Title: From Darkness to Darkness
Characters/Pairing: Sebastian, Ciel
Rating: K+
Warnings: Some spoilers for the end of the anime, I guess, even though I didn't watch the end of the anime. This is all based off of word of mouth and the ending credits of the OVA O_o
Word Count: 558
"Tell me what happens, Sebastian. Tell me how it all will end."
The moonlight makes him look older than he really is, as if his young master was halfway to a ghost. He always raises his voice when he is serious, a child's tactic to impart a sense of gravity to his words. Sebastian keeps his candles lit; only one eye reflects the candlelight, because the eye that belongs to him has a light of its own.
He considers whether it would be better to lie to him, or to tell him the truth. Sometimes, his young master can tell, but other times, he cannot.
He pulls lightly on the coverlet so that the edges are hanging straight, and makes his choice, and begins to speak.
He tells him about the boat that cleaves the moonless river, filled with lilies all silver and white, lilies so pure and beautiful they seem to cast a light all their own, softer than swan's down and silk, whiter than pearls in the moonlight. This boat, this little, wooden boat, older than anyone can remember, older than time, this is the boat that will take them to the far distant shore.
He does not tell him about the other boats. There will be other boats that will pass them in the night, rowed by silent shadow people back from the other lands of darkness. The other boats are always coming back. They are always empty. This is not something his young master—indeed, no human—needs to know.
He tells him about the barren, rocky shore that lies across the river, an ash and charcoal stretch of forsaken land. He tells him about the black and weathered ruins that lie inland, in a place so still and so quiet, where there is no wind, and neither is there earth, for no living thing may enter there.
He does not tell his master this either.
He tells him about the high cliffs that soar above the black and empty water, and the mountains that rise like castle ramparts around the ruins, the archways, the gravel-strewn paths, the crumbling walls. No one knows what people built those ruins, or in what age. No one knows what befell those that lived there, what happened that caused the great buildings to fall and leave only their bones to lie in the dirt. No one tells stories about what might have been.
Deeper and deeper they will wander into the ruins, higher and higher into the cliffs they will climb, until it seems they will climb into the spellbinding ink of the sky itself, the sky shows not a single glimmer of moonlight, a night sky completely empty of stars.
And then, when there is nowhere else to go, they will both disappear into the darkness, and only one of them shall emerge again.
Sebastian pauses. His master's breath is shallow and even, its rhythm slow and constant, like rippled water from a stone. How like a child, is his master in the realm of sleep. How like a thing to be pitied, and lied to, and hurt. (For that is the fate of all children, from the lowest urchin to highest born, from now until a time unforeseen.)
Sebastian blows out the candles, and leaves his master to the darkness, and the ephemeral peace of his dreams.
A/N: R&R is always welcome, my dears! This is my first Kuroshitsuji fic, but it is one of my top mangas and favorite fandoms; which this (hopefully) will not be the last!