Chapter Text
“You could have warned me,” Dexter’s voice sounds very far away.
“You knew what the case was,” Skulduggery says.
Dexter doesn’t look at his friend. He’s standing ramrod straight in the middle of the bedroom, eyes locked on her still face. In his periphery he can hear the emergency responders, the sound of vehicles and a siren. Skulduggery is knelt by the bed, scanning the scene.
“You could have said it was Cassandra.” Dexter says.
Skulduggery stands. “There’s no trace of magic use here. Her throat was slit. She woke up dying.”
“She woke up scared.” Dexter says. It’s evident on her face, the last thing she must have felt.
“The question is, how? How did a group organise a mass assassination of the most powerful Sensitives in the world, on the same night, without the Sensitives knowing?” Skulduggery brushes his gloves together, begins to leave.
“Where are you going?”
“To call Valkyrie,” Skulduggery says, shortly.
When Dexter is alone in the room he steps closer to the corpse. He’s seen death before, there’s nothing new in this. He wants to close her eyes, but knows not to change anything here until the photos are all taken, the evidence collected. It would be more dishonourable, to obstruct in any way the investigation of her murder.
Cassandra Pharos had lived gently. She had been a pacifist, and kind. Dexter had known her for centuries, and she had been one of those people that seemed quietly indominable. At some point she and Hopeless had had a fling, and even after that fizzled out she had been happy to help them, most of the time.
“We’ll get who did this to you,” Dexter says to her body, throat beginning its customary burn. He doesn’t believe the words even as he says them. “I’m sorry,” he adds, and then he walks out too.
Skulduggery is in the paddock, on the phone. Dexter watches his jerky pacing, the tension in his body, hears the forced gentle calm. The only reason Dexter is here is that Valkyrie is not. Yet she’s on the other side of an ocean, and here Dexter is, broken as he is, to try and do a job he was never good at. He wants to talk to Saracen; the last they had talked they’d both said harsh things. Some were old conflicts uprooted again; about his magic, about the war … Dexter blinks, and pulls out his phone, hurrying away from Skulduggery’s bitter conversation. Dexter scrolls to Saracen’s name in his contacts and presses shakily. Fuck, it’s ridiculous he hadn’t thought to call earlier. A targeted attack on powerful, well-known Sensitives has just occurred, and Saracen has always sworn he wasn’t one but he also always said he knew things, and how much would the assassins care for details in this?
The phone rings out to Saracen’s cheeky voicemail, so Dexter hangs up and calls two more times. His throat where Darquesse breached it burns; so does his chest, and behind his eyes. Saracen doesn’t pick up.
Dexter stands in this green paddock under the blue-grey sky, in the stunned certainty that yet another friend has died, and then his phone buzzes. It’s a text. What do you want?
Please pick up, it’s serious. Dexter types, shakily.
Busy.
Dexter stares at his phone, and as expected as the rejection is, it still anchors in his soul like lead.
Sensitives have been murdered. Stay safe.
I know. I’m not a Sensitive.
“Sick bastard,” Dexter mutters, and he shoves his phone back in his pocket.
That night he lies in his bed with eyes on the ceiling, and he thinks of the people he’s lost. The last year or two it’s become something of a hobby. In the war at least it had been expected, and yet it feels that the losses have piled up much worst in the Truce. Sometimes he relives the half-memories of the possession, of the way he was ripped apart and dropped like a plaything, returned to his senses in a destroyed body. The ill half-feeling, of being about to harm a child. Of doing things that were against his nature, and liking them.
Dexter doesn’t sleep much anymore. He doesn’t drink because he wants to pretend he hasn’t lost, and he doesn’t smoke because Larrikin would kill him, but neither does he do much else anymore. Under the heaviness of the past it’s difficult enough to eat and drink water, to work on cases when he’s requested, to forge forwards at all. Dexter has always had a part of him which, even in the direst circumstances, kept hope tight. It’s that part of him, the defiant solidity in his soul, which allows him still to rise each morning. Even if he goes to sleep shattered, with fitful dreams, as he does now.
"So what are you two fighting about?" Larrikin asks from the other side of the room.
Dexter rolls over in his bed, blinking sleep out of his eyes. The moonlight is drifting across the white bedsheets, the wooden boards, and settling in Larrikin's auburn hair. Dexter's partner is slouched in the green armchair, and Dexter just looks him over. He's not sure why it feels this important, to absorb the image of him in their room. He's barefoot, with black trousers and a white shirt half-unbuttoned and rolled to his elbows. Red suspenders are looped over his slender shoulders. At his right hand is an open notebook and pen, with notes sprawling across the lined pages.
