Title: Pinwheels
Author: Neko-chan
Fandom: Kuroshitsuji II
Rating: T
Warnings: …Alois. *loves the little batshit shota*
Summary: Memories pinwheel through his mind, spiraling chaotically through the twisting labyrinth of Alois' self.
Author's Note: Giftfic for Silver Affection~ Hope you like it, darling! *hearts* I wanted to try something rather abstract and pretty experimental, and… this was the result. *coughs*
Pinwheels
The rain was falling.
Pitter-patter-patter-pitter, like little mice feet over the pane of the glass. Pitter-pitter-patter-patter-pitter, tapping away. It never stopped when it rained. It was the only thing to listen to when it rained because the soft snores of the men next to him in the bed was something that he could not listen to.
Pitter-patter-patter-pitter.
His hands lifted up to clasp over his ears so that he could mute the sounds, hollowing them out so that nothing could be heard except the steady thump-thump-thump of his heart. He watched the rain, watched the seconds tick by—counted by the clock on the bedside table—and breathed in time to the thump-thump-thump that came within him.
It was steadying.
Sometimes, though, he wondered that if the sound was just a ghost from the past because so many times since Luka's death he had thought that his heart had been ripped out as he stared down at his little brother's body and as the darkness encased him with midnight.
Luka had been the only thing that he had loved in the world.
He had gone from having his brother, his heart—
And now he was a soulless husk that dirtied itself by controlling this powerful man next to him in the only way that he knew how: with that very same body. His mind burrowed deeper, clinging to threads that were spidersilk faint—he coiled them about himself, cocooning his mind to ensure that He, at least, would remain untouched.
Pitter-patter-pitter-patter.
The mice's march never ceased, and it was as the endless droning continued on that the old bastard awoke and rolled to pin him—the husk, not Him—beneath his flabby weight. He stared out of the window, still watching the rain; but the sound—the pitter-pattering of the drops against the windowpane—were silenced by the husky grunting in his ear.
It didn't matter.
Let the bastard have the body.
XXX
The already rotting corpse in the coffin might as well have been his own.
The old bastard had rotted from the inside, and had been an interesting parallel—a perpendicular line?—to his own fate. The body couldn't last for long without the soul and even the beating of his heart had slowly ceased to thud its way through his ears. He had promised the faerie (nevermind that the faerie claimed to be a demon; demons didn't exist because God didn't exist) his soul, and it would be a grand joke when he came to claim his prize and only then realized that there was nothing to claim.
Pitter-patter-pitter-patter.
The rain began to fall, clouds rumbling hungrily an eternity above his head.
He reached up, head tilted back with eyes wide and ignoring the droplets that pitter-pattered their way over his face, and reached for that eternity—feeling kinship, kindship, with those hungry, fury-ridden clouds that spread themselves greedily across the sky.
The faerie took his hand, pressing a white rose against his palm. "Place the rose on the coffin or the funeral's guests will suspect that something is amiss, Danna-sama."
He did so—not because the faerie had asked it of him but because he wasn't yet ready to have others suspect him when the grandest game he had ever played was just about to begin—and even managed to bring tears to his eyes as he placed the rose upon the old bastard's coffin.
He knelt on the muddy ground, ignoring how the dirt would seep its way against his skin, and wrapped his arms around the head of the coffin to rest his cheek over the smooth wood finish. The guests murmured at his show of emotion over the loss of the fucker, and he could only close his eyes in bliss as he whispered fondly, "Let the maggots eat you away into a piece of shit, 'Father.'"
He felt the pressure of a hand on his shoulder, and he glanced up to meet the faerie's burnished-gold eyes. "It's time to head back to the manor, Danna-sama," the faerie in butler garb murmured, his eyes as soulless as his own empty body. He couldn't help but smile at that, taking the faerie's hand and standing. Walking away from the coffin as the workers lowered it into the ground, he gave a shiver of delight at the thought of the bastard rotting away—and his hand tightened over the faerie's as a sharp pulse of hate spiked through him.
The faerie's eyes glowed in response, as starving as the clouds up above, and he couldn't help the fact that the hate shifted to this creature, too, for taking the name that only Luka had been allowed to call him. The name had been private.
He knew, though, that the faerie called him that to hurt him.
It worked.
XXX
Nighttime tolled away and he sidestepped his way in a dance around the pieces of shit that he had invited to his party. The dress swayed about his ankles, not so different than the kimono, and he made his way towards his mirror.
His mirror. His mirror.
The side of the looking glass that had everything he wanted: companions, family, friendship, concern—and a faerie, a demon, that looked at him with consuming eyes and didn't lie when he spoke aloud that he wanted to devour him to the very end. His own faerie lied, and he couldn't help but hate the mirror for that.
The mirror had everything.
