todays recommended listening:

"Beauty is Within Us" - Scott Matthews,

"Rocky wa Doko?" - Yoko Kanno,

"The End of All You'll Know" - Scott Matthews

and

"I Do"- Yoko Kanno

happy reading xx

-MercyA

Beauty is Within Us

"Ciel, honey?"

He looked up from his book. It was mid-morning – and it felt as though it had been mid-morning for the whole day. At the door, there was his mother, poking her head in to check on him.

"Yes, mother?"

"How are you feeling darling?" she came in, a cautious smile across her dainty features. "The doctor will be arriving shortly, I wanted to make sure you were awake."

Ciel shifted under the covers. The bed he lay in was far too big for his ten-year-old frame, but he had it on his fathers insistence. The whole 'you'll-grow-into-it' talk had only happened a year and a bit ago.

"I'm okay," he found his voice was nothing more than a hoarse whisper, a tickle in his chest threatening to become a cough. "Just reading."

Rachel Phantomhive perched on the bed at his side, leaning over to feel his forehead with the back of her hand.

"Oh sweetheart. You're still very hot – did Rosie give you anything for your headache when she brought up your breakfast?" his mothers brows knitted in concern.

Ciel pointed to the bedside stand. On it, stood a bottle of Nurofen and a silver spoon.

"She made me have two spoons of it, I'm okay," he replied quietly. "Honest."

"Good, I'm glad." Rachel nodded, a smile finally coming back to her face. "My poor baby – I had a letter arrive from your homeroom class this morning; all of your classmates and friends signed it for you."

Something heavy settled in Ciel's chest – something akin to guilt. "They didn't have to. You told Mrs Bradtke that I was going to be going back to school soon, didn't you?"

A pause. He watched his mother shift uncomfortably.

"Mother?"

"Ciel, honey – you've got to understand..." Rachel started, twisted the cloth of the bedsheets in her hands. "You're not getting better as quickly as we all hoped. Maybe for now, school should just stay off the cards..."

"But I want to go back," Ciel insisted, trying to sit up straighter. The tickle in his chest was becoming more and more prominent with every breath he drew. "I want to go back to normal. I don't like sitting in bed all day."

"I know my love, I know," Rachel reached for his clenched hands. "But your body isn't able to look after itself very well right now. We've got to give you every chance to get better."

He could feel a lump in his throat that refused to be swallowed.

"Listen – it's not as if you'll never go back to school," his mother's voice was wavering, almost as if she didn't really believe in her own words. "It's just going to take a bit longer. You won't be stuck in bed forever."

Feeling the tears prickling at his eyes, Ciel pulled away from her hands and stared out the window. He didn't want to have to look into her sad eyes.

"You don't know that," he murmured, and a single tear managed to escape and run down his cheek.

"I'm your mother, Ciel," Rachel's voice took a slightly firmer edge. He wondered if it was more for her own sake than his. "I can pretend like I know everything. And I have faith that my beautiful little boy will get better."

Choking back on the phlegm rising in his throat, Ciel shook his head before having to give in to the coughing fit. It took over his entire being, wracking his body and robbing him of any control. It wasn't a pretty sight as he hacked and retched. Rachel stood and reached for the Nurofen.

There was a strained silence between them after his coughing fit past, broken only by the sound of a car pulling into the driveway outside. A honk of a horn.

"That'll be Doctor Draper..." Rachel said almost absentmindedly, heading over to the window. "I'll go and greet him. We'll...we'll be back up shortly."

Ciel didn't watch his mother leave the room. He was too ashamed of his crass behaviour to even lift his eyes from the bedcovers that lay over him. She was only trying to comfort him.

But he was tired of empty promises and no change. He was tired of being told he was beautiful; there was no beauty in his sick little body.

-:-

When night fell over the Phantomhive manor, there was a nightly routine that came with it. Due to his illness, Ciel's parents had taken to dining in his bedroom with him. Then, Rosie the maid would run a hot bath and Ciel would spend up to an hour soaking quietly in his en suite bathroom. Sometimes he'd take a book with him, other times, he'd just gaze at the ceiling and watch the steam rises in soft wispy tendrils from the bath waters surface.

After his bath, Ciel would often take the opportunity to go for a wander around the manor; rugged up to his eyeballs in pyjamas and dressing gowns and slippers to keep every possible inch of him warm and snug, he usually went down to the library, or, on some occassions, he would go and sit with his father in his fathers study. This was one such evening.

Vincent Phantomhive was a man of mystery – every one of his associates could say that with complete faith. But Ciel knew that his father was really only human – a man who loved his family and worked to protect the world he lived in.

"Are you warm enough?" Ciel was stirred from his thoughts by his father's gentle voice. He blinked, realizing that he'd been watching the burning logs in the fireplace til he was almost hypnotized by the dancing flames.

"Yes, thank you," he murmered. Vincent plonked himself down next to Ciel on the thick woolly rug that lay across the tiles in front of the hearth.

