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Gavinor Kholin, son of King Elhokar Kholin, grandson of the Blackthorn, champion of Odium, sat in a cell. No one had locked him away. He had simply gone to place in Urithiru with the least amount of people.
No one seemed to know what to do with him.
He didn’t know what to do with himself. He couldn’t go to his room- his childhood room where the sheets had been tucked in around a five year old only nine days ago. Where he had been in the spirit realm when he was younger but less and less as time went on and Odium had told him he would show him more truth. The familiar building of anger swelled in his chest but without the brace of any confidence it just rumbled aimless and slipped away. Feeling like heat leaching from his body. Replaced by a hole of grief and loss and confusion.
What was he? What had he done?
He thought of the garden room as he had stumbled down the stairs from the rooftop but he had wanted to go down, down, down. The green was too soothing, too like childhood innocence, too much like his grandmother’s embrace. The one Odium had taken him from but promised, promised it had been for the best. For his kingdom. For the world. Because they would be united all under one god like Alethkar had been united under one king by his grandfather. That would make his father proud.
Odium said that often. Odium that betrayed him. Offered him up like a hog for slaughter to his grandfather in the end.
Was it all wrong? Everything?
No. No!
It couldn’t be. What had Odium said? That he would have sent Elhokar against Dalinar but he was now beyond his reach. Was it all a lie? What he had been hearing was all the god along? He almost let out a sob but clenched his teeth shut to stop it.
His father did love him. He had. He had. Odium had let him relive his father rescue him both as himself and as his father. Elhokar had loved him. Had wanted him. The arms that picked him up and carried him away from his mother’s voidspren had been real. The soldiers in blue who had saved him from Kholinar had said so. His grandmother had said so. His grandfather-
He couldn’t stop the next sob and collapsed against the wall. Clutching Oathbringer in his arms. No one had stopped him from taking the blade, though this was the first time he had really held it. The spren not forming a sword in the spirit realm.
Something weakly seemed to reach from the blade, spurred by his thoughts of Dalinar, its wielder for decades.
Gavinor screamed and hurled the sword away from himself. Sending it clattering on the stone.
He had spent all his time training, preparing, and suffering. Under Odium’s watch. For the good of what? He had grown to adulthood in the spirit realm, vision after vision after vision. Grueling trails pressed onto him for the better good, for revenge, because it was for the best. So Odium had said.
Now he was here.
His remaining family in the tower in part comatose or simply unsure what to do with him. Jasnah was so much smaller and frailer than his wisps of memory thought of her. Not what she had seemed like in corners of his father’s life- lived over and over and over. Renarin- was Renarin younger than him now? That was wrong.
He didn’t want either of them. He wanted Navani to wake up. As much as he was angry for her for supporting Dalinar- she, like his father, had chosen him. Or tried. But she had failed. Should he hate her? Clashing emotions threatened to split his head and he clutched it, pressing fingers into his skull. A half whimper escaping from him involuntarily.
Jasnah wasn’t Navani. And Renarin, faintly remembered as nice, wasn’t Adolin. Who had been so tall and bright and warm and taught him to ride horses. Who had always seemed just a little sad when Dalinar entered the room. Dalinar who had killed Adolin’s mother. It had made him feel like being Odium’s could fix that. That he would be right. That he would win.
Dalinar who had in the end died just a man, body shielding Gavinor in the storm.
Dalinar who had looked at him devastated when Gavinor had been frozen and left only to weep.
He felt like vomiting.
Storms the last time he had eaten something in the physical realm was twenty years ago.
The thought breaking through his daze made him near hysterical. The bridge point between wanting to sob and laugh at the bizarreness of it all. He was supposed to be five.
Gavinor curled further into himself.
“Hey”
He startled and looked up from where he was huddled. Somewhere in the back of his mind he thought to reach for Oathbringer. But the sword was uselessly in the corner. He wasn’t actually bound to it. He hadn’t been able to in the Spirit Realm.
