Chapter 136

From three in the morning to ten, Valkyrie stayed with eight day old Laila, Nadia coming in and out of sleep to check on her, so that Tanith could keep healing from her birth as Laila had decided she didn't want to sleep at all. For hours she cried and screamed, and it was only when Valkyrie finally went into the cool, still September air outside at seven in the morning that the baby settled. Unfortunately, Valkyrie hadn't expected that and as a result, had to stay outside in just her shorts and a t-shirt. Laila was wrapped up plus a blanket, as she had been only going to get her phone charger from the car parked out front, but she wasn't going to waste the opportunity to sooth the baby to dreamland. Carefully, she'd gone back inside when Laila was in a deep sleep and put her down in the parlour bassinet.

Dexter had come down with Erskine bickering loudly and Valkyrie had been too slow to stop them. Being tired, she'd angrily told them that they could take over and that Laila needed feeding and stormed up to her and Nadia's room – to fall headfirst into the pillow and pass out.

She woke around two as Nadia stroked her hair.

"Good afternoon," Nadia gently said, kissing her forehead. "You didn't sleep at all last night."

"I did a little," Valkyrie groaned, smelling the coffee. "Before Anton got me."

"Was he looking after Laila?"

"Yeah, but someone started messing about at the Hotel. He texted me last night that it was all good, but Laila didn't want to shut up. Ended up outside for her to sleep."

"Maybe it was too hot for her."

"She had cold feet inside. I only went out for a moment but she got mad when I went back in, so out it was," Valkyrie explained. "She doesn't have frostbite, in case you're worried. Can I have my coffee?"

"Sure. I was thinking," Nadia started when Valkyrie had sat up, "that maybe we could go out today? Since you did a ton of Sanctuary work already, and you did your babysitting and everyone else is here to hold things up."

Valkyrie smiled. "Of course. Where were you thinking?"

Nadia bit her lip. "Okay, I might maybe be being a little nosy, and probably overstepping, but I thought we could go to the village you grew up in? I wanted to see where you grew up."

Valkyrie had to take a deep breath through her nose before she dared even swallow her burning hot coffee. She hadn't expected that at all. "I suppose we can. What made you think about it? And for the record, it's not overstepping to ask me anything, you should know that."

Nadia blushed a little when Valkyrie stroked hair behind her ear. "I know. I was just curious. I've been talking with Gordon a lot while you've been gone about the house and his business and writing and you, a lot about you as a kid actually, and it just made me want to see it myself. He said that right after your father died your mother would take you to nursery on a Wednesday afternoon and he'd meet her and they'd have fish and chips and talk about you and your dad. I thought it would be good to see it myself."

Valkyrie smiled slightly, remembering her mum's face in her mind. She was a very beautiful lady, she remembered, and an amazing mum. "Let's get ready."

The two of them dressed – in the same room but faced away from each other – for the trip excitedly, deciding they would buy food there for lunch, breakfast in Valkyrie's case, and went downstairs to get Valkyrie's things that she'd dumped on the kitchen side at some point and it got left there since. Tanith, Laila, Ghastly, Erskine and Dexter were all in the kitchen when they walked in.

"Hi," Valkyrie said, sensing she interrupted something. Ghastly looked both miserable and desperate, and Tanith looked ready to either cry in frustration or punch something. "How's everyone?"

"Fine, fine," Tanith muttered, taking a sip of her tea. Laila was looking up at her with wincing eyes. "Thank you for looking after Laila last night, by the way."

"It's alright, she was just a little bit grumpy," Valkyrie smiled, stroking the baby's cheek. Ghastly tutted from his place by the counter.

"Excuse me?" Tanith snapped at him.

Sensing Ghastly's imminent demise, Valkyrie interrupted. "Me and Nadia are going to Haggard for lunch."

"Sounds good," Dexter jumped in. "Lovely beaches there."

"I know, I lived there," Valkyrie smirked, getting her card and keys from behind him and putting them in her pocket. "I thought we'd take a walk around, but there's no reason you guys can't come too."

"Great!" Dexter said, clapping his hands and looking around eagerly. Erskine jumped out of his seat quickly, Dexter wrapped an arm around a sighing Ghastly and manhandled him towards the front of the house. Tanith gave Valkyrie a tight smile but agreed to come on the walk, saying she needed the exercise. When they had all left to get ready, Valkyrie hugged Nadia and apologised for inviting everyone along but Nadia didn't mind the intrusion, claiming she was saving up events like these to aid her 'I deserve a kitten' campaign.

