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She comes to with the sound of a crackling fire, warm embers smoldering against the wind, the whipping of it causing the horses to sound out their anxious brays.
The otherwise quiet calms her, but she finds she’s unable to move, let alone open her eyes. It’s difficult to fight the pull.
Delirious images flood her in a fury as she reaches instinctually for the one power but still can’t quite get her head above water. A head of blond hair, endlessly tousled by the wind. A smile, equal parts mischievous as reserved. How that little smile did something entirely unexpected when she first encountered it. It pierced her heart.
Deep greens of meadows and forest borderlands, so vivid she can practically smell the musky, deliciously fresh scent of the earth, freshly tilled. A warm cottage room, fragrant with freshly picked herbs, with a modest table but generously laid out for her arrival. His reserved expression breaks around his mother as they pass her some fresh bread.
She feels safe.
The great white tower drifts in her mind. The place she was meant to feel the most at home among her kind. It was familiar, comforting in a way, but not in comparison. Not anymore.
Not to him.
Not since home became her horse. But mostly him.
Years flash and dance by, slipping away, beyond reach. Hazy. Confusing. She reaches for Steve. But it feels like she’s drowning. Endlessly sputtering for air.
A young man with familiar blond hair comes closer, eyes concerned and earnest. He offers her a helping hand. It’s a moment she is able to recall coming back to over and over in her mind, in the darkest points of night when she can’t sleep. Sometimes staring at him from her horse when he was leading the way. And the dreadful truth of it all came flooding her just in time for her to mask how she was feeling.
That she is the selfish one. That she’s dreamt about giving in, laying her heart bare since he’s already intimately known her soul. To press her lips to his and never leave any room between them again.
The truth of it, that she’s sure she is hurting him most of all by having kept him so close. To have offered a bond that was accepted. When he could have been free to live the kind of life that she’s not warranted. Not in this life. Perhaps in another turn of the wheel.
But he didn’t need to be beholden to that, no matter what he promised her. He was the best of them all. And he deserved a normal life. A quite life. Of family. Of love.
Perhaps it would be better to have released him from the bond long ago. To have never brought Steve into her world.
But she was deeply selfish.
Peggy’s eyes fly open as she’s struck with a sudden stab of pain. She can hardly make sense of anything it all.
It dissipates as quickly as it came, blurring to a throb.
Everything else is hazy, eyes unfocused, the real world slow to return. Her chest feels heavy but no longer burns in the agony she recounts before her body succumbed to darkness.
A body, warm and solid, the reason for feeling so comfortable, is pressed to her left side.
Steve.
When her eyes finally focus, heavy still, his are already watching hers. Blue, solemn, serious and soulful. Many say he is hard to read, careful and sparse with his words. Even without their bond there would always be a connection. And she would be able to read him like and open book. Usually, anyway.
“That bad?” she attempts to ask in a light-hearted tone only to be overwhelmed by pain. She gasps through the pain, attempting to sit up. Steve eyes her reproachfully. The familiarity of it sends an odd shiver through her. His muscular arm, that had already been around her, guided her back to repose. He never did like it when she made light of her minor ailments.
“Trolloc poisoning,” he confirms what she already suspected. Perhaps not so minor indeed. “And while I have done my best to carry my mother’s knowledge with me all these years, I am still not a Sister. We will need to leave at first light once you’ve rested a while longer. I will change your poultice once more before then.”
Steve’s mother had been a well-respected Wisdom in his small farming village, known throughout the fertile valley communities for her incredible innate skill for foraging and healing. She had never been given a chance to head for the White Tower, and didn’t live long enough for Peggy to properly convince her that it wasn’t too late for her to leave the small town even then. Instead, she raised her clever, headstrong boy to value knowledge, kindness and loyalty. He made good on his promises. Peggy’s heart throbbed. There was no doubt of him continually making his late mother proud.
Steve indeed was no steward of the Yellow Ajah but for a human man he could give some of their novices a run for their money. By all accounts, she should have died by now. And who knew how many days ride they were from the nearest Sister.
“Two at the most,” came Steve’s response aloud as if he was actually reading her mind.
In more than ten years of knowing each other they had definitely developed their own shorthand. The envy of many Aes Sedai and Warder. Still, sometimes it was spooky how well Steve knew her mind. Perhaps he felt the same about her.
“I was able to spot some tracks that I highly suspect are a convoy of Sisters. Too many make an obvious trail.”
She hummed her response, stabs of pain preventing her from speculating further. Which Sister didn’t matter at this point. She knew her own weakness was also slowly draining Steve.
It was strange to think that they had been together for nearly eight years. Almost a decade of sharing every waking and slumbering moments, to sharing emotions and in time, discussing thoughts she was certain they had never divulged to others. Their connection, the bond, the one they hadn’t made lightly, still felt as visceral to her as it had in the beginning. Comforting. Steady. As strong as that first day he pledged himself to her and over time their forged their mutual bonds.
Special.
Indeed, she could imagine most Sisters with a Warder could consider their bond special but Peggy couldn’t really be sure how others felt within those bonds. And yet… She had no doubt that beyond the typical coupling, what she and Steve shared was perhaps more special than that. Even those Sisters who did indeed turn their bonds into romantic relationships. Peggy had never considered that a possibility, to muddle a pure promise with talk of romance.
But the Peggy of the Tower was not the Peggy of the last many years. Still… Cherishing Steve didn’t mean accepting the deeper niggling in her chest when she looked at him. It was too much to think about at the moment. All she knew was she was where she felt safest.
Her eyes drifted close and she turned her head into his broad chest, listening to his heartbeat, the practiced steady breathing of a man dead set on keeping her calm and alive.
Steve never pried, despite all that he was able to gleam of her inner thoughts and unconscious emotions. They were partners after all, able to know and read her as no one else could. No one would ever get this close. Nor would she let them.
It was Peggy and Steve against the growing troublesome politics of the Aes Sedai, even more so against the coming end of the world.
Yes, she was selfish, but after ten years, she reminded herself that it was also borne out of her own sense of protectiveness. Not for her own sake. But his. Steve, son of Sarah, of the Fertile Valley, a pure light of goodness and hope. Steve mattered to her above all else apart from their purpose. Their sole directive, to uncover the Dragon Reborn, to find them before the Shadow did.
But that was something to dwell on when she was healed.
Peggy focused back upon Steve and the body heat he was generating. He was frowning at her, as she expected. There was nothing she could say. Protectiveness and stubbornness were both traits they shared. Many were surprised they hadn’t come to bigger discord in all their years together. The unspoken but clear doubts that their bond hadn’t crossed physical boundaries in any of that time. How little they understood.
Perhaps still, how little Peggy understood herself.
She curled into him further, the pain coming to her in irregular waves.
“I dreamt of you,” she murmured as his arm tighten around him, hot breaths against the top of her head. “The day we met.”
He hummed. “The stubborn Aes Sedai outfitted in a blue cloak and a death wish.” Steve brought a hand up to gently brush against her face, soothing strokes that made her warm. “I warned you about that river.”
“And I warned you I could handle myself.”
He snorted. “Only after I dived in after you.”
True. In her panic in what she hadn’t expected to be so treacherous a river, she hadn’t been able to call upon the power, an early test for in some ways. She would have likely drowned, or been gnawed at by the creatures of those waters if Steve hadn’t followed her. If he hadn’t jumped in and brought her to the surface. If he hadn’t yelled at her and let her yell back at him in kind.
She stopped fighting this long ago. After all, her youthful impetuousness brought her to Steve.
“Yes,” she replied, “you did.”
Peggy stayed put, pressed against him until he gently untangled them some time later to peel her shirt open and replace the poultice he made for her wound. She watched him as he worked, methodical and deft, his brow set heavy. She honed in on their bond, but he was giving very little away. But she knew he was still angry at her for risking herself as she had. For stretching herself so thin.
Despite his love of ascribing her as needing to shoulder endless burdens, he was not much different. It was another way they were so similar, they way he would carry the weight of the world so others didn’t.
They were so similar. And also different.
They had each other. To share those burdens. To alleviate them.
Peggy lifted her hand with effort to cup his cheek, finger brushing at his brow, then jaw, vainly attempting to smooth away the tension.
“Will we make it?” she asked some time later in a pained whisper.
Steve brought his face close to hers, jostling something the opposite of pain into her heart.
“I require it of you,” he said, making it clear that his concern won out over any lingering anger. “I will make sure that we do.”