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He knelt by his younger brother’s bed, legs folded beneath his rear and soaked the flax rag into the basin of water that had been brought up from the Nile by the servants. He watched as long, dark lashes fluttered against smooth, sun-kissed cheeks and Ciel’s mouth opened to say something.

“Shhh…” Sebastian cooed, mopping up the sweat upon Ciel’s fevered face with a strip of leopard skin he wore on his person, effectively smearing the peacock coloured pigments and onyx liner adorning his eyes. He cleansed the heated skin, cooling it with the sodden linen and removed the evidence of his royal title. “The infection on your leg from the chariot accident has died down since the doctor examined you, bled you and fed you the milk provided by the maid. And the serfs have been paying their respects to Sekhmet and leaving her plentiful offerings; but still you burn.”

“I’m dying, Sebastian,” the ten year old pharaoh told his half-brother, wincing at the bite of the cool cloth, then sighing at the brief respite from what felt like the fiery river of the Underworld running through his veins. “Every time I close my eyes I see the Fields of Reeds slipping away. My heart grows burdensome with guilt and disgrace by the minute. My subjects need more temples, there is much trading to be done and wars to be won.”

“Not from your bed, oh Ruler of Rulers,” Sebastian teased, wringing out the cloth, then dipping the tips of his fingers into the scented oils the priest had left behind. He rubbed the pads of his digits together then combed his brother’s hair, his fingers catching in the damp strands and tugging gently until they were free. He smoothed the locks, taking time to affectionately caress the boyish face, the gesture one of utter adoration, for there was nobody Sebastian loved or revered more than Ciel. Not his promised bride, nor his other siblings. Not even Osiris, himself.

They’d met at a Royal affair; Ciel the sleepy, five-year old heir to the throne had strode purposefully into the kitchen where Sebastian had been helping his mother, a servant, arrange figs on dessert plates. He demanded to know if the rumours were true, if he had a half-brother. Fearing Sebastian’s mother had incurred the Pharaoh’s wrath, the servants thrust an eight-year-old Sebastian forward in answer. Ciel took him by the hand, led him to his room and ordered him to watch over him while he slept for he’d been plagued with nightmares from an early age. The night stretched into a week and the weeks into years. And whereas Sebastian had known nothing but contempt, brutality and poverty prior to Ciel, he came to know tenderness and acceptance, comfort and friendship thereafter.

“Don’t call me that; not you...” Ciel groaned weakly, voice strained in agony as he clutched his abdomen with a pitiful grip. “If I suffer any longer... my heart… Sebastian, you know what happens after death; Anubis will add it to the scale and weigh it against the feather; it will sink with the weight of my continued failings. I’ll be barred from Eternal Life, Ammit will devour me with his crocodile’s maw and tear me to pieces with his lion’s claws. Please, you must help me… I’m… I’m scared,” he stammered, eyes wide with panic and sparkling with unshed tears. His stoic features began to crumble, starting with repetitive swallowing and a trembling chin. He blinked twice, causing small, salty droplets to pour from his eyes, cascading down the sides of his face and even that seemed to cause him pain.

There was only one way around the dilemma, and he would do it without hesitation for Ciel. Forget that he was but the thirteen year old bastard brother of the sickly King that everyone adored and that they would all assume he murdered the Pharaoh in cold blood for the throne. The vizer would have his head for this, but the pain of it would not come close to equalling the beating burden in his left breast that was a life without Ciel, and worse, an afterlife without him. His guilt-ridden, desolate heart would break the balance and Ammut would feast on him instead.

“I’ll do it.” It was quiet between them after that, a moment stretching what felt like the eternity they would not have together. He took his brother’s small, frail hands and wrapped them tenderly within his own, brought them to his lips and whispered words of devotion into them, wishing him safe passage into Aaru. He set Ciel’s hands back at their sides, tucked his favoured childhood toy under his arm and swaddled the linen under his royal body to make sure he was secure.

“Will it hurt, Sebastian?”

“No,” he lied, drawing in a shuddering breath as he took the stone pillow at his side into both hands, “just turn your head away, it’s easier if you don’t look.”

Forget damnatio ad bestia, the old man’s end wouldn’t come by being torn to shreds by lions, but rather the 100,000 passus that separated Tivoli from the Colosseum. At first, Sebastian had hoped he wouldn’t collapse or die of exhaustion; the task of carrying the grizzled christian martyr to deliver him to Nero was daunting.

For the eleventh time that day, the old man stumbled. And for the fifth time, Sebastian took a knee to help him stand again.

“I can do it myself, Sebastian,” Ciel said proudly, looking up at him defiantly from hands and knees. His wrinkled digits curled in the dirt, frustrated by the weakness of his aging body.

“Yes, I’m sure you can, but this is not an act of pity that I’m bestowing upon you, it is one of practicality; the sooner you’re walking again, the sooner I’m rid of this burden.”

“What must you have been through to see people as burdens…” Ciel intoned gruffly, accepting the guard’s outstretched hand and hefting himself back to his feet.

Sebastian said nothing. In the last five years, how many like Ciel had he helped send to their deaths? Hundreds? Hundreds of hundreds? He simply grunted in response, smoothing out his knee-length woolen tunic.

“Do you have a family?” the old man asked after another hour of silence had passed. Sebastian left him there, sprawled on the weather beaten path in search of an olive branch that would serve the small martyr as a walking stick. He didn't bother with those discarded, rotting tree limbs on the ground for they would surely break, even under weight of the frail man. Using his iron blade, he sawed a sturdy one off its trunk and handed it to Ciel, along with his water skin to quench his obvious thirst.

“No,” he answered curtly, unconsciously wiping Ciel’s face of filth with the sleeve of his linen undershirt. “Do you?”

“Not anymore. They were caught weeks ago; all of them: my spouse, my children and my children’s children,” Ciel wheezed, his voice breaking for the first time since they’d met. Sebastian could tell it wasn’t from the distance they had walked. He looped an arm around his waist to help support him as they continued on their way.

