Fic: Silhouette
07:06 AM
Rosette Merchant did not believe in God. She was in fact firmly opposed to the idea that there was any sort of benevolent Being residing in Heaven or anywhere else. Even if a spiritual presence existed, she doubted that it had the time or will to care about mankind in general, much less about her as an individual like her parents had told her since she was a child. And because she didn’t believe in God, she hadn’t thought it too much a stretch to add demons to The List of Things That Exist Only in Fairy Tales. If there was no positive spirit force in the universe, it didn’t make sense that there would be a negative one. Everything else in the natural world was in balance-male and female, night and day, life and death-so why should it be different for the spirit realm?
Being a minor in a house of very devout parents and siblings had its downfalls, and one was that she was still forced to attend church. ‘Forced’ wasn’t really the right word, though. Rosette didn’t have the heart to tell her family that she thought they were all wasting their time praying and worshipping, that there was no on there to listen to their words or to receive their praise. So she bit her tongue and sat obediently between her parents every Sunday morning. Bowed her head and acted like she listened when her father said grace over dinner. Attended youth retreats with her bratty little sister.
Because she loved her parents more than anything and because they would be devastated by her heresy, she pretended that she loved God as much as He loved her.
“Are you coming, or are you going to sit there like a knot on a log?”
Rosette looks up at the voice’s owner. “Shut up, Christopher.”
Christopher chuckles and extends his hand. “I offer to take you to the amusement park for a day, and this is how you repay me? Thanks, Rosie.”
She stands up from her perch on the bench and lets him draw her into a hug. “Sorry. I’ve had a bad week.”
“School?” he asks, knowing full well it’s not.
“Mom and Dad,” she says softly.
He hums against the top of her head and squeezes her a little tighter. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
They stay like that for a long time. Rosette sometimes wishes that she could run away and live with Christopher, anything to get away from her parents. But she knows she can’t, and so she revels in the moment, in today, because she was brave this morning and refused to go to the damned church where her parents would be all day and she is free to do whatever she pleases. Spending time with Chris is a very welcome bonus to this particular Sunday.
“C’mon,” he says finally, “we’re going to be late if we don’t leave soon.” He smiles down at her. “Can’t let them open the gates without us, right?”
07:29 AM
The amusement park doesn’t open until eight o’clock, but Christopher is still a kid inside and knows that waiting for a uniformed park employee to drop the rope is part of the whole experience. Excitement is in the air, and she can hear a group of older teens a few feet away making plans to dash off to the new coaster as soon as they can. She’s heard about it-built indoors in pitch darkness to underscore its extraterrestrial theme, with a run time of about three minutes-but it doesn’t interest her. It would interest Christopher, though, so she’s willing to soldier through for his sake. Because it’s really the least she can do to pay him back.
“So, what do you wanna ride first, kid?”
She pretends to think, tapping her forefinger on her chin. “How about Alien Invaders?”
8:03 AM
She’s out of breath when they make it to the ride. But she doesn’t care, because she’s still holding Christopher’s hand and he’s out of breath as well and she’s having fun despite herself and she’s not at the church with her parents.
11:15 AM
She gets a text from a friend while waiting in line for a pretzel. “r u ok?”
“yea y?”
“ur not at church w/ ur mom and dad they said u were sick i jes wantd 2 make sure ur ok.”
Rosette doesn’t really know how to respond. She turns off her phone and slides it back in her pocket.
12:37 PM
There’s this kid Rosette keeps seeing in the park. It’s strange: the park isn’t overly crowded, but it’s still a big place. Yet she keeps catching glances of the same kid over and over again. He’s kind of short and has this odd (but beautiful) dark, dusky hair. She gets the feeling she should know him from somewhere. She thinks about asking him, but he disappears in the crowd as suddenly as he had appeared. Next time, she decides, and wonders why it’s so important.
02:46 PM
‘Next time’ isn’t until after lunch when Christopher drags her to the other side of the park to ride Alien Invaders again. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots his oddly-colored head walking in the opposite direction. They’ve almost made it to the queue.
“I think I’m gonna set this one out,” she says suddenly.
Christopher turns to her, visibly caught between his concern for her and the fact that other people are taking his spot in the line. “Are you okay?”
“I think my lunch is being contrary. You go on without me.”
“You sure?"
“Yeah. Go ahead.”
He looks around quickly. “Uh, there’s a set of restrooms over behind the arcade. Just meet me back here, okay?”
She nods and he takes off, sprinting the rest of the way to avoid being put any further back in the line.
She turns around and there just happens to be enough of a break in the crowd to see the kid. He takes a left at the arcade, and she’s pretty sure he’s heading toward the restaurants and snack huts in the middle of the park and follows him.
He ends up walking into a shop that sells sweets. Rosette lingers outside for a moment, looking through the mostly-glass walls and noticing for the first time the tall man trailing behind the boy. They exchange a few words and the tall man walks back outside. Jumping on what may be her only chance to get him alone, she tugs the café doors open.
The boy orders something and she takes her place in line behind him. He glances over his shoulder at her. She catches a glimpse of his eyes-or rather his eye, as the other is covered by an eye patch-and immediately recognizes him. His name is Ciel Phantomhive. He is an orphan that her parents’ beloved Father Duncan is caring for temporarily, until a more permanent foster home can be found for him.
