Sorry for the long wait - I have many excuses :)

Chapter 232

"That was insanity," Erskine said, falling onto the sofa in Corrival's living room. Everyone else sat down around him. "They're going to declare war for sure now. Soon, too."

"Yeah," Dexter sighed. "Not much we can do."

Nadia came into the room with Laila then and Solomon followed behind. Valkyrie gave Solomon a long hug, holding him tightly.

"Are you okay, Valkyrie?" He whispered in her ear as Laila fussed over wanting to be in her mother's and father's arms at once.

"No," she whispered into his ear before pulling back. He gave her a tight smile. She sat on the sofa and Nadia joined her, putting a hand on her thigh.

"What's next then?" Valkyrie asked, putting her head back.

"No idea. There aren't any more mortals with magic powers and Kenspeckle is still working on a cure for the ones that we know of," Dexter said, smiling as Laila patted his head and babbled something. "There's still a bunch of crime going on, but without the mortals running rings around us it doesn't feel as… much."

"I feel that," she agreed, resting her head on Nadia's.

"I expect the Supreme Council will start putting things in place for war before they announce it. In a few weeks it'll start officially but the reality is, it already has. We should work on hiding anyone that needs to go now," he said, his hand dropping to the floor where he was sat. Laila patted his head again and spoke to him in her language and he gave her a sad smile. She leaned down and kissed his closed eye, getting slobber all over him. "Thanks babe."

They went quiet, Valkyrie refusing to break the silence. She didn't have the energy to talk, or even think, though apparently Erskine did as he filled in Solomon and Nadia, and when Vernon and Militsa walked in, them as well on what had transpired not far from the house. Solomon sat and Skulduggery stood at his side, a gentle hand on his shoulder. She peered at him, trying to tell what was different, if he was truly him. She felt that he had to be, that there was no way someone like Lord Vile could walk and talk the way Skulduggery did.

But then, she knew she was wrong. Lord Vile was Skulduggery and Skulduggery was Lord Vile. That was the start and end of it. It wasn't like Argeddion where a normal, peaceful man had found out his True Name and changed. He was a man with two personalities, a raw power within that he kept suppressed.

How suppressed though? Suppressed enough? She wasn't sure anymore. She had used to pretend like it wasn't true, that it was some phase Skulduggery himself had done with a different name, a phase he regretted and worked to change. Now it was different. The reality was, Lord Vile was also its own entity. Something Skulduggery didn't control but pushed down and rejected.

It was difficult, she could admit to herself, to understand. It felt hypocritical to suggest Lord Vile was entirely Skulduggery and also that he was a separate entity to Skulduggery, fighting to come out and held back by only Skulduggery's willpower. But that was how she saw it. Like a mental health break, a complete disassociation waiting to happen where a new personality came through. Perhaps that was a thing he had, some legitimate mental health illness. She couldn't know, but even if it was, she couldn't have sympathy for him. He had a certain amount of control and choice over it. The question, ultimately, was how much?

"I need to talk to you," she said suddenly, her voice cracking midway. Everyone had been silent, she belatedly realised, and now looked at her. Laila was asleep on Tanith's chest, Ghastly was snoozing with his head back, a hand resting on Tanith's lap though his palm was against his daughter. Dexter was sitting next to Militsa on a sofa now. She looked at Skulduggery. "Alone."

He nodded once.

They went to the back of the house, both knowing exactly what Valkyrie had on her mind, for privacy. Skulduggery found them some small room with an old table, some boxes, a thick layer of dust and three chairs. He turned on the light and she took a tentative breath. When she didn't begin coughing, she followed him in and closed the door behind herself.

They looked at each other, both suddenly uncomfortable.

"We need to talk," she began.

"I realise," he said softly.

"Not just about today," she said, not realising how much she needed this. "But about the last few weeks. And about before. Before you left, that is. For real this time."

He nodded slowly. "I think that would be good. Where would you like to begin?"

She wet her lips and delicately sat on a large crate. It creaked but didn't crack. "I want to know what happened today. The shadows… Lord Vile came out, didn't he?"

"He did."

"How? Why? It's been so long."

He was silent for a long moment. "Stress, I think. Or really, the consistent high stress without any relief. I live with stress and pain every day but the familiar pressure and friction, the torture, thinking I lost Solomon, the problems we've had that made me feel like-" he looked away but not in hesitation but thought "-like I'm a failure. Like I'm ruining my second chance at fatherhood again. The second chance I have with you at that. I couldn't protect my other child, and now I haven't even been loving you the way I should have been. None of it was any fault of your own, it was entirely mine, and I think about it constantly. With Mackin in front of me, pushing my worst thoughts to the front of my mind, all the while having the capacity to kill me at any time and leave you to finish him or get killed too… I snapped."