He’d been wrong about Ciel. This man was not like the hundred others. He’d not once tried to convert Sebastian, nor had he tried to escape, had not plead for his life and his willingness to make peace with death was brave. Noble, even; as though he were a descendant of a long line of kings.

And because the weight of Sebastian’s afflictions had been crushing him for years, he told the old man everything, “I had a family. I survived murder by numbers after a tenth of my legion underperformed in our last battle. As a result, I was disowned. Damnatio memoriae they called it, a punishment worse than death, to be purposefully forgotten by those you love, out of shame, out of absolute mortification.” His grip had become tighter around Ciel’s bony hip, squeezing reflexively as he spoke. Then he froze. How selfish of him, how thoughtless to talk about fates when this old man was hours from meeting his own.

Sebastian felt the sharp angle of ribs as Ciel slid lower in his grasp and faltered once more in his step. The soldier could see it in the martyr’s tired face, the sheer willpower furrowing his white brow as he put one sandaled foot in front of the other when the travertine marble facade of the great Colosseum came into view just as the sun was setting over the arches.

So proud. So strong. The determination so familiar. Not like a soldier. A leader.

Ciel stopped abruptly, leaning heavily on his branch, took two heaving breaths and looked up at Sebastian, “I will remember you.” The first plaintive sound since their journey began escaped the old man’s lips, crumbling Sebastian’s resolve. He scooped him up into his arms, and carried him towards his death. Ciel’s long, damp, silver-blue strands clung to the ex-centurion’s metal chestplate and when he drifted off to sleep, Sebastian hoped, silently prayed to Morta to come claim the mortal, to give him the peaceful eternal respite he deserved. But he stirred once the crowd had been roused from inside the cruel arena.

“We’re here,” Ciel’s voice was flat, there’d been no inflection in his tone, for it wasn’t a question. He knew.

Unconsciously, Sebastian held him closer. Tighter. Even when he saw his fellow guards approaching them, coming to take his charge from him.

“Will it hurt?” Ciel asked, his old crooked fingers coming up to force the Sebastian’s face closer to his own so he could read the truth in his eyes as they glinted in the moonlight.

“No,” Sebastian replied, then added, “not long. I promise...” He’d seen the ferocious beasts; they were starved. They would pounce upon the old man, hopefully knock him out before… before…

“Will you stay?” Ciel managed to utter as he was taken roughly from Sebastian’s arms by two guards. His blue eyes were pleading, even clouded over with filmy white cataracts. He might have been mostly blind, but Sebastian felt as if Ciel had been the only one to truly see him.

“Yes!” he called to him, as he was swallowed by the dark tunnel leading to the amphitheatre. “I’ll come find you!” It was too late to feed the beasts this evening; they would be sleeping, too lethargic in the dark and it would hardly give the Emperor the show he was expecting. Tonight, Ciel would be held in an oubliette, and he would go to him. Feed him. Talk to him. Tell him his secrets. His regrets. His hopes for the future. He would make promises. Live his life for the old man since he no longer had the time to do so.

“What are you on about Michaelis?” a portly auxiliary chuckled. “Ain’t you heard? Lord Nero is instituting twilight executions tonight. Them christians are gonna be nailed to crosses and burn alive to light up the arena for the gladiators to fight.”

As night began to fall, and candles could be seen being lit from various windows in his neighbourhood, Sebastian trudged up the path that led to his small home. Once there, he leaned against the solid porch frame, toed off his boots with a tired grunt, removed his wide-brimmed hat, pushed his hood back and discarded his beaked mask. He crammed his work attire, including wax fabric overcoat and cane into a solid wooden box just outside the door where it would spend the night.

When he’d not heard the telltale signs of his son’s exuberance at his homecoming, he let himself in quietly. There, in the corner of the sparsely furnished one-room home, was a table that had been set for two. At that table, illuminated by a stub of candle, sat a boy, no older than four years of age, short feet dangling from his chair, arms folded under his head and little snores tumbling from his lips in a whistled hum.

It pained him to leave Ciel home every day, especially since the passing of his mother some months ago, but his work was no place for a child. At least at home, his son was safe from the scent that carried the plague. Their dwelling was clean and uninviting to rodents. He’d nailed additional boards in weak areas to keep them out as well. He’d even found them a cat, young and playful, and though Ciel was allergic, his adverse reactions were better than the alternative, not to mention that it was good company for the boy and acted as yet another surety against vermin. And there had not been much by way of a threat in the past two weeks; with only one case of the great pestilence in their city, he and the other plague doctors were certain it was on its way out. Soon, he and Ciel could rebuild their lives and of course, the cat as well…

That the feline did not greet him at the door the way it normally did, to twist around his ankles in anticipation of scraps or an affectionate head rub, struck him as odd. Though now that he was closer to the table, he could vaguely make out its shape laying in a crumpled heap, completely unperturbed, under his son’s chair, seeming as exhausted as the child by whatever mischief they’d gotten up to today. He breathed a contented sigh as he looked upon Ciel, adoration and pride swelling in his chest. He was thin, painfully so, and this fact was made more obvious with his father’s shirt hanging loosely off his shoulder. The emaciation, a result of his grief and the arduous winter, had still left Ciel optimistic and whole. And his hope for the future sustained Sebastian.

“Ciel,” he whispered dotingly, kissing his temple and running his hand along the child’s bony arm, pinching the fabric between his fingers to bring it back up to provide him with a measure of protection from the draft that somehow managed to penetrate through the cracks in the walls. Two things registered immediately: hair damp with sweat and bloated lumps under the thin fabric.

No, no, no, no, no… It was impossible. Ciel had been fine when he'd left him and the cat in their bed that morning . Sebastian pursed his lips, begged a silent, pleading prayer to God that he was wrong, but as the bulky shirt dipped down his back, revealing his neck and spine, Sebastian gasped breathlessly and shook his head in despair. The sound of it was loud enough to rouse the child, to have him stir in his seat and cause the chair to scrape against the floor. The cat remained motionless.

