Chapter Text
but saying it out loud
is hard
so i won’t say it at all
i.
She’s not answering the door, but he’s not worried.
He can hear her voice from inside the house (along with a male voice - that must be the Danny she mentioned) and he doesn’t mind waiting as they say goodbyes. What’s another few minutes?
He didn’t bring anything with him - he’s got the keys to the rental car in one pocket, his phone in the other, and a bouquet cradled in his arms. That’s it.
And of course, a prepared opening line rattling around his skull.
Two and a half years ago, he had caught himself before he had a choked out a certain set of words in the form of goodbye over the phone. He didn’t know where it had come from; Valkyrie never said it on the brief phone calls they shared, though he did get an occasional I miss you , and he had obviously never used those words to sign off phone calls with anyone else. He stuttered a bit, switched it to his usual “come home,” and Valkyrie returned with her usual “soon”, and was none the wiser. He had placed down his phone, and realized his hand was trembling.
The last conversation they had - the last real one - was in front of the Accelerator. It, in hindsight, was not his finest moment. Valkyrie had left for America less than two months later, and they had been awkward and tense those six weeks. Now all they had was phone calls. He apologized on the phone, once, and he just got a mumbled, “no, it’s fine, don’t worry about it.”
He had never said it back.
But he will, right now. He’ll say it right to her face, won’t waste a second. Door open, those three words, bam.
“Magic,” she says, from the other side of the door, and he straightens up. He hears footsteps - not hers - a door creaking open, and then a deep inhale.
Two steps, and then the door opens.
She looks at him, and then down at her flowers, and blinks, hard.
“Wha-- why?”
Skulduggery can’t speak. It’s too much, somehow, the crease in her forehead, the purse of her lips, the way her eyelashes flutter as she stares up at him. She’s not mad, just confused.
Words fail him. It’s stupid, really, as all he has to do is add a “because” to said prepared opening line, but instead, he says:
“Isn’t this what people usually do?”
“I mean, I guess,” she says, taking them in her arms. She nestles her face into them, greedily inhaling the scent, and the lump of muscle that had burned to nothing centuries ago slams painfully against Skulduggery’s ribs.
He had spent an hour and a half picking out the flowers while waiting for Valkyrie’s text telling him to drive over - it’d been a long time since he had any use for the language of flowers, but thankfully one of the botanists at the shop was incredibly excited at the prospect. Together they had picked out asters, daffodils, hydrangea, and tulips, along with a couple others to make the bouquet a little less haphazard looking. He paid a, quite frankly, ridiculous sum of money for it, considering that he used to pick wildflowers by hand, but that - it was a different time.
Valkyrie’s face is still buried when she speaks. “I don’t think anyone has ever gotten me flowers before. Despite the weekly hospital visits.”
“Well, that’s mundane. This is … a unique situation.”
She looks up at him, and swallows. “... Yeah.”
She’s got a band-aid across her forehead and her hair is pulled off into a high ponytail. It’s almost too much, and he can’t look her in the eye for longer for a few seconds. Not like she can really tell. She sucks in another deep breath - in through the nose and out the mouth, just like he taught her - and then places the flowers down on top of her sofa. “I’m going to grab my bags,” she says, and walks past him.
He expects a hug. He doesn’t get one.
He watches her walk away, and he realizes she’s taller. Only a little. Level with the tops of his cheek bones instead of the bottoms. Things you don’t pick up from phone calls.
She turns to look back at him, and her smile doesn’t meet her eyes.
Another something that you don’t pick up from phone calls.
“This must be Xena,” he says, addressing the giant dog travel crate.
“Yeah,” Valkyrie says, voice soft. “I’d wake her up so you can meet her, but I think it’s best if she sleeps through as much of this as possible.”
“We’ve got plenty of time,” Skulduggery says, and Valkyrie’s shoulder jolt up towards her ears, before she slowly rolls them back down.
