thatsallthereis | And everything you've ever been is still there in the dark night

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And everything you've ever been is still there in the dark night

Gansey was dreaming.

He was in Monmouth -- no, he was in a hotel room. Monmouth stood empty in Henrietta, with Adam and Ronan tucked away at the Barns and Noah at rest. Gansey was only dreaming he was in Monmouth, but when he dreamed, he was never asleep enough to confuse it for reality. Much like in his waking hours, he kept one foot on the ground, checked in with himself to make sure he knew where he was. Tulsa, not Henrietta. Some hotel, not Monmouth. Home, but not those safe walls. After years of traveling and seeking, Gansey was relieved that he'd found a sort of peace that made him feel that home was wherever he, Henry, and Blue laid their heads for the night. Home was his Camaro, buzzing down interstate highways noisily despite the fact that there was no machinery to whir, no head gasket to blow every 45 minutes. Another thing he and his precious Pig had in common: a separation from time and the laws of the universe proper. Neither of them made any sense. No one Gansey loved did.

Gansey was awake. Calling what he was doing "dreaming" was a bit of a leap anyway. It was more like he was looking at Monmouth and noticing how empty it was. There wasn't even a ghost to haunt its empty halls.

Blue was gone. Henry was gone. A few moments ago, Gansey swore he felt Blue exhale a sleepy sigh against his neck, close enough to notice and far enough away to wonder if it had happened at all.

There was a vast expanse of a window spilling bright light into the room. Tulsa's forecast showed rain for days, heavy enough that Gansey had been able to convince Blue to let him get a hotel for a few days rather than risk flying off the road trying to flee the downpour. Gansey liked the rain. The sound of it on the roof had been one of his only companions in times of sleeplessness on his travels.

The sun was out and Gansey was alone. It sat wrong in his chest. Then, he looked around.

Books. Books he might read. A desk. A desk with knots in it the size of fists, all knuckle and no regard for bone. It made him think of Ronan, much the way gasoline smelled like Adam and the cold reminded him of Noah. This room was stark. The books were stacked in a way that felt familiar to him.

Then, he heard voices. The walls of this room didn't reach the ceiling and Gansey could hear the sounds of someone banging around in the kitchen, could smell their cooking. Occasionally someone would speak, and Gansey's heart was pounding too hard in his ears to find the voices familiar. What if he'd been kidnapped? What if Henry and Blue weren't safe? Some uninformed idiot might have traced some of Gansey's research and thought there was something to find, as Gansey once had. Though never, ever would he have tried to find it like this.

Still, the smell of breakfast was not very menacing. Gansey took the space of a few breaths to calm himself, work through some rational thought, and push himself to his feet. Distressingly, he was only dressed from the waist down, glasses still on his face. He looked around fruitlessly for a shirt. Unless he fashioned one out of a nearby book titled Questioning Darrow's History, that wouldn't change. He decided not to harm the book in any way and headed for the door. He pushed it open. He had no idea what he might find on the other side.

Ceilings, high as the ones in Monmouth. Maybe higher. There were several bedrooms, laid about a very open floorplan. There was some shuffling below that suggested activity beneath, a table set, some more ruckus in the kitchen. No one seemed to be guarding the door. This wasn't a kidnapping. What the hell was it then? His brows knitted deeply over the tips of his wire frames and he skidded a thumb over his lip as he rounded the corner to the kitchen.

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This particular noise was the herald of a Henry Cheng Word Vomit incoming, and Gansey was overwhelmed with familiar affection. For Henry -- for all of them -- there were no simple answers. Waking up in a strange building to all of his friends eating breakfast surely fell under that category.

As Henry spoke, Gansey understood the words but couldn't grasp them. Multidimensional pocket universe was the kind of thing that wanted to be interesting to him, but there was too much going on for him to try and tease out what Henry meant. That time would come. Another seven or so rants like that one and Gansey may have had an inkling of understanding. Maybe more. Together -- all of them -- they could do anything.

