At the End of Her Rope
Joanne had no idea who these people were. The Orcs spoke of them with dread; that was all she knew. They were more alien to her than anyone she'd seen, with their horns and the fleshy tendrils hanging from the men's chins like beards. They had legs like horses, with great heavy hooves, and tails. And their eyes glowed coldly blue, a reflection of their ice-blue skin.
She was terrified of them. Once freed of the netting, a female among them took her firmly by the arm and guided Joanne stumbling away to stand by one of the giant beasts on which they rode. It was massive, and sported yard-long tusks that looked capable of piercing even the toughest hide. She'd not seen one of these monstrous creatures before, either. Numb with fear, she stood there trembling as they hauled Fentulk to his feet, roughly searched him for weapons, then bound his wrists behind his back. The wolf lay dead on the red sand, slain trying to protect his new master.
To her eyes, the Orc was spent. Utterly resigned, even worse than when they'd fallen among the humans at Refuge Point. His head hung low and he barely responded to their harshly delivered commands. He simply walked where they told him to walk: to the temple.
Yet they were not content with his passivity, and struck him or shoved him cruelly at their will.
Joanne they gently lifted onto the back of a beast. Once the group began moving, the female finally spoke to her. It took a few moments for Joanne to make sense of the female's words, for her accent was thick and the common tongue was clearly not comfortable for her.
"Safe now, yes?" she said behind Joanne. "Orc do you harm?"
Incredulous, Joanne glanced over her shoulder. "No. What is this about? Who are you?"
"Draenei," the woman said. "Saw Orc on wolf, saw you. Where he take you from? This side or other side?"
"Side? What do you mean by 'side'?" Joanne asked nervously.
"Portal," she replied. "You from Honor Hold?"
"No," Joanne said, bewildered. "I have never been there."
"You see Obadei. Ask more."
"I don't understand you," Joanne snapped. "Why did you...?"
"See Obadei," the female insisted.
Once in the temple courtyard, the group dismounted. Joanne was carefully handed down from the elekk, but could not go to Fentulk. Guards surrounded him as though, unarmed and beaten down, he still presented a threat. She looked at their faces, and saw hate.
She did not understand any of this. Fentulk was pushed to his knees and he made no attempt at defiance. He could not even seem to look at his captors. The female who'd shared the mount with Joanne took her more gently by the arm and led her away. At least, she tried to.
"Where are you taking me?" Joanne asked sharply, jerking herself free and digging in her heels.
The female Draenei blinked at her, the glow of her eyes strobing briefly. "You see Obadei. Ask Obadei."
"I will not go another step," Joanne hissed, crossing her arms over her chest. "And I will not leave him with you people."
Darting a glance at the cowed Orc, the female appeared confused. Shaking herself, she conceded, "Stay. I go get Obadei. Bring here." Then she trotted off to a low building near the gates.
There had only been one other time that Joanne was driven to the end of her tether. She'd ground those herbs with shaking hands and tear-filled eyes, cooked that stew impatiently, contemplated adding one more ingredient to punish those who would not learn now any better than they did when her mother sought to educate them.
Who had they hurt? Across miles and miles, from one world to another, who in the name of the Light had they harmed? Why could no one simply let them be?
Beginning to shake with anger she rarely felt, Joanne watched a large male of these Draenei approaching. His strange tentacles were laddered with gold rings that clattered against one another as he walked in the strange, stilted way of his kind. He spared a glance at Fentulk, still on his knees and surrounded by hostile guards. He smirked, and Joanne experienced a wholly unfamiliar surge of rage. As soon as he was within range, she let him have it.
"What is the meaning of this?" she cried, startling the Draenei man. "Why were we attacked? What wrong had we committed?"
"I am told the Orc had captured you...," Obadei began, and Joanne became even more livid.
"I was not captured by him!" she shrieked. "If anyone has 'captured' me, it is you! How dare you? How dare you attack us when we had done nothing to you!"
"Madam, please," Obadei urged as calmly as he could. He shot a bewildered look at the female Draenei and she shrugged. "We will not harm you. If you wish to be transported to Honor Hold or to the Portal, we will gladly..."
