A/N: I don't own Warcraft. Or Draenor. I do own the graphic violence at the beginning and the disgustingly cute couple fluff at the end.
Bracing himself on the door frame, Khujand felt the area around the knife sticking in his throat for any other injuries. Aside from the two most grievous ones, he appeared to be unscathed. The blood soaking his vest and slow asphyxiation, however, were more than enough to worry about.
By tucking his chin down, he could sort of hold the deep but thin cut into his wind pipe closed, and he finally felt a small amount of air reach his lungs. The knife's blade had pushed right into one of the two major arteries in his neck, but had been left inside at such an angle that it was plugging the wound closed for the time being, and he leaned his head to the side to keep it that way. He had always possessed a high threshhold for pain, but in this case the knowledge of the danger he was in far outweighed any physical pain.
Ignoring the fight that had erupted outside, Khujand looked down to the threat at hand. The one-eared orc's entire face had swollen already from when the jungle troll's punch had pulverized its cheekbone. The eyeball on the left side of its face was hanging out of the socket and dangling by the nerve, a disgusting sight even to someone with combat experience. It's jaw had been dislocated and was slacked open at an abnormal angle.
Chances couldn't be taken, however. Stepping onto the orc's forehead, Khujand pressed his entire body weight down until he heard the orc's cranium crunch, its head swelling quickly in an even more disgusting display as the punk was damaged beyond even a resurrection spell.
"Help, he's got me - argh!" groaned another orc in their native language as the gurgle of someone being stabbed in the stomach was heard.
The commotion seemed to reach through the trees all the way back to the restaurant, and there were civilians screaming. The noise wasn't enough for a military assault, though - it sounded like a large brawl that had died down.
There was only another second to stand bracing he doorway before another threat presented itself.
"It's all over!" shouted the voice of a pandaren speaking Orcish.
Looking up, there was an abnormally lean pandaren rogue before him, raising an axe above its head as its underfed frame shook with rage.
Without even thinking, Khujand used the last of his mana as his eyes glowed even brighter. He still hadn't learned a spell to heal himself - if he lived through this, he swore it was the first thing he would do next - but his trump card had even been enough to even bring Blackhand, the Iron Horde general at the Blackrock Foundry, to his knees.
"What therggghdsfh!" croaked the leather-clad, lean pandaren as it hunched forward and fumbled to retain its grip on its axe.
Focusing his power despite the poor oxygen intake and gradual blood loss, Khujand allowed his voodoo to seep out as he hexed his second attacker. He lacked the energy to transform the rogue all the way into a critter, but a half-transformation was even more terrifying in many ways.
With a nauseating splurching sound from its insides, the pandaren's back curved unnaturally as the voodoo magic forcibly altered its posture and skeletal structure. The fur on the left side of its head fell out in clumps as its left ear melted into its scalp flesh and a cockroach's antenna pierced through its skin. Its left arm shrank in length, though the actual metamorphosis stopped there - Khujand was fading fast, and the exertion could end up hurting him as well given his weakened state. Sufficed with allowing the hex spell to simply toy with the pandaren's insides, he watched as dozens of white, ghostly apparitions with glowing red eyes like his rose from the surface of his body and arced into the pandaren, stretching and folding its skin painfully.
Still trying to raise its axe for the killing blow, the pandaren rogue with pure hatred in his eyes was interrupted by a short sword being shoved through its chest in a massive backstab. Khujand released his spell as his attacker fell to its now misshapen knees, revealing Tyron standing behind it. The worgen's fancy white ballroom dance shirt was stained with orc and pandaren blood as he grinned triumphantly. The second orc lied unarmed behind him, and Khujand realized that Tyron must have slayed it with its own blade before turning to the pandaren.
"We did it! We...oh! Mister Khujand, your neck!"
Though Tyron was a capable arms warrior, he didn't appear to be much of a combat medic, and he froze as though he was struggling to think of what to do.
"Ya wife," Khujand gurgled as he tried to hold the knife blade in place within his artery. "She can heal."
Finally getting the point, Tyron moved forward and threw Khujand's free arm over his shoulder, carrying most of the jungle troll's weight as they made their way back to the dying commotion of the restaurant. Khujand's breathing was cut off but still enough for him to survive...for a while. The blood, however, continued to spill even with the cut mostly closed by the knife that had caused it.
Though pain was never a problem for the jungle troll, he knew that this burning sting in his neck signaled something very serious. With every slow step they took, he felt his energy wane, his consciousness fade and more and more of his weight shifted onto the worgen warrior's shoulders. Keeping his chin tucked down to avoid more blood and oxygen loss, Khujand was denied of a clear view of the restaurant.
"He just came out of nowhere!" squaked a disturbed arakkoa patron.
"Blook beat bad guys!"
