rhy maresh (goldenhelm) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2018-08-01 22:53:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread, rhy maresh, richard gansey iii |
WHO: Rhy & Gansey
WHAT: Rhy goes to Gansey to talk about and work through something he's struggling with
WHEN: This past weekend, let's say Saturday the 28th (backdated)
WHERE: The Barns
WARNINGS: Lots of feels, mainly homesickness and relationship insecurities
Rhy had tried, really tried, to work through his feelings on his own. The problem was that they kept spiralling, digging him even deeper into insecurity. It took him awhile to recognize the pattern, but after about a week or so of making himself miserable every time he thought about it, without really getting anywhere, he finally realized that something needed to be done about it. Things needed to be said out loud, to someone who would see through Rhy’s insecure and faulty logic, and help him get to the truth of it.
But he still couldn’t talk to Alucard about it, because every way he considered expressing it to his lover sounded awful. Nor could he talk to Kell, for different reasons. Thankfully, he had a friend in Gansey, in whom he’d been able to confide his insecurities surrounding his death, and found a sympathetic ear and helpful advice. He had no idea whether Gansey would be able to relate to what he was going through now, but at the very least, he knew Gansey would listen to him, and he would understand the complexities underlying Rhy’s relationships in a way that most did not.
When he reached out to talk to Gansey, he was invited over to Gansey’s home, which already demonstrated an understanding of what Rhy needed from this conversation. Neutral territory, no one anywhere nearby that had an emotional investment in what he was going through, so he didn’t have to carefully choose his words make sure he didn’t cause any harm. He could spend all of his energy trying to get through to the heart of the matter.
And, as it turned out, the land that Gansey lived on -- the Barns, as he called it -- was beautiful, and calming in and of itself. Time seemed to move more slowly here, giving Rhy more time to think; and, too, the heat seemed to be lessened, the sky cloudier, the air cooler and a little damp, which was a pleasant reprieve from the intensity of the Texas sun. After he had asked after Gansey and his friends, and made genuine, admiring comments about the fields in which they walked, they reached a moment which felt appropriate to get to the point. He’d asked only if they could talk, without giving any specifics, and so he carefully considered where to begin.
“I’m not sure that Alucard would entirely approve of me telling anyone about this,” he began, “But as it’s necessary to explain what we talked about, and because I trust you not to spread it any further…” He trailed off, and then began again. “He had a younger sister, who he lost to the dark magic that invaded our city. And recently, we talked about… the possibility that she could be brought here, and have a life here, which was stolen from her.”
That was enough detail, he thought. Possibly too much, but he wasn’t sure that any of this would make sense to Gansey if he didn’t say that much. In his head, he offered a silent apology to Alucard for it; since his intentions in disclosing this information were to avoid hurting Alucard any further, hopefully, it could be forgiven. “I want her to come here, for her sake, and for his. I want that with all my heart. And at the same time, it hurts to think about, and on my own, I haven’t been able to figure out why.”
--
Gansey listened quietly. Now that they had reached the point Rhy could discuss the matter, truly open up, it was not Gansey’s place to dictate how he did so, how he shared. In fact, the way in which Rhy shared it would tell Gansey more context than the words alone did. They were at the Barns, far from Rhy’s palace, far from the most important people in Rhy’s life, and it took explanation, some context in which to place the issue to come. In fact, Rhy spent more words, sparse as they were, on that than he did on his feelings. Even as Rhy parsed down the specifics, leaving them out, and Gansey did not feel he needed more (it was not his place to know more), that much Rhy could comfortably say, at least in regard to understanding what things were. What had happened, Rhy knew. It was what happened now, about it, that was such a mess of chaos, it could not even fit on a platter.
“First, my apologies, even as you must be aware, that to answer that we will have to gently prod where that hurt comes from, and it will hurt,” Gansey replied. “I am also sorry to Alucard for his loss and to his sister for going through that.” It took little imagination to guess how that death had felt. Gansey had died at a young age and as a teenager. However old she had been, he could relate.
