A/N: Chapter 35 of Kuroshitsuji is available! How splendiferous! Another reaper appears with a lawn mower and *gasp* who are these mysterious men in white?
Disclaimer: All Kuroshitsuji rights belong Yana Toboso, all OCs belong to me, and all your base are belong to us.
Chapter 20: To Dream and Remember
Lilis wasn't even given silence to comprehend the words that had spilled from James' lips. Immediately Grell had let out what could only be described as some form of squeal and deemed it necessary to comment on the situation.
"A wedding!" He gushed, turning to his object of affection. "Little Sebast, if I catch the bouquet will you propose to me?"
Sebastian did not share his joyful mood. He gave Grell a disgusted look and muttered. "Hardly."
"How cruel, My Little Sebast!"
James closed the distance between himself and Lilis, grabbing the hands of the still silent woman.
"Lilianna, beautiful Lilianna, " He beseeched her. "Will you grant my wish?"
For the first time, Lilis found herself wanting to deny a wish. She had never done so before, she recalled, and began to wonder if she could.
Not receiving an answer, James began to speak again. "Don't you see? It was fated for us to be together. You appeared when I needed you as if an angel from the heavens!"
He leaned in and brought his lips to hers in a desperate manner.
Lilis immediately snapped from her daze. She yanked away from him and delivered a biting smack across his cheek. James, shocked, brought his hand up to the stinging red handprint on the side of his face.
Sebastian and Grell looked on in surprise. The demoness sneered at the human in condescending disgust.
"You stupid boy! You stupid child! Your naïveté knows no bounds, does it? I will not marry you!"
But as soon as the words were spoken a sharp pain shot through her body and mind like a bolt of white hot lightening. Yelling out, she grabbed at her skull and her vision went completely black.
Her body collapsed onto the ground in a heap of skirts.
"……purpose……"
"Abomination…"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Lilianna!" James cried out. He went to his knees reaching out to the fallen woman, but before he could touch her, her body was swept up by Sebastian.
"What are you doing!?" The young man yelled in panic. Grell echoed James' sentiments but was obviously pouting more about his Little Sebast than the demoness.
James made a foolish attempt to stop Sebastian. He sprang to his feet and threw a punch at him, but the demonic butler easily knocked the boy aside and he landed hard against a tree, stunning him.
"Why do you care about that worthless woman, when you have me?!" Grell whined. "I'm all the woman you'll ever need, Sebastiaaaaaan!"
"Stop speaking." Sebastian scowled. He wouldn't mind if he never heard the red-headed reaper ever utter another sentence again. Maybe, at a different time he could start where they left off and he could dispose of the Death God, once and for all, but for now he had other things to deal with.
Jumping away from the two men, Sebastian carried the unconscious demoness bridal style. She was still out cold, her body limp as a rag doll.
The thought to bring her to the Undertaker's shop past his mind for a brief moment before he discarded the idea and decided the Phantomhive mansion would be his destination.
Running through the blurred scenery he made it to the mansion in record time. He bypassed entering through the front door and instead jumped to a balcony attached to an unused room. He opened the glass doors and brushed the curtains out of the way.
The room was unused, but not dusty. He kept the manor spotless and this area was no exception. There was a bed without sheets or blankets against the left wall which he carefully laid her on. A single end table and empty candelabrum were the only other pieces of furniture in the room.
Ignoring the emptiness, he stood to the side of the bed and leaned over Lilis' prone form.
He had no clue as to what had caused her to collapse. She had no injuries that he could see and at the moment looked to be in no distress at all. Her light breathing told him she hadn't died, though she was a still as a corpse.
He gave her shoulder a light squeeze, but received no response. After gripping a bit harder he got the same lack of reply. No sort of jostling had any effect on the inanimate woman. For a moment Sebastian considered trying a kiss like that from those fairy tales (1) humans were so fond of, but decided such things would be more enjoyable were she awake. Still the idea amused him for a bit.
Eventually, after nothing appeared to wake her, Lilis was left to wake up naturally. Sebastian had a young master to attend to, after all.
"Sebastian." Ciel's voice rose through the levels of the manor to reach the demon's ears. A saying came to mind. "Speak of the devil.", though current circumstances were a bit backward.
"………to serve…."
"…shouldn't exist…"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Immediately he was in front of the young boy.
Ciel gave him an unamused look. "Maylene has informed me that we have a guest."
Sebastian blinked in surprise. He had not even noticed the young maid when she had no doubt taken a peak into the empty guestroom. She could try to use the excuse of cleaning duties, but he knew her to be a bit nosey.
She had probably gossiped to Finny and Bard in record time and Ciel had caught wind of it.
"How many strays are going to be brought into this house?" Ciel continued. He was of course, referring to Pluto, the shape shifting demon dog that had come into Ciel's care after his Houndsworth task.
Pluto was currently in his immense, furry form looking into the window at the two of them, whimpering. He licked at the panel leaving a foot wide trail of slobber on the glass and gave Sebastian a pleading look. He had developed a strong affection for Sebastian, but was not allowed in the house, a fact that pained the demonic canine.
Realizing they weren't about to respond to his begging, Pluto took to sniffing the glass, then the air, then after catching an interesting scent, he wandered out of sight.
"Bringing that dog here was your wish, my Lord." Sebastian reminded the Earl.
In fact it was only to irk him that Ciel had agreed to take the dog from his previous caregiver, Angela, the pale former maid of Henry Valleymoor(2), knowing full well that Sebastian hated them.
Ciel didn't argue the fact. Instead he asked. "So where is she? That demoness you seem to have taken a liking to."
