Chapter Text
It starts with such a small, soft moment. That’s what really gets to Charles, afterwards. The fact that it was him and Edwin, standing in the soft winter light from the window: Edwin in his nice blue jumper, strangely loose and easy around the edges; the fond smile caught at the corner of his mouth; the gentle press of his hand against Charles’s, the intimacy of the moment.
And then the Night Nurse is there, with her threats and her demands, and Charles is angry, panicked, but Edwin—
Charles makes the mistake of glancing back at him, and the rapid rise and fall of Edwin’s chest, the naked fear on his face, is like nothing Charles has ever seen before. And Charles will do anything to stop that expression from ever touching Edwin’s face again.
And he does, and it works, and for a moment he thinks it will all be fine, that whatever technicality the Night Nurse is going to investigate, it will end up with him and Edwin together, just like they’ve always been. That no matter what happens, Edwin will be safe, and with Charles.
And then—
And then, the source of all of Edwin’s torment for the seventy years of his death which he never, ever speaks about bursts through the wall.
The last thing he says before he vanishes is Charles’s name.
“Get him back,” says Charles, whirling on the Night Nurse with unearthly fury. “Get him back!”
“I cannot simply reach down into hell and lift him out,” says the Night Nurse. “It’s not that simple.”
“Then send me down after him,” says Charles, at once, without hesitation. “I’ll get him.”
Shock flits across her face. “It’s very unorthodox—”
“Fuck orthodox,” snaps Charles. “Send me down there.”
“I cannot simply— There are rules—” As Charles opens his mouth again, the Night Nurse holds up a hand. “No, there are rules,” she says firmly. “That cannot simply be put aside. I may be able to help, but it will be… complicated.”
“Then you better hurry,” said Charles. “Because I’m about this far from ripping that book up and tearing hell another one.”
The Night Nurse opens her book again, flips swiftly to a page at the back and skims the tiny text.
“There is precedent,” she says, after a moment. “For retrieving someone from hell, when the circumstances are… particular. A bargain that you can strike. A… sub-clause, I suppose you’d call it. But you must get Edwin to leave of his own accord.”
“Easy,” says Charles, at once. “Send me down.”
“Wait,” says the Night Nurse. “It’s… in order to assure that there is no interference… there is a rule.”
“Tell me.”
“You must not touch him,” she says. “And you must not tell him why.”
Charles stares at her.
“What kind of a rule is that?” he asks.
“It’s a test,” says the Night Nurse, still looking at Charles. “If you fail it, his soul is forfeit. There’ll be no second chances.”
“Can he touch me?”
“No,” says the Night Nurse. “No contact. You must bring him back with your words alone. And if you tell him about the bargain, now or later…”
“The deal’s off,” Charles finishes. “I get it.”
“You only get one chance,” says the Night Nurse, lifting the book and reading from it, “‘If the fates deny to me this prayer for my true wife, my constant mind must hold me always so that I can not return — and you may triumph in the death of two.’ In other words, this is irreversible, Charles. If you fail, that’s it for him. Forever.”
There’s a tense silence.
And— it’s a lot. Because Charles has never been the clever one, never been the one with the plan; that’s always been Edwin. But Edwin needs him, and Charles will pass any test, risk any punishment, to drag him back out of hell.
When the creature had come for him, Edwin had screamed Charles’s name.
“Well?” says the Night Nurse.
“I’ll do it,” says Charles, with a confidence born of desperation. “Easy.”
. . .
Of course, it isn’t easy. When he finds Edwin down in hell, it is all he can do not to run to him, not to cup his beautiful, bloodied face in his hands. But he must not let Edwin touch him, or this was all for nothing. It’s a test, she’d said. And dammit, but he won’t let Edwin pay for Charles’s failure. And so, though everything in him is screaming at him to grab Edwin and run, he resists, he keeps his distance.
Even as they stumble through hell’s trials, he keeps the space between them. Edwin, half mad with fear, doesn’t seem to notice the way Charles never gets within arm’s length of him, or if he does, he doesn’t mention it. Just runs at Charles’s heels, looking behind him as often as Charles looks back at Edwin, each of them checking, measuring the distance from what pursues them.
And then they are battling through Lust, and Edwin is falling, crying out for him, voice breaking with terror, “Charles!”
And Charles— stops. Stands there, frozen, as Edwin struggles and fights and almost gets dragged under. And then, sense returning, Charles seizes a stray chair leg from the floor, and goes to town with it, beating down the hordes of the damned clutching at Edwin, holding back the red tide, and very, very carefully, not getting close enough for Edwin to touch.
With Charles holding off the worst of it, Edwin manages to stagger to his feet, and then they are running again, but he sees Edwin glance at him, a new kind of fear caught at the corner of his mouth. Later, he thinks, I’ll explain— Except he won’t, will he? Can’t.
Edwin will forgive him this.
The moment they reach the light, he will pull Edwin into his arms, and everything will be okay. They just have to make it out of hell. They just have to make it up the staircase.
And they get so close. They really do – most of the way up those endless stairs; Charles running ahead, Edwin a safe few steps behind him, the doorway above them.
It’s almost within touching distance.
“Charles, wait,” says Edwin behind him, and Charles hears him move, feels the barest movement of Edwin’s fingers in the air as he reaches towards him, and then Charles is jerking back, pulling his arm out of reach.
It stuns Edwin into silence, into stillness.
“What?” says Charles, too fast, too aggressive, trying to cover for the near-miss, heart beating fast in his throat at the closeness of it all – how close he came to losing Edwin in that moment, because of his own stupid carelessness, and now Edwin is looking at him like he’s slapped him, and Charles has too look away.
There is a small noise, the barest sound, and then Edwin says quietly, almost guiltily, “Charles, I have to tell you something.”
Charles looks back at him, internally measuring the distance between them – two steps, enough for him to pull back if he needs to, enough for him to move – failing to conceal his own impatience, desperate and determined to get Edwin out of there.
And then Edwin says, “I’m in love with you,” like he’s confessing to a crime.
Charles looks away.
I’m in love with you. And— and, of course. Even as Edwin says the words, even as half of him feels a sort of blank surprise, the other half of him is there with memories already waiting: Edwin’s antipathy to anyone who interrupts the two of them; his half-aborted gestures; the small, fond smiles at the corner of his mouth and the way he lights up just for Charles. The way he stood in that window, saying I want to tell you something. The dozens of times Charles has turned to meet his gaze, and found him already looking back.
It is— Fuck, it is so monumentally… stupid, and unfair and ridiculous that it’s happening like this, when Charles’ hands are quite literally tied, and when he cannot take the risk of tempting Edwin to come any closer, when he has to do everything he can to keep Edwin at arm’s length.
He can’t— He cannot say a thing. Because Edwin will step towards him, and Charles will move away. And then the questions, and Edwin’s brilliant brain ticking over, and then it will all have been for nothing.
And he will not let hell take Edwin again.
So he says nothing, and nothing, and he watches the terrible fear creep into Edwin’s face.
Edwin is still talking, and Charles has to stand there, two steps away, and watch Edwin’s expression crack down the middle, as he talks himself down a drain of grief and hopelessness, and Charles cannot do anything about it, because he cannot risk Edwin’s life. Not even for this.
“You don’t have to feel the same way,” Edwin is saying, “I just… need you to know.”
He stops, and Charles realises it is his turn to speak.
He wants to say: My god, Edwin, why would you tell me this now, when you’re covered in blood and shaking like a rabbit, and your own personal monster is biting at our heels? Why would you stand here two steps down from me with your exposed collarbones and your green, green eyes, and throw these words at my feet like you expect me to kick them back at you? He wants to say: Finally, and Yes, and I know, I know, I’ve known— and Who else would I go to hell for, Edwin? It’s you, it’s always been you—
He wants to say: I love you.
He says, “We need to go.”
