Chapter Text
The guards certainly tried to stop her but there was precious little they could do when she could freeze them in place with a flick of her hand and open the door they were watching with a familiarity that left the arcane mechanism locking it barely even a whisper of resistance. The Violet Citadel had many such chambers, from grand to modest, for whatever function was required at the time, a ball, a conference, peace talks.
Neutral ground was a valuable commodity.
The chamber in question was on the modest end, more for meetings, and had not a single window for the sake of privacy and whatever sensitive subjects were to be discussed in such a space. A cluster of three crystal pendant lights illuminated it, washing the hardwood floor and pale brickwork in warm light.
Her boots were much too loud as she strode inside. She ignored the dull ache running the length of her spine as four pairs of eyes turned on her, the conversation dying at her arrival. She expected more of them, to find the table before her flanked by at least a dozen tense, bickering faces, not—
“Jaina,” Anduin blurted out her name as if she was catching him with his hand in a jar. The chair legs scraped as he stood, an awkward smile taking over his face. “I didn’t know you were in Dalaran.”
“She wasn’t,” said Genn, who leaned out from Anduin’s left to offer an acknowledging nod. He sat partially slouched with his arms crossed, looking bored and miserable in equal measure. “Come to watch the farce, have you?”
Anduin turned on him with an admonishing glare and Genn had the good graces to look ever so slightly ashamed.
“You can’t be serious,” Jaina muttered, moving to the edge of the table. “You’re really going through with it?” She fixed her eyes on the only other occupants, sitting across from Anduin and Genn in silent judgement.
The Warchief was as severe a sight as usual, sitting with her elbows on the table and hands joined in a steeple over which she watched Jaina, red eyes inscrutable if not for the hint of a smirk at the edge of her lips, expectant, perhaps, or challenging.
Nathanos bristled next to her having evidently refused to sit, glowering and tense like a hound ready to lunge if need be. He always struck Jaina not as a man but contempt given physical form and free reign to roam the land, and the way he looked at her now did nothing to lessen that.
Genn grunted, “Regrettably.” He ignored the second look Anduin sent him and got to his feet, smoothing out the creases of his coat.
“Whatever scene you hoped to make here, Lady Proudmoore, you’re a touch late,” drawled Sylvanas.
Jaina pointedly ignored her in favour of Anduin. “It won’t be enough. We’ve been here before and it was never enough, you are making a mistake.” You’re making my mistake, she wanted to say but swallowed. Anduin had a good heart, a gentle heart, one that only wanted peace in a world starved of it, and she saw too much of her younger self in that to just let him barrel head-long into it.
She paid dearly for that mistake and for a moment she had to fight down the image of violet ashes and floating corpses. The thought of the same happening to Anduin made her stomach lurch and boil like a live thing attempting to escape out her throat.
His brows drew together. “This time will be different,” he said gently, and his sincerity almost burned her, “the people involved are different, our world is different.”
She shook her head. “The Horde will only use this as an opportunity to recover strength.”
“As I recall,” Nathanos snipped, “it wasn’t the Horde who tried to start a war at the height of the Legion invasion.”
Genn snarled, “Our King died because of your cowardice!”
Anduin swept his arm out in front of Genn. “Enough!” he commanded, then softened his voice from its stern edge to say, “My father gave his life for Azeroth, as did Vol’jin, they both did. We must try to move forward for the good of everyone. Fighting now will only endanger our world at a time when it desperately needs us to work together.”
Jaina lifted her chin. “And you expect them to ‘honour’ that?” she asked sharply, “it’s not enough.”
Smoothly rising from her chair, Sylvanas slipped her hands behind her back in casual militancy, easily standing taller than everyone else in the room. “Do you have a suggestion, Proudmoore, or are you just here to posture?” she asked, that irritating hint of a smirk growing as she did so.
The back of Jaina’s neck prickled and she clenched her jaw. “Yes, actually,” she said hotly, “I think you need a minder, someone who can bear witness and verify your, I’m certain, very sincere efforts to ensure the peace is maintained.”
Outrage darkened Nathanos’s face but Sylvanas lifted a hand without taking her eyes off Jaina, and he shut his mouth.
Sylvanas slowly approached with an air of assurance Jaina did not care for until she was all but looming, and Jaina lifted her chin, staring up into Sylvanas’s shadowed face and the burning coals that served as her eyes. She was all points and sharp edges, as proud and fierce looking up close as Jaina remembered.
The smell of tulips touched her nose, tulips and strange metal, like ozone layered over freshly bloodied iron. It roused memories of Northrend and Jaina barely resisted the urge to back away, instead squaring her shoulders and continuing to meet Sylvanas’s stare.
That damned smirk remained. “Are you volunteering?” Sylvanas asked in a low, conspiratorial voice that positively oozed with provocation, and the air left the room.
Anduin, Genn and Nathanos were deathly silent, the kind of silence one fell into when they desperately hoped to go unnoticed.
Nostrils flaring, Jaina glared. “And what if I am, Warchief, afraid of one little mage looking over your shoulder?”
Sylvanas’s eyes flicked briefly to top of her head, which only just reached chin height on the insufferable elf. “I wasn’t aware you could reach that high,” she deadpanned.
Icily, Jaina said, “I’ll manage.”