“Yep,” she says, cheerily, facing away from him. Her tone is hollow, and he plucks a stray thread off his sleeve and reminds himself that there’s nothing to worry about.
“Meek Ridge is nice,” Skulduggery says, to fill the silence, and wants to smack his head against the mantle the second he says it, a pathetic attempt at small talk. Valkyrie doesn’t respond, just continues packing small things.
Skulduggery barely knows anything about Meek Ridge - it was the smallest town he had ever been in America. It was Denver where he bought the flowers, and he liked Denver plenty. It was flat, flat in all directions - despite the nearby mountains - and had a ravenous bright blue sky that took over the entire horizon. People were friendly and the airport tram played jaunty music and had a vaguely passive aggressive voice over. It was amusing.
“Have you heard of Blucifer?” Skulduggery says.
This actually gets Valkyrie to lift her head up and crack a smile. “Of course. Hard miss a giant blue horse statue. Apparently he killed his creator?”
“Like Cronus before him.”
The smile widens, just a little. She returns to packing, tucking an escaped strand of hair behind her ear.
“So are we flying out of here? Not … teleporting?”
He shook his head. “I thought this might be … easier.”
She nods, which is a relief, and shuffles on her knees to grab an already packed bag.
“We’ll be arriving at one pm in Dublin,” Skulduggery says, as she double checks the pockets of her duffle.
Valkyrie’s head pokes up again. “How the hell are the flowers going to last that long?”
Skulduggery stills. The flowers were more of a grand gesture than any attempt at longevity, but…
He points at a bright blue vase on top of the mantle.
“Oh,” Valkyrie says, making a face. “Yeah. The house came pre-furnished with that.”
“It's … lovely.”
“It's heinous.”
“It is a little heinous,” he admits, but picks it off the mantle nonetheless. He brings it over to her sink while she recovers the bouquet and sniffs it again, looking happy.
He thinks. (He hopes.)
--
ii.
“Are you serious? This counts as a carry on?”
“Ma’am,” says the woman behind the counter, patience either infinite or very well faked. “You can check your bag instead, and bring the flowers as a carry on. But you can’t take the vase, it’s too much water.”
“But they’ll die without it,” Valkyrie says, leaning in towards her. “Can’t you--”
“Valkyrie,” says Skulduggery, from right behind her shoulder. “It’s okay. Just … toss them.”
Valkyrie looks at him. “But--”
“They’ll die anyway,” he says, voice soft. “It’s okay.”
Valkyrie stares at him, and then her hand flexes at her side. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.”
The whole thing - vase, water, and flowers - drops from her arms into the closest rubbish bin, and Valkyrie stands there, staring down at them. Then a McDonald’s bag crumbled into a ball gets tossed down on top of them, and Valkyrie’s trance is broken
“Valkyrie,” Skulduggery says again, reaching for her hand, but it slips through his gloved fingers.
“Sucks,” she says, voice flat, and then she grabs the handle of her suitcase and walks away from the trash can.
Skulduggery looks back - the glass of the vase has cracked, and the water is everywhere.
He didn’t want to point it out to Valkyrie, but they’ve been leaving a trail of petals ever since they got out of the rental car anyway.
He abandons the trashcan, and follows Valkyrie to the boarding area. They sit, in the back where no one can overhear them. The airport is massive, echoing, with more people than he’s seen in years, and it makes Skulduggery feel very small in a way he isn’t used to.
“How do you even get on planes?” Valkyrie asks. “I mean, with the whole lack of face thing.”
“I’ve got identification that changes to match my facade,” Skulduggery responds. He’s holding all of their papers and identification in his suit jacket, so he pulls out the whole set and extracts his fake ID, handing to her.
“Stephen,” says Valkyrie, holding up the card to compare. The match wasn’t exact - there was no way to match every mole and scar to every facade - but it was close enough. “With a ph. Wow. Stellar fake name.”
