One Last Stand: The Fine Art of Falling Apart **Sirayn**

[Lannie]

One Last Stand: The Fine Art of Falling Apart

 

I'm burning bridges for the last time

I'm breaking habits for the first time

I saw my future today, it said I'm going away

And I still haven't sung the last line

On my way down...

~ Demon Hunter, “Not ready to dieâ€

 

In her dreams, she was running. The running was good, and she was at peace. She wasn't running for her life; she was running because she wanted to, because it felt good. The staccato rhythm of her feet hitting the ground, the adrenaline, sweat beading on her skin... and companionship. It all felt good and peaceful because she wasn't alone.

 

In her dreams, the sunrise was painting a still sleepy Tanchico a brilliant hue of amber and peach. Out here, on top of the hill where she was, there were hardly any sounds yet apart from the gentle breeze and early birds greeting the sun. That, and the two friends that were jogging down the hill... two women, one blond and one dark, their footfalls hit the ground in perfect rhythm and they talked, jested, and laughed with a familiarity that spoke of many years of companionship, of trust and kinship. Two friends on their morning jog, running towards the sun rising over the city in the east.

 

In her dreams, Lyanna was running next to her, and she laughed. The sound of it was so precious. The moment was precious and perfect; one to cherish for eternity.

 

In her sleep, Lanfir reached out to the scenes of her memory, trying to embrace the dream to stay forever in that early morning in Tanchico three years ago... but the dream fleeted between her grasping fingers and was replaced by an aching emptiness and a dull, throbbing pain all over her body that was forcefully waking her up. There was no escape, no matter how hard she tried to stay below the currents of her consciousness. Deep inside her dreams she wanted to deny reality, deny what was going on because she remembered that waking up meant facing things she did not want to face, things she simply couldn't deal with.

 

Her dreams were a far more pleasant place to dwell. And how long had it been since she had thought that last... for the longest times, the dreamworld was not where she wanted to be for it plagued her with scenario's that made her wake up gasping in horror and fear. In her darkest dreams, she had been betrayed and Lyanna had died horribly over and over again, mostly because of her own fault... but now everything had been turned upside down.

 

Now it was thus that in her dreams, Lyanna laughed her sweet laugh... and in the waking world... oh Light, in the waking world...

 

She almost remembered, and that alone was enough to jolt her out of her unconsciousness in terror.

 

Lanfir Leah Marithsen, ex-Amyrlin of the White Tower and arguably one of the most powerful people in the world up until yesterday, woke up with a choked scream. She sat up between her sheets and winced at the feeling of fabric against skin that was once whole but now was covered in sensitive burn-scars that were not completely Healed yet. The tears were rolling over her cheeks before she had even taken in her rooms and the bright winter sunlight falling through the silky draperies.

 

Late afternoon. How much time had passed? What had passed?

 

She remembered flashes – coughing up blood – the icy feeling of Healing – hurried talking – people sounding concerned and stressed – but most of all she remembered fire, she remembered burning. She didn't think that she could ever forget the burning. The scent of ozone and burnt flesh and smoke. And the hurt...

 

“Lyanna,†she gasped. Her fingers dug into the damp white sheets. Feverish breathing, panicking. She was in her own bed and it was empty. She had to fight for oxygen in her lungs. It hurt; as if on the inside she was blistered as well. Her head was spinning with nausea and fatigue, but she ignored it. She had to know. Her bed was empty, and her memories were ink black. “Where is Lyanna?â€

[Sirayn]

“In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.â€

 

If a listener had been passing by a black door, even at this late hour of the evening, they might have paused at the sounds rising from within. Stone and wood muffled words at such manic speed nobody could have pieced them together; fragmented sentences made a patchwork of images, some original and others imitated, and even the stops and silence and sudden swearing formed a broken whole. It sounded like the speech of a madman or maybe some kind of foreign code … but past that forbidding black door, in quarters silent but for this strange language, everything made sense.

 

No such thoughts troubled the speaker in question so immersed was she in her own work. Ever since yesterday’s chaos, smoke and screams burned into her memory, proceedings had moved on at a frantic pace. In truth she did not remember much of what she had done afterward; logically she knew she had stayed in the hall for some hours lending her meagre strength, they had cleared the ruins and had the fallen removed and ignored that some folk were weeping, but few images stayed with her. In the midst of spent fury a sister had fallen to her knees right there in public, started to sob, and not a single one had gone to comfort her … now on her own in empty quarters her speech faltered somewhat. All this meant nothing: she would feel nothing, she would make it mean nothing. Talking resumed.

 

Meetings and mayhem had devoured her time afterward. She recalled little of what she had said, to shaking recruits and her own and cynical generation alike, but no doubt it had been as coldly calculated as was her trademark. If people feared, she had likely not dispelled that, but she had at least told them that the Battle Ajah would stand ready. Nothing they did not already know; everything they needed to hear. Maybe it was obscene in a way, that she should go about her business as Ajah Head so callously and never mourn for the lost, but Aes Sedai did not grieve … and anyway, what right did she have to do so? She was merely a line in the great song of those legends Lanfir Leah Marithsen and Lyanna al’Ellisande. It was her job to pick up the pieces once the singing was over and all fell silent.

 

Last night she had been preparing for the trial and her quarters told plenty of tales. Books still lay scattered across every flat surface; only a few inches of her polished wood desk could be glimpsed beneath the papers. Some she was using now, of course, tomes spread open to the ritual page where other Captain Generals in similar circumstances had consulted the past, but others still spoke of law and precedent and a hundred other technicalities she had imagined she would never need. The trial itself had been grim all the same. No doubt her first instinct had been correct, that she should be seen to be involved, but it took a special kind of fool to get mixed up where others had a hundred years’ experience and she did not intend to go back to cool court rooms and contempt any time soon.

 

Nor would she. As the current Captain General, and how ironic it was that she the failure would hold that rank at a time like this, it was her responsibility to commit Lyanna al’Ellisande into the earth in true Battle Ajah style … and hence the constant tireless pacing, her pieces of speech, as she drew on history and memory and her own ingenuity to compose some kind of acceptable speech for the funeral. She knew the customs and courtesies back to front of course. Near a year ago she had stood silent while Jehanine Rhessaven de Gavrielle was committed into the earth. Burial with full military honours: that was the cold end that awaited sisters fallen in the line of duty. Yet none of those women had died on her watch and this would be her first funeral as Ajah Head … the first death laid at her door.

