honest_johns | (no subject)

(no subject)

Alain sits on the paddock fence, boots hooked on the lowest rail, offering a carrot to Boukephalos.

Boukephalos is feeling inclined to assert his superiority by ignoring Alain, but he keeps sidling closer to the carrot.

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After a while, he's joined by Roland.

Roland is quiet.

Alain glances at him, with a small nod of greeting.

Roland nods back.

Time passes.

"Svava came back. Asgard's in ruins. But she came back."

Alain's head snaps around, and he looks at Roland sharply.

Roland nods, with a slight smile.

"Moiraine healed her. Sleeping upstairs right now, I wot."

An answering smile starts, small and glad.

He looks back at Boukephalos, who has moved almost close enough to touch and is rolling an eye at the carrot.

The smile stays.

Roland notices this.

He doesn't say anything.

But he wonders, very much.

There's a crunching sound; Boukephalos has finally given up on pretense and gone for the carrot. Alain pets him lightly, and the horse magnanimously permits it.

He slants a glance at Roland. "The battle had ended, then?"

He doesn't say was won or was lost. Desolation either way, from what Svava said.

It's possibly a good thing he's not reaching out with the touch right now.

Roland nods. "Closed the door myself. Fire and ruin. But it was over."

He nods.

He doesn't say good. It's not. Never in life. But perhaps it is as well as it could be; perhaps they won their world's rebirth. Cam-a-cam-mal, pria-toi Gan delah; say please.

Boukephalos eyes Roland, and nudges his knee experimentally with his nose. Boukephalos nudges hard.

It's a good thing that Roland has a good grip on the rail.

Roland reaches out an experimental hand. Quietly: "None of that, and I say thankya."

"Behave," Alain tells the horse, with a very gentle reprimanding tug to his mane. It's about even odds whether Boukephalos will listen.

To Roland, "He's over-proud, this one." A wry smile. "Earned it all, though."

Today, it's easier to believe that Crowley will be back to watch his horse with a wary eye and wisecracks about snakes, even with a fresh grave by the lake.

"Do you say so?"

He's inclined to let Alain talk.

And that Alain is talking now...well.

Svava.

Huh.

He shrugs.

Boukephalous nudges Roland's knee again, though more gently, and looks as if he's comtemplating drooling on his jeans.

"War-trained, he was -- sai Crowley's, or brought and stabled by him, anyway. Trained to the treetops, and trig. Choosy, though. He likes Susan, and River."

He scratches the horse's mane lightly.

"Me, he tests."

He's thinking back to a specific conversation with Crowley.

The scouts found a stream - got all of a helmet-full of water out of it before it dried up, and brought it back to him. And there wasn't enough for anyone else, so he emptied it out onto the sand.

Quietly: "War-trained."

He's not surprised that Boukephalos likes River. Not at all.

Alain glances at him, hearing the thoughtfulness there.

Roland shakes his head slightly. "It's nothing, say true."

Pause.

"Simon says that Kaylee's better."

"Good."

Pause.

"How'd he take it?" The dream, he means.

"Couldn't tell." Roland hunches forward a little. "There's been time, since. And he's good at hiding behind courtesies."

Alain nods.

"Ask Kaylee, maybe. Or River, if she'd tell." Or if she can tell it, coherently anyway. Roland seems to do best of them at getting clear answers from her, but still.

Roland is quiet for a long time.

"Don't think she'd tell."

He's already asked once. Not about Simon, though.

He doesn't want to do it again.

Alain studies him.

"All right."

More silence.

"Mo cuishle." To himself, and not to Alain. Roland isn't aware that he's saying it.

Alain doesn't know the word.

Catches some of the tangle of emotions tied up in it, but only some.

He regards Roland in silence, waiting, while Boukephalos lips at their hands and knees in search of more carrot.

Alain will have to wait for a while.

Finally, low:

"Al -- this business -- "

Roland seems to be struggling with something.

"I harm in order to help, and I'm capable of such things, say true -- we hypnotized her once, to toughen her up, and we'll do it again -- "

His last words are tight and come all in a rush.

"It hurts to see her so."

Roland's head is lowered.

...Oh, Roland.

All he can offer is

Cold comfort. Very cold.

A long silence.

"That's what I told her."

Sometimes he believes it.

Sometimes he doesn't.

Hard to think what to say to that. Ka will do what it wills, to all of them.

Alain reaches out, lays his hand over Roland's diminished one.

After a minute,

Roland nods once, and doesn't reply.

He hopes.

He wouldn't see it done if he didn't think it would help her, in the end.

It doesn't make it any easier.

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