WHO: Adaine Abernant, Adam Lynch, and Ronan Lynch WHAT: Adam practices Safe Scrying (!!!) with Adaine, as he goes psychically searching for his husband. Ronan is not anything he expects in the dreamspace. He's worse. WHEN: Sometime after the Rescue Group left (Day 2) WARNINGS: Blood and some violence STATUS: Complete
"Ten minutes. It can't be more than that," Adam said.
He was reciting the rules, the one that he had put in place for his friends, family, and himself. Adam had always been a creature of strict regulations to follow, and he was also always pushing the same boundaries when there was something he wanted. But he had been through the dangers of slipping while scrying one too many times, and the rules were there to keep him alive. Even if he thought they should be there on a case-by-case basis.
Adam laid out the materials for scrying across the table: cloth, bowl, candle (which he lit immediately), and flat cola (which he poured into the bowl). Blue had stomped off furiously a while ago when he started setting up, saying that she wasn't going to be responsible if he keeled over in the kitchen. He felt mildly bad for pissing her off and for dragging in Adaine to replace her as his spotter. Like this was some kind of sport. Adam, who had never been remotely interested in physical education beyond his mandatory weight lifting class for credit, considered this a mental Olympics instead.
But he would do anything to find Ronan. He had let Gansey go try to rescue him physically, but Adam was not going to be a person who sat around and waited. So he took initiative; he would find Ronan where only the two of them could exist, determined that this would help.
Adam finally looked up to Adaine across the table. "If I do anything weird," Adam said, knowing that was a generous term, given the circumstances, "pull me out earlier. It will look like I'm not breathing, at least that's what I'm told, so just take it with a grain of salt."
Without explanation, Adam cautiously laid the switchblade beside the bowl. It was the one outlier in the collection of objects for metaphysical contact. "You might need that too."
Early on in her time in Vallo, Adaine hadn't found it too hard to step back from joining the heroes on adventures and journeys. For too long, she had been in this new world without the rest of the Bad Kids and they were the people she was most used to fighting alongside. For as chaotic as some of her friends could be, it was a type of chaos that Adaine understood and somehow thrived within. In Vallo, it had taken some time for her to find a place where she felt comfortable and secure, not only in herself but in those she surrounded herself with. And when a good chunk of the people who had made that comfortable and secure life for her had disappeared into a portal of unknown, well. Suddenly it had become very hard to not volunteer herself for the rescue mission.
The thing was, Adaine was a talented wizard. Her life in Spyre had given her unique experiences that had prepared her for a life of adventure, which had meant that she'd been a bit (though she wasn't one to brag or bring it up herself) advanced when it came to her magic using peers in school. Caleb's mentoring her in the same sort of magic she practiced had been a gift, only increasing and fine-tuning her skills. She wouldn't have been a poor pick to go.
Something had told her, though, that she was better fitted in this Vallo. It hadn't been a vision, like she was prone to occasionally get as an oracle, but just an intuition and Adaine had learned to listen to that. She had trusted that Essek would bring back their family and had been happy to remain as an added bit of normalcy for Kiri. She had volunteered her magical expertise when needed and now was relieved to be there to help Adam with this side of her expertise, too.
Adaine was no stranger to Scrying. Adam's version of it was similar to her own, though she'd never needed a switchblade. It wasn't hard to infer what it was needed for, as Adaine picked it up and handled it with more dexterity than someone who was supposed to rely mostly on magic to protect herself probably should have--thanks, Fig.
"Ten minutes," Adaine repeated, both for her sake and to make sure Adam knew she was listening and taking this seriously. "Pull you out if you get weird and... stab or cut you, if need be?"
Adam realized that this conversation was strange. How did he explain to another person that literally stabbing him was the only way to bring him back to his body? That the pain had to be so severe that his mind couldn't stay floating in the astral plane? Anyone else, anywhere else, and someone might have decided he wasn't fit for public consumption. But between two psychics, Adam felt Adaine was exceedingly prepared for anything, including this.
