[For Blue] Well I'm runnin' down the road trying to loosen my load

[thatsallthereis]

More than a month had passed since Gansey talked to Henry. There was casual chit-chat: a text to check up here, an accidental run-in there. Darrow was small like that, and more and more, Gansey found himself on the Barton campus, seeking out his Professor friend and hoping to catch Adam or Henry on their way to class.

The thing was, they were still in a similar category, Henry and Adam. The one he avoided, the other he wondered about. The thing with Henry had opened up a whole slew of hindsight. Friends -- boys, especially -- didn't act like they all did. They didn't touch too much, but they did stand too close, get too defensive, stayed in too close contact. Helen loved to joke about it, didn't she?

Oh Jesus, Helen. His family. Helen trying to spin something like this for his family. Helen waving her cell phone at him, ranting about how he doesn't care about Senator Gansey's campaign. Dick Sr. shaking his head. Senator Gansey -- Mom -- wanting him in less and less family photos.

He shifted into 3rd. The rattle of the engine sounded like it was going to break apart. Gansey knew the feeling. He shifted into 4th and the revving of his engine finally drowned out the sound of his short, unsteady breath. By the time he reached Blue's complex, the bees had stopped crawling on his skin; the walls had receded. He turned the car off and so, too, did he almost lose his nerve.

Courage, he thought. The door swung open and he rocked himself to his feet. Slam. Lock. Pocket. Blue. Somehow, talking to her was less complicated than anyone else he could think of.

"Jane," he greeted, the panic bubbling up in him all over again. A hand tucked casually into a pocket, a seemingly innocent gesture that was something of a security thing for him. "Please excuse me for not calling ahead. Would you be willing to take a drive with me?" The formality was casual enough, but it still needed to be said. They were friends -- somewhat estranged, at that -- and this was all quite forward. Not, he hoped, too forward.

Comments

[formicine]

The knock on the door is unexpected, but somehow she knows it's Gansey. Something about the brisk neatness of it, the slightly hesitant first knock that sounds half tentative, the rhythm: when she opens the door, there he is.

Blue takes him in: hand in pocket, manners and old-man Northern Virginia accent creating a greeting so genteel she thinks even Biffy couldn't complain. Eyes just a little agitated. Is it her that's causing that? She sort of can't stand the idea, but then, she doubts he'd show up without notice if it was.

"It's all right," she says and almost goes to put a hand on his arm: but that's not where they are. "I'd love to. Just let me grab shoes. Come in," Blue adds, as she goes to grab boots and keys.

Tugging on Docs and making quick work of the laces, she presses her lips together, tilting her head at him. "Are you okay?"

[thatsallthereis]

Thousands of freckles greeted him and every time, he wasn't quite ready for it. He knew them like he knew the stars -- the ones at home. In Darrow, maybe he knew them more like that stars in Darrow: reminiscent of something from home and different enough that there was still much to learn. In love, in light, in bravado, in freckles: Blue was a galaxy, complex and beautiful.

She was moving away before Gansey could think too long about touching her. What he wanted was simple -- a touch to the arm or a gentle nudge of shoulders -- but that was not for him to decide.

In a smooth step, Gansey crossed the threshold and took a quick look around. "I've not been inside one of these apartments yet," he side-stepped, darting a quick apology to her for doing so. This was something he was going to have to work up to, since they were in the unique situation they were in. Blue was the only person he wanted to talk to; navigating that was more complicated than knowing he was in the right place. "They're quite," he paused, "sterile."

[formicine]

She watches the way he moves, the little tells that give away anxiety. It's still a little confusing to think about the fact that he and the Gansey that were here before are both the same person and also intrinsically different. He's missing memories, and has added ones, but that doesn't make him not that Gansey.

And yet, he's also not that Gansey, not in the way that Ronan and Kavinsky argue that they're different people than they were in Henrietta, but in a totally different, literal way. A Gansey made whole by them, which is just the most overwhelming concept.

She knows, and doesn't know him. But she wants to.

Blue can't help a self-conscious grin. "Yeah, well. It had more personality before I moved most of my stuff to Hywel. My room is a little more me." She feels a little embarrassed, as though she's said something flirtatious by having mentioned her room at all. Stop that, she reminds herself with annoyance. The whole point is that you can be a normal person with a life.

She stands up, all put together. "You want to get out of here?"

