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It took Gansey a long time to come back into full sense.
First, he heard two words, “wake up”, although he didn’t hear the words as much as he felt them echoing through every cell in his body.
The next thing was the soft, tickling feeling of grass then wet clothes against his body, and water dripping down his face.
Then was the fresh, damp smell of dirt and leaves on a rainy day, mixed with the smoke and fuel of cars, and a flowery scent familiar in a way he couldn’t recall.
It was followed by voices, a few different people speaking incoherently, in solemn voices. Someone was sobbing.
Then he was finally able to open his eyes, and they immediately focused on a face in front of him, dark skin and darker hair, brown eyes so wet with tears they shone and reflected green and blue and gold from around them. There were other things, trees and cars and people and movement around them, but at that moment she was all that mattered.
Blue Sargent crouched right next to him, her hands holding his face, her whole body trembling. The moment she caught his open eyes, a wild sound escaped her mouth. Not a cry or a sob, not a laugh, but Gansey could feel every emotion in it - surprise and grief and relief and love.
He opened his mouth to reply, but then came another voice.
“Dick”
Behind Blue, came a dark figure that came into focus as he joined them on the ground. Ronan Lynch’s blue eyes were set in an expression Gansey had only ever seen them wear twice - the last time was just the previous night - but a new spark was lit behind them.
His field of vision filled with three other faces. Adam Parrish, Henry Cheng and the weird dream Orphan Girl were all crowded around him, all their faces shocked, relieved, stained with tears.
Gansey slowly pushed himself up to sit, Blue’s arms still around him, and then at last something clicked in him, the reason they were all looking at him this way. The few hours built themself anew in his memory.
“Am I… Am I dead?” His voice croaked the way it did after not speaking for a long while. He cleared his throat as Blue hugged him tighter, her face to his chest. Her unruly hair filled most of his vision, but above it he could still see his friends. “I’m pretty sure I died,”
“Yeah, asshole, you did” Ronan said, but no amount of snarling could hide his wild happiness.
“Then…” He started, but a terrible thought stopped him before he could form a sentence. What if his sacrifice did not work, and the demon got to his friends as well? Was he seeing them now in some kind of afterlife? Ronan’s face was still stained in black, Blue still had blood dripping down her cheek from when Adam attacked her.
It did not feel right. He felt alive - felt his heart beating and the air flowing in and out of his chest.
Blue raised her head, so she looked right at him, her face mere inches from his - Just as they were before, when she kissed him. He felt it again in his lips, in his whole body, like it happened mere moments ago.
“It worked, Gansey,” Blue whispered. “Your sacrifice. The demon is gone,”
“Then how am I alive?” He was sure of that by now. It was not some afterlife vision, but something did not feel right. He caught the looks Adam, Ronan and Henry exchanged behind Blue before anyone spoke. When Adam opened his mouth, Gansey knew he would not like the answer.
“We asked Cabeswater’s help - it’s magic was restored, thanks to you, and you know how it works on the ley line-”
“A sacrifice,” Gansey finished the sentence. Oh Jesus, what did they do? He pushed himself up to stand, Blue still holding onto him, like he might die again the moment she let him go. He struggled to find the words. “No,”
“Well, it is already done,” Henry spoke for the first time, and if Gansey didn’t like him so much he would’ve punched him.
“You sacrificed Cabeswater,” Gansey spoke slowly, “To bring me back,”
“It wasn’t unwilling,” Adam said. “We asked it, it agreed. I don’t know how exactly the magic worked, but…” He trailed off when he saw the expression in Gansey’s eyes.
“I did not ask for it,” Gansey said, “I did not want anyone - anything - sacrificed for me,”
“What were we supposed to do?” Blue’s voice rose. “Just let you… Leave you…”
“We knew it would end this way,” Gansey said.
It’s not like he wasn’t happy to be alive, like he didn’t desperately hope they would’ve found another solution to kill the demon, but for months he knew that it would end for him. With Glendower or without him, Gansey would not finish his senior year. He wanted to live, yet he accepted death, and the search that kept him going for the past seven years was over.
