This fic was first published for the Black Butler forum in the Thursday Crack Ficlet Thread 3: "Kuroshitsuji characters making a love confession." -CaladriaHaru

"When It's All Over"

Lizzy and Ciel and sadness

"Ciel?"

He's standing at the window again, staring out into the night, thinking those thoughts that he never shares with me. He's drifting farther away, like a newspaper boat on a stormy sea: fragile, barely seaworthy, and disintegrating before my eyes.

"Ciel?" I say again quietly. I have to talk quietly now. When I get overly excited his brows crease and I can hear how unwanted the sound is in his ears. If I talk too loudly he might break into a million pieces and disappear on the wind. If only…if only I didn't know that he'd rather be doing that, shattering and disintegrating, then listen to me.

I touch his shoulder gently (so gently!) and peer up at his last beautiful eye. It's far away for a moment, considering something that gnaws at his soul and I fancy I can actually see it happening. He wants to leave, but he is waiting for something or someone to beckon him and I am powerless to stop it. If I could cry anymore at this understanding, I would, but I know it would unravel him so much faster. Maybe I only have one more day with him. Maybe not even that. I try to imagine everything that must happen without him, like the sun rising, and I can't. I just can't, and he knows it so well. He knows it.

"I'm sorry, Lizzy," he says blinking his eye and turning to me.

Is he feverish again? He looks pale. For the ten thousandth time I wish Sebastian was here. It's horrible to think that after his mysterious disappearance a year ago, and Ciel has broken things whenever one of us forgets and mentions his name. It's so wrong to wish for the person that Ciel seems to hate more than anyone in the universe, but Sebastian would know what to do. He could take care of Ciel so much better than I can now, and Ciel was never so forlorn when he was around. Tanaka is getting so old, but Ciel refuses to hire anyone new. I don't blame him for that. He and Sebastian had the kind of bond that made anyone who loved the Earl of Phantomhive just a little bit jealous.

"It's all right," I reassure him, because I have been reassuring him for a year now. Reassuring him that it is okay…the way he is. That he cannot push me away so easily when these dark moods come on him (so frequently now!) "I just wanted to see if you were coming to bed."

He seems to see me for the first time. As he glances down at the floor I can almost feel his shame that he was so far away just now. I want to tell him it's okay, that if it means he will stay with me for even one day more I don't mind the soft breath of his regret. That he could even shout at me and I would be fine if only…if only he would talk to me.

He raises his hand, the low lamplight turning his blue ring into a white dwarf, slowly cooling and condensing into a black hole to suck him away before my eyes. His touch on my cheek makes me want to cry, but I hold it in so tightly. I barely restrain myself from grabbing that hand and begging him…

"You should be in bed right now. It's not good for a woman in your…condition."

He does look worried a little, which almost makes things worse. He can't say "for a woman bearing my child". That would be too much. I think he fears the baby more than anything else because he can't see his future in this child's life, and that makes my heart shudder. He's keeping himself detached, distant, viewing everything that happens with emptiness.

I only wanted to see him smile. I hope, I pray, that he can make it to see this little life he began with me. A little girl would be so nice! I'd dress her in frilly pink dresses and when she is 4-years-old I can see her running to him, arms outstretched, and his smile for his girl. That smile! Or maybe a little boy in a suit cut like his father's, all blue and tweed and done up with black buttons. What a pair they would make in London! My little one holding Ciel's hand, Ciel with his walking stick, beaming with pride at the passersby who would cast adoring looks. And I would watch them all, that little place in my heart alive again.

"It's perfectly all right," I assure him, "I just had a long bath. Paula put some salts in. Do I smell nice?" I ask shyly, very carefully taking that hand on my cheek in both of mine, to hold him, to keep him near.

He considers me for a moment with that monochromatic gaze that I haven't been able to fathom since we were so young. I think he is going to turn away, which would kill me a little inside, but he doesn't. He brings his lovely face to the top of my head and I experience a moment of sheer bliss as I feel his nose there, squeeze the happiness down deep into the pillowcase of my heart as he brings his cheek to mine.

"It's lovely, Lizzy. Like you."

My cheeks turn to cinnamon, all pink and sweet and warmth. One part knows that he only says these things because it's what I want to hear, but the rest of me turns away from the ugly understanding and clings, whimpering, to those words anyway. And he is being so gentle right now. So kind.

