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Sa'al doesn't like it when Edwin screams.
In his rare moments of coherence, Edwin finds it a tad ironic. Sa'al is, after all, a demon. Sa'al is quite a bloodthirsty demon as well, from what he tells Edwin in between bouts of plucking the toes off Edwin's feet; and perhaps most relevantly, Sa'al is a demon of retribution.
"It's the poetic stuff that I really do the best at," Sa'al confides, stacking Edwin's toes into a small pyramid on a desk off to one side. With only five, and the sizes mismatched at that, the effort is halfhearted at best, but he already cleared away the last set before he restored Edwin for the next bout.
The presence of the desk no longer bothers Edwin. He has little understanding of how space works in Hell, but wherever they are has been made to resemble the cellar of St. Hilarion's in which Edwin died. At first, he found this to be a deliberate affront; now, he takes this as a sign of Sa'al's lack of enthusiasm, or at least a lack of creativity.
Sa'al continues. "Like the boys who sacrificed you, right? They sacrificed you to Hell, so I took them to Hell."
Edwin cannot reply with his teeth gritted as tightly as they are. If he so much as whimpers, Sa'al will redouble his efforts at creativity to encourage Edwin to 'get it all out of your system'.
Edwin did not experience much pain when he was alive. He was always decently adept at dodging, whenever he couldn't simply get out of any matter involving sport, and aside from a few bouts of illness, he simply did not encounter situations which could cause him discomfort. This left him utterly unprepared for his current circumstances.
Satisfied with the pyramid of toes from the right foot, Sa'al turns his attention to Edwin's left foot instead.
"But you," Sa'al continues amiably as he bends Edwin's big toe back, "don't have any of that poetry about you. Which isn't an insult," he assures Edwin quickly. Edwin is not paying nearly enough attention to be insulted. The ligaments of his toe have snapped, and the thin skin that once formed the crease at the ball of his foot is burning in anticipation of its upcoming separation, and Edwin cannot let himself scream. Edwin cannot let himself scream.
The toe gives way as Sa'al gives one great, final yank. Edwin does not scream, although he feels tears seeping down the sides of his face, across his temples. Weeping, at least, is acceptable to Sa'al.
Sa'al places the toe on another desk, and puts his thumb and forefinger to the next. "It's just, I've got other places I'm supposed to be," he continues, wiggling Edwin's toe idly. The motion is the same that Edwin's nursemaid would use when he was a child: this little pig went to market, this little pig went home. Edwin tries to concentrate on that, on the feel of Sa'al's clammy fingertips pressing against his skin, rather than anything else. Rather than the dizzying nausea that overtakes him if he lets himself think about the air moving across the ragged edges of his skin, or the thick slide of his own blood down the sole of his foot.
Sa'al lapses into a thoughtful, if sullen, silence, and after a moment Edwin collects himself enough to speak. "If you've somewhere to go," he says, his voice wobbly and creaky at the same time, "don't let me detain you."
It's a risk. Edwin doesn't know how long he's been here – there are no days or nights in Hell, after all – but it's been long enough for him to get a sense of Sa'al's personality. Sure enough, Sa'al chuckles. "That's right thoughtful of you," he says, and releases Edwin's toe to instead pat the top of his foot. "I know you didn't ask for this either. We're both just stuck, aren't we?"
Edwin decides not to point out that he is the one bound to a table and getting his toes ripped off one at a time. He has a thought every now and then – when the pain abates long enough for him to think – that if he ingratiates himself enough with Sa'al, becomes dull enough, he might convince Sa'al to take pity and end Edwin's existence. That seems to be the best Edwin can hope for at this point, and the longer he is here, the more appeal the option has.
Sa'al sighs, apparently weighed down by his own existential woes. "Tell you what," he says. "You seem a good sort. How about I go get some shears for the rest of these?"
Edwin swallows. He can feel tears crawling down the sides of his face as he stares up at the ceiling, trying to think past the throbbing. Sa'al has used the shears before, and they have their advantages – they work faster, for one thing. But they almost always break bone, and Edwin hates the way the osseous snaps reverberate through him, so perhaps he should savor the reprieve even if the alternative is –
The breath catches in his throat as he realizes that he is quite literally choosing his own torture.
That is somehow worse than anything else Sa'al could do to him: for Edwin to know that whatever comes next, it is because he asked for it. He is complicit, even if he merely tries to lessen his own pain.
The emotion rises in him and erupts in a sob, abrupt and cut-off, but he is bound to the table and cannot raise his hand to stifle it. Sa'al frowns, crossing his arms.
"Oh, come now," Sa'al says reprovingly. "If you didn't want the shears you could've just said." He leans a bit closer, so Edwin can feel the heat radiating off his fleshy face, and examines Edwin's expression. "Or you know what? This might be a good time for a little break. A sort of catharsis, right?"
Edwin squeezes his eyes shut, suddenly knowing what Sa'al is about to say next.
Sure enough: "Get it all out of your system."
Sa'al's hand covers the ball of Edwin's foot, clasping around the space where Edwin's toes used to be, and he squeezes.
Edwin screams. All dignity is thrown aside as he screams, and weeps, and thrashes. Some animal instinct in him still thinks that escape is possible, and it is that creature which desperately pulls at the bonds securing him to the table, presses his shoulders this way and that to try to loosen them, throws his eyes open to search the empty darkness around them for anything that might help.
For just a moment, his wild gaze catches a face: familiar, dark, horrified – he glimpses curls and the glint of metal, but his gaze skitters away too quickly for him to -
"Honestly, Erinael," Sa'al is saying to Edwin's right, "I just don't know what to do with him."
Edwin is standing. Edwin is standing on two intact feet, even though he would have sworn that just a moment ago he was – he –
Wasn't he?
"There are plenty of demons," Erinael, another demon of retribution, informs Sa'al, "who would trade all the souls in their possession for one like him."
This isn't the fake St. Hilarion's cellar. Edwin doesn't know why he expected that. Edwin hasn't been there for – well, Edwin has no idea how time passes in Hell but it must have been years by now, surely. Since growing bored of boredom, Sa'al has been a bit more creative with his endeavors.
Edwin has grown more enduring in his silence.
