What did I want? I suppose that's the question everyone asks themselves at some point or another. Yet, when I thought about it, I wasn't entirely sure. What did I want for myself? Something I didn't think I would ever be able to get. What did I want for my people? The same thing, but, again, I didn't think I'd be able to get it for them.

What had I wanted before death had taken me? Oh, that was simple. I had been the Ranger-General of Silvermoon, and I had loved every minute of it. But I had lived for the days when I would gallop back to a small village not too far from mine and see her. She, who had been waiting for me at her window, long honey-colored hair glinting in the sun and eyes trailed on the road. More often than not, I managed to surprise her. Once, she'd nearly fallen out the window when she had seen me, which had reduced me to fits of laughter.

We had always been formal with each other on my visits, at least at first, in front of her parents. But whenever we were alone, somehow managing not to pounce on each other, lust would flare. I would see it in her movements, and she would hear it in the way I spoke to her. Images would flood my mind. Images of her flat on her back, writhing beneath me as I brought her to climax over and over again. Her calling out my name. Love.

The image changed. It went from her calling my name to her screaming it in agony as Arthas flung my dead body at her. She knelt next to it, brushed a lock of hair from the face I had looked at every day in the mirror. I was dead.

What did I want? I wanted to be with her. Forever. I had wanted her to be my bride. She had been my heart and soul, and when I had died, my last thought had been of her. My Faith. My love. The one I should have married but hadn't, out of some misconception from our parents, who had known nothing.

I had left her. I'd known when I had let her go that Arthas would kill me. Had I known he would raise me? Yes, part of me had arrived at that conclusion. Letting her go had been the best decision I could have made for her. But she hadn't let me go, despite the promise to do so. And in a way, I hadn't let her go either.

Rotvine had asked me why it was that I treated Faith the way I did.

"Because I want her to know that I'm not the same woman she loved for a century."

"Oh, I think she knows that, my Lady. You sent her to prison."

Yes, I had. I felt horrible about having had to do that, which was why I'd stayed with her. The magic of the place had reached me too, and I'd seen Faith's nightmares, reliving my death in vivid detail.

"Not just that. I sent her back home," I had said in a low voice.

I'd cried then, my tears drying instantly on my cheeks. I had loved Faith so much, and Arthas had taken that. He had taken the only one I had cared for. How did I feel about her now?

I had no answer to that question. I still wanted to be with her. I still remembered the way my heart had raced when I'd seen her. Sometimes, when she'd touched my hand, she had stolen my breath away. I remembered hat, and I wanted to feel like that again.

But I was dead. Walking around and talking, sure, but I was a corpse. And I didn't want her to be with a corpse.

"Do you think she'll come back to Undercity?" Rotvine had asked me.

After what I'd done to her? I hoped she would, but she shouldn't. "She should stay in Silvermoon. She deserves to live in the sun, not the catacombs."

"But you want her to stay with you."

I hadn't answered. I had left her to face her demons alone. Forced her to do it, under penalty of exile.

I wanted Faith to be with me, but I wanted her to be free. And I couldn't have it both ways.

"Do you think she should stay here?"

Rotvine had looked at me, "It doesn't matter what I think , my Lady.

"Humor me."

"All right. I'll speak candidly."

"Please do."

"You're a bitch to her."

I'd blinked, not having expected that kind of attack. Fury had welled in me, but I'd held it back.

"She doesn't deserve what you've been throwing at her. You're nice with her one moment, and horrible the next. No wonder she lashed out at you: you made her do it, and to top it all off, you sent her to jail to teach her and other people a lesson. And why? Because you wanted her to play ambassador to the Blood Elves. Didn't she beg you not to make her do it?"

She had. Begged me on her knees not to make her go to Quel'Thalas. But I'd been adamant. I knew she could do it, and I wanted an excuse to send her away to Silvermoon so that she could be away from the death and decay of Undercity for a bit.

"When will they be getting to Silvermoon?"

"If they don't get held up by the weather, they should arrive in about five days, give or take."

And so, one the day they'd been scheduled to arrive, I'd pooled every resources I'd had to get the mages to create a portal for me to Silvermoon, after having sent a letter to Lor'themar to tell him I was on the way.

