Disclaimer: I'm not Mercedes Lackey…it's highly unfortunate, I know.

Yes, I know, I'm awful. I've been bogged in over my head with work since April and I haven't updated. But I haven't lost interest in this story, I'm just being slow. So please, continue to review, let me know what you're thinking, and know that someday I'll finish this story, I promise. I wont let it die in the middle. Now, on to reviews!

Fireblade: Yup, definitely suffering from block, among other things, such as chronic overwork. Sorry for the shortness, though.

Wizard: Thanks, but I know, two months is a long time between posts. My characters are thwapping me for this as we speak.

Tenshi: Thanks, and it was short, I know.

Leshyae: Lol, thanks. I hope you keep reading.

Anyway, another little filler chapter. I'm trying to make the plot go faster, but filler chapters are sort of necessary, so yeah. Read, review, hopefully enjoy. Poor Lirain's a little sad, but all shall work out in the end.

Sorry about this chapter. I know it's not so good. The next one will be much better, I promise, once I get over this filler hump we should be good again, hopefully.

Chapter 24: Long Talks

Treet was sitting at his desk leafing determinedly through the next chapter of one of his many books on Healing. He currently had more books in his formerly empty bookshelf than he had seen in all of his pre-Collegium life. They weren't exactly his, of course, they belonged to the Collegium, but they were his for the duration of his studies.

More and more, he was beginning to realize the sheer amount of knowledge contained within the world. The Holderkin tended to scoff at more advanced knowledge as against the will of their ascetic, repressive God. As a result, Treet's knowledge had not gone beyond the necessities of his life and most of that had never been explained to him, only taught him as rote that he had better learn unless he wanted to suffer grievous consequences. In fact, looking back on it, he doubted that even his teachers had known the reasons behind much of what they had taught him. Looking at the sheer amount of whys and wherefores sitting before him, Treet almost missed that simple method. If he failed here, no one would beat him, no one would send him to bed without supper. In all probability, the reproach wouldn't even by verbal, but it would be there. The carefully veiled looks of disappointment when he failed to master his lessons, the knowledge that he had let down people who depended on him, that was enough, and it was more punishment than a thousand beatings, Treet had learned that early on, when his mistakes could be corrected before they harmed someone. Now, well, there was simply no room for mistakes. Now that he had begun to actually practice his new craft, albeit in a slightly limited fashion, he knew with grim determination which was not unleavened by pleasure that he would learn his lessons and learn them well.

It was in this steely and slightly grim mood that Lirain found Treet that evening. As she progressed in her studies she found more and more that her evenings were free and the burdens on her time easing. Not that she wasn't worked nearly off of her feet whenever she so much as set a toe within the House of Healing, but between patients she increasingly found that her studies were becoming a lighter burden. She only met with Rith three or four days out of every seven now, as opposed to five or six, and that was mostly to discuss cases, often more as equals than as teacher and student.

She had started off with no particular destination in mind, but, unsurprisingly, she ended up outside Treet's door. She shrugged mentally. After all, nobody had said that she wasn't allowed to simply be with him, and she ached for his presence in a queer way that only an unacknowledged soul bond can cause. She was careful not to appear overly interested in his doings, she sometimes thought that all the adults of the House of Healing knew what was going on, given the propensity her patients had to find themselves roomed close to wherever Sera and Treet were assigned to work.

Lirain was careful to knock on the door and wait for a reply before entering, although she already knew that Treet was simply studying at his desk. At his surprised "Come in" she pushed open the door, closing it carefully behind her.

Treet barely moved at the sound of the knock, although he had been so absorbed in his thoughts that he was almost in a trance. When the door opened, he was unsurprised to see Lirain standing there. It seemed as if he had known all along that she would be there.

Lirain stepped lightly across the room, the stride that had taken so long for her to learn but which was now as natural as the heavy booted clomp of her childhood had been. She settled herself cross-legged on the floor with her back against Treet's bed, secure in the assumption that she belonged there.

With a sigh of relief, Treet closed his book, carefully marking his place with a scrap of cloth. Although in the moons he had been at the Collegium his reading skills had improved enormously, it was still hard for him to take in information as he read for any length of time.

As he turned to face Lirain, a sudden moment of uncertainty loomed before him like a wall. He was utterly at a loss for what to say. His arms felt awkward and too long for his body and every movement seemed exaggerated and uncomfortable. She smiled and the moment passed over him like a wave. How utterly silly it was to be afraid of Lirain's company.

