On the Coldest Winter Night - Chapter 2
Summary: The Cardmaster, tired of Jizabel's tendency to disrupt his plans, gave his eldest son over to Head Priest Cassandra to do as the latter saw fit. Abused, injured, and left for death at the Hargreaves' mansion's gates, Jizabel discovered his true family.
Standard Disclaimer: Not mine; everything is Kaori Yuki's.
Warning for this chapter: Mention of abuse, some blood, some other forms of violence, Jizabel's rambling thoughts. Cassian/Jizabel if you squint (for now).
Another note: In Godchild, Kaori Yuki used "trump cards" to mean the lowest ranking members, Minor Arcana as the second-tier, and Major Arcana as the elites. However, I'm an amateur tarot card readers, and trump cards actually are the same as the Major Arcana, so I will refer to the lowest rank of Delilah as either third-tier or suit cards, and the second tier Minor Arcana will be referred to as Court cards (which makes sense if you look at it, there are four Court cards in each suit, so a Court card has more power and is more elite than the rest of the suit).
On the Coldest Winter Night
Chapter Two
Shattered shards of sounds could reach deeper than one tended to realize, Jizabel learned. He came to awareness quickly enough, though all he could feel was a deep-set sort of confusion. His head scintillated between extreme heaviness and feathery weightlessness. There was a piercing pain hovering on the back of his head, and as he attempted to open his eyes, he found that his lashes had crusted over, signifying that he has been out of it for quite long. His body ached. There was a cramp in his left hand that he hadn't figured out how to get rid of-he experimentally twitched his wrist only to let it chafe against large scratchy sisal ropes. The bastard demon had bound him, and most likely it had left him alone while it entertained several more unfortunate souls. He could hear bits and pieces of laughters drifting through the slits on the wooden door; there were tinkering bell-like giggles sounding like they belonged to a twelve year old rose bud, and there, deeper than the rest, was a low, rumbling chuckle, drenched with seduction and authority. He could recognize it anytime, so deeply has that sound been embedded in his head-just as deeply as a certain other part of the bastard in his body.
He groaned, the sound rough and rusty, so different from his usual melodious tenor. His attempt to stretch his sore limbs was immediately struck down: the ropes were too tight on his raw-red skin, stretching each of his limb to its very limit. Through his limited vision he could make out the tautness of the length of rope binding his left arm to one of the elaborate bed posts, and he imagined that similar treatments were done with his other limbs. The sheet underneath him was wet; he could almost see its delicate embroidered white flowers blooming crimson with the blood seeping out from the back of his head.
He couldn't remember what had happened after the demon had violated him. His last memory was of an enraged handsome face covered in spittle, and he briefly remembered a flash of something very solid flying toward him, and then nothingness. He figured he must have blacked out from the attack, and even the incomplete memory of his act of defiance brought him a deep sense of gratification. At least he had done something, he reasoned. At least he hadn't given that demon the satisfaction of taking him willingly.
It must have been ages as he laid there awake and quietly assessed his-admittedly few-injuries, eyes boring holes into the beautiful golden canopy partially obscuring a painstakingly hand-painted tromp d'oeil of small, mischievous Cupids looking down from their puffy white heaven. The walls were a deep velvety red, accented with curling golden candle holders that blazed with a comforting warmth. The ceiling was a light gold made ever more golden by the warm fire from the marble fireplace on the other side of the room, and the bed itself, probably a masterpiece of some old, sought-after carpenter, was a vision in twisting mahogany wood and snowy white Oriental silk sheets. The room was fit for a king and his queen, he mused, and relaxed fractionally as he felt the tensions in his limbs ebbing away.
He knew why Cassandra was keeping him here. No doubt the Head Priest wished to lull him into a sense of false comfort so that he would be compliant whenever Cassandra wanted to take away his dignity, he thought, disgusted with the very idea of seeing the other man's lewd smile again. He knew Cassandra desired his body, though he couldn't fathom why-he was just another callous, dirty human being, whose cruelty and desire to live had wiped all traces of compassion to his fellow creatures from his conscience. All humans are despicable beings, and he was no difference. Perhaps he was the only one to have ever realized this, though what good did that do for him? All he gained from the knowledge was the lost of love from his father-and Snark, his mind whispered, though he refused to dwell too long on the thought. It was best if childhood memories were buried; he was no longer a child, after all.
Surprisingly enough, the violation of his body hadn't cost him the clarity of his thoughts. He felt unnaturally calm, spread-eagle as he was on the luxurious bed, empty of fear or dread or anxiety and strangely detached from everything; the only reminder of earlier events was the dull ache in his backside and the persistent pain in his head that had already receded somewhat compared to when he just woke. The brief flashes of hot pain from his days-old, unhealed lacerations burned, but he had long learned to tune them out; these particular ones he cherished, for they were the last gifts his father had given him before he was handed over to Lord Gladstone.
