I dedicate this chapter to my sister, who with bravery came out to me first.

I stared at the chaotic sight in front of me. Elizabeth held her bleeding hand at the wrist, trying not to cry as the blood dripped over pale taffeta, and Ciel had no inhibition about his retching noises, or how he was covered in his own acrid filth. I decided it would be best to tend to the lady; the young master could wallow in his pool of vomit for a few moments. He brought the misfortune on himself.

I knelt to pick her from the floor. "Are you alright, my lady?"

What little dignity she was attempting to maintain crumpled away with a great sob. "No, no, I'm really not." She buried her hands in her face, for stopping tears seemed of more importance than stopping blood.

"But you will be?" She pulled her injured hand from her face, leaving a rosy smudge on her cheek. A tear fell across it and for a moment I thought it a little pretty. "Come, my dear, let us find Paula." I helped her off the floor, kicking bits of glass under the couch to prevent more injury. I held her right elbow, propping up a hand which still bled, while I supported her waist. She seemed to have little interest in walking, but with enough momentum she became a little more sure-footed.

We took a soft gait down the hall, and she murmured, "Paula is in my quarters."

"Is she waiting for you?"

"She always waits for me."

Her head rested on my shoulder, and I remembered that she was no petite woman. She had remarkable grace while also being tall and sturdy. By comparison, she made other young women appear as frail as twigs.

"I am so sorry, Lady Elizabeth." My tone was remorseful.

"You don't have to apologize for him." She sniffed, and I feared she might begin crying again.

"Actually, I fear I do." I felt the need to apologize because she would be acquiring a husband who was so damaged and deceitful, and I was largely to blame for it. "My young master's behaviour has been disgraceful. There is no excuse for it. Perhaps I am too permissive."

Elizabeth gave a hollow chuckle.

She did not question how I would know the way to her bedroom, but rather accepted the convenience, allowing me to open the door for her as a matter of course. Paula flew into a frenzied panic at the sight of Elizabeth's swollen eyes and gruesome cut. I could have cleaned her myself, but she needed to be distanced from that scene, near someone as secure and nurturing as her maid. Paula looked on the brink of tears to behold her lady in such a state, and this sent Elizabeth into another crying fit, the pitiable sort where one starts crying as a plea for sympathy.

I held Paula's shoulder as she hugged the poor girl. "There was an accident in the young master's room. Please, please do not tell her mother."

Her attention to the lady was arrested for the moment, and I watched the comprehension click. She pursed her lips and nodded. "Right now, the less she knows the better."

Elizabeth hiccupped, and then said. "I'll tell mother I had a nasty run in with the embroidery scissors."

Paula brushed blonde curls out of a mottled face. "Serves you right, to be working on your embroidery in the dark when you're so tired."

"Paula, if you should need anything else-"

"We'll be okay. We will discuss more later-"

"Right, I need to tend to my master." At which point Elizabeth was sobbing again. I turned and heard Paula murmur an "oh dear" as I shut the door.

The party seemed to have settled down. I would have reached the young master's quarters in time, if I had not heard a door click closed and a soft voice inquire, "Will she be alright?"

I turned to see a willowy, pale young man illuminated by a lamp that trembled in his hand. I looked down at my watch: quarter past eleven. Anyone would have little reason to venture out so late, and it should have been a given that guests would ask to stay after such rich food and so much beverage.

I walked into his sphere of light, and perhaps my up lit visage was what caused him to take a step back. "Is there something you require? I have pressing matters, sir."

"No... I just... may we talk?" What was this? I cocked an eyebrow at the request. Joann's look was as desperate and forlorn as I remembered him two years previously, a lost boy seeking some counsel and empathy. I cannot say no to a pretty face; it is not in my nature.

"Come, I need your lamp." Our walk down the hall was brisk. He covered his mouth when we entered the young master's room, either from the stink or the sight and I did not know which was more deplorable. He was half conscious sprawled in his own shallow puddle of stomach contents, which was a surprising amount. I did not think he was able to see me, or perhaps my gait was distinguishable enough. He could not get out my full name before he was retching again.

Joann murmured, "Oh my God."

"He had too much to drink." I pulled Ciel off the floor, and he was limp and heavy in my arms. "A glass of water, Joann."

"Right." He located the water pitcher on a stand in the corner. I sat the young master in the bathroom adjacent to the bedroom, a distance away from Joann's sight. I forced Ciel to sip at the glass while I searched through luggage for a fresh nightshirt.

Moments later the boy was coughing up into the toilet, and I insisted on more water, changing and cleaning between his sick spells. I handed Joann some towels. "Just cover it for now."

"I can clean it."

"I could not ask it of you-"

"No, it's alright, I want to help." I was not about to argue, for Ciel was sobbing for me.

"Sebastian, I feel like I'm going to die."

"No, you are not." I forced him into his night shirt and rubbed his back. "Drink more water."

After about twenty minutes of supporting the young master through his self-imposed ordeal, he managed to slip into bed. I placed a wastebasket nearby just in case. Joann had managed to clean a good portion of sick off the floor, but there would be a nasty stain to contend with. Joann sat on the couch by the fire, and I remembered I still had glass to clean from under it.

"Let us find a more suitable place to talk. The library, perhaps?"

"The Midfords have a library?"

"Nothing as grand as what you would find on a college campus, but impressive all the same." With the lamp in hand, we slipped downstairs, across the foyer to the east wing.

Joann shivered when we entered the large study, for it was quite chilly for it being unoccupied for the evening. I offered to start a fire, even if we did not plan to linger there, but the fragile young man assured me he would be well under his evening jacket. We sat across from one another at a small desk, the lamp to the side between us. Joann saw the ash tray sitting next to the desk and pulled a small case from an inside breast pocket. He placed a thin cigarette between his lips and cradled a lit match in front while I raised an eyebrow.

He exhaled a stream of smoke. "Father doesn't know."

I leaned back in my chair. "And what else does father not know?"

Joann lowered his head, his hair a shower of silk in front of his eyes. Of course his thoughts ran back to our interactions from two years ago. "It was easy to talk to you, back then. Even though men say they care, after you admit to things they secretly judge you. You never did that."

"People judge because they seek to have power over one another. I had no such motivation with you."

"What was your motivation, Mr. Michaelis?"

I folded my arms. "My motivation has always been the will of my young lord. I serve him in whatever manner needed so that he may achieve his own objectives."

"And when you helped me-"

"Yes, you aided in giving information which offered Earl Phantomhive the opportunity to elevate his position in the school's hierarchy. It was necessary for solving his case. You were there; you know enough."

Joann occupied himself with the cigarette, flicking ash into the pan. "I still don't understand all of what happened."

"And this is not the reason you wanted to talk to me." I could tell he was nervous, how his unoccupied hand fidgeted, how he compulsively flicked his cigarette. It was his routine to push the hair out of his face, and I wondered why he did not trim it if it caused him such irritation.

"I have a question, Mr. Michaelis," he took a deep pull off his cigarette. "Even if at the time you were simply playing a role, that moment when I came to you for confession... it still means something, right?"

"Mean something? In what way?"

"Were you lying to me?"

"My acting as a minister was a lie. My empathy for your hardship was not. If my advice helped to put your mind at ease, then you already know if it means something, because it mattered to you. Be damned how anyone else may interpret it." I smirked and his expression seemed to brighten.

"Mr. Michaelis, you have a way of putting matters simply yet you speak profound truths."

"No, you flatter me. I state things as they are, nothing more. Men complicate the matters of the world, and therefor they hide truths behind their hopes and perceptions, how they wish things could be."

"I have wondered about such things, and have made that same conclusion." He snubbed his cigarette. "And it makes the world all the more terrifying."

"How is that?"

"You see people live behind lies, and they don't realize it. Any chance to pull them from it and they become violent." There was a pain hiding behind his eyes that shone in the lamplight. His lip trembled; he sat before me as a child whose fears did not lie outside his small scope of the world, but rather in his timid heart.

I leaned in over the table. "What lie have you been living behind? What are you hiding from your father, Mr. Harcourt?"

His pale face flushed a furious red as his features cracked and he sobbed, "Please… please don't call me mister."

I did not know what to make of this outburst. "I meant no offense..."

"I just need someone to tell me I'm not going mad, that what I'm feeling is not a sign that I'm losing my mind."

"What are you feeling...?" The young man panted and sobbed, losing control of himself and looked ready to crumple under his own misery. I rose from my chair, pivoting around the table and I knelt before him. He could not hide his face if I were looking up at him. "Listen... no one is here to hurt you." I remember using these same words with Ciel when he was younger. "I am here, no one else." I held his arms on each side, firm and assuring. "Look at me. Take a breath. Tell me what is causing you such distress."

"It's hard to put into words, but I can try." He gave a great shudder, my touch seeming to calm him. "This life I have... I sometimes try to look at myself from the outside... and I wonder if this was a big mistake, that the life I was given was the wrong one, and perhaps I was meant to lead an entirely different one."

"That is very vague. You will have to be more specific."

His voice was barely a whisper. "I look in the mirror and I don't like what I see. I've always felt that way. I can care for my skin and my hair all I want, shave every morning and evening and it still doesn't make me feel better about myself. The clothes I wear are to keep everyone around me from staring, but I feel suffocated and exposed in them at the same time. Isabel looks at me with the expectation of something I can't be, that I never had the ability to be."

"A husband?"

"A man."

Comprehension clicked in my head and with it I saw a different person sitting before me. I saw the delicate hand that hid a sensitive countenance. Narrow legs were held tight at the knees and an arm slipped around a thin torso, something Elizabeth did when she was feeling uncertain of herself. I was not staring at an awkward young man. I was staring at a young woman that did not know how to feel right with herself.

"Oh. Oh dear..." Perhaps Joann could see the look of futility on my face. I had no explanation, no words of comfort for this. He fell before me to the floor, a great wave of emotion, fierce and turbulent as only a grieving woman can display: grief for her own misfortune, her own fate.

"I don't know what to do, Mr. Michaelis!"

Joann sat in my lap, burying a face in my arm. I patted soft hair, cradling this lanky form. I had no solution for this either. What was he coming for in the first place? How could this situation even begin to be fixed? He was not mad; he was frightened and hopeless and there is only one thing to be done for people like that, and I was already in a contract.

I held him fast, wiped his tears and he stared at me with those red eyes, which I thought were rather strange and lovely. I whispered, "I think you just needed to tell someone. I think you needed someone else to know, and I do not think you are insane. Something I have told the young master on a number of occasions... we feel how we feel. There is no right or no wrong about it. All one can do is accept the truth of it."

And that truth tore through me with such razor sharpness I tightened my grip on Joann in response to this crushing blow. My own idiocy, my own hypocrisy, that I would tell this soul that there was no right or wrong, only truth, to accept this person's feelings, when not so long ago I had taken Ciel's feelings and condemned them. It was selfish, it was cowardly. Yes, I am heartless, and ultimately self-serving, but in that moment, this was another example of where I had to place my master before my own needs, my own comfort. I had taken bullets for him, been maimed and beaten in all manner of ways for him. Perhaps I could take his affection, like a wound, and I would nurse myself from it in time. I could bear that, if only to stay true to this one principle.

"Joann." I cupped his face in my hands. "It takes real courage to admit the truth to ourselves, and even more to admit it to someone else. I am honoured you chose me to be the one to tell." He gave a small smile. "Do not expect others to understand your truth. I cannot advise you to let others know it. Perhaps there will be a time in your life where you will overcome this, where what you feel here" I laid a hand on his chest, "is reflected in the mirror."

"Do you think that is something to strive towards?"

"If it would make you happy."

"Just knowing it could be a possibility makes me happy."

I was suddenly aware of how close our faces were, and this was not my doing. Joanne was searching my eyes and I gazed right back.

"If it is any consolation," I murmured, "I have considered you lovely as you are."

"I've wondered about you, Mr. Michaelis."

"My young master calls me Sebastian."

"Oh." Joann's eyes were half-lidded, pouting lips brushing mine with curiosity. Such a chaste action, compared to the desperate wanting I had found myself experiencing with Ciel, how he would meet my desire with his own viciousness. This was intimacy with no passion, and I felt it best to restrain myself. A gloved hand slipped behind a thin neck, my thumb tender against smooth jaw as I reciprocated that warmth.

If I could do it for someone I cared nothing for, I could do it a thousand times and more for my master.

Joann quivered, whispered, "Oh my God," against my lips before backing into the chair. Another cigarette was on his lips, and he was rather clumsy lighting it with trembling fingers which suddenly seemed too large for him.

I rose from my kneeling position and chuckled as I sat in my seat across from him. There was still plenty of oil in the lamp, meaning still quite enough time to talk.

"I have that effect on people." I shot him a smug grin. "So you have wondered about me."

"Yes, that kiss confirmed it." Joann clung to that cigarette.

"What else have you wondered?"

"I've wondered about Ciel."

I leaned inward, my face propped in my hands with elbows on the table. "You are far too perceptive for your own good, dear." Joann blushed. "You have been brave enough with your secret, so I suppose you have earned a secret from me. Exchange one for another, no more or less."

"Sebastian, would you care for a cigarette?"

"You offer me too much."

"Not at all."

"Well, Joann, if you insist." He flicked a match to life and held it before me over the table. As I leant back and let a plume of smoke billow, he shook the flame out and dropped it in the ashtray. I inhaled the smoke into my lungs, and it felt a little like home, a comfortable and familiar sadness, and I remembered why I never cared to make smoking a habit. "The young master would literally beat me if he was aware that anyone would know it. He is of a different persuasion I think, although he hates to admit it, and yes, he has sought that company with me."

Joann's eyes widened. "And is that why you two...?"

"Oh, we have other reasons for this professional arrangement, and you must pardon my dismissal on the matter, no one is privy to that secret." I reached for the ash tray. "No, I suppose you could say our... affair... call it what you will, it is a rather recent development."

Joann stared into the lamp light. "What about Elizabeth?"

"What about her?"

"She doesn't know."

"Of course she does not know. It would kill her to know."

He paused before answering. "How does Ciel feel about keeping it from her?"

I sat and thought about that for a moment. It was difficult to consider his feelings. "I think he hides it well, and he hides things from himself. If he were more honest with himself, he would admit that it tears him apart, to be so deceitful to one of the few who has ever shown him patience and kindness."

"Oh..." he clutched at his shoulder, as though to stop himself from rattling. "That's so sad. That is so... so sad..."

"Perhaps you would find it sadder to realize that the young master cares less and less for his fiancée. He has tried... he has tried so hard to care about her needs and her feelings. Sometimes that is impossible if it is just not in you."

"How do you feel towards Ciel?"

"I..." I dragged on my cigarette. "That is the wrong question to ask, Joann."

"Do you care about him?"

"I care for his wellbeing."

"That's not the same thing." Joann put out his second cigarette, his eyes boring into me.

"You are right. It is not in me to care more."

He seemed to understand my meaning, his features softened and he reached for my hand across the table. "I'm sorry, Sebastian."

"No, it is quite-"

"No, you misunderstand me. I am sorry that you just can't... feel more."

"What?" I almost dropped my cigarette on the table.

"Do you see the way he looks at you? He tries to hide it behind his icy tone when he speaks, but he looks at you, and he looks at you deeply, something in his face just melts. The crease in his brow goes away and he doesn't hold his jaw as tight." I pictured his face, seeing such a harrowed look to him but his features were soft. He only carried that hardness when he went back to concentrating on his work.

No, it was the other way around. He always carried that hardness, that weight. It was only when I entered the room that his face softened. That look, the face which I found so beautiful, that expression was reserved for me alone. I thought back to the times when Ciel was with Elizabeth. I thought to the times when he glanced in my direction, and almost instinctually Elizabeth would turn his head to try and grab that expression for herself. It would be gone as soon as his eye fell upon her, no matter how much he tried to gaze with sincerity.

He was baring something for me. For me alone. He was not even contractually obligated to give it to me yet and it was there for the taking. Was it any wonder that face terrified me?

I snuffed my cigarette, feeling as wispy as the last tendrils of smoke. "Well, what can I say to that?"

Perhaps Joann saw my knit brow in the warm lamp light. Perhaps he saw my fingers tremble as I ran them through my loose hair. He murmured, "I'm sorry... Se-Sebastian. I didn't mean-"

"No, you did nothing. Thank you."

"For what?"

I sighed. "You have given me some... perspective. I will leave it at that." I caught him trying to stifle a yawn. "It is late."

He rose from his chair. "I should retire."

I walked with him to his room, and he shivered, either from the cold or the heaviness of the subjects we discussed. "Will I see you again?" he whispered.

"If you wish." My lips curled. He allowed me to move a strand of hair from his face, gloved fingers stopping at sharp jaw. Such a delicate face. His breath shuddered from the contact. His lips parted as if to speak but I placed my hand over his mouth. "No more. I hope you rest easy tonight."

He slipped into his guest room and I was left in the hallway in darkness. I could feel a yearning from my master, a pathetic loneliness, self-hatred and shame. It was something I had felt from him for quite some time. I crept back to his room. Cleaning the stain from the carpet was no more difficult than a flick of the wrist.

Even in his muddled consciousness he knew I was in the room. It was a sense that was beyond physical for us. I imagined my presence was as a thick blanket, blotting out light and dampening sound.

"Sebastian..."

"Yes, young master?"

I was already hanging my jacket, setting my shoes next to the chair by the desk. The fireplace held no more than scorching coals, and I left it. I poured another glass of water, sitting by his side and propping him in the dark. He allowed me to tip the glass to his lips, trusting I would not spill. His eye drooped, unable to focus even if there was light to permit it.

He eased into the pillows, but his hand clutched mine, commanding me to stay, to not leave him. The unspoken command was not necessary.