A Young God (P h a n t o m h i v e) [Kuroshitsuji 4]

Dawn; Ciel

"No one has been to collect the body in days, my lord, and alas... it's starting to smell."

Sunlight always hit those trees just outside the window of his study perfectly, and today is no exception. It is a wintery sun, that glaring, impudent grey that seens to impose itself on everything; forcing its way through thick, cottony clouds. Beads of frozen water which cling onto the branches of the trees create a kaleidoscope of patterns on the rich, expensive rug that is stretched across perfectly polished floorboards. Sebastian always kept them well. Even if he barely spoke anymore, after that journey he'd taken to the south.

Ciel studies his black fingernails as he speaks into the receiver of the telephone. It's quite new – only a year or two old. He was one of the first men in the country to have one. Then again, he's one of richest, as well as that. With an empire of toys, sweets, fashion and fragrances underneath your belt, one can't expect not to be. There's also a fire roaring in the grate just a few feet away, though he's been tending it himself for the last few hours. Josie not being here to potter around and fix things up anymore has proven most inconvenient.

"Christ." He sighs, sitting up and rubbing the back of his neck, before standing. Leaning heavily on the desk, he picks up the cradle and slowly edges his way to the front. The pain in his leg is bothering him again. Somedays, it's like the hansom accident never happened at all. Others... well, old wounds make themselves known. "Lizzy was heartbroken. You can't do anything about the poor woman's face, can you?"

"I'm afraid not, my Lord. Necropsy is a horrendous thing."

"Of course, of course." An infected wound, and it had all spiralled from there. "And you say there's no one to claim her?"

"Unfortunately not." This new undertaker seems... nervous of him, almost. Maybe it's the stories he heard. Nobody would blame him for being frightened of the last surviving Phantomhive. Least of all, Ciel himself. "My lord, if you wish for the necessary arrangements for a pauper's funeral to be made –"

"No, no, we'll find something for her. I'll send Sebastian. Thank you very much for your time, Mr. Hargreaves."

"And you, Lord Phantomhive, and you."

The phonecall ends with a shrill sound in Ciel's ear, and he replaces the cradle and the receiver on his desk, before reaching for his stick so that he can stand. All he would have to do would be work the muscle out until it was under his control once more.

As the young earl strolls slowly towards the window, he finds himself contemplating. He's never been one to deny it; the necessity for control in his life, above all, is what drives him. Nothing else. The need to control the fates of the men who killed his parents; the need of control over Sebastian, over the house. Lizzy... Lizzy had surrendered her will to him without a struggle. She would do whatever he said. That was, of course, unless it had something to do with the décor. Maybe it was this, this exhaustion from no longer having any competition to deal with, that made everything so dull and paper thin nowadays. There is no more verbal wars, no more lengthy, drawn-out spars between enemies. There is simply victory. It's exhausting.

His hands grip on tightly to the wooden sill and he reaches up to toy with the edge of his eyepatch for a moment or two, his dark blue gaze fixed firmly on the three pieces of white marble that jut from the earth, just underneath the collection of trees, close to the mausoleum. He'd always thought that it was a horrific thing, that building. And when Celeste had made the idiotic decision to decide to join his parents, Sebastian couldn't hide it from him. The demon couldn't lie. But even if he could have, the subtle anguish in his cold red eyes would have been enough to alert Ciel to the fact that something was seriously wrong.

He'd had his parents' bodies excavated, in the end. He didn't like the thought of them in the cold darkness of the family crypt forever. One would almost think that he was trying to start a collector's graveyard. With a humourless chuckle, Ciel turns away from the wide, wide window once more, to sit himself down heavily behind his desk again. There's a pile of letters that need replying to.