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Devilish Impulses	By : Arianawray Category: > Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji ???) Views: 13948 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Kuroshitsuji or any of its characters, and I do not make any money from these writings.

Chapter List
- 1-Unwanted
- 2-Whim
- 3-Trust
- 4-Taste
- 5-Scheme
- 6-Command
- 7-Competition
- 8-Advice
- 9-Enlightenment
- 10-Sustenance
- 11-Caught
- 12-Breath
- 13-Arms
- 14-Inflammation
- 15-Imagination
- 16-Intent
- 17-Compromise
- 18-Sacrifice
- 19-Despair
- 20-Compassion
- 21-Interest
- 22-Equality
- 23-Mentor
- 24-History
- 25-Disorder
- 26-Reputation
- 27-Gifts
- 28-Admission
- 29-Watching
- 30-Bonds
- 31-Revelations
- 32-Confrontation
- 33-Struggle
- 34-Separation
- 35-Duty
- 36-Change
- 37-Together
- 38-Love
- 39-Epilogue: Heaven
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Arms

Terror is all that Ciel feels as the water closes over his head, and the river swallows him whole. The airless element enveloping him entirely is so cold that he has to consciously stop himself from gasping in a reflex action as he is forced down to the bottom by the sinking cage. He struggles briefly in a panic, but once the cage hits the river bed, he quickly becomes calm as he accepts the fact that he is doomed to die.

His lungs have never been strong, or capacious; they cannot hold much air. He ought to end it quickly by allowing the water to rush into his body through his nose and mouth, instead of fighting to keep it out. Still, a part of him refuses to yield to death so easily, after having been given a second chance at life by the devil he made a contract with.

Even if he cannot speak underwater, he only needs to summon Sebastian in his mind, and he will come. But he refuses to do that, for Lizzie may not yet be safe. If she is close to death herself, then calling Sebastian will be tantamount to murdering her, because the devil will drop everything – including Elizabeth – to fly to him.

Though mere seconds have passed since his last gulp of air, his lungs are aching. He forces his eyelids open. The cold stings his eyes. However, the water runs clear, and he is able to look up through the bars of the cage, tilting to one side on the river bed. He gazes calmly up through the surface of the water, at the blue sky above.

All of a sudden, Sebastian is there on the bank of the river, looking down at him. The devil seems to smile, although it may be no more than a ripple on the water surface twisting Ciel's view of his lips. Then he vanishes.

The scenes from Ciel's dream hit him with full force, and his calmness scatters as despair takes over. As the water floods his nose and mouth, everything goes black from the pain – a blow like someone kicking him in the chest – and his last thought is that he has been tricked one final time, in the cruellest way, by the devil who had promised that he was owned by him.

***

Sebastian reaches his master moments after leaving the Phantomhive manor. The instant he lands on the bank of the river into which Sophia Easton's cronies have dropped a cage with Ciel in it, he is fired upon by some twenty men. Bullets tear through his immortal flesh and rip holes in his clothes.

The boy is almost out of breath. But he will have to wait one second more, while his butler disarms and binds every one of those thugs so that no bullets will ricochet into him once he pulls him from the water.

Swiftly, Sebastian disgorges the bullets into his hands and fires back at the men, hitting every one of them, but deliberately missing Mrs Easton – he will leave her to his master. He sweeps through their ranks like lightning, relieving them all of their weapons and binding them with the long tail-end of the great coil of rope that holds the cage. The lady he is pleased to knock senseless with the hard edge of his hand.

With not a moment more to waste, he tears off his coat, plunges into the frigid water, breaks the cage open and lifts his little master out of the river only to find that the child has stopped breathing. His arms and back are also scored with numerous knife cuts – but the latter wounds are not crucial now. What is pressing is the need to revive him at once.

"Young Master!" Sebastian calls, even as he thinks: Foolish child! All you had to do was to hold your breath for one more second!

