I will continue to post Black Butler fics until one of them "sticks" in the community, I swear it.
I am aware that plots like this have already been done, however, I wanted to exert my own take on this while also fleshing out characters I intend to use in my novel.
That said –
WARNINGS: Possibly some AU elements, possible OOC-ness on the part of Ciel. Sebastian, I have no problem with. Ciel can be a little harder. SUICIDE and ABUSE are elements, but hardly major ones. Of course, there will be sex, because what would Black Butler be without Sebastian seducing someone? (Dub-con will feature someplace.)
I shall leave pairings unannounced, because frankly I haven't decided any yet. You're more than welcome to suggest something, lovely community, if you'd like to see a particular one. (Crack pairings accepted.)
Moving on:
DISCLAIMER: I do not own anything or anyone except for my own OC's. Owning Sebastian would be awesome, don't get me wrong, but alas...
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
CH I
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
Light.
It was such an odd thing for a creature like him to consider. Not just physical light – that unto itself wasn't much in the way of interest. But this idea that people could be Light or Dark, Good or Bad – and further, that they had a choice to be so – this was, to him, an interesting kind of thought to entertain.
He, of course, tended to rank on the darker end of that theoretical spectrum, at least by human standards. No human in their right mind, so far as he was concerned, would dare place him anywhere else, for he was their predator, by design, and they his delicate prey. It was only natural, then, that they would consider him to be bad news, just as a sheep might consider a wolf in the same manner.
Unless, of course, they never noticed the difference.
"Sebastian, come here." The demon was swift to answer his Master's call, coming to stand beside him where he sat in his study, over-viewing the daily mail.
"Look at this," Ciel pointed long, dainty fingers to a piece of the page, where a large, bold title read, "MAN FOUND DEAD IN CHURCH IN CANTERBURY, SUSPECTS ADMITTED TO PERFORMING 'DARK MAGIC'". Ciel quietly scoffed at the outrageousness of it, but reading into the page, he came upon an interesting detail.
"...The suspects were interrogated by police, where they admitted to having been performing 'Dark Magic' rituals near the Church, however, they deny association with the body. Despite this, the body appears to have been crucified at one point or the other, with gashes apparent at the wrist and throat so as to bleed the victim dry – yet, no blood could be found on the body or at the Church the body was found in. While apparently favoring the denial of the suspect's association with the crime, a marking bearing likeness to a demon summoning sigil was found branded onto the victim's chest, with the wounds occurring postmortem..."
Ciel read over it, pointing as he read so as his butler might follow.
"Seems interesting." The older man admitted, pausing in his reading to tidy up the afternoon tea dishes.
"Hm, indeed. Makes me wonder if we'll be called to investigate. Branding someone with a demon seal, especially after they are dead? What would be the purpose of that?" Sebastian, going about his business, chose wisely to stay discreet about the matter, not wishing to upset his Master unnecessarily.
" I am uncertain what their purpose would be, but they're playing with fire, in any case – assuming those summoning sigils mean anything, which they very rarely do, as you know. Still..." Sebastian paused, thinking. Summoning seals on a dead body usually didn't mean good things in his experience. Even if it amounted to nothing, the idea might be worth investigating, for the purposes of protecting his valued interests, if nothing else.
"Perhaps we should investigate ourselves. It is in my experience that persons of this nature are typically attempting to resurrect the dead – a phenomena we have already had our share of poor experiences with." The observant butler did not miss the cringe his Master gave at the memory.
"Alright, but how would they use the body?" Ciel asked innocently. So much for being discreet.
"One needs a body to house a soul – the recently deceased are perfect for resurrecting lost souls, in theory, because their lack of energy means that that soul can, temporarily, re-assimilate with that body."
"But?"
"However," Sebastian went on to clarify, "It is not often that it is a human soul they invite into the dead host, but that of a weaker demon. Thus, a "ghoul" is formed – that of a demon which inhabits the bodies of the dead."
