Chapter Text
Spanreed message: Herdaz front to Urithiru
Ka— do you have access to the main spanreed network? Can you reach the battalion in Azir for me? Our spanreed to them seems to be out.
I need to speak with Adolin urgently.
— Sigzil
We haven’t heard from them in a few days. In fact the leadership here were going to send forces to them, but the Oathgate seems to be locked.
Anything I can help with? Strategic updates I can pass along to someone here?
Damnation. That’s of no use then.
Do let me know if they get in contact.
It’s not a strategic matter. It’s Kaladin.
Storms.
How bad is it?
It’s very very bad.
Ka, any word from Azir?
Nothing. Dalinar is very worried about them, he may send troops overground.
He asked after Kaladin too, do you want to bring him back to Urithiru?
He’s not stable enough to move right now. If that changes, I will bring him back, as I think a war camp is not the best place for recovery.
Is he recovering then?
Not very well. But he’s still with us, at least.
Word about Azir, but not what you hoped for.
Tell me, please.
Still no contact, but Azimir is feared lost.
Sorry, I’ve been awake for three days straight. I may be misunderstanding you. Lost?
Fallen to the enemy. Unclear if anybody made it out of the city.
…Fuck.
Are things any better with Kaladin?
Marginally. I now feel mildly hopeful that he won’t die, rather than certain that he will.
Please phrase that better if you pass it along to Dalinar.
I’ll keep praying for him.
Storming Damnation anti-light.
If Sigzil didn’t hate it enough before, he could now power a sun with the strength of his hatred.
Two weeks, ten full days, and he is still unsure if Kaladin is going to wake up. Or even live. Sometimes Sigzil thinks he will, that they’ve made progress, but then Kaladin slides back again and—
Well, Sigzil doesn’t really feel like he can take his eyes off him.
Right after Kaladin was injured in the fight, Sigzil and Teft both stayed awake for nearly four full days, chewing ill-advised quantities of ridgebark to stay alert so they could monitor each one of his breaths, every one of his heartbeats, which kept slowing and stuttering and dropping out to nothing. Even now, his heart rate feels more fluttery than stable. Sigzil's own heart has taken damage in the process.
So many moments of that hellish week are burned permanently in his mind.
Teft counting breaths aloud to try to help steady Kaladin’s ragged, desperate breathing, even though Kaladin couldn’t hear him. And doing it for hours.
The night when Kaladin was shaking so bad from the cold that Rock just climbed into bed to hold him.
The point where Sigzil had been awake for so many hours, had consumed so much ridgebark to stay alert, that he felt like he was separating entirely from reality, and found himself thinking, over and over to the exclusion of all else, he is going to die he is going to die he is going to die.
Kaladin didn’t die. Yet. Sigzil is still unsure whether he is going to.
For now, he’s sitting at the end of Kaladin’s bed, wondering what on Roshar he is going to say to him if he does wake up. Congratulations on surviving that, Kaladin. Azir’s fallen and your husband is presumed dead.
Storm it all.
Kaladin wakes groggily with his head resting on Teft’s chest. He can hear the thud of Teft’s heartbeat under his ear, even and strong. His own heart feels stuttering and weak by comparison, keeps jumping unevenly in his chest. Syl is curled up under his chin, listening to it pulse in his throat.
“Hey, kid,” Teft says softly, not moving from under him. His hands are very careful in Kaladin’s hair, like even pulling it too hard might break him. “That you awake, finally?”
Kaladin nods, which makes his head hurt.
“Good,” Teft says. “Thank fuck. Oh, my boy.” Then he hugs Kaladin to him, albeit very carefully.
“What… happened?” Kaladin manages. He can’t recall much. Just pain, and then nothing. It can’t have been that long since the battle, though, considering his entire body still hurts like the anti-light just burned through it.
“What do you remember?” Teft asks.
“Getting hit with that dagger,” Kaladin says. Speaking is really hard, both physically and emotionally. “Anti-light. I passed out. That’s all.”
