a/n: Set between warcraft 3 and the start of WoW. an attempt to explain the shit that had to have gone on behind the scenes. initially starting writing this as a birthday present for kiango. it's been 3 years and I am terrible
It's fairly simple, as far as graves go.
There isn't really much time to spare; the Warsong still need to regroup and there are still demons and feral elves breathing down their necks, but Thrall just can't leave Grom like this, can't let his body lay and rot, and so, stone by stone, he lays out a primitive altar, a circle of rounded stones placed around the spot where Grom finally fell. His hands work numbly, mechanically as he moves Grom's heavy limbs into place, trying to give him some sort of dignity before they stiffen up. He places Gorehowl aside without really thinking about it, the weapon suddenly foreign to him.
There isn't any time to bury him, and there's far more left of him than there was of Taretha, the only thing remaining her head, buried in a hole under a tree far away from the newly-resurrected horde's camp where he wouldn't get caught. He remembers, abruptly, that orcs burn their dead, Grom wouldn't want to be buried, he would want to be burned, and staring at his stilled form, Thrall's head is numb and is throat is tight, vision blurring. Probably what would be the quickest would be asking for the aid of some fire elemental, but he can hardly think, let alone try and commune with something he's just barely come to understand.
He barely hears footsteps behind him, soft, wary tapping across scorched dirt and stopping just to the side of him.
Jaina says, "I'm sorry," and his whole body heaves, trying so desperately not to crumble. She sounds sincere, at least. He can't quite be sure because he can't even look at her right now. Why- why is she here, he thinks, head sluggish but thoughts racing, too disjointed for him to keep up with himself. She looks between him and Grom, frowning, hesitant, and attempts to ask him something multiple times but unable to come up with anything each time she opens her mouth. It's not really surprising that she's speechless; watching the leader of what was up until a week ago her greatest enemies cry over something as inevitable as loss has to be strange experience.
"Orcs burn their dead," he croaks, voice breaking. "I can't-" He cuts off, throat closing up on him. She watches him warily for another moment before nodding grimly. In mere moments, there are blue flames licking at her fingers, Jaina whispering something he can't quite hear, and it streaks out of her hands, catching on Grom's clothing and consuming his body far quicker than fire really should. But it'll have to do; they have no time for anything else.
Afterwards, she continues to stand there, lingering while they both pointedly stare at his ashes and not at each other. He cannot speak, still numb with disbelief and despair. Hesitantly, she reaches a hand out, touches his arm, and says, "We- we can make a better one, later." He thinks he nods. He doesn't really remember much else.
They were not friends, then. The gesture seems out of place, just barely off the mark, but she still offered, and maybe this is what puts them on that track. When the world tree is in cinders, and Thrall and Jaina are clinging to each other, just relieved to be alive- it's not happiness, no, too raggedly driven the past few days to feel anything but the adrenaline and the come-down that is sure to follow- this is when it starts. This is when their friendship starts, truly, when they are in a command tent the night after Nordrassil has splintered into countless pieces, when Jaina is laughing on the verge of hysteric tears, so relieved is she, and Thrall is silent but cannot stop shaking, and they can do nothing but take from each other this tactile comfort.
This is too intimate, too trusting for what little they have, but after being run down demons and looking into the face of what was by all rights a demigod hell-bent on their destruction, this is a physicality he desperately needs. He nestles his nose in her blond hair, something that Taretha let him do even when he grew bigger than her, but Jaina is not Tari, and his heart wrenches in his chest because Taretha is dead, Orgrim is dead, Grom is dead; he can't even give himself the illusion that they aren't. Taretha's was a dry scent, one of crisp mint leaves and kindling, wood stoves and ash, and Jaina's is salt marshes and citrus, damp, heady and salty-sweet from sweat and strain. She is so jarringly not Taretha (She is not strawberry blond, she has freckles, her head still sits atop her shoulders) that he shudders and feels wrongwrongwrong but Jaina keeps holding onto him, digs her fingers into his massive arms so much that it hurts, starts mumbling "It's alright, we're alright, we're alright," repeatedly, perhaps to herself more than him, but he still takes what comfort he can from her words.
Later, they stumble back to his cot (hers had been destroyed along with most of her forces' encampment, not that it would have stopped them from doing this) and just lay together, she draping herself across his chest and grounding him until he stops shaking, until the adrenaline finally wears off and he falls asleep. When he wakes up, it's only an hour or two later because despite his exhaustion he is still strung too tight, jerking awake with his heart pounding wildly in his chest. She is still there, eyes half-open, already trying to calm him with the same mantra as previous: "It's alright, we're alright, we're alright." It's quieter, this one, subdued and gentle from sleep, slower as she shushes him and runs her fingers through his thick, brown-black hair. She has him relaxed and sleep-drunk in minutes, soothing his stuttering rabbit heart back to an acceptable pace. He slumbers again, and when he awakes again at daybreak she is not there.
The construction of Orgrimmar continues as it should, and so does Theramore's, from what he's heard. There's a snag early on, in that for some reason, it keeps being forgotten that peons are in fact, people, and deserve to be treated as such. Thrall has to fight several times with the foremen in charge, remind them repeatedly that they shouldn't use whips or blackjacks as punishment, and still they look at him oddly, like there wasn't a twenty-year gap stuck wasting away in the internment camps being treated little better than slaves between this horde and the last one. The older ones cling to the old ways much harder than he'd like, and he fears that they'll rub off on this new horde.
He hasn't heard from Jaina personally since Hyjal, but this is probably because of each of them being so busy. Their cities will not construct themselves, after all, and their peoples need them. He tries not to let it bother him, but it's an awkward thought to have his last memory of her before their departure from Hyjal to be her literally sleeping in the same place as him, coaxing him back to rest. It doesn't sit well with him, alternating between missing the intimacy of their newly formed friendship, and disgust, deep-seated uneasiness prickling up his arms at the thought of anyone touching him, however gentle or rough they may be.
(When you meet your kin outside of an internment camp for the first time, their brusque tactility makes you flinch, trying not to jump out of your skin when Grom would clap a hand on your shoulder and grin crookedly at you. But he feels your whole body stiffen under his fingers, sees the alarm in your blue eyes that you couldn't quite swallow down, and his grin doesn't falter, no, but the next you fight human forces, there is a feral anger in his movement; it is not the bloodrage, entirely, it is the primordial anger that a possesses wolves guarding its cubs. Grom knew that Blackmoore did something to you, even though you didn't tell him everything and the scars on your back are unseen. Orgrim's armor became walls to house you and the scars sealed under your skin, to cover all of yourself and the body whose green flesh still feels strange and out of place. Blackmoore did something to you, and Grom held all of humankind at fault for it.)
One thing he certainly didn't want to spring from their friendship was the inevitable rumors, but that did not make them any less inevitable. He is sure that they didn't see her leave his quarters at all- she was careful with that, at least- but they were not so subtle about getting there, both of them at only half capacity from sheer exhaustion. While their intentions and actions were perfectly innocent, the onlookers' certainly weren't, and suspected otherwise. Now when her name is brought up, it's with tones of suspicion or curiosity, sometimes both, sometimes with amusement. It's brought up with eyes on him while he tries to remain stoic, feeling pressed and irritated, wary and anxious like an animal pushed into a corner. He does not need this, and neither does she, new and untested rulers already put under fire.
Some of his advisors and ambassadors already hint at the subject, mostly grinding their teeth at the thought of even the flimsiest of alliances with the faction they had warred with for so long, but some, some pushing for stronger ties. They're gathered around a table in a large tent, the fortress outside still under construction. Thrall had insisted they build his people's homes, first.
"Dustwallow Marsh has the lumber we cannot get from Ashenvale," one mentions, an older orc, notoriously circuitous in his intentions. "And we have the food they cannot produce for themselves. A stronger bond with them would mean prosperity for both of us." He says this as if he's leading up to something, in a tone that Thrall is not entirely sure he appreciates. When humans assumed that orcs were not capable of greater intelligence, they were woefully wrong, and this one is an example of that, subtly clever and disarming in his presumed barbarism. He's is greying at his temples, strands of silver working their way through his blue-black hair, and his tusks are worn and yellowing. A spellcaster, perhaps, clothed in tattered robes and bearing a staff, but it's unsure as to what, exactly. Not all warlocks were welcomed back by the elements, and this would-be caster gives no hint as to where his talents lie. His name is Makhan.
"You would have us ally with those who attempted to destroy us? With those who killed countless of us and our allies?" a second one snarls from across the council table, the troll next to her nodding with her mouth twisted grimly around her tusks. This one is a warrior, leather armor adorning her athletic and battle-worn body, scars lining what little skin was exposed. A chunk of her ear is missing, and her eyes are still red, still bearing the burden of the blood rage. Kroshka is her name, all harsh sounds and snapping teeth. The troll, Tez'lipo, wears so little armor that the propriety human culture has taught him is hard to push down. Thrall is embarrassed for both for himself and her, but she is no less a warrior than the orc to her side, her size and musculature revealing her a berserker, her fire-bright hair wild and unruly. These two held on their sleeves what most of the common populace still suspected, that this would not last long, and that the humans were merely waiting for a moment to strike. Having the night elves to the north, a newly discovered faction, did not help this any.
"And how many more of us will die at the expense of old grudges? This cycle of violence will not stop until we choose to stop it, and we have already been shown that there are greater issues at hand than that," Makhan reminds, gently, firmly. "The Burning Legion has not forgotten about us, and there is no telling when they will return." Kroshka becomes absolutely livid, the troll a step just behind her.
"While true that may be," she allows, her fierceness showing even through the forced cordiality. "What are we to do if the humans were to decide just to take our land for themselves? What if the night elves decide that where we sit now is still too close to their precious forests?"
"Dey been playin' too nice with each other," Tez'lipo adds, her Orcish still thick with her native tongue. "Might think der not enough room fer us."
"Then we will have to make our treaties more permanent with a formal alliance," he persists. The other orc's frown deepens, and the troll laughs, a cynical bark erupting from her mouth.
"And how we gonna do this, ya think?" she sneers, her smirk more a subtle baring of sharp teeth than anything else. "Dey trust us about as much as we trust dem, and dat's bein' kind."
"Being civil with each other is a good start," Makhan scolds none-too-subtly, and Thrall can already feel a deep migraine growing from where this line of conversation is headed. They're all tired and irritable, and he can sense that this will probably end badly if he doesn't step in.
Kroshka looks moments away from flying into a rage, and Tez'lipo looks like she's about to say exactly what's on her mind; a thinly veiled threat, he suspects, one that assures imminent violence and he doesn't doubt her following through with it.
"That's enough," he states sternly. "As of now, what we have to worry about the most is making sure that the city's construction continues as planned. The lumber that the Warsong have already gathered for us should suffice for now, and there are already discussions of trade agreements with Theramore underway. But right now, what is most important is making sure that our peoples have a place to rest their heads."
None of them look too happy about having to leave this discussion- Makhan especially, frowning deeply around his tusks- but they manage to move away from the subject, ultimately putting their trust in his judgment. Somehow, this is a still a surprise even now that they do this, that they find him worthy of their trust, let alone be worthy of being their leader. He still feels estranged from his people in most ways- humans would've put up more of a fight if they felt something was wrong, but orcs seem to respect authority a good deal more than humans ever did, standing down as soon as Thrall exerts his rank. Maybe this is because the only human leader he ever experienced was Blackmoore, all who were under him rebelling quietly in what ways they could, and from what he's learned orcs tend to only disprove of their leaders if they find them weak or said leader is actively destroying their people, to which they react like they do to most problems: by killing whatever it is.
They do manage to finish discussing what needs to be addressed, but he doubts that any of them will let go what he cut them off from, and wonders if Jaina has to deal with the joys of squabbling councilors as much as he does.
As it turns out, she does in fact deal with them, even more than he does.
He gets his first letter from her a few days after the construction of Grommash Hold is completed, and they have moved onto focusing entirely on constructing the remaining houses and shops. They had gotten about halfway through the houses before several of his newly-elected advisors and military leaders insisted that the fort be constructed.
"It's just not wise to have no form of protection, even if we're supposed to be at peace," Nazgrel had groused. "And besides, the Warchief needs somewhere to lay his head, too. One that isn't a tent." Surprisingly, there's more nods of agreement with the second reason than the first, and Thrall isn't sure if he should be flattered or concerned. The hold is built swiftly, all the same.
