Carnivalesque, a kuroshitsuji fanfic

Disclaimer: I own nothing but the red nail polish I see on my fingers as I type this disclaimer. It is mesmerizingly pretty. The quotes belong to Emily Jane Bronte, Ray Bradbury, and Lewis Carroll, respectively.

Carnivalesque

"I, the image of light and gladness,

Saw and pitied that mournful boy,

And vowed, if need were, to share his sadness,

And give to him my sunny joy."

"That's it! Jump, run! This way to the night. This way to the dark!"

I awaken at four o' clock every morning when the world is dark. I do not know why I awaken at this time every morning, but I do. It makes me tired. So I lay in my bed, weary and sweating with fright. The bed is too soft. I get all twisted up in my nightshirt if I try to move. Not that I can move, just now.

You are only frightening yourself, Claude says. Claude has no imagination.

My room is a slippery, sliding scale of dark, dark, dark, and it is empty of all but me.

Empty of all but me.

I lie very still and jump badly at tiny noises.

Sometimes Claude comes in and I leap up out of bed and fling my arms across his shoulders. Claude is very tolerant. He knows what sorts of nasty things creep around in corners in the wee small hours of the morning. He knows, and I know, and they know me, those creeping things.

It is dark. It is so dark and I am sweltering under my coverlet. Sweltering, and sweaty and shaking. I can't move.

I can't move.

Claude!

I am as still as I can be, but it doesn't help.

It doesn't help. I'm so tired, I'm so tired.

It is swelteringly hot under these covers; unbearable! I ought to toss them aside and shred them, they have me trapped here in the dark and won't let me go!

Dare I move?

No.

No, no, no, I can't.

It's dark. Everywhere, everywhere.

The dark is all inside the hallways and it is filling up the rooms like oil. It leaves stains on everything and Claude never cleans them up.

The dark is too close.

I am burning up.

I dare not move. The darkness will…

The darkness will make strange noises and gather in the corners like lumps and stare at me.

Every morning it does this.

Claude does not come.

I wait.

One day, Claude will come into my room as part of the darkness. I will be petrified, and he will kill me.

Oh – oh, listen!

Listen. Listen.

Morning at last, beautiful, beautiful morning! Golden sunlight pours into my room and all around me, and I am clean and cool and bright, and I bask in it like a cat. It feels wonderful. I picture myself as I stretch, in the aforementioned catlike style. I can always see myself precisely as I am. I have made a practice of it. I am aware of how I look every moment of every day, and of every gesture and turn of my head and sweep of my lashes and angle of my shoulders through every encounter. I have cornsilk hair and blue, blue, blue eyes, and everyone in the world is at my fingertips because to look at me is to be enchanted by me.

Claude enters with my clothing for today.

And…scene!

"Claude?" I begin. "Claude? Have you ever dreamed something, and then woken up thinking that that something was so and had always been so, at least in your mind? And that even if things were to ever change, that something that might have been so would still have been so first and would therefore take precedence, until you realize that it was only last night's dream and it was the first time you had ever dreamt it, and that in a few moments you would forget about it entirely and never dream it again?"

I ask him this eagerly and endearingly, and employ smile number three, (endearing eagerness.)

Claude responds that no, he cannot say that he has. This does not surprise me.

"That does not surprise me!" I laugh. "You never dream, do you? If you dreamt, then surely, surely there would be more life behind those sober yellow eyes of yours – but there isn't! You're just a dead spider, really, aren't you?"

Claude says nothing.

I yawn and tap my fingers in time with my toes as I am dressed.

The deep plum tone of my coat makes me rather more than a little bit sick; I have never cared for it. It is the color of royalty, because I am royalty now, and because it brings out my eyes.

Don't you think it brings out my eyes, Claude?

Oh, what do you know, you horrid, grotesque thing.

Everything in my master bedroom is lilac and gold. The curtains and the windows and the walls, and the bedcovers and the pillows and the floors and the fireplace and the decorative plates, and the chairs and the cushions and the footrests and the dust and the spiders and the smell and the texture and the memories, and my contract, and Claude's eyes,

And me! And me.

