Chapter Text
The thing about life that seems rather strange, at least in Charles’ opinion, is that it keeps going, long after you’re dead. Things happen to you or around you, and you keep reacting. Then you die, and in his case, you keep reacting.
It feels odd, in a way, that they’re no longer in Port Townsend. Stranger than it felt being there, though they had been much more familiarised with their typical haunt of London. Perhaps it is because of the inevitability of the oceanside town. London was their roots, and there was never a question as to their return. They’d built no office, even as they constructed a reputation. They’d taken cases from behind an ironing board, for the sake of the Endless. But leaving a place, knowing that you’d never be likely to return… It doesn't quite sit right.
They’d wound up returning, when Niko stepped back into the mortal coil with all the gentle demeanour of a Yuki Onna meeting you in a storm, and yet none of the threat. She is gentle and sweet and a gift, and they tempt her to London easily enough, but she must finish the semester in America for her credits to transfer.
Edwin is really looking forward to it. Charles notices the little signs, but beyond that, Edwin just says it. That he’s excited for for Niko’s continued presence in their lives, that he’s anticipating anime nights and learning a whole new pantheon from half remembered stories.
Edwin says things now, where before Charles had to guess at him. It’s nice. Wonderful, actually. And that’s genuine, proper so. Charles had liked being Edwin’s confidant, the one who knew him truest, but watching Edwin’s eyes light around a pointed barb at Crystal (though they’re surely affectionate now) or the way he asks Niko about the latest plot points in one of her ridiculous manga, one of the ones with too much miscommunication and characters faffing about whether they do or don’t like someone.
(Yes, Charles hears it. And he is thinking about it, seriously! Just… He’s never been the brains, and this feels like something that he should be thinking about seriously, but yet, shouldn’t he not think about something like love? Niko says that ‘love requires no brain’ and then something about starfish. It’s tragic that she’s the best source of information he has.)
They’re loud now. Niko’s welcome home party is worthy a few noise complaints, but they don’t get any, which feels rather disappointing. There’s a softness in the way that a welcome home event takes place in a place she’d never been before, but she walks in with gentle steps and a gentler heart, and nods affirmatively at the walls around her as though she’s been faced with them her whole life.
If Charles has been reacting to the world his whole life, he thinks the earth reacts to Niko’s presence in it. She has a way of setting things in motion, laying the threads of fate across her fingers, playing cats cradle with the red. She’d bound them in the case of the dandelion sprites, had found the washer woman in a field of light, had even connected Jenny to Maxine. Hell, they’re only together because she’d found the clause to buy them a touch of extra time on Earth, only because she cared more for them than she did living, and then decided to live, not die.
The four of them, five counting Charlie, are a good team. They sweep through cases in record time, they live life like they can’t, they laugh and laugh and laugh, and sometimes cry, but they always come back stronger.
Things are better now, and it’s tricky to admit it sometimes. To hold it in their hands like a reality they haven’t earned.
Charles is… Happier now. It isn’t that he was unhappy before, the past thirty years have been some of the best of his… Existence, at least. But now, Edwin is safe from hell, and they have Crystal and Niko, and Charles has thrown all of his fear, all of his history in Edwin’s face, and they’ve come away stronger. Closer.
It’s more than he could have hoped for, once.
Charles has always been, in his own words ‘aces with other people’ and in Edwin’s ‘exceedingly charismatic’ but Edwin thrives in a role as a teacher. Where Charles gives a brief rundown of each new aspect of the supernatural world as they come across it, outlining it’s capabilities and threat level, Edwin will lay out the minutiae and a detail, like a professor. Except Charles actually wants to listen.
Normally it’s wonderful. Edwin will lean over and layer his leather gloves with ones of clear plastic and prod at some particular herb or root, and take on a tone just a little too loud and affected, and it twists between them. Crystal will lean against something, disguising her interest, and Niko will crouch down, tilted head. Charles, will bend just over Edwin, attention split between what Edwin is saying and the way his lips move when he says it.
“Guardian angel.” Edwin had once teased, and Charles’ laugh had come out strained because that’s exactly what he’d thought Edwin had been, thirty years ago. Watching his back with a cricket bat felt woefully lacking compared to what Edwin had done all those years ago.
Edwin will finish a sentence and turn back to Charles, looking as though he’s about to apologise for the tangent he’s embarked on, but Charles is hopeless to him and just smiles softly. Edwin stutters over an apology that will never quite set sail from the safe harbour of his lips, and it’s like Charles can see the thoughts flicker across his face. The affection, borne from Charles’ love, splashed plain across his face the way mud stains clean linen. The wonder, as he deduces the truth, too plain to misinterpret. That Charles loves him, loves listening to him, wants to hear more.
It was foreign, to Edwin, the way Charles loved, everything and everyone with effusive passion. To someone who had been raised with affection shown only in a stern example and straightening collars and cuffs, it should have been overwhelming and off putting. Instead…
“… I think it’s wonderful.” Edwin sounded oddly off, but not as though he was lying. “I…” His eyes flickered to the arcane book before him, as though wondering if he could pretend that he was busy, or feign distraction. “I’ve never seen someone care the way you do, with the capacity you do. My inability to requite your level of compassion is not a judgement, nor a sign of disapproval. And if it was… You ought to never let another man’s opinion of you compromise your identity.”
