In Friendship's Name
by Shu of the Wind

Your friend is your needs answered. He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
—Kahlil Gibran

Intret amicitiae nomine tectus amor.
—Ovid

It's difficult for him to remember the first time he saw an Englishwoman. He can remember dozens, if not hundreds, of men—men coming in and out of his father's house, soldiers, traders, noblemen, his brother's tutors, so many that they seemed almost commonplace in the Nawab's house. An Englishwoman—that's a different matter entirely, and it's seared into his mind like an image of war.

He must have been around four, and the woman herself had been called in to tutor one of his older sisters in French. She was small and thin, fragile as a bird, with blue eyes—he had never seen blue eyes before, and they startled him and scared him. Her hair was light as wheat. He had stopped, speechless, in the hallway, and the woman had given him a small smile before Meena had come to collect him. When Soma had come back to look for her a few hours later, she was gone.

At the time, he promptly forgot about it. But now, of course, he remembers.

The sixteenth son loves hunting, and once he turns five, Soma convinces his brother to let him tag along. It takes a long time—most of his brothers are easily ten years older than he is, and Danka is no exception—but finally he cries and that gets him his way.

Meena stays behind at the hunting camp, but Soma gets to tag along on the back of one of the elephants, and the rhythm of the beast's movement would lull him to sleep if it weren't for the electric tension in the air. There are some Englishmen with them, and their hats glint in the scattered sunlight through the leaves.

"We're looking for tiger," says Danka authoritatively, and Soma clenches his hands around his ankles and holds his breath in hope. He's never seen a live tiger before.

One of the Englishmen has a girl with him, and in spite of himself Soma can't help peering at her out of the corner of his eye. She has red hair, and he's never seen anything like it before, not even when one of his older sisters dyed her hair with henna. Her eyes are dark like Meena's, though, and she waves at him a bit before her gaze flicks to Danka. They lock eyes. She smiles, and it's a different sort than the one she'd given to Soma. Softer. Shyer. He can't be sure, but he thinks there's color in her cheeks.

"There!" shouts one of the Englishmen, and he lifts his gun and fires. Soma whips around and clings to the edge of the howdah as down in the brush, something huge and striped flashes through the leaves. There's another shot, and a terrible screaming sound, hoarse and rough and caustic, and then the creature falls flat in the dust. It's as long as the rug in his hallway, and Soma stares. For some reason, his throat closes up, and he has to look away as some of the bearers collect the body to be taken away.

The redheaded English girl is still watching his brother.

The sixteenth son falls in love when Soma is six years old.

He falls in love with the redheaded English girl, but it's more than that. He falls in love with the West. He falls in love with England. When their father hears of it, the sixteenth son is locked in his room, the doors guarded by their father's men, and she is stolen away by her family, taken out of Bengal. Soma's sad to hear this, but then he forgets about her. After all, she doesn't matter much to him. He doesn't even remember her name.

He can also remember sitting in his father's presence, listening to his brother being systematically pulled apart with words and reprimands and fury, and the fourteenth brother, Jamal, leans over and whispers to his twin that after all, one can only be so English. And Soma doesn't understand, because he's young and there are some things about Bengal and Indians and Englishmen that he still doesn't quite get.

The sixteenth son doesn't forget. Years later, Soma realizes that the sixteenth son is the only one of his elder brothers who hasn't married, who doesn't have children. When Soma's ten, the sixteenth son, his brother Danka, leaves for London to go and find his redheaded English girl. Their father disowns him.

Later, when he visits London himself, Soma wonders if he'll ever see his brother again. If Danka's found his redhaired English girl, and if he has, where are they?

He considers it when Ciel (his roommate, companion, and new best friend) introduces him to his fiancée. Soma doesn't think all that much of her. She's polite and cheerful, and she curtsies to both he and Agni without a second thought, with none of the hidden disapproval of the other Englishwomen he's met so far in London. Beyond that, he doesn't really notice her. After all, he's always seen the women in this country as strange sorts of exotic birds—crushed into corsets, their hair yellow or brown as opposed to a plain and reassuring black, and their skin pale enough to turn crimson in the light of too much sun.

