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His disappearance was gradual. He didn’t let go all at once. He held on. He had always been holding on, what was a few more days? Or was hours all he could do? It didn’t matter – he just needed a few more. He just needed more.
His fingers clawed desperately for purchase as he dangled from a cliff. His feet kicked, bucked, like they had the first time he died. He felt himself slipping. He felt himself fading. That was okay, because he didn’t want to pull himself up.
He just wanted to hold on.
For them.
Who – them. Who are they – just them. WHO – remember. Why – not just yet.
Who first? A different question, a different tone of voice. Who first?
Gansey.
It would always be him first.
i.
A boy was dying. Boys were always dying, so maybe that was not the way to go. A boy was dying on the ley line. But at this moment, there were two of them dying, so maybe that was not right, either. A boy named Richard Campbell Gansey III was dying on the ley line. But time was a circle, so maybe – Noah was watching a boy named Richard Campbell Gansey III die, at this moment of his unlife. That was not exactly correct too, but it would have to do.
In the end, would it matter if he was right?
“Gansey.”
The boy continued to writhe on the forest floor, fingers digging into dirt, body curling around itself, prepared to die, screams swallowed by the insects attacking, defending, attacking, defending… He was young. Much younger than the boy dying across time and ley line.
Even with the hornets – or were they wasps? Bees? Noah could never tell the difference – crawling along every inch of him, it was still undeniably Gansey under the skin of insects. Not because Noah knew this was where he died, but because Noah knew the kind of man this child would grow up to be, and he could already see the signs of that man under the buzzing, angry wings. A watch on the thin pale wrist trying weakly to slap death away from its owner. A bright yellow shirt, khaki pants, shoes that were richly tailored, richly bought, but sensibly worn – Gansey’s outfit. Eyes, beautiful eyes, peering out in between the darkness of fluttering insects, looking up at the sky, searching searching searching, always searching.
Noah gave him something to search for. “You will live because of Glendower. Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and you will live when you should not.”
Noah crouched. The boy stilled, dead or as near to it as makes no difference. Noah waited for the insects to fly away. It took a long time, but they did eventually when they realized there was no more life to sap, leaving the mangled corpse of a broken boy.
Gansey’s face. Young, and stung, and dead. His eyes were still open.
“Gansey,” Noah repeated. He reached out and touched his friend’s face. “Gansey.”
This was how he was going to remember Gansey: mint leaves, cardboard towns, sleepless nights, and a home with broken windows. Gansey, the tragedy. Gansey, the beginning. Gansey, the king.
“Good-bye,” he whispered, leaning down to kiss the top of the dead boy’s brow, where his future crown would rest. “Don’t throw it away.”
ii.
He found Ronan half-dead. Like the Gansey before, and the Gansey in a few minutes from now.
The demon was tearing his dreams and his body apart. Noah didn’t see that though. He wasn’t with the others, watching Ronan die and making impossible decisions – Ronan and Adam and Matthew or Gansey? Now or never? What next, what next? – he was with Ronan himself.
Ronan snatched for light.
Noah waited on the other side to give it to him. Ronan’s nightmares took Noah to places he’d never been before, places he wasn’t sure really existed. Noah searched for things to feed Ronan’s hungry, reaching hands, reaching reaching reaching, always reaching. He gave his dreamer friend things to hold on to, because it was all he could do to keep him alive.
Petals. Leaves. Stars. Paper. So these were the things he dreamed about now, small but sentimental. Noah had spent nights in Ronan’s room before, when he was more alive, watching him stir and then watching him come out with some thing… Before, they had always been something big, something important.
It was nice to see that what saved Ronan Lynch in the end were the little things.
It had never ceased to amaze Noah that consequence had kept him alive long enough to witness the magic of Ronan Lynch. Sand. Feathers. A lock of blonde hair. A rose of impossible colour.
Anything to keep his friend alive. To keep the demon at bay. To keep it from unravelling Ronan’s dreamt kingdom.
He felt Ronan jolt.
He felt Ronan start to wake. So the deed was done.
Noah began to draw back.
