riverviewlogs

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who: Undertaker, Ciel, whoever!
what: Memory swaps!
when: Oct 9 - 23
where: Undertaker and Ciel’s apartment, various locations around the city as needed
warnings: Sadness and possible gore and Undertaker being an adorable idjit

For Ciel

Dreams these days are random for him, born out of the weirdness that goes on in his head and in his daily doings in the city and often combining to make something too far out of reality to confuse him into thinking that he might be awake and doing something out of the ordinary, as some dreams are wont to do. But sometimes, they’re quite the opposite. Sometimes, they’re terrible and fill him with the kind of horror that his customers - living or dead - might have experienced shortly before they found their way into his funeral parlor back home.

This one is much like that, for wholly different reasons. For instance, the face looking back at him as he stares into the mirror, adjusting a tie over a suit that he hasn’t worn nor seen in decades, is one he recognizes and does not. Clear of the scars he now carries, eyes visible and a startling blue, hair shorter and decidedly more blonde than gray, it’s a face he hasn’t seen in well over a century.

Somewhere behind the scene, watching it from his current body in resigned unhappiness, he goes tense as a familiar voice calls to him in the memory.

”Ah, there you are, Cedric! We’re waiting for you!”

The view turns as the man in the mirror looks away from his reflection. From an open doorway, another man stands, smiling, clearly excited. This man is younger, with dark eyes and hair of the same yellow cropped close to his head in an almost military cut. He wears a darker suit and looks quite sharp as he shakes his head. Then a look of shy nervousness briefly darkens his features.

”I was starting to think you’d changed your mind.”

The laugh that comes from the man in the memory is not Undertaker’s own, and it is all at the same time. He approaches the younger and puts a hand on his shoulder. The nails are flesh colored and short and the scar on his pinky finger absent like the rest.

”Oh, Thomas, you know I wouldn’t do that to you. I’ll be out in a moment. I just want to…”

Undertaker turns away, unable to watch anything more, and it’s then that he realizes he isn’t alone in this. Away and to the side stands Ciel.

It isn’t the first time that he finds himself glad for the hair hiding his eyes, but now it’s for a whole new reason.

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He didn't quite know what he was looking at. The man looking into the mirror bore enough resemblance to Undertaker that he could probably place them as family but he couldn't see him as the reaper he'd grown up seeing appear in the manor to see his father. Without the long, silver strands, or the scars, it was hard to recognize him, since Ciel was half blind.

And the name, he couldn't know to connect it to Undertaker. The teen had no point of reference, even as he glanced away and spotted Undertaker watching as well.

"Under... taker..?"

There is a moment - one, brief moment - where his composure isn't up to par, where the veil falls and Ciel can see a little further past his walls. But then the moment is gone, and the grin is back, and he ignores what happens on the strange screen behind them, laying part of his soul bare against his will.

If this is a dream, he wants to wake. If it isn't, he can sort the pieces out later.

"Fancy meeting you in a place like this, milord. Ah, and what a strange place it is."

This was beyond out of the ordinary, and he seemed to be spending his life wading through the supernatural and hard to believe the past few years. Ciel took a couple spends forward, eyes wide and watching 'Cedric' before looking to Undertaker again.

The effect this had one him, it was hard not to notice, even if it was brief. Whether he knows anything about Undertaker or not, he knows enough about people. This scene bothers him. What the teen couldn't figure out was the why and a part of him was screaming not to pry.

"This- where are we?"

It would be hard to play the fool, he thought, looking back to the scene as it continued to play out before them whether or not he wanted it to, though if there had been a way to make it stop, he would have leapt at it and confessed a bit of the truth while he was at it. Whatever had done this hadn't touched his grin or his tone, but it cut him deep in a way he was quick to cover up.

And now Ciel knew it, too. "Your guess is as good as mine." He stepped boldly closer, the movement making his skin crawl under his coat, and reached out to the image to try and touch it; his hand slipped cleanly through, as if it were nothing more than a fog, and he turned away, grin stretching wider. "Fascinating what this world will do to us, isn't it? I wonder, is this all even real?"

He looked between the man and Undertaker again but he hasn't shown his face much since the Campania, it was impossible to draw any real conclusions, so he frowned and circled the man again, squinting a bit in the hopes his good eye might pick out something notable. And then focused on Undertaker again.

"He looks a bit like you but I've never met anyone like this before. And... I've never been anywhere like this."

It made him uncomfortable, honestly. The last time this happened, they'd been drawn into Riverview. And despite that having worked out well enough so far, he wasn't keen on it happening again.

"A hallucination of some sort?" But he hadn't had anything that the two other them hadn't worked on themselves. And the windows weren't open to let in any pollen like when he'd lost his memory.

The boy's close examination of the memory still playing out right next to them bothers him deeply, but he lets on to nothing. It's not a slip he can really afford, he tells himself, as he always has. Before things had been so much easier to conceal, though the walls around him have softened however slightly around the Earl.