“We match,” he says with a smile, tapping her ID.
She frowns, and then looks down at his finger, underlining “STEPHANIE EDGLEY”.
“Right,” she says. “Right, yeah.”
“Did they -” he hesitates, and then starts again. “Did they call you that, in Meek Ridge? Or - I know you’ve used Valerie before -”
“No,” she says, “no, it was Stephanie. I just never … “ she shakes her head slightly. “Never thought of it as fake before.”
“That’s not what I …” Skulduggery started, but Valkyrie shook her head again, and kept a steady eye on the screen above them announcing delays and arrivals.
The first flight leaves shortly after, and Skulduggery gets a few answers out of Valkyrie before he relents and leaves her alone. He wants to ask about the men who attacked her, but -
But if he gets a flat “no” after he jokingly asks if she’s a Masterchef now, then it’s probably best to wait.
After all, they had time. They had so much time.
On the second flight - the long one, taking them across the sea - she curls into herself, a tight ball, her head turned towards the window and away from him. He asks her another light hearted question about Meek Ridge and she pretends not to have heard him, and that’s that, he supposes.
There’s a kid sitting on Skulduggery’s right, in the aisle seat: a small girl with choppy fringe and lips so dry there’s a faint split down the bottom one. When Skulduggery leans back into his seat and away from Valkyrie, she wastes no time in introducing herself.
Her parents are divorced. One lives in Utah, the other London. She’s about to start school in England for the first time, and she’s understandably confused by the fact she had just finished second grade, but will be entering year four. Her name is Circe ... or maybe Cersei. (She was just a little too old, but her parents might have been book fans.)
The girl is only a little bit older than Alice.
Valkyrie won’t even look at her.
The flight attendants keep coming by to fuss at her, kneeling down to her eye level and talking in sweet voices.
“Maybe you should let this nice man sleep,” suggests one, and Skulduggery dismisses this idea with a hand.
“I’m on a different time zone,” he says, instead of the equally true but infinitely more pathetic, ‘my best friend is refusing to talk to me, so I’ll take what I get’. “I don’t mind.”
The flight attendant looks at him, her lips pursing, like she’s trying to figure out if it’s responsible to leave her temporary charge talking to a grown up stranger, and then her shoulders drooped. The universal body language for even if, I’m not paid enough for this.
Circe-maybe-Cersei had done this flight a million times, and around two am fakes sleep whenever an attendant comes by to check on her. Valkyrie, on the other hand, is genuinely fast asleep, her palm open on the armrest like she’s begging for change.
Cersei-maybe-Circe stares at Skulduggery’s false face, chin atop her pillow/stuffed animal. (The pig from Moana. Earlier, he had told her he preferred Zootopia, and she had ignored him for nearly half an hour.)
His gloved hand reaches tentatively for Valkyrie’s open hand, and then it stops.
“You missed her a lot,” observes Circe-maybe-Cersei.
“I did,” he says, taking in the unkempt state of the underside of Valkyrie’s eyebrows, the mole on her neck, the cupid’s bow curves of her upper lip.
“Did she miss you?”
He takes a long, long, long time to respond.
“I think,” he says.
She takes his hand in her tiny one, and falls asleep like that, and Skulduggery stares at the top of Valkyrie’s head as the morning drags itself slowly and painfully to shore.
Later, while Valkyrie is in the airport bathroom, Skulduggery sees Cersei-maybe-Circe sitting up on a chair behind an information desk, her feet dangling. There’s a man in a airport uniform asking a woman questions while she fills out paperwork verifying the child in front of her is, in fact, hers’, and Circe-maybe-Cersei looks bored out of her mind.
Skulduggery ducks into a store, dragging Valkyrie’s suitcase behind him, and when he reemerges, Valkyrie is waiting for him, shifting her weight as she got a better hold on her massive carry-on duffle bag.
“That,” she says, “was one of the worst bathrooms I’ve ever seen.”
