As a forsaken, there were certain noises to which one became accustomed. The creaking of brittle bones. The wearing and magical mending of rotting flesh, ever keeping the body just intact enough to continue on, so long as the body stayed active. The sound of wind catching in the throat on the rare occasions that one forgot one needn't breathe any longer. The soft rattling of the vocal cords as they learned to form words with magic rather than air. The quiet sobs caught by the tongue when waking from dreams of family and being loved.
A heartbeat was a noise heard in allies and enemies.
Timmons sat perfectly still on a large rock overlooking one of the ponds next to the entrance to Stromgarde. Smoke still drifted up from inside the city—his usual wake of destruction, really—as he stared down at his reflection, his hood knocked back to his shoulders.
A soft breeze washed lazily over him, carrying the scent of the ocean intermingled with the flowers and grasses of the gently rolling fields around him. The feel of the wind caressing his gaunt skin made him tingle, goose bumps rising along his arms.
This couldn't be real.
One minute he'd been threatening that idiot mage, the next he'd been waking up in an old, worn out building that was serving as an infirmary in Stromgarde, with humans and a few dwarves bustling all around him...
Well, sort of. Really, after he'd threatened that mage, the next thing that had happened had been a rather angry sheep-Timmons making his way out of the city and ignoring as a few novice draenei tried to coerce him into coming over. They must have figured that with his sense of direction he couldn't be polymorphed. He offhandedly realized that he'd forgotten about them and wondered if they were still in the general area. They needed a lesson in respect.
However, another breeze recaptured his attention, and he shivered, though it was only in part from the wind. This was so strange. Timmons raised his hands, and his frown deepened. While his appendages were still boney as ever, they were...living flesh.
Everything was blurred and hard to remember, though he could piece together a haphazard story as to what had happened. When the humans had come hurrying over to the bed they'd tucked him into, whispering about what was wrong with his eyes, he had assumed they were taking advantage of his weakened state, though it was only after he killed them that he realized they must have thought they had been tending one of their own. They'd probably feared—just before he'd incinerated their lot—that he was sick with the plague, or worse, the victim of a new one.
Fools.
Timmons pulled back his sleeves for the nth time, inspecting the skin that covered his joints and running his hands over them.
That damnable heartbeat made it hard to hear anything. In fact, it was almost all he could hear. That and the swishing of blood through his veins. How did the living get by like this? He didn't remember having these problems before he'd succumbed to the plague.
He jerked his ratty robes up and eyed his scrawny legs. He was skin and bone, so to speak. Well, perhaps he just barely made it to the low end of what a healthy human man ought to look like. Probably not. Running his fingers over the back of his neck, he felt his spine concealed beneath skin and abruptly realized that he wasn't sitting with a hunch.
He looked back down at his reflection. His eyes were still glowing yellow. Would that be enough to get back into forsaken territory un-harassed? He really didn't care about killing his own kind, but he had a feeling that if he went around charring them as he usually would have that it would make it harder for them to believe that he, too, was forsaken. And then there was always the problem of if he had to kill them to save himself, he'd be all but condemning himself to the Alliance. He'd rather die from the plague again than do that.
Timmons ran his fingers through his hair a couple of times. Those humans must have given him a bath, because his hair was soft to the touch, not nearly as stringy and greasy as he would have expected. Not to mention he was surprised he didn't have a truly hellacious case of hat hair. After all, it had been years since he'd last taken off his hood.
As far as he could remember, after getting thrown through the portal, he'd made it about halfway through the city, an off feeling plaguing the back of his mind, as though something inside of him was amiss. At the time, he'd merely written it off as being a sheep—no one had ever dared to polymorph him before. However, as he trotted along on his way, he'd rather abruptly been overwhelmed with pain.
He remembered how he had died to the plague, but this felt so much worse. Everything had hurt at first, though the pain had been like a tidal wave. After its initial breaking over his body, it had receded to his joints, his back, and his chest. And then it had amplified, as if his rotten heart were trying to beat before it had been mended, trying to force the decay from his body with ragged, desperate thumps.
Timmons figured that he had to have passed out shortly after the pain began. He'd still been sheeped when it had hit him—it had actually been what had broken the polymorph.
When he'd woken up, he'd still had a few aches here and there, but they had all been foreign. Strained muscles instead of scuffed, exposed bones. A dull, throbbing headache instead of a few frayed nerve endings.
He tossed a small pebble into the pond and waited for the surface to calm again, as though it might reflect something different, as though this were all a ruse. However, when the water stilled, he was still...whatever it was that he'd become. Stretching one of his shoulders and wishing that the dull aches in his body would go away, he looked around to make sure no one else was nearby. The last thing he needed was to be brought back to life just to have a human come up and kill him simply because he'd been too stunned to stay alert.
Timmons had to wonder how long he'd been unconscious—days, maybe?—and it occurred to him to check his guild stone. In the very least, he could ask what day it was and just tell someone he'd gotten caught up in something and lost track of time. He patted down his robes and then frowned.
Of course it wasn't on his person, that would have been too simple.
Summoning his voidwalker, he swung himself off of the boulder and literally cursed a few stones which scraped the bottoms of his feet. Damned nerve endings. He'd almost made it back to the gates when he looked over his shoulder to see his voidwalker still where it had been summoned, the glowing hollows that were its eyes watching him with a bit too much interest for his liking.
Timmons snapped his fingers and pointed to the ground beside him and the creature's bracers lit up, forcing it to bend to its master's will. However, instead of fighting against him, the voidwalker shot toward him, stopping right in front of him, his darkness curling slowly around Timmons' feet as though it were challenging his authority.
Turning away from the creature, Timmons stalked into the city, offering a few quick words to send pain running through his voidwalker when the creature didn't immediately follow him. While the demon continued to watch him with a most curious expression, it was obedient, going after a few humans who had managed to survive Timmons' first walk through.
It didn't take him long to return to the burned out shell of an infirmary.
Sure enough, his stone was wrapped up with a few of his other belongings next to the bed he'd been given. It was fortunate that Haa'aji had thought to fireproof the guild stones, for it was pretty much the only thing that had survived the fire. The rest of Timmons' things, bags and reagents for his inscriptions, mostly, had been singed, if not burned away completely. Timmons ran his fingers over his guild stone, considering that it was the only real proof that he had that he belonged to the Horde.
He waited until he was out of the city again before he found a quiet nook to settle in, out of sight from the road, and read through his messages. A few of the earliest ones he'd missed were jokes or playful quips from Liila, and he had to skip over most of them, as even a simple 'heh' sent his breathing spiraling out of control.
It was such a pain to have to remember to breathe.
A message from Roberts warned him to behave, half a dozen from Haa'aji begged for a summons, one from Sham told him not to send any general messages out on the stones since it was suspected that the Alliance had a spy. The one after that said that the spy issue had been resolved, though no one had really said much after that.
And then, through all of it, were messages from Mitchell. He had to set his stone down for a moment and concentrate on steady, even breathing as merely thinking of the mage made him seethe. It was like blood somehow fueled anger. He'd been pissed off plenty a time during his second life, but this...it was invigorating.
If only he could keep his breathing even. At least he wasn't having trouble keeping his heart beating.
At least? It was a huge weakness. Something enemies could aim for to end him with a quick stab. He knew; he did it to people all the time. At a loss for what to do—should he try to re-plague himself?—Timmons finally gave in and looked back to his guild stone.
Almost all of Mitchell's messages were simple, Are you okay?s or Talk to me, please.s. However, most of the later ones were written in common, instead of gutterspeak.
Common, really? Did Mitchell think his brain would just forget their language?
Timmons paused at the realization that Mitchell had to have been the one to have done this to him. He remembered that moron throwing something in his face just before he'd been sheeped. Had that potion done this to him?
His mind blanked, with only a single thought echoing through it. Had Mitchell found a cure for the plague?
He considered his reflection again and decided against it. His eyes still glowed. And any human as thin as he was probably wouldn't feel this...healthy. Timmons felt like he could run laps around Stromgarde, if he so chose.
No. This was no cure. He didn't know what it was.
Suddenly feeling uneasy, he spoke a few quick words in gutterspeak, switched to common, and then switched back, just to make sure he wasn't somehow forgetting his forsaken life. All the while, his voidwalker kept watch over him, as though waiting for him to break under the stress of whatever had happened. When he was sure he was still competent, he dismissed his demon much to its chagrin, decided to let the damn mage fret for a while longer, and grudgingly asked for the help of the only person he could think of who could truly keep a damn secret.
Haa'aji.
~"~
Timmons wanted to murder him a troll. Of all the people Haa'aji could have asked to help with Enlyhn's summons, he had to choose Cinder? It had been bad enough that Enlyhn had to have been involved, and Timmons loathed that it took three people to summon. The more people who knew about what had happened to him—whatever it was that had happened—the more complicated his life would be. After all, for all he knew it would wear off in a few days. No reason for any forsaken to see him and think that their days of misery were nearly over.
What the hell was she even doing back in town? Wasn't she supposed to be off living in sin with a demon? As he noticed the way Cinder kept her distance from Enlyhn and kept giving him resentful glares, he got the feeling that something must have happened. After all, her lover had been Enlyhn's demon.
Great, everyone had problems. Timmons couldn't help but feel that his dilemma was worse. After all, friends could comfort a broken heart. They couldn't fix a beating one.
And since Cinder knew, she'd tell Liila. Liila was the last person he wanted to see him like this. He didn't know why it mattered so much to him, but it did.
A sudden terror gripped him that one of them was going to broadcast what was happening over their guild stones. Timmons couldn't allow that. He gave them all a stern look and tried to voice that what they were seeing stayed between the four of them, and that was it, but when he tried to talk, he found that his vocal cords needed air to operate again, and they were sorely out of practice with such methods. He wheezed and gasped for a few minutes, with none of his summoners coming to his aid, before he finally managed to regain control of his body and merely sunk to a seat on the ground—roof, actually; Haa'aji had made sure they'd summoned him where no one would see—and covered his face with his hands.
Cinder was the first to move. When Haa'aji had said that Timmons needed a secret summons, she'd figured that he was trying to avoid Gregor after sneaking into a warfront again or some other such nonsense. But this...was it even really Timmons? Had the rumors of an Alliance spy been true after all? Haa'aji had said they weren't and that he'd taken care of it, but...
Creeping forward, Cinder paused as the human man—albeit with forsaken-esque eyes—lifted his head to watch her, his brow knitting together with suspicion. She eyed him for a moment before quickly reaching out and flipping his hood up over his head.
Yep. Definitely Timmons.
Haa'aji abruptly sighed, recognizing his guild mate with half his face concealed and then sauntered over to him, squatting in front of him while Cinder preoccupied herself by grabbing Timmons boney wrists and inspecting his skeletal hands. Had he always been this thin?
Timmons thought that it was ironic that masking the only part of him that remained obviously forsaken would be the key to gaining his guild mates' trust. Cinder and Haa'aji started talking at once and Timmons' eye twitched as he suddenly found Haa'aji's ear against his chest. "De hell, mon? De plague woa off a sumtin?"
"Are you...like okay and everything?" Cinder was asking, her healer tendencies showing through. She tried a rejuvenation on him, as though it would make him grow muscles or just go back to being dead.
"It was Mitchell, I think," Timmons finally mustered his voice, reaching up and scratching the back of his head. The action caused his hood to fall back again, and he shifted uncomfortably, unsure whether he wanted it back up or not. He had always been more intact than other forsaken, and he'd seen what happened to one or two like him, when jealousy got the better of their fellow rotting husks. Now, however, he just looked like a starving, skeletal man.
Cinder abruptly released him and rummaged through Haa'aji's nearest bag, hanging on his belt. The rogue seemed oblivious to the theft. "Watcha mean, Mitchell did dis? How?"
"He threw something on me," Timmons said slowly—his words were already coming easier, and he resentfully resigned himself to the fact that he'd probably need to have a nice long conversation to get back into the swing of talking.
Cinder came up with a wrapped loaf of bread and offered it to him. Of course she'd notice that he looked like he must be dying of hunger, though he wasn't. He frowned and took the bread anyway. If it would make her stop looking so damn worried...if she freaked out enough, she might tell—
"Don't tell Liila." He caught Cinder's arm as he repeated himself, looking her square in the eyes.
"What do you plan to do? Live in this exact spot for the rest of your life?" Cinder arched an eyebrow. "Because unless you are, people are gonna find out."
"Not from you, they aren't," Timmons hissed.
Shuffling robes caught Timmons' attention, and he turned in time to see Enlyhn step up next to him, offering a flask of water. Enlyhn muttered something about a sore throat, and Timmons took the flask, if only to get him to stop holding it out. Even with only the three people around, Timmons still felt like a nether-damned spectacle.
"We have to tell Gore," Cinder shrugged.
Timmons squared his shoulders as he shot her a glare. "You're not telling anybody anything."
"If someone sees you," Cinder snapped back, crossing her legs as she sat again beside him, "they'll tell the grunts that there's a human in Orgrimmar, and there'll be a manhunt for you. If Gore knows what happened—"
"I don't even know what happened," Timmons hissed, doing his damnedest to ignore that she had a valid point.
As he spoke, Haa'aji merely shrugged, "Gore ain' de leada a de defenses hea, aneh more. If we gotta tell somebodeh, it be T'rall."
"No!" Timmons cried out, cursing as his panic again left him concentrating on breathing rather than arguing.
Cinder patted one of his hands and sighed when he jerked it away. "If he knows that something's happened to you, he can allay anyone's fears with some bullshit about having already caught you or...something."
Timmons held his hands to his head, his feathery brown hair sticking out in tufts between his fingers. Practical as it was, he still didn't want to involve any more people. The more who knew, the faster word would get out. The faster Liila would know. "Get that asshole mage here and have him fix me, and we won't need to tell Gore or Thrall or anyone anything."
"I think he already did," Enlyhn muttered, still watching Timmons, standoffishly. "Fix you, I mean."
Even as the orc spoke, Haa'aji was already swishing through messages on his guild stone and different options that he'd 'programmed' into his. He preferred to operate on a much more complicated level than most of his guild mates. Haa'aji frowned. "Ah tink Mitchell got his stone off."
