Fanfic:A Second Chance/Part I
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When a covenant of Steel and Power is reforged, it is usually made stronger than the last time - forestalling it from breaking ever again.
The Power sought to devotedly continue on its path, even though it had been deserted - forelorn in the wake of death and abandonment. Unaccompanied, it held its head high and gazed straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge the lack in its heart.
The Steel was found wandering towards the furnace of the Pit of Dhoom, bereft of hope to find meaning in its solidary war. In the embrace of the scourging fires, it wished to find respite from long years of strident service by melting itself in the conflagration from which it had been forged.
Five and ten years apart, neither of them have forgotten what once was, yet both have to barter with Death in order to join again - as the trials they must endure would mould them together as one.
This is their story.
~ Respectfully brought to you by Caden Ives Gaidin & Miahala Sha'hal Sedai
"The dead cannot speak," said the highwayman in the mismatched armour. His shadowed eyes looked like holes in the moonlit surface of his features. "Give up your things and accept your ending peacefully."
"I would rather die with something you lack," rasped the man in scaled black armour quietly as he produced his maliciously long sabre. The curve of the silken mask he wore to conceal half his face was like the moon itself. His pale blonde hair hung in a thick braid down the length of his back.
"Your death is my gain." The leader began to move sideways around his prey, along with his seven companions - slowly encircling the traveller. "Until tomorrow, when we reach Shol Arbela, we will only be lacking a few wenches in our laps and a big keg of ale to wash down the meat your coin has purchased for us."
"Your confidence is misplaced," said the former Warder with a slight twinge of his mouth - a smile looking rather like a disdainful grimace. "And you fail to see my point. Rather than die in peace at the thought of you and your lot wenching away my gold, I'd rather die in honour - going down in the rain of your blood."
Harsh laughter answered the middle-aged man's words. "You surely are brave for being alone in the woods and having the ill luck to get our attention," said a smaller man wielding a pair of cruel-looking daggers. "Do you think you're some kind of hero, stranger? Heroes exist only in gleemen's tales."
Lowering his sabre in Apple Blossoms in the Wind - ready to use in a number of strike forms - he answered in cold syllables. "I have lived through stories which would make you all weep in fear."
"Oh, a celebrity, are you?" the grey-eyed leader asked in mock astonishment. "What's your name?"
Turning his blade slightly, the moonlight caught the heron at the base of the man's blade. Sharp intakes of breath and curses escaped the band of brigands. They began to stare more closely at the Blademaster that they had unknowingly stumbled upon. Instead of answering the question right away, the man reached up with his left hand and took off his mask. "It matters naught for you to know more than that I... am the face of your death." The sight of Lord Caden Ives' burned face was like a kick in the teeth to the brigands and they took a step back. In the moonlight, it looked as sinister as the face of a Myrddraal. The right half was stretched tightly against his skull, the slick skin scarred by deep rifts into the flesh. Where a jade-green eye had once been, only a lidless white orb stared back at them. His braided pale hair grew only in patches on the scarred side. "Who will be the first to die?"
The leader paused. After the initial shock had resided, he attempted a smile. In his peculiar situation, he could not afford to balk in front of his men. "You may be good, but there are eight of us. Alone, you stand little chance to win. Lay down your sword and I might just let you live through this night."
"You are mistaken, dead man," said Caden and bent his knees slightly, bracing his stance for the initial impact of fighting. "I am not alone."
Having seen a familiar face in the shadows - a face he had not seen in fifteen years - Caden just hoped she remembered him and was willing to lend him a hand...
Although the mission, such as it was, had been mostly forgotten in the wake of the Seanchan Siege, with that a thing of - unfortunately all too recent - past, Miahala was able to set herself back on the track she had been on before: the investigation of the odd, even for this area, happenings near the Blight. Considering herself something of an expert on the subject these days, it was a task that she was well suited for. And, with the reconstruction of the Tower's injuries well under way, she was glad to have a chance to get out again.
It was just her and N'dore, who was proving himself to be among the best of her warhorses from the past, and there had been many and quite a few who stood out, but he lived to his name. He danced. Moved across the ground with effortless grace whether simply traveling, or dancing the sword's edge of battle.
The two made their way carefully along the road and through Mia's mind raced the information that she had picked up along the way on this journey. It had started some time ago in Shiener and now brought her to Arafel, heading somewhat in the direction of Shol Arbela. All the reports were the same, yet different. The activities contained there in differed in details from report to report, which she picked up in the streets, from townspeople and from her own network of Eyes and Ears, but there was one singular thread that remained strikingly the same: the events were unusual, even to those living near the Blight.
Her purpose was waylaid, though.
It was not her sense of the Shadow, but some instinct within her that forced her to draw N'dore to a halt and ground him near the edge of the road as she slipped further ahead on her own.
The voices were what she heard first, and as she approached in caution and silence, she began to pick up on the words themselves. She embraced the one power, not pulling forth any weaves, but to be cautious and take use of the somewhat heightened senses that it provided for her. Without even a conscious thought, she'd pulled the knives from the sheaths on her wrists - which the Saldaean cut of the dress allowed for - and got closer.
When she got close enough to see, however, gave her pause.
Caden.
The name rushed through her mind like a chill wind and she almost could not believe her eyes, but there was no mistaking him and she heard his voice, his words, and the certainty sank deep with in her. Emotion moved under her surface, like soft waves, but she could not identify what it was, nor did she have time to. Something else roared louder, and that was the instinct to defend, protect. It was what made her a Sister of the Green Ajah, and... bond in existence or not, something still lived of it. It called out for action.
Pulling at the power inside of her, she moved her grip on the knife from hilt to blade. All her weapons were balanced for throwing. She was Saldaean to her bones.
Tried and true, she chose the weave that would rattle them, literally, but if Caden had any of the skills of the Warder in him still, and she felt certain he did, he would manage it while they would have trouble. She wove and manipulated earth, causing a slight rumble in the ground beneath their feet. Once. Twice, a little more. Three time, a small shake. As she kept up the third, she lifted her knife her sighted the one closest to her corner of the clearing, aiming for his leg - a wound, a distraction.
With a pause for aim, she let the knife loose and waited for the chaos.
Unblinking, Caden's eyes followed the movements of the brigands while his bent legs followed the motions of the earth.
They were frightened now, disoriented and unaware that they had been momentarily spared. This gave Caden a chance to actually look at the woman who had arrived to the moonlit glade - and their eyes locked for a brief second. Scenes of their time together in the Grey Tower rose unbidden before his vision. The moment stretched, remaining while his heart seemed to stop beating. The Bond they had shared, the lives they had taken, the ones they had saved. He remembered dancing with her the first time they met, but only in guise to approach darkfriends. He remembered her showing her scared back to ease the fact of his own.
She has not aged a day since last I saw her. She was a stunning Saldaean woman with auburn hair and smooth skin. The years had agreeably been very easy on her, while he felt like there had been a lifetime of aging on his part. Her brown eyes were fierce now, focused on their enemies - something which he should have been doing during the second he had been gazing upon her with his good eye.
Now, he turned the orb of his dead white eye towards the highwaymen. "Courage is fear when it has said its prayers," he mumbled, citing the Vaniral family motto like a ritual before each fight. The void and the flame made him one with Miahala Sedai, one with the surrounding enemies, one with the moonlit grass and the shadows of the forest. Time was a relative thing, and his enemies were still stumbling, or trying to rise to their feet. The one Miahala had injured was still lying on the ground. Caden could not even remember when he had taken the first step.
Everything moved at once. Distance closed to no distance at all and blood gushed into the chill night.
Even though it was not, his movements looked effortless and almost indifferent. In reality, his movements was an exactitude through practice and experience. Over the years - both in the Tower's service as well as outside it - Caden's skills with the sword had boiled down to the essential core. By now, there was no hesitation, no stray breaths, no error in balance and no room for mistakes. All unnecessary movements had been filtered away. Distilled into its pure and true art form, his swordsmanship allowed his sword to move exactly where it should go, without delay.
However, against these multiple opponents, that might not be enough.
The moonlight had turned everything black and white, and Caden stained the perfect balance with bright smears of red - shattering the air with the screams of his enemies. Like a ghost he passed between his enemies, his long blade striking like a viper in a white nightmare. Somewhere along his way, he sustained a cut across his left arm, digging through scaled armour and into flesh, but the void shut the pain from his blank mind. Subconsciously, he knew that he would not have survived this fight if it had not been for Miahala's unexpected appearance.
While parrying a series of overhead strikes from the opponent in front of him, he suddenly stepped inside the man's guard and shoved half the length of his sabre through his chest. The man's eyes were bared white all around his irises, not truly understanding that he was dying. Caden twisted the blade around and pulled it out horizontally while kneeling down - turning the movement into a sweeping strike against a second target. The first man spun half a turn before landing in the grass while the second man was cut across his unguarded midsection - being disemboweled before understanding that he had been struck.
Death was present among the combatants, laughing; reveling in the harvest of souls.
Time sped up.
Time stopped.
When they had stopped being afraid, or at least had stopped giving in to it, some of the men had come for Mia, although they did not quite realize what it was they were up against. Her hold over the One Power gave her a sense of everything around her and like a creature of the forest, she could almost smell their fear on the air. In some ways, she reveled in it. In some ways, it repulsed her.
She danced back in to the shadows of the woods, her dark green cloak blending with the night as she reached down and pulled one of the knives from her boots. Mia was nothing if not prepared. The blades glinted in the moonlight as she wove her way through the trees, knowing them almost as well as she knew the ones that surrounded the Tower while they stumbled after her, intent.
Two were after her... Another had been felled by her first throw. That left at least five to Caden, but the rumbling of the ground put them at disadvantage and before she melted back, she had seen his first volley and remembered with exquisite detail the bladesman that he was.
It had not just been for him that had released a catch of memories. In an instant that blinded emotion, she had seen the dance. Felt the inward trembling that came of her showing him her own scars, as well as the heat from the anger that he had shown at the time - not anger at her, but at the fact that it had happened. The cold of the snow that day in the mountains. Their bonding, the desperation... It all rushed in to her, crashing and cascading. She did not know what turning of the Wheel brought this upon them, but what a strange and interesting turn it was.
