#ask dren

Never mind—it's tearable!

(and oh my god, you wrote so well… your descriptions are *chef's kiss* and how you flesh them out so much, like there's so much even if it's a one-shot. And your longer stories have such a grip on me, like I binged a few of your fics and have not stopped nor will I till I finish them all)

and was curious if you plan to continue writing for supercorp / continuing your stories…? It's been quite a few years since an update or post about it. Fully understand if you've moved on from the fandom / life is being a bitch, just wanted to check in and ask

Hey! Thank you for checking in, I honestly hope this ask isn't too old and I'm not too late in answering. I've been absent from these parts.

Honestly, it's life being busy that's kept me away from writing, that and being more at peace than I have been in years. I think I tend to write more when I'm sad or working through something that when I'm in balance as is the case right now.

Don't get me wrong, I have written some (nothing in a postable state I'm afraid) and I'd like to come back to AO3, but I don't know when or how. Thought I was ready a couple months ago, and then it turned out I wasn't.

Please continue to take care of yourself and know that you have support and love whenever you need it whether you're writing or not

A little chili!

Beatrice wakes to an absence of warmth.

A Novice’s room is hardly ever warm, but there is a sharpness to the chill of the early morning air that can herald one thing only. An odor to it, at once pungent and clear.

Snow.

She resists the urge to burrow deeper under the pile of blankets. Soon an Accepted will be by and knock on her door and call her to service in the kitchens. She sighs, rubs sleep out of her eyes. It’s going to be a long winter.

Beatrice wakes to an absence as well. A bed, barely built for one let alone two, empty except for her. The narrow space Ava had occupied, vacant. Even the memory of her body heat is nearly gone, only faintly felt when Beatrice reaches out, fingers pressed to the shallow indent Ava’s head had left on the surface of their solitary pillow.

“Ava?” Nothing. Beatrice rolls over, puts her face closer to the wall where some prior occupant had drilled a hole through to the room adjacent, and calls again. “Ava, are you there?” Silence.

She sits up, tosses the blankets aside and her stomach twists into a knot of disquiet.

It’s a new thing, in the fast-evolving trajectory of their friendship, the sharing of a bed.

Beatrice can pinpoint the exact day it started with accuracy, yet the precise mechanics of the how it did remain unclear. Ava had simply showed up at her door at the first hint of Fall, had barely let Beatrice crack it the width of a finger before she’s pushed it fully open, her wheeled chair a battering ram crashing past the last lines of the admittedly already blurred concept of personal space between them, and announced that she was cold, her room was colder and would Beatrice mind if she squeezed in bed with her just for a night?

One sleep became two became three became a fortnight to the point Beatrice can’t imagine it’s ever been any way else. Shame colors her cheeks like so much paint as her stomach (her heart) gives another lurch. She can imagine it, but rather wouldn’t.

Dressing against the chatter of her teeth, Beatrice surveys her room a final time: no, Ava is not hiding in a corner, and yes, her chair too is gone.

She ventures outside, immediately spotting Ava one level above theirs and directly across. The rooms of that gallery are all empty, dark, and barred for fifty years she’s heard one of the Accepted say. She wonders briefly whether in another fifty years their rooms too will fall to neglect, or whether it’ll be less than. Twenty years. Ten. She abandons the dark thought with a huff and walks away from it quickly.

“Ava, what are you doing?” Ava is staring unmoving at the brightening sky “You’re going to catch a chill.” It must have been hot work to push her chair up the steep ramp and all the way around the gallery; still, Ava’s wearing just a nightshift. Now at rest, she’s sure to be frozen to the bone. “Here, put this on.”

A snowflake-sized pang of regret finds its way under Beatrice’s woollens the moment she removes her cloak but, even though she’s nowhere near mastering whatever it is that lets an Aes Sedai ignore both extreme heat and cold, she does her best to ignore it.

The cloak falls around Ava’s shoulders, white on white and soft as the layer of snow obscuring the garden down below. Ava startles. Looks at her and smiles.

“It’s snowing.” She reaches up, absently seeking Beatrice’s hands with her own. “It’s snowing, Bea.”

“I can tell.” Ava’s hands seem made of the same matter that’s falling from the sky, and Beatrice squeezes them hard, trying to restore them to a semblance of warmth. “Surely you’ve seen snow before?”

A strange expression flits across Ava’s face, and Beatrice bites the inside of her cheek to the point she tastes red, reminded of the gulf that separated their lives before Tar Valon. “I’m sorry.” Stupid, stupid. “I didn’t mean-”

The hold she has on Ava’s hands slackens with the remorse of hasty words, and Ava grasps for the chance, twisting until she’s the one gripping Beatrice’s hands tight, palm to palm, fingers interlocked.

“It’s okay.” She tilts her face down so that her lips brush the back of Beatrice’s left hand in what she would mistake for a kiss were she a fool and breathes a puff of warm air over numb flesh. “It’s just… winter sucks when you’re an orphan. I guess I should thank the Light that Amadicia rarely got any snow worth the name.”

