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.
Thalia wraps her hands around the sword at Zahir's throat, as if she could push it away. As if she stood a chance against Lan without the Power.
"He can't do anything," she begs. Smoke stings her eyes. "Not like this."
There's the sound of breaking glass behind her, but she doesn't worry about it until Zeyn grabs her upper arm and pulls her away, to her feet, fingers digging in with such force that Thalia knows she's going to bruise.
"You're all useless the moment you can't channel," Zeyn hisses and pushes her towards the broken window. The black asphalt of the parking lot rises up outside of it and Thalia twists and turns in Zeyn's grip but she can't break it and Zeyn practically throws her out the window after one more hissed sentence.
Then she turns back, gun held warily, looking like a predator unsure if it's about to become prey, and looks at whomever Sophia is now. Or was, and now is again.
"Are you going to let me carry him out," she says, "Or do I have to take him?"
There’s no time to deliberate. He ends Zahir’s misery by punching him upwards in the jaw.
Lan probably should have taken offense to Zeyn, but he doesn’t. He knows an ally when he sees one, even while she’s baring her teeth.
“I am in your debt, miss.” He’s still Sophia, even when he isn’t. He would have tossed Zahir’s body to the woman, but Sophia did a lot less weight training than Lan would have preferred. Lan grunts as he drags the unconscious body to the window.
A lightbulb explodes in a shower of glass. Lan grabs Alya by the wrist and breaks the other window, making sure that she left the building first.
“Can you get out like this?”
Alya concentrates hard. Not all of her powers are available, but wind was always her best element. She constructs a giant air bubble below, just strong enough to buffer their fall.
An alarm starts blaring, and one has to wonder about the quality control of the motel’s fire safety. A crowd gathers outside. The Muggles Are Coming. Oh god, they’re going to be seen.
“Sophia! What do we do!”
A strong hand grasps her shoulder like he had all the answers in the world.
“We live.” A push, and Alya makes the fall. ZAHIR BRAND
Like hell is Zeyn jumping out a window at someone else's mercy. Prying handholds out of brick and mortar means her fingertips are bleeding by the time she lands on solid ground, but it's a lesser burden to bear than the alternative. Her mother's voice croons in her head and the bitch almost sounds proud. Zeyn swallows past the warm happiness that blooms in her throat and fixes what Thalia calls her hungry falcon expression on the rest of them.
Zahir is sprawled on the ground, leaking blood slowly from his right side and Thalia is hovering beside him. She looks torn between her brother and a smoldering sort of anger. Zeyn is ready for that fight, craving it with a dizzying hunger, but now isn't the time.
"Now we find a hospital," she says. "Or a prison. Unless..." She trails off, but her eyes land on Alya meaningfully. If Zeyn had her way, they'd let him bleed out here on the street, walk away back into the shape of their own lives, but it's not her way that guides them.
Last Edit: Sept 27, 2015 12:18:11 GMT -5 by THALIA
Zahir’s alter ego may have just tried to kill them all, but Alya finds it hard to hate a man who’s bleeding out on the asphalt. She gathers saidar around her hand.
“I can try to stop the bleeding, but I would rather we take him to a hospital afterward. He hasn’t ruptured anything major, but I don’t want to risk an infection if we have the means.” Alya presses her weave on Zahir’s wounds, sending a steady flow of energy.
“Out of the question.” Lan speaks with his gravely tone. “The world’s seen both his face and the Dragon’s.” His gaze turns to the burning window above. “I am also reluctant to transfer him to a civilian facility. We don’t know what his state of mind will be when he wakes up.”
“We’re not just abandoning him!” Alya yells angrily, but her weave is steady. This isn’t like Sophia at all, especially to say this in front of Thalia.
“We aren’t. We give him to the Darkfriends. They don’t need to love him to have a stake in his life.” ZAHIR BRAND
"You can all go to hell," Thalia says with a voice like ice. With a voice like she doesn't particularly care if they do go or not, as long as they don't stay with her. "He's my brother and I'm not sending him to prison and I'm not handing him over to the Shadow. I'll take care of him. I'll deal with him. He's my responsibility."
