Diamond walked.
She did not walk with any purpose or destination. She just let her feet carry her over the sand, as the sun tinted the sky in scarlet red, and bright yellow, and soft pink.
Meanwhile, her thoughts swirled, and Diamond did her best to sort them, but images and sharp memories assaulted her at random intervals, interrupting the process over and over. The frustration made her stomp on quicker.
Yet, one train of thought seemed to stick with her, no matter how scattered the rest of them were. Part of her was mad at herself for freezing up; rendered useless in the moment she had been supposed to save one of them. And another part of her was glad she had let Skulduggery do it.
When her ankles and calves grew tired of fighting the soft dips of the sandy beach, Diamond noticed that she had been hiking at quite the speed. Her breath was going quick and deep, suddenly drowning out the rushing of the ocean.
Diamond slowed, stopped, and turned to the water. To her left, she had left behind the safe house. Behind her, the barely populated shoreline disappeared in array of tropical trees. To her right, endless beach reached out further; away from the horrors yet to come.
She took a deep breath and slowly sunk down to the ground. Adjusting her feet so that she could sit comfortably, Diamond rested her chin on her arms and her arms on her knees.
For quite a while, she just watched the sun go down, burying her toes in the sand, letting it trickle through the gaps.
She did not notice Skulduggery, until she saw his outline moving in her peripheral. Diamond stayed still, and her eyes remained blurry on the ocean ahead, where dark pink lines were now scattering the waves.
Without a word, Skulduggery walked around her as he wrapped a soft blanket around her shoulders, and sat down next to her.
Diamond leaned against him, and Skulduggery put an arm around her, hand on the blanket over her arm to keep it from sliding off. She let her head rest against his shoulder, where his suit was barely cushioning the sharp bones of his left clavicle, but she could find a spot where her own cheekbone was settled in a gap.
They quietly watched the water move in, the waves only trickling, making tiny, high-pitched splatting noises in the process, over the usual rushing noise of the ocean.
"Thank you," Diamond said once she found the strength.
Skulduggery looked down to muster her. "Are you alright?"
"I'll be fine." She closed her eyes. "This is just a whole new level of messed-up I need to get used to."
"Ah, that should only take but a couple of months," he said cheerfully.
She gave a deep but quiet sigh, opened her eyes, and shook her head in disbelief at the view ahead. "How on earth did I end up here…?"
"We teleported."
Diamond threw him a halfhearted glare. "I mean, how did I get here? To guarding slaves at a safehouse in Wherever, South America? With you." She skimmed his shoulder with the back of her hand.
"It is an honor," Skulduggery just noted.
"It'd better be," she snorted, glancing at the arm around her shoulder ironically. "Or are you doing this with a lot of girls?"
He tilted his head lower to muster her brazenly. "What if I were?"
"Well, then I would need to majorly reconsider my people-reading skills," Diamond smiled.
Skulduggery still seemed mostly bemused by her response, but he just turned his sights back to the water.
"How about you?" She asked.
"What about me?"
"Are you alright," Diamond repeated.
Skulduggery glanced at her, almost curiously, then took a moment to reply. "It has been…" He then said uncertainly, "a constant up and down. And up and down…"
"And up and down…" Diamond strung along, nodding agreeingly. "Sounds exhausting."
This time he turned his head back to her. "Well, you have certainly not been helping with that."
She smirked, as she nodded on. "I'll be credulous and assume, that's not a complaint?"
"Not in the slightest," Skulduggery philandered.
Diamond faded out her nods. Now that they actually had their faces turned to each other, she realized it was the closest she had ever come to his skull. She could make out the lines and some cracks and scratches that ran across it, wrapping around the raises and dips of bone around his eye sockets, and nose bridge, and teeth. It made Diamond realize that he appeared ageless from afar, yet from this distance, she could clearly see the many years that had edged themselves into the surface.
