Chapter Text
“I think you should see them from their level,” Declan had said, in his usual Declan way. Bland and emotionless. Ronan loathed Declan’s responsibility. He was content to craft their worlds in the Dreaming and leave everything else to Declan.
It smelled like human shit, honest to God, and Ronan tugged at his black sleeves and looked the pub up and down. Declan was supposed to meet him here, whatever that meant, though Ronan knew he’d been distracted lately. He didn’t know who, but he didn’t care enough to find out.
“I am pleased that you showed up,” Declan said, appearing beside Ronan.
Ronan let out a slew of curse words in a language that hadn’t been used for millennia.
“I don’t know how you remember curse words from two thousand years ago but never remember to come to family dinners,” Declan added.
“Come on, I want to make this as short as possible,” Ronan spat.
Declan tilted his head, indicating for them to enter Aglionby Tavern. There was a raven painted on the sign, the black paint chipping. Ronan always had ravens, dreamers that he took from Declan and used as his messengers. It could have been a sign. Or it could have been nothing. But Ronan had never believed in coincidences.
Declan got them drinks. This was one thing Ronan could understand about the humans–their desire to be oblivious, to forget, to drown their sorrows in a bitter drink. His way was better than this. Declan set the cup down after a sip, face twisting with disgust. Ronan didn’t even touch it. It smelled like piss.
“What is there to even see?” Ronan asked, bitter. “They smell as bad as they look, and they’re not saying anything of interest.” He wrinkled his nose at a crude joke about a man with his hand up a girl’s dress.
“This is humanity,” Declan said, sweeping his arm around the peasants.
“No wonder they die so young,” Ronan muttered.
“All of these people have dreams, and you are the one who controls them. It would do you good to understand them from this level, not just their minds.”
“Their dreams are not worth understanding,” Ronan replied. “A delegation of Faerie came to me last night. They want to leave this plane for something different. I don’t blame them.”
“Listen to the people,” Declan insisted in his usual way, straight-backed and stern. “See them.”
“I’ve seen Death,” a voice said, and it was quiet, gentle. Nothing like the rest of the coarse tones in the tavern. Ronan and Declan turned themselves towards the sound, and Ronan’s gaze fell on a boy, a little over twenty, but the exhaustion written on his face made him look older. “I lost half my village to the Black Death. I’ve fought in battles. I’ve seen death, and I don’t think anybody has to die.”
It’s straightforward, the way he says it, and he says it so strongly that Ronan thinks he believes it. Like he could talk himself out of the fate of every human on this earth. His friend corrected him, but the boy was unshakeable in his conviction.
“I’ve made up my mind,” he said. It wasn’t boastful or flippant. Just a statement of fact to his friend at the table with him. “I won’t die.”
His companion laughed, said that death would come for every one of them. The boy with the dirt-colored hair smiled amicably, but Ronan could tell he was serious.
“I don’t understand why someone would want an eternity on this earth,” Ronan said, turning away. He didn’t want to think about the man’s hands, almost boyish, calloused, long fingers and bony knuckles, or his smile, a casual thing, lips turning up in a false laugh at a bad joke. His name was Adam Parrish. Ronan didn’t want to think about that name, how the letters fit on his tongue, how it would sound out of his mouth.
“I could make him live forever,” Declan said. “If you wanted.”
“He will want death by the end of a hundred years.”
“We shall see,” Declan said dryly. “Should I tell him, or will you?”
“I will tell him,” Ronan said, lying to himself about how much he wanted to be next to this boy, who he didn’t even know.
He went to the table, where Adam was now alone, nursing a drink. He appeared older, but Ronan could sense that he only appeared that way.
“Did you say you would never die?” Ronan asked.
Adam paused and looked up. “Yeah.”
“I want to know what it’s like,” Ronan said. “Meet me here in a hundred years.”
“A hundred years’ time, on this day? I will see you in 1489, then,” Adam said in that country accent, serious when any other would have laughed. It made Ronan want to do things, things he wouldn’t say out loud, things he wouldn’t even think about.
