Chapter Text
She has been dreaming about Cairhien again.
It is not unusual. The dreams have been increasing in frequency since her return to the White Tower two months ago, in those terrible days after her father's funeral.
Some of them are bearable. The bustling streets seen from the palace balconies, the blooms of the gardens in summer. The sweet, tangy taste of an orange from the glasshouses, its juice dripping down her chin.
Then there are the other dreams. The ones about wandering endlessly through one of her uncle's dazzling parties, surrounded by masked, unknown faces and no way out. The gallows ready and waiting for the hangman's rope, the sharp thud of the axe on the block. Her brother.
The ones about her brother are some of the worst.
She is drowning now in the ornamental fountain, held down by an invisible force and struggling amongst the water lilies, gasping for breath -
"Moiraine - Moiraine, you're dreaming again…it's just a dream-"
She hears the voice from far away and jolts upright, eyes flying open and terror clawing at her chest.
Somebody is touching her back. She flinches away so violently that she almost falls out of bed.
"I'm sorry!" Siuan yelps, withdrawing her hand quickly. "I know you don't like to be touched when - but - well, I just wanted to wake you. You were crying."
"It is alright," she says, though she is not sure it is, really. She is still shaking, trying hard to catch her breath. Her skin is clammy, her nightgown sticking to her back. Her cheeks are damp, and she scrubs at them, embarrassed.
Siuan scrambles to the bedside to light the lamp. Moiraine could tell her not to - they receive only small rations of oil, after all - but she cannot deny how much safer she feels when light flares, spreading through her small room.
It takes a moment for her breathing to regulate, her heartbeat to slow. She gets out of bed to wipe her sweaty face at her washstand. The stone floor is almost painfully cold on her bare feet. Good.
Siuan watches from her bed, looking pensive. She nibbles at her thumbnail.
"Moiraine, these dreams….I think we should ask Merean about them."
"No," she splashes her face with the icy water in her jug, wincing at the cold.
"But there must be something she can do. Or the Yellows-"
"No, Siuan," she says firmly. The last thing she wants is for anybody else to know about this. What kind of Aes Sedai can she be if she cannot even control her own mind? It would be humiliating. It is bad enough that Siuan knows, though Moiraine had been the one to ask her to stay with her, that first night back, afraid of being alone.
Like a child, she thinks bitterly. She is so weak. Siuan has insisted on staying with her most nights after that, and it is surely because she pities her.
"They…they do not mean anything. Just night terrors, I need to learn to control them."
Siuan sighs unhappily, shifts to draw her knees to her chest. "I'm still worried about it."
"You do not have to stay with me," Moiraine says, for what must be the millionth time since her return. "I will ruin your sleep too."
"I wouldn't be able to sleep, wondering about you," Siuan says. Her face is pinched. "The way you cry sometimes….have you always had nightmares?"
"I think so," Moiraine swallows hard. "I think it started when my mother died."
"How old were you?"
"Six years."
She can still remember those horrible nights, curled up and filled with dread, pinching herself to stop sleep from taking her. Nobody had told her how her mother had died.
They hadn't even told her she was dead, not at first anyway. Her father hadn't been able to face it, and her sisters were lost in their own grief. All she knew was that her mother had been there - ailing and pale in her bedchamber, yes, but there - and suddenly she was not, and nobody would answer her questions.
Then there had come a day when she was roused early and dressed in mourning white, her hair carefully pressed into ringlets. There were new boots; she remembered that very well, because she was so proud of them, their soft kidskin leather and gleaming buttons. There were petticoats too, like the ones her big sisters wore, and white gloves.
She did not understand why the adults were suddenly looking drawn and whispering amongst themselves, calling her poor child. There had been a sombre ceremony, but there were always ceremonies, and under her uncle, everybody was usually sombre. It was only some days afterwards that Taringail had bullied her about something, and in a fit of temper, she had said, I will tell my mother.
Your mother is dead, he had replied coldly, Dead and gone, and cannot listen to your whining any longer.
