8/ The Story

The first time Ciel had read Peter Pan, he'd hated it. It was interest that had drawn him to the book—having missed the play when it first came out—and remembering that night he'd dropped in so unannounced at Arthur's house to find his friend Barrie over. He'd liked the man, he recalled; but there was something both sickeningly pat and incredibly sharp-eyed about the novel. It cut too deep. He'd laughed at the description of Peter Pan coming in the window, searching for his lost shadow, and wondered, a bit, at the broad caricatures of the Darling parents. But as he continued through the book, and noticed how very dark that fairyland of make-believe was, he'd begun to feel a creeping feeling, of something... not unlike familiarity. The narrator said that every child had a Neverland, and that was why it must be so familiar. Such a thing was nonsense, of course, and yet the familiarity remained. There was Peter Pan, an eternal child and lord of his domain, a figure both terrifying and pitiable (and strangely like Alois—there was a thought)—and then there was Hook; blue-eyed, black-haired, and ever haunted by his death; and there was something too like about them to be mere coincidence.

He had only read it the once, until Julie asked him to read it to her, one evening. She had vague memories of her own parents reading it to her; and, like Wendy, playing mother in Neverland, those memories grew fuzzier each year, until she was almost afraid to look at them too closely.

So he had begun: and, as he'd begun, caught in a bubble of stillness and invisibility that guarded them from Julie's roommates, sleeping all-unknowing, she had slowly crept closer to him, until she was leaning on his shoulder, following the words with her eyes and half-mouthing them, unconsciously.

So they read, a chapter every night, until they had gotten to the end. And Wendy had grown up: and Peter had not. And something about the way he always came back—to Wendy's daughter, and then her granddaughter, and then her great-granddaughter, had brought the weight of eternity crashing down again upon him, horribly so. When Barrie had written this, Ciel had never made a single deal. Now he had. And because he was not Peter Pan at all, he could never read the stories of himself with such uncaring wonder, because he had never forgotten any of it.

"What's wrong?" Julie said.

"I'm sorry?" Ciel said, and looked at her. She looked so young.

There was something so horribly apt about the feeling of Wendy's: as though she was too big for her own skin, and ashamed of it. She wasn't sorry about growing up, and yet… and yet...

"You didn't finish the last line."

"Oh." Ciel cleared his throat, and finished the book: "and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless." His voice was strong and steady. And when Julie leaned into his arms and closed her eyes, and fell asleep so easily, as though she didn't know perfectly well that he was going to kill her, he thought—I should have words with Barrie for this.

But then, of course, he couldn't. Barrie had been dead for some time.

He flipped back through the pages, while he felt her child's heart-beat, quick and fast, against his chest, and the smell of her soul, so pure and full of despair, and for a moment he thought—let me end it here and now. But he had made a promise to see her happy. What else could he do for her? What else but this little boon could he even grant, when his very presence made all things good wither and die?

(A long time ago—that is how all great stories start—he had visited his friend Arthur, and his friend Arthur had asked him why he'd felt the need to visit, seeing something calling out in that still-child's eyes. He had asked him why he'd never visited anyone else who had known him, and Ciel had brushed that aside as impossible. But was it impossible, after all? Or had he merely been afraid?

Lizzie had survived him, and he had never stopped loving her. She had always deserved something more than him. But perhaps, like Wendy, she would have appreciated a visit, something to see and speak to, once in a while…)

Lizzie was the only one who had survived him. It had not been so very long since James, after all: and he still could not look back on that contract without some kind of shudder. James, who had once had something in him that caught Ciel's pity, and Ciel had worked with such carefulness to blow that spark out.

Ciel remembered Claude, who had seemed so cold and so vile; it made him feel ill to think they might have anything in common. And yet that boredom he'd always spoke of… that helplessness in the face of time… he could understand how it could bring one to do terrible things. He was doing terrible things even now: and the worst part of all was that he did not even enjoy it.

That, of course, was what made it hell.

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