“A hundred years,” Ronan said. It might have been cruel to toy with him this way. To promise him a long life that he may regret. But he couldn’t let Adam go, not without doing something.
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“You shouldn’t mess with humans like that,” Gansey, the librarian of the Dreaming, said as Ronan walked through the library. He pushed his glasses up his nose and adjusted his collar. He liked humans more than Ronan, probably because he'd been one.
“It was Declan’s idea anyway,” Ronan muttered.
“You are controlling someone else’s life, without their permission.” Gansey had been human once, a raven turned into a human, and he still held much more sympathy for them than Ronan ever could.
“I want to see how it ends. All humans get corrupted. Will he hate the world in a hundred years’ time?”
Gansey huffed. “And if he does, will you grant him death? Or will you continue to toy with him?”
“I’m meeting him in a hundred years’ time,” Ronan said. “A blink of an eye for all three of us. We will see how it goes.” He whistled for Chainsaw, his favorite raven, and she landed on his shoulder with a loud Kerah! , her name for him.
The throne room was empty, the stained glass windows a plain gray, making choppy shadows over the floor. The Dreaming was wild outside, a thousand Dreams and Nightmares creating worlds for all the people sleeping in the world. Ronan dropped his coat on the floor, uncovering his swirling black tattoo, always shifting and changing, the essence of the Dreaming captured in black ink on pale skin.
“What will you do if you see him again in a hundred years and he says he wants to die?” Gansey asked again, stepping gingerly over the coat. Ronan sat on the throne, looked over his realm, wished he was anywhere else. “Will you let him?”
Ronan looked away, the gray glass in one of the windows clearing to make a picture of a raucous inn and a quiet boy with straw hair. “We will see in a hundred years.”
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1489, the same Aglionby Tavern. Fashions had changed, people had shifted and moved, but it felt so similar to that first time. Ronan wrinkled his nose at the stench, still putrid even after a century.
Adam was waiting at a table. He was better dressed, more clean than last time, and Ronan sensed that he had made an improved life for himself.
“My lord,” Adam said, nodding to Ronan. Ronan tucked the pouch of sand back into his pocket. “Tell me who you are. A demon? An angel? The devil? Did I sell you my soul?”
“Not the devil,” Ronan said with a bitter tone. “And nothing like your soul. I’m simply interested in you.”
Adam blinked. “In me.”
“In your experience,” Ronan amended. Adam’s hands hadn’t changed, still bony, still freckled. His hair was cleaner cut now. “So. Tell me. Do you still wish to live?”
“It’s brilliant,” Adam said. “To see how much everything has changed, even in a hundred years’ time. I’m in the printing business now. Might not amount to anything, but it gets me money and independence, and that’s all that I need right now.”
Ah. That’s what Ronan could sense bleeding off Adam. The need to be independent, the need to be his own person. A person whose hands and eyes were his to control. Perhaps Gansey had been correct that eternal life was not a gift that was willingly accepted, that the humans did not want their lives toyed with by eldritch beings.
“A hundred years’ time, then?” Ronan asked.
“1589,” Adam said with his same quiet smile, and Ronan turned from him.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
He went to Kavinsky that night in 1489. Kavinsky, the nightmare that Ronan had created in his own image, a second part of himself that he had needed out. Kavinsky could bite, could make Ronan forget freckled hands and straw hair, blue eyes and fine bones.
It was nothing physical. Only a dream that the two of them shaped, simultaneously breathtaking and suffocating. Ronan could feel a rush, could bring himself to a different place where he didn’t have to think about any of his responsibilities.
The whole thing left a bitter taste in Ronan’s mouth. He didn’t go back again.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
1589 saw Adam, rich, with everything he had ever wanted, and Ronan, bitter to see him happy with someone else. At least, Adam seemed happy. Ronan could still feel the dreams aching in him, the lives he still wanted to live.
