Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I am responsible for my own happiness.

Crystal had, at first, tried showing Edwin and Charles little videos of advice on her device.  (Edwin refuses to call it a phone - he has only seen her use it as such once, and he does not consider it to be one, by definition, merely because it theoretically possesses that capability, any more than he considers it to be a torch, which is a function she uses far more frequently.)

When she realized that neither of them was actually willing to pay attention (though Charles, at least, pretended to sometimes), she tried showing them pictures of text, trite quotes and bits of instruction on ‘mental health’.  Charles smiled and nodded and didn’t read it - Edwin knew that was partly because Charles couldn’t read something that was moving, like Crystal’s device in her hand - and Edwin, well, was not so indulgent.

So she had started printing them out.  The office had a printer, now, tucked in a cabinet.  Its intended purpose was so that, when Crystal found case-relevant information on her Internet, it could be rendered into physical form to add to their files.  She had, however, perverted that purpose by printing the images of text from her device.

Producing the solid backgrounds of the images was a wild waste of ink, which Edwin had by then learned was more valuable than all but the rarest potion ingredients.  He had, eventually, put his foot down on the matter.  If she wanted them to read little bits of pointless nonsense, she could find more of the pre-printed pamphlets she had brought a stack of into the office, once.  But there had been one print-out, on a pink background, text over it in an almost unreadable loopy lilac, that had stuck in his mind, and he could not get it out.

I am responsible for my own happiness.

It fell right into the hole in his heart that had been left some weeks before, by another sentence that had not been framed so delicately.

Who else will hold it together and keep the spirits up? You? Are you gonna do that, huh?

Edwin knew perfectly well that Charles was merely lashing out at him because he was the safest target on that bleak cliff; the one person he could trust to bear the impact of his pain and not leave him for it.  But that did not mean that none of what he said was true.  It simply meant he hadn’t said it with genuine intention to hurt.

It was true, for example, that Charles hated being dead.  Edwin had always known that, it wasn’t news; but hearing it said like that, just as Charles had been pulling away from him and towards Crystal, as they were spending nights apart for the first time in decades, had made it sting in ways it never had before.

It was true, also, that Charles believed he wasn’t good enough, and Edwin had always known that, too.  He had done his best to combat it, over the years, training his tongue, unaccustomed to openness, into letting all his honest praise for Charles spill forth freely.  He had taught himself, over years, so that whenever he looked at Charles in awe of his sparkling brilliance, or his marvellous dexterity, or his artistic skill, he let his adoration trip from his lips.  (It wasn’t enough.  It had never been enough.  But he would never stop trying.  Even when he felt a new sort of adoration, he let it spill, too, as soon as he had the chance.)

The point, however, was that it only stood to reason that that one bit, the only part that was a targeted bit of acid spat directly at Edwin’s heart, instead of an accidental splash as Charles overflowed, was true too.  So he took it in, considered it, turned it over (and over, and over) to find what was in it that Charles needed him to know.

Crystal called them co-dependent, often.  Edwin knew that wasn’t true.  He was dependent on Charles.  Charles would be unhappy without him, to be sure, but would survive.  Edwin would never let them be separated, regardless, because Charles’s unhappiness was unacceptable, but the fact remained that Edwin needed Charles, and Charles only wanted Edwin.

Now that he thought about it, laid out like that, and about Charles’s acid on the cliff, it was fairly clear, really, what Charles had needed him to know.  He was being a burden, and that was not permissible.  (Charles would let Edwin continue to rely on him, would bear the weight of both of them, and never complain on purpose, Edwin knew that.  He did.  But that did not mean that it was right for Edwin to make him.)

But it was more specific than that, what Charles was telling him.  Charles was always the one who had taught Edwin how to love.  Edwin did not know how, at first, had always copied Charles in his clumsy attempts to understand friendship and care.  And now Charles had told him again, far more explicitly than usual, how to show care: keep a smile on to keep the spirits up.  Keep a smile on to hold them together.

Edwin would do anything, anything, to hold them together.

So he let the acid eat away a hole in his heart, so he wouldn’t forget.

And a lilac-colored platitude fell in.

I am responsible for my own happiness.

Chapter Text

It was around two months after she joined the Agency that the Night Nurse first saw fit to punish Edwin.

They had failed, on a case, and a little girl had been lost to oblivion.  Crystal had gone home in tears, and Charles was barely holding back the same, and Edwin was… calm.  Charles was already in distress, and Edwin would not burden Charles further with his own.

I am responsible for my own happiness.

The Night Nurse demanded a full explanation, in her own office, and Edwin left Charles to provide it alone, because Charles never did well when reprimanded by an authority, even at the best of times, and he certainly did not need it now.

Edwin’s explanation, evidently, was unsatisfactory.

(That was unsurprising.  He had not found it satisfactory himself, either.)

She stood in front of him, somehow seeming to tower over him despite her height, and pressed a finger to his forehead, as he stood rigid before her, and she reminded him of what he had to lose, if he failed in such a fashion again.  Based on his other experiences with her mental powers, he imagined it was only a few moments, from the outside.  In his head, it was…  well.  Time had never made much sense, in Hell, even at the best of times.

He came out of it with tears running down his face, and promised her that he would do better, and she told him to see that he did, and gave him permission to return to his own office.

He did not.

Charles was… quite fond, Edwin had been initially surprised to realize, of the Night Nurse.  It only took him a short while, however, to understand why.  She was kind to him, in her own way.  Even after their rather disastrous first meeting, in which Charles had, if Edwin were being fully honest, attempted her murder, she wished only the best for Charles.  She had held no grudge, only wished to whisk him off to Heaven.  And when things had gone wrong, she had done him a favor - and no small one, at that.

It was unfamiliar, for Charles, for an adult, an authority, someone he knew full well had both the physical ability and the social power to harm him, to wish him well - and she did, Edwin was sure of that.  She seemed to have taken it on herself, as a result of their arrested state, to carry out Charles and Edwin’s afterlives on the universe’s behalf, to an extent.  And Charles belonged in Heaven, and Edwin belonged in Hell.

So no.  Edwin would not tell Charles.

He would not return to Charles with red-rimmed eyes or wetness on his cheeks or a tremble in his hands.

I am responsible for my own happiness.

And he would also not tell Charles that he felt better now.

The guilt that had been tearing him to shreds, though not gone, felt easier to bear, hidden by the lingering ache of flesh being torn from bone.

No.  Best not to tell Charles that.

Once his hands were still and his face was, as best as he could tell, back to normal, he mirrored back to the office from the forest glade to which he had detoured, and Charles, though clearly still distressed, perked up to see him.

“You alright, mate?  Sorry to leave you to deal with Charlie like that.”

“Of course,” Edwin said, and realized his voice was still a bit raw.  He turned towards the bookshelves and swallowed hard a few times to settle it.  “She simply reminded me of the terms of our arrangement, which is nothing I did not already know.”

Charles wrinkled his nose.  “She still didn’t have to do that.  Wasn’t your fault, no way we could’ve known what would happen.  But I knew it wouldn’t be that bad,” he said, with the start of a smile.  “She’s not a bad sort, once she warms up to you.”

“No, I imagine not,” Edwin said, and that was true.

He pulled down The Secret Adversary.  “Would you like me to read to you?”

“Oh, yeah, we haven’t had time for a book in ages!  I’ve almost forgotten where we were.”

He lifted his legs, letting Edwin slot in under them, and dropped them back down in just the right position to form a bookrest at Edwin’s preferred height.  Edwin flipped directly to the page where they had left off - he hadn’t left a bookmark, never having expected it to be this long before they resumed, but he remembered the chapter perfectly.  He cleared his throat.

“When Tommy set forth on the trail of the two men, it took all Tuppence’s self-command to refrain from accompanying him. However, she contained herself as best she might, consoled by the reflection that her reasoning had been justified by events…”

Chapter Text

After - after everything, in Port Townsend, Edwin found himself oddly sensitive, for a time.

He wasn’t entirely sure if it was a side-effect of Hell or of Esther’s machine - or a combination of the two.  He didn’t remember it, from the first time he escaped, but he wouldn’t, necessarily.  It was only an accident that he had realized this time.

Charles had gripped his arms, hard - as always, grip strong enough to be grounding even for a ghost - and it had hurt.

Just a little, just the normal slight bruisey ache of a firm hold, gone in a few moments, but it shouldn’t have been there at all.

He found it far more effective than Charles’s hold normally was.

He did not tell Charles.

Edwin remembered that he had seen a ribbon, of Niko’s, at the dandelion shrine, that she must have lost, caught on a thorny vine.  They hadn’t had time to collect it amidst the kerfluffle with the skeletons, and it was only a bit of litter, besides.  He doubted her mother would want it, surely torn and dirty by now.  But it seemed wrong, somehow, to leave it alone, delicate and caught, in the woods, when Niko wasn’t here, anymore.  So he went to retrieve it.

The skeletons were long quieted (they had made sure of that, before they left - wouldn’t do to start a floral-powered zombie apocalypse) and the glade was as serene as it likely had been, that first time that Niko came, in honor of her father.  To find courage.

My dad used to say that if you needed a little extra courage, a dandelion in your pocket would do the trick.

(Perhaps Niko shouldn’t have come.  Her courage turned out to be too much, in the end.)

The ribbon was still there, fluttering like it was fruitlessly trying to escape the thorns it was tangled around.  A soft lilac.  Edwin couldn’t remember Niko ever having worn a lilac outfit.  He had liked her coordination, the clarity and simplicity of it, her outfits detailed and complex but still reassuringly coherent, always.  Not like Crystal’s eye-sores.

He reached a hand out to untangle the ribbon and a moment later automatically yanked it into his mouth in surprise.  It tasted metallic, and it stung.  Just a little - just the prick of a thorn, but -

He pulled the finger from his mouth and it was already back to normal, skin smooth and unmarked as always.

He reached his hand back out for the ribbon.

He didn’t need courage, anymore.

They had called him a coward, when he was young, predicted that he’d try to avoid conscription, and maybe he would have, but he knew that whatever he was, now, he might run and hide and freeze (and even beg, he had begged, on that machine) but he would never again be a coward.

So he didn’t hesitate, to reach into the thorns.

He didn’t need courage.

He returned to the office with the ribbon in his pocket.  He had carefully avoided getting any of the blood from the scrapes of the thorns on it, but it wouldn’t have mattered; the crimson vanished in moments anyway.  And it was only a little, besides.

But it was odd.  Both to be corporeal enough for his skin to tear, and to - to truly feel when it did.  He was accustomed to not noticing minor injuries until Charles made sounds of alarm.  It wasn’t like this had actually hurt, the slight burn of the blackberry’s claws, but to be aware of it at all was unusual.

…the other sensation that came with it, the slight rush of relief-ease-calm…

That was longer-lost, but not so surprising.

Not unfamiliar.

He looked down at the lilac ribbon in his hand, and saw it covered in Niko’s blood, for just a moment, then closed his hand around it, and saw his fingers covered in his own blood, and that image rested far lighter in his mind.

There was a rose bush, that he passed often, every time he went back to Port Townsend to aid Crystal or Jenny in their moves.  It had no flowers, in this season, but it did have thorns, and one day he tossed his arm to the side, towards it, just to see what would happen.

It left faint red lines on his pale skin, gone in moments, and they stung, and he felt more restful.

He found himself bumping his arms against rough brick walls, as he walked, just to see if they would scrape, and they did, every time.

(Was he truly gaining any new knowledge by repeating the experiment?  Perhaps not, but - )

He was so busy, after, that he never got the chance to study the phenomenon properly.  He kept thinking he would have a chance later, and -

You would think he would know better than to think that, by now.

But it was barely a week before he walked past a sharp brick corner and let himself take it a bit too sharply in order to scrape against it, and he felt it less than he had been.  He paused, and went back - after checking that he wasn’t being viewed by Charles or Crystal (of course he wasn’t, they weren’t here, he knew that) - and tried moving his arm against the brick more purposefully.  It still rubbed red, and it still burned a little, and it still eased him, but less.

Well.  That was for the best.  It wouldn’t do for a ghost detective to be as weak and vulnerable as a human, after all.  And besides, if it had lasted, he would have had to tell Charles eventually.

So.  For the best.

He kept scraping against that corner, every time walked past it, harder each day but feeling it less each time, and it was only two weeks After that the sensitivity had faded entirely.

He should not have dreaded its passing.

He should not miss it once it had gone.

But…

I am responsible for my own happiness.

It was harder than the pretty, poorly-designed paper had made it sound.

Charles was out with Crystal, and Edwin was alone, and if his back could ache from bending over papers, if his eyes could grow weary, they would have.  But that was alright.  Charles was seeking his own happiness, as he should, and evidently doing a far better job of the task than Edwin.

Edwin pulled out the ribbon, the same soft color as Crystal’s sugary words of wisdom, and thought of Niko, and thought of thorns.

He didn’t need courage.  But he did need happiness.

And the Night Nurse, in her kindness, may have shown him how to find it.