I don't own shit.
"Hypothetically," Valkyrie drawled in her best imitation of Skulduggery, taking a sip of the milkshake he was side-eyeing suspiciously, "what's stopping us from just… taking over the Sanctuary?"
"Gordon had many vices, but I don't think even he had a streak of megalomania as wide as yours." Skulduggery turned his attention back towards the house they were watching, sinking into his seat in a change from his usual rigid posture. "What has you wanting to conquer our employers?"
"Your employers – I'm just your annoying tag-along in Guild's mind," she scoffed, taking a long sip of her milkshake. As the straw rattled in the almost empty cup, she saw him wince at the sound. She rolled her eyes at his dramatics. "Oh, leave off it, I won't smear the Bentley with half-melted ice cream."
"I'm not worried. You do realise you're the first person I'm allowing to bring anything edible into this car?"
"You didn't let me, I brought the milkshake and dared you to say anything about it. You didn't, so I think I won this discussion."
"…It's not by Guild's choice I'm employed by the Sanctuary, that would be somewhat of an untruth." Skulduggery felt he changed the subject in a very smooth way, but going by Valkyrie's snort it wasn't. How a fourteen-year-old girl could make him feel self-conscious in a way no one else had in 400 years was a mystery.
China had tried to explain it to him, late one night after Valkyrie had left, but the explanation had included words like 'clique', 'drama' and 'teen angst', and thus he felt like he didn't need to know.
In the end, China had agreed with him, and condensed it all down to 'Valkyrie is a teenage girl, and can find out people's self-conscious weaknesses in three words or less'.
"Is that the guy?" Valkyrie asked, taking one last obnoxious slurp of her milkshake. She didn't wait for his – positive – reply before getting out of the car and setting off after him.
"It is," he replied anyway, leisurely tugging his fedora into position before sauntering off in the direction she was chasing the criminal. When he arrived, she was sitting on a conveniently placed stump, booted feet resting on the back of the hogtied man.
"He didn't put up much of a fight," she scoffed, flipping through papers she had probably filched from his pockets. Skulduggery opted to ignore the debatable legality of rifling through someone's pockets without a warrant, technically under arrest or not. "What's this guy's name, anyway? It's so dumb I must've forgotten it when I heard it because you have told me – anything else would be stupid and you'd never hear the end of it."
Skulduggery was rather pleased his mumbled "…might not've told you" was covered by the hogtied man's loud protestations that his taken name was patently not stupid, thank you very much.
"What is it, then?" Valkyrie asked, actually handing the papers to Skulduggery as to give the other man her full attention.
"It's Atomic Inferno, and can you let me UP?" the newly re-identified Mr Inferno said, words garbled. When Valkyrie sighed and rose to turn him over, it was readily apparent the reason his speech was a bit unclear was that he'd gotten a proper mouthful of mud in the past five minutes. Skulduggery didn't remember much of taste from when he was alive, but he couldn't imagine mud to be a pleasant one.
"Well, that's an entirely reasonable name, why would anyone think differently?" The sarcasm in Valkyrie's tone was almost thick enough to leave a visible trace in the air between them, and Inferno was suddenly too enraged about her opinion of his name to be miffed about being tied up face down in the mud.
"I'm going to rain an atomic inferno down on my enemies, starting with you, girl!" he screeched, wriggling in place in an attempt to either get to his feet or to attack her. Possibly both. Skulduggery couldn't read people's minds, so he could merely make an educated guess.
His current educated guess was that both China and Tanith would've liked to see this – for some reason, they loved cheering Valkyrie on when she acted as an impertinent teenager while apprehending criminals. Valkyrie was very good at acting as an impertinent teenager, and while he hesitated to admit it and never would say it out loud, she was rather skilled at the apprehending part as well.
"If you're going to rain atomic inferno down on anything, I'd start with your eyebrows, man." She looked down at him, faux sympathy shining from her very pores.
"My… eyebrows?" Had Skulduggery not been listening as closely to Inferno as he had been during the – interrogation, he probably wouldn't have caught the sudden, well-hidden insecurity in his tone. Valkyrie, however… Much like a piranha could sense blood for miles in the water, Valkyrie could smell insecurity.
"Yeah… calling them eyebrows is being kind, I'm more inclined to call it a bushy unibrow." Had it not been for the leather trenchcoat and combat boots, Valkyrie could have been called angelic for all the kindness and sympathy she was exuding.
The entire scene was completed when Atomik Inferno – wanted for several cases of arson, as well as breaking and entering and larceny – burst into tears. There was something almost artistic about the way the tear tracks stood out against the mud caked on his face.
Manhandling Inferno into his car half an hour later – once the criminal had overcome his eyebrow-related breakdown – Skulduggery was very glad he'd had the foresight to lay down some towels in the back seat before strolling off to catch up with his apprentice. She had a penchant for tackling their suspects, which – to Skulduggery's immense dismay – meant their suspects was very muddy most of the time.
"I promised not to smear my milkshake all over the car, I said nothing about mud," Valkyrie pointed out as she sat down in the front seat, indeed getting mud all over the footwell (and the dashboard). Skulduggery preferred not to think about who'd be doing the cleaning.
"You'll clean it up," he grumbled, not that he'd admit to grumbling. He was a suave detective who co-habited with the most beautiful woman in the world. He did not grumble, and he most certainly did not whine.
"Say," Valkyrie began, after a couple of miles of silent driving interrupted solely by Inferno sobbing in the backseat. "Why do you let me run ahead like that? Usually, you're hovering and not letting me do anything on my own."
"I'm wasted on cross country running, natural sprinter though. Don't tell China I let you go off on your own."
"You're a skeleton. You can't run out of breath and it's not like you'll get a stitch." Valkyrie turned in her seat, drawing her legs up beneath her. Skulduggery couldn't stop the wince in time to hide it from her, but it was a testament that the day had taken a lot out of Valkyrie (despite all her claims to the opposite) that she didn't protest more than roll her eyes at his fastidiousness. "Why would she care?"
"I'm very bad at tackling criminals. As you say, I am a skeleton." Whatever mental picture his words brought to her mind, it was clearly hilarious; Valkyrie burst out laughing, almost drowning out his next words. "I've promised to keep an eye on you, else she will have my head. Literally."
Meanwhile, Atomic Inferno was sitting handcuffed in the backseat, contemplating revenge on the little chit for insulting his eyebrows (if he was also contemplating the possibilities of doing some landscaping to fix his unibrow, that's neither here nor there).
Silence settled in the car, occasionally broken by Valkyrie sniggering. It lasted until Skulduggery pulled into the underground parking garage connected to the new Sanctuary, which was when Valkyrie spoke again.
"I'm telling China tonight."
"Shit." It was heartfelt, and it made Valkyrie burst out laughing again.
Me, and fic, is on AO3 under same name.