"You do not understand, do you?" Joanne interrupted. "I came here with him. We are travelling together. He is my... my friend." Clutching fistfuls of her hair in frustration, she snarled, "Why can we not be left alone?"
"Come, come," the Draenei man said soothingly, "you are not yourself. Perhaps he has bewitched..."
"I have not been bewitched!" Joanne cried. "I am not being held against my will by anyone but you. I want nothing from you but our release. Both of us. Please."
Anger was not an emotion Joanne had long experience with, and its rampage left her bereft. Face crumpling, she burst into hysterical tears, unable to utter another word.
Most of those in the temple courtyard heard her words, including Fentulk. Anywhere else, he would have been overwhelmed with admiration and affection. Such fire! He had no idea she possessed it in such quantity. He fancied had he been closer he might have felt the heat of it wash over him. Yet he did not envy the target of her wrath.
What he did feel was strengthened. She, at least, had not given up or given in. Perhaps his inability to fight against the Draenei was due to racial guilt; she had no such constraint. While he could not ignore a lifetime of deference to an atrocity he'd not taken part in, he could at least do his damnedest to get them the fuck out of this mess.
"We ain't done nothin'...," he started to say, and was rewarded for it with a gun stock smashed into his jaw. The Orc's head whipped to the side and he toppled over, groaning.
"Fentulk!" Joanne screamed, and rushed to his side. She pushed two Draenei men out of her way to get to him. Cradling Fentulk's head in her arms, she glared up at the one who'd struck him.
"Where were you when all my days were spent in a tower?" she hissed. "Where was the 'rescue' when my mother wept for her shame each day? Where were you when I felt their eyes upon me?" Looking down at Fentulk's bleeding mouth and broken tusk, the deep lines of exhaustion etched in his face, the traces of burns on his head, and the bruise darkening his cheek, her eyes blurred. She gently touched his face and whispered, half to herself, half to him, "You could have left me there. What was I to you, after all?"
Blinking against the rattling in his head from the Draenei's blow, Fentulk tried to focus on her. "Everything," he replied huskily. "Always... for always. You... you were everything."
"I do not understand," Obadei said slowly. Joanne heard his great hooves approaching, and cringed. She held onto Fentulk more firmly, but did not look up.
"Where were you held?" Obadei asked. "Thrallmar?"
Joanne's fury came and went in waves. Another crested at the man's words, and she shot to her feet. Fentulk was jostled by her rising, his head thudding against the ground.
"I was not in Horde hands!" she cried. "We have sought their aid and received it; I have not been held prisoner by them, not once!"
"But you mentioned a tower...," the Draenei began, only to be cut off.
"It belonged to the Alliance!" she cried. "I was held in slavery by the Alliance! I was a servant to the Alliance! I could go nowhere, could not leave the place of my imprisonment, could not go out the door of the tower! All I was afforded was a view out a window upon the world I was denied a part in. All for a debt, a simple debt owed by my mother."
Obadei looked from her to the Orc struggling to sit up. He had no love for their kind; his family was slaughtered by them during the purging. It didn't matter that this one was of the Mag'har; he was an Orc.
"Will you now tell me," he growled, shifting his glowing eyes to Joanne, "that this Orc rescued you from that tower?"
Lifting her chin defiantly, she replied, "Yes. That is what he did."
She could not tell where his eyes focused, but could feel them roaming. Swallowing hard, Joanne labored to maintain her poise.
"Whose blood is on your clothing, madam?" Obadei asked quietly.
"An Orc's," she answered stiffly. He glanced at Fentulk. "Not his," Joanne clarified. "Another's. One who would have died by Alliance hands, though he was wounded and unable to defend himself. I am sickened by what I have seen of the Alliance. My mother... my mother begged money for the release of her sister from SI:7 custody. She promised anything to end the torture and abuse, for my aunt was... was a prostitute who had unwisely taken a criminal client." Wincing at the memory and the family shame, she pressed on. "My mother was poor herself, and could not pay the debt. Though my aunt walked free, my mother was turned over and became indentured to SI:7, until such time as her debt could be paid. There was never any hope of that day coming."