"Yes, to all of those things," Adam said watching her flip around the blade. "Most of the people I live with don't like to. Not that I expect people to like stabbing others." Adam sighed, knowing that he was verging on rambling. Something he never did. But his own nerves and distracted brain were causing him to have little restraint on his normal verbal filters. "There are things out there, in the dream space, that are looking to hang on to things. I don't know how else to describe it."
He touched his finger to the top of the liquid in the bowl, watching it make thick ripples across the surface. "I can find Ronan anywhere, but I don't know what will be waiting for him or with him. So if it's ten minutes and I still look dead..." Adam frowned, because it was like a small death.
"Don't be afraid to use it. Hand, arm, whatever is easiest." He pointed at the scar on the back of his hand, then gestured to the one peeking out from under the sleeve of his t-shirt, as if to say it was normal. "I can take it.
Many, many questions were forming in Adaine's mind as she looked from the blade to Adam's scars to the scrying bowl, all of which she had to assume would be better kept for another time. As much as this was her helping Adam locate Ronan, she was also hinging hope to it; if this magic worked to connect the two of them, then maybe all of the other ideas and plans that people had been forming could also work. If there was one thing Adaine would put her trust into, it was her friends; two things, magic.
"All right," she agreed, testing the blade gently with her thumb, just enough to test and not cause her skin to break, before closing it back up. As she set it down, she looked back up and added, "And if the stabbing doesn't work, I'll just, I don't know. Send a Witch Bolt at you."
It was meant to be a joke, but it fell a bit flat thanks to Adaine being Adaine and the situation as a whole. As though trying to make up for it, she pulled Boggy out of his hiding place in her backpack and left him on the table in front of her. Emotional Support Familiar, indeed. "Don't worry, though. I've got you on this side, I promise."
Adam was pulling the bowl toward him, and paused briefly at her joke. He might have offered her a more genuine smile, but the one she got was small and tight. It was his own stress of doing this, of finding Ronan and the others, bearing down on his shoulders. He exhaled, and shook his head. "If you think a Witch Bolt is going to be the better option, I won't hold it against you. I trust you."
Resting his hands on either side of the bowl, palms up, Adam settled into his seat and tipped his face toward the bow. His eyes focused on the reflection of the light on the dark, motionless surface.
"Ten minutes," he said on an exhale, meant for Adaine but mostly for himself. A reminder that he only had a short time to find his husband. He could do it. He'd done it before with less power, and a more fragile line to follow. He had survived days untethered, welcomed back by another dreamer. He knew how to be safe, Adaine was here. How would this be any different?
Adam blinked slow, slower, then not at all. His chest moved with an inhale before it didn't move again. His pupils dilated, blown wide where only the flame from the candle could mirror back in them. He was still, a statue, a body without a soul.
Hopefully, Adam wouldn't need the full ten minutes. He'd do it in nine. Goddamn overachiever.
Dreamspace while scrying was always disorienting. There was the mental unhooking from the grounding of his body, like the first tenuous step on a shaky bridge. Adam had done it hundreds of times before, it was as easy as breathing. Especially into Ronan's sweetmetal sea, where they could both exist in and out of the ebb and flow of the world. Adam had never forgotten the way it felt, how Ronan's presence was expansive and all-consuming. He could sense him in his bones, on his tongue, in the air that filled his lungs. Or whatever the astral projection of his body could connect as lungs.
But as he followed that familiar trail, something shifted. Like a techtonic plate, jarring the path to another side. It was a crack in a meticulously worn and walked space. Adam was suddenly, inexplicably lost in dreams.
