#soldug

And here it is! My pre-slash Soldug fic, set during/canon-divergent from Hell Breaks Loose! Thank you to Cassian for dragging me reluctantly into liking this ship…I hope you enjoy this fic.

Look, I didn’t know the plot of HBL when I read it, and three years later, I still don’t understand it. I’ve done my best. Also, this turned out a bit more platonic-Valdug than I intended. But I hope you like it. Let me know if you do!

All Out Of Fight came on this morning just as I was plotting it out in my head, and I decided it was meant to be…

SO - my idea is that, Valkyrie time-travels after UTE, which means that Solomon is actually alive, but they don’t know that for another six years yet, so she’s thinking he’s dead. Complicated, huh?

When something dies, doesn’t mean that it’s over

We’re not like them, we don’t have to be cold as ice

We could be you and I

So take my hand for the last time

And find my eyes with yours

We were two broken parts from the same old junkyard

Battered and bruised and we tried so goddamn hard

I never asked for easy

But it shouldn’t be this hard

My heart will always know your name

I’m all out of love

- All Out Of Fight by P!NK

Words failed her, and she broke from her pacing pattern and stormed off. They watched her go, and nobody said anything for a while….

Valkyrie Cain is so pissed. She’d told them. She’d told China, Skulduggery, Ghastly - all of them - She’d told them she shouldn’t be trusted with this mission. Albeit she’s the only person who can time-travel, and the mission is necessary, but she’d known she’d screw things up. Venturing to the future had meant having a fight with her future self and bringing back Skulduggery’s evil future self with her. And she had been trying to change that future. But going to the past? Trying not to change anything?

The moment she’d revealed who she was, shit had started hitting the fans. And now…and now…

She walks on, pushing past unknown people, probably heading deeper into the dungeons. She doesn’t care. It’s getting hard to think. Hard to breathe.

In. Out. Slow deep breaths.

She hears it in Skulduggery’s voice - her Skulduggery’s voice - and she wants to cry. But she can’t. She’s goddamn Valkyrie Cain. She can’t cry just because she’s stuck in 1703, having derailed her future, having possibly murdered her best friend.

Stop. Think. She stares at a particularly ugly blob of mould on the wall. There has to be another way around this. Serpine is dead. She doesn’t want to resurrect Serpine. But she can still rescue Skulduggery. The punishment for killing a prisoner might be severe. The Elders might not know how to kill Skulduggery, but what if they do, somehow?

That is absolutely unacceptable. Until The End still counts on Valkyrie’s side, even if she’s doing a completely shit job at it currently.

****

It’s easy to be stealthy when you’re Valkyrie Cain. Black clothing, black hair, sliding along the shadows like a super-cool ninja. But it’s harder to be stealthy when you don’t really know where you’re going.

She slinks back through the dungeons like an aimless but well-dressed shadow, until she spots Meritorious emerging from a room. The door clangs shut in a way that could only mean that it’s used for keeping prisoners in. She watches Meritorious - younger, yet still care-ridden, the weight of the world resting on his shoulders - crossing the hallway towards the narrow stairs; that level is where she came from, and where the Dead Men, presumably, still are.

She doesn’t waste time. One good strong sizzle of lightning, and whatever magical locking mechanism is on the door gives way with a sad little pfftshhtppft.

Skulduggery raises his skull as she steps in. There’s a small wilting candle on the rotting table. His wrists are shackled.

“Valkyrie,” he says, sounding surprised. He says her name differently in this time, like it’s an unfamiliar taste in the mouth he doesn’t have.

“Rescue mission,” she says briskly. “I’m breaking you out. We need to go and-”

“Kill Tithonus.” Skulduggery’s voice is smooth. Too smooth. She recognises the hint of rage underneath, more badly concealed than it used to be. Or, will be. God, she’s so tired of all this.

“Kill Tithonus?” She pauses, her hands clasped around the cold chains. “He’s, like, the one actually innocent person in this whole mess.”

Skulduggery tilts his head slightly. “I will be happy to elaborate once we are out of here. But I imagine Ghastly or Erskine may come down to talk to me now, so time is of the essence.”

