(Untitled)

[taishar_malkier]

Hazily, distantly, he's aware of familiar sounds: screams, sobs, voices muttering and shouting and just plain exhausted. Familiar smells: blood and Shadowspawn ichor, smoke, filth, ozone and choking dust. And somewhere, very far off indeed, the awareness of a bond that would once have mattered; slightly nearer, the raw wound of the shattered bond

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[not_only_wisdom]

Nynaeve, too, is weary from battle. She lost her shawl at some point, and one of her shoes. Her braid is undone, and strands of tangled, unkempt hair insist on falling into her eyes when she's working.

When she's Healing.

It's almost rote by now, there are so many wounded. So, so very many. And neither she nor her sisters will be able to save them all. But she can try.

She will try, and Light grant that she will. Not. Fail.

There's a gasp to her left, but it blends into so many other sounds of men and women in pain and dying that it's next to meaningless.

At least it is until one of the Novices--almost too dirt-stained for the white of her dress to be anything other than a muddy brown--tugs on her arm. She should know the girl's name. She should, but--

"Nynaeve Sedai. We've--come quickly."

Nynaeve would protest such cavalier treatment, but today--

Today she goes where she's needed.

[taishar_malkier]

If this were Milliways, the light of an Aes Sedai embracing saidar would burst like a miniature sun, so blindingly bright that he might notice it even now. Or perhaps he wouldn't.

In any case, it's not. And all the sounds he hears are too far-off to seem quite important; like voices, filtered through water, muddled to irrelevance.

[not_only_wisdom]

There's a moment--just one moment, Nynaeve is hardly a Light-blinded little girl--where her grasp of saidar flickers.

"Lan."

Oh, Light, I knew you'd try to get yourself killed. I knew it.

And then the only thing she can think about is how his body fits together, and what must be done to keep it so. The burn in her veins, the ache behind her eyes, the sweat beading on her brow--none of that means anything.

Not next to this.

Her weaves flare, one after the other, red and blue and yellow overlaid and intertwined.

If he dies today, she will box his ears herself. Bloody--

[taishar_malkier]

There's a burning rush through his body, intruding closer and closer, and it too feels familiar somehow--

And then he's jerked back into half-memory and pain he can't quite muster the focus to block out, and for one muddled moment he tries to pull away, to sink back into the peaceful darkness of death.

Then the pain is gone too, washed away injury by injury with healing weaves, and this day's death gone beyond recall too, and with a choked half-gasp he jerks back to full awareness and the sight of his wife's desperate face.