-:- Subject 13's Butler -:-
.:A Kuroshitsuji Fan Fiction:.
Author: AoUsagi
Summary: Ciel takes the leap into Oblivion, only to wake into a strange white-washed world of beeping machines and white-coats doctors. The only thing that seems real is Sebastian, who steals him away from the hellhole laboratory to save him from the sick sake of science.
BeforeNote:
I learnt a lot about brains recently. So much, in fact, that I'm going to have to alter the story a little. BUT IT'S OKAY. Don't fret, I've got it all figured out.
For example (*SPOILER_SPOILERSPOILER*) and then of course there's the cliff-hanger that I left you all on last time. Wasn't that mean of me? And I've made you all wait so long for an update. I'm a terrible person I know, but fear not lovely people, because chapter ten is already well underway and almost completely :D
Hang in there!
ALSO! BIIIIG shout out to Call Me Alois and Coiusk who get 10 beautiful glory points and a high five *HIGHFIVE!* for both guessing who's character song I added into the last chapter's before note. It was indeed the song Shinkouby Jun Fukuyama (a.k.a., Grell Sutcliff for any layman that may have wandered in here this evening)
This chapter, because you're all so cool and great and I'm so good at flattery, sees the return of our favourite death lovin' reaper! Read on, guys!
- Mercy
…
I wish I could write all of Grell's lines in italics, because it suits his character to be giving lilts and exaggerations to everything he says. Just a thought.
Chapter Nine: Two Halves Of The Ripper
-:-
He had thought that death would be a little bit more dramatic, honestly. He'd thought he'd died, once – plummeting off the cliff, drowning in that ocean, the feeling of a demons clawed hand plunging through his body. That's what he imagined death to feel like. Cold and cruel. Dark, fading away to nothingness, til his bones found rest in the darkest of depths in the sand at the bottom of the sea. Sand that hadn't seen light in years, sand that would move with the black waters, the oceans current, slowly washing away the flesh that would be eaten by fish and crabs and other sea-dwelling bottom feeders until there was nothing but shards of his bones left, fragments broken by the jagged rocks that snagged algae and seaweed on their sharp, dangerous edges.
He would have been forgotten.
However, Ciel didn't expect death to feel so…light. Like his head was spinning, his mind vaguely grasping for something to hold, something…solid. He was lying flat, in a bed of white nothingness, the opposite of the darkness that he'd expected. And craved, too – the whiteness all around him was blinding – he almost wished that, if this truly was death, that at least he wouldn't have to put up with such light making his eyes sore.
"…shall I close the curtains for him then?" the voice was wholesome, motherly – female. A woman, with a tender yet firm tone to her words.
Ciel tried to move his lips, to beckon her to somehow shut out the light, but he was immobile, every nerve ending feeling as though it was muffled, unable to feel or do anything. A deep voice of a man that he felt he should recognise answered before he could.
"If you wouldn't mind. Then you can get back to butchering my arm." There was pain in his voice, and the woman tutted in response.
"Honestly. If you'd come here first this wouldn't be happening." Ciel heard the sound of curtains being pulled shut, the rustling of the fabric, and the area of white around him dimmed. He couldn't even open his eyes, but the light beyond his lids darkened a bit. It then occurred to him that this wasn't death at all. This was…
…what was this? His breathing was rhythmic, even. His heartbeat was steady – measured somewhere above his head by a set of beeps. Somehow, that seemed disturbingly familiar as well. Like a dream he'd not been able to remember properly, but every so often he'd catch snatches of it. The beeps were those snatches of memory – never quite waking in the night long enough to think over the dream before rolling over and going back to sleep. The voices had gone quiet for a moment, but now, the man grunted in pain.
"Ouch."
"Stop squirming, and it'll be easier for the both of us."
"You stop waving that scalpel around, and I'll consider it."
"Bastard," she snapped.
"Bitch." The word bit back at her like a dog snapping at a stranger. Ciel felt the harshness of the words fall away, and the tension that he could almost smell in the air lessened a little.