Her mouth sours when she hears those two names, together, and her hand tightens around the chain shackling Skulduggery’s left wrist. It takes a moment - lightning sizzles; the chains spark and spit. Skulduggery doesn’t flinch. She does it again; forces more magic to her palm. The links burst open, and Skulduggery lifts his arm, flexing his gloveless fingers.

She does the same to the other chain; he stands, and she goes over to the door, listening.

“Nobody is coming.”

She glances back at him. “God, you’re annoying.”

He reaches past and pulls the door open. “Now for our dashing and daring escape.”

****

They have to hide in two rooms while people go by - one of the rooms is an abandoned latrine, and Valkyrie wishes she had Skulduggery’s lack of nose - but they make it out.

“Wow,” she says, following Skulduggery down a…a field, really. It’s not good enough to be called a track. “Ireland in 1703 is…bleak.”

“Yes,” Skulduggery says dryly. “It is.”

“What’s the plan? How do we get back to Italy? That’s where we need to go, right? To…” She can’t say it. “I don’t want to kill someone, Skulduggery.”

He glances at her, skull turning fractionally. Dammit. She has to remember this is not her Skulduggery. But he lets her vulnerability slide. “I have a friend. Cassandra Pharos.” He notes her kneejerk reaction. “She has a brother, and he is a Teleporter. He can take us to San Gimignano.”

“And how far away does Cassandra live? It’s hours away, isn’t it? Man, I hate walking. I hate it. We walked for months in Dimension X. God. I’m so done with walking.”

Skulduggery waits for her to finish. “I estimate it will take perhaps three or four hours of steady walking. Of course, we must hope that the Sanctuary do not pursue us.”

“How likely is that?”

“Ghastly might, perhaps, realise where I will go. But he will cover for me, I think. It will be hard for Tome to find us. And besides, who has time to waste on us, when there is the more pressing matters of dealing with Mevolent?”

“So we’re just gonna…hope they don’t come after the time-traveller chick and the murderous skeleton? That’s a terrible plan.”

Skulduggery tilts his head at her. “Do you have a better one?”

She scuffs her boots in the mud. Crinkles her nose. Glares at a rook flying over the hawthorn hedgerows.

“God, you’re so annoying.”

****

They’ve been walking for almost two hours. Skulduggery knows the way. They’ve crossed streams, walked through little mortal hamlets, through thick forests, across numberless fields. Mostly in silence.

“I must confess to a lingering curiosity.” He breaks the silence.

“What?” Her voice, unlike his, is slightly hoarse from not talking.

“Why did you rescue me? I am not the man you know. You watched me brutally a man, yet you still rescued me without a second thought. Why?”

“I’ve seen you do way worse,” Valkyrie says, truthfully. “Way, way worse. And - I dunno. You’re the only one I trust, to be honest, with this whole…fiasco. Like, I can’t do any of this by myself, and I don’t…”

“You do not trust Erskine.”

“Let’s just say that I don’t,” she mutters grimly.

“And yet, you say you trust me, but you do not know me.”

“I do. And I didn’t know what they’d do to you. Like, do they kill people for killing prisoners?”

“Meritorious mentioned exile.”

“See, I couldn’t let that happen. Until the end, and all that.”

Skulduggery turns his skull fully to her. “I beg your pardon?”

“Until the end.” She sees the shadows inside his eye-sockets; natural shadows, thrown there by the angle of the sun. “I save you. You save me. That’s how we work.”

He runs his hand over his skull. Discomfited. “I…find myself at a loss for words.”

She smiles. “That’s only the second time that’s happened, that I’ve witnessed. Come on, slowcoach.”

****

“Magic toilets,” she mutters to herself, crouching behind a broad oak. “Magic toilets, huh? That’d be the dream. It really would.”

She stands up, presses the amulet to her chest. She can see Skulduggery, standing a bit down the tiny lane between two fields, hands clasped behind his back. But there’s something else. Someone else.

She turns just in time to see the punch a masked woman throws at her.

It.

All.

Goes.

Bl-

****

She wakes up with her head on a hard floor.