"No, Tulsa," Gansey corrected, expecting that Henry might know that. He didn't. It was all over his face. Gansey backtracked the conversation, reviewing it in his head like the notes in the margins of his well-worn books. "Wait, Litchfield? We were in Tulsa. You, me, and Blue." Maybe time had gone sideways again; that sometimes happened to him now. While things were mostly normal (as normal as things ever were for them), sometimes Gansey experienced time all at once. Things fell out of order or blended together.

"I've never been to Tulsa in my life," Henry said, wonderment and joy and something else, something more coming through his voice. Because Gansey said it was him and Blue, and Henry were there with them, and they were somewhere outside of Virginia, and that sounded like a marvelous dream. It was not Venezuela or Zimbabwe or the Caribbean, but it was somewhere else. They'd done it.

Henry laughed, brief and quiet. He let his hands off Gansey's shoulders and then hummed.

"I came with my jacket--which is stupid, it is supposed to be hot as sin today--so. Just a moment, I'll--" He stepped back from Gansey, but he kept looking at him like at any moment he'd just disappear back into the ether, or like Henry would wake up any second now.

Reverent, excitable, energetic Henry Cheng zipped away for his coat and Gansey expected to be alone for a second. He scratched at his collar, but that reminded him of how bare-chested he was and it made him uncomfortable; moreso when he saw that he was being watched. There were 5 pairs of eyes on him, each with 100 questions that Gansey didn't have the answers to. Gansey was supposed to have the answers. If he didn't, then what was he?

When Henry came back, Gansey thanked him softly with a smile that was much weaker than he'd aimed for. Panic was creeping up in his chest, parching his mouth, making him feel small. He had to find a way to recover, he thought as he tugged his arms into the jacket and fastened the front.

"I'm confused," Gansey asserted, something like an apology for his current state. "Time must've gotten mixed up." What a dumb-sounding thing, Gansey thought, just the moment he said it. "You don't remember being in Tulsa? There was that monsoon that came out of nowhere." He finished rolling up the sleeves and regarded Henry with a knowing, wry look. "And that Opera you made us listen to." He omitted the word Godawful because Henry knew his feelings about it.

Somehow, putting Gansey in his jacket just drove home to Henry that Richard Gansey was a few inches shorter than he was. He had to turn the sleeves up. It hung onto his hips. It was just a little big in the shoulders.

There were eyes trained on them, and Henry was trying to not be fundamentally self-conscious about that. This felt like an even more delicate dance than before, then trying to navigate his space without Gansey here. Now, the king had arrived, their heir apparent, and Henry felt infinitely out of place, because he had never, not once, earned this place in this warehouse-home.

He turned away to pour Gansey a cup of coffee. Automatic, as Gansey explained what he'd last experienced. Henry looked at Gansey, asking without asking how he took his coffee. Instead, he said, "No, it's not that your time got messed up, it's that--this place, it doesn't like to keep things exactly in order?"

Gansey mentioned Tulsa again, rain, opera, and Henry ached. He wanted to know this, wanted to know all of it. Instead, he said, "It was fall, when I arrived here. The night after we spoke in Borden House? You were conferring with your court, and I--I was taking out the garbage, when I showed up here. In Darrow. That was in May--just over two months ago, now."

Gansey could see Henry's cautious awareness of their surroundings. He wondered what time was like for everyone else. Were there some that didn't even know Henry? Did Blue?

"Oh." Not even Henry knew that they were friends. This Henry had been awaiting the results of his dramatic audience with Gansey. All of that made Gansey feel foolish. He shook his head to indicate the coffee was fine as it was with a soft, somewhat distracted, "thank you."

In the space of his first few drinks of coffee, Gansey thought. Henry didn't know about the Green House, Gansey's death -- both of them -- or helping him find Glendower. He didn't know about Ronan's unmaking or the engineless Camaro or the hours they'd spent in the car, the three of them, talking about anything and everything. Time was Gansey's upper hand, and knowledge was best shared.

