Just curious - from your new chapter of The Colour you Have, Blue describes Noah through the lens of what Whelk has done to him (whatever that may be in this AU, it sounds terrible and awful). How much does everyone know? How did they find out? Is it as accidental as in the original book?
Long story short: no, it was not accidental and Noah is extremely lucky to have gotten away from it as lightly, relatively speaking, as he did. The scarring isn’t extensive but it is very obvious, and the left side of Noah’s face doesn’t always cooperate as well as it should when he emotes (Blue notes in TCYH that it sometimes seems stiff compared to the right side). Considering that it can be a little off-putting, and it’s an incurred deformity he’s self-conscious of, it’s something that gets disclosed early on in more lasting relationships because the truth tends to alleviate some of the more awkward, morbid, sometimes rude curiosity.Not everyone knows everything, but everyone knows a friend of Noah’s involved him in some kind of “accident” that nearly killed him and ended their association with each other. For most people, that’s where Noah leaves it; in Adam and Ronan’s cases, Noah’s long past needing other people to be righteously, appropriately angry about what happened on his behalf and doesn’t share as much with them to avoid that.
For others, like Blue and Gansey, they know more of the finer details: Gansey had his own brush with death and is still sufficiently traumatized and struggling with it so he can empathize, and Blue is Blue. She doesn’t let any of what happened change the way she sees Noah, and she bolsters him when he’s feeling insecure without realizing she’s doing it, which is invaluable to him.
