#i love crystal but istg i couldve stomped her ass

[bumblydumbly]

Everyone only wants to talk about Edwin but can we just talk about Charles for a second? Charles “The Brawn” Rowland?

He lived a protector, he died a protector, he afterlifes as a protector. Is that cementing for you? Protected his mom, from the brunt of his dad’s aggression, protected a schoolmate from his own ‘friends’, protects Edwin how he can, to the point that Edwin doesn’t want to even bother learning self-defense, apparently a decades old argument.

But then they have Crystal. It was Charles’ idea, but now he has another to protect. Someone alive. Even though its what Edwin has been telling him, it hits him encountering Esther, when him and Edwin are blown away, she can see them, she has iron, he can’t protect them and Crystal is mortal in a way he hadn’t really considered until then, and does the very thing he warned against!

Then Niko shows up and almost dies before they even get to know her, and he wouldve been powerless to save her if not for Crystal’s gambit. And then he is trapped in a different ending to his life, watching people (mothers, daughters, people he is meant to protect) die over and over and he is again powerless, in a familiar way and it worms its way under his skin, just watching. Watching had always been a great wrong to him (his mother had only watched, his schoolmates and teachers had only watched, Edwin’s schoolmates and teachers only watched, and done nothing, and to varying degrees, he hated them for it) but now its all he can do, and its killing him. He knows the Cat King rattled Edwin but he doesnt know why, he can’t help Crystal with an abuser in her head; he’s a protector, and all he’s doing is failing lately.

His friends notice something is wrong. They poke and prod at something he’d rather forget. He’s on edge and just wants to go home and leave this fucking place and then the Night Nurse shows and they thought something was going well for Crystal finally and instead its another thing he fucked up coming back to bite him and Edwin.

The Night Nurse is Charles’ personal bogeyman. If not Death, then any other power that could separate him and Edwin. To break the peace he found. To take the happiness he made, only after he died. To take Edwin back to Hell, where he doesn’t belong, and to be taken to his own Hell he’s convinced he deserves. This is the battle he and Edwin have been preparing for for over 30 years, the inevitable Fight For Their Afterlife, and he’s ready.

But the Night Nurse does something he doesn’t expect, and tap dances on all of his trauma to bait him into listening to her, she shoves all of his failures in his face and mocks him in his abuse and in his death. So in his hurt and panic and anger and fear and despair and desperation he Protects.

But he turns around, and his friends are looking at him in horror and fear, like his mother used to look standing vigil over his abuse, like the boy he defended looked at his ‘friends’. His greatest fear from his life, that he thought he left behind in favor of losing Edwin comes to light: becoming his father.

Basically, Charles Rowland: