Auriana

Auriana genuinely tried to heed Anduin's advice, and take some proper rest, but she could not ignore her gnawing fears for long. She had no idea why Varian had elected to remain in Dalaran after coming to her rescue, and there was a part of her that was hurt that he had left her to return to Stormwind alone. It was a small, silly thing – Dalaran was under assault, and a warrior of Varian's skill could save hundreds of lives – but she needed him, too. She wanted to disappear into the warmth of his embrace and feel the strong, steady beat of his mighty heart against her cheek. As much as she had tried to keep a brave face in front of Anduin, the morning's events had left her shaken, and she wouldn't feel truly safe until she was sheltered in Varian's arms.

Auriana rolled onto her back with a worried sigh, crossing both hands over her stomach as she stared up at the dark blue silk of the bed's canopy overhead. Ten minutes passed, then twenty, and with each passing moment, Auriana found it harder and harder not to imagine the worst. Varian had been unarmoured, with only Shalamayne for protection, and there had been something oddly unbalanced about his bearing. He had Jaina to watch his back, thankfully, though Auriana stubbornly refused to believe there was anyone that could protect him as quite as well as she could.

Not that Auriana was of much use in her present condition. Summoning a protective arcane shield should have been child's play for a mage of her calibre, not a staggering magical feat sufficient to bring her to her knees. Worse still, Auriana had cast the brutish spell knowing full well that it would likely cost her the life of her unborn child. She'd had no choice – both she and Garland would most undoubtedly be dead by now had she not acted – but she ached with guilt nonetheless.

Auriana pressed down very gently against the growing curve of her stomach and the taut muscle beneath. Not for the first time, she wished she had something of Anduin's gift with the Light; wished she had some way of connecting directly to the little spark of life inside her. Laurena had repeatedly assured Auriana that the child was safe, despite her use of magic, and her brief moment with Anduin had provided further confirmation… but Auriana herself could feel nothing. Her child had not yet been born, and already she felt like the worst mother on Azeroth. Fresh tears pricked her eyes, and she angrily brushed them away.

Fearing she might go mad from inaction, Auriana sent a silent apology to Anduin as she extricated herself from the plush sheets, and gingerly clambered out of bed. She started slightly as her bare feet met the cool stone floor, and took a moment to find her balance. Her legs felt weak and shaky, as if she'd been running for miles, though at least her nausea had remained at bay.

Auriana shuffled over to the nearby dresser, and grimaced at the sight of her pallid reflection in the mirror. With Laurena's help, she had discarded her ruined dress in favour of a clean and comfortable nightgown, though her hair was still a half-unbound mess. A dark bruise was already forming along the line of her right clavicle, but she paid it little mind. A minor bruise was nothing compared to what she had almost lost that day.

A loose hair pin stabbed insistently at the nape of Auriana's neck, and she reached both hands up behind her head to gently work it loose. She had long suspected that her pins were enchanted – they had a tendency to multiply while twisted in her hair, only to vanish without a trace when left on a dresser for too long. Certainly, Auriana could never seem to find one when needed, though her lady's maids were always liberal with their use.

Today's style had been no exception, and it took some time for Auriana to slowly untangle her braided locks. It was a simple and repetitive task, and yet she found it rather soothing. If nothing else, it gave her something to occupy both her hands and her mind. Better than lying in bed fretting, in any case.

Auriana had just counted out her twenty-seventh pin, when she heard a quiet commotion out in the hall. She twisted slightly, turning her good ear towards the door, and a frisson of pure relief and gratitude shot through her body as she heard a deep, commanding voice that could only be Varian. She yanked the last pin from her hair, tossing it carelessly aside and scattering its brethren across the surface of the dresser. The door flew open with such force as to rattle the lock and shake the frame, and Auriana's breath caught in her throat as she turned towards the threshold.

Varian looked awful. He must have come to Auriana directly from the battle, still breathing heavily and with weapons in hand. His once-spotless white shirt was torn and stained, and his long hair clung to his neck in sweaty ropes. Both his bare hands and his twin blades were stained black with dried demon gore, making it difficult to tell where Varian ended and his weapons began. Blood dripped to the floor from a nasty gash above his right eye, though he did not appear to have noticed.

And yet, despite his bedraggled appearance, Auriana wanted nothing more than to be in his arms – blood, sweat, and all.

Her heart thundering in chest, Auriana took a needy step towards him, only to pull up short as she got a proper look at his face. She had fought alongside Varian before, and knew well the aspect of single-minded, predatory intensity he carried into battle. But while his wolfish fury was on full display, its accompanying focus was noticeably absent. He looked uncharacteristically rattled, and he shifted his weight from foot to foot with the energy of a wild animal teetering on the edge of flight.

"Are you…?" he whispered throatily. "The baby…?"

