Written for spiffydorksarah, an author on this site because it's her birthday! :3
This story is born of my multiple and serious headcanons about Lizzie, so you might find her OOC if we don't see her the same way. See if that's your thing. The title is explained at the end, I'll just say now that I don't consider Lizzie to be mad.

Disclaimer: The characters mentioned in this story all belong to Yana Toboso.

Folia

Men are usually stronger than women, it is a question of body structure and strength.

Men usually protect women because of that superior strength they have, a husband protects his wife, a father his daughter and an older brother his little sister. It is a song she learnt by heart and she believes it fully at first.

Until reality in the form of her mother hits her hard when she is seven.

"Why do I have to learn fencing?"

It is not cute, it is not ballet and no little girl of her age or older practice it. What if she stands out, practicing something so…manly? No one will want to speak to her anymore if they come to know about it…

"Mother… why do I have to learn fencing?"

There are actually many answers to this question and she is tired of wondering which one is the true reason. A daughter is to obey her mother always in any case, so she learns with the idea that it's just to pass time. She learns because Edward started to as well, before she did, and she thinks she will spend more time with him as a result.

She learns, hoping her mother will soon see that she is unfit for this and change her mind.

However it does not happen this way at all.

People often joke how similar to her father she is, so attracted by simple and nice things, so easy to smile and laugh in a lovely way, but they are wrong.

If there is one thing that she learns… it is that she entirely takes after her beautiful and deadly mother.

.

En garde.

One hit. Two.

A few steps forward, then backward.

It's always the same dance, only she holds a sword and does not wear a dress. It is always too easy but she feels no pleasure because her victories only bring sadness to an opponent who will never be an enemy to her. So why? Why is she forced to do this?

After all, Edward can never keep up.

She tries to ignore her brother's sadness and locks her worry deep in her heart while hating herself for being better than he is.
For making him cry because a brother is supposed to protect his sister and he will never be able to fulfill that task.

This might as well be a complete nightmare.

Her older brother dares not cross their parents' eyes anymore, even when Father just laughs and says it is fine if Ed loses to her. Father also adds that one day he will probably lose to her as well and it becomes hard to breathe, even more when, in return, her brother looks at her with so much incomprehension in his eyes.

She does not understand either why Father is so sure she will end up winning against him too, but then she thinks it is probably to reassure both her and her brother. The tension between them makes her very uncomfortable because they have always been close and the fact it is all her fault does not help.

"Do you think Edward hates me?" She asks one day during training, fighting the tears and her shaking voice, because she is still so young and in need to feel better about him, herself and this entire nonsense.

"He would be foolish to."

Her mother's words are not of any help at all because she does not exclude the possibility that Ed does indeed hate her. However she does not have the right to falter. So many reasons to learn how to fight, none that she actually understands really, but she keeps on fighting her tears and battling her mother, even if she ends up losing to both.

"Get up, Elizabeth."

If there is one thing she does not need to worry about, though, it is to ever surpass Mother.

"Get up and take your sword."

Get up, get up, get up. Get up.

She wonders if she should hate her mother in return for destroying her innocence bit by bit, but a good daughter doesn't despise the woman who gave her birth. And she is a good girl because she practices fencing just like she is told to, even if she loathes everything about it.

She still stops bidding her goodnight with kisses because she might as well stop being a little girl in her mother's eyes.

.

.

What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice, they're made out of this and that.

"A Lady… Should be super weak and cute in front of her Lord. It is the most important thing, to be an innocent, naïve girl. It is your job to smile and be surrounded by nice things just like in nursery rhymes. That's why…"

You should always stay like you are.*

She is young and she does not understand irony, but she realizes how wrongly people of her entourage perceive her.

They do not know. They cannot know.

Or Ciel will hate her.

After all this time, she finally found a suiting answer to the haunting question and that answer is Ciel. Her future, the boy she loves and who will give her his name when they are older... Ciel cannot know.

Uncle Vincent does know though and he is not afraid of addressing the matter.

"Ciel's mother… Rachel, she is not like you, little Lizzie. This is why my son does not realize what strength is good for, no matter if it is held by a man or a woman alike. You are you and you should have more confidence in yourself. One day, Ciel will recognize his mistake and accept you for what you are."

