"Ciel, stay here." It seemed a silly instruction, for he seemed content to just lie there. I pushed off the bed, and the vileness of myself wisped as smoke off his pale body. He tried to catch it in the air, but it faded into ether.

I was drawn to the despair of death as instinct would compel me. Even if I suspected Ciel was ready at any moment to drown in me, the immanence of this exposed essence of life… I knew who it was before I had left Ciel's room. I smelled the blood before I had even gone to her room.

When I opened the door I saw she had cleared her vanity. The bed was made and over it she had set out a white dress, complete with shoes. Off to the side her trunk and bags were packed. The bathroom door was cracked.

I was met with red and white.

She was slumped in the tub, her hair limp and heavy, its ends dipped in red. She tried to be courteous with her mess, keeping it well within the tub, but in an effort to keep her music playing she had smeared blood over the box of the gramophone. The water was dark crimson, her white breasts just breaching the surface. On her face was the impression that this passing had been painful, not in a physical manner, but in her heart she had suffered far worse.

"Sebastian Michaelis, what the hell happened to you?" I whipped about to more red. Grell Sutcliff had appeared in the doorway, heels clopping on the tiles. "You look like you just emerged from the fiery pit itself. Don't think for a second you're getting a chance to lay your dastardly claws on these souls. But looking like that," he glanced over the rims of his gaudy spectacles, his gaze a little too low for my liking, "you can do more than dig those claws into me."

I ignored the comment. "She was pregnant."

"Yes indeed!" He knelt before the tub, and stared into the pale lifeless face. "Not very far along, I imagine."

From some unknown light source emerged a cinematic record. It was but a short thing and Grell stated, "They always start this way, just black, a few dim impressions." It was but the rushing of water, then the pattering of a little heart fluttering to life. There was a terrible shuddering, as if a great swell of sadness had caused the whole of existence to weep. Finally the world went cold, and with no warmth to keep it going, the heart stopped. "Judging from the length of this record, and a soul is not imparted until the heart begins beating... she conceived about... five weeks ago? At most?

Five weeks ago she was in LeHavre.

"Oh Sebastian, what happened to her? What brought her to this?" He pulled her arm from the tub. Where once there had been flawless skin was a grisly gash down the length of her forearm, carved with surety, the skin split deep. The dress she had laid out on the bed had full sleeves. "I bet she dropped the instrument of choice in the water..." Grell fished his full arm in the tub as one paws about in dishwater for a butter knife. "Oh dear, a letter opener. How crude." It clattered to the once white tile.

Another light erupted, and floating from it was a full narrative of the girl's life, every bubbling moment and every sad episode.

Her childhood was a strict one, with lessons on etiquette in the mornings and fencing in the afternoons: Poetry and embroidery, combat and strategy. She was to be the perfect lady in polite society, yet strong enough to face the horrors of the underworld with the Queen's Watchdog himself, because Marchioness Midford knew of the life in store for her daughter.

Elizabeth saw her mother cry only once in her life, and it was after the funeral in December. She was eleven. She learned that if even her mother was not impenetrable to grief then no one was safe.

For all the lessons she learned, her genius with the sword, in her heart she remained timid and frightened. She fought as she never had three years later, and despite those corpses being dull and stupid, easy targets to disembody, every second her heart raced with panic. She fought against her own fears just as much as she fought against those animated dolls.

Two years later they were on a boat once more, travelling south to France, instead of some grand journey across the Atlantic. Ciel held tight to her hand the whole way there.

She caught snippets of conversation between Ciel and Mr. Hameldon, insistence that he see the basement as part of his inspection. Later when she inquired of it, he said, "He's hiding something." She was so willing to be of use to him, so wanted to prove her worth, to show she could be strong, dependable. Maybe I was wrong to think he would never want a strong woman. Maybe if I prove that I am more than just a pretty face he will think me worthy.

How she pleaded to help, until he was convinced. He wanted to give her the benefit, believed she could accomplish the mission because she seemed so determined. When she crept into the basement of the factory she could barely breathe. Every step on the dusty floor seemed so loud to her.

The basement smelled of vomit and faeces and it made her want to wretch. Children sat in cages, emaciated, most too weak to cry, some too beaten down to care. One child clung to the bars. "Êtes-vous un ange? Aidez-nous, s'il vous plaît, sauvez-nous, Dieu ait pitié." More began to chant, "Maria, Maria, nous sauver de la misère. Délivre-nous de l'enfer."

