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neuxue · 5 years

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Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 33

You know that feeling. When you read a particular line and it just. Makes you feel a lot of emotions simultaneously and it’s almost too much and you don’t so much want to say something about it as you want to immerse yourself in it completely and make high-pitched keening noises?

Chapter 33: A Conversation with the Dragon

Well at least this one’s upfront about the fact that it’s probably going to hurt. Because any conversation with Rand is going to hurt, at this point.

Or…Dragon? Could also be referring to Lews Therin, I suppose. Which doesn’t actually lessen the probability that it’s going to hurt, so.

Even Rand’s pyjamas are red and black. Going to start dyeing your hair black again too, Rand? Better hope you and Moridin don’t turn up at the same fireplace anytime soon or it’ll be a major fashion faux-pas. Tabloids all over Tel’aran’rhiod will be sneering at you. You won’t be able to set foot outside for a week.

I’m stalling again, aren’t I?

It was getting harder and harder to see in him the boy Nynaeve had known in the Two Rivers. Had his jaw always been set with those lines of determination? When had his step grown so sure, his posture so demanding? This man almost seemed an…interpretation of the Rand she’d once known. Like a statue, carved from rock to look like him, but exaggerated in heroic lines.

Memory becomes legend…

This is an interesting description from Nynaeve, because it gets to the heart of what so much of his path has been: leaving Rand al’Thor behind to become the Dragon Reborn. Trading humanity for destiny, self for role. We see it early on as a struggle, as he only wanted to sit, and remember a shepherd named Rand al’Thor and then a little later as ‘I don’t know how human the Dragon Reborn can afford to be’ and it just escalates from there. He becomes the role, the Dragon, but the only way he sees to do that is by letting go of pieces of himself until there’s almost nothing left, until what remains what he believes he must be; what he believes prophecy and the world and the Last Battle demand. And strong enough – hard enough – to withstand it. Stone rather than human, statue rather than flesh, figure rather than human. A legend in the shape of the memory of a man.

But unlike most, Nynaeve still looks for the boy she knew; she sees the changes because she holds on to the memory of what was there. He’s still human to her, and that’s why the changes even register.

“Last I checked, I didn’t need your permission to channel. You’ve grown high and mighty, Rand al’Thor, but don’t forget that I paddled your backside when you were barely as tall as a man’s shins.”

And, being Nynaeve, she shows that recognition of his humanity, and her care for him, in her own…special way. Some things never change.

Rand’s very much not thrilled to be awoken in the middle of the night for a ‘spindly, terrified youth’ but is very slightly less not thrilled when Nynaeve tells him why.

That got Rand’s attention, and Min’s as well. She’d poured herself a cup of tea and was leaning against a wall. Why weren’t they married?

That’s…honestly so far down the list of important questions I don’t think it has a number. But Nynaeve is Nynaeve; this would have been her responsibility, once, back in Emond’s Field. And it’s part and parcel of the fact that she still sees the person he was in him; this wouldn’t even come close to registering in most people’s minds, because he’s the Dragon Reborn and one doesn’t wonder such things about the Dragon Reborn. I mean, not that it’s actually anyone’s business whether two people are married or not, but the fact that Nynaeve immediately thinks about it shows how much she does still see him as that boy she knew. And herself as his Wisdom.

“At the dungeon where you sent Milisair Chadmar,” Nynaeve said, eyeing him. “It is terrible, Rand al’Thor. You have no right to treat a person in such a manner.”

He didn’t rise to that comment either.

This puts me very much in mind of a doctor hitting your knee with one of those little rubber hammers to make sure your reflexes are working. She’s testing his ‘reflexes’ here, tapping at the buttons she knows were once there, scoping out the shape of what’s wrong. I mean, she knows what’s wrong, I think. But she’s trying to understand it, trying to draw more of Rand out if she can, trying to better understand what’s wrong so she can help make it well. But he’s not responding like he used to, and that in itself is an indication.

