Fanfiction: The Hour of Separation - Chapter Six
The Hour of Separation - Chapter Six
Charles tried not to think about hell whenever possible. It made him angry that Edwin had gone back there for any reason, that Edwin had been there for any moment at all. Charles hated that he hit the bell and hurt everyone, even though he should have read the notes and saw that it would have. He hated that fucking spider and the sound Edwin made when it took him away. Charles wasn't ever getting the sight of that thing tearing the body of his best friend apart out of his head for the rest of his afterlife.
Edwin's confession was something they hadn't really talked about that much. He had assured Edwin that nothing would change, and Charles very much meant that. At the time, he thought nothing would change, but then they did. Now Edwin touched him all the time, and it was distracting and confusing, as well as the best thing that had ever happened to him. He never wanted to go back to the days when he had to practically beg for any sort of affection from Edwin. At the same time, this new sort of affection was almost blinding, given how lovely it was and how much Charles was unsure how to handle it.
So Edwin seemed more at ease with himself, and they didn't talk about hell. That was the reality that Charles was living in right now, and the thought of doing anything else made him want to jump into his backpack and hide for days. He knew they needed to talk about it, but between their caseload and all of the weird things happening, it seemed like the wrong time, and Charles knew this was an important conversation to have. He also needed to figure out what he would say in this conversation.
It was very early in the morning, and the girls looked like they would have murdered them both if they weren't already dead. That was a common enough expression on Crystal's face, but it was rather impressive to see Niko looking that homicidal. Edwin sighed heavily and dug into his desk, presenting two energy drinks he had stolen from the store the night before. They were warm, but a peace offering that they had brought the two of them in so early. Crystal looked like she didn't trust this, so she took the can and handed it to Niko.
"There is something strange going on that people have been mentioning offhandedly, but no one has brought it up as an official case yet," Edwin said. "They said something about ghosts being in the wrong place, and those that are tethered to locations are suddenly moved somewhere else."
"What happens after that?" Crystal asked.
"Nothing, as far as anyone can tell. They move, and then Death comes to pick them up, and they move on. It just takes a little longer because they aren't where they're supposed to be," Edwin replied.
"Isn't that breaking ghost rules?" Niko asked, and Charles shrugged.
"We call them 'rules,' but we don't know anything definitively." He explained. The whole thing was still weird, and they would have to keep an eye on it. Ghosts that are tethered to locations are often volatile, and having some random, angry ghost suddenly moving locations is asking for trouble. They were working on another case when Niko's phone rang. She frowned when she looked at it and took the call in the hallway. Charles could hear her speaking softly in Japanese. The time between Niko being gone and coming back was hard, mostly because her mom thought she was dead. It took some fancy footwork to reveal that she'd been in a hospital in another state with no identification and was unconscious. It seemed to work, but it made things even harder with her mom.
Niko walked back into the office and was white as if she were about to faint. Charles was the closest to her, and he nearly tripped over his own feet, getting over to her and helping her to the couch. She was shaking in his arms, and he could already see tears in her eyes.
"Niko, what happened?" Crystal asked.
"My mom was in a car accident. She is in the hospital with some pretty bad injuries," she whispered. Charles wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and when he looked up at Edwin and Crystal, they looked at each other and looked like they were ready for battle.
"Okay, we need to get you to Japan as fast as possible," Crystal said as she knelt before Niko. "Let's go back home, and I'll break the spending limit on my parent's credit card so we can get there immediately."
"We can travel with you or meet you there," Edwin said. Niko nodded without making a choice, but Crystal was already out the door and on the phone with someone about ordering tickets. Once Niko was on her feet, Edwin pulled her into one of those bone-crushing hugs that always made Charles feel better. "Whatever you need, all you need to do is ask," he whispered into her hair. She nodded and pulled away like she was about to leave but stopped.
"If you don't mind, could you go sit with her? So she's not alone?" Niko asked.
