Understanding
(repost spam of all of my fics from my old old old now gone timetracertrash blog part 2/3)
Pairings: Ciel x Add (CielDE?)
o god the first fanfic i ever wrote for this fandom the horror is real
In the days following Ciel’s death, Add locks himself in his room and sits amid scattered papers and discarded equations and thinks about how nothing about the world makes sense. He tilts his head, watching the rain outside of his window, sorting out his feelings and shoving them into forgotten corners of his mind, unwilling to discard them, but not wanting to dwell on them as well.
When he allows himself to be completely honest, he realizes that he truly isn’t sure how he feels. It had all happened too quickly, slipping past him faster than his rational mind could analyze and comprehend, leaving him with a kind of numbness inside of him.
He wonders what he is supposed to be feeling at this moment.
A noise from outside of his room makes him look up. Lu is sitting on the other side of his door again, he knows, and he refuses to acknowledge her presence. The demon seems to know that he is listening however, for she speaks without preamble.
“Come to the funeral, Add,” Lu’s voice is completely worn out, riddled with exhaustion and grief.
The funeral. No, he wouldn’t go. If he went, it would only serve to shatter the perfect illusion of nothingness that he had created for himself. If he went, it would mean that he had finally accepted Ciel’s death. So he says nothing in response, leaning his head against his bed and closing his eyes.
“I know you can hear me,” she tries again, wanting to reach out to him, to finally get him to leave his room. “And it’s not fair for you to do this. You weren’t the only one who cared about Ciel. We were all his friends, and he deserves to be put to rest by all of us.”
Add wants to laugh then. He wants to put his face in his hands and just laugh without stopping, until everyone begins to question his sanity even further, because even Lu, the one with arguably the closest connection to Ciel, doesn’t understand.
“No,” he says instead, because there is absolutely nothing else that he could say to make anyone understand. “No.”
He hears her sigh in resignation, and then, “Do you even care? About him? About anything?” Her question, he knows, spawns from her bitterness and sorrow, but it still stings. He doesn’t reply, and eventually, the sound of her footsteps fades away and he is left alone again.
For the rest of the night, he lies on his side, his cheek pressed to the cold wooden floor and wonders if Ciel is happy where he is.
----
He knows that Ciel is unhappy now, with this chaotic sort of arrangement that they have fallen into. Add wishes that he could tell him how sorry he is, how much regret he feels for the way everything had turned out. Instead, he and Ciel keep their distance from each other, the gap between them unable to be sealed.
It remains that way until Add is bent over Ciel’s dying form, feeling the other man’s blood slip through his trembling fingers and watching the expression in his eyes turn to acceptance of his fate. He clenches his fingers around Ciel’s arm, shaking him back to awareness for the briefest of moments.
“Ciel,” he hates the way his voice sounds, strangled and cracking with panic and another emotion that Add can’t name. “Ciel!”
The half-demon smiles at him, and Add wants to scream at the way that he is just ready to die, to leave. “I’m glad you’re with me..,” is all Ciel says in response, his hand moving to cover Add’s. “Ah…Lu’s going to be mad at me for this…”
Add chokes a little then, his breath hitching in his throat. “What about me?”
“You’ll be fine, won’t you?” Ciel’s assumption is horribly inaccurate and Add just shakes his head, holding on to him more tightly. “Your future was never meant to include me, after all. You still have a lot more to do.”
He realizes that at this moment, Ciel is still trying to respect the decision that Add made so long ago, still trying to put Add’s feelings in front of his. And because there is so much that he wants to say in return, so much that he should have told him in the weeks of silence before now, and no time to say any of it, he shakes his head again, leans over and presses his lips to Ciel’s.
He can feel the man’s last smile when he finally pulls away, and sits there for a while, tasting the kiss in his mouth.
He remains motionless like this, until the ElGang finally stumbles upon them.
Lu screams.
----
Add eventually leaves his room, driven by the human need to eat. Rena, the resident cook now that Ciel is gone, places a plate of something vegetarian-looking in front of him, a sympathetic look on her face. He stares down at it, on his bottom lip until he forgets how that last kiss had tasted, mixed with the coppery tang of blood.
