"Oh! I'll be back in just one second!" The small girl with corkscrew golden curls and emerald green eyes squealed in pure delight
"Where are you going?" the smaller boy with black hair with a natural blue tinge and a eye patch covering his right eye hardly looked up from his Sudoku puzzle.
"It's a surprise!" the girl winked at him and opened the sunroof. "I think you'll like it." she added before struggling to get from her seat to the opening without having her shiny new black shoes touch the sticky floor. Finally she managed to get out and close the shade over the opening, she knew the boy detested sitting in the car with the sun bearing down on him.
It was then that the boy looked up at the roof concerned. Why? Not because a fourteen-year-old girl had just climbed out the roof of a vehicle moving at sixty miles a hour, oh heavens no. He was sure she had her own reasons, he had never gotten how the girl who's one year older than him's mind worked. She would be fine either way. It wasn't even because she had been polite enough to put the shade back down after she had climbed out, no it was because there was not one but two sunroofs on this limo. One in the passenger's area and one in the drivers area, completely blocked off from the passenger area. "Hmm." he sighed to himself and looked back down at his puzzle. That's a nine. He heard heavy steps tromp down the length of the limo. That's an eight.
Lady Elizabeth Ethel Cordelia Midford, or Lizzy as she was known now that all titles like 'Lady' 'Lord' and 'Earl' had lost meaning in society, ran down the length of the limousine, smiling all the way. Ciel was going to love the gift she had planned out for his birthday. She loved that gift he had given her all those years ago, and she wanted to repay him for that. It happened many years ago, but it hadn't faded from her memory one bit. She thought back to that night, when it all changed and she received that present, the one she would never stop trying to repay him for.
She ran into her room, eyes filled with tears making the overly large pink room swoon. Her legs gave out once she reached her regal four post bed. It was awful, her heart felt crushed. She loved Ciel. All she wanted was to make him smile, even though she had to admit she over did it sometimes. She worked hard to become a wife that could protect him, but also one he could protect. But they just received news that... that Ciel had... died.
He had died under mysterious pretenses, and Sebastian, his ever loyal butler, had disappeared along with him. It was only a couple of months before he was going to turn fourteen, and she was going to turn fifteen shortly after. She was planning on hosting a huge party for him, but now, he was gone. She refused to believe it. He couldn't be dead! She had seen him just that morning! Although, he was acting a bit odd, cryptic, like he was trying to distance himself from others, but he was alive, alive! And then they received the letter along with a Funtom Company lollipop. Ciel Phantomhive, died aged thirteen in August 1889. At least, that's what she thought it said. The words were floating around, swirling and mixing with tears, making it impossible to read the fancy cursive on the card.
"Ciel," she whispered into her pillow. "Ciel, Ciel, Ciel, Ciel!" she cried, each time getting a little louder until she was yelling his name into her pillow.
"Yes?" a cool voice answered her screams from across the room. "You summoned me?" he asked her.
"C-Ciel?" she looked up from her pillow, hearing that voice that soothed her aching heart. But he was dead! He couldn't be in here, talking to her, but still... "Is it really you?" she whispered. Whipping her head around to catch a glimpse of the boy whom she believed to be an apparition.
"Yes, its me." he pulled a lock of dark blue hair away from his eye patch. "For real." he added, anticipating her next question. He grinned playfully, as it reminded him of about three years ago when he reappeared after the manor burnt down the first time.
"Oh, Ciel!" she jumped into his lap, crying. "I though you were dead," her words were muffled by his chest, as she hugged him tight, worried that he might slip through and disappear again.
"Yes, that is the story we fed everyone." he agreed. He was practically dead, no real soul,, barely any heartbeat, no need for oxygen. He righted the girl bustling over with tears. He took a cloth out of his pocket and proceeded to wipe all the tears off her face. "Really, you must stop crying over every little thing. it is not very lady like to go walking around with a blotchy red face, and snot streaming out of her nose." he sighed. "And so, what is you wish?" he discreetly stood on his tip-toes too look her in the eye.
She laughed. Obviously, there is no discreet way of standing on your tip-toes to look a person in the eye, "My... wish?" she looked up at him curiously.
"Oh..." he cooed to her like she was a little girl again, like back when he was five and she was six and taller than him, but he still acted like the parent, like the older of the two. "You summoned me without a wish in mind." he tweaked one of her disheveled curls gently. "How unprofessional." he laughed gently.
