AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm so sorry guys! I took ages to update… I suuuuuuuck. *bows over and over again* Very sorry!

Thank you to Esmereilda, Valogirl, Kitty of 2 kingdoms, FanGrell and NatsuStar for reviewing the last chapter! Everyone was wondering what favour Victoria was asking Grell about, but I'm afraid it'll be a while until you find out! Also well done again to NatsuStar for spotting the Death Note reference :-P

I hope you all enjoy this chapter. Please review!

This chapter is dedicated to fangirl01music, Kitty of 2 kingdoms, FairyPiecelover, PadfootMoonyWOLFSTAR, HeartLuvAnimeGirl, SpiritQueen03 and Princess Kanako.


Chapter 8 - Lullaby

~Ciel's POV~

It had been over a week since we had gone to visit my old mansion and since then we had barely left Victoria's house. Sebastian had managed to convince Victoria to let him cook and, although there was nothing wrong with her cooking, it was good to taste his cooking again even with my dulled sense of taste for regular food.

As such Sebastian now spent a lot of his time in Victoria's small kitchen while Victoria and I sat in the living room, usually with Victoria showing me things on her laptop computer. The Internet still confused both me and Sebastian but I could see its uses. Victoria had shown us how you could send electronic letters to anyone anywhere around the world with one click. It truly was amazing.

"Sebastian, are you sure you don't want any help?" Victoria asked for the fortieth time that week.

Sebastian sighed. "Victoria, I assure you I don't need any help. I actually enjoy cooking, as I have told you multiple times."

Victoria grinned. "Okay, sorry. Last time I'll ask, I promise."

"Also good to know that some of your butler tasks were actually enjoyable," I called through to the kitchen, leaning back over the sofa Victoria and I were sitting on.

Since the kitchen, living room and dining room were all open plan I could see Sebastian's genuine smile at my remark as he continued chopping vegetables. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Victoria grinning too but I pretended not to notice.

"What're you doing anyway?" I asked her as she tapped away on her laptop.

"Nothing really," she said. "Just scrolling through stuff."

"What stuff?" I asked, leaning over so I could see.

As I did Victoria snapped her laptop shut so abruptly that Sebastian looked up on reflex.

"What did you do that for?" I frowned, sitting back.

Victoria looked down, embarrassed. "I just don't think you're ready for this bit of the Internet just yet."

I raised an eyebrow. "Victoria, don't be stupid. Show me."

Victoria sighed heavily and slowly opened her laptop again, pushing it over towards me. "Don't say I didn't warn you. And don't judge."

I felt Sebastian standing behind me as the screen flickered to life, clearly also curious about what Victoria was so embarrassed about. A quick glance to his face showed that he was just as confused as I was.

"Um…Victoria? What exactly is this?" I asked.

"…It's called Tumblr," Victoria mumbled.

As I scrolled down the page I became more and more confused about what this website was. There were some big lots of text but mostly it was pictures. Some were photographs but some were clearly drawings…and a few of them didn't really leave much to the imagination. At one point Sebastian actually covered my eyes and once again snapped the laptop closed before I could see why he'd blocked my sight.

"So what exactly is this Tumblr?" Sebastian asked, lifting his hands from my eyes.

Victoria shrugged, now looking extremely embarrassed. "It's just a blogging website. People post about stuff that interests them and can follow other blogs too. That's what you guys saw; it was stuff people I follow had posted."

Most of what Victoria just said greatly confused me but I did see a way to make fun of her quite easily.

"So…you look up blogs that contain things like that?" I smirked, pointing at the closed-over laptop.

"You don't understand," Victoria pouted. "It's not as bad as it seems!"

"I just saw a drawing of two men doing something like that," I pointed out. "It is exactly as bad as it seems."

"Hey, men being in love with men isn't a taboo like it was in your time!" Victoria insisted. "It's actually pretty widely accepted now."

Sebastian raised an eyebrow. "It is?"

"Yep," Victoria nodded, relaxing slightly from the defensive ball she had curled herself into on the sofa. "I mean, there are still some people who say it's evil and unnatural but the majority of people are fine with same-sex relationships now."

"I will admit that was always something I found strange," I said thoughtfully. "Why shouldn't people be with who they love, regardless of gender?"

