but you didn't have to cut me off

[skeletonenigma]

Characters: Skulduggery Pleasant skeletonenigma and Solomon Wreath peacefullywreathed
Date: After this network thread, around the beginning of the second week of August
Location: The common room of their suite, HUO-WEI in the Fire District
Situation: This animosity has got to stop. People are going to get hurt. Also, Skulduggery has a theory.
Warnings/Rating: Spoilers for the sixth book onwards, references to death and pre-canon torture, and a side helping of unintended emotional manipulation. Shouldn't be any present-day violence, though.


The rest of the day passed by agonisingly slowly. Time wasn't meant to pass slowly in the middle of a war. Even during the few brief rests Skulduggery enjoyed during the war with Mevolent, there was always something going on, something to pay attention to or something to plan. Here, the time passed slowly, and it passed quietly. It was enough to drive him mad.

He was the first one in the common room - not that that was a surprise - and he was early. Being early was a surprise. Skulduggery wasn't used to being early, but it was difficult not to be when the meeting place was the living room of one's own dwelling. There wasn't anything to read, and there wasn't anything to listen to, so he resorted to a very light meditation to pass the time. He refused to admit, even to himself, that a second and more important reason for the meditation might have been to calm himself down.

Comments

[peacefullywreathed]

"Yes." Solomon raised his glass and regarded the whiskey for a moment. "Whatever did you give it to me for?" He turned his gaze aside, just enough to narrow his eyes at Skulduggery past the glass. "And why did you go and speak to Bakura?"

Skulduggery had already said why, but Solomon found it difficult to swallow. Skulduggery Pleasant wasn't the type to just up and admit he was wrong, especially not when it was Solomon who'd accused him of being so. There was too much history between them for the skeleton to take Solomon's word like that, even if he was right.

[skeletonenigma]

"The whiskey?" Skulduggery shrugged. "You finished your last bottle, and it was a terrible bottle."

Not that Skulduggery had anything other than Wreath's treatment of that bottle to go by. But either way, it was a gesture of good faith, and gestures of good faith usually went a long way in pacifying people.

The second question was a little harder, especially since Skulduggery had already answered it. He stood up, paced to the door, turned around and leaned against it with his arms folded, eyeless gaze on Wreath. "Is it so hard to believe that, very occasionally, all I'm after is some intelligent conversation?"

[peacefullywreathed]

"Frankly," said Solomon, "yes. Even if my memories of our past association are a touch off, you never did anything without motives--plural. Maybe you do want some intelligent conversation--but you know enough people here that you wouldn't go to either myself or Bakura to get it unless you had another reason."

It just wasn't how Skulduggery worked. He had too much in his mind to actually do things for such simple reasons, and there were too many factors with regard to people to boil it all down to that one simplistic description.

[skeletonenigma]

Skulduggery tilted his head in acknowledgement. "True. I was, of course, implying that I can't get intelligent conversation from you either, but since you're choosing to willingly ignore my wit..."

He paused, and then sighed. The movement of air in and out of Skulduggery's ribcage was strong enough to be visibly noticeable, as well as audibly noticeable. "As I said, you were right. I wasn't being very fair. I sent him a message asking if he wanted to talk over coffee, and he did. Does that answer your question?"

[peacefullywreathed]

"I prefer to ignore comments which are blatantly untrue and inflammatory," said Solomon, and watched Skulduggery breathe with an air of distance indulgence. Not that the skeleton actually needed to breathe, but he didn't usually bother unless he needed stability.

Could the circumstance really be as simple as all that? Solomon found that difficult to believe. "You went to Bakura to ask whether he wanted to talk over coffee, on the basis of my accusation alone?" Very difficult. Solomon shook his head. "Since when have you ever listened to me?"

[skeletonenigma]

"As I recall," Skulduggery said, "I used to listen to you quite a lot." He tilted his head. "Then you sheltered Serpine, and any notion I had of trusting you with anything went out of the window. Then you offered your help saving the world - more than once, I might add - and followed through very admirably on all of those promises. At the same time, you're planning to murder half the planet's population. You're an extraordinarily tricky man, now that I think about it."

He'd have liked to say his decision wasn't based solely on Wreath's accusation. But because that accusation was, unmistakeably, the catalyst, it was impossible for Skulduggery to tell.

