Closed to Raven Kids

[fictor]

Who: Raven kids
When: The entire month of July
Where: Mostly the Barns, but I'm okay with it being used for anywhere in town
Warnings: Let's just make it R for everyone's sake. It might have everything in it.



With the lights out, the month of July takes the shape of some sort of weird slumber party. During the day everyone goes about their business. Adam works, Gansey researches, Ronan bugs the ever living crap out of Adam. Noah and Blue do whatever Noah and Blue do. Ronan suspects they’re still adjusting to this place. He knows it’s got to be a big adjustment for Noah. It’s probably not an easy one for Blue either who’s more accustomed to being around the craziness of 300 Fox Way rather than the craziness of Monmouth.

He knows it’ll be awkward at first, but when the electricity fails Ronan suggests that everyone stay out at The Barns. There’s plenty of room and several things that don’t use electricity to work like toasters and one shower that never runs out of hot water. Ronan feels better having the people he cares about under one roof, particularly when they’re not sure what the hell else is going to happen. Gansey agrees readily enough, always happy to have all of his people close by.

While The Barns allow everyone the space they need so that no one is piled up on top of each other, it is lacking in bedrooms. There’s the bedroom that Niall and Aurora shared, Matthew’s bedroom, Ronan’s bedroom and Declan’s bedroom (they can draw straws for that one). Ronan didn’t give anyone (including Adam) a vote when he claimed his room for he and Adam. He told the others they could sleep wherever the hell they liked. The couch in the den was pretty damn comfortable.

The Barns are also cluttered with dream things. The house, for the most part, contains the bits and pieces that function properly. Aurora had seen to that. However, there’s an entire barn full of frustration dreams for everyone to explore. The animals still lie sleeping where they’d been when Niall had died. For the most part, Ronan doesn’t mind his friends picking through the things and exploring. Niall’s office in one of the barns is locked and it’ll stay that way. He’d prefer that no one touch the mask on the wall that he’d had that awful dream, but it’s really only off limits to Adam (who knows that by now).

Explore, settle in. Ronan really is happy to have everyone here, to be able to share this with everyone.

[You’ve all read the book. Feel free to make shit up about the Barns. If you’ve got questions, ask and I’ll do what I can to answer them. Treat this as a month long mingle. Play with it and have fun. Adam’s birthday thread down below]

Comments

[dontscryalone]

"And it's you." Persephone smiles, reaching up to touch Adam's cheek. "I should have known. This place, it's - it's very strong." Her hands fan out around her. "This whole place, but this place," she says, meaning the house and surrounding lands, "this place is very strong."

[adamparrish]

She touches his cheek and her hand is warm, not cold as he figures a dead person should be. Normally, Adam flinches when people touch him so suddenly, knee-jerk reaction from living life as Adam Parrish. Not Persephone. She's one of those few people that Adam has let in. He's not sure when or how it happened, but it did.

"It's the Barns. It's Ronan's family home." Almost everything here is a dream thing. The magic here is very powerful. "Uhm..." He hesitates and then steps aside to let her in, closing the door behind her. "Blue. You need to see Blue." Or, vicariously, Blue needs to see Persephone.

[dontscryalone]

"The Greywaren." Yes, that too seems logical. Stepping inside, Persephone looks around. "Blue is here? I would imagine then, that - yes. It is very loud here." So Gansey must be here, too. "And the - " She was going to say Snake, but she doesn't. "The ... the - " her hands flutter. "The one who'd died?"

[adamparrish]

Adam nods. The Greywaren. He belatedly wonders if Ronan will be upset with him, letting Persephone into the main house on the hallowed grounds called the Barns. But then he thinks he doesn't care. There is no 300 Fox Way here. Where else would Persephone go? She should be where Blue is. Blue will want to be where Persephone is. Gansey will want to be where Blue is. Ronan will want to be where Gansey is. Noah will want to be where Ronan is. Adam...

"She's here. They're all here." They, being Ronan, Noah, Gansey and Blue. Not the full house of 300 Fox Way. Persephone seems to always know what he means to say anyway. Sometimes she even knows what he won't ever say aloud. Adam is only kind of used to that.

