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Fate may have kept them apart, the world may have frowned on their love, and conflict may have wormed itself between them, but they're finally together - too bad they had to die for it to happen.
Together In Death is when a couple is literally or metaphorically reunited in death. They might be buried together, seen together in the afterlife, or their corpses discovered embracing one another. It's not necessarily a romantic couple - it can just as easily be a pair of siblings, a parent and child, or a couple of close friends.
This is a good way to show the couple's devotion to one another, even into death; it is also a tidy way to show a (lasting) reconciliation.
This is a death trope so spoilers below.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- Toboe and Quent in Wolf's Rain. "Look after him, old man."
- Not to mention Hige and Blue as well.
- Don't forget Cheza and Kiba. Not only do they have one last embrace, their blood mingles together and pools into the shape of a yin-yang symbol, then drips into the frozen lake that is the Gateway to Paradise.
- Itsuki and Sensui from Yu Yu Hakusho. Four words: Dead body subspace containment.
- In the (somewhat (in?)famous Tear Jerker) ending of the anime version of Chrono Crusade, Chrono and Rosette's bodies are found sitting on a bench together, their hands clasped and smiling peacefully. They're buried together in a grave with a single headstone. Also, Rosette and Joshua met Chrono when they found him sleeping in the tomb of Mary Magdalene, although that's a bit of a variation since he was actually alive.
- Parent and child example: Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa with Wrath running into Izumi's arms at the Gate. And they're inexplicably naked.
- Hansel and Gretel in Black Lagoon, as shown in the ending of episode 15 — the only one not to feature the standard Revy ending.
- Hinoki and Keita in the last episode of Betterman actually Go Out With A Smile because they're together.
- They don't die, they end up stranded on an island.
- Subverted in Weiss Kreuz: when Tot is fatally stabbed, Nagi has a telekinetic meltdown which destroys the house they're in and apparently kills him. Seeing the two lying next to one another in the wreckage, Yoji moves Nagi's hand to rest on top of Tot's in a Together In Death pose. After the surviving cast members have left, however, Tot gets up... and in another episode or two, Nagi shows up in perfect health and the incident is never mentioned again.
- In the Battle Royale manga this happens with Sugimura and his love interest (Kayoko Kotohiki)
- Additionally, one couple (Kazuhiko Yamamoto and Sakura Ogawa) does a double suicide at the start.
Film
- In the final moments of Somewhere in Time (with Chris Reeve and Jane Seymour), a Downer Ending where the lovers seem to be separated forever and then both die is transformed into a Together In Death by showing them meeting and embracing in the afterlife.
- The myth of Katerina and Arturo in the movie Overboard.
- A good example of the non-romantic variant is probably found in the final scene of Return of the Jedi, where Anakin Skywalker is shown reunited with his two Jedi mentors.
- The death of Maximus in Gladiator (though since the protagonist was dying from poison, this may or may not have been a hallucination).
Literature
- In Greek myth, the old couple Baucis and Philemon were turned into trees when they died, which grew so close as to intertwine.
- Forbidden lovers Tristan and Isolde had a vine and a rose grow on their respective graves, which likewise intertwined.
- The intertwining rose and briar also shows up in "Barbara Allen", Child Ballad #84. Probably related to Tristan and Isolde, but the internet doesn't seem to know the details of how.
- The same happens in an old Spanish romance poem. A young count is killed for being in love with the local princess and she dies few hours later: when they're buried in a church, a rose and a briar grow from their tombs. When the evil Queen orders to have them cut down, a hawk and a dove are born from them and they fly away together.
- Also in Child Ballad Fair Margaret and Sweet William
- Pyramis and Thisbe: (Classical Mythology, famously parodied by Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night's Dream) Ovid tells us that the fruit of the mulberry bush under which the star-crossed lovers died turned red with their blood, and their ashes rest in a single urn.
- At the end of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, they find Quasimodo's skeleton so intertwined with Esmeralda's that when they try to remove it, it falls to dust.
- In The Mill on the Floss, Maggie and her brother, previously estranged, embrace each other as they drown.
- The fantasy novel Bridge Of Birds has no fewer than three couples thus reunited.
- Inversion: The Scarlet Letter makes its point more poignant by emphasizing the fact that Hester and Dimmesdale's graves, though near each other (and even sharing a single tombstone), were not touching "as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle".
- Combined with Ironic Hell in the Divine Comedy— the illicit lovers Paolo and Francesca di Rimini embrace in Hell, but according to the usual interpretation, their union serves as an eternal reminder of their sin rather than a continuation of true love beyond the grave.
