Moved from my tumblr to here because I'm ditching tumblr lol.
Disclaimer: I do not own Elsword.
Ciel's first memory is blood.
There's the smell of death in the air and the taste of copper in the back of his throat and all he can see is red, red dripping everywhere—off the walls, through his fingers, around the cold bodies of the people who used to be his living, breathing parents.
He clutches the hand of his crying sister and pulls her towards him as he gazes steadily at his parents' murderers. There's a numb, creeping sensation in the back of his mind that erases whatever pain he should have been feeling in that moment, and replaces the slowly-building terror in his veins with a rush of adrenaline as he prepares himself to do whatever it took to get the both of them out of this alive.
The bandits exchange looks with one another before letting out scathing chuckles. "There's nothing left here to take. Let's just kill the brats and get this done with." The words echo in his ears as they reach for his sister, their dirty fingers twirling her white hair, laughing harshly at the whimpers of fear she makes.
Ciel remembers pulling the knife from his mother's body, remembers the red that filled his vision and roared in his ears, remembers lunging forward and hitting something warm, something soft, something human, remembers the liquid that ran down his fingers and splattered across the front of his clothes—
He remembers that he'd never felt as alive in his whole life until then as he did in that single moment.
And then it's over, the bodies of the men slumping lifelessly to the ground leaving only his sister, staring at him with wide, terrified eyes. "Ciel, you…you killed them…"
He wipes his stained hand on his shirt, tucking the knife into his pocket, before reaching out for her again, not saying anything. There's a quiet moment, a second that stretches on for an eternity as her gaze moves towards his outstretched hand, a sudden feeling of distance rapidly expanding between them.
But the moment passes and her tiny, delicate hand rests in his own.
"What about Mom and Dad…?"
Ciel doesn't look back at the bodies behind them, doesn't look back at the childhood he's walking away from, at the memories that he'd never return to. There's a sharp, staggering pain inside of him at the thought and he swallows it all down, forces away the emotions threatening to overwhelm him. They were truly alone in the world now—he and his sister— and he couldn't afford to live in the past, to leave his precious little sister to fend for herself.
"They're gone."
He hears her starting to cry again, and he wants nothing more than to be able to take the time to bend down and wipe her tears away and whisper comforting words into her ear until she fell asleep, but he can't—they can't stay here, in a robbed house with dead bodies inside, in a place that they could no longer call home.
So he picks his little sister up in his arms and walks away from everything he's ever known, slipping into the shadows of his future.
There is no place that will take them.
Everywhere he turns is filled with slammed doors locked tight and nasty glares thrown their way. A part of him understands the hostility—they were just two street urchins asking to borrow what they could never pay back—but he hates it all the same. He'd never known people to be so naturally unkind, so innately selfish, but one look at his starving, sickly sister is all that it takes to remind him how disgusting the world is.
Ciel does his best to provide for the both of them, clearing out dirty corners to sleep in and robbing the occasional store or two for their dinner, never taking more than they need. He finds a plastic hairbrush discarded in the trash and runs it through his sister's tangled locks every night, weaving in his apologies for the way that they had to live into her twin braids.
She never blames him for anything however, taking his hands in hers and telling him every day what a good brother he was, how glad she was that she had him, everything that Ciel so desperately needed to hear, and for a short, happy, time, their lives are good—not perfect, not anywhere close to the way that they should have been—but just enough.
It falls apart all too soon.
He's honestly surprised when the bandits corner them, demanding things that they obviously don't have—food, money, possessions—Ciel has nothing left for them to take.
But they back them into the wall anyway, guns and knives flashing in the air as they threaten him, hoping to squeeze out something, anything that Ciel can give them, but there's nothing, and so they lash out at him, silver glinting through the air and then there's a blur of white jumping in front of him, then red, and—
His sister coughs blood, a wet, sickly sound, and suddenly he's holding her in his arms as the bandits exchange worried looks with each other—they hadn't meant to kill, only to frighten, and they couldn't afford to be caught by the authorities for murder—and they're running away from him, and he wants to run away from this as his entire world begins to crumble around his kneeling form.
She doesn't die immediately, blood slowly oozing out of the gaping wound in her side, and it gives Ciel just enough time to try and run for help, frantically knocking on doors and clawing at the coats of strangers and screaming and begging for someone, anyone to help him—to help her.
There's no one. Not a single person gives him even a second glance, brushing him away in disgust like he was nothing but a particularly annoying mosquito buzzing around their ears. And soon, he realizes that to them, that's all he is. That his sister's life meant nothing to the people around them.