Glaring hard at the Draenei man's surprised face, she carried on. "My mother was raped by the warden of that tower. She was raped by half his men. She could go nowhere, beg aid from no one, seek refuge in no direction. She bore me there, and though she told me the warden was my father... he could have been anyone. Where were you when she needed rescuing? Where were any of you Alliance folk and your love of the Light?
"I grew up in that tower, never setting foot beyond the door," she continued mercilessly, the group of Draenei gone deathly quiet in their shock. "My feet never touched grass. Because the debt must be paid, even by descendents if necessary, I was held there. I labored long hours once I was old enough to drag a bucket across the floor. My mother... spared me her torment, do you know that?" she said challengingly. "When I had matured enough to begin receiving attention from the men of the tower, she... she saw to them. So that they would not seek me out. Because they must be satisfied, mustn't they."
"Madam, I...," Obadei ventured when she paused, but her next words cut him off.
"They captured Fentulk," she hissed, pointing at the Orc, "with little more than a suspicion that because he is an Orc and because he is the same color as the Warchief, he must be up to mischief. They tortured him for weeks, most horribly, demanding he tell them what devious aims he pursued, and hearing none of his words to the contrary. When he arrived, he had such long, beautiful hair," she said, her voice trailing off as she gazed upon Fentulk. He had managed to sit and was looking up at her with rapt attention. His expressive face betrayed sorrow for her history, now revealed in all its ugliness, and such love her heart constricted with the same. Tearing her gaze from his, she snarled at Obadei, "They burned it all off. They beat him. They cut him. They broke his bones. They whipped him. When none of this gave them what they wanted, they tried to use me against him!" Her fury peaked once more.
"They made such a show of abusing me, raping me in that cell, he nearly killed himself trying to come to my aid!" she cried. "I could stand no more. Though it was illusion, he was not able to know the difference. He begged them to spare me. Begged them! He... wept... in despair of what he believed was being done," she said, her voice losing its strength as she recalled those days of torment. "And I wept," she continued, her voice barely a whisper, hoarse with sorrow, "for his suffering, though he could not see me."
Obadei shook himself. Her story moved him, but he could not dismiss the past easily. "How is it you were rescued? What sort of bloody vengeance was committed to secure your freedom? And how can you possibly forgive him the lives lost?" the Draenei snarled, his cold eyes narrowing.
Before Fentulk could reply, Joanne raised her head, her eyes blazing furiously. "There was no blood, and no vengeance. It was I who poisoned them. I who mixed a sleeping draught and carried the tainted meal to them all. While they slept, we escaped." Seeing the Draenei's brow arch skeptically, she snapped, "There was no talk of spilling blood, not from him and not from me. For the sake of my mother's memory alone, I was owed as much. But I did not take it. Neither did he."
If Obadei knew anything of SI:7, it was that the organization would likely not have let them slip away so easily. He also knew them well enough to believe every word of the woman's story. He'd never felt particularly comfortable with Wrynn's spymaster or the methods he employed. That Wrynn turned a blind eye if the more questionable practices were directed at Horde members hadn't sat well with him either. Even if most of them were only Orcs and therefore deserving of harsh treatment.
Yet looking at this trembling woman, her every feature speaking of her weariness, of the hardships she'd endured, he was unsure what to do for the first time in centuries. "You travel with this... Orc," he ventured carefully. Joanne nodded. "Willingly," he added.
"I do," she replied. "If you have any goodness in you, please let us go our way. He has done nothing, harmed no one."
"His people...," Obadei flared, but was interrupted by the Orc's rasping voice. He sounded just as weary as the woman. Utterly defeated, in fact.
"My people," Fentulk said, his voice unsteady, "are Redwalker. My parents was little ones when... when... Redwalker clan didn't hunt Draenei. We left. Went out beyond what's now Netherstorm. We was there the whole time your folk..." He swallowed hard. "Our chieftain spoke against Ner'zhul, and he was killed. His sons, killed. His mate... The clan scattered, regrouped. Never joined the Horde. Stayed far away, until... until the world started breakin' apart."
