If both Skulduggery and Wreath had acknowledged their feelings to themselves but obviously hadn't told the other pre-canon.
and then when skul gets yeeted into the Faceless Ones' universe after saving Wreath's life wreath gets to deal with the guilt about that for a year and that's why he helps Val bring him back
And then they talk about their feelings and they actually get together after skul returns.
And then, a couple years later, Solomon *dies* to Darquesse. And Skulduggery cannot stop her. And then he gets to deal with that guilt for about 14 years.
Because Wreath came back in UTE with the others but we know skul didn't know he was back. So. What if Wreath genuinely believed that Skul would despise him for being weak enough to die to Darquesse and so stayed away. avoided him. But at the same time read every bit of news about him that he could because of course, of course he still loved him. He just thought he wouldn't be loved back anymore.
When Skulduggery finds out that Wreath is alive he breaks into his house, punches him, then breaks down crying (or as close as a skeleton can get idk) because "I thought you were dead, goddamn you, why didn't you come back to me-"
They talk about it.
They move in together.
They get the closest thing to a happy ending they can get.
Solomon stares back, a defiant smirk curving the edge of his mouth. Valkyrie looks between the two men, and suddenly remembers years’ worth of mentorly-jealousy and petty spats that was all a thin facade for…
“Oh boy.”
*
the pre-slash Soldug fic I never thought I'd write...set during Hell Breaks Loose. Also on a03. @maximillien-morreldantes ...look!! I finally wrote it!!!
And here it is! My pre-slash Soldug fic, set during/canon-divergent from Hell Breaks Loose! Thank you to Cassian for dragging me reluctantly into liking this ship…I hope you enjoy this fic.
Look, I didn’t know the plot of HBL when I read it, and three years later, I still don’t understand it. I’ve done my best. Also, this turned out a bit more platonic-Valdug than I intended. But I hope you like it. Let me know if you do!
All Out Of Fight came on this morning just as I was plotting it out in my head, and I decided it was meant to be…
SO - my idea is that, Valkyrie time-travels after UTE, which means that Solomon is actually alive, but they don’t know that for another six years yet, so she’s thinking he’s dead. Complicated, huh?
When something dies, doesn’t mean that it’s over
We’re not like them, we don’t have to be cold as ice
We could be you and I
So take my hand for the last time
And find my eyes with yours
We were two broken parts from the same old junkyard
Battered and bruised and we tried so goddamn hard
I never asked for easy
But it shouldn’t be this hard
My heart will always know your name
I’m all out of love
- All Out Of Fight by P!NK
Words failed her, and she broke from her pacing pattern and stormed off. They watched her go, and nobody said anything for a while….
Valkyrie Cain is so pissed. She’d told them. She’d told China, Skulduggery, Ghastly - all of them - She’d told them she shouldn’t be trusted with this mission. Albeit she’s the only person who can time-travel, and the mission is necessary, but she’d known she’d screw things up. Venturing to the future had meant having a fight with her future self and bringing back Skulduggery’s evil future self with her. And she had been trying to change that future. But going to the past? Trying not to change anything?
The moment she’d revealed who she was, shit had started hitting the fans. And now…and now…
She walks on, pushing past unknown people, probably heading deeper into the dungeons. She doesn’t care. It’s getting hard to think. Hard to breathe.
In. Out. Slow deep breaths.
She hears it in Skulduggery’s voice - her Skulduggery’s voice - and she wants to cry. But she can’t. She’s goddamn Valkyrie Cain. She can’t cry just because she’s stuck in 1703, having derailed her future, having possibly murdered her best friend.
Stop. Think. She stares at a particularly ugly blob of mould on the wall. There has to be another way around this. Serpine is dead. She doesn’t want to resurrect Serpine. But she can still rescue Skulduggery. The punishment for killing a prisoner might be severe. The Elders might not know how to kill Skulduggery, but what if they do, somehow?
That is absolutely unacceptable. Until The End still counts on Valkyrie’s side, even if she’s doing a completely shit job at it currently.
****
It’s easy to be stealthy when you’re Valkyrie Cain. Black clothing, black hair, sliding along the shadows like a super-cool ninja. But it’s harder to be stealthy when you don’t really know where you’re going.
She slinks back through the dungeons like an aimless but well-dressed shadow, until she spots Meritorious emerging from a room. The door clangs shut in a way that could only mean that it’s used for keeping prisoners in. She watches Meritorious - younger, yet still care-ridden, the weight of the world resting on his shoulders - crossing the hallway towards the narrow stairs; that level is where she came from, and where the Dead Men, presumably, still are.
