Traffic [Valduggery, Skulduggery Pleasant Fanfiction]

Sounds Like an Octopus Villain

Some ValDug set after Resurrection :) 

It was cold on this damn boat. It was some sort of fishing boat, or something, run by a couple who kept staring at them from behind the wheel. They spoke—what was it? Portuguese—in low, hushed tones. Maybe they were talking about how nice her new haircut was.

"Skulduggery?"

Skulduggery didn't move from his position in the front of the boat, hands on his hips, surveying the water. The empty, empty water. "Valkyrie."

"Why are we on a boat?"

"What's wrong with boats? I thought you liked the water? Especially the ocean. The salt air has actually been proven to do wonders for your mental health, did you know. I don't know why, but people say that running water is good for calming the mind. Something to do with negative ions, or anions, if they were more educated in chemistry."

"I do like the ocean." Valkyrie pulled her jacket a little tighter. "But, I mean, you can fly."

"And you can swim."

"So you'd rather hire a boat than fly to where we're supposed to be going?"

"It is a floating island, Valkyrie." He had been saying her name a lot, recently. "I can't very well fly across the entire ocean looking for this place. Not to mention, it might have gone off course, very off course, and I'd rather pay this boat to look around for me, rather than waste my energy."

"But flying is..."

"Cooler?"

Valkyrie shot a look over her shoulder at the men behind the wheel. "Indefinitely more cool."

Skulduggery gave a little shrug. "I'm always cool."

Valkyrie bit her lip. Tapped her fingers on her leg, crossed her arms, tied her hair back. Skulduggery looked at her. Valkyrie stopped moving.

"So, like." Valkyrie leaned back against the railing of the boat. "So what's up with Aby?"

"Abyssinia."

"That's what I said. So like... What's up? With you two?"

"I feel like I've already explained to you our relationship. Actually, you're just about the only one who does know the extent of our relationship. She was my ex-girlfriend. We had differing opinions on how to advance our relationship. I killed her. Twice." Skulduggery gave another shrug.

"Well, yeah." Valkyrie nodded. "But how did it... work?"

"Well, at first, she told me she loved me. She listened to my anger, didn't try to talk me out of it like everyone else had done. She made my anger feel justified, encouraged it, thought it was fascinating. 'Make them pay,' she said to me."

That was not the answer Valkyrie had been hoping for. "Right."

"And as soon as she stopped supporting that—killing for the pure joy—she was useless to me."

Ordinary. "Right. Yes."

Skulduggery tilted his head to the left, confused. "I'm sorry, was that not the answer you were looking for? We had a sadistic little fling."

Valkyrie felt herself blushing. "Well, it's just that, you know, you're a skeleton."

"These two topics of conversation aren't related. I am a skeleton, and I dated a psychopath when I was a psychopath." Skulduggery's voice had a smile in it.

"So, Aby wasn't... intimidated by you being a skeleton?"

They stared at each other. Valkyrie could feel herself growing more red. She shouldn't have asked, oh my God.

"Well, I wouldn't think so," Skulduggery finally murmured.

"And everything..." Valkyrie floundered. "Worked out?"

"I do feel sensations." His voice was as neutral as she had ever heard it. "I wouldn't be able to manipulate air, otherwise. And we both know I feel pain."

"So, it was more of a physical thing?" Valkyrie no longer had any control over her mouth.

"I would think," Skulduggery said slowly, like he was thinking over every word carefully, "that any action in this department would have to be physical."

"Well, you have an aura."

"A red one."

Valkyrie shrugged. She didn't think she looked very nonchalant. "Well, I just wasn't sure if that's... what she—manipulated."

"Ah." Skulduggery nodded. "I see. No, that wasn't our process."

"But there was a process?"

They stared at each other again.

"There's a shoe in the water behind you," Skulduggery said.

"What?"

There very much was a shoe in the water behind them. Skulduggery told the couple to pull up closer, and he reached down and deftly pulled it from the water. He held it up, held it closer to his eye, turned it around the other way.

Valkyrie raised an eyebrow. "It just looks like a shoe."

"I think it's a clue." He held it out to her. "I think Abyssinia has been stealing other people's essences and dumping the bodies in the ocean."

"Yeah, me too, but I don't think this shoe told you any of that." Valkyrie took the shoe. "They're the only things that float when a person is dead. Makes sense you'd find a shoe and not a body. But how do you even know this is a shoe related to Abyssinia?"

Skulduggery put his hands on his hips, staring at the shoe. "It matches up with the tidal times."

"You hesitated." Valkyrie squinted. "Are you trying to stall?"

Skulduggery took the shoe back—a little defensively. "What would I possibly be trying to stall, Valkyrie?"

"The... uh... other conversation."

"About my—relations with Abyssinia?" Skulduggery wiggled the tongue of the shoe. "Now, why on earth would I want to avoid that conversation?" He looked past her shoulder. "I have some bad news: there are more shoes."

Valkyrie turned around. Hundreds of shoes bobbed on the waves, all different brands.

"Oh no," she breathed.

"Seems Aby has been busy."