His mind slowly strayed from observing the beautiful room-like a golden cage for an ugly beast-to what he had left behind when he was taken away from his work. Zenopia would have to take over his research on the deadly dolls, then, he mused, and he felt slightly sorry for the old man. Poor Zenopia held no such interest; he was more concerned with breathing back life to cadavers and gifting them with extraordinary abilities, though none of the old man's creations had worked correctly yet. Immortality and a chance to be a god. The old man was quite ambitious. He had promised to look into Zenopia's research and give his opinion, but he hadn't had the chance yet. What a pity, too; he was quite interested in the subject, and he had never minded working with Zenopia. The old man had no delusions about a possible friendship with him, but the two had come to an understanding of sort and were quite amiable colleagues together.
No doubt right now Zenopia was dissecting yet another corpse, probably only recently deceased with the flesh still warm and soft. Cassian always picked the best cadavers. He didn't know how the other man managed to find fresh bodies all the times, but he could hazard a good guess. The small man was ruthless and matter-of-fact when it came to business, a trait that he admired and also possessed. It was one of the requirements to be a member of Delilah, after all. The Cardmaster had seen to that. He suppressed a shudder, not wanting to remember his own initiation ceremony-not the one crowning him as Death, but the first one, the one that admitted him into Delilah's ranks at the beginning. If he were not disgusted with human beings before, the initiation had made sure of it by the end; never, in his sickest fantasies, could he have imagined the things that he was made to do. He could still recall the blood coating his hair, a warm, still beating infant's heart in his trembling hands, and his father...
But Cassian, the man was a mystery to him. When his father had first brought Cassian to him, he had barely turned twenty-one and just finished with his schooling at Cambridge. He was in the middle of a rather engrossing operation involving giving a congenitally blind girl a new pair of eyes-purely to satisfy his own intellectual curiosity and not out of any altruistic motive, and the experiment had failed anyway, leaving the poor girl dead, Jizabel vaguely discouraged, and Zenopia utterly crushed. Cassian had entered the room then, a young boy with wild dark hair and large, disturbingly old green eyes blazing with something that he couldn't quite place. Cassian had looked about the laboratory with a barely masked desperate, hungry countenance, and Jizabel-graying ash-blond hair done in a braid that had long since fallen out, white surgical coat and face splattered with the girl's blood and brain matter-had scoffed then, dismissing the boy as yet another opportunistic lackey wanting to advance through Delilah's ranks at all cost. His father had imperiously informed him that the boy was to be his new assistant, a move that had caused no small amount of discontent amongst the whole of Delilah; Jizabel was but a Court card at the time, and it was undoubtedly a clear display of favoritism for the Cardmaster to supply his bastard child with a personal assistant.
He didn't care much for the boy back then, though he was grateful for the special favor from his father. Still, he had inwardly sneered at the child he was sent; what could a child who hasn't yet hit puberty do for him? The boy was nothing but a burden, and he was most likely squeamish about blood and body parts, and to be completely honest Jizabel wasn't totally comfortable with the thought of allowing a child to dabble in his line of work. He didn't need a useless tagalong; he was at Delilah as a research scientist, not a babysitter for charity cases.
Cassian had proven to be a capable assistant, though: close-mouthed, professional, and speedy in his work. He had followed Jizabel to all sorts of unsavory places without much protestations, and although they did not exchange many words, the boy always seemed to know exactly just what type of victim Jizabel needed. The two fell into their roles of mad genius and helpful lackey and passed several months in an almost companionable silence, and Jizabel had almost grown used to the boy's quiet company. He could tell that Cassian held no special love for his job, and he couldn't really understand while the boy was in Delilah's services. Cassian was much too young to be associating with such an organization as he couldn't have been older than thirteen, or fourteen at the most. Jizabel had wondered how it was that his father came to happen upon the boy.
Their relationship had changed subtly, but irrevocably, after Cassian first witnessed one of Jizabel's numerous punishments by the Cardmaster. It was about one year after Cassian had come into Delilah. Jizabel couldn't recall exactly what it was that caused his father's displeasure-but then again, Alexis didn't really need an excuse to punish his son. Jizabel had just been back from an excursion to gather some information about a new strain of the plague that was threatening to ravage Europe, and as he was entering the headquarter, his father's bodyguard, the Moon, had quickly detained him and brought him, bewildered and barely able to uphold his composure, before his father.
Unbeknownst to them, Cassian had taken it upon himself to tag along, hiding his small, nimble body among the many alcoves along the corridor leading to Alexis' private room. He had stood outside and, ear pressed against the freezing stone floor, carefully listened to the sole rhythmic sound of a leather whip flying through cold, crisp air to land on something soft and solid. He was still there, an hour later, when Jizabel limped out of the room, clothes bloodied and rumpled and hair long fallen in disarray around his pale, pinched face. The boy had silently offered him a hand, and he remembered staring at it in incomprehension. It felt like a few hours that he had stood there, eyes gazing unseeingly at the outstretched, scarred hand, but it was only a few seconds. He had turned away and strode resolutely toward his own chamber, eyes burning with the knowledge that his subordinate had seen him at his most vulnerable, most cherished moments, and he had wished fervently to any god that might listen that Cassian would have enough sense to never speak of this again.
