Author's Note: Just the other day, I was musing over the fact I had not yet made a nightmare-induced fic this year. Actually, I don't recall having particularly dreadful nightmares this year overall.
So of course today I had not one, but two nightmares, both snapping me awake. Fuck you very much, subconscious.
I kept to my trend of linking these fics to Igorrr music, so although I didn't type it listening to it (Lorna Shore's EP instead. Damn it's good. The phrase 'swallowed by the womb of death' is from the lyrics of 'To the Hellfire'), I still named it after Igorrr's song (which is also very good). This whole thing is a sort of parallel/loop.
Disclaimer: Don't own Kuroshitsuji.
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Almost there.
He was almost there.
He just had to run a little faster.
Just a little farther. Just...
Where am I going?
He stopped, breathless, slightly dizzy, looking around himself. It was night time, in a narrow cobbled stone street dimly lit by gaslight lamps that painted the sight with ghastly burnt yellow. The houses towered on both sides, old, dirty, crumbling, and the sky was barely visible, a starless black slice up above. The street felt familiar, but he couldn't pinpoint where it was, nor when it was from; a roaming path he had once crossed as a Grim Reaper?, some long forlorned road he had stumbled upon barely alive during even longer forlorned years?
How did I get here?
He knew this place. He had to cross past it, fast.
He had to run. Fast. He was late. It'd be too late. He had to get there. Otherwise...
"Undertaker."
He halted again, this time due to the voice - a soft one, from a child. Familiar - calling his name. Yes, that's my name. That's my name now. At the end of the narrow road, where there should be a passage for him to speed through, was now a blockage created by a child, a small boy.
He knew that boy.
"Where are you going?" Ciel asked. The boy was younger than he remembered him as, than he knew him as; he looked ten again. Ciel shouldn't be ten anymore, but older. So a part of his brain was aware there was something wrong here. Still, nightmares have that magic to them; they feel real regardless of their nonsense.
"I need to run," he insisted despite it. He had to go, it would be too late otherwise-
-where am I going?
"Where are you going?" the question echoed again, but Ciel's lips did not move; the sound came from behind. He turned on his heels to find another boy - another Ciel - blocking the path he had just come from. Two small children shouldn't stop him, but somehow, two gates had erected behind each of them, closed shut, trapping all three of them. Now he couldn't move forward not backwards. There was no way out.
A chill shot down the Undertaker's spine. A nameless dread gripped his gut. He was late. He was stuck, frozen in place, he couldn't run like this. He was late. Too late.
"You're looking for her, aren't you?" One of the Ciels asked. He couldn't pinpoint which.
"I am," he replied with a certainty he did not have mere seconds prior. "I have to go."
"Come with us this way," they said, the two identical twins closing in, pointing towards a door on the side of the narrow street.
No, I can't, he tried to say, but the words didn't move past his tightening throat. The twins had somehow moved without notice, now standing together in front of him, taking both his hands in theirs and pulling him towards this new path, this new door, towards a new place the Undertaker did not know nor had ever seen. A dilapidated little house, worn down and dusty, abandoned, or so it seemed, but there was someone there. A handsome man, completely out of place in his posture and attire compared to the destroyed house, turning towards them, a father welcoming his sons back home.
The Undertaker felt a pang in his chest.
"Vincent."
"There you are," Vincent said, not to him, but to the two boys who hurried to throw themselves to his opened arms. It didn't seem like he heard his name, nor noticed the Undertaker at all. "What have I told you boys, huh?"
"Look, Father," one of the twins pointed. Vincent's gaze then lift up, meeting the Undertaker's.
"Oh, I see. You look a bit worn out. Do you need to rest?"
I can't, he repeated yet again, and yet again, the words did not form themselves aloud.
"He says he has to run," another twin said. Vincent took his son's words with care, nodding slowly before turning back towards the Undertaker.
"What are you late for? Isn't it too late already?"
That same dread, that same shiver from before, took hold of his body and the adrenaline, which had not ran out at all, pumped harder again, speeding up his breathing, his brain.
"No." No. "No, I have to go. I have to get her."
Vincent drew a saddened smile on his face; the Undertaker managed to catch a glimpse of it as he rushed towards the door, not the one he crossed guided by the twins, but yet another one, finding himself back outside, still night time, but on a new location. Confused and quickly trying to get his bearings, he finally restarted running, not knowing where he was headed anymore.
Where am I?
Where are y-
The pumping of his heart deafened all sounds of the nightscape, even the stomping of his steps against the cobbled stones. Only the urgency, the fear of not meeting, of failing, of not being enough.
Enough what?
Eventually, against that ghastly fiery yellowed gaslight, a cutout shape started to take form in the distance. And the Undertaker gasped.
Yes. Yes, it was not too late, he...
Speeding up, running as fast as he could, a sudden clanking of a metal chain and lockets furiously started to run together with him. Street lamps and houses of empty roads passed by him in a daze and opened up to a field where she stood, alone, as if she was waiting for someone.
She turned to him. Her face was a blur, made out of shadows and tears and fluttering wings, but it was her. He knew it was her.
"You're too late."
The words laced around his legs, his heart, and stopped him dead in his tracks.
What? No.
No, he was here. He had made it, he had-
"No. Please. I made it. I made it-"
The faceless face in front of him smiled. And started falling back, dropping, and he could only stare as her whole white clad form fell inside the mouth of a well that hadn't been there before, a darkness that gobbled her forever, swallowed by the womb of death. Falling away from the grasp of the hand he desperately threw after her, from the cry he let out.
No.
No.
No.
Why?
"Claudi-!"
AaaaahHHHHHH! ! !
NO!
The Undertaker fell back into his body and jolted up. Slightly dizzy and out of breath, he looked around himself to find the inside of the room he had clearly dozed off in the Phantomhive Manor. Slowly regaining his senses, the stinging behind his eyelids and on the inside of his throat being the first two sensory signs he felt, he then snapped his head towards the bed he should be guarding over. It was empty.
"Ciel-" he tried, but as he stood up too abruptly from his seat, a slight vertigo forced him to focus his attention to keep steady on his own two feet instead. It was for the best, really; he was not supposed to just burp out the Earl's name in quite such manner.
"Undertaker."
He turned his head yet again, now finding said Earl that should be occupying the bed. He was standing in front of the door, his form cutout from the moonlight shining from the windows. "What are you doing?"
"You should be in bed," he replied immediately, only to be met with a scoff and a grin.
"What for, to be woken up by you? What a ruckus. What good does me to have you doze off here, worst of all to then have you screaming out of it? I would've caught the biggest fright had I been in bed."
"Do forgive me, Earl," the Undertaker replied. Ciel waved his hand nonchalantly as if to brush off the subject, but as he started moving, the Undertaker detected a sway in his step. He rushed towards him, a sudden movement that would've made his locket chain clank if he still had it around his waist, but now only the rustle of his clothes creeped in the room. He caught the boy in his arms before he crumbled into the floor.
"Ah, blast... again..."
"You shouldn't have been standing up. You need to rest."
"Why is it still not working? Why is it still like this?" Ciel complained, distressed.
"You need more treatment. You shouldn't be up at this time. Come back to bed."
"I'm not tired, Undertaker!"
I am.
It still wasn't working. He still hadn't made it.
It still wasn't enough.
He had finally managed to perfect his Bizarre Dolls project, he had maintained a dead body functional and active for three years, he had finally been able to give him life again, give him memories, a voice, agency, wit, everything but a soul, and still it wasn't working. He still hadn't perfected it at all. It still wasn't enough.
He just had to move a little farther, he was almost there, but still not there. It was still too late. Just like in his nightmare.
They had that magic to them; nightmares felt real regardless of their nonsense.
The Undertaker had long given up on deciphering the meanings behind his nightmares. It didn't matter. Alive or dead, awake or asleep. His failures were everywhere. They never ended.
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おわり
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Author's Note: My other nightmares+Igorrr fueled fics, in case you have time and interest, are:
'Hardest/easiest choices', 'Nightmares', 'As real as the pain', 'Et Dixit Dominus' and 'Lullaby for an undead child'. This is the sixth consecutive year of this series.
Thanks for reading, reviews are welcomed.
