Notes: More (eventual) femslash! This is written a bit more abstractly, but hopefully it isn't too distracting. Once again, the characters featured are minor and this is an absolute crackship, which is my favorite thing to write.

Please do not read this if you haven't finished the entire WoT series! I will eventually be getting to huuuuge AMoL spoilers. This story will also update less frequently than Teacups, which I'm writing simultaneously.

Let me know if you see any grammatical errors or typos. Read, review, and enjoy!

Tempests

Prologue: Puzzles & Poems

The oathbreaker lays spread eagle in the crackling, thirsty grass of the forests outside Tar Valon and doesn't stop the tears when they pool in her eyes heavier than the waters of Northharbor. She can hardly breathe; rasping gasps wrack her ragdoll frame until she starts to choke.

(Pine needles dig into her back- her most recent self-imposed penance.)

A bubbling knot of fear roils in her gut, the culmination of years of lying and backstabbing and loyalty to the Dark Lord (the only time she was ever loyal) rent asunder by four terrified Sisters in the bowels of the Tower with a stolen Oath Rod and that tortuous ter'angreal.

She flees the protection of the Tower, the trust of her new confidants, the retribution she would face at the hands of the Black Ajah. Talene runs because she intends to survive (like all cowards do) and hiding in that dank room Saerin found could only last so long. The Brown had good intentions but her eyes were terrifying, and Talene's spine wanted to snap under the other Sitter's indefatigable scrutiny.

How had we once been viewed as equals? she thought. Only Cadsuane Melaidhrin was worse.

That dreadful scarred face judged her as if daring the Green (Black?) to betray her and the other secret seekers.

"Stay here. I will not deliver you to the Black Ajah, but if you run, Talene, I will hunt you down myself."

Talene quivers as fat raindrops plop unceremoniously on her cheeks. Saerin could only speak the truth and it was honest, it was real, it was terrifyingly assured that Saerin would come for her, and still (or be Stilled) she fled in the cover of darkness, bursting out of Tar Valon with a panicked grimace and racing footfalls. Her midnight sprint took her to the edges of Aldhe, where her she collapsed beneath the dying trees and prayed no one would find her.

(Certainly they wouldn't expect her to stay close. Surely she was safe here in a copse on the outskirts of an abandoned village.)

The former Sitter, a brave, confident warrior woman, curls into a ball and wishes for the comfort of another- anyone- who could take her fear away. She wishes for her stern farmer father, or housewife mother who was always quick to offer kisses. She wishes for her adventurous younger brother, now long dead, or for his children and grandchildren who hardly knew her name. Some sick, depraved part of her mind wishes for the (false, cruel, dishonest) love she felt from Merean, that deceptive bitch, when she was only fifteen and her body was aflame as she moaned into the mouth of the Mistress of the Novices in her study.

(Merean, who cared not a lick for her, who only wanted new recruits and their immortal souls and would do anything to report higher numbers to her Great Lord.

Merean, who set her on this path with breathless whispers of Don't you want to please me, Talene? and We can be together when you take the Shawl and Oaths.

Merean, who once called her Galina- a member of Talene's own heart, no less- as she unbuttoned her blouse with practiced fingers.

Merean who moved on to another naive Accepted the second Talene was raised to the Green and Black Ajahs, and disappeared twenty years ago without another word.)

You were duped, you little idiot, thinks Talene, digging her fingernails past her mop of dripping blonde hair and into her skull. Now you can't go back.

The decaying scent of the forest permeates the air, now soaked with sheets of rain, mixing into a nauseating concoction.

Rolling to her side, the oathbreaker dry heaves herself into unconsciousness, weeping pitifully until blackness consumes her. When she wakes groggily in the grey dawn the sky is still storming, but Talene seeks no shelter. She screams into the mud (at the Light and at the Dark and at herself) for not drowning in her sleep, reinforcing in her mind that there is not a shred of mercy in the world.

(The simplest answer is usually the right one.)

Sarene stares at the neatly printed proof laying on the borrowed desk in the Stone of Tear, leaning forward to read in the dim candlelight. Vitalien sleeps on the dusty bed- she will take the pallet tonight- and she would hate to disturb him with a surplus of unnecessary candles.

Semirhage has been erased from the Pattern, Cadsuane told her emotionlessly, colder than any White could hope to be.

Semirhage, who'd howled like a guilty novice beneath Sarene's ministrations. (She'd nearly died laughing when she recounted her tale to Beldeine. Yes, she'd really spanked one of the Forsaken with a hairbrush for refusing to eat her beans.) The nightmarish woman had shrieked threats until her voice went out, and then the blubbering began. That was the crux of Cadsuane's brilliant, fearless gamble: Semirhage was a woman. Only a woman.

Another human being erased from the Pattern by balefire. A lamb beneath the butcher's blade.

(Sarene is the queen of parsimony and relevance. She could find the bottom line, the highest truth, and everything in between with a well-planned argument. And now her unparalleled deductive reasoning has convinced her to be afraid.

With ink and parchment and a touch of statistical analysis, she has proven that one of the Forsaken will come for her, but to avenge Semirhage's death or by pure chance, she is still unsure. Motives are more difficult to analyze.)

The blonde Gaidin stirs beneath the blankets and his Aes Sedai idly thinks that he's such a handsome specimen (well muscled and tall with perfect bone structure)and that it's been far too long since she's penned a poem about him. He settles in a new position on his side, and she offers a small smile to the most important man in her life.

She loves him dearly.

Of all the subjects of her poems (so unlike proofs, but equally gratifying), she favors him the most. The White's writings have only been intercepted once, by some nosy novice that she still intends to find and punish, but the whole situation was atrociously embarrassing. She counts herself fortunate that the poem was about her Warder and not her fellow Sisters, whom she frequently uses as her subjects in far more erotic contexts, often with each other.

(Vitalien loves her enough to keep up the ruse, to feign a pseudo-marriage. The stolen poem set the subterfuge in motion and the deception never lost momentum. After all, what powerful, frightening, masculine Gaidin pined for the Warders he faced in the ring? What painfully logical Aes Sedai could irrationally long for the touches her Sisters? Pillow-friends are for lonely novices, not grown women, Sarene reasons.)

Her fingers itch to disprove herself or write some flowing prose, but the candlelight is dying and her heart races despite her calm demeanor. Sarene crosses her legs, skin sliding across the ivory silk. The Aes Sedai sits prone; she is crippled by terror. Images resurface of a corpse in the hall, blood shading the Tairen wood a darker stain, and the hair on the back of her neck rises as if she stands in a lightening field.

Semirhage has been erased from the Pattern, they told her. Yet Sarene still feels the bone-shaking agony that once accompanied memories of the Forsaken; it is a fear that should be dispelled. (She knows in her gut that the nightmares are not done playing with her: the logic doesn't lie. In so many ways she fears the Forsaken more than the Dark One himself: they are more tangible, more fickle, and more likely to seek her out.)

She wants to crumble into strong arms, to be rocked to sleep and be kissed so deeply she can't breathe, but she hugs herself more closely instead. Sarene blows out the candle.

(It is the only answer for now.)