She doesn’t waste time. One good strong sizzle of lightning, and whatever magical locking mechanism is on the door gives way with a sad little pfftshhtppft.
Skulduggery raises his skull as she steps in. There’s a small wilting candle on the rotting table. His wrists are shackled.
“Valkyrie,” he says, sounding surprised. He says her name differently in this time, like it’s an unfamiliar taste in the mouth he doesn’t have.
“Rescue mission,” she says briskly. “I’m breaking you out. We need to go and-”
“Kill Tithonus.” Skulduggery’s voice is smooth. Too smooth. She recognises the hint of rage underneath, more badly concealed than it used to be. Or, will be. God, she’s so tired of all this.
“Kill Tithonus?” She pauses, her hands clasped around the cold chains. “He’s, like, the one actually innocent person in this whole mess.”
Skulduggery tilts his head slightly. “I will be happy to elaborate once we are out of here. But I imagine Ghastly or Erskine may come down to talk to me now, so time is of the essence.”
Her mouth sours when she hears those two names, together, and her hand tightens around the chain shackling Skulduggery’s left wrist. It takes a moment - lightning sizzles; the chains spark and spit. Skulduggery doesn’t flinch. She does it again; forces more magic to her palm. The links burst open, and Skulduggery lifts his arm, flexing his gloveless fingers.
She does the same to the other chain; he stands, and she goes over to the door, listening.
“Nobody is coming.”
She glances back at him. “God, you’re annoying.”
He reaches past and pulls the door open. “Now for our dashing and daring escape.”
****
They have to hide in two rooms while people go by - one of the rooms is an abandoned latrine, and Valkyrie wishes she had Skulduggery’s lack of nose - but they make it out.
“Wow,” she says, following Skulduggery down a…a field, really. It’s not good enough to be called a track. “Ireland in 1703 is…bleak.”
“Yes,” Skulduggery says dryly. “It is.”
“What’s the plan? How do we get back to Italy? That’s where we need to go, right? To…” She can’t say it. “I don’t want to kill someone, Skulduggery.”
He glances at her, skull turning fractionally. Dammit. She has to remember this is not her Skulduggery. But he lets her vulnerability slide. “I have a friend. Cassandra Pharos.” He notes her kneejerk reaction. “She has a brother, and he is a Teleporter. He can take us to San Gimignano.”
“And how far away does Cassandra live? It’s hours away, isn’t it? Man, I hate walking. I hate it. We walked for months in Dimension X. God. I’m so done with walking.”
Skulduggery waits for her to finish. “I estimate it will take perhaps three or four hours of steady walking. Of course, we must hope that the Sanctuary do not pursue us.”
“How likely is that?”
“Ghastly might, perhaps, realise where I will go. But he will cover for me, I think. It will be hard for Tome to find us. And besides, who has time to waste on us, when there is the more pressing matters of dealing with Mevolent?”
“So we’re just gonna…hope they don’t come after the time-traveller chick and the murderous skeleton? That’s a terrible plan.”
Skulduggery tilts his head at her. “Do you have a better one?”
She scuffs her boots in the mud. Crinkles her nose. Glares at a rook flying over the hawthorn hedgerows.
“God, you’re so annoying.”
****
They’ve been walking for almost two hours. Skulduggery knows the way. They’ve crossed streams, walked through little mortal hamlets, through thick forests, across numberless fields. Mostly in silence.
“I must confess to a lingering curiosity.” He breaks the silence.
“What?” Her voice, unlike his, is slightly hoarse from not talking.
“Why did you rescue me? I am not the man you know. You watched me brutally a man, yet you still rescued me without a second thought. Why?”
“I’ve seen you do way worse,” Valkyrie says, truthfully. “Way, way worse. And - I dunno. You’re the only one I trust, to be honest, with this whole…fiasco. Like, I can’t do any of this by myself, and I don’t…”
“You do not trust Erskine.”
“Let’s just say that I don’t,” she mutters grimly.
“And yet, you say you trust me, but you do not know me.”
“I do. And I didn’t know what they’d do to you. Like, do they kill people for killing prisoners?”
“Meritorious mentioned exile.”
“See, I couldn’t let that happen. Until the end, and all that.”
Skulduggery turns his skull fully to her. “I beg your pardon?”
“Until the end.” She sees the shadows inside his eye-sockets; natural shadows, thrown there by the angle of the sun. “I save you. You save me. That’s how we work.”
