Shattrath was the one place in all the worlds where Aranya never failed to find solace. In the days of Thalassian civil war, when the elves of the Horde, Illidari, Scryers, and Sunfury had all clashed with each other across Outland, it had been Aranya's greatest refuge, basking in the Light of the Sha'tar, letting the unconditional love and gentleness of this band of naaru soothe her stormy spirit, as she constantly walked the edge of what she could be and what she needed to be - exploring the sharp line and trying her damnedest not to fall as she discovered what she wanted to be and what she chose to be. Even in the alternate timeline of Draenor, when she warred with the Iron Horde alongside everyone else, she would escape some nights to the docks - the least ravaged and most undisturbed part of the City of Light - and she would lie on her back, gazing up at the vast Talador sky, telling all her secrets and troubles to the stars above, as she had done for years since she was a girl.
There were no stars in this room to comfort her now. Aranya lay on her bed, in her city quarters in Outland, hating the cold ache that squeezed her lungs and slithered in her veins. Hating breathing, hating feeling, hating the thought of getting up and living.
On her left hand, her titangold wedding band was absent. She hated that, too.
And she especially hated that she didn't hate him.
Halenvar had taken his leave of their marriage, after hardly much more than a year. She had every right and reason to hate him for this, for dishonoring their vows, for not being there for her or supporting her… But hate him she did not. Burning tears slid over her cheeks as her mind played his rich, deep voice in her head over and over, as she saw his intense blue-green eyes every time she closed her own. She squeezed her pillows and could almost feel his arms squeezing around her again.
Aranya shuddered and choked on a sigh. "I can't be loved," she breathed. "It's not enough. They always leave." It was a pattern of her life, and it hurt worse than dying of maddening magic-withdrawal sickness.
Her own father, missing and presumed possibly dead after the 3rd War, only to have the old quel'dorei reunite with her more than half a dozen years later… to formally sign over the family estate to her and confirm that he was never coming home. Abandoning his kingdom… and to an extent, her too.
Merenylo, her erstwhile ranger love, left her without even saying goodbye when Valéria, their daughter, was not even a week old. Abandoning them both. He only waltzed back into their lives every few years or so when he felt like checking on the child.
Rhovin, who feared the lethal patterns in his own life and feared making her part of them, too. Pulling apart and together again with him over and over across the years.
And now Halenvar, her husband, the man who had been her anchor, her shelter, her peace. The man she thought she would live out her destiny with, whose shared love with her had saved worlds.
"It's never enough," whispered Aranya, tearfully. No matter how much, how deeply, how ferociously, how steadfastly she loved anyone… "They always leave me."
"Not me, minn'da," a very young and deeply concerned voice insisted softly next to the bed.
Aranya cracked one smoldering green eye open to see her young daughter's wide golden gaze regarding her gravely. "Oh, Valéria," she gratefully whispered, rolling herself closer to her child, glad to have her Little Light's company.
The paladin apprentice pulled her sorceress mother up into a hug, holding her little arms tight around the woman, stroking her darksome hair and murmuring soothingly to her. "It's okay, minn'da," the girl reassured her. "It's going to be okay. You're going to be okay. I'm right here, with you."
They sat like that for a long while, Aranya sobbing quietly into little Valéria's shirt, the golden child comforting her mother with all the love her pure, young heart had to give. When the sin'dorei woman lifted up her head for a moment from her child's shoulder, Valéria looked her dead in the eyes. "I am never going to leave you," she promised, her voice full of conviction. "You will always have me, minn'da. I am always going to be with you, and be there for you."
Aranya smiled through her tears, a strange kind of relief welling up inside her, and she welcomed it. "Thank you, my Little Light," she replied.
"I love you."
Timeframe: Turn-of-the-year, two weeks before the Black Empire rises again to assault Uldum and the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, a few months before N'Zoth's defeat in Ny'alotha.