This was how he was going to remember Ronan: fingers tracing remembered, bright lights, skidding tires, loud music, and beautiful, frightful dreams. Ronan, the wonderful creature. Ronan, the wonderful creator. Ronan, the dreamer.
“Good-bye, rememberer,” he said to the pile of things he had gathered around himself but hadn’t needed to give his reaching Ronan. “Let your knuckles bleed only for the service of your court, and your own self. Kavinsky says hello. I say, wake up.”
He did.
Noah disappeared.
iii.
Only for a moment, though, because he wasn’t done. Not yet.
He held on.
Adam.
He was inside the BMW. Ronan’s BMW. Noah appeared in the passenger-seat, Adam sat at the wheel, knuckles white and sure as he drove through empty, familiar streets of the town both of them had tried to escape from. Eyes clear, mouth set. Determined. Noah hadn’t expected anything less.
Noah knew this street. He’d followed Adam from work through it many times before, making sure he got home safe and stayed safe inside it. He’d never been too powerful to keep Robert Parrish from hitting his son, but he was there to lull Adam into sleep with hummed lullabies (“Squash one, squash two, squash three…”) afterwards, there to make sure his father couldn’t find his keys or his beer bottles the next day (or his pills, or his important papers, or his stolen, Adam-earned money) afterwards, there to make sure his mother was whispered to about guilt and responsibility (“He’s your son, your son, your son…”)afterwards.
In turn, Adam was there to be his friend. Fair exchange. Both had been hard to do.
“I have to say,” said Noah, “I actually had a feeling this was where you were meant to be.”
Adam turned, unsurprised. He slowed down to a stop. He shut off the engine.
“Czerny,” said Adam. Slowly. Carefully. He was unafraid.
“Don’t call me that.”
“I can see through you.”
“I know. I’m fading. This is the last time.”
Of course Adam could see him. Adam saw many things. He was quiet, but observant. Blank, but present in every way that counted. Noah reached to trace his fingers across Adam’s knuckles, still clenched over the wheel where Ronan’s hands usually rested.
“Ronan didn’t want it anymore,” Adam said with a frown, “but he didn’t want to throw it away, either.”
“That’s good. It was his father’s.”
“Yeah.”
There was a silence in between them, so present it was nearly physical in a way that Noah was not. Noah realized that while his farewells to his other boys had been in moments of death, this farewell with Adam Parrish was a rebirth. Adam had never really been living, like Noah. It was only right. Noah could see Adam’s old trailer peeking out from the curb waiting, waiting waiting waiting, always waiting.
“Be careful,” he told his friend.
“I always am,” Adam replied.
Of course. “Then, be careless.”
Another silence, this one stretched out thin and breakable. They could have said anything to fill it, to break it, but they said nothing.
Instead, Noah climbed to the back of the car, crawled to where dust clung to the window in the back. And, still silent, he wrote, Good-bye, on the dust the colour of Adam’s skin.
He glanced back once, to see Adam crying in the rearview mirror. Tears down his cheeks, shoulders trembling, head down, knuckles tight on Ronan’s wheel. Silent. And that was how Noah would remember him: silent, but sure of his emotions. Stable. Safe. Finally, finally… Adam, the giver. Adam, the given. Adam, the magician.
With Adam’s dust still on his fingers, Noah faded away. And let go.
blue.
He had slipped off the cliff before Blue could find his good-bye to her.
He was long gone.
He was long dead, but unforgotten.
Blue was living living living, finally living, in Gansey’s car by then, half of her clothes and half of her home in the backseat of the Pig. They were in a deserted street in Venezuela, under a blanket of stars she had finally reached. Henry was in the other Camaro. Gansey was asleep. Blue was not.
She was staring at a note she had found, finally, in the pocket of her jacket. She hadn’t worn this jacket ever since she kissed him, him Noah, but he had known even back then what would happen, and had written the note carefully with his ghost strength and slipped it into her pocket when she was asleep.
Ah, Blue – she was not crying. Her eyes were tired of tears, and Noah’s final note was not really meant to be cried over. It was meant to be rejoiced, meant to be kept safe and taken out in times of sorrow for a glimpse of joy, meant to be remembered.
Good-bye, Blue Lily Lily Blue, it said. Thank you for the kiss.