I finished Death Bringer a few weeks ago, so this contains SPOILERS. DO NOT read any further if you haven't finished the book - even the author's notes are spoilerific.

As always seems to be the case with Skulduggery Pleasant, I wasn't happy how it ended. Not at all. China is an epic character, and I don't like it when our heros don't like her. This fanfiction was meant to be therapeutic and unposted, just something to give the book more of an ending in my brain. but I couldn't let it go, and before I knew it I was writing Valduggery. I didn't even know I liked Valduggery! I support Skulduggery/China!

Ahem, so I present my first SP fanfic. DISCLAIMER: Derek Landy owns SP - I nick the characters.

China Sorrows had become skilled in reading the emotions of people around her. It wasn't a skill she had had for a long time - on the contrary, it had only appeared since her switch to the "good guys" but it was very useful all the same. Right now, she could tell Valkyrie was mad. Very mad indeed.

"Val-"

"I don't want to talk to you." said Valkyrie. That was to be expected, China supposed. Valkyrie's hair was swung forwards, covering her face. What was visible of her expression was pure fury.

"I am so sorry." said China, the words alien on her tongue. "I would never do anything like that now."

Valkyrie looked up, and raised her eyebrows. "Yes you would."

"Not to Skulduggery." China corrected herself. "Or to you or Ghastly. Fletcher, maybe."

Valkyrie glared.

"I'm joking, of course." said China. Valkyrie didn't laugh. She continued to glare at China, although she looked somewhat defeated. China didn't know how to handle Valkyrie when she was emotional. That had alway's been Tanith's duty. It almost made her miss the leather-clad blonde.

"You've ruined everything." said Valkyrie. "Skulduggery's not the same anymore."

"What's changed?"

"He's sadder." she said. "It's like he doesn't care what happens in the present anymore." There was a bitterness in Valkyrie's voice that China didn't understand. She wouldn't remain unknowledgeable for long - she was very skilled in the art of getting what she wanted, after all.

"Maybe Skulduggery preferred it then." she probed lightly. It was clearly the wrong thing to say, and Valkyrie shot her a withering look.

"He didn't, trust me." China was taken aback, but she pushed in regardless.

"Is there any reason he shouldn't prefer the past? He had a wife and a child in the past. Now he has nothing."

"He has me." said Valkyrie moodily. "Only that isn't enough, apparently." The bitterness had returned, China noted.

"Did he say that to you?"

"No."

"Then why do you think that?" Valkyrie didn't answer. Her eyes were fixed instead on the symbols embroidered on China's carpet, but they were unseeing. She was thinking hard, China could tell.

"I was going to tell him if he survived." said Valkyrie, her voice soft. "I promised myself that. Before he fought Mel. I told myself that when we were driving away, I would tell him." China was burning to ask what she was so desperate to say to Skulduggery, but years of practise told her it was better to let the subject tell you the information in their own time.

"It's odd, really. Fletcher didn't even bring him up when we spit. You think he would, but he didn't. Neither did Caelan. I guess it's too weird for even them." China remained silent, listening for the meaning behind the words as much as the words themselves. "I really didn't mean to China. But I couldn't help it. I was so young when he swooped in and saved my life that first time - can you blame me for it? Really?" China knew she didn't want a response, and gave none, waiting. Apparently, however, Valkyrie had reached the end of her monologue. Her eyes left the rug and she focused once again on China, who had the information she needed.

"You should tell him." she said. Valkyrie looked startled. "For all his self-assurance, Skulduggery can be stupid. He needs your help Val, to bring him back to reality." China glanced at the door, sensing a disturbance. Valkyrie didn't notice.

"You don't even know what I need to tell him."

"I think I do." smiled China. "You need to tell him you love him." if China had had any doubts about her conclusion, they would have evaporated at the look on Valkyrie's face. Opening and closing her mouth like a gulping fish, it took her a moment to speak coherently again.

"I- I don't know how it happened. It's just as time's gone on, I've become more and more fixated with him. I told him once, but he didn't realise what I meant."

"What can I say?" said China. "He may show off that he's a genius at everything, but he's clueless in the long run." Valkyrie smiled weakly, and China joined in. It was a strange sensation. Talking to Valkyrie as a friend, giving advice.

"It's... Wrong, though. Isn't it?"

"Wrong? Because you're almost seventeen and he's a 400-year-old dead skeleton?" Valkyrie nodded, and China laughed her in her tinkingly, patronising way. "We're sorcerers, Valkyrie. If its meant to be, it's meant to be. Isn't that right, Mr Pleasant?" she said, addressing the man lurking outside the door.

"It certainly is, Ms Sorrows." came a velvety voice. Skulduggery entered, his facade up, looking like a man who had discovered a huge amount of information, and was still trying to process it.

"How long has he been there?" asked Valkyrie, her voice higher than normal.

"Long enough." said Skulduggery. "Why didn't you say anything, Val? All this time..." China sensed that her work was done, but where Skulduggery was standing made it near impossible to slip out and leave the two alone. Valkyrie got up and walked to him, placing a hand on his cheek.

"I'm sorry." she said.

"Damn right you should be sorry." said Skulduggery, a smile forming on his lips. "I've had to wait way too long for this." He closed the distance between himself and Valkyrie and kissed her full on the lips. After a moment of shock, Valkyrie flung her arms around him and he lifted her off the ground. It was like a moment from a fairy tale. Only the princesses tended not to be dressed in all-black, and the prince wasn't normally a skinny, skeletal frame wearing a head with slightly unfocused eyes. It didn't matter in the slightest, because anyone - even Fletcher, who teleported beside her at that moment with the intention of picking up Valkyrie - could see (however grudgingly) that they were made for each other.