Varik felt as if he had been drifting just under awake for hours, when conciousness decided to cough him up and spit him out. He opened his eyes to a shadowed ceiling, the flow of curtains cascading in a strong breeze, that smelled of home. No. It wasn't home, Shadowmoon hadn't had an ocean in years, Draenor hadn't, not since Gul'dan had cracked it open like an empty egg.

And he wasn't dead. He carefully extricated himself from the bed, cautiously balancing on wobbling legs, taking a long moment before he trusted himself to step out onto the balcony beyond the curtains and take a long look around.

A seaport, an Alliance seaport, slumbering in what was either dawn or twilight. The last time he'd seen one of these, he'd come to help grind it into the dust under his bootheels. Not today. Probably not tomorrow, either. He frowned, it was all so foreign, uncomfortable.

"You're up. You shouldn't be."

He refused to answer her, since none of the replies he came up with were useful or adequate. She did not own him. She had no right to cluck over him like a broody hen. But his first reaction would probably leave him wandering around the balcony, bleating his little heart out until the polymorph wore off. He had to behave, for now. He had never expected to be asleep for the length he had been, everything would have changed.

"But I am." He stared out over the town, He was free, he was loose, there was not an orc in sight. He should be exuberant, he'd done the impossible. He'd escaped. Instead, he felt only drained, emptied, and adrift. He even struggled to find the correct words now.

"You seem contemplative." Jaina breathed, leaning against the railing and matching his gaze. He wrinkled his nose, it sounded all too much like the common orc 'you're thinking too much' indictment, but she sounded like she was impressed, or pleased. That was a rare reaction. "Over what?"

"I'm trying to decide if it's dawn or dusk." He gave up fighting for the words in common and let them flow from him. "I'm trying to decide if the emptiness I feel is physical, spiritual, both, or more. And I'm trying to remember the last time I smelled quite this awful."

Her reactions flowed across her face, openly, ending with a half hearted smile. "Well." She replied in serviceable orcish, "It is dusk. That is west." She inclined her chin behind them, towards the sun low on the horizon. "And while I cannot say when the last time before this one was, I can say now that you don't seem like a drowning risk, tonight will be the end of the current awful smell." She tapped her fingertips thoughtfully against the carved stone, "You really do have trouble speaking common."

He growled in disgust, locking his jaw. He felt like he had a child's vocabulary when he tried to speak it, and it lamed his thoughts into simplistic, shallow concepts. He should speak it better, somewhere, beyond the veil of his memories, he had once been fluent enough in it. It was his native tongue, but it was a shadow, an echo of something he had tried to obliterate within himself. He had almost succeeded... "A bath would be most appreciated."

"Of course. And clothes that come closer to fitting you." She almost said something, he caught the hint of it, unsaid, on the breeze, but she cut it off and he remained silent. "Come with me." She sighed in disgust, and he frowned, measuring that. No, she was disgusted with herself, not at him...although he was pretty damned disgusting at that moment. He nodded deeply, falling into step behind her. "Bath." She said, as if he was incapable of figuring that out for his own, waving at a lavish, deeply set pool of water steaming in the middle of a small, tiled room.

"Thank you."

She nodded, and turned to leave him alone. He blinked, then shrugged. He'd grown spoiled, catered to, unused to tending himself unless it was on a field of conflict. But he owed her, not the other way around, and that demanded a certain level of respect from him. He slid into the water, happy to scrub the stench of death from his body. His hair was a bigger mess, it took him more than an hour to oil it and finally comb it through. Damn you, Kargath. He should have been laid out with all due honors, not bundled in a pair of draenei caster's pants...where those had come from, he had no clue...and stripped of everything he'd owned. His hair was bare of the gold and jeweled ornaments that had bound it since the moment he'd been accepted as a true member of the Clans. His forearms, naked. His fingers. His ears. He'd been robbed blind. He couldn't look less like what he was if he tried.

Heads will roll. And their undead hands will pick them up and put them back on their shoulders, before they turn to me and call me master...

A pleasant, if empty, thought. Too much time had passed for him to exact that sort of revenge, he sensed only dry death when he thought of Kargath. And, bluntly, he'd been willing to risk his life to get away from Kargath, even if the man was still alive, a few baubles were not worth confronting him over. What was done was done. He could always get more.

He sighed, convinced he was as clean as he was going to get from one bath, and leveraged himself out of the water. He was hungry, thirsty, and yes, tired again. The only bright spot was that there was no one here that seemed likely to hold that weakness against him.

There was a pile of clean towels prominently displayed, and he dried off, wrapping one around his hips as he dried his hair and tightly braided it into submission. There was a mirror, and he steeled his nerves before he stared into it.

His own level brown eyes stared back at him, unchanged. The newest scar had paled a long time ago, he had to squint to find it, even though it seemed as if he'd been struck just days ago. "Grrrh." He breathed. His beard was, as usual, a complete loss and a total disaster. He'd tried to grow one on so many occasions, and each was a failure. Too curly. Too red. Too wrong. While he easily managed a head turning, glorious mass of dawn bright hair on his head, what grew on his face was a perpetual joke. But a straight razor had been provided so that he could take care of that problem. He shaved it completely away, studying himself in the mirror afterwards...

"Admiring yourself?"

"Making certain I didn't miss any." He sighed, turning to the speaker. It was the other blonde, the one who had never bothered to give him a name. The one that breathed threat and raised caution. She raised a brow when she caught a good glimpse of what he looked like now, cleaned up, and somehow, even that look was a threat. He stood his ground as she approached, even when she stepped right up to him. She was close to his height, so he couldn't even loom over her...

She placed her hand on his belly, way too low for his comfort, under his navel, stroking the fine line of dark blond hairs that traced the way lower with her thumb.

No. He locked eyes with her, stirring up his misgivings and staring unblinkingly into his own darkness. He could use it as a tool, a reminder, a memory of scenes he didn't want to repeat. He could control himself, the frenzy that he had given himself up to faded more and more every day that Mannoroth was gone. This one could not use it against him...he refused to let her.

"No, eh?" She murmured as if he had spoken it aloud. "Good." She nodded as if he'd passed a test, pulling her hand back and stepping away from him. "Oh, and you look much better without the beard, but you already knew that."

"I did." He granted slowly. Shaving displayed his weak jawline, but that childish feature was slightly better than the alternative. Gul'dan had laughingly noted that it looked entirely too much like he had a full growth of pubic hair clinging to his face.

"Dinner will be served in a few minutes. I have clothing that will come closer to fitting you, until we can get you some of your own. I'll be back to get you in just a bit...give you some time to get dressed."

There were indeed clothes, and they came damned close to fitting him. They weren't the dark, shadowed, hooded robes that he preferred, in fact they came close to the everyday clothes he had often worn when he had infilitrated human settlements ahead of the Clan's push... a billowy ivory linen shirt and tan breeches. Varik wasn't certain who actually owned them, he sensed no men close by. While he could sense that other men had been close by, that thread was weak and fleeting. They came, but they didn't stay.

"Ah, you're ready, good. This way, Jaina is waiting."