Archive of Our Own

There is no funeral.

Well, there is, but the key players of Gansey’s life are not there. It’s too showy, too fake, and so un-Gansey that they can’t bear to breach the doors of the funeral home—the drab, dark exterior captures none of the magic that is, was, Richard Campbell Gansey III, though that isn’t to say that they don’t drive up, dressed in mournful black and shrouded in a shared sense of grief that feels almost insurmountable. The funeral home—what a strange word for a place where people only lay after life—is gray and the sky is gray and there’s a threat of rain that leaves the air heavy and restrictive, the type of air that has to be parted and pushed through.

What a group they are without their fearless leader.

Ronan—dressed in his Sunday best, buttoned to the collar and vacant, just as he’d looked towards the end, not knowing but knowing what was coming, hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel and heart dying in his chest; Blue—missing her signature butterfly clips in a dark dress that belongs to her mother, hair still a wild tangle though she’d tried for an hour that morning to make it presentable only to fail and sink to her knees on the bathroom floor, her puffy eyes just as untamable; Adam—clad in a worn, faded suit, jaw wired tight because there’s a lump pushing at his throat and if he opens his mouth, he doesn’t know what will come out.

Between them sits a small, leather-bound notebook.

They don’t speak.

The decision to leave is one made silently, swiftly, and unanimously. The BMW slinks from the parking lot without a trace, and Ronan drives—he goes and goes and goes, and there’s silence, but over the gearshift are three different hands, all holding onto each other, lifelines in stormy seas, trying to keep them all from drowning. There’s no purpose to their direction until there is, and Ronan tears down backroads, going dangerously fast to feel something, but there’s nothing but a hole in his chest that aches, it aches, it aches.

Rain patters on the windshield, gentle at first, before it morphs into a downpour, unrelenting in how it beats against the glass, and the trio of hands on the gearshift tighten. It’s over, the rain shouts at them, unforgiving and uncaring for their grief, there is no going back, he’s gone and parts of you went with him.

The BMW stops on a country road.

Blue and Adam exchange looks, grief in the pinched corners of their eyes and the tight sets of their mouths, before they look at Ronan; tears roll down his cheeks, falling in time with the rain pouring down the windows, and it’s impossible to tell if they’ve just started or they’ve always been there, staining his skin and wetting the white of his collar. The hands on the gearshift tighten, but Blue has to look away while Adam looks on, bowing across the center console to rest his forehead against Ronan’s shoulder. There is no movement, no noise, between them for moments, minutes, hours, just the three of them succumbing to the grief that floods their lungs or rips at their chests or drains feeling from their bodies until there’s nothing, nothing, nothing but Gansey, vacant, stripped from the world he’d explored every corner of, searching for dead kings and meaning, meaning, there has to be meaning—

For Richard Campbell Gansey III, there is meaning to be found everywhere.

It’s in the rolling slopes of the hills beyond Henrietta, or in the faded fluorescent lights in the grocery store in the dust-colored downtown, or in the sharp edges of Ronan’s smile and the coy edges of Adam’s, or in the startling blue of the sky after it rains. It’s in the growl of his Camaro, in the tarot cards stacked in piles on the table at 300 Fox Way, in the grease that lingers on Adam’s hands, in the red fish that swim in impossible schools in impossible streams, in shared dinners at Nino’s, in stolen trips to the Barns, or in the sound of Blue’s voice on the other end of the phone in the small hours of the morning, when life is quieter and everything seems possible—

And life, too, is everywhere. It teems at the edges of his vision, regardless of where he looks; the world inhales, exhales, and Gansey syncs his breaths with as he explores every inch, reverent in his study of things that have lived before him and will live long after. He’s always been a keen observer, a note taker, a chronicler, filling leather-bound notebooks and tiny Moleskines in muted colors with sketches and scrawled notes, finding meaning where it has so far been overlooked, cast aside, rendered unimportant by those with less keen eyes and an inability to cherish every small detail. He doesn’t solve mysteries; he writes their conclusions, finishes once-forgotten paragraphs and fleshes out the in-between, lovingly crossing ts and dotting is to give his heroes a proper finale, a written burial, a memorial to bring their stories full circle.

Glendower’s had his ending, but his story isn’t yet complete, and Gansey plans on finishing it.

Realistically, though, Gansey acknowledges this quest for what it is: obsession. It’s a way to seek out a better understanding about why he, of all people, had been chosen to be revived. Gansey’s thought about that day thousands of times and he always runs through the same questions, asking why, when so many people die at the same hour, same minute, same moment, he was the one saved. He wants, so badly, to be part of something bigger; to not be just the politician’s son or the kid hooked on Welsh kings—he wants to live and die with a legacy left behind, a story complete and a chapter comfortably closed. He doesn’t want to go down in infamy: he wants scholars to whisper about his discoveries between dusty bookshelves and over half-consumed cups of coffee, and Gansey wants his discoveries to rewrite history books and museum placards—and maybe it’s all a bit grandiose, a bit too arrogant, but Gansey wants with such severity that it makes his bones ache because he wants Glendower to be represented as he ought to be, perfectly and honestly, and Gansey thinks he’s the man to do it.

When he finds out he’ll die within the year, things change.

Every moment becomes heightened, every fleeting touch or passing comment; every drive in the Pig, with its troublesome engine and worn seats; the world blooms in colors he’s never seen or mutes itself in shades of gray, and feelings he’s incapable of naming bubble and burst inside his chest, and yet, the months pass just as they have before and daily life remains largely the same as the sun still rises and moon still follows. Gansey still referees fights, starts others, drops apologies in the bumping of knuckles. He still has to eat, has to drink, has to sleep, (not that he manages to get much of it, but insomnia’s been a lifelong burden he bears without complaint). Building materials still scatter Monmouth’s floor, drops of hot glue and faded paint left in small mounds on a piece of brown paper he uses to protect the floor, and ink stains his fingers as he leans over notebook after notebook making notes and annotating photocopied sheets of pages in books too old to be borrowed from the antiquated Henrietta library.

But death, sweet, unforgiving death, she lingers over his head. There’s days when he forgets the track his life is on, where he dreams about an after, one where Ronan will find joy at the Barns, where Adam will be installed at a college far from the dirt road that led to his worst nightmares, where, maybe, there will be a life for him with Blue, where they drive coast-to-coast and camp on ley lines and a kiss won’t kill him. There’s so many lives to lead and Gansey wants to live them all, to have Glendower’s gift rooted in his soul, in the fibers of his being and in the marrow in his bones, as he explores the world and finds relics unlike the world has ever seen.

Then there’s days where it threatens to cripple him, playing on cowardice that’s chased him like his shadow at his heels since that fateful day amongst the trees, hovering nearby no matter how boldly he defies it or how doggedly he ignores it.

The most dangerous thing in Gansey’s life isn’t Ronan’s dream horrors, or Kavinsky’s molotovs, or his own nightmares where his throat closes up and life fades from his body; no, the most dangerous thing in his life is time, and the delusion that he has enough of it as he spends his last days, hours, heartbeats chasing an end he doesn’t know is coming.

“I think we’ve passed that tree six times.”

It’s a year and two months before Gansey dies, and he has to admit that Ronan’s probably right. They’ve been walking for almost an hour, following an incomplete map that Gansey spent last night cobbling together because he couldn’t sleep, too enraptured in the possibility of getting one step closer to his Holy Grail to bother shutting his eyes for even a minute. He’s been under the (perhaps overly-optimistic) impression they’ve been making progress, weaving around trees and crunching through underbrush in the dimming light of a Henrietta fall, but when Gansey takes a look up from his scrawled map and regard the somewhat-familiar tree in question, he frowns. Ronan’s leaning against a different tree, forehead beaded with sweat and fingers plucking at his shirt with distaste as he stares Gansey down, hand lifting to run though his hair before he remembers there’s none there and slides his hand down his scalp instead. It’s a habit from the past, one that Gansey tries to ignore lest his heart break anew in his chest.

“I haven’t seen that bush before.” Gansey insists, thumbing at his lower lip as he gestures with his journal towards some innocuous-looking shrub, laden with small buds that are either about to bloom or about to die. He’s not versed enough in horticulture to really know the difference.

Ronan scoffs, shifting his weight as he cranes his head back, scowling up at the canopy above. “That’s probably because you’ve been staring at that paper since we got here.” He replies, letting his head thunk back against the wood before leveling his gaze again, pushing his sleeves roughly up his arms before he folds them across his chest. Gansey’s not stung by the words, if only because he knows they’re true (and besides, Ronan’s always cranky when he’s getting tired), but his frown deepens all the same as he looks between his notebook and the trees that stretch up, up, up above them.

Around them, the woods teem with life, uncaring of their current dilemma, and Gansey pauses to listen to the birdsong overhead and the rustling of leaves, coaxed into movement by a gentle breeze, as he tries to puzzle out what to do next. If they weren’t currently in the midst of a quest to find some unmarked spot in some unnamed cluster of trees, he might take a seat amongst them and journal, or pull out a book to read while he nestled against their roots, fitting himself into the ecosystem as a quiet, humble observer. But they are, and the light is bound to start fading before they know it, so he worries at his lower lip and rubs at the spine of his journal while Ronan looks on, expectant, waiting for instruction. Ronan may be a reluctant participant on the best of days, but Gansey knows he’d never leave him to do this alone.

He’d gathered accounts from old Henrietta Sun newspapers and books about the town’s history, deep-diving into the archives to find repeated mentions of a spot, just outside of Henrietta’s borders, where people had frequently reported having supernatural experiences—something that Ronan, upon hearing this, had laughed at.

“They were probably drunk on old moonshine.” Ronan had sneered from his perch on Gansey’s bed. Ronan had started doing that a lot, recently, sneering. A vicious curl of the lip, often punctuated by a softening, a glancing away, a quiet, self-conscious apology—anger took hold of him so easily as of late, but Gansey knows not to take it personally. Grief did funny things to people. “People always want to be special, so they pretend they see Mothman or God or a pack of spectral wolves. What else did they have to do back then outside of making shit up?”

Gansey had to admit that he had a point—he’d chased enough false leads to have supportive evidence—but ever since starting this quest of his, especially since his arrival in Henrietta, Gansey has felt this pull whenever he’s been on the right track, a gravity inherent only to the wide slashes of the ley lines below his feet, and he feels it now, standing in this random section of woods with leaves skittering around their feet. In the warm glow of autumn, surrounded by a forest that breathes with them, that lives in interconnected roots below their feet and twined branches above, Gansey knows, without a shadow of a doubt, they’re doing something right.

“Let’s head back to Monmouth.” He says after a quiet moment, looking over to Ronan, who straightens expectantly. This is the right track to follow, but Gansey’s not sure what path they need to follow next, and he has a feeling Ronan won’t want to stand around waiting for him to find it. “Don’t want to be out here after dark, after all.”

“You might not want to be out in this creepy forest after dark,” Ronan replies, pushing himself off the tree to go to Gansey’s side, bruised knuckles burying themselves deep into his pockets, “but I think it would be a great chance to finally meet Mothman. Got some questions for him.”

Gansey can imagine Noah saying that’s not very Catholic of you and smiles, shaking his head as he leads the way back down the dirt path towards the Pig, watching as Ronan kicks up small piles of deeply-hued leaves, scuffing his boots against the ground.

“I’m sure Mothman inhabits other forests, so you can check the trees a little closer to home.” Gansey suggests, fidgeting with his keys inside his pocket, rolling the smooth metal across his palm. He doesn’t say I want you closer to home, but that’s what he means. There’s so little he can control when it comes to Ronan, but Gansey continues to make requests in the hopes that Ronan indulges him by listening, that he won’t have to go out hunting for him in the middle of the night, BMW a sleek bullet down long stretches of country roads. As of late, Ronan’s humored him more often than he’s fought him, and Gansey can only cross his fingers and wish on every star he sees that it continues.

“Where’s the adventure in that?” Ronan grumbles, but he doesn’t actually complain, going so far as to nudge his shoulder against Gansey in a well-worn ritual that means I’m kidding. Or I’m sorry, depending on the context.

Gansey’s read enough old manuscripts that rely more on context than the actual text itself to be quite adept at reading between the lines.

“There’s plenty of adventure to be found, so long as you look in the right place.” Ronan groans and grumbles you’re such a grandpa in reply, but Gansey means it; he’s discovered plenty by looking in overlooked or forgotten places, overgrown and decrepit buildings, and stumbled across treasures and clues that’ve taken him across the world.

There’s something here between the trees, Gansey’s sure of it, and he mulls over it as he and Ronan weave their way through the trees, birdsong joined by the sound of their voices as they tease each other and discuss what they’re going to have for dinner. One thing he’s learned over the years is patience, and it’s served him well to be patient in this quest for his lost king. This piece of the puzzle escapes him now, but there’s certainty in the fact it will, eventually, reveal itself to Gansey in fits and starts, leading him ever-closer to the end. He silently thanks the forest as they reach its beginning and promises to return once he understands it a little more—and maybe it’s his imagination, but in the rustling of its leaves, he hears something like a goodbye.

The forest visits him in dreams.

