He Is & He Was

Prologue

I remember once, seeing Sebastian standing out in the rain.
I didn't know why and I didn't know for how long, I just knew not to question it as I realised it wasn't him standing there but in fact the person that was hidden within the layers of blackened demons. The rain seemed to cast a spell across him as it clung onto his waist coat and freshly cleaned shirt. He wasn't Sebastian anymore but was whoever he was when he wasn't on patrol, when he wasn't around me or his other naive contractors he had to babysit.
I only caught a few glimpses of his face from my studies window but from what I saw, he seemed to be lost; staring or even looking for someone in the distance. It made me wonder if the manor was under yet another attack but nothing thrilling happened, no, just a demon who stood in the rain which was slowly losing its strangeness. His eyes looked like a deep chestnut rather than their usual redness which always lurked in my nightmares but on other monsters. They reminded me of my father's, his eyes on the wrong face, the wrong body; the wrong being.
I heard the other servants below me bickering about him, how he was worrying them and how Bardroy believed he was finally losing it but Sebastian wasn't like that, he was always fine. Or at least I liked to think he was.
I never really asked if he was okay even after the five years we had been stuck to one another, a metal chain made out of his contract clamped tightly around our ankles. Forever tugging us back to one another.
I felt like I never asked him questions because I knew I needed to not care about him. I was a master and he was a servant which could easily be replaced with a few pennies, but yet questions and worries swarmed me like wasps around a lemonade drink in the hot summer, drowning in the sugary water once they got too close and saw the ugly truth. Too late to turn back.
Why didn't he give up on my revenge?
Could demons get depressed?
Could demons die?
I was surprised that the others liked him and worried about him so much when he was nothing but cruel to them like I was to him. They always asked me questions that I could never answer about him, even when they were simple ones of where he came from due to his single eyelids while we had double and where did he learn to be such a good Butler if he was foreign.
Of course I knew he learnt to be a butler here during our first weeks coming back to the manor but that wasn't a worthy explanation to how he learnt so quickly and became such a mastermind of it. Truth be told I didn't know how he did it myself, just one day when we met again in the dining room; he was perfect.
He arched his head up to the sky suddenly, the water streaming down his paling face as if his facial features had now became mountains for the skies clear rivers to flow through. His eyes were closed but his lips were partially parted, reminding me of the numerous amount of fangs he hid from me behind such thin skin.
It made me wonder what a soul tasted like and how he ate them -- did he drink them?
I decided to walk around the deafening quiet manor since the work I was meant to be doing was dulling and agonising to keep on reading when Sebastian wasn't there to bully me to do it, with a award of a slice of his best cakes. He was a master of baking which I thought was pretty humorous as I always believed it was a feminine thing to do. A demon in touch with his feminine side; how deadly. How scary.
I have never really just walked around the manor and taken in its decor, no matter how long I had lived in it, as I was a child, and it never really came to me to just stop and look around what Sebastian had managed to recreate.
It kind of reminded me of the decor on the titanic before it sank. Dusty, wooden and full of pastel flowers which Finnian must of picked in the doubt that they would die quicker than they would outside in the wild.
They looked pretty but I knew it was caused by Elizabeth's constant moaning of how dark and creepy my home had now become, she was a beautifully strong woman but never realised how antagonising she could become when she visited me; I blamed how her parents spoilt her. Her angry and tearful ways caused by how her mother yelled at her to get the perfect lady life which she too could benefit from. I sometimes blame myself too as I knew it was difficult for her to not be her old self around me when my younger self was destroyed in that fire. I just liked to believe she was purposely sad to give me a meaning in her life because I wasn't really her fiancé and I had no reason to touch her. With her sadness I did have to pretend and give her what she desired as after all, I couldn't be the type of man that lets his woman have the ugliest dress or the wettest eyes. It would look bad on the Phantomhive name.
The door of my mothers and fathers room was daunting and no longer felt welcoming like it did when the monsters under my own bed sent me to them.
I still remember trying to sleep in their room in the first few days that I returned to the manor but it felt too wrong. It felt as if I was sleeping in their grave, the sheets tightening around me as the air became soil to suffocate me. We soon locked it and forgot about it until visitors came and there was one too many for the original guest rooms, but even the guests felt uncomfortable in there even without knowing the history of what happened in that room. They always believed the room I now slept in was my parents but in fact it was my original one.
I oddly felt attracted to their room today, an unknown presence pulling me closer with a long beckoning finger like a dark cloaked witch with a ruby red apple.