 

Pace and turn. The frenzied speed helped in a way, kept tension and determination thrumming through her, though part of her suspected if she ever stopped moving she might remember something she was suppressing very hard: that she too had known these women, had some kind of investment in them, and this … meant something. No, she had no time for sentiment or softness. Hard times demanded hard folk and in this moment, facing the funeral of a fallen legend, Sirayn intended to rival iron for lack of feeling. Somebody had to be in control. This speech had to be note perfect; every pause finely calculated, gesture and intonation tightly controlled, and if she did it right nobody would look at her and think she gave a damn.

 

“For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.â€

 

Stone and ashes and fallen heroes. Exhaustion trembled at the edges of her calm; at least she hoped it was only tiredness, stress and lack of rest maybe, nothing to compromise her work. Partly she felt … fragile, somehow, and this strange feeling waited like fingers tapping at a closed door … and she remembered: that she had gone to Lanfir still white and drawn following the blackest hour of her life and asked for judgement; not wanting forgiveness, no, for nobody could give her that after what she had done, but for punishment. Punishment to fix it all somehow, to make everything all right, to ease a weight of guilt and fear and dreadful shame … but even legends did not wreak miracles, at least not on behalf of useless commoners like her, and she had had to deal with that on her own.

 

For the friendless, for the isolated and alone, for those dark folk who could never come back to the light, Lanfir Leah Marithsen and her brilliant companion had been something more than women; they had been the heroes of this age, bright and flawless, and no wonder that everyone loved them so fervently. The likes of her did not speak to them as equals. She came for judgement; there would never be level terms between them. Some might deny it, others think it just the jealousy of somebody who had never earned such unthinking devotion, but say what one might about her Sirayn knew how everything worked. One did not question one’s idols, the heroes who graced the world with their presence; one only obeyed. And the White Tower had trusted those legends to lead them through the Last Battle. Much good would that do them now.

 

Somewhere during her musings she had stopped moving, stopped talking, and this strange fragile feeling took a tight grip. She ignored it; show a moment’s sentiment now, even in the silence of her empty quarters, and she might as well give up the pretence of being in control. This did not affect her. She was nobody’s friend, nobody’s lover, and had no right to feel anything. Finally she crossed the floor, echoing steps in the stillness, and slumped in a hard chair covering her eyes with one hand … and it would be easy to feel something now, so simple to let all that in. No: she would not be so shamed. She had not needed the Amyrlin & her great Keeper or anyone else.

 

Later, once she trusted herself to be as cool and composed and uncaring as anyone could ask of her, she left her quarters and headed up several levels through the great white citadel. It did not take a master observer to sense a certain despair lying like a weight on the air. The novices had gone back to their constant chores, those whose white skirts had survived the clash without taking a drop of blood, and a few sisters moved between quarters murmuring to themselves; but nobody lifted their eyes above the flagstones and when she passed through the Hall of Swords, what should have been the busiest part of the Ajah Halls, nobody so much as spoke to her. It gave her the odd sense that she was some kind of ghost unseen to all around her: or maybe she was the only one left alive.

 

Up here in the finest corridors, where stars had feared to tread, a woman had lain unmoving in bed ever since yesterday’s spectacular events. She had not stirred since they laid her here. It took only a word to get her past the guards and into the expensively furnished quarters beyond; as Sirayn entered, though she held her breath and froze a moment at the door, the better to pick out any movement, the sleeper did not wake. Pale light fell through the drapes and spilled cut-glass sharp across the bed. Illuminated so softly, the only one who had a right to mourn any more lay unmoving … the striking features composed, sheets drawn up to cover the scarring burns had made of her, the woman once clearly intended to save the world lay in undisturbed sleep. Part of her hoped those dreams were treating Lanfir well. Much better than the truth would do.

 

Silent, she took a seat at the bedside and clasped her surviving hand in her lap. The stillness lay over them like ice. Looking at the fallen soldier beside her … one who had smiled at her once, who had poured her tea and told her how sorry she was when she had been meant to pass judgement … Sirayn wished, for a brief and irrational moment, that she could fix this somehow; that a wave of her hand could vanish all that had happened and return it all to the way it was before. If she could snap her fingers and Lyanna al’Ellisande could walk in, just as dark and proud and beautiful, and Lanfir would wake and make a string of lights dance around them -- the simple novice’s trick she would never manage again -- then maybe everything would be all right. Maybe they would get through the Last Battle after all.

 

How many minutes passed in silence and contemplation she did not record. Only sudden sound and movement broke her from thoughts: a strangled scream as the sleeper jerked upright: the glitter of sunlight on bright tears. Fear closed on her like a cold hand. She had no idea why, it seemed illogical to be scared by this when Lanfir was the one suffering, but … being here with someone so fundamentally hurt, having to try to offer comfort when she knew so little of that … she was going to mess this up beyond recovery. She didn’t even want to think about it directly; her thoughts skirted the edges. No sister would want to remember what had happened to Lanfir. It came too close to the heart of every sister’s fears.

 

Outwardly composed, an image of calm in a world gone to madness, Sirayn waited while her companion got herself under control. Such strong sentiment had always discomforted her; she had no more idea of what to say to burnt-out survivors than talking to the moon. “Lyanna …†had come to her weeping one afternoon and told her how impossibly hard it was to be Keeper of the Chronicles at a time like this; Lyanna, whom she had once called a former drunkard to her face, had needed something from her she did not know how to give. “Lyanna didn’t make it.†Smooth tones, coolness, she would be in control. “She went before anyone could reach her. You took the full force of an unravelling weave. We nearly lost you both.â€

 

So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written. Death is swallowed up in victory.

[Lannie]

Walk, I cannot walk

For I am blind, blinded I am

By the pitch of dark, so dark it is

The narrow street, never ending narrow

Clogs my throat

Silently I try,

Try to walk, blinded by the pitch

The narrow darkness, clogs the street

I am speechless, I'm speechless

~The Gathering, “Black Light Districtâ€

 

 

“Lyanna...†a voice answered her, soft and timid. It sounded like a wish, somehow.