The first one was not very bright. His movements were brash, desperate because he was trying to over-come ego and fear. She was able to creep around behind him and cut his throat. In all her years, she'd taken many lives and it affected her none. It affected her completely. She felt blood run over one hand, but she wiped it on her cloak and moved back amongst the trees. The ground continuing to rumble around her at unpredictable intervals.
Her misfortune was that one was not so foolish.
His misfortune was that he underestimated her.
Coming from behind, he had actually grabbed her hair, which being to her waist made for a long braid. At the sudden snapping back of her neck, a dancer's grace kept her standing and she moved back with the movement, colliding against him as he brought the knife to her throat. "Fitting," he hissed, right as the blade touched her skin...
Through her flowed the power, and through him flowed the tendril weaves of fire and water. Electrocution.
The scream was almost inhuman, but it was wholly such. He crumbled behind her and she danced out of his grasp before the chance of it flowing back to her came. Briefly, she touched her neck and found a sliver of blood, but nothing to be of a concern. She pushed forward again, making for the clearing and whatever was left of the brigand's force.
Void of mind, he was the lord of the moment.
In the instances that made out the fighting and the quakes that threatened to ruin his balance, he saw the image of the leader attacking him with his wickedly curved falchion. Caden raised his sabre in time to deflect the blow, but he had to roll his entire body with the strike in order to protect his blade from shattering under the massive blow. The falchion had that quality as a weapon, and the Blademaster was aware what would have happened if he had blocked it squarely; in a rain of steel shards, he had been cleaved in two from shoulder to hip. Extending his legs, he leaped away at the end of his turning motion and rolled away from the leader before he had time to raise his weapon again for a second blow. While rolling, he kept his sabre horizontal and away from the ground.
Rising to his feet, he turned and met the leader's second advance head-on. The strike fell, and he raised his own blade in a diagonal parry of his own while stepping in to the right. The man's falchion was led of to the side - sparks flying in the shrieking of steel against steel - and then his own sabre came around in a quick circular strike, falling down on the unprotected neck.
Head and body and blade landed heavily on the ground. At the same time an inhuman cry rose from the forest.
Caden spared the twitching legs of the decapitated body a lingering glance and slowly turned around to make sure Miahala was safe. The cry had not sounded like her. She left the clearing, luring them out into the shadows. As he turned - he realised too late that the man who she had injured in the leg had regained his footing and was throwing himself against him in a desperate attack - screaming at the top of his lungs.
Being slammed into from his blind side, Caden didn't have the time to react properly and he felt the adamant length of a dagger grind itself into his scaled black armour - underneath a row of metal discs.
Landing heavily in the grass and after instinctively pushing the brigand's body away from him, he thought he had been mortally wounded. He couldn't breathe properly and felt a flutter of panic in his chest - the void and flame shuddering. He hurriedly rolled sideways to his feet and ran a cold hand across his left side. No blood. His single green eye found the attacker awkwardly getting up on his injured leg and suppressed a shiver of dread. I was fortunate. I merely got my breath knocked out of me.
Hurriedly, he closed the distance to the injured man with the dagger and got to him before he had regained his balance. Hooking his ankle against a leg, Caden swept the brigand's feet out from under him - making him fall on his stomach again. Reversing the grip of his two-handed sabre - Caden hissed between his gritted teeth and drove it down violently between the man's shoulder blades. The sabre skewered him and continued a foot down into the ground - impaling the heart in the progress. There was no scream, only a rattling breath released while the limbs settled on the ground.
Putting his foot on the man's back, the Blademaster retrieved his blade with a mighty yank and looked over his shoulder towards where the Aes Sedai had gone. The former Warder found that Miahala was standing at the end of the clearing, twenty feet away. He saw that she was bleeding from the neck, but since she was still standing, he supposed it was just a shallow cut.
He was injured himself, but that was a small fact - irrelevant. Blood trickled down his sleeve from the cut in his arm and the inside of his scaled armour was wet down the leg. He could not even remember who had cut him across the thigh, but it might have been the leader's first blow had caught him as he rolled away. Where the dagger of the last man had almost pierced him through, he was likely to have a big bruise. Moreover, fatigue after the fighting crept through him now as well, his joints acting and his heart beating fast in his ears.
The shadow of death had lifted from the clearing, leaving two alive where there had been ten. The smell of blood and guts was all that remained.
Limping over to Miahala, Caden shook the blood and dirt from his blade and sheathed it in one fluid motion. There was no room for smiles or pleasantries. "You are injured," he rasped. It was the former Warder in him speaking, the concern for his past Bondmate coming alive on instinct. "Where is Toseth? He should be protecting you."
Realising his own words, he glanced about briefly. There was no one there, and judging from the silence that had settled over the scene, there was no one around for miles around them. "I see. Forgive me, you are alone," he concluded. Not sure what he should say as the realisation of her missing Warder settled, he threaded carefully. She saved me. Thank her, you moron. His words came out stiff, since he did not know what to say. "Thank you, Aes Sedai. I get to see another morning thanks to you... Yet... what are you doing here, of all places?"
And why are you alone?
It was almost like a Dream state, the feeling that surrounded her as she stepped from edge of the clearing, out of the darkest shadows, and moved towards him. Caden Bloody Ives. Who would've guessed it? Her former warder approached her and they stood before one another. Her eyes rarely blinked and she favored him with a steady gaze. She listened to him speak. Heard the questions, realizations, further questions. All good ones to ask, of course, but that was not quite where her mind rested.
With the One Power still flowing through her, the untamed crashing of water on rocks, she said nothing but took a step forward and lifted her hand to touch his face and weave the threads of delving through him, touching and exploring the cuts and bruises that he had gotten in this fight, the one that lay spread out beneath their feet.
That knowledge now at hand, the threads were changed easily to that of healing. She was no Yellow, but was fairly well talented at it. It had benefited her more often than she cared to think about as a Green. Didn't need to be a Yellow to be around people who needed healing quite often, and if memory served, Caden had been one of those people more than once. Her mind's eye watched the threads knit together the cuts and smoothen the bruises. Her actual eyes remained on his. Her demeanor and gaze had grown more outwardly intense in the passing years and she cared not to smooth that out.
When she was done, she tilted her head slightly to one side and gave a faint smile, then removed her hand and took a step back, allowing him the moments always needed following Healing.
Then she spoke, "It was a strange turning of the Wheel that has me here tonight, Gaidin," she spoke softly, her voice smooth and a little amused, in some ways. She was still surprised to have seen him here at all. To have seen him ever again. "I am riding through the Borderlands, Shienar and Arafel at least, studying odd occurrences along the Blight border," she explained simply, turning around and giving dancer's steps to walk her boots through the chaos, locating the man with her dagger in his leg.
"As for Toseth," she said, pulling the blade free. "He retired. Did not feel he could afford adequate protection any longer, so I released him from his obligations," she continued, then added, softer. "Not too long after you left." Turning back as she wiped the blade clean on the inside lower hem of her cloak, she slid it back in to the sheath on her wrist, hidden in the sleeve. "I will be quite open to say I am surprised to see you," she went on, her face its usual smooth, impassive stone, but something moved through her eyes because she let it. "But I am glad to have done so, to assist in this moment, if afforded nothing else."
When the sensation of ice and fire coursing through his body faded - leaving him chilled and heated at the same time - the boiled leather underneath his armour creaked as he took a deep breath.
He regarded this woman he had know for several years as an equal, sharing the same goals in life and the same tenacity to carry them through. But when it came to her protection - Caden knew that she managed quite well on her own, yet nevertheless he felt a fleeting sensation of anger at discovering her travelling close to the Blight without the protection that her status as Aes Sedai and Head of the Green Ajah demanded. Was she still Ajah Head? He couldn't know. Regardless, he knew that such a feeling came from his old life, when he had spent those years doing just that - protecting her. Just as quickly as the irritation at having spent so much effort and time shielding her was rendered redundant in knowing that there was no one there now whom had taken up his duty after he left - he settled himself and reminded her about a trivial yet conclusive detail. "I'm merely Caden Ives these days, Miahala Sedai. The title Gaidin I left in your study when I departed for these lands."
But her words - which she knew how to use well enough to out-play any nobleman of the Cairhienin court - suggested hidden meanings which he picked up with a faint smile of his own. "I have little enough to offer you. While I was gone, I spent my years reclaiming what was rightfully mine. It has been a long and tedious struggle, but the name I was born with has now been rewarded the respect it was due. I am now Lord Caden of the House of Ives." The smile faded along with the light tone of his rough voice. "Would that it was my obligations as a Lord that hindered me from returning to the Tower, but I have relinquished all I hold to a steward in my place. He holds all power while I aim..."
He paused, but he knew that he could just as well share what he was to say. "While I aim to end what I begun even before coming to the Grey Tower. In reclaiming my birthright, there is naught else for me to do than to end my life doing what I have always believed in." He turned away from her and looked northwards, lifting his mismatched eyes above the treetops. With the burned side of his face towards Miahala, the crater where his ear had been was laid bare underneath patches of pale hair - tied back with a leather cord. His gaze was fixed against the horizon, his body completely still.
There, the Mountains of Dhoom loomed against the obsidian sky, accented indistinctly by stark moonlight. There awaited the end. All answers and the end of questions, closure finally at hand. "I have suffered enough under the shadow looming over these nations. I will go to the heart of the problem. Because..." In the lack of words, there was plenty to find. "I need respite."
He continued looking at his destination, spelled by the fact that it was finally time.
Standing in front of him, her impassive expression remained steady on him, even when he looked away. After all these years, the sight of the scarred side of his face still held no shock nor disgust for her. It was what it was, and it was a part of him. No, the flash flood of emotion that cast through her behind her cool exterior was something else all together.
Anger.
The memories of all the work that they had done together moved through her mind. They had struck blow against blow upon the Shadow and its followers. Perhaps they had not been able to affect any changes so major as to move the world, but Mia believed - and would always believe - that they had made a mark, a dent, in all of it and she would not look upon it any differently. She continued that work now, as best she could.
And now he was going to throw it all away. Respite. Yes. She could understand that. Light, how she could understand that. Miahala had been doing this for a very long time, and she had no plans to stop any time soon - no matter how hard it got. Or how much of it she had to do alone, she would move forward. Simply because it had to be done, and it was what she was.