Like now. This is not the first time Sa'al has had Edwin wait upon him and a guest. The room, if it truly is a room, is built in dark stone and heavy tapestries; the few windows in the walls overlook burning fields. The seats for Sa'al and his guest are sat next to a brazier filled with smoldering coals. The kettle, heavy and iron and bereft of any handle, sits directly on the hot embers.
There are two cups on a small table next to the brazier. Sa'al brings them out whenever he can, to better show them off. They are a matching pair of jawless skulls, turned upside down and with the hard palate removed to form the hollow. Small handles made of delicate loops of bone - finger bones, if Edwin's anatomy is correct – swoop out of each like ears, and the crowns of the skulls, on the bottoms of the cups, rest on broken-off mandibles attached to keep them steady on a u-shaped platform of teeth.
"What's the point, though?" Sa'al asks Erinael.
Unlike Sa'al, Erinael appears to be almost a normal human woman, albeit an unusually pale one with shockingly blue eyes. This, Sa'al informed Edwin once, is because Erinael is too attached to the human souls in her care and allows herself to become like them.
It is those glacial eyes that now cut towards Sa'al with a knowing look. "If you aren't taking advantage of him, that's nobody's fault but your own."
"I'm taking advantage of him!" Sa'al protests. "I'm taking plenty of advantage! Watch this: boy, pour the tea."
Edwin takes a deep breath. He doesn't protest. He simply steadies himself as best he can and reaches to press his hands on either side of the hot kettle.
The pain is almost comfortable by now. It is familiar, and the closest thing he has to a friend here. He knows it intimately: how to press into the scorching heat to deaden his sense of touch as quickly as possible, how to breathe through it, how to keep his blazing-numbing-shrieking hands from shaking too much as he lifts the pot and carefully tilts it towards first Erinael's cup, and then Sa'al's; why a demon like Sa'al stands so much on ceremony as to insist the guest be served first is beyond Edwin. Then he carefully places the kettle on the table next to the cups.
He pulls his hands, which have mercifully burnt almost beyond pain, away from the teapot in a sharp, quick motion; he learned in previous pourings that speed is the key to keep his charred skin from sticking. He does not look down. He does not want to see the damage.
Sa'al sweeps a hand towards the cups, looking pointedly at Erinael. "See?"
Erinael simply rolls her eyes, although she takes the cup. She drinks from the back of the skull, her pale lips nearly the same color as the bone; Sa'al drinks from the teeth, as is his wont, even though liquid leaks out through the gaps between the incisors.
"You have a spirit," Erinael informs Sa'al, "that cannot be claimed by any one level of Hell. Do you know how many messengers I've sent out only to find they were waylaid in an appropriate Circle? It is nearly impossible to send messages down to the Eighth anymore – even if a murderer makes it through the Fifth Circle, they'll be caught by the Seventh. You can hardly swing a cat in Hell without hitting a punishment for violence."
Edwin breathes slowly and carefully to make sure he shows no interest, even as he allows his curiosity to slip to the forefront of his mind, moving any sensation from his body to the back. Curiosity is not a quality that Sa'al generally encourages. It had somehow not even occurred to Edwin that Hell would require correspondence, or that certain souls might be drawn to – or possibly even trapped by – the areas of Hell meant for their sins, and the idea of infernal infrastructure is distracting enough to keep Edwin's attention off his hands.
"A sacrifice like him?" Erinael continues, motioning her head vaguely towards Edwin. "He can go anywhere. He's not spoken for, except by you. So bloody use him, all right?"
Sa'al is giving Erinael a look that Edwin finds more than slightly disconcerting. It's calculating – no, considering. Although perhaps Erinael, and her excessive attachment, would be an improvement upon Sa'al. Perhaps Erinael could be swayed to pity.
"Well," Sa'al says to Erinael. "What would you give me for 'im, then?"
"Edwin," hisses a voice behind him. It is neither Sa'al nor Erinael, which makes it, most likely, some sort of trick or hallucination; it is odd that he can't place the voice, even though it's familiar in a way he can't articulate.
A shadow moves along the perimeter of the room, entering his peripheral vision, and though Edwin doesn't turn his head to track it he allows his gaze to wander towards –
"Crystal?" he says blankly. Then he freezes, his attention snapping back to Sa'al and Erinael – who don't seem to have noticed either his outburst or Crystal's presence as they discuss terms of the trade. The sudden shift of focus allows a throb from his hands to seep into his consciousness, but he forces it down.
"Edwin," Crystal says, relief clear in her voice. She shuffles closer, further into the dim, flickering light of the brazier. "Thank God – I wasn't sure if you'd be able to, like, react to me or if this was all going to play out like a horror movie."
"Crystal," Edwin says again, slowly; carefully, so as not to disturb the delicate equilibrium of thought and pain. He cannot make sense of her presence, and his attempts to reason through it simply cause his thoughts to slow, as though he were wading through molasses. The harder he tries, the stronger the resistance. "How are you here? We haven't met yet."
Crystal hesitates. "You...know who I am," she says carefully, "and also that we haven't met yet? Do you know where we are?"
"Hell," Edwin replies promptly, but Crystal is already shaking her head slowly.
"We're in your memories – none of this is real. Remember? We were working on a case - "
Sa'al claps his hands together and rubs them. "There we have it, then," he says. "Boy, clean this up. Then you'll be going with Erinael, here."
Erinael smiles at Edwin. It has an anticipatory edge; there is nothing about it that seems kind, or attached.
Edwin looks from Erinael to Sa'al to Crystal. The demons still do not acknowledge her.
"Boy," Erinael says, her voice light and sharp as a scalpel. "Clean it up."
Her eyes are hard and unflinching.
Edwin reaches for the brazier, looking instead to Crystal. Crystal's gaze flicks to his hand and she gasps, covering her mouth with her fingers.
"Holy shit - Edwin, what the fuck," she says.
Erinael and Sa'al are still looking at him. He can feel the weight of their attention like a set of vises against his maimed fingers.
"I," Edwin says, his voice faltering. His hand remains outstretched towards the brazier. He still has not looked at it. He doesn't want to know where the char is, where the skin and muscle has burnt through entirely to show bone, if blisters have surfaced yet. It won't matter in a few moments anyway. "I have to clean this up."
"What does – no, it doesn't matter." Crystal closes her eyes and shakes her head again to clear it. "You don't have to. You don't have to clean this up, okay? This isn't real."
