acrookedpath | [pfsb]

[pfsb]

It is well past wǔ hour -- nearly noon, by the inn's reckoning -- when Wei Wuxian wakes back up to shuffle downstairs.

His robes are rumpled. He's secured his hair back in a simple, untidy ponytail, strands of hair ecaping from all sides. Muffling a yawn against the back of his hand, he bows to Madam Bar and asks for the strongest pot of tea she can provide -- he cannot sleep the whole day, after all, and he certainly must be awake for whenever Lan Zhan returns.

Not only does Madam Bar give him a pot of tea almost as big as his head, but it's accompanied by a hefty ceramic cup as large as two fists stacked together. Bold reds, greens, and golds swirl across one side to form an elegant wall of text: RISE AND SHINE, BITCHES.

He is still tired enough to find this absolutely hilarious, if his snickering is anything to go by.

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"Yes, that's right," he says, with brittle sarcasm. "Like the taint of the Shadow, wasn't it?"

His lip curls.

"You should be careful, Moiraine. It might be catching."

He is sensitive, Harrow had said, because his practice is forbidden in his own world, and this fact has ... caused him some great distress.

As she looks at him, and remembers their past conversation, a suspicion begins to grow in her mind.

"No," she says. "If I should be careful, it would be for other reasons."

A beat of silence.

"I did not mean to insult you when last we spoke, Master Wei."

He scoffs.

"And yet you did," he says. "You believe I am tainted -- why would I wish to discuss anything with you, knowing you see me that way?"

"You," she says, very precisely, "as a cultivator, as a person, are more than what marks you may or may not bear."

She looks him right in the eye, difference in height notwithstanding.

"And you do not know enough about me to know how I see you. Or why I made the offer I did."

A pause. There it is, at last: the faintest unbending to Wei Wuxian's posture, the slightest loosening of the tension in his shoulders.

It still does not do much to soften the glower, though.

"Then tell me," he says, flatly. "Why, if I am not a mistake to be corrected?"

"In the world where I was born," Moiraine informs him, "as well as in other places that I have come to know through my time here, unless removed, such marks are often a sentence of death."

There is a single beat of silence.

"I am Aes Sedai. I have something of a Talent for Healing. Why would I not wish to offer help where I might?"

He smiles thinly.

"Well. Then you do not have to concern yourself with it, as I am already dead."

Why would I not wish to offer help, if I might? Unwillingly, he thinks of lanterns drifting into the sky, voices of vows murmuring all around him.

Not by so much as the flicker of an eyelash does that appear to startle or unnerve her.

"You would not be the first among the dead here that I have Healed, as it happens."

Moiraine studies him for a moment longer, then inclines her head to him, very slightly.

"Be that as it may. My offer was well-intentioned, but the decision whether or not to accept it was - is - yours. I have certainly been made well aware of your opinion in this matter."

He chews the inside of his cheek. Looks away.

"Then why are you still here?" he asks. "You know my opinions; you know I will not speak with you. But oh, yes, I forget -- " The cold anger returns. "If I do not speak to you, you will pester my friends until you learn all you can about whether I am a threat. Lan Zhan will be no happier if you talk to him, you realize."

She makes note of the additional name, and files that away.

"I am interested," she reminds him, a little pointedly, "in learning what I can about necromancy. If that is not to be from you, then it would seem I must needs seek answers elsewhere."

One hand smooths absently down the side of her silk skirt.

"If I were concerned about whether you were a threat, there would be other ways to learn that."

"Why do you want to learn about it?"

He feels a little like Lan Qiren throwing a scroll at his head; it's a deeply uncomfortable feeling, one that almost lowers his guard another inch. But she has the Ninth, he reminds himself. That can be enough without involving him or Lan Zhan.

And in the end, Moiraine sees her ultimate goal as healing people of the mark of the Shadow. That is not a benign reason to seek out knowledge of necromancy.

And now, for the first time, she hesitates. Her hand smooths down the side of her skirt again, once, twice.

(Lan Mandragoran would have recognized the nervous tell instantly, after more than twenty years together as Warder and Aes Sedai. She has still never been able to train it out of herself.)

"There is a place," she says, finally, looking past him into the distance. Although her tone of voice remains calm, it is quieter than before. "Sometimes things... come from it. At least one might have been called a demon, of sorts. People have been harmed."

Her dark-eyed glance flicks back to him.

"I do not know how to stop it. Yet."

His eyes narrow... but, surprisingly -- even to himself -- the look is more thoughtful, more considering than before.

(It has always been difficult for Wei Wuxian to back down from a problem in need of solving. And he, too, spoke a vow beneath those lanterns so many years ago.

He is not a monster.)

"Tell me more about it. What kind of things? What sort of demon?"

She breathes out, and nods.

"I will," Moiraine says, "but I have also interrupted you."

She nods to the teapot and mug that he set aside before.

"Would you be willing to bring your tea, and sit and talk for a bit? I will explain further, if you would."

"We will sit here."

He doesn't move.

"As you prefer, then," she tells him, and takes a seat at the bar.

Only after she is seated does Wei Wuxian join her. Somewhat, anyway; he settles on the barstool next to Moiraine with one foot resting against the ground, arms still folded, mouth tense. There is none of his usual relaxed sprawl here.

She may need help, but he will remain wary.

"So?"

"What kinds of things, you asked," Moiraine replies. "It is hard to say, exactly."

"Some appear as ghosts, both of those who are known and those who are not. Some have appeared as the reanimated or restored dead, warm to the touch and seeming alive, but ... subtly wrong. Some are more nebulous, manifestations of strangeness in various ways."

"That which I called a demon possessed others in its gleeful rush to do harm."

There is something very, very flat about her tone as she says this last.

That is...

By all standards, that is exactly what cultivators are trained to handle. Malevolent ghosts. Spirits. Demons seeking to possess and torture. Resentment tangles his insides -- it would be nice, he thinks, if he could dismiss Moiraine's words with a curt I cannot help you and walk away, content in his loathing.

But now his curiosity has sat up on its hind legs like a rabbit sniffing the air, too insistent to ignore.

Be wary, he reminds himself, and sighs a tired breath as he shoves some loose hair away from his face.

"Where are they coming from?" Short, simple questions. As little room as possible for her to dance around the truth.

"There is a grove. In the woods, outside of the nearby town. Something lies at its center."

If anything at all were to come of this, she knows, she will have a very great deal of explaining to do, starting with what is almost certain to be an extremely difficult conversation with Dale Cooper.

It does not stop her from speaking. She is who she is, and for all that she has come to call Twin Peaks her home, she cannot know and do nothing at all.

"I have not myself been there. Not yet."

"Has anyone else?"

An idea begins to take shape as he remembers their conversation -- the bits and pieces of how Moiraine's own cultivation works. There could be a way to handle this without revealing too much.

"Have they seen what is at the center?"

"Yes."

Her tone is perfectly level, and her expression is absolutely smooth and blank, all emotion hidden.

"What is it?" he presses.

She has begun this. She will have to see it through.

(--Glastonberry Grove, also known as the entrance in our world to the Black Lodge--)

"I suppose it might be called a portal. Of sorts."

As level as before.

"At times it looks like a pool of black oil."

He nods, gaze abstracted, thinking of the blood pool in Demon-Subdue Cave. Absently, he scratches the tip of his nose.

"Are you certain it produces the spirits and ghosts, not merely attracts them?"

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