My Butler, His Master

24. Cache-Cache

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Cache-Cache

A black shadow prowled within the halls of the Rouge Manor, sauntering as its ebony furred head turned in scrutiny of it's silent surroundings. The cat arrived at the small lady's door, only to find it slightly ajar. It pricked it's ears at the sound from down the hall, and made it's way towards them, arriving upon the bathroom once again. As Othello padded across the tiles, he dared to gently rub up against a slender pale leg that belonged to a body that silently stared at himself in the mirror, fingers pressed against the silvery surface.

Ciel could feel the cat against him, but paid it no mind. As he stared into his own deep blue ocean, he could see that it was devoid of life; still and empty. The lump in his throat had finally subsided, and as he stared off into the parallel stare, he could feel a soft calm grace his mind.

Moments before, Ciel had been lost in the blood and torment; a crimson tornado that destroyed his mind from the inside out, wrenching his thoughts apart piece by piece with the mortal dread that he had witnessed his appearance; a lost soul with broken pride, submissive to the world and all it's disgusting denizens, a mockery of the prideful Earl that had once kept a collar wound about the demon's neck. A disgrace to his family name and to all he stood for... a sight he knew probably excited the demon to it's core, knowing that he had been successful by just biding his time and letting the boy destroy himself.

However, as he sat within the folds of Dahlia's bed, reflecting on the faded memories that still flooded his mind from childhood, he could feel all his woe from his nightmare shrink in comparison, and had willed himself to stand and walk to other confines to rearrange his inner turmoil. Peering into the tall mirror, Ciel could see himself, facing the person who, until moments before, had eyes wild with panic and madness... losing himself to the overwhelming pain of the world, allowing himself to be weak.

Within his mind, the chaotic war fueled by panic and paranoia came to an abrupt halt. As he stared at his own reflection, he gently swept the pain aside, and held out a blank slate before his mind's eye, writing down mentally a simple, yet horribly complex question that took him nearly an hour to answer: What do I see?

What he saw looking back at him was not the same face from his memories. The young man was a good replica, that was certain, but he looked incomparable to the proud child that had once sat upon the throne at the head of the Phantomhive family. The young man did not have the same hair, the same height, the same condition. Stripped down to his bare skin, one would never have mistaken him for a noble. His own slender fingers trailed against his wounds, as the memories flickered in his mind briefly, to subside in the traffic that waited in the wings, as he continued to organize his thoughts.

This young man possessed nothing. He was born into servitude, and during his six years of life, had done nothing less then serve a master and wear clothes provided for him. He had cooked, cleaned, bathed, dressed, raised, and assisted his master and mistress every single day from morning until night. The entire house was product of his sweat and blood. He alone had forged something from nothing; the room that surrounded him, and the mirror before him, were fruits of his own labor, though the credit was often snatched from him. The young butler had done in six years what many prayed could happen to themselves, and created a budding empire that would eventually blossom to be a red rose that could eclipse the competition indubitably. What's more, he did it alone.

As he looked into his own eyes, he could still see a small, faint glimmer of pride, as if hiding in the deep blue rim of his irises, slowly begin to flicker awake, coaxed from it's shell of shame and pandemonium.

That young man had begun building a legacy, and though it was not signed to his name, he controlled it with an iron fist behind the laughing crimson puppet. Although the brutish marionette came with a heavy price upon his own mentality, it served it's purpose well with sweet blissful naivety. It promised protection against losing his own game, and was easily manipulated with just the right selection of words. It had been Ciel's own humane boundaries left over from his early years of society's grooming had lead him to put restrictions upon what was appropriate and what was obscene, and as he tried to focus his corrupted thinking to take a forced logical path, he concluded that his previous behavior had been a result of such critical boundaries.