It’s a rare night of sleep for Gansey after weeks of snatched hours and impromptu cat naps, and when he opens his eyes, he’s standing between the trees that he and Ronan visited months before. It seems like a lifetime ago, those trees, painted in dappled light and the scent of autumn rich in the air around them, but here, it’s like he’s never left. In this space, he walks with purpose—there’s something that draws him forward in every forest he visits: an invisible line that tugs at his feet, a red string of fate, Ronan’s floating, moonlight-bright orbs. It changes every time, but the forest does not.

He doesn’t have the same connection to this place as Ronan does to Cabeswater—frankly, he’s not sure if this place can be fairly compared to Cabeswater at all—but it beckons to him all the same, coaxing him deeper and deeper into a space that is at once both grounded in reality and far from it, existing in the in-between that most everything, nowadays, seems to occupy. It’s liminal, he thinks, as he trods through golden leaves, whispered to by the branches in a language he recognizes but cannot understand. That’s fine with Gansey; there are other ways to communicate besides language.

He touches the gnarled bark of a tree to his left, taking a moment to rest, though his body doesn’t tire here. The lines imprint themselves into Gansey’s palm as his fingers stretch out, mapping the surface below, and he breathes—the forest, in all its wonder, its natural splendor, breathes with him. This tree, and its real-life counterpart, have years on Gansey, their story buried in the Henrietta dirt below, stretching for miles and miles, and yet, he feels a kinship with it. It’s something he won’t admit aloud, not for fear of being teased, but because it’s something that feels safer tucked away in the space behind his ribs, nestled by his heart. He’s tied to the trees as he’s tied to the ley line, to Glendower, to his friends that await him in the living world.

Tethered.

In here, he doesn’t have his dreamer, his magician, his mirror—is it selfish to call them his, when they are each other’s as much as they are themselves?—it is just Gansey, alone but not lonesome, among trees, moving towards an end he cannot see but can so nearly touch, if only his fingers could stretch that much farther. It’s a comfortable position to be in, with his hand splayed across something that is more creature than plant, one of many belonging to a family the likes of which Gansey will never be able to comprehend.

It is here that he stands, and here that he dies.

Gansey doesn’t hear them at first, the telltale whirring of angry insects, too enraptured by the soft murmurs of the trees and the lines that vivisect his palm to turn his focus out instead of letting it be in. Ronan has teased him in the past for his introspection, jealous of his ability to tune out the world that Ronan’s so firmly grounded in and in constant defiance of. Gansey’s never done it intentionally, though there’s been many times he’s wanted to, and in the time it usually takes him to register he’s drifted, he’s missed something important.

The first stinger is impossible to miss.

How many times has he had this nightmare? How many times has he jolted awake, gasping for air like he’ll never breathe again, drenched in sweat and the unmistakable, unforgettable feeling of dying? How many times has Ronan heard him crying out, thrashing under his covers, and has come running, wrapping him up in his arms until they can both breathe again, panic and adrenaline a lingering, unshakable feeling on their shoulders?

This time, like every other time, Gansey sinks to his knees. He clasps at his throat, claws at the dirt at the base of a tree with black bark, tries to scramble away and beg the trees for their aid, but he is nothing to them—they will persist long after he and everyone he loves is dead, growing taller, stronger, while he grows weaker, so what do they care if he lives or dies? Gansey is helpless without Ronan, without Adam, without Blue; there is no way to speak, to plead with them to help me, please, God, I don’t want to die like this again, because he’s being killed from the inside out, and he can’t breathe, he can’t see, can’t—

Wake up.

Death has always been an inevitability, a final destiny. Gansey’s never been under the delusion he’ll live forever, so he makes the most of the days he has. Hunting for relics of a lost king is a good way for him to spend his days, and often his nights, though those are often split with his self-appointed task to recreate all of Henrietta in cardboard. It’s a good pastime, especially when it’s pouring rain and two out of their five—no, it’s four, or is it still five, because Noah, god, Noah—are at work, and the other two veto Gansey’s request for an expedition.

He could go alone, but he’s found that going together is far more enjoyable.

It’s seven months before Gansey dies, and he’s attempting to build the grocery store downtown, but hot glue is drying on the gun and he’s staring out of Monmouth’s large factory windows to watch the rain roll down the glass in fat drops. It’s Noah his mind holds onto; the revelation that the boy he’s considered a friend—for an amount of time he can’t quite grasp, which is an entirely different revelation in and of itself—is (and has been) a spectre this entire time, hangs around his thoughts, coating them in a blanket of fog, which is a comparison Gansey would find terribly on-the-nose if he wasn’t so wrapped up in the unfairness of it all.

All things considered, their friendship is still intact, but it’s strange as recently, Noah simply appears instead of making a conscious effort to look as though he’s walked from one room to the next, or he’ll be all voice, no body or tangible presence. Gansey still sometimes finds himself walking towards Noah’s room only to find himself somehow redirected into looking for him elsewhere or forgetting altogether that he’d been looking in the first place. It stays unused, untouched, and the scene that Noah’s created to emulate some strange facsimile of normal is, as such, left unchanged. Possibly, they keep it that way out of respect for the not-quite-dead; possibly, they keep it that way because of Noah’s silent need to be tethered to somewhere other than where he died. To Gansey, it’s impossible to say.

Gansey wonders if the Czerny family would find comfort in their son’s, their brother’s, life after death, or if they would mourn the fact he’s never had peace.

Gansey, personally, mourns it.

The shadow across one of Noah’s eyes is now impossible to miss and while they’ve all become adept at ignoring it, eyes glossing over the grotesquely concave section of cheekbone, Gansey finds himself touching his own face on occasion, visions of what he imagines Noah’s death to be like and what he remembers his body, his remains, looking like, the stark, unapologetic brutality rendered upon his skull. He remembers Blue, with him, discovering the scene, her abject horror, and he swears with a fierceness usually reserved for Ronan that he’ll do everything he can to keep her from seeing that again. It’s unrealistic, but when has Gansey ever had two feet in reality?

There’s going to be a funeral.

Gansey and Blue had no qualms about bringing their discovery to the police, though they’d kept the discovery of the Mustang omitted, because to bring the authorities there would mean disturbing the balance of Cabeswater and end up threatening everything they were trying to do. Hearing that Noah had been missing for seven years and not once had Gansey, or any of them, realized that they’d been tied up with a dead boy, permanently locked in the state in which he’d died, been killed, had been one more revelation that Gansey hadn’t quite been ready to deal with. Gratefully, he isn’t alone in that; they’d all taken it with some disbelief and plenty of sorrow, or anger, depending on who was asked.

He supposes that, during this event that will be painful, albeit strange, because Noah’s still with them, still here, his question of comfort will be answered. He can only hope that their discovery will bring the Czerny family peace, and he hopes in equal measure that they don’t see Noah’s bones, unearthed from the ley line, because he can only imagine how they’d haunt the dreams of his family.

They certainly haunt Gansey’s.

At night, Gansey’s mind goes round and round when he’s trying to sleep, snagging on the fact that it was Noah who died for him to be resurrected, that somehow, seven years later, fate brought them together again: one dead, one alive, both occupying the same space in unfathomable ways. Imaginary conversations with Noah’s mother circle like vultures, like ravens, in Gansey’s head: oh, I’m the boy your son saved by dying; please know I’m grateful for the life he’s given me; we both died in the woods, you know, how fitting is that, don’t you think that sounds like divine intervention?

Divine intervention. There was nothing divine about Noah’s death, about how his cheek had been bashed in and how his life had been stripped from his crumpled body to be forced into Gansey’s dying lungs, so it’s for the best that Gansey’s been raised with faultless manners.

The only thing he plans on saying to Noah’s family is I’m deeply sorry for your loss.

Gansey’s never been to a funeral—one was held for Niall, but neither he nor Ronan attended because Ronan was drinking himself towards oblivion and Gansey was on his knees, trying to wrest the bottle from his grasp and praying to a God he only sort of believes in that they’d make it through the night—but he assumes that the way one conducts themselves is akin to how one would sit through an assembly or through a parent’s scolding: quietly, and with one’s head bowed.

A crack of thunder draws Gansey back from his thoughts, where he’s been consistently getting lost as of late, and in front of him, fuzzy around the edges but unmistakably there, is Noah. He doesn’t startle at the sight of him, just meets the mournful eyes and downturned mouth evenly, and watches as Noah shuffles closer and sits in front of him, legs loosely crossed. There’s been no shortage of questions in Gansey’s mind about how Noah’s life/death works, the logical side of his brain fighting for dominance over the side that suspends disbelief, and one of them is how does it feel to die and to stay dead, which is arguably a horribly insensitive, morbid question that would keep Noah’s presence from reappearing for weeks and would make Blue give him the silent treatment for just about as long.

The air is colder now that Noah’s here, and Gansey shivers because of it—this chill that sweeps through rooms and cars and bodies is a new development, too—though moments later, he extends a hand Noah’s way, and the room gets colder as Noah grabs onto the energy in the room to meet it, his hand not quite there but there enough for Gansey to feel his hand against his own, a grasp of solidarity, or, perhaps, of understanding. There’s an apology on Gansey’s lips, an “I’m so sorry, Noah,” borne from a bone-deep guilt over something he was not responsible for yet feels responsible for—it rises, unbidden, on his tongue, though before he can open his mouth to say it, Noah’s just…

Gone.

That’s all there is.

Gansey can’t sleep.

All he can think about is Blue, driving the Pig, their furious trip into the mountains, feeling wild and dangerously, breathlessly alive, all fire and cold September air and the distinct feeling of this is it, because he knows that this is all there is, that there is nothing outside of Blue’s hands and Blue’s eyes and Blue’s smile and the weight of loving her, pressing on his chest and lungs until he can hardly breathe with it. He thinks of her question (have you ever thought of stopping), and the way she’d asked it so casually had given him pause, not because he didn’t know the answer, but because there was, and is, so much weight behind such simple words that he hadn’t known what to say.

So he’d shaken his head, collected his scattered thoughts; asked are you afraid, and continued with, this is only mine, in the end, and found himself ferociously cut off.

It had been so good, before things had shifted in a way that makes his chest ache to remember—not in the wildfire, scorched earth, I have never been this alive way that had burned through the interior of the Pig but in the storm clouds, torrential rain, no-visibility way of close-kept secrets. They’d argued about Henry, but Gansey knew that it wasn’t about Henry, about him using his phone or the way they’d talked to each other—he’s by no means an expert on the enigma that is Blue Sargent, but he’s spent so long studying her that his question, the soft when are you going to tell me met with never, makes him wonder what she’s hiding, what truth she’s carrying that’s too heavy to share.

If Gansey lets himself think about it, about how she staunchly refused to tell him, about the way her voice had gone strange and unfamiliar in her throat, his own tightens, and he knows, but he can’t string the words together in his head, can’t mouth them up at the vaulted ceilings of the building he calls home—he can only feel the grim, unrelenting truth of all the words left unsaid.

Seven years ago, Gansey woke up from something he shouldn’t have survived, and since then, he’s been on this track, this journey; he’s followed the tugs of the ley lines, though he hadn’t known them by name, not at first, and has travelled across the world seeking out answers that were hard-won and nearly impossible to find, and now he’s close, God, he can feel it in his bones that he’s close.

There’s never been a deadline, but Gansey feels there’s one forming.

In Gansey’s dreams, which form during fitful bursts of sleep, he’s no longer brought back to the dark copse of trees that plagued him before and instead is shown a recasting of the vision, the prophecy, the promise that he’d been shown inside the tree in Cabeswater, with his king laid out in front of him, simply waiting to be awoken by him, of all people—and he’s pictured a thousand different ways the end to his nearly eight-year journey will go, imagined himself bowed in reverence and deference, imagined himself standing eye-to-eye, imagined a strong hand on his shoulder and hearing the voice of a man who’d conquered and fought and changed Gansey’s life asking him to claim, to state, to request his favor.

Gansey’s thought of a thousand different favors, too.

Now, with a deadline-with-no-date hanging over his head, Gansey realizes he’ll have to figure out his request once and for all. What a momentous, life-altering task that is—and the thought makes him laugh, a humorless, quiet puff of air, because they’ve already taken on a lifetime’s worth of tasks that fall squarely into that category. Once he finds Glendower, that will be it, and Gansey doesn’t quite know how to reconcile the reality of the after—will there be other kings to find, other favors to humbly request the use of, or will that actually be it? He’s thought so long of the end that he’s never considered the after, and for all of the answers he’s usually so readily able to give, Gansey finds himself answerless. Adrift.

The End.

A finite, unforgiving conclusion. Gansey thinks of the recording he’d caught and the voice, his voice, Blue had heard from what feels like decades ago, how his own version of The End is wrapped in a little bow, palatable in the same way a good poison in a good wine is until one feels their throat closing up.

Asphyxiation is a terrible way to go.

It’s a month and a half before Gansey dies.

The thing is, Gansey didn’t expect anyone else to die.

Not in the sense that he doesn’t believe in the mortal coil and the very real aspect of life called “expectancy” and murders-called-accidents and suicides-called-accidents, because he’s seen enough to know better, but when Persephone dies and Fox Way is rocked by the news, Blue is devastated by it, Adam’s ruined by it, and Gansey finds himself asking the unanswerable (and horribly self-pitying) question of why them, not me?

