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Chapter Text

“All children, except one, grow up.”

In the soft diffuse light of that late afternoon, Ciel Phantomhive opened the book, with all its dog-eared pages pressed by small fingers, and he let the cadence of that familiar story fill the spaces around him; the tall, narrow window over that metal-framed bed on which he sat curled up, his feet tucked under himself in the small space.

“They soon know that they will grow up,” he continued, glancing as he spoke, as though that other person might be waiting to meet his eyes, “and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, ‘Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!’ This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two,” Ciel continued, with the slightest smile at the absurdity. “Two is the beginning of the end.”

His voice trailed off into thoughtfulness, and he lowered the book to his lap, and stared for a long time at the girl on the bed, her soft brown hair brushed to her shoulders and her colourful patterned dress. “What do you think of that, Julie? Is it really as early as two? Or is it as Travers suggested, and earlier still? Might the learning of human language itself be what separates that species from its kin among the world, and leads you out of that garden for ever?”

She did not answer, for her fast and quick-beating heart had been stilled, and her gently smiling face, still rosy with life, was as much an illusion as that she had merely lain down to sleep. All children grow up, Ciel thought, but not all of them make it through that long and winding path to the other side. And she had not.

The padparadscha sapphire, such a rarity with its small and teardrop-shaped cut, was held to the bright thin silver of the ring by the finest filigree, a light and shining pink with the hint of orange. Only sapphires could hold the souls of the deceased for any time without breaking or letting that fragile spark free, and in that gentle stone, he could feel the soft warmth and aroma unclouded by mortal flesh.

He brought it to his lips, only scenting the very edges of that elusive strain, and felt a sigh from the tightness inside his throat. The book he held with one hand, awkwardly, as he pushed himself around the still body, at last curling up in the crook of her arm. He closed his eyes.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “it will all be different. I promise.”

Chapter Text

Then: 1902

“Hello, Arthur,” he said. “Or should I say ‘Sir Arthur’? Congratulations.”

The man in question started up, seeing the boy at his open windowsill, and stammered, suddenly as flustered as he had been as a young man, when he had met Ciel for the first time. It made Ciel smirk, feeling suddenly glad that he had decided to drop in on this old acquaintance unannounced. Of all the people who had known him when he was alive, the newly-knighted Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was perhaps the only one who would not be surprised to find him still breathing, and not a day older than he had been then. The idea had grown in him to visit when he had run across that recent novel by the man; the first new Holmes story in almost a decade, and he had poured over his copy of the Strand in as much baited anticipation as every other fan of the good doctor’s until every twist and turn had at last been revealed. From the mystery, to the terrible, lonely atmosphere of the moors, everything convinced him that he had been right in his initial assessment of the works—the writing was as good as he remembered it; and, seeing Holmes, that adroit detective, in a new story, Ciel felt as though he had run across an old friend he had never expected to see again. And why should he have? Holmes was dead, so Arthur had stated emphatically, and for eight long years that had been the last anyone had heard of him, except in those numerous parodies and novels by other interested persons that failed utterly in capturing that unique spark that had made Holmes so renowned.

“Please don’t,” the man answered, at once, when he was finally able to stop gaping and stammering and speak like an ordinary person. “Arthur is fine, as I told you once—Ciel.”

How odd it feels to be called that, Ciel thought. It had been years now since he had heard the sound of his own name, and he was surprised by the sudden rush of confused pain and contentment that seemed to battle inside him at the sound.

“I’m sorry,” said a man, about the same age that Arthur was now, who was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, and gaping like a fish. “Do you know this boy, Doyle?” He had a thick moustache and piercing eyes set in the prominent hollows under his eyebrows.

Ciel was at once interested in such a man whose first action had not been to scream or to doubt his own senses, or inquire how a child had managed to climb to a windowsill so high and at such a late hour.

“A friend of yours, Arthur?” he said, slipping into the room and shutting the window behind him.

“Yes,” Arthur responded, looking from Ciel to his friend and making a good show of introductions, though he still seemed at a loss. “Ciel…”

Ciel gave a nod. It was fine; no surname would be required. Arthur hesitated, then went on. “This is my friend, James Barrie. James Barrie, Ciel.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” the man replied.

Arthur offered him a seat, and the three sat in silence for some moments, as Ciel and Barrie watched each other inquiringly. At last the silence was broken by Arthur. “Where’s your shadow?” he asked.

That startled a laugh out of Ciel; he knew at once of whom Arthur was asking, and he felt a very faint pity for him and the way he, even now, seemed scared of Sebastian; the question had been so diffident. But he was a writer, and the spark of interest in his eyes was already burning.

“How should I know,” Ciel said at last, bitterly. “I am sure we will run into each other again, at some point—there is no way he can separate himself from me entirely, even if he tried.”

“I hope it isn’t too forward of me,” Barrie said at last, “but may I be entirely correct in assuming… that is,” he said, “are you human?”

“No,” Ciel said.

Arthur startled, at that, though he must have suspected the answer already. There was a silent question in his gaze that Ciel didn’t like, and he turned away. “But I haven’t come here to talk about me,” he continued.

“So, what have you come here for?” Arthur said.

Ciel hesitated. “I…” that, he had not quite thought through. It had just seemed right, and so he had come. “I very much enjoyed your new novel,” he blurted out at last, the skin on his cheeks burning. Had he really said that? He had. It was impossible to take back now.

Arthur groaned.

Barrie laughed, and slapped his hand on his knee. “Doyle, I didn’t know you had fans of Holmes even among the fairies!”

Arthur, who had buried his head among his hands, muttered something half-audible that sounded like, “speak of the devil.”

“Have you been following the series long?” Barrie continued.

“Yes,” Ciel said. “Since the first book. I knew Arthur would come to something in the writing world.” It gave him no small satisfaction to know that indeed, he had been right.

That friend of Arthur’s had soon become quite easy in speaking to him; though Arthur had cast him odd glances for much longer than that. But, with two writers in the room (though Barrie wrote more plays than novels) it was hard to keep the conversation dragging for long, and with the proper application of brandy, any remaining awkwardness was soon dissolved. It was with great reluctance that Barrie at last left the house, at some point after one in the morning, and Ciel and Arthur were left alone.

“Why did you really come here, Ciel,” Arthur said quietly, as Ciel pushed open the window once more and leaned out to watch Barrie find his way to a cab. The autumn air was not yet cold, but turning fast. He paused, there, on the sill, and looked back at the writer.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Are you all right?” Arthur asked.

“Why would I not be?” Ciel said, mechanically, although he did not feel ‘all right’ at all. Lizzie had started seeing someone. It had shocked him so to find out that she had; though he should have expected it.

“I went to your funeral,” Arthur replied.

“Thank you.”

“You haven’t… visited anyone else, then?”

“No,” Ciel answered sardonically. “It would be rather hard to explain.”

“It might be managed.”

“It couldn’t be,” Ciel replied.

“Need you leave yet?” Arthur said, at last, with some hesitance. “The tumbler isn’t empty.”

Ciel looked out the window, and then, slowly, he hopped back down into the room. Arthur shut the glass, and poured them both another drink. Ciel curled up on the couch in the small, cosy study, and watched the fire dreamily for some time, the cup filled with warm liquid between his hands. Arthur sat beside him, and they talked, sporadically, of Andersen’s magical and melancholy tales, while the clock whiled away the remaining hours of the night.