“It didn’t have to. It didn’t end,” Blue insisted.
“The sacrifice was to save Cabeswater,” Gansey was not sure why he pressed on, “And now there’s no Cabeswater,”
“But there’s Gansey-boy,” Henry tried to sound cheerful.
It was not right. For seven years, Gansey felt like he lived on stolen time. He wasn’t supposed to be alive past age ten, so he made his peace with dying at seventeen. If fate had decided to kill him twice, it was not his place to change it.
“But… Adam, what about you? your bargain?” Adam had agreed to be the forest’s hands and eyes, but now the forest was gone,
“Free,” Adam just said, and he spread his arms to the sides. He wasn't bound to anything anymore.
“Ronan?” Gansey turned to him. Ronan dreamed Cabeswater, the trees and the creatures there came out of his head.
“I almost just died because of it,” Ronan shrugged. “The fuck’s your problem, dude? You’re fucking alive,”
Gansey did not know how to explain to them the wrongness he felt. “I- I’m sorry, I just-” he turned around and started walking into the grove by the road. Blue held tighter to his hand for a moment, then let it go reluctantly, sensing his need to be alone.
Gansey stopped the moment he was surrounded by trees, looking up between the branches to the sky, trying to even his breaths. He had to sort out a whole new reality in his head.
He used to be a boy searching for a king. Now he knew there was no king.
He died once, in a wood, stung by bees. Now he died for a second time.
He sacrificed himself to save a forest on a ley line. Now there was no forest.
In the second time in years but also this one day, Gansey dropped to his knees and felt tears heating in his eyes.
There was nothing to cry about, said the voice that was everything expected from Gansey, you are alive, the demon is gone. And he didn't cry, not really, didn't fall apart like he did in the picnic area earlier. Two tears slid down his cheeks, and that was it, but Gansey did not feel any relief.
The sound of dry leaves snapping underneath feet startled Gansey, and he turned around to see Adam hesitantly stepping towards him. He looked at the ground next to Gansey and raised a brow, and Gansey nodded as Adam dropped to sit by his side.
“Hey,” Adam’s accent stretched the word like it was almost a sentence by itself.
“I’m not mad at you,” Gansey said.
“I know”
“I was mad at you when you made the deal with Cabeswater.”
“I know that too, “
“I wanted to find the ley line so badly, I wanted it awake to lead us to Glendower. Yet when you woke it, I hated it.”
“I thought we were past that,” Adam said.
“Yeah, I guess what I wanted to say was… I get it now. I understand that feeling of needing to take action, but feeling like you have to do this on your own, not carrying others into it. I understand you, Adam,”
How Adam hated these words sometimes. How he longed to hear them from Gansey other times. It was not patronising, it was genuine and simple. The understanding that even someone who had everything to give sometimes could not accept receiving anything from anyone.
Adam just nodded.
Gansey continued. “I felt like that sacrifice had to be me. It was my part to play, after everything.”
More silence. Adam still said nothing, but Gansey didn't need him to. The silent understanding hung between them.
“I'm sorry I got mad at all of you earlier, but… It's all weird, it's… What am I supposed to do now, Adam?” He wasn’t sure exactly what he meant - now that Glendower was dead? now that the search was over? now that Cabeswater was gone? now that he remained alive, against all odds?
“Live” Adam simply said.
“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, really. I just… didn’t expect that to happen. I knew I’m not gonna live to see the end of the year, and the past week, just the past day, has been so much, and when we found Glendower, all the pieces came together, it felt right,”
Adam’s fists clenched at the last words. He breathed out slowly, lips pressed thin. “You did not see Henry’s face the moment you fell to the ground. You did not feel the way Blue held you in her arms. You did not hear Ronan’s voice when he tried to tell you to wake up. Do not tell me that anything about it felt right.”
The ground underneath Gansey felt unsteady, even as he sat. Of course, he knew his friends did not want him to make his sacrifice, and he saw their faces as he revived. But the weight of what he made them go through just now hit him like a bullet. He sharply remembered the night he and Noah found Ronan covered in blood. He remembered the many sleepless nights he could not stop imagining them arriving just a minute too late.
That was what he did to his friends just now. The nobility of his sacrifice dissolved.
“I did not want to die, you know it was the only way,”
“It was, and it worked, and I'm glad it did. But I'm even more glad we still have you.”
Gansey glanced back at his friends by the road, who were all trying very hard to pretend they were not watching him and Adam, waiting for them. How he loved every one of them. He would go to the end of the earth for them. He died for them. He will also live for them.
He was already living for them, he realised. For years, he thought he was only living for Glendower, for the search, for the favour. But along the way, without noticing, it was less about the search, and more about the people by his side.
Ronan, who changed so much since Gansey met him, and broke every rule - whether it was school’s or the universe's.
Adam, who quietly crept into his life and fought to get everything he had, and who Gansey always somehow looked up to.
Blue, who entered like a storm and changed everything, teaching him so many lessons about life and love.
Henry, who was always in the background of his surroundings, but saw Gansey like no one had before, the true Gansey.
He used to think finding Glendower is the only purpose he had in life, the greatness he was meant to achieve. But he was only seventeen, and around him were friends who helped him be the absolute best version of himself that he could. He had so much time and opportunities, and he intended to take them.
Suddenly, he recalled words he heard in the weird, undefined moments of dying.
“Don't throw it away,”
But he had probably imagined it as his life slipped away, because it was the same voice he heard seven years ago on the ley line, Glendower’s voice. It made no sense, as the king was dead, but Gansey replayed Glendower’s words so many times in his mind, he would know it everywhere.
Imagined or not, he held onto these words, letting them be a guide for everything that is to come.
Gansey took a deep breath and stood up, “Everything's changing,”
“They have been changing for a long time,” Adam got up as well.
“Changing more. Everything I knew about my life for years- Everything Blue knew about hers. You, too, for months you have been tied to a forest that doesn't exist anymore.” Gansey added the last sentence apologetically, even though he was not the one who sacrificed the forest.
“I really am okay with it,” Adam said, “Cabeswater did a lot for me, but now I don't need it anymore to feel… powerful.”
Adam, who tried for years to be quiet and polite, to not disturb and never demand. He really had been changing long before the others and much faster.
Gansey smiled. “Time to find a new adventure,” and with these words, he turned back to Gansey the explorer, Gansey the leader, Gansey who borrows helicopters and rents expensive devices for the sake of discoveries but also for the joy of the search.
“Or we can simply rest,” Adam said, “As much as senior year in Aglionby will let us,”
“The ley line still exists,” Gansey said, “and I'm sure we're yet to find out all its secrets,”
Adam sighed dramatically, but did not hide how glad he was about Gansey’s enthusiasm returning to him.
“Let's head back. It was not safe to leave Henry and Ronan together unsupervised for so long,” he said.
“Blue is there,”
“Even worse,”
Surprisingly, they found the three of them - plus the orphan girl - back at the side of the road. Ronan was leaning against the BMW, looking at Henry with the least disdain he ever showed to the boy. Blue and Henry were talking to each other, and the Orphan Girl was inspecting Henry's shoe laces, putting one of them in her mouth.
“Don't wanna die anymore?” Ronan asked as they returned.
“Maybe in seven years” Gansey said, “Seems like I have a pattern,”
“Trust Raven Boys to have their entire future plans ready until the moment of their death - Deaths.” Blue replied, and Gansey was so happy to hear the humor in her tone, without the remains of grief. “But don't you dare,”
“I don't know, I might change my mind if I come across another noble sacrifice,” Gansey added.
“Someone get you away from Parrish, he's starting to rub off on you” Ronan chuckled.
“I'm pretty much done with sacrifices for now,” Adam rubbed his hands and joined Ronan by the BMW.
An autumn leaf fell down from a tree by the road, spiralled in the air and landed on Henry's head. Gansey stared at him as he laughed and said it was the new fashion now, Blue agreeing enthusiastically and picking up one from the ground. A new season was starting, a new chapter in his life. A new life, one might say.
Gansey stepped forward, a few more leaves crunching under his shoes.
“Let's get back to Henrietta,”