Chapter Text
She thanks the early days of the Bond, as confusing and revealing they were, for the mental tricks they taught her. Those are the only reason Lan doesn’t startle awake at the same moment she does. She thanks, if she can call it that, a categorically different entity for not having screamed bloody murder upon waking up. That entity is closer to the Shadow than the Light despite—because of?—the title of Aes Sedai. She looms large and threatening, in some ways scarier than the Betrayer of Hope Himself. Moiraine plunges herself out of these depths before fringes of a red shawl cover her eyes and clog up her throat.
Lan sleeps soundly. He has nightmares of his own, to be sure, and they’re not to be underestimated. He relives them every time they travel the Borderlands together, every time Moiraine carelessly seeks out danger with no concern for her own wellbeing, and every time he puts down his hadori for the night. She swallows insurmountable guilt as well as the itching impulse to take Lan’s hand in his sleep. She wraps something around herself, uncertain whether it’s her blue shawl or not, and steps out. Whatever she tries to hide under, cold will slither under her spoiled Cairhienin skin. With all due respect for the Aiel culture, may the Creator curse this Waste of theirs.
But the air is different here. She enjoys breathing it, somehow. It’s icy at night, but just as boiling during the day. A land of contradiction, and a complex people to match it. She fully steps out into the cold, and just there outside one of the tents stands a tall, scary shadow. Rand, the blessed idiot, suffers with his beloved blade. Her knees nearly fail her. You’re alive. She forgets how to exist.
She kept Healing him, to no avail. She tried to bargain with the world, to no avail. So long as she drew breath, danger struck at his heart every time. She looks around. This can’t be a dream. Let this not be a dream. She closes her eyes and controls her breathing. When her eyes open again, they see a tad clearer, though still blurred at the edges. Rand keeps stubbornly poking those edges with his sword.
“I still think it’s a waste of time,” Moiraine calls out, walking to him slowly.
“Yours, maybe,” Rand calls back, stabbing at air diligently. His next movement would prompt Lan to grunt his approval, and next after that would even elicit an arched brow. Considering the thick fog in her mind, Moiraine puts two and two together fairly quickly.
“Is that why Lan has been so pleased with you?” Surely, she closes more and more distance between them. “You’ve been swishing and swooshing with your sword at night?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Rand pants out, then cranes his neck at her moving figure. “Wait, he’s been pleased?”
Moiraine waves one hand in dismissal, “No word else from me, I’m afraid.”
“About right,” he sighs.
Finally, she reaches his little training ground. Close enough to study the way his muscles tense and relax with each new sword form in the light of a freshly lit fire, but distant enough that his blade wouldn’t accidentally reach her. Best of both worlds.
He follows the regimen a few more minutes. Moiraine finds herself suppressing the comments Lan would make about Rand’s form if he weren’t in slumber. They’ll have their time yet. When the heat from the fire gets to be too much in addition to his own body heat, Rand slows down and looks at her from the side, almost an afterthought. His eyes widen. A sudden, unexplained shock goes through him at the sight of her. He stops practising at once, very slowly and methodically lowers his sword, afraid he’ll nick something if he lets himself throw it down in a big gesture. It’s not that different from meditation, even though particularly rushed this time.
Masterfully sheathing his blade, he focuses on her face. “Moiraine, you…”
“What?” she demands bitingly after too long a pause.
“Your eyes are red. You’re crying.”
There’s a sharp intake of breath booming loudly in the night. She lifts her hand and slightly taps her cheek. Wetness coats her fingertips. Tears do stream down her face, as bright and strong as the River Erinin. Reality turns to liquid. Moiraine helplessly sinks to the ground, but her movement is regal and smooth, feeding into the illusion of complete control. Rand watches her from an elevated position.
“What—I mean—” he frowns, almost to himself. “Guide me here, Moiraine. Do you want me to shut up and go back to ‘swishing and swooshing’ or to listen?”
“This is… surprisingly patient of you,” Moiraine notes, her voice pitched higher than usual. She sounds not all the way here, like watching herself from above.
