Together in Death

"Death cannot stop true love. It can only delay it for a little while." —Westley, The Princess Bride

Together, we'll rest in peace.

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 True Companions.

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. Often forms part of a Bittersweet Ending.

As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.

Compare Reincarnation Romance, You Are Worth Hell.

Examples of Together in Death include:

Subpages

• Anime & Manga
• Films
• Literature
• Live Action Television
• Video Games and Visual Novels
• Real Life

Other Examples

Comic Books

• Ralph Dibny, the Elongated Man, always saw himself more as a detective than a superhero — and after his wife Sue's murder, it seemed the DCU was determined to make him a Butt Monkey as well. But he got a measure of victory by the end of 52 — he trapped Felix Faust and the demon Neron in Dr. Fate's tower, while they thought they were tricking him. It cost him his life, but he was reunited with Sue — and it seemed they were going to spend the afterlife as Topper, instead of Nick and Nora.
  • Then the most recent Crisis Crossover just had to come along and muck it all up...
    • To be fair, they're still together in death. It's just their bodies that are, er, busy, not their souls.
• There's a comic book version of Turandot by the Spanish artist Nazario where this is invoked: Instead of commiting suicide, a maddened and throughly broken Adelma (in the opera, Liu) stabs Prince Calaf to death just as he manages to get through to Princess Turandot and give her a True Love's Kiss. Cradling Calaf's lifeless body, Adelma/Liu says she will be with Calaf through death while Turandot remains alone forever, as punishment for her cruelty; she then stabs herself and dies, leaving a sobbing Turandot with her hands empty.
• The battery of the Star Sapphires is built around crystallized remains on Zamaron found this way. They turn out to be the original selves of Hawkman and Hawkgirl.
• Watchmen (comics) has the two Bernards (a newspaper seller and the kid who reads comic books). They hug as Ozymandias' monster vaporizes New York.

Fan Works

• Sunshine: After her death of leukemia, Satsuki is reunited with Ryuuko and they ascend to the afterlife, together.

Music

• The W Rock band Ministry Of Magic has a song called the Phoenix Lament, the final line of which is "Golden lights are cords for songs of love; something death can not erase."
• Parodic folk singer Les Barker has a song called "Maybe Then I'll Be A Rose", which deconstructs this trope as it appears in English ballads:

He lies in St. Mary's kirk and she lies in the choir, And out of her grave grows a rose and out of his a briar. So at last their souls entwine and now as one are climbing; Ten out of ten for true, true love, nought out of ten for timing.

• Appears in the alternate lyrics to the Hungarian song "Gloomy Sunday," where the singer laments the death of a lover and states an intention of committing suicide to join him/her. Developed its own urban legend and inspired a film.
• Johnny Preston's "Running Bear" (written by the Big Bopper) is a Romeo and Juliet story which ends with Running Bear trying to swim across the river to White Dove. When he gets in trouble she jumps in to save him and both are drowned. "Now they'll always be together in the happy hunting ground."
• This is the subject of "I Will Follow You Into The Dark" by Death Cab for Cutie.
• So many times in Sound Horizon Specifically, after Marchen's untimely death, we learn the Elisabeth refuses an arranged marriage. Crucified, Elisabeth sees her love as he offers her revenge.
• The song "Jake + Olive" by Mac Lethal is about his grandparents' love story: how they met in Ireland, and broke up only to reunite in America. After several decades together, Olive died from a lifetime of smoking, and Jake joined her a month later. The music video is a major Tear Jerker.
• The subject of "Intermission" by Pagan's Mind.
• Milky the Milk Carton (and his strawberry milk carton lover) at the end of the music video for "Coffee & TV" by Blur (combined with Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence).