"Are they dangerous?" Ciel asked, gaze uncertain when it met his servant's face, as though he was unsure whether to believe the demon or not.
"Not especially, but they are tiresome, and can spread disease like wild-fire if they are not kept in check." Sebastian said, sighing at length. His last accidental experiences with Ghouls cost the human world dearly – killing half the population of Europe with Plague had not been his intentions in the slightest, but alas, those bloody corpses just kept it right on going. But there were other, quieter times to reminisce about that. "They are much like the creatures we encountered aboard the Campania, only far harder to kill. They rarely inhabit humans, but it has happened before – thus, the concept of a 'Zombie'." Sebastian explained, choosing to omit his knowledge of what, precisely, a human Ghoul could do. He noted the calm way his Master was absorbing the information – but it was a deceptive calm, and he knew it. A long pause ensued.
"Prepare a carriage for tomorrow and cancel all other plans. We are going to Canterbury."
"Yes, My Lord."
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
Ciel and his party of one walked through the cobbled streets of Canterbury at a leisurely pace. The young lord had been here before, of course, but it had been some time since he'd seen the quaint little town.
"Where do you suppose they are keeping the suspects?"
"I would imagine somewhere within town hall – keeping them in a prison cell would attract too much attention. Humans do, after all, have a predisposition for being superstitious." Ciel shot his butler a glare, but it was only half-meant.
A sudden scream made the Earl's lax position at that moment shift into violent momentum, his spine snapping straight as if a wire had been pulled straight up it like the strings on a marionette. All at once too alert, his head began to throb, but he ignored it in favour of determining where the screaming had come from, his mind and ears alert for any other sound. He wasn't the only one, of course, who noticed the screaming, and as he gazed about uncertainly, he seen the crowd begin to gravitate towards a cross-street some block away from him.
"Come, Sebastian!" Ciel called the butler like a dog, (an insult said butler dismissed for the time) to his side, and began running towards the crowd, curiosity and apprehension drawing him to whatever it was that had gotten their attention in the first place.
Pushing through the crowd was no easy task when you were barely more than a meter and a half * tall, but Ciel managed to duck and wriggle like a snake through the throngs and up to the front, his butler pushing in an infuriatingly easy pace through the gap he made behind him. Looking up, Ciel suddenly understood what had made the woman (he presumed the voice was female) scream before, for there, upon a stack of bricks that lay before what was probably once a church, was an old cross – one that looked like it had been there forever – that now was leaning forward at a precipitous angle, burdened by the weight of a dead, bloody body.
Or, at least, he looked dead.
"Ow..." The apparent corpse, that of a very tall, lean man with long, silvery-white hair that defied his young complexion, groaned in a half-sigh. He wore a garment that seemed more befitting of the century prior, a single tailored suit that had, at one point, been a creamy white, with gold embellishments at the hems and cuffs. He'd been nailed to the cross in a typical fashion, save for one thing – a thing which made the fact he wasn't dead seem nearly impossible, or at least highly improbable.
He had some twenty-three centimeter nail* driven straight through where his heart should have been.
"Ow...that kinda hurts..." The half-dead (for surely, he couldn't have been totally alive or well with that much blood lost and a freaking nail sticking grotesquely from his chest) man groaned, opening one bleary eye, though his hair, which fell as if a veil before his face, concealed it's expression or liveliness.
"He's alive...He's alive!" Someone beside Ciel in the crowd called out, searching frantically for something. "Someone, get a doctor! This man is alive!"
"No need for that, now." The man on the cross said in an entirely too-calm way, his head lifting stiffly – and revealing something that made the Earl's wary heart skip a few beats and his stomach clench uncomfortably.
"What?" The man in the crowd turned a bewildered eye to the stranger on the cross, who's eyes now scanned over the crowd in a fashion Ciel was far too familiar with, their peculiar colour – a deep, burgundy red – shockingly apparent, but not in the slightest bit lurid for his complexion, which was extremely pale, but now, examining him closer, seemed lively.