Their voices were far clearer now. It was as if Ciel had been underwater, submerged in a pool and he was slowly rising, breaking the surface to hear everything around him. And with that emergence, the dimmed whiteness faded completely, melting into shapes and objects just beyond his vision. Beyond the shapes, the voice continued quietly, unknowing of his awareness. His eyes cracked open, and he found himself staring at a white plaster ceiling, lying on a very uncomfortable bed. His fingers trailed at his sides, finding crisp white sheets beneath them. Not daring to move yet, in case for some reason his body suddenly cracked and fell apart, he let his eyes wander. They saw a cabinet in the wall above his head, some sort of machine on a stand under neath the cabinet standing behind his bed, another machine with a cord leading from the side of it all the way down, across the bed frame and latched onto a band that was wrapped around his upper arm. His head lolled to the other side of the bed, and he saw a stand with a pack of liquid hanging from it, another tube trailing from the bottom of the sack down to his arm, where there was a large needle inserted into the crease of his elbow, taped down so that it wouldn't come loose. All around his bed was a large white curtain on a railing high above his head surrounding him, cutting him off from the rest of the world.
Ciel stared at it blankly for a moment, but suddenly, something snapped in his mind. He suddenly saw shadows of men towering over him, their faces lost in shadow with the bright lights above them, his wrists and ankles strapped to each end of the bed frame, and the men leaned down towards him, large epidermic needles poised to jab.
The vision disappeared as quickly as it had come, but it was enough – he suddenly knew where he was, with a dreaded, sickening jolt.
He was in the Hospital.
The Hospital.
Sense gripped him for long enough before panic kicked in for him to reach over and grip the needle, yanking it haphazardly from his arm. He stifled a cry of pain as an ache ran up his arm and his trembling fingers accidentally pricked the tip of the needle on the swelling, aching flesh of his arm, and as the beeping monitor machine began to beep faster Ciel made a mad grab for the arm wrap on his other arm, and yanked the Velcro off, the beeping dying the instant his arm was free, and he jerked his body upright, ready to slide off the bed and run.
And then, there was a moment of silence, and he held his breath as he tried to listen for the voices, to hear if there was any movement from beyond the curtain. The only thing he heard was the sound of several other beeping machines, and the sound of the voices a little way off. Standing carefully, Ciel let his toes touch the linoleum floor, testing the weight on his feet to make sure he wouldn't fall, before taking cautious steps to the curtain, drawing it back just enough so that he could look out from around it.
He saw a large, spacious room stretching away from him, and there were rows of the same hospital beds lined up against each wall. Some of them had similar curtains drawn around them, and he saw a few men and women in long white coats moving around, some of them talking to other people dressed plainly, and there was a large counter set into the wall at the other end of the room, with a few nurses milling around behind it.
It didn't seem like the sort of place that was designed for undercover experimentation, but that didn't mean this wasn't a public ward. An emergency room. A place where they might keep him in plain sight before taking him away again. Glancing around, Ciel's pounding heart dropped when he saw the only door that could lead to a way out that wasn't a walk-in cupboard was at the other end of the room, right next to the nurses station.
Forcing himself to take several deep breaths, Ciel ducked back behind the curtain as someone walked by, completely oblivious to him, and he looked down at himself. He was dressed in what looked like a nightie, but was too clean and antiseptic smelling. He took a guess that it was some sort of hospital gown. He looked around for his own clothes, finally finding them chucked into a trash receptacle next to his bed. Pulling out his shirt, he grimaced at the sight of it – it was still sodden from the rain, and it was completely shredded; someone had obviously had to cut it off of his body. He let it crumple into a heap back into the bin, and wiled himself to go back to the curtain, focussing on the voices.
"…honestly, stop struggling!" the woman was saying, and there was a hiss from the man.
"Well if you're quite finished trying to dissect me – " he replied, sounding pained, and it suddenly dawned on Ciel's panicked mind who it was. Sebastian. Sebastian was here. And –
"It'll be over soon – hey, just remember who's got the scalpel here!" Chided the woman.
He was in trouble.