She pinches herself hard, trying to shock herself out of the memory, and climbs back into bed. Siuan winches at her cold feet banging against hers but draws her close.
"I don't remember mine at all," Siuan says softly. "My mother. I suppose I was too young to really miss her."
There is a breath, a small moment of heavy silence, before she sighs. "Still. We have each other now, don't we? We can be each other's family."
"Are we not all supposed to be sisters?" Moiraine asks. She affects a lightly mocking impression of what they were told when they first came here. "Do not forget, the Tower is our family now."
Siuan bristles. "It'll snow in Tear before I call Elaida Sedai my sister and mean it."
Moiraine yawns. She feels better now, safer. Nightmares always seem far away with Siuan by her side.
“It’s so cold,” Siuan grumbles. She wriggles deep underneath the blankets until all Moiraine can see of her are her eyes peeping up and the tied bow of her silk scarf. “This bloody Tower will freeze us all to death before any of us become Aes Sedai.”
Siuan has always been cold here, used to the warm climate of Tear, where she says it never gets much colder than a mild autumn day in Tar Valon.
“Give me some of the blankets,” Moiraine says, smiling slightly. Siuan is a terrible blanket hog. “Or do you want me to freeze to death tonight?”
“Can’t have that,” Siuan mumbles sleepily, tucking the blankets tight around them both as Moiraine reaches to snuff out the lamp again. “Who’d take notes for me if you were dead?”
She moves close to her with no self-consciousness. Her legs are now tangled with hers, their shoulders bumping. Her arms come up to Moiraine's, rub at her goose-pimpled skin. Moiraine focuses on regulating her breathing. It’s fine. This is what normal girls do. This is friendship. But that doesn’t change the fact that everything in her wants to bolt at how comfortable and right it feels to have Siuan pressed against her like this.
She is mere inches from Moiraine, the lines of her face in silhouette. Moiraine can feel the warmth of her breath. She smells of her mint tooth powder.
“What are you thinking about?" Moiraine whispers.
Siuan smiles in the dark. "The Wheel. How many lives might we have lived before this one? All the people we were then, and all the people we knew. Sometimes it feels like I must have known you in all of them. Do you feel it too?”
Moiraine is silent for a long moment. Her fingers fiddle with the edge of her pillowcase.
“Yes,” she breathes at last. It sounds trite, even silly, but she does. There is an ease to Siuan's company, a comforting simplicity in how they interact. Being alone with her sometimes feels like the easiest thing in the world. “Our souls know each other.”
“Mm,” Siuan hums. “So you see, we are always meant to be friends."
“I think we were always meant to meet. Do you think…when we are raised…”
She does not have to explain her fears. Siuan knows her too well. They’ve both seen friendships wither when one or both are raised to full Aes Sedai, choose different ajahs, or take different paths.
“We’ll stay friends,” Siuan says firmly. She has this way of confidence, of being so sure about things, that Moiraine finds fascinating. How wonderful it must be to be so sure that life will be kind.
“Whatever ajah, whatever the Amyrlin sets us doing. They know we’re a good team.”
This Moiraine knows to be true. They have always worked together seamlessly, so well that they are often set to helping others in their own classes. She smiles at her, but the anxiety is still coiling in her chest at the thought. Surely testing is still years away for them. But it is so difficult to know when to expect it. Leane is older than them but still has not been asked, while there are younger girls who have been raised already after less time in the Tower. Their friend Iseult, too, had been slightly younger than they, and hers had gone so badly.
She doesn’t like to think about being lost in the Arches, though she still has nightmares about it. She doesn’t have any inkling of what lies in there, but her dreams are horribly detailed, of Iseult wandering hopelessly, forever alone in the mist or the dark. She squeezes her eyes shut. Far better to think of a quick death for her, a painless end, a new life in another turn of the wheel.
