#but Ronan is made of magic so i like to think its not a stretch | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

polichinelle · 2 months

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yeah fuck it i'm making this its own post. basically very long winded (but still not as extensively detailed as i'd like) thoughts on adam & ronan (sort of) & whelk & noah

i remember reading the raven boys back in 2014 (ten years of rot in my brain!) and being sooo disappointed that there was basically zero fandom interest in whelk & noah beyond "omg whelk is evil and awful and terrible, poor baby noah!" when that is not the narrative surrounding them, not really. i feel it's a disservice to both of their characters to do that, especially noah's:

there is nuance there. there are implications. like... it's ALL about the implications!!! we basically see nothing of whelk and noah beyond what's left after the carnage. and it's a theme in trc for characters to have irreparably changed before we ever meet them (gansey, ronan, whelk, noah). we don't know what they were actually like when noah was alive, when they were best friends. when they were tight as ticks.

what we do know is this: whelk was noah's gansey. whelk was cheating on his own girlfriend with noah's, which is a shitty thing to do for sure, but something we also have zero context for. we also don't know how true it is, because whelk has such a self-inflicted warped view of his past. he keeps rewriting his own memories to think lesser of noah, because his absence hurts that much! we know they were best friends, the same way adam & ronan are best friends with gansey. we know they did everything together

okay, changing gears a little.

i'll paste the part where adam is possessed, sorry for the amount of screenshots:

and this line from a bit further along the chapter:

then, from noah's possession scene:

compare this to whelk's recollection of killing noah, and the effects it had on him:

"red lines streaked in the corners of his vision" "in whelk's head, unearthly voices hissed and whispered, words blurred and stretched together" "dictated by something larger and more powerful than himself" "somehow invited into his body through czerny's death" yes i am going there, yes i am making that point. i think, to some extent, barrington was possessed when he murdered his best friend. neither noah nor adam get their own pov while possessed, so...

i mean, time is a circle. noah needed to die so that gansey would live. noah had already died, gansey had already lived. it needed to happen, and so it would.

where the difference lies, i think, is in barrington's reaction to being possessed, versus adam/noah. for all that i'm arguing possession, i don't think barry's a stand up guy, he's a kid who's never had good role models (need i pull out the quotes about his shit parents) and who was raised by money and objects and reputation, which is why i think the possession worked. the idea to kill noah might've seemed like his own in the moment, an escalation of the situation he was already in, but unlike adam/noah there was no one to hold him back (not to mention barrington isn't as familiar with magic things(?) as they are). in that moment, whelk did truly lost it. he did the unforgivable. but there is no universe in which he doesn't.

for every time we see noah reenacting his death, we also need to imagine barrington whelk, seventeen and shivering. realizing as he's committing the act that he can't go back. perhaps realizing too that he couldn't stop his hands from gripping onto that skateboard, no matter how much he wanted to after that first hit. ("But instead, he remembered the sound Czerny made the first time he hit him.")

there's also adam in this. both him as a parallel to barrington, and as a strange sort of part of noah in a way. adam and noah interact the least out of the main group, arguably, but they too are a two-headed creature; they started out as one singular character and you can sort of tell. something something hands and eyes, something something sacrifice. ronan sort of parallels noah, in that he is not the same lively person we hear about, and he never will be that person again. both are cabeswater personified (although in different ways).

some more things:

"he once had been tight as ticks with his roommate czerny" "only whelk and czerny, treasure hunters and troublemakers" "it was possible that czerny's death wasn't for nothing after all" "[...] his days a ribbon floating aimlessly in water" (in relation to: "he had been a swimmer himself, once") "czerny, you're in a better place than me, i think" "whelk, standing in the wreckage of his life, didn't laugh this time" "the dry, half-eaten burger on the passenger seat / the first fast-food burger he'd had in seven years" "these days, when whelk was trying to comfort himself, he told himself that czerny was a sheep, but sometimes he slipped and remembered him as loyal instead" "[...] took him back to that moment, the skateboard in his hands, the sad question gasped in czerny's dying sounds "we were friends like —"

also, whelk dying in the same place noah did. these lines:

both noah and barrington look the same in the end. broken, rumpled, forgotten. noah's family will never know his bones were reburied outside of their family plot. whelk's mother, however distant she is, will never be notified that her son has died. i think in a way barrington died at the exact same time noah did; something something invited into his body through czerny's death.

basically what i'm getting at is, noah and barry could've been ronan and adam i think, had the circumstances been different. they never will be, but i think about it sometimes.

and there's so many more things i'm not even gonna TRY going into, like noah and whelk both being parallels to gansey (the three of them kings in their own right), or the disparity between whelk talking about czerny vs adele talking about noah, or whatever the fuck is going on with whelk's backstory in general (what's the deal with his mother? how the hell did he get the aglionby job? a random headcanon of mine is that his and noah's search for the ley line lead them to fox way, seven years before the events of the book, and that's partly why whelk refuses to give out his name to maura, because barrington is hard to forget, and easy to trace back)

there is so much to talk about here and i'm so peeved no one is doing it properly... why are we still talking about declan bringing his weekly girlfriend over to monmouth for no reason when we could be talking about whatever the fuck kinda soul-fate-destiny bullshit noah and whelk have!

#i know trc has its villain of the book thing but i am sooo disappointed whelk is never really talked about beyond #the first novel. like he's one of the only tangible links we have to noah's life... he was RIGHT THERE #he's so interesting to me. i rotate him and noah over and over in my head like they're in a microwave #trc #the raven cycle #the raven boys #noah czerny #adam parrish #barrington whelk #ronan lynch

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adamsbackpack · 3 years

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Something that makes sense in dream logic...

But a continuation of this, maybe like somehow Bryde somehow finds Declan’s apartment where Jordan is as well and Declan finds a slightly unhinged Bryde carrying in an unconscious sickly looking Ronan and he’s slowly starting to turn into a tree, like the one he was trapped in during the dream? So he’s growing leaves and vines from his fingers, his skin is turning to wood

Idk the dream ley energy from the forests that Ronan dreamt are decaying and slowly releasing the ‘ dream energy’ back into him idk and slowly Ronan wakes up in Declan’s bed half conscious and out of it and slurring works and Ronan rasps that he’s sorry he was such a bad brother and made Declan hate him and obv Declan said he never hated him and Declan’s just a big mess of asshole Declan emotions cuz for all he knows his younger brother is dying in front of him and just a lot of Declan worrying about Ronan and yelling at bryde for what he’s done

And maybe they try the sweetmetal and when they put it next to Ronan he gains some color back slightly and Declan (and jordan) and watching over him In worry wondering what to do

So just can you make it longer if you can, than the last one? Mostly Declan’s POV with a little bit of Ronan’s, even though he’s unconscious/ dying/ turning into a magical dying tree?

Had it not been for the jarring silence in the room, Declan wouldn’t have heard the lumbering steps coming from the stairwell outside his door. Had it not been for the silence, he wouldn’t have had that sinking feeling he gets when he just knows that one of his brothers is fucked. He wouldn’t have cleared the mugs of coffee off of the marble counter of the island in his cramped kitchen. He wouldn’t have sent Jordan to the door to look through the peep hole, making sure there were no straggling moderators coming to slit their throats.

Thankfully, a heavy blanket of quiet had settled itself over the apartment, which allowed enough time for Declan to manage all of these things before Jordan opened the door to reveal his dying brother.

“Help me,” growled the tall, bird like man that had Ronan cradled in his arms. Ah, thought Declan. So this must be the infamous Bryde.

Jordan gripped Ronan’s ankles while Bryde struggled to haul the rest of him by his underarms. Had the situation not been so gruesome, Declan might have been laughing. Well, maybe he would have smirked (Declan really didn’t laugh all that often). But to watch his foolish little brother being dragged through his apartment door seemed like the perfect moment for those four glorious words that Ronan hated so much: I told you so.

But Declan wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t even smirking. Because the situation was gruesome.

Nightwash spilled from between his brother’s cracked lips, leaking from his nose and ear canals and soaking the living room carpet as Jordan and Bryde carried him into the kitchen, where they draped his body across the cleared marble countertop. Dark shadows clung to his eyes, looking more and more like bruises the longer Declan looked at them until he wasn’t even sure that they weren’t. His hair, which was normally buzzed to the scalp, had begun to grow out softly from Ronan’s days spent on the road, hopping from city to city with Hennessy and Bryde. Stubble grazed his jaw, and Declan was struck in that moment by just how much Ronan looked like Niall.

But Nightwash and exhaustion were the least of his worries.

From Ronan’s fingertips, branches were stretching out towards the kitchen windows. Thick leaves sprouted on stems that shot out from the startlingly green veins in his wrists, covering the smattering of scars from nightmares of the past. Tree bark crept up his throat, leaving Ronan’s neck stiff and confined. When he started choking, Jordan tugged on his bottom lip to find a soggy bunch of wildflowers crawling out from his windpipe.

“What the hell is going on here,” Declan demanded, gripping Bryde by the collar as Jordan helped Ronan to sit up as he vomited oily black clumps of moss. Bryde, looking a little worse for wear with black liquid strewn across the front of his shirt, snarled at Declan as he tore himself away from his grip.

“You think I would have come here if I knew?” The way in which the question was spat assured Declan that he knew the answer. “I think… I think it’s Lindenmere.”

“Okay,” Declan said dangerously, “then why don’t you tell me why the fuck Lindenmere is growing inside my brother?”

Bryde’s eyes glowed. “I’m sorry, did you miss the Ley Lines going down? Thanks to your girl-“ Bryde threw an accusatory finger at Jordan, who gave him her angriest finger in return, “-Lindenmere can’t exist. It’s returning to its dreamer because it has nowhere else to go. This is its way of falling asleep, just like the rest of his dreams.”

Declan swiped his hand over his face, silently praying that when he opened his eyes, all of this will have just been a stress-induced hallucination. No such luck.

“Declan,” Jordan said, “I don’t- what do we do?”

Declan contemplated this. They couldn’t exactly go to the hospital - what were regular doctors and nurses supposed to do against an illness such as this. Where would they even begin? And it’s not like Bryde could dream up a remedy with the Ley Lines down.

A sharp groan coming from the countertop brought Declan back to himself. Ronan’s body was convulsing with every movement of the branches engulfing his flesh. He tried to speak around the garden that had inhabited his mouth but to no avail. Declan placed his hand on Ronan’s forehead and rubbed his thumb softly against his temple the way Aurora used to do when they were sick. “Hey, Ronan,” Declan said softly, and was struck by the tightness in his throat and the stinging in his eyes. “You’ve really gotten yourself fucked this time, haven’t you?” Though his body still shook violently and the wildflowers muffled his voice, Declan swore he heard his brother attempt a laugh. Ronan’s hand shot up and squeezed Declan’s tightly, a pulsing grip in time with his body tremors. “It’s okay, Ronan. It’ll be okay, just try and breathe.” Declan watched as his brother’s chest shook with the effort to take in a measured breath.

Ronan let go of Declan’s hand, only to tap at his palm until it lay flat. He traced the letter ‘M’ on his skin. Matthew.

Was it better to tell Ronan he was fine, just to alleviate some of his stress? Should he tell him the truth of the matter, which was that the youngest Lynch brother was currently unconscious in his bedroom, as he had been for the past several days?

Declan settled on a half-truth.

“He went to sign himself up for high school in DC the other day. Isn’t that great? He had a meeting with the guidance councillor to register and select his courses. He was really excited about auto class, so he can help you fix the car with Adam the next time you crash it.” Declan rambled on, side-stepping the truth and instead offering the pleasantness of Matthew being happy. Ronan was too exhausted to demand a real answer, so he drank in his brother’s distractions eagerly. At the mention of Adam, though, Ronan tensed and glanced up at Jordan, who nodded in understanding and left to call him from Declan’s landline.

“He’s not getting better,” Bryde said impatiently. The young man had been so quiet up until that point that Declan almost forgot he was there. Almost. “I… I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to try.” Well, that wasn’t good. Bryde apologizing was decidedly not good.

A blood-curdling scream erupted from Ronan so suddenly that Declan had to take a moment for his heart to start beating at a normal pace again. Through Ronan’s t-shirt - which was now soaked with a mixture of blood and nightwash - burst forth five branches, flaking with rough bark and moss. Jordan rushed in from the living room, hand held over the speaker of the phone in a futile attempt to block Ronan’s cries from Adam’s ear. “Shit,” she breathed. “Adam, hun, let me call you back.” She silenced Adam’s muffled protests with one tap to the phone.

Declan gave a shake of his head before pointing to the cupboard beside the sink. “Get me towels, as many towels as you can,” he said sharply. Bryde and Jordan came back seconds later with armfuls of soft cotton dishtowels. Snatching them from their grasps, Declan began wrapping the towels around the base of the branches until most of the blood was sopped up. Just as he stepped back to observe his work, his cell phone began to tremble in his pocket. “Son of a bitch.” Unknown number. Maybe it’s Hennessy.

He answered it.

“What.” It came out more as a demand than a question.

“Listen to me carefully, Declan. I can help you,” said Niall Lynch.

***TBC***

#ronan lynch #declan lynch #bryde #jordan hennessy #jordan cdth #cdth #call down the hawk #mister impossible #mister impossible spoilers #post mister impossible #adam parrish #asks #ask me #drabble #drabble requests

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unsteadyflame · 3 years

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[Suddenly feels around the bed to search for the other’s hand / body when they’re sleeping] ( bluesey)

Blue Sargent had a secret. This was not unusual. Blue Sargent had had many secrets, over the years including but not limited to such wide-ranging subjects as: the knowledge that her first kiss would kill a boy; the future death of Richard Campbell Gansey III; the location of a magical forest; the fact that Ronan Lynch was 1) a magical sort of dreamer creature and 2) not as much of an asshole as he pretended to be; the knowledge that Blue herself could perhaps be best classfied as part-tree (she had not disclosed this at her latest doctor’s appointment, for example); and finally, where Calla had once hidden Orla’s parcel delivery of orange-and-purple nail polish, claiming its obnoxious loudness interfered with the clairvoyant powers of 300 Fox Way.

What she had now was a very different sort of secret. It was, however, a secret keeping her up late at night. Or that might have just been Henry’s snores. The tent they were all sharing was very small.

She had rolled over onto her side to stare at Gansey. In sleep, he did look younger, rather than what he usually did: an out of time being who was neither a young nor an old man. But that was all in his eyes. Like this, he just looked like an ordinary sort of boy. He stirred in his sleep and seemed to stretch out his hands. Eyes bleary, she could tell he wasn’t really awake, but he gave her a half-smile of sorts before seemingly punching her in the side. She gave him a glare, before feeling him fumble further. Not a punch, then, she realised, as his hand interlocked with hers, before his eyes closed again, his half-smile stretching out and then disappearing into sleep.

Blue had to fight off an undignfied wave of tenderness. Really, if the Blue of a year or so again could have seen herself now! Practically fawning over a Raven Boy in his sleep. But that was the secret: Blue Sargent was in love.

Technically, it wasn’t much of a secret. After all, she had always been told if she kissed her true love, he would die. She had kissed Gansey, and he had died. A far stupider boy than Richard Gansey could perhaps have put the two together. Blue herself had realized the implications, of course, even before they’d kissed. But it wasn’t a very sensible way of realizing oneself to be in love. She firmly rejected the very notion of letting a prophecy tell her - or him - that Blue was in love. She could make the announcement herself, thank you very much. The only question was when.

His hand in hers felt very warm, enough that Blue felt a craving to be closer. They each had their own sleeping bag, something that Maura had insisted upon (with a roll of her eyes heaven-high). Blue unzipped hers and quickly made the transfer through the cold air until she could wrap her arms around him inside his sleeping bag instead.

Her heart hammered, but there was something so right about this, about being close enough to press her lips to the back of his neck. These were her favourite kisses, the ones she didn’t have to think about at all. Just feel, over every inch of her body, an explosion of excitement, of sensation, that reminded her precisely of what she’d felt the very first time they’d visited Cabeswater. When she had realised: magic is real, and we can find it, touch it, make it our own.

She’d found it with him.

“Your feet are cold,” Gansey muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

“If only one could wear boat shoes to bed!” Blue snapped back. Well, really, here she was trying to be romantic. But with no further interruptions from him, her irritation died back down and she let her head rest in the crook of his shoulders. Her eyes closed, all sensation gone except for the warmth of his body, and his smell, that contrary to anything she could have thought the first time they had met ... whether she counted it as meeting his spirit, or meeting his unbearably pretentious President Cellphone persona ... frankly, she sooner would have believed she could end up with a spirit than President Cellphone Gansey... was the smell of home.

“Gansey ... by the way.... I love you”

She stifled her smile as he began to splutter awake, now feigning sleep herself. She needed nothing more than this, no grand gesture, even if it wasn’t befitting of a resurrected boy who still sometimes seemed like he had the power of an ancient king inside of him and the still-not-psychic but somehow magic tree girl who’d killed him with a kiss and then brought him back to life. But after all, she supposed part of the magic was that he already knew.

#blue [ muse ]#blue [ ft. gansey ]#clearly me trying to mimic mstief's style idk if i like this #ask memes

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aleidawrites · 3 years

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Baby Animals Are Romantic

A gift for @semicolonsandsimiles who gave me the prompt “post-canon/established relationship” for the @pynchpromptweek Pynch Secret Santa 2020. Have some of Ronan and Adam being soft and going on dates with each other!

Title: Baby Animals Are Romantic

Word Count: 3301

Summary: Adam had never been to the county fair before, so when Ronan suggests they go he figures this is a farming thing. But Adam's eager to spend time with his boyfriend, even if he also has to listen to an auctioneer trying to sell steers. Or, in which Ronan just wants to take his oblivious boyfriend on a date and maybe hold hands on the Ferris wheel.

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Ronan approached him a couple of weeks after they had finally discussed the dream-goop. It felt like they had progressed to a new stage of their relationship, with Ronan dedicated to his dreaming again and Adam figuring out what school was going to look like. Adam was bent over one of his many lists (this one a bulleted list of all the work study opportunities on campus) when Ronan rested his shoulder on the door jam to the study where Adam had taken up residence.

He liked the large wooden desk.

“You know, the fair’s coming up,” Ronan muttered.

“The what?”

Adam looked up from his list — the best chance for steady hours was working in the campus cafeteria but the assignment at the library would let him do surreptitious homework on the job more often — and frowned at Ronan. He could remember a school fair in elementary, but Ronan wouldn’t have those same memories.

“Wait, the county fair?” Adam laid his pen down carefully on the desk and leaned back.

The county fair took place every August at the fairground, which was just another field north of Singers Falls. Aglionby never paid much attention to the county fair, with the ruckus of the Fourth of July always outshining anything else that happened during the summer up until last year. Adam vaguely remembered some of his classmates in elementary school talking about their 4H projects or art submissions with markers and crayons.

“I’ve never been to the fair,” Adam said slowly. Ronan stood up straighter, pushing himself off the door. “What’s even there?”

“Y’know, competitions and shit, who can grow the biggest pumpkin, who’s got the best pig.” Ronan slumped fully into the room to lean against Adam’s desk, like standing straight was a hassle for him. “There’s rides they set up for kids, like those tiny airplanes that you get in and spin around.”

Adam didn’t say that he had never been in those rides as a kid. He knew Ronan wasn’t bringing that up to remind Adam of what he hadn’t had. They just had different perspectives of what kids had. Adam had a mattress on the floor of the double-wide, and Ronan had a dad who created magical things from dreams.

“And the auctioneer will come by to sell off livestock and shit,” Ronan said, speaking faster. “Steers and stuff for farmers. Sometimes there’s baby animals from the stock.”

Oh, so that was a thing. Adam leaned his elbows on the desk so that he could be closer to Ronan’s downturned face.

“You wanna go?”

Ronan’s shoulders slumped so fast that Adam barely noticed how high they had been before. But Ronan’s face relaxed at the same time, and that was more fun for Adam to watch.

“Shit, Parrish, don’t act like you're doing me a favor or anything,” Ronan drawled.

Adam rolled his eyes. For everything that had happened over the summer, Ronan was still shit at asking for what he wanted. He could’ve just asked Adam to go with him to the county fair auction.

“Fine.” Adam hid his smile in his shoulder and picked up his pen again. “When’s the auction?”

“Friday afternoon,” said Ronan. “You just have the factory shift on Friday, right? You’re free after that.”

Ronan asked like he didn’t have Adam’s whole work schedule memorized. Adam looked up and didn’t bother concealing his smile at Ronan.

“Yep.”

To Adam’s delight, the tips of Ronan’s ears turned pink as he nodded as if nothing was unusual about that.

“Good.” Ronan turned on his heel and marched back out the door. “Hey, brat, what’re you doing with that?”

Adam left Ronan to manage Opal on his own, but he was still smiling when he hunched back over his lists.

…

They left Opal with the Fox Way ladies on Friday, something Opal herself had mixed feelings about, but she seemed happy enough with all the various herbs the women let her chew on. Ronan drove the two of them back through Singers Falls and up to the fairgrounds.

Adam had only ever seen it when it was an empty field, mostly mowed down grass with patches of dirt or mud, depending on the season. Ronan kept vibrating in the driver’s seat, shifting so aggressively that Adam wondered if he should’ve offered to go “driving” with him before going to the fair. Or instead of it.

