(no subject)

[blue_ajah]

She is walking under bright-leaved trees by the shores of a topaz-blue lake. Occasionally, the thought of Malkier crosses her mind, as she glances out over the valley, but the similarity is not enough to be realistic.

Only a dream, in this valley of dreams.

Moiraine paces, thinking and planning as best she can. Remembering, as well; she finds it more than a little ironic that Rand's request for her return should come so hard upon the heels of Roland's departure.

The Wheel weaves, and perhaps it is time.

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[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

There's the soft crunch of booted footsteps over the grass; no jingle of spurs, not for this man.

He's lean, hollow-cheeked with only enough wisps of sandy beard to hide the lines of his face and make him no age at all. The only remarkable features of that face are the eyes, arresting and the washed-out ancient blue of a desert morning.

He's sheltered in the shade of a hat that looks roughly as old as the wheel, and jeans that were old when the hat was new. The boots are ancient enough to have crushed trilobites. The rest of him is swathed in a serape the no-color of dust or rain.

He's smoking.

He looks a little like a few fellows we've known, especially around the eyes, but he's not Roland Deschain nor Joe Manco. Not really.

He doesn't really have a name at all.

[blue_ajah]

At the sound of his approach, the Aes Sedai turns swiftly, and then stands very still, watching him.

Dark eyes are intent as she assesses him.

"This was ... unexpected."

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"Unexpected," he rasps--and the voice is like sandpaper filing broken glass, is like the desert itself talking, is the apotheosis of a growling drawl--"is my business. Howdy."

[blue_ajah]

"Good evening, Joe." A pause, as she studies him. "How are matters with you?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"Joe," he says, thoughtfully, tasting the name. "That'll do. Been called that. And he's here a bit longer."

He dips the hat at her. "Well enough, ma'am. You?"

[blue_ajah]

Dark eyes narrow slightly at this, but her tone remains serenely composed.

"One may be called by many names, I have found." A pause. "I am as well as may be expected."

Even if more than a little curious, now. She tilts her head, studying him. "Were you just passing through, perchance?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

He shakes his head. "Six times, since. Once for a delirious girl, and once for a despairing man. Once for the sake of desire, and once to destroy illusions. For a dream come true and a death on the way."

"Seven's a nice round number," he says, inaccurately.

[blue_ajah]

"Is it so?" She is still studying him carefully, but lets the inaccuracy pass, for now.

"I would offer you a seat...?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"Thank'ye." He hunkers down over a patch of grass, and draws on his cigar. "Pretty place. Ain't been here before."

[blue_ajah]

Gracefully, she sinks to the green, green grass and seats herself as well, blue skirts pooling around her.

"It did not exist, until recently."

There is something of wry humor in the calm tone.

"But I am pleased that you like it."

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"Your work?" He glances around it.

"Do you know what I am?"

[blue_ajah]

"This is, yes," she says-- and then her gaze narrows.

What, not who.

"I... am not certain, as it happens." Surprising directness from the Aes Sedai.

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"A dream," the Man with No Name says, with his usual brutal frankness. "People dream of a land, and they populate it with heroes and villians and types. I'm one of those heroes. Maybe the hero."

"The hero of the Waste Land."

[blue_ajah]

"I was neither/Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,/Looking into the heart of light, the silence," she says, slowly.

Moiraine meets his gaze.

"Fear death by water." A pause. "Yes, I remember. It seems fitting, perhaps."

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

He nods. "It's not my--not his time. Not their dream. It's people who came after, dreaming of his time. Remaking it with their own fears and hopes." He cocks a rueful smile. "Ain't quite in the nature of how they see me to talk like this, I reckon, but a man has to understand himself. Has to know his limitations."

"It's about guns, in a lot of ways. The way you fight with 'em. Skill's always important, but anybody can kill, and so damn easy, with a gun. So it's speed to win and trickery to stay alive." He taps his chest with a knuckle, and there's a clang. "Not about strength and size. It's about wearing away. The emptiness of the desert and the filed firing pin. Hollow men with no claim on good or evil." For a moment his scary blue eyes are distant, and then he focuses on her again.

"It's when they try to claim authority, might makes right and all that happy horseshit--beggin' your pardon--that it goes wrong. Fellas like Joe, like me, they walk alone, servin' no one but themselves, worn away to a glare and a gun. No past, no future, no name." Another crooked smile. "It makes a man hard... and a little lonely."

[blue_ajah]

"It would, I should think." Quietly said, as she looks at him.

A glare and a gun. Hard and weary, desperate men, with nothing left to them but what they do. What they fight for; kill for; seek, in the end.

al'Lan Mandragoran. Joe Manco. Roland Deschain.

