#took me ages to find a photo of them bc i only watched their povs

[sharksliveontrains]

[lassieposting]

So! Family headcanon: What kind of influence do you think will Skulduggery have on the Edgleys (Alice, parents, maybe Fergus?) after TDOTL?

OKAY RIGHT BUCKLE UP I HAVE EMOTIONS ABOUT THIS also i see you over here in my notifications and i love you

okay so basically, i think melissa like. highkey hates skulduggery. as in, can barely bring herself to be civil to him, even for val’s sake. from her perspective, this is the skeevy Much Older Dude who essentially stole her daughter, encouraged stephanie to skip school, isolated her from people her own age and from her own parents and turned her into a mess and a killer. literally the only upside from melissa’s pov is that they’re not sleeping together. and even that has a yet tacked onto the end in the back of her mind

i mean, we all know skul’s no predator, he was her best friend for years and yeah they’ve got a codependency problem but he loves the very bones of that girl (in whatever way, platonic or romantic whatever), but that’s the image melissa gets of him, because she hasn’t seen them together like we have, and doesn’t know how deep the affection between them goes. she’s predisposed to think he’s taking advantange of her daughter, and to hate him immediately. 

desmond is less…vitriolic? about it. but he doesn’t particularly take to skul, either. he’s spent his entire life terrified of people like skul, gordon’s weirdo friends. even if skul puts in a lot of effort with des, it’s gonna take a long time for des to get over that lifelong prejudice, which was probably drilled into him over the years by fergus 

that said, i think fergus knows skul. or at least, knows him by reputation, if they’ve never met. he certainly knows his name, when he confronts val about teaching the twins magic. so he’s probably aware of both skul’s Bad And Scary reputation, and the fact that ultimately these days, he’s a good dude. he’s the one who keeps saving the world. probably fergus is instrumental in talking melissa into at least accepting that there’s no prising val from skul’s side and that to keep her daughter she’s probably better off at least being civil. i think fergus, for all his faults, has it in him to be a good uncle, and i hope val has a better relationship with him post-america in spx. so he calms melissa down and talks her into civility for val’s sake, because he can just tell that if it really came down to an ultimatum, val’s parents would lose. it would break her, but they’d lose. she’ll pick skulduggery, every single time. and he’ll pick her.

(i think skul has a tendency to have this effect on parents, bc his wife’s dad hated him too, and never got over it, although he learned to be civil for his daughter’s sake, which is pretty much the same boat val’s parents are now in)

and then val takes off for america, and everyone is kinda left reeling. her parents have to find out from skul. they’re not there to see her off at the airport, melissa doesn’t get a last hug with her daughter, they never get to have all the conversations they need to have so her parents can get all the shit they need to get off their chests, off their chests. and when they try to call her, she’s changed her number and basically cut off all contact with everyone

except skulduggery.

so for those five years, he’s basically their link with their daughter. he calls by the house a few times, and they have a very terse conversation about val, and then as soon as they know how their daughter is doing he all but gets the door slammed in his face. alice is just barely starting to toddle around on her own and while he talks to desmond and melissa manages a civil silence, she goes up to skul and puts her lil hands on his knee and starts going “Up, up” which is pretty out of character for her, bc she’s a shy child and doesn’t particularly like strangers, at which point skul has to awkwardly admit that val first let him hold alice when she was weeks old and he’s seen her fairly regularly since then and it just makes them angrier, that this man who stole their first daughter has apparently been getting in early with the second one, and he nearly gets punched

 i think tbh there’s a part of them that thinks val isn’t coming back? so they take out all their grief and pain and betrayal out on skul in a big way, bc when it comes down to it val isn’t there to defend him, and he won’t defend himself bc he knows she is coming back and he’s gotta try to build up some kind of neutral relationship with her parents or she’s always going to be torn between them. so he, for once in his life, keeps his mouth shut and lets them hurl whatever they want to hurl at him

