Hi guys, I'm trying to update this as fast as possible, that way you don't all hate me for the cliffhanger at the end of the last chapter. You aren't going to believe the things that I have been through with my other laptop, my other laptop broke, at first, so I sent it off to be fixed for a week. Then apparently my laptop was sent to Texas, where it stayed for three weeks, yes ladies and gentlemen, three weeks! It wouldn't come back for another week after that when we found out that she (my laptop) was completely obsolete. It took another two weeks after that for me to go and get a new laptop, the model which I have now, that I got for my birthday. Said new laptop didn't work for another week, and I had to take it back to the shop and get again another new laptop. Then there were a couple more days until I could get the flash-drive from the old laptop with the story on it that I was really waiting for the entire time. I was missing my laptop for two months I believe so that is why I have not written the chapter. Thank you all for all of your reviews, and I'm glad that you all seemed to like that last chapter. So I'm going to stop being a blithering idiot and actually get to the story.
"Do you want to make a contract with me?" I stared at him into his red eyes.
"What do you mean? Contract?" I stood up releasing my brother's body.
"Yes." Well couldn't he explain? I gesture for him to continue. "You said you'd do anything, I can't think of anything that we can do…except, perhaps make a contract." I eyed him almost a bit suspiciously.
"What are the terms of this contract?" I was nervous and fiddled with the bottom of my dress. He sighed.
"You would enter the Faustian contract with me. Trust me, if there was any other choice other than this one I'd want you to take it. Once you enter it you cannot change your mind." I ran his sentence through my head again. I felt like I that my brain was processing things at the speed of molasses.
"The Faustian contract…." I had heard of it before. It seemed like something I had been taught if by Clara when I was very little. "Faustian…." I looked up at him when I finally realized the meaning. "You mean a deal with the devil?!" h e nodded solemnly. "B-but…. But…that would make you…." I stopped short. Sebastian smiled in spite of himself.
"I assure you I'm not the devil, I'm a demon."
"A demon…." I went over like a sack of potatoes and fell back hard into the darkness. The next time I opened my eyes I saw a pair of familiar red ones staring back worriedly.
"Catherine…Cat…are you all right?" I felt a wet cloth on my forehead. "I think she's coming around." He commented to himself.
"yes. I'm fine I'm just a little bit confused. I mean, it does take a lot out of you when you find out that your guardian is a d- d-de…d-d-de"
"Demon?" he asked delicately. I gulped.
"Yeah…that." He stood up, and removed the cloth from my forehead, moving to the bowl of water where he soaked it and wrung it out.
"You're afraid of me aren't you?" he reached toward me and I flinched "I won't hurt you." I relaxed and let him dab at one of the wounds I had sustained on my shoulder. "Just so you 're aware, Clara, she's a demon too." I laughed weakly.
"Good to know." He had cleaned up my nose for me, and looked hurt when I flinched. "I'm not afraid of you Sebastian, it's just…a lot to take in….a demon, Jesus Christ! You're a demon." I was taking the time to admit it to myself. "A demon….that makes so much sense!" he smiled a little.
"I suppose it does. If you mean my agility, though you aren't too bad yourself."
"You'd rather me have stayed out of that didn't you?" I looked up at him and pulled myself into a sitting position, my shoulder stinging and whole body sore. He nodded and rolled his eyes.
"But you never can manage to stay out of trouble can you? Or listen to a word that I say?" I blushed.
"I suppose not….so….to make a contract with you? Is that really the only way?" I can't lie to you my dear readers I was scared. To sell my soul to a demon, even if that demon was like my father….I couldn't imagine it. Ciel must've been so brave to even think about it, much less go through with such a thing. And then on top of that there was the fact that everything that I thought was a lie. I had been raised by demons and my brother was under contract with one of them too. I didn't k now what to believe anymore. I simply didn't understand. Stability was one thing that I thought I could rely on at the Phantomhive manor. Sebastian woke me up in the morning, and I had breakfast and tea with my brother, afterwards I would train with Mey-Rin, have lessons with Sebastian, or pla``y in the garden with Finny, until it was time for lunch, then at 2:00 Ciel and I would have tea together with Sebastian. I would then do whatever until dinner, and then I would take a bath, and be put to bed by Sebastian and get my goodnight kiss from one or both Sebastian and Ciel. Now all of a sudden…poof. It's gone.
