Work Text:
The worst part about knowing the truth about Noah was not the way he passed, the fact that he was left out unburied to rot or that she had held his hand not questioning his life for a second.
It had never once crossed her mind that Noah was dead. Looking back, she didn't know what she had been thinking.
Maybe she'd assumed he was a bad case of bad circulation and depression to explain the cold hands and suicidal humour.
But no. He'd told all of them that he had been dead for seven years and all of them had figured it was a joke. Hell, it wasn't at all uncommon for people to joke about their death wish.
Now that they had found his body, naked bones in the underbrush with only rags remaining of his aglionby uniform and his ID to confirm his identity. They had to live with the realization that their friend wasn't depressed or tired but slowly fading from time.
And it hurt.
It hurt to know his life had been cut short by greed. It hurt viscerally to know his days with her were numbered too, afterlife or not.
It was becoming increasingly clear to her the more she learned about Noah Czerny that she'd never know enough of him. Never have something to hold onto. Once you were gone, the only thing left of you would be memories. Good or bad.
Blue hadn't bothered to hold back the tears on her way home, barely registering the steady stream of them running down her face as she ditched her bike in the backyard. Stepping into her home and wordlessly wrapping her arms around her mother. It was the safest way to let herself dissolve, just holding onto her mom and the two of them gently rocking in a funeral waltz in their kitchen.
Maura didn't ask she knew her daughter far too well than to try and pry her sorrows from her with questions. Not when Blue came slinking into the room like that, eyes on the ground and straight to her. There was no detour to the fridge, no peek at the stove, no snark about the shenanigans she and the boys had gotten up to. Maura could feel the hurt radiating off of her daughter, just like it would on fathers day celebrations at school - mourning the person-shaped hole in her life.
It wasn't going to last forever. However, it was the moment that counted to Blue, the feel of her mother - alive and warm and standing strong in the face of uncertainty that went from a trickle to a flood that threatened to tear her out by her roots and carry her away with it. She didn't know how long she'd spend in her mother's arms like this. By the time she felt alright enough to go upstairs, the sun had started to set outside.
Upstairs in her room, the hurt coiling in her chest had cooled and settled into dread.
What were they going to do, now that they'd discovered their friend's bones in the woods?
Did it change anything at all? Did it change how she was going to approach Ganseys death?
The memory of Gansey's pale and faraway eyes in the parking lot, whispering to her, brought another downpour of tears to her eyes. The feeling of cold hard dread in her stomach growing until she couldn't stop the keening sound from slipping out of her throat. Like the caw of a crow watching a funeral procession. Looking in the mirror on her wall, she looked the part too, eyes puffy and dark, her hair a tangled mess with the occasional colourful hairpin sticking out.
It wasn't going to change anything about the horror awaiting her loved ones, but picking out the pins felt like something. A monotonous spiral of 'search','find pin', 'pick it out', 'drop pin into glass' - 'repeat' began and lasted at least a good hour.
Leaving her with dry eyes and loose hair - ready drop into her bed to listen to nothing on loop.
At least until she startled back into wakefulness around two am.
The red-blue-orange's of dusk had long since been replaced by the inky black outside of her window. The glow of her purple fairy lights left her illuminated in her window reflection - Looking every bit the ghost she felt like.
Blue stepped out of her room, wrapped in blankets. Finding Noah in her living room, sitting on the couch like he somehow belonged there.
Smudgy and smiling, just like she remembered him and somehow that made it worse. The fact that nothing changed about him.
So the tears just kept coming, again.
"You should probably have-- like a full glass of water, at least." Noah offered gently, "You'll get a headache because you're..like- superly dehydrated."
It felt like such a mundane worry to have given their circumstances.
She shook her head to indicate as much, her hair now free of clips and pins, leaving it to bounce with the motion - and Noah didn't push it.
Instead, he just opened his arms for a hug, cold and vague but growing more corporeal the longer she held onto him, eventually being corporeal enough for her to rest her head atop of his. Her dark curls meeting his colourless mop of hair.
It wasn't fair. Not at all. Especially now that she could smell the fruity hint of his seven years gone shampoo, feel the texture of little pricks of hair stiffened with product under her cheek. He didn't feel dead at all to her.
(But then, she had nothing living to compare him to.)
Eventually, Noah righted himself from the cramped position he'd been in, pulling Blue with him onto the couch.
She just followed him, bracketing his lap with her knees - staying with him, wrapping both of them in her comforter. The warmth making it feel almost like a normal thing.
So if she closed her eyes, she could pretend, just for a moment, that Noah was her raven boyfriend, snuck in for a movie night. That his red mustang was parked outside on the curb as opposed to being abandoned in the woods.
Like the day before had been a nightmare. Just as easily wiped away as her tears.
She was so caught up in the wash of feelings that she almost missed the subtle rocking motion Noah started with his arms wound around her waist. Just like before, it was an awfully comforting thing.
"Don't stay up because of me. I'll be here tomorrow."
"It's ok, I couldn't sleep anyway."