eventually, after a particularly explosive confrontation, he’s out of options and he goes to fergus to pretty much beg for mediation. fergus gives him a fucking good talking-to, what are your intentions with my niece sort of thing, and kind of finds this grudging respect for skulduggery. like he doesn’t bullshit. he’s perfectly willing to admit that like, there’s nothing between him and valkyrie at the minute, nor has there ever been before, but if she starts something in the future he won’t push her away. he will literally be whatever she needs him to be, for the rest of her life. they talk it out like sensible adults and fergus agrees to have words with val’s parents on skul’s behalf

slowly and painfully over those five years, they build up something like civility. desmond invites skulduggery round for a cup of tea while melissa is out, and it’s very awkward, these two dudes - one of whom can’t even drink tea - sat round the kitchen table making small talk. desmond starts talking about the all-ireland football. skul would be utterly clueless, except that he’s had valkyrie basically living with him for the last nine-odd years and she loves it, so he claims to support her team, and it’s enough to get a conversation going. 

the second time he comes round, he’s just got off the phone with val crying her heart out to him about killing alice, and he’s twenty minutes late because he wouldn’t hang up until he was 100% that she was asleep again. he’s kind of dejected and realises he’s pretty much got to lie to her parents, tell them she’s fine, when he knows she’s a fucking wreck and its his fault

and desmond gives him side-eye and asks him whether he’s ever been a father, and asks whether he knows just how difficult it is to parent a teenager, how headstrong they are, how they rely on the adults in their lives to give them boundaries and protect them (he doesn’t say ‘not to drag them into danger and encourage them to make the same mistakes we did’ but it’s definitely implied) and skul just sort of very quietly admits that no, he’s never parented a teenager. He was a parent. He’s not anymore.

I never took your place. I was never a parent to your daughter. I’d die - again - before I let anything happen to her. 

Gradually, they defrost a little towards him. I like to think skul actually finds kind of an unlikely friend in fergus, reluctantly on fergus’ end. he’s got nobody to talk to. nobody who understands his valkyrie problem right now, and he can’t talk about her to her parents. but fergus is her uncle, he’s known her all her life, and he can give insight where skul is missing things, and they end up bonding over their shared concern for this girl. fergus is also using this time to kind of. dig out this dude that he’s pretty sure his niece has Feelings for and might end up having a thing with sometime in the future. possibly a vague attempt is made to civilise skulduggery - “your uncle took me to play bridge this evening, it was rather bizarre” - and tbh, i’m very fond of the idea that one time skul sees fergus use magic and is just like, well actually if you do it this way it’s easier? and it’s nice for fergus to have someone for once in his life that he doesn’t have to hide his magic from. 

they’re not friends, like skul and gordon were friends. but they’re two people val can have at the same dinner party and leave unattended in the same room for an extended period of time, and she can come back to find the worst thing that happened is skul showing fergus that horrific photo of her eating a burger or telling her about the time he “watched her inhale an 18 inch pizza”. as opposed to like. her father or mother decking her partner in the face 

when val comes home, she finds skul’s facade has settled. melissa refuses to have magic around alice, and a dude whose face always changes every time he comes round is out of the question (and skul was kind of reluctant to mention that when he used to see alice with val, he never had a facade on in the first place). so skul took china a photo of val’s favourite facade - the attractive one from her birthday and was just like, you want to get back in my good books so do me a solid and so now alice knows him as this guy in his thirties who’s round semi-regularly and she’s not shy around him anymore. it was like, his concession to val’s parents, him trying to show that he’s willing to put in an effort and make sacrifices to get on with them if they’re willing to do the same. and over the last year or so, they’ve finally let him spend time with alice - never unsupervised, and he’s still not to be trusted, but if alice approaches skul melissa doesn’t snatch her away anymore.

and of course, skul plays it off as like, “of course your parents like me. i’m likeable. i’m a gem. everyone likes me” but val cringes when she thinks about how hard he must’ve tried to fix things with her parents and how much shit they probably gave him that should’ve been directed at her and he did all that for her and she swears she’s going to get them all getting along if it kills her

but in the meantime theyve made a start