i.
His throne is made of cold black marble, and he is swathed, nay, buried in red furs and silks. His luxuries have come as a by-product of selling his soul. (The fabrics were dyed with blood.) Because he has done so, he cannot dream any longer. He does not breath in his waking hours. He does not, can not sleep. His heart does not beat.
("Maybe the King keeps his heart inside of a chest, where a bridge guards over it. Or maybe it's kept inside of an eye, to be activated when he is dead and it is ready to be eaten. Or maybe it's kept in gloved hands, where the possessor will never give it up. Do you know, oh Alice?")
(His eyes are stained. One he covers up because it tells lies (No-Truth, though if it is one or the other he is not ever truly sure) and the other he shows because it shows truth. (Again, the same reasons. He's never sure these days. He gave away his eye.)
He holds a sceptre in one hand and does not regret.
His Knight, the one piece that will not go from him as he slowly moves himself into hell, is standing in back of him with a smile that will be forever etched into his marble-like face.
ii.
He remembers in fragments; first of being a child with knobby knees that are dappled in shades of vomit and blood, and then being the proud owner of legs that dangled uselessly off of a chair. He remembers cages and sacrifice and humiliation, in no particular order.
He thinks he remembers dreaming, too. He dreamed of waiting.
(He drowned himself inside a tea-can until the day of arrival came.)
iii.
He dreams of falling off of ships, of corpses that reach for a soul that doesn't exist in him, reaching with rotting hands.
But always there is a silver-haired man with golden-green eyes and a long scar that is carved across his face, telling him everything and anything from his enchanted mouth while he holds him in his arms, trying to sweep him away from his knight.
There are stars outside of the ship that shine so brightly, you could see them Underneath as they truly were, burning like infernos with the power of unspoken words. He, the King possessed it all-Everything in and beneath the sky.
"These are Bizzare Dolls, you know. Have you changed your mind yet about the coffins?" The Man says pleasantly to the King, and the King somehow knows that this Man is mad as a hatter, one way or another. Whether it is because of him or because of other things, he does not know. "Why?" He manages to say in between leaps and swirls and falling through space.
"Because you are interesting, Earl."
But he is the King and made out of the sky and not available to be taken by death, and he says so. The Man laughs, and lets him go, falling through the ship to let him go back to his servant. "Keep these!" He calls in a delighted way, making sure that it is not goodbye. "They're my treasure."
In the hand that does not hold his scepter, the king holds funeral lockets-And plummets.
iv.
"Little girls are made out of everything nice, you know," The Duchess tells him sweetly while embroidering initials on a handkerchief. She is wearing a doctor's habit today, but she shines in it-Like a candle in radiance. The French darling sitting at the table is listening with big ears, anxiously waiting on the Duchess' every word. She knows best. The Duchess knows best-She must.
"You must be cute and witty and smart and be perfect for him in every way you can," The King can see that the Duchess is trying to embroider the letters "R" and "V" and "P" all at the same time, in a very jumbled sort of way with her clumsy fingers. (Fingers that have preferred the touch of a scalpel to needles.) "That is why you must be like that." She graciously nods at a ghost, who laughs still in a pale imitation of daylight. She had blond hair, big blue eyes and a wicked humor.
The scent of ashes and burning wood surround him in the garden, and he closes his eyes to avoid a death of a family.
The scene changes.
vii.
There are many letters that are posing as doors in the hallway before him, he thinks with a kind of amusement. Each handle is made out of red wax, stamped with some symbol or the other. Each of them lead to a different sort of fate, but that's alright-He will open every one of them. He really only had one fate to choose from, after all.
"Tea, my lord?"
Dante's "Inferno" is now lying carelessly in front of him, and on the open page before him it reads: "In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost."
Perhaps this is right, the King thinks to himself. Only, perhaps the part about a raven at a window was more accurate.
(Nevermore)
viii.
He is dancing madly, though he doesn't know how to dance in truth. He is surrounded by a ballroom full of men, and he feels lost-Very lost. He's wearing a pink dress. "We're all men here," he hears from a participant in passing and feels a brief flicker of annoyance-Of course they were all men, it was strange but that-
"Ah my Robin, we will soon be alone…" He swears he feels his skin trying to actually escape at the voice. "May I have this dance?" His Knight interrupts the dancing quite suddenly, wearing glasses he doesn't actually need and adjusting them.
He lets go of his partner, and the ballroom floor suddenly is puddled with blood.
"Remove your gloves," He says shortly to Sebastian because the ballroom is rather suddenly now filled with dead corpses instead of men, and the gloves are covered in gore. "My apologies." Sebastian says, and means it after a fashion.
They begin to dance together in a ballroom of the dead, equals in every respect.
ix.
"Pass," He tells his court. The Duchess smiles, and taps her hat with a billiards stick. "Our King only aims to win, doesn't he?"
"Of course, Duchess." He says, because she's right and they both know it. The Guardsman is grinding his sharp, canine-esque teeth into an early grave, and he knows that the compensation will be coming shortly. "High Tea," He says casually and makes a mental note to not buy "New Moon Drop." It wouldn't do to be invisible to this man while they dined on the Big Ben.
"They say that there have been some mice running around, eating tarts…"
x.
"That's an order-An Order!"
The sky is blue and the wind is blowing, and he can practically feel the satisfaction rolling off of his servant in waves. They are both happy with their lot in life. They are in the middle of what can only be called ruins, of an abandoned house, an abandoned church, a graveyard-
And then his feet are taken away, and he is falling off of a high place. A Cinema explodes out of his stomach, and he slips into deep water.
It is a sea of tears named the Styx, and there isn't a boat for it.
xi.
"I loved you, you know," He says to an absolute darkness after a while. No stars will shine this night.
Feathers caress his face, and his face half-smiles from this gesture of sentimentality. "I loved you, my lord." (Victim, Lord, Master, Amusement, Toy, Doll, Pastime, Love-These words are all meant and said, and the dead sky king let go of his thread of fate for a final and last time.
The Knight checkmated his King. It was alright, in the end.
The curtains are being drawn back, and the sunlight pours in through the windows in his room. "Good Morning, young master…"
Ciel decides to pursue a better sleeping aid for tomorrow night.