Author's Note: This story was first posted on AO3. It was tagged "Underage, "Sebastian Michaelis/Ciel Phantomhive," "Latin," "Propertius," "Propertius/Cynthia," "Unrequited Love," "Weston School Arc," "Dialogue," "Snark" and "Angst."

I wrote this fic in honor of my favorite page in all of the manga: Issue 73, page 20. Why was it my favorite? Well, I'm a Latin nerd, and at the time I first read the manga I was somewhat obsessed with Propertius 4.7, the elegiac poem quoted there. The poem in question— composed by the Roman poet Propertius for his muse, Cynthia— works terribly as material for thirteen-year-old Latin students, but it works gorgeously as an allegory of Kuroshitsuji.

"Excidere," by the way, is Latin for "to fall away."

Ciel sat up in his Blue House bed, straining his eyes in the darkness, translating a Latin poem by Propertius, of all things. Not for homework, not for an examination, not for any practical reason. Merely because the poem inspired that warm, rushing sensation, the one that had sprung up in his head every time he thought of Sebastian over these past few weeks. An inexplicable sensation of joy, roused solely by the demon who had sworn to devour his soul.

Love was always a precipice. Ciel knew that better than anyone, having dropped straight off when his parents had died. He cursed his heart for dragging him back to the cliff's edge— not for Lizzie, who could love him back, not for Soma, who might understand. For Sebastian, who would neither love nor understand nor give— take back a damn.

And yet the Queen's Watchdog investigated the case, pursuing evidence, sifting through a poem Sebastian had personally assigned for Ciel's Latin class. As the boy stared at the passion-filled couplets, he wondered whether his demon was really as cold as he claimed . . .

()

"That was a test from hell, Sebastian."

"Why, thank you."

Ciel snorted, stirring the cup of fragrant Darjeeling tea freshly poured by his butler. They were safe from others' prying eyes, locked behind the closed doors of "Father" Michaelis' study. Ciel had steeled his expression in a second layer of defense, against the pleasure of merely watching Sebastian tidy his desk, gracefully arranging the papers in piles.

"This case is proving absolutely confounding," the boy said. "The last thing I needed was to be distracted by studying."

"How could I be a Phantomhive butler if I did not use a rigorous Latin curriculum?"

"'Rigorous'?!" Ciel gave an overly loud scoff, tearing his gaze from the butler's perfectly filed, ink-black fingernails. "More like 'impossible."

"Your peers find me quite an inspiring instructor," Sebastian smoothly responded.

"It helps when the instructor met all the authors personally," Ciel shot back.

Sebastian raised an eyebrow. "I don't recall saying that."

"Hmph," the boy grunted. "You probably brought down the Empire yourself."

The demon simply smiled. He finished with his papers, leaned back in his leather chair, and began polishing his glasses.

Ciel inhaled deeply, stilling his shaking body as the precipice grew closer. "I can't believe you started teaching us Propertius, though."

"Much of his work is above your level by several years," Sebastian admitted, now fingering his rosary beads. "But I believe in challenging students thoroughly . . ."

"That's not what I meant," Ciel burst out. Immediately cursing himself for interrupting so heatedly, he continued, "Propertius is an elegist."

"And Caesar was assassinated," Sebastian replied evenly. "Are we stating obvious facts?"

Ciel scowled. "He's a love poet, Sebastian. All his poems are about debauched philandering . . ."

"Not all his poems," Sebastian cut in with a smirk. "Only the good ones."

"You're playing a boarding school priest, for God's sake," the young student retorted. "The last thing we need is questions about your moral purity."

"I find that his debauchery rather humanizes Latin literature, in the eyes of many students," Sebastian countered. "At any rate, my elegiac selections were relatively proper. There's no danger of my assigning Tibullus 1.4, for example."

Ciel reviewed the exchange so far. He was playing his regular, snappish self, and Sebastian, as usual, filled the role of the demon— heartless, invulnerable, perpetually amused. While the bullet-fire rhythm of their conversations was always entertaining, it would not afford the answers Ciel wanted— needed— unless he made an aggressive move.

"You gave us a few lines of Propertius 4.7, the other day," Ciel mused, his eyes wandering along the wall, his words seemingly aimless. "I found them rather intriguing. That was the one where Propertius encountered the ghost of his lover . . . Cynthia, if I remember correctly. Her ghost had escaped a fire, hadn't it?"

"Indeed."

"And she always had a sapphire ring on her finger?"

"I believe that was beyond the excerpt we read in class . . ."

