A/N: 'Tis meh very first Kurushitsuji (Black Butler) fanfic! Though this is only the prologue, and though I stayed up 'till two in the morning nghề viết văn it on a Sunday night after repeatedly going to and from from an air-port many miles away, I hope bạn find it within yourself to enjoy my ridiculous words. I managed to slap in some time to do research (maybe ten phút of it! XP) and if bạn have any questions, concerns, hoặc tips, let me know. ^^
And do try to ignore any run-ons and excessive metaphors; bạn may dislike them, but I've written like this since the beginning and such a practice is hard to stop so abruptly. That said, I advise bạn to read this very slowly and please do not take a single comma for grant it! And I apologize for the dullness of this prologue... but I can assure bạn that, in honor of Halloween, the suspense of this story will rise to a lengthy height... It's probably one of my thêm proper sounding ones.Be prepared for Pluto cuteness, Mey-rin epic nosebleeds, and Grell... being Grell... -_-' Some things never change. Poor, poor Sebastian... and to add to that, he is now stuck as Ceil's butler for eternity. Mercy for a demon... Hmph. o.O
What HAS changed however... is the fact that, no, I've not watched the whole một giây season. I just barely finished watching the first because YouTube went whacko on me. -_-' But this story is meant to take place two years later (or, rather, a year, considering Ciel's birthday came in the first season, so I imagine he would have turned 13) when Ciel is 14.
P.S. If bạn find this metomorphizing into a CielxSebastian story, I gravely apologize... but for me, I find it rather irresistable. ^^'
Memento mori is a Latin phrase translated as "Remember your mortality", "Remember bạn must die" hoặc "Remember bạn will die" - literally " [in the future] remember to die", since "memento" is a future imperative of the 2nd person, and mori is a deponent infinitive. It names a genre of artistic creations that vary widely from one another, but which all share the same purpose: to remind people of their own mortality. The phrase has a tradition in art that dates back to antiquity.
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Memento Mori- Prologue
'Twas the night 'afore the morn',
and astrewn throughout the mansion,
an ear-shattering shriek reached the ears of our butler, the demon,
Sebastian...
His gentle knocking remained unanswered, and he stood at the slightest hesitation before his white-gloved hand reached out and twisted the bedroom's door-knob.
The door swung open with a creak; the noise made akin to that of a cat whose tail had been stepped upon.
It was like coming into the cold marbled room of a mausoleum after the moon had set. Complete darkness, not a hint of the silver world outside, the windows tightly shut, the chamber a tomb world where no sound from the great city would penetrate. The room was not empty.
He listened.
The little mosquito-delicate dancing hum in the air, the electrical murmur of a hidden ong vò vẻ, wasp snug in its special pink, warm nest. The âm nhạc was almost loud enough so he could follow the tune.
He felt his soft grin slide away, melt, fold over and down on itself like tallow skin, like the stuff of a fantastic wildfire burning too long, and now collapsing, and now blown out.
Darkness.
He was not consoled. He was not content. He đã đưa ý kiến the words to himself. He recognized this as a true state of affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask, and the Devil himself had run across the freshly-cut lawn with the mask, and there was no way of going to knock on the gateway to Hell and ask for it back. It never even existed in the first place, though, now, did it? And, besides that, the demon in disguise was not permitted to return to his heartland 'till the "contract", so said, "expired". Wait... the contract had expired, hadn't it? Because he had failed. No, now the contract was eligible... for eternity! There was some form of concience that told him that he could very well take care of that contract himself, whether he had failed the first time hoặc not, and he couldn't think of a reason why he hadn't already.
But that was inevadably beyond him, of course. After all, he was simply one hell of a butler. And he was just now really beginning to actually become fond of it.
Without striking a match hoặc catching light to a candle, Sebastian Michaelis imagined how this room would look: The young master stretched on the bed, uncovered and cold, like a body diplayed on the lid of a tomb, his eyes fixed to the ceiling bởi invisible threads of steel, immovable. And he would have forgotten all about his terrible, nightly screaming, and would be pondering, pondering, pondering, pondering, pondering- until his thoughts were coming in. Coming in on the bờ biển of his unsleeping mind. The room was indeed, empty.
Every night the waves came in and bore him off on their great tides of sound, floating him, wide-eyed, towards the early morn'. There had been no night in the last four years that Master Ciel had not swum in that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the umpteenth time.
The room was cold, but, nonetheless, Sebastian felt he could not breathe. He did not wish to open the drapes and open the French windows, for he did not want the moon to come into the room. So, with the feeling of a man who would die in the tiếp theo giờ for lack of air, he felt his way back towards the door and back towards the hallow corridor in utter silence, presuming, without a doubt, that his lord had found rest.
An instant before his foot hit the object on the floor he knew he would hit such an object. His feet, sensing vibrations ahead, received back echoes of the small barrier across its path even as the foot swung.
His foot kicked. The object gave a dull clink and slid off into the darkness.
He stood very straight and listened to Ciel on the dark giường in the completely featureless night.
The breath coming out of nostrils was so faint it stirred only the furthest fringes of life; a small leaf, a black feather, a single fibre of hair.
He did not want outside light. He pulled out his igniter, felt the raven etched on its silver disc, gave it a flick...
Two moonstones looked up at him in the light of his small hand-held fire; two pale moonstones buried in the creek of clear water over which the life of the world ran, not touching them.
"S-Sebastian...?"
"My lord."
Ciel's face was like a snow-covered island upon which rain might fall, but it felt no rain; over which clouds might pass their morning shadows, but he felt no shadow. There was only the song of echoed silence and his eyes all frosted glass, and his breath going in and out, softly, faintly, in and out of his small nostrils, and he not caring whether it came hoặc went, went hoặc came.
The object Sebastian had sent tumbling with his foot now glinted under the edge of the bed. The small crystal bottle of sleeping tablets which earlier today had been filled with thirty capsules and which now lay uncapped and empty in the light of the tiny flare.
"The pills the doctor prescribed you... bạn have already emptied the bottle, my lord?"
"Oh, Sebastian, don't be daft. I wouldn't do that." Ciel mumbled sleepily, rubbing the silken sleeves of his night garments against his dry and tired eyes.
"The bottle is empty, young master."
"I wouldn't do a thing like that, bạn ridiculous Astaroth*. Why would I do a thing like that?" he said.
Astaroth? thought Sebastian. The old chap's just too pitiful. How dare he think to compare me to such an embarrassment to the Underworld?
"Perhaps bạn took two pills and forgot, and took two more, and forgot again and took two more, and became so disorientated bạn kept right on until bạn had thirty hoặc forty of them in you."
"Bloody hell, Sebastian," Ciel scoffed. "what would I want to go and do a stupid thing like that for?"
"I don't know." đã đưa ý kiến the butler rather bluntly.
The young earl was quite obviously waiting for something thêm to be said, yet he was the one who broke the tiếp theo moment of silence.
"I wouldn't do that." he uttered without emotion.
"Never in a billion years."
Sebastian cocked his head in confusion, his wispy ebony bangs falling over his scarlett gaze.
"Yes, sire. Whatever bạn say, my lord."
His igniter remaining lit, with its flame fluttering about in a burning, wavering dance to the light gods, Sebastian nodded and turned on a heel.
He managed to swiftly glide his way to the door with his coattails floating after him, before Ciel's quiet, trembling voice stopped him dead in his tracks.
"I... but I had to."
Sebastian's eye-lids fell shut and he stood listening to his master's uneven breathing.
"Ah. The nighmares have returned, I'm presuming?"
"...Yes. They refuse to let me sleep, and so I overdosed and I..."
"Fancy a talk about it?"
Ciel paused. "No."
A lump formed in the fourteen year-old's throat, and he cradled his sứ, đồ sứ chin above his knees, grabbing hold of his white sheets and tangling himself all up in them.
"They've... worsened, however. So very violently, they have worsened! 'Tis not pleasant, Sebastian... And they grow frighteningly tiresome at the same time, but they are very much still too terrifying for me to even desire discussing them..."