But how can he be so sure?

She understands it is a possibility because Father once told her the exact same thing, when she had been in tears of realizing she was the kind of girl Ciel disliked and was afraid of, but she sees the kind of women that Ciel loves.

He loves his mother, Aunt Rachel and his aunt, Ann, and she is close to neither.

Who knows, maybe she took the place of the second son her parents were going to have instead of her and that is why she is punished by God.

It is Edward who comforts her then, because he stopped caring about being defeated by someone younger and supposedly frailer than him, and because he is a brother and he loves her. And Edward knows one thing: Mother would have preferred two daughters rather than two sons.

However Father hears him and denies his words, explaining how he and their mother were given exactly who they wanted for children. And she wonders, why is it that he always is such an enthusiastic man? That makes her laugh a little.

"I prefer when you smile Darling," Father says with his ever gentle smile on his lips, stroking her cheek affectionately, "it makes me happier."

In the end, she stops fighting it. She cannot win anyway.

However Ciel still cannot know.

.

.

.

She does not expect to meet such a strange man while playing hide-and-seek with Ciel one day at Uncle Vincent's house.

She stumbles upon him near the library, so unlady-like that her mother would probably scold her were she here, and she wants to apologize but the words get stuck in her throat because the person in front of her mortifies her greatly.

That is when the man lifts a finger and points it at her.

"You. You can see me, can't you?" He says with a really large smile and she starts shaking because he is terrifying her. His long black nails get closer to her face and she wants to scream in horror, thinking he might puncture one of her eyes, but instead he puts his finger against her lips.

"Hush you pretty little thing, I am not going to eat you~ I hate chewing on hair. Tell me…"

She feels the tears threatening to roll down on her cheeks when she hears the rasping voice and she tries to fight it, doubting her own strength that she cursed so many times before.

"…Why do you hide such a beautiful side of yourself?"

Green eyes shine in incomprehension because the rest of his sentence is so unexpected and she feels her fear beginning to fade away, her mind darkened by the confusion and the unreality of the man speaking such words in front of her.

"Every human has a shadow part of course ~ but not all are hidden. But you…"

She gulps down, unable to move even though she thinks running away would be the best decision. He has green eyes, bordering on phosphorescent even though it is the middle of the day.

"You try so hard even though it is so evidently present~. And it's blinding me so harshly too~! You should let it out."

She dares not answer, even if she has nothing to say in the first place and she just stares in confusion because she is young, still, and he speaks nonsense.

"Let it shatter your incomplete self. You will feel better, heheheh! Heheheheh~!"

Nothing more is said and the strange man walks away of his own agreement after that, chanting 'interesting interesting~' to himself while she keeps her two eyes and her life. When Ciel finds her, she realizes she totally forgot about their game but he smiles and she tries to relax.
Uncle Vincent whispers some words of apologies to her on behalf of the scary man's part at some point during dinner but even though she tries to ask about the strange man, she gets no real answer.

A few days later, she finds herself in a tournament fighting against a young boy a few years older than Edward called a 'fencing prodigy'. She is the only girl amongst many boys and her family is the only support she can count on while the prodigious boy receives acknowledgement of the entire audience watching the tournament, and yet she wins in no time.

Charles Grey is not pleased about his defeat and the constant frown plastered on his face whenever they will encounter each other in the future will speak greatly of his despise for her but she cannot care less.

She stopped caring about anything that she once refused to acknowledge except where Ciel is concerned.

.

.

The Campania boat incident a few years later changes everything.

The only thing she has not decided yet is whether it is in a good or bad way.

Somewhere deep down she had always childishly hoped that she would never see the day she would have to use what she spent all these years learning. And in front of Ciel, above all.

But at first it does not matter. Survival is a necessity, both Ciel's and hers, and she has no choice. Fighting Father, Edward or Mother, or competing in tournaments are nothing like a life-or-death situation, like getting eaten by moving and seemingly alive corpses.

Her brain does not seem to register the technical impossibility of dead people just moving, if not trying to eat living people because nothing matters except saving Ciel. The girl who likes cuteness and simple things, who just wants to see the boy she loves happy, this young lady inside her makes way for that hidden part that always coexisted in the intimacy of her house's training room and she lets her entire strength out.