"A lot has happened," Gansey warned, letting that be Henry's chance to opt out or delay the conversation. Gansey was still getting his bearings.

"A lot has happened," Henry said agreeably, because even if he had no context for Gansey--Gansey here, Gansey in front of him, now, present and accounted for--that was true for Darrow. Henry had hit the ground running, from what he understood. It had not been his favorite introduction to a new place, and he doubted that would change just because Gansey was here now.

Maybe especially because Gansey was here now. After all, Gansey would need to acclimate, would need to take stock of his kingdom. Then, perhaps, Henry would get that answer on his inquiry, his olive branch. An answer he had, apparently, already received because he and Gansey and Blue had been in Tulsa.

Henry looked at Gansey's fingers, wrapped around the mug of coffee, and tried to tell if something was different about them as well. Instead, he blurted, "Oh. You've had your birthday then, haven't you--you said we were traveling, which means, it's summer for you? Congrats, Pinocchio, you're a real boy now. Eighteen and everything."

For the first time, Gansey realized he must have missed a few things, too. To think of Henrietta as the "real world" was nothing but a front; it existed for no other reason than to give him a temporary sense of security. That wasn't good enough. Lives went on here, as impossibly as Gansey's second and third chances at his own life.

Gansey laughed politely, chided himself for showing something so very false to Henry. It wasn't either of their faults that things were different. Henry would understand. Jeong.

"Thanks, Cheng," Gansey said dryly. That felt better. Even though it was a great effort to reach something that felt real (that useless word again), Henry's easy Henry-ness helped smooth the transition, just like Ronan's aggravated advance, Adam's quiet wonder, Blue's mistrustful questions, and Noah's blind acceptance of what was. A few conversations, afternoons spent, trips to the library and Gansey could see the word "home" settling over this place.

"Tell me about what's happened here. Darrow." It was like he was trying the word on. Not Welsh -- sort of Southern, actually -- and not familiar. Gansey hoped it was implied that information provided would be met with his own information shared.

Henry blew out a breath. It was explosive for a moment, caught the edge of his fringe and ruffled it. He hadn't styled it before he came; rather, yesterday's styling was falling out of it, so it was night as tall as it ought to have been. He shifted his coffee cup on the counter, trying to find all the words in the right order.

"I arrived--it was November, early, but May here in Darrow. Within a week there was an event. Whole swaths of people with statements on their backs, secrets. Things they don't tell people. All of us had things--all of us." Henry gestured, small, at himself and toward the other four, but said nothing for what those truths had been. Gansey held all of Henry's. All the important ones, anyway.

"Then--a whole mess of summery-ness. Carnivals and festivals. This place likes to throw a party. I've started working--I'm part of a business, a think tank, with Tony Stark. Iron Man, Richard. Like, the. And, let's see--Blue and Noah are working, a cat cafe. Adam is at university--I will be starting in fall." Henry hesitated a moment, and then said, "Kavinsky is here?"

Henry's floppy morning hair was one of those things Gansey allowed himself to be charmed by. It was something he was familiar enough with now. Gansey sipped his coffee as Henry set his down. An avalanche of information followed. Gansey was glad he hadn't put his coffee down. He needed it to hide a bit. He was out of his element and that straightened his back. A back that was, at least, covered now.

Gansey looked around and couldn't help but wonder what each of theirs said. What Blue's said. Was Henry's about the hole? Was Ronan's about his father? Or was it Adam's that was about his father? What if Blue's was about him? What if it wasn't?

More information happened; so much that Gansey wasn't sure he could process it all at once. He thought about it like a book, soaking up information, marking in the margins, pursing his lips on the information overload and taking time to process. He didn't need to appear quick in front of Henry or any of them. These were the people Gansey didn't have to prove himself to.

"That is quite a lot to process," he said after a few more moments of brain buffering than he was strictly comfortable with. The last piece made the muscle at his cheek twitch just a bit: a momentary frown. Far from the most troubling piece of information, but certainly the one worth the least amount of thought. Gansey had come back and Kavinsky -- while truly a waste of oxygen -- was a powerful greywaren. Impostor, he thought.