Her message is waiting for him in his chambers on his desk, on plain parchment, folded neatly and wrapped in plain, brown twine. It's not the only one there, another more official-looking with Theramore's gold seal on a clean, white envelope. That one is the official correspondence, probably, and the first a personal message from Jaina herself. He opens that first, sitting down at the desk in a chair that doesn't creak under his weight. It was made for him, made to accommodate his size, and this is still something so strange to encounter, too used to everything becoming so fragile under his thick, too-large fingers. He has never forgotten that he's not human, but that didn't mean that he felt particularly orcish, either. He still doesn't feel quite like either, pulled too much one way and then the other, stretched out of shape until he couldn't fit anywhere.
(He misses Grom and Taretha. They made things fit, moving things around until there was a space for him. Brother, Grom had called him, despite being old enough to have been his father. Brother, Taretha had called him, both of them knowing fully well that she was human and he was not. It's funny how Grom managed to be a better parent in the couple months that he had known him, that Taretha cared for him better in the limited ways she could, through secret letters and hidden books, than in the entire span of the twenty-something years Blackmoore had raised him, and now he has neither father, brother, or sister.)
Building on the marsh is going to be difficult, Jaina writes. But it's nothing we can't handle. I hope things are going well for you, too, and that this letter finds you safely.
Jaina goes on to explain how they managed to find a dry patch of land; a small island just off of the coast of the marsh where the wet ground didn't try to pull everything into it. It's tedious to put down the foundations, but it goes relatively smoothly from there, the only snag she's hit being her incredibly aggravating councilors. Rumors have spread there as well, only they are not so subtle, and more than once she has had to chew out her councilors for not leaving things well enough alone. Enough soldiers had seen her wander away with him that it gave them cause to suspect her, apparently, and guilt pools under his tongue, uncomfortably warm.
I don't regret taking them with me when we fled Lordaeron, but it is very tempting to freeze their mouths shut whenever they start talking, she continues, bitter humor in every word. Apparently they'll only respect me as a leader so long as my 'purity' is unquestioned, ignoring that I carted those ungrateful old bastards across the entire damned ocean. I expected difficulties but none like this. Don't you worry, though, it's nothing that I can't handle or haven't already dealt with. Dalaran was packed to bursting with arrogant old men who think little girls shouldn't play with magic, and now they're just angry that a little girl was the one who saved them.
He smiles a bit, curiously impressed at her tenacity. He hasn't known her that long, not really, but he doesn't doubt her in this, somehow. He figures, well, if she can take down demons two and three times her size, she can take on opponents such as these, even if she can't set them alight with her frost-fire.
I think they're just having a difficult time because they didn't expect for us to have to set up a permanent settlement here, she continues. I don't really blame them. Thrall doesn't, either.
I pray that things are going easier for you than they are for me, she finishes. Take care, my friend. Write back when you can.
Her sincerity is a welcome comfort, he still a bit squeamish and unsure of the whole affair. He hadn't been sure where they stood after he had woken up to her being gone, but her candidness is reassuring.
When he writes back, it feels good to tell her, I hope things are going well for you, too, my friend. Take care.
Letters from Jaina after that are few and far between, sparse and hurried, but he doesn't begrudge her for it- it's not as if he's much better, scribbling a sentence or two when he manages to remember past the bone-deep exhaustion from the day. He can imagine the headache it is just to find somewhere to build in the marsh. Cairne and the tauren referred to it as Dustwallow, and he can easily imagine why; a brown and seemingly deadened marsh, stuck in an awkward corner between a swath of dry wastes where all the winds come to meet, growing off of the dead things that are blown into its waters, whether it's things from the deserts coming to die or an unwary denizen of the marsh becoming part of the marsh, themselves.
From what few letters he gets from Jaina, there is something odd about the marsh that draws her to it, something she can't quite explain, and Thrall would say that he knows the feeling, but he's not so sure if humans have the sight, at least not in the same way that orcs or tauren or trolls can. They have their magic, sure, but from what he understands, it's something that they measure and calculate, something that they know the precise outcome of as if it were a mere science. The Light is something closer, he's sure, but not quite the same, a different force and different rules from the elements. It was still a rather odd thing, coming from these two extremes to an entirely new concept of what magic could be, another life-force and cycle of nature, something that couldn't be predicted or calculated because it ran on rules outside of their understanding and control. Light is a force, and the Arcane a tool, but the Elements are sentient, alive and unruly, and Thrall has no trouble remembering that with every flood, every wildfire, every other disaster that seems to strike at Durotar. His people shrug it off easily, seeming more at home here, where the elements seem so much closer than they ever were in the Eastern Kingdoms.
It is likewise, apparently, that made Jaina see fit to set up on the island they had found not too far from the shore of Dustwallow. The construction will be harder, she says, with the rocky shore, but it just "feels right here," something about it pulling her towards it in ways she cannot ignore.
(In another letter, when Theramore has completed construction and Orgrimmar is barely a quarter of the way done, she explains it as ley lines crossing underneath the isle, roots in the world where magic runs deep, and Thrall thinks maybe all their magicks aren't quite so different as they think.)
When he sees her next, it's after her father is dead.
It's after the siege of Theramore, after Rexxar has cut down Daelin Proudmoore and Jaina could do nothing but watch, when Thrall is finally able to meet with her face to face. He is much more stable this time, and she is not, stance stiff and jaw clenched bone-white. They're not even in the city, wandering the rocky shore just outside it because Jaina just needed to "get some fresh air," presumably because Admiral Proudmoore's corpse still lay inside. She was not the one to kill her father, no, not directly, but it does not make him any less dead.
"I tried to talk to him beforehand," she says, smiling weakly, voice wavering. "You know? Tried to talk him out of it. But I couldn't… get him to listen to me." She can't seem to look Thrall in the face, eyes trained to the brown sand beneath their feet, and the first words out of his mouth are "It wasn't your fault."
Jaina flinches.
These are the first words he's said to her in a few months- each too busy with their own duties, but not far from each other's thoughts (not too far from his at least)- and however true they are, he thinks maybe he should have gone with something different to start with. Certainly not ones that made him recoil inwardly as soon as he said them.
"Jaina, it wasn't your fault," he persists. "He made his own decisions, not you," he adds, placing one of his massive hands on her shoulder. She crumbles upon his touch, only taking moments before just short of collapsing into him, grasping the front of his armor with ink-stained fingers and hiding her face in his collarbone.
Jaina is no more Taretha than she was before, he can't help but think, perhaps even less so this time, in all things: Taretha's strength was an enduring one, bending but never breaking, and Jaina's is more continuing in the face of being broken, picking up pieces when she can. The route of the issue is still Taretha, however, and these intrusive thoughts of her, as he cannot quite remove her image from Jaina's, despite Jaina's freckles, her rounder face, and heavier body. Taretha had always been slender, and so, so much smaller than him, barely reaching his chest when he last saw her and so thin he could wrap his fingers around her waist and the tips would touch. Blackmoore kept the Foxtons fed, yes, but not as well as he could have, and Thrall is certain he would not be able to do the same with Jaina, to wrap his hands around her waist and have them touch and this is a very dangerous road to go down, he realizes distantly, shoving it out of his head.
"He wouldn't- he wouldn't listen to me," she tries to explain, words unsure and shaky. "I tried to stop him, but he wouldn't listen and-"
"Jaina," he interrupts. "This is not your fault." Jaina shudders at this, as if he had struck her, and when she looks up at him, her face is ruddy and tear-streaked, and his arms snap into place around her waist before he can think about it. It occurs to him that perhaps the black plate armor would probably be uncomfortable, at least to her, but she doesn't seem to mind it, burrowing back into him, trying to muffle her crying as it wracks her body. He holds her like this for a long while, long enough that it should be uncomfortable, but he's more uneasy about how it isn't. Stop, he thinks, stop focusing on that. You need to help her. Do what she needs to recover.
He breathes in slowly, trying to soothe his rattled nerves.
"Listen," he starts. "You didn't do anything wrong. You did all that you could do." Jaina won't stop shaking, silent but for her breath stuttering out her mouth. "You did what you thought was right. You tried. That's what counts."
"I can't really believe you," she mumbles. "A lot of people I was supposed to protect are dead because I couldn't stop him."
"Your father's actions aren't your responsibility," he asserts. She shakes her head, and pushes away from him, still shaking from the tears.
"I couldn't stop him," she starts. "And I couldn't stop Arthas. What good am I as a leader if I can't even keep my own people safe from harm?"
At her mentioning Arthas, Thrall realizes that this is going to be much trickier than he initially thought. He doesn't know too much about him; understandably, Jaina hasn't really spoken of him that much, only enough for Thrall to get a bare bones understanding of what had happened, and why she was here in the first place. There were a lot of things left unsaid in the wake of Arthas' abrupt and horrifying turning on them, in Jaina's desperate attempt to gather up all the Lordaeron survivors and ferry them away from the wake of his destruction.