"Catherine, I only find this as the last resort. I can only wish that we didn't have to do that. If there was any other way I would do it do it for you to make sure that you two were happy." He rubbed my back gently being careful around my cuts and scrapes. He ran his fingers through my hair, and had a pained look on his face. "It's okay Cat, I know that Ciel wouldn't have wanted you to."
I pushed away from him.
"I'm not just some little kid! I care about my brother, I'm not having second thoughts, like I said I would do anything to get him back, even if I have to enter a contract with you." I turned a determined look in my blue eyes. "What do I have to do?"
"I'm afraid it's not that simple, it's not just a promise, it's a binding contract. You are forced by blood to comply by the rules. Choose your words wisely Cat. Even as a demon, I wouldn't want things to end not in your favor."
"I know Sebastian." I wrapped my arms around him again, and the tears, no matter how hard that I tried to keep them in, they refused and began to slide relentlessly down my face and on to Sebastian's coat. "I know."
"Oh…no, dear, don't cry, we'll get Ciel back, I promise you, but we have to do this quickly." I nodded wiping the salty tears away from my eyes.
"I'm prepared to do whatever it takes." He ruffled my hair.
"I know you are, now about the Faustian contract, it's completely binding and there is no escape once you make it." I nodded again, understanding. "Try to word it carefully, don't get yourself tangled in too many conditions, and your wanting has to be pure for it to work, you must do this willingly."
"I do. I enter the contract willingly." The world around me faded to a blackened ash. I was falling into to complete and total suffocating darkness. The way Alice had described falling down the rabbit hole to Wonderland was nothing compared to this. It was like falling through an endless oblivion, it had no real beginning and no end. I was moving through time itself. I closed my eyes and let it be, though I was more than terrified.
Once I do this there is no way out. I reminded myself. You are not going to have second thoughts about saving your brother. Suddenly though the darkness seemed to have no end, I stopped. The bottom still wasn't visible, but I stayed where I was suspended into thin air. I was wrapped in a red blanket, or towel. White feathers fell out of the black oblivion and gathered on the unseen floor below me. A dark slithery smooth voice awoke me form the trancelike state I was stuck in. It was a familiar one, and I felt comfort, though I knew that this wasn't my Sebastian per say, it was a demon. A relentless being from hell, or at least that's what all the stories said. I was beginning to grow angry at the way they were described, as they were nothing like that. They weren't ugly disgusting creatures, they were dare I say, beautiful. More beautiful than the angel I had met anyways.
His voice broke through the darkness accompanying the pure white feathers, the only means of life and light. I could not see Sebastian even as I strained and squinted my eyes through the dark.
"Are you positive that you care to enter a contract with me?" he asked, his voice having a deeper and slightly more sinister quality.
"Yes!" I said, almost frustrated he was asking again. He chuckled.
"I could tell. You never would have even been able to enter this realm if it weren't for your pure want to do so. You should be aware though, that if you enter this contract with me, the gates of paradise will be closed to you forever."
"I understand! Now can we please get on with it! Stop playing games with me!" He chuckled again.
"So impatient, tell me, what do you wish your terms to be?"
"To bring my brother back to life before his soul has been collected and finish off the contract that you had with him. Keep him safe, and in return, I will give you my soul."
"Good, so we are agreed then, there is one last detail to consider. Your contract symbol."
"Contract symbol?"
"Your brother….he has one on his eye, the one that is hidden by his eye patch. It is proof that you have entered a contract with a demon, and the demon sports the same one, that way neither of you can get away until the contract has been completed."
"Choose where you will have the contract symbol placed, keep in mind the more prominent the symbol is, the stronger the contract." I thought.
