The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legends fade to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the First Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long passed, a wind rose in the Himalayas. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.
“Zahir, be more considerate.” Sophia resigns herself to her fate for once and runs her fingers through his hair. She hates being the first to relent, but the situation makes the action less humiliating than it should be. He’s not going to be the first to give in. Once, she had believed it to be some kind of masculine pride. That assumption didn’t last long. “How am I supposed to be upset if you’re going to look like that?”
If she doesn’t give in, she’s not sure if Zahir ever will. The Wheel willing, she will never meet another man who was so afraid of his own happiness. She doesn’t think that she can survive two. Will she survive one?
Alya still feels very foolish, but it still stands that she’s only punched a Darkfriend (someone give this girl a Nobel Peace Prize) instead of...y’know, obliterating a population center. She doesn’t hesitate to pull Sophia into a hug from behind. “Oh my god, Sophia - don’t scare us like that again!”
She saves Sophia from asking where Zahir’s cuts and bruises came from, but the moment is lost.
Everything seemed so long ago, but it probably hasn’t been for those who needed to mourn.
“You don’t have to feel responsible for me.” She reminds Alya gently. It was like consoling her own brother. Even out here, Sophia can’t escape being the younger sibling. Between Alya and Nynaeve, she isn’t sure if she can accept her feelings with a clear conscience.
Thalia offers an escape. Sophia takes it. When she mentions motel, she starts thinking of a warm shower. Her expression turns a little dreamy at the thought. “Yes, let’s leave this place.”
Alya is the first to follow Thalia, trying to put as much distance between herself and the darkfriend as possible. Sophia is eager to join them, but she stops just before she steps through the portal. She looks back at Zahir nervously. There’s a part of her that’s rife with the fear that he won’t follow.
He flinches like a beat dog when she runs her fingers through his hair, but he doesn't pull away from the touch. This is probably going to be the last time she ever touches me without hatred, Zahir realizes. The thought is too sharp to cause pain. It only draws blood.
Alya shatters the moment and he's almost grateful. They can step through the gateway and she will still love him. They can walk through the darkness and she will still love him. He's greedy for these last few moments, wants to glut himself on them like a starving man. He's watching the time run out in front of him until Sophia sees his true face. The mask is gone now; only raw muscle and blood and teeth are left.
He could run, he realizes. Thalia knotted off her shield, but she's only shielding him from the One Power. There are secrets even she doesn't know how to protect him from. He could take a step and land half a world away. But he needs to be here for this moment. It won't make it better, but it's right. It's what he has to do.
He follows her.
-
Zeyn is sitting at the table, bent over one of those cheap plastic first-aid kits you can pick up at any drugstore, when Thalia steps into the room. She looks up with annoyance scrawled across her face, frowning.
"You looked disgusting on the television," she says. "Stop holding your left arm like that, I can tell you fractured it. There's no sense in pretending."
Thalia watches her eyes narrow and her gaze slide off of her. Behind her.
"She's not even dead? After all this? How useless." Her frown turns into a grin sharp enough to strike sparks off of when she looks at Zahir. "You must feel the fool."
Thalia makes a strangled noise in the back of her throat at that, but Zeyn is in no mood to wrap her iron fist in a velvet glove. She only pulls the other woman down into the chair next to her and starts dabbing viciously at a cut on her face with an alcohol-soaked cotton pad.
Alya decides to make herself useful. She crouches on the other side so that she can delve Thalia’s injuries without encroaching into Zeyn’s territory. That’s the arm that she used to carry Sophia away from certain death. The thought humbles her, and she waits for the defensive reflex that does not come. Rubbing alcohol can only do so much. The Healer’s weaves make up the difference.
Sophia watches the women quietly. She assesses the extent of her friend’s injuries with her limited experience from medical school. Thalia fractured her arm? That doesn’t sound right. The Dragon is the ablest of all of them. Sophia tries to think about the possible scenarios in which she herself would become grievously injured. Had they been ambushed by the Shadow?
She doesn’t know what to make of Zeyn’s insinuations, but she appreciates the hint. There is a remote control in the room. Sophia takes it from the coffee table and turns on the television, expecting to see Thalia.
