Chapter Text
We might make mistakes, but
we will make other things too.
—
Michael Joseph Savage
May 1951. Roarhaven, Louisiana.
China didn’t consider herself to be a great walker. She could ride, of course, and drive, and she had more than enough experience being chauffeured around, but she didn’t often find cause to move between places on her own two legs.
But that morning, something compelled her to tell Reginald to take the car straight home — that she’d make her own way back when she was finished visiting Eliza. The visit was uneventful — the Scorn patriarch wasn’t home, as to be expected, and Eliza was listless and borderline rude. China was soon fed up with her, and left before she fell into the trap of acting similarly in return.
At the top of what was publicly considered to be an open access road, but socially considered to be a private driveway to the manor houses that led off from it, China heard the sound of a car humming. She glanced back and left, chin raised as though this person was only owed judgement for daring to drive on the road at the same time as her, before she was taken by surprise as she felt a burst of recognition. It was almost exciting, the way she knew whose car it was — she, who didn’t know cars, but knew whose hands should be wrapped around the wheel.
The car had pulled to a stop on the road beside her — no need to pull onto the shoulder, there was never enough traffic to warrant that — and the passenger window was when she finally turned to look at Skulduggery Pleasant. He leaned across the seat to glance at her, somehow expectant and impatient, but made no move to open the door for her.
Rolling her eyes, China delicately tugged the door open and slid into the passenger seat and found herself sinking into the seat that seemed to be pushed back as far as was mechanically possible. “Coming to visit me again, or just lurking on private property today?” she asked, straightening up as best she could as they pulled away.
China could count on one hand the amount of times she had been driven by a man alone that she wasn’t related to or wasn’t paid to do it on one hand. She felt shockingly aware of Skulduggery’s presence beside her, the way he took up space.
“Come now, China. We both know if the road wasn’t public, your parents and their friends would have a delightful wee sign built letting us unfortunates know we’d be shot on sight,” Skulduggery said, his hands sliding smoothly around the wheel as they pulled onto China’s equally long driveway. “More importantly, this public road is within the country borders, so I am allowed to be here as per the court order.”
His flippancy surprised her, and she wondered if anyone had seen her get in his car. It was one thing for someone of her social position to have chance encounters with one of the poorer members of Roarhaven - a very different thing to be driven around by someone on trial for murder. But she couldn’t help herself - she wanted to talk to him. The way he’d looked at her not long after he returned to Roarhaven from God knows where, she didn’t think she’d ever see a grin cross Skulduggery Pleasant’s face again. Looking at Skulduggery for those first days left her with a cool, sick feeling in her chest that she hated.
He wasn’t smiling now, but clearly he felt China’s gaze on him and lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “The way I see it, there’s no point in my being miserable. I know who did it, and while we should, of course, all hope that justice will prevail, I’ve learnt I’m not a man afraid of getting my hands dirty.”
China took a sharp breath. Was he talking about murdering Serpine or Mevolent? Could she blame him? His wife and child were dead, and everyone in Roarhaven had already made up their minds as to who was at fault for that.
The car rolled to a stop outside of her mansion, and Skulduggery turned the car off. No longer in control of a moving vehicle, he looked at her face. There were dark shadows beneath his eyes but yet, a clearness to his gaze that was startling and new to her. “I won’t wait for an invitation today.”
China was shocked at what he’d revealed and moved on from so quickly. “Pleasant, you need to be careful. You- you all do.” The words tripped over each other, the thought of Skulduggery’s group’s vigilante justice in the face of Mevolent’s operations made her throat feel as though it was closing.
“Funny,” he said wryly, “I was going to say the same thing to you.”
Skulduggery had always had a way of assessing her, but she found that she burned beneath it since the unpleasantness with his wife had happened. She couldn't resist the urge to reach up and touch her cheeks, to see if she could feel the colour there. She watched Skulduggery's eyes follow her fingers as they pressed gently against her skin, before she tucked her hair behind her ear to disguise the movement.
Thinking about Skulduggery’s dead wife made that sick feeling return. She was a woman China had had very little to do with in life, their lack of crossing paths seeming to be intentional in a way that didn’t originate from just China. It was as though she’d known, somehow, that someday Skulduggery was going to be sitting in a car alone with China, just looking at her, and what that would mean.
His wife likely just presumed that she would be around to put a stop to it.
She sat there for a long dangerous moment - any of her family could come out and see her in Skulduggery's car, and there would be hell to pay - but she wanted to stay with the feeling. Steep in it. Make good and certain she was aware of what sort of person she was. Of what sort of person Skulduggery was. Of all the things that might have happened, if only she had been in town more two summers ago.
"Well," she said to her hands, "It's best that you get going, Skulduggery." She opened the door to the car and swung her legs neatly out, but couldn't help but glance behind her.