Chapter Text

1950

Once, a very long time ago now, a boy who was later known as Alois Trancy, but was then only known as Jim Macken, to those who knew him—and those were not many, after his brother had died—had summoned a demon with a handful of nonsense words and a children’s belief that they would call up a fairy. Ciel had sometimes wondered if his own summoning of Sebastian had only succeeded because of the cult’s calculations, but it had not been the outward trappings of the summoning, or even the evil that pervaded that room like a roiling stench and burned its way down his throat. It had been something in his call, in that pure desperation that was open to any answer, unique to a child alone and which those that were older were never able to recapture, except occasionally through spells and ritual. It was that same type of call that tugged on him the day he met Julie Davis for the first time.

The girl, who could have been no older than twelve, though she might have been as young as ten, was sitting on the cracked porcelain floor of a stall in the girl’s bathroom, and he could see that she had been crying. The salt tears had dried in streaks along her face, under her reddened eyes, and her nose was filled with snot that had started to leak out onto her upper lip. She was holding herself, her arms pulled toward her in a hug, and asking for someone to help, someone, please, it didn’t matter who.

And he was there. His child’s body didn’t take up much more of the cramped space when he sat beside her, and when the girl finally wiped her eyes and looked at him with a quivering lip, the first thing she said was, “are you magic?”

“Yes,” Ciel replied.

She nodded, satisfied.

“I can give you anything you wish,” Ciel said, looking into her lost brown eyes and feeling a strange pang of recognition. “You would gain me and all my powers, and anything you ordered me to do I would be compelled to obey. But... there is a price.”

“I understand,” she had answered. “That’s the way magic works. What do you want?”

“Your soul.”

“My… soul?” She looked afraid, just a flicker, for the first time since he had appeared, and she put one small hand up to her breast as though searching for it somewhere next to her heart. “Does that mean that I will go to hell?”

“It will feel like a long, deep sleep, nothing more,” Ciel answered. That was all that he could say, for that was all the comfort he could offer her. What dreams might come in that sleep, he could not know; what peace, or what torments, she might find, he could never say, and the agony of being forever cut from God’s presence, he could not communicate, though he felt it still.

“And… you would take it? How?”

“Easily,” Ciel replied, gently. “All it would take is a touch. But you must not promise it to me. If you make this deal with me, you have to promise it to someone else. A friend.”

The girl tilted her head. “A friend? Why?”

“Because… he is very weak, and I want to help him,” Ciel explained at last. “Your soul would help him very much. His name is Sebastian.”

She ran that name over her tongue, consideringly. “Sebastian. That’s a nice name. Is he nice?”

“He…” Ciel hesitated. It would be very easy to lie, to tell her yes and hurry this along. But there was something in her unwavering bravery and the strength of her soul that reminded him of himself, lost and alone; and he knew that the child in his memories would not have appreciated a lie, no matter how comforting. “He can be very nasty sometimes, unfortunately,” he said. “But there are times when, yes, he is nice… and he matters to me more than anyone else in this world.”

“Like family,” she murmured, softly, to herself. Then she pushed herself straight-backed against the wall and nodded to him. “If you can give me what I wish for, I’ll give my soul to Sebastian.”

“What is your wish?”

“I want you to save my little sister. Her name is Marsha. She’s very sick, and,” her eyes filled with tears again, and she scrubbed the edge of her elbow across her eyes, “she needs to get better...” she trailed off. “And… I want you to get her and my brother adopted by good families. You have to make sure the Davis family is happy and cared for, and that they stay healthy, even when I’m gone. Promise?” She spit on one palm, and held it out to him challengingly.

“I promise,” Ciel said. He solemnly copied the girl’s actions and shook her hand, holding on through the pain and the scream that the girl was unable to push back. When it had ended, he pulled her close to him, feeling that now-familiar connection, that contract thread that bound the two.

“That hurt,” she sniffled, weakly, into his shoulder.

“Sorry,” Ciel said.

“You could have warned me,” she said, reproachfully. Ciel chuckled. How many times had he accused Sebastian of exactly the same thing? A particularly haunting occasion with a tooth came to mind.

“As I said, I’m sorry,” he repeated. “But did you think it wouldn’t be painful? There’s no way to describe it, and so I could not have warned you of how horrible it is to find that the deepest part of yourself suddenly belongs to someone else… like your very body has been hollowed out and lead by a string.”

She leaned back. “Something like that would have worked,” she said, with some dignity. “Or you could’ve just said it was going to hurt.”

“In the future, I shall keep that in mind,” Ciel said, with the hint of a smile, putting his hand to his heart as he inclined his head to the girl. Julie. She hadn’t told him her name, but now he knew it, as he knew everything about her, in that strange and inexpressible way that still didn’t mean he knew her at all. “My lady.”

Julie laughed. “Who are you calling a lady?” she said. “I’m just a kid. Call me Julie.”

“Of course, Julie.”

“And what’s your name?”

“Whatever you would like it to be.”

Julie frowned, and her small brow furrowed. She looked at him with too-sharp eyes. “Don’t you have a name at all?”

Ciel did not answer.

“Well, then…” Julie said, and he wondered what name his new mistress would choose; what would please her, what he would become. “Your name should be whatever you think is best.” She looked at his frown, that tight surprise behind his eyes, and with the uncaring cruelty of a child, accepting without question their dominion, she continued, “That’s an order. What do you want to be called?”

“Ciel.” The word came out lowly, and he felt a kind of fierce pain, as though she had seen into the truth of him. He had always found lies so easy to bear, but oh: the truth hurt. It was only then that he realized he was still in his own form, the one he had come to her in, and nothing in her mind or her voice told him to change it.

She reached up, distractedly, to her forehead, perhaps wondering why the pain there hadn’t stopped like it had everywhere else, and she started, her face going pale, when she saw the blood on her hand.

“What happened to me?” she said, shakily. “Ciel, what happened? Tell me!”

“It’s just the mark of our contract,” Ciel said. “Here… I’ll show you, if you’ll come out. There’s a mirror in here somewhere, right?”

Julie nodded miserably.

He pushed open the stall door a creak and looked around, relieved to find that there was nobody else around.

“I sneaked off during breakfast,” Julie explained, “and told the matron I was feeling ill and wanted to lie down. She’s feeling sorry for me, ‘cause of what happened to Marsha, so she didn’t make a fuss, but the other children won’t get out for half an hour yet.”

“That’s good, then,” Ciel said, as he brought her over to a washbasin with a grimy, streaked mirror in front of it. He cleared a little space by brushing his hand over it, making the glass shine and easing back the cracks. Not quite enough to be noticed, unless you were looking closely, but the mirror suddenly looked somewhat younger and of less wear than the others in the room.

The star that was his mark was sitting low on her forehead, just between and above her eyes, and he showed her the answering mark on his own left hand.

He ran the water and took one of the papers from the edge of the sink as he dabbed the blood from the wound. “We’ve got a strong contract,” he explained. “The more visible the mark, the greater the power of the bond. The fact that it bled means this is a particularly strong one; the mark probably won’t hide itself, even if I’m not around.”

“But I can’t walk around with a star on my forehead,” Julie said, leaning onto the edge of the sink by her elbows as she took another paper and blew her nose noisily. “What would everyone think,” she continued.

“You’ll have to wear a fringe,” Ciel said.

“A what?”

“Uh—bangs. I can do that for you now, if you want.”

After a short moment, Julie nodded. Ciel pulled himself up to sit on the edge of the sink while he turned her head to face him; a sharp pair of scissors materialized in his hand as he combed the hair over her eyes. He began to snip, the fallen strands disappearing as they touched the ground, and Julie watched, fascinated.

“I guess it doesn’t look too terrible,” Julie said, to her reflection, when he had finished.