- Really, really creepy variation in Sammy Keyes and the Hollywood Mummy. Sammy's mother Lana, an actress, fakes an ID so she can claim to be 25. Unfortunately, her new birthdate is the day her boss's wife died. He thinks Lana is the reincarnation of his wife, and he tries to kill both of them so they can be reincarnated together.
- Kate Valentine and Bevis Pod in Mortal Engines, Tom and Hester in A Darkling Plain.
- Horlick and Claire Minton from Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle die in this way, falling to their deaths while still holding each other's hand.
- Two examples in The Amber Spyglass: when people die, their daemon dissolves into its component particles, and the person's mind goes to the Underworld, a Nothing After Death . Lyra and Will find a way to let the mind out into the living world, where it also dissolves and allows the person to have the same fate. Also, Balthamos, having completed his mission, simply loses the will to hold himself together and disintegrates, rejoining him in a way with Baruch.
- In Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, particularly later books (probably A Breath Of Snow And Ashes or The Fiery Cross, bother if I know) Claire finds herself contemplating this a lot— particularly thanks to the time travel angle, where she knows at least a vague idea of where her husband is recorded as dying, or might have died, from her research to try to find him during her 'modern' life. Memory fails me, but she might even find a pair of skeletons like the couple in the page photo.
Live Action TV
- The two skeletons found in an early Lost episode might be an example, but their past and identity is unknown.
- A creepy example in MST 3 K episode "Tormented": after the protagonist is Hoist By His Own Petard, the body of the antagonist is discovered and lain on the beach beside his; her arm automatically wraps itself around him.
- An episode of The X Files has a nasty variation on this: a pair of skeletons are found lying in a field. It turns out to be the skeletons of a married couple that were captured by a carnivorous fungus. The organism gave off hallucinogens that made the couple believe that they were lying down and cuddling in their own bed.
- In a Heroes tie-in, two of Sylar's victims are depicted this way; one of whom lied in order to protect his love's ability. It's quite a Tear Jerker too.
Theatre
- Hamon and Antigone in the eponymous Greek tragedy.
- Romeo And Juliet, the original Star Crossed Lovers.
- Radames and Aida from the musical Aida as well as the opera it's based on are buried alive in a single tomb.
- Most versions of Swan Lake end with some version of this - unable to be together in life, Princess Odette and Prince Siegfried plunge together into the lake to be united in death. In the Matthew Bourne version, when both the Prince and the (possibly imaginary) Swan are dead, the Prince's younger self is seen cradled in the Swan's arms as the ballet ends.
Video Games
- In the fourth game in the Quest For Glory series, when you tell the old man Nikolai that you saw his wife's ghost in the woods at night, he will leave town and try to look for her. The next time you go out into the woods at night, you see them both as ghosts, and they thank you for reuniting them.
- The "In Water" ending of Silent Hill 2. It's not actually shown, but it's very heavily implied that James puts his dead wife's body into his car and then drives into Toluca Lake, drowning himself so that they can be together again.
- Aerith and Zack are revealed to have ended up like this in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII.
- Mask of the Betrayer has an interesting take on this in one of its more bitterweet endings for female P Cs: If you choose to stay on the Fugue Plane (the underworld, more or less) in order to bind the spirit eater there, Flat Earth Atheist Gann will go as far as pledging his soul to the God of the Dead so that you won't have to be alone there. Neither of you are dead, just in Hell.
- Metal Gear Solid 3: If the player pushes the first-person-view button after shooting and killing the Boss, Naked Snake will see the ghostly apparitions of the Boss and her old lover, the Sorrow, standing together, watching over him. It's probably one of the very few comforts to take in the game's Downer Ending.
Web Comics
- Dorukan and Lirian in Order Of The Stick, with the twist that rather than having gone to the afterlife, their souls are trapped in a gem in Big Bad Xykon's pocket.
- Lirian: No...not a prison. Not anymore.
- Non-romantic semi-example: Miko and her horse, Windstriker. "Semi" because: only Miko is dead, Windstriker is merely stuck in the Celestial realms; and they're in different afterlives due to Miko's alignment shifting away from good.
- Another non-romantic example: Roy finally gets to see his little brother again, who had been killed when one of their father's experiments with magic went awry, when he gets to the Celestial Realm after dying in his battle with Xykon. Then they play blocks together. It was quite the Tear Jerker for many people.
Real Life
- This recently discovered pair of skeletons are speculated to be the oldest embracing couple, at about 8,100 years old. The couple pictured above is believed to be the second oldest.
- According to popular accounts, when it became clear that her revolution was doomed to failure, Boudica and her daughters drank poison and the Romans found them like this.
- Many of the bodies found at Pompeii and Herculaneum are intertwined like this. (Sometimes in couples, sometimes in large groups. Practically the whole city was Together In Death.)
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