we_bring_hell | (no subject)

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Harrowhark is in the bar, wearing the style of facepaint known as the Vanitas, with no lower teeth and sharp angular edges. It's good to be back in her makeup, even if the consecration was a greater undertaking than anticipated.

Although she is formally painted from the neck up, she is wearing some of the more informal clothes her room had supplied; soft trousers and a hoodie all in black. She is not wearing gloves today, because her palms are wrapped in bandages, but it is the kind of wound she is used to dealing with and it is healing quickly. The pinpricks of pain around her lips are worse, if only because it's been a very long time since she underwent the ritual of the Sewn Tongue.

She is diagramming spirals on paper, working in ink rather than blood right now. She can't spare any blood currently. She has refreshments to share, if you like faintly cucumber-flavored water and very bland, crumbly biscuits.

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"I do not," she says, as calm and cold as she can make herself.

"Indeed, I will put it to you this way, Wei Wuxian--I will consider your exorcism when you go to Moiraine Sedai to cleanse the stain of Shadow on your soul."

She thinks that over, her dark-eyed gaze resting on Harrow as she does.

"Does your theorem allow you to control the actions of the one whose vision you share?"

"No," she says. "Indeed, in the past, I have struggled to even understand what I was perceiving. The human sensory apparatus is vast and complex and--overwhelming, when approached from outside."

"But that is output. I do not believe the theorem even allows for input. That is; it must, since Gideon was able to see energy signatures. But no input under my control."

The Aes Sedai inclines her head.

"Very well," she says. "Then I will allow it."

In some ways, it may not be entirely dissimilar to the experience of a Warder's bond, in terms of transmitting sensation and emotion. There is little risk, she thinks, if both her thoughts and control over her actions are protected... and she has always been curious.

She inclines her head in pleased assent. "In that case... I have only used it a few times, allow me to consult my notes."

She reads her own code, extracting the mathematical notation, and mentally reconstructing that into a spiral floating in the darkness of her mind; floods the spiral with thanergy, triggering the spell. She gnaws her lip as she ponders, then closes her eyes.

"You must focus on what you're doing at each stage--as an adept I believe you will find it simple enough, but you must remember the absolute chaos that lies behind even the calmest heart, on a biochemical level. If I am overwhelmed I will have to break the connection."

And then she reaches out for the tight, coiled bundle of thalergy that is Moiraine Sedai's brain. Biologically, fundamentally, Moiraine is a living human and Harrow and Gideon and everyone she has ever met are descended from Resurrected ones; there are differences, and the feeling of thanergy settling under the Aes Sedai's skin may be cold and unwholesome.

For her part, Harrowhark has definitely begun to sweat.

Her lips part in a soft gasp, and Moiraine grows very still.

It is like ice spreading through her, but not entirely. Like being immersed in the shade-cooled, slightly oily water of a swamp, feeling the alien sensation spreading throughout her. It is instinct to struggle against it -- but it is an instinct the Aes Sedai suppresses through long years of skill and experience at embracing saidar, which requires the channeler to allow it to flood over and flow through her without resisting.

She breathes, in and out, slow and steady, letting herself settle into the chill as it reaches for her bones.

"I will channel now," she murmurs. "It will seem like a river, rushing. Do not be alarmed."

Moiraine opens to saidar, and in an instant the power rushes through her, flooding her mind and her being with Light, warm and golden and shining.

Threads spark at her fingertips as one stream within the golden storm brightens, flowing faster and more clear, sky-blue and white.

Her calm is preternatural, and helps enormously. Nevertheless, like all living things, under the surface Moiraine Sedai is a raging storm. As she brushes aside unnecessary sensory noise, she becomes aware of pillars of magic caging the Aes Sedai's mind; the Oaths of which she has spoken, she assumes. Chains run through her verbal centers, the adrenal glands that recognize threats, through other centers she doesn't quite recognize the function of.

These same centers light up, though, as Moiraine begins to channel. She dials into these particular senses, and what floats up in the darkness behind her eyes is the image of a rosebud opening to the light. It is an altogether unfamiliar image--very little grows on the Ninth House, and none of it is ornamental--but the blaze of light and cascade of energy metabolizing in the (wholly notional) cells is indeed familiar.

"I see it," she says says slowly. "The rosebud. Can you... channel a particular element?" How does this rush of energy become Air or Fire?

In the little time he's been awake, Wei Wuxian has pondered what Lan Zhan told him. The Ninth is haunted, and knows it to be so; despite this, she has made no effort to seek help. She is not in distress.

(She is in love.)

Her declaration puts a hand into his guts and squeezes, hard enough to drive the air from him. He readjusts his grip on the mug. Nods.

"I understand," he says, low.

"Yes," she says. "I will weave a breeze around us by stirring Air."

The sky-blue and white thread in the center of the golden stream brightens further, widens, and floats to the top of the torrent, settling into Moiraine's hands. She twists it into a small spiral, and the sensation of cool air against skin surrounds them.

She feels it--feels the breeze on her skin, on Moiraine's skin, and feels the breeze originating within Moiraine, from her breath and thought. It intersects with her biological senses of the other woman's body; now that she is aware of it, she can feel the Light of Creation in Moiraine's thalergy, and how it differentiates in her through different systems and interactions.

The bellows of her lungs; the furnace of her metabolism; the ground earth and stones of her bones, the flow and river of blood. And all of them dying as fast as they live, and being replaced; carrying toxins and wastes and charred remnants flushed away through breath and blood and lymph.

"Yes," she repeats. "I think I see it." She's not--quite--maniac enough to try and do anything else magical while she does this, but her palms itch in her gloves.

"Do you?" she says, as hard and cold as he's ever seen her. Harrowhark Nonagesimus's tongue has a cruel edge when she chooses to wield it; she has felt safe leaving it sheathed at Milliways, for the most part. "I hope so."

"I did not share this information--information no one outside of the Ninth knows, information no one knows in full, information which would sign the death warrant of me and my entire House in the hands of any other necromancer--I did not share it to ask for help. I do not need help; not with this."

"I shared it with Lan Wangji in the hope that he would see me for what I am and make his decisions in full comprehension. I would not have affection gained under false circumstances. Fool that I am, it would hurt my pride."

"It is unfortunate in the extreme that it seems to have only furthered his musunderstanding."

Edited 2020-09-17 18:16 (UTC)

He lets out another breath, a slow deflating. His face does not change: calm, serious, unaffected by the venom she spits.

"Lan Zhan and I were raised to be cultivators from a very young age," he says, just as calm. "Everything we learn affects how we react to ghosts, spirits, and the dead. Even me, who chose a different path. And Lan Zhan especially -- " He huffs a small laugh, and rueful as it is, it carries more fondness than he realizes. "He always wishes to solve every problem he encounters. Even when it is a problem not in need of solving. Or even a problem at all."

He shakes his head.

"I am sorry. For him, and for my own misinterpretation."

The chill of Harrow's thanergy wraps around her bones and tightens, and Moiraine blinks, then blinks again.

She looks past the familiar rush of the weave in her fingers at the tabletop in front of her, both solid and decaying at once, both states feeling balanced and right. People move around the room, and she is aware of them in ways that she never has been before, from the subtle patterns of death-after-life among the Milliways dead that differentiates them from the living (and yet dying, all at once) here.

"Strange," she manages, aware as never before of the burning brilliance of saidar in opposition to the avalanche of universal destruction outside the window. "This is so very strange."

"He thinks I am like you," she says frostily. "And he thinks you can do no wrong. So he persists in seeing me as a victim; it is the only explanation he can reconcile with his precious Wei Ying."

"But I am not you. I am not a problem to be solved. I am not a victim. I will not be pitied, Wei Wuxian."

"He has told me what it would take to dry up his pity, and I have no desire to do it. But I will not be pitied, and I would rather be a monster than a victim."

"Yes," Harrow breaths again. "Once you learn to see it--you cannot even close your eyes. The world goes on living in the darkness. When I was a child, feeling the responsibility of every soul in Drearburh as the Reverend Daughter, I would close my eyes at night and feel them living and dying out there. They were so old..."

"When you know it better you can see everything... organs, systems, functions. My caretaker Crux, his heart was in dreadful shape. I used to scrub the plaque from it like I brushed my teeth, terrified to lose him."

If Moiraine looks at Harrow she may see that she is different; a thanergetic system, more like the living dead of Milliways than a living soul from outside. Her heart is weaker, worse; her muscles spindled not just from her lack of exercise but from the persistent wash of death energy over her form. The Aes Sedai can, if she can comprehend the detail, see the subcutaneous blood vessels begin to burst beneath the paint as sweat gives way to blood-sweat.

And at that, at last, the lash strikes. Wei Wuxian's jaw sets.

It is the only explanation he can reconcile with his precious Wei Ying --

Levelly, he says, "There will not be any need for that, Ninth."

"Good."

Her black eyes do not meet his; they stare past and through the wall, into infinity. Her jaw trembles. "I see now I have made an error by speaking of these things at all."

"There is only one person I owe my confession, and they are not here."

His own flare of anger extinguishes like a lantern blown out. He looks down at his tea; takes a sip, somewhat mechanically, after a long, silent moment.

Somehow he is even more exhausted than before.

"Are we allies, Ninth?" he asks.

O corse of the Locked Tomb, the cold death to anyone who looks at me in pity
the heat death to anyone who looks at me in amusement
the quick death to anyone who looks at me in fear

"Yes," she says, deflating in turn. "For all of me."

Harrowhark's closest ally in Canaan House is Palamedes Sextus; she told him, the last time she saw him, that she was embarrassed for him for his lack of facility with bone magic.

Her eyes drop to his mug. "I am the bitch, Wei Wuxian. I have risen. I am shining. I am a heretic and a shadow cultist. I am two hundred dead children. I am pride and arrogance incarnate. I am Harrowhark Nonagesimus."

Softly: "And I am your friend, if you will have me. As I am."

Carefully, she shifts her weaving, releasing Air and calling Fire to the forefront. The golden light burns brighter and condenses into flickering flame on her palm, a flame fed by red-gold streams of light that ripple like blood through the river of saidar.

Just as carefully, she turns to Harrow, and dark eyes go wide with surprise.

Harrow keeps her eyes closed, focused entirely on Moiraine Sedai's sensory suite and on learning the shape of Fire.

She does not see Moiraine turn to look at her, but she does feel the Aes Sedai's surprise run through her, like an earthquake shaking a quiet laboratory. Her eyes open and she immediately wishes she had not; looking at Moiraine looking at herself and looking at herself looking at Moiraine through Moiraine's eyes makes her stomach churn.

She exhales and gradually retracts the theorem, pale beneath her paint.

Impulse would have her channel more of saidar as the touch of thanergy leaves her, as if to counteract, but Moiraine sets her teeth and resists it.

The golden gleam of light around her fades. Her breath is a little unsteady.

"That was ... quite something."

Harrow takes out a black handerchief. checks herself delicately for a nosebleed. All good.

She blots her makeup carefully. "For me, as well," she sighs.

"I believe I saw your Oaths--there were chains in your prefrontal cortex and amygdala, among others."

Edited 2020-09-17 20:42 (UTC)

For once, the Aes Sedai looks utterly startled.

"They were visible to you? You could see the weave?"

"Not--my eyes were closed," she says. "I could sense them. Like pillars the structure of your mind has grown around. Architectural."

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