WHO: Rhy & Gansey WHAT: Getting "lunch" (aka midnight snack in Tumbleweed time) in India WHEN: Very early Wednesday morning (backdated) WHERE:Haveli at Jalandhar WARNINGS: Mentions of death, loss, mental illness, relatively vague
Rhy’s birthday and the zombie apocalypse had passed. Everyone who’d died during the apocalypse had come back to life on his birthday, a detail which had not escaped his notice. It was a portentous coincidence, and he had already been dreading his birthday for many reasons, and so it had passed without a celebration, except quietly, with his husband and sister.
But he was going to make up for that. Not with a belated birthday party, but with finding opportunities to spend quality time with the people he still had.
The first person on his list was Gansey. They were long overdue. He offered lunch anywhere in the world; Gansey suggested India; Rhy chose a restaurant. Punjab was 11.5 hours difference from Texas, so stepping through the portal was an experience in itself — from the midnight darkness of Tumbleweed to the brightness of near-midday in India. It was suddenly warm and loud, the world around them bustling and alive.
Rhy loved it instantly. “It feels a lot like home,” he said, softly. It wasn’t Arnes, obviously, but if he was looking at it from the corner of his eye he could almost pretend that it was. His smile grew and he took Gansey’s arm. “Come. Let’s get a table.”
—
If Gansey strained, he could almost smell the mint farms he had never actually seen. After all he had done, all the places he had been, India was far from the greatest danger he had been in. Honestly, all his most dangerous moments had happened in Virginia, his home state. The portal had done some shenanigans, some of them more dangerous than others, but for the most part, Gansey had avoided those. They weren’t the same as what he had done before.
Night’s magic had died calamitously against the bright heat and light of the midday sun. His smile mirrored Rhy’s, pure pleasure in this trip of theirs only a few steps begun, and Gansey kept up with Rhy’s steps toward the restaurant. Food was always better local, so Gansey expected nothing less than a better experience than he had ever had with it. Better even than some catered events on his mother’s behalf. Small ones. Indian food wasn’t for fundraisers.
“Feels like magic,” Gansey agreed. His mood was as bright as his teal shirt. It was a world away from his family. They were always a world away. But they would have had a guide, a state sponsor. Not this wandering on their own.
—
Rhy’s smile widened, grew absolutely brilliant. “Yes,” he agreed. The hints of red, the bright colors, the smell of spices and freshly baked breads — it felt magical in a literal and metaphorical sense. There were few places in this world that evoked that specific magic. The markets in Turkey and Morocco, some corners of Mexico almost managed it as well; now he had found a third.
He got them settled at an outside table so they could enjoy the sun. “This is probably going to keep us up all night,” he reasoned, amused. People weren’t meant to be sitting under bright sunlight when their bodies were expecting it to be the middle of the night. “Worth it, though.”
He opened the menu and glanced over it, but not too intently before looking up briefly and asking, “How have you been, Gansey?”
—
Gansey’s sleep cycle had rarely maintained a tight relationship with external light. That had a closer relationship with his anxiety. The middle of the night was a time usually devoid of other people and full of thoughts and questions which could not be answered immediately. Still, something like this was worth whatever it did. “I do keep a fairly regular schedule still, but Fen is more forgiving than a school schedule,” Gansey commented. It wasn’t like Aglionby, with a uniform and three alarms and a great deal of futile effort to corral Ronan to school. As a teacher, it had felt something similar, without the Ronan experience.
Sometimes it was hard to keep times apart. Schools were often timeless places. One slipped and slid in time the way one might on a hazardly dropped banana peel. Still, he looked across at Rhy, not remembering a single item he had read on the menu. “Nostalgic,” Gansey said. It wasn’t quite the right word, but he lacked the right word in his pocket just then. It had to do.
“Or something like it,” Gansey added. “I don’t know if you heard. But Ronan’s older brother arrived last weekend.” Along with others. And it had been Ronan’s doing. Not his brother, specifically. But the mass arrival generally. “It makes me think about the brief time my sister was here.” It felt so short and so long a time ago. No matter how outlandish the world, Helen saw through him in an instant.
“This isn’t her kind of world,” Gansey said softly. And so she hadn’t stayed. There had been possibly another reason. But that seemed just as true. And he wondered, and he worried, that it was going to hold true again. He knew Declan had been more involved than Helen. But he hadn’t wanted to be, and he’d pulled away from that world, last Gansey had known.
—
“Yes,” Rhy said, “I imagine she is. I am still on the school schedule, myself, but I’ve been on vacation for a bit. So I’ll probably be forgiven for being jet lagged, as they call it here, anyway.”
Alaska had only been three hours off from Texas, and in the opposite direction. But it had been an anniversary trip and they hadn’t spent most of the nights sleeping.
He decided on his order and closed the menu, leaning his chin into one hand, the elbow on the table as he listened to Gansey. “You miss her,” he said softly. It wasn’t a question. “There are many things I like about this place, but having to miss people who leave, or who never come, is not one of them.”
—
“For schools, Ellie Phimister is forgiving,” Gansey granted. Sure teachers earned vacation days, but Gansey had rarely seen one use them. A few sick days, perhaps. But not leave. They had summers after all. Still, his mind slid away from that topic. Something that wasn’t quite small talk but lighter and more airy than he felt.
His lives had generally been kept separate. Gansey the family, the old money, the rising political star (and how far Gansey knew it would rise). It was the mundane world that dulled his edges and made him something small. Not that he disliked his family. No Gansey had been well loved and loved his family well. They simply operated in different worlds and made time for each other. But no matter how far Gansey had gone, with an exception for when he went to Glendower, his family had always been a phone call, a text, a drive, a flight away. The worlds hadn’t been this separate.
He nodded. All in all, even without his trust fund, there was less to complain about in this world - for Gansey - than for many people. He still did well and sought his passions, his aim, wherever it was. Despite the dangers, Gansey was doing well. He hadn’t lost an arm or a leg, an eye or something else. He had friends and a girlfriend here (the one from home, not some… newfangled relationship… he had waited and Blue had arrived). But not his family.
