Grell let herself in through the window in Anne's bedroom. Before her heel even touched the plush rug she was already bleeding brown into her hair and licking smooth her teeth. More human, as human as someone like her could be. She made these allowances for her madam, whose soul shuddered at the touch of death come too early.
She crept to the heavily velveted bed, intent on spooking Anne awake before crawling in beside her, only to find her absent. Her perfume still hung in the air, though, and the warmth of her body was still impressed upon the blankets. Grell took off a glove and lightly traced the shape. It was weak, but any vestige of life drew her like a beacon.
Grell heard the sounds of Anne's movement, like mice scurrying to hide. They led her to the vestibule, where the contents of a doctor's bag were laid out on a side table, each well-tended tool set at even intervals, glinting like mercury, like poison, in the moonlight. The rituals of a killer.
Had Anne been planning to go out without her? Did she really think she was able to?
Grell wasn't in the mood for murder tonight. She didn't know quite what she was - something just this side of weary. She had begun to suspect someone knew about her, about this. The lists were more and more often children who died not by chance or inevitability, but by the unfairness of the world. She had been hoping to distract herself with Anne, who she found sitting in the front parlour with a glass in one hand, looking over a piece of paper in the other. Her own list.
Being a shade herself, Grell moved in shadows, until she stood behind the chair. "You have an appointment tonight?" she asked quietly, startlingAnne at her sudden proximity.
"She looks like Rachael."
Rachael. Grell was just lucky it wasn't that man. She hated tears, those crystalline chinks in Anne's armour, and he always brought them out worse than her sister. Victor, or Valentine - something with a V. Grell couldn't be bothered to remember every mayfly that had once graced death's door.
She looked at the list over Anne's shoulder. Many names were already crossed out, but it would just keep growing longer. There were always women who didn't want children, and there were always children who wound up unwanted. Or without their mothers, courtesy of the newly monikered Jack the Ripper. Grell and Anne had been busy these last two years, too busy recently if the newspapers were any indication.
"It's not safe to go out tonight, Madam. People are wary." And Grell didn't want to spend the time sneaking her around on breaths of air and ash or washing out the blood. But she didn't say that.
"She looks like Rachael!"
"She'll look like Rachael tomorrow."
"Not if I have anything to say about it." Anne stood and was already to the door by the time Grell realized she meant to storm whatever hovel the woman likely called a home.
"Madam - Anne," she said sharply, catching up to Anne as she threw her tools into her bag. "Have you considered that they're making the right choice?"
Anne stilled. When she said nothing, Grell continued.
"Their children would be born, they'd live short, miserable lives - even by your short, miserable human standards - then they'd die. Alone, cold, hungry and unloved and not knowing why, but knowing the pain. And I have to collect them. Isn't it -" she stumbled. This was against everything she believed, everything that ached from the absence in her own belly. "Isn't it best that they never be born?"
She didn't feel the blade at first. Anne had surprising strength and deftness in her fingers, and it had slid easily between the ribs. When Grell didn't fall, she yanked it out and shoved harder, more wildly, putting her entire body into it.
Grell stumbled back and they both sprawled when she hit the stairs. Anne stabbed again and again, while Grell winced at the pain of cracking her head against the edge of a step. That wasn't the fun sort of pain she revelled in, the metaphoric pain of penetration. The punctures and cuts were blossoming black on the white of her shirt, the brown of her waistcoat, and she felt blood bubble at the back of her throat.
"I killed them - I killed them - I scraped and scraped. It could have been Ciel. It could have been our child. It could have been my - Those women threw away their children and you tell me to stop?"
Grell sighed dramatically and wound up coughing up more blood. Anne would wear herself down. Her movements were already becoming more erratic, weaker, and eventually she slumped against Grell, sobbing out her regrets. Grell brought a hand up to stroke her hair and whisper comforts.
She checked her nails on her other hand.
They stayed like that for several minutes.
When Anne sat up, she had blood smeared across her face, dripping down her chin. It painted her so prettily.
Tear tracks ran clean down her cheeks, and Grell brought her hand up to cup Anne's face and let a red-stained smile slip free. She wasn't wasn't even surprised.
"Do you feel better?"
Anne pushed herself to her feet, knife left in Grell's gut, and stumbled away with a look of horror on her face, Grell's blood smeared with her went against all sense of rightness to see a person you eviscerated talking to you, touching you. A guilty conscience given human form.
She heard a door slam, the faint sound of water, and knew Anne would not be going out tonight.
Grell lay unmoving on the stairs, one hand on her belly where most of the blows had congregated, fingers splayed around the knife still there, sinking a little in the exposed viscera. The damage had been wrought quickly, efficiently. One of the problems with a human body was how, well, human it was. Grell always forgot the small things when crafting the shell, like coagulation. The carpeting of the stairs was being soaked it certainly wouldn't kill her, the blood loss made her a little light-headed.
But that was okay, she had nowhere to be, and now neither did Anne.