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“Alright, Sutcliff,” William sighs as he puts down his papers to push up his glasses. “Spit it out. What do you want?”
Grell had knocked hesitantly on his office door and taken a few steps in with a look on her face that was unlike her. She had kept silent for a full minute while William finished signing off a report.
“William, I—,” She broke off and her voiced cracked so miserably that he immediately looked up at her fearful face. Tears were streaming down her face and fogging up her glasses.
William pushed himself up from his chair quickly to round the corner of his desk. She was shaking slightly, her red nails digging into her palms so hard they cut into the skin there.
“Grell? What is it?” William tried to reach out to touch her shoulder but the woman flinched back. William’s hand stayed in the air like a disembodied limb he had no idea what to do with.
Grell stared at him with wide, unseeing eyes that seemed to pierce through him.
“Something’s wrong…with me,” Grell whimpered. William was so shook up from the sight of one of the strongest reapers in the division stumbling through her words that he didn’t even think to say yeah, many things seem to be wrong with you.
William finally got his hands on the shoulders of his…. whatever it was that Grell happened to be to him. They trembled under his hands.
“What’s going on, Grell? Are you sick?” He led her to sit on the couch against the wall and she slumped onto it with the thousand yard stare uninterrupted. “What do you feel?”
“I have these… flashes of memories or dreams or…I don’t even know what they are,” Grell whispered so low that he had to lean in to hear her. “We’re not supposed to know, Will, right? We’re not supposed to remember…”
William’s green eyes widened at her words, realization sinking in.
“So why am I remembering? And why now, after so long?” Grell whimpered before she began to cry harder, fingers sinking into her flowing hair and pulling violently. William’s hands immediately come to to try and extract them before she hurt herself. “Why do I keep being punished like this?”
“Stop, Grell. Stop that,” William spoke as he tried desperately to pull her hands away from herself before she tore out hair from her scalp. “I’ll get you some help I swear to you.”
In the span of a blink Grell had wrapped her arms around William and sobbed into the crook of his neck. William felt his heart race with the sheer panic of seeing such a mighty woman fall from her pedestal of power. He wasn’t the strongest reaper— not even close to the strength that Grell possessed—but he had enough to hook his hands under her knees and and spine and lift her up.
Against his chest, she felt cold and thin. William knew she was terrible at keeping up with the minimum necessities for grim reapers to be able to survive, like sufficient sleep and nutrients. And he knew from the rare times he had seen her drunk out of her mind outside of office parties that she ate scraps, the absolute bare minimum to be able to fight and not pass out so that she could, as she put it, “keep a figure fit for a beautiful woman.” It had made William feel a mix of emotions, namely anger and a deep sense of sadness so vast that he had forced himself to forget about it in order to keep up his persona.
Now, William wondered if it had something to do with what was happening to her now. She kept quiet as he raced through the shinigami offices. He ignored the strange looks thrown their way as he walked. A few concerned calls came after them, but he remained silent.
He practically crashed into the infirmary with Grell in his arms seemingly catatonic.
Dr. Bedi jumped in her seat at his entrance. Without a word, she motioned him to set Grell down on one of the tables in the infirmary which he promptly did. Grell was squirming and groaning in pain, grasping her head and muffling screams.
“Doctor, she…she’s remembering,” William said miserably. He swallowed harshly at the sight of Grell trying to claw at her temples as if she could rip away the memories. He reached out to clamp his hands around her wrist. “How could this happen?”
Dr. Bedi was preparing a sedative beside him.
“Spears, get her wrist clear for me. Get the clothes out of the way.”
William shifted his hands to push up the red coat’s sleeve. His fingers stuttered in their movements as he exposed her pale wrist— absolutely covered in raised scars ranging from silver to purple to dark red. Some of them, quite frighteningly, seemed to be much newer than others. Before he could properly react, Dr. Bedi was injecting Grell with the sedative.
Her eyes went unfocused and drifted closed with a relieved smile.
William’s hand went up to smooth down her fiery red hair. Dr. Bedi cleared her throat.
“It’s extremely rare,” she explained as she took vitals from Grell’s unconscious form. “Sometimes an event can trigger the resurfacing of memories, whether that be something similar to a previous experience or…”
She trailed off and looked nervous, shifting on her feet as she took a blood sample from Grell. William lifted her eyebrows pointedly at the doctor until she spoke again.
“It could also be a deliberate process intended for punishment,” she mumbled. “….Grell was the ripper, wasn’t she? And she had to spend time with upper management for her crimes, correct?”
William’s heart sunk at the implication. He had been the one to drag Grell to upper management— and yes, she deserved to be brought to justice for the murder of innocent human lives. But this…
“What will it do to her?”
Dr. Beti shook her head and injected Grell with another solution that glowed under the fluorescent lights.
“She won’t die from remembering. They’ll ease up after time and patience until she learns how to live with them,” she explained as she wrote something down on her clipboard. “The only true threat is the Thorn.”
William’s eyebrows furrowed deeply.
“What? How could one contract the Thorn from this?”
“Not from remembering, exactly,” the doctor spoke sadly. She reached over to tap the raised lines covering Grell’s forearm where the needle had punctured. “Moreso that with the memories from her life before death, she’s at a high risk to try again. She’ll have to stay here to be monitored until she’s more stable.”
William wavered on his feet. He swayed at the idea of taking a scythe to her own body so badly she might truly die from it. Dr. Bedi reached over and guided him to a chair.
“Listen, Mr. Spears. I know how much she means to you—”
“What do you mean by that?” He tried to sound angry and authoritative but he knew he failed miserably when the doctor’s lips turned up into a smirk. “Fine. Finish what you were saying.”
“I know she means a lot to you, so I’ll waive the no visitors policy for you. I think you mean a lot to her too, and it would be a good thing to have someone from the afterlife remind her why she shouldn’t…end it.”
William gulped and looked over at the form on the surgical bed. Her red hair was a mess from grabbing at it so much and her scarred arm hung from the side, twitching lightly at whatever she was dreaming about.
He leaned forward to grab her hand.
“Thank you, doctor.”
“No problem. I love romance novels.”
Grell woke up to a sharp pain in her head. She groaned and tried to reach up with her right hand to massage her temples but was stopped by a weight on her arm.
Opening her eyes slightly she saw the familiar form of William slumped on the bed in front of his chair. His glasses were resting beside him on the bedsheets. The moment that she realized her wrist was exposed she flinched violently and pulled it back to her chest.
William startled awake to take her in.
“What’s happening? Why… why am I in the infirmary?” Grell asked, frightened. Her wrist was tucked beneath the sheet now, hidden from William’s view. “William?”
He stood up slowly and poked her side, giving a little smile when she squeaked. Ticklish.
“May I lay with you?”
It was a testament to how shaken up and confused she was by the situation that Grell made no innuendos or sexual remarks in response. She just shuffled over and laid on her side to make room for Will to lay beside her. They stared into each other’s eyes for a few minutes.
Some of her makeup had wiped off from the tears, and Dr. Bedi had taken the liberty to remove her fake eyelashes and lipstick the day before, citing how it wasn’t good to sleep in them. She looked more like the Grell he had first met than she had in decades like this.
That fact only made him feel even more uneasy and anxious. It was like watching a butterfly crawl back in a cocoon and shift back to a caterpillar— unnatural and uncanny.
“You’re starting to remember your life, Grell,” William whispered and watched helplessly as Grell’s eyes unfocused once more and her face went slack. He reached up to cradle her face in his hand and her eyes returned. “I’m so sorry. But you’ll be okay in time.”
Grell sniffled.
“Everything I remember is so…terrible, Will. It makes me sick. I wish I could just die—”
William pressed his thumb to her lips.
“No. No, you don’t,” William replied. “You think you do because that’s what your brain is telling you but let me tell you something: you are more now than you ever were when you were alive. You’re one of the most powerful reapers that the shinigami have ever seen and demons are frightened of your name.”
Grell looked down at his words, as if it were difficult to believe. She let out a huge sigh and brought up her hand to curl around William’s wrist.
“You said I’d be okay, and you never lie.”
“That’s correct.”
“So will you stay here with me? Even when I’m an ugly mess breaking down in a hospital bed because my own mind is turning against me?”
William slowly leaned forward, giving her time to pull away (as if she ever would) and kissed her. Her soft lips parted slightly to allow for him to deepen it. When they pulled away, Grell’s eyes were dazed for a reason other than her bitter recollection of her life before death.
“I’ll be here especially in those moments to bring you back from oblivion.”
Grell fell asleep soon after that, cheek pressing against his chest and wrists no longer hidden as she curled them around his body.