“Ugh,” she moans, rolling onto her back. There’s a tiny barred window, set ten feet high into a stone wall above her. Her head hurts. Her mouth is dry, tongue heavy. Her ankle feels odd. Her amulet lies on the floor next to her, and she scoops it up protectively.

“Miss Cain,” a voice says, and she sits up, tries to scramble to her feet but abandons that before she falls over or passes out again.

“Pardon, pardon,” the man says, holding up his hands. “I mean you no harm.”

“Solomon?” she breathes, dumbfounded.

A younger Solomon Wreath stands in the corner, back against the wall, dark eyes glinting at her. Then he smiles, and it’s the same smile she remembers. She has to blink back sudden tears.

“Miss Cain,” he says again. “You have been unconscious for a while. I was getting worried.”

Common sense kicks in. She stands, holding onto the amulet like it’s a goddamn good luck charm or something. “What are you doing here? Where am I?” She remembers that punch, and the kick to the head that followed, just before she blacked out. “Why have you kidnapped me, for God’s sake, Solomon?”

“Oh,” he says. “No, I have not taken you hostage, although all the evidence points to the opposite. I am, in fact, a fellow captive.”

She looks around. The corners of the room are shadowed, but she can see clearly enough that there’s no third prisoner. “Where’s Skulduggery?”

“I-”

“Where’s. Skulduggery?” she demands. “What happened to him?”

“They took him, too. Perhaps they are interrogating him as we speak.”

She shakes her head. “I can’t believe this. I just can’t. It keeps getting better and better, this whole shitshow. Who’s they?”

Solomon shrugged. “How can I tell? Mevolent’s people, or allies of his, most likely.” He studied her. “You are the woman from the future.”

“Yeah. Yeah I am.” It doesn’t occur to her to lie until it’s too late.

“You know who I am.”

This Solomon isn’t as…guarded. Suave. Unflappable. She watches him in return, her own eyes narrowed. “We’ve met.”

“In pleasant circumstances, I should hope.”

She remembers how he died. Her evil self killed him. She shoves that away; there’s no point lamenting over what will, probably, never ever happen - not now that she’s derailed the whole fucking timeline. “What the fuck are you doing here, anyway?” she demands. “It’s not like you just happened to be passing by in that one random desolated place in the wilderness and got captured as well.”

Solomon rubs his upper lip. “I…I am on a mission for my Temple. It is not for me to divulg-”

“Your mission was to, like, stalk us.”

“Gather information,” he protests, but he doesn’t try to deny it.

“About me? Because I’m the cool snazzy time-traveller?” Valkyrie snorts. “I thought you lot were neutral.”

“We were on the side of the Sanctuaries,” Solomon said, “until…recently. The Necromancers are neutral now. Entirely so. But rumours have a way of reaching us, secluded as we are. It was important for us to understand who you are. And what you are capable of.”

She doesn’t have her magic, not in this room. She wishes she did. “I shoot lightning, dude. I’m not your Death Bringer. Nope, definitely not going through that bullshit again. By the way? Killing three billion people is completely bonkers, and you’re being brainwashed.”

Solomon blinks at her.

“Just thought I should say it,” she adds. “So, you were literally stalking me, then. Since when?”

“I saw you and the skeleton leave the Sanctuary,” Solomon says, crossing his arms. “Pray, tell me, Miss Cain…”

He stops.

“What?”

“The skeleton. Skulduggery Pleasant.”

She arches her eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“I suppose, being made only of bones and magic, he has not even aged in your time?”

That was not what he wanted to ask. “I guess not. I mean, how do you even tell if a skeleton’s aged? There’s no wrinkles.” She stops herself. Dammit, you’re being too friendly again. You don’t know these versions of Solomon and Skulduggery. And it took Skulduggery himself to point that out to you.

Skulduggery.

Her belly twists uncomfortably. “I don’t like it,” she says, looking around. “What are they doing to him? Where is he? Do you think he’s…”

“Dead?” Solomon asks, looking, for a moment, as uneasy as she feels.

“There has to be a way out of here.”

He leans off the wall, watching her inspect the metal door. “You’ll not be getting out through that, Miss Cain.”

