A/N: big thank you's to you, promocat, tomboyprincess, and Lilyhasapenis. You make me happy! and Mei and BlackInkStains, you are awesome. Hope you continue to read and enjoy.
Chapter 2: into the fire and out again
(Sebastian)
The call is wordless, but just as relentless as if Ciel screamed my name. I drop all pretense of work and simply make haste to get to wherever Ciel is. But there. The urge becomes more directed and focused. Ah, now he realizes the danger. I know what he wants.
Take care of it.
Fire, and smoke. Screams from inside. I burst through the window, and the fire surges up around me, gaining heat and volume as it gains more air. Chaos. Alois chokes.
He's stumbling to the floor.
My clothes smoke and a stray flame even dances along my jacket. My eyes go past Alois to the elemental spirit running around the room, urging the flames on unnecessarily. I catch the thing in my hands, heedless to the burning pain.
"This will not do," I begin. "Put your fire out before things get out of hand." I open my mouth just enough to show pointed teeth.
The spirit shivers visibly, drawing from the heat and power of the room. I squeeze a bit harder. "I'm afraid I must insist." I throw it to the ground and stamp on it.
For all that I'd love to crush the thing, my first priority is and always must be to protect Ciel. No matter how close a tempting spirit wanders.
The flames go down with the battered spirit until the spirit cuts the magical link, making it easier to put the flames out. When it does, Alois finally escapes from the cloying smoke into the hall.
I step briskly around him, running a few paces to get a fire extinguisher so conveniently placed. It also holds more chemical foam than physically possible for its size, but I doubt anyone will notice. When Ciel gave the order to act human-like, he merely meant to keep our contract secret. He won't mind me manipulating things- like my fire extinguisher- to his advantage.
I spray down the room until the flames are small enough to beat down with thick cloth. I open the window to let in fresh air.
While unconsciously avoiding the chalk circle, I realize that it's broken, and more than that, terribly unbalanced. My eyes narrow. I smell a faint undercurrent of incense, and thoroughly melted candles. The tang of iron drifts up from Alois, and silver glitters around his neck.
Ah. Is that it?
It was a damned foolish attempt at a summoning. It shouldn't have worked at all, not without enough raw talent and at least rudimentary training.
I look up at the approaching sounds of sirens but a few blocks away.
Alois coughs and wheezes. He peers into his wrecked suite- books and things unrecognizable in the burnt out tracks of flame and furnishings sodden with chemicals. His cheeks are flushed from the heat, but embarrassment and anger is clearly written underneath that, in his posture and his wooden composure.
The foolish boy begins to laugh.
"And I thought that you were made of fire and brimstone," he rasps, and stifles a coughing giggle. His eyes are red, and he has a burn trailing up one arm; but for all that and the damage his rooms have sustained, he looks contemplative.
I smile and give the smallest of bows, moving to help Alois farther away from the room.
He groans and protests. After a moment, though, he begins to murmur as if in a dream. "I finally have proof that you're not human," the words are slurred, and his voice is all but the thinnest of whispers, but I can make out the sound.
"Of course not, Alois," I soothe. "I simply am one hell of a butler." I rise up from my knees.
Alois snorts. "Aren't you supposed to be a personal assistant?""
I merely smile.
"That went well," he continues. Sarcasm colors his laugh. "My summoning worked. And my room is trashed."
I see a burnt page, half crumpled in his hand, a collage of an old Latin text and faulty romanization. A relic of times past, I expect. The summoning couldn't have worked.
"I couldn't agree more," I reply, my tone revealing little more than polite deference. I lean the boy against the wall and make my escape.
It's time to see Ciel.
Ciel has the window open in the library. His ear is to the window and the approaching sirens, but his gaze is on Alois' room, scanning diligently for more signs of flame. "Get me out of here," he whispers. His breath comes in fast, hallow wheezes. He coughs and chokes near as much as Alois- Ciel, who was in the fire, but it's as much as I can expect.
"Young master," I begin.
"I mean it, Sebastian. Get me away from here." He chokes, his eyes large and frightened.
"We can't be seen fleeing the scene," I remind him. "People have seen us come in." I dust off ashes from my black clothes. They look positively gray. "Besides, you probably need a breathing treatment. You're showing signs of exposure to smoke. The police may be idiots, but they know enough to ask the hospital to keep tabs on crime-related injuries." My clothes as clean as I can get them, I gesture to the door. "It would be perfectly understandable for the asthmatic victim to wait outside, though," I remind him.
