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At first, there is nothing
Then Carlos wakes up.
He lies, face up. Something sways gently beneath him, light wooshes of water surrounding him, a lullaby lulling him back to sleep.
The instincts of an informant snaps in him. Carlos tries to scramble to his feet, fails. Lands face first into wood—wood?
Then he sees it. An endless sea, a vast body of pure water reflecting the sky, no longer the gloomy gray of Donlon, eternally draped over by a blanket of fog. It's all blue now, the crystal clarity of a dancer’s steps, the deep sapphire of porcelain markings—qing, as is said in Cathlonian, edges of its waves dusted with silver of an arrowhead.
And around him, dozens and dozens of small boats, all carrying equally small bodies of rats.
It unsettles him. He shoots out an arm, quick as an arrow, and seizes the next boat that passes him by. The flow of water is unyielding, but it doesn't take Carlos long to see what he's looking for: peeling back their eyelids, he sees pupils shrunken to needlepoint small.
They died by overdose. And the small bag of tea leaves peeking out from their pocket makes it very clear, by what they overdosed on.
Despite their tattered clothes, patched over and over in a mix of fabrics, all their patterns having faded by time, they are clearly taken care of beyond their death. They were laid with care onto their boat, hands clapsed together in front of their chest, and they look in peace, as they sleep
Trembling, with reverence, Carlos closes their eyes again.
He understands now. All around him are his brothers and sisters, his people, killed by tea. One way or another. He supposes he is one of them too, although the manner is unconventional, to say the least.
There is no night. There is no day either, technically. The sky might be blue, but there's no flaming ball of fire up there to light everything up.
On what Carlos has decided is his first day here, he looks at forty eight bodies. None are people he knows.
On the second day, he steals a walking staff off an old man, apologizes profusely to his sleeping form, and starts to steer his boat around.
On the third day, he finds Phil Krag, with one head and one arm and one leg, looking very much as if something had torn him apart from his twin. And yet he, too, sleeps peacefully.
The Mudlark in him accepts that all are equal in death. The rat in him, however, decides to unceremoniously flip off the man.
After a week, he's finished reciting all the prayers he knows in ancient Ratin. He switches to its modern form for the next week.
On day fourteen, Carlos comes across a very familiar hobgoblin.
The man sleeps peacefully, as everyone else does. He's one of the lucky few, whose body appears whole and untainted in death, with the faintest tear track down his face. In his hands is not his trusty crossbow, but a simple wooden carving of a skinny, sickly old cat.
“Cheeky?” Carlos cries out, a flood of relief at a familiar face. “Cheeky!”
All manners and teachings of ‘do not disturb the death’ forgotten in an instant, Carlos grabs Cheeky by his shoulders and shakes him. The man sleeps on, though.
If Cheeky’s here, then Maureen must be somewhere too, and so is Rover, and Pete—
Pete—
Pete, who's an automaton—
Carlos freezes, his tiny body sprawled across two boats, claws still sunken into Cheeky’s beaten up leather jacket. Would Pete exist beyond life at all? Carlos didn't return him to the Flow, the Flow that gave Pete a mind, he didn't have time to—time, he ran out of time in the end too, didn't he—time, if he just had a bit more time—
“We need to find Pete!” He gasps, shaking Cheeky harder. “Wake up! We need to find him, Pete isn't here!”
The boat begins to float away. With a frustrated groan, Carlos grabs the long strip of fabric that used to be Grant Krag’s tie—yes, he stole it too, no, he doesn't feel guilty about robbing the deceased when the deceased in question is a fucking cunt—and strings it through their oarlocks, tying the two together.
He needs Cheeky’s help in this, if he were to find a way to make sure Pete gets his peace.
Cheeky wakes up after what Carlos counts as five days, when Carlos finally got bored enough to fidget with the wooden John Nipples.
“Don't you hurt my cat.”
“It's not the real John Nipples anyway, Cheeky. I haven't seen him around.” Carlos glances down at the boat beside him. “Hey, do you think cats go to a different afterlife than we do?”
“John Nipples is dead?” Cheeky whispers, finally turning to look at Carlos. The man is still laid down, as if the effort to move his head is all he can muster.
“That's what I’m saying, I don't know! I haven't seen him yet, and I’ve been sailing for almost a month now.” Carlos does the math in head, then frowns. “But then, I’ve also only been awake for a month. I haven't been dead—haven't known I’m dead for that long.”