Charles, who had merely asked if he was overdoing or intruding on Edwin’s personal space blinked, a little lost, feeling like he’d learned something important. He leaned back into his friend, huddled together on the new couch of their new office.
“You’re just as compassionate as me mate. Maybe more so. Being chatty has nothing to do with being a good person, and you’re one of those, for sure.”
He liked to remind Edwin of that, when Hell sent a dark cloud over those beautiful eyes. And he’s rewarded with that smile, shy and sweet, and beautiful even in its rarity.
For now, Edwin finished the full lecture on the importance of alkaline soil for particular spectral properties of Mugwort when Niko notices it. She’s the only one who doesn’t know what it is, and so, the sparkling of the soil only seems innocuous to her.
They all see the way the moss lurches up, and flinch towards Niko, because she’s theirs but not so recently, she wasn’t, she had been taken away, and a part of them keep her in the corner of their eye, just because they’re scared she’ll be taken away again, and they need to be able to bring her back as soon as possible if anyone tries to.
They all lunge to her, but Charles has always been the fastest. Even though he was the furthest away, he’s the one who tucks her away and rolls, presses her to the ground and shields her ears and eyes, praying to a God he doesn’t believe in more than Edwin, but must be able to do something.
It’s Charles who gets a full, dizzying dose of Omphalotis Nidiformis to his eyes.
They don’t know what it is at the time. But they’re scared. They’ve lost and almost lost too much to not be scared.
Edwin lets out a scream, wretched and pained, and Charles, not yet understanding what has happened, risks rising, helping Niko to her feet. Crystal and Edwin are on him within the half beat of the second that passes, Niko wringing her hands and painfully quiet in her visible grief. It’s the way she looks when she thinks about her father, aching and soft, and Charles reaches for her, unable to soothe her, but wanting to check that she’s okay. They all turn the question back on him, overfamiliar with his tendency to ignore his own pain, and unwilling to permit it.
“I… Think I’m fine?” There’s a strange light in his eyes that feels vaguely familiar, and a strange tingling, like the one that comes when he touches someone with moving blood, warm breaths, a living heart. “My eyes are kind of… Fuzzy.”
Edwin is scared, and Charles can see it in the way he presses his knuckles together. He doesn’t stop him, unwilling to interfere or draw attention to the coping mechanism, but smiles, in what he hopes is a reassuring sort of thing.
It doesn’t work. It’s the bad part of having your soulmate in your partner.
Edwin’s fingers meet his chin, lifting it so their eyes meet. And Edwin is horrifically, painfully professional about the matter, bringing Charles face temptingly close, close enough that he can see every eyelash, the texture of his skin, the million colours in his eyes. Edwin scans him objectively, Charles feels lost in the wonder of Edwin’s gaze.
Edwin’s eyes meet his and they sort of… Flicker, just for a second. Charles has never been good at hiding it, and he knows how he looks. That longing sort of gaze, the blush of love, the promise of devotion. He knows Edwin knows. They’re in a moment where he could put words to it, he knows them now. He’s had time to think, knows what he wants to say.
But suddenly, the fuzziness in his eyes grow warm. Like he’s about to cry. It’s inconvenient, and annoying.
But most damningly, it’s familiar.
Charles bites his lip, not wanting to stress Edwin out. Immediately, his head spins. Ways to disguise it, ways to conceal the pain.
But, the darkness is blurring. This is a bigger dose than last time. He can’t hide it.
“Mate, it feels like the stuff from the Case of the Ghastly Greenhouse.” He’s relying on Edwin to understand his message send in the way he implicitly references a previous case, rather than naming it outright. But, he’d forgotten Crystal’s scarily retentive memory, and her eyes widen in damning realisation.
“The stuff from the forest? That destroyed ghosts?!”
Niko gasped, turning on him with wide eyes and a shaky voice. “Charles is going to be destroyed!”
“No! No, I’m going to be fine. Ester’s version was a mutated form.”
“Indeed.” As always, Edwin has come to save him, repositioning himself so he’s resting on his knees. His panic leaves traces, in the way he presses his knuckles together, and how his eyes flicker, never really leaving Charles’ face but still restless. “Omphalotis Nidiformis, or colloquially, Ghost Fungus. It is non lethal in both capacities, towards the living and the dead. It is not a… Comfortable process, but Charles will be alright.”
Edwin says it like a promise. Like he will make it so, a statement against the universe. It reminds him of the night before their lives changed with Crystal’s case, the two of them shielded from Death with nothing but a brick wall, and Edwin’s assurance, that he would never let anything happen to them.
Charles can’t quite look away either. Because the dark spots are creeping in, and he desperately wants Edwin to be the last thing he sees.
“But, how can we help? There must be a cure, or a spell. Something to… I don’t know, fight it?”