He returns to her side, empty-handed and shivering from cold and grief, the rain falling in icy sheets around them and grabs her hand in his, clinging to her as if he could keep her anchored to the living world if he held on tightly enough.
"Please. Please, you're all I have left, I—"his voice cracks and breaks and dies in his throat, because he has nothing left to say anymore.
"Remember me," is all she says, smiling softly as her eyes flutter closed, and presses something cold and hard and small into his hand—a cross-shaped earring, one half of the matching pair she always wore. "Remember what I told you."
And then she's gone.
Time has no meaning for him for a while. After he digs her grave and lays her to rest, he wanders aimlessly through the streets, endlessly repeating the same monotonous cycle day after day, until everything blurs together in a mesh of color and sound.
It's only when the strange man cloaked in a long coat and hidden by shadow approaches him that he finds purpose in his life again. The man extends a hand towards him, the way he'd done to his sister what felt like millions of centuries ago.
"Revenge, boy. Revenge is what you want, isn't it? Those men that killed the people that you loved the most—don't you want them dead?"
Ciel thinks that this is a stupid question—of course he wants them dead, he wants them to lie at his feet and breathe their lasts on the ground the way that they made his entire family do. He levels a glare at the man, pushing his hand away.
"And you're suggesting that you can help with that?"
The other's smirk is understanding and not unkind, and this unnerves Ciel more than anything else. "Of course. We have resources that you could never hope to attain on your own, after all. We have the ability to track down the people you seek to kill in less than a day. All we're asking for in return is your cooperation with us."
"So you're saying that you want me to kill for you," he deduces, shoving his hands into the pockets of his torn jacket. Even as he says the words, he finds himself contemplating the possibility, imagining a life where he erased the taint of human cruelty from the world.
"That's a rather simplistic way of putting it, but yes. I'm offering you a lot here, boy—a home, a chance for revenge, a new life. You'd be a fool not to take it."
Ciel chews on his bottom lip, his thoughts tumbling and tripping over one another until all he can think about is the way that his sister's body slowly grew cold, the way that he'd dug her grave with his own hands even after his nails cracked and bled, the way that not a single person would lift a single finger to help her, even as he begged and pleaded and offered everything that he had.
"…why me?"
The man smiles indulgently, and his next words are full of knowing, as if he could read every single one of Ciel's thoughts and correctly interpret the emotions hidden inside. "You have a certain look about you—the look of a person who's seen death, who's caused death, who wants death—the death of others, that is."
Ciel doesn't think he's ever heard a more accurate statement.
"I'll do it. I'll join you. But first, I'd like one thing."
The man raises an eyebrow, clearly pleased with the result of his offer. "And that is?"
Ciel holds out the earring in response. "Do you know someone that could help me put this in?"
The first thing they teach him is how to kill.
"I know how to kill already," he snaps at the man, who he now knew as his adoptive father and the boss of the mafia he'd fallen into. "I've done it before, after all."
"So you have. That does not mean you know how to kill. All you know is the act of taking lives in recompense for slights issued against you. Killing is different. Killing means erasing an entire existence, years and years' worth of memories and emotions and relationships. Killing means that there is no difference between the lives you take—innocent or guilty."
His "father" circles around the chair he's sitting in, hands clasped neatly behind his back as he throws a severe look in Ciel's direction. "You are but a child in this world, Ciel. I doubt you understand what killing really is."
"I do," Ciel's grip on the sides of the chair tightens. "I know exactly what it's like, and I can do it!" He refuses to be denied now, now that he was so close to finally avenging his sister's death. He wouldn't, couldn't let something as superficial as this tear him away from his goal.
"Really," the boss's voice is level and flat, clearly indicating that his words aren't a question. "Follow me, then."
He leads Ciel to a small, square room, locking the door firmly behind them. The room is bare, save for a table in the middle, where a small rabbit lays.
Ciel raises an eyebrow in derision, pushing down the urge to rush up to the baby animal and pet its soft head, scratch its furry ears. "This is what you wanted to show me? A baby rabbit?"
His "father" reaches into his coat pocket and hands Ciel a gun. "Kill it."
The order is simple enough, composed of only two words, but it's enough to make Ciel pause, to look twice at the gun in his "father's" hand, to hesitate. It's enough to tell the boss everything that he needs to know.
"Well, Ciel? I thought you could do it?" The smirk crawls across his face ever so slowly as he gazes down at Ciel, who, in turn, is staring determinedly at the rabbit, refusing to meet his "father's" eyes.