No, he knows the answer.

Cowardice.

He pushes it to the back of his mind.

He cannot let Maura die, too.

They have to go into the cave, but first, this—

Blue, curled into his chest, her tears burning in the hollows of his collarbone and dampening the collar of his shirt—

Adam, silent and vacant, Ronan at his side, one quietly working through his grief, the other quietly ignoring his own—

A vacuum, whirring to break the silence downstairs, trying to clean up shards of glass that glisten on the kitchen floor, an unmistakable, albeit on-the-nose metaphor for the ruination of the Fox Way household, Persephone’s lack of presence palpable—

A plan, hatched in anger and sorrow and a deep-seated need to go forward, to push on, to save them all from further heartbreak.

A true king’s quest. Gansey doesn’t feel like a king but he channels what he knows of Glendower anyways, bolstered by Gwenllian’s answer to his question: he asked them.

So he asks. He asks his friends to pack up their grief and throws out life-vests to keep them from drowning in it, and asks Glendower for guidance because he’s closer to Gansey than any God. He asks them to stare death in the face as they make the trek to Cabeswater, grounds himself in the inevitability of it, fighting back against cowardice with bravery that isn’t quite his own.

What a strange, fearsome group they are.

It’s a little under a month before Gansey dies and the headlights of the Pig and the BMW are warm where they fall against Cabeswater’s boundary of trees, innocuous and full of promise. Gansey fixes his eyes ahead—always ahead, always forward, because to look back is to suffocate under past mistakes and linger on words left unsaid, and his life is going to end, and perhaps it’ll be with no fanfare, no dazzling display like Kavinsky’s, so what point is there in looking back on things he cannot change? Blue and Calla talk behind him, but he tunes the hushed conversation out if only to give them privacy, and Ronan and Adam, with their shared looks and quiet diligence in gathering up supplies, are just out of view, leaving him, alone, backlit by the headlights.

If he were a painter, he’d dash this scene out on canvas, all rich, mournful tones, cut through by honeyed light; Gansey wouldn’t fit himself in the center of it, he’s not arrogant, but he’d cut a person-shaped hole in the center of it, indicative of all that came before him and all that will come after. It would be a poignant piece, he thinks, one that would have art critics and fanatics trying to puzzle out the meaning, and Gansey would tuck away the answer in his journal, keep it safe in the glovebox of Ronan’s car or hidden in the suitcase Adam keeps below his bed, half-packed, though Gansey’s never been sure if it’s to aid in running or indicative of staying. It could, he muses, be both.

When Adam and Ronan dive into the pit, into the dark, and he hears that noise that is unfamiliar, chilling, Gansey presses his forehead against the cave wall and silently begs, pleads, for their safety, because he cannot bear another death on his shoulders—those are his brothers, his friends, and to lose either one of them means to lose a part of himself forever. By the way Blue grips his hand, he thinks she’s of the same mind—and it’s a relief to them both when they’re called down, into the pit, into the sanctum, of creatures long-dead and long-lived, bones carefully preserved and frozen in place, as if they’ve been waiting for this, though Gansey doesn’t know what this is.

A temple, a liminal space, a place made for dying as it is for living, a cathedral, a castle. A space made holy in the reverent brush of fingers against vertebrae, clouds in soft clusters above, impossible, a king surrounded by his court of the living and the in-between, not dead but not alive, either, not yet. There are three sets of eyes on him as he moves through a kingdom that is his, should he only ask for it—and when Gansey does, the world comes alive.

In this moment, there is no death—there is only after in all its glory, bones made whole as they are awoken by magician, by dreamer, by mirror, by king, and this is it, Gansey thinks, joyous and awed and humbled, sword pulled from stone not by one hand but by many. It is fleeting but it spreads between them, this wonderment, and they chase the herd, magnificent in its improbability.

For a moment, they are alive, alive, alive, and Gansey knows with that same impossible certainty he’d felt at the beginning of all this that they, not just he, not anymore, are doing something right.

Richard Campbell Gansey III is a king.

He knows death looms around the corner for him, but doesn’t it for all great kings? Struck down before their time, ending with fanfare and success, leaving behind a legacy—it is interwoven in all the great kings, a birthright. Gansey is a successor, though he hadn’t believed it, truly believed it, until the animals in the cave woke by his simple command, nay, request. It baffles him, this realization, it humbles him, awes him, excites him.

He knows he is going to die, but he has time, there’s still time.

There’s still time for meals at Nino’s, worn plates laden with grease; there’s still time for trips for gelato, quests discussed over small cups and tiny, brightly-colored spoons and time for rides in helicopters and in newly-purchased boats, getting lightheaded from the chase, the journey, the adventure; there’s time for journeys into Cabeswater and finding answers in the most unlikely of places, allies and enemies in the most unlikely of people. Most importantly, there’s still time for this: Gansey seated by his miniature town, surveying his kingdom, and Ronan laying beside him, Chainsaw hopping through the streets.

He looks, Ronan thinks, like a king.

He observes the slope to his nose, the easy, regal line to his jaw, the quirk to his mouth every time he chides Chainsaw for getting too close to a building still setting, hot glue beaded at the corners and seeping down the fissures in the joining. It’s rare that there’s a day they’re not actively pushing towards their shared goal, one that has grown in prominence and importance since they’d dropped Malory and the Dog at the airport, so when one appears, a sliver of sunlight piercing through the clouds, Ronan seizes it without remorse. These languid fall days remind him of the first fall he’d spent at Monmouth, head still freshly shaved and mind often fuzzy with alcohol, numbing all emotions because he couldn’t bear to feel them—and it’s funny, relating this sober, tranquil moment with that particular memory because they’re vastly different, but Ronan draws them together regardless because of the feeling they encompass.

Safety.

No matter how many beer bottles Ronan breaks or close-calls in the BMW he has, or how many nights he keeps Gansey up, his hand a comforting weight on Ronan’s back while he’s either sobbed or screamed or gone catatonic, or mornings he’s spent, reeling from a hangover, brittle and full of venom, Gansey’s never wavered. He’s thought so many times of apologizing for what he’s put him through, what he continues to put him through, but Ronan knows that Gansey would dismiss it with a smile and a shake of his head. This is like an apology, these quiet moments where it’s just them, a return to the days of being the two-headed monster they’ve been since they first met. He likes how their group has changed, even if in the beginning he’d been possessive and jealous to try and chase Adam, then Blue, away so that he could keep Gansey as his own, as his one single, solid constant in life.

The thought of losing him to anything, anyone, is, and was, so viscerally upsetting that Ronan doesn’t know what to do with it except turn it outward, fletching emotions into arrows and letting them fly wildly, indiscriminately. He’s grateful they were undeterred by his behavior—the only reason he’d acted that way, after all, is because Gansey is all he has.

Gansey is more family to him than anyone else, except for maybe Matthew, bound by something deeper than blood, and without him, Ronan knows he would’ve been dead before sixteen. It’s a cold truth, one they both acknowledge without ever speaking it into existence. There are pieces of Ronan that have only been put back together because of the delicacy of Gansey’s hands, and for that he owes him more than he knows how to say. Words have never been his strong suit, though, so Ronan relies on action instead—which is fine, considering Gansey has words enough for both of them.

Ronan rolls onto his back from where he’s been laying on his stomach, eyes trained towards the ceiling, and extends his hand to the side, fingers wiggling to entice Chainsaw to return to him. She does, and Gansey takes notice of it too, his building temporarily abandoned while he rolls his wrists, stretching out from the position he’s been in for the last two hours. Ronan’s eyes slide over to watch the movement while Chainsaw pecks at his wristbands, watching how the light catches on the ridges of Gansey’s knuckles, how when he turns them a certain way, Ronan can see the old, stubborn calluses leftover from when Gansey had been on the rowing team. Those were the hands that held back his hair when he was sick in the morning or wiped tears from his cheeks after he shaved his head, the ones that gripped the wheel of the Pig and glided through the stream in Cabeswater, turning the fish silver and red, asking the forest to alter their scales to fit his vision.

It’s a golden October afternoon, and Ronan cannot imagine a world in which Gansey is not his sun.

“Do you think this is it?” Ronan asks quietly, gaze trained on Gansey’s face so he can watch the way he blinks, pensive, thoughtful, even in such an unconscious gesture. There’s no need to elaborate, no need to voice the questions that swarm in his chest, because Gansey knows all of them. He watches as he lifts a hand to his mouth, thumbing at his lower lip in a gesture that is so Gansey it makes Ronan emotional for reasons he refuses to acknowledge.

“I think it is.” Gansey’s voice is just as quiet as he steadfastly keeps his eyes on his recreation of Henrietta, and Ronan wonders if there’s emotion there, hidden just out of sight by the curve of his face. They’ve resolved to see this to the end, and Ronan can feel it in his bones that this is it—he knows he’s not alone in that feeling, either. They all are wired with the chase, hungry for the completion of Gansey’s quest, and while there’s more for them to deal with out there than finding a dead Welsh king, things that would break Ronan’s mind if he weren’t a dreamer, their eyes all track forward, watching Gansey, following Gansey.

Ronan sighs, tilts his head up towards the ceiling. “I guess that means you’ve got to consider where you’re going to college.” There’s a smirk on his lips as he says it, wry, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Gansey smiles, soft and round at the corners, and he readjusts so he can rest his cheek on his knee and cast his gaze to Ronan, spread out on the floor with Chainsaw merrily pulling at his wristbands.

Ronan isn’t going to college. Gansey won’t live long enough to see it start.

“Do you think my mother would allow me to take a gap year?” Gansey asks, then corrects himself. “No, nix that—do you think my grandmother would permit it?”

Ronan laughs, a short bark that sends Chainsaw skittering away in surprise, and she makes as close to a disgruntled noise as a bird can make as she skulks off to find a less noisy perch.

“Never in a million years, if we’re talking about your grandma. Never in a thousand, if we’re talking about your mother.” Ronan can imagine Gansey wearing down his mother in the bright way of the Richard Ganseys, all charm and persuasion and earnest excitement—that’s how he was allowed to traipse the world, Ronan’s sure—and it would only take one in-depth conversation about the next thing for Mrs. Gansey to relent. Mr. Gansey II would just be happy to be included in the conversation.

Ronan thinks that’s all a bit twisted and heteronormative, but what does he know.

When Gansey laughs again, it’s the full, careless sound of someone who occupies every space they’re in, who commands rooms with a smile and a wave, who could fell ships and win wars and capture castles with the jut of his chin and a single word, Excelsior, and Ronan grins, wide and alive and dangerous, a sword finally unsheathed.

“If you blame it on me, though, they might cut you some slack.” Ronan adds, gesturing vaguely towards himself. “Call it teenage rebellion, being around a bad influence because of underage drinking, shit like that. I want to say I’ve corrupted Dick Gansey III, even if it only took me a couple of years. You’re a bastard of a nut to crack, y’know.”

Gansey has the decency to look apologetic, but the smile on his face suggests it’s not earnest, and Ronan snorts, shaking his head. He hasn’t corrupted Gansey, because Gansey isn’t corruptible; he’s a pillar of light, a beacon, and that means he’s untouchable.

“Well, I’ll give it a go, and if it all goes horribly sideways, we’ll say I’ve lost my touch and you’ve single-handedly caused my corruption.” Their relationship is this—a series of back-and-forths, of push-pulls, and it’s soothing in the way going 150 miles per hour down a stretch of highway is soothing because it’s familiar, it’s quieting in a way so little else is nowadays.

What Ronan doesn’t know is how in the last three weeks, Gansey’s been quietly getting his affairs in order in a way that is the distinct mark of a man who is not, by any stretch of the imagination, untouchable. It’s hard work, trying to gather up the things that make up his life—the objects, the writings, the sheets on his bed, Monmouth—and finding a way to scatter them among the people he cares about. How is he supposed to choose who gets the Pig, who takes ownership of the warehouse they sit in, who will take on the burden of his milk crates of old books and packed-to-the-brim journals? It’s so wholly unfair that it makes Gansey nauseated, bent over a new notebook that’s too clean, too sharp at the edges, a thing made for eulogies and last wills and testaments and not the scribbles of a teenage boy that has spent his life finding things that are worth living for. He’s spent so many late nights bent over old manuscripts, taking over one half of his desk, his phone living on the other side, as he looks up instructions on how to write a will, minutes slipping by as he tries to wrap his head around the fact that this is his last year alive, God, what he wouldn’t give for one more—

Ronan doesn’t know that, and Gansey intends to keep it that way.

“However, you did have me speeding within the first three weeks of knowing me.” Gansey continues, eliciting an overexaggerated eye roll from Ronan. “That counts as corruption, I think.”

“Maybe if you’re a seventy year old man, then sure, that counts. Jesus, did you seriously never speed before I met you?” It’s entirely possible, though Ronan doesn’t know how Gansey got anywhere in a reasonable time if he hadn’t taken advantage of the Camaro’s speed, fickle though it is. “Please tell me it’s because you had the Suburban and not the Pig, because if you never tore down a highway in that monstrosity before you met me, you were missing out.”

