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English
Series:
Part 3 of Whumptober 2024 , Part 96 of Prompted Works
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Whumptober 2024
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Published:
2024-10-04
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479
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1/1
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2
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19
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The room went silent.

Summary:

Gansey gripped her hand. She took down all the walls around her energy.
Crisp and certain and loud, he told the thing: "Be. Noah."
The room went silent. --The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

Or Gansey, Blue and Noah in the aftermath of the "Noah is possessed by the demon" debacle.

Written for Whumptober Day 3 filling the prompt "I warned you."

Notes:

I did a full reread of TRC this year and the thing that most struck me was how young the characters are and how much the fact that they're just high school kids affects the plot. There's a whole meta to be written about this, but I won't do it here.

The title is the last line of Chapter 24 of TRK.

Work Text:

The silence only lasts a moment.

“I warned you!” Noah shrieks, himself again now that Gansey has commanded him to be. “IwarnedyouIwarnedyouIwarnedyou!”

Gansey’s not sure Noah actually did warn them of this, but he is too focused on Blue to really think about it right now. There is blood gushing down the side of Blue’s face, too much for him to get a good idea what the damage is. He fumbles a dish towel off the kitchen table and presses it to her face to catch the blood. He can’t tell how concerning this amount of blood is—is it life-threatening or just “head wounds bleed a lot?”—and he can’t see if Noah gouged out her eye. Everything is hideous.

Blue’s good eye is saucer-wide and Gansey can’t breathe from panic. He cannot believe that an hour ago they were at a toga party at Litchfield House. This doesn’t feel like a nightmare, though he wishes it did. If this felt like a nightmare he’d be able to convince himself that he would imminently wake from this horror and that would make it easier to bear. Instead he knows that this is reality, it’s the party at Henry’s that feels like a dream.

Blue needs a hospital. There’s a lot of bleeding and who knows about her eye. Gansey needs to get her out to the Pig and get her to the hospital as soon as possible. He wonders if she can stand. He can probably carry her if he needs to, but he doesn’t think she’ll enjoy letting him. His hands are shaking so badly that he’s not sure he’ll be able to drive, but he’ll have to, there is no one else here to—

Maura bursts into the kitchen in a clatter of footsteps. Evidently whatever stupor the demon held over the occupants of 300 Fox Way has been broken because she appears to be herself. She takes in the scene and her eyes widen in horror. “What—”

“Noah,” Blue gasps.

“He was possessed,” Gansey elaborates.

Maura looks around the kitchen. Noah has gone, though Gansey has no idea when he left. After a moment Maura crosses the room to grab the keys to the house minivan off the hook by the door and shoves her feet into shoes. “Blue, can you stand? Gansey, help her to the minivan. We’re going to the emergency room.”

Gansey is not the sort of teen who hopes for an adult to swoop in and save the day, make the decisions he knows he’s capable of making for himself, but in this moment Maura taking charge nearly makes him collapse in relief. In this moment it is so much easier to just do as Blue’s mother says instead of having to work out what needs to be done himself.

“Okay,” he says and starts to help Blue to her feet.