 

Lannie turned to look at the speaker through veils of panic and a clouded mind and recognized Sirayn Simeone sitting next to her bed. One of her Sisters. Despite all their differences, all of their misunderstandings and despite everything, Sirayn had been one of her Sisters. One of the few she had trusted to stand next to. Her Sister to Battle in the truest sense of the word was sitting next to her.

 

Sirayn's stormgrey eyes that had always looked at Lanfir with some sort of hidden challenge underneath her stony deference (that Lanfir never asked nor wished for) were now looking as troubled and sorrowful as Lanfir had ever seen them. So sad, so full of sorrow.

 

The look in the eyes of Sirayn Simeone told Lanfir all that she wanted to know before the words even left her lips. “Lyanna didn't make it.â€

 

She didn't make it... Lanfir remembered what had happened. Of course she did; she'd been so close. She could not have been any closer to Lyanna; they had been linked at the time. Sharing a Circle is more intimate than any bond with a warder, simply because there's more saidar involved than that one tied off strand of Spirit. It's a heightened state of being: you feel what she feels, you experience what she experiences. So very close...

 

At the moment of Lyanna's death, Lanfir had held her hand and shared a link with her. They were as close as they had ever been. She had not seen it happen because the lightning had been too bright for her to make out anything in that instant that it hit their unprotected, unShielded unity – but she had felt every... single... thing...

 

She had felt Death in one shattering blow.

 

“She went before anyone could reach her,†Sirayn told her in smooth, controlled tones. There was no gentleness in her words but a clear, blunt truth that she could not, and would not hide. “You took the full force of an unraveling weave. We nearly lost you both.â€

 

It had been Lyanna's death, but it felt like her own.

 

Her heart broke.

 

Was there any difference, really?

 

“Lyanna is dead?†Lanfir breathed, reaching out to the Green sister at her bedside like a drowning woman might clutch anything that would float. Sirayn was here, Sirayn was real in a world that seemed to beat any horrific nightmare she had ever had by a mile. “Oh Light... I've felt it, I felt it.†The other woman nodded solemnly, taking Lanfir's hand into her own remaining one – a reminder that she too had fought and lost. “I felt her die, and I thought that I would go with her.†Blood was pounding in her ears, in her head. Pounding like rain, drowning out any thought that resembled coherency.

 

“I should have gone with her.†Despite the pain, despite her weakened physical state and the wounds that had not been healed completely yet, despite the very real person that was sitting next to her, Lanfir reached out instinctively to the greatest source of comfort that had been with her for the better part of two and a half hundred years- something so ingrained in her being, something so much a part of herself... comfort beyond anything she knew, comfort like the Light itself... something that she had lived with for so long that she could not remember what it was like to be without.

 

Saidar.

 

She found out what it was like at that very moment.

 

Her breath stuck in her throat, her heart skipped a beat. She gave in and opened herself to the river that was saidar and could not find it. It was as if it had never been there in the first place. She opened her eyes and looked to Sirayn for reassurance, for comfort – but even before their gazes had caught she knew.

 

She knew.

 

She had been unable to connect to the Source before, in Fal Dara; after her fumble in Gytta's circle. The young Gray who'd had so much at stake in the successful completion of the weave had grabbed control over the link and had attempted to finish it, instead... and failed. The weave had been too much for her to handle and threads of Spirit had torn loose, effectively unraveling Lanfir's hard work and exploding in their faces before they could undo their error. Gytta had died, the young woman they'd tried to Heal had died... and the next morning, after Ryell had left so abruptly... Lyanna had sat at Lanfir's bed much like Sirayn was doing now. The parallel of the situation was crystal clear.

“I'm afraid I've burnt out,†Lyanna had said through a river of shared tears. The amount of Spirit they'd been hit with was staggering, and thus Lanfir tried to test Lyanna's theory... and found a blinding headache where her surrender to sweet saidar had been before, blocking her way. She had been unable to channel, but it had still been there. Not being able to reach for it was torture, but she'd known it would pass as soon as her body had recovered.

 

...And this felt different.

 

There was nothing. Nothing. NOTHING. NOTHING!

 

“Oh, you did...†She had not felt it previously; the dull ache in her mind, the emptiness where a part of her had been before. In her terror over Lyanna, over love itself... she had not felt it previously. But she did now. There was nothing left.

 

(nothing...)

 

“You did lose us both, didn't you?†Lanfir breathed. She'd lost her voice. New tears were streaming over her ravaged face, silent but unrelenting as the tattered remains of her world came crashing down around her. “It's all gone. I burnt out. And Lya... oh Light...Lya....â€

 

The realization was too big. Her body turned to water and she sunk back into her pillows. The world spun around her as she tried to weep. She tried to breathe and found herself failing. “Tell me it isn't true,†she begged of Sirayn and the Creator alike. “Tell me this didn't happen...â€

[Sirayn]

Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.

 

She had never trusted in prophecy. She lacked that conviction in her heart, that willingness to place her belief in something greater than herself, the capability to take a leap of faith; she preferred facts and logic. If there was anything else … anything that the credulous might call the work of fate or even destiny … it stemmed from people wanting to believe in it. The reason a thousand folk might follow just one person came not from prophecy but from inspiration, drive and desperation, from the hundred places that made a hero. Yet in the hard years, dark times of desperation and despair, people needed to fool themselves that a final glory awaited them. They dreamed of being saved; that the Heroes of the Horn waited even now just out of sight; that a Lord of the Morning would come again to defeat the Shadow on their behalf. And even when centuries whiled on into ashes still they stubbornly believed.

 

So she did not imagine for a moment that it had been prophesied, maybe long ago, that the Green Ajah would give forth a lion of an Amyrlin to save the world at the Last Battle, though perhaps there was an innocent part in all of them that wanted to believe … nor did she think that the game was up now and that they had no hope against the Shadow. Intellectually she figured it might even make no difference. Replace one Amyrlin from the Battle Ajah with another cut from the same cloth; maybe one of her choosing, she liked to think she could extend that much influence now; and everything might proceed as had been imagined. That was what logic told her. But some old and persistent fear told her another story: that people only got one shot at redemption, one chance for salvation, and they had lost theirs … and now they were going to slide once and for all into the darkness.

 

Enough of this dark philosophy. If they had lost their golden hero, they would have to go on regardless, to think otherwise would be to give in to despair. And that would be the final blow. Instead brooding she watched the woman lying in bed beside her. Sunlight and the shadow of pale sheer drapes played across the lovely face, smoothed over the dismay and anguish there … and for once Sirayn had complete and unqualified sympathy. To have such an integral part of one’s life torn away must be paralysing; that much she could assess from having lost her own friends time and again; she had stood silent in white at half a hundred funerals and it never got any easier. If there was anything she knew, it was the guilt and horror of surviving when everything important had gone. Perhaps only the Battle Ajah treated its sisters so harshly.

 

Nothing she could say would make this any better. She merely took the other woman’s hand and remained silent while she watched the world crash down around Lanfir Leah Marithsen, the golden one, their hero and leader; the bright room so still and silent it seemed like a mockery after the past days’ chaos. Amid all this tragedy she felt like a traitor even to survive. Had she not pledged herself to the defence of the Tower? If anyone should have died in dust and smoke and bitter ashes during a Dreadlord assault on her home it should have been her; an Ajah Head could be replaced easily and anyway, she was dispensable, she had little merit her successor could not also provide. Those two had been too important to lose. And surely no Keeper had died in battle for Light knew how long.

 

In an irrational way she suspected that Lyanna al’Ellisande had stolen her death. No loss if they could have been switched around. It would have meant a quick, clean end for a Captain General doing her duty and spared the Tower’s leaders for the desperate future ahead; times which required women of their quality and determination to guide the Tower through Tarmon Gai’don. To be thinking in these terms seemed callous, but it was … easier, somehow, to watch the big picture right now; to think less about watching one’s best and only friend struck down in front of one’s eyes; not to remember the bloody print of a hand on her skirts. Politics scarcely afforded her any more comfort, but at least life would go on in its old course. Lanfir would never get back what she had lost. The memory of that desperate hour would never die.

 

Resilient as she was part of her just about admitted defeat when the great and golden Lanfir, legend for so many years, started pleading with her for reassurance. Half a hundred replies came to her tongue, none any more comforting than the last, yet she felt that to provide consolation here would be a small sign of betrayal; false comfort for somebody now so shattered, no more than a shell of the woman who had guided their Tower past Dumai’s Wells and so many other disasters. Even her own composure wavered a little when it occurred to her that this scene … one injured, seeking comfort, one expected to provide that … was a twisted kind of mirror of some other meeting not long ago. And she could not afford to let that waver. Had to be cool: had to be calm. It was not her place to interfere between another woman and her own demons.

 

But what could she possibly say? Commiserations, life was now over, time to give up? The likelihood of Lanfir Marithsen, once and future saviour, removing herself to a dull and undistinguished retirement seemed minimal. Truth to tell she couldn’t even imagine Lanfir not being Aes Sedai any more. If one had lost saidar, the Light’s greatest gift, what else was there left? It was the same reason why she could not comprehend that anyone would risk their standing as Aes Sedai for shallow reasons like men or wine or the ties of blood. How could anything like that even compare? And watching her idol now, in pieces, irrevocably broken, it seemed to her that she was seeing her own future … or maybe a metaphor for the fall of the world. There was no denying the end of everything.

 

Somebody more articulate and more compassionate should have been sent to do this. She had no words; had no idea how to express her sympathy and her concern, what well meant platitudes might be of some assistance here. “I wish I could.†Her small gesture substituted for a thousand words. “It’s all true. You’re burnt out. You’ll never be Aes Sedai again.†Only sisters of their kind understood how much that meant. To be Aes Sedai meant not only channelling, but made them part of something greater and more fundamental than themselves; a life of service and sacrifice; their knowledge isolated them, their courage and causes drove them, there was little friendship or gentleness open to them. Aes Sedai still shook the world they had once made in their image.

 

Not to be part of that any longer … she could scarcely imagine it, didn’t even want to. It reminded her of the allegory she had once heard: the moth that flitted through a darkened room, passed through a single bar of sunlight, moved on into the darkness. And that darkness seemed all the more terrible for the knowledge that once, somewhere, there had been light. How was life worth living, deprived of saidar, shackled to home and hearth, shunned by the Aes Sedai one had once known for the fears brought up by one’s terrible condition? Limited like some servant to a life of labour and ignorance? Accompanied only by dreams and regrets. Nobody who had not once worn the shawl herself could understand the pressures of life as Aes Sedai, the hardship and the glory, the sheer strength of will demanded. It wasn’t worth living any more.

 

No softening of the blow. That seemed disrespectful somehow. “Lyanna will be laid to rest tomorrow morning according to her final letter.†Again, it was not her place to ask the woman beside her to attend, but it seemed pitiful beyond words that the funeral might go on and nobody who had once loved and cared for the deceased would be present; only the bizarre-looking Tower Guard like a mockery of a clown and she knew perfectly well how far the feelings of Tower Guards could be trusted. “Caladesh survived, but he burned out as well, or so we think. The Red Ajah are holding him and they haven’t reported any attempts to channel. Yesterday,†now if she could distil an extremely trying event into a perfectly calm and business-like account, that would be ideal, “we held his trial.†She was certainly not going to talk about her own part in that. “He’s been sentenced to execution. Should happen any time now.â€

 

It didn’t seem enough somehow. She had nothing more to offer. And the lines from that funeral service kept running through her head … so much for death being swallowed up in victory.

[Lannie]

Welcome to the soldier side

Where there is no one here but me

People all grow up to die

There is no one here but me

System of a Down, "Soldier Side"

 

 

If she had been anything less of a mess, she would have been grateful that Sirayn did not offer meaningless consolation. It was a sign of respect that the other woman told her the situation in a grave voice. For the first time since Lanfir had known the Green, she was showing genuine traces of regret and even something that ressembled pity. That was the worst, probably. It was a silent and yet so screaming loud a reminder of the situation, of her situation.