"But perhaps it does not always have to be so." A pause. "Why are you here?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"Seventh and last is destiny," he says. "Joe Manco was... me. A part of me, and echo. But he had the chance to escape the inevitable end. A death by inches, turning slowly to leather and teak and finally dying at the hand of the punk kid who's just a bit faster."

"And he gave it up to tangle himself up with Roland Deschain and his destiny. Roland was never more'n half a creature of the waste lands. He had something else in him--Aragorn, Arthur, Percival. Something like that. The desert hollowed him out. He wasn't born to it. But it would've claimed him in the end."

"Joe Manco changed that." The man holds out a fisted hand, and opens it; a white moth flaps its wings feebly in his palm. "And he's come back, seven times now, to see his work finished. He's ready to answer your questions, and ma'am, he's ready to move on. There's something else waiting for him, past the horizon, but part of him is bound here."

[blue_ajah]

"Destiny." There is something bitter about the knowledge in her glance, now. "I see."

"Seven times. Seven spokes to the Wheel of Time, and ka is a wheel, and that wheel is Destiny itself. Some things between the worlds are more than coincidence, I suspect."

"He is -- you are -- bound? Is there that which I must do, then?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"I belong here. Well, not here, but in the deserts of men's dreams. Not all of them are sandy." He looks at his hand, "But he--" He closes his fist over the white moth, and shimmers; cuts down to just slightly larger than life-size. "I'm tired, ma'am, and I have another life, now. You can release me. I'll understand if you've got a question or two to ask first."

[blue_ajah]

"Joe." More certainty in her calm tone, and Moiraine closes her eyes for a moment before looking on him once more.

"It is good to see you... but I will not keep you very long, then." A pause. "Do you know what happened to him, in the end?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

He nods, a quick jerk. "He died."

[blue_ajah]

"But he sounded the horn, first." Still quiet. "Which he would not have had without you." The Aes Sedai's smile is faint, but real. "Sometimes the price is high."

A pause. "You did not make a mistake, I think. You were worried about that, once."

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

He nods again, and smiles a little bit. "Was alive once, too. Things do change. I'm glad."

[blue_ajah]

"As am I." Very simply, for a woman who layers meaning in her words.

Another pause, and then she asks,

"Is there anything you would tell me?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

He considers. "It's better to ask questions of the dead," he says, finally. "Seven?" Then, with a faint smile, "Five more, that is."

[blue_ajah]

It is perhaps to be expected that she should think of a twisted red stone doorway and the Aelfinn who once had dwelt on the other side of it, answering questions according to ancient treaties.

Moiraine's tone is very carefully composed when she tells him,

"I am not unfamiliar with such exchanges of questions and answers, although those I asked them of were not dead at the time." A thoughtful pause, and she adds, "And they knew more of my own world than I would perhaps have thought you might."

There is a hesitation, and then dark eyes meet desert-bleached blue ones.

"But you have been something of a friend to me, and so I will ask this first. Do you have any final messages, or that which you would wish for me to carry to others who yet remain?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

His smile is more than a half, now, and not smug, either. "No, thank'ye kindly. For the others I'm dead and buried. Best let me remain that way. But you're very kind to think of it."

[blue_ajah]

"I am as hard as I have to be," she reminds him serenely, but there is a flicker of amusement in the dark eyes. "But perhaps that may depend upon the circumstances."

A few moments of quiet pass, while she thinks. The light in the sky sparks a glow from the water, and a breeze stirs small waves upon the lake's surface.

"I do not know if you can tell me anything of the world that was mine," she says, at length. "But if you can, if you know-- I am concerned for Rand, who is... not alone, within his mind."

This, perhaps, is an understatement.

"I had thought that a way had been found, but the Wheel weaves, it would seem. Is there that I can do to aid him in this, that you could tell me?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe smiles again, and this one is smug. "Sure I can, and I don't really need to be dead to tell ya. There's somebody in the bar who knows about that sort of thing real well. Friend of Roland's, name of Susannah Dean."

[blue_ajah]

Dark eyes flash, and for an instant the hope is visible before her careful composure is in place once more.

"I will remember." And she will seek Susannah out when she can, now, of that she is certain.

Three questions remain. The Aes Sedai thinks, watching the leaves flutter on the tree above her, and their very fluttering sparks another question.

"I am changing, I think -- and more than I had expected to," she says, finally. "If I am right, and you know-- what will happen?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"You're becoming like I am, in a lot of ways. 'll do moreso after you die. I ain't just me. In fact most of me ain't who I was at all. It's pictures of me that people had, what people need and want from me--but only so much as I could give 'em without being someone else."

"I don't know if that makes any sense."

