The coldest day of the year brought with it the inevitable. Ciel was standing at his bedroom window watching last daylight die, and he never could have explained how, but when Sebastian walked in he knew what he would say. The afternoon had been too quiet. He checked his gun and found it fully loaded. Sebastian came to his side, staring into the woods. He was likely seeing what Ciel couldn't. He could see the immortal beings out there, drawing ever closer.

"It's time," Sebastian said.

"I know."

Ciel heard a gunshot and closed his eye. The servants didn't stand a chance, but they wouldn't back down from their duty to protect the manor. He left the room with Sebastian close behind him. "Mother?"

"Received a spontaneous call from an old friend to have dinner, as you requested. She is far out of harm's way."

"Good. She doesn't need to know the true significance of this ring, I won't let her lose her husband twice."

They stopped in the main hall before the great doors that led to the grounds. Ciel looked over, and Sebastian looked back with a solemn smile. In those deep red eyes he saw his own months of pain and confusion, but in them he saw love, too. He wondered if Sebastian saw the same thing in him, if the demon knew his love was reciprocated. Surely he did. He knew everything. Ciel pulled Sebastian down to him and kissed him long and hard. It felt like hello, but tasted of a bittersweet goodbye.

Sebastian opened the door and they emerged into the frigid air. "I do wish you would stay inside where it's safe."

"Nowhere is safe now."

"That doesn't mean you have to throw yourself in harm's way."

"That's exactly what I must do. Enough people have died because of me, it's time for this to end."

"I'm glad you agree!"

They looked up at the sound of the unfamiliar voice. A man who was unmistakably a reaper stood at the edge of the roof, leaning on a red machine of some kind. He flipped his dirty blond hair and waved. Sebastian's brows knitted together in an expression that seemed more offended than concerned. "You're the best they could do? A college aged boy with a push power?"

"Don't underestimate me just because I look good for my age. Besides, I've got backup." The reaper winked and jumped from the roof but Sebastian met him halfway with no regard to the spinning blades of his scythe.

Ciel tried to get a clear shot but they were moving too fast. A bullet wouldn't hurt either of them but it might put that ridiculous scythe out of commission. He took a step back, trying to find an opening, only to collide with something behind him. He whirled around with his finger on the trigger but his gun went flying out of his hand before he could get a shot off. There was a blur of purple and platinum, then he was on the ground.

Damn, he thought. How did two reapers already get past the defenses? What does that mean for the servants? He could only afford to waste a second worrying about them, for the next moment brought a blade larger than his head hurtling toward him. He had little room to move but he rolled just enough to the side for the scythe to collide with the stone. Alois had it raised again before Ciel could process the movement. Ciel hissed in frustration; the spoiled tart had gotten better since the last time they fought.

"Why is this stupid ring more important than your life?" Alois asked, punctuating his question with a slap across the face when Ciel tried to get up.

"You wouldn't understand."

Alois leaned down until his nose brushed Ciel's. "Try me."

"I don't have to. I already know you wouldn't understand an act of love, because no one has ever loved you."

It was below the belt, but his words hit just where he wanted them to. Alois flew into a fit of rage. His fighting tactics slipped as his emotions got the best of him, hands going around Ciel's throat instead of using his scythe. Ciel gasped for breath, smiling. This was too easy. He slid his hand to the side until it encountered the business end of a sharp blade. He moved just a bit further down to grasp the handle.

"Why do you hate me so much?" Alois demanded, tears streaming down his cheeks. "All those years you were alone, that time you spent recovering after you were sold off to those cultist freaks, I was right here! Why didn't you want me?"

Ciel established a firm grasp on the scythe, feeling tears drip on to his face. They were oddly warm against his winter kissed skin. "You're pathetic, Alois Trancy."

He saw the boy's inhuman green eyes widen when he saw the glint of his own blade in his peripheral vision. Ciel felt a pang of sympathy for his fellow orphan. He had grieved this young man, had wished he could go back and be kinder to him, but the person that had wished for that died with his father. He no longer had room for such feelings in his heart. Alois' anguished cry for mercy rang out in his ears long after he embedded the scythe in the reaper's side.

Alois rolled to the side, screaming with pain. The long blade was between his ribs and had likely punctured at least one vital organ. Ciel reversed their positions to pin the taller boy down. He pulled the scythe back out and readied it for a fatal blow. However repulsive he found Alois, he had nothing to gain from watching the boy suffer a slow death. He held it over his head, arms shaking in their attempt to support the heavy weapon.

"I taught you better than that," said a voice he knew all too well, and the scythe was pulled from his hands.

He looked up at William T. Spears in the same suit as always, but now with what appeared to be pruning shears in his hand. He was unexpectedly ashamed. He didn't know Mr. Spears had become a reaper, not that it came as a surprise after seeing Grell. Alois was unconscious or dead, his blood running down the stairs. Ciel stood up from his limp form to face the man who had saved him in a way. He had protected him from anyone who wished him ill after he escaped his tormentors, and it was Mr. Spears who had united him with his family.

"It's over, Phantomhive. Let's end this before anyone else is hurt."

Ciel glanced behind him, but Sebastian was no longer fighting with the other reaper. "Anyone else?"

"Your human staff have been restrained but they are intact. Grell took care of your pest problem in the woods, and I don't expect Sebastian to hold his own for very long against both him and Mr. Knox."

Ciel huffed out a humorless laugh. He had convinced himself they stood a chance against four death gods, and he had never made it off the manor's stairs. He wrapped one hand protectively around the other. "You know I can't just hand this over. If you thought it would be that easy, you would have come alone."