To say that he'd been surprised to see me was an understatement.

"Sylvanas…" he had whispered. He had looked shocked. Halduron Brightwing, who had worked under me when I'd been general, had grown pale upon seeing what I looked like.

"By the Sunwell, what have they done to you?"

"Oh, I don't know, I don't think I look that bad, do you?" I had said to them. I looked the same as I had when I'd been alive, more or less, except that I was dead. My features hadn't changed, except that I looked angrier and a little more evil.

"You're a corpse…" Lor'themar had run a hand over his mouth.

"And as such, I know the inner workings of the Scourge. But we get ahead of ourselves. Shouldn't my delegation be arriving soon?"

"We were just about to leave to go get them. Would you like to stay and wait for us?"

I had nodded, and had settled down to do just that. They'd been gone for a few hours, and I'd had to time to read a book on the fall of Quel'Thalas. Taking a piece of parchment, I had added what I knew about what had happened to us. If they wanted a full story, they should at least get it right. I had just sat down again when the door opened.

Faith saw me. She froze. Her amber eyes went wide and her mouth opened to form a word. My name. For a second, she looked happy, but the look was extinguished almost immediately, and I realized she was still angry with me for sending her here. I couldn't blame her. I didn't deserve her forgiveness at this time.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"I figured that maybe I could see the Scourge problem for myself rather than just send you here on your own."

"Oh, you can see it all right. Go out to the Dead Scar and you'll see very clearly."

I frowned, "You were attacked?"

"Faith and your Forsaken had the situation handled even before I could get off my horse. Only two of my rangers were able to move as quickly as they did."

"It's just practice," said Faith. "We fight the Scourge every day in Tirisfal Glades the same way you do here. The only thing is that our fighters are, for the most part, former members of the Scourge, and they know how to work against them."

"Which is why we're happy to have you here." He looked at me, then at Faith, "I had a room ready for Faith, but I'm afraid I don't have one for you made up yet, Sylvanas. Would you mind sharing her room? It's big."

"That would be fine," I said, although I noticed by the flash in Faith's eyes that she wasn't okay with the arrangements. However, she smiled at him and nodded.

We walked to the second floor in the spire, where three rooms were located in a circular pattern. The rooms had been squared off, I knew, with the extra space being allocated for storage, so when we stepped into the bedroom, we were greeted with a bright and open space. Painted a pale apricot orange, the walls had various bits of art on them, including pictures of what Quel'Thalas had looked like before the fall of Silvermoon. I saw Windrunner Spire in one of the paintings, and noticed that Faith's eyes immediately went to it as well.

She didn't talk to me, instead taking a bath and changing as though I was invisible.

"You're acting like a petulant child," I told her finally.

She glared at me, "What do you want from me?" She let out a frustrated sigh and zipped up her boots, "You know, if you were gonna come here, you shouldn't have sent me back."

"For the love of the Sunwell, Faith, stop acting like this is only your drama, all right? You are not the only one who suffered when the Scourge attacked."

"I know that!"

My eyes narrowed at her, "Do not raise your voice to me."

Faith turned away from me, her shoulders shaking, "Why are you really here?"

"I told you why."

"No. You told Lor'themar and Halduron. Why are you here? You decided to come here on a whim, because you're in your armor, and you have a small bag for maybe one dress or two, along with your bow, arrows, and a blade. So why did you decide to come?"

"I imagined what it would have been like for me to be in your place, if I'd survived and you'd been raised. Would I want to relive all of that on my own?" I stepped closer to her, "I'm sorry."

"You're… what?"

"I'm sorry I forced you to come here on your own. I should have come with you." I took off my gloves and threw them on the bed, "And I should have never put you in jail." I moved closer, but she put a hand on my chest, stopping me.

She took a deep breath, "You've never apologized to me before." Her eyes touched mine for a moment, "I forgive you. But, Sylvanas, it's going to take me some time to trust you again."

"I know." I brushed the hair off her face. "I'll wait."

That night, I watched her sleep. She began to have a nightmare, and I added a blanket to her bed before climbing in with her and holding her. The moment I kissed her forehead, she quieted down, curling her fingers in the folds of the robes I wore.