Gansey pretends to shudder at the mention of the Suburban, making Ronan laugh as he shifts his position on the floor, rolling onto his stomach so he can lean his head against his palm. Ronan tries to avoid talking about the past, mostly because his own is so fraught with things he’d rather forget, but it’s easier when Gansey’s the focus; he’s heard plenty of tales from Gansey’s life before Henrietta, but he never tires of listening, though whether it’s because he likes learning more about his best friend or because he likes listening to him talk, words perfectly measured and cadence enticing, Ronan doesn’t know.

“That was it, in part.” Gansey admits, stretching out his legs, hand coming behind him to brace against the floor. “The other part of it was I was still learning how to drive the Pig, and besides, when I was hunting down ley lines or obscure spots on the side of the road, I couldn’t whip down roads without fear of missing where I was supposed to stop. Two sets of eyes are far more useful than one.”

Ronan’s filled with an odd sense of pride after what Gansey says; for as much as he complains about being dragged along the backroads of Henrietta and gives Gansey a hard time for tracing and retracing his steps, he’s been the second set of eyes that’s made Gansey’s quest easier. They have a third and fourth set now, but Ronan’s been there from the beginning of Gansey’s journey here, and while it might be conceited to think he’s been instrumental in getting them to where they are now, he thinks it anyways. He’s always been partners in crime with the seven deadly sins, after all, and he apologizes weekly for it, so Ronan’s sure he’s more-or-less in the clear.

“No shit,” Ronan opts to say instead, full of mirth as he gestures (albeit awkwardly, given his position) towards Gansey. “Having someone with better vision than yours makes everything easier.”

Gansey doesn’t reply to that, but he’s smiling as he refocuses on his task at hand, so Ronan knows he hasn’t taken offence—and they’ve known each other for too long to be insulted by banter, anyways. Ronan drops his arms so he can rest his head on them, observing in a quiet, still fashion that’s more Gansey’s, more Adam’s, schtick than his. He’s always moving, shifting, crackling with energy or loathing or emotions he doesn’t know how to name, but when it’s just him and Gansey, it’s easier to settle.

It makes him think of Gansey’s admission from forever and a day ago, where he’d told Ronan he knew Henrietta was it because he’d felt quiet for the first time in years the moment he’d stepped onto Main Street—for Ronan, Gansey’s the one that makes him feel that way, and he’s struck again with emotions too sweeping and broad to name as he reaches a hand out towards Gansey, and he doesn’t know that Gansey’s four weeks and two days away from dying, but it doesn’t matter when Gansey reaches back, lacing their fingers together, making the emotions diving around in his chest manageable at last. Gansey tends to have that effect on people; he’s the eye of the storm, the shelter from the winds, the anchor in stormy seas.

With Gansey, Ronan understands how home can be a person, not just a place.

Birthdays are a funny thing.

Gansey tries to keep his as low-fuss as possible; it helps that his family is far enough away to make throwing a party inconvenient at best, and Ronan, then Adam, have always indulged his request to keep it like any other day with the addition of some premade cake from the grocery store. His friends’ birthdays are spent similarly, though Gansey always tries to do something special for them, whether it be a small token of affection or an offhand comment of appreciation, so they know how deeply he cares without it being a thing, because both Ronan and Adam hate when things become things.

(Blue also hates when hers becomes a thing, but it’s an inevitability when living in 300 Fox Way, so she begrudgingly allows it.)

It’s why, on Ronan’s birthday, Gansey’s astounded to find his phone lighting up with Ronan’s name while he’s in the middle of trying to figure out what to get someone who can dream up whatever they’d like, and it’s why he drops everything to go to the Barns. This feels like a thing, and when he arrives with Blue in front of the old farmhouse, dotted with sleeping cattle and the drive already boasting Declan’s Volvo and a skidded-sideways BMW, Gansey’s nearly certain he’s going to walk into some sort of warzone, because having the brothers alone, especially in a house that holds as many painful memories as it does good ones, can only spell trouble. Blue’s hot on his heels as Gansey strides up the steps, chest tight with concern and a reprimand of some kind on his tongue—but when he pushes open the front door, there’s no chairs upended or new holes in the foyer walls. There’s Matthew, ebulliently greeting them as he wrestles with store-bought bunting, and Gansey can hear Declan and Ronan talking, not arguing, in the kitchen. He exhales, takes a moment to breathe with Blue’s hand firm between his shoulder blades, and then they both take off their shoes and advance into the house.

It’s bittersweet, being back. Gansey remembers birthdays spent here, before Niall’s death, where he and Ronan would sprint through the fields and clamber over fences, carefree in a way that Gansey hadn’t been for so, so long—he’d spent so long in academia, chasing dead kings to dead ends, speaking with scholars twice his age while completing coursework on the side, that he’d forgotten what it meant to be a kid. They’d been teenagers then, but Gansey hadn’t had the chance to be his age in years, and to be around someone like Ronan, who wanted to play and prank his brothers and laughed openly, freely, and who wanted talk about things that were inconsequential but mattered so much to Gansey, felt like he’d been served heaven on a plate. He remembers birthday cakes with too-sweet icing and nights sneaking out to sit on the front stairs to talk without being overheard, mornings bookended by pancakes and eggs, sunny-side-up. How easy things had been back then. It’s another time, another universe, another Ronan-and-Gansey. He remembers being met at the door by Aurora, ushered inside and informed you don’t have to knock, which he’d taken to heart, and now, he’s welcomed by Ronan, head freshly shaved and eyes sharp, alive.

He greets Declan, too, while Blue grins and tells Ronan happy birthday, watches out of the corner of his eye as Ronan ruffles Blue’s hair and calls her maggot, affectionately, and all of this, it’s—it feels normal, but it’s the normal for people that aren’t them, so it feels strange, too, and Gansey feels a bit out of his body as he stands in the foyer while Blue offers to take up the strenuous task of blowing up balloons that never seem to want to inflate. A lifetime of being observant means Gansey knows when something’s up, and half a lifetime of knowing Ronan Lynch means he knows that this isn’t just a birthday party, that Ronan gathering them all together was more than asking for a lifeline.

Goddamn it, he doesn’t want to leave them.

By the time Adam shows up, Gansey’s figured out what’s going on. He’s not paying attention to Blue swearing as another balloon refuses to inflate or how Ronan instructs Adam to find foil or how Matthew nearly wipes out as he skids around a corner; no, he’s talking with Declan in quiet, hushed tones—a ceasefire having been written out within initial pleasantries, both of them taking advantage of Declan’s ability to fade into the background, even in his own house—about what’s happening, about how Declan plans to protect Matthew, and Gansey, in turn, tells him about the notebook under his pillow. Declan’s face is grave, and while Gansey’s always found Ronan to be the closer match to Niall, he sees some of him in the way Declan meets his eyes, not asking anything because he’s a man that’s seen more than he lets on, and he nods, sealing a pact that doesn’t need verbalizing. They’re past that.

Gansey reintegrates.

He helps Blue with the balloons, sits closer to her than he needs to; he helps Declan with the grill, helps Matthew ferry plates back and forth, helps him tease Ronan for not pulling his weight, to which they get a lackadaisical, “it’s my birthday,” in response, which is something they don’t dispute; he discusses last week’s schoolwork with Adam, earning an overexaggerated eye roll from both Ronan and Blue as they pass out cupcakes that are tooth-rottingly sweet and red velvet, Ronan’s favorite. It’s so close to a normal celebration Gansey almost forgets, for a time, what’s brought them together, what’s coming, but a quiet moment, a look at Blue’s eye, still injured, still mostly closed, a run-in with a dream thing sitting innocuously on the table or counter or on a shelf in the bathroom brings reality crashing back onto his shoulders.

Gansey doubts he’s alone in trying to pretend that this is forever.

When Matthew and Declan leave, they stop pretending.

Gansey pulls a small Moleskine from his pocket, filled with scribbles and scrawled letters from when the mood strikes; the pages are cluttered and disorganized and more diary than journal but he doesn’t shy away from writing in it, not with his friends around him, as they try and piece together a puzzle with impossible pieces. With every addition, every recounting of the last few days, Gansey becomes aware of something new—of the particularly warm light Ronan’s dream-things give off as they float around the air, of the woodsmoke smell that permeates the room, of the weight of Blue’s body on the couch beside him, her head in his lap, on the steady step of Ronan’s pacing, on the steam rolling off of Adam’s coffee.

Oh, how he loves them.

It’s a night of truths, and a night of revelations. Gansey’s head spins with each new one that’s dropped, leaving him once again dizzied and out-of-sorts even as pieces connect themselves, no longer impossible but nonetheless complicated. From the truth of Cabeswater, from his own admission of love, for Blue, bone-deep and real, from Adam’s about Ronan, the constellation that they all make up reformulates and readjusts itself in his head so that, perhaps, when he looks up at the night sky, he’ll find a pattern that makes sense.

He wants this quest to be over.

The Barns is quiet outside of the white noise of Ronan and Blue talking in the kitchen; it’s just him and Adam, breathing, an understanding finally met between them, as Gansey has this last, ground-shattering revelation. Gansey’s spent his life chasing towards the end without actually wanting it; Glendower’s given him a purpose, Noah’s given him life, and while Gansey’s always wanted answers, he’d never imagined there being a true end to his quest. Dead kings are fickle things and Gansey’s read enough history books and manuscripts from ye olden days, as Ronan so aptly puts it, to know that uncovering treasures is never an easy business, and endings are rarely uncovered, but they’re close to one, now, and being faced with the reality of it has him rethinking if finding Glendower is truly what he wants.

He’s supposed to die, he knows this, and he knows Blue’s curse, just as he knows the sun will rise and the moon will follow, as these are immutable, unchanging facts—but Glendower, mighty Glendower, must have the ability to reverse that. Gansey wants to spend Ronan’s birthday here again, next year, and he wants to hold Blue’s hand and see Adam hold Ronan’s, and he wants to have the Lynch brothers gathered around a table without the threat of fratricide. He wants, wants with the same intensity he’s used to propel him forward in his quest for Glendower, to stay around, to see what comes after him, what fills the spot in the painting once he’s stepped out of the dark outline.

It’s foolish, selfish; Gansey could do so much good with his request and to use it on himself seems like such a waste, but, he thinks, wasn’t that the plan all along?

No—he’s thought of a thousand different requests, but as of late, they haven’t been for him.

He thinks of Persephone, gone; he thinks of Niall, gone; he thinks of Noah, all but gone. Gansey can do so much good with his one request, and the pressure of it is enormous, a lead crown atop his heavy head, pressing barbs into his skin. It’s horribly Biblical, his imagination, and he nixes it from his brain before the world pins him as a heretic and punishes him accordingly.

Christ, he’s being self-pitying, and he hates it. There’s an opportunity in front of him and he’s a coward for not grasping it with both hands, for claiming it like a silver sword, pulled from stone, and looking at the way Adam’s face is half-shadowed, faintly illuminated by Ronan’s floating lights, listening to Ronan and Blue’s laughter in the kitchen, warmer than any fire, Gansey decides that if his life means the continuation of theirs, it’s a sacrifice worth making. He doesn’t relish the thought of death, but he has to consider his friends, has to weigh his options in each hand and find whatever one is worthy. Besides, how much have his friends done for him, willingly, despite understanding the risks? How much have they cared for him, and him for them in return? He’s died once already, but he was alone then, and this time, Gansey thinks, hopes, that when he dies, he’ll be with the people he cares for most.

Outside of his family, that is.

If only he had some sort of condition, something that will make it easier for them to swallow the reality of his death; Gansey’s feeling pragmatic as he pushes down the self-pity and the cowardice to focus on everyone outside of himself. His own feelings on the matter can wait—right now, he needs to focus on protecting his loved ones. He’ll have to prepare a story for Ronan, oh, Ronan, to tell his family, because Ronan knows them best, and Gansey doesn’t feel right having anyone else break the news, but this means he and Ronan will have a conversation he doesn’t want to have. It’s all too easy to recall the vacant look in Ronan’s eyes that he’d carried for nearly a year and a half after Niall died, and Gansey doesn’t want to spend his finite hours with his best friend burrowed away in his head, trying to shield himself from the inevitable.

Death is inevitable, but it feels wrong to consider it all the same, but Life and her sister Death, Gansey’s learned, are cruel in their fairness. What goes around, comes around, and Gansey is not exempt from that rule no matter how much he wishes he were.

The ride back to 300 Fox Way is quiet.

At the Barns, goodbyes were shared, and Gansey pretended to ignore the way that Ronan and Adam shared private looks, or the way Adam casually said he planned on finishing his coffee before he headed back out, in order to give them the privacy they deserved, though, judging by Blue’s smile on the way out, Gansey isn’t the only one who’s been informed of recent developments. He’s fiercely proud of both Ronan—clever, cunning Ronan—and Adam—brave, resilient Adam—for coming together, for finding something in each other, rare as any gem, brightly furious as any star, and perhaps he’s projecting, because that’s how it feels with Blue as they climb into the Pig, their hands grasping each other’s tighter than is well and truly necessary as he heads down the gravel drive and out into the Henrietta night.