“I think he killed the messenger.”

Does no one remember you’re not supposed to do that? There’s a saying about it and everything!

Rand glanced at Nynaeve, and she could almost feelhim connecting the comments to figure out what she had been doing. “You Aes Sedai,” he finally said, “share much with rats, I have come to realise. You are always in places where you are not wanted.”

Nynaeve snorted. “If I’d stayed away, then Milisair would be dying and Kerb would be free.”

She’s not rising to his bait, either.

Also, that particular comparison makes me think of Moridin again, I have to say.

Ah, so Nynaeve does recognise that the kid is blocked by Compulsion. I guess we’ll get to find out whether ta’veren can out-do Compulsion after all.

“Stop,” Rand said softly. “Do you believe that I can kill you?”

The boy fell silent and – though Nynaeve wouldn’t have thought it possible – his blue eyes opened wider.

“Do you believe that if I simply said the word,” Rand continued in his eerie, quiet voice, “your heart would stop beating? I am the Dragon Reborn. Do you believe that I can take your life, or your soul itself, if I so much as will it to happen?”

So that’s…um…

A new favourite trick of his, certainly, it would seem. He tried it on Cadsuane, and we’re seeing it again here, and it’s the softness of it that makes it so terrifying.

That, and the fact that – maybe just because his choice of colour scheme and the comparison of Aes Sedai to rats has me thinking of Moridin – he sounds rather like Ishamael/Ba’alzamon here. Your soul is mine, death is mine, I can claim your life and your soul…

It’s very, verydifferent from how Nynaeve intimidated and threatened the prison guards. Soft and gentle and dangerous and utterly without feeling.

Nynaeve saw it again, the patina of darkness around Rand, that aura that she couldn’t quite be certain was there. She raised her tea to her lips – and found that it had suddenly grown bitter and stale

Okay, that’s it. The rest, I could forgive. But this? Making tea go bad? Ruining tea? That is truly irredeemable. You have gone too far.

“You will have to unravel the web of Compulsion, wipe it from his mind, before he can tell us what he knows.”

So it is a conversation with Lews Therin, at least in flashes.

Also, um, what?

No pressure, Nynaeve! Then again, if anyone can figure out how to heal Compulsion, it would be her.

“I have little skill with this kind of weaving,” Rand said with a wave of his hand. “I suspect that you can remove Compulsion, if you try. It is similar to Healing, in a way. Use the same weave that creates Compulsion, but reverse it.”

Does that mean Rand has, or would have, little skill at Compulsion as well? He’s never actually tried to use it, that I know of. Maybe some things are still too far, even for him as he is now. Or maybe he simply isn’t good enough at it to make it an option.

Can any weave be countered this way, or its effects healed? By using the same weave that creates it, but…reversed? Because there’s another forbidden weave, you see, that causes irreparable damage…

“I can’t tell you how it is done specifically, not for a woman, but you are clever. I’m certain you can manage.”

His unintentionally patronising tone sent her back into a rage.

Yeah, I mean, he shouts at her not to patronise him, and then turns around and basically pats her on the head and calls her a clever girl. She’s an Aes Sedai, not a raptor.

But then, she’s always done her best healing when she’s angry.

How had Rand known? She shivered, thinking of what Semirhage had said about him. Memories from another life, memories he had no right to. There was a reason the Creator allowed them to forget their past lives. No man should have to remember the failures of Lews Therin Telamon.

Allowed them to forget. Not made them forget. Others might see madness, but she just sees the pain it causes. Sorrows and his own suicide. Is it any wonder he tried so hard to push those memories away, to distance himself from them, terrified of sharing that fate? Is it any wonder he’s done what he has to try to insulate himself from the pain of not just this life but last? It’s not enough to carry the weight of the world; he has to remember letting it shatter.

