Wanted to try drawing Skully then wondered if I could make him look like an evil spirit haha. Some old, amnesiac ghost that's been in Ramshackle for centuries and whose memories have kind of. Worn away, over time.
This takes place post Book 7. I am not entirely sure I grasp the specifics of Silver's UM in the identifying dreamer with a bird sense and the logics of darkness characters and dream outfits. Just assume some kind of lucid dreaming here and roll with it if I broke canon haha.
This be one of the ghost! Skullys.
He's not keeping Yuu asleep in the Malleus sense, just helping Yuu dream of something happy since they get stress dreams and Overblot nightmares a lot. Their idea of happy is apparently their friends being fellow human schoolmates in their world and never having been isekaied. (Grim is a sassy but otherwise normal cat they own at home. It functions more like high school than college because Yuu isn't sure what a normal world college experience is like). Yuu wakes up, forgets Skully's existence and their dreams, lives the day, goes to bed, and Skully helps set up their boring slice of life dreamscape again
Overall benign but Skully's vibes are still too suspicious for Silver though lol. I think Skully would have kept the schoolmate/just a dream character guise if Silver didn't immediately try to fight him. In Silver's defense, Skully did glare.
Had this thought before I read book 7 but I like to think this is validating. From Book 7 Ch 111. Ghostly Oneiromancy go brr.
Skully's relationship with Yuu is platonic.
I think Silver's stumbled in Yuu's dreams before Skully came around but they both forgot
I think the 6 panels with Silver and Yuu are fun. Either Yuu sees Silver and greets him first or they're parallel which means Silver smiles first.
Left a little longer and Yuu might realize "Oh Silver's here" means "Oh I'm dreaming" and immediately wake up.
I imagine that Skully lived a whole life then died, but looks like a student because he really wished he could have been friends and had a fun school life with the NBC event boys . So I suppose him crashing Yuu's dreams/helping Yuu dream of a normal life may not be entirely altruistic then, but I would still like to think that is secondary to giving some comfort to the kid who was your friend lifetimes ago and who has not been having an easy time since getting spirited away to twisted wonderland
Alternative possible reasons for him looking young/relatively the same:
I do not know how to draw an older version of a character
Ghosts may be kind of immortal but their memory isn't. The Ramshackle Ghosts are blobs. Skully's painting was of him still relatively young so that's the appearance he assumes.
Actively trying to monitor Yuu in their dream and the easiest way to blend in is to just look like that so he's in their classes and such. Somewhere in Yuu's subconscious, Yuu remembers Skully being a friendly presence so there being another member in the friend group doesn't stick out.
In that state, amnesiac Ghost! Skully likes Yuu the way the way you might feel fondness for a stray cat that's decided your house is its territory and stops by now and then, until it becomes a daily visitor.
It's not your cat. Not really. Clearly, it has other friends outside the building and things to do and surely it has an owner somewhere, since it's so well-behaved aside from its trespassing. It gets into fights- it has some battle-scars and you would like to bring it in properly and keep it safe, but it's not your cat and not your place, and you know enough of yourself to know simply can't take care of it, as much as you want to.
But you are happy looking at it, and you enjoy its company, even if it never turns to you for anything and couldn't care less about you. It also has a kitten with it. Which is cute. Sometimes it brings its cat friends. Also cute.
And one day it comes by, and you find that while your back was turned(because you can't stare at it all the time), someone picked it up from your porch and kicked the poor creature out into the dark and cold, and with someone treating it so badly on your property it may never come back again and the thing gets into trouble a lot and might die-
Anyway that's sort of what was happening here with the Leeches when they kicked Yuu and Grim from Ramshackle.
I tend to go with the idea that Yuu doesn't "unlock" Skully in Ramshackle until Halloween because Skully put a scrap of his soul into the painting, but it would be funny if he was There The Whole Time.
