Three Days to Zero Hour
Sylvanas found Icecrown Citadel in ruins. A great force had shattered stone and rent saronite, leaving twisted heaps of metal and skeletal framework blasted almost beyond recognition. Most of the top thirty meters of the Citadel had been vaporized; the Frozen Throne was gone, as though it had never existed at all.
Above, the sky rippled and writhed, the veil thinner than Sylvanas had ever thought possible, though it had not torn entirely.
As she stood in the ruined tower, her eyes tracked the movement of Scourge far below; at least, what little Scourge remained. Most had seemingly vanished, disappearing into crevices and crags and caves, or fled to other parts of Northrend. Whatever had happened here had scattered them like ants.
Jaina was not here, either. Only by virtue of their shared sixth sense did Sylvanas even know she was still intact. It was that link that turned her attention to the East, and the storm-wracked mountains there.
Leaving the gunship behind, Sylvanas leapt from the tower. She thought she heard Tyra shouting for her, but the cry was lost to the wind. At the last second, as the rocks loomed below her, she became incorporeal. Her mist spread across the ground at speed, rushing towards the Storm Peaks.
Sylvanas covered ground at inhuman speeds, the dead land of Icecrown shifting rapidly into tundra and snow and craggy peaks. There was a tall one, with a round Titan structure on top, stone platform with stone pillars and an open roof.
Jaina stood near one pillar, hand pressed against it and head bowed low. Her other hand gripped a staff that Sylvanas had never seen before.
Mages, as a rule, used their staves to channel, control and amplify their power. Jaina, however, seemed to wield staves mostly out of habit. Ever since the battle at Orgrimmar where she'd wielded the Focusing Iris for a second time, she'd favored weapons formed from her own magic - and melee ones at that, though Sylvanas attributed that to the years of training they'd done together and a very real emphasis on her part to ensuring Jaina would never be defenseless without her magic. Fat lot of good that had done, in the end.
Still, there was something about this new staff Jaina was holding, formed of ice and energy and with all too familiar runes running down it, that sent an impossible chill down her spine. A Runestaff.
"Jaina?" Sylvanas made no effort to disguise her presence, and as she stepped onto the platform, Jaina turned to face her. They stared at each other, a dozen feet and a thousand miles between then as wind and snow whipped and buffeted at them.
Jaina's hair had come loose from her braid, blowing loosely around her head, shining and shimmering like ice on a lake in the dead of winter. Sylvanas hadn't heard her voice in long enough that the echo was startling. "Hello."
Sylvanas jerked her chin towards the west. "You've been busy, wife."
"Bolvar is dead. He was depressingly easy to put down."
She tried to read the expression in Jaina's eyes, tried to tell if it was really Jaina she was talking to, or … someone else. Jaina stared back at her, her eyes an energetic ocean of ice and wind. Sylvanas found herself falling into them.
The throne stood, twisted into something almost beautiful. Before it was the helm, and Jaina reached for it. Power surged through her, electricity where her fingers touched the cursed metal, and then that power flared. Heat and fire and energy, the cosmos flooded through Jaina and pushed back against the dark soul within the helm. Cracks formed, violet rays of light spider-webbing from Jaina's hand until the helm shattered until the Citadel shattered until Jaina's mind shattered.
Head throbbing, Sylvanas gasped and stumbled back against another pillar. Her voice was so faint she could barely hear it herself. "What have you done?"
"I've shone the light of truth to the greatest lie ever told," Jaina replied, walking slowly towards Sylvanas. She tapped the staff as she did so. "There must always be a Lich King."
Tap.
"Says who? Frostmourne? The souls trapped within it, under its control? How convenient. That sounds a lot like exactly what the Lich King would want us to believe."
Tap.
"Is not a Scourge directed with precision more dangerous than one scattered and lost?"
Tap.
