maskormenacelogs | Chasing leaves in the wind // closed

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Chasing leaves in the wind // closed

WHO: Declan Lynch

dauntless_son + Ronan Lynch and Kylo Ren
WHERE: the Meadows
WHEN: January 9th-ish
WHAT: meeting the... family?
WARNINGS: Lynch Family Trauma, violence

I. The birds all left my tall friend

Declan doesn't ask Ronan for a car. It doesn't even occur to him to ask a dreamer for anything. He rents one in the city and follows memory out to the Meadows. He shouldn't have any memory of how to get there, but Ronan said it was where the Barns should be. So he knows. Declan doesn't know if he's disturbed or relieved when he finds it. There's flickers of familiarity - some of the out buildings that he can see from the driveway, fields of cows (none of them sleeping as far as he can tell), the shape of things.

But the house is different. That's the first jarring thing that disrupts any sense of deja vu. Declan slides out of the car and just stands there for a moment, taking everything in. He's just come from work and his staid black pea coat covers an equally staid gray suit. Black gloves, black scarf to ward off the familiar evening chill.

He's about to head toward the house when a flash of light through the trees catches his attention. Ronan's always dreaming light... Declan follows the flash and realizes that there's more than one and that the way they move is very deliberate.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There's very little Kylo enjoys more than training with Ronan. He loves to put him through his paces almost as much as he relishes the opportunity to fight with someone, rather than simply going through the motions of form— he loves the rush of surging forward and driving him back.
It should be noted, however, that Ronan isn't so easily subdued, these days. He wields his sword with growing confidence, meeting Kylo's fluidly relentless attacks with increasingly competent defense— even surprising his teacher on occasion. Which is as it should be, and a point of pride rather than anything else. Ronan's improvement is intensely gratifying.

A lot about training with Ronan is intensely gratifying.

Kylo whirls forward, his blade slicing a bright red arc through the chilled air that lands heavy into Ronan's blocking defense, though the lock is imperfectly placed. Even without Kylo's superior physical strength, Ronan's put himself at a disadvantage. The sharply challenging light in Kylo's eyes suggests he definitely thinks Ronan could do better.

"You," Kylo accuses, pressing his point home with a smoothly punishing application of his weight into the unevenly levered convergence of their blades, "are dropping your arm."

Though Ronan is more equally matched to him in build than most would be, he's still leaner than Kylo. When it comes to a clash of blades, Ronan struggles to hold him off under the best of circumstances. Dropping his arm was a misjudgment. Trying to muscle his way out of the mistake now is impossible. Even wielding Vexed to Nightmare two-handed, he trembles with the effort.

So he abruptly lets his blade drop further, altogether abandoning the counter in favor of a sidestep with the hope that Kylo has put too much of his weight into that attack.

He can hear the light cutting through the air; it makes him think of the sharp crack that comes as lightning heats the air around it. That's the first thing that triggers unease, the kind of feeling that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. The lights clash, slide apart, clash again.

Declan moves a bit faster through the dark wood, navigating as carefully as he can to avoid tripping or making too much noise. As he gets closer he can see the bodies moving. He hates the rush of adrenaline that comes when he recognizes the choreography of a fight.

And of a party that is possibly losing ground.

Is that--Ronan? He'd recognize the shape of his brother's body anywhere. Jesus. Jesus.

Ronan makes a good call. A smart one, too. Even when simply sparring, Kylo does tend to commit. Heavily. And especially when there's a good chance he can catch Ronan in precisely the kind of trembling strain he has him caught in now.

As the resistance vanishes, Kylo lurches forward— the power of his pent-up surge carrying him forward as soon as Ronan's parrying guard drops— but his own recovery is almost impossibly swift. Fluid and practiced, he makes no attempt to fight against the flow of momentum, making use of it instead. His blade flashes, crackling furious red as he pivots sharply, rounding on Ronan again.

Despite their many training sessions, Ronan's reflexes don't (and probably never will) rival Kylo's. He'd anticipated Kylo's quick recovery, but that doesn't mean his body is fast enough to respond the way it will have to, if he hopes to hold his ground.

He fights almost too silently, most of the time, but the impact of Kylo's blade against his next hasty block knocks a gasped cry out of him that echoes through the woods. It doesn't send him tumbling to the ground - not yet - but the heels of his boots dig and slide in the wet mud beneath them. He's going to lose his footing.