Beatrice resists the temptation to press for more, and instead says:

“Do you like it?”

“Yes.” Ava lets go of her and extends one hand over the balustrade, watching snowflakes touch down on it and dissolve. She shivers, although perhaps it’s more of a shudder. “I think there was snow in my dreams last night.”

Beatrice doesn’t question how Ava could dream of a thing she’s never seen before, doesn’t tell her that she’s been sleep-talking (mumbling really) in the clutches of what had seemed like dreams of a darker kind. Doesn’t mention that these sorts of dreams, the ones that soak Ava’s nightshift through and dig black trenches all round her eyelids, have occurred nearly every night since they’ve begun sharing a bed. Every night since Beatrice was brought below ground to Test and refused the ter’angreal in its entirety.

She doesn’t say she’s had dreams too, lucid ones that ambush in the light of morning. What is and what could be, choices she could make branching out indefinitely; in the sheer number of them lies abject horror.

One such hovers at the corner of her eye. Beatrice focuses on Ava, on their hands still entwined. The dream – the vision – melts away. “We should head back to my room.” She glances at the sky, grey veering to lacteal. “We can snatch another half hour of warmth if we hurry.”

A flicker of motion, white from head to toe, freezes Ava’s reply. Two levels down.

“It’s an Accepted.” Slowly, carefully, Ava inches her chair back. “Crimson, I think.”

Fantastic. “We really need to go.” Beatrice looks from the wheelchair to the ramp and back again. “Can you get down without making noise?”

“I can do even better.”

“Ava, what-”

Too late. The glow of saidar dances across Ava’s knuckles. A trickle. Enough.

“Ava, don’t.” Beatrice knows it’s for naught. Ava has a glint in her eyes, mischief mixed in with intent. Snow silently coalesces into a small cloud, then a flurry. Unaware, Crimson glides from door to door, rapping once before she moves on to the next. “Ava, please, stop.” The cloud of snow, clumped together into something more solid, has reached the size and rough shape of a bucket. A weave of air and water nudges it under the eaves of the gallery and over Crimson’s unsuspecting head.

Grinning, Ava lets the Power go.

“See?” She whispers, as the first shriek reaches their ears. “I stopped like you asked me to.”

Beatrice grabs the back of the chair and whirls her around. “Let’s go.” She doesn’t care that the wheels let out a squeak against the marble. Crimson is screaming loud enough to cover the sound. “I swear to the Light, one of these days you’ll get into some real trouble, and I won’t be there to get you out of it.”

By some sort of miracle or mercy of the Light they make it back to Beatrice’s room undetected.

“Come on.” Beatrice pushes the door open, struggling to wedge the bulky chair inside. “Just-” Another set of hands appears, pushing Ava the rest of the way through, and Beatrice, too stunned to speak, stumbles after.

“Neat trick.” With Mary, and Shannon Sedai, and the two of them besides, the room, which is already cramped, shrinks down to a broom closet. “You should ask Shan to show you how to make ice appear inside people’s clothes, though.” Mary winks. “Less likely to be found out that way.”

“Aes Sedai.” With so little space it is impossible to curtesy, but to her credit Beatrice tries. “It’s all my fault. I told Ava I was sad,” Lie. She’s never as happy as when she is with Ava. “She just wanted to make me laugh. I will apo-”

“You’re sad?” Ava’s eyes study her face, full of concern. “You didn’t tell me you were sad, Bea. Why are you sad?”

Shannon brings a finger to her lips, and they all go quiet, waiting. A knock comes at Beatrice’s door, Ava’s, then the one further down the hall.

After, Ava is still looking at her for answer, and Shannon Sedai is still looking at them both, face blank save for an uptick to the corner of her mouth that smooths completely flat the instant Beatrice notices it.

“I will not report you this time.” The Aes Sedai declares finally, and Beatrice exhales a breath she’d not noticed she’d been holding. “But you best lay low for a while.”

“Until she teaches you that trick is what she means.” Mary chimes in, making Shannon sigh.

“Don’t encourage them, Mary.” Shannon gestures, and the door opens without anyone touching it. The wind snags at it, meaning to close it, and the Aes Sedai stops it with her hand. “Be steadfast now, child.” She holds Beatrice’s gaze for a moment, and then she’s gone, Mary hard on her heels.

The button up shirt, garish in contrast to the rest of the clothes Beatrice is wearing, gapes open at the front, more than a few of the buttons missing and Beatrice too loathe to alter the well-worn fabric in any way to replace them.

The sleeves fall shorter on her than they had on the original wearer, stopping at an unsatisfactory middle point between elbow and wrist, covering her forearms but at the same time leaving them bare.

Beatrice rolls them up: her fingers catch against a small tear she hadn't noticed when she last put the shirt in the wash, glance off fabric that's becoming threadbare, pineapple print fading just as her scent had; the shirt now smells of soap, of Beatrice's sweat after she's worn it a few times, and everything she's tried to hold onto by wearing it is fading too. Past memory to blur.