This was always the risk when they decided to become friends with the living. In many ways, it was fleeting, and both Charles and Edwin knew that these friendships, no matter how meaningful, were finite and probably even shorter than the girls wanted to admit. The truth was they would get older and have their own lives, get partners, and have kids, while he and Edwin stayed just as they were. One night, when they were discussing it not long after Port Townsend, Edwin likened it to a twisted version of Peter Pan, and the girls were the Darling family who couldn't stay in Neverland and stay kids.
However, Charles knew, and he knew Edwin agreed, that these friendships were worth it when you met someone like Niko Sasaki. In many ways, Charles credited her for bringing Edwin out of his shell, accomplishing something he'd been attempting to do for decades in mere weeks. Crystal once said that she was "too pure for this world," and Charles was inclined to agree, even if her taste in manga was anything but pure. There was something so pure and so good about Niko that made you want to do anything for her.
So when she stood there and asked them to sit with her mother in an intensive care unit in a hospital, where people died all the time and Death would be going in and out of the building at lightning speed, neither of them hesitated to say, "Yes." The tiny smile she gave them as she closed the door seemed to indicate that she hadn't thought about the ramifications of putting two dead boys running from Death in a hospital, but she asked them to sit with her mother, and this was Niko, so they were going to do it.
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Niko told them her mother's name and what hospital she was in, but that was about it. She needed to focus on getting to Japan as quickly as possible, and international travel was not exactly instantaneous for the living. Charles liked to think he and Edwin were halfway to smart between them, so they could find her if pointed in the right direction. The problem was that they did not want to spend a second longer in the hospital than necessary because Death was going to be everywhere. They hadn't gone anywhere near a hospital, even for cases for this exact reason, yet here they were.
This was such a monumentally bad idea.
"Charles," Edwin's voice cut through his anxiety and brought Charles back to reality. "We're going to be okay."
"I feel like you've been saying that to me a lot lately," he replied.
"Consider it me paying you back for the many, many hits you've taken for me over the year," Edwin said. Charles was about to argue that he was supposed to be the one taking the hits, but Edwin just shut that entire line of thought down with a look. He knew when there wasn't any point in pursuing a line of thought with Edwin, so Charles dropped it. They made their way through the mirror to Tokyo. The city was busy, and they were fairly close to the hospital, but there was something that seemed a little off. Unlike the states, but more like Europe, there didn't appear to be that many people who were driving cars, yet Niko's mom was in a car accident.
Fortunately for the two of them, if anyone in the city could see them, their fashion choices didn't seem that different from teenagers their own age who seemed to be experimenting with their own looks. Charles didn't like to admit that he liked clothes because his father would have beaten him, but seeing men, women, and everyone else expressing themselves through clothing was something he envied the living for. It took a little time for them to finally find the hospital because Tokyo was absolutely massive, and they both stared at it.
"Any ideas?" Charles asked. "I know she asked us to sit with her, but that is a terrible idea. We can check on her, but we need to find her and find out where she is in that massive place."
"There is likely a bathroom with a mirror we could travel through once we know what room she is in. We can just jump back and forth, but we need somewhere to jump back to. Somewhere close, so it's easier, so we can stay close just in case." Edwin said as he looked around. There was a large parking structure that looked separate from the rest of the hospital. If Death was running around, she had no reason to enter a parking lot. It took some time, but they found a storage closet that wasn't insanely small where they could sit comfortably. Charles dug into his backpack and pulled out one of the extra mirrors they carried around, just in case. It wasn't massive; they would have to practically crawl, but it was enough.
Once they had a safe place to jump to if they needed to run, it was time to face the hospital. Charles wasn't sure if he reached for Edwin's hand or if it was the other way around, but by some unspoken conversation, they threaded their fingers together and held on tight. Was it smart to go into the hospital while still holding hands? Probably. Did it make it a little harder for them to move? Yes. Was Charles going to let go anytime soon? Absolutely not. The problem with hospitals was the same one they had with police stations; there were people who had near-death experiences all over who could see them. Charles did his best not to make eye contact with anyone.
