Work Text:
“Alright,” Adolin said. “We’re going again.”
He relaxed his hold on his Blade, then tightened his grip again. His hands were wrapped in cloth instead of Shardplate gauntlets, thin enough to feel the warmth emanating from the hilt of the Blade, the feeling of something alive.
“Ready.” He might have been talking to the Windrunner. He might have been talking to Maya. Regardless, she would take it.
Adolin swung. Spinning in the air, Maya felt herself come alive.
This was how she’d come back to herself after centuries of darkness, in Adolin’s hands, lulled awake by Adolin’s voice. They made a great team, Adolin quick and fast on his feet with excellent reflexes, and Maya… she was still good for something, at least.
The Windrunner was faster. His weapon – the Honorspren – was long and slender, and every time the blades clashed against each other Maya felt a twinge of something that was unsettling, but not unpleasant. Like longing.
Adolin had on his side years and years of relentless training, refining his forms until he could’ve executed perfect duelling steps blindfolded in his sleep. He had the natural talent and the discipline. The Windrunner had the gifts that came from Honor, the speed and the strength of an unbroken bond.
The Shardspear hit Maya right above the hilt, close to Adolin’s hand, and the strength behind the blow made his wrist twist and his fingers fall open. Maya slipped from Adolin’s grip down to the ground.
She didn’t want to leave this Realm. She didn’t want to fall and disappear and–
Maya slipped from Adolin’s grip, and the Blade vanished into mist. Except not all of her did. Some part was still here.
“Well,” she heard Adolin’s voice, as if from very far away. “That could have gone better.”
“You’re tiring yourself.” A deeper voice, low and oddly soft. The Windrunner. “We should rest and then–”
“You mean I should rest.” There was the sound of a snort. “That’s hypocritical, Kal, coming from you.”
“We can go again later,” the Windrunner said. “I’ll be here.”
He always was. In the weeks since Kholinar the Windrunner was always, inevitably, there. Maya felt Adolin’s hesitation, felt her own awareness of reality go blurry at the edges as Adolin considered the possibility – to let her go for now, perhaps so that he might sleep as humans did. Perhaps the Windrunner would be there as well, as he so often seemed to be, and that Honorspren watching over them both.
“I’ll go,” Adolin said. “On one condition. You rest, too.”
Adolin didn’t say what they both knew: the Windrunner had Stormlight. Adolin didn’t, for all that he’d spent long hours holding Maya in one hand and an infused gemstone in the other, breathing in and out in fervent murmurs as he repeated over and over how much he could do with this power - help his father and Alethkar and all of Roshar, Renarin and all of their men. Take Kholinar back in Elhokar’s memory.
It was almost like praying, day after day for hours, until the night when Adolin’s grip had gone slack around Maya’s hilt and he’d whispered, tired, Maya, please. Maya had tried with all herself that night; they both had. But she was broken, and she couldn’t.
The day after Adolin had sought out the Windrunner and asked him to practice duelling Surgebinders, how to hold them at bay for as long as he could. These days when Adolin spoke to her it was always about their practice bouts, and sometimes about the Windrunner himself, about Renarin and life in Urithiru; but never about Stormlight, or spheres, or who Maya had been and couldn’t be ever again.
More and more when Adolin talked to her the Windrunner was there. She hadn’t paid attention to how it might have started, lost between Realms; one day she’d come alive in Adolin’s hand, in the familiar quiet of his rooms, and the other voice had been there too.
“We went to the Plans today,” Adolin had been saying, “with Kaladin and Bridge Four.” And then, “Kal’s here, too.”
Maya remembered the short pause, and then the other voice, back when it had still been unfamiliar. “Hello, Maya,” the Windrunner had said. It was the first time someone who wasn’t Adolin spoke to her in centuries. “Is it alright if I talk to her? I figured, if she’s listening…”
“She is listening,” Adolin had said, firm and final, and that had been it. Maya had learned to recognize the Windrunner’s voice, the sounds he made when he and Adolin sparred, the rhythm of his breath late at night.
Today the Windrunner was there when Maya slipped out of Adolin’s hold and back into the abyss, and he was there again when she came back, some time later. His voice had a husky quality to it, so different from Adolin’s clear tones.
“That’s beautiful,” he said, of Maya’s summoning. “All the vines and the tendrils. Like rockbuds.”
That made Adolin laugh. “Like rockbuds,” he said. “I guess.” And then he did it again, dismissing Maya from his hand just so he could summon her once more, a continuous back and forth between life and stillness. It was a habit of Adolin’s, one that Maya didn’t mind – the thrill that she felt in coming back every time more than made up for the fleeting moment of darkness when she was sent away. She knew Adolin would always call her back.
And then she felt Adolin’s arm lower as the Windrunner’s hand pushed down on it. “Wait.”
“Adolin,” the Windrunner said. “I know that you said – that Maya doesn’t…” It was odd, to hear her name on the lips of someone that wasn’t her human. Not bad, just… strange.
“Have you tried… does Maya ever change shape? I know she doesn’t need ten heartbeats, not really.”
Changing shape was for living spren. Not that Maya had ever tried; Adolin was a duelist.
“What, like into a spear?” Adolin said, echoing her own thoughts. “She doesn’t. She’s a Blade.”
“I know,” Kaladin said. “I meant… something Syl said once.”
The Windrunner had a way of explaining things that was linear and straightforward, like a drill sergeant on the practice field. Some other times, instead, he got tongue-tied like Adolin did when he spoke about feelings, and his words came out in garbled mumblings. This seemed to be a mixture of the two, wavering between efficiency and awkwardness.
“She said… for Maya, switching between two forms would be easier than just being around. She can’t do that yet.” Maya appreciated the ‘yet’, the hope that maybe one day she and Adolin together would learn how to fix her. Adolin appreciated it too; she could tell.
“If she could change into something easier to carry around, you could just keep her with you,” Kaladin went on. “Syl thinks that would help.”
Oh. That would be good. No more darkness, no more going away to the place where there was nothing but the memories of broken promises. Adolin’s grip tightened around her hilt.
“What do you think?” His voice had turned low, intimate. It was nice; Maya didn’t even mind that the Windrunner was looking on. “Do you think you could do that?”
She wanted it, badly, more than she’d ever wanted anything, just like the time she’d come alive to the count of seven heartbeats instead of ten, because Adolin needed her. And so she thought of that, the memories of fighting side by side and the sound of Adolin’s voice, and stretched her whole self in a burst of crystals. Like rockbuds.
Changing felt strange; she’d been trapped in one shape for countless years. But it wasn’t painful. Maya thought of Adolin’s hand, always so warm and safe, and twisted herself around it, so that she could – stay here, and not leave.
“That’s…” Kaladin sounded impressed, as he should. Cultivationspren manifested into far more elegant shapes than a Windrunner’s Honorspren. “It looks like a gauntlet.”
“Yes.” Adolin flexed his hands – both of them, his free hand and the one that held Maya; always around, so she could keep him safe. “Thank you,” he whispered, patting the back of his newly formed gauntlet. Maya decided she liked the touch.
Then Adolin cleared his throat. “Thanks,” he told the Windrunner, in that gruff tone humans who were self-conscious about their emotions used around each other. “You know, if she does…” his hand patted Maya again. “If she comes back, and teaches me how to fight like a Radiant, you’ll never win against me again.”
The Windrunner laughed. It was a rare thing, not as practised as Adolin’s spontaneous laugh, but Maya liked the warm feelings that sound brought out in Adolin.
“Alright,” Kaladin said, and he moved in very close to press his mouth against Adolin’s and share air like that. “I think I’ll survive.”
“We will.” There was something contagious about Adolin’s hopeful attitude, like the sun coming out after a Highstorm, to give life to all of Cultivation’s children. Maya basked in it. So did Kaladin.
“I want to go out to the top of the Tower,” Adolin said then. He punched the Windrunner’s shoulder lightly with his right hand, the one where Maya was. “Take me flying.”