She buys an outrageously expensive bottle of water and wanders over to the table where Ciel is sitting. He sees her approaching and stares at her. His gaze is much more piercing than it should be for someone with only one good eye.
“Um, excuse me,” she begins. “Are you Ciel Phantomhive?”
His eyebrows furrow and he looks her up and down once. “Who’s asking?”
“My name’s Rosette-uh, Rosette Merchant? I think we met at a youth retreat last spring. You are Ciel, aren’t you?”
He continues squinting and frowning at her for a minute. “I’m sorry, I don’t-”
“My little sister Lily was the one who spilled her soda all over you at the campfire. Father Duncan wanted me to-”
His eyes go wide for an instant before he looks away. “Oh,” is all he says and takes a bite of his cake.
Rosette sits in the seat across from him. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you or anything. I saw you walking around the park earlier today and was wondering how I knew you. Now that I figured it out, I thought I’d just stop and say hello.”
Ciel reaches up and scratches his nose, and Rosette can him roll his eyes despite is attempt to hide it. “Well, hello.”
There’s a long silence while Ciel ignores her and continues eating. She doesn’t really know what to say, even if she should say anything else, but she doesn’t want to walk back out into the crowded park yet. The wait time sign at Christopher’s roller coaster declared he could be stuck there for forty-five minutes. It’s either sit awkwardly with Ciel in a nice, air conditioned café where she was relatively alone, or stand awkwardly by the Alien Invaders’ exit door in the sun waiting for Chris.
“So,” she says slowly, “are you here with Father Duncan?”
Ciel glances up at her. “What on earth would give you that impression?” When she doesn’t answer, he adds, “I’m here with a friend.”
She nods. She doesn’t mention having seen the tall man, because she doesn’t want Ciel to think she’s stalking him or something. She does wonder who he is, though she isn’t impolite enough to ask.
“Are you here with your parents?” he asks politely, glancing around her. His tone suggests that he doesn’t really care whether she is or not.
She snorts. “No, my older brother. My parents hate amusement parks. There’s not enough money in the world that could make them come here.”
“At least your parents aren’t dead,” he says darkly, and Rosette can hear the spite and bitterness deep in his voice. She feels a little ashamed of herself, because she remembers Father Duncan saying something about how Ciel’s parents had both died in a car accident when he was younger, the same car accident that took his right eye.
“Might as well be,” she replies calmly. She can hear the laughter and the general commotion from the other park-goers just outside and wonders why Ciel likes this place so much that he snuck away from Father Duncan to come here. Amusement parks don’t strike her as something he’d waste his time with. And yet here he is, sitting in the run-down café, sipping an overpriced coffee-flavored beverage and munching on an overpriced piece of chocolate cake, waiting for this friend of his to finish whatever it is he’s doing.
“There’s a world of difference between ‘might as well be’ and ‘are’,” he whispers. He worries the top of his plastic utensil with his thumb and clutches his drink with the other hand.
“Not really. Not as much as you’d think.” She sighs, looking out the large window to her left and watching the people outside having fun. They’re eating junk food-funnel cakes encrusted with powered sugar, mountains of cotton candy atop fragile paper cones, corn dogs dripping with mustard, ketchup, and grease-and having the time of their lives. Forgetting all of their cares for one day and letting themselves be pulled away into some fantasy world where nothing else matters but the here and now. Rosette wishes she could forget herself like that.
Ciel scoffs into his glass. “Enlighten me, then.”
“Your parents are dead,” she starts bluntly, “and for all that you may wish they were still alive, you have the knowledge that they’re at peace and in a better place, or whatever.”
“Or whatever?” he repeats. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She glances over at him, and he’s leaned forward a little on his elbows, as if he’s really interested in what she has to say. “I have…unorthodox thoughts about death.”
“Tell me.”
She looks up into his eyes, and there’s this emotion that she can’t quite place staring back at her. It isn’t quite enjoyment or interest, but it’s triangulated somewhere between those two and scorn. It makes her want to go on, even if just to prove him wrong. “Death is just death-there’s no afterlife or immortal soul or eternal life in heaven with God. When we die, we die. We stop breathing, stop thinking, stop existing. We rot in the ground. There’s nothing else. Your parents are dead. They have a gravestone somewhere where you can visit them and leave flowers. They’re just gone. That’s easy.”
Ciel lets out a bark of sharp laughter that seems much more like something an adult would do. “Is it now?”
“Did your parents love you while they were alive?” she asks, and after a long moment, he nods. “Do you miss them terribly? I know you do, I can see it in your eyes.” Ciel’s eye shoots up from his fake-coffee and stares at her for a moment. It falls back down. “Okay, maybe ‘easy’ isn’t the right word. That kind of grief is cut and dry: they’re dead and you miss them and nothing you could ever do can bring them back. My parents are still alive, there in front of me every day, and they couldn’t care less about me. Their heads are all stuck up Father-” She stops, forces herself to shut her mouth before she can finish her sentence. “Anyway, they don’t care. They have their 60-hour-a-week careers and then the church, and there’s no time for anything else. If I didn’t have my brother Christopher, I wouldn’t have anyone. My parents are alive, and even though I live in their house and I see them and talk to them every day, I still miss them.”
“Ah.”