Their prayers were what damned her.

The men heard the children squalling. The light from the door slamming open poured over her, and there was nowhere to run, no place to hide behind barred cages. She had but a small knife strapped to her leg. She felled one man, at which point the others took her seriously. They pried away her only defence and wrestled her upstairs kicking and screaming.

She screamed loud enough for Ciel to hear, but she was slapped to silence. When he saw her captured he knew they were in serious trouble with no way out and she had never seen him so helpless. They would not survive to see morning, she thought.

"I'm sorry it had to come to this, Earl Phantomhive. This could have been so much easier if you cooperated, and took my offer." She knew not what the man meant, but she could tell her fiancé was disgusted. "Take the girl away. I don't care what becomes of her."

No amount of beating was going to silence Ciel Phantomhive as he called out to her over and over and over. The men's hands on her arms hurt. She was flung into the closet, and she was frightened to realise that the men wanted to be in the closet with her too. She could hear him screaming through the thin walls, the insistent yelling for him to shut up as he was pummelled to the floor. The men just laughed, taunted that she should reply to her waif of a boy, this half a man. "I can show you what a real man is."

And she learned just how cruel the world can be that day. She did not cry out to Ciel because she did not want him to die trying to save her, only to find her soiled, unclean, virginity wrecked, womb invaded and innocence so completely torn. No one would know, not even Paula, even when she would ask night after night, "Why do you cry so, my lady?"

Her mother had taught her the ways of womanhood, when shortly after her thirteenth birthday she went to her toilet feeling a little out of sorts and found a spot of blood in her bloomers. It had gone straight through to the petticoats. Mother was quite gentle that day, letting her have two pieces of cake, a day off from fencing, instead spending the afternoon in the women's lounge speaking of women's things.

She taught her how to track her cycle, important things for a woman's health. "The doctors are useless and seem content with women's biology remaining a secret, so women are the only ones who can speak to their own well-being." Francis told her of why women marry, to have children of course, and precisely how to go about having them. "Men will lay their claim on the womb of a woman, as they do everything else. You will know when his seed has taken root because that is when the cycle stops."

She was meant to begin her cycle again sometime about the twenty-third of April, give or take. She returned home, but it never came. Another week passed and it still never came.

Edward came home for the last time to tell his family the biggest mistake of his life. When Elizabeth overheard that Jacqueline was with child, and it was most certainly fathered by Edward, Elizabeth wondered if she too was with child. She prayed it to not be so, but some bastard child grew within her, and some noble child grew within the belly of a whore actress.

She watched her mother and father erase all memory of Edward from their lives. What if they were to find her pregnant as well? Out of wedlock? And Ciel could not even claim it as his own? It would be beyond disgrace.

She could get married before there was any showing of her pregnancy. She would convince him to be wed sooner. She would stage a rendezvous with him as soon as possible afterwards. The very idea filled her with dread. Ciel could not be anything like those brutish men. Surely he could be more gentle, more loving. It was the only hope to keep her all together, that he loved her. He just had a hard time expressing it.

But there was no point in her life happier than that one dazzling night, when she really did feel like an angel on his arm. She had never heard him play with more feeling, or felt him dance with more spirit. He laughed that evening, perhaps not over anything she said, but he looked so entirely happy that night. They could forge a happy life together after all.

That was convincing enough for her to pluck up her courage and venture to Ciel's bedroom, after nights of putting it off. She wore nothing under the nightgown, hoping this would be easy and she would not have to expose too much of herself.

She could see a light on underneath the door and thought it strange for Ciel to be awake so late at night. There was murmuring: Two different voices, one with that lilting tone that was so characteristic of Ciel, and another one deeper, but perfectly sophisticated. There was no possible way. It would be too bizarre.

It was interesting to relive the whole encounter from her perspective. She was completely shocked by this. Ciel had done well in keeping the secret from her, and he would have continued it if she had not made some plan to be indecent that evening. She could have stayed in her own bed and waited another night, or perhaps sprung the desire on him the next day. It could have panned out in a million other ways.

