Chapter Text
63.
Put me together one more time,
Love me forever, fix me right,
I can be your Frankenstein, Frankenstein,
Put me together, make me better
Love me forever, hold me tight,
I can be your Frankenstein, Frankenstein
I don’t wanna be a monster anymore.
- Frankenstein, Rina Sawayama
64.
By the time Undertaker returns home six hours after he left for the accident in Lambeth, Grell has cried twice, smashed four urns, screamed loud enough to get the neighbors whispering, taken her chainsaw to his armchair, split a coffin in half with her bare hands, paced a good three miles worth of agitated circles around the scuffed floorboards and then cried again.
He walks in to find her sitting in a miserable heap in the center of it all, slumped over like a marionette with its strings cut. Undertaker gapes at the carnage that greets him, at a loss for words.
Grell raises her head, hair loose, eyes red-rimmed and raw, and holds up the bundle of letters she found in his casket.
“When were you going to tell me about this?” she asks tiredly.
The older reaper’s expression shutters. “Ah,” is all Undertaker says softly.
“Tell me I’ve got it all wrong,” Grell begs, forcing a wobbly smile onto her face. “Please, darling, tell me it’s all a big misunderstanding. Tell me this house in New York belongs to someone else, or it’s- it’s some kind of investment, just. Tell me you’re not leaving.”
Resigned, Undertaker pulls off his top hat and overcoat with a sigh, hanging them on the rack by the door.
“I could tell you that,” he says carefully, “if you would like me to lie to you.”
The words startle a laugh out of Grell that sounds more like a sob. She takes a deep breath through her nose and slowly counts to ten - she knows that if she doesn’t keep her volatile temper even, she actually will kill him tonight. No amount of experience will be enough to save the mortician from her scythe this time.
Unwisely, he comes closer, crossing the room to sit in front of her on one of the few coffins still intact. Slouched over with his elbows resting on his knees, he sways in place, uncertain whether or not he’s allowed to pull her into his arms or press a kiss to her forehead. Wisely, he doesn’t try either.
“Do you know why we fought, after that carriage crash?” Grell asks, struggling not to raise her voice to a shout.
Undertaker’s mouth twitches with a smile, of all things. “Ah, I see. You really were serious about bringing that up in every argument to come. Alright, my dear, I’ll bite - we fought because I assumed you’d been injured by a demon, and then I very unfairly accused you of withholding the true story.”
“We fought,” Grell says through her teeth, “because we don’t talk. You never ask me anything, you just assume. You never tell me anything, you just keep me in the dark like- like I’m one of your Phantomhive children!”
Undertaker flinches back, expression deeply hurt. It’s a low blow, but she doesn’t know how else to get through to him.
“And now here we are again, on the verge of fighting about something else you’ve never once mentioned!” Grell rasps disbelievingly. She throws the papers down on the floor with enough force that the slap of the bundle against the wood echoes around the room. Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
“But if I can learn to speak again,” she says, trembling with poorly suppressed fury, “you can too. So go on! Talk! Spit it all out!!” Grell spreads her arms grandly with a hysterical bubble of laughter. “I’m giving you one last chance to tell me the truth! And if you’re very lucky, I won’t run you through with my scythe at the end of it.”
Undertaker swallows anxiously. “Where should I start?” he asks.
Grell shrugs. “Wherever it begins, darling.”
“Then I suppose,” he says slowly, “I must start on the night that Sebastian returned to Hell.”
The reaper rubs at the bridge of his nose tiredly, suddenly seeming all of his five hundred-odd years old. “Everything- everyone I loved was gone or destroyed. Their souls. Their cinematic records. That godforsaken demon didn’t even leave me their bodies. Othello accused me of going mad, just before I left reaper society, but I didn’t truly lose my mind until after that night.
“I remember very little of the following years,” Undertaker tells Grell with a quiet sigh. “All I remember is wanting to die. I drifted through London like a ghost, half-expecting, half-hoping to be ambushed by Dispatch. But nobody ever came - perhaps you can tell me later why that was; whether I was so lost that I simply couldn’t be found, or whether the higher-ups just no longer cared, once my experiments with reanimation had come to an end.
