Author's Note:

What happens when I work on too many things? I get blocked, which is why this update is nearly two weeks late. Sorry about that, everyone! I've also been really busy with work, and now the World Cup is happening, which will take up some of my time as well.

Also, if you haven't read Christie Golden's new book Before The Storm, you should. Lots of Sylvanas in there!

Love,
Lunarelle


Voices carried through the corridors of Undercity, some perfectly understandable, while others were barely more than a murmur.

"Sure, Faith's fire is effective. It's our most powerful weapon. But with all due respect, Commander, it's not infallible, and you can't keep it up forever. It drains you fast."

Sylvanas nodded, looking over at Faith, "Lydon's right. Besides, you say that you don't like the Blight because it destroys everything, but so does your black fire."

Faith looked right back at her, "Things can grow back after I've passed through an area with fire. Nothing grows back where the Blight's been, not unless the area is cleansed."

"You're not wrong there, but the destructive factor of your fire remains."

"I only use my black fire when I'm facing a particularly strong foe nowadays. Or on remnants of the Scourge."

"I think it's safe to say you're not going to face the Scourge on Draenor," said Nathanos with a sneer.

"You're forgetting who created the Scourge, friend," Faith told him. "The Burning Legion has necromancers too."

"What are the odds that you're going to run into necromancers?" he asked, incredulous.

"Remote," answered Sylvanas. "But it's definitely possible. Let us assume, however, that they're not a factor."

They had been discussing military strategy for the better part of an afternoon, sitting in the same meeting room they had used to discuss the Scourge. The old map of Northrend reminded Faith of days gone by, when everything seemed to be simpler.

"You seemed a little distracted today," Sylvanas told her later. "Are you all right?"

Faith nodded towards the map. "I'm sorry. Things were easier back then."

"Back when the Scourge was running rampant and Arthas was still alive?"

"When I wasn't the one commanding entire battalions. It comes more naturally to you than it does to me."

"I have a few years of experience in the matter." She brushed a lock of hair back from Faith's forehead, "But you're a natural leader."

"I'm not."

"Of course you are. You've been leading people for years."

"It's easier to do when you have others above you making the big decisions."

"I heard you did well on Draenor."

Faith shook her head, "I had no idea what I was doing."

"I never know what I'm doing, to be honest."

"Are you kidding? You built everything here from the ashes."

"I may have done, but a lot of that was guesswork."

"What about when you were Ranger-General?"

"I had the backing of the royal family, it was different." She smiled softly, "I was terrified the first couple of years. I remember waking up all the time in the middle of the night. If I wasn't lusting after you, I was worried that I was doing something horribly wrong and that I would end up leading our people to disaster. You see how well that turned out."

"Baby, you were the best general Quel'Thalas had ever seen."

"Said who?"

"My brothers. I heard them talking about you all the time."

"Your brothers idolized me."

"Most of the kingdom loved and respected you, and it wasn't because you were more radiant and beautiful than a shaft of sunlight over the water."

Sylvanas looked at her, "You should have been a poet, love."

"No. I could barely string a sentence together when I saw you unexpectedly. Coming up with a poem on the spur of the moment… I wouldn't have been able to breathe enough for that."

Soft laughter echoed throughout the room, "Silly girl." Sylvanas smiled putting a hand on the back of Faith's neck and pulling her in for one of those lingering kisses that seemed to be theirs alone. Faith responded as she usually did, with a moan that made Sylvanas crush their bodies together. Need rose between them —

"Uh... should I leave?" came Nathanos' voice.

"Yes," said Sylvanas, barely breaking the kiss. "Close the door behind you."

"Sylvanas!" Faith pulled her head away. "You'd make me blush if I weren't dead. Get your hand out of there."

Sylvanas gave Faith a completely unconvincing look of innocence, pressing her finger once against her clitoris. "It's what you live for."

"And what I live for," said Nathanos, "is to never see your hand down Faith's leggings again."

"Jealous?" asked Faith, forcing herself to break physical contact with Sylvanas.

He laughed. The sound was far from merry. "Naive, even after all this time."

"Nathanos!" thundered Sylvanas.

He shook his head, looking at her, "You're never going to tell her, are you?"

"That is my decision, not yours."

"No, see this is my decision too, because it affects me, not just you and her."

Faith looked between them, her brow furrowed, "What's going on?" she asked.

Sylvanas looked at her directly, "Do you trust me?" she asked.

"With my life."

A nod, "I will tell you what's going on, I promise."

"But not now?"

"Not now."

Faith nodded as well, "When you're ready." Her kiss on Sylvanas' lips was brief this time, but sincere.

"Thank you, love."