They had to jump back to their storage closet three times to avoid Death before they even went to the department where they thought Niko's mother could be. From there, it took a lot of ducking in and out of corners to find the right room, and Charles didn't think he'd ever been so glad to see someone in a hospital with a private room. Immediately, he could see the family resemblance even through all the bruising. It looked like her arm and leg were broken; she was sleeping deeply, and she was covered in cuts and bruises that he could only guess were from broken glass.
There didn't appear to be any paper charts around so they couldn't get more information about what had happened, so they were essentially useless. The intensive care unit was filled with people who were hurt or close to death, and Charles kept an eye out for that familiar blue or red light. The first time the room opened the door, they scrambled into the bathroom, through the mirror, and into their little closet with absolutely zero elegance. Somehow, Charles fell on his back, and Edwin was basically on top of him, which was a sensation that Charles didn't think he would enjoy so much. It was over before it started, and they settled into their little hiding hole until they needed to jump again. They could have returned to the office, but that felt like they weren't doing what Niko asked.
"Surely this is just a coincidence, right?" Charles said. "Just because the thing with Jenny and the Cat King happened, this can't be related. It's got to be a coincidence or terrible luck, right?" He wasn't sure who he was trying to convince, but considering the fact that Edwin didn't reply, he probably didn't believe a word Charles was saying. They were sitting side by side without any space between them, and Charles gave in to his impulse to rest his cheek on Edwin's shoulder. They would get up and check on Niko's mom again in a little while, but right now, it seemed like neither of them were inclined to move.
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Charles lost count of how many times they mirror-hopped between Niko's mother's room and their little storage closet, but it was enough that he was beginning to feel like he wasn't really in either place. When it seemed like they would need to take an extended break, the next time they jumped through, Niko and Crystal were both there. Niko immediately threw her arms around both of them and held them tightly.
"I didn't even think about how dangerous it was asking you two to be in a hospital where people are constantly dying; why didn't you say anything?" she asked.
"Because you asked us to look over her," Edwin replied like that was the obvious answer because it was. Niko asked, and they were going to do it. They still would have done it if she had turned around a minute later and taken the request back because she realized what she was asking. Niko frowned like she would argue that, but Charles decided to linger on this, which wouldn't do them any good. It was like Edwin trying to yell at him for going down to hell to bring Edwin back; it would always happen, and arguing about it wouldn't change anything.
"We couldn't access any sort of medical charts, so we don't know anything or if anything has changed," Charles said. That seemed to be the thing that brought Niko back to the present as she looked at her mother.
"It's not as bad as it could be, but it's also not good," she said softly. "The doctors don't know much about the accident, just that she wasn't driving, and the driver was pronounced dead on arrival. We don't have cars, so I can only guess Mom was in a taxi. But we don't know."
"I tried to read her, but anything about the accident is blurry," Crystal said. Charles glanced at Edwin and saw that his friend was having a hard time because they were both thinking the same thing; could this be another attack against someone connected to them? All Charles could think about was the way Thomas's and Jenny's faces looked when they realized that the terrible things happening to them were linked to them.
"How can we help, Niko?" Edwin asked softly. This was a way of seeing if Niko wanted them to look into this or if they would have to do it on their own without telling her right now.
"I want to know what happened, but I don't think I can help, and I don't want to be alone," Niko said quietly.
"I'll stay," Crystal said without missing a beat. "I'm sure those two can figure it out without us. They were doing it long before we came along." The unspoken 'and will continue to do it long after we're gone' hung in the room, but Charles wasn't about to draw attention to it.
"Anything you need," he said, and Edwin nodded. They hugged Niko tightly, and if she clung to them a little tighter, that was fine. She needed someone to hold her, and they were also happy to provide that service. It was still unsafe to stay in the hospital, so they mirror-hopped out of the room and back into their little closet. Charles packed up the extra "travel mirror," as he started referring to it, and they made their way out into the city. They didn't know their way around and had mirror-hopped a lot in the last day or so, so they took public transportation when possible and walked.
"Any ideas who could be doing this?" Charles asked as they rode one of the trains. It was packed, so they had stuffed themselves into a corner, but even then, they would occasionally phase through a person. However, once it kept happening and people got the chill that came from phasing through them, they started to avoid that corner of the car, thinking maybe a vent was broken.
