Let's get personal
Scene: Vanya comes to visit and performs a little first-aide.
Players: Vanya and Aivey
Place: Aivey's Cell
Old Empty Storeroom
Small and rather dusty, this room is just what the name implies. It used to be another storage space for the various odds and ends used by folk regularly enough to warrant its own room. Only problem was it was too far away from most of the residential areas, so it was cleaned out and had a few modifications made to it. For instance, there are no shelves, the rugs and any tapestries have all been removed, and the door locks from the outside. A thick metal ring has been embedded in the wall off in one corner so only half of it juts out, a perfect loop for sturdy rope or a chain. There's one glowbasket up on a wall, but it's empty.
The day has passed in silence and relative quiet, no real visitors have come and so Aivey has been left to make her own amusement. It's not with cards or pebbles, but absent wall staring. Both hands are pressed around her middle, her eyes half shut. She looks a little paler then normal - typical, though, after having spent as long as she has in a windowless room. The guards posted at the entrance remain at their station, absently chatting with one another but their voices never carry past that thick wooden door.
Vanya isn't certain why she wants to visit Aivey. Perhaps curiosity, perhaps a concern for the girl's injured hand. Perhaps for some other reason she doesn't even understand or know. But she's there, and though the guards aren't happy, they go through the usual procedure -- caution, search, warnings, and only then does the door open. She has to leave the basket of bandages and other small medical supplies outside, for now; it'll be brought to the healer if there's need for them. And, inside the cell, Vanya stops about halfway into the room, a guard at the open door. Vanya clears her throat. "Hello, Vey --" She pauses, "-- Aivey." Correcting herself. "I thought I'd come to see ... how your hand's doing." Lame, but there's kindness in the words. There always is.
Aivey's eyes slowly switch to the door as it's opened, taking in and following Vanya until she stops and speaks. Outwardly she looks to dismiss the healer by looking away and closing her eyes, though in the seconds that follow, she does answer her. "Somehow I don't think having a bad hand is going to matter much, soon. What do you really want?"
There's silence for several moments, then. "I don't know." Simple. Then, "I'm a healer, and you were injured. I don't like to see people hurting if I can stop it." The words are quietly spoken. "I know what they say you've done, but I wasn't here for that. I don't know anything about it, except that it happened, and I helped heal one man you hurt." A pause. "Allegedly hurt." More silence. "And that I came to know the man they said you were working with." E'sere, obviously. "Did you poison him?"
"Hurt," Aivey corrects as she lifts one hand and uses the other to lift the sleeve of her shirt enough to reveal a half-healed knife wound, "Had to stitch it myself. Got infected, I think. Other one too," She drops her hand, letting the sleeve fall in place, concealing the 'evidence'. "You kept him in there so long I couldn't finish the job." Bitter still, Aivey lets a heavy sigh escape before she nods her head, "I did. Twice, as a matter of fact. He's a strong man. I think I should've used more."
"Would you like me to take a look?" Vanya asks, stepping closer to the girl. Unafraid, though the guard, gives a grunt that would seem to pass as a negative vote for that. "It didn't look too bad, but ... you stitched it yourself?" This seems to surprise her for a moment. "Well, I guess you'd have to, wouldn't you? Too risky to go to a healer with it." Vanya moistens her lips at the answer to her question. "Yes, he's a strong man, but what you gave him did nearly kill him. It wasn't easy to save him, and -- twice? The food sent to my room and ...?" she prompts.
Aivey ignores Vanya's near approach, the grunt of the guard and even the talk on her wounds. "Nearly killed is the important thing to remember. I'm disappointed I failed." She pauses to consider Vanya, "The food sent to your room and sometime before T'zen. If he wants to know more, he can come ask me himself."
There's a wince on Vanya's face at this news, as if it somehow hurts to hear Aivey feels like a failure for not killing someone. "I see, and I'll pass that on for you if they let me see E'sere again. I somehow doubt he'll be allowed to visit you, though." The healer in her makes it hard to know what to say. "I don't understand the need or desire to kill, Aivey, but I'm sure you already know that." A beat. "And probably see it as a weakness in me. I can understand anger, I can even understand a desire for revenge. But ... deliberately killing, no. It's alien to me." Another pause. "I've tried to see it, but I can't."
