Empty.
Empty.
Empty.
Where were they?! He had to tell them! He'd heard something! There were... weird looking people outside! He had to tell Father, Father always wanted him to tell him if he saw weird people around the townhouse or manor. So where was he?!
Chest heaving from the exertion of racing down the manor's halls, the boy's brows furrowed as he turns another corner and is met with yet another empty hallway. Where were the servants?
He paused; just long enough to push his small frame against the door to his father's study, and call "Somebody!",watching it swing open to reveal an empty room. A blink, confusion and fear increasing, before the boy turned away, continuing his dash down the hall, fixed on the next room that could possibly hold his parents.
He almost instinctively tipped himself that little further forward, almost to a crouch, as he ran past the large windows. Windows weren't safe, Papa had said windows weren't safe when there were strangers outside their home, people could hurt you from the windows. He was meant to stay right away from the windows, let Papa handle the strangers and he'd come tell them when everything was okay.
But Papa didn't know this time. Ciel had to tell him. So the boy stayed low – he was already little, it wasn't hard to get low enough to not be a target through the windows.
"Heey!" The ten-year-old threw himself up against another door, trembling hand lifting to turn the handle so he could push it open, stumbling a few steps into the billiards room. No one here, either, and yet the boy still tried to call for them. "Where did everyone go!?" Of course there was no answer and the child casted one quick glance back towards the long windows of the hall before taking off once again.
He didn't get far this time, though, the strain and pain growing in his chest forcing him to stop, to double over and rest his hands on his knees as he heaved for breath. He could feel the asthma starting to aggravate, each panting breath a laboured wheeze through narrow airways. He could feel it building, the sensation far too familiar to ignore – but he had to tell Papa. Papa had to know about the strangers.
And then he heard the growling, Sebastian's growling. His head jerked up, one step towards the noise taken when it was suddenly shifted to a yelp, one that made the little boy's heart ache – that was his beloved pet, someone had hurt his dog! Ignoring the signs of an oncoming attack, he ran towards the source, turning another corner, blue eyes fixing on a door left ajar and the boy making a beeline for it.
This door swung open easily, and Ciel's attention instantly fixed on the limp pile of black fur. It wasn't moving. Sebastian wasn't moving.
"Sebastian...?"
Panting for breath, the boy stumbled towards the body of what had been his best friend, dropping to his knees and reaching out, trembling hands pressing into that thick black fur to shake the limp figure, and drawing them away with a horrified squeak as something slick spread across them. Teary eyes dropped to stare at blood-stained hands, the young heir's breath hitching on a sob. Blood. Blood meant—
A sliver of golden hair caught his attention instead, the boy's attention lifting to finally take in the rest of the scene.
Blood. More blood. It was everywhere. And in the centre of one creeping puddle, his parents, wrapped in each other's embrace.
Sebastian had been trying to protect them.
Someone had hurt them.
He hadn't heard them.
What noise left him as the sight sunk in he could never put words into. But it was horrified and terrified and sorrowful and confused all at once.
"Father! Mother!" neither twitch. The little Lord scrambled forward, dragging knees and hands through the pool of slick... goo to be by his parents' sides. He couldn't see the wounds, not with his mother clutched so close to his father's chest and the two of them so soaked in blood. But he could see his father's arm, at an angle that made the boy's stomach churn worse than the thick smell of blood.
Heaving breaths that were beginning to boarder on hyperventilating, the boy lifted his hands to rub at his eyes with the back of his wrists, trying to wipe away the tears so he could see clearer. They couldn't be dead. They just couldn't! His mother and father were immortal, untouchable, they couldn't die!
Blinking quickly, he reached those bloody hands out, hesitating to touch the two adults, blue eyes flicking over their forms.
And then he saw it. The slight rise and fall of their chests.
Small hands latched onto his father's shoulder, eyes already re-filled with tears that ran freely down his cheeks, and he shook the limp Earl with all the might his over exerted little form could muster. He kept shaking him, trying to be careful of his mother with her head tucked into his father's chest, but trying so hard to rouse the man. He didn't know what to do. Papa had to wake up and tell him what he had to do to get them better!
"Wake up! Father, wake up! Please! What do I do!? Father!"
Eventually, almost blissfully, his shaking and pleading was met with results, a soft, pained groan. So the boy stopped, hiccupping on a relieved sob as he leant over the limp form of Vincent Phantomhive, eyes fixed on his father's features. "Father?" breathless, trembling on hope and yet fearful to cross the line.
A sliver of brown, made murky by the haze of pain and blood loss, lasting for the longest few seconds before the eyes slipped closed again. "No! Papa! Stay awake, please, please, I ca—!" He was still breathing. He was still breathing. And so was mother. But there was so much blood.
He had to find someone to help. He had to find someone.
"I'll be back!" the little heir sobbed, hands tightening on the damp jacket he clung to, features distorted in pain, still heaving for breath, "I'll get help for you and mamma and be back, I promise, Papa, I promise!"
He forced himself to let go, to stand up and race back towards the door, pushing it open and darting out into the hall. "Someone help me!" he cried, "Everyone's going to die!"
A turn of a corner, and it was impossible to miss the elderly butler at the end of the hall, looking as though he was backing away from someone hidden from view. And Tanaka was scared. Ciel could see it, but he still ran towards him, hiccupping and wheezing. "Tanaka! Help me!"
"You must not come over here!" And yet the little Lord ignored him, even as his 'grandfather' turned towards him, fixing those terrified eyes on him properly, "Please run away. Lord Ciel... This is all too awful for y-!" More blood, and his father's faithful servant swayed before slumping forward towards his outstretched hand.
"Tana—!" He could see him. The man with a bloody knife, who had just stabbed Tanaka in the back, for all of a second before a hand descended over his eyes.
A flash and everything went black.
"Let's take him with us. He'll fetch a good price."
Fuzzy. Everything was fuzzy. Who was talking?
"There's this thing called idle curiosity, and it's got deep pockets."
Cages covered by dark cloth, the little orphan curled into the back corner, sore and aching and dirty. Watching with wide blue eyes as the curtains were pulled back to put him on show – and making him curl tighter in on himself, trying to look tiny and uninteresting and not worth any amount of money.
"Ohh... What have we here!"
"Rare, right?"
The sound of clinking coin, business being done.
"This is more than two persons' worth!"
"Cheers, Guv."
Stop holding him down! Stop it! Let him go! He wanted to go home! Why were you doing this?! What had he done so wrong to deserve this?!
"I shall brand you with the mark of the Noble Beast."
A scream. Pain, pain, nothing but pain.
Let me out. Let me out. Let me out of here.
"See, you've gotten so much lovelier now."
It hurts. It's all dirty. I want to go home.
Father, Mother, God. Please.
"Now let us begin the Noble Mass once more this evening."
Why?
Why must we be-!
No one's coming to save me.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GOD IN THIS WORLD!