Turnings (Aran & Aramina)

The world was no longer stable.  It was the first thought that came to mind as she walked through the White Tower.  Her hand came up to her neck, not quite touching at the place the collar had been until last night when Annais Sedai had been able to take it off of her.  She took a deep breath the quell her uneasiness. Nothing was right.  She had expected to find the Mother when she came home, had been prepared to tell her everything that she could, only to find her missing.  Annais, a one time friend from childhood, had been the one to take the collar off her.  The Gray sister had informed her about the going-ons in Cairhein and she had been informed that her Grand niece was in Tar Valon as well.  She wanted to find out what Raina had to say about Cairhein and why she had come this far on her own, but there was one more thing was outweighed the rest.

 

For all her talk of the Tower and it's glory, of the hope and faith she had in the women that stood within it's halls, there was one thing that she had learned in Kandor, one thing far more important than any other.  No matter what else there was in her life, there was only one thing that made any of it worth fighting for, somethings she had been denying herself for far too long.  She didn't know how to make the changes that needed to be made in her life or in the path she walked, but she had to start somewhere and she might as well dig in and start where it would be hardest.

 

Going to the barracks supplied nothing, but they had given her the name of a few likely taverns.  Those had been empty as well and before long, Aramina found herself looking in half the taverns in Tar Valon for the man she needed to speak with.  Afternoon was quickly coming before her target appeared.  She didn't know what had happened, but

the longer she had looked, the worse stories she had heard about him.  She put it all aside, believing none of the words of the owners as she finally caught him.  It was outside of Tar Valon and only luck had brought her this far out.

 

She took a deep breath, concern pushing to the foremost of her thoughts as she saw him.  "Aran?"

 

 

Brother...  Sister...

 

Those were two of the many words that swirled through Aran's mind as he watched the stream before him.  He'd found it as much of a comfort as the magnum in his hand that he drank from occasionally.  It had long since been drained of wine, filled with something else that was far more potent and likely to give some sort of comfort.  It was easier to bear when it was blunted, though blunted it made the stream no less attractive.  Drowning his sorrow in alcohol achieved but limited success, a more absolute freedom beckoned and enticed in equal measure.

 

Temptation that was overruled by self loathing.  He had failed, failed all of them.  He hadn't been at Aventari's side when he died, and now the rest of them were dead.  Jeanne, Remar, Joachim, Tessa, Cal, Marc, Claude, Martel, Annalise, Martain, Cerise and Barret.  All of them were dead, only Rakel was alive and that was only as far as he knew.  If they met face to face, he knew that Rakel would either have to flee or die.  Rakel would die, and then there was Anton, wherever he was.  Where was he when he was needed?  Nowhere, and Aran had not made a difference when he was.  All of them, dead on Aiel spears or by Talon's hand.

 

He'd failed them all.  He'd had Ghaul at his mercy, he could have slit the man's throat and he knew more than anything he should have.  He wanted to.  His brother would have, but he had failed his brother and been unable to finish it.  He'd allowed himself to be distracted by the woman's cry and a moment of monumentally stupid mercy.  To have let the man live after what had happened, and after what the Aiel had done to his people.  He should have hacked the man's head off the way his own brother's had been cloven from his body and have hurled it at the Aiel assembled.  Blood for blood.

 

Blood, blood on his hands.  He'd killed, then he had not killed.  Killed the innocent, spared the guilty, it was a confusing mix that he could no longer make head to tail of with certainty.  It shouldn't have mattered, all were obstacles, but now it did and that made it worse.  Another thing that his brother would never have allowed to get in the way, a misplaced conscience.  He was a Rogue, but the guild was dissolved and no more even as it turned on itself in each of the nations.  He was a Tower Guard, yet he was sick of killing, he'd had his fill and then more since he'd first learned how to walk, yet that was all he was good for.