"No! No, why the happenings now!" sobbed a hysterical voice he recognized as Anushka's despite not having seen her at the restaurant before.
"Oh God, honey, what happened?" asked Elizra with a calmness that was consoling, her professionalism as a healer apparent.
"The robbers, dear!" growled Tyron with a harsh sense of urgency. "The same ones that attacked us! That orc with the stupid looking headband stabbed mister Khujand!"
The voices sounded as though they were drifting further away despite Elizra's approach, and Khujand's vision darkened. Even by the standards of trolls, his regeneration was strong, and with a professional healer around he shouldn't have much to worry about. He'd had a lung punctured while cutting down a doomguard during the final push of the Battle of Mount Hyjal and fought on due to battlefield healers; he could live through this.
Elizra pointed to the ground and said something, and he felt Tyron cradle his head while lowering him. Following their instructions, he sat down slowly and lied back, seeing Kiul, his dear draenei friend and debate partner, waving onlookers away.
Slumping to the side, he could spy the rest of the carnage: several more punks had been killed, and a few of the patrons who happened to have combat training were standing over the corpses with their weapons readied. The nearest corpse to him was a greasy human with a bad combover that had a dirk Cecilia often carried on the inside of her left boot sticking out from the top of his head.
"I'm going to cast my sleep spell on you," Elizra said from some faraway place. "It will help with the healing. Everything will go dark now."
"She's passed out!"
The last thing he saw was the tall figure of a dark elf with azure hair collapsing before him while several people tried to catch her before she fell.
Then everything went dark.
The first sensation to return was the warm air in his lungs. Before anything else could be felt, his own breathing let him know that he was still alive. Khujand savored it for a moment, revelling in the simple fact that his body was inhaling and exhaling on its own accord. He had survived.
Not that it was a pleasant experience, but he had expected to survive.
His body felt warm, but that was natural given the time of year. That he could recall the time of year and the fight that had occurred meant his mind was clear, so he was healing well.
Searching for sound, he could hear feet shuffling on the other side of a cloth sheet. It must be an infirmary tent; he had spent time in one after Hyjal. The monotonous wait was usually more excruciating than the pain of injury, but it still meant that one had survived. There could be no complaining about that.
He could smell leather and dried blood; it must be his vest. Before he could sense anything else, the aroma of sandalwood wafted over to him and he became too eager. Forcing his eyes open, the brightness both blinded and winded him, and he slipped back out of consciousness.
Feet were still shuffling around his room in the infirmary tent when he woke again, but there was no way of knowing how long it had been. When he smelled his fiance again, he kept his eyes closed, knowing that with them both safe, he would be able to let his body rest. Perhaps testing his vocal cords would be less strenuous.
"Hmmmmm..." he hummed as he became drowsy again, but didn't pass out.
The aroma became stronger as he felt a weight less than his sit down on the bed next to him, and he knew it was Cecilia. Long, claw-like fingernails gently scratched his scalp at the base of his mane, and he felt so relaxed that he didn't even need to lean in. For a very long time, the two of them sat, no words being necessary at first.
When enough time had passed for his to take full breaths without feeling pain in his neck or grogginess in his mind, he opened his eyes to see her face once more. Her expression wasn't quite clear at first, but he could tell she was looking at him.
"How long was I out for?" he asked as he reached up to cup her face in his hand. She pressed her palm to his fingers as she leaned in to his heat, the deep sense of sadness and relief once again demonstrating how millennia of an emotionless state had been completely reversed by only a decade of living as a mortal.
Those two pure silver pupils locked onto his gaze, never blinking as she spoke even more to him than just the words spilling from those two violet-blue lips. "Elizra put you under since last night to aid your regeneration," she explained with a softness unlike someone who had already buried so many wounded comrades. "I suppose that would make it more than twelve hours now. It's early morning."
Each time he breathed, he could feel the still existant wound on his neck flesh, though it felt only slightly scratched from the inside - a world of difference from how it had felt when Elizra first put him under.
It only took a few minutes for him to explain what happened - with Jarinta all those months ago, the three punks he throttled, the insane one-eared orc's revenge story. The most important detail was that it was all over, and with the last of the three dead, he no longer had any enemies - on Draenor, at least. Earl Goldthwaite, the greasy human, was already known to them both from her old Booty Bay stories. How those two punks had met each other was a story Elizra had detailed to her, the way all of their paths crossing years later too bizarre for anybody to make up. But it was over; those chasing all four of them down for revenge were now killed.
She looked right into his soul and although he had healed up remarkably fast, he knew she would likely cling to him even more than usual for the rest of their vacation. Not that his clingy self minded; as he looked right back into her, he was once again reminded of how much he stood to lose were he not to keep his wits about him during a war.
"Was it ya that fell?" Khujand asked, remembering the last think he saw before the sleep spell.