If he doesn't keep guarding, though, Kylo's swing will follow through into a slice that would sever his torso clean in half, if he were fighting for his life. And since preparing for that scenario is the whole point, Ronan defends like his life depends on it, even as he's shaking and slipping further and further back.

It's inevitable, really— Kylo would be a formidable opponent even without the flash-fast responses he employs now. He advances with merciless strength and speed, the twisting flow of his attacks forcing Ronan to parry with an exhausting range of extension, stretching his ability to defend on the left and right to the limit. There's no space, no time to recover. Concentrating on keeping his footing will cost him the ability to anticipate Kylo's next move.

Slipping, in the end, will cost Ronan everything. Kylo drives him back and back, utterly indefatigable. If anything, he seems invigorated with every slip, falter and stumble. It won't be long now. He's closing in, every strike building to one last heavy blow designed to have Ronan crashing to his knees.

The weaving of Ronan's sword carves a ribbon of sunlight into the air, a fading afterimage tracking his increasingly frantic swings and parries. Kylo doesn't even seem to be breaking a sweat, but Ronan's skin gleams despite the cold night air and he can't catch his breath. Is Kylo getting faster? It's like he's taking all of his strength from Ronan's exhaustion.

That final blow doesn't send Ronan to his knees. He slips in the mud and goes tumbling all the way down, landing on his back with a wet smack. The wind's knocked from him and Vexed to Nightmare sails right out of his hand, landing a good few meters away and leaving Ronan utterly defenseless.

Victory flashes in Kylo's eyes. Valiant as it absolutely was, Ronan's fight is over.

Shoulders heaving with all the exertion he hardly felt just a second ago, Kylo looms over Ronan's splayed out, defenseless body, almost as if he means to grind his face into the dirt with a heavy boot... but no. Ronan may have lost, but Kylo hasn't won until he's claimed his prize. And Ronan is, undoubtedly, his prize.

Ronan's enemies would waste no time in carrying out an execution, now. But Kylo Ren, if he were seeking the Greywaren? Kylo would sink to his knees, straddling Ronan's body to trap him there, holding him to the wet earth. Kylo, holding his blade to Ronan's throat, would lean in to meet those furiously defiant eyes.

And Kylo would murmur something like...

It happens with a rush of adrenaline and the abject horror of the possibility of seeing his brother murdered in front of him. Niall's death was bad enough and Declan couldn't even bring himself to--

But Ronan. Ronan.

There's no cry, no yell, no sound to give him away other than the sudden rush through the undergrowth. He has no idea what the fuck he'll do when he breaks the tree line, unarmed and unprepared and everything that he shouldn't be. Because this will never end. Declan almost loses his balance when he feels something pulled out of him.

It happens like falling through the ice. Nothing, then everything. Or the opposite, maybe. Everything and then nothing. A sudden, sharp cut off from whatever power Ronan and his assailant have. Declan can't control direction or intensity or even make it stop. But he feels it. He feels Ronan and whoever is on top of him in a distant way.

What the fuck did he just do?

Edited (typo) 2020-01-12 07:18 (UTC)

This is Ronan's favorite game and he's eager to play it to the end. Despite the ache in his chest and his arms and his back, despite the fact that he's seeing stars and he still has to gasp for air, his lips twitch into smirk as Kylo bears down on him. He's ready to be finished. Holding his breath, he listens for the threat Kylo's about to whisper in his ear...

In the brief silence, he hears something else. All around them, in the woods Ronan has filled with life, things begin to fall. He doesn't even understand what the sound is, at first. Quiet thumps, like snowballs hitting the ground, which Ronan doesn't register as tiny bodies until one bird lands just inches from his face.

With a surge of panic, he reaches up to seize Kylo's wrist, terrified that somehow the training sword has been replaced with the real lightsaber and he's dying for real - dying and he didn't even notice - but the crackling red light's gone dark. Vexed to Nightmare's sunrays have disappeared into the twilight, too.

...If he were dead, would he feel his heart pounding this furiously?

Kylo's eyes are wide, strangely unseeing. It isn't dread he feels, though he'd always assumed it would be a heavy, deafened horror, being amputated from the rest of the endless flow of existence. It's nothing. There's nothing beyond the boundary of his skin, beyond the finite edges of his physical senses. Nothing at all.

Is Ronan doing this?

Belatedly, he stares down at his face— at which point he realises there's nothing there, either. No whisper of intention, no thought, no feeling bleeding out into the shared space between them. Only the performance of fear on Ronan's face.

And Ronan's pulse, shuddering through his skin where they touch.

"Stay down," he hisses, deciding in the absence of evidence that they must be under attack— or at least, that they could be and he wouldn't know.
How can anyone fight when they can't see?

He can hear the quiet thuds of bodies hitting the ground. He knows that sound, it's unique no matter where it happens. If this place is like the Barns, he wonders if they might be dream things. The only other sound Declan can hear for a few seconds is his own breathing.

The last of twilight is starting to fade across the sky, and beneath the treeline dark settles. Declan can't fight well when he can't see, but it's one of those things he's prepared for. The Gray Man had been hell for his paranoia, but good for preparation.

With a slower breath, Declan pushes himself up from the tree he'd fallen against. He listens; he thinks he hears a voice.

"Ronan?" There's a flicker of hesitation in his voice. Ronan has to be alive. He has to be okay. He thinks he can make out the shapes of bodies still heaped on the ground. Darker against the dark.

The magic throughout the Meadows may have gone into hibernation, but Ronan Lynch is very alive.

"Declan," he growls, all of his relief turning instantly to fury. Of course it would be Declan snooping around in his woods, setting off nullification like a bomb.

Which, it occurs to Ronan with some delay, must mean that Declan had thought there was reason to set off a nullification bomb. And possibly, given all that Ronan has learned about his brother in the past year, that is not the only weapon Declan is armed with.

At that thought, Ronan pushes himself up with a renewed but different fear, trying to put his body between Kylo and the approximate location of Declan's voice. If a bullet's going to land anywhere, it'll be in Ronan's back. "It's my fucking brother," he tells Kylo before shouting over his shoulder, "Turn your shitty power off!"

Without access to Ronan's thoughts and fears, Kylo can't quite understand what Ronan's doing, at first. Declan, the brother Ronan had mentioned had arrived, hadn't been presented as a potential threat— and Ronan had absolutely neglected to elaborate on any powers he might have at his disposal. Particularly ones that would potentially leave him vulnerable.

And he is, he realises, vulnerable. Not necessarily in a brawl, but...

That's what Ronan's doing. He's blocking the path of a bullet.

Does Ronan believe his brother is here to kill him?

"You are going to make me a fucking list of anything else I should expect," Delcan snaps when he realizes Ronan is fine. As soon as his brain and body catch up to each other, realizing there is no longer a need to prepare to fight or flee, his knees feel weak. Now that he knows Ronan is okay, Declan is furious. How difficult would it have been to answer his fucking phone at some point in the last thirty six hours? To check his messages?

Declan hates surprises.

He stays where he is, hand on a tree as he watches movement in the clearing. He's losing the ability to make out even the outlines of bodies but he knows generally where they are. Had Ronan just put himself between Declan and whoever is out there with him? He isn't sure if he's offended or concerned.

"I don't know how," he says after a moment. Declan looks at the ground and tries to get his heart and his breath back under his control. Maybe if he just calms down it'll stop.

Edited 2020-01-12 09:08 (UTC)

"You don't know?"

At least it doesn't seem like Declan's going to make any further attempt to come to his rescue. Ronan's shoulders sink as he turns back to Kylo, who's being suspiciously quiet and still. In the dark, it's hard to get a good look at him, but Ronan strokes his cheeks in apology and assures him, "It's okay. Declan's just an idiot."

Kylo can't feel Ronan. Anything. Nothing is okay.

"If he can't turn it off," he bites out, stiff and furiously irritable, "Then maybe he should leave."

Because Kylo knows one way to turn it off for him, and blinded or not? He likes his chances a lot more than he suspects Ronan would like the outcome.

His jaw goes tight and he can feel the familiar roil in his stomach, the anxiety that comes with something being out of his control. Something important. Declan wants to argue that he's been here for three days and this is the first time he's experienced whatever getting here did to him outside of reading about it in his file. How is he supposed to know what triggers it or how it works? How can he prepare himself when he has no idea what he's walking into? How difficult would it have been for Ronan to--

But he doesn't say anything.

Declan pushes his fingers through his hair. He is not helpless in this situation. He can do something. But how does he make it stop?

"I'm not leaving."

Whatever he did is already starting to break up. When an angry-sounding little bird streaks past his head in the dark, Declan assumes that Ronan is getting his power back. It lifts like a fog, dissipating slowly and then gone altogether.

His heart is still pounding and he's angry with himself for thinking this world would be different in principle. This is why he kept a gun under the driver's seat in his car. But he isn't armed right now and he still doesn't know the exact situation he's interrupted. Ronan's talking to the person with him. He doesn't sound like he's in pain.

Declan pushes away from the tree, moving into the clearing toward Ronan's voice and straining to listen to everything else. Movement, breathing, voices. He hates this so fucking much.

Edited (i stg i can write words) 2020-01-12 19:28 (UTC)

Ronan knows Kylo well enough to know where that fury is likely to lead. Unfortunately for him, without the Force's aid, he's not going to win against two Lynches at once. The arithmetic leaves Ronan with no concern for what Kylo might do to Declan, but an increasing fear of what Declan might do to Kylo.

"Don't hurt him," Ronan calls out. Not to Kylo. To Declan, whose approach he can hear more than see. He obviously doesn't expect his brother to obey, though, because he's still shielding Kylo when he turns around, arms spread wide. "That's some fucked-up shit, Declan. You freaked the hell out of us."

Past-tense, like he isn't still freaked out. Ronan can't feel magic returning, and Vexed to Nightmare remains dark as long as it's out of his hands. The woods may be stirring, but are they Ronan's creatures or natural animals who've just been disturbed?

Don't hurt him?

Kylo's fury only builds as Ronan makes a plea for his protection, blinded rage boiling under his skin with nowhere to go. He's stranded, caged in his body with nothing but his anger. Nothing but his violently pounding heart and the sharp-edged tearing of breath after breath from the cold night air.

Which is why, the second he feels anything beyond, he bursts out— his will exploding outwards in an indiscriminate tidal wave push as the blade in his hand crackles back into life.

Don't hurt him? What does Ronan think he's going to do? He can see the vague outline of Ronan with his arms out, a shield, a saint demanding that swords be laid down.

"I freaked you out? Jesus Christ--"

Declan doesn't know what hits him but it knocks him to the ground, hard. The blade ignites and as adrenaline dumps into his system, his power manifests again. The curtain of it falls and the menacing red that had been illuminating Kylo's face goes out.

Alright. Okay, he can see how this is going to be beneficial. He still doesn't like it, but it's useful, and utility matters more than anything else. Declan gets up slowly, more ready this time.

"Ronan, are you okay?"

He'd gotten a slightly better look at the other figure and Declan braces himself on the off chance that what follows next is a blind attack.

Edited 2020-01-12 21:39 (UTC)

Ronan is... not okay. He'd been a lot closer to the blast than Declan and it hit his back like a lash, sent him flying several feet, and left him face-down in the mud. For the second time in five minutes, the wind's knocked out of him, and it hurts a lot more this time. Choking and sputtering, he drags himself up onto his elbows but can't find his voice yet to give Declan an answer.

The sound of his struggling may be answer enough.

"Get. Out," Kylo snarls furiously, grip on the hilt of his deadened sword tight enough to crush it— if he had the strength of the Force to draw on.

Half-blinded and agonised, Kylo's far from the threat he usually is— but Declan could be forgiven for thinking otherwise as his oversized bulk turns squarely in his direction, fixing his eyes on the shape of his silhouette. He isn't about to give up, especially now he knows it's possible he might regain his power any minute. He's fought while bleeding out, too weakened with conflict to call on the strength of the Dark Side before. He'll fight now.

Two problems, two directions. The snarl lets him know where Kylo is; the choking sound lets him know that Ronan's at least getting some air. There's a body coming toward him and Declan has no intention of taking another sprawling hit.

He darts to the side and forward. Where did Ronan land? He makes for the silhouette still on the ground and nearly skids past him on the damp leaves. Declan crouches down and manages to get a hand on Ronan's back, then his arm.

"You gotta get up. Come on."

Declan tries to keep his attention split because it's not going to take long for the brick of a man charging around to figure out where his voice is coming from. Fuck fuck fuck. He has nothing here to even improvise with.

He stands straight again, anticipating the next rush and thinking fast about how he wants to take it. Declan knows how to take a beating, he's not afraid of that. Thanks to Niall, he knows how to give one back. And he can't leave Ronan while he's down.

Ronan is trying to get up. Between that Force attack and the beating he took during training, his body feels like one giant bruise. As he pushes himself up on his arms, his back protests so sharply he's sure he's broken a rib or three. He manages to get on his knees, but he stops there, still fighting to breathe.

"Kylo," he gasps. "Stop. Just give him a minute..."

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