Their voices weren't far – only one or two of the beds over, behind one of the areas where the curtains were drawn, and Ciel quickly looked around for some sort of weapon. Sebastian was unable to act on his own. Was he drugged? Tied down? A gleaming silver tray on a trolley had an array of polished, slender silver tools on it, and Ciel spied a rather sharp scalpel on it. Grabbing it up, he held the sharp end away from him and took a peek around the curtain. The area was now fairly deserted save for the nurses at the other end and the occasional doctor who passed by them. All the other people seemed to have disappeared behind the curtains or through the door. Ciel took a deep breath before ducking over to the curtain where he could hear Sebastian and the woman talking, their voices hushed but clear enough for him to have heard. Padding as silently as he could, Ciel reached the edge of the curtain and paused. He didn't know where they were on the other side – he would just have to take that chance. As soon as he saw Sebastian, he would put himself between his doctor and the woman, whoever she was, and even if he had to drag Sebastian out, then that's what he'd do. He didn't know how far he'd get, or if they'd get anywhere at all, but he had to try. He didn't know what else to do. And he couldn't try to escape without Sebastian.
Not after everything he's done.
"Goddamn that hurts," Sebastian hissed, and Ciel threw himself forward, throwing back the curtain and brandishing the scalpel wildly before he had enough sense to change his mind.
"Sebastian!" he cried, catching sight of a flash of red, but his vision blurry as his eyes darted around for Sebastian. He saw the doctor sitting upright in a chair behind the bed, the woman standing behind him, a long white coat adorning her body and a white face mask obscuring her face, her hair bundled up under a white cap to keep it out of her eyes. They both looked up in surprise as he nearly tripped over himself, but he managed to gather his wits enough to throw himself at the woman, and she cried out and dodged his wild swing with the scalpel. Sebastian was yelling and Ciel was hollering some sort of deranged battle cry as he swiped at the woman again and again, allowing his pent up rage that she had been hurting Sebastian and mostly likely about to experiment on him to guide his hand. The woman threw up her hands to protect herself, and one of Ciel's mad swings caught her across the palm of her hand, the scalpel's blade slicing her skin open cleanly, and blood spurted from the wound, splattering Ciel across the face. The woman gasped in shock and pain, stumbling back further and clasping her hand to her chest, smearing blood across her white coat. Ciel took advantage of her vulnerability and made for the final swing, the stab that would kill the woman, when suddenly, his hand was stopped mid-air.
By another hand. And suddenly, the rage quieted.
"Now, now, that's truly no way to thank a lady for her hospitality," growled a low voice in his ear, and in-between his gasps for breath Ciel vaguely managed to focus on the voice, the owner of the hand that had stopped his. He slowly looked back over his shoulder, to be met face to face with the smiling, shark-like grin of a man in a long dark coat with long, light brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. There were a pair of large, round glasses perched on his nose, and his grinning green eyes were locked on Ciel's.
"G-Grell…?"
Somewhere beyond Grell's fine features Ciel saw Sebastian's shocked face, his wide crimson eyes fixed on the three of them. The woman in front of Ciel was gasping in shock, blood running down her wrist and dripping to the floor.
Grell straightened up, but he gave Ciel's wrist a squeeze, and the scalpel fell from Ciel's grasp, clattering harmlessly across the lino, splattering a small streak of blood from the blade. Ciel yanked his hand back.
"What're you doing here? Especially looking like that?" he spat, and Grell smirked down at him.
"I'm doing my job, kid – and what you're doing here waving a blade you've got no idea how to use and attacking an unarmed woman like that is most definitely not the sort of behaviour you'd want to see go on a permanent record." Grell said, and they both looked up at the woman. "I'm dreadfully sorry about the brat, Madame."
The woman sighed, her shoulders visibly falling as she held her hand up above her heart to help slow the flow of blood.
"It's…all right," she murmured from behind her mask, her eyes still frightened, but the fear was controlled. She knew she wasn't at risk any more.
"No it's not," Ciel growled, taking a few steps back passed Grell and heading to Sebastian's side. "I won't let you hurt him any more."
Grell burst into laughter as he took the woman's hand in his own to inspect the cut, and Sebastian reached up from the chair and put a hand on Ciel's arm. Ciel looked down to see that Sebastian was actually in a wheelchair, and his eyes widened with surprise.
"She wasn't hurting me, Ciel – she was patching me up," Sebastian said firmly, extending his other arm slowly and painfully to show Ciel the fresh bandage wrapped around his wounded shoulder. "See?"