Auriana nodded, and touched a hand to her belly. "We're… we're fine. I'm tired, and a bit shaken up, but otherwise…"

A great shudder rolled down Varian's back, and his head and shoulders slumped forward. His long hair fell into his eyes, obscuring most of his face from view as he took a deep, shuddering breath. Far from easing the rigid tension in his shoulders, however, Auriana's reassurance appeared to have the opposite effect. Varian tightened his grip on his swords, as if preparing to charge off into battle once more, and the back of her neck pricked in warning.

"What the hell were you thinking?"

"W-what?" Auriana stammered, certain she had misheard.

A nasty snarl curled Varian's lip, and a dark shadow descended over his strong features as he drew himself back up to his full height. So fearsome was the change in his expression that Auriana took an unwitting step backwards, and let out a short gasp as the back of her thighs collided with the edge of the dresser.

"You could have been killed! You could have both been killed! You're carrying our child, Auriana!"

Auriana felt her fury surge, and it was all she could do to choke it back down. For a second, she saw stars, and she was forced to grasp the edge of the dresser to steady herself.

"I'm aware," she retorted, a heated flush rising in her cheeks. "More aware than you, I'd wager, given that I'm the one who's been up sick every night for the past three weeks!"

"Then you think you'd take more care!"

Auriana bristled at the accusation, and struggled to bite back another sarcastic quip. While she had sensed something off about Varian when had come to her rescue in Dalaran, this was something else entirely…

"I…" She raked an unsteady hand back through her hair. "How could I have possibly known that Dalaran would…"

"You're far too reckless. You don't think."

A sick feeling that had nothing at all to do with her pregnancy twisted Auriana's gut. Was that what Varian really thought of her? Rationally, she knew she ought not take his agitated ranting to heart – it was clear that something was desperately wrong with him – but his words cut deeply nonetheless.

"Stop it."

"You didn't need to be in Dalaran today. You're the Queen of Stormwind, not a bloody errand girl. You could have sent a representative. Had the Council contact you by magic. But no. You had to go yourself. It was selfish."

In a way, he was right – Auriana had been feeling stifled by her recent convalescence, and had jumped at the opportunity to leave the Keep – but that didn't make her selfish… did it? She bit her lip, her guilt and indignation warring with each other in equal measure.

"I… that's not fair," she protested. "I had no reason to believe that Dalaran was unsafe. I'm not… selfish."

"No?" Varian arched a bloody brow. "Garrosh Hellscream. Blackrock Foundry. Archimonde – to name but a few examples. Is it fair that you throw yourself into danger time and time again, with absolutely no regard for your own life?"

Auriana's fury roiled in her belly, and her legs began to shake with the effort of maintaining control. Her rage was bad enough at the best of times, let alone when she was exhausted and emotional from her pregnancy. But she knew she could not answer Varian's heated outburst in kind, and she forced herself to take a deep, steadying breath. Adding the fuel of her own rage to the fire would not help the situation in the slightest.

"That's enough," she insisted, fighting to keep her voice low and even. "Put the swords down. We'll get you cleaned up, and then we'll talk. Calmly."

It was not the first time Varian's fear for Auriana's safety had burst forth as anger, though this was… different. He was edgy, erratic, and not at all like his usual self. Auriana was under no illusions about the kind of man she had married, but his present fury lacked any semblance of underlying reason or control.

"Is it fair," Varian growled, as if he hadn't heard a word that Auriana had said, "That I almost lost you today?! That I almost lost both of you!"

He took another swift, angry step towards Auriana; his neck and chest flushing an ugly shade of carmine. She inhaled sharply, and her grip on the dresser tightened. It was an involuntary reflex – she knew with absolute certainty that Varian would die before he hurt her – but she was suddenly very aware of the enormity of his physical presence. He had hands the size of dinner plates, and outweighed her by a hundred pounds… not to mention that he was currently wielding two blades that were almost as long as Auriana was tall.

"Varian, please."

"Do you know how it feels, Auriana? To see you like that, knowing that you're about to die, and that there's not a damn thing I can do about it?!"

Varian continued to advance on Auriana as he spoke, punctuating each word with heavy, dogged footsteps. His eyes were strangely unfocused, both seeing her and not seeing her at the same time. Light glinted off the razor-sharp edges of his blades.

"Varian! Put the swords down!"

Oddly enough, given Auriana's proclivity towards berserking, she rarely raised her voice, and the unfamiliar volume was enough to shock Varian back to his senses. For the first time, he seemed to realise that he had backed Auriana into a corner; the points of his twin blades now less than a foot away from where she stood pressed up against the dresser. His eyes widened in horror, he stumbled to a graceless halt.

"I…"

Varian's fists flexed open, and his bloody blades fell to the floor with a metallic clang; the sound echoing unnaturally loud against the cool stone walls of the King's chamber.

