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After being settled down in their renewed office, with their new minder and their new stationery set—all thanks to Crystal—Edwin feels an insurmountable surge of loneliness.
It’s nothing he hasn’t felt before. He’s even confessed his plight to the Cat King himself, but admitting to being lonely doesn’t mean the feeling will go away after accepting it.
Edwin wishes he could share this new phase of their afterlives with Niko, but Niko is no longer with them. He isn’t capable of sleep, but whenever he closes his eyes the images of her passing assault him like nightmares: the flashes of light stabbing her square in the chest, her white hair floating around as she slumped against Crystal with one last breath passing her lips. He remembers the helplessness, the inability to do more than witness her downfall while being tied to that hellish device Esther had invented only for his torture. He remembers screaming until he felt as though his lungs would have collapsed if he had still been human, wishing that beam of malevolent light to course through him instead of slashing Niko open.
The fact that Death didn’t come to claim her soul is still a mystery to Edwin. He wouldn’t have been able to escape her if she had, so he is somewhat grateful for that, but it worries him. They haven’t encountered her ghost roaming the Earth—yet, he reminds himself, since there are many, many ghosts in the world and they are just two dead boy detectives, one human psychic, and one supernatural minder—and Edwin is scared of the outcome if they were to ever cross paths with her. Edwin knows what happens to wandering ghosts, how their unfinished business affects them. He hasn’t even tried summoning her for fear that she might be, in fact, roaming this Earth as a ghost instead of enjoying the tranquility of Heaven that she undoubtedly deserves.
They hadn’t had enough time together. He mourns the loss of his human best friend, the platonic soulmate he never expected to find. But life, and death, work in unexpected ways. He’s beginning to learn that, in his old age.
Sometimes, Edwin feels like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. There are things he can share with Charles—his worries about the afterlife, his deeply repressed feelings for crying out loud. There are things that he can share with Crystal—despite not always seeing eye to eye, she’s quickly become the one Charles trusts for important decisions, so Edwin has had to make do with that. And there’s always Jenny, their reliable human butcher who has left everything in shambles back in Port Townsend to start anew in good old London. Edwin will never confide in the Night Nurse, not after she so unceremoniously doubted that his being sent to Hell had been a technicality. He will never forget the feeling of being swept away once again, just because the Night Nurse refused to listen to them. He is done with not being listened to.
Edwin sighs, his eyes turning to the flower the Cat King gave to him as a parting gift back in Port Townsend. It stands on a vase atop his desk, lazily overseeing the whole space. It’s a magical plant , therefore it’s not a surprise that it doesn’t languish like any normal flower. It keeps its whiteness, wild and free, reminding him somehow of Niko. He misses her terribly.
Although he might have been able to muster up the courage to speak to Charles the way he did back at the Spiral Staircase in Hell, Edwin knows it was Niko who pushed him to actually utter the words. Not because Niko had said anything, but because in the short time they knew each other, she helped him become a better version of himself. He refuses to acknowledge that Crystal might have had some hand in that as well, though. Crystal has always meant bad news while Niko remained a ray of light in the darkest of times.
It has nothing to do with the fact that Crystal is—was, maybe—Charles’s love interest.
No, that’s not it.
Edwin had never had girl friends, so he isn’t really sure how to behave around girls, or how to befriend them, or how to remain friends with them—Niko being the sole exception, since becoming her friend had simply felt natural. During his uptight upbringing, he had been sent to an all-boys boarding school, as it was deemed proper back then. His parents wouldn’t have accepted any other outcome; therefore, he had never learned how to speak to women. Not that he’d ever had the chance to do so—nor the desire to. He’d been content just speaking with Simon, even if it meant being a nervous wreck every time his mate showed up. Edwin had loved the moments they’d spent together at the library, even if they spoke little to not at all. Edwin had always been different, he’d known that, but he’d managed to keep Simon as a friend—even if he would have wanted more, deep down to his most unspeakable secrets. Until they grew up, and Simon began behaving like the rest of their classmates. Edwin would never know why Simon did what he did, why he tortured Edwin. Then he died, and Hell had been all he’d known for seven decades. There was no chance to speak to women back then, unless he counted the spider as female, which he simply couldn’t. There was only dread and despair and death down there, and the sheer need to escape that had fueled him to try so many times he lost count.
