SUMMARY
Inspired by the Cities in Dust cutscene. Lord Darius Crowley is known to be a man who asks no sacrifice of his men that he would not also sacrifice himself, including his own life, if necessary. But when the queen of the Forsaken bargains for his unconditional surrender by threatening undeath upon his captured daughter, a split second lasts a lifetime, as Crowley must at last face his true limits in what he is and isn't willing to give up for what is right. Father/daughter study. Dedicated with love to my dad & all you other dads with daughters out there.
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"It's not over, Sylvanas. Not yet," growled Lord Darius Crowley of Gilneas. His shoulders were set, his arms moved in a gesture of finality as he spoke. To his immediate right, louring in the face of everything, stood Ivar Bloodfang, leader of the feral worgen pack who had agreed to join the efforts of the Gilneas Liberation Front and the Alliance. To his front, and glaring impassively back at him and Ivar, were the hard eyes of orcs, the glowing eyes of elves (living and undead), and the unreadable faces of the dread val'kyr. The Horde's worst. Darius' fingers curled and gripped the bladed, claw-like fist-weapons that he was armed with.
Lady Sylvanas Windrunner, former high elf ranger-general, now queen of the undead nation of the Forsaken, leaned slightly forward atop her skeletal warhorse, her eerily burning garnet eyes boring into Darius as she spoke in what sounded like an accusing or a reprimanding tone, "You frivolously throw away the lives of your people while your own king sits atop his throne of lies, nary lifting a finger to help." Her voice was like something heard in the hollows of a crypt. Her words rankled. She dared speak so of Genn? Wrong decisions had been made before by King Greymane, but he had only ever been thinking of his people, always. Even now, he sought to turn what he could of those decisions around and set them right. What would Sylvanas know of anything such as that? What had she ever sacrificed for her people, for anyone but herself, after she had become this... monster that faced him now?
What would she know of anything? Lord Crowley thought, contemptuously.
Lady Sylvanas continued, "Is Gilneas worth the lives that have been lost? The lives that will be lost? You cannot win."
"We will die trying!" Crowley snarled back, baring his razor-sharp teeth. To hell with the long-eared corpse-queen and her fetid legions! The Forsaken were relentless in their beseigement of this country, but Gilneans were a people that were renowned for their conviction - sometimes taken for stubbornness - and Darius Crowley was a true son of Gilneas, through and through. He was not giving up the fight for his kingdom, regardless. They were all of them, himself and everyone under his command, prepared to see their lives taken from them in this conflict if that's what it came to. They would take down as many of the rotten bastards as they could before any of them drew their last breath trying to free their people and their homes from the ravages of the Horde. He would not have it any other way. Even Ivar stood a little more proudly at his right, apparently concurring with the lordly worgen's words.
"And your daughter?" Sylvanas asked. Her tone had become... something highly uncharacteristic of her. "You could have saved her..." she said, so close to something resembling pity that Crowley did not know whether he wanted to bark a laugh or cough in disgust, and still there was that undertone of reprimand in her talk. "You could have offered her your blood, yet you did not. Why?"
You could have hired a goblin crew to drop a piano from the sky onto Lord Darius Crowley, and it would not have stunned him by even a fraction as effectively as the sudden realization of what the dark ranger was talking about hit him full-force in an instant.
"LORNA?" Darius' face was the absolute lupine picture of horror and fear, his one good eye wide and round as a full moon. Lorna Crowley. Blood of his blood, truest friend and ally above all others that he had ever known or cared for. His daughter. "What..." His incomplete thought remained hanging dead on the air, as the initial shock and consternation was very quickly displaced by rage, the bluish-silver fur rising on his neck and his whole body tensing like a spring. "Where is she!?" Crowley demanded with a snarl. "What have you done to her!?"
Lady Sylvanas Windrunner only ever-so-slightly tilted her head and twitched one whiskery eyebrow, her pallid face a perfect mask as she said, ominously, "Nothing, yet..." She sat with aura of dour majesty in the saddle of her warhorse, all command and imperiousness as she declared, "I now present you with a choice-" something flickered across her eyes "-a choice that I was never given." One of the living members of the Dark Lady's party flashed an extremely brief sympathetic glance her way before their eyes turned forward again in the next instant, regarding the two worgen who stood flanked by the wreckage of the Greymane Wall. Lady Windrunner continued, "I offer you the life of Lorna for your unconditional surrender." Now she leaned forward again, her voice low, dark, and threatening. "Choose your next words wisely, Crowley. Deny me and she will serve me in undeath-" the balefire of her gaze shot into Darius with as much piercing intensity as any arrow that she had ever loosed on enemy or prey, though he only gazed unflinchingly back "-forever," she finished.
