Akai-no-Kokoro (Heart of Red)
published October 24, 2010; final version (edited for excesses and some continuity glitches) October 25th.
with great love for Yana Toboso and everyone who's fave'd my Kuro stories, thank you!
disclaimer: I do not own the characters/settings of Kuroshitsuji/Black Butler, which belong to Yana Toboso forever, but damn, I do love them SO much. and if I take them for a ride, I promise x-my-heart to bring them back safely. Really I will.
-Good night, there were hundreds of them. Sebastian, a fistful of knives in each hand, was taking them out in great bloody swaths, but in the torchlight Ciel could see that more were pouring out from under the bridge, and more behind them. He reloaded as quickly as he could, looking hastily around him. There—a burly troll armed with two long knives was trying to muscle its way through the stampede to Sebastian; Ciel picked it off with a neat shot through the eye, looked around again, trying to make his few shots count.
"Filthy nobles! Filthy nobles and their dogs! England ours, ours ever!" A muddy claw swiped off Ciel's top hat; he shot the owner dead, but that was too close. This was getting bad. He scrambled a few feet further up the dead tree he was perched in for better vantage, saw that Sebastian was ten-deep in the mob and that more were spilling into the gap as fast as he killed them. They were separated with no visible chance of fighting their way to each other-and was there no end to the bloody things? How deep was the chasm under that bridge, lit with its great tarry torches?
-He kept seeing poor Knightslane's face. Edward Knightslane, Funtom's Assistant Manager of Soft Toys; one of his best and most diligent employees, the sort of candid, good-hearted fellow that Ciel always instinctively liked. When the Queen had first set him and Sebastian on the trail of these Unseelie uprisings, he'd never imagined it would take him to the home of someone he knew, let alone on the worst day in the poor devil's life. But there he'd been on the lawn when Ciel's coach had pulled up, staring at a charred swath across the grass that had consumed a garden shed, and in it, two long, low blackened masses…
... his parents. Arthur and Evelyn Knightslane.
The sight and smell, the memory, had choked Ciel with such horror that it was all he could do to keep his composure - he was more than half leaning on Sebastian behind him - and he was sure he'd been white as a sheet when he reached Knightslane, but his emotion was nothing compared to the bereaved son's. The man had tried to control himself when addressing the Earl, but he'd simply been unable, and had fallen to his knees in choked, helpless sobs. For all his lack of skill at such things, Ciel had been the one to stand with his employee - hand on his shoulder, heart wrenched with the similarity of this loss to his own - while Sebastian silently and methodically investigated the scene of the attack.
And he'd reported clear signs: trolls and goblins, just as Her Majesty had heard. The Knightslanes had apparently been assaulted only because their estate lay on the edge of the ancient forest. Ciel had left his grief-stricken manager with a promise of any help he or the company could give, and they'd driven off on the Unseelie creatures' trail -
-to this bridge-
"Bloody noble brat! You'd make a nice stew, y'would!" A goblin had grabbed up his elegant hat and was cutting grotesque capers with it, the roses and lace absurd on its dirty toadlike head, while another was clawing its way up the tree toward him, grinning hideously. "Bet yer queen'd like that, eh? If we's to have you to dinner?"
"Pig," spat Ciel, putting a shot between its eyes. The thing howled as it fell off the tree, spouting blood. He was tempted to shoot the one wearing his hat as well, but didn't dare waste the ammunition; he wasn't even sure how much he had—
-and then he knew for sure, as the hat-wearer shrieked in rage and leapt at him, clawing off the sash that held his brass box and hurling it into the mud below. He did shoot it then and retrieved his topper, but now he had exactly three shots left; and there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of shrieking trolls and goblins charging across the field, and he could barely even see Sebastian.
He cocked the top hat at a rakish angle, took a deep breath and prepared for the worst.