To be fair, she does see videos of Thalia. She sees a lot of things. The commentary reel isn’t as important as the images. There’s too much that regular reporters don’t know about the war, but the pictures don’t lie. A part of her brain is furiously calculating the amount of property damage that has been accumulated from the streets that were filmed. She can’t help it. Sophia needs her own ways of making sense of what happened, even if it’s through inaccurate figures. There is a count for missing persons. That’s a number that feels a lot less real. There’s a timestamp. That’s useful information. One of the recently-homeless is being interviewed. That’s not useful information.
She changes the channel and turns up the volume.
A different voice. A different story. The usual suspects.
Sophia doesn’t say a word. The television is the only prosecutor that is allowed to speak. Her hand moves to her chin. She doesn’t move from her standing position. From this angle, nobody can see her expression. She composes herself before turning off the television. Sophia gathers her thoughts like she’s a trial lawyer. Except she doesn’t even know who her client is.
She does not yet turn to face the other occupants of the room.
“I want firsthand accounts. One at a time.”
She doesn’t sound disappointed. She doesn’t sound upset. She doesn’t sound angry.
(Somehow, Alya thinks that makes everything worse. She almost pities the man who is being weighed against the feather of truth.)
Something soft and hurt flashes across Zeyn's face as Alya heals Thalia, but it's buried so quickly by an expression snarling contempt that it might as well have never existed. She fixes her glare on the TV, and then settles on Zahir as a worthier target. Thalia sags in the chair as if now, her body whole and unscathed, she's run out of steam. Maybe she has.
(A useless thought, a pitiful indulgence. She can't stop. Rest is a luxury for other people. For her, there's only forward momentum.)
-
Zahir awaits Sophia's pronouncement silently, and meets it with a composure that seems hewn out of stone.
"This is what I am," he says. "A Darkfriend. Shadow-sworn. Everyone in this room knows it. Do you think promising your soul to the embodiment of chaos and evil is a joke? No one should be surprised." Bile rises in the back of his throat. I am a monstrosity. Moridin throws himself against the cage bars like a feral beast, spitting venom. "Do you think I'll apologize? I killed and I laid waste to a city and I would do it again. I will do it again."
The room drops twenty degrees over the span of five seconds. For some people, rage took the form of entrophic fire. For Sophia, it takes the form of an embittered permanence. White trails mark her breath, but not her temperament.
He wants her to judge him. Zahir expects justice from a woman that he has wronged. That is unfortunate. Sophia has none to give him. Judging a mass-murderer doesn’t sound like it has many employee benefits.
“I didn’t ask for a speech.” Sophia finally turns around. She wishes that there was a kinder way of getting a different story out of Zahir. She wants to be kind to him where the world failed, but she knows. Kindness has a limited reach in the human heart. Just like cruelty. Just like indifference.
She feels nauseous at what she is about to do. She tries not to think about whether or not Zahir will forgive her for it afterwards. That’s not the important part.
Sophia approaches him with steady strides. She takes his left hand. She presses it against her throat. His hands hadn’t left a mark permanent enough to stay, but Sophia’s memory is enough. This is how he had held her, one lazy Sunday morning.
“If you don’t have the resolve to live up to your reputation, then maybe you should start giving me hard facts. Alternatively, I can ask Thalia. Feel free to fill in any missing details.”
His hand curls gently around her neck. His fingers stroke the soft, fragile skin of her throat. As tender as a lover. As ruthless as a lover.
"Those are the facts," he says. His tone is hard and brittle, and his eyes are soft and shuttered. "I thought you were dead and I reacted exactly like someone like me--a Darkfriend--would react. Without care for anyone else. Portland was in the way. Thalia stopped me, eventually. If you want details beyond that, they're all over the media. A video clip is worth a thousand of my words."
“I understand how much you enjoy blaming yourself, but the rest of us don’t experience the same gratification.” Sophia closes her eyes. Complicit or not, she is now a causation of Portland’s siege. Despite freezing to death miles from human civilization. She’s scared, even if nobody else in the country knows. A guilt weighs on her. It’s not a guilt that she want to talk about and it’s not a guilt that she can fix. Maybe it’s something that she can prevent.
Portland was in the way. What a curious way of framing the situation.
“You didn’t see my corpse. Was there a different trigger? Or is there a plan that we're not supposed to know about?” She decides not to avoid the question any longer. “Did Moridin lie to you? Ishamael?”
She doesn’t want to bring the emotional context into this. Not when he can’t even see past the weight of his sins. Also, she would be in danger of telling him: “Next time, I will be sure to die out of sight.”
