"I wanted to tell you that I'm going on a vacation. I wanted to see you before I left," Diederich said. He approached Vincent like he had planned out every part of it himself. Vincent had a feeling that Diederich wasn't going alone on this trip. In his mind, images of illicit overseas affairs came into his mind the second Diederich said vacation. Sure, it was getting to be a cold October but even though it was cold inside, it was so hot on the inside.
"Oh yeah? Where are we going?" Vincent asked.
"We are not going anywhere. My parents have called on me to deal with some serious family business." Diederich said. Vincent felt his heart sink back into his chest. His heart shrank three sizes that second and he looked up at Diederich with his brown puppy eyes, and got nothing out of it. It just wasn't working on him.
"But isn't that during Oktoberfest? Wouldn't that be a fun excuse to spend time together?" Rachel interrupted, like she really, really wanted to tag along with Vincent to be friends. Nope. Vincent knew that what Rachel wanted to do was get drunk on some that famous german beer.
"Look, I don't have time to babysit you two. I want to get through this as fast as possible."
"Why? Why not have fun with it?" Rachel asked. With her and Vincent both lobbying for his to drag them around Germany to have a little fun, he couldn't surely say no.
"My parents haven't spoken to me since I moved to England, and haven't even sent me letters on the holidays. This isn't a family fun time."
"Diederich, your tragic back story is showing," Vincent said. He was glowered at.
"I'm leaving. Alone, and I'm not taking you two with me. That is final," Diederich said. The Phantomhive duo's cuteness tactics had completely failed them.
A few days later, Diederich was getting aboard a train going to Germany. He had a light travel case he took with him, as he was clearly only spending a short time there. Vincent and Rachel were observing him from a distance as he put things away in a rented sleeper car and went back to the passenger car with a book to read. In the passenger car, whom else did he find, but Rachel and Vincent Phantomhive. Rachel was dressed in a pale pink day dress with intricate pleated ribbon work, and Vincent was wearing a comical fake mustache.
"You're not fooling me with that stupid disguise," Diederich said and ripped the fake mustache off Vincent's upper lip. Admittedly, that mustache did look ridiculous, but it was put on with a rather strong glue that required some work to be attached.
"Ouch! That was glued to my face, you know!" Vincent said. Rachel was giggling.
"I told you both not to follow me," Diederich said.
"We're not following you, we simply happen to be taking a vacation to Germany at the same exact time that you're leaving for your business," Rachel said with a sweet and fake smil.e
"That is the worst lie," Diederich said in an exasperated tone. He sat down next to the in the booth. Vincent had a criminology book which already had all of kinds of book markers stuck between its pages. Rachel was working on some embroidery work.
"What else are expecting out of us?" Vincent asked.
"Nothing else," Diederich sighed, "I even told my parents I was bringing company."
"We're going to have so much fun. I rarely get to go out much," Rachel said. She was bursting with happiness and excitement.
"Don't say that like I force you to stay inside the house all day."
"You do!"
"Because you get sick easily," Vincent said. It was true, Rachel didn't go out very much but it was so easy for her brash personality to get in the way, and she over exerted herself much too often. Which, invariably, ended up in a vicious cycle where she would feel fine, over exert herself into an attack, spend a week recovering, and then do it all again.
"So, Dee, why are you going away to visit your parents?" Vincent asked. Diederich had just as many issues with his parents as Vincent did, which was remarkable, because Vincent ended up killing both of his parents.
"It's a personal issue."
"We're all friends here," Vincent said.
"It's a family thing."
"Oh come on, just tell me what it is."
"Promise me you will not act out when you hear this," Diederich said in a low tone. His eyes darted around, like he was avoiding making eye contact. He was lying and showing all the markers. Page 85- a lack, or inability to make eye contact can indicate a person is lying. It was right there in the book, and unlike Diederich, books don't lie.
"With an opener like that, I'm not promising anything."
