(no subject)

[safe_as_life]

The rain starts early in the day, pouring down on Henrietta in sheets. It's the kind of rain that tends to keep people inside, but mostly they're just glad it isn't snow anymore. Spring is approaching quickly and this kind of rainfall is definitely the first sign of it. Gansey doesn't mind that it rains all day long, from first period to last.

It distracts him some, makes him feel nostalgic for things he can't quite put his finger on, and then worried for those same reasons. Then again, he's been a lot more distracted at school lately, not able to concentrate or pick up on his studies as much as usual. He wonders if it has to do with his anticipation to see Blue, because even now, that's all he's thinking about. Rain, the Camaro, Blue Sargent. Somewhere in the back of his head he's constantly thinking about Ronan too, but he supposes that's what best friends do.

By the time the last bell rings though, it's all about Blue. He certainly isn't going to let the rain stop him. Dinner, a movie, possibly sleeping over tonight. Yes, he definitely wants to ask her to sleep over tonight. He grabs his books and neatly puts them away, then goes to meet up with Ronan, Adam and Kavinsky by the front entrance. He has a good feeling about tonight.

Gansey practically races out of his last class, waving when he sees his friends, smiling as he hoists his bag over his shoulder. "Can you believe this rain? All day. Roads must be slippery."

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[the_greywaren]

Ronan finally takes a real, deep breath and his whole body floods with relief as Gansey opens his eyes. They didn't kill him. He grabbed one of his hands and held it tight. "I'm going to tell you everything. I just need you to listen. Okay?"

It took him a minute to get his thoughts together. He looked expectantly at Noah as if he could guide him and tell him how to start this story. There was nothing anyone could do to make this easier for him. Because he had lied. He had been deceptive and manipulative. Ronan knew all of the sins he had committed against his friends. Knew how horrible and awful it was for them. And he would do it all again.

He laughed nervously and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fuck. Shit...I'm fucking scared." That was a hell of a confession to make, it was the truth though. Ronan had no idea how Gansey would take the news.

"Okay.." He let out a shaky breath. "We talked about this, about me doing something to get your fucking name off that list. To stop whatever prophecy keeps Blue from kissing you." Which was why he had to make sure she had kissed him. He couldn't save his life just to have her kiss him and undo everything. "Well, I did it. Today."

Shit. He wished he was a lot less sober for this. "Kavinksy and Persephone helped me. And before you get pissed or whatever with them for it, please remember they helped because of me. Because I asked them to. I needed them and they let me use them for this. It's on me. All of it." He paused. Not for long though. If he didn't get this all out right now he wasn't sure if he could. "K and I brought you out here. We drugged you and you've been sleeping here for a few days now. Persephone helped with the magic, something to make everyone forget everything to do with you dying or if they should kiss you or not. I dreamt another you and we took him back to Monmouth. Left you here with Noah." Ronan hoped Gansey would understand that the help from Persephone had come to them because she believed his plan would work. She helped them not because Ronan manipulated her but because she saw the merit in what they were doing.

""There was a hell of a storm today. He was taking Blue out on a date and the Pig broke down. He called Parrish for help to get it started. We drove out....Adam was driving. There was so much fucking water on the road..." Ronan stared down at his hands, nervously picking at the leather bracelets wrapped around his wrists. "The car hit standing water and slid out of control. He got hit. It killed him. The car. We all decided that maybe if we took the body to Cabeswater there would be some way to bring him back. Only once we crossed into the forest the spell was broken and everyone remembered what they were made to forget." For now the clusterfuck of emotions, blame and anger would be left out of this story. "I buried the body and we headed straight here to wake you up. Gansey, I didn't plan that part. How he would die. I never meant for Adam to have anything to do with it. I never would have done that to him on purpose. It was just a fucking accident."

He figured Gansey might have questions so he finally shut up and waited.

[safe_as_life]

Gansey tries to sit up, because he can tell something is wrong, but everything still feels too heavy, so he just closes his eyes for a moment and nods. "Okay." Ronan's hand is in his and that can't mean good things, but he wants to know what's going on. He can collect himself while Ronan talks.

When Ronan says he's scared, that's when Gansey forces his eyes open again, eyebrows furrowing. It really is a hell of a confession to make, considering it's Ronan. And then he gets it. Ronan went through with the plan. Whatever the plan was, it happened. This gets him sitting up.