“It’s just like a fever or something. Just got to wait it out. I’ll find somewhere to hole up, but you two should go. We’ll contact you when it’s over.”
“Wait, leave?” Niko sounds hopelessly quiet. She thinks she’s not brave, but she’s the bravest of all of them, knows how easy it is to loose a life, but comes with them anyway, because she loves so much. He doesn’t want to risk looking away, but knows the way her eyes must look, soft and pleading. The way this must remind her of her father, of her mother, of having to be distant for fear of pain, and pained in her distance. “Isn’t there any other way?”
Gods, Charles is tired. It’s pulling at his energy even now. He’s seeing Edwin through a blur, as though he’s crying. Edwin hasn’t looked away once. Their eyes are fixated on each other. Like this, they’re the only people in the world.
Edwin speaks his words. “It’s better. Omphalotis Nidiformis targets the eyes first. Then the mind. It would be best if Charles is in a quiet environment, where there is limited sensory input. Besides, the living are not built to interact with ghosts. In his conscious mind, he is able to track you, and register your appearance. Under the influence, he may perceive you as a threat.” Edwin’s voice gentles. He knows how painful helplessness can be. “If you wish, you can aid me in my research. We were unable to find any treatments the last time we suffered an exposure, but there is always a chance that we may uncover something new. I’ve collected a great deal of new material since.”
Edwin had read every tome they could find at the time, thrice. Charles had returned to a wasteland, and Edwin muttering nonsense. He’d been shaky and scared, disoriented from the dark and the fear. But it was impossible to not be warmed at the sheer evidence of Edwin’s care, the lengths his friend had gone to.
He knows that Edwin will be scared again. Can imagine the way his brow is furrowed, the way he will pace until Charles returns. The soft hands he’ll use to guide Charles to a safe location, without mirrors that he could accidentally phase through.
It almost makes up for the panic he feels at being alone.
Like she can understand, Crystal’s voice returns, just as Edwin’s face vanishes. Like this, it’s like he’s closed his eyes. Like there’s a voice, lulling him to sleep. Like it will be okay.
“Wait, you’re not staying with him? I thought it was just the fact that we were living that was wrong.”
“The last time Charles was exposed, he requested isolation. I won’t disrespect his choice.”
“… Edwin, I know I’ve known Charles the least amount of time out of all of us, but I don’t think Charles wants you to go.”
Niko’s way too clever for her own good.
“But… Why would he tell me to go if he didn’t want me to?”
“Did you tell him you wanted to stay?”
And, that can’t be right, because Edwin didn’t. Edwin didn’t even like physical contact- or, well, hadn’t at the time, and being stuck in a room with a pathetic, panicking flailing Charles would never have been something his mate would have chosen, best friend or not.
But why wasn’t Edwin saying any of this?
It was petty and selfish of Charles. A habit of a child, to hold someone close, and crave the sound of someone promising that everything would be okay. To inconvenience Edwin, just so that the screams wouldn’t build within his own soul.
He would be fine.
It doesn’t feel like everything’s okay. It’s dark, and there is a stinging buzzing where his eye sockets would be and panic builds like a murmur.
And it’s so quiet.
Edwin’s grip on his wrists tighten. “Charles, do you want me to-” He breaks himself off. His best friend takes a shaky breath, like he’s recalibrating, readjusting. “Charles, please let me stay with you.”
He sounds… Pleading. Like Charles is hurting him, by pushing him away. Charles wonders, his mind growing loose with dissociation, and considers, if he’d found Edwin in Hell, and his best mate had insisted that he could do it alone.
He tries to reach out but the fuzz has spread, taking over his whole body. He remembers that, kind of. It’ll turn into a vicious, sparking pain, but for now it feels like he’s moving through static. It’s almost a little like the sensation of moving through walls, but just slightly uncomfortable. His hand doesn’t respond to his plea for it to move and he tilts horrifically. There’s a horrid sense of vertigo, of a shifting in the world around him, and he can’t quite register. It’s only when he hears a soft murmur, and feels a hand cupping his skull that he realises what has happened. He’s fallen into Edwin’s arms, and his friend is holding him.
It’s an unusual sort of familiar. Nobody had ever held him like this, carefully. Like he would break apart, and they were prepared to catch the pieces. He wants to tell Edwin how nice it is, but there’s a pained sort of groan that burns through the sentiment. He feels a tremor run through his friend and Edwin’s fingers spasm, before settling into a small repetitive motion, curling through his hair. With a hushed sound barely audible under the static of the fog of his brain, he hears Niko and Crystal leave, with some sort of gentle sentiment that disperses in the fog between them, but the sentiment soothes the ache. Edwin moves slowly, explaining his every move as the world sinks into that old dreaded buzzing, never fully letting go. He rolls out a mirror, something Crystal had bought for them, a portable way out, and clutched Charles close as they both sink through.
The last thing Charles hears before the biting pain is Edwin’s voice promising something important. He can’t remember the words, but it sinks into the bones that never left the attic where he died.
He’s not safe. But he’s not alone either.