Chapter Text

Then: 1945

Ciel’s second contract was his weakest; a man named James who had called him with the help of the old woman in whose house—converted to a makeshift hospital for the countless injured—he had been laying, day after day, his ear and the skin of his face blown off, his arms and legs just stumps. Because he could still speak, he could communicate, and the old woman, who would walk through the house at night, doing what she could to help to ease the nurses burdens and the soldiers’ loneliness by listening to their stories, sat by his bedside as he rambled, listened to the way he cursed the enemy and his country and God and asked him if he wanted to be healed so much that he would make even the biggest mistake.

“There’s only so much I can do with my own little magic, beside send you to rest, but I can tell that’s not what you want,” she had told him.

“What do I have to lose?” James had said, and laughed, as much as he could through the torn skin of his throat, when she said his soul.

The incantation she had performed had shone out, calling infernal attention like a soft, whispering brush, an ad in the paper. A bitter man, who wants only to be healed in body. A soul of substance, but middling quality. It was a weak call, all things considered. As she told Ciel tartly when they met, “I had no wish to bring all the hordes of you down on me. But, if one was in the neighbourhood, well,” she shrugged. “You could do worse than him.”

Perhaps Ciel had always been too easily moved by pity. That was what Sebastian had said, when Ciel came back to England with James in tow. The mark on James’ back and his own hand had only shown when the two were near, and James had never stopped hissing at the sudden pain when it would spark to life.

Ciel was used to pain. His own mark always burned, no matter how far he or Sebastian might travel from one another, and he couldn’t sympathize with the grimace that would travel across his master’s face.

James was not a man of imagination. After the purpose of his contract was served, and he had walked around again, alternatively laughing giddily and crying, looking at himself in the dirty mirror and touching his face with shaking hands, he had not done any one of the things that might have made life much harder for Ciel, or even put off the collection of his soul. When Ciel said that they were going back to see his business partner, James had come without complaint, expressing only the wish, (with a fervent curse) that he could get back to civilization and away from this blasted battlefield.

The war was already over, officially, and though the reality would take some time to catch up, already people were starting to wonder if the future might not be an attainable thing. The only thing James wanted was to see his home one more time.

Two soldiers making their way back to London was so mundane as to not call any attention at all. James had brown hair and blue eyes and when he was healed, even the old woman had remarked that the one thing he didn’t lack was in good looks (good sense, she added, was another thing altogether). Ciel had always drawn eyes, but James needed someone he didn’t feel threatened by in any respect, and so Ciel—now Dale—was a shorter man, stocky, not ugly but not particularly eye-catching. Still, there was something about him that made everyone look twice, some indefinable aura that made women (and some men) catch his eye at him before they looked at James, and then back after. The slow edge of a smile that Ciel could send their way made anyone breathless, and James, who watched him playing this little game all through the rattling trucks and then the trains that passed through these dead lands back into society, or what was left of it, made the first of his orders to Ciel. “Stop that… seduction you’re doing. I don’t like it. No, it’s an order.”

“Yes, master,” Ciel said. He watched the way James’s brow furrowed, thrown, uncomfortable with the way that servile word flowed off his tongue so naturally, almost—but not quite—making a mockery of itself.

It was the first time Ciel called him master instead of James, and he never called him James again after that.

Chapter Text

Ciel’s bond with James was different than the one he had had with Edwin. There had been days when he’d hated Edwin with a passion, but there had been moments when the breathless intoxication of his presence had overwhelmed him. James was never anything more than mildly irritating, and sometimes mildly amusing. He found it hard to feel the wishes that sparked through James’s mind, though he couldn’t tell, at first, if that was because James had so few wishes or because of the weakness of the contract. And his own influence over James’s soul was less. He would try to guide it one way, in hopes of deepening the flavour, and like an unruly mule, James would dig in his heels, and go nowhere. And then, unless James ordered him, Ciel felt no need to make things conform to James’s wishes, the way that every need of Edwin’s had tormented and teased him. It wasn’t entirely uninteresting, but Ciel could understand why Sebastian had been so driven to better things, why he had eventually become almost as starved for a challenge as he had for a quality soul. To put oneself into this position for a subpar experience seemed so trivializing.

The only way Ciel had found for riling James’s natural placid (if bitter) demeanor to something more passionate—though hardly with the subtle nuance and delicious contradiction Edwin had provided—was by cultivating his anger and jealousy, two emotions Ciel found personally distasteful; but strength of flavour won out over exactitide, and the entertainment effect was at least worth the bother.

Opportunity came in the form of a woman James set his eye on one evening, as they went down to a crowded bar where the drunken revellers were still singing and dancing, enjoying some confused bacchanalia in thanks that at last, the nightmare had ended. James took her to bed with him that night, and the very next day, Ciel had given her what she afterwards informed him was the most pleasurable experience of her life.

“You almost make me want to ask you to marry me, just so I can get more of you,” she told him with a low and throaty voice.

“I would say yes,” Ciel said, “but you’re already taken. You wouldn’t want to disappoint your husband, would you?” he asked, with a tiny, cold smile.

She stepped back from him at once, her arms untwining from him as she gave him a look of both shock and revulsion. “How did you know?” she said at last.

“The frequent wearing of a wedding band leaves a mark, even if you take it off,” Ciel said, and watched as her fingers felt at that empty spot with a guilty tremor. He’d timed the matter to give her allowance to gather her things and the remains of her dignity before James walked into the room—it was James he really wanted to play with, not this woman—and he watched with interest the way his master’s face went red and his hand struck at her face. She dodged all but the edge of the blow and ran down the stairs, showing an admirable spirit of self-preservation, while Ciel, who had neglected to rectify his own state of undress, leaned back in his bed and smiled.

“What the f— do you think you’re doing, Dale?” James shouted. “That was my girl you just slept with!”

“Your girl?” Ciel said, drawling. “Don’t make me laugh, master. That woman was married. Oh, didn’t you know?”

“You’re lying!” James yelled back, staggering his way forward. He was drunk, Ciel noticed, though it wasn’t even noon yet—the abundance of alcohol had certainly revealed something interesting in his behaviour. Or perhaps that was Ciel’s actions. He wasn’t going to be picky.

“Why does everyone always think I’m lying when I’m not?” Ciel wondered.

While another, smarter man might have asked how Ciel had even been able to get a woman into bed when he had been ordered not to use seduction (and to that, Ciel could have pointed out that James’s order had been quite unspecific, leaving room for many interpretations, including that ‘that seduction you’re doing’ only applied to the seduction that Ciel had been engaged in when James had given the order) James just walked over to the bed and pulled Ciel from under the covers, throwing him nude onto the floor.

“You’re not to sleep with any woman again, do you understand?” James said. “That’s an order!”

Ciel pretended to think this over. “I’m not certain. Do you think you could explain it more clearly?”

“I’ll explain it more clearly,” James said, and did so, kicking and punching Ciel until he had become so enraged and addled that he fell over onto the floor himself. Then Ciel dragged him to his feet and threw him, with hardly any care, onto his own bed, before dressing himself. He was surprised to find that his fingers were shaking.

What’s wrong? Ciel thought. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? His soul is already more flavourful than it was before, the aroma has almost progressed to something tempting…

He couldn’t bear to be in the same room as his master right now. The cold air of fast-approaching winter felt like a bracing shock as he stepped outside into the darkness. Had it really been that long since James had stormed back into the room? Now, more than ever, he felt the urge to slip away into the pools of darkness under the streetlamp, the icy breeze. It was impossible, for James needed Dale to be someone he didn’t feel threatened by in any respect, and the power of magic, something he couldn’t even comprehend, was cut entirely from Ciel’s use. Perhaps the uncomfortable sickness in his stomach came from transgressing James’s unspoken wishes in such a manner. Perhaps it was some left-over illusion from the beating that had already faded from his physical body. If it was pity that had drawn him to James at first, as Sebastian later suggested, he felt none of it now, and maybe it was that sudden lack that disoriented him, or the fact that, no matter the flavour of their soul, he still felt the same burning hatred for those that would abuse others as he always had, and he knew, with terrible certainty, that it had been his influence that had brought that darkness out of that caged place in James’s mind, and set it running free.