Things start filtering back into his head. Kavinsky and Ronan driving out here, all of them getting high, then things start getting very fuzzy. Even he knows pot doesn't knock a person out like that. They drugged him. "A few days?!" He looks around and Noah steps closer, as if he wants to keep him here a little longer and get him to listen to the rest of what Ronan has to say. Kavinsky, Persephone of all people.... he knows they had to be something big.

The more Ronan tells him, the more he feels like this is a dream. This isn't really what happened. It can't be. Dream versions of him, a storm, car crashes. His face is pale, and he suddenly can't feel his hands. He doesn't know what to do with himself. How could all of this have happened while he was laying here in this bed, sleeping?

"Oh my god." It comes out as barely a whisper, his brain still trying to wrap itself around all of this. He can feel his heart thudding in his chest. "How could you do this?" He shakes his head. "Where are they? Where is Adam and Blue?"

[the_greywaren]

How could you do this? That's all Ronan needs to hear. It's all he can take hearing. Letting Gansey's hand go he gets up and heads for the door. "I'll send them in."

At the door he pauses, strangling the handle in his sweaty palm. His heart hurts every time it beats. This is the price you have to pay, he reminds himself. "You told me to do whatever it took to save your life. I did."

Opening the door he disappears down the hall. Following the sound of voices he finds K and Adam in the kitchen. "He's awake." That's all he has the heart to say. Ronan only paused long enough to say those two words before continuing on out of the house.

He doesn't look for Blue. Ronan starts walking through the fields of tall grass, toward the rolling hills in the distance, hell bent on getting as far away from everyone and everything as he can.

[safe_as_life]

He isn't sure how he's supposed to react to any of this. He's angry, he's confused, he's worried... he can't believe it. Then again, in a world full of magic and dreamers, prophesies and ley lines, of course it's possible. Dream up a different version, kill them to save him. But nothing is that simple. How could they have thought it would be?

It takes a moment for Gansey to realize that Ronan is up and heading to the door, and Noah is standing there looking very scared. "Ronan," he says in a tone that urges him to stop, because he needs to think, and he still doesn't understand what happened. He knows he should, but his brain doesn't want to accept it. "Ronan, wait!" He gets up, but then he's crashing down to his knees, and Noah is there next to him in an instant, getting him up and back in bed.

"He just wants to you live. He doesn't want you to die. You could have given him the favor," Noah tells him, but Gansey is too dizzy to think about that right now.

[liberty_bodice]

She's quieted down with the crying by the time Adam's voice carries into the barn. She's simply sitting there, stroking the backs of her fingers against the big brown beast she was snuggled up to, feeling it shift her legs as it breathed. It was calming, at the very least. Blue remains silent, though. She isn't sure she wants to talk to Adam, even. If someone in her family was involved, the likely culprit was Orla. Second likely was Persephone, because Calla's mouth was far too huge to keep something like that a secret.

If it was Persephone, she doubted Adam was completely without blame. Blue's also having a hard time not lashing out at every single person involved.

But he was retrieving her to see Gansey. That means he's awake, and Blue's on her feet. She balks at the door for a brief moment, looking at Adam, working on some set of words that would give meaning to the moment beyond pulling her back into the group, and then she's running toward the house. She can hear Kavinsky yelling after Ronan somewhere in the distance, and that's some relief.

Blue tears through the house, and stops when she sees Gansey, Noah at his side. Every effort made to keep her shit together fails right them, and it takes her a moment before she's breathing again, and she goes and sits at his other side. She manages a half smile. "You okay?"

[safe_as_life]

Gansey keeps his eyes closed, trying to figure out what to do. He's dead. There's a dream version of him dead and buried somewhere and they killed him. How they even know if that'll save him is beyond him. He certainly feels different, but not in a good way.

He's trying to pull himself together enough to get up and go find Blue and Adam, but then there she is, rushing in through the door and he's never been so relieved. She's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. She seems so composed and together, small smile on her face, managing to sit down at his side before he can even jump up to greet her. He hugs her, holds her close, and he wants to apologize profusely to her. "I'm okay. Are you okay?" He's not okay. He doesn't think he is. He's not sure what he is right now. But he's alive.

[liberty_bodice]

Blue wraps around Gansey tightly, and it's him. He doesn't quite smell like himself, he smells like this place, but he's Gansey and she buries her face against his shoulder. She's glad she scurried in, sat before he could stand. He's been here for a few days. Had to be hell on him, even if he was asleep.

His question makes her choke a little, and she can't lie. She's refusing, absolutely, to lie about any of this anymore. "No." She pulls back from the hug and looks at him, eyes relieved and broken at the same time. Her hand smooths over his cheek, and she shrugs her shoulders. "I think I will be, though." She can be. He's there and hanging onto her and maybe it did work. Maybe Gansey's not going to die now.