Cheeky stares at him for a long time.
“Give me back my cat,” he finally says, rolling to the other side. “I’m going back to sleep.”
“No, don't—”
Carlos barely has enough time to tuck away the wooden carving in his pocket, before Cheeky clambers over. The much taller hobgoblin grabs at Carlos’ hand, clutched into a fist and held over the far edge of his own boat.
“Give it here—”
“No,” Carlos says in what he thinks is a very reasonable voice. “You’ll just go back to sleep like everyone else. I need your help.”
“Like hell you do, rat.”
Cheeky lunges again, trying to pin him down. His limbs seem all tangled, the body still getting used to wakefulness after an eternity of sleep. The wild, clumsy movements rock both their boats, water splashing onto the older man’s face.
Carlos takes advantage of his momentary shock to pounce on top of Cheeky’s body. “I do! I need to find Pete. Please, Cheeky, we need to get out of here, get back to Donlon, find Pete’s body and bury him in the Flow, or else he’d never be again!”
“You're mad,” Cheeky says, although Carlos can see a spark of consciousness returning to his eyes.
He shrugs, climbing off the man. “Death is just the beginning of another journey. Another path. No one ever said we couldn’t take another path and head back.”
Cheeky rolls his eyes, and goes back to sleep. Privately, Carlos prays that Cheeky will wake up again. It's starting to get lonely around here.
Cheeky sleeps, but never long. And he makes it very clear to Carlos that he hates being awake.
“It was a very good death, if that's how death looks like,” he says, a smile blooming on his face. “I haven't slept without a nightmare for years.”
It was a beatific smile, cheeks raised and eyes twinkling and lips curved up so high they could touch his brows. Carlos hasn’t seen a smile like this in ages. It reminds him of the way he and his friends used to grin, when they were all children and their parents saved up enough money for their birthdays to treat them with ice cream.
Ice cream wasn't exactly lacking in the Huispas household, but Carlos liked it more when he was eating it with his rat friends. They have different tastes, vermins and hobgoblins.
It was also the most words Cheeky has said to him in a week. He naps, he sits up a bit, he naps a bit more. Occasionally he helps Carlos reel in a boat or two, if Carlos persuades him enough that the deceased person is a rich cunt who doesn't deserve peace even in death.
Carlos has, by now, Grant Krag’s tie that ties their boat together, a fur-lined blanket that used to be Percy Greenwood Tips’ cape, three jackets and two sweaters, the walking staff that doubles as his oars, a hefty jar of pickles, a slab of cheese so expensive he couldn't pronounce it, and a small stack of books.
Regrettably, none is the Bible.
Cheeky chokes on air when he eventually recognizes the Krag twins’ tie.
“I owe them no respect anyway,” Carlos says, following Cheeky’s gaze to the strip linking their boats together.
Cheeky opens and closes his mouth several times, before he eventually settles on a quiet, resigned “I know.”
“They killed Chlorine, made Pete a slave, kicked you out of your gang—”
“It's a—was a community.” Cheeky snaps, before he quiets down again. “We used to look after each other. It was good back then. We were good people, back in the days.”
Yeah, good days. Wonderful days, where the ratkin were invisible to hobgoblins and the popo and everyone else, where doctors gave them tea as painkillers because it was purportedly cheap and easier to make than traditional healing potions. Where banks wouldn't loan them money to buy houses, and what little they built up was easily bought off by bigger factions at play. Never by physical violence, but always throwing them out their hard-won homes anyway.
“Oi, don't laugh. Albert was a good man, alright?”
“I’m sure he's a good man alright,” Carlos says bitterly. It's been so long since he had to spend so long around one of the Mobgoblins, without any mission or job to distract both of them. “It’s just that we were never in your community, were we? When he took care of ‘his people’ in the East End, it was never us vermin too, was it?”
The venom in his voice surprises him; Carlos sometimes thinks he has carried this so long, surely it must have dulled by now, worn down by time. But it doesn't shock him how it comes out eventually. Carlos has never liked the Mobgoblins, even among all the other gangs trading tea. It was, as Maureen would have put it, ‘personal’. He simply never said it out loud
So he's not surprised either, when Cheeky blinks, taken aback. “I never killed a rat for no reason. Albert never did either.”
“You never saw us. Even though we live together, side by side, on the same street, our homes beneath yours. You never gave a fuck.”
