3x06 crystalized something essential about what Moiraine is able to offer Rand in this moment of his journey. Presence in the darkness. A person who sees all of him and accepts him. Rand asks if Moiraine saw him kill her in the rings, and she smiles fondly at him and says yes. And he smiles back, because he knows that this doesn't frighten her away. Most people would run. Most would find the prospect of him going mad, no less him hurting them, too much to stay. But Moiraine won't leave. And where before that annoyed Rand to no end, now it has become a comfort. He is beginning to realize what he must do, what he must experience and how that will change him, to fulfill his destiny. And now the idea that there is a person who also fully knows that and accepts it and will remain by his side is a comfort.
Rand is reckoning with both the madness that he fears channeling will bring and also what he perceives as a darkness inside himself. Egwene tells him that loving Lanfear means he's given into the madness. But Rand knows the truth, that his love for Lanfear isn't about the madness from channeling. It's about there being one person he knows will see him at his darkest and still love him. Up until this episode she really is the only person who he knows can see that darkness and accept it.
I think that shifts at the end of the episode for Rand. When Rand channels to try to bring Alsera back from the dead it is a moment that feels for him like his evilness as a man and his madness from channeling come together. They're both him. It's hard to know where one ends and the other begins. Because he channels recklessly, but then that channeling brings the taint, and it changes his perception. And that feeling that he can do anything, that he is a god, is that him or the madness? Or does it speak to both the darkness within him and also the madness from channeling?
Egwene, Aviendha, and Lan have expressions on their faces as they watch Rand that speak to varying degrees of fear, disgust, and pity. But Moiraine looks at him only with understanding. Where the others recoil from the darkness, from the intensity of the pain of that moment, Moiraine goes to Rand in that pain.
There are a few aspects to what she can offers him. First, I imagine, a shared experience as a channeler learning the limits of channeling. Surely most Aes Sedai have raged against the idea that with all their power they cannot heal death. The have felt angry and helpless and despairing that despite their power, death exists, that they cannot change that.
Second, she grounds him. She understands the pull of the One Power, and she knows how to bring Rand back. Not with words or reasoning, but with touch, with human connection, with a hand on his shoulder, then quietly crouching beside him and encouraging him to look at her and come back from the seductive place the One Power takes him.
And third, and I think most importantly, she sits with him in the darkness. In his darkness. Not just the madness of channeling. But the moments after. When Lan looks at him with pity, Avienda with disgust, and Egwene with fear. Not because he channeled, but about the horrific human experience he just had, the messy, raw human experience of grief. Where he was out of control, overwhelmed by despair and rage, where he is lashing out, where his feelings are big and dangerous.
Moiraine touches Rand in that moment when he is loathing himself. She crouches down and looks him in the eye unflinchingly, sees him and offers herself. Her face holds understanding, but also an openness for him to give himself to her, to let her hold his feelings, to be the person who sees what he is feeling and holds it with him. And when he looks at her you see his face shift from this blank mask to all the complicated difficult emotions he has in that moment - the self-loathing, despair, rage. Moiraine is the person willing to wade into that with him, to see him when he feels his worst and be with him in that pain. She probably has always been that, but Rand finally sees it and accepts it, and that feels like a massive shift in this tiny moment of eye contact.
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