And yet, those memories are almost certainly necessary. The knowledge in them, for one, but also…I feel like there’s still something to the fact that he’s fighting against himself, and that he has reached a point where he’s effectively lost all hope of surviving what is to come, and any desire to do so. Where he believes he’s already damned. But I feel like there’s something to be learned there about…the Wheel of Time turns and each victory might only lead to another battle and sometimes there are failures and sometimes they hurt but at least there’s still a chance to keep trying.

And okay, he’s pretty much on the other side of the galaxy from anything even remotely resembling that kind of take on it, but. It feels like the lighter side of the fight Rand’s been fighting against himself – insisting that he will not be Lews Therin, that Lews Therin failed but he won’t, that Lews Therin Kinslayer killed everyone he loved but Rand will not kill where he doesn’t have to…but it’s the wrong fight. It’s the difference between rejecting failure and learning from it. And it’s the difference, I think, between fighting just for an end, and fighting for a reason, fighting to give the world another lease on the future and if not certainty then at least hope.

It’s why I’ve been shouting at him for several books now to stop fighting himself, to accept who he is but also who he was, because then it’s not about fighting against the past but instead moving on from it.

Still, easier said than done when, as Nynaeve acknowledges here, no one should have to remember that. But he does, and if he can accept it, that itself is a victory of sorts.

And just like that, Nynaeve heals Compulsion. Round of applause.

Rand lowered himself to one knee, cradling the youth’s chin in his hand, staring into his eyes. “Where?” he asked softly. “Where is she?”

It’s the gentleness of this that absolutely kills me. There’s something almost…sorrowful to it, or mournful (Morr-nful? I’ll see myself out), except there is no sorrow, no feeling at all. It’s soft and lovely and terrifying.

So it turns out there wasn’t much left to this kid’s mind than the Compulsion, which…might have been a good thing to tell Nynaeve before she removed it?

“Instructions cleverly designed to wipe whatever personality this poor wretch had and replace it with a creature who would act exactly as Graendal wished. I’ve seen it dozens of times.”

Dozens of times? Nynaeve thought with a shiver. You’ve seen it, or Lews Therin saw it? Which memories rule you right now?

There are a few layers to that question. Nynaeve is framing it as a question of whose memories dominate at the moment, but Rand has been hugely affected by the very existence of those memories as much as he ever is by the memories themselves.

Which…well, see above, I suppose. Trying to deny those memories, trying to deny who he was, doesn’t make them go away. And doesn’t make them any easier to cope with, no matter how many layers of ice and steel he tries to wrap himself in. Because at the end of the day, it’s still denial, and the truth is still there weighing on him. So he fights it, even in moments like these where he acknowledges the memories that are useful to him, lets them come to the forefront and shape his words. He still doesn’t accept their entirety, because he still, I think, believes that would mean condemning himself to that same end, that same failure. He does not surrender to them, so he cannot control them. He doesn’t embrace them, so he cannot move past them.

Rand spoke to Kerb again. “I need a location,” Rand said. “Something. If there is any vestige within you that resisted, any scrap that fought her, I promise you revenge. A location. Where is she?”

It’s almost a kindness, almost a mercy.

I guess he would know all about a vestige within you that resisted, any scrap that fought, even when the rest is gone, replaced, torn away. (He named you friend. Do not abandon him…)

“Natrin’s Barrow.”

Rand exhaled softly, then released Kerb with an almost reverent motion.

This is just so lovely. The way motion and gesture are done in this chapter, these soft, gentle, almost reverent movements against the gravity and pain and horror of it all, lightness against weight frozen in a moment and a gesture. There’s a shift here, in that exhalation – an end to a waiting, or a decision that comes with an answer. It’s the sort of scene where you’d have a single mournful violin and soft lighting and the whole thing is overlaid with an almost desperate sadness but all you see is simplicity.

It’s not a Big Dramatic Moment, but it’s very clearly a moment. Even if it’s not clear precisely how or why. It gives him a focus, a direction, and you can feel that shift.

What right did he have to look as exhausted as she felt? He had done barely anything!