"I'll have it placed on my left ankle on the inside." He nodded.
"Alright, I must warn you this will hurt." His pale white hand almost aglow in the dark, reached out and grasped my ankle, making me squeak in surprise, the surface of my skin grew hot, and then began to slowly burn on the edges, and then all at once, it was aflame. I felt my skin peeling off, and my blood boiling from the inside, and the blisters forming as the blood should have gone spurting out of my leg, but didn't there was no wet, sticky, thick blood clinging to my leg, as it dripped agonizingly slow to the floor, the way it had on my lower arm in the last near death experience I had been in. The pain spread through my whole leg, and I couldn't breathe, and couldn't dredge up enough energy to scream in agony, due to the excruciating pain that shot like white fire all through my leg and swarmed my entire body like a swarm of angry bees, only 15 times as powerful and lingering. I gritted my teeth, and prayed to god, to mother, to Sebastian, to anyone who could make the pain go away.
It intensified to its highest point. To the point where I did not think that I could bear it any longer, I thought I would become a pile of ash, and be swept away into the wind and never to be found or heard of again. Then like my prayer had been answered, though there was no way that even if someone heard my prayer that they would care enough to answer it After what I guess you can literally describe as going through hell, my body began to cool down, . I craned my neck to see the symbol beginning to appear. My whole body shuddered, as I went from the sickening, boiling burn on my skin, to be plunged into the freeze, the glacial bitter ice surrounded me as though I was immersed in the arctic Siberian winter. It burned all over again, in a new way. Slowly, ever so slowly the lines of my contract seal filled in. First the edges, the icy-hot burn, small as a needle's prick, and delicate, then wider filling part of the lines in, like the petals of a flower. The inside was more intricate, decorated with thin thorn-like lines, and covered at the base, like artfully curved triangles. Feminine, but definitely standing for something more than just a pretty design drawn to amuse oneself in a time of boredom. It was powerful, the lines swirled and intertwined, like a Chinese ink painting. The thorn-like edges were sharp, and turned into the middle with detail, like vines (again with thorns) into a star shaped flower.
Finally, it stopped, and I could sit up again, my whole body tingling like I was a new person. Which in a way I was. I felt powerful. Maybe this was why Ciel was so bossy all the time. How could I say that? You shouldn't mock the dead, I chastised myself in my head. I was laying on the cold wooden floor, when I opened my eyes and blinked a couple of times. I felt no different other than the lingering pain around my ankle, and the shivers running up and down my body. It took a moment for my mind to collect what had happened in the last few moments. In remembrance of my contract seal I flipped the hem of my dress to see if it really was all true. I heard Sebastian's laugh, and I looked up from the intricate contract seal.
"All of that pain you went through, and you still believe it was a dream?" I looked at him in a whole new light, and couldn't say anything. He clucked his tongue. "You silly, silly, girl." He reached out his gloved hands, and took hold of mine, half the size as his and pulled me up into a standing position. I steadied myself on my tingling legs, the left one had fallen asleep, except of course on my ankle I felt a sensation of a whole other kind. Such a sensation could not be explained to those who do not go through it, and mind you I wouldn't recommend making a contract to understand what I meant. I was dizzy in the aftermath of it all, and had to grip Sebastian's gloved hand otherwise I felt that I might fall.
"Becoming the subject of a contract…what does that mean you do, precisely?" I asked looking up at the once familiar man, my blue eyes shining in the reflection of his deep maroon ones.
"Did you not consider to ask that before you came into the contract with a demon?" I snapped my head back up to look at him worriedly. "Don't look at me so fretfully." I was still quite fretful thank you very much. How could I not be fretful when I had just made a contract with a being of the Netherworlds? He bent down to my level, and looked at me seriously. "I promise, that I will never, ever do anything to hurt you intentionally." I didn't want to, knowing the supposed nature of these creatures that came from the mouth of hell, but somewhere in my gut, the same gut that had told me to trust him when he fed me for the first time after getting run over by that 'rich boy's' carriage, and reminded me, that I could trust him. He was one hell of a butler after all.
