"Where are you taking him?" Ciel asks. Sebastian is standing up, cradling the body close, and is walking—past the silent dead; past Tanaka, crumpled to the ground, and the jumbled, soot-stained rubble, the remains of the blast which had taken out the rest of Undertaker's troops, and Bard with it.
He doesn't think Sebastian will answer, but after an eternally long moment, he speaks.
"Home."
Finny drives the carriage, Mey-Rin beside him, and neither Ciel nor Sebastian mention the sound of weeping that comes from that seat.
Inside the carriage, Sebastian sits with the body still held to him, and he doesn't look away; doesn't any more acknowledge Ciel in the carriage; and Ciel himself cannot speak. He wants fervently to tell the demon to release his brother, but he knows it would be useless.
He remembers the way his brother had gazed up at the demon as he died; the damned trust—no, acceptance—in his face and voice; he hadn't even spared a thought for Ciel beside him, his own brother. Sebastian had mattered more to him than even his family—throughout their whole battle, and at its end.
Ciel feels that white-hot, shaking anger fill him, anger at his brother, anger at the demon, and under that is terror, terror and exhaustion. He can hardly stomach to watch the demon and yet he cannot look away; finds himself drinking greedily in the tenderness of his cradled arms and the care in his expression.
It's not right.
That should have been his place, his and no one else's. Even in his brother's death, his twin still mocks him.
Ciel wants to touch his brother's hand, but he cannot. In the seat opposite, he only curls up, and falls into a daze; half-awake, half-asleep, aware of the rattling jolts of the carriage, of the rough uneven breaths of the demon, of the emptiness. His brother's body holds no soul, and the absence makes his body seem unreal.
He has tried not to notice, has tried to play the part of human to perfection, but the difference is so profound and striking that he cannot bear to dissemble about it now. He has grown used to the feel of his brother's soul, the soft reminder of his life, that which his other half had so easily kept, even as he bargained it away. Ciel had dreamed, in confused fashion, of holding that spark closer, bringing it within, through his skin and into the spaces of his heart so they would never be parted again. He had always woken with horror and anger from those dreams, and it had been so easy to treat Undertaker disdainfully then, for making him into a monster.
Now he cannot care if it makes him a monster, if only he could feel that soul in the other seat, instead of only emptiness and void.
/
In the manor, Sebastian takes the stairs, still holding the young master, and goes to his room. He lays the young master on the bed, as though he were sleeping, but the image is ruined by the blood and entrails, the damage to his new suit. Sebastian wants to find a better suit, an unstained one, something that will flatter the boy instead of making him seem so small, but the space between bed and wardrobe seems cavernous, and he cannot let go of the body. He fears that if he lets go, it will disappear—or perhaps he will, drawn inexorably back into the depths of hell.
He has never been able to remain on earth without a working contract before.
If he turns his back, even for a moment, he will never see the child again, that is clear enough; that is the only clear thing in the suddenly clouded world. He cannot let go of him. The thought fills him with terror.
Terror has been a stranger to him, but in this last year it had introduced itself, cordially, and then remained, though it was nothing but unwelcome. Now it has cast out every other feeling, every consideration of aesthetics; he is undone.
Sebastian crawls onto the bed beside the body and holds on. He will stay here because he cannot do anything else.
It is the only thing to do.
/
Even in winter, there is only so long before a decaying body becomes rank.
Ciel's anger and bitterness come to a head one morning as he crashes his goblet onto the table with a dull thud that makes the blood slop over the side. At the edge of the room, Mey-Rin hovers uneasily, wringing her hands. It is the sort of improper behaviour that Ciel ought to chide the servant for, but he cannot bring himself to. All the other times he has tried merely made her say, shakingly, "of course, sir," but did not stop her nervousness, or the tears that would ofttimes slip from beneath her glasses.
"And what of Sebastian?" he asks, cuttingly, into the silence.
Mey-Rin jumps. "I'm sorry, sir?" she says, in a shaking voice.
"Has he moved?" Ciel says.
"No, sir."
Of course he hasn't. It would have been foolish to presume that somehow, between his descent to the dining room this morning and the serving of breakfast, the former butler would have decided to leave the room and the body he has not left for days. The smell had followed Ciel down the hall. He knows what corpses smell like, look like, how they behave as they become less and less like humans and more and more like only things. He has had much experience with it, being brought up as he has been, among them. He is surprised to find that he's gained a sensibility, that of all the things to offend him it is that Sebastian has not bothered to prepare the body and bury him properly. It would have been the respectful thing to do.
Undertaker would have understood.
Undertaker's corpse is probably still lying on the hill; unless the reapers have taken him to give him whatever rites they give their own.
He gets up, drains the rest of his glass—he has no intention of fainting of exhaustion, as he is fairly certain none of the servants would even attempt to revive him—and stalks out of the room, up the stairs.
He flings open the door to his brother's bedroom, steps inside, looking disdainfully down at the demon lying there, and says harshly, "get up, Sebastian. I've had enough of you."
With effort, the demon opens his eyes, looks from Ciel to the body in something like confusion, before the memory visibly crashes over him. He turns away, but Ciel steps forward.
"I said, get up. This is an order. You're going to make yourself presentable, and you're going to talk to the other servants, and you are going to come back here only when I say so. Do you understand me?"
Sebastian makes a dry sound, like a cough and a laugh, but it has no humor in it. "I understand you, Phantomhive," he says. "But perhaps you forget, I don't serve you and I never will. Leave."