"What do you mean?"
"You and Saracen," Larrikin asks. It's rare he's this serious, but his green eyes are sharp with worry.
"Do we need to talk about this now?" Dexter groans, closing his eyes. The sick ill feeling he fell to sleep with lingers, but it’s quieter than usual. Absently he rubs his throat, and Larrikin's padding over towards him.
"Is your throat bugging you again? Let me see that." And slender fingers press, gentle, just above his collarbone and warm relief floods his body. "I wish I could do more," Larrikin admits, miserably, pulling his hands away. Dexter's eyes fly open and he grabs Larrikin's hands.
"You do more than enough." He assures.
"I wish I could properly fix it."
"Magic can't do everything," Dexter says.
Larrikin stays knelt on the bed, worrying his lip. He looks so young like that, like how he had during the war. Dexter sits up and puts a hand on his cheek.
"You're my partner, not my healer," he says, "you can't save me from every hurt."
"I want to," Larrikin says, firmly.
"Well love, better suck it up," Dexter says, "anyway, what was your question?"
"Why are you two fighting?"
"He won't tell me his powers."
Larrikin leans back just a little. "And?"
"And?"
"He hasn't told most of us for centuries, you aren't that petty to get upset about it now."
"He doesn't trust me."
"Vex, don't lie to me." Larrikin says.
Dexter closes his eyes. "Alright."
"Well?"
"I - it's awful, Larrikin," he admits.
"Love, you're shaking," Larrikin says after a moment. "What have you been keeping in?"
Dexter brushes something wet from his face. Blinks. And then he is sobbing, sharp and intense, and Larrikin is holding him so tightly as if to squeeze the grief out of him.
"Hey, hey, it's going to be alright," Larrikin says into his hair.
"It's not, it's never going to be alright, never again."
"Honey, whatever happened, we can face it together," Larrikin says firmly. "I'm here, I'm with you, and together we will work it out."
"I don't know if that works, for this."
"There are always options," Larrikin says, "you should probably rest, though, you have that case and you barely slept at all last night. When you want, we will talk this out, and get it sorted."
Dexter leans his head on Larrikin's chest. "I'm so tired," he admits.
"I know," Larrikin says, and he kisses his shoulder, ridiculously affectionate. "I think we all are, at the moment."
"You should rest too," Dexter says.
"Unlike some, I actually have a decent sleep regime," Larrikin scoffs, but even so he settles by Dexter in their bed. As Dexter drifts off he hears him say one last thing. "We should get a cat. Keep you company."
In the morning Dexter gets another call from Skulduggery, and hurries out to Roarhaven, tears seemingly still locked in the back of his throat. It’s to visit Finbar Wrong’s home – and his wife, and children. He had been killed at the same time as Cassandra. The papers are calling it the Night of the Long Knives.
Dexter had only met Sharon once and briefly. At the time she’d been part of a pseudo-pagan cult which had sounded somewhat disturbing. Now she’s in jeans and a t-shirt, sitting in her aunt’s loungeroom, hands shaky on a cup of tea.
“Sharon,” he says as he enters, “I’m so sorry.”
“Hello, Officer Vex,” she says to the teacup. “How can I help you?”
“I left Skulduggery in the car,” Dexter says, “he’ll join us in a bit but I wanted to talk to you alone first. May I sit?”
She nods, jerkily.
“You’ve met Skulduggery, you know what he’s like,” Dexter says, “he will try but he has never been the most tactful.”
“I don’t need tact,” she says, fiercely, “I need to know who did this to my husband and his friends, and I need to rip them apart.”
“I understand,” Dexter says. “All I wanted to do is ask if there’s anything you need, at all, before we start the interview?”
This makes her look up. Dexter sees himself in her reddened gaze. “You’re a kind man, Dexter. Finbar liked you.”
“I liked Finbar, he was a good man.” Dexter says.
“How did you manage?” She asks, after an awfully heavy pause.
“Manage?”
“Losing-” she cuts herself off, jagged and raw.
Dexter leans forward, and slowly, slow enough that she could easily evade the touch, he puts a hand on hers. “Badly. But the thing that helped me was relying on the people left in my life, and knowing that I could honour the people I lost by living. It’s – it doesn’t help, I know, but the pain will one day be less sharp. I believe you can do this.”
“He won’t get to see his daughter’s graduation,” Sharon blurts, “or her marriage, or her kids, or come with me to Spain, or … How did he not see this? How did he not stop it?”
Dexter leans carefully backwards. After a moment, he pulls out his card. “I can’t do much, but if you need anything, please reach out.”
