Author's Notes: This is an Alois character study more than anything else. I wrote it a while back, before I'd even finished the anime, but I've cleaned it up a bit and made it a fragmented one-shot.
Warnings: Angst and mentions of Alois's past.
- Fairy Tales -
I.
"I don't want it!" –A shrill scream echoed through the high ceilinged dining room, the darkly lit corridors and the grand foyer until it was swallowed by the oppressive, cavernous empty spaces that haunted the Trancy manor and threatened to consume the maker of the noise along with it. The slender, lily-skinned boy who sat at the head of his vacant table would be an enjoyable feast for the mansion's phantoms, had a certain demon not already made dinner reservations. But no one, devil or darkness, would eat until the meal itself was satisfied.
"Shit!" A thrown cake left white trails of frosting as it slid down the florid wallpaper. "You expect me to eat this?"
Alois sunk his hand into a poppy pink cake and giggled when he saw the improper mess it left on his silk soft hands. He licked it off with a devious grin before crinkling his nose and flinging the dessert across the table.
"Complete shit!" He savored the taste of the adult swear word—it was far sweeter than any of the treats placed before him.
"Is there a certain dessert my master is craving?" The demon's voice was like a low rumble of distant thunder in the midst of a crackling lightning storm. There was a polish to it, though, that thunder thoroughly lacked—a sleekness, like the flat edge of a knife.
It was the most delicious sound Alois had ever heard.
"I'm not hungry for sweets anymore," the lamb smiled with teeth as white as snow.
"I see. Is there something else master hungers for?" That voice, like dark licorice.
The boy stretched his arms, became a toddler beckoning "up!". White limbs wrapped themselves around the demon's neck, lean legs around his waist. A small, scarlet mouth nestled against his throat and twisted into a smile. The familiar jostle of being carried relaxed him into reverie; his clouded blue eyes watched the dining room disappear to be replaced with the parlor, then the foyer, then the grand staircase: a path he knew well.
"No!" He snapped up. "Not there. The sitting room."
"The divan?"
He gave no reply, preferring to nuzzle a smile against his carrier's neck. It was enough of a response for his supernatural servant.
Strong arms (Alois sometimes wondered how strong) placed the boy carefully on the expensive couch, where he elongated his brittle legs, airy and elegant as the bones of a bird, and let his blonde head settle against a pillow before he offered his slave a thin hand. A devilish mouth pressed against the bony back of his fist; black nailed hands worked loose each finger while kisses greeted each knuckle in turn. The boy stared down the top of his butler's head as fingers met mouth and tongue. A pair of amber slits flicked up in answer.
"Am I beautiful, Claude?" Alois asked in the same voice he used when deciding on an outfit for the day. Purple or blue, Claude? But the creature knew that this question held more consequence.
He turned up the boy's hand and licked his palm, expecting the sigh that followed and the flicker of thick eyelashes.
"My master is exquisite. I intend to make one Hell of a feast of him."
The hand was snatched back with an inaudible hiss. At times, Claude knew, there was simply no pleasing his testy young master.
"He's prettier than I am," he spat. "You know he is."
"I know not to whom my master is referring, but—"
"Don't be stupid, Claude. Ciel. Ciel. I'm talking about Ciel!" Small fingers snatched his butler's tie and yanked down, drawing the smooth marble surface of his face closer to boyish, reddened cheeks. "You want him more than you want me. I want him more than you want me. I want, I want…"
His butler had begun to chuckle—an unnatural, metallic sound that frightened him more than he would deign to admit.
"Stop that!" He swiped a clawed fist, which his butler easily dodged.
"Perhaps your highness would do best not to assume whom his servant craves the most," he purred, now crouched over the boy who fought to keep his gorgeous face composed as he glared into eyes that glowed like faux jewels.
"Tell me that you want me," the boy spoke from a distant corner of his mind where hideous memories lurked, where his sanity wavered like the fraying edges of his damaged soul.
Claude complied, like he always had, like he always would until his sentence was complete and the roles of master and slave were eternally reversed. He fulfilled his task with the same level of precision as when he set the table for dinner, laying his words as straight as silverware. And Alois was satisfied, closing his eyes and falling asleep to the echoes of demonic praise. But in the dark space there whispered the thought that dispelled his trust and made evident the dead, soulless eyes that rested in the face he so desperately clung to.
Lies. Lies. Lies.
II.
