Title: A World Full of Mirrors
Fandom: Black Butler
Rating: T
Length: 460
Content notes: Set some time after Black Butler II. Spoilers.
Warnings: Cannibalism? (Based only on a technicality.)
Summary: What once was a sweet creature teeming with love and curiosity is now an inhuman, loathsome beast that preys on those it once protected.

"You're far more fragile than any creature I've encountered," Sebastian noted with his usual calm and chilly demeanor. A smile curled his thin lips. "Why, you remind me of the Lady Elizabeth's childhood toy! A little porcelain doll so broken and beyond repair…Once cherished and now unwanted. Such an ugly thing…"

How right he is.

Reflected in the eyes of Ciel Phantomhive is a lifetime worth of suffering, anguish, and regret. This old soul is a far cry from the giddy boy who roamed the spacious halls of Phantomhive Manor. Ciel presses his hands against the cracked mirror mounted on the wall and stares back at his reflection.

"I wonder what you'd think of me now," he says, mostly to himself. A thick melancholy smothers his voice, but it doesn't show on his face; he can't will himself to frown or smile anymore. "Sebastian…" he speaks slowly and looks over his shoulder.

His servant also reflects what he has become: cold and listless.

"What shall I do with the intruders, my lord?" He gestures to the man across the room and the woman, whose neck is viced between his fingers. She's crying and begging for mercy, not for her partner, but for herself only. Her pleas grate on Sebastian's ears. "Please, my lord," he squeezes out in irritation.

If the innocent boy who Ciel once glimpsed into his eyes now, he'd be terrified of what he saw: a frigid, uncaring monster. Turning away from the mirror, Ciel wills a faulty smile to his lips and tilts his head to the side some.

"Poor, pathetic wretches…" he thinks, and then he feels familiar pangs of hunger rap against his stomach. Saliva pools in his mouth, and all thoughts of humanity flee from his mind as the shadows of what he's become creep inside. A tiny laugh escapes him. "They will pay the penalty for trespassing; kill them both."

Sebastian lets out a sigh he intentionally withheld. "Yes, my lord."

Inhuman shrieks and wails fill the abandoned chapel to capacity, blood stains the patterned-glass windows and floor, and Ciel just takes his perch on the ruined altar like nothing is happening.

"No, no," he corrects his servant. A finger wag beckons Sebastian closer with the mangled corpses in hand. Ciel's hideous grin stretches even further. "They're not much of a delicacy, but beggars can't be choosers. Prepare them."

Knowing full well he won't taste a single bite of his own kill, the butler just nods and drags them out of them room.

Something inside Ciel aches for the terrible trick he plays on Sebastian, taunting him with fresh food like a rider would a stubborn horse, but he shrugs any emotion off.

"I can hardly wait for dinner."