She takes the card and it crinkles in her grip. There’s a brief knock at the door frame, and Skulduggery walks in, hat in hand.
“Sharon,” Skulduggery says, “thank you for letting us talk to you. We won’t take up more time than necessary.”
“Hello, Skulduggery,” Sharon nods loosely. “I’ll tell you anything you need, but I don’t have anything helpful to say.”
“You never know what could be helpful,” Skulduggery says, sitting down next to Dexter. “I know this is hard, but did Finbar have any enemies? Anyone that came to mind when you discovered what happened?”
Sharon considers slowly, and starts to speak.
"Why would someone kill Cassandra Pharos?"
Larrikin puts down his pen and sighs. "It wouldn't be something personal. She wasn't the kind of person to get people that angry. It'd have to be about her magic. It's not like she was the only one killed."
"Who would want to kill all Sensitives?"
"Someone who wants to do something in the future, something that the Sensitives would stop."
"You're right. That's what worries me."
“Oh honey,” Larrikin says, “you can’t fix everything.”
When he's working, in the office or out on the field, grief floods his body; its veins and muscles and soul. When he's home he's not quite sure why he felt so horrifically distressed.
Dexter comes back from a day of desecrated bodies and the remnants of unhampered evil and is violently ill in his toilet. It's astonishing really that it takes that long, that he held onto his cold composure the entire day. Then hands are combing back his hair, and he's being guided to the sink, where he rinses out his mouth until he tastes more water than bile.
"Tell Skulduggery you can't keep helping him," Larrikin requests.
"And leave him to do it on his own?"
"He likes the work. You don't."
"He likes the puzzle, the chase, the violence. He doesn't like to see people's suffering."
"Are you sure?" Larrikin whispers, quiet.
Dexter closes his eyes and doesn't answer.
"Don't go tomorrow, at least," Larrikin suggests.
"The quicker we find the killer, the more people we save," Dexter shakes his head.
Larrikin sighs. "I just wish you got to rest."
"When has rest ever helped me?" Dexter asks quietly.
"When you were recovering from Serpine's attack, after you jumped in front of me," Larrikin says. "It sure helped then."
"Perhaps," Dexter says, eyes closing despite himself. Larrikin guides him to bed. He drifts to sleep with his partner's fingers carding through his hair, and somehow that makes a tear slip down his face, even as he loses hold on wakefulness altogether.
"You've seemed distracted, distant," Skulduggery Pleasant says, at the wheel of the Bentley as they race through the countryside.
Dexter frowns at his reflection in the window. "What do you mean?"
"This entire case, you've barely spoken, barely made suggestions." Skulduggery turns tightly into a lane on their right. "I would have thought you had more composure."
"I speak less because it burns everytime I open my mouth," Dexter says, with forced mildness.
"No, it's not just that."
"What, then?"
"I'm just worried." Skulduggery says, his delivery possibly the most awkward possible version of that sentence anyone has ever spoken.
"I'm doing my job, aren't I?" Dexter scowls. "I'm not Valkyrie, but you asked me to help. I'm doing you a favour."
"That's not what I meant. I ... appreciate that. You just seem to be lost. Miserable. Have you called Saracen?"
"Friends are dead and our job is to discover their killers. Before that, even more people died, people we loved. The world almost was destroyed." Dexter coughs, pauses until he feels he can speak again. "Did you think I would come to you cheery?"
The silence stretches as they approach their destination. Skulduggery parks outside the farmhouse, but doesn't immediately move.
"Stay at my house tonight. You don't have to be alone. I have a spare bedroom."
"I'm not alone," Dexter says, bewildered.
"What's there for you, in that tiny apartment?"
My partner, he wants to say, bewildered, but the words burn on his tongue and the moment to respond is lost. Skulduggery sighs and steps out of the car, and Dexter follows, as they go to interview another potential witness who undoubtedly knows nothing.
"Why are you two fighting?" Larrikin asks again, that evening.
Dexter stares at the cobwebbed ceiling. "Skulduggery was Lord Vile. We found out around the same time. Saracen doesn't know why I haven't reported him."
The silence stretches so heavy that Dexter turns his head to see his partner's response, eyes burning. The chair is empty. Dexter closes his eyes as tears trickle down his face, and wonders if Larrikin will return soon, or whether the horror of the situation has pushed him to leave. Dexter lacks neither the capacity nor the right to pursue him.
In the end, Dexter gets to sleep alone. He still has work in the morning. He wishes Larrikin kept a phone - unable to reach him - but knows the man will return when he is ready.
He always has, before.