blue_ajah | (no subject)

(no subject)

[After this.]

When Dale leaves, Moiraine sees him to the door and locks it after him, then returns to the sofa, where she curls up as she had been wont to do as a novice and sits quietly for a while, lost in her own thoughts.

Eventually, something occurs to her, and she glides down the hallway to her bedroom once more. This time, she retrieves Raven's feather from the pinewood box and holds it lightly in her hand, stroking it with the tips of her fingers.

How I wish I could speak with you.

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"It is often better, so."

Time travel is not for amateurs.

"But what will come, I think, is always changing."

"The Wheel weaves," she murmurs, not without a flicker of amusement.

Raven merely laughs, shaking his head.

He does not, however, let go of Moiraine.

"People are for making choices. It is not always so much the same."

She shakes her head, but does not argue.

"It has been some time."

Softly said.

"So much has happened, Raven. Both today, and over the past year and more."

"That, I am thinking, is how you know you are alive, yes?"

At this he moves away just enough to tilt her face up toward his, black eyes wide and bright.

"Things are always changing. Sometimes that is not so bad a thing."

"No," she agrees. "Sometimes it is not. Although it is often an uncertain thing."

"That, too, is not so bad."

Raven's grin is crooked.

"Certainty is very boring.

Moiraine sniffs.

"It is almost a certainty that you would think so."

After a measured pause, and with perfect serenity, she adds,

"Although I cannot precisely say that I disagree with you."

Raven laughs, bright and wild and warm.

"That, I am thinking, is only surprising for other people."

You know, almost all the people not in this room.

"Still, it is not so bad a thing to hear."

He will be smug later. So very, very smug.

"Which lack of certainties are not boring you today?"

"In a sense, it feels as though almost all my life ahead of this day has become uncertain."

There are very, very few people with whom the Aes Sedai is this open.

"Or perhaps since you gave me the choice of returning to Milliways, in fact."

Raven's smile is crooked and almost sweet.

"Freedom, too, has its price. But even the terror is mostly for being worth the cost."

He has never had much love for cages, has Raven.

"But you do not so much have to love it. It is new, yes?"

"Not so new as you might think; I am not ta'veren," she points out.

"But I was there to hear the day that Gitara spoke the Foretelling of Rand's birth, and knew what it meant. I knew what had to be done. I could not turn away, not from that-- but it was my choice to make and to pursue."

For all the many long years, no matter the price.

"One choice, perhaps, that set all the rest."

He doesn't laugh, just wrinkles his nose a very little.

"The certainty of stubbornness, yes? Also necessity."

Raven's smile goes crooked again, though it does not match the darkness of his gaze.

"Possibly now it is time for the other side of the coin."

Moiraine tilts her head in order to look up at him, a flicker of suspicion in her glance.

"The other side of the coin from necessity? Do you mean whim?"

Raven tilts his head, the angle sharp and painful.

He does not blink.

"You are not so much a stranger to that, I do not think. Even if you are not so much for trusting it, either."

"... how I wish you could have met Siuan Sanche. She would have set you straight in almost no time at all," Moiraine informs him.

"But I do take your meaning, I believe."

"Or your meaning."

He reaches out to ruffle her hair, fingers gentle as they slip between the strands.

Raven might also be laughing.

Quietly.

"But sometimes they are almost the same thing. So."

She wrinkles her nose at him, but does not dispute it.

"In any case," she says, after a few moments of silence. "I suppose we shall see what lies ahead."

"I am thinking," Raven says, crooked smile returning, "that it will not so much be the same as what lies behind."

And that is not even close to being a terrible thing.

"Light send that may be so," the Aes Sedai responds, dryly.

Raven laughs.

"It is, perhaps, not so much the Light."

And then, of course, he pokes her.

With his foot.

"It is not so much you in this case, either," she retorts, and shifts to tuck her feet up beside her on the bed, out of reach of his.

He snorts.

"You are not so bad at wishful thinking, perhaps."

It is cute.

A slight smile curves her lips, and her dark-eyed glance sparkles with some secret knowledge.

"Perhaps. As you will."

And that is when Raven, pint sized and heavy, launches himself at his sister.

Ticklish is as ticklish does.

But at least he does not turn her clothing pink.

(Yet.)