"Although I think you're the one who told me that if there's ever anything unpleasant to tell someone, it's best to get it done and over with as quickly as possible so that it doesn't fester inside you too long."

"And when did I say that?"

Faith shrugged, "I think I was around twenty or so."

"Twenty." She chuckled, "Right, I forgot that you remember every single conversation you and I have ever had."

"Not every conversation," said Faith. "But good change of subject, Sylvanas." She gave a bow, "I'll see you later."

Sylvanas watched her leave, before rounding on Nathanos, "Let's get one thing straight. What I tell Faith is my business. And if you so much as whisper a word to her about the one night you and I shared, I will kill you."

"She deserves to know," said Nathanos stubbornly.

"It happened decades ago. What could it possibly matter if she finds out about it now?"

"She's asked you about it."

Sylvanas flexed her hands, as though trying not to strangle him, and left as well. She felt agitated, not unlike herself at all. She didn't want to talk to Faith about what had transpired a lifetime previously. Didn't want to see that look on Faith's face...

"Sylvanas."

Starting in surprise, Sylvanas stopped walking as Faith came out from behind a column.

"Faith. Honey, I meant it when I said that I'd tell you later."

"Just talk to me. It can't be that bad. And if it is, it's okay, we'll get through it together."

"Even if it hurts you?"

Bracing herself, Faith nodded, "Even then. Tell me."

"I slept with Nathanos."

Faith didn't say anything for a minute. Her eyes, however, registered several emotions. Pain. Betrayal. Disbelief.

"Not recently," she clarified quickly. "This was before the Scourge happened. While we were still alive." She waited, but Faith didn't speak, simply staring at her. "Say something."

"May I be self-involved for a moment?"

"Of course."

Faith slapped her, hard enough to send her staggering back a couple of steps. By the time she had recovered, Faith had walked away from her.

She followed, refusing to let her leave that way. "Faith, let me explain. Please…"

"I know I said we'd get through it together. And we will. Just give me some space right now, Sylvanas, or I swear I'm going to do something I'm going to regret."

Sylvanas wanted to scream. To cry. She knew better than to think Faith would leave her over this. But she still felt wretched about hurting her lover.

There was nothing she could say, and she knew it.

Faith looked almost pitying, "I can't, okay? I just can't. I know that your first instinct right now is to hold me and make me feel better, but that's not what I need at the moment. I need to be away from you for a while, and I need you to understand that."

"I do understand it," said Sylvanas. "Go. I'll be here when you return."

She waited until Faith had gone, then settled in the throne room, reading various reports about Draenor and keeping an eye on the entrance to the Royal Quarter. Scenarios kept running through her mind, where she was left alone with her mistakes, where Faith was nowhere near her.

Where they weren't together. Where Faith was with someone else.

I don't think I'd be able to handle this… she said to herself, almost panicking at the thought. What if she was wrong and Faith decided to leave her over this?

Faith returned three hours later, looking relatively composed. She glanced at Sylvanas pointedly before making her way to their chambers.

The banshee queen followed her. Her hands were actually shaking as she closed the door behind them.

"You lied to me," began Faith, keeping her back turned. "You looked me in the eye and lied to me when I asked you if you'd slept with him."

"Faith, my love -."

"Don't call me that. Not now."

"I'll always call you that."

"You lied to me, Sylvanas!"

"I didn't mean to."

"Didn't mean to?" asked Faith incredulously. She closed her eyes and turned around so that Sylvanas could see her face, "You didn't mean to lie to me the three times I asked you about you and Nathanos? You really expect me to believe that?"

"I didn't want to hurt you."

"Good job."

"I didn't want to hurt you," she repeated. "You can choose to believe that or not, but it's how I feel about it. I didn't want to see that look of betrayal on your face when you found out I'd... it was a long time ago."

"I'm not upset about you fucking him, Sylvanas."

"Yes you are."

"Fine, I am. But that's not what this is about."

"I know you're upset about my lying to you. But you have to understand why I did it."

Faith came to her, suddenly getting very close to her, close enough to kiss, "I am your lover. Your best friend. Your partner," she said. "There is no reason for you to ever lie to me. About anything."

"You forgive me?" asked Sylvanas, surprised by how well things were going.

Faith shook her head, "No. Not yet, and maybe not for a long time."

"Fair enough."

Giving a rare sigh, Faith looked up at her lover, "I'm going back to Draenor."

"No you're not," said Sylvanas immediately. "You're not leaving me."

"It's not leaving you. It's taking some space. I can't be around you right now, and I certainly can't be around Nathanos. Seeing the two of you together is going to give me images, and I don't need to think about the two of you making love... I'll end up killing people."

"How long will you be gone?"

