WHAT: Matthew checks in & then they both check out (magically speaking) WHERE: the Barns WHEN: Tuesday evening, 2033 WARNINGS: Nightwash (black blood); temp magical coma (x2) STATUS: Complete
Matthew hated the ominous quietude of the Barns. The days of the farmers markets or special events kept the farm full of life and people, and even the house tended to be bustling with activity, the way Aurora Lynch would have loved. But Matthew always appreciated things like peaceful afternoons when the only sounds were typical farm noises: the lowing of the cows, the goats tussling around. He never minded that sort of quiet.
But this quiet, this stillness around the farm, was the sort that had Matthew holding his breath in anticipation. His muscles were stiff and tight, as if he was ready to bolt at any given moment. It was so at odds with his memories, the cognitive dissonance was difficult to contend with. Thankfully the house itself was still a relatively safe place, a temporary shelter for those who needed it. Temporary because not all that far off was Cabeswater, something Matthew couldn’t think about for too long or he would start to feel a tug in his middle, his body orienting towards it instinctively. Dream calling to dream.
Fortunately, there were other things to concern himself with, namely, Ronan and Ronan’s feelings. That made it easier to focus on the here and now, Matthew always did better when he had to be strong for other people, and Ronan needed him. So after indulging in a walk through the house, pausing in the doorway of his old room, Matthew went looking for his brother. He wasn’t hard to find. Unsurprisingly given current events, Ronan was sitting in the Pig, located in one of the garages.
He came around the front of the car and knocked on the driver’s window to give Ronan a head’s up before Matthew went to the passenger side door and opened it, sliding in to sit down. He reached back and patted a sleeping Nora on the knee before wrapping an arm around Ronan’s shoulders, his head resting against Ronan’s for a moment.
“Hey. Figured I’d find you here. Can’t hide from me for too long.”
Ronan was wallowing. Brooding. It wasn't anything new but he usually didn't do it this close to Cabeswater. He was risking falling asleep here and being visited by Adam while his emotions were too high and where Adam's power was strongest. As it was, Ronan had one eye on Nora in case she showed any signs of dreaming about her other father.
Adam hadn't invaded her dreams yet. Fuck knows he'd tried, but Ronan was usually there to wall him out.
He blinked as Matthew caught his attention at the window and then sighed, dropping back against the seat. The side hug was comforting, even if he didn't say as much. All he did do was knock his head against Matthew's lightly and pat his knee.
"If I was gonna hide, it wouldn't be here, dingus." He sounded tired. "Did you see him? He should be back at the Outpost with Sargent. Unless she took him somewhere else."
The corners of Matthew’s mouth tugged up in a smile when Ronan used his familiar, teasing nickname. Small things like that helped Matthew find the faintest of light in an increasingly dark and bleak world. “I don’t know,” he retorted. “Maybe you’ve become a crappy hider in your old age.” It wasn’t the most witty of responses, but he wanted to at least try to play along.
Absently, Matthew traced the panel in front of him, and then he circled back in his thoughts to make sure that was something he was actively choosing to do. He was, but Matthew had to be more cognizant of that over the years, of what was his choice and what wasn’t his choice, he almost analyzed it too much. It was a constant state of fear that if Matthew started slipping, he wouldn’t be able to come back. “Just to say hi and give a quick greeting. I wanted to give him and Blue a second to get adjusted to everything.” Matthew didn’t understand any of the magic involved in time travel, his part was to be supportive and encouraging. And sometimes…that didn’t feel like enough. Not compared to what other people were contributing, or what they had given up.
“You should talk to me about it,” Matthew said. A statement, not a question, not a suggestion. “I know it’s weighing on you.”
Ronan watched his brother out of the corner of his eyes. He was all too aware that they were both running out of time on the magic clock, but seeing Matthew in person always reinforced the realization. There was something faded about Matthew now. And it made Ronan want to draw him back into the world, with all his original bright color and life.
Unfortunately, he wasn't much better off.
