Chapter Text
The fae have a bad reputation for trickery and deception but, well, it's not quite that simple. Fae and humanity have less in common than an orange and a corkscrew. It's true that it's best not to deal with them at all, but not because they want to hurt you. The favor of the fae, you see, is often more dangerous than their fury.
A child who hates worms will perhaps smash them when they see them, but will make no special effort to seek them out, will avoid them even. A child who loves worms, being told that cutting a worm in half will make two worms, goes out and collects a hundred worms, and, out of love, cuts them all in half. The worms suffer, and die. Would it not be better, for the worms, to be hated? This is the favor of the fae.
Pity the worms, with the favor of the child. Pity the poor fool with the favor of the fae.
- - -
It starts so normally, because it always does. With the exception of the whole Port Townsend debacle (demonic possession, yikes), the interesting cases always look incredibly boring to begin with. Charles wasn't even really paying attention, something about a odd tree in a national park acting odder than usual. How oddly do trees normally act?
Their client (forest ranger in life, and, apparently, in death) is qualified to know all about the oddness of trees and she is convinced something is wrong. She doesn't want to go herself, there is a flower in the area that only blooms once every hundred years (right now, of course) and she thinks that may be the cause, but she hasn't been dead long enough to know how to investigate such things. Her map is detailed and handdrawn and she can pay quite handsomely in selkie teeth. It's obvious that Edwin wants to investigate this flower, as well as this tree, so they accept.
Apparently, the tree has been quiet lately ("is this not typical of trees?" asked Edwin, eyebrow quirked), and she would like someone with experience in supernatural biology to offer their opinion. The tree is quite old, old enough that all the records Edwin can find of the area make mention of it. Intruiging. Maybe they'll learn about the life cycles of magical talking trees.
It's nice, actually, back in the office, just the two of them, (using their usual caseload to steadfastly avoid talking about what Edwin said in Hell) everything is just like it has been for the past 30 years, but better, because they aren't on the run from Death anymore. In fact, they have a few cases lined up after this one from Her.
Edwin is lost in thought, pacing about the office in his shirtsleeves, slowly accumulating a pile of relevant texts on the desk, next to where Charles is perched, watching him. The thing about what Edwin said, on that staircase, is that the more Charles tries not to think about it, the more he thinks about it. He's figured it out enough to know that he doesn't know, and that he doesn't even know where to begin trying. He is a kindergardener faced with a calculus problem.
This, thinks Charles, as Edwin pulls out another book, riffling its pages, this is perfect. I could stay here another 30 years, I could stay here forever, solving cases with you. Heaven has nothing to offer me I don't have in this office right now.
If only I could figure out what that means.
- - -
They leave at nightfall, the flowers being most active at night. If they are causing problems for this odd tree, it will be easiest to tell then. Even approaching the border of the forest, the blooming is impossible to miss.
The flowers are, Edwin is delighted to note, breathtakingly beautiful. Starblossom, cousin of the moonflower and the benign sunflower, ghostly white blooms that appear high on the boughs of oak trees, invisible to human eyes. They are parasitic, technically, like mistletoe, although they grow so slowly and require so little they only rarely kill or even harm their host. The leaves absorb starlight and synthesize it into an odd glowing pollen that they release only once every hundred years.
A hundred years is an approximation, of course, it depends entirely upon how much starlight they are exposed to. Some, in distant, undeveloped lands are said to bloom more often, maybe every 75 years. These, so near London, have not been reported to bloom since the mid 1600s.
The name starblossom, for a plant that lives on starlight is apt, but, in fact, accidental. They are named starblossoms for their spores, which, to ghosts and other supernatural life, glow like thousands of stars, swirling like galaxies in the breeze. Charles is, predictably, enraptured. Edwin is, predictably (embarrassingly), enraptured as well, though not by the flowers. At least, not directly.
He looks beautiful, Edwin tries not to think. Charles, holding a flower out for Edwin, a halo of stars in his dark hair, smiling. He bows and presents the flower in his open palm, looking up at Edwin like a suitor, stars reflected in his brown eyes. Edwin looks away.
I'm sorry, Edwin thinks, accepting the flower (for scientific purposes only, of course) I will never ask anything more of you, just this, stay with me forever. I'm sorry to press you. I will never again, just stay.
But then, of course, it all has to go wrong, doesn't it? Damn tree.
- - -
They don't take cases involving the fae if they can help it. If they do encounter faeries they turn and run. Some things just aren't worth risking.
It's just bad luck really. Unfortunate. They didn't know. Their client didn't know. In fact, no mortal being had any idea what they were about to get themselves into.
- - -
The tree is unremarkable from a distance, especially after trekking through the most breathtaking forest imaginable. They've reached the edges of the starblossoms, only a few are waving high above them now and the spores have largely dispersed. Edwin has a few caught in his hair that Charles is not staring at. And would never stare at.
Edwin is crouched, examining some fallen starblossom petals, as Charles approaches the tree. Slowly, in case it talks or whatever. It doesn't, but, as he nears it, maybe a meter away from the trunk, the silence of the forest changes. From the silence of an empty forest, nearing midnight, to the silence of a full theater, waiting. The silence of a held breath. A watching, listening kind of silence.
They've had run-ins with the fae. He has heard (or rather, not heard) this before and, if he had noticed, they would have turned around right there and then. Avoided the whole catastrophe. But he didn't notice. Blame the stars. (Blame Edwin for rolling up his sleeves, have his forearms always been so distracting?) Blame the girl, actually.
Because that's when he sees her (how did he not see her before?), sitting up aginst the trunk of the tree, a girl in a nightgown. She is around his own age, with long dark hair and, when she looks up at him, with sparse freckles and green eyes, his first thought is that she looks remarkably like Edwin. His second thought is that she is really beautiful. And then he notices the blood matted in her hair, and that she can see him, and, oh, he thinks, she's dead.
- - -
The problem with the tree is obvious. It is an oak, after all, and quite old. But first -
Alice is the name of girl Charles finds. Alice Carter, 15, killed by her stepdad in an argument, when he shoved her down a flight of concrete stairs. Charles turns away when she tells them, clenches his fists, his jaw. Edwin wonders (tries not to wonder) if his touch would relax Charles, or wind him tighter. You owe me nothing, he wants to say, forget about it, forget it all.
She lives (lived) downwind, saw the spores in the breeze and came to see them. She was walking when this tree, in her words, asked for help. She was in the middle of figuring out how to control her spectral form, apparently by brute force (Charles is impressed, he had some difficulty with that back in the day) when they had happened upon her. She tells them this in short, clipped, businesslike sentences. Edwin finds he doesn't mind her, until, well, until she bursts into tears.
Charles is startled for a moment before moving to sit next to her awkwardly, hand on her back, shushing. He shoots Edwin a beseeching look, as though he is not by far the more qualified of them two for this situation. Edwin is still frozen stiff, shocked. She is obviously trying to collect herself, scubbing harshly at her face.
"I wish I wasnt fucking dead," she says, sounding devastated and angry that she is emoting, and Charles' poleaxed look melts into empathy.
"Goddamn it, sorry, I just, it's hitting me that that bastard really- ugh!" she puts her head in her hands (leaning up against Charles now and she is really very pretty and he's still touching her back), and composes herself, pushing her hair back from her face. She appears to have willed her headwound away. Edwin is reluctantly impressed.
"Yeah. It fucking sucks. I'm Charles, and this is Edwin. We're, uh, dead too, obviously"
Charles is smiling at her (and he is so handsome, smiling at her, and she is looking at him like Crystal did at the beginning, and she is a ghost, just like them, so she won't have to leave and age, she will stay 15 just like Charles is 16 and she is so pretty and he is looking at her like he looked at Crystal before they realized all the reasons they wouldn't work, but it would work with Alice, probably, forever, and can your heart break if you don't technically have one anymore because Edwin is starting to feel like he might be sick even though that's not possible for ghosts) and Edwin is still frozen.