“Something you didn’t help impart on me, by the way.” She throws a fistful of sand at his feet. He dances away from the dust cloud, cool as a cucumber. “I guess that’s my answer?”
“No, that—” Moiraine covers her face with a trembling hand. “I just—”
Rand looks behind her at the tent she emerged from, then at her again. “I assume you’ve masked it?”
“He needn’t lose sleep on my account.”
“And I do?” It comes out a joke more than anything, but it hits her well and true. She collects herself in time.
“You seem to be losing it regardless of my input,” she says dryly. Rand shakes his head and laughs at a private thought. Would he share? Would she be able to keep him just safe enough if she crawled inside his skull? Admitting some sort of defeat, Rand sinks down to her level.
“Okay,” he says, squinting at her boyishly, “the Lady Damodred can’t be left gathering dust.”
He gets up in one motion like a shiny spring and spends a few moments stomping out the fire. It helps nothing with Moiraine’s fever. She wipes her tears away with whichever fabric she donned on before leaving Lan to sleep. Yes, somehow, it is her shawl. She manages to get up on her own and rid of the sand between the folds of her skirts. Rand follows close after her, his hand hovering over her elbow lest she drop unconscious on him. When they enter his tent, strangely, the first thing Moiraine truly sees—as bloated and blind as her mind has become—is a thick leatherbound book.
“Prophecies?” she asks. Rand sighs behind her and sets down his sheathed sword in the corner.
“Loial lent me that. I promised I’d return it.”
Moiraine turns around to face him on unsure feet. “You think you’ll see him again?”
Rand gives her a waterbag filled to one third of its volume, as if not having heard her. Subtle. She receives it.
“Sit before you fall and crack your skull,” he orders her. “I’m not dying a traitor to a Malkieri king.”
You’re not dying at all, if I have my way.
What is my way?
She indeed sits down on his bedding, cross-legged and messy. He looks her over like someone new. He might even ask for her name, the way his eyes inspect. She takes one moderate sip out of the waterbag. He watches her do it and nods with a parental sort of approval. Misguided.
“Don’t read anything into this.” He plops down beside her. She hands the waterbag back to him. He holds on to it, forgetfully. “I’m still mad at you.”
“You are never not, I think.”
“Because you infuriate better than anyone.”
Moiraine makes a quiet sound between a cough and laugh, “Compliment?”
“No,” he says smilingly.
They keep silent for a while after that. Time and again, Rand’s eyes come back to the sheathed sword on the opposite end of the tent. Moiraine traces the path of his attention each of those times.
“You’re getting even better with that thing,” she offers smoothly. He registers her expression with his peripheral vision.
“I keep using it out of habit, but perhaps I should stop.”
“You saw why they don’t,” she infers, “in the Columns.”
“I saw a great deal more than that,” Rand whispers. “It, it connects me to who I was, the sword. Who my father, I mean Tam, but he is my father—” Rand shakes his head and cuts air with a raised hand. “It was between ‘swishing and swooshing’ and listening. What am I listening to, Moiraine?”
“Almost had you,” she says with tired humour, setting one hand behind herself on the bedding and falling back a bit. “All people need to talk continuously about themselves is silence.”
“I’m giving you that now.”
Moiraine swallows nothing. Despite the lubrication just the few minutes ago, her throat is dry and sandy. “I had a nightmare,” she gets out through a real cough. Rand straightens. “I saw someone die there,” she explains further. He nods solemnly. “It was real. Not like dreams are real, but like—”
“Rhuidean,” he fills in. Moiraine starts at that, and looks at him with subtle suspicion. Rand carries on cluelessly, “That, or my nightmares. I don’t know how it works, but it’s like the taint makes them feel more real than reality itself.”
She searches for better words, for words more meaningful, but comes up empty in pursuit, “I’m sorry, Rand.”
“No, go on,” he asks. “Who was it, I guess? Who died?”
