[In a different situation he might be annoyed by the approach. But for one, under the circumstances he more or less understands it. And there's something about the tone, about the words that seems a little bit more Hennessy than Jordan, and Ronan still has complicated feelings about Jordan's Dreamer, even after everything that had happened.
So there's no argument, and he doesn't protest as he opens the door with a vague gesture of invitation into the house that he shares with Kavinsky.]
Hey.
[He doesn't say anything else until she's inside, until they at least have some sort of privacy to work through the mess of what happened. He still doesn't apologize for not telling her earlier- but truth is that he really isn't. He meant what he said to K, about not wanting to put it on her shoulders. He doesn't think it would have made things any better.]
Do you wanna ask, or should I just start with what I think you wanna know?
[Operative word: she. The words are angrier than Jordan's ever sounded, the closest she's ever sounded to the way Hennessey says everything like it personally offends her. What Jordan knows is this: one of the last things Hennessey said to her was I wish you were dead and then, not too long after, all the dreams except for her went to sleep.
She would have gone to sleep too, if not for the sweetmetal. Jordan didn't have Hennessey's memories—not all of them, anyway, not the most important ones—and her sister wanted everything to crash and burn. Hennessey wanted tweaker investment bankers to crash their expensive cars and die. Jordan? Jordan just wanted a social security number.]
She... I would have gone to sleep too. Everyone else did.
[The anger's burned out of her, leaving only her wavering voice trying to make sense of something she doesn't think Ronan would understand.]
The short answer is, she got it in her head that if she took down the ley line then she couldn't bring out the Lace. She wasn't wrong, but that's not really the fucking point.
[His tone is complicated, softer than Jordan's despite the profanity, but he understands why she's angry. He doesn't know the specifics of how their last meeting together had gone, but he'd heard about the car wreck. He got it in a fucked up sort of way- needing to be selfish, so you act like a piece of shit to the people you care about, hoping they wont make you feel worse about it.]
She tried turning herself in to the Moderators before she did it. I think-- I don't fucking know what I think. But I'm not sure she intended to walk away from it.
[I'm not sure she intended for either of you to walk away from it is the part that he doesn't say out-loud, even if they both know that it's there on the hush of the air. It makes Ronan a little bit jittery, makes his hands flex like he can't hold onto the things in front of him.]
But she did. I couldn't talk her down no matter how I fucking begged, and I couldn't even beat her in a dream. She told me I couldn't because I wasn't thinking like a forger. That's what I was asking when I first got back. Because I still don't know how to fix this and I have to. All I have is Bryde and a handful of shitty ideas.
[Hennessey didn't intend to walk away from it. That much Jordan knows with the bone-deep certainty of being a near-perfect copy of her. Jordan screws her eyes shut and takes a shaky breath, trying to keep the most complicated emotions about everything she's learned to herself. All she can hear is Hennessey saying I'm so fucking tired of you on loop.]
You're so fucking stupid.
[Jordan doesn't mean to say it, but she thinks it's true all the same. She laughs, but it's a little hysterical. Twice. She did part of what Ronan and Hennessey were trying to twice and all it took was fucking around on a canvas. The rest of it? For people who could literally do the impossible, Jordan thought that dreamers thought so fucking small.]
Ask me. Ask me why I'm still awake, Ronan, because the answer isn't manna and it isn't Hennessey.
Whatever. You're dating someone who thinks working with the Moderators is a great idea, so no one looks too fucking bright right now.
[Using that against her might be petty, but talking about this shit was uncomfortable. It just reminded Ronan of the feeling of having everyone turn on him. What it was like to lose everyone, to be alone.
What he wants and what everyone else does still feel like different things. Like Bryde was one of the only ones that understood what he was chasing, but Ronan supposes he probably dreamt him to. All he'd needed was for Adam and Declan to believe in him for once -- no wonder siding with the Moderators had been easier. He's always the car crash, even now.
At least here he has Kavinsky, though. The only other person that understands how fucked everything is, understands being willing to watch it all burn. But he still hasn't figured out how to bring him back, how to change things, to make it work. Jordan wants a life, but that's all small tricks; bank accounts and social security numbers and medical exams. Ronan hasn't really paused to care about the sweetmetals, because they're too fucking small for what he's chasing. It's not good enough for him, because it wont change the world.]