Chapter Text

Paul, Julie’s younger brother, was incredibly impatient. He waited outside the room she shared with two other girls, complaining at the door that it was taking her so long to get ready and they were visiting Marsha today and couldn’t she hurry it up a bit?

“All right, I’m coming,” Julie said at last, stomping her way out the door. She seemed nervous, looking around as though Ciel might appear. But he’d explained that it would be easier not to show himself.

“Are you able to, like… fly then? Or walk through things?” Julie had asked. “Or turn invisible!”

“Only if you say the magic words,” Ciel had replied, from where he’d reclined on the edge of her bed, regally, as though he owned it. She’d hesitated, and he’d felt the edges of his mouth curl up. “Come now…” he cajoled, as though this was such a simple thing. “You know them.”

“Oh, all right,” she had relented at last. “That’s an order. Pretty please will you show me?”

So he had.

The miracle was to occur when both her siblings were present, because why not? Consequently, Julie was hardly able to concentrate, or pay any attention to Paul as they rushed down toward the waiting cars.

“Julie Davis!” The sharp voice of the matron at the door rolled out, and a few other girls and boys who had been peeking down the hall all gasped. “What have you done with your hair?”

Julie’s footsteps slowed. She looked around wildly, and opened her mouth once, as though waiting for something to come out. Finally, she said, in a small voice, “It’s bangs?.”

“I can very well see that, but how on earth did you get your hands on scissors? You’ve been terribly naughty. I should forbid you to visit your sister today.”

The desperate tears that filled Julie’s eyes weren’t feigned, and she gabbled out, “oh please, please let me see her. I’ll be good, I promise…”

“Come on Julie,” Paul said bravely, and took her by the arm. “We’ll be late if we don’t go now.” He gave one uncomfortable look up at the matron before edging his way out the door, dragging her behind him.

Julie was right about the soft spot the woman held for her, though. Her mouth turned down, but when she watched the two hurry their way into the car, she didn’t look angry.

The harsh wheeze of the long, tubular contraption was the first thing one heard when you walked into the room. Up and down went the tiny chest of a small girl with bright eyes, but the only reason it moved was because of the artificial pressure that forced it to. The Iron Lung had saved many lives of those paralyzed by polio, and so it had saved hers. Ciel could see, in that tired but resolute look, that familiar mantra that Marsha must always think, telling her to be brave. And the boredom was agonizing. Her brother and sister were coming today, though, and the unquenchable edge of her smile lit up the room as she chattered to the doctors and nurses about the visit. Will they be here soon? She couldn’t wait any longer!

Marsha, it seemed, was not any more patient than Paul.

The reunion must have been heartwarming, the way the doctors smiled in the background as the three siblings talked over one another, and Paul kept jumping up to show Marsha another of the pictures he’d drawn. Whoosh went the Iron Lung, and then whoosh, and whoosh, and whoosh, and… then it stopped.

The sudden silence was awful. Everyone jumped to alertness, the children were crowded away, where was the failure?

“Don’t worry,” someone thought to tell them, even as they rushed around the contraption.

And then a shriek, from one of the nurses.

“Doctor… look!”

They all turned. What was that, inside the tube? What was moving? That small edge of her hand, scrabbling against the glass. Her chest, rising and falling.

“She’s breathing,”

“Oh my God.”

“Well, get her out of there, then!”

They dragged the tray out, and Marsha’s hands went to her neck, and then fluttered furiously around, as though wondering what had happened. She blinked, and blinked again, and her legs moved. She dragged herself up.

“What’s happening?” she said, at last, in a thin, trembling voice.

Julie burst into tears. “You’re healed,” she said. “Marsha—” she rushed forward, enveloping her five-year-old sister in a crushing hug, and Marsha put her arms around her like a leech, like she would never let go. “You’re healed.”

Chapter Text

The perfect family came, a couple married a few years, childless, and good Christians in every way. They gave to their church and to charity, they helped with the little children on Sunday afternoon, and they had talked, with increasing seriousness, of finally getting a family of their own. They had loved Paul and Marsha on sight, and they had even loved Julie, although the solemn-faced girl hovering awkwardly behind her siblings had a cold, abstracted look across her eyes, and something about her, these days, made those most in tune to these things (the very faithful, and the very innocent) feel a creeping, shuddering wrongness down the back of their spines.

“Yes, they’re perfect,” Julie told him, the night after that first meeting, when he appeared in the window and the moon was high; two other girls, sleeping in their beds beside hers, shivering in their sleep from the cold draft. “But I don’t want them to adopt me.”

“Why not?” Ciel asked, as he leaned against the sill, interested in what her answer might be.

“Because I’m going to die,” Julie said, “and I don’t want…” he words failed her, and she hugged herself, sitting there upon the bed in her flannel pyjamas.

“Ah, I understand. The tragedy must be confined to these walls,” Ciel replied. “Nothing to disturb the happy home?” There was something too sharp in his words, almost mocking, and he didn’t know why, except perhaps that the meticulousness with which Julie meant to craft a fairytale life for her siblings disgusted him.

She had made this deal with him not for herself, but for someone else, and that was something he couldn’t understand. He tripped up against it, shining there like a beacon of innocence. Someone like her, with her pure high-minded morals, was too good for something like this. Only she wasn’t. She was just as hypocritical as the rest of them.

“Oh Ciel,” she said tiredly. “Please don’t.” And she lay down, curling herself up against the cold.

He could have counted those pleases on his fingers: she said that word so often. It’s an order, but please. Just please. Why are you asking me? Ciel thought. Why do you persist in asking me for everything, when it would be so much easier on us both if you just ordered it?

It made him remember those nights so long ago, when he had been (confined to) as small as she was, and the long, lonely windows had looked down on his long, lonely bed all the night through, while the nightmares in his head—the ones he couldn’t kill—prowled, waiting for him to sleep.

Stay with me, he’d said, to his demon, the only thing that knew him—the only thing that could—and pretended it was just another order.

It was easy enough to bring that creeping feeling into their minds, when they looked at her—to make them think that there was something about this child that should be kept far away from all things innocent and good, and it made their resolve to adopt the other two all the stronger.

Paul and Marsha wailed and swore and made oaths that they would never let the three be parted, not ever, they wouldn’t even go with the family if Julie couldn’t come along. Even when Julie tried to explain, first kindly, and then coldly, and then in screaming tears as she shouted to Paul—don’t you think our parents would have wanted something better for us than this? Take it, damn you!

They left on a grey day, Marsha still crying and confused, not knowing why they were leaving her older sister behind, Paul and Julie glaring at one another in frosty defiance that crumbled as soon as Julie saw the two out the door and fled into the hidden nook at the back of the orphanage’s tiny library room.

They would never forgive themselves for that, Ciel thought. It would always be Paul and Julie’s greatest regrets that the last time they had seen each other had been in anger.

When his almost-noiseless footsteps entered the room, and Julie looked up at him, he could see her flinch—but then she steeled herself, and faced him squarely. “All right,” she said. “You’ve done your part.”

“Not yet,” Ciel said, as he sat across from her on the worn old carpet, between shelves and shelves of books on cool metal racks.