"My wish..." she trailed off she looked up determined. Her tearful eyes had a new found fire in them. "I want to be with you forever!" she decided, knowing that was the one thing she wanted in the world after the incident of is pseudo-death.
The blue haired boy laughed at her childishness. "Are you sure you want that?" he cocked his head to the side playfully. "I've been told I can be a real pain after a while."
"It's what I want!" the girl called, afraid that if she didn't speak up now the boy would disappear forever.
"Oh, well..."
Lizzy smiled. She crouched down and ripped open the sunroof in the drivers section. "Hi, Jeeves!" she called to the driver, who certainly wasn't named Jeeves. "I'll be taking the wheel from here, so if you would get out..." she reached in and grabbed the trembling man by the collar. "Now remember, when jumping from a moving vehicle, TUCK AND ROLL!" she tossed him off to the side. She winced at the cracking sound his leg made. "That's because you didn't tuck and roll!"
She climbed into the drivers area. "Huh," she giggled to herself, "Maybe I should have learned what all these things do before I threw the driver out." she shrugged. Okay so this pedal makes it go forward? No, that made it slow down, saved for future reference. Not really, why would she slow down? After a second of an experimental and bumpy ride she had all the controls figured out. Her eyes scanned the road carefully, looking for the little dirt side road. There it was. She made a sharp right turn at speeds so high, she thought the car might just tip over. It didn't thankfully, and they continued on their way.
When the driver flew past his window and then again when the limo pitched to the right, Ciel looked up from his puzzle. When he saw the road they were taking his stomach dropped to the ground and was left behind by the speeding car. The small dirt pathway looked just as it did fifty years ago, like not a soul had traveled down this path since the last time he did. Just seeing the road brought back memories from the 1880's, when he had last traveled down this path. He looked down at the news paper, skimming the headlines for any mention of this place. The main headline read, 'Year 1934 Coming to a Close, What Waits in the Future' there was no mention of this place in the news. Too soon the car stopped parked inside the drive of an extravagant manor.
"Ciel!" Lizzy cried running from the drivers' area over to him. She was beaten by a tall raven-haired man in a long black tail coat with startling red eyes. "Oh, Sebastian," she whispered.
"I'll take this, Lady Elizabeth." he smiled, opening the door.
"O-of course." she stuttered, curtsying. She turned to look at Ciel who was climbing down from the car. "Isn't it wonderful! It looks just like it did back when we were little!" she cried, hugging him close. She began to mutter something but trailed off, lost in memories.
"Ciel!" a high-pitched boy's voice called down from the manor's large porch.
"A-Alois Trancy?" Ciel looked up at the boy in surprise. He looked just like he did a half a century ago. He wore a long purple frock coat, a forest green vest over a white dress shirt. He wore long black stockings, brown high heeled boots and ,of course, his signature shorty-short booty shorts. His platinum blonde hair had gotten a little longer and his silvery-blue eyes glinted cleverly.
"Yes." the boy smiled as he opened the door. "And welcome, to the Phantomhive manor."
The manor looked just as it had when Ciel lived in it, some fifty years ago. Walking through the manor dug up unpleasant memories of his childhood. Of the fire that killed both his parents on his tenth birthday. Of all the death the house had witnessed. Of the fire that burned down the house a second time, just before Claude stole his soul from Sebastian. Of how he abandoned the house after he became a demon. It was obvious the servants hadn't heeded his advice about burning it down again. The only differences were minor, things overlooked. The home had been updated to have all the best technologies the early 20th century had to offer. All the closets were fully stocked with clothes- either from the Victorian era, of the present day. Lizzy had obviously been the one picking the outfits. There was too much pink and not enough booty shorts for it to be Alois.
"So, do you like it?" Lizzy had been quietly standing by the small boy's side as he explored the house of his child hood, restored once again. She had stood as quiet as possible before, not even daring to breathe as he inspected every room carefully, only speaking up now because she couldn't read his face. "Alois and I met up here one day- I came here a lot, I missed this place it was a big part of our childhood- we both agreed it was a shame how it had been neglected. We both decided to fix it up and, eventually, started working together on it. I'm the one who decided to make it a birthday present to you." she smiled faintly. "And so, we fixed it up to look just as it did." she looked down at her low heeled shoes, blushing slightly.