"The fuck is there to say? He's here and he shouldn't be. If he dies again…" His jaw clenched and he gripped the steering wheel with both hands tightly. Eventually, he breathed out and closed his eyes. "I know we need this to work. We don't have any other shots to take. This is it. I just…" He was so tired. His shoulders sagged. "I just wish for once that Gansey didn't have to be a tool of fate or whatever the fuck."
“It’s not fair,” he agreed. ‘But we’ve been through so much shit throughout the last few years, that, honestly?” Matthew shrugged, slapping his hands on the dash. He glanced back at Nora to make sure he hadn’t woken her, and then leaned forward, his head in his hands. Matthew’s eyes hurt with the grit and rawness of missing sleep–he never got enough. Half the nights he woke up with a jerk and a gasp, as if his body needed the reassurance that he would wake up.
“I don’t know. What we’ve been through isn’t fair either. That doesn’t trump anything or make it better, it just is what it is. And if there’s a chance that it could be better for us, for Nora, for the rest of the kids, for the other us’s out there, or however this works, I’d do it. Wouldn’t you? That’s no more or less fair. I hate saying it because it’s obviously not me, so maybe it’s easier for me to say, but this is it. We’ve run out of options. Not only us, but every other us out there, every other timeline, like Caleb and Essek say.”
He pressed his thumbs into his temples, like that would ward away the headache creeping up. Matthew put on a good show for the kids he watched but that took up so much of his energy. It was worth it, to him, to be able to make things a little better and brighter for a few hours, and to give their parents time knowing that their kids were safe and being well taken care of, with songs too, but boy did it burn him out. “I hate it too, is what I mean. I’m sorry.”
“I know all that, I’m not—” Ronan scowled and turned his gaze out through the driver’s side window. Outside was just a rotted old barn wall with cobwebs. He wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than watching his once carefree brother shrug about all the terrible things they’d been through. “I’m not fighting it. I fucking agreed and I didn’t pretend he isn’t here. That has to be enough for today.”
It probably wasn’t. Nothing ever really seemed to be enough anymore. Ronan slumped down in his seat. He felt especially drained and the feeling was creeping towards one he was all too familiar with now. The one that said he needed Dream to put him under for a bit so that he didn’t use up the last of his sweetmetal. But they were at the end of the road now. He couldn’t spend it locked away from the land of the living.
“Fuck. Whatever, you know. Not trying to take it out on you.” He glanced back at Matthew and reached over to pat his brother’s chest over his heart. “How are you doing? You look like shit.”
“I know you’re not,” Matthew promised, clasping Ronan on the knee. Through everything, all of the years of loss and sorrow and grief, one of the few things Matthew had never questioned was his love for Ronan and vice versa. They would always be the Lynch Brothers, the Brothers Lynch, and even when tensions were at their peak and the stakes couldn’t have been higher, Matthew knew he would be right by Ronan’s side.
He rolled his eyes, turning that clasp into a punch. “Rude.” But Matthew blinked, hard, to clear his vision, sitting up and stretching as he did. He was slipping, he could feel himself slipping and for all that Ronan carried on his shoulders, he didn’t need the added burden of Matthew. Ronan was already working overtime to keep them both afloat, Ronan had Nora to look after, Ronan had Adam threatening to seep into his dreams any time he closed his eyes, Ronan’s best friend was coming from the past and being put in harm’s way in the last ditch effort they had. Matthew couldn’t fix any of that, but he could control himself.
“I’m okay,” he said. “Some days are better than others, but that’s how it is for now. How’s Nora holding up?”
Ronan looked unconvinced. But this was how they'd been doing things for years now. Scrape by, hang on, watch out for each other. He scowled and stared at Matthew for a moment before he glanced back at Nora. She was shuffling, probably at the sound of them talking, but he preferred it that way. The deeper asleep she was, the more likely he needed to be in her dream space to shore up her defenses.
"She's as good as she can be. She's better off than us, thank fuck." Being part Adam was probably saving her life. The irony of that wasn't lost on Ronan. He ran his hands up over his face and shorn hair, closing his eyes. This car had so many good and bad memories tied to it, that even just the smell of it around him made Ronan emotional. "I don't know how much time I've got left," he admitted, barely loud enough for Matthew to hear. "I feel like…fuck, I don't know. Paint peeling off an old wall."
