Warning; this mentions an attempted rape, it gets stopped but proceed with caution.
Chapter eleven
Elizabeth looked at the girl lying in the hospital bed and swallowed. This was it, her first attempt to collect a soul. Grell read the details of the girl's life and death from the To-Die List, Elizabeth prepared herself to end the girls suffering. Doing so was harder than she would have thought; the girl was only a year older than she was, just over a year older than the age Lizzy was when she died. At least she had chosen death; this girl was just unlucky enough to pick up an illness.
She felt Grell put hand on her shoulder in encouragement. Taking a deep breath she plunged her temporary scythe into the girl's chest and began to watch the records.
At first it had been just the usual, the things Lizzy had gotten used to seeing in Cinematic Records. She watched about the girl's parents, her older brother, attending a public school for a few years before leaving in order to get a job in order to help support her family, working in a shoe shop as an assistant. Lizzy watched as, when the girl turned twelve, the parents had started looking for a suitable man for her to marry, watched her protest slightly that she wanted love and not just to be sold off to the highest bidder. Then the records had something different Elizabeth started for feel sick.
The girl, Sarah, had been late leaving work and it was dark by the time she started walking home, she couldn't afford a carriage. After about a block she had become aware of two shadows following her, and they were catching up.
Elizabeth tried to turn away when the girl had started to run, only to be stopped by Grell's voice in her ear'.
'Don't look away; as reapers it is our job to watch their lives to the end, it is our responsibility to give their souls the respect of a proper judging.'
Elizabeth wanted to argue that watching this happen to a person wasn't respectful, but she headed her mentor's words.
She watched as the two men finally caught up to the girl and dragged her into an alley, watched as they threw her to the ground and slapped her face. She felt her stomach rebelling when they started to tear at her cloths and hike up her skirt, she really just wanted to shut her eyes and block her ears as the girl screamed for help.
And then there was a gun shot.
The man who had been about to take her fell to the ground with a whole in his head dribbling blood. There was the sound of a gun being cocked, another shot, and the man that had been holding her down joined his friend on the ground.
Sarah looked round in no small amount of shock, horror on her face at the death of the two men and the knowledge of what had been about to happen to her. And then a person was crouching next to her, helping her stand and offering her a jacket to cover her ruined dress, and Elizabeth's own face fell in shock as she recognised him.
Sebastian Michealis, her husband's demon butler.
It was then that her husband himself walked into the alley from the street opening, smoking gun still in his hand. Ciel looked at the dead men with a sneer.
'Robert and James Whitten, hired muscle and drug traffickers for the Ferro Family, recently suspected of raping and murdering eighteen girls in the last nine months. Their kind makes me sick.' Ciel seemed to have forgotten about the girl standing next to his butler, Sarah looked as if she was going to faint. Suddenly he looked up with a surprisingly relaxed expression on his face.
'Well, that takes care of that. Come, Sebastian, I'm tired and need a bath but I cannot do that until we get her home safely. We can give her a lift in our carriage.' Sarah was in shock and only vaguely aware of the man next to her, Sebastian, asking for her address and helping her to the carriage where she was sat opposite to the boy sho looked two years younger than her as he inspected his gun and emptied the remaining bullets, only two were missing. The ride passed in a daze before she was standing in front of her own door, jacket still on, as the carriage continued on.
Elizabeth was only vaguely aware of the rest of the events, of the girl's parents panicking and a doctor being called who confirmed that she hadn't been violated. Only dimly registration the gratitude to her saviours that permeated the remaining few years of her life, the fact that they were the only reason she could were white to her wedding, or have a wedding at all.
Sarah's records played on her mind long after she had cut them short, they repeated over and over again after she had handed in the soul. Not even Grell could pull her out of the haze that she was now in.
"I don't think you realise just how blood stained your husband was." No, she hadn't. She thought she had, even after that conversation she still had thought she understood that her husband had killed. Now she realised just how wrong she was.
"He absorbed the spatters from everywhere he went." She thought she had understood that one as well, had thought she knew what being the Guard Dog had entitled as it kept the two worlds separate, but she hadn't had a clue. She could never have guessed that there were people he had save, directly or indirectly, while she was curled up in bed sleeping, or waiting patiently for him.
After her talk with Grell she had thought she knew it all, thought she had the pieces to understand. She was foolish enough to think that what Grell had said was all there was to it, that it only confirmed the image she had had already with Sebastian as nothing more than a slightly clearer dot. She had truly believed that what she knew was all there was to it.
And now she was horrified, because she had just realised just how wrong she had been.
She had known Ciel his entire life, she had grown up with him and planned there whole lives together, and now she had just come to a gutting realisation.
She had absolutely no idea who she had married.