His prayers went unanswered. As he shuffled out of his father's private quarter after another beating session, arms gathering his disheveled clothes around him like shreds of dignity and shivering as the cold night air brushed over the open wounds on his back, he spied a small figure nestled next to the door, its expression inscrutable and serious. "Why didn't you make a sound?" Cassian had demanded, catching up to him effortlessly. "Why didn't you fight back?" The boy's voice shook with anger, though Jizabel could not place whether that anger was directed toward his father or himself. "Why do you give him the satisfaction of subverting you?"
How could he possibly answer those questions? Because I love him, because this is the only way I can receive attention from him, because this is all I've ever known, because... "Leave it, Cassian," he finally managed, walking faster to shake the boy off, though the extra effort brought a new wave of agonizing pain down his back. He bit through his lower lip to keep from crying out and blinked rapidly, grateful that his room was just around the corner. Just a few more steps and he wouldn't have to put up with Cassian's troubling presence anymore, and he willed himself to move, his limp getting more pronounced the more he tried to conceal it. His father had been a little too enthusiastic with the whip this time, striking even lower on his back than he normally did; the whip had curved around his buttocks and thighs, tearing through his trousers to strike the pale flesh.
Cassian would have none of his silence, and the boy had roughly grabbed his shoulder and pushed him up against the wall; the sharp edge of the peeling wallpaper dug into his bloody welts. Already disoriented from the blood loss, he could do nothing but gave a shocked gasp as the wind was knocked out of him by a small, angry blur of black hair and black clothes.
"You disgust me," hissed Cassian. "This has been going on for a long time, hasn't it? You're a grown man, aren't you, Doctor? Why are you acting like such a pathetic child?"
"I don't doubt that you know exactly what it's like to be a pathetic child," he sneered. "You don't understand anything. It's not what you think it is; this is between the Cardmaster and me. Now, if you will kindly unhand me, I will not report this to him tomorrow."
Cassian had shoved him back with force and took a step back, to shake his head disgustedly. "I understand much more than you think, Doctor. You feel like you deserve to be punished, don't you? You think this is the only way it could ever be, that you would be lost without being beaten on a regular basis. You're so accustomed to this sort of behavior that you don't even question the reason why he does it anymore." He sighed, all of the anger seemingly evaporating from his voice and eyes, and he looked at Jizabel with no small amount of pity in his eyes. "You remind me of myself back then, kid."
He paused, taking in Jizabel's skittish, wary look and the taut way he held his posture. "I won't tell anyone else of this, on one condition."
Jizabel had wanted to protest, and he had already opened his mouth, ready with a rough-edged rebuttal when Cassian's hand clasped over his mouth, the small hand cold and hard over the doctor's clammy skin.
"No, you have to listen to me now, unless you want the rest of Delilah to hear about this," Cassian warned, green eyes boring into stunned ones the exact color of an English iris. "Let me clean you up afterward. Please, this is for your own goods as well as mine." He hesitated a little, eyes averted before continuing, "I know just a little too well what it feels like to come back to an empty room to try and patch yourself up. Please, let me do it, Jizabel."
Jizabel had nodded then, mind still spinning over Cassian's acute analysis of him that he didn't comment on the insubordination shown by his inferior. He had allowed Cassian to help him back to his room that night, and he had sat numbly on the edge of his bed, upperbody fully exposed as the boy's surprisingly gentle hands brought a hot washcloth to wipe away the sticky crimson mess from his skin and hair. He bore the pain quietly when it was time to disinfect the wounds, and he didn't make a sound as Cassian's face, faintly red, appeared in his line of vision, gestured toward his torn trousers. Jizabel only shook his head mutely, and the boy had enough sense to leave it alone and set about wrapping his torso in soft white gauze.
When the angry lines on his back were completely hidden under a thick layer of white, Jizabel was hanging precariously on the edge between unconsciousness and the wakeful world. Cassian seemed to have notice it, and he had gently slid off of the bed and allowed Jizabel to fall back into the mattress still warm with the lower card's body heat. Cassian drew the plush cover over the doctor's thin, battered body, and before the Jizabel completely lost consciousness, he could have sworn that he felt the boy's hand smoothing out the tangles in his pale hair.
True to his words, Cassian had shown up in front of the Cardmaster's door every time that Jizabel was ungraciously summoned for an impromptu private meeting with his father, and the boy always wordlessly helped the doctor back to his quarter and took care of his injuries afterward. Jizabel had allowed it not only because he feared that Cassian would go through with his blackmail threat, but he had also grown to take comfort in being administered by the increasingly skilled small hands of his assistant. Sharing the evidence of his father's love with an outsider was jarring at first, but the addition of a new kind of affection-for he had no doubt that Cassian felt a certain sort of affection toward him, not unlike the sort that a dog would feel toward its master-was certainly welcomed.
He knew that he was harming the boy that way, but he couldn't help himself. Surely the kid was no innocent if he had come to work for Delilah, not to mention how skilled he was with a blade and the uncanny way he could drag back three, if not four corpses a night undetected for Jizabel's and Zenopia's needs, but the kid was still young, still had time to leave the organization and settle down for a quiet life somewhere. Not that he liked kids or was even able to tolerate them besides putting their carcasses to good use, but Cassian was a little more special than most in ways that he could't fully explain. He knew that he could help smuggle Cassian away if he wanted, but that was the problem: he didn't want to.
