Chapter Text
Charles learned at a very young age that in order to survive, reading people quickly was a necessity. The home he grew up in had been an emotional minefield, so his ability to read a room as soon as he entered it was crucial if he wanted to avoid his father’s unwanted attention. He made errors sometimes, especially as a young boy, which was always unfortunate - his father was not very forgiving of errors. Being able to predict his father’s mood swings was often the difference between a peaceful evening alone in his room, or an evening spent pleading for mercy on the kitchen floor. Learning to avoid the emotions of others became a method of survival, and Charles had always been good at surviving.
Well, until now. Now he’s dead and that habit, however exhausting, has followed him to his afterlife.
Ten years ago, as he laid dying on a dingy attic floor, Charles made three small discoveries about his new friend. The first was that even when Edwin was annoyed, he was kind. Charles was scared and dying, so he was naturally filled with what probably seemed like very stupid and obvious questions. Edwin answered all of them, sometimes with a bit of snark or an eye roll, but he took the time to answer every single question until Charles was satisfied. His patience and gentleness reminded Charles of some of the kinder teachers that had taught him, ones who encouraged him to stay after class and ask as many questions as he needed. The ones who had cared enough to ask about his home life, but didn’t have the power to force him to divulge any information or send the authorities to his home for a visit.
The second discovery Charles made was that Edwin seemed deeply haunted, and not just because he was a ghost. As Edwin explained the ins and outs of the afterlife, Charles noticed a look in his eyes that he couldn’t quite describe. When Edwin looked at him, it was almost as if he wasn’t quite seeing him. His eyes and his mind seemed to be seeing and processing two completely different things. It was a look that Charles sometimes saw in his mother’s eyes, though he could never figure out what to make of it. He just knew that when his father got angry, or began to reach for his belt, his mother eventually stopped trying to intervene. Her expression would instead go slightly slack and she would stare directly through their interaction, almost as if it wasn’t happening at all. It hurt Charles so profoundly to feel as though someone was staring through him, especially his mother, because he never knew why . He suspected being looked past was a feeling he would just have to get used to, given that he was now invisible to most living people.
The third discovery he made was that when Edwin was alone, he liked to hum. Shortly after Charles’ passing and Death’s departure, Edwin had instructed Charles to practice interacting with the world in his new spectral form while he started concocting a plan for their departure from the school. Being a ghost wasn’t as difficult as Charles thought it would be, though it did feel a little like learning to walk on water. The floor and walls were permeable to him now, and that was a new fact of life that he would just have to get used to.
Once Charles was fairly certain he could walk through St. Hilarion’s without sinking into the hallways, he went to find Edwin. The school was dark and quiet with sleep, which was certainly much more hospitable for two ghosts than the bustling business of daytime classes and activities. Charles eventually found him set up in a dark corner of the library, flipping through a number of books and humming a familiar, jaunty tune that Charles couldn’t quite place.
“I swear I know that song from somewhere,” Charles said, breaking the silence around them. Edwin flinched harshly, briefly looking as though he might jump up and bolt in the opposite direction.
Charles gave him an apologetic look. “Sorry mate, didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just me, innit?”
Edwin straightened his jacket in an irritated huff, though his face betrayed a brief flash of embarrassment. The flash went as quickly as it came, carefully replaced by a look of indifference.
“It is quite alright. I was simply not expecting you to return so soon,” Edwin replied, absentmindedly flipping through the book in his hands. “It is a jass* composition called The Entertainer. It was performed quite often when I was alive, though I’m sure it is still a popular tune in some contemporary circles. It is a rather bothersome earworm that I cannot seem to put out of my mind."
Edwin kept his eyes downcast, focused on the text in front of him. His tone was deliberately casual, but Charles could tell that he had struck some sort of sensitive chord.
Before Charles could ask any more questions, Edwin quickly steered their conversation back to planning out their future endeavors as a team. The pragmatic mask that Edwin always seemed to wear was back in place, but Charles couldn’t help but wonder about the conflicted look that had been on his new friend’s face just moments before. He wasn’t sure what to make of it, but the fact that his comments may have been a source of heartache for Edwin made Charles deeply uncomfortable. He allowed Edwin to change the subject and made a mental note to approach his singing habit with caution in the future.
Charles has since learned to be content with letting Edwin hum undisturbed. He still finds it incredibly endearing, albeit a little surprising that his buttoned up friend has such a natural inclination towards such upbeat music. Edwin only seems to sing when his mind is engaged in another task, which leads Charles to suspect that Edwin doesn’t even realize he’s making noise at all. The tunes are never ones he recognizes, which makes sense given the long-past timeline of Edwin’s short life, so Charles has gotten to know the songs through stolen moments of listening to Edwin from the other room. Edwin is pretty cagey about his singing habit, which means that if he suspects Charles can hear him, he always stops. After ten years together, Charles knows that Edwin puts up an infinite number of walls between himself and others in order to maintain a sense of safety (not that Charles could ever blame him, given what he’s been through). If Edwin is able to lower his walls a little so he can hum in their home, then the least Charles can do is respect Edwin’s obvious desire for privacy. Besides, Charles likes when he sings. Edwin’s voice is soft and carries a tune beautifully, which only adds to the excitement of getting a peek at Edwin's hidden inner self. He’s come to associate the sound of Edwin’s singing with a sense of safety; if Edwin is feeling content and calm enough to sing, then everything really must be okay.