“The Mobgoblins took you in! The Huispas gave you a home—and they work for us too, don't they? They care, right?” Cheeky rises to the challenge, face darkened as he gets more heated. “You said you were an orphan. Or was that a lie too, Carlos Huispas?”
“I shouldn't have to depend on luck and the arbitrary good will of a random couple, just to have food and a warm bed and a roof above my head,” Carlos snarls at him—how dare he think Carlos would make up a sob story like this! “I wouldn't have been an orphan if your people didn't drive my people into poverty!”
Cheeky staggers backward, both their boats shaking, but Carlos is too incensed to stop now, pressing closer. “Your friend’s so-called community was built on top of the ruins of our community that you drove us out of.” He pauses, the strings of leverage and weakness dangling in front of his eyes, clear as the silk of a spider adorned with morning dews, humming in tension. “Or did you really think there was nothing here before your friend built his beloved Esme’s club?”
The man makes an awful, strangled noise, slowly sinking to his knees, as if something has struck him square in the chest and sapped away his strength.
Carlos stares at him. He has a horrible feeling that it really did hurt Cheeky, but then the dull ache grew thorns and splinters, twisting the knife in his guts. Why should he apologize, when Cheeky's the one who’s so resistant to the truth? Why should he? None of it was Carlos’ fault.
“I’m going to sleep,” Cheeky says, shaken.
“Cheeky…” he starts, uncertain.
“I can't—I can't, I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m going to bed.”
When Carlos says something wrong, he usually feels guilt, an awful all-consuming rawness that demands him apologize immediately and ask for forgiveness, work to make amends and rebuild bridges. But right now, it's become a strange, seething anger, simmering on the back burner and trying its damndest not to bubble over the edge. Why are you making me feel responsible for your denial?
He silently hands Cheeky a pillow, which is just a particularly nice cardigan rolled up and tied at the ends.
They don't talk much after this.
Maureen was brought on board after another month or so, tied to the other side of his boat by Phil Krag’s belt. Carlos has lost count.
Cheeky doesn't talk much anymore. Carlos prefers to think that it's not his fault if Cheeky has the mind of a rat pup and he can't deal with his own shit.
He semi-regularly finds half eaten heels of bread. They make decent sandwiches, along with the cheese he's found, and recently, a new slab of salt cured meat. It's amazing how many people die with food in their bags and pockets—what the hell’s happening out there?
Maureen sleeps for even longer than Cheeky did.
This is getting really boring.
Sometimes Carlos sees a flash of Pete, here and there and gone before he could get a better look. He sees the white of porcelain in the foams contouring the waves, the blue swirling patterns in the deep mysterious water that Carlos dares not touch.
But there's no sun here. And Pete doesn't feel like Pete without the golden lines holding him together.
At least Maureen is more on board with his plan, although he hasn’t had the guts to tell her what it entails yet. “I’d like to give him something, if we see him again,” she says, creasing the hem of her red dress and smoothing it out again and again. It's not too unlike Pete’s self repair, Carlos thinks. Things look better when they have creases and cracks, and they look even better when those creases can be ironed out, and cracked filled in with molten gold.
Carlos doesn't know these people well enough to call them family, but something deep in him knows that once they find their way back and give Pete’s body a soul, everything would be fine again. He owes this much to Pete, at least.
“You guys sleep so much,” he complains.
“Shut up, Chlorine’s playing the fiddle,” Maureen grumbles.
“That's a nice dream.”
“It's not a dream,” Maureen says firmly, eyes still closed. “I’m in a bar right now, and Chlorine’s playing her fiddle—can't you hear it?”
“Maureen, we're in the middle of the sea right now.”
“And I’m in the middle of a dance! I’ll make your ocean dream tonight when I’m done making love with her, thank you very much.”
Carlos sits there, boggled out of his mind. It's true, he sometimes sleeps too, mostly for the sake of maintaining some semblance of day and night and keeping himself sane. He's seen what sleep deprivation in dark cells do to people.
But Carlos doesn't dream, certainly not of things like bars and fiddlers—
“Carlos! There you are.”
He steps on wood once again, but it's solid and firm under his feet. For the first time, there's no shaking and wobbling when he moves and shifts. He smells fresh pies and pastries in the oven, and as he walks in, there's whistles and cheers everywhere.
He nearly forgot how silence can kill a mind, until now.
Maureen, once again in a red dress and stunning emerald heels, loops her arms around his neck, which shouldn't be possible given how tall she is—and oop, nevermind, she's lifting him up.