Rosette sighs again. “I’m sorry,” she says abruptly. “I didn’t mean to unload all of this on you. We barely know each other. I’m sorry. It’s just that-” And she really doesn’t want to say anymore, because she knows Ciel probably thinks she’s a psychopath or a lunatic or something by now, but there’s something in the way he’s facing her and looking in her eyes and paying attention that tells her to finish. “It’s just that sometimes…sometimes I think I’d sell my soul to the devil to make my parents love me again.”
Rosette folds her arms on the table and rests her head on them. She’s still looking out the window at everyone else in the park having fun, and it makes her so angry she could cry. What the hell gives everyone else in the world the right to be so happy?
Rosette feels Ciel’s eyes on her for a long time, and there’s suddenly this strange tension in the air between them that’s obvious to the point of being tangible. She tries to ignore it, but she can’t. “What is it?” she whispers without looking at him.
“Nothing,” he breathes. She hears his chair grind against the tiled floor as he pushes it back to get up. “I just hate being forced to waste a perfectly good meal.”
His glass is empty. His plastic plate and fork are clean. She has no idea what he could mean.
03:43 PM
The person Ciel had been waiting on is called Sebastian. Sebastian is older than Ciel, in his twenties maybe, and that worries her a little. She knows only certain kinds of adult men hang out with little boys. There are so many things in this situation that worry her, like how casually Sebastian takes the seat next to Ciel and how close he sits and how relaxed Ciel looks about the whole thing. She knows Ciel hasn’t lived with Father Duncan that long-half a year, maybe three-quarters-and she wonders how the two of them met. Ciel is smart-doesn’t he know what men like Sebastian want?
Ciel introduces her to him, and Sebastian smiles pleasantly and offers her his hand. She doesn’t want to take it, but she does so anyway.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he says, smile fixed firmly in place. “I’m glad to see that Ciel is being a good boy and making friends.”
“Sebastian!” Ciel huffs. Their eyes meet for a second, and something passes between them that Rosette doesn’t quite understand. It scares her. The whole situation scares her. She doesn’t want to be here, but she doesn’t know why. She’s known Sebastian for less than a minute and he has been nothing but cordial and polite, yet she wants to run as far away from him as she possibly can. It’s almost like she can sense this evil aura radiating from him, and even though she doesn’t know why, she’s scared to pieces.
It’s the same feeling she’s gotten from Father Duncan over the past few months.
“Rosette? Rosette!” she hears a voice calling. She turns around to see Christopher walking toward her. “Oh my God, there you are!” She stands up just as he reaches the table and gets pulled into a hug. “What the hell were you thinking? I told you to-you can’t just wander off like that! You had me worried sick, kid. I thought someone had snatched you or something. Christ, can you imagine what Mom and Dad would do to me if I lost you?”
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
Christopher lets out a big breath, and she can feel his heart pounding against her ear. He’s shaking a little, too. “It’s okay, sweetie. Just don’t do it again, alright?”
She nods against his chest and doesn’t want to let go of him. Christopher is her protector, always has been for as long as she can remember, and she wants him to stay between her and Sebastian at all times.
“Come on, let’s get going,” he says. “We’ve still got a good two hours before the park closes.” She slips her hand in his, and it’s only then that he notices Ciel and Sebastian. “Oh, are these friends of yours, Rosette? Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“Oh, no, you’re fine,” Sebastian replies, smile plastered in place. “We were getting ready to leave as well. Right, Ciel?”
“Yeah.” Ciel looks over at her, and she can’t decide if his smile is genuine. “It was nice seeing you again, Rosette.”
6:11 PM
Rosette doesn’t tell Christopher how being around Sebastian made her feel. She doesn’t want to tell anyone-not her parents, not her closest friend, not anyone. What she does tell Chris is who Ciel is and how she knows him, but when he asks about Sebastian, she shakes her head. “I’m not sure. I’ve never met him before.”
“Wonder if Father Duncan knows about him?” he ponders, readjusting his grip on the steering wheel.
She shrugs. Belatedly remembering that her brother’s eyes are focused on the traffic, she adds, “Does it really matter?”
Christopher lets out a breath, one that tell her she’s still a kid and just said something stupid. “Father Duncan’s been entrusted with Ciel’s care for the time being, right? How do we know that Sebastian guy isn’t a pedophile or something? We need to let Father Duncan know about him. At least make him aware of the company Ciel keeps.”
Rosette doesn’t respond, and after a few minutes, the motion of the car and the gentle noise of tires on asphalt lull her to sleep.
2:49 AM
She wakes up in the middle of the night, laying on her side on top of the hand-made quilt her grandmother had given her before she died. Christopher must have carried her up to her room. There is a thin blanket covering her up to her shoulders, and she’s still a little cold. She gets up slowly, listening to a few joints pop as she stretches her arms over her head. She strips off her clothes, replaces them with a nightgown, and throws her tennis shoes in the general direction of her closet. As she is about to leave her room to brush her teeth, she hears her phone chirp a bright little tune and vibrate against the wood of her dresser. She’s tempted to ignore it. She glances at the clock and decides against it, because whoever it was must really need something to be texting her this late at night.
The message reads, “And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming…”
Her eyebrows furrow together. She checks the number it came from and doesn’t recognize it. She wonders which of her friends has enough free time on their hands to be staying up and sending her lines of morbid poetry. She’s too tired to care about it at the moment, too tired to care about anything more than brushing the remnants of sugar and amusement park junk food out of her mouth and going back to bed. Which is precisely what she does.