Jizabel didn't know that it was possible, but over the months and subsequent years he had grown fond of the boy and started to look forward to his presence. He didn't protest when Cassian started loitering in his quarter in the latter's spare time; it was tolerable, even the slightest bit nice, to have a non-threatening, living presence in his room late at night so that he wasn't tempted to make conversations with the jars and jars of his family preserved in formaldehyde. Cassian knew not to step out of his boundary as well, and Jizabel was accustomed to the soft, almost inaudible click of the door at a quarter after one, followed by a muffled "Goodnight, Doctor" that he probably wasn't mean to hear anyway. He was tempted to reply a few times but always decided against it. Between them, such words weren't needed.
Every couple of weeks, Jizabel would find a new, freshly carved wooden dove on his nightstand, and the little figurines began to accumulate so much that he had taken it upon himself to purchase a new shelf to display the birds, all done in various poses of rest and flight. Cassian had beamed with pride when he had first seen the shelf, and Jizabel had allowed himself a small smile as well. His assistant was certainly skilled, and yet again he felt a vague sense of what he believed was guilt when he thought of the life that the boy could have led if he weren't involved in Delilah; but then, he reasoned, Cassian would just grow up to be a disgusting human adult with a repugnant sense of righteousness while still knee-deep in sins, and he felt the guilt subsided.
That is, until Cassian had started nagging incessantly for the doctor to eat more than the meager amount he was used to for years. Honestly, he didn't see anything amiss with eating one meal a day, and he told the boy as such along with a firm reminder to their apparent age difference; he, as an adult, did not have to listen to a wee pre-pubescent brat. Cassian had only scoffed, shaken his head, and walked right out of the room, and Jizabel had snarled and hurled the dining set laden with high tea sandwiches and confections that the boy had brought in at the shutting door. Cassian never brought the issue up again, but Jizabel would catch the boy's disapproving stare sometimes while the blond picked idly at his dinner of roasted vegetables and plain bread. He always dissected his corpses with a manic glee-and precision-afterward, sometimes imagining that it was the boy's eyes that he was scooping out, that it was his chest that the scalpel had sunken into. He found that was a better alternative than to lash out at Cassian himself.
It wasn't until three Decembers later that he realized the reason why Cassian was with the organization, when he noted the changes of Cassian's boyish body and voice-or rather, the lack thereof. A quick conversation with Zenopia had confirmed his suspicion. He could have slapped himself for not asking before, for not noticing the truth in those old, old forest green eyes. It was a shock to find out that Cassian was a full ten years older than him, and he was slightly mortified to face the boy-not a boy, certainly not a boy-again after his talk with Zenopia, and he let himself fumble for a proper way to address the dwarf before giving up and settling on "Cassian." Cassian gave him a long, slightly befuddled look, but the small man just dismissed it and rambled on about the stupidity of his fellow suits-the lowest ranked amongst Delilah-while Jizabel didn't even bother to appear interested, the doctor's eyes faraway and almost opaque beneath the thin-rimmed spectacles.
He didn't know why, but Jizabel had started and hidden his research on dwarfism from Cassian. He gave the bulk of the information he obtained to Zenopia, and the old man served as the frontman whenever Cassian sneaked into the laboratory when he wasn't needed to ask about the progress. It seemed important to Jizabel to keep his involvement private; later, he would reason that he didn't want to be the object of Cassian's disappointment if he were to fail to find a cure. The dwarf was too useful to let him turn against his superior, Jizabel told himself.
But where was Cassian now? Now that Jizabel had fallen out of favor with his father, his rank of Death and his belonging to Delilah at all were severely compromised. For all he knew, Cassian might have been dead or severely wounded by now as a punishment for his laxness in keeping an eye on Jizabel-he had long found out that was Cassian's real function, a babysitter imposed on him by his father, though the dwarf never actually reported anything of use to Alexis from what Jizabel could overhear from the conversations he had eavesdropped in.
He could only hope for Cassian to be reassigned to another card, preferably Zenopia. At least Zenopia would keep the other man safe, as he knew that the Hermit was quite fond of the dwarf as well. Zenopia was boring and ambitious, but the old man was kind enough for a high ranking member of Delilah and wouldn't mistreat his assistant. Maybe it was for the best, Jizabel thought; Cassian deserved so much more than him.
The door to the room slammed open, startling him from his reveries. "Sleeping beauty has awaken, I see," purred a voice that he had come to detest, the very sound soaking his fuzzy mind with the reality of what was done to him by the damnable demon. He felt his limbs grown stiff and leaden with dread, and the blood coursing through his veins seemed to have come to a halt, frozen with the deepest fear that he had ever experienced in his twenty-six years of life. The wall of pleasant memories that he had carefully constructed around himself crumpled at once like a precarious house of cards come tumbling down from a stray winter breeze.
"My, my, Jizabel, you are even more... captivating when you're being rebellious." Cassandra's face loomed over him, the man's greasy locks of hair hanging about his-admittedly handsome-face ominously. "I hope you've had a nice slumber, darling. I dare say that the physical activities I have planned for us might be a little more..." the Head Priest paused, an eerie smirk gracing his lips, "ah, a little more strenuous than what you're accustomed to."
