149Valkyrie had since long fallen asleep, the centre of her chest glowing faintly like a pearl in soft light, dark edges like torn paper seethed and writhed at it, trying to close it up and heal her. Skulduggery lay on his side beside her and ran his fingers down her arm, watching the slight pressure marks fade as he traced her name into her skin.
It worried him. Everything was worrying him. Kenspeckle had looked grim when inspecting Valkyrie's strange wound: it hadn't been anything he had yet come across. He had taken some blood and then left.
Skulduggery couldn't begin to guess the time, except that it may have been late morning, or something close. Underground in a collapsed research facility wasn't the greatest place to pinpoint any time concept.
He had finished the 'e' to Valkyrie and was about to start again when he glanced at her face and was startled to find her staring at him with those large, intriguing black eyes. She raised a hand tenderly to her face and rubbed the sleep from the inner corner of her eye, studying him closely.
"You look worried," she murmured, closing her eyes again and shuffling a little further into him. "What're you thinking about?"
Skulduggery began to write the letters to her name again. "All kinds of smart things, dear," he said softly, warranting a half opened eye directed at him and a snort.
"You've gotten really bad at lying."
Skulduggery cocked his head and leaned over her, forcing her to waken and look up at him quizzically. "Or maybe all those years training you to be a great detective is, finally, paying off."
She cupped the side of his face lovingly and gave a half-smile – then frowned. "You know that's not it at all!" She pushed him off and Skulduggery retreated to his side again.
"What is it then?"
"Natural female intuition," Valkyrie explained matter-of-factly.
They shared a look, which Skulduggery broke bluntly.
"You said you love me."
In the dull light of the room Valkyrie's face suddenly exploded in a bloody burst of red and she seemed to find it hard to suck in air. Skulduggery watched this for a moment in amusement.
"I told you not to read into it!"
"I'm not, I'm not," Skulduggery assured her quickly, grabbing her wrist and squeezing gently. "But, you know that thing you said about admitting your love and jinxes?"
Valkyrie frowned at him. "What? What're you…" her face fell. "Oh…oooooooh. So now you think I'm going to die?"
Skulduggery gave a one shouldered shrug and Valkyrie rolled to her side so they were level, she winced at the pain in her chest but warned him off from commenting by a sharply projected glare.
"You know, you once took a seventeen year old werewolf hunting with more composure than you have now," she said, her eyes moving around as she summed him up. "And before that you set a thirteen year old on a criminal."
"Well, I don't think I've felt this amount of worry since those days. Sort of, getting used to it again. Readjusting."
"Why? What changed?"
Skulduggery cocked his head to one side before looking across the dark room. "You became Darquesse."
"Less vulnerable?" Valkyrie asked, leaning towards him.
He nodded.
"More capable?"
He shrugged.
Valkyrie chuckled.
"I feel like an idiot because not a few days ago I thought you not needing my strength anymore had changed our relationship in some way. It's a long, complicated self-imposed story, Valkyrie, but I wasn't sure how we fit together."
"On the scale of who has to protect who?"
"Ah…well…yes. Maybe."
He felt her shift and her panther-like body scrambled onto the barrel of his ribcage, she forced him to look at her.
"You, Skulduggery, are an idiot."
He tried to look away. "Only in this instance," he said grumpily.
Valkyrie held is jaw hostage. "A complete and utter goon."
"I've realise that now."
"A turnip in a pumpkin patch, the squarest wheel, the dullest knife in the kitchen."
Skulduggery stared.
"A moron, a million dollar home on a crumbling cliff, a bad investment, the dullest bulb on a chandelier. You, sir, are so strikingly stupid that you make tofu look intelligent. But hey," she tapped his forehead and smiled toothily, "I love you, Mister Pleasant."
Her face went red again and she kissed him.
Skulduggery felt the energy pass through him, the magic pulsate. Something about her and him matched. Matched perfectly.
"I was thinking about," he murmured as she pulled back, blinking. "I was thinking about having my body back."
Valkyrie stared at him. "Why?"
Skulduggery blanched. "Truly? You're asking a dead man why he wants to be alive and breathing again?!"
Her face darkened and turned a stony seriousness. "Yes."
He hesitated. "You like me being a skeleton?"
Her eyes widened. "I do."
"Valkyrie…I'm a skeleton."
Valkyrie grabbed his wrist and lifted it to their line of sight and pulled the sleeve back to reveal his bony forearm. "Oh my god," she gasped theatrically, "you are too!"
Skulduggery pulled his arm out of her grip as she laughed.
"Do you prefer it over to having a body?" He asked.
Her laughter faded. "If you had a body, you would be mortal. Easier to kill, easier to die, easier to lose. A portion of my love for your stems from the fact that I can rely on you not carking it. That you're invincible. That you can always bear the worst pains for me because you don't have flesh to destroy."
Skulduggery nodded and they lapsed into silence.
It lasted a while and Valkyrie hesitantly tapped him on the chin.
"Are you okay with that?"
"I don't know," he admitted good-naturedly. "It is a dilemma."
Valkyrie rested her face on his ruined suit. "It is indeed."
"But, even as bones, Valkyrie, I feel like I have flesh. This body comes with all the painful flaws of a living thing."
"So?"
Skulduggery snorted. "You are awfully selfish, you know that dear?"
He felt her shoulders shrug. "Well it comes with the gig of being the supposed World Destroyer. Selfishness, cruelty, sadism, insanity…"
"You know that's not what I meant."
"I know."
Skulduggery lapsed into another bout of silence and listened to her breath pull and withdraw from her lips. He focused on it for a moment and rested a hand on the small of her back.
"We should go," he said softly.
Her body stiffened in dread.
"We should."
Firstly, thankyou to all those that review! :D Your persistence is so uplifting! SO THANKYOU! :D
Nextly, I hope y'all enjoyed this particular moment, because there isn't gunna be another BD heh heh heh...
Afterly, I might not update in a while because of an English assignment where I have to write a 2000 word story in the genre of speculation fiction! It's about time travel, the LHC, Cern, a man from the future dying from radiation poisoning and a lovely pseudo scientist! :D The requirements is that it has to be based on real theories and backed with factual evidence.
It's like I was MADE TO WRITE SPEC-FIC/SCI-FI
LOVE IT.
:D Time travel IS possible.
It's like thinking about tomorrow, or the day after that.
You can go there, you can GET there.
YOU'RE A TIME TRAVELER PEOPLE!
PEACE OUT!