A/N: I'm basing the draenei's feelings toward the Burning Legion on Velen's story on Blizz's website. What better source, right?

…-…

…My breakdown lasted about eight days. I don't really know what pulled me out of it. But, I guess I'd been going to that portal thing—it's not actually a portal, just like a…hologram? No that's not right. It's like a camera, letting me see into the world, but there's no way to actually get there.

Well, the past few days, I guess I'd been coming there and just staring at it. When I started really noticing my surroundings again, I was staring at it. I guess that Clara and the others said goodbye to me and that they'd be back when they could, to help me figure out where I could stay or what I could do—I guess there was even a brief debate about shipping me off to some cathedral when I 'got better', though TJ said they should hold off deciding my future until they found out if I'd ever be more than a vegetable again—but I don't remember that at all.

And Brath…it may sound weird, but he left me a letter. I haven't read it yet. I don't want to know what he said. Though…even leaving a letter means he didn't leave right away, not that I know what that means exactly… Grrr…it's so frustrating because, not that I'd ever tell him and it's totally horrible of me, but I really liked having him around. Sure he was crazy, but he backed me up, even if it was for his own schemes.

I started to read his letter—which is apparently in draconic so that the draenei won't be likely to read it—but the first sentence is something like, "I cannot stress how your stupidity has thrown a kink into my plans…"

I may miss him, but that doesn't mean I want to be berated by a piece of paper in his absence. So I stopped reading.

Anyway, when I finally did come back to my senses, it dawned on me that my eyes hurt and I reached up to rub them. No sooner had I done so, I felt a hand on my shoulder and I turned to see one of those draenei women sitting beside me. I think I jumped at first, because it took a minute for everything to register and for me to remember what draenei were and that they were friendly.

She was patient though, offering me water when she was satisfied that I wasn't going to bolt. As I took it and sipped, realizing that my mouth felt super dry, she nodded her head toward that grotesque image. "You…found it?" When I didn't follow, a hint of sadness crept into her smile. "You kept saying there had to be something we have missed."

I stared at her for a long time and then I ran my hand through my hair. It was so grimy. When I looked down, my fingernails were caked with dirt and I was still in my thread bare, torn up clothes. I tried to remember whatever it was that I'd apparently been looking for, but everything was blank.

The draenei woman rose to her feet and offered me a hand. "Come. Let us get you washed up and I am sure it will come to you."

I felt bad taking her clean hand when mine was so dirty. And I felt bad turning away from my world to go scrub off the dirt when I'd failed so spectacularly. But what was I supposed to do? Stop living because I screwed up my entire world's chance at surviving? Was there ever really a chance that I could save it? When I looked at it like that, it seemed like it'd only be fair that I die off with the rest of my people, but the draenei merely patted my shoulder and tugged on my hand. "Come. You will feel better. I promise."

I almost called her a liar, but I didn't. My feet were heavy and everything felt so…numb.

Well, the draenei have a sort of bath house type thing and as I bathed, I couldn't help but feel that they'd vacated it for me. Like my depression was contagious. Thanks guys.

When I got out, there was a pile of clothes folded neatly near the door. I got dressed without paying much attention to it, besides noting that they were a bit big on me. But they felt clean and that was nice.

Maybe they didn't expect me to be done so quickly, but the woman from earlier wasn't around when I left, so I just started wandering around. And I got hopelessly lost.

Remember how in Booty Bay everyone knew of the strange human who didn't speak anyone's language? Well, I think word had gotten around the Exodar that there was a strange, depressing human in their midst. While the people in Booty Bay had gone out of their way to talk to me, the draenei were quite the opposite. A few gave me tight lipped smiles or reluctant nods when my gaze happened to meet theirs, but for the most part, everyone seemed like talking to me would end their world.

Then it occurred to me. The demons had attacked Booty Bay because of me—I think it was because of me, anyway—so were they worried that I was going to bring the Legion crashing down on their home?

Was I?

It seemed dumb that the demons would come after a lonely little human, but who's to say how demons think?

I kept my gaze down after that, not wanting to see anymore weird stares. I was still super depressed and all, wondering if I ought to just exile myself or something—walk into the ocean, maybe—when I heard laughter.

Holy crap, it'd felt like I hadn't heard simple giggles and laughs in thousands of years.

So I went toward it, just because I wanted something that might cheer me up. It'd probably be something closer to gaming humor—Greg and his friends used to laugh at comments like, 'What pet does the best dee pee ess?' and yelling the name Leroy—which I never got, but I figured maybe it'd be enough to make me feel less bleh. Like a joke can make seeing your world a dead husk any better, right?