A/N: Ahh, cliffhangers, how I hate them when I read other people's fanfiction...
Standard Disclaimer: Not mine; everything is Kaori Yuki's.
Warning for this chapter: Mention of abuse, some blood, some other forms of violence, Jizabel's rambling thoughts. Cassian/Jizabel if you squint (for now).
Another note: In Godchild, Kaori Yuki used "trump cards" to mean the lowest ranking members, Minor Arcana as the second-tier, and Major Arcana as the elites. However, I'm an amateur tarot card readers, and trump cards actually are the same as the Major Arcana, so I will refer to the lowest rank of Delilah as either third-tier or suit cards, and the second tier Minor Arcana will be referred to as Court cards (which makes sense if you look at it, there are four Court cards in each suit, so a Court card has more power and is more elite than the rest of the suit).
On the Coldest Winter Night
Chapter Two
Shattered shards of sounds could reach deeper than one tended to realize, Jizabel learned. He came to awareness quickly enough, though all he could feel was a deep-set sort of confusion. His head scintillated between extreme heaviness and feathery weightlessness. There was a piercing pain hovering on the back of his head, and as he attempted to open his eyes, he found that his lashes had crusted over, signifying that he has been out of it for quite long. His body ached. There was a cramp in his left hand that he hadn't figured out how to get rid of-he experimentally twitched his wrist only to let it chafe against large scratchy sisal ropes. The bastard demon had bound him, and most likely it had left him alone while it entertained several more unfortunate souls. He could hear bits and pieces of laughters drifting through the slits on the wooden door; there were tinkering bell-like giggles sounding like they belonged to a twelve year old rose bud, and there, deeper than the rest, was a low, rumbling chuckle, drenched with seduction and authority. He could recognize it anytime, so deeply has that sound been embedded in his head-just as deeply as a certain other part of the bastard in his body.
He groaned, the sound rough and rusty, so different from his usual melodious tenor. His attempt to stretch his sore limbs was immediately struck down: the ropes were too tight on his raw-red skin, stretching each of his limb to its very limit. Through his limited vision he could make out the tautness of the length of rope binding his left arm to one of the elaborate bed posts, and he imagined that similar treatments were done with his other limbs. The sheet underneath him was wet; he could almost see its delicate embroidered white flowers blooming crimson with the blood seeping out from the back of his head.
He couldn't remember what had happened after the demon had violated him. His last memory was of an enraged handsome face covered in spittle, and he briefly remembered a flash of something very solid flying toward him, and then nothingness. He figured he must have blacked out from the attack, and even the incomplete memory of his act of defiance brought him a deep sense of gratification. At least he had done something, he reasoned. At least he hadn't given that demon the satisfaction of taking him willingly.
It must have been ages as he laid there awake and quietly assessed his-admittedly few-injuries, eyes boring holes into the beautiful golden canopy partially obscuring a painstakingly hand-painted tromp d'oeil of small, mischievous Cupids looking down from their puffy white heaven. The walls were a deep velvety red, accented with curling golden candle holders that blazed with a comforting warmth. The ceiling was a light gold made ever more golden by the warm fire from the marble fireplace on the other side of the room, and the bed itself, probably a masterpiece of some old, sought-after carpenter, was a vision in twisting mahogany wood and snowy white Oriental silk sheets. The room was fit for a king and his queen, he mused, and relaxed fractionally as he felt the tensions in his limbs ebbing away.
He knew why Cassandra was keeping him here. No doubt the Head Priest wished to lull him into a sense of false comfort so that he would be compliant whenever Cassandra wanted to take away his dignity, he thought, disgusted with the very idea of seeing the other man's lewd smile again. He knew Cassandra desired his body, though he couldn't fathom why-he was just another callous, dirty human being, whose cruelty and desire to live had wiped all traces of compassion to his fellow creatures from his conscience. All humans are despicable beings, and he was no difference. Perhaps he was the only one to have ever realized this, though what good did that do for him? All he gained from the knowledge was the lost of love from his father-and Snark, his mind whispered, though he refused to dwell too long on the thought. It was best if childhood memories were buried; he was no longer a child, after all.
Surprisingly enough, the violation of his body hadn't cost him the clarity of his thoughts. He felt unnaturally calm, spread-eagle as he was on the luxurious bed, empty of fear or dread or anxiety and strangely detached from everything; the only reminder of earlier events was the dull ache in his backside and the persistent pain in his head that had already receded somewhat compared to when he just woke. The brief flashes of hot pain from his days-old, unhealed lacerations burned, but he had long learned to tune them out; these particular ones he cherished, for they were the last gifts his father had given him before he was handed over to Lord Gladstone.
His mind slowly strayed from observing the beautiful room-like a golden cage for an ugly beast-to what he had left behind when he was taken away from his work. Zenopia would have to take over his research on the deadly dolls, then, he mused, and he felt slightly sorry for the old man. Poor Zenopia held no such interest; he was more concerned with breathing back life to cadavers and gifting them with extraordinary abilities, though none of the old man's creations had worked correctly yet. Immortality and a chance to be a god. The old man was quite ambitious. He had promised to look into Zenopia's research and give his opinion, but he hadn't had the chance yet. What a pity, too; he was quite interested in the subject, and he had never minded working with Zenopia. The old man had no delusions about a possible friendship with him, but the two had come to an understanding of sort and were quite amiable colleagues together.
