[for ronan]

[formicine]

It takes Blue a while to get to Cabeswater, and walking that length of time eases some of the frustration and second-hand hurt she's feeling under her skin. There's something about being alone outside that, when she isn't just getting herself home after a long day at work, eases the tension in her muscles and settles her thoughts.

She's angry with him: angry for him hurting Adam so badly, frustrated that he's sullenly avoiding everyone, that he can't see what he's doing. But she also has an idea of Ronan, and she's not going to let him build up his walls and drop out of their lives more and more, not without saying something.

"Ronan?" she calls, feeling the slightly weird shift as she steps across where the woodsy areas of Darrow end and the sentient forest begins. She can hear the leaves rustle; they always seem to be talking, to her, even when they're not.

"You know where he is, don't you?" she addresses the trees, grumbly, and not really expecting anything from them.

The cool air warms, a little, as she goes further in, peering around.

Comments

[formicine]

Blue had been a little bitter, grouping guitar in with the things she'll never do someday: be a cultural anthropologist, backpack through Poland, save her mother, meet her father or decide she doesn't care, not go to prom, kiss Gansey, make up her own future stubbornly.

But guitar is far from one of those things.

Blue can't just admit that Ronan's right though, so she says "is that an offer?" with an arched eyebrow.

She hasn't quite forgiven him, but she understands it. That might be worse, in a way, but a less angry one. She takes a second to press down on random notes, frowning as she picks at the strings. They sound a little dull under unpracticed fingers.

Ronan's smirk is sudden and sharp and she flushes, scowling. "You're not supposed to know about that," she protests. It's sort of nice, though, that it's coming up like this, and not in a fit of jealousy.

"It'd have to have a verse in Welsh," she jokes, tucking at her hair. "Or I don't have a shot."

[thedreamthief]

"There's a lot of shit I'm not supposed to know about," Ronan points, a swell of bitterness overriding the calm. He's spent the past five or six months being told stories about himself, struggling to catch up, to be the Ronan his friends and Blue remember and failing at every step. He's not supposed to know what Kavinsky did, he's not supposed to know Kavinsky's dead, he's not supposed to know Maura's gone or that Parrish won his case.

But he does. He didn't live a fucking minute of it, but he knows it's true. At least for some other Ronan out there.

He scowls a little as she plucks at the strings, but the heat in it is already starting to fade as he drops to the log he'd been sitting on before, legs tucked up close. "You and Dick aren't exactly fucking subtle. There a reason you're trying to be?"

[formicine]

Blue tips her head at that, because she thinks he's not referring to the same sort of shit she means. Other-Ronan didn't know about them, either, because it's the sort of thing they're not supposed to be making obvious.

She's a little pink, looking down at the guitar as if she can figure it out by staring at it. "It started right after I broke up with Adam," she says, and makes a face because she doesn't feel like she broke up with Adam; he didn't really break up with her, but she's not sure the whole thing didn't collapse, maybe never existed at all. It just stopped being, slowly and all at once. Like Noah, or the broken guitar.

"We didn't want to hurt him," she says, and even that sounds stupid. "Or you --" She glances up. That doesn't sound stupid, it sounds awful, because it bares an inevitable truth: that Ronan is possessive of everyone. He has to know that about himself, though.

"I don't know why we keep doing it," she admits. "Gansey doesn't think he gets to have favorites," she shrugs one shoulder. "And there's not -- I'm not sure what we're doing," she admits to her fingers on the strings. "I don't think there's any way this ends well. But --" She hits each of the two E strings, an octave fit together in an oh-well.