Possessed
July

English summers were Ciel's favorite time of the year. July, in particular, brought pleasant warmth – highs of only around 75 degrees every day; and in the evenings it dropped just below sixty. The rain wasn't constant, nor was it particularly dreary, it was just a simple fact that at one point, every day, it would rain for just a little while. Then it would clear up, and the ground would feel freshly watered, the concrete streets as freshly renewed as if they were the unending pastures of the English countryside. This particular summer, he saw very little of the season. His time was spent shut inside, talking out his issues, discussing his relationship with family, and growing steadily more and more accustomed to only having one eye. It was, by far, the worst summer of his life. And it would be his last.

His behavior was a mystery. To him, more than anyone. As if the sunlight itself was exorcising the madness out of him, he would become lucid around sunrise every morning, just as the night staff were leaving, weak and weary, from a night of dealing with his "fits". That was what Claude called them – Dr. Faustus had, with a leer that seemed to stretch across his face unnaturally, insisted that Ciel call him by his Christian name. Claude. It seemed wrong, falsely intimate and personal, but he did as he was told. He did so because after several weeks of being in the hospital, he learned about things that seemed unholy in their own right.

Patients had stories. Stories that had to be told behind cupped hands, in hushed words, because it was a trigger and they weren't supposed to talk about it. Stories about how Claude would take a liking to a certain number of patients, and those whom he didn't like would regularly end up in alternative forms of therapy. Not the kind where you got to play around in the art room, finger painting and listening to the radio, which Ciel learned quickly enough really was a treat. A stark contrast to the life he left behind. No, Claude sent the patients he didn't favor to sterile rooms, strapped them down to gurneys and forced a bar in their mouth so that when he attempted to electrocute the fight out of them, they wouldn't bite off their own tongues.

There were the ice cold baths. The beatings. The isolation. The brain surgery. Despite Ciel's fits, he hadn't had to endure any of that. And the other patients watched him not with jealousy, an emotion he would have understood, but with something like wariness. Like they knew it was only a matter of time. And maybe it was.

Everyone's time was doomed, inevitably, to run out.

In their wariness, he found the patients eventually stopped trying to talk to him at all. They engaged him a little in group therapy, when he was aware enough to participate. Usually, he was so heavily medicated, or so exhausted from a night of feeling like his very self was going to burst from his body (something he neglected to mention to Claude. He didn't want to come off any crazier, and the man's affection for him suddenly run out, in favor for some of the more brutal treatments) – usually, he was so exhausted that he didn't say a word. Or simply grunted an affirmative when addressed. But every now and then, he came out of it. Talked a little. But it was after dinner that this particular patient pulled him aside, and he regarded her with concern; she looked mad.

That was laughable. So did he. They were both mad.

"I need to tell you something."

She looked nervous. She was nervous. Her eyes looked worse than his, and he'd torn one of his out with his bare hands. They were blotched, swollen from crying, permanently red and the dark rings underneath them suggested she hadn't slept in years. She folded and unfolded her hands together, casting a glance over her shoulder as he nodded, letting her tuck him away into a corner. He arched a brow, waiting for her to continue, but she just pressed her lips together, looking at him imploringly. As if she expected him to know.

He scowled, and she flinched. "Go on then. Tell me something."

Ciel nearly regretted his words; for a moment, she looked like she was going to burst into sobs, which he really wasn't mentally prepared to deal with. He was just so tired. So many nights of groaning in agony, feeling them (he was fairly sure it was a Them now, not an It, but these were facts he'd neglected to mention to Claude) gut him. So many nights struggling as he was slowly disemboweled and forced to live through every moment. And the agony of having one's abdomen slit open and coils of intestines removed methodically was nothing in comparison to the agony of the nausea. The gutting, that wasn't real. Every morning, when they let him go, when he clutched his stomach, he was still, mostly in one piece.

(Except for that morning he hadn't been, and he'd ended up here.)

But every morning, the nausea was real. The retching and dry-heaving and feeling like if he could only just die, it'd be so much better. A relief from that incredible nausea, just one moment's, would be worth never seeing anything or anyone again.

But she didn't burst into sobs. A couple of silent tears dripped down her face, but she looked at him resolutely, lips trembling. "Alois Trancy." She flinched at the words, despite them being her own, looking around like a child, guilty of uttering a Bad Word. But no one was looking at them, not even the orderlies. Patients were allowed, indeed encouraged, to talk to one another. Build support systems and make friends.

He blinked at her. Alois Trancy. The words were so bizarre coming out of her mouth, he almost wouldn't have guessed it a name. It sounded more like fanciful French, the way it blurred together, the way it sounded like the name of a fairy tale character. Though he was one to talk. Phantomhive. Whoever heard of anyone with a name like that.

"Alois Trancy?"

She flinched again, but nodded. "Claude liked him too."