He sees the rejection flash across Edwin’s face, sees the panic and the desperation and the hurt there, all normally so tightly buttoned down, but here, where Edwin is unmasked and laid bare to everything that tormented him for 70 years, here— Edwin can’t shake it off, can’t take it on the shoulder and let it slide down his lonely spine and push it right down, far below those thick layers he wraps himself in, down behind the carefully bound skin of his ribcage. Can’t hide it, like he normally would.
Charles knows, even before Edwin moves, that Edwin will reach for him. Sees it coming a mile away. And so when Edwin does, when Edwin moves forward, palm out, reaching helplessly for Charles, mouth open to say something, Charles is tense enough and frightened enough that he reacts purely on instinct.
“Don’t,” he spits, the fear and horror explicit in his voice, and stumbles back several steps, away from Edwin’s reaching hand.
Edwin stops. His hand is still stretched out in the air between them, reaching for Charles. Charles can see it trembling. He expects those familiar pink blotches to come to Edwin’s cheeks, but instead Edwin is completely white, his green eyes bottomless. Never before has he looked so much like a living, breathing, hurting boy. Never before has he looked so much like a ghost.
“I—” Edwin makes a small, convulsive noise, a flinch in his throat. His eyelids flicker; his gaze slides sideways, somewhere to the left of Charles’s ear. His expression – blown wide, cracked open – goes very carefully, unsettlingly blank. Only the tears leaking silently from the corners of his eyes give him away. “I’m sorry,” he says, to the wall, so quietly Charles almost doesn’t hear the tremor in his voice.
And if things had been otherwise, if he hadn’t had the rules of that stupid bargain to stick to, Charles would have dropped to his knees, would have gathered Edwin into his arms, would’ve kicked his own arse for ever making that expression appear on Edwin’s face. But it is what it is, and Edwin will be out of hell and safe, and once this is all over—
But he can’t think about that now.
There’s a rumbling from below, and the closed off expression on Edwin’s face shudders into terror.
“Run!” yells Charles, and it is everything he can do to turn his back on Edwin and run, but he knows, deep down in his heart, that Edwin will follow him. Even now, even with the whip of Charles’s explicit, inexplicable rejection fresh across the skin of his back, Edwin will follow him anywhere – Soho or Port Townsend or a haunted house or right up out of hell.
And Edwin does.
And they are running, a few careful feet apart, running and breathing hard and in sync, and Charles is glancing behind him, making sure Edwin is following, following, following but not touching— and then they burst out into the light.
Charles is on the floor.
Edwin is on the floor.
It is thin winter light, and the ordinary wooden floor, and Niko scooping them both into her arms, and the Night Nurse trying not to look too pleased, and everything is a little fuzzy with the strength of his relief.
And they are safe, and Edwin is safe and Charles reaches for Edwin, hands going automatically to his shoulders, to pull him up, to check he’s okay.
And Edwin moves away.
It is done so subtly, so gracefully, that if Charles hadn’t seen his face, he would almost have said that it had been an accident. But he’d seen the flicker of Edwin’s eyelids, the unhappy tug at the corner of his mouth, the open wound he’s left in the thin scarring over Edwin’s heart.
Fuck.
Edwin stands, wincing, and moves away towards the window.
Crystal bursts in, and Charles is on his feet, and he watches from the other side of the room, as other people touch Edwin.
The Night Nurse is suddenly there at his elbow, book clutched in her hand.
“Remember,” says the Night Nurse, very quietly. “You must never tell him, or the bargain is void.”
And Charles says, “Yes,” and “I remember,” and watches as Edwin carefully avoids his gaze, and wonders if he’s pulled Edwin out of one hell, only to land them both in another of his very own making.
. . .
He is on the roof that evening, alone, when he hears the door open.
He doesn’t need to look around. He knows it’s Edwin, knows Edwin is standing across the other side of the rooftop now, looking at Charles’ back. Knows exactly the way Edwin is holding himself: the tight, careful line of his shoulders, the way he’s placed his feet, the tautness at the corners of his mouth. Knows it, in the same way he knows where his left hand is, the same way he knows up from down.