"Hey," Treet said simply. "I haven't seen you in a while."

Lirain laughed. "You see me every day. But I haven't talked to you in ages. Whenever I see you, one or the other of us is rushing to get somewhere two minutes faster than should normally be possible."

Treet laughed as well, using the noise to cover up the motion as he slid off of his chair and joined Lirain on the floor. "I suppose that's our lot. No wonder they don't tell you what you're getting into when they snatch you and drag you off Companion back!"

"My parents would have given a dozen moon's worth of stipend if I had been dragged off on a Companion. They were too polite to shove me under the noses of the unattached Companions, but I think they were a little disappointed not to see me in Grays. You see, to a Herald, the Healer is the thing between them and their duty, usually with them flat on their backs and unable to move and the Healer telling them that is really isn't a good idea to go off and ride that border circuit anyway. Not that they don't appreciate us." She said this with a wryly-slanted smile. It was common knowledge that the Healers considered the Heralds to be the epitome of a bad patient.

"You grew up here, then?" Treet asked.

"Oh yes. I'm a Collegium brat, you see. They admitted me earlier than most simply because if they hadn't I would probably only have ended up wandering around the Collegium all day trying things out on my own and driving the Healers into the Terilee with my questions."

Treet could well imagine this scenario.

Although they were simply exchanging mundane and everyday words, anyone with even a touch of the Gift of Empathy could have sensed the tension growing between them. It was evident in the way they carefully avoided touching each other, although they sat side by side, the way Treet leapt back as if burned when his hand grazed Lirain's ankle.

After a while, they simply sat in silence, each feeling as though they were alone. For Lirain it was like regaining the stability she had lost the instant she had first looked into Treet's eyes. She hadn't even recognized the constant feeling she had had of vertigo, of tipping and spinning, until it had suddenly stopped. She sighed, eyelids drooping. Exhaustion was always the condition of the Healer, to some degree or another, but on top of everything else she had been suffering from chronic not-quite-insomnia. She slept. Sometimes. But waking or sleeping, when her hands weren't full of potions and her mind occupied with the task at hand, her thoughts turned insuppressibly to a certain pair of shy green eyes.

Inherently stubborn as she was, she refused to dose herself with her own medications, relying on her centering exercises to eventually put her to sleep of a night. "Soon," Rith told her every night they met, Lirain's eyes asking the question for her. "I've been checking with Sera and she says he's coming along nicely. Just hang on a little longer."

Rith's pity had been a new experience for Lirain. Even the hardest lessons, the longest hours had not elicited it. Kindness, yes, sympathy, empathy, yes, but never pity.

There were a few Lifebonded couples among the various Collegium dwellers, and Rith had once suggested that Lirain seek them out, that maybe among the younger ones she could find a confidant. Lirain had tried it, sort of. Seeing them together, knowing that they had what she did not; it was by far more unbearable than simply not having it at all. There was exactly one person, she thought, who could end it. Ironically, he was sitting next to her.

Her work hadn't suffered, she thought with a touch of pride. She kept her vertigo penned securely in the furthest reaches of her mind, where it affected no one but her. It was debilitating, draining, and would surely come out later, she had learned that in her years of study, but it was better than nothing. She held on to Rith's words as though to a lifeline. Not too much longer.

She had been careful not to come and see Treet too often in the preceding moons. It wasn't as though mostly everyone in the Collegium other than him didn't know about their bond, but she knew she had to be careful not to chase him away. Or at least, her brain knew it.

She relaxed against the frame of his bed and could see that he had done the same. They had this. She treasured these times, when the world came into focus once more. What were a few moons? A mere disturbance, really. They would have all of their lives together. She didn't allow herself to think of any other possibility anymore.

She wasn't desperate, exactly. She still did all the things she had always done, laughed, jokes, discussed interesting cases, studied. Somehow, though, there was a detachment, an emptiness that never quite disappeared except when she was with him.

She could feel him watching her, as she was watching him, out of the corner of his eye. Neither wanted to be the first to move and break the idyll that had descended over them, but both knew that someone had to be the first to do it.

As if be some unspoken agreement, they moved simultaneously, Treet stretching and Lirain beginning to get to her feet. There was almost no need for her to say anything, but she did anyway. "I guess I should be going. I have a long shift tomorrow." It seemed a woefully inadequate expression.

She walked out slowly, not glancing back, although her hand lingered on the doorknob for longer than was strictly necessary. Another night.