Author's Note: I wanted to write more about Undertaker and Claudia. But as I was short on ideas and spontaneous prompts like the ones that triggered 'Lay me to rest' and 'White', I picked up from my other fic 'Homonymous' and will tell some scenes from Undertaker's perspective rather than Othello. So if you want to read the other perspective of the following scene, please follow to that fic. That's roughly the source of this story.
Disclaimer: I don't own Kuroshitsuji, but I don't want to wait another decade to explore more about these two characters so I make it up as I go.
WARNING:
As you will quickly see, this follows the theory of Undertaker = Cedric. This also takes place in 1839, which obviously means Claudia is 9 years old. I don't want to write a story of Undertaker being a creep in love with a kid. What this fic will have, if I reach that far in the writing, is an unexpected and conflicted evolution of feelings through the years of Claudia's growing up, because who the fuck would be alright in loving someone you've known since a kid? So yeah. Until then though, this chapter has no sort of romantic feelings, but rather the core of what I headcanon on Undertaker and Claudia: fierce and utter sense of protection of life and innocence.
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1839
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"Cedric. I have been wanting to ask you a question."
"What is it?"
"You... you have killed yourself."
"That is not a question, Claudia."
"No. But that fact has been bothering me. You..." Her hesitation bled through in that moment, breaking her voice down to the innocence only a child could have. "Why did you kill yourself?"
Claudia's words echoed back to his mind when he spotted the man he was waiting for.
Timothy Miller
Born August 2nd, 1799.
Died on September 10th, 1842, by falling and drowning on a river.
No further remarks
-except that this man had already killed two people, and would kill six more in the course of the following years leading up to his death. And the record of one of those victims read words Cedric knew by heart:
Claudia Phantomhive
Born April 5th, 1830
Died on May 8th, 1839, strangled to death in an assault.
No.
So Cedric held Timothy Miller by the nape and pushed him over the cobblestoned sidewalk. It didn't take long for the man's drunken state to lose to the weight of the water and he followed to meet so many others under the Thames.
He didn't witness the man's cinematic record, and so for once, he didn't feel apathy or indifference. The dying out of the man's smothered screams and fits of kicking produced a different emotion that extended past relief into what was probably happiness. At least it seemed close to what he did recall of the feeling.
The record would now read:
Timothy Miller
Born August 2nd, 1799.
Died on May 7th, 1839, by falling and drowning on a river.
No further remarks.
-and that would be much better.
However, the silent relief had blinded him to a simple, crucial flaw. Or rather, a small series of flaws that led to a mistake.
Although he didn't collect the man's soul, and although the alteration he had made to the man's file on the Death List was meant to be only be noticed by some future coworker years from then, he didn't actually take Timothy Miller's file with him that night. His intention had been to leave it in its place until its originally intended date of death, or at least have the alteration remain undetected for as long as it could. Having found the man, he just wanted to get rid of him fast, without fully thinking all the consequences.
The mistake was the other file he should have taken with him.
Timothy Miller's file was only due years from then, but Claudia's file was to be attended to in the span of a day. Her death had been postponed, but her original death date would be too soon. And he had given them an altered cause and death date on her file, one that could be easily detected.
When the stupidity of his flaw dawned at him, it had been picked on. He immediately sought to correct it and made sure to be the one to take the investigation of the file's abnormal change. Thankfully, because the date had been postponed for years (ten years. Why was she supposed to die so young?) and it only happened on one file they had noticed yet, the coworkers on the Management Department didn't seem too alerted, but he would have to play all the burocratics to make sure the case would be forgotten as a rare but random occurance. He added it to his daily list for soul retrievals under the pretext of investigating the occurance, cursing himself for not preventing the alert altogether.
But then the extent of the mistake revealed itself to him on the night of May 8th, the night Claudia would be wandering in her explorations and investigations in the full height of her 9 year old curiosity and naivety. Her night would still go on about as it was supposed to, only Timothy Miller wouldn't be there to kill her. Cedric knew her route, and knew she would be on the look out for him.
And when he found her, he found another Grim Reaper.
All the sounds of the world drowned in his ears and the world changed to red when the same instinct he had felt before took over. He pulled out his Death Scythe and grabbed the coworker by the nape, not unlike what he had done to the man who would kill Claudia, and threw him with the same ease to the side, sending him flying against a wall and pinning him by the front of his lab coat. The coworker's helplessly shocked yelp worked to slowly bring back sound and sense back into the world, also bringing back acknowledgement of the familiar voice, clothes, face, of the Grim Reaper in front of him.