Ciel slaps him. His fury is boiling over—at Sebastian's insolence and selfishness, and Sebastian's very presence, when he ought to have disappeared the moment the soul was no longer his to consume.
Sebastian blinks in surprise.
"Get out or I will kill you myself," Ciel says, and pulls out the small scythe that had killed his brother, and which he had taken from the ground where it had fallen, knowing it was barely worth keeping, but knowing that the weapon would be his regardless.
Sebastian stares, with slight disinterest, that turns suddenly to bitterness. "You dare to bring that here," he says dully.
"I dare," Ciel says. He pushes the blade under Sebastian's chin, watches the way the demon's eyes follow it. "Now, are you going to let me kill you so pathetically, or are you going to obey me?"
"What do you mean to do with him," Sebastian says in a hoarse whisper.
"Bury him," Ciel says. "Properly."
At last, Sebastian nods. He gets up, slow and careful, as Ciel brings back the blade, and leaves the room with heavy steps.
Then Ciel is alone with his brother's body for the first time.
He sits down.
"You continually abandon me," he says. First he lived, abandoning Ciel to death; and now he has died, abandoning Ciel to life—or a simulacrum of it. His mouth twists, and he can hear the nasty pettiness in his own voice. "That was always what you wanted most, wasn't it? To get away from us all. Even me, when I had done nothing but love you. Did your own ambitions matter so much to you that you would choose them over family?"
He closes his eyes, and rubs a hand across his brow. "Dearest brother, what can I do now that you are gone? I have nothing left…" his voice cracks, and if he were still able to cry, he think he might feel tears gathering in his eyes; but he has not cried since his death, and he feels self-loathing at his own broken response.
He reaches to the bell-pull, and when Finny runs up a moment later, staring in sick horror at the body, Ciel is already standing, and the death-scythe is hidden away in his jacket once again.
"Run a bath, would you, Finnian?" Ciel says, and at last the gardener tears his eyes from the body to stare stupidly at Ciel. Ciel sighs. "I said," he says slowly, "run, a, bath."
Finny swallows. "Yes, sir," he says at last, in a very small voice. He is crying now, and Ciel resents the boy more than ever. But he says nothing as Finny pulls out the tub and brings up buckets of water.
Ciel lays his brother's body on the floor beside the tub while he takes off the old clothes, and carefully washes him. Finny hovers in the doorway until Ciel sends him off in search of what is needed.
It is easy, now, to move the body, for the rigour mortis has already ceased. Undertaker's shop, though abandoned, has not been touched, and when Finny returns with the cases of tools and jars of formaldehyde Ciel is waiting; he injects the artery to begin embalming, massaging the body and paying close attention to the progress of the chemicals through the veins. He is so focused on his task that it takes him some time to notice Finny standing sickly in the doorway; Ciel looks up and says, quietly, "this will take some time, Finnian, there's no need to stay."
Finny nods quickly, looking greenish, before backing out the door and closing it behind him.
It will take some time, Ciel knows—and he has to pause frequently and remind himself of the proper order; he's viewed this but never prepared a body himself.
When at last the jars nearby are filled with the dark liquid, and he has suctioned everything he can from the hole the death scythe has made, and filled the body with formaldehyde, he takes a break, feeling dizzy. He sips distractedly from one of the jars of blood—his brother was, after all, a Sirius, and he knows it will not make him sick. At last he returns to touch up the body, injecting a few more places here and there by hand. He poses his brother's eyes closed and sews his mouth into a careful line, just like he's having a nice rest, yes, he can almost hear the ghost of Undertaker's voice behind him say. Ciel takes a shaky breath and says quietly, "if you hadn't killed him, I wouldn't have to do this…"
He understands why Undertaker had. He remembers that moment when his own soul was taken—and nothing after that, until a long time later, when he was reborn in the land of the dead. He understands that that was the fate Undertaker wanted to save his brother from, and yet—he hadn't been dead, he had been alive, and could have been for a long time. Ciel can't agree with the idea that his brother should have died sooner, just to save the fate of his soul.
He stitches up the wound the death-scythe has left, as well as he is able, and when that is done he cleans and puts away every tool back into its battered case. It has taken a long time—he has worked through one whole night and into the next day, and in the morning he picks out one of his brother's suits and carefully dresses him, ringing the bell once more so that Finny can bring the coffin.
It is his own coffin, the one made specifically to their measurements. Ciel drinks again from the jar of his brother's blood, but he is still trembling with exhaustion.
Sebastian brings in armfuls of white roses, which he sets carefully around the body, and then he, Ciel, Finny and Mey-Rin have a wake.
He wishes they had thought to bring Tanaka; but the hill is far, far away now. Perhaps, Ciel thinks, he would understand that none of them had thought of it; not because they didn't care, but because thinking had been impossible.
Though there are only four of them, the order of the line still holds some battles; at last, Ciel stands to his brother's right, Sebastian to his left, with the other two behind him, though Ciel has to clench his fists to keep from spitting that Sebastian isn't family and never was. After, they carry the coffin—Sebastian, and Finnian, who are easily able to keep it aloft; and before them goes Ciel, and behind them goes Mey-Rin, and they walk to the family grave-yard, where the empty plot beside their parents with his brother's name on it has been re-opened, and where he is interred.
Ciel has kept back a lock of his brother's hair, as has Sebastian; the demon has already made his into a locket shaped into the star that was their contract. Ciel keeps his in his pocket, and touches it fitfully, unsure of what he will do with it, not ready to encase it under glass.
.
.
.