Author's Notes, Nonsense, and Nuisances: Sort of AU if you see it that way; rated for violence and dark themes. No yaoi for once! (Rare for me, right? XD;)
Sebastian's human life is such a mystery to us, but the moment I saw his saying "I do not lie", it all began to play through my mind. This is my tribute to his humanity, and to what I believe could have been his story.
x x x
Nobody knew exactly where they came from, but they were certainly foreigners. Nobody from the small world of their village would stand so stiffly, so far apart for a family. Nobody had such stiff names, such disciplined children.
Despite their differences, they would have been accepted if it hadn't been for the boy.
There were five of them when they arrived, but soon after their mother vanished, as silently and as impassively as she had arrived; tight-lipped in their church pew one morning and an empty seat the next.
There were four of them, really, the villagers would say in hushed and respectful voices later. Nobody could really help but count the cat, though. The boy treated that cat as though it were his own sister.
Most of the village turned away as if the scandal would disappear if nobody looked at it. The rest clung to it like starved dogs, working the rumor mill to the bone to squeeze every last drop from it over the next four years. It would never have been forgotten, for nothing ever really died there, but despite that... It would have been perfectly fine with time if it hadn't been for the boy.
Nobody could deny that the boy was unusual. Alexander Valentine Spears was indeed a most unusual child.
x x x
The house on the hill had been empty for years until the Spears moved in unexpectedly one cold fall afternoon. Nobody would ever forget that day.
We didn't think they spoke English, at first. They were so quiet... I'm sure the boy did, though, I heard him... It wasn't just a dream, it wasn't...
There were five of them when they first arrived. Their father and mother, presumably, grim individuals who looked as though a simple smile would crumble them, wearing thick coats that seemed strangely colorless, even in the grey world the village lived in perpetually.
The elder son, William Thomas Spears, a thin and somber boy of at least sixteen, sporting small, rectangular glasses and a demeanor as warm as that of his parents was normal enough. Devoted to both his parents and to his studies, he held the seriousness of a grown man in his young but somehow desperate eyes. He would have been fine. He would have been perfectly fine.
The cat, too, was nothing particularly noteworthy - a beautiful creature, of course, with furs like the blackest night and shining amber eyes that seemed full of mischief - she was perhaps the only bit of their family that was ordinary.
For indeed, the younger son could not be called ordinary in the slightest, even by the standards of a foreigner. Alexander Valentine Spears was the end of any normalcy the family possessed.
He was small for his age, which must have been roughly 10 at the time, lithely built as though he were part cat himself, moving with a grace and confidence that rarely reached his face or his lips. Perhaps it was his only eyes that unnerved were a normal enough hazel, some claimed later they were amber, others argued they had looked exactly like wine in the moonlight. That wasn't anything unnatural. What really got to people was how empty his eyes were... Nobody could see a flicker of emotion in them, ever.
We thought he was dead at first... No, not like a ghost, but in his heart... I could have sworn on my life without a single doubt that there wasn't a soul in the world with eyes quite like his.
Despite his eyes, he was a beautiful child, without question. The way his casually messy raven hair fell at either side of his face, a sharp contrast to the pale, flawless skin beneath it - no, his looks were not the real trouble. Perhaps it was his quiet manner of conduct that was really the reason they found him so odd, for he wasn't loud like other children his age - indeed, he avoided speaking at all costs and only murmured fond sentiments to that cat.
He was always talking to that cat... It was so creepy, like the cat even understood him or something. We saw him, so many times, sitting on his front step, or in the gutter, or in his windowseat behind those thick curtains - just sitting there, talking to that cat.
He and William were the only children in the small village who didn't attend the small school held in the church, which of course drew a large amount of judgement and criticism from the locals, but their father had no comment to make on the matter, and continued to tutor them privately at home.
Their home-tutoring drew skepticism from the rest of the village, fueling whispers and more suspicions. Local children found it the highest amusement to catch Alexander Valentine in one of his haunts, luring him out with taunts and cruel words and jeering at him until his brother showed up furiously, or until the boy ran away silently to find his cat. If the teasing and taunting hurt him, he seemed indifferent. Perhaps that was what was really unusual about him.
There wasn't really anything so unusual about them, I suppose, the villagers would whisper later. They just didn't want company or need it, and were quiet and somber... We judged them too harshly, perhaps, but nobody can pretend that final, horrific incident didn't happen...
x x x
The Spears had been in the village for roughly four years the night it all went wrong. Nobody thought the scream that split the early winter afternoon had belonged to Alexander Valentine. Nobody thought he could raise his voice, let alone cry out as though his very soul was being torn apart.
It was too late, when we got there... There was so much blood, all over him, all over their bodies... We all thought he was their killer, we grabbed him with shouts of "Monster!" and "Murderer!" He was just sitting there on the floor, holding the knife that did it... Nobody could have been expected to think otherwise.
They questioned him severely, gathering in the back bedroom of the Whitby house to keep him from escaping. Perhaps it was the fact that he refused to give a full explanation, simply shaking his head when he was asked, over and over again, if he had been the killer, whispering four words as though they were the only thing he had left to cling to - "I do not lie."
x x x
Nobody was really surprised to find in the morning the boy had escaped, though they felt strangely guiltly themselves and even guiltier when, years later, the true murderer was unveiled and hanged. Nobody really intended to hunt down the boy once more, for after all, nobody as small and frail as him would last long on the streets.
He actually made the bed before he ran away... gathered the broken glass from the window in a neat little pile under it and folded what was left of the sheet he used to climb down. Maybe that was what shocked us the most... He was such an unusual child.
Alexander Valentine's last few hours were spent in an alleyway in London, slumped between two crates, holding that cat. Small, pathetic, and broken, he resembled a drowned animal when the demon discovered him. Perhaps the shinigami were to blame for being slow that day. Perhaps it was the demon's fault that he happened to be passing through in search of an easy meal. Or perhaps it was, indeed, Alexander Valentine's fault himself for making the request.
x x x
"Don't leave me here," whispered the boy hoarsely, clutching the sleeve of the tall individual. "I'm close to dying, so please... don't leave me here."
Perhaps Alexander Valentine reminded the demon of his own son from a human lifetime. Perhaps he simply found the darkness in the child's eyes intriuging. Nobody knew the real reason the demon had agreed, catching up the small body and sinking his teeth into the succulent flesh, breathing his own demonic essence of death through the veins and heart of the boy.
We never saw him again, they whispered, even long after the incident. We didn't really want to imagine what happened to him - after all, we know what happens to stray souls like that...
The empty amber eyes became a virulent fuschia. The cold silence filling the alley after the elder demon had departed became filled with a quiet rustle of feathers. The boy, Alexander Valentine Spears, became a demon with a last whisper on his lips.
"I do not lie."
x x x
Not sure if I'm gonna continue this, but that's it for now... Somehow Sebastian's human name suits him, amirite? And in case you didn't pick it up, it is indeed my theory that Sebastian and William T. Spears were related to each other when they were human... Because we all know Will wouldn't change his name after he died. XD
Reviews are muchly appreciated, and thanks for reading!~
