Notes

I wrote this story a few years ago with my friend freezinginbristol!

Times like these were the worst part.

Thankfully for his pride, the attacks were few and far between but on nights like these, with the moon cutting through the curtains and his brain like a knife, flittering with repressed memories of fear and dark and so much blood he was going to drown in it-

Keep it together.

The motion is soiled by the dry heaving over the side of his bed, Ciel's breaths coming in ragged gasps as he struggled to stand. To breathe. To do something other than drown in his own memories. The concerto he had drowned out the sound and the noise and the hurt with was slipping, falling down like the London Bridge. Like his name. Like any chances he had of salvation.

The man is coming towards him with a knife, plunging downward and-

White. Porcelain stained with blood-

No.

Hands. Hand. Marble laced with red steel and he cannot breathe cannot think cannot see and another dry sob rips out of the Earl's throat.

"You shouldn't tempt me like this, young master."

Damn him.

Damn himself as well, his body immediately wanting to search for the voice that made something in his gut twist with some unholy need, like a numbing for all of hs pain. His body scrambles, practically falling over the bed and with a thump onto the floor, frame still shaking violently as he slams his back against the side of the bed. The creature continues to merely watch, the only indicator of this not being some sick part of his imagination are those unwavering red eyes and that sickening smile.

It made him want to rip his eye out.

The creature's name on the tip of his tongue and about to exposed as well, were it not for the body suddenly close to him, face at his level. Too close.

Ciel lets the hatred burn through his gaze despite his hyperventilating, though the butler shows no real reaction, only a light chuckle and a quirking upwards of his lip, revealing a flash of white teeth that reminds the young earl as something akin to a large cat.

Bastard.

"You shouldn't tempt me," he repeats, and his glove connects with his teeth, catching the material and pulling it off revealing the dark contract.

The sight of it makes Ciel's skin crawl.

Even more so with his hand brushing aside his long bangs, fingers tracing along his cheekbone. They would have to cut his hair soon, the demon faintly muses and Ciel has to fight the jerk of his body at a black fingernail tracing impossibly lightly underneath his eye, Sebastien's face almost pondering.

"You look like you did then. Pathetic, weak."

Ciel would snarl at him if he could, but the air seemed to be constantly escaping his lungs.

The contract on his eye begins to burn even more. "Unguarded." The butler says smoothly, before moving his gaze from something distant to meet Ciel's, voice impossibly calm. "Nothing more than a pup."

"Woof." Ciel snarls out and the panic chokes him once more. The demon only laughs, the sound moving through the younger's chest before the calm voice is almost painfully close, lips barely brushing his ear.

"God, you make this so difficult for the both of us. Your panic feeds me, like the scent of the finest cuisine, but to look and never," Ceil fights to squirm at the inhalation against his throat suddenly, something akin to an animalistic groan coming from the butler, "to taste."

"You're a monster."

Sebastien chuckles, breath warm against his skin. "You are absolutely right." Despite the close proximity, the boy can feel his heartbeat slowing from panic as the minutes dragged on, and something akin to a strange anticipation, like the pressing of flesh against a knife, the red pigment against fragile pale skin before the red flush. "I torture myself I suppose. You seem to bring out the masochist in me." The butler's other hand presses firmly against his chest, forcing the boy to concentrate on his breathing, oxygen coming back into his body ever so slowly. "Little boy. You hang yourself over the edge and fall into the dark and except a creature of the night to bring you from it?"

"I expect your loyalty, demon." Ciel's voice is icy. "My torment is my own."

Sebastien raises an eyebrow, the sight impossibly casual, and Ciel wants to shiver at his fingers carding through hair.

"What an odd thing. Torment. We live in a hell, you and I, made by your weakness and fear. You dress yourself in thinly laced panic and masks, and have the audacity to think this nightmare is your own? I fight, maintain, live, bleed, starve, all in your name and yet you still think this is only you? That died when you made a deal." His grip suddenly changes, hand grips the boy's hair lightly and forcing his head to the side, exposing the length of his jugular. Another shudder moves through the demon as he inhales again, nose skimming along the major artery, hearing and smelling the hot blood pulsing through his master's body, thick and lush with that white soul.

