Kuroshitsuji fic: Graven Images
Jul. 25th, 2010 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasse1111 words. PG. Charles Dexter Ward/Yog-Sothoth Vincent/Sebastian. Sebastian’s POV. Touches of demonic ambivalence to human gender.
Ciel’s memories of his father are clouded by a child’s romanticism: Sebastian’s have no such limitation.
Graven Images
Disclaimer: Black Butler belongs to Toboso Yana, G-Fantasy and others.
++++++++++
What the old grimoires fail to detail is that when demons take human form we do so with a purpose. We have our own shapes of course but one’s own shape may not necessarily be the most effective. So we take the shapes that people most desire: lover, sibling, father… Whatever a human desires to see most of all, whatever they are desperately trying to claw back from the brink of… oblivion? Memory? That face that they dare not lose to the mists of hazy human memory is the shape that we take.
Usually for children that’s the face of a mother or a family nanny at most. But for Ciel Phantomhive, contrary as he likes to be, it wasn’t either of those things. The face he was terrified of losing was that of a father. So I pulled from his mind the memory of face and form of smiles and laughter, of incidences that his childlike mind didn’t even recall he’d seen.
Vincent Phantomhive was no saint. In fact, if all those tumbled, disjointed images are anything to go by even in Ciel’s mind he ought to be a veritable modern monster. The beloved daddy of Ciel’s dreams was as cruel, as vicious as any demon. Perhaps even more so. Humanity are very good at inflicting pain on themselves and Vincent was no different. Or perhaps he was because while pain is a given, cruelty is a premium. People died because of him, families were ruined, men blew out their own brains with newly polished revolvers, women threw themselves into the vast stretch of sewage humans call the Thames, children were sent to workhouses. Noblemen left the country, prostitutes murdered their clients, street orphans sold the only thing they had left to sell. The opium dens grew wealthy with the money of men who Vincent Phantomhive had ruined. There wasn’t a noble family in all of England who had escaped his presence unscathed. Pity the ones he didn’t ruin: pity the women who realised what the lady Rachel was marrying into and didn’t dare warn her, pity the men who fled from the hazy gaze of those lidded eyes, pity the ones who thought he was the only one at fault, pity the ones that Francis Middleford brought to her brother’s attention.
But Ciel sees nothing of this even though his memories are speckled by those instances that to a child were inexplicable. Of course he thinks himself worse than his father: he’s quite convinced that Vincent was simply a glorified private detective in the service of the Queen. He doesn’t even understand the epithet of hound. A man who keeps a guard dog keeps it to ward of strangers but he also keeps it chained because should it ever break free he knows it will turn on him instead. Of all the Phantomhives stretched back into history Ciel is probably the kindest, the least given to the perverse art of human cruelty. Vincent’s father was a monster too as was his father before him. It is in a sense what they were bred for.
A child like Ciel is apt to remember only the best of his parents. He recalls Rachel’s smiling face and not her deliberate blindness to her husband’s actions. Even his aunts are benevolent saints in his mind: Francis the Just and Angelina the Kind. They are both murderers of course; the only difference being that Francis kept her own hands clean… just as clean as her brother’s. There was never a single man or woman in all of the Empire who could point to Vincent as their murderer, not directly at any rate. He never pressed the gun into their hands, never threw the bank debit notes in their faces, never took what little they had in repayment. He didn’t do a single thing other than smile lazily and let that always indirect gaze slide away from them in boredom. He might be at a ball when the fatal shot was fired, across the Channel when their children were sold into poverty, purchasing new cufflinks when the police dredged a well-dressed body out of the Thames.
Vincent was never there when the end came, when the whole fragile house of cards inevitably came tumbling down around them. He was perhaps simply conspicuous by his absence, and even the ones who survived, the ones who were driven to workhouse or madhouse never dared utter his name. One didn’t disparage the Phantomhives if one knew what was good for oneself. Even now, it pays to be cautions of that terrible name. Not that Ciel realises it entirely, that a good portion of the fear and anger that greets him is his inheritance from his father. When he grows up he will be the living, breathing image of his cursed father and all around him they will falter, the wrong name rising to suddenly pale lips in deference. And perhaps some of them will even wonder if Vincent didn’t just buy himself immortality with the blood of his innocent bride. The resemblance will be striking after all.
With time the face that Ciel so desperately wants to recall will become his own, not just in the structure of flesh and bone but in word and action. Eventually he will become his father in every terrifying way and when that time comes I too will take on a new shape. When Ciel is lost beneath the mantle of Earl Phantomhive, when society stumbles over Vincent’s name once again I will become something else equally appropriate. Elizabeth is a clumsy girl after all, all good nature and kind heart: the sort of attitude that will get her killed… just like poor Rachel.
We demons take many shapes, always shifting, always changing as required. I have a particular fondness for human names that begin with the letter ‘r’ because at least in beginnings they recall my own but I can compromise and ‘Lizzy’ is not so objectionable as ‘Angelina’ would have been. I care little for the initial shape after all, it can be altered, changed as I require. I have created a vessel using one shape and when the vessel has been fully prepared it will come to serve its destined purpose. Earl Phantomhive will again marry and once more to a woman who turns a blind eye to his wickedness. Society will not know, has no need to know, that Lady Phantomhive permits, nay, encourages his actions. But all that is to come, Ciel may yet live for another ten years at most but the wait will not perturb me: I have patience enough to await my lord’s return.
++++++++++
Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. - The Dunwich Horror
Regarding the series so far:
Snakes are practically deaf. The Russian adaptation of The Adventure of the Speckled Band addressed this issue back in 1979. Thus the latest chapter of the manga could at least have deleted the line completely to save face.
I’m growing more and more convinced that Sebastian is a particularly ineffective demon because he simply doesn’t know how to stack the deck and let others trip themselves up over it. Why must he absolutely do everything himself to the point of banality?
If only Kuroshitsuji would just be dire all the time without flashes of brilliance like the Circus arc I could just stop reading it. That said, this is as clear a message as ever that this series isn’t meant for people like me.
Ciel’s memories of his father are clouded by a child’s romanticism: Sebastian’s have no such limitation.
Graven Images
Disclaimer: Black Butler belongs to Toboso Yana, G-Fantasy and others.
++++++++++
What the old grimoires fail to detail is that when demons take human form we do so with a purpose. We have our own shapes of course but one’s own shape may not necessarily be the most effective. So we take the shapes that people most desire: lover, sibling, father… Whatever a human desires to see most of all, whatever they are desperately trying to claw back from the brink of… oblivion? Memory? That face that they dare not lose to the mists of hazy human memory is the shape that we take.
Usually for children that’s the face of a mother or a family nanny at most. But for Ciel Phantomhive, contrary as he likes to be, it wasn’t either of those things. The face he was terrified of losing was that of a father. So I pulled from his mind the memory of face and form of smiles and laughter, of incidences that his childlike mind didn’t even recall he’d seen.
Vincent Phantomhive was no saint. In fact, if all those tumbled, disjointed images are anything to go by even in Ciel’s mind he ought to be a veritable modern monster. The beloved daddy of Ciel’s dreams was as cruel, as vicious as any demon. Perhaps even more so. Humanity are very good at inflicting pain on themselves and Vincent was no different. Or perhaps he was because while pain is a given, cruelty is a premium. People died because of him, families were ruined, men blew out their own brains with newly polished revolvers, women threw themselves into the vast stretch of sewage humans call the Thames, children were sent to workhouses. Noblemen left the country, prostitutes murdered their clients, street orphans sold the only thing they had left to sell. The opium dens grew wealthy with the money of men who Vincent Phantomhive had ruined. There wasn’t a noble family in all of England who had escaped his presence unscathed. Pity the ones he didn’t ruin: pity the women who realised what the lady Rachel was marrying into and didn’t dare warn her, pity the men who fled from the hazy gaze of those lidded eyes, pity the ones who thought he was the only one at fault, pity the ones that Francis Middleford brought to her brother’s attention.
But Ciel sees nothing of this even though his memories are speckled by those instances that to a child were inexplicable. Of course he thinks himself worse than his father: he’s quite convinced that Vincent was simply a glorified private detective in the service of the Queen. He doesn’t even understand the epithet of hound. A man who keeps a guard dog keeps it to ward of strangers but he also keeps it chained because should it ever break free he knows it will turn on him instead. Of all the Phantomhives stretched back into history Ciel is probably the kindest, the least given to the perverse art of human cruelty. Vincent’s father was a monster too as was his father before him. It is in a sense what they were bred for.
A child like Ciel is apt to remember only the best of his parents. He recalls Rachel’s smiling face and not her deliberate blindness to her husband’s actions. Even his aunts are benevolent saints in his mind: Francis the Just and Angelina the Kind. They are both murderers of course; the only difference being that Francis kept her own hands clean… just as clean as her brother’s. There was never a single man or woman in all of the Empire who could point to Vincent as their murderer, not directly at any rate. He never pressed the gun into their hands, never threw the bank debit notes in their faces, never took what little they had in repayment. He didn’t do a single thing other than smile lazily and let that always indirect gaze slide away from them in boredom. He might be at a ball when the fatal shot was fired, across the Channel when their children were sold into poverty, purchasing new cufflinks when the police dredged a well-dressed body out of the Thames.
Vincent was never there when the end came, when the whole fragile house of cards inevitably came tumbling down around them. He was perhaps simply conspicuous by his absence, and even the ones who survived, the ones who were driven to workhouse or madhouse never dared utter his name. One didn’t disparage the Phantomhives if one knew what was good for oneself. Even now, it pays to be cautions of that terrible name. Not that Ciel realises it entirely, that a good portion of the fear and anger that greets him is his inheritance from his father. When he grows up he will be the living, breathing image of his cursed father and all around him they will falter, the wrong name rising to suddenly pale lips in deference. And perhaps some of them will even wonder if Vincent didn’t just buy himself immortality with the blood of his innocent bride. The resemblance will be striking after all.
With time the face that Ciel so desperately wants to recall will become his own, not just in the structure of flesh and bone but in word and action. Eventually he will become his father in every terrifying way and when that time comes I too will take on a new shape. When Ciel is lost beneath the mantle of Earl Phantomhive, when society stumbles over Vincent’s name once again I will become something else equally appropriate. Elizabeth is a clumsy girl after all, all good nature and kind heart: the sort of attitude that will get her killed… just like poor Rachel.
We demons take many shapes, always shifting, always changing as required. I have a particular fondness for human names that begin with the letter ‘r’ because at least in beginnings they recall my own but I can compromise and ‘Lizzy’ is not so objectionable as ‘Angelina’ would have been. I care little for the initial shape after all, it can be altered, changed as I require. I have created a vessel using one shape and when the vessel has been fully prepared it will come to serve its destined purpose. Earl Phantomhive will again marry and once more to a woman who turns a blind eye to his wickedness. Society will not know, has no need to know, that Lady Phantomhive permits, nay, encourages his actions. But all that is to come, Ciel may yet live for another ten years at most but the wait will not perturb me: I have patience enough to await my lord’s return.
++++++++++
Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. - The Dunwich Horror
Regarding the series so far:
