Notes that pertain to this chapter:
Hi guys! :) I'm currently doing a bit of historical research for the next two chapters of this story. In the meantime, please enjoy this short little interlude chapter/brief flashback.
Yorkshire accent: A historical dialect native to the northern English county of Yorkshire. Most generally associated with country people. Since London is located in the more southern part of England, the fact that Thoms speaks Yorkshire would indicate that he is not originally from the area in which this story takes place. I didn't make his accent too broad because I didn't want to confuse anyone.
ALSO, in the last chapter, I messed up towards the end when I described Lydia's eyes as brown, when earlier in the story I had said that they were cobalt-blue (like Ciel's.) I can only say that I must have been insane while I was editing that part. Lydia's eyes are blue. Thank you to Tsukiko-mei for pointing that out! I'm trying to entertain you people, not confuse you. XD
Finally, THANK YOU TO MY REVIEWERS! :D If I could send you guys cookies, I would. Hopefully you'll all get good karma for reviewing my story, and will somehow end up with cookies anyway.
Lydia was watching from a distance as a little girl with dark brown hair tiptoed carefully along the top of a short stone wall, holding her small arms out for balance. She was dressed in very fine clothing indeed; the edges of a scarlet-muslin dress peeked out from underneath a practical cloth apron, which was very dirty. It was clear that the wide, expansive apron had been meant to save the dress. Her hair was short and done up in a ponytail, which floated along behind her head like a cheerful taffeta spray. Her eyes were focused forward in a very determined way, but she was not alone. Gliding quietly along behind her was the darkened figure of a man, dressed in high-class servant's attire. He wore a black swallowtail suit, and his hair was black as well, sleek and soft-looking. He was taller than the little girl even though she was standing on the wall, and he watched her with a face that was as exquisitely beautiful as it was still. He made no sound as he moved over the late summer's crunchy brown grass.
Reaching the end of the stone wall, the girl did not hesitate, but leaped off, falling toward the ground in an instant. In another instant, so fast that the colors of his uniform blurred into the surrounding scenery, the man had caught the child up in his arms, and her innocent voice echoed back into Lydia's ears, laughing in delight. The man balanced the child against one shoulder easily as the pair of them meandered down a small hill to the shore of a lake. Even as he carried the girl along effortlessly, Lydia could not help but notice that he seemed to be in pain. The gloved hand that was not holding onto the child kept reaching up convulsively to rest against his chest, and his face was tense. Every now and again, he took a breath.
The child was playful and eager, and she hopped out the man's arms and began to race around with great enthusiasm as soon as they reached the water's edge. Seeing her tumbling over logs and kicking up sand with reckless abandon, it was not hard to imagine how her apron had become so dirty. She soon flopped herself down in the sand, and began the ambitious endeavor of building a large sand castle just out of reach of the tiny waves which rolled ashore. Meanwhile the tall, black-clad man had laid himself down in the wide shadow of an elm tree, hands still pressing to his chest, which pulsed jerkily as he drew in tiny sips of air. The little girl called to him to come and play with her, but he simply curled himself up tighter on the ground, seeming most unwilling to move. Finally, with the stubborn determination of childhood, the brown-haired girl gathered a large amount of sand into her apron and marched carefully back up the shore, dropping down next to the man and rolling all of the sand out onto the ground before him. A tiny, fang-toothed smile graced his beautiful features as he obediently reached out and began to shape the sand with his white-gloved hands, while the girl busied herself with it also. In the time that it took her to construct a rather lumpy tower, the man had already built an entire palace, as beautiful and intricate as the Taj Mahal. It was so realistic and exquisite-looking, it would have surely won any sandcastle-building contest in an instant. The little girl quite forgot about her tower as she crawled all around the castle in wonderment, bending down to stare inside of the actual windows at the tiny furniture in every room. As reckless as she had been before, she was as gentle as an experienced antique dealer as she admired the sandcastle. While this went on, the sandcastle maker had returned to his curled-up position on the ground, digging his sharp teeth into his pale lip while his hands clenched fruitlessly against his chest. Eventually, young though she was, the little girl came to notice the other's discomfort. She abandoned the sandcastle and crawled over to the black-clad adult, hovering carefully over him. The ripples in the lake spread out as a strong wind blew across the land.
"Is it very bad today, Sebastian?"
The man nodded without opening his eyes. His forehead was pressed into the ground, his breathing shallow.
"You ought to tell me these things." The girl huffed, tugging the topmost string of her dirt-stained apron over her head. "Honestly, what am I going to do with you when you can build something wonderful like this in a minute, but you can't even speak up for yourself?" The man twitched his shoulders as the child finished disentangling the apron strings from around her waist, and shooed the large cloth material away from her. She pushed the lovely puffed sleeves of her red dress up her arms, and then reached out and gently tugged the man's left hand away from his chest. Carefully, she peeled off the glove that covered it, revealing a sinisterly-shaped pentacle adorning the outer side of the hand. She did not have time to focus on it, however, for as soon as the glove was off, the dark-haired man pushed his fingers insistently into the much smaller hand of the child. She did not react to the pricks of the small claws which grew out of the very tips of his fingers. Rather, she wrapped her palms around the larger hand willingly, petting it softly. The man stopped twitching as both of his hands relaxed. He turned his head to face slightly upward toward the child, and her pink lips moved once again, very slowly, asking a question. Her eyes were kind. He nodded, red eyes staring up at the blueness of the sky. Still holding his hand, the little girl laid down beside him to see what he was looking at, and for awhile, the pair of them were amused by the antics of a mother bird way up in the elm tree, attempting to teach one of her late-blooming children to fly. Eventually, and without announcement, the man's dark body suddenly turned into a shadowy pool of blackness, out of which morphed a thin black cat, which proceeded to climb up onto the girl's right shoulder and stretch itself out most comfortably. The girl did not seem surprised by any of this, and as she petted the cat, it began to purr.
After some time had flowed by, the girl and the cat both heard a rather high-pitched voice in the distance, calling out that it was dinner time in the main hall. The girl waved goodbye to the mother bird and took one last, long look over the magnificent sandcastle before digging her feet into the ground and standing up. The cat lolled about on the grass for a moment, before jumping acrobatically into the girl's outstretched arms. The ripples in the blue lake began to still once more as the pair of them moved slowly up the hill, the girl's hair trailing out behind her like the tip of a colored paintbrush, as she carried the demon home.
Lydia was watching them vanish upon the bright point of the horizon when a sudden disorientation of the scenery caused her to bite her lip, and in doing so, she woke up. She was not particularly surprised to find that it had been- well, not exactly a dream, more like a memory….but certainly not the present. What did surprise her was the discovery that she did not know where she was. It was very dark, and a loud rumbling sound seemed to be coming from underneath her body. Wherever she was, she surmised that she had just fallen gracelessly to the floor of the place. In fact, the floor felt like it was rattling.
"Ah-ah. What place is this?" she inquired aloud, pushing herself up off of her face and squinting around in the darkness. Slowly, she began to make out some familiar objects- wooden paneling, curtains, a set of bench-like, cushioned seats on either side of her. She was in a small compartment.
"Pretty calm, I'd say, for someone who don't remember where you are." Called a robust voice from somewhere on the other side of the wooden paneling. At once, Lydia remembered everything, and she rolled her eyes in amusement.
"You would know, eh, Thoms Weatherstaff?"
"Aye, tha' I would, my child, sure enough. It's just yer disposition comin' out in ye, eh? The way ye've always been ever since I've knowed ye. Never was able to scare ye, not fer nothin'. Not that I've made much of a livin' outta tryin', but even so…."
Lydia clambered to her feet and drew aside the curtain from the right window of the carriage. She pushed down the glassine pane and stuck her head out into the night, observing their surroundings with sleepy, half-lidded eyes. They were still riding with dense English forest of either side, meaning that she could not have been asleep for very long before she had been quite disruptively awoken by that fall. "Where are we?" she called in the darkness. From the front of the carriage, between huffs of frosty breath, came the husky reply in a broad, comforting Yorkshire accent. "Still on the fores' road, it ain't been too long since we pulled outta t' man-oor back there. I 'spected ye to sleep the whole way home, but ye can't be sleepin' like a windmill on seats like them that's in these carriages. Narrow, they are. Ye'll fall right off, but then I guess ye already knows that now, child?"