"Have a seat. Let me explain it to you," Aivey says, though doesn't wait for Vanya to settle before doing it. "I didn't kill out of anger. I killed because I had to, because the situation called for it. All those other people I talked with-" Talked, not tortured. Funny little difference there, "-I didn't kill. I could have but I didn't." She lifts one shoulder then relaxes it, "Pass on all you want. Tell him he can thank me - no, better yet - tell him I'm really sorry about his accident." She shifts slightly, grunting as she resettles back against the stone, "Funny that they're still holding him after I confessed to poisoning him."
Vanya sits, drawing he knees up in front of herself, wrapping arms around them and facing the girl. The guard at the door is ignored. "Perhaps they need someone to blame, and he's a convenient target. Maybe because of that strength in him you mentioned," Vanya says quietly, her voice neutral. "I don't know enough to formulate a better answer. My own theories were terribly wrong, but I was blinded by a few things." No details on what her theories were. The healer sits there, trying to analyze what she was just told. "Why the difference? Why kill one, but not another? How do you distinguish? Circumstance? Arbitrary choice? There are times a healer has to cut off diseased limb to save the rest of the patient, but otherwise..." She shrugs, looking across to the woman and shaking her head. "I will tell E'sere, if I see him again."
"You're a healer, Vanya, and I like you. Do you really want me to explain to you why I killed one person and not another? Can you handle the truth?" Aivey shifts slightly, settling more space between her and Vanya while still keeping that one hand pressed over her side, "If I'd have known how much he meant to you, I wouldn't have touched him. I wouldn't have done-" She stops, makes a face and shakes her head, "Do you want to hear or not, Vanya. I have no problems explaining why I did what I did. I have problems if you can't handle it. I don't want to do that to you."
This is something Vanya doesn't quite expect from Aivey, and it shows on her face. "I don't know," she answers honestly. "There's a part of me that wants to know, and another part of me that's running out of here screaming," she admits. "And, yes, E'sere means a lot to me. I have to face he may be found guilty, whether or not he really did what they've accused him of. I /want/ to believe he's innocent, and maybe it's unrealistic of me to want that. Still, pretty or not, the truth is the truth." She watched Aivey for a moment, then, "What's wrong with your side?" noticing the hand that goes there when Aivey moves. "I'm a healer, and I don't care what a person's done. If they need help, I'll give it."
"I killed one because she got in the way and the other because it needed to be done. A split decision, healer. Like you'd make if you had a half dozen people you had to heal and only enough to save two... three of them tops. Who gets the medicine, who dies?" Aivey tilts her head, considering Vanya for a long, silent moment, "This weyr is one big, open wound, Vanya, and no amount of healing is going to save it." To her question, Aivey says, "An old wound. It never did heal right." She skips over it quickly enough, looking closer at Vanya, "I wish I could've trusted you with this. It would've made everything easier for the both of us."
"Please, let me look at it now, at least," Vanya offers. "Despite what you might think, there's no need to spend your time here in pain." But, at last, the healer does understand what Aivey means. "The choice of life or death is never easy. It's something they can't teach at the Hall, how to choose. A mother or the child, an older person or a youth. And there's always doubt, always the what ifs. If I'd done this or that, didn't do it." She sighs, moving to her knees now, a hand held out, palm up. "The weyr is wounded, but it's not dead. As long as there is life in a patient, there's hope. Of a cure, of healing the wound. It sounds cliche, but it's true. It's when the hope ends that the patient dies. Not before." Another pause. "I have to believe that, Aivey, to do the work I do. I don't judge people for what they have done, I just try to heal their hurts."
"Actually that was an easy choice. Too bad the mother forced my hand in reconsidering my original decision," Lightly, Aivey shares this tidbit with Vanya, even trying on a 'what can you do' sort of smile. It fades with the later of what the healer says, though obedient to her request, Aivey lifts her hand and shirt enough to reveal a second wound that looks considerably more unhealthy then the first. It's healing, but not at all that well. "The Weyr is dying. Outsiders are taking over, they're shipping off one of their own... will be shipping off one of their own."
The light in the room isn't good, but it doesn't take Vanya long to ascertain this is not a healthy situation. "No, this isn't good," she muses. "I wish you'd come to me with this before," and she moves close to Aivey, without a second of consideration this is a self-confessed killer. "It's ... let me get my basket. I brought a few things with me, in case your hand needed attention." And before either Aivey or the guard can protest, she's up and requesting her basket. "M'am, I can't --" is about all the man gets out before Vanya takes it upon herself to fetch it and is back inside the cell in moments. "There're no weapons in here," she assures the man. "I doubt she'd be able to take these," and she holds up a pair of tiny scissors, "and do much harm." To Aivey, it's a simple, "Please lie down and let me do what I can -- for my sake, if not yours." It's a pleading.
Aivey, showing perhaps the first sign ever of sanity, doesn't correct Vanya in what she can and can not do with scissors. She does, however, look at Vanya with something akin to wariness. "You're too nice for your own good," She assures the healer, "It's going to get you killed or worse." Aivey pushes away from the wall and lays down, making sure to keep her movements slow enough to /not/ alarm the guard who is now less then a few steps away from Vanya, hands on his knives.
"Perhaps," Vanya concedes to the girl, "but I'll die knowing I was doing something good. I don't want to die, no, and maybe you /could/ use these to stab me, to kill me, but I'm a nothing and a nobody. My death, while traumatic to me, might make a couple of people cry for a day or so, wouldn't be much in the grand scheme of things." She smiles, probing lightly at the wound, now, noting the redness, the puffiness. "It's gone too long for me to do much without opening it and letting it drain of corruption," she says, at last. "Sometimes new blood is needed to heal a dying patient, Aivey. I'm not saying what they've done is right or wrong, or what you've done is right or wrong. It takes time to heal bad wounds, and not every cure is the right one. Sometimes you have to try a lot of different things before it heals."
Aivey inhales sharply at the very first poke, cuts a meaningful look in Vanya's direction though refrains from chiding the woman. "I doubt there'll be anyone mourning my loss when I'm gone. They might even throw a party-" Aivey stifles a laugh, "If they do, you be sure and have a drink for me, alright? Promise me?" Her brows scrunch down in what passes as a serious look, "Forget all this talk about healing...I don't want to be healed, I don't want to fix things. I want to make them right."
Vanya does what she can for the wound, wincing as much as Aivey does when her touch brings pain. At the mention of a party when she's gone, Vanya hesitates. "I can't celebrate death," she says simply, "but I'll have a drink for you, but the reasons will be my own." There's a bit of numbweed in a jar, and she does apply this to the angry red wound. "This will at least give you some relief from the pain," she says, her fingers gentle. "I want to see things made right, too, Aivey. I guess that's why people consider me foolish to cling to hope. That I believe in what E'sere told me he wanted. They say he wants it for himself, and maybe that's the real reason. But, I can't believe it's his only reason." She rummages in the basket, carefully replacing the scissors out of reach. "I've some willow powder here, and that will help with the infection. Even if you took it all at once, it won't do anything but make you ill." This last said for the benefit of the guard.
"I'm not going to kill myself," Aivey says to Vanya with a disapproving tone, "Keep it, though, I don't want it." She slides back up, resting against the wall, hand once more over her side, "You want to ask me something more, Vanya, don't you? Like I told the others... just ask me and I'll tell you. I have nothing to hide. I'm not ashamed of what I've done."
Vanya leaves the jar of numbweed with Aivey, and hands the basket back to the guard, resuming her sitting position. "Is he guilty of what they say?" she asks, then, her eyes watching the girl. "Was he lying to me all the time? -- and, yes, it's personal, what I want to know. I love him, Aivey. Stupid of me, probably, but love doesn't answer to logic all the time." She closes her eyes and takes a breath. "I don't even know if you can answer me, but I have to ask."
