A/N: I've been browsing around the Eragon fandom and I've been a little disappointed at the lack of quality fanfics and the enormous quantity of mushy Mary Sues and etc. I'm not sure if my first contribution to this fandom belongs to the former or the latter, but I thought I'll take a risk and try posting something that's new for me. This fanfic contains mild f/f, so if you don't like it just don't read it. Comments would be cherished, and if anyone can suggest a better title I will be grateful. Thanks!

Disclaimer: Everything you recognize belongs to Christopher Paolini and his publishing company and whatnot. No money is being made off this.

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To See And Know

-Good morning. I hope you are feeling better.

-I am well, thank you.

She knows the elf's reply is merely a courtesy, and that she is actually still in great pain. But though Arya's pride will not let her show it, Nasuada notices the dim eyes and the tight lips, the subtle flinch as she tries to manoeuvre into a more comfortable position. Nasuada also knows the elf's strength is merely a front, a blank and fairly solid wall, just as the ground feels fairly solid beneath her feet before it quakes and cracks until you can see all the way down. Some may say she knows all this, despite her tender age, due to her inheritance of her father's perceptive nature. But even though that is true, she knows she knows this because she had crept to the infirmary during the night, and had heard Arya gasping, dry sobs that wracked her broken body until she finally slipped into a restless sleep-like stupor. She knows because she saw the tear tracks Arya hastily wiped off just as she entered moments ago.

Really, there is nothing between them, just empty words of courtesy waiting to be said. Nasuada's just doing her duty, looking after a fallen soldier she had known and who had known her since she was a babe. She knows she is still just a child to the immortal, but yet she knows she understands more about the intricacies of the relationships of life in her seventeen years then the elf permits herself to learn in a century. She knows this and yearns to remedy it, but the elf remains stubbornly ignorant, and gradually Nasuada learns not to trouble her.

But regardless of knowledge, acquired however bitterly, life goes on. This is something they both know. As Nasuada stands over the prone elf like a stalwart guardian, she wonders a little about the reversal of their roles, but dismisses it from her mind. Life goes on, there will be more battles to fight and wounds to heal, and soon the wounded will stand once more. One in particular will stand once more behind her father's chair, and maybe someday behind hers. Because Nasuada knows that keeping her back to a wall is not necessarily a bad thing. It depends on how strong the wall is. She not only knows but also understands that the elf's walls were smooth and hard, seemingly impenetrable. Glass, that rare commodity in their dark city, is smooth and hard, but brittle and easy to break once there is a flaw. And Nasuada can see faint cracks now, growing larger even as the elf tries to cover them up, but becoming more evident. Even if only Nasuada sees them, it still pains her to see Arya conceal them, away from the light, vainly trying to repair them, like scar tissue building over a wound that refuses to heal. It pains herself to hide them, pretending to the world that nothing is wrong with a few empty words.

Nasuada, being ever the unknown philosopher, smiles a little. They are both such a mass of contradictions together: strong but fragile, proud but unassuming, charismatic but aloof, and courteous but rude in appropriate circumstances. They are loved, hated, liked, disliked, respected, dismissed. Not one of the Varden would ever think of them together, but yet not one could ever forget them.

Instinctively she gathers the elf's pale hands in a reassuring grip, which Arya returns gently after a tense moment. Dark and light together, black and white, but while Nasuada was as warm as the sun and laughed with her heart, the elf was as cool as ice and smiled with only her lips. Such a contradiction, but not really one at all. Such differences between them, but really not many differences at all. Nasuada knows this, for she can see through the glass wall as easily as a sun shines through the grimy windows of her home.

She knows this, as she tries to know that there is really nothing between them. Arya knows that she knows, but the true words are left unsaid behind their walls. At least Nasuada knows that she will have a wall behind her back, so when she staggers the wall can help her upright again. She knows this, but then she also begins to hope. She knows that she will be glad to have a wall behind her, so when the wall crumbles she can not only see through to the other side but be there as well. But despite all this, in that moment when she finally begins to hope, she finds that she cannot see anything clearly at all.

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Any comments are welcome, with the exception of flames.