"Uh, yes," was Gansey's less-than-smooth transition back to conversation mode. "I am glad to hear that. School. Have you decided what you'll be studying?" He offered a polite, apologetic smile. "Unfortunately I am unsure how to respond to anything else you've said."

Henry compared it all to their discussion in Borden House, how Henry had been more delicate there. But he'd had the space, metaphorically speaking, to be more delicate. He didn't have that here. Here, he had nothing but Gansey's quiet, confused eyes and vaguely baffled expression.

"No, you don't need--I know it is. And you don't need to say anything, Richardman. But you deserved a line-up." Henry could only vaguely imagine what this was like. He'd arrived and been so panicked he'd been sick, but Gansey was holding it all together admirably, even with Henry dumping the transpiring months on him like that.

"I haven't decided yet, no," Henry said with a shake of his head. "I was thinking policy planning, but--now maybe computer science engineering might be more helpful? We'll see. Gen Eds, for a year, either way."

Helpful, he said. Gansey's brows shot up. Helpful because of his business relationship with -- Jesus Christ -- Iron Man, andhow that might impact his future.

"You don't think we can leave," Gansey said, more awed than terrified for that moment, only until his thought followed to the logical conclusion. "What about the one that came before?" He couldn't say the other Gansey because that was still too absurd to hear in his own voice.

He went to take another sip of coffee and it was empty. No words to say that weren't potentially ruinous to any two people in earshot and nothing to drown out the taste in his mouth.

"I -- we found Glendower." That culminated in a shrug that swelled with a self-deprecating smile that said what can you do. There were some more words he wasn't ready to say. Even though he'd said it before, he'd crushed too many hopeful smiles today already. "And I died. Again." At least he got to kiss Blue. At least Ronan was okay. At least Cabeswater had liked him enough to think it a willing sacrifice.

"It didn't take." He smiled. It was surface-level at best, but he was trying. With the least information, Gansey felt out of his element. All he could do was offer information, gather it, and hope it could all be pieced together. With his royal court assembled in its entirety, he knew it would all make sense soon.

"Ronan's been here for over a year," Henry said softly in answer to Gansey's not-question about the escapability of Darrow. Henry was fairly certain it was pushing toward a year and a half for Ronan, now. "And the other--that was before my time. I haven't asked much. But I know that sometimes...sometimes people vanish. Not like they packed up and left. But like they were hardly here at all."

Henry assumed, but had never asked because it would be too much to bear, that that was what had happened with the one from before. Who was not this one--but was--because Gansey was Gansey was Gansey. The difference, of course, was that Gansey had no recollection of this place. Which supposed that, if any of them returned home, Darrow would fade from their minds like a bad dream.

It was almost a comfort. Except they were all here.

What was more of a comfort, though, was that they were home. Henry had gotten his audience. Just as the world had moved on and Ronan had been there to see it from when he'd arrived, the world had moved on from when Henry had arrived, and he was there. He was part of we. Jeong. It swelled in his chest.

Softly, he said, "Jeong, bro," which seemed very suiting for this moment. Had he ever told Gansey of jeong? He did not think so. "Let me refill your coffee, Richard."

Gansey exhaled his surprise. A year. The Ronan that had skittered up and cornered him was a year separated from one of the lowest points in his life. Some of what Gansey'd heard made him wonder if his time in Darrow had been worse. The last thing Ronan needed was for another chunk of hope to slough off and away.

"Like me," he extrapollated, then waved his hand in broad dismissal, "like not me." Henry understood. It needed to be reiterated. Gansey would not be held responsible for the actions of the other. It couldn't have been him because he never would have left without them.

"Jeong. Right." His smile turned up without his meaning to. In Henry's timeline, that conversation hadn't happened yet. It wouldn't ever happen, yet it was a conversation that had changed Gansey's life. He handed the coffee cup over and followed close behind.