I fall back on my lilac and gold bed with a flop! while Claude is lacing up my boots, and I kick my feet up

and down,

and down. Claude gets it done anyway, though he only barely misses being kicked in the face.

Pity, that.

Not that he'd have minded.

I try harder.

They signify good and evil, you know, the eyes.

They do.

Right is goodness and left, left is evil.

I poke my two fingers into Hannah's left eye; in and in and in, and I swiiiirl them around.

It mushes.

Like an egg yolk.

It's all gooey under my nails.

It hurts her, oooh, it does, but it does not hurt me! It does not matter if it does not hurt me. Only things that hurt me are bad things. Claude says so, and he ought to know.

He wants to hurt me very badly, but he can't!

Isn't that funny?

He does; I can tell by the way he looks at me sometimes, the way a big, ugly spider might look at… well, a – a littler, uglier spider.

When he cleans Hannah's blood and bits of eye off my fingers, I know he wishes he could take those fingers and bend them all the way back till I scream and they snap and the bones jut right out of my hand. Or that he could take my whole hand and twist it and crush all my fingers beyond repair, all mangled nerves and torn muscle.

It doesn't seem quite as funny anymore. Well, not ha ha! funny; not laugh out loud funny. A more serious-faced funny. Stoic funny.

I have destroyed Hannah's left eye; the evil one. I have blinded her to evil. Or rather, at the very least, I tried. She should be thanking me!

She doesn't.

She just shudders in the arms of the triplets and moans, and wipes her clogged, dripping nose on her apron.

Ew.

Ha!

It stinks something awful in here now. But I am good, and I finish my breakfast. Hannah is half led, half carried out of the room, whimpering all the while.

Oh, please. These demons and their theatrics.

"Overacting!" I sing out after them as they go.

The triplets are always quiet as the grave, as they say. Hushed, muffled, silenced, mum's their word, and so forth. They keep mostly to themselves.

But sometimes when Claude isn't looking they swoop down on me and whisper things in my ears.

But… their voices don't get very loud. I can't just want to hear them; I have to listen listen listen.

I'm never sure which voice goes with which triplet. They all sound just the same.

How miserable, how tragic for them! Ha!

Listen! says one.

Listen! they all say. I think.

So I do.

Hannah weeps.

Weeps.

Weeps blood.

Yes, blood.

She says, she says,

She says

You're mad.

Mad.

Yes, mad.

Are you listening?

Mad. Listen!

Mad.

Mad! They all say. I think.

I clench my fists so tightly, my fingers ache.

Mad. Mad! So the bitch thinks I'm mad, does she? Why, how dare,

How can she,

She doesn't possibly comprehend,

How she dares…

Do the triplets think so, too?

Does Claude?

I'm not mad – I'm not! I'm not, of course. I'm not mad, of course not.

What a spiteful thing to say.

I won't believe it. I am above such things, things like the petty accusations of a whore and a guttersnipe - why that filthy….whatever the hell…

I won't believe it. I won't!

I won't! I won't! I won't! I won't! I won'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon't I won'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon't I won'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon't I won'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon't I won'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon't I won'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon't I won'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon't I won'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon't I won'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon't I won'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon't I won'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon't I won'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tIwon'tI - !

I have had hysterics. I have had a brief, blind, screaming tantrum, and now I am calm.

Er. Calm – er.

Claude tells me that I am too old for such behavior, and that having to be borne from the room shrieking Iwon'tIwon'tIwon't in an increasingly shrill voice while beating my fists against his shoulders is babyish.

I know, I say, and I pout irresistibly. Pout number eight, (Irresistibility.) But Claude, sometimes I just get so furious, you know? You know?

You know?

Claude says that he does.

He is lying, I think.

I smile wholesomely and sweetly, smile number eleven, (wholesome sweetness) and feel better.

Er. Better – er.

Wait.

