maskormenacelogs | so deliver me from evil 'cause the little things relieve us.

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so deliver me from evil 'cause the little things relieve us.

WHO: Residents of the Meadows & OPEN to visitors
WHERE: The Meadows outside De Chima
WHEN: Throughout September
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 home to 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.

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Ronan's omniscience, such as it is, doesn't manifest in ways that are nearly so convenient. He's alerted that there's someone at the door when he... hears a knock at the door. Lying on the sitting room floor surrounded by a nest of esoteric Latin literature, he'd been about halfway to dozing when the sound stirs him back to waking.

Visitors are rarely there for Ronan, so he doesn't bother to get up. Instead he shouts, "It's open!" and shuts his eyes again, striking a funereal pose with his hands clasped over his chest.

Though he hesitates for a beat, Finn still very quietly opens the door and pokes his head in. It very much feels like an invasion, like Ronan must have thought he was someone he wasn't or something. He still goes ahead and walks on in, anyway, shutting the door behind him.

The house isn't what he expected. Honestly, he didn't expect anything except for the interior to match the exterior in proportions. Instead, Finn gawks for a second before walking to the nearest doorway, preparing to call out again.

And that's when he spots Ronan. "This a bad time?" he asks, standing awkwardly in the doorway.

Ronan's brow creases in mild confusion as he registers that voice, his eyes opening once more to look at the doorway from sort of an upside-down position. Whoever Ronan was expecting, Finn is not that person. In fact, he can't puzzle out a reason Finn would be here. As far as Ronan knows, he and Kylo are typically enemies and the animosity between them is only tentatively suspended.

"I would've ignored the knock if it was a bad time," Ronan says, propping himself into an approximate sitting position that suggests he might flop over again at any moment. He squints at Finn. "Did someone die?"

If a visitor drops by the Meadows unexpectedly, they're probably looking for a miracle.

"No." Then he realizes what was asked. "What? No." Why is that the first thing that comes up? Was their last meeting really that bad?

... Well, kinda.

"No, no. No one's dead. I just-..." Finn pauses and flops his arms at his side, feeling dumb now. "It's been some time since the whole Death Star crisis. I wanted to know how you were doing."

Ronan appears no less confused, despite the explanation. The mission was a success, so he really doesn't see why anyone would still be worried about him. It would make no difference to any of them if he rolled over and died here and now. Why do they keep asking?

"I'm... fine." God, has he been worried about the nightwash this whole time? Poor Finn. "I was dying when I ported in, so I think I kind of started dying all over again when my nanites got fucked. Talk about a stupid-ass oversight."

Oh. Yeah, that's an issue. Finn scrunches his face up, grimacing. "I'm sorry. We pushed it too hard." 'We' as in all of them, including Ronan. There weren't many other options but going up there was still pretty pointless in the end, anyway.

"With everything going on, I don't think I thanked you for it after the fact."

"Me?"

This misunderstanding comes up so often, this whole impression people have that Ronan gives a shit about them. He has no idea why it's developed, because he's certain he makes his general disdain pretty clear.

"I didn't do anything. It was Kylo. I was just gonna get wasted and wait for the big laser show."

Can't take credit that doesn't belong to him.

Wait, what?

"I mean, you both created the TIEs, right? And you were the one that... I don't know, got hurt because of it." Was that getting hurt? What would one call that? "We literally couldn't have done it without you. So, yeah, I'm thanking you."

Perhaps one day Ronan will sit down to explain the full details of his highly perplexing nature to all of these poor lost space people. Communication has never been his strong suit. He at least has the presence of mind not to declare that he had no choice in the matter. That would give the impression that he's resentful of Kylo's absolute power over him, and he isn't.

Instead he blurts the truth more vaguely, "He created them. From me. I'm just the... thing he uses. I do what he wants. Did you at least thank him, too? Seriously, this was all him."

He probably should have in the moment, but Finn isn't exactly in the mood to track Kylo down. That's a mood he's very rarely in. For now, his shoulders fall and he looks a little pensive. "We don't really talk much." Understatement.

"But for all the stuff that's happened back home, I find it hard to believe that he'd do something like that against your will. Or at least not without your full support in the matter. Does he even think it was all him?"

But now Finn's just feeling like an asshole. He showed up to Ronan's place just to frustrate the guy. That's not cool.