"...why?" he asks, foolish and naive as he is then. "What's the point? It can't even stand or fight back. Why should I kill it?"
His hands shake and the world spins around him. It's nothing like it-nothing like what he'd felt when he'd killed those bandits. There's a steady unawareness, a foolish innocence, in his target's eyes and Ciel turns his face away, a sharp sting of pain jolting through him.
The boss shoots him a look, a smirk curling his lips and filling Ciel with unease. "You wanted this life, didn't you, Ciel? When I came to you on that day, when I rescued you from dying a meaningless death on the streets, this is what you agreed to," the mafia boss moves closer, until he's directly behind Ciel. "Besides...it's easy, Ciel. Everything is laid out for you. All you have to do is pull the trigger."
He presses a gun into Ciel's hand, so similar to the way his dying sister had done on that rainy, icy night, and Ciel remembers, remembers her small, fragile frame—how she was a gentle flower destroyed by the never-ending cruelty of the world.
This was what he had to do in order to avenge her, to protect her spirit. This was what he had to do to rid the world of the dark sea of evil that had swept his sister away and drowned her in its endless abyss. This is what he would do, no matter what.
There's a crack that splits the air and then the rabbit's body falls limp, the light in its eyes vanishing in seconds.
Ciel's heart pounds uncontrollably in his chest, adrenaline coursing through his veins and a crushing sense of loss deep inside of him, but when he looks back down, back at the still body on the table-
His hands have stopped shaking.
"Well? How do you feel?" his "father's" hands come to rest on his shoulders, an almost proud aura radiating from him.
Ciel bites his lip, watching the blood slowly trickle out of the small, white, furry thing on the table.
"People are easier."
And soon enough, he's at the endgame, he's being handed the file of the men he's wanted to kill for years now, being sent off with a weapon in his hand and their exact locations in his mind. He hunts them down stoically, methodically, like he would any other target.
But they're not like any other target.
He knows these men, remembers these men from when he was nothing but a scared, stupid child, too weak to protect what he loved the most, and there's an almost blinding fury clouding his judgement, warping his normally calculated decisions.
Ciel wants these men to suffer, to feel the way he'd felt on that night, to watch them choke on their own terror and blood and fall to the ground as lifelessly as his sister did. And it seems that the world agrees with him, recreating the conditions of then, the cold, cold rain falling steadily on the cobbled stones of the alleyway.
"Do you remember me?" he hisses at them, backing them into the dark corner of the alleyway, a sadistic glee lighting up inside of him at the look of utter confusion and fear on their faces. "Do you remember when you took everything away from me?"
He can tell that they don't, time having whittled away all memory of him from their minds, and it only enrages him further because he would never, ever be able to forget them. They shake their heads, beg and plead at his feet, pressing their foreheads into the pavement, promising to do anything, give anything if only he would spare them.
"Scream for help," Ciel snarls, yanking the one he remembers to be the leader upwards. "I dare you. See who comes to help you when you need it the most." He wants them to feel everything, to feel the constricting grief and hopelessness that he'd felt running through the streets back then.
They do scream, their helpless voices echoing off of the walls of the alley, and just like before, when Ciel was running and knocking on doors and pleading for help, no one answers.
Ciel feels himself smiling, a strange, forced grin stretching across his face, threatening to rip his entire being into two pieces. His free hand reaches up and touches the cold metal cross dangling from his ear, the other raising the gun and pointing it at them.
He shoots them in the stomach, and drops to his knees beside them, a sick recreation of the way he'd cradled his sister's form in his arms.
"Remember me," is all he says, breaking half of the bones in the leader's hand in his tightening grip. "Remember what I told you."
And then they're gone, their bodies growing cold in the still-falling rain. Ciel remains where he is for a while, idly tracing patterns of blood on the wet pavement, before deciding that it's still not enough, that he's not satisfied with just their deaths.
He rips open their packs, finds all the things they stole from other people, jewelry, money, precious items and photographs and letters as if he'd find the thing—the person that they'd stole from him along with all those other things too.
"I did it…" he mutters under his breath as he tosses away the useless trinkets, one after another. "I did it, so—so why isn't it right?"
He thought that he'd be pleased, that he'd feel a thousand pounds lighter once he'd finally, finally fulfilled his goal and avenged his sister, but instead he feels so much heavier, the weight of more and more of his sins piling up on top of him.
It's only when he reaches the mirror, when he sees his reflection for the first time in a long while, sees the crazed, deranged look on his own face that he stops.
"Remember what I told you," his sister had murmured, had made as her dying request.