Right now, though, Charles is not sure that anything will ever be okay again.
Even on this particularly gloomy Sunday in the middle of November, Charles is content. Edwin is on their sofa, thumbing through a weathered copy of Mystical Varieties & Applications of Loch-Born Life Forms. Charles is busy playing with a hacky sack he lifted from a local toy shop, every so often interrupting Edwin’s reading to show him a new trick he’s figured out. It’s an all-around calm day, and Charles feels content to fill their companionable silence with mindless chatter.
“Mate, why’re you reading about the Loch Ness monster?” Charles asks, attempting to kick the hacky sack up and catch it with his other foot. “We don’t live near any water, much less any sort of loch.”
“I suppose I would not expect you to know that the Loch Ness monster is not the only creature to ever reside within a loch,” Edwin retorts, refusing to look up from his page. “I am reading about a variety of creatures and magical plants that live within landlocked bodies of water. For instance, in Northern Ireland, there is a rare type of moss that –”
Edwin’s explanation is cut off by an abrupt knock on their office door. Charles kicks the hacky sack up and catches it in his hand, letting the anticipation of a new potential client wash over him. As much as he loves a calm day at home with Edwin, a new case sounds like a much more exciting way to spend a dreary Sunday evening. Charles kicks his toy into the other room and moves to open the office door for their visitor, while Edwin places his book on their coffee table and takes a seat at the desk. Charles pauses with his hand on the doorknob and looks back at Edwin.
“Ready?” he asks.
Edwin straightens up a pile of papers on his desk and gives him a short nod. “Of course.”
The woman Charles finds standing outside of their office door is most certainly dead, but what catches his eye is her haunting and unnatural beauty. Her cherub-like face is dotted with freckles, complete with heart-shaped lips that seem to be pale and bloodless in death. Long, thick brown hair spills down her back and over her shoulders, making her complexion seem as pale and smooth as porcelain in contrast. Steely blue eyes stare back at him, unblinking and icy, like the depths of a lake on a cold winter’s night. Charles shivers a little and tries to shrug off the phantom feeling of ice water running down his limbs.
“Hope you were looking for the Dead Boy Detective agency! Otherwise, you’ve got the wrong office,” He says cheerfully, trying to resist the urge to break away from her scrutinizing gaze. “Come on in, me and my partner would be glad to hear all about your supernatural problem-solving needs.”
The brown haired woman steps into their office, her long white dress covering her feet and brushing the floor. The length of the dress and her graceful movements give the illusion that she is gliding, like a balletic swan across a lake. She takes a seat in one of the chairs opposite Edwin’s desk and folds her hands in her lap. Charles closes the door, allows himself a moment to shake off any lingering feelings of frigidness, and perches himself on the corner of the desk.
"My name is Riosh,” the woman says, her lilting Irish accent carrying a distinctly music-like quality. “I need your assistance in recovering something precious that was stolen from me long ago. Without it, I fear I cannot pass on.”
Edwin nods and opens his notepad, pen in hand.
“Please, Riosh, inform me of as many details as you can remember.”
Riosh begins to tell the two detectives a story of a man whom she once loved from afar. She informs them that she is a selkie, which is not a term Charles is familiar with. Edwin seems to understand what she means though, so Charles resolves to ask him about it later.
“Many years ago, I lived in the sea with my sisters,” she explains, fiddling with the folds of her dress. “We were content to play in the waves and live off of the resources that Brigid** so graciously provided for us. But one day I saw the most beautiful young man fishing for crabs off the coast of the Irish Sea, and I knew my life was destined for more.”
Riosh smiles sadly, her hardened blue eyes softening a bit. Charles relocates from his place on the desk to the seat beside her and offers her a hand. The two detectives encounter many spirits in their work that are still grieving their own deaths, especially if their deaths were gruesome or unfair. The forlorn spirits are often in need of a kind word and a friendly face, which Charles is always more than happy to provide. That was what he had gotten on the night that he died, and his afterlife is all the better for it.
Riosh takes his hand gently and smiles at him thankfully. He returns her smile, which seems to give her the courage to continue.
“My sisters tried to warn me of the dangers of men, but I was infatuated with the thought of becoming his lover. I circled his fishing vessel for many days and nights after that first sighting, dreaming of the life we could lead together. Once I heard his crew mates call him ‘Anatole’, I had all but decided. I was fated to be his bride.”