"Cedric, wait," Claudia's voice pierced through the remaining ringing in his ears and cleared the fog. "Won't you get in trouble if you harm him?"
"I'm not intending to harm him," Cedric replied without thinking. He hadn't realized how well and effortlessly he could lie when his intention was so different. The fellow coworker's face was as daunt as a corpse and his mind seemed to be working back to its sense in a similar fashion as Cedric's own was.
Round glasses, disheveled hair and an equally disarranged tie and shirt under a lab coat. That little Grim Reaper who had bothered him once on a lunch. Cedric didn't even know his name. The young man had brought about a rather interesting topic of conversation, but without having thought it thoroughly enough.
Clearly, he had been thinking too thoroughly on something else.
"What are you doing here?"
The young Grim Reaper gaped, at loss for words. Claudia moved behind Cedric, and the man's eyes flew up and down the two of them. Cedric's gaze narrowed.
"You- you can't really do this, can you?" it was his reply. The real sense of fear and panic was making him giggle without control. Cedric didn't care for the display. He waited to see through the act if it was a fake, or to put an end to the misery if real. And to have his reply. What did the man know? Had Cedric's foul up really been deadly to Claudia, and his attempt to correct his mistake been discovered?
The man took a few seconds as his chest raised and fell in a frantic manner before his voice returned in the same staggered, giggled panic.
"What are you doing here?" he echoed. "You... you can't do this. I mean, this." His eyes moved to Claudia, and Cedric's fist clenched harder around the scythe. "We can't interact with humans. How can he even see us when we don't want to be seen?"
Too much death haunted Claudia. The veil was just that thin. Perhaps his own presence had done something about it. But Cedric wasn't the one who had to give answers.
"'He'?" Claudia repeated, scoffing in offence. Her preffered choice of attire in her night time getaways had always cleverly been that of a pageboy, complete with tattered clothes and her long locks tucked beneath a shabby beret. It was no wonder the Grim Reaper would mistake her for a boy, and it actually proved its efficency.
"Are you sure this is wise?" the coworker continued, unaware of the consequences of his words. "I mean... I don't know much, but-"
"You do know quite a bit, don't you?" Cedric interrupted, and repeated: "What are you doing here?"
"I just wanted to talk to you again!" he answered. Cedric narrowed his gaze further. The Grim Reaper was young, but not as young as he looked and acted to be. Not as naive as he wanted to be believed. What were the odds, in this situation caused by Cedric's mistake, that he was really innocent of any intention against Claudia or him? "You brought up so many interesting questions, I've been investigating and I wanted to ask you about them again. Altered causes of death! And when I heard there was a current case, it's so rare, I just wanted to..."
The man trailed off as his mind started to put the puzzle pieces into place. Cedric granted him the time. After all, if he did unknowingly and naively walked himself into this situation, he had the right to realize and understand his own mistake before dying.
"You're..."
"What am I doing?" Cedric asked, voice soft and smooth. The man might have heard it differently. He looked at Claudia again.
"You're tampering with his life."
"Am I now? What makes you say that, little Grim Reaper?"
"You..." he swallowed, his throat understandably dry. He wasn't as panicked as before, but his mind was working much ferverlish now, his staggering vanishing as he voiced his thoughts like an equation. "You've done something. You've changed... something that would be deadly today... Someone. You killed someone that wasn't meant to die, and now they can't affect others anymore. Therefore, at least one death was delayed."
The fellow Grim Reaper did have some wit in him. Not too much common sense, though. But that was normal in intelectuals. Perhaps that conversation might have been an interesting one after all.
"You really are a curious little one, aren't you?"
"Cedric, this will get you in trouble," Claudia spoke up again, reading too correctly into the situation. The man's gaze kept fluttering between the two, trying to understand their connection just by staring.
"Go home now," he told Claudia softly.
"No."
Of course she didn't listen.
"Please, Claudia."
"Oh! Sorry!" the other man said instantenously. Cedric had to frown again at the reaction, how the Grim Reaper's face suddenly went from pale to embarrassed at something so unimportant when compared to the fact he was about to die. He really was oblivious to it, and he continued ignorant much like a child would. "That is a very good disguise! But, sir... Cedric? May I ask you another question?"
Cedric found himself smiling. He could grant that naivety one more moment.
"You may."
"Why are you bothering?"
Cedric blinked. The question hit him not by the difficulty of the answer, but by the assumption behind it.
Why?
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Cedric took a moment to understand the simplicity of the question.
