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redisaid · 4 months ago

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Strangers - Part 3 of ???

Colors and Photographs

I forgot I love this AU a lot. It's more of the same bullshit I always do, but I don't care. Bon appetite.

5006 Words

Read it on Ao3!

Sylvanas Windrunner—burner of trees, blighter of cities, former Warchief of the Horde, former Banshee Queen of the Forsaken, former Ranger General of Quel’thalas, now wearing the title of repentant prisoner and nothing more—sits upon a ridge, looking down at her camp in the Maw, contemplating. Above it, an arcane flare blazes bright in alternating hues of blue and purple, and it is for this reason that she hesitates to return to it.

Next to her, Dori’thur perches on a spur of rock, silent and staring as ever, though the piercing gold of her eyes feels extra judgemental in this moment. Years of time being stared at by an owl have not prepared Sylvanas for this moment, where it seems to be asking her, “Why don’t you go to her?”

The answer is complex. Too complex for an owl to understand.

That’s what she tells herself, at least. In reality, a drop of water rolls down the exposed skin of her arm, chill on chill, to remind her of the real reason. She’d just taken a bath in Korthia. Her hair is still wet.

“Inconvenient,” she mutters in Thalassian.

Dori’thur, she supposes, must be fluent in it now. In moments where she is more prone to amusement, this makes her grin, thinking about the day she will eventually return, and have the beast somehow hooting in her nasty little Highborne dialect. What then, Tyrande?

She wears the new leathers Vereesa sent for her, and they don’t fit quite right. Not yet, at least. Her old set, worn as they were, were perfectly molded to her unchanging form, but comfortable. These are of a similar, but updated style. The top is too baggy for the fine stitching around the sides and neckline. The leggings are too tight in the calf but not enough in the thigh, and woven with useless ties down the sides that don’t even serve to help her in loosening or cinching where needed. Definitely something Vereesa would choose—style over substance.

Sylvanas prefers her clothing like she does anything—simple, precise, and practical. These leathers offer none of that, but she can fix them, with time.

And time, well, she has plenty of time.

It has been some time since Jaina Proudmoore’s ostentatious arcane flares have lit the monotone skies of the Maw. Keeping count of what might equate to days has been her chore between visits. It has not been a pleasant one. Sylvanas has never enjoyed dwelling on time and its terrifying numeracy.

Still, she knows it has been a while since she’s seen Jaina. She knows she’d prefer to do so with dry hair and properly-fitting clothes. There is still a spark within her demanding she not show her enemy any weakness, she supposes. Her lonesome repentance has not dimmed that yet.

Nor does it change the fact that the living always seem to hold a schedule that conflicts with her own.

She relents, after a time. Minutes, petulantly spent dripping onto twisted stones. Sylvanas has names for all the formations, because what else is she to do but invent geographic classifications. There is only so much of her mind that can be occupied by the endless search for lost souls. This rock she calls Broken Tree, because it has branches or sorts, but all end in blunt ends, their sharp edges perhaps snapped off by a rampaging minion of Zovaal’s long ago, or perhaps not long at all.

What does it matter? It doesn’t. Time is irrelevant. It crawls on, unfeeling, with or without her.

So while Sylvanas doesn’t want to be wet and ill-prepared for company, she doesn't want her company to leave because she’s kept them waiting too long. While Jaina Proudmoore isn’t exactly the most welcome of guests, she still makes for better conversation than an owl.

First, before she descends from the stone branches of Broken Tree, she reaches into the pocket of these unnecessarily embellished leathers. Really, isn’t that just like Vereesa to pick something like this? These damn ties. She never had good taste, and apparently still lacks it. Even the compact that Sylvanas pulls out of her pocket is adorned and impractical, its silver embossed with a hunting motif, a deer leaping over a stream, but the latch sticky and difficult to open.

Sylvanas would rather it remained closed, but she is unfortunately in need of a mirror. She hates looking at herself. It has been a dreaded chore since her first death, her first transformation into something she was not meant to be. Now she is changed again, and the blue eyes that look back at her don’t belong on her face and never have. Her eyes were a soft grey before she died, not blue like her sisters. She misses the distinction, even though this blue is not like theirs either.