The fact that he vaguely recollects that Miss Middleford has green eyes does not linger very long in his mind. After all, he has other things to do.

He doesn't give much thought at all to Ciel's fiancée. He rarely sees her, barely knows her, and, to be honest, has no interest in her at all. Ciel mentions her sometimes, usually in terms of reproach or irritation – Lizzy invaded the house today and didn't leave for hours, Lizzy dressed Sebastian up as a woman, Lizzy's just a child, Lizzy, Lizzy, Lizzy. He doesn't talk about her often, but when he does, it's difficult to shut him up, and Soma smiles to himself and wonders why Ciel doesn't just write her some poetry and be done with it. It's how he would handle it.

In fact, he doesn't really think of Elizabeth at all—outside of her association with his best friend, anyway—until Ciel's fifteenth birthday party. He is invited. So is Elizabeth. She curtsies to him, the way she curtsies to the few people that might be called Ciel's friends—the others who are here, the men and women from Society who have only been invited to be polite—don't get that much of her attention. Soma is nineteen, so she must be sixteen or seventeen now. He's startled by how much he notices her, and in the breathless moment before the guilt crushes him into pieces—because it's Ciel's fiancée that he's studying with such care—her smile makes his stomach clench.

"Good evening, Prince Soma! It's been a long time, hasn't it?"

"Ah…yes." Startling himself, even, he takes her hand in his and raises it to his lips. He stops right before he makes contact with her skin, as propriety demands, but that doesn't keep him from wanting to. Which he shouldn't. He really, really shouldn't. "It has been."

She's still smiling when she pulls away. There's no reluctance to have him touch her, the way there is in other English women. She doesn't seem to care that he's Bengali. To her, it seems, he is just Ciel's closest friend. Perhaps his only friend, Soma realizes later, as he looks around the room and sees no one he recognizes. Other than Elizabeth herself, anyway.

Ciel comes to stand by him, later in the evening. Elizabeth is dancing with a tall blonde man that looks so similar to her, they could be nothing other than brother and sister. Soma is feeling a bit drunk, and behind him, Agni is talking with Sebastian. Ciel leans beside him, against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. He's much taller than he used to be, though he'll never be all that tall. Soma's almost a head taller than him, even now. Then again, Ciel's still growing. His best friend clears his throat, and glances up at Soma. "I wouldn't have had a party if she hadn't insisted. Sorry for dragging you to this."

Soma shakes his head, and downs the rest of his champagne. His head feels light and there are bubbles popping in his brain. It's what makes him say it. "Your fiancée is…quite pretty, Phantomhive."

Ciel looks at Soma sharply, studying his face. He must be looking for something he doesn't find, though, because he relaxes, and looks to his cousins. When his good eye settles on Elizabeth, it softens. The expression is barely there, but even in the middle of tipsy frowns, Soma can still see it. It makes him feel worse.

"If you say so," Ciel replies, but behind the words there is a resounding yes.

Soma nods, grins, and goes after a waiter. He needs more alcohol if he's going to get through this night alive.

Later, when they're heading back to the rooms that they've engaged, he looks at Agni. He's roaring drunk, the way he hasn't been in a very long while, not since he broke into his father's liquor cabinet as a child and drank his way through three bottles of wine. "It's not right, is it?"

"I'm sorry, your majesty, I don't know what you mean." Agni's eyebrow lifts, but only just. It's enough to make him talk.

"She's his fiancée, Agni, I shouldn't find her pretty."

"It is no crime to find a woman attractive, your majesty," says Agni. Then he dumps Soma onto his bed. Soma looks at him for a moment, and wonders why he feels so guilty. If Agni says it's not a crime, then he really shouldn't. Sometimes he thinks Agni knows everything.

In the next few minutes he's asleep, and he doesn't remember what he said when he wakes up the next morning. In fact, he doesn't remember much of anything about that night for a very long time. All he can recall is this strange sense of guilt, and that is easily written off by how much his head is pounding. He drank too much. That's all. It's not like there's anything he should really feel bad about.