I’m in love with you, Edwin had said, but that’s only one word for it, isn’t it; only one way of describing the tether that binds the two of them, that has always bound them. The cord that stretches between them, from one unbeating heart to another. He never had to ask himself if he felt the same. It was like asking about gravity, or the movement of the sun. It just was. It always had been – just because it had gone unobserved, didn’t mean it hadn’t been there.
Behind him, Edwin shifts, and Charles turns to face him. He is looking just to the left of Charles’s ear again, and his eyelids flicker just lightly as Charles turns around. The space between them is like an open wound.
“Edwin,” says Charles, and Edwin swallows.
“I… I want to apologise,” says Edwin. “For—” He falters, gathers tight-lipped formality around him like armour. “I want to apologise. For what I said. I didn’t mean to— I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, Charles. I understand that you came to rescue me out of—” Edwin’s throat works. He has rehearsed this in his head. He is a boy held together with string. “Out of friendly regard, out of… loyalty. And I apologise for letting my,” he grimaces. “My feelings outweigh my sense of gratitude. I will never… I promise to never speak of them again.”
Charles pushes the heels of his palms into his eyes. It’s like being trapped in a nightmare, like communicating through three different languages and a poor telephone line. Like speaking in riddles. Like the deepest circle of hell.
“You don’t make me uncomfortable, Edwin,” he says, a pitifully poor response.
Edwin smiles, a small, sharp knife turned inwards, and says, “You wouldn’t let me touch you.”
Charles’s throat works. “No,” is all he can say, eventually. He’s so fucking afraid, still. So terrified that he’ll break the bargain, and Edwin will get dragged back down to hell. He’ll do anything to keep them both here. Even break his own heart. Even break Edwin’s.
Edwin nods, tilting his head down. His fingers are twisted tight together below the long sleeves of his coat.
“Well then,” he says, particularly crisp, holding the vowels carefully on his tongue like they’re burning him.
Charles doesn’t say anything.
God, how stupid he’d been to think all he had to do was get Edwin out of hell. To think this whole nightmare would be over, then, and things would go back to normal.
“I think…” says Edwin after a long moment. “I might return to London. I think… perhaps, it would be better if we spent some time apart.”
Apart. It’s a word that has never applied to them. They’ve always been together – since Edwin had broken out of hell the first time, since Charles had died in that attic, not alone. They’ve never been apart. They’ve never wanted to be.
Neither of them wants to now.
“No,” says Charles. “Edwin—”
“I think it’s for the best,” says Edwin, quickly. “Charles, I— I understand that this is my fault, and I will— I will fix it. It will be… I’ll just… I just need to, to manage it. And then things will be quite alright again. We can— we can forget it happened. Can’t we?”
His voice is still that terrible, wavering river: that uncertain shiver of melody he’s played host to since that moment on the stairs. Too high, too fast, too hesitant. Gauze pulled over unknitted bone.
He looks up, meeting Charles’s eyes for the first time. And Charles sees the fear in him.
He has done this to Edwin.
No, he thinks, I won’t forget it, I don’t want to forget it.
“Down in hell,” he starts, tries. “There are things you don’t— I was… Fuck, Edwin, I was so scared, and you caught me offguard and I—”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Charles,” says Edwin, words paper thin. “You did nothing— It’s my behaviour that…”
“Will you stop,” snaps Charles. “Talking to me like you’ve murdered my Aunt or something? For fuck’s sake, Edwin, you’ve done nothing wrong. I just— I—”
But he can’t explain it. Can’t explain his behaviour without giving himself away.
Can’t risk it.
He swallows, stops.
“I understand,” says Edwin quietly.
But he doesn’t.
The moment of Charles’s rejection hangs in the air between them. Edwin has spent the last thirty years getting to know every one of Charles’s moods, every single one of his facial expressions and tics and emotions. And so there is no talking around the flashing neon message that Charles had delivered to him in that recoil: the fear, the horror. The way he had moved away from Edwin, so sharply, with such panic.
The word he had spat at Edwin’s feet. “Don’t.”
