THANK YOU EVERYONE WHO REVIEWED, FAVORITED OR FOLLOWED! It's very helpful- and I feel very loved… If anyone of you out there want to request a pairing, or request some event- this fic is sort of unplanned, all of mine are- just review or pm me, and i will seriously consider and work with it! Again thank you so much for reading Seeking Revelation :)

DISCLAIMER: DON'T OWN NUFFIN. STILL WORKING ON INKING.

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The knife drew up in a soft arch, blood slithering down it's sides and falling, the muted murmur of it's fall abnormally loud beside his low gasps for air. A pristine, gloved hand swiped the red fluid from the metal, as if cleaning it, but thin streaks of pink and rusted black remained, blotting out the reflection of his pale, pain-wracked face. A single, slitted green eye stared down at him ((his own, his mothers)), clouded with agony and confusion.

"Again, Master?" questioned a low, rumbling voice. There was no voiced affirmative, except the icy metal, digging once more into the flesh of his abdomen. He jerked at the prickling sensation, the sting as the metal dragged lightly up his ribs, tracing the heaving bones, slicing effortlessly through the wings of his tattered shirt. It reached the patch of flesh above his heart, and hovered there , hesitantly, dancing over the unmarred strip of skin- and Harry felt his breath quicken in fear. He threw his head back, squirming lightly to get away from the lazy circles designed across his chest, mumbled protests falling like stones from his lips.

"No-no..no.." he muttered, eyes rolling, unable to focus on anything but the spinning, blurry ceiling, the slight sting of agony as the blade bit deeper into the muscle around his nipple. He yelled feebly as the knife jerked, blinded momentarily by sparks of pain as his own rushed breath pushed the knife deeper…deeper.

"Get on with it, Sebastian."

The voice came from far away, from underwater, low and drizzly, and so, so unimportant. He shouldn't be listening to the voices- the knife, the knife, it was a sensation he had felt many times before, the feeling of solid steel, RIPPING through him, gouging him out, scraping muscles from bones. Snapping tendons; spooning out pools and streams of heatheatheat and bloodmyblood.

But the voices were important too. Ignore the pain. No..ignore the voices Harry, Hermione'd freak if she heard you talking back. Merlins knows she's still convinced you fell off the deep end. Only SNIVELING LiTtLe UnGrAtEfUlL FREAKS have voices in your their heads- get away, Potters gone mad, get away RUN DON'T LOOK IN IT'S EYES NoRemusJohnRemusNatalieDon'tFallSiriusDumbledore CATCHTHESNITCH IT'S RIGHT. IN. FRONT. OF YOU.

The black was sliding across everything. It was hungry- and it wanted to eat him.

And he was tired. Why wasn't he allowed to rest? He wanted to rest…

He just wanted to rest…

Twig…Finny…

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Harry woke, for once, not alone. There were small, warm hands raising buzzing lines against his chilled flanks, fingers wriggling through holes in his clothes, worming into pockets and investigating their emptiness. A quiet voice, close to his ear grumbled irritatedly in time with his hitched breaths as his fresh, over-sensitive skin was prodded roughly. Tickling strands of hair slithered into his nose, silky and perfumed, just as his lungs jerked awake with a heavy contraction, the gaping feeling in his chest wrenching his mouth open with a sudden urge to breathbreathbreath. His body seized as life flared inside of him, flooding his veins with air, heat stealing the chill from his frozen fingertips. The slim body sliding over his and the searching hands quickly retreated as his chest heaved again with breath.

Like emerging from beneath a deep, heavy body of water, the darkness slid off of his vision in droplets, leaving the room before him gleaming grey and clean from between stripes of his crusted eyelashes. He coughed, throat tender, but knitting together quickly- had he been strangled?- and tried blinking residual veils of stormy magic from his buzzing corneas.

((He could see it still, the void where HE stopped existing for a while, so not like this world of color and texture and distant wooden walls))

"Good morning." Harry felt his brows knit together with confusion, the voice still sounding muffled and indistinct. The dulcet, but slightly high-pitched tones didn't seem familiar, but a ghost of deja-vu wriggled somewhere beneath his sleepy foggy just-now-not-dead brain. A figure, bleary, and decorated with many splotches of grey and indigo blocked the light.

Idly, he struggled against the last strains of drug in his system.

A memory floated up without prompting.

"I have one deal for you, Harry…" the child said softly, retying the ropes that had bound his chest to the back of the chair instead to hiss forearms, folding them behind his back with deft and quick fingers. He crouched slowly to Harry's feet, a look of distaste on his face, and did the same with his feet, binding them separately to the legs of the chair. Harry let him, knowing that he had little to nothing to fear…he had to play along…he was human...

"You see- I can't trust you to tell us what you are. I don't even know if you know yourself."

Hit the nail of the head. Did what Harry was even have a name beyond the "Master", supposedly, of Death?

...He was human…

"I also can't trust you to die, and stay dead." He flinched, beating down a small spark of panic as his forearms refused to jerk to his side, " So instead, I'll just have to ….test, what you can do."

"Finny is waiting outside, sir. I moved his bed with him." The butler slid into the room, and the fear that Harry had had in him since the weird-ass smarmy git of a Butler had pinned him tot he floor of the anteroom, burst into his eyes at the sight of the simple, sharp, carving knife in his hand.