There’s so much to be said but Blue, Gansey’s learned, is skilled in speaking without talking, and he’s well-versed in silent communication, so they hold a conversation in the twitching of fingers and the pulses of pressure and the broad sweep of a thumb across the delicate curve between thumb and forefinger. He’s building bravery and she’s building strength, two curved walls to shield them from things that have no name but that are better left nameless, lest dubbing them with any sort of moniker leaves them stronger.

Blue presses her forehead to Gansey’s in a way that would feel dangerous if there wasn’t so much behind it—reassurance, sadness, but unrelenting belief, too—and it makes Gansey feel choked up as he says good night, Jane, and receives an equally as emotional good night, Gansey, before she’s out of the car and heading up to the warmly-lit interior of 300 Fox Way. He sits and watches until the door’s closed and sits long after, the Pig humming below him, waiting for a command, a twitch of his wrist on the gear shaft, a pull on the wheel, patient. Expectant.

Instead, Gansey drives a mile and turns off the car, head resting against the wheel, and stays like that for a long time.

When he gets home, no one’s there to see his bloodshot eyes, stinging with unshed tears, except for Noah, who materializes only for a heartbeat, fingers cold against Gansey’s cheeks as if he can wipe away what emotion still lingers. He, too, presses his forehead to Gansey’s because he understands, he knows what path lies before Gansey and what choices he’ll have to take, and Gansey’s sure that there’s an I’m sorry hidden in the swirls of Noah’s fingerprints before Noah’s gone, again, and Gansey is left alone as he hunches over his small, leatherbound book, the one he’d told Declan about, among the cardboard buildings of his nearly-finished Henrietta. Gansey’s frantic as he writes, possessed (it almost makes him laugh to think if only because he can imagine Ronan cracking a joke and Adam snickering while Noah, with a wounded tone, complains in Gansey’s ear) by a need to finish this, because they all agreed, clustered in their constellation at the Barns, that it’s time.

It’s time.

And if Gansey’s going to die, he can’t leave things unfinished.

When Aurora dies, Gansey thinks the world is ending.

It’s another tally in a dark book, another success for Death. Gansey won’t be so horrible as to say because she was a dream, she didn’t truly die—anything that is accompanied by loss, in his mind, is a death of some kind, horrible and true and inescapable. Ronan is inconsolable, but quietly, so far from the vicious, violent creature he’d been after his father’s death. He sits in the BMW and refuses to move for anyone, waiting for Gansey’s command to go—Gansey thinks, hysterically, of Kavinsky biting out that Ronan’s his dog, and it’s so inappropriate he wants to laugh, because what else is there to do when everything’s going wrong?

Wrong.

Cabeswater, wrong. Turning against dreamer, against creator, seized by a force that’s like tar, slow and inescapable.

Christ, and he’d been with Blue and Henry with his parents, eating bruschetta and bathing in wealth his parents didn’t think about and talking with Helen about The End, capital T, capital E, while she thought about the end, while his friends catered to his parents’ love for collecting strange dinner guests. Strange. Gansey knew his parents had been delighted by his two new stars in the wild tangle of his universe, and he’d been delighted, too, that they’d been so easily wrapped in the Gansey embrace, and all the while, Ronan was suffering yet another loss, another piece of his dreamer’s soul shattered and drifted into the ether, consumed by yet another circumstance he couldn’t control.

Fucking bruschetta.

How many more people have to die because of him?

Nothing they do gets Ronan out of the BMW, so Noah, half-formed and with mournful, saddened eyes, stays with him. Orphan Girl stays with him. Chainsaw stays with him.

There is no space for Gansey in that car.

There is space, though, in the open expanse of Blue’s backyard where he and Adam sit on the patio as Blue settles herself underneath the tree there, and if the world wasn’t currently ending, he’d find it a beautiful picture—Blue, all wild heart and will, is serene where she sits, asking her father, the tree, for guidance. If he hadn’t gone through as much as he had already, Gansey would find it mind-boggling.

He’s had enough revelations to fill a lifetime, and then some. All things considered, on the list of strange, disturbing, and horrible things he’s seen and experienced, this is a footnote.

It doesn’t make it any less important, though.

Gansey settles his head on his knees, shutting his eyes while Blue talks, and Adam presses against him, shoulder-to-shoulder in a way that isn’t usually reserved for him. It’s grounding, just like the scent of rain, faint and fickle in the air, or the patio stone beneath his feet, or the sound of Blue’s voice, her cadence, her speech, soft and familiar. It’s the voice that’s helped him fall asleep countless nights, that’s settled the restless, pacing thing in his chest, soothed the tremors from his hands and the pinch between his brows. There is no soothing this, though, this unshakeable, heavy feeling of dread that has his stomach churning and his hands shaking where he clasps them in front of his shins.

He looks up when Blue’s father steps from the tree.

He looks up, up, up when he hears the news, the prophecy, the jury’s gavel falling with a bang, unyielding.

All his days, weeks, months, of thinking it do not compare to the reality of hearing it.

Willing death, unwilling death.

Gansey hears himself speak, asking Artemus about the favor, about his lifeline, painfully literally, and Blue seems startled by his voice, as if she’s forgotten he’s there, with Adam, who is stock-still beside him, breath caught in his throat as if the very act of breathing will change the outcome.

He doesn’t get an answer. Blue pleads for Artemus to return, and he doesn’t.

His silence is answer enough.

Adam speaks beside him but Gansey doesn’t hear the words, only the tired inflection to them, because blood is rushing through his ears and his heart is frantic in its beating against his chest, as if to remind him that, right now, he’s still alive, he’s still breathing and his heart is still beating and if he focuses hard enough, he’ll move through the throes of panic and be able to feel all his limbs again. With a dull realization, in some detached, emotionless part of his brain, Gansey acknowledges he’s close to having a panic attack, just like when he’d been with Henry in that hole, Robobee whirring against his palm.

Normally, Ronan’s there to talk him through it.

Gansey sucks in a breath but it’s shaky, and his fingers curve around his shins, gripping onto his pant legs with enough force to make his knuckles white. If Blue and Adam are talking, he doesn’t hear them. Artemus’ words bounce between his ears, catastrophic and cacophonous, an orchestra playing on frayed strings. He’s been expecting this for months, his inevitable end, but the finality, the surety of it, descended on him when he hadn’t been looking, vultures smelling vulnerability, and now that he knows, he knows, his time is so, so short, Gansey’s hit with the same thought he’d had at the Barns: he doesn’t want to go.

There’s a hand curving across his nape, strong and steady, and Gansey sucks in another breath, the catch before the sob that never comes. Has he been breathing this whole time? He’s not sure. There’s slow circles getting traced across his skin, moving up in a steady and gentle arc across the short hairs at his nape—Gansey tries to focus on the weight of the hand, on the calloused fingers, on something other than prophecy and The End. Distantly, he’s aware he’s trembling. Distantly, he’s aware that it’s not Ronan beside him, lured from the car by Gansey’s panic—God, what a relief that is, because Ronan doesn’t need to hear this, not now—and it’s not Blue, either; it’s Adam, with his slender fingers and slightly knitted brows, working methodically to bring Gansey back to himself, to ground him in the now and not thoughts on the after.

All the pain they’ve caused each other seems so far in the past, and all their prior squabbling, produced by two boys that care too much about the same things while standing on opposite sides of the same court, seems so insignificant in the face of this. An apology bubbles to his lips but Gansey can’t get enough air to say them, so he bows his head and receives a gentle squeeze to his shoulder in response.

Adam knows. There’s no need to say it—he’s sorry, too.

“Blue went to get you some water. Or maybe some of that tea that tastes like seaweed and topsoil to use instead of smelling salts. I’m not sure.” Adam’s quiet in his attempt to crack a joke without trying to make it funny, and Gansey manages a bitten-off sound that might be considered a laugh as he leans into Adam’s fingers, combing gently through his hair. It’s not just him that’s been dealt this blow, it’s Blue and Adam, too, and yet, while he tries to keep from crumbling, to pull himself together and be a king, a model in honor of Glendower, they’re comforting him. His heart twists and jerks in his chest, mournful and grateful in equal measure.

“I think I’d prefer the water.” Gansey’s voice is steadier than he expects, making up for the tremors running through his fingers, and he shifts, pressing his knee into Adam’s while Adam presses back. “Though, if she brings me the tea, I’ll exercise decorum and accept.”

Adam snorts, muttering decorum under his breath, teasing Gansey for his Ganseyness, and it’s normal, if only for the briefest of seconds, just long enough to make Gansey smile for a heartbeat, some of the tension seeping from his fingers. This isn’t acceptance; if he thinks about anything for too long, about Artemus’ words or about what lies in the road ahead, it’ll be a matter of seconds before he’s incapacitated once again.

It’s not something he’s proud of. He can stomach more than he ever thought possible, act in impossible situations, chase legends and dreams, but even Richard Campbell Gansey III has his limits.

Facing off with the reality of his own death is, apparently, one of those limits.

At least, for now. Acceptance will come later—what are the stages of grief again? Gansey wonders if this is bargaining or denial, but he can’t quite remember what the cycle looks like, his brain’s too fuzzy for that, but it’s better this way. He’d rather focus on the coarse drag of Adam’s fingers against his neck, roughened by years of labor, or on the scent of rain, growing heavier, not a promise and not quite a threat, or on the sound of Blue’s footsteps behind him. When she sits on his other side, she’s jasmine and linen and incense and she wastes no time in fitting herself against his side, careful not to disrupt Adam’s work.

She presses a glass into his hand. The water’s cold, or, the glass is, which is an irrelevant detail that Gansey can’t help but notice, and it’s slick with condensation that dampens Gansey’s palms as he holds it with both hands, grounding himself in the feeling of it. Blue rubs a hand over his knee and Adam keeps up playing with his hair as he sips from the glass, and once it’s gone, he carefully sets it on the patio and takes a slow, careful breath, hearing twin sighs from either side of him. Gansey’s not sure if they’re relieved or if they’re trying to carry the burden of prophecy, too, so it weighs less heavily on his shoulders, and frankly, he’s not sure it matters. All that matters is that they’re here—though his heart aches for Ronan, for Noah, still sitting, waiting, like the bones inside the cave, for a direction to go, a plea to wake up.

“Thank you for not bringing me tea.” Gansey says after a quiet moment, head tipped down, because he can’t bear to look at Blue, not yet, and she laughs without much humor, a puff of air, and her fingers squeeze his knee.

“I didn’t want that to be what took you out.” Blue replies, but her voice is tight with emotion, and it reminds Gansey of what she sounded like, forever and a day ago, before she’d burst into tears. Adam makes a noise that might be a laugh, might not be, and his fingers splay to cup the back of Gansey’s head, head dropping onto his shoulder.

“It would be quite fitting, though,” Gansey continues, trying for normalcy when his chest is still so tight, when words don’t feel right on his tongue, “considering all of those who perished with poison in their cups because of trusted advisors, et cetera, not that I think any of you would poison me intentionally.”

“Gansey.” This is Adam, his plea tinged with exasperation as his fingers return to combing through his hair in what Gansey’s suspecting is equal parts a fidgeting, self-soothing response and one with the intent to comfort. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter, because the repetitive motions are grounding, drawing him back into his body so that everything isn’t so overwhelming—or, rather, it makes him feel less like he’s less prone to doing something unGansey-like.

“Right.” Gansey stares into the empty glass at his feet for a moment before he cranes his head up once again, staring into the sky, dark and getting darker. It’s fitting, and if this were a novel, some long-winded bildungsroman, it would set a perfect scene for revelations, for grappling with great truths and unpacking of old burdens—it’s a shame that Gansey’s in too much pain, too raw from the reality of his condition, to be able to do anything of the sort. Fanfare, the sky declares—there are no quiet deaths, only loud ones, ones that leave gaping wounds and a sense of loss so deep it threatens to fill the lungs, and—Christ, he needs to focus. Tangents won’t get him anywhere. His analytical mind needs to come to the forefront, to take control, because if Gansey lets his emotions rule the court, he won’t move from Blue’s back porch, nursing the same water glass in the hopes it’ll keep him safe for another minute, hour, day.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean you.” Blue says quietly, and her voice is steadier than before, more controlled. More Blue. “There’s a thousand and one things that we could sacrifice, it doesn’t have to be—”

Her voice breaks, shattering the illusion of self-control, and Gansey wraps his arm around her, tugging her against his side so she doesn’t have to finish that sentence, to speak the words he’s been thinking, in some shape or fashion, for months. Adam’s fingers retreat from his hair and his arm loops around Gansey’s back, palm against Blue’s shoulder, and they sit for a moment, tangled up in each other’s arms, breathing in tandem, just to remind themselves that right now, they’re still alive. Blue’s right—there is plenty all of them could sacrifice to fulfil this grave prophecy, things willingly given up to satisfy whatever conditions are laid out in the twisting roads of the ley lines—but they all know that whatever they have to offer won’t be enough.

No other sacrifices will be made on his behalf. Gansey’s asked them all for so much already.

This isn’t acceptance, just understanding; there is a difference between hearing a thing and knowing it, and Gansey understands that it is his life that comes with conditions, his rebirth tangled up in strings. Feeling has to take a backseat, the stages of grief temporarily postponed, and logical, rational thought is what Gansey has to rely on now.