When they finally got to the fair, just after lunch, the field was already half full of cars on one side of the skinny two-lane road. The field on the other side of the road was full of white tents and footpaths around the various attractions. Rows of red and yellow and green tractors stretched out from one side of the fair into the empty trimmed field. True to what Ronan had said, there were a few carnival rides for kids, including a full sized Ferris wheel near the center of the fair.

“There’s a lot of people here,” Adam noted as they parked and got out of the Beemer. Lots of people was typically not Ronan’s jam.

“Don’t be a wuss, Parrish,” Ronan said. He hurried around the car to stand close to Adam’s side. “Let’s go.”

He grabbed at Adam’s hand and jerked him towards the road. Adam went. It was hard not to follow Ronan Lynch when he was this much like Ronan Lynch, a black T-shirt covering his shoulders while the wicked curves of his tattoo peeked out at the base of his neck.

For a minute as they crossed the road, Adam wondered if he should be more careful, if he should take his hand away from Ronan’s. His parents weren’t generally fair-goers, so he didn’t expect to see them or anyone else from the trailer park here, but farmers were their own kind of people. What would they think about two boys holding hands as they ran to the admission booth? But as soon as they pulled up to the ticket window where a gray-haired lady with a straw hat sat taking money, Ronan let go of Adam’s hand to dig in his pocket.

“I could’ve got that,” Adam protested, mostly because he could.

“So, you can buy us lunch,” said Ronan as he folded his wallet and shoved it back into his jeans.

The lady gave a string of pink paper tickets to Ronan, who tore it in half and gave one half to Adam. He took them and frowned at them. They looked like raffle tickets, but Adam wasn’t sure what purpose they served here.

“C’mon,” Ronan said and walked through the gates.

Inside the fairgrounds were full of lines of people grouped and moving like pods of fish. The packed squadrons of bodies all moved the same way, like rush hour traffic with bodies instead of cars. Ignoring everyone, Ronan pulled Adam to a stop in front of a fork in the dirt path and tilted his chin up towards the open sky.

“The games are that way.” Ronan pointed to the right.

Adam saw the pointed tops of colorful booths painted in reds and oranges and mechanical spires that — sure enough — propelled tiny metal airplanes up with kids strapped in and screaming in delight.

“I wanna know if they have the stupid carnival shooting games,” said Ronan. Adam rolled his eyes, but Ronan’s eyes went yet another direction. “There’s the Ferris wheel.”

Adam followed Ronan’s finger to the large white and purple wheel at the other side of the fairgrounds, straight ahead of where they were.

“Yeah, looks kinda cheesy.” Adam had only seen those kinds of things in movies. But it wasn’t what Ronan was here for, and in lieu of a responsible farmer, Adam supposed he could nudge Ronan towards the actual prize. “Where’s the animals? You said there would be babies.”

A frown darted quickly across Ronan’s face as he turned to Adam, but then he softened into something private, something reserved for Adam and the Barns. It was the kind of look that made Adam think they could survive a few years of long-distance, as long as Ronan always looked at him like that when he came home.

“Yeah, sure, Parrish, let’s go look at the babies,” said Ronan.

Slipping his shoulder behind Adam’s back, Ronan nudged Adam forward and down the left-hand path. They navigated around the people walking the opposite direction, and Adam felt Ronan’s hand pressing against his back, just below his shoulder blades where Ronan’s body blocked anyone looking closely at the two boys. Adam’s skin felt hot under his T-shirt.

They walked together to a long barn with a shiny metal roof, and Ronan shifted to take the lead up the incline to the end of the barn where the main doors were standing wide open. Adam recognized the smell immediately: hay and warm bodies and corn. But this was different from the Barns in a way that Adam could only attribute to the dream quality of Ronan’s home. Even once everything was awake again, there was a sense of peace over the whole thing, a wildness that the cows, the deer, Opal, and Ronan himself all were a part of.

But Ronan looked happy enough to be in his natural environment. The thought of teasing Ronan that he belonged in a barn made Adam’s mouth quirk up. Ronan grabbed his hand before he could say anything and pulled Adam towards one side of the barn.

“Look,” Ronan pointed into the pen.

People were pressed up against the wood of the pen, but Ronan just elbowed a man out of the way and ignored the glare that he received in turn. Adam scoffed but walked up beside Ronan and looked inside the wooden pen. Two lambs sat in the pen next to the back wall while a third lamb walked around on spindly legs, jerking its way back and forth from the many outstretched hands of the people crowding the pen then darting back to the safety of the other lambs away from people.

Adam rested his elbows on the top of the pen and watched the lamb dance back and forth adventurously, nipping at the outstretched fingers of a kid who had climbed up the rungs of the pen and then hopping back out of reach of all the adult hands that stretched out to pet the animal. Beside him, Ronan sighed and leaned down over the closed pen, nearly folding himself in half. He let his hand dangle loosely near the fluffy bedding lining the pen and ignored the rest of the people clamoring to see the baby lamb and entice them closer. Adam watched as one of the lambs from the back of the pen got up on its own shaky legs and nosed its way closer. Ronan wiggled his fingers and let the lamb approach him and sniff cautiously.

Adam leaned harder onto Ronan and watched the lamb lick at Ronan’s fingers, wary but eager for something that Ronan had. Adam could sympathize.

Ronan glanced up.

“Wanna pet him?” he asked softly, his voice toned down from his usual boisterous shredding of the English language.

Adam scooted closer to Ronan and leaned down with him, letting his fingers dangle just like Ronan had instead of thrusting his hand out in beckoning motions like the rest of the people. The lamb moved from sniffing Ronan’s fingers to seeking out Adam’s. It’s tongue tickled the tips of his fingers, and Adam stretched his hand out a little further and gently patted the top of the lamb’s head. He turned to see Ronan grinning at him.

“C’mon,” said Ronan. “I bet there are some calves they got further down.”

…

They passed through the other end of the livestock barn, where Ronan had stopped by pretty much every pen to see the baby animals and try to entice each one closer. Every time he had gotten an animal to come close to him, he offered petting privileges to Adam, which he appreciated. But Adam liked seeing Ronan’s unique magic with barns and baby animals even more than touching them himself. For all his dangerous appearance, Ronan was most at home being soft around animals.

After the barn, Ronan dragged Adam — fairly willingly but still — down the continuing path that looped back around to the carnival games that were all grouped together, next to the mechanical toy rides. Adam beat Ronan in a game of “shoot the water gun at the target,” which won him both an oversized red foam cowboy hat and a heated look from Ronan. It was only when Ronan had a bizarrely large stuffed giraffe under his arm that Adam thought he might be missing something.

“We should get food,” Ronan said. “You’re buying, right?”

Adam glanced down at the beaten watch on his wrist, still able to tell him when he was about to be late for a shift.

“What about the auction?”

Ronan frowned at him.

“Why would you wanna see an auction?” he demanded. “It’s just a bunch of people yelling about cows.”

“You yell about cows on a regular basis, Lynch.” Adam rolled his eyes. Ronan was probably just protesting too much and didn’t want to go to something that he was being forced to.

“Those’re my cows, though,” Ronan said into Adam’s good ear. “Special breed.”

Adam felt his cheeks flush and tried to brush the blush away with the back of his hand.

“Let’s do whatever you want,” he tried. “Where d’you want to go?”

Ronan stopped in between a booth with a ring toss and the back of a food cart that smelled like hot oil and sugar.

“I brought you to have fun, Parrish,” he said. “Are you that much of a workaholic? We talked about this.”

Adam bristled. He breathed in deeply, almost matching Ronan’s smoker-inhale, and told himself to be calm.

“Excuse me for trying to make sure you get what you need outa this,” he muttered lowly.

“Excuse you?!” Ronan’s eyebrows flew up.

Adam grimaced. The words had slipped out. Fighting with Ronan was still a charged activity for the both of them. Adam was still getting used to softness, from both himself and from Ronan Lynch.

“Look, I’m trying to be considerate of you here,” Adam explained very calmly.

“Well, don’t feel like you have to spare my fucking feelings!” Ronan bit out.

Adam threw his hands into the air, funny cowboy hat and all.

“You wanted to come!”

“I wanted to go on a date with you!” snapped Ronan.

Adam blinked his way out of his sudden anger and felt his stomach sink in its absence. Ronan looked suddenly sheepish and angry that he was sheepish. His jaw ticked like he was clenching his teeth, like he was trying to hold his words back from where they could do the most damage to Adam.

“I can do better than just driving in cars,” Ronan said. “This was gonna be fun. Way to ruin the day.”

Adam’s stomach turned to lead. He hated the idea that this was all ruined because of him. Part of his mind argued that going to the county fair was a weird idea for a date, but he recognized the defensive part of himself, the part that constantly looked for ways that he could get hurt so that he knew where to protect himself.

But the larger part of him saw Ronan’s jaw clench the same way it did when he was trying not to let his lip tremble, trying not to show how much he felt.

Adam thrust his red cowboy hat into Ronan’s hands and shoved him towards a wooden table in front of the food truck.

“Wait there,” he ordered. “I’ll get us lunch.” Ronan glowered at him unconvincingly. “Just wait there—” Adam just needed a couple of minutes to get his brain in order. “—I’ll be back.”

He marched off, trying to see what looked like actual food in this place.

…

Adam returned with a paper plate damp with grease and soaked in powdered sugar. Ronan was still sitting at the wooden picnic table, his head resting on his folded arms on the table. Adam slid the fried pile of dough toward Ronan and sat next to him. Sitting across would be too far away.

“I bought a funnel cake,” he said.

Ronan lifted his head and stared at the deep fried treat. It wasn’t real food, but Adam had thought it smelled good and was the kind of thing Ronan would enjoy stuffing his face with.

“I’m sorry,” Adam said. “I didn’t know this was supposed to be a date. I thought you were just looking for more animals for the farm.”

Ronan snuffled into his bare elbow and then rested his chin on his arms.

“You’re a real romantic, Parrish.”

Adam bent his head and leaned into Ronan’s shoulder so that he could hide the small smile that threatened his mouth. Ronan was at least willing to forgive him, which made the shameful tightness in his belly abate a little.

“You like baby animals, though.” Adam pressed his head against Ronan’s stubbled skull. “I knew you wanted to come here.”

Ronan shifted beneath him like he wanted to sit up straighter but didn’t want to actually lose Adam’s touch.

“So, you didn’t wanna come?”

“I didn’t say that,” Adam said quickly. He drew his head back so that he could wrap his arm around Ronan’s waist cautiously, still aware that they were surrounded by people who had probably grown up like Adam’s parents. “I liked seeing you with the lamb. That was cute.”

Ronan’s ears turned bright pink, and he turned to hide most of his face against Adam’s neck.

“Shuddup.”

Adam grinned.

“I’m just saying.” He shifted his hand up to cover Ronan’s ribs. “I would’ve come even if I didn’t know it was a date. I like being with you.”

Ronan relaxed into him, and Adam held his breath like he always did when he had to remind himself that this was his now. He wasn’t being selfish for having this.

“So, next time I should spell things out for you,” Ronan murmured into his neck.

“Might be good.” Adam knew his own weaknesses, and he was prone to not communicating. He was working on that.

Then Adam straightened, shifting so that Ronan’s head rolled off his neck.

“Or I could ask you,” Adam said to Ronan’s confused (and slightly disappointed) look. “Ronan Lynch, do you want to ride the Ferris wheel with me?”

The brief glance of Ronan’s wide eyes made Adam smile through his heated cheeks. He knew he was blushing, but Ronan’s cheeks were fully pink now.

“I can try to bribe the guy to stop us at the top,” said Adam. “Like in the movies.”

Ronan inhaled his smoker’s breath and leaned so close that he nearly headbutted Adam.

“Thought that was cheesy.”

“I don’t need a replay of what I missed out on, Lynch.” A bit of leftover shame curled in Adam’s stomach before he smothered it entirely. He focused on softening his face, and he took Ronan’s hand tentatively. “But if you want to show me your favorite stuff, I can get behind that.”

Ronan threaded his fingers through Adam’s.

“I wanna be with you,” he said. “The rest doesn’t matter so much.”

Adam grinned.

“So, come on.” Adam pulled Ronan until he followed Adam to his feet. “Let’s go.”

“What about the funnel cake?” Ronan protested. Adam didn’t think he really meant it.

“That’s barely food, Lynch.” He rolled his eyes anyway. “I’ll buy you some real food after the Ferris wheel.”

“Fair food is a time-honored tradition, you pleb.”

Adam grinned all the way through Ronan’s complaining as they walked hand-in-hand through the fairgrounds.

#pynch #fanfiction #writing #the raven cycle #pynchpromptweek

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rokangs · 3 years

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; r o n a n k a n g ☕ 🍂 .

( jeon wonwoo, cis man ) have you seen RONAN KANG ? i heard HE is a GRAD STUDENT IN ARCHITECTURE at SUN VALLEY SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS. he’s 24 years old, and he’s been living in san verto for 8 YEARS. he tends to be EARNEST & CAPABLE, but rumor has it, he can also be BLUNT & IRRITABLE. [ riya, 23, pst, she/her ] @foolsstarters

tw // references distant parenting & past violence.

; b i o s u m m a r y .

ronan kang is born on a snowy december morning to an affluent family in lower manhattan, ny. he discovers very early on that he only receives attention whenever he acts out or misbehaves. and this realization subsequently commences a Reign of Terror that stretches the length of his childhood years. until one day..

it ultimately backfires. instead of his parents giving him the love & attention that he wants, they send him off to live with his grandmother in san verto, ca.

( 10-year-old ronan is not a fan. )

his middle school years are a nightmare. san verto is momentarily tormented by a feral tween who tries to fight its entire population of college students, but.........

ronan has never been destructive for the sake of being destructive. at his core is just a kid who feels abandoned & uprooted by the strangers he was supposed to call family.

so, with a little understanding, a lot of love, a very patient guidance counselor, & some good ol’ fashioned grandmother magic, in a few years, he starts to mend.

nothing happens overnight. young ronan has a hard time reigning in his temper, & it’s clear he has trouble not thinking with his fists. -- eventually, however, he’s able to convert most of his excess energy into something more productive ( & some of it is even translated into art ).

does he still look intimidating as hell? yes. does he occasionally scare off tourists by demanding that they ask him for help? .... yes. does he have a vaguely threatening aura that causes unsuspecting residents to feel like they have to cross the street when they’re walking on the same side of the sidewalk? ........ ( hell yes. )

-- but when you’re down, there’s nowhere to go but up !!

after graduation, ronan returns to the east coast to attend university at his father’s request. despite having had, at best, a tumultuous childhood in ny, he’s always viewed his hometown with a fond, rose-colored sort of nostalgia.

this feeling of nostalgia quickly fades, however, due in large part to how distant his family is, despite their proximity. -- now missing the warmth of his small town & the people within it, ronan struggles to acclimate to how small it makes him feel. the bright-eyed intensity that he used to be known for dulls into a blunt sort of apathy,

.. so. after four years of academics, a bachelor’s degree in architectural design, & a brief period gaining entry-level experience, ronan ultimately makes the decision to submit his portfolio to the architectural grad program at sun valley.

; p e r s o n a l i t y a t p r e s e n t .

having been away from san verto for around six years, ronan struggles to reconcile who he currently is with who people remember him as. he typically tries to avoid conversations that bring up who he was in the past; which is to say, ( with a few notable exceptions, ) he tries to avoid people who used to know him altogether.

his post-high school years have really worked to mellow him out; he no longer looks unapproachable or threatening ( at least, upon first glance ) and is committed to quietly cultivating a respectable reputation among his university peers and the other residents in town. new acquaintances might come to know him as diligent or sincere, .. but also distant & detached.

underneath all the perceived changes, however, one thing, at least, remains the same: ronan’s temper. despite having matured considerably, ronan is still always on the brink of irritation; he’s just less explosive now & better at hiding it.

occasionally, his aloof facade will slip, and one will be able to catch a hint of snark or ( god forbid ) a small twitch of the eyebrow, but he’s.. working on it........; he always carries a thermos of hot tea to drink & a small notebook to stress scribble in, just in case.

; p o t e n t i a l c o n n e c t i o n s .

someone who’d been a good influence on ronan when he first started living in san verto. this is the person he considers his first & closest friend and most likely the only one he kept in touch with while he was in ny. ( def doesn’t have to be lawful good !! just someone who can keep him away from.. Crimes. )

someone who annoyed ronan in the past ( whether intentionally or not ). since his return, ronan has dreaded seeing this person, .. but the familiarity he feels after running into them again is slightly comforting -- if not endearing -- and this just serves to annoy him even more ??

someone who helped ronan’s grandmother one (1) time & made a positive impression on her. now, every time she hears that this person needs help with anything, she immediately volunteers her grandson to do it, and he never has the heart to say no.

any students who are unfortunate enough to be taking a class that ronan TA’s..

housemate(s), classmates, fellow art nerds, fwb’s !!

#" ━━ ◤ ooc. ◢#foolsintro #pls.. love this dumbass..............

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gansey-just-gansey · 4 years

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Before I Wake Part One

Written by @gansey-just-gansey, @allfortheandriel , and @majoringinlycanthropy

A second later, the engine roared to life. Or rather, the car roared to life. Who knew what strange, miracle wiring was even making the sound that flooded their ears. Blue made a ridiculous whooping sound of glee. The year was stretched out in front of them: magical, enormous and entirely unwritten. It was a marvellous thing and Blue was alive with the thought of a future unpredicted. Fate diverted.

“Do you think it ever breaks down?” Gansey shouted over the sputtering of the not-engine.

Henry began to laugh, warm and delighted. “This is going to be a great trip.”

He stepped on the gas.

Blue jerked awake, disoriented, like she actually expected to wake up in that old, beaten up dream car instead of here, on this plush dream sofa. She couldn’t believe how vivid it all had seemed. Her heart was racing. She could still feel the wind cooling sweat on her forehead, the smell of warm tires, and something fresh and mint-like that lingered on her lips.

“It was all just a dream,” she whispered, if only to convince herself.

“Dreams?” came a smooth voice from the other end of the large sofa. Joseph Kavinsky sat up with a snort, drawing a thumb under his nose to rub the powder away. There was more blow untouched on the mirror beside him. “Dreaming’s my job,” he said. “You just rest your pretty head.”

“Mm, just a crazy dream,” Blue mused. “I was friends with Dick Three and his merry gang. That wasn’t even the craziest part.” The dream had started to fade, but she recounted the heart of it. Prophecies, mysteries, and dead Welsh kings. It sounded like a bad trip by the time she shared the finishing dissolving details.

He laughed shortly. “You dreamed me dead, little witch? Fucking dark. And here I thought we were in love.” His crooked smirk mocked her.

“You should be so lucky,” she said haughtily, rubbing at that space above her nose where a headache had begun to form. “Quit hogging the coke. The world is way too sharp right now.”

“Come here, baby. Come get your fix,” he patted his leg, presenting himself like a throne for her to sit on.

Blue rolled her eyes, but did sit on his lap, pressed up against him as she used one of the numerous fake IDs that Kavinsky must have dreamt to separate out her own line. When she bent in to take it, she saw a flash of his grin. His smile would be almost nice to look at if it wasn’t like experiencing the world being turned over on its head. Her nose burned, stinging hard as she wriggled it, but she knew it wouldn’t be long before that sensation began to fade. The pain, the dream, K’s crooked smile, along with the rest of the world around her would be gone soon.

Kavinsky gripped her thigh as she started to slide off his lap. “Ah ah ah, little witch, where’s my payment?” He tapped his bottom lip.

A kiss. Only a kiss.

Blue didn’t hesitate, catching his mouth easily, and the world as she knew it melted like paint in a rainstorm. Their lips slotted together and her hand curled around the nape of his neck as she tilted her head and deepened the kiss. Complaining was in Blue Sargent’s nature, but in the end she truly didn’t mind kissing him. He was at least good at it, much better than others she had kissed. He knew how to use his mouth and tongue. In an instant, with his mouth against hers, she felt new. She was clean. She was oh so clean. Washed away like the world.

They were still plastered to each other when Proko entered the room; his familiar boots making heavy sounds as he came down the stairs. Blue felt the loss immediately. A kiss and then none at all, broken by K to watch his favorite plaything make his way towards them. No, Prokopenko was the easiest plaything. She didn’t want to think about what she was. She sighed quietly, wiping away the feeling of the kiss from her bottom lip. Her time with Kavinsky was over now.

Whatever, it was time for her shift at Nino’s anyway. “Later, bitches,” she said, not bothering to wait for a goodbye. K would already be too wrapped up in Proko to pay any attention to her exit.

She was only halfway through her shift when Gansey, the star of her dream, came through the door, followed by his disciples. She rolled her eyes, ignoring them as they were seated by her coworker. Her cheeks burned at the memory of Gansey’s part in her dream. She could still hear the sound of the Pig’s engine, the smell of mint on his breath, the feel of-

“Pardon me, miss.”

Blue turned unwillingly towards the voice. She knew who it was of course, how could anybody mistake the sound of that honeyed, old-money, Virginia accented voice?

“Yes?” she asked Gansey, impatiently.