She takes a breath and bites hard at her bottom lip. "It's been a crappy day." There's a hint of a sad laugh as she says it, because it's the understatements of all understatements. "Adam..." She looks back toward the door, and Adam's not behind her. "Adam's here too. Adam?" She raises her voice a little. Then she turns back to Gansey, kisses his cheek, and hugs him again. "Not sure I've ever been this glad to see you."

[leylined]

Adam lingers outside of the room, letting Gansey and Blue have their time alone and letting himself prepare to see him. He's still terrified, half-convinced they're all playing him for fools and that what's in there is an empty bed, or worse, the body of his friend laid out so that he's forced to acknowledge his crime more than he has. But he hears Gansey's voice, and then Blue calling him in, and he can't just stay here. Even if this is the last time they ever lay eyes on each other, even if Gansey comes to hate him, he needs to see him now.

He heads into the room with wary eyes, and when they're cast on his friend, his tension breaks. He doesn't care if Blue is there to see, he runs across the room and practically tackles Gansey in his bed, his hug fierce and full of everything that he can't say aloud, reaching around to hug Blue as well, savoring their warmth, their breath, their heartbeats. "You're alive." His voice is thick as he burrows his face into Gansey's neck. "You're alive."

[safe_as_life]

He can't even imagine what they've been through the past couple days. Few days? He's not even sure what Ronan told him. It's all a jumble in his head now. He remembers something about a spell. Cabeswater. He remembers telling Ronan that he trusted him.

"I'm so sorry," he says quietly, watching her face. She looks exhausted, eyes red, hair disheveled. He wishes he could take her pain away somehow. "I don't even know what to say. I can't believe...." There was another version of him running around. He can't believe it. "I'm glad to see you too." But it doesn't hurt the way it's hurting her, because all he did was sleep.

When Adam comes in the room, Gansey looks up and over at him, and he can see that same kind of pain in his eyes too. Pain and turmoil that eases just the slightest when he looks at Gansey. The massive hug is unexpected, but not unwanted and he throws his arms around Adam as well, hugging him back, then hugging both of them. It's a reunion, but he missed the part where he was gone, and he feels oddly out of place. "I'm alive. I promise you, I'm alive. "

[liberty_bodice]

"Don't." She can't hear Gansey apologizing for things he had no control over. It wasn't his fault that Ronan deceived them all. She shakes her head and stares at him, trying to make him know this was in no way his fault. "It's over now. You're here. It'll... get better."

Blue's bowled over with the hug, an odd noise that was somewhere between tears and laughter coming as she rubs Adam's back and hangs on tight to Gansey. He really is there, and talking to them. Blue opens her eyes and pulls back some, smiling as best she can at Noah, then she's watching Gansey again like he's the best thing she's ever seen.

And yet, still, inside, she's mourning the Gansey who died today. It's a very unsettling feeling she doesn't think is simply going to go away because he was a dream thing.

[leylined]

Adam stays there, sobbing lightly while also laughing into Gansey's neck. This time it isn't from hysteria but relief that this horrible day isn't the end of everything. He stays like that for a long while, refusing to let him go and letting the pain that's been plaguing him leak out like a lanced wound.

At last he does pull away, letting himself actually look, and everything comes back once more, the sight of his friend up against his windshield, blood everywhere.

He flinches.

He laughs again, trying to feign the same relief he'd shown earlier, but it rings too false. "I'm glad to see you're okay." It's true, of course, but his eyes don't meet Gansey's face, avoid Blue entirely because he knows she'd say something if she saw the look there. He stands up then, tentatively running a hand through Gansey's hair before starting to walk away. "I'll. I'll give you guys your space." Go back, part of his mind tells him.

He keeps walking. Out of the Barns, past Kavinsky and Ronan, and away from everything, through the rain and the long walk back to Monmouth.

[safe_as_life]

He doesn't know if it'll get better, because he still doesn't quite understand what happened. It hasn't sunk in yet. All he knows is that he died, but he didn't, and these two in front of him had everything to do with it, because they were forced to. Part of him knows that it was all his doing, too. He told Ronan to do what he had to do. He can't let his friend take all the blame.

But right now, having Adam and Blue in his arms, everything does feel like it'll get better. "It'll be okay. We're all here, I'm okay, I promise." He doesn't know if it's true, but he wants it to be, so he's saying it. "Are you both okay? I feel like... well, I've just been laying here. I don't even..." He shakes his head, watching Adam. He knows that laughter is more pain than anything.