"The punishment will be worse," Edwin whispers. The brazier is close enough to the ruin of his fingers that he can feel it now; it makes the patches of skin and muscle that can still feel throb to his attention, breaking through his compartmentalization. "The punishment is always worse, because that's when Sa'al puts effort into it. Because then he thinks I deserve it."
"No," Crystal says, and as Edwin takes and holds a deep breath, grasping a hot coal in as tight a grip as he can manage and bringing it towards his mouth, she says, "no, no, no, Edwin, don't - "
The searing heat of the coal hits his lips like a physical force and -
Edwin's mouth hits the floor as he collapses face-first against the hard-packed dirt at the lip of the pit. This time, though, the memory lingers: he was not here, a moment ago. He was somewhere else. He was in a room –
His leg pulses with agony, and he pushes himself onto his elbows just high enough to look back. The outside of his right thigh is trailing blood, leaving a smear of red where he pulled himself this far out of the pit, pierced through by the snake's fangs. The numbness is spreading up his leg, which cannot be good, and when Edwin looks forward again he can watch bruises erupting down his arms.
Of course the snake is venomous. It's Hell, after all; why would a giant snake (made of many medium-sized snakes, made in turn of even more tiny snakes, made of very sharp teeth) be anything less than perfectly, optimally harmful?
He casts his gaze farther behind him, but the snake shows no sign of being able to slither out of the pit. Erinael warned him, of course, and he had thought he had been careful, but even after all his experience as Erinael's messenger-boy he still underestimates how careful he must be.
Unlike Sa'al, Erinael does not bother with healing Edwin's wounds. She finds the lesson to be much more potent if he experiences it through to the bitter end, and he has already lost count of the times he has breathed his last in some putrid corner of Hell only to open his eyes once again under Erinael's bloodthirsty gaze.
Edwin will say this for the demonic bureaucracy: it has mastered the art of dual-purpose use of souls. Edwin delivers messages, yes, but he does so while being chased by, depending on the sender: hounds, hellhounds, tigers, bears, ravenous human spirits on loan from Gluttony (who caught him once, and he has never been so glad to shed one body for another), scorpions, and, one time that Sa'al had an uncharacteristic fit of creativity whilst sending Erinael back a polite acceptance of her invitation for light refreshments, crabs.
Sa'al replaced their pincers with bloody shears, though, because of course he did.
And the routes themselves are no better: Edwin crawls through mounds of worms feasting on still-feeling corpses, walks across burning fields until his legs are charred to the bone, stumbles through snow and ice until his fingers are black and numb with cold. Here, acid falls like rain, each drop blooming a blister onto Edwin's skin; there, indistinct and writhing shadows prickle against him as he swims through murky water.
It is a unique type of horror to realize that his punishment is not the worst that is doled out here.
The snake in the pit, he knows, is meant for thieves. The demon that he delivered Erinael's message to – or, more accurately, the twitching dismembered hand that served as Erinael's message, which went well over Edwin's head but made the demon laugh heartily, although he sent Edwin away with no reply – mentioned offhandedly that some of the snakes were once people, but much as they stole from others, so the snakebites stole their very selves.
Edwin is not turning into a snake. He is fairly certain of that. His leg continues to bleed profusely, despite the creeping numbness that has spread to his waist and claimed his other leg; yet it shows no signs of transformation beyond the swelling and purpling of bruising. The snakes, being made ultimately of teeth, were not purple; although Edwin supposes it is possible that a snake will erupt from his corpse like an egg –
"Jesus fucking Christ," Crystal mutters, her boots stepping into Edwin's view. "I knew it was bad, but – this is brutal."
Edwin swallows heavily several times, trying to speak. His mouth is filled with the metal taste of blood, and he can smell it in his sinuses as well. So he puts care into how he moves his lips and tongue as he says, "Yes, well, this is Hell."
"Yeah, okay, point taken," Crystal says, crouching next to him. "If I promise never to make fun of you for talking about it ever again, will you snap out of it and come with me?"
A wracking cough brings up a froth of blood; the poison is acting quickly now, and Edwin's lips are too numb to spit it out properly. Instead, it seeps out of his mouth, coating his tongue. He swallows as best he can to create space for speech, and says, "Snap out of – what?"
Crystal hunches even further down into Edwin's peripheral vision, and now he can see the skittering indecision in her attention as she looks at the blood, at his leg, at the bruises breaking the expanse of pallor down his arms. "These are your memories, Edwin. You got out of Hell. You escaped, you met Charles, you made the stupid Dead Boy Detective Agency and then, unfortunately for you, you met me. Then we all met a fucking psychic asshole who apparently tried to do to you what the Night Nurse did to Charles on the cliff – you remember Charles on the cliff? It was super traumatic for all of us, so maybe that memory will come through down here."
"Charles," Edwin repeats slowly. He manages to roll his head just slightly, just enough to see more of Crystal.
"Yes!" Crystal seizes on the point. "Charles Rowland, ghost? Been dead for thirty-five years? Your height, more melanin, tight little ass that you always pretend you're not staring at? But, honestly, who can blame you." Crystal lifts one hand, then hesitates; Edwin watches her resolve coalesce, and she very deliberately places her hand on Edwin's wrist. "He's waiting for you. He's worried about you. Okay, he's actually, like, completely losing his shit and blaming himself, because the second you folded he whacked the psychic with his new bat and he's convinced that's why you're stuck here, but – "
She cuts herself off with a deep breath. She isn't squeezing his wrist, which is quite considerate of her; with whatever is happening in his blood, it would probably cause more problems.
"Charles," Edwin says again, frowning. Or, at least, he thinks he is frowning; he can't feel his face anymore, and his words come out heavy and slurred. "Who is Charles?"
Crystal stares at him for a long moment, then closes her eyes in resignation. "Fuck, this is going to be so much harder than I thought."
Something stirs beyond Crystal, in the cavernous dark. Clicks, rapid and insectoid, scatter through the tunnels to them.
"Oh," Crystal says, her eyes going large and round. "Oh no."
Edwin's jaw now refuses to move. He presses his tongue against the back of his teeth, but his lips stay closed and there is no hope of shaping any words at this point. His breath, what little of it there is, churns like seafoam and he can feel blood condensing into clots along the inside of his nostrils. He is, unquestionably, dying.
