Author's Note: I originally posted this story on AO3 ( /works/4620318) with the tags "Manga Continuity," "Hypothetical End Scenario," "Murder," "Mixed Chess Metaphors," Tags: "Warning: I Demonized the Demon," "Canon Compliant through Chapter 105," "aftermath of suicide," and "Warning: I Demonized the Demon."

I'm new to ff, so please let me know if I should be doing anything differently (e.g.- if I've made formatting errors).

I

"It's them? They were the ones who caused everything?"

"I have no doubt, young master."

"Kill them, and make it hurt."

"What sort of pain do you suggest I inflict?" Sebastian asked, licking his lips.

"I want them worn down, wrecked, then dropped into a lonely eternity. As a demon, surely you know best how to accomplish that."

Sebastian watched Ciel closely. The boy still sat straight-backed on his red velvet chair, the throne from which he had ruled the English underworld for years. One who didn't know him well wouldn't guess that he was bound, doomed to be killed by the demon who stood before him. But Sebastian knew Ciel Phantomhive, and he heard that his contractor's low monotone— once thrillingly cold in its commands— was already defeated and lifeless. Dead.

"As you wish, young master," Sebastian replied, those last two words laced with a sneer. "I will bring the carriage at once . . ."

"I won't go," Ciel interrupted.

Sebastian widened his eyes, but, on reflection, he was only mildly surprised. He waited for Ciel to scorn the whole venture, to call the hunt for revenge that had animated him for years meaningless . . .

"My quest for vengeance has passed the time," Ciel shook his head and slipped off his eyepatch, revealing a purple orb emblazoned with a fiend's contract. "But it doesn't matter now. Go, Sebastian. That's an order."

"Yes, my lord."

Sebastian sped from the place, leaving his master in Phantomhive Manor. The estate was dark and silent, for the other servants had been dismissed. Only Ciel wandered the halls that night, twisting a sapphire ring around his finger, just one more Phantomhive waiting to fall.

Ciel had assigned the final task, and Sebastian executed perfectly. He teased, mocked, bit, scratched, mauled, snapped, scarred, crucified the ones who made Ciel suffer. It was a feast for his fists and claws and silver knives, but he thought only of the feast to come.

As he returned, gliding smoothly through miles of country moors, he reviewed the entire episode with the boy. It had its entertaining moments— the whole business with the circus, for example— and he would surely remember the butler who deemed him a "friend" for centuries. Most importantly, there had been an entirely sufficient number of cats. The boy's soul, an elixir of uncried tears and withered rage and aimless determination, would make for a lovely conclusion.

Grinning, Sebastian looked over the memories one last time before savouring the soul that started it all. Not until he crossed onto Phantomhive property did he smell the fresh corpse.

Sebastian scanned the trees and rooftops for Shinigami— no, they hadn't yet descended— and then bounded up a wall, crashing through a window. He found Ciel alone in his room, lying on his grand, four-poster bed, a vial of poison lying empty on the next pillow. The human was curled up on his right side, his skin cold and white as clean paper.

This was slightly shocking, yes. Sebastian's past victims had all clung to life as long as they could, praying, groveling, negotiating for a few more minutes of life. But a demon's prey must be dead before its soul can be consumed, and it seemed that Ciel, the proud bastard, had saved Sebastian the trouble of killing him.

If only he'd been so considerate in life, Sebastian sighed, climbing onto the bed and wrenching Ciel's left arm around, the joint of the shoulder popping as it was jerked from its socket. With one fluid motion, the demon slit the boy's wrist with a scalpel-sharp fingernail and brought the hand close to his own face. Almost vampiric, he inhaled the scent wafting from the veins, then opened his mouth, about to clamp his jaws around the boy's bitter, tortured, broken . . .

There was no soul.

Only now did Sebastian survey the full body and notice Ciel's expression, his mismatched eyes open, his mouth twisted in a jeering smile.

II

Heaven help those who feel a demon's wrath.

Sebastian sent the manor up in flames. The heat cracked the stone walls he'd rebuilt himself, and they collapsed, burying the boy's corpse under a mountainous weight. Sebastian turned from the smoking pyre and jumped, flying into a night stained red by hellfire.

In London he swooped upon the alleyways and plucked off bankers and sailors, priests and harlots. He felled each with one swipe at the throat, sampled their soul, and then fled, leaving them unfinished, choking on the saccharine taste. Upon discovering a series of half-devoured Cinematic Records, their tattered reels fluttering in the wind, the Shinigami on duty followed protocol and searched out the source of the trouble in order to complete a proper report. He was summarily speared on his own scythe.