Thrall sits them down on the sand, and he tells her about Blackmoore.
He tells her about the internment camps, and Durnholde, about the few people he'd befriended there, how they'd died in its subsequent destruction. He tells her about Taretha. He tells her about Grom. In return, she tells him about Arthas. It's not really an enjoyable affair in any sense, but it's not entirely unpleasant, either. The subject matter is, definitely, but he can at least appreciate the sense of trust and comfort between them. It's not something he's felt in a long time, and he's missed it more than he would really like to admit.
They talk for hours, long into the night, and soon it's just them and the stars, sitting quietly side by side while the ocean laps gently at the shore. At some point, he placed his hand on the sand between them, however little a space that was, and she placed her own over his, small fingers perpetually strained with ink lacing between his large, calloused ones. It's only a few hours before dawn when they say their goodbyes, and his hands still feel a strange, radiating warmth, even after they've been parted, and until he falls asleep, fingers prickling right up until sleep takes him for the little night left.
He doesn't receive another letter from her for a couple months.
Theramore needs time to recover, of course, and Orgrimmar still isn't quite done, so of course they're both busy, but he can't help but feel as if he's done something wrong, or there's some boundary that he crossed without realizing. Rationally, he realizes he's probably overreacting, that yes, this is going to take some time, but it's something that nags at him incessantly and intrudes on his thoughts the moment he lets his mind wander.
When a letter finally comes from Jaina, outside of official correspondence that is (and this was somehow worse than receiving no letters at all- getting stiff, formal messages that told him little if any of what she could actually be thinking), Thrall receives, alongside the letter, an odd, lumpy package about the size of his palm, wrapped in flimsy brown paper and twine. The polite thing to do would be to read the letter first, then to open the package, so he does, despite the anxious curiosity eating at him as he eyes it up.
She writes, I figured using these would be easier than writing letters back and forth. You activate it by touching the rune, and we should be able to speak through these to communicate instead of waiting days at a time. At the very least, it should be good for emergencies.
He can't help but feel a twinge of guilt at this. It'd taken him days to get into contact with her when Kul Tiras forces had landed, and maybe if he'd gotten to her faster, they could have stopped the whole thing before it truly started. (Maybe her father would still be alive.)
You don't have to use it if you don't want to, but please at least use it just once so that I know that it works. Try after supper-time; I'm the least busy around then.
After that, there's nothing else, and Thrall wastes no time in opening the package now, carefully untying the twine and peeling off the paper. What he finds under the layers of wrapping paper is a smooth, greyish-white stone that can fit in the palm of his hand, with a swirling, white rune carved into the front. It's a good deal paler than the rest of the stone, and glows very, very faintly when he grasps it between his fingers. The sun is down now, and it's well past mealtime; it should be alright to see if it works. He traces his thumb over the grooves of the rune, and it lights up under his touch, a soft hum emanating from it.
A minute or so passes, the stone continuing to hum, and he begins to get a little uneasy. The hum fades out, the stone's glow diminishing, and he's disappointed for all of thirty seconds before he can hear Jaina's voice emanating from the stone.
"Hello?" she whispers, tentative.
"Jaina," Thrall replies, far more relieved than he'd like to admit.
"Oh good, it works," she states, pleased. "Everything sound alright on your end?"
"Yes, I can hear you just fine," he confirms, a smile curling the corners of his mouth.
"Excellent. Now that that's out of the way, how are you doing?" she asks. Before he can answer, she quickly amends her statement with, "If- if you want to talk, that is. It's alright if you don't; I'm just glad to know that the gossip stones are working properly," a little hesitant and half-mumbled. There's another few moments of silence, and again, Thrall gets no chance to reply, Jaina speaking again.
"I know I haven't… been around, as of late. I'm sorry," she says, even quieter than before.
"You don't have to apologize, Jaina," he replies. "It's alright." She's silent again but for her breath, and it takes a few moments for her to respond.
"If you're sure," she allows, still hesitant.
"I am," he states firmly. "And to answer your previous question, I'm doing fine."