[thatsallthereis]

"For you," Gansey conceded, "this is stark. For anyone else, it is modestly decorated, at least." That tugged his lips into a smile. There was enough adornment that safely said Blue was here without being too on the nose. Maybe this is what an apartment they shared might have looked like. Gansey's sense of flair never seemed to translate well. Blue, on the other hand, was masterful to the point of excess. He didn't have to ever step foot in Blue's room at Hywel to know how it looked.

"Yes, let's." He held the door open for Blue and considered the room around him. The desire to flop face-first onto her couch and wail about his misery was there. He'd done it before. In the very beginning -- when everything seemed so messed up and wasn't, quite yet -- he'd wallowed in self-pity before her eyes. She was sort of someone else's girlfriend back then, and now she truly was. Time was as it ever was.

Gansey tossed the keys over to Blue. "You drive, I'll talk." It was all going to come out soon and he would prefer they be somewhere less... sterile. "Anywhere you want to go." He was ready to give it over to Blue because he was inching toward some sort of explosion. He didn't know what that meant but he knew it was imminent.

[formicine]

She smiles a little, a mirroring tug at her pensive expression. "Are you suggesting I overdesign," she teases, faux-appalled. Her room at Hywel is bracketed in leaves (real, and fabric), light-diffused with patterned curtains, a gallery of clippings and art on one wall; the desk strangely clean in order to support the days when it's piled with fabric. It's a bit of a mess, like her, but there's method to the madness.

Gansey's looking at the apartment in a thinking way, and she bumps him gently at the arm as she passes, like it could be an accident. Just a little brush that says it'll be okay, if she's allowed to say that anymore.

He tosses her the keys, and Blue catches them only in last-second reflex, blinking in surprise. If she hadn't been worried by Gansey not calling, handing over the Pig so easily seems like an indication she should be. Or maybe not. She considers, as they head down the stairs, that the gesture is easy, even to the height he needs to throw it. In another time and place, there's a Blue who Gansey trusts with the Pig, a Blue who has grown used to the throw and can do it laughing; who takes (and probably wrestles) the driver's seat from Gansey when he needs to sleep.

Her chest constricts, abrupt and unexpected, with the injustice. Not that she couldn't be that Blue, if she consented to it, but that she hasn't become that Blue, organically, hasn't learned yet to catch Gansey's keys.

She slides into the Pig as they get out, reaching across to unlock the door for Gansey and fumbling around to move the seat up. Adjusts mirror, settles and carefully pulls out, turning toward what will become the highway and where the city becomes country for a while before it turns around.

Blue glances at him. "So tell me."

[thatsallthereis]

"I wouldn't dare," Gansey responded, rocking a bit from her gentle nudge. His smile widened, and he bumped her gently back. Either this was easy and she didn't have to try, or she was trying for Gansey's sake. Either was fine. With Henry out of the picture for a moment, Gansey was having trouble finding the comfort he needed. With everyone, it was so complicated. Blue was no exception in that respect. The difference was that Gansey knew that their love was defined by fate as true. It was a comfort he wanted greatly to take.

Gravity seemed to shift when Gansey's keys landed in Blue's hand. Gansey hadn't noticed how effortless his Blue was at catching those keys until he saw this one's near-fumble. Still, she caught it, and when Gansey looked from her hand to those big, smokey eyes, he was sure they had what less loquacious teenagers might have called "a moment." It was poor timing. Gansey cleared his throat and ducked into the passenger seat. Before they went, he reminded himself not to watch the way she shifted, how her legs flexed against the clutch and the gleam of color from her nail polish against the steering wheel. For his own sake, he wished she wasn't so beautiful.

Gansey made a pensive noise through closed lips, not quite looking at her just yet. Many times Gansey had tried to come up with a way to broach this subject with any kind of grace. Since he'd handled it so gracelessly, maybe fumbling along was what he'd earned.

Depending on how well this Blue knew him, she may not have even noticed he was floundering. To a layperson, Gansey might have been taking a considerate pause. He turned his head to Blue and asked, "what are your thoughts about Henry?"

[formicine]

Blue might have been paying attention to shifting up into gear without stalling the damn car in the middle of the road, she might have had some vague amount of untellable time without this Gansey in her life, but she still notices the soft anxious hum Gansey makes and glances at him sidelong.

"My thoughts?" she asks. The road is blessedly empty out ahead of them. As traffic clears, city melts away, it could be fall in Virginia, orange and yellow climbing the leaves of deciduous trees.