"The main thing is... I have another life, because I ain't like you. I've been reborn, and just sort of visit here. But my life, this life, it's over. I don't have my own worries or fears or plans. I can't do. I couldn't go to the Academy; all I could do was talk to Miss River, and give her some gifts... and just doing that meant giving up part of myself."

"Time goes by--and mebbe sooner than you think--you'll be one to advise and steer. Not so much one who does. Somebody like you does too much, you knock the whole board over."

[blue_ajah]

"I have another life, because I ain't like you. I've been reborn." Moiraine pales, but inclines her head in assent.

"It is ... as I had begun to suspect, then." A slight sigh, of something that may be resignation. "The Wheel weaves, indeed."

She shifts, drawing her knees up and resting her chin on her crossed arms as a young girl had once done, in a place far from here.

"Reconciliation. The Pattern fills that which it lacks, I think, to prevent the Age Lace from tearing apart."

She looks at him, now. "Need is the key, in Tel'aran'rhiod. Was it your need to that brought you to those you have visited-- Roland, I know, and River, you have said -- or was it something else?"

Curiosity has often driven her, and does so still, even now.

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"It was Anthy and Roland's."

And then, because Moiraine has been kind, he explains some of it. "Anthy...she ain't right. She's better now than she was, but...sometimes she sees people who nobody else can. Dead people. She saw me, not long after I died. That's one part of it, the dream of me that Anthy needed. And Roland needed me, too, not long after. Was pretty desperate, and he was here."

"That might not've been enough--might've just stayed a lot of scattered dreams, with no real core--but my... well, Roland called it ka. My ka was tangled up in his, to see that he kept the horn and he earned it. And in dreams...sometimes the man I was reborn as dreamed of the man he was. Mebbe that was my need, there."

"And then you know that there's... the Man. It all wove together, and it created this bit of me. Now I've given it all away, bit by bit, until I ain't much more than a spark borrowin' a shape from the Man With No Name."

He smiles kindly. "One more."

[blue_ajah]

"Yes," she says, with a hint of an answering smile. "One."

It's easier, perhaps, than it had been with the Aelfinn, where each careful step carried danger of worse than death. Moiraine had known the risk well before she took it.

She feels no sense of the same risk now; misconception or not, there it is, and perhaps it's that which causes her to venture the question that has haunted her in her weakest moments, the same fear which Siuan Sanche had mentioned to her in a shielded room in Shienar -- not as Amrylin Seat and Aes Sedai, but as friends, or as close as was then possible.

"I have believed for over twenty years that I do what I must, to aid the Dragon Reborn, to help protect the world from the Dark One as Tarmon Gai'don approaches. Part of the Prophecies, chosen by the Pattern. The world will burn, but it must; it cannot be avoided, I believe, not fully. The Dragon Reborn will break the lands apart with his return, and his blood on the rocks of Shayol Ghul will save the world from the Shadow. The Wheel weaves."

She could ask this of her brother-by-marriage, she knows, perhaps, but she does not wish to, and so Moiraine looks up at him. "Was I right?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"I'm not the person to ask about right and wrong," he says gently. "And I certainly ain't the person to tell you if you did your best. No one knows that but you."

"Don't ask me--don't ask anyone to take away your uncertainty. That, more'n anything, is what keeps you human."

"You're like the gunslinger, I reckon," he says, wearily, warily. He's bound to answer the question. "I don't rightly know if you're good, bad or ugly, but I think you're righteous. And by all the saints, you're magnificent."

Something begins to chime beneath the serape, a pleasant jaunty tune. He fishes out a musical gold watch. "Time."

[blue_ajah]

"Time," she says quietly, and there is the briefest hint of wistfulness in her calm, composed tone. "'Endings are heartless.'" He will recognize the quote, and well she knows it.

Moiraine gets to her feet and stands there for a moment, looking at him. She had mourned for him, when he had died.

"It was very good to see you again, Joe; I am glad to have had the chance. Light illumine and protect you, where you may go, in whatever turnings of the Wheel you live through, whatever lives you have from here."

"I'm tired... you can release me," he had said. The Aes Sedai looks at him, and smiles.

"You are free to go, then, as you wish. And... thank you. For everything."

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe stands, smiles again, the last time, the cocked and crooked grin of a man who lived and died a little dirty but mostly righteous and always, always smug.

He winks, and a ripple runs over his features; half who he was, half who he's becoming. "Here's looking at you, kid." He clicks the button on the watch as he speaks, and it opens, and a white moth flies out, bound for the sky, and it vanishes into the sun.

The man with no name clicks his watch closed and puts it away, and gives her a nod and a tip of the hat; and walks silently away.

[blue_ajah]

She watches him as he leaves, until he fades into the distance in a ripple of heat or dust, or perhaps both together, and she knows that she will not see him again as he was, if ever at all.

But this time, she does not mourn. Some endings are simply right.