[peacefullywreathed]

"I don't." Recall, of course. The answer was an evasion, too, which made it as good as an admission, and Solomon wasn't sure what to do with that. "What I do recall is that you didn't have any idea who I was, the day I sheltered Serpine." At the time it felt like it shouldn't have been surprising, and yet it had been; and then in retrospect Solomon could only accept it, if bitterly. It hadn't done anything to prove his opinion wrong--the opposite, in fact.

"I keep people like you on their toes," Solomon said lightly. "For the record, I was trying to save the world myself. It's difficult to save it if it gets destroyed beforehand."

He took a drink and turned the half-empty glass, and said suddenly, "If you'd been a few seconds quicker I'd have let you kill him. That was part of the agreement. We gave him a guide, but we weren't willing to expend more resources than that. It would have suggested the Temple had allied itself with Mevolent's forces, which was untrue. He had to make it to the Temple on his own terms. He knew that. That's why he was so afraid."

The Necromancer looked at Skulduggery past the glass, though it didn't really do much to hide his impassive expression. "It's a pity you weren't a few seconds quicker. That would have solved a lot."

[skeletonenigma]

"It's just as difficult to save it if you destroy it in the process," Skulduggery replied evenly. He wasn't trying to prod an argument, and his tone reflected that. It was simply a subject he wanted to remind Wreath of as often as possible, in the hopes that eventually the warnings would stick. He didn't hold out much hope, but Wreath hadn't done anything irksome since Skulduggery first gave him the
benefit of the doubt, and that, at least, was something.

Still, he could have done without the history lesson.

Skulduggery was much slower to answer Wreath's second deliberate prod, but when he did, his voice was just as even as it was before. "Yes. It is a pity. I'm sorry, Wreath, but you've lost me. If the Temple wasn't trying to help him to safety, what were you doing outside the entrance ushering him in? Or was that just an unfortunate coincidence?"

[peacefullywreathed]

"That depends on your perspective of destroy," Solomon started, automatic in his defense before he cut himself off and shook his head. "Never mind." He was no longer nearly as certain about the Temple's goals as he felt he should be, but it was hard to remember that here, it didn't matter. He still wasn't used to that.

Instead Solomon took a mouthful of his whiskey, larger than the previous. "The Temple was offering safety, not helping him get it. I'm sure Tenebrae wouldn't have appreciated my letting him die ten feet from the entrance, but our orders were not to help him any more than the guide we gave him could do so on his own."

He frowned. "I still don't know quite what the 'favour' he did is, to be honest. I tried to find out, but Tenebrae shut me down." Severely. Solomon had always suspected something was not quite above-board there, but Tenebrae had somehow managed to get the support of the High Priest in the United States, so it had to be beneficial to the US Temple. Or at least the US High Priest.

[skeletonenigma]

Skulduggery looked at Wreath, skull impassive but nonetheless tilted in thought. That Wreath wasn't jumping to the defence of his Temple's goals could mean one of two things - either he was sick of arguing about it, which Skulduggery could understand, or being taken to the turtle was performing a downright miracle where his blind faith was concerned. Skulduggery needed a little more information to know for sure, but he supposed not everyone would consider the kidnapping an inconvenience.

He could guess what the favour was, if Tenebrae had a hand in it. But even if Skulduggery was wrong, it didn't matter here.

"No," he said with a slight shake of his head. "You misunderstood my question. I know why Necromancers were there at the entrance. I asked why you were there. Was the appeal of watching me lose the chance for revenge just a little too tempting?"

[peacefullywreathed]

An odd look crossed Solomon's face. Somehow, through all this, it hadn't occurred to him that his personal motives for that day might be called into question. Possibly he was still too used to thinking of Skulduggery as someone who didn't care. Possibly he just hadn't bothered to think of them in too long himself.

"I was ordered there," he said after a moment. "The Temple still remembered our affiliation. Whenever they knew you were going to be directly involved, I was the one they summoned. I was just--" Fortunate? Unfortunate? "It just so happened that we never came face-to-face until that particular mission."

And then he received the confirmation that Skulduggery hadn't, in fact, remembered him at all. He felt he was entitled to a touch of petty vindictiveness at that point.

[skeletonenigma]

Another impassive look, but this one didn't last nearly as long. "I'm flattered," he said dryly. "When we manage to get home, I would appreciate it if you punched Tenebrae for me. I'd do it myself, but unfortunately, he's already dead. I doubt it would have much of an impact."