"I loathe you more than ever, but," another moan, and Ciel dares not move, not at this point, and almost doesn't feel the light prick against his skin, the finger attached to the butler's marked hand trailing over the thin line of blood that came from the small wound, and holding his master's gaze as he licked it off his digit, eyes flashing the same as Ciel's marked eye before the voice is at his ear again, "I want you more than I can stand."

The words drip like poison into his ear, draining down through the rest of him, making him sick with the promise of death…or something worse. They hover in the air too: smoke, caused by the hellfire in the eyes of the fiend who spoke them.

But at last the boy remembers. He remembers that he is not helpless in this situation, he remembers that the demon can do little more than this, and far less than what he wants, because—

Ciel jerks his hair out of the creature's claws, and strikes his hand across his butler's cheek.

"Until I get my revenge," the boy chides, as if punishing his pet, "I do not belong to you. You belong to me."

Surprise darts across Sebastian's features at the impact of hand and tongue, but such emotions never last long in him, and soon it all fades into a terrifying, yet tantalizing smile.

If Ciel had wished such actions and words would make the demon want him less, he failed miserably.

Sebastian slowly stands, looking down upon the boy from a place high in a night filled with storm clouds.

"Revenge," the demon repeats, and somehow it sounds far more menacing when he says it, hanging in the air, like a spider suspended upon its thread, "It seems I am not the only one who is denied an enticing taste…Let us play our games. But, in the end," he turned away, stepping up to the window, the moonlight dancing on his pale features, "we will go hungry again."

Ciel tries to stand, but he's still weak.

"You disgust me," he spits.

Sebastian turns back to him, giving another flicker of a smile, and any attempts the young master had made to rise are foiled by those eyes piercing through him and he's just a boy just a boy just a boy—

But they both know he's not.

Sebastian steps back over to him, leans closer, bringing the hand with that mark—

That mark that mark that cursed mark—

up to his cheek.

His touch is gentle, a softness that one wouldn't expect from a demon—Ciel doesn't know why that makes him feel like there's still a chance, like there's something left in the world—but still so cold, a cold that threatens to envelop them both and leave them bleeding and empty in the dark.

"I'm not the one who made the contract with a demon," Sebastian whispers, then almost laughs as he tears his hand away and stands again.

Ciel's breath is weighing him, dragging him, down to the depths of the sea, at the sound of those awful words too. He stares with wide eyes, one blue, with a child's fear and nightmares dancing deep within, the other purple, with the embroidery of a star—not from the heavens—that burns and burns and burns though his very soul.

Ciel, still choking on breath and memory, lifts himself up enough to fall back upon the bed, so that he is no longer able to see the monster bound to him.

Was it worth it? He asks himself for a moment, then shakes himself of the thought.

Of course it was worth it.

That doesn't mean he didn't hate himself at times for doing it—Hate himself for choosing to, instead of run from hell as all little children are supposed to, take hell, and bring it back with him to the world of men.

Hell was at his command. Hell was at his disposal. He was the king in a game of pawns. And in the moment when he could no longer control hell, he would not need to.

So why didn't he feel safe? Why did it still feel like hell was right here in his heart, chasing him, burning through him, devouring his mind at every waking second—

"It gets lonely, doesn't it?" Sebastian's voice breaks through his thoughts.

Ciel lifts his head to stare at his butler.

"What?" his voice is stony.

"Inside your head," the demon finishes, "It gets lonely inside your head."

Ciel stares at him again.

Hell belonged to him. Hell was in his heart. He brought hell home with him.

So why does he see something more than simply hell in the fiend's eyes?

He tries to banish all thoughts of hope from his mind.

"And you'll, what?" Ciel hisses, "Fill the empty space in my head?"

Sebastian simply walks back over to his young master and sits next to him on the bed.

Demons shouldn't be so calm.

"I don't need your pity," Ciel mutters.

"Don't mistake it for pity."

"I don't—I don't need you!" he stammers.

"Obviously you do."

"No I—" Ciel stops himself, groaning, and sitting back up. He's silent for a moment, until he utters softly, "Get out."

"Is that an order?"

Those cool, blazing red eyes capture him. And he knows, he knows he is alone, and this this…thing is all he has left.

Funny that the only thing that can save him from the dark is the darkness itself.

He looks away, trying to hide the fact that tears are forming in his eyes.

"No," he answers.

Sebastian chuckles a little, but not a mocking sort of laugh one would expect from a demon, instead it's beneath his breath, soft, like a summer breeze fluttering through the drapes in an empty house.