But the face that stares back still doesn’t feel like hers. The ashen skin, faded hair, wet and stringy and plastered to her gaunt frame. She only sees the banshee within the body—the long fangs and sunken cheeks, the ghastly hands with too long fingers, reaching out to harm but unable to touch. Embodied now, she is still a ghost. A dead thing lingering and not wholly dead, but never to live again. She is a monster, an abomination, a blemish on her own existence.

But still, she sets the compact on a higher branch of Broken Tree, and uses the mirror to ensure she pulls her damp hair into a respectable and straight ponytail, devoid of imperfections. She might be a monster, but she will be a well-groomed one, even if it kills her for whatever time this death would be.

She catches another set of eyes in the mirror. Dori’thur’s yellow eyes reflect back their own glow. The spectral owl tilts her head, amused by the reflection.

“What are you looking at?” Sylvanas asks of her anyway.

Perhaps she too is vain, for the owl seems to be looking at herself rather than her charge for a change.

“Birds,” Sylvanas mutters to herself as she ties the ponytail tight, and gives one quick glance back toward her own reflection before she closes the compact.

She swears she hears a slight huff of disappointment behind her, but when she looks back, Dori’thur is staring at her as passively as ever. Always watching. Never not. It’s maddening, but Sylvanas thinks she might become concerned to see that damn bird do anything but that, should her attention ever be diverted.

She enjoys a brief respite from those yellow orbs as she begins to move toward her camp, and Dori’thur takes to the grey sky above. There is no color in hell, save for the white and pale teal shades of the owl, the yellow of her eyes, and the odd reflection of blazing blue that meets Sylvanas when she dares to look in Vereesa’s gaudy little mirror now and then.

Well, at least today there’s new colors. Blue and purple arcane light still projects into the sky from her camp, and now that she knows what that means, Sylvanas does not meet it with aggression this time.

She thinks it silly to announce herself. Surely Jaina has sighted Dori’thur circling overhead, and well, there is no one else here. Wandering souls do not count, in Sylvanas’ opinion. They are not even akin to ghosts such as herself, and seem to lack awareness of their surroundings, awareness of her, and the ability to do anything but screech out their confusion and fear.

She finds Jaina Proudmoore an array of new colors in her grey world. She is bent over a crackling orange and red fire she’s conjured for herself, but looks up with eyes of natural and subtle blue through stark white hair, streaked with gold. Today, she wears no armor, no regalia, and dresses casually in a white button up shirt and high-waisted navy leggings that tuck into high brown boots with bright, polished brass buckles. The contrast of her is almost blinding. Sylvanas has to blink away the color so it doesn’t overwhelm her vision all at once.

But Jaina is still there when she opens her eyes again, and she’s offering a kind, polite, and rather diplomatic smile—the kind that humans so famously do where they don’t show any teeth. Sylvanas does not deign to return it, and feels the expression would look too ghoulish on her, teeth or not.

Instead, she nods.

“Before you ask,” is what she greets Jaina with, “I have attempted to keep count. It has been about thirty days since I’ve last seen you.”

A month. There was so much Sylvanas could have done with a month on Azeroth. Troops to be trained, equipment to requisition, artillery to inspect. Even without a military to command, she could visit her sisters. She could travel, go to see someplace exotic and far off—Winterspring or Feralas, maybe even a trip back to enjoy Pandaria instead of battling against the mage standing in front of her within its confines. She could read so many books. She could rest, or whatever equivalent of that was left to her.

Counting the days is worse, but she’s done it because she knew Jaina would ask. She feels the corners of her lips pull up into a grin in spite of her resistance when Jaina’s mouth opens, then closes, meaning to utter a greeting but instead having to contemplate what this means for her.

“It’s been a week for me,” Jaina tells her. “And thank you, for counting.”

Sylvanas nods again. She is nothing if not efficient and proficient in her ability to provide necessary information. A good Ranger knows how to observe and report above all else, after all.

But she is not a Ranger. She is a grinning ghoul, a monster, the last devil left in a monotone hell.

She wills her mouth to stillness again, and feels her ears flatten along with it.

Jaina clears her throat. She turns, and Sylvanas can now see she has taken the liberty of setting her tea kettle over the fire to boil. She seems to look for a moment as if Sylvanas will take offense, but that comfort was for her guest, not her. She does not need to drink, nor does she care to. It is not her concern what Jaina does with something that is for her.

It is her concern when Jaina—seeing she’s unchallenged—is so bold as to pour the contents of the kettle into two mugs, and not just one. Sylvanas’ hard-won neutral expression turns to a frown unbidden.

She makes a point of walking past the steaming mug without acknowledging it as she goes to sit on the opposite rock stool from Jaina. To her credit, Jaina does not press the issue, and simply takes up her own, leaving the offending object to sit steaming on the ground, abandoned and unwanted.

There is a glint of recognition of all of this in her eyes as she looks to Sylvanas, sipping at her own tea. Those eyes are nearly as watchful as Dori’thur's and while they aren’t as severe in their judgment, Sylvanas feels as though there is no escaping what they observe in her. There is no doubt that Jaina is picking her apart, piece by piece. She may never say how, and that would be wise of her, but Sylvanas knows she sees every move she makes, every detail of her appearance and demeanor.

The mirror was a cruel thing for Vereesa to give her, at least she thought at first, though perhaps her sister did not know of her dislike of mirrors in undeath. Now Sylvanas understands the gesture. It was a kindness, an odd one. Vereesa was cognizant of her enough to know that, if she was going to be observed, she would want to do so knowing she was presentable. Much less if she was going to be observed by someone with such keen eyes as Jaina Proudmoore.

“Thirty days is a long time,” Jaina notes, finally, mercifully blinking. “Your sister had to arrange for something, and wanted to wait until it was ready.”

“I don’t see why you need to apologize for her then,” Sylvanas tells her as she settles onto the stool, crossing one leg over the other and again cursing the stupid, useless tiles that bite into the sides of her thighs.

“I suppose I was, wasn’t I?” Jaina says. She smiles again over her mug, clutching the bright copper in both hands as if to warm them, or perhaps just for comfort. If she can observe Sylvanas, then Sylvanas can observe her too, after all.

Jaina then points with a nod toward the ground beside Sylvanas’ stool, where a small package wrapped in brown paper resides. Even dull brown paper and flaxen twine are a welcome change from grey.

Vereesa’s handwriting is present on the corner of it, its black ink easily visible as Sylvanas picks the package up, with her messy, rushed scribbling spelling out “Lady Moon” in Thalassian characters. She would always write like she had something better to be doing, and clearly, still thinks that she does.

But what does Sylvanas know about that, really? Her little sister is almost as much a stranger to her as the woman who delivers her letter these days. She knows Vereesa as a disorganized and immature Ranger Captain with a lot of discipline left to learn—a spoiled little sister whom she was part of spoiling, certainly. She doesn't know her as a leader, a mother, a person thoughtful enough to send her mirrors and little paper packages. All of these things are strange to even imagine describing Vereesa as.

Sylvanas is careful as she opens the package. She can save the paper, use it for maps or notes. She still has plenty left of the stack that Jaina brought last time, but who knows how long it will be before she sees her again? Rationing supplies is part of what keeps Sylvanas sane here, and so she saves the paper rather than tearing it, and the twine too.

And she knows Jaina notices all of this, but she does it anyway.

Inside are three things. A small envelope of a different brown paper, which sits atop a long, flat glass bottle, padded with a mate to the towel Vereesa included in her last package. Sylvanas knows what it is without looking at the label. The shape of it, the floral scent that already fills her with nostalgia, even though the bottle is sealed shut—it’s her favorite shampoo, from Quel’thalas.

She nearly drops the bottle.

Her sister is a mother and leader and a person she no longer knows, but she clearly still remembers Sylvanas being angry with her for swiping her bottles of Camberon’s Lemon and Honeysuckle shampoo. It was expensive, after all. Too expensive for little silly girls, Sylvanas remembers saying.

But Jaina is smiling and watching her, conspiratorially so. She eyes the envelope and not the shampoo, and Sylvanas can’t fathom what means more than Vereesa remembering such a small thing.

Still, she sets aside the shampoo and its towel padding. She laments not having either for her bath today, and resolves another is in order sooner rather than later. Her hair does not dry nicely when it’s up, after all.

She opens the envelope to find it contains a small picture, framed simply in pale, knotty pine. A photograph, an invention of gnomish origin relatively recent in the annals of Azeroth’s history, after her death even. She has been photographed, but such perfect images of her likeness were not possible while she was alive. She only has the memory of her reflections, and portraits that have no doubt been burnt or broken by now, both from spite for her actions and disrepair of the places where they once hung proudly.

But on the plate she finds her sisters, their warm skin and shining hair and blue eyes. A bit of purple swirls in Alleria’s that wasn’t there before but it is so small a change compared to what Sylvanas has undergone. They are still themselves, at least on the outside.

With them are three faces Sylvanas doesn’t know, hasn’t seen, but knows who they belong to. Arator no longer has the pudgy baby cheeks that reminded her of her deceased brother. He is long and thin and elegant in many ways that remind her now of her father, but stocky in others that show the human half of him. He looks worried, blue eyes shining with concern as he glances more toward his mother than the camera.

In front of Vereesa are two identical redheaded, gangly youths. Giramar and Galadin. They wear their hair shorter in human tradition, and it makes them look far more human than their cousin of similar heritage. They look like trouble, is all that Sylvanas can think. They look like Vereesa.

Jaina smiles wider, a few teeth on display now. They are flat and distinctly human, even the half-elven boys in the photos still have little blunted fangs, but Jaina lacks them entirely. Still, she seems pleased. She expects a reaction.

Sylvanas does too, but finds herself more interested in her sisters than her nephews. She’s probably still spent more time with Arator than Alleria has, but he was a baby, and he likely does not remember any of it. But her sisters, why is it they get to remain unchanged by it all? Is that part of her penance too? If she had made the right choices, could she look in the mirror and find herself again? Do they even appreciate it when they do?

“I understand the wait, it must have been a real feat to gather them together for this,” is what she offers Jaina, photograph still in hand, eyes squinting at her sister’s faces, looking for any equivalency of change within them.

“I’m sure it won’t surprise you of all people, but Alleria was the hardest to wrangle, apparently,” Jaina reports.

It does not surprise Sylvanas. She huffs a laugh because of course she was. Alleria looks as though she’d rather not be there, and perhaps that is why her son seems worried. Alleria hasn’t been worried about another person and their feelings a day in her life, so for that reason alone, he seems nothing like her, though his long hair shines the same color gold as hers.

There is a bitterness that clouds her thoughts that reminds Sylvanas she is perhaps where she belongs. No doubt she does not belong in this photograph. Her greys would sour the colors of it. The gold and blue of them, of the Alliance. No, those were not colors for her.

“Vereesa told me you helped her with Arator, when he was still a baby,” Jaina goes on. “I remember him as a child too, so it’s so strange to see him grown now.”

Sylvanas realizes she has no idea how old Jaina Proudmoore is. The white of her hair belies an age that is much younger than such a feature would tell of in humans. But still, she knows of her father, her lineage, and does a quick calculation. Yes, she supposes Jaina knew her nephew as a boy, somewhat.

Strange. It’s all very strange. That is a good word indeed.

This woman knows her family so well, sees her sisters and her nephews regularly, yet Sylvanas has only ever seen her here in her prison, and before on a battlefield. Once during a trial. Only in times of stress and duress. Never before today in casual dress. Jaina cuts a fine figure without all those layers of mage robes and armor, actually.

“He was a good child, easy to manage,” Sylvanas reports. “Easier than Vereesa, certainly.”

Jaina laughs at this. Sylvanas wonders if she has the context for the joke. Does she know how her little sister tormented her? How, when she grew out of that, she moved onto constant whining?

