Chapter Text
A giant snake. Charles bloody Rowland killed a child-eating, youth-stealing, giant fucking snake. With a sword of all things. Proper brills was what that was, aside from his cricket bat breaking.
He couldn’t wait to tell Edwin about the whole thing. But the job wasn’t fully jobbed yet.
Climbing back out of the pit, he ran into Crystal first. She looked okay, good. Check that box.
“Snake’s dead,” he managed out as he helps Crystal to her feet. A quick scan of her revealed no obvious injuries, but a quiet fury held in her eyes.
Before he could ask anything more—where was Edwin? Niko?—a screech tore their attention away. A now severely aged Esther charged at Crystal. She, almost effortlessly, sent Esther flying back with a strike.
Charles had to hold back flinching at the unconscious reminder of his father’s backhand.
And then… well then Charles really can’t explain what happened next. He and Edwin have seen many a supernatural phenomenon over their thirty plus years detective-ing, but this was something… different. A woman covered in something that looks like blood, clad in only a tattered skirt, forced the front door open. Charles could only look on in a stupor as the woman stalked in and dragged Esther kicking and screaming to who-knows-where.
Esther’s gone. Job officially jobbed then. In the accompanying silence from the retreat of the door behind the bloodied woman—was that the giant woman covered in blood Crystal mentioned seeing inside Esther’s mind? She seemed significantly less giant than Charles was led to believe—Charles could feel an exhale of a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
Now for Edwin. Charles rushed past Crystal into the adjoining room where, from the echoes of Edwin’s scream etched into his memory, Charles reckoned Edwin would be. Eyes frantic and determined for a face he knew better than his own, Charles spotted Edwin restrained to some sort of contraption. He refrained to think what that contraption could do to illicit such pain in Edwin. If he still had a stomach, Charles would suppose it would have dropped to the other side of the world.
Edwin looked to be asleep on the table, which was more troubling than peaceful. Since ghosts, let alone Edwin, don’t sleep.
“Hey, Edwin,” Charles tried to gently nudge him awake. “Let’s get you out of this, yeah?”
Edwin laid unresponsive.
“Come on, Eds. You can rest when we are back at the shop, promise. Just please wake up.”
Charles’s voice eeks with a barely contained tremor. His shaking of Edwin growing more frantic. But nothing. It was like Edwin was dead to the world… again.
Charles almost wished he could be sick for some sort of relief.
“Crystal,” Charles calls out, reluctantly turning away from Edwin to find out where she ended up. “Hey Crystal, something’s wrong with Edwin, he—”
Charles’s question died in his mouth upon spotting Crystal hunched down over a body.
“C-Crystal?” He gently approached her shaking form., barely catching the chanting of words spilling from Crystals mouth: I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.
And then he sees the subject of her protestations: Niko.
Niko, pale as a ghost aside from the bloom of crimson at her heart. A small bear figurine clutched in her hand.
Niko, dead.
Niko, dead.
A brief thought in the newly formed chaos of Charles’s mind flittered by: Am I still in hell? Did Edwin and I not escape?
He almost wished that was the case. Then he could wake up, grab a terrified yet awake Edwin, and get the hell out of hell.
But no amount of blinking or wishing or pinching himself was going to fix this. He needed to fix this. It all seemed overwhelming, threatening to consume him whole.
In the overwhelming held a form of clarity though. Like all of the noise and pain and panic could not fit into Charles and instead transformed into a single-minded determination. If it meant fixing things—getting Edwin and Crystal and him out of this situation—Charles can do numb.
He’s done it before, and he will do it a thousand times over if it means the ones he loves are safe.
As if he is a ghost looking at the ghost of himself, Charles witnessed himself gently, but insistently pull a sobbing Crystal off Niko’s body.
“We need to go. Death will be here soon.” He heard himself utter out, preempting any argument from Crystal. “We need to go.”
“We can’t just leave her here!” Crystal bit back, her voice cracking in despair.
“We can come back, just not now.” Charles doesn’t know how to get Crystal to listen. He needs to go. Edwin needs to go. They cannot have gone through all of this just to be split up by Death.
Crystal just continued to stare at Charles in a mute inner conflict. Charles pushed on, focusing now on Edwin, still in bindings. He ignored the shaking in his hands as he fiddles with a ring of keys found on the floor beside Edwin. He ignored the tears threatening to spill out of his eyes as he tries to find the right key to unlock the bindings. He ignored the hiss and the shot of pain as he accidentally touched the iron encircling Edwin’s wrists. Most of all, he ignored the look of Edwin on the table, motionless and looking weaker than he did when Charles found him huddled upon himself in hell.
Charles ignored the pain—he could do that. It was something he was good at.
He glanced back at Crystal, coming more into herself as the realization of Charles’s quiet desperation sinks in. He held her stare, an agreement forged in pain and resignation happening in the space between. She hurried over to help finish unbinding Edwin after the fourth hiss of Charles touching iron.
Charles, without hesitation, gathered Edwin’s form into his arms—his head limply rolled onto Charles’s shoulder. A small mercy that ghosts only weigh as much as they feel the need to. And in this state, Edwin barely weighed anything at all.
A morose part of his mind commented that he looked like a proper knight—first a sword fight and now rescuing the princess from an evil witch. Another part of him commented that Edwin would be right cross with him if he saw how Charles was carrying Edwin.
Let him be cross. Let him be annoyed. Let him give Charles that exasperated look so integral to his being. He would take all the snarky remarks from Edwin if it meant he woke up.
But one thing at a time. He focused back on the task at hand, leading Crystal and Edwin away from that witch’s house of horrors.
Charles will fix this. He has to.