He chuckled, and Lydia hummed in assent, sitting back down in the carriage seat, but leaving the window open. She could picture him sitting up there, steering the horses, facing the dark. He would be buried in his greatcoat to keep out the Spring chill, but his big red nose and large chapped hands would be prominently visible as he moved them through the forest night. He would not be afraid, either; he had not been afraid when he'd pulled into the Phantomhive manor earlier this evening, the way that most people were upon arrival. Thoms Weatherstaff was far too practical a man to allow himself to fear 'anythin' not worth two beats o' my heart.' This was one of the reasons why she'd arranged to have him come and retrieve her upon the evening on this very important day. He was as reliable and strong a neighbor as anyone could ever ask for.
"So, child, how went it tonight?"
Lydia stilled and clutched the cushioned edges of the carriage seat with her small, tanned fingers. "….As well as any unexpected family reunion after almost five years' absence can be expected to proceed, I suppose."
"Ah." Thoms intoned lowly into the night. "But it weren't a bad homecoming, methinks. Am I right? Those fair-off folk didn't want ye t' leave when I pulled in fer ye on this fine evenin', sure enough."
"That's true." She replied honestly. They hadn't. Ciel and Madame Red had protested most strongly when she had informed them of her arrangements to return home this night. They had offered a multitude of rooms for her to spend the night in, and declared that she'd only just got back and she ought to stay awhile. The concerned looks on their faces had made her want to say yes, but she had graciously, gently, said no. For one thing, her father would be desperate with worry if she did not come home tonight like they had planned. She did not want to put him through that. And furthermore….she did not want to put herself through those memories. Lydia pulled her shawl closer around her body, turning to stare out the window once more. She knew that there was a deeper, more troubling reason that she felt so averse to staying the night at Phantomhive manor. However, she had no desire to delve into it on her first day back. Not with anyone. Not even with herself.
/
Back at the manor that night, the silence of the grave had taken over the noble property. The dead patriarch of the aristocratic Phantomhive family lay stiff in his winding sheets upon the cooling table in the cellar, but no one inside the household had a thought to spare for him. The majority of the still-remaining guests' thoughts and dreams were centered around the hopeful influx of money. Down in the servants' quarters, the human help was mainly concerned with the anticipation of the many chores to be done the next day, and with the worry that the young master had grown more distant over the past few days. Especially today. Today, he had barely known how to speak.
Upstairs in the manor halls, a red-haired woman stood quietly in the middle of an out-of-the-way room down an obscure hallway, surrounded by framed paintings covered in cloths. She had peeled the cover off of a single one only, and the eyes that stared back into hers were bright blue and beautiful, tinged with a hint of sadness in the lovely depths. Bosom heaving, the living woman stared for a long time into the face of her oil-and-canvas sister. "It's your wedding portrait, Rachel." Her voice cracked loudly across the silent room. "Your wedding. Why do you look so sad?"
Across the manor, the diminutive figure of a young boy lay curled up in his expansive bed, staring at the ceiling. His nightshirt had slipped down off of his right shoulder, and one of his hands was absentmindedly rubbing the back of that shoulder, where, emblazoned in the pale flesh, was a dim scar that had never quite gone away. It was not long, but it was deep, and as he touched it, he remembered everything about the night he had received it. The terror was with him still, and he suddenly wished that the room had more light. "Why did you do it?" he murmured to the ceiling, to the scar, to her. "Why did you do any of it? What was the point in caring so much?"
Down at the bottom of the stairwell, concealed behind the entrance to a hallway that led to nowhere, a tall, dark figure was sitting upright on his bed. His pale face was deep, deep in thought, and in his bare right hand he held a golden watch, a perfect circle. The chain was wrapped around his wrist as he delicately clicked it open, bringing it closer to his red eyes. Above the symbols of time, which told the demon that it was very late, was a single word, inscribed in brilliant cursive writing into the inside of the golden mechanism. Sebastian. My name. Slowly, the demon shifted his shoulders and came to cradle the watch in both hands. His red eyes stared intensely at the inside of the watch, as if he expected to see an entire novel written there, telling him what he should do. Eventually, he bowed his head over the golden timepiece, unwilling to sleep even though he now possessed the fleeting ability. His voice, when he spoke, was low and rough. "Master…."