She looked over at Ciel, the poor thirteen-year-old had been through so much in his long lifetime. First he was only ten years old when the manor burned down, killing both of his parents. He'd then disappeared for months. Even though they hadn't found a body for him, they all assumed he had died in the fire, and so they gave him a grave right next to his parents. Lizzy went there every day, praying for him to return. She was only eleven, so she really didn't get what it meant that he was never coming back. But one day to everyone's surprise, he reappeared. He was different, than the kindhearted little boy she had grown up with, though. For one, he was toting around his black clad butler, and he had stopped smiling. He was forced to take on an adult role so young, she couldn't help but feel sorry for him. So he tried desperately to be seen as an adult be society. To help him, Lizzy stopped wearing heeled shoes, so that he wouldn't be seen in public with his fiancee towering over him. As a result, he acted like an adult and never smiled, but she had noticed the boy softened around her. It was her hope that one day, he would start smiling again. That was her goal. To see his beautiful smile just once more.
"Since when does Alois do things for others, from the kindness in his heart?" Ciel asked as they were out of earshot of the boy, but he still barely made a sound- just enough for Lizzy to hear him. The boy was infamous for spying. He could hear, in the distance, the bimbo blonde babbling to the tall man. Something about a box with moving pictures inside, like a radio but with pictures in full color to compliment it. Nonsense.
"I don't know." Lizzy answered. She didn't really know Alois that well before meeting him in the manor, a little over a year ago. She had met him once at a costume party, and from what she could tell, that ended up(ultimately) in blood shed for the two boys. She was able to pick up enough context clues to know that they didn't like each other much, and that Alois apparently did everything according to his own secret agenda. "He seems...different, nicer than he was. He's changed. I've noticed many what would be called 'mental disorder' tendencies and is full of stress and a bad case of the crazies. But he seems nicer to people, to everything really. I honestly don't know what happened to change him...them." she cast her eyes down, mimicking the quiet tone of the short boy.
"Them?" he looked over at her, shocked that she had used a plural term when talking about one person..
"Yeah..." she looked over to see her companion's face had paled. "Oh. No, there's only us here its just... uh.. it's really complicated. You'll see later." she shrugged, leaving it off at that with the boy with stunted growth fuming.
"Hey guys!" the blonde menace himself squealed, throwing himself between the other two, completely ruining the serious mood. "What'cha talking about, all quiet like?"
"Hmmmm." Ciel sighed, obviously ticked at the little thing. "About how on earth you could be here, Sir, I stabbed you with a sword fifty years ago?"
"Ohhh." Alois got real quiet all of a sudden, and fell back behind them a couple meters.
Lizzy focused on the hall ahead of them and felt her pulse speed up as she saw one specific door- and Ciel's hand reaching for it.
"Oh!" she squeaked throwing herself between his hand and the door. "Before you open this door, while we were fixing the place up, we decided we should have places to put our things while we worked- like a bedroom. I just put my stuff in the dressers and closets. Alois, however..." she stepped to the side, thus letting the boy open the door, and then she instantly regretted it.
The small boy's visible eye opened wide, filled with rage. Lizzy backed to the opposite side of the hallway. She had seen that look before, and it was often linked to bad happenings. She thought on it too hard and was sucked into another memory fit, where she relived moments in her past.
Ciel looks so cute! She thought looking up the manors stairs, and seeing the boy, her fiancee like many couples in that time they were betrothed at birth, as nobles married nobles, wearing the blue suit she had picked out for him. She caught sight of a large blue diamond ring on his thumb. Where is the ring she bought him? Where? She yanked it off his thumb. It was much too large for him, the ring she bought was a perfect fit for him. He then got really angry all of a sudden. She didn't know why. At the time. She got angry and sad. He was so mean! She just wanted him to be happy! In a fit of rage, she threw the ring down, where it crashed on the hard floor and shattered. He got that look in his eye, that angry look and he charged towards her, hand ready to strike. She squealed and cowered away. Luckily Sebastian saved her. That memory was old, before she remembered everything with perfect clarity. She didn't exactly remember what words were said, but that they were and she could remember saying awful things to him.
The second time, she remembered perfectly.
"Lizzy, what are you wearing?" Ciel stared ice daggers at her feet. His voice was layered with nerves, revealing that he was angry, although his face remained completely composed.
"What, these?" she smiled and bent her knee inwards, showing off her new pair off high heels. They were light blue with little white stripes and buttons on them. "I saw them while walking around town today! I thought they were really cute, and all the girls are wearing them." she smiled slightly. "I... was hoping a new fashion accessory would help me get used to... what town is this again? New York? Cincinnati?" she mused. They moved around so often those days, and Lizzy never had a chance to get used to a new town.