“Just call me Valkyrie,” she mutters, running her hands across the hinges. It’s solid. “We’ll be friends, in the future. Mostly friends. Well, until you tried to trick me. And also you knocked me out. But then I punched you, so we’re even. I think.”

“Valkyrie.” Solomon sounds amused. “I can see why Skulduggery and myself like you.”

“Putting yourself together there, huh?” She huffs, glaring at the door. It’s tempting to kick it, but she’ll only regret that course of action.

“I only meant,” Solomon corrects himself hastily, “that both myself and the skeleton-”

“Oh, save it, Solomon. I watched you two do your shit for years.” She shakes her head, paces the cell, and then slumps into a sitting position. “Enemies to lovers is so cliché, by the way.”

He’s silent.

****

There’s no clock in here, and it’s not like Valkyrie can even see the sun properly to guess what time it is, and she isn’t a patient person either so it feels like at least eight hours pass, but after maybe an hour, the door clanks. To her left, Solomon stiffens, and she readies herself, but when the chains or bolts or whatever have all been unlocked, all that happens is the door swinging open, and Skulduggery being shoved in.

“Oh, thank God.” She leaps up and throws her arms around him. “Are you okay? Did they torture you?”

Skulduggery is stiff beneath her embrace; stiffer than he normally is; utterly frozen. It takes her a moment. Then he slowly, slowly puts one arm around her. Is this the first time anyone’s hugged him, since his family died? “I am utterly splendid,” he declares. “A touch of torture is always refreshing.” She stands back, and he turns his head to the other occupant of the cell.

Solomon stares back, a defiant smirk curving the edge of his mouth. Valkyrie looks between the two men, and suddenly remembers years’ worth of mentorly-jealousy and petty spats that was all a thin facade for…

“Oh boy.”

****

“Malevolent’s allies are the ones who captured us,” Skulduggery confirms what she’d thought. “I have not given them any information. Cleric Wreath, what in damnation are you doing here?”

“That, Pleasant, is sensitive information pertaining to my Te-”

“He was spying on us,” Valkyrie cuts in. Solomon glares at her. “You’d better have looked away when I peed,” she warns him.

“Of course I did,” he says stiffly. She believes him, but it’s worth it to see him squirm a bit.

“So what do we do now?” she asks Skulduggery.

He shrugs. “There is nothing to do. We have been captured. We must now hope that the other Dead Men succeed in their mission to close the Gate and stop Strickent.”

“But what about me?” she demands. “I mean, the whole future is fucked up already, just by Serpine being dead, but…k-” She still can’t say it. “Finding Tithonus? All of that? Am I supposed to just stay in here forever? Like, I’ve got my dog, my girlfriend, my folks…I can’t just stay in this time. It’s impossible. It is literally impossible.”

Skulduggery takes a step towards her, but Solomon gets there first. “You will be fine,” he says quietly, putting his hand on her arm. “I am sure of it, Mis - Valkyrie. You don’t seem like a woman who takes ‘no’ for an answer very often…”

She manages a smile. “No, I guess not.”

“So,” Solomon says, his dark eyes calming in a way that invokes memories of cool stone rooms and bottomless crystal-clear wells and beautiful shadows arcing high overhead, “I am sure you will conquer this adversity.”

Inhale. Exhale. This time, she hears it in this-Skulduggery’s voice, with the slightly roughened accent. “Still a good mentor,” she jokes.

They both look up when Skulduggery snorts. “Mentor? Solomon? He’s barely out of napkins.”

Solomon doesn’t respond, except for a haughty inhale.

Valkyrie raises her eyebrow. “You know I’m still in my twenties, right?”

She thinks Skulduggery is a bit surprised. Solomon, who looks about her age - or possibly even younger - smiles slightly. “I am well over a hundred. Skulduggery is merely jealous that he does not have any age to speak of.”

“I don’t know what they teach you in that temple, Wreath, but I do still age.”

“How so, my dear Pleasant? You have no birthday. You might count your deathdays, I suppose. In which case, I believe you would be about thirteen. But if you do not count your deathdays, then you are simply existing.”