Yuu takes a picture of Grim sleeping (as you do when you have a cat) with the ghost camera and why is there a guy in the corner why is he moving didn't Crowley say you need a soulbond for the pictures to move what
Just the ?????? of some dead guy having maxed friendship affection stats while even your idiot cat son and new Heartslabyul friends(? You hope your friends, after the whole Mine thing) don't move that drastically in the photos yet. Yuu be wondering "Is he some ancestor am I some descendant of his did I know him in a past life did I know him in this life and just forget how do you forget some white-haired tallboy Dressed Like That What is Happening"
Characters: Skully J. Graves, Ramshackle Ghosts, Yuu/MC, Grim, Sebek Zigvolt
Summary: A ghost waits in Ramshackle.
Notes: Ao3 is having issues so I'm doing this for once. Because. Um. Idk productive procrastination maybe. Anyway ghost! Skully. Which one? Um. I tagged this Creepy Fluff on ao3 might want to check the other tags there. Or just read there. I should be doing other things at unreasonable hours but oh well
This is platonic btw.
Ao3 Mirror | Masterlist of other stuff | Filipino translation b/c idk man
There's hardly anything left of him when they arrive.
He's little more than a whisper in the wind, so weak soul-wise that even the ghosts in Ramshackle can't perceive him. Ghosts, after all, are spirits, and what are spirits but desires and drives? He cannot remember what he desires, or why he lingers. There is nothing for a fellow specter to recognize in him, thin and empty as he is. He thinks though (when he does think, which he doesn't do often since there's so little of him to think), that he must be waiting. That must be why, no matter how long he sleeps, or how time wears away at what little remains of him, he still wakes in Ramshackle.
There's hardly anything left of him when Ramshackle becomes home to a living being for the first time in years, but there is enough for him to ache at the sight of them.
They look terribly downtrodden, and terribly frightened by the state of the building. Perhaps it is a good thing that he is so lacking. Perhaps he'd only frighten them further into a grave with his looming self, and the thought of scaring them so when they are in such low spirits feels cruel.
His fellow ghosts, more lively and present than he's ever been, have no such qualms. He cared little before, for how they'd scare away ruffians and vandals from Ramshackle, but the human is neither. It sparks an aimless anger that he can't do anything to put out. Let the ghosts protect the property all they like, but this human is. . .
Familiar, in a way he cannot place, with how hollow he has become.
Magicless, he finds, as they depend on a feline direbeast to fight their foes with flame.
Lonely, he learns, as all he can do is watch, as he waits for their return to the rundown building at the end of every day.
They have their beast. They have their friends. They even have the other ghosts who have grown fond of their living housemate. But Ramshackle isn't their home, though it might be his. They bring back tomes plentiful and heavy that they pore over deep into the night, trying to find a way back to their world.
He'd help if he could, but he cannot turn a page any more than he can brush the hair from their tired face as they blink blearily at their books, and he so does want to do those things. He wants to help. It's only right for him to, after. . .
He has not slighted them, beyond his helpless neglect, but he feels sorry for them, and just. . .sorry. They deserve another friend. They deserve someone else to help them if the Headmaster won't. Someone to speak to when their friends are back in their dormitories. Someone to hold them steady, or at least be by their side when they wake in the dead of night, sweating and stifling their voice for the sake of their sleeping familiar.
Their dreams are full of ink and monsters.
He knows because he's checked. He's not much of a ghost, but he's more magic than mage, more power than person, an ancient thing that's been idly amassing the mana that flows so thickly on the school grounds for centuries. He has plenty of magic for a touch of oneiromancy, and he's found himself wanting things enough to deal in matters unphysical. So he takes those night terrors away when he finds that he can, and the nightmares of blot and harm are pulled and crushed as easily as one steps upon a worm. When they sleep soundly after, it is soothing to watch them.
He rather likes watching them regardless of the state of their consciousness. They are so sincere and sweet and yet a spark breaks though sometimes, especially as they speak to their friends, and he finds himself smiling as he looks at them. They're patient with their friends, and determined to help, and endearing as they are, and he can't he can't help but fear that the light they are will be snuffed out soon.
It's a pity he can't follow them out of Ramshackle. Such a bright soul should be treated better than they have been, magicless or not, but they are always tired, always a little sad, and their hopes of home fade day by day, faster than their scars do. He hears enough from Grim and the Heartslabyuls, and all the others who come after, on how they are picked upon, or how they get into accidents. Overblots, an unbelievable three of them, are quite the accidents to have. He'd give them his magic if he could- what use does he have for it, dead as he is? Even if it's not some forgotten desire but magic that's keeping him anchored in the world of the living, he'd gladly give it all to them.
He can't give them anything though. All he can do, really, is watch those he thinks he was waiting for, and be company in Ramshackle that can't provide any true comfort, and pretend, sometimes, that when Ramshackle's prefect waves goodbye to Ramshackle's ghosts as they leave for school, that he numbers among the younger specters.
That's all he can do, until they bring in the painting.
He's never been fond of the way he looked. He'd have avoided mirrors if he could see his reflection in them, he knows that then-
Because once he sees his face, captured in pigments and time, and he remembers.
He remembers sketching the painting on campus. It was an rather ugly thing when it began, but he'd learned by and by, bit by bit. He'd improved over time, and he'd painted over it between his travels, filling the canvas with brushstrokes and magic and the memories, driven by the odd need to leave something of himself.
He remembers the sudden inspiration that struck him that day he went to the book fair at Foothill Town. He'd thought it might leave, but it never did, and it drove him to spread Halloween throughout Twisted Wonderland in a festive manner that would keep it beloved and celebrated for ages to come.
He remembers the strange loneliness that had haunted him since that day too, a feeling like he'd forgotten something. It waxed and waned as the years went by, every new town bringing with it a curious hope that had him looking forward to new faces and never quite finding the ones he sought.
Skully J. Graves turns to Yuu, and to Sebek Zigvolt beside them, and he remembers a spiral hill and moonlit days, kingship and kinship and his idol's blessing-
"I suppose," Sebek says, stepping back to see the painting in its entirety, how it hangs against wall, how it looks with the meager furniture in the dim light. "That this room is not as terrible as the others."
"That's because I cleaned it."
Sebek shoots them a look. ". . .this is cleaned?!"
"As it can be."
A sigh. "I cannot believe the Headmaster allowed you to bring it here!"
"Well it wasn't easy, but it's better here than hidden away in a storage room right?"
"I think it looks perfect here! The King of Halloween in Ramshackle- it oughta bring in a lot of sweets like a good luck charm!"
Yuu chuckles. "I don't think that's how it works, Grim. But I think he fits in just fine."
"That is only because Ramshackle resembles a haunted house!"
"Well this room doesn't. And I'll take good care of the room and our dear king until I go."
"You must! The Headmaster spoke of its rarity. This portrait is an irreplaceable treasure-!"
"I'll treat it like a friend. I think that's a pretty good standard of care- I treat you well, don't I?"
Sebek opens his mouth. Then closes it. The boy sputters and Yuu laughs, and when he reaches out, his hand passes through them still.
"Well, I think we would have been friends," Yuu says, gazing at the painting, and what a terrible thing it is, to be a ghost.
"I'm sure you would," Sebek grumbles. "You are an incredibly brazen human- if you could befriend my liege, you could certainly befriend a King of Halloween through your stubborn insistence- "
"I think he would have liked you too."
Sebek casts them a baffled look. "Why? "
"Just a feeling," Yuu smiles.
"Would have made a good minion too," Grim nods.
"Why you little-! "
"Come on," Yuu laughs. "I'll treat you to something from Mostro as thanks for helping hang it-"
"I do not require compensation for something as trivial as this! Only a weak human like yourself would struggle with such a simple task!"
"Well I'd still like to treat you anyway - and you Grim, yes, you too. Gotta treat my friends well, right?"
In the accidental Ghost Engagement au there is a nonzero chance that Deuce thinks Yuu's last name is Dear or Darling from how often Skully addresses them like "Yuu dear" or "Yuu darling" and because by this point Deuce doesn't know how to ask what their actual surname is without feeling very embarrassed after not knowing a friend's full name after several months or if they even have one. (Deuce tried looking at the name line of returned homeworks and papers but Yuu has not written their full name in a single document in twst for fear of fair folk magic and nobody has called them out for it.)
