Makhmilith!

The velvety blue dragon’s repose was abruptly interrupted by a mindvoice that was practically shrill with panic. He startled to his feet, wings partially spread in readiness to take flight even as he recognized the voice in question.

Raqisath? he asked, just to be sure.

Reya needs help. She needs help now! The younger green was insistent and clearly in earnest, and a swirl of alarmed yellow slipped into Makh’s eyes.

Get out, Makh ordered T’of, who had been swimming in the frigid water by the Weyr. He reinforced his words with a sense of urgency he knew would send the human to shore sooner rather than later.

At the same time he was issuing commands to his rider, Makh sent cool, soothing emotions to Raqisath and asked her to explain a little more clearly. Raqi allowed him to soothe her, as it had been a part of the reason she had reached out to him in particular, and did her best to explain:

She’s so desperately unhappy. I can’t really even get through her unhappiness. She won’t listen to me.

Makh considered that. For a young dragon accustomed to being able to hear any human’s thoughts if she chose to do so, and make herself heard if she wanted, it was probably truly distressing to have her own bond refusing to hear her. He relayed this information to T’of as his rider emerged from the surf and found his neatly folded pile of clothing.

Where is she? T’of asked, drying himself briskly on a rough sheet of cloth. Makh didn’t bother to ask Raqi for the answer. It wasn’t especially difficult to seek out Reya’s mind. Hers was the one that reeked of guilt and self-loathing, which were not emotions he was accustomed to sensing from her, and it was no great feat to figure out where she was.

The archives.

T’of dragged on his trousers, socks, and boots impatiently, and shrugged his long-sleeved wool tunic on before departing with long strides for the familiar corridors of the Weyr. He made his way to the archives without too much apparent speed - not enough to give anyone cause to remark, at any rate - but he was definitely moving with purpose and anyone who looked at him would know it a bad idea to waylay him. He took the stairs in pairs and trios and was ruddy-cheeked by the time he reached the archives. To be fair, some of the color was from the frigid waters he’d recently left, but it was also due in part to his haste.

It took several moments for T’of’s eyes to adjust to the dim archives chamber, but he was familiar enough with the layout that he was still able to make his way to the stacks without doing serious damage to his shins or hips by colliding with chairs or tables. He could hear scrolls rattling in cubbies as though someone was searching for something particular, or else the direct opposite.

“Reya?” he called softly. He didn’t really need to ask if it was her, since he could see her by the light of the glow she’d set in a nearby cubby. “Can I help you find something?”

Reya turned toward T’of with a haggard face and an expression closer to defeat than he’d ever seen. She offered him an empty, humorless smile and motioned vaguely to the scrolls surrounding her. She wasn’t sure herself what she meant to communicate by this gesture, but she could see the concern written clearly in the set of his mouth and the furrow of his brow. Concern for her, maybe pity. She didn’t want pity.

“Raqisath sent you.” It wasn’t a guess. She wasn’t completely unaware of the distraught green’s emotions fluttering at the periphery of her own sorrow, and she knew that Raqi always reached out to Makhmilith when she was upset about something Reya couldn’t fix.

“She did,” T’of agreed. “But I would have come on my own if she hadn’t. Will you tell me what’s wrong?”

Reya essayed another smile. This one was as unconvincing as the last. “If I say no, will you resort to secret mindhealer tactics to make me talk anyway?”

“We do have ways of making you talk,” T’of agreed with a villainous expression that ebbed away as he continued, “But of course I wouldn’t do that. Even if you were a patient, I would never do that.”

Even through her grief and guilt Reya heard the unspoken not to you and she offered him a grateful half-smile. Because she knew T’of was sometimes tempted to turn his mindhealer training to less than noble purposes when he was frustrated with someone or excessively bored. It was because he didn’t push her in this that she decided to answer him. That, and she was reasonably confident Raqisath would be telling some version of it to Makhmilith, who would probably keep her confidence, but it would be unfair for T’of to be excluded.

“My family are angry with me. At least, R’bin is. And Eri.” Her voice caught as she spoke her son’s name. She didn’t often speak of her family and T’of never pried, but he knew the names. She didn’t need to explain them to him.

T’of didn’t comment. His first meeting with R’bin had not gone particularly well. It had been the day Raqisath Impressed to Reya and her older brother had been taking her to task for Impressing a dragon and leaving her child in his care. T’of had not been overly impressed by her brother at the time. It wasn’t as if he would be required to do too much childcare: Western Weyr had a creche, just as High Reaches did, staffed by folks who were skilled and passionate at caring for youngfolk. There was no reason Reya’s absence should place an excessive burden on her brother as far as the basics of childcare. Of course, her son’s mental and emotional state were another matter, but there were people who could address that, too, while Reya learned to be a dragonrider.