“What do you mean?” Julie said, almost aghast. She didn’t want to live—not now, not without her siblings.

“You said you wanted the Davis family to be happy,” Ciel explained.

“They will be,” she said, leaning back, looking at him with hollow, tired eyes, still not understanding. “You promised.”

“Oh Julie,” Ciel said. “You’re part of the Davis family too. And you’re so unhappy, I couldn’t possibly kill you now.”

Julie flinched. He could see the understanding worming its way into her brain, the spark of betrayal flickering behind her eyes. She had chosen her words carefully, but not carefully enough. “Then, you’re not going to do it...” she said at last, heavily.

“Not yet,” Ciel said, and reached for her trembling face until she finally gave into all her tears, and wept.

Chapter Text

The first time Ciel had read Peter Pan, he’d hated it. It was interest that had drawn him to the book—having missed the play when it first came out—and remembering that night he’d dropped in so unannounced at Arthur’s house to find his friend Barrie over. He’d liked the man, he recalled; but there was something both sickeningly pat and incredibly sharp-eyed about the novel. It cut too deep. He’d laughed at the description of Peter Pan coming in the window, searching for his lost shadow, and wondered, a bit, at the broad caricatures of the Darling parents. But as he continued through the book, and noticed how very dark that fairyland of make-believe was, he’d begun to feel a creeping feeling, of something... not unlike familiarity. The narrator said that every child had a Neverland, and that was why it must be so familiar. Such a thing was nonsense, of course, and yet the familiarity remained. There was Peter Pan, an eternal child and lord of his domain, a figure both terrifying and pitiable (and strangely like Alois—there was a thought)—and then there was Hook; blue-eyed, black-haired, and ever haunted by his death; and there was something too like about them to be mere coincidence.

He had only read it the once, until Julie asked him to read it to her, one evening. She had vague memories of her own parents reading it to her; and, like Wendy, playing mother in Neverland, those memories grew fuzzier each year, until she was almost afraid to look at them too closely.

So he had begun: and, as he’d begun, caught in a bubble of stillness and invisibility that guarded them from Julie’s roommates, sleeping all-unknowing, she had slowly crept closer to him, until she was leaning on his shoulder, following the words with her eyes and half-mouthing them, unconsciously.

So they read, a chapter every night, until they had gotten to the end. And Wendy had grown up: and Peter had not. And something about the way he always came back—to Wendy’s daughter, and then her granddaughter, and then her great-granddaughter, had brought the weight of eternity crashing down again upon him, horribly so. When Barrie had written this, Ciel had never made a single deal. Now he had. And because he was not Peter Pan at all, he could never read the stories of himself with such uncaring wonder, because he had never forgotten any of it.

“What’s wrong?” Julie said.

“I’m sorry?” Ciel said, and looked at her. She looked so young.

There was something so horribly apt about the feeling of Wendy’s: as though she was too big for her own skin, and ashamed of it. She wasn’t sorry about growing up, and yet… and yet...

“You didn’t finish the last line.”

“Oh.” Ciel cleared his throat, and finished the book: “and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.” His voice was strong and steady. And when Julie leaned into his arms and closed her eyes, and fell asleep so easily, as though she didn’t know perfectly well that he was going to kill her, he thought—I should have words with Barrie for this.

But then, of course, he couldn’t. Barrie had been dead for some time.

He flipped back through the pages, while he felt her child’s heart-beat, quick and fast, against his chest, and the smell of her soul, so pure and full of despair, and for a moment he thought—let me end it here and now. But he had made a promise to see her happy. What else could he do for her? What else but this little boon could he even grant, when his very presence made all things good wither and die?

(A long time ago—that is how all great stories start—he had visited his friend Arthur, and his friend Arthur had asked him why he’d felt the need to visit, seeing something calling out in that still-child’s eyes. He had asked him why he’d never visited anyone else who had known him, and Ciel had brushed that aside as impossible. But was it impossible, after all? Or had he merely been afraid?

Lizzie had survived him, and he had never stopped loving her. She had always deserved something more than him. But perhaps, like Wendy, she would have appreciated a visit, something to see and speak to, once in a while…)

Lizzie was the only one who had survived him. It had not been so very long since James, after all: and he still could not look back on that contract without some kind of shudder. James, who had once had something in him that caught Ciel’s pity, and Ciel had worked with such carefulness to blow that spark out.

Ciel remembered Claude, who had seemed so cold and so vile; it made him feel ill to think they might have anything in common. And yet that boredom he’d always spoke of… that helplessness in the face of time… he could understand how it could bring one to do terrible things. He was doing terrible things even now: and the worst part of all was that he did not even enjoy it.

That, of course, was what made it hell.

Chapter Text

“A year,” Ciel said.

“What’s that?” Julie asked. She was sitting by the window, gazing up at the clouds that rolled across the blackened sky.

“I can kill you after a year, if you like. If a set time would ease your mind.”

“Oh,” Julie said, and she frowned, as though she wasn’t sure what to think of this. “Why are you saying this now?”

“I don’t know,” Ciel replied. “I just thought… I thought it might be something one would appreciate, knowing when.”

“After my birthday,” she said. “The day after. Maybe you’ll manage to make me happy before then, anyway. Who knows?”

“All right,” Ciel said.

She turned around, and faced him, pensively. “How are you going to do it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Take it. You know…”

For a moment, Ciel imagined dragging Julie across the Atlantic, having her meet Sebastian—like that hadn’t gone so badly the last time. He couldn’t imagine that meeting; and part of him, selfishly, rebelled against it. He had always meant Julie to be a present for his butler, but something in him said mine! —He didn’t want to part from her. It was for just that selfish reason that he’d decided to lay out a time: he was afraid that if he didn’t, he would put her death off indefinitely, until he’d run out of every excuse.

Sebastian would like her, wouldn’t he? Like this? A child’s soul, brought to the brink of despair, and then out again, still with a last, wavering thread of innocence? Surely her soul couldn’t help but bring to mind comparison with his own. It felt like a cheap substitute for both of them—she would never be whatever Ciel had been. And she shouldn’t have to be, when she was so vital and herself. And yet that was the deal they were in, that was the game they were playing.

“How do you want me to take it?”

“There are options?” Julie said. The sardonic lilt in her voice hadn’t been there before; Ciel was sure of it. She must have stolen it, sometime when he wasn’t looking. “All right. I don’t know. Then… tell me before you do it. Give me a moment. To, you know… I want to write to Paul and Marsha, and I want to change into my best dress and brush my hair. Is that what you wanted?”

“Should it hurt?” Ciel asked.

Julie laughed slightly. “I suppose if it must…” she said. But then she bit her lip, and turned away. She spoke with careful bravery, as though it really didn’t matter one way or the other. “But, if it’s all the same to you, maybe you could try to make it not. I don’t want to die in pain.”

Ciel nodded, meeting her eyes.

“I promise I’ll try.”

What is it like to fear pain, to shy away from it? he thought. And then, with some amusement—perhaps that’s my problem. I’ve never been sensible.

When Julie finally fell asleep, that night, he went on the first of many journeys to find a worthy setting in which to place her soul. It took months of learning, and looking, and at last a theft; but when he brought the delicate ring back to her and slipped it on her finger, explaining what he meant by it, she laughed.

“You went to all this trouble, just for a container?” she said. But she held the ring before her face, and smiled a little. “It’s pretty,” she said. It was worth more money than the whole orphanage she lived in altogether, but she didn’t know that. It could have been a trinket made of glass.