It terrifies me. He knows he is leaving me. I hate myself for wanting his gentleness when his annoyance would be the better representation of security.

Unbidden, the memory of our wedding night floats back to me.

I was so nervous, and I trembled and wilted when he turned to me.

"Elizabeth," he said, his face an unreadable mask in the weak candlelight from the candelabra on the bedside stand. "There are two things you need to clearly understand before we go through with this."

He said "go through with this" as if it was a crucible of pain, and looking back, I see that it was. But not for him.

I couldn't speak. There was a thick ball of lead in my stomach. I clutched the front of my white gown and said nothing in the long moment that passed. I think he was waiting for me to stop him, to keep him from going on, to release him from the sweet agony of our marriage vows. But I said nothing, and he had to go on.

"This is the first thing," he said, gravity in his voice, as if he had steeled himself for this moment over the full course of his 17 years alive. I held my breath as he reached up and untied the eye patch that had concealed the whole of him from me for seven long years.

My hands flew to my mouth and I know I cried out into my gloves. The tears on my cheek, overflowing to course down to the bunch of lace at my throat, seemed to mock what I had to see there.

The flesh around where his right eye used to be was swollen, almost as if the wound was still fresh, still aching, even though it had been in careful darkness for years. It was horrible. It was grotesque. I felt my stomach convulse. Surely…surely he had not lived with this livid hurt alone for so long! Surely it had to have been a horrible nightmare!

I think he thought I would faint at the sight of his deformity. It was a painful, disgusting mess, and it broke my heart into a hundred pieces, but I wanted to face it bravely, to show him that I could be very strong for him. That I had taken a vow to be strong for him.

"Oh, Ciel!" I reached out for him, to embrace him because it was the only thing I knew to do, but he lifted a hand to stop me.

"This is proof of an agreement I made to someone, Elizabeth," a grave-like chasm was opening between us where there had once been a tentative bridge. "One day I will have to leave, and I won't be coming back."

"What?" I whispered.

"And when I leave, that will be that, Lizzy. I can't say anymore than this."

Why, Ciel? Why why why? Why give me this morsel of happiness, this lovely ring and this dress and this place in your home if you were going to use that blue eye to go deep into my core and destroy everything there?

Why? Because I wanted it. He knew I wanted it. I had been a child, but he wasn't going to let me be a child anymore. If I wanted to step into his world, then I had to be able to find my way through his pain and darkness or I would never find his heart. But it was hidden in a maze, and I was never good enough or strong enough to really find my way to it. He knew that too.

"Do you understand me, Lizzy?" he asked, and this time his gaze wasn't quite so fierce. I wanted to kiss him. I would have pressed my lips to his, to his poor battered face, to his beloved ring. At that moment I thought I was strong enough to brave hell for him, and I truly would have…I would have, if he had given me the chance.

"Ciel, oh, Ciel! I love you so much!"

And then he did let me into his arms and I cried into his black coat with the white rose on his lapel. His hands were careful with the little pearl buttons running down my back that closed me up in that shroud of white.

"I know, Lizzy," he sighed mournfully for me, and I heard it there. The hurt. He leaned to my ear and I held my breath for those words I had waited for all of my life and then felt the light in me go out in one single breath:

"I love you, Lizzy…but I am not in love with you…"

For the last year I have watched him fade.

It isn't another woman. Ciel has been very faithful to me, to Finny and Bard and Mey-Rin and Tanaka. Sebastian had been gone for a couple of weeks before Ciel asked Mama and Papa for my hand. I feared Ciel had proposed to me to fill some sort of empty space in his life, but looking back now, I was really a fool to think that I could have taken that butler's place. The eyeless hole that had bored its way into my soul the night of our wedding was the dark pit that threatened us daily since, and it was pulling him away and down to some hell he would never fully share.

"One day I will have to leave, and I won't be coming back."

"Come to bed now, please, Ciel?" I take his hand and give a tentative tug. One more night, please, Ciel? One more night before you go to the arms of that blackness to never return. One more night to fool myself into imagining there could have been an eternity with your smile. Just one more, I'm begging you!

"Of course, Lizzy. I'll be in soon. I'm expecting someone. There's no need to wait up."

He tilts my head and sees the tears there. He kisses me so softly I swear there is nothing left of him but his soul.

I leave him by the window. I'm strong as I go. If he looks back he must see that I am strong, truly strong…for the first and last time.

FIN