Victoria smiled. "You're pretty open minded for someone from your time Ciel."

I smiled back. "When you're dealing with the criminal underworld and the supernatural, you need to be open minded."

Victoria leaned over and grabbed her laptop back. "And just for the record, I'm not gay myself or anything, not that there's anything wrong with it."

"You just look at pictures of people who are on the Internet," Sebastian teased.

Victoria glared at him as she opened her laptop back up again, quickly scrolling down past the image both Sebastian and I had seen and were still grinning about. I moved closer to her out of curiosity to see what she was looking at and noticed a word at the top of her screen which caught my eye.

"Victoria, what is that?" I pointed.

Victoria smiled and clicked on the word I had been pointing at. Immediately the website she had been on disappeared and a new one popped up. This one had a lot of text and one photo of a man I recognised immediately.

Soma.

"What is this?" Sebastian asked, voicing the question I had asked silently in my head.

"I promised myself I would find out what happened to your friends, so I've been doing some research," Victoria admitted with a smile. "Interested?"

Sebastian came and sat down next to us and we both stared at her, nodding for her to continue.

"Well, Prince Soma stayed in England for a very long time after you buggered off," Victoria started, using her favourite phrase to describe what happened when everyone else thought I'd died. "Prince Soma actually set up a charity in London to feed the homeless which still goes on today. I believe it started because of some sort of curry bun thing?"

I felt Sebastian smiled proudly beside me.

"Anyway, he stayed here for around ten years before he went back to Bengal very suddenly. His father had died and he had to return home to see his brother take the throne. While he was there…well, something happened which meant that he and Agni couldn't return to England."

"What happened?" I asked, frowning.

"You may not believe this," Victoria said with a small smile, "but it became public knowledge that he and Agni were in a relationship."

I pride myself on keeping my emotions in check but in this scenario I couldn't stop my jaw from dropping open. Sebastian himself made a sound of genuine surprise behind me.

"They were…you're being serious?" I asked.

Victoria grinned and nodded. "Yep. They were together. But once that was made known they couldn't return to a Christian country like England. Back in those times they wouldn't have been welcome anymore."

"How was that taken in their own country?" Sebastian asked.

"In Bengal and India and that part of the world at that time, it wouldn't have been very well received but they wouldn't have received the same kind of persecution they would have if they'd returned to Britain," Victoria explained. "I'm guessing that since Soma was royalty nobody would have really said anything against it as long as he and Agni didn't flaunt their relationship in the street. To be honest, the fact that it was a relationship between servant and master probably would have been more scandalous in India than the fact that it was between two men."

I sat back and thought this all through. Strangely enough this new revelation about Soma and Agni didn't make me think of them any differently. If anything I felt relief that they had both been happy, at least for the most part.

I felt Victoria's eyes on me and I looked over at her. She smiled.

"You know, a few years after it became known that they were in a relationship they actually adopted two orphaned children," Victoria continued softly. "They were twins. A girl named Yahvi and a boy named Khaleel. Because of Soma's heritage they became a prince and princess and they wanted for nothing. Soma continued his work feeding the homeless in India. He and Agni lived a long and happy life together."

I smiled at Victoria. "Thank you. For finding all that out I mean."

Victoria smiled back. "Not a problem."


~Sebastian's POV~

After Victoria told myself and my young master about Prince Soma and Agni I had gone back to preparing dinner. I hadn't been lying when I told Victoria I genuinely enjoyed cooking. A creature such as myself becoming something as menial as a butler was still rather degrading, but I found cooking somewhat therapeutic. At one time I had greatly enjoyed imaging snapping my young master's neck in two as I chopped vegetables if he had done something particularly irksome, but these days I simply enjoyed the familiarity of it. I also gained a sort of strange satisfaction out of seeing people enjoy the food I'd made through genuine work with no use of my powers at all. That was the main reason I had continued to make my young master a different cake every day I had served him as his butler.

After dinner my young master had been tired so I had taken him upstairs to prepare him for bed. He had fallen asleep almost immediately so I went back downstairs to clean up. I sighed heavily when I saw that Victoria had already washed and put away the dishes and was now nowhere to be seen. I quietened myself and listen carefully, and I easily heard her walking about in her bedroom. Supernatural hearing did come in handy quite often.

