abraxaslogs | [ open ] let the ultraviolet cover me up

Sometimes. It’s not that she’s struck with the honesty of it, necessarily - she hasn’t ever known Ronan to lie, hasn’t had any reason to think he’s answer in any way but honestly, rather there is something to the word that hints at a larger story. A history to him that she doesn’t not know. What had she told Geralt, once? That happy childhoods made for full company?

“Why?” Because through it, Ronan said have. Like he doesn’t have a choice. Like something is forcing him. It makes sense, that he has whatever energy it is he needs - that the Singularity acts as enough of a source to keep him from that hunger. But there is something in the way Ronan says he has to dream that has Yennefer’s head cocked to the side. “With power like that, I can’t imagine being forced to do anything, so what is making you?”

Ronan answers as nonchalantly as anyone could, "I die if I don't."

There had been a time he'd convinced himself that dreaming was an option. Once he'd gained control over the process itself — the command of his dreams and the choice whether to bring something back or not — he'd actually believed he could simply stop doing it. Turn his back on magic. Find fulfillment in the mundane world. Become an ordinary person with an ordinary life, marry an ordinary man and start an ordinary family, maybe even live to see thirty.

"I used to be able to go for a while without it. Then I started getting sick if I didn't do it once a month. Then once a week. Now I have to do it every day."

Ah, so there it is. Yennefer had been curious, since she'd first heard about Ronan's dreaming, where the balance came into play. Because chaos had always required a price, an equal exchange - energy had to come from a source, the transfer of energy from one thing to the next. And yes, the Singularity was a source, but something about the exchange had always felt a bit off.

Now it made more sense, and Yennefer's eyes light up a bit with the connection. Ronan was a conduit, alright, but rather than one that could choose when to access and use, he seemed to be always open, like a spout for chaos itself. And if he turned it off, if he limited that flow, it would be taken out on his body. His life.

Interesting.

"Would you stop? If you could?"

"Stop dreaming or stop dying?" he asks wryly.

The truth is, he can't imagine life as a regular person. Watching his older brother strive for that existence only heightened Ronan's distaste for it. A quiet life on the farm had once appealed to him, but then the routine became as stifling as high school had been before he dropped out. Looking back now, he can't believe he'd thought the answer to his restlessness could be found in Boston, in a stupid little apartment with his backstabbing liar of a boyfriend. What the fuck had ever made him believe he could be happy tagging along to Harvard parties with a guy wearing a sweater vest and a fake smile? It would have been a different kind of dying.

More seriously, Ronan answers, "When I first learned how to control my dreams, I felt invincible. Everything about it was fucking magical. Of course it was, right? All of a sudden, the whole universe was mine."

Would anything ever feel as exhilarating as the first dream he successfully manifested, start to finish, every detail exactly as he meant it? Dreaming had seemed miraculous back then. It's still miraculous, but after knowing power like that, nothing in the waking world can compare and it's a kind of cage, that awareness. It's a rope around his neck and it keeps pulling tighter.

"I don't want to stop dreaming. I want to never stop dreaming. There's nothing I can't do when I'm asleep. What kills me is being on this side. Awake."

“Wit is rarely the armor you think it is.” She says wryly in return, impatience pulled from her by the jokes. It’s not anger in her, or even annoyance, so much as she senses the comment was - in a way - an avoidance of the truth of this. That Ronan’s body, his life, is dependent on dreaming. She has no concept of the life he’s left behind behind a general sense of it - choosing to not reach forth into his mind on this occasion - and instead takes his tone, his answers, at the value he gives them.

“There is a price to all magic. A take, for all it gives. Did you not have someone to teach you, when you started dreaming?”

Though she supposed she doesn’t have much room to talk - her path to Aretuza had been less than direct, herself. But the idea that Ronan’s powers, these abilities of his to dream and to create and to bring back all that he built - had been without any guidance at all, it pulled a kind of frown from her.

