Mornings were the worst. It seemed as if every bodily insult lurked, waited and then attacked the moment she stirred from her bed. It didn't matter that she understood exactly what was going on and that she believed this was probably temporary. Part of it was beyond her control, she couldn't make herself younger, she'd seen her fortieth birthday come and go, but that did not explain all of this discomfort.
Oh, who was she fooling? Herself? This wasn't discomfort, the early morning effects of age and cold, this was pain. This was illness, but an illness that wasn't an illness. No, she was purging illness. She had to keep holding onto that truth. It wasn't age...well, not completely. Tirion was old enough to be her father and he was still serving in the field.
Tirion is loved by the Light.
Well, yes. But wasn't she? In spite of every single sin she'd committed, the Light still upheld her. So many in the ranks had fallen, lost their grip on the Light's gifts, become less because of it. Yet, she hadn't. Even when she'd been warped, corrupted, lashing out and committing atrocities on an epic level, it had still been there. Most of the time it had been a struggle, she'd had to push her way towards it, but it had been there when she had fought for it. Was that the point? There had never been a time when she'd stopped fighting for it. There had never been the time when she'd let go, when she'd given up on being a paladin. Had the others? The ones that had fallen from grace under her very gaze? Following her orders?
This is not supposed to be easy.
No, nothing worth having ever was. And no matter how far she strayed, Brigitte had never chosen the easy path. She'd chosen the wrong paths, but never because they seemed like the paths of least resistance. If anything, it had always been just the opposite. She could have evacuated...
I should have evacuated. I could have saved so many. I failed.
A single beam of muted sunlight cut through the sullen clouds, dispersed in the spider's web of shattered glass above her to surround her in a faint pool of light.
I have to come back to myself.
Except that she had no idea how to do that. It sounded well and good, like so many great ideas did. But it was all in the implementation, and she'd proven that she could fail in getting great ideas done. It had been a great idea to drive the Scourge from Lordaeron...
You must accept your failures and rise above them. Treat them as a crucible and not your destruction. Otherwise, this will be just another failure. This will eat you up inside as surely as the demon's control on you did...or worse, because this is all you.
"I wish...I wish you were here, Father." She barely vocalized the words, she was not completely alone here. She had been the only one to enter the chapel, to cross onto the fullest part of consecration that the very ground breathed, but she was not alone. She could sense Thassarian's proximity, the trespasses of the others upon this sacred ground, she could even feel the slightest stirrings of outrage deep in her soul because of that echo. But who was she to deny the Ebon Blade access to this area even if she could?
No matter what armor you wear, no matter whose blazon you show, you are still a paladin. You are the daughter of a paladin. The widow of a paladin. You gave part of yourself to forge Ashbringer itself. Nothing and no one can take that away from you. As it was cleansed...that part of you within it was relieved...
That part of her was safe, now held in Tirion's hands. Just like she was safe, held in the Ebon Blade's embrace. There was a way out of this, she just had to keep going the way she was headed. She had not fallen, only stumbled. She had not been abandoned, only temporarily lost. All that mattered was that she was herself again and that the Light had not forsaken her. The realization brought gratitude and the first strong feelings of peace that she'd had in a very long time. She stood, ignoring the twinges of aching joints and the rebellious popping sounds of her knees, picking her helm up from the leaning pew next to her. There was work to do, clean up from a battle she had been no part of, but that didn't matter. That battle had freed Darion, who had used that freedom to pull her back from the darkness. That battle had given Ashbringer over to Tirion, bringing her yet another step closer to the Light. That battle had returned this holy place to those who would cherish and protect it. And now, it was time for her to start behaving like what she was called to be, a paladin. Not a so called paladin of the Scarlet Onslaught, not a paladin of a fallen Lordaeron, but a paladin of Azeroth.