Chapter Text
Does any part of you still look at the sky and hurt?
There was a boy laying in the grass. A small boy. He would grow to a tall, handsome young man one day but here in this moment he was still just a boy, just a child. He was laying all curled up in the tall grassland, not much bigger than the rocks down by the river. He was looking up at the sky, watching a flock of ravens circle above him. There were hundreds of them and they moved like one organism, like each of them were part of something bigger, something powerful, something invincible. The boy was watching them, tears running down his cheeks while his heart ached, his soul screamed. Oh, how badly he wanted to follow them. How badly he wanted to unfold his wings and hurl himself after them, into the clear blue sky and become a part of this bird army. There he would be equal.
He would belong.
But instead his small childlike body was glued to the ground by gravity and no matter how much he longed for it, he couldn’t follow them. He couldn’t fly.
Clouds pressed in on the blue sky and soon a thunder grumbled, the blue Virginia mountains shivering in the anticipation of a storm. The wind danced through the unmown field, pulling on the dark curls of the young boy, tearing on his clothes, trying to carry him with it.
But the boy just pressed his eyes shut while dark tears kept running and running and his heart kept bleeding and bleeding black ink.
He would stay here forever. He would die here.
Maybe it was alright. It was what he had been born for anyway, wasn’t it? Deep down he had always known. There were no wings strong enough to carry him into the sky. There were no words to describe the hurt he felt when he looked at the ravens above him. There was no one to understand the agony of it all.
“Greywaren,” a voice said. It was a familiar voice. A voice the boy would always listen to. A voice that carried stories and tales like other voices carried songs. It was born for a clever plot twist, a hidden metaphor, a simmering cliffhanger.
Two strong hands reached down to the crying boy, scooping him up like he weighted nothing at all.
“Do you remember when I told you about the day you were born?” Niall Lynch bundled his little son in his arms, his cheek pressed to the man’s chest. The wind seemed to break around the two of them, like they were the eye of a tornado, it was completely still.
“It was like the whole world had been holding its breath until you were here. Like it had always waited for this day, for you to be born.”
The man slowly walked down the field, back to the old farmhouse. The boy pressed his face against his father, drying his own tears. He wanted to tell him. Oh, how badly he wanted to tell him that he wanted to fly. But he didn’t have the words.
“Why doesn’t it want me then? The world,” the boy said instead, opening his eyes for the first time to look at his father’s face. How familiar it was. How strange it was.
His father smiled at him and then carefully sat him down again. They had reached the driveway that led up to the Barns, the place the boy had grown up in. He grabbed for his father’s sleeve, not wanting to let go.
Niall kneeled down in front of him and laid both of his hands on his son’s shoulders.
“The true question is, why don’t you want it?”
And then he stood up again, and without another word he turned around and walked down the driveway, away from the boy, away from his son, away from Ronan Lynch.
Don’t leave me!, a voice inside him wanted to scream. Why did you leave me alone? Why didn’t you teach me how to fly?
Tears dropped from his chin while he watched his father disappear. He sank to his knees and stayed there until a warm hand cupped his chin. When he looked up a beautiful woman was smiling at him. Her long blonde hair was waving in the cool summer breeze, her blue eyes glinting with kindness and love.
“Mister Impossible,” Aurora said gently and kissed his forehead. “Don’t cry, my love.”
She wiped away his tears, took his hand and pulled him up to his feet again. Then she said, “Do you remember where we buried it?”
Let’s bury it.
She led her son past the farm house, past the long barn to a meadow full of blue lilies. She kneeled down in the middle of it and gestured him to join her.
“But it’s a secret,” Ronan said as he sat down next to her. “It’s supposed to stay hidden. Forever.”
Forever?
“But do you want it to stay hidden?” Aurora asked, her voice as lovely as the sky above her. Ronan shook his head. He had never wanted to hide it in the first place. He had wanted to show it to the world.
So they started digging. It didn’t take long until they had found it.
It was the sky captured in a book. It was infinity and longing hold together between pages.
Does any part of you still look at the sky and hurt?
The boy’s grown hands held the small book, the dream, the sky close to his heart.
Forever.
“Come on,” Aurora said sweetly, “go show it to your brothers.”