“Poppa, you’re back from work,” Ciel croaked, lifting his head from the cradle of his arms. The soft, genuine smile was so endearing, Sebastian forgot himself as he took the small boy in his arms and pressed him tightly to his body, willing the pestilence to transfer over to himself, to be able to take the coming agony Ciel would suffer.

“You’re hurting me Poppa,” Ciel winced, though he returned the affections with a weak embrace of his own. His legs curled around Sebastian’s waist apathetically and he rested his head upon his father’s shoulder. He coughed twice and Sebastian felt something wet against his neck. “Did you save many lives today?”

None that mattered, Sebastian thought, swallowing the lump lodged squarely in this throat. “Not today, my darling,” he said huskily as he sat the boy back on his chair trying for all the world to see past the death that clung to Ciel like a second skin. His big blue eyes still held their twinkle and he hoped his own hadn’t already snuffed out their light. It would do no good for the child to know, for him to waste what little time he had left in fear.
Ciel blinked, eyes heavy and tired, like he was making a great effort to stay awake for his father. “That’s okay, you’ll do it tomorrow Poppa,” he mumbled as he yawned, “I wish I could grow up brave and strong like you.”

“Then you’ll need to eat,” Sebastian whispered, his heart breaking for the future his son would not have. “Let me sweeten this soup, it will taste much better. I’ll be right back.” He gathered their bowls and went outside and Ciel did not argue, nor did he ask where he was going. His hand pushed aside his work attire in the wooden box until it felt the familiar leather-bound tome at the bottom. The red string used to mark one’s place in the Bible was moved along the edge of the yellow, frayed pages and when Sebastian opened it, the lance-shaped leaves and once fragrant bloom of pink petals lay flat against the passage of Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

“Lies!” Sebastian spat, his vision becoming obscured by tears the further down the verse he read. There was no future without Ciel. He was seized by a familiar emptiness and a lingering sense of deja-vu, one that only grew more potent as he clutched the dried Oleander, and let the Holy Book fall to the ground. Plucking the petals one by one, he crushed them in his hand and sprinkled their decaying bodies over both bowls. When he returned, it was to a moaning Ciel, gripping his stomach.

“You’re hungry; eat,” he instructed, depositing their dishes on the table before them, and moving closer to hold his son upright.

“M’not hungry, Poppa. M’so tired. Don’t feel well.”

“Just a few bites Ciel. That’s all you need to take.”

“M’cold,” the child whined, even though the sweat seeped from his pores and dripped onto the table, where both elbows were resting.

Sebastian pulled Ciel from his seat and cradled him, like he had many times before when he was but a babe. “Open up, my darling. You need to take a few bites; look, I’m doing it. How do you think I got so big and strong, hmm?” He fed himself four heaping spoonfuls.

He had to help Ciel open his mouth; and he couldn’t even feed him with the spoon. Instead, he dipped his finger into the bowl and spread the thick soup onto his tongue, once, twice, three times. Tenderly, and avoiding the swollen nodule that had since grown, he rubbed the child’s throat with his thumb to help him swallow. When the topmost layer of the soup was gone and the remnants of the deadly bloom with it, he rocked his son in silence.

As soon as he began to feel the onset of a faint whirling sensation, he moved them to their bed, laying Ciel flat on his back, while he himself knelt at the boy’s side, swept the damp locks from his beautiful heart-shaped face and pressed a kiss onto his burning forehead. Big tears rolled down his cheeks and as Ciel’s breath hitched, Sebastian wept aloud, bitter heart splitting and plunged into perpetual darkness.

“Poppa, will it hurt?” Ciel managed to wheeze, though it was hardly audible.

“No,” he lied. Not like it would have, had he left it up to God.

There came a sigh of relief and Ciel’s body went limp.

“It’s an ambush, Ciel!” Sebastian shouted in his face, both hands gripping the sides of his friend’s helmet, trying to hold it steady as the other soldier struggled to get out of his grip. “You can’t go to her! You can’t save her…!”

Aggressively, Sebastian turned Ciel’s head and they both watched in horror as the rear guard was surrounded some tenth of a league away and Joan of Arc was pulled off her horse and thrown to the ground by an archer. In that moment, everything was bedlam and provided Sebastian with the perfect distraction to drag Ciel off deeper into the forest.

“We must, Sebastian!” Ciel continued to protest, flailing with difficulty as the weight of his armored suit caused nearby fowl to vacate their perches. “If we don’t, everything will have been for naught!”

Sebastian pinned Ciel against a great oak tree, pushed the plate armour that covered his knee between smaller soldier’s thighs and held Ciel’s frantic gaze with his own panicked, piercing glare. “It won’t. We’ll keep fighting! Yes, we’ve lost lives, but…”

“Not that, you imbecile!” Ciel spat, finally surrendering to Sebastian’s hold.

“Then talk, goddammit! Fourteen years we’ve known each other, Ciel! Fourteen! Three since we joined the army. You made me promise never to lie to you. You’re my comrade, my brother in arms, what are you keeping from me?”

Sebastian knew it would always come to this. That Ciel’s intelligence would finally catch up to him, to them both. From the day the slate-haired young man had convinced him to sneak from his poverty-stricken father’s garden so he might help him steal fresh-baked goods from the neighbour’s windowsill, he knew that he was in a world of trouble. But when Ciel had managed to talk them out of being punished by the stern maid who’d discovered them with chocolate smeared across their faces and turned her wrath on the neighbourhood braggart in their stead, Sebastian knew Ciel was both dangerous and a genius.

“It’s better if you don’t kn--”

“Talk, the Burgundians will have this forest flooded in minutes…”

“The prophecy, Sebastian… that France would be saved by a virgin, that she would work miracles,” Ciel reminded him, his tone heavy with condescension.

Sebastian scoffed, interrupting Ciel as he lowered his knee and released him, “It was wrong; virgin yes, but not a female.” He grinned knowingly at his friend, through the dire situation called for anything but humour.