He had to hope that Adaine would know what to do on the other end when the ten minutes were up. Because while intuition told Adam to turn around, try again, don't go too far, his heart was telling him no, keep going, find him, findhim, findhimfindhimfindhim—
A burst of white noise clouded his senses, and Adam held his arms, his dream-self arms, up as if to protect himself from whatever that frayed buzzing noise was. It unsettled him to his core, and when he slowly dropped his arms, he was not bounding around in the dark dream sea anymore. The Barns, or what looked like the Barns, was around him.
The wrongness of them was immediate. Abandoned and quiet, the buildings and the rolling field were all desaturated color. Adam inhaled sharply, abruptly confused. The pressure of worry was building against his skull, and Adam squeezed his eyes shut and turned his face away as if he had been staring into the sun. But nothing that bright had been before him. When he dared to look again, in the center of the field was a dark silhouette that had not been there before.
Ronan. Adam had found him. But why couldn't he move forward? Why didn't he run to him? Why was every alarm sounding in his mind, ringing in his skull, through his teeth? Survival instincts were the only thing keeping Adam rooted in place.
"Ronan," was all Adam said, calling for his attention. He was acutely aware of how vulnerable he was in this dream space.
No one had been in Ronan's dream space in a long time. No one had been in Ronan's life in a long time. Not really. He existed in a dreadful limbo where to move backwards was failure and to move forward was just inching his soul deeper into the fires of Hell. He'd made his choice, over and over. He would do it again. There was no going back.
Each step he took left black ichor behind, like footprints of acid that ate away at the ground. It wasn't even a conscious thought. It was just the bitter fury in his soul leaking out through the soles of his boots.
He knew someone was here. He could even feel who it was before he saw him, a bright and horribly shining presence in the dark. It was like the last time he'd seen Adam. In the sweetmetal sea. When he'd been ripped away by the Lace, his scream echoing in Ronan's core. A warped version of that scream tore across the hills in the distance.
Ronan tipped his head slowly to the side, watching Adam with eyes lost in shadow. "This is new." He didn't like new. It meant the rebels were getting stronger. It meant Matthew had helped someone invade Ronan's dream space. "Who sent you?" he growled.
If there was one thing for certain, it was that Adam could observe quickly enough to recognize a threat. The problem was this threat, or the high possibility of one, was his husband. Even in the dream space, Adam's stomach dropped, a stone settling somewhere in his chest. Made worse by hearing a distorted version of his voice, his scream, echo in this space. Whatever happy reunion Adam had expected had been thoroughly dashed by Ronan's absolute disregard that he was here, that Adam was ever here before this moment.
"I sent myself," Adam answered, which was both true and untrue at the same time. Someone might have sent him, if they had asked. But Adam had taken the initiative to find Ronan, and allowed for the others to fall into place afterward. Even as Ronan approached, Adam didn't waver. He stood his ground, even if that ground was dying with every step.
"I came to find you, I was looking for you." Facts, Adam kept it to facts as he assessed the situation: the dark look in Ronan's eyes, the wrongness of his demeanor, the fury that felt intangible and palpable at the same time. Adam dared a question, "Where are you? What happened to you?"
Ronan's eyes narrowed. The corruption at his feet reached out towards Adam, like a snake testing the air with its tongue. Whatever this was, it was impressive. Adam felt like Adam. Or like Adam if Adam were on a long distance call.
Like Adam calling from a Barns full of life and love. Something swam around in the back of Ronan's memories - the echo of another Ronan - but it slipped away before he could decide if he wanted to drag it into the light.
"This is private property, Parrish," he sneered. He didn't believe this was Adam, but if the culprit wanted to play then he would play. He moved closer. "I didn't invite you here." The ground around Adam's feet turned into a sludgy black quicksand and it sucked up around his feet to hold him in place. A black shadow dropped out of the sky, sharp claws and a sharper beak, and she landed on Ronan's shoulder with a horrible shriek. Dream Chainsaw was an echo but she looked as vicious as the real thing. "What were you hoping to gain? You didn't really think I'd tell you where I am. Whoever you really are, you can't be that fucking stupid."
