Author's Note: IT LIIIIIIIVES. I feel like this fic is my boo who I keep cheating on with BBC Sherlock and Inception, then come crawling back to, "Baby, it meant nothing, I swear I won't do it again," and it keeps taking me back like a fool. You and me, IC, I won't stray again!
I can't apologise enough for the ridiculous wait for an update. I could make a ton of excuses, but the gist is that I had a lot of trouble keeping up with college this year and needed to put that first. In the hiatus, blazing-eyes over on DA drew a stunning bit of fanart for the fic. If you haven't seen it, there's a link on my profile, go and check it out!
As always, thank you to everybody who has added this story to their alerts, favourites and left a review. It's all very much appreciated :) If you're still interested in the story (and bros, would not blame you for fucking it off by this point) then there's going to be another nine or ten chapters. The end is in sight and I'm sure as hell going to get there!
Chapter Twenty-One
"Beast, can ya – yeah, thanks." Joker grunted in poorly masked discomfort as she manoeuvred his mangled left arm through the sleeve of his sweatshirt. Even after Jumbo's careful tending, it was touch and go on the healing front, and the gentlest of movements could ignite a burst of agony. The jagged clump of skin at his forearm and the ropes of tendons stubbornly holding the bones together were a breeding ground for infection, exposed and vulnerable. Even though a good half a year had passed now with only a few scares, Joker still couldn't shake his fear that one morning he would wake up to find the skin darkening with rot.
"Should I get Jumbo? He's still sleepin', but –" Beast began, her delicate features haunted by an ever-lingering worry. It struck Joker then that he could no longer remember what her face looked like without that shadow of concern. The thought was not one that pleased him.
"Nah, m'fine. Much rather have a pretty girl dressin' me." Joker grinned, dropping an eyelid in a wink that he knew would bring the colour to her cheeks. As dependable as clockwork, she flushed predictably, trying and failing to pretend that the offhand comment didn't effect her like it did. There was nothing shy about the way she went on to strip him of his pyjama bottoms, however. As clinical and detached as she could be, a bedside manner to put Angela to shame. She was trying to spare his dignity, he knew, but she failed just as badly at that as she had in trying to hide her blush.
Dignity was nothing more than a half-forgotten dream to him now. It had been stripped away with every hack of the blade, stolen as easily as the skin of his arm, well beyond his lame reach. They had rendered him a weeping child, cowering from them as an infant would the shadows beneath its bed. Beast could be as clinical and nonchalant about the entire affair as she liked, but just the fact that he even needed her help to so much as dress himself left him bristling. Twenty one years of age, yet hardly able to pull up his own pants, let alone tie the drawstring around his waist. Humiliation had him as ready to flush as Beast. The pain of his arm stung, but his inability to dress alone, to face a mirror without cringing away as though it could actually harm him, it was those things that made Joker seethe.
"So," Beast worried her bottom lip between her teeth, bringing it to a bright red that no stick of lipgloss could hope to emulate, "Drocell has gotten worse. A fever, Snake said, when I could get him to say anything at all."
"Oh?" Joker hummed non-committally, focusing on lacing his shoes with one hand. He heard Beast cluck her tongue impatiently, saw her hands reach over to help, and he knocked them away. More harsh than he had intended to be, if the way she jerked back was anything to go by. Instantly an apology was on his lips, the words ready to spill forth when he met her wounded gaze, but he found himself swallowing it down as his mood further soured. The lace slipped between his fingers yet again, and he found himself in no mood to apologize. "All he can do is sleep it off. We don't exactly have medicine hidden between the couch cushions, y'know."
Her dark eyes brightened with a flash of annoyance, yet no sharp words were thrown his way. Before he had been taken, when he was everyone's untouchable defender, she would not have shied away from giving him a good hard slap around the back of the head. C'mon, I'm bein' a prick, say somethin'! But no, these days every conversation had her walking on eggshells, so afraid of saying the wrong thing. She should have known him better than that. She should have known better than to be so tentative, to measure her every word so carefully. It had him itching for a fight, lashing out to provoke a reaction. He wanted her fierce, he wanted her to call him out when he was being insufferable. If she didn't tell him off, how was he supposed to know when he was acting wrong? He couldn't stand this, being handled with kid gloves.
"I know that," Beast replied carefully, so very carefully, doing her best to sound diplomatic, "But we've always been good at improvising. We sorted Smile out that time –"
"Staff helped, not the same," Joker cut in, tongue peeking through his lips as he concentrated on trying to loop one of the laces around the other. Yet again the little white strings dropped away from his grip, and he growled beneath his breath. Beast reached out once more but he stopped her with a glare. She looked even more frustrated than him, if that were possible. Always so eager to help, so desperate to be useful, but he was in less a mood to play nice by the minute.