He still sat in a back corner of Aglionby Tavern, albeit more nicely dressed and surrounded by plates of food. Like he had been waiting for Ronan.
“You haven’t told me your name,” Adam said, glancing up when Ronan sat down, black cloak swirling around him. “Two hundred years and no name.”
“Two hundred years is nothing to immortals,” Ronan replied. A commotion in the other part of the tavern, caused by a man named Shaxberd.
Ronan wanted the burn of Adam’s eyes on him when he walked away with Shaxberd. He wanted Adam to feel like he felt, and it was spiteful and childish and Declan would reprimand him for it, but Adam had a lover and it wasn’t Ronan.
He promised that playwright fame, a chance at living forever through his writing, the opportunity to write dreams for the waking. He wanted Adam to feel as bitterly jealous as he felt.
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It was 1689, and Ronan had been waiting. He was thousands of years old, and yet the minutes were an eternity in themselves.
There was a clatter, and shouting, and there was Adam, hair grown out, dirtier than even the first time Ronan had seen him in 1389, and Ronan couldn’t feel the hopes and dreams leaching out of him like he had in the past. Like something in Adam had died.
“Do you know how hungry a man can get? When he doesn’t die but doesn’t eat?” Adam said bitterly, taking handfuls of food. Other patrons looked on with upturned lips and scorn. “I lost everything. All of it. I’ve been on the streets for years, and I hated every second of it.” That was what had always mattered to Adam. His independence, his pride, his life. And he had lost it.
Ronan looked on in silence, unable to say anything. Unwilling to say anything. He could have been bitter, sarcastic, but there was a thrumming in the back of his mind, a secret he would not admit to himself or others. A desire he would not speak out loud, for fear of ruining everything.
“And would you still wish to live, then?” Ronan asked. He could take Adam from Declan if he chose to die. Bring Adam to his own realm, let him live on in the Dreaming. He could win the bet and have Adam at the same time. Even if he would not say the reason he wanted Adam in his realm.
Adam was quiet for a minute, staring at Ronan. The patrons around them got up and left, and the server girl looked on from the sidelines, nose scrunched in disdain. Ronan glared at her, and she turned sharply away and hurried to a different part of the tavern.
“I would still live,” he said, in that same quiet tone. “There is still so much to live for in this world, so much for me to experience.”
Ronan did not bother to hide the disbelief in his face when Adam said it.
“A hundred years then,” he said. “But I will get you a room for the night.”
“Don’t,” Adam said. “I don’t need your charity.”
“It’s the decent thing to do,” Ronan replied. “Not more than one night. Just enough for you to recover.”
“I don’t need your aid,” Adam insisted.
Ronan waved over the serving girl he had glared at previously. She came over reluctantly, pitcher held low at her side.
“See that he gets a room. Treat him as you would your richest patron. I will know if you do not.” Ronan would keep an eye out tonight, watch Adam’s dreams. Make sure he dreamt well tonight, after decades of distress.
“And how are you paying, sir? With his rags?” she asked, tone scathing.
“As you would your richest patron,” Ronan repeated, dropping an excess of gold coins into her hand. She gaped at the amount and Ronan stood, coat swirling around him. “A hundred years’ time, Parrish.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Ronan hadn’t expected the ambush in Aglionby Tavern. He probably should have; somebody would have found Adam out eventually. It had been a shock to see Adam defend him, to fight for him even when he didn’t need to do it.
She had dark, messy hair, and keen eyes. Introduced herself as Blue Sargent. Some kind of noblewoman with a penchant for the supernatural, who had found a drawing of them from the century prior.
(Before she had arrived, Ronan had sensed something in Adam’s blue eyes, and he thought that maybe one of them would say something about it all. About the meeting every hundred years. About the way Ronan looked at Adam when he thought Adam wasn’t watching.)
Sargent had nearly launched her goons on the two of them. Adam, a soldier as a young man and now preserved in time, had taken both of them out and was left with Sargent’s pink-handled knife at his neck.
Ronan blew his sand into her face, and she had crumpled, falling asleep. He didn’t blame her for wanting to study the two of them. Her intentions were good, if slightly wayward. Adam had stared at him, a small line of blood dripping from the underside of his chin.
“I didn’t need saving,” Ronan said.
“Clearly,” Adam scoffed, looking away. Ronan turned his eyes, afraid that Adam would see every intention in them. “I suppose this is the end of our meeting.”
“She could have told others. It’s not a good idea to go anywhere else.” He would have rather gone with Adam, but then again, he would rather leave than admit that out loud. He would not speak that secret, even if it played in his mind over and over again.
“Can’t die, remember?” Adam replied with a lopsided grin. Ronan noticed belatedly that he had fewer freckles this year. Less time in the sun, then. More comfortable in life, not working as hard.
“You can still be hurt,” Ronan said. “Or captured. I don’t want that. 1889, then?”
“1889,” Adam said, and they parted ways. Ronan could feel Adam turn back to watch him, a split second of blue eyes on the back of his coat, but he did not look back. He would not let himself want this. Even if it had already been four centuries of wanting.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Dreaming was ruined for weeks after their meeting in 1889. It rained incessantly, and when it wasn’t raining, the world was flaming, burning. Like Ronan’s rage had manifested itself in its contents. (It had to have hurt. After all, Ronan was the Dreaming, and the Dreaming was him. Scorching it would have caused considerable pain. But then again, maybe his pain was why the Dreaming set into flame in the first place.)
Gansey tried to remediate it as best as he could. Tried to console the dreams that lived there, promising them that it would settle, even when it rained fire from the skies, even when the rain drowned out everything.
He couldn’t reach Ronan. Ronan, lost in his own head, angry, bitter. Wishing the meeting had turned out differently and yet not wanting to change it. Ronan, who hated himself, who had always hated himself. Ronan, who had wanted Adam and lost him.
After things had settled, Gansey had begun to understand what had happened. He had known about Adam, had known that the meeting was approaching, but it had never ended like this.
It had gone like this. 1889. Adam, waiting for Ronan, like he always had. Ronan, wanting, aching, like he always had. Aglionby Tavern, the same as it had ever been, even if slightly changed for the times.
Ronan had been wanting since 1389, and Adam was starting to realize that perhaps there was a reason they continued to meet, even after half a millennium. Had suggested that Ronan (isolated Ronan, solitary Ronan) was there because he wanted a friend.
A friend. As if Adam could presume what Ronan wanted after all this time. Adam didn’t even know Ronan’s name. How could Adam know what Ronan wanted, when Adam didn’t even know what he wanted for himself?
(Adam wasn’t entirely wrong. Of course he wasn’t wrong. Adam had always been observant to a fault. But Ronan didn’t want a friendship. He wanted something else, something more, but Adam hadn’t seen that yet.)
Screamed onto the street, from Adam: if Ronan showed up at their next meeting, it meant they were friends. If Ronan came back for Adam, then they were something other than an observer and an experimental subject.
The storms settled, as all things did, but Ronan stayed secluded in his rooms. The nightmares began to realize that he was no longer watching them, and started to roam the Waking World, where they thrived. Kavinsky, one of Ronan’s first dreams, one of his favorite nightmares, was the worst of them, feeding his bloodlust through killing humans.
Ronan only left to collect them, coming back each time to sit on his throne silently. He spoke to Chainsaw, his beloved raven, but her thoughts were abstract dreams, and only he could understand them. Gansey ran the Dreaming while Ronan sulked.
Ronan had never wanted to feel like he had when he was young. When he had seen this role as a weight on his shoulders, when all he had wanted to do was walk away from it. The Dreaming had raged for years, and it had almost killed his form. He’d never wanted to feel like that (like dying) again.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Ronan had wanted to go to the 1989 meeting. He would have swallowed all his pride to go see Adam. Would have given anything to escape the glass cage and see bony, freckled hands and dusty hair and clear blue eyes.
He hoped Adam knew that he would have been there.