He returns to Bengal the following spring, on demand from his father. In no uncertain terms, the Bengali nawab is getting ill, and he needs all of his numerous sons in order to keep track of everything that the British don't already have control of. With all of his brothers working on it as well—except for the few who have vanished, anyway—there isn't much left for him to do, but in his father's eyes it's long past time he returned from England, anyway. He's been away for years, now, and in the eyes of Bengal, it's been many years too long.

And indeed, when he returns, he finds that England and all the people he knows there fade into the background, into the pages of history. Bengal is where he was born, and it's almost everything he remembers, almost everything he cares about. This is home, no matter what joys England can offer, and he's very careful not to forget that. In the back of his mind, Danka looms large. He doesn't want the people to think that he is another runaway prince, who fell so in love with the west that he forgot where he came from in the first place.

So he does what none of his brothers do. He takes a leaf out of Ciel's book, dresses as a commoner, and he goes on walkabout. He slips Agni's leash (to the devastation of his butler, but something that is necessary, as well) and he goes wandering around Calcutta, exploring everything he can, poking his nose into trouble and fighting back when he has to. He calls himself Adan, and his outlandish ways are excused by the people of this nation that he loves, because half the time they think he's drunk and the other half he's far more serious than he ever was in court.

It's a wrench at first. He's not good at taking things seriously. He's not good at being an adult. But down in the lower city, he doesn't get the second chances always offered to a prince. He figures that out when he makes a joke that results in a black eye and a missing molar. (He hides from his father until it's all healed, though sometimes he feels for the empty spot in his jaw with his tongue and smiles ruefully.) Like any human being, he doesn't like losing teeth, so instead he gets smarter. He has to.

He meets Alphonse Matthews at a meeting that he attends with one of his elder brothers. Matthews, it turns out, is only a clerk for one of the major English government people, but something about him strikes Soma as interesting. According to his brother, Matthews is one of the very few Englishmen to ever get dispensation from the company to take an Indian wife after the banning of relations between the races at least a decade ago. He's a quiet man, soft-spoken and reasonable, and he wears his ring openly, a circle of burnished gold on his finger. It might be that bit of openness, Soma thinks, which makes him introduce himself after the end of the meeting, and he's sure to look Matthews in the eye and shake his hand the English way, which startles the man. Matthews blinks again when he hears the state of Soma's English, and something in him relaxes and tenses all at once. Soma is one of the only princes—perhaps the only prince—with a good enough command of the English tongue to make do entirely without a translator, and that means nothing good for what the English might have been whispering behind their hands. But still, the connection is forged, and it's not something, once crafted, that can be broken.

Alphonse is a good man. He's quiet, and that quiet can make him dangerous at times, but he's brilliant, and loyal, and has that sort of inherent goodness that is so rare in people, a subtle kindness that he's rarely caught at but makes people love him all the same. His wife, Priya, is a beautiful woman, a daughter of one of the nobles he hates, and he's prepared to hate her, but instead he finds himself treating her like one of his sisters. She's as brilliant as an exploding star. The two of them have a boy, a son, William, and he's a delightful child. Before Soma realizes it, he's friends with Alphonse Matthews, and he rather thinks that Matthews views the change of relationship—from fellow employees to mates—with the same sort of raised-eyebrow surprise as he views anything outside of his books.

He's been in Bengal almost a month when he learns the Matthews are expecting a visitor: Major-General Isaiah Matthews, back from Scotland and ready to live his life out in Bengal, however much longer it will last. He organizes to meet with the man a week or two after he settles back into the rhythm of Calcutta, and when he does, he sees the last person he would have ever expected to meet in the house of Alphonse Matthews.

He's keeping an eye on his best friend's fiancée, he tells himself. He's making sure she doesn't get into too much trouble, the way Englishwomen can get in trouble in Calcutta. He's protecting her as best he can, because Ciel is not here to do it. He will make sure she is safe, and when she gets on the boat back to England, he will be the one to see her off at the dock.

That's all it is.

He doesn't expect her to wedge her way into his heart, like a weed, and grow there, stubborn as she always is. He doesn't expect them to become friends.