Chapter Text

Her birthday was in the spring. During the coldness of winter, when hats and scarves were bundled around protesting children every time they went out, Ciel taught Julie games he half-remembered from when he had been a child, and she, in turn, showed him ones that had been invented since. He arranged an outing for the whole orphanage to see the musical of Peter Pan that had come out the past year, and when she had exited, walking among groups of girls and boys, singing their favorite songs, chattering about their favorite parts and re-enacting the fight scenes (mostly the boys did that, if truth be told) her eyes searched the grey pavement until she caught his eye beside him, and she waved.

“Who are you looking at?” another girl asked. She could see no one. Julie laughed, and brushed it off; but her cheeks were glowing from more than the cold, and when she looked back this way, she murmured, “thank you—”

He didn’t know for what.

Winter was loosing its grip. The air that came in her window when she opened it at night (and he still couldn’t help the retort that it would let the miasma in. Julie laughed carelessly and said, “what does it matter, anyway?”) was not so biting as it had been.

“I was just thinking,” Julie said one day, looking at the girls asleep on the other beds; they had been giggling and talking about the boy one of them had kissed. “I’ve never done that.”

“Acted like a gossip?” Ciel said.

“Kissed anyone,” Julie replied, ignoring his sarcasm. “I was thinking that I’ll be dead soon. They’ll go on to kiss other boys, and get married, and have children, if they’re lucky, and they’ll have family over on Thanksgiving, and go to movies and musicals and buy a house and a hoover—”

“What do you want with a hoover?” Ciel muttered, beside her.

“And a car,” she continued, “—and I’ll never have any of that.” She leaned back, her head landing on the pillow beside his with a thump.

“I don’t want a hoover,” she said.

“Liar,” Ciel said. “I should get one for you. You can put it on top of your dresser.”

Julie snorted. “It wouldn’t even fit there.”

She turned to face him and bit her lip. He could feel the weight of her gaze on him; considering; more than a little shy. She looked over his dark hair, and his cold blue eyes; her gaze hovered on his mouth. Then she looked away.

Ciel said nothing.

“What would you say,” she said, at last, “if I asked you for a kiss?”

“You know I’ll do anything you want me to do,” Ciel said.

“Please don’t say it,” Julie said, staring upward at the blank cinder-block ceiling. “Don’t say I have to order you. That would spoil it. I’d rather you just said no.”

“Why?” Ciel said. “Don’t you want a kiss? I’d make it enjoyable for you.”

“You don’t understand,” Julie said. Her voice sounded wet; she’d started crying. She blinked back her tears, annoyed, and hid her face under her arms, rolling over so that when she spoke, her voice was muffled into her pillow. “You’re just a demon.”

Ciel blinked at her. Her words had surprised him—he didn’t know how. It felt like something sharp had lodged itself in his chest, and stuck there. After a moment, he remembered that he’d never told her he was a demon. She’d never asked.

“Is that so,” he said flatly. He sat up and leaned back against the wall, and she moved her hand away, peering up at him suspiciously; as though she’d noticed something unusual in his tone.

“Aren’t you?” she said, at last. “What else tries to steal people’s souls and take them to hell?”

“I did not steal your soul,” Ciel said, with an icy voice. “You gave it to me, fair and square. Or have you forgotten?” She shrank back.

“Of course,” he continued. “Winter is ending, your death is coming closer—what a perfect time to re-work the story; it wasn’t your fault, not any of it. Oh no, you were the innocent here, weren’t you?”

“I didn’t—” he didn’t wait to hear what she didn’t.

“Tell me,” he hissed, sliding closer to her, pressing her up into the head of the bed, that space between the dresser and the wall, “what do you think this mark is all about, Julie?” He reached for her forehead and brushed the bangs aside, putting his left hand to the mark. In the force of his anger, it started to glow purple, and she bit back a whimper of pain. “Did you really think you’d get a perfect little fairytale? Is that what you wanted?”

Her eyes were brimming with tears, but her mouth was an angry line. “I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.”

“Of course you are,” Ciel said with false sweetness, vehemently. He didn’t let go.

“Get off me!” Julie yelled. If the magic wasn’t in place, surely someone would have come running—but no one could hear her now. “That’s an order, Ciel, get off me—get off me—”

He took away his hand and pushed himself away, up against the wall. He stared blankly out into the room.

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ciel said.

“It does,” she said. “I was being stupid. I’m just scared, like you said, and I said something I didn’t mean, and… I hurt your feelings. I’m sorry.”

Ciel laughed. “You shouldn’t be apologizing to me,” he said.

“But you’re right,” Julie said; her voice was so earnest, like she was trying to explain. “I knew what I was doing, when I made the deal with you. It wasn’t your fault.”

“No one can know what they’re doing, when they make such a decision,” Ciel said. “Except those that offer it.” And sometimes not even them.

“You always say that,” Julie said.

“It’s true.”

Julie laughed bitterly. “Oh, Ciel; why do you think you even came? Maybe you didn’t know what I was thinking, but it was… terrible things. And I meant every one of them. I’m not perfect,” she said, looking at the ring on her finger, turning the shining pink this way and that. “I’m really not.”

The only thing Ciel had heard was despair and loneliness. The only thing Ciel had heard was please, somebody help me, anyone, I don’t care who. So what if she had renounced God? So had he.

She still didn’t deserve this.

“That friend of yours,” Julie said, at last. “The one you’re going to give me to, when I’m dead—what’s he like?”

“He’s…” Ciel stopped. He didn’t have any words, or whatever he was thinking seemed all balled up and like it would come out wrong if he spoke. “I don’t know.”

They’d lived together for three years when he’d been human, but all he’d gotten to know then was Sebastian, his butler. There was something else, beyond that—something possibly inconceivable, something that still tolerated him, somehow, even now—after everything he’d done; after everything he was still doing. He was so afraid. He had always been so afraid—even before he’d found out the truth—that maybe it was all just a lie, a comforting dream. Perhaps—that was the worst nightmare of all—perhaps Sebastian didn’t give a damn about him. Perhaps his soul was all he’d ever been good for.

No. His thoughts were going round, not making any sense. Ciel knew his soul was all he’d ever been good for. Sebastian had told him so enough times. If he’d ever thought otherwise, it had been in a childish wish to delude himself.

The problem was never that Sebastian didn’t care about him enough. The problem had always been that he cared too much about Sebastian. He did still.

And what did he do for him, caring so much as he did? Keep him in eternal servitude. Cultivate some girl’s soul as a gift the demon would probably laugh at, when it came, and refuse to eat out of spite.

He didn’t want to give Julie to Sebastian. He hadn’t wanted that for some time now. He wanted to eat her himself—but it was more complicated than that. He didn’t just want to eat her. Yes, he thought about how good her soul would taste, he agonized over the fact that it would never really belong to him, but… he just wanted her to be happy. He wanted to listen to what she would say next, he wanted to see her smiling and laughing with her friends. He wanted to be with her at her lowest, and at her highest. He wanted to see what she would make of herself, if she lived enough, because he knew it would be beautiful.

He didn’t know what he was feeling at all.

Chapter Text

Then: 1945

It looked so empty, Ciel thought. Every space where there had been familiar places seemed to hit him like a shudder, and he had seen it as recently as—what? A few years? He and Sebastian had been in London for most of the blitz, before they had gone to Hell to live out the rest of the war. To James, it must have seemed like a foreign country. Ciel saw him stop at every few steps, look around like he was in some dream, and he hadn’t yet figured out if it was a good one or not. There was a sudden depth to his soul that hadn’t been there before; the difference between the home that James had been imagining all this time and the one he was left with now cut through him like a gaping wound. That shard of pity woke again, unfurling hesitantly as he watched James’s lost blue eyes searching for anything that belonged to him. Nothing belonged to him anymore; not London, not the world. He hadn’t realized that yet, but he would in time.

