That same evening, Sebastian composed two letters. The first was to the Midfords at their Oxford address, informing them that yes, Ciel would join them within a week's time to observe the Weston cricket match, and to thank them for the invitation. The second was a formal request (more of a command) to Miss Nina Hopkins that she clear her schedule for an immediate fitting with Master Ciel Phantomhive. Indeed, the letter stated, Sebastian remembered their original appointment in April, scheduled just before the social season was to begin; however, Ciel would be visiting Oxford soon for the first cricket match of the college season and it would do him no good to show up in last year's fashion. Desperate times called for desperate measures – and indeed Ciel was in desperate need of measurements.
Ciel was at an odd stage of growth, where he no longer possessed any baby fat, except in his face, but he had not started developing an adult musculature either. His arms and legs were growing longer while his torso stayed about the same size, giving him a rather coltish look. Fortunately it meant that Ciel still fit into his clothes, though they were a little short in the wrist and ankle, and that certainly wouldn't do for an aristocrat of his stature.
The concept of physical growth was another Sebastian was not born knowing. As a demon, he'd had years to master a number of forms. When a contract ended and another began, there was no awkwardness in which he took to his next guise, adorning wings or claws or hooves as if they were mere accessories. Humans had enough trouble navigating their body's natural changes, and those were gradual. Sebastian had witnessed this with contracts in the process of aging. Some fretted about losing their hair and their shapeliness much more than they did about losing their lives. Others peacefully accepted that they had to say farewell to youthful beauty and easy movement.
Sebastian had watched numerous humans fade out of the prime of their lives. He hadn't spent much time observing humans who had yet to enter it. And for all the burden that came with Ciel's indecipherable attitudes, watching the boy pilot his growing body was an entertaining bonus.
Thus far, most of Ciel's physical changes had been rather gradual, so gradual that the boy did not really pay them any mind until the telltale moment that they posed a use or an embarrassment. Tripping had become a much more common occurrence, for instance, what with those legs stretching for new lengths. Watching Ciel trip had become the highlight of Sebastian's career. It wasn't to say he was happy to see his charge hurt – the young master only stumbled without falling – but to watch that stoic frown flinch into a look of utter dread was nothing if not hilarious. And then the blushing mortification that followed… Sebastian was always scolded for snickering, but it could not possibly be withheld.
Ciel's increased height, meager as it still was, brought with it benefits nonetheless. As someone who rarely had to reach up high or climb over obstacles, Ciel discovered these benefits in a very roundabout way: in the bath.
The bathtub was a strange, subtle, unspoken little fiend in the boy's world. This was due to its length and its finish. The sides of the tub were a very slippery porcelain, kept polished by none other than Sebastian himself. The slipperiness was merely a side effect of keeping them clean, which posed an unintended problem for Ciel. One could not lean against the tub's walls without slowly sliding deeper into the water. This gave the tub's user about two minutes of relaxing bliss before they discovered their lips were nearly submerged. Then they would have to go through the troublesome process of pushing their body back into a proper seated position – or at least, this was so if one's feet could not reach the opposite end of the tub, keeping them suitably propped-up.
Ciel's feet had long been unable to touch the other side, and so he could not lounge in the bath, an issue of such mild importance that the boy forgot it existed until faced with it each evening. Sebastian would be washing the young master's hair when he would begin to feel the scalp slowly sinking away from his hands, and then there'd be a little snort of frustration as Ciel nudged his posture higher. The fight for stability was a never-ending one. The thin veil of water between skin and porcelain dissuaded any hope for traction. Ciel was eventually forced to sit on his feet just to stop slip-sliding around like an ice cube in a bowl.
And then the magical evening came when Ciel discovered he could reach his legs out just far enough that his tiptoes finally kissed the other side of the tub. Slick porcelain walls could not defy this natural leverage. With his back pressed against one side and his largest toes the other, Ciel at last soaked in the tub without threat of submersion. It was one of the strangest and most intriguing little victories Sebastian had ever witnessed.
He missed those simple days of missteps and calculated centimeters of growth. The breadth of puberty was a more treacherous landscape, and he and the boy had been plopped in the middle of it without compass or North Star.