Valkyrie told her to eat shit and Nadia laughed in her face.

Since Tanith and Laila were in Gordon's old car, she and Nadia joined. Valkyrie drove so that the boys could talk in the other car all together, by which Dexter meant get mad at Ghastly about whatever Tanith was upset about when he said 'talk'.

"Tell me about it," Valkyrie demanded as soon as she was in the driver's seat. "It's going to take me ages to sort this seat out, oh my God."

"Just don't crash, my baby doesn't need that type of trauma," Tanith muttered, texting someone.

"There's a trauma she does need?" Nadia sassed from the back seat beside the baby.

Tanith snorted a laugh. "I'm going to start from the beginning, alright. So, it's midday. I've just gotten Laila back from Erskine after he insisted on taking some sort of photoshoot. I'm feeding her on the sofa. Next thing I know is Ghastly is in my face asking to hold his child. His. Hiiiis. So, I just about lose it immediately, but I read once a suspicious, ridiculous article that bad feelings transfer to babies when you breastfeed them and while I think it's bullshit, I also keep thinking about it and I don't want Laila to get all sorts of bad voodoo, so I tell him to leave until I'm finished. Dexter makes him leave but it only lasted until they made tea and came back. Laila was still going, so I was stuck basically. You can imagine how awkward that was. Ghastly held Laila for a few minutes and then she started pooping and I think it just made Ghastly freak out and he started getting this look on his face and I just mama-beared out and got mad again, which is stupid, but I did. He started asking me why I was so mad, and it took less than point three of a second for me to start shouting about how little I heard from him since I left hospital and then I started asking why he took so long to get to the hospital when I was giving birth and he was just all quiet and pathetic and it just made me madder. In the end, the guys came and took Laila who was screaming, me and Ghastly were screaming and we ended up in the kitchen before we calmed down and Erskine was the one to tell us how stupid we were being."

"I didn't think you'd shout and have an argument in front of your kid," Valkyrie said protectively. "You two shouldn't fight in front of her. Or at all, preferably."

"I know, Val. I know that, but when he's asking me for his child that I am literally breastfeeding, and then he asks what my problem is, it makes me very mad."

"Oh, yeah, I totally understand that part," Valkyrie agreed quickly. "I'd be screaming too. I just mean that Laila doesn't need that. But it's too late now."

"I know. I just don't understand how Ghastly thinks he can turn up at any point and just demand his kid? How shitty is that? He never acted like that before, and I never would have dated him at all if I'd thought he could act like that even a little bit."

"I know, Tanith," Valkyrie soothed.

"Maybe you should make a contract," Nadia suggested.

"Saracen suggested that," Tanith said seriously. "Last night when I interrupted him and Dexter talking about Ghastly. I just don't know if I want to go down that route. We have a very individual life, and a lot of people are involved. I mean, we essentially have a roommate agreement, live in a house together rather than have a traditional family home… I just don't feel a solicitor could understand and make an arrangement considering how unique we are."

"You might be right, to be fair," Valkyrie nodded as she made the turning out of the house after finally getting her seat how she liked it. "This really isn't very normal. But Gordon might be able to help a little with the whole custody thing because he took a little while getting me, and I bet it was a fight and a half to get Skulduggery, a single unrelated man I'd never met to be my guardian after he died. So maybe you could make your own agreements with Ghastly, but not so strictly. Just some boundaries and lines you don't want touched, but not a full on bi-weeking rotation of who gets to keep her in their room."

Tanith nodded, looking back at her phone when it buzzed. "I had just hoped things would be different. He's acting so, you know, defensively. It doesn't suit him at all."

"I know," Valkyrie said, and they left the conversation at that miserable ending.

"Nadia," Tanith started back a tab bit brighter. "What do you want to do in Haggard?"

"See the place," Nadia smiled. "I want to see Valkyrie's old house, and the pier, and the sea. It'll be good to be able to actually see a place that I hear about a lot."

"I wouldn't say 'a lot'," Valkyrie defended.

"I hear about it a bit then, and I want to know what it looks like," Nadia corrected. "And anyway, with my friends coming over this weekend I thought it would be good to see where Valkyrie grew up. Like having inside information on each other or something."

