It's the stomach turning pain in her arm and shoulder that rouse her in the cold darkness. She tries to lever herself up, but the flash of pain roils her stomach and she just barely manages to stop from retching. Jaina is sure her wrist is broken and the fact that she can't lift her arm to confirm points to a dislocated shoulder on the same side. There is also a niggling sense of unease that she can't put her finger on. She must get her bearings. If she survived whatever happened in that portal, there's no doubt that Sylvanas did as well. My staff. She groans softly, tears springing to her eyes as she tries to roll to her left to look around.
"Are you looking for this, Proudmoore?"
Jaina gasps at the familiar voice-nasally, double-toned, and colored with disdain. She tries to pull on her magic to strike out against its owner, but what is there where her magic should be, doesn't respond. She feels hollow; both her magic, and any hope she had of getting rid of Sylvanas once and for all, are gone. Between the pain of her injuries and hopelessness she feels, it would be a mercy to end it now.
As if Sylvanas Windrunner knows mercy.
Her eyes sag shut and she resigns herself to whatever cruel end Sylvanas has for her. She turns her head, resting her cheek against the frozen ground, and waits for the bite of an arrow in her back.
"And Archmage Jaina Proudmoore, Lord Admiral, former leader of the Kirin-Tor goes down without a fight." Jaina grits her teeth at the haughtiness, wanting nothing more than to punch that ever-present sneer off of the Warchief's face. "I'm disappointed. After that clever stunt with the portal, I would have guessed you'd have more tricks up your sleeve."
"How about you cut the shit, Banshee, and just get it over with." She bites out, setting her teeth against another wave of pain. The whimper escapes before she can stop it and she's angry for showing any more weakness in front of Sylvanas.
"Tempting, little mage, but a touch of challenge makes the hunt - makes the battle - more interesting." Jaina can hear the smirk coloring the other woman's words. "I like my opponents to have a little fight or flight left in them." The slight crunch of snow behind her signals Sylvanas's approach and despite her bravado, Jaina's heart starts racing. The tip of a clawed gauntlet lightly traces her hairline behind her ear and she flinches; the deep breath she tried to take cuts off in a squeak of pain. "And you have neither."
"Do not toy with me, Sylvanas. I am not completely toothless." But the growled warning is all Jaina can do, and she flushes in frustration and shame. Sylvanas doesn't deign to respond. "Anduin, Genn, my mother, Tyrande... they'll come for me, dead or alive. "
Sylvanas tsks behind her, working at something in the dark, "Undead even, Proudmoore? Would they come running then?"
"You wouldn't dare!"
"I would, but that's neither here nor there at this moment." Buckles catch and jingle behind her, and she hears Sylvanas lightly place something in the snow. "I've noticed you've not cast a single spell since you've woke. At first I thought it was because your lead casting arm was injured, but now you've confirmed my suspicions." The double voice drops to a whisper as she crouches closer, the whisper changing to a breathy laugh when Jaina tenses. "You can't cast here, can you, Daughter of the Sea?"
Jaina breathes deeply and counts to ten. She will not let her temper get the best of her. She will not let the mercurial elf have the satisfaction of her anger. "Kill me or leave me be. Enough of your games."
"Do you want to know why, hmm?" Sylvanas almost purrs, just like the cat she is playing to Jaina's trapped mouse. "Because we're not in Azeroth anymore. The magic here is muted, softer. It tastes different. I don't need Tyrande to tell me that Elune isn't in this moon. I don't know what you did, or how you did it, but you did it. So no, I'm not going to kill you, yet."
"Yet?!" Jaina huffs out. Gods, this woman is intolerable. "Why wait, truly? The moment I can cast anything, I'll not make the same mistake." She hears a soft chuckle behind her, closer than she'd like.
"Don't you want to go home?" Sylvanas wheedles, the tone so foreign in that voice. Jaina has whiplash from trying to follow and match the elf's mood. "Back to where you were the most powerful mage in the world, beloved by all - that includes some of my faction. Champion of peace, Lord Admiral of Kul Tiras… not a broken little girl in the snow?" More jingling buckles, and Jaina realizes Sylvanas is taking off pieces of her armor. "Don't you want to see your mother again, chatter over tea with my simpering sister?"
"What are you doing?" Jaina doesn't bother to answer the question, instead tries to turn her head to look back at the elf. She stops as the pain leaves her gasping.
"I need your abilities, little mage," Sylvanas's knees drop down to press lightly into her back, "to bring us back home...and you need me to fix you so you can do that. Hold still, so I can set your wrist." Being this close to Sylvanas was like being trapped in a vacuum, her unnatural stillness making it hard to breathe.
"No. Don't touch me." She can feel Sylvanas's eyes roll in the exasperated sigh.