It was the last stop before they ended up at the house again, and Sebastian. The dalliance was for no other reason than to satisfy Ciel’s curiosity. Could he finish that cultivation he had put toward James’s soul? Could he make him an enticing meal yet?

He had never ordered Ciel not to sleep with men.

The disgust that rolled off him in waves when Ciel came back—oh, he had made sure James read the signs correctly, that he saw everything he needed to put the picture together—was an interesting cloudiness, a confused mixture of hatred and fear. This was the first time James had ever been anything close to afraid in his presence, Ciel realized. And for what reason?—not because of Ciel’s powers, not because of the fate of his immortal soul, but because of a societal revulsion. It seemed cheap. He had been hoping for… he didn’t know. Something different. The same uncomplicated anger he’d directed at Ciel the night he slept with that woman. Even a slew of insults, no matter how vile.

Instead, James seemed set on ignoring him, even as they both got ready for bed behind the locked door.

“Stay in that bed until I wake up,” James said, before he rolled on his side to face away from Ciel. “That’s an order.”

Ciel remembered Edwin again. How funny, to think of him now; when he had spared not a thought for him, before this contract, since the man had died. Were all contracts to end with that same sudden, wrenching distance?

No. He’d never shied away, when it was his turn. He would have gone to Sebastian willingly. It was his promise, after all. Their covenant.

Only it hadn’t ended that way. There was a distance between them still, that Ciel couldn’t overcome. The only way out of this tangle was to die, but even his death wouldn’t allow Sebastian that satisfaction, not now. From a jewel of a soul, he was now only a mean, base creature, using those he didn’t even like for his sustenance. It made him feel ill. It was an unfamiliar feeling, this disgust. He’d never felt it before. Was that what guilt felt like, perhaps? Ciel laughed to himself, lowly. Wouldn’t that be a funny thing. That evil noble spends his years reveling in sin, then feels guilt when he becomes a demon.

The next day, they came, at last, to the house where Sebastian was. Ciel rang the doorbell, and his butler, still in a uniform half a century out of date, opened it.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Dinner,” Ciel said.

James, hovering behind him, gave Sebastian one sneering glance. “‘Business partners’,” he muttered. “Yeah, sure.”

“Is there a reason you’re bringing it here like this, young master?” Sebastian said, with a small frown at James. James was, in every way, the antithesis of Sebastian’s taste. Ciel didn’t know why he’d meant to share the man’s soul with him. It had seemed like the honourable thing to do; somehow, though he didn’t know why he should care about that, when he had no more appearances to keep up. Wouldn’t Sebastian be hungry by now? He’d never asked.

As Sebastian closed the front door behind them, Ciel reached out one hand and cracked James’s neck. It hung, the next moment, skewed and pierced by Ciel’s fingers that ripped their way down his throat. He wrenched the soul free before the body had even cooled and watched it float on his hand, for a moment, lazily drifting toward his mouth, before he took it between his fingers and pulled.

Nothing happened.

“Young master, may I ask what it is you’re trying to accomplish?” Sebastian asked, at last, as Ciel tried with increasing annoyance to pull the soul apart.

“I’m trying to split it,” he said at last. “What’s wrong with the damn thing?”

“Split it?” Sebastian stared at him with that look of puzzlement that had once been not so much of a rare occurrence as he might have deluded himself. “Whatever for?”

“So I can give half of it to you! What do you think?” Ciel shouted. The soul had floated toward his face and now batted aimlessly about his mouth. He pushed it away before he could suck it down by mistake, and it twirled off to hover reproachfully a few feet into the room.

“Give half of it to me?” Sebastian said, almost mockingly. “Young master, you mustn’t think of souls as akin to vegetables. They can’t be ‘split.’ They are whole and complete essences. Have you remembered none of your philosophy?”

“Damn your philosophy, Sebastian!” Ciel said. “Take the whole of it, then, I don’t care!” He grabbed at the hovering spark that had been slowly creeping its way back toward him, then held it threateningly toward Sebastian’s mouth, as though he meant to give it to him like some application of medicine. Only instead of the patient not wishing to have the medicine, the medicine, instead, wanted nothing to do with the patient.

“My lord,” Sebastian said, with a sigh, as Ciel held the increasingly struggling soul that was pulling its way toward Ciel’s mouth even as he tried to move it in the other direction; “please desist in your actions. You are only embarrassing yourself.”

“Eat it! That’s an order!” Ciel said, and the soul taking that opportunity for what it was, darted into his mouth while Ciel sputtered like he’d gotten a splash of water down the wrong way. Ciel reached his hand toward his throat, trying to catch the enraging thing, while Sebastian, compelled by the order, pressed their faces together and reached into Ciel’s open mouth, wrapping his tongue about the soul.

Ciel blushed, wheeled his arms wildly in the air, and coughed, as Sebastian took a firm hold on his shoulders and tried to tug the soul from Ciel’s mouth.

It wouldn’t budge.

Ciel lost his balance and went falling flat on his arse, Sebastian not even seeming to notice, so focused was he on what seemed to Ciel, increasingly, like an impossible order. He knelt over Ciel, holding his head still as he gnawed fruitlessly at the soul, which was still slipping slowly farther down Ciel’s throat. If he had any ability to breathe, Ciel would have rescinded the order at once, but all he could do was gasp as the soul rolled its way down his trachea. Sebastian growled, and reaching with both hands at either side of Ciel’s mouth, pulled— Ciel could feel bones cracking as Sebastian tried to reach his hand down Ciel’s mouth. It was very hard to think. The disorientation of it all, mixed with the very distracting pain, and then that quite-pleasant feeling of the soul finally making its way down his stomach and spreading itself through him, meant that Ciel didn’t even think of what he should have obviously done—dissipate into a wind, or pull Sebastian’s arm away with his own hand. He breathed and gagged, helf-dazed, as Sebastian continued to try to fulfill his last order, seeming more and more enraged as it slipped further from his grasp. Perhaps hunger was also the problem—Ciel had heard reapers remark on Sebastian being hungry before, when he had been alive, but he had never been able to catch a glimpse of it the way they seemed to.

It was obvious now. The butler was almost frenzied, the red of his eyes glowing, and while perhaps, if he had been in his own right mind, less distracted by the soul that had floated so close to him for what must have been excruciating minutes, he would have been able to put off the order long enough to allow Ciel to change it, he hardly seemed to even know what he was doing now.

I have made an incredible mistake, Ciel thought.

The tendrils of Sebastian’s essence were hovering around them, whipping wildly in anguished consternation, and they grabbed at Ciel’s arms and legs and pulled in opposite directions, trying to draw and quarter him to get at the soul inside. At last, Ciel was able to get a half-breath into his lungs, and he coughed out in a wheeze, “Stop eating the soul, that’s an… order…”

Slowly, Sebastian stilled on top of him. They were both breathing heavily, even as the redness faded from Sebastian’s eyes, and he stared down at Ciel with what seemed to be—no, it definitely was—anger.

“Master,” he said, at last. “Sometimes… your stupidity astounds me.”

Ciel couldn’t answer. He was still trying to breathe, his head thrown back against the floorboards of the front hall, and he noticed at last the mangled body of what had once been his contractor sagging against the wall; the blood had dripped onto the carpet.

Sebastian will hate that, was his only clear thought.