“Oh shut up and listen,” Ciel ordered, his gauntlet reverberating against Sebastian’s chest plate when he hit him, “France had not claimed a victory in more than a generation. And the kingdom’s fate rested on the triumph at the battle of Orleans. Every standard, rational option had been tried and failed. This was an act of desperation. To find a simple farm girl and put her at the head of a defeated army, claiming she heard the voices of saints! What other choice did I have?”

Sebastian took a step back, watched as Ciel paced in his full armour, feet shuffling in the muddied earth. “So when she came to us after she was rejected by Baudricourt, when she said she needed to have an audience with the King, you had…”

“Coached her, yes.” Ciel finally looked up at him gravely and the puzzle pieces finally fell into place after two years. “I had to select a girl who was virtuous, without a blemish to her name, otherwise the enemy would say Charles had been gifted his crown by the devil.”

“It was all a ruse,” Sebastian guffawed incredulously, removing his helmet as to better see the man standing before him; after all, it was like he was seeing him for the first time. “France needed a woman, and you provided. You’ve played us all like chess pieces. You dressed her as a boy to cross hostile territory. You taught her about the Archangel Michael, Saint Margaret and Saint Catherine of Alexandria.”

And Sebastian kept laughing as the clouds parted ironically, letting the rays of the sun shine down and filter through the dense canopy of the forest to illuminate Ciel’s simpering face. “Clever boy,” he breathed, “except when she is burned, and she will be burned for heresy, whose name do you think she will scream? Her allegiance is not to you.”

“I know,” Ciel admitted, finally showing a modicum of regret. Slowly, he removed his helmet and let it fall with a clatter to the forest floor. He closed the distance between them, pushing his long hair (somehow not in snarls and tangles the way Sebastian’s was) from his eyes then guided his friend’s hand to the buckles keeping his chest plate and plackart in place.

“And what do you think they’ll do to you, hmm? You will burn, Ciel. That is not a death befitting a decorated soldier such as yourself! That is a witch’s death!” Sebastian’s tone became one of utmost supplication. As Joan of Arc had become France’s hope, Ciel had become his salvation. He was always brave in battle. Always so sure of himself and of those with whom he associated. From where would Sebastian draw his strength and determination going forward if not from his friend?

“I know,” Ciel repeated.

Without knowing how his fingers had moved of their own accord, or when, Sebastian watched as Ciel’s armour joined his helmet, and left his torso exposed under a flimsy linen undershirt. Sebastian drew out his sword from his scabbard and held it impotently at his side. “I can’t do this,” he whispered, as birds a distance away could be heard taking flight and calling out to the open sky.

“You must.”

“I’m not a chess piece, Ciel.”

“You were the chess piece, Sebastian,” Ciel replied, placing his hand over Sebastian’s on the hilt. “And while I may have been the Queen, the most powerful, the most versatile, you were the King; the most important piece. What do I care of France falling, if you are kept safe and treated to the life you deserve. End me, you’ll be herald a hero. Joan, a martyr.”

Both their heads whipped around to the east as the sounds of hooves could be heard. “Do it!” Ciel cried. “I’ve not poured my soul into this for nothing!”

Sebastian’s free hand came up and rested on Ciel’s heart. It beat like thunder under his fingers and he willed it to stop altogether to save him from the daunting task. But Ciel deserved better. After all he had done, all his scheming, all his fighting, he deserved to die as he wanted.

Ciel closed his eyes, his wet lashes brushing against his dirtied cheek, “Will it hurt?” he asked as though he could not help himself, but Sebastian could swear his lips curled the slightest bit when he’d asked the question.

A nervous reaction, Sebastian told himself, so he is human after all, The point of his weapon replaced his hand, then was drawn back. “No. I’ll hit the mark.”

“Thank you,” Ciel exhaled.

When Sebastian woke it was like taking a first breath after having been plunged and held under water so cold it burned the flesh. He sat bolt upright, gasping and fighting off the last traces of the memory that still lingered. He blinked surreptitiously, trying to adjust to the semi-darkness of the room, then pressed his palms against his eyelids and let let the cruel images have their way with him before they dissipated from his mind: Ciel on the forest floor dying, choking on his own blood. They’d been surrounded and Sebastian had been shot in the shoulder, his hand had jerked down and he’d missed his mark completely. Ciel had suffered and as a result, so had he.

He wretched over the side of whatever platform he found himself on; it was too high to be a bed, too hard and uncomfortable.

Similar platforms obscured by shadows were laid out in an orderly fashion, one after the other, hundreds, perhaps thousands, no, millions of them, each with a supine, motionless individual occupying that space. He got to his feet and cringed when they met the floor’s cool surface. A shudder ran the length of his spine and it took him wrapping his arms around himself to realize that he was quite naked, except for the small pressured tug he felt at his wrist when he brought up his hand. It was a thin red string tied tight, but to what? It seemed to stretch out as far as the altars went and he lost sight of it amidst the tangles of others.

A wrongness settled on his shoulders like a cloak, thick and oppressive, weighing him down as though trying to anchor him to the spot. He should not go to it, but whatever was on the other end had a stronger pull on him. Irresistible. He could no more stop his feet from moving in that direction, stumbling in his impatient haste, than he could will his heart to cease beating. He passed row on row of sleeping corpses, his way becoming more illuminated, though no actual light was shed. Kilometers of the crimson thread lagged behind him the nearer his target he became but it was never a burden, never a weight too heavy to pull; so he should have known who he would find.