"B-but then…how…" Ciel murmured, before remembering their surroundings. "But we're – we're in the Hospital! Why are you being so calm about this?!"
Sebastian raised an eyebrow at Ciel.
"Because this isn't the Hospital we have to be worried about. Don't worry, I had the same thought when I first woke up, but it's all right. We're in the London Metropolitan Hospital – and when we were brought in by the ambulance here to the emergency room, the doctor on call happened to be this woman here." He nodded at the woman, who Grell had helped to bind the laceration on her palm with a bandage from a nearby stand. "She's not one of them. And…well, I honestly didn't realize that that's Grell. But I'd assume he's here on Dispatch Business, which I've no control over."
"But I'll be damned if I let slip that the ghost of the Phantomhive boy was seen at the Metro Hospital along with his guardian to my superiors," Grell huffed, flipping his long brown ponytail before sending Sebastian a flirty smile. "And Bassy, darling – I'm wounded that you wouldn't recognize me! Then again," he paused and looked down at Ciel. "How did you recognize me?"
Ciel had a flashback of Grell pretending to be his aunt Madame Red's fumblingly stupid butler, and shook his head. "Call it a hunch."
Sebastian scooted his wheelchair forward a little. "You see, Ciel? You're safe here, and you can trust me on that. I wouldn't be so calm if this were the Hospital itself. And I certainly wouldn't have left your side."
"And I certainly wouldn't allow any of the low life scum that walks those halls to pass through here," the woman stepped forward, her uninjured hand pulling the white cap from her head and allowing long locks of red hair to spill from beneath, her straight hair falling in bangs down to just below her shoulders. Ciel turned to her, and suddenly realized who he was looking at as she pulled off the facemask.
"Madame…Madame Red?"
His aunt smiled down at him, her eyes holding no anger, no fear any more. As if she didn't care that he'd just attacked her mere moments ago, drawing blood and injuring her.
"Hello darling," she said quietly, and she held out her uninjured hand, waiting for him to accept it. A little unsteady, shocked by the fact that it was her of all people, Ciel took a hesitant step towards her, reaching out his fingers for hers. The moment their skin touched, he almost fell into her waiting arms, and he found tears gathering in his eyes. Her blood from smearing on his face, from both her bloodied clothes and the blood that was already on his face, but he didn't care, no matter how much the irony tang stung his nose. He screwed his eyes shut and held onto her, inhaling the smell of her white doctors coat, the perfume on her wrists, the scent of her shampoo. The smell of his aunt seemed just like he remembered it to be, back when he thought he'd been living in the eighteen hundreds – strong, steady…beautiful. He recognized the scent of her perfume, too; spider lilies. Mixed with a heady scent of vanilla and something else.
"Aww," he could hear Grell saying. "Isn't this the most beautiful reunion, Bassy my dear?"
"Of course," Sebastian said, and Ciel smiled a little as he heard a tinge of sarcasm in Sebastian's voice. "If you're into blood and blades between aunt and nephew."
Ciel finally stepped away from Angelina Dalles and cleared his throat. Suddenly feeling embarrassment flush his cheeks.
"Forgive me," he whispered. "I – I didn't mean to hurt you."
Madame Red just smiled down at him. "It's all right. I forgive you, sweetheart. You were acting on instinct because you didn't know who to trust. It's understandable. Sebastian had a go at me too, when he first woke up."
Sebastian coughed self-consciously. "Yes, well. It's not often you wake up in a place so similar to hell only to find that it's not." He muttered, and Grell chuckled.
"You certainly wouldn't find me in a place like that – no sir," he nodded. "Completely out of my league – I leave that sort of hard work to William."
"William?" Ciel repeated, turning to Grell. "As in, William T Spears?"
Grell raised an eyebrow at him. "Yeees, and just how do you know about my boss, might I enquire?"
Ciel smirked with a shrug. "Another hunch."
Madame Red put her hands on his shoulders, and Ciel looked up at her. "We should get that blood cleaned up, dear – before it dries,"
Ciel touched a finger to his face, the digit coming away wet with slowly congealing blood, and he allowed her to guide him over to the hospital bed beside Sebastian, and he shimmied up onto it as she got a few cotton swabs and dabbed them in a basin of warm water from a faucet that was set into the wall. She knelt in front of him and gently swabbed at his face, wiping his cheeks clean of her blood. He calm aura was almost intoxicating – and strangely, Ciel felt that because Sebastian was there, because there was one of his family there, he didn't have a thing to worry about. Then, a thought struck him.
