Phantom faces at the window, phantom shadows on the floor

[skeletonenigma]

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.

Comments

[scryinghope]

"What would have been different?" Hopeless asked simply. "You already saw me. Even when I wasn't in your range of vision--you're the one who'd look around to find me. You never forgot that I was there." His thumb stroked gently.

"That's what's so wonderful about you. You see people, the people everyone else overlooks. You notice them for who and what they are, and you want to save them, not because they can do anything for you--but because of their simple worth as living beings. I'm sorry--"

Hopeless's breath caught, and his eyes prickled. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you from that part of you from being twisted. I'm sorry I wasn't there to keep helping you make sure it wasn't."

[edgeoftheknife]

Erskine wanted to believe that something would have been different, had he known during the war that he'd been in love with Hopeless, but maybe... maybe that was foolish. He couldn't have prevented Hopeless from going on dangerous missions. Hopeless would still be dead; loving him wouldn't have prevented that either. The only real difference was that Erskine would have grieved as something like a lover, instead of a bereft friend--but he'd already grieved so hard that maybe they were one and the same anyway.

"Don't," he said, and he carefully moved one arm from around Hopeless to lift a hand to his face, to stroke a thumb over Hopeless's jawline. "Don't be sorry. You did what you could. It was my fault. It was all my fault." Erskine's voice was thick and his eyes shut tightly, though the little strokes of his thumb on Hopeless's skin didn't stop. "It's my fault Mevolent got you in the first place. It's my fault we lost you. You were the best thing in my life and I'm the reason you're gone. I'm so sorry."

From pure joy, minutes ago, to tears stinging his eyes. No wonder he'd been such a wreck these last few months, in spite of all the progress he'd made. There was so much he'd needed to say and he hadn't been able to say it to the person who mattered.

[scryinghope]

"That isn't what I meant," Hopeless whispered. "I already had you, Erskine. I already had all of you. When you laughed, when you looked at me, when you slept by me--I had that. Even if you'd figured it out, there was nothing I would have wanted different. Except when you--" His breath caught. "--when I didn't hear them take you--"

When I had to listen to him torture you.

Erskine's thumb caught on the tears trailing down Hopeless's cheeks, and Hopeless's fingers curled into the back of his shirt. "I should have heard them. I should have looked for you. The rest--you didn't kill me, Erskine. Mevolent killed me." It wasn't going to be enough. It had been far too long, too many years, in which Erskine had told himself it was his fault. Hopeless had already said the same of his capture, and while with time the constant reinforcement might have sunk in, they hadn't had that time.

It could well be that Erskine needed to hear something else instead.

Hopeless took Erskine's hand and turned his head just enough, without breaking their touch, to kiss his knuckles. "But I forgive you for the rest."

For taking Hopeless's name, and turning it into something it shouldn't have been; for taking it, and removing the irony so it was truth instead of pointed.

[edgeoftheknife]

Erskine hadn't realized, until that moment, just how badly he'd needed to hear those words from Hopeless. He'd never expected forgiveness from any of the Dead Men and he'd never bothered to ask for it. If Descry's God existed, Erskine knew he was damned for what he'd done. The only consolation he had was that he knew his own intentions, and he knew that he'd been trying to help. He'd meant well, for whatever that was worth.

Anton's forgiveness had been unexpected, but it was what had kept Erskine going. It had kept him from losing hope completely while he'd been here in Keeliai. Hopeless's forgiveness was a weight off his soul.

There were tears in his eyes when he finally opened them again and focused on the little wet tracks down Hopeless's cheeks. Those tears--Hopeless's, not his own--made his heart ache in some indescribable way, even as the kiss on his hand made his heart flutter again. He was a confusing mess of emotions.

But Descry loved him. That was the important part, the part Erskine told himself to focus on. He moved his hand just as carefully in Hopeless's grasp, just enough to brush the tears from Hopeless's cheeks, and then leaned forward to place a gentle kiss where those tear tracks had been. Not on the lips this time, so as not to push Hopeless, just on his cheekbones. Little affectionate kisses, like the one Hopeless had given him a moment ago. Surely those were safe enough.

"We are a mess," he declared quietly, grinning despite his own tears.

[scryinghope]

That feeling of pressure alleviated felt like unexpected sunlight through storm-clouds. Despite his tears, Hopeless smiled at the feel it. It wouldn't erase everything Erskine felt in the wake of his suffering--all the ways he'd suffered--but it was the sort of settling that would make his future easier to bear.

Those little kisses caught his attention and made his breath catch, but not in the bad way. Not in the way that made Hopeless feel anxious for what might happen after.

"Little bit," Hopeless agreed with a quiet laugh. Even with how he couldn't be sure of his own feelings, the way it made Erskine's mind lighten made the confession worth the white lie Hopeless had to tell himself to make it. If he could live for centuries with the same feeling, even caused by bleed-through, surely that made it--

Let's not think about that.

Hopeless's hand shifted down from Erskine's temple to brush away the tears in Erskine's eyes. "For the record--I don't believe you'd be damned. I don't believe any god of mercy could see the weight of your remorse and not be moved by it."

[edgeoftheknife]

The grin faded a little at that; Erskine didn't agree, couldn't see how he could be anything but damned. He'd betrayed his brothers. He'd murdered his brothers. Feeling remorse for that wouldn't bring them back, wouldn't undo the evil he'd done. But even that thought wasn't enough to completely pierce the relief of forgiveness or the elation of the moment. He shook his head slightly, dismissing the topic like waving away a cloud of smoke.

"You're the one who talks to God," he said, smiling. "I'll take your word for it."

