Memory
Summary: Vasher dreams in vivid color.
A/N: A tribute to Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker. Or, actually (If I'm being honest, here) the ramblings of a rather excitable fangirl. I've taken some HUGE liberties here, since we don't really learn much about Vasher's history. So, if we ever get a sequel (*crosses fingers*) I'll correct this.
Italics are, based on context, either dreams or Nightblood's dialogue.
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Vasher cannot remember a time before dreams. And this means something, because he has lived—granted, as one of the Returned, but nevertheless—for over three centuries. If he cannot remember such a time, perhaps it never existed.
It seems to him that he has always dreamed. But the dreams are not always kind.
He sits in the cellar of the small house near the ocean; the room is windowless, but he can tell from the smell of salt and seaweed, and the sound of waves lapping the shore. He breathes quietly, alone in the darkness and it is peaceful.
He hears footsteps on the stairs, but he doesn't turn because they are familiar. She has as much right to this property as he does; more, perhaps, because for all that he loves this land he calls no place home.
"Wanderer," she teases, "Talaxin, stay with me."
He stands, then, and turns to face her. Her long gown is the deep blue of sadness and memories, offsetting the darkness of her hair. Her bright eyes shine in the darkness, and she holds out a pale white hand.
"Shashara," he replies, "Come away with me."
But she will not, because if his love is the open road, she belongs, body and soul, to the sea.
Her gaze on his face is steady, but suddenly her eyes are gleaming with tears that threaten to spill over onto her face. "Tax. Vasher, why did you kill me? I loved you."
And suddenly he can see what has been hidden from him; a sword is lodged in the space where her heart should be, and she reaches up a hand to wrap around the handle. In one swift motion, she tugs it out, throws it to the floor.
"Destroy evil," she Commands, and sinks to the floor. "Destroy evil," she repeats, looking to Vasher.
"Destroy evil," a third time, but now she is staring at her own hands even as the color fades and her dress bleaches from the loss of Breath. "Or have we created it?"
He wakes empty and weeping from the dreams of Shashara's death. He loved her, once, and she had loved him back. But what they had done…
He glances at Nightblood, sheathed and still beside his pillow. It remains innocently silent, and for the moment it seems his thoughts are his own.
Warbreaker, they called him. He will break this war, this unnecessary conflict between Hallandren and its sister Idris, and he will use the sword. Because, though perhaps he still cannot define evil, he can recognize what good must be protected.
--
When he enters the city, the gaudy, blazing colors are like a slap in the face after so many weeks on the road. Before anything else, he buys several colored handkerchiefs to keep in his pack, in case of emergencies.
We're back, Nightblood notes. I'm glad.
It may be true. Vasher has yet to decide whether or not the sword is actually capable of emotion, or if perhaps it simply mimics what it finds in Vasher's own mind.
A temporary lodging comes next, and Vasher slides easily into sleep, weary after so many days of travel.
Though, if sleep comes easily, so do the dreams. But the dreams are sometimes confused.
Steel sings as he draws the dueling blade, swinging it wide in the same motion. Arsteel dodges with all the grace of a natural born fighter, and Vasher just barely brings his blade up in time to block the next blow.
Arsteel wears shades of gold and orange, his red hair blazing like a fire unto itself. And he is so, so alive.
"Move your feet, Tax," he commands, "and bend your knees."
Vasher crouches obediently, but launches immediately into another assault. He is bewildered; Arsteel is a friend, Arsteel is a teacher, Arsteel is grace and power.
No, that was before. Now, things are different. Arsteel is the enemy, Arsteel is attacking, Arsteel is vengeance and anger.
"You killed her," Arsteel hisses, his smile suddenly vanished. His clothes are so bright they hurt Vasher's eyes; he almost turns away. But no, he cannot afford to expose his back to the enemy.
(Arsteel is not the enemy).
"You killed the woman I love. I'll see you dead for it."
It is true, Vasher cannot deny it. Shashara is dead, and she met her fate by his hand. He had known he would face Arsteel for that eventually—they had not competed for her, not in so many words. Their relationship had been complex, and sometimes Vasher wondered if Shashara was worth antagonizing Arsteel for. Arsteel was the first one who'd ever taught him anything. The first one who had believed in him.
Arsteel lashes out, quick as a thought, and bright red blood spurts from Vasher's stomach. It spatters against Arsteel's flame-like robes, and looks oddly fitting.
But Vasher does not understand, because suddenly it is Arsteel who is falling to his knees. There is a smile of something akin to wonder on his face as he hits the ground.
Vasher feels his sudden lack of Breath like a bucket of cold water dashed over his head.
