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Noah knew he did not need to be here. His presence here might not be changing anything, might make no difference to Ronan in the end. (An end coming soon soon.) But he wanted to be here. It was difficult, especially without Blue, to stay. He felt himself fading every time his concentration wavered. Whenever he snapped back to the car, he didn’t know if he’d been gone for an instant or an hour. Ronan gave no indications either way.
It helped to focus on the sensation of being thrown out a window. Noah thought hard about that, set it on a loop for himself. He wished, for Ronan’s sake, that he could be thinking about Aurora instead. Ronan deserved to have someone here who could be mourning the deceased along with him. But Noah, by now, didn’t have the capacity to imagine things outside himself and his friends. He was shrinking, narrowed to a set of fewer and fewer points.
He did not try to speak. He doubted that would be comforting. Words couldn’t make anything right for Ronan.
After this, it would be time. Or was it time already? No. After this. This was not yet over. Noah supposed it was a vigil.
He remembered how upset Gansey had been, when he’d discovered Ronan bleeding in that church. Back when Ronan still thought he had secrets from Noah. Noah could close his eyes and be back there now, when Gansey had come home late at night with his pale face and his shoulders set, his voice steady as he explained the emergency room visit of one roommate to the second roommate.
Noah closed his eyes, and then he was back in that moment. Gansey was looking at him, choosing every word carefully, some blood on his shirtsleeves.
No. Noah wasn’t capable of this much travel; he was in tatters. It made him start to slip, or be dragged, and it was scary. He focused on the visual of Ronan’s hands gripping his arms, he remembered the sensation of being thrown, and how it had felt like existing. It helped him get back to the passenger seat of the BMW.
Ronan spoke. Noah didn’t know when this was happening. It could have been only minutes after Ronan first told Adam to go inside without him in a quiet, level voice. It could have been after hours of sitting in silence with Noah.
Noah wanted to be here.
“Have any of the others--” Ronan’s voice came out unsteady, unlike him, and he stopped. Noah watched him grip the steering wheel, then loosen the grip, slowly. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet and even. “Have any of the others asked you about it?”
If Noah’d had guts, they would have churned. He wanted to pretend he did not know what Ronan was referring to. But he wouldn’t do that. That would defeat the purpose of being here at all.
“There might be a rule,” Noah said. “I know they’re all curious. Gansey especially. But he’s never asked me anything.”
“A rule,” Ronan said. Flat. “Like, we can see you, but our brains get squirrely when it comes to asking you about what it all means.”
“Squirrely,” Noah said. He liked that word. “Or you’re all just polite.”
“I’m not polite. I never wanted to know. Or I thought I knew enough. Or.” Ronan stopped, and he didn’t speak again for a long time. Noah thought he heard a humming, and if he’d had guts, he would have had to swallow down stomach acid. He kind of wanted to feign puking even still.
The humming was gone. Maybe it hadn’t been there at all. Maybe Noah was just too scared.
If the demon made him try to claw out Ronan’s eyes right here, it would at least give Ronan something to fight against with his hands.
“She died on the ley line,” Ronan said, every word ripped out of him. Noah watched him stare straight ahead, and he started to count the seconds between Ronan’s blinks. It was a lot of seconds.
“Yeah,” Noah said. Abruptly, his cheek hurt. He was being dragged again, back to murder, but he couldn’t relive that moment in this passenger seat. He had to stay present. He wanted to be here.
Finally Ronan shut his eyes, after the staring must have grown painful. Tears leaked out the corners. “Is it possible?”
All of Noah’s tatters tried to skitter. He slouched. “I don’t know.”
“I figured. But what do you think.”
Noah felt sorry for Ronan. He knew that this was not Ronan hoping, not exactly, but he still did not want to be the one to extinguish the hope that Ronan wasn’t allowing himself. There was no one else in the car, though. And no one around who might be better informe than Noah..
“I don’t think she could come back.” Unmaking wasn’t death, no matter how much gore it left behind. Whelk had not unmade Noah. He’d simply bashed his skull in.
Noah collected his tatters and veered away from that moment, again. Soon he wouldn’t have to try so hard. Soon he wouldn’t have to try at all.
“I figured,” Ronan said again, his voice thicker this time.