He looked a bit put off by her curtness, but not enough to stop his next words. “Would you like to come sit with us?” He gestured at his table where the other three were watching. She knew Ronan, of course, and Adam from K’s stories. The third boy was unfamiliar, blonde and smudgy. The stranger looked curious, Adam distasteful, and Ronan, that absolute bastard, amused. She scowled at him and his smile grew. She jerked her attention back to Gansey.

“Do you see how I’m wearing this apron? It means I’m working. For a living.”

He looked unconcerned. “I’ll take care of it.”

She echoed, “Take care of it?”

“Yeah. How much do you make in an hour? I’ll take care of it. And I’ll talk to your manager.”

Blue was at a loss for words. She regarded him with narrowed eyes. Could he really be propositioning her? Here, at her real job? Considering for just a moment, she decided it couldn’t hurt. She needed money to keep up with her habits. She couldn’t solely rely on K accepting her other services as payment. It wore her out too much.

“How much are you offering, sugar?” she asked, voice like silk. She put one hand on his forearm and left it there, leaning into him.

"You can't sell what you give out for free," Ronan smirked at her, coming up behind Gansey.

"Stay out of this, Lynch. If your friend is looking for a good time, I can oblige. Money might not be a problem for you, but the rest of us need cash to keep up with our habits."

"What kind of habits?" Gansey asked, frowning now.

"That's not anything you need to worry about, baby," Blue responded, pulling out her man-eating smile, the one she used when asking K to get her something good. “What do you say we talk when my shift is over? You can have me the whole night, if you like.”

“Oh yeah, you better prepare to drop a lot on that, Gansey. Like, at least twenty bucks,” Ronan rolled his eyes.

Gansey looked extremely confused and maybe a little frustrated now. “I was just asking if you’d like to have dinner with us.”

Blue’s smile dropped. “That’s it?”

“Yes, that’s it. What did you mean?”

“I thought maybe-”

“She thought you wanted to pay her for more than just her pleasant company,” Ronan said gleefully. She wanted to rip the sarcastic smile from his face.

Realization dawned on the Aglionby boy’s face. “Oh, that was not how I meant it. That is not what I said.”

Blue had abruptly run completely out of patience for these boys. “That is what you said! But it doesn’t matter, you couldn’t pay me enough to suffer your abhorrent know-it-all attitude and judgemental friends. Get out of my face,” she snarled, moving to go around them and hide in the kitchen until they left. Maybe she would call K and convince him to make the trip to the pizza parlor so she didn’t have to go the rest of her shift without another hit.

“Wait,” Gansey said, grabbing her arm as she passed. A dangerous look came over her face as she glared at the offending hand and then its owner. He released her slowly. “I just wanted to apologize for the misunderstanding.”

“Whatever,” she snapped, turning on her heel and slamming through the kitchen and out the back door, yelling over her shoulder that she was going on her lunch break on her way out. She was already pulling up K’s number on the phone he’d bought her in exchange for her services.

He answered on the first ring, making her swell a little with pride. He always dropped what he was doing just to answer her. “Hello, little witch. I missed you leaving earlier. You don’t even bother to say goodbye anymore?”

“I did, you were too distracted by Prokopenko to notice.” She tried not to let her annoyance slip through, lest he turn down her request.

“Ah well, that does sound like me. What do you want?” he asked. As disinterested as it was, his voice was a balm for her frayed nerves.

“I need a hit. Will you swing by?” she asked, scuffing her shoes on the asphalt.

“What will you give me in exchange?”

“Anything. Dick Three is here and pissing me off. I need it,” she said, a plaintive note in her voice.

“Oh is he now? Lynch and Parrish, too?”

“Of course.”

“It might be worth the run just to go fuck with them,” K mused. She stayed silent, letting her bait sit. She knew it would get her further for cheaper than if she begged. “Okay. I’ll be there in five.” He hung up.

Blue heard when Kavinsky showed up, his engine rumbling loud enough to be heard from the back of the restaurant. She went back through the kitchens to meet him in the front, but he was already leaning over the table that held the other Aglionby boys. All four were stiff, with varying degrees of anger on their faces. She smiled for their discomfort.

Finally, K started laughing and straightened up. His eyes roved over the crowd until they landed on Blue, still waiting next to the kitchen. He sauntered up to her, pulling her into a deep kiss that she had no choice to return, not that she minded very much. When he was done, he smacked her ass and slung his arm around her shoulders, guiding her back through the kitchen door. She chanced a glance back at the table Gansey sat. He watched them with a deep frown. The smudgy boy looked disappointed now; Adam’s distasteful look had intensified. She saved the worst for last. Ronan was pissed, his glower following them as they left.

“Definitely worth the trip,” he laughed, pulling out the little baggy of fine powder and holding it in front of her face when they were back outside. She grabbed at it, but he pulled it back at the last second. “Hey, show some gratitude. I came all the way here.”

She propped her fists up on her hips. “You said-”

“That it was worth the trip,” he finished, wagging a finger at her. “Not worth the substance.”

She sighed. “What do you want for it?”

His grin came easily. “Nothing as bad as all that. Just a little something for me this time.” He tapped his lip like he had earlier.

She fitted herself against his body, tilting her head up as he leaned down to reach her. The kiss was soft this time, tongues sliding together and hands roaming. When his palms reached her ass, she nipped hard at his lip.

“Easy,” K chuckled.

“Not at work,” Blue said unconvincingly. Her eyes were still on his lips.

“Fine. When you get home, then.” He tossed the baggy up in the air and she snatched it.

“Done,” she agreed, tearing open the bag and making a line on the extra chair that they kept back here. She did the line, sniffling a little when she was done. “Thanks.” She planted a chaste- or chaste for them- kiss on his lips before returning to finish her shift. She willed the memory of that honeyed, Virginian drawl to fade along with the rest of the sharp edges of reality.

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emjenwrites · 5 years

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@ganseyweek Wednesday, August 14: Road Trip/Stay inside/Bring me warmth

Here I am continuing to only vaguely answer the prompts (can you tell that I’m using this character week to force myself to write the Gansey fics that have been floating around in my fanfic ideas document?). This fic takes place at the end of Henry, Blue and Gansey’s road trip, so I think it counts.

It took Gansey less than three weeks after his second resurrection to realize that he was now a psychic. It took him the better part of six months to admit it to anyone. In fact, he probably would never have told anyone if given the choice. Gansey is not a very forthcoming person with things about himself and all things surrounding his second death and resurrection were at the top of the list. Who knows how long he would have continued to pretend he wasn’t psychic if not for Blue.

They were in Maine, on the beach. It was September and while the air was still pleasantly warm, the water was cold. Henry didn’t seem to ever get cold, so he was swimming. Gansey was sitting on the beach with a book about the Italian Renaissance he’d picked up at a bookstore in Indiana. Blue had taken a dip in the ocean too, but had come out after twenty minutes laughing and yelling about how Henry was insane before trudging back to the green Pig to change. They were all having fun, but there was a tension as well. They all knew that soon they’d have to go home, at least for the winter. Once they did that there would be jobs and college applications and hundreds of other adult things which they had been collectively pretending didn’t exist. None of them were ready for this to end.

Gansey was knee-deep in a particularly interesting chapter about an assassination attempt on the Medici family April 1478 when he heard Blue coming back. He turned around smiling, but there was something tense about Blue’s expression which made him pause. “Is something wrong?”

“Gansey,” Blue said. “Why do you have these?” She held out a deck of tarot cards.

Gansey froze. It felt like the world should have stopped but the sounds of the world continued on. The deck in Blue’s hand was the deck that he had bought off the internet just before they’d left on this road trip. It was one of those mass-produced Rider-Waite decks sold for people who didn’t know magic was real. The cards were cheap and flimsy and nothing like the lovingly handmade and impeccably cared for decks the women of Fox Way used. Gansey was fairly sure that those cards where the most poorly made thing he’d spent money on in at least the last five years and he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t invested in a better deck aside from that when he’d bought them he’d still be mostly hoping he’d been making everything up. Up until that point he’d just been having unusually vivid dreams that ended up coming true and just knowing random things during the day. The dubiously reliable sources he’d found on the internet (it was really hard to tell the difference between a real psychic and a faker from a website) had suggested that using tarot cards might help, so he’d bought the deck and given it a shot.

“Why were you looking through my bag?” Gansey asked. It was the only complete sentence he could form.

“I was looking for my shirt with the fringe,” Blue said. “I thought it might have gotten mixed in with your clothes.”

Gansey’s first thought was that shirt had probably been eaten by a washing machine at one of the numerous laundromats they’d stopped at over the course of the trip, because he hadn’t seen Blue wearing it in at least five states. His second was that he’d been foolish to bring the cards. He’d had so many close calls when Blue or Henry or both almost walked in on him using them or nearly went digging through his bag. Bringing them had been a recipe for disaster.

“You don’t need to look so scared,” Blue said. “I’m just curious. Where did you get them?”

“I bought them,” Gansey said. He wished he could say more, but he couldn’t get the words out.

“Why?”

“I was just fiddling around.”

Blue sighed but the sound was fond. “Gansey, you know that tarot is basically just a cool party trick if you’re not psychic, right? The cards can’t predict anything on their own.”

“I know,” Gansey said. “That’s why I bought them.”

For a minute, Blue just looked at him. For a minute, Gansey let himself hope that she wouldn’t make the connection. For a minute, he thought he might be able to get away with convincing her that the cards where just the result of a bored teenager with too much money. Then her jaw dropped and she groaned. “I’m an idiot. My mom literally told me months ago and I never made the connection.”

Gansey pulled back in surprise and--to be honest--fear. “What did Maura tell you?” He had been avoiding the women of Fox Way when they’d still been in Henrietta because he figured they’d be able to see this new change the instant he came close to them. He’d never realized any of them might be able to figure it out without his physical presence.

“Before we left she told me that I’d find you saw more than you had before,” Blue dropped down onto the sand next to him. She seemed surprised but happy. Gansey’s stomach was in knots. “I’ve been trying to figure out what she meant for months. I’d never considered that she might have been telling me you were psychic now. Of course, male psychics are pretty rare, so maybe I’m forgiven for that oversight, but Adam was psychic when he was bonded to Cabeswater and Cabeswater gave it’s life to bring you back so it makes perfect sense that you’d be psychic now.”

Somehow Gansey managed to get even more tense at the mention of Cabeswater. He spent most of his time desperately trying not to think about the magical forest and what happened to it. He shrugged in acknowledgment of what Blue had said and stared down at his book. Maybe she’d think he was engrossed in his reading and this conversation could be over.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Blue asked. Her smile had faded and now she looked serious and a little hurt.

Gansey shrugged again.

“Come on, Gansey,” Blue said. “I know you have your reasons. Just like you had your reasons for not telling us you knew you were going to die.”

Gansey winched. None of them had ever had a serious discussion about the fact that Gansey had known he was going to die almost as long as Blue and the women of Fox Way had. The closest they had ever come was the time Ronan had said that, “You know, not telling your friends you knew you were on a death list is like not telling your friends you had terminal cancer.” Gansey was pretty sure he’d owe Opal for the rest of his life for distracting Ronan before he could go on. The topic had never come up again, and Gansey wanted to keep it that way. “I didn’t tell you I knew I was going to die because I didn’t want to worry you and make it all about me” was a lot better excuse in his head than it was aloud.

“Come on, Gansey,” Blue said. “You need to start telling us things. You can’t keep bottling things up; it’s not healthy.”

“I didn’t tell you because I was afraid of what that implies about my resurrection,” he said before he had a chance to stop himself.

“What do you mean?” Blue asked, her nose wrinkling in the cute way it did when she was confused.

“What if I’m not actually Gansey?” the words poured out. “What if I’m just a collection of all of your images of me animated by Cabeswater? What if Gansey is really dead and I’m just such a good copy that even I think I’m really him?” He hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted to say that. Admitting it felt like lancing a wound.

“You’re still worrying about that?” Blue asked.

“You aren’t?”

“No,” Blue said. “I mean, we all worried about it at first, but you’re obviously really you.”

“But how can you be sure?”

“Richard Gansey, are you implying I wouldn’t recognize my own boyfriend?” Blue asked with a grin. When Gansey didn’t reply she shifted closer and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “I know its really you.” she said. “I don’t know what to say to convince you of that, but I know it's you.”

“That makes one of us,” Gansey said quietly.

Awkward silence stretched between them for several moments, then Blue took a deep breath. “So you’re a psychic,” she said. “Tell me about it, unless you’ve already been initiated into the ‘mysterious psychic’ club.”

Gansey managed a little laugh. “What do you want to know?”

“Have you noticed any patterns?” she asked. “Most psychics are better at certain types of things. Like how Calla is psychometric. Have you noticed anything like that?”

“I’m not psychometric,” Gansey said.

“Thankfully,” Blue said. “Calla doesn’t talk about it much, but I get the impression that knowing the history of an object or person by touching them gets old really fast.”

“It’s really precise,” Gansey admitted. “Not like the predictions your mom and Calla make. I know what’s going to happen and half the time I know when too.” He didn’t tell Blue that this was how he knew he was going to be going to Harvard next fall. It seemed like the wrong time for that information.

“Then you could become a celebrity psychic if you’re ever stuck for a career,” Blue said with a smile. “Neeve was good with specifics; that’s how she got her TV show.”

“But is that bad?” Gansey said.

“It’s uncommon,” Blue said. “But given how uncommon the way you got your abilities are, that might not be surprising.” When Gansey didn’t respond she hugged him more tightly. “Give me an example?” she said with a smile. “What have your predicted?”

“I knew about that tornado we almost drove into in Illinois,” he said. It was the first thing that came to mind.

“That’s why you were so adamant that we should stop for the night,” Blue said. “So you were lying when you said you felt like you were going to throw up?”

“Not...entirely,” Gansey admitted. “I was exaggerating because I needed to come up with a legitimate reason to stop, but I was anxious and I always feel sick to my stomach when I’m anxious. It’s been like that since I was a kid.”

“That’s good to know,” Blue thought for a moment then asked, “Do any of the others know that?”

“No,” Only his parents and the therapist who he’d seen following his first death knew. Gansey didn’t talk about that stuff; it always felt like he was trying to get attention or pity when others had it so much worse.

“Then there’s your proof that you’re really you,” Blue said, sitting back and looking proud of herself. “If you were really a random conglomeration of our impressions of you then you couldn’t know things about yourself that we don’t.”

Gansey had never thought about it that way. He felt some little bit of the tension he’d been carrying for months release. He was sure he was far from done worrying about this, but it was nice to have a little reassurance for once.

“Hey, what’s up?” Henry asked, slogging out of the water and up the beach. He was shivering and his lips were in the process of turning blue. It seemed that he actually did get cold. “Are you having a moment without me?”

“Go put on some dry clothes before you get hypothermia,” Blue said. “Then Gansey’s got some news; turns out he’s been holding out on us.”

“Oh,” Henry said. “Anything bad?”

“Nope,” Blue said. “You’ll love it.”

“Then I’ll move quickly,” he said and dashed up the beach. Gansey and Blue watched him until he vanished behind the green Pig.

“If you’re good with specifics,” Blue said slowly, like she was working up her nerve, “did you ever try to figure out anything about our problem?”

She meant the problem of them kissing. None of the Fox Way women had been able to give a conclusive answer about whether or not Gansey would die for a third time if he and Blue kissed again, so they hadn’t risked it. They hadn’t talked about it, but they both knew the not knowing was weighing on them both.

“I haven’t tried,” Gansey admitted. “I was afraid of what the answer would be and I didn’t know how to explain how I’d come up with the answer anyway.”

“I’m scared too,” Blue said. “But we need to know.”

“What are you suggesting?” Gansey asked, though he already knew.

Blue pressed the tarot deck into his hand. “I think it’s time you asked the question.”

#ganseyweek #the raven cycle #richard gansey iii #blue sargent #bluesey #sarchengsey #mine

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abarbaricyalp · 6 years

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tin epithymía tis kardiás

(Day three: Bonfire // Read part one and two))

They passed the days like that, lazy and soft in the sun. Ronan had begun to panic about the time passing, but Adam was quick to assure him that days were faster in Atlantis. It wasn’t so much that Atlantis based time around the sun and Earth’s rotations. The ocean was its own world and the fickle light sources that Ronan could never find were fueled by the sun, but were not the sun. Even with shorter nights, Ronan felt more rested than he had in over a decade.

Adam always had some place to show Ronan, leading him around, marked hand in marked hand. He tried to show Ronan places outside, always very aware of the way Ronan’s mood lifted when he was surrounded by grass and trees and light. All of Ronan’s sharp edges were illuminated when he tilted his face to the warmth, or curled his fingers in long strands of grass, but in those moments, Adam always forgot how sharp he was anyway.

Seven Atlantean days passed before Adam took Ronan to his most cherished public space. It took almost too long to climb all the stairs to the ornately carved stone building. Friezes in the recognizable black and gold decorated the top two feet of all the three floors. Frescos dripped down the walls like after thoughts and half statues seemed to pull themselves from the columns holding each roof up.

Ronan stared with wide eyes. He’d seen hundreds of libraries, some of the best in the world, and some of the oldest, but he’d never seen anything like this. Adam grinned widely up at him.

“We do not have many volumes not in Atlantean. Only a few thousand across Greek, Latin, Egyptian and other African languages, and Thracian. I think you will find some of our Latin inspiring though.”

“How did books survive the flooding?” Ronan asked, letting Adam lead him into the open space inside. The large, circular room opened into six different rooms that stretched so far back, the spaces went dark before Ronan saw the back shelves.

“Some gods were merciful to us. Things were saved sparingly. Our library before the flood would have broken your mind. Humans just cannot fathom such expanse.” Adam only sounded a little bit smug about it. The longer he spent with Ronan and Gansey, occasionally, the more he came to realize humans were not quite so different from Atlanteans. Stunted and odd, but not worlds away as he once imagined.

Adam rubbed his hand over Ronan’s lower arm and let him drink in the sights. Adam had noticed around Gansey that Ronan was bitter and short, cutting his joy off from his voice and face. But, alone, Adam got to see him light up with the promise of adventure and knowledge. Adam had asked Ronan why this was once, and after the light scoffing and eye rolling, Ronan had said Gansey just never asked the right questions, or seeked the right answers for Ronan’s taste.

“You,” he’d said, rough fingers brushing over the scarred markings on Adam’s face, near his temple, “are always leading me just where I want to be.” Then he’d smiled and brushed his thumb over Adam’s nose until Adam giggled and had to fight down the urge to sneeze.

So, yes, Adam let Ronan look and breathe in the beauty that he longed for. But, eventually, he had to pull Ronan away. “This is our foreign room. Not many use it. I’m one of a handful in Atlantis that can speak a language other than Atlantean.”

“What about Blue?” Ronan asked with a small smirk. As the days wore on and Adam and Ronan grew closer, it was obvious Gansey and Blue were also forging a vaguely steady repertoire with each other. Ronan’s jealousy bloomed even when he couldn’t recognize it. Sometimes it was a little tiresome to indulge in his need to prove himself better, but they were both in a good mood and Adam could detect just a little bit of genuine curiosity in Ronan’s tone.

“She cannot speak another language, but her family communes with the dead and the gods.”

“Bullshit,” Ronan said, admiration plain in his tone. Ronan always believed in the magic of Atlantis. There had never been a thing he’d seen, a place they’d gone, or a story Adam told him that Ronan didn’t instantly believe and devour with a religiosity that would put the priests to shame.

There was something magic about Ronan himself. Blue had told him as much when they’d eaten an evening meal with her family.

“Domitus,” she’d said, pulling him aside into a room he knew only briefly during an attempted relationship that had gone nowhere quickly. “The man you’ve brought...there is something otherworldly about him. Not just Earth. Something beyond Earth.”

Adam had frowned at her, rubbing at one of the sigil markings on his arm. “Humans don’t have the magic of Atlantis. And no other civilization had had magic,” he’d pointed out.

“I felt it, Domitus. The air cackles around him with energy. He’s more beyond Earth than some of the elders here.”

“What kind of energy?” Adam had asked. He knew Ronan was a multi-faceted puzzle, something he’d only seen a few pieces of, but he didn’t want to lose him to magic, like he’d lost so much else to it.

“There is a spirit attached to him. Something trying to speak to him. Old and strong. But there’s something else. Something in him. He brought something else with him.”

Adam had shook his head. “You just want him to leave. You want to take him from me. Is it not bad enough that your soldiers follow us wherever we go?”

“He is the true desire of your heart, Domitus, I know that. We can see that. But your heart is not the only one in this city.” Blue had looked at him with outright pity and Adam had left the room before she could say anything else.

There was something special about Ronan. Watching him run his long fingers over dusty spines in languages that Adam couldn’t begin to decipher proved that. But there wasn’t an evil energy about him. Nothing that would endanger the world Adam loved. Ronan loved it too. Adam knew his heart yearned for the one he’d come from, but Ronan didn’t treat Atlantis like something to be studied scientifically, like his companion did.