In truth, though they often referred to stones as being 'off' or 'on', they really only referred to the volume level they'd set it to. If it was quiet enough, one could go days without being drawn into guild drama or mishaps. Plus, Mitchell had set it up so that people could see when someone's sound was on silent, so that they wouldn't continue to send messages that wouldn't be received for however long.
"Are you sure we can't just get Margaret?" Cinder asked, her voice almost a whine. "She missed Mitchell when he headed out the other day, and she's in town. Do we really need that little brat?"
"He be de onleh apothecareh in de guild, yeh?" Haa'aji frowned, already sending a message to Mitchell. "If Mitchell did dis ta him, it probableh be a potion, nah a spell."
Timmons nodded grudgingly. Cinder slumped her shoulders, pouting. However, she barely allowed herself time to mull over having to see her arch nemesis and instead picked up one of Timmons' hands again, pushing his sleeve up so that she could better inspect all of his arm. She turned his limb this way and that, watching the tendons and thin muscles twist gently under the skin. She flicked his palm, and Timmons flipped his hand around to give her the bird.
"I'm just thinking," Cinder muttered, catching herself before she could whack him on the back of the head. This had to be hard on him. "Maybe we could get Whisper, Sham and—"
"What part of 'don't tell anyone' do you have such a hard time understanding?"
Cinder scowled. "I was just thinking that if we all tried to heal you at once, it might...improve your...condition."
"My condition is just fine," Timmons muttered. When he turned to glare at her, he heaved a sigh, though he instantly regretted it. Sighing threw off the rhythm of his breathing. Everything threw off the rhythm of his breathing. He had to wonder why he wasn't having as much trouble with his other bodily functions which were supposed to be subconscious, like his heart beat. In the end, he dismissed his curiosity, figuring it had something to do with him knowing that he shouldn't have to breathe. Cinder patted his hand as he regained control of his lungs, and the warlock gave up. He just wanted to be the way he was...being dead had been so simple. And Cinder was right. Everyone was going to know soon enough. "Do whatever you want..."
Enlyhn frowned. "You know what I want?" The others glanced at him suspiciously. He'd been oddly quiet since Timmons had arrived. "I want to do a forced summons for Mitchell."
~"~
Gregor was half asleep, watching his lure bob on the surf when he heard someone shuffle over the ridge of the hill and down the embankment toward him. The steps didn't sound quick enough to be Nat Pagle's—a fellow fishing enthusiast and quite possibly the only human who didn't recoil instantly when they saw him—so he waited until the noises stopped before he turned and inspected his visitor.
His eyes flashed angrily as he saw Mitchell standing beside him. The mage was holding one of his bags in front of him like a shield. Gregor looked back out to sea. "Get out of my sight."
"No." Mitchell replied sharply. He dropped down to sit even as his guild leader considered beating the damnable mage with his fishing pole. Mitchell drummed his fingers against his bag slowly. "I didn't mean to get them into trying to mask the plague like that. It was an excuse so they wouldn't know what I was doing. They ran with it."
Gregor felt his stilled blood boiling. He was doing something worse than masking something that could destroy the known world?
"I blew up the lab so that they can't work on that for a while," Mitchell offered, half heartedly.
His guild leader didn't even look at him.
"I need your help." Mitchell flipped open his bag and carefully pulled out a bundle of cloth. As he unwrapped it, Gregor slowly reeled in his line.
"I'm not going to aid you with your experiments."
"Just...it's for Margaret," Mitchell looked up at him pleadingly as he removed a small vial from the center of the cloth. Even as Gregor paused to eye him, mistrusting the mage's sincerity, Mitchell carefully set it down near his knee. "I think it's ready for forsaken testing...honestly, I don't know. I tried it on Timmons, but I haven't heard from him, so I don't know what to do. I didn't want to change it until I knew how well it worked—"
"You experimented on a guild member?" Gregor sounded ready to cast Mitchell to the sharks. The mage hoped he wouldn't; he was a terrible swimmer.
Mitchell removed a small box with holes in it from the bag. He held up a finger as he opened the box and removed a plagued frog. "Just...watch."
As he went to pour his concoction on the frog, Gregor grabbed the mage's wrist. "Hasn't the damn thing suffered enough? Now you have to play god with it?"