Skulduggery's hat was dipping his eye sockets into shadow, making them appear even darker in the already gloomy light of dusk. Diamond reached for the hat and took it off. His skull nudged back a tiny instance, but he kept still, and she set the hat aside and kept mustering him.
Now, she could make out the Necromancy through the openings, looking just like shadows one would expect to see inside of a hollow space. But sometimes, she thought to see them move; little curls and whisps escaping, connecting between the darkened spots.
Diamond knew for sure she had not been able to see those, before she had been stabbed. But somehow, she was glad for it.
Skulduggery mustered her back all the while but, eventually, looked at the water, then to her again, as if he were considering saying something.
Diamond raised a brow at him.
"So…" he started hesitantly.
"So...?" She curiously prodded.
Skulduggery looked as uncomfortable as a skeleton could. "Is this… a thing… now?"
She snorted amusedly. "I don't know, is it?"
"I asked first," Skulduggery said.
Diamond unwittingly pulled up her shoulders. "I wasn't really going for anything specific."
"Neither was I."
"And yet, here we are," Diamond simpered coyly.
"Here we are," Skulduggery muttered, at no one in particular.
Diamond sniffed and looked back at the ocean, where the sunset was slowly dimming, leaving the stars to poke out in a frame of deep blue. "You're funny."
His skull moved back in surprise. "I wasn't trying to be funny."
"Exactly," she nodded. "That's when you're the funniest."
As if to prove her point, Skulduggery grumbled something she could not make out, which made Diamond sniff again. He looked at her for a longer moment, with a demeanor Diamond could not identify.
"What about Vile?" He asked, eventually.
She raised a brow. "What about Vile?"
Skulduggery threw her a look, to which she raised it higher, continuing; "you want me to tell you my opinion on Lord Vile. Right now."
He sighed. "I have to bring it up, eventually. And you, technically, haven't told me yet why you never turned us in."
Diamond mustered him. "I won't tell you what I 'think of it'," she stated.
He nodded apparently.
"But I'll tell you something else," she wavered.
That seemed to spike his curiosity. "Shoot."
Diamond breathed out tediously before speaking. "I think society can't function without accepting those, who are looking to better themselves," she said preverbially, then leaned her head in his direction. "You have been trying to make up for this for, what, a hundred-fifty years now? For what was virtually five years of misconduct? For how long does someone need to be punished, until the punishment becomes crueler than the crime?"
"In those five years, copious amounts of people lost their lives," he reminded her blandly.
"And there is no way to make that alright. It will always be horrible and unforgivable." Diamond said, to which Skulduggery mustered her silently.
"But you can make other things in other places alright," she continued. "Which you have. And I have centuries worth of proof that you don't want to repeat those five years. Keeping you in the naughty corner for this entire time has been a ridiculous waste of your potential, already. So, why would I want to put you behind bars now, when you can do much better things out here?"
"Unless that is out of my control," he challenged.
She sniffed apparently. "I think the topic at hand has proven that, if you were to be out of control, there is not much any prison can do about it."
For a moment, Skulduggery continued looking at her quietly. His expressionless skull made it hard to guess what he might be thinking about that.
"So, your answer is; there is no redemption," he then concluded.
Diamond found herself smiling at his conclusion. "Forgiveness is always out there, Skulduggery. But it's best served from people close to you, people who have the big picture."
"I wasn't talking about forgiveness," he just replied.
She threw him a look. "Redemption is the path to forgiveness."
"By interpretation."
"By definition."
He tilted his head to her at an ironic angle. "Are you going to start telling me about loving myself first, next?"
Diamond snorted bemusedly. "No, I think you've got plenty of experience with that. I'm not going to presume to give you any advice in this regard, currently." Her voice grew more serious as she went on. "But this hunt you're on... You are bound to run out of air, eventually."
"I don't need air," Skulduggery said casually.
"But you need rest," she argued unimpressively. "More than a couple of hours on my couch, once a week."
He did not appear as if he was going to reply to that.
Diamond mustered him. "What, exactly, are you so worried about?"