 

“Lyanna will be laid to rest tomorrow morning according to her final letter," Sirayn said quietly.

 

Lanfir didn't say anything, she just sat with her face in her hands and remembered the day that Lyanna had told her where she'd kept her testament in case they'd ever die in battle like the Greens they were... no, had been. It had been on a sunny afternoon on the balcony, and they'd been drinking a glass of bloodred wine. Lanfir remembered thinking that Lya's wine had looked like blood itself, with the sunlight shining directly into it like that... and how oddly fitting it had been for their morbid topic of conversation.

 

Who would have thought that this letter would be opened so soon? Oh, Lya...

 

Bitter tears were wetting the palms of her hands as they pressed against her face. Bitter, desperate. I can't believe that you're gone, that everything is gone. It wasn't supposed to be like this Lya! It was supposed to be you and me cutting our hair on the morning of the Last Battle... why did we end up this way? What went wrong?

 

Lost in the enormity of trying to grasp how the world had turned into such a nightmare, she nearly missed Sirayn's next piece of oh so vital information.

 

"Caladesh survived, but he burned out as well, or so we think. The Red Ajah are holding him and they haven’t reported any attempts to channel..."

 

Oh no you bastard... you can't be alive. Not you, and not my Lyanna, my Syl. Not you. NOT YOU, Light burn you, not you... She only realized that she was biting on her knuckles when she tasted blood, heavy and copperish in her mouth. Tears and blood for her, and life for Caladesh. It was unbelievable. The darkness of her nightmare just seemed to increase and increase until there was no light left at all. Was there an end to this insanity, to this nightmare? Even Serashada in all her sadism had not been able to come up with a scenario as painful as this one... and yet the Creator was doing this to her. Life for Caladesh, death for my loved ones. Death for me. Why?

 

"Yesterday, we held his trial," Sirayn concluded. "He’s been sentenced to execution. Should happen any time now."

 

Sentenced to death by execution? Oh yes, the Tower took care of its problems. Caladesh would be beheaded, gentled-- wait.

 

No gentling. Her weave had already taken care of that. If only she had lashed out with Spirit to begin with... she was strong enough for the Severance weave... but no... she had wanted to undo his destruction, and it had cost her everything. That weave had cost her everything... HE had cost her everything. But he could not channel anymore, he was harmless. And he was still alive. He shouldn't be. He deserved to die for what he had done to her.

 

"When?" she croaked out.

 

"Tomorrow at noon," Sirayn answered. There was an inquiring light in those gray eyes, a calculating light. "He's been held in the cells under the Tower at present, waiting for his execution."

 

His execution. He would die tomorrow, a clean kill. And all she could do was watch... no. Light, NO.

 

At that very moment, Lanfir made the decision with the speed that had saved her life so many times out in the field, in battle. A gut instinct telling her what to do, and how to do it. She knew what to do.

 

There was blood staining her balled fist, but Lanfir thirsted for more. "My battle is over while the war has not yet ended. Can you imagine what it feels like, Sirayn, to be out of the fight for good and just watch it from the sideline? I can't stay here and wait it all out. I wasn't made for sidelines."

 

She pulled the covers off her body and stepped out of the bed, ignoring how her vision was shimmering and the lightheadedness that made her dazzle. She walked over to her closet and opened it with a wide swing. There, her battle attire.

 

"What are you going to do?" Sirayn asked, her wording still so careful, so controlled. Such a difference with how Lannie was feeling; the maelstrom of emotions in her head and her body threathened to consume her. But now one feeling was prevalent, pushing all the other ones to the background... grief, pain, disbelief and horror... they were there, but not as overwhelming.

 

Now there was just vengefulness and determination.

 

"I'm going to do the only thing I can still do. Caladesh' blood is mine to claim, not the Tower's."

[Sirayn]

Mob justice: her mouth wanted to twist into a hard line but she kept her composure smooth. She had seen the consequences of people taking the law into their own hands too often to be entirely comfortable with it, had come across the rough side of it herself on occasion, at least due process could be relied on to give the innocent a chance to explain themselves. Besides, not being accustomed to law nor the intricacies of court work, she had suffered rather a lot during the recent trial and it stung to hear it proposed that all her hard work should be undone so easily … that Caladesh should not be strung up before all watching eyes as she had originally planned, with nobody left to doubt that the Tower had meted out swift justice. An end fraught with suspicion and outcry did not seem a fair return for their efforts.

 

On the other hand … maybe she of all people had no right to complain about people delaing out justice themselves. She had never cared for rules when they crossed her path. If word ever got out about half of what she had done the golden Lanfir Leah Marithsen would never forgive her and maybe she deserved no less. Laws and official verdicts were dealt out by people in ivory towers, with no understanding of the tears and suffering of those beneath them, and what did Phaedra Eskarne know of justice? What did she know of revenge? Had she ever seen her best friend torn apart before her eyes and had to go on regardless? So many ways the Battle Ajah understood this that cool isolated judges never could. Nobody who had not suffered their own losses – not matters of politics but real, raw losses in blood and grief and despair – had the right to judge here.

 

If she had ever found out who laid hands on Jehanine this world would have held one less Darkfriend as soon as she caught up with them. No amount of trial nor procedure would make up for that absence; when one turned around and nobody but shadows waited there, when one spoke to an empty room expecting somebody to hear and no well remembered voice replied, when there was nobody any longer to share one’s stories with and one’s grief and fury and loss … what was the point of law? None of it would bring anyone back. Not even Lyanna al’Ellisande, the great and gifted, a legend to so many sisters who came after her could rise from the dead at a judge’s command. So many tragedies might be averted if the effects of death could be reversed so easily … but there was no such solace for the living who found themselves left behind.

 

All her life her actions had been characterised by suspicion and lack of faith. This golden woman before her, now so irreversibly broken had arrived at a critical time in her life and she had come to idolise Lanfir more than she had ever expected to do, so much that it contravened Aes Sedai dignity and stung her pride as much as it unnerved her, always a lesser shadow illuminated by the Amyrlin’s light. Yet there were certain fundamental truths on which she based her life and none of them had anything to do with trials and public executions. No, inwardly she had contempt for such ceremonial occasions. No two ways about it. In the end … when it came right down to the wire … she believed in Lanfir, she believed in the Battle Ajah, and she believed in the Tower.

