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Elizabeth hates Sebastian.
The contract wasn’t even the beginning of her spite. She more or less demanded the truth leading up to their wedding, smoothing over the creases in Ciel’s eyepatch as he spoke of everything. His pain saddened her, and at first Elizabeth thought it made him sad too. She allowed him to cry into her shoulder that night, his body and spirit heavy against hers. The emotion surprised her but didn’t stop him. Then she speculated that maybe he thought the truth would push her away for good, that she would not marry him; that she did not love him.
If anything, the space in her heart reserved for him expanded so much that she felt it might completely burst out of her chest. The feeling was comparable to when a stray animal on the street approaches you, or when your horse allows you to saddle it for the first time. While Ciel is not a stray dog or a feral cat or even a stubborn horse that does not wish to be ridden, he is someone Elizabeth feels the need to protect. And when he appeared almost surprised to see her at the other end of the aisle on their wedding day, she understood then what she was protecting him from.
How she was forced to watch the contract play out is what began her loathing. She didn’t doubt that it came from a place of selfishness. It started as a type of one-sided territoriality that was entirely unique to her, and grew into something fierce and violent. The finality of the contract wasn’t bothersome, accepting death was a natural part of life. What she couldn’t accept was the pain he was actively put through.
Upon returning from any one of his excursions, Ciel was battered in ways she couldn’t reason with. Bruises, scrapes, cuts closed by stitches, broken fingers and ribs. And what drove her the maddest was that she was never permitted to tend to him. Elizabeth was no medical professional, she could admit that much, but Sebastian was insistent on her not touching him. She understood that while he might not be the one inflicting his injuries, if he had ceased to exist in the first place, there would be no pain.
But then again, if Sebastian did not exist, then neither would he. It was a complicated reality she lived in, and a frustrating one.
If her hatred could be unrolled and laid in a straight line, she was certain it could extend for miles. The lurking, the attentiveness, his all-knowing attitude. Many days it made her insane with anger, silently wishing his overbearing nature away. And she knows it amuses him; she knew he found entertainment in her furrowed brows and the sole fact that she knew there’s nothing she could do about it.
She couldn’t tell Ciel about any of it. How can she and what would there be to say? Life is undeniably easy with his presence; everything they could ever want or need is made available in a more than reasonable amount of time. Parisian nightgowns, Caribbean pineapples, Egyptian cotton sheets. Anything that could be beckoned arrived no later than dinner the same day. She made a game of it once, testing how far he’d obey, only until Ciel caught on many months ago:
Elizabeth’s damp hair sat freely on her shoulders. She’d been out riding all day in the blistering heat; now washed of her grime and sun-kissed as she waited for dinner to roll around. With her book in hand, she didn’t look up when Ciel entered the room.
He did not speak as he took his place next to her, though much closer than usual. When time passed and she still didn’t acknowledge his presence, he pushed back her hair off her shoulder; his fingers lightly grazing the side of her neck. “Lizzy” He finally said, softly.
The gesture made her blink and feel grateful her face was already red, but did not look away from her book. “Yes?” She answered just as gently, though her heart began to race at what was coming.
It’s not like they had fought that morning. Actually, they rarely ever did, which was a surprise to them both. She had made an early rise and swift retreat to the stables though, having a dreadful feeling that she’d been caught in her charades the night before. Her disappearance clearly had done little to persuade him out of the confrontation, and really, she should’ve known better.
“Are you unsatisfied?” Ciel continued and leaned over to press his lips into the place on her neck his fingers had just left. One of his arms snaked around her waist too, likely to ensure she wouldn’t get up and leave.
That was an inappropriate thing to ask, she thought as the heat from her face melted down her spine. She very well knew what he was getting at, but chose to play along. “I’m not following” Elizabeth answered, her fingers gripping her book tighter now.
Annoyed, his teeth suddenly sank into her warm flesh causing her to startle and drop the book down into her lap. “Are you bored?” He grumbled while pressing his palm into the open pages, forcing her attention. “Is that why you continue to harass my butler?”.
Elizabeth wanted to shove him off of her at that, taking offense at his tone. But she couldn’t deny how nice it felt to be this close to him, even with the heat. “Is it not his duty to serve you which, by default, also includes me?”. She would hardly call it harassment if he so willingly obeyed.
“Routinely demanding outlandish goods from foreign lands is not his duty” His voice was muffled by her skin as he continued to dust her neck with kisses. The affection did not surprise her, though it was not particularly fitting for the conversation. “Nor do you need any of those things”.
She huffed, sinking into her stubbornness. “Can you not afford my lifestyle?” She was playing with fire but she didn’t care; they’d both be scorched in the end. “I figured my father’s dowry would last at least another year”. This was funny because he refused her dowry on the terms that he did not need it.
Ciel wanted to bite her again, she could tell from the way his breath stilled against her neck, but instead pulled back to look at her sternly. “This is not a game, Lizzy” He said, perhaps too harshly because his next words were much quieter. “You cannot distract him with frivolous things”.
It was a game though, she remembered thinking, it had always been one even when she didn’t realize she was playing. She rubbed the sore spot on her neck and frowned at him. “I’m not”. There was little fight in her voice. “He should be grateful he gets to serve me from a distance”.
He looked at her for a moment that then stretched into several minutes of strained silence. “You put me in danger by assigning him away from me”. Now he was playing the right cards. It was one big game of manipulation, really. “Please find other ways to spend your time”.
Elizabeth recalled this conversation as she lay in bed under the warm morning sun, gazing upon Ciel’s exposed back. It was past time she’d call on Paula to dress her and soon the man she hated would come knocking. She chose not to brood and reached out to touch him instead. Under her hand she felt his rhythmic breathing of undisturbed slumber, tracing down his back and stopping above his scar.
How could the boy who was once so frail and quiet now be tied to an agreement that could only end with his death? The terms were more complicated than that, or so she had been told, but it always boiled down to the same ending. At one point in time the thought had eaten her alive and filled her with so much dread you’d have thought she was the one in the contract. But she quickly learned that when you have little time left with someone, you don’t waste it mourning what hasn’t happened yet.
Yes, Elizabeth did hate Sebastian, the likelihood of that changing was slim, and she would continue to bother him in her own ways. But, the outcomes of learning about the contract hadn’t been all bad.
The truth brought out the best in them. It didn’t happen overnight, but with time their walls came down in ways she hadn’t expected. They dined together, strolled, gossiped, bathed, fought, and even made love. That was a rare occurrence however for many reasons, and a story she would not share even to her mother who continually pried about it.
Her arm draped over his torso now, bringing their bodies together as she was consumed by emotion. It made her physically ill most mornings, waking with her chest tight and stomach churning with panic that he might not be laying next to her. But here he was, awake now and reaching to intertwine their fingers together.
Ciel didn’t turn in her arms; he didn’t need to. “It’s this hot yet here you are right next to me”. His voice was groggy and his words vibrated against her collarbones. He pulled their conjoined hands to his chest, attempting to curl back into sleep.
Elizabeth rested her cheek into his shoulder, closed her eyes, and smiled. “You’ll live”. She answered smoothly without thought.
He deserved to, but he wouldn’t, and it was okay.