"Ever since that man spoke to me in Port Townsend, I've been going through old case files and the mail, but I haven't found a single thing that could point us in any direction. Whoever this person is, their connection to us is either buried in a case file that I'm unable to find, or they are connected to someone we have interacted with."
"And if that's the case, literally any case we have solved could be a possibility, and it's not like we can ask anyone follow-up questions," Charles finished, and Edwin hummed in agreement. "I don't think I've ever wanted a car accident to just be a car accident more."
"Indeed." It took a couple of tries to find the right police department that had the file on the accident. It was the middle of the night, and thankfully, Edwin knew just enough Japanese to get through the computer. Charles kept a lookout as he copied down the incident report so they would not have to spend any more time around police than they needed to. Once they had all the information needed, it was easy to find a restaurant that was closed for the night where they could sit down and talk quietly.
The report detailed that it was a two-car accident that happened at a four-way stop. One of the cars ran a red light and smashed into the other. From the report, it looked like the car Niko's mother was in had the right of way, and the other car hit them. However, the witnesses' statements about which car has the right of way were inconclusive. Edwin wasn't able to get copies of the pictures right now, but the description of the car detailed that if Niko's mother had been sitting behind the driver instead of behind the passenger side, she probably wouldn't have made it. It wasn't just the taxi driver who passed away; it was the other driver as well, with Niko's mother being the sole survivor of the crash. Several other cars were almost involved, a few fender benders here and there, but nothing that really contributed to the injuries.
If there was CCTV footage of the crash, they hadn't had a chance to watch it, but they did have the address of the crash, and that was somewhere to start. Charles didn't think they would get lucky enough that one of the drivers would be hanging around and could help them, but there was a chance. The four-way stop was fairly busy by the time they got there, but there didn't appear to be any evidence of lingering ghosts that they could talk to, get some information from, and then help them move on. Charles was looking at the road itself, trying to see if there was anything that could have caused the accident when Edwin called him over to a small corner shop.
"I believe that camera could have captured the accident," he said. This was one of those times when Crystal's presence would have helped a lot, but the corner shop was on a skeleton crew for the night shift, and it was fairly easy to phase into the back office and use the computer to look through the CCTV. The camera did catch the accident, and Charles couldn't hide his wince when the two cars smashed into each other. As the report detailed, no other cars were involved besides just running into each other to avoid the accident, and pedestrians immediately ran over to see if they could help. However, something about the pedestrians didn't sit right with him, but Charles couldn't quite figure out what it was.
"Charles," Edwin said, "the witness statements were inconclusive, with people reporting that both cars had the right of way, correct?"
"That's what you copied down, mate, yep," Charles replied.
"Look at the traffic light." Edwin pointed at the light and started the footage again. The light changed moments before the accident, so both directions were green. Charles closed his eyes and sighed heavily.
"They were both green," he said,
"They were both green," Edwin repeated. "There is the chance that there was some sort of glitch, but considering everything that has been happening, I believe we should work under the assumption that this was intentional. If nothing else, I believe overreacting is the best course of action rather than assuming nothing is wrong." Charles agreed with that entire statement, but something about this footage was still bothering him.
"Switch seats with me," Charles said as he sat down and watched the footage play again. Edwin was close, watching over his shoulder, because he knew that Charles wouldn't have sat down like this if he didn't have a hunch of his own. It wasn't the crash that was bothering him; there was something in the crowd that was just off enough that he noticed. Like it was a bad guy pretending to be a good guy and helping someone in an accident, but Charles could see through them. It took a little while, but he finally saw it.
"There," Charles said, and he used his finger to point to one of the people running up to the crash. "This guy right here never turns his back to the camera, and he moves in a way that is weird enough that it's intentional. He also looks in Niko's mom's car and hesitates, but then other people come over, and he backs off."
