So this is the very first chapter of my very first story, tell me whatcha think, guys!

Counting Dropping Heads

One: Impressions

"So much was closing in about the women who sat knitting, knitting, that they their very selves were closing in around a structure yet unbuilt, where they were to sit knitting, knitting, counting dropping heads."

Charles Dickens

The Queen's Watchdog.

A select few individuals knew his name, and even fewer knew his face. But they all knew twelve-year-old Ciel Phantomhive's title.

The Queen's Watchdog.

He was the one who did Queen Mary's dirty work, slaughtering hated Protestants and removing any royal opposition from the Queen's picture. He was quick, he was deadly, he was efficient. He did what he had to in order to make the Queen's whims a reality.

And he hated her.

The Queen's Watchdog.

She had tried to bend him and break him in the lowest of ways. He had clung to his hatred, his pain, the poisoned memories she'd birthed, let them fester, because his thirst for revenge was the life preserver that kept him sane and alive and unbroken. His hatred for the woman who had razed his soul reminded him that he had not surrendered to her, and that one day, when the opportunity presented itself, perhaps he would slaughter Bloody Mary as she had ordered him to slaughter her own enemies.

He would do it, one day.

But right now, he had a job to do.

It was early morning, and Earl Ciel Phantomhive, the Queen's Watchdog, was watching through a dark London ally with every intention of getting kidnapped. The buildings on either side of him were dark gray, as gloomy as the England sky above his head, casting eerie, sinister shadows that predators and fugitives were famous for taking full advantage of. The ground under his styled black leather boots was gravelly and filthy, but he paid it no mind as it became one with the soles of his shoes.

He heard what sounded like a signal – a pigeon's call – and the blue eye that was not covered by a black eye patch snapped to the dark passageway on his left. The autumn wind rustled his black-blue hair as he waited, eye narrowing in determination and something like annoyance.

When the arrow wished toward him, he was fully prepared, and simply tilted his head a fraction to keep the weapon from embedding itself into his skull. It rushed past him harmlessly. Two more came, and both were nearly as effective as the first. He smirked, and when he spoke aloud, his child's voice held an out-of-place cynicism, and, at the moment, amusement.

"And you have the nerve to take up archery with such horrid aim?"

Ciel began to make his way steadily down the dark passageway, dodging arrows as he went and allowing the sporadic frustrated grunts of the hidden archer to light the path to his destination.

Before long, Ciel was upon him. The man half-wrapped in shadows was tall, with long, bright red hair and predatory gold eyes that grew steadily more alarmed as the child half his height snatched the bow from his arms and threw it to the muddy ground, staring the man straight in the face without a trace of fear.

"W-who are you?" The man's voice trembled despite its smoothness of tone.

Best to make quick work of this. "Earl Ciel Phantomhive. By the order of our most honorable Queen of England, you are hereby under arrest for treason against the crown."

Just as Ciel had hoped, this yanked the man from his stunned hesitation, and he became aggressive and combative.

"I will be under the control of no one, especially not an insignificant little brat and his murdering Queen!" The man's face exhibited his obvious fury, and his fist flew forward. Ciel didn't even try to dodge it, and the lights went out.

It was all going according to plan.

He regained awareness slowly. His name was Ciel Phantomhive, he was twelve years of age, he served the queen as her personal assassin, and he was currently lying on a wooden table in a forest, surrounded by tents and animal skin lean-to's with shabbily dressed people bustling in and out of them. He sat up slowly and winced. He tried to grab his throbbing head in his hands, but found them to be bound together at the wrists in front of him by course rope.

He looked around with a guarded eye at the haggard people passing by his wooden table without a second glance at the individual perched atop it. He watched as they ignored him and went about their business, cleaning weapons and preparing food in hand-made cauldrons, working and chatting amongst one another in grave, intimate tones Ciel deemed hugely inappropriate for polite conversation. He was quickly filled with a certain detached triumph as he realized he must have been brought to the heart of the Mary's Protestant resistance.

"Queen's mutt!"

Several scruffy people looked on as Ciel turned his head and saw the red-haired archer stomping toward his table, disdain and disgust radiating from his stance and expression. He must have connected his name to the title.

"Stand!"

Ciel inched sluggishly toward the edge of the wood, feet reaching for the ground. After they found nothing but air, Ciel was thrust forward by a large hand on his back, tumbling from the table. His bound hands were unable to break his fall, and he held back a whimper as his face collided painfully with the gravelly forest floor.

"I said stand, dog!"

Ciel refused to humor the man with a response and silently climbed to his feet, ignoring his pounding head and aching joints. He looked at the man with a gaze sparking with defiance and no small amount of arrogance. The red-haired archer seized him by the rope binding his wrists and yanked Ciel ahead of him, facing the direction from which the man had come, following with a rough push to the back of the head.

"Move, mutt!"

"Where are you taking me?" Ciel asked in a tone of off-hand curiosity as he took a step forward, then another, then another.

"Keep your mouth shut!" Ciel stopped walking and repeated his question.

"Where are you taking me?"

He knew the blow to the legs was coming before it came, and he did his best not to fall on his face again.

"KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!"

The younger of the pair sighed quietly in annoyance before returning to his feet.

"Keep moving!" Ciel rolled his eyes, but resumed his walking again.