But when Crystal stands between him and the shifting shape, the tightness across her shoulders and the tremor in her hands suggests she fears whatever is out there more than Edwin's approaching doom.
"Shit, shit, shit," she mutters, and turns back to Edwin. "Edwin. Edwin, you need to trust me, okay? You need to trust me and come with me, because I can't get you out of here if you don't come willingly and that's a fucking misery wraith."
Misery wraiths are not an unfamiliar threat to Edwin. He has seen their victims before, curled up and gibbering or dead-eyed in their anguish. The trick, Edwin knows, is to feel nothing at all, and he has become quite adept at doing just that.
But he is not usually dying when he comes across the misery wraiths, and he thinks he can feel his blood vessels popping now, and his lungs are screaming for oxygen as they inflate less and less with each breath, and his muscles ache and his spine prickles as though electrified and why does the name Charles feel like a hot coal to the back of his throat?
Crystal's valiant but incorporeal stand between him and the misery wraith does very little as it crawls through her with ease, and then its claws rake across Edwin's face and:
He is tied to the table again, gagged and uselessly flailing. Simon, torch in hand, leads the chant: "Mary Ann, Mary Ann, Mary Ann - "
Beyond him, flickering in the torchlight but speaking with just as much enthusiasm, is Edwin's family.
Mother and Father, in the driving outfits they wore when depositing him at school as an excuse to take the Bullnose out in public.
Isidore and George, in the evening suits they had worn when arriving straight from the club to Edwin's good-bye dinner the night before he left.
Flora in the new sailor dress she had received for Christmas and been so excited to wear until George had oh-so-accidentally tipped gravy onto it, sparking a row that had lasted until Isidore thumped the table and reminded George that, whether he liked it or not, he was a grown man and could damn well act like it. But of course that had set off Mother's nerves, which had set off Father's temper, and when they, the two youngest, were sent away from the table so the adults could have a conversation, Flora had stolen and hidden Edwin's copy of The Moonstone to try to keep him from leaving. Edwin had arrived back at St. Hilarion's with a headache and a sense of foreboding and he had been dead within the month.
None of that familial discord is present now: all of them stand beyond Simon, calling him a Mary Ann and staring at him with bloodthirsty intent, their patience with his abnormality finally exhausted.
He still cannot move, his breaths coming slower and slower, the lack of air smothering his thoughts, but it occurs to him that at least Sarah is not –
Oh. No, there she is, stepping in front of Simon now, her tiny body still bloated with dropsy from the scarlet fever that killed her, nearly bursting out of the dress they put her in for the memento mori photographs. Edwin had been only three years old at the time, but surely nothing could drive the memory of being arranged next to his six-year-old sister's corpse from his mind.
Her little dead mouth is shaping the chant, too.
Something in Edwin crumbles, some last little bit of hope that he hadn't realized he still had. Hell has been torture, but was his life before truly better? Did he not scurry from awkward interaction to awkward interaction, stealing moments alone so as not to inflict his queerness on others, knowing that the only chance he stood of being accepted was if nobody ever truly knew him? Perhaps Hell is a mercy if it spared his family from the disgust they inevitably would have harbored for him.
Another figure steps through the crowd of murderers. Erinael, carrying her flaming spear, cocks her head as she surveys him.
"Normally," she says, her voice ringing out over the crowd, "I would let this play out to teach you an important lesson about avoiding misery wraiths. Lucky for you, though, I want to hear what Sabnock thought of the hand."
And she lifts her spear, twirls it easily, and plunges it through Edwin's throat.
Edwin gasps back into existence in Erinael's lair. Unlike Sa'al's castle, Erinael's realm is a small bubble of diffuse, sourceless light surrounded by thick darkness; Erinael doesn't bother with the fripperies of physical space. There are no chairs, no beds, nothing other than a happenstance space in which to exist, and Edwin is lying on the floor.
There's no sign of Crystal. Edwin takes the opportunity to curl himself into a ball and cry.
It's been a long time since he cried like this. Misery wraith notwithstanding, he's become quite adept at separating the parts of himself that are him from the parts of himself that hurt. But his family has always been a part of him, and now it is his family that hurts him, and all he can think of is how terribly he misses them even though they most likely do not miss him in return.
Father and the sternness that George insists wasn't there before Sarah died, but the watery shine in his eyes as he told Edwin to write them regularly. Mother and her aversion to touch, replaced by a consistent delight when Edwin would read to her. Isidore's absence and long days preparing to take over for Father, and the good-natured reassurance he'd given Edwin his first break home from St. Hilarion's: chin up, Edwin, you're the sharpest of all of us. George's razor-sharp tongue, so frequently turned on Flora, yet he never hesitated to use it to defend Edwin.
And Flora. Edwin would never admit to having a favorite sibling, but the absence of Sarah between himself and George left Edwin and Flora children together when Isidore and George were well on their way to adulthood. Yes, she could be tiresome, and yes, she was always demanding his attention, and yes, she stole something of his literally every time he came home to try to keep him from having to go back to St. Hilarion's, even when he insisted that it wasn't helping, but –
Oh, he misses them, all of them, so very desperately. He doesn't even know how long he has been here, or even if time works the same back home as it does here; perhaps Sa'al snatched him away from time, too. Perhaps he still has a home to return to.
It is that thought, more than any other, that keeps him weeping.
Eventually Erinael returns, the heavy end of her spear clunking against the indistinguishable floor.
"It would've ended eventually," she tells Edwin, squatting down to catch his gaze. "Even a misery wraith couldn't keep you going forever, with how far along the venom was. But you should know that whatever you saw was just the beginning." She turns the spear in her grasp, idly watching the wood grain turn. "Do you know why the body feels pain?"
Edwin's brain takes a long moment to catch up with her clear expectation of a response. He blinks, and more wetness collects in the corners of his eyes. He manages to croak, "No."
"Because, Little Payne," Erinael says, with something almost like fondness, "it protects you. An open wound hurts so that you will be careful with it and avoid making it worse. A bite hurts so that you'll avoid getting bitten. Each bruise, each ache, each sting leaves you more equipped to survive the next. And so – " she pauses long enough to take the back of Edwin's head by the hair – "you'll be more careful to avoid those wrinkly misery leeches, won't you?"
After a moment, Edwin whispers, "Yes."
"Good." Erinael lets go of his hair. "And Sabnock?"