Adam knew Ronan’s judgement was clouded. He radiated the need to be loved like he radiated energy to Blue. The scream that had ripped from his chest in the cave all those days ago still haunted Adam. He could see all of the fight and feral-ness of Ronan’s human side when his companion suggested they find a way to ‘radio’ back to a ship they had come from. He’d seen anger like when Ronan had first raised his hand to Adam in the cave when Gansey said they should return to the surface, to Earth. It was a specific kind of anger. Not the base anger that cloaked the soldiers who followed them at a distance and pretended not to. It was was an anger bred of fear and hurt.

Adam had known hurt for much of his life. Physical pain at the hands of his father and mother. Emotional pain by his own mind as he struggled to do all he accomplished. And the empty ache in his chest that had overtaken him every time he looked at his wrist.

“You used these books when you were learning Latin?” Ronan asked suddenly. Adam watched the dust stirred up by his breath swirl in front of his face for a moment.

“Yes. There are few others in the whole empire who speak Latin. When I was trying to learn what was on my wrist, I had to come here. I read every book until I saw characters and words I recognized.”

Ronan made a sound and carried a stack of books over to a long table in the middle of the room. Adam sat cross legged on the table to watch him flick through pages.

“No wonder your grammar is so bad. These barely even added spaces between most of the words.”

Adam didn’t know what that meant, but he watched Ronan’s fingers brush over the letterings. Ink flaked off under his skin occasionally, but it didn’t really stop him for long.

“Do many people still speak Latin?” Adam asked. Gansey’s Latin was not the best, but Adam’s Greek was hardly passable and that was a major language.

Ronan snorted and shook his head. “Probably about as many people on Earth speak it well, as people here do.”

“Then why do you?” Adam asked. Ronan just held his wrist out, the Latin almost glowing against his skin. Adam let out a small laugh. “We learned the language for the same reason then. And had we not, neither of us would have Latin on our skins and we wouldn’t have needed to learn it in the first place.”

Ronan looked up with a smile on his face that made him look years younger. A beard had sprouted over the lower half of his face that added years to him anyway. Gansey had had no such problems, so Adam wasn’t sure what to make of it. If it was a magic thing or a Ronan thing or a human thing.

“What languages are dominant now?” Adam asked instead. If he asked about the beard, he would want to reach out to touch it, feel the odd coarseness of human hair that Atlantean hair lacked.

“English. It’s what Gansey and I speak when we’re alone,” Ronan explained. “Um, Chinese. It’s a type of… China is beyond Thrace was. To the very east. Spanish is popular. Spain is a country to the west of Greece and Thrace and Egypt. It’s on the other side of the Mediterranean ocean. But Spanish is not quite only from Spain. It has a lot of forms.”

“Greek did too. Sparta and Athens spoke different dialects and the northern plains were so removed that they almost invented a new language, like we did here.”

Ronan looked up suddenly and Adam thrilled to see a curious but studious gleam in his eye. “Do the words Linear A and B mean anything to you.”

Adam shook his head, but didn’t let himself feel bad. Ronan always had a reason that whatever he asked about wouldn’t make since to Adam.

“I figured it wouldn’t. It’s what modern researchers named it.” Ronan switched books and continued reading.

“What is Linear A and B?” Adam asked so he would look up again.

“It’s these two tablets that were found in an excavation of sites in Greece. It’s some of the oldest writing we have. We can decipher B, but not A. Which makes people wonder if they’re different languages or dialects, or even if language was common at that point, or just personal.”

Adam nodded. “Atlantean was dialectal for a long time. Even after they went under the water. Thracian peoples and African peoples and Greek peoples all had their language dominant their culture. We find volumes still that no one can read anymore because it is too Thracian, et cetera.”

Ronan looked like he was about to say something else when a guard burst into the room. “Domitus.” He gave a slight bow to Adam, more of a nod and gesture. “Human.” This he almost spat. “Your presence is requested in the palace immediately.”

Ronan and Adam exchanged looks, but before they could move to each other, the soldier was pulling Ronan away, marching him out of the room. Adam struggled to keep up, despite knowing the way better than the soldier.

Gansey and Blue were both in the palace when they arrived. Blue looked furious and Gansey was fidgety in a way Adam hadn’t been able to catalogue yet. He realized with a start that Gansey’s hands were bound in front of him. Adam quickly moved to Ronan’s side, grabbing his wrist to keep anyone from hurting him. Blue had traded the flowing robes she’d been wearing the past few days for full battle gear again.

“What is going on?” he asked in Atlantean. He had to. He’d translate for Ronan when he had an answer.

“The desire of your heart lead more here. They fear an invasion,” Blue answered, keeping an icy look on Gansey.

The soldier who’d brought Ronan and Adam in made a noise behind them. “We shouldn’t be telling him anything. He probably conspired with them. He probably brought them here in the first place.”

Blue cut a look at the soldier. “Speak when spoken to,” she barked out. Still, she cut to the lingo that the soldiers used and Adam didn’t understand. He leaned towards Ronan’s ear instead.

“They think there’s another human.”

He could feel Ronan tense under his hand and from the way Gansey jolted, they were staring each other down. Finally, he asked something in English that stopped Blue and the soldier’s conversation. Adam wished he knew what any of them were saying.

“Domitus, do your sigils tell you of any danger?” Blue asked. Adam looked at her sharply. “You are a priest, deny it as you will. Are the gods telling you something?”

Adam shook his head slowly eventually. “Just the energy of the festival this evening,” he said slowly.

Gansey perked up and in terrible Atlantean, he repeated, “Festival?” He said something to Ronan in English that Adam assumed was a translation.

“Henry would bring a party,” Ronan growled in Latin. Just for Adam. Adam squeezed his wrist again.

“It’s a celebration of light. The gods do not have to bless us with light this far down but they do. We thank them every year by creating the largest fire we can in one of the fields. We sacrifice animals and plants and they send us new kinds and renew our light sources,” Adam explained back.

“What are they doing to Henry?” Ronan asked.

“Did you lead him here?” Adam asked instead of answering.

A muscle worked in Ronan’s jaw and his eyes were fixed in a glare on Gansey. “We both did. There were trackers in the suits we wore. He followed our path right…”

“To the medical unit. The heart of the palace,” Adam finished for him. It made his blood run cold, to think of the danger that Ronan had brought to the city. Humans knew how to get here. Until the next shift in the rocks, Atlantis wasn’t safe. And it was Ronan’s fault.

But Blue was right. Half the pain of his childhood was being a mouthpiece of the gods. The fire the sigils would burn into his skin when they wanted him to know something, the aching they left behind, and the cold that Adam couldn’t describe when they were completely silent tormented him more days than not. But he’d spoken true. The sigils were only humming in excitement for the festival. He could almost, almost, hear the singing of the lesser gods, who were closer to Adam’s Atlantean divinity.

“It’s safe, Blue. Let them see each other,” Adam assured again. His back was to the door, but the way Gansey visibly relaxed was a sure sign that Henry was in his line of sight and okay. Ronan looked over his shoulder and rolled his eyes.

He rattled off something in English, biting and mean, but a little fond. Henry replied with as strong a tone as he could manage despite the wobble in his voice. Gansey said something and was suddenly across the room, a soldier striding after him. Despite his bound wrists, Gansey leaned into Henry and Henry’s arms came up to hold him tightly. It was so raw that Adam looked away. He studied his thumb as it brushed over Ronan’s mark, Adam’s own words in his messy scrawl.

Suddenly, in Latin, Henry was asking, “Is this him? The soul mate?” When Adam turned, Henry was studying him, a kind of mirth on his face that Adam wondered could be removed. He must have been terrified, but he was working up to a full grin the longer he stared at Adam’s hand on Ronan’s wrist.

“That’s him,” Gansey agreed with his own gentle smile. “They’re terrible to spend time with together.”

Adam could feel Ronan’s scowl without looking up at him.

“Keep the humans together. Find the trackers. Destroy them,” Blue ordered, cutting off the conversation.

Adam faltered. “Wait. No. Don’t take him. Let me… You said so yourself. He’s magic. Look at him. He’s light. Let me take him to the festival. Don’t say you don’t want the other one with you.”

Blue turned that hard gaze on him, but Adam had been scrutinized by her enough times to stand his ground. “Please,” he added softly. “He is the desire of my heart. I cannot leave him now that I know where my missing heart beats are.”

Blue sneered and then waved a hand. “You are already under surveillance. I’ll double the soldiers tailing you. And you will make yourself seen at least four times an hour. Do not run, Domitus. He is not worth it.”

Adam thought Ronan was worth a lot of things. But he remained silent.

* * *

Ronan was actually very helpful once Adam let him know what bargain he’d struck. Lithe though he was, he was strong too. Not as strong as an Atlantean, but he could carry wood across the fields and chop more when men wanted a break. Through it all, he kept an eye on Adam always. Adam swore he felt the sigils warm when Ronan was looking at him.

By the time it was dark, the fire was lit and large, stretching so far into the sky that Adam couldn’t see where the flame flickered out, only where darkness bled in on the sides.

“Do you have fire on Earth still?” Adam asked. They were sitting together, alone for the first time since Henry arrived. In the grass, their fingers tangled together and they kept leaning into each other for no real reason.

“We still have fire, yeah,” Ronan laughed, looking at Adam with a grin. In the firelight, he looked young again, softer than he should with the flickering shadows playing tricks over his face.

“Fires like this?” Adam asked.

Ronan nodded and straightened up again. His muscles tensed and relaxed just as quickly. Some kind of reflex tamped down. “We call them bonfires. Usually we’re not sacrificing food, we’re eating it.”

“Is that all you do at bonfires?” Adam asked.

Ronan laughed again and shook his head. “We dance like that,” he said, gesturing to the wild and carefree and happy Atlanteans by the base of the fire.

“Sacrificial celebration?” Adam asked.

“No. It’s just a way to be close and happy with someone,” Ronan explained.

“How does it help you be close?” Adam asked.

Ronan leveled a cool look on him and Adam felt his heart kick up into his chest. “Let me show you,” he said, standing up and offering a hand down to Adam. He hauled him up and then pulled him close. “Okay, you’ll put your arms around my neck like this,” he said, moving Adam’s arms. In the fire, the sigils glowed and they were warm in his skin.

“And I’ll hold you around the waist like this. Now we just move to the music,” Ronan said, shifting his weight back and forth.

“But we dance to the words. You don’t know the words of these lyrics,” Adam pointed out.

“Well, on Earth we actually dance to the rhythm. Or, you’re supposed to. Most dance music doesn’t even have words.”

Adam must have looked appalled because Ronan laughed, head thrown back. “Don’t look like I just killed your cat. A lot of still does. But you’re supposed to feel the music, move to it.”

He kept his hips and torso shifting until Adam was moving with him. And, yes, he completely understood why this would make people feel close to each other. Ronan let his forehead rest against Adam’s and they swayed back and forth in the grass by themselves. Adam thought this celebration was suddenly not about the gods and light, but about Ronan and love.

#pynchweek #pynchweek18 #adam parrish #Ronan Lynch #pynch #the raven cycle #atlantis au #writing #OTP: in more than his lips #atlantis

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sargxnts · 6 years

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when you were young

This work was commisioned by @wishingstardust who wanted Blue and Gansey being kids in love! I hope it’s everything you wanted.

1.6k | ao3

Blue Sargent did not consider herself the type to waste time on doing very much of nothing at all. She worked. She amplified. She carved herself a niche in the world that was exactly five feet even, no more, no less. Well, maybe it was five feet and one inch on a good day. But she had never simply done nothing at all.

But lately, Blue had taken to staring at Gansey’s hands. At the way his glasses sat on his face and the way they often didn’t. At his arms and his legs. At the occasional flash of a tan line on his feet. At the way he furrowed his brow and bit his lip and beamed and frowned and laughed and held her hand like he’d never held anything so wonderful before.

When he’d gasped, alive, alive, alive, the world started spinning again. It had taken some time before the truth of it all settled. Glendower was dead, had always been dead. Noah was gone, faded, had always been dead and gone and faded but somehow alive. Cabeswater was gone how they’d known it. But he was alive.

She was no longer Blue Sargent; murderer but instead was Blue Sargent girl. And so, she’d begun spending a lot of time staring at Gansey.

If anyone had asked her for a list of her top 5 places to kiss her boyfriend (her boyfriend), the Pig would not have been at the top of the list, Really, it wouldn’t have been on the list at all if it weren’t for Ronan being Ronan, if it weren’t for the silence left hanging in Monmouth in Noah’s absence, if it weren’t for all seven hundred and forty-two women who lived in Fox Way. And so, the Pig made the list.

The gear shift was digging into her ribcage at just the right angle to kill her, she assumed. But Gansey had a tentative hand at her lower back her hands were pushing into his hair. The fear wasn’t gone- not entirely- that she wouldn’t kill him. Magic loved to pick and choose and Blue was going to be quite angry if it decided that slipping her tongue into his mouth would kill him all over again. She decided the risk was worth it.

Gansey pulled away, breathless and flushed. His hair stuck up in small tufts; Blue was especially proud about that part. His hand hadn’t moved from her lower back; her hands hadn’t moved from his hair. Instead, he let his head fall forward, forehead to forehead.

He cleared his throat. “We should start heading back,” he said slowly, as if testing out the words as he went along. Pensive. Blue always found it strange to see him like that, unsure of himself and hesitant. She liked it.

It was the difference between Gansey and Richard. The impossible to touch statue of a boy, a Kennedy in the making and someone who was hers, who belonged to Henrietta and a worn out factory with a cereal box city. Blue moved her hand to touch his face. She liked it.

“Jane,” Gansey tried again. “Surely people are beginning to wonder where we are.”

She had a distinct, highly unwelcome thought about her mother because no one wanted to think about their mother while making out with their boyfriend in his awfully wonderful car. But Maura was not like most mothers and as Blue had found, most daughters hardly had to worry about a psychic knowing that they had lied about where they were going. Actually, most daughters probably did. Mothers were known for knowing.

Blue gave a short little huff before finally moving away from him, settling back into the seat she was too small for with a decidedly sour look on her face that she didn’t mean.

“By people do you mean Ronan?” She deadpanned with a raise of her eyebrows. She could never get just one to quirk up. No number of time practicing in the mirror had helped much at all.

Gansey had reached over to turn the key in the ignition, but left one hand to rest on her knee. “By people I mean Ronan.”

Blue laughed, let her hand fall to rest on his as he maneuvered the Pig off of the side of the road. They were mostly in the middle of nowhere and very likely lost, she had decided before the kissing had begun. (After the kissing had started, she had someone how found little reason to care.)

She found it quite telling that she’d begun to enjoy the hideous sounds of the Pig. Maybe it was the company more than the car. Blue watched Gansey as he drove, traced the cut of his jaw with her eyes. She could do that, stare at him unabashed and without worry that someone would see or that she would start to care. Walking the razor thin line of “are we or aren’t we” had been a hard habit to shake but had been a task she welcomed happily.

“Have you ever kissed anyone before?” Blue asked, breaking the silence that had settled over them as Gansey navigated through the winding mountain roads, brow furrowed in concentration, just slightly.

He all but jumped in his seat at the question, turning his head just slightly in her direction. “Why do you ask?” He asked after a moment, something flashing in his eyes that Blue couldn’t quite recognize before he looked back toward the road.

She shrugged and lifted his hand from her knee to trace the lines of his palm. “I’ve only ever kissed you,” she paused, “and Noah.So I’m curious.” He barely had a lifeline, she realized as her thumb brushed across the arch. The thought made her heart clench and her hand hold his a little tighter.

Gansey raised an eyebrow, just one, at her comment on Noah, but said nothing before licking his lips. She could tell he wanted something to chew. “Well, yes. I have before, here and there.” He paused again as if gathering his thoughts.

Blue used her free hand to rifle through the console of the Pig. She finally found a plastic bag and pulled a mint leaf free from it, shifting in her seat and stretching to poke it between Gansey’s lips.

“There was Abigail and Madison.” He chewed slowly on the mint, kept his eyes forward. “Rhett.” She had never seen Gansey...self conscious. All shiny white smiles and firm handshakes and ‘what do you know about Welsh kings?’ Self conscious was not something Blue had thought was in his repertoire.

Blue picked up his hand again, sliding her fingers between his and squeezing once. Twice. “Rhett,” she repeated as her eyes fell to the way his knuckles went white around the wheel.

Gansey nodded. “Early on in my searching, I found him. He was able to sense the line after being struck by lightning. We hunted along the line for days before I ultimately left.” He kept his eyes forward and it was almost heartbreaking. Blue pressed a kiss to the back of his hand. “And I very much wanted to kiss him, and then I did.” He sucked his lower lip into his mouth and spared a glance in Blue’s direction.

She wasn’t sure where they were or where they were going. “Gansey, do you think I’m going to be, what? Jealous or something that you’re interested in boys too?” She asked, trying her best to make sure he knew she wasn’t at all.

He opened his mouth, seemed to think better, closed it again. “That is such an outdated way of thinking and you know me. You know I don’t care about things like that.” And she didn’t. Gansey was still Gansey and, well. She’d seen him look at Adam. “I’m not really straight either,” she added with an easy going shrug.

He looked over at her with a startled look on his face though she wasn’t exactly sure about what he was startled. Her reaction or her own revelation. Relief washed over his face seconds later and he squeezed her hand.

“With my mother in office, I haven’t had much opportunity to be,” he hesitated, “honest, about it all. I have a responsibility to her. Before you say anything, I know what you think about that.” A wry smile worked its way onto Gansey’s face as he looked over at her.

Blue let out a breath, laughed because she had made it very clear what she thought about things like that. “Do Ronan and Adam know?” She asked, curious, as she turned her gaze toward the blur of scenery passing by the window, green and bright and comforting.

He shook his head, gave his mint leaf a thoughtful chew. “No, not yet. You’re the only person I’ve told, though I’m certain Helen knows because Helen knows everything,” he added and Blue was certain he was right. Helen was mildly terrifying in the way her mother was mildly terrifying, like a force of nature.

Something uncurled in Blue’s chest at the knowledge he trusted her to be the first to know. She pressed another kiss to the back of his hand and smiled as he turned on a familiar street. “Maybe we have a little more time to kill.” she suggested, flicking her eyes back in his direction with a smile toying at her lips.

“I’m sure Ronan won’t be too worried,” Gansey added as he made an odd left turn.

“And I told my mom I would be going out,” Blue continued, rubbing her thumb in slow circles against his palm.

“The day is still young,” he agreed with a purely presidential nod of his head.

Blue unbuckled her seatbelt and was already shifting out of her seat. She loved him, she decided as she watched him reach out to brush a tuft of hair away from her face with one hand.

“And so are we,” she finished as the Pig sputtered to a halt, crashing her lips forward to his without waiting. They didn’t need to wait anymore.

#blue sargent #gansey #bluesey #the raven cycle #trc #trc fic #the raven cycle fic #mine #I hope this is okay I'm really bad at fluff tbh

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thewarlocksbitch · 6 years

Text

I will be your: hands, eyes, heart

prev - chapter 10 - next

word count - 5k

thank you to chloe for beta editing

read it on ao3

When Adam left the trailer park behind a week before term started, the last thing he would have imagined was returning to Henrietta so soon.

But here they were. Ronan, purposeful and confident behind the wheel of the BMW, calm and focused in a way that made Adam wonderfully content to witness, and Adam, sprawled with the seat leaned back at a relaxed 120 degrees, aimlessly sorting through Ronan’s CD collection as he unsuccessfully thought through his plan to disconnect the faeries from the ley line.

They passed trees and more trees, so fast that Adam could only see a green blur. Ronan had overshot on the highway and taken the wrong exit, and because of this, they did not pass Aglionby. Adam wasn’t sure if it had been an accident. It wasn’t important whether it was, but it was something to think about.

His mind had been reeling since last night, uselessly coming up with theories on what Ronan wanted to tell him and then shooting them down. It had to be very important. It might be what Gansey and Ronan had been keeping from him. It might be the key to all of this.

Adam tried not to let himself dwell on it too much. He thought that if he completely let his mind run wild with Ronan beside him he would start spouting theories and never stop.

Instead, he kept flipping through Ronan’s CD’s. Over and over and over, until suddenly Ronan was slowing the BMW and turning it into a gravel driveway overgrown with forest. Adam put the CD’s down and sat up.

The Barns, Ronan had called this place. But the reality was not anything like what Adam had imagined.

It was fields. And hills. Hills and hills and hills, rolling and sloshing and stretching on forever in a sea of lush green. Dotted all along them like small sneezes of occupation were run-down barns and then even more run-down barns, held up by leaning trees and propped slats of plywood. Crowded around one of the barns were cows of all colors, half-hidden in the grass, swishing their tails at flies with lazy contempt. It looked like something straight out of a children’s fantasy book. It looked like a home.

Adam was stupidly stunned by the beauty of it.

They came up to a house. It was white, all repaired corners and shabby shutters. It looked comfortably homey and exactly like the place where someone like Ronan Lynch might grow up. Ronan got out of the car and slammed the door behind himself.

“Not here,” he said, when Adam slid out of the car and stepped towards the house. “Not yet.”

“Okay.” Adam let the car door fall shut. Ronan walked around the car and past him to a tree heavily laden with odd fruit. He reached for the lowest hanging branch and plucked two fruits. He shoved one in his mouth and tossed the other one to Adam. Adam caught it between his two palms. It was warm and sticky to the touch.

Adam wasn’t hungry. He put the fruit in his pocket. “What kind of tree is that?”