Cecilia nodded while staring at him with those sad eyes. The apprehension within her was apparent though she didn't try to dodge the subject.
"What happened?" he asked.
She skipped a beat to breathe deeply before answering as though it would be a great strain. "I've never seen you hurt before," she whispered with her ears dropping down. "I mean...I saw you take damage a few times...but I've never seen you really in danger of..." Her voice weakened and trailed off before she shut her mouth quickly, attempting to compose herself.
As Khujand continued to be captivated by Cecilia's eyes - two lights that always shone for him, the standards of her people be damned - he sensed a vulnerability inside of her that he had never felt before. She didn't try to hide it, though he was sure that she had never felt it before either. Removing his hand from her face, she clasped it in both of hers and began kissing his knuckles as he would so often do with her. Normally, he would have pulled away - his reverence and respect for her wisdom and age convinced him that it was different when he did it - but he didn't resist. He could sense something within her now - a confession she was trying and failing to hold back.
"Whatever ya might think of what it is…" he whispered up to his fiance with a sincerity and warmth that caused her to cease her hand-kissing for a moment. "…ya know that I will never think it redundant or without value. Please, say it out loud. I already know it's there."
Still clutching his hand in hers, she flashed him a sad smile as she began to speak. "Uryndil passed away last month," she started in reference to one of the two male elf Druids assigned to Serenity Grove, her ancestral glade, after the end of the Long Vigil. The other had been her uncle Elindir, who was thankfully still alive but likely ageing just a rapidly.
Sensing the crushing weight of the news on her shoulders, Khujand actually murmured a last rite used in temples of Elune she had taught him, and for a split second the sadness disappeared from her smile.
"How did ya find out all tha way from back home?"
"There were some other night elf adventurers passing through Fort Wrynn," Cecilia explained clinically. "There are only a hundred-thousand night elves left on all of Azeroth, give or take, compared to more than twenty-five million humans or perhaps a hundred million or so trolls worldwide. Coupled with the fact that we knew no illness and death for tens of thousands of years, and the passing on of one of our own from old age becomes a major loss for us all."
He reached up with his other hand and took both of hers in his; he had not yet visited her people - it might not even be safe to do so - but he felt her pain. Not only because he detested seeing the only woman he ever truly loved hurt; their bond was such that he felt what she felt and understood the reasons why.
"Did he and Priestess Lamynia ever pledge themselves ta one another?" he asked in reference to the woman who had lead her ancestral home for the entirety of the Long Vigil.
Cecilia clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and the strain in her voice was far too intense for her to only be speaking of the priestess and the druid. "We knew their private consultations were much more than they claimed, but they always kept waiting for 'the appropriate time.' Just waiting and waiting for a time that would never…"
Her voice trailed off as she pursed her lips and broke eye contact. Cecilia was wounded inside and Khujand knew it was about them, and the guilt over his hand in the cause was eating at him already. He stroked her delicate chin with his pointer finger and guided her back to him, knowing - feeling - what it was now.
"I only go on these raids with tha guild ta finish payin' off tha house faster," he whispered to her with an apologetic tone. "I was doin' it for us and I can stop it for us."
Cecilia winced and tried to look away before returning to his gaze again. "The house is useless if I'm not sharing it with you," she whispered shakily with a pain he knew her warrior's heart hated to admit. "My time is drawing near, Khujand," she said a bit more confidently as her apprehension over her sole weakness - him - was already exposed.
"When we made love yesterday in the tent, I was almost too tired for the swim afterward. I wanted to do it again before we left - so bad - but I knew that I would have had to stop to rest on the hike back here. Even without doing it again, my lungs were raw by the time we reached the settlement's main gate. Every night at moonrise I pop my joints more than before and when I deal with bandits and monsters on the highways here, my skill protects me but I know my movement has slowed down even from how I was ten years ago at Hyjal.
"My sister bore two children, two lovely, beautiful children I want to see so much. We haven't spoken in eight years but word gets around among Kaldorei. I know her and know she must have tried for more. Elven birth rates are low as it is, and I'm just afraid…"
As her voice trailed off without breaking, Cecilia sucked in a deep breath and leaned her forehead down onto Khujand's chest. He ran his hands through her long azure locks, their shade almost matching the complexion of his hide. Even so near to retirement she still held the pride of a sentinel, and if she preferred to regain her composure before finishing, he wasn't going to rush her.
After a minute, she sat up and took his hands with hers again. The sadness was still in her eyes, though she was more sure of what she was saying now.
"I am afraid of losing our chance. We believe in fate, but accepting it is difficult now that, for the first time in my twelve-thousand years, I feel like half of my heart belongs to someone else. We're so close to leaving all the war and adventuring behind, so close to finally having peace, raising a family and seeing the products of our love grow into adults themselves. I can't wait much longer, and I can't accept the thought of losing you. You have to stop taking risks, Khujand. No more raiding, no more questing in remote areas. If we still owe money for the house once your parole is finished and we return to Azeroth, we can find honest work in Ratchet."
