(no subject)
Title: Child-Rearing Dos and Don’ts for the Criminally Insane
Series: crossover between KHR and Kuroshitsuji
Pairing/Characters: little Rasiel, little Bel and Uncle Creepy The Undertaker
Words: ~2,555
Rating: Gen, with violence. Which, considering the characters, is pretty much your basic gen. Also creepy family cuteness.
Notes: This whole thing was inspired by my lovely wife snarkrabbit, who pointed out that due to the logic-defying powers of both their worlds, Bel and the Undertaker could totally be related, and would in fact be a really adorable, if super creepy, family. After much discussion about family dynamics, how each twin has their own brand of crazy, and how epic the Undertaker would be to have around at Christmas time, the idea for this fic was born. Sorry I couldn’t work in the part about them being princes of the underworld, bb (although I am now definitely considering a separate fic just for that idea.) This would have been here sooner too, but for some reason I had mass problems writing the Undertaker, so apologies for that. Bel and Ras property of Amano Akira, the Undertaker belongs to…someone else whose name I am totally blank on right now.
“We-e-ell,” the Undertaker tapped a long black nail against his lip, slumped over the table and peering in a general upward direction. “When it’s to do with matters of the heart, an indirect approach is always the best.” He said and nodded firmly; quite convinced that he had just offered a pithy bit of wisdom. His dinner companion apparently did not agree.
“What does that even mean, Uncle? That’s not what I was talking about at all.” Prince Rasiel stared at his eccentric relative (though exactly whom he was related to, and how, no one ever seemed to say), a forkful of torte raised in the air and tiny mouth curled in a bemused sneer. When the Undertaker did not respond to his exasperated tone with immediate, servile apologies as etiquette dictated that he should, Rasiel drew himself up straight and gripped the arms of his chair, readying himself to give a miniature royal proclamation. The Undertaker’s attention flickered to the seat reserved for the Crown Prince. It was small, like its owner, molded to fit him, embellished with gold paint and modeled after the king’s own throne. It was, in short, nothing more than a painted highchair, and painfully pathetic if one stopped to think about it. The Undertaker smiled.
“I order you to tell me something useful!” Rasiel cried out in his shrillest, pretending-to-be-just-like-daddy voice. He looked very put out by the fact that his uncle’s full attention still did not seem to be on him, and also a little irritated that even with the modifications he had ordered to his throne (a stack of phonebooks piled on the seat, and then covered with a golden cloth) he still could not quite see over the table.
“Useful?” The Undertaker hummed under his breath and took a moment to deliberate as Rasiel’s temper- tiny as his chair and the basis of all his self-importance- veered closer and closer to a catastrophic level hissy fit. “I’ve always found that the easiest way to remove a human heart is to go in underneath the ribs and then up. Saves all the time and mess of sawing through the rib cage.” After many experiments, he’d realized that that was quite useful information.
Rasiel frowned, flinging his silverware petulantly down onto the table. “This is why no one likes you, uncle. You should show more respect for royalty!”
“Eh?” The Undertaker waved a hand, long sleeves trailing in the teacups. “What for?”
“Because we’re royalty. Maybe if you spent less time playing with bodies you’d know these things.”
“Dead bodies.” The Undertaker corrected.
“That doesn’t make it any better, uncle.” Rasiel replied, apparently having perfected the Queen’s particular brand of icy, holier-than-thou sarcasm. That had always been one of the few things the Undertaker liked about her. He made a noncommittal noise and mashed more sugar cubes into his overflowing cup.
“Mother was right; you’re practically a peasant,” Rasiel sighed, as the Undertaker heaped salt over a bowl filled with various bits of roasted potato, smashed leafy vegetables, and the remains of a piece of cherry cheesecake. The food had been shaped into something vaguely resembling the village square at Christmas time, with the relentless pouring of the salt standing in for a fresh snow.
“No, I’m just a simple undertaker~” he returned, cheerfully, dissecting the cherries and turning bits of them into disturbingly accurate miniature models of human bodies.
“Ugh, stop reminding me or I’ll lose my appetite.” Rasiel said, although the cauliflower and cherry juice brain set jauntily atop the mashed potato snowman might have done it already.
The Undertaker chuckled; pretending to be oblivious to the look of Supreme Royal Displeasure Rasiel was shooting him from across the table, and remembered just why he liked the boy in the first place. He was so prickly, for starters, and offending the young prince felt a bit like trying to ignore a small lion determinedly gnawing on the hindquarters of a zebra’s carcass. Not that hard to do, unless you were the unfortunate zebra in question, but still difficult to resist the misguided pomposity. The Undertaker had always had a fondness for lost causes, after all.
