abraxaslogs | let's pretend we like each other [ closed to Ronan Lynch ]

Entry tags:

let's pretend we like each other [ closed to Ronan Lynch ]

WHO: Hennessy & Ronan
WHAT: Hennessy has a few questions
WHEN: After the jailbreak
WHERE: Castle Thorne
WARNINGS: will add as they occur

All things considered, Ronan Lynch is possibly the very last person that Hennessy would have expected to be able to get her out of jail using his words rather than his money or, failing that, some dream nonsense. She's more than a little disappointed to learn he's siding with the people who were content to accidentally kidnap her and then let her rot, but she's reluctantly conceded that alive is better than dead.

She's also had time to eat, sleep, bathe, and change clothes since she'd sworn to behave herself. It's enough to remind her that she actually likes existing when everything's not awful. She can't remember being the sort of child who'd ever wished to go to magic school in a big old fancy castle, but she can concede there's a certain appeal to the idea. If the mages can help her. If she hasn't just passively committed herself to something worse than ending the world.

She's been sitting in one of the room's large windows and admiring the view while Ronan did Ronan things, but there are several elephants in the room that she can tell they're both trying to navigate around. Might as well get it over with.

"So. Which fight did you want to have first?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

At the moment, Ronan doing Ronan things means he's practicing his arcane magic, like a proper student at a magic school in a big old fancy castle. Bent over a spellbook — which is itself a dreamt forgery of an identical book residing in the library — he's been studying the same page for a long while now. Whatever he's trying to do shows no signs of success yet, because no matter how many times he's gestured at the air, nothing happens.

It's possible he's failing because his mind can't stay focused on the words in front of him, drifting every other minute back to Hennessy. Hennessy, existing in the same world as him. Hennessy, sitting right over there. Hennessy, close enough to hold. Close enough to strangle.

Because she's expecting a fight, Ronan's expression is perfectly serene. When he looks at her, even his frustration over the difficulty of the spell has slid off his features, leaving his brow free of wrinkles and his mouth ponderous rather than pinched.

"I don't wanna fight you," he tells her. "I never wanted to."

Hennessy has mostly refrained thus far from making any snarky commentary about his attempts at wizardry. Mostly. She refuses to name the envy that threatens every time she glances over there, lest it turn into the kind of curiosity that will consume her. She doesn't need to be casting spells, but she wants to. Just once, before this, too, is taken away.

"You sure? You seem awfully stuck on the idea that I tried to kill you, so I thought you might want to finally have it out about it."

It's not as though she deserves to have her actions interpreted more charitably, considering how she went about them, but it needles her that he keeps saying it.

"You know what happens to me without the ley line," Ronan utters as his eyes return to the book, his fingers tracing the ink on the page. His voice is low and strangely calm. Like Bryde's. "It doesn't take weeks. It doesn't even take days. Hours. How many hours did you give me? Not enough to make it back. Not enough to say goodbye to my brothers or Adam. Definitely not enough to make it home one last time."

He looks out the window, at the sky, and then he looks at Hennessy again. "My dad died next to his car, too," Ronan says. "He took maybe a step or two before it happened. Of course, he left a body. I'm not sure there's gonna be anything left of mine. There was hardly anything left of my mom. If you don't know what you're looking at, you'd never think it was a person. If anyone ever finds me there by the side of the highway, they'll probably think it's a puddle of oil or some shit. The blackest, blackest oil. Hose it down. Wipe it away. 'Here lies toxic sludge. Requiescant in pace.' Don't bullshit me. Don't tell me that's not what you were trying to do. You knew what would happen and you did it anyway."

Hennessy bites down hard on the inside of her lip to keep any traitorous words or tears at bay. She can't make this better and for once she'd prefer not to make it worse, since he keeps defying her attempts to make a clean break. She doesn't have the right, she feels, to grieve the friendship she's lost -- because his forgiveness is unfathomable and she doesn't want it. She'd just like to stop feeling miserable about it.