"I mean. He's Henry," she says, and her stomach tenses, chills a little as though this is some sort of test. She can never quite discern whether she has a crush on Henry, or a friend-crush. It would be very convenient, especially around Gansey, if she could just stop feeling things about people. "He should really annoy me, and he used to, acting too good for Henrietta, but now...he doesn't at all," she decides. "He cares too much about being part of Hywel, I think, for his own good. He -- cares a lot. About things. About people."

"And he makes fun of white people with me," she adds, with a small private smirk. "I'm positive on Henry Cheng."

Blue shifts up into fourth gear, pausing to glance at the stick and giving the engine some gas. She raises an eyebrow. "What are your thoughts about Henry?"

[thatsallthereis]

"We were past this point in Henrietta," Gansey said with a sympathetic little frown. "Ronan was already over it and we... hm." Were there words for what the three of them were doing? "We were inching toward something. The three of us." His eyes flicked to Blue to catch her reaction to this. Instead of carefully in his laps, Gansey's hands were under pressed under his thighs, arms drawn in like he was tense with defeat.

"It must be hard. To go backward." No, Gansey knew it was, but since he hadn't meant that to be a jab, he ducked his head, focusing on the pleat of his pants for a minute. As he always was, he felt very aware of how he must look: like a king dethroned, relegating himself to the passenger seat. There was no nobility in uncertainty, and Gansey was more lost than he'd felt in quite some time.

[formicine]

She downshifts as they draw close to a crossroad, listening to him (Ronan, over something? Amazing! her brain chimes in, bitter and unhelpful), turning her head a little as he draws out the "hm."

The three of us. The car stutters underneath Blue's hands, the timing of clutch-gearshift-brake thrown off kilter by an unexpected variable, and her hand tightens on the wheel instinctively, she almost goes for the brake. She's done this before, the terrifying stutter of The-Car-Doesn't-Like-This, and her mind tries to talk herself past the feeling of something wildly out of the norm. Gansey's hand was on her knee, then, wasn't it?

She's failing this test, Gansey's implicit trust. Don't hit the brake: slow down, take a breath, ride this out.

Does this mean that Gansey has feelings for Henry? Does this mean that Gansey is open to a more-than-two-of-us? That Blue is, if it were -- What does it mean about Ellie? What does it mean about Henry? Shut up and slow down.

Blue fixes the gear and slows them to a rolling stop before the crossroads, taking a long breath in and laughing nervously at that unnecessary adventure. She looks over again, at Gansey projecting anxiety. She reaches over in the pause, putting her hand tentatively over his, to try and communicate that he doesn't have to retreat from her. "It is hard," she says. "Frightening, But worse for you, I think." She glances at him, moving her hand to turn onto a smaller road that will take them towards winding woods and country. "There are spaces I wish there weren't."

Blue chews on the inside of her lip, thinking about the three of us and diverging to Gansey and Henry. "What about here?" she asks, abruptly.

[thatsallthereis]

Though Gansey was jostled as the car lurched, he didn't appear more troubled than he already had. It made sense that she might not have as much experience driving the Pig. Even if she did, the topic was certainly worth a slip or two. Not everyone was accustomed to driving it under duress. He braced himself on the roof for a second. When she laughs, he he smiles -- like for a moment something beautiful had broken through his misery.

"I don't know," Gansey said after a few moments, so quiet. Fragile. He scrubbed at his face once, pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. This meant so many things. So, so many things and some of them were staggering and terrifying and some were beautiful and Gansey wanted to touch it all. He wanted to grasp at every little, dichotomous thing that was jabbing at him and inspect them and turn them over until he understood them. It was exciting, underneath so many other things So many other, less crucial and somehow more important to Gansey things.

Like this: Gansey let out an unsteady breath. "I know we're cut off from home, and I still keep thinking: if Helen -- if my parents knew..." No amount of pressing in could stop the wetness that gathered under his eyes, sloped down his cheeks. He swiped all of this up, but there was more, brimming over and silencing him.

[formicine]

He leans his hands against his eyes when she lifts hers, guard let down in a way Blue has both seen and not seen before, and she waits, breath still in her chest.

Oh, she thinks as he continues, trails off, as his voice cracks under the pressure of so much leaning on it. Oh-- and her chest clenches a little. For all the teasing she's offered this old money boy, the jokes about red tie affairs and the privilege he's slowly learning to unwind the same way she's learned to spool up what that means, she's never considered exactly how different the priorities of his family must be. He's not a church-goer like Ronan: if Gansey has been raised to believe in a God it must fit into a structure of histories and mythos much older than Jesus.