"We'll grow accustomed to this, you and I. It may feel strange, and even terrifying, now, but one day you may grow to rely on me…perhaps even to enjoy my company."

Ciel stands up beside the bed, any hint of a teardrop gone from his eyes as he snarls,

"Enjoy the company of a demon?!" Ciel laughs, a derisive, patronizing laugh, the kind that the mad are known to give, "Know your place, Fiend; you are not my friend, nor my family. You are my butler. Nothing more."

Ciel makes his way across the room and begins to place a coat on over his night clothes, not giving Sebastian a chance to retort. Although, as he sees Ciel attempting to put on his coat on his own, he begins to off his assistance,

"Would you like—?"

Ciel holds up his hand to stop him.

"I don't need your help," he utters, finishing his mediocre job of buttoning up his own overcoat, and vanishing out the door to walk alone for a while in the night.

Sebastian smiles a little when his young master leaves. A child in some ways, perhaps, but not innocent, not naïve, not helpless, and, certainly, not kind. Still, there's something about him… shadows are closing in from every side of his soul, trying to enter and pierce through it, to penetrate…but, somehow, the soul itself…Sebastian can still taste the blood on his tongue, and its intoxicating. The taste pesters and plagues him, it dances just out of reach, and laughs at him. It knows just how deeply he wants it, but it also knows he cannot bring it up to his lips until the master of the soul gets his wishes. Every wish, until dark vengeance is fulfilled. It seems like such a long time, such great effort, for so small of a reward. But is it small at all? It will satisfy his hunger for a while, yes, fill a need, but, as he said, he will go hungry again. What's the worth of a human soul, really?

Ciel ponders this question too as he walks out into the courtyard. He asks himself if he sold something valuable for something cheap, or if he sold something cheap for something valuable. Not that it really matters now. He made the deal, and he cannot go back on it. He would have to learn to live with what he'd done, learn to live with the hell inside, the hell outside, the hell at his fingertips.

Ciel shivers in the cold, his footsteps in the gravel the only sound in the moonlit night, that, and the rustling of the leaves in the hedges.

It's a terrifying thing to have a demon by your side, tethered to you. It's terrifying to have such power at your fingertips, but knowing, with all certainty, that one day that power will turn back on you, and devour your soul.

Not more terrifying, he decides, than the memories, than memories of—

Don't you dare think about it.

Ciel draws in a sharp breath, he tries not to give off the scent of panic and paranoia and pain that the demon takes in and—

And in a flash, they're back.

The knives, the knives coming down upon him—

The fire, the fire burning through his house, through his family, through his belongings, through his flesh and—

Through his eye.

"Young Master?"

Ciel finds himself on the ground, looking up into that crimson gaze, a gaze that bores through his soul with hunger, but that also drips with a certain light, a light like a red moon, bleeding, ominous, surely, but still comforting in a world of dark and burning sunlight.

At last, Ciel lets go, wrapping his arms around Sebastian and starting to cry. He curses himself for losing his composure in front of his butler, in front of a creature who probably just loves the smell of his anguish and tears.

Sebastian's arms encircle the boy as he lifts him up.

Ciel isn't so sure he wants such a fiend carrying him, and he doesn't know where he's carrying him to, but he's so tired. The boy places his arms around the butler's neck, closing his eyes and burying his face in his shoulder.

"We'll make them suffer for all that they did to you, Young Master."

Ciel gives a small flicker of the smile.

"Nothing will stop us, Sebastian?"

The demon's smile, this time, cries with songs of the night, unholy, wretched, cursed things, not so much filled with the warmth and gentleness it contained before.

"That's right, My Lord; Not even the gates of hell can stop you and me."

At last, a shred of comfort reaches Ciel, and he lets himself rest, even in the arms of the creature he scorned not so long ago.

But Sebastian was right before: there may be a demon living inside his house, but the real demons live inside his head.

Power is such a foolish, fickle thing, he muses to himself, Men desire it above all else, grasp tightly to it, but eventually it all blows away like flower petals in the wind, or else is ripped away by someone else, no matter how tightly one may cling to it.

Power cannot save you. It can only kill you.

Ciel has the power of hell.

But Ciel's goal isn't exactly to survive either.

Revenge…now that must be something else entirely.