"I would have found a way to get to you before that happened. I don't even know how long that thing I dreamt will work."

It's what she'd told herself, anyway, when the flicker of doubt entered her mind despite Liliana's assurances that it would be okay. Liliana hadn't promised her Ronan's life. She'd only offered Hennessy her own.

"I said I wanted to stop."

It's a little defiant, once she can bear to meet his eyes again. She'd told him. He hadn't listened.

"Yeah," Ronan agrees. "You said you wanted to stop. So I let you go."

Slowly — because he's not trying to startle her or even intimidate her — Ronan picks himself up and drifts closer to Hennessy without closing in on her. He folds his arms, hugging himself loosely, regarding her with a grim expression.

"You do remember that, right? I let you go to Jordan. I let you stay behind. I could have dragged you away from the rose garden, but you stayed there, and I let you, and you didn't stop, Hennessy. That's not what you decided to do when it was all up to you, when you finally had your choice."

He takes another step closer. "You joined them," he continues, his voice dropping to an incredulous whisper, like he still can't believe it. "You didn't want to stop. You wanted to stop me."

She's on her feet in an instant anyway, rising to meet him with her own quiet fury close to the surface now that it seems she might get the fight she'd asked for.

"That doesn't mean I agreed to murder you."

How little he must think of her, to draw that conclusion so completely that there's no room to hear her side of the story. He's still not really listening, just like he hadn't listened when she'd said she wanted to stop and she'd meant she wanted them all to stop. She'd fallen for the lie that they were in it together hard enough to assume he'd hear her when she asked.

"I went with them thinking they were going to kill me and it was still a better option than the fucking Lace getting out. Bryde didn't care if it ate me. You might've, eventually, once you stopped to look back. If you ever did."

"I promised I'd keep you safe from the Lace," Ronan shoots back, his arms dropping to his sides as he faces her. "You walked away from me. You. I never turned my back on you. I would've done anything to help you."

And she knows that. That's the most infuriating part of all this. He never failed her, yet she could never put her faith in him. Somehow she'd found it easier to turn to the people who'd slaughtered her entire family.

"You decided you'd rather die? Fine. Why didn't you, then? You went with them thinking they'd kill you, and then they didn't, and what did you do next? What did you do for them? What exactly did you think would happen when you destroyed the only thing keeping me alive? Don't give me that bullshit about how you would've found me. Found me and then what? You killed dreams, Hennessy. You killed everything that could've saved me. If you'd even been able to find me before I was gone — if — then the only thing you could've done was watch me die in front of you. Do not tell me you didn't know that when you made your choice. I was in your fucking head."

She stares at him like she can't believe he's actually this stupid. He'd seen her nearly be unmade by whatever magic-killing field is down in the dungeon, and he still thinks there's an option that ended with him dead that wouldn't also take her down, too. What would be the point of trying to save herself if that had been her goal?

"I went there thinking I was going to die either way, and they told me none of us had to. They've got a psychic who's like a million years old when she's not a teenager and she's seen a way this can play out. No. More. Dead. Dreamers. That includes you and me, because if you somehow missed my graphic demonstration yesterday, I still have to dream to live and I can't do that if the ley line's broken forever."

She wouldn't have dreamt something that's a death sentence for him, or for her, or for Jordan, because if the ley magic is gone then she can't imagine how they'd ever wake the dreams up.

"They told me there was a chance for us to live, which didn't seem like it was going to happen if we managed to end the fucking world."

By the end of her rant, she's nearly shouting at him, only keeping it down because she doesn't want Kylo or the prison guards to come see what all the fuss is about. It feels better and worse than it ought to all at once, somehow.

Ronan isn't shouting. He hasn't even raised his voice. And he only gets quieter now, allowing Hennessy's words to meet silence. It's not hard to see Bryde's influence — or, rather, Bryde's origin — in this Ronan who no longer needs to argue with words. Hennessy knows what she did. He doesn't have to drive the point further because her guilt is already there, eating at her, no matter how hard she fights to defend her bad decisions.