“I know she is alive and well,” that could not be said for everyone’s relations who left. Gansey thought briefly of Rhy’s father before he had become Rhy’s father. “But we texted regularly, at a minimum. Even when we were apart. It makes the distance larger.” As he was sure Rhy knew. He looked across at Rhy. Why did so many people lack siblings? “And it’s fair that it hurts. But we also have to live here.” Because here they were. They could not think themselves back through the portal. And Gansey had been miserable enough times not to want to live that way. He had wonder and joy and adventure.
—
“They are,” Rhy agreed. “For their purposes, they have to be.” Considering how many different worlds their students and teachers came from, and how much the portal threw at them — or threw them into — keeping a school running to educate their young minds and help them advance their career dreams required a lot of flexibility. Thankfully they were all in it together.
Gansey did not have to explain the ache of missing someone across a great distance to Rhy. Even as they talked, Rhy could feel — barely — the whisper of Kell’s heartbeat in his chest, a constant reminder that his brother was missing. And that Rhy still carried him around, even as his magic continued to carry Rhy’s life.
He nodded. “My brother is alive and well at home too, and will eventually travel far away from me there,” he said, “In my future at home. Alucard — and our newest resident from our world, Lila — are from a time when that is already happening. But I’ve never had to experience a time when he was gone this long. And even when he travels at home, I’ll be able to write, and feel him, here, through the bond.” He put a hand over his heart. “The bond is still here with me somehow, and I can feel just the faintest whisper of him, but I can almost forget it’s there if I’m not thinking about it.”
Commiserating was all he could offer, really. There was no platitude that could make this better, no truths that he could share which made it easier and which Gansey didn’t already know. He simply managed a nod of acknowledgment. “And that’s more connection than most people get to someone who isn’t here. So I just have to live with it.”
—
Gansey was the brother that left. He was the prodigal son as well as the golden boy. He knew how to be what people expected of him in places he ought to for his family’s sake. But he preferred just being Gansey. Nothing more. Only himself as he was. Less a performance. As much as Gansey felt in common with Rhy - they had bonded immediately - he felt he some similarity with Kell just then. Going and leaving and exploring after being held in a grand house that felt less a palace and more a prison. And it was not to get away from Rhy. He was sure Rhy knew that. Gansey didn’t need to say it.
They could only understand each other and the pain they felt. Gansey wanted to make it better. His mind tried to figure out what he could say that would be what Rhy needed to hear. But Rhy had said as much for Gansey as for himself. They were understood. It wasn’t the limit that Gansey wanted for himself. But he had to accept it nonetheless. It was easier than holding his breath about Declan. He had no logic for those feelings.
“Some people do come back,” Gansey said. “I am glad of that, not only for me.” Perhaps, primarily, not for him, glad as he would be to see Adam again. Kell. The people others missed most. He could handle his hurt well enough, he thought. He had been feeling it for months somewhere. “In some ways the portal’s uncertainty is like that of life. But many of us at least have been fortunate not to be cut off from those we love the way the portal has. There are people no longer part of my life, who being in this world or not wouldn’t much change anything. But those it does…” Gansey sighed.
“It’s as safe as life here.” Which meant more than he said. Because he had said that phrase - safe as life - so many times it had developed new meanings atop the original one. Nothing was truly safe, and Gansey had stopped holding his breath on living life, had turned away from peaceful nothingness for something more. And here, it may not be a wasp or a bee. But it felt much the same. “I try to remember, among other things, that we would never have met, without some magic like the portal.” They had both been firmly ensconced in their own worlds. And some good had come out of being here.
—
Rhy nodded. “Yes. All life is uncertain. I think we both know that better than most.”
He smiled, soft and warm. “There are many good things to remember about this world. I am not sorry to be here still. I think I would still choose to stay, if it were my choice.” As long as Alucard remained here, leaving meant abandoning his husband. Staying meant abandoning his country and possibly never seeing his brother again, but he had to believe that there was some version of him back there. If not… well, it wasn’t given to him to know, and the choice wasn’t in his hands. “There is still enough here for me, including our friendship. Though I have had some friends from other worlds disappear lately as well, and I have to wonder, whether it will be the same if they come back. I don’t know if they will remember me, and if circumstances here would recreate the friendship. At least with a sibling, that’s not a concern.”
Briefly, he looked away, and then back at Gansey. “I think you and I would bond again, though, no matter the world. It wasn’t a matter of circumstances here, but our histories at home.”
—
Gansey nodded. It had pushed him more than once. It continued to make him press onward here. To do more. To be more. Sometimes that came while shaping something at the smithy. A sword or a knife. One of his knives was no longer here, gone with Katniss. Another Katniss had returned, not quite the same one. She had felt like a whole other person. Because she was, granted. But Gansey usually didn’t know that much about strangers. Something that could be said about many here.
How many of them had read or seen stuff about each other? Only one person had ever mentioned reading the books about his world (they weren’t just about him… it even said as much in them: depending on where one started the story, it was about many many people). Stories always were. Even Glendower’s. “I feel the same way,” Gansey said. “I couldn’t abandon my friends here.” Which included Blue. Blue was his girlfriend and a friend. A friend first. It was easier with her here. It had always included Ronan, so Gansey didn’t know - and couldn’t imagine - this place without him.
“I have had… one friend leave and return, from another world,” Gansey spoke gently. As though he might tread upon someone’s heart otherwise. “She doesn’t remember me, and so far nothing has been recreated. She had already known people I know here. And now she does not.” Gansey hadn’t been as close to her as some. He had not reached out, uncertain whether that would hurt his friends, to bring her back to their lives when they didn’t know her. It was a strange sensation. But not altogether a foreign one. Gansey had a loose relationship with time, looser than most people, more tightly bound than seers.
Still his small was warm and natural. “I agree about us,” Gansey said. “And that is a comfort. Though I hope we never need prove it true.” Then one of them would have left. They would have left their people here. And that was better avoided.