He reached up without moving his neck, and pulled her down to him by her shoulders. She bent over in her chair next to his hospital bed and laid her upper body across his, her panting heavy as she waited for the waves of fear and anxiety to roll back. He kissed her hair and enjoyed the familiar scent she always wore as they clung to each other, both hoping with all their shared heart and soul that they would never be pulled apart.
"I know we will, and we gonna do whatever it takes," he murmured into her ear with that low rumble he knew made her feel as though everything would be alright. "No more risk-takin', just regular work. We gonna go back ta our home, and live normal. I ain't gonna let anythin' get between us."
With another day to spare before their six-month anniversary and the night of a family-oriented dance and bazaar in the public square to benefit a local orphanage, it was easy for Cecilia to convince Khujand to spend the rest of that day in the infirmary tent. Elizra and Tyron both stopped by as often as their brand new jobs allowed to check on them, and the healer-slash-field medic was surprised by how powerful the jungle troll's regeneration was. He was already swallowing solid food from the time he woke up that morning, and as he and Cecilia fell in and out of sleep on an irregular schedule across the span of the day, the marks from the cut on both the inside and the outside of his neck disappeared entirely, according to the prognosis Elizra gave based on her ability to 'see' internal wounds.
The elf and the troll weren't alone, as their close friends in the area filtered in and out of their partitioned area in the tent to see how their two friends were doing. Most curiously, Irien - the best friend of Cecilia and now Khujand as well - only stopped to say hello briefly before pulling her elder elf to a corner of the tent behind a curtain to speak in hushed tones by themselves. She didn't even bother saying goobye.
By the time they were ready to check out that early evening - the rest of the healers were amazed that the beefy jungle troll with a bloodstained leather vest appeared completely unhurt within a single day after having one of his arteries severed - they began to worry about making it to the children's benefit event on time.
Outside of the tent, a sobbing Anushka was already waiting for them with an armful of fresh clothes.
"Anushka!" exclaimed Cecilia as though she had found a small girl with a splinter in her finger. "Everything's fine-"
"Hurtings!" she spastic brunette draenei sobbed in Common. "Hurtings bad much!" She immediately began sputtering something in her own language that may very well have been incomprehensible to other draenei as well given her hysterical state.
Cecilia motioned for Khujand to take the clothes from the trembling woman as she pulled Anushka into a hug. It seemed that, for the umpteenth time, the spaz had inadvertently turned someone else's crisis into her own.
Khujand held the pile of folded clothing out in front of himself for a second. "Wait a minute...these are tha towels from tha inn. And these clothese ain't new..." His eyes darted from the clothes to the balling draenei. "Anushka, did ya break inta our-"
"Sssshhh!" shushed Cecilia with a finger to her lips. Anushka had calmed down as the night elf held her and rocked her back and forth like a giant horned child.
After some more coaxing, the trio made their way down to one of two bathhouses at Exarch's Refuge - one which mostly catered to local draenei (where genders were separate but on each side everyone bathed together) and the other where patrons paid extra for their own private shower. Cecilia and Anushka both went to the cheaper bathhouse for locals without issue, though Khujand's territorial culture took over and he demanded his own private room to bathe in, and they parted ways with their respective clothing and towels.
As was expected, there was a short wait at the private showers in the more upscale bathhouse, and Khujand sat on a marble ledge to wait his turn, clothes and towel folded in his lap. There were only two people ahead of him, though almost as soon as he sat down, the turn for the local orc at the front of the line came up and he hurried inside. The waiting area was literally just off on one side of the rows of private showers, and the rising steam from the ten-foot high partitions created an almost humid-subtropical climate that reminded the jungle troll of Gorgrond.
The exhausted looking draenei waiting in front of Khujand was the first to strike up a conversation as they waited. The draenei also happened to be a woman, which made him a bit uncomfortable sitting next to her alone while waiting to shower. She was also kind of pretty which made him really, really uncomfortable. But she also had a bad haircut which made things a little easier.
"Not into the whole communal bath thing either, huh?" she asked in Common.
Khujand raised an eyebrow suspiciously at first, though given that he was trying to improve his social skills and this was a person he didn't have to deal with regularly, it was as good an opportunity as any other. "Pshh, naw way," the jungle troll said dismissively. "I ain't down with that. I earn my money ta enjoy it, not ta hoard it forever. I can shell out a little for my own privacy."
The plainclothes but battle scarred draenei nodded approvingly. "Amen to that!"
There was an awkward pause, though the fact that bad haircut woman seemed just as awkward was heartening. Perhaps awkward silences aren't always because of me, Khujand thought to himself. Deciding to try another social interaction, he jumped right into a topic that interested him.