Sebastian let Ciel sleep as late as he wanted the following day. It was to both their benefit: being in Ciel's presence made Sebastian feel unusually wary, ever since that little seed of sympathy was planted in his chest. All he could think to do was deprive it of water and sunlight – deprive himself of Ciel, or at least, of this current Ciel, who needed attention and patience and reassurance and kindness – and, according to Tanaka, who needed Sebastian to fulfill all these requirements.
That was nothing if not the opposite of a demon's purpose.
What was a demon's purpose? Sebastian knew that well. It was to trick and charm and seduce God's precious man off the thorny path to Heaven. It was to build snares out of gold, blood, and promises, three things man could not resist. It was to make man cry and sweat and piss himself as he begged for mercy, on his knees, only understanding at his bitter end that the golden gates would for him stand firmly closed. Most of all, the demon's purpose was to take the soul into his mouth, into his being, and sup upon its poetry.
Sebastian was a connoisseur. He had tasted a myriad of lifetimes; he had smelled countless bouquets. The revenge-seeker was sweeter than the thief, and the thief could be bitter or sour, depending on his motives, his childhood. Bastards and drunkards had runny, salty souls like tears. The souls of the sick were curdled and textured. Sebastian personally enjoyed the rich gravy that came from the grief-stricken most of all.
"My lord, you are not quite yourself these days," he had said, and it was true. The ten-year-old Ciel had held more fire and brimstone – he'd shimmered with sheer pride. Again the bath revealed this so. In his younger days Ciel was as unabashed in his nakedness as an Olympian. Now he'd grown shy of his body, only shedding his towel at the last possible second and adorning his toga again at the soonest opportunity.
"You should put new sheets on my bed now," Ciel had said during last night's bath, while Sebastian had been scrubbing between his shoulder blades with a large soapy sponge.
"Certainly, sir, after we finish here."
"No, you should do it now. I want you to. So I have something to sit on when I'm in my pajamas."
Sebastian sighed and wiped dry his hands. He decided not to question his master, as the day had been a rough one, though the interruption was a little stilting: of course he not intended for Ciel to sit on a bare mattress, he merely meant to change the sheets while the boy relaxed in the water. But if it was to be insisted upon…
When he returned from the bedroom, Ciel told him, "I finished washing my legs myself, so you can get on to my hair." Sebastian understood the scheme at once. He hoped this wouldn't become a pattern. Ciel's new bashfulness was going to make bathtime very complicated if he kept coming up with excuses for Sebastian to leave halfway through each time.
In the long-term, however, these petty annoyances could prove substantial. Adolescence was a different kind of emotional torment, Sebastian was coming to know, an unintended yet self-inflicted kind, and he wondered what sort of flavor this would add to the soul. He forced himself to fantasize about the delicacy until he felt the saliva growing in his mouth and was satisfied in his demonhood once more. Even humans who crooned over piglets and calves ate pork and beef without a second thought. A single spike in sympathy for his prey was no cause for alarm. As long as the end still excited him, Sebastian relaxed in the knowledge that his mind was not lost.
Ciel didn't call Sebastian to his bedroom until it was a quarter past eleven. He was sitting up in bed, though his posture was slumped, and his hair had been fluffed up by his pillow even more so than usual.
"Oh my. It would seem you slept deeply, yes, my lord?" Sebastian asked with soft amusement.
Ciel rubbed at his tattooed eye, the innocent blue one at half-lid. "How late is it?" he asked, then immediately yawned, indulgent, mouth stretched wide enough to show off every tooth.
Sebastian smiled accordingly at this display. "Just past eleven, sir – you managed to sleep for over twelve hours. Truly you must have needed the rest."
The boy nodded groggily a few times.
"Would you like me to bring you your breakfast now, my lord? I began preparing it not long ago; the temperature should still be palatable."