"Yeah, well … I can't see Sebastian putting himself out there for Drocell, can you?" If she kept gnawing away at her lip like that, she was going to bleed it. It was already purpling beneath her teeth. Her nails were digging in where she was clutching her arms around her too, little pink welts imprinted on her skin. Joker wanted to pull her hands away before she scratched herself again – there were already ragged red lines along her arms, her fretting was always so obvious – but he needed the only hand he had to finish tying his damn shoe. It had been five minutes now, and he still hadn't done even one. "We at least need to keep his temperature down or else he'll end up in the infirmary."
That was playing dirty, mentioning the infirmary, and maybe Beast wasn't being careful with him so much as she was being strategic. That was better, so much better, that hint of calculation in her eyes. She knew how to play him, she always had. Play on his worry, play on his sympathies. Pluck on his strings until she got the sound she wanted. Nothing good ever came from a visit to Doctor and his little den. If he sat there, festering in his own temper, only for Drocell to disappear and not come back – well, he'd have to deal with guilt then too, and that was the last thing he needed on his plate.
Beast was fighting down a smirk. Abandoning his shoe, he reached out for her, prying one of her hands away from her arm before she could do herself any more damage, and pulled her down beside him on the bed. He couldn't help the smile pulling at his own lips. Who'd have thought emotional manipulation could ever be a good sign? At least she wasn't treating him like a landmine. Beast still had bite when she thought it mattered.
"I'll talk to Snake, make sure he knows to monitor Drocell's temp. Watch out for any sign that he's hallucinatin' – if it reaches that point, the infirmary may be the only way to go – but fingers crossed he won't be that bad. We'll take turns checkin' in on them throughout the day. Alright?"
Beast graced him with a smile, leaning her shoulder against his companionably and twining their fingers together for a brief moment before going to kneel down in front of him.
"Don't understand why you're fine with me getting your pants on but you're getting so pissy over your shoes," she muttered as she laced them up with ease, then immediately rolled her eyes before Joker even had the chance to make a salacious comment.
In truth, Joker's poor mood could not be entirely blamed on this still foreign helplessness. Obviously that played a part – it was disarming, no pun intended, going from being able to do everything for yourself to needing assistance tying your shoes – but today it had more today with Drocell. No sooner had his name left Beast's mouth had the thought what does it have to do with me flashed through his mind. It was heartless, yes, but it was also his automatic reaction to the other patient's plights these days. After all, it had been his attempt to look out for Peter that had landed him in that mess in the first place. He'd have to be mad to go through that and not feel his self-preservation instinct more keenly.
Joker wasn't sure when or why he had become the leader of the patients. He certainly hadn't applied for the dangerous position, that was for sure. There was no doubt in his mind that that was how staff and fellow patients alike saw him, as nonsensical as it seemed to him. Unlike Smile, he was not the most knowledgeable regarding the Institute, nor was he the longest residing there. And unlike Peter and Wendy, he was not the oldest amongst them, so did not have that natural seniority that commanded respect. Yet, despite his age and years of residence not being nearly as impressive as some of the others, it had been him that the rest of the patients had fallen in line behind. Him they looked to for guidance and protection. Him they put in a position of prominence when to survive you needed to be invisible.
The truth of the matter was that he hated them for it. Most days it was only a little. Just a slight pang in his chest when he looked at them, hidden safely in his shadow. Other days, when he woke up sweating from the pain and unable to even step into the bathroom from the fear that he may glimpse his reflection, that pang became a searing burn deep inside his chest, one that threatened to scald him from the inside out. He had never asked for this and it wasn't fair. Where was his shield, when they were busy hiding behind him? Smile had come for him back then, it was true, but even then, he came too late to spare him the staff's attack. And what had the others done, his little clique, apart from sit around and fret? He knew what they would have expected him to do for them if the situation had been reversed. To come for them, of course, to save them like some knight in shining armour. Well, Joker was sorry to disappoint, but a threadbare sweatshirt made poor armour, and it had done little to protect him.
It was too easy to let himself resent them, but he was not the type of man who held grudges. For all that he wished they wouldn't depend on him so much, and for all the hate he felt in quiet moments alone, they were the closest thing he had or would ever have to a family. Intermittent hate was just a part of that, he supposed. No family was without its strife. So when they came through the other end of a bad treatment and needed comfort or entertainment, he would supply it without hesitation or even needing to be asked.