Chapter Text

“The soul was promised to you,” Sebastian explained. He sighed, looking at the mess in the front hall, and picked up the body of what had once been James with some consternation. “As there is nowhere else convenient to bury the body, I’ll be taking this down to the cellar,” he said at last. “Do try not to make a mess before I come back.”

Ciel could barely drag himself up against the wall. His vision was blacking out still, and he felt incredibly tired. He hissed in discomfort as the wounds across his body began to knit themselves up, and stared at the bloodstains across from him. When Sebastian finally returned, soap and a bucket of water in tow, Ciel said, “I’ll make sure to promise the next one to you, then.”

Sebastian paused in the midst of his scrubbing, and all Ciel could see was the sudden still, tense line of his back.

“Young master,” he said, at last, “do you think I am hungry?”

“...Yes?” Ciel said.

Sebastian turned around, gracing him with that perfect smile he’d always given when he was battling the temptation to tear one limb from limb; it was more of a grimace than a smile, and his eyes were very, very hard. “Well, you are correct,” he said pleasantly. “Do you further think that I have somehow gone without eating ever since this ill-fated contract began? Well? Do you have nothing to say?”

Ciel breathed harshly, and tried to get the feeling back into his limbs. He had never thought about it, to be quite frank, and it was very clear that Sebastian knew this. “I suppose not,” he said, at last.

“Correct again!” Sebastian said. “I should give you perfect marks.” His mouth was bared in such a grimace you could see the very edge of his fangs, though it was still disguised as a smile; his voice was terrible. “I have indeed ‘worked something out’ in the time you were set on ignoring me.”

“Me ignore you!” Ciel protested. “It was you who were shaking up the house and moaning! You didn’t speak to me for thirty years!”

Sebastian laughed.

It was a horrible laugh. Not the one that had made criminals wet themselves in fear and good men cower on the floor; not the low and grating rumble of mirth that made one feel as though the shadows were crawling toward you from every angle, and they were about to pounce. It was high, and more than a little frazzled, and it went on, and on, and Sebastian laughed like a man who had reached the end of his rope miles ago and was still going.

And then he stopped, quite suddenly, and picked up the sponge that he had dropped on the ground in the midst of his fit. “There’s no need to bother feeding me, master,” he said, in a dark but tired voice. “I don’t want your charity, nor do I appreciate your third-rate souls.” He turned around, then, and continued to scrub at the blood, ignoring Ciel entirely.

And that was the end of the matter, as far as Sebastian was concerned. He had acted just the same, as though nothing had happened—and when Ciel brought up the conversation, diffidently, Sebastian had swiftly changed the subject; but without any hint of discomfort. His tone of voice implied that Ciel was being the odd one, to harp so on the matter; but Ciel couldn’t get the shuddering image out of his mind. Sebastian had never scared him the way that scared him, and he didn’t know how to make whatever it was right again. So they continued to pretend, just as they had been doing since that time in the great war when Sebastian had given up.

For the first time, Ciel began to wonder what it might mean, for him to have done so.

If one is to be a slave to eternity, Sebastian had said, it seems a terrible thing to spend it in making oneself miserable. So he had resolved not to be. It was the only option in his power. He had tried to ask Ciel to break the contract, and he had not. He had said he never could.

So Sebastian would always be Sebastian. His butler. His servant. His knight.

His.

If I had been contracted to Edwin, for eternity, Ciel thought… his mind shied away.

If I had been contracted to James…

His first thought was a denial. He would have killed himself before he let that happen. He would have killed them. Ah… but what if the contractor was smart enough to have covered those possibilities? What then?

He still could have tried to get me killed, Ciel thought, though he remembered the way he had felt so obliged to protect Edwin from every harm, no matter how much he seethed and spoke in hatred in the depths of his mind.

It was true that Sebastian had not tried. It was true that he still could. But he had chosen not to: that was the other option in his power. And it was Ciel’s life that he had chosen, not his death (after that one, fateful moment—during his birth, when the blood had flowed into the water—“do you wish to make that tighter?” Ciel had asked him, that first day, as the butler tied the bow round his neck.

“No,” Sebastian had answered.)

Ciel couldn’t understand why. He had spoken so coldly, but he’d almost wished the demon would.

Chapter Text

Elizabeth had died. It happened eventually, as of course it must—she was mortal. He had gone to her funeral, and everything around him had been like a terrible itch, too familiar, too constricting around him. There was nothing in all of England that didn't make him think of Lizzie. So he'd informed Sebastian that he'd been leaving, that he'd be going on holiday—or grieving, however you'd rather put it—and that Sebastian might as well go do whatever it was he did for fun.

"How very kind of you," Sebastian murmured, and Ciel glared at him. It was true that he'd never paid much attention to his butler's movements for years now, and there had certainly been times when one or the other had just… left. He didn't know why he felt such a need to inform Sebastian now, and it made him irritable.

"I'm not being kind," Ciel ground out.

"But you are so very kind," Sebastian assured him. "I have never seen a demon so moved by the softer emotions… to think you felt such pity for your last contractor, it almost makes one feel sorry."

The sarcasm that coated his words were the consistency of honey.

Ciel wished he had never told Sebastian about James, even though the man had needled him to—the butler had only rubbed it in more once he'd heard the whole story. He could almost feel the ghost of Aunt Francis hovering over his shoulder, agreeing with Sebastian's assessment that he was a girl. Ciel huffed, and left. America was where one went to get a new start, wasn't it? The land of the brave, or the free, or something. And he hadn't been planning, then, to give anything to Sebastian. He hadn't been planning to make any contract at all. But he had heard Julie's cry, and he had not been able to stay away.

And then it was Julie's birthday. She accepted presents from her friends—small things they had bought or made, and hugged them all; they ran around wildly and played through every hour of free time. She was wearing her second-best dress.

"I don't want to go to sleep tonight," Julie admitted, when she lay under her covers that night; her letters were written and waiting in the dresser drawer; Ciel lying beside her and stroking his hand through her hair. She closed her eyes, and a single tear leaked out, before she could stop it. Nothing more.

"Don't worry," Ciel said. "I'll wake you up at dawn tomorrow. I'll show you the sunrise."

And he did.

There she sat, looking out over the buildings and the city below, bustling with life; the trees, unfurling their buds, were a riot of green and pink. "I was happy," she admitted. "At least a little. Thank you."

He couldn't answer. You deserve so much more than this, he thought.

"When you take me to your friend, would you tell him I hope he's well? And I hope he's happy too?"

Ciel blinked in surprise. "You've never met him," he said at last.

"I know," Julie answered. "But I know you care about him. And I know you, don't I?"

Ciel's voice was thick and shaking somehow, but he answered almost clearly. "...Yes," he said. "Yes, you do."

She folded her hands in her lap and turned to face him. "So… what now?" she said.

"You once asked me for a kiss," Ciel said.

"No, don't," Julie replied.

"I'm not going to," Ciel said. "I don't have any around anyway. But, if you're willing… I'd very much like to give you a thimble."

Julie blushed, and looked over at the book, half-open beside them. Peter Pan had been ignorant about kisses, so Wendy had created such a mix-up… a kiss became a thimble, and a thimble, a kiss.

"Well," she said at last, "only if you want to."

"That will be the end, you understand," Ciel said gravely. Julie nodded, and screwed her eyes shut. But Ciel took her face gently in his: he kissed her softly, sweetly, on the mouth, until he could feel her trembling stop and the edges of her lips curl up. Her brown eyes opened and for a moment, she was staring at him, closer than she had ever been; her smile fluttered like a butterfly against his skin.

And then the soul came out, easily, and slipped into the ring on his hand. A soft pink, with a glowing orange in its heart—the colors of the sunrise.

The End