He knew that Reya always seemed harried and out of sorts when she heard from R’bin, who wrote her with a regularity she called surprising, mostly to report that her son had still not adjusted to her absence and to ask when she planned to resume her maternal duties. She had not wanted to be a mother to begin with, and Impressing Raqisath had given her an acceptable way of escaping that life. They had never had that specific conversation, and she had never explicitly said as much, but T’of had, on more than one occasion, seen the panicked look of a trapped animal cross her face when she talked about motherhood.

“Shall I punch him? R’bin, of course. Not Eri.” Speaking the name of Reya’s son felt odd, but he was trained to have uncomfortable conversations as if they were commonplace.

Reya looked up and to the side before rubbing vigorously at her brow ridge for a moment. She was very obviously Not Crying. She was just as obviously incredibly upset. T’of really did want to punch her brother for putting her through this.

“Better not,” she said with a deep breath. “I don’t want to be the cause of another inter-Weyr incident.”

Reya actually wouldn’t have minded hearing T’of have it out with R’bin, but she would rather have the conversation herself. It was nice that he was willing to do so, but it was better that he wanted to listen to her. She needed that more than she needed a champion in shining armour. That, and absolution, but she didn’t think T’of was the right person to offer her that. It was too bad, really, because she could see that he would give it her, and that when he did it would be after consideration and thought. He simply wasn’t the person she needed to forgive her.

“Fair enough. But if the opportunity arises? If I can make it look like an accident?”

The mental image of T’of accidentally punching R’bin made her giggle helplessly. She hated that her emotions were so raw she was reduced to such, but at least with T’of she felt safe letting go just a little bit. Enough to not feel instantly mortified at her outburst once she reined in her giggles.

“I think not. Besides,” here her face fell, “He has reason to be angry. They both have. I abandoned my son T’of. And…”

T’of reached past her and picked up the glow she’d been using as she rummaged mindlessly through the scrolls for something to occupy her brain. His movement startled her, both its suddenness and its direction. It almost seemed like he was about to put a comforting hand on her shoulder or some such. It was almost a disappointment when he didn’t.

“I shouldn’t interrupt you. My training was quite explicit on that point. But I’m not really a mindhealer anymore, and so I’m interrupting you to make something completely clear: you didn’t abandon your son, Reya. He lives with an uncle who loves him and is under the care of creche workers who have more experience raising children than most parents. He may feel that he has been abandoned, and he may say that he has been abandoned, but that is not the case.”

His dark eyes gleamed in the light of the glow, catching and holding her gaze. Everything in his manner conveyed sincerity, and from the tightness of his grip on the glow, he badly wanted her to accept his point. She wished she could.

“He won’t even see me, T’of.” Her voice was a strangled whisper, as if the tears she refused to shed had lodged in her throat and were choking her. “I went to bring him a nameday gift and he wouldn’t see me.”

T’of had never met Eridan and had heard relatively little of him, but he knew Reya and he recalled all at once why mindhealers were discouraged to the point of proscription from taking on loved ones as patients. Even without knowing all of the players in this situation, he ached for Reya’s suffering and he wanted to step in and fix it. It was an impulse he’d always struggled with, but with Reya the urge went bone-deep, so that Makhmilith stirred in the back of his mind, cautioning him to steady himself.

Easy, T’of. I’m just about managing to keep Raqi calm. I don’t have the energy to support you, too.

T’of didn’t reply, but the dragon knew his point had been made and withdrew.

“No wonder you seem like you’ve been through the ringer. There is a potential positive side to this, if you want to hear it.” His free hand, the one not holding the glow, flexed. He wanted to draw her close and hold her, but he knew to do so would be beyond his limits, and he was so damned frustrated with himself.

Reya slouched backward against the solid structure of the scroll cubbies. They were only cubbies from the waist up. Below that they were solid constructions with a flat surface intended for opening scrolls on. Reya rose in a releve and eased first one buttcheek, then the other onto that flat area, then leaned back once more so that her shoulders and head rested against the cubbies behind her.

With her head tilted back and her eyes closed, she said, “Tell me.”

T’of didn’t have to stand on his toes to be able to sit on the reading ledge, he had only to sit down, and he did, mirroring Reya. He set the glow beside him on the ledge and said, “Your son loves you. He’s angry and hurt and he wants you to hurt the way he does. The fact that he is playing these games means he does have a thought for your feelings.”

Realistically, he didn’t know if Reya’s relationship with Eri could be salvaged as long as she chose to live apart from him, but he absolutely wasn’t going to say that right now. Besides which he knew very little about the boy - only what Reya had told him - and that was nowhere near enough to make that sort of prognostication with any degree of certainty. It was true, though, that Eri was every bit as entitled to his feelings about the situation as Reya was to hers, and in his position there were many adults who would probably feel much the same. But neither those theoretical adults nor Eri were T’of’s concern, except inasmuch as they affected Reya, who was.

“Eri’s father used to say something like that when he was particularly cruel. He’d say it was because his feelings for me were so strong, they sometimes overwhelmed him.” It was more than she’d ever said about Joha to T’of at one time in the whole of their acquaintance.

T’of intended to acknowledge her words with equanimity, but what came out was more wrathful. “That man is wherryshit.”

The vehemence of T’of’s declaration took Reya by surprise, but she couldn’t find anything in his statement to disagree with, even as he began to apologize for saying what he had. Or, rather, for saying it the way he had. He didn’t actually take back the epithet.

“Reya, I would not have said your Eri’s behavior was a positive sign if we were speaking of someone you were romantically involved with, or even a friend. That person would, presumably, be an adult, and if they were being emotionally manipulative like that it would be a huge warning sign.” His hands flexed again. He was not doing as well at this as he would like to. “Eri is a child, and children often lack the experience and emotional vocabulary to express themselves in anything but absolutes when they’re hurting. I am reasonably sure Eri loves you, even though he’s furious with you. If you were to ask my advice, I would recommend that you make it clear that you love him and continue to reach out to him unless he specifically asks you to stop. I would also beg you not to cast yourself as a villain.”

Reya took a deep breath and looked across the aisle at T’of, gazing so steadily at her, speaking so reasonably to her. He almost made her believe him. But she hadn’t told him the whole of it. Uncharacteristically, she didn’t think she could while the glow lit both their faces. Logically she knew it made no difference, but she found herself asking, “Would you cover the glow, please?”

T’of barely hesitated before he found a pot of sand and plunged the glow into it so that it was completely submerged. That was what the pots were there for, after all. In the new darkness it seemed he could see brilliant stars and halos for a moment, but they dissipated shortly and it was left to his other senses to take up the slack.

“What if I am a villain, T’of?” Reya’s voice was so soft and so hesitant it was as if someone else had spoken. She was rarely so bereft of confidence.

Nevertheless it was an easy question for T’of to answer: “You are not a villain. I promise, Reya, you are not. Even if you won’t trust my word, remember that you Impressed a dragon. Raqisath would never have Impressed to you otherwise. Dragons know these things. Even in the egg, dragons can tell a little bit. Have Makh try to explain to you how he Searches candidates sometime. Dragons know.”

The sound Reya made was something between a sigh, a laugh, and a scoff all at once. “When I realized he meant it, that he wouldn’t see me, after being frustrated, I was relieved. I thought, ‘does this mean I don’t have to worry about being his mother anymore?’ And I wished it did.”

T’of’s tone was gentle as he asked, “Do you still feel that way?”

“I don’t know!” There was a sound like she’d lifted her head and then dropped it back against the cubbies. “And isn’t that bad enough? A mother shouldn’t question whether she feels relieved at the thought of being absolved of maternal responsibility!”

T’of knew he would have to tread with care here, and yet he also would have to sound as if he wasn’t. Tricky, but not impossible. Not after turns of training. His skills were rusty, but they weren't completely gone.

“People feel all sorts of things. Feelings aren’t right or wrong. They just are. Your experiences will influence your expectations of people’s behavior and feelings, but remember that behaviors and feelings are two separate things. Most people can control how they behave. Few can control how they feel.” He paused, both to give Reya time to absorb what he was saying and to figure out where to go next.

Reya was a logical person. Because of that, she knew that what T’of was saying made sense, and could work out from there that he meant her understand the way she felt wasn’t inherently bad and did not make her a bad person. But as he’d said, feelings were beyond control, and she felt guilty for the way she felt toward motherhood. She was about to say so when T’of spoke again.

“However you feel about being a mother, you love your son. That much is obvious. You have, to my knowledge, always done the best you could to care for him and see that he was kept in a safe environment with people who cared for his well-being. Is that not so?”