But not everything's about text. In Virginia, in all places, so much is about subtext.
What happens to that beautiful canvas family photo when their eldest son has a boyfriend? Or -- more scandalous -- a boyfriend and a girlfriend?

Blue pulls the car over where the shoulder has turned into dirt, where the trees part just a little. "They'd still be proud of you," she says, because who could fail to be proud of Gansey? Her tone betrays, just a little, that if they weren't she might find a way to enforce the idea.

"Come on," she says, then, and nods at the forest. It's not magical. It's just trees. But trees have always felt safe to her. "Come walk with me."

[thatsallthereis]

Blue's empathy was a thing with mass, large enough to inspire its own gravity. They got out of the car; Gansey stood up slowly and arranged himself. First, he swiped at his eyes. Then, he adjusted his sweater and his hair. At the base of him, he was still trembling, still on the verge of more tears. Some combination of the autonomy of piecing together some kind of composure and changing altitude brought him enough peace that he remembered to breathe. On the other side of that deep breath of crisp air, nothing felt any better.

The elder Ganseys would most definitely not be proud of him. His pledge for a stupid gap year had been a Whole Big Thing for a while, and this was much, much worse than taking another year to travel. Isn't that what he'd always done?

Blue's empathetic gravity tugged at him again, and he found himself linking arms with her. It wasn't a dignified, gentlemanly thing, it was a clutch at support. He kept their bodies at a respectable distance and he remained conscious of her comfort as he sought his own.

As they walked -- even as the trees moved closer together and the sky became less and less visible -- Gansey felt less trapped out here. Gentle. He held Blue's arm in both hands, a gentle anchor.

[formicine]

She watches Gansey put himself together, reassemble the pieces of one layer of mask, straighten and fuss and compose. Blue can see the shine, still threatening, at his eyes. There's some part of her that wants to lean up and kiss it away, because she can, strictly speaking, and because she wants that pain not to be there.

But can is not the same as allowed; besides, she's too uncertain of what that means, and also: now is not the time.

He links his arm into hers. It's not the first time in the last month or so that a taller, more genteel man has done that, and she lets herself become a pillar and walk quietly into the woods.

"Did I ever tell you about the beech tree in the back yard?" She means did I, and also do I: Gansey has become yet another fortune teller in Blue's life, able to inform her of who she kisses and who she kills, where she travels and who with. "I used to sit out there for hours reading or just -- thinking out there with my back up against it and my shoes off." It seems very far away now, that Blue much littler and having lived through much less. "It always felt safe to me, somehow. Home."

She isn't changing the subject: she knows Gansey likes to hear her talk about little things, and she likes doing it. That much, she's been there for.

She isn't changing the subject: she's taking him somewhere safe.

"When I was little, I thought humans must seem very fast to trees."

[thatsallthereis]

Customary changes were difficult to adjust to in one place to another. Often times, Gansey had to do research to figure out what to avoid, how close he could stand. The boy also had the gift of gab. If he were every on his own -- stranded in strange place like Darrow -- he could rely on that to get him by, and one other principal: a person deserved respect in their home.

Blue was among her own, so Gansey was a guest in this place. Among humans, the customs were more political. In the forest, the only game face worth anything was being as honest as possible.

For a moment, Gansey nearly reminded Blue that he did know that tree well, but there was no point in that. Home's destiny was a course plotted and Darrow was the Bermuda Triangle. In legend, not in practice, obviously.

Gansey listened. He listened with every part of him down to the roots of his veins. He listened to Blue, and he listened to the trees listen to Blue. Cabeswater had been a think of extraordinary power that Gansey had not understood. No better did he understand it now, even when they were part and parcel. Cabeswater had remade him well, down to the obliviousness and the troublesome cowlick he'd gotten away with for so long.

Other little girls probably weren't thinking about speed relative to trees, but he didn't say that, either. Cabeswater hadn't taken care of his head-in-the-clouds problem, but Blue had taken care of a lot of what had been problematic. She was chipping away. Gansey was backtracking and reprogramming.

"Pretty brilliant thing for a child to be pondering," Gansey remarked, winking over at her as the sun spit down a beam through a gap in their foliage. A corner of his mouth turned up in a tiny smile. He trusted her as she led. He liked when she did. They always ended up doing something incredible.