“We should go eat something.” Adam makes a strangled noise to his side, clearly incredulous about Gansey’s proposal, but he pushes on regardless—be pragmatic. “And we ought to see if Ronan will eat, too. There’s no sense in trying to focus if we’re starving, and we have to come up with a proper plan if we want to make any sort of forward progress.”

Personally, Gansey’s never been less hungry in his life, but the promised motions of eating are familiar, easy, grounding, and he needs to make sure his friends aren’t on the verge of passing out because they haven’t done something as human as eating in far too long. The last thing they need is a concussion amongst their ranks because someone’s fainted, and Gansey knows that none of them would fare well in a hospital.

He gives Blue a last squeeze, taps his head gently against Adam’s, and shifts forward, pushing himself up and snagging the empty glass as he goes, leaving a space, a hole, between Adam and Blue; their arms are still around each other, Blue’s eyes furiously bright with tears that refuse to fall and Adam’s jaw set in a hard, firm line in the same way one prepares for a blow. Gansey looks them both in the eye, clouds rolling and building behind him, and he looks like a king, preparing to ride off to battle as he raises his water glass, tipping it towards the heavens as he says,

“Excelsior.”

It’s sixteen hours before Gansey dies, and the moment the Fisker stops in front of the house, decrepit, ensnared by nature as it refuses to let the building stand in its way of reclaiming what was taken in order to build something new, Gansey realizes where the ravens brought them. He says as much to Henry, says this is where I died, and Henry takes it in stride, eyeing the ravens perching on every inch of the house, watchful guardians of something hidden from view, and Gansey follows him out onto the gravel drive, the same one he’d stood on with his parents on either side like brackets, unknowing of what was to come within two hours and seventeen minutes of arrival.

What fills his chest now is the same feeling he’d had, what, twenty? thirty? sixty? minutes ago when he’d commandeered—no, that’s not the right word, because Gansey asked, he asked, in his own frantic, desperate way, and the answer, emphatically, was yes, before he could properly verbalize the question—Henry’s Fisker, brought to him by the courageous, kind wings of RoboBee, abandoning the Pig to keep up the chase, bloodhounds tracking a scent, the world shouting go, go, go! as they go, chasing a flock of birds that is improbable, impossible, real, down roads Gansey’s sure he’d recognize if he could pay attention to anything but feeling. It’s strange and disquieting, this realization of things coming full circle, and adrenaline pumps through his veins, leaving Gansey’s hands trembling as he pushes them into his pockets. It’s fear, it’s anticipation, it’s fervor, all tangled up in one brightly-colored ball, sitting heavily in his chest, waiting to be unwound.

He doesn’t think about anything other than how grateful he is for Henry, for RoboBee, for their moment of facing fears inside that hole, where Gansey had been sure he’d die within the boundaries of and Henry had been sure he’d live beyond. He doesn’t focus on anything other than creeping up the front stairs, pushing through the door Henry opened, standing in the house that saw and watched, unapologetically, as his heart stopped beating among the trees, body imprinting itself on grass and leaves and sticks, roots ready to drink up the life he left behind. Gansey’s heart is in his throat as they part ways—he doesn’t know what they’re looking for, but this doesn’t seem to trouble Henry, and he wonders what would’ve happened if they’d met earlier, been friends earlier, if he had been there from the start. Would things be different? Would Niall, would Aurora, would Persephone, all still be alive? Would Gansey still have found himself looking down the barrel of a gun, or were the events of his past immutable, destined to happen whether or not Henry had been brought into the fold earlier?

Keep looking ahead.

Gansey’s drawn towards the back of the house, down the stairs, and he advances without meaning, without thought.

The moment he steps into the treeline, he reels as recognition all but strikes him in the chest; this is where he’d been, with Ronan, over a year ago, when he’d been so sure that he’d been on the right track. This is the other end to the red string of fate, the connector between then and now, and Gansey’s breathless with it as he’s tugged forward, stepping towards where his past self had been, god, where two versions of his past selves had been, and he’s struck with the feeling that he’s lived this moment before and he’ll live it again. Twigs pull at his sweater, at his slacks, and it’s colder, here, the trees blacker, omens threatening to spill from their branches with every rustle, tossed out in every sharp caw from the ravens, but Gansey can’t keep himself from pushing on, drawn to the patch of earth that had been so willing to welcome him in life and in death, the trees judge, jury, and executioner.

His body winds up tight at the memory, projected onto the grass, dead and gray, in front of him—if Gansey shuts his eyes, he can smell the flowers that had been blooming in the gardens, hear the others playing, charging after each other with all the wild abandon of children who have nothing to lose. If he keeps his eyes shut, he can hear the low, threatening buzz get louder in his ears, and if it’s conjuration or reality, he doesn’t know, and Gansey’s heart stutters, lungs seizing up with panic, until Henry, Christ, Henry, calls his name and he’s snapped from his reverie, a mere foot away from the tree that had watched him die, bark still the same inky black as it was years ago, as it always appears in his dreams.

Unchanged, and waiting, patiently, to take what it had been robbed of, years ago.

Henry watches him lower himself into the hole inside the house with a dip of his head and a go get ‘em, Three, and then Gansey plunges into a different kind of blackness than what envelops the world outside, wrapped in a borrowed sweater as he advances further into the tunnel. It would almost be funny, how many revelations he’s had while trapped, hidden, protected by the walls of the earth, if he wasn’t still beholden to that tangle of emotions that try to unfurl themselves to create a breadcrumb trail, a thread to escape the Minotaur’s maze, as he advances deeper. His phone dies, faint light gone, and it’s just—dark. Dark and damp in the way that tunnels under the earth often are, and Gansey can’t breathe, because Jesus, is this really it, and he can feel the rot that’s spread through Cabeswater in this tunnel, threatening to seep into the marrow of his bones and eat him alive.

There’s buzzing in his ears, and Gansey doesn’t think it’s adrenaline.

Please. Something that won’t hurt me.

Then—

He’s no longer alone.

His court, as Henry had dubbed them in the past, is here, with him. This is mine, he remembers saying to Blue as he rests his head on hers, only to be met with a strong no, and he’d believed her then but he believes her now, that this isn’t just his. He is no longer an I but part of a we, like Henry said, and Gansey’s known it all along, but being reminded of it, with shaky laughter and the unwavering faith and support of his friends bolsters his flagging courage. He holds Blue close, flashes his friends a grateful smile, and with a collective breath, a gathering of resolve, they make their way down the tunnel. It’s eerily familiar to when they entered the valley of bones, and while there’s a quiet here that the valley lacked, Gansey knows what’s at the end of this. He’d say it’s his light at the end of the tunnel but that’s too much, hitting too close to what he knows is coming, so Gansey shuts his mind off and focuses on feeling, on the tred of his friends behind him, on the rustling of leaves despite the fact there’s no wind.

The door is a surprise, forcing Gansey to stop suddenly, hand coming to brace against the wall of the tunnel to steady himself, small pebbles rolling out from under his shoes. It’s as a king’s door ought to be; carved stone, bearing the symbol that’s guided them through forest and field and lake, a raven, her beak cracked just a fraction. Perhaps it’s fantastical to think she’s heralding their arrival, but in Gansey’s mounting excitement, in his anticipation, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched. The door gives easily below his fingers, swinging open, and he’s struck with how cold the stone is below his skin—with what he’s about to do, with the conclusion of this quest, Gansey nearly expected it to be warm, alive, but not all of reality can bend around the ruling forces of nature.

And there, God, right there—

Gansey almost stops breathing as he looks at the tomb, casket set regally in the center, the same remarkable, solid stone as the door that shields him, his king’s hands folded serenely across the center. He hears various utterances of surprise behind him, a few sharp inhales, though they roll through one ear and out the other as he steps forward with his hand outstretched, wild with anticipation, chest tight and aching because he’s here, close enough to touch, and Gansey can’t quite believe that this is all real.

Glendower had been here the whole time. Mere yards from where Gansey had died, buried below the house that oversaw his death and rebirth, and he’d gone—he’d gone all over the world, spent weeks in Wales and Iceland and countless hours pouring over manuscripts worn and faded with age, and all the while, sitting on a ley line just outside of Henrietta, his king had been hiding in plain sight. A laugh forces its way out of his lips, incredulous and not giddy, per se, but a damn close thing to it, and Gansey stops at Glendower’s side, fingertips hovering over his clasped hands. He’s afraid to touch him; with the poisoning of Cabeswater, who’s to say that the ley line hasn’t poisoned everything down here, that the demon, the unmaker, hasn’t tampered with some ordinary cellar to make it appear as what he desires so deeply, planning to rip the illusion from him as soon as his fingers graze the stone?

“Well then, Dick,” Henry’s voice cuts through the silence and Gansey’s head snaps up to look at him, oddly illuminated in the glow of the flashlights, and he thinks back to their time in that hole, confronting the horrors of their past, and wonders if that moment had been preparing them for this. It’s all dizzyingly cyclical. “Aren’t you going to wake your king?”

Gansey nods, though he doesn’t move. He spends a moment looking at his friends as if he’s never seen them before, committing the sharp line of Ronan’s mouth and the crease of Adam’s brows and Blue’s fingers twisting a hair-tie around her wrist and Henry’s unwavering gaze, all of them supporting him, holding him aloft as he reaches for the treasure that’s been just out of reach for so long.

This is before, and God, he’s terrified of the after.

What if this is where he dies?

What if waking Glendower is what kills him, whether because of the poisoned ley lines or a cruel twist of fate, the rules of the monkey’s paw coming into effect, or because the leaves they keep hearing are actually a swarm, hiding just out of sight? He’s spent so long trying to prepare himself for this, and Gansey wants it to be over, but he doesn’t want this to be over, this moment of solidarity, this life. It’s his destiny. He knows this. They all know this. Knowledge doesn’t mean acceptance, though, and Gansey thinks he must still be in the stage of denial or bargaining because he’s trying to prepare the words please save me in case his throat closes up the second he touches his king’s hands. He’s thought of a thousand different favors and this one is the most selfish, but as he gazes across his friends’, his family’s, faces, being selfish no longer seems like an issue.

His inhale is shaky, his smile the practiced, bright thing of the Ganseys, and he nods again, firmer this time, pulling bravery out of a box that reads cowardice, molding the old into something new, into something, better, more befitting of a king. This isn't just his, it’s theirs, but he has to take the first step forward, has to make the move the rest of them will follow, and the time for being fearful has long since passed. If he’s going to make a choice, he has to do it now.

The first brush of his fingers against the stone makes him pause; it, too, is cold, reflective of the November chill above them, and smooth below his fingertips, but it doesn’t kill him. There’s no pain lacing up his arm, no strained breaths, no suffocation. Gansey plants his hand more firmly on top of Glendower’s carved one and looks over his king’s carved face, taking in the features he’s seen drawn in countless books on Welsh kings and has drawn himself in his own notebooks. They’re as familiar to him as the sky and the rattle of Monmouth’s windows during a storm, of the garden behind his parent’s house and the interior of the Pig, and Gansey nearly bows in reverence, awed and humbled by the sight of his king, laid out and waiting for his request.

Wake up.

Thirteen hours.

Gansey tumbles from the car.

He’s failed.

After years of dreaming about what it would be like to wake Glendower, Gansey is now left to wrestle with the fact that his dreams were just that, that there is no waking of his dead king, that his tomb is stone and marble and not flesh and blood and magic, and in all this daydreams and fears and questions about the after, he’d never expected that it would be him, alone, sitting in the dead grass at some rest area on the road, weeping silently into his arms with his knees against his chest.

The past year has been rich with fantastical improbability, each experience leaving Gansey riding high on hope and the thrill of the chase, or filled with a dangerously quiet resolve, and yet, with all the hills and valleys, he’s never once considered the possibility that his quest in finding Glendower would fizzle out in a shower a pathetic sparks, that he’d find him but not wake him. It’s cruel in the way the world often is, and it leaves him hollow, the shake of his shoulders slowing, tears falling but no longer accompanied by choked-off breaths and quivering inhales. Gansey realizes that this is the first time he’s cried in who knows how long, and there should be some catharsis in it, some sort of relief coming from shedding all the emotional weight he’s been saddled with from his shoulders, but there’s nothing but a knife-sharp ache in his chest and a burning in his eyes.

There’s no promise of surviving the year, no guidance in how to beat the thing that’s poisoning Cabeswater, no help in keeping Ronan from being torn apart into bloody pieces in his dreams or Adam from going with him, no assurances that they can help heal the ley lines and fix whatever the fuck is going on. Gansey has no plan, no next step forward, and he needs to, because if they don’t tackle this beast that’s stripping Cabeswater of everything it has, it will devour Cabeswater, and it’s entirely possible the rest of his friends will go with it. He might go with it. Unwilling death, willing death. The parameters for that sacrifice are as specific as they are vague, and Gansey—well, if he’s going to sacrifice himself, how will he know that he’s doing it at the right time?