"I don't know what they say. Just that they think he's guilty of something." Aivey says to Vanya, "I was more then a little distracted the first time I heard they were interested in him, and the second time was after he'd already been arrested." She shrugs a shoulder, closes her eyes and continues talking, "I can't speak for him. Won't. All I know is that I poisoned him and you saved his life. He's a good man-" There's that regret again, "Trust what he says. Believe he means it. Loyalty is everything." Another mirthless smile, "You can tell him that too."
"Loyalty is important, and so is truth," Vanya says, nodding. "They say he's being all the killings you did, that you and he were working together to bring down the weyr. That he murdered Weyrwoman Yevide -- and that's only speculation from what I've heard in rumor. Nothing confirmable." She pauses. "I was there when they came for him, and I suppose they may think I was involved somehow." Another shrug.
"No," Aivey does get mad at that, "I did everything /myself/. I was behind the killings. How... those sons of-" She straightens and stands suddenly enough that the guard looks a mite bit upset and hastily steps forward, a warning look to both Aivey and Vanya ("Ma'am, time to go." - like now). Aivey stays flat against the wall. "You make sure people know that, Vanya."
Vanya nods to the guard, climbing to her feet slowly. "I'll do my best, Aivey, but my word isn't all that ... much." She turns to the guard, then turns back. "Aivey, do you know anything about this drug that's going around the weyr? This happy drug?" She holds up one finger to the guard. "If you do, or about the man that's selling it, please tell me. His name is Kam." She moves to the door. "I'll come back, but if you know something, please tell someone. It's addictive, and --" When her arm is taken, Vanya breaks off, nodding. "I believe you, Aivey, and I'll try to convince them it was you, not E'sere."
Aivey now watches the guard as he leads Vanya away. She doesn't respond to the woman's question, doesn't do much of anything even after the door is shut and they're both gone.
Players: Vanya and Aivey
Place: Aivey's Cell
Old Empty Storeroom
Small and rather dusty, this room is just what the name implies. It used to be another storage space for the various odds and ends used by folk regularly enough to warrant its own room. Only problem was it was too far away from most of the residential areas, so it was cleaned out and had a few modifications made to it. For instance, there are no shelves, the rugs and any tapestries have all been removed, and the door locks from the outside. A thick metal ring has been embedded in the wall off in one corner so only half of it juts out, a perfect loop for sturdy rope or a chain. There's one glowbasket up on a wall, but it's empty.
The day has passed in silence and relative quiet, no real visitors have come and so Aivey has been left to make her own amusement. It's not with cards or pebbles, but absent wall staring. Both hands are pressed around her middle, her eyes half shut. She looks a little paler then normal - typical, though, after having spent as long as she has in a windowless room. The guards posted at the entrance remain at their station, absently chatting with one another but their voices never carry past that thick wooden door.
Vanya isn't certain why she wants to visit Aivey. Perhaps curiosity, perhaps a concern for the girl's injured hand. Perhaps for some other reason she doesn't even understand or know. But she's there, and though the guards aren't happy, they go through the usual procedure -- caution, search, warnings, and only then does the door open. She has to leave the basket of bandages and other small medical supplies outside, for now; it'll be brought to the healer if there's need for them. And, inside the cell, Vanya stops about halfway into the room, a guard at the open door. Vanya clears her throat. "Hello, Vey --" She pauses, "-- Aivey." Correcting herself. "I thought I'd come to see ... how your hand's doing." Lame, but there's kindness in the words. There always is.
Aivey's eyes slowly switch to the door as it's opened, taking in and following Vanya until she stops and speaks. Outwardly she looks to dismiss the healer by looking away and closing her eyes, though in the seconds that follow, she does answer her. "Somehow I don't think having a bad hand is going to matter much, soon. What do you really want?"