“I had too much stubborn pride to turn myself in to Dispatch, but I couldn’t die by my own hand, either. Our bodies are remade when we’re reborn as reapers, stronger and absurdly durable, to prevent us from ending our lives again. Starving myself didn’t work. Drinking myself to death didn’t work - I couldn’t even manage alcohol poisoning. Throwing myself in the river again only washed me out to the docks. A gun to the temple just resulted in a year long headache. And whenever I wanted to turn my scythe on myself, the wretched thing would never appear.
“I remember the day Queen Victoria died. I remember hearing the church bells ringing all over London. I remember thinking ‘good’. I began leaving flowers for the Phantomhives once a year - I didn’t have the strength for any more than that.
“And then I found you,” Undertaker continues, looking up at Grell wistfully. “And even covered in blood, on the edge of death, you smiled at me! You smiled, like it was all so funny. HA! At last, I thought, another member of my own species who understands what a grand cosmic joke this life is! Of course I couldn’t let you die again - I began to fall in love with you that very night.”
Grell’s breath catches. Even so early as that?
“You’ve always been so beautiful, even when you were my enemy, so curiously full of life and color for someone already dead. How could I not want you? How could I ever let you go?
“Your fragile health gave me a wonderful excuse to hoard you to myself for a while, but I hated the idea of you becoming as sad as I was; I couldn’t trap you in the house forever. So when you asked to go shopping, I took you. When you brought me theater tickets, I went with you.
“And then we met the O’Hara’s. Bertie could tell I wasn’t the same man he once knew. He suggested the idea to me so off-handedly - why not come to New York? I’m sure he only meant it as a holiday. So for a while, I considered taking you there on a honeymoon.
“But the more I thought about it, the more I thought…why not New York? My dear, I am surrounded by the bones of people I once loved in this city, every one of their souls lost to me. Why not start again, I thought, in a country without five hundred painful years of memories?
“When I wrote to him afterwards, O’Hara offered to introduce me at the Athenaeum Club. I met other Americans there, and Mr. Goldberg, the British lawyer that deals with their transatlantic affairs for them. Why not, I kept thinking? If I could fall in love one last time, couldn’t I make one last attempt to pick myself up off the ground, too?
“I didn’t tell you, then, because I wasn’t sure I could really do it. Letting go of London seemed just as painful as holding on.
“Then that carriage crash,” Undertaker sighs again. “Then we fought.
“I realized you were right; I never gave you a choice. I never asked what you wanted. As happy as I was being your husband, I couldn't take back the awful words I said to you that night. I couldn’t keep calling you my wife, because you’d never consented to marry me in the first place. I love you so much, Grell Sutcliff, but I am a man who loves to the point of obsession. I love to the point of madness. I love to the point of cruelty.
“And I’ve been so- so afraid since we fought. What if I brought up the idea of moving to America and you said no? What if I gave you the choice, only to find that I’d already pushed you too far away? You’ve been so withdrawn, lately, don’t think I haven’t noticed. What if I’d already broken our relationship beyond repair? I couldn’t bear the thought.
“But things in America had already progressed too far. The house was already bought. Half of my money had been transferred to New York. I’d made up my mind to leave, but I hadn’t yet decided how to explain any of this, until you forced my hand tonight. I hadn’t worked out how to ask you to move across the ocean. And if you want the whole, terrible truth, I seriously considered never telling you at all - I wondered if it was kinder to set you free of me by simply disappearing.
“If I asked you to move, would you truly, genuinely want to come with me? Or would you only stick by my side because you had nowhere else to go? Once I understood that you were running from Dispatch, I realized how little choice you really had in any of this. So I left half of my money here for you, in case you wished to stay. You wouldn’t have to worry for work; you’re a fine mortician already, and the connections you’ve made with the nobility would serve you well.
“I love you, Grell - I do, you must know that by now,” Undertaker finishes softly, ghostly-green eyes imploring. “But my heart is too old and fragile to survive you breaking it.”
Grell’s whole body shakes with rage. She gets to her feet just to tower over him. How dare he doubt her after all these months. How dare he think so little of her affections for him.
“And so?” she demands, voice trembling with anger, canine teeth bared. “Are you going to take me with you, or not?”
“That depends,” Undertaker says slowly, resigned to his fate, “entirely on what you want.”
How can someone so old be so incredibly stupid?
“YOU LEAVE ME BEHIND AND I’LL KILL YOU!!” Grell roars at him, absolutely furious. “You leave me and I’ll hunt you across the oceans to the ends of the Earth just to cut you into tiny little pieces, and then I’ll sew you back together and reanimate you just to KILL YOU AGAIN!!”
Undertaker looks at her with wonder glittering in his eyes.
“You do love me,” he breathes. Oh, for fuck’s-
Grell screams at him wordlessly. It scrapes against her broken throat painfully, but if she doesn’t find an outlet for her frustration soon, knives will shortly be involved in this conversation.
“My dearest Grell,” Undertaker says, smiling like an idiot. He dodges the urn filled with cookies she lobs full force at his head. If he had any sense he’d run, but it has become quite clear to her that he doesn’t, so instead he falls to his knees, shuffling closer to beam up at her by her skirts, besotted.
“My love,” he sighs happily. He snatches up her wrists before she can reach for a specimen jar to smash over his thick skull, holding them firmly in his hands while she struggles against his grip.
“To die by your hand would be an honor,” he tells her sincerely. “But to have your hand in marriage - truly, this time, no more playing - would be the single greatest pleasure of my afterlife.”
Grell stills, breath hitching. Is he…now? Really??
“Marry me,” Undertaker begs between noisy kisses pressed to each of her fingers. “Marry me. Come to New York with me, Grell, as my wife. My real wife.”
It takes a long moment for it to really sink in that Grell has just been proposed to. Yes, she thinks. Of course the fucking answer is yes. Of course he’d choose now to propose of all times, when she’s the angriest she’s ever been since he found her bleeding out. Of course it would take threatening to kill him for the old reaper to finally get it through his twisted head that she loves him just as much as he does her. She remains furious enough not to give him a straight answer.
“You’re the only one who was playing,” Grell snaps. “I’ve been your stupid wife since I woke up with your ring on my left hand.”
Undertaker blinks. “My…my ring? What ring?”
Grell holds her pinky finger out for him to inspect. “We match,” she says sullenly. “You see?”
Undertaker places his hand by hers, their two scarred pinkies side by side.
“So we do,” he murmurs, eyes round. He links his finger tight with hers, then raises her last knuckle to his lips, brushing a kiss over it reverently.
“Why should I marry you now?” Grell challenges him. “How can I be sure that you really do love me, when you’d even consider leaving me behind?”
“It’s precisely because I love you that I’d consider it,” Undertaker insists. “If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t give you a choice - I’d simply stuff you in a coffin and drag you across the ocean kicking and screaming. But I do love you; I can’t stay in this town full of ghosts any longer, but I can’t bear to rip you from London if it would make you unhappy, either.”
Grell frowns. “Whatever gave you the impression I’d hate to leave?”
“It’s home,” Undertaker says. “You said so, last night in bed.”
What? Is that all? It’s only home because he’s there with her in this dark, damp little house. She told him so once before, when he asked her why she was here: this is where her husband is. Where else would she be? It’s not that she objects to leaving at all, but…
“...Can we leave?” she asks apprehensively. “My body is buried somewhere in England. What happens to us as reapers, if we leave? I’ve only ever left the country on work assignments.”
Easing himself to his feet with an awful crack of his knees, Undertaker shrugs. “I don’t know. I drowned myself in the Thames; I have no bones left to find. They all became fish food long ago, I suspect. I’ve traveled before without issue, but there’s nothing to stop us from returning here one day, if our roots become a problem.”
His hair has parted just enough to reveal the fondness in his uranium-green irises; he smiles at her so gently, these days, the corners of his eyes creasing into crow’s feet. The enormity of his affection for her is hard to look at face-on right now, so she looks down at her hands, held securely in his own. His thumbs are rubbing absent circles into her skin.
“...To hell with London,” Grell curses. “To hell with Dispatch, and reapers, and demons, and every human in this damn city.”
Undertaker sways closer, nudging at her nose with his own. His bangs are ticklish. “You’ll marry me, then?” he asks breathlessly into the scant inch between them. “You’ll really come with me to New York?”
“On one condition,” Grell decides.
“Ohhh?” Undertaker coos, but his face has already cracked into a wide, happy grin. Annoying, awful man. Grell kisses him just to make him stop it. He doesn’t, of course, he only laughs into her mouth. “Tell me your condition, Mrs. Undertaker.”
Well. That’s exactly it, isn’t it?
“I want to get married with our real names,” Grell announces.
There. That puts a stop to his giggling. He draws back, blinking at her with surprise in his round eyes.
“And I want to get married here, in London,” she adds, sticking out her jaw stubbornly.
“That’s two conditions,” Undertaker points out, just to be contrary. He tips his head to one side curiously. “Neither of which I object to, mind. Only…why? What for?”
“Because I don’t want to play or pretend anymore,” Grell tells him, helpless to stop the note of pleading in her voice. “I want to marry you as me, and I want to marry you as you, not ‘Undertaker’, or ‘Victor Graves’, or 136649, or any other nickname you’ve collected over the years. I want a chapel, and a priest, and a piece of paper in a dusty old registry office with both of our true names on it.”
“And a real ring!” Undertaker crows with a grin of purest delight. Grell lets out a yelp as he scoops her into a bridal carry, spinning her around the wooden floorboards of the shop. “With diamonds and rubies! And a wedding dress, and a photographer, and a bouquet bigger than your head, and the honeymoon suite on the ship to America!!”
He laughs so happily as he spins her round and round. I don’t really need all that, Grell thinks, heart aching with how much she loves this strange man; she just needs him, smiling, always.
65.
William T. Spears isn’t sure whether reapers can die of a heart attack, but his chest certainly gives it the old college try when Ronald slams his front door open at six in the morning, startling him awake.
“Will!” Ronnie shouts. “Will, where are you!?”
William groans loudly. He falls back into bed and very seriously considers making the trek down to Forensics to ask Othello to check his blood pressure. He suspects that the reading will be astronomically high.
“Ronald,” he moans with his eyes closed, “do you know how rare it is that I get more than one day off in a row?”
“Ah! In bed, obviously, duh,” Ronnie says, ignoring him completely. The bed bounces as the younger reaper throws himself onto it, frame creaking perilously.
“Where the fuck were you last night?” William continues in a growl, eyes still tightly shut. “I’d been planning our evening off together for weeks, you know.”
“Yes, I do baby, I do, and I wouldn’t have disappeared on you if it wasn’t important,” Ronnie insists hurriedly. “Now stop pretending to be dead and look, would you?”
He is dead. They both are. Ronald rustles something impatiently a few inches away from Will’s face; it sounds like paper. So help him God, if this is something to do with work on his precious Saturday off-
He blinks up at the blurry pages of a newspaper instead. William squints.
“Glasses,” he grunts.
“Oh! Right,” Ronnie chirps. He reaches across his chest for the glasses on the nightstand, tie smacking Will across the cheek. Wait - is he still wearing his work suit? Ronnie obligingly slots the glasses onto his face. He is still dressed for work. Did he even go home last night?
He flaps the paper at him again.
“A human newspaper,” Will observes, unimpressed. “London. Evening edition.”
“Ugh,” Ronnie groans. “Just read it!”
William clears his throat, adjusting his glasses. “Lexington Estate arson attack; three arrested, upper classes shocked as two nobles found tied to chairs in flames-”
“Not the headline!! This one, here!” Ronnie snaps, stabbing a finger at one particular, tiny paragraph, typeset barely six points tall. He’s still wearing his gloves.
“Society, Whitechapel. Lady Grell Sutcliff wishes to announce the happy news of her marriage to Lord-”
Will launches himself upright, narrowly avoiding Ronnie’s skull with his own as he snatches the paper out of his lover’s hands.
“Is this a fucking joke?” he shouts.
“I checked every copy I could find,” Ronnie tells him breathlessly. “It was in every one of them. She took an ad out in the paper like a regular human! She’s alive, Will!!”
“Oh god,” William moans, pinching his eyes shut with his fingers. He might be on the verge of a panic attack. “Oh god, there’s two of them now. Why him? Why of all the bloody creatures did she have to shack up with him?!”
He peeks over his fingertips, but the announcement is still there in the middle of the page.
“…And why announce it?” he wonders suddenly. “Why put it where anyone from Dispatch could see? Now we know for certain she survived. Is she…taunting us?”
Ronnie rolls his eyes expansively. “Or,” he suggests, as if William is very dense, “she’s letting her friends know that she’s alive and well.”
William scrunches up his face. “‘Friends’?” he repeats. “After murdering six members of middle management?”
“Yes, asshole, friends,” Ronnie thumps him in the arm, hard. Ow.
“Why risk it?” Will frowns. “Once the higher-ups see this, they’ll have no choice but to investigate.”
“Which is why I did it first!” Ronald says excitedly. “I spent the night chasing the newspaper editors down, those guys stay up real late getting the morning edition ready. Turns out she left an address when she paid and everything! …Well. He paid, actually, but still.”
“And you went there?!” Will says angrily. “Alone?! What the hell were you thinking! If it had been a trap-”
“I wasn’t going to go in!” Ronnie says defensively. “But I got there, and it was just…an empty funeral shop. Windows all boarded up. Everything covered in dust. They were long gone by the time that announcement was paid for. There was only one thing left behind - here. Look.”
The blond digs about in his suit jacket, presenting Will with an envelope from his inner breast pocket.
“Be gentle with it,” he pleads softly.
The spidery letters and the blood-red ink they’re scrawled in are heartbreakingly familiar. In Grell’s usual awful handwriting, only one line is written:
To my dearest friends, with love and apologies.
William runs his fingers along the words, almost afraid of what he’ll find within. Ronald has already cracked open the wax seal; holding his breath in suspense, he tips the contents of the envelope out onto the bed.
It’s just a single photograph.
“She looks so happy,” Ronnie murmurs wistfully.
Grell does. It’s a wedding portrait. In black and white, William’s oldest friend beams at the camera, an enormous bouquet of roses and spider lilies in her lap. She’s seated, while the Undertaker stands to her right, regal and imposing in a neat black suit with one gloved hand resting proprietarily on her shoulder. Will half expects him to look smug, but he doesn’t - the silver-haired reaper just looks content, smile wide and genuine, eyes that crinkle at the corners both visible for once.
His gaze drifts back to Grell. Her dress is too light to be red; she must have actually worn a traditional white gown for the wedding, despite swearing up and down to Will that she never would. She’s achingly fashionable, waist cinched tightly and hair styled to perfection.
There’s a wide ribbon around her neck tied to one side in a bow. Will read the incident reports, the details of the night Grell disappeared painstakingly reassembled from the managers’ cinematic records by Forensics - he knows what gruesome scar must be hidden under there. He finds himself unexpectedly grateful that it was the Undertaker who found her first; no one else could have saved her from a scythe to the throat. Not even Othello.
The guilt has weighed William down for months. He can’t help but feel responsible for Grell snapping again. If he hadn’t assigned her that one tiny soul, if he’d noticed how short the child’s lifespan was, could he have prevented the murder spree that led to middle-management terminating her? Nobody warned him that she was about to be fired. He only found out after six managers were already dead. But with the human population increasing exponentially, perhaps his slip-up was always going to be inevitable. He could only protect her for so long. Now, he just has to hope that the Undertaker will protect her for him.
“She looks beautiful,” William whispers.
He hopes she really is happy. Truly, he does. He did love her, just…not the way she wanted him to.
He passes the photo back to Ronnie.
“Hide this,” he orders, “and burn the newspaper.”
“What??” Ronnie gasps, holding the photograph to his chest protectively. “But-!”
“We didn’t see it,” Will insists, giving him a meaningful look. “We never read it.”
Ronald scrunches up his face, preparing to argue. William cups his cheek with one hand to stay his protests.
“This is the only wedding gift we can give her,” he explains softly. “If Dispatch never gets wind of that announcement, she’s home free. If they do…then let’s at least give her a head start, eh?”
Ronnie bursts into tears. William flinches, and then flounders, hopeless as always in the face of emotion, but it seems he doesn’t have to do much - the blond buries his face against his chest, getting snot all over his pajamas, and Will only has to wrap his arms around the younger reaper to soothe him.
“I miss her,” Ronnie bawls nasally, “we should have been there to give her away at the altar!”
William huffs, amused. “Don’t be silly. We would have never agreed to give her to that scoundrel.” He tugs his lover down into the pillows with him, stroking over his light hair soothingly. He breathes in the scent of the blond’s cheap, minty shampoo, unexpectedly content with his own lot in life. His endlessly heavy conscience feels lighter than it has in years.
“Wherever they are,” Will murmurs, “I hope he always remembers that she’s too good for him.”
66.
The edge of the Irish coast is slowly disappearing over the horizon. It’s the last time Grell will see land for days.
Despite the icy chill of late autumn, she and Undertaker are out on the upper deck of the steamship carrying them to New York, enjoying the wide blue sky above them. It’s cold enough that they have the place to themselves, but although there are plenty of free lounge chairs for him to pick from, Undertaker has chosen to lie on top of Grell’s legs with his head in her lap.
It feels strangely appropriate to find herself on the open sea with him once more. He first met the real, red-haired Grell in the middle of the Atlantic ocean; now here they are again on the way to their new life.
With her gloved right hand, she combs through his silver hair repetitively. Her left hand remains bare, the better to twist it around in the sun - Grell is hypnotized by the sparkling wedding ring on her finger. She has been for weeks, ever since her husband placed it there in church.
“There’s a lovely view out here, and all you’re looking at are your diamonds,” Undertaker complains.
Grell flicks his ear playfully. “Your eyes aren’t even open,” she points out mildly. “Besides, they glitter so nicely in this light!”
The ring is suitably morbid for a pair of grim reapers - Undertaker designed it for Grell himself. The jeweler vehemently protested the inclusion of a carved pearl skull in the center of a wedding ring, but her husband had been adamant. The skull is crowned by three large diamonds and four small ones set in white gold, with their true names inscribed on the inside of the band. The first time Grell saw it was in the little chapel they married in; she’d been curious enough about what he’d choose to let Undertaker surprise her.
(For him, Grell chose something red, naturally. His gold wedding band is simpler, but it matches the rectangular signet ring he usually wears nicely - it features a scissor cut garnet in the center, blocked in by four square rubies, two on either side.)
But although Grell remains delighted with her new gemstones, there is one thing that bothers her.
“Darling,” she asks slowly, “why did you sew my engagement ring so badly?”
“Hmm?” Undertaker twists around to blink up at his wife sleepily. “I never gave you an engagement ring.”
“You did,” Grell insists, presenting her scarred pinky to him. “This one.”
“Ah,” he laughs, “is that what we’re calling it now.” He pulls her finger closer, inspecting it this way and that.
“I hate to disappoint you, my dear,” Undertaker says with a little frown, “but I don’t remember sewing this up.”
Grell’s brow furrows in return. “But you must have - it wasn’t there before you found me in the graveyard. It’s been there since I was laid up in bed.”
Perplexed, Undertaker scratches his head. “Hmm…then why indeed would I do it so badly? I was out of practice, but not by that much.” He traces a finger over the lumpy scar tissue. “I suppose it’s possible I was in a rush…or maybe I was so tired that I simply forgot all about it. I don’t think I slept at all, those first few nights. Mmm…or maybe I was light-headed from sharing my blood; I gave you more than was advisable for my own health, I think.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Grell hums, though none of those options satisfy her entirely. “To be honest, I don’t remember it being cut in the first place. Everything happened so suddenly.”
“Then perhaps,” Undertaker grins up at her widely, “it’s our soul mark.” He presses a noisy kiss to the scar. “The symbol that binds us together even in death, my love!”
“There’s no such thing,” she rasps flatly.
“You don’t think so?” he says, sitting up to smile at her face to face. “We were brought back from the grave to reap the souls of the living. I spent years reanimating the dead. I’ve seen angels and demons and ghosts of all sorts, and if demons can carve claims onto their prey, why shouldn't we have a binding seal of our own? I decided you would be mine that night, and so - you are.”
As she considers this, Grell takes Undertaker’s left hand, tugging his leather glove off to link their scarred pinkies together tightly. Her old glasses chain is wrapped around his wrist like a bracelet. He hasn’t taken it off once since she gave it to him on their wedding night.
“What a romantic idea,” Grell decides with a smile.
THE END.
On the thirteenth of November, 1905, Mr. and Mrs. Dullahan arrive in New York via Ireland. Save for the standard procedures of the port authorities, their arrival goes unnoticed and unremarked.
They make their name and fortune in the undertaking business, offering authentic Victorian funerals such as those enjoyed by the British aristocracy to the new elite of America.
They become known more colloquially by the New York underworld as the Undertaker, and his wife, the Mortician.