"Indeed. However, I did not. I know there is only one way you will give that to us willingly. Grell?"

Grell came up the stairs holding one of Sebastian's arms, the other one held by the younger reaper. Sebastian's clothes were torn and bloody, and his face didn't tell a much kinder story. Rage boiled Ciel's blood but he knew if his demon wasn't a match for two reapers then he certainly wasn't. He clenched his hand around his ring and glared at Mr. Spears.

"Coward," he spat.

"I devised this plan of action so you didn't have to be hurt. It's against our code to threaten a human life in order to gain your compliance, so your mother was ruled out, but Mr. Michaelis has no such immunity."

He stared into his butler's eyes. They were sorrowful and apologetic which only hurt worse. Typical Sebastian, blaming himself for failing in a hopeless battle. Ciel started to go to him but Mr. Spears' scythe extended out to block his path. He ground his teeth in frustration, as he knew he was in check. There were no moves left that wouldn't put him in a perilous situation.

"Give us the ring at the soul held captive there, and Sebastian will be released from this world back into his own. Fight and we kill him. Do decide quickly, please, I detest overtime."

William's knights had his king. He grasped his ring between his thumb and forefinger. "Let me say goodbye, and it's all yours."

"Try anything and he's dead," Grell said. He had been looking especially murderous since he saw Alois sprawled in front of the door.

The scythe retracted, and Ciel walked over to Sebastian. The demon inclined his head the best he was able in his compromising position. "Forgive me, my lord."

"Shush," Ciel said, taking Sebastian's face in his hands.

The reapers dropped him and he fell to his knees. Grell kept his chainsaw at the back of Sebastian's neck but in those seconds there was no one else in the world except a young man and his butler. Ciel didn't know he was trembling until Sebastian began to rub his back soothingly. He cleared his throat and tried to hold his tears back. If this was goodbye, he wouldn't be saying it like some blubbering Alois Trancy type. He leaned back to stare at the face he had come to dearly love.

Sebastian pulled his eye patch away and kissed the scar tissue beneath. "Thank you, Ciel."

The sound of his first name coming from Sebastian's lips allowed a single tear to escape. "For what?"

"You have given my eternity meaning. I vow by all that I am and on my love for you, I will never forget you."

"Sebastian," he choked, feeling more tears burn their way down his face as he slid his ring off. "I love you too."

He let the ring clatter down the stairs and bathed in the sight of his demon before kissing him. He wanted that smile to be his last memory of Sebastian, to send him off with a kiss that said everything those fickle three words could not. That clichéd expression came no where close to summarizing his feelings for this insufferable man. Sebastian was more than his lover. He was his protector, his teacher, his anchor in the churning, storm riddled sea that was his life. He feared those waters would carry him away without Sebastian at his side.

Over Sebastian's shoulder he saw William holding the ring with the end of his pruners, and Grell raising his chainsaw. Checkmate. He watched, helpless, as the ring shattered in all directions. A radiant blue light surged between the two reapers. Ciel smiled sadly, watching the piece of his father's soul disappear between their scythes. Vincent could rest now.

He sat back and found the demon's eyes closed. "Sebastian?" He was distantly aware of Grell lifting Alois and following the other two reapers through a portal that opened at the bottom of the stairs. He could only scream in vain at a man who wasn't coming back. "Sebastian!"

The man he held was dead weight. When he could no longer support it, he lowered Sebastian to the ground. There was the faintest of glows under the demon's skin, red and orange like the embers in a fireplace. Ciel had never known what it looked like for a demon to fade from a human body. He didn't want to but he couldn't look away as that light dwindled into nothingness. Staring at the empty shell of his lover, he learned there was a state of grief too profound to cry for.

He must have stayed that way a long time. The servants came to check on him, by which time Sebastian had flaked away into ash and blown into the wind. No, not Sebastian, Ciel reminded himself. Just an empty body. He would rather think of Sebastian alive and forever lost to him rather than gone altogether. His servants tentatively approached him where he sat on his knees. They had been pressed to the stone for a quite awhile, and he could no longer feel them. He could no longer feel much of anything.

Many arms encircled him. Soon he heard Finnian and Mey-Rin's sobs over Baldo's quiet tears, and knew Tanaka to be holding them all in pained silence. He could not return their embraces, only stare down at the pin in his hands that he had taken from Sebastian's lapel. Part of him had been expecting it to show some sign that Sebastian had held on to this world in the same way as Vincent but no sign ever came. Sebastian was gone.

Tanaka helped him to his feet. As he did, a bloodied figure made his way up the stairs. Ciel recognized the torn trousers and cracked glasses but he still couldn't find it within himself to speak. Instead he held the door open in silent invitation. Claude was too exhausted to look surprised, and stumbled into the manor with a grateful wave of his hand.

It was well past midnight and stretching into the early hours of morning when Ciel placed the silver pin on his bedstand. He stared at it until his eyes were heavy, and for the first night since Sebastian had returned, he slept alone.

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"There is no color to our meeting, it blows through in monochrome

I go where your cool fingers beckon me

I am like troublesome ice after the melt

You gently scoop me up to your mouth and play with my upper lip

Still, I search for a form of love

The dry eyes that shape the present rather than a distant time

Want to end like this, cloaked

But the night ignores that wish and brings morning

With your gentle, passionate, and dastardly kiss

Paint this final night

The moon illuminates us."