Open | Action: When the ghost becomes a boy

[deathbysk8board]

It isn't so much that Noah walks through a door. After all, he's more spirit than boy, more energy than being. But somehow, when he finds himself on a near a copse of trees, he seems to have a body. He can't tell if he's cold or not - he never felt cold, after all, even when he was dead and people said he was cold.

But this isn't Cabeswater. This isn't anywhere he's been. He doesn't know where he is and he doesn't know where his friends are.

And ... well, the things he doesn't know outnumber the things he does know and he's scared (which ... probably isn't a surprise). He wrings his hands together, turning a slow circle and he moves to where he's standing on a sidewalk.

"H-hello?" he manages. Can anyone even hear him without Blue's energy? Will Ronan and the others find him? The smudgy boy looks around, wide-eyed, his faded Aglionby sweater hanging loosely on him.

Comments

[deathbysk8board]

But -

Noah's brows drew together in questioning points. "How can I be here?" he asks. Away from the ley line? Away from where he's buried? "Is it because of Blue?" And Blue's energy?

For the record, Noah has always seem Adam, especially when he sacrificed himself for Cabeswater. They may not be the closest, but Noah tends to notice things that other people didn't, ghost or not.

[adamparrish]

"The ley lines are here too." Adam spends hours out in the forests repairing them where they need to be repaired, trying to keep up with Ronan's dreaming so that he doesn't lose his mind again as he had when Kavinsky had been abusing the privilege. Now that he understood the connection there, he tries not to let it happen to him again.

In truth, as Adam had discovered shortly before coming to Itinere, the ley lines, and Cabeswater, were not just in Henrietta. They were everywhere.

"This place. My theory is that it's a pocket dimension. People here are from different times and places." It's the most intellectual and logical explanation he can come up with. "It gives us what we need." Even Cabeswater and ley lines.

[deathbysk8board]

"From different times? Like Glendower, then?" Noah asks. Perhaps he should be more surprised by what Adam is saying. Except that they all know that stranger things than what most people know exist.

Like Noah after he died.

"And now, we are all here?" he asks. "Together?"

That's good, isn't it? And he feels pretty good. Pretty solid.

[adamparrish]

"And different worlds." Adam reiterates, if just to explain that it was like Glendower in some ways, and different in others. Noah was on the right track though, understanding more in this small amount of time than Adam and Ronan had understood for awhile. But then, Adam and Ronan had had to figure all this out on their own. Noah, Blue and Gansey had Adam and Ronan.

Adam nods, it is good that they're all here together. Everything feels right. Like the missing puzzle pieces of a puzzle slipping into place. It feels right. Adam's problems are entirely personal.

"It's good you're here. Ronan will be..." As happy as Ronan ever gets. Adam was going to stay scarce so Ronan could have his happy reunions with Gansey and Noah. "He's been really sick. Nearly everyone here's been sick. They're working on a cure." But Noah's probably just the medicine Ronan needs.

[deathbysk8board]

"... sick?" Noah asks, brows drawing together in spikes. "Have you been sick?" he asks Adam. "What kind of sick?"

It's almost as if he'd been sick before coming here, so angry, drawing so much of Blue's energy, destroying so much. Maybe he's better now. He doesn't know.

He wants to see Ronan. And Gansey, and Blue of course. Still, his hands flutter at his sides, not having a place, really, to land. He - and his hands - almost feel too solid.

[adamparrish]

"I've only... runny nose. Ronan seems to have the flu." Which is so much worse than a runny nose. So Adam won't complain. Ronan and he had been so domesticated lately, with Adam taking care of Ronan through this never-ending sickness. That would probably change with everyone here. Adam would back off. Ronan would turn back into Ronan.

Adam continues though, explaining as well we he can. "Some virus was released into the air. Everyone's a different kind of sick though. The people in charge are working on a cure."

[deathbysk8board]

It isn't that Noah doesn't believe Adam: he does. It just sounds strange: a virus in the air? People in charge?

It sounds like a movie, though without the explosions that Ronan likes.

"Where do we live?" he asks, though. Because at least Ronan and Gansey and him will live together, right? And Adam, if he wants to - though he never wants to, at least as far as Noah can knows. Pride and all that.

[adamparrish]

That one question has Adam hesitating. Of course Noah wants to live with Ronan. And of course Ronan will want Noah to live with him. His and Ronan's apartment won't be his and Ronan's anymore.

After thinking about it for a moment, Adam answers softly somewhat deflated with the thought of leaving Ronan and the bed they've been sharing. Ronan probably doesn't want anyone to know about that. Maybe Adam doesn't want anyone to know about it either.

"Ronan has an apartment." He says, looking at the floor. "He'll probably want you there with him. He's missed you a lot."

[deathbysk8board]

The defeated curve of Adam's shoulders is hard to miss. What Noah doesn't know is why it's there. "Did you and Ronan fight?" he asks, eyebrows a question too. That's usually what happens, anyway. Ronan happens.

He and Noah rarely fought simply because Noah never fought back. Ever.

[adamparrish]

"No." Adam answers simply with a soft shake of his head as he fidgets with a kleenex in his hands. He has a hard time fighting too, as is evidenced by his letting his father and everyone else beat on him for his entire life. So maybe he and Noah are alike in that way for whatever reason.

He shrugs and finally turns back to the pieces of motor scattered out on the floor, a bike he's building for Ronan. "You should go see him. He's at the apartment, probably. Fourth floor. Room 403."

[deathbysk8board]

Does that mean that Noah should leave? Can he just go wherever he wants; does it work like that here? "Is that," he asks, hands fluttering again, "where I'll be living, too?"

[adamparrish]

Noah doesn't have to leave. Adam assumes he would rather find Ronan than stay here with him. Adam has always had one foot in with this group of friends and one foot on the outside of it. He's always been partly on the outside looking in. It's his own fault. But he's not like any of them, not Ronan, Gansey or Noah. He's from that trailer part on the edge of town, a place made for leaving.

Adam considers Noah's question for a moment, then nods. "I'd assume so. Ronan will know."

[deathbysk8board]

Adam thinks that. That's more accurate of Noah, though, seeing as he's not living.

"Do you want me to leave, Adam?" Noah asks, wondering where he mis-stepped.

[adamparrish]

Adam was the last one to join this group of friends, not very long ago, in fact. They had all been friends, were comfortable with each other before Adam had stopped to help Gansey with the Pig on the side of the road. Noah was Ronan's best friend. Ronan was Gansey's. Adam was... Adam.

Lone warrior. Army of one. Him against the world. Although, there had been a chink in this line of thought since Ronan and Gansey had shown up at his father's trial in spite of his having tried to keep them out of it. Maybe he wasn't an army of one. This was a new concept though, one that it would take time to get past.

He shrugs, not knowing how to answer that. No, he didn't want Noah to leave. He didn't want to talk about what he was feeling either though. And he felt like his world was crumbling so intensely that it would be hard not to talk about it. How would Ronan be around him now?

"I don't wanna talk." He sat back down on the floor, picking up the piece of the motor he was working on with calloused, greasy hands.

[deathbysk8board]

"Okay."

Noah would be the first person to tell Adam that Ronan did as he wanted, nothing more, nothing less.

So, for the moment, Noah moves back, out of the way, stuffing his hands in his pockets over and over again, just watching.

No talking necessary. He wasn't, after all, much for talking.