"I wasn't… I wouldn't…"

"I know."

Nonetheless, Auriana breathed a sigh of relief as Varian turned away, and released her vice-like grip on the edge of the dresser. She didn't dare approach him, instead closing her eyes and focusing on her own breathing in an effort to soothe her surging rage. She counted up to ten and back down again, and by the time she finished, she was no longer wavering on the edge of control, even if she was not precisely calm.

In the meantime, Varian had began to pace back and forth across the room with a jittery hitch in his step. It made Auriana nervous just to watch him, though she supposed it was better than being subjected to another unstable tirade. She'd expected that Varian might be upset, of course, given what had happened in Dalaran, but she had not expected to see him quite so shattered.

Auriana fiddled with the sleeve of her chemise as she struggled to think of something to say, something that might bring Varian some small modicum of comfort, but every time she tried, the words died half-formed in her throat. The silence between them swelled, blanketing the room in a suffocating miasma… and yet when Varian finally spoke, Auriana very much wished he hadn't.

"Do you know what it sounds like, when you carve someone's heart out with a knife? Because I do. I've known since I was ten years old."

All traces of heat and anger had abruptly vanished from Varian's voice. Now he merely sounded distant and defeated; his desperate fury replaced by a rambling wretchedness that was somehow far worse. A chill ran down Auriana's spine.

"It's not as loud as you might think," he murmured. "More of a wet sigh."

"You… your father?"

Varian nodded, once. "I was there. I was standing barely twenty feet away when Garona plunged that cursed blade into his chest, and I did nothing but watch him bleed out on the floor…"

"Varian, you… you were a child… what could you have possibly done?"

"Something. Anything."

Varian shook his head. Auriana had no idea why he had suddenly decided to recount the grisly details of his father's murder, and in truth he didn't seem to be talking to her, exactly. He sounded painfully lost, spiraling downwards into the depths of his tragic past – and Auriana hadn't the slightest idea how to pull him back.

"My father wasn't the only one that died that day. Everyone remembers his death, of course: the tragic fall of another Wrynn king, and the city of Stormwind along with him… but my mother perished, too, along with Light knows how many others."

Varian glanced out the window, towards the distant blue of Stormwind Harbour.

"We were running for the docks. She was holding my hand, urging me to move faster… I heard a high-pitched whistle… and then she was gone." He thumbed the bruised knuckles of his left hand in an echo of his mother's touch. "She'd been shot in the back, you see. She shielded me… gave her life for mine…"

Auriana winced. She, too, knew the particular pain of losing a parent far too soon, but she had been a grown adult when her mother and father had died, and she had been half a world away from Theramore at the time. It was a far cry from the horror of a young child clutching for his mother's lifeless fingers as they slipped from his grasp.

"We couldn't stop. I wanted to go back, to retrieve her… her body… but Lothar forced me to keep moving. For all I know, she burned with the city."

It was easy to forget, sometimes, that Stormwind had once been reduced to naught but rubble. The city was bright and prosperous now, but the ghosts of the First War still lingered in the stonework – including, it seemed, the haunting spectres of Llane and Taria Wrynn.

"I'm sorry," Auriana murmured, feeling horribly inadequate. "I-it sounds like she was incredibly brave."

"She was. I have never lacked for remarkable women in my life – a pity I keep getting them killed."

The matter-of-fact way in which Varian took blame upon himself made Auriana feel sick. "That's not true…"

"Isn't it? When Tiffin… when she…" A low, morose sigh rumbled through Varian's chest. "I didn't realise right away…"

"R-realise what…?" Auriana asked, not entirely sure she wanted to know the answer.

"That she was… dead."

Auriana had to forcibly remind herself to breathe. Varian had only ever spoken of Tiffin's death in the vaguest of terms, and had never come close to revealing the details of what had happened that terrible day. Auriana had hoped, for his sake, that those memories had been lost when he had been sundered by Onyixa's magic, or locked away so deeply that he would never have to relive them again. Of course, neither she nor Varian were ever quite so lucky.

"It was a beautiful day. Blue skies; a light breeze. Far too beautiful for the ugliness that followed." Varian closed his eyes, and lifted his chin as if he could feel the wind on his face even now. "Tiffin was beautiful, too. She always was."

He let out a soft, bitter-sweet grunt.

"She wore her hair down. It shone like spun gold in the sunlight," he murmured, vague and dreamy with memory. "She wanted to help; to calm the unrest before it became a riot. I think she thought to inspire hope. She wore this dress… dusky pink, and white, and gold… she looked like spring…"

Auriana had, of course, never known Tiffin in life, though she had walked past the portrait of the late queen hanging in the royal gallery many times. Tiffin had been a striking woman – tall and graceful, with delicate features and a crown of thick, honey-blonde hair. Even rendered in oil on canvas, Tiffin had been dazzling, and Auriana could only imagine how stunning she must have been in person. Auriana could not have explained why, but it seemed even more unfair, somehow, that Tiffin had died while at her brightest and most beautiful; the Golden Queen of Stormwind cut down in her prime.