When Adam gets up, ready to leave, he's not having any of it. He gets up and tugs Adam back to them. "You think after all of this, I'm letting you out of my sight? Stay. We're going to figure this all out. I feel like I'm completely in the dark here."

[liberty_bodice]

Blue's doing her best to keep it together. Gansey's there and that's what matters now. She'd have to deal with whatever was going on in her head independent of this moment, because she needs to be close to Gansey and being a sobbing mess wasn't going to help anyone with anything.

She watches Adam try to leave, and Gansey stop him. It feels like everything is splintering. Whatever places they'd all slotted into were the wrong shapes at the moment. And Gansey is completely in the dark. "I'm just... really happy to see you." She sits back a little, watching Gansey, watching Adam and seeing that pain on his face that some part of her feels.

Blue pulls Gansey's hand over into her lap, and holds onto it with both of hers.

[leylined]

Adam jerks with the contact and almost pulls his arm away, a scathing comment on his tongue before he can even think about it. Don't fight with Gansey. He gulps and lets out the tension in his limb, but doesn't bring himself to look at Gansey. He can' with the fear of reprisal of those images. When he asks if they're okay, Adam shakes his head. "No. I. I killed you today." He shivers as he says it. "I don't think I'm okay at all." He doesn't sit. He just stays where he is, ready for Gansey to let go so that he can get out of there. Run away from this.

He lets things lapse into silence. Not sure what he can say that wouldn't make things worse. not right now when everything is still so raw and right at the front of his mind.

[safe_as_life]

"I'm happy to see you too..." Gansey starts, but he's cut off by Adam jerking, almost away from him, like its all too much. It is too much. They both look like they are falling apart and Gansey doesn't even know where to begin with all of this. Suddenly he feels like he wants to run away, too.

"But I'm right here. You..." You didn't, he wants to say, because it isn't fair. It wasn't him who died, and yet it was and everything is a god damn jumble. "Adam..." He doesn't want to let go. He doesn't want to let go of either of them. He's scared of what will happen if he does. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry you had to go through that. I'm sorry I wasn't there. Damn it." He looks at Blue, then back over at Adam. "Please... there must be a way we can work through this. Adam, I don't want you to be alone right now. Lets just all go back home."

[liberty_bodice]

"Gansey, this isn't your fault at all." It's Ronan's, she wanted to add. She wonders how much they were all lied to by Ronan Lynch, someone who purported himself above lying. Lies, all of it. "Don't apologize. This is just... hard." Not even two hours ago, they were planning a date. Since then, Gansey died and lives again, and he has no memory of a single thing that happened between the two of them, let alone anything else.

It's hard for Blue to sit there and not feel like she's completely in the wrong too, when it comes to Gansey. She watches his mouth, knowing what it's like to kiss him, and wishing she could then, but she can't. Too much risk, if all of this was for nothing.

Adam hit Gansey with a car, and now he's sitting here and talking to them. She doesn't blame Adam for wanting to run. "Adam, stay." She looks away from Gansey's mouth then, turning her eyes to level at Adam's shoulder. Some part of her blames him, and doesn't all at once. Everything is wrong and painful, but the only two people she doesn't hate in all this were there in the room, and them leaving, going away... It would make her break again.

She doesn't want to break again. And she can talk to Gansey later, when everything calms down. It would be a long, strange conversation.

[leylined]

He sighs and sits back down on the bed then. He can tell what Gansey was about to say, and he's glad it was left unsaid. By now all the things that had gone down in the past few days have returned clearly, and he wants to pretend for a while longer that he didn't contribute in his own way. That to ensure that even the universe itself was fooled that he'd tethered the shadow to the original. A part of Gansey, the real Gansey, may have died and it's his burden to bear on that end.

It's selfish, but Adam's decided that after tonight's events, he deserves to be selfish, at least for now. Until Blue figures out what extent Persephone helped out, and how the two of them figured out a way to help without anyone knowing.

His phone blares then, and it takes him a minute, but he fishes it out of his pocket and glares at the name of the sender. Finally he checks it before shoving it back in his pocket. "Lynch says there'll be a ride here for us in about an hour."

[safe_as_life]

"Isn't it? It's just as much my fault as anyone else's." But he doesn't know how much he wants to get into that right now. Blue and Adam have had enough. He knows he can't put more on them right now. He wants to know everything, but he doesn't think he can or should drag it out of either of them.