The boy is naked as the day he was born. An apt state for him to be in, for Sebastian knows he has to act as quickly as a midwife does when the baby she has pulled from a womb fails to draw breath. He holds Ciel upside down over his lap. No water emerges. He smacks him smartly on the back – once, twice. Some water leaves his nose and mouth. Still, he does not breathe, and his heartbeat is slowing dramatically. Sebastian at once turns him over, lays him on his back on the coat he pulled off just before leaping into the river, and presses his mouth to his, forcing air into his body while his left hand rests on his narrow chest, monitoring the slow pulsing of his heart, urging his organs to return life to his body.

Steadily, he drives lungfuls of air into the boy, compelling his air passages to reopen. He is a devil, and can tell better than anyone else here that the child's soul has not separated from his body. There is life in him yet. Again, and again, and once again, he breathes into his master, and breathes for him. At last, Ciel splutters and coughs violently, expelling the remaining drops of river water. Sebastian holds him as the spasms rack his thin body, and holds him tighter as he gasps and wheezes, struggling against the pain, against the one trying to help him.

"Young Master, be calm. Steady your breathing. The pain will pass," the butler says, keeping his arms about him, his mouth still filled with the sweetness of the boy's lips and breath. Many feet behind them, the men who are still alive struggle and swear while their lady, bound along with them, remains unconscious. Sebastian ignores them, his body a barrier keeping him and his master alone in their own space.

"Se...bastian...?" the child's hoarse voice comes between his ragged gasps.

"You are safe now," Sebastian answers, pulling back a little so that the boy can see his face.

"Lizzie...?" he rasps.

"Lady Elizabeth is alive and well," he assures him, as he slashes through the rope binding his wrists and ankles. "She is safe with Lady Francis."

"Why did you save me?" is Ciel's next question. His eyes are wide with bewilderment, and not a little suspicion, even as he shakes violently from the cold.

Sebastian gazes back at him curiously. "Why would I not save you, my lord?"

"You smiled at me and went away."

"Young Master," Sebastian says soberly. "I had to leave you for a second to prevent those creatures from shooting you once I pulled you from the water. I was able to shield Lady Elizabeth from two guns with my body, but I preferred not to chance your being shot when we were surrounded by twenty armed men. I believed you could and would hold your breath for just that second longer. And I did not smile at your predicament."

"You're smiling now," the earl remarks, still suspiciously, his teeth chattering.

"Because you are no longer in danger," the butler replies.

Sebastian shifts his arms to pick Ciel up so that he can take him into the mill house, dry him quickly, and wrap him up warmly before he dies of exposure. But as his hands brush the boy's hips, the earl unexpectedly tenses and tries to push him away with his aching, mutilated arms.

"Young Master...?" the butler asks, concerned that some other, more serious injuries besides the knife wounds and the welts are hurting the child, and that he may have failed after all to save him.

But there is no other grievous physical wound. The child is shrinking from his touch as never before, trying to hide his nakedness as he never has from him. Sebastian sharpens his senses, seeking an answer to what has happened besides the cutting and beating. The river has washed a great deal of evidence away, but his devil's senses are acute, and he finds it soon enough – a scent of a male's saliva, his tongue and mouth, all over the child's private parts. A swift glance downwards picks out some tooth abrasions on the boy. Whoever did this to him did not care enough to keep his teeth covered with his lips at all times.

A cold, biting sensation of wrath spirals through his demonic being. He desires little more now than to whip around and rend limb from limb the worthless human who has dared to so touch his master. Even Agni's honourable handling of the child was almost unacceptable to him; what more this violation?

But his first priority is to assuage the boy's fears, so he pushes his wrath aside and wraps his coat around Ciel, covering his body from his head almost to his toes. There is gunpowder on the exterior of the coat, but that cannot be helped now, and Sebastian hopes the thickness of the wool and its silk lining will keep the substance from touching his master's wounds. The collar drapes like a cloak's hood over the earl's head, allowing him to shield his face from everything here if that is what he wants to do.

"Young Master," he speaks as gently as he did to Elizabeth. "I would not harm you for the world – not for all the world."

He fixes his garnet eyes on Ciel's sapphire-and-violet orbs without blinking or looking away, until the message sinks in. When at last it registers, the boy visibly relaxes. He allows him now to lift him into his arms, without resistance. The big black coat keeps him well-wrapped and warm despite the many bullet holes in it.