Riosh swallows thickly and takes a deep breath, clearly overwhelmed. Charles squeezes her hand gently, hoping to pass along whatever feeling of comfort he can manage.
“On the night of a full moon, over sixty years ago, I removed the skin that Brigid had so kindly gifted me and waded my way onto the shore of the Irish Sea. I was determined to find Anatole and devote myself to him as a wife. I was overjoyed to find that he lived just off of the water’s edge, and when we met, it felt as if I was coming home. Against my sisters’ wishes, we fell in love instantly and were wed within days. I could not have been happier and I barely spared my sisters a passing thought, though I came to sorely regret our lack of contact as time went on. I stored my skin in a bedroom drawer and only removed it to refresh a moistening charm on it every full moon. We were happy, Anatole and I.”
Charles glances at Edwin, who is still dutifully taking notes while Riosh tells her story. He’s glad to see that Edwin is keeping track, because he’s sure going to have questions about all this ‘skin’ business later.
“After a handful of married months, I began to realize that Anatole was not particularly nice,” Riosh continues, releasing Charles’ hand and returning hers to her lap. Her face goes still and her gaze gains a faraway quality, as if the past is unfolding before her eyes. “He liked his libations, as all men do, but alcohol made him angry. Everything I did for him was inadequate, and if I so much as looked at another man, he became rather aggressive. He was convinced that I was running off during the night to sleep in the arms of others.”
Charles winces in sympathy, thinking back to some of the arguments that he had overheard between his mother and father growing up. He accused her of cheating nearly every other day, even though there had never been any proof that she had been unfaithful. Those nights were always the worst for him, especially if his mother had tried to stand up for herself.
“I decided one night, in a split second of clarity, that I had to get back to the sea,” Riosh says, her melodic voice shaking Charles from his own bitter memories. “I had to get back to my sisters. But when I went to retrieve my skin, it was… Gone,” Riosh whispered the last word, looking down at her lap.
Charles hears Edwin suck in a sharp breath and turns to look at his partner. He’s paused his notetaking and his features betray a look of sorrow. Charles gives him a confused look.
“Selkies cannot return to the sea without their skin,” Edwin explains quietly. “They become trapped on land, beholden to the individual that is in possession of it.”
Riosh nods, wiping tears from her cheeks. “He promised to reveal the location of my skin to me before his death, but he has since passed on and I am no closer to finding it than I am the day I lost it.”
Charles grins at Riosh, trying to display as much warmth as possible. “Then you’ve come to the right place, yeah? Finding lost items happens to be a Dead Boy Detectives’ specialty.”
The radiant smile that Riosh gives him is enough to warm his heart from the inside out.
“Right, so, new case! That's brills,” Charles remarks after escorting Riosh out of their office. She had finally finished relaying all of the information she could remember to Edwin, and had provided them with her wedding ring as a form of payment for their services.
Charles flops onto the sofa and picks up a throw pillow, fiddling with the tags.
“Mate, I have a question, and you have to promise not to laugh.”
Edwin looks up from his notepad, skeptical. “What is your question?”
“What even is a selkie?”
Edwin rolls his eyes in exasperation. “Really, Charles? Have you not bothered to read even the most basic of Celtic or Nordic mythology? Perhaps you would be more inclined to do research if I collected books with pictures.”
“Oi,’ Charles replies, throwing the pillow in his general direction. “That’s what I have you for, yeah? So stop scolding and fill me in.”
Edwin dodges the pillow easily and gives Charles an unimpressed look, but reaches into his desk and pulls out a well-worn blue book with a frayed white ribbon bookmark. The title reads Celtic Mythology of The Shores and Beyond.
“A selkie is a shapechanger that can take the form of a seal or a human woman,” Edwin explains while thumbing through the text. “In order to transform into a human, the selkie must remove her skin. If her skin becomes lost or irreparably damaged somehow, she is doomed to live out her days as a human.”
Charles lets out a low whistle. “Bad luck for Riosh, innit? That the man she left the sea for turned out to be such a knob.”
Edwin gives Charles a long look, and then returns to flipping through his book. “I suspect luck had very little to do with it. Men with temperaments like Anatole often seek out women that have no one else to turn to. He likely found her to be easy prey due to her lack of human understanding and separation from her sisters.”
Charles stares at Edwin a moment, mind stuttering to a halt. Did his mother have any sisters? He doesn’t remember ever meeting any aunts. Did she even have a family?
Edwin snaps his book closed, causing Charles to jump at the sudden noise. Edwin gives Charles a slightly concerned look.
“Are you quite alright, Charles? You are not normally one to startle so harshly.”
Charles recovers quickly, a relaxed smile spreading easily across his face.
“Aces, mate. Now, what’s the plan?”