How long had it been? A minute? Two minutes, at the most? Adam was trying to get a sense of the ticking clock and whether or not Adaine would pull him out early, or late, or exactly on time. Calculating the minutes was the only thing that was keeping him steady on his feet and not focusing on the growing shadows at his feet, coalescing at his ankles, pinning him in place. He couldn't run if he could, if he wanted. But Adam, who had always been afraid his entire life, didn't want to.
But he hated that he flinched at the unearthly noise from Chainsaw landing on Ronan's shoulder. He hated how much this was scaring him now. He jutted out his chin, because Adam's determination was stronger than his fear. It always had been.
"I'm welcome on this property," Adam said, his fingers curling at his sides, attempting to solidify himself in the dreamspace, despite how corrupted and unwell it was. "You have always welcomed me here, you said this was my home. We built a life here." His voice didn't waver, but it was a close thing. Whatever happened, whatever was happening to Ronan, it had fundamentally changed him, and Adam might have been the only one who could help.
Adam swallowed, and exhaled sharply. And for a moment, the smallest fraction of a second, he pushed through enough of the dream to make himself glow, to be his true astral self. He wanted to be that bright beacon again to whatever darkness had hooked himself into Ronan. "You disappeared. So I did what I will always do, and find you," Adam said, his eyes flicking furiously to his feet then back up. "Now let me go, so I can take my husband home."
Ronan had been in the dark too long. The brightness stung his eyes nearly as much as it burned a mark somewhere deep in his chest. He blinked until the pain receded and he was left with the undeniable truth of Adam in front of him. Magic could do a lot of things, out there in the real world. But in the dreamscape, Ronan was the master of what was true.
Between one breath and the next, he seemed to become something shapeless and inhuman and enraged. Then he was himself again, clear across the space between them in a blink, teeth bared and his hands fisted into Adam's shirt, close to his throat.
"Your husband?" he hissed. "I'm not your husband. And I don't need to be rescued. You're too late! I saved myself. Without you. Without Gansey. Without any of you! Matthew's a traitor but I don't need him. I don't need any of you." It was a lie, but he said it with the conviction of truth. Only the look in his eyes betrayed him. Adam's Ronan was inside of him, beating against the glass like a trapped bug. His grip tightened.
Adam knew logically and instinctively that trying to prove he had some sort of semblance of control in Ronan's dreamspace was a risk. Adam had taken so many risks in his life to be with Ronan, to protect Ronan. But the lapse into the inhuman shadowy form seconds before a more human-looking version of Ronan grabbed his shirt had scared him. Whatever had touched Ronan and dragged him away had done so much damage in such a short amount of time.
He also knew that time was cyclical, that this moment, this world, whatever it was dictating this version of Ronan was meeting Adam here, at this point. His words, without without without clung to Adam's subconscious as he tried to figure it out. Maybe this wasn't his Ronan at all and what kind of fucked up situation had either of his Ronan's gotten themselves into?
His hands came up to grab Ronan's—to hold him in place, to keep him from hurting him. It was an inherent gesture, an old scar making itself known. He never had to worry with Ronan—hurting him or death, Ronan had lived it once under Adam's own chokehold and had chosen death. Adam didn't like the alternative now.
"I don't know what happened to you," Adam said carefully, shifting in Ronan's hold. "And why you were alone all this time, but you're not alone now. And you won't be, not again. Please, Ronan—" Adam sounded a little desperate, a little like he was begging. "Let me help you. Tell me where you are."
The fear in Adam's eyes reached somewhere his words did not. Ronan had never wanted to be the reason Adam felt fear, but he couldn't tell if the self-hatred that gripped him suddenly was his own or a result of the interloper in his head. It had been so long since he'd felt anything but bitterness at the world and a desperate need to be the most powerful, to decide his own fate.