"Rachel, would you mind if we left to speak privately?" Diederich asked. Rachel shook her head quickly, and got back to her work that was more important than her husband's disagreements with his 'illicit love affair'. Diederich walked Vincent into his private sleeper car. He took the suitcase off of the bed and put it on the floor. Vincent and Diederich sat on the bed.
"My parents had arranged a legal agreement between myself and a third party in exchange for money."
"And what the hell does that mean?"
"I'm getting married."
"YOU'RE WHAT?!" Vincent shouted.
The door opened and Rachel looked in. Clearly she could have heard Vincent screaming from the general seating car. She looked at a sullen Vincent with a concerned expression. "You okay?"
"I am NOT okay," Vincent said, then stormed out of the compartment.
"I'll go simmer him down a bit," Rachel said and followed after him. Vincent sat down for a few seconds then went back to Diederich, because he could not contain the emotions he was feeling. They crawled through his veins like the high of a drug. The rage he was feeling poisoned his blood like arsenic or laudanum. He had to get it out and there was only one person he could get it out towards.
"I'm pissed as hell at you, that you were planning on getting married to some bitch you've never even met behind my back!"
"It's a legal agreement my parents signed. It's pen and paper. It means nothing to me"
"If it was nothing, then why did you refuse to tell me about it? Just how was this visit going to go in your little plan?"
"I was planning on marrying her at my parents castle while you guys were having fun, then I'd pretend that you had an emergency in England that you needed me to help with and I needed to leave immediately. Then I'd never come back. My parents get the money. She gets the marriage ceremony, and I can put it all behind me," Diederich explained. It was a great plan, brilliant in it's outright coldheartedness, but there was one minor flaw. It involved him getting married and to Vincent, that was too risky of a flaw to make the plan acceptable.
"You know what you're not putting behind you? The fact that you planned on lying to me."
"Because you're reacting like this. I'm afraid you might try hurting her or something."
"I'll give that conniving bitch a piece of my mind," Vincent said.
"She doesn't speak english."
"That's alright, because I have a certain hand gesture I'd like to share with her."
"Vincent, no. As much as I hate them, you are not to act rude to my family, or Oktavia."
"Oh so she has a name," Vincent said.
"Yes. Oktavia Von Seckendorff is an opera singer whose parents are very, very wealthy have paid my parents a large sum of money so that Oktavia could have a husband because she's is already forty and has not yet been married," Diederich was explaining.
"You're fucking kidding me. You've been sold to an old rich bitch," Vincent said. His expression was dark. An ocean of discontent was swimming in his mind. A part of him could not accept this. He felt like he needed to craw out of his own skin. He felt like he was having a manic episode.
"Vincent, please."
"If they're just selling your virginity off to the highest bidder I'll pay triple what her family is paying."
"That's not the point. I am legally obligated to marry this woman, if I don't then my family go bankrupt and be penniless."
"So what if they do? What the hell do you care? You have your own fortune. I pay you plenty," Vincent argued.
"Because, as much as I hate it, it's the right thing to do," Diederich said.
"What about what you said to me? Don't I mean more to you than your parents? Goodness knows, I certainly care more about you than they do, and it's their own fault if they don't have money."
"Don't try to guilt me. I've already had enough of it from everyone else. You're acting like a spoiled child who has to make himself the center of everything in my universe," Diederich told him. He stopped staring at Vincent and picked up his book. This tactic was super ineffective at dealing with an irate Vincent. Vincent was looming over him like an angry, dark cloud, threatening to rain on his parade and then set it on fire, probably.
"I can't stand you sometimes," Vincent said.
"I know something that will cheer you up," Diederich said.
"You're just placating me," Vincent said, but Diederich wrapped his arms around him in a warm hug. Alright, so it was somewhat easy to change Vincent's demeanor if the right bait was used. He was interested in it. Diederich kissed him lightly on the cheek.
"The only way I know to make you less pissed off is physical release, isn't that true?"