It made the supernatural-savvy Earl Phantomhive clench his gut, entirely unsure what to make of that colour.
"Sebastian."
"Yes, My lord?" Ciel didn't get to finish before he felt more than seen the man's red gaze descend upon him, flicking quickly to Sebastian and back a few times. Frozen by a sense he could not explain, Ciel watched the man's gaze settle on Sebastian finally.
"Hey, mind helping a fellow out up here?" He called to the butler in a strangely familiar fashion. "These nails fucking hurt."
"Oh?" Sebastian said, seemingly out of surprise, though Ciel did not miss the amusement dancing in his eyes, particularly when they looked back at him for permission. Ciel thought on it for a moment before nodding solemnly, hoping he wasn't making a mistake.
"Get him down."
Sebastian approached the leaning cross without hesitation, climbing gracefully up the bricks until he could reach the shining silver nails that pinned the man – or whatever he happened to be – up there. He began with the legs, pulling a large silver nail from the man's shin with a sickeningly wet, cracking sort of sound that would have rendered Ciel ill at the moment, had he not wisely turned his head away so as he did not have to watch.
"Hey – Hey! Watch the lean! The last thing I need is to have this damn nail punched further into my chest, if you don't mind." Ciel glanced over at them, seeing the man's legs dangling limply as Sebastian worked on his wrists.
"Oi, don't touch!" The man snapped when Sebastian reached to remove the nail in his chest. "I can quite well remove that one myself, if you don't mind."
"Well, I'm afraid I can't quite get you down gently if you leave it in." Sebastian cautioned. "How on earth did you wind up here, anyway?" The man gave a drawn-out sigh.
"It's a long story."
"I imagine. Now, since you won't let me remove the nail –"
"I'll deal with the pain. Just get me down."
"As you wish."
The moment Sebastian went around and plucked the other nail from his wrist, the man fell quite limply into the air for a second before somehow righting himself like a cat at the last moment, landing with his hands and knees beneath him in like.
"Ow." He complained, rocking back to sit upright. As he did so, he seemed to notice that there was still a nail in him, though it was far longer than Ciel had thought, and actually punctured him out both sides, with the back protuberance soaked in his blood. Looking down at the part of the nail – or whatever it happened to be, for Ciel could not quite recall ever seeing a nail so long – that still protruded from his front, Ciel watched in horror as he promptly, and without any sort of hesitation in the slightest reached up and grabbed the spike in his fist, drawing it out of his body at length as though he were drawing a sword from it's scabbard.
Someone screamed again in the distance.
"Oh, quiet, will you? I'm not dead, as you can see." The man said calmly, and Ciel noticed that his voice had a peculiar kind of inflection, one which made him seem exotic, though Ciel could not place where the accent, which was so subtle as to be hardly noticed by anyone without a sharp ear, had come from.
"Indeed, you aren't." Ciel said to the man, who's red eyes once more turned to him. In the path he had taken turning his head, Ciel noticed something else odd – his ears, which were distinctively pointed.
Ciel swallowed thickly. This was not painting a brilliant picture.
"So I am."
"But how?" Ciel couldn't help but ask, his curiosity getting the better of him. The sly smirk the man gave him in response chilled him, somehow.
"You ought to know, little boy." He glanced meaningfully at Sebastian then, and Ciel was left without any doubts as to what this man was –
And felt at the time both faint and intensely curious.
"Have no fear. You're far from my 'type'." He said, rising to his feet. Much more accustomed to Sebastian's grace, the Earl was surprised when the (demon?) staggered, wincing.
"Silver nails. Blessed, Holy silver nails. Can't say they didn't know what they were doing." The man said, brushing himself off casually despite having been impaled moments prior. The crowd around him murmured uneasily, which he finally seemed to notice. Heaving a sigh, he turned his blood-soaked back to Ciel that he might address the masses.