Sebastian glanced back at his master with an expression one might call sympathy, one another might call a facade. He attempted yet another step towards his escape, but, alas, was yet again interrupted.
One of Ciel's large eyes- the misty màu tím one with its glowing pentagram* etched in its interior- came to rest on him pleadingly with the other one- the sapphire eye- hidden behind bangs composed of smoky black strands of his satin hair.
"Sebastian?"
"Yes, my lord?"
"Might bạn tuck me in?"
"Yes, young master. Of course."
And the butler found himself once again at his master's bedside, tenderly taking the folds of several blankets in his careful grasp and pulling them over and tucking them under Ciel's fragile, tiny body. The boy flashed him a quick look of gratefulness, but the một giây Sebastian noticed it, it was gone and Ciel's lips had drawn back into their trademark frown.
His hands still resting upon the small earl's upper ribcage, Sebastian could- even through his thick, white gloves- feel the small body before him was shivering and covered in a cold sweat. And he was confused. Why ever were humans so terrified of silly old nightmares? He considered them very wonderful things!
Ciel's hands grabbed at the blanket and he tugged it up to cover his mouth, his jaw forcefully clamped shut so as not to give his teeth the freedom to chatter. The nightmares, the nightmares, oh! They rolled in like great thunderstorms in the very midst of his slumber and horrors gushed from every corner of his mind. Flashbacks bombarded him as such an immense strike of burning, blue lightning and setting him ablaze, the thunder following it at such a volume that his Bones were nearly shaken from their tendons; he felt his jaw vibrate, his eyes wobble in his head. He was a victim of third-degree burns and a violent concussion. When it was all over, he felt like a man who had been thrown from a cliff, whirled in a centrifuge, and spat out over a waterfall that fell and fell into emptiness and emptiness and never- quite- touched- bottom- never- never- quite- no not quite- touched- bottom... and bạn fell so fast bạn didn't touch the sides either... never... quite... touched... anything.
The storm faded. The flames died.
"Would bạn like anything else, my lord?" Sebastian's voice murmured in such a gentleness Ciel had thought impossible for a demon to manage.
"Warm milk? Pudding? Krumpets? Porridge? A slice of Sô cô la tin giờ chót cake topped with the freshest dollop of whipped cream, perhaps?"
"No. No, Sebastian. Sweets are unneeded at such a time of the night. Just..."
"Yes, master?"
And Ciel, his eye-lids drooping due to his severe fatigue, slowly reached out to grasp Sebastian's hand and he held it close to him like a hot-water bottle, to soothe and melt the stubborn layer of ice that came to blanket his pale skin and engulfed, chilled, his very soul. His eyes, like tiny moons, waned shut as the tiếp theo word escaped his thin lips in a whisper.
"Stay..."
A smile came to grace itself upon Sebastian's handsome face, and he knelt on a knee and craned his neck downwards, elegant fingers brushing against Ciel's soft, peach-fuzzy cheeks.
"Yes. Sleep well, young lord, for tomorrow... tomorrow... tomorrow... de nobis fabula narratur*."
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A/N: Hope bạn enjoyed it! I have yet to write the first chapter and I'm hoping it will be up some time tiếp theo week.
Definitions:
Astaroth: demon of inquisitors and accusers
pentagram: Satanists use a pentagram with two points up, often inscribed in a double circle, with the head of a goat inside the pentagram. This is referred to as the Sigil of Baphomet. They use it much the same way as the Pythagoreans, as Tartaros literally translates from Greek as a "Pit" hoặc "Void" in Christian terminology (the word is used as such in the Bible, referring to the place where the fallen thiên thần are fettered). The Pythagorean Greek letters are most often replaced bởi the Hebrew letters לויתן forming the name Leviathan. Less esoteric LaVeyan Satanists use it as a sign of rebellion hoặc religious identification, the three downward points symbolising rejection of the holy Trinity. YAY! This evil definition is brought to bạn bởi no other than Wikipedia! (lol just kidding! XP)
de nobis fabula narratur: About us is the story told; Thus, "their story is our story". Originally referred to the end of Rome's dominance. Now often used when comparing any current situation to a past story hoặc historical event.