Thalia slides him out from beneath Alya's hands, her fists white-knuckled and knotted in the ragged cotton of his shirt. She struggles to gather him into her arms with much less grace than she carried Sophia, but Zahir is larger and taller. Zeyn watches, arms folded, and although she knows Thalia must feel the weight of her gaze, the other woman doesn't lift her head to look at her.
"You can come with me or not," Thalia says finally. "I don't care. It's probably better for you if you come with us. He can untie the shields on us when he wakes up. But if you come with me, you're following me, and that means letting me handle him. No matter if you think otherwise or not."
“...your first responsibility is to the world.” Lan says quietly. He doesn’t force the subject and he’s reluctant to be self-righteous about it. The Dragon’s life was never her own, and Lan is not unfamiliar with the demands of duty.
She can have her brother because there is too little that this world can offer her.
“I will protect you in any capacity I can. I leave the choice to you, though I would prefer to keep my distance from him. I doubt that we would survive his alter ego again, should I cause him to resurface.” He hesitates for a second before buckling down on his resolve. It’s been twenty-seven years. Understandably, he’s not thrilled about seeking out his own jailer. “The woman is determined not to return.” “Sophia?” Alya flails at him a little. “Why? This is her body! She's gotta come back, she's gotta!"
Her concern is not for him. Lan makes a blatant expression of annoyance - he hasn’t been awake in this body for long enough to know how to mask them. It goes away quickly with his shifting mood. “I do not know. She’s blocking me off.”
The world has never done anything for Thalia and Zeyn doesn't see what she owes it. (Why should she die for it?) But she watches his words sink into the fine lines of Thalia's face, the furrow between her eyebrows, the unhappy lines at the corner of her mouth, settling into place like a shroud over a corpse and Zeyn feels her heart close like a stone.
I should hate you, she thinks without fervor and at times she thinks she almost could. Almost. She's going to die for that almost. Zeyn can feel it stuck in her throat like a bone, like a knife. She watches Thalia's hands smooth Zahir's shirt over his shoulders, trembling minutely, and wants to hold them in hers. She wants to break them. But all she says, sneering, is to Alya:
"Have you noticed the events of the past 12 hours? Is it a surprise that she wants to be gone?"
Last Edit: Sept 28, 2015 11:12:06 GMT -5 by THALIA
Alya shuts up after that. She hadn't been thinking of Sophia's feelings, and the price had already been paid. If only they had more time to dissuade her--
"You misunderstand. She has left the war in my hands for as long as the Dragon needs me.” He doesn’t know why she trusts him so much. Sophia had not consciously suppressed him, but neither were they bosom friends. “No matter how long it takes.”
She had not asked him to keep her alive. Whether or not the omission had been intentional, Lan can’t say.
He walks over to Thalia and puts his coat around her. If Thalia is trembling for reasons other than the cold, then Lan pretends not to notice. “We shouldn’t stay. If we’re unlucky, then our enemies might pick up our trail.”
The other channeller tries to follow his example. Better than wallowing in regret. Alya stoops to Thalia’s eye level and tries to collect some of her maturity from before the city was leveled. “Hey Thali, it’s okay. Once he wakes up and unweaves the shield, I can put him back. I’ve fixed worse, remember?” She pokes Zahir’s cheek to detract from the severity of their situation.
The three of them curved around each other in the street--this is where she should go to Thalia's side, Zeyn knows. She has always known, in excruciating detail, what she should be and how far short she falls of the mark. But if she goes to Thalia now, her hands will only bruise and her words will cut like cold steel.
That knowledge brings none of its usual comfort. At night, lying beside her in silence as the two of them stare at the ceiling and pretend not to know that the other is awake, shoulders and knees brushing beneath the blankets until Zeyn's skin prickles with uncomfortable heat; on those nights knowing that she can wound Thalia is a balm. Zeyn will measure each blow that Thalia can deliver her and weigh out its counter, lull herself to sleep with the soft picture of Thalia's shattered eyes and cracked mouth.
But today she feels nothing except a desire to hold her without causing pain, and the sharper truth behind that wish: I don't know how. Her craving makes bile rise in the back of her throat, that she should be held thrall to such a weak and useless desire. There is no balance for this. There is no hope of escape.