“That hurt feeling does not undermine or invalidate your wishes for her to come. Clearly, she is not what is hurting you. If she were, you would have said something more, something else, about her,” Gansey tried to set a little groundwork of his own. There was not enough to understand what bothered Rhy just yet. “I would posit, instead, that her coming here would change something - or you imagine it would - about your relationship with Alucard. And that, whatever you fear about that, is what causes the pain.” He looked over at Rhy, his body language open and honest. His voice sympathetic and grounded, even.
--
“No, please, don’t apologize for prodding,” Rhy said, with a slightly strained laugh. “If you don’t, Alucard will be the first person to ask me about it, and I’ll be completely unprepared.”
He took a deep breath, and then another. He was comforted already by Gansey’s calm, even voice, but they were getting to the heart of the matter, and there was only so much that a calm, even voice could do to make him feel better. He probably should have come to Gansey sooner, before he’d spent a week guilting himself about it. He had already tried to sort through what the source of his hurt was, and what he had added on top of it, which were the thoughts that were only making it worse. But that hadn’t worked on his own, either, and so he breathed, and listened, allowing Gansey to take the lead in questioning him.
“No,” he said, and he was glad to be able to give that answer. “I don’t think her presence would change anything. Not in a bad way, at least. He would be happier, and that would make me happier. And I don’t -- I don’t feel threatened, at all, by his love for her.” If it had been that simple, he would have worked it out already. It would be a stupid insecurity that he could just talk himself out of, eventually. But he really, truly, felt nothing but joy when he imagined the two of them reuniting, and spending time together, and Anisa building her life here. And yet…
Hesitantly, he added, “I think… there has been a change, though. It’s already changed, perhaps it changed the moment we arrived here, or maybe it was the moment that Alucard realized the portal could bring his sister back.” He paused, because he was getting closer to it now; he could feel it. He only had to put it into words. “The moment he started thinking of this place as… somewhere with a future. If not for him, then for her, but… how could he not want to be here with her for that future? If I were him, and it was Kell who had died, and we were suddenly here together… I would want to stay forever, to live with anything, in order to have more time with him.”
His throat tightened, and there were tears in his eyes. Some part of him was amazed that this was already coming out of him so quickly; it seemed to have just been waiting there for him to say it out loud, instead of inside his own head. And Gansey was keen enough to point him in the right direction, even if he’d missed the target just by a hair. “I think… maybe that hurts because… because I don’t know if I can choose to stay here, too.”
It felt more real to say it aloud, and he felt it keenly, the sharp thorn of it digging deep into his heart. He had meant to continue, to explain his reasoning, but his throat had closed over.
--
His heart ached on Rhy’s behalf. Relationships changed - how could they not? - and some of those changes came from differences in circumstance. As those changed in life, so too did everything else. Tumbleweed, Texas in the twenty-first century was a vastly different place than London, Arnes in the nineteenth. Especially for a king. It was the sort of title people enjoyed placing at Gansey’s feet, metaphorically, and he had been forced to deal with a great many changes, including the complete lack of money, on his arrival here. He was continuing to deal with that. But for all that, Gansey had not been a king with a country, a people and a land that he ruled. Rhy had. And that was a part of his identity, one not readily set aside, one with an enormous mantle, a duty that called whatever his personal desires. So it was no surprise, then, that were it a matter of choice, Rhy’s natural inclinations were to return to do what he felt obligated to do.
This place was not necessarily - certainly not explicitly, openly laid before them - a place one chose to stay in or to leave to return home. Ronan and Adam had both been in this place for more than a year. Years even. They were taken to other worlds and returned to this one, time and again. People were studying the portal, Gansey had heard. But he had few expectations that it would lead, in any short period of time, to people gaining the choice to stay or to go.