Suddenly, Gansey felt his age of twenty-one, notably older than when he arrived, and felt his father’s concern and judgment. Most people were graduating college at this age. And Gansey had yet to begin. The adventures they had here made it difficult, and Gansey had little inclination to leave for Harvard or Yale. Or even to fill out their applications. He was quite the delinquant for some circles. More like Ronan and how they thought of him. It wasn’t what he would do back home, but his aimless wandering and searching for what he wanted to do with his life was relieved of some pressure. External pressure. Only that within him remained. “I am a long way from becoming who I may be here,” Gansey said, “and I’m far from who I’ll be back home.” He had been older once. And while his life would be a good one, it wasn’t this one.
—
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Rhy said quietly. No one that he’d known that had left had yet returned. They were still absent. But he was as prepared as he could be for the eventuality that it would happen. He managed a smile when Gansey did, and nodded agreement. “I also hope as much, but it is still a comforting thought.”
He considered Gansey’s last statement for a long moment before replying. “Do you have an idea of who you want to be here?” he asked. “I feel as if I am constantly trying to find out who I want to be. Aside from being a friend, a brother, a husband. I don’t really know who I am aside from how I relate to everyone else.” He paused. “I suppose being prince, being king… that was all how I related to everyone, to the entire world, until it defined me. Without it…”
He didn’t have words for how to finish that sentence, but he didn’t think they were needed. He simply spread his hands to indicate the absence, to indicate where it had left him. Sitting here, with Gansey.
—
Gansey acknowledged the remark silently. It was nothing many people hadn’t gone through themselves. He wondered if Noah was a good person to speak with about it. After all, Noah had already known them when he got to know them. Due to time being not quite how people thought of it. Their relationship had never felt odd or stilted or unnatural, despite how much Noah had known that Gansey had not realized he’d known. Noah was possibly the best person at this sort of thing.
Rhy’s question was one Gansey had wondered about plenty. Slowly. There was always an impulse to live - truly live! - because of his deaths. But they hadn’t come with a manual or dictionary for what that might mean. Gansey had chased a potential answer without trying to get too close to it for a long time. Gwenllian had been right; Gansey could have found him sooner. But he hadn’t been ready for an answer on himself. In the end, it had been for his friends’ sake that Gansey had committed to finding Glendower. Here he felt the same echo and desire, as he did back home, but without the same pressures. Gansey was a gas, and without a vessel he simply kept expanding and expanding.
“I have found some people in myself I don’t want to be,” Gansey replied. “I have been trying on who I could be. And I’ve grown closer and closer toward who that might be. I have more of a notion or a shape to it. Relationships are the ones that make the most sense to me, same as you put it. I’ve committed to searching for myself, and I’m not hiding from the answer.” It was the closest he had just yet.
He considered Rhy’s unfinished sentence. The amount it said about where Rhy was. “Who we are to other people is important. It’s a part of me I don’t want to let go,” Gansey said. “We have been freed, to some extent, from the constraints and identities we had. We’re something more, underneath. And here we have the chance to look and to see what that is.” His smile was warm, comforting. “Trying is searching and a part of being. You’re doing that right.” God knew answers didn’t always come quickly.
—
Rhy didn’t know if there was anything in himself that he didn’t want to be. There were types of people that he absolutely refused to be: a ruler who considered lives as necessary sacrifices, for example, either in terms of death or loss of freedom by being bound to the crown. He had watched his parents do that. It wasn’t going to be him. But that had never been him, everything in him had always obstinately rejected that outright.
No, there was a person in him that he didn’t want to be. Someone who succumbed to the empty, howling void inside of him, someone who was dead inside even as he lived. That was someone inside of him, and at the same time it wasn’t. But he still felt like he needed other people, especially Alucard and Kell, at least one of them, to avoid that.
And yet… he remembered promising Alucard that he didn’t only want to live for him. It was true, he wanted to be alive, but there was nothing else around him currently (without Kell) that made him so determined to cling to life. Some part of him was still searching for that, for some purpose — anything except for a person — that could give that to him.
“I haven’t been searching for myself like that,” he said after a moment, his voice slightly thick. He swallowed, suddenly feeling very raw and unsteady. But not unsafe in feeling that way, because he trusted Gansey. “Strictly speaking. I’ve been searching for… a purpose. Something outside myself that makes me worthwhile, that isn’t a person. Maybe that’s still searching in the wrong place.”
—
How long had Gansey sought a purpose? Years. Half his life at one point. It was a familiar feeling, an uncomfortable one in some ways to sit in. It was not one Gansey tried to have now, even as it sometimes felt like a siren’s call. In doing, in having purpose, it was easier to believe in himself. That was some of the peace he found in blacksmithing. Each time he took up the tools and made something Gansey proved himself. Capable. Worthwhile.
His friends had not needed that to come for him. To believe in him. And Gansey had, with weakness from time to time, generally come around to the notion he had worth, in and of himself. The strength of the feeling waxed and waned with his moods. But it had been proven. He could remember things that actually happened that demonstrated it. And sometimes the way his friends felt about him was enough for that. It was not entirely tied to their presence here. It would still be true without them. But Gansey believed it too. “That kind of search has a powerful draw,” Gansey agreed. “It’s not… wholly a right or wrong path. Simply, it’s not the only place to look.”
He looked across the table, more intently than a usual conversation between friends. “You are worthwhile, in and of yourself,” Gansey declared. It had already been true, and it continued to be true. His posture relaxed slightly. “It is always easier, in my experience, to see that in others than ourselves.”
—
“No, I know,” Rhy said, smiling at him unsteadily. “I know that. But thank you.” He paused, trying to figure out how to express what he meant. “It’s just… one thing to know that, and another to actively look for the reason of it inside myself. I don’t know if that makes any sense.”
He gestured with his hands again, palm up. “Searching for a purpose is still a way of defining myself by how I relate to something else. I haven’t even really considered the kind of introspection you’re talking about.”
Everything inside him was… dark, empty, painful, except for what he could feel for others, and what he could say about himself in relation to others. Especially now that Kell was gone, but then, he supposed he wasn’t going to have another good opportunity for introspection without his brother’s emotions — and their mutual need to be able to feel each other through the bond — getting in the way. So in a way this was the perfect time for such a venture.