Very little could hold Alois's attention for longer than a handful of seconds. The boy bounced from one diversion to the next, draining amusement from his subjects like a bloodsucking insect before whizzing away to the next spark that caught his flickering interest. Hedonism was the only altar at which he worshipped now, finding divine delight in candies, gemstones, heeled boots and the looks he received when he wore them. He lived for the looks. He pleaded for them, and when he got his wish he imbibed them like liquid chocolate. The looks, the caresses, the affirmations of beauty and desire—the love he wished would satisfy him but somehow, though he refused to admit, left him all the more alone. And the loneliness feasted on him like flame to fuel, driving him to slap, bite, kick, and stab his servants until the fire dulled.
Sometimes, though, the loneliness left him silent, and it was in these brief moments that he stared into the mirror.
The mirror in his bedroom was exceedingly large, with an ornate frame that hardly mattered because all that the reckless boy cared to admire was the light haired, light blue-eyed, light skinned child through the looking glass. Mornings were often spent romancing the reflective surface, pretending that an audience lurked behind the frame and watched his dancing form with awe and lust. The Alois that now stood before the glass bore none of this playful fancy. He was naked as an infant, with blue orbs wide and ghost skin pallid under the glow of candlelight, and his lips moved as if uttering a prayer. From the mirror's reflection he watched a familiar hand press against the glass as his own hand did the same, matching palm to palm.
Was there another Alois behind the glass? If there were, would he be exactly the same? Would he have lived a different story? If he crawled out of his mirror world, just now, and stood before this world's Alois in flesh and blood, would he embrace him or wrap his identical hands around his throat?
He sunk to his knees, dizzy with the thought of two Alois's—which one the original and which one the copy?
"Could the world even handle two of us?" he asked mirror Alois, giggling at the thought.
Two Alois's. Two pairs of long white legs, he thought, trailing fingers over his thighs. Two chests, with two beating hearts inside (he felt the persistent thump beneath his fingertips). Four eyes. Two tongues—he stuck his out to examine mirror-Alois's seal. Yes, it was there, and just as vivid. With a mix of curiosity and depravity, he pressed his tongue against his reflection's own, tasting the cold surface. Nothing happened, but he liked the picture it presented: two beautiful, blonde boys, tasting each other through the glass. He drew his tongue lasciviously up the mirror boy's cheek, reveling in the sin and beauty before he realized that no one was there to appreciate such an image.
Maybe two Alois's wouldn't be so bad. Maybe Clau—maybe grown ups would like the two little mouths pressed against each other and pressed against other people like twin nymphs. Would he like that? Maybe. Another Alois would love him, too, because people have to love themselves.
"Do you think he would like it?" he asked himself.
The twin Alois in the mirror stroked a line down the glass.
"But how could I…?"
What if… the idea was dismissed before he could even finish the thought. Ciel could never be his twin. He wanted the dark haired boy to belong to him, not become him.
But would he like it if he kissed and caressed him? Two little mouths pressed against each other. His stubborn pet would refuse at first, but he would learn to behave. And maybe one day he would stop resisting, and Alois and he could be like brothers, and they could hold one another against the darkness of the world even as they willingly gave themselves to it. For though the yellow haired child would go to any length for the affection of the one who would consume his flesh and soul, he held comfort in the thought that there was another boy like him: another boy who had seen evil, who had been torn from family, who had felt unwanted touch and watched his rose-white cover of childhood ripped to shreds. Someone who knew well the scarlet hatred that drove a boy to sell his soul. Maybe then, the mirror boy would not be the only face he truly knew.
III.
The night after the funeral, he threw the sheets into the fire. Watched the linens burn until the glossy flames flickered in his pupils. Held his breath as the orange beast engulfed the remains of what-once-was, of nights spent yielding to greedy hands and mornings of shivery cold. The blankets had been witness to it all—all that he fought to expel.
"Can you erase the past, Claude?"
"No, young master. It is beyond my power."
So he turned the past to ash.
The fire grew brighter and larger, as though it hungered for more. Light eyes glanced up at his impassive demon. When they returned to the fire, the mouth below them was smiling. A little hand, a hand that had been held down far too often, hovered close to the blaze. Then it plunged. The boy stifled a scream, wishing to see the look on his butler's face when he turned and said—
"Look, Claude. I'm burning."
On the ground an instant later, the fire on his sleeve put out by his supernaturally quick servant, Alois screamed. He stared at his singed-pink hand and shrieked as tears slid down his red cheeks. He wailed far longer than the actual pain lasted, but his screams had little to do with the burn.
Gently and silently, accustomed as he was to his master's fits, the butler carried the boy out, cradling him as he cackled and twisted and bowed his back like a petulant infant. Yet again, the butler would tend to his master's broken pieces. And all the king's horses and all the king's men, he thought.
It would not be long until his master could no longer be put back together again.