It seems so long ago that I was an orphan, a child of the street. Granted life hadn't taken the most positive turn either. What with my older brother, and the boy I planned to marry when I had become a woman and he a man, dead. My thoughts strayed again to Finnian. The experiment. All he ever really wanted out of life was to go outside and spend time in the fresh air, among his beloved garden. Oh Finny, why did you have to leave me? You were young and so full of hope, you loved me and I loved you back. We were young, fruitfully young, but we planned to stay together for the rest of our lives. I recalled his last words to me. He told me to do whatever I needed, even if it meant that I would court many other boys. He told me to do whatever made me happy.
Perhaps, Finny is the most selfless person that I ever met. He never cared for himself, it was always, 'How're you doing Ms. Catherine', or 'I hope you're feeling well Cat, maybe we can go to the garden! If you're up to it of course.' We made each other happy. When I could get away from lessons we spent as much time together as possible. I remember when he finally told me his painful past.
*Flashback*
We were together in the shed fetching tulip bulbs and mulch when he showed me the tattoo on the back of his neck. SS102, is read. I saw it that day for the first time. I asked him about it, and the smile fell from his face.
"It's something that I got a long time ago, before I came to work here." We were alone. Anytime that the subject of past came up, he shied away from the conversation. Over time both Bard and Mey-rin had come to tell me about what they were before. Finny, the one I was closest to had never told me. He looked up suddenly in the dark of the shed. "I'll tell you about it. If you want to know…."
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to." I said turning my head shyly from him. He smiled.
"I'll tell you, after keeping it bottled for so long, I should tell someone otherwise I might burst." he laughed, because it was the only thing that he could do not to cry. The tears slowly began to crinkle in the corners of his eyes. I had seen him cry before, over silly things, but never before had I seen him cry with pain behind the tears. Lost, deep inside his turquoise eyes, there was much pain and agony and sadness, but there was something else that I saw, that you just didn't see when people had been through that much….hope. That hope had kept him alive, and it had the power to keep me that way. To make me live, for him. Because it's what he wanted.
"The people who kept me locked away….they made me do terrible things, I had to fight, and I killed my friends. I didn't have a choice it was live or die, but I didn't want to! I don't think I'll ever forgive myself for what I've done. I'm….I'm a terrible person." He buried his face in his hands, pulling his knees to his chest.
"You aren't a terrible person Finny. You're my best friend, and one of the sweetest boys I'll ever know." I bent down next to him reassuringly. "it doesn't matter what your past is if you do good things in the present and the future." He looked up at me.
"Do you honestly think that?"
"I do. Honest."
End Flashback
Are you happy in heaven Finny? In a paradise where qe will never be able to meet again. Due to my affiliation with a demon? The same demon that he had worked for unknowingly. The same demon that he had looked up to all those years.
Sebastian and I walked out of the winding corridors of the Queen's Inn, a place that I would hope to never see again. The outside was dark and I assumed that I had been out of my conscious state of mind for at least 3 hours. Sebastian wrapped me in his coat, and I stayed tight with him as we walked. The wind had a stinging bitterness too it. Colder than I had felt it earlier, frigid now perhaps, with the pain of loss and loneliness. I whimpered, and clung to the soft material of Sebastian's black coat. He pulled my in tighter and picked me up, wrapping his arms around me, pulling me tightly to his chest.
"Is something wrong young mistress?" Sebastian asked . I shuddered at the sound of his smooth and loving voice call me such a cold title.
"Call me Cat. Like nothing has changed." Everything would go back to normal as soon as I got Ciel back. It would be fine. He smiled.
"Of course."
But nothing goes the way it seems. For without either of our knowledge, we were being observed by a spider in its web.
They seek out clara the nun to try to 'mother' Cat's soul until Sebastian completes Ciel's mission in life and Sebastian can consume both Cat's and Ciel's soul that way that even if they were in Purgatory, Hell, or nothingness, they will still stay together for all eternity.