Skulduggery wasn't ignoring how Wreath must have felt after that encounter - or at least, he wasn't doing it deliberately. But as far as he was concerned, it was over and done with. Neither of them were capable of changing the past, but now that they both had context for what drove them apart all those centuries ago, Skulduggery was already filing the information away. If Wreath didn't bring it up again, neither would he.

[peacefullywreathed]

Solomon frowned. "Not that I fault your, ah, disapproval of numerous of his methods, but that seems a touch excessive on a secondhand level even for you. Why am I punching the High Priest? Not that I would necessarily be opposed to risking excommunication in the name of striking an idiot, but I would like to know the meaning behind it."

You could just resurrect him first, he could have pointed out dryly, and declined to. There were things of which Skulduggery had been capable that Solomon, theoretically, was now also; but Skulduggery at least didn't have the benefit of being able to experiment with them, and Solomon hadn't yet dared.

[skeletonenigma]

"The High Priest," Skulduggery said evenly, "is the reason I didn't die."

He didn't specify further. It was very likely he wouldn't have to, but even if Wreath asked, Skulduggery wouldn't answer. He was ready with a change of subject, in fact, if that was how Wreath decided to pursue the conversation.

[peacefullywreathed]

"Tenebrae is the reason you didn't--" Solomon stopped and cursed. "The Red Hand. He's the one who taught Serpine the Red Hand." He'd been the student of the only master who had specialised in researching that magic; and when the master had refused Serpine, Serpine had killed him horribly.

"He was attached to a number of your units when we were still involved in the war. He figured out you were ambidextrous." It wasn't a question, because it didn't need to be. It was the sort of circumstance that felt ridiculously obvious in hindsight; because now all of Tenebrae's motivations and actions were unfolding in Solomon's mind. No wonder he'd sent Solomon to defend Serpine--he might have even been hoping to make Skulduggery angry enough to tap into his Necromancy again.

Tenebrae was directly responsible for Vile. That was ... typical, actually.

"I'm going to punch him when I get back, High Priest be damned," Solomon muttered, and took a long draught of his whiskey.

[skeletonenigma]

Skulduggery laughed. It surprised him, but it shouldn't have. It made sense that even after all this time, Wreath was still capable of surprising him enough to amuse him. "I don't think he's your High Priest anymore," Skulduggery pointed out offhandedly. "Certainly not in my version of events. He's dead. You can use that as your justification, if you'd like."

What he really meant, of course, was that Wreath had rethought enough of the Temple's tenets by now not to consider himself a member of their faith anymore. That was why Skulduggery hadn't yet brought up Hayley. Wreath had earned some measure of trust by now, as agonising as that was to admit.

[peacefullywreathed]

He didn't think Tenebrae was Solomon's High Priest anymore? It was an interesting comment, and Solomon wasn't sure whether the skeleton meant solely in his own universe, or was stipulating here in Keeliai. It couldn't mean solely in his universe, because then he wouldn't have added that part; but then Solomon had no idea if it was meant to be a compliment or not.

"I'm sure he'd take that well," Solomon said dryly, "after I explain the part about going to another universe and becoming a Death Bringer, even if I manage to remember that I did."

Which was a subject he didn't want to think about--the fact that he wouldn't. If he had the choice ... if he had the choice, he wasn't sure he would choose to go back at all.

Solomon blinked. That was a new thought. He knew where it had come from, but it was unexpected, true or not; and the more he turned it over in his head the more he liked it. It was a choice, the kind of choice he hadn't felt he'd had in a long time; the kind of choice he hadn't even known he'd lacked until he had it.

"Is there anything else you need me for?" he asked lightly.

[skeletonenigma]

"No," Skulduggery replied, waving Wreath off. "Enjoy the whiskey."

He paused, and, against his better judgement, looked back barely a few seconds later. "Well, one more thing. Hayley tells me you're thinking about teaching her necromancy. You don't have the benefit of the experience my version of you does, so I'll warn you once - it's a terrible idea, and it's only going to end in tears. Most likely hers."

The warning given, Skulduggery straightened back into his meditative position again. "Now there shouldn't be anything else. Enjoy the whiskey."

[peacefullywreathed]

Solomon frowned and didn't rise. "You spoke to Hayley? What else did she tell you?" Of course he spoke to Hayley--Solomon remembered seeing Skulduggery also respond, but only belatedly. His frown deepened. "What did you tell her, and what does this have to do with my future?"

[skeletonenigma]

Skulduggery hid the rise of irritation with a resigned sigh. He really should have known better than to bring this up. If it truly became a problem later, he would have dealt with it then.

