[This is Ronan before Adam, who doesn't know the darkness of the world. But he's not actually naive-- he can hear the trauma in the spaces between the things that he doesn't say. He lets Kavinsky pull himself together, even if Ronan wants to offer him something, say something, but they hardly know each other, and Ronan doesn't know the right words. Isn't someone like Gansey where he could just take him by the hand and drag him away from it, like he could put physical distance between the bad memories.
But it means something; it's a glimpse that makes him more than the drugs and the rumors. Even more than the fact they're both Dreamers.
Something about the other boy tugs at something in Ronan, in a way he doesn't linger on. But it's a secret he knows, now: Kavinsky cares. And for someone like Ronan, especially this Ronan, who feels so much, it matters. K doesn't say what happened, but Ronan can guess at the shape of it. And it makes him hate Kavinsky's father for what he took from him.
At the question Ronan shrugs his shoulders a little bit sheepishly.]
It's hard to remember. I was young.. but I think it was flowers.
[He swallows at the memory of it, also because Ronan is still soft in ways Aglionby boys weren't always kind about. This is Ronan before the fights were a coping mechanism, but he was still no stranger to bloody knuckles.
His is a different sort of trauma, that he's not sure anyone who wasn't a Dreamer would understand. The sort of wonder and horror that were Ronan's dreams, of being utterly alone with that. Knowing there was not only no help, but no one that would understand -- no one he could tell when he woke up shaking with the taste of blood in his mouth, unsure if it was a sense memory, or something he'd brought back with him. He takes a breath and lets himself tell him, quiet but dream doesn't really care about the distance anyway.]
I was.. there was this thing, and I could tell that it wanted me, and I was running, trying to get away, to wake up and-- I fell. Grabbing on to whatever I could, and I woke up with them in my hands. Flowers and smashed petals and the way they smelled.
[If they weren't in a dream, if Ronan didn't know they were in a dream, he might have just tried to describe them. All stumbling words, fumbling to explain the impossibility of them, the ways they were wrong and different, the color, the way the scent on the air made you feel. But instead, he's able to tug at it, to gently ask the dream for what he wants, for Ronan's blue flowers to take hold in among the cracks of the ruined city they stand in. And he grins at K, all bright blue eyes, heart-racing with the adrenaline feeling of being able to show someone.]
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But it means something; it's a glimpse that makes him more than the drugs and the rumors. Even more than the fact they're both Dreamers.
Something about the other boy tugs at something in Ronan, in a way he doesn't linger on. But it's a secret he knows, now: Kavinsky cares. And for someone like Ronan, especially this Ronan, who feels so much, it matters. K doesn't say what happened, but Ronan can guess at the shape of it. And it makes him hate Kavinsky's father for what he took from him.
At the question Ronan shrugs his shoulders a little bit sheepishly.]
It's hard to remember. I was young.. but I think it was flowers.
[He swallows at the memory of it, also because Ronan is still soft in ways Aglionby boys weren't always kind about. This is Ronan before the fights were a coping mechanism, but he was still no stranger to bloody knuckles.
His is a different sort of trauma, that he's not sure anyone who wasn't a Dreamer would understand. The sort of wonder and horror that were Ronan's dreams, of being utterly alone with that. Knowing there was not only no help, but no one that would understand -- no one he could tell when he woke up shaking with the taste of blood in his mouth, unsure if it was a sense memory, or something he'd brought back with him. He takes a breath and lets himself tell him, quiet but dream doesn't really care about the distance anyway.]
I was.. there was this thing, and I could tell that it wanted me, and I was running, trying to get away, to wake up and-- I fell. Grabbing on to whatever I could, and I woke up with them in my hands. Flowers and smashed petals and the way they smelled.
[If they weren't in a dream, if Ronan didn't know they were in a dream, he might have just tried to describe them. All stumbling words, fumbling to explain the impossibility of them, the ways they were wrong and different, the color, the way the scent on the air made you feel. But instead, he's able to tug at it, to gently ask the dream for what he wants, for Ronan's blue flowers to take hold in among the cracks of the ruined city they stand in. And he grins at K, all bright blue eyes, heart-racing with the adrenaline feeling of being able to show someone.]