Fanfic:The Silver Lining
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"Kewi Segai! I wanna pway, I no wanna go shwops!" Amil was whining at the Aes Sedai as he trudged inbetween her and Jip. He had already given up on convincing Jip that playing was a better idea. Jip shook his head as he watched the child. They had promised to take him to the gardens to play after they had been shopping for some new clothes for him, he had outgrown all of his he was growing so fast. Amil sulked as he walked next to Jip holding his hand tightly against the crowds. It was a busy day and quite warm and Amil was fed up. Still neither Jip or Keriinen were letting in to his many demands.
Jip was glad Keriinen had agreed to come with him today, Jip had no idea of how to buy clothes for children, what to look for and what was suitable. Also it was easier to cope with Amil's tantrums when Keriinen was there too. Even if she didn't step in it was good to have moral support. They walked down the street, Amil soon forgot his insistence to play as the town excited him and he started to point at things that interested him. He never stood still and it took a much longer time to get where they wanted.
"Kewi Segain, looky!" Amil was jumping up and down now, "U'cle Jip 'ook!" Jip looked where the child was pointing, it was at a juggler who was dancing around, five balls flowing through the air around him. Jip had to grin at that fact that a child who had grown up around Aes Sedai and Asha'men using the power could still find something like juggling mesmerizing. "Me wanna look," Amil was pulling on Keriinen Sedai's hand, trying to get closer.
Keriinen laughed at his innocence and nodded at the boy. She sincerely hoped that he would never lose what he possessed, but she realized with sadness that he would soon enough. He had already lived through much more than many adults had to, and she was surprised he was as resilient as he was. He would probably make a most excellent Warder one day when he was older and able to provide stability and protection to the special someone he chose.
"Of course you can go and see, Amil!" she spoke cheerfully. She embraced Saidar and let it fill her with its pleasurable light. She wove thin strands of Air, she would need little else as he was not that heavy. Wrapping them tenderly around him, and with great care, she lifted him from the floor and to her shoulders. Then she let the Source go with regret. She would have used her arms, but her old bones were not as strong as they had once been. In many respects she felt thinned, stretched with her years rather than normally ancient. She mused whether it was the same for all channelers but knew she would never know. Channelers were finicky about discussing age, prudish indeed.
She walked forwards towards the juggler, watching the balls fall and loop in lazy arcs. Sometimes they were slow and sometimes fast. It was an enjoyable thing to watch but she reckoned she could be better with but a few strands of the One Power.
Amil squeeled with delight as he was lifted in the air with the Power. Jip grinned at the look of awe on the childs face, no one around batted an eyelid channelers were a normal part of life here. "U'cle Jip ooky, they pwetty!" Amil was still staring wide eyed at the juggling. Jip nodded.
"I can s...see Amil! A...Aren't th...they ni...nice." Jip exchanged a small smile with Keriinen, a rare thing for Jip and under Amil's protests they continued walking once more. Amil was placed back on the ground and walked holding Jip's hand again, asking if they could see the pretty balls again when they returned. Jip agreed and Amil walked along happily.
Until he saw the kite, brightly covered cloth fluttering in the wind above their heads as they walked into the crowded market street. Amil squealed with excitement again and letting go of Jip's hand suddenly, darted into the crowd. "Amil, no!" Jip shouted, but his voice was lost in the din of the people around and Jip rushed forward pushing through the people to get to the child.
He was nowhere to be seen: Jip panicked, calling out his name. Keriinen wasn't far off, also shouting for the boy. Jip tried to push his way to the kite as that was what the child was after and got to the end of the crowd just in time to see a large man, his face covered with a scarf, grab Amil and break into a run. There were more, men with covered faces surrounded them, coming out from the crowd. Jip drew his sword, a instinctive movement. He saw four men surround Keriinen, and Amil was screaming now in the distance.
