((Author's Note: Hey, everyone! Thank you for checking out my fanfic, Earthshine. Orginally, this fanfiction started out on DeviantArt, but after much thought I decided to bring it over here. However, I want all of you to know that it might take me some time to update this particular fanfiction. As I post them on my DA account, I've committed myself to drawing a screenshot for every chapter, therefore it takes me a while longer to work on each one since each is posted at the same time. Please feel free to check them out at any time. My user for DA is the very same as on here: SilyaBeeodess.
Enjoy!))
The Undertaker looked up from his work to gaze across the dirt road toward what remained of what had been the largest farmhouse within the small neighborhood and grinned. It didn't seem to be much of anyone's house anymore—half burned down with the entire right wall reduced to charred wood and ash. The blackened support beams and cracked boards that remained standing held some semblance of spears and arrows lodged within the earth of an ancient battlefield. Men and women alike busily scuttled between homes in fervor in the community's efforts to restore the simple peace of their daily lives that had been robbed from them less than twenty-four hours prior. Occasionally, a puerile lad or two would appear from the nearly wood or fields, dragging along some of the livestock that had been released in order for them to escape the flames. A young girl—barely old enough to run on legs chubby from baby fat—clutched tightly to the scorched form of a doll that hadn't survived the fire and cried. From what he had gathered, it appeared that the child's toy suffered more than anyone. Things could've been worse.
Wood grated against wood as he pushed one of the plain pine coffins he had brought to the village back into his cart with the aid of one of the farmers. Two others stood to his left, placing the lid atop a second coffin thereby sealing the corpse it contained within. "Good riddance, I say," huffed one of them—a bearded fellow with heavy brows crinkled with age—as the pair heaved the box parallel to the first. "I always knew these scoundrels were never up to any good! Always drunk and cursing and raving about the landlord! We should've done something back when they shot a couple of Ernest's cows, but we didn't! Should've chased them out of town! Now look!"
"Hush, Jeb. One of them was one of Anna's boys," chided the second; a younger man, but with a mature gaze in his deep brown eyes. "And it's bad luck to speak ill of the dead."
"Bad luck, huh? We had bad enough luck from them when they were alive: I'm not scared of them haunting me now." He jumped down from his position atop the cart to help the other load the last of the pine boxes. "Besides, you didn't say I was wrong."
"I didn't."
"So you agree with me then."
"I didn't say that either."
The grey-haired reaper snickered quietly at the antics of the pair, causing them both to cast him a curious glance before setting about finishing their task. Leaving the rest of the work in their hands, the third of the farmers thrust himself over the side of the cart to assist the Undertaker in moving one of the only two favorably-crafted coffins into one of the farmhouses, for while the bodies of the criminals would be buried elsewhere without ceremony the pair of their victims—one murdered and the other trampled to death by terrified horses during their escape from the fire—were still due their funeral rites and their families required time to mourn.
Shockingly enough, as far the townspeople were aware, none of them actually knew how the criminals themselves had perished all save for one that one of the men had shot down after most of the chaos had already ended. The attack had been so unexpected and unprovoked that no one could prepare themselves in time for tragedy. The only aggressor still breathing—found lying on the earth unconscious behind a barn, bound with strips of rope more often used for forage—denied all knowledge of how he wound up in such a state before he was taken away by the police, and it wasn't as though the dead had any means any longer to speak of their fates.
Well, perhaps not to most mortals anyway.
The small cottage that the Undertaker now entered was an island of solitude amid the bustle of the activity that the rest of the village partook in. The man of the house—a pilose, yet thin figure—ushered them inside with the faintest of smiles and saddest of eyes, sealing the door quietly shut behind them. They were then greeted in the two-room home by a small gathering of people, predominantly woman, who at first turned to them upon their entrance as though they hadn't expected their arrival. The dejected postures and harrowed expressions settled in soon enough though.
The corpse that lay upon the table, covered by a thin sheet, was one of a young girl ripe of age: A year or so older and she might have been a married woman. A pretty thing with rounded cheeks and hair of a rich shade of auburn, even though her nose was a bit crooked. The matron, the mother, sitting upon a cracked stool appeared to be far older than she probably was, and clenched her daughter's hand—stiff from rigor mortis—so tightly as though attempting to divert her own life-force into the child through the connection. Her face, numb from grief, was already streaked with tears shed, but the sight of the coffin severed the cords of her shattered heart anew and she collapsed over the girl's body, digging trembling fingers into her chest as a lamenting cry rose up from her throat.