And when she wakes in the morning and gets ready for school, she doesn’t notices the crow perched delicately on her window sill.
* * *
3:58 PM
The next time Rosette sees Ciel, it is at Father Duncan’s funeral. His burial, really; she couldn’t bring herself to attend the actual funeral service, because for the longest part of her childhood, she’d hated him. But there was this strange part of her that wanted to be there when his corpse was interred, destined to lay in worm-ridden earth and decompose for the rest of eternity. She’d found out about his passing from Lily-“And don’t you know, sis, the police think he was murdered? Really, who in their right mind would want to murder poor old Father Duncan? He was such a good man!”-and her husband encouraged her to go.
They have nearly an hour’s drive to the gravesite, and most of it is spent in silence. She never talks about her past anymore, and revisiting one of the most painful memories she has isn’t exactly pleasant. She’s glad she’ll get to see some of her childhood friends again, though, and if she’s lucky, she’ll see the pallbearers lowering Father Duncan’s casket into the grave. She should probably be ashamed at thinking the way she is, mentioning old acquaintances and death in the same cheery manner, but she’s not really all that remorseful.
And almost immediately after she steps out of the car and begins approaching the group of mourners, she spots him.
Well, logically the dusky-haired child she sees has to be Ciel’s son, but the resemblance between the two of them is so striking that for a moment Rosette thinks she must have gone back in time forty years and met him all over again. They have the same oddly beautiful locks, the same eyes, the same authoritative stance, the same unemotional, apathetic expressions. The same everything. She wonders briefly where the boy’s parents are, if she would have the pleasure of seeing the real Ciel again after so long. He must have grown up to be a stunningly handsome man, she thinks, and distinctly avoids looking at the man she loves.
“Are you alright, dear?” her husband asks.
“I’m fine,” she answers hesitantly. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
She walks through the crowd of mourners and approaches him slowly. “Excuse me,” she begins. “Are you Ciel Phantomhive’s son?”
“Who’s asking?” he asks rudely, glaring up at her.
She tries her best to make her smile reassuring. “I’m sorry, you don’t know me. My name’s Rosette. I used to live in this town, and I knew your father. Is he here today? I’d like to talk with him.”
The boy rolls his eyes. “My father’s dead.”
“Oh.”
Before she can think of anything else to say, a tall woman in a bright red blouse and equally bright red stiletto heels approaches them. “Come on, darling, everyone’s waiting,” she says, running her red-painted fingers through his dark hair fondly.
He flinches out of her grasp. “Don’t touch me.”
The woman sighs, putting a hand on her hip. “Fine. Be a brat about it, then. See if I care.” She smiles wickedly and chuckles, earning pointed glances and angry whispers from the mourners all around her. “I suppose this means I’ll have Bassy all to myself now. Can’t say that doesn’t excite me a little.”
The boy snorts, ignoring the woman and turning towards Rosette. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he says, smiling brightly, and for some reason she hasn’t noticed the eyepatch until now. Eyepatch. On his right eye. “I have to leave now. It was nice seeing you again.”
4:04 PM
She watches the two of them walk away to the edges of the field. They’re greeted by two men waiting beside a blood-colored Firebird. The red woman says something to the one in the glasses, who reaches up and readjusts said silver eyewear and mutters something. Rosette looks over at the boy, who is talking to a tall, dark-haired man dressed rather casually compared to-
Rosette’s mind hitches back. A tall, dark-haired man dressed rather…a tall man…the tall man. Sebastian.
Then, the boy…?
(the eyepatch-dusky-haired child-the same everything-the eyepatch-piercing gaze-dead parents-the eyepatch)
(the eyepatch-the eyepatch)
(the eyepatch!)
Ciel Phantomhive.
Her mind is reeling, and her knees are getting weaker by the second, turning into jelly and nearly collapsing under the weight of her epiphany. No. It can’t be Ciel. No, she was just a child when she knew Ciel. It has been nearly forty years since that day in the amusement park. Ciel had grown up. Ciel had married. Ciel had had a son. He must have done.
Motion at the edge of the field brings her attention back to the present. Sebastian is smiling down at Ciel. There’s something oddly intimate about the way they’re gazing at each other. It’s the same, she thinks to herself, the same way they looked at each other forty years ago, the same emotion her teenage self hadn’t been able to process back in the cool air of the amusement park café. The more she sees of the two of them, the more she begins to believe that she must have gone mad. It’s all the same.
Sebastian’s leaning down now, and he glances up and catches Rosette’s eyes just long enough to grab her full attention. Then he’s kissing Ciel's mouth and Ciel is kissing him back, all lips and teeth and tongue, and she has to turn away then because she can feel the bile rising in her throat and coating the back of her tongue.
“Rosette, are you okay?” she hears a far away voice ask. She thinks it’s her husband’s and she’s almost positive she nods, but she can’t be sure of either. “You look as if you’ve just seen a ghost. Come on, let’s get going.”
4:23 PM
They are halfway home when Rosette feels her cell phone vibrate from the depths of her purse. It is a text message. She’s almost afraid to open it, but her curiosity wins out in the end.
“‘And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming.’”
A moment later, another message comes.
“It was nice seeing you again, Rosette.”
She wants to vomit.
* * *
4:24 PM
“Sebastian, you shouldn’t waste your time tormenting that woman anymore. There’s no point to it now.”
