"So." Ciel heard his own voice echo strangely in the ruins of whatever great mansion had been built here. "At last the end of it all."
"Indeed." Sebastian's response was level, as if he hadn't spent the last two years awaiting this very moment. He knelt smoothly on one knee and laid Ciel down atop the stone bench in the midst of the ruins. The stone was cold against Ciel's skin, and his body was nothing but a collage of dull aches and sharp pain.
He sat up anyway, pushing himself upright. The motion initiated another trickle of blood from the wound across his side. He braced himself against the edge of the stone, attempting to be subtle and give the impression that he was able to sit unaided.
He looked up. Sebastian's mouth was quirked in the tiniest of wry smiles. Because he knew, of course, as he always knew.
Ciel met his eyes with what would have been defiance in any other situation. "Let's get on with it then."
"Are you ready, master?" Still no note of excitement in his voice, but his eyes seemed brighter, as if the thrill of the moment was bleeding out however it could.
"Must I order you?" His voice was haughty, he was pleased to note, not trembling with fear or pain.
Sebastian inclined his head in a nod of acquiescence and lifted his hand to his mouth. His teeth caught at the finger of his black glove in a startlingly feral action and he pulled his hand out. It was the first time Ciel had ever seen his hands properly; they were the same long, thin profile to which he was accustomed, but the nails were long and dark, the blackness of them turning Sebastian's skin chalky by contrast.
Sebastian pulled off his second glove and dropped it. It was a further incongruity from Ciel's scrupulously tidy butler. He reached out for Ciel, his fingers settling gently on Ciel's temples and sliding tenderly through his hair.
"I will be as gentle as I can." Comfort now, suffusing his voice even while his eyes blazed red in anticipation. The tone was a mote of familiarity in the sea of strangeness Ciel was lost upon.
"No." Ciel held Sebastian's glowing red gaze and met it with the glare of the young lord he was. "The pain is the only thing that will prove that my life meant anything at all." He was not afraid at all, he realized; he felt brittle, fragile, and filled with fury that demanded destruction, but fear had no part in it.
Sebastian smiled then, his grip tightening against Ciel's skull. "As you wish." He leaned in until his face was all Ciel could see and brushed his lips against Ciel's forehead.
The whole world went red as the pain blossomed against Ciel's face. He thought he saw a blur of darkness for a moment, the burn of red eyes against a backdrop of shadow, and then the exquisite pain wiped his mind clean of all but it. Sebastian's fingers were holding him too tight; he could feel his skin bruising under Sebastian's palms as those long fingernails delicately carved into his scalp. The wound in his side flared brightly for a moment, sharp and hot like the agony of his memories, and then faded into a burn that swept over his entire body. He sucked in what might have been a breath and the blistering heat boiled into his lungs, searing away any ability to speak. A flood of what must have been his own blood gushed across his chest as a sharp pain caught at his throat.
It was excruciating and it was wonderful. All the fury and all the revenge he had clung to since the death of his parents was burned away cleanly, unlike the dusty forgetfulness the angel had offered. The pain swelled up into his mind and dominated his rage until he felt tears of relief come to his destroyed eyes.
And Sebastian was there, tenderly torturing his body and freeing him from his pain. Ciel felt his self slipping away, consuming by the towering darkness that had become Sebastian. The agony peaked for one shining moment, sweeping the fragments of his shattered soul before it, before he felt himself dissipating, the pain sliding away only as his self dissolved away.
A whisper: "I will be there, master. Till the end." And then, at last, nothing.