Mitchell paused, confused for a moment. He frowned as he realized his guild leader figured that he was just going to torture the little creature. "You're not going to believe me if I don't show you—"
Gregor shot to his feet and caught Mitchell by the collar, jerking him close. "I'm so tired of you apothecaries! It was bastards like you who started the damn plague! Monsters like you who took everything from me! And you don't even—"
His voice cut off as both he and Mitchell were encompassed in glowing purple runes. When they'd faded out, it took Gregor a moment to see Enlyhn, Cinder, and Haa'aji all staring at him with 'oh shit' expressions. Angry as he already was, he didn't want to know what bullshit they were involved in. He loosened his grip on Mitchell, and the mage darted out of his reach, freaking out as he nearly dropped one of his few remaining vials of his experiment. When he realized he was in Orgrimmar, he thanked the Dark Lady that his bag had caught on one of his toes when Gregor had assaulted him. Leaving his research notes near the surf in Theramore would have been a nightmare. Even as he leaned down to pick it up, so that no one would step on it, a firmer pair of hands grabbed him by the collar, swung him around, and slammed him into the rock face of the Drag, bordering the roof they were now on. His brittle bones protested the abuse, and Mitchell hissed as the liquid in his vial sloshed about and nearly spilled out onto him. He couldn't very well study the plague if he was alive, now could he?
"You son of a bitch! It wasn't enough to come after me, you had to go for our guild leader next? After you've fucked him over, then who? Roberts? Shadow? We're not your fucking lab rats!"
However, Mitchell almost instantly perked up, despite himself, when he saw who it was who was holding him. "Timmons! I tried to get in touch with you."
While both Haa'aji and Cinder pulled Timmons off the mage, Enlyhn watched their guild leader's face as it slowly dawned on him what had happened. Gregor's arms fell limply to his side. His earlier rage vanished as his mouth hung agape, stunned.
Haa'aji managed to get Timmons' arms behind his back, though the warlock continued to wriggle, trying to break free so that he could strangle the smug looking mage in front of him. However, when Haa'aji lightly put a bit more pressure on the man's weak arms, he stilled, not wanting any bones to break. Timmons had a disgusting hunch that it would hurt a hell of a lot more, as he was.
Cinder stood between Timmons and Mitchell as an extra line of defense, though she looked more than willing to step out of the way, should Mitchell not have a damned good excuse for whatever he'd done.
"Killin' him won' be makin' nuttin' betta, mon," Haa'aji tried to protest, though Timmons merely turned as best he could to sneer at the troll.
"It'd make me feel a hell of a lot better."
Cinder finally couldn't keep treating Timmons like a traumatized man and smacked him upside the head. It was Timmons. He'd get over it. "Stop it."
His headache seemed to double, and his pride stung, though he abruptly stilled and straightened up, looking down his nose at her. Without his forsaken hunch, he offhandedly noticed that he was easily a few inches taller than Cinder. "I may be breathing, but I can still curse you."
"Then curse me," she paused to glare at Mitchell, who had dared to snicker, letting her gaze flicker red in warning. As the mage's smile vanished, she looked back at Timmons. "But if you kill Mitchell, you're like this forever."
"You..." Gregor murmured, stepping up to stand in front of Timmons. "You're alive. And you don't want to be? Just look at you...you have a heart beat...you're—"
"Your wet dream?" Timmons hissed. Even as his guild leader jerked back, indignant, Timmons scowled. "What am I? Forsaken? No. Human? No. I lost my life and now my unlife, and what am I left with? Nothing! You think the forsaken will let me even set foot in Undercity?" For the first time, his voice cracked. "I'm nothing now..."
It was the kind of weakness he hadn't shown since before his unlife began and, like sighing, he instantly regretted it. His eye twitched as Haa'aji abruptly leaned down and wrapped his arms around him. "It be okay, mon. Me 'n Liila let ya in our club, yeh? Ya can be a misfit."
"I don't want to be a misfit," Timmons muttered, resigning himself to the fact that he would be hugged until the troll felt like releasing him. Though he considered trying to curse Haa'aji, now that he'd finally calmed down and gathered his wits about him, he decided against it. The troll was too aware of his situations...he'd probably silence Timmons before he could get the curse off.
Gregor was shaking his head. "How did this happen?"
Grinning from ear to ear, Mitchell lightly shook his vial, albeit not enough for the contents to spill. He motioned toward it as a salesman might to a new miracle drug. The action was oddly fitting. "I found a cure for the plague."
"This is not a cure," Timmons hissed. "Look at my eyes. Do you think I can walk into Stormwind? By the nether, I have to sneak into Orgrimmar."
Gregor eyed the warlock, inspecting him more carefully. While Timmons seemed loathe to be anyone's display model, Gregor ignored his disposition. "It's a bigger break through than anyone else has ever made."
"Yeah, Whisper and I never came anywhere close to this..." Cinder murmured.
All of them paused to eye her. At length, Timmons was the one to ask. "You were working on a cure for the plague?"
She shrugged, avoiding eye contact. "We had a few ideas...nothing ever panned out though, so it wasn't worth mentioning...Whisper wants Shadow back, you know? We were just quiet about it because we figured he'd yell at us."
Mitchell slung an arm over her shoulder, a firm grin in place. "So...I'm guessing wherever you did your research was...outside of Orgrimmar? Seeing as you would have needed plagued creatures to experiment on?"
Cinder frowned at him, lightly plucking his arm and removing it from her person. "I was doing some research down in Gadgetzan. You'd have to talk to Whisper about anything nearby."
"Can I have your lab?"
"Can you say 'fuck no'?" Cinder slipped into cursing in zandali as Mitchell pestered her, insisting that he could use her lab more efficiently than she could.
Timmons wanted to strangle the damn mage. "Why not just hole back up in the ruins of Lordaeron?"
"The Society found out what I was doing, and they trashed most of my work," Mitchell murmured, smile vanishing. He shrugged as he hopped back over to his bag, which was still on the roof. "I didn't see them do it, but I know it was them. First Roberts was looking into my stuff and then Lisp and then... They toppled my cauldron, made sure every last drop seeped into the ground, and burned my extra reagents. Luckily, I keep my written notes on me and a few copies hidden in different places. And I'd hidden a few vials."
Gregor frowned. "Why would they do that?" When Mitchell gave him a blank look, Gregor shook his head. "Everyone would benefit from being freed from the plague, so why would they destroy your work?"
"Wow, you really have no clue how bitter people are, do you?" Mitchell asked, one of his eyebrows arching. He shrugged. "They're more into destroying than restoring."
"And what made you decide to be different?" Gregor ran his hands through his hair, his rotting flesh suddenly feeling like more of a prison than it had in years. He looked back at Timmons. Of course it would have been one of the worst bastards in the forsaken to be redeemed first.
"Margaret's been really upset lately," Mitchell whispered, shoulders abruptly sagging. "Ta'lim made it worse by teasing her about Wren. I'm..." he trailed off for a moment before shrugging dejectedly. "I'm worried she's going to give up."
"So show her Timmons, den," Haa'aji patted the warlock on the head. "Tell her it be in de works, yeh?"
Mitchell eyed Timmons again, a fleeting, giddy smile flashing across his face. "You think it'd help?"
"Hope is an amazing thing," Gregor whispered.
Timmons twitched. He couldn't stand it. He'd been the first test subject, so of course Mitchell was thrilled that he had a heartbeat, but he was a point to move forward from. He was one of those things that would, so to speak, be set aside on a shelf and forgotten as better things came along. Even if Mitchell did find an absolute cure for the plague, it would be for a full forsaken. Where did he stand?
Was he ever going to get to be a real man again?
Haa'aji had fallen to joking with Gregor about how of course it had to be someone who didn't care about life who would figure out how to restore it. As Gregor said something else about hope, and the troll jokingly hugged him, Timmons took his window of opportunity. He darted forward and wretched the vial of liquid that Mitchell had been holding out of his grasp. He knew a way to get Mitchell to fix him. If Mitchell were in the same boat...
As he went to toss the vial at the mage, Gregor misinterpreted his actions, thinking him merely trying to throw out the cure. In a breath, he had darted from Haa'aji's grip and grabbed for Timmons's wrist.
The concoction sloshed up one of Gregor's arms and onto his neck.
Timmons stared at him, wide eyed, as his guild leader watched the liquid seep into his flesh.
"Shit," Mitchell hissed, despite himself.
Timmons ignored him. As much as he wanted to curse the damned warrior, he instead grabbed Gregor's other arm and forced him to sit down. "You have maybe five minutes before you're gonna feel like you're dying...again."
~"~
Timmons and Gregor stood awkwardly in the middle of the warchief's chambers while Mitchell enthusiastically explained what had happened, using grandiose hand gestures to go with his story. Thrall, Vol'jin, Garrosh, Saurfang, and Gore—who was only present because of his status in their guild and Thrall's continued respect for him—along with a few trusted grunts were the only ones present beside the trio. And every one of them counted as a person too many to be in on what had happened in Timmons' mind. He hated being on display as he was. All of the orcs were watching Timmons and Gregor with varying looks of awe, surprise, and suspicion.
With someone there to heal him after his heart had begun to beat, Gregor had fared much better in his transformation than Timmons had. Cinder's heals had accelerated the restoration of his flesh and bones, once they'd begun to repair themselves.
...And while Gregor still would have probably slept for a damn week, as Timmons had, Haa'aji had kept poking him until he woke up, in pain, exhausted, and amazed that he could feel his heart beating.
Gore had to say that, if nothing else, he was pleased to see that brash, Outlandish orc bastard Garrosh was actually speechless. However, even as Thrall tried to quiet down the excited mage long enough to ask him to fill in some of the gaps for the rest of them, who weren't forsaken apothecaries, a sharp knock on the door caught one of the grunts' attention, and he nodded to the warchief quickly before opening the way, allowing Lady Sylvanas to walk in.
Thrall nodded to her, though she barely noticed it as she took in the scene in front of her, first the enthusiastic Mitchell and then the other two. The others present could have been furniture for all she cared. Her red gaze scrutinized them for a long moment before she finally turned a cold look back to Mitchell. "Explain yourself, apothecary."