Then again, maybe nipping things in the bud was the sort of tactic he needed to try more often.

"Yes," he replied without turning his head. "Nothing else of concern to you. Lots of clever little things. With your future, very little, but with Valkyrie's future, it makes a world of difference. I would have thought you'd learned how dangerous it was to study necromancy after growing up in a normal life outside of the Temple when it happened to you, but clearly I was mistaken. As I said, enjoy the whiskey."

[peacefullywreathed]

Calmly Solomon rose, filled the glass half-full with whiskey, and dumped it over Skulduggery's head. "You don't," he said, "get to introduce a topic like that and then pretend there's nothing to talk about. I don't dance to your whim, remember, and if you were truly willing to mend fences then you wouldn't treat me like one of the simpletons at the Sanctuary."

He poured another glass and re-took his seat. "Now, shall we try this again? What does Hayley have to do with Miss Cain, and what did you tell her about me, Necromancy and the Temple?"

[skeletonenigma]

If Skulduggery had truly been treating Wreath like he treated the simpletons at the Sanctuary, he would have left by now. But he neglected to mention it, mainly because it wasn't relevant, and partly because his skull was now dripping with whiskey. His suit was getting wet. That was unforgivable.

"I don't suppose you'd let me change first?" Skulduggery asked wryly before unfolding his legs and standing up. "Just a minute." He went to grab a fresh towel from the closet and used it to dry his skull, then pulled it around his neck to try and soak up the worst of the damage dripping down his shirt collar. It didn't work very well, but it would have to do.

"You were teaching Valkyrie necromancy as well," Skulduggery said as he worked, his voice coming out muffled through the towel while he ran it over his face. "To give her the extra power she needed to rescue me. Needless to say, it backfired. I'm not going to tell you how, because that information is Valkyrie's to share, and there is every chance we'll remember our escapades here when we make it back. I told her what the Temple's ultimate goal was, that you were rethinking your position on it, and that necromancy is addictive and she should be careful what she chooses to learn."

He dropped the towel onto the chair and removed his jacket. "Was I wrong?"

[peacefullywreathed]

"That's what your magic is for," Solomon pointed out, sipping his glass and watching with amusement as Skulduggery attempted to dry his suit. "I don't know if you've realised this, but Miss Cain isn't here. Ergo, anything that involves her isn't particularly relevant, especially since I barely know her."

He would have gone on, had opened his mouth to do so, when some of Skulduggery's words sank in and he snapped it shut again. Necromancy. Addiction. He groaned and rubbed his face with one hand. Idiot. Idiot, idiot. He'd forgotten--how could he have forgotten? He'd put aside the need for an item for so long that he had neglected to remember that Hayley would need one herself--or it would be addicting.

Unless he took this opportunity to see whether it was possible to teach without such facets. Maybe it would be possible; maybe it wouldn't. Either way, Hayley knew enough of the details to make the choice if she wished. Solomon would just have to rethink some of his methods.

"Your point is made," he said, and his voice was slightly muffled. Then he moved his hand and drank a mouthful of whiskey, and leaned forward, elbows on knees, thinking. "What was her reaction?"

[skeletonenigma]

"My magic," Skulduggery replied, "manipulates water, not whiskey. Taking the water out of the equation would leave behind everything which stains the suit. Completely counter-intuitive. You're paying for a new suit, Wreath."

It should really have gone without question, but where Wreath was concerned, one couldn't be too sure.

That exact conclusion was confirmed a few moments later when Wreath fully admitted to completely overlooking the addiction. It wasn't the sort of admittance Skulduggery had come to expect from Wreath, making it at once promising and worrying. He tugged his shirt off while the necromancer was silent, tested the tie, deemed it suitable, and threaded it through the collar of a new shirt.

"Level," he said as he buttoned that shirt up. "I suggested she talk to you herself, and she agreed. If it's changed her perspective of you, she certainly didn't make it obvious."

[peacefullywreathed]

"That depends on how well tailored you want your new suit," Solomon murmured, taking a lazy sip that was pointed without being obvious about its pointedness, and watching Skulduggery unconcerned for the skeleton's relative nudity. He'd seen worse.

"She's too single-minded to be put off by gossip," he said, but even so he relaxed slightly. Well, at least it meant one of his relationships here hadn't been completely ruined. His voice was mild, though, mild in a way that said he was unhappy. "I would have preferred, however, if you'd come to me before telling her all my dirty little secrets."