The Undertaker looked over to group of four gathered together in the adjacent room. An elderly woman—possibly the grandmother; a lad who seemed to be in his twenties, but was thin and had boyish features like his father; a middle-aged miss dressed in the dark garments of one who had been widowed for sometime, forcing herself to keep her attention on her task as she ground a variety of the herbs set beside her.
Last of all was a young woman whom he actually recognized: He had become familiar with her sleek, bronze waterfall of locks—though now pulled up in a loose, hastily-fashioned bun that seemed ready to fall apart with the slightest of motions—and independent posture. As he directed his gaze to find hazel irises peering back at him inquiringly he gave her a knowing smile. Despite her ivory skin and clear femininity, she was lean in figure and carried an aura of one always driven with purpose.
As the deceased girl's father began explaining where the second coffin was to be delivered, attention had shifted away from the mortician and resolute damsel. She was busy cleaning a deep, reddened scuff upon the young man's face with a wet rag, but as the Undertaker shuffled closer she shot him a fervent look before flicking her eyes briefly to the door and giving a faint nod its way. If you want to talk, we'll talk, he read, but not now. He found his smile only growing wider and anticipated with fiendish delight the various ways he could dig into her skin. It had become a sort of verbal game with them to constantly bicker and bait one another—his own doing more than hers—and in which their back and forth quips inevitably resulted in his vexing her to the point of lividity before smoothing the matter over. She made the game too easy at times, but her flustered reactions were all too tempting to resist.
And even with their bouts they always managed to cross paths and resume the game anew. Were it not out of necessity, she probably wouldn't endure his persistent goading in the slightest. However, her self-commissioned responsibilities and all the deviance they were linked to led her to his parlor time and time again, as well as into a fragile, yet binding acquaintanceship based on his knowledge of her work. Overall, she wanted little more from him than his silence.
As the widow took over tending to the boy's wound, she scooped a dark cloak hung upon the wall and dismissed himself from the household without so much as a courteous glance his way. A few minutes after he did similarly, tipping his hat and giving his condolences to the family before following after her at an unassuming distance. It wasn't until after they had walked some ways past the farmhouses and barns, down the dusty lane, and close to a clump of woods near the vast fields of barley that she pivoted upon her foot to face him—the sun rays reflecting all shades of gold off of her hair. "What are you doing this far from London?" she pressed heatedly, "Isn't this a ways off for your usual work?"
"Don't assume I tracked you all this way, love: You're company isn't all that enjoyable," he taunted, savoring the roll of her eyes as he spoke his given pet name for her. "But to answer your question, I'm merely on delivery." True, normally, the local carpenter would've seen to the construction of the coffins; however, with crisp autumn air signaling winter's fast approach and the damages done to the farm being a more pressing matter, the families of the deceased had called the eccentric mortician away from London for the job in his stead. Fortunately, the village was not all too terribly far from London itself—just a few leagues across the Thames. "I believe it's my turn to ask you now. What are you doing this far from the city?"
"The same as you: work," she replied curtly, though knowing he would only interrogate her further she complied by adding, "If you must know, I had business with a gentleman near Maidstone and I overheard a couple of those disgusting topers at a tavern discussing their intentions to sack some of the tenant farmers."
Leave it to her to always be where trouble was thriving and the grass fed on crimson, but the Undertaker had to admit that she was effective; a paragon of a vigilante if there ever was one. It was the one reason the Yard detested her so much and were so eager to have her at their mercy, for although she went unknown to the populous, the citizens of London did recognize some earthly being that significantly helped rid of the malice plaguing the innocent—a being working outside of the Yard and that which London's officers held no power over themselves.
With the young Earl Phantomhive solving most of England's major cases for the Queen, and with such a fiery maiden ridding of crime under the blanketing cover of shadows and slowly gaining notice from the public, the Yard itself was increasingly viewed more as a formality than an adequate force. Thus far, she was marked as a wanted criminal, but the very men who would hunt her down had nothing on her to go by. Nothing except him—and the mortician wasn't about to lose one of his more interesting amusements. Not until he grew bored with her, at the least.
It had been an entertaining evening the one time Lord Arthur Randall, the police commissioner of the Yard, had stopped by his shop for information on the woman and he had had to play ignorance.
"I was wondering where you vanished," he giggled, stepping alongside her to run a hand along the side of her skirt—where he knew the well-cared for spadroon was hidden beneath it and knowing all too well how easily the action unhinged her. Her cheeks lit up a slight vermillion and she batted him away from her with a look of indignation spread across her features. "You often make an effort to visit, don't you?" he further teased. "You were gone for so long this time that I was starting to think you'd finally been bested. It'd be a shame, after these past months, to learn that you were rotting in a ditch somewhere."
