Shadows and Bones
One hundred Skulduggery Pleasant drabbles.
Nothing is owned by me.
LOOK OUT! SPOILERS FOR DEATH BRINGER ABOUND!
This piece actually takes place after Dying, a later chapter, so don't worry if things are a little confusing here.
Chapter twenty-Keeping a Secret
...
Skulduggery knew what happened when a person died.
Oh sure, he told everyone he didn't, that he hadn't gone far enough, that all he'd done was stay on Earth as a furious spirit. But he knew. He'd just promised not to tell anyone.
Of course, the secret was right in front of everyone, if they so cared to look. Skulduggery could see it, just over their shoulders. All anyone ever had to do was turn around, and there it was. Though perhaps it was something only Skulduggery could see-the brilliant white glow at the edge of everything, and the words that unfurled themselves in the air. And the...Other.
It was to the Other he'd given his promise of silence. The Other had looked straight at him with its huge eyes (the color of which he could not remember, not that he wanted to) and in its gaze Skulduggery could see the great secrets of the universe that were never meant to be told.
"Look up," the Other had said in a voice that was somehow sound and vision and time all at once and even the memory of it burned Skulduggery's thought. "Look up, and you'll see."
So Skulduggery had looked up, and he'd seen something he couldn't remember. It was something burning and unreal and important, and as hard as he tried, he simply could not remember.
But when he looked back down again, the Other had smiled at him, a smile that tore at the inside of Skulduggery's mind whenever he thought about it, and held a finger to its lips as if to say "Don't tell."
Skulduggery didn't remember much after that except awakening back in his skeleton, under a river, with a fury that could have lasted him ten lifetimes.
Ah, but that didn't matter. Nothing mattered nearly as much as returning to that afterlife, that blank white space, and the Other's welcoming wingbeats and burning voice. The existential terror that had held him while he was there seemed like nothing compared to the strange loneliness and dullness of the living world.
When he'd first returned to life, Skulduggery was glad to be back. The colors and the soothing familiarity had comforted his lingering fears. The living world greeted him with horrors he could fight and problems he could solve. However, as time wore on, it seemed that there was a certain hollowness in the living world that could not be filled no matter what he did, whether it was help people or...otherwise, when he was Lord Vile.
It seemed half of him still remained in the afterlife, back with the Other and whatever alien hand guided his life and the life of everyone else. It wasn't that surprising that he wasn't all alive, because anyone who saw him knew that he wasn't. He was a skeleton, after all, and skeletons are dead by definition.
However, he knew that there was no point in trying to die again. The Other would just send him back, as it had done the first time. It had told him that his death was just the beginning-of what, Skulduggery didn't know, but he did know that trying to kill himself would come to nothing. As a matter of fact, he wasn't even sure if he could kill himself. He had no idea how far-reaching the Other's powers were, and for all he knew, the Other would make it so that nothing would kill him.
So Skulduggery continued his half-life, and kept his secrets. When people asked him, he told them that he didn't know anything about the real afterlife, that he'd just floated around as an angry spirit for a while before possessing his bones and returning to the physical plane.
He caught another glimpse of the afterlife in the St Clair girl, when she had temporarily dispersed him with her 'death bubble' or whatever it was. He saw the great white expanse and heard a whisper of the Other's great beating wings, and then he was snapped back to the living world again, with Valkyrie attempting to put his body back together.
After that, he'd become Vile for a short time, and there was a sense of inevitability that was overpowering. When he'd been Lord Vile before, it was out of a feeling of desperation and overwhelming fury. Now, Vile seemed like something he had to do, like he was playing a part in a play (he thought sometimes that perhaps he was, but he soon dismissed these thoughts for fear of what they would bring).
In the end, he could pull off Vile's armor and pull Valkyrie out of Darquesse's hold, and he felt a strange urge to ask whether Valkyrie saw the same things he did. After all, she was like him, her power overflowing through her skin and in her mind.
Then he remembered the sound of the Other's voice and the searing look of its smile, and decided to keep his secrets, if only for a little while longer.
...
I've been reading a lot of Grant Morrison lately.
If anyone is a little confused as to why I seem to completely ignore any continuity unless it suits me-well, that's because I do. Unless it's a character study or otherwise stated, each chapter takes place in a completely different universe from the previous chapters or even canon.
Oh, and just to avoid any confusion-the Place-Beyond-Life where Val met Nye and got her chest cut open is not the afterlife that Skulduggery is talking about.