"I assume I don't need to make this an order, Sebastian?" The butler smirked, shaking his head, and Harry forced his eyes shut to hide his boiling fury.

"Not at all, sir." he purred.

"Harry?" questioned the Earl, voice light and innocent, " You don't mind do you- the terms of our deal?"

It was all he could do to just nod him head.

…human…!

All he knew after that was pain.

His eyes flew open, narrowing immediately on the figure looming over him.

A round, porcelain face, inset with sharp features and single, large, cerulean eye stared down at him, strands of light, softly mussed hair framing his severe expression like a limp halo of gloom. The Earl. A burning like hatred flared inside of him, and this time he did not stop his expression from twisting into something feral, his inhibitions wavering as the drug prodded at the forefront of his mind, magic fizzing just beneath his skin…

"Good morning- Phantomhive." he spat, brutally pushing past the weakness in his throat, fisting his hand in the…sheets, to stop himself from going for that pale column of throat that mortal DARED to flaunt before him. Above him boy sighed a long-suffering sigh at the crass gesture ((Harry might've attempted something rude with his hand)), but elegantly retreated from the bedside-…

...

…Bedside?

The nasty, hissing little voices in his head which muttered ugly, angry things about the things Harry could do with a skinned and flayed Earl, fizzled into silence. A silence filled with wonder. Subtly flicking his gaze down to his fisted hands, feeling horror dawn on his face as he found himself staring at an elegant sea of of delicate silk and embroidered duvet covers, a vast expanse of died and woven cloth swaddled around his tinglingly numb legs.

If he didn't have a relatively firm clamp on his mind at the moment, he would have certainly gaped.

Bloody satin, striped with royal purple designs.

Vines and ghostly, nymphodic faces detailed, and gazing up at him through spirals of gleaming, golden embroidery.

He could pick out the elegant tableu's lining the foot of the duvet cover: the moon in silver sticthes, the sun, ruby and golden, the stars, pinpricks of rainbow threads. The grimy stains of dirt where his feet, poking out and tinged with blue, rubbed against the soft hem.

In particular the ugly, gaping holes in the crimson satin, detailing the places where his fingers had unknowingly dug into. The finery was ridiculously lavish, and as feeling began working it's way steadily down his legs, he could actually make out the soft, liquid feeling of silk shifting around the feverish skin of his seventeen-year-old knees…

"Merlin…" he breathed, anger forgotten as his gaze flickered over the bedspread, dancing between that and the rest of the room, which was similarly posh and glittery. He hadn't noticed before, but the light from a window he couldn't see moved beside him, a steady grey mote swirling with dust, small stripes of it's girth colliding with and gleaming off of the many polished surfaces dotting the room; the bedposts, the waxen floor, the candelabras , door hinges, doorknobs, the draperies metallic, golden tassels. The room was lit by constellations of such intricate surfaces.

Beside him, he heard a derisive snort, but couldn't bother shooting the irritating child another glare -though he did hate the kid, feelings of gratitude aside- it had been so long since he had slept in a bed of any respectable sort. Or in any place half as gorgeous as this- as gaudy and rich and sparkling.

He could vaguely remember countless, monotonous, cold nights, his rags wrapped nervously round his arms to hid the long gashes, renting suspiciousy moldy and dingy old motel rooms, or sheds, or justplunking down in some abandoned house on a spoiled mattress.

But this- this was almost wizard.

((-His hands shook as they admired the Gryffindor regalia. Home…-))

"We moved you, for your meeting with my Gardener, " interrupted the Earl, breaking Harry out of his slight trance. He sounded bored. "The story is that we found you in an alley in London. Sebastian brought you back after rescuing you from a group of …muggers." The way he said the word, as if it something as plebeian as 'rat-filth' or 'taxes'.

Harry stared at the boy, incredulous. "Are you serious?" he snorted disbelievingly, eyes lit with a quiet amusement, which obviously irked the short Earl, " A mugging? You summarized torture with a mugging? Seriously?"

The one-eyed boy shot him a look, obviously unamused, but forged on-

((Not even Harry thought the situation was that funny, but his mind was having trouble moving on from the stripes of reflected golden light strung up in front of him))

- his posture attempting to convey a sort of gravity Harry couldn't pick up on around his own tired, drained body. " You offered me your death Harry- and with it your life."- He stiffened, that ugly, resentful feeling he seemed to always feel around the silly child, rearing it's head.

The boy met his blazing gaze with smug, lidded eyes, lit with their own authoritative fire. Challenging him, relishing in his contained fury, his reluctant compliance as he made no move to stop the rest of his words besides a little grunt of distaste.

((He could see it. The next insignificant grain of his monotonous eternity- being dictated by this foul, weak little human. By his words he thought were significant- as if his life meant anything more than a way for Harry to connect with his Twi-Finny…))

"I have made a decision, about what to do with it." he intoned grandly, his single eyes alight with triumph- " You will work for me."

AND because I'm mean, a cliffy. Sorry- short chapter, hopefully my muse will move on from the haikus to something a bit more substantial…but right now, I just want to get the set-up sort of…set up. Please review- I really REALLY love them! Even if you don't though- thank you for reading! My view count goes up anyhow :)

….gah. Just two scenes…this is gunna kill me. Feel free to flame…I feel super guilty...