"Do you honestly believe that self obliteration is all that is left, or is it just an easier path?" she asked softly, without obvious emotion. Only those who knew her very well may be able to hear the tendrils of anger, steel, that wove their way through the words.
Hearing her words, he closed his eyes and sighed.
Turning back, his face was drawn, looking worn with age in the moonlight. Conflicting emotions was playing behind his good eye. He took a moment to consider his answer. In a way, if there was anyone else in the world he had obligations left to besides himself, it was the woman before him. "I have given the course I took in the Tower many years of my life. For what?" he rasped hoarsely. He took a step away from her. "Honour? Glory? Titles? In the end, that's just winds and words. How can any of those things help me when I stand face to face with death? Did I do it for the Amyrlin Seat and the M'Hael? For the yards and the future of our common struggle? In the end, we are nothing more than the results we bring. Our actions are those who will live on afterwards. What did my time there give me in real? Suffering. A realisation that I could no nothing more than to scratch at the looming iceberg of the Shadow. Pain. A ruined self-image. Bloody ashes! All good it did me was to ruin me, and that made me realise that how much we even try, there is no extent to where we can push ourselves that will truly make a difference. I lost my bloody face in the process, and what good did that do, truly? You can't tell me that the Black Ajah and the shadowsworn are all gone from the Tower, can you? When is enough enough for you?"
Caden took a deep breath and stalked over to the head of the brigand leader. Closing his fist in the head's hair, he held it up to Miahala. "Right now. This man is at peace, more so than I ever will be while still drawing breath. I swore, in my ignorant youth, that I would free mankind from the oppression of the Shadow. How easy it was back then, when you thought you could rewrite history at the turn of your hand. I tell you, I have come to realise that that isn't the case."
Dropping the head back to the ground. He gritted his teeth from saying more. All the pent up emotions he had felt were welling out too quickly. He was not at all angry with Miahala, so there was no need to drive the argument harder. "Do you really think that me staying in this world will achieve any kind of result? Tell me so, for I would gladly like to hear what."
"We are not put to walk this ground to be at peace," Mia said softly, her eyes wildly flickering in the dim light. She stepped closer. "Nothing you ever say will convince me that what you and I did meant nothing. What if everyone of us who tried, who fought the shadow for what little we can do, what if everyone decided this was all there could be and threw their lives to the fire. There would be no one left, Caden Ives. I do not believe in giving up, and I do believe that even if I can only help to hold the Shadow at bay, then that is enough."
She walked closer to him, her gaze fierce and gentle in equal turns. Lifting one hand, she ran slender, cool fingers down the scarred side of his face, contact made but barely touching as they ran the length, stopping at his chin. "Do you honestly believe that this is what there is to you?" she asked softly, "No, Caden. I have never believed that, and I did believe in you." She touched his chest, over his heart, then stepped back in a quick movement.
Folding her hands in front of her, she looked at him again. "We do not hold the committment to one another we once did, don't think I do not understand that I have no influence over any longer. You can do as you will, and I know you will. I just cannot allow frustration or despair, which yes I do feel often, to move me from the path I set myself on, that you were a part of for a long while. I think we did good work, for our parts, in that time and I will never think otherwise."
Miahala's touch was like a cold shower against the hot anger in his chest. The pent-up frustration was shed in a different light; a light he had tried to shine upon it himself but failed to see the many facets of the problem.
The problem was that the truth was more simple than he had reckoned. We are what we are. And yes, we are defined by the choices we make. He was thinking that the results mattered more, while Miahala had come to understand - with her extended knowledge of their calling - that it mattered more that one tried. Looking down upon his bloodstained hands, Caden saw the tools he had used in their struggle. When the day was done, it was the day's labour that mattered. But if no one did the job, nothing would be done at all.
Caden turned and looked at the mountains to the north again. There lay one answer, while Miahala presented the harsh truth. The malevolence awaiting him beyond there was the place were things would come to and end. Therefore, he had wanted to take the easy way, just to end the struggle that had made him suffer so. Is it true that I don't know happiness because I failed to understand my calling? Is it that simple?
No, it wasn't as simple as that, but it was closer to the truth than what he had known to that point. His eyes were stinging, and for the first time since after he had come to realise that his face could never be healed, a single tear escaped down his unburned face.
"I'm a soldier," he rasped turning back to her. "In the age we live in, it seems that means I run and fight with false shadows." He placed one hand on the pommel of his sabre. "Actually, we are both soldiers, you and I. No matter how many threads of deception are woven together, the truth we bring illuminates the face of Light. Either we stand, or fall. We die, or rise up again."
He shook his head. "This is hard for me Aes Sedai. Forgive me." She was asking him to turn back from his path. But what would he do? Should he live out his days in his mansion, rotting away in idleness? Never. That is not, and has never been, and option. She knew that, he would never abide it. Gritting his teeth, he brushed away the tear in irritation. "I'll save my tears for the day when the pain if far, far behind. Now... I will take my place - fall in line - as the soldier I am."
But did she still want him, after he had left her once for his own ambitions? It's time to make the sacrifice, he thought and stepped away from the mountains, standing before her, and to remain with you. Until the end. This time, there was nothing between him and the fight she was leading, a fight he had shared before. The moment had such a weight of finality that he had to swallow once, relinquishing his own wishes of respite till the day when it was finally time. The Wheel would decide his fate now. He was left to his destiny without turning back. "Is my place still at your side, Aes Sedai?"
A small smile pulled at the corners of her mouth and her eyes shone softly. You are still the man I thought you to be, she thought with a quiet sense of relief that time had not changed him so much. That they had not spent all this becoming people so vastly different from who they once were, from each other.
The relief and quiet gladness also came from another source: that his question posed a simple result, that was of immense feeling and importance to her. He was offering her the chance to not have to continue this alone. She had spent so much time alone in her life that she was weathered in the task, did not flinch from doing anything on her own, but the relief was immeasurable when she found someone who would be by her side in it, that she could trust upon. There had not been many in her years, but Caden had been one of them.
She surprised herself to find the well of emotion inside of her, what had been ferocity and anger and gentleness before, now turning in to something different all together, that was thick in her mind and throat. Of course, Mia did not give in to it, she had learned how to manage such things, but the struggle itself caught her by surprise.
There was relief in that he had listened to her, and considered what she said and he would not be casting himself upon death, upon the blade of the blight, which had taken so many, so much... from her. So self-centered, Miahala? she whispered to herself in her mind.
Well... she was only human. She spent much time looking at the world and things all around her for their own sake, and what she could give of herself for others, for the causes, but she could not deny that sometimes she did think of things in terms of herself and she was glad that this strange weave in the pattern that put them in the same place, the same, like this was not about to just take him off again and send him to his own destruction in the wretched place.
"It is," she said, very softly. "If you wish it to be."
Realising that he had not done things properly, he decided to clarify himself and produced his sword. He knew what the single response was that would make her certain of his resolve.
Kneeling before her in the moonlit grass, he held his sword level before him upon his opened hands. The blade was still coated with blood at some parts, but it didn't matter. What he was about to say was not said lightly by any man. This was to be the third time he pledged himself, and now he knew for a certainty that it would be the last time. In a firm yet husky voice, he began his bedle at the scene for their battle - the dead serving as their witnesses. "By my dead mother's name, I will draw as you say 'draw' and sheathe as you say 'sheathe'. By my dead ancestors, I will come as you say 'come' and go as you say 'go'." He kissed the steel with his unburned lips and looked up at her, his double-sided face carved in granite. "By the Light and my hope of salvation, I'm yours, for I will fight by your side at any given battle."
The last time had been in desperate need for her, because she had needed his strength to survive. This time, the pledge was made directly without any other factors involved. It had not mattered the first time, but the circumstance was equally lifted from this second pledge. The sacrifice is made. I shall know respite when that day comes, not before.
Miahala breathed in slowly and then it out again. She listened to the words and wasn't quite sure she could believe what she was seeing, what she was hearing. It had all happened so suddenly. It was all so surprising. Mia let the moment swirl around her, wash over her until it felt like it was real.
Lowering herself to her knees in front of him, she smiled. It wasn't the faint sort that usual came about these days, but a simple, genuine smile.
"Our fight may not be over yet," she whispered, "But I believe that together we can do good things again." With another inhalation, she brought the Power in to her again and wove the weaves of bonding once more. In this evening, that which had been dissolved was remade. Perhaps was may have been broken could be whole again.
A single, glimmering tear streaked a pale cheek, but she paid it no heed.
The Bond, and all that it implied. It had been placed on him before - twice even - but nothing could prepare him for the extraordinary sensation. The flash of heat coursed through his body, searing him clean through. And then she returned to his senses, like volcano erupting inside him and leaving the feeling of another being in his mind. I am aware again.
When you shared the Bond with an Aes Sedai, your senses turned into something akin to a wolf's. The scent of blood and death sharpened in his nose and the leaves in the moonlit trees could be discerned one by one. The hunger that gnawed him after the Healing turned less sharp, and his mouth less dry for water. He was aware of himself on a completely different level, as he was aware of Miahala Sedai.
The feeling of her as a part of his mind was like returning home.
Unsteady after the fight and Healing already, the vertigo that hit him afterwards threatened to make him fall over, but he planted one hand in the grass to steady himself, holding his sabre to the side with the other hand. His mismatched eyes remained on Miahala, and the picture of her shifted a few times before it finally sharpened, and he found her smiling open-heartedly - a sight that gladdened his frost-coated heart. This time, the Bond was made without desperate reasons, the way it should have been made the first time if not the Black Ajah had forced it upon them.
The unburned side of his face hinted the ghost of a lop-sided smile. "Like you said the first time - after you woke up - we will be better off together than by ourselves."
He sheathed his blade by his side before rising, and then helped her to her feet with his bloody hands. "There are few times which I have considered myself fortunate, but I admit that this is such a time." Not only had he found a reason to stay alive, but he had gained a partnership he had thought he had lost for all time. The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills, yet it seemed that it had to have had a say in order for the two of them to meet gain at such a particular time. He nodded to the north. "There is much to discuss, and I think the camp I made a hundred yards that way will be better suited for conversation than this place."
"That sounds like a good idea," Miahala agreed, setting herself upright and finding that she was momentarily unsteady herself, adjusting once again the feeling of... That feeling of presence that attended a bond. It was a welcome feeling after so much time on her own. She looked up at him for several silent moments. "First I must go fetch N'dore, though. He's awaiting me on the road I was on."
