Standard Disclaimer: Blah, blah, blah, I don't own Kuroshitsuji. Neither does anyone else on the site, I would guess.
Note: So, I first got the idea for this when I saw the episode where Ciel was trying to get Finny, Bard, and Meylene to sneak-attack Sebastian with that magic camera. The setting for this story is hovering somewhere between the anime and manga, since I used ideas from both.
Finian hated the color white. He loved being outside, where the only light came from a warm sun, and the nothing was entirely white, but softened, natural versions of it. He loved the feel of the grass beneath bare feet, the sounds of birdsong in the air, the smell of the earth after a rainstorm. He loved being around anyone or anything alive. People were the best – he could talk to them, and they would listen. Sometimes they would even hold an entire conversation with him. If there weren't any people around, Finny would always want to be outside, so he could listen to the birds and watch insects crawl around in the grass.
He hated the times when he was left alone in the Phantomhive house. It didn't happen very often, but sometimes the other servants had to go and run errands while Mr. Sebastian and the young master were away. Those times, Finny would be left under instructions to watch the house, not let anyone in, and above all, don't touch anything.
Finny hated being alone. He would light every lamp in an area of the house, although he knew the young master would have been furious if he found out. Finny would stay in that one small area of light, with his back against the wall, and stare out into nothing. He would wait for the others to return.
Finian had a family at some point, he was sure of that. After all, his name had to come from somewhere, and he had memories of a time when he always felt warm and safe. But those memories were few and vague, compared to the other memories.
The memories of the featureless, harsh white walls of his cell were always there, torturing him in the time he spent alone. The memories of that place could be shoved to the side, ignored if there was someone to be near, someone to talk to. He couldn't even spend the nights alone, which was why he shared a room with Bard. He wanted to forget.
The dead silence of that godforsaken place, silence broken only by the occasional footsteps or scream. The harsh chemical smell that permeated every part of the building. The mark on his neck that forever branded him as an object.
Finny knew that he had not been the only person in the building. There were the scientists, for a start, but he barely counted them as people. Sure, they treated him kindly sometimes, but they never spoke to him. Whenever they spoke about him, they spoke as though he were a stupid animal who couldn't understand him. On a regular basis, they would come and cover his nose and mouth with a cloth, dampened by a chemical that made his thoughts hazy and actions slow. They would drag him through halls that he would never clearly remember later, and shackle him to some sort of table.
The needle penetrating his skin was never really painful; whatever they used to keep him subdued during those times usually blocked it out. Nothing could block out the pain that always followed immediately afterwards, though. His veins would run with fire, or with ice. No matter how much he struggled, he could never break free.
They would always drag him back to his room before the pain fully subsided. He would collapse there and lay unmoving for hours, his only comfort the knowledge that the scientists wouldn't return for another few days.
Sometimes they wouldn't drug him. Those times, they ran him through tests before the shots; make him run on a treadmill as long and as fast as he could, force him to hold his breath until he was on the verge of unconsciousness, make him lift enormous weights until he was sure he would collapse. He never knew why they made him do those things, when they were just planning to give him the shot as usual.
There were others like him there, he knew. He never saw any of them, but he knew they were there. Sometimes he heard screams pierce the deathly still air, or a sob floating down the hall. Over time, they grew less and less frequent, until they stopped altogether.
Finny only had one source of peace in that terrible place. His room – his cell – had a window, high in the corner away from the board that served as his bed. It was little more than a hole in the wall, with bars across it. Most days, a small ray of sunlight would shine through that window for a few hours, and Finny reveled in the warmth. A passing breeze would carry the scent of the outside to the cell, a sense of life amid the choking chemical smell that Finny had become used to during the past few years.
Then there was the bird. Finny noticed it one day, when he was trying to see out the window, to see the outside. It perched right next to one of the bars and looked at him with a tilted head, almost as if it was asking, what are you?
"I'm Finian," Finny told the bird. It flew away when he spoke, startled by the sudden sound. Finny nearly cried. It was the first living thing he had seen, aside from the scientists, in more years than he could count. And he had scared it away, and it would probably never return.
But it did. The bird was sitting there in the window the next day when the scientists dropped Finny back into his cell and slammed the door. The shot that day hadn't hurt as much as usual, but it had left him extremely tired. It took all of his remaining strength to sit up against the wall and look towards the window. The bird chirped and flew into the room, landing on Finny's 'bed'.
"You came back," Finny said weakly. The bird chirped and flew over to him, landing on his knee.
The bird kept coming back to his room, every day for a long time. Sometimes it would even bring him something, usually a leaf or a twig. Finny always smiled when it did that. He had found a friend.
Until the accident.
The shots had been changing Finny somehow. He didn't really understand until one day, when he actually broke free of the restraints that always pinned him down. He was so surprised that he just stared, when one of the scientists snuck up behind him…
He woke up in his cell, the bird sitting on his chest and chirping. He smiled at the bird's curiosity and apparent concern. "I'm all right," he told it. The bird chirped, happily this time. Finny went to pet the small creature, like he had a few times in the past.
And the bird was dead.
Finny stared at the poor creature, and at his own hands. He couldn't believe that he had done that. He loved the bird, it was his only link to the outside. When the scientists came to his cell the next day, they found him leaning against the wall, cradling the bird's body in his hands, and sobbing.
They took the bird's body, then dragged him down for his usual shot.
Time passed. Things proceeded as they always had. Without the bird as company, Finny felt lost. He was certain that the other subjects were dead. The scientists had replaced the shackles on the chair with something stronger, and Finny had given up resisting for the most part.
One day, the shot hurt more than usual, even more than before the first incident. His veins were running with fire, with razor blades, with crushed glass. He screamed and pulled at the restraints, pulling them loose. He got up and ran blindly down the hall. He didn't care where he was going, he just had to keep running. And he crashed into someone.
That was the first time Finny had ever met Sebastian. Sebastian rescued Finny from that horrible building, from the scientists who thought of him as nothing more than an interesting toy. Sebastian had made it so that Finny could be outside whenever he wanted, and Finny was always surrounded by people who liked him.
Finny would do whatever was needed to please the young master, because when the young master became upset, then Sebastian would become annoyed at Finny. And he couldn't let that happen. Sebastian had saved him from hell.
If the price was having to spend a little bit of time alone in the mansion with his memories once in a while, then Finny would do so. Because nothing could make up for what the Phantomhive household had done for him.
Another note: I like reviews. I probably won't reply, but let it be known that I do read them. Reviews give me the warm fuzzies.