“Maureen,” he squeezes out from her bone crushing hug.
“Come dance with us!” She exclaims, dragging him through the dance floor as soon as he's let down. The dancer weaves expertly between waves of bodies moving to the melody, until she's at the corner of the stage.
“Chlorine, this is Carlos. Carlos, Chlorine.”
Chlorine pauses her playing for a moment, extending a hand out in his direction. Ah, he sees it now. She's blind.
“¡Hola!” Carlos shakes her hand. He’d love to press a kiss to her hand, but he’d rather not risk being murdered by a serial killer, sympathetic as he has been to her motives. “Yes, sorry, I’m a bit down here. I’m, ah, a rat, you see.”
“He’s one of the men who helped me get the Krags,” Maureen says quite happily, none of the reservations he’d expect from her when she's with Chlorine. “Bit of a bastard, but his heart’s in the right space. Wait, let me buy a drink. Be right back, love!”
She kisses Chlorine on the cheek quickly, before she darts away. Maureen must have spent so long here with Chlorine, long enough that she no longer feels the need to hover around her lover every moment. Privately, Carlos thinks that if he ever loses a lover the way Maureen lost Chlorine, he’s never letting them out of his sight again.
It’s a good thing, he thinks. It’s good that Maureen has found some healing here.
“Maureen’s been telling me about you guys,” Chlorine smiles, fetching a cane resting against the wall and carefully getting down the stage. “Thank you so much for taking care of her, in her last few days out there.”
Carlos blinks. “Oh, it's really nothing, miss. Maureen takes care of herself very well. She’s very good at, um, self defense.” Do not call her a serial killer to her girlfriend’s face, idiot.
“Tsk, we both know you're lying, Carlos,” Chlorine laughs. “She sounds real tough, but I know that deep down, she’s a soft-hearted, impulsive idiot. She starts fights all the time, you know?”
“Oh, I know.”
“I’m just glad she’s… mellowed out. Just a bit.” Chlorine’s cane knocks softly against the ground, and she takes a step closer. Carlos can smell a faint scent of sweetness on her, like the sap of woods. “She used to be so combative and aggressive. I just worry that she would’ve gotten worse after I was gone, you know?”
“Wait,” Carlos’ head snaps up. “You… know you’re dead too?”
He couldn’t see Chlorine’s eyes, but he has the distinct impression that she was giving him a deadpan look anyway. “Of course, Carlos. I’m not stupid. This is heaven.”
“… And here I thought I was the only one conscious of that. Does Maureen know?”
Chlorine opens her mouth, but then she perks up, and a moment later, her lover in question is back with them, kissing Chlorine soundly on the mouth.
She shoves a pint of ale into his hand. “Drink up! It’s Friday night, big boy.”
“Wait, Maureen!” Carlos tugs at her, before Chlorine and her could jump back onto the stage. “I have something I need to talk to you about.”
The women led him out of the pub. Carlos can see where he is now; it was a pub on the edge of the woods. Lush green and dots of white and pink surround him, illuminated by the soft silver of the moon, as he smells the freshness of grass doused in rain. And up there is the most beautiful night sky he has ever seen, navy blue and sparkles of diamonds that seemed right out of a storybook.
“Gorgeous, isn’t it?” Maureen sits down beside him. “Chlorine and I met here.”
“It’s beautiful,” Carlos murmurs, entranced. When he took on an oath to protect the purity of the Flow, this must be what it means: to protect all that nature has given them, the trees and the stars and the smell of rain, and yes, the river that flows through Donlon and brought their ancestors wealth ages ago.
And now he has to ask her to leave her home, and her Chlorine.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry in advance, for what I’m asking you here.”
“You want Maureen to leave here,” Chlorine guesses, her cane firmly planted against the grasses as she sips on a bottle of ale. Carlos didn’t really plan to talk about this with Chlorine here, but he supposes he can’t ask Maureen to leave afterlife, without Chlorine being in the conversation.
“Absolutely not. I’m not leaving you here—I won’t leave you again!”
“Listen to the man first, love.”
“Yes. Yes, I’m sorry, but I’m asking you if you want to go back.” Carlos swallows. He’s usually better than this, he thinks, but he also usually doesn’t have to talk people out of leaving their heavens. “For Pete.”
Maureen crosses her arms, once again the familiar sight of a serial killer assessing her own risks and benefits. “Explain.”
