Heartwarming / Rhythm of War

Spoilers Off applies to this page. There will be unmarked spoilers below. Proceed at your own risk.

Chapter 12

• Half-funny, half-heartwarming. Adolin and Veil have been trying to set Kaladin up with various women to try and get him to lighten up. Kaladin even seems to honestly give their suggestions a shot, given Lyn was one of their suggestions.
• Kaladin begins the chapter in the darkest state we have yet seen him. Syl goes for one of "two people in the tower Kaladin can't intimidate": Adolin. It's nice, considering the early enmity between the pair, that they are genuinely friends now.
• Syl gets Adolin to take Kaladin out drinking to help with his depression. Adolin is unfailingly kind and supportive the entire time, waiting for Kaladin when he needs to speak.
• The winehouse Adolin takes them to is rather middle-rate, but is one he frequents. They're holding a wedding party for their bouncer. Adolin, of course, brought a wedding present.
• When Rock declares that he is returning home to face justice for his crimes, Kaladin decides not to go with him because it would be nothing but an attempt to undermine Rock's decision and subvert his people's justice.
  Kaladin embraced his friend. One final, crushing Horneater hug. When they pulled apart, Rock was crying, but smiling. "You gave me back my life," he said. "Thank you for that, Kaladin, bridgeleader. Do not be sad that now I choose to live that life."

Chapter 22

• When the diplomatic party transitions to Shadesmar, Adolin immediately goes looking for Maya and makes a point of introducing her to the rest of the team, even when everyone else insists that as a deadeye she cannot possibly understand him.
• Later in the same chapter, Maya joins Adolin in brushing down Gallant.

Chapter 25

• While trying to help find a suicidal soldier for one of his patients, Kaladin discovers just how limited the ardents' ideas of mental therapy really are. The ardents genuinely do care, but they only seem to have one method of helping people, and that is isolation in darkened areas to minimize overstimulation. Kaladin and Teft instead choose to help the suicidal soldier by helping him go out into the sunlight and talking to him about his depression and low self-worth. Afterward, Kaladin makes the decision to start trying new methods to help the mentally ill, citing his own personal struggles with depression and his knowledge of surgery and medicine.
  Kaladin: Release this man to my care. And warn your superiors I will be coming for others. The ardents can complain all the way to Brightness Navani if they want. They'll get the same answer from her that I'm giving you now: we're going to try something new.

Chapter 29

• Adolin and Maya's relationship is pure heartwarming. Even other spren have written off deadeyes as being unable to be saved, but Adolin shows that through his friendship and respect toward Maya, she is starting to heal from her "death" due to the broken oath. Maya has gone so far by this point that she's able to perfectly match Adolin's combat stances and katas. The other spren are at a loss to explain how he's managing to heal what they think is permanent damage.
  Ua'pam: She's a deadeye. She was killed thousands of years ago. She doesn't think. The trauma of her Radiant betraying her broke her mind.
  Adolin: Yeah, well, maybe it's wearing off.
  Ua'pam: We are spren. We are eternal. Our deaths do not merely 'wear off'.
  Adolin: And spren are never going to bond humans again - yet here you are, Zu's companion spren. Words like 'eternal' and 'forever' aren't as definitive as you all pretend.
  Ua'pam: You don't know what you're saying.
  Adolin: And that might just be why Maya and I are able to do things you think impossible.

Chapter 34

• Adolin taking Shallan to see a starspren, because he knew she needed something beautiful after everything she was working through.
• After Adolin shares some of the issues he's having with his father:
  He reached over, putting his hand on her knee, and met her gaze - almost teary-eyed. Because she understood. And storms, she did. She rested her hand on his, then pulled him closer. Feeling his breath on her neck as he drew close. She kissed him then, and as she did, she caught a glimpse of the sky. The majestic spren had started to fade back into the cloud - perhaps feeling ignored now that her attention was on someone else.
  Well, it wasn't the spren's fault.
  It simply couldn't compete.

Chapter 80

• Kaladin is trapped in a dream with a dark, frigid storm symbolizing his own battle with depression and despair. Amidst this dream, Wit appears and pulls him into a temporary shelter with a dream-like campfire and warm stew, and tells him a tale to help him lift his spirits. At the end, Kaladin is faced with going back out into the storm, but Wit is there for him:
  Kaladin: You told me it would get worse.
  Wit: It will, but then it will get better. Then it will get worse again. Then better. This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is truth. I promise you, Kaladin: You will be warm again.

Chapter 91

• Teft finally telling the truth about his past, and realizing that he is happy to live again.

Chapter 93

• Wit, Pattern, Adolin, and Veil all assuring Shallan that she is trusted and loved, and that she is strong enough to accept the pain of her past. With Veil's guidance, she accepts her memories of her first Cryptic, and reintegrates Veil into her mind.

Chapter 101

• Dalinar presenting Jasnah with his completed version of Oathbringer, and then asking her to offer her own commentary in the work's undertext - the tradition of Vorin women adding (normally-unseen) commentary to a written work after a man has dictated it. Jasnah is suitably overwhelmed by the honor of being allowed to do this, especially since now that Dalinar has learned to read, he will be able to see her thoughts, criticisms, and ideas as well.

Chapter 108

• Dalinar managed to find the one person he could Connect Kaladin to in order to knock him out of his Heroic BSoD: His dead brother Tien in the afterlife. Kaladin receives a vision where he appears as one of the young messenger boys who Amaram's men sent to die. Tien volunteered to go with them even knowing they'd all die.
  Tien: It's all right. I'm here. To help you feel brave.
  Kaladin: I'm not the child you see.
  Tien: I know who you are, Kal.
• Just before Kaladin swears the Fourth Ideal he's encouraged by another voice, heavily implied to be Teft.
  "Say it, lad! Do it!"

Chapter 117

• After a whole book of being unable to deny his nature as the merciless, amoral storm, the Stormfather reveals to Dalinar the last time he showed mercy: after Eshonai's death, he showed her the world she wanted to see so badly, from the view of the storm.

Interludes

• Hesina, trying to turn Lirin back from driving away his son, brings him to Noril to ask why he wears Kaladin's shash-mark on his head. Noril's answer?
  "But sir, do you know why I get up each day?... It's hard sometimes. Coming awake means leaving the nothingness, you know? Remembering the pain. But then I think, 'Well, he gets up.' ... He's got the emptiness, bad as I do. I can see it in him. We all can. But he gets up anyway... He still fights. So I figure ... I figure I can too."
• It's revealed that the egalitarianism of the Radiants is influencing society for the better, as people of all ethnicities and classes are seen attending the Radiants and wearing the shash-mark. Adin, a potter's son, is an absolute Hero-Worshipper of Kaladin because he's proof that a darkeyed boy from nowhere can become someone great and hopes to attract a spren of his own some day.

---