Chapter Text
Niall Lynch’s day begins with a bang.
Not necessarily how Niall Lynch had planned for it to, just that it had dragged itself half-heartedly across the starting line kicking and groaning and covered in mud. He is, of course, talking about his middle child who’s just blown up the shed in a tedious and pubescent attempt at creating some kind of… bomb? Molotov cocktail? The details are unclear, as the shed has just blown up and at least one chicken is deceased, despite his son’s hilarious attempts at shooing them out ahead of time. Honestly, Niall Lynch is a little unclear as to just what, exactly, Ronan Niall Lynch had expected to fucking happen. But there he was, head bowed in prayer and mourning the loss like they weren’t going to eventually eat the thing for dinner anyway.
Niall Lynch’s children confused the shit out of him, awed him, and right now, downright infuriated him.
After everything that had just recently occurred, he and his wife had made what at the time seemed like a pretty damn good decision of taking Ronan out of school to be homeschooled for “a little while” so he could recover from the past year’s events and see specialists and take things at his own pace, but, well… a little while had at some point turned into a long while… and a long while had at some point turned into a longer while. And finally, a longer while had shown itself to be indefinitely indeterminate. Niall was reluctant to let his son return to school and Ronan, for his part, didn't seem all that eager to go back. They were managing---with the help of the other parents at the church---to homeschool him just fine, thank God, but the cushion of a watchful and protectively close-knit community that Niall had... altered at one point or another previously wasn't exactly helping the family's general mid-to-high level paranoia that Ronan might get attacked again and they'd lose him for real this time at any given moment.
Regardless of the timeline, recovery wasn’t what his son seemed keen on doing at all. And if Niall was honest with himself, that wouldn’t be what he’d be keen on doing, either. He'd also be climbing trees and blowing up sheds and... "Ronan, are you praying to Lucifer?" They'd all learned---a little---sign language. Niall had picked up what he'd had to. Mostly biblical references. Mostly under the hopes that it would be a temporary solution. "Why?"
He's hot.
Niall made some face and some noise and directed it squarely into the grass beside his son's silent form. He shook his head and began walking back to the house.
He's hot... the hell he is.
Ronan Lynch had saved his father from a violent and grisly end in a way that Niall, quite frankly, had no idea a child was capable of. He supposed it made sense, in an Animal Kingdom sort of way. But when faced with his son, who was still eating his parents out of house and home and stacking hay bales too high and then jumping off them and—finding any other thing he could think of to mess with his father’s blood pressure—Niall was having trouble reconciling the truth of what had happened that night with his son. With Ronan… And Ronan, upon waking, had had absolutely no recollection of it whatsoever. All the boy remembered was going to sleep the previous night and waking up in the hospital an entire day later.
His throat and his stomach had been severely damaged. He’d been deeply in pain after surgery and the anaesthesia wearing off—-and sobbing, inconsolably, for reasons even Ronan Lynch later couldn’t express. And once he’d been consoled, somehow, after sleeping it off for a day or so… he couldn’t even remember it happening at all. All of it was disturbing. But the doctors all said the same thing that made Niall want to rip everyone’s fucking head off.
“It’s understandable.”
All the damned child specialists money could buy couldn’t tell them what had happened. Their best guess was that it was just too difficult of a memory to recall.
What they’d managed to work out by the damage to his body and the damage to the—the corpse—was this:
Ronan had seen a man following his father, tried to warn him, and when that had failed, had been attacked by the man himself in the process. And by virtue of the living evidence before them all, miraculously, had fought like hell to survive.
At first, Ronan was advised not to speak to avoid further damage to his throat, but… after that had healed… he still couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. For some reason or other. They hadn’t worked out all the details. After trying several speech therapists and social workers, Declan, at the very least, was fully convinced by the idiots that Ronan wouldn’t be speaking again anytime soon and had quickly set himself to learning ASL and bribing Ronan with ice cream and money and whatever else to do the same. Niall Lynch saw no harm in it, he just didn’t see why it needed to be done. Ronan would be speaking again soon. And laughing again soon. And returning to school. If it was psychological in nature, or trauma related, or whatever, they just needed to find the cause and smite it out as soon as possible. Then things could—well, not go back to normal. Niall Lynch at the very least could see that that was never going to happen, but… return, somehow, to some semblance of normalcy…
Up until this point in life Niall Lynch had been altogether a little too unconcerned with things being normal. He’d never given the thought of things being otherwise enough credit. Until it—normalcy—had left him entirely, replaced by the image of his son covered in—it was time to send Ronan back to school. It would be a good move for everyone. Of this, and of pretty much nothing else these days, he was sure. Back to his friends. Back to whatever would stop him from continuing to be a constant terror bored out of his mind at the Barns and in the Lynch household the minute they all had other things to do.
