Keres — Every Death During Her Trial

Spoilers for Grimm Fairy Tales 10th Anniversary: Death. I wanted to go through the deaths Keres experiences during her trial, because this is probably the most important part of what happens to her in this story. She starts out thinking she understands death better than anyone. Then she's forced to experience it from the human side, without her powers and without being able to decide when it ends. She says she lives and dies what seems like dozens of times. We don't see every one of those, but these are all the deaths the comic actually shows us. The first is Betty, an elderly woman in a care home. Keres can barely move, her chest hurts, and when she looks in the mirror she sees this old woman looking back at her. Then she collapses. She's used to being the one who shows up when somebody dies. Here she can't even keep her own body going. Next she's Nick. He's tied up in the trunk of a car, dragged out to a dock, and chained to a concrete block. The men who brought him there throw him into the water. She has to feel herself drowning, knowing exactly what's happening and being completely unable to stop it. Then she's Harper, a man in prison. Other prisoners expect him to kill someone to settle a debt. Keres won't do it. She gives the intended victim the knife instead, and eventually the men who wanted the killing come into her cell and stab her. She's still trying to act like none of this can get to her, but she's feeling every bit of it. After that, the story moves through several deaths much more quickly. She's a soldier shot in the head on a battlefield. She's put to death in an electric chair. She's in a motorcycle collision with a truck. She's caught in a car wreck. She's shown hanging. And she's attacked by a shark. We don't get names and full stories for those people the way we do for Betty, Nick, and Harper. But by this point she's been through enough of these lives that she can feel herself changing. She understands the fear now. She understands what it means to have a life and then lose it. The last life is Tara, and this is where the whole thing really gets to her. Tara is a single mother with a daughter named Lisa. She's also in a relationship with Shawn, who is abusive. Keres starts taking on Tara's memories, and her attachment to Lisa becomes real. She spends time with her, helps her with her homework, and starts wanting to stay in this life. She's found something she doesn't want to lose. Then Shawn comes home. He attacks Tara and hits Lisa. Keres fights back, gets a knife, and tells Lisa to lock herself in her room and call 911. She's trying to protect this little girl, but Shawn gets behind her and cuts her throat. And the worst part for Keres is knowing Lisa is still there with him. She can feel herself dying, and she can't get back up and protect her. Shawn is already telling Lisa that her mother hurt herself. Keres knows what really happened, and she has to leave that child behind. When she wakes up as herself again, she isn't laughing at the punishment anymore. She's begging Abaddon to send her back for Lisa. That was the part of this story that stood out to me. She went through all these different ways of dying, but becoming attached to somebody and knowing she couldn't protect them was what finally broke through. She understood why a human being would be terrified to die even if they weren't thinking about themselves. And thankfully, she does get another chance. After the trial, Abaddon helps her go back. Keres shows up dressed as a police officer before Shawn kills Tara, gives Tara the chance to speak up, and takes him away. Tara and Lisa get to live. Shawn doesn't. The last page makes that pretty clear. Keres has changed, but she's still Keres.