It feels like glacial suffocation when she opens her mouth. Words grow thorns and climb up her throat, cutting into her flesh. Speak no word that isn’t true. She wants to laugh. She wants to cry some more. Rand waits, and he waits, like the sun waits for winter to finally pass.
“Someone I care very deeply about,” Moiraine manages, averting her eyes from him. “I didn’t mean to, but—” she gives up on that particular thread. “They’re someone I’d do, well, anything for. At least I can’t think of a thing I wouldn’t do. And there I go, watching them wither, as funny as it is tragic. One might think I’d tear the fabric of the Pattern Itself to see them well, but here I stand. Bearing witness.”
Rand closed his eyes and hung his head somewhere between her words. To think. To weigh in his mind what exactly she’s telling him. It’s rare enough that she’d voluntarily say anything more profound than ‘good morning’; he’s learned to anticipate it, to snatch every piece of her mind, even pieces as disjointed as she has presented at this hour. Bastard.
He lifts his head and finds her face anew. Having found it, keeps searching still.
“She’s lucky to have you,” he says. Moiraine’s chest expands with horror. Rotting flowers bloom left and right in the vacant spaces between her ribs. Rand gauges her reaction inaccurately, which prompts him to put up his hands in defence, “I tell no one, Moiraine. I promise you. I mean, it wasn’t that difficult to guess, considering what happened at the Waygates in Cairhien, but it’s not really my business, so…” he trails off, shrugging. “It’s just what I think. She’s lucky. That’s all.”
“Don’t worry,” Moiraine tells him after a loaded silence, “I haven’t a concern regarding that.”
“Well, good.” There’s awkwardness before he speaks again. “It was just a dream, Moiraine. I’m sure the Amyrlin can take care of herself. Light, you don’t need me to tell you that.”
She moves closer to him, studying his face for imperfections. He lets her, though tenses up visibly. It’s no use. Much worse than a blind kitten in the dark, she can’t see what she needs to see. Can’t reach it. There’s a tear-inducing protective filter. She knows him by outline, now. By feeling. But it’s not enough. “Is this a dream, too?”
“The weirdest one I’ve had, if it is.”
Moiraine assumes her previous position. Rands breathes out. “With your dreams—” she hesitates. He waits with the patience worthy of the wisest kings. She smiles in that nervous, novice-like way. He, again, might ask for her name. “How do you tell them apart from reality?”
“A detail, usually,” he looks up, remembering. “Something no dream or illusion can replicate. Someone’s heartbeat works. You can hear that in dreams, too, but it’s shallow there. Flat. A beating heart in real life is something completely different. Every beat has depth and weight to it. I don’t know,” Rand finishes with a frown. “I’d wake up next to Egwene and just listen for her. Or next to, uh… Lanfear… back in Cairhien. Mat, when we travelled. Who had a living heart that I cared about, it worked.”
“Did it, now?” Moiraine clenches her teeth and attempts to hide from him. Bending down to be at the same eye level, Rand locks eyes with her.
“It might,” he says quite simply. He gently takes her wrist before she can protest, and places her palm upon his chest. “Like that. You don’t need to see for this.”
She recoils at first, but he offers himself up without reservations. Realities collapse on her shoulders with the weight of a thousand peoples. Her bones groan. She’d rip his heart out sometimes, hand placement much the same. His blood would coat her fingers, and the metallic smell of it arrest her senses forever. She would slit his throat in the Great Hall of the White Tower. She’d undress him to give beatings. She’d undress him to prepare baths. She’d even kiss him, sometimes. Other times, he’d kiss her. Neither here nor there, that, but such is the future: it only makes sense when you truly live it. He’d kill her, and she’d kill him. As Aes Sedai and Warder, they’d sometimes die both. Other times, go mad together.
She opens her eyes. A thousand visions of the same young man blend into one. Finally, a heartbeat. Clean and pure. Strong. Pumping blood with resolve and passion. The heart of the Dragon Reborn Himself, hot like a sword newly forged, this living, beautiful thing for which she’ll risk it all.
“Is this a dream?” she asks.
“It’s not,” Rand assures her.
