abraxaslogs | [ CLOSED ] i met god and asked him what he wants.

Entry tags:

[ CLOSED ] i met god and asked him what he wants.

WHO: Ronan Lynch & Kylo Ren
WHAT: After Event #2
WHERE: Castle Thorne
WHEN: July 24
NOTES: Mister Impossible spoilers up in here.

It's a dream, but it's not a dream.

Ronan brings nothing back with him. Nothing other than hot shame and feverish memories. He wakes in his own body, empty hands flexing experimentally, unhindered by the kind of paralysis he would expect after dreaming somewhere so powerful. The forest didn't come with him. It feels like it must have, like he couldn't possibly leave it behind, but the place he's woken up is a camp, and someone else has been taking care of his body.

He's unsettled, and the feeling doesn't leave him even after everything's been explained, even after they leave the Singularity behind. He finds himself shuffling restlessly down the castle corridors, avoiding anyone's company. There's a lot to process here, around him and inside him. He doesn't recognize the person he's been since he entered the Horizon.

No, that's a lie. He recognizes Bryde. But he can't look at it yet. He doesn't know what to do with the truth.

And then there's this feeling, too. He'd thought it would leave him once they returned to Thorne, but it hasn't. He can feel the Singularity coursing through him like a surging ley line, the kind of power everyone he loved was willing to kill him over, to keep him from accessing it exactly the way he's doing now. Is this what it's going to be like from now on? Is it endless? He's alive like he's never been alive before. Does that mean he's deadly to everyone else?

Suddenly, it feels like a very bad idea to be alone unless he's going to be the real kind of alone. The kind that puts miles between him and every other living thing. The kind he can't bear.

He searches until he finds Kylo Ren. Ronan hadn't been able to meet his eyes earlier and he finds it difficult to do now, too. But it's not like he can keep dodging the inevitable. "That was some shit, huh," he mutters as he circles Kylo, trying to gauge just how close is the appropriate amount of close after one has extracted a magical bargain from an unwitting victim.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There's a lot going on inside Ronan, and he's not sure it's exclusively the Singularity that has him feeling so charged. Does Kylo know the difference? Ronan feels transparent under that heavy gaze, like Kylo's got him under a microscope and he's teasing out all the molecular structures of him, categorizing him like he's done with those meticulous notes on the table.

"I could never feel this shit before," Ronan explains as he drags out a chair and sinks into it. "My... teacher. He used to get pissed off about it, like I wasn't trying hard enough, but I just couldn't feel this kind of energy outside of dreams. Not unless it was super-charged."

When they're this close, it's impossible to believe Kylo can't sense himself inside Ronan. His mind keeps going to Adam, the day Adam realized what the Greywaren and Cabeswater were to each other, and what his bargain with Cabeswater had meant. You're still just you, Ronan had insisted, but he knew Adam hadn't believed it then, and Ronan isn't sure he believes it now, either. After Bryde, how can he be sure of anything when it comes to what he is or what he does to people? No wonder Adam wanted him dead.

He sucks in a breath, like he wants to say something more. But the words elude him and all he ends up doing is staring right back at Kylo.

"I didn't feel this in you before," Kylo murmurs, the expression on his face shifting between adjacent shades of curiosity as he visibly resists the urge to lean in closer. "I felt..."

But it's hard to remember what Ronan felt like before, especially given the fact that during their first meeting he could barely feel anything at all. His lips quirk.

"You're worried. About me. Our arrangement."

Ronan looks away again. As if that will accomplish anything. As if Kylo's been reading his eyes instead of his mind. His fingers fidget with the leather bands around his wrist, plucking and twisting. There's space for an apology here, but he's never been very good at those. It's possible that's because an apology is never enough for the kinds of sins he commits.

"I don't know what it feels like," he begins slowly. "For you. I figure it's got to feel like a parasite. I take so much from people. My boyfriend was scared of me. My teacher said I've probably killed other dreamers without even knowing it. I eat everything. I get stronger and everything around me dies."

With some effort, he drags his gaze back to Kylo. What the fuck is he supposed to say? He can't even say he didn't mean to do it. He absolutely meant it.

"Do you wish you hadn't done it?"

"Parasites harm their hosts," Kylo points out, smooth and unconcerned. "Do I feel lesser, to you? Weaker. Do I?"