"What on earth was Alois doing?" Ciel demands. "Why did his room catch on fire?" Paranoid hysteria colors his voice.
"Fire still bothers you, doesn't it?" I brush a hand to his cheek, wiping at a smudge of ash. "The foolish boy tried to summon one of the fae—or perhaps a demon." I shrug. "He rather confused certain elements. Silver and iron are for spirits of this world, but pentacles and rituals are for spirits or demons of that one." I lead Ciel towards the door. "It's a wonder an elemental spirit showed up at all."
I could have made quick work of him too, if I hadn't been forced to only do what a single man could do. The order, which keeps me scrubbing floors and preparing teas instead of employing a host of devils to do the work for me instantly.
But I don't have any regrets. Ciel Phantomhive is as interesting as I could have wished.
A few minutes pass.
"Ciel," Alois coughs, his pink face turning towards Ciel like a flower to the sun. "I'd forgotten you were here. Quite a show, don't you think?" His teeth are pearly against his flushed skin.
Just then, firefighters announce their arrival, sending two men in without so much as a "by your leave."
They stop before me, eying my singed clothes and ashes I my hair. I point a long finger down the hall. "That room," I tell them, and keep pulling Ciel away from the fouled air.
Safely outside, Ciel insists on being set down. "Put me down, you bast— Undertaker?" Ciel chokes on his breath, unable to continue.
Long gray hair pulled back, the Black Doctor smiles from beside a gurney. A shady character from Ciel's ties to the underworld, he's usually the first called when someone wants their injuries hushed up.
Undertaker's sleeve barely hides his giggle. He smiles broadly now, his customary black cap hiding his eyes.
Ciel snorts. "We're already attracting attention." Ciel's breath comes in faltering wheezes. He lets out the air in a rush, his pink lips open and gasping for air. He coughs up ash-colored flem. "I need the hospital..."
"Hush now, Ciel. I've got a nice little toy for you." He pulls out a plastic mask with a tube connecting to a cylinder of tank. An oxygen mask, I think. "Suck on that for a while."
"What is that?" Ciel goes cross-eyed trying to look.
"Hm? A Resuscitator, of course."
"Did you steal that it?" Ciel sounds incredulous.
Undertaker flips his hair behind his shoulder casually, and addresses me. "Alois did it this time. You let the little one get away, Sebastian."
I raise an eyebrow. "That thing is hardly a threat," I shrug. "But this 'little one' needs proper treatment. Is an ambulance coming?"
"Probably. I did tip them off. And the firefighters came, didn't they?" he shrugs, and stands up, stretching like a cat.
I follow the Undertaker a few yards away, checking my watch. The paramedics should arrive in a few more minutes...Assuming Undertaker called just as the fire started (some ten minutes ago), the response time is faster than anticipated…Ordinarily, the call would be shuffled through operators and then dispatched. The firefighters are ten or fifteen minutes early…could this mean he anticipated the fire? Or only that this community is given special status? I wonder how Undertaker could have known.
"We didn't call you. Your services hardly warrant reward."
"Oh, payment? I'm just passing the time…" he smiles. "But I wouldn't mind a joke. Really, it isn't that much to ask…" I feel his gaze even under his cap.
"Just here to gawk, then." I look down my nose at him, and begin to go back to Ciel.
"Things are changing for you two, you know." He giggles again. I turn around to consider him. "I'm sure I can smell it. Care to come over and try out coffins with me? I know a place…" He lifts his chin, bearing his neck like a challenge.
I consider his position again. A doctor for the crime lords…what could he know of Ciel and my bargain? Or does he mean something else? I smile. "I decline. Your face disgusts me."
Noticing a firefighter come out of the house, I make a show of rushing to be at Ciel's side. A personal assistant who can't do that isn't worth his salt, after all.
The smell of fire permeates the air. I wonder if that's why Ciel's heart flutters so…remembering the beginning, and thinking of the end.
The final act.
o0o0o0o0o
(Alois)
The hospital room is full of white lights, busy, rushing nurses, and beeps and whizzes of machinery. It's never quiet, a little too cold, and exactly not the place I want to be.
I touch the sheet restlessly, longingly wishing Ciel would wake up and get over here. He wasn't even in the room with me, but he's definitely the favorite of our situation. Oh yes, I'm the stupid brat who let candles catch the rug on fire, but he's the poor, asthmatic victim over in the other room who had nothing to do with anything. It's enough to make me throw up.