“That’s probably for the best.” Teft sighs heavily. “Since then, you’ve been out for three weeks.”
“Three weeks?” Kaladin demands, then regrets his own volume.
“It was bad,” Teft says, tone darkening with the memory. “We weren’t sure you would make it.”
Kaladin tries to push himself up, but collapses again as pain lances through all of his nerve endings, his vision whiting out for a second. Fuck.
“Don’t move,” Teft says. “Let’s not make it worse.”
“Can I just have some water?” Kaladin manages.
“Course. Hang on.” He carefully maneuvers himself out from under Kaladin. Kaladin turns, and lets Teft prop him up against the wall of the infirmary. Even being semi-upright makes his vision spin, but he accepts the glass of water Teft passes him.
Then stares at his hands, which are trembling violently.
Teft perches on the bed beside him, steadying Kaladin’s hands with his own. “Easy.”
Kaladin manages to drink some water, then accepts the fathom bark Teft hands him to chew on. His hands are still shaking, but it’s light enough he can hold it anyway.
Sitting upright is painful enough that he has to give the fathom bark a few minutes to work before he can speak again. Then he says, “Was anyone else hurt?”
Teft hesitates just a second too long before saying, “No.”
That makes Kaladin put down the medicine. “Who else?”
“No one at this battle.”
“Teft, please don’t keep it from me.” Kaladin just cannot take not knowing.
“I’m worried about your heart,” Teft says, eventually. “I need you to stay calm right now.”
“I’m clearly not staying calm,” Kaladin says. He only feels more anxious and his heart is thrumming unevenly in his throat. “Teft.”
Teft scrubs a hand over his face. “Azimir’s fallen to the enemy. Oathgate’s shut down. Fused are in control of the city. They can’t tell for sure if anyone made it out, but they think not.”
For a moment, Kaladin can only hear a high pitched ringing in his ears, and his heart galloping in his chest, trying to shatter through his ribs.
Then he blacks out.
Teft is holding him again when he wakes, crouched by the bed this time. Kaladin’s chest hurts like his heart has been physically broken. Maybe it has.
“Teft,” he manages, swallowing past the pain. “Adolin.”
“I know, kid,” Teft says, pain in his voice too. “I’m really sorry.”
“I have to— I have to go to him— maybe there’s still something—”
“You’re in no state to do that,” Teft says firmly. “Dalinar’s sending ground troops. If there’s anything to be done, they’ll do it.”
Kaladin presses his face into Teft’s chest again. “But you don’t think so.”
“I don’t know. There weren’t many reports, and what there were, weren’t good.”
Kaladin’s heart is hurting again. Syl, curled again against his throat, pulses steadily as if to school his heart back into a normal rhythm. Even she doesn’t seem to have comforting words for him now.
“I want to go back to Urithiru,” Kaladin says. If there’s anything, they’ll hear it first, if there’s even a chance—
“Once you’re stable, I’ll take you, promise. It’s a long flight like this, is all.”
Kaladin hasn’t even tried to draw in Stormlight again yet. He’s finding it hard to even care about that.
Adolin.
Maybe the anti-light should have just killed him after all.
It takes Kaladin a few days to regain the will to live after that. He contemplates not regaining it at all.
He doesn’t have much energy or ability to get up anyway. The anti-light has royally fucked him up. His hands tremble all the time. His sense of balance is completely shot. He’s exhausted constantly, even after sleeping for ages. Though he can still breathe in Stormlight, it doesn’t seem to help with any of that.
But all of that is nothing compared to Adolin. Adolin who’s almost certainly dead in occupied Azir. How long since Azimir fell? Almost a month now, it seems. And no word from anyone. Any number of horrible things could have happened, and Kaladin wasn’t there to protect him. His husband is dead and he wasn’t even there. What is the point of any of this.
He spends several days just lying in his infirmary bed, completely spent. He is, in fact, supposed to be resting anyway, but this feels less like rest and more like giving up. He can tell how much it’s disturbing Teft, who’s sitting with him, and is used to Kaladin fighting off anyone who tries to tell him he should rest when there’s still work to be done. Now, when the Edgedancers and surgeons tell him to rest he just nods. Fine. Whatever. He doesn’t care.