He offered Gansey a small smile. “You’ve always been good at making me face my own self-deception, my friend.”
—
It was one thing to know it. And another to hear it from other people. It wasn’t necessary, always. Gansey knew that well and that sometimes it did the opposite of help. But still, it was nice to hear it sometimes. Gansey thought he wasn’t alone in that. Still, it wasn’t the point just now, true as it was.
Searching for purpose without looking inside was a familiar tactic. Though Gansey had been much too invested in the search to find the answer. And now… now he forced himself to look inward, the great unknown and vast expanses of himself. It was as much in need of exploration as the final frontier, not that Gansey had had time to engage in those explorations, too busy making his own. It was - so far as Gansey knew - an introspective show too, in its ways. Perhaps it was worth watching. So as to question himself, rather than those aboard the Enterprise.
“In a roundabout way, I do believe I am still searching for a purpose,” Gansey said, “Simply from the other side of the hill than the one I was on before. To fulfill ‘to thine own self be true’ I must first know myself. Then I can be true to it.” Gansey didn’t know that he would be a blacksmith, always, here. He had embraced teaching, but that hadn’t stayed. The most important element of it, so far, Gansey felt, was that he had divorced his work - to some extent - from the purpose of earning money. Ronan was there for him, if he needed it. And though he preferred to pay for things himself, he would accept that help when the need arose.
Money was not the way Gansey wanted to define himself, even if he could not deny the privileged life he had grown up with. This place was an equalizing existence in some ways. A truer embodiment of the American ethos in some ways than many people lived. “You continue to help me understand my own thoughts,” Gansey replied. Because it was true. Rhy was a safe place to express himself messily, mistaken words and all.
—
Rhy listened carefully, trying to glean as much as he could from Gansey’s wisdom. He thought he was true to himself; the self that he knew, at least. The self he had been before he’d died and the parts of him that he knew still remained. He thought he knew the parts of him that still remained without a crown on his head and a country to lead, too.
“I’ve spent a lot of my life pretending to be frivolous,” he said slowly, “When I couldn’t have the things that I wanted. Magic. Alucard.” He considered. “I don’t think I’m doing the same here. But nothing I do feels… as fulfilling, as right, as looking after my country did at home.” He shook his head. “It might be simply that everything else here is going to be smaller, less all-consuming, than that no matter how important it is to me. That was such a big thing, and it demanded so much. I gave it everything I was, everything that I had.”
He looked at Gansey. “I know that sets my expectations too high. I don’t know if I can possibly find anything that gives me even a fraction of that feeling. Aside from my relationships, I mean.” His marriage felt like that; it demanded everything from him and gave him everything he needed in return. His life revolved around it. But that couldn’t be everything, he knew that. For the sake of the marriage itself, he needed to be fulfilled outside of it as well. He knew Alucard was struggling with something similar in his career. “I spent a lot of time on myself at first, as you probably remember, fixing my broken heart. I suppose… going back to what still needs fixing would be a place to start.”
—
Frivolous was not a word Gansey would have chosen to describe Rhy with. Certainly he hosted parties and incredible celebrations at that, just as true he loved people and to socialize, within everything else there was a love for food and wine and travel, yet none of those were frivolous, nor Gansey’s experience of them with Rhy frivolous. Instead it came with deep conversation like this, even as they traveled and had good food and company. That feeling of kinship circled their table. Still, Gansey believed Rhy and could imagine such a thing. There was more than one Gansey, and they did not all center him within himself.
Gansey nodded, acknowledging those expectations, the difference between being a king and… anything else. Who would Glendower have been, had they woken him? Wales was not in a place to accept a kind from hundreds of years before, to rise up and throw off the British. And if they did, that was likely to come in the form of a vote, not an armed revolt. It had not been Glendower Gansey had seen in Rhy however. It was Rhy and a kindred spirit. “Ruling Arnes was an enormous task, as large or larger than a person,” Gansey agreed. “Nothing here will be the same as that. And that need not be a bad thing.”
He was on the cusp of something. A feeling. A thought. An idea. “Your expectations may be… too narrow, blinded, rather than too high,” Gansey suggested. “I cannot altogether accept the idea that your life will be a void of feeling or purpose, a specter of what you once had. The same as I cannot become stuck on that thought for myself.” He sighed. “I easily find myself stuck on dark or unwelcome feelings.” Even if they were not quite the same.
“I have not entirely fixed myself either,” Gansey said. “I don’t know if I ever will. But that will not put me off the… enterprise” - that almost made him smile - “of doing so. I am more whole than I was, and I can become more whole again.” And with that, purpose seemed like it would be found. Gansey believed it or hoped for it enough to believe it. And for him, that made it true.
“You’ve come a long way,” Gansey recognized. “And in some way, I am glad we both have further to go.” Being done and complete and over had never sat readily with him.
—
“Maybe,” Rhy acknowledged, though he didn’t quite see how he could widen the scope of his vision if that was the case. “I can see a very big picture of the world from sitting on a throne, but I’m sure there was plenty I missed. Things that others might take for granted, even.”
He hoped that didn’t sound derogatory or elitist. He had great respect for ordinary folk, considered them more important than himself. Being royalty hadn’t made him more special than them, only more burdened with responsibility, but it had still come with privilege. All that responsibility had taken away the chance at so many ordinary things. A normal dating life, normal friendships, normal day-to-day tasks and goals. He had people to prepare that for him — not just, he believed now, because he had the money to spoil himself, but because a single person (or even two people, since usually a pair of people ruled together) simply could not manage to handle all those tasks around the home and do everything that was required of them to rule an empire. Focusing on running the country and delegating the care of himself and his household was probably the best way of resolving that.
And he didn’t know if it was because he had already started looking more deeply into himself, or if this still fell in the realm of his narrowed, blinded vision of his life, but he became aware of a thorn still pricking at his heart. He looked down at his hands. “I know there is one big thing that I want,” he said at last, “A child of my own. But in a life as tenuous as ours is here, that is… a very difficult thing to imagine.”
