Work Text:
Blue chains herself to her first tree in Tennessee. Henry sighs and sends RoboBee to investigate the construction company. Gansey sends a picture to Adam and Ronan.
‘Ronan says she’s 2 small + the bulldoser is gonna squish her,’ replies Ronan’s phone.
‘Hi Opal,’ replies Gansey.
“It’s in my blood,” Blue insists.
By the third tree they have it down to a science.
“I never pictured myself going into Environmental Law,” Gansey says, filing the appropriate paperwork with the local court.
“Aren’t you technically part forest?” Henry asks.
The laws are different in Louisiana, but Gansey’s French comes in handy. They get tattoos in New Orleans - the ley lines, a beech tree, and RoboBee - and then they scramble between train cars and up the levee.
“Excelsior!” Gansey screams across the dark river.
Texas is big and flat and Blue’s Camaro loves it. They reach dreamlike speeds, with RoboBee scouting ahead for speed traps.
At the border, they hand over three passports - two worn, one new.
“It’s a whole new country of trees to chain yourself to,” Henry says affectionately, kicking his feet against Blue’s headrest.
“Pendejo,” she retorts with equal affection.
(Though he’s not wrong.)
Gansey has seen a lot already in his wanderings, so both he and Henry defer to Blue’s lead. She takes them to Teotihuacan, and Tikal National Park, and they spend three days on the Pacific coast in Costa Rica.
Henry murmurs, “so I assume the curse is gone,” against Blue’s lips and she answers by closing the distance.
Gansey’s Spanish remains rudimentary, but Blue is quickly fluent. She writes two postcards a week, and the one to Opal is always in Spanish.
A friend of Declan’s lends them a house in Panama for a week and Henry becomes obsessed with locks and canals.
“I’m buying a boat,” he declares every day when he comes back to their bedroom.
“Then Gansey’s shoes would make sense,” Blue says from her nest of blankets.
Gansey, who has been wearing hiking boots for the expedition, is offended, but not enough to stay mad at either of them.
On their last night in Panama, Gansey gets an email from Adam insisting that he needs a monkey and to bring one back for him. An hour later, he gets another one telling Ronan to stop fucking around or he’ll stop visiting.
The last tree that Blue chains herself to is actually a tir e e’lint . She’s very friendly once she figures out what they’re doing, and so there are two women chained to the tree when Henry and Gansey return with the authorities and a stay of execution.
It’s dark when they cross the border into Venezuela and make camp in the tent that Ronan dreamed for them.
Blue is the first to wake the next day, and she wriggles out of the sleeping bag. The forest is loud around her with what sounds like frogs or crickets and she sits on the empty hood of her car soaking it all in. As the sky brightens, she can see movement in the trees.
When Henry and Gansey are woken by her laughter, she’s entirely covered in short-tailed pygmy tyrants.
“Where to next?”
They keep heading south. They’ve got time. A year stretches ahead of them, followed by their whole lives.