And yet. He cannot let himself care, but somewhere on some level it weighs on him. And I also get the sense that it’s not a presentexhaustion so much as a…future one, if that makes sense. He’s been waiting for this for a long time, for evidence that Graendal is here, for a location. And he means to kill her. And now the waiting is ended, in two words, and so you get a soft exhalation and a look of exhaustion because it never ends; there’s never enough time to rest, and even rest isn’t restful.

“I did nothing, Nynaeve. I suspect that once you removed that Compulsion, the only thing keeping him alive was his anger at Graendal, buried deeply. Whatever bit of himself remained, it knew the only help it could give were those two words. After that, he just let go. There was nothing more we could do for him.”

Nothing left but anger, and a single purpose or intention, and after that he just let go. Sound familiar, Rand? You don’t think there’s anything more that can be done to for you, either.

“I don’t accept that,” Nynaeve said, frustrated.

Yeah, somehow I feel like we’re not just talking about Kerb the chandler’s apprentice here. Just a feeling, you know?

“Don’t you feel any guilt at all?” she demanded.

They locked eyes, Nynaeve frustrated and helpless, Rand…who could guess what Rand felt these days?

Certainly not Rand.

“Should I suffer for them all, Nynaeve?” he asked quietly, rising, face still half in the darkness.

Oh okay so we’re doing pain now. Alright. Sure. Why not.

It’s still so…soft.

Also, I see what you’re doing there with the face still half in the darkness.

“Lay this death at my feet, if you wish. It will just be one of many. How many stones can you pile on a man’s body before the weight stops mattering? How far can you burn a lump of flesh until further heat is irrelevant? If I let myself feel guilty for this boy, then I would need to feel guilt for the others. And it would crush me.”

It’s just too much. (Am I talking about the quote or about what Rand has to endure? We may never know).

It’s too much, and it would break him. He knows what he’s doing, and the simplicity of it, the willingness to just explain it, explain his pain and what he’s been through so simply as if the magnitude isn’t overwhelming, and say so matter-of-factly that it would crush him, is…

Perhaps strangely, it reminds me of Lan telling Nynaeve what had happened to him, in Mashiara. Telling her simply ‘you would not want me bonded to you’ and calling it his last gift.

It’s not self-pity; it’s just fact, plainly stated and devastating.

“Oh, Rand,” she said, turning away. “This thing you have become, the heart without any emotion but anger. It will destroy you.”

“Yes,” he said softly.

She looked back at him, shocked.

“I continue to wonder,” he said, glancing down at Min, “why you all assume that I am too dense to see what you find so obvious. Yes, Nynaeve. Yes, this hardness will destroy me. I know.”

He knows. He knowswhat he’s doing. And he knows why; he has all along, as he’s fought to make himself harder and then harder still, patiently forging his soul in the fires of pain, bringing up the list of names, all so that he could harden himself enough to do what must be done. It’s always been deliberate. It’s just that at one point he thought he could stop short of that last line, could hold on to enough of himself to be worth saving. But now…now he knows better, or thinks he does. And here we see this softness of resignation and resolution; this is all there is for him now, this is how it must be, and he will not survive it much longer, so it doesn’t matter now. All that’s left is the doing, and the dying. He’s accepted it, stopped fighting, so there’s nothing but this calm, this clarity and the softness of finality.

They think he can’t see it, because who would willingly do this to themselves? They think he can’t see it, because he is supposed to be salvation even alongside destruction, hope and Light against despair and shadow and oblivion.

But that hurts too much.

I just. The self-awareness, and the gentle fatalism of it, is…oh, Rand.

(‘Your logic destroyed you, didn’t it?’)

“When I was much younger,” he said, voice soft “Tam told me of a story he’d heard while travelling the world. […] Tam’s stories claimed no man had ever climbed to Dragonmount’s peak. Not because it was impossible – but because reaching the top would take every last ounce of strength a man had. So tall was the mountain that besting it would be a struggle that drained a man completely.”

