11/ fear
(And the seventh drop fell.)
/
People spoke of overcoming fear; of defeating it. As though it were a foe that could be vanquished and then lie dead. As a child Ciel had been frightened of everything, and it would have surprised most people, who were not his parents, to know. After all—how sunny in aspect he had been! How gregarious! But he had been frightened of strangers and the dark; his dog Sebastian; running until he couldn't breathe, and dying; he had been afraid of Frances's strength and Diedritch's loud voice and his father's title. The list of everything Ciel had been afraid of encompassed so much of his world that he learned very soon there would be no overcoming it and no defeating it. Instead, he learned to go through it.
He would talk to strangers they passed on the road; he would stay up late in bed, without a single candle; he would play with Sebastian and run through the yard when the grown-ups were busy socializing; when he came close to death—three times? Four? He lost count how many times he'd fallen so sick—he kept lists of everything he didn't regret, and would stare unwavering into the possibility of nothingness.
He had practiced fencing with Frances, took note of what it felt like to lose, and mastered it. He had stood close to Dietrich when he spoke in his booming voice; and prepared, in every way he could think of, to become the Watchdog of the Queen.
That was before.
The truth was, he didn't become a different person after. He just had more to go through.
Being touched by strangers would sicken him; and more than once he had fallen into a fit. Spending time with Lizzie would make him ill with fear, thinking always if it had been her in my place, and—if she gets too close. It still could be.
Walking through the halls of his mansion, unchanged and untouched by fire, he would imagine his parents around every corner, and the room where he had found their bodies sewn together in the flames—though the exact image escaped him until much later—made him tremble until he sometimes feared he would once again lose his breath.
And he went through it.
In increments, and not without the occasional stumble.
He still ordered Sebastian to his bedside to assure himself he would be safe. He still avoided people as much as he possibly could.
And he found servants who would push those rigid boundaries—causing trouble and screaming in the halls until the sight and sound no longer caused his pulse to skyrocket; pressing him close in hugs when they worried he wasn't all right; chattering on and on inanely (and all, intensely loyal).
All but Sebastian.
Sebastian, you see, wanted something. And though Ciel had every intention of giving it to him eventually, he did not labour under the illusion that Sebastian cared for him in any way other than that.
/
In the hall leading to Angela, the walls warp strangely and the screaming souls, like faces, appear from the blackness, with staring eyes and piercing shrieks. He presses his hands close to his ears and runs, as fast as he can. Not over, but through.
/
Not over, but through.
When Baron Kelvin created a horrible imitation of the cult. When he found Angela, and the Queen, to be the culprits.
When he thought Sebastian had killed his parents. When it turned out to be Claude. When he fought the very essence of himself from Alois's grasp. When he died, again, and then faced a new and bleaker world, where his first breath was laced with blood from the hole Sebastian had punched in his middle; in the underwater dimness. Without a soul.
The only fear he had never been able to walk through, was the fear of making his way through the rest of time alone; without Sebastian. The fear that Sebastian would grow tired of him at last; the fear that the bond between them, that he clutched at so fiercely, would slip from his nerveless fingers at last.
And yet Ciel knew quite well that turning away from fear, ignoring it, curbing your life carefully to avoid it, was worse than useless. For it would never truly go away, but always be lurking, like a shadow, behind you.
How much better to turn squarely to face the dark!
.
.
.