"A-Angelina?" he murmured, and her eyes flicked up to look into his. "Are you…my real aunt?"
She blinked for a moment, and then comprehension seemed to dawn on her face.
"Oh, of course. Sebastian did explain the situation to me. And yes, dear – I am your mother's sister," she smiled, before letting the smile fade, and her head dropped. "And…and I'm…"
She trailed off, and Ciel waited. He noticed that Sebastian and Grell were watching her carefully, Grell even reaching out to give her shoulder a gentle pat.
"Easy," he said softly, and Ciel realized that Madame Red's shoulders were trembling, and she was biting her lip. When she looked up at him next, there were tears in her eyes. She took a deep breath to calm herself.
"I'm…I'm the one w-who allowed you to be sent…there…" she whispered unevenly, and Ciel knew immediately that she meant to the Hospital. The bad one. His eyes widened a fraction.
"But why?"
She looked up, a tear streaking down her shame. "I didn't mean to. I wanted the best possible treatment for you – here at the Metro you wouldn't have had the very best. All I wanted was to put your parents at ease; I recommended that they take you there. To the prestigious children's hospital. I didn't know something this awful would happen."
Madame Red reached up and gently stroked Ciel's now clean face, her fingers warm and slightly damp, and a small, choked smile touched her lips. "I'm sorry."
Ciel felt a little awkward, being reunited with a family member that he'd once thought an enemy, a family member who all he remembered of was how she died, tragically, in an alley way, killed by the hands of none other than the man standing by her now, his green eyes almost caring as he watched her solemnly, without a trace of his usual flirty nature. Sebastian watched them quietly, before Madame Red turned to him.
"Thank you, doctor," she smiled tearfully at him, clasping Ciel's hands in her own, not even caring if her injured hand hurt. "Thank you for looking after him and protecting him for all this time."
Sebastian nodded and returned the smile with a gentle smirk of his own. "I've told you, you're most welcome. He remained my top priority every single day; even when things seemed to turn for the worst."
Madame Red's smile spread gratefully, and she got to her feet, letting go of Ciel's hands, letting them rest back in his lap. "Well. While you've been off playing dead the rest of society was in quite the uproar. Not only was your reputation ruined, Doctor Michaelis, but so was my beloved sisters and her husbands. I don't know why but no one seemed to blame me for what I did."
"It wasn't your fault," Sebastian said. "And there's no point in dwelling on it if no one noticed – calling such attention to yourself, especially now when no doubt news has gotten out about some sort of fiasco going down at the Hospital, would only bring them down on you. If they think you know anything, you will be silenced."
"If not by the Hospital," Grell added. "Then by the Dispatch. Which is why I'm here."
"Why's that?" Ciel piped up, determined to not be left out of the conversation. Madame Red busied herself by going back to tending to Sebastian's wounds, and Ciel saw several new cuts and scrapes marring his bare chest, no doubt from the fight. Grell's usual smirk returned as he looked down at Ciel.
"Because a little birdy had a bad dream the other night. Wouldn't stop on about some sort of accident – he mentioned your names and the fact you'd be here. So I was sent to investigate, just on the off chance that there was any merit to his deluded ramblings." He replied, and Ciel raised an eyebrow.
"Who?"
Grell shook his head. "Just a nut case we've got down at the Dispatch. Had him since about a year ago – he's completely off his rocker, but he seems to occasionally have moments of clarity about the whole incident with the Hospital three and a half years ago. That's really the only reason he's still in our custody. That and he'd be locked up in an asylum if we didn't have him."
"You're keeping a sick man just because he's an asset for your ongoing investigation?" Sebastian frowned, before wincing as Madame Red returned to stitching the gasp of the bullet wound in his shoulder. "Ow." He added pointedly.
Madame Red mumbled her apology, sounding as if she didn't really mean it because of her concentration on the task at hand. Grell threw back his head and laughed.