But even if no one, if neither Rhy nor Alucard, had the choice whether to stay or to go, there were the hopes in their hearts. What they longed for, what they planned for, what they did with the time given to them. The cruise had certainly felt like vacation. There had been no chance to have a job and no concern for money, realistically. Tumbleweed, however, required it of them. They had financial needs, they had jobs, they had longer lasting lives that they were building. Gansey had just recently helped with the building of a swimming pool. These were investments in their lives, whether they hoped to stay or to go. That hope, which there was no guarantee it mattered, had a real effect on a relationship. If Alucard wished to stay and Rhy wished to return to Arnes, there was a tension in their relationship. They could not each do those things and remain together. Perhaps Rhy could, if another Alucard were still in Arnes, but Alucard could not. That was heart wrenching stuff.
“That is painful,” Gansey acknowledged. As much wonder and awe as there was in this place, purely on a selfish level, Gansey wanted to go home. But he could not hope for that because Noah could not live back home, he was dead and gone, not just dead. And so long as Ronan and Adam and Noah were here, Gansey did not want to abandon them - certainly not by his choice. “One day, that could force you two apart,” Gansey acknowledged, “Before then, it pulls on you in different directions.” The hurt was a valid feeling. And Rhy had recognized a good portion of it.
“Since you are speaking with me, I presume you have not spoken with Alucard about it,” Gansey continued. “Should his sister show up, it does seem reasonable to assume Alucard would prefer to stay.” Noah’s presence had changed Gansey’s priorities. “But has he spoken about this place, about wanting to stay, about the future you might have here?” There was still some amount of assumption going on. Rhy could only speak for Alucard to some degree.
“Beyond that,” because that was a small question, nudge as it might Rhy toward more open communication with his lover, “have you considered what it might take, for you to hope and to choose to stay here? If there is nothing, or if those conditions cannot be met, then that affects what happens.” Not just next, but after that. Even if they had no choice, it could not help but change things. Gansey waited to weigh in on speaking about the issue with Alucard, though he saw no way of avoiding it altogether.
--
Still, Rhy could not quite muster the words to explain in further depth. There was still something else, a deeper truth, that he had now acknowledged to himself, but not aloud. Which was an improvement, he supposed, even if it filled him with despair.
“No,” he answered. “I haven’t spoken with him. And I haven’t asked about what he would choose, I’ve made assumptions, based on what I would do, and what I know of him. But in a way, I don’t feel that…the choice itself is necessarily the more important thing.”
But he still couldn’t explain it any further than that, not yet. He tried instead to focus on the questions, which would hopefully lead them back around to it. Perhaps Gansey would guess at it, and then he would only have to manage a simple yes or no.
He drew in a breath. “If Kell wanted to stay here,” he answered, “I would stay for him.” That, too, sounded horrible to his ears, as if he was diminishing Alucard’s importance to him, or the importance of his sister’s life. He was fairly certain that was just his insecurities talking, so he continued. “But I have no idea who I would be here. I know who I would be to them, but… for me, my sense of self. In Arnes, I know exactly who I am and where I belong; when the difficult moments come, I know the right thing to do. Here, I...” He gestured helplessness. “I have to think of it as some kind of a vacation, that will one day end, or else I get lost in missing Arnes, missing… that feeling of belonging. I had only just worked out how to have everything I want -- that being Alucard -- when I get back there.”
And now, suddenly, the words were right there, at the back of his throat. He swallowed to dislodge them, and tried to get them out, no matter how awful they might sound. “It’s been on me, this whole time, to work out how to give him -- and me -- the future that he’s been dreaming of for years. I haven’t been thinking about any kind of a future here, and now that I am… none of the options are good. If all three of us stay, intentionally or otherwise, I will never see Arnes again. If it comes to a choice, no matter what choices we make, it will be painful. And if there are no choices, if it’s all random… what if she never shows? What if she comes, but leaves again? What if she comes, and stays, but his time here is cut short? I wish…”
He swallowed, before he could finish that sentence, and then tried to finish it with some composure. “There is a part of me that wishes, very selfishly, that we had never come here, that none of these possibilities were ever available. But that feels like I’m wishing that Alucard would never have had the chance to see his sister again, and I feel… awful.”