Heart beating, blood pulsing, she does not lose. Avoiding nails, teeth, tightening hands and relentless murderous intents, she jumps and pierces through skin easily with no hesitation. Her ever growing strength shatters the few boundaries it had left and she moves faster than she ever moved before.

And Ciel watches it all.

However it turns out Uncle Vincent was right and Ciel does not hate her. Tentatively, a spark of rejoice makes way through the surreal situation: corpses moving and then splattered on the floor, experiments and souls, the madness seems to die down because Ciel does not hate her.

They manage to survive all the way back to London, him, her and her family and she thinks her life might turn out differently even though Ciel now knows. But how hard is it to stop thinking one certain way after all these years? In the end, she still has no idea why a single girl like her can put so many people, women and men alike, out of misery with the edge of her sword or why it all feels so… natural.

It has never been obvious to her, which is why she always fought it deep down, but now everything seems easy. She has to take a different path, in which she should seek becoming better instead of tying herself down.

Edward knows something happened during that voyage but he does not know what exactly, Father could guess but he does not and Mother understands and smiles.

She is strong.

Accept yourself.

She has to at least try.

.

She comes to the manor on a rather warm day at the end of May, to visit him.

The other servants are busy elsewhere and she expects they are not particularly happy to see her anyway…

"Ah ! Lady Elizabeth, welcome. I am sorry you traveled all the way here but the young master is not home today. He went to London for… work."

… Especially when Ciel is not home to control her enthusiasm.

"I know, Mr. Tanaka. My brother wrote me when he entered Weston a little while ago but… I did not come here for him today."

She sees Tanaka raising his eyebrows in slight confusion briefly, but his sharp gaze soon catches the shape of the sword she has been concealing under a long overcoat when she makes a few more steps towards him. She hardly goes out without at least two weapons hidden under her clothes nowadays, but the long sword she carries today has another purpose.

"Mother… Mother says I should train with you because you taught her a lot. Would you mind…?"

The old butler looks at her intently as if gauging her intentions for a minute or two. She probably looks very different from the little lady dancing happily around her fiancé he is used to watch over but he has known her since the day she was born. He can see the duality and the seriousness, as well as the act she puts on and the doubts about her entire being that she holds deep inside.

"Are you sure that is what you want, my Lady?" Is all he asks, carefully and ever so gently, and she nods once. No more words are needed and she follows him into the Phantomhive manor as he goes to search for his own weapon.

It is better to learn from as many opponents as she can if she wants to follow the path she has chosen.

Defend Ciel. Protect Ciel. Make sure he survives so she can hope for the future she always wanted.

But then who will protect her if needs be?

Not Father, not Edward, and probably not Ciel because she is stronger than all of them, and Mother will not always be there.

Weak in order to love, strong in order to protect… Both in order to stay at his side.*
Her preferences do not matter because Ciel is her happiness.

In truth, she does not take after Mother or Father individually but after both, because she is their daughter. It does not matter from where her strength comes or what the blood running through her veins means, she will make sure she does not need to be protected because she can support them all.

She has to train, she wants to. Not only for Ciel but for her as well. There she stands, half shattered but the parts in her still sticking together with something.

Maybe it is a promise that the future will not be as bright as she once envisioned but she fights for the present now.

Because if it dies, there will be no future to protect in the first place.

(*): these sentences are from Kuro chap 58.

Thanks for reading. I'm pretty much on board with any theories describing Lizzie as more than human since I consider her mother to be more than human as well. It all goes back to Claudia P and the Undertaker, I guess Yana will give answers about them soon, so we'll see whether or not Lizzie is a fighting prodigy or someone more complicated

As for the title: it relates to the music theme and I chose it because of the rather intricate kind of music it represents and because I was listening to one when this idea came to mind. Folia is all about variations and "madness", and it was widely popular when it first appeared because it was really different, even though the specific writing is quite strict. So many Follies remind me of Lizzie when I listen to them which is why I was bound to feel inspirated one day.

I only needed a special occasion for that :)

A small review could help if you can, thanks! :3