Sabnock – Sabnock was the demon that Edwin was sent to deliver the hand to. It feels, appropriately, like a lifetime ago. "He laughed."
Erinael smiles. "Good. Back to it, then."
And Edwin stands on the edge of a field – no, a cave, since there is no sky in Hell, but the ceiling is covered in a dense yellow-brown fog that mists to the blighted ground below. There are people in the field, of course; Edwin can see the glint of blades peeking up past the shadow-lines of trenches and hear the crack of rifle fire. Shattered stubs of trees jut forlornly from the packed earth and mud, and what few blades of glass remain shine with the edges of tiny bayonets.
There are flowers, though, which strikes Edwin as odd – the bright, bloody bowls of blossoms vivid against the black dots at the base of each petal. Poppies, Edwin thinks, although he can't remember the last time he saw an actual flower of any kind and not a vision conjured for torment.
He has an actual physical note in his hand, because he was sent by Erinael again. The memory of being sent is right to hand, yet it feels old and worn in his mind, and there is something else niggling at him – an edge of something, a corner that he can almost grasp –
"Did I ever say thank you for the time you saved me from that misery wraith?" Crystal's voice comes from behind him, and when Edwin turns, she looks faintly nauseated. "Because – fuck. That was so intense it pushed me out."
And now, in his mind, Edwin has two immediate pasts: one in which Erinael handed him a note with a particularly satisfied cast to her mouth as she directed him to the Circle of Wrath where he now stands, and one in which a misery wraith's assault on him was cut short only by the tip of Erinael's spear.
"Ah," Edwin says, now that Crystal's recent absence makes more sense. "Lucky for you."
Crystal steps towards him and places her hands on his shoulders; he stiffens, but freezes and does not pull away. "Edwin," she says levelly, "you have to come with me out of here, okay? Like, now. Being here is killing you."
He can only stare blankly at her. "You'll have to be more specific," he manages after a moment. "That is not particularly meaningful here."
"No, not here – out there!" Crystal gestures at – something. Something beyond Hell, presumably. "Edwin, this spell or psychic effect or whatever it is is literally eating your soul, okay? It's consuming you, in the scary, worst-thing-that-can-happen-to-a-ghost way."
Something in Edwin goes cold. "Ghost?" he says, but then –
He whips his head towards the battlefield. "Did someone call for me?" he says, because he would swear he heard – not his name, precisely, he hasn't been called his name since Sa'al brought him to Hell, but something close enough to catch on his mind. Sa'al only ever addressed him as you or boy, but Erinael has been consistent enough with Little Payne that Edwin is beginning to understand what Sa'al meant about attachment.
"Yes," Crystal says flatly. "Me. Right now. Edwin! See, I just did it again!"
But Edwin is listening now, and he manages to coalesce the syllables before Payne this time:
"Lieutenant Payne!" someone is shouting on the battlefield, crisp British public-school diction shot through with agony.
He doesn't know that voice, but though he can't make out the words of the response, something in him hums with recognition at the shouts over the flurry of activity in the trenches. Clusters of soldiers pour from the nearest trench like water flowing over a dam, and there's something about the shape of the one leading the charge, the set of his shoulders or the way his arm moves as he urges his men forward.
Crystal is still talking frantically at him. He ignores her and stumbles onto the battlefield.
"George?" he calls, his heart racing. Two steps in, the stench of rotting meat and copper blood and the pungent allium-tang of something like horseradish – mustard, perhaps? – hits his lungs and catches his breath. He coughs, more out of startlement than any real reaction, and repeats, louder, "George?"
"Edwin?" Crystal repeats, following, and her hand barely brushes his arm before he is running.
The figure above the trench has turned, his silhouette standing there with one arm still raised. But his head is turned towards Edwin, and if Edwin wasn't certain before, he is now.
"George," Edwin calls. The note falls from his hand, forgotten and unimportant besides, as Edwin's brother looks at him through the growing fog, his features obscured but it has been so long – it has been so long -
The fog is thicker and the smell more pungent here, strong enough that it seems to burn his skin, but he truly could not care less. George is moving now, too, a steady but lopsided walk where one of his arms seems to be outstretched, and Edwin ignores the tiny cuts left by bayonet blades of grass and the steady thumps of artillery fire pocking the ground around him –
"Edwin, watch out – " and that is Crystal, her voice high with urgency –
Of all the ways Edwin has gone from one body to the next, a bullet is...new, if nothing else. It catches him in the neck, blowing out the flesh on one side, and the rest of him goes numb immediately. He drops, as much due to surprise as his inability to move, and his own blood showers around him; then again, and again, in time with his heartbeat thudding in his ears.
But at the angle Edwin fell, one arm pressed awkwardly out from beneath him, he can see his sleeve. What was his nightshirt has become, instead, a coat of gray-green wool with thick spots of mud and wear at the elbows, and there is something between his head and the dirt beneath him.
"Oh shit," Crystal whispers, kneeling next to him. "Edwin? Can you hear me? I - shit - "
George is still coming closer, slinging his rifle over one shoulder, and – oh. He hadn't been reaching out to Edwin after all. At least, not empty handed.
The face that Edwin once knew looks uncannily familiar, even when spattered in mud and bright red with irritation; with every step that George takes, one half of his mouth curved in that same old cocky smile, Edwin feels his pulse get slower and slower, the spurting of his blood around him weaker and weaker.
"Thought you could get us from behind, eh, Fritz?" George says, and it's the same voice, too; the careless, easy syllables combined with impeccable enunciation that he would use to mouth an apology to Flora, or shoot an insult at Isidore. His smile looks more wolfish from here, and there is something hungry in his eyes even as he hides his mouth behind his elbow to cough, long and wet, before wiping it away and looking properly down at Edwin for the first time.
"Edwin?" George says blankly. The rifle slips from his shoulder, but he doesn’t move, not yet.
Crystal looks from George to Edwin and back, apparently finding the family resemblance. "Oh, my God – oh, no – "
"Medic!" George screams, and drops to his knees. His hands press against what’s left of Edwin’s neck in a vain attempt to save what little blood he still has. "We need a fucking medic, now!"
Edwin has never actually heard George swear before.
"You'll be all right, Edwin," George continues, the words tripping over each other. "You'll – I know you'll be all right, please, just stay awake, it – it isn't that bad – how did you even get here, you shouldn’t be – "
And Edwin is running.