“Imported,” Ronan said, through a mouthful of juice. “Come on.”

He turned on his heel and led Adam around the house to the largest barn, the only one that seemed to be in any state of use. Its double doors were open, with a few cows loitering between them. Adam and Ronan weaved through the rest of the herd as they made their way up the field.

One cow looked up from its grazing and mooed balefully at Ronan. It was very pretty, with a wide brown face and dull blue eyes. Ronan paused for a second to rub behind its ears. Then he strode through the barn doors, not even looking to see if Adam followed.

Inside, the barn was dark and damp, with the scent of grass and shit and grain in the air. A few cows were inside, but they were not like the others. They slept, some standing, some on the floor, some curled up like cats. They did not look up or stir at all when Ronan and Adam walked by.

Ronan stopped in front of a door that looked like it’d been added to the barn as an afterthought. Adam hadn’t noticed before, but now that Ronan had stopped moving he could see that Ronan was shifty, restless, like Noah on one of his good days but unhappy. He turned away from Adam and put his hand on the knob. “This was my father’s office,” he said.

Was. Adam hadn’t known Ronan’s father was dead.

Ronan opened the door.

The “office” could barely be considered that. It was a very small room, dimly lit by a single light bulb that hung from the low ceiling. There was a cushioned office chair with an old quilt thrown over it pushed up against a desk that looked more like a worktable than anything else; it was covered with so much dust and clutter that Adam couldn’t make himself focus on any of it.

Ronan went over to the table. He picked up what appeared to be a small, clear glass cube. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?” he asked, handing it to Adam.

Adam looked at it. It was much heavier than he had expected, and upon closer inspection he saw that it had something inside of it: a flower that bloomed and died, bloomed and died, all while suspended in midair. Adam handed it back to him, confused. “No.”

Ronan grabbed another object from the table. “What about this?”

This one looked more like something you would find in a barn. It was a rusty hammer, and seemed completely normal except for the fact that it was both made of metal and was feather-light and feather-soft to the touch. “I haven’t,” Adam said slowly.

“My dad,” Ronan said, and those two words came out of him so raw that Adam had to look away for a few seconds. “My father, he made these things. Look.” Ronan tried to hand another object to Adam, but Adam wouldn’t take it.

“What are you trying to tell me?” he asked.

Ronan took the flower box and the hammer from Adam. His jaw set as he decided something. He never beat around the bush, Adam knew; he picked up a machete and obliterated it.

He turned away from Adam and braced his hands on the worktable. "I can take things out of my dreams," he said.

Adam must have misheard him. Or Ronan was messing with him. "Things?" he said.

"Lights,” Ronan said, turning around to face Adam. “The fucking glasses. Gansey's car. Chainsaw. Half the cows in that fucking field. Things."

Adam stared at Ronan. Ronan stared back, no amount of humor in his expression. Adam felt, all at once, a tilting vertigo as his brain tried to process this. Ronan, who was plagued by nightmares and insomnia, who refused to let Adam get too close. His pet raven that he'd previously claimed to have found. The strange knickknacks that littered his and Gansey’s apartment: the game controllers that needed no batteries, the generation-old mixtapes and CD’s, the plants that looked nothing like plants were supposed to look and that never needed watering.

The unsureness, the nervous heat in Adam's chest that came with the knowledge of something too big to contain, left him all at once.

"Whatever." Ronan said, already turning away from Adam, always turning away. "It's not that big of a deal."

"No," Adam said, but Ronan was already past him and at the door. "Ronan, stop. It makes sense."

Ronan stopped, his hand crushing on the door knob. "This makes sense to you?" he asked, his tone bristling, all of his defenses up.

Adam, ever the scholar, ever the scientist, felt better now that he knew. It was easy to accept that Ronan was a creature who could do this kind of thing, this impossible thing. It was easier to accept than Gansey's death and rebirth and Noah's ghostliness and the possibility of a king sleeping somewhere underground. Because Ronan wasn’t like other people. He wasn’t like anything else at all.

The more startling part of all this was that Ronan had told him.

"It makes sense," Adam repeated, careful like he was talking to a frightened animal. Ronan merely looked at him, his arms hugging each other over his chest. He raised an eyebrow, waiting. "It's surprising," Adam said, exasperated. Ronan was expecting him to spit out his reasons for accepting this, and Adam didn't know anything except that he just did. "But... it makes sense. I don't know. You're not giving me any time to process this. But I guess I get it." "You guess?" Ronan said. Adam frowned at him. "Are you just going to keep repeating everything I say to make me feel stupid?" "Maybe. No," Ronan said, and he laughed, the harshness of it betraying his anxiety.

“I mean,” Adam said, and paused. He was experiencing a mental block that refused to let him arrange his fragmented thoughts into sentences. “It’s makes sense that you can dream things into reality, but the actual dreaming part doesn’t make sense.”

“The fuck?” said Ronan.

Adam pushed his glasses up a little to rub at his eyes. “How does it actually work? Where do you get the things? How are they made? Do you even follow Newton’s third law?”

Ronan shrugged. “It’s connected to the ley line. Or I am. Same difference.”

Adam dropped his hands from his face. “What do you mean?”

Ronan pulled at the leather bands around his wrist. He looked almost self-conscious. “It calls me Greywaren.”

Adam stared at Ronan. Greywaren. It did not sound like an ordinary word, or even a word crafted in the language of humans. It sounded ancient, foreign, past the understanding of this time or place in the universe. It sounded magical.

It was the big secret. And it fit Ronan perfectly.

“Show me,” Adam said.

Ronan sighed. Then, pushing the door open into the rest of the barn, he almost smiled. “I knew you’d say that.”

Adam followed Ronan up to the front door of the house. He stood off to the side as Ronan flipped over the door mat - it read Welcome to Our Kingdom - and grabbed a key from underneath it.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit obvious?” Adam asked him.

“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Ronan said. “The only thing you have to worry about out here is bears.”

Adam shrugged and didn’t reply. What they were about to do felt too big for casual conversation.

Ronan pushed the door open with just enough force that it opened all of the way but didn’t hit the inside wall, like he’d done it before, like he’d done it a million times. He tucked the key back under the mat.

“Come on,” he said, though Adam was already stepping through the door.

The inside of the house looked much less magical, much more ordinary, but it still wasn’t what Adam had expected. Everywhere were things that had obviously lived more than one life, or had at least had a very difficult and damaging first one. A rusted key hook hung on the wall near the door, next to a rack holding dusty jackets and stiff raincoats. An oil painting of a forest hung on the wall opposite, framed by four shoddily nailed together pieces of wood.

“Come on,” Ronan said again, pushing past Adam and up the carpeted stairs, so fast Adam barely saw the kitchen and sitting room except for a few details: chipped, shabby cabinets; an antique vase full of flowers, a calendar, dull metal swords, too many rugs to count rolled up and pushed into a corner, a red rocking chair.

Ronan flicked on the light when he reached the top of the stairs and paused. Adam stopped, too, on the second-to-last step.

Ronan half-turned to look down at him, his arm braced against the wall. Adam watched the muscles in his arm tense and shift beneath his skin. His flower tattoo looked delicate and improbable on the thin skin of his hand.

“My room,” Ronan said, “is at the end. The last on the left.”

“Alright,” Adam said.

Ronan looked at him for a second, then turned and stared down the hall for a second longer. Then he pushed off the wall and walked down to the last door on the left. It fell open with the soft creak of mechanical tiredness.

The inside of Ronan’s room looked just like Ronan, except it was bright and personal at first glance instead of hiding what it contained. It was a cluttered mess of what Adam imagined to be the ideal childhood: toy trucks and mud-caked sneakers and expensive instruments forgotten on the floor, only half secured in their cases. A pair of swim goggles and four boxes of Legos and a giant stuffed bear. A twin-sized bed, with the comforter and pillows tucked in tight and a thick quilt thrown carelessly across it.

Ronan stepped into the room and, after another glance at Adam, he sat down on the bed.

Some things were not what Adam would have ever imagined: a teeter toy that swayed rapidly though nothing had disturbed it, a children’s book that lay face-up on the floor, its pages flipping back and forth as if pushed by a fan; the almost unnatural brightness and hue of the bedside lamp.

Adam walked over to the dresser. It was child-sized, only coming up to his hips. One of the drawers was half-open. Peeking out from it was a toy snake that blinked.

Adam looked at Ronan.

“Dream thing,” Ronan said. He was holding something small in his hand.

Adam went to sit beside him. The bed dipped under their weight. Ronan was warm against him.

Ronan rolled the thing between his thumb and finger. It was a green pill.

“If you want me to show you,” Ronan said, “I can use this.”

He said it like someone would say, if you want to see this snake bite me, I can put my hand in its mouth.

“What does it do?” Adam asked. He leaned in to get a better look at the pill, but there was nothing written on it, no dosage, no brand. Ronan’s breath ghosted over the back of his neck.

Ridiculously, Adam thought about turning his head and kissing Ronan. It had been on the back of his mind all day - it had been on the back of his mind for days - but it had been somewhat easy to ignore in the face of everything else going on. But in this small room, pressed against Ronan, it was hard to forget.

“I don’t really need it now, because I know how to take things out of my head, but when I was first learning I used these to make it easier. Now I just need it to fall asleep fast.”

“Is it safe?” Adam asked.

“It hasn’t killed me yet,” Ronan said. Then, “Kavinsky made them.”

“Kavinsky,” Adam said slowly. “He taught you.”

“Kind of,” Ronan admitted.

Adam wanted to ask what Kavinsky really was to Ronan. He wanted to know what Ronan really was to him. He wanted to kiss the complicated pull of Ronan’s mouth.

Ronan scooted away from Adam, then laid back on the bed. He was much too big for it; his height was all legs, and half of them hung off the end. Ronan rolled the pill between his thumb and forefinger. He glanced at Adam and away. “What do you want me to bring back?”

Adam half twisted his body to look at Ronan, his hands braced on the soft mattress, keeping him from toppling over every time Ronan shifted, trying to get comfortable. “You make it sound like you’re going to the grocery store.”

“So not a sandwich, then.”

“Bring back something you like,” Adam said. “Something magical.”

“Something magical,” Ronan repeated. He put the pill on his tongue. “Don’t watch if you’re gonna freak out,” he said.

“I’m not gonna freak out,” Adam told him.

Ronan closed his eyes. He swallowed the pill. His pulse visibly picked up, and stopped.

“Ronan,” Adam said.

Ronan did not move. He looked, for all intents and purposes, dead. Adam held his breath. He was not going to freak out.

With a violent jerk, Ronan came to life: his eyes shot open, the muscles in his arms seized, his pulse crashed again against the skin of his throat. Something green writhed in his hand. He looked from Adam to the thing in his hand, his eyes the only part of him moving with any semblance of control. After a moment of hesitation, Adam reached forward and took the impossible object from Ronan’s hands.

It was a plant. It had stopped writhing now that Adam had righted it, and its trailing vines, unencumbered by pot or soil, wrapped themselves around Adam’s wrist and fingers. It still swayed back and forth with more force than could be blamed on any breeze from the fan or air vents. With its mouth-like flowers, it snapped at the dust motes that lazily floated in the slats of sunlight coming in from the window.

Ronan sat up. “Fuck,” he said eloquently.

“You dreamt this,” Adam said, starting to freak out a little, unsure if he had really, truly believed Ronan could do it until he was holding the evidence in his hand. “It came from your head.”

“Yeah,” Ronan said. “I was going for a house plant lamp thing, but then I started thinking about how you’re always eating protein bars.” He reached a hand towards the plant, but drew back when it started to reach a vine towards him. “I think it’s sentient.”

“You can create something sentient?” Adam said.

“Chainsaw,” Ronan reminded him plainly.

Adam just sat there, staring between Ronan and the plant, feeling like he'd stepped into or stolen someone else's life. People like Ronan didn't just happen to you.

“I don’t think my dorm allows pets,” Adam said uneasily. As if it had heard him, the plant tightened its vines around him.

“Here,” said Ronan, reaching to untangle the plant. His fingers were surprisingly warm on Adam’s wrist. As soon as Ronan had reached forward, the plant had stretched a vine towards him and now it was as attached to Ronan as it was to Adam.

Adam kept himself still until he was finally free. Ronan disentangled the plant from himself and set it on his dresser, where it immediately began to grab drawer knobs and picture frames.

Ronan turned away from the dresser and faced Adam. “Do you believe me now?”

Adam nodded, a little overwhelmed by Ronan’s strangeness and a lot overwhelmed by the position they were both in: Adam, sitting on the bed, almost casually, and Ronan, still breathing hard from his dreaming, standing just a few inches in front of him. He doubted Ronan noticed, but he still felt himself flush.

Adam looked around. “What else in here is a dream thing?”

It was a lot, apparently. Ronan showed him iridescent spinning tops and fire-breathing toy dragons, and demonstrated how the strange and whimsical knickknacks on the windowsill worked. He tapped a rusted spout on the wall and out poured shiny candies. The plastic windmill standing beside a photo of Ronan and Gansey began to sing and dance when he blew on it.

“So, pretty much everything,” Ronan said. He sat back down on the bed, this time on the side far away from Adam. “There’s actually something I wanted you to look at.”

He reached under the bed and produced a shimmery, almost translucent looking blanket. Adam brought one leg up onto the bed and folded it under him, turning towards Ronan.

Ronan gathered the blanket in his arms and held it close to his chest. He didn’t turn to face Adam yet. “I dreamt it the night before Gansey and I left for college,” he said. “I think that it might help us find the faerie ring.”

Adam reached forward. He touched the blanket, then slid his fingers into the juncture between Ronan’s thumb and open palm, not sure of his intent or why he did it but sure that he didn’t want to move away. Ronan tilted his face down to the touch, his eyes veiled by long dark eyelashes.

“How does it work?” Adam asked, his voice a raspy thing in his throat.

“You put it around you, and, uh,” Ronan was red to the tips of his ears, and Adam couldn’t help the stupid, face-splitting smile that overcame him. “You see things. Or it helps you scry. I don’t really know.”

“Well,” Adam said. He pulled his hand away. He swallowed. “Let me try it.”

Ronan handed it to him. It was cool to the touch, and slipped against his skin like silk. He lifted it and swung it around to rest over his shoulders. Nothing immediately happened, so Adam ducked his head to completely cover himself.

“Wait,” Ronan said. “Keep your hand out. I’ll ground you, just in case.”

It was the practical thing to say, but it still made Adam flush.

He held Ronan’s hand, fingers interlaced tightly, wrist against wrist, rapid pulse against rapid pulse. He pulled the blanket all the way over his head. He closed his eyes.

When he opened them, he was in another world entirely.

Adam stood. He’d been crouching on the forest floor, and leaves and dust fell from his shoulders and hair as if he’d been there for a very long time. Maybe he had. He couldn’t remember.

He was in the Charlottesville forest they often ventured in, the one with the first faerie ring. Adam couldn’t see it, and he didn’t know where in the forest he was, but he somehow knew exactly how to find it.

He began walking. Everything about the forest was the same, and everything was different. The trees shifted and shuddered above him, every sound of their leaves brushing as clear and clean as water over rock.

Adam walked under them, stumbled among their great, twisting roots, an insignificant human. He felt as if he were in a state of over-conscious hypnagogia, seeing everything as too real and too dreamlike.

Dreamlike. That made him think of Ronan. He remembered Ronan, in the realest sense. He was back in the farmhouse with Adam’s body, with Adam, holding his hand and watching him intently so he didn’t get too far away.

But Adam didn’t feel like he’d get too far away. He felt like he couldn’t get far enough. Ronan had given him this thing, this thing that made everything so clear, and Adam was going to use it to get exactly what he needed.

He started walking faster. He would be at the ring in less than a minute, and there would be a faerie waiting for him. Adam would talk to it. They would understand each other. He would figure out how to get rid of it and get Noah back.

The trees shuddered and shuddered, sounding more frightening now. Adam stopped and looked up at them. They shook at him, menacingly. Leaves fell and fell but not one fell on Adam.

Stranger, a voice whispered. Unfamiliar. It was a tree, or trees. Of course it was. Of course it was. Of course-

“I’ve been here before,” Adam said. “This is exactly where I should be.”

And the trees were quiet. And Adam walked on.

He came to the faerie ring differently than he had before, in real life, or in whatever other dimension or time his real life was. There was no following of the stream downhill, and no picking across rocks to avoid soiling his shoes. Adam simply decided to arrive at the faerie ring, and he did.

But it wasn’t the right one. It was not even a ring; a single line of mushrooms and stones ran in an almost indiscernible curve across the beaten path Adam stood on. He stopped in front of them. He knew better than to step inside.

He turned around, and was unmistakably in Henrietta.

Adam didn’t need to look behind him to know he was still standing at the cusp of the new ring; he could feel its power, like he could feel the sun on his face and neck. Henrietta forest stretched out endlessly in front of him. Which meant that the giant ring was in Henrietta.

He started walking. He knew where the giant ring was now, but there was still something else he needed.

Standing alone on the path in front of him as if suddenly called into existence was a tree. An oak. It was gnarled, ancient, weathered by more than age. Adam stopped in front of it. There was a cavity rotted through it that looked more like a black hole than anything else. He put his hand to the edge, where the bark gave way to blackness, and it crumbled under his fingers, brittle as charcoal.

Somehow, Adam knew that he was supposed to step inside the tree. And once he knew, he did.

It was warm, and moist, and smelled like life and death at the same time. It was the smell of home, of too-hot summers spent in the car garage to avoid going inside, of baggy clothes and ugly bruises and forged doctor's notes; it was sudden and overwhelming, and it choked Adam with a sick sort of longing. He closed his eyes against it.

“Adam,” he heard Ronan say.

Adam knelt down. He pressed his hands into the dead foliage in front of him, feeling the moisture from the soil and moss on the forest floor seep into the knees of his jeans. He was no longer inside the tree.

He was aware of Ronan, far away inside the farmhouse, but here with Adam, too, a strange-looking little girl at his side. There was something blurry about them both, something just off enough that Adam couldn’t have mistaken it for the real Ronan.

Adam looked into himself. This was him, and the Adam in the tree was him, and the Adam sitting on Ronan’s bed was him. He felt so removed from himself, so much a stranger to who he was, confused as to whether it mattered which Adam he paid attention to.

This one. He would pay attention to this one, for now. For as long as it took.

Adam blinked, and kneeling in front of him on the other side of the ring was a faerie. It was shimmering, dead, emitting cold like a heater emitted warmth; scorching, everywhere. It opened its mouth, perhaps to say something, perhaps to cast a malicious spell. Its eyes were bright with feeling. Adam could see that it hated him. He could tell that it wanted him dead.

But it couldn’t hurt Adam, not here. There was nothing it could say to him that would help, nothing it could do to change anything. Adam didn’t need it after all; he knew what he was going to do. He had thought the faeries and what they wanted mattered, but they didn’t. He stood and turned away from the faerie.

He looked across the clearing and there was Gansey, looking incredibly substantial and real. He wore a crown and armor, and his expression was the most vivid thing in the forest.

For a moment - not even a moment, a fraction of a second - Adam regretted seeing Gansey like this, because he very acutely realized the second he laid eyes on him that this Gansey had power when Adam didn’t. There was something of the ley line under his skin, something like magic in his eyes.

The Adam in the forest understood what this meant.

He felt the ley lines pulse thrum frantically, desperately, in his own throat. Like it was taking one last breath. Like it was saying goodbye.

“Adam,” Gansey said joyously, “it’s time to wake up.”

Adam let the blanket fall from his shoulders. He gripped Ronan’s hand tightly. “The ring is here,” he said. “In that forest. Cabeswater. And I know how to destroy it.”

Ronan’s voice was barely a breath. “Calm down, you asshole,” he said. “You almost died.”

Adam looked at him. “What?”

Ronan made a noise like he was in pain. Then, using his crushing grip on Adam’s hand, he pulled Adam against him.

Instinctively, Adam drew into himself, folding his arms in against his stomach. But he didn’t pull away. Ronan held him close, one hand held captive between them, one arm around Adam’s back, his face pressed fever-hot into Adam’s neck.

“We have to stop,” Ronan said. He sounded angry. “We have to tell Gansey before we do anything else.”

“I’m fine, Ronan,” Adam said, startled.

“You almost died,” Ronan said again. “You stopped breathing for a few seconds.”

There was anger in Ronan’s voice, that emotion Adam knew well. But under it was fear. Fear for Adam.

Slowly, he brought his free hand up to touch the nape of Ronan’s neck. He thought about flattening his hand and pulling Ronan tighter against him, and what that would mean. He did.

“I’m sorry,” Adam said. “I got carried away.”

Ronan was quiet for a few moments, and Adam was quiet, and they were both very still, just listening to each other’s breaths. Adam could feel Ronan against him. His grip was crushing around Adam’s hand and back, and his face was pressed against Adam’s skin.

Adam could feel Ronan’s cheeks, his lips. He scratched lightly at the back of Ronan’s neck and felt his eyelashes flutter.

Ronan’s grip around Adam shifted, causing his shirt to ride up. Adam felt the shocking warmth from the tips of fingers on his bare skin. Ronan didn’t move for a moment, and Adam made some sort of embarrassing noise. Then Ronan rode his fingers up the bumps of Adam’s spine.

