Ronan Lynch has always been good at self destruction.
Not the type that is taking a blade to skin, although he knows what people think, when they see the thin white scars up and down his arms. What would they say, if they knew those were caused not by a knife but by his own nightmares? Never mind that, though. No one ever asks.
No, that is not Ronan's style of self harm.
His destruction feels like this, foot pressed down on the gas, car humming around him. It tastes like green pills. It looks like Adam's hands and smells like the cream he dreamed up. It sounds like Gansey's fear and Adam's distain and Blue's anger and Noah not breathing, Declan's hate and Matthew's hurt. Kavinsky, laughing.
Kavinsky might be Icarus, who fell in flames, but he's still stuck in this maze, every dead end littered with skeletons, the beast a mask stalking his footsteps.
He arms himself with Epi-Pens and he punches Parrish's dad and he watches Noah's murderer die and traces REMEMBERED and still feels like he's drowning. He stands in the cave with empty hands and tells Cabeswater that it cannot take his friends, says it like a spell, and he doesn't lie.
If they die, I die too.
No one bothers to tell him that Gansey's already dead. Not dead like Noah, but dead like his voice on the recording, that's all there is that's all there is. Blue knew before she even met them, she fell in love with a dead man and Ronan is the last to know.
Well, aside from Gansey. None of them tell Gansey, and this is a secret but it feels like a lie, and he can't look at him without longing for the ache of bruised knuckles. Ronan Lynch is a dreamer and a fighter, but you cannot fight death, and you can't dream it away.
He tries. He tries he tries he tries, and that's all he can do.
Adam knows. He watches him with Cabeswater's eyes and the unspoken promise is there. We'll find a way to save him. We must.
Ronan is glad he never says it out loud. Because then he'd expect the same promise from him, and Ronan can't say that, he can't.
Ronan Lynch doesn't lie.
He drives fast, faster than he should, and wonders if they just find the right thing to offer, would it save Gansey. Do they have anything left? It would be hard to find something worth Gansey's life, something to save the power in his voice and the life in his eyes.
Is Blue worth Gansey? Is Adam? He doesn't want to think about that. He drives around a corner and for a moment he thinks he won't quite make the turn. Would his life be worth Gansey's? Probably not, but he will try if he has to. His tires hold on, he makes the corner and speeds off to the Barns. He'd make what he said to Gansey a lie, if he offers his life. His last action would break promises, which is unfortunate, but maybe that's the only way.
This time, he'll make sure Adam doesn't have to watch.
Ronan Lynch has always been good at self destruction.
Adam sits next to him on Gansey's bed. The night is quiet, like they all stopped breathing the moment Gansey did. Ronan wasn't fast enough, Adam not strong enough. Blue not loud enough, as she screamed for their favour and nothing came. Noah too quiet, gone missing, looking for Gansey in places only he can go.
He almost reaches out, almost risks everything to hold Parrish's hand. But his hands are covered in blood, and Adam's eyes are empty, and they failed. Gansey is everywhere, in these tangled covers, in the shadows of his Henrietta, in the maps and the lines and in the space between every one of them. Without Gansey, what are they?
A place for leaving, Adam had been fond of saying, when someone asked him about his home. Only maybe he meant this whole town, which felt empty now. There is no mystery left here. Cabeswater, a place of magic, stained with where Gansey had bled out. The Barns, where his father died, where his mother slept. His dreams, where Kavinsky waits for him in his father's mask. He'll get a kick out of this, Ronan's sure, laugh 'til he's sick. Make some joke Ronan can't stand to hear.
He doesn't reach for Adam's hand.
Instead, he stands up. No one else moves. No one else sees him, they're all ghosts now, because Gansey brought life to this factory, and now they're sitting in a graveyard.
No one stops him when he leaves. He takes the Pig, because he can, and because the others can't. They'll be left with the BMW, and he has the keys. They can't follow him.
He drives back to the forest.
His mother is there, waiting. She looks sad, but not surprised to see him.
"You should go home," she says, and he loves her in spite of his father, not because of him. Niall dreamt her but she is here and he is not, and she loves her sons. She loves Matthew most of all, which is good, because Matthew might have to move in here too. Just for a little while. Adam can save them, they were not quite ready but Adam is so clever, and Cabeswater is awake, and together they can save Gansey, and Aurora, and Matthew.
Everyone important will walk from these woods.
It has to work. He has nothing else to offer.
"I can't go home," he tells her. Around him, time moves in jumps and starts, like Cabeswater is upset. Does Cabeswater mourn their King too? Ronan hopes so. That will make this easier. "It's not my home anymore."
That's how it works. People die, and their homes die with them. First his father, now his best friend. He's running out of places to go, and he's tired of running.
Aurora looks sadly at her middle son. "That's not true."
And maybe she's right but he's not listening.
He leaves her at the edge of the forest, and continues on. The deeper into the woods he gets, the harder it gets. He has to fight through brambles, watch out for roots wanting to trip him up.
"Exspecto," whisper the trees. "Patientia."
He will not wait.
He stumbles through a particularly dense thicket, and comes face to face with Adam. Immediately, the trees around them open up, go quiet. Adam is watching him with weary eyes.
"You can't be here," Ronan tells him. "I took the keys. And the car."
Adam shrugs. "Noah hot-wired the BMW."
Maybe it's true. And maybe he's dreaming.
Ronan scowls. "Doesn't make a difference."
The trees are still moving, and Ronan realizes that they must have slowed time, so Adam could catch him. That isn't fair.
"Don't do this," says Adam. "Ronan, right now is not the time for hasty decisions."