Out of habit I did one final check of the downstairs of the house, ensuring that everything was clean and all the doors were locked, before I retired to my room for the night. I carefully removed my tailcoat as to not crush it and lay down on the bed. My young master and I both still felt more comfortable in our usual clothes so unless we were leaving the house we tended just to wear those. Ciel also didn't bother with his eyepatch while he was here since Victoria already knew about his contract and why the brand was on his eye.

I hadn't been there long when I heard a familiar scramble on the roof. I smiled slightly as I sat up and easily opened the window.

Victoria hadn't been on the roof since the day Ciel and I had arrived here, but I did often hear her pacing the hallways or quietly going down the stairs in the middle of the night. I knew she rarely slept for more than a few hours each night. Although I wasn't entirely sure why I felt like this, I was worried about her.

Slipping easily out of the window and up onto the roof in one fluid movement that was so agile no mortal man could ever mirror it, I walked over to the other side of the roof. Victoria was lying there, staring up at the sky. She didn't react to my presence but as she hadn't asked me to leave I sat down next to her and looked up at the stars.

Victoria's village didn't have many lampposts lining the streets. As such the stars were very easy to see with no man-made light blocking them out. Victoria and I sat in complete silence for at least ten minutes before I finally spoke up.

"Can you not sleep?" I asked her.

Victoria slowly shook her head. "I haven't been able to sleep for a while. You already knew that though, didn't you?"

I smiled at how perceptive she was and I nodded. "I've noticed how restless you become at night. What I don't know is why."

Victoria sighed heavily, still staring up at the heavens, but she didn't answer. "Does Ciel know?" she asked instead.

"No, I believe he's slept right through your night-time pacing," I reassured her.

"Good," she said. "I don't want to disturb both of you."

We both fell into silence again before I asked the question that had been on my mind for over a week now. "Does it have something to do with Grell?"

Victoria's eyes shot to mine and I knew I was correct in my assumptions. "How did you…" she started before she sighed and rolled her eyes. "Of course you know I spoke to him. I shouldn't be surprised."

"What I do not know is what you spoke about," I told her honestly. "I didn't hear any of your conversation, I merely sensed his presence."

"I'm not conspiring against you and Ciel if that's what you think," Victoria said quickly. "I would never do that."

I held a hand up to stop her. "I know you would never do that," I promised her. "As strange as this is to me, I trust you."

Victoria smiled. "Thank you."

I knew she wasn't going to tell me why she was speaking to Grell so instead I changed the subject. "Do you wish to sleep?"

Victoria looked up at me and frowned. "You're not going to punch me or something are you?"

I chuckled and shook my head. "No, of course not. But I can help you sleep if you wish."

Victoria's crystal blue eyes met with mine and she nodded. "I'm so tired…but I just can't sleep with everything that's going on in my head," she admitted quietly.

I turned my eyes back up to the sky and Victoria did the same. Then I began to murmur softly. It was a chant, a song of sorts, which I repeated from memory in my native tongue. Not English, nor any human language, but the language of demons. It was a song which was meant to be used to lull our prey into a false sense of security so they trusted us, but if a human was exhausted enough it could send them to sleep.

My chant was so quiet that I knew only Victoria would hear it. Even if someone had been sitting on the other side of the roof they wouldn't have heard a sound. It wouldn't sound like words to any mortal though; it would sound like deep beautiful music. It could calm any soul after mere moments. It was a very powerful weapon, one every demon was born with. Even Ciel had the capability to do this, although he had never tried.

After only a few minutes I looked down at Victoria and stopped the song, smiling slightly at the sight before me. The girl had fallen asleep and it was the most at peace I'd seen her since we'd arrived. Whenever she thought nobody was looking Victoria always had a look of worry on her face, but now it was finally gone. Her breathing was even and her body was completely relaxed.

Normally I would be worried that moving a human in this state would wake them up but I knew the song's magic meant that nothing could wake her until she was completely refreshed. As such I picked her up easy and quickly carried her back into her room. Pulling the covers tightly over her and shutting her window, I murmured a goodnight as I returned to my room.


A lone figure dressed in red sat atop a roof, watching the whole scene. As he twirled around his precious Death Scythe he sighed ever so slightly.

"My dear Bassy…you truly have no idea."


AN: I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! Please review!