[formicine]

Gansey's quiet, listening, and if it weren't for the close trees she would feel a little like she was talking into the void. Still, she can feel his breathing slow a little bit, and then he smiles a little, sudden, like the sun that breaks the leaves, and it feels warmly like she's doing something right.

"Brilliant," she scoffs, "when you were that age..." She stops: it occurs to her that she doesn't know that much about Gansey before. Before hornets, before Glendower. She doesn't know much about him at age 13, sure, but she knows something. She can't imagine him at age 8. "You were probably pondering nation-states," she finishes, because she can't really imagine a time when politics and kings didn't exist in Gansey's life.

"It's good to see the leaves, anyway. I missed them last October. I got sort of -- there was this whole other Darrow, full of our worst fears." She shrugs about it: she doesn't want to think about those long weeks. She can't not: there's a lot of her that was made out of them, some of the things this Gansey hasn't lived through. Learning to climb, to fight, scale buildings with Tris: these are things she carved out of not wanting to be helpless. But this is more about Gansey.

"Your family must rank up there," she says instead, quietly, and keeps herself close and steady. She doesn't want to summon demons, but they seem like something that need to be exorcised.

[thatsallthereis]

Not many people that Gansey spent his time with were shorter than him, but Blue was. He had to tilt his chin down a bit to look at her. When the sun shone through the leaves, it illuminated freckles, the lines of her mouth forming words that were meant to soothe him with their normalcy. It worked because the words were hers. It also didn't work because what Gansey knew was words and he hadn't found any yet to do what he was experiencing any justice.

"It's not where they are, it's who they are," Gansey said, letting go of an unsteady breath. "Mom worked hard to get herself in with the Good Old Boys." And it had been their job not to do anything to jeopardize that. Helen had taken it upon herself to keep Gansey in line, and Gansey had fled as far as his trust could take him. There, he could study, be left alone, work at not feeling so different.

"Senator voting records are public. Ask her: my mom will tell you how she voted in every election, she'll tell you about every summit. Ganseys take pride in what they believe." And what they believed -- what the Gansey's had always believed, even far before Senator Gansey was a Gansey by name -- was that everything had a certain way. Things like marriage.

[formicine]

Blue watches him quietly, tipping her head up as he talks. His features are, and probably always will be, regal -- even as his eyes move, thinking and focused and uncertain, he's tall enough to be illuminated by the slanting sun.

But even kings falter, and this one has his knights for a reason. Blue wishes, fervently, that she could share her don't-give-a-fuck just a little with him, pass it through skin.

"There's only one Gansey here," she says, turning around to lean on a tree where a creek has grown wide enough to be called one, running parallel to the path. "And that's the one I care about, honestly. You're not them. You don't have to be them. What do you believe?"

[thatsallthereis]

Blue leaned and she was all legs. With the sun beating into his eyes, she was a shapely outline. He couldn't see her mouth or her freckles, just the way the silhouette changed when she cocked out her hip. He felt the same way about her as he ever did, and she was no less gorgeous when he wasn't allowed to kiss her.

He leaned beside her. Enjoying the way she looked was only serving as a reminder of how bottomless his confusion was.

"There have been two Gansey here, now," Gansey pointed out, miserable enough that he couldn't quite cover the petulance underneath. "We are all here. Most people only know one or two people from home, but we are all here. We can't predict what will come. Or who.

"I don't know what I believe," Gansey concluded, sighing out his frustration even though it swelled anew with his next breath. "You'd think dying twice might bring some clarity."

[formicine]

His tone edges onto pouty. Blue can't blame him, exactly, but she does arch a sensible eyebrow at Gansey. "This place does seem to like us," she says slowly. Or hate them, maybe, which is its own consideration. But regardless of when they're all from, and what problems that causes, they do all have each other. It comes to her that it's really up to them if they take advantage of that, and that maybe they don't.

"Though if your parents show up here before I see my mother again, I might have to have a Talk with -- someone."

"Back home, we were -- inching towards a thing," and she gives him a yes? look to clarify that she's recapping this correctly, even though heat flares in her cheeks. "You, me, and Henry. You didn't tell me about this when you got here, and you definitely weren't worried about your parents showing up. Or you were, but it wasn't like this."