"Nothing and no one can touch you now if you do not wish it," Sebastian says to him as he walks back towards the pile of humans composed of Mrs Easton and her men. "You only need to say the word, and I shall kill those who remain alive."

A tremor runs through the boy's body, separate from the cold-induced shivering. The butler clasps him even more tightly as for the first time he feels his master willingly slipping his arms around his neck.

"Only say the word, and they will die," Sebastian whispers, as the small arms tighten about him.

"All except Mrs Easton," the child whispers back against the base of his ear.

"Yes, I have kept her alive especially for you. And if you point out the one who hurt you the most, I shall tear his tongue out of his mouth before I end his life."

"No, I don't want to look at him again." The boy is pressing his face into the side of his neck, the collar-hood concealing the rest of his head.

"As you wish, Young Master. Give me your order."

"Kill all the men," he murmurs against the devil's skin.

"Yes, my lord," Sebastian replies, scanning the pile for the ones still breathing. Keeping his master safe in the embrace of his left arm, he picks up a rusty blade lying on the ground with his right hand and slits the throats of those who survived the bullets, one by one, moving as smoothly as running water around the group. He allows the blood to spurt over Mrs Easton, who has still not regained her senses.

One man's scent stands out for him, for it corresponds to that which he detected on that part of the child nobody should have touched without permission. The man tries to scream and beg as the devil closes in on him. But Sebastian reaches into his mouth and tears his tongue out, then clamps his hand over his mouth to stop all sounds of agony, letting him writhe in terror for a good minute or so before slashing his neck so deeply that his head lolls and hangs off his shoulders by a flap of skin. Another man has many drops of the boy's blood on him – he must have been the one who inflicted the knife wounds. Sebastian gags him with a filthy rag lying in the soil, then steps on and crushes both his hands before drawing the knife across his throat.

Holding Ciel tightly, and ensuring that the boy's face is still buried in his neck, the butler unties the rope holding the pile of bodies and one unconscious woman together, and scatters the corpses around the river bank. He sweeps up all their weapons – the guns he had cast aside earlier, the knife he used, and drops them amidst the bodies.

"There now, Young Master – it looks almost as if they shot and slashed one another – except the woman. What would you have me do with her?"

"Leave her to the police."

"Oh?" Sebastian asks, genuinely surprised. "Do you not want me to torture her for days, until she pleads for permission to die? I could do many things to her, and no one would ever find her again, not one piece of her."

The boy stirs in his arms, and Sebastian angles his body so that Ciel will not see any of the bodies when he lifts his head – especially not the one with the torn-out tongue.

A deep-blue eye peers up at him from under the curve of the makeshift hood as the earl tells him: "No, I don't want her dead, because that is what she wants if she fails to carry out her plan. So I want you to tie her to the mill wheel and tell Commissioner Randall that Mrs Easton's men, who abducted the Lady Elizabeth Midford, have turned against and killed one another, but Mrs Easton remains alive to be arrested. Let her rot in prison, knowing she has failed."

"Are you certain?"

"Yes."

"Then I shall do as you say, Young Master. Do you wish to watch while I tie her to the wheel?"

"No. I never want to look at her again."

"May I at least set the wheel in motion?"

He hopes the proposal will bring a spark back into the boy's eyes, but Ciel only says uninterestedly: "I'll leave that to your judgement."

So he carries his master into the mill house and finds him a chair to sit on. He would like to clean his wounds, but he distrusts the cleanness of the water here – the river itself may have done enough unseen damage as it is. His handkerchief is at the manor, still lying on the floor where Lady Francis dropped it. Fortunately, there is a spare handkerchief inside one of the coat pockets. He uses that the best he can to clean and dry his master's wounds.

He wraps him up again, and scans the area to make certain that he has overlooked no one who might harm him. He then goes back outside alone and proceeds to bind Sophia Easton by her wrists and ankles to the outer circumference of the waterwheel, over the blades. He ties her tightly, unheeding of whether the ropes will damage her limbs or not. He will spare her no such consideration, when it is plain how much harm she has caused his master. Indeed, he wishes that he had been given the order to peel her skin off her bones an inch at a time. But alas, he must content himself with smaller gestures.

