itinere | Open | Action: When the ghost becomes a boy

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Open | Action: When the ghost becomes a boy

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.

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Itinere, it seemed, really had it out for Adam Parrish this month. Not only had Blue and then Gansey arrived, but now Noah was here too. It isn't that Adam isn't so very glad that they're here, because he is. Their little makeshift group is back together. The problem is that a lot has happened between him and Ronan, a lot that Adam is still so very unsure about and still trying to come to terms with for both himself and them as a couple.

Now where does this leave him? Can he still be with Ronan with everyone else here? He doesn't know if Ronan will even want him now that everyone is here to see it, to judge and mock. Adam shouldn't expect judging and mocking from them, but a large part of why it had taken so long for him and Ronan was because of Adam, not knowing if he even liked boys, knowing what his dad would call him if he knew he had kissed a boy. His dad's voice is always in his ear.

The door Noah walked into had been Parrish's Garage. And there Adam sits on the floor tinkering on some motorcycle parts and now looking up to him, wide eyed. "Noah."

Turning toward the familiar voice, Noah lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding (can he hold breathe? He has no idea. That requires lungs.)

"Hi, Adam."

A pause.

"Where are we? Is this the garage you work out?" After all, Adam has a lot of jobs.

She misses Henrietta. She misses 300 Fox Way and all of its many inhabitants and visitors. She still worries about her mother and where she might be. But not everything about Itinere is bad. Blue Sargent has finally gotten a wish granted: she gets to live in Monmouth. She has her own room and has already begun to decorate it with a similar tree and leaf montage as her room back home.

It's on her way back to Monmouth after shopping for more supplies that she notices the smudgy boy. Blue might not be psychic, not like the rest of her family, but there are some things she just expects. Noah had been the only member of their group (makeshift family?) not yet here. Now, the group is complete.

"Noah," she greets, walking forward. "Did you just get here?"

"Blue?"

Noah breathes out with a small smile and walks closer, almost automatically reaching up to touch the wayward tufts of her hair.

But he stops with a realization. "Can you see me?"

Noah barely even looks shaken by the displacement, which Adam supposes seems just right. Maybe he's just displaced by nature of being Noah just like Adam is invisible by nature of being Adam. There were some things that are so intrinsic to who they are that they carries over into everything. Even walking through a door and being in a whole different world.

"This is where I work." He says dryly with a nod. The garage isn't much, but Adam fixes all kinds of things here. He might not be so good with people, but with things, well... he's the magician.

The fact that Noah is a special case doesn't escape Adam's thoughts. He knows that being here might be different for Noah than it is for anything. Luckily, the ley line is still here. Luckily, Adam can still feel Cabeswater. "Do you know where you are?"

There's a small pause as Noah contemplates the question and he finally shakes his head. He assumes Henrietta, because, after all, where else could they be?

"Can you see me?" he asks. All of him, he means? Or is he just a figment? "Is Blue here?" Or Ronan, or Gansey?

"I can see you." Adam nods, not even being caught off guard a little bit by the question because it's Noah. He thinks he would need that reassurance too if Adam were him. For the most part, as far as Adam is concerned for himself, he just likes to go unnoticed.

He sets aside what he's working on and pulls a handkerchief out of his back pocket to try to wipe away some of the grease and dirt from his hands, arms and face. "Everyone's here now. Gansey, Blue, you... Ronan." He explains.

For a moment he pauses, just wiping grime from his skin (mostly), before continuing. "This isn't Henrietta. It's a place called Itinere. We've all walked through a door into this place. Like you did."

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.

Guess who's sick as a dog? Yeah, that would be Ronan. Guess who isn't staying put in the apartment like he should be? Yeah, that's Ronan again. He's convinced that boredom is going to kill him long before this virus. He might be right. In any case, he's out walking along the sidewalk looking like something Death scraped off his shoe. He's got several days stubble on his jaw and he probably looks like someone that women should hide their babies and purses from. He's huddled in a zip up hoodie, hood pulled up, Chainsaw on his shoulder. It's not so much the sight of Noah that stops Ronan in his tracks (because he feels too damn bad to pay much attention to that); it's the sound of Noah's voice that makes him look.

And when he sees him that's an actual smile cracking Ronan's face. It looks wrong on Ronan's face, but right now he's far too grateful to care about wrong. He'd thought Gansey and Blue were sick hallucinations, but as they've been proven real he's more inclined to believe Noah's real too.

"About damn time you showed up," he tells Noah as he comes closer to him.

Gansey is still fairly new to Itinere and he's got a great deal to study about it. In fact, he's decided to let that consume him rather than the fact that they're no longer in his beloved Henrietta or in Cabeswater, that he no longer has his quest for Glendower, at least until they get back to Henrietta. He'd found his journal on his desk in Monmouth looking exactly as his journal ought to and always has. He's got it in hand as he walks, jotting notes along the pages, a mint leaf in his mouth. When he hears Noah's voice, he doesn't even look up. He's absorbed in his work and it's normal to hear Noah, isn't it?

"Blue is still back at Monmouth, I believe."

He does stop before he runs into Noah and looks up, a smile curving his lips. "Hello, Noah." As if he just remembered that Noah hadn't been here a moment ago (because he did).

"Am I late?" Noah asks. He doesn't know where he is or how he got here. Turning, he looks at Ronan and states the obvious. "You're sick." His nose wrinkles, though it isn't as if he can catch anything, right? Dead, ghost. "You should be resting. Hello, Chainsaw." He isn't sure the bird has ever actually liked him. But she screamed regardless. Pretty much all the time. "Where are we?"

"Hello, Gansey."

There's a relief at seeing Gansey. Gansey knows what's going on, after all. He might not always listen very well and says stupid stuff some times, but, well, since he found Noah's body, it kind of feels like they're bound together (even more than they already were, he means).

Noah tugs at the hem of his sweater, back to not knowing what to do with his hands. "I guess you can see me?" Does that mean he's more himself?

"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.

She doesn't shy away when Noah reaches out to pet her hair. It it had been anyone else, she wouldn't have allowed it. But it's Noah. And some rules are worth breaking. Like hanging out with Raven boys.

"I can even feel your hand on my head."

"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.

A smile tugs at the corner of Noah's mouth as he pets at those wayward tufts. "What do you suppose it means?" he asks. "That you can feel me?"

Is it simply, he's wondering, because she's Blue and she amplifies things? Or is it something else? Seeing as he doesn't know this place.

"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.

"... 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.

"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."

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.

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."

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.

She doesn't know. Some times she can feel it more prominently than others when Noah uses her energy to support his form. Right now, everything feels normal. Or as normal as her life usually gets.

"That you're very solid right now?" It could be because of her. Maybe it's Itinere's own magic? "Whatever the reason, I'm glad. I like you better like this, Noah."

He pats himself - he can't help it. "I do too," he admits, his smile a little crooked, still a little unsure.

How Noah can be real is a mystery. His bones were buried, after all. "Where should we go?" he asks. "Where are the others?"

"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."

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Open | Action: When the ghost becomes a boy

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