Myth and Legend

• In a Greek myth described in The Metamorphoses, the old couple Baucis and Philemon were turned into trees when they died, which grew so close as to intertwine. This was actually an Invoked Trope: they once let two men spend the night in their home after their rich neighbors didn't want to, the two turned out to be Zeus and Hermes in disguise, and when the Gods asked them if they wanted a reward for their Sacred Hospitality (after punishing the selfish neighbors), the very Happily Married Philemon and Baucis solely asked to die together so they wouldn't spend even one day apart.
• 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, Romance del Conde Niño/Conde Olinos (The Romance of the Young Count/Count Olinos). A count is executed by a cruel local Queen for being in love with her daughter despite a Parental Marriage Veto, and the Princess dies few hours later. Then, as they're buried in a church (with his tomb being few steps away from hers due to her higher social status), a rose and a briar grow from their tombs; the evil Queen orders to have them cut down out of envy and anger (and the man who did it couldn't stop weeping), but then a heron and a hawk are born from the remains 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 Nights 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.
• Husband and wife Ceyx and Alcyone from Greek mythology. After Ceyx is lost at sea, Alcyone throws herself into the sea, and both are transformed into kingfisher birds by the gods.
• The Lovers of Teruel. According to this Spanish myth, The Ojou Isabel waited for the return of her Victorious Childhood Friend Diego, who had left Teruel to search for the fortune and fame he needed to marry her. After several years, Diego returned home... right after she had married someone else upon her dad's decree. After a secret last talk, poor Diego literally dropped dead at Isabel's feet; the next morning, she showed up in his funeral clad in her wedding dress, and after a Last Kiss she also fell dead. They were buried together.
• At first subverted, but ultimately upheld in the Guarani myth explaining Iguazu Falls. A beautiful girl named Naipi and her lover, the warrior Taruba, ran away so she wouldn't sacrificed to the snake god of the river, M'Boi. M'Boi made a huge waterfall in front of their canoe and turned Taruba into a tree at the top of the falls and Naipi into a rock as she fell to the bottom, thinking that this would be the worst punishment imaginable: to be able to see each other but never touch each other. However, on some days one can see a rainbow from a tree at the top of the falls to a rock at the bottom, and that is Naipi and Taruba's way of being together.
• The famous Butterfly Lovers from Chinese folklore. They've been compared to Romeo and Juliet. Intelligent and beautiful Zhu Yingtai disguises herself as a man to attend school, where she falls in love with scholar Liang Shanbo. While they become good friends, despite Yingtai's many hints, Shanbo remains an oblivious nerd who doesn't realize Yingtai's true gender until years later. He falls in love with her, but she's been betrothed to another man; Shanbo pines away and dies. On her wedding day, Yingtai throws herself into Shanbo's grave, and both are resurrected as butterflies. It's particularly Asian in that it's not necessarily Together in Death, but together in rebirth.
• In one version of Deirdre of the Sorrows, Deirdre and her lover Naoise are buried beside one another and trees grow from their graves to intertwine.

Opera

• Radames and Aida from the musical Aida as well as the opera its based on are buried alive in a single tomb.
• In Donizetti's Lucia di Lamermoor, Edgar stabs himself when he learns that Lucia has died.
• In Wagner's Götterdämmerung Brünnhilde immolates herself in Siegfried's funerary pyre.
• Wagner's adaptation of the Tristan and Isolde legend is one long exploration of this trope.
• Tosca throws herself over the wall of the prison after her lover, Mario Cavaradossi is killed by orders of the Big Bad, Scarpia. And in doing so, she calls the name of Scarpia, not Mario's.

Theatre

• Haemon and Antigone in the eponymous Greek tragedy.
• Romeo and Juliet, the modern archetypal Star-Crossed Lovers.
• 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.
• Attempted by Horatio at the end of Hamlet, but his best friend Prince Hamlet (who's dying in his arms) stops him before he can drink the rest of the poison. Which makes Horatio a lot luckier than most characters in a Shakespearian tragedy.
• Audrey and Seymour both wind up eaten by the same plant in Little Shop of Horrors, and at the end their heads appear in adjacent pods.
• All of the students in Les Misérables (and actually everyone else who died over the course of the show). When they realized their death that night were certain, they all silently decided to have one last drink together and fight till the end.
• Subverted in The Adding Machine. After Zero dies, Daisy appears to him in an Arcadian afterlife, where she suggests that they "can always be together now." He gets bored and decides to leave the place.

Webcomics

• Dorukan and Lirian in The 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. It is specifically stated, however, that she will be able to see Windstriker again, and for her, that is enough..
  • 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.
    • Don't you mean Crowning Moment of Heartwarming?
      • More like both.
• According to Word of God, RED Spy and BLU Sniper in Cuanta Vida.
• The first panel of this Simulated Comic Product comic shows a young man next to his dead wife's tombstone, vowing he will use science to be re-united with her. The rest of the comic shows a montage of his scientific career, older in each panel, until the last shows the same scene as the first, with two tombstones.
• Parodied in Buttlord GT after nearly everyone dies. "Awesome! All my friends are dead and safe!"
• Mandy and Grace, two minor characters in It's Walky!
• Something of a recurring theme in Homestuck. John and Vriska, Karkat and Terezi in two different alternate timelines, Karkat and Nepeta, and John's Dad and Rose's Mom all end up this way.

Web Original

• In the Cracked short film "Worst Second Date Ever", the main character attempts to enter a suicide pact with a Hispanic maid he's dating, claiming that they're Star-Crossed Lovers. It doesn't go as he planned and it ends in a rather lighthearted note.

Western Animation

• In Spider-Man: The Animated Series, of all things, Mysterio's lover is an actress who was disfigured. She kidnaps Mary Jane for a body-swap, but Mysterio's body-switching machine turns out to not actually work - and never had. He'd been trying to give her hope. When she discovers this, she activates the Self-Destruct Mechanism (okay, why on Earth does it have one of those?) because she'd rather die than not be beautiful. Spider-Man urges Mysterio to run, but Mysterio chooses to stay behind and die with her. No, they don't get better. In fact, though we still don't get the word "dead," there were none of the expected attempts to sweep it under the rug or make it Only Mostly Dead - it even gets referenced later on.
• Presumably this was the logic for Nox killing himself on his late family's grave in the season one finale of Wakfu. With no one to bury him, his remains are blown away by the wind.
• Happens to Ferdy the fox at the end of Theres Good Boos Tonight. He is shot by a hunter, only to come back to life as a ghost after Casper mourns his death.
• At the end of the American Dad episode, "May the Best Stan Win", Stan and Francine are shown as skeletons in the same coffin.

---