He runs his hand over his skull. Discomfited. “I…find myself at a loss for words.”
She smiles. “That’s only the second time that’s happened, that I’ve witnessed. Come on, slowcoach.”
****
“Magic toilets,” she mutters to herself, crouching behind a broad oak. “Magic toilets, huh? That’d be the dream. It really would.”
She stands up, presses the amulet to her chest. She can see Skulduggery, standing a bit down the tiny lane between two fields, hands clasped behind his back. But there’s something else. Someone else.
She turns just in time to see the punch a masked woman throws at her.
It.
All.
Goes.
Bl-
****
She wakes up with her head on a hard floor.
“Ugh,” she moans, rolling onto her back. There’s a tiny barred window, set ten feet high into a stone wall above her. Her head hurts. Her mouth is dry, tongue heavy. Her ankle feels odd. Her amulet lies on the floor next to her, and she scoops it up protectively.
“Miss Cain,” a voice says, and she sits up, tries to scramble to her feet but abandons that before she falls over or passes out again.
“Pardon, pardon,” the man says, holding up his hands. “I mean you no harm.”
“Solomon?” she breathes, dumbfounded.
A younger Solomon Wreath stands in the corner, back against the wall, dark eyes glinting at her. Then he smiles, and it’s the same smile she remembers. She has to blink back sudden tears.
“Miss Cain,” he says again. “You have been unconscious for a while. I was getting worried.”
Common sense kicks in. She stands, holding onto the amulet like it’s a goddamn good luck charm or something. “What are you doing here? Where am I?” She remembers that punch, and the kick to the head that followed, just before she blacked out. “Why have you kidnapped me, for God’s sake, Solomon?”
“Oh,” he says. “No, I have not taken you hostage, although all the evidence points to the opposite. I am, in fact, a fellow captive.”
She looks around. The corners of the room are shadowed, but she can see clearly enough that there’s no third prisoner. “Where’s Skulduggery?”
“I-”
“Where’s. Skulduggery?” she demands. “What happened to him?”
“They took him, too. Perhaps they are interrogating him as we speak.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t believe this. I just can’t. It keeps getting better and better, this whole shitshow. Who’s they?”
Solomon shrugged. “How can I tell? Mevolent’s people, or allies of his, most likely.” He studied her. “You are the woman from the future.”
“Yeah. Yeah I am.” It doesn’t occur to her to lie until it’s too late.
“You know who I am.”
This Solomon isn’t as…guarded. Suave. Unflappable. She watches him in return, her own eyes narrowed. “We’ve met.”
“In pleasant circumstances, I should hope.”
She remembers how he died. Her evil self killed him. She shoves that away; there’s no point lamenting over what will, probably, never ever happen - not now that she’s derailed the whole fucking timeline. “What the fuck are you doing here, anyway?” she demands. “It’s not like you just happened to be passing by in that one random desolated place in the wilderness and got captured as well.”
Solomon rubs his upper lip. “I…I am on a mission for my Temple. It is not for me to divulg-”
“Your mission was to, like, stalk us.”
“Gather information,” he protests, but he doesn’t try to deny it.
“About me? Because I’m the cool snazzy time-traveller?” Valkyrie snorts. “I thought you lot were neutral.”
“We were on the side of the Sanctuaries,” Solomon said, “until…recently. The Necromancers are neutral now. Entirely so. But rumours have a way of reaching us, secluded as we are. It was important for us to understand who you are. And what you are capable of.”
She doesn’t have her magic, not in this room. She wishes she did. “I shoot lightning, dude. I’m not your Death Bringer. Nope, definitely not going through that bullshit again. By the way? Killing three billion people is completely bonkers, and you’re being brainwashed.”
Solomon blinks at her.
“Just thought I should say it,” she adds. “So, you were literally stalking me, then. Since when?”
“I saw you and the skeleton leave the Sanctuary,” Solomon says, crossing his arms. “Pray, tell me, Miss Cain…”
He stops.
“What?”
“The skeleton. Skulduggery Pleasant.”
She arches her eyebrow. “Yeah?”
“I suppose, being made only of bones and magic, he has not even aged in your time?”
That was not what he wanted to ask. “I guess not. I mean, how do you even tell if a skeleton’s aged? There’s no wrinkles.” She stops herself. Dammit, you’re being too friendly again. You don’t know these versions of Solomon and Skulduggery. And it took Skulduggery himself to point that out to you.
Skulduggery.