She is beginning to stir, so he stands on the bank and waits till she opens her eyes. Then he opens the sluice gates, and the wheel slowly creaks and begins to turn after years of not moving in the water. Sebastian's devilish eyes gleam as the woman begins to gulp air when she realises that her feet are sinking into the river, soon followed by the rest of her.

This wheel is constructed such that at no point of its rotation do its blades come too close to a wall or any other solid structure, so Mrs Easton will not be crushed as it turns in its old circle. It moves rather slowly on its first round, not having gained momentum, and she spends a good half-minute underwater before emerging feet-first on the other side. She is now upside-down, and her dress has scooped up a large amount of water. The outermost silk of her skirt falls down over her face while exposing her lawn underskirts, stockings, part of her bustle, and her drawers. Sebastian smiles sadistically as she splutters against the soaked green fabric, shaking her head from side to side to get it off her face. The fabric slides away from her mouth only after the wheel turns her upright again, and she has a few seconds to take air into her lungs before she is pulled under the water once more.

The young master is not entirely right about her wanting to die if her plans failed, muses Sebastian. She seems to be holding on to life the best she can – or perhaps she thinks the fight is not over yet. Her light-coloured eyes flash murderous looks his way even as she snatches air into her lungs; if her power were equal to her will, she would surely destroy him.

He puts her through three more rotations of the wheel before closing the sluice gates, timing it so the wheel comes to rest while she is upside-down. Let the police find her that way, exposing her undergarments to the world, the devil thinks.

Before he leaves the river, he springs onto the wheel and strikes her on the temple with the edge of his hand to render her unconscious once more, not caring if she sustains permanent harm from the blow. He hopes that she will truly feel the pain of it when she awakes. It would please him to do more, but he has already exceeded the authority given by his young master, so he leaves it at that.

Done with the woman, he returns to the mill house.

"Did you kill her?" the boy asks indifferently. He is calmer, and no longer shivering.

"No, my lord. She is alive, as you ordered. You may see for yourself."

"I don't enjoy staring at people who have been robbed of their dignity, unlike you."

"I did what I did because she nearly damaged my master beyond recovery."

Ciel seems to consider giving a reply to that before dismissing the thought and saying instead: "My clothes and ring are in the upper room. Fetch them."

Sebastian scans the place once more to make certain that no one remains alive or mobile to harm the boy. He enters the uppermost room of the mill house to retrieve the clothes, shoes and jewellery stripped from Ciel's body. He spends only a second there, but does not miss the blade and switch smeared with his master's blood, or any of the blood and sweat spilt on the uneven floorboards. It is all evident to his acute senses despite what appears to have been a crude attempt to wash them away with water. Neither does he miss the scent of the dead man's arousal, the boy's revulsion, and Sophia Easton's pleasure.

Having taken in the details of that scene, he descends the stairs, bends down before his master and draws back the hood to look properly into his face, which is still red from the beating Mrs Easton gave him. Now that they have a quiet moment, Sebastian wants to chide the boy for ordering him to save his cousin before himself, but the awareness of what he has been through makes him hold his tongue.

"Would you like to be dressed in your own clothes before we leave this place?" is all the butler chooses to ask at this time.

Ciel nods.

Sebastian carefully dresses him and finishes up with the shoes, ring, and eye-patch.

"Shall we leave?"

"Not yet. There's a working telephone line behind you – I saw one of the men using it earlier as they were taking me upstairs. Ring the Commissioner and tell him to send his people out here."

Lord Randall rants and fires a hundred questions at Sebastian over the telephone. But as the abduction of Elizabeth, daughter of the Marquess of Midford, has been reported to the police, he knows this could be another feather in the Yard's cap. So he shuts up after five minutes and agrees to clean up the mess at the mill.

That done, Sebastian prepares to remove his master from this unwholesome place.

"The Marchioness' carriage is not here," he observes.

"No. They ditched Aunt Francis' carriage and horses a mile from the manor and changed to another."