“Ciel,” he stammered, choking on a sob as he closed the distance between them. His trembling hand brushed the small rising chest, trailing down the abdomen where the latest damage had been caused. In the absence of a gnarled gash, of blood and entrails, was flawless, milky flesh. If relief was a wave that washed over him, then omnipresent guilt was the undertow that dragged him back into hopelessness. He draped himself over the unconscious man’s body, head on his chest, aware of nothing but the heart that beat feebly under layers of skin, muscle and bone. “Ciel… wake up!” he begged, still struggling to speak, to find the right words when he had so much to atone for. He would do anything to hear him, to be ordered around, to succumb to that icy glare. “Why do I keep having to end your life?” He clung to him, hands circling the lithe form, fingers locking together. He would not be separated from him again. Not even God himse--

“You shouldn’t be awake. You’re not ready yet,” came a voice, booming like thunder. It was clearly upset, and Sebastian felt the gut-level trepidation he’d felt earlier from abandoning his initial spot. He daren’t move, daren’t even breathe. He was rooted in place, and he felt and heard Ciel’s heart pound, drowning out the sound that echoed through the hall. Goosebumps erupted on the unconscious boy’s body, the hair on his arms stood at attention, and a tremor rocked his small frame. Sebastian gripped him tighter, angry because he knew only one being that would delight in frightening his soulmate in such a vulnerable state. He shielded Ciel from whatever harm would befall them and lashed out at the all-encompassing divinity.

“I can't do it anymore! Please don't make me!” he admonished, burying his face in the crook of Ciel’s neck.

“By all accounts, you should be in Hell for the amount of times you've broken my commandments, Sebastian.”

“Which commandment? I’ve coveted him, I've worshipped him, I've stolen for him, I bore false witness to protect him…”

“You’ve killed him.”

“I showed him mercy!” Sebastian bellowed, “More than you've ever showed any of your creations. I love him. I obeyed his wishes like a loyal servant! And I have been to Hell. Each time I've held his lifeless body in my arms, bludgeoned, burned, disease-ravaged and eviscerated. There is no Hell worse than the four times I've seen the life drain from his eyes.”

A booming laugh rang through the vast hall, bouncing off the walls, and shaking the grand pillars whose outlines could be vaguely distinguished some fifty meters away. “Four times! Four times? You only remember four times, Sebastian!” Another hearty chuckle, “Here, let me assist your memory.”

A sacrifice atop a temple. Fire raining down from a mountain as ash blocked out the sun for days. The salting of a great Empire. Templars burning at the stake. Searing flames devouring an entire city… Sebastian groaned, and Ciel responded with a quivering chin and the trembling of his core. He didn’t dare separate him from his body, for fear that he would draw attention to him, and that God would plague Ciel’s thoughts in his stead. He kept his hold tight on him, watching the ebb and flow of colour under the press of his hands on him.

“And those to come…”

Another shudder from Ciel. Sebastian was mouthing no repeatedly; his head was full of wars and trenches, of genocides, a massive vessel sinking, the massacre of a royal family, a immense mushroom cloud in the sky.

“The possibilities are endless, you see...”

“No! I won’t do it. You can’t make me. We don’t get enough time together. You always cut it short!” he accused. And having had enough of this discussion, lifted Ciel from his altar and made to walk away with him, though he wasn’t sure to where.

“Since you would defy your Creator so blatantly,” the voice drawled with toxic superiority, “this time, when you find yourselves, you will not be human and to ensure this expendable little being does not return and that I do not have to witness a repeat performance of your trivial outburst, you’ll be responsible for devouring his soul. Now go.”

Five years had gone by and not much had changed since their initial contract in the way of his master’s physical appearance. He was still small for his age despite his healthy diet, his eyes still twinkled with malicious intent every time he glared at his butler, and he was still a heartbreakingly beautiful little creature, all sharp curves and edges, never to be weathered by time.

The changes that were most coveted by the demon however, were not those that could be directly observed. These had been sampled both in scent and taste and on occasion, they were even felt. Today was such an occasion.

He helped the young master from the elegant porcelain claw tub, careful he did not slip as was his habit, even though the terms of their contract had become null and void since this very morning. He was no longer under any obligation to protect the little lord from harm, though he would out of fondness. He’d cultivated Ciel, stained and tainted him to a devil’s liking, allowed his pride to flourish, encouraged the continued farce of his false identity to blossom, all in an attempt to make him unlovable so that when it came the time to reap his soul, he would not feel the lingering torment of guilt. It was all an attempt to make losing him bearable so that they might finally stop playing this game that spanned millennia.

Tonight he carried his charge into his chambers, resisted the urge to hold him close as he once had, as father, as brother and as friend; worse still, as he never had carried him before -- as a lover.

Ciel did not protest, in fact, he said nothing. As Sebastian sat him upon the bed, he wondered if he felt the way the demon did, like if he were to open his mouth, would the words he’d kept to himself for the last half decade ever stop? Which of them would break first? Which would beg the other? Which would show mercy?

“Was it worth it? Are you satisfied, young master?” he blurted, unable to take the silence that stretched on when, soon enough it would be infinite. His gloved right hand hovered over Ciel’s nightgown and was dismissed by the boy with a slap, decisively indicating that he preferred not to be dressed this evening. He thought of pointing out to Ciel that his corpse would be discovered in the nude should he not don any night attire, but he’d grown accustomed to obeying his orders without question.

“Those are two different questions, Sebastian,” Ciel contended, his voice laced with waning authority as he rose to his knees before him on the bed so that their faces were nearly level. He saw Sebastian’s eyes, like burning embers, flicker away a moment and Ciel redressed the dismissal by tucking his finger underneath the butler’s tie. Gently, he began to loosen the knot, tugging harder when the bond proved to be as stubborn as the demon wearing it. “Of course it was worth it. Every minute. Every hurt. Every sacrifice.”

Ciel wound the tie around his hand and pulled. The sound of silk slithering on cotton was as pleasant as the whisper of it kissing the floor. He watched as Sebastian’s rigid body went slack for only a breath, his butler aesthetic failing him as Ciel’s steady fingers set free the sterling buttons of his vest first, then along the panel front of his dress shirt. It might have been the cool air in the room hitting his exposed flesh or the devil’s unconscious arousal that was responsible for the small growl that reverberated deep in Sebastian’s chest, but whatever the reason, Ciel blamed his own goosebumps and the stiffening of his prick on it as well. “But I will never be satisfied,” he told the butler pushing his pique vest off and letting it join the tailcoat that had just fallen next to the tie on the floor, “our time is cut too short despite all our best efforts of dragging out this contract.”

