The problem with Declan Lynch was that he wasn't always the eldest Lynch child.
Ronan Lynch was the eldest.
"Hey, Ronan," Declan says. There is something wrong about him that raises Ronan's skin and electrifies him. It leaves him off-kilter, like entering a bedroom only to find everything at a millimeter offset.
Declan's words hang in the air as Ronan stares back, caught in an uncharacteristic silence. He gazes into green eyes framed by long, dark eyelashes.
"You're not ready, are you?" Declan says with a contemplative air weighing him down. A gentle smile curves his mouth. It is disingenuous—calculating even. If Ronan were to put his Aglionby education to use, he could transcribe the parabolic curve of his smile into an achingly exact equation.
Empty and mathematical, Declan states, "I think it's time you woke up, Ronan."
Ronan wakes up with empty hands and an emptier mind. Unease furrows his brow as he grasps onto the gossamer strands of his dream. He is left with a disquiet upsetting his equilibrium.
"Hey, Ronan," Declan says. A broad smile bares his red-streaked teeth in a pantomime of pleasure.
"What," Ronan growls. Unease and anger is indistinguishable in Ronan. He is the animal that bites the hand. He is the beast cowering and snapping in the corner. He is an unraveling.
"Did you know that the whole world is a dragon's dream?" Declan says. His tone is pleasant in its blandness and bland in its pleasantness.
Ronan's mouth curves around a "what" yearning to be released as Declan speaks again in a sharp voice that punctures his eardrums. As blood trickles, he hears, "…time you woke up, Ronan."
Ronan's last glimpse is Declan's blonde hair lifting in an unseen breeze, like fields of golden wheat rippling in the summer wind.
Dreamless and untethered, Ronan wakes up with a soft gasp and empty hands.
"Hey, Ronan," Declan says. He smiles, sweet and dimpled.
"What," Ronan says. A strange lethargy sucks the energy out of him. He cannot dig up the passion for annoyance, for rage.
"Do you remember the time before me?" A gentle question offered by a gentle tone. Declan is as sweet as powdered sugar melting in your mouth and leaving you craving for more. To melt into Declan and pretend the world doesn't exist is Ronan's fiercest desire. He yearns for their childhood, where their world was each other and the rest of their family, isolated from a world outside the Barns. He wishes for the time when they came as a pair. He wants to fight with Declan and fall asleep beside him again when they exhausted their rage upon each other.
"What time?" Ronan exhales. There was no time before Declan. There couldn't be. Ronan is younger than Declan. Declan has always been there. He is the sun that rises and illuminates the world into flourishing. He is the moon that tugs the ocean into motion. He is the stars that light up the void. To escape Declan is to escape gravity, to escape electromagnetism.
Wrong answer, Declan shakes his head. "I think it's time you woke up, Ronan."
Desolation coats Ronan's mouth with a metallic tang that makes him regret ever waking up.
He remembers nothing and holds nothing in his hands.
"Hey, Ronan," Declan says. A soft flush kisses the apples of his cheeks and the tip of his nose. Snowflakes hang suspended on the tips of his eyelashes and rest in his curly head of hair. The snow does not melt; his breath does not condense.
Ronan heaves a sigh, breath condensing in the air. "What do you want, Declan?" His aggrieved tone is punctuated by a hand fiercely swiping across his face. Tiredness wilts him; frustration incenses him. It is the frustration of knowing that there is a word perched on the tip of your tongue but for all your efforts otherwise, nothing is articulated. There is a story untold and hanging in the air, Ronan knows. He does not remember the story, for all that Declan begins anew each and every time they meet (and Ronan remembers that he has been dreaming of Declan with the periodicity of a pendulum and yet he knows that when he wakes up, he will remember nothing but this frustrated ignorance that is endless).
"What worlds you've built," Declan whispers into the silence. "And what rules you've imposed." There is a scornful lilt to his voice as the snow begins to melt in his hair. The snowflakes on his eyelashes drop down his face like tears. His breath coalesces in the air. "I am so very cold," Declan thrills with a breathless laugh.
Declan laughs and laughs. The whiteness of his teeth, the redness of his gums flash with every laugh. He is the wailing siren that jerks Ronan into panic, into movement.
Ronan lunges.
Declan laughs wider. His jaw unhinges, his mouth stretches with every laugh as Ronan comes near.
Ronan lunges into a gaping maw that devours him whole.
"I think it's time you woke up, Ronan."
Sunrise lights Ronan's world red.
The sun rises in the west.
It is beautiful.