Ciel had a fondness for men. She had heard of such things before but it was impossible that Ciel could be the sort. But he never kissed her the way he kissed Sebastian. She played the piano to try and get her mind off it, but stopped to watch Joanne load the carriage. Ciel stole a kiss then too! There would be no end to his madness! It made her beyond furious. Was she just not good enough for him?

When he yelled in her face a bit of spit landed on her cheek. It so reminded her of the men in the closet, how their spittle was on her face as they...

and she did the one thing she had so wished she had done in that closet. She wished she had fought, and screamed for someone to save her. She wailed all of her regret in that foyer and she played Ciel's words over and over again.

"You bitch." Those men had called her that too.

"Like you're the only one here who suffers." She never wanted him to know just how much she suffered, just as his suffering had always been a secret to her.

"No one's pain and suffering can match yours." He was right, because Ciel had someone to protect him, to confide in, someone to patch up the broken pieces of him and make him stronger. Ciel grew stronger every year, because he had Sebastian. And she would have no one.

"Do you feel vindicated?" No, she just felt wretched.

"I hope you never have to suffer a day of true terror. I don't think you could handle an hour of it." It was not a full day, but those few short moments were enough to ruin her. It took a whole month to ruin Ciel, and she was spoiled in but an instant.

"Just leave already." Ever compliant to the one person she believed she could have love with, she decided to do just that.

Setting the guest room right put her mind at ease, and she thought best how to leave with as little trouble as possible. She did not want to be heard. She thought she might run a hose from the gas cooker under the door into the pantry but there was too much risk of something not going right. She made too much noise going down the stairs she knew, so she went to the drawing room like she wanted to fetch the gramophone. If she was caught out of her room she could make the excuse of wanting music.

The opera drowned out the sound of her sobbing. The music was soothing to her. She did not know German, but she knew it was a prayer: Maria, Maria, maiden mild. It was a prayer of salvation, just like those children prayed in that basement. Deliver me from this cold, cruel world, from its evils and its lies. Bring to me some peace, do not leave me alone.

She could barely lift her hand to set the needle on the recording one final time. The amount of blood amazed her. Surely she had none left, but it still came. Keeping her eyes open became very difficult, but it did not hurt as much anymore. She forgot to tell her mother that she and Ciel had decided to move the date for the wedding to June, possibly the third weekend. She had picked out her wedding dress, it was on the bed, nothing fancy. She thought of the white rose on the lapel of his jacket last night, and for some reason that made her feel sad.

She fell asleep.

And her heart slowed.

She exhaled and took in no breath after.

Grell sat on the floor watching this record, his head resting on his arms over the edge of the tub, tears streaming down the bridge of his nose, but otherwise his face serene. They dripped into the bloody bathwater.

"You stupid, stupid girl." He lifted his glasses and wiped his face with the hand he had submerged into the gore. Acid green eyes were a blur of red and coal that had been splotched from silent weeping. He held Elizabeth's cold head to his chest. "You could have left and made some new life for yourself, with your bastard child. You could have made it work. What I would give to have been in your position, as dreadful as it all was." He kissed a spot of blood off her temple. "Poor, stupid little lady. You tried to be strong. To take your life, and the life growing inside you. You couldn't have regard for even that, but I can't fault you, I suppose."

As he stood, the corpse slid further into the tub, and he plucked his scythe off the floor. With a whiz and a swipe the cinematic record was cut, and the essence of her vanished from my senses. Grell sniffled, "Now let's see..." a book appeared in his hands, "Yes, Elizabeth Ethel Cordelia Midford. Born 5th of July, 1874, died 18th of May, 1891. Cause: heart failure due to blood loss. Special remarks: suicide. Second Soul, unborn. Ugh, I do hate the amount of paper work on these cases. Do you see, Sebby, why they put me on these assignments? Dispatch sees it fit that I be the one to handle these types. And in London, I'll say, there's no end to them."

"Considering your history, you have an affinity for these macabre sort of scenes."

"As if you know." He scrunched up the sleeve of that abysmal coat, the one that belonged to a certain Madam, then unbuttoned the cuff about his wrist. He pulled back the sleeve. There was a dreadful scar raised dead centre. He must have known to cut right between the radius and the ulna, for it was more than a slash down the forearm, but a sizeable removal of flesh. He had intention to sever the vessels deep, with scalpel precision to ensure no one could save him. "I could not lift it to finish the job on the other, but I did pretty good carving into this one. It did me in quick enough." He buttoned the cuff once more. "In case you wonder why I always wear long sleeves. Or gloves. Even in the most seductive dresses a lady can't be too revealing. Speaking of which, you're beyond revealing."

