The Conversation
"The soul was promised to you," Sebastian explained. He sighed, looking at the mess in the front hall, and picked up the body of what had once been James with some consternation. "As there is nowhere else convenient to bury the body, I'll be taking this down to the cellar," he said at last. "Do try not to make a mess before I come back."
Ciel could barely drag himself up against the wall. His vision was blacking out still, and he felt incredibly tired. He hissed in discomfort as the wounds across his body began to knit themselves up, and stared at the bloodstains across from him. When Sebastian finally returned, soap and a bucket of water in tow, Ciel said, "I'll make sure to promise the next one to you, then."
Sebastian paused in the midst of his scrubbing, and all Ciel could see was the sudden still, tense line of his back.
"Young master," he said, at last, "do you think I am hungry?"
"...Yes?" Ciel said.
Sebastian turned around, gracing him with that perfect smile he'd always given when he was battling the temptation to tear one limb from limb; it was more of a grimace than a smile, and his eyes were very, very hard. "Well, you are correct," he said pleasantly. "Do you further think that I have somehow gone without eating ever since this ill-fated contract began? Well? Do you have nothing to say?"
Ciel breathed harshly, and tried to get the feeling back into his limbs. He had never thought about it, to be quite frank, and it was very clear that Sebastian knew this. "I suppose not," he said, at last.
"Correct again!" Sebastian said. "I should give you perfect marks." His mouth was bared in such a grimace you could see the very edge of his fangs, though it was still disguised as a smile; his voice was terrible. "I have indeed 'worked something out' in the time you were set on ignoring me."
"Me ignore you!" Ciel protested. "It was you who were shaking up the house and moaning! You didn't speak to me for thirty years!"
Sebastian laughed.
It was a horrible laugh. Not the one that had made criminals wet themselves in fear and good men cower on the floor; not the low and grating rumble of mirth that made one feel as though the shadows were crawling toward you from every angle, and they were about to pounce. It was high, and more than a little frazzled, and it went on, and on, and Sebastian laughed like a man who had reached the end of his rope miles ago and was still going.
And then he stopped, quite suddenly, and picked up the sponge that he had dropped on the ground in the midst of his fit. "There's no need to bother feeding me, master," he said, in a dark but tired voice. "I don't want your charity, nor do I appreciate your third-rate souls." He turned around, then, and continued to scrub at the blood, ignoring Ciel entirely.
And that was the end of the matter, as far as Sebastian was concerned. He had acted just the same, as though nothing had happened—and when Ciel brought up the conversation, diffidently, Sebastian had swiftly changed the subject; but without any hint of discomfort. His tone of voice implied that Ciel was being the odd one, to harp so on the matter; but Ciel couldn't get the shuddering image out of his mind. Sebastian had never scared him the way that scared him, and he didn't know how to make whatever it was right again. So they continued to pretend, just as they had been doing since that time in the great war when Sebastian had given up.
For the first time, Ciel began to wonder what it might mean, for him to have done so.
If one is to be a slave to eternity, Sebastian had said, it seems a terrible thing to spend it in making oneself miserable. So he had resolved not to be. It was the only option in his power. He had tried to ask Ciel to break the contract, and he had not. He had said he never could.
So Sebastian would always be Sebastian. His butler. His servant. His knight.
His.
If I had been contracted to Edwin, for eternity, Ciel thought… his mind shied away.
If I had been contracted to James…
His first thought was a denial. He would have killed himself before he let that happen. He would have killed them. Ah… but what if the contractor was smart enough to have covered those possibilities? What then?
He still could have tried to get me killed, Ciel thought, though he remembered the way he had felt so obliged to protect Edwin from every harm, no matter how much he seethed and spoke in hatred in the depths of his mind.
It was true that Sebastian had not tried. It was true that he still could. But he had chosen not to: that was the other option in his power. And it was Ciel's life that he had chosen, not his death (after that one, fateful moment—during his birth, when the blood had flowed into the water—"do you wish to make that tighter?" Ciel had asked him, that first day, as the butler tied the bow round his neck.
"No," Sebastian had answered.)
Ciel couldn't understand why. He had spoken so coldly, but he'd almost wished the demon would.
.
.
.
