incognoscibilis | [Gansey AU]

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gansey,
never link

[Gansey AU]

He didn't know what to do with this new worldview. Adam had feared Gansey's death so much, had altered every possible phrasing in his head to make sure they got the best version of Glendower's favor. To have Gansey here, after all of that, dead and alive again, was a strange thing. Adam stood in front of him and he knew it was Gansey but he also stood in front of him and felt Cabeswater. Through Adam's eyes, Cabeswater looked into Gansey and saw itself and then it looked into Adam again.

It was a powerful and magnetic uncertainty and it took Adam into the woods, sitting at the base of a tree that stood on the very edge of Cabeswater. Persephone's deck was in its velvet bag on his lap but Adam hadn't yet begun to shuffle, to seek understanding.

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The Pig pulled up next to Adam's bike and something knowing settled in him. He wasn't surprised that Cabeswater had called to both of them. When Gansey slept, he always dreamed, and it was always Cabeswater's dream. Dreams were a part of Gansey that couldn't be remade, as Gansey couldn't remember a single dream he'd had in his life. All of his dreaming was done in the waking hours, and they had all been about Welsh names and energetic surges. Seeking, finding, and now Cabeswater calling.

Peace. Three steps from his car and Gansey felt utter silence descend, total and strange. Peaceful. It was a quiet he only associated with Blue. Until now. Cabeswater was more beautiful than he remembered it, soaked in silence like the world could never tarnish it.

As he approached Adam's hunched form, he recognized the deck immediately. Where Adam came from, he'd barely scratched the surface of his potential, his purpose. His near-downfall. He took care to make noise as he walked, to make sure he approached on the right side, and bumped him softly as he lowered himself onto the ground next to Adam with little to no regard for what this might do to his khakis. Thanks to the zeroes Ronan had added to Gansey's Darrow bank account, it didn't matter what happened to them.

"What are we looking for?" With this, Gansey was careful, too -- as careful as he'd been on the approach. A thing for one of them was a thing for all of them, and whatever thing this was, Gansey made no presumption other than that Adam would explain.

"The mysteries of the universe, for starters," Adam said. It was an answer so broad that it was true.

Even in Darrow, even in this magical forest that breathed through both of them, they were still Adam and Gansey. They were still a boy who was fastidiously careful to come here in old thrift-store jeans that could be cleaned of mud but were carefully spotless anyway and another boy who could afford to be careless and had no idea how it marked his privilege.

"But mostly, I'm just checking in. I don't really know what else to do."

"Easy enough," Gansey remarked of those mysteries, so many of which Gansey had tried and failed to find. The one that had meant the most had actually been nothing at all but fairytales. The real magic was this place, this boy, this perfect silence. There was what Glendower had done and there was what Gansey had done. Once, Gansey had thought the two might intersect. He'd never expected that his real purpose was the place and not the person.

"Let's do it." Gansey leveled his eyes on Adam's face, gentle and supportive. Hadn't things been more difficult than this back home? There was a time when it seemed like all Gansey and Adam did was fight -- about money, mostly, but also about Glendower and Ronan and what it meant to be one's own person. To not be owned. The luxury of not owing. Now, they were both part of something bigger, the same something and it was theirs. They were equal. Gansey hoped every day that he'd never again have to tell Adam how he didn't want to fight.

"What do we do?" The nature of Adam's relationship with Cabeswater -- the thing that surrounded them and the thing that Gansey was -- had been intellectually fathomable, but Gansey did not often see it in action. That was something Adam and Ronan usually did while Gansey took to the books. Maybe he'd thought he didn't belong. Once he sat on the ground, the roots in his heart threaded with the roots beneath him and he thought he'd never feel out of place again.

"I deal the cards and usually the ones that come out are the ones Cabeswater is trying to say something through," Adam said. His fingers were not so perfectly deft as Blue's but his shuffle was decent enough that they would lay themselves out as Cabeswater ordained. The cards were an imperfect translator for a forest that communicated in sights and memory and abstracted concepts, but they managed.

"Or else I could just read your cards."

In this place and in these shapes, it was hard to say whose cards he'd read. Would they look to Gansey's future or the forest or the between space and time creature that was Cabeswater-in-Gansey? Or would the cards only look to Adam now?

Gansey raised his brows at the offer, but his face neutralized quickly. That made sense. If this was Adam's Cabeswater, it was the thing that existed inside Gansey. They were one and the same. The way Gansey had taught himself to forget about time, he had to learn that being by himself meant something different, now. That wasn't so bad at all. Gansey had never been very good at being alone.

"Okay," he decided, springing to his feet. He dusted haphazardly at the backs of his legs and settled on a slightly less damp bit of Cabeswater-earth across from him, across from his tools. "Tell me what to do." He'd done this once at Fox Way, had seen it a few times since, but not since Gansey became more. Being out of his depth was not the sort of thing Gansey could find much peace in. Gansey did not follow, not unless Adam was leading.

"You shuffle," Adam said in a brief moment of inspiration. Adam was only Cabeswater's hands and eyes; Gansey was everything, contained into a human shape, unmade and remade. What better way to get a true read of the cards than to have Gansey touch them?

Neatly stacking the deck again, Adam held all of the cards out again.

"I'll pick three cards and you will too."

