What They Don't Know
Disclaimer: I do not own anything other than my ocs, when they appear. Blizzard owns everything else.
Chapter 4: Leaving the Past
"Hear the words,
a cry in the wind,
echoes from the past
See the man fall,
don't want these chains, no,
standing alone,
in the middle of the storm"
-"Rain" Harmony
LLLLLLLL
xX Test Xx
At the top of the tower, left alone with Koraly Sunrose to plan, ("I was surprised at how well she perceived who we can and could not trust.") Jaina –Rapunzel, sweet and unyielding Rapunzel- watched the rogue for a moment who was holding a scroll with Jaina's personal signet on it. –She felt unsteady on her own two feet as if the world was swaying beneath her.- The elf read the amount in the scroll, eyes flaring perceptibly at the amount scrawled upon it. ("Was it worth it in the end, Jaina?" "I would pay the amount over a million times, Thrall.")
"This is a significant portion, Lady Proudmoore." The high elf took it into her leather breast pocket, a hidden area in her armor. –Jaina sometimes imagines trying to put on such regalia but she knows that with her feeble physical strength, if she tried such, she might be encumbered with far more than her duties- The sorceress feels a slight chill in her palm at the amount she has given.
"We need what can only be bought with gold." This was necessary. (She has repeated it in her mind when she calculated the costs but she wants as little death as possible.) The mantra echoes in her mind while the elf watches-analyzing, never forgetting the smallest detail of the woman's movements- before speaking once more.
"The juggernauts are the only things that can fight the blockade?" Her question lies in the air, much resembling a note from a maestro's wand. Jaina can't figure out whether or not the elf is alright with her plan. (In many years, she will look back to herself and wonder if there had been any other way) The mage glances to the windows, where the blockade is visible. –It was a circle of giants resting there, waiting for anything to come and to destroy with the strength of her father's men-
"Yes, they are. They're built by the goblins for the pirate attacks that were near Ratchet." The goblins were good money, Jaina always surmised. (When Garrosh comes into being and he allows them in the Horde, Jaina hopes she hasn't lost a potential ally in case hers ever decide to destroy her.) –When she first met Gazlowe, she could remember the feeling that he would turn on her at any moment, but as long as Thrall and her gold were in his hands, she could count on him.-
"Thrall will be notified." The mage knows it's a given that the Warchief would be notified. Koraly knows it as well. ("She is faring well?" "As any caged woman in a cell, Warchief." "Then we should hurry there and free her.") The elf bows, turning on her heel towards the door, where Jaina is sure, Koraly's replacement lies in wait.
The door creaks open. Jaina bites her bottom lip.
-There was the image of her father, heel turning out of the door to the seas-
(She held his hands and cried into them for Thrall was the only one able to truly understand.)
"Wait….I need you to get something." The mage stops the rogue with a fire-sure command from her lips, uttered in her language. Koraly, as old as she is and as vengeful, glances over her shoulder. It has been years since she heard her own tongue and the Silvermoon dialect projected to her. The elf glances back, responding in common. –The rogue later on nearly cries to herself after the whole affair for she didn't realize just how much hearing her native tongue after the scourge tore apart her home would hit her with a sense of homesickness.-
"Yes, Lady?" Her voice is rough upon the wind between them, a tenous thread because Jaina knows that if she had made the choice that Arthas had, this elf would be after her head as well. ("Decisions come to make us who we are, Jaina." "Archmage Antonidas, are there any decisions you regret?" "No, because I made them for reasons I believe are right." Years later, she wonders his words.)
"My father has the twin to the stone I gave Thrall…." The rogue cuts her off, as sharp as the blades she wields with precise aim. –there was glass on the floor once and she can remember picking up the shards from a rather vehement argument that Arthas and her yelled about-
"I'll get it. Anything else, Lady?"
"Find those loyal to me; make them understand we are not to fight the orcs." As she heard the door close, another human, one of Jaina's favored guards, the sorceress closed her eyes and could only wish for the days when life didn't make her feel as if she was walking an invisible knife.
xX Tower Xx
It stood in the distance, a beacon of something to Thrall. (It meant that she was still alive in her tower. It meant words that the orc chieftain could not help but think and repeatedly ignored for it was the good for the Horde and he was the Warchief, not just Thrall.) His men watched him –a thousand eyes or more only make it harder for him to breath but he would never admit it- with an earnestness that Thrall did not know how to abate.
("I wished often enough when I was reading that I would be able to live like a normal orc and that someone else was 'Thrall'." "If anyone got the choice to refuse destinies, Thrall, we would have never been born." "I was born to raise people up from the ashes." "I was born to save what was left of mine." We were born to meet each other.)
The shifted weight of armor creaking on the decks of the small naval ships he had bartered for silence while Gazlowe tended with the juggarnuts to the blockade. (Gazlowe had grinned in the way that made the Warchief wince…..often. He thanked the spirits later that Jaina had paid over half the goblin's fee.) His eyes traced over to his army.