Ciel closes his eyes.
"I'm sorry," he whispers to the rain. "I've already forgotten."
It doesn't surprise him when he wakes up sick the next day, shivering from the invisible glaciers that have sprouted in his room and curling up pathetically under the blankets. What does surprise him is when the boss's wife, who he's barely spoken three words to up until this point comes into his room, sympathetically laying a hand on his forehead and clucking her tongue in a worried, concerned sort of way.
She scoops up the pile of his still-wet clothes in her arms, casting him a glance of slight disapproval, but a different kind than he's used to.
"You stayed out in the rain, didn't you, Ciel?"
Her words are reproving, but her tone is gentle, and his eyes flutter shut in an uncharacteristic moment of weakness as her hand runs gently through his hair, brushing the blue strands away from his warm forehead.
Ciel mutters something incoherent in response about a mission he'd gotten from the boss for today, attempting to force himself out of the bed, but a gentle push stops him where he is. She smiles softly at him, leaving him momentarily dazed at the rare kindness he's being shown.
"I'll talk to him. He'll just have someone else take your mission. You need to rest for now."
He frowns, confusion dizzying his mind and fogging his thoughts as he allows himself to be laid back onto the bed and tucked in like a small child. An unfamiliar feeling washes over him, a feeling of warmth, warmth like he's never known filling up inside of him like a ray of sunshine.
What was this?
His eyes slip shut again, and he finds himself losing to the pull of the warmth, of the darkness—a good darkness, for once.
When Ciel next wakes, it's to the rough sensation of the boss shaking his shoulder.
"The person we sent in your place failed dismally," he explains to Ciel, who simply nods along in a haze of fatigue. "He's being…disposed of as we speak, of course. The mission will return to you, when you're healed. You're even getting his weapons—the ones that you've always looked at so enviously, so try not to disappoint me this time, Ciel."
Ciel forces his sleep-blurred eyes open further as his "father" places something on the table next to the bed before departing. He weakly pushes himself up, taking the weapons from the table and running his fingers over the cold metal blades.
It was true that he'd been wanting the gunblades for quite a while, but he hadn't wanted the owner of them to die. He shakes the troubled feeling away, forcing the last remains of sentimentality out of his mind. This was how the mafia world worked, he reminds himself as he lifts the weapons up, examining the way that they felt in his hands, marveling at how natural it all was.
He's itching to try them out, to get out of bed and carry out the mission that the other couldn't but then the boss's wife is back again, gently patting his head and offering him a cookie and a tall glass of milk.
"…why?" he asks, his voice a low whisper, loud in the quiet room. He's afraid that if he talks too loudly, the illusion will shatter, and everything will return to the way it once was, lonely and empty and full of nothing. "Why are you doing this for me?"
She sets the plate of cookies on his lap and smiles at him gently, a smile that brings up memories that Ciel thought he'd discarded and locked tight, away from all eyes, especially his own. "Why shouldn't I do this for you?"
He can't think of a proper answer to her question, instead choosing to turn his attention to the cookies, warily poking at them as if they were some sort of hidden trap. He wouldn't be surprised if this was all just another one of the boss's tests.
"They're not poisoned, you know. You've eaten my cookies many times in the past."
Has he? He thinks back, remembers sitting at the dinner table with her and his "father" and several other members of their little "family," stealing cookies from the plate when no one was looking—had those been from her?
He takes one carefully and bites into it, savoring the taste. "It's…different this time, then. It…doesn't taste the same."
She looks surprised for a moment, before tilting her head and gazing at him in a new light. "Well yes…I did change the recipe, but you shouldn't have been able to notice it….you might make a good cook, you know?"
Cooking? It's something that he's never even considered, never had the time for. Something so trivial has never crossed his mind, his thoughts too preoccupied with vengeance and grief and killing.
"You should try it. I'm sure you'd find it fun."
She's right.
Cooking and baking are not talents that are appreciated in an assassin, however, and soon Ciel finds himself in the place he's beginning to hate the most, stuck in a hard, wooden chair as his "father" paces around him in circles, a displeased expression on his face.
"Why are you wasting your time with these things, Ciel?" he frowns at Ciel, making a noise of disapproval as Ciel chooses to stare out the nearby window in lieu of an answer. "Ciel. Pay attention. I assume that you are well aware of what happens to the members of our 'family' when they stop being useful, correct?"
Ciel grits his teeth and stares him in the eye. "Yes. But I've been doing fine—I've killed every target you've given to me. What do my side hobbies matter to you?"