It was probably because of the anniversary that he was thinking about it. He was still riding high on that, on all the love between them and how wonderful the last year had been, how wonderful the next year and all the years after that looked to be. He smiled wryly. “Sometimes I wish we could have one by accident, so that it wouldn’t be a matter of choosing to bring a child into the world knowing that we might abandon it by disappearing through the portal.”
—
Gansey didn’t discount the myriad issues Rhy had dealt with on a throne. They were the sort of political thicket his mother entered and rose to the top of. How far that would lead… from the odd chance to peak at the future, something this portal did. Perhaps the women of Fox Way could have done the same or even had. Gansey didn’t expect them to tell him about that. Not something so large and specific. There were matters, still, that Gansey hadn’t learned before becoming friends with Adam or Blue. That he had learned from them. He felt like a child of multiple worlds.
The air fled Gansey’s lungs at Rhy’s declaration. There were no words of comfort to be found or scrounged from the life they had near the portal. Eliot and Kylo and Fen were having a baby; theirs was the mixed fortune of being able to have a baby by accident. At least, Gansey hadn’t heard anything about it being on purpose. Either way the baby was coming, and that was what it was. But Rhy and his husband, as wonderful as their marriage was, would not ever have that. “I find that difficult too,” Gansey agreed. Not that he was even otherwise ready to parent a child. But the thought of it was harder. The parallels of life being able to be cut short at any time didn’t make up the gap.
Perhaps the portal could bring them a child. Perhaps they figured that out back home, and the portal could be the accident beyond their control. Gansey had nothing better, and even that much, he couldn’t say. “You will make a wonderful father,” he said instead. Somehow, someway, Gansey chose belief in Rhy, in the face of the impossible situation. No one had been here long enough for them to have any surety. He had no similarly impossible desire and deep wish. Instead he knew he had children and trusted his future. And here, separated from it, that was not an issue of concern so much.
“Sometimes I wonder whether the portal will one day be figured out. If some of the uncertainty will go out of life here.” Gansey wondered who would choose to stay, if that were a choice, and who would go. The only certainty was that it would irrevocably change their lives here. Those who stayed. “But it is a long way off, if it comes.” They couldn’t hold their breath for it yet.
—
“Thank you,” Rhy said, warmed and grateful for the sentiment. Especially the way it was phrased in the future tense, as if Gansey was assuming that it would happen one way or another. “I know Alucard will be a wonderful father, too, and it’s something that I know he wants. It seems almost as wrong to deny ourselves the possibility as to choose to go forward with it.”
It wasn’t a topic he wanted to linger on, so he sighed and shrugged. “Maybe that is still thinking too narrowly. It’s always been a part of my plan for my life.”
It should have been an easier thing now that he didn’t have to worry about the child succeeding him on the throne — Rhy still don’t know how his people would take to adoption — but all the other complications of this world sometimes made that seem like a minor issue by comparison.
“I’m not holding my breath that the circumstances of the portal will change. I'm making most decisions on the assumption that I have time here, that a life here is worth building. In some ways, having no choice over whether I’m here makes me feel less guilty for that.”
—
Rhy and Alucard were like many many other people - after all, having children was generally presumed to be true unless counterfactual statements were provided - so Gansey could not think anything negatively about Rhy wanting to have a child. Their situation making it difficult was not unique more generally, and there may indeed be other people in the community making similar decisions. Or facing the same facts to make them. But one person’s answer was not another. And Gansey was off that hook by virtue of not being ready to have children, despite being roughly the same age as Rhy. Gansey felt a little like Peter Pan in that moment. Not having fully grown up. Not to a parenting level.
“It will be two years next month for me,” Gansey replied. Length of time was no promise; Adam had been here longer than Gansey. He was just as gone as Helen, who had been here less than a month. “While I will admit to holding my breath for Blue’s arrival, I agree that is the only way I can live here. It’s been far too long for moment to moment. I need to live. Avoiding danger and risk was never the same thing, and here we live with it in every breath.”
In two years he had not sorted himself out. People did say that was what college was for, and Gansey was still in his college years, so to speak. He smiled. “Monmouth has always been my place, a part of myself. With Blue here - and living there too - we’re going to work on making it our place. It’s moving forward, here. Life.” Rather than feeling like a ghost inside a part of him he no longer entirely was. Haunting himself.
—
Rhy nodded. “It will be two years for me in March. In some ways it feels like it has already been longer than that. Length of time is no guarantee, but nevertheless, part of me feels like I should be here a little longer before making such... major life decisions.”
And yet another part of him felt that time should not be wasted. What if they waited until they’d been here five years, and they were only here for ten total? A child who had ten years of them in its life would be far better off than one who only had them for five, even if it would surely miss them and be in a bad situation either way.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to waste any of the time that they had available, even if it was an unknown amount. No parent could ever guarantee they would be around for their child as long as their natural lives should have lasted. He thought of his own parents, then, with a little pang of grief, and then pushed all the thoughts out of his mind to refocus on Gansey.
Listening to him, hearing how he was building his life, was a warm enough thought to make Rhy smile again. “I’m so glad Blue is here, and that you can do that together,” he said. “It’s such a joy to build a life with someone you love.”
—
Gansey was not entirely sure how time worked, but he thought it was distinctly possible that both ideas were true: soon each of them would reach the two year anniversary for coming here and they had both been here longer than that already. Sometimes time got drunk and stumbled back and forth. Or something enough like it. Gansey was made of many things; time wasn’t one of them.
“It’s different from what we were doing back home,” Gansey admitted. “We weren’t so much to the building stage yet. More… exploring the world and each other and ourselves.” It had been a breathtaking experience. And an incomplete one, something Gansey knew Blue still wanted. Something Gansey still wanted, though it conflicted with other desires Gansey had. While technical solutions were possible, they undermined the texture of the experiences, each of them.
He looked back at Rhy, grateful for being brought here, beyond being present for Ronan, beyond the incredible places they explored. “This place untangles many troubles for building that life, supposing you’re both here,” — which for Gansey and Rhy, they were — “Uncertainty, about how long we have, while always true, simply had greater weight.” Yet Gansey was less anxious. His friends wouldn’t choose to leave him, even if it was as likely or more likely that they might do so. It was about something else. Comings and goings weren’t reflections of him.
