You don't know what fear is until you've had the cat trip you while you're carrying your laptop.

/*\

"You want to what?" Thaellas asked, disbelief coloring his voice.

"I know how it sounds," Talyn responded, "but I swear it's her."

Thaellas shook his head and turned away, crossing his arms and staring out into the woods. There was no way Talyn could be serious. He'd heard the story, yes. Pretty much everyone in Teldrassil knew of Talyn's insane tale about his little blood elf in Northrend. How he'd screwed up, and how a sin'dorei girl had saved him and the rest.

And then how she had simply vanished into thin air. How Talyn had been dragged away screaming that they needed to save someone who didn't exist. No one really knew the full details of the assignment, Talyn had never been permitted to tell, but they knew this: at only seventeen that mission had broken him. He had to be removed from the Alliance military, and it had taken all of five years for that wound to scar. Thaellas didn't doubt that a blood elf had saved his cousin. If she'd really been as young as Talyn said she was, then it was possible she might have been capable of having some empathy for her enemies. Especially under the circumstances. His family had been grateful to this girl they'd never met, but it was a widely accepted notion that they never would meet her.

Talyn had been consumed with guilt after the fact, and for a long time he had insisted that she was still out there. The entire family had to stop him from sneaking out of Teldrassil to go looking for her on more than one occasion. Thaellas had heard his parents talk about it for months. The scout reports were not pretty. The battlefield had been riddled with bodies. Not a survivor to be seen. Whatever happened in the Howling Fjord that day, no one outside Talyn and his friends could truly say and they did. But they were seldom believed.

"How do you even know it's her? You and I both know that girl should be dead."

"Just let me talk to her." Talyn said. "If she doesn't recognize me we do this your way, but if she does…"

"Your proposal completely negates my reasons for kidnapping her. Besides, if she was the same girl, why did she not recognize you before?" Thaellas said. For a split second, Talyn hesitated. His eyes widened and he chewed his lip, and then he dodged the question.

"I'll cover the ransom. I'll give you the twenty-thousand gold and more if you ask it. She was sick and delirious. Just let me see. I have to know." Talyn was almost begging at this point. His head was bowed and his brows furrowed. He stood tense and shrunken down. It was one of the rare moments that the hunter saw the druid behave like this. Talyn had massive authority issues. He did not take kindly to orders from other people, and he liked it even less when he had no choice but to follow them. The druid did not look angry now, only desperate. He was submissive in every imaginable way, and he was willingly compromising against himself.

It didn't help that the offer itself was worrying enough. Talyn wasn't a bad person, but he was about as stingy as a goblin when it came to money. He saved it all in different bank accounts across Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, and he wouldn't touch the gold for months on end. When he did he withdrew very tiny amounts – maybe forty gold on an indulgent day – and it took a fair amount of arm-twisting just to get him to help out a guild member. Now he was just offering up thousands of his savings? Plus the expenses for Stormwind? Over a blood elf who he didn't even know?

Talyn was regressing back into his seventeen-year-old self. Finally, just when he'd stopped talking about her and quit asking the Horde spies for information, this happens. The wound was reopening and Talyn was starting to lose it. But it would be a simple fix. Cruel, perhaps, but simple. To let Talyn talk to the blood elf meant crushing his hopes. It would be terrible to watch, and Talyn would likely fall back into the depression they'd all spent so much time trying to heal.

At the same time it would be even crueler to let him think that the blood elf girl he knew was still alive. It wasn't impossible, but it was highly unlikely. Even if she had survived the explosion, she would've been executed in Orgrimmar. If by some miracle she'd earned a lighter sentence, then the orcs would be holding her in their dungeons.

No way would Talyn survive a solo siege on an Orcish dungeon. No one would ever be crazy enough to go with him.

Thaellas had no choice.

"Fine." He said. "But I will hold you to your word."

"I expect nothing less."

/*\

Lilliya scratched beneath the dragonhawks chin as she resumed her wary dialogue with the gnome. Holly didn't seem eager to harm Lilliya, which the elf took as a good sign. In fact, she was rather amicable for a blood-sworn enemy. She explained the situation in full, but Lilliya was not stupid. Alliance lackeys were not this friendly. There was no way it would be that simple.

"So, Holly, this is not a malicious kidnapping." She stated cautiously. "You don't plan to do anything with me other than deliver me back to my mother when the week is over."

"That's it." The gnome responded. "This is in no way going to be any sort of adventure, but at least we'll be staying in Stormwind. We won't be camping out in the rain, and with a little arm-twisting I'm sure I can get Thaellas to let you have your own bed."

"Assuming the guards don't kill me first." Lilliya murmured. From what Holly had described the leader of this mission – the silver night elf – was absolutely mad. There was no way this plan was going to work. He'd planned out the kidnapping bit perfectly. Though it was a rather cowardly move to use a drug to capture someone who looked as frail as her, it had actually been very wise on his part. She was certain that they didn't know the true extent of her power, but it sounded like he didn't want to risk his people getting hurt.

Compassion was an admirable trait in a leader.

But that didn't change the fact that the rest of his plan was utterly ridiculous. Stormwind was not a kind place for a blood elf, even worse than Gilneas. No Alliance territory was safe for her, but Stormwind was the lion's den. It was the central hub of Alliance activity, and it wouldn't take long for someone to notice her. With the help of a little magic, she might be able to pass for one of the neutral high elves, but such illusions were easily seen through. She would just have to keep her head down as long as she possibly could.

"How do I know you aren't lying to me?" Lilliya asked. The gnome shrugged.

"You don't. That being said I'm not lying. I don't know how much stock you put into the words of a little old gnome like me, but I swear we have nothing nefarious planned. We just need money."

"Then why not hire a rogue to go pickpocketing? Surely that would have been easier."

