Work Text:
Noah slept.
Or perhaps he was awake, after all.
He recalled Ronan once trying to describe to him the place he passed through when he dreamt – in between wakefulness and sleep. Perhaps that was where Noah was now.
Or perhaps it was someplace completely different.
Noah tried to open his eyes, but they slept peacefully on. He couldn’t feel his body, but he couldn’t much when he was a ghost either, except when Blue was nearby.
The more he thought about it, he found he could feel… something. Something far bigger than his human body, but felt part of him none the less. Something tingling, scratching, growing, decaying. But decaying was only part of the cycle. Something humming. A quiet hum that Noah felt was familiar. He thought he might have heard Adam hum it absently before. Or was it Noah himself who had? Details seemed irrelevant in this place.
Time passed. Or perhaps it didn’t. Noah found that he could hear and feel more and more. No, not more. It was as if he was always aware of them, but they were just coming into focus.
He was part of something bigger now. (Will be. Always has been.)
The Something spread forever. A circle with layers of millennia past and millennia yet to come. There was no distinction here.
Noah realised that he could understand how to see the forevers. (Will do. Always has done.)
The hum was background noise to thousands of other voices. Sometimes they spoke to Noah, and he realised he could understand them. A mixture of Latin and other languages older and not yet created. Noah didn’t know any of the other languages, so there was no distinction. It didn’t matter, only this strange compound language mattered here.
Noah saw himself – his life and death and cycle – a teardrop in the tumultuous waters of the cycle that was time.
He saw his friends. The adventures they had. (Are having. Will have.) – A spark of light in a gathering darkness. A clarity that followed. A widening of the path of power from this place to the world of wakefulness.
Noah wondered if he would ever see his friends again and immediately knew the answer. He would see them again, as their lives are constantly entwined with the lay line. (Were. Will be.) But they will never see him again. All their meetings were painfully familiar to Noah as he watched them.
This struck Noah with a sadness that brought about a localised shower of rain near where he was buried.
The trees comforted him in their strange language. They told him what he had to do.
Noah thought Goodbye into the life that he had once, and then twice, lived. It was easier than he had thought to let go of himself and everything that came with it, but maybe he had known all along. Then he was free. He could move. He could speak. This strange place was always where he was meant to be.
The entity that was once Noah listened, and found other voices in this place: countless others who had fallen asleep on the lay line and kept just enough awake to add their energy to the line’s power.
Time passed. Or perhaps it didn’t. The entity that was once Noah listened. One of the voices in this place belonged to a king.
Maybe the entity that was once Noah had always known. Glendower, it whispered.
* * *