Stay, he thinks, staring at Charles as he begins to speak, stay with me forever. Please. Please.
And he can imagine it all slipping away, eternally tagging along at Charles' heels like a lovesick puppy, forever second fiddle. He realizes all at once that, as much as he wants Charles to be happy (with all of his heart) it would kill him again to watch it.
Charles is speaking animatedly to her now, something Edwin can't make out over the ringing in his ears (when did that start?), and she rolls her eyes. His hand is still on her back. Charles is charming, incredibly so, and Alice is clearly charmed. They are a well matched pair, he thinks, they look nice together. His hand is still on her back as he leans closer to her. She laughs at a sweeping gesticulation and then she looks directly at Edwin.
He starts, embarrassed to be caught staring. Charles is staring at him too. Expecting. Did he miss being asked a question? Oh no. What are they here for? Oh, the tree. Yes, the tree.
- - -
Alice is a lot like Crystal, except that she has her memories and is dead and isn't American and well, Alice is like Crystal in that Charles likes her immediately. When he tells her that he and Edwin are dead she fixes him with a withering look and says, "yeah, no shit sherlock." She's got her headwound under control, which is insanely fast. She died tonight. It took Charles months to feel warm. Imagine her with some practice.
Another parallel between Alice and Crystal - Charles is a little scared of them.
He tells her about the agency, it's the first thing that comes to mind. He needs to keep talking while she puts her armor back on. She's clearly embarassed to have cried in front of them. And Edwin obviously needs a moment to recover after being startled like that.
"-and, between you and me," he leans forward to stage-whisper "I'm Watson. These could be real stars for all I know!" He sweeps a hand around them, to the floating spores, being dramatic intentionally, showy, so Alice and Edwin have space to compose themselves. Alice laughs as he catches a spore, holds it up between two fingers and pronounces "definitely a star! What say you, Holmes?"
Uh oh. Charles should have blustered longer, Edwin clearly hasn't recovered from unexpected secondhand emotions. He is staring at them like he had seen a ghost, or, like, whatever the ghost equivalent of seeing a ghost is. Seen a ghost's ghost. He jumps when he notices them staring back.
"The starblossoms are too far west," he says quickly, albeit, a little nonsensically. Alright, change of topic then, Charles can roll with that.
"They seem perfectly healthy to me, mate. Sending up those spores just like all the rest of them"
"Well, yes, that's rather the problem. They hadn't spread this far west last time they bloomed." Edwin looks up at the boughs of the tree above them, maybe a half dozen starblossoms at the very top, waving in a spectral breeze.
"This tree is quite old, and starblossoms are parasitic. Very mildly, of course, but this tree must simply be too frail to support them."
Alice takes a deep breath and stands, shakily. "Well, might as well climb up there and pull them out. We're already dead, not like falling will kill us again" Her form seems to waver for a moment and, dead as she may be, Charles doesn't exactly think she's in shape for climbing right now. Edwin clearly agrees.
"You've had a horible shock, Miss Carter-"
"Alice"
"-why don't you sit for a moment longer and Charles can tell you about the Case of the Haunted Gumball Machine? It's an amusing one."
Edwin is smiling at her, but Charles can see the tension in his shoulders, in his hands. Edwin would probably be upset rather than comforted if Charles touched him in front of a stranger. If Edwin is even usually comforted by his touch, which is unclear. Charles wishes he were.
"You didn't think it was very amusing when it happened, mate."
Edwin looks at Charles and somehow grows more tense. He looks like he is gearing up to change the subject, and then abruptly lets it go, shaking his head minutely. He looks away from Charles, tracking the path of a floating spore between them.
"I don't find you being in danger to be amusing, Charles," he says. "Although with some distance I can appreciate that it was certainly... unlikely."
