Chapter Text
Mat had never been to war. He’d never held a blade beyond the dagger that Laila had given him. He’d never commanded an army, or dodged blasts beneath the cover of darkness to carry a message back to his command. Still, as he danced through the debris of the slaughter, he was filled with the steel of familiarity. His body knew how to move to minimize the injuries he took. His heart beat a soft and steady rhythm, as though he wasn’t running for his life in search of the two little girls that he’d raised like they were his own children.
He found them beneath a chicken coop, faces streaked with dirt but not tears. (The Cauthon children had long since learned not to cry.) The two had dragged a piece of wood in front of the opening, and Bode clutched Eldrin’s hand like her life depended on it. Their too-thin bodies trembled with every crash in the distance.
“Hey.” Mat would have wept from the relief, but he could barely feel it. “You’re alright. I’ve got you.” He took them into his arms with a desperation that was entirely his own. He wanted to crawl right under the rickety structure with them and be just as small and scared as they were. Instead, he braced himself against the blessed numbness that was wrapped around his shoulders like a blanket. He took them to the old oak tree in the forest, shepherded them up into the branches, and stood with his back to the bark and his hand on Laila’s dagger.
Mat knew, rationally, that he was terrified. All logic suggested that fear was the only possible response to the events of the night—fear and grief for the people who wouldn’t make it out of this alive. He felt nothing but a distant flare of anger at his parents’ cowardice.
He’d feel it all when he was safe, he’d always assured himself. Yet, Mat had a sneaking suspicion that the day where he was safe enough to exist as more than a hair-trigger soldier was never going to arrive.
***
Amera was furious.
The Cauthons had acted with greater dishonor than any deserter she’d ever encountered—and, given her background, she’d encountered quite a few.
She usually understood it: war took everything that a person thought they knew about themself and twisted it until it was unrecognizable. Children became wizened in days as they fought for their homes, and even old, hardened soldiers could snap after seeing just one cruelty too many. Amera may have shamed any deserter she encountered, but she would never blame a person for losing their nerve.
Abell and Natti Cauthon, though, never had any nerve to begin with.
The fierce care that had driven Matrim to steal, bleed, and love for his sisters was entirely absent in those who had given all three of them life. Their children were their pleasures and burdens, alternatively, but never their family.
Amera would have laughed, but she didn’t dare to make a sound.
She held the dagger with the hand of a gambler and the grasp of a warrior. In her periphery, the lanterns on the river swirled and bled until they looked just like the weaves of the Pattern itself. Cursed and violent though the night had become, Amera loved Beltine with an ache in her soul.
She knew what it was to follow the lights home.
(Eighteen years ago, Manetheren had called her, and she had come.)
***
Mat let his mother take her little girls into her arms as though she’d been the one to keep them safe the night before. She needed them, and he couldn’t begrudge her that, no matter how much he had needed her. Besides, if there was a chance that his sisters could have the mother that he’d always wanted, he would do anything to make it happen. Maybe nearly losing her little girls would bring her to her senses.
Mat raised his eyes to meet his father’s gaze, and found himself trapped within the scornful perspective for a moment too long. He would’ve stayed there, too, but a familiar silhouette behind the old, broken man had his head snapping away like a compass freed to face north. “Perrin!” He’d registered Rand and Egwene when he’d arrived in the square, but a cursory glance had shown him that they were well enough, if not in the prime of health. The same couldn't be said for the fourth of their little group.
Perrin looked as dead as Laila’s stiff body in his arms.
Light, Mat wanted to curse every devious hand that had woven this horrible tangle into their lives.
“Perrin!” He reached his friend just as Perrin laid Laila down on a wooden palette and knelt beside her. Mat didn’t say a word, but he grasped Perrin’s shoulder with his own cold fingers and wished that he could summon up some warmth for both of them. He refused to leave Perrin's side. He would keep watch. He would be the steadiness to fall back on, when the light of Perrin’s fury broke through the clouds in his mind—or when those clouds turned to rain, and the tears that so few of them recalled the taste of began to fall.
He would stay, when they placed the apple seed in Laila’s hand and lowered her into the earth.
Perrin had stayed at Mat’s side through years of cold winters, destructive choices, and half-hearted attempts to make things better. Mat refused to leave his friend now.
He refused, and even the conniving woman who’d arrived to steal them all away from the only home they’d ever known wouldn’t break his resolve. “We’re not going with you,” Mat told her. His voice was as firm as the grasp he held on Perrin’s shoulder.
“I fear you don’t have a choice. I am sorry to be the one to lay this on your shoulders, but you have a duty, all of you.”
“Exactly.” Mat wasn’t sure where the words that fell from his lips were coming from, but he was as powerless to stop them as he was to resist the rivers. “We have a duty. Our duty is to the place and people that raised us, however shabby and worthless you might think it is. We have dead to bury, people to heal, and children to care for.”
Perrin choked a bit, as Mat said the word ‘bury.’ Mat gripped his shoulder so tightly that he thought either his or Perrin’s bones were sure to break.
“Mat,” Egwene murmured. She’d spent enough time around the Wisdom’s hut to know exactly where the panic in his voice came from. She knew that if he left, his sisters would be all alone. And still, she said, “Who’s to say that more people won’t come after us? The Two Rivers can’t take another assault. We’ve already lost too many to this one. We can barely heal the ones that are left!”
