Rachel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ariescantus) wrote2011-02-19 09:38 am
ariescantus) wrote2011-02-19 09:38 am
Entry tags:
Kuro fic
Warnings: SPOILERS!!! through episode six of Kuroshitsuji/chapter 13 of the manga. Spoilers to the end of the 'Jack the Ripper' arc. I know it's old, but just in case. Also angst.
(apologies if it doesn't flow. I got about three pages of this written and then my program froze, so I took the five paragraphs I could still read and and continued writing from there to almost the end. Then I went back and rewrote the beginning from what I could remember. Then I wrote the last few paragraphs. It's also nearly 10am and I haven't been to sleep yet.)
[a red affair]
I despised the colour red almost all my life. The red hair I inherited from my father. It was bright, vibrant, violent. It stood out, made me harsh and ugly, compared to my beautiful sister, blonde and blue-eyed. Father always told me how proud he was that I took after him, but I saw the way he looked at Rachel, dearest Rachel who looked beautiful like our mother.
Rachel used to tell me she was jealous of my scarlet locks, that she wished she could look as amazing as I. I always just laughed and told her she was the most beautiful creature to grace this planet, I wasn’t lying. No matter how much I wanted to, I could never bring myself to hate her. She was so perfect, so pure, so loving. Even if she was everything I wasn’t I loved her.
I remember one time as a child, in a jealous fit I had decided that I would cut off all of her lovely hair. Then I really would be the beautiful one. I snuck into her room that night, scissors in hand, poised to hack it off. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t ruin her beauty. Our parents would never forgive me. Even worse than that, I know she would, once I had explained myself. She would forgive me and still love me, even though I was such a monster.
After that I started to embody the colour, as if it were my only way of living. I became the colour red in dress and manner. I wore the brightest most awful dresses and immersed myself into the social life. I lived as the colour I hated, like the rose I was so often compared to. Momentarily beautiful, but quickly forgotten.
Then one day everything changed. Father introduced us to a man, Earl Vincent Phantomhive. At first I disliked him, thinking he’d be like every other man I’d ever met. He wasn’t however. He told me I was beautiful, which wasn’t anything new, that the color red suited me. He called me Ann, much like my sister. But what really got me was that he did not compare me to a rose. No, he told me it reminded him of Spider Lilys. They quickly became my favorite flower.
There was this one time he brought us all gifts. It was the first time I received a dress that I had not absolutely abhorred. I couldn’t wait to put it on. It fit me perfectly; slimming and elegant, skirt flowing beautifully to the floor. I hardly ever took it off after that. I wore it every time he came to visit, and he always complimented me. It was one of the things that made him different than other men. Of course he was good looking, and gentlemanly, but he was more than that. He was gentle, and genuinely kind. He always made time to spend with each of us individually as well as the two of us together. It was probably the reason I never saw it coming.
It happened a year later. Rachel had excitedly called the whole family together and she and Earl Phantomhive announced their engagement. I remember fainting. Really, the whole family had been shocked. Earl Phantomhive had not properly asked our father’s permission, and he begged then for him to allow it. Of course Father gave them his blessing, it was what he wanted out of this whole thing. As long as the Earl married one of us, it was all right. I wondered if it had all been lies up to that point, everything he ever said to me, every compliment he ever paid me. Looking at them though, I didn’t hate him like I wanted to, and I had learned long ago, I could never hate my dearest sister. I did, however, hate the colour red again. Red no longer had any meaning to me.
Their wedding was beautiful, all full of whites, pale greens, and deep blues. Everything that brought out how beautiful Rachel was. Once more I stood out, ruining the perfection in my ugly red. Not the dress he gave me, I could never wear that dress again. Instead it was a new one I had custom tailored for this day. I sat in the front pews and wept with a smile on my face as they read their vows to one another. Wept out of happiness, wept out of the deep sense of loss I felt at seeing the
two of them together, and knowing in a way that I had lost them both.
