The Grey Truth: Chapter Nine

A couple of hours after making the decision that Josephine would spend the night with Grell, the two had arrived at the red-clad man's apartment. Upon entering, Josephine was surprised to see that, at least the living room, wasn't a cluttered mess as she had thought it would have been. Grell had led her to a red-furnished guestroom, which was very similar to the room she had at William's apartment, the only difference was that everything that was black in the room at Will's apartment was red, and the white of the pillows and sheets beneath the covers was instead black.

"Well, what do you want to do?" Grell questioned after he was sure Josephine was settled.

The girl didn't know what to say. She barely knew herself, not anymore, at least. She didn't know much of her likes or dislikes, her hobbies, nothing. For all she knew, her mind could be the exact opposite of what it had been years ago. After several moments of silence, Grell spoke up.

"I was originally planning to go do some shopping in the living world if you would like to come with. Shops here are all the same, dull and boring," the redhead suggested.

"In the living world? But, according to the Recruit Shinigami Handbook, section seven, page five, paragraph two, recruits are restricted from going into the living world," Josephine said.

"You are so much like my darling William, always following the rules, but the section also states that if a recruit is accompanied by a fully-graduated shinigami, access to the living world is permitted," Grell stated, and Josephine knew she had been beaten with her own card.

About half an hour later, the pair were in the living world, in London. Josephine had changed out of her recruit uniform into something of her own design. The girl was now wearing a white blouse with a rounded collar, a black vest, black pants, black ankle boots, and a black leather cap, a dark green blazer completing the outfit. Grell was in his usual white shirt, black vest and pants, and his red coat slung off his shoulders.

The pair ventured into several of the stores, and after several hours, finding nothing of interest, except for a few dresses that Grell had thought would look wonderful on Josephine, as well as a few for himself (which at purchase, he claimed they were for his wife), the two went back to Grell's apartment, both going into the bedrooms.

After dinner that night, Josephine was sketching in the guestroom when Grell came in. She didn't even look up from her drawing or say anything. The red reaper drew closer, his high-heeled ankle boots clicking with each step. The man leaned against the wall by the desk, catching the girl's attention, causing her to look up from her drawing.

"Will told me to talk to you about your, uh…," Grell began, though he couldn't quite think of how to word the end of his statement.

"I figured," Josephine replied.

"So, you know that both of us did at some point, and mostly why. Could you tell me why you've taken to the blade?" the man asked.

"A number of things have driven me. Stress being the main factor. And then there's the fact I've got no friends to speak of, as well as everyday pressure from my peers, who act nothing like up-and-coming shinigami," the girl answered.

Grell nodded a bit, knowing that this was more information than he and William had gotten in the past. When he looked back at the girl, the redhead knew right away that she was doing her best not to fall asleep. Years of working with Will had allowed Grell to learn to read the most subtle hints of emotion in another's eyes.

"Get some rest, Josephine. We'll have some breakfast in the morning, then I'll take you back to Will's," he said, and left the room with a quiet 'good-night'.

Although her injuries from her parent's attack months ago had healed, and she now knew they couldn't get to her, Josephine still had nightmares. William knew about them, of course, he was the one who would comfort Josephine when she woke up screaming in the middle of the night. But Grell, he didn't know about them. The redhead didn't know that the cold girl would often wake up with tears streaking her pale face. He didn't know that more often than not, Josephine would actually be afraid to go to bed because of her dreams, no matter how tired she was.

Sure enough, later that night, the peaceful quiet was shattered by a yell. Grell rushed into the room in his two-piece red pajamas and red robe. Through the darkness of the room, the red-haired reaper could see the girl's bright eyes, widened in fear. He walked in and turned on the lamp next to the bed.

"Are you alright, Josephine?" the man asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Yes, fine, I'm perfectly, fine…," Josephine said, though the obvious look in the girl's eyes told the red-haired man another story.

The pair said nothing as time passed. Soon, Josephine had fallen back to sleep. Grell lay the girl down and pulled the covers over her slim frame, and left the room after turning the lamp off.

The next morning, after a breakfast of warm oatmeal and strawberries, Grell brought Josephine back to William's apartment. Once Josephine had gone back into her room, Grell told William what he had found the night before. Several moments passed before William said anything.

"Well, that explains quite a bit. I say we wait a few days and see how she does, and they try to go from there," William suggested, and his subordinate nodded in agreement.

The recruit did well for nearly a week, though when she accompanied Will and Grell on a reaping, she snuck away. She had found her knife by mistake while she was spending the night at Grell's apartment, though hadn't thought of adding any more cuts because things had been going well. Though something that day sent her over, and she couldn't help herself.