Leaving nothing left for the journey home. Yeah. Also, two things. First of all, the fact that he calls Tam by his name rather than saying ‘my father’ is just one more soft and sad thing in a chapter already overflowing with soft sadness. He resolved that inner conflict a long time ago; Tam is his father in all the ways that matter, so I don’t think that’s what this is. I think it’s just another measure of detachment, of relinquishing any last vestiges of emotion or humanity or hope. He is the Dragon Reborn, nothing else, and if the Dragon Reborn cannot be human then he certainly cannot have a father he loves, or a home he is bound to, or anyone he might want to stay alive for.

Second…yeah, about climbing Dragonmount. I joke a lot about Rand’s penchant for climbing on top of and then falling off of things, but Dragonmount has been both foreshadowed and honestly kind of inevitable more or less since the Prologue, I feel like. I just can’t see it remaining purely metaphorical, though I can’t see what purpose it would actually serve, except as a full-circle kind of thing.

“So they never climbed it. They always wanted to, but they waited, reserving that trip for another day. For they knew it would be their last.”

“But that’s just a story,” Nynaeve said. “A legend.”

“That’s what I am,” Rand said. “A story. A legend.”

YES THIS IS EVERYTHING I WANTED AND IT’S DEVASTATING.

He knows. It’s part of what makes this so painful, is that he walks into it eyes open. He knows the role he must fulfil, knows he must shoulder this duty or the world dies, knows it will be all but unendurable, knows what it will cost him. Always, at each step, each time he tore away another part of himself, he knew what he was doing, even knew, I think, where it would lead if taken too far.

“I don’t know how human the Dragon Reborn can afford to be,” he told Nynaeve in essentially the precursor to this conversation (and I think there’s a reason we see both through Nynaeve’s eyes, rather than his). When he truly didn’t know, but had begun to suspect. When he knew he would need to let go of at least some of himself, some of his humanity.

Because the Dragon Reborn is a legend, a story. “He belongs to the Pattern now, and to history.” He saw Rhuidean, saw the threads of the Pattern that wove him. He knows the prophecies, knows what they demand. And for a long time he fought to find some balance there, some way to be both himself – even if just to die as himself – and to be what prophecy and story and history demanded. But now he’s stopped fighting that, because it’s too much for anyone or anything but a legend and a story to carry, so that is what he will be. No longer a shepherd named Rand al’Thor, but the Dragon Reborn. And that’s all. The rest is gone.

But he…stopped fighting the wrong thing. Instead of surrendering the fight against himself, he surrendered the fight to live, to salvage anything of himself. And it’s the wrong surrender.

And the whole mood of this is almost like that of the time Rand wandered into Moridin’s dreams and the two of them sat quietly by the fire; that sense of inevitability and of being pulled into these roles and of ‘your logic destroyed you, didn’t it’ except this time Rand doesn’t bring any hope or balance with him. Just the gentle calm of accepting his own destruction. Welcoming it. As Moridin himself seemed to welcome the concept of a true ending.

But it’s all overlaid with this gentleness, this sadness that comes through even if Rand can’t feel it, and so it’s harder to see the horror beneath it. The wrongness of it all. Because that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? There’s less pain this way. Easier, softer, to just…let go.

“You all claim that I have grown too hard, that I will inevitably shatter and break if I continue on. But you assume that there needs to be something left of me to continue on. That I need to climb back down the mountain once I’ve reached the top.”

I still just cannot get past the honesty and clarity with which he recognises exactly what he is doing. It’s one thing to know he knows, and another thing to sit here and watch him state it like this, holding nothing back, not trying to disguise or mitigate it, but also not…caring anymore.

And it hurts because again, he’s done this to himself so that he can endure agony long enough to do what needs to be done, to fulfil his duty in the world’s salvation, and then die.

Just.