He had clearly still been looking at her, but he'd turned away quickly as she looked back. "Of course, China." He was staring at the wheel, and China got the odd sense of a missed opportunity. "Just wanted to give you a lift down your long road. It's the polite thing."
They both knew that the only reason for Skulduggery to be on that road in the first place was if he was he coming to see her, and China almost wished that she'd been at home already, with any number of family or servants that could be around, and absolutely no room for Skulduggery's shrouded confessions.
"See you around," Skulduggery called over the thrum of the engine. China merely raised a hand at him, and crossed the driveway to the front door. By the time China put her shoulders back and opened it, the engine was already a faint whine down the road.
—
It was late when China heard the knock on the window. She wouldn’t have heard it at all if it had been only a few seconds later — she was already getting ready to leave her study and retire for the evening — but as timing would have it, China spun around to see a somewhat familiar face at the French doors. It took her a moment to swallow her shock and recognise the man, at which point she stormed over and wrenched the door open with more force than entirely necessary.
“Hopeless, what are you doing here?” she hissed, furious. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”
Hopeless pushed past her, stepping into her study like he belonged there. It was a trait he shared with Pleasant, and Ravel, and presumably all of his strange little gang, except perhaps Ghastly Bespoke. They all believed they belonged anywhere, and had just as much right to be there as anyone else.
“You can’t be here,” China warned, following after Hopeless to grab his shoulder. “Listen to me!”
Hopeless turned around to look at her. The first thing China noticed was how tired he looked, how empty. Hopeless wasn’t a particularly handsome man, not like Erskine Ravel, but he had a certain roguishness that made him more mysterious. He looked like a man who understood what it was like to live a hard life, something China knew she had a weakness for. She hated it, the way these men could make her waver just by looking at them, make her wonder if her gilded life was really worth the safety it provided. If she would be better to try and live like them.
“Why should I listen to you?” Hopeless asked. His voice was rough, restless, matching the rest of him. “The others, the ones that know you, they all think about you differently. Ghastly thinks we should stay as far away from you as possible, Erskine thinks you’re a self interested heiress with nothing going on in your head, and Skulduggery,” he trailed off, with a humourless laugh. “Well, I’m sure you know already what he thinks of you.”
China flushed, snatching her hand back sharply. “What’s your point?”
“My point is that all the others think you, at worst, to be little more than an annoyance. Or something to be ignored.”
“And you don’t?”
The room felt tight, like it was holding its breath, and China was suddenly very afraid of what Hopeless was going to say, what he was doing here in her study. She wanted to glance back at her desk for something; a heavy book, a letter opener, anything to hold in her hands and make her feel like she had any bit of control.
“I think you’re more dangerous than you let on,” Hopeless said, and he took a step forward, towards her. “I think you’re just as involved in whatever is happening in this town as your grandmother.”
Mama Sorrows wasn’t in tonight, neither were China’s parents. They had all been invited to a dinner out of town, one China had feigned illness to avoid. She wondered if Hopeless somehow knew, and if he had been waiting for his moment.
“Hopeless, I recommend you leave,” China said, her voice betraying none of her fear.
Hopeless didn’t give any indication he had heard her, his eyes travelling the length of the study, like he was looking for something.
“Have you seen Erskine, since he got back?”
She had, once. He had appeared to be fine, if not a little skinnier than before, but China wasn’t stupid. Erskine had been missing for weeks. Erskine had been a weak point for her almost as often as Skulduggery had, perhaps even more with the frequency with which she saw him. Roarhaven was small, and even a wealthy immigrant family was still wealthy enough to brush up in the same circles. Erskine was a fixture at certain parties, and a fixture that made China laugh.
She’d seen him since he’d gotten back. She was too afraid to talk to him.
“Hopeless —”
“It’s evil, China, what you’re doing. Simple as that. You can try to justify it behind your family, or whatever it is you use to get sleep at night, but it’s pure evil to sit back and let things like this happen. It makes you just as bad as the rest of them.”
Indignation rose up, and China could feel her face crumple. Her first instinct was defensive, to yell at him to get out of his house before she phoned the sheriff, but she tamped it down. He was here to appeal to her better nature, to succeed where Skulduggery had clearly failed, where her own brother had failed. A tall order. China flicked her hair over her shoulder with a sharp tilt of her head. Hopeless meant very little to her, in the grand scheme of it all. There were so few occasions before this one that they had even spoken to each other, and China was sure this was the first time they had ever had a conversation alone. Without Erskine there to smooth the rough edges, without Skulduggery to distract her with too clever green eyes, and without Ghastly’s patience and reassurance, Hopeless was simply a man in her house. A man who hated her.