Well, she is Vereesa’s friend, after all. No doubt she knows about the whining.

“Vereesa’s boys carry on the illustrious red hair of their father’s name I see. They’ll do well with it in Quel’thalas, should they be welcome there. It is relatively rare among elves,” Sylvanas goes on.

Not as rare as dark hair, of course, but she can still remember Lady Liadrin back when she was just a priestess, and being both too holy and too oblivious to the amount of attention her red-hued locks brought her, back when she was younger.

But Sylvanas supposes she knows little of the dating scene in Quel’thalas these days, and little of chasing redheads. There is only grey in the Maw, except when Jaina Proudmoore visits and colors it to the point of blinding radiance.

Jaina laughs at this too though. She nods sagely. “I don’t think there was any escaping it for them. But yes, they look a lot like their father.”

Their father, who as Sylvanas remembers, died to save the woman in front of her from Garrosh’s bombing of Theramore.

It’s all so complex and entangled. Jaina’s life has brushed up against her own in so many ways, yet they’d never really spoken until that first letter she’d delivered. Even when Sylvanas turned against the Jailer and offered her assistance in defeating him, Jaina would not speak to her, only listening to her counsel with a daring glare. No doubt she blamed her for what happened to Anduin. It was fair, Sylvanas blamed herself too.

Sylvanas wonders if Jaina feels as protective of her nephews as she does of the Alliance’s own High King, who apparently calls himself her nephew in name only.

And now, she searches Sylvanas’ face for signs of reaction, fondness, and humanity when looking at a picture of her own family.

Sylvanas struggles to find anything but nostalgia for connections long cut and things long made untrue by the relentless march of time. Such numbness rings true for the banshee in her, but it strikes a discordant bell for the soul that’s been restored to her. The same soul that gets lost in that nostalgia in the countless lonely hours of searching. Sylvanas misses her sisters. She always has. She knows she will never fit into their happy little photographs. She will never again shine with them in brilliant blue and gold.

She supposes this is what Jaina Proudmoore looks for when she studies her face. She wonders if she’s been able to find it yet.

“I suppose I have you to thank for orchestrating this,” Sylvanas says as she finally looks to her, and sets the photo down on her tie-bedeviled thigh.

Jaina waves off the responsibility, releasing one gloveless hand from the copper mug. Her fingers are practiced and graceful with every movement, aware. A mage through and through.

“No, no,” she says. “I merely brought it up to Vereesa and she ran with it. She said she wanted some photographs for her home anyway.”

Still, Sylvanas sees through her meddling. Mages always want to fix and change and alter. They cannot leave nature well enough alone. Jaina Proudmoore brings her colors and views of a world she cannot have and cannot help it, just as she surely does not know how her fingers look as though they’re tracing runes even when they do not.

But it is Sylvanas’ nature to haunt and wail and linger on a life long gone. She is a ghost, after all.

She supposes it is fitting she may yet spend centuries here, shepherding the dead.

And Jaina Proudmoore will go home to have more tea with her sisters and her nephews and everyone that will certainly be glad Sylvanas isn’t something they have to worry about anymore. She will put happy photographs on her mantle in Boralus. She will meet so many people and do so many things that this odd chore will be just another appointment on her busy calendar.

And yet, she and the things she brings will be the brightest colors Sylvanas sees until her penance is done.

“Vereesa said she didn’t have time to write another letter and apologizes for that,” Jaina relays. “She still wanted me to bring you the photograph, and whatever that bottle is I suppose.”

“Shampoo,” Sylvanas tells her. The Common word for it is so silly. It sounds like something one would name a fluffy little lap dog.

She watches as Jaina cranes her head a bit to read the label. No doubt she can read the Thalassian. Sylvanas is sure she can speak it too, but chooses to speak the human tongue to her anyway.

“Well that was nice of her,” Jaina notes.

It was, but it’s more than nice. It’s both infuriatingly confusing and overwhelmingly loving. Sylvanas deserves neither. She was ready to be forgotten. She was ready for no one to remember her name, to curse its mention, and to forget anything they knew about her, much less such a small detail as her favorite shampoo.