Ronan hums a noise of disagreement and seizes upon the opportunity to delay his answer a little longer by gesturing to a nearby chair. "You can sit, by the way." This is not an offer he would make if he was truly frustrated. He likes Finn, even if he thinks Finn hangs around a bunch of idiots.

"The thing about Kylo... No, he wouldn't say it was all him. We aren't alone anymore, in anything, so everything we do is something we do together."

Even now, though Kylo isn't in the room, Ronan is with him. Whenever the urge strikes, he can reach out to Ronan and Ronan will feel him there, too. They're entwined.

"But I'm with him like his lightsaber's with him. Or the Force. I don't say no to him. He points me in a direction and I go. Maybe, technically, a sword wins the fight, but the hero is the one who's holding it. I think what everyone's gotta learn to accept is that Kylo can do something good all on his own, just because he wanted to. If he couldn't have done it with me, he would've done it with something else."

The offer of a seat actually kind of surprised him, but Finn inches over to the chair, anyway. He sits on the edge and listens, staying quiet for a moment after Ronan's done, thinking about it.

Ronan seemed to think of himself as a type of tool, which made sense considering his claim that he was his abilities. A sort of personification of a dream or something like that. But that's not really the point he's trying to make.

"I understand. I guess I could counter that with the fact that he has things here that's worth protecting to him, like this home and you, but love is what drives anyone to do something like that." As Finn sees it, anyway. "But if a lightsaber could talk and have life, I'd probably thank it for saving me, too, no matter who wielded it. The saber wanted to be there, after all..."

Then he goes quiet again, clearly trying to find the words for something as his eyes go distant and his hands squeeze together. "I would probably thank him, too, but... there's history there. I've already started on forgiving him, but I'm not sure I can get much further than where I am. Doubt he'd care for that, anyway. It's not like he wants to speak with me either... But I get what you're saying."

Everyone is so very determined to project an autonomy on Ronan that he doesn't even want. Everything in his life became easier when he stopped fighting his nature. The one thing he's meant to do is also the one thing he can do well, unlike being a hero or a boy or anything with a single will and choices to make.

But he's accepted the reality that humans can't quite grasp the concept of a being that is all things, all at once.

It's easier to talk about Kylo.

"He doesn't want forgiveness," Ronan says. "That's what pisses him off. Everyone wants to forgive him for something he's not sorry about, and when you forgive someone for something they're not sorry about, what you're really doing is blaming them all the fuck over again."

Kylo's perception of forgiveness is vastly different from Ronan's, of course, but Ronan's opinion is irrelevant in this.

"He doesn't want you to think he's good. He wants you to know he's right."

"He wasn't right." It wasn't right to kill Han or torture his friends or strike Poe down for trying to help him. Finn could probably make excuses for what happened to his back (it was a fight that he knew he was outmatched for) or the Hosnian Cataclysm (more of an accomplice considering he used the Order to reach his own ends at the time), but there were plenty of things Kylo did of his own accord that wasn't right.

Finn sighed and shifted, resettling his legs and clutching his hands together. "Maybe forgiveness is the wrong word for it. I know he's not sorry and definitely doesn't care about what I think, even if it wasn't for his sake. It's more of... an acceptance. Moving on from the past and trying to let things go. Not holding on to anger for no reason, but it's a work in progress."

He knew nothing of the Force and didn't claim to. When he was a Stormtrooper, Kylo Ren just was the Force, the dark and twisted and hated side. That's all he was to Finn back home. Here, the monster is much more human. It almost makes it worse.

Finn rubs at his face in one slightly frustrated motion. Trying to parse his feelings surrounding Kylo Ren wasn't very fun. "My views on all this doesn't really matter, though. Point is, I doubt I could talk to him. Even if I could or wanted to, he wouldn't want to speak to me." He's about 99% positive Kylo doesn't even know his name. "That make me some sort of self-righteous hypocrite? Thanking you but not him?" Kinda. Yes. It's not like he should just be able to pick and choose.

Ronan and Finn are actually very much aligned in their thinking. Once, Kylo had asked him about forgiveness, and Ronan had described it in almost those exact words. But Kylo was unable to accept it, and it's never been Ronan's job to change his mind, and that was that.

"I think," he says, "it just means you wanted this to be easy."

Which is remarkable, really, because no one treated Ronan as the easy path until he came to stand in contrast to Kylo Ren, as the softer monster of the two.

"If what you really are is grateful, then your thanks belong to him. But you're half-right: He wouldn't want you to talk to him. He'd appreciate it more if you listened."

A serpent's smile creeps across his face.