"That other conveyance remains here. Would you like to take it?" Sebastian asks. "This mill is not far from the manor."

"I don't want to touch anything of Sophia Easton's."

"Of course. May I bear you back to the manor, then?"

"You may."

To keep Ciel as warm as possible even though he is already fully clothed, Sebastian rewraps his hole-ridden coat over and around him, picks him up, and sprints off the land around the mill before slowing to a walk in the forest.

"We are off those grounds now, and won't meet Lord Randall's people. Let us travel more slowly for a while, shall we?" he asks. "It will give my clothes time to dry."

Ciel assents with a nod, and reclines his sore cheek against Sebastian's shoulder before murmuring: "Did she gasp for breath?"

"Oh yes, several times."

"Good." A little spirit in his voice now.

"I would have liked to have hurt her more – perhaps another time?"

"Perhaps." A pause, followed by another question: "You really didn't leave me to die in the river, did you?"

"No, my lord. I truly believed you had breath enough to last you till I had disarmed the men."

"And you tore out that man's tongue."

"I did not think you saw that, or I would have covered your eyes before doing it."

"I didn't see. I knew you did, because you sounded like you wanted to when you suggested it earlier."

"Did I sound that way?" Sebastian asks seriously.

"Yes."

"Then I must have really wanted to," Sebastian whispers.

Ciel slips his arms around his butler again, presses his face to his neck, and whispers back against the devil's cool flesh: "I'm glad you wanted to."

Sebastian smiles, for the words uttered against his skin feel like soft kisses from the lips of Ciel Phantomhive, planted along with his sweet, warm breath on his butler's throat.

***

Before entering the manor, Ciel orders Sebastian to set him down. He does not want the others reacting hysterically to his being carried, which will be a dead giveaway to them that he has been seriously hurt. He also tells him to put the bullet-ridden coat back on himself, so its blackness will hide the numerous, more obvious, holes peppering the butler's waistcoat and shirt. Despite those precautions, they are still mobbed. The servants flock about the earl, all talking at once, and Sebastian has to tell them to give the master space.

Aunt Francis and Elizabeth are upstairs in one of the guest bedrooms, where the trusted, long-time physician to the Midford family is almost done with his medical examination of the girl. Doctor Marshall is just remarking to the girl and her mother how fortunate it is that her stays were not tightly laced, or she might have died before help came. But Lizzie barely hears him, for the second the commotion downstairs reaches her ears, she leaps up from the bed against her mother's admonishments, and flies into the foyer to throw her arms around her cousin.

"CIEL!" she cries, bursting into fresh tears.

The earl does not normally like such demonstrations of affection, but he welcomes it today despite his wounds hurting all over again at Lizzie's tight embrace, so relieved is he to see with his own eyes that the girl is unharmed.

"I only thought of myself when I was trapped in that box," she sobs on his shoulder. "But when Mother confessed that you had gone away alone with those wicked people to try and save me, I wished I had died instead!"

"Don't say such foolish things, Lizzie," he chides her. "No one is dead."

Except for more than twenty of Mrs Easton's men, but you are never to know of that, the boy thinks.

"Oh, Ciel! Your face!" she exclaims when she draws back and sees the welts on his cheeks.

By this time, Aunt Francis has made her way down with the physician. She immediately goes up to Ciel and puts her arms around both him and her daughter.

"I do not think I would ever forgive myself for so foolishly being taken in by Sophia Easton if you had not come back, Ciel," she whispers to him.

"Everything is fine, Aunt Francis," he replies, glad for the long sleeves and high collar of his shirt, and his black coat, which conceal the cuts on his arms and back.

"Your face... someone has struck you," Lady Francis says, when she looks closely at him. The touch of her hand is so different from Mrs Easton's – there is no malice in it, only love – but Ciel puts his hand over hers and gently moves her fingers away from his face.

"I'm perfectly well. This is nothing," he states to both mother and daughter. "Lizzie, tell me if those men hurt you in any way."

"They locked me in a dark box. I couldn't breathe after a while, and I think I slept. But Sebastian found me. That's all... oh, and I had a splinter in my thumb, but Doctor Marshall has removed it."