"The alligator or the bit with the-"
"Sorry, a haunted gumball machine!? With an alligator? That's bullshit." Alice is looking between the two of them, seemingly unimpressed. She puts on an affected posh accent, imitating Edwin "Oh, let's haze the new ghost, she'll believe whatever we tell her about starflowers and alligators."
Edwin cracks a smile, a real smile, and says, "Unfortunately, we are quite serious. Charles tells it better than I do."
Edwin turns that smile on Charles and he still has those spores caught in his hair, like a halo, or a crown of stars, and for a second Charles' unnecessary breath is caught in his throat. And then Alice sinks down beside him again, head on his shoulder, clearly exhausted.
"Well, this was back in 1993..."
- - -
The tree wasn't that difficult to climb, all things considered. It's not meant to be climbed, but it also isn't meant to not be climbed, and Edwin had climbed a great deal of the latter in the 70 years before meeting Charles. It didn't shake violently out of his hands, or shoot poison, or burn him, and it wasn't covered in hot oil, or blood, or glue. Uneventful, really.
Charles' voice drifts indistinctly upwards, regaling their new charge with the account of their misadventures at an American style diner, only a few years after they had met. She interjects, now and again, incredulously. Nothing has to change, he tells himself, we will lead her to her afterlife, and nothing will change.
The starblossoms really aren't that hard to uproot, they glide out of the tree easily. The leaves and stems are so pale green they are almost white, and unpleasantly waxy to the touch. He gathers them anyway, keeping the flowers intact, to take back to the office as a curiousity. (Or to give to Charles, who had given him a flower already.)
It is theraputic, in a way, to complete a simple task, route to the next one, and do it again. The difficult part is navigating from one blossom to the next as efficiently as possible. There are only 5 starblossoms rooted in this tree, and Edwin is nearly to the fifth when Charles shouts, nearly scaring him into falling (which, as aforementioned, would not kill him again. It would, however, be incredibly embarassing).
"You saw them LIVE!? I cannot BELIEVE-"
And then Charles and Alice are yelling over each other in excitement. He looks down to see Charles jumping up and down, before practically shaking Alice by the shoulders. Alice is talking quickly, holding out a braceleted arm and, well, has Charles ever been that excited to talk to Edwin? What do Charles and Edwin have in common, truly? I saved him and he feels he owes me, thinks Edwin, bitterly, he feels bad for me, alone.
Charles falls dramatically to the ground before breaking out into song, not a song Edwin knows. Alice joins him instantly.
It should be like that, shouldn't it, he thinks, looking away, back towards the flower he is almost at. They don't want to be dead, neither of them. They shouldn't be. They should be going to concerts and eating spagetti and growing up and having kids and-
None of that was ever in the cards for Edwin. Not being born how he was, when he was. His life wasn't going to be good. He would trade his miserable theoretical lifespan for 70 years of hell and then 30 years of Charles Rowland. This was the best he could've ever hoped to ask for. Charles, though. Charles and Alice.
I wish someone had found him, that night, other than me, he thought, someone who could help. He would've found someone like Alice, and fallen in love and they would be alive together, right now, going to a show and growing up and wouldn't that be the best thing in the world? Charles Rowland, alive?
And then he pulls up the last flower.
- - -
It's an old tree, older by far than the oceans that now cut through the land, older even than the stars that feed the strange little creatures that gnaw on its bones. The First Tree, though it doesn't think of itself as a tree, it doesn't know of the plants that imitate its form. It knows, in a vague, inexact way, of odd small creatures who paint upon its surface and ask for wishes, dreams, favors. They haven't, not for many years. The First Tree has been forgotten since before the fish in the seas and the green plants.
Humans are just another shape of the odd small creatures of will and wish. Same as all of them, to the First Tree, same as every other one, on every other planet, in every other time. Creatures whose bones are turning to iron in the heart of their dying star and creatures who have not yet been born, who will know a sun that has not yet formed.
One of them has come and picked off the gnawings with its will and the First Tree reaches out and plucks the wish from its small strange hands and says, yes, I will make this. Thank you, I will grant you your wish.
God pity the fool with the favor of the fae.