"He's got nowhere else to go, Bassy – and besides, he's happy enough. Gets a couple of hours a day to go and smell the roses, but rather spends most of his time reading or banging his head against a wall." He chuckled, but then, he paused. "Of course, I assume that's what he does in that cell."
"You keep him in a cell?" Sebastian questioned.
"It's nice and padded."
"It's cruel."
"He's a raving delusional idiot." Grell said pointedly. "If we let him go he wouldn't know how to merge back into society. He's been out of the social loop for too long already – he'd need a constant guide. Everyone would call him nuts. He's got this thing about talking to himself."
Grell pulled a face, as if thinking over a memory of such an occasion. Sebastian narrowed his eyes at Grell, and Ciel figured that it was probably best that the doctor was confined to a wheelchair at that moment, because it looked as though Sebastian wanted nothing more than to strangle the agent.
"What's wrong with him?" Ciel asked quietly, and Grell sighed and shook his head.
"Nothing, really. I mean, the guy got so traumatized by things he saw and heard that he went pretty mad, but he's not a menace to anyone but himself. We hold onto him because he's a bit of a clairvoyant, see. Used to be a therapist, known for having some sort of weird hypnotic technique. We have to keep him confined because he tried it on a couple of our agents once and nearly killed them. Went like, looking around inside their heads or something," Grell shuddered at the memory. "Both of them ended up in the intensive care unit for a week."
"What did he do to them?" Madame Red asked, her eyes wide as she looked up from behind Sebastian's shoulder, which was bare and covered in splatters of blood. She had a needle and stitching thread in hand, the end of the thread leading up from Sebastian's shoulder. The dark haired doctor winced a little as she tugged the stitches taut. Grell shrugged.
"Don't know all the details myself, but I learnt my lesson to keep out of his way. Apparently he's got some sort of way to make you see things, things you've forgotten, like traumatic childhood memories or something, and neither of them could hack it. They both tried to commit suicide – luckily, though, neither succeeded." He replied, and Ciel felt something flutter through his mind – the faintest of ideas. "Both got transferred away from his ward area after that. They got taken out of field work and given desk jobs, the strain from the whole ordeal was so bad."
"Wait," Ciel said quickly. "Go back a moment – you said something about a hypnotic technique that can make you see things?"
"Yeeah, what's on your mind, kid?" Grell asked, sounding suspicious. "Don't get any funky ideas now."
Ciel took a quick glance at Sebastian, who was watching him carefully. The doctors' eyes betrayed no sign of emotion, and, taking that as a cue to continue, Ciel cleared his throat.
"I…I have a piece of my brain missing," he said slowly, and he noticed out of the corner of his eye that Madame Reds' eyebrows raised a fraction. "And they took away some of my memories. Is there possibly someway he could help me to remember them if we obtained that brain matter?"
Grell's expression was one of curious disgust. "That's…a pretty twisted idea, kid. I don't see why it wouldn't work though. I mean, replacing brain matter shouldn't be too hard if you know the right people – "
"It can't be done."
They all turned to look at Madame Red, who had finished stitching and was using a set of medical scissors to cut the end of the stitches before straightening up and looking each one of them in the eye.
"Why not?" Grell asked with a shrug. "I mean – I'm no doctor or anything. But I don't see a problem with it."
"You're an idiot," Madame Red said with a smirk, and Grell looked taken aback. "You can't replace brain matter. Brain tissue can't regrow, and it's tissue can't be grafted or replaced. You can't even extract certain parts of the brain without permanently damaging the patient. You'd turn them into a vegetable. Their motor functions would be affected, and they may end up paralysed or without the ability to speak, read, write – it would be such a dicey operation that you'd be lucky if the patient survived at all."
Sebastian turned his head as best he could to look up at her. "Then how do you explain the scar on the back of Ciel's head?"
Ciel's hand went instinctively to his hair, finding the raised scar tissue among the silky slate strands, and he felt his stomach do a quick flip. Madame Red washed her hands under the faucet, before drying them and going over to where Ciel sat on the edge of the bed. She gave him a small, reassuring smile as she reached up around his head to feel for the scar herself. A moment later, she drew back.
"I'm not certain, but I think I can explain that." She said, and Ciel looked up at his aunt. "I'd have to do an MRI on him to be sure, but I think you'll find that this isn't a scar from an operation to remove brain matter at all."
