tushanshu_logs | Phantom faces at the window, phantom shadows on the floor

Characters: (CLOSED) Skulduggery Pleasant, Erskine Ravel, Anton Shudder, and the fourth-wall Dead Men.
Date: April 15-30.
Location: Throughout Keeliai, but mostly in Erskine's new Earth Sector shelter.
Situation: The Dead Men haven't created something lasting together in a very long time. It's led to some spectacularly stupid decisions. This? This is their chance to fix things.
Warnings/Rating: Intimacy / non-serious flirting between grown men, some jokes of a sexual nature, massive spoilers for the entire Skulduggery Pleasant series (but notably the last two books), mentions of murder and betrayal, gratuitous amounts of violence and punching in response to said mentions of murder and betrayal (the Dead Men actually communicate by punching each other in the face). Also, broship. Lots of broship.

With Erskine and Skulduggery's relationship somehow even more strained than it was before Skulduggery vanished for a month, and Erskine growing maybe a little too dependent on Anton while living at the Hotel, the Dreaming's been getting a lot of wishes -- subconscious or otherwise -- for the arrival of very specific people.

They arrive on the 15th, scattered around the turtle. Over the day, they find each other, two or three at a time. There are hugs. There are punches. And when they all come together, they spend most of the following two weeks helping Erskine build and prepare a shelter for the kedan -- in between needing subtle reminders that the point of the reunion is to forgive each other.

Or, if not forgive, at least accept each other, flaws and all.

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Every moment with Skulduggery is something impossibly snatched, something to be tucked away and treasured for that they will never quite have it again. And yet, at the same time, things are as they ever were: Ghastly and Skulduggery, picking up where they left off, sarcasm and tailory and everything in between. There is marginally less assumption that Skulduggery will need Ghastly to punch someone, but that's about it.

This particular pause, and what comes after, makes Ghastly hesitate a moment, the needle of the sewing machine hesitating in time with him. "I'm not sure," he says in a moment or two. "Do you think it will help?" Curiosity is a natural part of people, but in this case Ghastly isn't sure that what he learns won't just make everything worse.

There's another pause, this one shorter than the last, and then Skulduggery shrugs. "I don't think it'll hurt, but then again, I'm not the mind-reader. Maybe it depends on the questions you ask."

For Skulduggery's part, he's never seen knowledge to be a bad thing. An undesirable, unwelcome, or unhelpful thing, certainly, but not a bad thing. Of course, Skulduggery also tends to separate himself from 'other' people, which probably isn't very healthy.

Don't ask anything he doesn't genuinely want answered. Right. Ghastly has to think about that a little longer, the work of the sewing a comforting underlying hum of business with his hands.

"All right," he says finally, sitting back and looking over at Skulduggery. "What happened to you? I got bits and pieces of it, and I probably don't want to know all of the details, but what happened to you--"

After I died. Ghastly does not actually finish the question, though he himself isn't sure if it's for Skul's sake or his.

-- except for that. That knowledge is a bad thing.

But Skulduggery extended the offer of answers, and he's not about to go back on that offer. So he just takes an unnecessary breath, his eyeless gaze on Ghastly's sewing.

"Erskine revealed his city," he says. "I helped defend it from Warlocks. After that, Darquesse rose. We beat her." A pause. "Well, we actually sent her into the dimension with the Faceless Ones, since she was pretty much unkillable, but it amounts to the same thing. The problem was no one saw fit to tell us activating the Accelerator also started a countdown to the end of the world, and the only way to stop that countdown was to offer it a willing soul. You can probably guess what happened after that."

This is why he asked if it would be a good idea, Skulduggery. But the fact Skulduggery even has to take a breath says something, and so Ghastly braces himself, even though he was more or less braced already.

"You sent her to the Faceless Ones," Ghastly repeats, blankly. That's... one solution. If Darquesse was as bad as she seems to have been, then it follows that they'd have to resort to something drastic, and allowing unkillable horrors to deal with unkillable horror probably works, but it's still a bit horrifying.

Why would anyone have built that into the Accelerator. Ghastly shakes his head slowly, almost disbelieving the sheer volume of bad that happened after. "I can guess," he says quietly. "I... how many of us are left, Skulduggery?"

Not an answer he wants, but one he probably needs.

Skulduggery hesitates -- again. Yes, alright, on second thought, perhaps this was a bad direction to take the conversation in.

"I'm not sure," he answers. "At the time, I thought we all survived that final battle. I didn't have time to stop and check. From what I've heard here, though... Saracen, Erskine, and Valkyrie."

Dexter probably shouldn't come as a surprise. Even if he'd survived, he wouldn't have been a Dead Man anymore. But somehow, news of his death did come as a surprise, and hearing about other deaths from Saracen while here in Keeliai... occasionally Skulduggery wondered what China had done with the country when it was missing half its sorcerers.

Saracen and Erskine. No wonder Saracen had hugged Ghastly as soon as he saw him. Ghastly closes his eyes for a moment, letting the weight of it sink in, letting his heart ache for those left behind.

They couldn't have lasted forever. All of them would have died eventually, after all. Probably even Skulduggery, someday. But it shouldn't have been like this, with Saracen alone and Erskine drowning in regret.

"Was there anything good about it?" he asks abruptly, focusing on Skulduggery again. "Or was it just-- war, all over again?"

"Well," Skulduggery says carefully, "it was a war that lasted for less than a year."

A record, where sorcerers were concerned. But since it was Ghastly and Anton's deaths which ended that war, Skulduggery hadn't been able to get too excited about it. Something good? China becoming Grand Mage probably doesn't qualify.

"Otherwise, no," he adds quietly. "No more than the little things. Getting back someone you thought was gone. Unexpected allies. Winning."

A war lasting less than a year is actually kind of an upside, at least for the people left behind. War is a terrible, terrible thing, and the fewer people who have to make their way through one, the better.

Last time, Ghastly thinks morbidly, it took the deaths of two Dead Men before the war was finished. Why should this time have been any different?

Then he mentally shakes himself. "Sometimes," he says, "the little things are enough." But the smile he offers Skulduggery is a melancholy one. It's scant compensation for everything lost.

"Do you think the world will be all right? Ireland?" Ghastly has perilously little picture of the world after, only really the deaths.

"Yes." There's barely any pause before the response this time. "Yes, I do. All three of Mevolent's Generals are dead. Did I mention that? China's Grand Mage and, despite everything, mortals still don't know sorcerers exist. As long as what's best for Ireland matches what's best for China, I think there's a good chance the world will be fine."

It's difficult to accept, sometimes, that the world doesn't care very much about you and your friends. Skulduggery had it harder than most -- through a twist of luck, the fate of the war actually did hinge on his death. But that's all it was. A twist of luck. The Dead Men breaking didn't portend the world breaking, which is perhaps why it's so difficult for any of them to see past themselves.

Ghastly laughs unwillingly, like he didn't mean to be amused by any of that. He really shouldn't be. But it's China. "China Sorrows, Grand Mage," he says, almost wonderingly, and shakes his head. Somehow he thinks Ireland's years of having difficulty hanging on to a Grand Mage are over. He'd like to see the first idiot who tries to assassinate her.

Or maybe he wouldn't, knowing China. The point is: her aggressive self-interest will be helpful if it extends to Ireland. "The world should tremble," Ghastly says dryly, shaking his head. "But the war is over. And the old one can't come back again. That's-- that's a relief."

Phantom faces at the window, phantom shadows on the floor

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