“Gav?”
A girl stood at the entrance. Familiar. Who had been much taller in comparison to him when he had last seen her.
Long hair, simple clothing. And a spren clinging to her shoulder with bespectacled eyes.
Lift stepped in the cell.
He cringed away from her. The urge to fight, goaded by Odium, having fled. Leaving him empty. Lost. Broken. Like a discarded toy.
Lift paused few steps in, casting a shadow that didn’t quite reach him from the lanterns in the hall.
“You know- I think the singers had me in here for a while. Starvin bastards didn’t share their lunch”
She tried a smile but it didn’t really work.
“Ya mind if I’m here?”
He shrugged. Barely looking at her.
Her face became un-Lift like. Uncharacteristically serious.
“I’m sorry that you got into the Spiritual Realm. It’s my fault” she said. Her voice was achingly sincere.
He sniffed. He can’t cry. He won’t.
“I was a dumb kid Lift, it’s my fault” he said, voice hoarse. He’s not too sure when he last spoke. Or how long he’s been sitting here.
She jutted her chin out and walked closer to him. Easing down to sit.
“No it’s not.” Wyndle slide down from her shoulder to curl on the floor by her side. Seeming lost for words. She looked directly at him and then at the floor between them.
“I went to check on you- when Navani came back” She wrapped her arms around her knees. “You looked like you. So I left before I got you into any more trouble”
“I wish someone had noticed” he whispered- words betraying him before he can realize it.
She flinched. Almost imperceptibly but she did.
The silence hung heavy in the stone cell.
“We have you back now. I know- I know it’s not the same but,” she said, breaking the quiet.
“You can’t just- fix this Lift.” he whispered
She looked at him.
“Well what if I can fix some of it?” she narrowed her eyes at him “I did in fact manage to get a hug on Darkness- and he was trying to murder people and is a storming Herald to boot.”
“This is different. I would have killed him Lift. I still almost feel like I should have. I don’t know my own head. I’m grown up but not really. I don’t think what’s left of my family wants me. I feel like maybe they never did. The last time I talked to any of them was years ago! If I was normal I probably shouldn’t even remember that!”
The words come like a flood and he swears they’re echoing around them when he finally stops. He’s started shaking again and his hands have formed fists in his lap.
“It was literally 8 days ago when we talked about this to me Gav, I remember.” She looked determined. “I’ll help you remember”. Wyndle on the wall besides her nodding encouragingly.
Gavinor looked down at the ground, curling his fingers into each other.
She nudged his shoulder, and then with no reaction she pulled an arm around his shoulders.
When had anyone held him, reached out, in the past twenty years? Apart from his dying father? The closest had been earlier, when his grandfather had shielded him from the new god’s wrath. He still had some blood from the older man’s injuries in splatters on his clothing.
“Lift I- I can’t….”
She brought up another arm to make it a full hug.
“It’ll be better Gav. It can be, I promise.”
Promises, promises, promise. His damnation and lifeline all at once.
He should be angry. He should fight, he should, he should-. He fell into her embrace and wept instead.
She had been able to lift him up when scrambling around the tower earlier this year but now she seemed so much smaller. She was able to hold him together anyway.
~~~
What seems like hours later, when he feels just a little better, a little more solid, but still wrung out like a towel, Renarin quietly arrives. He looks like he’s not sure if he should intrude, but at some sign from Lift or Wyndle he slowly steps in and offers Gavinor his hand. It’s almost the hardest thing he’s done today but Gavinor reaches up and lets his uncle pull him to unsteady feet.
“We’ll figure it out Gav. The only way from here is forward,” he tells him in a soft voice. Quiet but confident.
Gavinor’s not sure if he believes him. He doesn’t think he believes in himself. But he does believe Lift. And when she stretches two fingers in a handshake he hasn’t done in twenty years, he hesitantly returns the gesture.