As Ciel confirmed both their guilt and continued to touch his body with the familiarity of having done so many times, Sebastian did not move. Did not even breathe. He’d been caught like prey in Ciel’s piercing gaze and the subtle threat behind the burning fervour illuminating the blue of his former master’s irises only stirred his more devilish impulses. Ciel only ever looked at him like this when he was ready to make a demand.

“You only say that because you’re frightened, my lord,” he answered finally, his tone mocking to hide his own fear. He knew what Ciel would ask of him this evening; it was as though the young man was rushing headlong to meet his Maker, though he couldn’t know that he would not this time. If Sebastian had him this way, if he were allowed to indulge the way he’d been wanting since first laying eyes on Ciel in this life, he would not be able to stop. He would devour him immediately. Break his trust. Lose him forever.

He could always refuse Ciel. He was no longer his servant after all. The revenge had been carried out and yet he continued to tend to the Earl like it hadn’t. The mark was already fading from the back of his hand, as was the violet from his Ciel’s eye. Soon there would be nothing left of their contract, but to collect payment. Soon, there would be nothing left of them.

Ciel scoffed as he removed Sebastian’s sleeve garters and divested him of his shirt, “Hardly. My soul is heavy Sebastian, leaden like a rock; I tire of bearing its weight and I doubt any other beast but yourself would eat it. It would likely not even burn if you set fire to it. I’m plagued by what I’ve done, and I would have none other gut me for the part I’ve played in deceiving everyone.”

Sebastian repressed the urge to flinch; the young master’s words were so unforgiving, even after all this time. Ciel did not know. Would never know. And Sebastian was damned to serve a new sadistic master, one that would lash open his festering wounds with images and sensations: his memory. Nothing would fill the void that would be Ciel’s absence. Of course he would keep him at his core, but he would not be able to hear him and feel him as he did now with the young man’s hungry mouth laving his bare shoulder, teeth cutting into his human skin as it made its way up his neck. The sound of wet smacking, lips both inexperienced and eager despite his years engaged to Miss Elizabeth, left a searing brand on his flesh to replace the one under his glove.

“Answer me this, Sebastian, and tell me no lies,” Ciel ordered between warm shaky breaths and kisses claiming Sebastian’s exposed throat.

“Yes, my lord?” Sebastian could lie. He wasn't even compelled to call him by any other name than the one he’d given himself, but the thought of saying it out loud, uttering the most perfect order in which four letters had ever been strewn together, caused him distress. He whined at the very thought of it, though Ciel was likely to think it a response to his clumsy ministrations.

“At the Music Hall some years ago, Blavat called you a collapsar,” Ciel rasped against the taut skin of Sebastian’s throat, hands fisting the short hair at the back of his head to cock it back as his mouth trailed under his chin. “Was he correct? Are you such a hazard?”

Sebastian was a hairsbreadth from losing his reason. Why should Ciel care about that right now? He forced inhalations into his spastic core, order into his frenzied thoughts, willing the blinding grief that was threatening to take over to pass. He regained at least enough control to conjure a semblance of composure over his chaos. “You would know more than anyone else,” he answered gruffly, looking up at the ceiling.

“Is that a yes?”

Ciel’s hand gripped his hair tighter and Sebastian shut his eyes, hissing a yes. He felt the fingers disentangle themselves from his shorn strands, and his head fell forward to rest upon Ciel’s forehead. The breath that washed his face was warm, sweet like honeyed milk, his chest filled with its fragrance, and everything inside him froze as it fanned the flames of his fiendish appetite.

When he opened his eyes again, it was first to see the inferno he felt within reflected in Ciel’s, then to see his gloved hand being brought up to the young man’s mouth to witness the tip get caught in Ciel’s teeth and pulled off. The Earl’s name bubbled to his lips, but died there when he felt the boy’s wet muscle drag once, twice, three times along the Faustian seal. Ciel’s heavy-lidded gaze was documenting the devil’s reaction as both his eyebrows were raised in a show of nonchalance and imperiousness.

And Sebastian snapped.

In the span of a breath that was forcibly expelled from Ciel’s lungs, he’d picked up the little lord, and flew him across the room to slam his back into the wall. Ciel’s legs parted to receive him and pulled him closer and Sebastian growled. “What do you mean by this?” he whispered menacingly, one hand supporting his bottom and the other cupping Ciel’s face in a merciless grip. “I need not be tempted any more than I am at this point in our contract. Our time is up.”

If Ciel wanted it, he would have to ask for it. Sebastian would grant him this one last wish.

There was no fear in the depths of his master’s ice-blue eyes, instead they sparked with defiance as if challenging to murder him. Ciel’s fingertips feathered over Sebastian's alabaster-silk covered flesh, layered with the sensations of softness and steel, heat and hardness; and flush as they were, chest to chest, Sebastian felt Ciel’s heart beating madly, its rhythm the only thing driving him to remember he should not yet devour him.

“It’s time to claim your soul… we both know it’s always been yours,” Ciel murmured on a ragged breath.

The butler inclined his head, a predator at leisure, his prey all but cornered, and yet, he was the one being tormented. So Sebastian took his mouth in a bruising kiss, without shame for his faltering aesthetic, uncaring that the pressed trousers he painstakingly looked after every morning came away from him like melting wax, leaving black, inky tendrils in their wake. And then the butler was no more.

He swallowed all of Ciel’s sounds, from needy little whimpers to grunted ahhhs and moaned ooohs. A lick of heat twisted in his stomach as his demon’s cock slid, soaking and slippery with his natural dewy form, between Ciel’s fleshy cheeks. He was losing himself, became what he was meant to be, deserved to be: all sin and carnality, with nothing remaining from his former Sebastians.