Time was a circle, and it was a loop, and this loop was pulling tight, a thread looped around itself and pulling into a knot too small to be seen. Soon enough Adam would be in this seat--or maybe he was already here--
”He threw me out the window!”
Ronan’s voice, singing through a closed bedroom door, Noah’s roommate and his friend who never lied: “You’re already dead!”
Adam was not here yet. Noah was not gone yet.
“I know I can’t really help,” Noah said, because words couldn’t make things right for Ronan, but talking could be a reminder that you were in a car instead of a nightmare forest with your arms soaked in your mother’s blood. Talking could help the living. “But is there anything you want from me?”
Ronan looked at him for the first time since Noah had appeared here. From the look in his eyes, Noah suspected he’d heard what Noah had not said: anything you want from me, before I go.
“Creepy question,” Ronan said, and then his face went blank, as if he realized he’d just sounded slightly like himself, and slightly unlike someone who’d recently held the corpse of a parent for the second time in two years. The blankness on his face began to contort, and Noah watched as Ronan took in a long, harsh breath, regaining control.
Noah reached out and placed a hand on Ronan’s forearm. Ronan had not answered his question, but he looked down at Noah’s hand and didn’t ask not to be touched.
“Cold,” Ronan said.
“Yeah,” Noah said.
Noah wanted to be here, and he didn’t want to be used by the demon again. The other thing--the last thing--that wasn’t something he wanted, it was a choice he’d made long before. A choice he was constantly making. That didn’t count as a want.
He didn’t want to be used by the demon again, which meant it was over, he was over, because soon the demon would become inescapable. Soon the demon would use Adam. Soon the demon would start its work on Ronan. Noah couldn’t do anything about that. All he could do was want, and choose.
It was nice if he thought about leaving as taking flight. Maybe it would be like getting tossed from a window.
“Blue’s eye,” Ronan said. “It sounded rough.”
Noah was surprised, but also not surprised at all, that Ronan was trying to check in with him. Now of all times, here of all places. A knot growing smaller and tighter, the thread hard to see. He squeezed his hand on Ronan’s arm.
“We don’t have to talk about that right now,” Noah said, as kind as he could. Ronan shouldn’t have to worry about him. Ronan should be focused on himself right now. Ronan had been focused on himself--or at least, on his own desires--for most of the time that Noah had known him, and now was a very bad time for him to stop.
Ronan would have much better odds in the upcoming fight for his life if he kept focus on what he wanted, if he kept his will about him. Noah wished he could see the outcome of that fight, wished he could go with the knowledge that Ronan would make it out alive, but it was getting harder for him to see anything but the choice and the life tied to his.
“Gansey,” Ronan whispered, as if he’d read Noah’s mind, or perhaps they were just similar boys. “I’m waiting for Gansey.”
“Me too,” Noah said. It was sort of true. He’d always be waiting for Gansey, and looking for him, and finding him.
Noah flickered, and when he came back his hand was no longer on Ronan’s arm, and Ronan was looking straight ahead again. Noah didn’t touch him again. Time passed, or maybe Noah just left again, but the next thing he knew the rest of his friends were walking toward the car.
Noah felt his tatters knit back together a little as Blue stepped closer, but now that he was more fully here all he had was sorrow, remorse. He could feel Blue’s thoughts, her kindness, and he didn’t know what her fate would be either. He didn’t want to be here in the passenger seat anymore.
But even after Ronan shut the car door on his friends, Noah lingered, although he suspected that Ronan could no longer see him. He wasn’t sure he had enough of himself left to be seen. Maybe to be heard. He could hope, but he didn’t know.
“Aurora and I couldn’t fight, but you can,” Noah said. Before he could tell whether or not Ronan had heard, he had slipped away.
Choosing. Noah found it funny that he’d never really made that many choices when he’d been alive. He’d had ideas, he’d done things, sure. But how often had he made a real choice, conscious and clear? Compared to the choice of throwing himself against one of Ronan’s night terrors and rolling under a car, or the choice to kiss Blue, or this firstlast choice, none of it seemed very momentous.
Maybe that was all right. Well, it didn’t matter if it was all right. But Noah didn’t mind.
As Noah crouched over Gansey’s body and said the words Gansey needed to hear, energy lines and time circles and knots in threads flitted through him like bird wings flapping. He was relieved to find that letting go did not feel like being murdered at all.