The dark-haired girl ducked into an alley-way, intending on only adding one cut to her left arm. She got to her knees and rolled up the sleeve of her jacket and shirt, taking off her glove, hidden by the space's dark shadows, and pulled out her knife. She extended the blade, hearing it lock with a faint metallic click. She took a breath to steady herself, worried more than ever that she could be caught, it had happened enough.

'It's only one cut, just one…' she thought, trying to rationalize all of this with herself. With one final breath, she put the cold blade to her wrist, softly gasping at the feeling of the cool metal touching her skin.

Just as she was breaking the skin, seconds before the pain really started to register in her mind, a black cat cam sprinting by, chased by a large brown dog, startling her, and causing Josephine to cut too deep. The second she pulled the knife away, she realized that there was far more blood than usual, and she was feeling dizzy. Josephine tried to get up, and fell to the ground. Everything in her line of sight went blurry, and then black.

The next thing Josephine knew, she was lying under the covers of a four-poster bed, staring at the ceiling. When she looked to her left, she saw that her arm was above the covers, and from half-way between her elbow and wrist, all the way down to her where her fingers joined the rest of her hand, and around the base of her thumb, was wrapped in bandages. Or, at least that was what she believed she was seeing. Everything around her was blurry, indicating that she didn't have her glasses on.

The girl felt around with her right hand to her left, finding nothing but her bandaged arm, she tried her right, finally finding her glasses, she put them on, and was able to confirm what she had thought she was seeing. Moments later, after trying to figure out just where she was, a man came into the room. He was tall, with black hair, and pale skin, though the most striking thing she noticed were his eyes, which were red. Her mind was still fuzzy as she tried to recall what had happened, and she certainly couldn't put together the obvious.

"It seems you've finally woken up," the man stated as he came closer. "Though you still seem a bit dazed. I'm not surprised, judging by the amount of blood you seemed to have lost, I was surprised that you were still alive," he told her as he began to take the bandages off her arm.

As the bandages came undone, Josephine was finally able to see the damage she had done. This cut was much worse than many of the others. It was jagged, and obviously much deeper than she had intended. In her surprise at the cat and dog running by, her knife had slipped, not just cutting deeply into her wrist, but she had turned it, causing the cut to stretch from the left side of her left wrist, all the way across her wrist, and up through part of her palm. When she had fallen, she had tried to catch herself, scraping her hand against the jagged edge of one of the wooden creates in the alley, causing more cuts to litter her palm. The injuries had been well-cleaned and any splinters or small pieces of rock from the ground had been taken out, the man had obviously known what he was doing.

"Now, may I get your name?" the man asked.

"Only if I get yours first," Josephine replied.

"Sebastian Michaelis," the man replied.

"Josephine Grey," Josephine told him.

Sebastian nodded, and after checking over the wounds, carefully wrapped clean bandages over the wounds. After making sure that Josephine was comfortable, he left the room. After several moments, what had happened began to come back to Josephine's memory. She was in the alley, when a cat and a dog ran by, scaring her, and she had cut too deep.

'I need to stop… I could have died there…' she thought, though she shook the thought from her mind. She had tried stopping several times, but she couldn't go more than a couple of weeks. If she went more than two weeks, she would crack, and once she ended up hurting more than simply herself, the time when she had hurt Will. That moment would likely be forever imprinted upon her mind.

Later on, Josephine heard three men talking outside the door to the room, when they walked in, Josephine was glad to see that two of the men were William and Grell. Josephine could see the look of mixed emotion in Will's eyes. A combination of relief, annoyance, anger, and slightest hint of subsiding fear. He walked over, and Josephine saw him pick something up from the table to her right, her knife, returned to its closed position.

"It seems that we'll have to get some sort of professional help involved in this, Sutcliff," he stated, fairly coldly, turning to Grell.

Grell nodded, knowing that his superior was right. Josephine was beyond their ability to help. The pair sighed, William reluctantly thanked Sebastian, whom Josephine had now figured out was a demon from how he and Will interacted. After Josephine got her shirt and jacket back on, along with her shoes and grabbed her hat, the three walked out, going back to their own world.

Later that night, Josephine was in her room, resting, while Will and Grell were in the kitchen, thinking of what to do next. They had discussed putting Josephine in an institution where she would be able to get help and be monitored, though they quickly dismissed it, thinking that it was going too far. They had come to either sending her to a shrink or a support group. William was against shrinks, knowing that they didn't always know what you were going through, because more often than not, they hadn't experienced it.