Her initial instinct had been to turn and begin to head that way, but then she realized that she probably wouldn't be making the walk alone, and in the past that might've made her unhappy... as though she were being stifled and her ability to be independent were being refuted, but at that moment, it didn't feel that way. In fact, it felt comforting.
Turning, she paused to allow for them to fall in step and then she began walking. There were many things that she wanted to say, but none of them would now come to bear. It was a strange feeling. They slipped through the trees, coming roughly in the direction that she'd come and that was about the time they passed the body of the man she'd electrocuted. Steps slowed and she glanced up to catch the inquiring glance.
"I don't like men putting knives to my throats," she said with a somewhat flat expression, though she found something morbidly amusing about the moment she stood in - perhaps it was fatigue - but she managed to keep it to herself.
After seeing the man lying on the ground, still letting out tendrils of smoke from his clothes and mouth, Caden found himself surprised at the deadly force which an Aes Sedai in actuality presented. He knew he had been away from the Tower too long to let something like that catch him by surprise, but the sight made him recollect all that he had seen from before - and reminded him that he was the lesser deadly force in their covenant of Power and Steel. Leaving the man behind, Caden glanced back before reaching the road.
Reaching the small road, the newly bonded Gaidin waited while Miahala proceeded ahead to her mount. She took the reins and Caden turned on his heel to lead the way to the camp he had barely begun to prepare before the brigands had entered the forest and chanced upon him. It was not far away, and he picked a path which would let Miahala lead her mount through the undergrowth without hindrance.
Arriving, Caden's old stallion Winterbourne lifted his head to scrutinise the new visitors. Winterbourne's coat had now turned completely white since he had left the Tower. Many years ago, he had been charcoal with white dapples falling down his sides like snow. The proud and intelligent animal stood to the side of the small campfire, which was yet to be lit. The saddlebags lay in a heap beside it.
Caden sat down to resume his fire-making like he had not slain six men and become Bonded with his old Aes Sedai since he had been interrupted. Only his eyes following Miahala as she lead her mount into the camp showed where his mind truly was. "Are you hungry? I don't have much else than oatcakes and salted meat since I travel light, but I think I can find some mulled wine to celebrate the occasion."
Leading N'dore to a different side of the camp from Winterbourne, Mia could not help but give the older horse a smile. She remembered him. Mia remembered horses often enough in the ways that most people remembered other people. She remembered them, too, but she was born and bred in Saldaea. It was still her blood, no matter how long she remained away from it.
The Aes Sedai grounded N'dore away from the other steed, as the stallion did not know Winterbourne and she didn't feel like getting the high energy-high spirited steed used to him. It was simply safer to keep them apart.
As she worked, she could feel Caden's gaze upon her, but she finished the task before she responded. Speaking to N'dore in the Old Tongue, she gave him a gentle scratch on the forehead and he lowered his massive head to her. Closing her eyes, she leaned her head against his and she spoke a few more words, then turned away.
"I'm not hungry, but thank you," she said as she removed the saddlebags and set them on the ground near by. She would perhaps remove his tack later, depending on how the timing went. "As for the wine, if you have some then I will not refuse it," she replied, walking to his side and smoothly lowering herself to her knees, a seat beside him.
Mia smoothed her dress' skirt over her legs, pulling an errant strand of long hair that she just noticed loose behind her ear. "I must say," she began again, looking at the fire that he was working on. "As years pass, I realize the importance of saying what you think when the time comes to you," she mused, then lifted her head enough to settle blue-green eyes on him. "So, I hope you'll forgive the sentimentality when I say that I have missed you, Caden Ives."
Unbuckling the flaps of his saddlebags, Caden calmly proceeded to withdraw his wineskin from the contents inside. "As you remember, I am not much for sentimentality. However, I forgive you. And likewise, Aes Sedai, I have missed you too," he rasped and gave her another of his faint lop-sided smiles. He placed the wineskin between them and continued to produce two large cups in thick porcelain. He couldn't remember where he had come across them, but they were probably Arefelin. They displayed a faded cross-hatch pattern on the outside, but the inside was well-tended and clean.
Giving her one of them, he placed the other one at the side and continued to prepare the fire. On a more serious note, he added, "It's lonely to prepare meeting your death. You exclude everyone. In a sense, you seize to live before dying." The flames had begun to spread over the dry wood and he blew some air at them with his unburned lips. "The Bond now feels... like a blessing, to know that someone else is always there with you. I will never be so bereft of everything but my own misery again. I will always feel you there, inside my mind, and know why I must carry on."
Turning to her again, he looked into her eyes, wondering. Has she been alone in her struggle as long as I have? Realising that wasn't probably the case - since she had other companions in the Green Ajah - he still knew that she must have missed having a Warder by her side, since she had lost them over and over again and chosen to be without one for so long. Had she been afraid of taking yet another one? "I am guessing now," he rasped in low syllables, choosing to follow the sentimental path of conversation that she had taken and also trying to overcome his own nature of shying away from such talk. "And forgive me if I'm wrong, but it must have been hard to continue alone after you released Toseth from his service by your side. The Light knows it was hard to leave you behind to do what I had to do."
The fire sparked once as it began growing, coming to life. Fire had always struck Mia as being alive. It lanced through her when she took the One Power in to her and utilized the threads of the element. In the camp fire before her, it grew... it breathed... it danced. The light from it flickered over her face, warming her. She felt the cold, she felt the heat, but time and the ability to step away from it with the power trained her to not feel it most of the time, but she felt it now.
She could not stop it, without the assistance of a weave, but she did not want to. All she did was allow the shivering light to move through and around her eyes as she stared, unblinking.
"We have all had to do hard things," Mia said, her tone shifting back in to something flat, less impressed with emotions. The tone of it deepened a little. "I became used to being alone a long time ago. No, it has not been easy, but there are few things in this life that are." She fell silent then, and felt strong emotions continue to flow through her, much like a river through its ravine.
Miahala just let it do as it would.
"I had almost forgotten what the bond feels like," she whispered then, as she had almost forgotten. She realized more keenly then, in that moment, than she had in all the time that had passed that in the releasing of Caden's and Toseth's bonds to her in so short a succession that she had fairly well given up on the idea of every bonding again. She had resigned herself to the idea that she was only destined to fight alone. Two warders in the grave. Two having requested to leave. It seemed her fate, didn't it.
But now... She was uncertain what she believed. Finally, she turned her head to face him again. "It was hard for us both, but all too often hard things need to be done, so they are done."
Caden had finished with the fire - making it stir enough to support itself - and took up the wineskin to fill their cups. Fire in itself had been a though phobia for him to overcome during the years. Right after he had been burned, he could barely stand being in the same room as a lit fireplace - now, he could sit by a campfire if he just kept himself from looking straight at it for a longer period of time. If his mind ventured into the past in recollection of the fire that had ruined him, he might suffer the same unease as he did before, but avoiding the alluring flames had become habit after long years of travelling alone.
After filling their cups with the mulled wine, Caden put the wineskin down and looked out into the night. "Hardships are - like you say - a part of life. But so are the rare moments of exultation. So in this rare moment of such," he rasped and looked back to her, "I propose a toast."
He raised his cup with his calloused hand. "To reunions, to life and to an ongoing battle - together." He drank like he always drank, taking two healthy swallows and keeping a mouthful of the third to swirl around in his mouth. The taste of it washed away the bile in his mouth after the battle, but he felt that he should be eating instead of drinking after the Healing he had received.
Slim fingers curled around the smoothness of the cup and she lifted it as well, a smile forming on her lips. "This is one of those moments," she agreed softly. "And I am glad of it. I will toast to that." She paused, considering, before continuing. "I also toast to the second chances that the Wheel grants us."
Her eyes remained observant, intense, by nature, and it was no different as they rested on the man sitting beside her as she lifted the cup to her lips and took a small drink of the wine. It was good, and had been a while since she really had a chance to have a drink, and have the time to consider enjoying it.
Caden seemed much the same, yet much changed since they had last seen each other. It was a reflection she could not help making, given the moment they found themselves in. It was hard to define. Much like the fact that she found herself changed as well, but could not exactly say what it was that had altered.
"My business in the Borderlands is almost done for the moment," she said just before taking another sip and looking in to her cup. "I was then planning to head back to Tower and see how the rebuilding is coming along." She paused, glancing over at him again. "I suppose you have not heard much news of the Tower in your time here," she mused.
From there, she gave him a brief rendering of the events of the Seanchan Siege and her part in it - defending the battlements, the sortie to take back the captured sisters, and then the rest. Her tone was quiet, bland once again, and she gave the explanation in short terms, for it was not something she wished to dwell upon.
"Rebuilding is coming along well, though," she concluded. "Which was why I was able to depart for this trip." Another faint smile. "A small twist of the pattern, as it were. Much like the twist that prevented this trip and kept me at the tower when the Siege began, so that I might assist in her defense."
While Miahala recited the story of the Siege, Caden listened in silence while he prepared his travelling ration of oatcakes and dried meat, eating it methodically without joy. Not just because of the poor food, but because of what he was hearing. The Seanchan, he thought with a bitter taste in his mouth, so they have reached as far into the mainland as the Mountains of Mist. They were a hard folk from across the sea, believing they were entitled to these lands because of the yore Arthur Hawkwing. Brilliant strategists, he had heard, and with tools the nations on this side of the sea lacked. He had heard of their winged and walking beasts, not relishing the prospect of leading battles against such. Even if he was a renowned strategist of war, he would be hard pressed against such a foe. Moreover, they enslaved Aes Sedai to fight on their side. That, by itself, was reason enough for him to loath their kind, even though their ambition was indeed similar to what his own had been when he reclaimed the Lordship of the House of Ives.
After offering Miahala more wine, he washed the last of his meal down with a few mouthfuls from his own cup. "Although I'm sad to hear of all the losses of life, and gladdened that we prevailed and sent them off, I'm equally grateful that the Wheel made it so that you came here in the right time." Caden turned the cup in his hands, realising that he had swiftly shifted into talking about the Tower as if he belonged to it. It was a good sign that he had done the right thing in listening to Miahala's plea.