Well, when I came over, it was this draenei woman—not the one who'd been with me before. She seemed younger, though I couldn't quite place her age. Maybe early twenties or something? It's hard to tell age on other species, but that might just be because I'm not used to seeing them.

Anyway, she had this little mechanical toy and it was doing something…I couldn't see it well from my stalker stance in the doorway, but she must have been laughing about it. Just as I was thinking I should leave her to whatever she was doing, she saw me. With a grin, she motioned for me to come over.

"You are engineer?"

"No." I mumbled.

She waved her hand like it didn't matter. "Look at what I have got scrapbot to do…." She turned some crank on the toy and it broke out into this seventies type dance. It was kind of funny. "Now you will never be bored while raid leaders explain logistics of fight, yes?"

"I bet raid leaders will love that," I tried to joke, imagining them to be sort of like teachers vying for attention from the class clown. She broke out into giggles again and I had to say that I smiled a little bit. It was nice to have someone talking to me again.

She left the toy dancing and went about messing with a few others, trying to tweak their programming to do different dances and I couldn't help but feel that engineers must be the geeks of Azeroth. This made me happy, if only because it reminded me of my brother.

Maybe raiders are like the jocks?

Well, she let me hang out with her, talking about different things and showing me what she was talking about when she lapsed into engineer talk, "You see this little twirly thing…yes, the blue one? It should be a little to the left, but then it will hit the green twirly thing…" I liked that she dumbed down the names for me… "…but where it is, it hits the copper bolt. So it must be moved if this is to be able to move onto its toes, but I am not sure how."

I just shrugged. I had no clue how to fix that sort of stuff. After maybe half an hour of chatting, the draenei abruptly gasped, as though she'd left a group of children unattended in a bath tub. "We have not introduced ourselves." She slapped her hand against her chest. "Neesera Lightsong."

I sat up straighter as well, trying to mimic her odd formality. "Amy Ford."

Her face fell instantly. There was an awkward silence and I finally tried to joke it off. I didn't want her to reject me, too. "Um…if I did something wrong, it'd help if you told me."

Okay, half-joke. Not really a joke. I just wanted people to stop treating me like a leper.

Neesera's eyes widened—making their blinding light even worse—and she grabbed my hand. "No! No, no, no, no." I'm not sure she said no enough times before she continued. "You have done nothing wrong." She motioned to herself. "It was us. We failed."

When I just stared at her blankly, she tried to think how to explain herself. I could see when it dawned on her to attempt an angle of someone who'd never heard of a draenei before. "We, draenei, take the Burning Legion very serious," she paused, "I mean, not that others do not, but…" She seemed at a loss for a minute before shaking her head. "It is our responsibility to stop the Burning Legion. You brought to us a failure to do so. Everyone is feeling the weight."

I stared at her for a minute, trying to make sense of it. "So…the reason no one wants to look me in the eyes is because…"

"We failed your world."

Wow. The draenei are hard core. I like it. Though they could probably tone it down a bit and still be awesome.

Neesera looked down at the scrapbots, with less enthusiasm than before. "They are saying there were billions of lives lost."

"It's not your fault," I offered almost instinctively. But it was true enough, wasn't it? Even as she gave me this sad smile, I hugged her. It may sound weird, hugging a stranger, but I think in the end, I was the one who really wanted a hug. She wasn't expecting that, but she hugged me back. It's a good thing her horns went straight up, like an antelope's, too, because otherwise I probably would have accidently impaled myself. I don't think when I act. I really need to fix that.

When I let go, she still held me to her and it took me a second to realize she was crying. Draenei are like super empathetic or something. When I finally got her to calm down, she explained to me the eredar and how, yes it was really their fault. I told her that was stupid and that you can't control other people's actions. That the fact that they were trying to save other worlds at all made them pretty awesome and that no one could be expected to save everyone.

I felt a bit better distancing myself from my world and throwing it in with all the others.

Well, we talked for a bit about non-life-or-death topics, like engineering and weather and stuff. Finally, it was getting pretty late, so Neesera offered to walk me back to the inn. It was fun to have her around. I didn't even notice the stares from the other draenei on the way back.

And I regaled her with tales of electronics from my world. Even though, in retrospect, I think it made Neesera sad, she still smiled and listened. She did enjoy my story of the toaster that Greg tried to 'improve'. The machine ended up shooting toast into our ceiling with enough force that one of them got plastered up there. Greg had to spend the next two days scraping bread bits off the ceiling. It was priceless.