There was, of course, also the matter of the letter. Something he’d been putting off dealing with until he’d gotten Ronan figured out. A messy note written by his son’s hands looking nothing like his son’s handwriting. Another possession modern psychology couldn’t explain away in a comfortable manner beyond, “he was going through something quite stressful.” And something the Father would only sigh at knowingly and say, “give the boy some grace, Niall…” and then probably recite the goddamn fucking serenity prayer. And as precious and comforting and routine as it all had become, as lovely as it felt to sit next to a woman in a church and… pretend. At a mortal belief for a little while.
If Niall Lynch heard the fucking serenity prayer one more time, he was going to commit an original goddamn sin.
Ah, yes. The letter.
No point in ignoring it anymore, was there? No. Certainly not. Another thing he’d tried to keep Ronan from. And failed, hilariously at. He and his eldest had read it over once they’d gotten to the hospital and found it—well, disturbing…
Declan had admitted to Ronan acting strangely before their father had returned home to look for him. And Niall agreed, the behavior did sound very un-Ronan-like. But that didn’t necessarily mean the letter would prove to be important. Doctors and clergy alike assured them that more than likely it was nothing consequential and only a piece of fiction conjured by a young mind dealing with a great deal of pain and fear.
Baby Matthew, however, had tragically not been part of this deeply serious inquiry. And had found a funny looking piece of paper in Dad’s Old Chest with Ronan’s name on it while playing Indiana Jones—and had brought it to Ronan immediately the following morning for brotherly inspection.
Ronan had not been disturbed by this finding. He had been overjoyed. As any teenager would, at the indication that some eldritch horror, imagined or not, was out there somewhere and possibly looking for him. Possibly looking for more murder. Angling to tell Niall Lynch how to raise his children. How to live. Begging to be thought of… the hair on the back of Niall’s neck had risen when he’d stepped lightly down the stairs to the sounds of his youngest sounding out the french in a terrible accent early that morning while Ronan poured over a translation. It was all he could do to walk past them, extremely normally, into the kitchen while adjusting his night robe. Only to find his eldest and the boys’ mother already there, listening in. Aurora was gripping the edges of the counter, but she stayed silent, looking to Declan who was folded over the coffee maker and looking physically ill… Declan looked over his shoulder at him and his face was pale.
What the fuck? Niall remembered signing, for once, of his own volition.
Declan shook his head. He didn’t turn around immediately. When he did, his face was drained of all color and in his hand was his father’s mug. He held it out to Niall in silence until his father took it from him.
"It was always going to happen, right? No matter how hard we tried, something was—” Aurora was close enough to him, suddenly, to very carefully run a hand through Declan’s hair. When it calmed him, just slightly, she did it again. “We were never going to keep this from him forever. It’s better that it happened now. Before.”
Before what? Niall continued, he hoped, understandably. He was afraid if he spoke he'd scream. He'd shout. Or worse, he'd start crying and never stop.
Declan's eyes watched his father's finger's move and watched them fall. They stayed there. They didn't come back up to meet Niall's. Niall was confused. It wasn’t until then he noticed. Declan had been acting very oddly.
“I don’t know what before, I just—I just have a terrible feeling, I just—” Declan had ceased managing to inhale oxygen. Aurora’s arms had encircled him and his eyes had gone huge and stared out at everything and nothing all at once. It had taken time, and effort, to get him to focus. Niall's memory... stops? Somewhere around then. Perhaps they were all experiencing psychiatric symptoms. He remembers reaching out to his son and taking hold of him. He must have. He knows he must have. But somewhere before crossing that threshold, he just... stopped. Being himself. And was gone. For a little bit. He remembered staring at the floor and waiting for Declan's breath to even out. His grip in his son's hair was tight, probably too tight to be comforting. Ronan and Matthew's heads had poked curiously around the corner. Niall dimly, dimly remembered Aurora shook her head and shooed them off... Something was happening to all of them.
It made him sick to his stomach to think about.
They needed to find something to anchor Ronan—and now Declan, too—to the real world. Insofar that the concept had ever had a meaning to Niall Lynch himself to begin with, at the very least. This was the worst thing that could have ever happened to any of them. It was utter chaos. His wife wasn’t too concerned about it. But then—she wasn’t really designed to be.
Niall Lynch had cooardinated himself neatly right in the center of a storm of his own creation. And it wasn’t as though he wouldn't snap his fingers and fix all this if he could. It wasn’t as if his son would never have even had to have healed from those injuries in the first place if it were possible.
But that was the thing, wasn’t it. Wasn't it just. Whatever had happened that night had left him entirely powerless—entirely and frustratingly human against everything—in the process.