It is wrong wrong wrong but suddenly it is Vasher's blade that slices across Arsteel's jugular, and it is Arsteel who breathes his last Breath. Arsteel does not live to speak any final Command, and the power drained from his cloak vanishes alongside his spirit.
"You cheated," Arsteel's corpse accuses. Vasher doesn't find it strange that the dead body speaks. Because, in a one-on-one fight, of course Arsteel will win. Everything is backwards, upside down and inside out. Why, then, should death be permanent and linear?
"Yes." Vasher will not gainsay him. Tricks and illusions, he was always the slipperiest of the five. Hard to catch and hold; he is not a warbreaker he is a wishweaver, and he leaves the cooling body of an age-old friend (enemy, rival) in the dust behind him as he turns away.
He wakes trembling and breathless from the dreams of Arsteel. Arsteel who was brilliant and beautiful and vibrant. Arsteel who was envy and wrath and retribution. A myriad of contradictions, too complicated for words.
But not too complicated for Death.
Vasher picks up Nightblood, holding it before him in a two-handed grip, if only to stop his fingers from shaking.
--
It does not take long for him to notice VaraTreledees (Denth, he's Denth now) agitating in the city. What begins as an annoyance morphs suddenly into a serious problem as word spreads that an Idrian princess—and not just any Idrian princess, but the eldest, the most devout—has come to prepare her people for war.
Seeing her for the first time, Vasher does not see religion or age or royalty. She is a pretty girl, but she is so young and so naïve. But if she is allowed to continue, she will bring him to his knees before the month is out.
He'll have to do something about her. Quickly.
I could kill her for you, Nightblood offers hopefully, I'll bet VaraTreledees won't mind. He's always liked me.
Vasher snorts and ignores his blade. Which, he notes with amusement, actually takes effort. He heads away from the house currently occupied by the princess, Denth, and Denth's shadows Jewels and Tonk-Fah.
He's restless, though, for all that it is well past dark. Reconnaissance, he thinks, is all well and good but not enough to exhaust his body. His mind chases itself in circles until he finally falls into an uneasy slumber.
Sleep soon lends itself to dreams, and the dreams are often disarming.
He's in a cellar, which makes him frown because he's never liked unfamiliar spaces. Unless, of course, he is on the road. Under the open sky, on a path—of other's making or his own, it makes no difference—there he can face anything.
So in this cellar, which is neither open nor familiar, he feels entirely unprepared to face Yesteel.
There are tables set up, long wooden tables with sturdy legs and no chairs. Resting on top of the tables are various contraptions and pots of bubbling liquid, tubes half filled with potions and sheaves of paper covered in scribbles and stained with dark fluid. He wonders if it is blood, and then chastises himself for being foolish.
This is Yesteel. Of course it's blood.
He takes a deep breath, and nearly chokes. The air reeks of chemicals.
"Take care, Tax," Yesteel warns calmly. He's stirring a beaker of something dangerous-looking, wearing goggles and rubber gloves. "And try not to bump into anything."
Despite himself, Vasher wanders closer. Yesteel smiles, but it is razor sharp and cuts like a switchblade. Yesteel, Vasher thinks, was always the cleverest. And, possibly, the most dangerous.
"What are you working on?"
"What, now?" Yesteel glances around and shrugs carelessly. "Something to sustain the army. It's too much to waste a Breath for every soldier we reanimate. There must be something else we can use."
Vasher is curious now, and peers into the glass near Yesteel's hands, feeling like a child. Or, at least, as ignorant as one.
The dream changes suddenly, and Yesteel's face takes on a new countenance. Gone is the witty, indulgent scientist and friend. This Yesteel sees through Vasher as if he were made of glass.
"Shashara and Arsteel, Vasher," he whispers. His gaze is condemning. "Who will be next? Are you coming for me? Should I be worried?"
Vasher winces. He had briefly entertained the idea of seeking Yesteel out. Yesteel, who had disappeared one night and never come back.
Yesteel, he had thought, who might not have heard about what Vasher had done.
"You're a fool, Vasher," Yesteel says dismissively. He's right, Vasher thinks. Compared to Yesteel he's as knowledgeable as an infant. He should never have thought he would be welcome here.
(It's my dream! some part of Vasher screams. You have no power here!)
(Lie.)
"I have whatever power you give me," Yesteel tells him, reading his mind. Or, perhaps, his face. Yesteel was a hard one to fool. "But that is irrelevant. Now that Shashara is gone, you have no lover. VaraTreledees will finally have the reason he has waited for to hate you. You've killed Arsteel, who defended you, and who was my brother."
It's true.
