#and valkyrie visits him and tanith too and they just sit by his bed

[thorin-is-a-cuddler]

Revelation

A/N: Spoilers for all Skulduggery books till #13

There has been some talk about what would happen if Dexter finds out that Skulduggery is Lord Vile. So have my extremely dramatic version. 

This takes place after Tanith, Skulduggery, Valkyrie and Dexter had a fight in Roarhaven against Lord Vile who has travelled into their dimension from the Leibniz Universe. He revealed himself to them and it goes all downhill from then on. I listened to incredibly sad music while writing this, so ... just be certain that you can take bad, bad angst without happy end when you read this.

Dexter was sweating. He was also bleeding. And he was incredibly pale. 

Valkyrie was very quiet while taking care of his bleeding collarbone. She didn’t dare to look at his face. Something very close to horror had taken over her eyes and now seemed to jam through her every second she breathed. Her cheeks appeared more hollow than they actually were. The revelation from the fight they’d just survived in Roarhaven had obviously shocked her deeply. 

Dexter could of course understand that. He himself was in a nearly catatonic state. That picture. That picture of him taking off his armor. The moment right after his helmet had disappeared. With a shudder Dexter realized how sick he felt. „Val…“ He huffed out warningly, before he held his head to the side and threw up in the far corner of the abandoned room. 

Valkyrie lowered her shaking fingers. Blood was on her fingertips and on her cheek from her own cut. A cut Lord Vile had caused with his slashing shadows. 

Tanith was standing by the window that was nailed shut with three wooden bars. She was hugging herself, avoiding to look at either one of the other three. 

And Skulduggery was staying in the shadows. He was standing by the wall opposite to Tanith. He was completely still. More so than usual. No wind moved his clothes, his arms didn’t cross over his chest, he didn’t touch his hat. He just stood there. And waited. 

Dexter readjusted his position on the broken bed by the window and took the piece of cloth out of Valkyrie’s hand to take care of his wound himself. He patted the space next to him and tried to take her by the arm, meaning to help her sit down in case she was feeling as nauseous as he was. But Valkyrie freed her arm from his grasp and took a step away from him. She’d only looked that grave to Dexter once before and that was during their mission in the Leibniz Universe. All the guilt, all the pain she’d felt back then had settled in the lines on her face. The exact same face was looking at him now. 

All Dexter could think off to lighten the mood was the following bit: „You know that feeling when you watch a mystery movie or something and you guess who might be the disguised stranger and you have ideas and when the revelation comes up it’s someone completely unexpected? That is such a shocking feeling. Shocking… Like… that’s what I just felt… I would have never guessed that the Lord Vile from the Leibniz Universe is Skulduggery!“ A hysterical laugh escaped him and suddenly all eyes were on him. 

Skulduggery took a step to the side. Valkyrie’s lips parted in surprise and Tanith raised her brows. She had found out about Skulduggery being Lord Vile back in the Leibniz Universe already. And she had managed to make the correct conclusions. Skulduggery was Lord Vile. In every universe. In every story ever told, in every horrible memory kept, in every encounter made. It had been Skulduggery in that armor. That was his biggest, darkest secret. And Tanith had kept it. She knew, Valkyrie had been keeping it, too. Probably for a lot longer than she had. 

Yet, here they were. The last of the Dead Men were bleeding on the floor and Dexter couldn’t jump to the conclusion. He couldn’t. He had always been the smartest of them all. The most reasonable and thoughtful - despite his (former) tendency to crack jokes and take life lightly. He had loved his friends so deeply, so profoundly. All of them. Anton, Ghastly, Larrikin, even Erskine, Skulduggery. 

Saracen…

And he had lost all of them. He had loved them and he had lost them. What remained was his friendship with Skulduggery. He cared about Valkyrie and Tanith. But it wasn’t the same. With the Dead Men he’d fought evil, he’d survived on less than one could survive on, he’d suffered for them, with them. Now they were all gone. Only Skulduggery remained. Only Skulduggery. Who had now been in the armor of Lord Vile. 

That could not be. Dexter didn’t allow the conclusions to arise. He pushed them down, down, down. They were coming right back up, forcing him to puke, forcing him to acknowledge them, to see what was true. What always had been true. The way Skulduggery had betrayed them, had tried to murder them, had fought against them. The way he had made them suffer. The cause of the worst kind of nightmares, the reason why Dexter had spent nights awake, hunching in the shadows to protect his crew, scared Lord Vile might come and wreak havock on them all. It had been Skulduggery. The root of so much pain and anger. The reason for war, for loss, for grief. 