But the most notable question. "You died. But you... appeared to me. To finish teaching me what you could. I don't know how..." How she appeared to him. How she's here. Is she a vision? He had felt her touch his face only moments before.

[dontscryalone]

Of course they're all here. Persephone could feel all of them. And of course, with Blue here, amplifying everything, it's no wonder that it's so very loud.

"I know," she tells him. She knows she died. But death is hardly permanent, it seems. "How close is the ley line? You've been repairing it, haven't you?"

She reaches over, hand covering his again. "You haven't been letting it take over, have you?" He doesn't need to let the ley line tell him what to do.

[adamparrish]

This house itself is a mystical thing. With Ronan and Adam here, with Blue... of course Persephone could feel them all. He wonders, briefly, if Noah still has that magical feel about him since he's no longer a ghost. "Noah's not a ghost anymore." He volunteers randomly.

He gestures to the North, or what would be the North, of the Barns. "The lines are all through the forest out there, up close to the mountains. I've been keeping up." Busily. Because Ronan has no idea how much he's been dreaming and Adam wants Ronan to be able to dream whenever he wants.

So when he says he's been keeping up, that means he's been in charge of it... so far. "I'm in control. The tarot deck you gave me helps a lot. And I'm getting better at scrying."

[dontscryalone]

"Good." Persephone smiles at him, head cocked. "You are stronger. There's something different about you, Coca-Cola shirt." She's teasing in her own way. "You are not alone, even though you think you are."

About the ghost-boy, well, she can feel a presence, but no more than that. The mood of the house might be different without him, though. "So, this place can bring some of us back from the other side, can it?"

[adamparrish]

Adam doesn't feel so different. But if anything's different it's that Ronan has given him confidence that hadn't been there before. And where he had always felt so solitary a creature prior to Persephone's death, he now has moments where he doesn't feel so alone. He understands his power a little better. Maybe these are the things she sees in him.

"I guess so. Maybe the doors act as a veil." It's a new idea, the thin walls between the living and the dead. "I wonder if you and Noah came through the same doors the rest of us did." Maybe the two of them came from somewhere else... somewhere not Henrietta. And that's why they're alive.

[dontscryalone]

"I suppose we can investigate," Persephone says, but she knows that asking questions is not always the best thing to do. She seems content to sit, her dark eyes watching Adam's face. "The lines have to do something with this, don't they? Are there other dead people here?"

[adamparrish]

"I don't... no. It's a different power." Because Adam would feel it if the ley lines were being overused. He feels everything Ronan dreams. He feels it all. This power, used to keep Itinere up and bring people here, it's entirely different. Adam doesn't feel it the same way he does the ley lines.

"Only you and Noah as far as I can tell." But Adam is not the most sociable of creatures. He knows very few people.

More importantly though. "Blue wants to go home. But the doors home are stuck. Maybe you can do something to open the doors for her." Something that none of the rest of them could do.

[dontscryalone]

Her face the very picture of seriousness, Persephone says, "it might be best if she stays here." It may be safer here, though she won't know for sure until she investigates some more.

"No one knows how the doors work? That's ... interesting."

[adamparrish]

He stares at her for a moment, wondering what she knows, if anything. But of course she knows something that the rest of them don't. There must be some reason for Blue being better off here.

"Maura's in trouble. She's been missing." He leaves it at that, as if that might explain why it might be difficult to convince Blue that she should stay here. But if anyone can convince her, maybe it's Persephone. Living and breathing, a miraculous thing come back from the dead standing here before him.

The doors. Adam shakes his head, rubbing a hand over the back of his head over his messy hair. "Some are locked and some aren't. Sometimes they go back and forth from being locked and not." He can make no sense of it. And as Ronan says, Adam is a genius. "There's no order, as far as I can tell. The one to Henrietta has been locked since Ronan and I got here. And it keeps locking behind Blue, Gansey and Noah... now you."

[dontscryalone]

"I know about Maura," she tells him. That's who she was looking for when she died. And yes, Persephone knows she's dead. She's self-aware in that way.