Ciel’s body was imprinted on his, his stiffened member squashed against Sebastian's stomach as he tried in vain to reach for it; the Earl wasn’t ignorant after all. Sebastian had heard him late at night in his own bed, or mid-day in his office at his desk. The very thought of it caused the demon’s vision to grow red and hazy and he rutted even harder against Ciel, nudging his entrance every time he pulled his hips back and slammed them forward again.

Ciel’s small nipples pebbled against his chest, brushing against Sebastian's sweat-dampened skin. His gaze never left Ciel, even as he held him higher, sucked his own long fingers into his mouth, coating them with thick, inhuman saliva and squeezed a finger none too gently inside him. Ciel’s breath hitched, and he held it as his hips rose and fell with his need. “Breathe, young master,” he informed him, pumping his finger firmly in and out of him, exploring him, caressing his inner walls.

Ciel’s thighs shook as he pushed in another digit and this time the Earl cried out, head shooting back and banging against the wall. He groaned, bringing both hands to his head, but instead of cradling it the way Sebastian expected he would, he fisted his hair in a maddening display of wantonness, his back arching off the wall, face twisted and contorted in both pleasure and pain, struggling to keep his eyes from screwing shut.

“Relax,” Sebastian crooned, his cloying breath washing over the virginal milky flesh trembling before him and staining it as he spilled his scent all over him. As per usual, Ciel did not listen to him; his body clenched and constricted as he unsuccessfully repressed whine after whine. “Shh… my lord, you’re embarrassing yourself,” Sebastian mocked, lecherously licking and sucking Ciel’s essence off his fingers and re-inserting three of them.

The little thing wailed in his hold, writhing, hips bucking, skinny legs barely able to wrap themselves around Sebastian’s waist, sliding off and coming back up again.

“Nnnnngh… Se-Sebastian… Seb… ” Ciel called for him, the sound of it distorted by the frenzied jerking of the up and down movements of his lithe form. His forehead slid along his demon’s shoulder, mouth slack and dry, whimpering in between stuttering the servent’s given name.

A stupid dog’s name.

He’d been sure when he’d been gifted the moniker that his master had remembered, but when it wasn’t the case, he’d grown to despise it. Now, he never wanted to forget the way it sounded on those lips. So he would pull out those syllables from Ciel, had him begging, crying, calling, screaming, plunging his fingers deeper into him. Harder. Faster. Then Ciel finally ordered him to stop.

Sebastian’s breath had become just as ragged, he felt their chests heaving one against the other, felt the frantic beating of Ciel’s heart through bone and muscle, the heat radiating from their sweat-slicked skin. He kept his voice low to steady it, and it came out as a growl as he licked the shell of Ciel’s ear, “Did you not know what you were asking for, my lord? You never seem to… are you ready?”

“Will it hurt?” Ciel blurted, pulling Sebastian’s face away from the crook of his neck where his face had been buried.

“No,” Sebastian exasperated for what felt the millionth time. He could lie to Ciel now, it was expected of him as a devil, and he owed him no honesty from their contract. Besides, he did not know which hurt he was asking after, for one was greater than the other, pleasure or death. But none so great as being left behind.

“You always say that.”

Ciel had spoken the words not as an observation, but a truth.

Sebastian’s knees buckled and a sanguine substance brimmed his eyes, spilled over and burned his cheeks as it ran down. His eyes flickered as he regarded Ciel, searching his face for artifice; they went from blue to brown, green to hazel, amber to grey and all the colours in between, all the colours Ciel had seen in their lifetimes together.

“You remem --” he barely had the chance to ask before Ciel answered, mashing his lips against his, plundering his mouth as if they had done so before. But it had never been this way; they had never been lovers and they would never be again. Would this one time be enough to appease the vicious ache they shared?

Ciel pulled back, gasping and shuddering, “How could I forget?”

Sebastian crushed him to his own body. His murky, viscous tendrils turned into bright red strings, dozens upon dozens of them, binding them, wrapping themselves around their bodies to keep them tethered together. He adjusted himself to impale his soulmate and it took all of his crumbling resolve to take him gently. He wanted to savour him, to luxuriate in the familiarity and revel in his presence; but also to punish him, to bruise him and wreck him preemptively for abandoning him this evening.

When Ciel sighed, moaned his name with both adoration and supplication, the soft, rounded head of his cock pushed against him and was swallowed up by his heat. They were quiet, feeding off one another’s breaths as Ciel’s body stretched to accommodate him, embraced him, squeezing and pulling him deeper, as if not wanting to release him. Then the devil moved, letting Ciel feel the drag of his thickness inside him.

Sebastian pumped into him with slow, deliberate thrusts as Ciel clutched at his shoulders, nails digging in, holding him impossibly closer than even the tendrils could bind them. Sebastian hitched him up higher, drove deeper into him, gradually picking up speed and pressed him hard against the wall again. The pictures shook on their nails, and at Ciel’s insistence of harder, they fell off and smashed onto the floor, unheard by the lovers over the growling and crying and whining. A spike in heat accompanied the spike in Ciel’s pulse as the sconses came crashing down as well and lit the drapes on fire, the flames licking their way to the bed and the rug.

He devil’s tongue lashed at the boy’s collarbone, his teeth tore into the soft flesh, his claws left cuts and his fingers left bruises along Ciel’s thighs as he continued to fuck into the slicked up hole, making Ciel demand more. His mouth covered Ciel’s plump, bruised lips and devoured the pleading and hitched sobs. Stop begging me for death Sebastian wanted to cry out, you belong to me... you belong to me.

But his hunger grew as he worked his cock into Ciel. It would not be abated with the way his lover’s inner walls kept rippling around his shaft. He continued kissing Ciel with abandon, pricking his lips, chasing the droplets with his tongue, not bothering to soothe the small superficial wounds. He was a beast grunting into him, but he was past civility, angling his cock so the head would rub Ciel in all the right ways. And it did. Ciel tensed and cried out.

It was a symphony; Ciel’s sounds an ethereal choir, and he, the most undeserving audience. Then Ciel seized, stopped chasing that glorious fulfillment and everything inside of him seemed to stop at once, drawing a tight line of pleasure from his chest to his prick. His eyes went wide, wet and without a trace of fear, “Do it now!” he commanded as he was consumed by flames and a pleasure not meant for those of this world.