One night he's invited to a party with one of the older Company employees, and when he mentions it to Elizabeth, she says she wants to come. "I don't know much about Bengal," she says, "or India, and if it's part of England's territory now, I should, shouldn't I?" It's been a part of England's territory for years, he thinks, but at the same time he understands what she's trying to say. It's the same reason, underneath his search for Meena, that he had stayed in England. Exploring England was a way to understand what Bengal would eventually become, and it's something that he wouldn't ever give up, not for the world.

He doesn't like this man. He never has, not since he'd been a child and come around the corner to find a much younger Adam Abernathy fondling one of the palace serving girls. She'd run away trembling, and Abernathy had sworn at the little darkie child before realizing, as Meena came up behind him, that he was badmouthing one of the younger sons of the nawab. In English terms, at least, a prince. He'd gone right pink and then scuttled off, and he'd been obscenely obliging ever since. Still, it's not an engagement he can afford to miss, not if he's helping his father, and if Lizzy is there to back him up, at least a little bit, it'll soothe his temper.

Still, the instant they step through the door into the man's house, she stops. There's a tiger head on the wall, set in a fearsome snarl, and it stares into the door frame, threatening anyone to cross over the threshold. Abernathy laughs at the look on Lizzy's face, and tucks his wife's hand under his elbow. "That's a maneater, Miss Crawford. Or it was. Horrible beast. Ripped a child apart, so they sent the hunters after it. Took four shots to the brain to take it down. You can probably still see the holes," he adds, and goes off laughing.

Soma looks back to Elizabeth, expecting to see fright, confusion, horror, but none of those are there. Instead, there's raw fury, a trembling anger that he's never seen on this girl, on any girl, really, and it brings him up short. She waits until Abernathy's out of earshot before spitting it, viciously, under her breath. "Filthy pig."

She's shaking. He doesn't think about it. He slips his hand into hers and squeezes, lightly, and Lizzy grips his fingers so tight that her rings dig like brands into his skin, a reminder, a warning.

He lets it burn him.

It's like falling down the stairs. It's slow at first, that gut-wrenching realization that his foot hasn't landed on the next step. Then it goes faster, as he trips, and stumbles, and falls headlong, tumbling over and over and winding up at the feet of the worst girl he could have chosen, the only girl he could ever imagine loving, and the one he absolutely cannot ever touch, because she is his best friend's fiancée.

It's that she is Ciel's, but it's more than that. It's always been more than that. The engagement is just what he uses to lecture himself, something that he uses to make himself feel guilty so he doesn't have to think about the full impossibility of it. It's that she is England's; she is Europe's; she is London's; she is the West's, and as much as she clings to Bengal, there are too many things that keep her from becoming Indian. Her clothes and her maid, her house and her friends, but most of all it's her pale skin and green eyes, the long blonde hair that he sometimes catching himself reaching out to touch.

It's all of that and more, and Soma clenches his hands tight around a pillow and stares at the ceiling above his bed until his eyes cross with the pressure.

It can't be done, he tells himself, over and over and over. It can't be done. It cannot happen. Not ever. I cannot go down the same road as Danka. I cannot love an Englishwoman.

But when he goes out onto the balcony, the moon mocks him for a liar, and he pulls on his pauper clothes and goes and gets into a fight, because there's nothing else that can really drive his mind off of Elizabeth anymore.

Even under her assumed name, she can't quite escape the claws of society. It's not because of anyone suspecting who she truly is, either. Rather, it's the fact that she exists – one of the very few unescorted, young, pretty, and (assumed) single woman in British Bengal, where there are hundreds of equally young, single white officers discouraged from liaising with the "native sirens." Parties are their hunting grounds.

They're mostly Company parties, which means that Soma is almost never invited to attend, but the one time he does sticks out in his brain like a thorn on a rose. It makes him think of Danka, the sixteenth brother, and of Jamal and his whispered words – after all, one can only be so English – and that sticks in his throat and makes his head ache.