I looked down and remembered that indeed I was still very naked. Some of the infernal essence of myself had dissipated, not by much, as my hands were still ebony to the wrists, and I still felt as hard as stone. I could not even will my hair to resume its more manageable length. "Your mission is done, so now I must insist you leave. Right now."

I heard one of the floorboards in the hallway creak, ever so, as if gentle feet were creeping. Ciel was in the hallway.

Grell could not be alerted to this.

"Seb, darling, we at Dispatch were informed you were out of contract. I had to be punctual, knowing I was to collect souls where a demon resides." He swaggered to where I stood, a few inches taller for the heels he wore. The noise of the death scythe he had slung across his broad shoulders must have alerted Ciel to something gone awry. I had never bothered to tell him of my previous encounter with the reaper. "You could have plucked them right from under me, and that would have been an even greater deal of paperwork. A suicide? Lost to a demon? We haven't had to deal with that sort of debacle for at least a century."

My fists clenched as I attempted to remain calm. "Due to what has transpired here this evening, I do not wish to deal with a bigger scene. Leave, Grell."

"Now you see... I can't really do that." He stalked about me and I heard Ciel's breathing in the other room. Grell had no idea just how close the boy was, for he stood with his back to the door. "A free-roaming hell spawn is too much of a liability in my jurisdiction."

Click. It was the sound of the hammer of a revolver being engaged.

Grell placed a hand on my shoulder as he bent to whisper in my ear. "It is unfortunate, you handsome devil, that I am forced to exterminate you."

BANG.

Grell rammed into me from behind with the most unattractive bellow from the force of a bullet finding its mark on his shoulder. As I spun about I shoved him against the wall and lunged into the guest room to find Ciel in a dress robe still holding the pistol, his British Bulldog, as trustworthy as a security blanket. He had not lowered his arms before I pulled him into my own, burying his face into my neck.

"Do not look," I murmured into his hair.

"Damn that earl brat!" Grell shrieked from the bathroom. His death scythe roared to life as he stomped onto the carpet. Looking back, his right shoulder hung low but he still managed to support the weight of the scythe with his left, even if it looked cumbersome to wield. "You better have more bullets, you little shit, because it's gonna take more than that." The saw of the scythe whirred as he held it over his head. "You wanna play, boy? Fancy a go?"

"Grell, leave him out of this! Your quarrel is with me!"

Ciel pushed against my chest but to no avail. Muffled, he bellowed, "He's going to kill you, you idiot!"

"And you think you can affect this situation?"

"I already have!"

"Indeed." I bent to scoop up his legs and tossed him over a shoulder. "I think you have done enough." I turned to face Grell, thus ensuring Ciel had no view into the bathroom.

"Sebastian put me down!"

"No."

He pounded on my back with the butt of his pistol. "Put me down or I'll shoot you!"

Grell had ceased his attack stance to stare at us, and burst into a cackling fit. "Oh my God you two even fight like lovers, what a dreadful turn of events. Earl Phantomhive, getting his jollies with a demon, can't say I blame you, I'm even a touch jealous. But my, what a sordid, despicable little boy you are." Grell attempted to saunter closer, but I backed toward the doorway. "You really did a bang-up job on her too, all that despair and anguish and betrayal made her into such a beautiful damsel, like some fallen heroine."

"What is he talking about, Sebastian?" The trembling in his voice indicated he already knew the worst of it, in some small part of his heart, but his mind was convinced such could never be possible. He ceased his fighting. "He's not here for you. Of course not. He's a reaper."

"Oh, I think the dim-wit is starting to catch on. Sebby, you baffle me, what could you ever see in that waif?"

"Grell, do you ever stop talking?" I snapped.

"If my mouth is full. Come here and I'll show you." He blew a kiss in that stomach-curdling manner he had.

"You mean when I fill your face with my fist? No, that results in you screeching louder."

"If you want to hear me squeal, you could fill something else with your fist you know." Like some dreadful bitch in heat he pushed his rear in my direction.

"Enough!" Ciel bellowed from behind me. "Cut the shite! Where is Lizzie?"

"She's dead!" The blood from Grell's shoulder trailed down the white of his shirt over the already red-stained jacket. "She killed herself, in your honour, Earl Phantomhive."

It would have been foolish to hide the ghastly event, but it was mean-spirited that he should find out like this. He grew limp over my shoulder. "Sebastian. Please put me down."

His limbs quivered as he took small steps, noticing for the first time the eeriness of how the outfit was laid upon the bed, and how the vanity had been cleaned, the mirrors scrubbed, the bed made, fresh pot-pourri on a side table. He could not even set foot into the bathroom as he pushed the door open by his fingertips, but immediately turned from the sight. It took but one wide-eyed glance to register the horror, and he gulped at the air, pawed for something to hold.

Grell marched forward to extend an arm. "Isn't she even more beautiful this way? The beauty of death is even more transient than the freshness of her youth. Think of how in her final moments she made such a choice, how every event culminated to this final act of self-expression, when her whole life she bottled all her rage and suffering like a good little girl. On this final night she became a woman, bathing in all her pain. Do you love her now, Ciel Phantomhive?"

Ciel lifted the gun and cocked the hammer. "Fuck you. Reaper or not, I'll use however many bullets it takes to SHUT THAT FUCKING GOB." He turned to me, tears streaked his face but his lips were contorted with rage. "Sebastian, if you don't tear him to pieces I will, I swear to God—"

Grell had his death scythe at the ready. As soon as the chain drove the saw to a cacophonous whir Ciel shot the gun. The bullet missed its mark and instead hit the window behind the reaper. I lunged to pull Ciel out of the way of the saw's wide arc. I flipped behind the bed and ducked just as Grell swung, a hit that cut clean through the bed posts and the canopy with a splintering crack. One opening, one clean shot would be all I needed to end this before Grell in his berserk blood thirst would destroy the whole house.

Ciel was shoved into a corner and I hurtled over the bed, twisting to avoid a counter-swing made clumsy by Grell's wounded shoulder. He would not be deterred by a minor injury, but his movement was limited all the same. To defend a compromised arm meant he kept his left side exposed. I could attack below the ribs and end this.

My hands had turned to claws once more. The air around me seemed to snap as I darted about him to confuse my target. He was quick to sense my movement, but his scythe was a cumbersome weapon. As he turned I spotted my mark.

My blow was disrupted by a pair of branch clippers that clamped my wrist.

We both froze, our eyes on where the teeth of the shears immobilised a claw that would have dealt a gory blow to the red reaper. I followed the scope of the instrument that had ceased this brawl. On the other end a tall man stood by the window.

"Grell Sutcliff, you were ordered to return to headquarters as soon as your task was complete, and here you are making a further mess of things. Honestly, why do I bother entrusting to you even the simplest missions?"

"Will!"

Another grim reaper was the last thing I wanted for this situation.

"Sebastian Michaelis. Well, I suppose we can't even call you that anymore." He retracted his scythe, and pushed up his glasses. "The word from our superior office is you are free-roaming. So much so you appear incapable of even the most rudimentary acts of decency. You would do well with a pair of trousers."

I held at my wrist where he had previously grappled it. "Clothes are not a priority at the moment."

"Evidently." William turned to the red reaper who was attempting to make himself rather small. "I've come to retrieve you. Our business here is done."

"But Will! We can't just let a demon-"

"Actually, as much as it pains me," a folio appeared in his hand and he opened the cover, "the High Records office sent this non-interference policy to our regional dispatch just this morning. Their division is a veritable fiasco at the moment, whispers of a 'disruption,' or 'anomaly,' or some such. He adjusted his glasses and read, "British Isles region of Grim Reaper Dispatch Society, urgent note: contact Grell Sutcliff, London division, cease and desist any attempt to eliminate demonic entity no. 110793, currently operating under pseudonym 'Sebastian Michaelis' due to 'unforeseen circumstances.'"

Ciel stood from his place in the corner. "What the Hell is all this?" He pointed the gun at William, who arched an eyebrow in response. "My fiancee is dead, this lunatic barges into my house... I better get some answers quick." Holding a firearm had the amazing effect of steadying his hands.