Though no longer starving, the demon switched cities and continued killing. He pushed a beggar under the wheels of a carriage. He hurled a blacksmith into his forge's coals. He took a crying baby from her crib, calmed her, and bashed her brains out against a doorknob. When the Shinigami came— and they always promptly did— he pounced and tackled them to the ground, holding their scythes to their throats.

For someone had poisoned that brat and stolen his soul, and Sebastian demanded to know who. A Seceder? Another demon? God forbid, an angel? Nobody was more likely to know than the Shinigami, the keepers of souls, and yet reaper after reaper refused to answer. "I don't know." "I can't tell." "I won't talk to you, damn you demons."

And with every answer, Sebastian fumed at that thankless imp of a human. Ciel had been a sniveling babe, too useless to even button his shirt. And yet Sebastian had suffered for him. Had been stabbed by a reaper's scythe through the heart. Had stabbed himself, more than once. Had been poisoned by snakes. Had been shot by a firing squad. Had breathed in mustard gas, one of the deadliest weapons humans had ever invented, a toxin that made even his demonskin peel and brought bloody tears to even his dry, demon eyes. So now he raged, terrorizing England, filling newspapers with reports of a monster whose cruelty and brutality were downright inhuman.

At last, he caught the red reaper and ran the chainsaw against her neck, the blades nicking her chin. "Who took that scapegrace's soul?" he demanded.

"Sebas-chan," Grell purred in reply, eyes sparkling with pity. "Isn't it as clear as the moon in the sky? You've been played for all you are worth."

"Ciel played you."

III

Grell gave Sebastian a surprise kick and wiggled her way to freedom. Stunned, he let her go.

He tracked down another Shinigami— Will, inevitably, was close by, only a few rooftops away from where Grell had been. "You are unleashed," the reaper spat. "And now your monstrosity is exposed to the world."

"Did you commit suicide in your human life?" Sebastian called back.

The reaper swiped at the demon with his scythe, but not before Sebastian caught the pain flickering across his face— or was it a flash of light on his glasses? The fiend dodged and sprinted away, sure of the answer to his question.

At last, he began to comprehend Ciel's plan. The human had poisoned himself, shattering the contract and escaping Sebastian, becoming a Shinigami instead.

How?

How could he have learned that suicide made humans into Shinigami? Here, too, Sebastian was sure of the answer— Undertaker. The patchwork creature would have told Ciel anything for the right price, and Ciel had had opportunity enough to ask. When he had stalked in alone to drag out Undertaker's laughter, making a show of his independence, he could have tacked on a query of his own in secret.

One question remained.

Why?

IV

Even a bureaucracy as inert and labyrinthine as the Shinigami Dispatch Society must respond to repeated attacks by a demon. And so, large teams of Shinigami were sent out for every violent death in England, their numbers too great for Sebastian to dare approach. As a result, he exchanged murder for lingering in hospitals, where throngs of humans expired because of natural causes. He lay in wait for months, and months became years . . .

He saw a young woman battle with consumption, hanging on, persisting through wheezing, weakness, and bloody coughs. When she finally lost, Sebastian watched her room from a window across the street as a Shinigami came to her bedside. Though small, the reaper carried himself upright. His coal-black hair tumbled over a pale, round face with delicate features and two uncommonly large, childlike, green-gold eyes.

The old hunger flared in Sebastian again, and he stood still at the window, staring at Ciel Phantomhive, reborn. The young god whipped out his scythe, a gleaming metal rod that flattened out and split into two prongs, like the end of a shimmering satin ribbon. A weeder. He wielded it easily, the prongs flickering like a serpent's tongue as he twirled it about and then thrust it into the core of the woman's soul.

It struck the demon that Ciel was meant to be a reaper— there was Shinigami in his blood. So often had Sebastian seen that heartless efficacy as Ciel weeded out the wrongdoers of the underworld, performing the tasks of the Queen's Watchdog swiftly, smoothly, unquestioningly, taking life and death in his hands whenever those above demanded it. Now, while Ciel pierced the woman's Cinematic Records and spliced them cleanly, as unemotional as William, yet working with a relentlessness even the redhead could not match, Sebastian suspected the boy had no choice but to die and resurge as a reaper . . .

Ciel whirled about faster than a demon and stared right back, laughing at Sebastian.

Of course Ciel had had a choice. He chose to cheat the devil. He chose to win. And though Sebastian may have been the human's queen, the demon was a pawn nonetheless, unable to fathom the intentions of the chessmaster who played him.

Sebastian felt nothing, just an odd twinge of pride. He bowed to Ciel, turned away, and faded back into a lonely eternity.