“If you believe I’m evil, why do you believe there’s anything here worth trying to change?” China asked, as much flippancy in her tone as she could muster.
Hopeless seemed to be making a study of the wallpaper behind China’s head. “I believe you are doing evil things. I believe you could stop doing them, if you wanted.”
“And what could I possibly have done to inspire that belief?”
Hopeless rocked back on his heels, shoulders rolling in the approximation of a shrug. “You left once before. Not for nothing, I assume.”
Her black mark. Her almost betrayal. The time she tried to cut away the cord tying her to the family tree and came back with bloody hands and a not completely severed tie. She’d believed at the time, so wholeheartedly, that her return had been the right path. Wealth and security and family over anything else. She’d said as much to her brother, in Vengeous’ home, and she’d had to believe it then. With Skulduggery’s family dead and him presumed so too, she’d had to believe it was all worth it.
Now, with Mevolent breathing down her neck and the claw marks from holding on too tight visible in everything her grandmother touched, it felt easier to be tempted.
“It wasn’t for nothing,” China admitted, almost without realising.
Something about her admission seemed to satisfy Hopeless. He walked past her, and she turned to watch him go.
“For some God-unknown reason, there are people who’d help you still, China. If you run, there’ll be people waiting on the other side.”
“Your side?” China asked, helplessly, with a small, defeated laugh.
Hopeless looked back at her. He was wearing a small, sad smile. He didn’t answer — there was nothing to say — but China recognised an ultimatum when she saw one. She took a deep breath, and let it out slow.
“I’ll be seeing you, Hopeless.”
—
The knock at the door startled China out of her thoughts. She smoothed down the front of her skirt as she stood, willing her hands to stop shaking. Ever since her conversation with Hopeless, she felt as though she had eyes on her every time she moved. It was frustrating, China wasn’t a nervous person by nature, and the shift had her clenching her fists each time she was taken by surprise.
The nerves returned, churning her stomach when she opened the door.
“Mevolent,” she said, only barely managing to keep the fear out of her voice.
Mevolent pushed his way in, not waiting for an invitation. His car sat in the driveway, someone China couldn’t make out sitting in the front seat. He shut the door behind him, wrenching China’s attention away from the car and to his face.
He looked deceptively calm, but China knew that facade far too well. He knows.
“Shall we do this in your study, China?” Mevolent asked, but it wasn’t a question. He knew the way, and began to walk before China could even open her mouth.
Her mind was desperately trying to keep up, trying to come up with a strategy before whatever he came here to do started. He wouldn’t kill her, that she was confident about. It wouldn’t be the Sorrows mansion up in flames tonight, not if he still wanted the cooperation of her grandmother. There was some safety she was guaranteed from that, but would Lydia Sorrows keep her safe from harm entirely? Or would her grandmother have simply waved a hand, agreeing that her troublesome granddaughter deserved to be taught a lesson?
She had been on a tight leash since her dalliance with her brother’s side of life two years back, and her grandmother had made it clear it could not be allowed to happen again.
I should have ran , she thought, as they entered the study. I should have listened to Hopeless and I just should have ran as far as I could.
Mevolent opened the french doors, letting in the cool night air. He made a gesture out into the darkness, before turning back to China.
“I thought Roarhaven would be just like any other town, when I arrived. I thought my work here would only take weeks, and then I would be on my way again. That was never going to be the case though, was it?”
China blinked, unsure of where he was going with his speech. There was movement outside, and China watched in horror as three men entered her study. One, she recognised all too well as Sheriff Baron Vengeous, and another, as the bloodied, dishevelled form of Hopeless, being propped up by a third she didn’t recognise.
Weeks ago, China may have reacted differently. She remembered how controlled she was when her brother had delivered the news of the Pleasant family murder. That China could have put on a mask, acted indifferent, given herself time to assess and approach the situation logically. That China would have felt nothing for the man in front of her, and would have cared only for protecting herself.
That China, as Hopeless had so eloquently put it only days earlier, was pure evil.
She started forward — to do what, she wasn’t sure — but Mevolent caught her, holding her tight and spinning her around so all she could do was watch. She thrashed against him, but he held tight, leaning down so his mouth was close to her ear when he spoke.
“These men have tried every last shred of my patience, and you are not too far behind.”
His voice was low and furious, and China could almost feel the rage coming off of him. She took sick pleasure in that, in the fact that this horrific man had been met at every turn by a group of upstart locals who simply refused to die. She thought of Skulduggery, and Erskine, pulling themselves back from whatever horrors Mevolent had thrown upon them, and wanted to laugh.
That triumph was flattened quickly when Vengeous walked over to Hopeless’ slumped form, pulling his head up roughly by grabbing a handful of hair. One of his eyes was swollen shut, but the other opened slightly, his whole face wincing in pain. He didn’t make a noise.
China wasn’t so dignified. She cried out, trying to kick Mevolent as she thrashed, like a fish pulled out of the river. “Please don’t, please!”
Her attempts to break free didn’t seem to bother Mevolent in the slightest. He held fast, and China was suddenly glad his face was out of her sight, because she could practically feel the smugness dripping off of him when he spoke.
“I was worried you would be something of a fly in the ointment. Your grandmother had warned me that you had a little incident a few years ago, and that a special eye would need to be kept on you. You almost had us all convinced China, when you gave Serpine that book of mine, that you were trustworthy. You were almost there.”
China was crying now, hysterical little sobs that made her afraid. She hadn’t cried like this in years. Hopeless’ eye met hers, and she wanted to look away, so ashamed and sorry and scared, but she could not look away from him, not now.
She wanted to be brave, like him. God, she wanted so many things. To be brave, to look away, to have run when she had the chance, to have made so many different decisions in the past.
“In your own house, China!” Mevolent was yelling now. “Even if you had summoned the nerve, who will take you in now? Who would believe that you did all you could to stop this next tragedy from taking place?”
Dull light reflected off of Vengeous’ polished Colt as he unholstered it. China was screaming and begging, a stream of unbroken rambling, promising loyalty, professing remorse. Mevolent couldn’t be moved. He held tight against her, and grabbed her chin cruelly with a free hand, forcing her to look ahead. She bit her own cheek where his thumb pressed in, and the taste of blood was immediate. If she wasn’t being held so roughly, she would have spit it in his face. As it was, there was nothing she could do. Except watch.
Hopeless’ gaze hadn’t left hers, and he still hadn’t spoken. Just stared ahead, resolute and calm in the face of what was going to happen to him. His mouth moved; no sound came out, but China saw his words for what they were.
Close your eyes .
It was like deliverance, like permission, and China wept for it. Even in this moment, the men she’d hurt so badly still wanted to protect her. She let that image burn into the back of her eyelids, Hopeless; dishevelled and bloodied, one dark eye fixed on her filled with nothing but calm. She hoped she’d memorised enough.
The crack of the Colt was enough to silence China’s begging, but she felt a pit open in her stomach, low and heavy, like it was the centre of all gravity around her. The thud came almost instantly, the unmistakable sound China had never heard before, but recognised instantly. Far away from her own body, mind suspended in a space that promised safety until she opened her eyes, China wondered if Skulduggery’s body had sounded like that, before he was dumped in the river. She wondered if Serpine had shot his wife and child first, if their bodies had fallen with such a heavy significance, if Skulduggery had heard that sound, and felt as disconnected as China felt now.
She barely noticed Mevolent letting her go. She hit the ground elbows first, managing to protect her face from being smashed on the carpet, but she kept her eyes shut. She curled in on herself, arms clutching her sides, like she was trying to keep herself together.
“Move him,” Mevolent muttered, audible only over the roar of white noise in China’s head, “before he makes too much of a mess of the carpet.”
China wanted to reach out blindly. She wanted to grab at Hopeless’ body, to pull him onto her lap and smooth his hair back. She wanted to hold his hands until they went cold. She wanted to hold him to her chest and apologise through tears. She didn’t do any of it. She let Vengeous roll the body away, and stayed silent, breathing heavy through her mouth.
She felt Mevolent crouch down next to her, and shivered when he dragged blunt fingernails over her cheek, gathering her dark hair out of the way so he could whisper in her ear.
“This was a nasty bit of business, China. I hope it puts us on the same page now.”
He stepped over her, and followed Vengeous out into the night, closing the patio doors behind him. China didn’t move, even when she heard the car start and peel off down the driveway. She couldn’t say for how long she lay there, shivering in the late spring chill, while blood dried slowly into her carpet. She may have slept, at one point, the exhaustion of the ordeal catching up to her, but when she finally opened her eyes, they were already filled with tears.
She pushed herself up, sitting cross-legged on the floor while tears spilled down her cheeks silently, like a child. Her vision swam, which she was grateful for. It made it impossible to focus on the blood on the floor, the walls, the furniture. She stood shakily, and reached out for her desk to steady herself. On unstable legs, managed to pull herself down the hallway until she reached the telephone.
Her fingers shook, and slipped several times using the rotary. She could have screamed at herself every time she got it wrong, dialling on muscle memory more than anything else, while her tears continued.
Finally, her call connected, and she slumped against the wall as far as the cord would let her go. Her jaw ached from where she’d been held, but she almost sobbed in relief when the phone was answered, and she heard Erskine’s sleep rough voice break through the static.
“Erskine,” she said, more a sigh and shaky breath than anything else. “It’s China. Something—” she inhaled sharply, a phantom sob, “—something terrible has happened.”