“You’re not lying to me.”
“I’m not. I don’t have your Oaths to prove it, but I’ll never lie to you again.”
Foolish boy.
He puts his arm over Moiraine’s shoulder and gently presses her into him, giving plenty opportunity to back away whenever she wants. Her palm stays on his chest, connecting a sure heart to screaming mind. She puts her forehead against his shoulder and falls deadly silent. Barely even moves, having found a point in endless space where realities fully stop raging as violent echoes in her ears, where eyes finally see every dimension.
“Is this a dream, Moiraine?” Rand says into her hair.
She sighs, shuddering, “It’s not.”
He lays her down. Not to sleep, perhaps, but to rest, and then he lies down beside her so that she doesn’t miss one single beat of him. He brushes long strands of hair out of her pained face. Five minutes later, she asks again if it’s a dream, slurs it with half her conscienceness.
“The most peaceful one I’ve had, if it is,” he tells her. “But it’s not. You just listen.”
She nods, closing her eyes, “I am. Your heart is very heavy.”
“Yours, too.” She snaps open, partial sleepiness gone. She looks like a very determined drunk. “Light, just listen,” he orders, preempting any questions.
“I am. It’s not a dream.”
Rand nods. She shuts her eyes again. He covers the palm on his chest with one of his own. Her breathing deepens, calms down. He holds her tight with the one free arm. Holds her even as she thrashes against him, enduring again one of her nightmares. Holds her until the very moment she goes blissfully limp in his embrace. He keeps her palm pressed to his chest for a while after that. Just in case.
***
One hour passes, maybe two. Rand sits beside Moiraine, holding her hand as she sleeps. An especially violent wave of night terrors sent her rolling to-and-fro on the blankets until she felt a piece of him within her reach. He stares at her relaxed face unblinkingly. Tears are somewhere at the back of his head, itching behind his skull like a liquid beehive. He doesn’t move an inch. His hand aches from being stuck in one stationary position. Nightfall is nowhere close to dissipating when Lan barges into the tent without his usual politeness or calculated grace of movement. With his hair completely down, he has to hastily brush it out of his face to see clearly. His forehead glistens with sweat in the dim candlelight.
“In Light’s name, sheepherder!” Lan hisses quietly, taking in the scene. His eyes stop dead at their interlinked hands. He finds his bearings quickly, focusing on Rand as if nothing unusual is afoot. “And without warning?”
He lethargically looks up at Lan, “I would have warned you, but she practically sleepwalked in here.”
“Can you say—”
“She’ll cut out my tongue and feed it to me if I say any part of it,” Rand warns. His words would command much more fear if Moiraine weren’t clinging to him like a fevered child.
Lan considers this anyway. Eventually, he hums his agreement, not for one second doubting the threat has been meant literally. “I see. Well. I might have to tie her to myself sometime.”
“Oh, good—” Rand yawns softly. “—luck. I don’t think even your kinghood makes you prepared for that.”
Lan gives him a look. Rand divines it’s meant to express laughter, the sort he doesn’t share. He opens his mouth to speak. Words grow thorns and climb up his throat, cutting into his flesh. She said my name. It’s me she saw—
“Sheepherder?” Lan calls him from above.
He shakes his head dismissively, “Nothing. Let her sleep it off here.”
Lan squints at the bags under Rand’s eyes. “What of you?”
“I can’t catch mine anyway. You can go back and sleep through the rest of the night. I’ll watch her.”
“Evidently, you will,” Lan notes carefully. After a moment of timid silence, he decides on, “It all comes back to then, does it not? The City in the Clouds?”
“I’m sorry, Lan,” Rand looks back down at a cozily sleeping Moiraine. “Words would be useless even if I was as well-read as Loial.”
Lan softens, if a rock could do such a thing, “Do not be, sheepherder. I appreciate this.” With one last look of worried love at his unruly Aes Sedai, he exits the tent.
Rand is left wishing he could cut off both his hands, saw them off to the blood and bone so he’d never find himself able to touch Moiraine again.