(1) On Loyalty
He still feels a lingering frustration from the Sphere Music Hall case, and Lizzy's continued disappearance is a puzzle that he can't solve, a knot of worry in his stomach that feeds off his already too-active paranoia. The visit to the townhouse is just what Ciel needs to wind down; when he gets there, Soma tells him that Agni has made sweets, and that makes the whole terrible world better, if only for one moment. Ciel would never turn down an offer of sweets, and Agni's rival Sebastian's own. He is too tired to be angry anymore, to be scared; and Soma tells him he won't leave his side, won't listen to excuses. It makes Ciel want to scream, it makes a sick feeling rise under the sugar that coats his tongue. That devotion is too familiar: he has seen it on too many people.
On Doll, who gave him her trust without asking any questions. On Snake, who believes every lie, if it means he can be in a family. On Finnian, who reminds him of himself, whose eyes still bear too much innocence, whose hands are stained with blood through every fault but his own. On Sieglinde, who followed his every advice, except the one to be careful, to be safe. To keep out of the shadows in which he drowns, and pulls them all in after him.
On Lizzy, who used to look at him (at who?) with such devotion, and who has disappeared, driven away, after everything.
It rains during the night, and the townhouse is lit by flashes of lightning. It reminds him of times long ago, when he (the scared child) would crawl into his parents' bed, and feel safe between their arms. Yes. His brother would usually wake up after him and crawl in besides, and when he closed his eyes then, none of it mattered. Not the fact that he was the weak, sickly one; not the fact that he was and had always been the spare. All he knew then was that he was loved, and happy. Yes. He, too, had looked at his brother with those eyes, but it had not helped him. The knife had still come down. His screams had still torn his throat. His cries had still gone unanswered.
The dead are still dead.
It is for these reasons that storms still disturb him. The sounds and light-show have long ceased to hold menace, but the memories they carry linger. It fills the air next morning, an insubstantial scent mixing with petrichor and the water that floods the surface of the cobblestones, that dots everything with a fine mist, leaving him shivering even in his top hat and cloak. Soma and Agni wave goodbye, and Ciel watches out the carriage window as it jostles away from the city and toward the manor.
… "Young master?"
He's too preoccupied to really take note of the servants' surprise, but their words reach him through a haze. "It's so early! We thought you hadn't gone out yet."
"What the devil are you talking about," Ciel mutters. The case still needs to be solved; he has nothing more than vague suspicions, a pattern with no one to pin it on; and Lizzy is still gone.
A low, amused chuckle comes from the head of the stairs, and for a moment, Ciel is too tired and baffled to make the connection. Any connection at all. "Me," the voice says.
He looks up. He looks up, and—freezes.
"I am Ciel Phantomhive," his brother says. "And I've come home."
/
The next hours are a blur. He doesn't remember standing shivering in the entryway; he is barely cognizant of being ushered into the parlor by Tanaka, to be served tea by him as though he is a guest in his own home. Sitting on one of the couches. Watching his—his—
Watching Ciel Phantomhive sitting in the chair that belongs to him, all poise and grace, as though nothing is wrong, and all the while his world slowly cracks beneath him, tips sideways, loses its moorings. Until he does not know what to do at all.
Undertaker is there, standing behind him—Ciel, the real Ciel, the earl, the way Sebastian stands behind the spare. Both giving each other measured looks; the Undertaker's inscrutable, Sebastian's dark. While Undertaker explains how it is that Ciel is alive. (Not alive.) While Ciel explains that he has come back to take the burden from the spare's shoulders, a burden he was never meant to have. That the small, weak child could never take. Of course. Of course not.
"I'm doing this for you, brother, just as you kept this place, and this title, for me," Ciel says, earnestly.
"Of course," he says. Blankly. He cannot argue. He cannot breathe.
"I want to make this as easy on the both of us as possible," Ciel says. "I won't reveal your deception; I'll give you as much money as you like to start over—under your own name, this time. Or another one, if you're really so fond of living in the shadows," he adds, with a bright, carefree laugh.