There are quotes stuck in my head like songs. Only I keep forgetting parts of them, so they all combine themselves together, all jumbled and fused and irregular. They are all from the same story, the only story I know: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It's my very favorite.

I never did learn to read, you know; where the bloody hell would I have learned to read? No, no, I don't read. I am read to. I have Claude read it to me over and over and over before I go to sleep, and if he tires of it, he has never said so.

Not that that means anything.

Use more expression, Claude! I tell him. Make the voices sound different!

But he always reads it the same way. It's quite the mediocre performance, and it never stops me from waking in that awful terror at four o' clock in the morning. Ah, well.

I dance down the longest hallway in the manor, twirling and twirling, making myself quite dizzy, and each time my twirling brings me out of the shadows and bathes me in the light from the windows, I strike a match and light the curtains on fire.

Lilac and gold.

And crackling. What a funny word.

Crackling. Crackling.

I am able to do this six times before Claude finds me out. He puts out all the fires lickety-split, quick as you please, and plucks the matches from my wholly un-mangled fingers.

"My life is a pool of tears, Claude!" I wail. He does not so much as blink.

He seems irritable. I hope. You can't think of anything as awful as an irritable servant.

I shall show my irritable servant that, not unlike the titular Alice, I, too, can recite.

"I can never imagine myself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what I was or might have been was not otherwise than what I had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise."

There! I have finished a quote, a whole one!

Claude crushes the matches into dust and taps the ash from his gloves as if he is happy to be rid of it.

"That's so?" he replies.

He speaks! I have forced him to speak, tra-la!

The contract on my tongue is sticky and fuzzy and gags me from time to time. It does so now, and I feel as though I'm swallowing dirt.

I tried to once, when I was very, very hungry. Tried eating dirt, that is, not gagging myself, although I've tried that, too.

It takes effort, believe you me. Swallowing dirt, that is.

And it leaves a filthy, rotting taste in my mouth.

I bet Ciel Phantomhive has never tried to eat dirt.

The next line I recite to Claude is a little hesitant; a little unsure.

"Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?" I ask.

I twirl in place once more for emphasis, but I falter, and it does not go over very well.

Claude does not blink, does not move, does not answer. After a long, long, long,

Long time, he turns on his heel and leaves me alone in the long, long, long, long hallway full of smoke, cold sunlight, and scorched draperies.

Lilac and gold.

And black.

Honestly – the way Claude looks at me sometimes…

Like he can't stand me, like I'm something repulsive, abhorrent, low and weak and undeserving.

But then, has anyone ever looked at me any differently?

Well…

Well, yes, now that I think of it. Luca did, and…

And Hannah.

Damn her. Damn all of them.

Damn Luca, and damn Sebastian Michaelis.

Presumptuous name, isn't it? It is.

I shall damn Ciel Phantomhive myself.

The triplets pass me as I stand unmoving, staring after the long-departed Claude. They tear down the ruined drapes and bear then away, and as they go I can see their lips moving as they speak to one another. I want to hear them, but I'm afraid I'm not listen listen listening.

The hallway is drowned in brightness now.

For a little while longer I button my eyes up tight against the glare and stand in the light.

"The first thing I've got to do," quote I to myself, "is to grow to my right size again."

Every once in a while – not often, and only when I am at my most sneaky – I catch Claude dancing – dancing! – when he does not think I'm anywhere near enough to see.

It's so marvelously funny, watching him tap, tap, tap away with such an oh-so dignified expression!

I clap my hand over my mouth to stifle my laughter. He does look so absurd! Were it anyone but Claude I would laugh aloud and rip their stolen and preciously guarded moment (all his moments are really my moments, so he's stolen them from me) to shreds, and stomp on it for good measure…but I've felt lately as though I'm treading on shards of glass where my demon butler is concerned. Any and every slip of my footing might make me bleed. So I keep still and admire Claude from a distance.

It has been this way between us for a while, now. Secretive and strained. He thinks I do not notice. Ever since the night of that party full of strangers… I used nearly all forty-two of my smiles that night, I recall… when I realized that I was no longer the only one with my sights set on Ciel Phantomhive.