He holds Ronan's gaze steadily. Clearly, he doesn't feel damaged by his association with the Greywaren. If anything, the intensity burning behind his eyes is stronger now than it's ever been.

"Why would I regret it?"

There's nothing about Kylo that seems weak. That's what drew Ronan to him in the first place and it hasn't changed, not even in the wake of the Horizon. But it had been like that with Adam, too. Adam had become so powerful after his bargain with Cabeswater. Then he'd lost his hands and his eyes and nearly lost his life and soul to a demon who'd only actually been targeting Cabeswater's dreamer. Had Ronan made Adam more powerful or had he only made him more vulnerable?

Ronan leaves the question unanswered, telling Kylo instead, "I don't regret it, either. My memories don't make a difference. It's what I want and I'm going to hold up my end."

In the Horizon, where anything was possible and they could have anything they wanted, the creature Ronan became had chosen the endless heat boiling under Kylo's skin as the only treasure worth pursuing. It had been a heady rush for the lord of the molten mountain— and it remains one here and now for Kylo Ren, never anyone's first choice for anything. Kylo watches Ronan's face for a long, elastic moment.

"I want it too," he says.

Ronan's shoulders — which had up until now been knotted taut with all the anxiety he'd been trying and failing to suppress — sink with relief as Kylo says those words. They sound true. Or at least they don't sound coerced. When he searches Kylo's eyes, there's nothing hazy about them to suggest he might still be trapped in Ronan's thrall. They're clear and sharp and so earnest that Ronan can feel his face growing hotter under that gaze.

They'd made vows to one another. They hardly know each other, yet their souls had been drawn together immediately when the context of their identities was wiped away. Ronan can't think of a more meaningful sign that he's making the right choice, even though it feels like the most dangerous thing he's ever done.

In the middle of the library, Ronan can't do what he wants to do most: throw himself at Kylo and drag him into a heated kiss. Instead, he runs his knuckles in a grazing caress along Kylo's forearm and lets out a quiet sigh of frustrated longing.

Kylo's lips tic towards a hidden smile, his eyes fluttering shut. For most people, the simple touch would barely warrant attention. Kylo, however, can feel the torrent of desire hurling itself behind Ronan's movements— dizzying even without the added rarity of simple tenderness and affection.

"Ronan," he warns, though there's no real admonishment behind the low rumble of his voice. It's possible that by now Ronan knows to recognise the unpracticed fondness hiding there instead.

"The Singularity. If we are to master it, we have to learn its secrets. Working together will increase our chances."

He knows, he knows. Ronan's not really trying to take Kylo away from his work. He just couldn't let a statement like that go completely unanswered. Marriage — or handfasting or whatever name someone would put to the ritual of unbreakable union between two souls — is no small thing to Ronan. There are no words to express how much it means to him that Kylo wants to uphold it. Touch will have to do.

But now they're back on task and Ronan lets his hand fall away, casting his gaze over the notes again. "I'm not really good at this egghead shit," he confesses. Research was always Gansey's strength and problem-solving was generally left to Adam — Ronan being more of a problem-maker. "Being there just gave me more questions than answers."

His eyebrows knit together as he chews it all over, frowning deeply the more he thinks about it. Unsure it's wise to be overheard by the natives, he continues in a lower voice, "We were guinea pigs, right? Test subjects? It's like they threw us in there just to see if we blew up. That probably means we won't find much in old books. It probably means we're the ones with the latest intel."

"Why put both the successes and failures in at once if all they wanted was to see if we'd perish?"

It's not a question to which Kylo expects Ronan to have an answer. His eyes stray back to his notes, his fingers tracing idly over the paper as if as an aid to concentration. Memory. Something of the blend between.

"Ambrose would have given anything to go with us. I could feel— he fears it. But he wants to see beyond the borders of the Horizon. To touch the Singularity, as we can. As only we can. More than anything."

"I don't blame him."

Ronan would probably never leave the Singularity's side, if it was up to him. He would curl up right beside it and dream up entire universes, until he learned to make everything exactly how he wanted it. Someplace just for him. But no one's going to let him do that, and anyway, someplace just for him doesn't feel like such an urgent goal anymore.