"No one." Yesteel isn't smiling, but Vasher can feel the dark amusement rolling off him. "You have no one, and you belong nowhere. You were always destined to fail."
Vasher wakes panicked and desperate from dreams of Yesteel. He flings out his arms to reassure himself that he is back in the city, and not in Yesteel's laboratory.
Yesteel, who was right about the Lifeless soldiers, and had created the ichor-alcohol. Yesteel was always right. He had never met a problem he couldn't solve. He was in every way Vasher's opposite, and that was what made him so frightening.
Vasher's hands clench involuntarily into fists, and he has to remind himself that it was Yesteel who left their group years before Shashara's death and Arsteel's murder. Yesteel, who never came seeking revenge, so why would he do so now?
But all the logical reassurances in the world won't slow Vasher's heartbeat, or soothe the fear Yesteel's dream-words have instilled in him.
Because he is not going to fail. Not this time. Not these people.
--
She was not what he expected, Vasher thinks as he lays the princess (Vivenna, Nightblood supplies helpfully) out on the bed. Several weeks in the city's slums have taken their toll on her. But not, strangely, so much as to make her unrecognizable. Though he wonders where her Breath has gone, and spares a brief thought to hope she hadn't given it over to Denth.
At first he plans to wait until she awakens, and demand answers. She has already proved herself to be resourceful and clever about escaping and hiding—he won't leave her alone like that again. But when one day turns into two, his vigil begins to seem ridiculous as his mind screams for rest.
Sleep. I'll wake you if she starts to get up, Nightblood offers.
He doesn't question this. He has no doubt that, if Nightblood wishes to wake him, he will awaken. Besides, he couldn't run off with the princess anyway. She couldn't even stand to hold him.
Another surprise. He hoped this wasn't going to become a habit of hers. Not that he was planning on hanging around her long enough to find out. If she'd sided with VaraTreledees, she probably wasn't the kind of person who would want to hang around Vasher, anyway.
By now Vasher has come to equate sleeping with dreaming. But sometimes the dreams are also visions of the future.
Vasher is chained to a stone wall, cold and alone. No, not alone. VaraTreledees—Denth, Denth—sits cross-legged in the corner. He isn't looking at Vasher; there's no need, and Vasher can tell the sight of him repulses Denth. Denth is sharpening a dagger, the methodical swick! sound of steel against stone clearly meant to intimidate.
But Vasher doesn't intimidate so easily. Denth knows this.
"So we finally meet again, Kalad," Denth says, rising and finally raising his eyes to meet Vasher. Vasher is almost surprised by the amount of loathing in that glare.
Denth sees it and chuckles. "Don't look so shocked. That was my sister you dicked around with and killed. And then, as if that weren't good enough, you had to kill Arsteel too."
Vasher licks his lips and mentally weighs the pros and cons of getting Denth riled up. "But I see you're still keeping him around. Or, at least, Jewels is."
It works. Denth's expression turns ugly, briefly, before he pulls himself back under control and shrugs. Then he tosses the knife almost casually and it buries itself in Vasher's left shoulder. Vasher bites the inside of his cheek and remains silent.
"Don't provoke me," Denth tells him as he crosses the room and retrieves his knife. He gives it a sharp twist as he pulls it out, and Vasher winces.
Somewhere, subconsciously, Vasher recognizes that this is a dream. That it is not, in fact, happening to him. But his dreamself feels so real, and he curses again the predisposition the Returned posses toward vivid dreams.
Denth, meanwhile, is tracing patterns along Vasher's arm with his knife. Vasher doesn't have to look to see that they are words. He doesn't even have to wonder which ones.
Murderer. Traitor.
Suddenly, it isn't Denth he is seeing, but himself, reflected back. He starts, stunned, and Denth returns.
Denth grins widely and mouths "Guilty conscience," at Vasher before plunging the knife into his thigh. This time, Vasher screams.
Vasher wakes up screaming. He forces himself to calm down, before he wakes up the girl. He can't deal with her properly in a state like this. He glances over at the bed and, against all odds, she's still out like a light.
Good.
What is wrong with you? Nightblood wants to know, You started screaming in your sleep.
Nothing, he tells the sword shortly, just nightmares.
He knows better than anyone that dreams are simply a twisting of the subconscious, memories relived in bizarre and incomprehensible ways. His problem, he thinks, is that he comprehends them all too easily. But just because he sees it does not mean it will become manifest. His dreams have been misleading many time before.
But not, he thinks with a shiver, always.
Leaving Nightblood with the Idrian princess, Vasher stood and left the room. He had hunting to do.
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Fin. Lemme know what you think.