A long drabble that takes place at the end of season one, when Sebastian and Ciel are in the boat and rowing towards... well, the end. That scene made me want to cry and left me depressed for days afterwards.

Disclaimer: I don't own Black Butler

Ciel Phantomhive was satisfied. The monster who had murdered his family and sent him spiraling down into the depths of hell was dead. They had gone out with a bang, with wounds and blood and the latest great fire of London. If anything remained at all, it was the ashes the fire left behind. That satisfied him, didn't it? He took a deep breath told himself yes, it did. He tried to quell the frantic thumping in his chest.

Ciel ran a finger through the water lapping at the sides of the boat, blurring the moving , colourful images beneath him. He remembered Grell saying that mortals saw their cinematic records after they died. His were beautiful, he had to admit, so lively. So many smiles and and so much dancing, and his parents smiling down at him from their seats at the dining room table. There were fields of flowers and his mothers beloved shining jewels, and his father and their trips on the town together, riding in a horse and carriage withhorse clomping steadily along the street. Too beautiful to be the whole truth. His life did not amount to joyful family gatherings as a child and birthdays and trips with his parents. That was only a few short years, and most of these things were memories he didn't even know he had. Why, he didn't even see Sebastian. Nothing seemed to go beyond his early childhood.

I'm only seeing what I want to see, he realized. The fire was absent from the spectacles, the torture, the grief and hopelessness, the figures in their cloaks and masks. Good. It better that way. He didn't need to see that right now. For once, he wanted to forget what happened in those few years. He wondered what Grell was doing right now. Probably checking his book repeatedly for the name of a soul he could never collect. The image was almost comical as he thought of it.

"Something wrong, Master?" Sebastian said, as he rowed the boat with quiet strokes of the oar through the water. Faces and shapes blurred as he did.

Ciel turned and saw the butler was staring at him, a wistful faraway smile on his face. His eyes however, were sharp and alert, and glowing a faint red like the illumination of a lantern. He's was probably imagining what his soul would taste like.

Ciel leaned back against the side of the boat, and his hand brushed against something soft. He glanced down and pinched a single white rose petal between his fingers and held it up to his face. There were no flowers anywhere near this place, except in his memories. He held it out to Sebastian. "Is this your doing?" It was like throwing confetti at a funeral. He hated the mocking tone of it, but admired the cleverness. It was something he wouldn't have thought of.

Sebastian's face was blank, and he raised his head to the white void that was the sky of this place, and all around his dark form fell more silvers of white, landing and causing ripples in the liquid surface of his memories. One fell onto the the top of his hair, and he plucked it out and ripped it down the middle, tearing the petal in half.

"This is beyond my abilities," he said. "But not yours, it seems. They are your favorite flowers, yes?" The shower of rose petals was thickening, and the bottom of the ship was being carpeted in white. Ciel sighed and removed his eye patch, and when he put his hand to his left eye, he could almost feel the burn of the star shaped mark in his iris. Sebastian's eyes flared expressively then, and Ciel put the patch back over his eye.

"Why would I do this? It's a preposterous idea as it is." He had given up pushing the irksome petals out of his way, and let his boots be covered.

"Ah, but this is your place, young master." Sebastian had stopped rowing, yet the boat kept moving of its own volition. This didn't surprise either of the two. "Why should you not be able to do things that normally would be impossible? A mind is a place where limits and reasons are twisted beyond comprehension."

"Flower petals falling from the heavens though?" Ciel raised an eyebrow, breaking his concentration with watching his life play out below him. "I did not wish for this."

Sebastian smiled and looked amused with half-lidded eyes. He made his way slowly over to his master and tilted his chin up with a white gloved hand. "You did, you just haven't admitted it to yourself. You're lying to yourself. There is no one to cry for you, so you have made tears from the world itself. Who says tears cannot be fragrant and soft to the touch?"

He was being unusually bold, but Ciel felt a pang of understanding, and a hollowness in his chest. He was right. His had played his chess game for far too long, moving pieces across a great checkered board. With manipulation and cleverness he thought he had been king. But then the bodies had begun to pile up, a tangle of pale limbs and clouded eyes staring at the king as he sat on his throne. And finally his best pawn had turned against him, so slowly subtly he hadn't realized it until his own turn to be removed from the game had come, and red eyes were looking down at him under dark water with such finality in them, such promise.

"Checkmate, little lord."

Ciel said nothing. He wasn't satisfied, no, not at all. He was craving life when the end of it was staring him in the face. Ah, the irony.

"Yes, I suppose so", he said, and he felt like crying, but he couldn't do that, now could he? Don't let them see you cry, don't let them see you weak. It was almost over anyway.

Edited slightly.

Angst is my best genre, I think. Not that that automatically means the stories good... I'm very awkward, sorry.

Anyone waiting for One Last Dream to be updated, it might take a while, but I promise I will.

I hope you guys liked it though. Review?