"Let me ask ya a question, if ya...ya don't mind, ya know." Khujand tried to sound casual, though his control over his tone of voice still wasn't as precise as that of normal people, and he felt it would sound a bit forced.
The unassuming draenei seemed not only unperturbed by the tone of voice but also undaunted by the question. "Shoot," she said as though the two of them were old pals.
"Whashyu think of all this interfactional cooperation?"
The draenei puffed her cheeks up with air as though she didn't know what to say. "That's a big topic," she started cautiously. "I mean, we're in the midst of an interfactional campaign, so one would think that such a concept would be assumed as a given now."
"One would think..."
"Right. Society is slow to change, unfortunately. Sometimes the prejudiced among us have the loudest voices."
Khujand's ears drooped, though the logic in the answer was comprehensible. "I suppose problems're inevitable."
The single draenei female looked thoughtful for a moment as she rested her elbows on her towel and the fresh clothing in her own lap. "You know what?" she asked absentmindedly as she stared off into space.
There was a pause where the woman simply didn't continue, which had the jungle troll staring in anticipation.
"Um...what?"
Staring at the wall for a second longer, she blinked and seemed pulled back into reality. "Oh, sorry," she apologized sincerely. "Eh, look. Every community has its problems. Building a more tolerant world is just a matter of shutting those nagging, extreme voices out."
Khujand stroked his scarlet beard while the draenei ruffled her hair. "So ya think it's gonna be easier now, with all tha cooperation?" the jungle troll asked the draenei.
"I really, truly hope that and many more forms of person-to-person connection become easier with all the cross-factional cooperation," she answered. Then she turned toward the jungle troll abruptly and began examining him. "Wait...I know you."
Ears perking up with curiosity, Khujand turned and half-expected to be faced with a pissed off Alliance prisoner-of-war he might have tortured during his time with the Warsong Outriders - the war crimes that got him sent on his own prison sentence in the first place.
"All trolls look alike, as they say," the Shadow Hunter murmured nervously in a a weak attempt at denial.
The draenei was undaunted but polite. "No, I'm sure of it..." Khujand was almost sweating bullets as she looked up at him, hints of recognition showing on the woman's face. "Were you at Tanaan?"
Images of the Assault on the Dark Portal flashed through Khujand's mind as he could almost hear the death groans of friend and foe alike as shells and firebombs exploded around him. Once he realized that this exarch recognized him as an ally, however, it was easy to calm down. "Yeah!" he beamed just a little too loudly. "Wait...taei wanni wanga, I remember regroupin' with ya after we set a bunshaya free at that old buildin' we barricaded!"
"Yes!" the Draenei beamed with a legitimate warmth. "We split up when we reached those steamships...there really is no way of knowing who survived and who didn't until you meet them." What was once tension immediately turned into relief that only former comrades in arms could understand, regardless of what banner they marched under.
Khujand felt a sudden joy he normally only experienced with old friends. "I already didn't think we'd make it past that arena where they sent tha hundred warriors after us," the jungle troll chuckled as the memories came back to him. "That was some serious shit, ya saved our asses with all those heals ya were throwin' out while swingin' ya hammer at tha same time."
"Oh, I do try my best," the draenei admitted with a hint of what seemed like bashfulness. "That spell you cast to shield us during the final push against the artillery, after we demolished the Dark Portal...it's called 'big bad voodoo,' right? Like what Rokhan and the other Shadow Hunters do to protect their allies?"
"Right, most of us don't understand exactly how it works...we just, commune with tha spirits of tha fallen, ya know? And they stand in tha way of our enemies and our allies knowin' that some time in tha past, they were protected at least once, too."
"Some people scoff at buffing and debuffing ones comrades, but having that support makes all the difference between a winning front line and a losing one," the draenei added as the they both became more engaged in the conversation than Khujand imagined either of them had been in a long time. "Not that clobbering a few Iron Horde soldiers by hand wasn't fun either..."
"Ya said it, sister!"
The two veterans jammered back and forth about the horror and unintentional hilarity they witnessed back in Tanaan for more than ten minutes, forgetting that they had been waiting in line at all. They laughed and grew serious and laughed again, the sort of sharing that two veterans who served together - no matter what races they were born with - would always be capable of. The two suddenly dear friends had just begun complaining about the tendency of Thrall and Khadgar to go on long, boring speeches when they'd done very little of the work when a bathhouse attendant bearing a striking resemblance to the former warchief walked up to them.
"Your shower is prepared, sir," he told the draenei in Orcish.
Nodding as she stood, the two friends shared their goodbyes and prepared to memorize each others' contact information. It wasn't every day two people who had survived such battles bumped into each other, and they'd be sure to keep in touch.
