Heartbroken and Blind [ATTN: Fiona/Marla]

[Jon]

Phineas

Phineas had his nose in the library’s book on the history of studying ter’angreal, but his eyes did not see the words on the page. He was instead, too focused on the small slip of paper that he’d slid between two pages further along in the book. His mind fumbled over the words read in the privacy of his section in the library for a few seconds before he forced himself to try and read the words in front of him. You cannot continue to cry, Phineas he told himself as he walked. He knew that anyone who stopped him and looked into his face would see the red, puffy eyes of a man who had just had his heart ripped out of him, and he did not want to explain that to anyone. In his focus on trying to forget what he would always remember, Phineas didn’t realize he’d taken a few wrong turns and wound up in the Warder Yards. This was a part of the Tower that he avoided as best he could. Weapons were something that he used to make not use. He barely noticed the pairs sparring around him as he stepped across the yards, unfortunately crossing the path of a pair of drin’far’ji who were sparring.

[Sunny]

Fiona

Left. Right. Left. Right.

Fiona’s fists felt raw, and her arms throbbed with every blow to the leather-wrapped pads that her sparring partner had strapped against his arms. Her parents had never allowed her to fight with her fists. The one time they had caught her engaging in fisticuffs, her bottom had stung for a week and she had not stepped outside the manor’s gardens for a month.

Now it was expected of her, and her slight body was wholly unprepared for the activity. Bruises in various shades of purple and green marched over her entire body, remnants of brutal lessons in defense that she still had not mastered. I will get better, she thought. The black-headed boy she sparred with caught her eye and gave her annoyed look. The next time she swung at his forearm, he jerked it to the side and pushed back, twisting her hand at a painful angle and dragging her knuckles across the leather so hard they burned.

“Ow!” Fiona yelped, stepped back as taught to examine the damage. Before she could voice her objections to the rough treatment, someone else bowled into her from the side, knocking her to the ground. As she fell she looked up, seeing only black breeches, black coat, and a brief glimpse of a face that reflected utter misery. Then the man was gone as if he hadn’t noticed her at all.

“That must have hurt,” Terrence said with false sympathy, holding his hand out.

Fiona glared at him. “Go fight with someone you can’t bully, you woolheaded chicken chaser,” Fiona said sharply. He rolled his eyes and turned away.

She stood carefully, brushing dirt off her gray-clad legs and bottom as her eyes strayed toward the figure that had run into her. It took only a moment to decide what to do; with a furtive glance at her instructor, Fiona inched her way to the edge of the Practice Yards and ran after the stranger.

She caught up with him north of the stables; he had collapsed against the wall, staring at a piece of paper in his hand as if his eyes could light the bloody thing on fire. “You look miserable,” she commented simply, holding out her handkerchief. The fine linen caught on the blisters that ringed her palms, and she winced. “Care to talk about it?”

[Jon]

Phineas

Phineas didn’t even notice the young woman with whom he collided as he made his way through the Warder Yards. It did not even register that he’d made human contact. All he could tell was that he’d stumbled and that he was not where he wanted to be. If someone had asked him where that was, he wouldn’t have been able to say, but he knew it was not where he currently was. And that was that. Voices sounded as he staggered past the pair whose spar he’d interrupted, but Phineas was too far gone to have been able to make out words even if he could have registered the voices. Mentally and emotionally drained, his body was shutting down from the stress. So it was no surprise when he collapsed after making his way just north of the stables. His walking had finally brought him to a wall that he decided to lean up against (well in this case rather to sit up against because he’d collapsed when he stopped moving) instead of finding the doorway through it that would lead him elsewhere. Perhaps, with the rough stone wall providing him some sort of stability, he was able to face the demons that had been unleashed by the letter in his book. He pulled it out, unfolding it and rereading the worst words he’d ever read. Phineas, I am writing to inform you that if you were ever to show your Light-forsaken face in our area again, I personally will string the noose around your neck. You are a disgrace to our village, and you have spat upon the goodness of Master Kamryn and his family. I admit that I too was caught up in your unnatural fancies, and I let myself be swayed by your tenacity. However, I am immune to your administrations henceforth, and I will not tolerate them. None of us will. So stay the burning well away from us all, or we’ll see you hang. Cymon Phineas was not surprised by the content of the letter, per se. He’d known his friends’ and surrogate family’s reaction to his relationship with Cymon, and he had planned never to return to that village. However, he still had hope that Cymon might find him, might enlist among the Warders and that they would be able to be together. All of that, however, was ripped out from under him by hateful words written by his former lover. He read and reread those words until a female voice interrupted him. “There’s nothing to talk about,” he replied coldly, sniffling back tears and snot that he hadn’t even realized were flowing. “There’s nothing…” His voice broke into sobs again as he tried to reassure her that he was fine. Why put up a pretense? What was the point of it anymore? He just sat there and cried—a big, strong man with a soft, wounded heart and letting the whole world see it.