"Do you live here? Do I?" Gansey had 1000 questions and they all hinged on answers to the previous one. This one seemed as good as any by ways of a jumping off point.

"Like a you," Henry corrected. This threw a terrible wrench in Henry's conversation he'd had with Ronan at the Fourth of July, about trying to get a message home and how, at least, they had all come from the same place and everything. Except, had they? Or were they all from nearby infinite timelines? Where was the event horizon that had made each of them a little bit different?

Henry hated theoretical physics and quantum mechanics. String theory bullshit.

He filled Gansey's coffee cup and handed it over, and laughed. Once, sharp and brilliant. "Oh, no, definitely not I don't live here. I think Lynch would kill me in my sleep. Though, he was very good today and even acknowledged my existence without sneering. Progress is slow but it is progress. I live on the north side of town. The other, the last, he did live here I think? But you'll have things waiting for you at the train station in central--an apartment, cellphone, money."

Unsurprised as he was to hear about Ronan's reaction to Henry, Gansey had hoped. Back home, Ronan had learned to live with it, first by ignoring him completely, and later by little gestures, and then total resignation. If Gansey squinted, he could see that Ronan actually liked him a bit.

"He'll come around," Gansey said. He had no doubt. If in being right he also managed to reassure Henry, that was even better. A knowing smile disappeared over the rim of his cup as he drank. He listened. He extrapolated. He calculated.

"Mm," he murmured around his drink, and he set the cup down. This noise meant excuse me and he set his coffee on the edge of the table. For a moment, he disappeared into his room and when he reappeared, he had an envelope. "I saw this before I came out." He pointed to the hand-written name on the front. Richard Gansey III. A solvable mystery.

"Dimera, number 51," he read. That, he didn't like. An envelope with his name on it, the contents of which were a wallet, an ID that had his drivers' licence picture on it, keys to an apartment and an ostentatious cell phone that Gansey found somewhat pleasing in its big-screened simplicity. He was sure he'd have to find a middle schooler to show him how to use it.

Gansey frowned. If this wasn't his place of residence, why had he been plunked down in it? He had no intention of going to a strange apartment with his envelope of cash and a bank card that looked so simple Gansey almost winced at it.

"Where does it come from? All of this?" The money, the ID, the assigned room that made Gansey itch to disobey. If he had his way, he'd never see the inside of Dimera and he'd smile in any face to keep it that way.

Henry waited. He made eye contact with Blue and something--something felt very terrible in his chest. So he looked away and made sure that his coffee was full, and Gansey's was full, and that there was food for each of them, though he was suddenly sick-feeling. It was probably the lack of sleep. It was probably because he ought not be here while they all squared their shoulders to figure out how to work things.

When Gansey returned, Henry hummed speculatively. Perhaps the city, strange and awful as it was, knew that Gansey would show up here, unlike Henry who had just shown up in the street. Maybe it knew that Gansey wouldn't want to leave. It didn't really matter.

"No one really knows. There's always a packet, waiting and ready, always a place set up for you, it's all arranged. You don't have to go though," Henry pointed out with a shrug. "I know Blue keeps her apartment still. And I have mine. But this place--"

Well, it wasn't Henry's place to be in, that was for sure. He felt an intruder, now, a stranger in a strange land, the usurper. Not that he had tried to hone in on Gansey's throne, but this was the point of his ousting until things had settled in the kingdom, for sure.

"I'm glad you're here, Richard."

More than once, Henry had stayed over at Monmouth. Ronan and Adam spent a good deal of time at the Barns, and Blue was there a decent amount, but sometimes Maura got weird about her staying over too often, and Monmouth was too big for one person. Henry was always glad to fill the space. Gansey figured they would all end up in Monmouth together. Blue had stuff of hers there. At some point, it would start to make more sense for Henry to move in. It made him vaguely unhappy that Henry didn't live with them. It made him slightly more unhappy that Ronan had a lot to do with it.