What if he sacrifices himself, throws himself on the sharp end of the sword to save his friends, and it doesn’t work? What if he dies and nothing happens, and his friends are forced to save the world, hyperbolic though it may be, without him, and they’re forced to make a sacrifice because of it? He’s read countless stories where the heroes have simply known when it’s been their time, where their moment of martyrdom is all but scrawled in the air in front of them, but after how much effort, how much work, it’s taken to get to this point—not the crying in the grass point but the Glendower point—Gansey doubts it’ll be so clear.

He inhales, rubs his nose on his sleeve, silently apologizing to Henry, whose sweater he’s still wearing, and lifts his head, fishing around in the grass for his hastily-discarded glasses. Breathe. The last thing any of them need, and the last thing he wants, is for Gansey to be in the midst of a panic attack because he forgets how to use his lungs, too wrapped up in his head to focus on something that feels so inconsequential and yet is so terribly important.

Inhale, exhale.

Inhale, exhale.

Gansey’s on his third, pointed set of breaths, in for four, out for five, when Henry makes his way around the corner of whatever dully-painted brick building he’s been leaning against for however long, and instead of trying to fix himself, to be Ganseylike, he finishes his set of breaths as Henry settles down in the grass beside him. Out of everyone he expected to check up on him, Henry wasn’t at the top of the list, but now that he’s here, Gansey’s grateful for his presence. He’s quiet as they sit together, looking up towards the cloud-dark sky as Gansey sniffles and wipes at his eyes, perching his glasses back on his nose.

“Sorry about your king, Ganseyboy.” Henry keeps his voice low, lips flattened in a sympathetic sort of line, and Gansey swallows, shaking his head in response.

“I found him, and that’s truly what the plan was all along.” It’s a half-truth; finding Glendower was part of it, but the favor was the other monumental bit, and to get one without the other, selfish though it is, makes Gansey feel incomplete. Or maybe it’s the fact Glendower hadn’t woken at all, not with his request, not with Adam’s aid, or Ronan’s, or Blue’s, his tomb silent, unfeeling, that has him so unsettled; there hadn’t been the same magic in that space like there’d been in the valley of bones, and he’d known it, yet Gansey had hoped, god, he’d hoped.

“Put it in your adventuring scrapbook.” Henry doesn’t press him on it, doesn’t say it’s okay to be upset or maybe we can go back or any other placating thing, just talks to him like he’s not fragile, not crossed with faultlines and fractures. “Take a polaroid and put it on your wall. The Gang Finds Glendower. It’d be a great article in a magazine, Three. You’re photogenic enough for black and white.”

Gansey heaves a breath, unable to coax out a laugh, and leans his head back down, forehead against his knees. Normally, Gansey’s all for direct, honest communication, and not for ignoring the problems in front of him, but he needs a second to come back into himself, and Henry, in his limitless amounts of wisdom, seems to understand that. Their moment in the pit did more between them than Gansey had realized.

“I don’t know what to do.” Gansey admits after a stretch of silence, voice little more than a whisper. “I thought finding Glendower would be our solution, that he’d fix things, and now I don’t know what’s left.”

It’s daunting, admitting that aloud. Speaking it into existence means it’s real, and if it’s real, that means Gansey has to face it. He has to move past bargaining and denial and launch himself towards acceptance, because there’s nothing left. Their whole plan, their expectations, have to be reset; their adventure, returned to square one. All of that work, and what does Gansey have?

Nothing.

“Never knew you were secretly the pessimistic type, Dick. Truth be told, thought that was Lynch’s thing.” Henry sighs beside him, and Gansey feels a hand on his back, steady between his shoulder blades. “You’ve got a brainiac court, you know that? Between me, you, and RoboBee, I think that you’ve got the right people involved in this thing to find what is left. You’ve got the whole world as your oyster, and there’s plenty of pearls around. I’m pretty sure that’s how the old saying goes.”

His court.

What is a king without his court?

Henry’s right; solving their problems isn’t only Gansey’s responsibility. His friends have willingly taken on, and continued to carry, that burden, and it’s been proven time and time again to be true. Why else would they follow him below ground, unflinchingly following his lead, except to support him? Why else would Ronan dream up a firefly for him, even though the act itself might’ve killed him, why else would Blue and Adam be there to tether him so that didn’t happen? If Gansey was supposed to do this alone, he would’ve been alone from the moment he stepped into Henrietta. There would be no Ronan, no Adam, no Blue, no Henry.

This was never intended as a solo mission, and he needs to stop acting like it is.

Inhale, exhale.

Gansey is a king, but he is not alone.

It’s time to get back to his court.

They go back to 300 Fox Way.

The car ride is tense, but not unproductive; Blue sticks to Gansey’s side, thumb briefly brushing over a tearstained cheek while Adam takes over the passenger’s seat, and they discuss what to do next, Henry chiming in over Gansey’s phone, settled in a cup holder. Glendower is no longer a viable option, and while the demon continues to spread through Cabeswater, poisoning the ley lines, they need to find some other way to destroy it.

Gansey relays Artemus’ prophecy, his omen.

Ronan takes it as well as expected—which is, to say, not well at all.

“I think the fuck not.” Gansey hears Ronan’s abrasive tone for what it is: fear. He can see his knuckles whiting out on the wheel and wishes there was something he could do to soften the blow, but how do you soften a blow like this for someone who’s already lost so much? No amount of dancing around the cold, callous truth can turn it into a pill that is easily swallowed, and no amount of explanation will undo the breaking of Ronan’s heart. “That’s not happening.”

“Ronan, we might not have another choice.” Adam’s firm as he speaks, unwaveringly level, and Gansey watches Ronan’s jaw work in the way it always does when he’s trying to keep himself from lashing out. If this were any other time, Gansey would praise his restraint. “None of us like it, but it’s something we have to consider. Whatever’s drowning Cabeswater is forcing our hand, and this might be the hand we have to play.”

“I said no, Parrish. There’s always another way.”

Gansey clears his throat to break the tension brewing between Ronan and Adam, reminding them, silently, that this argument won’t help them find solutions, find another way, and he watches them refocus on the road, each with their heads turned away, obeying Gansey’s request to keep things civil. Now isn’t the time for their ranks to break up, and they know that. Beside him, Blue squeezes his hand; her palm is warm and soft against his own, thumb moving in gentle arcs across the back of his hand. Something inside of Gansey settles, just for a moment.

“We’ll talk with Maura and everyone when we get back, see what their thoughts are. It’s entirely possible they’ll come up with something we haven’t thought of yet.” The psychics have certainly aided them plenty thus far, and Gansey’s hope is that they’ll have some thoughts on what other things they can try. It’s the next logical step, and Gansey clings to it, his focus more on the micro-level than it's ever been.

“I know I’m mostly the sidekick to whatever superhero show you’ve got going on,” Henry’s voice comes from Gansey’s phone, slightly tinny, “but I’d like to help if I can.”

“Please do, Henry.” Gansey’s quick to jump in. He’s honored that despite all Henry’s done for him, for them, and for all he’s been thrown into, he’s still willing to be a part of this. “Your insight will be invaluable. A set of fresh eyes is always needed.”

They flood into the house, filled with strange candles and oddly-smelling teas and overstuffed chairs, and make their home in the center of the living room, the women of Fox Way sitting nearby, dignified and fierce in the way Gansey has come to associate with Blue. They’re quiet for some time, not sure where to start, and it’s Blue and Henry who wind up explaining to Maura and Calla what had occurred after their conversation with Artemus, after they’d sped after Gansey and Henry had found him with Robobee; they’re fully factual in their account, omitting the forty-five minutes they’d been parked at that rest stop, Blue and Ronan and Adam bowing their heads together as they tried to figure out how to deal with this new, post-Glendower Gansey.

There’s some discussion about next steps; some concerns voiced about how much time they have to act, about what the deadline is, if they have months or weeks or days or hours, to which no one can come up with a satisfactory answer. Gwenllian comes in, jeering and singing about kings and fate and death, and Calla forcibly arms her from the room until she quiets, somehow, and returns, perching by the window.

Gansey says little, too focused on forcing himself to reach acceptance and move past denial to contribute much; his area of expertise is now, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant, now that their quest is focused more on the things he can’t quite touch, at least, not alone. His fingers interlock with Blue’s, and she squeezes his hand periodically when he drifts too far into his head, drawing him back into the present. If he shuts his eyes, Gansey can almost pretend that they’re back at the Barns, talking about the what comes next? as if they don’t already know the answer. It’s Adam who brings that discussion up, divulging to the others about all they’d talked about, about time and Noah and Cabeswater, with Ronan and Blue, and occasionally Gansey, filling in the gaps.

It takes considerable time, but they come up with a rudimentary plan. It’s half-baked and tentative, a bunch of guesswork knitted together, but it’s something, and right now, they need that something desperately. Gansey needs that something desperately. He joins Blue—they’re going to try and talk to Artemus again, and Gansey hopes that by his being there, he’ll be able to ask questions about the prophecy he’d given before he’d receded, leaving them reeling. Ronan, with all the steely bull-headedness he’s known for, declares he’s going to dream again so he can see how much time they have, and Adam promises to scry to protect him, Calla and Maura acting as their anchors to this world.

They decide to try and contact Noah, too.

There’s ravens on Artemus’ tree—or on Artemus, as Gansey’s not quite sure what the line is between it being him and belonging to him—when they kneel at his roots, their fingers tightly laced together. Gansey’s not paying attention to Blue’s murmuring—he’s focused on the damp earth staining his slacks, on the heavy promise of rain making the air thick and oppressive, on the soft caws between the birds above their heads, on the rustle of leaves and branches. There is no doubt in his mind that this is it, that this is The End in all her glory, and Gansey tries to wrestle with the fact that this is likely the last time he’ll spend a day at 300 Fox Way, that his hours to hold Blue’s hand are limited, that he won’t get to see Adam’s rare smiles or hear Ronan’s laughter again or get to know Henry just that little bit better, to hear about his life, to learn from his subtle, strong resilience.

By the time Blue coaxes Artemus back from his tree, Gansey’s cheeks are wet with tears.

Hours pass.

Gansey’s laying with his head in Blue’s lap in the softly-lit living room, the rest of their group scattered around the space, perched on pillows or in armchairs or wrapped in blankets, a record of Maura’s playing quietly in the background, crooning to them as they take a moment to recuperate from the day’s events. He’s lost track of what time it is, the storm clouds outside making it impossible to distinguish something as nebulous as time, not that Gansey cares; he doesn’t want to think about time passing, about how things could change at any second. Maura and Adam are discussing something in the threshold, voices a dull murmur that he can’t decipher—Gansey can guess they’re trying to figure out what Persephone would do in this situation. He doesn’t blame them.

If he wasn’t so afraid of falling asleep and never waking up, Gansey would try to sleep now—it would be peaceful, passing in his sleep, surrounded by his loved ones. He’s been putting off calling his family only because he doesn’t know what to say; the last thing he wants is for his family to call it intentional, thinking he was secretly so miserable he cut his own red string of fate, but Gansey wants nothing more than to hear their voices again, regardless of what they think in the aftermath. He wants to apologize for all he’s put them through, for his missteps, but mostly, he just wants to tell them I love you and hear them say it back.

He sits up, dislodging Blue’s fingers from his hair and disturbing Ronan, seated on the floor with his shoulder against Blue’s legs. Gansey has to pause, has to take a pointed, slow breath as he does—for hours now, his chest has felt tight, constricted, and he’s used to that feeling, but it doesn’t make breathing any easier. There’s eyes on him, Gansey feels them, but he doesn’t mind it—their worry is nearly palpable in the air around him, and it gives him more of a reason to be the brave one, to harness the shreds of it he has left and fasten it like armor. Gansey glances around, looking for his phone—if he’s going to call his family, he needs to do it now, while he’s still got the bravery—and is about to open his mouth to ask if Ronan or Blue have seen it before he’s abruptly, sharply, cut off.

“Hey! Parrish, take it easy!”

Gansey whips his head to look at Henry, who’s dislodged himself from his blankets, before looking to Adam, and oh, god—

They’re all up in seconds.

It takes considerable force to pry Adam’s fingers from Maura’s neck, takes skill to dodge his fists—Ronan isn’t so lucky, but he pushes past the blow—and it takes all of them to restrain him so that Calla can bind his arms up, so that Henry can wind a towel around his eyes at Adam’s begging while Gansey tries to pin his wayward legs and writhing chest in place so that no one else gets hurt. Blue flees first once Adam’s propped up against the wall to check on Maura, who braces against the threshold; the rest of them circle around Adam, his fingers and arms starting to twitch and thrash against the restraints, hungry to cause more pain, to create more chaos.

Adam’s pleading out apologies, trying to explain what happened to Ronan, to Henry, to Maura, but Gansey can’t focus on his words, not when the message is painfully clear—they’re running out of time. Whatever’s destroying Cabeswater is asserting itself in his friends, and Gansey’s heart constricts as he comes out of his crouch, breathing shakily as he straightens. He knows what this is; it’s a warning, coming through loud and clear. No, it’s a promise. If they don’t do something soon, this thing, this beast, will take over and one by one, they’ll all get devoured from the inside out.

Gansey wonders if it’ll force him to watch them die.

It’s you or them.

He can’t get the words out.