“Though, I will admit, with how many people have departed of late, given how many people left quickly after the last… influx of arrivals, I find myself holding my breath more and more,” Gansey spoke softly, though no one was listening to their conversation. Declan, in particular, at the moment. He didn’t always (often, honestly) agree with Ronan’s older brother. But he thought it was better he stayed than left again. If only Gansey could believe that would happen.
—
“Exploring can be its own kind of building a life,” Rhy said thoughtfully. “Or... creating. It’s spending time together and making memories.” He supposed he and Alucard had done it the opposite way: built a life, created a home, and then they had gone out to explore. But that didn’t mean it was the only way to do things. “There’s so many ways to have a life with someone. I love having someone to explore and to explore with. I love not living only in one place. Even though I loved my London enough to stay there.”
He smiled, and then sobered. He gave a small nod. “I know what you mean,” he said just as quietly. “For me it is less about the number of people who’ve left than the significance of them in my life, but… the number of those who have left is growing.” He looked down at his hands. “I want to spend as much time as I can with people I still have, but instead I seem to be isolating myself from the community more and more.”
—
Exploring was far more familiar to Gansey than building a home. Than settling. Monmouth Manufacturing had been his home in Henrietta, before he gave it away for the chance to offer Ronan another future he hadn’t actually wanted. And Gansey had liked Henrietta, had known he would return to Henrietta. But exploring was far more familiar. In his bones. Searching and searching and traveling from one place to another. He had — thankfully — grown better at staying in touch with people. At saying goodbye. Even brief ones. Home had been far more of a trapped experience for him, and Gansey knew that needed to change at some point. Two years was nearly the longest Gansey had stayed in one place. But this hadn’t been one place. It had been a cruise between worlds, twice over, and two weeks in Tombstone in the nineteenth century. Though it still felt like standing still.
Gansey smiled, at the shared feeling of not living only in one place. Perhaps, despite the privilege and money he had to do it, having more than one house, more than one home, would be the way he could settle. Back home. Or here? Rhy was doing so here, not back at home. Homes were stationary in their own right, so Gansey wasn’t sure it would fit Blue’s need to explore and to search. But they would figure that out too. “I haven’t truly stayed put since I began traveling,” Gansey admitted. He had stayed at Aglionby to graduation, in part because of his father’s threats, in part because of the searching and after the searching because of his friends. But it had been filled with travel, and Gansey wanted more of that too here. Would have been more restless without their portal sponsored trips.
Rhy’s words referred to his brother’s departure without naming it. Gansey suspected it was easier for Rhy that way. He wasn’t immediately sure who else Rhy meant. His father had come at the same time as Helen. Left at the same time too. When Gansey thought back to Rhy and Alucard’s wedding, however, a notable number of the guests had gone home in the year that followed it. “Those instincts coexist,” Gansey said, “We contain contradictions.” He paused, his thumb rubbing his bottom lip. “I left first, for many years,” Gansey said. “I traveled from place to place and met people, and I left them before they could leave me. For more years than I am proud to admit. I am still scared I’ll lose people. That my friends will lose people. What that will mean. It is harder I believe to go after what we want, when it has some odds of wounding us even more deeply, than to try to keep ourselves safe.” Not that Gansey had ever felt safe.
What touch or connection would make Rhy feel grounded? Connected? Gansey offered his hand across the table, open. “Seeing what you’re doing is an important step,” he said, “It’s natural to try to protect your heart, especially when it is hurt. Still, you are reaching out at least some. We’re here, eating lunch. If you’re ready, you can reach out more.” But Gansey wouldn’t judge Rhy if he didn’t, if he needed time. “And should you want my help doing that, you have it.” Not that Rhy necessarily needed Gansey’s help. And Gansey couldn’t do it all for Rhy. People had to do it for themselves. Something, perhaps, that Gansey had to keep in mind with Ronan. It was always easier helping advise others than to follow advice oneself.
—
We contain contradictions.
Rhy turned the words over in his head. They felt significant, and yet, did not offer him further answers the longer he sat with them. He still wanted to be with his loved ones and simultaneously wanted to be alone to grieve those that were gone. Fear that others would leave was more of the motivation for spending time with them, not isolating himself, or at least that seemed to be true. He couldn’t say definitively that it had no influence over the latter, though.
He hadn’t yet celebrated his birthday in the way he’d planned, but that was only partially because people had left. It was also in large part because the town had only just recovered from being overrun with zombies, and many had died. Rhy hadn’t wanted to ask people to be joyful in that situation, and he hadn’t wanted more grief tainting his birthday. There was already plenty. But it hadn’t helped, wasn’t helping, his state of mind to simply ignore his birthday and let it pass. It felt like surrendering to the darkness, both of their circumstances and inside his own head and heart.
“I should throw a birthday party,” he said, “Even if it is belated.” It wasn’t until after he’d spoken that he noticed Gansey offering his hand, and he reached out to take it, to give it a squeeze. “I was just going to reconnect with everyone one by one, like this… and I still would like to do that, but it feels wrong to let my birthday pass without a party. At home I always threw one, for my people as much as for myself.”
Parties had made him seem frivolous, but they offered food and entertainment and joy to his people, and at his heart, making them happy was the part Rhy loved the most about it. He had been born in winter, and while Arnesian winters were relatively mind (especially compared to places like Alaska), it was still a time of less sunshine and more difficulty for some families. But everyone always had something to eat, lights to see by, and a reason to smile when the prince’s birthday rolled around. Not everyone appreciated the gesture as such (court types almost certainly didn’t) but if even one person did, it was worth it. He would have been that person, probably, magicless and poor, if he hadn’t been born a prince.
—
A birthday party sounded very much like Rhy Maresh. Parties in general were associated with the Mareshes in Gansey’s mind. There had been a ball and the pride parade on top of their wedding reception and Rhy’s birthday party the year before. A birthday party wasn’t Rhy forcing a smile onto his face, torturing himself through polite conversation, and eating environmentally friendly cucumber sandwiches. It was being who he was. Who he was when he was happy. As a step against isolation and loneliness, it fit Rhy. And that made Gansey happy just then, for his friend.
