A/N - Trigger warnings folks. The next two chapters are DARK. So be warned for torture, non-con, mind games, and language.


Hell is Cold and Dark

"In the end, there is only once choice. You were incapable of making the correct choice back then. I have eliminated that problem for you." Ash's breath curled around the shell of Ciel's ear.

"Keep. Your. Distance." Ciel spat the words out. His hands were curled into the material of his short trousers, desperately wrinkling the material between his fingers with rage.

"I will show you the error in your ways, the pain your naivete has brought you. You will thank me, Master Phantomhive." The white butler, looming oppressively behind Ciel, curled his hand around the base of the boy's neck and forced his gaze downward.

"I will not humor this lunacy any further. Let me up this INSTANT." Ciel struggled against the grip, but found he was no match for the strength in those incorporeal arms.

"Oh, I think you will."

At first, Ciel saw nothing. He merely stared at his own reflection in the polished floor. After a few moments he realized the tile was almost too black. He could peer too deeply into the nothingness. It was too empty and there was a clenching in his stomach. Ciel's skin prickled in goose flesh as his subconscious was reacting to something he himself did not yet understand. Shapes began to form in the dark. Ciel felt a breath hitch in his throat as his eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness.

No. He did not want this memory. He relived it far too often in the recesses of his mind while he slept. There was perhaps no memory he would like less to experience in the waking world than this one. The sounds came to him before the images did. Just like when he dreamed.

There were other children besides himself stuffed in the cage with him. Several other cages like his were spaced a short distance apart in the dark stone room. It was never fully quiet. Never could one let their imagination lead them to believe that maybe they would wake up safe and sound at home. No, more often than not there was crying, sniffling, coughing, the sound of chains rattling together and Ciel noted whispered prayers between chapped and bleeding lips.

It had only been days. The boy had not yet learned not to beg and plead when robed captors entered the room. Men - at least he had assumed they were men at first - swept into the darkened cell full of chattel. The children pressed themselves against the bars and pleaded to be let free, begged for their mothers, and cried piteously when they were neither spoken to nor acknowledged.

Something had entered into the room with the masked and robed captor. A shadow loomed behind him, darkening the man's right shoulder. It was nearly imperceptible from the normal shadows hugging the walls and corners. The small boy with tear-streaked cheeks and wide blue eyes did not see the shadow amongst shadows. Ciel, kneeling beneath Ash's firm grip and staring harshly at the scene, did see. His expression pinched and his teeth clenched together.

"I do not remember that."

"You were too innocent yet. There was much you did not see."

It began that night. The shadow had little form other than being a separate thing that followed the robed man. It stayed close to his shoulder and part of itself draped about the man's neck. The man pulled a key from deep within the sleeve of his robe. He stopped in front of one of the cages, the one next to young Ciel's. The children within the other cages pushed themselves upon each other as they pushed against the bars, willing themselves to slip through, or perhaps materialize inside the cage the man stood in front of.

The door was unlocked and the looming shadow slithered into the cage amongst the children. The robed man slid his hood back and the young boy who still had both his eyes recoiled with a start. The man's face was obscured with a mask that looked more than frightful in the shadows and the doorway of the cramped prison. The shadow flowed back out of the cage and once again hovered behind the masked figure. He reached a meaty hand into the cage and grabbed hold of the wrist of a small brunette girl. He squeezed her small wrist vigorously and the child began to cry in earnest with fear now etched on her face. She was roughly pulled from the cage, and the door slammed shut and locked.

Instinct was a strong thing indeed. Young Ciel had pushed his way through the mass of simpering children, away from this scene. His stomach tightened, watching the large rough hand grab the girl's chin. Ciel remembered how dirty the fingernails of that hand were as it roughly twisted the girl's head from one side to the other, and how his thumb had slid down her neck and under the collar of her sullied dress. Every fiber in his being told him to hush and to hide.

The robed man swallowed both of the girl's small hands in his large one. He suspended her off the ground by her hands, carrying her out in front of him like some prized game bird. The man never spoke, but the boy remembered the smell the masked figure brought with him. The sharp smell of alcohol burned his nose along with something sweet he couldn't place and the pungent scent of wood smoke. Young Ciel watched his back recede in the darkness, his manacled hands clenched together to keep themfrom trembling too much. The young boy didn't see. From above him, Ciel watched the captor swinging the small girl about and slapping at her swinging legs with his free hand. Behind him, the shadow paused. For a moment it detached itself from the bastard and for the briefest second, Ciel thought he saw two tiny points of red light directed at the small boy.

There was a large door separating the cells from whatever lay beyond. It probably would have deadened the sounds emanating from the adjacent room. It looked heavy, sturdy and thick. Yes, it certainly would have stopped the sounds from reaching young Ciel's ears, if the robed figure had managed to close the door.

The screaming started soon after. The small boy sank down the bars and pulled his knees to his chest. His small hands wrapped around his shins and he pressed his forehead against his knees. The girls screams and wracking sobs crashed through the stone room like a tidal wave, and soon the other children were swept up in the fear and the grief. The cages rattled with panicked bodies sobbing against one another. Young Ciel refused to cry. He only wanted to block those sounds out. He wanted to be able to force from his existence the other sounds that slithered through the crack in the door. The chanting seemed to vibrate the very air around him. It brushed against his ears like hot, unwanted whispers and simultaneously stole the heat from his body, making him shiver.

Ciel closed his eyes momentarily against the onslaught of memories. That was the unforgiving thing about memories, though. Even when you closed your eyes, they still played on and you did not have the option of looking away. His hand clutched at his ear where Ash's whispers grated on his nerves and behind his eyes, his younger self mimicked his action against the voices of adults he could not see and knew he would never be able to stomach. It would get worse. Much, much worse.

How much time had passed? The small boy wasn't sure. He only slept when his body could not hold out any longer. There was no light here save for flickering candles when the men - and occasional woman, Ciel learned - came to choose one of them. The little brunette girl had not returned. The ginger-haired boy they took after her did. He had yet to wake up, though. He was returned to the cage bleeding and bruised and the other children crowded away from him as if his injuries might be contagious. Who knew? Maybe they were. A group of the monsters had come. The boy had decided this was an apt name for them. His mind could come up with no better moniker for people who caged small children and made them scream until the screams turned to hoarse coughs and then whispers and then nothing at all as the chanting overtook them.

The monsters came. They came to the cage that Ciel occupied. The other children had learned now not to crowd the door. No longer were they pressing themselves at their captors and trying to win their way out from behind the bars. Young Ciel sat with his back against the bars of the cage, his head bowed. The shadow seemed to be darker still now. The young boy still did not see it, did not feel it slither into the cage with him and hover intently in front of him. He didn't see the monsters carefully peer over each child until they reached him, when the the shadow curled around the boy and two tiny points of light bore into him. That was the first night he was pulled from the cage. He refused to scream, a forced grunt left his lips as he was pulled from the cage.

The small boy squeezed his eyes shut and tried to shrink into himself as one of the men gripped his wrists painfully above his head. A second grabbed his chin roughly as he had seen done before and twisted his head this way and that. Meaty hands ran down the length of his arms and over his small chest before wrapping around his hips. The monsters laughed. It was deep and grating and made his heart feel dead in his chest.

Outside of the cold hell where a small boy dangled in the grip of monsters, an older boy struggled against steadfast hands gloved in white. Ciel's knees dug into the cold, white marble. He didn't scream as the men grabbed his younger self, but a pained sound left his mouth, brought up from somewhere deep in his chest as all of the air forced itself out, tortured and uneven. His brows furrowed and he felt he couldn't inhale properly. Ash clicked his tongue from behind his right shoulder and his hands held Ciel firmly in place. "A shame he singled you out..."