Looking at her, a thought struck him. "Does your war against Shadow allow you a man who's waiting for you?" She was a beautiful woman and he was sure she had suitors even though the fact that she was Aes Sedai might scare some of them away. The reason, he thought, for asking her was that he needed to know how he could protect her best. If he need to protect a dear one to Miahala as well, so that agents of Shadow could not blackmail her into their bidding by threatening his life, he needed to make some arrangements and take certain precautions to ensure the man's safety while he bodily protected his Aes Sedai.
His own life had been bereft of any particular loved one since Llewellyn and he had parted. His appearance did little to ease the facts that he was older and furthermore less inspired to see such aspects in life. His ambitions had swallowed him whole the past years, leaving room in his heart for little else, especially not a woman to distract him.
Sipping at the wine, Mia gave a wry, rueful smile. "No one waits for me," she replied evenly, then glanced side long at him. "There has not been any one, of that sort, in my life since Seth moved on. When I dissolved the bonds, there were all dissolved." These things were said in simple sincerity and without rancor. "I have been quite alone these past years." No trace of bitterness could or would be heard in her voice, for it was that stating of a simple face and one that she had accepted.
It had been over a decade, by her reckoning now. Not that she kept count, of course, but she was a passionate creature by nature, so somewhere in the back of her mind a note was kept. When she was younger, suitors were easy to find even though she did not look for them, and even as an Aes Sedai. She did not *look* like one then, but as the years moved on, the agelessness of her features grew little by little and she more and more looked the part.
She did not have the desire to pretend to be other than she was simply to not be alone, in that manner. Would she have liked the chance? Of course. She was who and what she was, and Aes Sedai or not, she was a woman. Still. Even those who had no problems with Aes Sedai were nervous of her, her history and what power she might have. Or they simply assumed she did not care for such things.
Now and then, she indulged in a night out, pretending - in a way - to be other than she was, but it never lasted longer than a night of wine, and dance, for she would not hide herself for longer than that.
The sudden loneliness and longing were pushed far to the back of her mind, escaping for the length of a sigh before she replied to him. "So, my Warder, you need not worry about any... extraneous concerns," she said, assuming the reason that he had asked and answering it.
Hearing her answer, he felt relieved. In which ways, he could not tell for himself. It was just the relief of not needing to add another factor to the protection of his Aes Sedai, wasn't it? Frowning in thought leading to no answer, Caden swallowed another mouthful of wine.
Shifting the subject to something with more urgent need of attention, Caden offered Miahala more wine if she wanted it before getting to his feet. He dropped his heavy cloak next to his saddlebags and began to unfasten the parts of his armour. "So, what about your mission here in the Borderlands?" Lifting off the dented plates his shoulder-pads; he proceeded to drop the scaled armour of his arms on top of his cloak. His worn leather shirt was red down the side of his left arm where he had been cut. "You spoke earlier of odd occurrences along the Blight border. Have you come to understand what has happened since you mean to return to the Tower soon?" While asking his question, Caden unbuckled the last strap that held the chest and back of his scaled armour together. He disentangled himself with practiced care and placed the larger piece of armour on top of the two smaller ones.
While listening to her answer, he walked away to where his waterskin lay. He grabbed the hem of his leather shirt and pulled it off, baring his sweaty and bloody upper body to the night air. It was made out of reflected moonlight and shadows, criss-crossed with fine lines of scars - while about half of them were rougher with pockmarks of stitching running along them. The cut across his left arm was nowhere to be seen though, even though the dry blood remained down its length. Taking up the waterskin from the ground, he began to wash the blood away along with sweat and dirt.
Although she hadn't been going to at first, Mia decided for a little more wine. She sensed a notable reaction from Caden when she said what she had, but it was so long since she'd had a Warder - or so it seemed - she wasn't entirely sure what it was. Curious, she thought to herself, but did not let her mind wander.
Miahala lifted her eyes from her wine cup and thoughtfully, they followed the Gaidin's movements. He still moved like a Brother of Battle, there was no denying that. "I have yet to solve the mystery," she answered, her mouth forming words but her thoughts only half following them. Some floated one way, others moved around her words, and more still considered...
What they considered was that after her own fight, she was probably not wearing the cleanest of garments. Briefly, she glanced at herself. It was negligible, she figured, and would see to it later. As years passed, she cared less for impressions and only necessity. She had never been a vain creature, though occasionally had suffered her own moments of vanity.
It would seem that this was one, for she felt the desire to see to it sooner, but it wasn't the time. She sipped some more wine. "I was actually not headed back to the Tower, when I came upon you. I was headed for Shol Arbela, or that general vicinity and to head to the Tower after that. I may stem the research, though, for this has not been fruitful and I find myself... filled with a longing to see the Tower again, sooner than planned."
She let the words drift off, for what was needed to be said was said and anything else on the topic would be superfluous, and although she could let words flow as well as anyone, she did appreciate the economy of them as well. She glanced briefly in to her cup and then up again with a slight, considerate smile. "It has not been so long. If you would care for assisting in cleansing the blood off, I know something of the task," she offered simply.
Turning his shoulder to look back at her briefly, he nodded. "My thanks," he rasped and gave up scrubbing the dried blood with his fingernails, "that would be very kind of you." He had only managed to get his front somewhat clean of sweat and grime, while the landscape of his back - with scars resembling rivers across the valleys and peaks of his musculature - remained along with the length of his arms. The breeches he wore underneath the scaled armour he had not removed was crusty with dried blood down his right leg.
While waiting for her to assist him, he poured some water over his forehead and washed his face with the palms of his hands. He turned to her with the waterskin still in hand. "So I guess that means we will be returning to the Tower on the morrow," he said and considered how long it had been since he left Arafel. Rubbing his good eye with his fingers, he cleared his sight and looked at her. "Are we taking the landroute directly south, or are there any stops we have to make in between? I suppose your Eyes and Ears might have something to report."
It would be nice to see the road back, to remember the places which he had travelled through many times before, yet a long time ago. The years pass by too quickly. I have limited my life to this nation too long. But before that, it would be equally nice to feel clean again. That felt like a long time ago too.
Mia set the now empty wine glass aside, and rose to her feet to walk the few steps worth of distance between the two of them, skirting the fire although the greater warmth was pleasant in passing. Glancing at him, she reflected that in a disassociated way it had always amazed her how blood accumulated so much. Passing by where she had laid her saddle bags, she rooted momentarily before finding a piece of cloth that might be used for a task. It was either that or cut a part of her cloak and she didn't care either way. This was easier.
"They did not have much to say on the journey here, or just before it," she commented, as she held her hand out to request the waterskin. "I do not see they would now have much to add, but I," she paused, tilting her head as the skin was placed in her hand, "We," she corrected with a small smile, "Shall not be long in returning, I imagine, to continue my efforts."
Soaking the edge of the cloth, she set the skin on the ground and began to clean the blood off his skin. Using the fingertips of one hand placed on his arm for balance and steady, she used the other with deft, quick movements. It was far too reminiscent of many times before; warders, Husbands... even her own son. When he had returned from the battle in which he lost his Aes Sedai... Well, she had just been grateful his comrades had gotten him home and left him in her stead.
How much more blood must I clean? She thought this to herself, not in relation to her current task... not entirely. How much more blood must I take? For some reason, her thoughts drifted to home and the life she might have had, if she had not run away, had not found the Tower. She would never, could never, regret a moment of it, but... sometimes a quiet life. A husband, a family... when not all were twisted in the pattern of the fight, or far away. Or perhaps it was something else she missed, that pulled on that one thread of thought simply because it was easier to face than the truthful side of itself.
Her musings had not ceased her task, moving in tender motions to be too brash upon the skin but achieve the goal, yet her mind had wandered and that was rarely like her. Blinking, she realized this and came to. "I see no reason to not simply return to the Tower by the main paths," she said, finishing the statement she'd begun.
Standing still with his arm clenched to ease her work, Caden listened to her as she spoke. Her cloth scrubbed against the ropes of his muscles to rinse it of the blood and grime while his green eye looked out into the shadows of the forest. Like her, he drifted off, thinking about other things.
It was a comfortable silence that stretched between them as she continued to scrub his arms and back. He thought about the life he had passed in Arafel, and how it had come to an end in a way he had not planned. His road now led south, towards a home he never had thought he'd return to. Who was still there? Were the Yards as he had left them as he left the Rod of Discipline on top of Sigmund Danzig's desk? Was Durent still alive? Was Firredal? He could easily ask Miahala these questions, but he realised that he had closed his eyes to enjoy her tender scrubbing. He could ask later, he just didn't want the moment to stop.
Other questions rose in his mind too. Was Llewellyn still there, and how would he handle the situation? What would she do when he returned? Somehow, thinking about Llewellyn now seemed wrong. It had been too long, he had a hard time to remember what he had fancied about her so - especially now. Why? Well, it had been many years for him and he had not had room for love in his life. Spending his life as a powerful hermit amongst the nobles he had to face off against, he had easily grown accustomed to a life without much love. Bereft of love, one easily forgot how it was like.
The touch of another was a treasure after such a long time alone.
Breathing between his lips, Caden now remembered how it was like, with Leanna and later Llewellyn, and when a voice suddenly broke the surface of his reminiscence, it was all too soon. "I see no reason to not simply return to the Tower by the main paths," she said below his shoulder, and he abruptly opened his eyes, realising that his Aes Sedai had spoken. Where was my mind at? She is Miahala, no one else.
How much time had past? Had he drifted off in the middle of her sentence? Had there been a minute? Two? Looking at his left arm, it was evidently clean of blood, so she must have scrubbed it off completely while he was thinking about other things. She had even rinsed his back and other arm. "That's all well," he scraped in a husky voice, "We both know the way and we will put the leagues behind us quickly."
His mind now intimately attached to the circumstances he found himself in, he pretended like nothing had happened and unbuckled his swordbelt, dropping it to the side. Four straps and two greaves later, he removed the scaled black armour from his blood-soiled breeches. He removed them methodically, like a statue come alive, and stood in his smallclothes. However awkward a normal man might be in the situation, Caden breathed evenly, emotionally detached - for he know that this was needed. He didn't even realise that he had grasped the void and the flame. All thought of intimacy would, however, be eradicated by the simple fact of what had happened to him. From the place where the deep cut in his thigh had been, dried blood had crusted all along his leg. The cut had probably touched the main blood vessels in the thigh. Had he not been Healed, or had he not stemmed the blood flow in time, he might have bled to death within a few minutes time.