No doubt right now Zenopia was dissecting yet another corpse, probably only recently deceased with the flesh still warm and soft. Cassian always picked the best cadavers. He didn't know how the other man managed to find fresh bodies all the times, but he could hazard a good guess. The small man was ruthless and matter-of-fact when it came to business, a trait that he admired and also possessed. It was one of the requirements to be a member of Delilah, after all. The Cardmaster had seen to that. He suppressed a shudder, not wanting to remember his own initiation ceremony-not the one crowning him as Death, but the first one, the one that admitted him into Delilah's ranks at the beginning. If he were not disgusted with human beings before, the initiation had made sure of it by the end; never, in his sickest fantasies, could he have imagined the things that he was made to do. He could still recall the blood coating his hair, a warm, still beating infant's heart in his trembling hands, and his father...
But Cassian, the man was a mystery to him. When his father had first brought Cassian to him, he had barely turned twenty-one and just finished with his schooling at Cambridge. He was in the middle of a rather engrossing operation involving giving a congenitally blind girl a new pair of eyes-purely to satisfy his own intellectual curiosity and not out of any altruistic motive, and the experiment had failed anyway, leaving the poor girl dead, Jizabel vaguely discouraged, and Zenopia utterly crushed. Cassian had entered the room then, a young boy with wild dark hair and large, disturbingly old green eyes blazing with something that he couldn't quite place. Cassian had looked about the laboratory with a barely masked desperate, hungry countenance, and Jizabel-graying ash-blond hair done in a braid that had long since fallen out, white surgical coat and face splattered with the girl's blood and brain matter-had scoffed then, dismissing the boy as yet another opportunistic lackey wanting to advance through Delilah's ranks at all cost. His father had imperiously informed him that the boy was to be his new assistant, a move that had caused no small amount of discontent amongst the whole of Delilah; Jizabel was but a Court card at the time, and it was undoubtedly a clear display of favoritism for the Cardmaster to supply his bastard child with a personal assistant.
He didn't care much for the boy back then, though he was grateful for the special favor from his father. Still, he had inwardly sneered at the child he was sent; what could a child who hasn't yet hit puberty do for him? The boy was nothing but a burden, and he was most likely squeamish about blood and body parts, and to be completely honest Jizabel wasn't totally comfortable with the thought of allowing a child to dabble in his line of work. He didn't need a useless tagalong; he was at Delilah as a research scientist, not a babysitter for charity cases.
Cassian had proven to be a capable assistant, though: close-mouthed, professional, and speedy in his work. He had followed Jizabel to all sorts of unsavory places without much protestations, and although they did not exchange many words, the boy always seemed to know exactly just what type of victim Jizabel needed. The two fell into their roles of mad genius and helpful lackey and passed several months in an almost companionable silence, and Jizabel had almost grown used to the boy's quiet company. He could tell that Cassian held no special love for his job, and he couldn't really understand while the boy was in Delilah's services. Cassian was much too young to be associating with such an organization as he couldn't have been older than thirteen, or fourteen at the most. Jizabel had wondered how it was that his father came to happen upon the boy.
Their relationship had changed subtly, but irrevocably, after Cassian first witnessed one of Jizabel's numerous punishments by the Cardmaster. It was about one year after Cassian had come into Delilah. Jizabel couldn't recall exactly what it was that caused his father's displeasure-but then again, Alexis didn't really need an excuse to punish his son. Jizabel had just been back from an excursion to gather some information about a new strain of the plague that was threatening to ravage Europe, and as he was entering the headquarter, his father's bodyguard, the Moon, had quickly detained him and brought him, bewildered and barely able to uphold his composure, before his father.
Unbeknownst to them, Cassian had taken it upon himself to tag along, hiding his small, nimble body among the many alcoves along the corridor leading to Alexis' private room. He had stood outside and, ear pressed against the freezing stone floor, carefully listened to the sole rhythmic sound of a leather whip flying through cold, crisp air to land on something soft and solid. He was still there, an hour later, when Jizabel limped out of the room, clothes bloodied and rumpled and hair long fallen in disarray around his pale, pinched face. The boy had silently offered him a hand, and he remembered staring at it in incomprehension. It felt like a few hours that he had stood there, eyes gazing unseeingly at the outstretched, scarred hand, but it was only a few seconds. He had turned away and strode resolutely toward his own chamber, eyes burning with the knowledge that his subordinate had seen him at his most vulnerable, most cherished moments, and he had wished fervently to any god that might listen that Cassian would have enough sense to never speak of this again.
His prayers went unanswered. As he shuffled out of his father's private quarter after another beating session, arms gathering his disheveled clothes around him like shreds of dignity and shivering as the cold night air brushed over the open wounds on his back, he spied a small figure nestled next to the door, its expression inscrutable and serious. "Why didn't you make a sound?" Cassian had demanded, catching up to him effortlessly. "Why didn't you fight back?" The boy's voice shook with anger, though Jizabel could not place whether that anger was directed toward his father or himself. "Why do you give him the satisfaction of subverting you?"