Reya nodded, and then remembered that in the dark T’of couldn’t see her. She was forced to acknowledge that he was correct, though she was reluctant to do so. If he was correct, that meant that maybe she wasn’t the terrible human she felt she must be, which meant she might be fundamentally wrong in some of her ways of thinking. She didn’t like to be wrong, even when it benefited her ultimately.

She settled for a noncommittal, “Mm.”

“There are different ways of being a loving parent, Reya. Dragons, if you recall, entrust their newborn children to members of another species to be their companions and guardians until - and please listen because this part is important - until they are fit to fight a celestial enemy that will probably kill them before their time. And when their children die, they mourn, but they do so with the knowledge that they did as much as they were able to prevent or put off that ending. A lot of human weyrfolk do the same with their children, who they hope will Impress, even knowing the tremendous danger it will put them in if they do.”

At this, inappropriate though it may have been to laugh, Reya could not help but laugh. Not at the plight of dragons, but that T’of should think to bring it up and phrase it in that way.

“You’re saying I would do better to think of myself as a dragon?” She knew it wasn’t what he meant, but she had to say it.

“If it helps,” he said. Unlike Reya, his tone was serious. “You don’t deserve to be punished for being the person you are, Reya.”

He wanted to add that he hated to see her turning herself inside out like this, that her anguish struck a sharp and painful chord within his own heart, but he did not. For one thing, he had no business placing that sort of emotional burden on her. No one should be made to feel that they had to regulate their feelings so that someone else would feel better. Secondly, there were limits to what he could say to her before the nature of their relationship would come to a point of no return. He hoped that they would someday reach that point, if he were being honest with himself, but now was assuredly not the time.

Thus, T’of was forced to conclude, and somewhat lamely he thought, “For what it’s worth, I like you. Just as you are.”

It was the darkness, Reya told herself. It was only the darkness which made T’of’s words seem to carry extra meaning. She couldn’t rely on his eyebrows, for once, and so she in the absence of visual cues she was reading far too much into what she heard. Or else she was searching for distractions that would enable her to avoid confronting the rest of what T’of had said. She wasn’t ready to unpack all of that here and now. She was, however, able to begin to compartmentalize things inside her head once more so that she wasn’t an emotional wreck that made her dragon panic.

“Thank you.”

T’of didn’t ask her for what. He could guess that there were multiple levels to her thanks, and he was fine with any of them. He would have been just as fine with no thanks. His friend had been in distress and he had been able to offer some degree of comfort. It wasn’t everything he wanted, but it was more than enough.

“This is probably going to push your gratitude too far, but you might consider talking to a mindhealer about Eri and motherhood. The Weyr has a number of them, and that’s what they’re here for.”

Reya felt a hot flash of humiliation. She should have been able to handle this without T’of, and now, she realized, she had overstepped and placed too much on him. This was why she preferred to be entirely self-reliant. Then she recalled that she hadn’t actually asked for T’of to involve himself, and she felt that humiliation shift to indignation. How dare he show up uninvited, offer evidence to suggest her entire worldview might be wrong, and then try to shove her off on someone else?

“Why would I need them, when you’re right here?” she shot back. The words themselves could have been spoken in jest, but her tone implied he was the one who had overstepped. It was unkind and unreasonable of her to say it, and even as she spoke the words she regretted them, but T’of refused to rise to the bait.

Instead, T’of sighed deeply and flexed his fingers compulsively. When he spoke his tone leaned toward ironic. “I’m too close to the situation to be objective or offer sound counsel.”

He was too close to the situation? It took Reya a few seconds to realize that he meant her. He was too close to her. She blushed in the dark, embarrassed by how slow she had been to make the connection. Her mind really was a mess today.

“That’s right. Mindhealers aren’t supposed to treat their family. Or their friends.”

“As you say,” he agreed. “It was only a suggestion, at any rate.”

In an effort to make amends for her earlier sharpness Reya replied, “Well, on the whole I’d rather talk to you. I understand that being my friend renders you incapable of giving useful advice, and I shall ignore you accordingly whenever I feel our friendship is preventing you from keeping my best interests at heart or has rendered you stupid.”

T’of heard the humor in her tone and huffed a soft sigh of relief that probably sounded like half a laugh to Reya.

“That’s only fair,” he agreed.

“T’of…” she began, reaching for her usual self-assurance and knowing without a doubt that what shreds she was able to grasp and draw about herself were only restored because of T’of. “I would never have asked you to come. But...thank you for being here.”