"I'm afraid of you becoming soft, Ciel. I'm afraid that one day, you'll find something or someone too cute to resist, or that you'll be so engaged in your 'side hobby' that you'll forget your mission. Besides, no one takes an assassin with an addiction to 'cute things' seriously."
His "father" is exactly right.
And that's the point of it all.
On his next few targets, not only does he fail to hide his obsession with cute things, he shows it off, attracting the attention of his targets and letting them mark him as a harmless being. He works undercover at a nearby restaurant, chopping vegetables and frying meat and humming to himself as he flips through the pages of a recipe book, smiling genially at the customer who enter the diner—including the ones he was supposed to kill.
He was, after all, "just a chef"—how could he possibly be capable of taking lives?
When he visits the office the next day, dropping the files of the completed missions onto his "father's" desk, he doesn't have to say anything more. There's the briefest hint of concession in the stern eyes, the smallest nod of approval before he's shooed out of the room.
He chooses not to dwell on the warm feeling that wells up inside of him at the approval.
There are whispers throughout the mansion, accusations of traitor and liar reaching Ciel's ears, and before he can stop himself, he's making the familiar journey to the kitchen where he knows that she will be, the woman who's established herself as a mother figure in his lonely life.
"He's going to kill you," is all he can manage as he watches her move about, delicate hands adding the last touch of frosting on a cookie. "He thinks you—he knows you betrayed him, and he's going to kill you."
She doesn't say anything for a while, holding up a cookie to the light and inspecting it before finally answering. "He's not going to kill me. I know him well. He's going to do much, much worse." She calmly replaces the cookie, adjusting the rest so that they all fall in straight, even lines.
"Then you—what are you going to do? Are you going to run away?"
"Ciel," she levels a gaze at him, and her eyes are filled with every emotion but the one she should be feeling—fear. "You and I both know that there's only one escape for me now. After all, that's why you came here, isn't it, Ciel? To kill me?"
He steps back automatically, his hand going to his gunblades on instinct, the feeling of being cornered rising up inside of him. "W-Well, I—"There are no words that come to his defense and he drops his hands, defeated. "Yes."
She gives him a soft look, the edges of her smile turning slightly sad. "It's the right thing to do, Ciel. But I'm afraid that I can't let you." Her fingers trace invisible patterns on the granite countertop, drawing circles that Ciel can't see an end to.
"Wh-what? B-but he'll-!"
"I didn't say that I wouldn't be dying. Only that I wouldn't be letting you be the one to kill me. I've made you into many things, Ciel, things that I'm proud of, looking at you. I won't make you into my murderer," her voice is firm, and Ciel finds it so strange that even on the verge of death, she was still looking out for his well-being, rather than hers.
He swallows hard, tears blurring his vision and he swipes a quick hand over his eyes and internally, he rails at the unfairness of it all. She takes his hands in hers, gently drying his eyes with a tissue and pulling out a slip of paper—her prized cookie recipe from her pocket, pressing it into his hand.
It's too much the same—everything is happening exactly the way it did all those years ago and just like the last time, Ciel can't do anything but stare as the pieces of his shattered glass world that he'd managed to pick up and put back together from before break around him once more.
"Remember me," is all she says, and Ciel wants to scream, wants to plead, but he knows that no amount of anything that he does will change the end result of this. "Remember what I told you."
And then she picks up the cookie she'd been frosting when he'd walked in and takes a bite out of it, closing her eyes and enjoying the taste even as she falls, her internal organs slowly failing and shutting down from whatever poison she'd put in that frosting.
When his "father," the boss of the mafia, and the husband of the dead woman in Ciel's arms comes to collect what he believes is due, he stops short, his gaze shifting to the tray of uneaten cookies on the counter and the apparently unharmed, but lifeless body on the ground.
"Good job, Ciel."
He leaves the mafia after that, abandoning the principles of everything he'd worked for because now he finally, finally knows that this whole time, he's been wrong. So he picks up his gunblades and walks away from everything he's ever known, slipping into the light of his future.
And with enough searching, he finds it.
The girl lying on the ground has tangled, white hair and a thin, sickly-looking frame, curled up in a dark corner of the alleyway and clothed in a torn dress.
Ciel sees his sister in her. He sees the woman he was able to call "mother" for a short time in her. He sees the faces of every person he's ever killed in her.
But most of all, he sees his redemption, a light in the darkness, his one last, final chance to do something right, to save a life instead of taking one.
I'll retake the throne...
I'll give my soul for you...
The contract is complete.