Sebastian had to give Ciel credit on his observational skills, but he didn't comment on the claim.
"She is…. resting." Sebastian simply said for lack of a better reply.
"Resting? Do demons need such things?" Ciel asked. He had never seen Sebastian rest.
Sebastian looked a bit more unwilling to answer this time, but he did.
"No. She is currently… " He searched for the right word. "… unawakenable."
The confusion on Ciel's face showed clearly. "What?"
The young Earl had Sebastian take him to the room in which Lilis still lay in a comatose state upon the bed. As before, the demoness did not respond to Ciel's attempts to rouse her.
The attempts were then interrupted by Pluto, who had managed to scale the side of the building and was sitting on the balcony, fogging up the glass door.
Sebastian and Ciel shot the dog-man impatient looks as he made howling noises, muted by the barrier. Growing exasperated Ciel began to leave the room. He cast a glance over his shoulder to his butler.
"She's no trouble in this state so I'll allow her to stay for now." He spoke. Sebastian grinned and nodded once to the boy before the Earl disappeared around the corner.
Before following his master out, Sebastian spared a withering look to Pluto. Still in his human form, Pluto remained with his hands pressed against the glass pane, yowling in the direction of the bed.
Sebastian walked over to the balcony door and drew the curtains shut then finally left the room to go make lunch.
"…serve……"
" humanity…"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
It wasn't reality. This Lilis knew.
She remembered what happen. She remembered what James had said, what he had wished for, and what her response had been. However, that was it.
Everything after that moment was a blank and now she stood in what she knew instinctively to be her own psyche.
Voices drifted in and out of her hearing. Sometimes the words were loud enough to make her want to cover her ears and other times they were indistinguishable. She knew neither where they were coming from nor who they were spoken by.
She didn't understand the message they were trying to convey, but had the distinct feeling that they were trying to convey something. Something about herself, something she did not want to hear.
Her psyche was bright, yet gray. There was no floor or ceiling and she was able to walk in any direction, even up and down and sideways, but she never lost the feeling of being right side up. She had nothing to go on, relativity wise. There were no trees or landmarks or anything of the sort.
She could make out fuzzy memories drifting around her like soft cottonwood fluff in all different kinds of colors, but couldn't distinguish most of them and they floated in no particular pattern or direction, adding to her lack of perspective.
Lilis couldn't even be sure how much time had passed, hours or maybe days. She was lost in her own mind and had no clue on how to get out.
She tried to catch a memory and bring it towards herself for inspection. She reached out and made a cradle with her hand around the small, fuzzy orb of soft, reddish light before closing her hand delicately. It felt like holding wisps of clouds, or how one would think clouds felt like, lightly shifting air with hardly any substantial presence, but soft in its own way.
Carefully, as though handling a fragile butterfly, she brought it to her and opened her fingers.
She knew this memory well.
As though reliving the memory Lilis was looking at her own hands. They were smaller than now with shorter fingers and tiny palms. In those palms were large handfuls of gold coins.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
July 1417, Spain
"Where did you get these?!" A boy asked her in his native tongue of Spanish.
Lilis emptied the gold coins from her hands into the hands of the little boy standing in front of her.
"What does that matter?" She piped, also in Spanish.
The eleven year old boy, too excited to answer, shoved the two handfuls of coins into the pockets of his tattered pants.
"Got any more?" The boy inquired.
"You only asked for two handfuls."
"Yeah but, Lina-"
Lilis interrupted the boy by holding out her hand expectantly.
"We had a deal, Pablo."
Pablo sighed and dug into the bag that hung at his side. He pulled out a Spanish doll carved from wood with black hair made from a horse's mane and a detailed hand sewn red dress. Her facial features were expertly hand painted.
"My papa bought this for my m long ago, you know. It was really expensive."
Still, he handed over the doll to her. Lilis' face beamed with pure unadulterated, childlike glee as she took it.
"You wished you had more money and now you have it."
Pablo couldn't argue with that. Even a doll like that wasn't worth as much as all the gold he had received. He sighed and walked away from her then to head back home.
"Don't tell where you got it, Pablo!" Lilis yelled as a last precaution before he disappeared from view.
She wondered if he'd stop and buy himself something in town with his new money.
She never went into town during the day. She had once, but looking the way she did, like a nine year old girl, people had assumed she was an orphan and tried to put her in an orphanage. She had escaped that night easy enough and hadn't ventured into around adults since then.
She sometimes played with the children who lived on the farms near the edge of town, when they'd wander out into the fields. Pablo was one of them. But she'd have to leave now. Humans couldn't be trusted to keep secrets and gold was in high demand in the impoverish village.
She didn't want to be mobbed by questioning peasants. So she decided to head up north.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Lilis still had that doll somewhere; she was sure. Perhaps next to the matador's estoque(3) she had acquired over 300 years later. That had been one of the first deals she had ever made and she had been so young then.
Lilis let the memory drift off her palm. If floated diagonally away from her as she reached out to grab another.
(1). Sleeping Beauty actually wasn't written until about one year past this time, unless you count Sun, Moon, and Talia, which didn't involve a kiss. But work with me here. Yana thinks TV has already been invented so I think I can bend the time line by a year or so. No offense Yana.
(2). Valleymoor, Barrymoor I just picked one…
(3). Matador's Estoque: The sword used in Spanish bullfighting, I believe.
A/N: End o' chapter 20. Are you confused? All questions will be answered….. eventually. Unless they are questions I did not mean to make you think of. In that case just ask. Well at least this chapter is a bit longer than the last few….