Edwin has spent his whole life tightly buttoned and self-sufficient, terrified of reaching out for fear that he’ll be rejected. Steadily internalising the message that had sentenced him to seventy years in hell: you are wrong, you are disgusting, you are unworthy of love. And Charles has spent thirty years coaxing him out of that shell, teaching him to lean on Charles, teaching him that if he reaches out, Charles will reach back.
All that time, all that love, undone in one stupid moment. Impossible, now, to put back together.
“It’s not what you think,” says Charles, quietly, miserably. “I just couldn’t— I can’t—”
“I know,” says Edwin, gently. And this, somehow, is worse. “It’s not your fault.”
It is, though. It is.
“I’m going to… go,” says Edwin. He gestures vaguely at the door behind him, but Charles knows what he means: go back to London, go home. It strangles him, the knowledge that Edwin will be so far away. Stupid, when he could step through a mirror at any moment and be by Edwin’s side at once, but it’s the symbolism of the moment, isn’t it. The fact that Edwin is willing to put an ocean between them. Feels that he must.
He can’t tell if Edwin’s trying to give Charles space, or himself.
Edwin turns to go, a ragged tautness to the line of his shoulders that speaks paragraphs of the scars he’s trying to hide.
“Edwin,” says Charles, and Edwin spins back to him at once, without hesitation. As though he still hasn’t learned that Charles can’t give him the answers he wants, as though he still hasn’t learned that Charles can’t fix this. As though he’ll do anything Charles asks of him, even now, when Charles has hurt him in ways that hell never could. Of course he does. The boy who’d screamed for him, every time he’d needed rescuing. The boy who’d reached out for him, not once or twice, but three times, though Charles had rejected him over and over again. The boy who’d followed him out of hell.
Charles’s throat works, but the words don’t come. What can he offer, now? What can he say to try and fix this, that won’t lead to more questions, that won’t bring Edwin back, inevitably, time and time again, to that moment on the stairs, when Charles pulled away.
That won’t send Edwin hurtling back down into hell, that terrible raw fear in his face, and Charles’s name on his lips.
This is the bargain he made.
“I’m sorry,” he says, eventually, instead.
Edwin’s breath hitches. “So am I,” he says, and it sounds like Goodbye.
Then he turns, and walks away.
. . .
Charles spends about three hours tying himself into knots about the whole situation, before he decides that thinking about it is stupid. He isn’t the brains, never has been: he’s the brawn. He goes out, and he does things.
He’s up, and off the roof, and on his way out the door before he can second guess it.
He can’t speak to the girls about it: Crystal would call him an idiot, Niko would get all gooey-eyed, and then they would tell Edwin. And Charles doesn’t think one degree of separation is enough to let him off the hook here – if he tells the girls, and the girls tell Edwin, it’s still Charles’s handiwork. It’s still Charles who’s told Edwin, really. He can’t risk it.
The Night Nurse has made her position clear. And Jenny— Well, it can’t be fixed with a fierce look and a butcher’s cleaver, or he’d have fixed it already himself.
Normally, in a situation like this, he’d turn to Edwin. The perfectly-spun irony of this is not lost on him.
He starts walking without knowing where he’s going. Walks long, aimless strides through Port Townsend, down abandoned streets and across parks, past lit shop fronts and dark windows.
He isn’t thinking about it, he isn’t, but slowly, with a dawning and dreadful inevitability, it is becoming undeniably clear where his feet are taking him. As the streets grow darker and shabbier, and the buildings taller, Charles confronts the inevitable.
By the time he reaches his destination, he’s almost come to terms with it. An empty carpark, an open door, a large, dark warehouse.
Charles stops in the middle of the room, squares his shoulders, and sighs.
“I need help,” he says, half confession, half drawn pistol. “When Edwin was in trouble, I made a sort of… bargain-thing, and now I want out.” He folds his arms, steels himself, and asks the question. “What do you know about loopholes?”
On his ridiculous throne, draped in semi-sheer fabrics, with his yellow eyes perfectly lined, the Cat King smiles, a slow, pleased thing.
“Well,” he says. “This sounds like fun.”