“You’re just saying that because you think you’re destined for something better than this place. You think you’re fucking special, Egwene, but you’re not. You’re just a kid from the Two Rivers. None of us are the bloody Dragon Reborn.” It wasn’t fair. Mat knew that it wasn’t fair. Most people in the Two Rivers spent their lives wishing for something more, and Egwene’s hopes weren’t half as selfish as Mat’s own dreams of leaving and finding a place where he could be happy on his own.
“I know better than to stick around here and be a poison to the place and people I love!”
Mat flinched so violently that Perrin startled out of his stupor to glance worriedly at him.
“You want to follow her because she reminds you of Nynaeve." Mat was on a roll, now, and he couldn't bring himself to shut his Light-damned mouth. "Well, Nynaeve’s not coming back, Egwene! I know she believed in you—we all fucking believe in you because you’re bloody brilliant—but reaching for the next person to treat you like you’re special does nothing but dishonor her memory.”
“Fuck you, Mat.” Egwene stepped towards Rand and turned her face towards his broad chest to hide her tears. Rand stared Mat down, eyes alight with anger, betrayal, and, most damningly—worry.
Mat ached. He opened his mouth to apologize, but a roar in the distance cut him off.
Fuck. Fuck. Egwene was right. Their only chance now rested in hoping that they were tasty enough prey to draw the Trollocs in the other direction.
“We need to leave. Now.” The blue-cloaked woman wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer, and the warrior beside her looked ready to take them by force. There was certainly an interesting dynamic there, Mat thought distantly. Perhaps Bode and Eldrin would laugh with him about it when he came back home.
Perhaps they wouldn’t have starved to death by the time he got back.
Impossibly, this time, it was Egwene who slowed the woman’s progress. “We’ll come with you, but not until we’ve said goodbye.” She looked towards him, barely a glance, but Mat saw in her eyes the ice that shattered when the rivers began flowing again each spring. “Mat’s right. We all have a duty to the people of this place.”
“Make it quick,” the woman said. Her warrior prickled beside her.
Yep, there was definitely something strange going on there.
With only seconds to impart every lesson that he’d hoped to teach his sisters in the ruins of his mother’s cruelty, Mat found himself mute. He stumbled towards where his father scowled, his mother stood staring at nothing, and his sisters clutched each other like they had nothing else in the world. (Once he was gone, they wouldn’t.) He tried to reach towards them, but something stopped him in his tracks.
Behind him, Perrin hadn’t moved. His deep brown eyes were fixed on Laila’s body. His lips swelled and stiffened around a silent prayer. A quick glance around the square revealed that his parents were nowhere to be seen.
Perrin, Mat realized like a punch to the gut, didn’t have anyone here to say goodbye to.
And so, as he’d trained himself to do since he was barely old enough to move, Mat made himself what he needed to be. He met Perrin’s eyes, let his own fill with the anxiety that existed somewhere in his soul, and whispered “I don’t know what to say.”
Perrin had a hand on his back and was steering him towards the little cluster of broken people before Mat could blink.
“Hey there, Bodewhin, Eldrin. Your brother and I have to go on a little trip today, alright? We might be gone for a while, but you aren’t to worry an ounce about us. We’ll be home as soon as we can.”
“And we’ll miss you every day,” Mat managed to gasp out. “You ridiculous, beautiful little creatures. Come here.” Eldrin looked towards her mother for permission, but Bode flung herself onto Mat without hesitating. When their mother nodded, Eldrin followed her sister, as swift as a summer storm.
“Why do you have to go?” she whispered into Mat’s hair.
He felt as though he was going to die right there on the cold ground. He wanted to spin some fantastical story, make them laugh so that he could etch their smiles into his memory one last time, to permanently banish any ounce of guilt they might ever feel over his disappearance. They were as sharp as arrowheads, though. They would know if he was lying. Mat cleared his throat, and told them the closest thing he could to the truth.
“The world isn’t safe or beautiful right now. I’m going to find a way to make it into the most wonderful place that you could ever imagine, so that I can come get you and we can all live in it and be happy together. Does that make sense?”
“You never make sense,” Bode sobbed, and burrowed deeper into his chest.
Mat clutched them against his ribs and quaked. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
He was glad, in the end, that he’d asked Perrin to come with him. The blacksmith was the only one among them who would have been strong enough to pull Mat from his sisters and lead him away. He kept Mat’s feet on course, even as Mat looked over his shoulder again and again, only to see his sisters weeping and clinging to each other, with his parents having already turned their backs.
Had they always been so small? Was it just the distance?
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Perrin held him in a vice-like grip until they mounted the horses and were forced to let go of each other. Mat watched as Rand and Egwene were torn apart, just as reluctant. He tried to look back one last time as they rode up and out of the valley, but a heavy fog had descended over the Two Rivers as though the air itself was exhaused.
So, as he had done since the Wheel had been spinning, Mat Cauthon turned his head away from Manetheren and rode on towards what his bones already knew would be the battle of a lifetime.
(Somewhere, Amera began to sharpen her spear.)