"Perhaps, but it also would've taken longer and we'd have had to forfeit some of the stolen gold as payment."

"So you're an impatient lot." Lilliya quipped. To her surprise the gnome laughed.

"Yeah, just a bit. But in our defense we'd spent months camping out on a murloc-infested beach. All we want is to go home."

"That in itself is fair. But this is ridiculous. There is no way you'll keep me in Stormwind unnoticed." The elf protested, but Holly's face remained unfazed. In fact, she only smiled wider.

"Ah don't worry about that. We aren't going to be staying in Stormwind."

"But you just said–"

"We'll be staying underneath it."

/*\

Madrii and Derul listened in on the conversations from within their tent. The longer this went on the edgier everyone got. The couple knew that the guild members were planning something, but they didn't know what. If they could get away with pretending to sleep and eavesdrop a little, it could be incredibly helpful.

It had saved their lives on more than one occasion.

Naturally the blood elf was perplexed and suspicious. No surprise there. Holly was doing her best to placate their ill prisoner. There was no need to be rude or nasty. She was incapacitated, and Thaellas was snarky and suspicious enough for all of them. No, there was nothing out of the ordinary going on in the tent next door. However that was not the only conversation taking place.

The night elf himself was carrying on a very soft dialogue with his cousin just at the edge of the camp. The two draenei had to strain their ears just to catch the words. It certainly seemed to be a conversation worth listening in on. Talyn was arguing with Thaellas about the blood elf. The druid wanted access to her and Thaellas was not impressed. At least he wasn't until Talyn said something about…money? They couldn't hear the conversation in full, but it seemed odd that he would offer to pay her ransom out of the blue.

"Did he just offer to buy her?" Derul murmured, a perturbed look on his face. Madrii sniffed.

"Sounds like it. Twenty thousand gold is a lot just to have a 'conversation' with her."

The two continued to listen, but if the conversation was hard to make out before, it was even more so now. With each faint murmur Madrii became more and more stunned. Did Thaellas just agree to the druid's terms?

This wasn't good. If there was one thing that the Alliance did not take kindly to, it was slavery. And now their leader was partaking in it. They had to intervene, but a fight would not end well. Three coordinated guild members against an amateur mage and a wounded paladin? No way would that work. The couple had to do this stealthily. They had to get the elf girl to trust them, at least as much as Horde would trust Alliance, and they had to get her out of here. Fast.

/*\

When Thaellas returned, Lilliya watched him with wary eyes. Holly was insistent that the people within this camp had no interest in hurting her, and she was sure that was true. Unless she tried to escape that is. The night elf snapped at the gnome in fluid Darnassian, and he motioned with his head for the dragonhawk to leave her lap.

Slowly the creature slinked away, and she was left staring up at the night elf uneasily. He almost looked angry and a spark of fear flashed down her spine. Sure she'd been told they didn't want to hurt her, but that didn't mean they were telling her the truth. What was going on? The man spoke to the gnome again without taking his eyes off her, and Holly translated.

"Lilliya, he says that his cousin would like to speak with you." She said. This gave the blood elf pause. Could his cousin be the man she'd initially spoken with? The druid?

Wait. The druid. The one with violet hair and a familiar engraved staff.

"The man who healed me?" She inquired. Holly nodded. The hunter said something else. Lilliya might have ignored him in disinterest, but then she caught a name. No. No way. She heard wrong, she had to have. The gnome began her translation.

"The druid's name is Talyn, he–" But that was all Lilliya needed to hear.

"Talyn?" She interrupted. "His name is Talyn?" Slowly Holly nodded.

"Yes. I just told you that."

"Talyn…Frostfire?" She asked hesitantly. It was impossible, she knew it was impossible. The man's eyes widened in surprise and Holly blinked.

"How do you know that?" She asked, but Lilliya had already marched out of the tent into the rain. There was no way that Talyn could be here.

Talyn Frostfire was dead. Lilliya had killed him.

/*\

At first, the only word that Talyn could think of to describe her face was horror. She looked like she'd seen a ghost, a ghost that would overpower her and devour her whole. She was almost exactly as he remembered her. She was just as tiny as she used to be, standing at barely above five feet tall. Her silk robes hugged her waifish figure perfectly, and her eyes radiated a fel energy that might have once terrified him. Her pink lips parted in shock, and she pushed the long bronze hair out of her face. Her nose was red with the cold, and her pierced ears stood at articulate points.

It was like she'd been frozen in time, a memory taunting him from beyond, but she soon made it perfectly clear that she was real. She breathed out his name and approached him, lucid and awe-struck. She touched his face lightly, her caress lighter than a butterflies wings.

"It's you." She said, affirming his tangibility. "It's really you."

He nodded speechless. It was then that her expression morphed. No longer was she gazing up at him, mesmerized and just a little frightened. No, this was the girl he had first met. The one who had literally scared him into pissing his pants and singed off his pathetic excuse of a beard. Her brows scrunched together and her mouth twisted into an angry grimace. It was only seconds later that a sharp pain exploded in the middle of his face. For a split second his ears rang and he saw stars, before he registered the dripping.

She stood before him, swearing and shaking out her hand, working away the pain in her knuckles. Holly was laughing boisterously, and Thaellas was staring at him dumbstruck. It was only when Talyn lifted his hand to his face and found blood that it really hit him.

After all this time and all this worrying, his reuniting with her was supposed to be a happy occasion. She was supposed to leap into his arms, singing his praises and calling him her hero. He was supposed to take her to some remote land far away where she could have the life she wanted and live in peace, and he could move on knowing that he had kept his promise and saved her. Maybe he had even envisioned a future once or twice where she came back to Nighthaven with him. But no:

Instead, she had punched him in the face and broken his nose.

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Seven chapters down. Yay!