"What's an MRI?" Ciel asked, and Madame Red gave him a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder.
"It's a scan using a machine that will show us what your brain looks like. Basically, it shows us what the inside of your head looks like – it lets us see if there's any abnormalities with your brain, if there's anything wrong, like for instance, if you have a tumour – it can tell us if it's malignant or benign." She replied, before turning back to Sebastian. "Both of you will need at least a day or so to recuperate – I'll have word sent to your safe house to let the others of your little family know what's going on; there's no doubt that they're worried sick by now. But in that time you're still here, I'd like to have an MRI of Ciel's brain, if you'd like the full explanation to my theory."
Sebastian raised an eyebrow.
"I'm not comfortable with being in a public facility where just anyone might catch a glimpse of either of us," he answered, casting a look at Ciel. Angeline shook her head.
"I'll have a private room prepared for you – en suite and all, barely a ward away from my personal office. If you like, I'll even ask if Pluto would come and keep guard for you." She said, and Ciel looked up at her.
"You know Pluto?"
"Of course," she smiled. "I know all of your medical team; we have a sort of a network figured out amongst those of us who are against the Hospital. We like to keep it mostly a secret from prying eyes such as the Dispatch," she flicked a look at Grell, who grinned slyly. "But Grell's an exception because of his loyalty to Sebastian."
"And vice versa, right Bassy?" Grell winked at Sebastian, who rolled his eyes and ignored to comment, instead looking to Madame Red.
"Fine. Ask Bard if he'll rotate with Pluto. And only a week, Angeline." He said firmly, and the redheaded doctor nodded curtly.
"You have my word you'll be safe here," she said, and Ciel had a slight sinking feeling; he wasn't sure about that. He didn't know if he could trust Angeline, regardless if she was his aunt or not. Would she be able to contact his parents somehow? Was she really loyal to her word or would she turn on them?
He supposed, as Grell sauntered over to Sebastian, leant down and gave him a Judas Kiss before waving goodbye and taking his leave, and as Sebastian wheeled over to him, he didn't really have a choice in the matter. He would just have to wait and see.
-:-
The day passed by his cell without much activity. There was the occasional change of guard, but nothing unusual. He was so incredibly bored. He may as well have been made out of wood – sitting there, staring out the window without anything to do. Too lethargic from that last tranquilizer to move. He'd had another nightmare again. It was worse this time; too much blood and too much death – he'd woken up screaming and the guards had come in. They'd tazered him and they'd tranquilized him until he was so deeply drugged that he couldn't even raised his hand to scratch his ear. It itched, as if there was a bug crawling on it.
He wasn't sure whether or not he cared enough about it to complain. Maybe he'd complain just because there was nothing better to do. Maybe they'd give him back that damn music box just to shut his whining mouth up. Some of the strings inside the box were broken, and whenever he played it now there would be the occasional sad little twang from the snapped wire string against the others. It was a discordant sound, like a badly tuned piano. It made him sad because he had no way of fixing it – fixing things was what he did best.
He used to fix peoples heads, too – until they fixed him. Fixed him up good. Made his ears hurt with loud ringing noises and made his eyes blind with big, flashy lights. His teeth still ached from grinding them at night whenever he managed to find sleep. He often wondered to himself why they hadn't given him a straightjacket to stop him from hurting himself. But they never did.
Menace only to himself.
What did those words mean? He wondered about it lazily as he gazed out of the small window, between the bars and up at the twilight night sky. There were stars out now. Did stars ever menace? Was there anyone afraid of stars? Did they scare themselves?
As the last rays of light faded and the evening breeze brought a chill to the air in his cell, he found himself unable to stay sitting upright, and he titled over, falling against the padding of his wall, still gazing out the window. Even blinking had turned into quite the chore. He was a little scared to sleep tonight. He didn't want to see any more visions – they only started after he got fixed by them. They'd done something to his head. Something bad.
He didn't know how to work properly anymore.
-:-
AfterNote:
Is it really worth asking if anyone wants to guess which nut-shell I've just brought in? does he NEED an intro? Well, review and tell me how much you're lovin' the new year already, and soon, chapter ten shall grace your internet web browsing….things….O_O
- Mercy