A hum, and a smile. “Of course."
Rosette Merchant did not believe in God. She was in fact firmly opposed to the idea that there was any sort of benevolent Being residing in Heaven or anywhere else. Even if a spiritual presence existed, she doubted that it had the time or will to care about mankind in general, much less about her as an individual like her parents had told her since she was a child. And because she didn’t believe in God, she hadn’t thought it too much a stretch to add demons to The List of Things That Exist Only in Fairy Tales. If there was no positive spirit force in the universe, it didn’t make sense that there would be a negative one. Everything else in the natural world was in balance-male and female, night and day, life and death-so why should it be different for the spirit realm?
Being a minor in a house of very devout parents and siblings had its downfalls, and one was that she was still forced to attend church. ‘Forced’ wasn’t really the right word, though. Rosette didn’t have the heart to tell her family that she thought they were all wasting their time praying and worshipping, that there was no on there to listen to their words or to receive their praise. So she bit her tongue and sat obediently between her parents every Sunday morning. Bowed her head and acted like she listened when her father said grace over dinner. Attended youth retreats with her bratty little sister.
Because she loved her parents more than anything and because they would be devastated by her heresy, she pretended that she loved God as much as He loved her.
“Are you coming, or are you going to sit there like a knot on a log?”
Rosette looks up at the voice’s owner. “Shut up, Christopher.”
Christopher chuckles and extends his hand. “I offer to take you to the amusement park for a day, and this is how you repay me? Thanks, Rosie.”
She stands up from her perch on the bench and lets him draw her into a hug. “Sorry. I’ve had a bad week.”
“School?” he asks, knowing full well it’s not.
“Mom and Dad,” she says softly.
He hums against the top of her head and squeezes her a little tighter. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
They stay like that for a long time. Rosette sometimes wishes that she could run away and live with Christopher, anything to get away from her parents. But she knows she can’t, and so she revels in the moment, in today, because she was brave this morning and refused to go to the damned church where her parents would be all day and she is free to do whatever she pleases. Spending time with Chris is a very welcome bonus to this particular Sunday.
“C’mon,” he says finally, “we’re going to be late if we don’t leave soon.” He smiles down at her. “Can’t let them open the gates without us, right?”
07:29 AM
The amusement park doesn’t open until eight o’clock, but Christopher is still a kid inside and knows that waiting for a uniformed park employee to drop the rope is part of the whole experience. Excitement is in the air, and she can hear a group of older teens a few feet away making plans to dash off to the new coaster as soon as they can. She’s heard about it-built indoors in pitch darkness to underscore its extraterrestrial theme, with a run time of about three minutes-but it doesn’t interest her. It would interest Christopher, though, so she’s willing to soldier through for his sake. Because it’s really the least she can do to pay him back.
“So, what do you wanna ride first, kid?”
She pretends to think, tapping her forefinger on her chin. “How about Alien Invaders?”
8:03 AM
She’s out of breath when they make it to the ride. But she doesn’t care, because she’s still holding Christopher’s hand and he’s out of breath as well and she’s having fun despite herself and she’s not at the church with her parents.
11:15 AM
She gets a text from a friend while waiting in line for a pretzel. “r u ok?”
“yea y?”
“ur not at church w/ ur mom and dad they said u were sick i jes wantd 2 make sure ur ok.”
Rosette doesn’t really know how to respond. She turns off her phone and slides it back in her pocket.
12:37 PM
There’s this kid Rosette keeps seeing in the park. It’s strange: the park isn’t overly crowded, but it’s still a big place. Yet she keeps catching glances of the same kid over and over again. He’s kind of short and has this odd (but beautiful) dark, dusky hair. She gets the feeling she should know him from somewhere. She thinks about asking him, but he disappears in the crowd as suddenly as he had appeared. Next time, she decides, and wonders why it’s so important.
02:46 PM
‘Next time’ isn’t until after lunch when Christopher drags her to the other side of the park to ride Alien Invaders again. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots his oddly-colored head walking in the opposite direction. They’ve almost made it to the queue.
“I think I’m gonna set this one out,” she says suddenly.
Christopher turns to her, visibly caught between his concern for her and the fact that other people are taking his spot in the line. “Are you okay?”
“I think my lunch is being contrary. You go on without me.”
“You sure?"
“Yeah. Go ahead.”
He looks around quickly. “Uh, there’s a set of restrooms over behind the arcade. Just meet me back here, okay?”
She nods and he takes off, sprinting the rest of the way to avoid being put any further back in the line.
She turns around and there just happens to be enough of a break in the crowd to see the kid. He takes a left at the arcade, and she’s pretty sure he’s heading toward the restaurants and snack huts in the middle of the park and follows him.
He ends up walking into a shop that sells sweets. Rosette lingers outside for a moment, looking through the mostly-glass walls and noticing for the first time the tall man trailing behind the boy. They exchange a few words and the tall man walks back outside. Jumping on what may be her only chance to get him alone, she tugs the café doors open.
The boy orders something and she takes her place in line behind him. He glances over his shoulder at her. She catches a glimpse of his eyes-or rather his eye, as the other is covered by an eye patch-and immediately recognizes him. His name is Ciel Phantomhive. He is an orphan that her parents’ beloved Father Duncan is caring for temporarily, until a more permanent foster home can be found for him.