"I would forgive you," he says after a good long moment of staring down at her, letting her simmer. "Even if you meant to do it. Even if you decided to die and decided to take me with you."

Because he failed her. As her teacher, he failed her. It had been up to him to show her the beauty of everything they could be and he hadn't managed to do it.

"But I hear you. You're telling me that's not what went down. Fine." Ronan reaches for her, tentatively, to lay his hand on her arm. He's not going to hurt her. They're not on the battlefield anymore. "That means someone told you a lie. And you believed it. I don't blame you for wanting it to be real. No more dead dreamers. A boring, ordinary life. Goddamn paradise. Yeah, I get it. But you got played. You sent me into the dark and I couldn't find my way out. The only reason I'm still here is because Ambrose reached into that fucking abyss and pulled me out of it."

She knows. Deep down she'd known that Ronan was collateral damage however this ended, whatever lie she'd told herself in the moment to make her willing to make that leap. But she knew this, too: he couldn't protect her from the Lace. Not forever. Not if he met the same fate all Dreamers seemed to. Not if he got tired of her shit like everyone else. So she'd leapt, willing to believe a lie if it meant she could just be a person and not a ticking time bomb.

She flinches ever so slightly as though his touch burns her, but she doesn't shrug him off immediately. Instead, she silently searches his gaze for any hint of deceit, knowing she won't find any and hating him a little for that.

"Fucking Catholic boys," she manages at last, her lower lip trembling minutely in a way that forces something like a smile to cover the traitorous emotion.

"Fine. I accept your forgiveness on the condition that I get to say I told you so when Ambrose tries to use us to blow up this world."

She's not capable of I'm sorry; the words might be actively toxic to her. But it's as near as she's come in a while for anyone. She supposes it's only fair given how many times he's saved her life.

Ronan doesn't expect a real apology from Hennessy, because he doesn't think she regrets what she's done. He's no fool. He knows she'd do it again in a heartbeat, and every choice he makes going forward will have to compensate for that risk. Still, he can't just abandon her. Her betrayal is different from Declan's or Adam's. Ronan understands the fear she's been living with for a decade now, the torture of sleepless nights, the impossibility of peace. He understands why she would believe there was only one option.

He gives her arm a light squeeze before releasing her. She's still afraid of him, and that's okay. He's getting used to wearing everyone's fear as his armor.

"Don't get me wrong," Ronan says as he retreats from Hennessy, wandering to the window now. "I don't work for Ambrose. I'm learning from him and the other mages here, because who else is there? But I'm not his little soldier boy."

She'd do it again, and she'd be sorry about it. It's not an either-or.

It's not really that she's afraid of him. She's afraid of what she is with him, and of how much he already possesses the ability to wound her. She's not sure when she handed that over, but it had happened without her knowing it somewhere before he'd almost died in the backseat of the Burrito and she had to go find him asleep in a damn magic tree.

At least if she killed him, she couldn't be blindsided by the loss.

Bored with her daily contemplations on death, she crosses over to where he's left the magic book and picks it up, curious as to whether she'll even be able to make heads or tails of it. For all she knows it'll bite her, or at least be written in some arcane cypher. That doesn't mean she won't make fun of it.

"You don't work for him yet. What do you think he's going to ask you to do in return for access to his library of the Dark Arts here?"

Edited (broken spacebar my nemesis) 2021-10-01 04:05 (UTC)

"I already know what he wants," Ronan replies, dismissive of the concern as he surveys the castle grounds below through the warped glass of the windows. "It's not obedience."

There might be others within the castle walls who would want it, would want to keep a dreamer as their golden goose or weapon of mass destruction. But Ambrose hadn't even used the talismans Ronan had gifted him freely. No, the High Mage wants something else.