It's still hard for me to think that he could really be gone.

Anyway, I'd moved on to talk about this time Greg tried to 'adjust' a street sign so that it would spin when cars drove up—he was trying to make sure that Aunt Isabella didn't find our house, because he didn't want her lecturing us about Twilight and how awesome it was that she had the same name as the main character—when it hit me.

Street signs. Signs in general.

"How do we get to the portal place?"

Well, at first my new friend had no clue what I was talking about, but after a brief foray into phrases like, 'the shimmery stuff' and 'mages make them, you know?', she realized where I was talking about and led the way.

I'd been so upset about the what, but not the where, right? I mean, yeah I saw that police officer get killed right in front of me, but I'd never seen mass death like that and I think maybe I freaked out too soon, right?

When we got there, the woman from before wasn't there, but there was a guy grimly inspecting the image. It had changed to a different scene. And, as I watched it, it switched again and this time I realized that I recognized one of the broken buildings from the previous image, just from a different angle and way further away. I trotted up next to him and he sort of jumped when I touched his arm to break his concentration.

"This portal—"

"My apologies," he murmured and motioned toward the shimmering image. "We do not have enough power to make a full portal to your world. This is merely a way to look in."

"This thing then…how far have you looked?" I pointed at it.

"How far?" The man seemed lost for a moment.

"Like…miles?" Do they have miles in Azeroth?

I think Fizz's translation spell must have translated that word for me into whatever measurement they would need, though, because he nodded. Fizz would be a god in my world, I swear. Language barriers crumble before that mighty goblin.

He made this sort of map appear in the air near us and it was my turn to jump. Then he was all apologetic for scaring me for like, ever. When I finally got him back on track, I could see that they'd been to maybe a hundred cities.

Out of how many hundreds of thousands of cities there are in my world? So I asked him if he'd seen any signs, you know, to figure out where this was exactly. I mean, I would think it would be around my town, since, you know, I came from there, but who knows, right?

These draenei are something else. They have all these catalogues of stuff. Monsters, species, areas destroyed by the Legion. Apparently they'd been mapping out my world, looking for any signs of how the Legion had destroyed us in specific, to help them fight them later. And I guess the Legion recruits new species from time to time, like elves from this world, so there was a possibility that there were new monsters to contend with that the draenei would need to learn about.

That's a bit off topic, though.

Um, about the camera thing. It's not real time. Apparently it's really hard to even peer into my world because of the lack of magic, so what the spell(?) or whatever it is does is send an image every hour, about. And it travels. Hence the map.

So far, they haven't seen any life, but…I don't think that's something to worry about, depending on where this is. And even then... I know, you may be thinking, you're still hoping? Are you crazy?

No. Well, maybe. But, think about it. If there were living people still in those cities, would they leave all those bodies lying around? Duh. In my world, we can't see the demons. So why would we make it obvious that we're in a certain part by cleaning up after them when we don't know if they've even left for sure? It's grizzly and depressing, but to survive after what those monsters have done, people are gonna need to blend into the destruction.

And, who's to say this portal-camera is invisible? If people can see it, they sure aren't going to trust that it's friendly.

Though…if someone had seen it, they probably would have tried to destroy it by now.

Whatever. I'm dealing with one problem at a time.

Well, I asked the guy if he could bring up all the signs, right? And he said he would try, but that it would take a while. I wanted to see what direction the thing was traveling in, you know? And where I was looking. Like, if this was Brazil or Australia, then yeah, my world is probably gone. But if these images were from one of the countries that had already fallen when I was still in my world—or even from my town and the surrounding ones—then there was hope. For the southern hemisphere at least.

He promised to look into those signs for me and Neesera helped to drag me off so that he could get back to his job.

When we were pretty close to the inn, we saw the woman who'd taken me to the bath and a few of the Exodar guards backing her. She was arguing with someone. From the angle of her chin, it was someone pretty short.

"I tell you. It is not my fault. I left her to relax and was called away for a moment. When I came back, she was gone—" Did I mention the draenei sound kind of Russian when they speak? They do. Kind of.

"Ya gotta be kiddin' me," the voice of the guy she was arguing with sounded like someone out of Jersey Shore and I felt a tiny ping of hope in my chest. No way could it be…

I raced around the corner as he berated the draenei woman for losing track of me and nearly tackled the small goblin as I stooped down to hug him.

"Fizz!"