WHO Persephone Poldma & Adam Parrish WHERE 300 Fox Way WHEN Tuesday, January 19 WHAT Half the Barns residents (and the Outlanders) are missing, so Adam goes to scry with Persephone to try and get answers. STATUS Complete! WARNINGS Vague (like super vague) mentions of death
Lost was not Adam's normal. Whenever a problem presented itself, Adam was quick to pull it apart, break it down to the barest functions, and rationalize them out into something that made sense, into something that had a solution. Logic could win over any emotional response. As long as Adam stayed focused, he could solve anything.
Adam did not believe in impossible. Even when he slipped in the paranormal psychic unexplainable territory, his mind tried desperately to explain it in terms he could understand. It was what made him a good—no, great—psychic. Nothing was impossible.
So when he came to the bitter, confusing realization that something unexplainable happened to Ronan, Adam didn't know where to start. For once, something felt impossible. His whole brain was a mess of tangled threads and half-formed theories. But each theory required following a route that led away from one another. Which was the right one? Which one was the one that made sense? Which one was the one that clouded his judgement the least?
He needed clarity with the other person who could provide it.
Stay here with Gansey and Matthew. I promise I will come right back Adam had said to Opal, kissing her forehead before she could latch back onto his leg again. He knew she could sense his messy urgency. His attempts at remaining calm and not giving into the scarier, more painful emotions were mediocre at best.
Adam didn't remember how he got to Fox Way (there were keys in his hand but no car in the driveway, the waypoint to the house was so far, but he couldn't place the time walking from one place to the other) only that he was here now. He knocked, impatiently and impolitely, over and over. The terror rising up in his throat made waiting seem unbearable. The door was barely open before he was pushing his way in and toward the kitchen.
"We have to scry. We have to look for them. And I need you to—" Adam paused, turning to look at Persephone. "I need you with me to do it."
Persephone took her time doing most things. Even in frantic, psychic grief, that she knew all too well. She wasn’t a panic-attack sort of person, or someone that stretched far beyond needing a glass of vodka to push through the day being what it was.
All things happened for a reason.
But it took all types, and Adam preferred answers and tangible reasons, much like Calla and Blue. She just didn’t have answers to give him, other than already knowing this was going the direction Adam was pushing for. The direction she’d strayed away from since her death.
The house was quiet, Maura gone as well, and she just closed the door behind him with a sigh. “Not until you’ve had a second to calm down, coca-cola.”
"I'm calm, I'm calm," Adam said in a voice that decidedly was not calm. He rubbed aggressively at his eyes, as if exhaustion was already threatening to overtake him; a preemptive warning to the future sleepless nights he was about to have. He knew that frustration and anger and worry were all terrible precursors to doing something that required focus.
But all Adam could think about was Ronan was in trouble, Ronan was in danger, Ronan was gone and there was nothing Adam was able to do about it without more answers.
Dragging his hand down his face, pulling away that swirl of complicated and dizzying emotions, Adam took a deep breath. Then another. It didn't help that Cabeswater was roaring inside of him, a frenzy of Latin and fury at the missing greywaren, and it took another forced deep breath to soothe the gnawing forest as well.
Adam wasn't calm but he was calmer, and that was the best he could do right now. He stood there watching Persephone, knowing that he wasn't the only one who was missing someone from whatever this rapture was.
"The cards didn't work. And no one knows what happened, there's no sense of anyone anywhere," Adam said, pained. It wasn't like him to fall apart so he wouldn't. "Help me. Please."
Persephone reached out to place a hand on his shoulder, an attempted additional calming effect. She’d seen this type of frustration before, not just in Adam but others - Blue, especially. And she knew they never usually liked to be told all things happen as they’re supposed to. Destiny was a tough concept when you were young, but their feelings were valid even so.
If anyone was going to figure it out, it would probably be coca-cola. His determination could shape worlds, she’d called that when she first met him and his quiet stubborn expression furrowed at her table.