He has the scars to prove that he survived Hell. Twice.
Not that he’s ever going to show them to anyone. Not even Charles. He may be Edwin’s best mate—the love of his afterlife, even, but Charles would never understand. Not even after having stirred up Hell in his quest to find Edwin. But somehow, Edwin believed that Niko understood. Despite having been human, she had been surprisingly understanding.
After he told her that confessing his feelings to Charles had been to no avail, Niko had placed her hand on his and had spoken soft words of reassurance. They were devoid of all judgment. She simply understood that, sometimes, what one wants is different from what one needs, and what one needs is different from what one gets. So young, so full of life, and yet so wise.
Edwin misses her like he misses breathing. He knows he can go on without breathing—he’s proof that the dead walk this Earth—but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt to know that he will never breathe again. It hurts to know that he will never feel another human feeling. It hurts to know that he will never get to kiss the love of his life because he was robbed of the chance to grow up. He conveniently dismisses the tiny, little fact that, had he not escaped Hell due to having been sent there on a technicality, he would have never met Charles—who, Edwin might have discovered as of lately, is most probably the love of his afterlife.
He’s come to terms with the fact that Charles will never love him the way Edwin needs him to; no matter how long their eternity looks like, Edwin has been dead long enough to hear the unspoken words beneath Charles’s proclamation, to understand what the cagey way Charles had looked away just before walking down those steps meant. He doesn’t think they’ll ever be more than just best mates, partners in afterlife investigation. He needs to accept it and move on in a way he has never been ready to.
Growing up, he never paid much attention to his own feelings. It was not customary, back in his day—showing off emotions wasn’t an everyday event, and back then men were brought up to be providers and not caretakers, a redoubt of antiquated beliefs that meant they were seen as predators. Emotions of any kind—be it love, be it pain, be it insecurity—were strictly forbidden. Edwin had just struggled not to show how much he cared for his peers, especially one. He’d always known that Simon held a special place in his heart, and even back then, Edwin knew that showing that particular bit of himself could put him—and Simon—in danger. It hadn’t really mattered, how much he had tried to bury his feelings for Simon. Simon had been Edwin’s downfall, after all. And then he’d been sacrificed to a demon, who traded him for another demon, who in turn condemned him to an eternity of torture at the doll-headed spider’s pincers.
Meeting Charles had helped him crack a little of the defensive walls he’s put up after seven decades in Hell, even though he’s been repressing his true feelings for way longer than he’s amenable to admit. It’s part of his upbringing, maybe, but he also knows that his hesitance comes from a place of deep fear. Fear of never being enough. Irrational dread at being sent straight back to the dungeons in Hell if he as much as allows himself to feel anything different from friendship, brotherhood even, towards Charles.
And then, Crystal and Niko and Jenny had entered their lives, leaving everything in shambles as they stomped all over his outdated beliefs and helped him realize that love is simply love. And just like that, he’d been deprived of the joy of sharing his deepest thoughts with a kindred soul.
Edwin knows, however, that he will never get over losing Niko. She’d been the first human to ever touch his soul in a way nobody else, dead or alive, could before. She saw right through him. She understood him to a degree not even Charles had mastered. Niko had been a pure soul. Edwin hopes that she has passed to her next stop in the afterlife without the hustle that comes with dying violently.
And it’s all his fault, he can’t help but think. Because he had been kidnapped, and she had felt the need to go save him; and then she’d needed to save Crystal. Edwin shouldn’t resent Crystal for that, but he can’t help it either. He doesn’t wish Crystal were dead instead of Niko, but he wishes for a different outcome.
He should have known better than to hope. Wishing for better has never led him anywhere except the different rings of Hell, over and over and over again.
He sincerely wishes Niko’s gone on to afterlife adventures of her own. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t sad that they didn’t get more time to stir some havoc of their own.
The door to the office slams wide open, Crystal stepping inside followed by Charles. They’re laughing about something that Edwin is sure he won’t understand. It’s his cue to compose himself once again, to push Niko’s memory back to the bottom of his soul.
He clears his throat, fixes his bow tie, and places his slender fingers on top of the desk, close to the vase with the Cat King’s flower that Charles so much despises, and waits for his partners to try and make him laugh. He knows they will not be successful.
Mainly because he still believes he doesn’t deserve to be happy.