That was exactly why, he supposed, the reason they rallied behind him. The moment any of the other patients – his brothers and sisters, in bond rather than blood – were reaching their limits, his resentment at being their human shield dissolved and made way for concern. He couldn't help reaching out to them, his only allies, whether they wanted it or not. Not just his little group, the ones he surrounded himself with on a daily basis, but the stragglers too. Smile, Soma, Drocell, Snake and even Alois, they were all just as important to him, even if he didn't see as much of them as he did the others. Drocell and Snake had each other, tucked away in corners and consumed in their own joint world. Soma was impossible to fix down to a spot, to hold still long enough to have a conversation with, but he flitted in and out as he pleased. Smile, well, Smile cared more than he let on. Then there was Alois.
From the moment Alois Trancy had been led onto the ward, dull-eyed and silent, small fist clutching at Dr. Faustus' sleeve like a lifeline, Joker had known to be wary. There had been something in him that had made Joker want to recoil, an emptiness to the boy's features that spooked him. This first impression had only been confirmed over the years. Prone to sudden tempers, smiling too easily for it to be genuine and with an appalling violent streak, Joker was not too proud to admit that Alois scared him. And sometimes, as cruel as it seemed, he looked upon Alois and wondered if perhaps St. Victoria's was the perfect place for him to be. For a person who had no qualms about plunging his fingers into an innocent person's eye, these walls seemed the safest place for him, and for everybody else to be safe from him, too.
As keen as that fear was at times, it didn't change the fact that Alois was as much a victim as the rest of the patients, and Joker's brother in the asylum too. For all that Joker resented his role of leader, he did nothing to refute it, playing the part as well as he could. From that vantage point, he saw more than the other patients did regarding one another. He noticed when Wendy was staring blankly to her side, looking for someone who was no longer there. He noticed when Dagger was climbing the walls and needed to escape the group for a while. He even noticed when Freckles had missed a night of sleep, as much as she tried to hide the fact from the others. So it did not escape his watch that Alois and Smile, once joined at the hip, however reluctantly on Smile's part, were now actively avoiding one another.
It made Joker worry. A lot.
To even the blindest of people, the cause of their sudden distance would have been blatant, the eye-patch that Smile had been wearing for four years now a testament to the forever lingering tension between the two friends. To see how close they had become, nobody would have guessed that it was Alois himself who was the reason that Smile had lost his eye, but Joker had seen the attack himself. The cause was the same then as it was now; Dr. Claude Faustus.
Smile had done nothing to provoke Alois other than being the unwilling recipient of Faustus' attention. Unlike most of the other patients, Smile had not approached Alois, not extended friendship only to be met with aggression and spite. Nearly all of them had attempted to welcome Alois into their good graces, but he had done nothing to ingratiate himself into the group, and as it stood, Joker was the only one still trying to make a connection. A part of him hoped that the others would follow his lead, as futile as that was. But even Joker threw in the towel after Alois, seeing Smile returned to the ward following a session with Faustus, launched himself at the smaller boy without provocation. It didn't last long. No sooner had he knocked Smile to the ground and sunk his fingers into Smile's right eye had Soma, not frozen in shock like the rest of them, bounded over and flung Alois away.
Alois had visited The Room for the first time following that incident, and he hadn't returned quite the same person, but by that point, none of the patients were willing to show even a modicum of care. Aggression and spite were one thing, expected even, and they could have forgiven it. But to attack another patient, one of them, there should have been no forgiving that. And yet.
"If you were trying to kill me, your execution needs work." Smile, half his face hidden by thick white bandages, had approached Alois without hesitation the moment he had seen him curled up in one of the armchairs. The Room had done a number on the blond, left him trembling and jumping at every noise, a shadow of the angry little thing he had been only a week before. He tensed when Smile stood before him, as though preparing himself for a blow, but he wasn't to know just yet that Smile never wounded with a fist when he could with a word.
"I … " Alois began, even that small sound so weak and trembling, but he had nothing to say. He just stared at Smile warily, bracing himself for however Smile intended to get back at him. The other inhabitants of the leisure room were doing much the same, watching curiously. Even Joker wasn't sure he'd intervene if it came to blows.
"The throat would have been a better bet. This was more of an annoyance than actually life threatening," Smile continued when Alois didn't reply, words so casual that he could have been discussing the weather rather than his near-blinding, "Relax. If I were going to do something back, I'd have done it already."
The words obviously weren't a comfort to Alois, who only curled in upon himself more, staring at Smile with barely veiled fear. That seemed to amuse Smile, who came as close as he ever did to actually smiling, despite his namesake.
"Well, that's not entirely true," he sneered with a mean little laugh, "I already did. I can see you enjoyed your little trip to The Room."
Alois startled at that, finally showing something other than fear. Joker wasn't sure what it was he saw in Alois' face then, surprise certainly, but something else too. When Alois said, "You had them take me there? But … how?" Joker identified it as sounding almost admiring.
"Faustus can be accommodating, especially when he's looking to please. At least when it comes to me. But you noticed that already." Smile's lip curled wryly. "Take it as a warning. I'm rather attached to the other eye, I'd hate to lose that one too."
Joker wasn't sure what he had expected next, but it was not Alois breaking down into a giggling fit. For the first time since he had arrived on the ward, Alois looked exactly his age, snorting childishly as though the threat was the funniest joke he'd ever heard. Smile waited him out, annoyance becoming obvious as his threat lost its bluster, but eventually Alois subsided and Smile could speak again.
"Come on," Smile inclined his head, a demand to be followed, "You need to get that cut cleaned. If it gets infected, you'll be sent to the infirmary. You think The Room's bad, just wait until you see there."
Alois observed Smile with blatant mistrust, "Why … are you helping me?"
Smile rolled his eye, still managing to make it scathing despite its effectiveness being halved, "Patients have to stick together, genius," and then turned to walk away. It was about as warm as Smile generally got, Joker knew. The now one-eyed boy had not even glanced behind him, sure in the knowledge that Alois would be following. And follow he did, however uncertainly.
If you had told Joker then how attached to Smile that Alois would become, he wouldn't have believed it. Smile was hardly kind to him, more mocking than anything else, and comfort was not in his repertoire. Yet a friendship had formed, however unlikely, and one that had endured the years. Until now. Just as it had been Faustus' favour back then that had caused Alois to snap, it was that same blatant favouritism that had driven a wedge between them now. Unlike the past few years, however, Alois was not putting it aside, and Smile no longer cared enough to make even a token effort, it would seem.
Joker couldn't say that he liked Alois. Even if Smile had put the attack behind him – Joker had no doubt in his mind that there was some ulterior motive to that, in the first place – Joker could never quite forget it. There was a feral quality to Alois' anger, and it was the sort of anger that could never quite be tamed. It put them all at risk and that frightened Joker. And yet, Joker worried now. He saw them drifting, pushing away from each other like the opposite poles of a magnet, and he couldn't shake the concern.
Smile had people. He may not have wanted them, may have acted as though his and Soma's company was irritating and undesired, that even Freckles pushed her luck, but he never put forth more than an obligatory complaint about it. Whether he wanted them or not, Smile was not alone. He never had been, really. For all his aloofness, he had a quality that drew people in, even when his sharp tongue half-succeeded in keeping them at a distance.
Alois had no such quality. He was brash and unpredictable, capable of dangerous violence, and all the patients had brushed him off as not worth the effort. Even Joker had. The only one who had given him the time of day had been Smile, but he didn't even have that any more.
Alois was alone, and Joker couldn't find it in himself to be alright with that.
Dagger's singing was grossly out of key. To compare it to strangling a cat would have perhaps been too harsh, but something less fatal certainly, like yanking the unfortunate cat's tail. It was an old nursery rhyme they had heard time and time again, to some generic tune that didn't really match the syllables, and it was getting on everybody's last nerve.
"Shut ya hole, Dagger! I've 'eard better sound from a flushin' toilet," Wendy snapped, whipping one of the couch cushions over at him. Joker tried not to roll his eyes, but it was hard work. Of course now Dagger was only screeching louder to annoy Wendy, skipping out of reach of any projectiles launched his way.
They'd been inside too long. There was nothing new to talk about. You could almost see the restless frustration tattooed upon their skin.
"Should I break this up, or …" Joker offered half-heartedly, about as enthusiastic as the cook sounds when enquiring into an inmate's last dinner. Wendy had bolted from her seat now, given chase, but there was none of the usual playfulness.
They were jumping the walls. Scratching away inside their skulls. Sometimes Joker thought it would be the boredom of all things that would finish them off.
"Nah, leave them to it," Beast sounded as lively as he did, picking away at one of her nails, "Either he'll shut up or Wendy'll finally calm down. She's been impossible, this week."
Wendy was always impossible these days, but Joker didn't bother to say it.
Looking away from the Benny Hill scene in front of him, Joker glanced over his shoulder towards Alois' bedroom door, firmly closed as it had been all morning. Well past noon now, well past the time Alois usually emerged, but no sign of the younger boy.
"Be back in a minute," Joker said, peeling himself from the couch. He'd been waiting all morning but it didn't look like Alois was coming out under his own steam. Well, if the fight wasn't coming to him then Joker would have to go to the fight.