Dexter’s hysterical laughter stopped. He took in deep, hard breaths. With a wavering smile he stared into the shadow to make out Skulduggery’s shape. „Lord Vile, ha! That could be hilarious, if it weren’t so fucking disturbing!“ 

He waited for a comment, for a snort, anything that reminded him of the Skulduggery he’d known. He needed to hear that, to see that. He was starting to feel sicker and sicker, the longer the awful silence remained. Valkyrie’s horrified eyes were piercing through him, Tanith’ creased forehead and lowered chin worried him, Skulduggery’s frozen shape didn’t allow relief to flood his stomach. 

„Dexter…“ the husky, morbid voice from the shadow said. The despair in Skulduggery’s tone forced Valkyrie to close her eyes. The physical pain in her gut was almost too much. She could barely keep herself on her feet. Tears threatened to slip out from between her tightly shut lids. 

Dexter’s face turned pale again. So pale. His blue eyes, once so bright and glinting, now lost all their color. It looked like the conclusion had been dropped into the deep blue oceans of his eyes and was now slowly sinking to the bottom. Like a disease. Like a poison. Killing everything on its way down. Hope, love, trust, admiration. What was left was two cold, colorless ponds, haunted and emptied of life. 

Skulduggery was Lord Vile.

From his eyes the disease spread. His face distorted into a mask of pain. The slow inundation of his features broke Tanith’s heart, made it explode like a glass made from crystal. She pushed her fists against her stomach to keep herself whole. Otherwise she might have just as well copied her heart’s desire to dissolve. 

The tears came faster than his anger. 

Silently they fell. 

Valkyrie pressed her hands against her lips. She saw Dexter in front of her, that last rest of the man he used to be. She saw the cold, dead eyes, the tears streaming down his face, his lips slightly trembling, as he stayed still like a statue. 

Skulduggery dropped his head, his hat covering the bones of his face. There was nothing he could say, there was nothing he could do to make this up to his old friend. This was it. 

Dexter gulped hard and moved his hands to his cheeks. With one swipe he got rid of his tears. Then he looked down at his knees, his jaw clenched hard enough to make the bone pop. It was starting.

It already crackled between his fingers. 

His magic wanted to take matters in its own hands. The energy was throbbing in his chest. It looked like a lighting heart that shot the blood through his veines. 

All that grief, all that impossible pain he saw himself faced with needed an outlet. 

The next time he looked up at Skulduggery, the cold ponds of his eyes were glowing blue. 

Skulduggery immediately grabbed Valkyrie’s arm and hauled her behind himself, he meant to grab for Tanith, too, but Dexter suddenly let out a herat-wrenching howl and uncotrollable blue energy sparks flew between Tanith and Skulduggery. She gasped in shock and threw herself against the wooden bars of the window to get out of their way. 

„DEXTER!!!“ Valkyrie screamed when a loud windy noise started to accompany the growth of the energy turmoiling in Dexter’s chest. Tears were blurring her sight. She wanted to run to him, but Sulduggery caught her around the waist and wrestled her to the floor.

„NOO! I NEED TO HELP HIM! HE NEEDS HELP!“ 

„YOU CAN’T HELP HIM, VAL!! NOBODY CAN!“ 

Valkyrie wailed in agony as she saw Dexter lose more and more control over his own magic. He squeezed his eyes shut in pain, only to open them again with panic. He clutched his hands to his chest and tried to curl in on himself, but that seemed to only cause him even more pain. He threw his head against the wall. The windy noise turned louder. Dexter’s eyes were shining with an almost white light now from the energy building up behind them. 

Skulduggery held Valkyrie’s head down with his gloved hands and stared at his old friend. He saw what he had done to him. He saw what the revelation of his past crimes meant to Dexter. He saw how he had betrayed him in the darkest way possible. And all he could do now was stare at the anguish and heartbreak that threatened to tear Dexter apart. 

Tanith cried out, when the energy in Dexter’s core came to its ultimate expansion. She threw herself to the ground and covered her head in the same way Skulduggery was covering Valkyrie’s. 

The sound Dexter made when his grief exploded in a destructive energetic wave was the cry of a tormented soul, already in hell, already right inside the burning flames. 

Valkyrie screamed when her eardrums shattered, Skulduggery felt a myriad of cracks tear through his bones. Tanith’ head slammed to the ground and blood started trickling from her nose, her eyes, her ears. And when the house shattered around them, they fell and their arms and legs got squashed under the roof, the walls, the wood. And when it was all over they remained motionless under the weight of what Skulduggery had done. Because he was the one who had committed all of Lord Vile’s crimes. What Valkyrie had been able to forgive, because she hadn’t enlived it, had ripped the heart out of Dexter’s chest. 

When they found him, his eyes had dissolved into smoke, blood running down his cheeks. His ribs were deformed and had managed to tear through his skin in two spots. His chest was perforated from energy streaks that had been so forceful they had shot through his skin like bullets. Valkyrie fell on her knees before him and cradled his head on her shoulder, holding on to him until the healers arrived. Because he was alive. 

But all three of them knew when he woke up he would wish to be dead.