She buys an outrageously expensive bottle of water and wanders over to the table where Ciel is sitting. He sees her approaching and stares at her. His gaze is much more piercing than it should be for someone with only one good eye.
“Um, excuse me,” she begins. “Are you Ciel Phantomhive?”
His eyebrows furrow and he looks her up and down once. “Who’s asking?”
“My name’s Rosette-uh, Rosette Merchant? I think we met at a youth retreat last spring. You are Ciel, aren’t you?”
He continues squinting and frowning at her for a minute. “I’m sorry, I don’t-”
“My little sister Lily was the one who spilled her soda all over you at the campfire. Father Duncan wanted me to-”
His eyes go wide for an instant before he looks away. “Oh,” is all he says and takes a bite of his cake.
Rosette sits in the seat across from him. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you or anything. I saw you walking around the park earlier today and was wondering how I knew you. Now that I figured it out, I thought I’d just stop and say hello.”
Ciel reaches up and scratches his nose, and Rosette can him roll his eyes despite is attempt to hide it. “Well, hello.”
There’s a long silence while Ciel ignores her and continues eating. She doesn’t really know what to say, even if she should say anything else, but she doesn’t want to walk back out into the crowded park yet. The wait time sign at Christopher’s roller coaster declared he could be stuck there for forty-five minutes. It’s either sit awkwardly with Ciel in a nice, air conditioned café where she was relatively alone, or stand awkwardly by the Alien Invaders’ exit door in the sun waiting for Chris.
“So,” she says slowly, “are you here with Father Duncan?”
Ciel glances up at her. “What on earth would give you that impression?” When she doesn’t answer, he adds, “I’m here with a friend.”
She nods. She doesn’t mention having seen the tall man, because she doesn’t want Ciel to think she’s stalking him or something. She does wonder who he is, though she isn’t impolite enough to ask.
“Are you here with your parents?” he asks politely, glancing around her. His tone suggests that he doesn’t really care whether she is or not.
She snorts. “No, my older brother. My parents hate amusement parks. There’s not enough money in the world that could make them come here.”
“At least your parents aren’t dead,” he says darkly, and Rosette can hear the spite and bitterness deep in his voice. She feels a little ashamed of herself, because she remembers Father Duncan saying something about how Ciel’s parents had both died in a car accident when he was younger, the same car accident that took his right eye.
“Might as well be,” she replies calmly. She can hear the laughter and the general commotion from the other park-goers just outside and wonders why Ciel likes this place so much that he snuck away from Father Duncan to come here. Amusement parks don’t strike her as something he’d waste his time with. And yet here he is, sitting in the run-down café, sipping an overpriced coffee-flavored beverage and munching on an overpriced piece of chocolate cake, waiting for this friend of his to finish whatever it is he’s doing.
“There’s a world of difference between ‘might as well be’ and ‘are’,” he whispers. He worries the top of his plastic utensil with his thumb and clutches his drink with the other hand.
“Not really. Not as much as you’d think.” She sighs, looking out the large window to her left and watching the people outside having fun. They’re eating junk food-funnel cakes encrusted with powered sugar, mountains of cotton candy atop fragile paper cones, corn dogs dripping with mustard, ketchup, and grease-and having the time of their lives. Forgetting all of their cares for one day and letting themselves be pulled away into some fantasy world where nothing else matters but the here and now. Rosette wishes she could forget herself like that.
Ciel scoffs into his glass. “Enlighten me, then.”
“Your parents are dead,” she starts bluntly, “and for all that you may wish they were still alive, you have the knowledge that they’re at peace and in a better place, or whatever.”
“Or whatever?” he repeats. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She glances over at him, and he’s leaned forward a little on his elbows, as if he’s really interested in what she has to say. “I have…unorthodox thoughts about death.”
“Tell me.”
She looks up into his eyes, and there’s this emotion that she can’t quite place staring back at her. It isn’t quite enjoyment or interest, but it’s triangulated somewhere between those two and scorn. It makes her want to go on, even if just to prove him wrong. “Death is just death-there’s no afterlife or immortal soul or eternal life in heaven with God. When we die, we die. We stop breathing, stop thinking, stop existing. We rot in the ground. There’s nothing else. Your parents are dead. They have a gravestone somewhere where you can visit them and leave flowers. They’re just gone. That’s easy.”
Ciel lets out a bark of sharp laughter that seems much more like something an adult would do. “Is it now?”
“Did your parents love you while they were alive?” she asks, and after a long moment, he nods. “Do you miss them terribly? I know you do, I can see it in your eyes.” Ciel’s eye shoots up from his fake-coffee and stares at her for a moment. It falls back down. “Okay, maybe ‘easy’ isn’t the right word. That kind of grief is cut and dry: they’re dead and you miss them and nothing you could ever do can bring them back. My parents are still alive, there in front of me every day, and they couldn’t care less about me. Their heads are all stuck up Father-” She stops, forces herself to shut her mouth before she can finish her sentence. “Anyway, they don’t care. They have their 60-hour-a-week careers and then the church, and there’s no time for anything else. If I didn’t have my brother Christopher, I wouldn’t have anyone. My parents are alive, and even though I live in their house and I see them and talk to them every day, I still miss them.”
“Ah.”