"Yes, but… in a moment." Ciel shifted his legs under the covers. He gave his head a hard shake in order to perk up more quickly. "I was thinking… well… I don't know what I should do with myself today. I mean… I don't know what sort of Ciel the servants are expecting to see… Though it isn't as if I care about their opinion," he corrected sharply, "but I do care about how they respond to me. And if they treat me like some sort of invalid, I'll get cross with them, see if I don't." Ciel sighed, leaning back. "But at the same time, I'm not going to pretend as if yesterday didn't happen. I just have no intention of ever telling them what I was up in my room for all day." A blush, the color of a sliced strawberry, hinted the tops of his cheeks. "What I mean is, I don't know how to respond to them, if they ask why I was in here."
"You need not answer them, if they did," Sebastian said. "If they were bold enough to broach such a topic with you, I would be very cross with them myself. The master's business is not that of the servants', unless the master wishes it to be."
"Right," Ciel agreed, bobbing his chin a bit, as if Sebastian had reminded him of this fact. "Right… Well… I still feel like I should have an answer. I'm worried that if I don't say something to them, they'll form their own opinions, and that would be worse than any lie I could come up with."
"Mr. Tanaka's first assumption was that you had had a nightmare about your past and it was affecting you, which wasn't entirely wrong," Sebastian informed. "I wouldn't be surprised if the other servants thought something similarly."
Sebastian said this believing it would pacify Ciel, but his response was one of shock. "What? Are you serious? The hell are they talking about my personal problems for?! Is that what they always think, when I'm a bit late in the morning or lounging in my room? That I'm having an attack of panic because I'm ever so traumatized?"
"I haven't any surefire idea what their thoughts are, as I of course haven't asked them directly," Sebastian said. "I don't believe so, though. You may recall that Mey-Rin, Finny, and Bard have had their own experiences with trauma, yet are able to live normal lives. I cannot speak so admirably of them in most cases, but I believe they do know what it is like to have dark memories – what it is to sit with them."
At last that did quell the boy. "I never thought about it that way," he said. He breathed out his nose and folded his arms. "Fine. I'll just let them assume whatever they want then. Saves me the trouble of coming up with some stupid story."
"Glad to hear it, sir," Sebastian said. "Shall I bring you breakfast now, then?"
"Yes," said Ciel, and there was a full tray before him in moments.
He had never been a fast eater or a heavy eater, but these days Ciel did eat with reserved gusto. The plate was always bare when the master declared himself finished. Today was more of the same, not a crumb or speck overlooked. The high-pitched scraping of Ciel's fork against the floral transferware for a last bite of hash browns reminded Sebastian of the "music" some lesser demons entertained themselves with.
"My, my, I shall have to be careful to wash this dish myself, or Bard will mistake it for a clean one," Sebastian teased.
Instead of puffing up his cheeks at the remark, Ciel merely lapped at the tip of his fork. "What are you going to do today anyway?"
The young master's tone had not been authoritative: he was asking out of pure curiosity. Such a strange thing to wonder… Ciel had never professed an interest in his butler's daily routine before, except when they first met and were training each other. Ah, but it was possible that Ciel had a request and planned to see when it could be done. That was a normal reason for the master to ask such.
"Well," Sebastian began, "after I finish tidying up breakfast, I was going to check the kitchen storage to measure our current stock of sugar, salt, flour, and the like, and leave orders with Bard for more, if necessary. Following that, I was going to inspect the rain gutters, as they seemed a bit clogged during the last storm. That may also be a good time to examine the state of the chimney flues, to see that they're efficient. Otherwise, my schedule shall not deviate from the usual of preparing high tea and dinner, and keeping the house in good order. Is there something I did not mention that you required me to make time for?"
Ciel shook his head no, sliding the tray off his lap and handing it to Sebastian. "I just wondered where you'd be around today was all."
"Ah. I see." Only he didn't, at least, not entirely. Had that been an indirect request for reassurance, the very reassurance Tanaka had mentioned Ciel needing at this age? Sebastian sincerely hoped not. "Well then, young master–" he held out a hand to help the boy out of bed "–shall we go forth and greet the day together?"
