"Alright, mister Macken, we're going to do a simple exercise today." said the therapist sitting across from the menace while placing several cards on the table. "We will be repeating this test several times with different faces in order to get a semi-accurate measure of how much you remember about the people around you."
"Okay..." Alois answered, carefully watching the woman. The cards were neatly laid out in several rows. Each of them had photographs of a face on them, some of which he recognised right away.
"Now, what I want you to do is organise these people into three groups." the therapist began. "One of them is for people you recognise, one of them is for people whose faces you reconise, but aren't sure who they are, and the last one is for people you don't recognise at all."
"Sounds easy enough." the menace stated before shuffling all of the cards to one side. He moved all of them to the pile that would become the "do not recognise" pile before he took out the ones he knew.
One card he picked out had a photo of his brother Luka on it. The next had Sebastian, followed by Kristopherson Miles, Audrey Baines, Travis Sullivan, Sir Integra, Seras Victoria, and so on until he had a pile that was almost equal in size to the other. It was smaller by one card and none went into the pile that was for those whose faces Alois knew, but didn't have a name for. The extra card was placed in the "do not recognise" pile with the rest. Looking at the picture, the therapist frowned, knowing that this was not going to bode well.
Sir Hellsing and her grandmother, Elizabeth, were already having trouble dealing with their "guest" as he threw a fit with every piece of bad news. Over time, they had become smaller as the Watchdog tried to control himself better, as he was begged to by his cousin. Ciel had taken to focusing what wrath he had to the obstacle course, although it proved difficult to not destroy it completely.
His rage was entirely reactionary. It was a secondary emotion that spawned from hurt. The destruction he caused was an attempt to shield himself from the aching in his chest from his heart breaking and to make the stinging in his eyes not become tears. Ciel's limbs felt heavy and took all of his strength to move them. His sentences were incoherent. He didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to hear any of it. He wanted it to go away.
So he roared. The Watchdog roared while baring his fangs, cursing the gods for this, damning them, yet begging of them as to why it couldn't have been him instead. His voice boomed, shaking the building with it's force, but those who were knowledgeable of him knew that these were his cries. He cried. He cried, and cried, and cried like a wild beast until his throat was raw. Then it would heal and he would begin anew.
The despair he felt seeped through to his very core. It caused his bones to ache, his lungs to shiver, and his eyes to redden. Both his body and his soul were in unyielding agony as his happiness was violently torn from, completely ripping him apart. Eventually, the time came where he needed to be sedated before his self-restraint disintegrated completely. In the course of mere hours, Ciel Phantomhive had been defeated entirely. In his sleep, his tears fell freely.
His heart had crumbled. His soul had been crushed. His spirit and will were decimated. All it took to do this was merely the news that his husband did not recognise his face on a card.
The therapist tried to get Alois to think harder. "Very good! You got almost all of them right. The rest of them are people that you don't know who were selected randomly. In this set, you're only missing one person."
To this, the menace furrowed his brow and stared at the cards more intently. If he knew one of them, it would certainly come to him eventually. Thus, he thought long and hard. On occasion, the blonde's hand would linger over certain cards, usually because the person on them had a facial feature that was similar to someone he knew. Interestingly enough, however, the card he thought about hardest, however, was that of Ciel Phantomhive. Despite this, he did not pick the card.
"I'm sorry, I just can't figure out which one it is..." he said finally, moving his hand away in order to scratch his head.
"That's alright. There's always next time." the woman said, gathering up the cards again and putting them into a neat stack. "Now I'm going to pass you off to someone else, and they'll help you with another area."
"Aright." the menace said, standing up at the same time as the woman. Both of them exited the room and made their way down the hallway as Alois was led to his next appointment.
The hallway was long, but this was nothing new. Alois kept up a decent pace for the most part, but gradually, it began to slow as he felt something familiar in his gut. The man was aware that it was sixth sense and he could tell that he was sensing a demon that he did not recognise, but he did not feel concerned. The feeling grew stronger with each step, gradually becoming akin to butterflies in his stomach. His therapist noticed the change in pace and eventually looked over her shoulder.
"What is it?" she asked.
"I'm sensing a familiar presence with my sixth sense." the man replied. "I don't know what it is, though."
"Interesting… Tell me more when we get there."
Before Alois could answer, he noticed a familiar face stepping out of a room with several nurses. The woman separated from the group when she laid eyes on the menace before quickly jogging over to them. She was an angel and her name was Elizabeth Ethel Cordelia Hellsing. Before Alois could so much as say "hello", however, she had her hand over his mouth.
"Please don't make noise." she said in a hushed tone, pausing before asking: "Wait, I'm sorry, do you remember me?"
"You're Elizabeth." Alois replied, causing the angel to utter a sigh of relief.
"What's the problem, milady?" questioned the therapist, prompting Elizabeth's attention.
"#D-001 needed to be sedated." Hellsing answered, earning a gasp from the other woman and a confused look from the man. "He's in that room I just came out of. Please, we need Alois to move through here quickly so he isn't sensed."
"Right." the therapist agreed as the angel put a hand to Alois' back and led him down the hall at a reasonably quick pace. The man's eyes stayed fixed on that door, but he didn't make a sound until their pace slowed.
"Who's D-001?" Alois asked in a whisper. "There's another demon?"
"You'll be reintroduced eventually." Elizabeth replied. "Right now, his condition is a little… fragile at the moment… You'll see him when he calms down some."
Alois, not knowing what she was talking about, simply trusted her. Yet he couldn't help but look over his shoulder at the door and wonder who was on the other side. There was also the curiosity as to why the presence that radiated from the other side seemed to draw him in.
A/N: Three updates today. I'm on a roll.
I actually wanted to add something about how his contract was affecting him as well, but he hasn't seen it yet, and adding "and caused his tongue to tingle" to the end of that last sentence sounds weird.
Jus' sayin.
I wonder how they will meet...
Until the next chapter, my duckies~!
CHARACTER SHET
Question: "I have a question for Elizabeth: How do you put up with a angry Ciel without getting agitated yourself?! I mean come on he SLAPPED you before..." by Melajay
Elizabeth: "Actually, that only happened once when he was twelve and under a lot of emotional distress, and Sebastian stopped him and calmed him down before he could succeed. The thing about Ciel is that he was never good at expressing himself. He was always shy and kind of withdrawn, but he would open up once he got to know you. The problem just got so much worse after his parents died, though. When he finally did let out his feelings, it was sometimes in a way that was not healthy in the slightest. Now he's lost Alois, too, so he's going through it all over again. What he's going through is actually really traumatic.
Where my patience comes from in all of this is understanding why he is reacting the way he is. Now, that does not by any means justify it. It only explains it. In this case, I'm not really sure if he can help it. It seems like the more he holds it in, the more agony he is in. When he was younger, he would have probably tried to crush it down and not feel anything at all, but he's gotten so used to having a heart that now he's vulnerable. What he is reacting to is heartbreak and loss. The source of what he is feeling is not 'anger', but 'anger' is how he is trying to express his grief without hurting himself. Right now, it's almost as if Alois had died, only with death, Ciel can bring him back fairly easily. This is going to be a lot more difficult...
All of this aside, it is difficult to handle him right now. He won't listen to reason and he doesn't want to calm down. He's reacting badly and the violence and outbursts are tedious to work with. I think he will simmer down soon, if only to crash, but right now, he's is perhaps in the worst place emotionally that he's been in a hundred years. I don't blame him. In fact, it breaks my heart to see him so distraught. I can only hope that things will turn out alright..."
