Homeward Bound

[Jay Carpenter]

 

Jai

With the door sealed, darkness slammed.  The ash of a hundred pyres swirled, choking; his chest hurt inhaling it, but on he kept drawing.  The courtyard below was drenched with the same mournful emptiness.  Not so much as moonlight penetrated, but his eyes were tuned to the passage that brought him here.  Waiting.  Motionless.  Perched to react at any flicker of light.  At any drop of footfalls.  

He didn't intend on lingering long enough to learn the necessary thumbprint to skim out of here.  Traveling was out, too.  Unless he made it to the yard where this whole thing began.  Out there he'd felt the Pattern shear itself apart in Daryen's hands, and once known, he knew he could reproduce it.  There were three exterior walls separating him from cold air.  Probably a minute of running.  Two or three more minutes more to find that yard.  Not that he intended to run.  He didn't need to.  

The whisper of an opening door.  He turned.  And she was there.  Looking at him.  A fall to his knees all over again, but he didn't flinch.  Could barely breathe.  He was bloody out of his mind being here.  But there was no other choice.  It had to be tonight, while his blood pumped hot enough to see it through.

He couldn't well make out her face.  Not with the harshness of staring into fresh flame flickering behind her.  Darkening her hair.  Casting her shape in ghostly silhouette.  Jai swallowed, eyes weary.  They fell to the floor.  Not to look back up until they were alone.  

The moment they did, he moved into action.  Fluid strides carried him close.  Achingly close.  He grabbed her arm and led her inside her own room.  
"Come on."  

The man who touched hilt to heart was buried deep now.  If he remained at all.  He shut them in, blocking the door with his stance.  He could hardly bring himself to look at her, and when he did, a cold smile formed until he strangled control back to his grasp and it died away.  
"Guards are looking for me.  I didn't exactly knock," he explained.  

He didn't want to watch himself uncurl the barb.  But this wasn't the first time he found himself coaxing instinct toward bloody acts he never intended to do.  If he were going to maintain a steady hand, and rip the flesh free, her eyes were going to have to be his cold anchor once more.  His resolve was melting.  

"I'm going to tell myself you sleep fully dressed.  Because I know you prefer to peel the layers when I'm around." A mild grin briefly touched his face, but the stretch of tender skin was followed by a wince he was too tired to hide.  The pit inside was growing.  But he ignored both, and studied their surroundings.  Biding the time.  He didn't want to do this.  With all his heart.

Her room was carved from the same smooth stone as the rest of the White Tower.  Ogier and Saidar's handiwork unground by this last Age.  But their unnatural refinement was the extent of the similarities between her space and the cave in the Black Tower assigned as his.  The room seemed touched by femininity.  Untainted by lingering scents likely still festering in his.  Her desk was tidy, but used.  Nothing broken by the mindless practice of forms.  A wardrobe hid personal affects.  Probably home to items more likely to be the sentimental keepsakes of normal people, a violin for instance, than the honored sewing pack tossed in his.  Lt. Tomdry lent him that kit the night before his vivisection.  Jai kept it on him ever since: passing long hours mending, fireside; until recently that is.  She'd slept rather than collapsed unconscious, bottles not strewn: the blankets were tussled.  As was her hair.  Light.  

He pressed the inside corners of his eyes tight, willing the ache casting them with dull shadows to erode fully away.  To focus clear-headed.  One smooth motion.  Pull the barb free and don't bleed out.  It sounded easy.  Far easier than it actually was.  But he had to stay sane.  Keep going.  Stupor served the Black Tower nothing.  It'd be poor gratitude to the smith that finally polished off his latest weapon to rust the steel its first night in use.  

Nythadri was probably wondering what insanity justified all this.  The last few days weren't exactly displaced reality for her.  Nothing sent her to her knees, begging and crying.  Helpless.  She was better than to let something like that happen; or to give in to despair afterward.  The witness of her brother's murder hadn't ripped her apart: she admitted the context of failure, straight faced and level headed.  Failure was the first hook to drop from his meat, but unlike the other wounds, this one he left untended.  Ignored; an earned toy for the ghosts to torture him.  While to her a pendant delivered and a check deposited were the notable events of the week.  And a trip up town.  She had to question his sanity.  She was right to.

He sighed, face too drawn to grin again, not when the sickle swung close.  He no longer scrambled from the scythe's path like he had last they were together.  Though he knew he could manage a final grin once the blade chunked in his spine.  He'd pay that price a hundred times over if it meant deflecting the reaper's attentions from those he cared about.  A thousand times.

Do it.  He followed her.  Standing close, but carefully untouching; his resolve wasn't that strong.  Potential burned his throat like the snow vaporized by saidin.  The promise of intensity sharpened his tongue.  This is what he came to say.  The only way he could think to save her.

"You took the money to Zakar?"  He asked.  Voice low, and Light burn him, threatening.  "Get it out.  Tomorrow.  Move it.  Give it away.  Burn it for all I care.  But get your name out of Zakar's head.  And never seek me again." He barely heard himself say it.  

The command would have chilled a corpse; it chilled him.  But it wasn't sacrifice; not to him.  He was no hero.  He didn't have the greatness to bend history itself.  But seeking the depths veiled by Nythadri's flared eyes, wondering what she was thinking, the way shadow fell across half of her face, obscuring her lips and darkening her hair and brightening her eyes, Jai was never more decided on changing a small portion of events to protect her.  If his death were to someday count for something, he might as well make his life mean something too.