I buried myself in work and social engagements after that. I finished medical school and quickly obtained a position at a prestigious hospital. It was quite a bold move as their weren’t many women in the medical field who weren’t nurses, I was one of few. My bold reputation proceeded me with everything I did. Once again I became the embodiment of red. Crimson dresses, bright makeup, flashy shoes, bold statements. I was a sensation at any gathering. I thrived during London’s social seasons, and soon earned the name ‘Madam Red’. At the time I hated the title, and laughed it off anytime anyone used it.
One night, at one of these parties, I was out on the balcony for a breather. I’d had one glass of red wine too many, and the gossip just kept coming. I needed a moment to myself. That was where he found me. He came out making some light comment that made me chuckle and we got to talking. He also told me red suited me. I nearly walked away right then and there. But he didn’t compare me to a Rose, or a Spider Lily, nor any kind of flower. He said I reminded him of the red of a sunrise, soft, lifting, and all encompassing, watching over the world as it wakes and fading into the night. I slowly began to accept the colour red once more.
We continued to meet at these functions, both social and professional, it seemed we ran in many of the same circles. We would, of course, dance and gossip, but we would also talk. We could converse for hours about any subject. He wanted to know me and I wanted to know him. He was a good deal older than me, but I couldn't care less. He asked Father for my hand in marriage after several months of correspondence. Courting? I came to red love red, and I loved the red he saw in me. I felt as if I had perhaps redeemed myself, this was my second chance. Perhaps red wasn’t so bad after all.
For a while everything was great. The only thing I had to be jealous of was when Rachel gave birth, and even then I was hardly upset. The boy was lovely, just like his father, and had his mother's eyes. Of course I wanted a child of my own, but I was not daunted. I had a husband, who I had come to love, and we had our whole lives ahead of us.
I can still remember the happiest day of my life. He came in to hold my hair back as I bent over the toilet for the third time that week, and it hit me. I'd seen the symptoms in many women before. I was going to have a child. I was going to have a child with this man that I loved. Perhaps it would be blessed, as I had been, with the extraordinary colour red. I felt light, as fi I was walking on clouds. Alas, when walking on clouds, you're bound to fall. Falling is exactly what I did.
It was an accident. Plain and simple. The horse hand been frightened by some children playing rambunctiously in the streets, lost control, and crashed into the carriage. I hardly remember it at all. The only clear thing I do remember is crimson red, the dark colour of blood. Beautiful, terrifying, and ugly. I woke in a hospital covered in bandages. The doctors were straight with me. My husband was dead, killed instantly in the crash. Had it been his blood? To save my own life, they had to operate, to remove my uterus, and with it my unborn child, my last hope at happiness
in life. In jst an instant everything was gone, snatched away from me in a flash of red. Red, red, red! Everything was always red! How I hated that colour with every fibre of my being. Had it been my baby's blood that day, filling my vision with that awful colour?
Red wasn't done torturing me, however. Not a week after I hd lost half of everything I held dear, then lost the other half. Once released from the hospital I'd been invited to stay with my sister and her family while recuperating. I wanted to say no, I would have rather been alone, but I couldn't. It was probably for the best anyway, even I didn't know what I was capable of by myself.
As I looked out the window the first thing I noticed was the sky was tinged red. How fitting I thought. I didn't know anything was wrong until the driver suddenly pulled the carriage to a stop. Then I could hear the roaring. It was almost deafening. Cracking and snapping, and so very red. My nephew's house, my beloved's, my dearest sister's house burning, crimson flames covering every last inch of it. Red. Once again, it was that wretched colour, it was all I could see. Red had claimed my husband, my unborn child, and now it was taking everything I had left. I wished the red glow would engulf me as well.
I heard from Lord Randall later. Two bodies found, confirmed to be Vincent and Rachel Phantomhive. By that time I was numb. I wished I could have buried my heart with my sister and my beloved. Not even the spark of hope in that news could reach me, The idea, that perhaps my dearest nephew might have somehow survived. I threw myself into work, the one salvation I had left. I was barely hanging on and eventually I slipped.
