So this is unabashedly AU, and I totally don't own Kuroshitsuji. Vague spoilers for episode 20 ahead!
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The dress is pink around the edges, lacy and frilly. It's a little girl's dress, a doll's dress, a play dress. Ciel's fingers alight on the edge, afraid to go past that intangible barrier. If he lets himself see past the edges, his already splitting calm with disperse like so many ashes. Above him, Sebastian and the man they had confronted still banter back and forth, caught in a game of cat and mouse until he gives Sebastian the final order, the one that will bring the man to his final justice in Her Majesty's prison yards. But his vocal cords won't form the words he knows it is his duty to say, and so he doesn't say anything at all, and lets the play go on above.
A cheerful call, a sudden move, a stray gunshot, a screaming maid, blood spreading redred over a lighter fabric. It all happened so fast; so slow; so eternally. He can't go past the barrier that the hem of her dress has come to represent, the line between illusion and reality. If all he looks at is the unbroken beginning, he can pretend that it extends. That the spreading blood he knows is there doesn't truly exist.
"Lizzy," he breathes, and it's a plea, a desperate wish for an answer. Maybe he still half-expects one. To the side he can hear that maid – Paulanne? – sobbing, screaming, pleading with God for something, anything, to take her instead, to make time rewind. Ciel thinks it's foolish; God has no time for the likes of them, cannot hear their pleas over the choruses of sweetly singing angels surrounding him. It is only the demons, the devils, and the monsters that hear their cries, ever searching for souls and despair to prey upon.
Ciel lets his eyes follow the pleats of her skirt, finally, coming to rest at the edges of pooling red across her chest, a sash, a banner, a corset of death. He chokes on air; this was never supposed to happen. She was never supposed to get involved, even by accident. Sebastian should have known, should have warned him, should have saved her – but even he hadn't anticipated her sudden appearance, or managed to intercept the bullet in midair. If Ciel hadn't made it a direct order after Aberline, he might be suspicious, but Sebastian, for all that he is not what Ciel wishes he would be, is eternally loyal to their contract.
"Lizzy," he chokes again, tears welling in the eye that doesn't burn with the seal of the contract. His hands fist in the fabric of her skirt, and he bows his head, unable to look at her wide, glassy eyes, forever devoid of comforting laughter. Anger burns like a red-hot brand inside his chest, so much more intense and lasting than any physical pain could ever be. A breath. Another. And the words bubble up from his chest, the words he'd known were imminent all along and tried to fight.
"Sebastian. This is an order. Annihilate him."
"Yes, my lord."
Ciel takes one of Lizzy's cold hands between his own, lifts his head to watch as Sebastian shreds their target, bits and pieces of bone and muscle and flesh flying in haphazard directions. A piece of a toe hits his cheek and leaves a bloody trail, but he doesn't flinch, even when Sebastian leaves the mutilated center and wipes at it with a blood-soaked glove.
"I want you to bring her to the Phantomhive manor. Contact my aunt. And she'll need to be given a proper burial."
"As you wish."
The demon is gentle as he lifts her, careful. In his arms, if not for the darkening stain, she could almost be simply sleeping. But Ciel will not delude himself with fancy visions any longer. There's nothing but reality, cool and unforgiving as the gravestone that will bear Elizabeth's name.
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I'll just uh, make a disclaimer here that I really do like Elizabeth. Really. She's my third favorite character in the show.