Raising his good hand to knock on the door, a sound from within gave Joker pause. Confusion pulling his face into a frown, he lowered his hand and leaned forward instead, trying to hear better through the wood. It was the low hum of conversation, the words indistinguishable yet the voice in full flow, Alois' soft tone carrying. He turned, took note of who was in the room, whose doors were closed, who he knew to be off the ward. It was a full house, everyone accounted for, so who was Alois talking to?
The worry in the pit of Joker's stomach was becoming something altogether more sickly. He rapped sharply on the door before the voice telling him to walk away started to sound even more reasonable than it already did. Instantly, the dull murmur through the wood ceased, as though somebody had pressed the mute button.
There was a brief scuffle from within, muffled footsteps heading his way, and the door finally opened. Alois barely peered out, the door held open only a crack, just enough to see wary blue eyes watching him.
"What?" No hello, no how are you. Not that Joker was expecting a warm reception, but the open hostility coming from the boy in waves was unwarranted. He looked as ready to slam the door in Joker's face as he was to talk to him.
"Hey." Joker threw up a grin, as warm as he could muster, and stood back half a step. He had never cut an imposing figure – too short, too scrawny, and now too visibly weak – but he was trying to dial that down even further. Hand casually in his pocket, leaning away, giving Alois space. Everything about him was screaming not a threat. "Been a while since we last saw you. Just checkin' you're not dead or anythin'."
The look Alois gave him could only be described as scathing, a look of disdain that would have done Smile proud.
"I'm alive," he drawled in a tone you'd be more likely to hear from Smile than him, the words dripping in scorn. His lip twitched, as though he wanted to smile, and he gave a darting glance behind him.
"Yep, I can see that," Joker replied, trying not to sound as loathe to be having this conversation as Alois was. They were hardly the best of friends, but he couldn't help but be surprised by the degree of dislike he was finding here. Alois was hardly a prize himself.
"... Bye," Alois said pointedly, making to close the door. Joker found himself blocking the way, jamming his foot between the door and the frame. Something wasn't right, something really wasn't right. He didn't know what, but he couldn't just leave it at that. Whether he'd wanted it or not, the fact remained that Joker had a responsibility towards the other patients. If it had been one of the others, he wouldn't walk away so easily. He couldn't treat Alois as anything less than them.
"What are you – move," Alois huffed, pulling the door back to shove it against Joker's foot. Biting back a wince, Joker took the opportunity to look over his shoulder, to see his completely empty room.
"You've been cooped up in there all day. How about you come sit with us for a bit, kiddo?" Joker offered, ignoring the increased urgency of that voice in his head. Walk away. This one's too far gone. Leave it. It would have been so easy to listen to it, but would it be just as easy to sleep that night if he did?
It proved irrelevant, regardless, as Alois' look of mistrust only intensified. Was it that out of character, Joker wondered with a pang, for him to show an interest in Alois? Could Alois see nothing more in such an act than reason to be suspicious?
"I'd rather not," Alois replied, edging Joker's foot out of the way and shoving the door closed before he could stop him.
For a moment, Joker just stood there and stared at the door, an uncomfortable churning in his stomach. Whether it was guilt or just concern, he didn't know, but it didn't seem to matter either way. As the murmuring behind the door started up again, Alois talking to thin air, it seemed to Joker that he had extended the olive branch that little bit too late.
Hating himself for it a little as he always did, Joker once again wondered if maybe Alois really did belong at St. Victoria's.
The chairs were designed to be just that little bit too small to effectively wedge under the door handle, but Alois tried it anyway, the illusion of a barricade good enough for him. He waited until he could no longer see the shadow through the crack under his door before he spoke again.
"Sorry about that." Turning with a bright grin, Alois returned his attention back to Luka, sitting cross-legged on top of the sheets. His features, so similar to Alois' but softened by youth, were painted with a shock so extreme it would have seemed exaggerated on anybody else.
"Who was that?" Luka whispered. He always seemed to whisper, Alois found, as though every word was a secret just for him. It was a stark contrast to the loud exuberance he remembered, but then, death changed everyone.
"Joker," Alois shrugged, "Don't know what he wanted though. He never talks to me usually."
Reclaiming his spot at the head of the bed, Alois settled himself against the pillow, encouraging Luka to lie back down with his head on Alois' knee. The warmth against his leg was a comfort, grounding and real, chasing away that wicked voice at the back of his mind that said things he didn't want to hear.
"But, his arm." Luka's eyes were wide, words so heavy with disbelief that it was a wonder they carried across the air between them. "What was wrong with it?"
It was only too easy to slip into the old habit. A story barely formed in his head before it fell from his lips, Alois concocted an explanation from thin air, a story of fantasy that would appeal to all of Luka's favourite storybook qualities.
"You have to promise not to tell," Alois began, as he always did.
"Promise!" Luka cried, earnest.
"Because if you tell, the curse will spread." A promise, a tantalising thread for his brother to pull at, and without fail, he did.
"What curse?" Wide-eyed, believing every word he was given. It was one of the things Alois had missed the most, the absolute single-minded attention he received, as though his words were the only truth that mattered, Alois the only thing in the world that counted. And he was, wasn't he? Right now, in that room, Luka existed solely for him. Defying all logic, Luka had come back just so that Alois wouldn't have to be alone any more, and no one could ever steal him away again.
"The demon's curse. No one knows exactly why the demon came for Joker, or what Joker did to anger it so badly, but every year since they met, the curse has taken over bit by bit. At first, no one noticed, because it was inside stuff. He'd get in real bad moods, or get sad for no reason, and no one could see it. But then the curse got more powerful, and now you can see it happening. It's burning him away. Bit, by bit, it'll go, until he's nothing but a skeleton!"
Just like Luka gave power to the lies Alois was throwing out by his faithful belief, he gave power to Alois, too. His very existence, seeing him there, hearing him, being able to touch him, it made Alois powerful in a way he had never been before at St. Victoria's. It was Alois who had brought Luka back to him through sheer force of will, by the power of his want. Why would he ever want to leave that room, give up that power he had never experienced before, lose the rapt attention he was being given for the first time in years? Outside that door, there was nothing for him. But inside, it was just him and Luka, like it had always been. Like it always should have been.
"Do you mind?"
Snake jolted as though he had been struck. Always timid, it seemed that quality had become exacerbated to its extreme, the man's eyes haunted as he looked up at Ciel. For all his usual lack of colour, there was a sickliness to him now, one that inspired the instinct to keep a distance lest whatever it was be contagious. Having already ignored that instinct and his own usual aversion to talking to people and just generally caring, Ciel stood his ground and gestured to the empty seat beside Snake's own.
After a hesitation so long that anyone else would have been insulted, Snake gave the barest incline of his head, so Ciel sunk into the armchair languidly.
It was loud in the leisure room that day. Joker and his usual lot were playing a game or arguing, difficult to tell the difference with them, while Soma shouted a colourful commentary from his perch on the other side of the room. Grell and Ronald were monitoring the ward, so naturally, they were worse than the actual patients, bickering over the artistic merit of the Titanic film. Secretly, Ciel agreed with Ronald that Leonardo Dicaprio being attractive didn't constitute a good film, but it would have taken a braver man than him to try and sail that against Grell.
With the noise being what it was, it was a wonder that Snake had braved the room at all, especially without his faithful shadow to keep him company. But then, maybe the noise was better than the silence of his empty room.
Ciel waited patiently, quiet coming easily to him. Snake was fiddling with something around his wrist, a touch-tarnished chain, with a fleur-de-lis pendant dangling perilously off its cheap clasp. The kind of trinket one would find in a supermarket goody bag, but one that Ciel knew Drocell had treated like the most valuable gold.
"Ash took him this morning," Snake eventually murmured, voice soft and weary, "Said he might infect the rest of us."
Ciel had assumed as much, but it was always better to hear it from the horse's mouth than to operate on assumptions. Though all it took was one look at Snake to see what was going on. Without Drocell at his side, he seemed like only half the picture, missing the broad outlines that contained his colours. He wasn't trying to hide his fragility at all, something that made Ciel uncomfortable despite himself. For all that they were broken by default, the patients usually took cares to hide it, put on fronts and appeared strong, at least to some degree. Snake was making no such effort, the one person he would have bothered to do so for now the reason he would have needed to in the first place, and when he next looked up at Ciel, it was with a plea in his pale eyes. For comfort, reassurance, neither of which Ciel knew how to give.
Instead of empty platitudes, Ciel just nodded, letting them lapse back into silence. When long enough had passed that it didn't feel like running away, he excused himself and retreated back to his bedroom. It was easy to pretend that he didn't notice Snake's disappointed gaze following him as he left.
"Grell has Ronald in a headlock," Sebastian informed Ciel as he kicked the bedroom door shut behind him, cutting off the undignified squawking going on in the leisure room, "Something about Gangs of New York?"
"Don't ask, you don't want to know. Neither do I, for that matter." Ciel tossed aside the dog-eared paperback, read so many times he could have recited it word for word by that point, to favour Sebastian with his attention instead. His nose wrinkled as an unpleasant but familiar smell followed Sebastian across the room. "What is that?"
"Hm?" Sebastian seemed distracted. Stretched out on Ciel's bed, he looked in almost as bad a state as Snake had done earlier, pallid and whipcord tense. His brow was wrinkled, frustration or exhaustion, or possibly both. He was in his uniform, the button down shirt and slacks now heavily creased, but he hadn't been on the ward at all. It must have been a Ward V day, then. That explained the less than talkative mood, at least.
"Never mind." Ciel wandered over to his desk, busying himself with pretending to rearrange things, just to put some distance between him and the pungent smell. He knew that smell, that sense of deja vu dancing just beyond his memory's reach. "How did it go?"
"On a scale of one to ten? Eleven." Even his voice sounded like it wanted to turn off the lights and go to sleep. "It was with Doctor today. Can't believe I ever thought he was decent. Tried to get me to burn them all day. No rhyme, no reason, just wanted me to scald them."
"Did you?" Ciel asked.
That sparked a reaction.
"No," Sebastian hissed, throwing him an affronted glare. A nerve had been hit, clearly. Not in the mood for any arguments, Ciel just shrugged, the closest thing to an apology one would get from him. "I just kept saying no, and he just kept demanding I do it. Got fed up when I didn't and started doing it himself."
Ciel repressed the sudden urge to touch his back, hands curling into fists as the base of his spine tingled uncomfortably. He knew that smell, the smell of seared and melting flesh, the way it clung inside the nostrils sickly sweet. Now he'd recognised it, there was no trying to ignore the way it was filling the room, like water filling a glass to the brim.
"Sebastian, c'mere." Sebastian sighed but followed him obediently into the bathroom. His eyebrows climbed up to his hairline when Ciel closed the door over behind them and said, "Clothes off, get in the bath."
After a stunned moment of pause, Sebastian came back with a shit-eating grin, "Well, it's certainly an improvement on the lolly-pop trick, but there's something to be said for foreplay."
"You're easy enough without foreplay," Ciel tossed back, "But that's not what I meant. You're taking a shower. I can't have that smell around me, it's knocking me sick. Go on, get in. You can even use my soap."
Sebastian's grin had dropped, the exhaustion back as though it had never left." Well, aren't you good to me." Despite his words and the less than happy tone, he did as he was told, stripping down with unnecessary flourish and climbing into the tub. His silhouette against the mucky white shower curtain looked awkward however, lacking in the usual grace Sebastian possessed, though that may have just been due to how aware he was that Ciel was making no moves to leave the bathroom. Not that he was keen on peeping, but if anyone heard his shower going and saw he wasn't in there, questions would be raised and assumptions that hit too close to the truth would be made.
True to Ciel's thoughts, Sebastian was only too aware that Ciel was still there, could probably see every move of his arms and shift of his body through the cheap plastic curtain. It was nothing like shyness he felt at that knowledge. For all the many things Sebastian was, shy had never been one of them, and he quite liked the lingering looks Ciel had begun giving him since their little liaisons had begun almost two months ago. No, not shyness, but definitely a sense of discomfort. Any other time and he would have continued the salacious comments, goading Ciel into backhanded attempts at flirtation, egging him on into climbing into the shower with him.
But not today. Today, his head was too full of the Ward V patient's screams. Any thought of touching Ciel was twisting into his hand holding a scorching metal rod against Ciel's skin instead. Sebastian may not have buckled beneath Doctor's insistence and done as ordered, but the patient's hollow eyes looked at him with unrestrained fear anyway, and even that was better than the utter emptiness of the other patients, already too far gone. He hadn't held them down and scorched their flesh, but their screams had been just as much for him as they had been for Doctor anyway.
Skin scrubbed a flushed and tender pink, Sebastian finally shut off the shower, fingers pruned and the air around him billowing with steam. He made to pull back the curtain, accept the towel he could see Ciel's shadow waiting to offer, but found himself pausing. The curtain was like a barrier, all of a sudden. A safe shield that he was hiding behind. It made it easy for the words to slip out of him, now that he didn't have to see the look on Ciel's face when he heard them.
"I thought about it." The words were little more than a whisper, a shameful confession that barely pierced the barrier of the shower curtain. "Patient V2, it was. A woman. She must have been pretty once. She's a screamer. Loudest of the lot, even when you aren't touching her at all. I actually considered it, Ciel. Just … hurting her, for no reason at all, just so that I could get off that ward."
Sebastian wasn't sure what to expect as a response, telling another patient something like that. Yelling, disgust, to be kicked out on his ear and told to never speak to Ciel again. They were all likely, each as justified a response as the last, but Ciel did none of those things.
Pulling back the curtain, Ciel perched on the side of the bath, paying no mind to Sebastian's bareness. He wasn't even looking at him, eye trained on the far wall with a sightless vacancy.
"Nothing wrong with considering things." Despite the weight of the subject, Ciel's voice was casual, flippant even. "I consider things all the time. A few years ago, I seriously considered smothering Soma with one of the couch cushions, just so that he'd finally leave me alone. He was always chattering away, seemed the only way to get him to shut up. I once stole one of Faustus' pens – hid it in the waistband of my pants – and sat there for hours considering jamming it into the eye I had left. And when you first got here, I considered using you to get out of here. Didn't even care how. I would have used you as a goddamn trampoline to jump over the wall, if it came down to that. I didn't care what it would have meant for you, if they'd have locked you up in my place. Didn't consider the consequences at all.
"Thinking about things doesn't hurt anyone, Sebastian. It even helps, having a back-up plan, a safety net just in case everything goes to hell. Knowing there's an alternative keeps you sane. There's nothing wrong with it, so long as that's all it is – a thought."
Sebastian slid down to sit in the tub, meeting Ciel's look when he finally took his eye off the wall. There was understanding there, certainly, but more than anything, it was a warning. The threat in his expression was belied by the gentleness as Ciel threaded his hand through Sebastian's hair, combing the wet strands back from his face.
"The point is, you didn't harm V2. You thought about it, yes, maybe even wanted to, but you didn't. That right there is the distinction. That's what separates you from the rest of the staff."
Ciel's hand tightened in his hair, tugging almost painfully, and Sebastian heard the unspoken end of that sentence; keep it that way. Biting back the smirk itching at his lips, he let himself slump forward, resting his forehead against Ciel's back. He felt Ciel tense all over, a lick of satisfaction going through him when the tension was forced away and Ciel didn't move, didn't push off. He did remove his hand, twisted behind his back now that Sebastian had moved, letting it rest on his shoulder instead.
It wasn't with the same trepidation as before that Sebastian spoke again.
"This wasn't the first time I've thought about it. That place is like hell, Ciel. The heat, the smells, all that screaming. Everything about it tears at you, gets under your skin. Even though I'm out of there now, I can still hear them. I think about it, and I think about making them be quiet, that maybe then the screaming will stop. And – it scares me. That I'm capable of thinking that. And I wonder if that's how the other staff got started. Maybe they started off like me, but they wanted to stop the screaming too? And I have to wonder, how long until the thoughts become something dangerous, until what I'm considering starts to seem less monstrous?"
Ciel still didn't pull away, fingers fiddling with the collar of Sebastian's shirt restlessly, but he was silent for a while before he spoke again. The threat was gone from his words by then, and with it, worry that Sebastian hadn't even realized he was holding evaporated too.
"I can understand that. It's … difficult, to be teetering on that line. I've been wavering between the two extremes for longer than I can remember." Ciel twisted around to look at him, something in his expression that Sebastian couldn't place. "Not being able to trust yourself, it's the worst thing these people can do to you. But it doesn't mean you've lost the game just yet. It's just a matter of finding something external to depend on, something you can trust to ground you."
Sebastian caught Ciel's wrist, stilling his restless hand, holding it loosely enough that he could pull away if he wanted to, "I don't want to become like them, Ciel."
"So don't," Ciel replied, as though it could ever have been as simple as that. A pensive look flashed over his face then, something Sebastian would have called almost mischievous on anyone else, before he found himself flat on his back in the bath with Ciel straddling his naked stomach. His clothes darkened with dampness wherever their bodies met, but Ciel didn't seem to notice, scanning Sebastian's body thoughtfully before deciding on his left hand, lifting it up as though inspecting it.
Then, without so much as a token hesitation, Ciel leaned forward and bit into his hand. Sebastian had been bitten many times, in many different places, but the top of his hand was a new one. Also new was the viciousness of the bite, not the playful or flirtatious kind in the least. As Ciel's teeth sunk into his skin, Sebastian, no stranger to a bit of pain, found himself yelping in a distinctly unmanly fashion. Blood budded from the crescent welts, streaming down his arm, a concerning amount for a simple bite. The skin was well and truly broken, and some of the blood was smeared across Ciel's lips as he smiled, leaning back with an air of satisfaction. His lips stained a ghastly red, he looked downright sinister.
"You won't become one of them, Sebastian. You're not allowed to. I got to you first. And any time you think you're forgetting that, I want you to look at your hand and remember. This is my claim."
Sebastian could do nothing but stare for a long moment, tracking the drop of blood slipping over Ciel's chin hungrily, before letting out a shaky laugh. He leaned forward, bringing their faces close enough that he could feel Ciel's breath on his skin, see the alarmed twitch when Ciel thought he was going to try and kiss him. Instead, he let a hand hover around the back of Ciel's neck, wanting to touch, to pull them together, but resisting the urge, and swiped his tongue across the blood stained lower lip.
A mockery of a kiss, the best thing for the two of them.