(Untitled)

[taishar_malkier]

It's early morning. Nynaeve is still asleep. This isn't a guess; he knows, now. Every moment, like breathing, he knows.

Dawn over the lake is slow, and misty, and beautiful.

Lan is sitting on a rock, cross-legged, his sword across his knees. In silence, he watches mist coil, and the sun drift upwards.

The ko'di is a meditation that isn't

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[cutting_edgex23]

X is good at meditation, too.

But right now she's on her way back from a very early work-out, hair damp and curling ever so slightly.

Her trajectory changes when she sees Lan, though she doesn't interrupt.

She just settles within eyeshot, leaning up against a nearby rock.

Watching Lan.

Waiting.

It is still good to see him. He was gone a long time.

[taishar_malkier]

Lan knows she's there. Of course. The ko'di means being more attuned to your surroundings, not less.

But she's X-23, and he is who he is, and the morning is very still. They have never minded silence, either one of them.

So it's several slow, even breaths before his gaze shifts to her.

[cutting_edgex23]

She doesn't quite smile.

Not quite.

Or maybe it's just a trick of the early light, faint and almost fragile.

"You are okay."

Beat.

"Enough."

[taishar_malkier]

Lan inclines his head slightly.

If there's something of wry, ironic humor -- and if the harsh planes of his face are softer, less closed off, for a moment -- perhaps that, too, is only a trick of the light.

(Or perhaps not.)

[cutting_edgex23]

X slips a step or so closer, reaching out one hand to rest it on the rock Lan is sitting on.

"I have not died."

Beat.

"Since you left."

[taishar_malkier]

It's been months, for him. He knows she heals, but still -- especially now, with all that's so recent -- it takes him a blank instant to remember that death is temporary for her.

(It's not a fate he would ever want. Not even when he was younger and far more hopeful. He hopes, for her sake, that it won't be forever true.)

All the same: "Good," he says quietly, after that moment, and he means it.

Lan has never, never wished for death for his friends.

"You have been well?"

[cutting_edgex23]

"Yes."

Beat.

"I had a birthday party."

This pause is longer.

"And we stopped an alien invasion. At home."

She hesitates fractionally.

"And I have a fish."

[taishar_malkier]

Lan listens, in silence.

X's summaries tend to be... haphazard. Silence sometimes yields more information.

And he's interested.

(And this conversation -- all of this -- is so surreal, against yesterday, against the last several weeks, against everything. It makes him quieter than usual. He has less to say; he's alive, against all expectation, and he has no duty in this moment, and he feels drained of words.)

[cutting_edgex23]

X just keeps watching him, gaze steady and not uncertain at all.

"It was a present. From Duo."

Beat.

"And I have made arrests. Here. But not many."

She seems to think that is good.

Because the fewer people that get hurt, the better.

[taishar_malkier]

"Milliways has been quiet, then." There's a little bit of question in there, but mostly it's a statement.

This is good, to Lan, in a distant, half-real way -- like a memory, or someone else's tale of their own world -- but still. It is. On principle

(When you have never known peace except to dream, it becomes more than a talisman)

and for the sake of certain people here.

"How long has it been?"

[cutting_edgex23]

"Not a year," X says, after a long few moments of silence. She still doesn't keep as much track of time as most other people.

"But it has been close."

That much, at the least, she is very sure of.

The rest of it --

"It was that long for you?"

Some things X is not good at saying. Not at all.

[taishar_malkier]

Lan shakes his head.

It would be wrong to say her answer is a surprise -- the only thing Lan knows for certain about the speed of time at Milliways is that it makes no sense. Time outside and time inside have never been the same.

But -- still.

"Two months or so. A little less."

[cutting_edgex23]

X absorbs that, keeping to her own silence.

Then she pulls herself up onto the rock, mimicking Lan's posture.

There's enough space -- more than enough, even. She still has to look up at him, but the angle is significantly less pronounced.

"It has not happened to me. Like that."

[taishar_malkier]

"Nynaeve first came here months before I did. In our world, it was days at the most."

Time didn't match up for Moiraine, either. But that situation is more complicated, and in any case Lan doesn't want to talk about how Moiraine came to Milliways. Even obliquely.

Some things will always be complicated.

"It seems to always freeze for those who are here. Beyond that, I would not guess at the pattern."

There must be one. But he has no idea what it is. (And, to be honest, has higher priorities than figuring it out.)

[cutting_edgex23]

"It does not always freeze. For me. Except when I am Bound."

Beat.

"But it is slower."

It's a little tentative, that last bit. But only a little.

"She is okay? Nynaeve. She was tired before."

[taishar_malkier]

"Yes."

Lan's craggy, harsh-planed face will always soften fractionally in discussion of Nynaeve.

"She is sleeping."

"She wore herself out with weaves." The amount of healing she did would wear anybody out; the fact that it came right on the heels of the Last Battle, fighting Forsaken and Shadowspawn and fighting for the Dragon Reborn's life -- well.

It's not really a surprise that she's still asleep.