01

holding the Reaper's hand

madam red/vincent/ grell

angst/tragedy

pg

in which madam red thinks of  her life while being taken to the underworld

holding the Reaper's hand

974 words

madam red +  grell sutcliff +  vincent phantomhive

With a hand dipped into the black water and with parted red lips, Angelina Durless-Barnett thinks of her rather tragic life, moments of it flashing before her eyes at a sickening speed, as if she's watching a cheap soap opera with bad actors and a sappy storyline. A dreary laugh escapes her parted lips and gets lost in the darkness, only an echo resonating for a few seconds afterwards.

Her whole life has been a mess and nothing went how it should have, she concludes in the end. She fell in love with a forbidden man and suffered for this atrocious act for years, she got married with a random man she had met at a party, man she didn't even love, she got pregnant and afterwards lost her child, her unloved husband and the ability to have children in the future. And to add to the sappy storyline, the love of her life, the man she fantasized about in the lonely nights when her unwanted husband was away (or even when he was beside her with an arm swung casually over her petite waist), the man she had wished to be her unborn baby's father and her beloved sister she had grown to love and hate at the same time, died in a horrible fire right before her eyes and the color she had despised so much all these years had come back to hunt and to mock her. She will never forget the smile that had brought her happiness and sadness at the same time for it was not meant for her but for her dear sister, the perfect one from the two of them.She had lost everything she had ever wanted in a blink of eyes and thus, from this despair, the well-known alias has been born, a name that will be on the lips of the most influential men and women in Great Britain, Madam Red; a memento that her love is long gone, but then again, how can you miss something when it was never yours to begin with?

She looks ahead to the person cladded in black and with a judgmental smile on her lips she brings her dried hand and she grabs the black robe, tugging it repeatedly in order to obtain his attention. After several moments of tugging and cusses thrown in the air, the man turn with an exasperated look on his face and a hoarse voice of a loyal smoker breaks the silence.

“Anything your heart wants, milady? “ She just continues to smile, ignoring the bored expression on his face and the vein pooping on his forehead and just simply points to one of his pants’ pocket where a packet of cigarettes is hiding and just a small portion of it shows. Getting the clue, the gondolier grabs the packet and without further hesitations he hands it to her. With a content smile she takes one, her long finger encircling around the cancerous stick and with the other hand she lights it, a moan escaping her throat when smoke comes part her lips and transforms into disfigured forms in the night.

The man returns to his task and keeps rowing to the see of unsettled souls with a blank expression.

“Quite a turn off to see such a young and beautiful lady as yourself smoking” Madam Red doesn’t waste any second and looks at him with a deadly glare, her red eyes making holes into his un-existing soul. “Well, I think we can accept it now, giving that you won’t have the opportunity to do it again, now do you?” He laughs at the end of the sentence as if it was the most humorous joke he has ever told; Madam Red just shakes her head.

She continues to dip her right hand into the water, loving the feeling of having the cold liquid escaping through her fingers, as if it was her soul.

She begins to wonder how in the world did she met Grell, the handsome and way too weird death god, who has a passion for red and blood. Madam Red, even though was pieced by his scythe, doesn’t regret any moment that she has met him. Even if she knew what her end would be like, she would still accept his offer and re-do the gruesome acts like the first time-without a trace of hesitation or disgust, like a real lady born for the color red.

He is one of the most charming man she had ever had the pleasure to meet and for a short period of time, the pain in her heart and the rotten love for the dead Earl that had begun to decay and transform in ashes disappeared and were replaced by an unknown feeling-she felt like she loved and was loved in exchange; a beautiful feeling indeed.

She continues to smoke and think about the past, about Vincent’s smile and Grell’s un-amusing jokes, about her dear nephew Ciel who resembled his father- much to her dislike, about the time she had seen Vincent in Sebastian as if he never left; just transformed into something new, about Grell’s affection towards the mysterious butler who had become Ciel’s pillar of support.

She exhales the smoke one more time and crushes the cigarette on the boat with her red boot. With her head held high and straight back, she grabs the gondolier’s hand and walks with grace towards the place where her soul is going to rest from now on, without love or hatred to spoil it or tempt it to do reckless acts like in the past.

With a content smile she looks back at the departing boat and she is more than sure in her heart that her beloved nephew, the only person who kept her away for a while from insanity is in good hands.

“Farwell, my dear Ciel”

-

a/n: icon credits- chocotti@livejournal; rphantomhive@tumblr

In this one shot, I wanted to show just how strong Madam Red actually is, how much Ciel means to her even though he is the lovebaby between the man she had always loved and her sister, just how strong the bond between her and the red haired death god actually is.