Keriinen could look after herself for at least a time: Amil was three years old. Jip dashed past the men, his sword hitting their weapons, not believing that this was happening. He could hear similar sounds of fighting from behind where Keriinen was. She was fighting hard, both of them fighting to save Amil.
How many people there were, Jip had lost count. But he ran to Amil as fast as he could, persued by masked men but refusing to stop, or he would loose Amil. He could hear the childs high pitched screams as he ran forward. There was no time to find the void, and no need to. His determination to reach Amil won through, the man who had hold of him dropped him as Jip got close. Amil did not move, just curled in ball on the floor and carried on screaming loudly. The man had a sword, there were three or four others, Jip thought he had killed one on the way and realised he did not care.
He felt sick as his sword rose to meet those of the attackers. It was happening again, it would never stop. The world was too full of darkness, it was in the fear of the people of the city, who had all disapeared, running for cover. It was in the pittiful screams of Amil as the child tried to hide, screaming out his fear at an act that he did not understand. It was in the clanging of swords, the blood. Jip had not fought someone properly since the night of Isabel's death. Violence and death, that is what Jip was as his sword took one enemy after another, stood in front of Amil ready to protect the childs life with his.
Tears mixed with blood on his face as the last of the dark friends died at his feat. Jip did not stop, he grabbed Amil who fought for a moment before realising that it was Jip and not one of the masked men. The child burried his face in Jip's chest and sobbed, Jip had no time to comfort him. He ran, back to where Keriinen had been fighting. Amil pressed to him with one hand, his sword in the other, past the darkfriends he had killed.
Keriinen had fought hard, four darkfriends lay littered around her, their bodies broken around her. Still seven attackers was too much for anybody and channeling was exhasting. Jip ran forward, not sure how he was going to get to her through the three attackers with Amil still clinging on to him. Still he tried. He swung Amil round so the child was on his back, he was not too heavy but it would still make fighting awkward. Not that it mattered, it was the only way.
Jip met the first attacker, who span and blocked his sword. Jip struck again and lept backwards in defence. He was stuck, he had to get through but he had Amil, who was screaming again, on his back, and had to protect him. He leapt forward again, a downward strike. Over the mans shoulder he saw Keriinen fall, his sword piercing her chest. Jip screamed as the body of the Aes Sedai crumpled to the floor, lifeless. The killers turned, swords ready towards Jip and the babe in his arms.
Jip ran, it was obvious what would happen next they would kill him, which did not phase him at all but they would also take Amil. He had to get Amil to safety. He swung the child back to his front, he was screaming again, screaming for Keriinen. They were persued, Jip thought he saw other figures join them, one or two but he did not look back, he just ran. He had to get to the Tower it was the one thing making him keep going. Get back, make Amil safe and then he would happily die, he had failed again.
His right arm hurt, in fact all of him hurt but that was the worst. He tried to ignore the pain as he ran, clutching Amil tightly so the child did not fall. Seeing a crowd, where the jugglers were Jip dived into them, hoping it would slow down the attackers somewhat. An advantage of being small was he was able to dodge through the crowd easily, even carrying Amil and holding his sword. A trick learnt from his early days as a thief. He kept running. It was the only way. He still was not in the void, but something had taken over, the need to make Amil safe was stopping him from thinking of the fact that Keriinen was dead.
He burst through the crowd on the other side, he did not know if they would make it, Jip could run and was actually faster than you would think but that was from practice of running with Garren and Whisper, that is before they had sunk into madness and retreated into the gardens. More darkness, the attackers were catching up but the Tower was in sight Jip concentrated all his energy into running. Amil's screaming had attracted the attention of the Tower Guard and a group of them ran out of the Tower, weapons bared.
Jip felt something on his back, hot, pain, the attackers had caught up. Jip let go of Amil and gave him a push towards the Tower, "run," he shouted and turned round to the attacker. He had broke off from the group and they fought quickly, a guard caught up to him and together the darkfriend fell. Jip turned back and breathed a sigh of relief.
Amil screamed, he didn't understand what had happened or where Keriinen was but some men taken him from his uncle and now they were running and his uncle was scared. He had his eyes squeezed shut but opened them because he felt himself on the ground, his uncle shouted and Amil knew what run meant, but running was meant to be fun and this wasn't he ran a few paces and someone else picked him up he screamed again for Jip and Keri.
Jip saw the guard enter the Tower gates with Amil in his arms and then reappear seconds later, Jip turned back to the battle in hand, Amil would be safe enough for now he hoped. There was not much he could do either way. The other attackers were close, Jip stood with the guards waiting, he expected to die and just hoped that someone would look after Amil. Blood, tears and darkness Jip's sword rose and fell countless times. He knew not what the forms were called, or more he did they just did not come to his mind. He did not think about, or care about the death he was dealing. They had tried to take Amil, they had killed Keriinen.
Then they were all dead. All dead and yet Jip was still alive, he shouldn't be alive. He wanted to die, he was useless Amil needed better protection than him. He stumbled forwards, he didn't have to stay alive, Amil was safe, someone would look after him better than Jip could ever do. He felt hands grab his shoulders and tried to fight them off but he was confused, these wern't enemies, why were they grabbing him? He couldn't hurt them not properly not even to get away. Maybe if he fought they would kill him, he could end this.
His sword was gone, how had he managed to be disarmed so easily? He recognised the gates of the Tower as he was pushed inside. Through the madness raging through his head he realised what had happened, they would not let him die he turned round, but the rage which had mainly been aimed at himself evaporated when he heard Amil, the child was still screaming. Jip spotted him, in the arms of a terrified looking Ji'alantin. He stumbled across, something seemed to be injured, he couldn't walk properly.
"He wont stop screaming," the Ji'alantin said, he seemed more disturbed by the childs screams than by the violence that had happened outside the walls. He passed Amil to Jip, the child screamed for a while longer as Jip sunk to a sitting position, leaning against the wall. But then realising it was Jip who had picked him up he stopped screaming, he was trembling and recognising Jip, burried his head in his chest and sobbed.
Jip sobbed too, there was not much else that could be done. Keriinen was dead, Jip had failed her completely and she had been nothing but kind and friendly. The guards and some others that had turned up steared clear of him, probably didn't know what to do with him. He made people uncomfertable. Amil soon sobbed himself to sleep, the sleep of frightened children when they can no longer face the world. Jip wished he had the same ability. A way to avoid darkness, but he didn't so he just sat and cried, there was nothing else he could do.
It always began with a scream. Swept back a year, Oenone heard it again: the piercing scream that she had not realized was her own. Bereft and lost, she'd fallen to her knees. Then, as now, the world had cracked in two. Wrapped in a sense of bleak deja vu, she shook her head, but the images persisted.
Today, she was standing, and the scream was accompanied by the ring of steel on stone. A hundred men, Gaidin and their trainees, flooded the courtyards, making a bottleneck that the Aes Sedai could not pass. Protection or annoyance? One never knew with a Gaidin: their honor was prickly and their pride was in the scars they bore for the Aes Sedai. However, when they had secured the courtyard, there was little left to guess. The screaming was done: only the hoarse, broken sobbing remained. Sobbing that echoed her own: every night, she ripped her sheets to ribbons, cried until she slept. This man had a long hour of sobbing before that mercy could come.
She didn't need the gossip to know what had happened here. It was laid out in black and white: Keriinen a lump under a cloak, guards fallen. And while there were other sisters in the throng, none approached the broken man in the grass, his arms wrapped around the chubby body of a baby. It was the blood that decided her. Red painted the fleshy leg hanging limp, and smeared the Gaidin kneeling with him. Oenone licked her lips and forced herself to move. If she were lucky, he'd kill her where she stood. She would forgive him.
But she could not forgive herself if the child bled out into the grass.
Her own slender hand appeared before her eyes, and the Gaidin recoiled. His arms rose around the child, and she pushed them gently but firmly away. "Is he...?" she asked, recognizing the boy as she leaned over the kneeling man, caring not a whit for her silk skirts in the winter grass. She ran her hands over the baby, feeling the sweet warm softness of innocence. No need to Delve and wake Amil Trimak: she could see he was merely dirty. The real injury here was in what had happened, and there was hope. There was life, after all. And life as an Aes Sedai gave a solution that most never had. Her mouth was dry, and she fumbled at saidar.
He ducked her reaching hands, but she seized his skull. Likely he thought she was only going to Heal him, and she should.
But perhaps, first she could Heal herself. It was selfish and it was cruel, but she was desperate. She was so dead inside. Now, so was he. Surely, anything was better than living every day as if she were the last soul alive, completely and utterly disconnected from the joy of living.
They had told her to take another Warder: they had told her to take another lover. They had brought her to the Yards, where they had displayed all their most tempting wares. She could not make herself touch them. None of them were Akuma. None of them mattered. And yet, she had seen Jip before: he was hard to miss. Strong, but not fierce. Firm, but gentle. Small, but respected. She knew he was grieving, and she thought she might be the only person who had ever felt the unique pain of having the soul sliced in two. She wondered how he would fit into the gaping hole inside her head. She wondered if she could even form the weave.
In the end, it was a difficult thing easily remembered: as instinctive as mercy, as binding as law. Spirit laced them together, the broken man, the shattered woman, and the sleeping child, although she was careful to touch him not at all. Her knees were on the Master of Training's, her body stretched tall enough to see the part in his hair. The crowd took in a collective breath, and her weave sunk into his skull. Irrevocable, now: he was hers and she, his. Someone murmured about difficult Healing, but a voice filled with wonder, high, sweet, and feminine, proclaimed her crime.
"She took him but she did not ask!"
Yes. And the worst part, the part crushing her with the sheer disappointment, was that he did not fill her as Akuma had: he was different. The ball of him in her mind was hard, taut: it resisted her. He twisted away from her fingers and she lunged at him, throwing a Healing weave into him because she had to. He convulsed and shook under her fingers, his grip on the child tight, tighter. She wished that his arms were around her. And she wished they were Aiel dark, and covered in tattoos. But there were limits to even miracles.
Limits, even, to love.
Someone pulled her to her feet, tugged her away from her Gaidin as if they could ever be parted so easily now. He was part of her. The wrong part. He was alien and his rage was cold and enormous. Hot tears coursed down her cheeks as she followed the leading hands. There would be questions. There would be demands. There would be the pain of admitting that she couldn't say why she had saved him. The euphoria of the bonding was beginning, the blissful high that had her giggling into Akuma's hair for weeks. She had thought that was their love: the sheer pleasure of being joined at last. Indivisible and strong: eternal, as easy as their own bodies entwining. It was her sweetest memory.
To feel it tainted with such cold, clinical hatred...
She sobbed, and no arms wrapped around her. She was as alone as she had been before, but this time she had a hostage within her own mind that she could not afford to free. And, she sensed, a war she could not afford to lose.
Jip sobbed for a while, he barely saw anything as people ran around. He did see them bring in Keriinen's body though and that of a guard who had fallen. The sight made him remember again the cost of the fact he had failed again. He stopped looking after that and just cried, Amil slept on.
A figure aproached and Jip tightened his grip on Amil, it was an Aes Sedai however, a healer judging by the stuborness in how she pushed Jip's arms away to get at Amil. Jip let her, he did not think the child was injured but it was best to be safe, she did not wake him though and Jip took that as the child was fine. He ducked away from the womans hands, he did not want to be healed he just wanted to die. It wasn't fair that Keriinen was dead because he had failed, just like Isabel was and yet someone would take all his pain away easily. All the physical pain anyways, the pain inside his head would never leave, the feeling of his soul being torn and the grief of losing someone who had been one of the kindest to him since Isabel had died.
