Author's Note: For makokitten. Happy birthday~
Warnings: References Japanese mythology, as well as episode 8. (Though I honestly haven't watched that episode since it first came out.) One-sided ClaudexAlois, character death.
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Jorougumo
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He is a fly in a web. No— less than a fly. Lower than an insect. He is a human, such an insignificant thing; one of many and no more special than the rest. Far stupider than any captured moth or butterfly, he does not even bother to struggle against his bonds. Instead, he allows the tangled web of love to ensnare him, embrace him: hold him aloft and dictate his movements, dancing on the end of lucent threads of silk and milk. Strings that make a puppet of his body, heart, soul.
Affection is painful. Heavy. Condemning. Like a chain around one's chest, binding and breathtaking. It pierces his gut like a silver-tipped sword; it jostles his insides like a midnight-dyed carriage ride. And in the wake of that wearying burden, infected by that terminal adoration, he finds himself sick. Helpless. Weak. And every day (every second), he is getting weaker: life draining from his tiny body as tears fall from his eyes, and sugary confessions crystallize atop his hell-seared tongue. He offers that saccharine nectar to his quiet, looming servant; he offers all that the creature has asked for and more, more, more. Yes, the spider's meal cannot help but give— so willingly, so eagerly—, because he is not a butterfly. He is not a moth. He is less than a mosquito, a gnat, a fly. He is a human, a whore of a boy and a sham of an earl, and he has been enchanted by the beautiful demon and his black-widow nest of daydreams and nightmares.
Just as the spider has been enchanted by the devil crow's sweet supper.
There is no priest to save him, much less offer a final blessing; he doesn't even realize it's the end until it is far-too-late. The snap of bone rings distantly; the sound of shorn ligaments and ruptured nerve endings fizzle like gray static inside of his clogged ears. His front is a waterfall of burbling blood. His eyes are as empty as the azure night sky. And yes, the spider thinks, a fly would have died with more dignity.
Truths into lies, masters into corpses, a boy into a bug. That is the Trancy family butler.
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