There's silence for several moments, then. "I don't know." Simple. Then, "I'm a healer, and you were injured. I don't like to see people hurting if I can stop it." The words are quietly spoken. "I know what they say you've done, but I wasn't here for that. I don't know anything about it, except that it happened, and I helped heal one man you hurt." A pause. "Allegedly hurt." More silence. "And that I came to know the man they said you were working with." E'sere, obviously. "Did you poison him?"
"Hurt," Aivey corrects as she lifts one hand and uses the other to lift the sleeve of her shirt enough to reveal a half-healed knife wound, "Had to stitch it myself. Got infected, I think. Other one too," She drops her hand, letting the sleeve fall in place, concealing the 'evidence'. "You kept him in there so long I couldn't finish the job." Bitter still, Aivey lets a heavy sigh escape before she nods her head, "I did. Twice, as a matter of fact. He's a strong man. I think I should've used more."
"Would you like me to take a look?" Vanya asks, stepping closer to the girl. Unafraid, though the guard, gives a grunt that would seem to pass as a negative vote for that. "It didn't look too bad, but ... you stitched it yourself?" This seems to surprise her for a moment. "Well, I guess you'd have to, wouldn't you? Too risky to go to a healer with it." Vanya moistens her lips at the answer to her question. "Yes, he's a strong man, but what you gave him did nearly kill him. It wasn't easy to save him, and -- twice? The food sent to my room and ...?" she prompts.
Aivey ignores Vanya's near approach, the grunt of the guard and even the talk on her wounds. "Nearly killed is the important thing to remember. I'm disappointed I failed." She pauses to consider Vanya, "The food sent to your room and sometime before T'zen. If he wants to know more, he can come ask me himself."
There's a wince on Vanya's face at this news, as if it somehow hurts to hear Aivey feels like a failure for not killing someone. "I see, and I'll pass that on for you if they let me see E'sere again. I somehow doubt he'll be allowed to visit you, though." The healer in her makes it hard to know what to say. "I don't understand the need or desire to kill, Aivey, but I'm sure you already know that." A beat. "And probably see it as a weakness in me. I can understand anger, I can even understand a desire for revenge. But ... deliberately killing, no. It's alien to me." Another pause. "I've tried to see it, but I can't."
"Have a seat. Let me explain it to you," Aivey says, though doesn't wait for Vanya to settle before doing it. "I didn't kill out of anger. I killed because I had to, because the situation called for it. All those other people I talked with-" Talked, not tortured. Funny little difference there, "-I didn't kill. I could have but I didn't." She lifts one shoulder then relaxes it, "Pass on all you want. Tell him he can thank me - no, better yet - tell him I'm really sorry about his accident." She shifts slightly, grunting as she resettles back against the stone, "Funny that they're still holding him after I confessed to poisoning him."
Vanya sits, drawing he knees up in front of herself, wrapping arms around them and facing the girl. The guard at the door is ignored. "Perhaps they need someone to blame, and he's a convenient target. Maybe because of that strength in him you mentioned," Vanya says quietly, her voice neutral. "I don't know enough to formulate a better answer. My own theories were terribly wrong, but I was blinded by a few things." No details on what her theories were. The healer sits there, trying to analyze what she was just told. "Why the difference? Why kill one, but not another? How do you distinguish? Circumstance? Arbitrary choice? There are times a healer has to cut off diseased limb to save the rest of the patient, but otherwise..." She shrugs, looking across to the woman and shaking her head. "I will tell E'sere, if I see him again."
"You're a healer, Vanya, and I like you. Do you really want me to explain to you why I killed one person and not another? Can you handle the truth?" Aivey shifts slightly, settling more space between her and Vanya while still keeping that one hand pressed over her side, "If I'd have known how much he meant to you, I wouldn't have touched him. I wouldn't have done-" She stops, makes a face and shakes her head, "Do you want to hear or not, Vanya. I have no problems explaining why I did what I did. I have problems if you can't handle it. I don't want to do that to you."