He sounds so much like Gansey, and it pisses Ronan off. But Adam's still talking, stalling like his mother was stalling, like the trees.
"Think about Matthew, and about the rest of us. Stop being selfish and just think for a moment, Lynch."
Ronan grabs him, and fear flashes through Adam's eyes. Of course it does. Adam is used to being grabbed, and pain usually follows it.
Instead, Ronan kisses him.
He's so good at self destruction.
He expects Adam to shove him away, to go stiff in his hands. Instead, after a moment of surprise, Adam kisses him back, puts a hand on his waist to steady him. Adam takes Ronan's desperation and softens it, grounds it, makes it feel like it could last.
When the kiss ends, it's Ronan who pulls away, and it's Adam who says something first.
"I love you," he whispers. "Please don't go."
It's everything Ronan tried to hide from himself, everything he wanted to hear, everything he was afraid of. He shoves Adam away, heart beating out a distress signal in his chest.
(Gansey had taught him morse code, because 'we're explorers, you never know when it could come in handy.' Really, it was just them being boys, tapping out secret messages for the fun of it, but he remembers that day so well, Gansey looking so serious as they learned their letters)
"Maybe I did dream you." Ronan doesn't mean to say that, meant to shout or throw insults but he just sounds shaken. The question turns to dirt in his mouth, because Adam's a little bit broken, and what fucked up kind of person would dream up a person to fall in love with and make their life so full of shit? Someone damaged. Someone wrong.
Adam's shaking his head. "You didn't."
"You don't know that!" Now he is shouting, and the trees are whispering again, patience patience greywaren, but he's not listening. "There's no way you can know that."
There's something old in Adam's eyes, and it's probably the forest around them, but it reminds Ronan of Persephone. "I do know."
Ronan deals in truths and that sounds like a truth and he desperately wants to believe it, but it's too convenient, too big a coincidence and they all know there's no such thing.
"You're a dream or a liar," he finally says. "Just trying to say that so that I don't leave, so you'll feel better, so when I'm right and Gansey's back you can look at him and say you did your best to stop me-"
"Shut up!" Adam yells, and he's in Ronan's space again, although he doesn't touch him. "We don't even know the favour didn't work! We don't know if it'll be instantaneous, we don't know he didn't hear us. Noah can't find him, which is a good thing. So can you just wait, just hold off on doing anything stupid for five seconds?"
Ronan glares at him, tries to ignore the hurt in Adam's eyes, and how his hands are shaking.
"When did you grow a spine, Parrish?" he asks, finally.
"When my friends started dying," he says, voice seeming to come from him and from all around them. Ronan tries to hold on to his anger, but it's retreating, leaving him feeling empty and cold.
"Fine." He wants to go home but he doesn't know where that is. "Fine, I won't go off myself. That's fine."
He turns away from Adam, and the bramble behind him is gone, back to the familiar paths of Cabeswater. He scowls, more out of reflex than anything. Already the air feels thick, hard to breathe, like it did in Monmouth earlier. He'll probably have to relearn how to live on not enough air.
A hand, one he's never held but knows as well as his own, ghosts over his wrist, fingers slipping through fingers until Adam Parrish is holding his hand. He doesn't say anything, just matches Ronan's pace, and if one is crying the other says nothing, and if one is shaking the other doesn't not mention it. They hold hands, and they walk away from where Richard Campbell Gansey III lay dying, out and back into life.
Blue sees them coming, and says her goodbyes to Aurora. Aurora gives Ronan a hug, like he's come back from a war, and then gives Adam one, too. Adam looks surprised, like he's not sure what to do with a mother who loves, but he hugs her back as well as he can without letting Ronan go.
"I'll take the Pig back," says Blue, and holds her hand out for the keys. When Ronan, still too empty to form words, gives them to her, she punches him in the arm.
"Ow," he says, more out of shock than anything, although that touch of a sting feels a bit like waking up. "What was that for, Maggot?"
She fixes him with eyes red from crying and hard as steel.
"No more of that, idiot," she's so much bigger than her small frame, her presence so much stronger, and today Ronan can feel her power, pressing down on him, encompassing him. "Next time you want to be some stupid action hero, go drink or punch a wall or something normal, okay?"
That's what she says. What Ronan hears is don't hurt yourself where we can't reach you. If you want to self destruct, fine, just don't try to do it alone.
"Yes, ma'am," he sneers, voice heavy with sarcasm. But Blue understands. She gives them both a nod, and then climbs into the Pig. It's a big car for a small girl, but she looks at home in it, pulls it away from the woods and down the lane like she's perfectly comfortable with the thing. Ronan wonders when Gansey took the time to teach her. Wonders why he did. Adam and Ronan have both stolen the car, drove it off to dangerous places. But Blue's the only one who's driven it back again.
There's a message there, somewhere, but Ronan's not in the mood to decipher it.
Adam pulls him over to his own car, only letting go of his hand so he can climb into the driver's seat.
"Go around," he says, and there's no room for argument in his voice. That's usually Ronan's favourite time to start one, but today he just accepts this, passes Adam the keys and sits next to him in the passenger seat. There's some CD on, turned down so he can just barely hear it, something he doesn't recognize. It's nice, though, not something of his. not anything that can trap him in his own thoughts, right now. He leans back, closes his eyes, and lets himself drift.
He is not quite asleep, when Adam's hand finds his own again. Adam touches him like he's not afraid of getting cut, even with all of Gansey's warnings about Ronan's sharp edges.
"I meant it, you know," he talks to the road, to the car, to the woods they drive by, but he must know Ronan is listening. "What I said."
It's the truth.
Ronan holds onto his hand like a lifeline, and lets Adam drive them home.