C'mon. You wanna brag about having a sweetmetal go for it, but you don't need me to set the stage.
You really think I just stopped at getting a sweetmetal, because that's where you would stop. Crumbs.
[Jordan laughs. Of course Hennessey would look at this fucking cocksure white boy and eventually realize that he's full of shit. In a way, that makes Jordan feel better about Hennessey's seeming lack of care. Maybe it wasn't about her. Maybe it was about Ronan.
She remembers the first time the Moderators called Declan, asked if he'd heard from Ronan—or at least the first time it happened and Jordan was with him. Declan turned them down and said he had a lawyer on retainer. The person on the other end hung up. For a while, it had even seemed like Declan was... proud? Approved, at least, of what Ronan was doing. It seemed harmless enough, but then everything started waking up and he'd gotten more concerned. At the time, Jordan thought it was just the sheer audacity of what Ronan was doing that concerned Declan. As far as Declan was concerned, Dreamers were something to stay hidden. To stay quiet.
Now, she's wondering if Declan realized what she just did: there was no plan to what Ronan was doing. It was like a bad forgery when she finally stepped in close to look at it: haphazard techniques, sloppy brushwork, mismatched materials. Ronan's thinking about the end result, the thing he wants. Knowing the end result isn't enough in forgery. It doesn't matter if a forger can paint something that looks like something else if they don't understand how to do it.]
You think like a copyist, you know? You paint the Mona Lisa with shitty student acrylics and think it's enough that it looks the same.
No, I wouldn't bother with them in the first place, because they don't fucking matter. But if pretending you have the answers makes you feel better about Hennessy not giving a shit about you, knock yourself out.
[Ronan almost rolls his eyes but instead settles for shrugging his shoulders in casual disregard. In spite of himself, his tone has a definite edge of 'person talking to a particularly slow five-year-old', but he is trying to be patient. It's far from something he's good at though, and it feels like there's still venom in his mouth, even if he's trying to not push. He hadn't wanted this for her- it was a shitty thing to have to deal with, and he did feel bad for her.
He doesn't want to make this a stupid fight -- although in honesty, Ronan is mostly only keeping his temper because he thinks Jordan sounds like an idiot rather than insulting. None of it is really hurtful, because it's all so off-center. It just makes it obvious that Hennessy never used the phone he dreamt her; he'd assumed that she would have called her, talked to Jordan ...
But he hadn't called Adam either, had he?]
Look, if the only reason you're here is for this asshole shit, I can get that from Kavinsky for free and he makes it sound better.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
So there's no argument, and he doesn't protest as he opens the door with a vague gesture of invitation into the house that he shares with Kavinsky.]
Hey.
[He doesn't say anything else until she's inside, until they at least have some sort of privacy to work through the mess of what happened. He still doesn't apologize for not telling her earlier- but truth is that he really isn't. He meant what he said to K, about not wanting to put it on her shoulders. He doesn't think it would have made things any better.]
Do you wanna ask, or should I just start with what I think you wanna know?
no subject
[Operative word: she. The words are angrier than Jordan's ever sounded, the closest she's ever sounded to the way Hennessey says everything like it personally offends her. What Jordan knows is this: one of the last things Hennessey said to her was I wish you were dead and then, not too long after, all the dreams except for her went to sleep.
She would have gone to sleep too, if not for the sweetmetal. Jordan didn't have Hennessey's memories—not all of them, anyway, not the most important ones—and her sister wanted everything to crash and burn. Hennessey wanted tweaker investment bankers to crash their expensive cars and die. Jordan? Jordan just wanted a social security number.]
She... I would have gone to sleep too. Everyone else did.
[The anger's burned out of her, leaving only her wavering voice trying to make sense of something she doesn't think Ronan would understand.]
no subject
[His tone is complicated, softer than Jordan's despite the profanity, but he understands why she's angry. He doesn't know the specifics of how their last meeting together had gone, but he'd heard about the car wreck. He got it in a fucked up sort of way- needing to be selfish, so you act like a piece of shit to the people you care about, hoping they wont make you feel worse about it.]