"Chicago." the boy corrected her, "We came here from New York last month."
"Oh, yes." she flushed red and looked down at her heels again, bringing the boy's attention back around to those monstrosities.
The midget of a boy who would not- could not- grow taller stood up from his large desk and stood next to her, looking up at her. With a giggle she noticed that she dwarfed the boy. On a normal day she is taller than him, by about thirteen centimeters but with the heels, she was easily twenty centimeters taller. Normally he was only barely five feet tall while she was about five foot four. But with the heels she was almost six feet tall, towering over him. The boy was trying so hard to be seen and accepted as an adult, and here she was, his girl cousin obsessed with cute items, and she was much taller than him. He's probably suffering from a bruised ego.
"My, my, Ciel. Maybe you should invest in a pair of heels for yourself." she grinned and patted the small boy on his head, taunting him. She was trying to help, to joke around and make him smile his beautiful smile, but teasing someone with a bruised ego is not a good cure.
His eye filled with the same rage and he brought his hand down on his desk, snapping it in two.
"What exactly happened here, Lizzy?" he turned his head in her direction, looking at both the room an the girl at the same time. She could tell he was struggling to remain calm. "What happened to my manor?"
"In a word: Alois." Lizzy cautiously skirted around the boy to look into the room. All the wallpaper had been exchanged for a lighter tone of blue. The classic, four poster bed had been exchanged for a round mattress sitting in the middle of the room with silken purple sheets draping down it. Gaudy ribbons tied in bunches with flowers- bluebells, she noticed- adorned the walls. It was a catastrophe.
Lizzy noticed Ciel's fingers curl into fists, uncurl, and then re-curl again. She knew what was coming next. She skirted aside, ducking waiting for the blow, not necessarily on her, but anywhere. Coincidentally, at that moment Alois ran into the room, bubbling over with excitement.
Faster than human eyes could trace, Ciel's fist reached out and broke the bimbo blond's nose. Blood dripped out of the wound. "Ow! What the-! why would you do that!? Oh it hurts like-! oh-!" the boy with a now crooked nose let lose a stream-waterfall- of profanity. "Lizzy told me you wouldn't like it at all, but that much! Ow! oh-!" he straightened his nose so it would heal properly, re-breaking it in the process. Just as fast as the last time, Ciel's fist flashed and made contact with the blond's eye, and then a second later with his ear. It was like that for several minutes. Ciel's fist would flash out, hit the boy hard, and then give him a second to get all his profanity out of the way and set his injuries to heal correctly. Never once did an expression other than boredom cross his face. And all that time poor little Lizzy stood in a corner, cowering away from the gruesome scene unraveling before of her.
"This..." Ciel muttered seconds after the last blow had landed home. "This is not the mansion." his visible eye closed, trying to wipe the image of the room from his memory. Unfortunately, it was stuck, permanently ingrained into his perfect memory. "You shouldn't have made this drastic a change without my knowledge."
"I-I'm sorry!" Alois wailed, cowering at the boy's feet. His face was red from dried up blood and tears. "I-I just w-wanted a place I could call mine!" he wiped his snot on the boy's pant leg.
"I'm sorry I didn't do more to stop him!" Lizzy didn't want Alois to bear all the blame, she felt as though she should take some responsibility, it was her choice to revive the manor and oversee that it went well. Tears leaked out of her eyes and streamed down her face. "I tried I really did! But he was so insistent! His argument was really persuasive and honestly it just made my heart break!" the blue haired boy now had two crying buffoons hanging off him.
"However," Ciel butted his way back into the conversation, "Since we'll be living here full-time now, I suppose it is appropriate for you to decorate your rooms, as you please. However, I don't want any monumental changes." he shrugged looking around, "So please, feel free to decorate."
Lizzy looked up at him her teary eyes full of joy. "Since we will... you mean we'll be living here now! Instead of the London town house! And Alois too?" she hugged him, smiling. "Thank you! Thank you!" she squeezed tighter, a normal person's ribs would of cracked.
And so the trio+butler fell into a regular schedule there, one that would carry them on for decades without interruption and little difference. They stood, frozen in time watching the eras float past. Watching fads come and go, watching new technologies appear. All of it floated by, like snowflakes, having their fifteen minutes of fame before falling to the ground, quickly replaced, the new one rendering it obsolete.