"Proudmoore," The bored drawl drips with condescension, "You're being unreasonable. If you don't let me help you, you'll just die here in the snow. Then I'll raise you and get what I need that way."
"If you can raise me here."
"I'm willing and able to wait and see."
Insufferable bitch. Her wrist throbs enough to keep her aware; dying here would be slow and she cannot afford to gamble on Sylvanas's powers. She'd be too powerful an arrow in the Banshee Queen's quiver should Sylvanas make it back to Azeroth with Jaina as her thrall.
"Fine, do it then." Jaina closes her eyes and braces herself for the feel of Sylvanas's hands upon her.
"This is going to hurt."
"Then start with my shoulder."
"That is going to hurt as well."
Jaina just sighs. It seems everything will be a battle between them. It's exhausting. "It will be quicker and less painful than the wrist. Plus, I would be more comfortable being able to move my arm."
"As you wish." Sylvanas hesitates a moment before leaning closer, her thighs pressed perpendicular to Jaina's back, "I would not choose to take off my gloves, but I will need to feel for the bones in your wrist. You are lucky it isn't compound."
Sylvanas's gloved fingers are rough against her collarbone as they unbuckle her pauldron and peel it away with far more care than Jaina thought possible. She blushes, the touch strangely gentle and compassionate from a woman not known to be either. Jaina feels the other woman jostle slightly behind her as she works off her gloves. She screws her eyes shut at the flash of movement in her peripheral vision and is surprised at the touch of leather against her lips.
"Here, bite." The elf's voice is unexpectedly gentle as she presses the soft leather to Jaina's mouth, but it quickly sharpens back to her regular snide tone. "I don't know how much danger we're in here, so if you can keep from screaming..." Jaina's head spins with the elf's shifts in tone.
She has the feeling that Sylvanas wanted to say more, to needle her again, but there's not enough fight in the mage to draw it out of her. She simply nods and bites hard into the offered glove, face already creased in anticipation of the pain. Her eyes go wide when Sylvanas swings one leg over to straddle her hip and she jerks her head sharply to look up into the smug, red glow.
"I have to get up under your shoulder if you want me to reduce it before I set your wrist." Sylvanas shrugs and settles her weight against Jaina's hip. "This is why I offered to set the wrist first. Once you passed out from that, you wouldn't have known how close I would have to get to fix this." She gestures toward the dislocation.
Jaina says nothing, just sets her jaw and turns to look straight ahead once more, hoping Sylvanas takes the hint. All the shoulder reductions she'd seen had the healer's foot planted in the armpit while they pulled back on the arm. Her displaced wrist complicates things. Sylvanas leans down against her body, wiggling carefully under the affected arm. Her left arm curls up around Jaina's back, open hand resting gently against the dislocated shoulder. Sylvanas's right arm reaches across her chest and pushes between the frozen ground and her side in a mockery of an embrace. Their proximity is even more unnerving than before; Jaina's heart thunders so loudly in her chest she's sure Sylvanas can hear it. Her thought is confirmed when a puff of laughter stirs the hair at her temple and soft, cold lips move against her ear.
"Calm down, little mage. I promise I won't bite-though that would be assuredly more pleasant than what I'm going to have to do here."
Sylvanas chuckles again at the goosebumps that erupt and Jaina rolls her eyes and growls in protest. If anyone could see the position they are in, they'd think them lovers. The low heat that pools in Jaina's stomach is as confounding as the way Sylvanas seems to nuzzle into the nape of her neck.
What the everloving fuck? Before Jaina can spit out the glove and demand to know what the hell is happening, Sylvanas lunges forward with her shoulder while simultaneously pulling down with the arm looped over Jaina's. The flash of pain shoots stars in front of her eyes as the joint pops back into place. Her cry is muffled by the glove clenched in her teeth and it tapers to quiet weeping; the pain in her wrist increasing ten-fold from the jostling of the reduction.
She cannot stop the tears that stream down her face or control her breathing. She pants between whimpers, ashamed and angry at herself that she cannot be more stoic. Sylvanas carefully moves out from under her arm and slides from her hip to sit in the curve of Jaina's body, her hand on Jaina's arm above the injured wrist. Without speaking, Sylvanas reaches out to take the glove from her mouth and to wipe the tears from Jaina's cheeks, as if to save her from the indignity. The compassion in her face slips away when Jaina's eyes meet hers in surprise.
"The worst is yet to come." Sylvanas speaks quietly, but without mocking. "I have no way to distract you while I do this either. You're strong, so I fear you'll be conscious longer than you'll be able to control your screaming. Put your head in my lap."
"What? No." Jaina sniffs and hitches in a breath to hold, anything to regain control of a situation that was spiralling beyond. "Just set it."
"We cannot afford to be found until you're stabilized and I can get all my armor back on. Hate me all you want, rage at me after, but see that I speak truth here." Sylvanas unclasps her cloak and balls it up, setting it on her crossed legs. Jaina locks eyes with her, jaw set in anger and pain, but it's obvious that Sylvanas will give no quarter. With Sylvanas's help, she bends closer, slipping her good arm around the elf's waist and burying her face into the cloak. Jaina hates that Sylvanas is right, hates that the other woman can see her so weak and needy, and absolutely loathes the fact that obviously one of the things she has always thought about the Warchief has been wrong. Jaina despises being wrong. Sylvanas has not lost her empathy.
Sylvanas's voice cuts into her thoughts. "Try to hold your upper arm against your side to avoid straining that shoulder. I'll bind everything up once I set this."
"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Jaina hates how her voice waivers, how she involuntarily tightens the arm around Sylvanas's waist, how suddenly desperate she is for comfort, because she is so tired of hurting… because she's just so tired. Sylvanas doesn't respond.
Both women gasp at the first touch of bare skin to bare skin. Her eyes go wide at the bolt of pleasure, her magic flooding back, but then it's eclipsed by pain, and Jaina's gasp drops into a steady groaning as the elf takes her wrist into her hands. She knows Sylvanas is murmuring something but she cannot focus on her words. Cold fingers gently slide across her skin, sussing out the displacement and what will need to be shifted. Then the chilled grip adjusts, thumbs aligning along the outside of the wrist. Another murmur, and white-hot pain explodes from her arm. Jaina's groans rise and she shrieks into the balled cloak. Sylvanas's knees raise to push the her face firmly against the thick material and her abdomen, further muffling the screams that Jaina can no longer hold inside. She feels the bones grind together once, twice, and on the third time, her mind finally shuts down, a blessing, as she slips into unconsciousness.
s§s
Green haze greets her when she opens her eyes. She rubs them and shakes her head to try to clear it, and as she drops her arms she realizes there was no pain accompanying the movement. Her wrist is unsplinted. The haze is still there, as are several floating rock formations, and what might be vaguely humanoid forms of light.
Now where the fuck am I? Is it possible that this whole mess is just one of her regularly scheduled nightmares? If so, she's definitely going to reconsider adding portals to her battlemagic. Better to run the Banshee Queen through with icebolts, or get her onto the ocean and sink her damnable ship...just steer clear of portals.
As she leans forward, brushing off her skirts, the click and clash of sliding rock shoots her to her feet. A wave of déjà vu washes over her as she twists to look behind her. Where's my staff?
"Sylvanas?"
She waits, but no response. A tiny trickle of fear settles cold in her belly at another clatter of rocks and the distinct feeling of eyes on her.
"Sylvanas, if you're going to kill me, just come out and do it." She tries reaching her magic, sifting through whatever it is filling that space to find something useful. Some of what she touches feels familiar, cool and sharp-edged, but nothing heeds her call. Hand to hand then; she squares up, hoping she'll be able to do a little damage before taking a dagger somewhere in her person.
"I do not know who this 'Sylvanas' may be, but I may assist you if you wish, da'len."
The voice is unfamiliar, definitely not Sylvanas's double-toned drawl and possibly not belonging to a woman. Jaina squints her eyes to peer through the green gloom at the silhouette of a person, somewhat taller than her, approaching slowly. She keeps her stance ready though the other carries a staff and seems far more capable than her at manipulating whatever magics are in this land. She'll not stand a chance if they decide to attack. She wills her voice steady, and responds with a confidence she does not feel.
"Identify yourself."
The silhouette stops moving and tilts its head slightly, "Peace, da'len. I do not wish you harm."
"Who are you?" Her inflection rises and she silently curses herself for showing her uncertainty. "Are you Horde?"
The figure is close enough now for Jaina to see that he is undoubtedly male, and possibly an elf, though his ears are shorter than any elf she's ever met. Half-elf perhaps. His expression is guarded but not aggressive, and her question seems to confuse him more than antagonize.
"What is this… 'Horde'?"
If possible, she stiffens even more as the Banshee's words come flooding back into her memory. We're not in Azeroth anymore.
"It's… forget I asked."
The half-elf hums, clearly not convinced, but he blissfully says nothing. "I am Solas, if there are to be introductions."
"Jaina."
"Andaran atishan, Jaina."
"Uh- to you, as well," Jaina stands awkwardly with her arms down at her sides, at a rare loss for words. Solas looks at her expectantly. "So, I don't know where I am."
"We are in the Fade. And as far as I can tell, you are no spirit or demon, so you must be dreaming."
Everything? All of this is a dream? "Well, that's a comfort." Her sigh of relief almost echoes in the sickly light, the sound making her pensive. "I don't think I've ever had a dream this vivid before..."