Disownings: Black Butler and its characters belong to the fabulous Yana Toboso! aka... not me. :'(
And do try to ignore any run-ons and excessive metaphors; bạn may dislike them, but I've written like this since the beginning and such a practice is hard to stop so abruptly. That said, I advise bạn to read this very slowly and please do not take a single comma for grant it! And I apologize for the dullness of this prologue... but I can assure bạn that, in honor of Halloween, the suspense of this story will rise to a lengthy height... It's probably one of my thêm proper sounding ones.Be prepared for Pluto cuteness, Mey-rin epic nosebleeds, and Grell... being Grell... -_-' Some things never change. Poor, poor Sebastian... and to add to that, he is now stuck as Ceil's butler for eternity. Mercy for a demon... Hmph. o.O
What HAS changed however... is the fact that, no, I've not watched the whole một giây season. I just barely finished watching the first because YouTube went whacko on me. -_-' But this story is meant to take place two years later (or, rather, a year, considering Ciel's birthday came in the first season, so I imagine he would have turned 13) when Ciel is 14.
P.S. If bạn find this metomorphizing into a CielxSebastian story, I gravely apologize... but for me, I find it rather irresistable. ^^'
Memento mori is a Latin phrase translated as "Remember your mortality", "Remember bạn must die" hoặc "Remember bạn will die" - literally " [in the future] remember to die", since "memento" is a future imperative of the 2nd person, and mori is a deponent infinitive. It names a genre of artistic creations that vary widely from one another, but which all share the same purpose: to remind people of their own mortality. The phrase has a tradition in art that dates back to antiquity.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Memento Mori- Prologue
'Twas the night 'afore the morn',
and astrewn throughout the mansion,
an ear-shattering shriek reached the ears of our butler, the demon,
Sebastian...
His gentle knocking remained unanswered, and he stood at the slightest hesitation before his white-gloved hand reached out and twisted the bedroom's door-knob.
The door swung open with a creak; the noise made akin to that of a cat whose tail had been stepped upon.
It was like coming into the cold marbled room of a mausoleum after the moon had set. Complete darkness, not a hint of the silver world outside, the windows tightly shut, the chamber a tomb world where no sound from the great city would penetrate. The room was not empty.
He listened.
The little mosquito-delicate dancing hum in the air, the electrical murmur of a hidden ong vò vẻ, wasp snug in its special pink, warm nest. The âm nhạc was almost loud enough so he could follow the tune.
He felt his soft grin slide away, melt, fold over and down on itself like tallow skin, like the stuff of a fantastic wildfire burning too long, and now collapsing, and now blown out.
Darkness.
He was not consoled. He was not content. He đã đưa ý kiến the words to himself. He recognized this as a true state of affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask, and the Devil himself had run across the freshly-cut lawn with the mask, and there was no way of going to knock on the gateway to Hell and ask for it back. It never even existed in the first place, though, now, did it? And, besides that, the demon in disguise was not permitted to return to his heartland 'till the "contract", so said, "expired". Wait... the contract had expired, hadn't it? Because he had failed. No, now the contract was eligible... for eternity! There was some form of concience that told him that he could very well take care of that contract himself, whether he had failed the first time hoặc not, and he couldn't think of a reason why he hadn't already.
But that was inevadably beyond him, of course. After all, he was simply one hell of a butler. And he was just now really beginning to actually become fond of it.
Without striking a match hoặc catching light to a candle, Sebastian Michaelis imagined how this room would look: The young master stretched on the bed, uncovered and cold, like a body diplayed on the lid of a tomb, his eyes fixed to the ceiling bởi invisible threads of steel, immovable. And he would have forgotten all about his terrible, nightly screaming, and would be pondering, pondering, pondering, pondering, pondering- until his thoughts were coming in. Coming in on the bờ biển of his unsleeping mind. The room was indeed, empty.