At the train station, Diederich's parents and whom Vincent assumed was Oktavia were waiting. He could not determine which one was his mother and which one was his fiancee. She was forty in the same way that a grown hen was an egg. She was probably hot twenty years ago. Now she was a washed up has-been of an opera signer who had failed in all aspects of life, including marriage, but that whole marriage thing was fixable. Because Diederich parents were degenerates, and he had no choice but to be married off to this bitch. Like a bitch. Yet, he was Vincent's bitch so j really, Diederich was already spoken for but nobody would acknowledge their gay little relationship, and Vincent would not acknowledge Diederich's straight little abomination of the law and decency.
Diederich gestured towards them, "Earl and Lady Phantomhive," he said along with a bunch of stuff Vincent couldn't understand.
"What did you say Vincent asked.
"You are my friend and my business partner,"
"Did you mention you are also my sexual partner?"
"Vincent!" Diederich hissed.
"What? They don't know what I'm saying," Vincent said. Rachel was giggling behind his back.
"Don't laugh Rachel, it's not funny," Diederich told her.
"Oktavia wants to know what business you do," Diederich said.
"Tell her that we kill people together. Tell her that I can make it look like an accident if she touches you."
"I'll telling her you're also a philanthropist."
"She wants to know what charities you work with,"
"Orphans. I had a soft spot for orphaned children after I became an orphan because I murdered my own parents in what the tabloids called a 'tragic carriage accident'."
"Rachel could you stop encouraging him."
"No can do," Rachel giggled.
"My parents are making comments about you and Rachel acting like lovesick teenagers."
"Wait until we wake up everyone up with the sounds your moaning," Vincent said. He was sniggering. He and Rachel were acting like teenagers, but Rachel, being younger than her soul seemed, was still a teenager and so his parents weren't exactly wrong.
"Thank goodness I brought my ear plugs," Rachel said.
The castle which Diederich's parents lived lay out past the german country side, and through a thick, and creepy forest. The October air was chilly and felt like it could chill them to the bone. The castle sat on the edge of a massive lake, the waters of which were placid and calm. The lake was black and probably inhabitable in some eerily unexplained way. The castle was over bearing and imposing, witch an old gothic style that was crumbling from disrepair in some parts. It had probably stood there for hundreds of years, being carefully looked over, until Diederich's parents and their stupid gambling had put it over the edge.
"I'll give you two the tour," Diederich said. Oktavia was also being led around the castle by Diederich's parent, happily pointing out things out to her as the spoke in german and Oktavia let out a wink slip out at Diederich. Vincent's blood was boiling. He could hardly contain it.
"This place is creepy," Rachel said, as she passed a few idle cobwebs that clung to the brick walls. The hallways were lit with gas lanterns instead of electric ones like Vincent was used to in his own manor. Dracula could move right into the basement and all this place home.
"I didn't think so when I was a child, but back then, I didn't know anything else," Diederich said.
"Didn't your parents ever y'know, take you out on vacations?" Vincent asked.
"Not at all. My brother and I were taught lessons by a hired tutor who would come here. I rarely left the castle until I went to Weston," Diederich said.
"Your parents just love dropping bombs on you like that, don't they? First they take you out of the country to go study in England, then they drag you back to Germany for an arranged marriage you were never told you had until recently."
"Well, they're not horrible people Vincent, they just don't have their priorities..."
"They are kind of horrible people, even my parents wouldn't force me to marry someone who I didn't like," Rachel said.
"You went into that willingly," Diederich said with a smirk. They highfived.
"Hey now," Vincent said.
Yes, the name Oktavia Von Seckendorff is from "Puella Magi Madoka Magica". It took it for symbolic purposes, not just because I was too lazy to think of something original. If you're a fan of Madoka Magica, you'll understand why. If you don't, just enjoy what precious time you have before the big cliffhanger plot twist that comes in chapter 50 on Saturday! I promise it'll leave your jaws collectively hanging open!