This is something Vanya doesn't quite expect from Aivey, and it shows on her face. "I don't know," she answers honestly. "There's a part of me that wants to know, and another part of me that's running out of here screaming," she admits. "And, yes, E'sere means a lot to me. I have to face he may be found guilty, whether or not he really did what they've accused him of. I /want/ to believe he's innocent, and maybe it's unrealistic of me to want that. Still, pretty or not, the truth is the truth." She watched Aivey for a moment, then, "What's wrong with your side?" noticing the hand that goes there when Aivey moves. "I'm a healer, and I don't care what a person's done. If they need help, I'll give it."
"I killed one because she got in the way and the other because it needed to be done. A split decision, healer. Like you'd make if you had a half dozen people you had to heal and only enough to save two... three of them tops. Who gets the medicine, who dies?" Aivey tilts her head, considering Vanya for a long, silent moment, "This weyr is one big, open wound, Vanya, and no amount of healing is going to save it." To her question, Aivey says, "An old wound. It never did heal right." She skips over it quickly enough, looking closer at Vanya, "I wish I could've trusted you with this. It would've made everything easier for the both of us."
"Please, let me look at it now, at least," Vanya offers. "Despite what you might think, there's no need to spend your time here in pain." But, at last, the healer does understand what Aivey means. "The choice of life or death is never easy. It's something they can't teach at the Hall, how to choose. A mother or the child, an older person or a youth. And there's always doubt, always the what ifs. If I'd done this or that, didn't do it." She sighs, moving to her knees now, a hand held out, palm up. "The weyr is wounded, but it's not dead. As long as there is life in a patient, there's hope. Of a cure, of healing the wound. It sounds cliche, but it's true. It's when the hope ends that the patient dies. Not before." Another pause. "I have to believe that, Aivey, to do the work I do. I don't judge people for what they have done, I just try to heal their hurts."
"Actually that was an easy choice. Too bad the mother forced my hand in reconsidering my original decision," Lightly, Aivey shares this tidbit with Vanya, even trying on a 'what can you do' sort of smile. It fades with the later of what the healer says, though obedient to her request, Aivey lifts her hand and shirt enough to reveal a second wound that looks considerably more unhealthy then the first. It's healing, but not at all that well. "The Weyr is dying. Outsiders are taking over, they're shipping off one of their own... will be shipping off one of their own."
The light in the room isn't good, but it doesn't take Vanya long to ascertain this is not a healthy situation. "No, this isn't good," she muses. "I wish you'd come to me with this before," and she moves close to Aivey, without a second of consideration this is a self-confessed killer. "It's ... let me get my basket. I brought a few things with me, in case your hand needed attention." And before either Aivey or the guard can protest, she's up and requesting her basket. "M'am, I can't --" is about all the man gets out before Vanya takes it upon herself to fetch it and is back inside the cell in moments. "There're no weapons in here," she assures the man. "I doubt she'd be able to take these," and she holds up a pair of tiny scissors, "and do much harm." To Aivey, it's a simple, "Please lie down and let me do what I can -- for my sake, if not yours." It's a pleading.
Aivey, showing perhaps the first sign ever of sanity, doesn't correct Vanya in what she can and can not do with scissors. She does, however, look at Vanya with something akin to wariness. "You're too nice for your own good," She assures the healer, "It's going to get you killed or worse." Aivey pushes away from the wall and lays down, making sure to keep her movements slow enough to /not/ alarm the guard who is now less then a few steps away from Vanya, hands on his knives.
"Perhaps," Vanya concedes to the girl, "but I'll die knowing I was doing something good. I don't want to die, no, and maybe you /could/ use these to stab me, to kill me, but I'm a nothing and a nobody. My death, while traumatic to me, might make a couple of people cry for a day or so, wouldn't be much in the grand scheme of things." She smiles, probing lightly at the wound, now, noting the redness, the puffiness. "It's gone too long for me to do much without opening it and letting it drain of corruption," she says, at last. "Sometimes new blood is needed to heal a dying patient, Aivey. I'm not saying what they've done is right or wrong, or what you've done is right or wrong. It takes time to heal bad wounds, and not every cure is the right one. Sometimes you have to try a lot of different things before it heals."