Skulduggery nods, waits for her to say something else. She doesn’t. They keep walking, and when they pass Cersei-maybe-Circe and her entourage of adults, Skulduggery throws something high and the girl catches it above her head in both hands. Grinning, she opens her palms to reveal a Zootopia keychain. She makes a face at him. Skulduggery beams, and then catches Valkyrie staring at him.
They make eye contact, and Valkyrie immediately breaks it.
They keep going.
The third flight is the shortest. Skulduggery doesn’t bother trying to start up conversation as they board; even he’s exhausted, and he’s technically immune to jet lag. While he’s putting her bags up in the overhead compartment, she stares at something over his shoulder, eyes wide and horrified.
“No. No, no, not here--” she says, voice low and scared, and Skulduggery shoves the bag back with air magic, not caring who sees.
“Valkyrie? Valkyrie, what is it?”
She freezes, face pale. “Nothing. Sorry, thought I saw someone I went to school with.”
His hand stills in the air, hovering above her shoulder. Valkyrie stares at it, expression wary, and he tucked it into his suit jacket.
“Okay,” he says. “If that’s all.”
“That’s all,” she says, nodding, and takes her seat at the window.
He follows.
--
iii.
She asks for a few days to settle in, and he complies. When she doesn’t answer his phone call a week after, he shows up at her door.
She opens the door, wearing a t-shirt and workout shorts, the locks trailing down it only allowing it to open a fraction.
“Don’t do that,” she says.
“Do what?” he asks, genuinely baffled.
“This,” she says, gesturing. Annoyed. “Showing up unannounced, popping up at my door--”
“I’m … sorry,” he says, still lost. “I was worried.”
“Why?”
“You didn’t answer my calls. I didn’t know what happened to you.”
Valkyrie frowns, and then reached over to a table. He saw he grab her phone - saw his five voicemails pop up on the screen, all notifications unread.
“Oh,” she says. “Oh. Right. Sorry.” She takes a big breath. “I’m okay. I don’t always, um - I have my phone on silent a lot. It wakes up Xena. I’m fine.”
He nods. “Do you want… is there anything I can do? Pick something up for you for dinner…?”
“I’m fine,” she says. “Went grocery shopping yesterday. … Thank you.”
Skulduggery knows a dismissal when he hears one, and he straightens, nodding. “Right. I’ll be off then.”
“Wait,” she says, and Skulduggery turns back so quickly he nearly gets whiplash. Valkyrie squeezes her eyes shut. “Just a few more days.”
“Of course,” he says. “Take as long as you need.”
The next few weeks are much of the same. Valkyrie is distant, jumpy, quiet. She rarely smiles, and never laughs, and he has never felt so desperately out of control. Her dog is the only thing she shows any sign of joy about, and for a few days, he is, in fact, pathetic enough to hate the German Shepherd for it.
Progress is slow, so, so slow. He manages to convince her to tour Roarhaven, and she stares at it with a sort of dead eyed awe. They drive there at night, to avoid the stares, and he takes care to drive around any sort of Devastation Memorial, but she still looks at him, expression hapless.
“Jesus Christ,” she says. “I can barely recognize it.”
A few days later she tells him that her parents are picking her up from Gordon’s for a welcome back dinner. It’s over the phone, so he can almost pretend she’s happy about it. He gets a text the following evening - “please pick me up”, and obliges, parking where he usually does at the Edgley family home.
“How’d it go?” he says, softly, as she storms in, wearing a nice dress and heels. She slides into the passenger seat, gaze steely and steadfastly forward.
“Drive.”
“Valkyrie?”
“ Just drive.”
He does.
--
iv.
It’s always more time. A few days was what she asked from him at first. Then a few more days. Then a week. Then a few more weeks.