She bit the inside of her cheek, letting him continue.

"I realise it sounds a lot like a woo-is-me story," he said, his voice stronger, more dismissive of his pain. "But it's what I think, combined, influenced this mental break. Before it was like I lost myself. This time, I was taken over by my rage. It was different. It was anger at myself, anger at Mackin and Kellaway, anger at the world and the Sanctuaries. It was only for a moment, a quick second of regretfully allowing my emotions to take over my actions. It was a mistake."

"How did you pull it back in?" She asked quietly, a hint of curiosity.

"It was only a momentary lapse in control," he shook his head. "I was scared though. Scared I'd let him out, that Vile would take over my mentality. I would have killed you. Killed Mackin and our family. Then I'd have killed other people, innocent people. I'd have destroyed everything our family and our country have built. I'd have ruined what I've built, as selfish as it may sound, everything I've worked so hard to change and accomplish. It was a moment of terror. All I could think of was to tell you to get away from me in case I wasn't me."

She nodded though not in agreeance or acceptance. Just that she'd heard and was listening. "Okay. So how are you not going to do it again?"

He looked at her and she couldn't read the emotion. "I can't."

She frowned. "Can't what?"

"I can't guarantee it won't happen again. I can't promise I won't fall into that rage again. I can't say it might never be necessary to use it as a weapon. I can't say I'll ever be able to work on it directly because how can I? If anyone knows, I'll be outed as Vile and all of our lives will change. It's an impossible situation."

Her frown turned to one of anger. "That's not true. You can work on your anger issues easily enough even if you can't mention some topics."

He considered her words for a long time, long enough that she was about to talk again. "You may be correct. Perhaps that's something I should begin to deal with, alongside the other… traumas."

Her anger faded. She nodded and looked away. "Yeah."

He sighed and sat on a very dusty chair, not trying to disturb the dust by wiping it away. She appreciated that. "Would you like to talk more about us?"

"I suppose," Valkyrie almost whispered. "It's all so complicated."

"I know," he said softly. "A lot has happened now. Perhaps I'm wrong with this, but I feel as if a lot of your feelings are linked with me doing things that remind you of how I did wrong by you, like how I wasn't there for you or brushed you off. Would that be accurate?"

She thought for a moment, the numb, empty headed type of thinking, and nodded.

"It's a hard thing for me to battle against because, in reality, we both know my words are nothing compared to my actions."

She swallowed. "Yeah. You made me feel like – like I wasn't enough. Like I was just some kid pushed on you. And I had no one else. Everyone else who lived with me died and I know I have Echo Gordon but it's really weird with him. He's himself but he doesn't hug me or even try, and he can't even if he did. I have my brothers and sister, but it's just not the same. Gordon picked you to be my guardian, you were going to be my father-figure at the least. And you just didn't want me. Maybe not at first when we were just meeting and getting to know each other, but overall, especially when you met Solomon… you pushed me out. And things never felt the same."

He nodded, attentively taking in her words. "I understand."

"But not just that. Even as your partner, I felt like I had so much choice and the ability to tell you stuff and you'd let me take the bull by the horns every time. I get that I can't always be right or anything, but I feel like you never let me do that anymore. Any time I suggest something you have a better idea, and maybe you are right on some of it and I'm being oversensitive because of the other feelings I have, but it still hurts to be continuously pushed out."

"I can see how that happened, and it's not you being overly sensitive. I like to think I don't reject all of your words without considering them, but if that's how you feel then it's okay and I need to listen and try harder. At the least, I'm dismissing your thoughts enough for you to feel badly and that's too much."

She thought that she'd feel tears at his words, but she didn't. "I thought you left me at the Spider's den. I thought you were running away. I really thought it. And I know you weren't now, that you were leading me to the exit, but it still almost feels like you were leaving."

He sighed, a small non-breath of air. "I would never have left you there. My recent past aside, I could never do that."

She shrugged. "It's just how I felt at the time."

"I'm sorry then," he said in the softest, deepest voice. She looked up at him through her lashes. "No matter my intentions, I never wanted you to think that. I can't imagine how scared you were. I'm sorry I made you feel that way."

Another shrug. "'Kay."

He tilted his head slightly. "You aren't ready to forgive me."

She shook her head. "It's not that. It's that I'm not ready to trust you again. I don't… I don't think I want to. You could change at any point and I want you to be the person I thought you were but now I don't know if I can let you be. In my mind at least."

