As usual all speech in italics is in the Old Tongue

Interlude XVII - Tel v Asmodean

The day after Tel's surrender to Rand

Tel tentatively reached out to grasp sadin. After the agonising pain that had come from his connection to the Gre… no the Dark One being cut, he'd been scared to even try for the first day. He had no idea how Lews Th, no, Rand had done it, but it was what it was. In a way it was actually very helpful. It left him with no chance of backsliding and also, he suspected, would make it harder for the Dark One to take revenge. A connection could go two ways after all.

Freedom. What a refreshing thought. Or was it freedom? He'd committed himself to something a long way from what he would have called freedom.

With a thought he seized hold of the raging torrent that was the male half of the Power, allowing only a trickle into him. The boy standing over him, distrust in his eyes and saidin filling him to bursting held Tel back from any more than that.

Saidin was as it always was, a storm of ecstatic power to be mastered and shaped, but now… He wanted to scream, to vomit, to cry. He'd thought what he'd heard about the taint was an exaggeration, but this was worse than he'd been told. Slick, oily filth oozed over him. He could taste it, feel it in every pore. How was Rand even able to tolerate this? It was horrific!

With a shudder he released saidin and met Rand's eyes. "T t that was the taint?" He couldn't believe he actually stammered. He was too thrown out of sorts by the feel of the taint to even be angry with himself for his momentary weakness.

Rand just nodded.

Fuck. Death was all he deserved, but channeling… that. Going mad or rotting to pieces. That wasn't going to happen, he couldn't allow it to happen. In a sudden movement Tel stepped close to Rand, gripping the man's arm tightly and looking straight into his eyes. He realised a moment later that he could have just gotten himself killed, but that didn't feel important right now.

"Rand, listen to me very carefully, this is possibly the most important piece of advice I'll ever give you." He spoke each word carefully, emphasising how absolutely, deadly serious he was. "I know you don't trust me and you have no reason to, but please, take my advice on this, I beg you. I want you to go to Taija, right now. You need to ask her exactly what it was she did before the War of Power. Make her talk about it, pretend to be curious, tell her you saw it in a dream, I don't care how, just get her talking! Then you are going to tell her about the taint, every horrible detail that you can. I'm sure you've been telling her it's not that bad. Grinning and bearing it and pretending to save her sensibilities. It's what I would have done." Wasn't that an irony! "Don't. Make her understand in any way you can."

"Why would I do that?" Rand protested. "What's the point? It just gives her another thing to worry about and she's already struggling under everything that's happened to her. No thanks to you." He muttered the last part.

Tel shook his head suppressing a flash of anger. Rand was right. "You don't even know what you have in her." He ignored the pain at what he'd lost, no thrown away. He'd had her support once. "You do realise this is exactly the sort of thing she got a third name for? In her mid hundreds. In an obscure field. While being bad at politics. Do you even have the faintest idea how impressive that is? No, of course you don't. Look, I'll explain that properly another time, but there is no one in this Age or the last that I would rather have thinking about the problem." Rand still looked dubious. "Just go, talk to her, now. Please!"

A couple of weeks later

Tel looked defiantly up at Rand, at first meeting his eyes without flinching, but then after a second he looked down. He was trying to redeem himself, not show defiance or assert dominance. The young man was in a foul mood about something, but when Tel had asked what was wrong he'd just snapped that it was none of his business. It had rankled, but he hardly had room to complain. Rand didn't trust him and he couldn't blame him for that.

"How can I trust you?" The younger man barked. "I don't even know the half of what you've done. What I do know sickens me." He laughed humourlessly. "Yet I'm stuck here, dependent on you for my survival. Dependent on someone who betrayed their cause twice over."

Tel winced. "I've sworn to follow and obey you Rand." He knew it was inadequate as a response, his word, once a treasure he'd doled out sparingly, was worth less than mud now. So, he sighed and tamped down on the resentment bubbling up inside him. "If I was playing some kind of elaborate game, it would be a very strange one. I had you at my mercy and then I placed myself at yours. I've taught you without hesitation. You've cut me off from the G… the Dark One's protections. I can't see what I could possibly gain from this." He grimaced, "other than my faint hope of being able to make up for my crimes. Haven't I obeyed every command you've given me?"

"Hrmph," Rand grunted in response, clearly unsatisfied by Tel's answer. "And if I told you to clean my apartments using a paint brush? Would you still maintain your facade of humility?"

Anger flashed across Tel's face before he firmly strangled it. He had known this wouldn't be easy. "I would tell you that there are better uses for me and then if you nevertheless insisted, I would do it."

"Hrmph." Rand grunted again and then stalked out without another word.

Tel stood there for a moment. How dare the boy speak to him like this? And then just storm out as if Tel had caused him offence! This was more than Lews Therin at his worst! Yet it was no more than he deserved. Before the War menial labour had been a common punishment for trainee channelers, to illustrate to them that if they were going to waste their instructors' time their own would be wasted and because pointless labour was the very opposite of what it meant to be aes sedai.

He thought back to his own early education in the Power and the following years he'd spent bouncing between athletics development camps and the tutelage of various aes sedai. He'd been a headstrong youth.

It enraged him to have the reincarnation of the man he had blamed for so many of his woes speak to him like this. But. He needed to suck it up. There was no way back other than accepting the consequences of his actions. In full. Nothing else could ever be enough. If he was honest, nothing could ever be enough, but he would do what he could. He'd given up once, never again.

He was going to need to find a paintbrush. Also a bucket of water and soap. This was going to truly suck. However, Tel would be damned a second time over if he wouldn't do the best job he could do.

Another couple of weeks later

"So that's enough about logistics, I can see your eyes are glazing over." Tel ignored Rand's scowl. "If you're feeling well enough rested, we can work on fine control in channeling. You've got more than enough Power, but someone who knows what they're doing will just out spin you with no trouble. The first exercise I want to work on helps develop faster spinning skills. We'll combine it with a new web as well. It's pushing far too fast really, but I think you can handle it."

Shortly after Cadsuane's fight with Taija

Tel was angry beyond reason. Did they not know what Taija must be going through?! Obviously he avoided her as much as he could, but he kept his ears open, saw her occasionally from a distance. She was a wreck. This gang of teenagers might not be able to read her, most of them had the emotional intelligence of a spoon, no that was unfair, but they were still basically children with all that entailed.

Rand had forbidden him from speaking about her, which didn't help. He could see why. The boy wanted to protect her from him, but it still rankled.

"How did you allow this to happen al'Thor? What were you thinking?" He was almost spitting with rage, his promised subservience all but forgotten. "Can't you see what a mess she's in and then you let your pet aes sedai loose on her?!"

Fortunately Rand chose to overlook his disobedience of the command not to speak about Taija, he seemed nearly as angry as Tel in fact, although his anger was directed elsewhere. "How was I flaming meant to know she'd do something so insane? She bloody well decided Taija couldn't channel and went to teach her some discipline. I put a stop to it as soon as I found out!"

"Lucky for her that you did from what I heard," Tel couldn't help but feel a bit of pride, misplaced as it was given everything that had happened between them. Beating the absolute shit out of what was apparently the top aes sedai of this age, who had a paralis net no less. Taija probably didn't even know what a paralis net was. "That reminds me, we need to think of a way for you to tell Taija about Cadsuane's paralis net to make sure she knows what's going on there.

Rand nodded sourly, "of course." There was clearly more on his mind though, "it's just so hard to know what's going on in her head. She won't talk about her problems or what's bothering her and the sometimes someone just pushes her too far. I've dealt with Cadsuane, I don't think she'll be causing problems with her again." Tel wasn't so sure about that, he'd seen that kind of woman before, but he held his peace and didn't interrupt. "It's everything else though."

Well maybe here was another way that he could make himself useful to Rand and help to undo some of the pain he'd inflicted on Taija. The rage was already fading as he put his thoughts in order.

"Alright, we should probably discuss how to deal with people like Cadsuane, but first if you want to help Taija, you're going to need to understand her better. I can't tell you everything, but I've known her for a long time." He sighed. "Firstly you need to keep in mind that she's under an incredible amount of stress. She's basically lost everything, every single one of her friends has been dead for 3,000 years. Her whole civilisation, everything she knew, everything she fought for is long gone. I think it's hard to understand for someone who wasn't there."

Rand interrupted coldly, "is this a roundabout way of trying to make me feel sympathy for you? Because it won't work."

Tel shook his head stifling a flare of anger, it wasn't an unreasonable thing to say. "I made my choices and I'll pay the price for them. Taija didn't, but she's paying anyway." He took a breath and composed his thoughts again. "What this means is that she's going to be more prone to sudden bursts of emotion, whether it's anger or sadness. There isn't much that you can do about that, but there are some things…"

Tel continued with telling Rand what he could about how to work with Taija. It hurt, drawing on his memories of the fifteen years he'd spent with her, but that was no more than he deserved. At least the pain was, in a way cathartic, allowing him to do a small part to improve her life.

"… Finally, you need to keep an eye out for signs that she's hitting her limit. She will absolutely run herself into the ground and then struggle with frustration because she's not concentrating. The warning sign that you need to look out for is that she'll stop talking to anyone that she doesn't have to and just withdraw into herself as much as she can. She'll do the same when she's really concentrating on something, but then she'll often chew on her bottom lip or stick her tongue out a little and look a bit cross-eyed. Best not to bother her then. When it's stress she'll look like she's trying to curl in on herself and get snappy at small things. If that happens, the best thing to do is feed her some chocolate, give her a hug and then make her go to bed."

Tel paused, "do you have chocolate? I don't think I've seen any." He paused again, "also she's quite picky about who's allowed to touch her, so be careful with the hugs. Maybe Aleksi?"

He sighed, this was getting silly. "Look, the key point is she will absolutely work herself to the point where she forgets to eat or sleep. If she looks like she's pushing herself too hard, make sure someone brings her food and makes her eat and that she's pushed into bed each night. If you can do that she'll be alright."