A/N: Hey! Here's the next chapter! I was originally going to put it up in the three lives per chapter, but the eighth and ninth were a bit too long for me to not slaughter during the doc manager process, so I'll post it in two parts. Anyhow, let life seven commence! D:

Disclaimer: I don't own Kuroshitsuji, Ciel, Sebastian or anything to do with said Manga.

1745 A.D. America

"London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. London bridge is falling down, my fair lady."

The seventh time they met, Ciel was sitting on a chair, swinging his legs back and forth and looking extremely guilty. The demon had just formed a contract with the school mistress of a schoolhouse in a small village.

"What did you do?" The demon asked, arms crossed lightly over his chest as he looked down at him. Ciel jumped in fright, almost falling sideways off his chair. He held his head, rubbing at his temples for a few seconds before looking up at him.

"I set a boy on fire."

"How old are you?"

"Fourteen."

"And you did not think that, at fourteen, setting boys on fire isn't a sensible thing to do?"

"I tripped. He shouldn't have been in my way. They're accusing me of witchcraft."

"You're a boy."

"They have doubts." At this, the demon gave a short laugh. Ciel may not have been the most boyish-boy, especially not this young, but doubting his gender was a new step for the humans. Even he couldn't help but find the idea of Ciel being a woman highly amusing.

"Funny; if you were a girl, I would think that you would be a bit more, developed in a particular area."

"Shut up! You're not even a teacher here; be quiet."

"Setting a boy on fire shouldn't be enough to accuse you of witchcraft. How did you set him on fire?"

"I told you, I tripped over. Grabbed him as I fell, pushed him into the fireplace. But they also saw me sneezing in the presence of a black cat about a minute before; they think I was talking to the thing." The demon gave a frown, looking at Ciel carefully and noting how, despite this being his seventh embodiment, he still looked the same, albeit younger.

"They won't be able to convict you." The demon started, unsure how to deal with the slightly depressed boy as he waited. The demon wasn't too fond of his mistress, and briefly he wondered if he could bribe her to not send the boy to a trial. He glanced back at Ciel.

The boy looked terribly hopeless.

"Did you not say they couldn't convict me?" Ciel asked, looking the slightest bit desperate and mildly feral as he pulled at the hem of his shirt, nervously looking towards the doors of the courthouse. The demon gave a small sigh, resisting the urge to kick the boy. He'd tried to subtly persuade his mistress to see reason, subtly attempted to stop her from telling the courthouse judge. But she'd only ordered him to keep away from the boy in question. He could feel the Faustian mark on his hand tingling as he disobeyed his orders.

"If you could stay quiet for just one moment, I could perhaps get you out of this mess."

"Just give up. They've not accused someone of being a witch for decades; they want some excitement in the town. And what better to accuse of witchcraft than a vulnerable, weak boy who is susceptible to contact with spirits and possession due to his ill health?" At that, the demon turned to look at him, remembering the Salem Witch trials and wondering if perhaps Ciel had once heard about it. Because try as he might, what the boy had just said would remain with him for a long time.

Because he was right.

"Guilty! How could they possibly declare me guilty of witchcraft?" Ciel kicked the wall of the small cell he was confined to, hands balled into tight fists.

"Quite easily. They say 'guilty.'"

"You're so funny; such rapier wit!"

"Would you rather I tell you the truth? Would you rather I sit with you and allow you to mope on death, murder, guilty, not guilty, slaughter, witches and other morbid things?" At this, Ciel gave a heavy sigh, sitting in the corner of the cell of the jailhouse and hugging his knees to his chest. The demon sat down on the empty chair in the room, noting the absence of the jailor but dismissing it in order to carefully study Ciel. The boy in question gave another sigh, tired blue eyes locking with his own.

"Did you ever have any idea of what was going to happen?" The scared tone that layered his voice made the demon raise an eyebrow in mild surprise.

"No, not really. I thought that I had enough evidence to make the judge unable to convict you. It seems, however-"

"I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about that night, with the black rose. The day a prince professed to love a servant, before allowing them both to be unlawfully killed."

At that, once blurry memories from his last human life became very vivid and clear. Whereas before he could only remember days spent in the servants company, that one question uttered by the very servant in question pulled the memory of their last day as humans from a void inside the demon's mind. He could clearly remember the tricky ties of the servant's uniform, slowing his progress, could clearly remember the taste of his skin on his lips before they were pulled apart by the banging open of doors.

