[Midnight Hotel] June catch-all

[gistful]

Characters: Anyone, everyone.
Date: Month of June, 2016.
Location: The Midnight Hotel.
Situation: Catch-all post! Feel free to use this post for anything that happens within the Midnight Hotel during the month, using the subject header to label specific rooms or for specific people. See also the OOC note at the bottom.
Warnings/Rating: Mark your threads if content warnings become applicable, please!

The Hotel’s numbers have dwindled slightly since last month, but there are some new additions of note – firstly, Jintou, an ex-Snake kedan brought there by Aqua and Akito’s Chihuelan mugger Marcil, the one with a noticeable scar on his cheek, who was recently bargained out of the Snakes’ imprisonment. Jintou, while still skittish, has relaxed enough to start getting bored by being limited to the Hotel, as he’s not allowed out unless escorted. Malcil, on the other hand, is lean and bruised like he came out the worst in a fight and has no desire to leave at all—he barely leaves his room, in fact. Any interrogation will make him clam up and back away.

For the most part both are given a decently wide berth by the other kedan in the Hotel, though the kedan are more likely to recognise Malcil as Chihuelan than Jintou as a Snake and he, therefore, bears the brunt of both dirty looks and intense curiosity.

Another notable newcomer is the unfairly gorgeous man who has been making himself known on the network recently. He can be seen around the Hotel, wearing a frilly maid’s apron and doing some cleaning, with varying degrees of skill but with a magical talent people may recognise as the same discipline as Skulduggery Pleasant – using air to lift furniture to vacuum underneath, conjuring water in his mopping bucket, and so on.

If anyone asks, Anton will just say he summoned a cleaning faerie.

It’s notable that this unfairly gorgeous man doesn’t have a room of his own – he can be seen coming in and out of Anton’s private bedroom. They obviously know each other well, since Erskine has a habit of stroking Anton’s hair given the opportunity. Several times throughout the month Anton will be slightly late for his shifts and emerge with his hair still damp and unbound, only for Erskine to come by a bit later and sheepishly plait it for him while he’s working at the desk.

While there isn’t much physically different about the Hotel this month, aside from the newly settled exit into Sky Sector, Anton himself is more protective. He’s more watchful, more inclined to look up even at minor signs of tension – though he’s no more likely to interfere than before. He will also regularly scout the Hotel's entrance for anyone who seems to be paying undue attention, thanks to Sokka's mugging right outside its door.

Anton's alert, and no wonder given the Hotel is now housing two essential fugitives.

[ooc: The Midnight Hotel’s status page is available here, with the rules at the top and ongoing status at the bottom. PLEASE POST TO THE STATUS PAGE IF YOUR CHARACTER WOULD LIKE A ROOM, JOB OR AREA IN THE GARAGE, OR ARE MOVING OUT. Anton will manufacture means of payment until Foreigners are able to properly offer recompense or choose to move out.

[Both Jintou and Malcil can be threaded with by request to the mod account, though Jintou will be more open; however, any new information will need to be bought with reward requests.]

Comments

[skeletonenigma]

At some point, Skulduggery was going to have to say something. At some point, Anton was going to start taking the silence as a deliberate and obstinate rebuttal.

"That's true," he said slowly. "I could have left the decision to Saracen and Dexter, but they both agreed with me. I could have left the decision to Grand Mage Sorrows, but the only reason she wouldn't have made the exact same choice is because she wasn't nearly as good at anticipating Darquesse's motives. There weren't many of us left, Anton."

He meant to say more, but hesitated, skull tilted slightly to the side. "Just so I know where I stand," he said, "how much of my justification are you willing to hear before you punch me again?"

[gistful]

Anton punched him again.

[skeletonenigma]

Skulduggery was sent reeling again, this time actually knocking his skull against the raised stone walkway, and the only thought he managed to have through the blinding pain was I really should have seen that coming.

Even after the pain cleared and Skulduggery managed to keep a level head - metaphorically speaking - he didn't dare try getting up again. He could barely bring himself to raise his skull, but decided that if he was going to conduct this conversation from the ground, he might as well assign himself the added indecency of having to look up at the man he was having the conversation with.