Ciel was only aware of the white butler's voice as a distant irritant. His eyes were on the door. That door that separated the screams from the darkness, and from whence children did not always return. The young boy kicked his legs as he was carried forth. A smaller hand, with surprisingly strong fingers, grabbed his ankle. The hands were softer, but no more gentle than the meaty paws. The female monster captured his legs and helped drag him through the doorway. There were so many of them. This was the creatures' lair. Masked faces leered at him from beneath hooded robes. The room was brighter, even the dancing firelight was more than his eyes were used to. He had become accustomed to the dark. Hell was dark and it was cold. This room was hot and his eyes watered as he tried to look everywhere and nowhere at the same time. In the center of the undulating cretins was a table of stone. The boy was carried to the table and shoved roughly against it. His soft stomach collided with the hard edge and a squeak forced itself from between his dry lips.

Laughter. The small sound had drawn their attention. The beasts crowded closer as if he were some piece of meat that had just fallen before them and the feeding frenzy were about to start. Across the table of stone, the female with harpy hands grabbed his wrists forcefully and pulled him to lean across the table's surface. Someone kicked his ankles sharply and he stumbled. Unable to fall because of the grip on his arms, he hung against the stone with the mere tips of his shoes touching the ground. A rough hand yanked his shirt up to his neck. His skin crawled with fear at the sudden exposure and the pain of fingernails that scraped the skin of his back with the motion.

It was to be his first lesson in pain. The blows came hard and fast. The small boy didn't know what was hitting him. He thought it was hands at first, slapping at his pale skin. He gritted his teeth and refused to call out. The boy squeezed his eyes shut and tried to be anywhere else but stretched on a table with the hands of monsters crawling over him. The blows came again, stiff and hard. A ruler, maybe? The quick, unyielding hits stung and added to the burning of his flesh from the earlier assault. The leather strap that followed was so much worse. It curled around his sides and licked at his back. Tears began to leak from beneath the boy's squeezed lids and he felt something warm trickling down his back and into the band of his short trousers. His small body tried to tense against the blows, to foolishly protect itself, but he could find no leverage to do so. Young Ciel's hair clung to his face with sweat and his small teeth sunk into his lip, the coppery taste of his own blood now filling his mouth.

Ciel stared at his small self with such burning hatred sparking through his eyes. He couldn't change this. Logically he knew that. Still, his eyes darted among the monsters trying to will his smaller self to escape with the force of his hatred and with the bitter, slimy taste of his shame. He stilled for a moment, and Ash's reflection smiled, showing perfect straight teeth. Ciel's eyes fell on the masked brute swinging a long leather strap through the air. He remembered the sicking whistle of air before each blow, and the dark chuckles that would follow from the onlookers. This was new. The shadow, darker and more defined in the flickering illumination wrapped itself around the man's whipping arm. It moved with the man, and as it did so, the blows grew harder and more precise, striking the same patch of welted bleeding flesh over and over again. The shadow prodded the captor, and while the man never seemed to acknowledge actually being touched, he adjusted his body anyway, and a new onslaught began.

The new flurry of blows were too much, too precise. The boys legs gave out completely and he hung by his wrists as the monster in front of him licked her own lips and stared at the blood leaking from his mouth. He didn't cry out. Not that night. They managed to draw pained whimpers from him by the end, and the shadow, Ciel noted, turned red glowing lights onto the bleeding child.

"I... You bastard." Ciel shifted his head to the side, knowing he still wouldn't see Ash behind him.

Ash laughed and patted Ciel on the cheek. "I? I am the bastard? Maybe if you accept the truth, you will finally move on from this debacle."

Ciel scoffed and he narrowed his eyes, not wanting to give away just how confused he was feeling. "I should expect the truth from you?"

"Still in denial, hmm? Very well, let us see how much abuse your poor body could take. He certainly enjoyed making sure you got all the attention you could handle."