I pull at my nightshirt. It's just the kind of thing that bastard would have loved...loose around the sleeves and disguising any kind of figure I might have had—makes me look like a kid in a pillow sheet. But the doctors and nurses are babying my skin. It's somewhat mollifying, since they've more or less stopped lecturing me and started praising Sebastian for getting things under control.
"Where is he?" I mutter, and my hair falls into my eyes when I look down. I look at my pink hands. Compared to them, my arms are stark white- except for the ugly, crescent burn. It's like a gaping mouth, turned a deep red and pink at the center, and the blister is painful and stinging without me even touching it.
The door opens. "Alois?"
I smile slowly without looking up. Just who I wanted to see.
"Hello Ciel." I kick my feet out of the tangle of blankets and let them dangle over the side of the bed. I don't get up, but pat the space next to me.
"How are you feeling?" His voice is wooden, and I look up to see that his colored contact has been replaced with his leather eye patch.
"You've been discharged." I frown. He's changed into fresh goth clothes, the usual black with more lacing than strictly necessary—a present from Sebastian, I guess. He has his hands around a tablet. I recognize it as that thing he usually brings to our meetings—a nice bit of equipment for note-taking, recording, and other stuff, though I always thought it lacks the romance of a real notebook and pen.
He nods. "They said they want to watch you a little longer though, but if you asked…" he shrugs, "you could probably go home soon. The smoke smell's been cleaned and everything."
"Thanks," I snort. "Now sit down before you make me dizzy looking at you."
Ciel fidgets. He's trying to keep to small talk, and not business. He can be straight-laced, even while he's actually impatient. His parents must have crammed manners down his throat. I mean, why else would he bother with small talk when he really, really doesn't like it? "I hope you'll be in better health soon."
"Just spit it out, Ciel," I snap. "I don't have time for your power games…" I pat the bed again. "And sit down."
He does. "I wanted to ask you about the occult," he says slowly.
I can't help but stiffen. "The occult." My fingers go to the blister again. It stings like nobody's business.
With a look at his sullen, but sickeningly hopeful face, I laugh.
"What?" he snaps. His single visible eye narrows with irritation, and he offers a bit of consoling explanation. "Sebastian told me about your summoning." Bingo.
"So you want to know about the occult because you want something." I look at him sideways, waiting for him to reveal something else.
But Ciel is no easy mark. He rolls his sleeves back. "What do you know about the spirit world?" he asks instead. A vague and unsatisfying request that tells too little about him.
"I know lots of things." If he wants to be vague, I will answer with empty bullshit. We trade smiles for a minute.
Ciel crosses his arms and sticks out his chin. He's mute for a minute longer.
Time passes too slowly. Impatience is a weakness in most people's eyes, but I know how to play the card right. Intuition and luck will keep me straight down the path to victory. "You wanna know about summoning, right?" I toss my fringe out of my face, trying to look like a cat with a string. That's the way he wants to see an informant—under his control and needy. "It's just the basics, you know. Getting them to come is easy."
Ciel actually leans toward me. "And what comes after is hard? Is supposed to be hard?" He almost trips over his words.
I shrug as nonchalantly as I can. Ciel is really struggling here. But why would he ask about that? Doesn't he have firsthand experience? I fiddle with the fabric of my nightshirt. "You want something to help you, huh. Something that Sebastian can't give you."
He stiffens at that, and I smile wider.
Ciel stops breathing. He literally can't seem to find his breath.
I laugh, delighted to have found something at last. "Why don't you tell me all about it?" I was going for sympathetic, but my voice comes off different. Excited, maybe.
Whatever.
"Alois."
I grit my teeth. This isn't the wheedling or teasing of a boy I've known forever. This is a dangerous calm that I've only heard sometimes. And almost never directed at me.
"Tell me." Each word is a dagger in his hand.
Scowling, I wonder what he thinks I'll say.
"Why should I?" I snap back. My eyes narrow, and I pull away from him. "God, you're making me hot."
Ciel is relentless when he's after something. Like a damn dog after a rabbit. "It's not good business to deny requests," he says thinly.
I smile just as lazily as Sebastian, and I lean a little less dramatically. "Business?" I drawl.
Ciel isn't happy to repeat himself. "If you can't tell me anything directly, let me know this; how much of your documents pertaining to the subject remain in your possession?"
"Quite a few were demolished. In the flames." I snort. "And what I wasn't using wasn't exactly chock full of little known secrets to…whatever one does after summoning the beasts." I wave my hand dismissively.
Ciel slumps. "…you really don't—"
"—hey." I interrupt forcefully. "I didn't say I lost everything. I've got some books in my study."
