Hi! I'm EbonyEnigma and this is my first published fic!
Before I begin, I'd like to thank Tele, bearahcubecars, bluecookiedough, and Jonez7 for being such amazing friends IRL and for always supporting me in all my crazy endeavors.
I would like to give special thanks to Mancer. The idea for this fic originally came from a oneshot I co-wrote with her, and she's a brilliant writer, as well as funny, ridiculous, understanding, and an incredible best friend. My adoration for her knows no bounds, and for someone who 'just can't life', she sure can do a lot of things I would never be able to do.
Hope you enjoy this more than I own the characters (which would be any at all).
"What do you mean you won't take the case?" asked China, leaning elegantly back in her finely made chair and rubbing the frown lines from her forehead.
Skulduggery leaned up against the spare chair in her office and gave her a look from under his non-Bespoke-tailored hat. He did not deign to answer, instead paging through the briefing packet he had been given. He feigned indifference at her words, but if he had had a heart, it would have been twinging.
He should have known this day would come. In fact, perhaps he had always known that one day this case would slide into his perfectly tailored white gloves.
A torture death.
Skulduggery closed the papers with a snap, and China started, then sat up straight in her seat. "Listen to me, Skulduggery. They've canvassed all over the area. The mortals, the mages. No one can find anything. We both know you're the best detective in Europe, and I need you on this case." China gave him a pleading look that Skulduggery immediately saw through.
"Don't flatter me, China! You know why I'm not taking this case, and in case you've forgotten, I'm not feeling exactly peachy keen about you right now, so I would recommend that you just..." he took a deep breath, voice low and slicing through China's demeanor, "you just drop it."
China stood, not bothering to rub out the angry lines this time. "Skulduggery, I know you're still hurt by what I did. But everyone makes bad decisions! We settled this argument a long time ago. So don't dredge it up again now-are you rolling your eyes at me?"
"No," said the Skeleton Detective. "Would I do that to you, Grand Mage Sorrows?"
China let out a long, shuddering sigh. "I know you're still upset about your...death. But they need you. Please just let me help you through this. Or Valkyrie. There are dozens of people who would be willing to help you. Just give them a chance!"
He turned on his heel and began walking.
"Oh, what are you going to do?" cried China in exasperation, "go sit in your Bentley? You think your car cares about you?"
The skeleton quickened his pace, but the door seemed a million miles away and suddenly China was in front of him. "It doesn't," she said, her voice and eyes softer than he had ever seen them. "And I can prove it."
Sitting in the Bentley, the sky the same wispy, not-quite-there blue as China's eyes, Skulduggery laughed. He laughed so hard that he had to take his hat off and lay it on Valkyrie's seat. He howled with laughter. The idea of the Bentley not caring about him! The same car he had taken care of for decades, the car that had been his only friend!
Passers-by gave him strange looks and took their companion's hand, but the great detective kept laughing.
When he was finally done, he patted the seats of the Bentley lovingly and looked around it. Then he pulled out the thing that China had given him and considered it, thinking about the opportunity that he might never have again. The opportunity to speak to the object that had been his only friend for fifty years.
Skulduggery got out of the car and began to perform the operation described on the back in incredibly tiny print.
Fifty-eight minutes later, he was finished. In his hand he held the essence of his Bentley, contained in a tiny magical syringe, a deepest blue only half a shade lighter than its shiny black paint. Then he looked about for a suitable candidate, and his eye caught on a young man carrying a satchel, a man with shining black hair. How fitting, he thought, and made straight for him.l
Skulduggery wondered what his Bentley would say to him. It would probably be very thankful for all the care the skeleton had given him, the thousands of dollars he had spent. Perhaps it would even kneel at his feet in thanks, like the world should have many a time.
A grin spread across his facade as he imagined the good times they would have, he and the faithful companion who had stuck by him for fifty years. Perhaps he could even get the spirits of more cars and they could all have adventures together!
The skeleton walked faster toward the unsuspecting man.
Karush Turner was having a perfectly lovely day until he was attacked by a strange man in a designer suit.
He was walking quickly across the green, inwardly congratulating himself on his masterful handling of the debate in his political science class, when he realized something. There was a man following him.
Now, Karush considered himself to be a reasonably intelligent individual, and as soon as he realized this, he walked more quickly, straight toward a group of graduate students in sweatpants very different from his argyle sweater and crisply pressed slacks. If he could get to them, he'd be safe.
But before he got there, he was grabbed by a bony hand. "Follow me, please," said a velvety voice.
Karush turned, heart thumping. While being very gifted in the top floor, he was not exactly proficient at physical confrontation, and the man standing before him was very tall. So, he nodded, swallowed, and followed, taking a long, rueful look at the domestic scene of Little Drownerton before him.
They stepped into a dimly lit alley, and Karush, being a master of the perfect one-liner, opened his mouth. But before he could say anything, the man pulled something out of his pocket and there was a flash of dark blue.
Then Karush Turner saw no more.