The draenei appeared contrite. "This is awkward, but...what was your name again?" she asked, a bit embarrassed.
"Khujand!" the jungle troll chortled, feeling absolutely thrilled that someone else fighting on the campaign could openly admit to feeling awkward. "I'm at tha Horde settlement at Thunder Pass. My ol' lady works with tha cartels shippin' mail through locations regardless of faction, so I won't be hard ta reach."
"A noble endeavor if there ever was one," the draenei said as she gathered her items and moved toward the showers. "I'm currently around Auchindoun, but I just took two day's leave. Our arms are open to anyone helping to fight the Iron Horde." She had already begun to walk to her shower stall when she realized she had forgotten something. "I'm Yrel, by the way," she said with a thumb to her chest.
Khujand sat down and waved as the exarch walked out of sight, alone as he waited for his own turn.
"Hmm...Eerul...wait, Yrel?!"
The entire central platform in the main area of Exarch's Refuge had been lined with stalls, with a small wooden stage set up toward the center for the live music. The band wasn't particularly loud and a great number of the songs were specifically for children - fitting, considering that the cover charge required would be donated to the local orphanage at the Refuge.
One of the more horrifying consequences of the Iron Horde's reign of terror was the large number of children left without parents or with handicapped parents unable to care for them properly. It was heartbreaking to see - almost every town on Draenor, even those established by Azerothians of the Alliance and Horde - was filled to the brim with refugees, a large portion of them children. The sheer amount of coinage minted by the capitol cities back on Azeroth was draining gold supplies though creating jobs in the mining industry back home. The money was mostly going to construction and logistics contracts for the war effort, but eventually it made it to the local population on Draenor. A massive expense, but a noble cause defending the people of two separate planets.
Though the even was well organized, there weren't quite enough chairs, and the ledges marking the outer circle of the platform were lined with sitting guests watching the band on the stage and the crowd of mostly children dancing nearby, a few scattered parents and caretakers functioning as chaperones while onlookers consumed non-alcoholic beverages.
The environment wasn't wild, but it was festive, fun and friendly.
Although Khujand's neck had healed more or less completely by then, Cecilia clutched his elbow and slowed him down as she insisted he walk carefully the whole way there. Anushka soon found Yaromira and Kiul, the draenei couple working for the same cartel as Cecilia that had led the mapping mission in Gorgrond where she met Khujand. Only recently leaving duty, they were still wearing their light brown postal workers' uniforms, though with their sleeves rolled up they still looked ready to relax.
Yaromira attempted to look for the now healed cut on Khujand's neck, giving him a minor scare when she almost inadvertently poked it with one of her fake fingernails while inspecting his throat. "Honestly, it has healed very well," she commented. "To be frank, I'm glad I wasn't there. It would have been stressful to see."
Cecilia laughed, though her long, feral eyebrows were arched in a sad smile. "You don't know the half of it," she replied as she clutched Khujand's arm a bit tighter and directed him to sit down on the stone ledge next to a saberon couple.
The male saberon noticed the necklace of sixteen animal teeth, talons and claws around Khujand's neck - ten thousand years of Cecilia's career as a huntress she had bestowed upon him. When Khujand saw him looking, he pointed to a fetish made of beads and decorated rat skulls hanging from the cat man's ear and gave a thumbs up.
"Looks good!" the jungle troll beamed in Orcish, garnering a confused yet not hostile look from the saberon. Seeming to get the point, the saberon pointed at the necklace and gave a furry thumbs up of his own.
Elizra and Tyron waved to Cecilia and Khujand from across the platform but preferred not to approach. The jungle troll deduced that the worgen couple preferred not to hang around when the saberon couple was sitting next to them, the eternal conflict between cats and dogs unfortunately hampering relations between the two races.
"Oh, I remember this song!" Kiul sighed wistfully as the six-person band began playing an upbeat tune with a goofy sort of sound. The children went wild as a few more adults joined them, dancing in pairs. "We used to dance to this song as youths on our own timeline's version of Draenor. The words are about children trying to wake their father early on a holiday morning." He turned to Yaromira, who clasped her hands together tightly in her lap and batted her eyelashes at him.
Kiul looked back to the night elf and the jungle troll sitting in front of them. "If you'll excuse us," he chortled as he took Yaromira by the hand and led her toward the growing crowd that suddenly had a dozen more children bouncing around to join it. The draenei couple met their worgen counterparts and joked briefly before joining in the somewhat stiff, formal dance that had the children laughing at the adults.
There were still people sitting on the ledges around the platform and in scattered chairs as they talked and joked, with droves more still milling about the hawkers' stalls just on the other side of the ledges. Just as the trumpeter on the stage blew his horn, Anushka and Irien popped up from the crowd across the platform and made their way toward the interracial couple.