"Sylvanas," she murmured.

"What?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

"I love you."

I wished my blood were still running through my veins to remember the exact feeling that sentence left me with. My chin trembled. Could I say it to her? They were just three words. Words I had said to her before. "I love you."

She opened her eyes and looked at me. I must have looked as shocked as I felt, because she touched my face, "It's okay. It doesn't have to count if you don't want it to," she whispered.

I wasn't supposed to feel like this. I was dead, and she was alive. But that was how it was. "Go back to sleep. I'm not leaving you."

"Do I have to leave you?"

I shook my head, "Not tonight anyway. We'll see how my mood changes tomorrow."

Faith chuckled, "Right." Pressing herself closer to me, she closed her eyes again.

She didn't believe me. That knowledge hurt me. I didn't want to think that she didn't believe the words I'd said to her. "Faith?"

"Yeah?"

"Did you mean what you told me the other day?"

"Which bit?"

I closed my eyes briefly, "When you said that you wished I'd really died."

"Yes. I'd rather know that you're dead and at peace than a banshee." She shivered and I wrapped a blanket closer around her. "I loved you so much, and he not only killed you, but turned you into a…" she began to cry.

"Shh." I kissed her forehead gently. I didn't want her to cry. I knew where we were going to the next day, and she was going to need her tears then. "Please, Faith."

Throwing the blankets off herself, Faith climbed onto me, wrapping her arms and legs around my body, tucking her head under my chin.

"You're going to freeze," I warned her, even as my body accommodated her new position.

"I don't care."

Faith didn't move from that spot until the next day. I wrapped the blankets around her as best I could and waited as she slept like that for the rest of the night. She'd done this once before, just after I'd recovered from the poisoned arrow the Amani trolls had shot at me. Faith had been so horribly terrified of losing me that I hadn't been able to dislodge her, nor had I wanted to. I'd been wrapped around her too, and my parents had found us like that the next day, which had been both amusing and sad.

I saw the sun rising and woke Faith up so that she could watch it with me. "Are you okay?" I asked her.

She moved to be able to look at me, and nodded slowly. She was shivering from head to toe, and I could tell that her skin had chilled from her prolonged physical contact with me, but she didn't seem inclined to move.

"We're going to Fairbreeze Village today, aren't we?" she asked. "That's why you're here now."

"You're stronger than you think," I told her. "I wanted you to realize that you can do this on your own. You don't need me to survive."

"But I do. I'm useless without you."

I absorbed that, running my fingers through her hair, "No, you're not. You hate being away from me, but you're far from being useless. You managed without me for a year."

"Yeah, and you should have seen me trying to cope."

"We loved each other for a long time," I said. She nodded, "And we didn't spend every waking hour together."

"We should have."

That brought a smile to my face, "We should have, yes. But we didn't. We spent more time apart than we did together. And you did just fine."

"I would have died with my family had you not arrived when you did."

I held on to her, not wanting to think about what would have happened had we gotten there even a minute later. "All right, that's once. But you weren't useless. You're alive, and you're fighting for it. You're still fighting for us."

"I miss you," she whispered.

What could I say to that? I missed everything about the time we had spent together. There had been hope then. "Don't cry."

"I can't help it," she said.

"You can." I wiped the tears off her face, "You can. I'm telling you, you're strong. You made it through this, and you're going to keep making it."

"With you by my side?" she asked me hopefully.

"Maybe." I pinched her side and she yelped, "Now, come on. Get up before you catch your death of a cold laying on me like that."

"But I want to stay like this." She giggled for a split second, remembering, as I did, the nearly identical conversation we'd had years ago, when she hadn't wanted to leave the bed we'd been sharing.

"Your lips are turning blue with cold, get up. I'll draw you a bath."

Faith extricated herself from me, wincing at her stiff muscles, "Next time we do this, remind me to wear something warm."

Next time? I shook my head, rolling my eyes, as I drew a hot bath for her, "Get in."

"Are you going to watch me?" Now she sounded curious.

"Probably."