He never had to justify - to explain - it to anyone else before. He never had the need to put it into words before finally killing himself, and no other Grim Reaper was concerned with his reasons when all of them had had their own to share the same purgatory, this same state of limbo in search of nevercoming redemption. After all these years now - so many, too many years - the root of the answer was still branded deep inside him.
"I couldn't anymore."
Claudia waited for him to continue, to elaborate his simple answer, but Cedric didn't know how. The few words he had been sparing in the past years really had done their job that numbing him of the gift of eloquence. What could he tell her? To a child already burdened with so much death?
"It was too much. I couldn't hold on to so much pain. I couldn't hold on anymore, so I let go."
Claudia still didn't seem satisfied.
"But surely there was something? Something you still wanted to do, or someone you still wanted to see?"
"There was. But they were all dead."
Her gaze wavered and her features fell heavy with understanding and sadness.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have... I shouldn't have asked. I just... I'm sorry for your loss, Cedric."
"It was many years ago," Cedric said to reassure her, but the one who felt reassured was himself. No one had ever been sorry for him, or for the people he had lost.
"I just find it so scary," she whispered. "The thought of having nothing. Of being nothing. Of just ending, without choice. Because... what happens after the end? It's... terrifying that there will be nothing. That everything we have will be gone. That's why I wanted to know, why someone would walk that way willingly."
"I did have a choice, Claudia. I made my choice because there was nothing else for me."
"You died. How is that fair? Why did you have to suffer so much and die, and only to after that be punished for it with this whole Grim Reaper business? How is that fair? You're suffering for having suffered, and being punished for chosing to end your suffering."
A child could understand the grim irony, but Grim Reapers could not.
Someone tampered with their lives. They, who wanted to die, were forced to live to see everyone else die. Everyone else who should be alive, everyone who did not have a choice on their deaths.
Someone who could be alive if he wanted to.
And then he would be punished again for doing it.
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So, why?
Why change the inevitable? Why risk one's safety over someone else? Why go against the established rule? Why go to lengths of breaking rules - no, not rules, taboos - in order to change something that would happen regardless? Why act? Why her?
So many of the echoes that had been swirling in his mind, questions he knew one day someone would presumptiously demand of him, summed up into that simple epitome:
Why are you bothering?
Well.
How couldn't he?
Whichever answer the man got from Cedric's expression made all colour vanish from his face and at last he was aware of what was happening.
Perhaps he hadn't been conscious in him human death, not felt his end when he was still alive. It might be a shock to finally be aware this time; and to be reminded of the paradox. They could still die. Ironic, wasn't it?
Cedric released the grip on the lab coat and his hand flew backwards towards the scythe.
"No!" Claudia shouted, and her voice and rushing steps were smothered under another scream that eruped right before the blade ripped forward.
"I see! I see what you mean!"
For some reason, the words halted his strike. The world froze for a moment, the night stood motionless and silent.
The man's strangled breathing escaped his lungs. Claudia's own breathing was ragged and dry. Time started to slowly run again.
"I see," he repeated, treading with his words as the only salvages of his life they truly were indeed. "Forgive me for what I said, now and that time when I made those questions. I see what you mean."
"And what is that?"
"Continuation. When you said 'our lives were tampered with'..." Simple, familiar words. "You mean us, who wanted to die, were forced to live. And now that someone who deserved to live is forced to die... you don't want it. You don't want THE END to happen, because there's nothing else. It's just over. And that's not fair."
Cedric's wary and dark expression didn't ease or soften, but the man continued: "But you know, eventually, it won't be able to be delayed anymore. Eventually, she has to die."
Claudia had stepped next to Cedric by then. He couldn't feel any stress or fear emanating from her due to the man's words, but he knew how the subject scratched past the surface, how it was just too close, too impending, on someone who had no reason to die. He felt her hand through the fabric over his arm, grounding and pulling him to her. For the first time in the past long minutes, Cedric turned his eyes away from the other Grim Reaper and looked at Claudia.
"Leave him. He says he understands."
His hand was still firmly clasped around the Death Scythe, and the request had no effect to loosen the grip.
"Would you really trust mere words, Claudia?"
"Hardly," she admited. "But in this case, you can verify it for yourself. You'll only give you more trouble if you kill him now."
"It will give trouble if I don't." This whole deal was to be handled without attracting any attention, any more than the blessed casual glance it had got at the Management Department. Now this Grim Reaper was the lose end of the noose he had just ripped off Claudia's neck.
"Then do it where I can't see it. Decide whether he means his words or not."