"Adam," he whispered. He pulled Adam closer, his hands untangling from Adam's shirt to cradle his face. It seemed like a gentle gesture. An intimate caress. The words held a secret - I missed you. But the madness in his eyes was like a hungry shark swimming just below the surface and his fingers started to dig into Adam's jaw as he spoke again. "I'll do you one better, Magician. I'll show you where I am." With that, he started to pull at Adam in a metaphysical way, reaching out with all of his dreamer energy to try and untangle Adam from his anchor, to bring him fully to Ronan's side. It was like trying to tear a hole in the universe but his power had always been about what he believed he could accomplish. And his will now was a terrible, terrible thing.
Adam fucking fell for it. Later, if—no, when, he made it back to his body, and he was firmly grounded in reality and consciousness, Adam would realize the mistake. He had been so hopeful, so goddamn frenzied, to believe that whatever was happening to Ronan was temporary. That the strange uncanniness of this version of his husband, raw and alone and brutalist like Bryde had been, was all fixable. Adam had hope, the fluttering canary in the metaphysical mine that was Ronan's dreamspace.
He managed only a soft sigh, a hitch of his breath when Ronan leaned in to take his face. But a blaring siren in his head screamed, and screamed, and screamed. He was screaming. The pain from Ronan's fingers was real. The tearing sensation was unnatural. He could feel himself full of cracks and fissures as Ronan's will started to sever Adam from his body in a not-so-temporary way.
Panic seized him. "No, no, please Ronan, don't—" Adam shouted at him, desperate in a way he hadn't been in a long time. He tried to pull away, to run. Could he run from here? Adam had been so determined, he lost sight of all the red flags. This was going to be bad. "Adaine, Adaine now, now." Adam shouted into the sky, into the void, into nothingness.
He didn't think she could hear him, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to try. Another snap of a tether, another unmoored sensation. And then a sharp, bright burning pain in his hand. Real pain. Waking world pain. A beacon back to his body. Adam stopped struggling then as blood ran down his hand in the dream.
Ronan warred with himself. Hearing Adam scream was a visceral thing. Like stepping back in time. He just wanted to keep him. He'd lost everything. Everyone. And the grief and the not knowing had broken him. But that other part of him that had been calling out for Adam since the moment he stepped into this space, that part of him had teeth and it used them to break Ronan's concentration. It gave Adam a moment - an opening - to escape.
"No. No!" he shouted. He could feel Adam slipping from his grip. "Goddamn it, Parrish. You said I wouldn't be alone again!" The words were desperate and unhinged. He pressed his face into Adam's neck and clung to him with clawed hands. "I should have known it was just another fucking lie," he hissed.
The hurt of Ronan's words swallowed Adam whole. What had he just said to Ronan? What had he just promised? Was he a liar? He hadn't intended on lying. But this beast that was consuming Ronan was not the one he knew, and it was that small sliver of truth that Adam tried to cling to in order to make the pain of the words less. It didn't, but Adam could pretend.
His expression was raw and miserably apologetic. What had he done? He could feel himself sliding back into his body, like the slow roll of a tidal wave, pulling more and more of himself back from the coastline, from the precipice of this dreamspace. He wanted to take Ronan with him, but even the press of his face in his neck, the sharp claws that he was digging into him, it all started to ease away as he became more incorporeal.
He couldn't stay, not when he was bleeding in the conscious world. He ducked away from Ronan;s touch and hold, his own bloodied hand leaving a mark on Ronan's cheek. Much like how Adam had touched the stone in Cabeswater years ago.
"I'll find you," Adam said brokenly, but the fight was not completely out of him. He'd remember this forever. "Not here, but I'll find you."
And then he was gone. No preamble, no gentle fade, just gone. Where Ronan couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't breathe, Adam woke up in the waking world screaming.
Whatever quiet peaceful—albeit unnerving—position Adam had slipped into when he was scrying, he was the opposite when he was ejected out of the scry. Cold dread and unrelenting fear had been bottled up inside of Adam at seeing Ronan, an unnatural and wrecked version, and all the adrenaline that he had kept at bay in his astral projection was real and pumping wildly now. He thought his heart would burst through his ribs. His breathing was heavy and labored, and an acute, blossoming pain was radiating from his palm and up his arm.