Skulduggery takes a step towards Solomon. Valkyrie holds up her hands. “Gentlemen, gentlemen. No brawling.”

“Of course not,” Solomon says, with another smile.

Skulduggery is silent. Valkyrie looks at him suspiciously. “You aren’t going to kill him, Skulduggery. I know you like him secretly.”

That does the equivalent of detonating a bomb. Damn. She should have thought that through a bit more.

“You - I-” Skulduggery splutters.

“I assure you, Valkyrie, Skulduggery does not like me,” Solomon says with a rueful smile.

She has evidence, from the future, that could state otherwise. Skulduggery would never tell her quite why he disliked Solomon so much, and in the end she had asked China, who had told her about their ‘sordid affair’ during the later years of the War. This, Valkyrie had worked out, was after Skulduggery’s return from being Lord Vile. The two men had been at odds with each other until soon after her eighteenth birthday, at which point, she suspects, the push-pull, on-again-off-again ‘affair’ had started again.

And then Darquesse killed Solomon, and the last thing the Necromancer ever saw was Skulduggery rounding the corner, steaming black shadows crusting into armour over his suit.

She shakes herself out of the memories. That future might not even come to pass, now. “So,” she says, looking between them again. “Why don’t you tell me how you two first met or something?”

****

“We were in Prussia,” Skulduggery says. They’re all sitting now. Skulduggery and Solomon are sitting against the opposite wall, a healthy two metres between them; Valkyrie sits by the door, knees pulled up to her chest, watchful in case she has to break up a sudden fight. Or, possibly, a snogging session. “Mevolent’s troops raided a Necromancer Temple and killed all but three of the people there.”

“Morwenna Crow,” Valkyrie says. “And Auron Tenebrae. And…you.” She looks at Solomon, surprised. “I never knew that.”

“You know this story already?” Skulduggery asks, head tilting.

“Yeah, bits of it. There was an ogre called Jeremy.” She smiles at him; his head tilts the other way.

“With a very big axe,” Solomon adds dryly.

She turns her smile to him. “Yeah.” This is a very different rendition of the story. Last time, ten years ago, she was sixteen and terrified, after one of the men she held as a hero had knocked her out, and the other was revealed to be a mass-murderer. And here they are, again; or here they are, before the other time has even happened-

“We were tracking the raiding party,” Skulduggery says. “I was the only Dead Man there.”

“You were married,” Valkyrie says softly.

His chin dips slightly. “Four months and three weeks.”

Something flashes across Solomon’s face, gone before she can quite see it. She realises something. Solomon crushed on Skulduggery. She’d bet…Well, she hasn’t got anything to bet, but she’d bet something that the Necromancer had crushed on a happily-married-and-alive Skulduggery.

“Skulduggery spent most of his time talking to Morwenna,” Solomon says, even more dryly. “Which meant I had to speak to Tenebrae.”

“I did not wish to speak to young and immature fools,” Skulduggery retorts loftily.

“For Heaven’s sake, Pleasant, I am-”

“You were nine and twenty.” Skulduggery cuts him off. “A naive fool. You deserved Tenebrae’s company.”

“You were thirty-five,” Solomon shoots back. “If I remember correctly, Morwenna was already in her eighties.”

“I would not count on your memory being correct. It is unlikely that the cognitive functions of memory in your mind had formed yet.”

“How pathetic, Pleasant, that you have, in your state of unlife, been reduced to unintelligent quips and a burning desire for revenge.”

“Better that than being alive and obsessed only with an utterly pathetic idea of unrequited love.”

Solomon arches both dark eyebrows. “Better that, I should say, than an inability to love at all.”

“That’s not...”

“Not what, Pleasant? Cat got your tongue? Oh, I beg your pardon - you don’t have one any more, do you?”

Valkyrie clears her throat pointedly. They both jump - even Skulduggery. She looks between them. “I’m still here,” she says. “Being held here against my will, as well. So, like, just…cool it with the lovers’ tiffs.”

There’s a moment. Then Skulduggery sags a little. “You are right, Wreath,” he growls. “I am incapable of love now. Do not hope for anything different.”