"If the doors can lock," she then notes, "they can be unlocked." It is the way of the universe: nothing is just one thing, or one way. There is always an equal and opposite pull. "I can help you if you'd like to figure it out. But you are getting stronger."

[adamparrish]

He nods. Adam's glad for that, that Persephone has that knowledge. Maybe she can help Blue in a way that none of the rest of them can. Blue wants to go home to find her mom. Adam can't make it happen. None of them can. But Persephone, maybe she can help to settle Blue's mind on the issue, at least until they can truly find a way out... for her.

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking." That if the doors can be locked, they can be the opposite. It's logical. It's reasonable. Adam would almost think Persephone was talking down to him with the obviousness of the statement if it weren't Persephone, who has always believed he could be something... more.

As is evidenced by her comment about his getting stronger. Once Persephone had gone, he'd had no one to lean on as far as his abilities. He'd had to step up. And he had. He does now, even here in Itinere. "It's getting easier." Easier, in that he and Cabeswater are becoming a seamless thing. Even Ronan sometimes says that he can smell the mossy woodiness of Cabeswater on Adam even without their having been there in some time.

[dontscryalone]

Persephone is also learning, so much of what she says is her means of understanding this new home she seems to have found herself in.

Doors opened and closed after all. They didn't stay closed. That isn't a door then, but a wall.

Reaching out, she touches his arm. "Just keep yourself," she tells him. Adam shouldn't lose himself in Cabeswater. He should be himself, too. "Should we have tea?"

[adamparrish]

"I'm trying." He tells her, not thinking much of the hand on his arm outside of acknowledging that it's there. It's Persephone. She's one of the few people who just touches him with little regard to his wishes. And he's strangely grown to be okay with that. Persephone means him no harm. She helps him.

There are days when Adam can barely tell where Cabeswater ends and he begins. Sometimes it's an obvious divide, sometimes it's seamless, and sometimes... there is no Adam to be found. It's been awhile since that's happened. But it's always a strange mixture of disturbing and comforting to lose himself so completely. Disturbing because, anyone would be disturbed to fully lose themselves. And comforting because Adam Parrish doesn't like himself all that much. Sometimes even he likes to hide away from who he is.

What is it with people making him drink tea? Gansey, Persephone. He really is in a whole new world. "There's a tea kettle that's always got hot water in it in the kitchen." He tells her. Obviously the tea kettle is a dream thing. "I'll have a coke."

[dontscryalone]

Walking with him there, then, Persephone begins hunting around the cupboards simply because she can, finding a tin of tea not too far in. It's bergamot but it will do. "And what have you been up to, aside from Cabeswater?" she asks. Work-life balance. In her own way, Persephone stresses that.

[adamparrish]

In the kitchen Adam goes straight to the fridge to grab a coke. Then he pushes himself up to sit on the counter, legs dangling over the side while Persephone rifles through the cabinets. The tea kettle is there too on the counter, plain as day, the one he told her about.

"I work at a garage." He says, because Adam can't exist and not work. It might sound luxurious to be able to do that to some. To Adam it just isn't at all enviable. He needs things to keep himself busy. At least here he has only one job and not three.

[dontscryalone]

"You fix things." With a smile, Persephone notes this. Of course he does. "Is that what you do for yourself, though?" she asks, though, curious. "What do you do for fun?"

Though it can be noted that the way Persephone says "fun" is something like a foreign vocabulary word.

[adamparrish]

Fun? Adam isn't one who's really prone to having fun either. Not on his own, at least. But when he really thinks about it, anything fun always seems to involve Ronan in some way. And thoughts of Ronan lead to thoughts of other things, things he doesn't know how to put into words on his own just yet.

"Well there's a carnival in town right now. And a water park." He finally says. "I had my first birthday party ever earlier in the month. On a boat..." A yacht, actually. Ronan and Gansey clearly didn't know how to do the beach without an expensive yacht.

[dontscryalone]

Up go Persephone's eyebrows. Well, that seems good. "Good," she says, patting his hand. "Good."

She will miss Maura and Calla quite accutely, she thinks. "I'm glad to see you, you know."