And so Carlos does, laying out everything he knows so far. The souls he sees, the theory in his head, Pete’s last request to him. And finally, “I don’t know if someone can pass on without a permanent, inherent soul. And I don’t know if he does.”
“…Fuck.”
“Yeah, fuck. I—I really should’ve done that. Could’ve done that, if I had managed to get out of Sinkington Palace.” Carlos sighs, wiping his eyes roughly. Somehow, he failed this one last mission, out of everything.
Maureen doesn’t speak for a long time, merely drinking from Chlorine’s bottle, resting her head on her lover’s legs, Chlorine’s deft fiddler fingers playing with her short auburn hair, the rough edges of an impulsive, probably one-woman hair cut now softened as it grows out to her shoulders.
Finally, she speaks, ragged and wet. “Pete would’ve loved to see this.”
“Sí,” and Carlos is surprised at the crack in his voice too. “Sí, yes, we should bring him here.”
Chlorine pats her shoulders lightly. “Bring him home, love.”
And that’s enough said for the three of them.
Afterlife is a funny thing, Carlos is gradually finding out. It looks different to everyone. To Maureen, it’s Emerald and a nice pub to dance at and Chlorine at her side. To Carlos, it’s the Flow at its ultimate form: the North Sea that it empties into.
He visits Maureen at her place now, when he sleeps. They’ve found him, in Maureen’s world, asleep in a field of flowers when he’s not there. And Maureen wakes up on the boat, when Carlos gets too bored. His boat has gotten big enough now for them to sleep side by side comfortably, and with room for all the things they keep stealing off undeserving assholes too. Between the two of them, they’ve gotten through quite a volume of novels, both the classics and the pulp.
Cheeky continues to sleep.
Later, Maureen tells Carlos what she and Cheeky talked about the night before their deaths.
“I’m surprised you forgive him that quickly,” he comments, gesturing vaguely. “Given your, well, everything.”
“He’s alright,” she shrugs. “Cheeky doesn’t have a bad heart. He’s just a bit of an idiot.”
A laugh escapes him, before he can stop it. Idiocy is definitely something he’d ascribe to Cheeky Dustbin. Childish too, or rather, childlike. The way he clings to the Mobgoblins and the Krags reminds Carlos of how children hide behind their mothers’ dresses, if only because they’re uncertain what lies beyond the boundaries of their homes.
“Is this about some bad blood between the Mudlarks and the Mobgoblins?” Maureen pipes up, when Carlos has been quiet for too long.
“No, it’s between his people and mine.”
Maureen hums in sympathy. “I’m sorry. Ale’s a rat too, she’s told me a bit about growing up in Mobgoblin territory.”
“Thank you,” Carlos nods awkwardly, not knowing what else to say. His people have been ignored for so long that he doesn’t know what to do when someone turns out to be a willing listener and observer.
Would Cheeky listen, if he talks? Pete keeps giving him chance after chance, and out of all of them, Carlos feels Pete would have the most reason to hate Cheeky.
It’s really surprising, how mature and kind an automaton can be. And a former popo, too.
“I should talk to him,” he decides. “Perhaps in his world. He’s probably spending more and more time there.”
As much as he’s wary of Cheeky, and sometimes annoyed by the man, Carlos does hope he finds some peace in his own afterlife.
It takes Maureen and him a whole month, both in his North Sea and in her Emerald woods, to find a way to Cheeky’s mind.
But Cheeky doesn’t suspect a thing, when Carlos slips him a bottle of ale in the short period of time he’s awake. And it’s not like Carlos is drugging him. He’s also drinking the same ale laced with the potion.
Carlos finds himself in familiar streets once again, when he wakes up. The streets are lit with neon red and green, hobgoblins hustling by and paying him no mind, men in sharp suits and women in flashy dresses and occasionally the opposite, all ready for a night out with alcohol and dancing and gambling. It takes him no time to find his target; the name Esme’s is in big bold letters across the facade of the club.
The potion links him to Cheeky, tiny mice invisible to all but him running ahead and leading him through the crowds. It’s easy to sneak past the hobgoblins at the door, scurrying past the main dance floor. Carlos, however, did not expect to be led upstairs deep into the club, corridors twisting and turning.
The mice chirp and squeak, when he finally stops in front of a door, closed but not locked.
He slips inside silently, scanning the dim room for traces of a tall, red-skinned hobgoblin. Instead, there’s only a dog, asleep in front of the fireplace.
