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

[nightwash]

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.

Comments

[photophobic]

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."

[nightwash]

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."

[photophobic]

"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."

[nightwash]

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."

[photophobic]

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."

[nightwash]

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?"

[photophobic]

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."

[nightwash]

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.

[photophobic]

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."

[nightwash]

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."