Rosette sighs again. “I’m sorry,” she says abruptly. “I didn’t mean to unload all of this on you. We barely know each other. I’m sorry. It’s just that-” And she really doesn’t want to say anymore, because she knows Ciel probably thinks she’s a psychopath or a lunatic or something by now, but there’s something in the way he’s facing her and looking in her eyes and paying attention that tells her to finish. “It’s just that sometimes…sometimes I think I’d sell my soul to the devil to make my parents love me again.”
Rosette folds her arms on the table and rests her head on them. She’s still looking out the window at everyone else in the park having fun, and it makes her so angry she could cry. What the hell gives everyone else in the world the right to be so happy?
Rosette feels Ciel’s eyes on her for a long time, and there’s suddenly this strange tension in the air between them that’s obvious to the point of being tangible. She tries to ignore it, but she can’t. “What is it?” she whispers without looking at him.
“Nothing,” he breathes. She hears his chair grind against the tiled floor as he pushes it back to get up. “I just hate being forced to waste a perfectly good meal.”
His glass is empty. His plastic plate and fork are clean. She has no idea what he could mean.
03:43 PM
The person Ciel had been waiting on is called Sebastian. Sebastian is older than Ciel, in his twenties maybe, and that worries her a little. She knows only certain kinds of adult men hang out with little boys. There are so many things in this situation that worry her, like how casually Sebastian takes the seat next to Ciel and how close he sits and how relaxed Ciel looks about the whole thing. She knows Ciel hasn’t lived with Father Duncan that long-half a year, maybe three-quarters-and she wonders how the two of them met. Ciel is smart-doesn’t he know what men like Sebastian want?
Ciel introduces her to him, and Sebastian smiles pleasantly and offers her his hand. She doesn’t want to take it, but she does so anyway.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he says, smile fixed firmly in place. “I’m glad to see that Ciel is being a good boy and making friends.”
“Sebastian!” Ciel huffs. Their eyes meet for a second, and something passes between them that Rosette doesn’t quite understand. It scares her. The whole situation scares her. She doesn’t want to be here, but she doesn’t know why. She’s known Sebastian for less than a minute and he has been nothing but cordial and polite, yet she wants to run as far away from him as she possibly can. It’s almost like she can sense this evil aura radiating from him, and even though she doesn’t know why, she’s scared to pieces.
It’s the same feeling she’s gotten from Father Duncan over the past few months.
“Rosette? Rosette!” she hears a voice calling. She turns around to see Christopher walking toward her. “Oh my God, there you are!” She stands up just as he reaches the table and gets pulled into a hug. “What the hell were you thinking? I told you to-you can’t just wander off like that! You had me worried sick, kid. I thought someone had snatched you or something. Christ, can you imagine what Mom and Dad would do to me if I lost you?”
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
Christopher lets out a big breath, and she can feel his heart pounding against her ear. He’s shaking a little, too. “It’s okay, sweetie. Just don’t do it again, alright?”
She nods against his chest and doesn’t want to let go of him. Christopher is her protector, always has been for as long as she can remember, and she wants him to stay between her and Sebastian at all times.
“Come on, let’s get going,” he says. “We’ve still got a good two hours before the park closes.” She slips her hand in his, and it’s only then that he notices Ciel and Sebastian. “Oh, are these friends of yours, Rosette? Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“Oh, no, you’re fine,” Sebastian replies, smile plastered in place. “We were getting ready to leave as well. Right, Ciel?”
“Yeah.” Ciel looks over at her, and she can’t decide if his smile is genuine. “It was nice seeing you again, Rosette.”
6:11 PM
Rosette doesn’t tell Christopher how being around Sebastian made her feel. She doesn’t want to tell anyone-not her parents, not her closest friend, not anyone. What she does tell Chris is who Ciel is and how she knows him, but when he asks about Sebastian, she shakes her head. “I’m not sure. I’ve never met him before.”
“Wonder if Father Duncan knows about him?” he ponders, readjusting his grip on the steering wheel.
She shrugs. Belatedly remembering that her brother’s eyes are focused on the traffic, she adds, “Does it really matter?”
Christopher lets out a breath, one that tell her she’s still a kid and just said something stupid. “Father Duncan’s been entrusted with Ciel’s care for the time being, right? How do we know that Sebastian guy isn’t a pedophile or something? We need to let Father Duncan know about him. At least make him aware of the company Ciel keeps.”
Rosette doesn’t respond, and after a few minutes, the motion of the car and the gentle noise of tires on asphalt lull her to sleep.
2:49 AM
She wakes up in the middle of the night, laying on her side on top of the hand-made quilt her grandmother had given her before she died. Christopher must have carried her up to her room. There is a thin blanket covering her up to her shoulders, and she’s still a little cold. She gets up slowly, listening to a few joints pop as she stretches her arms over her head. She strips off her clothes, replaces them with a nightgown, and throws her tennis shoes in the general direction of her closet. As she is about to leave her room to brush her teeth, she hears her phone chirp a bright little tune and vibrate against the wood of her dresser. She’s tempted to ignore it. She glances at the clock and decides against it, because whoever it was must really need something to be texting her this late at night.
The message reads, “And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming…”
Her eyebrows furrow together. She checks the number it came from and doesn’t recognize it. She wonders which of her friends has enough free time on their hands to be staying up and sending her lines of morbid poetry. She’s too tired to care about it at the moment, too tired to care about anything more than brushing the remnants of sugar and amusement park junk food out of her mouth and going back to bed. Which is precisely what she does.