I did. I watched her as she relaxed in the tub for a while and warmed up. For the first time, I noticed how horribly skinny she'd become.

"When's the last time you had a decent meal?"

"Last night. You were there."

"You ate a chicken leg and half a portion of vegetables. You're not eating enough."

"I'm fine, I swear."

I knelt next to the tub and reached out a finger to touch each of the ribs I saw on her, "You're not fine, Faith, you're malnourished."

"I eat, okay?" Her tone was getting defensive.

"I won't let this go." I helped her out of the tub and stood her in front of the mirror, "The fact that I physically look healthier than you is something I hadn't noticed before."

"Sylvanas –."

I held up a hand, "I know, you're fine. Now you can prove it to me by eating more." I kissed her cheek and picked out something for her to wear, "I loved it when you wore blue," I murmured, holding up the clothes she'd brought – all of them black.

"I like black," she said. "It goes with everything, and I don't have to waste my time trying to figure out what to wear in the mornings."

Knowing what we were doing, I handed her black suede leggings and the suede tunic that went with it. Both were practically molded to her body, but she could move in them, which was what she wanted.

To complete her outfit, she laced up some knee-high turnover boots that were also made of deerskin and that made her legs go on forever.

"I'm very happy that you never wore that particular outfit while I was alive," I whispered to her, getting dressed as well.

"Why is that?"

"Because it would have killed me."

She smiled at me and came over to help me fasten my leather jerkin. "No. You would have resisted like you always did." Her smile faded and she looked down suddenly, but I tipped her chin up until her eyes met mine.

"Hey. I wasn't the only one who resisted. I know what went through your mind every time you saw me."

"Because you thought the same thing," she told me. She leaned over and pressed her forehead to mine, closing her eyes.

"I did. And you're still thinking it."

"I'd have my way with you now if you'd let me."

I have no idea what possessed me to say the next thing that came out of my mouth, "What's stopping you?"

Her eyes popped open, and she stared at me in such amazement that I actually laughed.

"I… you'd let me?"

"I've already let you. Or rather, you let me."

"You told me that was a dream!" she exclaimed.

"For one thing, I didn't tell you anything, you thought that all by yourself."

"Sylvanas!"

I looked at her innocently.

"You couldn't pull that look when you were alive. You're worse at it now," she told me, pouting and turning my head so that I could see myself in the mirror. She was right. I only managed to look devious.

"I'll work on that," I said. I saw her face grow serious again and pulled her into my arms, "It'll be okay. Ride with me today, give Prince a rest from the Scourge."

She nodded, "Okay."

A few minutes later, we arrived in the common quarters of Sunfury Spire and I watched Faith attempting to eat something, but she just pushed it around.

"Do I have to feed you?" I whispered in her ear.

"You wouldn't," she told me.

"Eat." I squeezed her shoulder a little harder than intended to make sure she did as I told her, and was rewarded when she ate an entire bread roll. I guess I couldn't ask for more than that.

Observing us, Lor'themar cleared his throat, "Would you like something else, Faith?"

She shook her head, "No thanks. I don't eat as much anymore."

He looked at me for a second, "Is that what she died for? So that you could starve yourself?"

Faith gasped and I put my other hand on her shoulder, rubbing them, "Breathe and let it go." From behind her, I glared at him.

"Look, I'm sorry, but it's true. She didn't sacrifice her life so that you could give up on everything."

"I am standing right here," I said, feeling my temper rising.

Faith put a hand over mine, squeezing it. She took a deep and shaky breath, "I'm fine, Lor'themar."

"Really? Because that's not what it looks like." He stood up, "We need you, Faith, all of us, and we need you at your best. I know how devastated you were when Arthas killed her, I saw it. I saw it hit you so hard that I didn't think you'd ever recover."

I held up a hand, "Enough. I've already had this talk with her."

"I need to make sure she's going to be okay in Fairbreeze Village. The Scourge attacks it periodically."

"She'll be fine," I told him, although I wasn't even going to be able to guarantee my own state of mind there.

"Good. I'm not insensitive to the fact that it'll be a difficult day for you both. But you need to know what we're facing."

I nodded once, "Then lead the way, Regent Lord."