Ciel was dressed in a black frock coat, a deep grey single-breasted pinstripe vest, and short grey trousers with black stockings beneath. For a spot of color, the tops of the stockings were trimmed with burgundy and a matching ribbon was tied in a loose bow around the boy's collar. Ciel toyed at one of his earrings, twisting it in the lobe while Sebastian adjusted his sleeve on the opposite hand. Yes, it didn't quite meet the wrist…
"Ouch," Ciel hissed lightly.
"Perhaps you should leave that be, hm?" Sebastian smirked.
Ciel didn't take his hand away, nervously turning at the little gem. "What am I going to do today anyway? You said I should take my mind off my work for a bit. But I can't decide how to keep myself busy."
"I hardly expected that to be a hard question for you to answer." Sebastian straightened up, the outfit passing his inspection well enough. "What were you doing last month, when you were neglecting your lessons and such?"
"Don't patronize me," Ciel snorted. His index finger rubbed at the handle of his cane after Sebastian handed it to him – certainly a better habit than stretching the holes in his ears. "I suppose there're always new chess strategies to test out. Or billiards, I'm finally starting to get the appeal of it. And now that I think about it, I haven't exercised Irish or Sysonby in a while." Ciel's grip on the cane tightened a fraction. "Well, I'd need to ask Bard to help me saddle them if I did that…"
Ah, so there was still some trepidation about facing the staff today. Sebastian chose to let that play out on its own: no more encouragement was to be doled out this morning, or he would just be teaching Ciel to come to him with every little gripe. Not at all the lesson he needed the boy learning just before his aunt was to come into the picture. "I don't know if your riding boots still fit, my lord – in November you told me they pinched. Fortunately, Miss Hopkins should be in contact with me soon to tell me if she can get you in for an early fitting. We should have her measure you for shoes as well."
Ciel kicked out his right foot in the high-heeled lace-ups he currently adorned. "I can only wear these with thin stockings now, too, or else my toes feel cramped. Let's visit a cobbler soon and place an order for all-new pairs."
"Perhaps just a few while your feet are growing," Sebastian suggested. "It wouldn't do you any good if they were too small by the time they arrived. Custom shoes take a while to make properly."
Ciel blinked and craned his neck to gaze down at his feet. "Do you really think they'll grow that fast?"
"It's always a possibility." Much as he had yet to learn about adolescence, Sebastian was not unfamiliar with the sight of a young man whose shoe size had reached adulthood before the rest of him.
Ciel cocked one ankle, then the other, looking somewhere between baffled and impressed with his feet. "All right then. Only one new pair for a while yet." He took a large step forward; the conversation seemed to puff him up. "Well, it's high time I got the day started – it's already past noon. I'm going to my study. You go off wherever it is you have to go. Goodbye."
The rain gutters on the east side of the house were especially stuffed with dead leaves dating all the way back to November. Sebastian knelt on the edge of the roof and fished out the debris with a trowel. This was just another one of the many tasks he would never offer to Bard or Finny: if they didn't break their necks, they'd break at least a hundred shingles. It did feel hardly the head butler's role to be doing this though. Was there even a graceful way to unclog a rain gutter? If anyone could make a ballet of this scrub work, it was Sebastian, but he reserved his energy for other matters today.
There was a distant whinny, and Sebastian looked up to see the postman's arrival in the drive. Ah, there was Nina's response: he was never sure what manners to expect of the woman, and it was good that she did not tarry. He sprung down from the rooftop behind the house, so the postman would not see his acrobatic descent, and accepted the message with a courteous nod, then opened it promptly.
I will arrive tomorrow, March 31st, at noon. Please have a room ready in advance for taking measurements and to act as my workspace.
The only addition to the message was a large, swooping signature that occupied almost the entire rest of the parchment. The terseness of the letter seemed to convey an irritation at the short notice; she did not even properly address the master, how shameful. Well then, she could expect to be paid handsomely in money and lectures alike. Sebastian never had a shortage of words for that coquettish tradeswoman.
Sebastian took a respite from his chores to bring the letter to Ciel. Sensing for the boy's presence found him in the library, rather than his study, and Sebastian went on his way with a knowing smile. Perhaps he could have guessed as much. Surely those anatomy books would be particularly enticing today…
But if one was having a conversation, they certainly couldn't be reading. As Sebastian approached the door, he was immediately aware of a familiar voice in the room.
"I felt very helpless yesterday, hearing you speak like that." It was Tanaka, of course. His words were laced with that perfect concern best captured in the voices of the elderly. "I so desperately wished there was something I could have said, but I didn't know where to begin. I was afraid of making the situation worse."
"It isn't your job to say anything." A pause. "In that moment… it hardly felt like me. I don't even associate that person with myself. You shouldn't either."
"But… it is a part of you, young master."
"Well of course I know that. I'm not mental." Another pause. Ciel's voice slowed down as he mulled over the best way to explain his experience. "It was more like… a little child overcame my thoughts all of a sudden. Yes, that's it. There's just something inside me that, when it gets anxious, snatches up the reins and shoves the real me out of the way, and doesn't give me control again until it's made me look completely ridiculous. I don't know why and I don't like it. I despise having to clean up its mess in the end. But it's all I can do." His voice had an airy ring to it, as one who dismisses a mere trifle.
"I don't think it's ridiculous, young master. I feel a bit sorry for that child."
Ciel was very quiet for a moment. Sebastian could hear the grandfather clock inside the room ticking. "It isn't something to feel sorry for. It's annoying and it doesn't listen to me."
Tanaka made a contemplative noise in the back of his throat. "Well… if it doesn't listen to you, might it listen to somebody else?"
"I have no idea, and I don't care," Ciel said, not harshly but still in a way meant to finalize the conversation. "I really don't. I really just hate it. This discussion is tedious for me, and it's all its fault. I don't want to talk about this anymore."
To Sebastian's surprise, Tanaka did not allow the subject to close there. "What I think, young master, is that this 'child' is trying to tell you something. I think he deserves to be listened to, as much as I know he's been a bother for you. Perhaps that would help you understand why he's there in the first place."
"It ought to listen to me, not the other way around," Ciel said defiantly. "That's all I have to say about it. Let's not speak on this anymore. Do you have the letters written for Cavendish and Kashyap about mass-producing those fried Indian sweets? What are they called, jelly-something? Jelly bees※? Good, have them sent promptly. Then, would you mind telling Sebastian that I'd like to have tea shortly? And some lunch as well?"
By the time the senior butler left the study, Sebastian had practically materialized behind the next corridor, out of sight.
There were not many in Ciel's inner circle that could do what Tanaka had done just now. Aside from Lau and Undertaker, Ciel always did tend to be gentler with those he had known before the contract. They could tap into some softness in him that Ciel barred all newcomers from seeing. Sebastian considered it a good fortune that he had overheard this conversation by chance. He was, of course, not high enough on Ciel's totem pole to know such secrets. And gladly so.
"I had a strange conversation with Mr. Tanaka just now."
Ah, no, how could he forget: he was the totem pole's watchman.*
"He was asking me about yesterday," Ciel continued, after Sebastian laid a plate of spring greens and radishes in a light balsamic before him. "He said he didn't need the details – thank God, and I wouldn't have told him anyway – but he asked me if there was anything he could have said in the moment to make me rational." Ciel took a bite of the salad, made a bitter face, and drenched the vegetables in more of the vinaigrette he'd been offered from a tiny silver pitcher.
Sebastian stood by silently. Bound to the truth, there was only so much he could insinuate without revealing he'd overheard the conversation already, and he waited to see what the young master would catch him up on.
Ciel swallowed his mouthful. "He got me thinking, about how I really felt in that moment, when I was so ashamed and I didn't want anyone to find out. I felt like I wasn't myself. I felt like an entirely different person, but I had no willpower over him. I had to give in to his demands until I'd finally wrestled back the control." Ciel shook his head, smirking a bit. "It's like a disease, like my asthma – I can't help but let this other being take control, just like I can't help the coughing when it grips me. I've been so embarrassed about this alternate self for so long. But now I wonder if I should be. I wonder if there's some parasite inside of me that makes me this way." He tipped his chin at Sebastian. "Is there such a thing, some little organism that can get inside your skull and change your behavior, up inside your brain? Do you know of it?"
Would that there could be. "Sir, there is no such thing inside you."
"Tch." Ciel immediately grew frustrated. He banged his fist and the handle of the fork against the tabletop. "Lovely. And here I hoped for some way out. So then what you're telling me is that all my thoughts were my own yesterday, and I'm absolutely crazy to try to attribute them to some other entity."
"You are far from 'crazy,' my lord," Sebastian said. "Even if such anxieties are a part of you, as you say, it does not mean they are without impulse."
"Well then where the hell are they coming from?" Ciel demanded. "I hate behaving like that, like a spooked horse, it's so embarrassing. I want to stop letting my feelings in the moment take control of me."
"Young master, I do believe that is the result of being human."
Ciel crossed his arms, flopping back against his chair so that it rocked briefly on its hind legs. "But other people don't act like that," he whined.
"'Other people,'" Sebastian said, "haven't been through what you have."
It was spoken as an observation, but with a jolt Sebastian realized his words might have been served with a generous helping of sympathy – that accursed thing that was surely his parasite to bear. The grandfather clock spoke when neither of them did, a three-beat chime followed by those endless metronomic ticks.
"I don't want to talk about this anymore," Ciel finally said, to Sebastian's masked relief. "You told me that you heard back from Nina when you first came in. So? What is it then?"
Sebastian was not blind. No, he could see with perfect clarity the circumstances he had put himself in. Whatever he had spoken to Ciel yesterday evening, whatever sympathy had seeped into his tone, it had increased the boy's trust in him exponentially. He had not meant to convey to Ciel that he was now his surrogate, his lead through adolescence. Neither does the moon intend to change the tides: it merely does so by existing, locked in its eternal dance with Earth.
And like the moon, Sebastian was such a product of nature. Humans saw him quite the opposite, but the demon knew better. Following his instinct had merely gotten him in trouble this time rather than the other way around. So a dog ate chocolate and poisoned himself, so Sebastian comforted his charge and betrayed his purpose for existing. But nature prepares her children for their mistakes, and so the dog will not die if he eats grass to make himself vomit. And forever will the scent and taste of chocolate repel the wise dog.
Sebastian would take advantage of the boy's newfound trust one last time. Then it was over. He could never allow Ciel to associate him with a guardian's attention or patience or reassurance or kindness again, for these were fodder for the awful talon of sympathy that clutched Sebastian to its feathered breast.
It was ten-thirty in the evening. Ciel was in bed early, earlier than he had been all month, not having been up for even twelve hours, quite awake but lying down for an attempt.
"I don't know how I should be able to sleep very quickly," he said, hands folded beneath his head on the pillow, "but I suppose I should at least try. Aunt Francis won't be very impressed with me if I'm not awake on-time for the cricket match this Friday."
Sebastian smirked. "If only I had known that sending you off with your family would solve the sleeping matter sooner," he mused, knuckle to his chin. "We may have had fewer arguments, at any rate. Well, I for one am pleased with your due diligence. If you keep it up, your efforts to turn your late-night habits around will not be in vain."
Ciel pouted thoughtfully, looking away. "It was your idea to try, though."
"Yes. But you did not have to act on it."
"I suppose." Ciel shrugged. "I'm only saying… maybe I wouldn't have done it if someone hadn't told me to. It wouldn't have occurred to me."
This was the day's second indirect request for guidance. It reminded Sebastian of the task at hand. Take advantage of the boy's newfound trust one last time. Then it is over. "You are not tired at all, yes, young master?"
"Not a bit. I could count a thousand sheep before my eyelids started to droop."
"Then… before you try to sleep, perhaps you would be open to a discussion of a more personal nature?"
"A… personal nature?" Ciel looked uncertain.
"More of a recounting, actually. It need not be so personal, and you do not have to answer me, again, if you do not want to." Sebastian gave the smallest hum of a laugh. "And I shall 'muck out' the stables, if that punishment still stands."
Ciel lifted up his head to glare at him with sidelong confusion. "What? What are you on about now?"
"Please pardon any impertinence, my lord, but I wanted to address again the occurrence at the Shrove Tuesday party between you and the young man from the Reubin family."
Ciel hesitated, breath crackling in his throat a bit, then said, "That? That was over a month ago."
"It was," Sebastian conceded, "but… I felt a change in you that night. I think you may have as well. And I think we can both agree that this is the first day in a while that we have been on good terms with each other. If you're willing to recollect, I would be very curious to know."
"Hmm." Ciel leaned back in the pillow a bit, sighing out his nose, and closed his eyes. He contemplated this quietly. Then his brow slouched. "Ugh, it was just… It was really stupid, Sebastian. I don't know. My mind is so scattered these days. It jumps from thought to thought and comes up with all sorts of things, I don't always know how it gets where it does – I just find myself there."
Sebastian gave a more contemplative hum. My most recent thoughts have behaved in kind. He waited for the boy to tell his story.
"So, Lyle Reubin had forgotten his manners at home, and Jane was near to tears she was so ashamed," Ciel began, knitting his fingers together and placing them at the base of his throat. "The other girls were getting frightened and upset. I knew if anyone was going to say something, it would have to be me. And besides, that stupid boy was being as bad as a drunk! It was getting on my nerves! So of course I told him off!"
There was a glimmer of the confident, irritated young master Sebastian knew best. It faded into melancholy all too fast.
Ciel had been toying with the top sheet, absentminded in his actions. "I said something like, 'You're spoiling this party for everyone else, you're an awful nuisance.' And he said, 'That's what all my teachers said about me too.' So I replied, 'Then it's no wonder they kicked you out of school.' Which, in hindsight, was a bit rude, especially towards his sister, but Lyle had really said so himself in the first place." Ciel shrugged, chewed his lip briefly. He seemed not to want to speak more.
"The way he responded next," Sebastian prompted, "was jarring to you somehow."
Ciel pulled up his knees and huffed again, fussing over how to go about saying what came next. "Well, what he said was," Ciel began, and stopped. He rambled to himself instead, "I'm ridiculous, letting it bother me like I did… I hardly even understand how I made that connection, or why I spent so much time on it, it's silly…"
"Perhaps that conclusion can be reached, if you tell me what it is he said to you." Sebastian spoke calmly, but inside he was equal parts intrigued and tentative.
"Well, what he said was, 'Maybe I got kicked out on purpose, because nobody believed me when I said I was in danger.'" Ciel was red-faced when he finally got the words out. Sebastian wasn't entirely sure where this hot embarrassment came from but made no comment. He was careful not to do anything that might keep his charge from at last revealing the dark cellar of his doubt. "And the way he looked at me when he said it, I knew that he really had been in danger… or, at least, he thought he had been. Either way, he wasn't lying to me." Ciel tucked some stray hair behind his ear. Swallowed. "And the way his eyes were, it reminded me of… of myself, when I was younger, I mean. The way he spoke mostly though. And it… It's stupid, but he made me… jealous."
Sebastian cocked his head to one side. "Jealous?"
"I know, I know, I said it's stupid!" Ciel's face was burning.
Sebastian patched it up quickly. "I don't believe it's stupid. I believe it is important. Won't you explain, young master?"
Fortunately that had been the right thing to say. The boy's skin still glowed, but he admitted, "I was jealous that he could just get out of whatever trouble he was in by acting like a little child. He made me start thinking about when you brought me back to the mansion, when I was just ten. All I did was focus on becoming an earl and becoming an adult, and I didn't want to think about that horrible month at all, I didn't want to acknowledge what I'd been through.
"But it's been a few years and thinking about it is different now, and it makes me angrier than ever before. Like I said yesterday, I'm mad at my parents, and I'm mad at the London police for not being able to find my captors, and I'm even mad at Lyle, who's got nothing to do with any of this – I'm just mad because he was complaining when he wasn't even in as much danger as I was! I just want to scream at everyone, 'You don't understand anything!' But that would be the most childish of all, and so I can't say a word. I feel like a firework about to go off. I just feel wretched and stupid all the bloody time."
Ciel finished his tirade with a ragged exhale.
Oh, the layers of grief this soul was wound up in…!
