Full Circle

[Eidolon]

  

 Chakai & Malaika

The room was dim and cool, curtains drawn so that only a hazy light penetrated the stale darkness.  As she passed the threshold her gaze was pulled to the armour-stand on its plinth in the corner, illuminated by the light seeping in from the hall. She paused, hand still curled about the door handle.  A moment of hesitation.  The stand had been thrust round as if in anger, the insect-like armour skewed, the spear fallen like a lazy sentinel.  It sucked in what little light there was, made the air chill.  Fanciful thoughts… but even discarded like that it stoked an old fear.  She clicked the door shut, and the armour winked from existence.

“Chakai…”

It was difficult to see in such dim light, but as her gaze adjusted, she thought that he looked older than she remembered.  It had only been a year - she had barely changed; still untouched by agelessness, still unnaturally youthful.  He, though … he looked old before his time, laying prone in a bed heaped with sheets as though to stop the thin man within from simply floating away.

Chakai grimaced as though the very sound of her voice grated against his nerves, and she wished bleakly that she could offer some sort of comfort – that she could sooth the taut lines of his face, that she could evoke a smile as she had been able to so easily during their childhood.  I am still me, she longed to whisper, to take his hand and caress his brow. 

But she knew she had nothing to offer him that he would accept. 

That discomfort settled to a tight feeling in her chest, an ache in her arms and fingers that longed to embrace him as the big brother she had loved and idolised in youth.  Nothing of that connection seemed to remain, though, aside from her memories, and those she barely let surface in her mind, lest they become tarnished by this man she did not want to be her brother.

Silence stretched for a long while, in which he refused to meet her eyes and she ran her gaze over his withering body, thin even under the blankets, and watched the shallow rises of his chest.  She felt almost desperate in her affections, to the point that some detached piece of her mind was disappointed with her irrationality.  You should not even care, she told herself.

“Kasimir is in the sitting room with your wife,” she said, joining her fingers in some mark of comfort to herself, holding them still in front of her.  She noticed he had made sure there were no chairs in the room; perhaps had even removed them in lieu of her visit.

A sigh gurgled from his throat – relief? – anger?  Was he in pain?

“You stole him, you blasted witches.  Poisoned his mind in a terrible way such as I cannot even fathom.  But you cannot have him, witch.  You cannot.”

She had expected no less, if she had hoped for more than hostile accusation.  Even in the gloom, with Chakai in the bed so far away, she wouldn’t allow herself to close her eyes, to mourn the way this meeting must go.  “He came to Tar Valon because he was curious, brother.  Because you would tell him nothing.”

Chakai hissed, and the following intake of air resulted in a rattling in his chest, and a wheezing cough.  “Brother?” He did not move his head, but his eyes darted to her, wide and bright white.  “Do not dare to call me that!”

“Let me get you some water,” she murmured, longing to avoid the battle to come, to lessen in some way the pain her presence caused.

“No.  I do not wish to speak with you, marath’damane.  I do not even wish to look upon you, or share the same space.”  The coughing had reddened his face, and he had clenched the sheets into crumpled fissures at his sides.  I could delve him.  Perhaps even Heal him.  She had some skill, if not a talent for it.  But she did not think his ailments were those that could be cured so easily.

“I want nothing from you but my son, whom you have stolen from me and refuse to return.”

She opened her mouth to refute his words – to remind him that Kasimir had come willingly, that she had no hand in keeping him in the White Tower.  Light, that it was down to her that he had answered his father’s summons at all!  But no words came.  He had already cast her as the enemy and nothing she could say would change that.  The best she could do for him was to avoid the argument, to simply accept all that he had to say.

“Kasimir is free to do as he pleases.  I have no claim on him and he is in no chains.”

“A bargain, witch.  I will have your word you’ll not take him back with you.”

He isn’t listening.

She considered leaving. The pain here was too great for either of them, and there was nothing to be gained. Perhaps this had been a mistake … no, she had known, deep down, that it was a mistake, but one that she had been powerless to avoid. Rather than dwelling on that inevitability, she began to form in her mind an answer that would satisfy Chakai – as much as she could, anyway. She had no intentional power over Kasimir – promising not to take him back with her would be meaningless, because ultimately Kasimir was free to follow as and when he pleased.

The silence spread; she could feel the tension blooming. Chakai was growing angrier. He took her silence for refusal. Light, I’m just making things worse. She opened her mouth to speak, to end this conversation. Chakai saw her as nothing more than an Aes Sedai, a channeling abomination, and it was time she stopped clinging to the memory of their shared blood. But Chakai spoke first.

“My son, for your sister.”