Had To Repost This So I Don't Forget It - Tumblr Posts
I really want something where Crystal and Charles see all of Edwins memories. Maybe Crystal is trying some new stuff with her powers and accidently drags Charles with her into Edwin's memories.
Some of it flashes by quick. His childhood, the years with Charles before they met Crystal, the cat king, Monty, a majority of Port Townsend.
Some of it drags by. His death, hell, meeting Charles, hell again, Esther, Niko.
She knows Charles kind of has an idea of what to expect but knowing and seeing are two different things.
Crystal can't even watch most of it. Crouching down and covering her eyes, crying and occasionally making a sound like she was going to be sick.
They can't make any changes, of course, and they can't talk to anyone. These things have already happened and they're just watching them but Charles breaks her heart.
He bounces between furious and devastated.
He walks around the boys holding Edwin down to sacrifice him like he's looking for an opening, around and around restlessly. He knows, even better than she does, that he can't do anything.
Hell is even worse. Charles is clearly upset but he's not surprised, a grim determination that has him trailing after Edwin like a shadow. He keeps up with Edwin, running with him through the hallways and making himself watch each time it all starts over. He runs back to find the new Edwin and sticks close again, right beside him or behind him. He doesn't get in the way or try to stop it, he can't do anything so he's trying to provide a comfort that Edwin can't feel.
He sits with Edwin when he finds a place to hide, just watching him. Sometimes he talks. She can't hear what he's saying but she can guess.
Sometimes the demon doesn't kill Edwin right away and he isn't hiding so much as trying to find a place to curl up and die. Charles follows, sometimes circling him like he had when they saw the boys who sacrificed him.
She doesn't understand why he's making himself watch it all. How can he watch it when Crystal can barely tolerate just the sounds?
She's never seen him so focused. She thinks he might have forgotten she's even here.
Ghosts bleed here, they can feel and, the last thing Edwin felt as a living being was hands holding him down and the last thing he truely felt while dead would have been the last time the demon ripped him apart before he escaped hell. No wonder he's less bothered by iron than Charles. Iron is nothing compared to this.
She wants to tell Charles to come over to her. Tell him to stop watching, god why is he watching?
She knows why though, because he needs to know. Usually the mind can conjure up things much worse than reality but she thinks that neither of them could have imagined something like this. She knows Charles saw some of it when he went to get Edwin the second time but it wasn't a lot. He and Edwin were both tight-lipped when it came to hell, other than Edwin mentioning it vaguely here and there, usually in arguments.
He passes her again as he follows Edwin, again and again, and she goes to yell at him but she stops. His jaw is clenched the way he does it when he's truely furious, and his mouth is a thin line.
Charles can be scary when he's angry, especially when he's angry because someone has hurt Edwin. He would never hurt her but there's a cautiousness to how she speaks to him when he gets like this. Forget the cricket bat, he looks like he'd throw himself at the demon with just his nails and teeth if he could.
The memories go on and he's just as restless during Edwin's second trip to hell, only relaxing when he appeared in the memory.
Watching Esther is hard, Charles doesn't move during this one, just stands by the table Edwin is stuck on and stares.
This one is different and she thinks it because Charles was here for this one. She knows he's in the kitchen, kept in place with an iron collar and stuck listening to Edwin scream.
Crystal loses track of them as she sees Niko in the corner and sudden she needs to see it. She can feel Charles look over at them as Niko dies on the floor but he stays where he is until Edwin is up and next to Niko too.
More memories slip by until they're suddenly thrown back into the real world.
It's jarring, like something smacked them on the back of their heads. It takes them a minute for the world to stop spinning and their thoughts to reform. It's been seconds, maybe a minute, since they'd been thrown into the memories. Crystal feels like she's aged 10 years.
She does think she understands Charles a lot more now. She knows she's going to be reluctant to let Edwin off somewhere by himself, not that Charles would let him.
Edwin looks nervous, looking at them then the floor and back up to them again. He straightens the ends of his sleeves the way he does when he needs something to do with his hands and then he starts to press against each other. He must have a good idea of what happened and what they probably saw.
She remembers one of the deaths where he had ended up close to where she's been curled up. The way he laid on his side and just stared at the wall, quiet and accepting, the way tears rolled down his face and he just kept bleeding. Until he didn't anymore and Charles took off without a word to go find the new him again.
Niko is beside him and looks at both Charles and her with big eyes. She wonders what they look like, if they look any different to her and Edwin.
Charles makes a vague stangled noise beside her, makes a move towards Edwin, and she takes a deep breath.
Right. Okay, she and Niko need to leave. Like, right now. She has a feeling that the boys need to have a very long talk. And just cling to each other for awhile.
She grabs Niko, who looks at Edwin to see if he wants her to stay but he shakes his head just enough for her to let Crystal get them both out the door and away.
As they're leaving, she wonders what she'd do if someone had shown her Niko's death over and over. She looks at the other girl, who still looks worried but gives Crystal a little smile.
Maybe they need to have a talk too.
🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙
Two side notes:
*Currently living for the idea of Charles and Crystal going feral over Edwin and Niko being hurt. And vice versa.
*You know when dogs/wolves circle something over and over, like they're trying to herd it or just watching from all sides? Idk for some for some reason I just picture that from Charles in certain situations. Especially when he can't do anything. Just circling it over and over like eventually he'll see something, find a way to do something.