07. Kindness.
What a shame we all remain, such fragile broken things, a beauty half betrayed, butterflies with punctured wings. — part II, paramore.
Eden pressed the pillow under her head, everything was so white that it bothered her. She knew that was where she should be, doctors told her about how she was no longer fit to live in society.
But it was painful, the jet of water she had received in her body earlier made her flesh hurt.
It had been five days since she arrived at the asylum, her family had been certified that she would be placed with the most passive women. Eden was trying to stay calm, but she was scared and couldn't even get a prediction of what her life would look like right now.
She was a mad young woman, the reason she was in that asylum had been her lack of sleep and her unconstant emotions. She had become desolate after knowing that one of her cousins hadn't come back and had been rude to her mother in a way she had never been before, her mother still — even though Eden have acted cruelly, ignoring the fact that Francis also lost important people to her — didn't want her daughter to go, but Eden thought the doctors might be right.
She always considered herself a rational person, and now she was having these endless visions, doing things she had never done and barely recognizing her own image in the mirror. She was becoming a little madder every day and was very afraid of the future.
Eden was glad that at least she had achieved to see her baby cousin and talk to him freely one last time, she knew that the possibility of receiving a visit from her little cousin would be almost nil. He inherited all of his father's properties and titles, which meant his time would become shorter with the tasks he would perform in his father's place.
Eden was proud, Ciel looked so strong and less hesitant, she wanted him to get all his goals.
God had a high debt to that child.
Life inside the asylum was routine, they bathed and wore equal clothes, ate and sewd in their spare time. Eden began listening to murmurs of her fellow patients, about how the medicine didn't make them any better, on how taking the medicine just made them feel more tormented.
She befriended one of the patients, Harriet.
"My husband put me here."
"Your... your husband?"
"Yes." She remembered seeing Harriet's blue eyes become blurry. "I wasn't being a good wife, I wasn't considerated enough."
Eden soon realized that the reason women were there were almost always related to their husbands. She thought what the price a woman should pay to be a wife, the things she should sacrifice.
Eden thought she didn't want to be a wife anymore.
Harriet told her that she was 20 years old and two children, she married too early and her mother was not as permissive to her as Francis had been with Eden.
"I'm sorry for it, Harriet."
She smiled and shook her head.
"You're here, too? There's nothing to sorry."
Eden didn't know, for her, there was a reason she was in that asylum. Her mind was no longer the same.
Harriet had been placed in the asylum for not wanting to give her husband another heir, because she didn't like to go to balls and she no longer laugh like she used to in the beginning of their marriage.
It was unfair.
The medicine didn't seem to improve anything either.
"I feel tormented when I take them." Harriet once said. "Some of the girls said the same, probably doesn't help. I doubt my husband wants to get me out of here."
Eden, being the daughter of her parents, began to distrust the medications.
They all took their medicine once a week, Eden took the first dose and had already begun to feel worse. She didn't want to take the second dose, but she was almost sure she couldn't help it, she'd have to accept that things were this way going forward.
Eden rolled into her bed, staring at the ceiling.
She could barely sleep at night, she was always tired. The tasks she performed inside the asylum made her fatigued, even if it wasn't really tiring at all.
The dreams continued there, and now it was all weirder, because sometimes when she closed her eyes and tried to fall asleep, she heard that voice that was so similar to her cousin's new butler.
It was so strange and sad, seeing her dear uncle's mansion without his presence, it was as if she were in the past again and she stopped in front of the stairs hoping to see him come down the steps.
Her cousin's butler was frighteningly similar to her uncle, although some aspects were different, she could easily see her uncle in the way he smiled, at the angle of his thin face and on his lips outlined.
It was disturbing, the story behind everything that had happened to the Phantomhive and her cousin was saved by a mysterious man who now worked for him.
Eden couldn't even think much about it, she couldn't protect her cousin, she was mentally unstable. She was too far away, trapped in her own fantasy.
That night she managed to doze off, but within those few minutes of sleep, she who was tied to a trunk, eyes judging from strangers stared at her from below.
Red hair strands mixed with flames.
Burn the witch!
They were screaming.
She woke up screaming too, taking the sheets off her, with tears flooding her face and the feeling of burning, pain and injustice eroding her bones.
They forced her to take another dose of the medicine, they took her paw a separate bedroom from the dorm, they tied her hands and feet to bed, Eden tried to explain that she was not a witch and only after, when her body was softened and tired, she noticed that she was no longer within her illusion.
She cried because she felt attached to a trunk again.
The feeling of seeing her inside a fragile body of a child was still an insult from heaven.
A child's body.
A small and thin child's body.
They were not human, she was not human, and yet she was being forced to repeat a cycle of eternal weakness.