"Varian, I…"

"She had Anduin in her arms. I saw that damn rock hit her, I saw her fall… but I thought it was just a glancing blow. I went for Anduin first, he was so little, I…" Varian stumbled over the words. "By the time I turned to Tiffin, it was too late. My queen, the woman I loved, and I didn't realise that she was already dead."

He choked out a laugh, rasping and bitter, and it was the most awful sound Auriana had ever heard.

"The priests told me later that she died almost instantly. They assured me there wasn't anything I could have done."

A half-asked question lingered beneath Varian's words, as if he didn't quite believe that the healers had told him the truth.

"All that light… all that life… gone in the blink of an eye. I suppose I ought to be thankful that she didn't suffer."

Auriana's throat tightened, and she once again found herself on the verge of tears. They were not symptomatic of her pregnancy, however, but rather her empathy for Varian's grief. He'd lost so much; far more than any one man should ever have had to bear.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, wishing she had something more to offer him than base platitudes. "If I could give her back to you, I… I would…"

Auriana meant every word – no matter the personal cost, she would not have hesitated to bring Tiffin back, had such a thing been within her power. Losing Varian would destroy her, she knew, but if it meant that she could take away his pain, and heal the rift within his soul… she would have done so in a heartbeat.

"It seems to be a common fate for those unfortunate enough to call themselves my friends, or family," Varian muttered, once again continuing on as if he hadn't heard her. "Arthas – corrupted and consumed. Bolvar – betrayed and burned alive. And that's not even counting the thousands of good men and women who have died in my name, fighting for Stormwind and the Alliance…"

Varian all of a sudden seemed to remember that he was not alone. His eyes flew open, and he turned to Auriana as if seeing her for the first time.

"Is this all I'm good for? Is this why the universe spat me out?" he beseeched her, his normally commanding bass reduced to little more than a pleading whisper. "To eternally stand three feet away, helpless, while the people I love suffer and die?"

"It's not… no, of course not, you…" Auriana fumbled, hating every half-formed thought that tumbled from her useless mouth.

Light, she was Varian's wife. She ought to have known what to say to bring him comfort as he unraveled before her very eyes, but she felt as if she were trying to hold back a raging flood with her bare hands.

"It's not," she repeated lamely.

Varian looked down at his own hands, still blackened and hideous with the taint of demon blood.

"They call me Lo'Gosh. The Wolf. It's not a name I deserve."

"I don't… I don't understand…"

"Wolves protect their packs. But I fail at that very same task, over and over and over again. Because I… because I'm weak, Auriana."

The way Varian said her name made Auriana shiver, and her arms broke out in gooseflesh. The lump in her throat became choking, and she could no longer fight back the silent tears welling in her eyes.

"You're not weak. You're the strongest person I've ever met… you saved me today, you…"

"No. You saved yourself."

Varian's frown deepened as his eyes raked over Auriana's burgeoning belly, and his lip curled in disgust. It was clear that his revulsion was not directed at Auriana, however, but at himself. He clenched his right fist, and ground it painfully into the palm of his left.

"Not only weak, but selfish. I know what I am, and in full cognisance, I decided to inflict myself upon you anyway. And now I've sired a child on you, I…"

Varian broke off with a growl, and for the first time in what felt like hours, he stopped his incessant pacing. His haunting gaze found Auriana's, and she let out an involuntary gasp as his soul was laid bare before her: his fear and his fury, his towering pain and the profound depths of his self-loathing… and worst of all, at the very heart of him, a lonely, frightened ten-year-old boy.

"Varian…"

Auriana reached out a trembling hand, her palm turned upwards in silent petition. It was hopelessly naïve, perhaps, but if she could just touch him, if she could hold him in her arms the way had wanted to since the moment he had returned from Dalaran… perhaps she could mend what the morning's events had so severely broken. Varian's fingers twitched, and Auriana's heart leapt in sudden, desperate hope… but then he blinked, and in that split second, a stoic mask descended over his dark features. The terrified little boy vanished as if he had never existed, and only the King remained: aloof, implacable, unflinching.

"Excuse me."

Varian turned sharply on his heel, pausing only to retrieve his hastily discarded weapons as he stalked from the room. Auriana pressed both hands over her mouth as her trembling legs at last gave way, and she slid slowly down the dresser to the floor. The stone was cold and hard beneath the scant silk of her nightgown, but Auriana barely noticed. She wanted to cry out, to plead with Varian to stay, but she was frozen in horror, unable to muster even the slightest whimper.

The door slammed shut.