Chapter 1
If it wasn’t because he was watching her so closely, Lan would have missed the way Moiraine tensed for a fleeting moment before she responded, voice even, “Of course.”
“Are you sure?” He asks, taking care to keep his voice even, too.
Moiraine’s eyes are on the paper in front of her, but Lan has no doubt that she isn’t reading a single word. “If the president of your university calls, it would be unwise to not answer,” she replies, cryptic as ever, as if she hasn’t ignored the university for years.
Normally, he would let the matter go. “This is a social event,” he points out.
With that, Moiraine finally looks up again at him. She is unreadable at the best of times, but now she may as well be carved out of stone. “I will go,” she says simply. “You do not need to join.”
He will never change her mind when she’s made it up. “I will RSVP for two, then,” he says, carefully neutral, and makes plans to communicate with the few other professors Moiraine keeps in contact with to ensure that she is not venturing into the fray without a friendly face.
In the days leading up to their departure, Moiraine is unnervingly normal. She continues to spend the majority of her time at the dig, coming back streaked in mud, only emerging again from her room when it is time for dinner. Meals, though, are quieter than ever. They have never been talkative, but this oppressive silence is a silent weight on everything that they do.
She, of course, is infuriatingly unreadable, serene and tense. That is what concerns Lan the most. She is at her most destructive when she is so deeply hidden behind walls.
“Are you packed for tomorrow?” He ventures, knife cutting smoothly down into his steak. She cooked that night alone, a rarity. Moiraine has a strange aversion to spices. Or rather, she eats to return to the dig the next day, and there is never enough space in her mind for spices and temperature. Today, though, he was late returning from the fieldsite, but the meat is still tender and well-spiced.
She is quiet for a moment, chewing, before she replies. “Yes.”
He cuts another piece of steak, chews it, swallows. “Moiraine.”
She looks up at him, eyes tired but sharp. There are darker circles than usual under her eyes, though they are harder to notice with the slight tan that she sports. This is the first time she has tanned in all the time he has known her. The desert creates miracles. “Lan,” she responds lightly, as though she expects him to make some sort of joke.
He chews, taking extra time to give himself time to word his thoughts. “The new publication,” he decides, “and the funding. You should speak to someone about it.”
“Is something wrong with the funding?”
“There’s never harm in having more.” He cuts a small piece of asparagus. “And if we’re going to a social event, it can’t hurt to have a little more help.”
“Has something happened?” Unconsciously, she is sitting straighter, a slight frown touching her face. It is sometimes endearing how much she cares about the work. “My grant looked fine when I last checked.”
“Nothing is wrong,” he says, soothingly.
She narrows her eyes. “Say what you want to say, al’Lan, burn you.”
“The department knows about your falling out with the president,” he says, looking straight at her. “I want to make sure that the funding stays coming.”
Her mouth twists, just enough for him to discern the underlying disgust that she holds for university politics. “I’ll network.” She says, shortly.
He nods, eats the piece of asparagus. He sometimes wonders why he tries so hard when she’ll probably resent him for half of what he does. Then he tastes spicy gochujang sauce on the vegetable and sighs. He’ll make appointments at the tailors’ shop before they board tomorrow.
Lan surveys the crowd in front of him. Try as he might, he can’t bring himself to do exactly what he told Moiraine to do. The shirt he wears is hardly too tight, but still he fights the urge to tug at it. It has been too long since he has worn anything that wasn’t lightweight and cotton, and the fineries of the university have never appealed much to him to begin with. He takes another sip out of his champagne flute, and tries to pretend that he doesn’t desperately want something harder.
Moiraine, on the other hand, looks more comfortable than ever, gliding around in a midnight blue dress made of some sort of expensive fabric that Lan will never be able to name. Blue gems glimmer at her forehead and her ears, and she moves through the crowds of people like a fish in the water, exchanging pleasantries as though she had never left. He envies that about her, sometimes. This life is as much his birthright as it is hers, yet he never took to it the way that she did. But he would never trade his childhood with hers, and so he takes the lack of experience with grace.