This is what Sebastian thought. But what was the tone of that thought? Sebastian himself was not sure. He decided it must be bloodlust over the meal. It must be.
It had to be.
But whether or not it was… it was due time to close this book.
"Well then," Sebastian said, clapping his hands twice, as if to brush the conversation off, "isn't it much better when we tell each other what's really going on? Perhaps we would have gotten on a lot better these past few months if I had known what had truly been ailing you. So let this be a lesson in clearer communication between the two of us. Yes?"
Ciel blinked at Sebastian with lost, puzzled eyes. "That's… Is that all you have to say about it?"
"Young master," said Sebastian, amiable as a street vendor, "I am qualifying that I understand your perspective. You experienced a delay in your grief. You are coming to terms with your past. It is causing you to change the way you see the world – your world. It even changed the way we respond to each other. So I am very relieved to know your perspective at last."
"Do you know my perspective?" Ciel regarded the small mounds his feet made beneath the covers. "I don't know if I know it."
"I've troubled you," Sebastian said. "I did not recognize the answer to my question would be so complicated, emotionally, for you. I did not mean to cause a stir right before you are about to sleep. You hardly needed that."
"No, it's…" A pause. "It was good… that you asked."
Sebastian dipped his head. "And it's good that you think so. But now I should leave you alone, to your sheep."
"Alone, to my sheep," Ciel repeated softly. "I will make for a real shepherd tonight: I feel I will keep vigil for hours before I am finally able to rest."
"The shepherd that cannot sleep is too busy watching for wolves," Sebastian said, stealing the flame from the bedside paraffin lamp, the last light in the room. "I urge you to think of sheep, not wolves, if you wish to drift off."
Ciel pressed his chin into the pillow he'd had since his youth, his greatest physical comfort. "A shepherd and his sheep are much more at peace," he mumbled, "when the shepherd has a dog."
Sebastian froze in the darkness. This metaphor… If Ciel were the shepherd, was the dog a simulacrum for Sebastian himself? Luckily this proved not to be the case – Ciel finished a moment later, "And I have no dog, so I must keep counting until I can count no more."
Sebastian relaxed then. "Goodnight, young master. I wish that sleep is fast on your heels."
The door, yesterday's wall, today's drawbridge, shut at the demon's back. And from that moment on, Sebastian vowed he would never allow sympathy to so shape his actions again.
Three days. Three days until they would travel to Oxford, and Sebastian would deliver the child to his family. He saw these days stretching before him as bright as the suns that would dot their skies, blinding, inevitable. There were things to do about Ciel. Get him outfitted. Get his suitcases packed, his hair trimmed. Be his pawn or be his knight, but be no longer a thing wrapped around his finger, unless that thing is a serpent.
A serpent, a serpent. A serpent, not a dog. Ah, but Ciel had not appointed Sebastian the role of the dog – and in the moment, Sebastian had been so relieved not to be labeled the canid that he hadn't bothered to ask what it did label. He chuckled without merriment. Of course, the Reubin boy mystery would be solved just as a new riddle presented itself, and it would nibble at his brain just the same as the last.
The night's darkness brought with it time for turning questions over. If Sebastian was not the dog in the equation… then who or what was?
※: The fried Indian sweet that Ciel is trying to recall the name of is jalebi. It's a sugary confection cooked in such a way that the outside is crisp but the inside is syrupy, and it's a very pretty orange color. In actual Victorian times, Queen Victoria's closest companion was an Indian man named Abdul Karim. I don't know if he exists in the Black Butler universe, but if he does, I imagine she might make an effort to weave Indian culture into the English mainstream. Prior to the events in my story, she asked Ciel if he could try marketing some Indian-themed snacks and toys, to see how it caught on, and naturally he agreed to it. Ciel even asked Soma what his favorite sweet was, to which Soma promptly replied, "Jalebi!"
*: The "watchman" of a totem pole (a wooden pillar meant to commemorate cultural beliefs through carvings, made by certain Native North American groups) was an animal figure sometimes fixed at the top of the structure. Its purpose was to be protective and look after the house or village.