"And Propertius," Ciel cut him off, suddenly thrilled, "Propertius was downright obsessed with her, wasn't he?"

Sebastian put down his glasses and fixed his full attention on the boy, auburn eyes strangely luminous. "You appear to have quite the interpretation of this poem, young master," he murmured. "Won't you elaborate, that my lesser intellect might understand?"

The game was on.

"It starts with Propertius, the poet."

"But of course, young master."

"He's starving for inspiration, wouldn't you say? And Cynthia's pretty enough, interesting enough to pass the time, so he deigns to take her as his muse. Then what do you think happened?"

"Pray tell." Sebastian watched him with simmering gaze.

"He did his job perfectly, Sebastian. Three perfect books of downright spotless poems," Ciel's eyes flitted up and down his butler's own spotless robes, then around the tidied desk and the whole of the preternaturally neat room. "But, of course, he soon sated himself. He let her die and moved on to a new mistress without ever intending to look back."

"Which is where Cynthia's soul comes in?"

"Her 'ghost,' Sebastian," Ciel corrected. "We are not talking of souls, are we?"

"Of course not, young master."

"And honestly, I doubt the ghost's really a ghost. It strikes me more as a hallucination," Ciel paused. He was in free fall, now, his heartbeat strumming in his ears. "A delusion born from grief."

At this, Sebastian straightened up and tilted his head, looking genuinely intrigued. "Is that so, my lord?"

"Oh, yes," the human breathed, the contract in his right eye flaring as his next words tumbled out, growing increasingly loud and swift. "He thought it was over between them, Sebastian. And yet he can't forgive himself. He imagines her listing off every time he wronged her, the ways he should have cared for her, the times he shouldn't have left her . . ."

"If I understand you correctly," Sebastian abruptly cut him off, "Propertius would have avoided all his troubles had he simply provided her with impeccable service."

Ciel stopped still. "You're joking."

"But of course. You see, young master," the butler shifted, folding his arms over his chest, "Another interpretation holds that Cynthia is a useless shrew, still very much alive at the time of writing, and that, in writing this poem, Propertius himself was telling a joke."

"What's the punchline?" Ciel forced the quiver from his voice.

"She's so irritating that even death could not mute her foolish, pathetic whining."

The demon's cool viciousness snapped against the boy's soul and left burns in its wake, like the coarse ropes of a net.

"Is this the interpretation you prefer, Sebastian?" Ciel asked, gazing up— no, through his demon's fine-boned face to the wallpaper behind it.

"Cynthia complained about their 'hollow contract, which the deaf South Winds tore up and scattered.' You need have no such worries about the strength of our contract."

"Our contract? How do we relate to any of this?"

Ciel regarded him with innocently furrowed brows, and Sebastian stared back. Finally, the boy placed his cup on its saucer and shrugged. "It's only poetry, I suppose."

They conversed for a few minutes, plotting against this prefect or that, discussing which of Ciel's chores Sebastian would cover the next day. Suddenly, the boy stood up mid-sentence and, with a perfunctory excuse, slipped to his own room for bed. Once again on solid ground, he slunk back from the edge over the next few days and soon forgot the precipice ever existed.

Sebastian sighed that night, unable to shake the oddest feeling of falling. He was impressed by Ciel's clever conjectures, but, for all his probing, the boy had missed the one detail that had made Sebastian turn to Propertius in the first place. For he needed to remind himself, even after so many centuries, that no demon could hope to love a human and still leave them unharmed. Inter complexus excidit umbra meos.

"In my embrace, her soul was lost."

Author's Note: "Excidit," from that last line, literally means "fell away" but can be figuratively interpreted as "disappeared," "perished" or "was lost." "Inter complexus excidit umbra meos" is actually the last line of Propertius 4.7. "Umbra" technically means "ghost" or "shade" rather than "soul," but Sebastian gets to take liberties with his Latin :-)

Tibullus 1.4, which Sebastian mentioned, is a rather interesting poem from the same genre as Propertius 4.7; it explores how older men might court boys around Ciel's age. In Victorian times, Tibullus 1.4 would likely be considered hugely scandalous, though yaoi fans of today might find it rather ordinary.

In case you're curious, here's a translation of the manga quote:
The Shades mean something- death does not end everything.
A pale ghost escapes the burnt-up pyres.
For Cynthia seemed to be lying on my couch-
Cynthia, just now buried among the noise of the road's end-
when my sleep was suspended by the last rites of our love
[this next line doesn't show up in canon, but I'll include it anyway because it completes the couplet]
and I was lamenting the cold kingdom of my bed.