Chasing leaves in the wind // closed

[dauntless_son]

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.

Comments

[photophobic]

"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.

[dauntless_son]

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.

[nightmarist]

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..."

[photophobic]

Without the tug and flow of the Force guiding his focus, Kylo barely hears Ronan's voice. His attention, all of it he has available to him, is on the figure straightening up from a crouch on the ground— right where he needs it. With his senses pared down and supplying only such basic, immediate information, he doesn't have anything left to spare.

If Declan won't leave, Kylo's mind supplies him, if he can't or won't stop, then he has to be stopped. The threat ends with Declan unconscious and unmoving. Nothing less.
And so this time, no longer offering an alternative, Kylo hurls himself at Declan not with the intention of driving him off but taking him down, his arm swinging heavy for a brutal blow to the jaw.

[dauntless_son]

Declan can't duck out of the hit entirely and his head rings when a fist slams into him. While Kylo goes for his head, Declan punches hard at his ribs. He can't stop Kylo's momentum, either; regardless of where or if the blow lands, they run into each other and Declan loses his balance. The most he can do is twist them away from Ronan so that when they hit the ground, it isn't on top of his brother.

He kicks hard and immediately tries to get back to his feet.

[nightmarist]

This is going to be a more difficult fight than Ronan anticipated, now that he can barely move. Declan is an excellent boxer, like all the Lynch boys, but he's no match for Kylo alone. Even if Kylo's essentially fighting blind.

"Stop," Ronan cries again, louder and sharper this time, as he hauls himself to his feet. For several reasons, this isn't a fight he should get in the middle of, but he's pretty sure the worst outcome is what they'll get if he doesn't.

He uses what little strength he has left to throw himself between them, foiling Declan's attempt to get the fight away from him. He can't do anything for either of them except get in the way and take the blows meant for both of them.

[photophobic]

Reality shrinks in to little more than the span of a heartbeat. The shock and hiss of pain, the gathering, building and loosing of strength, over and over and over, impact after impact, the interlocking physical mechanisms of his body all serving the one, singular goal. Everything he has left, to break this hold over him. He'll do anything. Endure anything. He wrestles Declan to the ground and holds him there under his furious weight, fully intending to trap him under a wild rain of blows until he's subdued all resistance— but with all his focus on the struggle he's easily blindsided by Ronan's interference, soon tangled up in his tightly coiling grip.

He thrashes against Ronan's hold long after his efforts to put his fists through Declan's face become largely futile, rage masking his agonised distress.

[dauntless_son]

Declan pulls his next blow as soon as he realizes Ronan has launched himself into the fray. His knuckles are sore and he knows they'll swell and bruise; everywhere Kylo has landed blows hurts and the pain is grounding.

"Ronan. Jesus Christ, please--"

He hauls himself out from under the enraged body on top of him and watches, as much as he can by starlight and rising moonlight, as Ronan holds on to Kylo. He wants to intervene, he wants to drag Ronan away. But he can at least recognize that Ronan is trying to calm the thrashing man down.

Declan doesn't move far. He manages to sit up, tastes blood in his mouth and spits it onto the grass.

"Tell me what you need." He says it to Ronan because that's the answer he needs, the one that matters to him. Declan keeps an eye on Kylo, anticipating the moment that he might break free from Ronan and come at him again.

[nightmarist]

"Kylo..."

It feels miraculous that he's even managing to hold on. Ordinarily, there's nothing that can keep Kylo contained when he wants to be free, yet here's Ronan - injured, no less - with nothing but his arms to hold Kylo back... and he's succeeding.

For now.

"Kylo," he pleads. "You're hurting me."

If Declan gives them what they need, then Ronan's pretty damn sure Kylo will kill him in the process of shaking him off. He can't take another hit from Kylo at full power.

[photophobic]

The only thing Kylo needs is Declan and the separation he brings with him gone— and it's that single-mindedness of purpose that keeps him fighting until Ronan's voice draws his attention to what exactly it is that he's fighting against.

There's a flash of betrayal at the realisation. A sick, lurching moment, where in his blinded and numbed isolation he can't feel Ronan's choice. All he has is that plea, and Ronan, holding him back while Declan refuses to leave. Ronan is hardly the sword in his hand now, is he.

"He attacked me," Kylo bites back, the heat of the accusation almost enough to burn out the traces of the one underneath.

[dauntless_son]

"No, I didn't." Declan's voice is tight. He wants to step in and relieve Ronan, but getting any closer to Kylo at the moment seems like it would do more harm than good.

"I think it'll stop if no one comes at me again." He directs the comment more to Ronan, if only because Ronan is the only other person to have seen his file. He wants to add, it would help if you stopped hurting Ronan, but he doesn't.

The moon starts to creep over the tree line and the light doesn't do much to illuminate the damage they've done to each other, but it's enough to see by. Declan looks at his brother. awash with concern. He can be angry later.

"Can we at least get Ronan inside?"

[nightmarist]

"Fuck off, Declan."

Ronan doesn't need to be inside. He needs Kylo to see him again. Now that there's something like communication between them, Ronan stops wrestling with him and reaches for his face. To bring them forehead-to-forehead and calm him.

"I know it hurts," he assures Kylo, his voice shaking with adrenaline and the sharp pain that cuts short every breath he takes. "But it's an accident, and if you kill him, we don't know if we'll lose everything along with him. He just has to stop being afraid, like before. Right? Be with me now. Hold onto me until you feel me again."

[photophobic]

Everything is wrong, hollowed out and crushed flat. Words are just words. Touch is no longer an invitation. Nothing, while Ronan shivers through his reassurances, feels real. He might as well be watching a recording of Ronan trying to soothe him, one of those empty television dramas that never quite work, for him.

But the words are still true. Aren't they? Ronan hasn't become a liar simply because Kylo can't press into his mind to be certain. Kylo sets his jaw, focusing on the physical sensation of his teeth crushing together. His heart, pounding. The sharp pain where Declan landed a particularly hefty blow.

If Declan won't stop until he's no longer afraid, Kylo could be trapped like this for some time. He's given Ronan's brother every reason to fear further attack with his reactions. He regrets none of them.

[dauntless_son]

Declan becomes a silent sentry through this process. He watches, he listens to the way Ronan talks to this man.

For all that he has every reason to be afraid of Kylo Ren, Declan will not let himself stay that way. Ronan needs him to stop if only because Kylo needs it to stop. He doesn't entirely understand what he's seeing beyond the obvious tenderness his brother is offering up, but obviously being cut off from whatever power Kylo has is enough to induce blind rage and panic.

Every breath makes him aware of a new bruise. But he breathes deep, tries to find something to focus on to work himself back down. It worked with anxiety, why not this?

He's tense as the dampening field around them starts to lift, prepared for Kylo to decide to come at him again. Declan's more aware of it this time, how it feels at it recedes and what he becomes aware of as it does. Lights in the dark; Ronan and Kylo.

Declan realizes he can hear Chainsaw as the rest of the Meadows wakes up again. He remembers, in a flash of sensation, how it felt to cradle that bird in his arms.

[nightmarist]

With all of his attention fixed on Kylo, Ronan doesn't notice the precise moment the effect begins to lift. He only feels the tension in Kylo's jaw beneath his palms, the pulse at his throat, the heat of lingering rage where skin touches skin.

He doesn't say anything more for a while, because he's used to the easy silence between them, but when he realizes that silence must feel like emptiness to Kylo, he whispers, "You're mine. I'm yours. You have me."

[photophobic]

Connection returns like the slow burial of a snowdrift in reverse, a sweet, blessed relief that soon slides past comfort and into a broad crescendo of pain— Ronan's pain, thudding through his senses. Kylo's eyes widen, his hand lifting— but he has nothing to offer but a light, almost tentative touch, fingertips skimming Ronan's jaw.

Then, as his hand drops away, he turns his head to level a very tight, furious glare at Declan.

He is not, as far as Kylo is concerned, welcome here.

[dauntless_son]

Declan plays through all the ways this could have been different. Possibilities that splintered off moment after moment. He runs his aching hands through his hair and tries to think of what damage control might look like. The scenarios are considerably few, and most of them end the same way.

He meets Kylo’s fury with a dead-eye stare. He is not solely to blame here, but he doubts that is how Ronan will remember it.

The way Ronan talks to this man unnerves Declan and at the moment he can’t articulate why. His head is still ringing. He is not entirely sure that he doesn’t have a minor concussion. He’s going to have to either take off work or hope he doesn’t look as bad as he feels.

He waits to hear Ronan’s verdict. He is the beginning and end of all of this and, unlike the Barns, Declan can’t claim any kind of right to be here.

[nightmarist]

But Ronan doesn't give the verdict. He follows Kylo's gaze to Declan and immediately returns his eyes to Kylo, waiting. Nothing has changed in the hierarchy between them, even if Kylo briefly mistook him for a traitor.

The one thing Ronan won't do is stand by and watch his brother be killed. Anything else? That's for his master to decide.

[photophobic]

Kylo can feel it, of course. Ronan, looking to him, waiting for his judgement. It's soothing in a way nothing else could be, calming the remnant of his earlier panic— already such a twisting, confusing memory that his mind makes little effort to catalog it. How could a three dimensional object process the experience of being crushed back into two?

He examines Declan, instead, staring him down, matching him to the vague shape he occupies in Ronan's memories. The complications of a dynamic he simply isn't equipped to understand, having never had a protector, unwanted or otherwise.

No. He can't, Kylo reminds himself, destroy Declan Lynch without destroying part of Ronan, too. The damage already done speaks to that.

"This. Is my home," Kylo begins, his voice much thicker, now. Stronger. Richer. "And I told you to shut that off, or leave."

[dauntless_son]

It takes two seconds too long for Declan to realize that Ronan is deferring to Kylo. Something in him sinks and even as Kylo speaks, Declan is looking at his brother. His jaw tightens and releases, biting back words that will not help if they're said.

"It's stopped," he says quietly. If Kylo hadn't felt the need to charge at him like a fucking bull, it would have stopped much sooner. But he doesn't say that, either. Some bitter part of him whispers that he should not be surprised by Ronan's silence. Every time Declan thought something might change, something might be different, it's only changed for the worst.

Declan gets up; the last time he'd been hit this hard was in his dorm at Aglionby, courtesy of the Gray Man looking for the Greywaren. And Ronan is sitting there, not even looking at him, waiting for someone else to decide how this goes.

He meets Kylo's gaze. His judge and jury.

[photophobic]

"You didn't shut it down," Kylo snarls at him derisively. "I did."

Which is one way of looking at his decision to trust Ronan and endure the indignity until Declan's fear of immediate reprisal died down, and absolutely the one Kylo has chosen. The only alternative he sees is that there was no accident, and that Declan remains an active rather than reactive threat.

[dauntless_son]

Declan doesn’t look moved by the claim that Kylo ended this. What the hell has Ronan attached himself to so completely?

“Whatever you say.”

Ronan still isn’t even looking at him. Can’t be bothered to speak for him. Enduring indignity is nothing new for him; neither is the feeling of being let down, of being thrown under the bus to deal with whatever problem arises himself.

God, he’s tired.

The solution to his possibly involves balming Kylo’s pride or dignity, but Declan can’t muster anything that would sound sincere. He swallows his own pride, pushes it down to join his ulcer. If he’s exiled tonight, how long before Ronan speaks to him again?

“I’m sorry for... putting you through some difficulty. It wasn’t my intention. Didn’t even know what my file really meant before tonight.”

The delivery is as smooth as it can be.

[photophobic]

Kylo might, possibly, have even less patience for smoothly delivered lines than Ronan does. Unimpressed with Declan's attempts to placate and manage him, Kylo holds him with a piercing stare before dismissing him completely, turning his attention back to Ronan.

Pained, winded but obedient, faithful Ronan.

"If he does that to me again," he murmurs in a low, dangerously steady tone, "I will kill him. You wanted him spared. So you tell me. Do you want him here. Now. Or can whatever it is you want with him wait until he's learned some control. To listen, when I tell him to leave."

[nightmarist]

It's a warning, not a threat. Ronan understands that. If it happens again, the consequence won't be a decision Kylo makes. It will be a reaction. There's no negotiating with it because it's a reflex. Ronan can't get on his knees and beg him to reconsider when consideration doesn't even come into play.

"I think that's the wrong question," Ronan replies, his voice straining with every labored breath. "You'll have to kill me before you kill him. I promised I wouldn't put you through that again. So it's not about what I want. It's what has to happen until one or both of you can stop yourselves."

[photophobic]

Is there a reason Ronan won't tell Declan to leave? Kylo's eyes narrow in irritation. Behind him, still hovering despite having been warned, threatened, attacked and shown in every possible way that his continued presence will not be tolerated, Kylo can feel Declan— he's practically radiating a particularly wet, miserable concern. Can't Ronan see it? Can't he tell that Declan, for whatever reason, is still here because he's waiting to hear Kylo's command come from his brother's mouth before he'll accept it?

He's growing increasingly tired of the blatant disrespect.

"I've told him to leave," Kylo says, tightly. "He's still here because he thinks you want him here. That you need him here. That's why he's risking another accident. He wants to hear it from you."

Declan hasn't demonstrated the slightest interest in listening to anyone or anything else, after all. And for what? What is he hoping to gain? What is he hoping to achieve?