"I'm glad to hear it, friend," she tells him, and he can hear the smile in her voice as she says this. It's better to hear those words than to read them, Thrall finds, and they end up talking long into the night. Thrall is exhausted the next day, more so than he has been as of late, but it's not something that bothers him, apparently, looking forward to when he can speak with her next.
Trade continues to be a difficult thing to fix, and his councilors are doing their best to make it near-impossible. Thrall keeps putting it off as long as he can; the city's construction is still underway, technically, and that by itself should keep them occupied for now. Not for much longer, he laments; the city is nearly complete, now, only a few remaining buildings left. Jaina's having about the same difficulties, though instead of being pressured to build up her forces and attack, she was being pressured to ally with the night elves, then to use that alliance to build up her forces and attack.
"Honestly, it's as if they've all forgotten that we killed that legion lord together," she vents. "Or, you know, that we killed a legion lord at all. There's more important things to worry about, here." She pauses for a moment, and briefly Thrall only hears the faint hum of magic from the stone.
"How are things going over there, by the by?" she asks. "Surely you must be doing better than me," she adds, laughing.
"About the same," he replies. "There isn't a day that goes by where they don't argue about the truce. Sometimes they go on for hours." Jaina sighs.
"I feel like I've been stuck in this tower my entire life. I don't think I remember what the outside world looks like." Jaina jokes melodramatically. When Thrall chuckles, she follows up with "How dare you laugh at my pain," mock-serious, but she can't keep the laughter out of her voice.
"Alright, I think it's more than clear that we both need to get some fresh air," she says after another pause. She hums thoughtfully. "How do you feel about sneaking out? Just for a little while." Thrall hesitates.
"…how?" he asks after a moment of silence. "I know we're neighbors, but Orgrimmar and Theramore aren't exactly right next door to each other."
"Well," Jaina starts. "I could come get you? I mean, I could teleport over there to get you, and then we could go from there. Only if you wanted to, of course." He thinks for a moment. The sun had gone down but only recently, no longer sinking at the edge of the horizon but its warmth lingering still. The moon is big and bright against the sea of blue-black sky, a soft breeze blowing through the night, and he can't deny that the thought is very tempting, feeling as though the wind is tugging at him as it sweeps through. He'd gotten all that he could've gotten done today, he reasoned, and it would just be for a little while. A few hours maybe, if that. Surely nobody would mind him straying for a little while.
"Alright," he agrees. "Just for a little while."
"Of course," she agrees, and he can hear the smile in her voice, infectious and affectionate. The hum of the stone goes silent suddenly, and when it's followed by a flash of blue light not two feet away from him, he realizes, oh, she meant literally right this minute.
She seems to materialize out of thin air, no sound other than the soft tap of her feet landing on the ground below them. She reaches a hand out to him, gestures for him to come with, and it's an awkward moment of hastily getting up from his desk and taking her hand without knocking everything to the floor with a clatter. She pulls him through the tear she's left mid-air, and there's a strange sort of tugging on his bones as he passes through the portal. The change is abrupt, the air now humid and warm, reeking of salt. They're in Dustwallow, apparently, on the shore and not too far from Theramore, judging by the lights twinkling in the windows of her mage tower and the town surrounding it on the horizon.
The portal behind them closes soundlessly, folding in on itself and distorting everything around it as it disappears. The blue light fades out, leaving little discolored spots in his vision from it. Jaina dusts herself off briskly, then starts walking through the line crooked trees dotting the edge of the swamp, motioning for him to follow.
"We'll have some privacy over here," she tells him quietly, holding in an impish grin. "It's where I go when I need to have some time to myself to think."
"And here I thought you hadn't been out of that tower in months," Thrall points out, the corners of his mouth curling up in turn.
"Oh hush," she replies, playfully annoyed. "What they don't know won't hurt them," she says, pointing over her shoulder back at the city, now hidden by the trees. "They don't need to know about me sneaking out every once in a while to get some fresh air."
"Oh, I'm sure," he replies mock-seriously, raising his eyebrows at her. She very maturely sticks her tongue out at him.
"Anyway, it's right through here," she says, continuing to lead him through the swamp along a path he cannot see, covered with roots and underbrush. The trees become taller and denser the deeper they go in, alarmingly quickly for how little time it takes them to get there. She leads them to a tiny, secluded glen- a nook hidden away in a corner of the marsh formed by thick trees clustered together in an uneven circle. There's a little window to the sky out the top, in between the layers of branches and leaves, and moonlight streams in, lighting up the whole glen.