How could he possibly answer those questions? Because I love him, because this is the only way I can receive attention from him, because this is all I've ever known, because... "Leave it, Cassian," he finally managed, walking faster to shake the boy off, though the extra effort brought a new wave of agonizing pain down his back. He bit through his lower lip to keep from crying out and blinked rapidly, grateful that his room was just around the corner. Just a few more steps and he wouldn't have to put up with Cassian's troubling presence anymore, and he willed himself to move, his limp getting more pronounced the more he tried to conceal it. His father had been a little too enthusiastic with the whip this time, striking even lower on his back than he normally did; the whip had curved around his buttocks and thighs, tearing through his trousers to strike the pale flesh.
Cassian would have none of his silence, and the boy had roughly grabbed his shoulder and pushed him up against the wall; the sharp edge of the peeling wallpaper dug into his bloody welts. Already disoriented from the blood loss, he could do nothing but gave a shocked gasp as the wind was knocked out of him by a small, angry blur of black hair and black clothes.
"You disgust me," hissed Cassian. "This has been going on for a long time, hasn't it? You're a grown man, aren't you, Doctor? Why are you acting like such a pathetic child?"
"I don't doubt that you know exactly what it's like to be a pathetic child," he sneered. "You don't understand anything. It's not what you think it is; this is between the Cardmaster and me. Now, if you will kindly unhand me, I will not report this to him tomorrow."
Cassian had shoved him back with force and took a step back, to shake his head disgustedly. "I understand much more than you think, Doctor. You feel like you deserve to be punished, don't you? You think this is the only way it could ever be, that you would be lost without being beaten on a regular basis. You're so accustomed to this sort of behavior that you don't even question the reason why he does it anymore." He sighed, all of the anger seemingly evaporating from his voice and eyes, and he looked at Jizabel with no small amount of pity in his eyes. "You remind me of myself back then, kid."
He paused, taking in Jizabel's skittish, wary look and the taut way he held his posture. "I won't tell anyone else of this, on one condition."
Jizabel had wanted to protest, and he had already opened his mouth, ready with a rough-edged rebuttal when Cassian's hand clasped over his mouth, the small hand cold and hard over the doctor's clammy skin.
"No, you have to listen to me now, unless you want the rest of Delilah to hear about this," Cassian warned, green eyes boring into stunned ones the exact color of an English iris. "Let me clean you up afterward. Please, this is for your own goods as well as mine." He hesitated a little, eyes averted before continuing, "I know just a little too well what it feels like to come back to an empty room to try and patch yourself up. Please, let me do it, Jizabel."
Jizabel had nodded then, mind still spinning over Cassian's acute analysis of him that he didn't comment on the insubordination shown by his inferior. He had allowed Cassian to help him back to his room that night, and he had sat numbly on the edge of his bed, upperbody fully exposed as the boy's surprisingly gentle hands brought a hot washcloth to wipe away the sticky crimson mess from his skin and hair. He bore the pain quietly when it was time to disinfect the wounds, and he didn't make a sound as Cassian's face, faintly red, appeared in his line of vision, gestured toward his torn trousers. Jizabel only shook his head mutely, and the boy had enough sense to leave it alone and set about wrapping his torso in soft white gauze.
When the angry lines on his back were completely hidden under a thick layer of white, Jizabel was hanging precariously on the edge between unconsciousness and the wakeful world. Cassian seemed to have notice it, and he had gently slid off of the bed and allowed Jizabel to fall back into the mattress still warm with the lower card's body heat. Cassian drew the plush cover over the doctor's thin, battered body, and before the Jizabel completely lost consciousness, he could have sworn that he felt the boy's hand smoothing out the tangles in his pale hair.
True to his words, Cassian had shown up in front of the Cardmaster's door every time that Jizabel was ungraciously summoned for an impromptu private meeting with his father, and the boy always wordlessly helped the doctor back to his quarter and took care of his injuries afterward. Jizabel had allowed it not only because he feared that Cassian would go through with his blackmail threat, but he had also grown to take comfort in being administered by the increasingly skilled small hands of his assistant. Sharing the evidence of his father's love with an outsider was jarring at first, but the addition of a new kind of affection-for he had no doubt that Cassian felt a certain sort of affection toward him, not unlike the sort that a dog would feel toward its master-was certainly welcomed.
He knew that he was harming the boy that way, but he couldn't help himself. Surely the kid was no innocent if he had come to work for Delilah, not to mention how skilled he was with a blade and the uncanny way he could drag back three, if not four corpses a night undetected for Jizabel's and Zenopia's needs, but the kid was still young, still had time to leave the organization and settle down for a quiet life somewhere. Not that he liked kids or was even able to tolerate them besides putting their carcasses to good use, but Cassian was a little more special than most in ways that he could't fully explain. He knew that he could help smuggle Cassian away if he wanted, but that was the problem: he didn't want to.
