Here's to Christmas - Skulduggery Pleasant FanFic

Chapter 9: A Change of Heart

WARNING: This chapter contains mild drug abuse. If this is a topic that causes pain or makes you uncomfortable in any way please skip this chapter.

MoreThanWhatYouSee77 xxx

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Valkyrie walked into work the next day and there was still no answer to her wrapper question. As she ploughed solemnly but gracefully through her shift, as China had taught her to do, she noticed a distinct lack of Natalie-ness. She assumed, as anyone else would, that she was on sick leave, and thought nothing more about it.

On her lunchbreak, she walked into the staff bathroom to straighten out her hair, which hadn't been behaving all day, and noticed that smell again - the sickly sweet, rusty smell. Beside the sink, she noticed a teapot and lifted the lid, and the smell erupted like mount Vesuvius from a foul looking, brownish liquid. She quickly shut the lid and backed away, and then in the mirror she noticed a pair of feet sticking limply out from underneath the ajar toilet door. She pushed it open and Natalie was sitting propped up against the cubicle wall, her eyes closed.

"Natalie?" Valkyrie said urgently, squatting down next to her and tapping her shoulders lightly. "Natalie, if you can hear me, open your eyes."

There was no response so she checked her pulse. It was so slow it was virtually none existent. She cursed and looked in the toilet. Two more silver wrappers had found their way into the basin and were floating amongst Natalie's vomit.

She locked the door to the bathroom and dragged Natalie out of the cubicle, lying her down against the wall and putting her in recovery position so that if she threw up, she wouldn't choke on it. She promised that if she didn't wake up within five minutes she was calling an ambulance. Just then, her phone went off. It was the Canadian waitor, Jacob.

Where r u?! U just disappeared...x

She hurriedly thought up a reply.

I'm in the toilet with Nat. She's not well again :-( x

He replied almost immediately.

Oh okay then x poor Nat :-(

She put her phone beside her and relaxed a little, knowing that Jacob would cover for both of them. She then got up and flushed the toilet, knowing the wrappers would stay, and held her breath whilst she poured away the brown liquid in the teapot. Then she fished out the wrappers and washed them.

Her phone went off again and she thought maybe it was Jacob, but it wasn't. Someone had replied to her question on Yahoo Answers. She read the response and her heart felt like it was going to fall out of the bottom of her legs.

You need to find out who had them because they're used to wrap heroine tablets up.

Source(s): I used to be on heroine (been clean for three years though)

Natalie stirred and Valkyrie didn't know whether to be relived that she was ok or furious that she'd so very nearly fatally overdosed. Her eyes fluttered open and she moaned.

"Where am I?" she asked.

"Beyond the grave," Valkyrie said, her voice humourless, "or very nearly in any case."

She moaned again and managed to prop herself up into a sitting position. Her pupils were dilated. Valkyrie held up one of the wrappers so Natalie could see it. She looked like she was about to cry when she saw them.

"I'm sorry." she whispered immediately. Valkyrie let a long silence hang in the air.

"How long have you been on this stuff?"

"It's not that bad. Really. It's not like I'm injecting." Natalie ignored her question.

"Yes, but that's the next step, isn't it?"

Natalie barely moved and Valkyrie shook her head.

"How long have you been taking it?" She said slowly. Natalie sighed.

"A few months. I'm not a druggie. I'm not addicted."

"So that's why I found you passed out and almost dead in your place of work? You didn't even lock the door to do it. And stealing a teapot from the kitchen? Are you insane, Natty?"

Natalie sobbed softly. Valkyrie felt empathy but it had to be said.

"Are you going to tell the boss?"

Valkyrie dropped the wrapper. "That's what I should do. I should obey the law. I should go in that office right now and tell them you've been taking smack in the staff bathroom. But that would leave you out on the street without a job and without a reference. And I'm not going to do that, so this is what's going to happen. You're going to tender your resignation and get a decent reference. Then you're going to go to the doctor, who's going to send you to a rehabilitation facility. I won't ever say a word to anyone about this and no one will know. Ok?"

Natalie looked so worn out and Valkyrie wanted nothing more than to just give her a big hug and tell her it would all be ok, but she knew she couldn't.

"Yeah."

"I'll only keep my mouth closed if you tell me where you got the smack, though."

Natalie hesitated. "I can't."

"I'm not kidding, Nat."

Natalie blinked a few times and closed her eyes for a second.

"He showed me things," she whispered, "strange, frightening things. But it was amazing. Fire and shadows. He captivated me. Controlled me. He said that if I took these I could do it too. I wanted so badly to be special. It wasn't until after a few weeks I realised what he'd sold me but by then I couldn't stop."

"The name," Valkyrie insisted, "tell me the name."

Natalie hung her head. "His name was...his name is Lucas Flint."

Valkyrie banked the name. Was this the same drug lord the sanctuary were trying to bust? She suspected it was.

So Natalie resigned and Valkyrie, trur to her word, kept her mouth completely shut. As far as everyone else knew, she'd resigned on medical grounds - it was only her who knew the true extent of it.

The last time Valkyrie ever saw Natalie was when she got into a taxi and drove away from Jamie Oliver's after her final shift. She cried a little. It wasn't fair. Natalie didn't mean for things to get out of hand like this. She just wanted to be special, like Lucas Flint. She wanted to play with fire and dance in the shadows. She wanted to be more than a waitress.

And the penny dropped.

There was nothing she could do about Natalie now. What happened to her was down to the medical and psychological experts at the clinic. But there was something else she could do. She could stop other innocent people like Natalie becoming addicted, becoming broken.

So that night, when she got home from her shift, she went up to the loft and dug out her old black clothes. They still fitted.

She left the house, caught the bus and headed towards Roarhaven.