Skulduggery's facade grinned and he rubbed his gloves together.
Here he was, waiting for confirmation of his self-esteem.
Here he was, hoping that his Bentley cared for him in the same way that he had cared for it for fifty years.
Here he was, standing vulnerable in front of his only friend.
Then the man opened his eyes.
"You're a narcissistic idiot who has a hat addiction," he said in a clipped, professional tone, cocking his dark head to one side. "Although that girl is very good-looking. I don't know how you got her."
He gave Skulduggery a bright smile, showing straight white teeth, and waited for him to respond with an inquisitive look, as though he was curious what he would do in response to this provocation.
Skulduggery's mouth hung open and a chasm opened in his ribcage. All his hopes, all the things he had thought of fondly and laughed about, were all sucked down, down, down, until all that was left was a ribcage and a few dog bones, more empty than ever before.
The man was still smiling. "What's the matter?" he queried. "Have I hurt the little skeleton's feelings?"
Skulduggery punched his Bentley in the face and glared at it through facade eyes. Thee young man stumbled back against the brick wall of the alleyway, deep blue mist bleeding like the thinnest wisps of smoke from his left nostril, glasses crooked across the bridge of his nose.
Skulduggery had a sensation then. A roaring, powerful, corrupted, dirty sensation, filling his nonexistent ears and turning his vision dark. He knew then what it was. It was the feeling he got when he was Lord Vile, killing and turning on all in his way. It was like fire, and suddenly he knew why Valkyrie had told him that his life force was red. It was red like blood, red like the pain and suffering he could inflict, red like the rage he felt.
It was power, and it was metal like the taste in his mouth, and it was liquid like the blood that had been sapped from his veins long ago.
Skulduggery advanced on the man, blue facade eyes snapping, voice low and dangerous. "You... for fifty years I've owned you. I loved you, I took care of you, I cared about you! When I had no one, I had you. When I was dying inside, when I was alone, I had you! And you... you think I'm a narcissistic..." He was shouting now, gesturing wildly with his arms, voice breaking and soaring like a bird riding the thermals. He extended his wings and glided, velvety sound flying. "And I have people now, people who care about me! People who know what I am and, more important, what I can be! I don't care about you anymore."
He socked the Bentley again with all his strength, and felt joy and red and blood and metal course through his nonexistent veins as the car-man's eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed onto the ground.
The dark mist seeped out of the man's nose and was caught in the tiny device that Skulduggery still held in his non-gloved left hand.
And then it was just them in the alleyway.
The man who Skulduggery had rendered unconscious when he didn't even know his name.
The syringe holding the Skeleton Detective's formerly only friend.
And a skeleton frightened of himself, of what he still had inside.
There was a screech of tires and the most beautiful woman to ever live pulled up to the kerb in a little two-seater the same blue as her eyes. She opened the door and stepped out, navigating the uneven ground easily with her six-inch heels.
China Sorrows pulled her sunglasses off her nose and looked at him, her pale eyes almost...was that caring? Skulduggery almost thought for a second that there was a flicker of empathy in those eyes, that perhaps China had once been alone in her house with her books, that they had been all she had loved.
"So," she said in her musical voice, smiling at him with perfect teeth. "Do you believe me now?" He looked at her, at her perfect smile and her tailored suit, at her icy eyes that were perhaps the warmest they'd ever been. Perhaps, he thought, their relationship could be going through a spring thaw. "Of course, I have the customary doubts," he said. "I'm so used to being alone, my relationships are all still at the ten-foot-pole stage."
China looked at him. "Are you sure about that?" She snapped her fingers and if Skulduggery still had eyes, he would have cried tears of joy and sadness together at the sight, intermingled like fire and water, like darkness and light. Like the fury and love fighting viciously in his heart.
Behind China, Valkyrie Cain stepped out of the shadows, dragging Solomon Wreath after her. Behind her strode Dexter Vex, Saracen Rue, Tanith Low, and many others. Skulduggery tapped his collarbones and his facade retreated as Melancholia St. Clair and Vaurien Scapegrace trotted towards him, joining the others, a wall of faces all looking at him, all with eyes that spoke of love and joy, of all the things he wished could rule his soul. Valkyrie stepped forward from the throng and put her arms around his neck.
"Skulduggery, you're annoying, sarcastic, and a pain," she declared, pulling back with her dark eyes sparkling. "But whenever I needed you, you've always been there for me, and we-" she gestured around her to the crowd of people, "-we decided to return the favor. Skulduggery, you'll always be my mentor, my partner, and my favorite person."
She looked at everyone else expectantly and they all nodded.
"I'll always be my own favorite person, but you'll be my second," China announced, and Valkyrie rolled her eyes with a smile, and all of a sudden he was struck by how grown-up she was, no longer the bright-eyed teenager who had insisted on riding in his car. This woman was his friend, and so were all the others here.
And for the first time in a very long while, Skulduggery decided perhaps love would win the fight for his heart after all.
He turned to China. "I'll take the case."