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

[thatsallthereis]

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.

Comments

[thedreamthief]

Ronan already knew of Matthew from Adam, and Maura from both Cheng and Noah. If nothing else, whatever version of Gansey this was, whether a dream thing or a Darrow trick, he at least had the story right. Even now, Ronan couldn't let himself believe this Gansey could be real, could be their Gansey. It seemed too improbable in a place like this. And too selfish to want it.

But Ronan's always been real damn good at being selfish.

He nodded. "Only a couple months ago. Should've fucking figured it out, but she had to tell me." And he's still more than a little bitter about, he'll admit. "We sat out this year, you know. On St. Mark's Eve. You were already gone by then and we didn't see or a hear a fucking thing."

It comes out like a challenge, like he's expecting Gansey to explain himself. And maybe he is. Because none of this makes any fucking sense.

[thatsallthereis]

There was nothing rational about Ronan's question. There was nothing rational about Ronan. This wasn't a time for rationality. Why would he bother clinging to all of that after everything that happened? Still, Gansey's alarm remained, propelled by the monmentum of Ronan's leap toward him when he'd walked out of that small, strange room.

"I wasn't," Gansey began. "Yes, I was, but not for long." That was no way to explain what was happening. If this were Gansey standing before Ronan lobbying questions, he would wish for as litte resistence as possible.

A thumb found Gansey's lip. He breathed. "I found him." He meant Glendower and he was sure Ronan knew that; it was a thing written on his face: something so personal to him that no amount of public and private seperation could do much to mask his passion for it. Now, it was a passion extinguished. It still kicked up plumes of smoke.

"Someone beat us to it. From the looks of it, by thousands of years." He shrugged as if to say what can you do?. It meant too much to speak about even still, but here he was. He'd been so sure his purpose was tied up in that king that he hadn't considered there might be nothing to find.

Another breath, this one less measured. He'd retold the story to his parents, the women of Fox Way, dreamed about it on sleepless nights. It didn't matter that it hurt. All he had to do was get to the end.

"Piper Greenmantle woke the third sleeper: a demon. It started to eat away at Noah, it was decaying Cabeswater. It possessed Adam. It tried to unmake you." It would have succeeded, Gansey thought, if he hadn't done something. The only thing there was to do.

Here, he tripped up. He derailed himself with: "There was no other way."

[thedreamthief]

There's too much in what Gansey's saying. Too much to piece out one by one, little by little. Gansey had died just as Blue said he would. He'd died and come back? And they'd found Glendower, but there was no favor. There was some fucking demon that possessed Adam, that tried to unmake him, whatever the fuck that even meant.

There's too much so Ronan hones in on something easy, lips curled in a scowl.

"Who the fuck is Piper Greenmantle?" he asks. "I thought that dick's name was Colin."

He wants to ask more, but he doesn't at the same time. There's so much to know, too much, and Ronan wants to hide away from fucking all of it.

[thatsallthereis]

Ronan looked to be experiencing some kind of system overload, and Gansey made a mental note to pace himself more with the big news. It was another reason Ronan couldn't know about Aurora.

"Piper is his wife. Was his wife." They'd both fallen victim to the same demon Ronan nearly did. The difference was, Gansey felt no guilt about them. Which, in turn, created a bit of guilt on its own.

"Ronan, listen to me: you were dying. There was no sleeping king with a favor." But there was a boy who'd been promised death. Unavoidable, he'd thought, and Ronan's death had been quite avoidable. Gansey would do it again. There would be no hesitation. He would not apologize for that.

[thedreamthief]

It's another story, Ronan thinks. He'd asked for this one just as he'd asked for every story brought in by each of his friends before. It's a thing that happened to someone else, another person with his face and his history and his name. That's all. It wasn't really him. It couldn't be when he's been stuck here for nearly a year and a half.

"So... so what, you sacrificed yourself?" Ronan asks because even it's a story, it's a story that doesn't make any fucking sense. "Why? Fuck, how?"

[thatsallthereis]

Stories were what Gansey had. Without the stories and all of their promise, the last 8 years of Gansey's life would have meant nothing. Gansey had followed stories all over the world, had shared them with anyone who would listen, and now had some for himself. Glendower was a story to share. Cabeswater was a story for only some.

Gansey's gaze didn't falter. Sacrifice is exactly what it was, and Gansey had done it without a second thought. He'd do it again. No other innocent person was going to die because of him.

"A life for a life," he said simply. Ronan didn't have to understand. Gansey wasn't going to apologize. In one fell swoop, he'd saved his best friend and kissed his true love. Not a part of him -- neither Cabeswater nor Richard Gansey III -- regretted it. In that moment, he'd been brave. He'd been King.

[thedreamthief]

It's a story, but if this is really Gansey -- and, right now, Ronan has no reason to believe it's not, despite Darrow's penchant for tricks -- it's the truth in at least one world. The world Ronan came from and can't forget.

His lips twitch into a grimace and he shakes his head, a laugh bubbling free of his chest that borders on the hysterical.

"No," he says, short and to the point. "No. Fuck. Fuck, Gansey. You already fucking died once, why would you--" Except he knows why. Because Adam was possessed, he'd said. Because Noah was decaying. Because Ronan was dying. "So you just-- you died and it stopped? All of it?"

[thatsallthereis]

"My life to kill the demon," Gansey said, inclining his head once in agreement: he'd died and it stopped. All of it. There was no other way. It was something worth giving a life for. It made him feel courage.

It was the most like a king Gansey had ever felt.

"You asked Cabeswater to sacrifice itself to remake me. It did." Somewhere, a sad little shrug initiated, shrugging his bare arms out as if to say that's all there is. The space between Gansey and Cabeswater was nil. Gansey's veins were ropes of vines, his heart pulsed out the rhythm of the leyline. He was Gansey but he was Cabeswater reflecting an echo of Gansey.

Adam was Cabeswater's eyes. Blue was Cabeswater's kindred. Ronan was it's creator. Noah was its captive. Gansey was Cabeswater. With them was where he belonged.

[thedreamthief]

A demon instead of Glendower. Gansey dying, actually dying. Cabeswater sacrificing itself.

It's too much. Still. It's a goddamn story Ronan will never live through on his own, will only ever hear about from Gansey or Noah or fucking Henry Cheng. And it's not that he doesn't believe it -- Ronan himself is an impossibility, a monster and a miracle rolled into bone and made flesh -- but he doesn't know it. And he never will.

But this is Gansey. He's sure of that much. Maybe not the same Gansey as the one who held Ronan together back home, nor the one that held him together here the first time, but he is Gansey. A Gansey re-formed.

The realization, the acceptance, rolls over him like a tidal wave, strong enough to make him sway forward, his eyes locked on Gansey's when he says, "If you disappear again, I swear to God, I will hunt you down and kill you again myself. You fucking hear me?"

[thatsallthereis]

Leave it to Ronan Lynch to threaten Gansey over something he had no control of. A good part of him wanted to roll his eyes, and another had a faraway desire to pull Ronan into a hug like he had so long ago. Underneath the token aggression was something not unlike desperation. Ronan couldn't lose anything else. He wouldn't.

"Too soon," Gansey said, but the way a corner of his mouth curved upward proved that it wasn't. Somewhere between the shifting tides and the rising sun was Ronan, forcing himself upright and trying not to question too hard the thing before him that he wanted so badly to be true. Gansey would prove it just by being there. He'd done it before and he'd do it again.