With the red-haired man close in his wake he trudged past huts and shelters and women preparing stews in pots for men who were off a ways mastering various silent weapons. At least they had the sense not to get themselves caught, Ciel mused, and felt a small amount of pride in facing a moderately competent opponent. A tiny smirk remained on his face before it was replaced with his customary glare as that damn man cuffed the back of his head again. He was going to kill this loud, belligerent, pathetic excuse for an archer after this was all over, he swore it.

"Halt, mutt!" Was the mongrel capable of only one volume?

They were facing a lager tent than the rest. The man grabbed his bound wrists and jerked them downward as if to make the captive's feet more adequately glue to the ground. "Stay here!"

The man's red hair whisked behind him as he disappeared behind the tent flap.

Ciel used the alone time to glance around, quickly determining the most effective escape routes between the huts before pinning his blue eye back ahead of him as the tent flap rustled and the red-head stormed out, grabbed him ("Move, mutt!") and dragged him from the gloomy England forest into the tent.

The interior was light and warm. Gold and scarlet blankets carpeted the floor, and the light from outside was magnified, making the tent walls glow. There were men scattered about the sides, all focused on a mahogany table in the center, where a stunning, tall, raven-haired young man leaned and indicated as he addressed the rest of them.

"Sir." The archer's voice was shockingly adoring in that one word, and Ciel almost blinked at the alteration in behavior. The black-haired man looked up from the makeshift desk, straightening as he caught sight of Ciel. Shocking crimson eyes narrowed, and Ciel instinctively glared at the man.

"I brought the queen's servant to you, just as you requested." The red-head's voice was pitifully complacent now, and Ciel's nose wrinkled in distaste as he realized this man must have held particular – affections for his leader. How unprofessional. He turned his gaze back to the red-eyed man and almost smirked when he saw his own expression mirrored onto that of this leader's. Ciel was obviously not the only one who thought so.

"Thank you, Grell. You may release your hold on him now."

"But, sir, what if – "

"– Grell, release him now. I wish to speak with him."

Ciel had not realized how tightly the red-haired man – who had a name, after all this time – had been latching onto his shoulder until the pressure on it was relieved, and he had to bit back a groan of satisfaction.

The black-haired man raised his eyes from the tow, addressing the tent's occupants. "Leave us, please."

The man all shuffled from the tent accordingly, Grell doing do not without one last longing glance at the tall man with red eyes. Ciel felt his nose wrinkle once again.

When the room was void of all but Ciel and the leader, the former resumed his glaring. The leader, however, allowed an unsettling grin to spread across his lips as he motioned for Ciel to approach the mahogany desk. Ciel did so with his chin tilted defiantly upward. I will not bow to you. The man's smile widened and his eyes flashed, reminding Ciel of freshly-spilt blood on cold pavement.

Yes, you will.

"So Earl Phantomhive. The Queen's Watchdog. What brings you to my realm?"

Ciel scowled. "You have no realm, rebel. My loyalty to the most honored and revered queen of England guided me here, to reclaim what is rightfully hers."

That smile never left the man's face, and Ciel refused to be unnerved by it, hardening his own stare.

"How can you claim that I possess no realm, rule over no subjects, when I am deemed, by the revered queen herself, enough of a threat to the crown that the queen's own mutt was sent after me?"

"You have seized power you never once had a right to, and you have besmirched the name of England's glorious sovereign. For that you deserve no less than death."

His smile widened a fraction, and Ciel wondered how someone such as him could smile so freely. "If I truly deserved to die, in the eyes of our Almighty Sovereign, would I not have been smited or slaughtered long before this day?"

"The will of God is acted out through the loyal human subjects who serve him."

"And you are the holy servant, in this case?"

That smile…

"The queen is the servant of God, and I am a servant of the queen."

The red eyes narrowed, but the smile remained fixed firmly in place. "What makes you so sure that Queen Mary act in accordance with God's will?"

The blue eye narrowed as well, and there was only a scowl on Ciel's face. "What do you wish to gain from holding a conversation of this nature with me, the queen's most loyal ally?"

The man leaned in from the other side of the table until their faces were a scarce few inches apart. Ciel did not back up, even as the man opened his mouth to speak in a low, almost seductive tone.

"What do I have to gain? Child, if you commit the atrocities you do in the name of the queen, I can only imagine what an ally you would make for an individual to whom you were actually loyal."

It took a lot to catch Ciel Phantomhive off-guard; he was famous among friends and foes for his unwavering reserve and stellar poker face. So when his visible blue eye widened and he gasped almost imperceptibly, it was no great wonder that the leader's awful smile stretched wider than ever before. The man leaned back and stood up straight, sauntering around the table to look down at the shaken Ciel with nothing separating them but politics.

"My name is Sebastian Michaelis, leader of the Protestant rebels. As of this moment, I deem you a prisoner of war. You are to be my personal servant and remain at my side unless ordered otherwise."

The preposterous edict was more than enough to snap Ciel from his shock, and outrage overflowed in his veins.

"There is no way in hell –"

"And if you disobey me in any given instance, I will kill you."

"If you think, even for a moment, that I will simply –"

"My will shall be done, Ciel Phantomhive. I am sparing your life when many in my place would have cut you down already. In return for my grace, you will be my servant."

The smile never left the face of Sebastian Michealis, and Ciel refused to be moved.