One of his mice has climbed up to Carlos’ shoulder, its tiny snout pointed at the dog, chirping excitedly. Carlos approaches it—him?—slowly, mentally thanking the Flow that it wasn’t a cat instead.
“…Cheeky?”
The dog stirs, his eyes blinking awake slowly. There’s a pitiful whine from him, as Carlos inches closer. In fact, everything about the dog is frankly quite pitiful, now that Carlos is close enough to see. He’s clearly an old mutt, cloudy eyes drooped down and his coat of fur thinning, missing in patches and showing dry, sagged skin underneath. And as he tries to move, Carlos can see that he’s not quite walking right, either.
But it is undeniably Cheeky. Somehow, the hobgoblin has become a dog.
“This cannot be your heaven… is it a Rover situation?” Carlos wonders out loud, already running the mental calculus of a soul somehow being cursed beyond death, and how they could return him to normal.
The dog—Cheeky, he needs to start calling the dog Cheeky—makes a sad noise in response, shaking his head slowly. He’s dragging with him the quilt over him, its colors faded but clearly well loved.
What a twist. Carlos sighs, sitting crosslegged and patting his lap, a wordless invite.
Cheeky crawls over slowly, the old mutt sniffing his hand cautiously. Ah—Carlos does have a small chunk of ham wrapped up in his pocket, it makes for quite a nice travel snack. He breaks off a tiny piece, holding it out to Cheeky, and watches as the dog slowly eats it off his hand.
It all feels very weird, and very uncomfortable. Carlos isn’t sure he can look the old man in the face once they get back to his sea.
Thank you. The dog doesn’t speak, but Carlos hears Cheeky’s voice in his head anyway.
“We need you, Cheeky,” Carlos says, as softly as he can be. “Maureen and I have agreed. We’ll find a way to get back to the living for a while and find Pete’s body, so he can get a soul and have eternal rest like us too. But we want to do it with you.”
You’ll be fine without me, as he hears a low whine from the dog. I can’t do things right. Not like you. Not like Maureen.
Carlos exhales, already frustrated. “Why would you say that?”
He goes to pet the dog, but Cheeky freezes for a moment, a beat too long that curdles something in Carlos. Couldn’t free Pete. Didn’t help Maureen or Chlorine. Stuck myself to the Krags for too long.
“Maureen says you shot the Krags in your last moment. Made them lose their grip and die.” Carlos very slowly runs a paw down Cheeky’s head, feeling tension ebbs away from him every so slowly. “That’s not nothing.”
Didn’t help you and your rats. We were neighbors.
Fuck. Carlos should’ve known not to run his mouth, especially not around a hobgoblin like Cheeky. It’s all too sensitive, practically impossible to talk to anyone above about it without making him feel about what Carlos think is a very reasonable guilt, and then Carlos will inevitably feel guilty because they will always go on a spiel about how awful and bigoted and irredeemable they are, until Carlos is the one consoling them that it wasn’t their fault they never noticed a whole race of people living side by side with them, oh no, how could he ever asked that of them?
He breathes out slowly. Looking out the windows, all he sees is hobgoblins and elves and tieflings dressed to the nines, none of his people in sight. Janitors and dishwashers tend to be hidden from sight, after all. “And this is helping?”
I can’t do anything wrong now.
“You can’t do anything at all right now.”
The dog whimpers, eyes closed as if avoiding Carlos’ gaze. A rare occasion indeed, a dog being scared of a rat. I’m sorry.
“Sorry won’t bring Pete home.”
You two should go on without me.
“Pete would want you there! You’re his friend, he’d be upset if everything works out and he wakes up and sees two strangers he met only a couple of days before he died, and his best friend was nowhere to be found.” Carlos throws up his hands, “what’s the matter with you? You’re not even in heaven—you’re a dog with an admittedly loving owner, but you’re a dog. And one who seems to be sleeping away half his time here, not even doing anything fun. You’re not even a person in your own afterlife!?”
Cheeky nuzzles into Carlos’ lap with a measure of desperation, his tail tucked between his legs, like the dog with a hobgoblin’s mind has come to the conclusion that the only safe response is to fawn and grovel. I’m sorry, I’m really trying to do my best, but I just end up hurting everyone I try to help, and… I don’t know how to fix it.
