#Then ‘’Voice of the Savior’’ for the voice who loves a lonely outcast and comes in with a very ‘’I CAN FIX HIM!!!’’ attitude.

[msfcatlover]

Okay StP fandom. I am once again working on my “Slay the Monster” AU, and this one’s going to need some context because I’m giving a second choice when entering the cabin. The Long Quiet is Stillness/Silence/Darkness/Absence, and I want to reflect that by having the basement be pitch black and putting a cabin-appropriate light source on the table, forcing you to make the active choice to bring light into the basement with you. So with that in mind…

(I don’t personally think the order you take the blade & light in should matter, nor do I think it should matter if you decide to go back for one before meeting the Monster, but they are theoretically options so…)

Note that I’m not saying I’ll adhere to this poll, I’m just trying to figure out the exact choices needed for a Voice who treat/views the Monster as more of a pet than anything else.

[ironwillcd-a]

Roots

Grommash Hellscream trudged onward with very little regard to the wails of the infant at his side or the corpse slung over his shoulder. Draka’s weight was hardly a bother, and the child’s incessant whining had become white noise quite a while ago. “Keep up your spitting, child,” he had earlier threatened, “and you will soon find your place back in the river.” It hadn’t done much, considering the babe was hardly a few days old, and so the Warsong chieftain had only sighed and tried to pay it no mind.

In his absence, apparently, much had transpired. Orgrim Doomhammer had released his former chieftain, the so-called traitor Durotan. The Frostwolf leader had thrown down his banner in front of Gul’dan, initiating a sacred mak’gora in response to the slaughter of his people. What a fight it had been, Grommash’s clan mates told him, as Durotan and Gul’dan were nearly matched in raw strength. It disheartened Grommash that he had missed such a spectacle only to dispatch a certain Frostwolf woman.

But the story turned sour, like a rotten blood apple. Gul’dan had broken tradition; calling upon his gift when Durotan had him in a corner. He had cheated. Gul’dan, the savior of the orcs, the one that held so much respect and dignity in the minds of his people, had defied perhaps the most sacred orcish tradition that there was. Worst of all, the deed had gone unpunished and Durotan was left to expire like the clanless outcast that he had become.

To Grommash’s amusment, Orgrim had stood by his friend in the very end. It was Orgrim who held the banner, who watched with pained eyes as his childhood friend was robbed of his life and transformed into a frail husk of the powerful orc he had once been. As if to make matters worse, the events had transpired simply because the mighty Orgrim Doomhammer could not trust his chieftain’s judgement. It made Grommash laugh, the irony. One’s greatest friend could be the downfall of everything he loved.

Upon Grommash’s return, Durotan’s body was nowhere in sight, and neither was Orgrim. The smoke against the darkening sky led him to believe that Orgrim had dragged away his friend’s battered body to burn it. Funeral pyres were customary in honoring their dead, and even Grommash felt as though Durotan deserved more than being picked at by the birds. Draka, he decided, deserved no less than her mate.

The Warsong orc paused in his tracks, pausing to look at the now-sleeping infant in the basket, before he looked ahead and marched towards the source of the smoke.

- - -

The smell of burning flesh was ever-present in Orgrim’s nostrils as his eyes lingered upon the fire. The pyre was meager, a mere collection of sticks that he’d collected from the surrounding trees that barely managed to fit Durotan’s shriveled body atop them. Durotan deserved better, so much better, but this was all that Orgrim could offer. He had dishonored Durotan in life; he would honor him in death.

Boots crunching twigs beneath them drew his attention away from his mourning, whipping around with the Doomhammer readied in his hand. A lone orc approached him, carrying something resembling the form of a person over one shoulder and carrying a smaller object in his other arm. Orgrim glowered as the orc approached, able to recognize the visage of Grommash Hellscream as he grew closer. “You have no business here, Hellscream.” Orgrim’s tone was a warning as he called to the Warsong chieftain. “Why do you come?”

Grommash only snorted. “I am afraid I do have business here,” he retorted as he stood before the Frostwolf, where Orgrim was able recognize both the body and the basket he carried. Fury encased Orgrim’s very being.

“Are you respo-”

“Yes.” Grommash quirked a brow, moving to drop Draka’s corpse unceremoniously into Orgrim’s arms. “I would not have, if I knew that Durotan was right. I heard of the mak’gora. I felt that Draka deserved to burn with her mate.”

Orgrim glanced wildly to the basket and hoisted the body in his arms. “Did you hurt her son?”

“No. He lives, unscathed.” 

A breath of relief released itself from the Frostwolf orc, peering in shock and disbelief at Draka’s limp body. He had failed her, too.

He looked expectantly at the basket in Grommash’s grasp, his golden eyes searching for any abnormalities. Grommash noticed this. “The child stays with me. I came to bring you your dead, not bestow upon you a son.”

It was completely Grommash’s intention to take the son of Durotan and Draka home to his clan, to stay. He couldn’t leave the child for dead; tradition forbade it. Besides, he might yet grow into a strong warrior, and the Warsong Clan needed those more than ever. Orgrim glanced up sharply, gaze narrowing.

“What are your intentions with him?” Orgrim growled, taking a step closer. “He is of an unbroken line of Frostwolf chieftains. There is no Warsong blood in his veins, Grommash. What use have you for the son of Frostwolf traitors?!”