"Looks like a support group would be the best thing for her, Will. Hopefully we can get her to go," Grell concluded, and William nodded in agreement.

"If we have to push her into the room and keep our backs against the door to keep her in, we will, it's the only thing that will help her at this point," Will nodded, knowing that this would be the best thing for Josephine.

Several days later, after Josephine had taken a day off from classes to further recover, William brought her to a support group meeting for those who also cut. As expected, William had to force Josephine to go, and had to stay by the door for a good five minutes until she reluctantly accepted that she would have to stay.

"Welcome, we were just about to start with introductions, please, take a seat," a brown-haired man said.

Josephine took a seat between a tall, slim, blonde man, wearing a similar suit to Will's, though he wore a brown version, instead of black, and a ginger-haired man who seemed to have just gotten out of the academy no more than three years before, considering his possible age. She looked around the room as the others introduced themselves. They were mainly men, with about two or three other females other than herself. Most of the others were a fair bit older than her, anywhere from the man to her left, who was a mere three years older than her, to others who were around ten years older, or even more. Soon, the introductions came to her. Josephine stumbled a bit, thinking of what to say. She cleared her throat after a moment and began.

"My name is Josephine Grey, I am aged 16 years, a current student at the Shinigami Academy, and I have been resorting to the blade for the past four years," Josephine said, earning a small greeting from most of the group of ten, while others simply stared. They obviously hadn't expected someone so young and seemingly steady to have resorted to the blade.

The meeting lasted two hours, and consisted mostly of everyone getting to know a piece of another's story. At the end, they were each given a journal in their choice of a color, most chose a black version of the leather-bound book, while a few chose brown, one chose a dark blue, and Josephine chose a dark green book. Each came with a key, to keep the secrets contained just that, secret.

The months passed by in a flash, and Josephine was starting to hurt herself less with each passing week. She seemed happier, and had even managed to make friends with three of the boys in her class, Joseph Powers, Drew Summers, and Wilfred "Will" Anderson. William and Grell knew that they had done the right thing, though Josephine would still have days where she would relapse, they were able to pull her out of it, and the scars were fading.

Soon, the students were being paired up for their final exams. Josephine and Joseph were put together because of their close grade averages, Joseph having a B average, nearing an A, and Josephine having an A average. Their task was to observe a single printer by the name of Terrance Short. While Joseph tried to find Terrance, Josephine read certain parts of his file aloud, hoping it would help.

"Terrance is 20 years of age, just able to get by financially," Josephine said, and continued reading until Joseph stopped her, finding their target.

"We have one month, though this seems fairly certain, he's sick, see?" he said, pointing to the health status on the papers.

Josephine nodded. "Yes, he is, and that is what kills him, one month from now, on his way to work, five o'clock A.M, November the sixth," Josephine read.

The pair observed Terrance for the month, both growing stronger in their conclusion that he would be set to die on the correct date. On November sixth, the two waited for Terrance to pass the alley where they were hiding, five minutes before five o'clock, Terrance fell.

"It's time," Joseph said, Josephine nodded, knowing that Joseph was much better with time than she was.

A small crowd had gathered around Terrance, all of them concerned. Josephine pushed through them, taking out her scythe. She knelt to the ground on one knee, and rose her scythe above her head.

"Just what are you doing?!" a man shouted, though Josephine ignored him. The girl plunged her scythe into Terrance's abdomen, releasing his cinematic record. She jumped out of sight before anyone in the crowd could realize what was going on.

Though, things soon got out of hand. Joseph stepped in, though he didn't notice Josephine falling off the roof they were on until it was too late to catch her. He managed to get away, and help her back up, though, when checking her over, he noticed that the girl's left arm was once again broken.

"That looks serious, Josephine, are you sure you can continue?" he asked, fully concerned about his partner.

"I'll be fine, Joseph," Josephine said. "It isn't the first time. Let's just focus on getting our grade, then worry about my arm. I don't wield a scythe with my left hand, anyways."

Joseph nodded. "Shall we finish him off?"

"Certainly."

With that, Josephine stood up and to Joseph's side, they overlapped the blades of their scythes, and within a moment, a blue ball of light and power surged at the tips, and the two brought their scythes forward, throwing the ball of energy towards the rouge record. The final pieces of the soul were collected by Josephine.

"Done," she stated simply, and Joseph nodded in agreement.

((A/N: Hey guys! The next chapter is the last one to this story, so I hope you've all enjoyed it! Also, I'd like to credit irishjenny for the idea of Josephine going to Grell's, as well as the support group. Nine chapters down, one to go!))