 

Nobody had elected her a messenger of law and propriety nor did she have any right to interfere between a mourner and the object of her revenge. Nor would she have done anything different in the other woman’s situation. Put like that the decision seemed very clear. “Your decision.†She made the words cool and lacking in feeling; the time was far gone now when she needed to worry about what image she presented to the Amyrlin Seat, how much sentiment could be read into her actions and used to ruin her, but instincts kept everything sharply suppressed all the same. “And the right one,†her tone got a little quieter despite herself, it was not long enough since certain losses to remember this without feeling anything, “Lyanna deserved no less.â€

 

The words lay subdued on the stillness. No further ones came to her tongue; she had built her career on a foundation of speeches, silver tongued and always persuasive, but now that the situation required her to say something a little closer to her own heart she found herself tongue tied and silent. It would be only fair here for her to return the same comfort and support Lanfir had once given her in her darkest hour … but she had no idea how to do so; no idea if that would even be right; if that was what somebody better would have done in her place. Somehow she felt that she ought to do something, ought to make this right somehow, but nothing save an actual miracle would fix this now.

 

A bitter wordless kind of grief trapped any such display in her throat. Maybe this was it: could it be that this was the end for the Tower? That lacking their two lions, the great and good legends of the Battle Ajah, they had no chance whatsoever in the Last Battle? It seemed to her that this night they were not only mourning a strong woman, one of the only leaders the Tower had needed, but also the ruin of some great dream. The loss of any last hope that together, if they just held their courage, they could win through on behalf of the Light. How could anyone hope to fill the gap Lanfir Leah Marithsen had left behind? How did they settle for less at a time like this, in their hour of greatest despair, when somebody less great than Lanfir would have to step forward?

 

And part of her remembered something else … that near two years ago somebody had whispered some prophecy to her: something about heroes … and unaccountably she shivered. Playing like a legend was not her job, thank the Light, nor ever would be. Somebody else would take up that burden. They just had to stay strong even if the end was near now, even if they had no more heroes left, the game was not yet done and maybe a last gamble might win them some measure of hope; and if only she believed that. In fact she rather suspected that this signalled the end to any organised resistance from the Tower. But she would keep such dispiriting thoughts to herself.

 

If this was the last time Lanfir would ever be among Aes Sedai it seemed a poor ending. She wanted to say how grateful she truly was for the other woman’s services to the Tower, how much she regretted that she had been so stupid and resentful and inferior and given Lanfir so much grief … that she was ashamed of herself, that she feared so much, that she had wanted more from Lanfir than this living legend could ever give her … wanted to apologise, to reverse the past somehow, to make all of this never have happened. For frustrating moments she struggled with her own innate obstinacy, the soldier’s code of silence on anything important: and gave up. All she managed was, in tones briefly and uncommonly honest: “Light be with you, Lanfir. Mother.â€

 

Sirayn Damodred

Head of the Green Ajah

[Lannie]

Ein Herzschlag nur für mich

und die, die bei mir sind

Augen auf, schaut euch das an

Wer dafür keine Tränen hat wird morgen blind

Wenn ihr das nicht liebt, was dann

Jeder liebe das so viel er kann

Wir Sind Helden, "Wenn es passiert"

 

"Your decision," Sirayn said. She seemed cool at first, so much more calculating than the hot-headed and spiteful woman Lanfir had once argued with. But then she added: "And the right one. Lyanna deserved no less."

 

Lyanna didn't deserve any of this, was all Lanfir could think and she froze for a moment as she felt her determination waver and stagger under the immense weight of her loss. Light no, no, don't go there. Don't stumble, don't fall. Time to pick up the pieces later, if there are still pieces left to pick up, or if I even want to pick them up... those pieces don't matter anymore, this is not the world as I know it and want to be in anymore.

 

She slid her leather vest over her head and fought nausea, fought the aching stiffness of her joints and the bruises still on her body. They must have not completely healed her; she must have been drained too much by the initial Healing and what the burning out had taken out of her. Burnt out. It felt like it had happened to somebody else. Lanfir's whole life she had heard about it, she had even known somebody who had burnt out - a younger Green that Lanfir had known briefly before going to Fal Dara - she had been warned of burning out her whole life... they told her to never, ever give into the sweetness of saidar or she would lose it all. And now the horror image that her teachers, her colleague Aes Sedai, had painted her had become real. It HAD happened to her and it was the worst feeling in the world; the ultimate crippling. And inside of her there was a gaping hole of emptiness. It was worse than a broken bond, it was worse than any sort of battle wound she had ever taken (and that punctured lung on that mission to Kandor with Brid had been very nasty, never mind the lovely scar near her kidneys that she had taken in Fal Dara when the weave exploded), it was as if a part of her had just died and the rest of her body had just not followed suit yet.

 

She finished dressing in silence.

 

Sirayn was still sitting and watching her get dressed, subdued and her stormgrey eyes clear. Lanfir saw the thoughts raising as the Green looked up to her and said suddenly, from the bottom of her heart:

“Light be with you, Lanfir. Mother.â€

 

Tears welled up in her eyes again. She sat down on the chair before her vanity stand and hugged her knees, ignoring her body protesting against the sudden movement by aching ferociously. Emotions were more important now, and she was filled by them. She looked up at Sirayn with a sad and wry smile. "I knew you wouldn't stop me, Sirayn. You're a Green, you understand what I'm going through. However different we are you and me; a soldier's attitude is what I've always recognized in you... and you in me, too, I think." She rocked back and forth for a moment, lost in thoughts and emotions that were too big for her, threathening to pull her under again - so she focused on the present and let go of the might-have-beens and the should-have-beens. Caladesh. "You know he is to die, at the hands of Tower Law, but you can't blame me for wanting to spill his blood myself. I've seen you after... Solin... you told me what happened... you know what it's like to hate. You know that it's all I've left." So, so painful. So horribly true. There was really nothing left. Light... it was all over. Anger boiled. "The Tower won't let me spill blood, but I'm no part of the Tower anymore. They'd put me away to die quietly..." Oh yes, she was Amyrlin, she knew what the Tower would do. She knew what the Hall would do. She had reached and fought Hall decisions long enough to be perfectly aware of what was in store for her. Quiet, supervised wasting away. Not for me. "I won't have it. That is not my life. Everything's gone wrong but at least I'll still have his blood on MY sword and on MY hands. I have first rights to the spilling of his blood and everyone knows it... even if it's not the political thing to do, it is the RIGHT thing to do. His blood is MINE."

 

If she would have been listening to herself, she might have been disturbed by the vehement and bloodthirsty tone in her voice. As it was, she couldn't care less. She was so, so angry.

Murderous. Feelings, vermillion red and boiling - so violent and dark that she had not thought herself capable of. She knew she was darker than she'd given herself credit for; she had felt rage and wish to hurt, to maim, while standing before Serashada. She had wished to kill, wished to mutilate. At the time, those feelings had been a surprise to her because she had, despite everything, always thought of herself as a generally nice person just doing her job. But with Serashada and the horrors that the Forsaken had caused, she had become closely acquainted with vengeance and bloodthirst. It shouldn't have been a surprise, though. After all, she came from a pretty shady family and blood doesn't lie.

 

Blood doesn't lie. Blood for blood.

 

Her katana was standing next to her closet where she had left it after morning workout just a few days ago. An eternity ago. Light - how come it's been only days? She picked it up and strapped it onto her back in the same practiced movement she had done a thousand times before. It was dark outside by now, night was falling. Time to end it.

 

Yet first, there was responsibility, and tying up the loose ends. She sat down next to Sirayn and made direct eye contact with the Green, suddenly feeling on top of things again. "Sirayn; I'm going to leave the Tower. I might even leave this world. I don't know, and I don't care. There are still some things though. Tarmon Gai'don. The Tower. My responsibility for the Light has been ripped away out of my hands and there is nothing I can do about it anymore." She took Sirayn's remaining hand in her own. "All I can do is to make sure the Tower is in good hands. I've trusted you with Dumais Wells, Sirayn. I was with you in Namandar. People might say that you messed up, considering the disasters, you might beat yourself up over it." Light flashed in Sirayns eyes and Lanfir nodded a little, strengthened in her decision. For what it was worth, here she went like a battlefield commander handing over command. Her job was done, after all... "Sirayn Simeone; I know what it's like to be dealt a bad hand of cards and having to deal with consequences. I've always think you've done well. The Tower has been dealt a bad hand too, and you know about crisis management. Please Sirayn; will you guard the Light for me when I'm gone? Will you watch the remaining seals and Tar Valon and the Tower?"

[Lannie]

OOC: hey hun, could we finish this? :)

[Sirayn]

ooc: It's been a privilege to play with you in this thread. I hope this works. :)

 

• The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
  Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
  Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
  Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it. –- Omar Khayyam
   
  Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutamus.
  Hail Caesar! We who are about to die salute you.
  –- Gladiators’ farewell, Ancient Rome

 

Bright silence and stillness closed round them. The sunshine fell subtly though half a hundred pale drapes, illuminated this woman softly, picked out brilliance in the lowered eyes; trapped in her lashes tears sparkled like diamonds. In that moment above all Lanfir Leah Marithsen looked as beautiful and as terrible as a solitary star, a single lonely light in a world gone to darkness, and to look upon the Tower’s last hero then was have that image forever burned into memory. It seemed like a little bit of blasphemy to even be here right now. This should have been an hour fit to be immortalised in song and story. Lanfir should have made her farewells in a manner suited to such a legend, possibly amid tears and speeches and in the company of those who had loved her best, not alone with a crippled soldier in the silence of the Tower’s mourning. But she was the last one standing: her, the failure, the shadow: it was her job to end this.

 

Soldiers together. Hearing that pulled at her, a relentless draw, like the phases of the moon, like something she should have said before; it summed up everything she hadn’t found the words to say. That they had been sisters. That they had been comrades in arms. That they had fought for a common cause, under the banner of the Battle Ajah, and in that at least they had been the same. The green shawl marked people out in ways others could not recognise; no matter that this woman had worn six other stripes on her shawl, nor that she technically belonged no more to them than to any other Ajah right now, she was as Green Ajah in her heart as Sirayn herself. Nobody could dedicate their whole lives to one cause only to forget it all when called to the Amyrlin Seat. Iron and stone and plate steel, red sparks and chaos, the taste of blood, the sweep of foreign lands before them in a hundred wars … yes, the Battle Ajah remembered.

 

Part of her had been remembering back even before Lanfir spoke her son’s name. Months had passed and the intensity of those memories had faded, the bright colours dulled, but nothing had been forgotten entirely. During sleep she dreamed it; that tale came with the shadows, held its tightest drip at the darkest hour of the night; in the bright hours of sunlight, it ebbed. Yes, she knew what it was to hate. Sometimes she still felt it, a subtle thrill in her bones, an echo of an older time. Those two had ruined her: look at her now, no longer a soldier, just another spider in a tower filled with webs -- if she could have exacted from them the same price, balanced out her own losses even in the smallest measure, she would have done so … and in the end all she had claimed was one life. A quick death was the last gift she could give her children.

 

Under the Light, I hereby denounce you as a servant of the Dark One. Under the Light, I find you irredeemable of your crimes. Under the Light, I condemn you to execution by my hand, serving in this as in all else.

 

Memory put a shudder in her and she suppressed it hard so that nothing should trouble her outward composure. Briefly she felt in her bones that all this was wrong, that it should have been her in need of support and understanding … how uncannily this mirrored that other day, when she had come to be condemned for her sins and found only forgiveness instead, only all twisted about somehow … that if anyone should have taken this blow it was her. Nothing should have interrupted the Amyrlin Seat in her work of destiny. But the Wheel of Time cared nothing for the labour of mere lives, nor did it mete out to each person what was deserved like some gigantic balance, a force so immense and unknowable acted only according to the constraints of its strange nature. The moving finger had writ, and having writ, moved on. The world had changed. No going back now.

 

How dark her thoughts in such a bright room. Lanfir Leah Marithsen sat next to her -- on her level, like an equal, she prized that tiny gesture -- and she found herself looking into eyes the same grey as her own. Only these grey eyes had once been so warm. Now both women here were weighed down by duty and destiny and losses, the Battle Ajah burden, and Lanfir no longer looked to her like anyone’s Mother. She looked like a soldier who had nothing left to lose. Never back your enemy into a corner, somebody had taught her once. Had it been Daeralle? Daeralle was dead. She had never mourned the loss. A woman with nothing left to lose is a desperate one, a danger in herself, and she will fight until the very end. And this was what people got for their last stands. This was how everything ended.

 

Only a coward should want to look away, somewhat like a small child convincing herself it would be less true if she didn’t watch, but she found it difficult to hold that grey gaze. Most intensely at this point she wanted to be somewhere else. Not to look at a woman who had lost everything. Not to sit here as though she had any right to be present, as though she could possibly replace anyone, she the failure. Definitely not to have Lanfir take her hand, gently, like a sister. She stared at their clasped hands in the golden light of this quiet room and for an instant, everything wavered and she found herself shamefully on the point of tears: asking herself how it had come to this, how she had never made things right and now Lanfir was leaving forever and there would never be another chance: and it seemed to her like a microcosm of the Tower’s greater disquiet that such similar, similarly committed people could not have worked together better.

 

Back in the mists of time she had come to the Green Ajah among ordinary women. Perhaps they had only been ordinary because she had known them, maybe acquaintance undercut any basis on which otherwise to command worship, but she had seen them merely as people. And even the folk who ran her Ajah back then had whispered this name with reverence. Later somebody had come from nowhere, a hero whom all the world had thought lost, and that had been Lanfir Leah Marithsen: golden haired, charming and already a figure of legend. They had been crying out for a hero. Of course she had resented it, it would have taken a stronger woman than her to watch that in play and not feel jealousy, of course she had felt threatened and cast into shadow, of course she had responded with bitterness. Of course. Such a fool’s thought. It had been a damn stupid way to react. Now she sat with Lanfir holding her hand, Lanfir who had lost everything already, and for the space of that single moment of clarity she had again the terrifying thought that she might weep.

 

Aes Sedai never let their composure slip. She drew a slow breath, made herself unreadable as a book in which nobody had written, and next moment had to scramble to keep her cool. The question unsettled her so intensely that she had a momentary urge to flee, a shadow flitting at lightning speed across her thoughts, even as she recoiled away from its meaning. Only deliberately could a question be made to sound like that. Only intentionally and meaning every word, and at that thought her treacherous mind unsettled her even more, she wanted to dismiss it as a mistake or a passing fancy not to acknowledge that it carried such meaning. The last stand had come upon them with such speed that surely Lanfir had had no time to think upon who might succeed her, surely only the Hall in all its poisonous strength could dictate who did so, surely nobody in their right mind would have chosen her anyway … yet, and her thoughts ticked over as inexorable as a clock, to hear such from Lanfir Leah Marithsen, the Amyrlin Seat, the champion of the Light on the very day that she passed from the Tower’s reach forever … meant everything she feared to admit.

 

Not her. Please the Light, not her. All the hundreds of people whom Lanfir might have chosen, why her, when she had cracked every rib she had in a knock down fight with this same woman, when she had pleaded for forgiveness for her sins, when she had failed, why her? I couldn’t possibly. I was always a soldier, I was never meant to play Daes Dae’mar, I’d fail so terribly. I’d bring everything down. If you put that burden on my shoulders I will fall. Such poisonous thoughts. The past had only dimmed not yet expired; though she had mastered it a little, part of her still feared so intensely to take command, terrified in case she failed again. She could not imagine ever being a Lanfir herself. Couldn’t think how she would even begin to measure up to the legend the Green Ajah had wanted. Knew herself too much of a coward, too crippled, too weak and too stupid and too useless. She wished intensely that Lanfir had asked elsewhere, that this cup had passed to someone else, but she had to take it. Had to. Because she was the last one standing.

 

Did the why of the question even matter in the end? She had many failings, too many to list, but deserting her post had never been one of them. No matter the past and inward doubts and her sudden, frantic fear … she was still Battle Ajah to the core and she knew her duty when it was set before her. There were few constants one could rely on in this dark time, but the sun would always rise, the tides would continue to move and the Green Ajah stood ready. She lacked the words to say so, to communicate that unpredictable as she might seem, she had always been dependable when it came right down to the wire -- but somehow she thought Lanfir already knew.

 

The effort needed to smile at a woman as good as dead already, who had lost everything that had once defined her life, hurt a little. In fact that summed up the whole situation. Everything hurt a little right now. She smiled anyway, because Lanfir deserved it right now, her and her always thinking of the Tower first, and Sirayn Damodred -- who had found herself Head of the Green Ajah as this woman had been before her and knew herself to be in no way a successor to a legend so great -- said: “You can’t catch me like that. I’ll be on a Domani beach in the sun, with a cold drink and legions of flatterers, not knee deep in paperwork.†She kept her tones light. Not that it was necessary; Battle Ajah knew one another to be true in trying circumstances. Just the subtlest edge of despair threaded through her tones when she relented. “I’ll guard them, of course I’ll guard them, I couldn’t do anything else. And when the Last Battle comes and the Tower holds the front line I’ll tell your name to the Dark One himself. Be there to hear it. I’ll remember.â€

 

Now she had to speak, found the words spilling out of her, everything she had not dared to say. It was a farewell, most likely the last farewell ever for all her light comments, and how could she not speak the truth? Light help them all. They were losing Lanfir, Lanfir, and surely all the light in the world was going with her. “If this is the last you hear from a fellow Aes Sedai, let it be this. You were our hero. You were the great star of your generation, the standard against which all others were measured, and we are but the shadows cast by your light. Even now and ever after yours is the legend. You served the Tower long and loyally; it is ended between us in honour.†Damn it. Damn it. “Go with the Light’s speed, Lanfir.†The bright light fell round them and at the last she spoke the words she had known she had to say all along: the last and ritual vows for a soldier heading to her last battle.

 

“The Light shine on you.

May you shelter in the palm of the Creator’s hand.

The last embrace of the mother welcome you home.â€

 

Sirayn Damodred

Head of the Green Ajah

At the Last