Her words stayed with him, as few as they had been, for the next few hours. But like all nights, the pain was universal, distracting, and all consuming. It was a language everyone not only understood, but understood from birth. Most nights, it felt like he was being eaten. Other nights, it felt like he was being raped and eaten. Rarely did it deviate from either of those things, and frequently he woke up with some form of physical damage. The worst nights were when they sedated him, but not enough. If they sedated him properly, all the pain, all the fear, everything would disappear. And in its stead, nothing. Peaceful, blank sleep. Some nights, they didn't sedate him enough. He wasn't sure if it was because he simply couldn't be sedated, or if it was because the nurses were inept and misdosed him. On those nights, his body would thrash, and he would scratch and scream and sweat and cum and hurt, but inside, it would be like his life was drained to slow motion.

Every moment lasted five. And the night would be an eternity.

His only consistent, steady point was his time with Sebastian. And Sebastian never seemed to be able to turn him down. Considering he was almost always doing some kind of physical damage to himself in the night, he always had a reason to go, and he noticed that his doctor took slow, deliberate care in nursing his wounds. In doing so, the professional, sterile environment that was Sebastian's office was violated, and it became something else. Something better, and comforting.

They talked a lot. Sebastian would slowly bandage him up, and Ciel would tell him what he didn't tell Claude. He would discuss how he felt every night, tell him when he thought it started, and Sebastian would listen, but rarely provide useful feedback. Perhaps all of the psychobabble had gotten to him, but Ciel had grown so accustomed to talking everything out that every secret he kept from Claude almost spilled from him the moment he came in contact with Sebastian. And almost as if Claude knew this, he pressed. Their seats grew closer and closer, and he noticed his therapist became more and more handsy with him. It started as subtle, "comforting" touches to the shoulder, which slowly, everslowly got lower. In the last session, Claude's fingers made it to his thigh.

Ciel wasn't afraid of that. Sex. He didn't burst into sobs and run screaming like a prudish woman afraid for her virtue. In fact, he simply sat very still, continuing on with his conversations as if nothing was different. He was beginning to realize that maybe having a violent episode might have been a better idea – Claude seemed to take his lack of reaction as a challenge. Maybe even encouragement. Ciel didn't really know. Nevertheless, he would walk quickly, unaroused, with a cold sweat running down the back of his neck from these sessions - he'd walk straight past the cafeteria and straight to Sebastian. The orderlies didn't even try to stop him anymore; they were under the impression Ciel hurt himself in each of Claude's sessions, or maybe Claude was using some radical new treatment on him. Nevertheless, he would walk briskly to Sebastian's office, tell the good doctor something was hurting, sit down, and start talking.

It was the middle of the month before he finally had the gall to bring up what he'd been thinking about non-stop.

"Hey. Sebastian."

The doctor looked up from Ciel's bloody knee, which he was cleaning, and arched a brow. "Yes?"

"Er…" He didn't really know how to bring it up casually. The woman who'd told him about him had seemed terrified to even say his name. Would she be punished if he relayed the information? Would he? He pursed his lips. No, of course he wouldn't. This was Sebastian. Sebastian was his rock. The only safe thing in this abominable hospital. Sebastian was the person he could talk to about anything, and did. And Sebastian was the only one who regarded his words with indifference and maybe a warm smile. It wasn't a perfect reaction, of course, but it was far better than pumping him full of antipsychotic drugs. Sebastian was safe. It would be okay.

"Do you know anyone named Alois Trancy?"

At this, his doctor did the last thing Ciel would have expected from him. He laughed. "Ah, that tired ghost story? I didn't know him, personally. But everyone knows of him."

"Ghost story? So he died?"

"Yes. Quite some time ago. Twenty, thirty years? I think he was a war orphan."

Ciel was intrigued. Within that timeline, he really could have only been a war orphan to World War II. His mental image of Alois, a French boy of high birth, changed to something a bit more twisted. A once-wealthy child whose parents might have been executed by Nazis during the occupation of France? Maybe he watched it happen, and went mad? But how would he have ended up here, of all places. He was suddenly brimming with questions, and Sebastian smiled like an indulgent parent and continued.

"The story goes that Alois Trancy came sometime during the Second World War. He was mad, spoke no English at all, but many people in this country were bilingual to the languages spoken by the Axis powers. Supposedly, he was the child of a Nazi, and had gone crazy from the atrocities he'd seen at war." Again, Ciel's mental image shifted. No longer French, Alois became older in his mind, a cruel looking German teenager, narrow eyes and sunken cheeks, eyes crazed from seeing Nazi experiments on Jewish captives. "For whatever reason, he was sent here. The institution was brand new back then, and was less of a mental hospital and more of a general hospital, but St. Peter's was quite revolutionary for its time. There were attempts made to treat patients psychiatrically, rather than simply locking them away in cells, covered in their own filth.