The girl was young, not even twenty yet, and quite pretty. She had the misfortune, however, to not have been born into the privileged life that I was. She had to sell herself to survive. I might have had pity for her once upon a time. She came to me to get rid of her unborn child. To kill it.She had the opportunity to have children, to have a family, to everything. Everything I always wanted. And here she was throwing it in gutter like the whore that she was. I hated her. I hated her as much as I hated the colour red. How dare she act so carelessly, when she is blessed with something that some people will never have. I couldn’t stand it.
I followed her that night in a rage. All she was was a dirty whore. She didn’t deserve the life she had. She didn’t deserve to live. It was a snap decision. I had my tools on me, I’d just come from work after all. It wouldn’t be difficult to cut her up. To slice her open and watch her bleed scarlet streams. How perfect it would be for her to fade away in a pool of red. Red caused by me, it’s mistress.
It was much easier than I had anticipated. She put up little resistance, and all I had to do was cut her throat first, then she couldn’t scream. The rest was simple surgery. If she didn’t want children, then she wouldn’t be needing her uterus. I had not been thinking clearly. I hacked away at her stomach until there was hardly anything left before I remembered myself. And there was that colour, surrounding me again. Red. Her blood pooled beneath her body, her blood splattered all over me. Red was all I could see. All I would ever see.
That’s when I met him. Perhaps he was my saviour. Perhaps he just pulled me deeper into my crimson hell. All I knew at that point was that he was something, and in a world where I had nothing, that was everything. He too saw the red in me, the red of blood. He too loved me for that colour. He said he could help, that he understood my feelings. These women were monsters, but together we could make them beautiful. We could stain them red in their own blood.
A glimmer of hope appeared not long later. My nephew turned up after a couple months. My beautiful, darling nephew. My sister’s child, his child, their beautiful child. I could instantly see that he was stained too, but not red. Black, like the mysterious butler, who came with him. But that hardly mattered, because some part of what was dear to me was alive. I had something, even if it was a reminder of everything I had lost. My child, my beloved, and my sister. I still had my darling nephew.
Ciel’s return sparked a change in me. A resolution I had lacked until I had seen his blue eyes again, Rachel’s eyes. I had a purpose in this world, and that purpose was justice. Justice at what had been done to me, and to give all those unforgivable women exactly what they deserved, to be stained red at my hands.
No longer was I dominated by red, I had taken it and made it my own. The colour red was my tool to wield. Once more I became Madam Red, a name I embraced this time. I found myself in a world, I’d never bothered with before, the underground. The world of my beloved, now the world of my nephew, and even myself. I became someone to know, and I took my justice out on those who deserved it.
These brutal killings earned me a nickname in the newspapers. I became ‘Jack the Ripper’. Of course no one was aware of this, but me and my blood red reaper, my saviour, my butler. Unfortunately gaining notice, also earned the attention of the Queen. Her Majesty couldn’t have someone staining Her country red. So she sent her Guard Dog after Jack the Ripper. Sent my own nephew after me.
Ciel, oh Ciel. He could never understand why I killed those women. I couldn’t ever let him know. I had to protect him now. He was the only thing I had left. But he couldn’t stop digging, even when I asked him to, out of respect for his dear mother, who would never want him to live this kind of life. I know it was hypocritical, but I couldn’t have him finding out. It would ruin everything. Everything I had spent the last two years building.
He did of course. I’m not sure how, though perhaps that butler of his had a hand in it. Still, I won’t let him stop me. I’ve worked for this, this is what’s kept me going these past two years. Even my own nephew can’t take this from me, the one salvation I have left.
I take the knife and lash out at him. This is going to end here and now. Grabbing him by his tiny throat I slam him up against the wall. This is it! This is what it’s all come down to. After everything red’s curse has put me through, it all comes down to one final act. Killing my own nephew.
And then he looks at me. He looks at me, and all I can see is Rachel, my dearest sister. My beloved sister, Then I look closer and I can see his father as well, my first love. And suddenly everything I can’t do it anymore. Not to Ciel, not to my darling nephew, not to their son. Not to him To anyone but him, but them, because that what Ciel is now. He is Rachel and Earl Phantomhive in one and I simply can’t. Even when my scarlet reaper orders me to or it’s my life on the line.