The door to the garden dining hall slowly creaked open, like the horror movies the Queen Mother forbid and the Undertaker insisted on, in a way that was quite incongruous with the light, airy room, and Belphegor peered around the corner, grinning. He ducked back out of view as the room’s occupants turned to him, and then danced back into the room, holding something aloft. There were dark, blotchy stains down the front of his shirt, an oversized kitchen knife poking from the top of his boot, and a general air of successful mischief about him. He performed something a little like a solitary tango as he made his way across the room, dipping and twirling, rhythmically tapping his heels and leaving dark smudges of mud across the pristine marble floor. Rasiel scoffed, mentally adding ‘scene-stealing’ to his list of well-nursed grudges against his darling little brother, as Bel leapt onto the coffee stand and took a bow.
“I brought a present!” He sang, and waved something small, furry and dead in front of him.
“Ah.” The Undertaker reached out a hand for it, examining what appeared to be its three heads. Belphegor sent it down gently in his palm, as if he were passing on a very great treasure, and the Undertaker prodded it with expert fingers. “An unusual specimen.” He gave a low, odd laugh and declined to comment on the fact that two of those heads appeared to be superglued to the shoulder of the unfortunate original creature. Discouraging creativity was harmful to a child’s development, according to the childcare books he had checked out from the library (or had it been the Minds of Murderers box series he had found in the ‘Rare Gems’ section? He was forever getting the two confused.)
“Coo~kie, Coo~kie.” Belphegor demanded, climbing down from his perch and yanking on the Undertaker’s sleeve. When the older man did not comply fast enough (still trying in vain to recall which book had stated that Oedipus complexes were often misdirected onto other family members, which could be either entirely harmless or tragically detrimental, depending on the mental stability of the child with said complex), Bel picked up a trailing end of the Undertaker’s robe and began to gnaw on it, grinning happily. The owner of the impromptu chew toy patted him on the head.
“I suppose you deserve a reward then. Here, here. Open up.” He pulled the lid off of a small jar on the table and Bel yawned, sticking his tongue out like the time the man with the needle had come to make him better, but then got mad when Belphegor had tried to give the needle back. The Undertaker put a bone-shaped cookie between the younger prince’s teeth, and Belphegor climbed onto his lap, humming around the sweet.
“Baby.” Rasiel jeered, who had been watching the display with his most adult frown, in case anyone mistakenly thought that he might ever want to cuddle on his uncle’s surprisingly comforta- extremely bony lap. He had no interest in such things, his mind attuned only to the higher matters that affected the Crown Prince of the land, and if he sometimes happened to fall asleep clutching strands of long gray hair in the midst of those stories which he absolutely never asked to have read to him, well, that was just a coincidence. Yes.
“Jealous~” Bel replied, spewing crumbs across the tabletop. Rasiel’s face pinched with anger, and he whipped his head to the side, resorting to his usual coping mechanism of pretending that both uncle and brother did not exist. Belphegor stared at him for a moment, fingers hovering over the tea setting, before he lunged across the table and slashed at his brother’s arm with the stolen kitchen knife. Rasiel shrieked, clutching at the bloody gash, and retaliated with surprising speed, hurling a caviar fork. It grazed Belphegor’s neck, sending a thin stream of blood splashing back onto the Undertaker, and the younger prince laughed wildly, leaping up onto the table and dashing towards Rasiel. The older prince met him halfway, fastening his hands around Belphegor’s neck and slamming him down onto the dishware.
“You worthless little shit; you’ve tainted my kingdom with your birth and ruined my cake. Didn’t Olgert ever teach you not to jump on the furniture?” He yelled, repeatedly pounding his twin’s head into the table for emphasis. Belphegor clawed at Rasiel’s hands, slamming the heel of one of his riding boots down on Rasiel’s precious dessert for good measure.
“How should I know? I don’t let the servants order me around, you stupid peasant-lover!” He cried back.
“What? Hold still, I’ll carve your heart out just like Uncle said!” Rasiel continued to hold Bel down with one hand, groping with the other for anything sharper than a butter knife.
“Wouldn’t do any good.” The Undertaker, who had been silently watching the fight, informed him. “Neither one of you is scheduled to die. Today, anyway.”
The princes stopped, startled out of their cutlery-powered battle to the death for a moment.
“What does that mean, Uncle?” Rasiel asked, unable to shake the odd feeling that the older man was staring at him (though how any of them could tell who was looking at whom was quite debatable.)
“Oh, you’ll find out, I expect. More cookies?” The Undertaker replied, waving the container of treats at them. Fight instantaneously forgotten, Belphegor wiggled out from underneath Rasiel and crawled back into the Undertaker’s lap, brushing bits of mashed cake and assorted sweets from his face. He held a hand up, chanting ‘give~ give~ give~’ and the Undertaker handed him another cookie, adjusting the boy’s dangerously lilting tiara as he ate. Rasiel sniffed and took himself back to his seat with all the dignity a small boy with a bloody forearm and chocolate smeared down the front of his silk costume shirt could manage.