“Ronan,” Adam said, and his voice broke off halfway through the name.

Ronan leaned back and looked at Adam. Adam didn’t let go of the back of his neck. Ronan slid his hand from Adam’s back over and up to cup his cheek.

Adam closed his eyes. Ronan kissed him, and kissed him, and Adam felt the faerie ring, not too far away, alive and hateful between them.

#pynch #pynch fanfic #trc #trc fanfiction #pynch college au #vv #ive had this chapter forever and while i was proud of it a month ago now i'm just sick of looking at it #but i worked hard on it and i think i'm proud of it??#so i really hope you guys enjoy it!!! feedback is always appreciated

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mild-lunacy · 6 years

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The Way Things Have to End

I'm a person who's often deeply torn about fanfic in a way I'm not about other stories, and I can't even defend it. Usually when people have strong feelings, they try to justify them, but I don't feel I have an excuse. Even so... honestly, the very existence of a fic where Ronan and Adam break up for fifteen (15) years and Adam gets married (to a woman), and they only get back together 'cause the wife dies and/or is dying.... How do I put this. It's a wrongness in the universe. It's not wrong like murder is wrong, or like people I disagree with may claim writing about 'bad things' is wrong, or like how bad grammar is wrong. I can try to say it is about characterization-- and it is that, because there's no way canon Adam and Ronan would end up like this-- but that's not why it strikes me as so wrong.

The fact is, this conviction of the wrongness of this scenario coexists with my firm conviction that self-expression is hugely important, and fiction needs no boundaries. If someone wants to do something new for its own sake (and that long of a separation is definitely new in Pynch fics), then that's a valid motivation. It's great to experiment and flex one's writerly muscles and come up with unnecessary drama because said drama allows you-the-writer to write about the things that seem interesting or important. Why not? What is fanfic for if not stretching said muscles and seeing whether one can write a long story with all the fixings? I remember how important finishing my first long novella via fanfic was for me. It felt momentous. And of course, I tried to make it as canon-friendly as possible, but then again Harry Potter was in love (and lust) with Draco Malfoy in it, so I can't throw stones even if I wanted to. Which I don't.

That said, I *have* found that people who say they're 'exploring' things (particularly new things) via the medium of fanfiction end up writing things that jangle and jolt my fannish and/or shippy sensibilities. Ultimately, the thing is, that sort of ambition is suited much, much more to original work than fanfic. I read fic to meet with old friends and feel good. Even angst feels good when the pleasure of character recognition exists. That ability to think 'here I am with Adam Parrish, my dear boy'-- that's what fanfic is for. And sometimes I like to worry about my boy, because bad things happen, but there's different kinds of worry. I don't want to worry that I no longer recognize him, that he's become something other than the boy I care about while I wasn't looking.

There's different caveats there, of course. I remember an AU Adam who grew up without Ronan or Gansey, who became a rather cold, manipulative criminal sort. Mr. Grey and Adam always had more than a bit in common. It's not even unlikely, given Adam didn't know them growing up. It'll be different once that changes; it's OK because Adam *will* change. While I don't want that for Adam, I'm not as dismayed by the idea as the notion that he had Ronan and threw him away-- and for fifteen years. That's pretty permanent. That's a life lived without the other person already. That's proof Adam doesn't need Ronan, more or less, and vice versa, even as a good friend. Like I said, it's wrong. It destroys what was so beautiful about them, about all of the Raven Boys. The way they were all so deeply connected, so intertwined. Even if Ronan and Adam get back together after that, it doesn't matter. This means what tied them wasn't as deep as the books suggested, so it makes the whole thing rather pointless and sad. They're just another couple. My point here is that it's the *constancy* of the relationships that are important with fanfic rather than any exploration of the new and unusual.

A lot of people seem to write fic just to use material they love, and play in the sandbox they enjoy, rather than as an *homage*. And it doesn't need to be, certainly. There are no rules. My point is just that-- for example, imagine a Peter Pan story where Peter decided to grow up, to become a banker in London, married to a woman who's not Wendy. OK, let's imagine Wendy and Peter may still secretly pine for one another, but Peter is married and his wife is dying, and Wendy herself isn't a young woman anymore. She can barely believe she once thought she flew to a make-believe magical island where no one ever had to grow old, or stop having adventures. She doesn't think she'd enjoy it the same way anymore, anyway. After all, she's thirty-something now and has gotten used to running water and coffee down the street. Thinking of Peter makes her a bit weepy, still, but she tells herself it's better this way, and most of the time she even believes it. So of course, it's quite a shock when Peter waltzes back into her life, over thirty and as handsome, urbane and charming a finance guy as you could imagine.

Now, maybe this story could have a happy ending (say, Peter and Wendy end up adopting a dog, and actually have very good sex sometimes, and sometimes they take a vacation to the Bahamas, which isn't Neverland but at least it has running water and coffee). But surely that happy ending wouldn't matter. More importantly than anyone's happiness, Peter Pan would have been thoroughly destroyed by this. In fact, the old, real Peter Pan wouldn't piss on this man if he were on fire, so to speak. No 'happy ending' is actually possible at that point, no matter how happy anyone is eventually, because it doesn't *matter* anymore.

As a matter of self-expression and experimentation (say, as a parody or a commentary on our lost childhood or the excesses of capitalism or what have you), one could see why a person would actually write this story. On an individual basis, there's no need to justify it. However, as a story-- as another story in the world of stories, existing in the ether of dreams and nightmares rather than stuck as a product of a particular person, time and place-- this would be an abomination. Not because it depicts any nasty or unfortunate acts, but because it's the antithesis of its original truth and beauty. No fan of Peter Pan who really cares about the character and his world could enjoy or appreciate a future where everything is in ruins. In this sense, Barrie's original bittersweet ending-- where neither Peter nor Wendy ended up happy, per se-- suddenly seems like the height of satisfaction and good sense. The characters remained themselves. They weren't happy in the tritest possible sense, true, but that doesn't matter, because they were themselves. Nothing was lost, and an adventure was had. A story was told and then finished, nothing and no one harmed, with only character growth as a result.

It's not the *sadness* of Adam and Ronan's long estrangement that bothers me in the break-up fics. Similarly, I don't consider it a 'fix' to know they end up together again in the end. Happiness isn't the point. Happiness isn't the *goal*, not even of love stories. It's not about happiness: it's about being, *becoming*, your best self. It's about how love becomes a part of you. It's about how another person is *necessary*, even if you don't need them on a basic level. This isn't something you can lose or give away. To deny it is to deny that love even existed.

I realize that it's just that other people don't see it that way, obviously. Generally, the point here is that in 'real life', all sorts of unfortunate and sordid things happen, even if they shouldn't. We lose things we never should've lost. We end up places we never expected, for reasons that just kind of... made sense at the time. No more and no less.

I get that this kind of 'realism' is why some people feel motivated to write fiction, but I'm talking about writing fanfic for a genre work that is much more abstract, much more idealistic and much more of a Romance (in the sense that Peter Pan or The Raven Cycle are Romances, nothing to do with the genre). In the case of such romantic, literary works, you have heightened realism at best and idealistic romanticism as an average. To translate such characters to some kind of sordid realism requires a deft hand and an understanding of just what counts as central underpinnings of the original text, not to be messed with.

In some ways, you could even argue the Harry Potter books are more amenable to gritty realism than The Raven Cycle, because JK Rowling is always trying to reference and comment on social issues (just indirectly). So I dunno, it's not a stretch if Harry's actually seriously abused as a child and never gets to Hogwarts at eleven, or Remus actually had AIDS, and Sirius has all sorts of things that happen in and after a stay in prison. Harry's a heroic character-- he's smart, brave, and true-- but you can do all sorts of things to heroes and still have them end up heroic. Harry was pretty messed up in the actual books, too. Love stories aren't quite so resilient, or resilient in the face of the same things (abuse, abandonment, or even being focused on something else entirely and having no extra time or effort to spare). There's a reason Harry only got together with Ginny (and Ronan got together with Adam) at the end. It's OK when you're friends/lovers who're going through tough times that require plenty of patience and forgiveness-- like Remus and Sirius, for example-- but it's not OK if your tough times are your own fault, and they happen after you're supposed to have figured it all out. At that point, it's not the same story anymore, essentially.

I honestly think that stories have their own flavor of 'reality', and don't benefit from the introduction of any improved airs of 'realism' if it's not native. Note, this is separate from something like a non-magic AU. I mean 'realism' as in the philosophy that just about anything can happen, just because. Why not? Well, it's fiction. There's actually plenty of reasons why things had to happen just how they did and that's it. Fiction isn't random, and good endings (happy or otherwise) are the most rational and inevitable things of all. In a good story, things end up how they're supposed to be, on a very, very deep level. Ignoring all that to say 'well, it could all go poof tomorrow!' seems to ignore the underlying nature of stories entirely. That's the sense that I mean when I say this is 'wrong'. It is definitely very wrong to argue with the way stories *want* to be, the way they are meant to be.

As a writer, if I know anything, it's that.

#fanfic meta #raven cycle #raven ❤️#hp feels #characterization #romanticism #peter pan #pointless rambles #me myself and i #pynch #narrative #writing

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ridleymocki · 7 years

Text

Chapter 2!! (Just Take a Hold of the Hand That Breaks the Fall)

Done for Pynch Week 17, Day 5: Northern Lights // Dreamscape // Stars

Because I originally wanted to do a painting for the 'northern lights' prompt but I ran out of time to finish it up how I wanted, and the next part of this fic fit coincidentally well for the prompt. So here, have 3.5k of pynch hanging out in a dream.

This fic will be updated and continued as soon as I actually write the thing. I'm still super hyped for the plot I've got worked out so that will be soon, promise.

Thank you so SO much for reading, and I hope you enjoy it.

This is the second chapter of Just Take a Hold of the Hand That Breaks the Fall

also on ao3

As long as Ronan could remember, there’d been the forest. When he was small his mother would praise him for having a nap in the afternoon and Ronan would insist that he’d done no such thing, that he’d gone exploring and look, look at the leaves. All he got were patient smiles and he didn’t understand until he was older that not everyone went somewhere else when they dreamed. Cabeswater, as the forest called itself, hadn’t made him feel Other; it had made him feel safe.

After his father died and he’d figured out that he was different – after he had the Institute to give him the specifics of how he was different – Ronan had wondered if his parents knew the whole time, and what kind of thought process lead a parent to not telling their kid that they had powers. That not everyone could pull things out of dreams.

Then he’d found out his father had had the same power, and hadn’t helped him, hadn’t guided him. In some moments he’d be shaking with rage and hurt at his father for that and, not wanting to be angry at his father – because Ronan loved him and could never tell him that ever again – it had just left him angry at himself. Another box ticked on a list of how to effectively perform self-loathing.

There was a new nightmare that came into being from that anger. The forest had hated doing that to him, bringing the creature to life to hurt him. It had hated watching as the nightmare scratched at Ronan’s arms, shrieked its abuse. It was pained to let him go back to the world alone and cold and bloody. But on some level it was what Ronan had asked for, and the forest couldn’t refuse him.

It loved him; it could not refuse him.

There was a frightful amount of potential in being able to dream an object, pull it into the world and have it work as you meant it to, every time. There was obligation and responsibility there that Ronan wanted nothing to do with. He wondered if his ancestors, other dreamers along his bloodline, had been afforded a small mercy when they had to keep their power hidden. How beneficial it was to present yourself as unremarkable, so no one thought you were something to be used.

His father had been a black market trader, a businessman whose business got him killed. But Ronan lived in a world of heroes, of civic duty and the global community, of living for others’ needs.

Ronan had never saved a life, and he’d always said he never wanted to. Doing things like that made you public property, and Ronan could only ever be his own master.

But, now, as he watched Adam’s body lie still and ghostly, and his nose crinkled at the smell of the bleach they used to keep the infirmary’s linoleum floor clean, Ronan wondered if he hadn’t done it already, by accident.

What if, the night of the factory, Adam wasn’t meant to make it out alive?

Ronan touched the flower Persephone had left, brushing a finger over its browning petals. The corner of his mouth quirked up at Noah’s card; he’d drawn Adam in pencil with a crown of flowers in his hair and covered the whole thing in glitter. The inside said I know you’re not dead, so there’s really no excuse for being this dramatic. Wake up soon. <3. Adam’s eyelids didn’t flutter at all, and his chest rose steady and even like it wasn’t him doing it. Ronan could see the blue of his veins sprawl over his wrists, stretch over the inside of his elbow.

What if Adam was supposed to die and Ronan had saved him? Just because, for a split second, he’d thought No, and the forest had listened.

Ronan rubbed a hand down his face. “I swear to god if you hit me when I get in there, I’m not helping you with Latin for a month.” He’d be within his rights, though.

Persephone had told him that Adam was still whole, but the body lying in front of him was unrecognisable. Noah had said that Adam wasn’t dead, but he may as well have been, for all that this body’s cheeks were hollow and his muscles slack. No one ever really understands, until you see it for yourself, how much a dead body doesn’t look like the person that once lived.

He pushed a frustrated breath out of his nose. “Don’t be mad,” he said to Adam, and stepped over to the vacant hospital bed next to Adam’s. He lay down, for once not quieting his mind with over-loud music; something about how long he’s delayed this made him think he didn’t deserve the comfort.

Ronan traced the shape of the ceiling with his eyes, the hazy shadows left by an unenthusiastic grey light coming through the windows. He turned his head and traced the shape of Adam’s nose, the dip before his top lip, and wondered if Adam had come to the same conclusion; that him winding up in Cabeswater had been a last ditch effort to preserve his life. It’s more like a beginning, Maura had said. But if the beginning was meant to have started with Adam dying, Ronan hated to think about the middle or the end.

Despite being by his side, despite having all of Adam within his reach, Ronan went to sleep afraid.

……………………………………..

“I was beginning to think you forgot the way,” Adam said when Ronan came to. This time, Ronan was already leaning against a tree, and had to peek through the low hanging branches to see Adam where he stood in a little clearing. It was still night. Or, it was night again. He wasn’t sure.

“What?” He ducked under the branches and stepped closer. Adam still looked a little unreal, but there was a frown between his brows now that had been absent the last time.

“Nothing.” It was said low and frustrated. Adam ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “That insomnia still getting to you, Lynch?”

Ronan’s mouth twisted with regret. He should’ve come sooner. “Not exactly. Look, I didn’t mean to leave you in the lurch–“

“Whatever. It’s just. It’s been night time all the time, here, okay? And I don’t even know how long I’ve been here, and for some reason the one person who can contact me hasn’t been doing that so, what, were you busy?” He raised his brows at Ronan, looking like he was torn between genuinely wanting Ronan to give him a good excuse, and wanting to see him admit that he’d just selfishly chosen not to come.

Ronan wasn’t a liar. “No. I was just being an idiot,” he said quietly, and shoved his hands into his pockets. The breeze picked up, uncomfortably cold, and Ronan knew it was because the forest was reacting to his distress. His completely ridiculous distress, because shit, he was never like this. He cleared his throat. “You’ve been here five days. I was passed out for three, and it’s been two since then.”

Adam’s frown grew deeper and he looked away. “Feels longer.” Ronan wondered if maybe time worked differently in the forest; maybe one of his days was several for Adam. He didn’t want to believe it. Adam curled his arms around himself, one hand resting around his neck, and Ronan watched as Adam’s thumb pressed behind his ear. With a sniff he seemed to gather himself, “Make the sun come up?”

Ronan hadn’t even considered that possibility yet. That, just as he could dream things up to take back to the world, he might be able to dream things to be better for Adam. But he hadn’t even begun to ask the forest to raise the sun when, immediately, it was doing so. The sky lightened enough that the shadows stopped being contrasted with silver-white moonlight and became instead the eerie blue of the early morning. It showed up the circles under Adam’s eyes, made him look vaguely skeletal and Ronan wondered if it did the same for himself. After a minute, a burnt orange light pierced through the trees and landed right across Adam’s cheek, as though he’d been splashed with the brightest paint. The change was so stark that Ronan realised he’d been staring without wavering all that time, and he abruptly moved his gaze onto the horizon, instead. He didn’t think about why Adam had been looking back.

That was when he remembered the quickness of the forest to respond to the wish, and realised it hadn’t been his own, not really. “I didn’t do that,” he said wonderingly.

“What do you mean?” Adam frowned. “You had to.”

“Well I didn’t. I didn’t think it, I just heard you say it. It listened to you.”

“But, it didn’t when you weren’t here. I asked it to do stuff when you were gone and it didn’t.” Adam seemed to consider it for a moment, eyes growing distant the way that was usual when he was working on a hard math problem or trying to translate a passage. “Maybe it’s only if we’re both here.”

Yes. The forest whispered in Ronan’s ear. Magic maker. Magic wielder.

“Well,” he groused, “that’s just great.” He realised too late that Adam hadn’t heard the Latin words, and might think Ronan was grumbling about him. But when he looked Adam was fighting a smile, eyes bright. Ronan rolled his eyes at him and the smile won.

“Sorry,” Adam said, sun glancing off his teeth, before he sobered some. “And sorry about before, I just– I guess some worries came back to me, since I saw you. Or I got new ones, I guess. Point is, you shouldn’t have to pop in just to keep me happy.”

Before he tangled himself in an argument about his willingness on that subject, Ronan snorted garishly and smirked at him, instead. “Stop. Hate to break it to you, Parrish, but I’m usually more of an asshole than you and that’s not changing now.”

Gratifyingly, Adam actually laughed. “Jesus, is that your version of an apology?” Ronan raised a brow at him. “Oh don’t worry, I’ll take it. It’s just, if you ever want to workshop that you let me know.”

“Fucking Orla and her fucking workshops,” he groused, scowling even through the second round of Adam’s easy laughter.

“Come on,” Adam said after a moment, and walked past him to duck through the trees.

They walked silently through the vegetation and the streams of light, stepping over fallen branches, circling around the occasional anthill or spider web. Adam wore an expression like he was very quietly pleased by everything in this place. Like he was pleased to see every leaf, every dust mote in the air. Or maybe he was just amused at the fact that even a magical dream forest had gross bits and disarray. It was Ronan’s dream place, though, he should’ve expected a little disorder.

“I gotta ask,” Ronan said when he was sure he’d lost track of how far they’d gone, “you found a pair of jeans all the way out here but you couldn’t manage a shirt?”

Adam, ahead of him by a few steps, threw a grin over his shoulder. “I woke up in this. Is it distracting you, Lynch?”

“Aren’t you cold?” he asked, ignoring that entirely.

Adam shrugged. “I don’t really get cold here, or warm, it’s actually kind of difficult for me to feel anything properly. Which is irritating”

Alarmed, Ronan stopped and pulled at Adam’s elbow to get him to turn. “What do you mean? Are you– what does that mean?”

“Don’t freak out,” Adam rolled his eyes, “I can still feel, I just… It’s like when you’re really tired and you’re just so in your own head that, I don’t know, real stuff doesn’t feel real. I know that it’s cold, I just don’t feel cold.” He pulled away and continued walking. “I’m fine.”

“That’s not reassuring,” Ronan called out after him, and followed. It sounded awful, actually. Ronan knew that part of Adam’s training at the Institute was in grounding himself, using mindfulness techniques to make himself feel like he was actually in the world instead of letting him dissociate away into his own head. Adam could scry like the witches could, but too much time spent in such a cerebral state made him slip into it again a little too easily, and that’s when his magic would take over. So he used sensations, the more stark the better, to reattach himself to reality. Rough fabrics helped, like the itchy wool of their uniform sweater. A scrap of coarse sandpaper in Adam’s pocket. The nib of a pen pressing harder and harder into the pad of a finger.

When he was in the mood to be a little shit, Adam would reach up and scrub his hand over Ronan’s buzzed hair, feeling the prickle of it. When Ronan swatted him away with a grumble, he’d laugh and say “Shh, I need it, help a guy out,” and go to do it again.

Ronan didn’t understand how Adam could be so calm here, if his sensations were really that dulled. Or maybe not dulled, just intellectual as opposed to subjective. Wasn’t he drifting away, here?

It didn’t sit right with him and so Ronan asked, in his mind, screamed it into his thoughts: Make him feel.

The breeze picked up for a moment and stirred the leaves, hard. In front of him, Adam abruptly stopped, his back rigid. Ronan was seized with the sudden worry that maybe he’d overstepped. Adam never took kindly to anyone messing with his head, and maybe this qualified as messing. After a moment, however, Adam turned and looked back at Ronan with wide eyes.

Ronan quirked a brow. “Better?”

Adam stared at him for a moment, then swallowed, and nodded. They continued on without a word, as Ronan tried to parse the significance of that stare. He thought, tentatively, that it was similar to what happened so often at the Institute, when one person realised with full forces the nature of another’s power. It was a moment of wonder. Ronan tried not to let it get to his head.

Eventually, they came to a clearing with a small rise in the middle, not quite a hill, but enough to stretch one’s legs on the way up. Ronan had fallen a little behind, as Adam pushed on, wary of not making his company overbearing or unpleasant, given it was all Adam had to choose from. When he broke through the trees Adam was already standing at the top of the rise, the sky around him blushing pink in the emergent morning, the breeze ruffling the tall grass around his legs and the hair on his head. His eyes watched Ronan approach.