She could not bring herself to say that she’d needed him. It was not her nature to willingly admit to that sort of reliance on anyone, even her dragon. Still, she half-hoped T’of would hear what she couldn’t make herself say. He sometimes did. More than most people, anyway. It was one of the many things she liked about him. It was also one of the things she found infuriating about him. It was not always comfortable to be friends with someone who could interpret her thoughts so well.

“Just a moment.” T’of fumbled for the banked glow and pulled it free of the sand so that it once more cast the pair in a dim light. “I want you to be able to see my face as I say this so that you can’t tell yourself later you misinterpreted or I meant something other than exactly what I’m about to say. Are you paying attention?”

Despite the ragged state of her emotions, Reya smiled at T’of’s dramatics and gave him a nod.

“I will always find a way to be there for you, Reya. Any time. And you will never be a bother.”

“You’re using a lot of absolute values there,” she said, uncomfortable with being the recipient of so much unreserved - and in her opinion, undeserved - generosity, because his sincerity was once more obvious in the set of his features and the timbre of his voice. She had no way of knowing that Makhmilith, listening in, was saying much the same thing, though with considerably more genuine amusement. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to add some qualifiers?”

“Credit me with knowing what I’m saying and saying what I mean, please.” There may have been a hint of frustration in T’of’s voice, but it was hard to say. His eyebrows, on the other hand, though silent, spoke volumes: he was absolutely, one hundred percent in earnest, and would not allow her to joke her way out of hearing him.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to belittle what you’ve said.” But somehow what he’d said was precisely what she needed to hear. Not just his promise to be there for her, but his request that she trust him to know what he was promising, which was so very much in character for him that it put a seal on his words so that she knew for certain they were the truth.

T’of nodded. He thought he understood, for the most part. He was at more of a loss when it came to ideas for getting them out of the archives. Fortunately, it seemed Reya was better at moving on from things than he was, or else considerably more eager to leave the scene of her misery.

“I need to change out of my riding gear, and I’d feel a lot better for a bath,” she said with an almost desperate briskness.

Reya knew that when she got back to her weyr she would be unable to avoid crying, but it wouldn’t be the same as the tears she’d been fighting when she took herself to the archives to avoid the possibility of encountering her roommate and having to explain herself. Her tears would be cathartic as much as they were unhappy, for no matter what her feelings on motherhood her son’s rejection had hurt her, but they would pass. Especially if she gave herself a deadline.

“After that, would you mind if I came up to your weyr and read some of your notes from Healer Hall?”

She suspected that once her upset was less immediate she would find that T’of was right about many of the things he’d said to her. Perhaps even about speaking to a mindhealer, though she’d always sort of felt that mindhealers were for other people. People who had real Problems, with a capital P. So maybe she could spare the mindhealers having to deal with her lowercase P problems by reading T’of’s notes.

“Like I said. Anytime. Though, actually, I could use a scrub myself. I can feel salt drying onto my scalp.” And now that he’d thought of it, it was hard to get the thought out of his mind. He didn’t like the feeling of salt drying on his skin any more than he liked the feeling of anything drying onto him. “If you’re up to it, let’s meet for dinner and you can teach yourself mindhealing after that, okay?”

Reya didn’t know how he did that. She was still hurt and there were a lot of conflicting thoughts and emotions fighting to break free of their tidy mental compartments, but at the same time he had her smiling, albeit weakly, and making plans she was actually looking forward to.

How did he do that? Raqisath demanded of Makhmilith as the humans finalized their plans.

He is observant and intelligent, Makh replied with more than a hint of pride in his human’s savvy. And he cares about her.

I care about her, Raqi grumbled.

Of course you do, the older blue soothed. Be sure to remind her of that. I suspect she’ll need to hear it.

With an astonishing amount of hauteur and offended dignity for a nearly-undersized green, Raqi drew herself up and replied, You needn’t tell me what my bond will need.

In truth, it had not been easy for her to tune out Reya’s misery and distance herself. Had Makh not guided her through it, she might not have managed. She hoped by the golden egg of Faranth that she never had to do it again.

As you say, Makh agreed. But I didn’t mean it as advice from one dragon to another. I meant it as a friend to Reya. I care about her, too, you know. Some.

Having made his own insouciant declaration of fondness, Makh removed himself, lest another emotional scene develop. Raqi watched his flight for a long time as he made precise circles of the Weyr’s airspace and thought about the things Reya and T’of had said, and why she hadn’t been able to accomplish what the bluerider had in easing Reya’s suffering. After a time, she decided it came down to her lack of life experience and wisdom and resolved to acquire more of both.

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