He Is & He Was

Part 9: Vincent's Demon

Authors note: this is a memory from Vincent's perspective (for now), this is only a small note for those who might be confused! UPDATE: Also I know Vincent's mother passed away at 1866, so that means Vincent is 15 in this (Sebastian/Raven will be 13)! I was hoping for him to be a bit younger but I forgot to do my research on Claudia before I wrote about her death. ~L

His fur was a tangled mess of what I believed the sky would look like if it was to fall on us like a curtain at a show or opera.
He was warm at the foot of my bed, my toes barely touching his body which was curled up in a ball, making him a small speck as I watched him from my pillow. He was a unclean animal in both holy and hygienic ways but it oddly didn't bother me, even when the name demon grew thick with the phlegm in my throat.
In the morning when I awoke, he was a ghost of a child by my window.
A child in white skin and wrapped in blue veins, laced like ropes in his wrists and bare feet that stood him by my window. His hair black and knotted, his eyes a peculiar red with a glimmer of pink to remind me he wasn't human.
I didn't speak to him, I only watched him as if he was an animal that had crept into my room. A shy deer ready to run even if I whispered. He was delicate for such a thing that was created for destruction and hurt.
His feet barley touched the floor as his tiptoes glided him in front of the windows stained with ice. His body was bare but I was surprised to see his looked like mine rather than a monsters or mangled creatures. He was small in height and in weight, his bones like mannequins sticking through transparent fabric as the designer left him half finished or more realistically; half fed. I wondered what he ate.
He seemed memorised with the outdoors but his timidness showed hesitant to open the windows and run out, forgetting about us and his time in the well. He pressed his hand up the glass, the warmth from his body leaving condensation around his fingertips.
"You can open that, you know?" I said, sitting up in bed as I grew bored of watching him become a still object in my room.
He quickly whipped his head at me, staring at me with his wide eyes that were more piercing than I thought a child's eyes could be. His hand slid off the window and remained at his side but he didn't speak, hopefully too scared to or it would be a pain teaching him English.
We stared at one another for a long time before I threw my duvets off of me, the heavy weight finally lifted and sweeping the coldness around my ankles as the warmth on my mattress became icy and unpleasant to sneak back into again. My feet were heavy on the flooring of my bedroom, every step creaking beneath me while the demons steps remained silent as he wavered on his tiptoes patiently even when his face was split with concern but also interest. A small smile kept on my face, hoping he would notice I was no threat and he didn't have to become one to protect himself.
"They're windows. You can push them open and pull them shut," I stopped a couple of metres away from him once he begun to shuffle back, "Look,"
I turned to the window, the metal frame was a darkening black but some white shines from the coldness outside crystallised the sash and crept onto the glass, the demons fingers left smudges in the condensation and was slowly being covered over again as if his presence didn't exist. I took hold of the swirly handle, Rose buds patterned into the metal which I was too young to know was valuable. It was cold in my palm and stiff to turn but as soon as it finally obeyed me and turned, the window pushed out with a wobble, making the glass give out a deep hum of vibration. The air was silent and still but it was clear it was winter, the world like a round pearl; the shiny red berries were the only thing on show. Fat robins stared at me and the demon with their beady black eyes, chirping a song that wasn't important to us but was to them.
"That's how you open it, you close it the exact same way." I said, glancing at him as he grew closer to the window.
"I know." He replied, his voice young but sturdy, a flick of iron at the end of his words in a way I think he didn't notice.
"You can speak English?" I asked.
He turned his head and gave me a faint single nod with a blink of his red eyes, his white body and eye colour mimicking the outside world but it was clear to me that he already had foot prints stamped into his white skin, while the outside was untouched and ready for me and Francis to jump into, once she came home from her fencing.
"My father taught me." He said, looking out to the world he was hidden underneath.
