Chapter Text
London breathed like some ancient beast, its lungs filled with fog, soot, and the faint perfume of decay. Gaslamps flickered in the wet dark, their glow faltering against the river of shadows that slithered through the narrow streets. Within the hush of a drawing room, lit by trembling candles, the old story of Jack the Ripper had been summoned back to life.
Ciel had been tracing the faint threads of death, following the pattern of killings that dared to echo the Ripper’s infamous reign. He stood poised, elegant, his one visible eye glimmering like cold sapphire as Integra, grave and unwavering, remarked that nearly thirty years had passed since such horror had scarred London’s nights. Her words fell heavy, like a tolling bell across a graveyard.
Alois sat fragile and restless, his wounds of spirit sharper than any wound of flesh. Mina remained still, her composure like glass that might fracture with one touch, while Vladis stood apart, his gaze fixed to the floor, hoping—perhaps praying—that Sebastian would vanish, leaving him unbroken in the silence.
But Alois could not be silent. The storm within him erupted.
“Jack the Ripper is so very classic,” he spat, his voice trembling between mockery and despair. “Some low soul, too idle, too diseased, too enamored with blood, would of course attempt to conjure him again. Tell me then—what of the butchering details?”
The words shattered the air. Ciel turned, appalled, for in that moment Alois was less boy than phantom, his unspoken past pressing outward, shaping his every syllable. Ciel, who knew the cruel subtleties of mirrored lives, felt the truth stir: how easily one twin might dissolve into the shadow of the other.
He answered with the solemn weight of history itself. “They were women. Forgotten, desperate. Prostitutes cast aside by the city, their lives worth nothing until death made them legend. Throats cut—always the throat, silencing their screams. Then the knife lingered. Bellies opened, entrails bared, organs removed as if plucked for an altar unseen. It was not chaos, but purpose. That is what chilled London most—artistry, precision, disguised as madness.”
The chamber darkened with his words, the lamplight paling as though in reverence. Mina shivered, Vladis lowered his head further, but Alois leaned in, his blue eyes alight like fever.
“But what is different—” he whispered, pressing his finger to a crime scene photograph. “Is right here. He robs them of their faces. The rouge, the powder, their painted lips—all washed away. He strips them of the beauty they clung to. He defames them so they are no longer pretty. Corpses, nothing more. Dolls with their paint wiped off.”
The cruelty of it seeped into the room. Mina turned away, Vladis stiffened, but Alois, trembling, could not stop. “Don’t you see? This monster doesn’t merely kill them. He annihilates their identities.” His lips curved in anguish, almost in delight at the horror unveiled.
Ciel’s silence broke, a blade sheathed in velvet. “Would you like to aid in this case,” he asked coldly, “or silence yourself?”
The words lingered like poison in the air. Mina caught her breath. Vladis clenched his fists, the sinews of his hands betraying what he would not say.
Alois only smiled, sly and brittle. “Oh, how very like you, Ciel. To demand usefulness—or silence. As if the world itself bends neatly to the terms of your contracts.”
Ciel did not flinch. “Contracts, at least, are binding. They demand order. Your words scatter like sparks in an empty hearth. They warm no one. If you wish to help, do so with clarity. If not, then your silence is worth more than theatrics.”
“Clarity?” Alois mocked, his voice breaking into a laugh both sweet and cruel. “It is clarity that makes the world unbearable! To see the truth unadorned, gnawing at you. That is what I give you, Ciel—not sparks. Flames. Flames you are too cold to admit you need.”
Ciel set the photographs back into order, his every gesture precise, reverent. “Do not mistake cruelty for flame. Cruelty consumes only the one who feeds it. What we require is precision. A fire that burns toward justice.”
At that, Alois’s laughter broke again, brittle as glass. “Justice? You speak of it as if it were a crown only you may wear. But when has justice ever come for boys like us? Dragged through dirt and fire, reshaped by hands not our own? No, Ciel. There is no justice. There is only survival—and the endless ways we endure it.”
The silence afterward suffocated them all. Mina’s eyes shone with unshed tears. Vladis trembled once before stilling.
Then Ciel smiled, his mouth curved in dangerous grace. “Then perhaps you will find, Alois, that in this case survival depends upon justice. And if you cannot walk beside it, you may well be trampled beneath it.”
The challenge glimmered like a drawn blade. For the first time, Alois faltered, then answered with a laugh that rang hollow as a crypt.
Ciel extended his hand slightly, not in warmth, but in demand. “Partners then?”
Alois tilted his head back, golden hair falling loose, laughter spilling as though he could deny the very gravity that tethered them. “Partners? Oh, Ciel… of course. I love a good crime drama.”
And though his voice rang with mockery, though his smile was that of a jester at a funeral, something older and more dangerous had been forged between them—a thread of fate, binding not by contract, but by shadow, blood, and inevitability.