A part of her wants to keep that detail for herself, but it burns within her. She wants to talk, to vent, but also desperately to keep everything within the fortress of herself. Such nostalgia for her is a part of the pain, the loss of it all.

But Jaina Proudmoore, perhaps, is a person who can understand that.

“It was a favorite of mine,” the words spill out before she can rethink them. “Back…before. Vereesa always used it without my permission. It’s expensive.”

But what does Jaina Proudmoore of all people care about elf shampoo? Of photographs and colors and mugs of tea ignored, left to cool on grey dirt. Why did she come back with no letter to deliver? Why does she smile at these words, this time genuinely, where a dull canine peeks past pink lips, unadorned with makeup or the mask of war. She is just a woman, a friend of the family Sylvanas no longer knows, a stranger. Still, she seems happy to listen, intrigued.

“That sounds dreadful. I’m thankful to only have brothers then. Derek and Tandred would never take any of my toiletries, or at least never admit to it,” Jaina tells her through that smile, giving up her own tiny, innocuous details.

Sylvanas remembers Derek Proudmoore, gasping on the deck of her flagship for breaths he no longer needed. The seawater stink of him, the barnacles that still clung to his tattered coat. She remembers questioning even then why she did the things she did, even as her Dark Rangers peered at her with concern in their red eyes. A part of her knew it was wrong, even though those that return to unlife must make the choice to do so themselves. She and her Valkyr lacked the ability to force them as she was forced. That requires a mournblade, but there will be no more of those ever forged. Never again.

And now his sister jokes with her about how he would never steal her things, or whatever makes her white hair shine so brilliantly even when there is no sun to light it.

Perhaps Sylvans should ask her about her hair care routine. What else is she meant to do?

Instead, she apologizes, “About Derek—”

Jaina doesn’t let her. “He’s told me. You don’t need to explain. It was his choice, you merely offered him the vehicle to take it. Honestly, for all of how it worked out, I should thank you, for being part of what brought my brother back to me.”

“You should not,” Sylvanas assures her.

She cannot possibly offer the explanation as to why. It was never meant to be Derek. Some other Kul Tiran admiral was the target, another sailor sleeping in a watery grave. But the opportunity presented itself and Zovaal had told her that Jaina Proudmoore must die, and this was the best way to do it.

She was always far too hard to kill. And Baine always was too soft. In truth, it had all worked out for the best.

Still, it’s a change of heart from the woman who stared daggers at her for daring to put Anduin in the Jailer’s hold, even though it wasn’t entirely by her own choice. Such forgiveness Sylvanas supposes comes with time, though it has only been a year for Jaina since then.

Longer still for her.

But now the words are spilling out of Jaina, and it seems that the silence of the Maw demands filling from the both of them. “I’ve missed him so much. Derek’s death was incredibly hard on my parents. I was young then myself, maybe a bit too young to really understand, but I think a part of me missed him in the way that his absence affected them more than anything else. Even now, I’m happiest seeing him with my mother again, and how much joy he brings her.”

Sylvanas doesn’t often like to dwell on Derek Proudmoore, but the thought of an undead man being embraced by his living family hits her in a place she didn’t know was so exposed. She’s seen so much rejection of her Forsaken, though they are hardly hers anymore, so much hatred for them. She cannot imagine anything else but that for them.

Does Jaina have happy photographs of him next to those of the Windrunners on her mantle?

It isn’t her right to ask the question.

In fact, she can’t say anything at all.

“Derek drinks tea still,” Jaina tells her. “He says he likes how it makes him feel warm for a time. I thought you might enjoy it.”

She wraps her gracile fingers around her mug again, and tilts her head to the second one on the ground.

Sylvanas picks it up, but does not drink from it. She holds it, and admittedly relishes in the warmth that flows into her hands as she listens to Jaina talk about her brother with a fond grin.

#sylvanas windrunner #jaina proudmoore #sylvaina #fanfic #strangers #post-slands

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