Skulduggery did not seem to have expected the question but snorted about it anyway. "You're honestly asking me this?"
"Yeah," Diamond said casually, "I thought my whole immunity thing was pretty well established."
"It doesn't stop there," he disagreed.
"Of course, it doesn't. It's you."
After a glance that could have been both disapproving and agreeable, Skulduggery moved on from it. He took his arm back, so that they could sit facing each other, knees still touching. "So, we are going to completely overlook the fact that I might be dead, or on the run, in a couple of years?"
"Yeah, don't you love it when the future looks promising?" She poised.
"Diamond, this is not a joke," Skulduggery said, sounding irritated. "It would be naive not to acknowledge that it would be safer if you stayed far away from us."
She nodded and quickly adapted his serious demeaner. "Alright. Sure," she agreed. "How about...? Ah, no, I probably shouldn't tell you. Maybe, Nuce should pick. He won't be happy, I'll tell you that."
"Happy about what?" Skulduggery asked.
She ignored him and pondered on. "The only question is... do you or I pay for it? I suppose, a split would be fair, but then, how do I send you the bills without an address?"
He tilted his skull confusedly. "The address to what?"
"The new place I'm moving to."
Skulduggery paused uncertainly.
Diamond frowned at him. "I'm confused, I thought I was leaving and never seeing you again."
"But I don't want you to leave," Skulduggery said.
Diamond raised her brows in feigned surprise. "Is... that... so," she asked deliberately.
Skulduggery paused again, this time probably in annoyance at himself. "Apparently."
Diamond snorted at him with sincere amusement. "Could you please spare me the I'm-bad-for-you card? I've been over all this with Dexter, already."
"Well, we just want you to be safe," he retorted.
Diamond puckered her lips casually. "Right now, I mostly feel belittled."
That made Skulduggery pause, once again.
She threw him an understanding glance. "Look, I know you told me that you feel bad about how things developed with Valkyrie. You formed a toxic relationship, and now you're stuck in it; trust me, I know what that's like."
He mustered her but she continued surely, "but I'm not Valkyrie, and I'm not twelve. I'm a big girl. And if I'd need a knight in shining armor, I would have looked for one that's shiny."
"So, you went for light-absorbing, instead?" He joked.
She threw him a half-scolding, half-bemused look. "Actually wanting to make a change is the recipe for making it happen. So, as long as I can tell that to be the case..." She faded her words out with a shrug.
"How do you know I actually want to make a change?" Skulduggery challenged.
"Well, you're talking to someone about it, aren't you?"
He faltered, and Diamond sniffed bemusedly and lightly bumped her shoulder into his. "Ever really done that before?"
Skulduggery tilted his head down to her at a reasonably favorable angle. "Not really."
Diamond smiled coyly. "Well then, I suppose, I do consider myself honored."
"You also happened to show up at a very convenient time," Skulduggery noted, then paused to add, "although... maybe, you could have shown up a bit earlier."
"My bad."
Skulduggery mustered her. "I assume this isn't the most flattering 'talk' you've ever had?" He then asked.
She crinkled up her nose. "Not especially..."
"That's on me... There is just a lot going on."
"There always is," Diamond waved. "I'm hiding out with a victim of the Mob, right now, and their leader is, for some unknown reason, after me, personally. And my training currently consist of using my own partner's True Name on him, so we can practice for the next time that happens… You're not the only one with problems, you know."
"Well then, how about I help you with those," Skulduggery replied.
Diamond smiled, yet while she looked back at the water, she noted some chills creeping up beneath her skin. She was still wrapped in the blanket, but the cold air and sand were slowly cooling her down, despite. And since he did not emit any heat himself, Skulduggery was no use in that regard, either.
She nodded to the left, in the direction of the cabin and moved away. "Let's go back."
Skulduggery got up, dusted off his hat, and pulled Diamond to her feet, and she kept the blanket around herself, some fabric bunched up in her fists to keep her fingers warm. And so, they made their way back to the others, over the sand, quiet in thought.