He’s upsetting Syl, too, who wants him to get up and at least try. Try to talk to Bridge Four, try to walk, try to do something, anything. Kaladin can’t see the point in it. If the world wants to end in catastrophe, then fine. Fine.
Let it.
After several days or weeks of being almost completely checked out of reality, Kaladin wakes up one day and decides, actually, fuck this.
Everyone keeps telling him Adolin is dead. But no one has actually been in Azimir. No one has actually seen anything. No one knows for sure. Which means there’s still a chance.
He has to do something. He has to get into Azimir. He has to rescue Adolin, or at least find out for sure what happened.
To do that he first needs to get himself back into fighting shape, to whatever extent that is possible. That first involves actually getting up, and that alone has been a tall order lately. Nevertheless, he pushes himself upright in his infirmary bed, Syl cheering him on and looking happy for the first time in a while.
Then he sways, and nearly topples over, startling Sigzil who’s fallen asleep in the chair by the bed, reports stacked in his lap.
Sigzil shakes himself, blinking awake. “You’re up? Where are you going?”
“I’m going to go sit in camp,” Kaladin says. “I can’t lie here anymore.” One step at a time, he’s aware he’s not capable of getting to Azimir right now. But he will be. He has to.
Sigzil looks briefly alarmed, then tentatively pleased. “Let me help you.”
“It’s hardly a far walk.”
“It is when you’ve barely walked in a month. Come.” He gets up and offers Kaladin his arm. Kaladin pulls himself to his feet, sways, then manages to stabilize himself on Sigzil.
Being upright like this storming hurts, but Kaladin doesn’t sit back down. He does let Sigzil duck under his arm to take more of his weight, and wrap an arm around his waist.
“Come on, then,” Sigzil says. “Rock has a fire on, I’m sure.”
And they make their slow, painful way out of the infirmary.
In any other circumstances, Sigzil would not want Kaladin to be up walking like this. But considering that, for the first time in more than a week, he’s apparently decided he wants to do something other than merging into the infirmary bed and dying, Sigzil is hardly going to stop him.
They manage to make it over to the fire eventually, though Kaladin is shaking dreadfully against Sigzil’s side and seems like every step pains him.
Sigzil deposits him close to the fire, knowing how cold he still often feels thanks to anti-light’s cursed influence, and Rock appears as if summoned with a cup of tea and a blanket to wrap around Kaladin’s shoulders. Then he sits behind him so Kaladin can lean against his chest and Rock can steady his quivering hands.
“How are you now?” Rock asks.
“Not great,” Kaladin says, drinking some of the tea and then leaning his head on Rock’s shoulder, evidently exhausted just from walking over here.
“Is okay, you go back to sleep,” Rock says. “But drink tea first, will help.”
“Yeah, what did you put in this? It’s not an herb I’m familiar with.”
“We have better medicines in Peaks, not these weak lowland plants,” Rock says, which makes Kaladin chuckle fondly. “Is good for this.” He touches Kaladin’s hand. “Tremors. Nerve pain.”
“Well, thank you, then.” Kaladin tucks his head under Rock’s chin, closing his eyes. Rock wraps his arms around him, meeting Sigzil’s eyes over his head. Sigzil just gives him a tiny smile.
Gradually, the rest of Bridge Four trickle in, all relieved to see Kaladin there. They’ve been visiting him in the infirmary, of course, but it’s a different feeling than having him here with them.
Kaladin clearly still feels pretty out of it, but Sigzil thinks he seems more content here with the group. In any case, no one tries to get him to go back to the infirmary. He just dozes against Rock’s chest, occasionally waking to talk quietly with someone or drink whatever tea or soup Rock tries to feed him.
Everything is still a mess, but for the first time in a while Sigzil actually feels tentatively hopeful.
This is good. Finally, progress.