But then there is something to what he says - his words, but also more than that. Yennefer considers him, his stance and his tone and his willingness, without many questions at all, to dream up whatever she’d asked. She leans against the arm of the couch, her elbow coming to rest on its arm, her palm under her chin.

“Why do you wake at all, then? Why not sleep forever?”

Ronan thinks of Glendower in his tomb, rotted to bones. Sleep forever. Sure, it sounds like a good solution. Until it doesn't work. Until the ley line shifts and the enchantment fails and all your plans go to shit. The sleeping king had been nothing if not a warning to him, and the worst part is, everything he'd done to try to avoid that fate put him in the exact position to suffer it.

It's easy, in this magical place, to push away the memory of being severed from the ley line. But it creeps up on him now, the feeling of that final moment, when Hennessy decided to put him to sleep forever.

"I did have a teacher," Ronan says, "and what he taught me was that it doesn't have to be like this. Sleeping. Waking. When I have enough power, I can change the rules. I make reality. Why should I be the one that sleeps?"

Yennefer's brows lift at Ronan's words, at the implications he makes of them. She is curious who his teacher could have possibly been, curious as to what a world looks like when filled with so many types of people who can do what Ronan does. It's exciting, in a way, but there is a kind of double-edged excitement to it. Of a world, full of dreamers, and yet still Ronan is clinging to it.

Enough power, Ronan says.

"And that's where the Singularity comes in to play." It's an assumption, yes, but Yennefer is fairly certain she's right. "You want to use it to change your rules, so you don't have to sleep." And then she nods, as if impressed. As if this world that Ronan plans on making could be interesting, could be worth seeing. "Where does that leave everyone else? The ones who don't dream like you do."

Ronan stares at her for a moment, trying to discern what exactly she's implying with that question. Because she wouldn't be the first person to assume the world he's trying to create would be one that would threaten the survival of the human race. Humanity worked for ages, Bryde said, to take power out of the hands of dreamers and claim it for themselves, destroying the Earth in the name of greed. So it's inconceivable to them that dreamers, in taking it back, wouldn't want to destroy it in their own way. How can humans believe that someone would choose to use power in order to create and nurture? They're incapable.

"Paradise," Ronan answers. "A world where wanting something and having it are just a thought away. The thing you're asking me to dream for you... You'd already have it by now. If you could step into a dream with me, you'd see for yourself how easy it is for me to give you everything you need when the conditions are right."

But maybe that's the problem. Maybe it's always been about envy. It takes a unique sort of person to accept such a change in order.

"Kylo understands."

The value of adoration.

Maybe she was implying that, with her question, or maybe she just needed to know. Yennefer was unused to a world where people did things that did not, directly, cut others down to build themselves up. She was unused to a life where someone wasn’t, at any given moment, actively working to tear her down.

She asked that question because she did not know who Ronan Lynch really was - not really - and something about this conversation made her think she might be able to.

And then he says if you could step into a dream with me and Yennefer’s eyes flash - dangerous, excited, alight, eager - all in a manner of half a breath. “Could you? Bring me into a dream with you?”

Because that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? Access to that magic? Yennefer, and the only one she could trust (herself), having the ability to do what she needed? It’s almost too much to seem possible, too much to open herself up to.

When Ronan mentions Kylo, Yennefer feels a smile tug at her lips. Not quite sharp enough to be a smirk, but something knowing and almost dangerous in its curve.

“That does not surprise me.” And there is something to her tone - not quite adoration, but acknowledgement. Understanding. Of who Kylo is that he would bring about the kind of tone from Ronan as he has. “Kylo understands a great many things.”

Ronan had expected that the prospect of joining him in a dream might excite Yennefer. Who wouldn't want to go there? His kingdom is more beautiful and terrible than anything she might be imagining. If she could see it, she'd understand why he loves it so much more than the waking world, why he'd stay forever, why he'd bring it here.