--
They shared a similar belief about the matter of the choice itself. The displaced population would certainly decrease by a large amount, were that ever to occur. But the consequences of everything tied into feelings about it and that whole area of feelings, the emotional landscape it could be found in, those had to be dealt with. And clearly not in an eventual sort of sense, for Rhy, but on a rather short schedule.
The first impression Gansey had had about Rhy in this place when he implied his choice would be to return to Arnes. That was his answer, for himself. It took something more - his brother in this case - to change his mind. He was certainly a king, one more displaced than Glendower had been. Perhaps if Glendower had lived, he would feel something similar to Rhy here in this time and place. Not the same. But… It was a whole new life, one that would not be shaped by being king.
But oh, the last part, the feeling that came from this awkward uncomfortable situation with no easy or clean answer, that was the heart of the matter. “This awkward uncomfortable dilemma is not the first difficult situation you have faced,” Gansey replied. “But wishing that dark magic did not nearly destroy your whole world, wishing that an assassination plot had never been imagined much less sprung, there was no conflict in wishing those things, nothing purely selfish or personal, because everyone could agree, would agree if asked, that those were bad things. But this situation, which for whatever ills and difficulties it brings, brings some good, potentially, some otherwise impossible good. So it feels selfish and given what it would prevent, it makes you feel awful.”
Gansey had sidestepped, gently, that never having come here would have meant they never knew each other. Gansey had no impression he was anywhere near the decision turning issues that weighed in each scale for Rhy. “Whether or not Alucard will see his sister again, you still have to determine your identity here. The amount of time you have spent problem-solving your home situation - something much easier in this place, without the daily obligations of your crown - held it at bay some time. But it has been months, for some people it has been years, and at some point you will have to forge a new identity. Either that, or you shall be home, likely having no memory of this place, and so not concerned with having questioned yourself in the first place.” Life continued, no matter how one tried to look at it.
“If you do,” Gansey suggested. He was asking a rather lot of Rhy, something he was still in the process of handling in his own, simpler situation. “Then the abyss, the pit, the void of understanding you have about yourself here will be gone. Perhaps you will still wish you had never come here. Perhaps you will still wish you were at home. But the terror does not go away by pretending the situation is not frightening. I have some experience with that, and it continues to be a work in progress, constantly,” he shared, trying to make it perhaps a touch less frightening. Or at least Gansey’s advice rooted in more than a lack of understanding of just how lost Rhy felt. “You can ground yourself again. And having done so, the rest will be not easy but easier. Manageable.” So Gansey believed, had to believe.
--
Rhy listened, trying to take what he could from what Gansey was saying. His friend was trying so hard to help, and Rhy had dumped quite a lot of emotion onto him -- which perhaps had been wrong of him, in retrospect, to bring this to Gansey and not directly to Alucard. But it had come out of him so much quicker, so much easier this way. And now, hopefully, he was prepared to talk to his lover about it as well, though the thought still filled him with dread.
Dread and despair; that was primarily what he felt, now that the truth of it seemed to be out. He examined his emotions carefully, searching for fear, but did not find any. He lifted a hand and rubbed at his wet eyes with the pad of his thumb.
For just a few hours, not even a day, he had known what it had felt like to think of his future as secured, to know that he would have everything he wanted. He already missed that feeling desperately. And maybe Gansey was right; eventually, he could ground himself, envision another kind of future.
But if he was being brutally honest with himself, and he was trying to be -- he didn’t want to. He didn’t want a future here, away from his country. And that was, perhaps, the most selfish emotion he’d ever had. The cost was so high, the amount of himself that he’d have to give up, and perhaps no one else could truly understand that. Rhy knew he could do it, for the sake of the people he loved, especially Kell, because he owed Kell everything -- his life, his soul, his beating heart. He wanted to be able to do the same for Alucard; he certainly loved him enough. But if Kell wanted to leave, then his loyalties were torn -- and he didn’t even know if he could survive here without Kell, in a very literal sense, because Kell’s magic was the only thing keeping him alive.
