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Were I in such a place, I sure should pray/ That nought less sweet, might call my thoughts away,/ Than the soft rustle of a maiden’s gown/ Fanning away the dandelion’s down. - John Keats I stood tip-toe upon a little hill
Ciel Phantomhive is selfish in a multitude of ways. He is proud and self-serving and a law unto himself; he gave up the Protestant beliefs of his ancestors in favor of narcissism and he relinquished heaven and all its delights for revenge and black hatred. He has allowed himself to follow the teachings of Sebastian not out of some twisted sense of admiration but because he loathes—and needs—the beast in equal measure. The demon is, in many ways, the key to his revenge and the poison of his immortal soul. Ciel doesn’t mind death, not truly, and he has no regrets about leaving this world and all its black depravity.
But there is a girl, a girl he loves, and she is the sun, the rose, and every other beautiful thing that’s left on this mortal plane.
The chained goldfinch.
He does not love her with all the cliched analogies writers so love to romanticize. Her kisses do not intoxicate him like heavy bourbon and her presence does not make him breathless and wild with delight. She is vibrant and flawed, with a fierce sense of loyalty and a wicked temper. She is not soothing as the spring rain or tranquil as the August dusk. Such trivialities are an insult to the whole of her being and Ciel despises such false sentiment.
She is the ripe May flower and the beauty of a maiden's first blush; she is a halo of crystal rivers soothing Ciel's tormented soul with every smile she puts on his lips. He loves her voice almost as much as he hates his own; and she reminds him of jasmine and sweet briar and forgotten paradise. He loves Elizabeth Midford with burning, self restrained fervor that is the aftermath of fire, corruption, deceit, and hatred.
It is agonizing to love someone so dearly but know that love can never be expressed—not fully, never wholly. He would never dream of corrupting Elizabeth’s heart with the pitch-black repulsion of his own soul. Even monsters like him have their limits.
And Elizabeth is his.
When she smiles he wishes he could smile back. When she laughs he wishes he could be the reason for it. There are so many things he yearns to wish for but wishes are the stardust of broken dreams, fragmented and unsure, blown away by the midnight breeze. Terror has made him cruel and unable to articulate what he feels; he restrains himself that way, with a noose he has paid for and slung around his own neck. He hangs himself and then attempts to speak, trying with failed dignity to convince her how ardently he loves her and that if everything should fall away and crumble, she would remain—as bright and beautiful as a butterfly’s wing.
That is what Sebastian fails to understand—what he can never understand. Ciel would risk his own life time and time again for Elizabeth, not out of pride or familial necessity but for her. There is something indescribable about Elizabeth, a feeling that equates to the strange contemplation one feels when gazing out at the vastness of the universe and all its planetary stars; when the sky is a shimmering onyx and jasmine scents the air. She fills him with hope and that is why he fears being around her for too long a time. If he is, there is the very great chance she will make him hold onto the hope he promised to abandon all those years ago.
She frightens him because she is everything he is not. Bold and beautiful and so full of life—if he could only photograph his Elizabeth in all her splendor and carry that image always, he would meet death with a contented smile and a final look of fatal triumph. He would hide from her all his dark secrets, not because he is unable to trust her (for she holds his humanity in her lily-white hands) but out of the commonplace fear of falling from the pedestal she has built for him. Lizzy, who looks at him like he’s her moon and stars, might never again gaze upon him with such favor if she knew the cowardly child who hid beneath this veneer of calm control.
Ciel Phantomhive is selfish. Selfish and unrelenting but even men such as he have their breaking points. Elizabeth is his winged goldfinch, one he must turn away in favor of the devil and all his cruelty, but what Sebastian—and perhaps he himself—will never understand is that he will never let Lizzy go.
Not her.
(And oh there’s a girl, a girl he loves…)