"Of course," he says. "How thoughtful of you."
Ciel smiles at him. "Well, how could I not take care of my little brother?"
I'm not, he thinks. I haven't been him for years. I'm not the spare; he is dead. He has been burned, his bones turned to dust. And you are not my brother. Not my brother at all. Only a doll that looks and talks like how the Undertaker thought you might be if you had lived, pulled along by your one abiding wish. He keeps waiting for Ciel—the thing—no, he is too real to be a thing—yet, still—to pounce, to open his mouth wide and groan for blood, but. He doesn't.
Ciel gives him all the servants, out of his generosity. Recognizing their loyalty to him. 'Giving them' —as though everything that he possesses is at the earl's whim. It is.
Everything but Sebastian; Sebastian, who was cut short at every remark by a cold word from Ciel, cut short with every word in his own defence that he could not articulate, every word for the family name, the Phantomhive honor, oh, what does it matter now?
It has never been his to keep. He was a fool to think his theft might go unremarked.
The times have been, that, when the brains were out, the man would die, and there an end; but now they rise again, with twenty mortal murders on their crowns, and push us from our stools.
It is strangely funny. He almost laughs.
They are stuck entertaining in the parlor until Elizabeth is invited in.
Oh. There she is, he thinks dully. At this point, nothing surprises him anymore. The pain to see her there is only a hollow ache, the wound is numbing.
She is wearing the same clothes she'd been in when she'd been taken from the hall. He notices it. It is not like her. Her dress is pure white with black at the sash and the gloves with their black lace, black and white like a photograph, washed out, on double exposure, ghostly, hardly there. And yet Ciel looks more real than it seems right for him to be. He invites her over with one careless gesture, and she hangs onto his arm, head down, only speaking a few words against him, falling silent. He can only utter her name. She says nothing. There is nothing to say.
I'm sorry? He isn't. He only wishes it had never come to this. He can't feel remorse for his own actions. He can't blame her for hers.
"Well! This is comfy," Undertaker says, with a chuckle. "It's a right family reunion."
He is given a spare bedroom to sleep in, that night. Ciel has… re-taken his rightful room, and he has nothing in him to dispute the gesture. He finds himself robbed of words (In life, there are only two kinds of people… and how the tables can turn, in only the blink of an eye).
Sebastian is unable to coax anything from him, as he prepares him for bed. He stares up, unsleeping, at the ceiling and the not his things in the not his house and feels like crying. He has not cried—not really cried—for years. That was something that small, weak version of him, the one that was locked in that cage and kicked at, punched, branded, worse—that is what those children would have done. He. He doesn't. It's hard to tell himself that he has grown past it when his past has shown up in his house and taken everything he fought for, everything he built. Through trickery, yes, but then. Who doesn't.
He gets up after an hour of tossing and turning, slips on a robe and makes his way into the servants' wing. One flimsy door is all that separates it from the main manor, and yet he feels the screaming pit that has eaten away at his brain, at all his limbs, loosen a little. Knowing he is in a place where they are loyal only to him. Where he is only who he has chosen to be, and not what others have made of him.
This is the fourth time he's been to Sebastian's room. It is just as barren, as blank of all personality, and yet with the butler in it, it seems to reflect his presence. He is sitting in a nightshirt, on the bed, half-under the covers, and staring into the distance with a furrowed brow and a downturned mouth. When he was earl, Sebastian spent most nights wandering the manor, preparing for the next morning. Obviously, the butler feels no such obligation to this new earl. Perhaps he, too, feels uneasy in that other part of the house, where those who are meant to be are.
Ciel slips in and closes the door behind him without a word. He crawls on the bed next to Sebastian and lets him pull the covers up over him, and hold him, though the night is dark and clear, and there is no rain, no lightning, no peals of thunder shaking the sky.
The stars are out.
.
.
.