Still healers were stubborn and Jip was not surprised in the slightest when she grasped his head in her hands regardless. But what came next, a fealing of searing heat instead of the customary cold waves of healing. Jip barely had enough time to register shock before he started trembling, shivering and then the feeling faded. "Wha..." he whispered, but then stopped. He did not need to ask what she had done, he knew. He felt an alien presence in his head laced with disapointment? Anger? Jip stared at her wide eyed with horror, he was angry to but more horrified, and frightened and even all that was numbed next to the torrent of pain.
He tried to tug away, like that could change anything and was almost knocked backwards with the strength of the coldness that was flung into him. That was healing and Jip grasped Amil tighter not wanting to drop him. Amil woke up at Jip's shaking just as the Aes Sedai was being dragged away and looked around with wide eyes.
Jip went cold, he looked down at Amil and back at the Aes Sedai who was being dragged away. Had the weave touched him? Had it hurt him? He did not look hurt he just looked frightened but that was nothing surprising considering. Another Aes Sedai came towards him and Jip stood up, ready to run but she spoke softly, "I am just going to delve Amil, Jip," Jip realised she knew this Aes Sedai, it was Ami, when she had been raised Jip did not know but Amil knew her and though he did not let go of clutching Jip he made no protest as Ami laid her hand on his head.
Ami let go of the child, a look of relief on her calm features. Jip realised that she had had the same fear as he had. "He is fine," she said softly and Jip was relieved, the relief was strong enough to be felt over the grief of the loss of Keriinen and the horror of what had just happened. Ami was still stood there and Jip realised that he was not going to be allowed to run away anywhere. Not that there was much point, whoever that Aes Sedai was who had bonded him would be able to find him. Ami was telling him he had to go to the infirmary, it was the last place Jip wanted to go. He would be trapped again, just like he had been when Isabel died. He started crying again as he followed Ami, Amil was awake now and not crying but he refused to let go of Jip or take his face away from being burried in his chest.
They walked to the infirmary, Ami and another Aes Sedai and Asha'man of the yellow surrounding Jip as if expecting him to run. The Aes Sedai and Asha'men were talking in low voices, but they obviously did not expect Jip to be listening, he did just because listening to their talk kept him anchored, reminded him that there was a world that had not just been turned on its head and there were people in it whose lives wern't totally in pieces.
They arrived at the infirmary Jip was hearded into one of the rooms they didn't take Amil away from him, mainly because the child would not let go of him and left him in piece after bringing him some water. Probably going to discuss what happened next, Yellows seemed determined to control his life. Aes Sedai seemed determined to control his life, Jip was desperately trying to ignore the new knot of emotions in his mind. Not that that was possible at all Jip shuddered he could not even comprehend what had happened today, it was enough to make him want to curl up in a ball and cry forever. But he couldn't. He had Amil to look after and so he tackled the most practicle problem first. Making sure the child, and he for that matter, were clean and not covered in blood.
He still cried, crying could be done when doing practicle things Amil was silent, still frightened but did not make a fuss when Jip bathed him. When he was done he placed Amil on the bed where he whimpered a little bit because Jip was a few paces off but then exaustion claimed him and he curled up and slept.
The water was dark red with blood by the time Jip finished washing. Knowing the yellows would not let him out until they had decided upon whatever they were deciding on Jip sat at the end of the bed watching Amil. To look at him now, clean and asleep it was hard to imagine the event of an hour ago, tears came thicker and faster. Jip had to get a grip, but he had been flung out into something unknown and frightening. Nothing in his training as a Warder prepared him for this, because this was not meant to happen. You were not meant to fail, you were certainly not meant to have two Aes Sedai die whilst you were with them and unknown Aes Sedai were not meant to bond you without permission.It was not meant to be this way.
