For a full guide on each chapter and additional tags, please see my AO3 upload of this story posted under TheSawIsFamily. Some scenes will also be removed in this upload to meet FFN's policies. Some inspiration for this story comes from Journey into Darkness: The Unauthorized History of Kane.
Chapter Summary
The Undertaker returns to where it all began. Mentions of miscarriage.
September 2004
Two silhouetted figures stood in the overgrown family cemetery located near Furnace Creek in Death Valley. The location always brought a sense of both solace and yearning for the elder son of the late Susanna Kane Calaway. He knelt before his mother's newly restored grave and placed his forehead against the cold granite.
"Mother," he began after a moment of contemplation, unsure how to reconcile the news. Although he and Victoria typically watched all the matches, even when they were not scheduled to fight themselves, neither had witnessed the accident that befell upon his brother and sister-in-law. It took a call from corporate and later Kane himself (albeit a clipped explanation of events) to realize the extent of the tragedy.
Perhaps their bloodline truly had been cursed. He heard the rumors of a family curse even when his mother attempted to distract him from the townspeople' cruel, whispered speculations. He remembered the leather scrapbook Susanna hid in the embalming room. The book detailed the tragic and malevolent nature of her family although he only snuck brief glimpses at it.
For so long Mark believed the fire incinerated the book only to discover Paul Bearer found it unscathed amongst the ashes of the Calaway funeral parlor and used it as a tool to train Kane into believing lies — that his mother never loved him and their bloodline had been tainted by some ancient curse.
His mother's wavy auburn hair and pale blue eyes flashed in his mind until the image slowly morphed into the last time he laid on his mother. Or rather what had been left after the flames charred her body into a blackened husk.
The flames his foolishness caused.
Now Kane would understand the torment of destroying a family even if the entire ordeal proved an accident.
He let out a humorless laugh.
Accident.
Did everything in the brothers' lives have to end in misery?
His thumb traced the engraving of his mother's death date: May 19, 1978.
No wonder Kane refused to acknowledge him (at best) every May nineteenth even when the brothers were on good terms with one another.
"Mother, it's the child. Kane's," he began again, looking towards the darkened skies above Death Valley and noting the few stars.
"It has been lost."