Fall turns into winter. Christmas passes, and then his birthday, and the first of the year immediately after. She apologizes for missing all three over the phone, genuine distress in her voice, and he holds the phone to the side of his skull and thinks those three words over and over but doesn’t say them; because it’ll only make things worse, because he should have already said them, because he’s a coward.
Arbiter work is slow, but it’s better than desk work. He sends Temple Fray on an undercover mission, half out of boredom.
He waits.
--
v.
Temper Fray won’t answer his phone.
Temper Fray’s neighbors haven’t seen him.
Temper Fray is probably dead.
Missing at the very least.
Skulduggery puts his head in his hands and stares miserably at his front door, like he can will it into opening and revealing Temper, safe and sound. Temper was - and Skulduggery was keenly aware of this - a band-aid, a friend and temporary partner until Valkyrie got back in the saddle. He helped handled things, investigate strange happenings in Roarhaven, make Skulduggery feel like he was actually accomplishing something. If Temper is missing or murdered, not only is he out another partner, but he has an actual problem to solve, and he really, really, really didn’t need any more problems.
Fuck.
Skulduggery pages through the registrar of students Peccant had given him - there wasn’t anything incriminating on it, nothing to even indicate what its purpose was. It was the same thing a professor would be given before school started; a list of names and accompanying school pictures. Ordinary except for the little hand drawn stars underneath the names. This was to indicate how useful Peccant thought the students would be at being undercover; he asked not to be told who Skulduggery picked, to stay as impartial as possible.
To give whoever this student was the best chance at being invisible.
Skulduggery flicks through the pages for the hundredth time, stopping at the face of a handsome young boy, smile charmingly troubled. Auger Darkly, who had apparently accidentally named himself after a small drill. He was the anti Valkyrie Cain, blessed with a heroic destiny, meant to save everyone.
Or cursed.
The Darkly prophecy had predated Auger’s birth by ten years - Skulduggery had even heard that it was how his parents met, their romance named and assigned by fate. He had spent his entire life training, and, since he was about ten or eleven, had picked up some other end of the world catastrophes in his spare time. Which Skulduggery was grateful for, of course; he always felt like he should send a box of candy whenever he returned to Roarhaven and learned that Auger had averted some disaster that usually Skulduggery and Valkyrie would handle.
He looks closer at the boy. Maybe this boy was Valkyrie’s answer. Someone she could mentor, someone who could understand better than most the kind of role she grew into it. Perhaps his humble heroic ways would ground her.
Or she would furiously hate him.
Obviously, beneath Auger’s name there are no stars: he was the most famous student of the school by a country mile. Probably the most famous mage in their teens, now that Valkyrie was pushing twenty five. Skulduggery’s gaze falls across the row, to a boy who must have been his brother, marked with one star. Of course: being the chosen one’s brother must also mean living in the spotlight. Although Skulduggery hadn’t ever heard the name Omen Darkly before - the prophecy had neatly skipped over him, like he was no more than an afterthought. Had whatever Sensitive who had penned the prophecy even know he was coming? Was he planned, too, as someone to help lead his brother to victory? Or maybe just a pair of backup organs, just in case?
A smudged set of features came to the forefront of Skulduggery’s mind - a man he could not have helped, even if destiny had demanded it. Skulduggery Pleasant didn’t believe in fate, but he knew there was no world where both he and his brother survived the war.
He returns to paging through - no one had received five stars, although a few got four - and then realizes he could not bring Auger’s brother’s face to mind.
He flips back to the twins’ page, studies the picture for a moment, and then closes the registrar.
Again: gone in a flash. Not handsome, not ugly, just … a fourteen year old boy.
One who had lived in the shadow of his brother his entire life.
Skulduggery nods to himself, decided. Now for the hard part. He picks a three piece suit and a handsome face to match. He hesitates on the call button.
… If he calls her while he was driving through her gate, he isn’t technically showing up at her door unannounced, was he?
His fake face in his full length mirror gives him a “you're pathetic” look. He agrees.