He's less pleased by the shift in her tone when she talks about Kylo. It's not that he doesn't want others to recognize Kylo's greatness. It's just Yennefer. The way she's acting as if Kylo's recognized and revered something about her, too. As if it's a thing she and Ronan have in common and not the exclusive privilege of Ronan alone, to be seen like that.

He looks away.

"I'm working on it, but I don't know how to do it yet. Bring someone with me. But there's a place I can take you... We need a portal. We'll have to do it when Kylo and his lackeys are around."

Ah- yes. She supposes she did get a little close there. Ronan and Kylo's connection is hardly a secret, and she is more than a little aware of the bristles she can feel from Ronan at where she may or may not be inserting herself. It may not be acting, when it comes to her and Kylo's shared recognition of each other, of similar ambitions, and of course simple attraction. But even she is not so far wrapped up in it to think it's entirely shared - what Kylo Ren and Ronan Lynch have, she genuinely believes, is for them and them alone. Where she fits, if anywhere, is of a making all her own. But she's getting ahead of herself.

"I can handle the portal." Yennefer says, even as Ronan looks away. Not that she has any issue with Kylo being around, she cares less about his lackeys. Kylo may believe in his team, and Yennefer has connections of her own spread out amongst the castle, but she hardly trusts them, and would exactly what them around if they were going to be experimenting with chaos to this degree, but she'll take Ronan's lead, nodding thoughtfully. "Where is this place?"

Portal magic is a difficult concept even for Ronan. I can handle the portal seems like a wildly bold statement to make about a place she's never seen or been to. How would she know where to go? How would she aim it? How would she avoid missing the target by two feet and transporting them straight into bedrock? If she did, would he get sliced in half or crushed into pulp?

This is exactly why Ronan never makes portals.

"In the mountains. As close to the Singularity as I could get without killing anybody."

They each have their strengths. Portal magic was how Yennefer had been introduced to the power within her, had given her escape when she had needed it, had offered her freedom time and time again. Portal magic, Yennefer understood, and while she had kept her abilities somehow muted since arriving - knowing that it was magic that was more coveted, and therefore watched, tracked, and kept an eye on.

Ronan's concerns are not wrong, but this is a space that Yennefer is used to inhabiting, and is not a space she is worried about moving forward.

She nods, once, like a decision being made. As if in spite of the request she'd made of Ronan for today, she already has her sights set on the next time. "Simple enough. I can take us there." And that is that. "But why do you need Kylo's mages there?"

"Because I can't call an Uber?"

He has a feeling his wit will be lost on Yennefer.

"Even if I thought making my own door to Narnia was a good idea, I don't go anywhere outside the castle walls without an escort. Believe it or not, I'm a national treasure and anyone with decent intel could snatch me or put a magic bullet through my skull. Life's easier with a boy band watching your back. I learned that the hard way."

Yennefer blinks, once, unamused. She very much only understood half of that statement, maybe not even that, and she's clearly not catching onto his wit.

"Fine." She says - not unkindly, but more that she's simply not invested. "It is your trip, we can go with the...what did you call them? Boy band? But I can get us there." Because that's an important point she needs to make, here.

She can do it, without Kylo's little lackies following along.

"I mean, if it's as easy as you say it is..."

Maybe she really can teleport them hundreds of miles without any effort. Yennefer is a certified badass. Ronan's seen enough of her in battle that he'd be willing to bet one Yennefer is better than ten boy bands.

"I'm cool with breaking the law. The demonstration will work better if it's just you and me, and anyway, it's not like the place gets heavy traffic."

"Portal magic was the first spell I ever learned. It's more than easy, it's rudimentary."

Breaking the law - that does come into play, doesn't it? Yennefer doesn't seem to mind, or even react, to the mention of it. "It's settled then." A smile, and then a nod. "In a few days time?"

Little do they know the festival is right around the corner, and the schedule will get pushed back. But for now she looks excited at the very concept.

[ open ] let the ultraviolet cover me up

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boy i hope you finished this book

DONT WORRY I DID

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wrapping up maybe? or close to? c: