He had died in his bed.

He had been content, for as short as it was, it had been a life well lived.

There had been no loose ends for him to obsess over, no regrets to weigh him down when he'd breathed his last and closed his eyes for a final time. Not once had it crossed his mind that he would open them again, he'd refused to give himself a false hope of a miracle, not when he was getting weaker with every second while hacking up his lungs with intense coughs, not when he'd learned that accepting any sort of treatment would leave his family in poverty while he died anyway because his disease had been diagnosed too late for it to work.

There would be no miracle to cure this, and why would he be the one to receive it? If there were any gods out there, they clearly had more pressing matters to attend to than he...

He accepted that, and moved on from it to focus on finishing his life properly.

He should have remembered what his father had said when the news of his late diagnosis came to light, "Fate has a very warped sense of humor" he had said, and whoever was behind creating the concept was even more so, because it seemed that even in death he would not be left alone to his devices without something (or someone in this particular case as you might have guessed) making his existence a chore.

The next time he had opened his eyes had been somewhat of a pleasant shock, seeing as he had been alone when the sleep came and he would have liked at least someone to be by his side when he actually died. It had quickly turned into confusion when he realized that he was in a completely different room, and that confusion quickly turned to panic when he realized that the bed he was laying on were surrounded by giant bars.

As bad as that sounded, reality turned out to be far worse when he tried to collect himself and actually observe his situation. Because an attempt to call for help after he'd tricked himself into wishfully thinking he was on some kind of drug that affected his perception of things, revealed that he apparently was now a baby, who wasn't even old enough to make comprehensible sounds or even lift his arm without someone having to do it for him. He didn't know how long he'd lain there, trying to make sense of all of this before he finally gave up and let his panic take over.

He'd immediately started crying like a... Well, like a baby, a mixture of bottled up emotions that had been a product months in the making finally tipping over in a loud and ugly cry.

His cries were apparently loud enough for someone to rush into the room and immediately try to calm him down, which didn't help much given that her bodily picking him up and rocking him back and forth had only served to highlight just how helpless he was now and how it would be like this for a long time. He'd honestly felt bad for the woman trying to comfort him afterwards, he'd been like that for a long time while he found a myriad of reasons to cry about before eventually passing out.

He had been surprisingly calm after he woke up again, though he chalked that up to being too emotionally exhausted to even think. It didn't take long for him to fall unconscious again, and when he finally, properly woke up, he was able to rein in his turbulent emotions before they got the better of him. Once rational thought reasserted itself in his mind, it didn't take long for him to think about the positives rather than the initial negatives he had before and actually start to relax.

Honestly, he'd even started to get a little excited with the possibilities, even though he had no idea how this happened and the best guess he had about it basically boiled down to 'someone screwed something up', but even that seemed to be in his favor. Sure he would have to spend a few months as a sack of bones at the mercy of whoever had been lucky (or unlucky, if you wanted to get into the details he would prefer not to think about) enough to have a reincarnated person as their child, and would probably have to spend a decade or so acting like a child if he didn't want to spend the first decade of his new life being considered a 'demon child' or whatever, but it beat dying of cancer at age twenty.

And his education would be a breeze at this rate, honestly he was seeing positives all around!

There was a question of where, when and who he was... It would all be revealed to him in time, but there would be problems attached to each answers. Where he was would determine if he would have to spend a significant amount of his time learning a completely different language and adjust to a whole different culture. He hoped 'when' would not be much of a factor, but he had never thought 'reincarnation' would be factor either so best to be cautious on that front lest he be caught off his guard when he really shouldn't be. Figuring out who he was was mostly about learning his new name and getting used to responding to it, and he was still a 'he' thankfully, as a quick shuffling around revealed, so he wouldn't have to get used to living a completely different life than before.

A quick look through the room and his memories could yield the 'when and where', so that's where he would begin, the 'who' would have to wait until he actually met someone without an emotional breakdown getting in his way.