They had grown closer after that, she and Siuan, drawing together after the loss of their friend. The intensity of their friendship frightens her sometimes, how quickly they have fallen in step with each other. What she had seen at first, childishly, as a rivalry, is now clear to her - Siuan is so much her better, though they are equal in the One Power.
She had missed her so much in those two weeks in Cairhien. There had hardly been any time to prepare - a curt letter, a carriage sent for her. A hurried goodbye.
It had been strange being back in Cairhien, like visiting another world. She was a stranger there now, somebody who frightened the servants. Four years into her time here after fifteen in Cairhien, yet it is almost as though those years in the Sun Court happened to somebody else. They exist somewhere in another reality, another turn of the wheel; one where she was a lady of the house Damodred, when she wore fine silks and wanted for nothing. Leaving it once again had felt freeing, and as the carriage had jostled through the streets she had been hit by the realisation that perhaps she would never see it again. That, too, had felt freeing.
She likes this life better. One of hard winters and boiling summers, of hands raw and red from scrubbing floors, simple white dresses and early mornings. She knows how to darn clothes now, the best way to get mud or grass stains out of a gown, and how to light and keep a fire.
Her uncle had sent for her once, but most of the time had been spent in her rooms there, uncomfortable with the privilege afforded to her.
Siuan's father died a year ago, and nothing like that had been done for her. She had received a very bare letter, informing her only that her father had died and been cremated three weeks before. That had been a frightening time, one where she felt she could not reach her. It had been a long time since she had smiled again. Even now, she still has melancholy days, lapses where Moiraine knows she is thinking of the past.
Siuan is almost always the first of them to fall asleep, and soon her breathing is deep and regular, curled up beneath most of the blankets. Moiraine gently detangles herself from her. In her sleep, Siuan frowns, a line creasing her smooth forehead.
Moiraine watches her. It seems these days she spends most of her time watching Siuan. She is quietly observant of everything about her. It’s embarrassing how much she notices.
Her beautifully quick mind, of course, has fascinated her ever since they met. She might have been barely able to read then, but now she devours books from the Tower, listening wide-eyed to the stories Moiraine has told her of her family’s library in Cairhien, which is supposed to be one of the biggest in the world. Rashly, Moiraine has promised to take her there one day, and is surprised to find she means it. If she could have brought back the entire thing in her arms she would have, just to see her smile.
The way she moves, how quick she is to smile or laugh, the dimples in her cheeks when she does. The habit she has of dancing her fingers across her lips when she’s thinking, the frown line that appears on her brow when she’s mulling over a puzzle. The swing of her strong legs as she sits into a desk, the tiny soft hairs of her shins underneath her skirts.
She speaks with an honesty that some others find abrasive, but almost everyone respects. She does not see the point in frippery and flattery; Moiraine finds it endlessly admirable about her. She is so observant and sharp that she would be brilliant at Daes Dae’mar, if she ever cared to play it. Moiraine had explained it at length, but Siuan had only scoffed. What was the point, she said, of prettying things up when at the end of the day a codfish was still a flaming codfish? To her, the Game of Houses sounded like a headache.
She had thought at first that all of this admiration was platonic. Friendship, she has found, is a difficult, slippery thing; girls constantly fall in and out of groups, making up, breaking up. She often seems to say or do the wrong thing, to misstep and lose what little standing she’s gained.
It has taken her an embarrassingly long time to wonder if she wants Siuan as a lover. It’s hardly unusual here at the tower. There is a word for girls like that. Pillowfriends. It is a common practice when there are very little boys and plenty of lonely girls. It doesn't mean anything, not really.
Even Siuan has spoken of it. She said she and Iseult had kissed once, mostly to see what it would be like, though they did not have those feelings for each other. Moiraine is afraid to ask if she could have those feelings for other girls. So many of the others seem to exchange kisses like hair ribbons, and fawn after stable boys and warders too. What if she is the only girl in the whole Tower who feels such intense things?
It still shames her that she feels this way for other women. She has suspected it about herself, yet never properly acknowledged it, nor had it been so evident before. She had tried to train it out of herself, in Cairhien, to some success. But then, in Cairhien, there was much less temptation.