"Whatever he was here for, Alois supposedly stayed for a little less than a year, and then he died. The circumstances for his death were… unusual. That's why his story is told; many patients die in mental hospitals, or hospitals in general, it's simply a part of the trade. But Alois… Alois was different."

Ciel could hardly contain himself, but he kept his voice steady, almost indifferent as he asked "How so?"

Sebastian smiled, wrapping the last of the gauze around Ciel's knee. "Alois Trancy died in a demonic exorcism."

He left Sebastian's office very quiet, still overwhelmed with questions that he'd felt were too stupid to ask. Twenty, thirty years ago? There was no way Claude had been there. Claude might not have even been born the year Alois was committed; the therapist was severe, but distinctly young looking, just like Sebastian. Ciel had no idea the institution was even that old. Everything seemed so fresh and immaculate, as if there'd been a massive renovation completed a couple days before he'd arrived. All the technology was new, all the lamp fixtures were modern, all the marble was fresh; not even the architecture of the building looked like it could have ever existed in the 30's or 40's. And yet, it had.

In the days that followed, Ciel began to feel better. There was an influx of new patients, and all of the staff could be found wandering the halls, listening to interviews on tape, or making notes well after their shifts normally would have ended. Ciel suspected that their presence, the overwhelmingly human presence of so many more people around than usual, was what was helping him. But he was actually getting some sleep. He still had fits every night, but they didn't last as long as usual, nor were they as painful. In fact, the better he looked, the more ragged everyone else looked. Even Claude, who was always utterly immaculate, was beginning to look disheveled as he worked triple shifts, not leaving the building for 72 hours straight in an attempt to keep up with all of the new additions to St. Peter's. Whatever the reason, Ciel felt like he was breathing for the first time in months. And it was wonderful.

His family came to visit, bringing Elizabeth in tow, and he received permission to actually go outside to walk with them while they visited. Other patients were allowed to do this all the time, so long as there was an orderly following like a shadow, but Ciel was a Problem Patient, and therefore hadn't actually been able to leave the building's confines in nearly two months.

And it was incredible. He'd never been one to particularly relish the outdoors before, but it'd been so long, and the July weather was so sweet, he'd momentarily considered making a run for it. But there was no chance for true escape, really. If he managed to make it through the gate, he'd still be on foot, and it would be a while before he could make it to a bus station. And even that, he wouldn't be able to use, because Ciel had no pocket money. There was a little bit in his suitcase in his room, but that was so far away. So instead of running, he just walked with his family, even held hands with Elizabeth because that was what she wanted, and he owed her something. After all he'd put her through, he owed her at least this.

His parents regarded him with cautious hope. They seemed to see the change in his health as well – he looked distinctly less sick and weak since the last visit, where Rachel had left crying, and Elizabeth hadn't been brought along at all. When their goodbyes were bade, Rachel promised to bring Ciel some home-cooked meals, since she'd had a talk with his oh-so-kind therapist, Dr. Faustus, who'd oh-so-kindly given them permission to bring Ciel food and sweets from home, even a few books, since Ciel was tearing his way through the library, and running out of fiction to read. This display of kindness worried Ciel, so he forced a thank you as he passed his therapist and, once again, went straight for Sebastian's office, under the guise that he had a headache.

Time passed slowly. When he was too exhausted to function during the daytime, it was like there was no time; he'd blink during group and open his eyes to find himself in Claude's office, blink again and be at dinner, blink again and be contorted terribly, spine cracking as he howled at the orderlies who tried to sedate him. But in his awareness, time became something again, and he didn't necessarily like it. His hours of therapy with Claude dragged, and his therapist's touch became more and more difficult to ignore. It almost burned. Not figuratively, the way one flinched from molestation, but it literally felt scalding. Like underneath his skin, Claude's blood was boiling. Still, Ciel kept quiet about it, although his discomfort became more and more evident. If Claude rubbed his neck (one of his favorite things to touch, it seemed), Ciel would break into sweats, his temperature rising under his therapist's fingers.

It all seemed so hot. And it was trying his patience. The urge to slap him away, kick him in the groin, run, escape this place grew with every day of his incarceration. His parent's visits only served to tease him, to give him a literal taste of what freedom would be, in the form of his mother's delicious casseroles, curries, sometimes the smell of Elizabeth's lipgloss as it clung to his cheek. He never wiped it away in front of her, but his enthusiasm for even her presence was disappearing.

The only person he ever cared about seeing anymore was Sebastian.

And so it really shouldn't have been a surprise when, after an inspection of the empty socket of his eye, Sebastian pressed a rather sound, firm kiss to his lips.

xx

Relatively fast update! Hope you guys enjoy it. I'd appreciate some reviews, for those who are reading, and thank you to all who have been giving me the reviews/favorites/alerts/etc. Thanks a lot for the continual support.