She tried turning herself in to the Moderators before she did it. I think-- I don't fucking know what I think. But I'm not sure she intended to walk away from it.
[I'm not sure she intended for either of you to walk away from it is the part that he doesn't say out-loud, even if they both know that it's there on the hush of the air. It makes Ronan a little bit jittery, makes his hands flex like he can't hold onto the things in front of him.]
But she did. I couldn't talk her down no matter how I fucking begged, and I couldn't even beat her in a dream. She told me I couldn't because I wasn't thinking like a forger. That's what I was asking when I first got back. Because I still don't know how to fix this and I have to. All I have is Bryde and a handful of shitty ideas.
no subject
You're so fucking stupid.
[Jordan doesn't mean to say it, but she thinks it's true all the same. She laughs, but it's a little hysterical. Twice. She did part of what Ronan and Hennessey were trying to twice and all it took was fucking around on a canvas. The rest of it? For people who could literally do the impossible, Jordan thought that dreamers thought so fucking small.]
Ask me. Ask me why I'm still awake, Ronan, because the answer isn't manna and it isn't Hennessey.
no subject
[Using that against her might be petty, but talking about this shit was uncomfortable. It just reminded Ronan of the feeling of having everyone turn on him. What it was like to lose everyone, to be alone.
What he wants and what everyone else does still feel like different things. Like Bryde was one of the only ones that understood what he was chasing, but Ronan supposes he probably dreamt him to. All he'd needed was for Adam and Declan to believe in him for once -- no wonder siding with the Moderators had been easier. He's always the car crash, even now.
At least here he has Kavinsky, though. The only other person that understands how fucked everything is, understands being willing to watch it all burn. But he still hasn't figured out how to bring him back, how to change things, to make it work. Jordan wants a life, but that's all small tricks; bank accounts and social security numbers and medical exams. Ronan hasn't really paused to care about the sweetmetals, because they're too fucking small for what he's chasing. It's not good enough for him, because it wont change the world.]
C'mon. You wanna brag about having a sweetmetal go for it, but you don't need me to set the stage.
no subject
[Jordan laughs. Of course Hennessey would look at this fucking cocksure white boy and eventually realize that he's full of shit. In a way, that makes Jordan feel better about Hennessey's seeming lack of care. Maybe it wasn't about her. Maybe it was about Ronan.
She remembers the first time the Moderators called Declan, asked if he'd heard from Ronan—or at least the first time it happened and Jordan was with him. Declan turned them down and said he had a lawyer on retainer. The person on the other end hung up. For a while, it had even seemed like Declan was... proud? Approved, at least, of what Ronan was doing. It seemed harmless enough, but then everything started waking up and he'd gotten more concerned. At the time, Jordan thought it was just the sheer audacity of what Ronan was doing that concerned Declan. As far as Declan was concerned, Dreamers were something to stay hidden. To stay quiet.
Now, she's wondering if Declan realized what she just did: there was no plan to what Ronan was doing. It was like a bad forgery when she finally stepped in close to look at it: haphazard techniques, sloppy brushwork, mismatched materials. Ronan's thinking about the end result, the thing he wants. Knowing the end result isn't enough in forgery. It doesn't matter if a forger can paint something that looks like something else if they don't understand how to do it.]
You think like a copyist, you know? You paint the Mona Lisa with shitty student acrylics and think it's enough that it looks the same.
no subject
[Ronan almost rolls his eyes but instead settles for shrugging his shoulders in casual disregard. In spite of himself, his tone has a definite edge of 'person talking to a particularly slow five-year-old', but he is trying to be patient. It's far from something he's good at though, and it feels like there's still venom in his mouth, even if he's trying to not push. He hadn't wanted this for her- it was a shitty thing to have to deal with, and he did feel bad for her.
He doesn't want to make this a stupid fight -- although in honesty, Ronan is mostly only keeping his temper because he thinks Jordan sounds like an idiot rather than insulting. None of it is really hurtful, because it's all so off-center. It just makes it obvious that Hennessy never used the phone he dreamt her; he'd assumed that she would have called her, talked to Jordan ...
But he hadn't called Adam either, had he?]
Look, if the only reason you're here is for this asshole shit, I can get that from Kavinsky for free and he makes it sound better.