Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.
— Mary Elizabeth Frye - 1932
1. Do not stand at my grave and weep
Ciel Phantomhive's second funeral was on a clear, cloudless day, and all during the service Lizzie remembered the first one—the violent winds, the overcast sky, the empty coffin lowered into the earth with those of his family's, in absence of any body. But this time, the body was there, and he was never going to show up again, like a miracle. It was a long walk to the front of the church aisle, where she stared down at his calm, restful face, the unfitting innocence of white in every stitch of his clothes, the colors for a child's funeral. It seemed hideously unfitting, one more horrible thing in this whole horrible affair. Ciel had left his manor all in black. It had unnerved her then, in a way she could only describe as "uncute" —but it was more than a lack of style. It was a darkness, a sucking void; it was the uncomfortable feeling that he did look well in it, that it looked like funeral clothes, that it looked like his butler.
They had gone, and neither of them had come back. There was Ciel with the blood and bullet wound hidden under white cloth, and there was Sebastian, gone, and there was Lizzie, standing in front of the coffin, touching the cold, pale skin of her late fiancée with trembling hands. She was terrified. All she could think of was that glimpse in his eyes—had she imagined it? That cold, burning red… it made her wonder, and shudder, afraid that he would open his eyes again here and now, and look at her, and be wrong, but she could not tell anyone that. Her mother and father and brother all about her, and everyone else who had been at Ciel's first funeral, except for his aunt Angelina, whom he had been so fond of, and who had died.
It was so dreadfully unfair, such a mocking cruelty, to have gotten him back only to lose him three mere years later—and lose part of him even before that—his last year was memoryless, stuck in the sadness of another person's story… it didn't suit Ciel at all to be so oblivious, so young. It didn't suit him at all to be dead, and she almost wished he would wake and look at her, even in anger, just so she could be sure, just so she could know…
Oh, but something terrible had happened to him!
Sebastian had arranged the funeral, it seemed, and sent out all the cards—at least, he must have, because his servants had not, and they did not know who had. But Sebastian was not here. That didn't even make it into the murmurs all throughout the church—whispers of pity mixed with disdain, sorrow with ambivalence, rumors about the child-Earl, his flourishing company, his excess of money, his dark secrets. But Bard, Mei-Rin, Finny, and Tanaka stood by her and when she wept she knew they understood, if anyone did, at least a fraction of her grief. She felt strange, out of place, more connected to his family and estate than her own in this time, a belated sense of marriage that would never be. She'd told him that they would be happy. She'd promised him. She'd… wanted him to promise her. Didn't he want to be with her? Didn't he understand that she loved him? How could he leave her again? Wasn't that crueller than never coming back at all?
What a terrible thing to think.
The fading summer grasses whispered under her feet as she stood above the new earth of his grave, stepping into those dry, crumbling clods. "How could you do this to me?" Lizzie demanded, crying, waiting for an answer from the cold grey stone. "How did you know… who was it that killed you… why didn't you stop it from happening? I know you could have. You always did."
The Queen's Watchdog was invincible. He came back, ten years old, malnourished and bruised with a cold steel in his remaining eye that brooked no argument, and in the years that followed he cut a firey path through the underworld, spawning fear and superstition, while he rose to dizzying heights in the light of day. That kind of charm, that uncanny luck couldn't have run out, could it?
Wasn't it his due, for all that he had suffered; wasn't it their happy ending, after all?
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.
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