Camdyn exits the captain's cabin, carefully closing the door behind her in an attempt to be respectful of the meeting still going on inside. Her head is reeling and the deck feels strangely unsteady beneath her feet. The last thing she had ever expected was to be included in a war council with the kings of Gilneas, Gnomeregon, and Stormwind and the leader of the Kirin Tor. She's no one. A simple paladin. But as her eyes adjust to the darkening sky and her gaze skims over the thin numbers on the main deck of the ship, it's sharply punctuated that she is the highest ranking paladin to have survived the Broken Shore.
Tiron Fordring is dead. She had seen him die, had been forced to watch it happen, completely powerless to stop it. The guilt and the pain tangle together, ripping and clawing their way up her belly and into her throat until she feels like she's choking on them. It's a horrible pain, but also horrifyingly familiar. She had felt it when she watched Bolvar Fordragon sacrifice himself for the good of Azeroth at the top of Icecrown Citadel.
Too many of her heroes are dying.
Camdyn swallows back against the bile rising in her throat at the thought, and the ache behind her ribs that accompanies it and crosses to the port railing of the gunship, leaning on it and watching out over the side as clouds slide around it like cresting waves. The sun is setting in a gloriously serene watercolor wash of oranges and pinks across a horizon that doesn't show any of the scars of war, and the longer she looks at it, the more her sense of disorientation grows until none of it seems real. Not the relentless tide of demons Gul'dan had summoned, not the crushing losses they'd suffered even before the Horde forces had deserted them. Not the fact that her king has abdicated and that she's being looked to for guidance by the Alliance's most powerful leaders.
She can't understand it. Not any of it. Her head is swimming and her heart is breaking, and her bones ache and she just... can't.
Camdyn hears the soft tread of feet on the deck; someone's come up looking for her, but she's so tired she can't bring herself to react.
"Paladin." It's a calm voice, too serene in the way that most night elves speak. Camdyn takes a quick, bracing breath before turning to see what the elf needs. It pulls her up short when she realizes the elf is simply standing there, watching her, with two tankards in hand. "We found some undamaged casks in the hold." The elf gestures delicately with the tankards, and Camdyn can smell the yeasty bitterness of ale. "Should you desire more, we brought the casks to the main deck and set them up to stern." She pauses. "There are many who are toasting the dead tonight."
With a dip of her chin and a murmur of thanks, Camdyn takes the tankard the night elf holds out to her. The elf's answering grin doesn't reach her eyes, and then she slips away again.
The tankard is heavy in Camdyn's hands as she brings it to her mouth. The ale is cold against her lips and the malt is heady on her tongue, and she's immensely grateful to both whoever it was who found the casks and to the mages who enchanted the tankards. It lets them all toast their dead.
It lets them all, for a moment, forget.
The sun has long set and Camdyn's gone through two additional tankards of ale when the door of the captain's cabin swings open, light flooding across the deck. King Greymane steps out first, followed closely by High General Varian. Camdyn frowns into her ale before taking another long pull of it, draining the last dregs. His abdication rubs against her uncomfortably, like crushed velvet brushed the wrong way. She trusts him implicitly as her king and knowing he'll still be leading the military forces is a comfort, but it still feels wrong.
As the king and the general begin to make their way around the perimeter of the ship - talking to clusters of soldiers, checking on those still wounded - Camdyn moves counter to them, making her way to the stern of the ship. She stops long enough to refill her ale before proceeding up the ladder to the poop deck. It's quieter here: most everyone is down below on the main deck or even further down in the crew quarters.
Normally, she'd be down there with them, laughing, celebrating that they'd made it out alive. Mourning the dead and honoring their sacrifice. But tonight feels different. The losses have been too great, almost too heavy to bear. Cradling her tankard between her palms, she tries to count the stars dotting the darkness of the sky. Lets the mental fuzziness from three ales help dull the ache.
Tomorrow, she'll start processing. For now she just wants to forget.
She doesn't know how long she hides - time stopped meaning much once she'd had enough ale that her teeth began to tingle and the bruise on her cheekbone didn't anymore - but it's long enough that her ale is mostly empty again. Somewhere in the back of her brain, she attempts to calculate if she's sober enough to climb down the ladder for a refill. It's quiet up here. Peaceful almost. Up here, she can almost fool herself into believing that the whole engagement on the Broken Shore had been nothing more than a nightmare instead of terrifying reality, and she's reluctant to leave her small sanctuary, even with every intention of coming back.
"Paladin." The deep voice is unexpected and sudden and makes her jump, and it's only the fact that her ale is almost empty that keeps any of it from sloshing over the rim of her tankard. She jerks her head around to the ladder. "Might I join you?"
It's him. She's adored him from a distance for so long, and he's so handsome, standing there at the top of the ladder watching her, waiting for her answer, the darkness and flickering lamplight throwing his already sharp features into even sharper relief. The contact between them has only ever been warmly professional - nothing more than a devoted paladin and her king - but that hasn't kept her from wishing, and him specifically searching her out has been a prime feature in her fantasies for at least a decade, and he's actually here.
A heady giggle bubbles up in her throat, and she forces it back down with another swallow of ale. "Of course, General," she answers with a smile, her voice as loose and warm as her limbs feel. Something niggles in the back of her brain, says that if she were more sober, she would be mortified. She does giggle then precisely because she isn't sober. If she were sober, she would have ducked away as soon as he'd climbed the ladder. She wouldn't be here. And, as he dips his chin in acknowledgement of her reply and crosses the space between them in long, slow strides, here is exactly where she wants to be.
He leans next to her on the railing, all lazy grace and restrained power, and there's a muted ferocity still burning in his eyes that Camdyn can see even in the moonlight. Camdyn feels like she's lighter than air, that her armor is the only thing anchoring her to the gunship's deck; her head is swimming and her tongue is tingly and a little numb, and he's standing so close.
He's close enough she can smell the sweat of battle and salt of ocean spray still clinging to him, and there's something absolutely primal about Varian Wrynn that goes to her head every bit as much as the ale has. He's close enough for her to notice the exhaustion buried under his ferocity. For her to see the weariness hangs heavily off of him despite his persistent battle-ready tension, as if he's personally carrying the responsibility for the lives lost on the Broken Shore and the lives they're all fighting to protect beyond it.
She means for the hand she lays against the back of his broad shoulder to be comforting, a gesture of solidarity. Maybe the ale makes her touch too heavy or too lingering, and it's definitely making her too familiar, because she has no right to touch her king like this. But alcohol and heartache and exhaustion make her bold, and she keeps her hand where it is.
As soon as her gauntlet touches his mail, he turns to her. For a fraction of an instant, something lost and broken flickers behind his eyes, and for the third time since storming the Broken Shore, Camdyn's heart breaks.
Before she can think of how many rules she's breaking, before she can think of all the reasons she shouldn't, she's leaning in and up and pressing her lips to the corner of his. It's only a kiss in the most academic of terms, only lasts a fraction of a heartbeat - just long enough to feel the prickle of whiskers and the barest hint of the fullness of his lower lip at the edge of her own mouth - before she realizes what she's done.
Camdyn jerks back from him and attempts to clap her hand over her mouth in horror. Varian's fingers catch her wrist mid-air, and a fresh bolt of adrenaline shoots through her before she belatedly realizes that he's just stopped her from beating herself in the mouth with the gauntlets she's still wearing. He's frowning at her and she can't blame him and it feels like her mouth's been stuffed with cotton and so's her brain because she just kissed her king.
Ale and shock make her wobbly as she takes two large steps back as soon as he releases her. Her lips tingle and her lungs are iron and she can't even blink. All she can do is stare at him wide-eyed and unbreathing. "I'm... I'm so sorry, your Majesty," she manages around a tongue that feels like lead and a voice that refuses to work properly. "That wasn't...I shouldn't..." She desperately wants to apologize, but the words won't come, so she dumbly take another gulp of ale instead. "I, uh," she says to the bottom of her tankard once she's lowered it, "I think I'm much more drunk than I thought." Her voice is quavering, and she doesn't know if it's the ale, her hammering heartbeat, the realization of what she's done, or all three. "I," she pauses and forces herself to swallow around the tightness of her throat, "I'm going to, um, to go lay down until we reach Dalaran. Try to sleep this off."
She doesn't give him time to respond before she turns and heads for the ladder that leads to the main deck.
Climbing back down is harder than climbing up, and she curses herself for even touching the ale every single rung of the way. Her lips still tickle from where they'd been pressed to his beard, and she licks them to try to quell the sensation.
The taste of salt, sharp and sudden, bursts across her tongue.
Salt that had been on his cheek.
Mortification stops her in her tracks, and she lets her head thunk against the nearest ladder rung. She can only hope he'll forgive her in the morning because Light knows she'll never forgive herself.