Chapter Text
The first time they met wasn’t really the first time they’d met.
The first time they met had been many many years ago, but neither of them remembered the encounter that much. Since then, they’d almost bumped in each other exactly thirty-two times, but it was always a matter of seconds, of different exits, of different approaches.
One time Skulduggery had to wait forty-five minutes for Ghastly to finish measuring someone else, sulking all the time while he heard chatter and a woman’s laughter in the other room. When he inquired Ghastly about the client, who had apparently left through the window in a hurry (something Skulduggery could respect), the man had only said “you’re not my only friend, you know”, which caused even more sulking.
One time Valkyrie arrived at China’s library just in time to see a Bentley driving away. When she’d asked China to borrow a book to do some research, the woman had sighted dramatically. “Oh. dear, I’ve just loaned the perfect book to someone else. Do you want me to call him? Just give me the word.” She had almost said yes, but decided that China’s second best book would be enough. She always gave up research after a few hours, anyways.
One time they were even after the same guy, but, unfortunately for this man, his very secret adept discipline was the ability to make two of himself. When he heard that someone was after him, he thought that the best course of action was to double himself and leave a very confusing trail behind him. He wasn’t aware, however, that it was two different people after him, and that each one had picked a different trail to track, which led to each of them finding one of the double, in completely different places, in completely different ways. They were never aware of the other, and both thought that had completed the job without any help. The Sanctuary, obviously, was very confused when they had to lock up the very same guy twice, with only hours of difference.
Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain had heard about each other, of course. Ever since Valkyrie had discovered magic, when she was eight, her uncle couldn’t stop talking about her skeleton friend and how she should met his inspiration for The Raven, even when he hadn’t seen his friend for almost ten years. Unfortunately, Gordon had always a new story to write, a deadline to keep or a woman to chase, and could never arrange a meeting between the two of them. When Valkyrie was older, she learned that “her uncle’s skeleton friend” was actually that Skulduggery Pleasant, and not some really skinny guy. She knew that he was a skeleton, that he was a detective, that he had fought on the war against Mevolent with the other Dead Men and that he was an incredible powerful Elemental. She also knew that something had happened between the detective and Wreath, by the amused-yet-ironic way her teacher mentioned him sometimes, but given that that was the way Wreath talked about almost everyone, she hadn’t thought much about it. Then, of course, that had happened, and by the time she’d came back from her self-imposed exile, very few people talked with her at all, so she thought that the chances for her to meet him (or for him to want to meet her) were very slim.
Skulduggery, of course, had heard about a girl, shadow-prodigy and believed by many as the next Death Bringer. He’d heard about a girl who somehow had discovered her true name and had managed to protect it, only for her other self to find another body — don’t ask Skulduggery how that had happened — and kill an awful lot of people. He was on the other side of the planet, chasing the body count that Darquesse had made there, and by the time he arrived in Ireland, the end of the world had already been avoided by a team of psychs, a very powerful killer-god weapon and the very same girl, who had developed a kind of Adept discipline in her Surge that nobody had ever seen. After that of course he would be inclined to meet the girl, if only to be certain that she wasn’t a threat anymore, but she’d disappeared. Retired, some said. Running from what she’d done, whispered others. Skulduggery was too busy after Serpine to go look or even to care very much for someone who wasn’t an imminent danger. He only heard her name again twenty years later: not only she was back in the magic world, but was using her very unique and very powerful discipline to catch bad guys. Not being a threat, there wasn’t a reason to him go after her. He wasn’t the type of person to go after someone only to shake hands, after all, and he definitely wasn’t the type of guy who people wanted to be friends with.
Fate, as it turned out, can only be delayed a certain amount of time until a certain group of magic people decide to intervene. In fact, little did they know that there was an ongoing pool between the psychs. All of them had had visions about the two of them meeting (Cassandra had predicted it happening twenty-three times, while Finbar claimed he had seen forty-seven variations of the fateful encounter). While they didn’t understand exactly why was so important for those two people to meet, the psychs were far too invested in what had become their very own soap opera. Valkyrie, despite the somewhat psych powers she’d developed, was unaware of this particular thread of destiny (she sometimes dreamed with a very smooth voice talking to her, but could never remember what it’d said by the time she woke up) working in her favor. So, almost as readers binge reading a very exciting book, the psychs decided to peek a little further (or maybe it was a matter of correcting a huge, unforgivable plot hole). Cassandra had casually hinted Valkyrie that something very big would happen in the next Requiem Ball during one of their training sessions, and Finbar had not so casually warned Skulduggery that something very bad would happen if he didn’t attend the next Requiem Ball.