Ronan awakens to an empty world with a mind empty of all but a primal fear that hastens the beat of his heart until all he can hear and feel is the drumbeat of his heart that sings a song that Ronan wishes he could unhear and god, he wishes it would all just end but it doesn't and it is endless—this fear, this heart of his that keeps on beating, beating when all he would like to do is sleep in peace and wake up in peace but the world runs away from him as he desperately tries to catch up and isn't it funny the way he is always trying, trying when he would be better served by clawing off this false skin of his and raze this world to the ground…and these thoughts are not his and he has no idea where it has all gone so wrong.
Run-on and run-off, Ronan slumps in his bed.
"There is something wrong with Cabeswater," Ronan comments casually, as if he hasn't been plagued by half-remembered dreams that leave his heart pumping futilely for more blood. He absently spears a piece of his syrup-laden pancake. The tines stab through and shriek against the plate as he applies more force. He winces.
Ronan looks up in expectation of words, of a sign, of something from Adam.
Adam is silent, but he is smiling that smile that Ronan would hoard, would kill to keep, would hide from the world. He is beautiful in the fluorescence of Nino's lighting.
He is still beautiful even as his mouth stretches broader and broader with every second that ticks. When Ronan peers, there is nothing in that beautiful mouth of his—no teeth, no gums, no tongue. There is only a darkness so pure that it is impenetrable and sucks in all the lighting from the diner.
Adam is a void and god help him, Ronan cannot help but still love this void-damned form.
"Did you ever think that more than Cabeswater is wrong?" Adam says pleasantly. He does not sound like Henrietta. He is Declan's cultured tones. "Your world is falling apart. I think it's time you woke up, Ronan."
Ronan wakes up to a silence that is perversely loud (loud in the way that in the absence of all external sound, all you can hear is your internal symphony—the rushing of blood, the cacophony of a beating heart, the staccato rhythm of panicked breaths).
He has been waking up in silence for far too many days.
Where is Chainsaw and her screeching, cawing cries?
Ronan does not know how long Chainsaw has been missing. He does not know how long he has been dreaming these wind-tossed, frazzled dreams. He does not know when the last time he spoke to Adam, Gansey, Blue, or anybody else was. In fact, he cannot recall ever taking a step out of his room. Ronan's whole world has been confined to his room for god knows how many days.
Terror strikes Ronan like lightning to a tree (splitting him in two and setting him alight). How long has he been alone? How did he never realize until now? Where is everybody? Is he still dreaming?
Endless questions borne of endless panic set his mind racing and his heart rate skyrocketing.
His eyes burn.
His chest feels tight.
He is an unraveling.
His breathing speeds up.
His vision goes dark as panic renders him useless.
"Hey, Ronan," Declan says with a wide, wholesome All-American smile. The skin near his blue eyes crinkle charmingly. His dark brown hair shines in the sun. His build is so reassuringly solid and steady that Ronan just wants to collapse into his arms and let him support the both of them.
"What in the actual fuck is going on?" Ronan yells. His nails scrape across his scalp as he clutches at himself, utterly aggrieved. The heels of his hands dig into his eyes, lighting up his world. He clenches his jaw when Declan continues to grin in silence. "Fucking answer me, you dipshit," he snarls, unwilling to let the silence stretch further.
"Hostility," Declan says, "does not negate your reality. Or rather: the truth of your reality."
"Wow, thanks for that two-bit fortune cookie wisdom, you fucking knockoff bastard Lynch." Ronan is never happier than when he can verbally eviscerate people.
"As charming as ever, Ronan." Exasperation softens Declan's words into a sigh.
"Yeah, well, the world's fucked up and I have no idea what's going on."
"Ronan, Ronan," Declan tuts, "you know exactly 'what's going on'." He has the gall to use air quotes for emphasis, as if he finds Ronan's struggle terribly plebeian. "Your world's falling apart. It was never meant to last this long. You've had your fun. Now it's time to go home. I think it's time you woke up, Ronan."
"My world. . .what do you mean?" Ronan's words are low and quiet, struck dumb by realization. "Am I the dragon, Declan?"
"Ah, now you're getting it," Declan laughs. "You are Cabeswater; Cabeswater is you. The world outside Cabeswater is you; you are the world outside Cabeswater. You are Adam; Adam is you. Gansey is you; you are Gansey. You are Blue; Blue is you. And here's the kicker, right now, I'm you and you're me."
"Was I so alone that I became God?"
"You were so starved for information that you cannibalized yourself. It's the curse of anisotropic beings."
"The anisotropic," Ronan says, exultant and breathless.
Ronan wakes up.
"While I'm gone," Gansey said, pausing, "dream me the world. Something new for every night."