November 1889
Dearest Elizabeth,
Today the calm cool face of the river asked me for a kiss. I declined, of course, out of respect for you but also because Bath has yielded few results and I am anxious to return home. To see with my own two eyes the fate that lies before me. I have come to the bitter end of an inevitable conclusion that you were never mine to keep, were you? These fragments I have shored, a desperate, flimsy barricade against the truth that, once discovered, can never be turned away again.
The sky seems an endless black and I find the weight on my chest difficult to ignore—not pain, per se, but a dull, reaching ache that extends to the thoracic cavity of my misplaced heart. I sip the air with small, ungrateful breaths and find that Bath—and London and Suffolk and all the cities of England—have been saturated with a grotesque darkness that now deprives them of color. And the weight continues to sink into my chest, compressing into me with an intensity that feels breakable.
You see Lizzy, this afternoon was rather wretched. The manor house we stayed in lacked the proper utensils for tea so I was forced to measure the contents of my day with coffee spoons. It gave the tea a faint bitterness that lingered on the tongue and, once swallowed, burned down my throat with a lingering sour taste that I found disgusting and entirely unpleasant. And Sebastian, that lamentable creature, thought it all so terribly amusing. My words, he claimed, would have carried more weight had I not used them so often.
But I find now that the regret of time's past has come to haunt me and I have overused not only words but the forgiveness of your character. For a long while I thought myself alone but it was only after you left that I began to understand what true loneliness was. You, who came to me with your love for sunshine and pretty things and cheerfulness. And I, who turned you away.
You see, I am nobody's darling—nor do I wish to be. But, for the briefest moment, for the clearest second, while we stood aboard the Campania and the sea breeze blew by I thought, for half a heartbeat, that I might be a little in love with you. I could not dream very far, you see, and could only conjure the image of you, smiling under the sun. But for someone like me, bound beneath the moonless sky, it was the dearest image I could have dreamed.
Don't let me alone just yet. Let me hold onto you for a few seconds more. I have been bruised and ruined by callous, angry hands and you have tried to heal me though you need not have tried so hard. I have no desire to heal, Elizabeth—only to hold onto you, for a little while longer. Your hands clasping mine until my palms are warm and my cheeks regain color.
The weight on my chest pushes down on me with heavy contempt each passing day and I am left bleeding. The lacerations are deep and carelessly cut—most of them my own design—for the fickle path to hell is paved not with good intentions but with a terrible desire to press on, no matter what the cost. I am half consumed by the abyss already and the promise of retribution is the only thing that has kept me alive for the past three years. (But Elizabeth—even as I turned away and drowned myself with greater force, you made the world around me the smallest bit bearable.)
I am indebted to you, Elizabeth, and I have not forgotten the promise I made to you on the Atlantic.
It is true that most men fear isolation from the world, but I have learned better. The decades pass and the ripe earth withers but there nothing I fear so much as the possibility of being too late. Half a measure behind, a few moments too slow—
Wait for me Elizabeth. Wait just a little while longer.
—Ciel
- "Today the calm cool face..." — lifted from Langston Hughes' poem Suicide's Note
- "I was forced to measure..." — references T.S. Eliot's poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
- "You, who came to me with your love for sunshine and pretty things and cheerfulness." — comes from F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise
- Melpomene: the Greek muse of tragedy
A/N: One chapter left! (And I know this was supposed to be the depression letter but in my mind, Ciel has a will of steel and bone—he won't sink into depression but use it to fuel his revenge.)
Feedback appreciated :)