Her hand touches his elbow, lightly, pulling him away from his conversation as she excuses herself from her own. “Bloody tiring,” she murmurs to him, flashing another polite smile at the professor passing them as they make a retreat from the hall.
“These things never get better,” he agrees, nodding to another familiar yet unnameable face that passes. They find a secluded booth, and he looks around before nodding at her, and she sinks down. He hands her the champagne flute, and she takes a small sip from it before handing it back to him. “Have you spoken to the president yet?”
She shakes her head. She sits, ramrod straight, shoulders back and head held high, but he reads the exhaustion in the line of her neck and the clench of her jaw anyways. “Sit,” she says, nodding at the seat in front of her. “I’m done mingling for the night.”
“Did anything enjoyable happen?”
“Well, Cadsuane is still touchy about that last award,” Moiraine rolls her eyes, “Liandrin is as forthcoming, as usual.” Lan raises an eyebrow. It is no secret that Liandrin has held a torch for Moiraine for the past decade, but he is still surprised. Moiraine continues, shaking her head, “Verin was going on about some philosophical pondering of academia, and about twenty PhD students came up to tell me about how my work was so ‘inspiring and innovative’.” Her voice goes up at the end, mimicking the students. Lan chuckles. He can imagine the swarms of students, desperate to get their time in front of Moiraine. “So no.” She nudges his foot with hers. “You?”
“Anjen tried to get me to go to the bar with them tonight,” he offers. “Other than that, I tried to stand very still and pretend to be invisible.”
“I’m still surprised with how often you can get away with that.”
“I make a very good statue.”
Moiraine chuckles, a small sound, but amused nonetheless. Lan feels something warm blossom in his chest. She is so rarely amused, and whenever he manages to make her laugh it always feels like some small reward, given to him by the Wheel itself. “You should go.”
“And do what?”
She shrugs. “Drink, dance, do something stupid?” Her face is settling into something morose, again, and he wonders what it is about this university that settles something deeply melancholic on her shoulders. “I sometimes feel I have taken you away from everything a young person should experience.”
“I’m hardly young.” He says, but this is an old argument that is worn out before it even begins.
She waves a hand. “You were when we began.”
“You were, too.” He shifts, nudging her foot with his. “You’ve only had one sip of champagne.”
“I can be emotional without alcohol,” she protests weakly. He just looks at her, unimpressed, and she sighs. She knows she wouldn’t win that battle. “Shall we retire for the night then, start our rounds of goodbye?” She says, instead.
He nods, stands, hands her the flute. She takes another small sip, hands it back to him, and he finishes it, leaving it on the table. “I do think you should go to the bar, though,” she tells him, quietly as they pass by more people entering and leaving the hall. “What was it that you told me to do again? I seem to recall, something along the lines of -”
He looks at her, unimpressed, but acquiesces. “Fine,” he says, although he wouldn’t complain about a whiskey or the finer alcohols money can buy. He’s missed this part of the city, though not much else.
“Don’t stay out too late,” she says, a smirk so small most people would have missed it passing her expressions, though it is immediately schooled into something more professional and less real as they enter the hall. They split as she makes her goodbyes, and by the time they meet up at the entrance again she is holding herself stiffly upright.
“I’ll take a taxi back,” she tells him. “Stay. Go out into the city. Have a little fun.”
He nods. “Text me when you get back.”
“Is that an order?” She says, a real smirk gracing her lips.
He is already on his way back into the hall, but at that he stops, turns, gives her a real look. “Did it sound like a suggestion?”
She shakes her head, exasperated but amused, and bids him to have fun. He watches as she gets into the taxi, then watches as the taxi leaves. He is by her side so often that he sometimes forgets how to be a person on his own. Still, though, the thought of her alone, taking down the intricate braids that he had so painstakingly helped her put up this morning, pangs his heart. He worries, often, that she is lonely. He has her, and she should have him, but she is so deeply withdrawn inside of herself that he wonders sometimes if all he sees is another mask that she has presented, more sincere but a mask nonetheless.