No, no that was what had drawn him back. That sharp attention in the intangible nature of the dream space. It had been grounding, despite the way he received it.
Adam's sight was always the last thing to come into focus. Everything was blurry, strange shapes, with the candle now doused. Adaine was closer than she had been from across the table where Adam had left her, he could see that, sense that. And as his eyes adjusted to this ambient light, and the details became more clear, her hand was wrapped around the switchblade which was currently in his hand.
"I'm here, I'm here," Adam said, hoarsely, breathlessly. He had been screaming in the dream, had he been screaming here? His voice felt raw with it. And his face was wet with tears he hadn't known he shed. He reached out with his free hand to put it on hers. "You can let go of it now."
Adaine was no stranger to violence. She was a teenage adventurer who had saved the world on multiple occasions. Her magic could be downright explosive. That was just how it was and had been since she'd first set foot on Aguefort Academy's campus and landed herself detention with the rest of the Bad Kids. She could do what Adam had asked of her and she would--
But not without a fair bit of panic rising in her chest, as she stared at Adam's hand, the switchblade, the blood, her own hands, blue eyes wide. For a moment, Adaine didn't hear anything but a muffled voice, as though it was being filtered through cotton balls. And then, all at once, she heard Adam. You can let go of it now.
"Oh--oh, okay okay." Adaine's voice was a higher pitch than normal, but her hands did spring from the blade. "I'm so sorry. I know I was supposed to do that and I am hoping it actually helped, I could tell something had happened and you said if anything went weird I was--" Adaine forced herself to stop, take a breath, and start over, this time finally looking away from the wound and up at Adam's face, cataloging everything. "Are you okay? Did it work?"
"You did good, thank you," Adam said, sharp and flat. He realized after he spoke that Adaine might not believe him, but he worried that if he showed any emotion about what had just happened, he wouldn't be able to cram it all back inside of himself. He couldn't afford to break down now, not after he had abandoned Ronan, in every sense despite his wrongness. There was so much to do, too much to think about.
Adam made quick work of removing the blade and pressing his hand into the cloth on the table. He probably should have been more careful, it would scar if he didn't. But he clutched his hand against his chest, wrapped hastily, breathing slow and even though his whole body couldn't seem to calm down or not feel exhausted at the same time. "It worked, but something is wrong. Something is very very wrong. He was—"
Oh, that was when Adam's voice hitched, awful and broken. He swallowed it down, attempting to steel himself. He leveled a look across the table at Adaine. "We shouldn't do that again," Adam said, as if this experience was going to lure Adaine into doing it and he was doing his due diligence in stopping her. It needed saying, regardless.
He started to get up from the table, ignoring his bleeding hand. "Wherever he went, they all went, it's not—it's bad. I don't know how much yet, but it is."
Adaine's look of concern was obvious, as her previous panic started to melt away. Her mind cleared as she focused and immediately so many questions formed: where were they? How was it bad? Did he know anything about Caleb and Kir? Did Ronan mention Matthew? Did he learn anything that they could use to get them back?
None of that was helpful just yet, though. Adam was clearly Going Through It and Adaine wasn't about to make that more difficult; she knew from her own experience how that felt and even if she herself had been panicking a moment ago, her override to push that aside and help a friend kicked in without hesitation.
"We'll sort it out," she determined, deciding to lean on the optimism that she only occasionally managed to cling to. Rummaging through the pockets of her jacket, she continued, "Just give yourself a minute or two, then we'll figure out what you saw and put as much of it together with everything else we know and hopefully we'll be one step further along. Ah--here it is." Out of her pocket came small vial filled with a red, viscous liquid. Adaine immediately popped the cork, then held it out to Adam. "First, let's get your hand healed."