Tanith laughed at Nadia's phrasing and they giggled and joked the rest of the way to her old town and parked by the pier. Seeing as they were already hungry, the family met back up and went on a stroll down the beach to get fish and chip to start. Laila was in her baby wrap snuggled against her father's chest sleeping peacefully. It was her first real outing and Valkyrie made sure to get a cute picture of the two of them. Despite how Ghastly had been acting out recently, he was very sweet and gentle with his baby daughter and it was adorable.

Their lunch was peaceful, sitting on the wall separating the path from the drop down – there was a bench too which Ghastly and Laila sat on to stay safe, but close enough that they weren't excluded – and they ate their haddock and chips. It was only when Nadia nudged her that Valkyrie looked backwards and noticed her cousin.

"Crystal?" She called out. Crystal turned from perusing the menu and spotted Valkyrie and her family. Valkyrie got up and went to greet her.

"Hi Stephanie," Crystal said softly. "I didn't think I'd see you here."

"I didn't think I'd see you," Valkyrie replied and hugged her cousin. "Does this mean you aren't going to uni then or is that still a few weeks away?"

Crystal immediately grimaced. "It starts mid-September, almost on your birthday," she told her. "I've told Mum I'm not going and she's furious, but not as furious as Carol."

"She'll be with her boyfriend though, she should be happy," Valkyrie said, leaning against a lamppost.

"Yeah, they broke up," Crystal said, rolling her eyes. "I didn't like him. I think Dad did a dance when he heard. Except now she's saying that if I don't go, she won't and that means I'm ruining her future. I've been getting so mad with her lately."

"I would too!" Valkyrie agreed strongly. "You do what you need to. You said you had work in place over summer so you're being proactive, right? You're doing exactly what you should."

"That's what I said!" Crystal said passionately. "I'm saving to move to Australia. Mum and Dad don't know yet so don't tell anyone, but everything I'm doing is to move out there. I have an internship organised for January, all I need to do is get a little bit of money together and I'm good, plus I work to support myself which is very different to Carol staying home and not going to uni because she doesn't want to go to class by herself."

"That sounds good, what's the job in?"

"It's just accounting, but I did well in maths and my business classes at college so I thought it would be a good way to move to Australia you know?" Crystal confided. "I don't know if using this to migrate over is good or not, but it's what I'm doing. I don't want to be in Haggard forever."

"No, I'm the same, I'm happy for you. Keep on and you'll be there in no time. Just remember to get your visa sorted."

"Already done," Crystal nodded happily. "Um, I think your girlfriend is coming over."

Valkyrie turned and Nadia was there. She wrapped an arm over her girlfriend and kissed her temple. "Did you ever out ask your friend?" She asked.

"Me? Oh, um, no, I chickened out," Crystal admitted. "She began dating someone in our school that bullied me and we're not even friends anymore. It was all a bit messy."

"I'm sorry," Valkyrie said genuinely.

"Not your fault," Crystal shrugged, smiling again. "Hey, have you seen the new arcade place down the street? It only uses two cents again! The last one had ten cent machines."

Of course, this was something she and Nadia thought would be fun to do, and the others decided to come also, and that meant introductions. Tanith, Ghastly and Laila were easiest because Valkyrie brushed over them as a unit and focused on the baby and Crystal thought she was adorable, of course, and was a great distraction from Ghastly's scarred face. Erskine was polite but way excited for the arcade, and Dexter made Crystal blush enough that Valkyrie was sure she was suddenly way more confused about her sexuality. Dexter was good at making people consider sexuality. A talent, he'd called it in the past.

Herself, Nadia and Crystal fell in line and they walked behind the others to the arcade, everyone being careful to call her Stephanie and not mention anything magical, though it wasn't hard at all. They talked about people in Haggard and they laughed about how they had used to fight as children and admitted the times they had done things to get the other in trouble which Nadia, having grown up almost completely without other children, thought was great. Valkyrie paid for all three of their money which Crystal tried to refuse but Valkyrie got her to comply when she grinned and claimed it was just a little help towards her Australia move.

Together they won a bunch of sweets from the machines, and a few toys, and played a few rounds of table hockey together. Crystal and Dexter doubled as a team against Nadia and Erskine at one point and Crystal had been incredibly good at it despite the fact she was beetroot red and practically squeaked when Dexter nudged his hip against hers cheekily. It was all in good humour though and by the time they left to get snacks, they were all talking like good friends. Valkyrie actually regretted not getting in contact with Crystal specifically because of how well they were getting on.