But Matthew heard it. To be fair, he wasn’t surprised. He felt it too.
He pressed his finger against the car window, watching as the heat formed a halo of condensation around the tips.
“I could go to sleep,” Matthew said, finally. It was like literally pulling teeth for him to do it, the very last thing he wanted to do. Even suggesting it had him instinctively pulling away and balking, remembering a time long, long, when it wasn’t Matthew’s choice. Whenever it was convenient to Declan was when Matthew was awake, and God, he hated the idea of going to sleep and not having a clue how much time passed or what happened around him, but he knew how much keeping him afloat was costing Ronan. He held up a hand to hold off Ronan.
“Nora needs you. And if it bought you more time to keep her safe, I would do that, for both of you.”
"Don't," Ronan growled. It was a weak sound all things considered. His head lolled back against the seat and he dropped his hands back into his lap like they were suddenly too heavy to hold above his head. "It's not--Even if you did sleep it wouldn't buy me any kind of real time, Matthew. And we need everybody at their battle stations for this shit to work."
He rolled his head along the back of the seat to look at his brother. "I need you here, Matty." It had been a while since he'd bothered with that old nickname. Gansey's arrival had apparently opened the floodgates. "We need you," he added, looking back at Nora. She was awake and quietly watching him. He swallowed dryly and sagged more in his seat. "This plan, it's the last line in the sand, you know? I'm not doing it without my family. We just…we might need…"
Ronan was drifting. His eyes felt heavy and the old familiar drip of something viscous on his cheek made him swipe at his face slowly. There was a black smear on his palm when he pulled it back into the dim light filtering into the barn.
“I know, Ronan, but,” Matthew started, before he literally swayed in his seat when the wave of fatigue hit him like a wrecking ball. He blinked, his eyes slow to open, he flexed his hands just to make sure they still would on his own account, his gaze went distant and blurry. And it was hot. A suffocating heat that made everything drag and give weight to the air. He blinked again and wasn’t sure how much time had passed. He thought he would sink into the car seat.
Matthew’s thoughts were coming slowly, in with the tide and then out again before he could fully grasp them. He finally said, “We should call someone,” but wasn’t entirely certain if he’d said it or if he intended to say it and hadn’t gotten it out. He pinched himself on the leg hard enough to bruise, hoping the sharp pain would cut through the murky swamp of sleep that threatened to take him. “We should call someone,” Matthew repeated, to make sure it came out that time. But his device could have been miles and miles away for all the effort it would have taken him to reach it.
“Fuck,” Ronan grunted. He rolled on his side to face Matthew, to try and reach for him, but it felt like it took an eternity. Tipping his head back, he looked back at Nora, who looked like she was quickly realizing something was wrong. “My…my phone…,” he said. Nora’s face appeared suddenly in front of his, her head parting the space between him and Matthew. What energy he had, he forced into pulling his phone out of his pocket.
“Caleb,” he forced out. “Ink.”
“Papa, hold on, just, wait—” Nora grabbed the phone and looked torn about taking her hand off her father’s head. Like that was going to be the key to keeping him tethered to this world. God, Ronan loved her.
“It’ll be…okay, kiddo,” he murmured softly, nightwash tears dripping down off his chin. It was probably a lie, but he'd lie for her any day. He felt her hand drop away and saw her punch in his passcode furiously. His eyelids were like anchors. He only got a half second longer to look at his brother and inch his hand across the seats to bump against Matthew’s thigh before the world plunged into darkness and stayed that way.
“It’s okay, Nora-Nora,” Matthew promised his niece in the same tone he used when it was his turn to read her stories before bed. Soothing, even it sounded so distant to his own ears, because he had nothing else to give her and it wasn’t fair. “Hit the buttons and wait. Stay in the car.”
He was so scared. He was so tired. It was hot. He thought he smelled roses, like their mom. Another dream.