“When it comes to you, Pleasant, I have never hoped.”

“You’re wrong,” Valkyrie says firmly. Again, they both look up at her. “You can love, Skulduggery. You’ve got so many people to love, in the future. You’re not not able to love.” She glances at Solomon. “But you probably shouldn’t get your hopes up.”

There’s silence, and then…

“Why have you never hoped?” Skulduggery asks, his voice slightly different.

Solomon smiles, then ruins the effect by picking at his nails. “I am not given to delusion, Pleasant.”

“You are a Necromancer.”

Solomon snorts a laugh. Skulduggery’s head tilts. Valkyrie bites back a smile. For a moment, she’s sixteen again and it’s okay; they’ll stop Darquesse, they’ll get Tanith back, she never killed her sister, Erskine was never a traitor…

But she’s in 1703, all alone. These two men are not the men she knows. Almost everyone that she has met is now dead in her future. There isn’t even a ‘her future’ anymore, because she fucked it up.

Solomon, or Skulduggery, or both of them, notice her face.

“I am sure you will be all right,” Skulduggery says, echoing - maybe unconsciously - Solomon’s earlier words. “That is, if Mevolent’s troops do not kill us in retribution for Serpine’s death.”

Valkyrie smiles tremulously. “I’ve been captured enough times, like. And sentenced to death and beaten up and tortured and stuff. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.”

“Why do you do it?” Solomon asks, a hint of genuine curiosity in his voice. “There isn’t a war in the future, is there?”

“Oh, man.” Her laugh is shaky. “There’s so much shit in the future.” One of the wars is against myself. “I don’t even know where I’d start. But…” She closes her eyes. “It’s for my folks, I guess. My sister. My girlfriend, my dog. All the people I love. I guess…I need to do everything I do, so they’re safe? So they’ve got a world to keep living in.”

“That is noble of you.”

“Thank you.”

“I am alive in your time,” Skulduggery says suddenly. “Who else is? Or…who is not? Or, who died, while you have known them?”

She swallows. “I don’t know who I should start with.”

“Start with the occupants of this room, perhaps.”

She looks at Solomon. He looks back at her. “I am a Necromancer, Valkyrie. I do not fear death. I embrace it.”

She closes her eyes, so she doesn’t have to see the inevitable: when his face changes, or Skulduggery’s posture stiffens.

“Yeah,” she whispers to her knees. And then, what she never had a chance to say:

“I’m so sorry, Solomon.”

****

There’s no source of light, no candles or anything, when it gets dark. The light seeps from the room, and leaves it in the sort of pitch blackness that Valkyrie would’ve been afraid of, once upon a time, so long ago, back when she was Stephanie Edgley.

She stays quiet. Skulduggery and Solomon exchange conversation every now and again. The barbed undercurrent gets more and more muted. They talk about people she’s never heard of, occurrences that Skulduggery never told her about. Once, when they think she’s probably asleep, Solomon murmurs a condolences about Skulduggery’s family. Skulduggery replies with a curt but genuine thanks.

She’s hungry. She’s hungry and at some point she’ll need to pee again and all of this is just distracting her from the other thoughts, the real problems. If her-Skulduggery could see the mess she’s got into…He’d been so sure that she’d be alright. But look at the disaster she’s made.

****

They don’t hear much of the ruckus, thanks to the thick stone walls. But when the door flies off its hinges and a glow of fire lights the cell, then the dim noise turns into an amplified roar of bloodshed and small explosions.

“You miscreants,” Dexter says cheerfully, holding a lantern. His right eyebrow has been singed off.

Skulduggery scrambles up. Valkyrie follows suit, wincing at the pins and needles in her legs.

“The rescue mission?” Skulduggery says.

Dexter chucks him a small knife. “I hope you know you’re bloody idiots.”

“Come on! I haven’t got all day to stab pretty people!” Saracen calls from a distance.

Valkyrie turns, but Skulduggery beats her to it. Firelight dances across Solomon’s shadowed face as he looks up, still sitting on the floor.

Skulduggery holds out his skeletal hand.

“Come along. You are a part of this now.”