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The dead were better company. They didn’t ask questions, didn’t flinch at his laughter, didn’t notice when his hands shook as he stitched their wounds shut. Undertaker sat cross-legged on the cold stone floor of his mortuary, a corpse laid out before him like a sacrament. But tonight, he wasn’t working. Tonight, his fingers moved through his own hair instead of theirs.
Divide. Weave. Repeat.
Three sections, over and over, until the braid hung heavy down his back. It was too tight, the strands pulling at his scalp like a reprimand. He imagined it was someone else’s hands doing the work—gentler hands, warmer hands. Hands that didn’t smell of formaldehyde and regret.
His mother’s hands had been the first. She’d braided his hair every morning before school, her knuckles swollen from scrubbing floors, her voice humming hymns he’d long forgotten. “Keep it neat,” she’d say, tying the end with a scrap of ribbon. “You’ll catch trouble otherwise.” He’d hated it then. Now, he’d trade a thousand souls to feel her tug just once more.
But the dead didn’t bargain. They just left.
Phantomhive Manor’s east wing smelled of dust and dried ink. Undertaker lingered in the shadows of Vincent’s old study, his back pressed to the wall as if the weight of the room’s memories might crush him. Moonlight bled through moth-eaten curtains, illuminating the desk where Vincent once wrote letters in that looping, reckless script.
Undertaker stood before a cracked mirror in what had once been Vincent’s study, his silver hair unspooled down his back like a shroud. The real Ciel—his Ciel, the one he’d stitched back from the void—slept fitfully downstairs, unaware of the rot festering in the walls. Or the rot festering in his savior.
Undertaker’s hair itched.
It always did here. The silver strands felt heavier, as though soaked in the phantom residue of hands that had once carded through them. Vincent’s hands. He could still recall the man’s laugh—rich and warm, like brandy poured over fire—as he’d leaned back in his chair and said, “You’re far too pretty to lurk in graveyards, my friend. Let me see that smile again.”
A draft stirred the air. Undertaker froze.
Fingers—warm, calloused, impossibly real—brushed the nape of his neck.
“Still keeping it long, I see,” Vincent’s voice murmured, close enough to ruffle his hair. “Always hiding behind it, hm?”
Undertaker didn’t turn. He knew better. Knew the dead stayed dead, no matter how loudly the stars lied. But his traitorous lungs hitched anyway, his skull buzzing with the honeyed poison of memory.
The fingers slid upward, tangling in his hair, braiding it with a tenderness that burned.
“You look tired,” Not-Vincent said.
Undertaker shut his eyes. “You’re not here.”
The hands stilled. “Aren’t I?”
Undertaker froze. The reflection in the mirror showed only himself—gaunt, hollow-eyed—but he could feel Vincent’s presence as vividly as the day he’d buried him. The heat of his chest against Undertaker’s back, the scent of bergamot and gunpowder, the laugh that vibrated through him like a bow across cello strings.
“...Vincent,” he whispered.
“Let me fix it for you.”
The hallucination’s hands began to braid, slow and tender. Undertaker’s knees buckled. He gripped the desk placed on the side of the mirror to stay upright, nails gouging the wood. It felt real. Too real. The tug of fingers against his scalp, the brush of knuckles against his neck—he’d forgotten what it was to be touched without violence.
“Why do you mourn me?” Vincent’s voice darkened, the braiding tightening. “You, who made my son a puppet? You, who craved my attention but never dared ask?”
The mirror flickered. For a heartbeat, Undertaker saw them both—Vincent’s smile sharp as a scalpel, his hands now corpse-gray, tangled in silver hair.
“You’re a coward,” Vincent crooned. “Too afraid to live. Too afraid to die. Let me help.”
The braid became a noose. Vincent yanked hard, wrenching Undertaker’s head back until his throat strained. The mirror shattered. Shards rained down, and in each fragment, Undertaker saw flashes— a corpse he molded to resemble Vincent’s, bloated in its casket, Ciel’s stitches splitting like overripe fruit, his own hands drenched in the blood of everyone who’d ever seen him.
“You want to feel something?” Vincent hissed. His fingers plunged into Undertaker’s hair, tearing clumps from the roots. “Feel this.”
Undertaker screamed—or tried to. His voice died as Vincent’s hands melted into his skull, fingers elongating into bony talons that scraped the inside of his cranium. The pain was exquisite, a white-hot hymn that blurred memory and madness.
“You’ll never be free of me,” the hallucination sang, its voice now a chorus of every corpse he’d failed to save. “Never be loved. Never be real—”
When the phantom finally released him, Undertaker collapsed to the floor. His hair lay in bloodied ribbons around him, the comb snapped in his fist. The mirror shards reflected a hundred fractured versions of himself, each with crimson tears streaking their cheeks and raw, ragged patches where he’d torn out his own hair.
Downstairs, Ciel stirred. A floorboard creaked.
Undertaker pressed a shard of glass to his wrist, tracing the veins that refused to rupture. “...Almost,” he laughed wetly, watching blood bead and slide instead of spill. His immortality pooled on the floor, a mockery of release.
Vincent’s ghost lingered in the corner, smiling.
There had been someone once. Maybe.
A face blurred by time, a voice eroded to a sigh. Undertaker couldn’t remember their name, their touch, their warmth. Only the absence they’d carved into him—a hollow where a heart might have fit.
He tried to conjure them now, sitting before the cracked mirror he usually kept veiled. His reflection stared back, gaunt and ancient, hair streaked with blood from where he’d torn it out the night before. Pathetic, he thought.
“Would you love me like this?” he asked the empty room.
In the glass, his reflection shifted. The lines of his face softened, his eyes brightened, his hair gleamed like fresh snow. A hand—smooth, unblemished—reached out from the mirror and began braiding.
“Of course,” the reflection murmured. “You’re perfect.”
Undertaker leaned into the touch, his breath fogging the glass. The hand felt real, the fingers deft and tender. For a moment, he let himself believe.
Then the reflection’s nails dug into his scalp, drawing blood.
“Perfectly broken,” it hissed.
Undertaker smashed the mirror.
It began as it always did: with the smell of bergamot and gunpowder.
Vincent’s ghost sat cross-legged on the desk, one leg swinging lazily as he split Undertaker’s hair into three strands. His hands were perfect. Too perfect. No scars from the fire that had eaten his body, no rot from the grave. Just the soft, aristocratic hands that had once patted Undertaker’s cheek and called him “macabre little thing.”
“You’ve been neglecting yourself,” Not-Vincent chided, weaving the braid tighter. “The boy works you too hard.”
Undertaker stared at the wall. The study’s bookshelves curved inward now, warped by damp and time, their titles blurred into Rorschach stains. “He’s your son,” he said flatly.
“Is he?” The ghost’s voice dripped with false curiosity. “Or is he just another puppet for your guilt?”
The braid yanked suddenly, hard enough to snap Undertaker’s head back. He gasped—and the world rippled.
Vincent’s hands were blackened, the skin sloughing off in charred strips. The smell of burnt flesh clogged Undertaker’s throat.
“You watched me die,” the thing hissed, its voice a chorus of crackling embers. “You laughed as they buried me.”
Undertaker’s nails dug into his palms. “I didn’t—”
“Liar.”
The braid unraveled. Undertaker’s hair writhed, strands coiling around his throat like serpents. Vincent’s face melted, revealing a grinning skull wreathed in smoke.
“You want to join me, don’t you?” it crooned. “Let me show you how.”
Undertaker kept a doll in the bottom drawer of his desk. A crude thing, stitched from burlap and stuffed with sawdust, its yarn hair faded to gray. He’d made it centuries ago, during a fit of madness or clarity—he couldn’t recall. It wore a tiny overcoat, the buttons mismatched.
He set it on the slab beside him, its lopsided eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. “Shall we play, brother?” he whispered, dividing his hair again.
The doll didn’t answer.
In his mind, the brother was everything he wasn’t: bright-eyed, quick to laugh, unafraid of sunlight. He’d braid Undertaker’s hair by the fireplace, telling stories of places that didn’t exist. “One day,” the phantom brother promised, “we’ll sail to a land where no one dies.”
Undertaker’s fingers faltered. The braid unraveled, strands slipping free like smoke.
“Liar,” he muttered, clutching the doll to his chest. Its sawdust heart didn’t beat.
Reality returned in fragments.
Undertaker found himself crouched on the study floor, his hair hacked unevenly above his shoulders. Scissors lay beside him, blades crusted with silver strands and… blood? His scalp stung. He touched it—his fingers came away red.
“Ah,” he whispered.
The hallucinations had been getting worse since he’d moved into the manor. At first, they were fleeting—Vincent’s shadow in the hall, his laughter echoing from empty rooms. But now the ghost took shape, wore his skin, pressed close enough to mimic breath. Undertaker knew it was madness. Knew the dead didn’t linger, not even for him.
But God, he ached.
He stumbled to the mirror—the only one he hadn’t shattered—and stared at his reflection. Blood trickled from a gash above his ear, staining his collar. His hair, once a source of perverse pride, now framed his face in jagged tufts.
Pathetic, he thought. A Shinigami reduced to hacking at his own hair like a heartbroken child.
Vincent’s voice slithered from the corner: “Let me fix it for you.”
Undertaker spun. The ghost stood by the fireplace, whole and unburned, holding a razor.
“Come now,” Vincent smiled. “You always loved my hands.”
The boy’s body was small, too small, curled in the fetal position inside the pine coffin. A fever, the parents said. Quick, painless. Undertaker knew better. Death was never painless.
He braided the child’s hair as he’d done for thousands before him, weaving in a sprig of lavender to mask the rot. The parents would never know. They’d weep, kiss the cold forehead, and leave. Just like always.
But tonight, his hands wouldn’t stop shaking. The braid frayed, uneven.
What if it were me?
He imagined himself in the coffin, his hair braided by hands he’d never known. A mother’s tears falling on his cheeks. A father’s rough palm closing his eyes. A sibling’s whispered goodbye.
“Stop it,” he snarled, slamming the coffin shut. The sound echoed like a gunshot.
In the silence that followed, he braided his own hair again, tighter, until his scalp bled.
The razor was cold against Undertaker’s throat.
Vincent stood behind him, one hand gripping his shoulder, the other tilting his head back. The mirror showed them both—Undertaker’s bloodied scalp, Vincent’s pristine gloves.
“Such a mess,” Vincent tutted. “Let’s make you beautiful again.”
The blade slid upward, not cutting, just resting there. Undertaker’s pulse thrummed against it.
“Do you remember,” Vincent murmured, “the night I died?”
Undertaker’s breath fogged the mirror. “Yes.”
“You felt nothing, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
The razor pressed harder. “Liar.”
Undertaker’s hands flew to his throat—but Vincent was gone. The razor clattered to the floor. In the mirror, his reflection grinned, its eyes hollow pits.
“You mourned me,” it hissed. “You still do.”
Undertaker lunged at the glass, shattering it with his fist. Shards embedded in his knuckles, but he barely felt them. He grabbed a fragment and sawed it through his hair, tearing clumps from his scalp. Blood dripped into his eyes, hot and metallic.
“Get. Out.”
But the hands returned—dozens of them, sprouting from the walls, the floor, his own mangled hair. Vincent’s hands, burnt and bleeding, clawing at him, braiding his remaining hair with strips of flesh.
“Stop—”
“You’ll never be rid of me,” the voices chorused. “I’m in your bones. In your blood. In every strand you—”
The door creaked open.
“Undertaker?”
Ciel stood in the doorway, his single eye wide.
The hands vanished.
Undertaker knelt amidst shards of glass and hair, his scalp a raw, weeping mosaic. Blood streaked his face, his clothes, the floor. He smiled—wide and manic, the way he had when Vincent first found him years ago.
“Just a bit of spring cleaning, my lord!” he chirped, voice trembling. “Terribly sorry for the mess.”
Ciel’s gaze flickered from the blood to the razor. For a moment, he looked so much like his father that Undertaker’s stomach lurched.
“...Are you drunk?” the boy asked coldly.
Undertaker laughed. It sounded like breaking glass. “Not nearly enough!”
Ciel hesitated, then tossed him a handkerchief. “Clean yourself up. You’re needed downstairs.”
The door slammed.
Alone again, Undertaker pressed the cloth to his scalp. The blood bloomed through the linen, a crimson rose. In the shattered mirror, his reflection mouthed:
“He’ll die too, you know. And you’ll watch. Again.”
Undertaker reached into his coat and pulled out a single, preserved lock of hair—navy blue, tied with a red ribbon. Vincent’s, taken the night they met.
He wound it around his bleeding wrist and pulled until the skin split.
“I know,” he whispered.