Chapter Text
The grim reaper did not take Vincent Phantomhive.
No, he lived. He lived long enough to receive the blow with wide eyes and a charming smile dropping into the pallor of shock. He lived long enough to see his beloved wife, Rachel, stretch her desperate arm towards him but fall too fast, dead on impact from a red slit in her white throat. He lived long enough to pull the pistol from his breast pocket and fire three shots into the row of thieves, blowing through them with the vindictive bark of a wounded watchdog. He lived long enough, eventually crumpling, lying on his back, gasping for air, as moonlight streamed through the wide windows and his elderly butler - the butler that raised him as practically his own son - Tanaka eased him onto his side and investigated, with expert eyes, that the rip in his neck was only mere centimeters from major arteries and pipage. He would survive it, barely.
One of the maids phoned Scotland Yard. Tanaka had said. …They will be here shortly, but in the meantime, the thieves have disappeared into the woods. The gunshots must have scared them off.
And Vincent just groaned, head lolling, the taste of iron collecting in his mouth. Shock was setting in and, light swirling above his vision, he asked, “Is Rachel --”
Tanaka’s old face shifted, regret evident.
“She’s passed…almost immediately.”
He knew she was dead already - he did, he saw her go down. If he moved his eyes just a bit, he’d still see her delicate body, thrown to the rug by the force of the strike. And she had been so full of life, too. Her health that picked up, just in time for her sons’ birthday--
Feeling a sudden chasm (a chasm that had not been opened since the passing of his mother, some twenty years prior), Vincent asked, weakly, desperately, “And the boys?”
Tanaka’s eyes only wavered. What a truly ghastly sight. No Phantomhive butler expressed such horror unless absolutely necessary.
---
When Vincent saw his son, it was only after the sun had risen. The boy, now ten years old, stood in the doorway of his parents bedroom, hands pinned to his sides, a look of incomparable pain clouding his face.
Hospitals - even for the highest class - were not recommended. Vincent only sat up in his bed - a bed now empty of Rachel, now and forever, as Tanaka had said as the others had confirmed and as he had seen - and stared over with dazed half-focus. Doctors had fixed him up, even in his half-conscious stupor. Even his own sister-in-law, scarce from that disaster of a party, had arrived as the sun rose, and the two cried together in the early hours of the morning, in a tender moment he wasn’t entirely sure was actually happening. It was she who restitched the gash in his neck, and she explained that, with some bedrest, fresh bandages, and little-no exertion, he would be alright (so long as it didn’t catch infection). He was lucky, she said, in a voice that rang with the unspoken, lucky in a way my sister would never be.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, cast scarlet and magenta in the rising sunlight, Angelina Dallas starkly opposed the surviving maids (who huddled together like frightened white mice). Tanaka (who despite suffering a stab wound and soldiering through it for a considerable 4 hours -- to ensure his master and young master were safe -- before eventually keeling over) sat in a chair facing the window, rose again, and with a different sort of energy - a dedicated resolve to what must be down - started out of the room to fetch the lone Phantomhive heir.
It was time to bring him back in. And when he arrived, Vincent realized, dully, they hadn’t made it clear to their guests which of the twins was still with them. That was, primarily, an issue, because throughout the entire staff there was only one clear assumption.
As she rose from the bed, Aunt Angelina Dallas could barely contain her relief, “Ciel?”
“No.”
The boy said it immediately, shaking his head, “I’m sorry, Auntie. I’m not him. They -
And, as if on cue, the floodgates opened. He hauled himself onto the bed, clambered his way over to his injured father, and fell down beside him, like a tot seeking comfort after some horrendous nightmare. That wasn’t too far from the truth. Vincent blinked and, rather numbly, pulled him close, as his coherency eventually slipped away into sobs.
Tanaka said he found this boy waiting patiently in his bedroom, underneath the covers, as the sudden noises had scared him. He was unharmed - and like a good child, he stayed in his room when Tanaka told him to. It was Tanaka who blockaded the door, Tanaka who posted guard, Tanaka who took a knife in the hallway- and who watched his brother, a frantic and wide-eyed Ciel, be swept away by their assailants, taken into the night.
The boy told that story, too, only with much looser, scareder, shakier language. All Vincent could do was listen and hold him and wait, as seconds turned into minutes, and minutes eventually passed into the kid crying himself into a light sleep, face still buried in his father.
It was a very sad day. Angelina returned with a fresh pitcher of water and, to note, her eyes were nearly as red as her hair.