 

It was what he was needed for, yet he was done with it.  But he wasn't because he had to kill Talon, kill a man who had thoroughly stripped of his notions of superiority and skill and cast him down.  It should have been Talon, the darkfriend, that had faced Ghaul.  He would not have hesitated, he would have ripped Ghaul's throat open with his bare fingers and made certain that no Aiel thought of the Cairhienin as prey.  He would have cast down their finest, made sure that the Aiel could no more look down upon the Cairhienin they had slaughtered.  Men and women and children in the streets, fighting as best they could for a home they had no hope of defending.

 

Freedom...  It was meaningless to the dead, yet they had fought so nobly for it.  Oh so nobly.  But then, what was life as a captive?  It was still a life wasn't it?  He couldn't decide, part of him knew that survival was most important because one could do nothing dead.  Yet another part of him spoke to him, told him that survival was not a measure of success.  How to live with oneself?  He had done so well for so long, first by not caring then trying to atone.  There was not atoning for what had happened, for his failure to his family, even to his people whether they knew him or not.  He'd failed all of them.

 

The voice that interrupted was familiar, and at the same time thoroughly unwelcome.  Aventari had been right, he knew it for certain.  He'd made a mistake with one who had not even wielded the power once, until she'd chosen another over him.  One might have moaned of cruel fate, but the truth was that the cruelty was deserved.  Others had cried over him, but he would not shed tears a second time over a woman.  He refused to, it had been fated and he should have known better.  People like him didn't settle down and have a family, other Rogues did but not him.  The Wheel had a karma of its own.

 

Drinking from his magnum, he completely ignored the woman nearby even as a little sloshed on him.  With luck she would simply go away.

 

 

None of the storied had prepared her for the sight of him.  She had no one to ask what had caused this but in the end, none of it matter.  Something had happened and her place was with him.  Of all the things she had learned in Kandor, that was perhaps the hardest to accept, yet most true of it all.  In denying her heart as long as she had, she had denied her own humanity.  Aran had been the only one to reach past the image of who she was to see the real her.  He had become her humanity in a real sense and though she had feared for the life of herself and her warder, her thoughts had turned almost constantly to her lover and the desire to see him once more.

 

She had never thought to find him like this though.  Drunk was a mild way of saying it.  She'd seen it more than a few times, even on a sister once or twice when they'd seen or done something they could no longer live with.  Light, she wished she knew what to say.  He ignored her as she called his name, or simply was too drunk to hear her.  She closed her eyes for a second and shook her head, trying to figure out where she was supposed to get the strength for this.  She had spent most of Kandor wishing to be home in his arms again so that he could comfort her form the pains as he had for years now.  She hadn't expected to find him the one in pain.  He didn't know about her capture, about the torture at the hands of Semirhage's people or the bonding of Rosheen.  He didn't know about the collar or the pain as she had traveled.  He was caught in his own pain.

 

She kicked off the slipper she wore and walked closer to him, sitting next to him.  She didn't say anything at first, but gave him a moment to adjust to her being there before beginning.  She didn't know how to say the words she wanted to say, so she started with something similar.  "I missed you when I was in Kandor."

 

 

She missed him.

 

The feeling of her being so close was enough to inspire a base anger that began to simmer and turn at those words.  She missed him.  It was funny how everything circled around her wants, funny being a polite euphemism for a much darker feeling.  He had tried for so long, so hard, he'd been patient and he'd waited and hoped she would come around and everytime he thought he saw a change in her and every single time she reverted.  It didn't matter, no matter how many times he proved himself true she would question him, again and again and again and it was something he had refused to see, that much was clear now.

 

It was hopeless.  His brother was right to point it out, and a part of Aran had always known it.  The potential was in there, he knew it was, but it was never going to completely unlock and reveal itself.  Her paranoia and her problems would forever be in the way, and he would either have to stand alone and be pulled down by them.  Not that he could be pulled down much further, but his brother had been right and he had ignored his brother long enough to cause so much tragedy.  Wasted his time trying to help Aramina, wasted his time trying to fix Sirayn so that Aramina would be safe.