Running away from the Dollhouse – the shift between memories seems to have skipped over the Dollhouse entirely, which is somewhat disconcerting, although since Edwin's overriding emotional state there was largely empty depression it makes a certain amount of sense. If the spell that Crystal spoke of is trapping him in the uniquely agonizing moments of his time in Hell, there's hardly anything out of the ordinary about his time in the Dollhouse: it fell into a stable routine of run, die, run, die, and so on.
But now he is running up a very long set of stairs, and for the first time in longer than he can remember he thinks he might have hope. Even though one of his ankles aches where he turned it in Gluttony, slipping on something he doesn't want to think about, even though his heartbeat is pounding in his ears, he can see the end of the staircase.
The stairs give way to a landing and on one side of the landing is a door, and Edwin throws himself against it, wrenching the knob, and he staggers through into another room –
Another room. Edwin's heart doesn't break, but it cracks; he thought surely Limbo would be the last of Hell, but if he has to keep running, then he will. He slams the door behind him and picks his way as fast as he can between discarded desks and over odd plasticky chairs, ducking around a column even though he can't hear the skittering anymore, and then pushing through another door.
There isn't another room on the other side of this door, though.
There is sky.
It stops Edwin dead in his tracks. Gray wisps of cloud overtake blue as clear and deep as a bell's ring, stretching from the top of one building to another. Some sunlight filters through weak spots, casting the edges in white-hot silver, and he is standing on grass.
Nothing grows in Hell, not truly.
Edwin drops to his knees.
"Is – " says a hesitant voice behind him. "Is this it? Is this when you got out?"
His head tipped back towards the darkening sky, Edwin spares Crystal only a halfhearted, "Yes."
Crystal steps into his peripheral vision, looking up with him. "No sky in Hell, huh?" she asks.
"No," Edwin says. "No, and I – I forgot about days. Can you believe that? Not as a measurement of time, but that days turn into nights as the sun goes down. That the sky changes."
"And..." Crystal ducks her head, as though preparing herself. "And your brother?"
Edwin closes his eyes, his head still facing up. "No," he whispers. "I left him."
Crystal inhales sharply.
"I would only make his punishment worse," Edwin continues, and he hears how hollow his voice sounds as he says it. "I will look him up, though. He is the only member of my family that I will. He didn't die in the War, you know. He died after. Only a few years after."
"You didn't look anyone else up?" Crystal says, her voice straining with something that Edwin can't recognize.
"It's been almost a century," he says. "They are gone, and so was I."
He opens his eyes. A gentle drizzle has begun to fall, plopping cozily on the grass around him. He holds his hand out to catch some, and the raindrops fall right through him.
His stomach twists.
"Okay," Crystal says slowly, and looks around. "Okay, hang on. This is a good memory, isn't it? You got out of Hell, you escaped, you – you did it! Why did the spell bring you here?"
Edwin's hand is shaking now, still held out before him. "Because," he says, his voice as unsteady as his hand, "I am dead."
"Well, yeah," Crystal says, frowning at him and crossing her arms. "This is 1989, right? So you have been for, like..."
But she stops, looking more closely at him.
"Did," she says, haltingly. "Did you not know?"
"I was taken directly to Hell," Edwin says. "I didn't experience dying, as such. The pain when Sa'al took me was – well, it was exactly like the pain I would continue to feel for the next seventy years. I died more times than I can count in Hell, and it never really mattered. Somehow I never suspected that...that I might be..."
"Edwin..." Crystal steps closer and gently lays a hand on Edwin's shoulder. "I'm so sorry."
Edwin finally lets his hand fall. "I'm not coming with you, Crystal."
Crystal's hand tightens, just for a moment, on Edwin's shoulder. It registers only as a brief increase in pressure. "What?"
"You said this spell is consuming me," Edwin continues, and pushes himself to his feet, letting Crystal's hand slide off his shoulder. He's back in his suit, he sees, and he straightens it absently. "That when there is nothing left to consume, I will simply cease to exist."
Crystal folds her lips at him. "Uh, yeah. That's why we need to get out of here!"
"That is why you have to go," Edwin corrects her. "I am staying."
Now Crystal gapes at him. "Are you out of your fucking mind?" she hisses.
"No," Edwin says shortly. "I am done, Crystal. After seventy years of terror and pain and horror, there is nothing left of me. I cannot..." But he can't think of the right words to end the sentence, because there are simply too many of them. He can't continue, can't suffer, can't endure. So he just repeats, "I can't."
Shaking her head, Crystal says, "No, this is – this is the spell. It's just that you can't remember all the good stuff, like – Charles! You can't remember Charles, can you?"
Edwin opens his mouth, but his tongue trips on nothing. His instincts tell him to say yes, he knows Charles, of course he knows Charles, but when he tries to summon even the slightest detail, he gets only –
A flash of metal dangling from an ear –
A crooked smile, comfortable and satisfied and directed at him -
The weight of a hand on his shoulder –
"Charles," Edwin says, tasting the name, and –
– turns back from the low stone wall, blinking in the yellowed streetlight and the flaring of the lighthouse, to look at Charles.
Charles, who halfheartedly shrugs and says, with defeat lacing his voice, "Why are you all looking at me like that?" Then, with more emphasis – almost frantic: "I did that for us. She was gonna take us!"
"Charles," Edwin says, trying to ignore the sour feeling in his stomach, "that was...extreme."
The laugh that Charles lets out sounds like nothing Edwin has ever heard from him before. "Was it too extreme, Edwin?" he demands, his voice cracking. "So was me dying at sixteen, mate. I don't want to be dead. I hate it! But every day, I'm fucking smiling."
"Edwin," Crystal says quietly, just behind him.
"'Cause who else is gonna be the one holding it together and keeping spirits up? You? Are you gonna do that, huh? For what? What good am I even doing?"
Crystal tries again. "Edwin, I know this is bad, but – "
"I couldn't stop Devlin from murdering his family over and over. I can't stop Crystal from hurting. I can't stop whatever it is that's going on with you – I can't stop anything," Charles continues.
"Charles is better now," Crystal insists. "You talked it out and he – "
"I sure as hell couldn't stop my dad from beating the shit out of me," Charles says, and drops to his knees. He is weeping. "No matter how good I was."