He glances off for a moment, pensive, then muses, "I bet I can get him there."

Now that has Kylo's attention. His whole attention. He'd only been considering the potential for showing Ambrose a memory of the experience, but...

"A dream?"

"Yeah."

The way Kylo's looking at him makes him feel suddenly anxious, though. He hadn't meant to inspire quite that much hope.

"I don't know for sure. I might fuck it up and get him killed. It's just that I feel a lot stronger right now. I've got more control when I feel like this, usually, which means I can dream bigger."

Kylo's smile is back again— shallow, lopsided, knowing. He enjoys these moments, when Ronan stretches himself out and claims just a little more of his own power, even if he tends to recoil immediately after.

"You want to try it out," he murmurs, pleased. "Dreaming. With all the power you can reach."

Ronan's lips part like he's going to protest, but then he doesn't. Why should he? Despite what his brother or Adam or Hennessy might believe, he doesn't have to be ashamed of wanting more, of striving for it.

"Yeah," he admits.

All of this energy inside him needs to go somewhere. That's obviously what Kylo wants, too. Why he gave himself over to Ronan. He believes in what Ronan can do with that gift.

And what Ronan can do with it is limitless.

"I just can't be stupid about it. If anything happens to Ambrose, they'll think I did it on purpose. And if it actually works... I don't know. There's a lot of ways it could go bad."

"Then we forget involving Ambrose for now," Kylo suggests. "We go out from the city, into the mountains. I've seen them. There are places we could go. Wild and empty."

The rest hardly needs to be said, but Kylo leans in anyway. He likes the way Ronan's mind seizes on opportunity first, and only then allows the doubts to filter in. It may take time and practice, but Kylo feels certain he can help Ronan silence his fears with an accumulated weight of evidence. Mastery, one success at a time.

"We go out there and create something we can show him."

No one's shown this much enthusiasm about Ronan's dreaming since... well, since Bryde. It's hard not to be wary after all that's happened. Ronan isn't being timid because he's not sure he can do it. What really makes him hesitate is the certainty that he can, and that once he does, everyone here will fear him the way everyone else did back home.

Not Kylo, though. Ronan can see it in his eyes. He's eager to explore every aspect of dreaming as it currently exists and then invent entirely new ways to use it. He wants all the things Ronan wants. There's nothing he can possibly do that would make Kylo muzzle him and throw him in a cage, because to Kylo, every accident is an opportunity.

Ronan's pulse ticks up. He is so in danger of falling.

"Okay," he agrees softly. "Yeah, we can try that."

Kylo nods, satisfied.

"And you're right," he decides. "About there being nothing worth learning in these books. Anything our High Mage is that afraid of won't be common knowledge. If it's known at all. We're the ones with the answers."

He closes up the closest of the hefty tomes with a decisive snap and pushes it aside.

"We should learn all we can about the changes."

He's right? Ronan blinks in mild surprise, sitting back in his chair as Kylo shuts the book. He hadn't thought he could actually talk Kylo out of his research. Most people just tell him to sit still and be quiet while the grown-ups do the real work.

"How?"

Kylo's mouth twists, somewhat unpleasantly. If he were still Supreme Leader of the First Order with an entire army under his command, it would be extremely simple to gather all the information he could possibly want— even before resorting to his own, rather intimately intrusive methods.

But he's not. And while that is beyond irritating at times, it occurs to him that being without his reputation here also offers an advantage.

"Perhaps we ask," he suggests. "It can only benefit us to pool our resources."

This sounds necessarily collaborative, which is another weakness of Ronan's. He doesn't exactly have the kind of face that encourages honest and open communication, even when he's on his best behavior.

"So, like, a family meeting? Gather around the fire and talk about everything we did?"

Everything? his eyebrows seem to emphasize.

Kylo's hardly the most socially agile himself, of course, but they both know that. He catches the look Ronan is giving him and returns an unnecessarily flat expression that passes, if you are Kylo Ren, for amusement.

"I don't think the fire will be necessary."

Ronan's lips twitch, and although he still looks skeptical, he throws his hands up in a wide shrug. This will probably go terribly! But at least Kylo has the kind of steady and commanding presence that's required for these situations.

"Let's do it."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ CLOSED ] i met god and asked him what he wants.

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

no subject