(no subject)

[ladyfirestarter]

It's late in the afternoon of an ordinary day at the Taos installation, a fairly pleasant day in early spring.


Nobody is currently in a particular hallway on the second floor of Main, where one particular door (known only to a very few) is a fixed gate to a place called Milliways.

Comments

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

She'd passed through the door with her hands on the handles of her mother's chair; she could see the bar in front of them, a brief glance through the door; as the door blows open and she staggers through, her arms are still out in front of her. Which is good, as she immediately stumbles and falls to the floor.

She can hear the blood thundering in her ears, and the horrible blackness that enveloped her for an eternal moment is still vivid in her mind, if not before her eyes.


She's trying not to panic but it was big--and black--and not empty.

[ladyfirestarter]

On the other side of the campus, in the library, in the gym, in the dining hall, heads come up and turn. First a few, then a handful, then a dozen.

"No," Sarai says aloud, on the library's second floor; her voice is urgent, but not frightened.

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

This is not the bar.

When her mother proposed the idea, she'd had her doubts, but she let hope push them aside. But she'd known--she'd had a chance to go to the bar, the man who looked like her father but wasn't had given her a key, but she'd lost it, in that strange awful dream between death and life at Christmas.

People had given her lots of things, in that dream, but they'd all slipped through her fingers.

This is not the bar, and she doubts now if she'll ever--if she'll ever be allowed--to see the bar. It looks a bit like offices, or something like.

It's a little bit---a little bit bright.

She's having trouble catching her breath.

[ladyfirestarter]

"No," Sarai repeats, reaching out a hand to no one. "It's all right. You're safe."

"Safe," echoes Mavis dreamily, sitting in lotus position on one of the exercise mats at the far end of the gym. "Where it's warm."

"It's all right." Roberto stands in the doorway of the refectory and stares across the lawn, toward Main.

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

She leans against a wall, her thin brown hand spread out against the white surface.

She almost thinks she can see through it. But that--that doesn't make any sense. She can feel attention focusing on her, like light on her face, and she feel the world, solid as stone. Real as roses.

In the hospital, more than once, she felt a pervasive unrealness, the same yawning black gulf she passed through, and now she doesn't feel in anywhere but inside herself. She can feel the nothing out there, and it's not empty.

Safe someone whispers, and she says, she thinks out loud, Don't let me go.

Her heart is pounding.

[ladyfirestarter]

"They can't come here," Beth says sharply, and pushes back her chair from the refectory table. "Can't follow you. City of refuge."

"It's okay," whispers Hana into the grass, lying on her stomach next to one of the riding paths. "It's okay."

The staff are starting to take notice.

It's becoming more practiced, more rapid: the good-mind is already starting to form.


In her office, Charlie McGee looks up with a start.

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

The world begins to settle. It's still too bright--everything is saturated in a way she's not used to. She squints at the odd door.

Maybe it'll take her back. But--she rubs a hand across the hollow ache in her chest. She's not sure she can take another transition like that; certainly not again so soon.

With one hand still trailing along the wall, she walks gingerly down the hall. The place doesn't feel dangerous, but that's a feeling from outside. Her feelings inside are pretty awful, and she can't tell which one is right.

[ladyfirestarter]

Someone's here, is the general consensus among the children. Someone who wasn't a moment ago.



Where? is the next question, but Charlie's already on her feet and heading for the second-floor corridor.

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

There are stairs; she makes an executive decision that she doesn't want to fall down them. Here's a window. She leans against that, instead.

Okay. She's not in Westchester any longer. It's not so much the terrain--it looks like it could be the campus of a private school, not that different than her own. It's the sky, the washed-out shade she's only seen in movies and one dream. A desert sky.

"Hunh."

[ladyfirestarter]

"Come to our bracing desert," murmurs Zillah, sitting under one of the library tables, "where eternity is eventful."



There are footfalls on the stairs near Rose.

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

She turns.

There are no weapons here.