Edwin looks to Niko and Crystal at his side; Crystal's eyes are directly on him as she speaks.
"Edwin, this is just a memory - you're stuck here because the spell knows that this moment hurt," she says, and takes a step towards him – slowly, with a barely-outstretched hand, as if she's approaching a wounded animal. "You know that there's more to you and Charles than this, right?"
"Is there?" Edwin says, looking back at Charles. His head is ducked now and Edwin can see the glitter of wetness dripping down his nose. "Thirty-five years of knowing him – of being his friend, his mate, and I had no idea. I never asked, I never noticed." He swallows heavily, watching Charles's breath come in frantic, heavy sobs. "I failed him."
This time Crystal puts herself between Edwin and Charles, splaying her hand out to keep him from moving. "You didn't," she tells him. "It's not your fault that Charles is so good at hiding – "
"I am a detective!" Edwin snaps. "That is the only thing I have ever been good at, found success at, but when it was my friend – when it was the only friend I have ever had, I chose not to see! Because he's right. He smiled, he kept it together, he kept the spirits up, and I was glad to take advantage of it, but when he needed me, he saw the same thing everyone else has seen: that I am weak and selfish, something to be coddled rather than trusted!"
Crystal begins, her voice heated, "That's not fucking true – "
Edwin steps neatly around her, wiping at his cheeks with one hand, and lowers himself down to Charles. "Charles, it's going to be okay," he says, and reaches out to lay his other hand on Charles's shoulder.
And Charles pushes his arm away with a quiet, broken, "No."
"Okay, fuck this," Crystal says, and a hand grabs Edwin's arm and wrenches him.
Iron burning against his wrists, his ankles, as he feels his energy being pulled from his very self, as if his soul is being threaded out through his intestines –
"You can talk to me about anything too, mate," Charles says, with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes, and Edwin almost does, his mouth is open but Charles is already turning away to –
The bracelet glints around his wrist, looking so unlike the shackle that it is that Edwin's mind boggles. He's the reason that they're trapped here, as stuck as if there were layers of Hell between them and freedom –
There is something pulling on him, like the spider dragging him back to its lair, and Edwin refuses, he refuses –
The sallow yellow-green of the Dollhouse light falling on row upon row of backwards-shelved books, the thin and hollow pile of torn-out pages, the throbbing ache of his head and the sticky cling of drying blood against his temple, his cheek, his neck, as he says, "Wait. Is this your punishment?"
And Simon, tear-faced and oblivious, looks back at him and says, "What?"
The anger rises in Edwin in a way he has never let himself feel before. "You sacrificed me to a demon, who traded me to another demon, who traded me to a thing that is worse than a demon, and this is your punishment – an eternity of paper cuts?" Edwin grabs and flings a handful of useless pages.
"I didn't know," says Simon. His voice is choked with tears, which only incenses Edwin more. "It was a prank – it was just to scare you – "
"It is right that you're here, after what you did," Edwin snarls. It feels like a dam breaking, the sudden rush of relief as he looks into Simon's miserable eyes and knows that Edwin is the one making him feel that way. Edwin, who has been tortured for over seventy years because Simon wanted to prove his power over Edwin, is finally the one with the power, and it feels glorious. "Do you want to know what I went through down here, every day, over and over again?"
Simon tears out another page and the sound scrapes against Edwin like sandpaper. He grimaces and turns away, towards –
"Is this - " Crystal says, staring at Simon with shining eyes. "Is this the guy that...?"
Edwin stares at her for a long moment. "That killed me? Yes," he says eventually. "And – and I want to hurt him. Do you understand that? This is who I am. Someone who would hurt a child for doing a childish, foolish thing, just to make myself feel better."
Crystal is already shaking her head. "No, you help people – "
"For my own benefit," Edwin snaps. "Every case I took was so that I could plead with Hell for leniency, and it worked. Every client is just another person that I've used – "
"Shut the fuck up, Edwin!" Crystal shouts, and it shocks Edwin into silence. "You said you've only ever had one friend? Well, you're wrong. I'm your friend too, whether you like it or not, and I'm not gonna let you pity-party yourself to death."
"You," Edwin says through gritted teeth, "have no idea – "
Crystal sticks a hand out, right in his face. "Then show me."
He shouldn't. It would be immeasurably cruel to expose her to his suffering. He glances at her hand.
She shakes it. "Come on! I'm waiting!"
Edwin's patience breaks. He grasps her hand and thinks of –
The spider pushing him onto the concrete floor of the Dollhouse, its porcelain claws tearing through his back, snapping his ribs. One of its arm-pincers comes down at the base of his skull, where it meets his spine, and presses on it to gain leverage in the other. Edwin can feel the hot tearing of muscle and cartilage under the multitude of doll hands, the creaking of his own skull under the pressure, and with a pop –
He is back in the nest, in a fresh body. As always, he is sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, his knees curled up to his chest. Crystal sits across from him, one hand clasped to her mouth beneath her wide eyes.
"That one," Edwin informs her, "was one of the better deaths. At least it was quick."
Crystal blinks back tears, but makes the mistake of looking around. Her flinch, when she sees the pile of Edwin's corpses, is full-bodied. It doesn't take Edwin any effort to avoid feeling smug; smugness, or satisfaction of any kind, would take more energy than he has.
He thinks he can feel the spell now, as it hollows him out. Parts of himself are dying, consumed, and each one feels like a tiny euphoric release.
"This," Edwin continues, "is what the majority of my existence has been. To – to end would be a relief."
Crystal drags in a furious breath. "You wouldn't say any of this if Charles were here."
Edwin scoffs. "Of course not. I never claimed to be brave."
"Okay, well," Crystal says, and her expression hardens. "Fuck you."
"What a devastatingly incisive argument," Edwin says.
"No, shut up, this isn't witty banter time, it's tough-love o'clock." Crystal waves her arms around, seemingly to encompass the bizarre memory-space they currently inhabit. "This all sucked, okay? It was bad, and awful, and you've earned every goddamn inch of your trauma. But I've got bad news for you, bucko, and it's that there are people who care about you. And if you're gonna sit here and be selfish and try to wallow in self-pity until it literally kills you, then I'm gonna sit here and be selfish and try to keep you."