He nodded. "Maybe it isn't going to be as easy as rebuilding what we had then. Maybe we need something different."

"I need to feel like you're sane and normal. Or as normal as you can become," she said without any joke. "But we don't have any time for that. We need to be seamless and work together and not have any issues. I just don't know how to achieve that when we're basically at war now."

He made a noise of agreement. "That's true. If I agree to go to some, let's say, family therapy with you after the war, would that make you feel a bit better? At least to help the feelings until we can do something about it?"

She thought about it for a moment and then nodded. "I think so."

He nodded. "Okay then."

"There's more to talk about now though," she said quickly. "Like Griever's Down. Why did you send me in when you knew the type of people down there? Why didn't you care about me?"

He lowered himself to rest his forearms on his knees and clasped his hands together. "I barely know. I was just desperate and didn't think through what I was agreeing to, or what I was saying. It was a means to an end. You were the means to the end. I suppose, in some respect, I stopped caring about anything and everyone except Solomon. I just had to get him back."

"And then what about Nadia, sending her into the middle of all those Spiders?" She asked, venom in her voice.

He shook his head. "I can't explain it. I changed. I wasn't myself at all. Doing that to her was the kick I needed to know I needed to go to the therapy centre for treatment. I realised I wasn't myself, that my actions were the opposite of what I wanted. It felt like I was detached from myself. I didn't feel like myself then and now it's over, I can't relate to it at all. I know it's not a good answer but it's the only one I have. I tried to work on it at therapy but we didn't go into the specifics of what happened to me, we were just working on a recovery."

She took some deep breaths, trying to keep a control of her own anger at the situation.

"Tell me what you think about it," he told her. "And be honest."

"Honest?" She asked, incredulity in her voice. "I barely know, Skulduggery. I suppose I hate you for it. It's one thing to mess with me and put me into a bad position, but to do that to my fiancée? You overstepped so far I didn't want to see you again for a time. I wanted you to disappear and never come back. I wanted to be told you threw yourself into lava and were dead for real." She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself from saying something she'd regret. "I don't know how I'm meant to get over something like that. I want to be glad you got yourself help, and I am, but it's so marred with anger I just don't care. The whole situation is messed up. Like, I know you couldn't come to us in your mental state, I know it in my head, but I just don't care. You did a lot of this to yourself, built it up until the point this triggered you to snap. You could have gotten help before so that this wasn't a trigger. But you didn't.

"And what's more," she said, standing suddenly but not knowing what to do with herself, so she stood there, "you didn't even ask what had happened, you never have. You've just pretended like this is a thing that happened and you don't need to think about. Do you even know what happened down there? They tried to rape me, a hundred people. That's not even rape, that's basically gang rape. They were going to keep me there as a prisoner and sell me as some attraction to fight people or die and then let people use my body. You sent me down there. I still feel like–"

She cut herself off and turned around, running a hand down her face. She started again when she felt the pressure dissolve. "Be honest with me. What am I doing that's making this harder? Why are you knocking heads with me so much? And don't lie or hold back just because I'm mad. I want to know. I need to understand. At least then, even if we're not the same, at least I'll have some sort of peace with all this."

He nodded slowly and looked down at his hands. "I feel like you aren't at the level you think you are. I think a lot of your confidence is bravado and you don't have the skills to back up. It's not all bad – a lot of fighting it bluffing and a lot of our work, your work, is pretending you have the upper hand even when you don't. It's an important aspect we specifically made sure you had in the field. Nervousness gets people killed. But," he thought about his words, "I think you take it too far. I think you have it in your head you are at the level the rest of us are at when you aren't. And then when we dismiss your ideas or you get looked over, you're angry. Some of it is warranted, and I agree with that, but some of it is entitlement."

She swallowed, unready for the criticism to land such a hard blow. "I don't think I'm entitled," she said, her voice a little quieter than she wished it was.

"You said to be honest."

"Good. Yeah, I'm glad. So a part of my issue is that you don't listen to me in the field, and a part of your issue is that you think I don't deserve to be listened to."

"That's not true," he corrected. "You deserve to be listened to, but I think you need more humility. I do think you're right to a certain extent in that I haven't been listening to you enough, but the moments I do it aren't times I'm thinking to myself that I want to snub you. I just don't like the idea or feel mine is better, and since I have more experience, I want to go with my idea over yours. And when you argue about it, it ire's me."