Her belly twists uncomfortably. “I don’t like it,” she says, looking around. “What are they doing to him? Where is he? Do you think he’s…”
“Dead?” Solomon asks, looking, for a moment, as uneasy as she feels.
“There has to be a way out of here.”
He leans off the wall, watching her inspect the metal door. “You’ll not be getting out through that, Miss Cain.”
“Just call me Valkyrie,” she mutters, running her hands across the hinges. It’s solid. “We’ll be friends, in the future. Mostly friends. Well, until you tried to trick me. And also you knocked me out. But then I punched you, so we’re even. I think.”
“Valkyrie.” Solomon sounds amused. “I can see why Skulduggery and myself like you.”
“Putting yourself together there, huh?” She huffs, glaring at the door. It’s tempting to kick it, but she’ll only regret that course of action.
“I only meant,” Solomon corrects himself hastily, “that both myself and the skeleton-”
“Oh, save it, Solomon. I watched you two do your shit for years.” She shakes her head, paces the cell, and then slumps into a sitting position. “Enemies to lovers is so cliché, by the way.”
He’s silent.
****
There’s no clock in here, and it’s not like Valkyrie can even see the sun properly to guess what time it is, and she isn’t a patient person either so it feels like at least eight hours pass, but after maybe an hour, the door clanks. To her left, Solomon stiffens, and she readies herself, but when the chains or bolts or whatever have all been unlocked, all that happens is the door swinging open, and Skulduggery being shoved in.
“Oh, thank God.” She leaps up and throws her arms around him. “Are you okay? Did they torture you?”
Skulduggery is stiff beneath her embrace; stiffer than he normally is; utterly frozen. It takes her a moment. Then he slowly, slowly puts one arm around her. Is this the first time anyone’s hugged him, since his family died? “I am utterly splendid,” he declares. “A touch of torture is always refreshing.” She stands back, and he turns his head to the other occupant of the cell.
Solomon stares back, a defiant smirk curving the edge of his mouth. Valkyrie looks between the two men, and suddenly remembers years’ worth of mentorly-jealousy and petty spats that was all a thin facade for…
“Oh boy.”
****
“Malevolent’s allies are the ones who captured us,” Skulduggery confirms what she’d thought. “I have not given them any information. Cleric Wreath, what in damnation are you doing here?”
“That, Pleasant, is sensitive information pertaining to my Te-”
“He was spying on us,” Valkyrie cuts in. Solomon glares at her. “You’d better have looked away when I peed,” she warns him.
“Of course I did,” he says stiffly. She believes him, but it’s worth it to see him squirm a bit.
“So what do we do now?” she asks Skulduggery.
He shrugs. “There is nothing to do. We have been captured. We must now hope that the other Dead Men succeed in their mission to close the Gate and stop Strickent.”
“But what about me?” she demands. “I mean, the whole future is fucked up already, just by Serpine being dead, but…k-” She still can’t say it. “Finding Tithonus? All of that? Am I supposed to just stay in here forever? Like, I’ve got my dog, my girlfriend, my folks…I can’t just stay in this time. It’s impossible. It is literally impossible.”
Skulduggery takes a step towards her, but Solomon gets there first. “You will be fine,” he says quietly, putting his hand on her arm. “I am sure of it, Mis - Valkyrie. You don’t seem like a woman who takes ‘no’ for an answer very often…”
She manages a smile. “No, I guess not.”
“So,” Solomon says, his dark eyes calming in a way that invokes memories of cool stone rooms and bottomless crystal-clear wells and beautiful shadows arcing high overhead, “I am sure you will conquer this adversity.”
Inhale. Exhale. This time, she hears it in this-Skulduggery’s voice, with the slightly roughened accent. “Still a good mentor,” she jokes.
They both look up when Skulduggery snorts. “Mentor? Solomon? He’s barely out of napkins.”
Solomon doesn’t respond, except for a haughty inhale.
Valkyrie raises her eyebrow. “You know I’m still in my twenties, right?”
She thinks Skulduggery is a bit surprised. Solomon, who looks about her age - or possibly even younger - smiles slightly. “I am well over a hundred. Skulduggery is merely jealous that he does not have any age to speak of.”
“I don’t know what they teach you in that temple, Wreath, but I do still age.”
“How so, my dear Pleasant? You have no birthday. You might count your deathdays, I suppose. In which case, I believe you would be about thirteen. But if you do not count your deathdays, then you are simply existing.”
Skulduggery takes a step towards Solomon. Valkyrie holds up her hands. “Gentlemen, gentlemen. No brawling.”