Every night the waves came in and bore him off on their great tides of sound, floating him, wide-eyed, towards the early morn'. There had been no night in the last four years that Master Ciel had not swum in that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the umpteenth time.
The room was cold, but, nonetheless, Sebastian felt he could not breathe. He did not wish to open the drapes and open the French windows, for he did not want the moon to come into the room. So, with the feeling of a man who would die in the tiếp theo giờ for lack of air, he felt his way back towards the door and back towards the hallow corridor in utter silence, presuming, without a doubt, that his lord had found rest.
An instant before his foot hit the object on the floor he knew he would hit such an object. His feet, sensing vibrations ahead, received back echoes of the small barrier across its path even as the foot swung.
His foot kicked. The object gave a dull clink and slid off into the darkness.
He stood very straight and listened to Ciel on the dark giường in the completely featureless night.
The breath coming out of nostrils was so faint it stirred only the furthest fringes of life; a small leaf, a black feather, a single fibre of hair.
He did not want outside light. He pulled out his igniter, felt the raven etched on its silver disc, gave it a flick...
Two moonstones looked up at him in the light of his small hand-held fire; two pale moonstones buried in the creek of clear water over which the life of the world ran, not touching them.
"S-Sebastian...?"
"My lord."
Ciel's face was like a snow-covered island upon which rain might fall, but it felt no rain; over which clouds might pass their morning shadows, but he felt no shadow. There was only the song of echoed silence and his eyes all frosted glass, and his breath going in and out, softly, faintly, in and out of his small nostrils, and he not caring whether it came hoặc went, went hoặc came.
The object Sebastian had sent tumbling with his foot now glinted under the edge of the bed. The small crystal bottle of sleeping tablets which earlier today had been filled with thirty capsules and which now lay uncapped and empty in the light of the tiny flare.
"The pills the doctor prescribed you... bạn have already emptied the bottle, my lord?"
"Oh, Sebastian, don't be daft. I wouldn't do that." Ciel mumbled sleepily, rubbing the silken sleeves of his night garments against his dry and tired eyes.
"The bottle is empty, young master."
"I wouldn't do a thing like that, bạn ridiculous Astaroth*. Why would I do a thing like that?" he said.
Astaroth? thought Sebastian. The old chap's just too pitiful. How dare he think to compare me to such an embarrassment to the Underworld?
"Perhaps bạn took two pills and forgot, and took two more, and forgot again and took two more, and became so disorientated bạn kept right on until bạn had thirty hoặc forty of them in you."
"Bloody hell, Sebastian," Ciel scoffed. "what would I want to go and do a stupid thing like that for?"
"I don't know." đã đưa ý kiến the butler rather bluntly.
The young earl was quite obviously waiting for something thêm to be said, yet he was the one who broke the tiếp theo moment of silence.
"I wouldn't do that." he uttered without emotion.
"Never in a billion years."
Sebastian cocked his head in confusion, his wispy ebony bangs falling over his scarlett gaze.
"Yes, sire. Whatever bạn say, my lord."
His igniter remaining lit, with its flame fluttering about in a burning, wavering dance to the light gods, Sebastian nodded and turned on a heel.
He managed to swiftly glide his way to the door with his coattails floating after him, before Ciel's quiet, trembling voice stopped him dead in his tracks.
"I... but I had to."
Sebastian's eye-lids fell shut and he stood listening to his master's uneven breathing.
"Ah. The nighmares have returned, I'm presuming?"
"...Yes. They refuse to let me sleep, and so I overdosed and I..."
"Fancy a talk about it?"
Ciel paused. "No."
A lump formed in the fourteen year-old's throat, and he cradled his sứ, đồ sứ chin above his knees, grabbing hold of his white sheets and tangling himself all up in them.
"They've... worsened, however. So very violently, they have worsened! 'Tis not pleasant, Sebastian... And they grow frighteningly tiresome at the same time, but they are very much still too terrifying for me to even desire discussing them..."
Sebastian glanced back at his master with an expression one might call sympathy, one another might call a facade. He attempted yet another step towards his escape, but, alas, was yet again interrupted.