The door was unexpectedly unlocked. It was unlike Sebastian to leave a room unlocked or to even go in this room; cleaning the drapes and furniture was not necessary in an abandoned room when we had no balls coming up which involved visitors staying over night. I still opened up the door but cautious in case a person was on the other side, reminding me that I still had enemies out to get me no matter how many we murdered. Why did they want me so badly?
The room was clean but I could still see the thin layers of pastel dust on the window stills, as the small cracks of yellowing sunlight through the grey clouds shone through the windows rain stained glass. The bed was made but there was no owner to sleep within it's newly washed duvets, except for the fluffy dead moths that lingered around the fireplace no matter how much I told Sebastian to clean them up.
Fathers deep red leather chair lay by the long window, the thinning white curtains sprawled across the top rail of the chairs wooden frames as the window was purposely left open to keep the room from smelling of old musk. Maybe Mey-Rin came in here instead, it made more sense with the simple mistakes that Sebastian would never leave behind while Mey-Rin would never of noticed she did them.
I walked over to his chair and fingered the arms of it gently, in hope to feel the skin on the back of father's hand but I felt nothing, even when I sat down and mimicked his usual posture: arms both flat on the armrests, legs crossed with his face turned to the right as he watched us and Elizabeth play in the garden in the early mornings, Tanaka walking Sebastian the black hound off into the distance.
I was nothing like father even when I mimicked everything he did in his life. I didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing as everyone still talks about him in loving tones as their eyes grew distant like Sebastian's today. I couldn't really remember what father was like anymore. When I thought of him, I just saw his eyes glistening with betrayal as he held mother tight.
I sighed, feeling idiotic to think that father would return. They were dead. They were gone and I had accepted that, even when I wanted to see them during my toughest days. The remains of my childhood were enough to comfort me. At least, I pretended they were.
I slipped off the chair, my feet still barely touching the ground before the seat slipped forward with me, making me panic as I thought I had destroyed what was left of my own father's personality and decor taste.
I instantly jumped off and turned to see the damage I had cause; surprised to see there was a secret compartment underneath the leather slab that was wearing thin with the amounts it was used. I was hesitant at first to remove it but soon my curiosity killed me and I slipped it all the way off, showing me the drawer sized compartment underneath the chairs seat. Why didn't he tell me about this? Was this the original chair from before, how did it survive the fire?
It seemed to be hiding browning pictures that I had never seen before and journals which were noted to be owned by 'Vincent'. Not lord. Not master. Just Vincent.
Just father being who he was before he made a family.
I pushed the photos around, many of them being of me, my brother or my mother or his numerous friends from his education days that use to visit us and play snooker for hours by the grand fire place.
I suddenly froze.
There were coloured photos. The expensive kind which father refused us to get as a family... so who was more valuable to him when compared to his own family?
I picked up the one that was easiest to get, surprised to feel like I had already seen it before even when every detail of the room that was printed off, being unknown to my youthful eyes.
The room was completely white apart from the million green plants that sat on the long window still. All in different sized and median pots; some glass, some clay with crappy paintings all over them and even ones that were just in mugs and cups. What a waste.
The walls, the desk, the beds covers, the beds frame, the curtains and even the scenery outside the windows behind the plants, illuminated a blinding colour of white. Purity and innocence, which the figure in the photo surely didn't have.
The male was thin and tall while his black, messy, wavy  hair covered his eyes but not his greying lips that was frozen in a timid smile. The male looked outside the window as he sat on the edge of the tidy white bed.
His clothes were unusual. A black collar was strapped around his neck with a little silver pendant that was too blurred to read. His shirt white and buttoned up but with oversized short sleeves, while his trousers were a pale grey and striped with tiny white lines, but instead of being tight or smart looking like usual trousers, these were flared and baggy, reminding me of the kendo trousers that Lao once wore. A belt made of the same fabric tightened around his waist like a ribbon, keeping his shirt tucked in as his bare feet dangled just above the ground. Ballet shoes scattered across the wooden floor below him, the ribbons being knotted and worn out with love and determination.
In his hands he held a tattered straw sun hat as the golden rims of his glasses sat on the top of his head instead of on the arch of his nose.
The sunlight which cascaded across the male made it impossible to see who he truly was or where they were.
It was a beautiful photo but it bugged me as I felt as if I knew who he was but I just needed to see his face for that reassurance of being right to think I knew this stranger. I turned over the photo as I gave up on trying to guess who it was; I hoped father had put something on the back about him:

'1867- My demon in his white room.'

I felt Sebastian's eyes opening in the rain, penetrating into the sky as he spoke the name of a man I thought he never knew. The name foreign to me as it was whispered in the voice of a devil:

Vincent.