Still, it's something he'd like Ciel not to figure out, not yet, and he's watching him keenly - as well as he can with his eyes - to see if the boy is starting to make the connection even while he pretends this is all just a new game the city is playing.

"He does, but you've never called me by that name before, and I've not even heard it in years. Maybe it is a hallucination. Maybe it's those plants again." He reached down to a palm to slap his ring hard against a finger. It just as he thought it would. "Still hurts, it does. What do you think happened to us?"

"No... No, you've only ever been Undertaker to me." He wasn't sure about how it was with his father but he could remember most people saying 'Undertaker' around the twins as well.

Even though he was still curious, Ciel stepped away from 'Cedric' and back to Undertaker, watching him as he slapped a hand to his ring. Even he couldn't help a faint wince, imagining how that felt. He'd slammed a ringed hand against things before and could remember a bit how it had felt. It was never pleasant.

"I don't know. I've barely gotten used to how advanced the city is as we are, I can't guess at this." Wasn't Undertaker the smarter one here with so many more years on the earl?

He gave a soft sound, bemused with that. Oh yes. He had always been Undertaker to everyone. No other name, no other identity other than what he did on a day to day basis. Made things simple, kept it clean. No one to ask questions, no one to pry into his business when his business was mostly with the dead.

It hurt, not enough to make him wince himself but enough to let him know whatever this was, it wasn't entirely a dream. How could it be? More than that, how could they get out of it now that they were stuck inside, watching something he would really rather them not have to see?

"If only I could say I knew something more. That's not information I could sell you even if I wanted to." He took another look around, wandered back behind the memory itself to disappear in the sheen of it briefly, then reappeared again, frowning briefly. "Thick as the worst fogs in London in the morning. Even I can't tell what's farther back beyond it, if there is anything at all."

Sometimes he had wondered why no one questioned him further but how deranged he'd sometimes seemed surely kept them distant. Anyone else probably felt how dangerous and private the man could be. Ciel himself had never worried about it. Before it was because Vincent kept them safe, and then it was because of Sebastian. Now it was Undertaker himself that gave him that sense of safety.

"It doesn't seem quite like the kind of situation you'd want to sell anyway." This... somehow felt very private. Why would they be there though, if it was.

The teen moved to join Undertaker, frowning. So probably not London, where ever they were. However they were there. He looked around the room, hoping to spot something that stood out.

"And they have nothing that particularly stands out to tell where we are. I don't even see a noticeable signet." Not unless he got closer to really look but he almost didn't want to, in case they suddenly became noticed.

Rather than respond to that outright, he giggles and looks around as well, noting nothing more out of the ordinary. There are parts of his existence he'd like to forget, parts of it that he'd like never to have to reveal. If he must, then he must, but he doesn't think it will be like that. Or at least, he's hoping. The boy is smart, if nothing. He would make the connection eventually, but Undertaker didn't want to be around to see it.

"No, indeed not. Strange, isn't it?"

Then it happened, all at once, that he felt himself cradled in warmth and shrouded in darkness. He opened his eyes, startled to find them suddenly closed, and found himself lying on his side in his own bed, the haze of the dream he had been within lifting lazily as reality and awareness settled in its place. He wiggled his toes, curled his fingers, testing his limbs slowly to make sure they were really there.

In his chest, his heart hammered still, threatening to beat its way out of him, and he took a few deep breaths to force himself to calm. What an odd, odd dream.

He wasn't even sure what to look for, and that giggle didn't seem to offer any extra hints. In fact, the man wasn't giving him much of anything at all. He might be frustrated if it were Lau or someone else but Undertaker was a mystery and always had been.

"It is-"

Oh.

He didn't expect to wake suddenly, reaching for his patch out of habit and then stopping as the memory of the dream starts to push it's way forward. He tried to remember all the details, not wanting to forget anything about the man, Cedric, or where they'd been. And then he turned over, feeling Undertaker shifting.

"Are you awake?" Were either of them awake?

He'd been of a mind to go get a glass of water, something to clear his mind, shake the feeling that had hold of him after the dream ended so suddenly. Maybe he wasn't careful enough in leaving bed or maybe Ciel had already been awake for whatever reason. However it was, the boy gave him pause and he sat there, half in a sitting position.

"I am. Go back to sleep, milord. Everything is fine."

He was awake. If he hadn't been, Ciel might have actually tried going back to sleep, using Undertaker's steady breaths to lull him back to sleep. It wasn't an option though, so the teen leaned up, eyes moving towards Undertaker's voice.

"I'm not sure I can go back to sleep. I had too strange a dream..."

The water could wait. That they'd both had strange dreams on the same night and been awake around the same time had his interest. He sat up fully and lifted a knee to rest an arm across it. "Did you? I did as well. I think we've spent too much time around each other, milord."

Ciel followed suit, sitting upright and on his legs, and made a little face. Tiny huff included but then he smiled.

"If that were all it took for me to have strange dreams then this wouldn't have been the first." Especially since he'd spent the last month frequently curling up beside him at night, had openly started telling jokes without needing to be asked.