“Of course not,” Solomon says, with another smile.
Skulduggery is silent. Valkyrie looks at him suspiciously. “You aren’t going to kill him, Skulduggery. I know you like him secretly.”
That does the equivalent of detonating a bomb. Damn. She should have thought that through a bit more.
“You - I-” Skulduggery splutters.
“I assure you, Valkyrie, Skulduggery does not like me,” Solomon says with a rueful smile.
She has evidence, from the future, that could state otherwise. Skulduggery would never tell her quite why he disliked Solomon so much, and in the end she had asked China, who had told her about their ‘sordid affair’ during the later years of the War. This, Valkyrie had worked out, was after Skulduggery’s return from being Lord Vile. The two men had been at odds with each other until soon after her eighteenth birthday, at which point, she suspects, the push-pull, on-again-off-again ‘affair’ had started again.
And then Darquesse killed Solomon, and the last thing the Necromancer ever saw was Skulduggery rounding the corner, steaming black shadows crusting into armour over his suit.
She shakes herself out of the memories. That future might not even come to pass, now. “So,” she says, looking between them again. “Why don’t you tell me how you two first met or something?”
****
“We were in Prussia,” Skulduggery says. They’re all sitting now. Skulduggery and Solomon are sitting against the opposite wall, a healthy two metres between them; Valkyrie sits by the door, knees pulled up to her chest, watchful in case she has to break up a sudden fight. Or, possibly, a snogging session. “Mevolent’s troops raided a Necromancer Temple and killed all but three of the people there.”
“Morwenna Crow,” Valkyrie says. “And Auron Tenebrae. And…you.” She looks at Solomon, surprised. “I never knew that.”
“You know this story already?” Skulduggery asks, head tilting.
“Yeah, bits of it. There was an ogre called Jeremy.” She smiles at him; his head tilts the other way.
“With a very big axe,” Solomon adds dryly.
She turns her smile to him. “Yeah.” This is a very different rendition of the story. Last time, ten years ago, she was sixteen and terrified, after one of the men she held as a hero had knocked her out, and the other was revealed to be a mass-murderer. And here they are, again; or here they are, before the other time has even happened-
“We were tracking the raiding party,” Skulduggery says. “I was the only Dead Man there.”
“You were married,” Valkyrie says softly.
His chin dips slightly. “Four months and three weeks.”
Something flashes across Solomon’s face, gone before she can quite see it. She realises something. Solomon crushed on Skulduggery. She’d bet…Well, she hasn’t got anything to bet, but she’d bet something that the Necromancer had crushed on a happily-married-and-alive Skulduggery.
“Skulduggery spent most of his time talking to Morwenna,” Solomon says, even more dryly. “Which meant I had to speak to Tenebrae.”
“I did not wish to speak to young and immature fools,” Skulduggery retorts loftily.
“For Heaven’s sake, Pleasant, I am-”
“You were nine and twenty.” Skulduggery cuts him off. “A naive fool. You deserved Tenebrae’s company.”
“You were thirty-five,” Solomon shoots back. “If I remember correctly, Morwenna was already in her eighties.”
“I would not count on your memory being correct. It is unlikely that the cognitive functions of memory in your mind had formed yet.”
“How pathetic, Pleasant, that you have, in your state of unlife, been reduced to unintelligent quips and a burning desire for revenge.”
“Better that than being alive and obsessed only with an utterly pathetic idea of unrequited love.”
Solomon arches both dark eyebrows. “Better that, I should say, than an inability to love at all.”
“That’s not...”
“Not what, Pleasant? Cat got your tongue? Oh, I beg your pardon - you don’t have one any more, do you?”
Valkyrie clears her throat pointedly. They both jump - even Skulduggery. She looks between them. “I’m still here,” she says. “Being held here against my will, as well. So, like, just…cool it with the lovers’ tiffs.”
There’s a moment. Then Skulduggery sags a little. “You are right, Wreath,” he growls. “I am incapable of love now. Do not hope for anything different.”
“When it comes to you, Pleasant, I have never hoped.”
“You’re wrong,” Valkyrie says firmly. Again, they both look up at her. “You can love, Skulduggery. You’ve got so many people to love, in the future. You’re not not able to love.” She glances at Solomon. “But you probably shouldn’t get your hopes up.”
There’s silence, and then…
“Why have you never hoped?” Skulduggery asks, his voice slightly different.
Solomon smiles, then ruins the effect by picking at his nails. “I am not given to delusion, Pleasant.”