"I was fortunate to find you helping me this night," not sure what he was talking about, just needing to speak.
Having stepped back to allow him room, Miahala had reached a similar detachment without even realizing she had done so. For her, it was not void and the flame. It was just the dark rooms of her mind where she could shut things in, shut things off... until they came back later, at a more convenient time, but she did not think of that now. She didn't realize she did it, so why think of it.
"I am glad I did," she said, her voice soft, low. As he finished stepping from his armor and glanced at where the wound would have been, she stepped forward and offered the water and cloth. These were areas where assistance was unneeded. Her eyes rested intensely on him for a long moment and then she turned, headed back to where she had been sitting before, though she did not yet sit.
Reaching up, she untied her cloak and laid it over her saddlebags and then knelt. Pulling the long braid over her shoulder once again, she carefully pulled the tie loose and dropped it in to her lap, idly unweaving the braid. The back of her skull, she realized, was still a little sore from where her hair had been pulled on and letting it loose would ease it.
"If I might comment along the lines of an earlier thread," she began, her voice quiet and musing as she pulled free long auburn strands, "I am almost a little sorry to return back to the Tower without passing through Saldaea," she continued, "Not that I do not travel here often without doing so, but it has been a while. I have not seen Tianna in some time now."
Relieved and yet not that Miahala saw the good sense in the situation and let him scrub his leg clean himself, Caden accepted the cloth and waterskin and began. The look she had given him as she handed it to him was... peculiar. In a way, she had changed a bit since he had last been in her company, and he had a hard time reading her. That look was such a case.
While he scrubbed his skin raw to remove the dried blood, he stole a brief glance her way, and saw her unweaving her braid by the fireplace. The comfortable silence stretched, and it immediately felt like they were companions of war, like many years before. Whatever had passed between them - if anything at all had - it was gone.
When she spoke next, it was of her family. The story of Tianna was a strange one to tell. A long time ago, Miahala had given birth to twins - Tarvin Aaril and Tianna Raye - well-nigh dying in child-bed. When the girl was three years old, she accidentally fell through a ter'angreal, leaving her mother mortified. She was believed lost, but it so happened that she turned up again, aged eighteen years old instead of three. The woman now lived a peaceful life in Saldaea with a husband named Kel. Although he had heard Miahala talk about this daughter of hers, he had not had the privilege to met her.
"If you should wish to," he rasped and continued his work without interruption, "we can take that detour. If we do, we can follow the Arinelle River southwards to get to the Mountains of Mist again after you pay her a visit." Pouring water over his kneecap, he let the cloth change hand. "If you feel like you can afford yourself the time, this is a good opportunity. We'll have to travel west for a few days before we reach the Saldaean border, though."
Sometimes, Caden wondered where his own daughter was. Bascha Surani had turned up at the Tower a long time ago, and vanished just as quickly. He had never heard from her since, and even though he had not known about her till that point, it was still strange to have set a daughter free in this world without knowing where she was. Before she vanished, Bascha had left him the ashandarei he had given her mother upon the desk of his study - back when he had still been unburned and Gaidin Captain. Now, the weapon was the only thing that remained of his daughter. He glanced at it sitting in the lance holder of Winterbourne's saddle. It was not the weapon he favoured most, but he was competent with it and he made sure he practiced with it whenever he could as a kind of homage to the daughter and wife he never had never knew.
Returning his thoughts to the subject of Tianna, he added. "You don't have to decide now, Aes Sedai. Sleep on it and make up your mind on the morrow."
Mia stared in to the fire. "I'll think on it," she said quietly, although she had the idea that she might wait on the visit. There were emotions stirring in her that she feared would not make for the best of visits with her daughter and her family. A long moment of silence descended over the Aes Sedai, as thoughts and imaged moved through her mind. She didn't look up. Her expression grew more and less emotional with barely a visible change. You could just tell.
Or maybe it was the fire light.
"You know, it's strange," she began again suddenly. "I almost died giving birth to her. She's one of a pair of twins," a pause. "I believe you know that... I don't know if it's been said that she hid. We didn't even know she was there. The Yellows didn't see her, so her birth was... a surprise. I had already had Tarvin, and my body didn't want to bear the second, but Tianna wouldn't wait. That's where the trouble came, but..." She gave a faint, wry smile. "Yellows are miracle workers."
One hand dropped absently to her waist. "After everything I have faced in my life, all of the strange and unusual things that I have seen and fought and survived against... Is it not strange that the thing that should come closest to killing me is something that women have been doing for centuries before me?"
Miahala sighed, "She is well, though. She has always been a robust child and she remains so as a woman. She's got her family, living and well and all around her. In some ways, she is living the life that would have been mine, had the pattern not weaved it this way for me." She paused and then her voice lowered to barely a whisper. "At least she is not so alone," she added. The past ten, fifteen years stretching before her suddenly.
Looking up at him, a look of such terrible sadness passed over her face and eyes before she was able to lock it away again, all without realizing it. She then laughed faintly, looking away, "I do not know what has gotten in to me," she said lightly. "Perhaps the battle and the fatigue are now telling on me. I did not mean to go on like that. I apologize," she said.
The distance and sadness was gone from her voice now, moved by her considerable strength of will to being even and impassive once more.
Seeing in the corner of his eye how sad Miahala suddenly turned out to be by the topic at hand, Caden straightened - finished with cleaning the blood from his body. He would not have had to seen it; the Bond betrayed her like a shout inside enemy territory.
"No need to apologise to me, Miahala," he scraped, and threw the bloodied breeches into the fireplace - fuelling it since he would never be able to get them clean. The cotton burned easily and was devoured in seconds. He walked over to his saddlebags to find something to wear, meanwhile looking at Miahala. "The adrenaline is thinning in your blood, I have felt the same thing many times so I know - like you do - that you are left feeling vulnerable. But I can assure you, you are the same woman as you were fifteen years ago - only stronger."
He produced another pair of breeches and pulled them on absentmindedly while he continued talking. "You don't have to be alone anymore now," he said with such finality that he even surprised himself, "I will stay with you."
He walked over and sat down bare-chested by the warming fire. Not wanting to sit across from her since he would be forced to look at the flames, he placed himself a little to her side - meeting her eyes once he had settled himself. The fire began to dry him slowly. "I know that I am a poor substitute to a peaceful life in the Borderlands without harsh duties and having to fight for your life at each turn. In fact, I'm rather the opposite - a tool you might need to lead that very life." The unburned side of his face hinted a lop-sided smile. "But wishing for what could have been is nothing but dust in the wind. The Wheel still has a design for you, my Aes Sedai. And evidently, I am needed to be at your side from now on. Let us find brief joy in that, and not dwell on what has been."
Too late, Caden figured out that she might have meant more than a battle-companion when she claimed that she had been in sore lack of company the past years.
She had meant that, and she hadn't. She had meant both.
Long ago in her life she had decided that never would be the one, the 'more', without being the other. She could not subject someone who did not understand to the life she led, and she could not afford anyone else the time. She could have someone beside her in battle who was not as such, but never one the other way. All of this she kept to herself however. Mia smiled a little.
"I do not feel vulnerable," she said quietly. "I am glad to have you at my side again, for this is a fight that is served better that way and are not a poor substitute for anything. I know that the Wheel did not intend me for a quiet life in Saldaea, with a husband..." Here, she trailed off a moment, then her smile was rueful. "With a living husband, or even lover, and children all around. I know that, and although this life has subjected me to much, I do not regret it or wish another. This is who and what I am, all the many parts of me, and I shall be that until I am finally weaved back out of the pattern, to return later."
She took in a deep breath, not voicing the rest of her thoughts and feelings. He need not be subjected to them, as they were things that she did not wish to share with even herself though she had not the choice. Absently, she reached back and lifted her head off her shoulder and let it fall down her back again, out of the way. The ache in her scalp had indeed eased with the loosing of the braid.
Idly rubbing his hands from the tension of labour - both from the fighting and the scrubbing, he watched her in the firelight.
"I'm glad you don't have second thoughts on the course of your life, for in that case, my pledge to you would have turned out to be a hollow one. Don't misread me here; I have never doubted you, not then, and certainly not now. I'm just pleased that your faith in yourself never flicker despite any prospects of what could have been. You are a hard woman, Aes Sedai. And that's why I like you." He turned his hands over and watched the raw calloused ridges along his palms.
Considering what he had been through, all the harsh treatment he had suffered in his battles, and the ruins of what was left of him, he uttered a noise that was almost half a chuckle. "Leading another life, you would have been a rare prize for any given man. You could claim any man you want if you had a will for it, and you still can. You are beautiful in every sense of the word. I am fortunate in the position as your Warder because I get to spend time with you, defend you and preserve your cause. I am to be envied in this." Finding a thin streak of dark humour in his chest, he looked back at her, his scars glistening sickly in the light of the fireplace while her unbound hair shone in stark wonderful contrast. "I suppose you'll just have to endure having a ugly big brute as your companion for the time being, instead of a sweet man who rubs your feet and sings pretty words."
A smiled curved the corners of her mouth and she gave him a side long look. "Then I suppose you do not know me so well, Caden," she said softly, her voice colored by a little amusement, "I do not know if you are fortunate to be in my company, but I am fortune to be in yours. I am most glad of it. Besides, I would much rather have your presence beside me than that of anyone who sings to me." The smile increased a little.
Then she glanced back at the fire and shook her head. "I do not miss that sort of man, for that sort of man would not have me," she went on, "You and I... You and I are much alike, I think. We are not creatures made to be loved nicely, or by nice people. Kind, yes, but not nice. Not the average person, so said. I have always been quite aware that I could not love nor be loved by someone who was not part of this fight as much as I. All of those I have loved and have loved me..."
She paused, casting another semi-amused side long glance, "And despite the reputation of the Greens, in a life as long as mine there have not been many," she turned back, "But they have all been part of this. All but one were my warders."
Memories of them danced before her eyes. Four men, in over a hundred years. One... she did not regret, but she knew that he was not so much the product of love as just needing escape. She was not at an ideal time in life. But, oh, the rest. She had loved them well. At least Seth had not died on her.
"Think about it, Caden," she said, amusing tinging her voice again, both earnest and dark. "Any nice, normal man could barely tolerate the sight of what my back remains, but even if they could, do you think they would so easily tolerate that it could happen easily again on any given day, and that the chances are dependent on the flipping of a coin as to whether I live through another or if it is the one that finally kills me. No nice man could tolerate the stress of that."
She turned her body towards her. Something fierce now danced through her eyes. "Think about it. Walking here, we passed a man that I electrocuted. I wove fire, air and water together and made his blood burn and smoke. Did I have a right to? Yes. He was going to cut my throat, very nearly did. But no nice man could walk past that and be at ease with it, especially to hear me say that I not precisely sorry.
"I do not like taking life, but I do what I must and if the situation occurred again? I would do it again. Simple. Not nice. Not pretty. Nothing a nice person - certainly not anyone not of the Tower and even many within it would have trouble with its ease."
A mirthless smile returned to her features as she turned her head towards the fire, idly rubbing the small nick in the skin of her throat. It stung, but was otherwise fine and the bleeding had stopped. "No, we are not creatures made for simple, nice lives nor are we made to be understood by many. Why should love be any different?"
Understanding her point, Caden nodded at her words but he had to disagree. "Ah, but have you not heard? Love is as blind as my right eye." He felt that he just had to point out that clich?? since there was substance of truth in it, and did so with his faint smile on his lips. "I would be careful to reject all the pretty common men who sings just as prettily. For one day, you might just end up in the arms of someone like that, despite how much in common your lovers and husband had in your past. Love and life is quite unpredictable, and you should never say never." Running a hand through his pale hair, he mocked his own appearance. Something which he would never have done fifteen years ago. "And the clich?? of that love is blind is something I, for one, should hope to be true. Therefore I will not bend on that argument for my own sake."
Adding a few sticks of firewood to the fire, he continued. "Yet again, like you said. Love is easier to maintain if the two share a common cause and view-point of the world. Warders like me, and certainly the most part of the Yards, do not balk at the sight of what you Aes Sedai can do, be it killing or crippling people for the cause of greater good or out of right to do so in defense of your life. The pretty boys might run away with their pretty voices caught in their throats."
His voice lowering a notch, he turned introspective. "Llewellyn was blind to what I looked like. And I think she loved me for who I am. Yet Leanna did not love me for the man I became... afterwards."
Mia smiled faintly. "For a great number of years, Leanna and I were as close as sisters, but I can say that she was a fool to let you go," she said simply, glancing at him again side long. "However, perhaps you were not the only one who changed. People evolve, like anything else, and though love is meant to weather such things, sometimes... it changes, too. Like the seasons, it moves on." She paused, looking in to the fire again.
"Llewellyn knew what I know. You, Caden Ives, are far more than your appearance. Love is meant to be blind, but not ignorant. Any woman with enough depth to see past what is merely the physical shell will be rewarded, I believe. You have much to offer, whether you realize it or not, for you have the most experience of all to be able to see equally deep, past the veneer, of a woman," Mia mused softly.
Unbuttoning the top two buttons of her dress' collar, just to allow herself room to rub at her neck, she took in a deep breath and then sighed, "I do not want one of those nice, gentle, pretty men. Not in my life. I need more than that." She glanced at him again, "You are right, though, that love and life are both unpredictable. So I do not predict. I just know what I want, and what I don't want."
A longer pause, "I wish in a man what you seek in a woman. Someone with enough depth to look beyond, and accept. There are women like that, so hope is easy and I would not discount it, ever, for yourself. For I believe you could make some woman very happy." A light smile played on her features. "Would I were so lucky, eh?"
Her fingers climbed up gently the back of her neck, where skull meets spine and pressed lightly, easing the tension and the ache. "You know, it's been a while since I've had the chance for a talk like this. Just... about something other than the fight. About people. Philosophy. I've missed it, I must admit. Strange to find it here, but I am grateful." She smiled at him again. "Thank you."
His good eye darted to the skin she exposed as she unbuttoned her collar, then darted away again while she was talking. It was inappropriate for him to look, but he was a man and could not help it. Like he had said, she was easy to look upon - so a glance was nothing other but human. Still, he felt like he needed to do something with his idle hands.
Standing up - dry from the warmth if the fire - Caden walked over to where his sword belt lay and picked it up. "It was nothing, Aes Sedai," he rasped and returned to the fire after picking up a small package from his saddlebags. "I enjoy it too. Life needs more than the calling in each of our minds. We only choose to neglect that fact from time to time in our lives. But don't expect me to tell you a gleeman's tale."
Sitting down by the fire where he had sat before, he unsheathed his hand-and-a-half sabre - also called bastard sabre, as it had the same length of hilt as the bastard sword with a straight blade. From the small package, he produced a folded tissue which he used to clean the blade from blood and dirt. As he worked, the weapon seemed to have attached itself to his body, moving as if it was an appendage of his spinal cord. His brow was creased in thought. "It might be I see people differently after my injury, like you say. But in the end Llewlelyn left me too. I didn't see that coming. And when she returned, she thought everything would return to the way it was, as if two years had not passed since she left me with only a scribbled message. Not only that, but the informants I left behind in the Tower after I departed has reported to me that Urikanu Gaidin returned to her arms after a long leave of absence - the father of her children."
Realising that the was grinding his teeth while he cleansed the blade with long, hard strokes, he stopped and took a deep breath. "Maybe that was why I have discarded love the past years. My faith in blind love is for the worse, and the trust that should come along with it too, but one can still cling to hope. One must."
Exchanging his cloth for a whetstone, the scarred Blademaster began to hone his blade with practiced efficiency, sweeping it along the edge in even strokes. The small nicks and the minimal dullness of the point and edge would gradually go away. "Who are still alive after the siege? Or rather, who died?"
He was ready to hear the body count now, ready to hear the about the deaths of old friends.
Something about the sudden switch in topic, the two being far too close together for comfort for Mia, caused an internal wince, but she kept it to herself otherwise. "I think things were not as bad as they could have been," she began, then told him of what she knew from the battles that had ensued: the most notable were the loss of the male Channelers captured before the siege began, but there were a few others that she outlined simply.
"But, the Tower - like its people - have come out the other side and will rebuild now," she finished with a faint smile. "One must cling to hope, for it is the best that we have. The Tower as a whole does that and does that now, if you think about it," she mused.
Restless spirits and strange emotions were suddenly loud inside of her. Mia pushed herself to her feet and wandered over to the edge of the tree line and out of the fire light, for the most part. She stared through the darkness and let them all clash and crash inside of her. There were many of things she wanted to say. Things she wanted to reply to things he'd said.
Things she wanted to say about herself, and that last was the most surprising of all. She tended to avoid talking about herself so much, but for some reason... part of her wanted to speak everything, everything she kept to herself of late.
Still. She did not speak. She did not want to dominate this conversation with her self. Despite all of the things rolling through her mind, she knew that she could wait until this strange feeling passed. It was safer to talk on neutral things, she reflected, when she suddenly felt like this. "Your return is timely, though," she began, speaking over her shoulder as she wrapped her arms around herself. "As the tower can always benefit from the return of its family."
Sharpening the blade in his hands, Caden looked at her from in the centre of the firelight.
Her words had somehow been hollow, as if she was not speaking what she was truly thinking about - yet it was hard to tell with an Aes Sedai. Being a creature devoted to the uses of one body, Caden could discern far more from what he was seeing than he heard. The outline of her back told him that something was clearly amiss. She was steeling herself against something. The gesture of wrapping her arms around herself was at the same time defensive, warding.
"If the Tower had a family," Caden said in his rasping voice, beginning to speculate casually, "I would be the family's ugly guard dog. I am not fit to attend the dinner table. Being ill-mannered and too grave for conversation, I would most likely guard the door. However, standing to the side, I have the benefit of a objective viewpoint. Listening, I hear the words like all else there, but I can see - like few others - what is really going on." His tone had changed, its casualness declining. "Being in the same family for a long time, I am able to discern more and more for the benefit my mistress - whom I report to. But just sometimes, the guard dog learns something that he has a personal interest for. Like where the food is stored in the kitchen..."
He got to his feet slowly and walked up behind her, leaving the sword by the fire. "...or that his mistress is hiding something. She has something to say but something is holding her back from forming the words with her lips. This guard dog worries for her then, and is helpless in aiding her. All he can do... is to continue listening."
He placed his hands on her shoulders, protectively. "And I will," he rasped, "if you let me."
At the feeling of his touch, Mia closed her eyes. There was a roaring in her mind. "You should not be so disparaging to yourself," she whispered, finding it suddenly hard to focus. She tried to concentrate, but her spirit would not let her.
Opening her eyes again, she turned her head slightly and was able to see him from the corner of her eye. "Dancing," she whispered, "It's like dancing, you know." She paused, turning her gaze to the forest again. "I wish I knew what I thinking, Caden, I really do. I am not familiar with sort of chaos in my mind any longer."
Finally, she turned away from the forest, moving to face him. She titled her head back, looking up at him and being captured for a moment by the shadows of firelight dancing behind him. "When I was younger," she began, her voice suddenly thick. "I was all fire and dance, with a mind wholly uncatchable and ruled by passions." A rueful smile curved her lips. "Life tends to temper that. In all these years, those feelings have not gone away, but I've gained control of them... until now."
Mia took in a shaky breath. "My mind is full of chaotic things... thoughts, memories, emotions. It's been so long since they were like this, I find that I have trouble containing them, and I am uncertain as to what all of them mean. Our talk tonight has returned me to things I've put off thinking about for years, and find that I miss..." she trailed off, with a sigh.
"I... did not wish to speak of such enigmatic and unuseful things," she began, head and gaze tilting down to the ground.
Looking down at her, shadowed by his body from the flickering flames of the fireplace, Caden listened.
"Pent up emotions," he began, his damaged vocal cords thrumming in resonance to the fireplace's crackling, "are likely as good as a sheathed blade in a sword duel. What are you going to do when the need calls for it? You need those emotions now. Otherwise, you would not have such a hard time containing them." Searching her for signs that she understood what he said, he looked down at her hair, her face, her lips.
He thought he knew what was wrong. She said... she had lost control of her emotions... The Light burn him to ashes and bone, he knew what she wanted.
