Chapter Text
There's dirt in his ears.
It's in his mouth, too.not that it matters. His jaw's stitched shut. Threaded through skin and gum with something tight and unkind. He doesn't remember who did it. Or why. Or when.
He remembers pain, though. And silence. And the way cold feels when it's not just a season but a sentence.
Frank claws upward.
It's not elegant. The ground fights him, greedy and heavy, but something in him—someone in him—refuses to stay under.
Fingers break through first, then his wrist, then his whole arm, trembling like the leaves above him. The air burns in his nose, sharp and wet.
It smells like rain and rosemary.
By the time he hauls himself fully out, his legs are barely working. His left foot doesn't lead right anymore. One of his stitches has popped loose, and there's a bitter taste in his mouth from blood he shouldn’t have.
The graveyard is still.
But beyond it, candles. Flickering in the windows of a cottage tucked just along the iron fence. There's a circle of stones beside it, dark with recent ash. Something tells him he knows this place. Not in the way of memory, but muscle.
He limps toward the light.
Then, creaking hinges.
Frank lifts his eyes.
The individual in the doorway has candlelight on his cheeks and chalk dust on their sleeves. Brown hair tucked behind his ears. There's a smudge of ash beneath his eye, like he forgot he’d been crying. Their black sweater is too big and hangs off one shoulder, barely covering their body.
He was very gray and dark with the colors of his outfit.
Witch, Frank thinks.
Not in fear. In recognition.
The witch looks at him. Really looks. And something in Frank softens, which is terrifying, because nothing in him is soft anymore.
"Oh," the witch breathes. "Can I help you, sugar?"
Frank tries to speak- he grunts. Then comes out a muffled groan.
The boy’s lips curl into a gentle smile. His eyes glance at Frank’s lips, halfway kept in place by stitches. His gaze turned with sympathy, like he had found a stray puppy lost to the hardship of the outside.
“Does it hurt?” He questioned softly, taking a step back. “Come on in, I assume you came here for some reason.”
Frank hesitates. The threshold hums.
Not just with candlelight or warmth, but something deeper—old magic that tastes like earth and iron. It brushes against his skin like spider silk, catching on the ragged ends of him. It doesn't burn. Not exactly. But it sees him.
Sees what he is now.
The witch-Gerard tilts his head. “It won’t keep you out,” he says, voice low. “You’re not the kind of dead it minds.”
That should be a comfort. It kind of is.
Frank steps inside.
The floor groans beneath him, wood soft from years and storms. Dried herbs hang from the beams overhead: rosemary, lavender, something darker he doesn’t know the name of. There’s chalk on the floor in looping, scrawled symbols that make Frank’s eyes ache to look at. Salt in the corners. Jars full of things that might once have had names. Maybe they still do.
Gerard walks ahead of him, bare feet soundless on the floorboards.
He stops beside a deep, worn armchair. “Sit. If you can.”
Frank does. Or tries. His knees don’t bend right and his spine pops like wet wood. He slumps more than sits, a low sound rattling out of his stitched-up throat. Gerard watches, patient.
Then he crouches down, so they’re eye-level. A strange smile plays on his lips, soft but unreadable.
“You came back wrong,” he says, like he’s saying the weather changed.
Frank flinches.
“I’m not judging.” Gerard reaches out, fingers hovering near Frank’s face. “I just... know the signs.”
His touch is light, and Frank doesn’t jerk away. Fingers brush the edge of Frank’s mouth, near the half-unraveled stitch. They come away bloody.
Gerard wipes it on the hem of his sleeve, unbothered. “Someone pulled you up,” he murmurs. “But they didn’t finish the spell.”
Frank doesn’t know how he knows, but he knows it’s true. He can feel the raw seam in his chest where something was meant to settle but didn’t. An empty place.
“Was it you?” he rasps, voice half-rotted and thick with dirt. Thank god he could form some kind of words in this condition. His voice was restrained.
Gerard blinks. “No.” He sits back on his heels. “But I think maybe I was supposed to.”
Frank stares.
Outside, the wind howls, low and distant. The candles flicker.
Gerard stands, wiping his hands. “I can fix it. Maybe.” He moves to a shelf lined with glass vials and blackened bone. “But it’s not just a spell. You’d have to want it.”