“A lot of people could use a party around now,” Gansey agreed. It wouldn’t only be for Rhy. It would still do what Rhy wanted it to do. “And I know you need no help in doing that.” His smile was wider, assuring without forgetting the sad and serious topics that were not even yet in their rearview mirror. If Declan was still around when Rhy threw it, Gansey thought he would enjoy Declan seeing such a thing — Rhy’s palace, the almost dream quality of it, the bright colors and food and conversation. Ronan didn’t stand out — much —- for being a dreamer. It let people skip over that part, just thinking of it as magic. And Gansey wanted Declan to see that. Wanted Declan to stay. Gansey didn’t particularly like him, but as bad as the Lynch brothers’ relationship could be, they were without a doubt brothers.
“I should plan a trip,” Gansey said. Not that where it went needed to be planned. Only the going and going by car, whether his or Blue’s. And as much as possible, to avoid the quick instantaneous connections that were anathema to the kind of trip they had been taking. “It has been a while.” And that one had been aborted, gone barely after it started.
—
“Yes,” Rhy agreed. “Alucard was going to throw me a party. If I let him know I want it, I imagine he still would.”
It wouldn’t have been appropriate on his proper birthday, although he imagined many people had still gone to the post-Halloween party that one of the Eliots had thrown. He hadn’t been in the mood, himself. He’d spent the night at home with Alucard and Anisa, and it had been a good night, all things considered, but it wasn’t the sort of party he normally had.
Admittedly the previous year he’d spent the day with just his family as well, because they had been so busy planning his wedding nine days later that he hadn’t wanted to plan anything else extravagant on top of it.
He smiled widely. “I highly recommend taking trips. They are one of my favorite things to do here.” He tilted his head. “Where will you go?”
—
Gansey already looked forward to the party. It was the sort of party Ronan could go to. It didn’t have politics or ask for a version of Gansey that stripped away so many parts of him. That made him a lesser version of himself. More importantly, it was good for Rhy. “There is plenty of time to still have a party in November,” Gansey said. If not quite birthday, it was still the birthday month. It could still feel connected to that. Easy enough for people to relax and forget it wasn’t quite that day. A day that perhaps hadn’t been so much for them as for Rhy to begin with.
Where to go was, in one sense, only limited by what land was connected. The Americas. Anywhere reachable by car and some places able to be hiked some miles beyond that. It was still best that Gansey avoided flying any helicopters. Even if Ronan could make one where flying felt like driving, two dimensional and logical to Gansey’s mind. “I was thinking Mexico, perhaps somewhere in Central America,” Gansey replied. It remained close. There were other states, states worth seeing. But they had been going to see states when the last trip ended. Gansey didn’t want the same thing to repeat itself, to etch that location so firmly into their minds with disappearances that Arizona had to be wiped off the map altogether.
“We like to drive,” Gansey said, “to travel from here to there, carrying ourselves across the surface of the earth and seeing it all along the way.” Unlike a plane trip which simply cut the journey out of the trip in a disconcerting manner, much as it was faster than boats when traveling across oceans. “The portals feel different,” he shrugged. They were useful, helpful, especially in emergencies. They just didn’t feel like travel to him. It had always been about the journey, not the destination. Not really.
—
“I love Mexico,” Rhy said, with feeling. “I doubt I’ve seen as much of it as could be seen driving around it, because I’ll admit, I am still used to either magic or horses and carriages, so in a way, I suppose I understand what you mean. But that does sound like a lovely adventure. And a good place to go in the winter, I’d imagine.”
He smiled, with a slight sparkle in his eye. “I hope you’ll still come to my party. Or perhaps we’ll bring the party to you, I wouldn’t mind another trip to Mexico myself.”
—
Much of what was to be seen from roads were dusty landscapes and the open road. Roads connected civilized places, and wildness retreated from them and that sensation they brought. Modern roads weren’t like Roman roads. They didn’t fit the earth and become a part of it in a timeless way. So much stonework fit in with the world. Asphalt choked it. So Gansey knew there was only so much Rhy had missed, simply by not driving. Gansey always found something, when driving, even when other people drove past whatever it was without so much as blinking. He was a searcher. A finder of forgotten things.
“I highly recommend exploring Guadalajara and the areas around it, if you haven’t been,” Gansey said. He’d spent some time there, searching for clues. Glendower had never been there, certainly. But other things had, other wonderful things, and such items were interconnected. All roads had led to Glendower back then. Gansey wasn’t sure what he would see now if he returned. “When would you like to host the party?” Gansey asked. Because he felt a time restraint, a ticking clock, though no one else seemed to. “I expect this trip will be… a shorter one for the time being.”
But his smile became genuine, radiating more of his happiness and friendship than the anxious turmoil in his gut. Even when worried about Ronan, Gansey found happiness and good moments. Or else his moods would nearly always be gray or black, shades in between. “I’d be happy to time it right with you. A little time out of town would do a lot of good.” Along with the party being a party itself.
—
“I haven’t yet,” Rhy answered, “We went first to Mexico City, and then mostly along the coast. But now that you’ve recommended it, I absolutely will.”
He was grateful for the fact that the conversation had turned to things that made them both happy, travel and parties. Not that the other, sadder things hadn’t needed to be said, but he hadn’t come here to spend the whole time being sad. He had more to think about, and also more to look forward to, which was a pleasant mix.
He considered the question. “There are quite a few holidays coming up I wouldn’t want to interfere with. But there are two more weekends in November that aren’t claimed that way. Perhaps the one just before Thanksgiving, so that it merges somewhat with that theme without interfering with anyone’s plans.” He tilted his head. “Would that work for you, or is there somewhat else going on that interferes with your travel?”