I just can’t! I can’t, I can’t! I simply won’t, I can’t. I just ca--
(apologies if it doesn't flow. I got about three pages of this written and then my program froze, so I took the five paragraphs I could still read and and continued writing from there to almost the end. Then I went back and rewrote the beginning from what I could remember. Then I wrote the last few paragraphs. It's also nearly 10am and I haven't been to sleep yet.)
[a red affair]
I despised the colour red almost all my life. The red hair I inherited from my father. It was bright, vibrant, violent. It stood out, made me harsh and ugly, compared to my beautiful sister, blonde and blue-eyed. Father always told me how proud he was that I took after him, but I saw the way he looked at Rachel, dearest Rachel who looked beautiful like our mother.
Rachel used to tell me she was jealous of my scarlet locks, that she wished she could look as amazing as I. I always just laughed and told her she was the most beautiful creature to grace this planet, I wasn’t lying. No matter how much I wanted to, I could never bring myself to hate her. She was so perfect, so pure, so loving. Even if she was everything I wasn’t I loved her.
I remember one time as a child, in a jealous fit I had decided that I would cut off all of her lovely hair. Then I really would be the beautiful one. I snuck into her room that night, scissors in hand, poised to hack it off. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t ruin her beauty. Our parents would never forgive me. Even worse than that, I know she would, once I had explained myself. She would forgive me and still love me, even though I was such a monster.
After that I started to embody the colour, as if it were my only way of living. I became the colour red in dress and manner. I wore the brightest most awful dresses and immersed myself into the social life. I lived as the colour I hated, like the rose I was so often compared to. Momentarily beautiful, but quickly forgotten.
Then one day everything changed. Father introduced us to a man, Earl Vincent Phantomhive. At first I disliked him, thinking he’d be like every other man I’d ever met. He wasn’t however. He told me I was beautiful, which wasn’t anything new, that the color red suited me. He called me Ann, much like my sister. But what really got me was that he did not compare me to a rose. No, he told me it reminded him of Spider Lilys. They quickly became my favorite flower.
There was this one time he brought us all gifts. It was the first time I received a dress that I had not absolutely abhorred. I couldn’t wait to put it on. It fit me perfectly; slimming and elegant, skirt flowing beautifully to the floor. I hardly ever took it off after that. I wore it every time he came to visit, and he always complimented me. It was one of the things that made him different than other men. Of course he was good looking, and gentlemanly, but he was more than that. He was gentle, and genuinely kind. He always made time to spend with each of us individually as well as the two of us together. It was probably the reason I never saw it coming.
It happened a year later. Rachel had excitedly called the whole family together and she and Earl Phantomhive announced their engagement. I remember fainting. Really, the whole family had been shocked. Earl Phantomhive had not properly asked our father’s permission, and he begged then for him to allow it. Of course Father gave them his blessing, it was what he wanted out of this whole thing. As long as the Earl married one of us, it was all right. I wondered if it had all been lies up to that point, everything he ever said to me, every compliment he ever paid me. Looking at them though, I didn’t hate him like I wanted to, and I had learned long ago, I could never hate my dearest sister. I did, however, hate the colour red again. Red no longer had any meaning to me.
Their wedding was beautiful, all full of whites, pale greens, and deep blues. Everything that brought out how beautiful Rachel was. Once more I stood out, ruining the perfection in my ugly red. Not the dress he gave me, I could never wear that dress again. Instead it was a new one I had custom tailored for this day. I sat in the front pews and wept with a smile on my face as they read their vows to one another. Wept out of happiness, wept out of the deep sense of loss I felt at seeing the
two of them together, and knowing in a way that I had lost them both.
I buried myself in work and social engagements after that. I finished medical school and quickly obtained a position at a prestigious hospital. It was quite a bold move as their weren’t many women in the medical field who weren’t nurses, I was one of few. My bold reputation proceeded me with everything I did. Once again I became the embodiment of red. Crimson dresses, bright makeup, flashy shoes, bold statements. I was a sensation at any gathering. I thrived during London’s social seasons, and soon earned the name ‘Madam Red’. At the time I hated the title, and laughed it off anytime anyone used it.
