The Grey Tower

Kaira stood on the chair and up on her toes, next to the open door, as she attempted to balance the pie on the sill of the door. It was a silly prank, but she was sure that it would work. Oh, she couldn’t wait to see the look of surprise on her victim. But it was more difficult to balance the pie than she expected. Carefully, she nudged it one way, and then the other, trying to find its center of gravity.

A voice spoke from below.

“What are you doing?”

Kaira flinched and gasped. The pie slipped from her hands. She lunged forward in a vain attempt to catch it and instead wheeled her arms as she lost her balance. She clutched the door to steady herself and looked down in dismay. A lean, grim-faced young man stood there, the pie held perfectly in his hands with not a crumb out of place. Kaira let out a breath of relief.

He didn't look happy to see her. Well, why would he? She hadn't told him that she was bringing pie to his room because she had rather hoped that the pie would fall on top of him and cover him with its blueberry filling. That would be such a funny sight! But she wouldn't tell him that, of course. And secretly she was glad that he had caught the pie, because it remained whole and edible and ready-to-eat. Her mouth watered at the thought. She hopped down from the chair and grinned up at him.

“I found a pie in the kitchens. Want some?"

The last thing Johan had been expecting upon returning to his room was to find a Novice there. And not just any Novice, but one he’d saved from the Tower Guards and then got lost in a snowstorm with, and then almost half died with. He didn’t even bother to wonder why she was standing on her tiptoes attempting to balance a pie on his door. He wasn’t completely stupid; he could add two and two together to make four, and clearly she had decided that he apparently needed to get covered in pie. If he hadn’t been so tired and drained, he would have just rolled his eyes and walked away.

As it was, he stood with one eyebrow raised, the pie in his hands – after he’d caught it -, his shirt on the floor. He’d had to drop in order to catch the pie. He stood bare-chested, still covered in dust and sweat from the training yards, and he’d been rather hoping to take a nap. There was a nice bruise blossoming on his side from where he hadn’t been quick enough to parry a blow.

“Right,” he finally said, dragging the word out, his eyebrow still raised. “You had no intention of dropping the pie on my head. You just decided that the best place to let it cool was the top of my door?” He let out a half-laugh, more a snort, as he looked down at the pie in his hand.

“But, no, I’m fine. You can have it back. Here,” and he took a step forward, ready to give the pie back, before he suddenly tripped in a very un-Gaidin like (and purposeful) way. He fumbled for balance, the pie still in his hands, before he couldn’t keep a grip on it anymore. The pie shot up, seeming to hover in the air for a moment before....

SPLAT! Straight at Kaira’s face.

“Oh Light!” He jumped back, clasping a hand to his mouth in horror. “I’m so sorry!” But the words were barely understandable, drowned out by his laughter.

Kaira barely had time to squeeze her eyes shut before the pie smashed into her face. She cried out in surprise, and then wiped at her eyes with her sleeve. Light, now she would have to go back to her room and change! And somehow make it there without being stopped and scolded. She brushed half-heartedly at the blueberry filling, which left purple stains on her dress. Nope, they weren't coming out anytime soon.

She groaned and rolled her eyes, and then pretended to glare at Johan. However, she couldn't keep the wide grin from spreading over her face, or the crinkles that appeared at the edges of her eyes as she strained to hold back her laughter. She placed her hands on her hips.

"Why did you do that? Now the pie is all gone and you can't have any."

To make her point, her tongue flicked out between her lips. She licked at the remains of the dessert on her face, and then her eyes widened with surprise. The pie had been freshly baked and warm. The blueberry filling dissolved in her mouth. It was sweet, tangy, and utterly delicious. She closed her eyes and moaned.

"Mmm, it's so good! You are sure missing out."

Why did he do it? Why did he do it? The laughter stopped and Johan again raised an eyebrow in what could only be disbelief. She’d been planning on doing the same to him, only he’d managed to catch her and turn the tables back on her. There would have been no pie left, either, had she dropped it on him. He certainly wouldn’t have wanted any of it afterwards. Just like he didn’t want any now.

He moved to pick up his shirt and straightened back up, pushing the hair from his face as he bit back on a sigh of exasperation. He was tired, and no doubt he stank, and he really didn’t have much time to nap before he had to go to another training session. Thank the Light he hadn’t been hit by the pie, because he wouldn’t now have to explain why his skin was suddenly stained blue.

He wondered as he stood just how she had found out where his room was. He’d only been in it for a matter of days, having moved there after he’d been raised to the title of Ji’val. Half the time, he forgot where it was and ended up lost and-

-and his eyebrow arched higher as Kaira suddenly moaned, and he couldn’t help but look at her as if she had grown an extra head. He took a step back.

“I… I can leave you and the pie to go find a room together, if you like?”

Kaira blushed. How crude!

"Don't let your imagination get too carried away," she snapped.

Why were men so silly? It was just a joke. She hadn't meant anything by it! Yet a small part of her quivered with suppressed excitement, the same part of her that lay coiled like the bud of a flower with its petals gathered tight. In the space between them, where words lay unspoken, she felt the gentle, invisible brush of something secret and forbidden. Her eyes swept across his bare chest. They lingered to examine the bruise on his side, and then darted up to his face.

His expression was as inscrutable as always - or nearly so. In her study of portraits, she had seen many faces. While each person had idiosyncrasies, she found Johan to be particularly fascinating. On the day they met in Hama Valon, he had shown himself to be something more than just a simple, ragged street rat. She imagined that after repeated observation that she was beginning to recognize the few traces of emotion that the stoic young man allowed.

Today, he looked tired. And annoyed. Kaira crossed her arms and turned away, feeling rather self-conscious. She already knew that she annoyed him. Despite that knowledge and the guilt it brought, she couldn’t help herself. He was so guarded and serious, in a way which lay at complete odds to her own rather flighty nature. She wanted to poke and pry and tease and goad. She wanted to pierce that wall he had built around himself and discover exactly what lay beyond.