Ciel stares at me. Of course, it was the room he was just in. He's probably trying to remember titles on the shelves.
I snort. "You didn't think I'd just leave occult texts in the open, did you? The encyclopedias, Ciel. It's just the binding." I feel my lips tighten and thin with a smile. I laugh. "I've got journals, articles and spells about all sorts of things. Precious little about summoning, though. That subject is off limits even in magical circles for the most part."
Ciel nods slowly. He's probably weighing his desire for knowledge against the favor he'll owe me. "I'd love a chance to take a look," he says at last.
"What exactly do you need? I might know just the book with a bit more specifics," I enunciate the words slowly. If he tells me…
More information about Ciel's mysterious black shadow. My ideal fairy servant.
Ciel swallows. "I need to uncover Sebastian's true name. His magic Name. Something to hold over him."
I kick my feet idly, considering. So ruthless, crafty Phantomhive is in a tight spot with his servant. Perfect. All the easier for me to try and work out a way to steal him.
I shrug. "You ought to ask him," I suggest.
Ciel glares at me. "No. He doesn't know I'm looking. He'll go ahead of me and wipe out anything that might help. He'll—"
"I don't mean now," I snap. "Sugar him up a bit. Make him adore you. He'll tell you himself if you can play him right," I insist.
Ciel's scoff turns into a cough. "You must be joking. He's a demon. Romance and flowers will hardly work."
I laugh. The sound is not pleasant. "Have you seen him around you? He's already halfway there," I maintain, jealousy churning uncomfortably in my gut.
And then…
Memory flies over me like wind, and I can't remember if I'm sixteen or seven—the playgrounds with kids my and Luca's age pointedly ignoring us, and the smell of sweat and heat on the air. I remember how bratty and stupid they all were, and how I just wished they'd all die.
That and sitting by my brother and licking our fingers free of crumbs. Waiting for someone to notice when we didn't have dinner to go home to.
And that memory, just because someone opened the window. The wind always blows in when Ciel's around.
Ciel is quiet. He looks like someone just slugged him good, but he's not convinced. "Alois," he says slowly. My eyes refocus.
He's quick. One of the only ones our age who realize that's a firm, solid tie to the here and now—my name. One of the only people who can pull me back on the verge of slipping.
"I don't know how," he says in a small voice. His shoulders are pulled in so tight and tense he looks like a kid.
"Oh," I fidget. "So I guess those vids aren't consented, huh?" I muse. It just came out.
Ciel freezes. Says nothing. He fixes me with a look so cold and calculating that I'm sure he must be panicking.
Is he weighing my value against my knowledge of something he wants hidden? Or is he simply lost in the memory? I try and move the conversation on.
"…you know, it doesn't matter." Lame, but true.
Ciel continues with that look.
I hurry on. "Your bosses pro'lly wouldn't care to know how you got…um, anyways." I fidget. Figuring out when to stop explaining and shut up hasn't exactly been my strong suit.
I try to find my place. "It's so annoying that nobody understands how stupid the tricks are—" I break off again. "It's them. Not the prostitutes." I try again. "Turning a man so hot for action he'd suck his own dick isn't the point," I snap. Having to explain something so basic makes me irritable.
Ciel looks one step short of terrified. God. Who'd have guessed he's so afraid of sex?
"Listen. Just spend time with him. Let him talk and listen. Find out what he likes and do it." I hold out my hand.
Ciel takes it awkwardly. "Romance." He says darkly. "Why would that work on a demon?" he repeats.
Fighting anger now, I almost break his fingers. Oddly enough, Ciel doesn't let go. "You are so stupid." I shake my head. "People like to be flattered. Not obviously, but carefully." I let go of his hand, and he rubs at the knuckles. I look at him. "Demons won't be so different. Trust me."
Familiar irritation flashes in Ciel's eyes. "The logic you're using is completely unsound."
I shrug. "Well then, just give it a try, and I'll keep my ear out." I stare at the wall, certain he's ready to go, and I'm impatient for him to hurry up and do it already.
"Everything will be all right," I mutter.
Ciel looks at me darkly. "Feel better soon," he bids, and he stands up unsettlingly fast.
My head swims. "Mm. You too."
Before I look up, he's already gone.
oOoOoOoOo
A/N: I love Alois and that Ciel just listens in horror as he prattles on. Undertaker is for kind reader/reviewer/great-writer BlackInkStains.
Any reviews you might write would be candy to me. Greatly enjoyed. Especially with tea.