As much as now she was a carcass of flesh and bones than to be that she was one day, he had the opportunity to witness the creature she was. And although he despised the heavenly creatures, he never felt anything but captivated by her luminous powerful appearance before resting inside human bodies through the ages.
She was a minor angel, away from god's throne. He had been an archangel, and failed to divert his attention from her, seeing her from afar while she seemed absorbed in every minimal thing that was new within their eternity, envying and hated the way as she never felt bored or disgusted by their state of submission.
She always questioned him about what made him interested in being like her and he never understood how she doesn't seen how fascinating she was.
Her presence was delightful.
She was all what he wasn't, and she became the only being that he kept preserving ancient sensations.
She was reduced to it.
And he still struggled to divert his attention.
Her eyelids trembled and she opened her eyes, the green spheres seemed blurry before she widened her eyes surprised. The messy hair and tiredness in her features made what should be his recovery in torture.
Sebastian smelled sweat and dry tears in her skin even though the distance between them.
"Mister... butler?" She pulled her wrists, uniting her eyebrows when she realized that the lashings on her skin had been loosened. "Am I dreaming?"
She shook her lips, her soul reflecting on her face and making her a little more like what he remembered of being her.
"I'm afraid not, my lady." Sebastian climbed his glasses on the bridge of his thin nose.
"So you're really here? Dressed as a doctor?"
"Essentially."
She put her hand in front of her lips, still weak and incredulous.
"Forgive me for not believing, my mind tricks me." Her voice was a tired, broken sound.
Sebastian smiled with the false kindness.
"The young master sent me to get you out of this place, I apologize in advance for the rudeness, but time is not in our favor."
"Apologize? For what?" She whispered, her senses still didn't seem to have come back.
The butler put one arm under the joints of her knees and the other on her back. Eden accepted his arms quickly due to the effects of the medicine, Sebastian kept his chin raised as he left the room with the girl in his arms, the smell of her essence disturbed him.
He was agile, as expected, no one noticed when he warmed up with Lady Eden in his arms. She did not move, her body was suffering severe effects, she could barely keep her eyes open.
Sebastian jumped out of the hallway window for the night, the girl in his arms had her eyes half open and he realized she stared at him.
He smiled again, full of politeness.
"Is there a problem, my lady? Are you uncomfortable? We'll arrive quickly, I assure you."
She shook her head from side to side, unpurposely rubbing her cheek on the fabric of his white coat.
"You eyes," She started to saying, so low that he probably wouldn't listen if his hearing was in human standards. "It are sharp, like a dagger."
The butler analyzed her words, having fun with them.
"Does that displease you, my lady?"
A subtle curve appeared in the corner of her rosy lips.
"No. It's really beautiful."
She closed her eyes slowly, falling asleep again.
Sebastian again faced the way ahead of him, sighing heavily, frustrated.
She hadn't changed so much after all.
"I can't stay here, Ciel. I appreciate your efforts, but I'm mentally unstable."
Eden was trying to convince the child, but Ciel might look a lot like his mother when he wanted to. Eden remembered how impetuous her aunt Rachel was, Ciel was getting with praise to imitate her footsteps.
"You're not coming back, Eden. It's my final decision."
She was sitting in front of the tea table, still wearing the white dress look like a sleeping costume, there were shoes on her feet now, they were on the side of her bed when she woke up.
It was amazing how her baby cousin seemed comfortable giving orders, she was very astonished by his actions.
She leaned against the chair.
"Ciel, I'm really not able to deal with what I see anymore. My mind is getting more and more confusing, I don't know if there's another way to heal me other than being away from other people."
"But here you are. You've been talking normally for almost 20 minutes trying to convince me that you're not stable." The boy smiled victorious, Eden opened her mouth, but closed when she realized the boy's manipulation. "I need people of my trust, people I know. I'm not doing this for you, I'm doing this for the Phantomhive family name."
He touched the blue ring on his finger, Eden's expression became tender.
She was quiet for a few seconds, Ciel waited patiently for the girl's response.
"But what about my parents?"
"Don't worry about anything. The only thing you need to do is stand by my side," Ciel said in an authoritarian tone. "I'm going to deal with the consequences, but I know you and I know that my cousin isn't mad."
Eden's body strained, the green pool full of unshed tears, her heart became heavier.
Those were words no one had said, and deep down, that's all she'd like to hear.
She smiled, her cousin didn't even know, but at that moment she didn't want to get away from him. That little broken person, with harsh eyes and words, struggling to show the image of a grown and strong man had shown a kindness that she had just seen in one person, his father.
He was the perfect balance between his mother and father, with the accentuate virtues of both.
They still live in him.
Eden pulled the air into her lungs.
"All right. Count Phantomhive, please take care of me."
[author's note]
Thank you to all those who commented in the lastchapter, a special thanks to darkangelynn5, mothedman, Miss Meep and Manon.
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