Khujand turned to Cecilia, whispering into her ear while fixating on their approaching friends. "Cici?"
"Hmm?"
"Why didn't Irien stick around ta talk ta me at tha infirmary like everyone else did?" he asked with a measure of concern. The sharpshooter was not only co-owner of the duplex they were working to pay off back in Ratchet but also the best friend of them both.
Cecilia looked up to her fiance with a cheeky grin. She leaned in close as though she had a secret to tell. "Irien cried."
Khujand's eyes grew wide as he tried to wrap his head around Irien Rainsong, the most outspoken, brash elf he had ever met, crying over his throat injury. "No... he murmered incredulously. "Like, whined or whimpered?" he asked.
"Nope," Cecilia denied with a shake of her head. "Cried cried, as in, she was balling like Anushka because she worried your severed artery wouldn't heal. Irien shed tears for you like a big wuss." The both snickered at their best friend's expense and felt like some sort of power couple as they exchanged knowing looks.
"Took you long enough to get here!" exclaimed their target as she stood in front of them with her hands on her hips. "The weekend has passed by without you!"
The Shadow Hunter flashed a mischevious grin, though Irien didn't seem to realize her secret had been told. "So, Irien," he started nonchalantly. "I saw ya at ta infirmary taday."
A quick flash of anger flashed across the shorter of the two elves' face and she glared at Cecilia for a moment. "Yes, I remember that," she said with a flat tone.
"Ya didn't say much ta me," he said with a disappointed voice. "Why'dya pull Cici away ta tha corner and leave me by my lonesome?"
Irien knew what was going on when she saw Cecilia stifling a laugh. "I had something private to say! Something that was supposed to stay between me and Cici!" Irien's fists were already balled up just as she began blushing violet. "I don't have to listen to these wild allegations!"
Already sensing the 'conflictions,' Anushka stepped in. "Please not to talk about the healings," the spaz pleaded. "Let's all find our happy of the childs!" She tugged on the collar of Irien's long-sleeved, faded red everyday shirt she probably found at a thrift store and the shorter elf gladly stomped off to salvage her pride.
Once again left alone, Cecilia scooted a little closer to Khujand as they watched several of their friends dance among the children and a handful of other adults to the live music, an overall positive vibe wafting over the entire area as members of almost every race and faction imaginable shared food, drinks and laughs. Blook, despite his massive bulk that was likely a huge safety violation, began doing the cabbage patch in front of the stage, eliciting a roar of cheering from the half a dozen children all spinning around him.
Looking down to her, Khujand saw a faraway look in Cecilia's eyes as she smiled at Elizra and Yaromira both. As they each danced with their husbands, they appeared totally free, relaxed and truly happy. None of the four were particularly good dancers, but they didn't seem to care - they laughed as they pulled each other close, just like the other couples dancing amidst the crowd of children.
The guilt of his behavior yesterday returned to him as Khujand remembered how quickly his fiance's mood had changed when he pulled his hand away from hers. All around the platform, on the ledge and on chairs, were members of both factions. From the Alliance, there were archmages, paladins, dwarven nobility and a lot of high-ranking draenei. Blue-and-gold tabards were mostly off to one side, with the occasional native Draenorean and neutral faction member mixed in.
Mostly off to the other side was a mix of red-and-black as witch doctors, blood knights, two tauren chieftans, an animated obsidian statue and a lot of orc veterans chatted and laughed. There were members of neutral factions as well and a handful of open-minded gnomes, but otherwise there seemed to be an unconscious divide. The large amount of natives to Draenor - most of whom didn't know and didn't care of the factional differences on Azeroth - filled in the gaps everywhere.
When the wistfulness came to Cecilia's gaze, Khujand couldn't bear it any longer. He rose from the ledge without her even noticing and offered his hand.
"Come on, girl," he said in Darnassian with a sad smile. "We can't let our friends think they're tha only bad dancers out here."
She looked up to him in legitimate surprise, her eyes wide and her mouth dropped open as though she didn't know what to say. Her eyes moved to four of Khujand's fellow Darkspear trolls seated across from them. One of them was clearly a Shadow Hunter like him, and was already scowling contemptuously at one of his brethren extending his hand to a Kaldorei for a dance. Some other night elves were also peering at Cecilia judgmentally, though she was used to that.
She looked up at him again, a mixture of joy, flattery but also self-consciousness and disappointment on her face. "It's alright, Khujand," she apologized with her ears drooping lower. "I'm not upset anymore. We can still have fun watching." Though nobody else would have felt it, he sensed the hurt Cecilia was trying to mask in her voice.
"I want ta, Cici. Please. It doesn't matter who sees or doesn't see."
He reached forward a bit further with his hand, but only held it in front of hers; he wanted her to accept rather than be pulled. With his eyebrows arched innocently as he knelt down like he had at the inn, though he kept as playful a demeanor as he could in an attempt to help her loosen up.