Frank’s jaw shifts, the bones clicking with a tilt of his head.
Gerard looks over his shoulder.
“To be whole again.”
Silence falls between them like a dropped stone. Frank doesn’t know what whole even means anymore. He doesn’t know if he ever was. But he knows he doesn’t want to rot alone in the cold, pulled halfway back into a world that forgot him.
And maybe it’s the witch’s voice. Or the way the house smells like memory and moss.
But for the first time since clawing out of the earth—
He thinks maybe he wants something.
Anything.
Maybe him.
Frank feels crazy for thinking that.
It wasn’t in the sense of love at first sight. This witch was the first person he’s been drawn to, inviting him with open arms. Frank doesn’t remember a thing—yet he believes he can find his help right here.
Gerard takes a step closer, and Frank can see the gleam of steel between his fingers—small, sharp scissors, delicate enough to feel cruel in their purpose. He crouches low, knees bending until they’re level.
“Hold still,” he murmurs, and though it sounds like a command, his voice is softer than the wind outside.
Frank does. He doesn’t breathe-can’t, really-, but something in him still tightens, waiting for pain.
The first cut is quick, a snip of black thread tugging loose from the torn corner of his mouth. The second drags, the thread catching against scabbed flesh, pulling a low grunt from his throat. Gerard’s hand steadies his jaw, thumb pressing gently beneath the bone, keeping him in place.
Blood beads along the seam, warm and metallic on his tongue. He tastes himself, decay and salt, and it makes him shiver.
One by one, Gerard clips the stitches. The thread falls in curls onto the floorboards like brittle spider legs. His face is close enough that Frank can smell him, herbs, smoke, a faint sweetness beneath it all. Close enough that every exhale ghosts across Frank’s skin.
When the final stitch comes free, Gerard sits back on his heels. He gathers the bloodied threads into his palm, looks at them for a moment, then brushes them aside like they’re nothing.
“There,” he says, almost smiling. “Now you can speak.”
The words are a release and a curse. Frank’s lips ache, raw and trembling, but the tight binding is gone. He flexes his jaw, the bones clicking, and manages a rasp of sound.
And that’s when Gerard leans in again, that strange smile tugging at his lips, unreadable and soft.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
Right. Names. Frank had forgotten he even had one of those.
He wonders who would ever force him through this. Living as a rotting corpse has to be the worst curse anyone could give.
“Frank,” he rasps. The crackling dryness in his mouth makes every word scrape.
Gerard tilts his head, considering him as a puzzle half-solved. “Frank,” he repeats, letting the syllable linger. “It suits you.”
His mouth curves- not quite a smile, not quite a frown. “I’m Gerard.”
The name feels heavier than it should, like it carries more than just identity. Frank turns it over in his mind, as though speaking it aloud might grant him something solid to hold onto.
“Gerard,” he tries, his voice sandpaper and smoke. The sound of it scrapes out raw, almost foreign. His lips split on the word, and he tastes blood again.
Gerard’s eyes flicker, sharp but not unkind. “Careful,” he says, quieter now, like the word is only for Frank. “Your mouth’s not used to… freedom yet.”
Frank swallows, or tries to. His throat protests, stiff and ruined, but he forces out another rasp: “Feels… wrong.”
“Of course it does,” Gerard answers simply, like that’s expected. He shifts closer, knees brushing the floorboards. “You’re stitched together, but you’re not… finished.”
Frank blinks at him. The candlelight throws shadows across Gerard’s face, making him look both human and something older, darker.
“Finished?” he repeats, voice splintering around the word.
Gerard hums, gaze steady. “You were dragged back, but no one thought about what comes after. They never do. They want the body, the proof. They forget the soul.”
Frank’s chest aches at that, like something is tugging at the hollow seam inside him. He almost wants to ask if Gerard can see it, the place where he’s empty.
Instead, he rasps, “And you? You finish people?”
Gerard doesn’t flinch. “I can.” Then, softer, almost like a vow: “If you let me.”
The silence that follows is heavier than the storm outside, and Frank can feel himself sinking into it. For the first time since clawing through the dirt, he wonders if maybe he isn’t doomed to rot completely alone.