So that's what she was talking about! Crowley thought, horrific realization dawning on him. It was a known fact that the worgen were immune to undeath. Not even the Plague itself could turn them. Only the Lich King - at the height of his power and while his runeblade, Frostmourne, was still unshattered - had raised dead worgen into unlife. It was a significant part of why some humans in the fight with the Forsaken would choose to be turned by their lycanthropic comrades. Crowley had turned others. Never his daughter.
Lorna was not safe from undeath.
How in the bloody hell had Sylvanas known!?
Lady Sylvanas sat up straight again, turned towards her left and yelled, "Bring her, Godfrey!"
Godfrey? Crowley all but whirled to look in the direction that Sylvanas had called to and what he saw made his hackles rise. Ivar's, too.
There was Lord Vincent Godfrey. Now as inhuman on the outside as he had only ever been on the inside before. He was one of them. One of the Forsaken. Sylvanas must have found his lifeless shell and had the val'kyr raise him into her service. Ivar was growling low and loud in his throat at the very sight of him and Darius could not have blamed him one bit in the slightest for it. The bastard had made a point to convince Genn to erect the Greymane Wall in such a way that when Gilneas isolated itself from the rest of the world after the Second War, his lands would just happen to become of strategic importance, while a great deal of Darius' own lands and people would be cut off and left to sink or swim on the other side. After the Shattering, the arrogant traitor had kidnapped and sought to trade King Greymane to the Forsaken in a stupid attempt at "saving" Gilneas from them. The despicable fool had jumped off of Tempest's Reach to his death, rather than be brought to justice and continue to have "mongrels" for king and countrymen. He was now flanked by his equally no-longer-quite-living conspirators, Lord Walden and Baron Ashbury.
"GODFREY!" Darius roared, as soon as he had realised that it was he. "You deceitful maggot!" He had all teeth and fangs bared, silverish fur standing visibly on end, his clawed fingers gripped his fist-weapons fiercely, and his every muscle was tense and aching to spring.
Oh, how he wanted to tear the vile dastard apart!
But, truth be told, it was not Lord Godfrey himself nor any of his past transgressions that held the fullest measure of Crowley's attention. That was all lain on the burden that Godfrey was, quite literally, shouldering as he approached. He was clutching the body of Lorna Crowley, slung over his right shoulder like a sack of potatoes, her arms extended over her head, likely tied at the wrists.
Darius' heart twisted painfully in his chest.
The closer that Godfrey came to where all were assembled, the more clearly Darius could discern Lorna's state. Her armor looked to be in horrible shape. Her limbs hung limply. Once Godfrey had finished his approach, he turned slightly, giving Darius a full view of the woman hanging over his shoulder. "Hello, old friend!" Godfrey sneered.
But Darius was of no mind to snap back. There were sharp scuffs and bloodstains, even burn marks, all over Lorna's armor! The scales of the mail were jaggedly rent in some places and hanging torn askew. His wolfish nose could only too easily pick out the thick scent of the blood and sweat that was on her, even over the stink of rotting undead and the smells of distant blasts from various kinds of weapons, as battle still raged on beyond the immediate area where he, Ivar, and his enemies stood. Blood matted the dark curls of her hair, trailing towards the ground, and streaked the side of her face. Ugly bruises were in various places on her as well - one side by her eye clearly showing the telltale signs of a gauntleted backhand strike.
However the Horde had captured the Gilnean commander, it had been one hell of a fight. However the Horde had treated her since then, it had not been well. Everything in Darius screamed and howled at seeing his child like this!
"Lorna..." Darius found himself vocalizing without even thinking, his thick, growling voice bearing a subtle undernote that sounded amazingly close to a dog-like whine. Lorna moved. She probably wasn't even aware of it, but she did. Her eyes fluttered half-open, unfocused, and shut again all in an instant, as her head moved in a slight and sluggish motion and fell limp again, as though waking briefly in the night only to fall right back into the welcome arms of sleep again. Her face had turned towards him, incognizantly responding to the sound of his voice. Just like when she was little.
The twisting ache in Darius' chest was becoming more and more unbearable by the second.
Damnation. That was all that Sylvanas offered. Death in battle would have been one thing, everyone who was with him knew the possibility of the costs of their undertaking, even and especially Commander Lorna Crowley (and how proud he had been in his heart of hearts to call her that). But this... Not this. Anything but this. He would have begged to the Light and howled to the Moon for another fate than what faced him now. This choice was unforgivable, unbearable. No! Damn Lorna to a fate worse than death, to exist in the Shadow forever, never again to know joy or love or family, never again to be touched by the Light. Or damn all his kingdom and countrymen by surrendering Silverpine Forest, losing ground, and opening the way for further losses... Losses of the most inexcusable nature.
Darius Crowley's one good eye kept darting rapidly from his daughter to Lady Sylvanas and back again.
"I..."
The first sign came in the morning, when the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and Lady Crowley was going about her day with a lighter spring in her careful step than usual: excitement every time that she felt something stirring at her center. Wouldn't it be so amazing, so wonderful, if today was the day?
The second sign didn't come until well into the night - as slowly, very gradually over the course of the day, those stirrings had become more and more insistent, more taxing on Lady Crowley. Lord Darius, her husband, tried to make a joke to raise his lovely wife's spirits as she lay beside him. It was exactly the sort of joke that had always gotten her laughing before, no matter how awful the situation might have been. But she scowled and told him that it wasn't funny. At all.
Right about then Lord Darius Crowley thought it might be a good idea to send for the harvest witch who had agreed to be their midwife.
It was already well into the small hours of the night, but the woman was glad to awaken and come at their summons - for what a blessed reason they had to do so! Upon arriving, the druidess conversed in great depth with Lady Crowley, and at length proclaimed that all was as it should be. The only thing to do now was wait and let Nature take its course. Tea was served, and the night passed on in a pleasant manner.
The third, and most important sign, was one or two hours later. Lady Crowley had begun to clutch at her husband and whimper, "I don't know what to do! I don't know what to do!"
Scarcely understanding what to make of this, Darius asked his wife, "What do you mean you don't know what to do?"
"I don't know!" She cried.
The harvest witch smiled softly. "Self-doubt," she murmured. "It's nearly time." Not very long after that, a flood of water found its way to the floor right under where Lady Crowley sat.
Darius was right there at his wife's side the whole time. Stroking her hair, massaging her back when she needed it, and kindly backing off when she asked that he do so. He watched and felt - with fascination - her breathing, her concentration, as she focused herself to relax and work in synergy with this violent miracle that had hold of her. Darius didn't count the time that passed until the real work was upon them, he was too absorbed in all that was happening. Time slipped away unnoticed.
Darius propped up the pillows in their proper places for his wife, while the druidess took her position further toward the end of the bed. Lady Crowley took a steady breath and released it, and then another, carefully pulling one leg on either side of her towards herself as she did so. On the third breath, she held, and pushed. This routine repeated itself several times, with as many respites in between as Lady Crowley voiced that she needed, until at last... Darius spied wispy dark curls!
A handful of pushes more, and the child's head was free. "Once this push is done," interjected the midwife, "I'll need you to hold on for a bit."
"What? Is something wrong?" Lady Crowley asked the very instant that she had finished that particular push.
"No, not at all," the druidess replied. "The cord is just looped once around the babe's neck, is all." So saying, the midwife very gently slipped two fingers under the cord, and very carefully slipped it over the child's little round head. "Proceed," she said with a smile.
Shoulders, arms, torso, legs and feet all emerged without incident. Lady Crowley did not shriek but once the entire time, and it was only near the end of it all. After the infant was birthed and in the arms of the midwife, the druidess took a moment to examine Lady Crowley to see if anything was awry with the noblewoman. There were only a few very small tears, nothing that wouldn't heal as right as rain on their own, so long as they were kept clean. Still, she saw no reason not to help the good lady along, anyway. She murmured a spell of healing to mend the new mother, and once that was done... "It's a girl," she declared, with a brilliant smile.
Oh, how the girl wailed her disapproval at being put in such an unpleasant situation as the midwife cleaned her in a prepared washbasin! She didn't even stop after she was dried and swaddled! But then she was handed to her father...
"Hello, Lorna," Darius greeted her, smiling. Like magic, the girl ceased her cries. "Hey there, my sweet girl," he murmured, and she calmed even further. Darius' heart was doing flips in his chest, he wasn't aware of standing on the floor, his face was going to break at any moment from the enormously broad smile that was on it. He was too happy! He was holding his own little girl in his arms! His child! She was so beautiful. Undeniably the most beautiful thing that he had ever laid eyes on!
The night was not yet over, the sun had not yet risen. Somewhere at that moment outside, in the silver-light between moonset and sunrise, Darius heard a wolf howling long and loud to the heavens. A sound of joy. The same as his soul was doing now.
Darius came back up alongside his wife on the bed, and let little Lorna seek the comforts of her mother. His wife looked at him with tired but radiant eyes, every bit as happy as he.
"That was fun," said Lady Crowley, sincerely. "Exhausting, but fun. I would do that again."
Darius raised an eyebrow at his wife. "Would you?"
Lady Crowley laughed, "Well, not right away!"
Darius grunted as his wife's late-night return to bed roused him from sleep once again. No sooner had she settled herself in, however, when-
"Waaaaaah!"
Lady Crowley groaned. "I just fed her," she muttered, half-muffled by the pillow under her head. "Just fed her, right before I put her down! She can't possibly be hungry again so soon!"
"I'll see to what she needs," Darius volunteered, getting up from the bed.
"But-" Lady Crowley started.
"You need to rest, darling," Darius interrupted her, turning around and gently stroking the side of her face and hair. Then he fixed her with a mock-stern look. "Your lord commands it."
Lady Crowley whapped her husband lightly on the arm, but it was not a gesture done in earnest, as she also rolled her eyes and smiled with wry affection at him.
Darius kissed his wife soundly on the mouth. "As you said," he reasoned, "you only just fed her, so she can't be hungry. There is nothing lost in letting me see to her this time." He kissed her again. "Rest, my love," he whispered, and she gratefully settled herself back down to do just that.
Darius walked into the adjoining room where Lorna lay in her cradle. "Hey..." he greeted her, soothingly. "It's me." The tone of the baby girl's voice changed once she heard him. "It's your father, Lorna." Her little face turned towards him, and her little grasping arms reached out and up, seeking out his presence that she could now sense was there. Darius was glad to oblige her, and as he gently scooped her up and held her securely in his arms, he asked her, "Can you not sleep, my girl?" Lorna only hummed and grasped at his chest in answer, and he smiled as he went over to the rocking chair and sat down with her.
Darius did not think himself at all the same caliber of singer that his wife was - she had a voice of pure gold. All the same, he sang to his daughter, a few old country lullabies. Little Lorna became ever more serene and quiet as her father's softly resonating voice vibrated from his chest through her small form, familiar and welcome. A tiny sigh escaped her and Darius smiled, eyes sparkling.
He'd do damn near anything for her, and he knew it.
His father-instincts were quite something to live with now. The undeniable drive to protect her alone was fierce and formidable, to say nothing of his other desires. He had so many things to teach her! To show her! The sense of responsibility was great, but wonderful, and he embraced it. He would see to it personally that she was raised to be a proper Gilnean lady. Not like some useless, delicate flower of the courts of other kingdoms, oh no. She would hunt, ride, shoot, and clash swords with the best of them, as Gilneans prided themselves in every level of society for being the most self-sufficient of all the human realms. But for now... she was so small. Helpless. She needed him. And something deep within him needed to answer that, however it could. Even if it was only by holding her close and letting her know that he was there.
"I can't promise to protect you from the world," Darius murmured to his daughter. "Because the world never leaves you alone. It always finds you, one way or another." Darius looked out through the window into the night, at the moonwashed silhouette of the construction of King Genn's ultimate regards to the Alliance of Lordaeron - the Greymane Wall – and he sighed, a hard set to his brow. He looked back at his daughter, and his face softened. "But whatever the world faces you with, I will face with you," he promised. "And no matter who or what stands against you, I will fight for you however I can. On my honor, I swear it." Darius gently kissed the top of little Lorna's soft, fragile head, his whiskers brushing at her feathery-soft skin. But then as he watched her slumbering contentedly in his arms a little while longer, he came to realize something.
He could say whatever words he liked, but it wasn't his honor that would be holding him to them. Not really.
Darius snorted softly at himself and shook his head, then looked again at his little girl and fought to control how his voice near-choked with emotion as his heart swelled with love. "You've left me rather incapable of doing any less, my girl."
"Release her. I will sound the retreat."
Ivar Bloodfang turned to face Lord Darius Crowley with a look of downright incredulity plastered all over his muzzled face. He couldn't believe what he was hearing! "You can't be serious, Crowley," he insisted emphatically.
Darius shot him a look. Oh yes. He was.
The packleader's head began to move in a barely perceptible headshake, unable to accept this. His face contorted from disbelief to disgust. Anger flared in his wide feral eyes. "You miserable bastard!" Ivar shouted. He roared out a howl of fury to shake the silver skies, and then turned and ran South, back the way that he and Crowley had come, away from the Greymane Wall, back to the Gilnean peninsula.
Lady Sylvanas Windrunner calmly turned to her left again. "Release her, Godfrey," she ordered.
"Of course, mistress," Lord Godfrey replied, and he dumped Lorna Crowley to the ground with a guttural sound of contempt.
Lorna hit the ground hard, the impact jarring her painfully into consciousness. Lifting her head up, she looked around confusedly from where she lay sprawled in the dirt for a only couple of seconds, until her eyes landed on her father. As soon Lorna saw Darius, she scrambled headlong towards him. But no sooner did she get within arm's reach of him, when at the last moment she collapsed right at his feet. Her breaths came hard and rasping.
"Now leave here, Crowley, and never return." Darius had to tear his eye away from where his daughter was in heap on the ground to look up at Lady Sylvanas as she addressed him again. The Dark Lady met his eye directly with the sanguine embers of her own. Her hollow voice echoed for all to hear as she proclaimed, "Lordaeron belongs to the Forsaken."
Darius bent down to grasp Lorna's arms, helping her to rise. "Forgive me, daughter..." he begged, choking thickly on the words. He really couldn't tell what kind of emotion was in her bright, moistening eyes as she looked back at him. Once she was standing, Lorna began the retreat Southwards beyond the Greymane Wall. But she didn't get far before she was staggering again as before. Her father was right behind her. He caught her up in his arms. Lorna buried her face into his chest and clutched at his tabard, shaking.
Darius kept going, albeit a tad less quickly, careful of that which he carried. But he had a grim thing to ponder as he went.
As long as Darius had been a lord - longer even - he'd had it in his mind that he was not above his men, and that it was not their duty to serve him. Rather, as their lord, he had a responsibility to his men, and more than anything it was his duty to serve them, however he could. He was only a man, leading other men, and he had held himself to account that he ask no sacrifice of his men that he would not also sacrifice himself.
He knew that he could go on putting one foot in front of the other if he lost his lands, wealth, or station. Had he not done so already? Losing Ambermill and Pyrewood to the other side of the Greymane Wall when it was built? Being imprisoned, stripped of everything for treason when he and his men lost the Northgate Rebellion? He knew there to be much that he would give up for what is truly right.
His holdings, and more, when he risked the rebellion.
His brother Gilneans to the hope of Lady Jaina Proudmoore's mission when he'd sent the Gilneas Brigade to assist her at the time of the Third War, taking the survivors of Lordaeron across the sea, to the ancient and forgotten continent of Kalimdor. At the time, it had been certain that he would never see or hear from any of those fine souls ever again, but it was a decision that he did not regret.
Even his own life, gods curse it! He'd made that much as clear when he and his forces had made what they thought would be their last stand at Light's Dawn Cathedral! It had been a distraction, when the land was overrun with feral worgen, to buy all their loved ones time to evacuate to safety - including Lorna and the Greymane family – and it had ended in all within Light's Dawn becoming worgen themselves. It cost them much of their humanity, but their people survived.
Darius looked down at the bloody, bruised face of his daughter in his arms and felt his heart break.
Not her.
Not in a thousand years.
Never her.