—
Gansey did the math. It took a moment, as he hadn’t opened the calendar on his phone. When had Declan arrived? He couldn’t be gone too long. The twenty-third would be pushing it. “What about the sixteenth?” Gansey asked, the other weekend Rhy referred to. Being a week closer, it was a week safer. Something Gansey could possibly feel comfortable leaving town during. There wouldn’t be as much time for Rhy (or his husband) to organize a party in another country. They didn’t need much time, if they had to.
He bit his lip, considering. Then Gansey spoke, more of his Virginian accent coming through, “Nothing is for certain yet. But I do expect something to happen, though I don’t have anything close to a date for it. Sooner is more likely to work well, and I would very much appreciate it happening earlier than later. I am sorry for what inconveniences that causes.” In another time, Gansey might have offered to help pay. But even were his trust fund with him, Rhy was likely still wealthier than him.
—
Rhy smiled. “If that’s better for you. It’s not an inconvenience; it’s last minute one way or another.”
He had other friends left that he hoped would be able to make it, and he did not make judgments about who was most important, but Gansey was the one sitting in front of him, had helped him decide to do something good for himself, and so it was very important to him that Gansey was there.
The timeline didn’t worry him. He had pulled together parties in a short period of time before, already had plenty of connections to people who had helped him with various party needs, who understood he might need them in a short period of time and that he would appreciate them for it. Rhy was good business when it came to such things; he paid generously, tipped well, offered other benefits where he could, and continued to come back and use their services. The only thing he probably wouldn’t be able to pull off was getting the Besame back to Mexico in order to be part of the party, but that was fine. The boat had hosted many parties and would host many more.
He considered Gansey, the nerves he was showing and the change in his accent. “Do you want to talk about what it is that you’re expecting?”
—
Gansey’s gratitude and appreciation was, as always in his family, genuine. That was how people worked well, each being considerate of each other. It wasn’t for his own sake, beyond his desire to be a good friend, beyond the concern he would be needed, that he had asked. Ronan’s well being mattered terribly to him. It wasn’t his responsibility, but Ronan’s support was missing Adam in particular. It simply felt wrong to leave knowing being gone then would hurt his friend. It had held Gansey in check a fair amount, that and that without Blue he had felt less inclined toward travel. He’d done enough traveling on his own.
People had left before, when they came in a large group. It was not - Gansey suspected - ever a natural phenomenon. But here and now, this time, Gansey knew it had been Ronan’s doing, not the portal’s. That made Declan — the person he cared about who had showed up — an even more likely target for some resurgent display of authority. Whether that action had emotion and intent or was merely a natural reflex, Gansey couldn’t say. Only, it was what he was expecting.
The part about it being Ronan’s doing was not Gansey’s secret. Though Ronan was more open here, they still tried not to say dreamer aloud. Even though it could be looked up by a far more invasive google search than could be done back home. And this was large, huge. The potential for wonder and terror were equally massive. But he didn’t need to share that to have the fear and expectation he did. There was precedent.
“A little, perhaps,” Gansey said. He took a sip of water and grounded himself. Imagined the fields of mint somewhere in the area. “I am expecting at least most of the large group of people who arrived to leave again. Sometime this month. That would not be the best time, for a lot of people.” To have a party. To need something else. Though if the continued happening of Eliot Waugh’s party was something to go on, perhaps a party would do some people some good.
After Adam’s disappearance, it was hard not to think about what the portal might do without some trepidation.
—
“Ah,” Rhy said, catching on to Gansey’s meaning. “Yes. I remember the last time we had such a large group at once.”
His father had been among them, and then, like many, had disappeared with the majority of the group. Some had stayed, though; he remembered that much. He did not remember exactly who they had been, now, but he knew that they had.
“This doesn’t seem like quite so large a group, but it is still a possibility. And I wouldn’t want my party to be ruined for anyone.” Or for Gansey or his people to lose someone they particularly cared about, but if Gansey wanted to talk about that indirectly, he could do the same.
—
Rhy was right. It wasn’t as large a group. In comparison, fourteen was a modest number. That many people might arrive naturally over a few weeks. That many had certainly disappeared in that period of time. Autumn, the season of loss. They hurtled toward the end of the year, the time for which many peoples around the world had created festivals and holidays, artificial ways to maintain cheer that the world did not provide in gloomy weather.
The weather was nothing like that here, a consequence of their magical globe trotting. But it still hung over Tumbleweed, along with the malaise from the zombie apocalypse. “One person came from our world,” Gansey put it vaguely. He doubted Declan would thank him for talking about him with someone he was a stranger to. Who was a stranger to him.
But Gansey rallied. They had been through the sad conversation, reached happy, and were now on uneasy waters. Anxiety was a familiar sensation, and the fear of someone leaving especially so. Even with the different root, the lack of a sense of worthlessness, Gansey knew these feelings all too well. “It’s possible I am wrong, of course,” Gansey said, “in which case I shall have another thing to be grateful for come Thanksgiving.” He wished he would be wrong this time.
“And you had someone arrive from your world, a little before all this activity,” Gansey said. He had looked briefly at some of the comments when he hadn’t had time to say anything himself. Still after some of the recent losses. How recent they felt. How many months had it been? Sometimes some months hardly existed at all. “I am sure no one present could ruin one of your parties.”
He sighed. “Sorry, I just… don’t want to linger on it too much. I can handle what dread I feel because it’ll be gone one way or the other,” Gansey added. He didn’t want to turn into a version of himself that was more distant. That one was simply too much to stick around in.
—
“Ah, yes,” Rhy said, amused, “Lila.” He searched for words to describe her easily, failed, and shrugged. “She is a presence that comes and goes in my life. I would like for her to stay, if that’s what she wants. But I won’t pretend to know what she wants.”
Probably, she wanted Kell to be here with her, just as Rhy did. Probably she wanted travel and adventure and a ship to sail out to sea. He felt those desires too. He knew her, in a way, but he didn’t really know her.
He shrugged. “I meant only that I wouldn’t want people to have to avoid the party because they were sad. Their presence could never ruin it for me, but I would want them to enjoy themselves.”
He offered Gansey a small, bittersweet smile. “I understand. Let us not linger on what might or might not happen, and enjoy our lunch.”