It was really quite a lot, all things considered.
“You are both idiots with no proper sense of decorum, and I will no longer grace you with the Crown Prince’s presence. Good day.” He said, sliding down to the floor and trying to hide the quivering pout of his lips. Bel watched his brother slam the door, and, after a moment’s thought, stuck his tongue out at the empty place across the table.
“Uncle~ Uncle~. Tell me. I’ll be king, right?” He tilted his head back, leaning on the Undertaker’s chest and looking up at him through messy golden bangs.
“Why would you want to be?” The Undertaker replied, genuinely curious.
“Because princes should be kings. That’s how all the stories go.”
“Not all of them.” He said absently.
“Yes they do!” Bel insisted, sitting up. “There’s a prince who’s smart and clever and charming and handsome of course,” he giggled a little, preening at the sight of his reflection in a glass, “and everybody loves him, except the king and queen but they don’t matter, and the pathetic little rival he has to defeat. So he does, and he gets a crown and a castle and it turns into a fairy tale. It’s the way it always goes.”
“What would you do if you were king?” The Undertaker asked, musing over the points of the prince’s explanation. “Sit on a throne all day, marching your soldiers across a map like little ants?”
Belphegor thought about it for a moment, idly kicking his legs over the edge of the chair.
“I wouldn’t like that. The soldiers aren’t very bright. Father gives them guns to shoot with, but not a one of them can do what I can do with a knife.” He said, and grinned fiercely.
“Then what?”
“Hm.” Bel shrugged. “See the world, I guess.”
“Oh? You’d abandon your castle and go out among the sad and sordid masses?” He asked, and Bel giggled a little at the words.
“Well, it’s my world, why wouldn’t I want to see it?”
“I suppose you’d make a fine king then.” The Undertaker said, “Though your crown may suffer for it.”
“Uncle, are you talking nonsense again? Mama says you do that, because living with peasants has made you mad.”
“Mad is relative~.” The Undertaker waved a hand.
“What does that mean?” Belphegor asked, licking crumbs from his fingers and watching his uncle intently. The Undertaker always told the best stories and never wasted time on those mushy happy endings that everyone else ruined a perfectly good death scene with. It was probably the best thing about him, besides the cookies and the pats on the back and the mad scientist experiments that he got to help out with on weekend visits to the mortuary, and that preserved head in a jar that the older man had given Belphegor for his fifth birthday.
“Well...” the Undertaker said, “if the whole palace burnt down tomorrow and you had no court but the spiders and skeletons and things that go bump in the night, would you still be a little prince?”
“Of course.” Bel said, smiling. This was going to be a good one; he could tell.
“Then that’s what it means.” The Undertaker replied.
Belphegor looked up at him for a moment, before nodding. “Ah, I understand.”
“Oh, do you?” He countered.
“Yup. Doesn’t matter what other people say I am, ‘cuz I know better. Right, uncle?”
“Right, right little prince. You may be mad, but the world is madder still.” He intoned in a voice that was part Shakespearian actor and part Boris Karloff soliloquy.
“Well, naturally I understand, but I bet Rasiel never would.” Bel leaned up, dropping his voice into a stage whisper. “He’s stupid, you know. Can’t do anything unless Papa tells him to.”
“Head full of straw.” The Undertaker added.
“…Does that mean I could set him on fire?” Belphegor asked, visibly brightening. The Undertaker considered it.
“You could certainly try, although I wouldn’t recommend it. Humans aren’t nearly as flammable as you would think. Not even the straw-headed ones.”
“Oh.” Belphegor looked away, frowning softly. He sighed, and the Undertaker picked up another handful of sugar cubes and dropped them into his tea, before handing it to the little boy.
“I never said you couldn’t burn him, just that it might take a while. That’s why they used to tie people to stakes, you know. Stops them from getting away while the flames are building up.”
“So…do we have any stakes?”
“Probably some left over. Your great grandfather used to keep them around for dinner parties. Go ask the gardeners.”
“All right!” Bel clambered down from his uncle’s lap, running towards the double doors. He whirled around at the last second, facing the Undertaker again. “When I’m made king, you’ll come to my coronation, right?”
“I suspect I’ll be there, whether you know it or not.” He smiled.
“Well then sit up front, ok? I want you to see it all!”
“I would never miss such a special occasion.”
Belphegor laughed delightedly and spun through the open doors, cheerful at the prospect of finding a way to roast his brother alive. The Undertaker sighed and stirred the syrupy sludge in his tea cup.
Good boys.