“You are a Necromancer.”
Solomon snorts a laugh. Skulduggery’s head tilts. Valkyrie bites back a smile. For a moment, she’s sixteen again and it’s okay; they’ll stop Darquesse, they’ll get Tanith back, she never killed her sister, Erskine was never a traitor…
But she’s in 1703, all alone. These two men are not the men she knows. Almost everyone that she has met is now dead in her future. There isn’t even a ‘her future’ anymore, because she fucked it up.
Solomon, or Skulduggery, or both of them, notice her face.
“I am sure you will be all right,” Skulduggery says, echoing - maybe unconsciously - Solomon’s earlier words. “That is, if Mevolent’s troops do not kill us in retribution for Serpine’s death.”
Valkyrie smiles tremulously. “I’ve been captured enough times, like. And sentenced to death and beaten up and tortured and stuff. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.”
“Why do you do it?” Solomon asks, a hint of genuine curiosity in his voice. “There isn’t a war in the future, is there?”
“Oh, man.” Her laugh is shaky. “There’s so much shit in the future.” One of the wars is against myself. “I don’t even know where I’d start. But…” She closes her eyes. “It’s for my folks, I guess. My sister. My girlfriend, my dog. All the people I love. I guess…I need to do everything I do, so they’re safe? So they’ve got a world to keep living in.”
“That is noble of you.”
“Thank you.”
“I am alive in your time,” Skulduggery says suddenly. “Who else is? Or…who is not? Or, who died, while you have known them?”
She swallows. “I don’t know who I should start with.”
“Start with the occupants of this room, perhaps.”
She looks at Solomon. He looks back at her. “I am a Necromancer, Valkyrie. I do not fear death. I embrace it.”
She closes her eyes, so she doesn’t have to see the inevitable: when his face changes, or Skulduggery’s posture stiffens.
“Yeah,” she whispers to her knees. And then, what she never had a chance to say:
“I’m so sorry, Solomon.”
****
There’s no source of light, no candles or anything, when it gets dark. The light seeps from the room, and leaves it in the sort of pitch blackness that Valkyrie would’ve been afraid of, once upon a time, so long ago, back when she was Stephanie Edgley.
She stays quiet. Skulduggery and Solomon exchange conversation every now and again. The barbed undercurrent gets more and more muted. They talk about people she’s never heard of, occurrences that Skulduggery never told her about. Once, when they think she’s probably asleep, Solomon murmurs a condolences about Skulduggery’s family. Skulduggery replies with a curt but genuine thanks.
She’s hungry. She’s hungry and at some point she’ll need to pee again and all of this is just distracting her from the other thoughts, the real problems. If her-Skulduggery could see the mess she’s got into…He’d been so sure that she’d be alright. But look at the disaster she’s made.
****
They don’t hear much of the ruckus, thanks to the thick stone walls. But when the door flies off its hinges and a glow of fire lights the cell, then the dim noise turns into an amplified roar of bloodshed and small explosions.
“You miscreants,” Dexter says cheerfully, holding a lantern. His right eyebrow has been singed off.
Skulduggery scrambles up. Valkyrie follows suit, wincing at the pins and needles in her legs.
“The rescue mission?” Skulduggery says.
Dexter chucks him a small knife. “I hope you know you’re bloody idiots.”
“Come on! I haven’t got all day to stab pretty people!” Saracen calls from a distance.
Valkyrie turns, but Skulduggery beats her to it. Firelight dances across Solomon’s shadowed face as he looks up, still sitting on the floor.
how soldug actually end up talking about their feelings:
imo Val and Tanith set them up so they have to work a case together and they spend the whole time sniping at each other except their insults get progressively more personal and bitter, until Skul makes a jab about Sol being unable to mentor Val properly. Sol replies with a comment like "well, at least I'm not like you and actually know how to have feelings." And skul, without thinking, says "I do have feelings! You should know, I've been in love with you for years-" and then immediately just. shuts up, turns around and starts to walk away (entirely in character for the idiot).
sol uses his shadows to catch him and is just like. "what. you're what."
What do you think the Dead Men / other skulduggery pleasant characters pet names would be for their SO?