"I found a cure for the plague!"
Lady Sylvanas took a few slow steps further into the room before turning her attention toward Gregor and Timmons as one might a caged animal. She walked around them once, her heels clacking sharply on the floor, before stopping in front of Mitchell, who was having trouble keeping his smile in place with his queen looking so...disgusted. "These men were forsaken?"
Timmons frowned and flipped his hood back up as Mitchell named them, pausing to offer that his lady had probably never met Gregor. The Banshee Queen vaguely recognized Timmons from the various tasks he had performed, once his face was masked...as did half the orcs in the room.
When she didn't respond, Mitchell trotted over to Gregor, seeing as he was the more hospitable of the test subjects, and held out his arm toward Sylvanas. "See? He has a pulse and..." His voice trailed off as her reaction did not mirror his enthusiasm.
She kept a calm gaze on Timmons and Gregor. "Your work is admirable, apothecary. Though, I do have a question or two, if I may..." She began a slow pace around the three again.
"Of course, my Lady."
Sylvanas paused in front of Timmons, reached out, and caught his chin, tilting his head this way and that. "Is this permanent?"
Mitchell had opened his mouth to respond to any sort of question she might ask, though he paused when her question proved none of the ones he'd been mulling over in his head. He frowned. "I should think so. I—"
"You only think so? You are not certain?"
Mitchell floundered. "...I don't know."
"So...at any point these men could deteriorate back to forsaken...or fall into even further disrepair." It was more a statement than a question. Even Timmons found himself wanting to defend the helpless mage. He immediately hated himself for such altruistic thoughts.
"I don't think so," Mitchell tried to defend his experiment. "I mean, you need certain agents for deteriorations and—"
"I am well acquainted with what you need to make your little plague batches for your experiments." She paused to smile at Thrall. "We have to make sure we have samples of the plague if we are to learn to control it...and we need samples from all stages." Even as the warchief frowned, she turned back to look at Mitchell. "What I'm asking is whether this effect might wear off as the potion leaves their systems."
Mitchell didn't like her tone. "I don't see why it would. Timmons has been like this for almost a week, and the process of resuming life was eerily similar to that of dying."
Sylvanas inspected them again, more closely. She could hear their blood rushing through them, and one of her ears twitched. "Is their will as strong as a regular forsaken's?"
"I would think so..." Mitchell shrugged uneasily. He'd been so giddy when he'd seen it had worked not once, but twice on restarting heartbeats that he hadn't really considered that it would mean he'd have to have a formal findings report. After all, he hadn't wanted to tell anyone until he'd gotten more results, except that Gregor's screams as his body had mended itself had caught the attention of a patrolling grunt. After that it'd been a quick march to interrupt the warchief's plans for Northrend. "I mean, they're the same people they were...just alive."
"Are you sure?"
Gregor coughed into his hand. "I am the same man I have always been."
Sylvanas glanced at him, and he felt a chill run down his spine when her red gaze seemed to pick apart all that he was. After a moment, she lost interest in him and turned back at Mitchell. "Can they stay underwater as long as a regular forsaken?"
"I don't know."
"Can they march as long?"
"I...don't know."
"Can they fight as hard?" He didn't respond. "Can they suffer through as much?" When he didn't answer, she walked over and stood in front of him. "Well?" When he still didn't say anything, she gave him a condescending look. "Can they succumb to the same plague that killed them the first time?"
"Sylvanas," Thrall said, coming to stand beside her. However, before he could try to protest, she crossed her arms and glared at him.
"He said he found a cure for the plague. If rumor of...this," she motioned to Timmons and Gregor as though they were pests, "spreads to my city, there will be chaos. People will be demanding to be cured. This may appear better than our current situation, but who can say so soon? Perhaps it will have side effects that will not arise until later. And consider that we live in a plagued area. What is the point in saving people who will take in a single breath and be condemned back to rotting flesh?"
Mitchell set his jaw slowly, eyeing the woman in front of him. "So some tests still need to be done. It's a break through. Besides," he fought back a shiver as Sylvanas' cold gaze swept back over him, "it's not like this is the end result. I'll keep at it until I figure out a proper cure. And your point is valid. There is no reason to offer this to anyone until the Lich King has been dealt with."
While Sylvanas seemed somewhat pleased to see that Mitchell wasn't completely starry-eyed with thoughts of restoring the world to a happy place full of sunshine and rainbows and had thought of some of the practicalities, she wasn't about to let him off so easily. "Are these your only test subjects?"
"At the moment," Mitchell said, having somehow managed to scrape back together his earlier confidence.
"Do keep it that way, for now. Understood? I don't want any more of my people subjected to something so experimental."