"Almost like he was going to finish the job," Edwin said. "That motion right there, as he walked into the street, that hand movement occurs, and the traffic lights are working normally again." They watched as this mystery person didn't wait for the paramedics or the police to arrive and instead walked into a building just on the edge of the screen. It appeared to be a highrise that was being remodeled. "If this is the person that attacked Jenny and killed the cats to turn Thomas against us, we know that he is manipulating things, and he is only letting us see what he wants us to see. We are seeing this footage and him going into this building because he wants us to and he wants us to follow him."
"Hence, we're probably walking into a trap or ambush of some kind," Charles said with a groan. There was a very good chance that the tormentor wasn't there anymore; it had been a few days, but he had a very good feeling that the area would be empty, either. He agreed with Edwin; if this person is as smart as they think he is, he wants them in this location. Charles glanced at Edwin, who had this pinched expression on his face as he likely came to the same conclusion, but there might be some sort of clue there, and they couldn't leave a stone unturned--not when this person was targeting their friends and allies.
Charles dug into his backpack and got his bat and a spellbook that Edwin could use just in case something happened. It was a short walk across the street to the construction site, and if they were going to do this, they needed to do it now. It would be early morning soon, and workers would start showing up soon. The last thing either of them wanted was a member of the living to get caught up in a trap intended for them.
"Stay behind me," Charles said, and the look Edwin gave him would have sent most people running in the other direction, but Charles was not deterred. "I mean it, mate. You stay behind me and let me take care of this. That's the deal."
"Fine, Charles, for Heaven's sake," Edwin said. They phased through the door with Edwin a step behind Charles. He had his bat in hand and kept an eye on every corner. There was construction equipment everywhere, but so far, it just looked like a normal construction site. It was hard to tell if anyone was in the building since the sound of the city was deafening, even this late at night. They made their way through the first level of the site until they got to the back, where a large symbol was drawn on the floor. The walls in this room were all boarded up with what looked like cheap plywood as if someone had done it very quickly. Charles knew better than to step on whatever was on the floor, but Edwin needed to get close to see what it was. He stayed close to Edwin's back, bat in hand, ready to drop the first thing that came after them.
"Curious," Edwin said softly. "This appears to be a variation of a rune that someone would use if they were trying to summon the dead."
"You think he was going to try and summon us?"
"No, it wouldn't work on us. It was designed to pull demons up from hell, but it's been modified to try and bring a soul back from wherever they ended up. Someone who is extremely experienced with magic and summoning did this, but it appears that the rune didn't work," Edwin explained.
"Then why leave it here? Why guide us here and show us this?" Charles asked out loud. He didn't get the chance to get an answer to that question when something in the room changed. They had triggered something, and he could feel it. Judging from the way Edwin nearly jumped to his feet, he could feel it, too. It felt like pressure was building in the room, but nothing around them changed. Charles grabbed Edwin to shield him from whatever was coming, but the force shoved them back as hard as possible. He was expecting it to hurt when he hit the wall, but what Charles wasn't expecting was what felt like hundreds of small pricks of blinding pain all over his back.
He'd protected Edwin from whatever was on the wall he had hit, but the pain was blinding. Vaguely, he heard Edwin saying something to him, but he sounded far away. All Charles could focus on was the pain in his back, and he gave into the scream of pain he was desperately trying to hold in. Everything was a bit black around the edges, and Charles decided that giving into the black was a good idea, if only for a moment.
+++
Charles came back to the sound of Edwin yelling his name. Not much time had passed, which was good, but there was still a significant amount of pain in his back. It wasn't so bad that Charles couldn't sit up, but Edwin was helping him nevertheless and saying something about iron and his back. The words weren't making sense, though, and he said as much to Edwin.
"All of these walls have iron nails in them, hundreds of them, everywhere," Edwin said. "We must have triggered something the second we walked into the room. He wanted both of us pushed back and impaled on those nails. You protected me from them, but you hit many of them."
"You're saying this guy puts hundreds of iron nails in these walls so that we would hit them?" Charles asked, and Edwin nodded. "Who the fuck does that? And to what end?"
"It's not just that. The rune vanished once the spell was activated, and I didn't get to sketch all the details. We cannot have Crystal come do a reading," Edwin said.
"So you're saying, at the end of this, all we are a dozen iron holes healing in me, a rune that doesn't exist anymore, and a shot of this man that doesn't show his face in any way," Charles stated.
