Richard Campbell Gansey III

Gansey didn't drive as far into Cabeswater as he could have. He knew the trees didn't mind the commotion, but Gansey preferred to let his insides match what was outside. Cabeswater -- a living, breathing thing with a limited means of communication -- never seemed lonely; yet, they were always happy to see him. They rustled a greeting, like a child testing their reflection. Together, they were old friends, Gansey thinking of drawn-out landscapes of the places he'd been and Cabeswater calling up little pieces of it. Gansey laughed and the hills rollicked. Gansey thought and the birds squawked protest. It was a welcome noise, less like the commotion of the Gansey day-to-day.

These two friends travelled together mindlessly. Gansey wasn't sure he knew how to get to Ronan's place, but he always found it. He wondered if it worked the same way with Adam.

The place was beautiful. It looked so very Ronan, rustic and quaint and dangerous. The chickens roosted away. Gansey was oddly glad to hear the sound. Maybe he was just so glad to see Ronan's face that he could take an hour or two of clucking. Gansey raised his hand in greeting. Once he was close enough, he called, "looks great, Lynch." It did. All of Ronan's reckless abandon drained when it came to the concept of home.

No matter where Gansey was -- in a bed, on a couch, on the floor, at home, in Darrow -- sleep could never find him. Somewhere between Cuba and Scotland (or was it the Ukraine?) it had abandoned him and never returned.

It was 9pm when Gansey pulled up to Hywel. He parked himself neatly next to its twin and tried not to imagine what sort of conversation was waiting for him upstairs. He was exhausted and all he wanted was to lay down and sleep, which was self-sabotage at its finest. Sleep wouldn't come. Even if he hadn't been chewing on the inside of cheeks thinking about how to find Henry peace, he still wouldn't be sleeping.

Instead, he did what any sensible bachelor would do: put on a pot of coffee. He was too drained to think about poking at the fat question mark that was Darrow and fiction seemed like it might hinder more than help when what he wanted was a miracle.

The coffee was brewing and Gansey's legs were rubber; it was the familiar sting of sensory overload and not enough sleep. In a moment of pure genius, Gansey remembered they had a TV with an infinite number of channels. There had to be something. After 15 minutes of clicking around blindly, Gansey found a documentary about the history of Halloween. How festive. How simple. And to top it all off, the coffee was ready. He couldn't be unafraid, he wasn't going to make it all the way to "afraid and happy," so he settled for vaguely nervous and temporarily okay.

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.