"Good," it was that same tone that his mother used – it was the sort of tone that made Ciel feel like they didn't believe him a hundred percent, but knew that arguing and insisting would break the thin ice of pleasantries they all skated on.

His illness had done this to them.

"Do you wish I wasn't a problem?" Ciel found the words tumbling from his mouth before he could stop them, and glanced quickly up at his father.

"You're not a problem. You're our son," Vincent said, his voice solid and steady. "You must never think that we feel burdened by you."

"But I'm always sick." Ciel continued. "And it makes us all unhappy. Mother's unhappy. I think she's tired of me always being sick and grumpy."

He watched the flickering fire for a moment, unsure whether to look up at his father again. But Vincent's chuckle caught him off guard.

"I know you're tired of be sick. But your mother's unhappiness is only because she doesn't know all the answers. She just wants you to be well again, to not be sick or unhappy yourself. It frustrates her – but you're not the problem, Ciel."

I feel like I am.

"Oh." He wasn't certain how better to continue. He let his fathers words sit around them.

"You must never doubt our love for you, son," Vincent's arm came around his shoulders, and Ciel couldn't stop the little pin-pricks of tears at the corners of his vision. "We'll always, always be here for you and we'll never stop loving you, whether or not you get better."

There's a chance I won't.

"I mean," Vincent continued, almost clumsily. "That's not to say you won't get better. You're made of tougher stuff than this; you'll conquer this soon and everything will go back to normal. You are our strong, beautiful son."

Swallowing the building lump in his throat, Ciel tried to nod against his father's embrace. But he felt like he was lying to himself.

I don't feel very beautiful.

He felt disease-ridden. Rotting. It was growing dark inside his mind.

-:-

Shortly after he had been admitted to the Karnstein Children's Hospital under the watchful eye of the enigmatic man who called himself Doctor Sebastian Michaelis, Ciel found himself getting fewer and fewer visits from his father. Business as usual amongst the Aristocrats of Evil seemed to be getting busier all the time.

Soon, it seemed as though only Rachel Phantomhive was coming to visit her son. Every day that she spent with him, he saw that strained smile growing slowly more and more tired. Her words never faltered in their praise of his bravery to undertake the hospitalization and careful monitoring of his condition, however – she kept saying those same words.

You are strong. You are beautiful. You are my son.

And I love you.

It was getting harder and harder to say it back.

I love you too mother.

Almost as though the lump in his throat was no longer going away when he swallowed. As if it was now stuck; just as he felt. Stuck. His mind was a quagmire of misery – even the young intern that Doctor Michaelis had brought in to keep Ciel company was only doing him so much good. The lad was cheerful and chipper every single day, but Ciel felt like the more the blonde lad smiled, the less he felt his own facial muscles capable of it.

It was getting harder to keep up appearances for his mother. He had begn to notice that the faint bags around her eyes were growing darker. She wasn't eating well; she wouldn't eat with him in his ward anymore, and even when he asked her to she only ate a little.

I feel like I have to. It's a dark place we're getting trapped in. I can't see you anymore, mother. Can you still see me? Your beautiful little boy?

One day, when summer was beginning to give way to the deep oranges and dying leaves of autumn, he asked her.

"Am I still beautiful?"

Rachel Phantomhive had tears running freely down her cheeks; her hollow, now bony cheeks. But she leant across the hospital bed and wrapped her wiry arms around him. He buried his face into her chest as she cried into his hair. Somewhere along the line, he heard her murmur.

"Always. Always my beautiful little boy."

-:-

"Are you all right?"

Ciel almost physically felt himself land back in the present. The visages were fading from his mind. He could hardly picture his mother's face anymore.

Pluto was standing over him.

"Y-yeah. I'm okay."

The engineer leant against the armchair Ciel was curled up in. The beach house was quiet; Finnian and Mey-Rin were napping in one of the couches across the room from them, wrapped cozily up in each others arms. Sebastian and Bardroy had gone to do a surveillance run. The world of his reality was coming back to him.

"Thinking hard, huh?"

"Yeah," Ciel nodded slowly. "I don't know if I was remembering bits and pieces, or if I was just imagining them."

Pluto rolled his shoulders, and Ciel heard the quiet popping of the man's spine.

"It'd be cool if you got your memories back completely, but it's not likely you'll ever remember absolutely everything," he said. "Don't discount anything you think of, though."

"Right..."

As he turned his gaze to the balcony window that overlooked the ocean.

Sometimes I think I'd rather not remember.

I don't want to remember how awful I must have been to my mother.

Something stung at his heart. Guilt, probably.

Forgive me, mother.

-:-

fin.

Afternote:

I'm a real sap for the music from Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex. It gets me in a real melancholy mood. This short piece is set somewhere in the Newquay/beach house arc of Subject 13's Butler. Anyway, Chapter 66 of Subject 13's Butler will be completed shortly. Til then, be good and safe travels!

~MercyA