"Don't be absurd – "
"I'm not done," Crystal interrupts savagely. "I'm not arguing that this wasn't as bad as it looks or any of that shit. But if you're tired, you know what? Take a nap!" This thought seems to trip her up. "Can ghosts nap?"
"Charles can," Edwin admits, "but – "
"Nope, still not done. All this stupid spell has shown you is the bad stuff, which we've already established was very fucking bad. That's because it's trying to keep you here, so it's not letting you remind yourself of all the good stuff – the stuff that might make you start to fight it."
"After everything you've seen," Edwin says, "you think there is anything that can combat all of this?"
Crystal presses her lips together and holds out her hand again. "How about we find out?"
After a moment, Edwin says, "What?"
"You just got run through a montage of your worst moments, right?" Crystal says. "So let's try a supercut of the best moments."
Edwin just stares at her helplessly. The spider clicks and skitters in the distance. "You can't be serious."
"Don't make me pull out the big guns," Crystal says, and it sounds like a threat.
"What big guns?"
Crystal leans in close. "If anything happens to you, Charles will be fucking devastated."
Edwin flinches. "That's – no. He's always been the strong one."
"The strong one?" Crystal says incredulously. "The – are you fucking kidding right now? Oh my God, Edwin, would you get your head out of your ass - "
"You could always leave me here," Edwin reminds her.
Crystal lets out a noise that's too furious to be a groan but too quiet to be a shriek. "I'm not leaving you here, you asshole! But Charles is completely losing his shit right now! You know how I can tell? Because he's being quiet. When the fuck is Charles ever quiet?"
For the first time in this deluge of memories, Edwin feels a fresh spike of fear through him. He can imagine it: Charles in the office, hunched over himself on the couch, as tightly wound as he was in the Devlin House.
"If something happens to you," Crystal continues, relentless, "I really have no idea what he'll do. And..." She hesitates, biting her lip, and when she continues her voice has gone almost gentle. "You do know that if you die here, that means – that means you'll never see him again?"
Edwin stares at her. Somehow, despite all the talk of oblivion, the thought hadn't occurred to him at all. Nothingness means no pain, true, but it also means no more Charles. Charles will be without him, devastated, and Edwin will be...not there. Not comforting him, not distracting him, not protecting him; not even knowing that Charles is hurting.
"Please," Crystal says, and turns her hand over towards Edwin. "Please let me remind you what else you'd be saying goodbye to."
Edwin looks at her hand, feeling his throat tighten. It would be so much easier to just stay, and waste away, and never have to worry about anything again – never have to hurt or be afraid or worry that the temporary reprieve from Hell might be lifted at any moment.
"I'm so tired," he says again, and his voice cracks on the words. His gaze is going blurry with tears, and he can't even muster the energy to be upset with himself for such a blatant display of emotion. "I don't know if I can."
Now Crystal slides herself next to him, her arm coming around his shoulder. Perhaps one advantage of his soul-deep exhaustion is that he doesn't have enough fight left in him to move away; the weight of it is surprisingly comforting. "You can," she tells him, with fierce certainty. "You can, and if you can't, then – then we'll fucking do it for you, okay? You're not in this alone. You're not even in this with only Charles. You're stuck with me, whether you like it or not, and I don't actually want you to die here, so would you – would you just let me show you? Would you try to let me help you remember?"
Edwin swallows hard. The ache in his bones begs him to just stay and let everything fade away.
But he whispers instead, "All right," and –
"Take a deep breath," Charles says, and despite his arm being chained halfway across the world Edwin does, "and put your big brain to work, because the answer's got to be in there, somewhere." And Charles taps fondly on Edwin's temple, a reminder that no matter how sharp Edwin's edges are, Charles will always endure them –
"Why is it called," Edwin asks Jenny, ignoring the roll of her eyes as he frowns at the black rectangle that she placed on their London desk, "a podcast?" –
The tentacles – lianas, perhaps? – of the forest elemental grasp Edwin's ankles, pulling him relentlessly towards doom, but suddenly the warmth of Charles's hand covers his. Edwin should be furious that Charles would risk his grip for something so meaningless as a moment of comfort in the face of being eaten by a forest elemental – and one named Teeth Face, no less, the sheer indignity – but something about the moment calms the frantic clockwork need for problem-solving that always ticks in the back of Edwin's mind –
"Do not tell anyone, as I have a strict reputation to uphold," Edwin says, "but – I completely understand." And he and Niko nod at each other in unison, a synchronous ease that makes Edwin feel, for the first time since Charles, as though he is a thing capable of being understood –
The tight squeeze of Charles's arms around him as the last traces of the Night Nurse and her superior fade away –
"No," Charles says, pointing at the pulp-paper instructions, "the rail goes on the inside, yeah? So that the drawers can, like, push in – " as Edwin gives an exasperated sigh and begins unscrewing the strange Swedish bedframe he and Charles offered to assemble for Crystal –
The satisfying clunk, clunk as he lets each blade of the scissors walk across the tabletop, enjoying the simplicity of an old-fashioned haunting and the way it feels, for once, like the three of them work naturally together –
And Edwin is being pulled again, but this time it doesn't feel like being dragged; it feels instead like being brought to the surface –
When he blinks his eyes, he is staring at the familiar ceiling of the Dead Boy Detective Agency's London office. His head is tipped further back than he thought, and as he raises it he realizes that, in fact, he is on the couch.
Crystal, kneeling on the floor next to him, opens her eyes with a gasp, and immediately Edwin hears the shuffling of papers as Charles stands bolt upright from his seat on the desk.
"Crystal – is he – " Then his gaze catches on Edwin and he pounces forward, his arms wrapping tight around Edwin's back. "Bloody hell," Charles says, and Edwin pretends not to hear how clogged his voice is, "don't you ever, and I mean ever, do that again, do you understand?"
Without the spell fogging his mind, Edwin has easy access to the sequence of events. In his recollection, it isn't as if he jumped in front of the spell or anything like that; he simply didn't dodge fast enough. It was, truly, a mistake, and a kneejerk reflex in him wants to say that.
Instead, he holds Charles just as tightly in return and glances over his shoulder, where Crystal has tipped back into a seated position, her eyes wet as she watches them.
"I won't," he says, and allows one of his hands to leave Charles's back to reach for Crystal instead. She huffs out a damp laugh, rolling her eyes, but takes his hand anyway, and Edwin adds, "I promise."