He had nothing.
The mirror had nothing.
He had everything.
Criss-crossing looking glasses flip and twist and invert and turn inside out in feats that should have been impossible, but he could follow all too clearly. They followed his thoughts, shattering when he no longer needed or wanted them—seven years of bad luck, though he knew that he wouldn't be alive to deal with it. He caught the mirror, once, but his fingers slipped against the glass surface; his fingers cut and bled and the glass tumbled through his fingers and fell and fell and fell and broke.
He was taken back to the rooms when all the pieces shattered further; was told that he was still required to go to the ballroom despite the fact that his mirror would look at him that way, with contempt that would never be bothered to be concealed, and he screamed and screamed and raged at the night that blanketed the world and threw his own mirror through the window of his bedroom.
The shattering of glass was soothing.
It sounded nothing like the pitter-pattering of the raindrops that came to the mansion almost every day, never offering up mercy and never ceasing ever since the faerie had come to stay. (Forevermore and nevermore, though it was quoth by the mirror's raven and not his own spider.)
"Danna-sama, you must get dressed in your costume. Your guests are waiting for your presence and you've kept them in suspense long enough. Come."
He hated.
He hated, and his hate raged itself deep deep deeper within himself.
XXX
She called him "child." She held him close to her breast, pressed her cheek against the top of his head; she crooned in her mother language that echoed familiarly within his ears and let her fingers comb slowly through his hair as the other two looked on in distaste, and she called him a fucking child.
But he had never been a child. Never. Never.
Children were not supposed to root through garage bins for their nightly supper.
Children were not supposed to be pressed down against silk and satin sheets, and children were not supposed to be forced to part their legs in anticipation of being violated irreparably. There were some damages that could never be healed. Never. Never.
Children were not supposed to dance amongst the corpses of the people they had spent their entire lives loathing, celebrating their deaths as too-young hands ripped valuables from the still-warm bodies.
Children were not supposed to stare into the mirror and wonder why their gaze looked so empty.
Children were not supposed to—
Children were not—
Children were.
He was not a child.
XXX
He slapped her because he could. He slapped her because she looked at him with eyes that softened imperceptibly as she gazed up at him—and those were the eyes that he remembered his mother having before she and his father left him behind. He slapped her because she had no right to look at him in such a way. He ripped out her eye so that those looks, those fucking loving glances, would stop.
He was just a body, he was only just a body, she knew only the body and so she had no right to look at Him in such a way. He hated her because she loved him; he hated her because she pitied him and loved him despite it all. He hated her because she loved him even through his hate; he hated her because she loved him when he abused her.
He hated.
Oh, he hated.
(But he hated himself most of all.)
XXX
There was darkness, and perhaps that was not so unusual. The darkness had slowly been consuming him as the years, the months, and the days tick-tocked away through the time kept by the bedside clock—so the darkness was not so unusual.
The lack of the pitter-pattering rain drops was, however.
And the lack of the steady thump-thump-thump as he pressed his hands over his ears.
There was no sound, no scent and no touch and no taste: complete and utter Oblivion, the heart and the seed that had buried and burrowed itself deep within himself, within Him. Here was the core, the promised soul that two faeries had wanted and only one had claimed—
Because a fucking "maybe" had never been good enough, you piece of shit.
And it was here that His true self was finally revealed to all of the world.
The mirror lived on, and that was finally acceptable because the mirror would hate himself as much as He hated himself; there would be an eternity of loathing to look forward to, a chance to torment his faerie with his presence every second of every day—and deny that presence to his faerie because to let him starve meant to let himself live.
The mirror had nothing else to live for, but the mirror would never consider that an acceptable state of being—thus, the mirror would find something to set as a goal and then strive towards it, always making his way forward.
It was so stupid, really.
There was nothing to live for.
Nothing to strive for.
Nothing to set as a goal.
This, now, was the only fate that human beings would ever meet, would ever have the chance to know. No afterlife—no Hell to be damned to and no fucking Heaven to reside in for a happily-ever-after—and only this—this—is what lingers on. This was eternity, this was the abyss, this was the fate that he had wanted from the very beginning when the hate for others and the hate for himself (but never Himself) had taken hold.
It had buried deep, and deeper, and deeper yet until the hate had been part of Himself.
He was surrounded by it, and—for the first time in his very short life—he felt like he was finally coming home. He laughed, though the sound never escaped his lips—for he had no lips to laugh with—and he opened his eyes as far as possible to see nothing and nothing and nothing all around, the endless night that had stared emptily out at him each evening, peeking through his bedroom window as it waited to claim him. There was only oblivion, and it was Oblivion that he had anticipated from the very beginning.
Home.
He was home.
He laughed. Laughed again.
And Alois opened his arms wide to embrace Eternity.
End.