Disclaimer:

I don't own the characters of Kuroshitsuji mentioned in this story. They all belong entirely to Yana Toboso. The characters which don't belong to Yana Toboso are either historical characters – which I also do not own – or characters of my own creation. I don't earn a single cent with this story - all just for fun.

Rated: M for a reason: violence, death/murder, glorification of criminal organizations, excessive abuse of drugs, sexual themes

Pairing: Lau/Ran-Mao (slightly and will take some time)

I think Lau and Ran-Mao are two of the most interesting, mysterious and unluckily most underestimated characters in Kuroshitsuji. So I decided to invent their (most importantly Lau's) backgroundstory during their days in good old China.

Have fun reading!

Scattered Poppy

Prologue

Once we've invited the Devil

Poppies.

Vast, red oceans of soothing crimson. Brightly glowing in their glorious red and slightly pink colours they were a gorgeous sight growing on our fields.

They were so pretty with their velvet petals which radiated a pleasantly warm light and brought joy into the hearts of everyone who passed by.

It was not until 1839 that we realized there was something more to this little, so innocent flower but it's dashing beauty.

Death, suffering and the corrupt battle for power and influence were brought upon us by foreign strangers with black top hats and suits, speaking languages we could not understand, shouting orders we could not comply with. Fighting us for reasons most of us just could not comprehend.

Four long anguished years we fought against armies of countries we never heard of before.

Fought losing battle after losing battle, saw our villages burst into blazing fires, our children die, our families starve and our country devastate.

The heritages of our ancient culture were consumed by fire in front of our very eyes before we settled an unstable peace with our invaders.

The once so great and victorious empire of China was degraded to nothing more but a colony that simply didn't call itself a colony. The informal colony of another empire.

An unknown empire so far away and beyond the horizon that most of us couldn't even fathom were this militant country that called itself great might be.

We were forced to surrender. Forced to open our harbours for trade, we did everything what was contracted in the peace treaty and nonetheless, the peace shouldn't last long.

Our new so-called "friends" and trading partners got greedier the more we offered to them.

After a second war in 1860 the ancient civilisation that was China had been thoroughly defeated and humiliated to the core. 25.000 of our fellow-countrymen died in one single battle alone.

And once again we opened our country for trade, happy and relieved the war was over and that something like normality came back to our lives.

But we were terribly mistaken.

We underestimated the price we had to pay for this peace. A blood red plague descended upon us like a deep crimson wave washing over our country, invading it by storm.

The colour red.

Once a warm and happy colour, the colour of roses and poppies quickly became the colour of perdition.

We invited the devil to our own country. A devil dyed in crimson, the colour of bloodshed without a cause.

Opium.

Afterword:

I would like to say some words about my new FF before you continue reading the next chapters. The story will deal with the background of Lau so it plays in China between 1860 and roughly 1885.

I did some historic research about China during this period but because this isn't supposed to be a correct historical report please take in consideration that some historical facts are altered to fit into the story or changed/left out to highlight the tension. Because the story is written from Lau's perspective it is entirely and throughoutly subjective and does not take every event during the second Opium War and the time after into account. Generally I dealt with history rather freely, just so you know. I hope you like it anyway and see you in the next chapter.

Greetings, Eisteufel

P.S. When I take a look at my planning for this story it will become a rather long one. I hope that does not daunt you ;)