ClaudexReaderxSebastian, Part 8

ClaudexReaderxSebastian, Part 8
Your Butlers, Supportive

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“Lordy.” You moaned silently, appalled at what you about to do—the things and opportunities that you would lose. “Jesus, help me. For what I am about to do. For once, God, do something for me.”

... Now was the moment. Now there was no turning back. Never again to return to the life you once had. Could you bear that, you wondered? Could you bear to leave behind a world that you so dearly loved? And at the same time, you weren’t sure that you could hold on to a new reality… you weren’t sure that you could accept this new life.

“… Perhaps I knew it would turn out this way since I accepted…” The contract. Of course—there had been no guarantee that you could have ever been allowed to return to the life you once had. And now that you were bound to demons, now that you could see into them and understand them a bit more… you were beginning to wonder why you’d ever thought of such a ridiculous thing anyways.

Return to your old life? Ha…! What a mundane way of thinking.

It had been clear from the start that when you accepted the new life Claude and Sebastian had placed into your bloody, torn hands, the life you once knew had vanished.

I wonder what it would be like if I had just died? Wouldn’t it be so much nicer to just rest in piece? … No… there’s no room for thought like that anymore. I did what I did. Perhaps I was foolish… but I don’t care about that anymore.

What’s important is what is here now: the decision that lies before me.

… Join the Underworld as the Queen’s guard dog or flee your home? Which was the better choice? What was your only option now, the one decision that would fuel the rest of your burning, hatred-propelled life? (After all, there was nothing left to fight for but to fill yourself with the only feeling you had left: hatred.) Which was worth the trouble to go to all that for the Queen? Which one would give you more freedom to do as you needed to?

I don’t want to spend my life running around for someone else. I know that now… Why must I entrust my life and loyalty to a woman I barely know? What’s the point if all you are is a toy for someone else?

“It doesn’t matter.” You reminded yourself of that. “It doesn’t matter whether you are loyal to the Queen or not, (Name).” It must have looked strange to them—to the firemen, to Abberline’s men, and even your butlers—how you stood there, hands clenching already crumpled paper tightly, muttered to yourself with trembling, hesitant words. “Whatever I do… the only thing that matters… is this new life.”

The contract. You still felt both the marks burning on your shoulders, even now. No, they didn’t hurt anymore. Not physically, at least. You realized—it’s never going to end. Never. No matter what I do… no matter how I run… I can’t hide from them. I’m bound forever to a leash that cannot be cut.

Claude Faustus and Sebastian Michaelis.

The two butlers that you would spend the rest of your miserable life with from now one. A life driven by ruthless ambition, a sort of unexplainable insanity.

“Sebastian, Claude. You may rise now,” you murmured, sinking down into the burnt grass. You felt awfully hopeless, sunken too deep into a pit of denial and reality that seemed intent on burying you—consuming you. What was this feeling? Pain? No. You’d felt pain for so long now that you realized it must be dull to you.

Was that even possible? you wondered. Did pain really just fade away? Were humans able to forget it, to be exposed to it so much that they couldn’t even feel it prick at them anymore? Or did it just recede slightly… make them forget the agony a bit… and then come back in full blast to impale their hearts? There was no end for it, not for humans; pain goes away a while, and then another greater hurt comes back to take its place.

It is forever eating at humanity, tearing archaic chunks of flesh from their wounds and pouring ocean water upon their cuts and into those bleeding eyes.

It was cruel, the way pain worked. Life itself was cruel—how it never ended, how it continued to go round in a cycle was enough to destroy the sanity of any real person.

You knew that now, and even as you looked up into the eyes of your butlers before allowing your head to lower itself again, you felt the pain in your heart. In how many lives would hearts like these continue to throb so painfully?

Perhaps making a deal with demons is a good idea after all. I don’t have to go on. I don’t have to feel any more pain. The cycle can then…

… Break.

They hesitated at first, eyeing your sullen face that you soon buried into your knees so that you could face a dark, fresh world, free of the smell of burning smoke and ash and life, but you felt and heard them as they rose up out of the yellowing grass. You kept your face hidden in your knees, but through a crack in your closed-together legs, you could peek through the dead ground. It seemed as if the fire’s light, flickering upon the dirt from under you, had lit up the ground…

… running in a river of light under the earth…

“My lady?” Claude said silently, moving forward to look down upon you. Sebastian raised an eyebrow in concern as he wondered. Whatever could be wrong with this ever-determined child? Could she already be breaking? What a shame—he’d had such hope for her strong, pure future. And it was really no fun to play with a broken toy, after all...

He wondered if Claude felt even vaguely the same way. Sebastian knew he liked to toy with his meal before eating it—one of the reasons he adored felines. They were ever so clever and sly in their tampering with their food, and it was quite adorable to watch one trap a poor little creature between its paws, to see it toss one curve after another at a mouse that could never escape its confines.

Claude didn’t seem like the type to play with his food. He was the type to lurk in a dark corner and wait, patiently, indifferently, for a sweet little butterfly to entangle itself in his web. And then he would wrap the little thing up patiently, watching as it thrashed and tried to wriggle free.

That was the difference between them—Sebastian would rather watch his food tie itself up in its own web, to watch its struggling intensify to the point that it would limp, exhausted, and finally realized that it was wrapped up too much to escape, and all the while he would be playing the Good Samaritan in the background, beckoning for it to struggle more, promising hope and freedom and happiness.

He was the type of demon to enjoy indirectly piercing an enemy deeper in the heart than it deserved. But Claude wasn’t like that—he was far too calculating and cold for games.

He liked to directly interfere and destroy his opponents. He reeked of intimidating aura that made a man’s knees buckle; his eyes tore through the souls of his victims, and that power was what they sought when the extended their hands towards him and begged for life.

Sebastian, too, had felt that aura. It was the aura of a fellow demon, the mark of a predator who refused to ever back down when a much more delectable meal showed itself... even if that meal belonged rightfully to another of his own kind. He was silent, thoughtful, and sat on a throne above, carefully observing the word.

Sebastian was demonic and yet more instinctual than anything, although with his graceful ways he might be considered half human. Claude was animalistic, even more so than the other butler, and just somewhat human in his greed and with his calculating mind. After all, weren’t humans, at their very core, greed and lust and pride?

… That was the Claude Faustus he had known then,

But… What about the Claude Faustus that I know now? Where is that aura he had then? Is he… hiding it? No. No time to contemplate such things. I will confront him for it later.

There was no time to judge and to wonder—their master came first.

He and the other butler shared a hurried glance—the same thought had run through both their heads at that moment. A result of their newfound bond, no doubt. But Sebastian could still feel the brewing hatred in his veins, those filled with a lustful evil, the dark blood of a demon. He never was meant to love, the devil; he was a spirit created for destruction and a fuel for hatred and death. He never could get over any old grudges...

Claude avoided the scorching gaze he had been given by the slightly shorter demon. Of course Sebastian’s feelings towards him wouldn’t have changed in any way. He was still unchanged, still exactly as Claude had remembered him in the life before as a young, childish lord’s servant. That sadistic, immature, arrogant human child—he was the reason that Claude had resorted to such actions. He had hated the boy, absolutely hated him, to the point that he was willing to run off for another boy and murder his own master. What a taboo to commit. But who cared then? Even now, who was there to mourn the boy’s death?

He certainly was not one to regret his actions. And now, his only concern, his life’s work, was to be you.

“… Leave me.” The words were harsh, almost unreasonable to Sebastian’s ears. He uttered a quick: “Excuse me, my lady?”

“Leave me.” Tear-stained eyes were lifted from their dark perch to face his own crimson orbs—you glared hatefully at him before commanding once more: “Leave me. Both of you. Go somewhere, do something, as long as it isn’t near me. Go until I call you back when I need you.”

You wanted to sort out your thoughts alone. Alone. You didn’t want their glowing eyes beaming down on you, you didn’t want the hazed aura of pure black caressing your weakened form. No. You wanted them somewhere where you couldn’t see them, where their smooth and careless voices couldn’t reach you.

You raised a bloody hand and pointed a finger towards the darkness beyond the house, beyond the dimmed streets and the bellowing crowds that demanded information, reason for what had happened at the (Last name) manor. Make them leave as quickly as possible; that was your plan. You needed them somewhere that would leave you in peace to think clearly, for once.

They left. Without a word, without a sound, the two demons had briskly taken their leave, walking, almost gliding down the pathway silently. How haunting; you shivered to think that they could leave and come when they wanted, so quietly, so unexpected, and—you didn’t even want to know what they were capable of if you were off your guard, helpless. Were demons really completely trustworthy? Could you feel safe knowing that they, so powerful and capable, had sworn to protect you? Could you place your trust in them wholly?

“… I don’t want to think about it.”

Oh, but you do. You will think about it, today, tomorrow, and every day until the end of your miserable, pathetic life.

You shivered, groaned, burying your face in your hands to face a blank world again, a world that still waited to be coloured and writing across with pictures and words, the days and years of your new life. “No… I’m not pathetic. I’m not miserable. Don’t… say that!”

Oh, but you are! You are so miserable and helpless, you know that? You haven’t got anyone or anything beside you, not a person, not even a pet. Even your cousins will stray from you, and all you will have left is evil surrounding you. That’s what you agreed to, isn’t it?

“… N-No… Th-That’s not it! I didn’t agree to such a thing! I-I wanted someone! I don’t want to be… alone!!”

Was this some unmentioned side effect of the contract? A doubtful voice to lurk in the back of your mind to remind you that for all eternity, you were stuck here, in limbo, until you unleashed vengeance?  A questioning laugh in your head to tell that no matter how much you ran, you could not escape from this contract and the demons that came rushing with it?

You were a master now, and still somehow you’d become a slave to yourself. To your own demons… you didn’t want to be…

“I don’t want to be alone!”

But you will be. You’ll be alone forever. None of the terms in your contract said that you would have your family beside you. You didn’t ask for a friend. You didn’t ask for anyone to care for you and live beside you. You have no one.

“N-N-No! No! That’s not the way it’s supposed to be!! That’s not the way I want it!” You were forgetting something. Something that nagged awfully at you, gnawing at your bleeding mind, lingering in the back of your head…

But that is the way that it will be. Don’t try to deny it, (Name). You couldn’t even specify what you wanted in a contract. You couldn’t tell them what you really wanted. You are trash. Weak, pathetic, helpless trash that cannot even make a life for itself. Face it—you will have no one. No one will want you. You will be alone and pathetic.

“No! No, no, no, no, no!” You clutched your head, something inside you threatening to tip over, to spill. Hope? Despair? Want? Hatred? Anger? What was it? There was something missing—the terms of the contract you’d formed were so, so blurry… what did you agree to? Did you even request anything? No? Did they offer you the rules of the contract? Who was it that initiated it? Who… who was in… who was in control?

You will always be alone, you bitch. You will never have someone who cares for you.

“N-No… Sto-Stop… stop it…”

You will never have a soul who truly wants you. Everything you have… will be a lie. Will be fabricated.

“Th-These thoughts… please… make them go away.” You began to rock back and forth, feeling the soft blades of fleshiness of the dying grass beneath you bend under your crushing weight. Back and forth… back and forth. And then back and forth again. A cycle. Would it ever, ever stop?

Never. You will never have…

“St-Stop! Stop it! Immediately! I-I order you!”

Anyone… Who… loves you, never—!

“Shut up!” Your eyes snapped open in realisation—that was it! That was exactly it! “Shut up! That’s not true! That’s not true, and you know it!”

… Silence. It had stopped. Why? Was it… waiting? Listening for an explanation?

“You know that’s not true,” you snarled under your heavy breath. “I don’t have my parents anymore… not anymore! But that doesn’t mean I have no one!”

“My lady…”

Faraway voices that spoke in the back of your mind.

“… I will always…”

“I have someone! I do!” Your fists clenched. “I-I have… Persephone! I have Persephone… and my cousins, and Sebastian and Claude! I won’t be alone, damn it! I won’t! I bought this life for myself!” Fingers digging into flesh so deeply that they drew just a drop of blood.

“I won’t be alone ever again!!”

…

… Silence.

The wind blew ever so slightly, scattering the dried and speckled leaves amongst themselves, and the fire crackled and died down slowly. The flickering of yellow, orange, and red faded from the ground at your feet, and the river of light in the earth faded away.

“… I’ve made my decision.”