-
Alya reinforces some reality for them. A brutally extroverted college student is useful for that kind of thing.
“What does that even matter! Sophia, don’t feel bad for this asshole -- he trashed the city after ditching you for weeks.” She doesn’t like Zahir’s fingers around Sophia’s throat for obvious reasons. She would get up to peel them apart, but there’s something intimate about the sight, something that gives her reason to pause.
“Okay guys, am I the only one who sees something really weird about this?” Alya points at them bluntly. Is the darkfriend enjoying this? Oh god, she hopes that the sicko isn’t enjoying this. ZAHIR BRAND
"Sometimes," he answers. "My bad decisions are just me. Nothing else, no one else, is necessary."
Alya reminds him there are other people in the room, one of whom is his older sister. He unwraps his hand from Sophia's throat and folds it behind his back before anyone can see that it's shaking.
"No one is making you watch, Alya," he says, deceptively mild. "Unless you enjoy that sort of thing? I suppose that's the closest some of us will ever get to the real deal."
His hand tightens into a fist behind his back, the tendons of his arms pulled into stark relief, his pulse thrumming with nervous energy. It feels as though he's lost everything twice over in a matter of hours and he's desperate for the safety of the mask. Something to cover up his nerves, ground down to the quick. He can't put the one he lost back on, but he can always make another.
And the best masks always have some truth in them. He digs deep for all of it: the coldness, the cruelty, the rage and the despair that turned his soul towards damnation a thousand lifetimes ago--all these things that are him--and settles beneath them. A corpse trapped beneath a frozen ocean.
Alya squawks and makes a face like she’s just swallowed some coffee without a single sugar cube, but Sophia’s temper is quicker.
“Zahir Brand. Believe it or not, you are not alone with the things that you have done.” Unfortunately, this is not a world where he has killed the Dragon by his own hand. This is a world where he can shut himself away, free of cosmic consequence.
Unfortunately, neither can she. Had she been stronger, a lot more people would be alive today. Solipsism is a tricky bitch.
(She just wishes that her tears would have meant something to him)
She doesn’t want to die. She doesn’t want to live as a ticking bomb. Between the two, Sophia can’t decide which fear is greater.
She’s not sure how much longer she is willing to stand between him and the rest of the world. Sophia is only a suburban girl with no place in a war. She has no right to protection when the safety of the world is a prize to be won.
This world needs Lan, and Sophia can only ever be a liability. She’s seen the way that Alya looks at her, and it’s proof enough. This isn’t the king that she wanted.
(I’m sorry. Someone else wanted me more than I wanted myself.)
She wants to look to Thalia for an answer. She resists the temptation. This has to be her own choice. Sophia has already made her peace in the snow all those hours ago.
Don’t think too much. She always had the tools. She always had the means. She just needed the resolve.
A weave of air cuts sharp and true behind her. A lot of hair falls out. Sophia had put so much care into maintaining it by eating the right foods and developing the right morning regimens. Most of it is now on the dirty motel carpet.
She’s not a perfect king, but she is a king. She is a Mandragoran.
(Lan. I'm yours.)
“Portland won’t happen again.” Her voice is undeniably sharp. There is no question, Portland will not happen again.ZAHIR BRAND
His nails dig blood out of this body's palms before he can make them relax. It takes a conscious effort, a fact that irks him. Zahir's eyes had widened when Sophia's hair fell to the floor, a gap in the armor long enough for someone else to slip through and Moridin draws himself up as proud as any king, casting a scornful eye over the room's occupants.
"None of you children understand, not even him," he says coolly. "Portland--" His tongue stumbles slightly over the unfamiliar word, but in a manner that somehow implies the word is the clumsy, wrong thing, "--will happen again and keep happening. You'll dream of Portland, in the days to come, dream for the escape of simple blood and fire. This is a war."
He draws on the True Power till he feels he might burst, and then draws further. Black saa pour across his eyes in a flood. These primitives might not know what the saa mean, but they'll surely be able to see them. None of them have a counter to the True Power, but he readies three shields. While he has control of this body, it's best to make use of it. Stilling the two extraneous ones will be best, he thinks, and then binding Lews Therin.
(Zeyn doesn't even register; she is less than a gnat.)
They will keep losing, but they will not have lost. The Malkieri have always been exceptionally bad losers.
“A war can be won.”