“How are you feeling, Add?” Rena’s warm eyes are filled with concern as she pulls up a chair and folds her hands neatly on the table. He can feel her sadness as well, and remembers the first night when Rena had cried endlessly, shedding enough tears for the rest of them.
“I’m…tired, I guess,” his response is short, and he senses her frown at the curtness of it.
“We all feel the same way, right now. We all miss him a lot. You can talk to us, you know?” Rena tries again, her motherly side attempting to make Add open up.
He says nothing, still looking at the plate of food before him. He doubts that any of them would understand how he feels. The elven woman continues to gaze at him expectantly, so after a while, he picks up his fork and spears something green, chewing mechanically.
“If you don’t want to grieve with the rest of us, at least come to the funeral. Ciel deserves that much.”
So she, too, had heard about Add’s adamant refusal on the matter. He shakes his head slowly, unable to reject her kindness outright. “I’ll…think about it,” he forces out, abandoning his half-eaten meal and placing it in the sink.
Rena’s eyes follow him as he leaves, filled with the same pain that he remembers seeing in Ciel’s.
----
On the last day that he allows himself to love Ciel, Add tells himself again and again that there is no other way, that staying with Ciel would only result in tragedy, that what he’s doing is ultimately right, for the both of them.
It isn’t fair to Ciel, after all, for Add to keep playing this game, to continue to pretend that they could have some kind of life together. This world was pleasant enough, the people in it kind and generous, but it wasn’t his. In the end, he would have to return to his own time, to his own life, and he would have to fulfill his final duty to his parents.
He could not make Ciel forever wait for someone who would never return.
But even as he explains this all to Ciel, even as he turns away in order to avoid seeing the pain on the other’s face, a part of him rails against everything he had believed in. A part of him wonders what it would be like if he simply remained in this world, and created a new life for himself.
He hates this part of him, for daring to think about betraying his parents in such a way, but he can’t help but sometimes agree with it, especially now, as he severs the final tie that connects him to this world.
Ciel accepts his explanation without question. “I understand, Add,” he lets out a breath, and shoves his hands into the pockets of his long coat, making his way to the door.
No, Add thinks, you don’t.
He watches Ciel leave, feeling the wrongness in their parting. He wants their goodbye to be something more than a farewell between strangers, but he knows that if he lets himself fall back into Ciel’s arms, he’ll never want to let go.
----
It is Raven who finds him next, and Add is slightly more receptive to his words, if only because of the way that the half-Nasod has of speaking without judging.
They sit in stifling silence for a while, neither of them saying what needed to be said, and Add finds himself drifting away in the comforting quiet, thinking about happier times in his life. Raven shifts uncomfortably, poking at an invisible speck of dust on the couch.
“So,” Add finally decides to break the silence, wishing that the other would simply say what was on his mind and leave.
“Why won’t you come to the funeral, Add?” This was new. Add’s reasoning had not yet been called into question until this point. “I mean, we’ve all tried to ask you to attend and every time, you refuse. What about this funeral are you so afraid of?”
Afraid?
Add supposes that one could call his hesitation that. He is afraid of watching them place Ciel’s cold body inside a colder box and bury him under layers of dirt. He is afraid of hearing everyone say their goodbyes and knowing that he already said his own far too early. He is afraid of acknowledging the fact that Ciel is dead and gone.
He says none of this to Raven, resolutely staring at the ground. The other takes this as a cue to continue. “I didn’t go to Seris’ funeral, either. I never got the chance. Her family took her and buried her somewhere nice, somewhere in a grassy field, since she’d always liked nature and I-“
“Stop,” Add isn’t sure where he finds his voice from, but the word comes out more strongly than anything that he’s said in a while. Raven’s words had begun to enter a dangerous territory, and Add is now definitely sure that he does not want to hear them. “You don’t understand anything,” Add jerks away from the older man and gets to his feet.
Raven watches his actions, an unreadable expression on his face. “And what is there to understand, Add?”
Add never answers his question.
He doesn’t have an answer.
----
Much later, when he finds out that everything that he had done was for nothing at all, that he sacrificed such a large part of himself for something that would never yield anything in return, he realizes that he was the one who never understood this entire time.
He drifts past the ghosts of his parents and whispers his apologies to Ciel with every dimension that he rips through, thinking that it is truly ironic that the moment he gains all the knowledge in the world is when he discovers what it really means to have nothing left.