One of Ciel's large eyes- the misty màu tím one with its glowing pentagram* etched in its interior- came to rest on him pleadingly with the other one- the sapphire eye- hidden behind bangs composed of smoky black strands of his satin hair.
"Sebastian?"
"Yes, my lord?"
"Might bạn tuck me in?"
"Yes, young master. Of course."
And the butler found himself once again at his master's bedside, tenderly taking the folds of several blankets in his careful grasp and pulling them over and tucking them under Ciel's fragile, tiny body. The boy flashed him a quick look of gratefulness, but the một giây Sebastian noticed it, it was gone and Ciel's lips had drawn back into their trademark frown.
His hands still resting upon the small earl's upper ribcage, Sebastian could- even through his thick, white gloves- feel the small body before him was shivering and covered in a cold sweat. And he was confused. Why ever were humans so terrified of silly old nightmares? He considered them very wonderful things!
Ciel's hands grabbed at the blanket and he tugged it up to cover his mouth, his jaw forcefully clamped shut so as not to give his teeth the freedom to chatter. The nightmares, the nightmares, oh! They rolled in like great thunderstorms in the very midst of his slumber and horrors gushed from every corner of his mind. Flashbacks bombarded him as such an immense strike of burning, blue lightning and setting him ablaze, the thunder following it at such a volume that his Bones were nearly shaken from their tendons; he felt his jaw vibrate, his eyes wobble in his head. He was a victim of third-degree burns and a violent concussion. When it was all over, he felt like a man who had been thrown from a cliff, whirled in a centrifuge, and spat out over a waterfall that fell and fell into emptiness and emptiness and never- quite- touched- bottom- never- never- quite- no not quite- touched- bottom... and bạn fell so fast bạn didn't touch the sides either... never... quite... touched... anything.
The storm faded. The flames died.
"Would bạn like anything else, my lord?" Sebastian's voice murmured in such a gentleness Ciel had thought impossible for a demon to manage.
"Warm milk? Pudding? Krumpets? Porridge? A slice of Sô cô la tin giờ chót cake topped with the freshest dollop of whipped cream, perhaps?"
"No. No, Sebastian. Sweets are unneeded at such a time of the night. Just..."
"Yes, master?"
And Ciel, his eye-lids drooping due to his severe fatigue, slowly reached out to grasp Sebastian's hand and he held it close to him like a hot-water bottle, to soothe and melt the stubborn layer of ice that came to blanket his pale skin and engulfed, chilled, his very soul. His eyes, like tiny moons, waned shut as the tiếp theo word escaped his thin lips in a whisper.
"Stay..."
A smile came to grace itself upon Sebastian's handsome face, and he knelt on a knee and craned his neck downwards, elegant fingers brushing against Ciel's soft, peach-fuzzy cheeks.
"Yes. Sleep well, young lord, for tomorrow... tomorrow... tomorrow... de nobis fabula narratur*."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/N: Hope bạn enjoyed it! I have yet to write the first chapter and I'm hoping it will be up some time tiếp theo week.
Definitions:
Astaroth: demon of inquisitors and accusers
pentagram: Satanists use a pentagram with two points up, often inscribed in a double circle, with the head of a goat inside the pentagram. This is referred to as the Sigil of Baphomet. They use it much the same way as the Pythagoreans, as Tartaros literally translates from Greek as a "Pit" hoặc "Void" in Christian terminology (the word is used as such in the Bible, referring to the place where the fallen thiên thần are fettered). The Pythagorean Greek letters are most often replaced bởi the Hebrew letters לויתן forming the name Leviathan. Less esoteric LaVeyan Satanists use it as a sign of rebellion hoặc religious identification, the three downward points symbolising rejection of the holy Trinity. YAY! This evil definition is brought to bạn bởi no other than Wikipedia! (lol just kidding! XP)
de nobis fabula narratur: About us is the story told; Thus, "their story is our story". Originally referred to the end of Rome's dominance. Now often used when comparing any current situation to a past story hoặc historical event.
Disownings: Black Butler and its characters belong to the fabulous Yana Toboso! aka... not me. :'(