No manicured gardens at the Institute, or wide flat plains in Virginia could rival the wildness and beauty of Adam in that moment.

“You don’t know how to get me out of here, do you?” Adam said suddenly, and Ronan nearly tripped on his way up the rise.

He paused in his movement instead, grimaced, and continued on slower than before. “No. The witches aren’t even sure how this happened. Their scrying is being blocked.”

“What?” Adam’s eyes widened and he stared as Ronan came to stand in front of him. “That’s not good.”

Ronan snorted. “Yeah, no shit.”

“No, Ronan,” he said, voice low and careful, “the Deans are some of the most powerful time seers in history. Their power is like mine, it’s old school. Blocking them is like… it should be impossible. What the hell kind of thing could do that?” Adam’s eyes darted around, like he was searching the space around them for answers.

“My money’s on the freaky bug people,” Ronan said, but absently, he was too concerned with the way Adam looked so unsure, now. “Look,” he said, “whatever is going on back on Earth, you’re safe here, okay? I know that inside my head probably isn’t the healthiest place to be, but at least if you’re here, nothing can get to you.”

“Yeah. Unless it gets to you, first,” Adam said, cutting. He wasn’t wrong. Ronan knew from experience what happened to dream things when the dreamer was gone, the vacancy and impoverishment of life. When his father died it was like someone had pulled the plug out of the wall on everything he’d ever created. The animals and Ronan’s mother alike fell under some sick Sleeping Beauty spell. He didn’t want to think about what destruction would happen in this dream place if he wasn’t here to dream it.

Shit. He was going to have to be careful, now. He was going to have to give half a damn about whether or not something took him out. For Adam’s sake.

This is exactly the kind of responsibility he never wanted.

Adam’s expression turned furtive, and he glanced at Ronan from the corner of his eye before looking away. “Be careful, Ronan,” he said quietly, then folded himself down on the ground, legs crossed and spine lax. It wasn’t said selfishly, wasn’t a take care of me or else; it was worried, like Adam thought he’d put a target on Ronan’s back and was shamed by it.

Ronan collapsed beside him, legs thrown out across the grass, flattening it without care and leaning back on his elbows. “So no more drag racing, then?” he grinned.

Adam sent him a stunningly flat look. “I’m serious.”

“Oh, right,” he nodded. “Of course. So like, I should watch my cholesterol, too? Maybe eat a vegetable?” Adam’s face only grew more unimpressed. “I guess base jumping is out of the question.”

“Ugh!” Adam finally broke, and pushed at Ronan’s shoulder so hard he tipped sideways and fell onto the grass, chuckling without apology. “You’re an asshole,” Adam groused.

“I have an established brand, okay, you gotta be consistent.” Ronan sprawled out in the grass, the line between forced and genuine humour blurring as he smiled over at Adam’s irritated frown. From the outside, one might have said that he’d actually made Adam angry. But being annoyed at Ronan was one of Adam Parrish’s favourite past times and Ronan didn’t see why he should be deprived, now.

“That’s the most Gansey thing you’ve ever said.” At least Adam was starting to smile.

“Hey now, the poor guy’s doing some ‘beautiful mind’ shit to try and figure out how to get you back, don’t point out his flaws.” Adam looked a little surprised at that, but quickly recovered to smile, open and languid.

“Nerd,” he said, and for some reason the tone was so perfect, so spot on to how he’d been countless times before in their classes together and when they hung out at lunch, that Ronan let out a helpless cry of laughter.

Adam smiled at him, pleased, and reclined back to lie beside Ronan in the grass. It was well into morning now, though the colours were still pale instead of the vivid hues of midday. If he ignored their surroundings and focused on the sky, Ronan could imagine that it was any one of the mornings at the Institute before class, that he could turn his head and Adam would be in his uniform, disciplined and ordered instead of wild and bright.

“This is what we’re like in the real world.” Adam turned to him with a confused look and Ronan gestured to the way their bodies were arranged, side by side. “I’m asleep in the bed next to you, back in the medical wing.”

Adam seemed particularly interested by that. But he asked instead, “Is it weird for you? Coming here and seeing me?”

Ronan played with the leather bands around his wrist, where his hands lay above his head. “Probably should be. But you kind of fit in, here. I’ve spoken to people in here before but they’ve always been people I dreamed up, even if they were based on someone real. You, though, it’s like…” as he tried to gather his words, Adam turned fully on his side to await them, and Ronan felt his ears go a little warm at the attention. They were uncommonly close, enough to see the pale freckles on Adam’s bare shoulder. “You feel like the forest. I didn’t put you here on purpose. You’re just here.”

Adam nodded, seeming satisfied, but he didn’t roll away, just took some deep breaths like the breeze was clarifying for him.

They lay there for a long time, Ronan couldn’t say exactly, but the sun had passed the midpoint in the sky when he felt himself start to drift away. They talked intermittently, teased in turns, but the air had grown warmer with the sun and made the muted colours around them even hazier, so they mostly just lounged. Ronan was usually calmer in his dreams, his lounging in the real world always cut with an undercurrent of cynicism or irritation. But he didn’t usually have company, and he found himself trying to hold onto his calm for longer so that Adam would be content to lie beside him just a little longer, too. When he started to grow hazy, eyelids growing heavy, he felt a little mournful.

“I’ll be back soon,” he said, strong and sure, wanting to impress it upon Adam that he regretted wasting his time, before.

“You don’t have to,” Adam said easily, concedingly.

“I’ll want to,” Ronan replied with certainty. For a second he saw Adam’s returning smile, bright and clear, and then he was gone.

#pynchweek #pynchweek17 #pynch #the raven cycle #fic #my fic

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parakeatswrites · 3 years

Note

1, 3, 7, 25 writer meta? 🥰

HAR, get ready for a long one!!

I wrote this whole thing and it’s a LOT but a HUGE thank you for giving me an excuse to chat about my writing!! 😍

1. Tell us about your current project(s) – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

My WIP folder has 27 files in various states of writing / planning / abandonment. So here’s the ones that are posted on AO3:

- 🌄 Home to Me (the timetravel slowburn / they are married one) - I’m scared of writing the ending of this 😂 but i’m definitely in the home stretch of writing the draft and my brain Does Not Want To.

- 💤 The Night Hides All Flaws (the ASMR, no-magic, university AU) - I just like writing this when I want to do pure awkward fluff. It’s incredibly self-indulgent.

Here’s the WIPs that are still drafts or just notes that I fall asleep thinking about:

- 🎠 the Witcher Fusion AU (very very loosely based on the Witcherverse concepts with no regard for timelines) where Adam was given as a child in payment to a Witcher and is now walking the Path. He keeps coming across the runaway Prince Gansey and his Crew etc etc It’s got a small mystery, action vibe to it so I’m taking my time putting in plot points. So here’s the tentative summary that I’ve written:

Adam hadn’t been a Witcher for very long in the grand scheme of the Continent and he wasn’t the type of Witcher that got involved in grand adventures, or found himself in the middle of turning points in history. Adam had been trained because he was a child surprise - no more important than a cask of wine - and had made it to adulthood because he was smart. He wasn’t like the Witchers of yore, and he wasn’t trying to be. Give him a nekker nest or a few drowners over Destiny any day. Then again, the errant Prince of Gansey was determined to cross his Path with his merry band of misfits in search of adventure as often as possible.

Adam had come inland for the winter, hoping to get a big payout to tide him through the season from the local Duchy of Springer Falls, but something wasn’t right with Duke Lynch and his brothers. The monster in the woods hadn’t been part of any bestiary Adam had seen, and the Duke seemed reluctant to hire Adam to dispatch it despite the threat to the surrounding farmland. The whole situation smelled of too much trouble for not enough coin, but of course Prince Gansey couldn’t leave a good mystery alone.

- 💥 Break and Enter meet-cute (a pynch fic which I can’t explain any better than that I think??) No text written yet, but some general chapter planning and now I’m just trying to figure out what it wants to be

- 🌳🌲 Blue sacrificial bride - a bluesey fic, but Hear Me Out. Set in ~old medieval fairytale times~ and there is a Beast in the woods that demands human sacrifice every solstice etc etc and one day Maura is called to the Lords Manor or whatever and when she doesn’t come home Blue figures that she has been chosen as a sacrifice to the Beast. She rushes off to save her mom, but people who go into the forest Don’t Come Back dun dun duuun. Blue rolls up on a falling down castle in the woods etc etc meets a boy who is just Confused About Being Here but Having A Good Time (Gansey) and she has to work with him to try and escape the forest that is magically keeping them there. (It is Very Extremely ‘YA novel retelling of beauty and the beast’ meets ‘any weird folktale i want to include’). I haven’t written much yet because it will be Blue POV and I am not confident in that POV yet haha

- 🏫 A wip with no title (I am open to suggestions) that I’m hoping to post this fall that is a no-magic, Adam meets the gangsey post-university with the premise “What if Matthew was a lot younger and Adam was his tutor and Ronan has to pick him up from school but Adam is just like ‘You are not Declan’ and Ronan was like ‘No, but you are hot.’” I AM ONE MAN WITH ONE WISH and it is doting older brother Ronan who is a fool over an aloof Adam

- 💅 A series of notes I frantically wrote one night here is the most coherent part of them:

Adam and Ronan are in a sort of paranormal fbi situation and are deployed undercover as a married couple. Adam doesnt know what Ronan's powers are (redacted) but he's got a (somewhat false) reputation as "the muscle" and Adam is like "ugh, they are going to make me stay in this house w this uncomfortable hetero dude".

Ronan starts setting off fireworks in the backyard, and Adam thinks it’s gunshots and is like “Do you understand that we are UNDERCOVER??”

And they have to be domestic and pretend to be married while they basically gather intel about a dangerous magical object in suburbia?? Gansey is their handler and just wants them to stop fighting and endangering the mission???

I will stop there, please, anyone is welcome to come STRAIGHT into my ask box / dms to talk to me about these.

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)

Bet you didn’t think I have any more ideas after all that, right? BUT here’s a snippet from a character study oneshot for an Adam headcanon that will probably never see the light of day:

It started when he had the graveyard shift at the factory, taking breaks with the exhausted moms who didn't mind sharing a smoke with him because he wasn't their kid. He kept it up because it calmed his nerves as he frantically tried to get the grades for the Aglionby scholarship, sneaking smokes out of Boyd’s jacket that always hung off the back of his office door. The double wide was always acrid with the smoke and old beer, so his father never noticed. He quit after starting at Aglionby, too worried about the smell of car oil on his uniform and he didn’t like what nicotine would signal to the other boys. At Mountainview, hanging around on the sidewalk behind the school with cigs was its own place in the social hierarchy. He didn’t want to find out what rung that would string him up on at Aglionby.

Car oil might just mean that he was handy, had a useful hobby. At seventeen, new to the pristine halls of Aglionby, nicotine just meant trouble. He didn't want trouble, he wanted to get out of Henrietta. He never told Gansey. Not because he was ashamed, but because Adam didn't have to tell Gansey everything.

Adam was grateful that smokes seemed to be the only habit Ronan didn't pick up from Kavinsky. The smell curling off the Mitsubishi made his skin itch with nameless wanting. (Near first semester midterms at Harvard and ronan came up to visit adam and "Did you smoke?" Adam asked, feeling immediately embarrassed. What was he doing sniffing Ronan's collar like some sort of dog. "Huh?" Ronan's brain hadn't caught up with the idea of talking instead of kissing and his only response was grunt and an insistent kiss to the corner of Adam's lips. Adam leaned back, now feeling like a jealous wife, "you smell like cigs." He wasnt sure what he was asking.

7. What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree?

Not totally sure since I don’t think I can consciously control the characteristics or style of my writing. I also try to avoid noticing if I repetitively use the same words or phrases, since I’ll probably just become self-conscious.

I do try to remember to keep a character’s physical surroundings present (even though I find a lot of place descriptions boring to read and write 😂) So I try to keep whole passages from feeling like just ‘talking heads’. Also I try to show the emotions of a character whose POV we’re not in, instead of having the ‘close 3rd person’ narration spell it out explicitly.

I’ve also gotten a lot of comments on HtM that the writing style is ‘mysterious’ which is a HUGE compliment and I have no idea how I made that happen.

I can’t speak for anyone else if they agree with how I’ve described my writing so feel free to reply / dm me to let me know 😂 you can give me a reality check.

25. What part of writing is the most fun?

I have answered this here too, but another part of writing I find fun is dialogue between friends when they’re just hanging out. The cadence of how people talk and the weird shit friends will joke about... Just love it!!

CONGRATS if you read this far!!

Here’s the link to the questions if anyone else wants to play

#catboyadamparrish

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aion-rsa · 5 years

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Captain Marvel: Who is Mar-Vell?

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Before Carol Danvers was Captain Marvel, there was a Kree warrior named Mar-Vell...

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Marc Buxton

Marvel

Mar 9, 2019

Captain Marvel

It is not a stretch to say that we are indeed living in the age of Captain Marvel. But as awesome as Carol Danvers is, the legacy of Captain Marvel did not began with her. Well, the legacy of Captain Marvel doesn’t begin with Marvel either, but that's way too drawn out to get into here. Needless to say, Carol wasn't the first Marvel character to hold the Captain Marvel title, that would be a Kree warrior named Mar-Vell.

And it is with this Captain our story begins. So before you enjoy Captain Marvel on the big screen, strap on your Nega-bands and join us as we present the rich history of Captain Mar-Vell, the hero that paved the way for Carol Danvers...

What’s in a Name?

Captain Mar-Vell was created by Stan Lee and Gene Colan and first appeared in Marvel Super-Heroes #12 (1967) and it all started with a name. So, let’s talk everything Kree. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced the Kree in Fantastic Four #65 (1967). Just a few months later, Lee continued the story of the Kree in the aforementioned Marvel Super-Heroes #12. In this issue, the world meets the Kree Captain Mar-Vell. A white skinned Kree (the Kree can either be white or greenish/blue skinned) who is sent to Earth to spy on its inhabitants. Mar-Vell takes the human identity of Walter Lawson and oft times dons his (awful) green-and-white Kree uniform to protect the people he is supposed to be spying on. Originally, Mar-Vell was a Flash Gordon type who used laser guns and other space tech to defend the Earth. There was a wonderful Stan Lee irony to Mar-Vell as he was always torn between protecting the humans he admired and his duty to the Kree. It was a quality set up, but it just didn’t have the gravitas of other Marvel characters of the era.

It seemed like Mar-Vell’s origins were cobbled together so Marvel Comics could have a place holder for the Captain Marvel name. While some vital Kree concepts like the Supreme Intelligence, Ronan the Accuser, and the Sentry robots were either created or explored in Captain Mar-Vell’s stories, sales sagged and the book just didn’t have the same energy as Lee’s other creations.

read more: Captain Marvel Ending Explained

That didn’t stop Marvel from ditching the character from the Marvel Super-Heroes anthology and giving him his own book. There were some vital Marvel concepts and characters introduced in Cap’s solo title, the most important of which was a certain Air Force captain who would go on to great things in the decades to come. Captain Carol Danvers makes her debut in Marvel Super-Heroes #13 (1968). She is the security chief of the base where Walter Lawson does his thing. Lawson and Danvers become friends and in Captain Marvel #1 (1968), she gets caught in an explosion of A Kree device and suffers some serious injuries. Turns out, the device grants Danvers Kree like abilities and when she resurfaces years later as Ms. Marvel, her and Mar-Vell’s stories take a parallel course.

Clothes Make the Man

In Captain Marvel #16 (1969) by Archie Goodwin and Don Heck, Mar-Vell begins his journey to become a Marvel legend. The past few issues, the new creative teams spent time ridding the Captain Marvel title of its supporting characters (except for a certain Ms. Danvers, of course). These issues also introduced the Supreme Intelligence, a green floating head potato made up of the combined intellect of the best members of the Kree race. In a power play, Ronan the Accuser (ya’ll remember him) and Mar-Vell’s arch nemesis Yon-Rogg team up to kill the Supreme Intelligence (how do you kill an intelligence? A Fox News marathon? I’M KIDDING...not really). Mar-Vell saves the Supreme Intelligence and is rewarded with new powers and a snazzy new Gil Kane designed costume (Kane would take over the art chores in the next ish of Captain Marvel).

read more: Captain Marvel Post Credits Scenes Explained

Mar-Vell now went from a Buck Rogers style space jockey to a nigh omnipotent alien superman. He could crush any substance, transport himself across any distance, fly at the speed of light, and mentally project illusions. The newly designed Cap leaped off the page and he was ready for bold new adventures. But there were more changes ahead and one of them was a pure homage to the Golden Age.

The Nega Bands

I think you all know that the original Shazam version of Captain Marvel gains his powers when Billy Batson says the magic word of "Shazam!" That transformative aspect of the character would be homaged in the pages of Marvel's Captain Marvel when Cap is blasted by radiation which traps the Kree hero in the Negative Zone. The Supreme Intelligence, helpful verdant potato that he is, mentally connects Mar-Vell to one Rick Jones. For those not in the know, Rick Jones had been a supporting character in Hulk, Avengers, Captain America, and had become something of a Marvel journeyman. Well, now Jones was in Captain Marvel.

read more: Complete Guide to Captain Marvel Easter Eggs

Mar-Vell telepathically leads Jones to a cosmic weapon known as the Nega-bands. When Jones is compelled to knock the wrist bands together, he and Captain Mar-Vell switch places. Captain Marvel writer Roy Thomas was a lifelong Shazam fan and did his level best to gift Marvel Comics with its very own cosmic version of the character. From there, Jones became an indispensable part of the Captain Mar-Vell legend. It seemed like Rick, the constant sidekick to Marvel’s greatest heroes, was the missing ingredient to Captain Marvel as the title and lead characters were off to explore the cosmic side of the Marvel Universe.

Kree Skrull War

Any discussion on Mar-Vell would be incomplete without looking at Avengers #89-97 (1971-1972) by Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Neal Adams, and Sal Buscema. In these classic issues, the Kree-Skrull War begins, and Mar-Vell is one of the main catalysts. This was next level cosmic comic storytelling that set the tone and standard for just about every Marvel space tale moving forward, and our good Captain was right in the middle of it.

read more - Captain Marvel: Who Are the Skrulls?

The Jim Starlin Years

In Captain Marvel #24 (1973), writer Marv Wolfman welcomed a new artist aboard, a young man named Jim Starlin. Starlin would go on to become the most important creator in Mar-Vell history. At first with co-writer Mike Friedrich, and later, flying the space winds solo as both writer and penciller, Starlin took Mar-Vell to new heights. During Starlin’s epic run, the writer took the cosmic grandeur established by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee in such stories as The Galactus Trilogy and continued by Roy Thomas in The Kree-Skrull War, wrapped it all up in a button of peyote and downed it with a jug of bathtub moonshine to create one of the watershed moments of the Bronze Age.

read more: The Comics History and Origin of Captain Marvel Explained

In his short run on Iron Man, Starlin introduced two new characters to the Marvel Universe, Drax the Destroyer and some space villain guy named Thanos. You may have heard of him. While Starlin’s Iron Man run was short lived, the writer shunted his new creations over to Captain Marvel setting the stage for one of the greatest cosmic epics of all time. During his run on Mar-Vell, Starlin introduced the character Eon, a fungus-like entity of immense cosmic might who became a mentor to Mar-Vell. Eon names Mar-Vell Protector of the Universe and separates Rick Jones and Mar-Vell, leaving him free to fly the cosmos on his own. And boy, does he.

read more: How Did Nick Fury Lose His Eye?

Eon gifts Mar-Vell with cosmic awareness, the ability to be aware off all corners of space and time at once. So basically, he is constantly tripping balls. Mar-Vell soon becomes mixed up with Drax and Thanos as the former becomes obsessed with killing the Mad Titan as Thanos quests to find the realty altering Cosmic Cube. Yes, Thanos goes on a quest to find a way to alter reality to honor his love, the Mistress Death. Sound familiar? This is the same power lust that inspires Thanos to quest for the Infinity Gems (in comics they are gems, damn it!), and we all know how that turns out. Indeed, Starlin is the writer who continued the saga of Thanos in the pages of Adam Warlock’s comic and into the immortal saga of The Infinity Gauntlet. Hey, Infinity Gauntlet was adapted into a film. You may have seen it.

In those pages, Starlin showed the world what a multi-faceted threat Thanos could be but he also finally defined Mar-Vell as its cosmic protector. Starlin’s ideas were like a blacklight poster come to life, and while he only had one more Captain Marvel story in him, and it would be the most tragic tale of all.

The Death of Captain Marvel

In Starlin’s final issue of Captain Marvel, issue #34 (1974) to be exact, Mar-Vell encounters the villainous Nitro. It might seem like a fun but typical punch up, but Starlin later reveals that during the conflict, Marv is exposed to Compound 13 nerve gas. The highly radioactive substance infects Mar-Vell with incurable cancer. Mar-Vell’s final days are recounted in The Death of Captain Marvel (1982). There is no magic wand, no cosmic cure, and no divine intervention; instead, Starlin presents the noble last days of a hero.

read more: Captain Marvel Comics Reading Order

As Mar-Vell awaits his death on the moon of Titan, Earth’s heroes race to find a cure. Meanwhile, Mar-Vell’s friends and foes arrive one by one to honor the soon to be fallen hero, the Skrulls award their Kree adversary their highest military honor for his persistence in battle, and Mar-Vell dies quietly, bravely. Then, the specter of Thanos arrives (the Titan was also dead at the time) to guide Captain Mar-Vell to the afterlife.