 

Powerful.  Vainglorious.  Foolish.  Untrustworthy.  His brother had been right on all accounts, and he had been the biggest fool of all for presuming to think that he could fix it.  Thinking that he had to fix it, that he could maybe atone if he helped, fallen for a woman who had so many problems.  Falling for her like he had fallen for the other, though not.  The first had been similar, if so very very different.  This one was completely different, if in some ways similar.  Both were similar in that they had been mistakes, the former abandoning him for another and the latter unable to see the one she worshiped was unworthy and a shell of a person.  Now it was too late anyway.

 

It was a different tone that Aran adopted, one he had never shown Aramina in all the time he had known her.  It was the firey cold sting of contempt that laced the words that he returned to Aramina.  "You missed me."

 

His words cut deeper than she would have thought they could.  Just three small words and she had never felt so bare or vulnerable in her life.  He hadn't even bothered to look at her.  Panic welled up inside her, made her want to push it all away.  Light, she couldn't do this. She couldn't take whatever was happening here.  She needed to run, needed the facade that had held her in place after everything else had been stripped away.  Her purpose in the Tower was gone.  Her mind had been compromised by one of the Forsaken who had shown her how completely wrong the White Tower had become over the years.  She had been tortured and collared, and made to hate herself for a secret she would never be able to tell the only woman she might possibly be able to call friend in the White Tower.  She didn't think she could bear whatever it was Aran was dishing out.  She felt concern filter back at her through the bond and quickly blocked it out of her awareness.  The last thing she needed was Rosheen coming to see what was bothering her so much.

 

She took a deep breath and looked back at the road.  It would be so easy to just get up and walk away.  Shut herself off from everyone again, but Duram had shown her how wrong that path was.  She had promised herself she would be more than that.  It had to begin here.

 

"Yes.  I missed you.  I don't suppose i've said it often to you, but it's true.  There are..." She took a deep breath.  "There are a lot of things I didn't say."

 

Lots of things that hadn't been said, that was an understatement.  Snorting derisively at what was said, Aran just put the magnum to his lips and drank.  Lots of things that hadn't been said, things that should have been and that he'd hoped for but he'd never heard.  How many times he would have yearned to hear a dozen and more things from her, things that he had hoped for even before he had realised that he wanted her alone and many more things after that moment.  Yes, there were a lot of things that she didn't say, and like many tragic dramas that gleemen spun, they were things that were far too late to be spoken.

 

But, maybe it would help lighten her burden to speak.  It always had in the past, right before she turned on him again and doubted, and mistrusted, and cast everything he offered back into his teeth.  Everytime, she always had a realisation, an epiphany, a moment of truth that was just as quickly forgotten and discarded.  A hint of it would remain, enough that he would follow along, thinking he had made progress but it was never enough.  Not once was it enough, because time and time again it proved to be lacking, he was tired of it to the core, to the bone, to his very marrow.

 

Far be it for him to deny her the chance to feel better, to assauge her own feelings.  Turning to her for a moment, there was a cruel edge to his eyes that hadn't been there before.  Despite was but the forefront of a thousand strands of emotion and feeling, hurt and anger, no hiding now.  He had been open to her before and he was now, he doubted whether she would be quite so appreciative of what she saw.  No, not the same patience that her crippled emotions had relied on to get by, not this time.  Not after everytime before.

 

Turning away, Aran snorted again as his words were clipped and quick, as if he wanted as little do with them as possible.  "What wasn't said?"  Lifting his magnum to his lips once more, he wondered what he would now be forced to listen to, tempted to accept even though he knew better now.

 

 

The words were on her lips.  The truth that she had hidden from herself for so long, the truth that she had accepted was her and hers alone so she would never burden him with it.  The truth was that she had always been afraid to say it, afraid he would reject her for feeling too much and afraid to learn than he didn't care at all.  A friend, someone to take what you had to give a no more.  When had that become such a problematic concept?  How long had what she wanted been far more than she had ever been willing to ask for?

 

Duram had made her weakness clear and she could do something about it now.  Three words.

 

But he wasn't ready to hear there.  Not with what had happened to him.  "Aran, what happened?"

 

Three words.  Always the wrong three words.

 

 

"What happened?"  Aran chuckled, anything resembled his once light hearted nature gone.  She quailed, she lied without lying, she slipped away and didn't have the courage to continue on and now turned the tables onto him.  She shifted the focus from herself the moment it became uncomfortable, it was only when it was uncomfortable for her that she was willing to ask of him what the matter was.  So typical, so utterly selfish, so infuriatingly awful, so something inexplicable that could not be framed into words, it amazed him how he had denied it to himself for so long.

"I'll tell you what happened."  Looking at Aramina rather than to her, there was no chance that the words that were in his mind were ever going to be reigned in.  "I had a startling epiphany, a most sublime understanding of a simple axiom that I blinded myself to because I was so stupidly hopefuly, so unfailingly optimistic.  I tried to do the right thing, everytime I tried so hard and I showed infinite bloody patience.  I did everything I could, and it just wasn't enough.  Not because it wasn't in itself, but because you were so bloody self centred and so needy, so bloody cowardly."

 

Pushing up to his feet, Aran swayed a little but he was still able to keep his footing.  If there was anything that his drinking had taught him, it was how to keep upright even when he was drunk as a skunk.  "You can't help yourself, can you?  You're so desperately needy of your pain, never able to let it go.  So what, you find it difficult to let people close and two of them died, so what?!  Other people cry, mourn, get off their bloody feet and get on with their lives!"

 

Having shouted the last, his voice dropped to a normal tone as he ploughed on.  "You though, you can't function without that pain can you?  Your own little world so orderly and neat, so easy to understand.  You're the world's greatest victim, aren't you?  Lost two close friends and its just shut you down emotionally for a century.  What bloody dag!  You feed of your own self pity, don't you?  I bet once in awhile you even sit down and cuddle those pictures tight, rehash those pains again and again like some dog licking up its own vomit."

 

"But you don't need to do it.  Noooo, you don't have to but you just can't help it.  Every single time I get through to you, every time I try do something right, I'll get this glimmer that there is something better, something more underneath it.  And you know what you do?  Every bloody time, I get treated like a criminal, like I'm there to use you.  Of course, you're ever so quick to apologise, ever so quick to realise the mistake, and then you just go and do the same bloody thing again!"

 

Spreading his arms wide, Aran would have been wearing a smile if a smile could carry such anger, a happy tone if it weren't so tragic.  "But not your Sirayn, not your little one handed goddess.  No, she is beyond reproach, she's the wonderful inspiration who so dominates your life.  Nevermind that she's the cowardly bitch who put you in the state you are.  Or was, I should say.  Oh, you clung to it yourself, but I have no doubt that Sirayn fostered your isolation as much as she fostered Estel's self imposed stupidity.  She is the most fundamentally flawed and outright deluded person I have ever met, and for some unknowable reason you wish you were like her?"

 

"Oh she truly did a number on you, all of you.  The weakest of the lot of you, yet she ascended above you all much in the way she ascended as Amyrlin, like a turd rising to the surface of a befouled lake.  Even now, I'm willing to bet for certain that the first person you went to see when you returned was her, just in the same way she is always there in your mind.  Not because she overshadows you in nature, but because you choose to diminish yourself, to hide there, like a great oak trying to lurk in the shadow of a shrub, except you're so convinced that she's the oak and you're the shrub."

 

Aran had been stepping from side to side, but now he was awfully still as he looked down on her.  His magnum in one hand and the other spread wide as if it would fly apart.  "But its an oh so comfortable little illusion you have, isn't it?  A nice way to escape from functioning like a real human being, a way to avoid having some self respect!  If you'd had nearly as much self respect and love for yourself as any decent person would, you'd not be such a little slave.  But you won't change, you'll cling to your little comfortable world where it all makes sense to you even though its complete lunacy!  You'll begin to pull yourself out, then you'll dive back into that mess of a life to spite me and to flee from the possibility that under all that crap there might be something better out there."

 

"Thats what I realised, thats what happened."  Drawing from his magnum quickly, he almost succumbed to the urge to throw it at her but instead his tone was almost insidious as he spoke.  "Does that answer your question?  Does that inform you as to what happened?  Do we now understand each other in a way that does not end with me getting kicked in the crotch?  Or perhaps this is just a plot, maybe I'm a Mallien spy or some dirty darkfriend who was sent to twist and turn you and destroy you.  Wouldn't that be so much easier to believe?  Much easier to believe, like every other time that something happens that you don't want to deal with."

 

"Well?  What have you got to say for yourself?  Are you satisfied with my reply?  Speak up!  You've never been short of words to cast into my teeth before.  No accusations?  No pleadings?  No blaming your unwillingness to act like a normal person on people long dead or your Tower, which doesn't require you to be as ice yet seems to be the convenient excuse whenever you desire it.  Well?!"  The last word he hurled with the overwhelming disgust that consumed him.  When an answer wasn't immediately forthcoming, he simply turned to the water as he said.  "Either say something or run along back to that Tower of yours.  Run along and hide in your room like you always do, except don't expect me to chase after you this time."

 

She sat on the ground, eyes brimming with tears she refused to release.  There was very little he said that she could argue with.  In fact, she wasn't sure there was anything to argue at all.  She was proud of her accomplishments within the Tower, but she wasn't the Tower.  She was a person who had absolutely nothing to show for the 150 years she had walked the earth.

 

Part of her wanted to run as he suggested.    Run from the pain and the words that meant too much from a man that meant more.  She didn't know how to confront his anger, let along the drunken anger that was being thrown at her.  She closed her eyes against the accusations, feeling each strike her heart and leave her to bleed.

"No."

 

She took a deep breath, wiping the tears from her eyes as she looked up at him.  "No.  I'm not doing this.  I came to do something today because it was important and i'm sorry if you're too drunk to hear what I have to say, but i'll say it anyway."

 

She stood up then, moving close to him again.  Her eyes held more fear than anything, fear and a sadness as she took a deep breath and continued.  "Every day I spent in Kandor made me realize that I wasn't living life as I should.  Everyday, struggling to protect their loved ones, and every day we buried more and more.  There were times I missed you so much I couldn't breath, but I never wished you in the middle of that with me.  There were times when I thought I was going mad, when the only thing that kept me sane was the thought of you. They put a bloody collar around my neck as a message to someone that wasn't even here anymore.  All I could think about was getting back to see you."

 

"Every moment since I stepped foot in Kandor until now, I have set myself towards one goal, and that was to come back to you.  Because it doesn't matter if it hurts, or if you'll hate me for it.  It doesn't matter than I want more than you can Bloody give!"  She fought tears for a moment, looking away before she could look him in the eye again.

"I love you.  I have for years and you're right.  I couldn't say it.  I can now though.  Tell me what hoops to jump though and I would.  Tell me to walk away from it all, tell me to walk away and you'd walk with me and I will.  My life is yours.  Do what you would with it."

 

 

There it was, the cruelest twist of the knife that Aramina could have ever given.  To finally give the simplest words in so heartfelt tone, to give him what he had once wanted so much.  She just dangled it there before him, the ultimate temptation, the one and only thing that could have possibly gotten under his skin because he knew that said in such plain terms it could be nothing else.  In the same moment, knowing that the words were only true for the moment, knowing that if he said yes and they walked back to the Tower, she would renege when she came to her senses.  A last ditch attempt to sink another hook into him when all the others had ripped free of him and been as torturous as if they had been ripped from his very flesh.

 

The intensity of it all with her so close to him, in all came down upon a single point of intense focus for him as he turned to her.  Tears of grief wandering down the cheeks he had once so gently cupped in his hands, her chest rising and falling as if she had run a marathon, her fingers tightly clenched in hands that he had once welcomed.  Everything he had come to want offered before him so plainly, a poisoned chalice that would destroy him.  A temptation that would ruin him even more than he was, a siren's song that would draw him down to the depths where he would drown in a sea of misery and frustration.

 

No, he had been fooled by the foxfire long enough.  "You played your hand too late and I call your bluff.  Oh, you mean it oh so sweetly now, but sooner or later you will renege as you always have.  You'll back out, you'll doubt it or you'll doubt me, you'd follow another if she but reappared.  If she were to appear here now and snap her fingers, you would be at Sirayn's side and is only because of her absence that you offer yourself so freely now.  I won't be a second choice any longer Aramina sur Dulciena.  Its a cruel thing to learn you're a shawl first and foremost, you won't fool me now that I've finally learned my lesson."

 

"Get out of my sight."  The moment of inaction on Aramina's part resulted in Aran grabbing the front of her dress and shoving her with such force that she tripped over her feet and fell back even as he roared.  "Get out of my sight!"

 

There had never been a time when his hands had touched her in anger.  He had never hit or harmed her in any way.  His words had been patient and he had always tried to see her through the trials that came into their relationship.  She had never once that that Aran had been waiting for her to show more.  How many women had there been over the years?  How many that she had just looked past or refused to see because it simply hurt too much.  She didn't know and didn't want to.  None of it mattered.

 

She didn't fight the tears anymore.  She looked up at him, her shocked expression left unschooled and unguarded.  "What proof do you want Aran?" She asked  "I've given you my word and I cannot lie.  Do you want this?" She pulled the serpent ring of her hand and threw it at his feet.  "It's a symbol.  The first time I was asked to betray everyone I ever loved.  I passed with flying colors.  I could get my shawl if you'd like.  The first time I realized that I was destined to be alone, that I would always be asked to put aside myself for the Tower and I accepted it then."  Her voice broke and when it returned it was with anger.  "Well I don't anymore!  I am nothing anymore Aran, not a ring, not a shawl.  All I want to be is yours."

 

 

How tempting, so very tempting as she made her display, her final attempt to snag him.  Her ring at his feet, her words affirmed as her tears flowed like wine in a tavern but more bitter and sour than vinegar to view.  She was there, waiting for him, a lure and an unwitting trap all in the one, made all the more dangerous because the bait could have been worth the barbs that would sink in.  If he were a different man, perhaps, but he had learned his lesson.  There were certain things that could not be accepted, he had betrayed his brother and his family enough times and thrice more because he had left Cairhien.  There was no life to be had for himself when he had failed those who had needed him most.

 

No, he would not do this, could not do it, refused to. He had forgotten for too long, he would not forget again now that he had learned the lesson.  She would betray him, just as the other had chosen her path, this one would as well when given the opportunity.  Holding her gaze, Aran deliberately turned and walked away.  He would not have a part of her, not again, no more, even if it were a nirvana rather than a hell, it was not his to have.  Not anymore.

 

She watched him, studying his face as he took in her words, waited for some sign that he understood, that he was hearing her words.  Nothing came though.  He didn't say anything, did try to reach our to her, or to strike her.  He didn't acknowledge her in any way.  Her life's work lay at his feet and he simply walked away.

 

She tried to make herself care enough to pick up the ring, but she couldn't.  She knew that her choice had been made.  If Aran came back tomorrow and asked for her to follow him she would.  If he came back to her in ten years she would still follow.  She loved him and it didn't matter than he hadn't accepted it.  She took a small step back, and then another.  There were things she needed to do, her niece needed seeing to and she had to report back to her Ajah.  She didn't know when he would change his mind, if ever, but she would still be there, at the White Tower, waiting for him to call her away.

 

 

Aran & Aramina