Gansey sat cross-legged on the familiar sofa in the sitting room of the Barns. He was draped in layers of familiar blankets, surrounded by familiar objects and dream things. He couldn’t see them very well, but his memory of the way this room shaped itself put him relatively at ease.
He hadn’t slept for a single moment.
Dawn peeked through the window over by Niall’s old desk, now cluttered with more things than he remembered, likely because a whole family lived here now. A family that had sprouted and grown while he had been underground.
Gansey couldn’t really say that he’d actually been underground the entire time. Whether by design or by virtue of what he was, the edges around his memories of the last few (several?) years were faded and fuzzy, like the edges of Maura Sargent’s tarot cards. His fingertips suddenly itched to touch them. Or Ronan Lynch’s buzzcut or the back of one of Adam Parrish’s elegant hands or Blue Sargent’s skin. Something else that was alive in a way unaffected by him. He couldn’t even say ‘real’ anymore, because he couldn’t decide if sitting in the Barns on a lovely summer morning was real, or another thing he’d cleverly crafted to keep from slipping completely out of himself. It had been tempting, to leave the trees behind to speak for him while he went wherever boys who should have been dead go when they accept that they should have been dead.
Gansey shook his head. It was a slow-motion movement of dragging himself away from that faraway place. When he imagined the Barns — or Ronan or Adam or Blue — the memories were fragmented and dissonant. He could remember how they looked or how they smelled or how they felt, but never at the same time. But as his hands worried at the edges of a quilt Aurora Lynch had made, it felt real and it smelled like the old leather of the couch, like boys who played in the mud and woodsmoke. This he could breathe in and touch with his hands, and even with his terrible vision, the mottled blues and greens of the patches — they all existed together.
Reality.
Something clattered in the kitchen, and Gansey started. A moment later, Ronan started cussing. Something about potatoes and trust and needing to go to the store. How many times had he summoned Ronan’s voice while holding a dream in his hands and feeling it stir to wakefulness? How awful it had been to associate the two. What a comfort it had been. That single noise seemed to wake the entire house. All at once, Gansey became aware of feet shuffling over the floorboards above him, water running in the pipes as teeth were brushed, showers were turned on. More banging and cussing from the kitchen and Gansey had to put his face in his hands to let it wash over him.
Home.