There are far more British and European women in India than there were in his father's time. That doesn't keep her from being surrounded, caught like a rat in a trap. Soma keeps an eye on her through his conversation with Major-General Matthews, who's muttering on about his book on the Battle of Plassey. Lizzy catches his eye over the head of one of the lieutenants – Soma thinks it's Farrow – and makes a face at him, and Soma's biting back a laugh when he hears a whispered voice behind him, soft and dark as a secret.

"Shameful."

He can't work out who said it, man, woman, young, old, but then there's another whisper, and this time he has to clench both hands into fists in order to keep himself from turning around. Agni sees him tense, and there's a brush of fingers across his shoulder blade, but Soma doesn't acknowledge it. There are only the words, pounding like blood through his brain.

"Heathen-loving whore."

She's not a whore. He wants to shout it until his throat burns. She's not a disgrace, she's good and kind and strong and better than any of you, but then another hand, puffy and old, lands on his shoulder, and when he looks up from the floor the Major-General is smiling at him, his eyes like poisoned honey.

"It won't do if you bark at them, lad. You'll just make things worse." He says it in Sanskrit, something that Soma hasn't heard in a very long time, and he has to let go of his anger in order to understand the words. "I'll deal with it, don't worry."

"You're sure?" asks Soma, and the Major-General snorts.

"The day I can't handle a pair of fusspots is the day I drown myself in the Bay of Bengal," says the Major-General with a snort, and behind Soma, Agni chuckles. "You'll want to go extract her from the wolves now, I expect."

Soma looks back at the pocket around Elizabeth. She isn't smiling, her mouth drawn down into a bit of a scowl as she looks very closely at Farrow. The man's waxing poetic about something, his hands flailing and fluttering about his face. After a moment, she smiles, sweet as a melon, and then says a single word that makes Farrow's hands drop down to his sides, shot down cold. She curtsies deliberately to the other officers, and then slips through the spaces between them without another word. He bites his tongue rather than smirk triumphantly at the crew. After all, it would only make things worse.

"I don't know," he says, and grins at the Major-General instead. "I think she has it under control."

And then, of course, it all falls apart.

The night of the monsoon has him out in the city for days. He comes back rarely, leaves Agni behind, and he doesn't know if he wants to kill something or have something kill this wretched sickness inside him, the one urging him to betray everything he knows to be right for a woman and a love that he cannot have. He drinks, and fights, and goes on hunts with some of the city boys that he now calls friends, and he generally acts like the most untutored ass that he can possibly concoct.

It's even worse after she leaves. Their friendship is gone, cracked through the seams, and he finds himself missing her—not as a woman, or as Elizabeth Middleford, but just as herself, Lizzy, the girl who has become (and this hits him with a pang) his best friend in the world. The one who throws vases at him when they fight about Ciel (because it had been a fight about Ciel, about Ciel's treatment of her, he remembers it with the same sharp clearness as a cut, because for the first time in his life he's furious at the boy he called his blood brother once upon a time) and the one who takes his hand when she's furious and the one who loves children and takes care of William Matthews with the same care and joy that another woman would only bestow on her own blessed boy. He misses Lizzy, the girl who loves elephants and sneaking through the Calcutta markets, the one who would never dare wear a sari despite how beautiful she would look in one. He misses her desperately, and he can't write to her, can't talk to her, can't hold her the way he wants to, because she's thousands of miles away in a country he dares not return to, and most likely in the arms of her fiancé, his best friend, and a man that he absolutely cannot hate.

So he hates himself instead, and Agni catches him at it one night, after he eats, the first night in weeks he hasn't gone out into the city in order to pummel his fury away. "Your majesty," says Agni, and the curious tone to his voice makes Soma look up at him, rather than pick at a bug bite on his elbow. He's picked up some terrible habits, down in Calcutta. "You haven't been well, lately."

It's not a question, which puts him right on his guard. Soma laughs. "What on earth are you talking about, Agni? I'm fine. I'm in perfect health." He waves a hand, flamboyantly. "Where did you get the idea that I wasn't feeling well?"