It's a question. What changed? Maybe it's just more now, especially with the three of them all from different places. There's more enough for everyone, going on in her own head; she'd understand that. But he's so scared of himself: it makes her chest hurt. And completely selfishly she wants to know. What's changed here between them, if anything. What she's missed.

[thatsallthereis]

Fortune had favored Gansey from his first breath; it was no surprise he hadn't noticed the similarities. On this topic, Gansey had assumed and shed a lot of ideals. The longer ago they were, the less proud he was of the skin he'd been wearing. None of it had been Gansey, not really. Not until his breathing stopped the first time. If he was lucky -- and he knew he was -- his parents wouldn't or couldn't follow him here. That thought made him feel terrible. What kind of person wished for the absence of people they loved, the people that had given him quite literally everything?

"If you're missing back home, Maura's coming. She's got one foot in the Darrow door already." That made him smile, too, a little, tight as his chest may have been.

Gansey considered this point as well: she was asking what had changed. The backdrop for this operetta was so vastly different in this second act than it had been in the first. It was a difference so big that it blocked out all else. Until Blue's insight shined a light on all that had been overshadowed. She was forever an amplifier -- a beacon.

"It was never going to happen," Gansey decided, since it was as good a hypothesis as any when the answer was not more than a petulant shrug in their current state of observation. "It was there. We all knew it wasn't going to happen. For a litany of reasons. Like this one. And you." He laughed and he meant it so very much that it crinkled the corner of his eyes. "You wouldn't even entertain the idea." And that didn't matter now. And his parents weren't here now. That was what had changed.

[formicine]

"I'm not, though," she says back, smiling tightly at the kindness of the gesture and trying to be light about it. "You know I'm not: I was there with you. The only reason I know she's not still missing is Noah, and you."

She considers that, considers herself considering it, and gets stuck for so many reasons. "You mean, we talked about it?" she asks.

It's true she doesn't especially like her own overwhelming ability to love without restriction, but that's more about jealousy and not wanting anyone to feel badly. She's not exactly sure how things would work: she's seen it fail with Noah, and work with Krem's other lovers. Maybe, before she was here and saw any of that, she'd have had no idea, but she can't see herself, what with her family, being the obstacle to unusual relationship configurations.

And if she wasn't really opposed to it she certainly doesn't want to have been assumed about. But it's hard to predict, exactly. She feels so removed from that Blue.

[thatsallthereis]

The comfort Gansey tried to provide was false, so it was no great loss to see it exposed like that. Blue had a great way with words, with the economy of them and knowing when to say them. Knowing what was appropriate didn't stop her from toeing the line. She did with words what Ronan did with a sneer. They were different, but effective.

"It came up a couple times," Gansey said. "I thought you'd shut it down. More I think about it, that's not an honest assessment." Avoiding eye contact was, too. There was something about exposing one lie: it made all of the other want to come up, too. Not looking at her bright, curious eyes or the manic tufts of hair clipped every which way was another sweep under the rug, another almost-miss. What was he getting from any of this bullshitting?

"Jesus, Blue." He felt like he'd taken a breath after being held under water for too long. From the freckles on her nose to the pale smatterings of fall on the leaves, everything cleared. He ached to hold her. What a selfish, terrible thing to stretch over such beauty. "I've been trying to go on like nothing's different. I've been looking for answers everywhere." He let go of a breath not as steady as he'd sent it. "But not to the right questions."

[formicine]

If the Blue she becomes at home is anything like the Blue she is here, brimful with longing and contemptuous of anything purely conventional, she thinks it is probably not an honest assessment.

His eyes flicker away from hers, and it just makes her want to look harder, searching his face for something. What? Something grounding, something to delineate, contain neatly what parts of him are the Gansey she knows and what parts she can only hear about second hand. What does she have yet to learn?

She wants him to know her. Not to know what she would do in Henrietta. To know what she has to refer to here. The calluses she's built on her fingers here from climbing buildings with Tris and why she felt the need to do it. What the nightmares are that she wakes up from, watching him or Persephone die in that other Darrow.

She wants to know what it was like to watch him die in Henrietta, too, to bring him back, what it felt like for him, because she's lost him enough times to earn it.

It seems so close and so out of reach.

Gansey says Jesus like it's an exhale, like she's what he's swearing the oath to, and her heart stretches in her chest. She blinks, worries the inside of her lip. Is it something to do with Gansey's confluences of time that she feels entirely caught in it?

"What are the right questions?" she asks softly.