Anjen’s voice sounds behind him. “So, I assume you’re still not sleeping with your PI?” He sounds too smug, and Lan is rolling his eyes before he even turns around.
“I assume you’re still sleeping with yours?” He retorts.
Anjen shrugs, handing him another flute of champagne. “Nah, we stopped that last year.” At Lan’s quizzical look, he continues, “It was never serious, you know? It was just… Fun. But sleeping with someone you work with stops being fun after a while. You’re always trying to hide and shit.” He nudges him. “So, have your eye on anyone?”
Unbidden, the image of one of the postdocs who have come to work with them on the site comes to mind. He shakes his head, clearing the picture. “No.”
“Amazing. Then let’s go get really, really drunk, and make some deeply questionable decisions!” Anjen slings an arm around Lan’s shoulders, waves over a few of the other researchers that they’re friendly with, and Lan allows himself to be pulled away.
He regrets it the next morning, when he rolls out of the bed with a pounding hangover. There is Gatorade and aspirin on the table, but Moiraine is nowhere to be found when he stumbles out of his room. His phone, which is also plugged in, shows no messages from her.
He calls her. “Did I miss anything?” He asks, his voice gruff.
“No,” she sounds distracted, but there is the sound of the water next to her. “The event isn’t until later today.” There is a pause, some crinkling of paper, before she continues. “Did you have fun last night?”
If he didn’t know her like the back of his hand by now, he would have missed how coy she sounded. “Don’t sound so smug.”
“You seemed like you had fun.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“To have even more-” He hangs up, buries his face in his hands, and then reaches out to call for laundry services. His only suit jacket is luckily dark enough to hide anything that might have spilled on it last night, but his poor white collared shirt didn’t fare nearly as well. The hotel is unable to salvage it, so in the end he wears the only other shirt that he brought.
He is glad he does, of course, because he breathes easier in it. Moiraine notices it, too, by the way that she gives him a wry half-smile. She doesn’t understand how he prefers the rougher fabrics that she would never choose for herself, and he is baffled by how she prefers silks to cottons. They are the picture of contrast as they enter the hall, Moiraine perfectly at ease, Lan ill at ease.
The attendant leads them to their seats near the head of the table. Moiraine’s steps falter, just a little, when she sees where they are sitting, but she follows the person leading them to their seats without complaint. Lan would normally ask after her moment of hesitation, but she glances at him, and he decides that now is not the best time to push her.
The food that is placed in front of them is fish. It is nicely toasted, looks like something that Moiraine would enjoy, but instead Lan feels her stiffening next to him. He looks over in concern. She is looking straight ahead, face still holding the even tranquility that she wears like a second skin. Underneath the table, though, her hand is too still. He decides to push her.
“Is something wrong?” He murmurs.
She shakes her head, stiff. “When is this flaming thing starting,” she says quietly. Lan is about to point out that they have only just gotten there, but she continues before he can. “We’ve been waiting for-” Just then, as if answering her summons, the large hall doors open. The quiet conversations that have been happening around them quiet a little, before they continue, even more merrily than before. Next to him, Moiraine, impossibly, sits straighter.
Lan watches as Siuan Sanche saunters through the doors.
Even from a distance, Siuan looks good. He chances a dart at Moiraine, who, if anything, only looks more comfortable in the din of the dinning hall. She has picked up her fork and knife, and is very delicately cutting the fish on her plate into small pieces. He looks back at Siuan, and Siuan is looking right back at him. He inclines his head slightly, but instead of returning the gesture, Siuan’s mouth tightens and she looks away.
Lan turns back to Moiraine, confused, and opens his mouth to ask, but she speaks before he gets the chance. “Tonight is not about her,” Moiraine’s voice is flat, as she gently, almost too gently, cuts through the fish on her plate.
“If you say so.” Lan replies, evenly. He cuts into his fish too, and takes a bite. Siuan has settled into her seat at the head of the table, only a few seats down from his own. She is gesturing wildly in conversation with Leane, but from Anjen’s expression next to Leane Lan is certain that what they are speaking about has nothing to do with academia. He chews, swallows, and comments, “Fishy.” The fish is perfectly fine.
Moiraine merely glances at him, her face a perfect mask. There is nothing to hold onto at all in her expression, perfectly polite and bland. “Enjoy it. There won’t be much more of it when we return to the field.” She cuts another piece of fish. “When are our return tickets booked for?”
“The day after tomorrow.”
She looks at him. Her face remains perfectly, eerily still, even as her voice lilts up in confusion. “The event ends tonight.”
“I thought there might be people you would want to see in the city.”
“There are none.” Her fork makes circles on her plate with the piece of fish speared on it, but she makes no move to lift it to her mouth. “Please see if you can change the tickets.”
Lan looks up at the head of the table. Siaun is looking at him again. He makes a snap decision. “There are people I would like to see.”
Moiraine pauses. She sets down her knife, picks up her wine glass, and takes a healthy sip, the only outward sign that she has given of something being wrong since Siuan walked into the room. “Of course.” She says, finally. She picks up her knife and fork again, going back to cutting her fish with an intensity that doesn’t seem in keeping with the simple motion.
She does the same all night. “Are you going to eat the fish at all?” Lan finally murmurs to her during a lull in conversation between her and Alanna.
Moiraine barely looks at him. “No.” She pushes the plate towards him, and he takes some from her plate. He won’t be having fish for a long time, and there is no need for them to both deprive themselves. He is just about to begin to start in on it when he feels a hand on his shoulder. Next to him, Moiraine’s conversation stutters, although so briefly that Lan can almost convince himself that he imagined it.
“Lan,” Siuan smiles at him, although the smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “It’s been so long. Come grab a glass with me.”
Lan schools his own expression. He presses Moiraine’s leg, trying to comfort the anxious energy that he, if no one else, can feel vibrating off of her, and stands. “It has been a while, Siuan,” he says, resolutely not looking behind him to see if Moiraine was comforted.
“How are you?” Siuan leads him to the drinks table, effortlessly parsing through the groups of people. Siuan has changed. At first glance, Lan would have thought her the same young PI whispering and laughing in Moiraine’s ear. But there is something more solid in the set of her shoulders now, and though she still smiles and laughs as she used to, she is no longer nearly as open as she used to be. Politics, Lan thinks wryly, remembering Moiraine’s disdain for it. Any type of power can corrupt.
Lan shrugs, accepting the whiskey that she asks the bartender for with a small nod of thanks. He is glad, at least, that she still seems to favor the same things that he does. He can’t stomach any more of the fancy wine that the rest of the faculty is being served. “Fine,” he takes a sip. “You, Madame President?”
“Ugh, don’t call me that. I hate it when people I actually know call me that.” Siuan mimics a full body shudder, and Lan suppresses a smile. He has forgotten how easy it is to laugh with her. “It’s fine. So much fucking finance and politics, but,” she presses one shoulder to her chin, “was in the job description. But burn me if academic politics isn’t as entangled as a trout in a net.”
“You seem fine.” Lan observes.
“You bet your bloody arse I am. The position was as slippery as a basket of eels to get, I’m not letting it go that easily.” She takes a sip of her whiskey, staving off a fierce look on her face. She’s not changed as much as he thought she had, Siuan, if all of the fish metaphors and cursing is any indication.
“I imagine Elaida wasn’t happy?”
Siuan’s eyes narrow at him. “Weren’t you in the middle of the Light-forsaken Aiel Desert?”
Lan allows a small smile to cross his lips as he shrugs, refusing to divulge his secrets. Siuan doesn’t push, just rolls her eyes at him good-naturedly. “Well, either way it’s hardly a secret. Unfortunately, let’s just say that the Engineers weren’t too happy when one of theirs didn’t get elected.” She nudges him. “But enough about me. What about you? What are you doing with the million dollars that the university shells out each year?”
Lan stiffens. “We’ve done a lot, actually-”
Siuan laughs. “Light, Lan, don’t get your spikes up. I wasn’t accusing you of anything. I just wanted to know. What have you been doing?”
The best offense is defense. “I think Moiraine would be able to say more,” he says, evenly, lying through his teeth.
From the way Siuan’s smiles drops, for a split second, he knows he hits home. Then Siuan rolls her eyes. “Burn you. I swear I’ll feed you to the silverpike one day.”
“What?” Lan replies, innocently.
“Don’t smirk at me like that. Me and Moiraine don’t need to be steered together, al’Lan.”
Lan raises an eyebrow. “So you didn’t pull me away from dinner to talk about Moiraine.”
“Can’t I just want to catch up with an old friend?” Lan takes another sip of his whiskey, looking thoroughly unimpressed. Siuan sighs. “And I wanted to know how she’s doing.”
“You can ask her.”
“She doesn’t want to speak with me,” Siuan dismisses.
Lan gives her a look. “Moiraine hates these events.” He tells her, as though she doesn’t know. He nods at the table, where Moiraine is sitting, deep in conversation with Alanna and almost looking like she is enjoying the event. It is a bit of a test, although he knows he is in no way qualified to administer it. Still, he wonders if Siuan can read the annoyance and irritation that radiates off of every line of Moiraine’s posture the way he can.
“Light, but she does look like she’s being forced to eat scales and entrails, doesn’t she?” Moiraine is smiling, her cheeks pink in the light, but Lan never really doubted whether Siuan would pass the test or not. “Did she ever tell you what happened?”
Lan shakes his head. He had been there, the last time that they had visited the university, nearly seven years ago now. He had returned to their hotel room to find Moiraine, furiously packing. The room was as much of a whirlwind of clothing as Moiraine is capable of, and she was stony faced, nearly frightening to behold, but he had held on until she finally calmed down. Even then, all she said was, “We’re leaving.” He deduced the rest himself.
“There was an issue with our grant,” Siaun tells him grimly. “Something about plagiarism. Neither of us took it very well, but we were young. We said some stupid things.”
Lan raises an eyebrow. It’s nearly impossible for him to believe that a few words would be enough to separate Siuan and Moiraine, but then again, they are as proud as people can be.
“We decided I would stay here and she would do the fieldwork. But,” Siuan waves a hand, “things happened. She left.”
Lan is silent for a moment. Finally, he takes another sip of his whiskey, and remarks, dryly, “Young and stupid, you say.”
Siuan pushes his arm, and turns to hail the bartender for another drink. Almost as though she has been watching them out of the corner of her eye, Moiraine turns her head a little, pinning Lan with a look that threatened fourteen hour workdays on the field if he didn’t return soon. “Not all of us can have an old soul like you, al’Lan.” Siaun says, turning back. Moiraine is back to her conversation with Alanna like Lan had imagined everything.
Lan finishes his glass and leaves it on the counter. He gives Siuan a look. “Speak to her,” he says, and leaves to return to his dinner before she can respond. Moiraine excuses herself from her conversation with Alanna as soon as he approaches the table, turning to him with urgency in her eyes.
“Was it about the funding?” Moiraine asks, voice low.
Lan shakes his head. “Just wanted to catch up.” He replies, keeping his voice low as well. He takes a bite of the fish. “You should go speak to her. Network.”
Moiraine glares at him. “Stop smirking at me like that.”
Lan innocently spears another piece of fish with his fork, chews it, and tilts his head to the side to appraise Moiraine. “You know,” he starts, conversationally, “I think if you craned your neck a little further backwards you could turn your neck like an owl.”
Moiraine’s cheeks pink slightly. “That is untrue.”
“She’s not going to bite your head off, Moiraine. And we have the funding to think of. Go speak to her.” With that, Lan turns to his food and refuses to say another word, even as Moiraine glares at him. He just blinks back, owlishly, and takes a deliberate bite off his fork.
Moiraine stabs at her food one last time, before she stands, elegantly and unnecessarily soothing down her dress. She gives Lan one last look, severe enough that even an innocent bystander would be able to deduce her meaning, and leaves the table to go to the bar, where Siuan still stands.
Next to him, Stepin looks thoroughly amused. “Is Moiraine going to go speak to Siuan?” He asks, pausing in his own eating. Lan hums in response, not confirming nor denying. “Siuan’s going to bite her head off. Half the hall is going to be watching them.”
Lan raises an eyebrow in question at that. Stepin chuckles at his confusion. “Everyone knows that they hate each other’s guts.” Leaning in closer, conspiratorially, Stepin asks, “What’s happened?”
“Nothing.” Lan replies, cutting into his broccoli. “So far.”
Stepin knows him well enough to know that no amount of pushing would be able to get Lan to open his mouth when he didn’t want to, so he just shrugs, good-naturedly, and asks Lan about the fieldwork. The conversation flows easily, smoothly, and for a moment Lan allows him to feel how much he has missed a few of the friends he made during his short time on campus.
There is a lull in the conversation towards the end of the night, and when Lan looks back at the bar covertly, the two women are nowhere to be seen. Something warm and comfortable settles over him, so when Ivhon offers to take him and the other researchers out for another drink at one of the bars close by, he doesn’t say no.
He sends only one text to Moiraine.
“Wear protection.”
Moiraine doesn’t respond.
Moiraine is back in the apartment when he returns from his morning run, her hair wet and her face bare of makeup. She looks up from the newspaper that he set out for her on the desk when he enters the hotel room. “How was your run?” She asks, evenly.
“Quiet.” He replies, tugging off his shoes to switch into slippers. “How was your night?”
“Loud,” she returns, sipping from the coffee cup.
“Where did you go?”
Moiraine flips a page on the newspaper. “A bar nearby.”
Lan hums noncommittally. “And how is the state of our funding?”
“Fine,” Moiraine takes another sip of her coffee, expression neutral. The tips of her ears, though, redden just slightly. “It was never not fine. I received your text.”
“I hope you listened to it.”
Moiraine lifts her eyes to give him a completely unimpressed look. “Go shower, al’Lan. And then go see all of the people you have to see in the city.”
“Are you trying to get me out of the room?”
Moiraine tilts her head to the side, appraising him. A small smirk dances on her lips. “Didn’t you say you needed two days to see all of the many people you know in the city?”
“Didn’t you say this wasn’t about her?”
Moiraine’s eyes narrow. “Some days, I miss when you were scared of me.”
Lan shrugs as he moves towards the shower, allowing a full smirk to cross his expression. He makes plans to clear Moiraine schedule for the next two days. He is blow drying his hair when Moiraine walks into his room, sits primly on his bed, and says, completely innocent, "Nynaeve sent me an email."
Lan closes his eyes briefly. "Yes?"
"You should go back earlier."
"Too late to change plane tickets."
"I already did for you."
Lan turns to give her a glare. "What if I wanted to stay longer?"
Moiraine gives him an unimpressed look as she stands, smoothing her hands down her pants. "Your phone is going to wear out if you keep checking it so often."
He nods, resigned, and turns off the hair dryer to start packing. "When is the flight?"
"In three hours."
Lan glares at her. "Cutting it close, aren't you."
Moiraine's grin, completely real and all too similar to a shark smelling blood in the water, is blinding. "Can't a woman have some fun anymore?"
Burn the woman, Lan thinks, ferociously, as he starts to pack and Moiraine leaves. He should have known she had something up her sleeve. Still, his thoughts are already miles away by the time he is finished packing, and he has to give that much to her- she knows how to distract him.
"Be safe," he tells her again when he is getting onto the taxi taking him to the airport. "I mean it."
"The city won't eat me, al'Lan," she replies, infuriatingly.
He is unmoved. "You know that's not what I meant."
Moiraine's small smile doesn't waver. "I'll give her your best."