"First you want me to explain," he murmured, "and now you don't want me to say anything. I'm sensing a double standard here."

[gistful]

"No," said Anton, "that was to prove to you that you're not the only one with a sense of dramatic timing." He forced his fists to unclench, even though that made the shake in his hands more obvious. It hadn't made him feel any better.

Quite the opposite, really.

"You can dress up your reasoning all the pretty excuses you like," Anton said flatly, looking down at Skulduggery. "It still doesn't change the fact that you let him be tortured for nearly two weeks. Yes, there would have been fallout if you'd made it stop earlier. So what? Since when have Dead Men ever let the fallout stop us from doing what was necessary? Since when has the things that are necessary only been things that are wrong?"

Now he took a step closer, and his shadow covered Skulduggery's skull. "Sometimes the things that are necessary are the things that are right, in spite of the consequences. And you can't even muster a veneer of regret that you let a broken man suffer instead of lending him the same chance of redemption you took for yourself. How vile of you."

His voice hadn't risen. Anton didn't raise his voice. But it had got low, and cutting, close to a snarl. "You haven't learned anything. Nearly two centuries, and you still think that the hard choices are the ones when you choose to do wrong. What you let happen to Erskine, Skulduggery--that wasn't the hard choice. That was vengeance. That was punishment. That was the easiest choice in the world."

THE AFOREMENTIONED MAJOR SPOILERS NOW INCLUDE BOOK 9: DYING OF THE LIGHT.

[skeletonenigma]

"I know," said Skulduggery quietly. And then, for a moment stretching into several, he didn't say anything else.

Punishment is not the answer. Punishment is easy. It's lazy. Redemption is hard. Redemption makes you work.

He'd said that to Valkyrie, mere minutes before stepping into the Accelerator and sacrificing his soul to save the world. He'd believed it then, and he certainly believed it now. It was one of the reasons he'd armed Ravel for the final fight. Consequently, it was one of the reasons he'd refused to acknowledge for so long that he'd actually been rescued from the Faceless Ones' dimension all those years ago.

And here, in Keeliai, in a dimension that sat outside of the normal cycles of death and time - if ever there was a place to begin that work, wasn't it here? Here, where Anton wasn't dead, where Roarhaven and the Children of the Spider didn't have a poisonous hold, where every day brought a fresh opportunity for Ghastly to come walking through the Midnight Hotel's doors?

Skulduggery didn't pretend to know, but Anton was right. If he didn't know, then he didn't have the right to pass judgement.

Which was, quite frankly, infuriating.

He took a steadying breath. "Would a veneer of regret have changed anything about the way this conversation has gone? I don't believe the punishment was justified. If I could have stopped Darquesse, I would have. I meant it when I said I had no intention of getting in the way of a second chance. But I won't be part of that second chance, Anton. All I see when I look at him is Ghastly choking on his own blood; your gist vanishing into thin air. He won't get a second chance if I'm anywhere near it."

[gistful]

If Skulduggery had answered nearly any other way, Anton would have accused him of being dismissive. Skulduggery, very frequently, did that. He knew, but he didn't know. He thought he understood, but didn't. This time, Anton believed him when he said he did. It was a rare occurrence, when it came to situations like this.

Anton sighed, a long and deliberate sigh that forced all the tension out of his body. His arms had been heavy, and still were, and they made his hands shake worse; his chest felt tight and hot. But he was glad Skulduggery didn't make him want to punch him again. Anton wasn't sure he would have been able to do it again, not because he didn't want to but because he did.

He crouched, his elbows on his knees and hands trembling freely in the air, still with his shadow cast over Skulduggery's face. "And is that because you don't want to forgive him," he asked, "or you don't want to forgive yourself?" He shook his head. "I told you you're self-righteous in your guilt, Skulduggery, because you are. You refuse to give it up, as if you won't be anyone if you manage to let it go. You try not to be a hypocrite, Skulduggery--you don't always manage it, but you try. But looking Ravel in the face and seeing him as a man you can forgive means that you'd have to face the fact that you can forgive yourself. You won't do that. Not because you can't, but because you choose not to. Because you won't even try."

