Then it was done, and Ciel Phantomhive stared back at Hannah with a look ageless and sad. Yes—she knew that look. She had felt it herself for so long, without knowing what it was.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
He pulled away, then, and his servants rushed toward him, the three hovering about uncertainly before he stumbled. In the rush to catch him at once, they all missed, and when they had picked themselves out of their awkward tumble the child was kneeling on the ground, his hand hovering at his black eyepatch. He breathed harshly.
"Where is Sebastian," he said at last, looking up, through the gloom.
/
(before)
When the light had stopped blinding him, Ciel found himself blinking at the edge of a high mountain. It was part of a whole range of mountains that rolled off into the distance, blue at the tips, where it was covered with mist and clouds, and below that, a brilliant, dazzling green, like growing things, wild after a rain. Grass and trees sloped their way down to a clear river, smooth and meandering icy-clear through the valley below. It was late afternoon, and the golden light of that last shining moment before darkness falls was gilding the edge of every leaf and painting a rich, intangible music over the stillness.
The angel was standing beside him, looking over it with a contemplative face.
Ciel realized, with a sudden surprise, that he could move his own body, that Alois did not seem to be here with him at all. But he wasted no time on relief before he was turning to the angel, a stony look in his eyes.
"I'll have to insist you take me back," he said. "I am not interested in what your kind offers."
"I am sorry about your experience with Ash Landers," the angel said; only when it said his name it seemed, also, to be saying Angela, and to be saying some other name, too, that wove itself between those two words, beautiful and yet discordantly broken. "But I am not here to give you the same opportunity."
"I don't care what opportunity you're here to give me," Ciel said vehemently, "I don't want it."
"Really?" the angel said, turning to him, its lavender eyes piercing. "It's not very often that we interfere in the affairs of mortals, these days. I would not have come to you, at all, if I had not been called by a heart that cared about you, and a pen."
A pen? Ciel thought. What is it going on about? "I don't know why you came," he said, less shortly, trying very hard to be civil, "but you really needn't have bothered. I don't want your help."
"So I can see," the angel replied, and looked back out over the valley. It didn't say anything else, and it did not move. The sunlight changed, imperceptibly, as Ciel stood there and watched; the reddish-purple hues of sunset dancing their way into the air. Scarlet and vermillion, and that spot of gold, still shining; other colors, too numerous to name, dancing on the undersides of the clouds.
"Why didn't you come for me then?" he asked at last, in a hoarse whisper of a voice. He closed his eyes, and remembered, with clear despair, those days, when he had wished for nothing else but to be free… and then to die. It had not happened, and those wishes had changed, to a wish for revenge, and to kill, and to hurt. He had prayed so many times, and those prayers had not been answered. He had looked for angels, and he had found only darkness. And to darkness, he had given his heart.
"Because we could not," the angel said.
"I called!" Ciel screamed. It was a small sound, in that endless, open space, but it trembled with rage and unshed tears. "I called so much! I never did anything but call to you, and you never came… not once…" He fell to his knees in the grass and screamed again, the sound tearing itself from his throat. It was a horrible, wounded sound, and it leaped from someplace deeper than his mouth, from someplace deep in his chest where it seemed to have been waiting, clawing at his insides for years.
The scream went on, and on, and finally, he ran out of breath, and it ended.
He felt better, he realized. Better than he had felt in some time. Stronger. The air was sweet and clear and warm, and his limbs were sturdy. For a moment, he wondered where he was, what place the angel had actually taken him too.
Is this place on earth? Or is it… somewhere else?
(He did not want to wonder if it was heaven. He had turned his back on that long ago.)
"The option I will give you you is this," the angel said, and when Ciel looked back at it, he realized that it had sat down, to face him. The white robes that it wore seemed to catch the colors of the sunset as though it was made from it, and it seemed more substantial than anything he had ever seen before, its very there-ness hurting his eyes. "Think on it carefully. You will not get another."
Ciel scoffed, weakly, in the back of his throat.
"I will fix what has been done to your memories. I will free your soul from the soul of Alois Trancy. But, before I do so, you will break the contract that ties you to the demon that calls himself Sebastian Michaelis. Your soul will forevermore be protected, unable to be consumed by any demon, but what you do with that protection will be up to you alone. Whatever the span of your natural life, your own choices will determine where you will go when you die. This is the most I can offer you."
Ciel swallowed. "And if… I say no?"
"I will return you now."
"And I will never get my memories back," Ciel says. "And you will not free me from Alois."
"Yes."
"It's not a choice," Ciel said. "It's not a choice at all." His throat was so dry, he could hardly speak.
"Choices are rarely equal," the angel replied. "Your choice to sell your soul in the first place was driven by desperation; freedom of the body, or an unending torture. That is how you conceived of it then."
"That's what it was," Ciel said.
"Everything worldly has an end," the angel said.
"That must be easy to remember, for you," Ciel said bitterly.
"No," the angel said, quiet. "Not so easy, even for us."
The breeze, that moved so gently over the mountains, carried a hint of night. The shadows had blued over every shard of grass, and the burning embers of the sun flickered beneath the gloaming.
"I made a promise," Ciel said. "A devil he may be, but Sebastian has always kept his promises to me, and I wouldn't break mine in return."
"I know," the angel said.
"But… if I refuse your offer, he still won't be able to have me. I'll be stuck in an unlivable life," Ciel said. He wished he knew what Sebastian would rather have him do, now. He'd said he'd seen something in the contract other than Ciel's soul, and yet the soul was what it came down to. Sebastian would not be satisfied with an endless deferment, and neither would Ciel.
Ciel realized, suddenly, that consideration toward Sebastian would not tip the scales. Either way something would be lost. But… with what decision could Ciel live?
If only I can apologize to him, Ciel thought...
He closed his eyes.
/
(Now)
The darkness was entire. The muck beneath his knees slid around, and his fingers, clutching against the dirt, were covered with mud, mud that splattered its way up the elbows of his sleeves while rain slid down the shell of his ear, under the silken fabric of his eyepatch.
As if from an endless distance, he heard the other servants talking: "He was just here!" "Where did he go?" "If only we had a blasted light," "Did he fall down? He was injured, wasn't he?"
His hand scrabbled fruitlessly at the the patch, as he shivered and tried to speak, his breath scraping its way inside him.
He knew, even before he pulled it off.
Sebastian wasn't there.
His eyepatch came away in his hand, fluttering to the drowned earth, and his eyes opened, two blue eyes as brilliant and clear as a cloudless sky, seeing only the darkness of the garden, the indistinct figures of his servants that blurred their way drunkenly around him. "He's gone…," he tried to explain. "He's gone… because I broke…"
His words trailed off into a long and rattling cough that shook every bone until he could no longer even sit. And then the darkness folded in from every side, like a muffled, grey smear, wiping away even the rain.
.
.
.