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

[nightmarist]

Ronan doesn't say another word to his brother. He doesn't fully believe Declan's leaving, either, and waits in tense silence along with Kylo, listening. He waits for Declan to arm himself and return, to put up a stupid fight. But when Kylo exhales, Ronan understands it must mean Declan's really gone.

Ronan looks at him. He takes Kylo's hand and draws it to his heart, cradling it the way he always does. Everything hurts so much that he's shaking, but he can ignore it a little while longer. He can take a beating a lot better than he can take Kylo's doubt.

[photophobic]

"Ronan," he begins, not really knowing what he wants to say next— but in the end, it doesn't matter. Ronan's trembling, and Kylo can't stand it. A strain or a struggle are one thing, and Ronan frequently makes his beautiful to watch, but this suffering is an unearned punishment. He draws in close, but not close enough to crush their bodies together.

"I know," he promises. And he does, now. Should have, all along. He lifts his hand to cup Ronan's face, cradling it with all the tenderness he forgot as he murmurs in unnecessary observation: "You're hurt."

[nightmarist]

Does he know? Ronan has never felt himself disappear so completely in front of Kylo, not even when his physical reality unraveled - because then, at least, Kylo had begged him to exist.

Is he nothing? Ronan Lynch without power. Did Declan make him nothing, even to Kylo?

"I've been worse."

It's not like he needs this body, anyway. Ronan leans into Kylo's touch, waiting for the invitation. It'll be easier to get back to the farmhouse as one, and anyway, the union will be a comfort to both of them. There's probably nothing Kylo wants more than the reassuring strength of Ronan's magic. And Ronan...

He would rather not be Ronan for a while.

[photophobic]

Kylo's hand stills. Ripples of Ronan's misery spread through him, joining with the fear native to his own heart, his own nerves, adrenaline still surging through his blood.

He doesn't know how to banish either. The only thing he ever learned to do with fear and the pain of being nothing worth saving, of being nothing of value to counter the threat of his power, was to transform it into anger— and he is furious, still. Just not... not with Ronan. Declan did this. Declan blinded him, cut him off from everything beyond the hideously inadequate prison of his own physicality— a vehicle Kylo had never learned to pilot manually. Ronan could have been pulsing glorious with all the magic and power in the universe and Kylo wouldn't have been able to see it, let alone touch it.

It's frustrating, sensing the argument for his own worthlessness Ronan draws to himself when all Kylo can feel is how vitally important he is— not his magic, but his choice. How could he explain? How could he put Ronan back where he belongs, right at his centre? Perhaps only like this.

"Come back to me," he says, his thumb running lightly over Ronan's cheek, as if wiping away an invisible tear. He breathes out, slowly, his welcome a fully conscious decision. He needs to feel Ronan join with him, not to banish a lingering fear of powerlessness, but of abandonment. And maybe, Ronan needs it too. "Come back where you belong."

[nightmarist]

Ronan nods. A near-imperceptible movement, felt more than seen.

And just like that, there's no Ronan anymore. The scent of distant chimney smoke, the melody of a half-remembered song, and then the illuminated branches of Kylo's veins as magic courses through them. The dream nestles safely in Kylo's mind and all misunderstanding becomes impossible because this one is no longer separate from Kylo's thoughts. It's just another one of them.

[photophobic]

There he is. There. Kylo's very favourite thought, sliding through the tangle of all his buried hopes and insecurities to curl into the hollow, desolate space Kylo had set aside for all the rescues that never came and declare it home. Ronan, shedding his humanity, becomes the life-giving relief of water to desperately parched lips. Air to burning lungs. Light in the darkness. Help for the abandoned. Change to the inevitable.

And as it settles into place, this beautiful idea that causes all Kylo's impossible struggles to shift their shapes until they can accommodate two, the certainty of Ronan's existence as a being who chooses to stand with him in full knowledge of everything he is becomes something Kylo had never been able to find on his own: a belief in a way out.

He draws in a shuddering, steadying breath, stoops down to retrieve Ronan's sword from the mud, then turns back towards the farmhouse. It won't be easy, no. But they can do this. Together, they can accomplish anything.