It was immensely disillusioning.

I think on this.

Hm.

Hmm.

I conclude, after some serious thought, that a career as a butler is not Claude's calling.

No.

Definitely not. Profoundly not.

Everything he ever does in an echo of Sebastian Michaelis.

Except - !

Except the mysterious and enthusiastic bouts of dancing. Those, I am fairly certain, are entirely Claude's.

He's still at it.

I would gladly partner him, if he ever cared to two-step!

But he would never ask.

Definitely not. Profoundly not.

I also conclude that I may not live much longer. There are just too many demons in this house. Ha. Hell must be rather empty.

The world looks odd

from here.

This flesh is too tight, and Ciel Phantomhive is shorter than me, and I feel so much closer to the ground. I can feel the lack of the year between our ages like a straightjacket that isn't there. It's unnatural in here.

I rip at my skin… his skin… my skin, and it stings and throbs, and it makes a nasty scritching noise. It hurts, but not as badly as when Claude killed me.

That…

That hurt.

It still hurts. And I'll never have my body back again.

But strangest of all; stranger than anything I have ever known is the feeling of Phantomhive in here with me. He struggles and shrieks from somewhere inside my… his… my chest… fluttering like a feverish heartbeat and beating against the walls of his cage like a crow beating its wings.

It must be… so terribly dark where he is.

He cries for Sebastian, but Sebastian can't heed him, no, oh no.

And below me, everything is falling to shit. With every passing minute, more truths are revealed, though I never, never meant for it to be that way, not ever!

I meant to twist us all up in my lies the way Claude did with his, but it's as if Sebastian and Ciel each took hold of a stray thread and pulled… and now everything is coming undone before my eyes; the maze of my thoughts warping even as I stare on…

Can I not ever create anything that is mine? Can I never possess anything that lasts?

Shut up! Shut up!

Ciel Phantomhive is screaming in my head… and Hannah is soothing me in that wind-chime voice of hers, so low and sweet that it doesn't belong, and I am crying…Ciel is crying… I am crying, because these devils have taken advantage of me… us…me… and I shouldn't be surprised, no, no, I shouldn't, but it hurt when Claude killed me, and it hurts because Claude killed me, and I'm sinking away as Ciel Phantomhive screams…

And…

And –

And… it's so terribly dark in here.

The cool, shining, lovely, lovely, relief of my pretty new contract glows comfortingly in my… Ciel's… my right eye.

Hannah shall have everything now, and I'm so glad, so glad, I could die.

The triplets circle around me, ever mystifying, ever familiar, ever constant.

Listen! says one.

Listen! they all say.

And I am.

There is nothing

Nothing

That is there in the dark

Dark

That will not also

Be there

In the light.

Look,

Think,

Listen,

Listen.

I tell them that I will,

And I mean it.

You have so little time left.

Hush!

"Hush," says Hannah.

They do, and so do I.

Everything is ending now.

And hasn't it been splendid – hasn't it been grand and mad and wild? Haven't I been the center of a stimulating and merry chase? Through my actions – my will – hasn't Ciel Phantomhive's miserable life been lengthened? Hasn't his demon enjoyed the time given him – thanks to me?

Ungrateful, both of them.

But everything is ending now.

We have come to a complete unraveling as everything in my life dissolves away. We have come to the denouement.

It's been splendid, and mad, and wild!

For now, I linger here in the dark, but it will not last long.

All the monsters here are evil, but only one of them is mine.

Mine, and Luca's.

Mine and Luca's.

Ciel Phantomhive rages within me… us… me. He has so little time left.

You have so little time left.

Hush!

Hush.

A/N: There! I well and thoroughly wash my hands of season two, which I wish didn't exist. I really have no idea where this fic came from or if it makes any sense, but my foolish muse paid retail for it and couldn't take it back, so I had to get it out of my head.

And yes, I know that the triplets shouldn't be there at the end, but they were the one solitary thing that I liked in this season, so in they go and there they shall stay.