Cedric inhaled slowly, deeply. This decision was nothing like the one he had made when he first met Claudia, nothing like the death of the people who would harm her. Killing the fellow coworker now would garantee his silence, but undoubtfully bring about too many suspicions around the incident and everything going on about that night. Killing him later dropped the chances of Claudia's safety to be maintained, her file investigated thoroughly and her death set right by some way, or kept from further tampering altogether. Cedric would have to flee, with Claudia's file with him, and hope that would be enough to keep her alive. And leaving the coworker alive altogether was just too risky. How could the man really understand?
Cedric turned his eyes back to the man. He hadn't moved from the same spot or attempted to flee in any manner. His eyes were wide behind his glasses, a morbid fascination in his features.
"What is your name, little Grim Reaper?"
He swallowed. "Othello."
"What happens after the end, Othello?"
He didn't take long to let his confusion show.
"I don't know."
"Aren't you curious?"
"I... I don't know."
Cedric shrugged.
"I am." And it would not be nothingness. It had to be more, it had to be more for Claudia. She deserved a continuation.
Othello opened his mouth and closed it before saying anything else. Cedric breathed in again and realized he had made his choice.
The Death Scythe disappeared from his hand. The moment it did, Othello seemed to be released of the only invisible string holding him straight, and he crumbled down to his knees. He seemed shocked with it himself, suddenly catching after the breathing he thought he had already controlled.
"Dear God... I really thought this was it... I was gonna die..." he babbled to himself not too quietly.
The pressure of Claudia's hand on his arm increased. Cedric turned to face her, her blue eyes piercing into his.
"I was going to die today, wasn't I?" It was more of a demand rather than a question. "That's why he's really here."
"My name is Othello, Miss Clau-"
Cedric and Claudia shot him simultaneous warning glares. Othello's squeak was barely audible and he returned to muffled prayer-like whimpers.
"No." He didn't know what he answering to. It was both a lie and a truth. Othello didn't dare to voice up any comment. "You are not going to die, Claudia."
"You've already started doing it. Continuing after the end."
"Your life has not ended."
"But it keeps happening, doesn't it, Cedric?"
This conversation should wait, should not happen in front of someone else. Cedric glared at Othello's cowering form and the nuisance of his presence.
"I don't want you to be in trouble, Cedric."
"I'm not concerned about myself."
"I am. You know how grateful I am to you, but if you..."
"Claudia," Cedric interrupted her, the creeping urge to rip Othello in half returning.
She picked his cue and sighed in frustration.
"All right. We'll discuss this after you've decided what to do with him."
"What?" Othello gasped. "But you won't kill me, will you? Please, I have no reason to say anything, bottom line I'm actually an asset!"
Cedric's gaze narrowed yet again. Maybe he really should kill the fellow.
"Go," Claudia said. With their previous roles now switched, Cedric was just as willing to obey the request as Claudia had been before. Only she would not take 'no' for an answer. "Go. I'll be fine. Go with him."
"I don't like you wandering alone at night, Claudia. You know it's dangerous."
"Of course I do. But I have work to do, don't I?"
Othello's ears perked up and that settled Cedric's mind into obeying. He cowered as Cedric stepped over to him and clasped the front of his lab coat for a second time, pulling him up to his feet again.
"You wanted to have a conversation with me. Let's do that, shall we?"
Othello gulped before both of them disappeared from the human world and returned to the Grim Reapers' society.
Cedric still heard Claudia's last words.
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"Grim Reapers are supposed to bring death," Claudia said, bringing Cedric's mind back to the present. "But you don't bring death to me. You've brought me a continuation to my life."
"I did what was done to me. Only I did it right."
"Then I will never call you Grim Reaper again. It doesn't feel right."
"I don't mind."
"I wish I could have met you before," she continued. "I would like to be someone that would help you not to let go."
Cedric smiled faintly at the naive, heartfelt words. They helped to express what he had yet failed to say outloud.
"I killed myself because I couldn't stop someone like you from dying. Not anymore."
Claudia held his hand and smiled.
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to be continued
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Author's Note: ...eventually.
Like I said, I had intended to write this fic, but the trigger to actually start it the way I did was the beautiful interview with David Draiman, vocalist of Disturbed, talking about the song 'A Reason to Fight' and people like Chester Bennington. It also set the title to be the third 'Reasons' Kuroshitsuji-titled fic, as opposed to something opposite/complementary to 'Homonymous'.
I have some ideas for what will happen in future chapters. But let's see where we go from here. If you have interest, please do let me know.
Written to the song 'Premonitions of War' by Mutum. Nice omnious choirs.
Thanks for reading.