Speaking of that... His memory of the woman who had came to confront him had been shaky, seeing as he had been under intense emotional turmoil at that time and could barely see through the tears in his eyes, but that fuzzy memory came with the distinct image of being pressed against an immaculate dark colored dress with a clear, light-colored apron, even with his undeveloped yes, he knew that to be the textbook image of what a Victorian Maid would wear, though that didn't mean he was in the Victorian Age exactly; seeing as maids were still a thing in his short life, it did mean his family rich enough to hire one (or multiple ones) though.

Him trying to observe the room was easier said than done though, given that couldn't exactly lift his neck or move his tiny body, and neither did he have a perfect twenty twenty vision with the still developing eyes of a baby. It didn't help that the things he could actually see were heavily obstructed beyond the thick bars of his crib, with him barely being able to make out the corner of a gaudy looking stool and a small dresser(?) situated right next to him.

All in all, there weren't a lot of answers to his questions at the moment, so the only thing he could do was wait until those answers presented themselves.

It didn't help that he was starting to feel really tired, not surprising...

Well, a little sleep wouldn't hurt.

Something was wrong.

Very wrong.

I should have known better than to hope for something too good to be true...

Why was he like this you ask?

In short; his (former, and wasn't that a nice thought to think of in this situation?) father had once again been proven correct in saying that fate had a warped sense of humor, although he would go further and say that it had none to begin with, seeing as how it liked to get off on seeing him hitting new lows every goddamn time he opened his eyes and was greeted with his new life. And he wasn't exaggerating for the sake of being theatrical either, as much as he didn't like to think about the downsides of being a baby, he had nonetheless accepted them as something he would have to deal with until he fully completed his development. Like he had said before, it was a small price to pay for getting to live a new life while still retaining his identity.

So he didn't feel all that embarrassed when he cried to get someone's attention to get changed after waking up, and it didn't take long for his call to answered too, as luck would have it, there was a maid sitting just outside the corner of his vision who quickly got up and started to tend to him. He didn't know if it was the same woman from before, but trying to figure out if it was actually her was better than dwelling on the awkwardness of the situation.

Imagine his surprise when the woman tending to him just held his hand open, and the dresser he'd only spotted because it was just off the corner of his eye opened on its own and a new set of folded clothes just flew into her hand before closing down with a bang that had felt more sharp than it perhaps was as he tried to comprehend just what had happened.

He was in luck, (though whether that luck was good or bad was seriously in question at this particular moment) because he got an encore, seeing as it only took the woman a moment to cast a quick look at the door behind her as he started to levitate above of his crib with just a wave of her hand. A normal person in a situation like this may have already started to panic,seeing as he was suspended midair in the complete mercy of a stranger with even stranger capabilities clothed him while muttering about how easy it was to do it like this in a language he definitely knew wasn't English but understood perfectly anyway; but as things stood, his mind was too busy trying to rationalize what the hell just happened.

It didn't take him long to throw 'rationality' out of a window as he remembered just what kind of situation he was in.

Magic was a conclusion he'd reached immediately after that.

Because of course, of course something had to happen to complicate his new life.

At least this magic was the kind of magic that was benevolent enough to give him some benefits before fucking him over, seeing as he didn't have to deal with the language barrier now, and that he had a pretty good possibility of learning it himself when he got older and explore just what it could do. The 'fucking over' part came with the fact that he would be defenseless to stop a force that probably anyone could use with ease given his current caretaker's flippancy with him. (on both counts, he was pretty sure this should be something illegal and he was just a single distraction away from falling to his death.)

But baby steps.

Literally and figuratively, funnily enough.

I'm taking these news too well...

Nothing to be done about it but move on and make your plans according to it.

He sighed as the woman lowered him down on the crib gently and started humming a song that immediately had his eyes droop with exhaustion. Sleep would claim him not long after that, but the sleep that would come from that would be anything but calm, as dreams of an uncertain future that was sure to make his life even more difficult started plaguing him instantly after closing his eyes.