But Gansey had seen Ronan's face, how he'd had to convince the boy so hard that everything was okay, and his doubt still lingered. Ronan was not in a state to share his space with someone that, to this Ronan, was a relative stranger. The time would come. Everything would align. Maybe it wouldn't even be magic; maybe Gansey would make it so himself. The thought put the touch of a smile at his lips.

"Come on," Gansey said, clasping Henry on the shoulder in an Aglionby-friendly sort of way. He didn't know what to say. He wasn't glad to be there, mostly because he hadn't had a say in the matter. "I've got a lot to learn." He would need to buy clothes, first -- probably in the next hour or so. "Is there a department store around here?" That would be perfect. Especially if they had a garden section. He could get two errands out of the way.

Which brought up another question: "What is transportation like here?" What if he had to take the bus? Gansey had never been on a bus before. And worse: how was he going to pay for it? How much of a mysterious stipend did he get? He was sure it was less than he was used to spending.

This was what Henry knew: Richard Gansey III was here, in this warehouse, in this place that was hell but could be better, maybe. Could be something more. The grand court was all back together--and, now, it had Noah in it, which seemed an important caveat that had not been wholly true back in Henrietta. Henry was pleased and overwhelmed, on Gansey's behalf. Gansey was right, as well: there were things to do and learn and accomplish, as there always was when one was fresh and new in Aglionby it seemed; the city did not like to take you when you were prepared for these things.

Henry took the new-arrivals-packet from Gansey, and fished the map out of it. He reached boldly into the interior pocket of his jacket on Gansey--murmured only 'scuse--and grabbed a pen. Then he laid the map out on the nearest, mostly bare, counter.

"So...we're here. Here-ish." He marked a star on the map for Hywel's location on the corner of Stag and Scoone. "I'm up north, at Candlewood...ah, here it is." He marked an X over his building. "And then, let's see. Here's the library, the university, the shopping mall..."

Henry went through the vital attributes of Darrow, as he'd found them, since his arrival in May. It was hard to believe he'd been here for over two months now. He didn't say a thing about that right now. It was the least of their problems.

Gansey watched without moving as Henry reached into his jacket pocket -- rather, reached into the pocket of his jacket that he'd so kindly lent to Gansey. This Henry was much more cautious than the one Gansey had left. A couple near-death experiences, an actual death, and a few hundred miles in a car tended to change the dynamic of a relationship. Even as he marked the map and Gansey leaned forward, he watched. It was a Gansey family pastime, and it developed a remarkable attention to detail. His mother looked for talking points. His sister looked for weak points. Gansey looked to memorize, to catalog everything. Gansey wanted to remember, to know.

"Very informative presentation, Cheng," Gansey said, smiling his approval. He tucked the map back into the envelope and spent only a few seconds rifling through the contents again. He eyed the money an the cards. He closed it.

"Thank you." Nearly everyone else had so much more tumult about Gansey being around than Henry did. It was worth it -- love always was. Still, it was nice to be greeted by a friendly face with more answers than questions. He gripped Henry's shoulder again, less tightly, this time. He was processing.

The words didn't feel dismissive, but Henry did still feel terribly out of place. Everyone else in this warehouse had the baggage of the former Gansey, the one that had been here before he'd disappeared. But all Henry had was the baggage of waiting, of placing RoboBee gently in Gansey's palm and telling him, If you cannot be unafraid, be afraid but happy.

Gansey's hand was heavy and informal and comforting. Henry felt terribly out of place. What was he doing? What was the answer here? He avoided the nervous need to fidget, tap the pen or chew on the cap. It wouldn't alleviate any of this strange energy.

"I'm around," Henry assured. This was the first time he'd stepped into Hywel, but things were not as tense as they'd been back in May when he'd arrived. "If you need help settling. It's rough at first." And what he meant by that was Let me know if it gets any easier. Henry didn't honestly know if Darrow became not rough for some people. Maybe not for them. Maybe it would for the five Henriettas, and not for him. Who knew.

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And everything you've ever been is still there in the dark night

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