"You were there though, and I couldn't recognize anything about where we were."

He tilted his head at that look and felt his braid slip to the side with the motion. "Indeed it wouldn't. I'd think that I would be in the same boat, but I haven't had dreams in some time, this being the exception."

Something in his chest flinched when the boy mentioned the happenings in his own dream, and he took it with as much humor as his waking self could manage. "You were in mine as well. It seems like we were wandering in a fog." Conveniently left out was the memory that had been drifting around them, nothing that needed to be mentioned. They had been spending too much time with each other, he thought without any seriousness.

He could remember fog. 'Thick as the worst fogs in London-' he could still hear. And he tried to bring back more details, the room and it's size, a mirror, the man.

"There was another man in the dream. Two of them." Ciel let a little frown form. "I didn't recognize them though. Cedric and Thomas. I don't think I've ever remembered a dream so clearly."

All at once his blood seemed to run cold. Of course the dream had seemed too strange to be anything of a coincidence, but that the boy had had the same dream he had - those names, there was no way that could be random happenstance - had him startled thoroughly and shaken. The look on his face said as much well before he could recover and hide under his veil of hair again.

"One of them was looking in a mirror, wasn't he? They met in a room, then went out to a wedding."

Oh, that was a headache and a half, Jason's head swam after that blurry vision. He had never suffered from vision problems but he felt like he had just put Barbara's glasses on and tried to read. He'd done it before to make her laugh the pain was the same, but this was longer. The more he tried to focus on the scene the easier it was to get somewhat of a grasp of what was happening.

He recognized the voices, knew outlines. The butler was apparently tall, well spoken, and clearly loyal. As they tended to be.

Dead children and jokes, and Ciel putting himself at the mercy of an undertaker's humor to get information. It was fascinating to say the least. He rubbed his eyes a bit trying to fix whatever the focus issue was.

"So, is this Undertaker, or Ciel? Whose life have I witnessed tonight?" He spoke into the never to see what answered, what the dream twisted into.

"Yes, he was."

Ciel stared for a moment, surprised at the reaction. How much ever actually disturbed Undertaker of all people? Eventually, he reached out to touch his hand, trying to offer the same reassurance Undertaker always gave him.

He wasn't entirely sure about the wedding but then, they had been dressing fairly well. And there had been something of a celebratory air to everything.

"I suppose they did, yes. You... know..?"

For several moments, he didn't move or speak. All along his spine and up to the top of his head he felt his skin prickling. Never had he felt so exposed, so much of him in so short a time laid bare. But, he reasoned with himself, Ciel had been through far worse. This really should have been a minor thing for him, and yet it cut so deep.

He wanted to remain mum on the dream's contents from there. All the Earl had were names and faces, so far. It would have been easy to chalk it all up to randomness and fantasy, but here he knew so much about the boy. This couldn't hurt him.

He sighed, the breath in it taking its time in leaving him. How they'd managed to have the same dream, on the same night, with each other in it while they watched a memory that the boy could not have possibly know was beyond him, but he intended to look fully into it later. "I know it well. Cedric was my name long ago. Thomas was my younger brother."

And it was Ciel's turn to freeze, realizing he now probably knew far more than anyone in his family had ever really known about him. Or at least his parents and brother, his aunt and uncle.

He tried to connect the face of Cedric to Undertaker now and, he could see the similarities. It was hard to imagine Undertaker with gold hair, or hair any shorter than it was now. The resemblance was there. And yet-

"You don't look like a Cedric." Was blurted out before he could stop himself, the teen slapping his hands over his mouth a second later.

The silence seemed to stretch while the Earl let that soak in, and he waited for it to click. The comment pulled a grin from him again, relieving some of his tension in just that tiny act. He tilted his head in Ciel's direction again, bemused by his reaction. Sure, he'd jump on that little distraction if he could. If anything, it would loosen the heaviness in the air.

"No? What do I look like to you, then, if not that? And don't say Undertaker."

"That's not fair, that's all I've ever called you." A little pout and he tried thinking about names that would have fit him. Nothing quite came to mind though. And it was still difficult to connect Cedric and Undertaker as the same person. They just seemed too different, personality-wise.

"I don't know... I can't think of anything else quite right for you."

That grin softened for once, and almost disappeared entirely while he let himself go to thought, then came right back again. For the most part, the chill in him had taken its leave, but he still felt uneasy in his stomach. He wouldn't be sick, but it was a hollow feeling, like something once safe in him had been destroyed. "Let it be the only thing you ever call me. I've not gone by that name since well before your father was born. It means nothing to me now."

In that, he'd lied. He carried two sides of himself and had for decades. One side was what the world saw and the other was the man he had once been. Slowly but surely, he'd noticed the two were starting to combine when the boy was around, but he'd refused to acknowledge it.

For now, he let it out of his mind. There was still the question of how the two of them had managed to dream of each other and his own memory. The frown did return then, only in thought. "It rightly bothers me, that this has happened. So many questions."

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