Grommash allowed a grin to spread across his tusks, which seemed only to infuriate Orgrim more. “You are right, he is no Warsong,” Hellscream confirmed, “but it is either he comes with me or he remains as his mother left him in the river. You’re a hunter, Orgrim, you know the beasts would have eaten him by nightfall. Need I even mention the humans? After all the destruction the Horde has wrought, would they show an orc child mercy? I think not.”

Orgrim hissed in frustration as his hands shook like leaves. “You seek to rob a child of his heritage? Of his clan?  He was born a Frostwolf and so he should be raised as one! Save your Warsong customs for your own children, Grommash Hellscream!” His voice trembled with unbridled fury, all of his control being used to abstain from socking the Warsong orc in his ugly, green jaw.

“The Frostwolves are nothing but ghosts, Doomhammer! A clan with no warriors is hardly a clan! The rest of the fel orcs killed them ALL! Who would raise this child, but you? Or maybe those that you left behind on the old world, the ones that were too weak to make it into the warband in the first place?” Grommash’s smile had disappeared. Orgrim had roused his anger with his foolery; now, he would pay the price.

“This boy has no future with you, nor the Frostwolves. He is safer with the Warsong, an entire clan to protect him, than with an orc of no clan with enemies wherever he turns! You don’t even have a way to feed the thing!” 

Orgrim snarled, a string of saliva dangling from one of his canines. “I do not trust the likes of you to provide for him!”

Grommash had had enough. “If you were so bloody concerned with the well-being of this child, then perhaps you should have used that thick skull of yours and thought about it before you BETRAYED HIS FATHER AND SOLD OUT THE WHOLE CLAN TO THE REST OF THE HORDE!”

“Don’t you DARE lecture me-”

A small cry cut him off, and both heads whipped to the basket. The shouting had disturbed Go’el from his sleep, and the child whimpered in response to the noise. It didn’t take long for either adult to realize that the baby was afraid; perhaps even less time to realize that their arguing was fruitless.

“You already terrify him,” Grommash huffed, earning himself a hearty glare from Orgrim.

“Please, just... give me the child. I was a fool for believing in Gul’dan, and I should have listened, and I... I owe it to the boy’s parents. Let me raise him as Durotan and Draka intended, Grommash... let their son live the life they hoped for.”

How Orgrim loathed to beg, how he loathed it with everything that he was. But it was his only other option. He was desperate; Durotan’s son could not fall in the hands of a clan like the Warsong, or any clan that was not the clan of his birth.

Grommash bounced the basket in hopes to soothe the upset babe. He furrowed his brow and rolled his eyes in Orgrim’s direction, feeling no sympathy. “Have you such little honor left that you plead for a child? I thought you’d learned your lesson.”

There was a pause, accented only by the crackle of Durotan’s flesh, the chirping of the crickets, and the gentle coo of the child.

“I am a father.” Grommash began quietly, avoiding Orgrim’s tired gaze. “I have a son, and he has no mother to look after him. How was I to kill this infant when I found him? He is not responsible for his parents’ mistakes, and what if it had been Garrosh at the mercy of my murderer?”

Orgrim opened his mouth to speak, but words did not come out. Nothing did. 

“To leave him here with a single Frostwolf male, who cannot nurse him until he can eat food or protect him as a clan should their young... it would be to condemn him to death, Orgrim. This is for his own good.”

After a period of silence, Grommash began to turn. Orgrim stared, eyes burning with emotion and pain that he wished weren’t there. Grommash was right and he absolutely despised it. He felt empty. Orgrim Doomhammer had officially lost everything he had, at the slight of his own hand.

With lightning speed, Orgrim slipped a hand into a pocket on his belt and produced a bloody tusk. “Let him keep this. It was Durotan’s.”

Grommash accepted the Frostwolf’s offering with a nod, waiting as Orgrim broke off one of Draka’s tusks to add to the palm of the chieftain’s hand. It was an understandable custom, and Grommash would not object to it. Again, he turned away.

But he didn’t walk far. The Warsong chieftain stopped and turned his head back to the mourning Frostwolf, eyes showing more emotion than Orgrim had previously thought possible. Calling out softly, he nodded to the basket balanced on his hip.

“Did Durotan get the chance to name him?”

Orgrim’s voice trembled and cracked. “Go’el. His name is Go’el.”

Grommash nodded, and turned away again. The baby orc stared up at him with wide, curious blue eyes as he chewed on his fist. A tiny sigh escaped the Warsong orc’s nostrils. A familiar sight, it was.

“If he ever asks about where he came from, then I will tell him the truth. The son of two noble orcs, that fought to the end... if there comes a time where you may show your face among the Horde once again, Orgrim Doomhammer, then perhaps you will see him again.”

With that, Grommash carried on the route he’d come to settle little Go’el in within the clan. Orgrim watched him go and struggled not to let Draka sag in his arms. Tears gathered in his eyes as he looked from Draka’s glassy golden orbs to Durotan’s burnt and nearly unrecognizable form within the dying fire. They did not deserve this. They did not deserve ANY of this.

Hefting the corpse into his arms, Orgrim draped Draka over what remained of her husband. She would have wanted to burn alongside him. They desired only to be together when they fell.

Orgrim tended the fire that night until the corpses had become ash upon the night’s breeze. It was there that he stayed, until dawn crept over the horizon.

It was there that Orgrim wept, not only for the lives of his greatest friends, but also for the future of their son.