Somehow, the demon held his posture as he rifled through the memory of his last twenty-four hours of human life, remembering the cold, dampness of the dungeon he had been locked in and the searing pain of the stones tearing his skin open.

"You were in the dungeon cell opposite me. I tried to get you to speak to me, but you simply ignored me." The demon stated, any emotion hidden from his voice. Ciel, snapping his head up from where he was sat, looked up at the demon.

"I thought you had known what was going on. I thought you had set it all up. I thought I'd be hanged and then you released back to your lifestyle. Until the King made me watch you getting stoned from the window. But even then, I thought you had been under the impression you were being freed; that you'd simply been betrayed by your father."

"No. I never knew what would transpire that night, nor did I expect that my father would react the way he did." At the demon's words, Ciel seemed to relax in his cell, leaning his head against the wall and giving the barest hint of a smile.

"Then perhaps I can be finally allowed to stop this ridiculous cycle of life and death. Perhaps the reapers will take me this time, and allow me to never have to walk this earth again. I wonder, did you feel like this in the days when you realised that you were in your last life? Or am I the only one to be reborn again and again?" The question was rhetorical, needing no answer.

"How have you constantly recognised me?" The demon asked, wanting that one last answer before he would let this soul go. In all honesty, he was only curious. Attachement and sentiment had disappeared the moment the first stone had tore his cheek open. Ciel looked up again, a look of wonder in his face. He kept silent for a few seconds before he answered.

"The second time we met, in Constantinople when you were a demon, it may have been because I thought I was going to die. The moment you picked me up off the floor, I thought it was over. I yelled out the first thing that came to mind, and with it returned my memories. The third time, in India, it was because you saved my life. Your touch as you pulled me from the water revived memories I didn't know I had, along with vaguer memories of a life of thievery and a life in a palace. The fourth time, in China, you knocked into me. Again, the contact from you sparked memories of my past life. The fifth time, on the ship, I was dying from plague after saving that rat. Although that time, it may have had something to do with how I was dying and the contact from you as you moved me to make it easier to breathe. The sixth time, in England, you placed your hand over my mouth to silence me, and it brought back vaguer memories that became clearer the more I saw you. This time around, your hand brushed against me as you led me from the schoolhouse to my home. It may be the contact, it may be coincidence."

The demon gave a nod at that, keeping his eyes on the boy as a bell outside tolled midday. Ciel kept his silence in his cell as he awaited news of his coming execution. The demon merely sat there, going through the memories in his mind and feeling oddly at ease. In a way, he still felt dismayed with himself for feeling the way he did.

When Ciel was called for execution, the demon merely watched in silence, content with knowing that he wouldn't be annoyed by the continuous reappearance of the soul that had kept popping up in his demonic life.

Or so he thought.

"You."

Ciel hadn't been expecting that; it surprised him to the point where he took a small step forwards and tripped, his foot getting caught on the leg of the table that he had been arranging food on. His hip connected with the wood, sending him flying forward to the floor uttering a rather loud curse in the process. As he fell, he moved to grab the edge of the table and succeeded only in slicing the palm of his left hand open. In his pain, he managed to blush only to a faint pink. The prince shook his head with a smirk on his face, waiting until Ciel had stemmed the blood flow from his hand in his servant robes.

"I too, had that reaction when I realised it." He uncurled his hand, showing the servant a long, fresh scar that ran along his left hand from where it had been sliced across the table edge. "I was folding the table away and noticed you having a heated discussion with the cook outside. I wondered how someone could act so small and fragile one second, and then explode in such anger, retort with such a heated passion in their voice. At the same time I realised that I was falling in love, you sat on one of the wagons outside and looked up to the window. It shocked me as the realisation hit me fully, and I fell over the leg of the table."

"I-I…" Ciel trailed off, undeniably shocked by the confession but unable to think of anything suitable to say. Instead of insulting the prince like he thought it would, Sebastian merely gave another smirk, this one oddly fake as he helped to pull Ciel up from the floor. As he pulled him up, he directed him closer to himself, bowing his head so as to be able to quietly whisper into the blushing servant's ear.

"Most people mistake black to be the colour of death, hatred. I consider it to be the colour of rebirth, of the final mark needed before the feeling of satisfaction can be achieved… Do not mistake the two upon the appearance of a blackened flower."