They went down the high street next, having a good time looking around and getting some nibbles at the corner shop. They stopped so Laila could eat as she had to so much, having their snacks and Crystal trading stories about school and the worst things fellow students had done with Nadia. Sleeping around and getting 'engaged' was a common theme, though all of it was because of how obviously ill thought out all of it was. Still, it was made even better when Dexter and Erskine laughed and chimed in with crazy things that had happened when they were 'deployed with the army', as well as Tanith's own stories which Valkyrie knew for a fact was just things that had happened to Tanith herself and she was just pretending it was to other people in her imaginary school. Ghastly was quiet, and Crystal avoided looking at him at all costs, having been told he'd had an accident in the army causing the scares which she didn't question.

Their bubble was burst eventually when old neighbours, shop keepers and generally people just walking by started recognising Valkyrie for who she was and the gossip spread quicker than Valkyrie thought possible. Walking past the flower shop, the owner came out to greet her.

"Sweet Stephanie," he smiled, his eyes lightening when they landed on her. Valkyrie felt her lips thin and a lot of bad feelings well up. "Well, this is a lovely surprise."

"Hello Mr Hagan," Valkyrie murmured slowly, not wanting to show him weakness. "How are you doing?"

"I'm grand, it's all grand. My sister has cancer now if you haven't heard, do you remember that she ran the wool shop down the street? She's closed down now. Very hard for her children," he nodded. "Is this your family then? We all wanted to know how you were after your mother died, you know Stephanie, she was a wonderful woman."

"I lived with my uncle," she said shortly. "And yes, this is my family now that Uncle Gordon is dead. I'm sorry, but we should keep going, we're only having a short visit."

She went to shepherd her family along, but Mr Hagan held up a hand in front of Valkyrie. It might have looked innocent enough, although perhaps a little rude, but Valkyrie was not stupid enough to not see his hand was directly in front of and barely inches away from her breast. "Would you at least come in for a moment? It would make an old man happy to see how much you've grown up."

Valkyrie was not comfortable, but someone was coming down the street, two men walking their dogs together and they were going into the shop and held their arms open to let her and her family in first and she felt herself move forwards into the building without really meaning to. She cursed herself but decided to just let it happen quickly so they could move along. She kept a grip of Nadia's hand.

"Now, how about this," Mr Hagan said brightly, moving to his counter. "Some flowers for you young ladies, I think, something complimentary."

Mr Hagan, forever keeping up his chattering, charming charade, gave herself, Nadia, Tanith and Crystal a flower each that somehow complimented them, and commented to Tanith how beautiful her baby was while being very opening disgusted at Ghastly. Finally, Valkyrie was able to politely say they needed to go, and her family went for the door.

"Just before you go," Mr Hagan said softly from behind Valkyrie. She turned. "Would you like a sweetie, sweetie?"

Valkyrie's jaw clenched, that phrase lingering unpleasantly in her mind. She didn't make any move, and he just smiled mildly and held the jar to Nadia. "Sweetie?"

Valkyrie, being too rough most likely, wrapped an arm around her girlfriend and restricted her from going near the man and rushed them from the room. She was more than unhappy with the idea of talking about what just happened and snapped at them all to not ask. They didn't, but she could see Crystal was more than concerned and looked pale even. For all Valkyrie knew, Hagan had treated Crystal the same way as herself. She hoped not.

(Minor spoiler for actual books. In the book Midnight, of Phase 2 of SP, Mr Hagan is a character and it is insinuated that he assaulted child Valkyrie/Stephanie when she went in his shop once. It is very vague but obviously, a lot of people picked up on it. I was angry that she didn't tell Skulduggery and we get to watch him maul the guy to death in the book, so here we are)

To the guest that commented yesterday: Thank you for coming back! And yes, almost a year of work, it's been a lot! As far as I know, this is the longest SP fanfic on the site, so I'm super close to it! I think I'm already the longest worded one, so I'm chuffed in myself honestly. I'm so glad you like reading it, it means a lot to me to know there are people checking up on it all the time, even though I can't post regularly at the moment. And yeah, looking at crap fanfics probably doesn't help ;) I'll keep them coming! PS, you can vote if I do a Valduggery, Fletchyrie, or Vanith after this one. Thinking Vanith at the moment, but I fucking love Fletcher though, so you know.