now it's in the past and i'm stuck here.

[nightmarist]

WHO: Residents of the Meadows & OPEN to visitors
WHERE: The Meadows outside De Chima
WHEN: Throughout June
WHAT: Day-to-day encounters at the magical farm commune.
WARNINGS: Look to the subject headers.
NOTES: This is a mingle/catch-all log. Start your own threads! Tag around!

[The Meadows, being a place largely created from magic, has a subtle strangeness to it. From the outside, it could be taken for any old Appalachian farm: scattered barns and stables, a lakeside castle, a roomy wooden farmhouse, a 19th century stone chapel that some hoodlum graffitied. There's evidence that the farm is occupied by unsupervised teenagers, too, in the donut tracks that mar the grass and the remains of regular bonfires. As long as the monsters are out of sight, everything seems ordinary.

Once inside the farmhouse, however, the odd discrepancies become more apparent. The layout of the rooms doesn't quite match how the house appeared from the outside. There are windows where windows shouldn't be, stairways like vertical mazes to secluded rooms, and views from rooms that look into other worlds entirely. Half of the appliances work without any source of electricity, fresh coffee's always waiting in the pot without anyone having to brew it, and the refrigerator never seems to run out of leftover pizza. Things are simply wrong about the place, for all the cozy warmth of its design.]

Comments

[disentombs]

Gansey blinks a few times to be sure he isn't seeing things but Ronan is right there. Likely Adam wouldn't be home yet and so he can't feel for Adam's emotional signature at this point anyway, but he can feel the bottom drop out of his stomach.

Gansey takes out his device and flips through, attempting to send a text to Adam but he simply freezes when he can't.

[nightmarist]

This is a punishment, Ronan thinks. This is divine punishment. This is God ripping the heart out of his chest and leaving him to suffer without it. For months, for years, forever maybe.

"He's safe at home," Ronan assures Gansey, catching the stricken look on his face, though it's really for his own benefit. "It's fine. He'll be fine. He's just going to college." There's nothing left to hurt Adam there. There's just the rest of his life, which will be better than it's ever been.

Ronan reaches out to the table beside him, as if he's going to brace himself against it to stand up. But his hand changes its mind halfway through the action, sweeping the table up by its leg and sending it careening across the room with a violent crash.

[disentombs]

Gansey weakly reaches out to bring Ronan's hand down. They both know that won't help with anything, but Gansey also understands Ronan's distress. He won't protest Ronan's coping mechanisms too much for the moment.

"He is. We know that," also assuring both himself and Ronan. They both are from far ahead of when Adam was from so they know.

The grief and guilt from Ronan overwhelms him.

"This is not your fault, Lynch."

[nightmarist]

"Save it," Ronan snaps. There's no doubt in his mind that this is his fault. His only comfort is the knowledge that Adam will be infinitely happier back in their world, and that the only one suffering here is Ronan himself.

And he can do that indefinitely. He's an expert at losing and mourning. That's all his life has been for years now.

[disentombs]

Gansey pulls hands away from Ronan, unsure how much of his attitude is being upset Adam is gone and how much is Ronan thinking what they did together resulted in losing Adam.

"You know the process is random."

[nightmarist]

"It's not random. Just because we don't understand the pattern doesn't mean it's random." Lachesis is a sentient being. Her choices are based on something. And Ronan's certain he's the one who swayed her. It's always Ronan who ruins things. That's his cycle.

[disentombs]

"Then if we can't understand the pattern, likely it means there's no obvious trigger for it. It would have been recognized already."

Gansey's sick thinking about Adam being gone, but surely someone would have noticed if having sex with an ex behind their current partner's back was a trigger of some sort for sending people home. Surely.

When Ronan is like this, he knows Ronan wallows in despair. Gansey wants desperately to take that away, but seeing as Ronan may be blaming him partially for this happening, Gansey has no right to take it away entirely. Instead, he takes the edge away, stopping the self-loathing and depression from swallowing him whole.

[nightmarist]

It's a good thing, too, because Ronan was gearing up to put his fist through a wall. As soon as Gansey begins to work on him, though, Ronan's head dips and fatigue overpowers his misery, leaving him tired instead of angry. He slumps over, putting his weight against Gansey, laying his cheek on Gansey's shoulder.

The demon had once shown Ronan how awful he was, how much trouble, how leavable. The Unmaker may be long gone, but Ronan remembers all that it had whispered into his mind, and the truth of it. He hadn't even understood, back then, how true it was. It settles over him as a numb understanding, that he is a thing meant to be alone. In their world and in every world.

"What am I supposed to do?" he asks Gansey, because he knows he should die now, but he's not allowed to.

[disentombs]

Gansey gladly holds up the full weight of Ronan. He'd much rather this than Ronan going off and possibly hurting himself in the process of grieving. He steadies Ronan against him, wrapping an arm around him and pressing his cheek against the top of Ronan's head.

"Going on as you have before," he mutters, his own misery coming far secondary to Ronan's. "We don't know how long he'll be gone. He may do what you did and come back in a few days, months having passed at home."

[nightmarist]

"I don't want that for him," Ronan murmurs. Though he wants nothing more than Adam's presence, home is a better place for him. It's where Adam can start living the life he's been working toward. "He's free there. And he's happy. I hope he never has to be here again."

But without him, Ronan can't go on has he has before. Adam was the stabilizing force in his life, the one person capable of metaphorically and sometimes literally holding Ronan together. Without the bargain, Ronan hadn't grown independent of Adam. They'd become equals. They were partners, halves of a whole, and now one half is missing.

[disentombs]

Gansey maybe selfishly doesn't share the same feeling. "He will be fine regardless of where he is, home or here."

Of that, at least, Gansey has no doubt.

He wants badly to help with the hollow, empty feeling from Ronan, but he knows no one but Adam can alleviate it. All Gansey can do is support him as best he can.