Chapter Text
There were just two of them, now.
Ronan and Gansey. Two lost boys alone in the vast space of Monmouth Manufacturing.
The day after tomorrow, right before the winter solstice hit, Ronan would take Gansey to the Barns like they'd agreed. The day after that, Ronan thought he might drive off to where-the-fuck-ever and never come back. Then there wouldn't be any them any more.
It would just be Ronan.
Noah was gone for good. Ronan had no idea if he had finally gone to rest or if he had just vanished into nothingness when Neeve's spell cut his ties to the living world. Either way, he was gone.
Still, Ronan kept expecting him to turn up again, just like he kept expecting his father to breeze through the door, announcing that surprise, he was alive! Even now, Ronan could hear Niall Lynch explaining that no, no, it was all just a mistake, it was only a joke, it was merely a little game, you see? He had needed to hide for a little while, so he switched himself out for a dream at the last second and everything was now as it had been and should be.
Any second now, Dad would be home with a new set of wild stories and marvelous gifts, just like always. Any second now, Noah would show up out of nowhere, just like always. Ronan could hear the stupid goofball apologizing for taking so long to come back, only he'd forgotten how, and...
Ronan gritted his teeth. He would not lie to himself. Noah wasn't coming back any more than his father was. He just had to keep telling himself that until he believed it.
Nothing was the way it was or should be.
Blue was alive, and eventually might be okay-ish, so things didn't suck as much as they could have. From the way Gansey was still moping around, though, you'd think she had died and wasn't now home with her family, recovering from how the Third Sleeper had nearly shattered her.
Yesterday, Gansey said miserably that he thought Blue would be recovering for a very long time. After days of checking in only to be told there was no change, he had of course slept through the call that came to tell him she had finally woken up. When he had called back, Calla had finally snapped and told Gansey to stop calling or she would drive out to Monmouth herself and make him stop. Ronan didn't get why Gansey didn't just go over to Fox Way and Richard Campbell Gansey the Third his way in there and demand to see her.
Gansey said stiffly that he would respect her family's wishes. Then something in him seemed to collapse and he said he didn't understand why Blue was so mad she didn't even want to talk to him.
Ronan got it. The runt was more like him than he'd cared to admit for a long time, and he knew that what she was feeling only looked like anger.
Ronan knew because he was angry in the same way, only he was angry at Adam.
He hugged his knees and ground his teeth, because he wouldn't cry and rage, not when Gansey kept hovering around looking like he wanted to fix things. But there was no fixing things. Every time Ronan closed his eyes, he once again found Adam by one of Cabeswater's magical ponds. Ronan had gone looking for him after that last, desperate struggle to tell him that they had won. The cost had been high, but with Adam alongside him, Ronan thought he could bear it.
What he had imagined finding was an Adam whose eyes lit up to see him, an Adam who could finally let go of Cabeswater's burden now that the Third Sleeper was gone, an Adam he would pull into his arms and kiss with all the passion he had been bottling up for months.
Instead, he had found Adam slumped over in an awkward heap by the water's edge, hours dead, everything that had made him Adam lost forever.
Both memories played on an endless loop, and Ronan couldn't say which one he hated more, the real one or the fake one. He didn't want to think about Adam at all, not any more.
Ronan wished he'd never met the stupid asshole. He wished he had been cruel enough to drive Adam away when Gansey first started dragging his trailer-trash loser ass around with them. He wished he had never given in and kissed Adam only to be surprised when Adam didn't push him away or punch him but instead kissed him back passionately, breaking off just long enough to drawl a shaky about damn time, Lynch before leaning in for another kiss.
He wished because if none of those things had ever happened, then maybe right now he wouldn't be on the razor edge of going out and doing something that would make Kavinsky look like a fucking model of civility and self-control.
More than all of that, though, Ronan wished he had said something to Adam months earlier, back when he first began to hope that maybe, just maybe he could have what he had been so afraid to want. He wished they could have had far more than just one rough and desperate night together when Ronan was still half-lost in grief over what turned out to be just the first of too many losses.
Ronan wanted to wish he could wake up tomorrow morning with Adam dozing peacefully right next to him in bed. He wanted to wish that the next morning would be just the same, and the next one, and the one after that, but he wouldn't. He couldn't. It was too dangerous to wish because right now, with his dreams acting the way they were, it might actually happen.