And when she wakes in the morning and gets ready for school, she doesn’t notices the crow perched delicately on her window sill.
* * *
3:58 PM
The next time Rosette sees Ciel, it is at Father Duncan’s funeral. His burial, really; she couldn’t bring herself to attend the actual funeral service, because for the longest part of her childhood, she’d hated him. But there was this strange part of her that wanted to be there when his corpse was interred, destined to lay in worm-ridden earth and decompose for the rest of eternity. She’d found out about his passing from Lily-“And don’t you know, sis, the police think he was murdered? Really, who in their right mind would want to murder poor old Father Duncan? He was such a good man!”-and her husband encouraged her to go.
They have nearly an hour’s drive to the gravesite, and most of it is spent in silence. She never talks about her past anymore, and revisiting one of the most painful memories she has isn’t exactly pleasant. She’s glad she’ll get to see some of her childhood friends again, though, and if she’s lucky, she’ll see the pallbearers lowering Father Duncan’s casket into the grave. She should probably be ashamed at thinking the way she is, mentioning old acquaintances and death in the same cheery manner, but she’s not really all that remorseful.
And almost immediately after she steps out of the car and begins approaching the group of mourners, she spots him.
Well, logically the dusky-haired child she sees has to be Ciel’s son, but the resemblance between the two of them is so striking that for a moment Rosette thinks she must have gone back in time forty years and met him all over again. They have the same oddly beautiful locks, the same eyes, the same authoritative stance, the same unemotional, apathetic expressions. The same everything. She wonders briefly where the boy’s parents are, if she would have the pleasure of seeing the real Ciel again after so long. He must have grown up to be a stunningly handsome man, she thinks, and distinctly avoids looking at the man she loves.
“Are you alright, dear?” her husband asks.
“I’m fine,” she answers hesitantly. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
She walks through the crowd of mourners and approaches him slowly. “Excuse me,” she begins. “Are you Ciel Phantomhive’s son?”
“Who’s asking?” he asks rudely, glaring up at her.
She tries her best to make her smile reassuring. “I’m sorry, you don’t know me. My name’s Rosette. I used to live in this town, and I knew your father. Is he here today? I’d like to talk with him.”
The boy rolls his eyes. “My father’s dead.”
“Oh.”
Before she can think of anything else to say, a tall woman in a bright red blouse and equally bright red stiletto heels approaches them. “Come on, darling, everyone’s waiting,” she says, running her red-painted fingers through his dark hair fondly.
He flinches out of her grasp. “Don’t touch me.”
The woman sighs, putting a hand on her hip. “Fine. Be a brat about it, then. See if I care.” She smiles wickedly and chuckles, earning pointed glances and angry whispers from the mourners all around her. “I suppose this means I’ll have Bassy all to myself now. Can’t say that doesn’t excite me a little.”
The boy snorts, ignoring the woman and turning towards Rosette. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he says, smiling brightly, and for some reason she hasn’t noticed the eyepatch until now. Eyepatch. On his right eye. “I have to leave now. It was nice seeing you again.”
4:04 PM
She watches the two of them walk away to the edges of the field. They’re greeted by two men waiting beside a blood-colored Firebird. The red woman says something to the one in the glasses, who reaches up and readjusts said silver eyewear and mutters something. Rosette looks over at the boy, who is talking to a tall, dark-haired man dressed rather casually compared to-
Rosette’s mind hitches back. A tall, dark-haired man dressed rather…a tall man…the tall man. Sebastian.
Then, the boy…?
(the eyepatch-dusky-haired child-the same everything-the eyepatch-piercing gaze-dead parents-the eyepatch)
(the eyepatch-the eyepatch)
(the eyepatch!)
Ciel Phantomhive.
Her mind is reeling, and her knees are getting weaker by the second, turning into jelly and nearly collapsing under the weight of her epiphany. No. It can’t be Ciel. No, she was just a child when she knew Ciel. It has been nearly forty years since that day in the amusement park. Ciel had grown up. Ciel had married. Ciel had had a son. He must have done.
Motion at the edge of the field brings her attention back to the present. Sebastian is smiling down at Ciel. There’s something oddly intimate about the way they’re gazing at each other. It’s the same, she thinks to herself, the same way they looked at each other forty years ago, the same emotion her teenage self hadn’t been able to process back in the cool air of the amusement park café. The more she sees of the two of them, the more she begins to believe that she must have gone mad. It’s all the same.
Sebastian’s leaning down now, and he glances up and catches Rosette’s eyes just long enough to grab her full attention. Then he’s kissing Ciel's mouth and Ciel is kissing him back, all lips and teeth and tongue, and she has to turn away then because she can feel the bile rising in her throat and coating the back of her tongue.
“Rosette, are you okay?” she hears a far away voice ask. She thinks it’s her husband’s and she’s almost positive she nods, but she can’t be sure of either. “You look as if you’ve just seen a ghost. Come on, let’s get going.”
4:23 PM
They are halfway home when Rosette feels her cell phone vibrate from the depths of her purse. It is a text message. She’s almost afraid to open it, but her curiosity wins out in the end.
“‘And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming.’”
A moment later, another message comes.
“It was nice seeing you again, Rosette.”
She wants to vomit.
* * *
4:24 PM
“Sebastian, you shouldn’t waste your time tormenting that woman anymore. There’s no point to it now.”
A hum, and a smile. “Of course."