Title: Waiting in Illian
Author: AsianScaper
Disclaimer: Just borrowing; Robert Jordan owns everything.
Rating: PG (Let's just say I'm catering to an audience who 'might' understand...)
Category: Drama
Spoilers: None
Feedback: Friends, enemies: Send your comments or constructive criticism to asianscaper@hotmail.com. Advice is highly sought after!
Summary: Another title for it would be "A Study on Aes Sedai Vulnerability: The Gaidin". Don't tell me that didn't get you all curious.
Archiving: Just email me the URL to allow me a peek.
Dedication: To Robert Jordan, of course. And also, to the gals in high school, the family, and the crazy drinking buddies.
Author's Note: It's short, it's cheesy, and I never change. This was a short reprieve from that epic story I'm writing (not to mention tons of reports and papers). My first attempt at a WOT fanfic, so please be HONEST.
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He sat with her quietly, as if resting in the midst of a dream; frightened that if he moved, he would be swayed by the breeze. It was much like swimming and never drowning despite the exhaustion one felt. Like dying without feeling fear as one ought to. For there was much to fear in pain. Usually, death was entitled to that horror, which was why many shamed from it.
Sitting with her, was much like shying away from the inevitable.
He leaned against a balcony, scattering watchfulness with the haunted poise of a warrior. But there was constant warmth and ice just a little bit to his right when he sat down. The man's grim repose slashed the color from his eyes, even as it rested on his person and not on the woman before him. Not a muscle moved to leisure and there was a whip to the curls of his hair as they blew by his brows.
"You seem well composed, Aes Sedai," he said as quietly as his eyes could tell.
"Seeing is only part of it, Gaidin," she returned, neither smiling nor frowning nor agreeing upon the emotions he felt. She felt.
The Warder bond had always been a communion of hearts that left one breathless, ceaseless, in agreement to the beauty in knowing. So the Gaidin grappled with his brows, careful that his lips did not twitch, that they did not move to a simple smile or a disapproving frown. She added, "Feeling is something else altogether."
"You would never have admitted that in front of a queen. The better, I should think. " His murmur did not move his tongue. It did not cease his thoughts though it did hers. Amusement spread through their bond and she could not know if she should accept them as his emotions or the blight of hers. But it was delight nonetheless.
"What you think, Gaidin, is of no consequence," she said. "We sit here too long. I must go and attend to this before morning. I must.." But strong hands clasped around hers and the insistence of their grasp stopped her from rising.
"You must rest," he told her firmly. Weariness spread through him like a blossoming rose with too much red. A flood of worry for every finger bitten by the thorn. "Sit. I will take the watch." He released her, knowing that she was furious at his attempt to stay her hand.
True to his word, he stood from the chair he had taken, his hand on the hilt of the sword by his side. The cloak batted against his thighs and made his feet invisible to the eye.
There was very little light except for the one flickering by the table and even then, his cloak was drawn to it, placing all its hues into a carousel. The eye-wrenching cloak whistled as another breeze from the Aryth Ocean besotted the room. It now mocked him with its changing colors.
The room, though, hung with contempt.
"I will not sit idle, Gaidin, even if the world fell apart with impending death awaiting me."
He turned to her violently, suddenly, and it frightened her that her Warder's blue eyes were more intense than ever she had seen them to be. "It is not so easy for me. Do not say such things. I would not lose you, Aes Sedai. I would not. I rather would not."
Emotions raged through the bond and neither could tell which was whose. "What you prefer, Gaidin," she whispered, "Is of no consequence."
"I know that, Sister. How I know that in everything that I do! And I am grateful we take it for granted because if we had not, I would not be here, sitting. Allowing you to sleep on a chair instead of a bed. Allowing you to have your throat cut instead of…" His eyes hardened then, the smothering color of a sky at noon. Ready to be plagued by thunderstorms yet ready, also, to be softened by the cool arrival of twilight.
Little showed on a Gaidin's face yet when fury did on his, the Sister did not move. Nor did she need to. The bond showed her more than she needed to know and she turned crimson somewhat. In anger, perhaps yet also, in mockery of that craft.
But the Gaidin did not care. He took the long, swift strides portrayed by a deadly man ready to lunge at his prey, a hand taking the buckle that held his cloak. The Aes Sedai blinked, her knuckles tight against the arms of her seat. By the time he stood before her, her head to his waist and him, looking down with the gaze of a hawk and wolf all at once, he had unbuckled his cloak. His armor was dull in color yet the blurry quality of it gave her more reason for pause.
He hesitated then, wondering at the fear he felt in her, and why she would feel it.
This time, his movements were neither quick nor frightening. He leaned towards her and gently, softly, so unlike the hard man he was within the battlefield and without, he put his only cloak around her, binding it together on her chest as a father would to his son except that his touch was more intimate than any lover's. There, too, was that attentive, disturbingly warm gaze as he reveled in the details of putting it on her. It was so unlike him and he withdrew, damning his kindess and his love for all the look in her eye.
He stood tall, the candelight prancing about his features as once more, his brow turned to stone and his cheeks began to be hacked from the sides of a cliff.
Her eyes widened in surprise, and also, at his temerity. Then he said in an equally tender voice with a warmth that almost reached the vastness of his gaze, "Take it. Illian can be cold, for all its nearness to sea. My cloak is yours inasmuch as it is mine." His armor tinkled then, a wondering sound and the Aes Sedai was comforted by it. Her façade faded for a moment, and there she sat, with a smile. Almost as if in response, she lifted a delicate hand, touched his face and his blue eyes softened.
"Thank you," she said, as if it were a lullaby.
The Gaidin did not know if it were his eyelids closing or if it were hers. If it was he who kissed her forehead or she who kissed his. Whichever way, the bond felt granules of peace resting and multiplying amongst its chains, turning into liquid that burst from an eye, then to a cheek, then to a lip that tasted the salt of the sea.
Soon after, with his gaze upon her, watching like the moon on the treetops, she was asleep. He, on the other hand, was still awake though his heart beated as hers did, slowly, like the wheel of time when sleep was about.
He took her in his arms as he would a babe. Then, he laid her on the bed under the shutters of an inn sitting on the city of Illian. He stopped to admire her, the fine curls framing the delicate features of an Arafellin, the hair neither blond nor brown yet instead, tinged with each like cinnamon on newly baked bread. She looked too young for the walks of the world, yet in that thought, he clutched his sword hilt all the harder. In that movement that brought a prick to his chest, he tore his gaze and took to the window.
He sat on the pane like a fairy on the quarter moon, looking beyond with wariness and reveling at the tranquility of the Sister sleeping beside him.
If one outside the bond's sphere were to look, the Warder had only given a statement encased in ice, and the Aes Sedai's face would reveal nothing but cool, serene irreverence to the deed. And the rest would be lost to them.
Their bond allowed this familiarity, Warder and Aes Sedai, Aes Sedai and Warder, without the wonderment of the world.
That, my friend, is how this story ends...and honestly, why it was written.
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-The End-