“Okay.” She drained her glass of unknown clear liquid (vodka, it was vodka) and set the cup down on the table before gathering up her items. She moved ahead of him, a hand reached out to touch his shoulder again before she went towards the stairs. “Come on, then. The attic is the best for it in the house.”
Persephone also hadn’t entered it since Fox Way had arrived here in Vallo, but she knew Maura still kept what they needed up there.
There was the tiniest bit of relief when she agreed to help him, and ushered him upstairs. Everything about her presence, from her hand on his shoulder to the gentle way she took the steps, steadied him. The incremental climb forced Adam to take his time, to center himself before plunging into that deep, dark, endless abyss.
The attic was smaller than he remembered. Maybe because the space had cut an equally large hole in his heart when it ripped Persephone away from him, and it always lingered wide open in the sweeping space. But instead the cellular-like room was cramped with half-burnt candles, used books, overlapping colorful rugs and two free standing mirrors with a bowl sitting in the middle.
Adam pushed past Persephone, and quickly dragged them away from facing one another.Persephone would be Adam's mirror. Adam would be Persephone's. They didn't need them.
He knelt down on one side of the bowl and stared up to Persephone. "It won't be like last time. I won't let anything happen to you." A promise to Persephone, and himself.
She let him move things around as she stared, a vague, semi-vacant expression on her face as the energy of the room hit her. She’d always enjoyed it up here, the tallest part of their house had always made her feel centered and powerful.
These days, she had to take a deep breath and remind herself that, and Adam was convinced he needed her.
He probably wasn’t wrong. They were stronger together than apart, and he was one of the strongest psychic’s she’d ever met.
Persephone adjusted her skirt and floated down to the ground, to sit across from him like she was on a cloud. “You don’t have to promise that, it’s not my time.” It seemed like the thing to say, to ease that level of worry from him. Focusing on her when they needed to find Blue, Ronan, and Maura was going to only be a distraction. “Don’t push yourself too deep just to find them. I know you’re going to want to, it’s tempting, if you think you can take just another step. I’m not going to let you.”
Adam nodded in agreement, an ever courteous student. Persephone taught him everything he knew, was still teaching him. It would be a disservice to not listen, even if he was still unmoored without answers and without Ronan. He knew could scry alone—Adam had the forest humming in his veins, a power he had only begun to tap into—but it wasn't the same. Having his psychic mentor by his side was like the magnetic pulse, keeping his internal pendulum between his body and Cabeswater steady.
He took one of her hands, then the other, bracketing the air above the bowl. Adam didn't notice until now that it was full—had it been that way when they had come in? Was it something else?
"I know you won't let me. It's why I need you," Adam said quietly, giving one last look to Persephone, before tipping his head down. A single light refracted off the surface, but neither of their faces reflected in the dark liquid. Adam blinked once, twice, then stopped blinking all together. Dropping into the other plain had become dangerously easy since his bond with the forest, but connected with Persephone, it was as simple as breathing.
When he opened his eyes again, he was standing on the edge of a cliff. It was a familiar place, one he had had many lessons with Persephone in Henrietta. But the view was different. It was the Barns again. There were no cliffs near the Barns, not like this.
With Persephone beside him, the wind picked up and the world was bathed in a dark hue. The pastoral fields of his home with Ronan fractured into two images and then back into one. "I don't know what's happening," Adam said as he looked to Persephone for her guidance.
“What’s happening is I wish I had worn leggings,” Persephone quietly muttered in return. Slipping in had been easy, like putting on one’s favorite pair of gloves. She should have expected it, but it was still a jarring surprise. Persephone let her projected self close her eyes to feel around her, her physical form mirroring Adam’s image.
“You can’t trust what you see,” Persephone warned, as she walked forward against the wind, her skirts flowing all around her legs as the weather fought back. She squinted at the fields, looking a little closer. Then waited.
And waited.