"Sir," Agni replies, and there it is, that soft demand. Don't play with me, my lord. "I am not blind. Don't pretend with me. Please." Soma stays quiet, and after a moment, Agni kneels beside him. "Your majesty, you saved my life. You are my god. I cannot sit idly by and watch you ruin your life without knowing the reason why."

Something in him breaks. Soma looks at Agni, and the words pour from his mouth. He never tells him the full truth, not really—he doesn't say the words that would doom him—but he says enough to make Agni's eyes widen and his servant sit back on his heels, as though this is the last possible thing he ever expected. He runs out of words faster than he thought he would, considering the weight that's been crushing him all these weeks. Finally, he sits silent, and he waits for Agni's judgment. The man is never long before delivering it.

"It is a problem," Agni admits. Soma snorts at the understatement. "But it is not wrong."

"I think about ripping them apart, Agni," says Soma, and his voice breaks. "I think about what it would be like if she'd stayed here, if she'd forgotten Ciel, and I oughtn't. They're engaged. He's—he's my best friend." And it's still true. One can have a best friend and a friend of the heart at the same time, he realizes. For someone with so little experience of friends, it's a very strange thing. "I shouldn't. I won't."

"Does she—" Agni shifts, uncomfortably. "Are you alone in this, my lord?"

He thinks of her, her face in the rain, the pain in her eyes. Don't. The way she'd looked at him, as though it had been the first time she'd ever seen him, and the way her lips had parted and her whole face had changed, into agony and joy. He closes his eyes. Walking away from her had been the only thing he could have chosen, the only thing he could have done, but regret burns in him like a cancer, a crab in his belly. "I don't know."

It's a lie, he thinks. Agni can hear it. There's a considerable length of silence before he speaks again. "There must be something to be done, your majesty."

"There's nothing that can be done," Soma shouts, and Agni goes abruptly silent. He leaps to his feet and sends a plate flying, and he wants to break something, to ruin something, but there's nothing in his room to destroy. Not anymore. "There is nowhere we can go, not in England, certainly not in Bengal. There's nowhere that this can happen, Agni, no way for it to happen, not really, and I won't doom either of us to that sort of half-life. As much as I—"

—love her. He snaps his mouth shut and refuses to say it, because every other time he's said it, no matter to who, it's burned him worse than an iron on his chest. Every other time it's come around to bite him, this mixture of heat and life and happiness and pain and tears and devastation, and he can't afford for it to happen again. He's not sure he can take it again.

Agni says nothing for a very long while. It's only when Soma has control again, what little of it he can wrest from the creature sitting on his shoulder, whispering hope and destruction in his ear, that he speaks. "Forgive me, your majesty, but I believe there is one thing you have forgotten in this matter."

Soma waits, and Agni collects the curry dishes, holding them in both his bandaged hands. Then he smiles. "You are not the only one who has the right to decide."

Agni leaves, then. Soma sits in the dark, and stares at the wall, and he wonders.

Weeks pass. He keeps working. He refuses to think about that night in the rain, or what Agni told him. He doesn't write to her. He does write to Ciel, once or twice, but he doesn't hear back and sometimes he wonders if those lying notes have gone astray. He feels older than he has ever done before, which he supposes makes sense. It's not like he's getting younger. Still, at twenty, almost twenty-one, it's a wretched thing to feel like an elder.

He leaves off playing about as Adan, though. There's no point in such games anymore. It doesn't take his mind off of his problems, and if he keeps coming home with a bloody lip and a black eye, someone is going to suspect something. Also, Agni will have an aneurysm.

When the morning of change dawns, he's more interested in going over trade agreements with the Company than thinking about England. Then, of course, Matthews brings in his mail, and everything he means to do flies out the window.

The letter is in heavy parchment, and has come a very long way. Soma studies it, settled at the top of his letter pile by Matthews, who looks at him with raised eyebrows and gestures forward. "All the way from London, your majesty. The courier said it was important."

He knows it's important. He recognizes the handwriting. That still doesn't make him want to open it. Soma looks up at his newly-hired liaison to the Company offices, and wonders if it's perfectly legal to beat the man over the head with the nearest chair. "Thank you, Al."

