the raven sideblog

the raven king countdown → day six

Most heartbreaking moment Such a damaged thing

I think the most heartbreaking Raven Cycle moment is in The Raven King (though it is not the one you think it is), but I actually think this Adam moment in The Dream Thieves comes in close second. He’s already had to endure quite a few heartbreaking events, such as losing his hearing and his family home and stability in quick succession, but the worst moments to write for him were actually not events but thoughts.

I know too many people stuck in this place: they’ve removed the cause of their trauma, but they haven’t realized that they are still actively traumatized. In DT, Adam academically knows the consequences of long-term child abuse, but he hasn’t yet realized the portability of his abuse. It doesn’t matter that his father isn’t living in the room next to him. He’s living in Adam’s head, and that sort of life — freed from physical reality and set free in a world of damaged thoughts — is lasting and insidious. For Adam to admit that he’s been broken by abuse is a powerful step towards moving on, but in DT, he’s still too far in it to realize that his clinical analyzation of his own worthlessness is not clinical at all.

Money, a car, a home that looks nothing like the one he grew up in. Someone to want him. Adam thinks all of these things — any of these things — will make him happy. And it’s true that they’re things that would make his life easier or different. But DT Adam doesn’t realize that he could get every single thing in that list and still not be ok. He can’t work his ass off at Aglionby to magically make himself feel like he’s worth something. He can’t annex the entirety of Virginia to his father’s memory to be free of pain outside the state lines. Being wanted by Blue Sargent or crushed on by Ronan Lynch is not going to make Adam love himself any more.

by songs

“You like me,” Adam says, in a quiet voice. It’s neither cruel nor challenging— just a statement of fact. Blunt, rounded only by the stray lilt of his accent. This, Ronan decides, is not the Adam who scavenges for stones in Cabeswater, not the mythical boy with forests in his eyes and hands. This is the Adam Parrish of Aglionby, the Adam Parrish on the steps of the double-wide. Calm, guarded, matter-of-fact. Saying You like me, as though it were a sentence from a textbook, and not a pull for a confession.

Adam finally goes on, “Right?”

Words: 830, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Adam Parrish, Ronan Lynch

Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish

From Henry IV:

Glendower: ‘Cousin, of many men I do not bear these crossings. Give me leave To tell you once again that at my birth The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds Were strangely clamorous to the frighted fields. These signs have mark'd me extraordinary; And all the courses of my life do show  I am not in the roll of common men.’

From The Dream Thieves:

‘ “When I was born,” Niall Lynch told his middle son, “God broke the mold so hard the ground shook.”

 “It was a proper earthquake,” Niall clarified, as if anyone had asked him — and knowing Niall, they probably had.’

“And you, Ronan,” Niall said. He always said Ronan differently from other words. As if he had meant to say another word entirely — something like knife or poison or revenge — and then swapped it out for Ronan’s name at the last moment. “When you were born, the rivers dried up and the cattle in Rockingham County wept blood.”

From Henry IV:

Glendower: ‘I can call spirits from the vasty deep.’ Hotspur: ‘Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?’ Glendower. ‘Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command The devil.’

And from The Dream Thieves:

‘Ronan Lynch believed in heaven and hell.

Once, he’d seen the devil. It had been a low, late morning at the Barns when the sun had burned off the mist and then burned off the chill and then burned the edges off the ground until everything shimmered with heat. It never got hot in those protected fields, but that morning, the air sweated with it. Ronan had never seen cattle pant before. All of the cows heaved and stuck their tongues out as they frothed with the heat. His mother sent Ronan to put them in the shade of the cattle barn.

Ronan had gone to the searing metal gate, and as he did, he’d glimpsed his father, already in the barn. Four yards away from him had stood a red man. He was not truly red, but the burned orange of a fire ant. And he was not truly a man, because of the horns and the hooves. Ronan remembered the alienness of the creature, how real it had been. Every costume in the world had gotten it wrong; every drawing in every comic book. They’d all forgotten that the devil was an animal. Looking at the red man, Ronan had been struck by the intricacy of the body, how many miraculous pieces moved smoothly in harmony, no different from his own.

Niall Lynch had had a gun in hand — the Lynches had an enormous number of guns of all sizes — and just as Ronan had opened the gate, his father had shot the thing about thirteen times in the head. With a shake of its horns, the unharmed devil had presented its genitalia to Niall Lynch before bounding off. It was an image that had yet to leave Ronan.

And from Blue Lily, Lily Blue:

‘[Gwenllian] broke off with a hysterical laugh that perfectly matched the one that had come out of Chainsaw earlier. Rolling onto her back so that she was looking straight up at Ronan’s disgusted features, she cooed, “Cut me free, raven prince.”’