"I'll come back periodically to check in." She turned away and grabbed one of her bags, using magic to pack it. She paused after a while, "Did you love him?"

"No. He was just convenient at the time. I... it was several years before the Scourge. I... I needed you, but I couldn't get to you. He was there. That's all."

"Oh, I see, so you're pawning this on me," said Faith. "Typical – you never take the blame for anything."

"Hang on just a second. I'm not pawning this off on anybody. I'm telling you the way it was. I needed you that night, and I couldn't get to you. It was nobody's fault, it's just the way it happened."

"You could have come to me."

"Yeah? I could have just come down to Everstone Village in the middle of the night and snuck into your bedroom to fuck you in your bed, just like that? How easy do you think that would have been?"

"Do you know how much I wanted you to do that?"

"Of course I know how much you wanted me to do that! You think I was blind to your feelings or something? We pretended well, sweetheart, but let's not fool ourselves now into thinking we had no idea how we felt about each other."

"So why didn't you?"

"You know why."

Faith shook her head, "So you just fucked him instead of me. How long did that last?"

A blink, "It was one night, Faith, I didn't have a relationship with him."

"Does he know that?"

"Yes, he knows."

"And how fair do you think that was to him? You just used him, then when you were done with him, you discarded him?"

"All right, so you want to know the way it happened. Fine. I knew he cared about me. Hell, it was more than that. I knew he was in love with me. We were spending a lot of time together because I was the one who endorsed him to be one of my rangers, and I was training him personally." She looked away from Faith, remembering. "I liked him. Actually, I liked him a lot, and my parents knew it. They were convinced that it would be a good match for me, despite the fact that he was human."

Faith didn't want to hear this, but forced herself to listen as she packed another outfit into her bag. "They would have preferred you marrying Kael'thas."

"Yeah, that wasn't going to happen. A relationship with Nathanos could, and he would have made a good partner for me. But I was already in love with you." She heard Faith make a noise and glanced at her. "I'd tried to deny it repeatedly, but it was useless. Still, I kept acting as society dictated of me. I took male lovers, whatever. Nathanos was one of them, and it only happened once."

Wincing, Faith looked at Sylvanas again.

"I knew the moment it started that it wouldn't continue. It didn't feel right. But he wanted me, and he acted on it – I guess that's what caused me to go to him in the first place."

Faith opened her mouth to say something, but Sylvanas walked to her and put a finger to her lips.

"I know this isn't making you feel any better. It's not supposed to. You want me to be honest with you about this, so here it is. It was just sex, nothing else. It was a lot for him, but for me, it was about scratching an itch."

"And did it help?"

"No. I could have slept with two dozen men, and it wouldn't have begun to satisfy me. Nathanos was the last male lover I had before you and I finally got together."

She didn't want to ask this… "Was he good?"

"He got the job done."

Faith pulled away, closing her bag and hoisting it over her shoulder, "Answer me this then. How would you feel if you were to find out that I'd slept with someone and lied to you about it, even in the distant past?"

"I'd hate it no matter how long ago it was, and I'd prefer not to know it."

"You lied to me. You lied to me about something that's pretty damn big. How am I supposed to trust you with anything else?"

"I gave my life for you!" snarled Sylvanas.

"I'm not questioning that. But Sylvanas, for a relationship to work, it can't be based on a lie. It just can't be."

"We haven't based it on a lie. This was just one lie about a lover I had years before I even died."

"I don't care how long ago it…" Faith forced herself to stop. "It doesn't matter now. I'll see you in a few weeks." She walked to the door, stopping when Sylvanas said her name in a broken voice.

"I'm sorry. I thought I was protecting you by not telling you."

"I believe you."

She left.

A few hours later, she was back on Draenor, reuniting with Rotvine and Liadrin in Frostfire Ridge and getting back into the swing of things. Garia was there too, and while she could tell that there was something wrong, she didn't press her about it, merely telling her that they had built a stronghold in Talador and that a group of goblins was on its way to the Spires of Arak.

"We seem to be expanding well," said Faith to her. "Good job, Garia. We'll make sure to send more people to them so that they can build a proper base."

She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. Her mind flew home, towards Sylvanas, her body seeming to grow cold. Was she with Nathanos now? Would they rekindle their relationship now that she was gone?

Don't be stupid, Faith, that's not going to happen, came Sylvanas' voice in her mind. It wasn't really her, she knew. Even if they had a gateway open between their worlds, passing through Outland, the two of them couldn't keep up their telepathic communication.

She shook her head, "You can't blame me for thinking this," she said to herself.

Garia looked up, "You know I'm here if you need to talk, right?"

"I know. Thanks, Garia. But this isn't something that I want to talk about just now." It was still too fresh in her mind. Too painful.

She had no idea what to do…