She crossed her arms and glared at a box. "If I remember rightly, all of my plans have worked. Every one of them. And I go along with your plans all the time without an issue. Whereas I know for a fact that a lot of plans you've come up with haven't worked. And I know some of that isn't your fault and all, I'm not trying to be unfair, it's just that proportionally, I have a better track record than you."

He watched her. "I'm not sure that's a fair assessment. Yes, I realise I've had more failed plans with you, but I've never dismissed your plan simply because I wanted to disregard you. I really felt my plan was the best course of action and you just don't have the experience I have. I have over four hundred years on you Valkyrie. I'm coming up on four hundred and fifty. I have experience that you don't and I do feel that I should be free to prefer my opinion over yours in those circumstances."

She bit her tongue and forced herself to think through her response. He was, in a respect, right. "Then how about at home? Like when we got back from being captured at the Spider headquarters or whatever you want to call it, you just wanted to go straight back to work."

He tilted his head more this time. "You didn't want to talk. You wanted space."

She snarled to herself and looked away from him. "I fail to see how this could all be my fault when you're the one doing all the wrong things."

"It's not that, Valkyrie. It's that you have a lot of anger and fears right now, and I expect it's easier for you to put the blame on me for everything rather than award me merits for anything good. Especially when everything's so fresh in both our minds. Perhaps I've been too controlling. It wouldn't be the first time. Perhaps I've let things build up too much and I didn't try hard enough to stop it, either way, let's at least be honest and accurate about things now. I need to work on listening to you, maybe even let you take the lead sometimes, but right now, before war, I doubt I can do that. I've done this before, you haven't. I have this experience, I have the stand at this time. For all the history we now have, we both need to remember that experience trumps good intentions."

She ground her teeth together. "So ultimately, what you're saying is that I need to not be so entitled and – and trust you know what you're doing. Despite everything."

"I know it sounds bad. I do," he sighed. "If there wasn't a war, I'd still be in that treatment centre getting… trying to work on my health. It's just the way forward I'm seeing."

She moved her weight from one foot to the other. "I – I suppose that's fair. I can't help but wonder how long it's going to take to be good enough to be equal to you. You'll always be older and have more experience than me."

"That's an unfortunate fact of life I'm afraid, there's always someone older and more experienced at everything. God knows Corival holds everything he can over me."

She finally nodded. "I understand."

"You don't have to like it," he said and it took a moment for her to catch his meaning. "You're absolutely allowed to feel however you like. Feelings aren't always rational or something you can tell yourself to just change on a whim. Do you feel at least a little better about this subject?"

She worried her lip between her teeth. "I guess. Not about everything else though. But I suppose I can work on being less, I guess, entitled about my plan making. You know more than me and my anger at other stuff shouldn't get in the way of a potentially good plan. As long as you listen when I do suggest things. And I won't – and I'll work on not getting upset if you don't like mine more than yours."

"Thank you," he said. Some small amount of relief was in his voice, as well as genuine gratitude. "What else did you want to talk about?"

She sighed. "I don't know. I guess I said most of it. Or the stuff that's really weighing on me anyway. All the little things are only getting to me because the big things are. And most of the little things aren't really your fault or anyones. They're just getting to me. What about you?"

"I can't think of much you've done. You're young, you're learning, you're finding your balance. I'm not angry with you for anything. Actually, you work incredibly hard every day. I'm proud of you and how much you do. You're doing so well."

She nodded once, not certain if she wanted his compliment. "Thanks. I guess that should be it for now. There's nothing else we can do."

He stood. "I suppose so."

She opened the door and waited, not wanting to walk away and put some barrier between them after their attempt at working things out between them. He closed it behind him. She waited for a moment and then nodded, beginning to walk away.

"Wait," he said and she stopped. He put a gloved hand on her shoulder. "Do you want a hug?" Feelings aside, she slipped her arms under his and they held each other. "I love you. I mean that. I swear it."

She swallowed the lump in her throat. "I love you too. Promise."

They stayed like that until Valkyrie backed out of it and gave him a fleeting smile. Together they walked back to the front room right as Tyren and Lenka came through the front door looking exhausted.

"Hey," she greeted them.

"Hi," Lenka smiled tiredly. "Didn't you have some big mission today?"

"Did it," she stated simply. "War to come."

"Fuck," she said simply, her smile fading.

"Val," Nadia said suddenly and Valkyrie perked up. "Turn around."

Valkyrie frowned but did, getting a laugh from Nadia. "What?"

"Your butt's covered in dust."

She wiped it away, her fiancée continuing to giggle at her expense.

OMG it's been a while. Many excuses. Got a doggy. Can't remember if I said before. PM for pics.

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