He didn’t want to. It’s not out of anger or malevolence or even temptation. Its done out of determination, because he didn’t know what else to do. Because he didn’t know how else to hold on long enough.

And now the only answer he sees is to not hold on anymore. To give up that last part of himself. It’s a sacrifice, and it just hurts more because it’s the wrong one.

It’s watching the slow death of hope in someone who has been forced to withstand too much in its name. It’s a lot.

“That’s the key, Nynaeve. I see it now. I will not live through this, and so I don’t need to worry about what might happen to me after the Last Battle. I don’t need to hold back, don’t need to salvage anything of this beaten up soul of mine.”

Except it doesn’t work that way.

He cannot go to the Last Battle like this, devoid of hope or care for what comes after, with no reason to fight except that it’s the last thing he must do before he can die. That’s too close to what Moridin is coming to it with, and what is the point of the Light’s victory if it isn’t to sustain and renew hope? The whole pointis that it means they get a future, a chance to salvage something from a broken soul or a broken world, and keep going. There are neither beginnings nor endings, and that means either an endless cycle of despair and pain, or a continued cycle of hope and renewal, and I think when you’re the champion of the Light, it matters which one you choose to see.

The Dragon is one with the land, and the land is one with the Dragon. He cannot succumb to despair, because to do so would damn the world. No one ever said it was fair.

“We can find a way, Rand,” Nynaeve said. “Surely there is a way to win but also let you live.”

Again, it’s like what she said to Lan, only…slightly higher stakes, perhaps. But this is who she is; Nynaeve doesn’t believe anything is impossible, doesn’t believe anything can’t be healed. She’s very much a creature of hope, in that sense, hope and determination and sheer force of will. She’s not going to stand by and let him die any more than she will Lan, no matter what either of them says must happen or will happen.

“No,” he growled softly. “Do not tempt me down that path again. It only leads to pain”

YEAH NO KIDDING IT DOES. I’M IN PAIN RIGHT NOW.

This is fine.

It’s the first break in that gentle, soft calm, as well. Because there isa temptation there, a part of him that still wants to keep fighting, and he has to fight notto. Once again she can almost get through to him, and he can’t let her. But it is a vulnerability in that armour. There is still a temptation there. And the fact that he sees it as a temptation, rather than as a lifeline…oh, Rand.

It just hurts too much. To hold on to any hope that maybe he can survive this, to let himself want anything at all anymore. It hurts to feel. Apathy is easier. But it’s a false sense of…absolution, almost, except its exact opposite. Absolute certainty of destruction and damnation. But through the lens of apathy they look almost the same, because they grant illusion that nothing else matters. That you don’t have to think about it anymore. Don’t have to weigh those choices or that pain or that action or inaction. It’s all the same, now. There’s no changing your path, so no need to try, so no need to struggle, so no need to hurt. It’s a powerful illusion.

But he can’t let go of it, because of the sheer magnitude of pain. And no guarantee that it would bring him anything but more suffering in the end.

So that’s…yeah. It’s just hard to condemn him for choosing the path he has, because at every turn it seemed like the only option, and he tried so hard.

“I…I used to think about leaving something behind to help the world survive once I died, but that was a struggle to keep living. I can’t indulge myself.”

He can’t let himself want, because wanting would be selfish and human and he doesn’t get to have that. He’s a legend and a story and a piece in the Pattern; he doesn’t get to have things like wants, or choices. Those are for humans and he’s the Dragon Reborn.

It’s irony bordering on paradox that to be the Dragon Reborn, he has to accept his place in prophecy and give everything he has to the world’s salvation…but in order for that to have any meaning, he has to see it as a choice, and retain his humanity and capacity to hope and also to want. He has to be willing to die, but has to want to live.

“I’ll climb this bloody mountain and face the sun.”

As if the sun, light and warmth and life, is something to be faced, something to be endured, rather than something to strive for.

“You all will deal with what comes next.”