OKAY SO
here's the rundown
DEAD MEN
ghasdug: they don't really use pet names. ghastly sometimes calls skug skul, which skug hates, but he gets away with it by dint of having done it since they were teens. they get together at 16 and for most of their relationship skug doesn't use affectionate nicknames or pet names for anyone. He does sometimes fondly call ghastly bespoke, though.
sexter: dexter is just dex, mostly - not just with saracen, but with all his lovers. saracen is like 5'9 to dexter's 6ft, so dexter fondly refers to him as big guy.
shudderkin: shudder isn't a pet name person, but he is pretty much the only person who regularly calls larrikin by his first name, rover. on the flipside, larrikin will answer to pretty much anything, and shudder promptly gets nicknamed altar boy, in honour of all that religious guilt he carries around.
other: ghastly was a sergeant major during the war. everyone who doesn't outrank him still occasionally whines "but sarge," if he's telling them off for something.
BAD BOY BRIGADE
violent: their relationship is a closely guarded secret for a long time, so in public they're professional: vile calls mevolent your grace, and mevolent calls vile general. in private, over the years, mevolent will sometimes fondly refer to vile as rouquin ("little redhead" or "little ginger" in Middle French). vile doesn't use pet names at all, but he does call mev mevolent, rather than an honorific title, which isn't something many people get to do
nefmev: they don't do pet names, especially not from nef. he's pretty smitten with mevolent, but mev sees him as a convenient casual hookup whenever he wants one, so he won't get away with over-familiarity in the same way vile could if he was the pet name type. he's one of mevolent's closest advisors, and in the war room, to a certain degree he gets to talk to mev like an equal and argue with him, but that doesn't really carry over to the bedroom. nef is used to messed up power dynamics, so this never really strikes him as odd.
sorrowscorn: they're both rather fond of darling
baronscorn: they have their own little awkward thing where she calls him husband and he calls her wife. the rest of the court are not entirely sure whether these are affectionate pet names or whether they are just strange ultra-repressed oddballs who think that's how normal people speak. vile and mevolent have a running bet.
GOOD GUYS (MISC)
cassdug: she's not flowery at all about her pet names - he's usually either love or lovey, depending on her mood. he doesn't really go in for them with her, but he does call her cassie in private, which is. very unusual for him, seeing as he pretty much never shortens names.
skulpine: skug calls nef nefarian. this is significant to nef because he isn't on first-name terms with leibniz!skug, and he gets visibly annoyed when og!skug keeps calling him nefarian in lsodm/tdotl. as his obsession shifts from skug-as-enemy to skug-as-ally, he starts to like the informality, because it makes him feel like skug likes him, and at a certain point he starts reciprocating by going from "the skeleton" or "detective pleasant" to skulduggery. these aren't actually pet names for skug though - he and og!serpine are on first name terms the whole way through book one, so this is normal to him.
valdug: pet names are pretty rare from him, and non-existent from her, but he does call her dear every now and then. neither of them are really the type that show affection like this.
skugwife: easily the most petnamey couple here - he's my darling and she's dearest. when they're courting and writing to each other, him at the front and her back in dublin, his letters begin with "dearest clary" and hers always end with "be safe, my darling". they keep this sappy shit up until she's killed, and even after - he vaguely remembers hallucinating her comforting him and telling him to come with me, my darling when he was being slowly tortured to death in serpine's dungeon, and that's the incident her ghost tells him about in tdotl - "we watched you suffer, we tried to get you to come with us".
vilekyrie: not so much a pet name, but i've always had a headcanon that when vile has nonverbal periods, he communicates with little shadow emojis like the sandman in rise of the guardians. he has one for her, like (🙎🏻), and mostly uses it to show he's worried about her if she's upset (🙎🏻❓) or that he's happy to see her/wants to show her something (🙎🏻❗) or say "I love you" (🙎🏻❤). sometimes his shadows will make the little signs in his sleep, and she can tell he's talking to her in his dreams. she sees it as almost a pet name. when he's talking though, they don't really have any.
(@bubblemoon66 do they have pet names in the spy!au? now im curious)
soldug: they mostly call each other by their surnames (pleasant/wreath) or by titles (detective/cleric), so their version of pet names is just...informality. if they use skulduggery or solomon, it's usually affectionate or concerned.
skug's siblings: after skug's mother is killed, he gets custody of the five youngest siblings. respair, the youngest, is only like four, and still has a little-kid lisp, and can't actually say 'skulduggery'. So skug gets to spend several unfortunate years as...well...skug thkug. respair grows out of it - eventually. raising kids is a thankless, embarrassing job.