Maybe what he wanted was just for the choice, even the choice of wanting one option or the other, to be out of his hands, no matter what future that left him with. Because the thing that Rhy feared most, had always feared most, was ruining any of the most important relationships in his life. If there was fear involved, maybe that was what it came down to. And the selfishness of his desires scared him because they could very easily lead to doing the wrong thing by Alucard or Kell, or both. He felt emotionally exhausted now, unable to tell if that was truly the conclusion or not. Yet again, he made himself refocus on responding based on what Gansey was saying, rather than on his own thoughts.
“Yes,” he said dully. He tried to inject a little more life into his voice, but it only came out sounding resigned. “I could.”
--
Rhy could not have more readily communicated how little he wanted this life here. Again, Gansey took no offense at that. But it was so absolutely true, right down to his posture and the sound of his voice. There was no hope, no light at the end of the tunnel, nothing that Rhy longed for. Not even once he handled what issues were to be faced about being here, in being here. For here they were. It was simply another chore, a hardship Rhy could be forced to face, without great reward. Not that Rhy could feel now. And perhaps there wasn’t one. Gansey’s mood was not so crushed at the thought of being here. Plenty of negative emotions swam through him. But Gansey already had someone who had died. That did change a great deal.
Gansey stepped closer, having already been looking toward Rhy the whole time. He lifted his arms and wrapped Rhy into a hug. Words were not always enough, not able to sooth or offer comfort the way they were meant. And that sorrow, Gansey wanted to acknowledge it, in a way that Rhy could accept. It was a warm hug, lasting as long as felt right, felt comfortable to the man in his arms.
Then, once he pulled away, Gansey considered again what he had said, what advice he might give. “But first,” Gansey chose, “you should speak with Alucard about this. And perhaps Kell.” It was not Gansey’s place to decide that for Rhy. And having both options before him, both possible avenues of acting, it was up to Rhy to decide what to do.
--
Rhy had not been looking at Gansey directly, and his eyes were blurred with the threat of tears that hadn’t fallen, so he was not expecting the hug. But he accepted it, and returned it, because he was grateful to Gansey for listening to him, for not seeming to judge him (too harshly, at least), for offering what advice he could.
“Thank you,” he murmured quietly, over Gansey’s shoulder. But then, as the hug broke and Gansey offered his final piece of advice, he breathed out, “Oh, saints, I really don’t want to.”
It had been one thing to talk to Alucard about all of his insecurities, his feelings surrounding things that really, for the most part, had nothing to do with Alucard. But in imagining this conversation, he felt nothing but dread. Best case scenario, it would pile onto the torment Alucard was already experiencing in this place, and the possibility of Anisa coming through the portal. Worst case, it truly might ruin their relationship, even if it didn’t immediately pull them apart.
“But you’re right,” he conceded, because he knew it was true. “I should.” The emotions were there, whether he voiced them or not, and they weren’t going to go away. Even if he resolved everything else, his homesickness for Arnes, for the person he was in Arnes, was no longer hidden away inside him where he could ignore it. It had been acknowledged, and it was an enormous void inside him, one that he would not be able to conceal. “Thank you. You are… an incredible friend.”
--
Gansey found himself anxious on Rhy’s behalf. He believed in his advice, believed it was the best way forward. Not talking would only make things worse, until the conversation would happen regardless, but starting in a worse place. That made it no easier to actually do what needed to be done. And it was far easier for him to stand there and pronounce what Rhy needed to do. Being right didn’t negate that. It was Rhy’s relationships on the line, Rhy who had to have the conversation and to handle the consequences personally.
“You are welcome, truly,” Gansey replied. He was honored to be the one Rhy turned to, even as he understood why that was. Why it had not been someone else. “I do my best,” he acknowledged, “as I know do you, in all your relationships.” He would have happily had Rhy as a brother. They turned to each other on many issues, especially those relationships they already had from home.
His eyes looked out over the misty fields in front of them, which did not acknowledge the Texan summer’s reign. “Excelsior,” Gansey declared. It was what they both had to do. And for all the difficulties, because of them, they could prove their mettle.