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*
In the months escaping death, Victoria finds her husband yearning.
For something.
Someone.
She kindly suggests a plot of dirt and a headstone for Emily, the bride, to settle Victor's troubled thoughts.
"You have impassioned artistry deep in your heart, Victor," Victoria says with girlish enthusiasm behind it, smiling up at the carved face of the woman who loved Victor. As deeply as Victoria loved Victor. "How grand this is. How delightful. And you yourself carved the marble by hand."
Victor wrings his fingers together, mournfully sincere.
"Do you suppose…?"
"She would adore the likeness. I know it." Victoria reassures him, her arm tightly folded with Victor's. "It is true that I may not have known her as well as you, Victor… however, we love you." She nods, beaming. "Therefore… I know her… as I would know someone as myself."
With a light brush of each other's hands, they draw closer. Victor's lips faithfully hold against her left hand's knuckles.
Victoria's face colours a rosy pleasantness.
*
Within the carriage driven by Mayhew's eldest son, leaving the grave, Victor chances another kiss. He uses the cover of their sheltered darkness, touching her. Victoria's mouth opens against warming pressure. She giggles, against him, echoing Victor's quiet huff of laughter.
Their happiness jolts. Violently.
Victoria gives a frightened shriek, being thrown inside the carriage suddenly rolling, and rolling, until they're held upside down. Everything splinters apart. Pain festers somewhere in her. Hot liquid pours down the front of Victoria's ivory-ribboned corset, staining it red.
She wheeze-gasps, unable to take a breath while clutching Victor's hand wildly spasming.
"Master Van Dort?"
Lantern-light fills Victoria's eyes.
She stirs, waking upon a busied cobblestone street nowhere near London.
"Mayhew?" Victor murmurs, bewildered as the other man ventures off.
Victoria opens her mouth, to question Victor and to discover what has happened, and finds nothing.
Not even the previous pain.
In absolute terror, Victoria grips at her throat, feeling over a dreadfully large splinter of carriage-wood jutting from Victoria's flesh.
"Oh! Oh goodness me!" Victor panics, cradling the back of Victoria's neck as she quivers fretfully and easing it out. The constrain inside her releases. Blood, as black as a midnight moon, gushes out. He means to soothe her, to distract her worries, and Victoria gasps again.
Half of Victor's face lacks a layer of skin, revealing facial-bone and thin, discoloured muscle tendons.
"Vic…tor…"
Something went wrong.
While they were riding on from Emily's grave…
Victoria can hardly speak a syllable.
"It is alright," Victor encourages, not seeming so panicked anymore, caressing her cheek. "We are among friends now. Oh, I am so sorry."
Friends?
What does Victor mean?
Victoria gawks as a old, hunched skeleton approaches, followed by a taller skeleton with a monocle, and…
"Em…eh…ly…"
"Do not be afraid, my darling," Emily says restlessly, heaving a funeral wreath of lilies over Victoria's collar and embracing her. "You suffered. You will no longer suffer while here." Victoria glances down at her own flesh tinged blue, as well as Victor's, feeling faint.
Emily does the same for Victor, tutting and examining the side of his face.
"We have died then?" Victor asks, toneless.
"Yes, my love."
"And there is not a spell to return to the Land of the Living?"
"Not for the dead and the dead alone," Emily says, struggling through a blubber when Victoria's tears shed. "Not for us, my sweet Victor."
He nods, understanding.
One of Victor's arms touches Emily's waist, and the other encircles Victoria's shoulder.
They must move on.
*
Her heart, as unbeating as it is, gladdens.
Emily titters over Victoria's shy smiles, holding her arm, introducing her to Elder Gutknecht and General Wellington offering a beer. Victor searches for his wife's approval before devoutly kissing Emily's cold, skeletal hand, giving her the attention she long has craved.
In the alleyway of coffins, walking side-by-side to the two most dear persons to her…
Victoria realises she has accepted what has happened.
And now, they live a life of unliving.
*