Ronan was trying very hard not to fall into a negative pit of thoughts - everything was so good so clearly bad things had to happen to balance the scales. But the loss of Persephone was enough to punch a hole in his honeymoon bliss. She was a person Adam chose for family and who chose him right back. Someone he let down his defenses for. That list was so short that Ronan would have fought tooth and nail to protect everyone on it. But there was no protecting Persephone from Vallo sending people away.
He couldn't even say sent back, which was obviously the worst of it.
But he would be damned if he'd let Adam wallow alone in his pain for long. He knew where to look, at least.
That would have been more of a comfort if Cabeswater didn't look so strange. It slowed Ronan's approach. The trees stretched out their long limbs, wound together like brambles and vines. Ronan expected them to part as his approach. It was probably just Cabeswater trying to protect its beloved magician. But the barrier seemed to tighten instead.
"What the fuck, Cabeswater? Let me in." Darkness and a howl of wind seeped from between the cracks, but nothing budged. A whisper of panic trilled up Ronan's spine but he tried to keep his voice calm and commanding. "I know he's hurting. But I'm your Greywaren. Open. Up."
Adam didn't know how long he had been inside the forest. He aged a hundred years and none at all. His whole body felt fragile and ancient as he laid down in the grass. Leaves settled on his body, plants grew up and around him. Somewhere his mind had disconnected from the rest of him, and went floating, scrying, anything to not feel like the tight, unwieldy knot in his chest was weighing him down. This was what loss truly felt like, and Adam had wanted nothing to do with it.
And so Cabeswater had coaxed him inside, taken his hands and his eyes, and brought them in a place where none of that mattered. A puffy dandelion sprouted in the rocky soil beside where he laid his head, blossomed, and disappeared on a wisp of wind. Adam reached for it too slowly, and it was gone before his fingers could wrap around it. And so the cycle started again.
Persephone was the dandelion. Persephone was the dandelion. Persephone was the dandelion. Open. Up. The words, the voice, pierced through the mantra, a slice of sharp reality in the slog of his disassociating mind.
He tried to reject the request. It felt like an echo, far away, and his whole body didn't want to move to open up. Cabeswater's protective, aggressive rumble was saying mane hic, magus. But he couldn't stay here, right? Part of him knew he couldn't, not forever, but what if? What if he let the forest just grow over him, become wholly a part of Cabeswater? But what about Ronan?
Adam pressed his palm to the dirt, took a heavy tired breath, and said patefacio sursum—open up. The branches on the edges of Cabeswater groaned and curled away, just enough for Ronan to slip in, but nothing more. Adam sighed, and didn't move again.
Even though Ronan didn't have the same bond with Cabeswater that Adam and Gansey did, he could still feel it, this close. The way it hesitated and reached for Adam's decision. How concerned it was. He was grateful the forest was fond of its magician, but he also felt cut off in this instance. Like he was a trespasser in the creation he'd pulled into existence. It made him even more tense and he scowled as he squeezed inside. He found Adam with his hand to the ground and plants all grown up around him.
"Jesus," Ronan whispered. The trees echoed the tone, if not the word. A bird cried and flew up into the stormy sky above. "Have you been right here since you left?" It had been hours. Enough to make Ronan worry and Gansey pace. Ronan crouched down on one knee next to his husband and touched his hands to the foliage around him. "Dimittas," he told Cabeswater. "I've got him. I'll protect him. Let go."
Adam could feel the reluctance from Cabeswater to let go, and the pull of the command from its greywaren. He heard Ronan's voice close, then closer, and then the gentle touch of his hand. Adam closed his eyes again, taking a deep breath, and on this exhale the plants retreated. But Adam didn't want to get up, his hand slowly reached for Ronan's, and his fingers curled loosely around his. Part of Adam wanted to pull Ronan down with him, drag him into this hazy space where he didn't have to think, just be and exist where nothing hurt.
But Adam also knew that the reason Ronan was here was because time was up. Adam had to come back. He didn't have a choice in the matter, and it was Cabeswater, with his naive capacity to do that didn't understand the complexities of this strange grief, that wanted to keep him. Adam, as its magician, was supposed to teach Cabeswater, and all he had done was confuse the forest.
He had been through worse, Adam tried to tell himself, but that was a loss that he had slowly said goodbye to over the years. This time he didn't even get to say goodbye.
The air was still cold, the breeze rough, and Adam struggled to sit up. "How long?" Adam asked, though he sounded far away, empty in the places that should have been full. "How long have I been in here?" And then as if Ronan already answered, he added, "I'm sorry."
It was tempting to roll Adam into the grass, cocoon him there in the curve of Ronan's body. But they had a bed for that. They had people still too, waiting at the house, willing and able to dog pile together. Sargent had looked fragile when he left. They would all be better together, as they always had been. And staying in Cabeswater too long was dangerous anyway. Time passed differently outside and while the forest was less wild than when it was newly formed, it was still unpredictable at its core. Ronan coiled one hand in Adam's and the other around his forearm to tug him up out of the slowly retreating vegetation.
"Shut up," Ronan said softly, shifting his hand from Adam's forearm to cradle his face much more gently than the words would suggest. "It's only been a few hours. We were just starting to worry and I didn't like the idea of you being out here too long by yourself. Figured Cabeswater would get all fucking riled up." The trees whispered a spooky litany of latin around them, sounding anxious and powerful. The hair on his arms stood on end. "Thanks for proving my point, shithead," he said to the forest.
It was hard to look at Ronan, full of worry and concern, holding his face, holding him together. Adam took a shaky breath, knowing full well he shouldn't have been out here alone, but... "I didn't know where to go. I didn't know what to do," Adam admitted. Not having a solution available immediately was not how Adam operated. Again, Cabeswater whispered here, come here, a messy cacophony of gravelly voices. As tempting as it was, Adam shook off the trees. "I wasn't ready."
And he supposed he wouldn't ever be ready.. The loss was too big, too great. He could feel that grief working its way up, eroding all the walls he had hastily built in order not to feel it. What a stupid, irrrational response, to think Adam was faster than emotional pain. He squeezed his eyes shut, almost like he was bracing for impact.
"Do you think she knew?" Adam asked, tearing away from Ronan, in a panicked desire to pace. "Do you think she always knew? She knew, the first time. She talked to me, right before and I thought I understood, but now, now—" His hands were over his eyes trying to stop the tears, shoving fingers in as hard as he could, but it was too late.
Adam didn't want Ronan to see him like this; he was the person who was supposed to keep it together and in control, especially in Cabeswater. The forest rippled, like an explosion of air in all directions. It called to Ronan for help, unsure of what to do.
“You weren’t ever going to be ready, Adam.” Ronan tried to pull him closer, into the comfort of his arms, but Adam broke away with his slightly manic questions. Following, Ronan frowned and reached for Adam’s forearms. He didn’t want to pull on him – he didn’t want to force anything in this moment – but he hated having Adam’s face lost to him. To feel like his husband was protecting himself from Ronan. He kept his grip loose and caressed Adam’s arms, kissing the tops of his hands where they covered his face.
“I don’t know,” he murmured. “If she did know…she might have figured the best wedding gift she could give you was not warning you. Letting you have this one week before the heartbreaking shit that our lives always manage to circle back around to at some point.” Cabeswater’s concern was like a hovering tidal wave. Ronan tried to think calming thoughts. Strong thoughts. Cabeswater’s protectiveness retreated, but didn’t go away. “I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t change a damn thing—” The words were twisted and tangled with emotion. “--But I’m so sorry.”
The gentleness was almost too much. Adam felt overwhelmed in the best and worst ways, emotion tossed inside of his body, unsure of what to focus on. And there was Cabeswater waiting to move in at Adam's request. But he couldn't, not when Ronan was here, trying to rationally explain why she might not have told them. Would Adam have reacted better or would it have put a damper on everything that had just recently happened?
"Don't," Adam pleaded, rough and raw, his voice thin, "don't apologize. It's not your fault, it's not anyone's fault, it's just shit, it's just so much shit, and I don't understand it, I don't understand any of it." He took a deep breath through his nose, exhaled. A brutal attempt to ground himself. To not fall apart. That was the worst feeling, teetering on the end of all that grief. It struck Adam then—the comfort Ronan was offering—was something others had given him. The same kind that Adam had given him when he lost his mother.
He dragged his hands away from his eyes, only to crash into Ronan, wrapping every part of himself around his husband. He wasn't sobbing, but the way his body slightly shook, it was a near thing.
"There's so much I didn't get to tell her. So much I wanted her to know. I never told her, not really, what she was to me. How much having her in my life changed everything, everything." Someone who was proud of him, someone who had slipped into that empty cavernous part of his heart that he had learned to live with. "What do I do now?"
Ronan sensed the shift just before it happened. He’d like to pretend it was just knowing Adam that well, but it was also the way the trees around them bowed all at once like the wave of grief hitting Adam washed over them at the same time. Ronan met Adam halfway and folded him up into his arms, pressing his head to Adam’s and holding just this side of too tight. If he could have turned himself into armor, he would have.
“She knew. You know she knew,” he said. “And I don’t mean in some psychic way, just. She knew. Love like that isn’t fucking one-sided, babe.” He hated the ache that empty little what do I do now left in his chest. How hollow Adam sounded. Ronan hated a lot of this. But he didn’t hate being here to hold Adam close and rub circles into his back. “Right now, you don’t have to do jack shit but grieve. We’ll go back to the house and pile up with Blue and probably cry. Tomorrow we’ll figure out what comes next. Alright?”
She knew was such a small thing, but it was vast in its relief. Adam could find every reason why she wouldn't have known, talk himself up into a critical mess. But having Ronan confirm that it wasn't a big unknown, that Persephone left profoundly aware that Adam loved her like a child loved a parent was enough. It would have to be. Adam couldn't change anything now.
He nodded fiercely into Ronan's shoulder, but didn't let go. "Alright, alright," Adam said, strangely comforted that Ronan was telling him what to do. Was it wrong to lean on his husband, knowing he had experience in this type of loss two times over? Adam would feel guilty about it later, when he was clearer headed, and not wondering what and how and when and why—why did she have to leave now? There was a purpose, timed with something he would only realize later.
The darkness didn't quite pass, but there was a calmness in the forest now, a keen scent of ozone right before—"The rain," Adam whispered hoarsely into Ronan's throat, their only warning. Then came the warm steady drizzle. Cabeswater was an echo of Adam's grief and sadness, but being soothed in Ronan's arms was safety he hadn't felt until this moment. Ronan had prevented the torrential downpour, the unsteady storm.
"I want to stay just a little longer first. Please."
Ronan was the kind of asshole who wore tank tops in the winter just to be a shit, so the jacket he was wearing was thin, but he was still quick to tuck Adam under one side. The rain on his shaved head was cold down the back of his neck. Adam's warmth was close and comforting, though. Even if his husband's broken heart was the last thing Ronan ever wanted in this life or the next.
"Yeah, okay," he whispered, pulling the other flap of his jacket around Adam and pressing his cheek to Adam's hair. "Whatever you need."