Okay. She has her keys; she makes a fist around her keychain, with her house key sticking out between two knuckles. And she has--her phone, which weighs about an ounce. Not very useful.

Maybe if she pegged someone, at the right time, in the right spot, on a flight of stairs--

Her eyes lock on the slice of the stairs she can see, and she waits to see what she can see, one hand cocked behind her head.

[ladyfirestarter]

What she can see: a woman with red hair, rounding the turn of the staircase, already looking up.

The woman stops moving at the sight of her, and takes a step back down; her hands come up in an odd gesture, half-surrender, half-comfort.

"It's okay," she says.

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

This doesn't fall into any definition of okay that Rose is familiar with.

The red-haired woman doesn't seem to be armed; Rose puts the phone in her pocket, but keeps her hands cupped around the keys. "What is this place?"

[ladyfirestarter]

"You're in Taos. New Mexico."

She doesn't go on to add Earth, since the girl's clothing looks reasonably local and contemporary, but she's prepared to add it later if necessary.

"Did you come here from Milliways?" And if so, that's definitely something she'll have to speak to Dr. Stantz about, that isn't supposed to be possible --

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

Rose doesn't know anything about New Mexico. But Milliways, at least, is a familiar word, if not entirely comforting--Susannah had emphasized, again and again, that Milliways was not safe, not to talk to anyone but the people they were meeting.

"No," she says; hesitates, then tells the truth. "I was supposed to be going there, but I came here instead. It wouldn't let me in."

[ladyfirestarter]

... all right, and that definitely shouldn't be possible.

Charlie's face shows only a little of her consternation.

"Where were you coming from?"

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

The train station, is her surface thought. What she says is: "I don't know if I should tell you that."

There's a little bit of tremolo in her voice; she doesn't like hearing it, but she focusing harder on keeping it out of her hands. She leans against the sill, in what she hopes is an inobtrusive motion.

[ladyfirestarter]

Slowly, she starts up the stairs again, keeping her movements gentle and unthreatening.

"Then you don't have to."

A beat.

"But if you weren't intending to come here, I assume you're going to want to get home?"

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

"That would be good," she says weakly. "But I don't--" And then, oddly enough, she starts giggling, only semi-hysterically.

(She was going to throw her phone at someone. Not her best plan.)

[ladyfirestarter]

"Do I get to hear the joke?" Charlie asks with a careful half-smile.

(This girl's not a threat. Surely not. The kids would have reacted differently.)

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

Her chest hurts.

"I just--wasn't thinking," she says, waving the hand that isn't holding her up.

Ow. "I can, call my folks. I'm sorry I'm in your--whatever this is, I--"

"Ow." It's like a stitch in her side, but... not in the right place.

[ladyfirestarter]

She's on the top step by now, and her smile's rapidly eroding into a frown of concern.

"Do you need to sit down?"

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

She was taking her phone out of her pocket; now her hand tightens on it enough for her knuckles to whiten.

"I think," Rose says quietly, "I'm going to."

[ladyfirestarter]

Going to, oh shit --

Two quick steps take her over to the girl, in time to catch her as her knees buckle and ease her gently to the floor.

"Take it easy," she says. "I'm going to call a doctor."

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

"Doctors can't help," Rose gulps out. "That's why--"

The pain in her chest has become a deep tearing. Aortic dissection, Dr. Manning said. Her free hand grips Charlie's shirt with surprising (and short-lived) strength, while she fumbles the phone at the red-haired woman.

"Listen," she says, the same desperate strength in her voice. "My mom is Susannah Toren. We were going to meet... a healer--" The phone slips through her fingers, and the black holes in her vision, familiar friends from the hospital are circling, and she thinks this time, they're aren't just visiting.

(charyou tree)

This time, they might be here to stay.

[ladyfirestarter]

"...You're Rose Toren."

Charlie's eyes go wide, even as the girl's -- Rose's -- eyes slide shut.

Rose's phone has skittered across the floor. Rather than waste time fumbling for it, Charlie goes for her own phone and punches in one of the very few numbers she has on speed-dial.