Jizabel didn't know that it was possible, but over the months and subsequent years he had grown fond of the boy and started to look forward to his presence. He didn't protest when Cassian started loitering in his quarter in the latter's spare time; it was tolerable, even the slightest bit nice, to have a non-threatening, living presence in his room late at night so that he wasn't tempted to make conversations with the jars and jars of his family preserved in formaldehyde. Cassian knew not to step out of his boundary as well, and Jizabel was accustomed to the soft, almost inaudible click of the door at a quarter after one, followed by a muffled "Goodnight, Doctor" that he probably wasn't mean to hear anyway. He was tempted to reply a few times but always decided against it. Between them, such words weren't needed.
Every couple of weeks, Jizabel would find a new, freshly carved wooden dove on his nightstand, and the little figurines began to accumulate so much that he had taken it upon himself to purchase a new shelf to display the birds, all done in various poses of rest and flight. Cassian had beamed with pride when he had first seen the shelf, and Jizabel had allowed himself a small smile as well. His assistant was certainly skilled, and yet again he felt a vague sense of what he believed was guilt when he thought of the life that the boy could have led if he weren't involved in Delilah; but then, he reasoned, Cassian would just grow up to be a disgusting human adult with a repugnant sense of righteousness while still knee-deep in sins, and he felt the guilt subsided.
That is, until Cassian had started nagging incessantly for the doctor to eat more than the meager amount he was used to for years. Honestly, he didn't see anything amiss with eating one meal a day, and he told the boy as such along with a firm reminder to their apparent age difference; he, as an adult, did not have to listen to a wee pre-pubescent brat. Cassian had only scoffed, shaken his head, and walked right out of the room, and Jizabel had snarled and hurled the dining set laden with high tea sandwiches and confections that the boy had brought in at the shutting door. Cassian never brought the issue up again, but Jizabel would catch the boy's disapproving stare sometimes while the blond picked idly at his dinner of roasted vegetables and plain bread. He always dissected his corpses with a manic glee-and precision-afterward, sometimes imagining that it was the boy's eyes that he was scooping out, that it was his chest that the scalpel had sunken into. He found that was a better alternative than to lash out at Cassian himself.
It wasn't until three Decembers later that he realized the reason why Cassian was with the organization, when he noted the changes of Cassian's boyish body and voice-or rather, the lack thereof. A quick conversation with Zenopia had confirmed his suspicion. He could have slapped himself for not asking before, for not noticing the truth in those old, old forest green eyes. It was a shock to find out that Cassian was a full ten years older than him, and he was slightly mortified to face the boy-not a boy, certainly not a boy-again after his talk with Zenopia, and he let himself fumble for a proper way to address the dwarf before giving up and settling on "Cassian." Cassian gave him a long, slightly befuddled look, but the small man just dismissed it and rambled on about the stupidity of his fellow suits-the lowest ranked amongst Delilah-while Jizabel didn't even bother to appear interested, the doctor's eyes faraway and almost opaque beneath the thin-rimmed spectacles.
He didn't know why, but Jizabel had started and hidden his research on dwarfism from Cassian. He gave the bulk of the information he obtained to Zenopia, and the old man served as the frontman whenever Cassian sneaked into the laboratory when he wasn't needed to ask about the progress. It seemed important to Jizabel to keep his involvement private; later, he would reason that he didn't want to be the object of Cassian's disappointment if he were to fail to find a cure. The dwarf was too useful to let him turn against his superior, Jizabel told himself.
But where was Cassian now? Now that Jizabel had fallen out of favor with his father, his rank of Death and his belonging to Delilah at all were severely compromised. For all he knew, Cassian might have been dead or severely wounded by now as a punishment for his laxness in keeping an eye on Jizabel-he had long found out that was Cassian's real function, a babysitter imposed on him by his father, though the dwarf never actually reported anything of use to Alexis from what Jizabel could overhear from the conversations he had eavesdropped in.
He could only hope for Cassian to be reassigned to another card, preferably Zenopia. At least Zenopia would keep the other man safe, as he knew that the Hermit was quite fond of the dwarf as well. Zenopia was boring and ambitious, but the old man was kind enough for a high ranking member of Delilah and wouldn't mistreat his assistant. Maybe it was for the best, Jizabel thought; Cassian deserved so much more than him.
The door to the room slammed open, startling him from his reveries. "Sleeping beauty has awaken, I see," purred a voice that he had come to detest, the very sound soaking his fuzzy mind with the reality of what was done to him by the damnable demon. He felt his limbs grown stiff and leaden with dread, and the blood coursing through his veins seemed to have come to a halt, frozen with the deepest fear that he had ever experienced in his twenty-six years of life. The wall of pleasant memories that he had carefully constructed around himself crumpled at once like a precarious house of cards come tumbling down from a stray winter breeze.
"My, my, Jizabel, you are even more... captivating when you're being rebellious." Cassandra's face loomed over him, the man's greasy locks of hair hanging about his-admittedly handsome-face ominously. "I hope you've had a nice slumber, darling. I dare say that the physical activities I have planned for us might be a little more..." the Head Priest paused, an eerie smirk gracing his lips, "ah, a little more strenuous than what you're accustomed to."
A/N: Ahh, cliffhangers, how I hate them when I read other people's fanfiction...