Disclaimer: I do not own Skulduggery Pleasant (the series or the character) or Death Note. Or, for that matter aDeath Note.
7—Death
"Oh," Anita said. "Um. Why are we going to go and see the elders, Skulduggery?"
"Yes, you don't know, do you?" Skulduggery replied.
"No. Tell me," Anita demanded.
Skulduggery hummed, tapping the wheel as he pulled out and started towards the Sanctuary.
"This'll be a long drive," Valkyrie sighed.
Anita sighed and rested her head on the dashboard. Skulduggery chuckled.
"You shouldn't do that. What if we crashed?" he chided mockingly.
"You wouldn't crash," Anita mumbled.
Skulduggery tilted his head, looking over at Anita. Her shirt was bulging, struggling to hold in the extra volume of her wings at the back. Her hair fell across her face, the late afternoon light making it look like honey.
"Are you ok?" Skulduggery asked softly. Concern tinged his voice, and the voice in the back of Valkyrie's mind growled.
Anita let out a long, slow, shaky breath. "No, I'm not. I almost got killed, and I felt it, and I nearly gave in. Serpine showed up and I couldn't protect you. He pointed and I crumpled. Just…fell to the ground. I would never have done that before. I worry about you and Ryuzaki now—all the time," she explained. Her voice shook slightly, and Valkyrie saw past the flames and knives and her husbands. Anita was suddenly plunged into a world of magic.
"Just like I was, huh?" Valkyrie thought. Suddenly she felt the voice in the back of her head silenced, drowned by pity. She would be able to bear sharing Skulduggery with this girl.
Anita suddenly seemed more fragile than she had ever allowed before. She seemed…almost broken.
"You know," Skulduggery said after a time, "no one has ever withstood Serpine's right hand before. Even I couldn't. And as for protecting me…I've been living this life for hundreds of years. Remember that."
Anita nodded. Suddenly, her head snapped up. "Where'd my parents go?" she asked quickly.
A sharp intake of breath from the front was the only response she got at first. Or, at least the replicated sound of a sharp intake of breath. Skulduggery had no lungs. No breath…
Anita paled. "What happened to my parents?" she demanded, and her voice was deep, tinged with ice. Valkyrie knew it was the tone of concern, but it put her in mind of slow, cold deaths and long nights with no comfort from the nightmares that came.
"Anita…" Valkyrie started, but she couldn't say it.
"Anita, when your power exploded, your parents…they couldn't get back. You were shot, and the water exploded up…they died. I'm sorry; there's no graceful way for me to say that," Skulduggery stated calmly.
Anita paled even further, though Valkyrie didn't think it would have been possible. As it sank in, Anita went grey. "I killed my own parents?" she breathed, not daring, not wanting to believe.
Her colour quickly went green, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. Skulduggery reached for her shoulder, but she shrugged his hand of and turned to look out of the window, head bowed.
The trees raced by outside. Cars drove by, oblivious. Valkyrie wondered how it was that Anita was so composed, and then the fire started.
Smoke drifted up from in between strands of hair, dissipating quickly. Small flames started at the edges of her hair, a low note starting as a hum, and Valkyrie saw Anita's mouth open. The sound that issued from it was barely human.
Soon the flames roared, consuming her hair. No, wait—her hair became fire, for nothing else was consumed. And the note rose in volume and pitch, becoming an eerie wail. Valkyrie saw men and women whipping their hands, throwing fire and ice and water at dark shapes which solidified in this picture, this grotesque video playing in her head.
Valkyrie wanted to scream, and she saw dimly through the mask of her mind's eye's vision that Skulduggery was stiff, staring straight ahead, hand paused in midair.
The battle waged on, and then she saw one woman hurrying with a child. There was a baby in her arms, crying. She shushed it, rocking the child and clasping it to her bosom. The child looked almost exactly like Allison.
And then she put the child in a stump, and a puff of blue and the child was gone, gone…
A scene changed, and she saw the people battling, battling a large beast like a slug with nine heads, the size of a blimp.
"It must be a Gounar!" Valkyrie gasped internally. Still she felt the anguish of the memory, wanting to scream, to cry, to rend her skin in the agony.
And now the people were being encased in stone, grit filling their lungs until finally their stone coffin cracked in half to reveal stone bodies. The people…were all dead.
And now there was another scene…and another…and another…
They pelted Valkyrie, one by one, seeming to last for hours. People running, people fighting, people dying, all of them the same fire-race as Anita every time. They fled, in the forests, and were shot down, screaming, before coming under the influence of some other being (though neither Valkyrie nor Skulduggery knew how they knew it, both did) and getting up only to kill their friends, their family.
And the mother from earlier, bound to a wall, and her daughter, whom both recognized to be Anita, as she struggled to save her mother, and then watched as she died, and then the notice that Anita's people were all dead.
It was a single page, a single note, and Anita's head was up now, the pitch was high and shrill and loud, a scream, as Valkyrie saw the single sentence that marked the end of a race.
All but one.
Valkyrie broke out of the dream-like quality of the visions she had seen. The sun was no lower in the sky. Valkyrie saw the sign for Roarhaven, and Skulduggery exited.
Anita sobbed silently, her voice having broken off when Valkyrie and Skulduggery had come to the end of the visions. And Valkyrie felt she understood Anita now. This girl, who had lost everything but gained everything, too.
"That was…oddly similar to my own past," Skulduggery commented dryly. "But by the end, we won…by Scott, and I wondered why you worried about me so. Anita, god, it's alright to cry. I can tell you hate it. You told me that plenty of times before, didn't you? But you have plenty to cry about. Let it out. Let it go."
Anita didn't move, didn't change, except for a slight relaxation in her shoulders as she gave in and the tears flooded her cheeks.
A/N: Oh. My. God. That was sad.
And sorry this is so late, but I just barely wrote it all, soo...
And I hear I have readers in Ireland. Do you guys know that you inhabit my favorite country? Hrm? And the rest of the countries where my readers start from are all pretty awesome, 'cause you guys live there. So here's my update. Hope you like it.
I am now going to go and write chapter 8.