"Where is he now though?"
He was hesitant to speak, maybe wanting to ask me the same question since we took him from the well. Maybe that was his home, maybe his parents were looking for him right now, panicked and angry.
Fortunately Tanaka had already told me he was abandoned but it still didn't mean no one is looking for him.
"Not here. Not anymore," He seemed unfazed by the words he spoke, "He was on the floor the last time I saw him and mother."
I arched my eyebrows in confusion and distress, not wanting to ask him more in case the detail was gory, "Why were they on the floor?" I continued even with my doubts.
He shrugged his shoulders as if it was an everyday thing to describe, his mind too young to realise how horrific it was, "I don't know but there was blood coming out of their mouths. Then the things in robes and bones took me to the circular room." He glanced at my face, his unwrinkled and youthful while mine was scrunched up in a ball of confusion and a sense of guilt which I didn't understand why I felt.
Did he know that they were dead or did he just think they were messing around? Or maybe he pretended it wasn't death to make it more bearable to live everyday without them.
"How long have you been in that well?" I asked.
He looked at his hands that barely lay on the window still, his fingernails latched on like tiny hooks, one finger lifting and then dropping while the other one lifted up and dropped also, "I used my fingers to count but I lost track after day forty." He said.
"Did you have anything? Like clothes?"
He shook his head.
"Food?"
He shook it again.
"Friends?"
Shook it again.
"Anything?"
He only stared at me, his eyes big and round while the pupils were as small as needles through crimson fabric. Everything else was human about him except for his eyes, his black nails able to be forgotten or miscorrected to varnish or paint. They were long and pointed like a wild animals, weapons against anything a demon found a threat which was just ironic; what would a demon find scary?
Some of his nails were torn, the skin underneath red and sometimes purple, obvious that he caused these injuries by trying to climb or scratch his way out. His fingers mangled in cuts and blisters while his feet only remained dirty on my wooden floorboards. Tanaka really didn't do a good job at cleaning him.
"What about a name? Do you have one?" I asked, raising an eyebrow as he only shook his head.
"I use to but I lost it, or at least, can't remember it." He sighed heavily.
I smiled suddenly and he tilted his head to my unusual change of atmosphere, but he oddly seemed to be warmed by my kindness even when I was a stranger meeting a demonic being. For all I knew he could attack me at any moment from now on but I oddly liked the sense of danger, the thrill of living which I was so protected from by the servants of my manor; they were terrified of me having fun. They even kept me away from cats, fearful they would scratch my skin and make my face grow red with sea salt.
"Well, why don't I give you a name? I'm pretty good at naming things." It felt like he was a new born puppy I had gotten for my birthday, a little red ribbon wrapped around his neck while his fur was cleansed in the boiling waters of rivers, scented with the mud of the forests and the log burners within the dining room.
"You can, I suppose." He didn't seem as thrilled as I was, but I supposed he had so many different names and titles that he had grown bored of not knowing his real identity.
"When I first saw you come up from that well, I thought you was a raven or a crow because of your wings." I begun.
"So you're calling me Bird?" He huffed.
"No," I smirked at the humour he didn't realise he had planted within his words, "I thought Raven."
"Very original, must of been hard to think that name up," he said, glaring at me with a untainted face until he too smiled at his own cruelness, "Yours is Vincent."
I nodded, "Phantomhive. Vincent Phantomhive."
I decided to leave out the fact that I was the upcoming Earl. Finding the label was a bit patronising to those around me. They saw me as a threat even as a child, that I would rip them off in the future with money, jobs and even homes. But I wasn't like that and I didn't want to be like that. I wanted to fix this town, I wanted to make it nice, safe and not be in the shadow of the manor which will soon be mine, I wanted everyone's homes to be pretty and fixed so they weren't angry and jealous at my naivety. I wanted my town to be the opposite of my fathers. I wanted it to be my town.
"You need some clothes," I said just as there was a faint knock at my door, "Grandpa Tanaka shall give you some and help dress you."