"If we're going to go, then we need to go," she says and watches Thalia rise unsteadily to her feet, teetering beneath the struggle of carrying Zahir. She knows she should go to her--she knows she should--
She doesn't.
She turns to walk down the street ahead of them instead. "I have a safe place we can stay," she offers. "At least until he wakes up and the three of you can channel again."
“Thank you for offering.” Instead of waiting for Thalia to regain her composure, Lan walks around her and tries to take her brother’s unconscious body from her. “You shouldn’t force yourself”
His arms crumple under the weight. Sophia has the advantage of a few inches on Thalia, but it’s not like she’s been to the gym in a good long while. That’s channeller privilege to you. Lan looks slightly embarrassed.
In the end, it’s Alya who ends up successfully carrying Zahir on her back. She’s strong and tanned from all those years in intramural sports, charity marathons, and backpacking. She looks back at them. “Geez, you guys are hopeless. C'mon. Wait for me, Zeyn!” Alya somehow still manages to run after her with a grown man on her back. Lan makes googly eyes. Somehow, Alya still manages to turn everything into a shounen genre. THALIA
Zeyn very blatantly doesn't wait for Alya. Her fists are jammed into her pockets and walking forward is the only way to keep herself from doing something she might possibly regret, if she lives long enough for regret. Her mother keeps a safe house a few miles from here. She scans the road, the cars parallel parked beside the dull gray meters, and settles on a fairly unobtrusive one.
"Thalia, I need you to hot wire this," she calls over her shoulder. "And don't pretend you can't do it just to be modest."
Thalia's face darkens with either anger or embarrassment, but she makes her way to Zeyn's side and pops the lock without much fuss.
"I didn't think car stealing would be part of saving the world," she mutters, half under her breath, but she still slides into the driver's seat with some satisfaction once the engine is purring. Zeyn decides to be gracious and opens the back door for Alya before taking her spot in the passenger seat. It's been a long time since the two of them did this, and against her will she can feel herself relaxing, enjoying the moment. She can almost pretend the other three aren't here.
Believe it or not, this is Alya’s first ever carjacking. She’s not very good at hiding it, either.
“Thalia, we are going to return the car after we’re done with it, right?” Alya squeaks. What if they got some poor sap stranded in the middle of Nowhere, Oregon? Shit, they’re stranded in the middle of Nowhere, Oregon now that Portland isn’t even fully on the map anymore. She gets in the backseat and slowly admits to herself that they are in fact going to commit a felony. Alya didn’t mind breaking the law to save the world, but losing your car just sucks. She can only hope that the Wheel repays in good karma. "Where'd you even learn how to do that?"
She buckles Zahir into the middle seat since he’s not conscious enough to protest. Lan scrunches his nose as he gets in on the other side. He usually liked to put as much distance between himself and darkfriends as possible, but concessions have to be made.
"Registration," Thalia says to Zeyn, and Zeyn pops the glove compartment open and rifles through the mess inside. There's discarded candy wrappers, a Bob Dylan CD, and a crumpled brochure for an apartment complex, as well as the papers Thalia's looking for. There's no gloves, which is a disappointment, but she gets over it rather quickly and memorizes the name on the registration.
Meanwhile Thalia tries to make a decade old car that was probably a piece of shit straight off the assembly line go from 0 to 60 in less than 5 seconds. Something in the engine makes an alarming nose as she takes a sharp turn on two wheels.
"I'll buy them a new car--" Zeyn starts to say to Alya, and cuts off to brace her hands on the dash and keep her head from ricocheting off the paneling. "--when all of this settles down, if that appeases your bleeding heart," she finishes. "A nicer, newer one, for the inconvenience."
There's the snarl of rubber on asphalt. BANG BANG BANG. A series of trash cans spin out in the street behind them, receding at a frightening place in the rear view mirror.
"Sorry," Thalia says, not sounding sorry at all. "Didn't see those. We're going to the place with the basement, right?"
"Yes," Zeyn says. There's not actually a basement anymore--their last visit resulted in a total reconstruction from the foundation up--but she knows which place Thalia means. Her stomach lurches and she hopes they arrive soon.