As if still under contract, Sebastian obeyed, threw his head back with an inhuman snarl. If pleasure was something someone could wallow in, he glutted himself on it by taking Ciel’s mouth. His essence was ineffable, like a prism casting an iridescent sheen over the darkest shadow, he was daybreak and diamonds, lifeforce bright but hard, a spectrum of light you could taste, flickering over his tongue, a smooth finish that kept him swallowing.

He broke away, and as their lips parted, a long, drawn out lament escaped Sebastian as empty blue orbs gazed back at him with an expression of awestruck gratitude on Ciel’s peaceful face. He lay Ciel on the burning bed and took his rightful place at his side, still coiled in the red string and held him tight.

Blavat had called him a collapsar, and he was not wrong.

“Yesterday we talked about how black holes are made from…”

“A collapsed star, professor,” a girl in the front row answered.

“Exactly, Sally. And today we’re going to learn abou… Yes, Sebastian?”

The boy, Sebastian, never spoke. Not in class. Not to peers. He could be seen eating lunch on his own in the cafeteria day after day. He walked to and from school alone with the same detached expression on his handsome face and red string tied around his wrist. And even as a senior, he’d never been part of a team or a club. It wasn’t that he was unpopular; more than anything else, he was forgettable, just another twelfth-grader sitting in Advanced Physics on a rainy Monday afternoon. So when he asked the teacher a question, he had twenty-seven pairs of eyes trained on him.

“What happens to someone if they’re devoured by a black hole, Professor?” Sebastian asked, not looking up at the teacher, but keeping his gaze lowered on his notebook where he drew a circle over and over and over. The fine tip of his pen had begun to tear into the sheet of paper and mark the one beneath it.

“Well, that would be highly unlikely, Sebas-”

“Theoretically, then,” the raven-haired boy argued, much to everyone’s surprise.

“Astrophysicists surmise that as one nears a black hole, it would appear that time slows almost to a standstill until such a point as they reach what’s called the event horizon -- the point of no return. Once they’ve crossed that imaginary line… It wouldn’t be pleasant to be alive, Sebastian.”

“How so?” he demanded, leaning forward in his desk, one of two set near the back corner of class, letting the tattered notebook fall to the floor.

“Simply that the closer you got to the singularity, Sebastian, the more your body would be stretched, your molecules would be ripped apart. It would be excruciating. You would wish for death.”

Sebastian grimaced as the teacher went on explaining the process of spaghettification. He was barely aware that he was shaking his head and that he’d clutched his chest as a widespread icy fire spread there.

He wasn’t sure how much time had gone by since Ciel, but it ached, it was a void so deep, a yawning emptiness as real as if he had been eviscerated, not once, but daily. Hourly. No, with every breath he took.

There was too much he couldn’t account for: how was he human again? And if he was, why hadn’t he woken in the white room with the altars? All he really knew was that wherever, whenever he was now, the technology far exceeded that of Victorian England and that these individuals boasted no god, as evidenced by their lack of temples and churches and religious texts.

“... so if that’s all the questions you have, Sebastian,” the professor inquired casually.

“No!” Sebastian beseeched, breaking out of his living nightmare, “What happens once they’re taken into the black hole?”

At his student’s insistence, the professor’s eyebrows shot up, disappearing into his grizzled hairline. He cleared his throat again, “Well, as I’ve never been in a black hole, I can’t say for sure, but the research suggests that were an individual to survive such an ordeal, that they would likely end up in another universe altogether due to the high occurrence of wormholes.” The teacher shuffled the papers on his desk, took one and walked over the a projector, “We’ve gotten off topic though; can you please take out your books and open them to page --”

“One more, professor!” Sebastian pleaded. There was a collective sigh in the classroom, he even noticed some students roll their eyes. He wasn’t bothered. “And what happens to the collapsar?”

“We’re not sure. Maybe it dissipates, maybe it gets pulled into the wormhole itself. See me after class if you have more questions, Mr. Michaelis.” The teacher’s glasses fell down his nose as he gave his student a look indicating that he’d spent enough time on the subject. He took his red pen from behind his ear, removing the cap with his teeth and spitting it onto his nearby desk. The wrinkled mouth opened to read the first question he’d scribbled onto the sheet of paper when he was interrupted by three successive knocks.

Sebastian felt no better knowing this; he was, after all, basing all his information on something uttered once by a madman posing as a fortune teller, goodness knows how many years ago. He leaned over in his seat, groping blindly for his notebook on the dusty ground.

“Perfect, you’re here! Class, this is our exchange student, he’ll be joining us for the remainder of the semester. Why don’t you introduce yourself, son?”

“My name is Ciel Phantomhive.”

Sebastian held his breath. Went dizzy, as all the blood rushed into his head, doubled over as he was reaching for his book. He shot back up, but not only in his seat, he stood, his core trembling, long fringe falling into his wet red-rimmed eyes, concealing the appearance of the new kid. It didn’t matter. He didn’t need to see. He heard him. Felt him. Didn’t care that his peers and teacher were staring at him for the second time today. For the second time ever.

Oh and he was beautiful. Beautiful and whole and perfect. Not torn apart. Not without a soul...

All this time, Sebastian had been wrong. He’d not consumed Ciel’s soul, but his own. They were never soulmates; never two souls reawakening together life after life. No, they were twin flames, they shared but one soul between them; Ciel had kept it safe for them when he’d been a demon, until such a time that they would be cast from the universe into which they were born, to start anew, away from a merciless Creator.

“Why don’t you go have a seat next to--”

“Sebastian,” Ciel interrupted, lips quivering, already making his way to the back of the class, hand pushing aside his overgrown, slate hair, red string sliding down his wrist.

“Do you know one another?” the teacher asked, completely perplexed.

“We’ve known each other a while,” Ciel and Sebastian answered in unison.