Persephone could be far more patient, as she listened to the psychic energy of this place. It felt odd, different somehow. But there was no Maura or the vibrant signature energy she knew Blue to put off. “It’s confused. Like it’s on the edge of cracking and trying to put itself back together.”
Watching Persephone close her eyes—you can't trust what you see—was both familiar and unnerving. How many times had his eyes betrayed him? How many times had Persephone told him those exact words in his moment of need? Adam swallowed hard and then mimicked her, closing her eyes and trying to feel the psychic energy again, finding balance in the confusion of the otherworldly plain.
"I've never seen it do this before," Adam said, sounding frustrated as he came up empty. Much like Persephone, he sought out Ronan in the psychic world—the greywaren was always so easy, even at a great distance. Adam's energy was magnetized to search him out. And there was nothing, nothing.
Adam was already losing focus, he could feel that incremental shift; his mind wanted to look for more logical answers, but his body was firmly rooted in the psychic ether. "Something is causing it then," Adam said, as the world expanded out, like a pulse, the wind picking up with it. When he opened his eyes again, they were still on the cliff but the Barns were but a speak in the distance. Darkness shuttered around them.
Turning, Adam was surprised by another version of himself and Persephone. A mirror, a liquid mirror, had formed. "These aren't answers. It doesn't explain where they—I don't know how to make it understand. That's what it needs, right? To close the fractures it's trying to produce," Adam said, his voice echoing.
Persephone didn’t move her body, didn’t get closer, didn’t let herself fall into the cracked world ahead of them. It gave neither of them any answers, and pushing it wasn’t going to force that.
It was how psychics got lost here. How they lost their connection to themselves, when they went too far, too deep and pushed it beyond what the limits would allow. Because there were always limits, even if the heart desired otherwise.
“I don’t think we can help it here,” she finally answered, quietly, knowing Adam wouldn’t like that answer, but with the commentary, things around them settled slightly. The fracture looked less broken and more normal. “I think this is the wrong place, it’s too-- far. Too removed. I can’t feel anyone but I know it’s not right.” It was like they had to be closer, but it wouldn’t happen in a scrying bowl.
Persephone turned to Adam, but her hair whipped around her with wild abandon, obscuring her view of him. “In this case, nothing may be more of an answer than something.”
Adam didn't like that answer. It wasn't Persephone's fault, it came with the territory. Accurate but not specific. Maybe that was the problem. Adam's precision had become sharper, enhanced, the longer he was tied to Cabeswater. Not because of the forest's power, but the way he wielded it. Moving backwards, coming out empty handed, was not an option anymore. Adam refused.
"That can't be it," Adam said, his irritation replacing the sliver of hope he held when he dove head first into scrying. "There can't be nothing. There's always something, there's always—" His chest felt tight, every inhale burned, each breath quicker and shorter than the last. Was he panicking? No, he didn't panic. He needed to focus, he needed to not reach through the water reflection or try to climb down from the cliff. Not get lost in the bigger, grander optics of the world.
But if he just went a little further, then maybe this panic would go away, maybe there would be something...
Rationality forced him to reach for Persephone then instead, realizing that for all the fear welling inside him, she had done much more than just grounding him. A reminder of what he lost and what he could lose again. What would he have done without her? What had he done before this without her?
"If there's nothing, then..." Then he would have to figure out another way. This was not it.
Persephone met Adam halfway, reaching back to him as he grabbed for her. She knew what he needed - grounding and answers. She could only give him half of that, as she wrapped her slender fingers around his wrist and held tight, without letting go. It was a rough lesson to learn, and one most psychics would at some point in their lives.
Sometimes, the answers weren’t always here. Or there. Or in the distance. Sometimes, answers came when they damn well wanted to.
“Nothing here, in this place. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing everywhere.” She knew how he had to be, seeking out reasons and putting science and math in with the magic and mysticism of everything. It’s what made him one of the best she’d seen in this generation, she couldn’t deny that.
“You’re smart, Adam Parrish. You’ll figure out an answer.” The statement made with utter confidence in him.
Adam closed his eyes again, nodding against the wave of self-doubt and disappointment, the furious guilt of not being able to help Ronan and Blue and Maura and everyone else who needed them now. This was what he had practiced for, this was why he had bonded himself back to the sentient forest. To help. To be better. Sensing that spiral, Cabeswater burned inside his chest, warm and comforting. With his grip still in Persephone's, being reassured that he was capable, was what Adam needed.
"I'll figure it out," Adam said, repeated, and repeated it again. He could already feel the gears turning, moving in a different direction, pulling pieces together from fragments of knowledge he had from this. It may have given them nothing but it was not for nothing.
With his free hand, he touched one of the walls of the psychic space—a drop in an ocean, a ripple effect. His eyes tracked the movement, as it hopped along, above and below. Between one breath and the next, Adam was scrying, and then he was awake, blinking down at his tiny reflection on the bowl between him and Persephone.
He quickly rubbed his hands across his face, holding them over his eyes. Everything was blurry and strange after scrying, pupils blown wide still letting all the magic in. "I know I asked a lot from you. I'm sorry," Adam said. An unfamiliar phrase, rare in its use but Persephone deserved it above all else.
Persephone heard the words come at her before she saw him again, her own vision was re-focusing, but she was reminded of how glad she was the attic was often dim enough not to make her light-sensitive. There had been a flash of worry, once Adam was gone, that she wouldn’t be able to pull herself out.
That it would be like before, again. But it was easy, especially with Adam there and their power combined. There was no singular frantic pressure, like what Persephone had experienced when she was looking for Maura the first time, or what would have plagued Adam if he had gone in alone.
She blinked a few times, letting his apology settle even if it was easy to wave off. “I didn’t do anything I didn’t already know was coming.” She was softer when she looked at him finally, blurred around the edges but very real now. “I prefer that you asked me, rather than trying to do it yourself.”
Adam reached for her again. Somehow between scrying and returning he had let go, and that didn't seem right. Not when they both were still trapped straddling either side of the waking and the psychic worlds.
There was a part of him that felt full of regret. How much did his mind tell him to just scry alone? How often did he fight a war within himself about accepting help from others? To seek help from others? Persephone was the obvious example, wanting her guidance and wanting to prove he was capable. But remembering that cliff, the empty answers, Adam would have walked right off it in search for the truth. He was still so amateur.
"If you ever change your mind," Adam said quietly, blinking far more than usual, his sight becoming clearer in the dim attic. "Tell me no. I won't be offended. This was—" Adam managed to look at her then. "It cost you last time, and I won't risk it if you know it doesn't feel safe. Sometimes, I get so single-minded about something, and this, this..." This was more important, more than anything.
Persephone’s smile was kind and comforting, and from another person might have felt patronizing somehow. But looking down on Adam wasn’t something she did, nor was taking him for granted. This was a tough situation for all of them, but she knew Adam’s connections made things infinitely harder for him.
Easier, in some ways, but only in pleasure and not grief. She wasn’t worried about herself, but then Persephone rarely was - that was one of the fine beliefs of fate, knowing things were out of your hands for all time, even beyond death.
She closed a hand around his and squeezed. “This is what it is. Trust in me, trust in magic, and believe in yourself. We’ll get through this.” With that, she stood and brushed her skirts down around her legs, then held out her hand for him again. “We’ll get through it with pie. You need it.”
He took a steadying breath. His mind could be endlessly critical and cruel, telling him that he was failing if only to convince him to work harder. Adam would burn out too fast before a solution ever came if he only listened to that tiny nasty voice. So Adam let himself feel one bright, blinding emotion of loss, of feeling sorry for himself, before he tucked it all away into those tidy mental compartmentalization boxes. He didn't have time for that.
Adam took Persephone's hand. Trust was needed now more than ever. Belief in one another. As he pulled himself to his feet, standing close to Persephone, endlessly glad to bask in her calming presence, Adam said, "I'd like pie."