Something made Gansey take the cards carefully. The way the cards felt in his hands bore no resemblance to how they felt in his heart. Cabeswater wanted to communicate. Gansey wanted to experience Cabeswater communicating. The only way it could happen was to put those two people in that particular place. This felt like a responsibility, not akin to attending school but more like the privilege of being the one to answer a call. It was a feeling Gansey knew well, and yet not. There was no cinch of dread in his chest, no fraying edges. In Cabeswater, Gansey felt as polished and golden as he looked.

He shifted the cards to the ground to shuffle them there. It felt like the right thing to do.

Gansey selected his three cards: three from the middle, all touching.

Adam, too, retrieved three cards and laid them between Gansey's. Some of the cards were familiar in feeling even without turning him over. Turning one would, he thought, not actually be much of a surprise. Gansey though was always a surprise, a bottomless array of hidden depths that beckoned to be understood more deeply.

Without ceremony, because he had a feeling, Adam flipped one of his cards. The Two of Swords looked back at him, the same card that they had seen at 300 Fox Way. The one that suggested conflict, choices, change.

"Turn that one over."

Adam set out the instructions and Gansey followed. He flipped the card and cast his eyes up to Adam, watching his microexpressions to inform his next move. To many, Adam was unreadable, unknowable; to Gansey, Adam was one of the only known things in the universe. There was a part of Gansey's new concept of living that only Adam understood. He was glad they had each other, but that was nothing new.

"What's that one?" He asked, even though he didn't need to.

"The Knight of Swords," Adam said, a little pleased with the parity. "If the Page of Cups is Blue's card, then that one's got to be yours."

In Persephone's deck, the Knight of Swords was a man with a mask-like face, expressive but possibly a little sinister. He was draped in a cloak of many colors and patterns, bedecked with animals and thistles, attended by a winged creature. It was a more evil take on the knight than other decks he'd seen, with a heroic charging soldier, but that didn't alter the meaning.

"He strives to go forward and know more. Onward and upward."

Excelsior.

Adam's validation for something utterly out of Gansey's control thrilled a small smile onto his face, quickened the pace of his heart. Something was happening and it was happening in the forest around them, within them. One card was Ganseys. Did that mean the other two would be Cabeswater's? Was there even a difference? And if Cabeswater had something to say, why didn't Gansey know what it was?

"What's your card?" Gansey asked, rather than let on how much that parallel meant to him. Gansey wanted Adam to think the best of him and few had seen him worse than Adam had. The fact that someone as smart as Adam was still following him meant he had to be doing something right. Cabeswater whispered its agreement and Gansey couldn't hear it but he felt it.

When Gansey smiled, so did Adam. The forest around them seemed suddenly greener, happier, the filtering sunlight a little brighter. Cabeswater was always pleased when its humans were happy but it seemed especially so today and that happiness flowed back into the both of them.

Turning over the next card, Adam was unsurprised to see an androgynous figure that stood in profile. Bare-shouldered in another one of those endlessly patterned robe, they wore a crown of horn and shell, swathed in plants, attended by a wand, a coin, a sword, and a cup.

His card.

"The Magician."

The wind rustled the leaves and it sounded like laughter. It inspired the same in Gansey, though he was surprised to hear it. He couldn't help but feel like Cabeswater was playing with them. The air was cool, now, and the light more concentrated around them. He thought it was asking them to stay. He looked back at Adam and wondered if he saw it, too.

Two cards had been flipped, one for each of them. Was this Cabeswater's version of a sit-com two-parter recap? There was so much Gansey didn't know, so why was Cabeswater telling them something they already knew? What could be under those other cards to make this trip fruitful?

Not that it was fruitless. He was with Adam and it was quiet. He'd left his cell phone in his car. He could do that, here. The thought turned up a corner of his mouth as he flipped the next card and looked up to Adam.

Adam turned over his next card and laughed, unsurprised. The Hermit. In this card, she was an elegant gothic statue, elongated into a graceful s shape, walking at night with a staff and lantern. Despite her name, animals cavorted at her feet and she was alone but not lonely.

"This one suits you as well as me," he said, turning it for Gansey to look. "Either you're set back in contemplation or you're locking the world out. Depends on how you see it."

"Can it be for both of us?" Gansey asked, both unsure if there was a precedent set or which part of all of this reading into things was more about the interpreter than the interpretation itself. However, when it came to matters of Cabeswater and Adam's hands were at the deck's helm, much of the doubt eased away. Something acerbic was left -- likely nurtured by Ronan. Magic was fueling his life and Cabeswater had done such a stellar job of duplicating him that he had trouble believing what he was. Ganesy was thankful that Cabeswater's attention to detail was somewhat more fine-tuned than its creator's.

"Which way do you see it, Parrish?" He grinned a bit, bright because he felt no need to dim it. Here, the wasn't anyone to impress. True, Gansey needed Adam's approval more than nearly anyone else's, but since he'd been (back?) in Darrow, he felt like he had it. They were in this together. It was something no one else could understand. Shared secrets were the best kind.

Adam laughed because it fit all of them. Adam, Gansey, Noah, Blue, Ronan, Henry. All of them were good at sealing off and being introspective. Or else, good at blocking every one away and hiding in a fortress.

But mostly, he thought of Gansey at his desk, listening to his headphones and making his careful scale models. Gansey, who solved puzzles and found things because they simply had to be. Gansey, holding up his sole lantern.

Adam Parrish. Army of one.

"I think that's fair."

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[Gansey AU]

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