#this IS shippy but it's primarily moiraine ruminations and extremely muted mutual pining LOL

[superfluouskeys]

ghost of you

Wheel of Time || Moiraine/Lan

Lan is agitated, defensive, and Moiraine gets the distinct sense he’s not really hearing what she’s trying to say.  He knows she wants to mask the bond, give him a chance to visit his family in the kind of utter privacy she values, and he wants to tell her not to do it.  Moiraine thinks, not for the first time, that she’s quite lucky to have a Warder with such strength of will.  A lesser man would have succumbed to madness long ago, being left to his own devices so often. “I like her, you know.  The Wisdom.” It is true, because it has to be.  Moiraine cannot lie.  She does like Nynaeve, in the way one admires something she may never fully understand.  Much of Nynaeve’s insolence she files away with the rest, the others’ baffling tendency to disbelieve and doubt her even when she is being as forthright as is physically possible, baseless and tiresome at the very best of times.  Sometimes, however, Moiraine can understand Nynaeve’s suspicion to be borne of a genuine sense of responsibility, not merely to her charges, but to anyone she views as unable to protect himself. And on that note, she is not a little grateful to Nynaeve.  It’s not every channeler who would call upon the One Power to save the life of a Warder not her own.  It’s not every channeler who could, even if she wanted to.  Much has been whispered in recent days of the tragedy of a Warder who outlives his Aes Sedai, but the reverse is often almost as true.  Moiraine imagines, perhaps fancifully, that she would handle losing Lan even worse than he would handle losing her.

Read More (AO3)