[skeletonenigma]

Skulduggery stayed quiet. Right now, emotionally and personally speaking, he disagreed. He was pretty sure his inability to forgive Ravel had much more to do with Ravel having betrayed and killed two of the men Skulduggery trusted above all others. There was no underlying motive there, no layers to peel back or depths to plunge.

But it didn't change that Anton was right. And Skulduggery didn't know how to answer. He didn't know how to say that he wouldn't be anyone if he managed to let it go. He didn't know how to say that he couldn't forgive himself because he didn't know who he would be afterwards. He didn't know how to explain that anger kept his bones together, kept his consciousness tethered, offered him the lifeline of a purpose and a cause through the wrathful haze he'd been trapped in as Vile. For nearly three centuries, Skulduggery had needed a reason for existing; something to focus on, to strive for, to search for. Redemption was just the latest in a long line, really. An attempt to make his un-life about something other than searching for revenge. If Skulduggery achieved that, and there was nothing left, no reason or focus for his anger... then he wasn't sure his bones wouldn't just fall apart where they stood.

He didn't know how to explain any of it to Anton because he still didn't know how to explain it to himself.

"A little of both, if I'm being honest," Skulduggery answered at last. "But that's a burden I'll happily shoulder until I manage to reconcile them. That's all I can promise, I'm afraid."

[gistful]

There was no way to force Skulduggery to do anything he couldn't see himself doing, and yet he was still an idiot. "A burden you'll happily shoulder." Anton shook his head as he rose. "You're a fool, Skulduggery. You look at your life as a series of burdens. You think of redemption as an achievement you don't believe you'll get, as if life is a linear progression and when you falter all you do is stop or go backwards."

Anton stepped away toward Skulduggery's hat, sitting precariously on the edge of the canal, and reached down to pick it up. "But that isn't how it works." He straightened up, flicked dirt off the hat, smoothed down the brim. "Redemption isn't something you get, it's something you do. You'll rise, you'll fall. Whenever you fall, you make sure you rise again, and you do it over and over, as many times as you must."

He turned and came back, and cast his shadow over Skulduggery's face again, hat in hand and looking down at Skulduggery with an unreadable expression. "Except you've chained yourself to your fear and your guilt. You're unchanging. You plateau. You're too afraid to rise ..." He held out his hand and dropped the hat. "... so you leave nothing in your future but another fall."

The hat landed squarely over Skulduggery's fleshless face, and Anton turned and strode toward the Hotel's entrance.

[skeletonenigma]

The last thing Skulduggery had expected when he told Anton the truth about Vile was to have it thrown back in his face every time he made a mistake. Well, no; that wasn't true. He'd expected that. What he hadn't expected was every choice he'd made since Vile getting thrown back in his face. To Anton, even five years of mass murder was possible to overcome. Why? Because there wasn't anywhere else to go, and because maybe if he held Skulduggery to high enough standards, Skulduggery might eventually reach them.

It was ludicrous. There was only so high a dead man could go, only so much he could do to overcome being dead. Skulduggery had never entertained any illusions that he was capable of being the man he used to be before he was killed. He'd tried, a long time ago, and fallen flat. Now, he made the hard choices and took the path of moral struggle so that no one else would have to, because there was very little else he was good for.

Maybe that was the problem.

He sighed, sat up, and brushed some more of the dirt off his hat. "I'm glad we had this little chat," he told the empty air where Anton was standing moments before, if only because saying it might make the sentiment true. It did, in a way. Then he made the conscious decision to stop thinking about the struggle and to remember that he was, in fact, an amazingly unique man with a phenomenal sense of style and an ego large enough to keep him upright when nothing else would; and as Anton vanished inside the Hotel, Skulduggery got up and lifted into the air, eventually disappearing over a neighbouring rooftop.