Ciel, seeing through his cousin's words to the truth of how close she came to dying, bows his head and indulges her by letting her keep her arms about him a little longer.

"Doctor Marshall," Aunt Francis turns to the physician. "Would you please examine my nephew to ensure that he is not badly injured?"

"Certainly, Lady Midford," the physician says.

But the earl steps back from both the doctor and Elizabeth, and puts a hand up. "Thank you. I am perfectly well. A medical examination is unnecessary."

"Ciel, this once..." Aunt Francis pleads.

"I thank you, but I must decline. I do wish, however, to ask Doctor Marshall about my cousin's present health."

"My examination of the Lady Elizabeth has revealed little more than distress and shock," the doctor replies. "She is breathing well. Her lungs do not appear to have been damaged by being shut in a place with little air, as she reports that she was."

"That is good to know. What about the coachman and Lady Elizabeth's maid?"

"I telephoned the manor a few minutes ago," Aunt Francis says. "Doctor Marshall's assistant, who remains with them, informed me that they were both awake. They are in pain, but it appears that they will live if they do not take a turn for the worse in the next day or two. I ought likewise to have telephoned you earlier, when Mrs Easton first came running to our house. If I had stayed calm, I would have rung you first. Instead, I impulsively heeded her recommendation that we drive here and look for Elizabeth along the way. Because of that, I brought that monster into your manor."

"She would have come here with or without you," Ciel says. "Her arrival in your carriage only smoothed her entry, and gave her the pleasure of seeing your distress."

"Nonetheless, I was a fool."

"No – Elizabeth is safe and her health unharmed, and the servants will recover. I am home also. Therefore, all is well. The police have been told where Mrs Easton's gang is. They will see to it that those people never trouble you again. Lizzie, you must rest at home after what you went through. I shall have Baldroy and Mey-Rin drive you and Aunt Francis to your manor and keep you safe all the way there."

Lizzie starts to object, but her mother puts a hand on her shoulder and tells her: "Elizabeth, your cousin is right. You must rest at home, and we must see Jones and Paula. Ciel himself is badly in need of a long sleep, I think. But before we leave, I insist that my nephew take a jar of Doctor Marshall's ointment, to apply to those scratches on his face. Doctor Marshall, please add the charges to the Midford account."

It would be ungracious of Ciel to reject this least little gesture from his aunt, so he accepts, and Sebastian receives a jar from the doctor, which he sets on the side table.

"Thank you, Aunt Francis," Ciel says. "Sebastian, see Lady Francis and Elizabeth to my carriage, and Doctor Marshall to his gig."

Lizzie gives Ciel one more tearful embrace before Sebastian walks her and her mother to the Phantomhive carriage, which is ready and waiting because Baldroy had wished to be prepared for all eventualities. The chef takes the reins, Mey-Rin sits inside the carriage with one revolver and one rifle strapped under her skirts, and they roll away, the doctor's gig travelling close behind.

Sebastian returns to the foyer to find Ciel already climbing the stairs on his own. He is refusing help from Finnian and Tanaka, who hover helplessly. The boy has obviously spent the past fifteen minutes presenting a strong facade to his relatives and the physician. Now that they have left, all his strength is sapped, and he is taking the stairs stiffly, on unsteady legs. Doggedly resisting the pain, he struggles on obstinately until Sebastian strides past Finnian and Tanaka, moves up behind Ciel, bends down and puts his arms around his waist, stopping him from climbing any further.

"Young Master, please allow me," he says into the child's ear.

Ciel does not answer, but neither does he strain and struggle against being held back.

"Please turn around so that I may lift you without further hurting the places where your skin is broken – the cuts must be smarting," Sebastian continues.

Ciel remains unmoving on the stairs for a few more seconds, and Sebastian is uncertain if he is thinking about it, or too tired to react. But eventually, the boy turns around in silence within the secure circle of his butler's arms.

Without another word, Sebastian lifts him up, one arm under his bottom and another gently holding the small of his back, and carries him into his bedroom.
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Devilish Impulses