He's glad Adam is staying though. He can't handle another person running away from him now, when he's been out of it all for days. "How many days has it been?" He can't help but ask, because as much as he wants to tiptoe around, he needs answers, too.

Gansey checks his phone as well, furrowing his eyebrows. "How did you all get here?"

[liberty_bodice]

"No. It's not your fault at all." Any conversations Ronan and Gansey had had were mysteries to Blue. She's in the dark about more than revealed to her already, and will defend her misdirection to the end right now. She wants to blame Ronan, but more, she doesn't want to be assigning blame about anything. Blue would rather focus on Gansey being alive.

"About a week. Kavinsky came and picked us all up after... everything and we went to Cabeswater. And that's where we remembered. Well. They remembered and told me what... happened." She can't look at him then. She lets his hand go and picks at her broken nail polish. "And then we came here to get you."

Blue glances briefly at Adam, then back to her fingernails. Someone was picking them up. That meant they'd head back to Monmouth. "I think my bag is still in the Pig. I'll have to get it before I go home."

[leylined]

Adam nods along to Blue's words, confirming everything she says. He feels trapped, but he stays where he is, knowing that him running off would only cause the others to freak out in turn. And maybe that's enough to keep him calm and out of the worst of everything for now. He keeps trying to clear his mind, but it doesn't work.

He looks up at Blue at that request. "Can it wait?" He doesn't want to see any of it, not his car, not the Pig, not even the site.

[safe_as_life]

"A week.... good god. A whole week? I was just..." He looks toward where Noah was standing, but he isn't there anymore. At least he was here with him the whole time. He remembers what Noah said about the favor. It might have been better than this. "Kavinsky? Right, of course. So you all thought I was..." He doesn't even want to say it. Eggshells. So many eggshells.

"Where's the Pig?" He asks, before he can stop himself, as if a car should even matter right then, but it does, because everything feels so far removed from him. It feels like this is suddenly not even his life anymore.

[liberty_bodice]

"Had I known..." She picks her nail polish off her nail, one thumb against the other. Had she known, she would've ruined all Ronan's plans and woken Gansey up, had nothing to do with the dream version of him, wouldn't have kissed him. And then this Gansey would still have a death sentence. Was her vision from the tree null and void now? She has to go back and see. Not now, though.

Now it's figuring everything else out. "On the road between Fox Way and Monmouth, last we saw it. You'd... He'd picked me up and we were headed back so you... he could change." She trails off. It's all too complicated. It was Gansey, but this is Gansey and Blue feels like she betrayed him in the worst possible way. Adam's question gets a shrug of her shoulders. "If I don't go home, yeah. My keys and stuff are in there, but... I can sleep on the couch at Monmouth."

[safe_as_life]

"Neither of you noticed that it wasn't me?" The last he remembers, Adam was away. Ronan and Kavinsky had done this all under everyone's nose. Gansey knew it was coming though. He knew, when Ronan has mentioned it. He knew that Adam was upset about what they were doing, too.

He wants to ask about the car accident, but he sees the look on Adam's face and he can't. And then Blue starts going on about this other version of him, and how he picked Blue up, and he wonders what else might have happened in that week. "Sleep wherever you're most comfortable. We'll get you there. I have to speak to Ronan before we leave, though. He ran out of here before I had a chance to talk to him."

[liberty_bodice]

Blue's guilt spikes when Gansey questioned if she knew it was him. "It was you. Something screwed up my memory, or I would've known." The minute Gansey tried to kiss her without a care in the world, Blue would've stopped him, if she'd had her head about her. She'd have known something was wrong. And Gansey would still have a death sentence.

It was hard to be happy about that part of it. "I should've known." She murmurs it quickly and quietly, and then gets up off the bed. "Go talk to Ronan, then. Car'll be here soon and I'm sure that's not going to be a quick conversation." Blue reaches over and touches his shoulder, something in her checking that he's really there, and then she steps out of the room in the hallway as tears decide to start again.

She's very much done crying in front of them.

[leylined]

"I...wasn't there for the switch. And we didn't remember anything until we went back to Cabeswater." Why they were there hangs heavily in the air. He drops his gaze from Blue. "None of the fights. None of the visions, or plans. We. There was nothing. We were all happy." And he feels awful for saying it, because things had been so tense for so long. Gansey deserved to be a part of all of that, to forget that he was doomed and that Blue's true love was doomed, and that his only care was to find Glendower.

He watches her go, and he pats Gansey's leg lightly. "She'll be fine. It was just...a rough day for all of us."