There were things she had never noticed there that now, in a tower full of girls, are painfully obvious. She had never realised before, for instance, how much she loves the shape of women’s bodies, the softness of their skin, the gentle warmth of their voices.
She likes how women smell, the sweet floral perfumes they might use, or just soap or hair oil, things like the fall of long hair down their backs, the cadence of their laughter.
There are girls in the Tower who bemoan the lack of access to boys, the years spent almost entirely away from them. Moiraine thinks she would be quite happy never to have to see one again.
In Cairhien, it was silently agreed as something that existed, but not necessarily accepted, most certainly not something you flaunted. In books, in the stories, the songs that were shared, there was nothing about love between two women, though there was little about romantic love in general.
People are much freer with their touches in the Tower, romantic or otherwise. The looping of arms as people walk, the holding of hands. Girls might lay their feet or their heads in their friend's lap, might lay a head on a shoulder.
Once, she had even seen two older girls kiss in the alcove by the library, and the sight had made her blush a furious red, an unfamiliar and confusing mess of feelings tangling in her stomach.
She had never seen people kiss on the lips before, not even at the weddings of her siblings, where marriage was legitimized by a chaste kiss to the cheek. And to see two women, at that. It had made her think of things that frightened her. It had made her think of Siuan.
Such easy intimacy has unfolded between them in their time at the Tower. Is this how close friends are? She has never had a best friend before, after all. She had not known how to make friends before the White Tower. She still isn’t entirely sure she does. She seems to have been absorbed by a friend group instead, as though all of the girls who surround Siuan have adopted her too, unquestionably.
She thinks whatever is between them is different, somehow. Their friendship is closer, somehow more intense, breaking through the distance she places with the other girls. Siuan always manages to worm around her defences, to make her smile or laugh when she has been determined to be stoic. She has started to work on touching with her, if only a little, measuring her own discomfort. Siuan seems to like touching, to like them looping arms as they walk to classes or bumping shoulders with her in a friendly way.
Over time, they have become Siuan-and-Moiraine, a hybrid creature. Where one is, it is expected the other isn’t far behind. On those rare occasions when they are apart, she is often asked where Siuan is, and can usually answer. It embarrasses her sometimes to be so predictable, and yet she wants to be around Siuan always - they never run out of things to talk about.
Siuan makes a soft noise and nuzzles her head against the pillow, frowning again. Moiraine longs to touch her, but pulls away further to the cold edge of the bed, denying herself the satisfaction. Siuan held her in friendly innocence. For her to do the same would be taking advantage.
Since she realised the depth of her feelings, it has been sweet torture to lie beside her in bed. To have Siuan throw her arm over her waist in sleep and not lean into her, to feel her curled against her back and not nudge closer.
Such thoughts make her burn in shame. What kind of person is she to imagine such things when Siuan sleeps obliviously beside her? What kind of person is she, to want so much more when Siuan has already given her friendship? Her greed sickens her. How like a Damodred, she thinks bitterly, to constantly want, to take and take from others.
She thinks of her uncle’s court, his cold blue eyes and roving hands, how he can just grab at any serving girl who catches his eye and have her in his bed that night. She will not be like him. She may share his - his perversions, his character, but she can suppress them, hide them away.
She has somehow managed to convince Siuan she is a good person. She keeps waiting for the day that her friend will see inside her soul, into the sickening rot that must live there, and recoil in disgust. She is too weak to push her away, too lonely to not grasp the friendship she gives her with both hands.
But that does not mean she cannot control the rest of her feelings, the shameful, dirty ones that haunt her at night.
Yes, she thinks, watching the gentle rise and fall of Siuan’s chest as she settles in sleep again. Far better to deny this aching want, to starve that Damodred monster inside her. Perhaps, with Siuan's influence, she can train herself to be a good person. Perhaps she can escape the stain of her soul.
It is with this final determined thought that she falls back asleep. This time, there are no dreams.