There’s some truth to that, perhaps; I have a hard time seeing a place for the Dragon Reborn after Tarmon Gai’don, should Rand find a way to live by dying. If that is an immediate sort of thing rather than an eventual rebirth sort of thing. I think it is, but I’m far from certain. Anyway, I still don’t see him being the one to actually shape that future; his role is to enable it.

But he has to care about what comes next, because that’s what he’s doing all of this for.

“You did well tonight,” Rand said. “You have saved us all a lot of trouble.” “I did it because I want you to trust me,” Nynaeve said, then immediately cursed herself. Why had she said that?

Because he’s ta’veren, and because it’s true.

Rand just nodded. “I do trust you, Nynaeve. As much as I trust anyone; more than I trust most. You think you know what is best for me, even against my wishes, but that is something I can accept. The difference between you and Cadsuane is that you actually care about me. She only cares about my place in her plans. She wants me to be part of the Last Battle. You want me to live. For that, you have my thanks.”

WHAT. AM I. SUPPOSED. TO DO. WITH THIS.

HELP ME.

To have him just say all of that, so simply. To see that he knows, that he understands how much she cares about him and that it means something to him even if he can’t let himself feel it.

“You want me to live. For that, you have my thanks.”

Even if he doesn’t want to live, doesn’t believe he canlive, doesn’t want her to even tempt him into wanting it. Despite that, he thanks her for it. Because it matters.

And it’s kind of fascinating to see this through Nynaeve’s POV because from the outside it almost looks like he cares, like he’s touched by this. But we know from his previous chapters that it’s just…like when he said ‘I’m sorry’ after she told him about Lan. There’s no true feeling behind it, because he can’t permit that in himself.

And yet he thanks her anyway, because still it matters. Even unfeeling, even cuendillar, it matters that she wants him to live.

…….oh.

“Dream on my behalf, Nynaeve. Dream for things I no longer can.”

………

…………………

I’m just. Going to lie here, on the floor, forever.

What a line.

What a beautiful, perfect, absolutely devastating statement that is.

It’s as if the entire chapter has built towards this, with its gentle gestures and quiet sadness and stark acceptance of self-destruction and surrender to legend and story. With its calm and the knowledge that he feels nothing and yet somehow this means something to him despite that. The knowledge itself that he has gone beyond feeling, but that it shouldn’t be that way, and so he leaves the dreaming to someone else, because someone should.

That’s one of those lines I need to read several times over just to try to feel it.

Dream for things I no longer can.

The acknowledgment in that. The acceptance, the sadness felt as much through its absence as anything else, the secondhand hope alongside perfect calm despair.

Why is this HAPPENING WHAT DID I DO.

The gentleness of all of this just ruins me and the way it contrasts with and yet follows perfectly on from Rand’s own chapters just before, and how it all feels so final and almost at ease and yet is wrong but is still so beautiful and

Akfsleaksjralekjrljelsatea

Help.

Why couldn’t she come up with an argument against what he’d said? Why couldn’t she make herself yell at him that he was wrong? There was always hope. By surrendering that most important emotion, he might make himself strong – but risked losing all reason he might have to care about the outcome of his battles.

That says in about thirty words what I’ve been trying to say for about thirty thousand.

And she’s right, but it is hard to argue with his logic not because she’s wrong but because it means causing him pain. It means asking him to shatter this peace he’s found – dark and illusory and cold as it is – and and go back to the pain and the struggle and the guilt and self-hatred and anger and fear. She’s a healer; she doesn’t want him to be hurting, doesn’t want to ask that of him because it’s too much to ask. What right do they have to demand that of him? And yet he can’t go on like this.

But it’s part of why I think he needs to come to that realisation himself; it has to be his choice, not something he feels he is forced to do, or required to do.

And I would maybe have more to say but Dream on my behalf, Nynaeve. Dream for things I no longer can has effectively destroyed me so I’m just going to stop now, and maybe eventually pick myself up off of the floor, and go make a cup of tea, and stare at a wall.

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