"Essentially, we have nothing," Edwin said. They had nothing for Niko as well, and somehow, that hurt even more than the healing iron wounds on Charles's back. They sat at that construction site for a long time until workers arrived and loudly complained about the plywood walls someone must have put up after hours because they weren't supposed to be there.
They had a couple of things that they had to do first. While it wasn't easy now that the store was open, they got a copy of the CCTV footage of the crash, so they had at least some sort of photo. They also returned to the police station to get a copy of the police report. Edwin found an old printer hidden in a storage closet, and it took a little work, but they got it up and running, and they were able to send the report to the printer and had a hard copy of the entire thing. It was just another thing they would add to the "unsolved" wall.
It was mid-afternoon when they mirror hopped back to the hospital. Niko and Crystal were already there, and Niko's mom looked a little better, at least to Charles. The girls agreed to meet them just outside the hospital so they could speak freely, and they were able to find a small bench where they could deliver the bad news. Edwin was much closer to Niko than Charles was, so he let Edwin do most of the talking. He explained the accident, what they had seen, the traffic lights, and the mysterious man who appeared and left a strange rune and the trap on the construction site.
"Niko, it appears your mother was targeted because of your connection to us and--"
"No," Niko said, cutting him off. "I'm not going to listen to you two blame each other for this. Do you want to know why?" They wordlessly nodded their heads. "If you hadn't come to Port Townsend, I would be dead. The sprites were already inside of me when you arrived, so if you hadn't come and we hadn't met, I would be dead. So don't you ever think of apologizing for something that isn't your fault; I won't stand for it."
It took a lot to render Edwin speechless, but Niko always managed to do it. Crystal wrapped an arm around Niko's shoulder and pulled her into a hug she had just melted into. "How can we help?" Crystal asked.
"I need to stay and care for my mom," Niko said. "So don't forget about me or replace me in the agency. I want my place to still be there when I get back."
"No one can replace you, Niko," Charles said. She pulled both of them into tight hugs. Charles was all too happy to return, and Crystal said she would work on getting a flight home as soon as possible. They were still going to be spending a lot of time at the hospital, so it would be best if Edwin and Charles went back to London, which was exactly what they did.
Charles watched as Edwin made the case file for Niko's mother and meticulously filled it with all of the information they had so far. It was added to the same place as Jenny's assault and the killings in Port Townsend. "It was different this time. If he was trying to get Niko to hate us, I'm not even sure what he could do to make that happen," Charles said as he stood side by side with Edwin, looking over those unsolved cases. They were shoulder to shoulder, and Charles pushed down his desire to wrap Edwin up in his arms and hold onto him as tightly as possible. He missed something today, and Edwin almost got hurt; Charles could not let that happen again.
"What if the intention isn't to make people dislike us?" Edwin said. "We hypothesized that he wants to separate us and make us easier targets, but maybe he's going out this in a different way. You cannot separate us without first severing our ties to the living world. The point of the car accident wasn't to make Niko hate us; it was to force her to relocate to Japan, hence temporarily severing yet another tie to the living world."
"All right, let's assume all of that; we still aren't any closer to a "why," and if we are following the pattern, Crystal is next," Charles replied.
"We'll have to protect her." When Edwin said that, he made it sound like it was going to be easy, but it was clear that this guy was going about this in weird ways. They could protect Crystal from a threat that was directly in front of them, but Charles didn't know how they could protect her from this.
Notes: Happy Monday, everyone. I hope you're all having a good day and a solid start to your week. We're back with part six. I'm going to wait to change the chapter count, but it will change, and once I have a better idea of what it will be, I'll be sure to do that. More plot happenings continue to happen in this chapter, and a couple of you guessed what the intention of my bad guy was, to an extent. There is still more going on, and I will keep my cards to my chest. If you want chapter previews, I post them on my Tumblr for Work in Progress Wednesday and Six Sentence Sunday, so feel free to follow me there. My life is an absolute disaster right now, so I cannot overstate how much every kudos, comment, and like means to me.