It came in fast, shrieking and snarling, a mob of fangs and claws swarming up the trunk of his tree. "Eat him! Eat him!" -and Ciel pushed back the memory of the Knightslanes' corpses, the thing that had broken their son, that they had not just been burned to death but torn and gnawed - he tried to climb away, but one grabbed his ankle and hauled, and he slipped a yard down the tree. He shot the one pulling him - two shots left - and tried to scramble back up, but couldn't climb fast enough one-handed; two and then three more caught hold of him, pulling him down into the mob, and he shot one more and then kicked out at them, uselessly. A sea of glittering eyes and grinning teeth opened under him.
"Eat him! Eat the brat now!"
- drowning in their foul breath, the stink of blood and the river marsh - he'd seen the Knightslanes' half-eaten bodies, smelled the scent of burned meat, like his own parents, like - one bullet left, he thought, shoot yourself now.
But he couldn't die this way, couldn't - the contract-
-something seemed to explode in the goblin ranks to his left, and with a grinding roar forty or fifty trolls flew into the air in a spray of mud and bloody fragments—
-and an arm went around him and pulled him clear. Effortlessly, high into the night, clear and crisp with autumn and bright with moonlight. In a blink he was away and the trolls were far below.
Ciel gasped for breath, unashamedly clung to the arm holding him, shaking. Seconds - in just seconds they would have torn him apart and eaten him-
He was gathered up and held close, and he huddled into his rescuer's blood-soaked coat as if it were fresh white linen, shuddering. Slim gloved fingers combed through his hair, stroked his head soothingly. Something solid underfoot - they must have alighted in a tree-
Sebastian would ask for his orders in a moment, he thought, and I'll tell him to burn this place to the ground.
The rescuer stroked his head again, with a soft, throaty chuckle. "There, you're safe, little Earl-"
-what?-
"-you didn't think I'd let Madame's dear child be devoured by such monsters, did you? Hardly." - Velvet-soft kiss on his forehead; the lightest scrape of very sharp teeth. "The little master's own monsters are much more dangerous than this trash."
Ciel opened his eyes, staring at the fabric in front of his face, and no, that wasn't just blood, it had always been red-
-looked up, and was met by a fond, shark-toothed grin, bright jade eyes. Grell Sutcliff. His rescuer was a Death God.
-"What are you doing here?"
"Why, I just told you, Ciel-kun." Grell patted him. "I looked down from my tree, saw you in trouble and Sebas-chan up to his pretty neck in trolls, and, well! Big sister had to do something, no?"
"Since when were you my sister?"
And for just an instant there was pain and grief in the green eyes.
"-Since you made it very clear you don't want a mother." The shinigami, holding Ciel in one arm, checked the balance of his chainsaw with the other. "You'd better hold on-" the sawblade grin turned carnivorous-"Sebas-chan and I are going to burn this place to ashes, and I might need both hands."
Ciel saw no choice but to put his arms around the Death God's neck; sleek, heavy red hair slid like silk over his wrists. He couldn't help touching it. Did she-
"It's really for Madam, isn't it?'
Grell stopped still.
"—let me tell you something, Ciel-kun. Though it's a punishable offense to say it." Theatrical sigh. "We shinigami are never supposed to regret killing. Death is our art—our raison d'etre! We exist to deal death. And I have always tried to deal it as artistically as possible! But your aunt…" The green eyes darkened. "I was so disappointed in her…I killed her with no art at all. And I miss her."
He looked up defiantly into the starry sky. "I don't care if you hear me! Go ahead and punish me; I'm sorry I killed Angelina Burnett." -the back of a gloved hand brushed across his eyes. "-and I wish I hadn't."
An almost-shy, sweet smile at Ciel; he straightened the boy's frilled top hat. "Yes. It's for her."
And he launched them both back over the bloody field.
(The demon Sebastian, atop a heap of troll bodies with Phantomhive silverware buried in their throats, looked up and smiled; the Young Master's charisma had ensnared even that one…)
Grell picked a spot and got to work.
And Ciel's amusement slowly faded into awe, as he realized - from his vantage point in an ancient, stately oak - just what he was seeing. He had never watched the Death God fight in real anger; when he battled Sebastian it was with a sort of manic playfulness that made it seem light-hearted however deadly, and even when he had killed Madam Red his mood had been not so much rage as the vengeful hurt of a jilted lover. But now he was mowing the trolls down with steady sweeps of his roaring saw, a Grim Reaper in very truth, green eyes blazing and jagged teeth gleaming like razors; slim, ferocious, hair swirling like fire, a thing of bloody and terrible grace. A cold chill ran down Ciel's spine; Death Itself was here, and the ancient army was nothing before it.
In moments the trolls realized that the tide of battle had turned, and they abandoned Sebastian and swarmed toward the shinigami, hoping to overwhelm him with sheer force of numbers. Stupid, thought Ciel as he watched the flood sweep toward the redhead, they'll just make it easier for him—
"Crazy Reaper! Why fight us? Reapers old, so old, should understand!" One tackled Grell at the knees and pitched him into the mud, others piling in after it. "No nobles, no Queen! Us oldest ones, as was before—"
The motor grew louder, the fog turned red, and Ciel grinned savagely. Death Itself was on his side. -This wasn't the silly, flirtatious Grell he'd foolishly thought he knew, this was its true self, and it had smiled at him—it was like Death's understanding, Death's blessing on his entire life. Those eyes-
"-All right, you rats! Do you know what I am?"
The Earl looked up; the Reaper was standing in the middle of the muddy field, glaring around him. The torchlight caught in his streaming red hair, gleamed off his glasses; he swung the saw high in a glittering bloody arc. "-Death on high heels, that's what! And I amgiving you an order, so shut up and listen!"
The entire goblin army stopped where it stood, looking up in awe. Even Sebastian – Ciel could see him – straightened, pushed wet hair out of his eyes and watched.
'Not one of you touches that boy there—" he pointed with the saw—"Earl Ciel Phantomhive. Not now, not ever. And do you rats know why?" Grell stamped the butt of the snarling chainsaw into the mud. "Because he belongs to my dearest Sebastian Michaelis! and even more-to Angelina! To Madam Red!"
Again he swung the saw overhead, taking out a massive oak branch which fell in a shower of smoke and sparks. The goblins drew back, yammering in panic. "Tell the rest of the scum! This Death Scythe protects the Queen's Watchdog, till the contract is complete."
And as Ciel sat in his tree, he saw them all turn to stare up at him.
"…a contract? Queen's dog is under oath?" "-didn't know it was allowed—" "—Reaper means it—"
-and, with respect: "Queen's dog is no ord'nary dog."
He couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw some of the trolls bow to him as they trudged back toward the bridge.
Sebastian reached the tree before Grell did, and there was a moment. Of course.
"I don't recall asking for your protection, Grell-san."
"Your little master is a much-contested item in the underworld, Sebas-chan. Plus, he's so cute." Grell caught him up and cuddled him; Ciel suffered the indignity (there was no real way to refuse) and met the redhead's eye.
"Thank you, shinigami-san."
And he meant, thank you for remembering her; and he meant, thank you for being one of my monsters..
And the Death God's green-in-green eyes saw all of that, as he set Ciel down.
"Most welcome, Earl-kun." A sharp, dazzling grin. "- My best to Her Majesty."
-and gone.
Sebastian carried him to the ground; Ciel straightened his hat, thoughtfully, and the demon gave him a long look.
"I think, perhaps, that your aunt's Reaper has become your Reaper, Young Master."
Long silence.
"-And how is that a problem?"
Slow, feline smile.
"Not at all, Young Master."
"Good. Now burn it."
He bowed, picked up the oak branch the Death God had set ablaze, and with a deep breath, incinerated the field.