Chapter Text
"And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation." - Khalil Gibran
The months following Port Townsend were complicated, to say the least, and if someone asked Charles how they got through it, he wasn't sure he could vocalize how they managed to make it all work. If you had asked him before Crystal came into their lives if he and Edwin had everything sorted out, he would have told you that they did. They'd been doing this for thirty years; they had a system, so of course, everything had to be sorted. Looking back, Charles couldn't believe how unbelievably stupid they both were. However, as Jenny loudly pointed out to both of them, even if they had been roaming this Earth for longer, they were still stupid teenagers, and no teenager had everything figured out.
So that's what Port Townsend became: an entire mess of dredging up everything they were running from and forcing them to face it head-on. The reality that Edwin could get dragged back to hell was no longer a possibility; it happened, and even though the Night Nurse reassured them that it wouldn't happen again, Charles didn't trust her or the Lost and Found department. Charles thought he had buried everything that had happened with his father and how it impacted him so deeply that it didn't matter anymore. Then, the Delvin case happened, and he kicked a woman into a monster. He could rationalize it all he wanted. But Charles couldn't get the expressions on Edwin, Niko, and Crystal's faces out of his mind.
Crystal was a member of the Agency now, and while Charles missed their brief romantic relationship, he also knew that it was something that couldn't ever last. There was a reason that he and Edwin didn't have many living acquaintances, let alone close friends. The living faded; he spent the last thirty years watching his parents slowly succumb to the passage of time through a mirror and drawing out what he and Crystal had felt was unfair to both of them. So, what felt like mere moments after she stepped foot onto British soil, they ended things but pledged to remain close friends. It was going to hurt when they eventually lost her the same way it hurt when Niko was gone.
Niko's loss impacted Edwin more than Charles could even begin to put into words, and he wondered how his partner would recover from this. Of the two of them, Edwin was even less inclined to form attachments to the living and hadn't been close to anyone besides Charles since he was alive. Charles wondered how he would try to pull Edwin out of this spiral and keep him from sinking back into himself when Niko just returned. It was more like she fell out of a crack in the universe, holding Tragic Mike's lucky charm, inexplicitly covered in snow, and somehow alive.
It was a week after Crystal had landed in London, and the three of them were in the middle of some three-way nasty argument that Charles, for the life of him, could not even remember what it was about. Charles wasn't lying when he said that Crystal and Edwin were alike, so when they really fought, it was explosive, and his patience for trying to mitigate them had run out a while ago, so now they were yelling at each other. Then, there was a crack so loud that Charles thought the entire building was about to collapse or some natural disaster just occurred, and the pressure in the room changed like it had just ascended or descended a great height. The weird thing was that a pressure change shouldn't have impacted him and Edwin, but Charles swore that his ears popped. He was about to say something when the world in front of them split open.
Charles acted impulsively, throwing Edwin and Crystal behind him because the last time they saw something similar, it dragged Edwin back to hell, and he wasn't about to let that happen. No fire or brimstone came out of this crack; instead, they were blasted with freezing cold air and snow, another sensation that Charles should not have been able to feel, yet here they were. He blinked, and then Niko Sasaki was walking through the crack, wearing pink snow gear and with a dazed expression on her face. As soon as both of her feet touched the ground, the pressure equalized again; there was another crack, and it was gone. The whole thing happened in under a minute, and no one moved.
"Oh, is this what your office looks like? It suits both of you," Niko said, breaking the tension in the room. Crystal shoved Charles aside, touched Niko's hand, and her eyes went white. A brief second later, she looked back at them with tears in her eyes.
"It's really her, and she's alive," Crystal whispered. Things got a bit blurry from there, as many hugs were shared, and everyone asked many questions with very few answers. Unfortunately, Niko didn't know where she was. She was somewhere cold and in an igloo with the sprites, holding Tragic Mike's lucky charm until she felt she needed to leave.
"I heard the three of you," Niko explained after they had helped her out of her snow gear and into some of Crystal's more weather-appropriate clothes.
"What do you mean?" Edwin asked.
"I could hear the three of you arguing, and I hated that you were all fighting. So I followed the sound because I wanted to try and help the fight stop, then the light happened, and now I'm here," she replied. "How long has it been? Time felt weird there."
"A couple of weeks," Charles replied. So, no one had any explanation as to where she was or how she got back, but while Charles might be a lapsed Catholic, he knew when to count a blessing, and this was one. Niko was the balm that settled all of them again, and after going through the very weird process of getting in touch with her family to explain that she wasn't actually dead, it felt like things were settling.