[Sunny]

Fiona

"There's nothing to talk about. There's nothing..." the stranger's voice broke, and he began to cry in earnest, curling into a ball against the wall with his arms around his knees and his head buried in the space between. His grief, whatever its cause, went far deeper than anything she had ever experienced, and it tore at her soul. She could not simply leave him; he reminded her of nothing so much as a forlorn child in that moment.

She sank to her knees in front of him, ignoring dust and dirt as she reached for his hands. As she did, his fingers went limp and the paper he held fluttered to the ground. After a moment of silence punctured by shuddering sobs, the tiny Andoran reached for it. She intended to return it unread, but the word noose jumped out at her, and she found she could not help herself.

Blue eyes scanned the paper first with curiosity, and then with growing horror. By the greeting, her new companion's name was Phineas. The rest? Whoever wrote the message had chosen words intended to bite deep and cause pain. The writer was an old lover, by the sound of it, and judging by the tone and the name, likely male.

After another long moment of staring at the letter, she matter-of-factly crumbled the filthy thing between her palms and tossed it aside with a quiet curse on its maker. Then she twisted to sit next to the boy in black, and without a moment of hesitation, put her arm around his shoulders. "My name is Fiona," she said calmly. "I don't know anything about you, or why someone would write such a letter, but I know it was a hateful thing to do, and no one deserves such treatment. If you decide you want to talk, I will listen."

He didn't move or speak. The former Lady shifted to get a little more comfortable, then sat quietly to wait. Eventually he would talk, or he would leave. Until then, at least he wasn't alone.

[Jon]

Phineas

The sobs that wracked Phineas’s body left him curled into a ball. The palms of his hands were pressed flat against his face as he wailed into them. Tears and snot streamed down his face, along with sweat. Being this distraught was exhausting, or would be once his body caught up with the energy it was expending. For now, the adrenaline from the high emotional turmoil was enough to keep him going. With his eyes covered and his mind caught up in the emotion, he didn’t realize that he’d dropped the letter. He started whispering and sobbing, “Why?” In his desperation, he couldn’t understand what had driven Cymon to write this. He sat that way, lost in the storm of emotion raging inside him like a leaf caught in the wind, until that female voice broke through. Like a lighthouse’s beam in the night, the soft, kind words of that woman called to his floundering heart. And he found his way to the shore. “I will,” he started, gasping between each word, “talk.” It took him a moment to compose himself. He unashamedly undid the top buttons of his black coat, giving him access to his undershirt, with which he then wiped the snot and tears from his face. He could imagine his face was red and blotchy. This wasn’t the first time he’d cried, just the first time in a long while. “That letter,” Phineas began, inhaling sharply at the pain that came from discussing the bloody thing, “came from a man who served as an apprentice under the same blacksmith I did. He and I grew up together, practically, having started our apprenticeship about a year apart.” The more Phin talked, the more steady his voice became. “We hated each other at first, but eventually we became close friends,” he added. With that, he looked Fiona in the face. There was no hiding what was in that letter, no hiding with whom exactly Phineas preferred to share his bed. “Then we became more than friends,” he said defiantly, staring her in the face. “We were discovered and run out of town. Apparently, however, he went back and blamed me for the whole situation.” His voice was now laden with anger and disgust. He spat off to the side, as if the words he’d uttered had soiled his mouth. “Bloody hypocrite,” Phineas muttered, “the whole business was his idea not mine.” He huddled together a little tighter, still feeling the pain of the betrayal, but it was being replaced by anger. The warmth of that anger stoked life back into his mind, clearing his thoughts abit. “I’m Phineas, by the way,” he added, “but I think you gathered as much.” He looked at the letter that Fiona had crumpled and thrown away. Without thought, he embraced Saidin and channeled a thread of Fire. The paper flashed to ash, and he felt some satisfaction at having destroyed it.