Now that the Third Sleeper was destroyed, Cabeswater was more alive and awake than it had ever been. Every day after they had 'won,' Ronan had woken up surrounded by hundreds of strange and marvelous and beautiful things he didn't remember dreaming about. After just three nights of fractured sleep, his room looked like the Genie's cave from Aladdin. The only reason Ronan was out in the living room instead of his bedroom was that there wasn't any room left for him.
At least Chainsaw was enjoying all the shiny shit, and Ronan was sure Matthew and Noah would as well.
Noah. God damn it.
He'd forgotten. Again.
Ronan flopped his head against the back of the couch and let out a loud breath through his teeth. Gansey was still puttering around their living room without stopping to rest, picking up books and clothes and putting them back down again without actually looking at them. He had been doing this for over an hour. To Ronan, it seemed like he was trying to remember how to be himself again. Something in him had broken during that horrible moment when they thought Blue was dead, and it had stayed broken.
"For fuck's sake, stop feeling guilty for being alive, Dick," Ronan snarled.
Gansey's familiar, exasperated sigh was more comforting than Ronan wanted to admit. Gansey may or may not have muttered something about pots and kettles. Then he cleared his throat.
"I don't. I don't feel guilty about... about that."
Ronan looked up from the couch. Gansey turned a book over and over in his hands as if he didn't know what it was. His stupid glasses had slid halfway down his nose, he looked rumpled and unshowered, and it was hard to believe that he was now king over half a continent at some weird spiritual level. His health was now tied to the land's and the land's to his, and the asshole couldn't even see two feet past his own nose.
They were all so very, very fucked.
"I just wish..." Gansey started.
"Don't even go there," Ronan snarled, but Gansey pushed on.
"It's only that it isn't fair," he said softly. "We lost so much, and you lost - "
"I said don't go there!" Ronan didn't know if Gansey knew about him and Adam. He didn't want to know.
"Ronan, I - "
"Shut the fuck up, Gansey."
Gansey shut up. He was alive. The girl he loved was alive, even if she was kind of damaged and maybe not speaking to him at the moment. His entire family was still alive. Yeah, he had damn well better shut up.
"You wanna know what I feel guilty about?" Ronan rasped out at last. Gansey didn't say anything, but he was clearly waiting for Ronan to continue.
There were so many things to feel guilty about, and Ronan thought maybe he should just pull off the band-aid and finally tell Gansey about him and Adam and all the regret over what never really had a chance to be. What came out instead was the one thing he had been refusing to let himself think about for the past ten days -
How can it only have been ten days? Has it really been over a week already?
- and would now no longer be ignored.
"I wish I'd taken Declan to see Mom."
And fuck, his voice broke on that last bit, and he had to clench his teeth and press the heels of his hands to his eyes, because even after everything that had happened he was not going to let himself start bawling in front of Richard Campbell Gansey the Third, he was not, he was not, he was not.
"Go ahead and tell me 'I told you so,'" Ronan said, throwing the words out like knives. "Go on! You fucking nagged me about it enough!"
So had Matthew. Matthew didn't - couldn't - know why Ronan had never taken Declan to see their awakened mother, but he had accepted it when Ronan said it wasn't time yet. Now it would never be time, because that Greenmantle bitch had put a bullet in Declan's heart. It had only been four days since the funeral (how could it be a four whole days already?), but Ronan knew Matthew would never say anything about it, ever. That just made it worse. It made it all so much worse.
Gansey didn't say anything. He sat down on the couch near but not too near Ronan. Ronan couldn't tell if he was waiting for Ronan to say something or just didn't know what to say.
What could he say?
Adam had let his soul slip into Cabeswater and he had strayed too far and stayed away too long, just like that stupid Persephone woman. But in dying, Adam had somehow been able to goad Cabeswater into action in a way he couldn't when alive. Ronan and Gansey and Blue and who knows how many other people had only survived because of whatever Adam had done, whatever new fucking deal he'd made with Cabeswater.
Declan had been shot on a whim by a sociopath for no good reason other than he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and she knew he was a Lynch. Ronan hadn't even known Declan was back in Henrietta until the police called him.
One death meant everything and one was completely fucking meaningless, and there was nothing that could make any of it in any way right or worth it. There was so much Ronan wished he had been able to say to each of them.
"What the hell am I supposed to say to Mom when I see her again?" Ronan shouted, and this time he didn't even try to stop the tears. If Gansey tried to hug him, Ronan was going to punch him, king or not.
Gansey did not try to hug him. He did, however, sit quietly nearby until Ronan finally fell asleep.
The voice came from behind him, warm and familiar and more welcome than anything Ronan could imagine.
"Do you remember me?"
Ronan turned around and his heart nearly stopped from sheer joy.
Adam was there at the edge of the forest, alive and powerful and more beautiful than ever.
"Sometimes I wonder if I dreamed you," Ronan said. This didn't feel like a dream.
Adam smiled sadly and reached out just as he had that last wonderful, horrible night. This time, they were too far away to touch, but Ronan reached out for him anyway. The instant he did, Adam was suddenly younger than Ronan remembered, frighteningly young and frail and half-starved. The soft smile twisted to something feral and merciless. His face and body blossomed with livid bruises and the smile cracked and blistered. Bark crawled across his face until it became a crude and cruel wooden mask.
The trees hissed and whispered.
"Maybe you should."
"Owwww..." Ronan sat up. He touched his cheek and his fingers came away sticky. "Fuck!"
Gansey took one look at him, paled, and ran to the bathroom. Ronan heard water running, and as he expected, Gansey came back a moment later with a damp washrag and some antiseptic.
"You look like you lost a battle with a cat," he said.
"Better than having my wrists slit by a night terror... ow!" The antiseptic stung. "I've had worse," Ronan said weakly.
"True. These are shallow - I'm surprised there's even any blood. There's more of it on your fingers than you have left on your face. What happened?"
"What happened is that one of the cast of characters that sometimes shows up in my dreams decided she would get her jollies by trying to claw my eyes out."
He had collided with Orphan Girl while running away from the Adam-thing. For whatever reason, instead of skulking around being unhelpfully cryptic, she had lunged for his face, screaming in rage. She got in one good scratch before collapsing against him, sobbing and battering his chest.
"Take me with you, take me with you," she'd sobbed, or at least that's how Ronan had translated the Latin. "I can't remember... I can't remember... Why didn't you take me with you? It's too late, it's too late..."
Ronan rubbed his chest, feeling the lingering ache where those small fists had pounded against his sternum and ribs.
"There are people who show up in your dreams?" Gansey asked, sounding more like Gansey than he had in the past several days.
"Yeah. There's a few of them lurking around Cabeswater, wearing old-timey clothes and shit. A couple of them talk to me, sometimes." Ronan almost said more, but instead shrugged, feigning indifference. Hey, the shrug said, everyone has a head full of historical re-enactment nerds. It's not like it's any big deal.
Gansey's eyes brightened with curiosity, just as Ronan had hoped. "How peculiar! You never mentioned it before. Do you have any idea why they're there? Or who they are?"
"No fucking clue," Ronan said, knowing his apathy would just egg Gansey on. He felt like he was throwing a rope to a drowning man, and it was the closest to not miserable he'd felt in days. "What sucks is that they usually only speak Latin. Even the ones who look like they escaped from the set of Les Mis."
"We never did figure out why the forest speaks Latin," Gansey said, happily skipping down a new tangent. It sounded like he was finally remembering how to be himself. Or maybe he was just glad of the distraction. "I mean, it would make more sense if we were in Europe..."
Ronan remembered how Adam had said he had once sensed how Cabeswater was connected to other forests throughout the world. Maybe all of the forests spoke Latin.
"...one of the Iroquois languages would make more sense, really. And didn't you say the Latin was a bit rough?"
"Yeah. Just one step above Google Translate," Ronan grumbled, quoting one of Adam's wry observations, and Christ... was everything going to remind him of Adam now? Missing Adam was exhausting in a way Ronan could never have imagined.
Missing Dad was like burning up. This was like burning out.
Ronan stared down at his lap, not wanting to look up and not see Adam standing there listening to the conversation with amusement and offering his own theories about the Latin. He clenched his fists and was surprised and yet not surprised to find there was something in one of them.
"What the hell?"
He opened his hand. Gansey pushed his glasses back up so he could see what was in Ronan's hand.
Ronan felt his heart drop to his stomach. He had brought back something else without knowing he'd brought it back. But why this? It made no sense.
He had brought back a white gold claddagh ring. The crowned heart between the hands was a smooth and shimmering green gem that looked like dappled forest light turned solid. He had seen it more times than he could count.
"It's beautiful," Gansey said. Then he looked at Ronan, his brows drawing together in concern. "Are you all right? Is it something about the ring? What is it?"
Ronan wanted to hurl the thing through a window. He wanted to hold it so tight it sunk into his flesh and could never be pried loose.
"It's my mom's wedding ring."