So everything had been chaos, and they were all stumbling through it; the thing that Charles couldn't stop thinking about was that moment on the stairs with Edwin. He didn't care who Edwin loved, so his coming out meant virtually nothing to Charles. The confession, however, and the way Edwin looked at him when he said they had forever to figure it out was the other thing he couldn't stop thinking about. 'Forever' was a long time, and Charles tried to convince himself that it was best just to let that sit on the back burner. There was too much else to deal with and he and Edwin had all the time in the world. Port Townsend was behind them, and everyone was settling into their new place within the Agency. Maybe they could have a bit of a break so they could all metaphorically breathe.
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Charles was a little surprised when Jenny called the girls and announced that she was "so fucking done" with everything in Port Townsend and wanted to get things started so she could move to London. Crystal and Niko seemed thrilled about this idea, but Charles exchanged a wary glance with Edwin because they thought the same thing. However, while the girls happily talked to Jenny over speaker phone so they could hear the entire conversation, phones were something that they couldn't interact with. So, if they wanted to tell Jenny their concerns, it meant they would have to mirror-hop back to the last place Charles wanted to go.
Edwin didn't look entirely thrilled about the idea either.
After double-checking the time zones and making sure they wouldn't be popping in an awful time, they walked through the mirror and into the apartment that Crystal once lived in. It was empty, not a trace of any of them left behind, and somehow everything felt like it had happened years ago and just yesterday at the same time. They made their way through the building to where they could hear Jenny moving around, but Charles put a hand on Edwin's arm to stop him from just walking into a room.
"Oi, Jenny, it's Charles and Edwin. We need to talk to you," Charles called from behind a closed door. Edwin raised an eyebrow, but Charles shrugged. "If anyone would have an iron meat clever and the ability to throw it across the room, it would be Jenny."
"That's a fair assessment," Edwin replied. The door opened, and she glared at the two of them, but she was not carrying any weapons, which did seem like a win for them.
"Is that about as close as you two come to calling ahead?" she asked, deeply unimpressed with them as always.
"We usually just walk in," Edwin replied. The two of them stared at each other for a moment until Jenny stepped aside so she could let them into her home. It was a symbolic welcome, but the two of them were learning the importance of respecting closed doors the more time they spent with the living. Jenny's place was already mostly packed up as if she was more than eager to leave this building as soon as possible. Charles could only guess that it held more than a few bad memories.
"So why are you two here?" she asked, her arms crossed.
"Because we can't talk over the phone," Charles replied, and Jenny nodded as if that made sense to her. "We heard that you want to move to London, and we have some concerns about that."
"I don't want to be lectured about what I can or can't do with my life from two dead teenagers," Jenny replied, and her voice had more of an edge to it than normal.
"If I were to lecture you, I assure you you would know. I've been told many times I'm not subtle when I start to lecture," Edwin said. "You mentioned on the phone that you want to leave town because you are in tune with all the supernatural dealings here. London is much larger than Port Townsend. If you go to London, then you will see more than you can see now. You'll see all sorts of things because Charles and I are still finding new things out there, and we've been doing this for thirty years. So London is not a place to go and escape all of this. It's walking into the belly of the beast."
"Unfortunately, the dead are everywhere, but the bigger and older the city, the more history it has, and the weirder shit tends to get. London is very old, so it gets bloody weird. We weren't sure you knew or were thinking about that." Charles was always interested in the kind of ghosts and other things they tended to run into depending on how old the place they were investigating was. It was something that the two of them didn't even put together until they'd been working cases for ten years.
Jenny was fidgeting in a way that Charles was very familiar with. Edwin would fidget similarly when something was bothering him or he was trying to put his words together. So he knew she needed a minute to figure out what she wanted to say. When it looked like Edwin was about to say something, Charles gently knocked their shoulders together, and Edwin remained silent.
"I know London is going to be worse in that there will be more," Jenny said carefully, "but Port Townsend is somehow even worse because I'm going through it by myself. I don't know who I can trust here if I see something fucked up. If I'm in London, I'm near all of you, so at least there is someone else nearby I can bitch about all of this with who will understand instead of sending me to the psych ward."
It was an aspect of being able to see the dead that Charles had never really considered, and judging by the expression on Edwin's face, he hadn't considered it either. They always had each other to lean on, so none of this was lonely for them, and now the girls were also here. The argument could be made that they were just a quick mirror hop away, but they weren't Crystal and Niko, and they couldn't relate to Jenny the way the girls could.
"Charles and I will do what we can to expedite any paperwork you need to come to London," Edwin said.
"Remind Crystal not all of us are fucking rich, and I'll have to work, so a visa where I can work would be important," Jenny replied.
"We're on it," Charles said.