"But so many are giving up," Mitchell protested. Even as Thrall gave him a curious expression, Sylvanas had to fight to keep her temper in check. Thus far, their allies had yet to learn of the hopelessness that was slowly diminishing their forces. Of how more and more forsaken saw less point in living for vengeance alone and were allowing themselves to rot away into nothing. "If we at least give them hope, they'll fight harder and longer, won't they?"
The Banshee Queen drummed her fingers against her hip slowly, considering the mage's words. However, it was Thrall who spoke. While he didn't entirely know what Mitchell was talking about, he understood the gist of it. "If you tell people that there is something being created, something that has yet to be perfected, but will be given out when it is, you can use the cure as a way to help your people endure."
Sylvanas' nails drummed down at once, and she gave Mitchell a chilling smile. "Send your work to the apothecaries, and we'll see if they can't perfect your ideas." When he opened his mouth, her coldness returned. "We'll give you credit if it works out."
"But I'm an apothecary for the Society," Mitchell murmured. "I can just take it to them myself—"
Lady Sylvanas allowed her gaze to wander away, as though to say he was no longer worth her time. "I don't want you in my city until I decide how to deal with you."
"What?"
"You proceeded with unauthorized experiments and may have compromised two of my people. Until I am certain that they will not suffer for it, you are not welcome in our territories. And I would suggest they keep their distance as well. The forsaken may recognize their own, but the abominations are not as smart."
Even as Mitchell accepted his lady's decree, though he didn't bother to hide at least some of his resentment that she would think so little of his work, Thrall dismissed them so that he could speak in private with the Banshee Queen about what her apothecary had meant.
~"~
While Mitchell and his test subjects entertained the leaders of the Horde, Haa'aji, Cinder, and Enlyhn stood around in front of the warchief's hold. As Cinder paced and Enlyhn started and extinguished small fires, Haa'aji remained perfectly still.
Cinder finally picked up a small rock and threw it at him. "Stop being so roguish, dammit!"
Her aim was awful, and the rock flew past Haa'aji's head, nowhere close to hitting him. He blinked, slowly turning his gaze to focus on her. Of course she was worried about Gregor, and Timmons, too. However, Haa'aji was more concerned with what was going to come.
Word of what had happened was going to get out. If the information wasn't handled properly, yes, there would be riots in the Undercity and forsaken territories. Worse, it could create a rift between those who found the benefits of being dead and those who desperately wanted to live again. People would kill each other for a chance at a cure or to quell such meaningless dreams.
If the forsaken fell, then the Alliance would retake their territories. The sin'dorei would be isolated. It would be like losing two allies, instead of one. And if the tables tipped that much, the Alliance would crush the Horde. While Haa'aji supposed that he and Liila would be able to escape any impending doom—they could easily join a goblin cartel or something of the like—he'd grown rather fond of Orgrimmar and didn't want to leave.
And there was her...
Haa'aji dismissed his personal feelings. Surely Thrall and the others would consider such problems. He'd ask Gore about it when they were finished.
…
It seemed like they were going to take all night, and he really didn't want to wait that long.
He paused. What if he explained that it was a curse, not a cure? Gregor and Timmons could have been investigating something quilboar related, and as they vanquished the local leader of those annoying little creatures, it had hexed them. Something real complicated like.
Haa'aji frowned. Why would it be so complicated if it had to cast it in the creature's dying moments? Maybe...he was trying to resurrect his lover, and the spell was misdirected to Timmons and Gregor. Because there were two targets instead of one, it only half brought them back. The two had been knocked unconscious and had no clue how this had occurred. Gregor had sought answers, but Timmons had gotten frustrated and set everything on fire. That was a Timmons thing to do.
Haa'aji nodded to himself. Pulling out his non-guild stone, he sent Roberts and a few others outside the guild who he'd been kind enough to give independent stones the story he'd concocted. By morning, no one would believe that Mitchell was close to a cure for the plague. While it might steal the mage's thunder, at least it would avert the fall of the Horde, and by the loa, it might even give him time to work on his cure. Maybe he'd get it right this time.
Haa'aji paused as he felt a chin rest on one of his shoulders and turned his head to see who in the nether could be tall enough to lean on him. Cinder had used the lower rungs of a nearby brazier to boost herself up high enough, and she was watching his stone. "Quilboars, eh?"
Enlyhn glanced over at them, fire dancing around one of his fists. "Do I even want to know?"
"Haa'aji is concocting the perfect cover up," Cinder grinned and gave the troll a thumbs up. However, her smile slipped as a flash from the stone caught her attention, and she pointed at it. "I think you have a message."
"Dem bastards ain't even readin' de damn details—" Haa'aji cut himself off as he realized that the message was from Liila. The runes barely had time to flicker above the stone before he clamped his fist around it and darted forward, leaving Cinder to plummet to the ground. "Enlyhn, we be needin' a summons stone. Now."