“Come back with me,” Carlos says, a touch of equal desperation at Cheeky’s stubbornness. “Maybe you really fucked up before, but to stop trying at all… it’s even worse, isn’t it? I failed too, I couldn’t fulfill Pete’s last request before I got sucked in as well, but I’m not giving up. Pete deserves better from me.”
Pete was the best of us.
“He is.”
Do you really think I could help him? For good, this time?
“I think we can do anything together.” Carlos shrugs, stretching his legs, “if we managed to take down the Tea King and the Krags and at least half of all of Donlon’s elites all in one go, and find each other again after we all died, what’s to say what else we can do?”
You’re very audacious.
“Meekness doesn’t make a good spy. And I want the tea trade shut down once and for all, and Donlon free of the influences of tea.” He pauses, eyeing the dog with a hint of amusement. “Aren’t you a gangster?”
The dog that is Cheeky somehow manages to convey a rather cheeky expression. I prefer to think of it as being a very involved community member.
“Sure,” Carlos snorts. “Maybe you’ll get to do that here one day. For real, this time.”
Maybe.
Cheeky cries in his lap for an hour, when he and Carlos wake up again in what is now a boat big enough for four people and ample supplies.
Carlos looks to Maureen for help, if only because she’s dealt with Cheeky crying into her chest before. Maureen gives him a smug look, and promptly goes back to sleep again. Traitor.
“So, what’s your plan?” Maureen asks, over her breakfast and Carlos and Cheeky’s dinner. Just because they don't have to eat as deceased souls now, doesn’t mean they won’t. It’s amazing how much more grounded one feels with two to three meals between every sleep.
Heat creeps up Carlos face, as both of them look at him expectantly. “I, ah, I haven’t thought of one yet.”
“I’m sorry, what—” “You woke me up without a plan?!”
“I wasn’t going to make a plan until you’re both on board with this!” He cries, hands raised in surrender to their incredulous gazes. “It feels wrong to plan a whole heist to escape the afterlife with who knows what kind of risk, if I didn’t even know whether you’d come!”
Maureen and Cheeky exchange glances and shrugs, before Maureen takes another bite of her beans on toast. “What, you’d untie—no, unmerge our ships and let us go if we said no?”
“Yes,” Carlos says easily. “I’d do that. I wasn’t going to kidnap two people and force you to come onto a very dangerous trip into the unknown with me!”
“You know, for a Mudlark, you’re surprisingly very nice about this.” Cheeky comments. “And very laissez faire when it comes to things like life and death.”
“Death is just another path, one that we must all take” Carlos shrugs, swallowing another spoonful of the beans. It honestly tastes amazing, especially for canned beans. “Who knows what lies beyond the veil? No one can say for sure. All I know is that the journey doesn’t end at death.”
Maureen bites on her lips in what Carlos has now come to recognize means she’s stifling a laugh. Cheeky frowns, curious. “You’ve told me that before. Is that a Mudlark teaching?”
A giggle escapes their bard, and Carlos finds himself barking out a laugh as well. “No, it’s from Lord of the Ring.”
They look at Cheeky, expecting him to smile in recognition at least. And then the beat passes, and they laugh even harder.
“What? I’ve never read it.”
“You’re old,” Maureen sing-songs. “You’re somehow even older than J.R.R. Tolkien."
“He’s a halfling too,” Carlos joins in, cackling. “I can’t believe you hate us smaller folks that much, Cheeky.”
“Oh you—kids!”
Cheeky goes to smack Carlos on the head, but Carlos ducks out of the way, stumbling just into Maureen, whose half eaten toast goes flying and flings all its beans onto Cheeky’s face, smiling impossibly wide.
“I think I’d like to read those books with Pete together, when he’s here,” Cheeky hums, lying down on the boat. It’s a new occurrence, but sometimes the sky above Carlos’ North Sea turns dark and light again now. The North Star is always there above their heads at night. It also happens to be the only star Cheeky consistently recognizes.
“He’d love them. It’s all very fairy tale-like.”
Maureen snorts, next to the two of them. “Sure. Except for Frodo.”
“No spoilers, Maureen.”
“But do you think…” Cheeky says slowly, “do you think he’ll like the boat?”
Carlos watches as a shooting star arcs across the sky, its tail a golden line cracking across dark blue, the bright star white hot as the gleam of sunlight off porcelain. Somewhere, somehow, there’s now an endless sea where tea doesn’t run, and a stretch of woods without gang violence, and the stars outshine even the most powerful firearms.
“He’d love it.”