Hopeless's fingers on his face, wiping the tears away, sent little shivers across his skin. He was used to the thumb on his temple; Hopeless had used the same gesture during the war, after Mevolent, often enough that even Anton had remembered it all these years later. But feeling those long, gentle fingers elsewhere on his face made Erskine inhale sharply. His face was unusually sensitive to touch, always had been. Most of the time it was a non-issue. Lovers rarely noticed, and he wasn't close enough to anyone anymore here in Keeliai--except for Anton, who hadn't made the mistake of using that gesture more than once--for it to matter.

He still didn't equate it with the kind of physicality, the kind of desire that had Hopeless so worried. Maybe if he had the time to sit down and think about it. For now he equated it with pure excitement, the thrill of having Hopeless back, a kind of electricity in the air around them. His smile widened again.

"You do recall that I haven't used a loom in something like three hundred years?" he asked, the amusement in his voice so apparent he was practically humming.

[scryinghope]

Happy Erskine was like a cat. Large, sprawling, effusive in his contentment. There was no way to miss Erskine when he radiated happiness. It was a light shining in him. But Hopeless did happen to know where at least some of that excitement came from, so when he pulled back with a soft laugh he let his hand fall to Erskine's shoulder.

"I do recall," he said teasingly back. "But that's the nice thing about futures. They're self-defined. They can include anything you want to learn, or re-learn."

... Alright, he lied; his hand lifted again after all, to cup Erskine's face, his voice quiet. "Nothing changes the past, Erskine. But remorse and forgiveness can enlargen the future. Relearn the loom. Leave behind something which grants warmth, safety and beauty, even if only for a few. That's a far greater legacy than changing the world in one sweeping blow."

[edgeoftheknife]

A future. Erskine hadn't ever been one to plan for the future; during the war he'd simply looked forward to the end of it, to clean, comfortable sheets on a real bed and not having to worry about himself or his brothers ending up dead on a battlefield. After the war there had been nothing but the plan. The future had been everything but it hadn't been his future. If everything went as he'd hoped there was a very real possibility he would have no place in the new world he was creating. He didn't need a place in it. What would he have left? No Hopeless. No Rover or Anton or Ghastly. A small handful of remaining brothers who despised him.

He had no future, no hope for himself left.

Keeliai, however strange and tentative, was a future. Hopeless, however brief and fragile, was hope.

Erskine leaned into Hopeless's touch like a cat starved for attention. He closed his eyes again, still smiling although not quite grinning as before, and slowly moved until his forehead was resting against Hopeless's. "You sound like you're trying to make me into a good man," he said softly, a teasing edge in his voice. "Pretty ambitious for your first few days back among the living."

[scryinghope]

The track and tenor of Erskine's thoughts brought tears to Hopeless's eyes. No matter how much anyone said it, Erskine couldn't internalise that he wasn't hated, that he could have a future. The only thing that would override the thinking of a century was action contrary to his belief, and time.

They might not have enough time. But maybe they could lay foundations, at least.

It still hurt, feeling that incomprehension for his own qualities, and Hopeless stroked the side of Erskine's face, responding to that affection-starved lean despite the fact Erskine's forehead was once more resting on his.

"I have every faith in your ability to be a good man," Hopeless said with that quiet, steady assurance which had always made the Dead Men respond, no matter how much they doubted themselves. "I have every faith in your ability to care for people, to help people, to see the best in them. I have every faith in your ability to be generous, and gracious, and gentle. I have faith in you."

[edgeoftheknife]

The tears in Hopeless's brown eyes were visible, even though that quiet, confident voice suggested otherwise. Without moving away from the fingers on his own face--still leaning into them, more like--Erskine reached up to brush at Hopeless's cheeks again, either to brush away tears or... just to touch him, really. Just to wonder still at whatever twist of fate had brought Hopeless back to him after tearing at him for so long, wearing him away like a stone in a river. Why now? Why....

...how did he deserve this at all?

He loved that voice. God, how he'd missed Hopeless's voice, even after the Echo Stone had come along to remind him. He didn't necessarily agree with Hopeless's assessment of him, but being this close, listening to that voice and knowing that Hopeless at least believed it all.... Erskine swallowed against the sudden lump in his throat and offered a small smile.

"I'm no good without you," he rasped. "I've tried. Without you there's not enough of me left to be that man."

[scryinghope]

Hopeless's other hand lifted, found Erskine's cheek so he was cupping Erskine's face. "There is," Hopeless said with that same confidence. "There is still that man in you. He's in your graciousness and generosity. Your love for beautiful things, and sharing them. Your wit. Your dedication. Your compassion."

As he spoke his thumbs stroked the line of Erskine's cheekbones, up to the corner of his eyes, as if to wipe away tears that weren't there. "He's just gotten lost, and you need help finding him. If you want to change, Erskine, it's within you to change. It's always within anyone's capacity to change. I promise, it is."

[edgeoftheknife]

Erskine's eyes closed as Hopeless spoke, as the fingers trailed along his cheekbones. He didn't have the kind of faith Hopeless did--never had--but maybe Hopeless had enough faith for both of them. He was usually right about these sorts of things, wasn't he? He'd almost always been right, about damn near everything. The memories of that stung, the ache in Erskine's chest a sharp counterpoint to the overwhelming relief of seeing Hopeless again.

One of Erskine's hands moved to lightly clasp around Hopeless's wrist again, as the fingers stroked his face. He'd long known that Keeliai was his second chance--probably the only chance he was ever going to get--but lately it had felt like he'd been treading water. Lost. Losing ground, even, on those days when he'd been unable to do anything but shut himself up in Anton's room with the Echo Stone. With the shelter, though, and with Hopeless here... it was starting to feel like maybe that chance wasn't wasted after all.

On impulse, Erskine moved his other hand to wrap around Hopeless, to draw the mind-reader into a tight hug. "Thank you."

For the gift. For the faith, and the love. For just being Hopeless, and for coming back to him.