We need to go.

Four and a half hours.

Black drips from Ronan’s nose.

Adam thrashes against the wall.

Gansey falls to his knees.

Blue’s voice breaks as she calls his name.

His chest threatens to rip open.

Please.

Four hours.

“We— you need to go to a Goddamn hospital, Gansey, Jesus Mary fuck.”

Gansey almost wants to agree.

He’s lost consciousness too many times to count, and each breath comes out as a wheeze, strained through his lungs with every inhale, exhale. Thoughts don’t come easily; he has to struggle to focus, to form words, never mind coherent sentences, and trying to open his eyes has him feeling much like Sisyphus, working towards an end that is impossible to reach. It’s a hyperbolic comparison, but it’s one he doesn’t mind—if he can think of Greek myths, that means he’s reached a point of clarity.

This is the end.

Poison might not have lingered in the stone hands of Glendower, but there is poison seeping into them nonetheless, It’s made its presence known in Adam, forcibly restrained and under guard in the living room, fights it in his hands, his eyes, his body; in Ronan, pale and pacing and drawn up tight, skin stained black from the trickle coming from his nostril; but in Blue, cradling Gansey’s head, it does not, only because she’s turned off her connection to the ley lines, too afraid to mirror what’s corrupting her raven boys, of amplifying it, worsening it, as if it isn’t already seeping into their veins, their muscles, their lungs; nor in Henry, who floats between living room and kitchen, where Gansey had collapsed, offering water to Blue and keeping Ronan from punching walls and aiding in keeping Adam from breaking loose despite the watchful eyes of Calla and Maura.

Five hours ago, he felt the first ache in his chest and called it anxiety, brushed it aside; hours later, he understands the warning it had been, the first alarm bell, the first quiet peal of thunder. He knows that it’s his body threatening to shut down as the force that gave him life, all those years ago, is slowly strangled by something much bigger, meaner, stronger. Adam’s broken free of it, somehow, by the time Gansey regains consciousness; he’s no longer restrained, his face no longer in a cruel snarl that is not his own, and Ronan, paler than Gansey’s ever seen, argues with Adam, with Henry, with Maura, trying to convince them to let him take Gansey to a hospital. He can’t quite make out his words, he’s talking too quickly for Gansey to follow, but he knows the edge to his voice, identical to how it’d been in the BMW on the ride back, understands he’s trying to delay the inevitable.

Hours ago, Gansey and Blue spoke to Artemus for the second time.

Willing death for unwilling death, he’d repeated, and Gansey asked, as bravely as he could manage, what that meant.

I don’t want to die in vain.

They’d gotten their answer this time.

Gansey’s fingers twitch against his chest and Blue reaches for his hand immediately, squeezing it so firmly it hurts, but that ache is grounding, drawing his focus away from his own rasping inhales, a death rattle in their own right. He squeezes back, opens his eyes as best he can to look up at Blue, Christ, his sweet, beautiful Jane, who smiles down at him even though the corners of her mouth wobble and her lashes are strung with tears, and when he holds her gaze, brows slightly furrowed, pleading with her to understand, he watches her lower lip quiver, watches her nod, ever so slightly, as she laces their fingers together.

He’s running out of time.

A few hours ago, Blue found Noah, spectral, mournful-eyed Noah, and asked him, begged him, to use her energy so that they might make sense of Artemus’ instructions. It pained Gansey to see him if only because there was so much they couldn’t see, his body reduced to a section of wrist or a patch of chest, his face more bruise than boy, and even with Blue’s aid, it was obvious that keeping himself present was a struggle, his spirit suffocating under the weight of the unmaker. A few hours ago, Ronan went into Cabeswater and came out with black splattered across his t-shirt. A few hours ago, Adam came back into his body and brought the demon with him, trapped in his hands, his eyes. A few hours ago, Henry found Blue and Gansey on their knees by the porch, Noah gone, and sank to his knees with them, wrapping them both in his arms.

“Ronan.” Blue’s voice is faint, rough from holding back tears, and Ronan doesn’t hear her, emphatic in his argument that we need to get Gansey somewhere, now, he can’t fucking die like this, so she tries again with a firm, beseeching, “Ronan.”

The argument grinds to a halt. Air grinds against Gansey’s lungs.

Inhale, exhale.

“We need to go.”

Gansey’s eyes shut.

It takes considerable effort to keep his hand gripping Blue’s, to keep his eyes open, but he tries, throws his battered heart in fourth gear and pushes forward, to look at her in this soft light before he’s removed from it entirely. Her hand is strong in his own, the curve of their fingers around each other’s a lifeline, a tether, and Gansey focuses on the skin-to-skin, the palm-to-palm, the perfect way his thumb fits over hers while Blue takes charge and Gansey’s eyes slide shut, forcing all of them to confront the actuality of their situation, to accept that there is no other option, that they can no longer deny what has to be done.

What Gansey has to do.

Time ticks on, sand falls to the bottom of the hourglass.

There’s rustling as everyone moves at once. The front door slams, footsteps landing heavy down the halls; Blue’s hand leaves Gansey’s as arms slide underneath him, supporting the limp weight of his body, and it takes two of them to ease him off the tile of the kitchen floor and out of Blue’s lap, not that Gansey’s awake to experience it, dragged under by his failing lungs, his failing heart. He’s buoyed by the reverent, careful hands of his friends, carried like the most precious of artifacts out to the BMW, shielded by Ronan, by Adam, by Henry, by Blue’s bodies from the rain, steady and sharp, as they ease Gansey into the backseat, Maura following them with a blanket for his body, a whispered word, an entreaty for protection, falling with the rain as she places it over him, turning to the rest of them, solemn, to see them off.

Richard Campbell Gansey III is a dying king, and he asks his court to guide him to the afterlife.

An hour.

The world passes in flashes, small snapshots of life, a coda in a larger piece.

Awake: Blue’s fingers in Gansey’s hair; Henry’s hand on his ankle, steadying; Adam, trying to talk over the rain, their navigator guiding him home.

Asleep: White knuckles on the wheel; peals of thunder; fabric wrapped around wrists and arms disobeying once again; fingers fiddling with the edges of a blanket worn with age.

Awake: It’ll be okay, whispered softly by his ear; a curse, the car sliding on slick roads, Gansey’s heartbeat skittering with it; a broken, wheezed exhale.

Asleep: Hurry up, desperate; I’m fucking trying, agonized.

Asleep: Wake up, wake up—

“—wake up, c’mon, Ganseyman, I know your dreams must be great, but you’ve gotta come back to us.”

His head bursts above the waves, propelled by hands in his hair and hands shaking his shoulders, and Gansey gasps, instinct driving him to sit up despite the fact he lacks the strength, leaving him to rise an inch, fall an inch. This is not the dying of before, this is the dying of after, punctuated by the rain pattering on the car, on the relieved, pained exhales of his friends, the smell of jasmine and spice and home filling the car. It takes minutes, hours, for his mind to claw back its control from what is eating him alive, and he fights to keep it that way, fights to open his eyes and tip his head, taking in the sight of his friends, dimly lit while the storm rages on around them.

It’s time.

Gansey’s mouth moves—no sound comes out. Excelsior, he mouths, because he doesn’t have the oxygen for speech, and one by one comes the echo—

“Excelsior.” Goodbye.

For months, acceptance has eluded Gansey.

For hours, he’s tried to grasp onto it, to settle himself firmly in the fact that this is the only way they can fix things.

As he laid on the cold, chipped tile in the Fox Way kitchen, Gansey had counted his breaths in his moments of lucidity, rolling over moments in his life as though he were rewinding a tape, playing everything back that had led up to this moment—in retrospect, it’s horribly cliché, but it’s true—to understand his purpose. He’d always thought that his destiny was to wake Glendower, but he realizes as he blinks up at Blue’s face, warmly illuminated by a plethora of lamps in decorative shades, that finding Glendower was merely a stepping stone, a drop of water in a lake. This is his destiny, this is his after—he’s been living on borrowed time for seven years, and the world is asking for it back. It’s strange, considering he’s thought this through so many times, that now would be when it finally clicks, but Gansey’s no master of the secrets of the universe, so he yields, says I understand, and just like that—

The End creeps ever-closer, but there’s no fear, no panic, among the pain.

There’s only peace.

It’s a silent, unanimous decision that Ronan should be the one to carry Gansey. They all ease him out of the car with Adam, wrists newly unbound, and Blue taking care to support his heavy head, to keep his crown firmly in place, while Henry keeps the blanket over his body, as though it’ll protect him from the rain that soaks them through, promises to keep them drenched for hours to come, saturating the ground so that it yields below the weight of their steps, one set of prints missing from the parade. Gansey’s head rests against Ronan’s shoulder, arms folded across his body, as he’s carried from the car and towards the trees, his best friend’s voice a quiet refrain, played for his ears alone. The BMW’s headlights cut through the dark, illuminating the rain as it falls, pattering on leaves and filling hollows between roots and catching on lashes, making it impossible to tell where tears begin and rainwater ends.

Blue reaches the Mustang first.

Willing death for unwilling death.

Four sets of hands make a home for him on the forest floor.

Four sets of hands settle themselves on Gansey’s body, and he wishes he could hold them all, bring them to his chest and wax poetic about how much they mean to him, using an excess amount of five-dollar words just to make them roll their eyes and laugh at his dramatics, teasing him for his word choice that makes you sound like a seventy year old Classics professor, seriously. He wishes that he could explain through gasping breaths that it’s okay, I’m ready, because Gansey is—not just because he’s been struggling to breathe for too long and burning from the inside out, but because he knows Glendower was the lesson, that his story was made to teach a king made in his image how to die, how to hold true to his beliefs, his people, how to honor the sacrifices made by others, for others, how to meet his end with all the grace of a man who’s fulfilled his purpose.

Finding Glendower wasn’t his destiny—it’s all that came before, and all that comes after, that is.

It was waking the ley lines, it was Adam’s sacrifice, it was the valley of bones, it was the Fourth of July, it was Ronan’s dreams and his horrors, it was Persephone and Aurora and Niall, it was helicopter rides and finding ravens and Noah, it was Cabeswater and tiny red fish, it was his forehead against Blue’s and the clock stopping at 6:21, it was the third sleeper, it was a flock of ravens, an abandoned Camaro, it was Gansey, revisiting the place of his death, it was a borrowed sweater, a reunion underground, it was Gansey, unable to wake his king, it was Gansey, kneeling in the dirt and coming to terms with the fact that this has always been so much bigger than him.

Gansey understands that now.

He exhales, and it’s the steadiest breath he’s had in a long time.

His eyes open, squinting against the rainwater, and Blue cranes her head over his, sheltering him even though water drips into her own. It’s dark—Gansey can’t quite make out her face, but he can imagine it with perfect clarity, and he wishes this kiss wouldn’t be their last.

“Wait.” Ronan’s voice is shakier than Gansey’s heard it in a long time, and the sound of it draws Gansey’s eyes from Blue’s face to the shadow of his. It takes a moment of rummaging before Ronan draws out a small glass jar from his pocket, brightly lit from the inside by things Gansey can’t quite make out—the world is fuzzy, his eyes straining to focus, but as soon as Ronan pops the lid and the lights float out from inside, Gansey understands what they are.

Fireflies.

Fireflies that happen to be the color of one particular Camaro.

Dream me the world. Something new for every night.

“I figured you should have some reminder of that God-awful car you’re leaving behind.” Ronan’s voice breaks at the end of his sentence, and Adam’s hand shifts to rest on top of Ronan’s, their linked fingers resting atop Gansey’s heaving chest. Please be happy, he pleads, silently reciting a line, revised, in the journal below his pillow, please take care of each other. He can’t imagine when Ronan brought those back—can’t imagine the reality that was Ronan, dreaming despite the risks in the front seat of the BMW with black dripping from his nose, over his lips, onto his black-stained shirt, while Henry and Blue tried to wake Gansey up, one last time, please, Gansey, just a little longer, just to bring back a jar of Camaro-colored fireflies before they brought Gansey to his final resting place, to the place where life was taken away, was given.

Speech escapes him but Gansey still manages to smile, a tired, dulled imitation of what he usually wears, head craned up to watch the fireflies overhead, blinking past the rainwater that drips from Blue’s hair down onto his face. They’re beautiful, ethereal pinpricks of light in a forest that has seen so much death and will see more, and he’s entranced by them as they dance around the faces of his friends, gentle reminders that what has left is never truly gone, even as his breath stutters and falters in his chest.

His fingers twitch and then there’s hands resting on his own—there’s something to be said about reunions and the cyclical nature of life, but Gansey can’t find the words.

Inhale, exhale.

Henry speaks; Ronan speaks; Adam speaks; Blue speaks.

It doesn’t matter if Gansey can’t catch their words, mind too sluggish to process what they’re saying—he knows they’re all different forms of I love you.

Inhale, exhale.

I love you, too.

Inhale,

I’m ready,

exhale.

Inhale,

Blue’s lips on his—

and they’re softer than Gansey expects, damp from rain, and everything in his body quiets all at once—this is the after, this quiet, and it’s exactly what he’d felt all those years ago, stepping into Henrietta.

Full circle.

Exhale.