Aivey inhales sharply at the very first poke, cuts a meaningful look in Vanya's direction though refrains from chiding the woman. "I doubt there'll be anyone mourning my loss when I'm gone. They might even throw a party-" Aivey stifles a laugh, "If they do, you be sure and have a drink for me, alright? Promise me?" Her brows scrunch down in what passes as a serious look, "Forget all this talk about healing...I don't want to be healed, I don't want to fix things. I want to make them right."
Vanya does what she can for the wound, wincing as much as Aivey does when her touch brings pain. At the mention of a party when she's gone, Vanya hesitates. "I can't celebrate death," she says simply, "but I'll have a drink for you, but the reasons will be my own." There's a bit of numbweed in a jar, and she does apply this to the angry red wound. "This will at least give you some relief from the pain," she says, her fingers gentle. "I want to see things made right, too, Aivey. I guess that's why people consider me foolish to cling to hope. That I believe in what E'sere told me he wanted. They say he wants it for himself, and maybe that's the real reason. But, I can't believe it's his only reason." She rummages in the basket, carefully replacing the scissors out of reach. "I've some willow powder here, and that will help with the infection. Even if you took it all at once, it won't do anything but make you ill." This last said for the benefit of the guard.
"I'm not going to kill myself," Aivey says to Vanya with a disapproving tone, "Keep it, though, I don't want it." She slides back up, resting against the wall, hand once more over her side, "You want to ask me something more, Vanya, don't you? Like I told the others... just ask me and I'll tell you. I have nothing to hide. I'm not ashamed of what I've done."
Vanya leaves the jar of numbweed with Aivey, and hands the basket back to the guard, resuming her sitting position. "Is he guilty of what they say?" she asks, then, her eyes watching the girl. "Was he lying to me all the time? -- and, yes, it's personal, what I want to know. I love him, Aivey. Stupid of me, probably, but love doesn't answer to logic all the time." She closes her eyes and takes a breath. "I don't even know if you can answer me, but I have to ask."
"I don't know what they say. Just that they think he's guilty of something." Aivey says to Vanya, "I was more then a little distracted the first time I heard they were interested in him, and the second time was after he'd already been arrested." She shrugs a shoulder, closes her eyes and continues talking, "I can't speak for him. Won't. All I know is that I poisoned him and you saved his life. He's a good man-" There's that regret again, "Trust what he says. Believe he means it. Loyalty is everything." Another mirthless smile, "You can tell him that too."
"Loyalty is important, and so is truth," Vanya says, nodding. "They say he's being all the killings you did, that you and he were working together to bring down the weyr. That he murdered Weyrwoman Yevide -- and that's only speculation from what I've heard in rumor. Nothing confirmable." She pauses. "I was there when they came for him, and I suppose they may think I was involved somehow." Another shrug.
"No," Aivey does get mad at that, "I did everything /myself/. I was behind the killings. How... those sons of-" She straightens and stands suddenly enough that the guard looks a mite bit upset and hastily steps forward, a warning look to both Aivey and Vanya ("Ma'am, time to go." - like now). Aivey stays flat against the wall. "You make sure people know that, Vanya."
Vanya nods to the guard, climbing to her feet slowly. "I'll do my best, Aivey, but my word isn't all that ... much." She turns to the guard, then turns back. "Aivey, do you know anything about this drug that's going around the weyr? This happy drug?" She holds up one finger to the guard. "If you do, or about the man that's selling it, please tell me. His name is Kam." She moves to the door. "I'll come back, but if you know something, please tell someone. It's addictive, and --" When her arm is taken, Vanya breaks off, nodding. "I believe you, Aivey, and I'll try to convince them it was you, not E'sere."
Aivey now watches the guard as he leads Vanya away. She doesn't respond to the woman's question, doesn't do much of anything even after the door is shut and they're both gone.