It is not an insult when I write that the greatest thing Captain Mar-Vell did was die. His final story is unforgettable, chilling, and poignant. The death story was so powerful that it would be impossible for Marvel Comics to undo it. It would somehow cheapen the moment and minimize the suffering of real warriors who battled cancer. So because of Starlin’s final Mar-Vell tale, the good Captain was no more. Yes, there would be some journeys to the afterlife where heroes would meet Mar-Vell again and there was even a teased return during the Secret Invasion event of the mid-2000s, but that turned out to be a Skrull in disguise. Mar-Vell is still dead/

But his legacy would live on stronger than ever. After the tragic death, the hero Monica Rambeau took up the Captain Marvel name. Captain Mar-Vell’s son Genis would take up his father’s mantle as well. While Rambeau and Genis are fantastic characters in their own right (Rambeau would become Photon and Genis Legacy), it was not until Carol Danvers took up the legacy of her friend Mar-Vell that Marvel Comics found lasting success with the Captain Marvel name. But as we enter the next phase of the Captain Marvel story, let us never forget the life and death of Marvel’s first hero that took the name that has inspired so many.

read more: Complete Schedule of Upcoming Marvel Movies

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readbookywooks · 7 years

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Fight and Flight

Harry had no idea what Hermione was planning, or even whether she had a plan. He walked half a pace behind her as they headed down the corridor outside Umbridge's office, knowing it would look very suspicious if he appeared not to know where they were going. He did not dare attempt to talk to her; Umbridge was walking so closely behind them that he could hear her ragged breathing. Hermione led the way down the stairs into the Entrance Hall. The din of loud voices and the clatter of cutlery on plates echoed from out of the double doors to the Great Hall--it seemed incredible to Harry that twenty feet away were people who were enjoying dinner, celebrating the end of exams, not a care in the world ... Hermione walked straight out of the oak front doors and down the stone steps into the balmy evening air. The sun was falling towards the tops of the trees in the Forbidden Forest now, and as Hermione marched purposefully across the grass--Umbridge jogging to keep up--their long dark shadows rippled over the grass behind them like cloaks. 'It's hidden in Hagrid's hut, is it?' said Umbridge eagerly in Harry's ear. 'Of course not,' said Hermione scathingly. 'Hagrid might have set it off accidentally.' 'Yes,' said Umbridge, whose excitement seemed to be mounting. 'Yes, he would have done, of course, the great half-breed oaf.' She laughed. Harry felt a strong urge to swing round and seize her by the throat, but resisted. His scar was throbbing in the soft evening air but it had not yet burned white-hot, as he knew it would if Voldemort had moved in for the kill. 'Th en ... where is it? asked Umbridge, with a hint or uncertainty in her voice as Hermione continued to stride towards the Forest. 'In there, of course,' said Hermione, pointing into the dark trees. 'It had to be somewhere that students weren't going to find it accidentally, didn't it?' 'Of course,' said Umbridge, though she sounded a little apprehensive now. 'Of course ... very well, then ... you two stay ahead of me.' 'Can we have your wand, then, if we're going first?' Harry asked her. 'No, I don't think so, Mr. Potter,' said Umbridge sweetly, poking him in the back with it. 'The Ministry places a rather higher value on my life than yours, I'm afraid.' As they reached the cool shade of the first trees, Harry tried to catch Hermione's eye; walking into the Forest without wands seemed to him to be more foolhardy than anything they had done so far this evening. She, however, merely gave Umbridge a contemptuous glance and plunged straight into the trees, moving at such a pace that Umbridge, with her shorter legs, had difficulty in keeping up. 'Is it very far in?' Umbridge asked, as her robe ripped on a bramble. 'Oh yes,' said Hermione, 'yes, it's well hidden.' Harry's misgivings increased. Hermione was not taking the path they had followed to visit Grawp, but the one he followed three years ago to the lair of the monster Aragog. Hermione had not been with him on that occasion; he doubted she had any idea what danger lay at the end of it. 'Er--are you sure this is the right way?' he asked her pointedly. 'Oh yes,' she said in a steely voice, crashing through the undergrowth with what he thought was a wholly unnecessary amount of noise. Behind them, Umbridge tripped over a fallen sapling. Neither of them paused to help her up again; Hermione merely strode on, calling loudly over her shoulder, 'It's a bit further in!' 'Hermione, keep your voice down,' Harry muttered, hurrying to catch up with her. 'Anything could be listening in here--' 'I want us heard,' she answered quietly, as Umbridge jogged noisily after them. 'You'll see ...' They walked on for what seemed a long time, until they were once again so deep into the Forest that the dense tree canopy blocked out all light. Harry had the feeling he had had before in the Forest, one of being watched by unseen eyes. 'How much further?' demanded Umbridge angrily from behind him. 'Not far now!' shouted Hermione, as they emerged into a dim, dank clearing. 'Just a little bit --' An arrow flew through the air and landed with a menacing thud in the tree just over her head. The air was suddenly full of the sound of hooves; Harry could feel the Forest floor trembling; Umbridge gave a little scream and pushed him in front of her like a shield-- He wrenched himself free of her and turned. Around fifty centaurs were emerging on every side, their bows raised and loaded, pointing at Harry, Hermione and Umbridge. They backed slowly into the centre of the clearing, Umbridge uttering odd little whimpers of terror. Harry looked sideways at Hermione. She was wearing a triumphant smile. 'Who are you?' said a voice. Harry looked left. The chestnut-bodied centaur called Magorian was walking towards them out of the circle: his bow, like those of the others, was raised. On Harry's right, Umbridge was still whimpering, her wand trembling violently as she pointed it at the advancing centaur. 'I asked you who are you, human,' said Magorian roughly. 'I am Dolores Umbridge!' said Umbridge in a high-pitched, terrified voice. 'Senior Undersecretary to the Minister for Magic and Headmistress and High Inquisitor of Hogwarts!' 'You are from the Ministry of Magic?' said Magorian, as many of the centaurs in the surrounding circle shifted restlessly. 'That's right!' said Umbridge, in an even higher voice, 'so be very careful! By the laws laid down by the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, any attack by half-breeds such as yourselves on a human--' 'What did you call us?' shouted a wild-looking black centaur, whom Harry recognised as Bane. There was a great deal of angry muttering and tightening of bowstrings around them. 'Don't call them that!' Hermione said furiously, but Umbridge did not appear to have heard her. Still pointing her shaking wand at Magorian, she continued, 'Law Fifteen "B" states clearly that "any attack by a magical creature who is deemed to have near-human intelligence, and therefore considered responsible for its actions--' '"Near-human intelligence"?' repeated Magorian, as Bane and several others roared with rage and pawed the ground. 'We consider that a great insult, human! Our intelligence, thankfully, far outstrips your own.' 'What are you doing in our Forest?' bellowed the hard-faced grey centaur Harry and Hermione had seen on their last trip into the Forest. 'Why are you here?' 'Your Forest?' said Umbridge, shaking now not only with fright but also, it seemed, with indignation. 'I would remind you that you live here only because the Ministry of Magic permits you certain areas of land--' An arrow flew so close to her head that it caught at her mousy hair in passing: she let out an ear-splitting scream and threw her hands over her head, while some of the centaurs bellowed their approval and others laughed raucously. The sound of their wild, neighing laughter echoing around the dimly lit clearing and the sight of their pawing hooves was extremely unnerving. 'Whose Forest is it now, human?' bellowed Bane. 'Filthy half-breeds!' she screamed, her hands still tight over her head. 'Beasts! Uncontrolled animals!' 'Be quiet!' shouted Hermione, but it was too late: Umbridge pointed her wand at Magorian and screamed, 'Incarcerous!' Ropes flew out of midair like thick snakes, wrapping themselves tightly around the centaur's torso and trapping his arms: he gave a cry of rage and reared on to his hind legs, attempting to free himself, while the other centaurs charged. Harry grabbed Hermione and pulled her to the ground; face down on the Forest floor, he knew a moment of terror as hooves thundered around him, but the centaurs leapt over and around them, bellowing and screaming with rage. 'Nooooo!' he heard Umbridge shriek. 'Noooooo ... I am Senior Undersecretary ... you cannot--Unhand me, you animals ... nooooo!' Harry saw a flash of red light and knew she had attempted to Stun one of them; then she screamed very loudly. Lifting his head a few inches, Harry saw that Umbridge had been seized from behind by Bane and lifted high into the air, wriggling and yelling with fright. Her wand fell from her hand to the ground, and Harry's heart leapt. If he could just reach it--' But as he stretched out a hand towards it, a centaur's hoof descended upon the wand and it broke cleanly in half. 'Now!' roared a voice in Harry's ear and a thick hairy arm descended from thin air and dragged him upright. Hermione, too, had been pulled to her feet. Over the plunging, many-coloured backs and heads of the centaurs, Harry saw Umbridge being borne away through the trees by Bane. Screaming non-stop, her voice grew fainter and fainter until they could no longer hear it over the trampling of hooves surrounding them. 'And these?' said the hard-faced, grey centaur holding Hermione. 'They are young,' said a slow, doleful voice from behind Harry. 'We do not attack foals.' 'They brought her here, Ronan,' replied the centaur who had such a firm grip on Harry. 'And they are not so young ... he is nearing manhood, this one.' He shook Harry by the neck of his robes. 'Please,' said Hermione breathlessly, 'please, don't attack us, We don't think like her, we aren't Ministry of Magic employees! We only came in here because we hoped you'd drive her off for us.' Harry knew at once, from the look on the face of the grey centaur holding Hermione, that she had made a terrible mistake in saying this. The grey centaur threw back his head, his back legs stamping furiously, and bellowed, 'You see, Ronan? They already have the arrogance of their kind! So we were to do your dirty work, were we, human girl? We were to act as your servants, drive away your enemies like obedient hounds?' 'No!' said Hermione in a horrorstruck squeak. 'Please--I didn't mean that! I just hoped you'd be able to--to help us--' But she seemed to be going from bad to worse. 'We do not help humans!' snarled the centaur holding Harry, tightening his grip and rearing a little at the same time, so that Harry's feet left the ground momentarily. 'We are a race apart and proud to be so. We will not permit you to walk from here, boasting that we did your bidding!' 'We're not going to say anything like that!' Harry shouted. 'We know you didn't do what you did because we wanted you to--' But nobody seemed to be listening to him. A bearded centaur towards the back of the crowd shouted, 'They came here unasked, they must pay the consequences!' A roar of approval met these words and a dun-coloured centaur shouted, 'They can join the woman!' 'You said you didn't hurt the innocent!' shouted Hermione, real tears sliding down her face now. 'We haven't done anything to hurt you, we haven't used wands or threats, we just want to go back to school, please let us go back--' 'We are not all like the traitor Firenze, human girl!' shouted the grey centaur, to more neighing roars of approval from his fellows. 'Perhaps you thought us pretty talking horses? We are an ancient people who will not stand wizard invasions and insults! We do not recognise your laws, we do not acknowledge your superiority, we are--' But they did not hear what else centaurs were, for at that moment there came a crashing noise on the edge of the clearing so loud that all of them, Harry, Hermione and the fifty or so centaurs filling the clearing, looked around. Harry's centaur let him fall to the ground again as his hands flew to his bow and quiver of arrows. Hermione had been dropped, too, and Harry hurried towards her as two thick tree trunks parted ominously and the monstrous form of Grawp the giant appeared in the gap. The centaurs nearest him backed into those behind; the clearing was now a forest of bows and arrows waiting to be fired, all pointing upwards at the enormous greyish face now looming over them from just beneath the thick canopy of branches. Grawp's lopsided mouth was gaping stupidly; they could see his bricklike yellow teeth glimmering in the half-light, his dull sludge-coloured eyes narrowed as he squinted down at the creatures at his feet. Broken ropes trailed from both ankles. He opened his mouth even wider. 'Hagger.' Harry did not know what 'hagger' meant, or what language it was from, nor did he much care; he was watching Grawp's feet, which were almost as long as Harry's whole body. Hermione gripped his arm tightly; the centaurs were quite silent, staring up at the giant, whose huge, round head moved from side to side as he continued to peer amongst them as though looking for something he had dropped. 'Hagger!' he said again, more insistently. 'Get away from here, giant!' called Magorian. 'You are not welcome among us!' These words seemed to make no impression whatsoever on Grawp. He stooped a little (the centaurs' arms tensed on their bows), then bellowed, 'HAGGER!' A few of the centaurs looked worried now. Hermione, however, gave a gasp. 'Harry!' she whispered. 'I think he's trying to say "Hagrid"!' At this precise moment Grawp caught sight of them, the only two humans in a sea of centaurs. He lowered his head another foot or so, staring intently at them. Harry could feel Hermione shaking as Grawp opened his mouth wide again and said, in a deep, rumbling voice, 'Hermy.' 'Goodness,' said Hermione, gripping Harry's arm so tightly it was growing numb and looking as though she was about to faint, 'he--he remembered!' 'HERMY!' roared Grawp. 'WHERE HAGGER?' 'I don't know!' squealed Hermione, terrified. 'I'm sorry, Grawp, I don't know!' 'GRAWP WANT HAGGER!' One of the giants massive hands reached down. Hermione let out a real scream, ran a few steps backwards and fell over. Devoid of a wand, Harry braced himself to punch, kick, bite or whatever else it took as the hand swooped towards him and knocked a snow-white centaur off his legs. It was what the centaurs had been waiting for--Grawp's outstretched fingers were a foot from Harry when fifty arrows soared through the air at the giant, peppering his enormous face, causing him to howl with pain and rage and straighten up, rubbing his face with his enormous hands, breaking off the arrow shafts but forcing the arrowheads in still deeper. He yelled and stamped his enormous feet and the centaur; scattered out of the way; pebble-sized droplets of Grawp's blood showered Harry as he pulled Hermione to her feet and the pair of them ran as fast as they could for the shelter of the trees. Once there they looked back; Grawp was snatching blindly at the centaurs as blood ran down his face; they were retreating in disorder, galloping away through the trees on the other side of the clearing. Harry and Hermione watched Grawp give another roar of fury and plunge after them, smashing more trees aside as he went. 'Oh no,' said Hermione, quaking so badly that her knees gave way. 'Oh, that was horrible. And he might kill them all.' 'I'm not that fussed, to be honest,' said Harry bitterly. The sounds of the galloping centaurs and the blundering giant grew fainter and fainter. As Harry listened to them, his scar gave another great throb and a wave of terror swept over him. They had wasted so much time--they were even further from rescuing Sirius than they had been when he had had the vision. Not only had Harry managed to lose his wand but they were stuck in the middle of the Forbidden Forest with no means of transport whatsoever. 'Smart plan,' he spat at Hermione, having to release some of his fury. 'Really smart plan. Where do we go from here?' 'We need to get back up to the castle,' said Hermione faintly. 'By the time we've done that, Sirius'll probably be dead!' said Harry, kicking a nearby tree in temper. A high-pitched chattering started up overhead and he looked up to see an angry Bowtruckle flexing its long twiglike fingers at him. 'Well, we can't do anything without wands,' said Hermione hopelessly, dragging herself up again. 'Anyway, Harry, how exactly were you planning to get all the way to London?' 'Yeah, we were just wondering that.' said a familiar voice from behind her. Harry and Hermione moved together instinctively and peered through the trees. Ron came into sight, closely followed by Ginny, Neville and Luna. All of them looked a little the worse for wear--there were several long scratches running the length of Ginny's cheek; a large purple lump was swelling above Neville's right eye; Ron's lip was bleeding worse than ever--but all were looking rather pleased with themselves. 'So,' said Ron, pushing aside a low-hanging branch and holding out Harry's wand, 'had any ideas?' 'How did you get away?' asked Harry in amazement, taking his wand from Ron. 'Couple of Stunners, a Disarming Charm, Neville brought off a really nice little Impediment Jinx,' said Ron airily, now handing back Hermione's wand, too. 'But Ginny was best, she got Malfoy--Bat Bogey Hex--it was superb, his whole face was covered in the great flapping things. Anyway, we saw you out of the window heading into the Forest and followed. What've you done with Umbridge?' 'She got carried away,' said Harry. 'By a herd of centaurs.' 'And they left you behind?' asked Ginny, looking astonished. 'No, they got chased off by Grawp,' said Harry. 'Who's Grawp?' Luna asked interestedly. 'Hagrid's little brother,' said Ron promptly. 'Anyway, never mind that now. Harry, what did you find out in the fire? Has You-Know-Who got Sirius or--?' 'Yes,' said Harry, as his scar gave another painful prickle, 'and I'm sure Sirius is still alive, but I can't see how we're going to get there to help him.' They all fell silent, looking rather scared; the problem facing them seemed insurmountable. 'Well, we'll have to fly, won't we?' said Luna, in the closest thing to a matter-of-fact voice Harry had ever heard her use. 'OK,' said Harry irritably, rounding on her. 'First of all, "we" aren't doing anything if you're including yourself in that, and second of all, Ron's me only one with a broomstick that isn't being guarded by a security troll, so--' 'I've got a broom!' said Ginny. 'Yeah, but you're not coming,' said Ron angrily. 'Excuse me, but I care what happens to Sirius as much as you do!' said Ginny, her jaw set so that her resemblance to Fred and George was suddenly striking. 'You're too--' Harry began, but Ginny said fiercely, 'I'm three years older than you were when you fought You-Know-Who over the Philosophers Stone, and it's because of me that Malfoy's stuck back in Umbridge's office with giant flying bogies attacking him--' 'Yeah, but--' 'We were all in the DA together,' said Neville quietly. 'It was all supposed to be about fighting You-Know-Who, wasn't it? And this is the first chance we've had to do something real--or was that all just a game or something?' 'No--of course it wasn't--' said Harry impatiently. 'Then we should come too,' said Neville simply. 'We want to help.' 'That's right,' said Luna, smiling happily. Harry's eyes met Ron's. He knew Ron was thinking exactly what he was: if he could have chosen any members of the DA, in addition to himself, Ron and Hermione, to join him in the attempt to rescue Sirius, he would not have picked Ginny, Neville or Luna. 'Well, it doesn't matter, anyway,' said Harry through gritted teeth, 'because we still don't know how to get there--' 'I thought we'd settled that,' said Luna maddeningly. 'We're flying!' 'Look,' said Ron, barely containing his anger, 'you might be able to fly without a broomstick but the rest of us can't sprout wings whenever we--' 'There are ways of flying other than with broomsticks,' said Luna serenely. 'I s'pose we're going to ride on the back of the Kacky Snorgle or whatever it is?' Ron demanded. 'The Crumple-Horned Snorkack can't fly,' said Luna in a dignified voice, 'but they can, and Hagrid says they're very good at finding places their riders are looking for.' Harry whirled round. Standing between two trees, their white eyes gleaming eerily, were two Thestrals, watching the whispered conversation as though they understood every word. 'Yes!' he whispered, moving towards them. They tossed their reptilian heads, throwing back long black manes, and Harry stretched out his hand eagerly and patted the nearest one's shining neck; how could he ever have thought them ugly? 'Is it those mad horse things?' said Ron uncertainly, staring at a point slightly to the left of the Thestral Harry was patting. 'Those ones you can't see unless you've watched someone snuff it?' 'Yeah,' said Harry. 'How many?' 'Just two.' 'Well, we need three,' said Hermione, who was still looking a little shaken, but determined just the same. 'Four, Hermione,' said Ginny, scowling. 'I think there are six of us, actually,' said Luna calmly, counting. 'Don't be stupid, we can't all go!' said Harry angrily. 'Look, you three--' he pointed at Neville, Ginny and Luna, 'you're not involved in this, you're not--' They burst into more protests. His scar gave another, more painful, twinge. Every moment they delayed was precious; he did not have time to argue. 'OK, fine, it's your choice,' he said curtly, 'but unless we can find more Thestrals you're not going to be able--' 'Oh, more of them will come,' said Ginny confidently, who like Ron was squinting in quite the wrong direction, apparently under the impression that she was looking at the horses. 'What makes you think that?' 'Because, in case you hadn't noticed, you and Hermione are both covered in blood,' she said coolly, 'and we know Hagrid lures Thestrals with raw meat. That's probably why these two turned up in the first place.' Harry felt a soft tug on his robes at that moment and looked down to see the closest Thestral licking his sleeve, which was damp with Grawp's blood. 'OK, then,' he said, a bright idea occurring, 'Ron and I will take these two and go ahead, and Hermione can stay here with you three and she'll attract more Thestrals--' 'I'm not staying behind!' said Hermione furiously. 'There's no need,' said Luna, smiling. 'Look, here come more now ... you two must really smell ...' Harry turned: no fewer than six or seven Thestrals were picking their way through the trees, their great leathery wings folded tight to their bodies, their eyes gleaming through the darkness. He had no excuse now. 'All right,' he said angrily, 'pick one and get on, then.'

#OrderofthePhoenix #HarryPotter

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