"But then you might fuck up your healing process, right? God forbid."

He huffs a laugh because it is kind of funny and stupid. Maybe it wouldn't fuck things up but he certainly wouldn't know how to feel about it. So... yeah. He wanted this to be easy.

Could he listen to Kylo Ren? Maybe if this was before, when Finn believed that he had grown beyond the choices he made back home. But there was what happened here to Poe, and Finn wasn't sure how to look at him now. Not really for Poe's sake, honestly. It was just the idea that maybe Kylo hasn't changed all that much. He wasn't sorry, right? Why should Finn care about what he'd appreciate?

... Okay, so that anger's still there.

"I could probably try it someday. For now, I don't know if it's worth risking me pissing him off somehow."

Somehow, he says, like his very presence here wouldn't piss him off.

"You keep doing that," Ronan observes, somewhere between amused and astounded. "Like you're managing him. You can just say you don't wanna talk to him, man."

It should come as no surprise to Ronan, that the people who defend and stand beside a fearful little man who would have murdered his own nephew based on a hunch would themselves be easily swept up in their own assumptions.

"Stop pretending you know all this shit about what he'd care for or what'd piss him off or what he wouldn't want."

There is, in fact, little that Kylo despises more than someone projecting their assumptions onto him.

"You know what's actually, totally reasonable?" Ronan laughs. "Hating him. You can hate him for what he's done or feel sick about talking to him because you can't stomach what he's got to say. The risk isn't pissing him off, it's him pissing you off. Why the hell does that scare you so much?"

"I don't want to talk to him. That's not a secret." But Finn says it with a laugh almost purely due to nerves. Ronan's right, though. Kylo deserves his thanks, not that the other man likely wants it.

Was it really assumptions, though? Was it even hate? He hated Hux, but Kylo was such a totally different beast. Where Hux was a man desperate to live up to his father enough to subjugate billions like Finn, Kylo... sometimes didn't even seem like a man at all.

His hands end up threading together behind his neck as he bows his head, quiet for a second to think about that. A lot of introspection happening today, apparently. He didn't expect to come here and poke at parts of himself he never wanted to look at again. Probably should have expected it, though.

"He scares the hell out of me." Not that he was particularly keen on elaborating as to why. "I honestly don't know if he'd make me angry or not. I know he pisses Poe off and I couldn't tell you what Rey thinks about him, but he's always just scared me. Not even really sure if I hate him or not, despite the past."

He'd feel funny about admitting that but it's not like Kylo or anyone else would be particularly shocked by the news.

Despite the thorough unspooling of these knotted emotions, Ronan isn't here to judge what Finn discovers about himself. It's denial that Ronan can't abide, the lying that people do to themselves and each other. Maybe that's the consequence of being a creature born out of the subconscious.

"You know what I'm gonna say, right?"

Maybe he doesn't. Or maybe he doesn't want to.

"You're gonna keep being scared of him as long as you keep running from him. What you said earlier about acceptance and moving on... It doesn't happen without facing him, first. If you can't, then what you're doing is ignoring, not accepting."

... Oh. Finn deflates, the revelation washing over him like molasses. He hates it, but it's true. Finn's just never faced that idea before. It's been so much easier to step around and ignore Kylo, ignore the past, instead of trying to face it.

Not that Kylo cares. Again, he probably wants Finn kept at a certain distance from him at all times, same as the rest of the Resistance and Rebellion figures here. But he's assuming that. It's a likely assumption, he knows, but Ronan also has a point with this... listening thing Finn's usually good with.

"You're right," he relents a little while after he realizes it for himself. Then, with a little aggravated huff, "You're right. I need to try. He deserves my thanks, too." And Kylo can sneer at him about it if he wants. At least he'll know then.

"You're gonna be alright, Finn."

Ronan does not idly issue reassurances to anyone who looks distressed in his vicinity. He says it now because he has confidence in that statement. Kylo has no interest in the squabbles of his former universe, no care to bring them here and no desire to seek redemption for it all. If moving on is truly what Finn's after, then he and Kylo have the same goal in mind.

"Thanks," he says with another sigh but he's smiling. "I came over to make sure you were okay, and you ended helping me instead."

At least Ronan seems okay. Perhaps he should have visited earlier to help, but with everything else going on with Aegis and multiple other fallouts, he hadn't really had the chance. Just another guilt for the pile, he supposes.

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so deliver me from evil 'cause the little things relieve us.

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