Chapter 10: The dark crow smiles
The residence that the family owns in Germany, it´s smaller than the main mansion. However it is impressive. It is that, or perhaps it is the sharp contrast that a house of these characteristics produces in such a small town.
Astre has never been there. He has known of his existence by his father's comments, but he had never visited it before. From the outside it looks compact. With its windows everywhere and multiple floors stacked one on top of the other, it transmits the sensation of orderly chaos. The separate parts would not make sense, but as a whole everything seems to work.
Undertaker moves freely through its grounds. The grass is properly cut and the plants are well maintained. Someone has been taking care of the place. All this has been planned, he thinks. The fact that we came here has not been a random move.
His brother recharges in the Shinigami to be able to advance.
"The trip has exhausted him," he says with a half-sided smile, as if he had asked for some explanation. Almost instantly, the echo of Ciel's voice echoes in his mind.
I'm dying.
Astre moves his head from one side to the other. It is not time to think about that.
Once inside, he checks the mansion. There are no closed doors or places of restricted access. No surprises seems to be waiting for him there. Internally, he feels relieved not to run into coffins containing the bizarre creations of the Shinigami.
He can go outside and go around. No one seems to pay too much attention to him. Nobody stops him or slows down his march. He takes advantage of those moments alone to think. Since Sebastian appeared in his life, he has never been on his own again. Freedom produces him a disturbing sensation.
The intentions of Undertaker are still a mystery. If his brother's words were real and he was really dying, what role did he have in all of that? Staying with him? Why? Absurd.
He could only aspire to get to the bottom of all that by following his game. He had gone too far to retire and anyway, he has nothing to lose. He still has revenge as his primary goal. Without Sebastian, staying close to the Shinigami is the only way to unravel that riddle.
He has noticed that his servants have been remarkably restless since they arrived. Mey-rin and Finnian can not hold his gaze, while Baldroy adopts a stoic position every time he crosses him. Their strange behavior is far from the clumsy nonchalance to which he is accustomed to, but he has not given them much importance either. He has had more crucial things to think about.
Finally, one afternoon after two days, he understands what happens to them. It is Tanaka who approaches to request, but his voice represents everyone's.
They need a funeral.
The unusual request leaves him speechless. A funeral? But then he understands. Sebastian's death has not gone unnoticed by them. They need to mourn him. He allows it almost without thinking. If it's what they need to stop acting so strange, well ...
While watching Finnian nail the symbolic cross in the garden, he has to place a handkerchief over his mouth to prevent others from noticing his smile.
This is how he is involved in another absurd situation. Faking a funeral without a body, without a coffin ... commemorating a demon with a Christian cross.
What would Sebastian think of all that?
No doubt he would smile too. Sebastian used to have a very particular sense of humor, like that time when he had had a relationship with that puritanical girl to get information..
In that moment, a sudden melancholy assaults him and he must leave the place. It's been ridiculous enough for one afternoon.
They could never understand what Sebastian had meant to him. Sebastian had been his. His demon, his weapon, but also something else. Something that was not in the plan, something that he would have liked to avoid ..
In his bedroom, the accomplice smile that the devil directed him on certain occasions returns again and again to his memory. That smile had been his downfall. Different from any other, scarce, reserved for extremely specific moments in which he could clearly perceive that there was a complicity between them. That everything was already said and spoken between the two, that both knew the final destiny of their relationship and still ...
If the Shinigami words were true or not, it did not matter. If his role had been to be just entertainment, he was proud of having played his part well.
He should not be alive. He must have given his soul to the devil. Not only because he had made a contract, but because Sebastian deserved it.
That night he dreams of him. He dreams with his smile, with his eyes, with the sharp jaws that appear behind his half-open lips, with the delicate brush of his hands when he approaches him to take his face and …
Is that a dream or a memory?
He does not know, it does not matter ... because at that moment Sebastian's mouth is sealed over his and the moment is so intimate, that the rest of his thoughts lose meaning. He seeks to cling to his suit, to something that causes the world to end up spinning around him, but discovers that there is no longer a garment to cover him and then he understands.
Sebastian is going to take his soul. There is nothing else that separates them, nothing will avoid it this time ... and he smiles, he has waited for so long.
He allows him to do it without resisting. He is docile and complacent in his arms. At last, he can stop acting disdain, stop pretending that he does not care, that he is just an instrument ... that he does not love him.
He wakes up with a sharp pain in his throat. Sebastian is gone. He feels something strange in his face, and looks at his hands..
Tears? Is he crying for Sebastian?
Undoubtedly, the demon would have laughed a lot that day.
To be continue...