"I don't intend to leave this world just yet if I can help it," she barked, pulling herself away from him and then adjusting the cotton sleeve protectors she wore over her forearms—more than likely borrowed from one of the women in the village. "Now if you'll excuse me I promised to lend a hand with some of the harvest for today." Turning her back to him in further dismissal, she began to return to the farm at a brisk pace.
The Undertaker frowned a bit in disappointment at her retreat. It wasn't fun if she didn't bait him back. And she usually did. "Are you still mad about your last visit?"
"You locked me in a coffin!" she snapped, coming to a halt in the middle of the road while shouting the words over her shoulder, her cloak flattened tightly against her chest as she folded her arms together.
"In my defense, you stepped into the coffin," he replied without apology. Even now it was still funny, and almost a month had passed since then. For a woman of such self-sufficiency, she was not as mature as she made herself out to be—a trait he often capitalized on when finding new ways to tease her. The whole reason he was able to trick her into doing such was simply because daring her to do it challenged her grit. What she had done in retaliation after he had let her out of the coffin—hiding the urn he used for a cookie jar while he was out of the room—had only further displayed her childish nature.
Unable to retort, she began to walk away once more while muttering obscenities under her breath. It was then that a large stain at the end of her skirt caught his eye—possessing a brown discoloration against the blue fabric and much too thin a layer to have been mud.
"Nicole!" he called after her, and so rare was his use of her real name that she immeadiately paused to look at him with a raised brow. It gave him enough time to approach her side a second time as he gestured to the stain. "I hate to embarrass you," he began with sarcastic mirth, to which she scoffed, "but it seems you have a little something on your clothes."
Her eyes widened and her scowl was replaced by sudden apprehension. Swiftly she yanked her skirt forward and held it taut, grimacing as she caught sight of the projecting blotch. "As if I needed this today!" she fumed with an exhaled breath and whipped her cloak around her shoulders.
"You left one criminal alive," he reminded her. "I would trust that you have your reasons, but if you're that worried of being found out then why didn't you kill him as well?"
"Because if I did then there would be no one to interrogate in case there are more of those brutes," she answered, tying the cloak's black cords in a basic knot. "Besides, if the police are focused on that gang then it means they're not focused on finding me. I knocked him out from behind: He didn't have the chance to see me."
"If the Yard so much as catches a whiff of what you've been up to, they'll have you strung up by the neck before you can say, 'Oops!'" he chortled, raising a finger and slashing it across his throat for visual effect. "Don't you worry though: I won't let them have your corpse tossed away like some petty felon's. I guarantee I'll pretty you up nicely."
"How reassuring…" she mumbled with a snide tone.
Farther ahead, someone whistled for them. Though they stood too far away for him to make out much more than a blur, he could at least discern that the figure was indeed one of a man's. If he needed further validation, Nicole was looking at him expectantly to react. Likely it was one of the farmers telling him all of the pine boxes had been loaded and that the final coffin had been delivered without complication. He hated having to cut their meeting short, but he supposed it was best for him to return to his parlor as quickly as he good. He had his own work piling up as it was.
"I don't suppose I could convince you to let me take you back to London with me?" he offered in hopes of prolonging their repartee.
"I already told you that I promised I'd help these people," she sighed, "I'm not about to back out on my word."
"Then you'll drop by my shop when you do finally get back," he said factually, more of an order than as an invitation. Little Lord Phantomhive hadn't seemed to have much need of his information as of late and the Undertaker felt due some means of hilarity. An evening teasing one of the most stubborn and easily ruffled women in England seemed not only desirable, but necessary.
Nicole opened her mouth to retort, but all that left her lips was a silent, irritated cry as he reached over and lightly flicked her messy bun of hair with his fingertips—making it fall apart in a cascade of golden locks. He giggled with all the mischievousness of a young boy as she sent him a vehement glare, mouth slightly agape, before bending to the ground to pick up the fallen pins that had been holding mass together.
"You nutter!" she vexed, snarling up at him from her knelt position after collecting the first few. "You have no idea how long it took me to put my hair up—much less make it stay that way!"
By the time she rose back on her feet to continue her tirade he had already vanished from her sight, leaving her confounded in the middle of the road with no one but herself to scream at. He watched her from a distance though—snickering behind his hand as her expression morphed from one of bewilderment back to one of umbrage. If nothing else tempted her to cross paths with him again, being left before getting in the final word would. In order for the game to end, she needed to feel some satisfaction of her own. Sometimes he'd treat her to small victories, if only to let her believe it could be done: This, however, was one of those times where he would push her to the limits of her patience to ensure she'd keep playing.