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The first time Grace dies, she doesn’t mean it.
It’s a year to the day since her wedding and widowing and she’d decided to celebrate the occasion on the inside of a bottle. It’s perhaps not something she’s proud of, drinking herself under the table on a Thursday, but there also isn’t anyone around to judge her.
Grace is, after all, drinking alone.
It's nothing new.
She didn't have much of a social circle even before she killed her inlaws. After -
Well.
People might not know that she's bloodied her hands or that she's met the Devil, but, like deer in headlights, they know enough to sense danger and freeze.
They know enough to, when given the opportunity, flee.
So, until the sun greets the sky to mark the beginning of a new day, Grace drinks and wonders if this is it - how the remainder of her life will play out and, someday, how she'll meet her end: with no one to witness.
With the arrival of dawn, she pushes herself to her feet, swallows the remaining dregs of whiskey in the bottle before she drops it onto the floor and staggers her way to the stairs and starts climbing.
Of course, drunk as she is, it’s no surprise that she stumbles.
It’s no surprise that her grip on the railing, tenuous as it had been, falters.
It’s no surprise that she falls.
-
She hits the floor head first.
It only takes a moment for her consciousness to slip through her fingers like fog.
It only takes a moment for Death to come.
-
It'll take more than her lifetime for the Devil to leave.
-
It's a stupid death, all things considered. But, if nothing else, at least it's quick.
Most won't be.
-
She wakes up to a pounding head and the taste of iron and grime on her tongue. She's lying at the bottom of the stairs, face turned toward the ceiling, blinking up at the flickering remnants of a memory dream that disappears more with each breath she takes.
When she rises, the glare of the sun through the windows greets her with all the tenderness allotted someone reborn at Night, its fire imprinting itself behind her eyes.
Whether it's an omen, threat, or promise, she can't tell.
Likely, it matters little.
On the floor, reaching outward, creeping through cracks and carpet, is blood that was hers but now isn't.
Her skin, sticky but improbably soft, is unbroken beneath her fingers.
-
Even after hours of scrubbing, there is no removing the stain.
-
Grace is a master at the pretense of normality.
She’s always been, even before the Devil, before Alex, made his home in her heart. Some of it boils down to being naturally gifted in the art of putting one foot before the other, in always keeping walking, but mostly it's a matter of practice. She's had more than most, given the way she entered this life and the path it put her on.
Survival, she's good at.
Being unnatural, deviant, is the most harmful thing for a child left to fend for themselves. It's something that leaves you unable to hide, envied and feared and left to wither, and she'd learnt to withstand it before she'd ever learnt to mask.
Not with grace, for all that it's the name a nun had seen fit to give her.
No, never with grace.
-
At her core, Grace is a creature of anger, retribution, and defiance .
She refuses to go gently.
-
But she goes, regardless.
She comes back, always.
-
The second time she dies, she still doesn’t mean it.
She's been restless, skin itching from watching eyes she perceives but is unable to pinpoint, and sleep has been scarce as a consequence. She would think it's the Devil - or Mr. Le Bail as the Le Domases had called him when they'd lived and ensured others didn't - except he doesn't hide. He has no need to.
You don't need to see the Devil to know he's there, still Grace sees him every time she looks in the mirror; wearing her face, smile eclipsing even the sun and with teeth far, far too white.
The Devil doesn't pretend nor hide.
Whoever owns these eyes, do.
Whoever owns these eyes, feels familiar.
Feels safe.
So, Grace doesn't sleep, because the illusion of safety has always been just that: an illusion, prone to be ripped away at times most inopportune, and she refuses to be easy prey for anyone.
Yet, easy prey is all she is when she falls asleep in the bath.
-
She thinks she hears someone screaming her name, someone reaching for her, but that's not a new motif of her subconscious.
Grace has always wanted someone to follow her down under if she couldn't have someone pull her up.
But make belief doesn't make reality and beggars cannot be choosers.
-
She wakes up underwater.
It isn't quick.
-
She drags herself out of the bath, chest heaving, coughing water and crying. She breaks her nails gripping the porcelain of the tub and almost her nose when she collapses into it.
The Devil cradles her face in his hands, whispering sweet nothings that pass through her ears like wind.
Grace, unable not to, leans back into him.
-
The third time she dies, it’s on purpose.
-
There are faint, white lines etched into her wrists - thin enough that if you didn't know to look, it's likely you wouldn't notice them at all.
She almost misses the red. It had hurt, of course, digging the knife in until she'd hit bone, but pain has been her companion longer than the Devil. The visible bones, the gore of ruptured vessels and broken flesh, had been, if not comforting, reaffirming.
She's Grace.
And, though she might not be able to stay dead, her body is human.
For now, says the Devil over her shoulder. But for how long, only you can decide.
The Devil puts his hand around her throat, not squeezing and almost gentle, his grip an omen, a threat, and a promise.
The Devil pushes her hair away from her face and leans in, foreheads together, and had he been able to breathe, they'd be breathing the same air.
-
And maybe if it hadn’t been for that, she would have tried her best to live. Maybe if it hadn't been for that, she would have walked away, buried her head in the sand, and clung to pretence as much as she clung to survival.
Maybe if it hadn't been for that, she could've moved on.
But for that it had been, would be, is; and so she willingly trades in her humanity for a price, a promise, and a gift.
For that, she makes herself anew.
And she doesn't regret that anymore than she regrets killing them, but she regrets him.
-
And, because she regrets him, she doesn’t mind trading in her humanity for his.
-
Perhaps it can be said that the Devil isn't where any sane person should put their trust, but Grace has long since stopped fearing God and the Devil has yet to break a promise he'd made her.
It's been a while since sane had been a fitting description for her, anyway.
-
Dearest Grace, the Devil says after sealing their relationship in blood and promise, there is no one more sane than she who sees the forest through the trees.
He smiles, all teeth.
Her face, the one he's wearing, is growing into them.
Maybe it already did, before she'd even known to look.
It's why you're such a prize, after all.
The Devil lifts her hand up to place a soft kiss on the back of it, his eyes steady on hers.
It's why I don't mind sharing you with my wayward Child.
-
Between one moment and the next, Grace is remade.
Between one moment and the next, the Devil Daniel falls to his knees, as bloody as he'd been when Charity had killed him but, this time, alive.
“Oh, Grace, you shouldn't have,” Daniel says, anguish as audible as it's visible on his face. He grabs her shirt as if to shake her but doesn't, simply using his grip to hold her in place. “Why did you?”
Grace folds her hands over his, untangling his fingers from the cloth before she pulls him to his feet, grip as gentle as she can make it even as her skin is barely able to contain her.
“Because dying is easy,” Grace says.
She doesn't say, It's the living that's hard, but she thinks he hears it anyway.