"We can do things they can't do. I'm not talking about dreaming. I mean physically, we can do stuff they wouldn't survive. We can get close to the Singularity without dying. We can astral project ourselves into the Horizon. We've got the keys to Wonderland. He wants to learn from us as much as we wanna learn from him."

Ronan turns from the window, stalking up to Hennessy, and looms behind her as he eyes the page over her shoulder. "It's not as hard as it looks," he assures her. "Not even for you. This magic won't turn on you like dreams can. It's straightforward. All wrapped up with a pretty little bow. The mages here aren't like you or me. They've got everything tamed and under control."

Hennessy has a lot of catching up to do, clearly. She'd been too exhausted to parse much more than the basics about the Singularity and the Horizon as they'd been explained to her, and she's still nowhere near ready to trust that they're not being used as guinea pigs at best.

She has to admit, though: learning to be an actual wizard sounds like a cool thing to cross off one's bucket list. If there's even a chance it's worth the cost, she'd be stupid not to take it. She squints at the page as though that will make it sound less improbable, and then scowls at what she interprets as a hint of condescension.

"Gee, thanks. Not that hard, even for the girl who can't dream right to literally save her life. Better make sure they put that one into their recruitment brochure."

There's no real bite behind her words anymore; this is where she's comfortable. She flips through a few pages anyway, curious as to what's even theoretically possible within the realm of successfully tamed magic. What would possibly appeal to the Dreamer who could already have anything he could imagine?

"What were you trying to do before?"

Ronan looks so pleased that she asked, his features softening into something like a smile while his eyes grow sharper, the way they always do when he has the opportunity to demonstrate something. He gives her a little space, not because he doesn't think he can control his magic but because he doesn't want to startle her.

"You remember my storms," Ronan says. It's not really a question. Of course she does. He'd carried them around back when they were battling Moderators, tempests exploding out of a single drop from his bottle. "I'm trying to learn how to do that without dreaming."

His hands dance in an elaborate gesture and the smell of ozone fills the air only seconds before sparks light from his fingertips. Electricity shoots back and forth between his palms, crackling more loudly than seems warranted for such contained bolts of lightning.

"I've got this part down." That much is obvious. He's paying more attention to Hennessy than the lightning between his hands. "I just need to figure out the rest of it. The wind. The rain. Fucking with the air pressure enough to make it grow. Maybe it'd be easier outside, come to think of it."

Her eyes widen as his gestures produce a tangible result this time, all pretense of being disinterested dropping away for a brief moment before she realizes her mistake. She can't be this easy to win over with shiny things.

"Not bad."

In Hennessy-speak, that's as close to fucking awesome as anyone's likely to get for a while.

"As hilarious as it would be to watch you set your bed on fire with your own lightning bolt, I'd rather not have the wizard police knocking on our door, so yeah, I think we should take this outside."

She doesn't notice she's said we, as though things were actually okay between them. It would be so easy to just let them be. No one had died. The world hadn't ended. It was a problem for future Ronan and Hennessy, if they ever went back. It didn't have to belong to them here and now.

Ronan notices it. We. A small word for such an enormous concept, somehow capable of containing both of them. We. Two dreamers, two galaxies tangled in each other's gravity. Hennessy had fought so hard to pull away from him, severed him like a gangrenous limb, but that isn't what he is, and that isn't what they are. She can feel it even if she's not ready to admit it. They are one universe, complete.

We.

The sparks fizzle out as quick as they appeared, no damage done. "I already wrecked this room once," he says, spreading his arms in a wide shrug. "They didn't give a shit. I mean, they made me fix it, but accidents happen."

He would assure her that they're not dealing with the Moderators here, and that no one will put her to death for being who she is, but he can't actually make that promise. She would be dead already if he hadn't negotiated her freedom from the dungeon, and Ronan can't even blame Ambrose for putting her there, because his evaluation was totally correct: Hennessy would destroy the Singularity if she could. Ronan is the only one here who's agreed to take that risk for the chance of changing her heart.