"Leave troops with the Theramore tabard alive! They have been instructed not to attack. No innocents are to be killed! LadyProudmoore is to not be harmed!" His orders were passed by the mages in each group. The orders were well known. He glanced over at his personal entourage, Rexxar with him and his bear, Koraly hidden by her mask and her white Theramore tabard. ("Is it going to fit?" "Warchief, don't worry about such things." There was silence until Thrall's promise echoed to the rogue. Jaina had heard of the elf's desire. "I will talk with Sylvanas to see if she has heard anything about your kind.")
As their sloops glided across the foggy bay, passing the marina, the Warchief could only glance up again at that white tower.
"Be safe….." (He would later on press his hands against walls to try and find out just why he wanted Jaina safe. Why he even wanted to keep their alliance when things often got in the way.)
xX Standing Still Xx
Daelin eyes his daughter. She has long stopped opening her mouth to protest him, to defy him.
(I am the mountain.)
He looks over at the spell stealer. He stands at attention, ready to do whatever the admiral commands.
(No matter how you howl….)
Jaina is the woman in the center of the room, being watched and calculated. She is the steelbloom on the mountain as Daelin's words cut through her.
(I cannot…)
There are cries as the orcs meet more resistance at Theramore's tower where Jaina is held at.
(I will not…..)
Daelin is screaming now and ordering men to come to him at arms. Thrall is crying out for the admiral to reconsider. He is outmanned, outmaneuvered, outwitted. Rexxar blocks the axe from hitting his Warchief.
(I will never…..)
Thrall's eyes meets her own. They both know he will not raise the Doomhammer against her father.
The mortal wound hits and Daelin is on the floor.
(bow to you)
Jaina runs to her father, lying on the floor, dying.
"You are not my daughter, orc whore."
xX Rejection Xx
In the middle of the night, the night after, the night of, -Jaina's not really sure which one it is today- she sits in her chair, looking at the splattered blood in her audience chamber. (There was a man there once, a foolish and proud man and there was a girl there once too who hoped for something far different than war.) She sees Rexxar, Thrall and she is surrounded by orcs. –Her father's words haunt her despite the blood on the floor being long washed from the stone-
The blood belongs to her and her father and her brother and Aunt Yennika and her mother. (She feels her hands drowned in it as she cries to his body lying on the floor and she can't move.) –Nothing is there and it's the night of and her heart is racing, faster, faster, and faster. –Is it a time clock racing against the owner? - She closes her eyes tighter –hoping to the light he forgives her for this- before the image of her father's fight.
She watches the admiral's hat fall from his crown and she thinks to herself, "This is like Terenas, like Arthas, like King Llane and I can't….." She can see the axe fall down after her father receives the mortal wound. ("There was so much damn blood!" Thrall sometimes thinks she should have never been born to war, but she was and even more her fingers are in the thick of it.) The proudest and most stubborn man refuses her, refuses Thrall. ("I tried." "I know, Go'el." I know and I still don't blame you.)
He stares with dark blue eyes. ("My father belonged to the sea and my mother. There was no place he was happier.") He stares and she wonders what he thinks as her hands reach down for him. It isn't until her fingers reach his that he retracts, using the last of his strength. –Thrall says nothing when he sees her arms are extra red from scouring her arms. He doesn't know what to say. - He spits on her. Her father takes his lifeblood and saliva in his mouth and spits on the whore his daughter is, the disgrace she is as she reaches for him.-
("You are not my daughter, orc whore.")
Thrall could only hold her shoulder in front of his troops. (It was only later, when she was so broken from the fighting that she was resting on the chair with no one around and he came to hold her. "I'm here." And it meant the world.)
"Why didn't you listen?"
xX Solitude Xx
He knows better to press her. ("They take and take and take, Thrall! I'm sick of it! Hear me, Arthas? I'm sick of it!" Only the warmth of her mouth crashes on the collar of the chieftain's armor with her hands bruising themselves and Thrall can only hold her this time.)
He still wants to reach out-to feel her small body even if it is wracked with sobbing, bursting at the seams with regret- when he sees that little human, back bent –a willow in the breeze of life- hair falling around her with her fingers on her staff much like the day they had met –white to the knucklebone, pushing up against her frail skin-.
He can't make himself move to her. ("Feet are stubborn like that." "They belong to the body and should listen to it." "Not everyone can do that." He couldn't.) He couldn't, not like this. His hands tightened on Doomhammer when he felt the softest of nudges against his legs. (Her name was Sanrruf and she came to speak, softly in Kalimag.) His fingers caressed fur, -knowledge being passed on- slowly becoming paws before his body lay down against the wall nearby.
It was the first time he understood that solitude. (He saw Sanrruf's pain and life and her pack, children, ages of natural instincts.) He became wolf and Sanrruf disappeared, gifting her power for this. –Solitude was for humans and never packs- ("I must tell you a secret, Jaina." "What is it?" "Seeing your real body for the first time as a spirit wolf almost scared me." It was a sky blue, brighter than the brightest summer day.)
The spirit animal slinks across the tower to where she is, to where she is sitting on a balcony bench in her white tower-for some times, she is Rapunzel with no hair and he is Thrall with no horse but it's their twisted tale.-
Llllll
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