"Absence from the slaughter does not absolve your bloodthirsty kind...," Obadei snarled, and Fentulk winced.
"Didn't have no choice," he replied. "Clan loyalty speaks pretty fuckin' loud. The clan... woulda got destroyed if we stayed. If we kept speakin' against Ner'zhul. You gotta know that. There weren't no fightin' so many of our own. No fightin' against the Legion, 'less yuh got enough to back yuh up." Forcing himself to meet the Draenei's smoldering eyes, Fentulk added, "Yuh oughta know 'bout that. Your folk've been fightin'em for a lot longer'n we have."
"My family...," Obadei hissed, then faltered. "I saw them..."
Fentulk nodded. "Yeah. I know. And I know... it don't mean a fuckin' thing, comin' from one of us, but... I'm sorry. It shouldn't... it shouldn't've happened at all. You ask any Mag'har, and he'll tell yuh. We got regrets. We see Draenei walkin' in the world, and we smile, cause... cause yuh ain't all gone. You survived. We look at... at this place, Hellfire Peninsula, and we... we know we fucked up. Even if we didn't turn our backs on the old ways, we let this happen cause we turned our backs on you. 'S'why we take care'uh Nagrand. Treat it like our ma and our pa and... love it like it's part of us." He nodded toward the red sands all about them. "We know we made this. Ain't gonna forget it. Just know we gotta make sure we don't let it happen again."
The Draenei looked away for a moment, firming his jaw, composing himself. It shouldn't matter, the apology of one Orc from the tens of thousands who took part in the decimation of his people. He should not be moved by the Orc's words, when one of his kind had so recently slain Obadei's brother, Sedai.
That it was a fel Orc, not a Mag'har, who committed the murder was of little consequence at the time. Sedai was the only family left to him. What did it matter who wielded the blade months, or decades, ago?
Seeing the Draenei's struggle, Fentulk assumed he would be on the losing side once this Obadei spoke again. Firming his resolve, the Orc said brokenly, "If... if you could just... see her to Nagrand. I promised her... Told her I'd show her my... my home. Just let her see it... that's all." Bowing his head, he whispered, "And don't... don't make her watch, eh?"
Joanne's eyes widened at his words, and she shot a look at Obadei. "No," she breathed, shaking her head. "No." Dropping to her knees she threw her arms around Fentulk's neck and held him close, sobbing, "No, no, no."
"Get on back, now," Fentulk said shakily, though he rested his head on her shoulder and closed his eyes. "They'll... they'll do it quick. You don't wanna be where you can... can see."
"I followed you this far," she whispered, clutching him tighter. "I shall follow you into death, if that is where you go."
"Madam," Obadei said hoarsely, swallowing a hard lump in his throat, "you needn't fear. Nor you, Orc. My brother... Light preserve him... sought reconciliation with the Mag'har. I confess I called him fool. I reminded him of our losses, our griefs. My griefs. He told me... a similar story to what you have said, Orc. That the Mag'har is peopled by those who did not... partake. Who defied their own kind, their own leaders, their own... lusts... for the sake of honor. Sedai thought the time was right..." Pausing, he took a deep breath and clenched his jaw for a moment. "He was slain on his way to Mag'har Post."
Fentulk looked up at the Draenei and shook his head. "They wouldn't've. My folk wouldn't've..."
"I know," Obadei replied, raising a hand to still the Orc's protests. "It was discovered that a fel Orc – one of the Bleeding Hollow, possibly, or Bonechewer; we do not know – murdered him." Gathering himself, Obadei looked upon the Orc and made himself truly see him. There was no malice in those brown eyes, no hint of the taint that greened the skin of the Orcs at Thrallmar, or reddened those more thoroughly corrupted at the Citadel. Rather, he saw remorse.
"I'm sorry," Fentulk told him. "About your brother. For what it's worth."
"Your words," Obadei said quietly, "are worth more than you know. Moreso than I expected. Perhaps Sedai..." Gesturing to the female Draenei, he said, "Release him."