[ OPEN ] pre-event (until...)

[nightwash]

WHO: Ronan Lynch & OPEN
WHAT: Before (& eventually after) Event #1
WHERE: Room 2 & The Library
WHEN: June 12 - 14 (& eventually June 19)
NOTES: Prompts in the comments! Action or prose is fine.

Comments

[nightwash]

Free is the very opposite of how Ronan feels. They sucked the air from his lungs. They cut off his wings. His fellow dreamer, his own brother, Adam... All of them had conspired to destroy him. After everything he'd done for them. He'd saved all their lives and they repaid him by delivering him to his enemies and leaving him to rot with nightwash. He'd thought he'd been alone when he'd been living a solitary life at the Barns, but even that loneliness can't compare to this.

The only person who believed in him was the one who'd been created by him for that purpose. Everyone else would rather see him dead than see him become powerful. What is it about him that makes it so hard for anyone to believe he can do good?

All at once, Ronan understands what Kylo means.

"I never needed any of them."

[photophobic]

Not too long ago, Kylo had reached out his hand and pleaded with another traveler on the same path to recognise exactly this. Exactly. The rush now is the direct inverse of the frustration he'd felt then as she'd refused to listen to him, wild and heady in its unexpected alignment. Ronan gets it. He sees.

"Let it go," he agrees. "Everything. Everything you tried to do, everything you tried to be to satisfy them. They have no answers to give you. No power over you. They never did."

[nightwash]

What is this place? What world did he invent now, spun from his father's stories and populated with men like this one, urging him to go on even though he's lost everything? Ronan feels dizzy. He shuts his eyes, touching his fingertips to his temple.

Let it go. He's never let anything go. He's not sure he knows how.

"I need to sleep," he murmurs, though what he means is, I need to dream, and he doesn't know whether that's even possible anymore. But the void inside him is growing, starved and yawning. He has to try, at least, or this thing will devour him just like they all hope it will. Ronan lies back, pressing his hand over his eyes.

[photophobic]

"Then sleep," Kylo murmurs.

It will be so much easier, once he can reach out through the Force and push Ronan under. The matter of a moment. Idly, he tries it now— flexing his fingers, attempting to find the flow and strain connecting them to each other— but there's nothing to grasp hold of. Nothing but the low, background hum at the very edges of his awareness, like perceiving shifting levels of light from behind closed eyelids.

He hardly notices how his breathing has slid into synchronicity with Ronan's until he realises Ronan is following him, now, his chest rising and falling at a steadily, smoothly slowing pace.

Kylo knows the dark. If Ronan will let him, Kylo will guide him into it just like this. One breath at a time.