"Do you really want to?" he asks. "Go outside? I can show you how to do it."

Hennessy knows where she stands with the people in charge. It's not all that difficult a calculation for her to make; she won't let herself be unmade behind bars. With that off the table, she might as well learn enough to at least have a solid shot at defending herself if the time comes in which she has to -- whether from Moderators or mages or the Lace or Ronan himself the next time he decides the world looks better on fire.

She doesn't even entirely disagree with him on that front, which makes it hard to keep up a fight she doesn't stand a chance of winning here and now.

"Sure, why not. It's hardly the worst idea I've had this week."

She's already halfway out the door by the time she finishes talking, dropping the book back onto Ronan's bed in the process because she's not gonna read all that. But she pauses to ask the other burning question that's come up in the meantime.

"Please, please tell me you dreamt a bunch of two-headed frogs into the surly behemoth's bed?"

Ronan scoffs, "That would've been a hell of a lot easier to clean up."

But he doesn't especially care to get into the details of what it was he did dream up. Hennessy will see right through it. She always does. She has a way of digging out his insecurities and infecting them with her own special brand of gloom. She'd done it with him and Adam, and worse still, she'd been right. If she hasn't figured it out already, she'll put together what he's done with Kylo and then she'll fucking —

Ronan takes a breath. No, he's not going to do her job for her. He doesn't have to let paranoia eat away at him. She's not going to turn Kylo against him, because she can't, and because she won't, now that Ronan can help her really understand magic.

"What do you wanna learn first?" he asks her as he leads the way down the stairwell. "It doesn't have to be lightning. I've been practicing a bunch of stuff. We can figure out something new together."

Hennessy's not saying a word. Sure, his answer earns a snort and a pointedly raised eyebrow, but she's absolutely not making any of the many, many snarky comments about exactly what kind of mess he might've made. It's not the fight she's interested in having, not since she's still feeling some kind of way about telling Jordan she wished she'd die. Jealousy isn't a good enough look on her to be worth the damage.

She considers his question seriously on the way outside, at least temporarily setting aside the petulant desire to smash whatever stubbornly remained of their friendship. She's the picture of restraint. Really.

"Does it have to be elemental? Or can we try something like we did with the Burrito? Something to encourage people not to notice me so easily?"

It's probably funny coming from someone who dresses specifically to command attention, but there's a strategy behind it. If they're looking at her clothes they're not noticing anything that might actually betray her intentions. She wants to direct attention, not merely draw it.

"I like the way you're thinking."

Rather, he likes that Hennessy's entertaining the question. Ronan isn't particularly thrilled by the prospect of an invisible Hennessy, because an invisible enemy is — as they've both already proven with Burrito — the most dangerous kind of enemy. Their car had been impossible to perceive and therefore impossible to defend against. If Hennessy truly learns to conceal herself, he'll be as helpless against her as the Moderators were against the three of them.

He's already promised to help her, though, so he takes a detour at the landing to make for the library. He's not a huge fan of books, himself, but he couldn't possibly memorize every spell that's ever been developed.

"There's gotta be something that'll do the trick," he says as he kicks open the door to the library. "We just have to dig."

She's not stupid; she fully expects him to be willing and able to counter anything he's aware that she's learning. The time will come when keeping him in the loop is no longer in her best interest, but that time isn't today. Invisibility is one of the least aggressive things she could have gone for, all things considered.

She picks a shelf and runs a finger along the spines of the neatly arranged books, reading off topics as she goes.

"Scrying... sigils... lesser summoning...? I've changed my mind. I absolutely require a tiny little demon to keep me company and tell me all about hell so I'm properly prepared for when I go there."

Her sentence ends up in a slightly sing-song tone that's indicative of nothing so much as her own distaste for silence, and the fact that poking around an actual magic library is a little too weird for comfort even if her curiosity is well and truly piqued.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

let's pretend we like each other [ closed to Ronan Lynch ]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject