Filler Scene in "Nightmares Walking" Book 3

[Iris 0]

Filler Scene from the chapter “Nightmares Walking” in The Dragon Reborn

 

She [Moiraine] paused as if gathering strength. Her grip tightened on the angreal and her free hand slid down Rand's side as if it were not covered in blood. “Brace yourself.”

Suddenly Rand's eyes opened wide and he sat straight up, gasping and staring and shivering. Perrin had thought, when she Healed him, that it went on forever, but in moments she was easing Rand back against the oak.

“I have...done as much as I can,” she said faintly. “As much as I can. You must be careful. It could break open again if...” as her voice trailed off, she fell.

Rand caught her, but Lan was there in an instant to scoop her up. As the Warder did so, a look passed across his face, a look as close to tenderness as Perrin ever expected to see from Lan.

“Exhausted,” the Warder said. “She has cared for everyone else, but here is no one to take her fatigue. I will put her to bed.”

“There's Rand,” Min said slowly, but the Warder shook his head.

“It isn't that I do not think you would try, sheepherder,” he said, “but you know so little you might as soon kill her as help her.”

 

Lan turned and started walking back toward the makeshift hut that he and Moiraine shared on the slope of the valley. As he held her, cradling her head against his chest, he was reminded of just how small she was, and he felt that bubble of affection for her again. Such a strong and brave soul in such a little body. He lifted her arm, slackened by sleep, that still held her angreal, and tucked it in atop her legs, so the object wouldn't fall onto the ground, which was still littered with the carnage of the fight. She slept in his large arms like a child, and he held her tightly so that her head wouldn't loll nor her limbs hang loose like a rag doll. But he didn't hold her so tightly that her breathing was strained or her face smothered. He knew just how to hold her.

 

He pushed open the creaking door and walked through his own room in the front, moving through the second doorway into the back room, where Moiraine slept. A pallet and blanket lay made neatly in the corner of the room. Lan knelt down, and with one hand still holding Moiraine's sleeping head against his chest, he drew back the blanket. He then brought his hand to the back of her dress, undoing the long row of pearl buttons. He gently laid her head down, followed by her body, after which he took the angreal from her hand and laid it aside. He stood and retrieved the chipped bowl that held the water that Moiraine used for washing. He brought it beside the pallet and lightly rested her other hand in the water, removing Rand's blood from the Healing, after which he gently toweled it dry. Then he slowly slid off her silk dress, careful not to disturb her. He had seen her in her shift countless times, so he didn't think she would object to him undressing her so she could have a comfortable night's rest.

He folded the silk dress as tidily as he could, setting down on the edge of the pallet. Then he reached up into the dark waves of her hair and unclasped her kesiera, withdrawing it delicately so it wouldn't catch. He looked back at her sleeping body, the rising and falling of her chest beneath the silk, the pale skin of her arms and legs. For a fleeting moment he felt a flicker of longing, which was extinguished just as quickly as it lighted, as he drew the blanket up over her body--like the flame of a candle that flitted for an instant, and was then blown out with a single breath.

 

It was moments like that, when an unexpected thought or emotion rose to the surface, that Lan wondered what he actually felt for this woman. The ball of emotion and sensation that was her glowed peacefully in slumber, so he allowed his thoughts to roam freely. Twenty years she had been at his side, and what he felt for her now was just as much a mystery as it had been when their bond was new, despite the fact that he had come to know her as well as he knew his own self. His eyes lifted to the mud wall opposite him, and his thoughts drifted to Nynaeve. As sure as his heart beat in his chest and his blood coarsed in his veins, he knew what he felt for Nynaeve, and he knew it within only a matter of days, if that. Time had only changed the magnitude of it, but never its essence. He looked back at Moiraine's sleeping figure. But this woman? He knew every emotion that flowed through her mind and every sensation that moved through her body. It was like a part of him embodied in another human being. Yet he still couldn't define what she meant to him. He only knew how much she meant to him.

 

And yet she doubted that—doubted how much she meant to him. He had felt worry creep in and settle over her these past months. It was after their journey to the Eye of the World that he first felt it from her. Initially, he had wondered why she would feel that worry--an emotion that she quickly boxed away whenever he came near her. Then she finally told him herself a short time after, that she had wondered since Fal Dara if he was still wholly with her. Everything made sense then, and despite his assurance, and even anger, that worry still clung to her. Most of the time she schooled it to silence. But even now, usually after some discussion of future plans, when he left her room or she his, or during that time in the night before sleep when thoughts wander, he felt that worry creep back over her. Since coming to this place he had even seen her once in that worried state, the door to her room having been slightly ajar. She sat on her pallet crossed legged, an elbow on each knee, her face looking down and fingertips pressed to her forehead. No Aes Sedai mask covered her features, and he could see it in her face—a worry that brought a tightness to her eyes and a tiredness to her face.

 

Ar first it had infuriated him when she asked him if their bond chafed, an uncharacteristic spike of anger rising within him and nearly breaking through the surface. But then anger subsided and he came to understand the legitimacy of her concern. For twenty years neither he, nor she, had ever thought it possible that he could love any woman the way he loved Nynaeve. And yet within a matter of a few days he had changed drastically, at least on the inside. And Moiraine knew him on the inside. Could he blame Moiraine for worrying that another constant within him might change drastically, or unexpectedly? Did he not dream of being with Nynaeve and taking her as his wife? And where was Moiraine in those dreams? Conveniently forgotten, or dead?

 

Dead. That was another thought that haunted him, especially in quiet, dark moments like this. Moiraine had made a pact to pass the bond to Myrelle in the event that she died before him. How could it have been in these twenty years, that he never truly acknowledged the possibility that Moiraine could die before him? That's what it would take for him to be free to go Nynaeve--Moiraine's death. Or her severing their bond. As much as he loved Nynaeve, the mere thought of Moiraine dying, or his bond to her being severed, was like thinking of a part of himself dying or being severed. But what if he did allow her to sever their bond? Would Nynaeve not replace it with her own, and something more than that besides? He thought of Moiraine fainting after healing Rand, but with no one being there to catch her when she fell, or being caught and accidentally mishandled. No, he would never allow her to sever their bond, and it wasn't because of guilt--it was because of how much she meant to him, and what she meant to him--even if he only understood the former and would never understand the latter.

[Iris 0]

He looked down at Moiraine, her soft breathing a mark of peaceful sleep, and he entertained the thought of her death, the other means for their bond to end. Just allowing the thought to skitter across his mind made his heart clench, as if some icy hand had suddenly gripped it. Had he really thought he could control death, always intercepting it for himself when it was meant for her? But it was possible that one day it would find her, and he wouldn't be able to meet it in her place. Lan closed his eyes and brought his hands over his face, imagining it. He couldn't bring himself to look at her living body while his mind plunged deeper into these thoughts, as if seeing her alive while thinking of her death made the connection all too real.

 

As soon as Lan obscured his view of Moiraine with his closed eyes and hands, thoughts of her death materialized in his mind. Death could come in a thousand different ways, but always he saw the same two images. The first, a man standing in front of her, running a sword through her middle and then withdrawing it. The second, an arrow piercing her from the back, the point just barely emerging from the center of her chest, right through her heart. A death that was expected and a death that was unexpected--the deep recesses of his mind having created that symbolism without any conscious effort on his part. Lan's fingertips pressed forcefully into the skin of his face. He thought he would burst from the mental and emotional anguish of it, but he forced himself to imagine every detail.

 

A surprised look would replace her normally serene one, her dark eyes wide with shock, as the blade, or the arrow, met her body. Then her eyes would remain wide, the color draining from her face, paling it to whiteness, as pain wracked her--a pain he would share with her. She would reach a shaking hand to the wound, as if to make sure it was real, bloodying her fingertips, as more blood bloomed onto the blue silk of her dress. Finally, a trickle of blood would come from her mouth, sliding over her paled lips, and she would collapse first to her knees, and then to her back. Brown eyes gazing up with the stillness of death, blood would pool around her, staining blue silk to red and dampening the dark curls of her hair that had fanned out as she fell to the floor.

 

“Lan?” Lan felt the touch of a small, warm palm on one of his own hands, which still covered his face.

 

That small hand gently brought down his hands from his face, and opening his eyes, he saw Moiraine sitting up on the pallet. Her dark eyes searched his blue, concern evident in those two deep pools, and in the bond. As his mind came back to reality, he realized his breathing sounded fast and heavy, and his heart was beating frantically. He wondered what the expression on his face beheld when his hands first came down. Moiraine's eyes continued to search him, and he realized she still held his hand. Emotion poured silently from her into him—deep concern, care, worry. And was there something else, that could be defined, as love?

 

I will never know what she means to me, only how much she means to me—and she means so much to me.

 

Abruptly he pulled her face to his and kissed her briefly. As he brought his face back she wore a look of quiet surprise, but the bond revealed that what was inside her mirrored what was inside him---things surprising, but not quiet.

 

They continued to look at one another in the dark silence and then Lan spoke. “As long as we're both alive, I will always be by your side, Moiraine--to catch you when you fall, to take a sword through my middle or an arrow in my back, for you. Always.”

 

And with that he got up and walked from her room, closing the door. Moiraine continued looking, for what felt like a very long time, at the place where he had just been sitting—the place by her side.

[Asmodean82 0]

I really like that. I always wanted more of the meat of that triangle.

[Iris 0]

Thanks, Asmo. I share your sentiment about the triangle.

 

Typos cleaned up now too (i hope i got them all...)

[Kaitlin 22]

I like this. I like reading about it from Lan's perspective.

[Iris 0]

Thanks for the feedback. Im glad you guys liked it *kesiera twinkles* *takes credit from more likeable alternate ego Iris*

[Aleyna 1]

This is amazing!I love it!

It's exactly how I imagined that scene once.

It always seemed so odd to me that they never had moments like this for 20 years, and we know they shared rooms together.

I just posted something a bit similar to this, though yours covers the whole inner monologue perfectly!

Congrats again!

[Iris 0]

thanks aleyna! *goes to read your's*