04-12-2018, 12:30 PM
South. In a breath the layout of the city flashed. Probabilities roared, but the taste left his hunger unsatisfied, and he scrubbed a hand through his hair. Nodding. South was good. Safe.
He nodded, confirming Araya's question. Yes, he grew up here but on the opposite side of the island thank the Light. It was a small comfort someone of the Black Tower didn't know, but privacy wasn't quite as coveted as it once was.
Then, Araya's admission left him at a loss for words. Wagons? His brow narrowed a moment, then paled suddenly. The sort of sympathy to leave a sick taste in a man's mouth.
"Blood and ashes you're a Tinker."
Araya's cheerful wardrobe, today a green coat paired with a violet scarf, the painful furniture, even the way he stuck his hands in his pockets. Like a symbolic turning of the other cheek. So obvious.
He collapsed in a nearby chair, rubbing his eyes and hoping to wake from this nightmare. But Araya's temperate voice remained, offering kindnesses after all this. Jai would have laughed at the absurdity of it if the wind hadn't been knocked from his lungs. Light! The guy dragged his bloody mug off the grounds, fetching food because his houseguest was too spineless to get it himself. Right. He had absolutely no intention of letting Araya do another bloody thing on his behalf. Thankfully, at that moment, his stomach was too tied up in knots to put anything in it anyway. He'd likely regret it later, but he still shook his head no.
The kind of desperation Araya described wasn't so straightforward anyway. Jai was aware of his limits. Just as he knew exactly how much of the Power he could channel before being consumed by it. It was easy to ignore during the day. When tasks consumed his attention, but every soldier's life was often boring as much as it was dangerous. He sat around as often as not, and those moments left a man's imagination to wander. Training was the only thing that kept him from making the alternate versions of his life a reality. That self-awareness stung, acid on an open wound, but such was why he hadn't written Nythadri a single letter as he so wanted. He'd pour out his heart, but no matter which responded, from dismissal to utter silence, he knew what he'd do next. That was a path he couldn't explore.
"She is your family then? Hana said she was widowed?"
He swallowed saying the word, looking briefly away. If not Araya's wife, A sister perhaps? Mother? Light, Araya couldn't have a daughter with gray in her hair? He blinked, studying Araya's outline. A child Tinker grown to a beautiful demon of a man.
Somehow, though. Araya did it. Here sat a man who saddled two horses galloping opposite directions. He had the answers, if Jai was brave enough to hear them.
A deep breath and he forced the question from his throat: "How do you do it?"
Then he heard it. What he asked, how he asked it. The question hung on the air like the stench of decay. He leaned forward and shoved his face to his hands. There was no escaping it now.
"Your family. You love them right?"
His hands fell to his lap, and he looked up. Too uncomfortable to relax as Araya was. Then a torrent of questions erupted. His heart pounded desperately, eyes seeking answers.
"Every time you leave, you have to say goodbye, right?"
Not a regular man's goodbye, but to stare forlorn into the eyes of cold reality. Every time was not a goodbye, it was the goodbye.
His stomach turned. "How do you do that to yourself? To them? You know you won't come back one time."
Forget the horror of actually leaving, but their suffering was the fault of the Asha'man's selfishness. Would it not be better to spare them that?
Shivers chilled every fine hair on his body. "Say you come back. How do you look them in the eye when you know what you've done? Shadowcreatures. Darkfriends."
He shook his head. Piles of carcasses, the stench of warm bodies indistinguishable from what they were before. It didn't matter whether bits of fur caught the wind or not. They were all the same mounds of pink in the end. From the nastiest of foes to the most sinister of girls. They all had the same look before obliteration. Frightened. Horrified. Abhorrence.
But they were men of the Black Tower. Soldiers could walk a battlefield and turn a blind eye to the screams of their friends piercing the night. They could sit at a fire and clean their boots that night without thinking about what it was they wiped off. They woke the next day and walked dark paths so others didn't. When closeted together, it was a tentative sort of balance. But then they return to the civilized world, and he had no idea how to behave in it.
Horrified by the idea, Jai posed his final question. The cold scenario was far from hypothetical. "Aren't you afraid? Someone wakes you up in the middle of the night and you turn to instinct before you realize where you are? Or who's waking you?"
It was a dangerous thing to wake an exhausted Asha'man, and he only lets it happen once before he stops sharing beds with the innocent.
The temperature flared hot. His chest tightened, his head pulsed. This was why he couldn't stay in Tar Valon. He paced. Hard. Arms folded across his chest. Then they disentangled, and frustrated, scrubbed at hair. The bloody room wasn't large enough for more than a few strides each way. It was only upon the third pass he realized he'd even left the chair. "We don't reach for the weapon under our pillow, Araya! We are the weapon!"
Everything came to a stop. And ten years of questions stared their chasm at Araya, but his throat strained. Choked. This was the torture of Tar Valon. That for some reason the city was a punishment he couldn't outrun, and not so easily discarded as a simple sword.
He fell quiet, a black pillar looking down into his own palms, head bowed. What would Nythadri say of their hands now? Could something damned by violence reach for something purer? Memory flashed. The scent of the sea, the taste of saltwater. The graze of her fingers. A voice whispering in his ear.
"No."
He shook his head quietly.
Jaw tight, "No. I don't want to know."
He knew his own limits. Having the secret to living as two men would crush, not free, him and in the end he would utterly fail both causes.
If Hana heard any of that, she'd have her answer. He glanced at Araya a moment, resolute, compliant but on the precipice of something. Then the bars slammed in place, and Jai headed for the door.
He nodded, confirming Araya's question. Yes, he grew up here but on the opposite side of the island thank the Light. It was a small comfort someone of the Black Tower didn't know, but privacy wasn't quite as coveted as it once was.
Then, Araya's admission left him at a loss for words. Wagons? His brow narrowed a moment, then paled suddenly. The sort of sympathy to leave a sick taste in a man's mouth.
"Blood and ashes you're a Tinker."
Araya's cheerful wardrobe, today a green coat paired with a violet scarf, the painful furniture, even the way he stuck his hands in his pockets. Like a symbolic turning of the other cheek. So obvious.
He collapsed in a nearby chair, rubbing his eyes and hoping to wake from this nightmare. But Araya's temperate voice remained, offering kindnesses after all this. Jai would have laughed at the absurdity of it if the wind hadn't been knocked from his lungs. Light! The guy dragged his bloody mug off the grounds, fetching food because his houseguest was too spineless to get it himself. Right. He had absolutely no intention of letting Araya do another bloody thing on his behalf. Thankfully, at that moment, his stomach was too tied up in knots to put anything in it anyway. He'd likely regret it later, but he still shook his head no.
The kind of desperation Araya described wasn't so straightforward anyway. Jai was aware of his limits. Just as he knew exactly how much of the Power he could channel before being consumed by it. It was easy to ignore during the day. When tasks consumed his attention, but every soldier's life was often boring as much as it was dangerous. He sat around as often as not, and those moments left a man's imagination to wander. Training was the only thing that kept him from making the alternate versions of his life a reality. That self-awareness stung, acid on an open wound, but such was why he hadn't written Nythadri a single letter as he so wanted. He'd pour out his heart, but no matter which responded, from dismissal to utter silence, he knew what he'd do next. That was a path he couldn't explore.
"She is your family then? Hana said she was widowed?"
He swallowed saying the word, looking briefly away. If not Araya's wife, A sister perhaps? Mother? Light, Araya couldn't have a daughter with gray in her hair? He blinked, studying Araya's outline. A child Tinker grown to a beautiful demon of a man.
Somehow, though. Araya did it. Here sat a man who saddled two horses galloping opposite directions. He had the answers, if Jai was brave enough to hear them.
A deep breath and he forced the question from his throat: "How do you do it?"
Then he heard it. What he asked, how he asked it. The question hung on the air like the stench of decay. He leaned forward and shoved his face to his hands. There was no escaping it now.
"Your family. You love them right?"
His hands fell to his lap, and he looked up. Too uncomfortable to relax as Araya was. Then a torrent of questions erupted. His heart pounded desperately, eyes seeking answers.
"Every time you leave, you have to say goodbye, right?"
Not a regular man's goodbye, but to stare forlorn into the eyes of cold reality. Every time was not a goodbye, it was the goodbye.
His stomach turned. "How do you do that to yourself? To them? You know you won't come back one time."
Forget the horror of actually leaving, but their suffering was the fault of the Asha'man's selfishness. Would it not be better to spare them that?
Shivers chilled every fine hair on his body. "Say you come back. How do you look them in the eye when you know what you've done? Shadowcreatures. Darkfriends."
He shook his head. Piles of carcasses, the stench of warm bodies indistinguishable from what they were before. It didn't matter whether bits of fur caught the wind or not. They were all the same mounds of pink in the end. From the nastiest of foes to the most sinister of girls. They all had the same look before obliteration. Frightened. Horrified. Abhorrence.
But they were men of the Black Tower. Soldiers could walk a battlefield and turn a blind eye to the screams of their friends piercing the night. They could sit at a fire and clean their boots that night without thinking about what it was they wiped off. They woke the next day and walked dark paths so others didn't. When closeted together, it was a tentative sort of balance. But then they return to the civilized world, and he had no idea how to behave in it.
Horrified by the idea, Jai posed his final question. The cold scenario was far from hypothetical. "Aren't you afraid? Someone wakes you up in the middle of the night and you turn to instinct before you realize where you are? Or who's waking you?"
It was a dangerous thing to wake an exhausted Asha'man, and he only lets it happen once before he stops sharing beds with the innocent.
The temperature flared hot. His chest tightened, his head pulsed. This was why he couldn't stay in Tar Valon. He paced. Hard. Arms folded across his chest. Then they disentangled, and frustrated, scrubbed at hair. The bloody room wasn't large enough for more than a few strides each way. It was only upon the third pass he realized he'd even left the chair. "We don't reach for the weapon under our pillow, Araya! We are the weapon!"
Everything came to a stop. And ten years of questions stared their chasm at Araya, but his throat strained. Choked. This was the torture of Tar Valon. That for some reason the city was a punishment he couldn't outrun, and not so easily discarded as a simple sword.
He fell quiet, a black pillar looking down into his own palms, head bowed. What would Nythadri say of their hands now? Could something damned by violence reach for something purer? Memory flashed. The scent of the sea, the taste of saltwater. The graze of her fingers. A voice whispering in his ear.
"No."
He shook his head quietly.
Jaw tight, "No. I don't want to know."
He knew his own limits. Having the secret to living as two men would crush, not free, him and in the end he would utterly fail both causes.
If Hana heard any of that, she'd have her answer. He glanced at Araya a moment, resolute, compliant but on the precipice of something. Then the bars slammed in place, and Jai headed for the door.
Only darkness shows you the light.