There was a mirror over his dresser. She frowned when she saw her reflection. She was a mess. It was all Johan's fault.

“Do you have a towel that I can borrow?” she asked.

He hadn’t failed to notice the look, the way her eyes had swept over his chest, and he couldn’t help the blush that crept over his cheeks as a result as he moved to hastily pull his shirt back on and cover himself up. Of course, he couldn’t quite stop himself from grimacing at that, either, as the material clung uncomfortably to his still damp skin, and he had to wonder, as he resisted the urge to pull at the shirt, just what he’d done to encounter the Creator’s apparent wrath. Was a nap really such a bad idea? He worked hard, always pushed himself as far as he could, always tried his best, and he got tired, and sometimes he thought that he deserved, at least, to get a rest. That was what free time was for, wasn’t it, before he had to fling himself back onto the training grounds?

It was hard not to show his annoyance as he crossed his chest and leant back against the wall – still not entering his room. He had to hope that the colour in his cheeks would be mistaken for anger and not the embarrassment of having someone look at him. He’d never thought of himself as shy, but he also wasn’t one to put himself on display either, like he’d seen some of the other Warder Students doing, flexing their muscles just for show in front of all the watching Novices.

“I don’t have one you can borrow, no,” he said after a moment, moving ever so slightly to block the view of his room. He didn’t much like people going in there either. “I’d rather not have any of my things permanently stained purple. I’m really sorry…”

Indeed, he looked very sorry, guarding his room as if she had any plans to intrude unwanted into his quarters. Kaira drew herself up indignantly, nearly boiling with white-hot, childish rage. How she wished that she knew how to clean herself with the Power! For the first time since becoming a novice, she had the sudden desire to actually be an Aes Sedai. And then she could stuff his face full of pie! She wanted him to pay for his insolence, for the cold way he looked at her, for the way he fidgeted clearly wishing to be free of her presence, for his stony face and sarcastic tone of voice.

She snatched the pie from the ground - or what was left of it - and flung it forcefully at him. He ducked out of the way, and she only ended up seeming sillier than she already did. Which, of course, made her even angrier. She threw her hands into the air. If she could not win the battle with pie... then she would resort to a spar of words. She did not think of the consequences. All she wanted was to hurt him just as much as he had hurt her.

"Fine," she spat. "Fine! I guess that I won't bring pie by your room ever again. I had only thought that it would be nice to bring you a little dessert to celebrate your Raising. Instead you throw it in my face! And I would have forgiven you if you had shown even a modicum of common decency, but is this how you treat a friend? How could you?! I thought you were better than this, Johan. Not even gracious enough to accept a pie! Loathsome... despicable..."

She ran out of adjectives and simply stood there, shaking and feeling utterly rotten and ready to explode.

Johan just stood there in disbelief, unsure of how to act, how to react, how to… to make it so that none of this had ever happened. He hadn’t exactly asked for it, after all, had he? And he was absolutely baffled by her response and sudden change in direction. So it would have been all good for him to have been covered in pie – bloody good fun! A great joke! -, but it wasn’t all right for the tables to be turned? It wasn’t even something he could get angry about, because there wasn’t anything for him to get angry about. He just wanted to escape, get away, and take that nap he had planned.

He kneaded his brow with one hand, trying to get rid of the headache that was suddenly, rapidly, forming, and took a breath, shut his eyes, and counted to ten before he opened them and looked back at Kaira.

“Right,” he said again, his voice flat. There was no emotion in his voice: no anger, no annoyance. “So I just imagined you attempting to place the pie on the top of my door? I’m sure you would have found it nice to drop it on my head, but I certainly wouldn’t have, even though I suppose you’d have wanted me to find it funny?” He shook his head. “If you… you can’t deal with the possible consequences of your actions, then you shouldn’t do them in the first place. So don’t blame me for this.

“And we barely know each other. I don’t know you. You don’t know me. We’ve met –what-? – three times properly? Spoken maybe four? I don’t really know you.”

The flatness of his tone infuriated her. She bit out her lies through teeth clenched tight with anger.

“Drop it on your head? What a peculiar idea! I would never. I was placing it there for safekeeping from other hungry Ji’val. There was going to be a sign on the door. Like I would waste perfectly good pie! I didn’t suffer through the risk of bringing it here from the kitchens just for it to end up scattered all over the floor.”

She gestured dramatically at the scattered purple filling and broken crumbs. Then she launched into the next part of her speech.

“And you don’t have the right to lecture me about facing consequences! You don’t even want to be a Warder, you hypocrite! But you must have kept that a secret if you managed to become a Ji’val…”

Her voice trailed off as she realized what she had just said. Her head tilted to the side and she looked at him, puzzled.

“Does anybody else know?”

Apparently, Johan decided, he had done something somewhere along the line to really annoy the Creator, and the Creator was now punishing him for it. Or maybe he had stumbled upon some bubble of evil that turned Novices crazy. He couldn’t find any other explanation for why this was happening. The whole thing was just bizarre, and he had to wonder if she really believed what she was saying.

He shook his head, his eyes briefly flicking to the remains of the pie. He felt absolutely no remorse. If you wanted to play a prank, you had to be prepared for it to go wrong.

“You’re not the only one who knows, no,” he said in the same calm tone, looking back at her. “I’m fairly certain your aunt knows, for one, and your father certainly knows. He was the one who told me that there’s a difference between being Gaidin and a bonded Warder. I don’t have to be bonded if I don’t want to.

"If it was a secret, you certainly wouldn’t know about it, because it’d be a secret, but,” and he smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m glad to know you think I’m a hypocrite.”