"How did you find this place?" he asks. Jaina shrugs.
"I don't know, I just sort of found it," she tells him. "One night after a council meeting, I was still… frustrated with them, so I just teleported out here to cool down."
"Would you have started casting fireballs, otherwise?" he asks, chuckling.
"The possibility was definitely there," she says, exasperated. "Smartass," she adds, mumbling. He continues to laugh, keeping direct eye contact as he does. "But anyway, I found this place when I decided to take a walk through the woods. Something about it drew me here." Thrall eyes the forest floor. Pale little mushrooms poke out among the tree roots and underbrush, forming a circle around the glen. They glow, slightly, in the dark, and he cannot tell if that's truly them, or the moonlight, or both, but there's something ethereal about them, all the same.
They talk for a little while and catch up, but it's only a matter of time before they're drawn back to politics and the goings-on of their respective factions; to be fair, it's all either of them has really been dealing with as of late.
"I'm starting to worry about Tyrande," Jaina says after a short lull in the conversation. "I haven't been hearing that much from her, and what I've been hearing hasn't exactly been… pleasant."
"What's wrong?" he asks. He isn't really at liberty to communicate with Tyrande, for rather obvious reasons despite technically being closer to her than Jaina is, but he still hoped to consider them friends, despite all this.
"Apparently, not many of the night elves are happy that their immortality's gone now," she starts. Thrall cringes inwardly, though apparently it's not as inwardly as he would've hoped because then she adds, "It's probably about as bad as you think it is," an odd little half-smirk forming on her face. It's not as if she's taking joy out of this; this is more exasperated sympathy than anything else.
"What exactly is happening?" he asks.
"Well, among other things, the druid that's replaced Malfurion wants to plant a new world tree, to try and salvage their immortality," she explains, wincing a bit.
"That's understandable," Thrall replies.
"It would be, were it not for the fact that, according to what Tyrande's told me, it absolutely will not work, but with Malfurion stuck in the dream, he's garnering support."
"That's… worrisome," he admits, cynical. At seeing Jaina's hesitance, however, he quickly amends this with, "I'm sure Tyrande will be able to handle them. She is strong enough to stand on her own." It doesn't really do much to alleviate the anxiety creeping over Jaina's face, and doesn't do much to alleviate his own, either. For one agonizingly long minute, it's quiet, until Jaina says:
"Do you think we did the right thing?" She's biting her lower lip, and suddenly her cloak is seeming much too big for her, hiding her face easily beneath its hood, her eyes a bright blue glint in the dim murk. "With- with the world tree, I mean. Do you think we could've done it some other way?"
Thrall hesitates, for a moment, speechless at the thought of this. He mulls it over for another moment, wracking his brain to try and think of anything they possibly could have done instead of that, and every passing tic only seems to thicken the tension that manifested itself from the evening mist. Jaina's still looking at him through it, but she can't seem to meet his gaze for more than a few seconds at a time, shame and guilt lining every fold of her cloak.
"We did what we could, Jaina," he says finally. "The Kaldorei knew what had to be done and accepted. They knew the cost." She nods, but doesn't look convinced. He reaches his hands out, pausing briefly just before they meet her shoulders and checking to see if she flinches before placing them there, palms enveloping them entirely, easily. It doesn't seem so out of place, oddly enough- not as much as it used to, anyway.
"If there had been another way, we would have found it," he tells her, softly. She sniffs, probably a little louder than she really meant to for how embarrassment flickers across her face, but tears don't start rolling down her cheeks, her eyes don't become red and watery.
"Alright," she accepts, finally- accepts it the best she can, to be sure. He takes her into his arms, gently- it seems to be the right thing to do, here, for some reason- and she clings to him hard, freckled arms snaking around his waist, surprising him with the amount of force behind them and sending a little jolt through him.
"Thank you," she starts, fingers clenched where they sat on top of his shoulder blades through the fabric of the plain clothes he wore. "For being there for me."
"I know you would have done the same for me, Jaina," he replies easily, throat warm, blood thrumming in his veins. She smiles earnestly at him, sighing a little, and he can't quite swallow, for some reason.
They end up stargazing for another hour or two before returning, the odd warmth lingering long after they return, prickling in his throat and the tips of his fingers.