"You are dreaming, yes, but not in the way you believe. Mages enter the Fade when they Dream."
"So I'm asleep at the moment?"
"Unless you are able to Dream while conscious, then yes, you are." Solas's brow furrows as he frowns. "Forgive my forwardness, but you are remarkably… uninformed in the way of magi. Did you not come from a Circle?"
"A Circle?"
Solas seems to scrutinise her with an intensity that makes uneasiness curl in her gut. "Where are you really from, Lady Jaina?"
"What does it matter?"
"You speak of strange things. You do not know what the Fade is, despite it having been bleeding into reality for the past few months through the Breach."
"I… you're right. I'm not from wherever this place is. I'm from a planet called Azeroth." Jaina shakes her head trying to remember how this whole shitstorm started. "We're locked in endless war there. Two factions, the Alliance and the Horde, cannot settle their differences except with blood and misery. They refuse to even try anything else."
Solas inclines his head towards her as she continues. She can see the spark of curiosity and interest glimmer in his eyes. "I tried to eliminate the Horde Warchief by pushing her through an unanchored portal. She managed to pull me in with her and then I woke up with a broken wrist and the Warchief helping me… and Sylvanas Windrunner doesn't help anyone, much less an Alliance official. I cannot wield my magic, nothing… not even simple magelight."
Solas seems to take a moment to process everything Jaina had said. "Fascinating. I wonder how you came to be here, and if the Breach has anything to do with it," he muses, then shakes his head, expression souring. "Funny enough, it is fortunate that you aren't able to spellcast. I'm afraid it's a dangerous time to be a mage in Thedas right now. The Herald may be missing, but her Commander yet lives."
"Herald? Breach?"
"The tear in the Veil that lingered in the sky above Haven before it was attacked. The Herald had just sealed it."
"Your sky was torn? The sky in Azeroth is too. The Warchief destroyed the Helm of Domination, and it caused an explosion of energy that ripped a hole in the sky above Icecrown."
His eyes jump to hers. "This Warchief… I would like to meet her."
"Hah," Jaina snorts, "I think otherwise."
"If she is sleeping right now she may be in the Fade as well." Solas presses, despite her comment.
"She doesn't sleep. She's undead." Jaina looks pointedly at him. "And she'd kill you as soon as look at you. The only reason I'm still alive is because she thinks I can get us back to Azeroth."
Solas tilts his head again. "She is undead? And yet she keeps her mind?"
"Yes." Jaina draws out the word, internally debating whether the Banshee Queen kept Sylvanas's mind.
"It's a long story. One that, if you do happen to meet her, I recommend you don't ask about." Jaina sighs, "She wasn't always cruel and heartless but I don't think there's any of that Sylvanas left."
It certainly wasn't the Banshee Queen who wiped the tears from your face and cradled your head in her lap.
"The Commander will have you executed if you are found in Thedas. A mage without a Circle is an apostate, a crime punishable by death, according to the Herald. I fail to see how she fails to see that all mages are now apostates and her views are clearly outdated." Solas scowls and shakes his head, obviously in disagreement with whomever the Herald is, "So this Warchief's protection would be a boon for you, and yours for her as they will most definitely see her as an abomination."
"I don't know what I can offer her as far as protection. I can't manipulate this magic." Jaina shrugs, "They'd just kill her while I watched and then turn on me."
"They don't know you can't cast spells." He looks at her thoughtfully, "She could be your magic. If she were 'bound' to you..."
Jaina bursts into laughter. "If she were what?! Sylvanas would never agree to be bound to me for anything."
"Obviously, she wouldn't truly be bound. She would just have to pretend. Is this not something she would do?" The corners of his lips twitch, and Jaina sees the sparkle of amusement in his eyes as Jaina shakes her head vigorously.
He pauses, as if listening for something, then turns pensive. "In the waking world, the survivors of Haven and the remaining part of the Inquisition are headed to Tarasyl'an Tel'as. We're travelling due north of Haven, along the Frostback Mountains. Can you remember anything about where you were when you woke?"
"Not really." Jaina shakes her head slowly, "It was dark. There was snow and we were under trees - pine trees. Honestly, I was more concerned about the pain and the fact that a murderous undead elf that I'd tried to kill was with me."
"An elf you say?" Solas's eyebrows rise. "Now I have to meet her." He stills again, then turns abruptly, walking back the way he had come. Right before he disappears behind a rock he stops. "I know you cannot cast any spells, but can you feel our magic, Jaina?"
She nods.
"Keep feeling it. I will call you to us. Remember you're not safe alone, neither of you. Travel together, convince her to play the part."
When Jaina goes to argue, she sees he's already gone. So she sits and waits to wake up, practicing what she'll say to convince the Warchief to pretend to be her slave.