BAD GUYS (MISC)
vilequesse: she frequently refers to him as my little toy or my pet. he doesn't really have one for her (but vilekyrie!au vile does have a sign for darquesse, and it's different to his one for val, which is. a relief for her tbh because for a while she's not actually sure whether he knows there's a difference)
tanguine: brs is a good ol' southern boy, so he has a whole bunch of names for tanith. honey bun, sweetheart, sugar, dumplin', all the typical schmoopy food ones. if she asks him something, he'll often answer her with either "yes ma'am" or "no ma'am". tanith, being all remnanty, isn't overly given to genuine displays of affection, but in a world where he survives tdotl and they figure it out, she mostly opts for babe
I just. i ship it because there's so much potential for enemies -> enemies with benefits -> begrudgingly friends (thanks to val) -> actually friends because they complement one another more than they'll actually admit -> wait shit fuck I like him oh my god- -> them actually talking about it (being forced into talking about it because they have to solve a case together without Val) -> married father figures
Hiiii heard you were taking requests again so perhaps… Time loops? For whatever fandom, I just wanna see what you come up with :)
ooooh! thank you for the interesting request :)
------
DAY 2
It was by the second day that Solomon woke up in the same place, doing the same things, that he knew something was truly, truly wrong.
It was also when he realised that he was trapped in this day.
300 goddamn years ago.
The day the Temple took Nefarian Serpine into their protection.
The day Mevolent's forces had stormed anyway.
Worst of all, the day he'd kissed the goddamn skeleton.
He groaned and considered, absently, if shoving a shadow through his heart would end the timeloop. He doubted it. He tried anyway.
----
DAY 9
No matter what he did, Tenebrae seemed hellbent on letting Serpine into the Temple.
And fucking Pleasant seemed hellbent on seeing him. He hadn't kissed him again, though.
What fucking joy.
He dragged himself up to face another of these days.
Maybe he'd change it this time.
----
DAY 14
He couldn't believe it hadn't occured to him before to just kill Serpine. That would probably achieve whatever the timeloop wanted.
He briefly pictured the look of shock on Pleasant's face. His lips curled in amusement that was just slightly too tender.
He needed to remember that this wasn't the skeleton who knew him. It was a much younger him. And he wanted nothing to do with Solomon.
Whatever. He'd kill Serpine.
----
DAY 27
13 goddamn days, it had taken him to kill the bastard. How the hell had Skulduggery done it before? That hand of his hurt like hell.
And still, it hadn't broken him out of the loop.
He gave into his frustration and punched the wall of his room, muffling a scream of anger.
Fine. It would take something else.
----
DAY 32
Maybe he'd just have to kiss Skulduggery again. He'd been religiously avoiding that entire encounter with the skeleton - this wasn't the man he remembered, and he couldn't bring himself to deal with the dismissiveness of him all over again - but.. needs must.
He replicated their original interaction to a tee, complete with the kiss. He grit his teeth against the insults hurled at his back as he walked away, but he felt it settle in his gut that this wasn't the way out.
Damn.
----
Day 37
Maybe he could give Serpine over to Pleasant? That might achieve what he needed to do.
God, that would be infuriating to do.
Still. Worth a try.
----
Day 43
Six hours, it had taken to sedate and sneak Serpine out of the Temple. He kept his hand clamped firmly over the bastard's mouth as he dragged him out to Pleasant's camp. He didn't bother with politeness.
"Pleasant. Skeleton Detective. I've a gift for you."
As expected, the skeleton seemed to appear almost immediately, and Solomon relished the sheer shock on his skull at the sight of Serpine. He tossed him at the other man's feet with a scowl.
"He's all yours. Have fun."
He turned to walk away and was stopped by the hand that grabbed his wrist.
"What."
"You.. brought him to me."
"Clearly."
"Why?"
Well, shit. What did he say to that?
"I had my reasons."
"Wreath, you bast-"
"Shut up, you bag of fucking bones."
"Oh, I'll show you-"
"Will you now-?"
And then Pleasant's lips were on his and for a single moment he let himself pretend it was his skeleton. And then he pulled back, sneered, and the moment shattered.
"That meant noth-"
Solomon was done. He drew back his fist and slammed it as hard as he could into Pleasant's jaw.
"Shut up. Just.. shut up."
He was shaking, he dimly registered.
"You have Serpine. Happy now?"
He didn't wait for an answer; he turned and returned to the Temple. He felt, within him, something spark.
The timeloop was over, he could feel it.
He could go home.
----
AFTER
He returned to a world in which nobody knew he was alive. Especially not Skulduggery.
He hated it. But it was better than before.
And then his skeleton broke down his door, and he knew that this was inevitable.