And suddenly the moments they shared earlier when she had washed the blood of his arms and back came back to him, unwontedly. This feeling he had was treacherous, and if he was wrong, he was walking upon rotten ice with each new word he articulated. The best way was to make certain, to know for sure. "Tell me what it is you miss. Any need that my Aes Sedai have is an important one to me. I have a hard time imagining that anything you crave is unuseful. But you sure are enigmatic."
Did he know what he wanted? He did not know, but something inside him made the decision that it was so. He had to know, else he would never dare do anything more. He did not have faith in his perceptions to judge the situation fully. He needed her to say it. Say it, so that I know I am not a fool. Nervousness coiled in his stomach even though his body stood as still as a cliff-face. In nervousness, he made a small jest
"Although I have only one left, I'm all ears to your needs," he said, placing a calloused hand comfortingly on her arm. The touch was soft, too soft of a touch for a Warder upon his Aes Sedai. "I am listening."
She trembled lightly at the feel of the touch, closing her eyes again and trying to rein in the thousand swirling thoughts and feelings that were going through her mind. Was she a fool for this? She could not help but wonder. Her emotions were running rampant - where were they going to lead her? To something that would break her heart again?
What do you miss?
He was asking. Did he know? Did he suspect what was going on inside of her? Was he just being polite? Blood and bloody ashes, she thought to herself, just let me think straight for a moment. She struggled against the urge to press the heels of her hands against her temples and try to keep her head together.
Finally, though, Mia stilled herself just a little and lifted her head, only so much as to meet his gaze. What do you want? The thought moved through her mind like a breeze, but who was she asking the question of...
"I miss..." she trailed off, eyes glistening. "I miss being close to someone. Knowing someone. To have someone by my side, not just in the moments of battle and in the fight, but in those moments before it and after it. Someone who understands, understands me. I can talk to about anything, and everything. Someone to be with, to share all with..."
Closing her eyes for a moment, she continued quietly. "I've had that in my life... felt two die violently, wrenched away from me, and I watched another walk away... but more than Aes Sedai, I am human. I'm alive. I miss... being able to feel alive again with someone. Not just being alive, but living." Her eyes opened again. "Someone who understands, and wants to feel those things with me, too. Share... the closeness."
She paused, swallowing hard. Her breath caught in her chest, somewhere around the fierce pounding of her heart. She felt warmth flush her pale cheeks and she wondered if it showed. Did he really want to hear the truth? Flame her, she hoped that she wasn't about to make a huge mistake and possibly break what had been refound and reforged in these passing moments.
Lifting trembling hands, she rested them on his chest and leaned forward a mere fraction of breath, but anyone trained as they could would be able to tell the difference. "Do you really want to know what I miss? What I want?" she whispered. "I think... you already know."
Reading her eyes, how the flames of the fireplace behind him reflected the emotion behind her irises. The fire he saw in those eyes gave him an idea of the extent of her need, and that was the thing that assured him that he was right. Her words just nailed the coffin shut, even though they made his mouth water and his breath catch momentarily in his throat. The touch of her hands upon his bare chest and how she leaned against him as she said them, but oh, that convinced him in full of his own desires.
His hand slid around her shoulder to her back, and gently, he pushed her against himself in a hesitant - yet firm - embrace. The feeling of her felt like the world finally coming into focus after decades of being blind. "I know," he scraped softly, a barely audible whisper, "I want this as well." Kissing the top of her head with his unburned lips, his mouth almost not remembering the motion - he felt his emotions settle firmly in his chest. Sharing this moment with her made him realise that the covenant of steel and power had turned into something deeper after years of being apart. Like a wine, it had now taken a new character.
In embracing her, he ran his free hand up to her cheek and lifted her face to his. Looking down into her dark eyes again, "I want you too. More than I wanted to die before meeting you this night. You have given me life back... twice. Once, helping me survive the brigands. Twice, in opening the gates to my frozen heart." His lips lowered towards hers gradually, meanwhile his voice became mere breaths meant just for the two of them. "Now please... come inside."
When his lips closed over hers, he knew that he was fortunate in being burned, for if he had not, she would not have come to him years past, and shared her hurt with his. And thus, they would never have come to this reality. The Wheel would have forgotten that this would come to pass, and they would have been left bereft of themselves and their years together - a reality which just now culminated in their shared kiss.
It was like all of the roaring inside of her mind suddenly silenced in that one instant. All that existed were the two of them... the strength of her need for this moment, the strength of his own and the stretching of this far past this instant.
A single flash of realization exploded inside of her mind. She remembered so many years ago when she had first made the decision to share with him what only one person outside of herself knew. In that instant, knowing there was someone that could understand, at least in their own way, though hers was dwarfed by his. Still. It was something, and it was important. And later...
She had been with Seth, and he with Llewelyn, but already the relationship between Toseth and herself was then drifting and limping towards it's slow yet inevitable death. She realized that something had stirred in her even then, but she'd held it at bay. A little bit of shame tinged that memory, but how to avoid such things?
It was hard to deny that they understood each other better than most and to her, that was always very important. This moment brought the simple knowledge that this feeling, at this moment, was not new, entirely, and was not simply bred of loneliness. That was merely a catalyst, and this night was a realization that life was too easily able to be cut short to pass on second chances.
This all passed before her mind's eye with a single blink.
And it was gone again in washing of emotion and that the past was now, in this moment, fairly irrelevant. She ran her hands up to his neck, fingers curling gently around his jaw and neck, rising to her toes to hold herself a little closer. She could feel his scars beneath the skin of her palms, but it was simply that: recognition. They were a part of him. Not one to be a distraction or detriment, yet not to be ignored like they were something shameful. They weren't that. They were just what they were: a part of him and it was all of him that she was with in that moment.
Gently, she ran her thumbs over his cheeks and returned the kiss with feeling, just letting the instant flow all around them.
In sharing a kiss with his long-time Aes Sedai, what Caden was doing felt forbidden, unthinkable - yet so dreadfully precious. Maybe the fact that it was disapproved off made it even more enticing for them both. Either way, Caden drowned in the feeling of ease in which they shared their kiss - as if they were intended to be kissing each other but never knew. With his lips encompassing hers, and when she answered it just as willingly, time seized to be and each fraction of a moment was extended and divided into a myriad of feelings, sensations. Her hair smelled faintly of roses, and her skin had the exotic carnal scent of a woman who had been on the road for days on end - vibrant under his touch. Her lips were silken and thermal, welcoming him.
Somewhere, an owl disturbed the silence, yet it could have been in another world for all the meaning it had for the two of them.
But as they had begun, Caden felt that he could not let it end. Since he saw her earlier that evening, he had been subconsciously wanting her - not knowing how badly until his mind truly began to understand the thought in speaking to her, sharing their hurts and wishes. His free hand pressed her body more firmly towards his own, and the kiss became two, three and kept coming one after the other. His hand ran down from her cheek to the backside of her neck.
His jade green eye opened slowly to regard her and he regained a measure of equilibrium. "What is happening?" his voice was a whisper against her lips, "Should we be doing this?"
Her lips were too close to resist, but he needed affirmation from her. He felt her heat suffusing him. His dulled senses of will forced him to spread a slow rain of kisses down her cheek to her neck instead. His lower hand closed firmly into a fist around the fabric of her dress, holding it to in part to make her stay close, in part to keep his hand from moving elsewhere.
Mia's laugh was soft, low. Without conscious thought, her head tilted to one side, causing the long curtain of her hair to drift to that side and away from the side he was kissing. Despite the fact that she had just asked the same questions of herself, she found herself not voicing any of them. Instead, she took a sharp inhale. "We are both adults, free of all personal bonds... save one another," she whispered, trying to raise her voice above breath.
Her body trembled quietly and she tried to gain sense of her mind. She achieved some. "Will you still feel able to be my Warder?" she asked, "For that is the prime concern and really the only reason to..." Her breath caught again and she took a moment to catch herself again, "To stop. If you think that you will regret this in the morning."
Taking in a deep breath, she righted herself a little more and found her center enough to reach her hand to bring his face back up, to look at him and meet gaze for gaze in the morning. "Do you believe you might regret this tomorrow?" she asked softly, her look one of full earnest. "For I am quite certain that I shall not, even were it to be no longer than this instant." Something winced inside of her at that thought, but she pushed it away.
"I am certain I will have no regrets, and shall still be able to be your Aes Sedai, no matter what happens here," she said softly, sincerely.
Meeting her eyes while breathing heavily, Caden understood the importance in her statement and the weight of her question. It was imperative that they did not destroy all the trust and functionality they had built over the years, and especially as they had just reforged their companionship. It would be too easy to do something rash like this without both being certain it was right.
Holding himself back from her, he made sure he spent a second, or maybe it was two, to sort out his feelings - to understand what it would be like waking up and looking into her eyes again. After this moment, there will never be a turning back. His breath mingling with hers, his hand still behind her neck, he made his decision crystal clear to himself, and he proceeded to tell her.
He told her by gently pulling back her head with his hand in her hair, kissing her throat. "No," he rasped, "Never." He kissed her collarbone and let go of her hair, stroking her neck instead while his lips yearned for her salty flesh. "I will never... regret this. Not tomorrow. Not ever... I will be your Warder still."
Kissing his way to her neck again, his hand slid down her body to join the other in holding her hips close. "What happens here..." he whispered in her ear, "is sacred... And my only regret is that this did not happen sooner..." He closed his lips around her earlobe while his hands slid up her sides, lifting her dress tentatively in caressing her, but letting it fall down as his hands ventured onwards. "...Miahala."
His lips returned to hers and the passion was rising with the blood in his ears. "I told you..." he said against her mouth, "I am to be envied by the pretty boys..."
Her breath momentarily stumbled over itself and then released in a sudden shudder. She had watched the thoughts move through his eye, and for a single, surprisingly shattering, moment, she had feared that he would change his mind. Mia would, of course, have respected that wish and it would have changed nothing, but that did not mean she would have to like it.
The relief she felt was over-whelming and it crashed through her with the pounding heart beat and shallow breath. She kissed him, then pulled back and gave another low laugh. "I told you, I would not want those boys," she said, her voice low, fierce. Almost like a growl, even her words were being over-whelmed by her intensity. "For why would I want them, when what I want is right here?"
Lips curving in to a slow smile, she slipped her hands back to where they'd been and pulled herself up to meet him, renewing the kiss once more with fresh interest, and not intending to let go any time soon...