Hesitating as she heard a snide comment from one of the tauren further away, Cecilia slipped her hand into his and rose up as he did, letting her wrist lie limp and daintily as she bowed her head and looked at the ground in front of her. Though she didn't speak, he knew her well enough to guess it could have been caused both by a coy appreciation of his effort and a lingering discomfort over how he might react if other members of the Horde became critical.
Guiding her over to the small sea of children dancing around the handful of other couples, Khujand turned and took her hands in his and Cecilia finally met his gaze. There was still apprehension but her expression softened as they pulled each other close.
"I don't give a damn about what anybody says about us," he whispered to her as he slid one hand on the small of her back. "And I swear, if I see any of my old prison buddies again, I'm gonna french ya right in front of them!" They both laughed at the suggestion and Cecilia grabbed his right hand in her left assertively like they did that first night in Gorgrond many months ago, once again taking the lead herself.
Cecilia leaned her head up against his neck, turning to put her lips closer to his ear. "Incorrigible," she whispered right back. Her eyes darted first to a Warsong Outrider looking at the couple with disgust from across a table someone had just set up for snacks on the platform itself, then up to Khujand who also glanced at the Outrider for a moment before ignoring the guy completely and leaning his cheek against her forehead.
The band played a slower tune now, much to the chagrin of the children but the enjoyment of the adults. Any tension that had been present previously dissipated as Khujand could feel every muscle in Cecilia's body relax as he pressed her against him again, a strange tingling feeling settling in on the top of his head as they pulled apart again to be able to see each other (and because there were children present).
Cecilia opened her mouth to speak before someone shorter ducked in between the two of them and pushed them apart.
"Irien!" Cecilia growled in frustration as their best friend decided to start dancing right in the middle of them. "We're trying to enjoy ourselves!"
"Third wheel for the win!" Irien tried to say in a voice similar to Cecilia's huskier tone but ended up making her sound like a buffoon, just like every time she tried to do that.
The shorter elf suddenly started chest popping rapidly in some dance she said was called 'krumping,' and the draenei, orc and arakkoa children around the three gigantic dancers began going wild. The band felt the change in atmosphere - the children still outnumbered the adults - and picked up the pace of the tune. Irien was still intent on pulling Khujand and Cecilia into some awkward three way dance only she was interested in when Anushka clopped over.
"Irien, the in-cuttings are so inappropriate!" the silk-clad, overdressed draenei urged in Common. "Dance for two of two, not three of three!"
That evil grin spread across Irien's face and Khujand and Cecilia shared a silent 'uh-oh' as they realized what was happening. Without warning, Irien grabbed Anushka and pulled her in the center of a ring of small children, pulling her into an embrace ten times more awkward.
"Irien, of what you doings!"
"Two of two, right?" Irien asked with a laugh as the children placed their hands on the backs of each others shoulders and started doing a people train around the night elf sharpshooter forcing Anushka to do the cha-cha with her.
Cecilia practically fell into Khujand with laughter, the two of them nearly stepping on a few more kids as they tried to contain themselves. She threw her arms around his neck to prop herself up, and he already had his hands on her waist as they fell into half-step with the music again.
She looked into his eyes as they slow danced despite the faster pace of the music. Two incredibly tall bad dancers standing out in a crowd of other bad dancers and rambunctious children swayed in front of a makeshift stage held by non-professional musicians. The noise of the patrons, diners and shoppers at the stalls just outside of the central circular platform was almost louder than the music, but the two of them only heard a certain drum beat coming from nowhere played by an absent friend they'd both need to visit soon.
Khujand pulled Cecilia in close again and rested his forehead down on hers. Though the glow from both of their eyes was dim, it burned brightly in the little room of privacy created by her arms as they wrapped around the back of his head and the leaned in to each other. An odd couple ignored the judgmental stares of others as they felt at peace, feeling each other live and breathe without thinking or analyzing at all.
"I love ya, girl," he murmured.
She nuzzled his nose with her own before answering. "I love you too."
A/N: and that's the fluffy yet violent story I wrote during the summer. Hope everybody enjoyed the shorty but goodie!
For those interested, there is an interlude...a few ensemble pieces on Draenor are coming up next, including a double whammy of two stories posted at the same time: one from Irien's perspective called 'Pit of Sargeras' and one from the perspective of Yaromira and Kiul called 'Dream Eater.'
When those finish, I'll finally post a story I'm a bit self conscious about: 'Be By My Side,' how Cecilia's sister Unelia met Johan.
There are others immediately following - Escape From Ashran, the massive You Me & Us to name a few - but I won't inundate you with titles. If you choose to read on, awesome! If not, I hope you enjoyed this small piece here and I wish you all the best. :)