One night, at one of these parties, I was out on the balcony for a breather. I’d had one glass of red wine too many, and the gossip just kept coming. I needed a moment to myself. That was where he found me. He came out making some light comment that made me chuckle and we got to talking. He also told me red suited me. I nearly walked away right then and there. But he didn’t compare me to a Rose, or a Spider Lily, nor any kind of flower. He said I reminded him of the red of a sunrise, soft, lifting, and all encompassing, watching over the world as it wakes and fading into the night. I slowly began to accept the colour red once more.
We continued to meet at these functions, both social and professional, it seemed we ran in many of the same circles. We would, of course, dance and gossip, but we would also talk. We could converse for hours about any subject. He wanted to know me and I wanted to know him. He was a good deal older than me, but I couldn't care less. He asked Father for my hand in marriage after several months of correspondence. Courting? I came to red love red, and I loved the red he saw in me. I felt as if I had perhaps redeemed myself, this was my second chance. Perhaps red wasn’t so bad after all.
For a while everything was great. The only thing I had to be jealous of was when Rachel gave birth, and even then I was hardly upset. The boy was lovely, just like his father, and had his mother's eyes. Of course I wanted a child of my own, but I was not daunted. I had a husband, who I had come to love, and we had our whole lives ahead of us.
I can still remember the happiest day of my life. He came in to hold my hair back as I bent over the toilet for the third time that week, and it hit me. I'd seen the symptoms in many women before. I was going to have a child. I was going to have a child with this man that I loved. Perhaps it would be blessed, as I had been, with the extraordinary colour red. I felt light, as fi I was walking on clouds. Alas, when walking on clouds, you're bound to fall. Falling is exactly what I did.
It was an accident. Plain and simple. The horse hand been frightened by some children playing rambunctiously in the streets, lost control, and crashed into the carriage. I hardly remember it at all. The only clear thing I do remember is crimson red, the dark colour of blood. Beautiful, terrifying, and ugly. I woke in a hospital covered in bandages. The doctors were straight with me. My husband was dead, killed instantly in the crash. Had it been his blood? To save my own life, they had to operate, to remove my uterus, and with it my unborn child, my last hope at happiness
in life. In jst an instant everything was gone, snatched away from me in a flash of red. Red, red, red! Everything was always red! How I hated that colour with every fibre of my being. Had it been my baby's blood that day, filling my vision with that awful colour?
Red wasn't done torturing me, however. Not a week after I hd lost half of everything I held dear, then lost the other half. Once released from the hospital I'd been invited to stay with my sister and her family while recuperating. I wanted to say no, I would have rather been alone, but I couldn't. It was probably for the best anyway, even I didn't know what I was capable of by myself.
As I looked out the window the first thing I noticed was the sky was tinged red. How fitting I thought. I didn't know anything was wrong until the driver suddenly pulled the carriage to a stop. Then I could hear the roaring. It was almost deafening. Cracking and snapping, and so very red. My nephew's house, my beloved's, my dearest sister's house burning, crimson flames covering every last inch of it. Red. Once again, it was that wretched colour, it was all I could see. Red had claimed my husband, my unborn child, and now it was taking everything I had left. I wished the red glow would engulf me as well.
I heard from Lord Randall later. Two bodies found, confirmed to be Vincent and Rachel Phantomhive. By that time I was numb. I wished I could have buried my heart with my sister and my beloved. Not even the spark of hope in that news could reach me, The idea, that perhaps my dearest nephew might have somehow survived. I threw myself into work, the one salvation I had left. I was barely hanging on and eventually I slipped.
The girl was young, not even twenty yet, and quite pretty. She had the misfortune, however, to not have been born into the privileged life that I was. She had to sell herself to survive. I might have had pity for her once upon a time. She came to me to get rid of her unborn child. To kill it.She had the opportunity to have children, to have a family, to everything. Everything I always wanted. And here she was throwing it in gutter like the whore that she was. I hated her. I hated her as much as I hated the colour red. How dare she act so carelessly, when she is blessed with something that some people will never have. I couldn’t stand it.
