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

[edgeoftheknife]

Erskine hadn't known how to behave around Dexter at first, short of quietly shying away from him as he'd been doing with Ghastly. It was true that Erskine hadn't plunged the knife into Dexter's back himself, at least by the point when he'd come to Keeliai--he didn't even know how Dexter had died, honestly--but he knew that it was his fault. The war, the state of the world when he'd left it... it was all his fault, more or less. Eight of the strongest, most talented sorcerers the world had produced, and Erskine was responsible for the deaths of all but three of them.

Even he himself was dead by his own hand, after a fashion, and would be in a very literal sense if he ever returned to their own world.

For someone who was deceptively gentle, Dexter had been particularly vitriolic after Ghastly and Anton's murders. Erskine couldn't blame him, but it left him at a loss as to how to occupy the same room with the energy thrower. Only the presence of the others saved the situation, Erskine suspected. So they found themselves working on the same section of the shelter, Erskine holding up a beam with a current of air magic while Dexter chattered to anyone who would listen. Erskine started at the sudden yelp and his magic slipped, dropping the unsecured half of the beam a good foot before he caught himself.

"All right up there?" he asked quietly, his hands moving in front of him as he manipulated the air.

[vexingshieldbearer]

The destabilising beam made Dexter wobble and fall flat on his ass, still gripping his hand. "I'm alive," he called back down, and only belatedly realised what he'd said. His chest wrenched and he sighed, and put his head in his hands. "This isn't working, is it?"

The banter. The chatter. Hopeless was right. Skulduggery had--done whatever he'd had to do. Dexter was pretty sure on what that was. Saracen had apparently had time to make his peace. Ghastly hadn't had to see the fallout of his death, and apparently that was helping. Anton wasn't even from he same time.

Rover and Hopeless ... well, they were Rover and Hopeless. The most loving and forgiving of the lot of them.

The only question-mark left, for Erskine, was Dexter.

He uncurled and picked up the hammer, and gave the nail a final savage blow, and then levered the beam properly into place so it locked in with the nails and wooden pegs that were to keep it wedged into place. "Done." Then he dropped the hammer and wriggled over to slide down the ladder. He wasn't entirely sure what he was going to do when he got down there; but at this point anything had to be better than this.