He isn’t drawn to the man’s new manner of speaking or the different way that his face contorts with disdain. He’s drawn to his enemy’s new confidence and his center of balance. The important things.
“Nynaeve, watch the Dragon!” When he draws a sword from what appears to be the ground, it is not made of its usual ice. The sword is blackened steel, with no brittleness along its fine edge.
Alya responds to the call immediately. Unlike Sophia, she never saw anything odd or unsuitable about being molded after an ancient hero who saved the world. She grew into her role before she had ever understood it. “Roger!”
He sustains an offensive stance. Moridin had already failed to kill Sophia once. He can't expect that this man is as bad as Zahir at learning from his mistakes.
A sword? Does this woman think they're going to duel like sportsmen? Moridin truly despises heathen cultures. He has many areas of expertise, often focusing on what others had scorned, but they were never one of them.
All of them are still hundreds of years too young to face him. Even al'Thor had won only by luck, only by clinging desperately to the memories in his head. This cycle's Dragon has no such help. The True Power courses like fire through his veins and he draws as deeply as he can, as deeply as the thinning walls of the Great Lord's prison allow.
It's not what it once was, but it should be enough. He slams a shield down on the Dragon and the other one and ties them off. Let them try to find someone who can unknot that for them. They'll be looking for a very long time. Shielding both of them at once takes the edge off the second one; she's not severed, although perhaps its as good as.
It all takes happens in the space between one breath and the next. He eyes the woman's sword and sneers. "You don't understand the tenth part of what you could do. None of you do. I'm not Demandred, dying like a fool for principle, willing to fight on your terms."
And to prove it, he spins a weave to fill the room with flame.
This is the only way that he can win, Lan thinks. He is not of the Aes Sedai, but even he can tell that firepower isn’t going to carry them through. What they do have is one small advantage.
Zahir Brand had loved this girl dearly.
(I favor my left side)
When he is shut off from the One Power, Lan feels a renewed lightness. No parlor tricks, no mind games. Just his own skill and his opponent’s lack thereof. The fire is a distraction. The enemy’s words are a distraction. None of those things can hold up to his own resolve.
Lan doesn’t wait for Moridin to finish tying the weave. He charges straight for his right side, counting on speed to upset the balance of their fight. ZAHIR BRAND
Moridin steps left and goes to throw another weave at the girl, quick as thought. Zahir steps right and both of them scrabble over the True Power uselessly, hands clawing at slick glass. The sword rips through his shoulder with a wet noise and both of them recoil from the pain. Moridin is a hair slower stepping back in and Zahir shakes his head and spits out a truly impressive stream of curses.
At the same time, Thalia gasps that she's shielded and Zeyn decides that she's rather tired of every channeler in her immediate radius being exactly what they are. She draws her gun from her holster and puts a bullet in Zahir's right thigh. Between that and the sword, he drops like a wet bag of sand.
Between that and the sword, he might not actually be around that much longer to worry about Moridin or Sophia or Portland. Zahir laughs with a mouth full of blood.
Thalia scrambles to his side on hands and knees, heedless of the fact that she's still shielded, of the fact that she doesn't know who he is. Her eyes are bright with fear. Zeyn keeps her gun level.
To Alya’s credit, she makes a genuine effort. To her dismay, it’s not enough. Just like how the water soaking them from above isn’t enough to save them from the True Power’s flames.
“I can’t reach Spirit!” She doesn’t know why - drawing upon her healing powers has never been a matter of difficulty. Then it hits her. The shield that helped Moridin is now going to kill Zahir, and Alya can’t enjoy the irony. “Zahir, can you undo the shield?” She uses his name for the first time that day. She has to believe that there is a different Philosopher in that body, for all of their sakes.
While the Healer pleads. Lan levels his bloody sword at his enemy’s throat, never mind that he’s already bleeding out. Zahir Brand is a darkfriend before he is the Shadow’s hostage, but he isn’t entirely unfair. Lan hasn’t killed the man yet.
“If you want to live, then put out the fire.” Zahir may be dying, but the carbon monoxide may as well kill them all at once. Love is a more debilitating emotion than hatred, and Lan currently suffers the penalties of both. His enemy is in front but the Dragon and the Healer are behind. He thinks that he would rather face a hundred armies than to face this nightmare again.
(Lan Mandragoran, please. You owe me.)
He does, but his duty to the Dragon is greater. ZAHIR BRAND
