Infinite

Chapter 16

He held me tightly to him, jumping overtop buildings and caressing the air gently enough that it barely stirred. I felt strangely at peace with the world, then. I had time to ponder things in which I had been too timid and reluctant to think upon before. I realized that mine wasn't going to be the only death today. When I would die, so would the butler Sebastian.  Just as he had given me life anew, I had permitted him to exist.  After I was gone, the biggest part of him I had ever known would be gone. He was entirely someone else... and he was about to loose the one name in which I felt familiar with.  Though the ruthless beast would stay forever, haunting... slipping in and out of murky shadows for centuries to come.  

I would be left behind.  

I would be carried with him

I mourned the death of this identity.  I had grown attached to the servant Michaelis, and I was not too prideful to admit that. I wanted Sebastian to be all he was, and all he would ever be. He hadn't been Sebastian until he had met me, and yet he had since become so entrapped within that role, that perhaps he had lost a part of who he had been before.  He wasn't a demon... he couldn't be, wholly.  I had seen too many of his different pieces.  Yet I could say surely that he was far from being a man. He was too ethereal and dark to be anything but a demon, and yet he was too sensual and real to be anything but my butler. I decided that he wasn't either choice. He was simply Sebastian. Sebastian was who he was... and he danced upon an entirely new plane of existence. I could not put him in a box, for he was unconfined.

Yet we both knew that Sebastian could not exist without me, just as Ciel could not exist now without Sebastian... and I couldn't help but wonder if he had finally become him.

Who had he been before? How many Sebastians had there been before me? How many roles had he played, in how many different eras and times... past and future? What exactly was he capable of if left to his own control? Such a thought struck fear within me, for I had only known him for a brief moment before he had catered to me to become exactly what I had willed him to. Would he become that creature again, after this? Would I be permitted to gaze upon such a form once again?

I looked up to his handsome face, taking in every inch of skin... every pore and every detail of color. I memorized the way his lips curled, and the sharp arch of his brow. I inhaled and digested the perfectly glowing color of his eyes, his finely sculpted jawline... his eyelashes which cast shadows upon his flawless cheeks in the unforgiving light of late morning. Hotness pinched at my eyes, and I blinked away the thought that this was going to be one of the last moments I had with him as my butler. I was foolish to have forgotten that Sebastian wasn't all this creature was. He was nameless... timeless. He was everything, and nothing.

He was infinite.

I reminded myself for the thousandth time, and yet it meant something different, now.

I curled further into him, reveling in the last moments of certainty before I knew I would have to let it be swept away into the vast, endless darkness of sky and wind and sulfur. I suppose every living being which had ever dwelled upon this planet would sometime have to die. We would all crumble to dust. The only thing we would have to cling to would be our souls, and I had sold mine to something despicable. Yet I wanted no other being to have it. I wanted him to keep it safe, as only he could... yet the thought of him being someone I did not know brought a new fear into me, and I realized how foolish I had been. I knew he could not love me, but I had never thought once that he would lie to me.

'I do not lie.'

It was a vow he had spoken to me ages ago, and I had always believed it to be true... but what if that in its self had been a farce? What if it was more than what it appeared to be? My heart tugged at me to forget this, and I listened. It was impossible not to obey something so demanding and eager.