Jaina stopped in front of Sylvanas, looking up at her, and once again Sylvanas questioned if she was really speaking to her wife, or … something else. "Fair point. There was always the chance that we were dealing with an unreliable narrator."
"We knew it was a lie. We've seen what happens when the Lich King's control wavers, when his command of the Scourge is lost. Why did we believe it? How could we, with you right in front of us? But I could still be wrong." Jaina's eyes searched Sylvanas's. "I could have destroyed everything we built."
"Were you tempted?"
"To put it on?" Jaina tilted her head to the side, her eyes seeming to lose focus. "Yes. It was very convincing."
Slowly, Sylvanas lifted her hand, her fingers brushing Jaina's cheek. "Do you know who you are?"
"Sometimes I can barely remember. I don't know who I am or who I'm supposed to be. But I know what I've done and I need you to trust me." Jaina's eyes focused again, and she held Sylvanas's gaze.
None of this was as Sylvanas might have expected, after the way they'd spoken the last few times, after what she'd found in Icecrown and the disconcerting distance between them.
There was no battle, no tumultuous words here the likes of which might shatter the mountains upon which they stood. Even the storm grew quiet, the winds dying down as the clouds parted to cast starlight onto them as they stood inches and miles apart
And in that new steady silence, the words escaped Sylvanas. They were quiet words, if not soft ones, for Sylvanas rarely if ever did anything softly. "I love you."
Jaina smiled, something that might almost be tears shining at the corners of her eyes. "I'll take that as a yes."
It was not easy to say those words. There were perhaps five other people who'd ever heard them from her. Two were dead, never to return. And the others had not heard them since those deaths.
But Sylvanas had watched Jaina's life blood drain from her body, had felt keenly her old friends grief and despair. She'd carried her herself through the portal to Orgrimmar. Had laid her on that slab and commanded a Valkyr to give her entire being to return Jaina to this world without a moment's hesitation.
She'd had a lot of time to think about the way she'd felt and while she may never actually say them again, they'd been said.
As Tyra might tell her, no takesy backsies.
"You want me to trust you blindly, without knowing what it is you are doing or what this likely insane plan actually is," Sylvanas said. "But you are Jaina Proudmoore, and if you say you have a plan, I cannot think of anyone else I would trust more."
Jaina lifted her hand, pressing Sylvanas's hand against her cheek. Her skin felt surprisingly … normal. Soft, not cold, but not warm either. Mostly, she felt like home. That smile returned, dispelling any notion that this woman was anything other than Jaina Proudmoore. Different, yes. Sylvanas was the first to admit that death changed a person. But it was still her.
And to say that was a relief would be an understatement.
"I'd like to actually, you know, hear you say it."
"I trust you, you fool, even if you have managed to unleash the apocalypse once more onto Azeroth. I'm actually impressed. I couldn't have done it better myself."
"Oh, I've managed to impress you? High compliments indeed." Jaina rested her free hand on Sylvanas's hip, and Sylvanas felt as though the chasm between them had closed somewhat.
Words so often felt unnecessary, with Jaina, especially in recent years. What Sylvanas did not expect, nor want, was forgiveness. Just as she would not apologize for bringing Jaina back. But what she needed was their equilibrium restored, even if it might appear different from that which they'd had before. "Do you hateme?"
"No." Jaina leaned into Sylvanas, their bodies fitting together like they always had. She could not hear Jaina's heartbeat, nor feel her breath against her throat, two things she would probably always miss. But the hum of her unlife was comforting, and noticeably different from her own.
Sylvanas could get used to that.
Jaina pulled their hips flush together, her lips brushing at Sylvanas's neck, before teeth sank in deeply. Sylvanas pulled her head away and looked down at her wife. "Now? Really?"
"We might not see each other again for awhile," Jaina pointed out. There was the slightest change to the coloring of her cheeks and Sylvanas's eyes shrunk to points. That was her Jaina. "And… and I need to know."