I followed her that night in a rage. All she was was a dirty whore. She didn’t deserve the life she had. She didn’t deserve to live. It was a snap decision. I had my tools on me, I’d just come from work after all. It wouldn’t be difficult to cut her up. To slice her open and watch her bleed scarlet streams. How perfect it would be for her to fade away in a pool of red. Red caused by me, it’s mistress.
It was much easier than I had anticipated. She put up little resistance, and all I had to do was cut her throat first, then she couldn’t scream. The rest was simple surgery. If she didn’t want children, then she wouldn’t be needing her uterus. I had not been thinking clearly. I hacked away at her stomach until there was hardly anything left before I remembered myself. And there was that colour, surrounding me again. Red. Her blood pooled beneath her body, her blood splattered all over me. Red was all I could see. All I would ever see.
That’s when I met him. Perhaps he was my saviour. Perhaps he just pulled me deeper into my crimson hell. All I knew at that point was that he was something, and in a world where I had nothing, that was everything. He too saw the red in me, the red of blood. He too loved me for that colour. He said he could help, that he understood my feelings. These women were monsters, but together we could make them beautiful. We could stain them red in their own blood.
A glimmer of hope appeared not long later. My nephew turned up after a couple months. My beautiful, darling nephew. My sister’s child, his child, their beautiful child. I could instantly see that he was stained too, but not red. Black, like the mysterious butler, who came with him. But that hardly mattered, because some part of what was dear to me was alive. I had something, even if it was a reminder of everything I had lost. My child, my beloved, and my sister. I still had my darling nephew.
Ciel’s return sparked a change in me. A resolution I had lacked until I had seen his blue eyes again, Rachel’s eyes. I had a purpose in this world, and that purpose was justice. Justice at what had been done to me, and to give all those unforgivable women exactly what they deserved, to be stained red at my hands.
No longer was I dominated by red, I had taken it and made it my own. The colour red was my tool to wield. Once more I became Madam Red, a name I embraced this time. I found myself in a world, I’d never bothered with before, the underground. The world of my beloved, now the world of my nephew, and even myself. I became someone to know, and I took my justice out on those who deserved it.
These brutal killings earned me a nickname in the newspapers. I became ‘Jack the Ripper’. Of course no one was aware of this, but me and my blood red reaper, my saviour, my butler. Unfortunately gaining notice, also earned the attention of the Queen. Her Majesty couldn’t have someone staining Her country red. So she sent her Guard Dog after Jack the Ripper. Sent my own nephew after me.
Ciel, oh Ciel. He could never understand why I killed those women. I couldn’t ever let him know. I had to protect him now. He was the only thing I had left. But he couldn’t stop digging, even when I asked him to, out of respect for his dear mother, who would never want him to live this kind of life. I know it was hypocritical, but I couldn’t have him finding out. It would ruin everything. Everything I had spent the last two years building.
He did of course. I’m not sure how, though perhaps that butler of his had a hand in it. Still, I won’t let him stop me. I’ve worked for this, this is what’s kept me going these past two years. Even my own nephew can’t take this from me, the one salvation I have left.
I take the knife and lash out at him. This is going to end here and now. Grabbing him by his tiny throat I slam him up against the wall. This is it! This is what it’s all come down to. After everything red’s curse has put me through, it all comes down to one final act. Killing my own nephew.
And then he looks at me. He looks at me, and all I can see is Rachel, my dearest sister. My beloved sister, Then I look closer and I can see his father as well, my first love. And suddenly everything I can’t do it anymore. Not to Ciel, not to my darling nephew, not to their son. Not to him To anyone but him, but them, because that what Ciel is now. He is Rachel and Earl Phantomhive in one and I simply can’t. Even when my scarlet reaper orders me to or it’s my life on the line.
I just can’t! I can’t, I can’t! I simply won’t, I can’t. I just ca--