"Rest assured, I am largely without grave injury." He said to no one in particular, but instead with a surprisingly soft, yet commanding tone, addressed the crowd on the whole.
"How? How are you alive?" One man asked with evident suspicion and fear in his voice. "And how ye be nailed up there to begin with?"
"I was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time." The man explained simply. "And they purposefully missed my vital organs and blood vessels, the bastards. They intended for me to die of infection, most likely; an event that would have occurred, had I attempted to free myself forcefully."
"But now that you are off..." Another man swallowed, his eyes pinned to the blood that had begun dripping down the pale man's sleeves.
"Ah, yes." He said, seeming to have just realized the state he was in. "As to that, I don't think I shall be hindered too much. I am a doctor myself, after all." This was news to Ciel's ears, particularly, and glancing over at Sebastian, he noticed that even his own demon wore an expression of surprise at the admittance.
"You're a doctor?" Ciel inquired. The pale man turned around to look at him then, a much softer sort of expression on his long, pallid face.
"Yes, in fact, I am, in a manner of speaking." He explained. "Though it is not only humans who's injuries I treat." He once more gave a meaningful glance at Sebastian, making Ciel understand. A demon doctor? Well, now he could say he'd seen it all.
"Come, then. I do suppose you have other questions for me, Phantomhive. In which case, I think it would be better that we did not discuss such things in public." The man said, turning and beginning to walk away with almost absurd nonchalance.
Then again, if he was a demon, Ciel could suppose the nonchalance wasn't so atypical.
"How do you know my name?"
"Easy. That Undertaker friend of yours is not only extremely useful for sourcing 'supernatural' worthy medicines, but is also quite chatty. He mentions you as his nephew, but I know that to be false. Still, he has an amazing fondness for your family line, and speaks of you and your –" He turned to watch Sebastian briefly. "Servant, quite frequently." With that, his eyes returned to a forward position, leading them on into a dim alleyway of kinds, one with back doors to shops and taverns littered all over the walls. He stopped at one in particular, which had a distinctive scent of food wafting from beneath it. Had his situation been different, Ciel probably would have felt his stomach rumble.
"You know the Undertaker?" Ciel asked incredulously.
"You will find, little Lord, that there are not many demons in London who do not know him, by appearance if not name." With this, he opened up the door they had stopped in front of, and the smells of food being too great to handle this time, Ciel felt his gut quiver involuntarily.
"I presume you are hungry. Shall we?" The man, who's name Ciel still did not know, motioned politely for him to enter.
"But what of your clothes?" Ciel asked, looking the man over – only to discover that he had, somehow, either begotten or else concealed the blood that had soaked his clothes moments before.
"You really are a demon, aren't you?" Ciel asked flatly. He knew the answer, of course, but a second opinion never hurt.
"In a manner of speaking, yes." Was the man's cryptic reply. "The name is Alistar, by the by. No need for formalities on my end." Ciel eyed this Alistar suspiciously, interpreting his reply to mean, "I don't want to tell you my last name in case you try to find me again."
"Alright, Alistar." Ciel tested out the new name, finding that it fit the man well. "I believe we have a few things to discuss. With that said – shall we?"
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
Ok, ok, so maybe it's a little odd, but I did try.
Bram Stoker's Dracula is a good book to reference here, since I was inspired by it to write this fic in the first place. That said, I can not promise to hold absolutely true to this style, since I've never written with this kind of prose before. All I can do is learn whilst I read, so do forgive any stylistic wishy-washing.
Now, for my favorite english word:
ASTERISKS!
*Metric system: Despite being an American myself, I try to exercise use of the metric system for foreign travel purposes. (Plus authenticity). But for those who do not share my affinity:
1 ½ meters= 4 ½ feet (4' 6")
23 centimeters = approx. 9 inches.
Well, I hope you liked – and you know, just so the record shows, I do tend to be much quicker about updating when I have feedback. Just sayin'. :)
Until next time, Aufwiedersehen!