Matthews gives him another considering look, and then the corner of his mouth quirks up, and he leaves the room. He closes the door to the office very carefully behind him, as though emphasizing the click of the knob, the fact that Soma is now very much alone in this room. He reconsiders beating Matthews about the head, and decides on a shotgun instead. Much more bloody and satisfying. He uses a penknife to slit the wax seal, and he reads it, slowly, digesting it.

Soma,

Things will end soon. You probably won't understand what I mean, but I can't explain. You're just going to have to accept the idea in good grace, without tearing down to London and acting the fool in an attempt to know all and discover all. There's nothing to be discovered. There's only that single fact: that things will soon end, and when they do, it will be strange for all of those who remain.

I wondered once or twice whether or not I should come to Bengal and shoot you. It would take a fool not to realize there's been a change in her. She hides it quite well, but I catch her in the garden sometimes, and then she can't disguise herself any longer. I thought about it, but after due consideration, there's no point, not really. There will be more than enough strife as it is, with things the way they are.

By no means do I intend to restrict or trap anyone, or cause any blemishes to her happiness – hers, of all the people in the world, means the most to me, and if you are central to that, then I suppose shooting you in the throat would be beside the point. All that I ask is that you give me a year. Once you hear of the inevitable, give me one last year, another year to cling to her and to keep a place in her heart, even in absentia. Let me have my selfish way and hold on, at least for a short while longer.

Then, my friend, she truly does deserve to be happy.

It's signed with nothing but a simple C.

Soma looks at it, and then cancels all his appointments for the rest of the day, and goes for a walk on the riverbank. He stays away for hours, watching the sun set over the Hooghly, and when his shoes squelch in the mud he reaches down and takes them off. He feels stupid for even wearing them in the first place.

It's almost dark out when he looks out at the water, and shakes his head, and smiles.

"You always surprise me, old friend," he says to Ciel, and he turns back into the city. There's a year left, and if he's lucky, he'll be able to wait that long.

It's March when they both finally get to return to Bengal, and the streets are filled with flying powders, every shade in the world. He'd forgotten about Dol Jatra. The ship docks, and there are a thousand colors streaking through the air as the passengers wind their way down the plank. Some of the Englishmen wrinkle their noses; the woman from the dining hall sniffs and gives him a dark look before drawing her skirts close, mumbling about heathens. Behind him Agni stiffens, but neither of them speak. There's no point, after all. A tossed handful of crimson dust hits Agni's turban and spatters there like blood.

They have to stand aside and wait, but they don't have to wait long. Lizzy bolts down the gangplank in a long white dress, her hair struggling to escape from its pins, and darts straight into the color-streaked crowd, laughing like a child. Paula pauses at the edge, clinging to a pale coat, worry making her forehead wrinkle; she glances up at Agni for a half a second, and then looks away and calls out. Her voice is muffled by the shouts of sailors and the cheering of the crowd. "Miss Lizzy?"

Lizzy emerges, black and violet and gold staining her skirts, silver and red smearing her arms, and a spray of blue on her cheek. Her hands look like they've been dipped in distilled emeralds. She reaches out, half-smiling, brushing one against his cheek before pulling away. It leaves a smear of color on his skin.

She deserves to be happy.

He wishes they were someplace else, so he wouldn't have to hesitate about bending down and kissing her. As it is, it's still too close to the English world. He takes her wrist and peels her hand away, moves a bit closer to her, letting her slip through his fingers. There's only one thing he can think of to say.

"I love you," he says, and her eyes widen and her lips part as if she's about to speak. Then she smiles. There's not much more they can do, not out here, but for now, it's enough.

"I love you," she replies, and then she darts away.

They will figure the rest out later, he thinks, as he watches her. Right now, in this moment, nothing else matters. And no matter what, he won't let this end the way the world might want it to.

This is theirs, and no one else can touch it.

Soma steps into the crowd, lifts his head, and joins the joyful crush of celebration.

A/N:

So writing this took a much longer time than I thought it would. But it's up, Ant won't kill me, and we have more information about Soma's motives, too.

...yeah.

Thanks, loves~! I hope you enjoyed~