"Susannah? It's Charlie --"

"Rose is here."

Her free hand goes out to put to fingers carefully under the girl's nose and mouth.

"There's no time. She said you were going to meet a healer?"

She feels the slight puff of air, and relaxes fractionally.

"Rose just collapsed. She's still breathing. I'm coming to open the door for you now."

And she's on her feet before she's quite finished the sentence, and striding down the hall towards the door before the phone at the other end of the conversation shuts off.

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

She's been here before. There's the woods, and here's the path. There was a door, but she's past it now; up ahead, not far, just past that bend, she knows there's someplace nice.

Whatever it was in the undergrowth can't hurt her any more.

There'll be water there, and food, and--
beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee--
She's been here before.

[ladyfirestarter]

Doctors can't help; and Susannah Toren would know.

Charlie reaches the door in four long strides, and throws it open.

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

And it takes no time at all for people to enter from the other side; Susannah's chair thunders through the door, with Lan at the handles. She's disoriented for less than a second, her eyes rolling as she takes everything in--and quickly honing in on the only thing in the room that matters, as far as she's concerned.

Her face is stricken. But it's in Nynaeve's hands now.

[taishar_malkier]

She's not the only one taking in everything; cold blue eyes sweep the room, scanning entrances and exits and people. Lan looks deeply out of place in this modern room, with a sword at his hip and clothing a few centuries (and worlds) out of date, but that doesn't matter in the slightest.

Nynaeve is Lan's priority, now and always. He halts Susannah's chair near Rose, but far enough back to be out of Nynaeve's way, and lets go. Moves, too; enough to guard (whether it's needed or not), and, probably more importantly, enough to catch Nynaeve if he needs to.

She and Moiraine are alike in this: when there's a patient to be healed, they never guard their own strength. That protection, too, is a Warder's job.

[not-only-wisdom.livejournal.com]

Nynaeve channels through the angreal on her hand, the light of saidar sun-bright around her to anyone that can see it.

She ignores the rest of the room as she hurries over to the dark girl--who must be Rose--sprawled out on the floor.

Light, this is worse than she thought it would be. Delving takes a moment, then two, and she's gritting her teeth as she considers the damage that will have to be repaired.

But there's nothing for it but to begin. So she does, spinning Fire and Water and Earth into the girl, followed by a cross-flow of Air and Spirit.

Call it an anchor. Or a hook.

And then the real work begins.

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

The weak spot in the aorta has blown full open, like a popped seam in a tennis ball; blood is leaking out into her chest cavity, and her circulation has faltered and slowed. Her breathing hasn't stopped entirely, but the air isn't going anywhere, and shock is gripping her.

She can hear voices up ahead, and kind laughter. But there's something else.

It's him, standing by the side of the road, with one more glass. One more toast. One for the road, and the third time seals the deal.

Well, all right.

The power thrums through her, and her hazel eyes fly open to stare unseeing at the sound-dampening tiles of the ceiling.

[not-only-wisdom.livejournal.com]

Nynaeve's teeth score her bottom lip as she weaves red and green strands together, clearing out the blood and burning it away, at the same time as she spins a delicate network of silvery-blue and yellow filigree to stitch the blown-open heart back together.

And then--then she can start putting the rest of Rose's body back together. Sweat beads on her hairline--less from the power required than because the work is delicate, every weave precise and well-placed.

But eventually she sits back, hands still resting lightly on Rose's shoulders.

"Rose? Answer me, girl."

Her voice is rough, eyes a little unfocused.

She is, after all, still embracing saidar.

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

"--and the season of mists," she slurs; blinks.

(it was RED--)

Focuses, impressive speed. "I'm here," she says. "I'm okay. I'm here."

[not-only-wisdom.livejournal.com]

"Good. You just--stay where you are for now. Catch your breath."

Nynaeve needs to do that, too.

Just for a moment.

And this time, when she sags backward, Lan is there to catch her.