"Here? Amidst Titan ruins while the world is on the verge of catastrophe?" Slowly, Sylvanas traced her finger along the scar that marred Jaina's neck, much in the same way that Jaina so often traced the one on her chest. Marks of the past, proof that men were rarely to be trusted and that death, indeed, came for them all.
Jaina dug her fingers into Sylvanas's hip, letting go of the hand on her face to tangle those fingers in Sylvanas's hair. She pulled her in, lips meeting, that gulf bridged. The anger that had characterized their last kiss was absent, replaced by longing and an acceptance within Jaina that had been a long time in coming. With neither of them needing air, there was no need to shorten the kiss. Yet Sylvanas broke it first, compelled to say something. "You're still you."
"Jaina Mk. II," Jaina replied, before pressing Sylvanas against a pillar.
The temperature was well below freezing, but it might as well have been a warm, sunny day. Still, Jaina shivered when Sylvanas exposed her chest. She smirked, letting her own pauldrons clatter to the stone. "The cold bothering you?"
"Old habits." Slowly, bit by bit, Jaina shed the rest of her robes, until she stood naked before Sylvanas. It hadn't been a race, but Sylvanas won it anyway. Not that she was desperate, or anything.
She drank Jaina in, her snow-white skin and her hair of ice, perfectly preserved from the day she'd died, flaws and all. "You are, as always, beautiful."
Jaina smiled, mischief etched into the expression as she became more comfortable with herself and Sylvanas again. "On your knees."
Sylvanas did not hesitate to obey, dropping to her knees hard enough to jar her teeth. She reached out, grasping Jaina by the hips and pulling her in range of her lips and teeth. "Tell no one of this."
"Handy for blackmail." Jaina slid her fingers into Sylvanas's hair, stroking lightly, fingers twitching with undisguisable nerves.
"It will feel different," Sylvanas murmured, looking up at Jaina and suddenly fascinated by the depth of the blue glow there and how sharp they'd become. Was this what Jaina saw in her? "And yet much the same."
She pressed her lips to Jaina's navel, then traced it with her tongue, stroking her fingers over Jaina's hips and then down and across her thighs. All the while she kept close watch on her wife's face and the sapphires of her eyes.
Jaina gasped, mouth dropping open when Sylvanas moved her thumb across her folds. Whether her legs trembled genuinely or simply as a memory from being alive was a question Sylvanas couldn't answer, even for herself. But they trembled, and she moved her fingers again.
"Gods, I still don't know how this all works."
"Is that what you're going to focus on?"
"I just—" Jaina groaned, her body shuddering as Sylvanas's tongue replaced her fingers.
Sylvanas couldn't remember if she herself had always been a quiet lover, but Jaina's volume remained virtually unchanged from life, starting out as low, needy whimpers and rising as Sylvanas flicked her tongue in random patterns. Jaina's hand slid down her stomach, then caught one of Sylvanas's hands. She laced their fingers together and that simple act hit Sylvanas like an arrow. She closed her eyes, unable to deal with her feelings. Easier to focus on pleasuring Jaina. On re-learning her. She smelled and tasted different. Not unpleasant and not entirely so, but something had shifted.
On another day, in another place, Sylvanas would not have been satisfied with undoing Jaina just the once. But today, here, as Jaina's voice still rang in her ears and off the mountains, she pulled her down and wrapped her arms around her.
"I missed this," Jaina admitted. "Was this what it was like for you? To be so angry all the time?" She turned around in Sylvanas's arms to look up at her. "It's exhausting."
"The dead don't get exhausted." A truth, or a lie. From certain points of view.
"My point stands." Jaina elbowed her, then leaned her head on Sylvanas's shoulder.
"Are you still angry?"
"Not at you."
"Do you still love me?"
"Just because I'm angry doesn't mean I ever stopped."
"So you're still angry."
Jaina took Sylvanas's hand, and traced her knuckles with a finger. "Yes."
"Good."