"While I can sympathise with your distress to some extent, put the gun down, Phantomhive," William drawled in a bored tone. "The night before we received an invoice that your contract with this demon was null and void, and all members in the area were put on high alert status. Standard procedure for a known nefarious entity with this sort of track record, and in London no less, with plenty for a starving demon to feed on. In addition, with Elizabeth Midford on the "to die" list, a special case scenario in close proximity to a free-roaming demon, you can imagine the entire office has been in shambles.

"But then we get the cease and desist notice in addition to this invoice..." William flips through a few papers, "yes, this was also from the High Records Agency, direct to our Dispatch division, which we never get a direct invoice from them except in the most extreme circumstances. It reads 'revision: soul known as Ciel Phantomhive change status from "unsalvageable" to "undetermined" until further notice.' I don't suppose you can understand, the High Records Agency, the ones responsible to seeing to the Fate of all things, has no idea what your fate is. You were not on the "to die" list, and you are no longer an open case with our Subdivision that processes our unsalvageables."

William snapped the folio closed and it disappeared. "In short, Ciel Phantomhive, you and this demon are an anomaly in the course of the natural progression of events. We are still on high alert, but after showing no signs of malicious or hostile behaviour, we are forced to conclude the situation is stable enough to concede to the non-interference mandate. Grell, time to leave."

Without another word, seemed to melt into the black of the night. Outside the crickets chirped once more. The wind caressed the sheer white curtains.

Ciel lowered his gun... and laughed.

"But he never said anything about why she had to die. Just make sure the demon doesn't get to her first." He turned to me. "You were going to eat her, weren't you?"

"I... wasn't." Actually the thought had crossed my mind.

"Liar." There was no arguing against that.

I was hungry, and I had no faculty to continue this charade. I could not change my hands to resemble the hands that caressed him. I looked into the mirror to see fangs a shock of pearl against skin as dark as soot, my eyes an opalescent fire. The brief fight had stirred me. Every time I felt my own evil culled from me it seemed that much more a strain to suppress it once more.

That was when he fired a bullet into the looking glass. A second one sent shards all over the top of the vanity. He spent another into the full length mirror in the corner and it was this point he screamed his violent confusion. He needed to convince himself there was still something in this world he could control. That was but a by-gone memory, for he had no control of me, and therefore his towers were crumbling away. The aristocrat upon his shining citadel would fall to ruin.

"Was I the one that did it? Am I really the reason she decided to kill herself?!"

He did not need to know the entire truth. He did not need to know just how much she suffered. It would have added to his guilt and he had enough of it for two souls.

"There were more factors than just you. I do not believe you would have been able to stop it. If it was not this night, it would have been another. She had a reason to be so determined with ending her life."

"What reason?"

"May I, this one time, exhibit some compassion and not divulge this to you?"

The gun with its bullets spent fell from his defeated hands with an ominous plunk. He shuffled to the bathroom but stopped at the threshold. He crumpled where carpet met tile, his hand cupped over his heaving mouth. "I can't... even hold her...!" His sobs erupted as the incoherent words of fresh, brutal grief.

My Ciel, an embodiment of all tragic horror, that he should lose his parents, his innocence, his faith, that he should fall in love with a face of destruction, that all the good he should encounter in his life were never meant to last. He saw the delicate paleness of her skin spotted with red, how it had been flung on the tile like so many rose petals.

He cried for more than the loss of her life. He cried for his guilt. I thought back to when he had slaughtered my white roses in the garden and felt no remorse. This white rose bled, cried, mourned her misfortune. It is not death that spurs guilt, but suffering, and Ciel saw the evidence of the suffering he had caused his fiancée.

When he cried as Joanne left I was there to hold him, because it was a simple sadness that could be treated with an embrace. To intrude on this would have felt vulgar, as if interrupting the most secret rite. He never looked so small, his legs folded under him as he curled into himself, his nails cut into his palms of his fists. He pounded the floor as if it were glass that could be shattered to send him plummeting. His wails were amplified by porcelain surfaces, the same sort of pitiable, forsaken call into the darkness I had heard some years ago.

Author's Note: I'm sorry.
Some of you have holding out for some happy ending. I can't and I won't. I had planned to off Elizabeth from the beginning, not to get her out of the way so Sebastian and Ciel could ride into the sunset unfettered, but because I needed something that would drive Ciel to the most complete despair. The devil made me do it. But the final chapter will have its silver lining. Yes, one more chapter to go. I'm dreading it. Please continue to offer me your love and support.