“So, you mean to shadow me and uncover all my nefarious schemes to threaten the Alliance. Do tell me what happens when you find none.”
“I continue until such a time I deem it unnecessary.”
“Is that so? I do hope you enjoy getting dust in your robes, Proudmoore, so much of my time is spent in Orgrimmar these days.”
Jaina opened her mouth to retort only for Anduin to break from the silent compact he had with the two other men in the room and stumble out a quick, “hold on!”
He nearly withered when she and Sylvanas both looked at him and he held up his hands. “This is all quite sudden and unplanned but if we’re going to do this then I insist that it be fair and mutual,” he said, “the Alliance has its share of wrongs and bad actors, and the Horde has just as little reason to trust me and mine. There should be a Witness to the High King, someone you trust to carry out such a task.”
Sylvanas regarded him from the corner of her eye a moment. Without moving her head her eyes slid back to Jaina and the smirk was finally gone. Bluntly she said, “Nathanos.”
The man in question started as if someone had dropped an especially slimy eel down the back of his coat. For a second he looked ready to sputter out a refusal but he lowered his head, just enough to be respectful, and sighed, “by your command.”
Sylvanas smiled coldly, just enough to show her fangs, and Jaina narrowed her eyes. “Details can be worked out at a later date but for now,” Sylvanas said, lowering her head and her voice, “does that satisfy you, Proudmoore?”
Jaina scowled. “For now.”
Sylvanas straightened, canting her head in a mock bow. “Are we done here, Your Highness?” she asked without taking her eyes on Jaina. For whatever reason, the taunting gesture didn’t colour her voice when addressing him, as if she were actually trying to be respectful or something close to it.
Anduin let out a long breath and nodded. “Yes, for now,” he said, and added quietly, “Thank the Light.”
With that, Sylvanas calmly walked from the room, quickly shadowed by a still unsettled looking Nathanos.
A pair of flustered Kirin Tor guards stumbled in after them and Anduin lifted his hands. “We’re fine!” he insisted, “please return to your posts, we’re fine, thank you.”
They took a moment to scowl at Jaina before they returned to the door.
Jaina rounded on Anduin. “What are you thinking?” she demanded, incredulous. “Allowing an elite agent of the Horde into the heart of Stormwind?”
Anduin clasped his hands, rocking slightly on his heels. “Did the Warchief not just allow the same of us with zero warning that such a demand would be made by an uninvited party?” He spoke gently but the words may as well have been delivered with a slap.
She bristled and he moved closer with a pleading look. “Aunt Jaina, please,” he said, “I know why you feel the way you do and I know I will never truly understand, but we must try, always, until there is no other choice but to fight. I don’t believe we’re at that point yet and I hope we never arrive at it.”
“I wish I had your hope.”
“I don’t believe anyone ever completely gives up on hope. They might bury it but it’s still there, waiting to be unearthed.”
Jaina looked away from him, sighing. It would’ve been cruel to laugh.
Genn grunted, crossing his arms. “I loathe this as much as you, Jaina, but thanks to those bleeding hearts the witch has a reason to pretend she cares about peace.”
‘Bleeding hearts’ left his mouth the same way the word ‘traitors’ or ‘treason’ might, but despite herself it was ‘witch’ that made Jaina frown. Memories of Northrend roused again, softer this time, quiet conversations and flashes of vulnerability—cruelties snarled between clenched teeth. She took a long breath and let it out slowly. “So it’s true then?”
Genn sneered but Anduin answered first. “Yes. The Forsaken have a real solution to their plight and given the critical role of Alliance heroes,” he looked sternly at Genn as he said that, “in securing it, Sylvanas has seen fit to overlook the events of Stormheim.”
She had heard of the assault on the Halls of Valor, how Odyn was felled and his power absorbed by Helya, and the worry that gripped her at the thought of such a twisted being having all that power. What she did not expect to hear was how Helya went on to dismantle the damned realm of Helheim, her own creation, and throw her newly united forces against the Legion in thanks.
As it turned out, it was justice long since deserved for turning Helya into what she was against her will. An ignoble end to a cruel, self-absorbed tyrant.
Whatever that meant for the Forsaken no one in the Alliance yet knew, but it had nonetheless resulted in Sylvanas extending the offer of peace shortly before the Legion invasion ended.
Jaina fully expected it to be some kind of feint, a lie, a trick to make the Alliance falter and drop their guard—that it got this far without a hint of foul play made her nervous. With the impact of Gorribal on their world, the destruction of Silithus, the innumerable environmental aftershocks, the world was in too delicate a place to risk being caught by surprise.
Aware she’d gotten lost in her thoughts, Jaina flatly said, “I see.”
Anduin pursed his lips. “Jaina, I believe in you, I don’t think you’ll do something to jeopardize this on purpose.”
The imploring tone made her shoulders tense and she looked at him. “But you think I’ll do something rash.”
Anduin smiled awkwardly. “You mean you haven’t already?”
When she didn’t smile back he coughed and ran a hand over the back of his neck. “We’re going to make this work, I promise. I’d appreciate it if you would come back to Stormwind with us, we can catch up and start sorting out this… arrangement.”
She forced her shoulders to relax and canted her head. “Of course.”
Sylvanas had fully expected this latest talk to be another in a long string of excruciatingly dull and grating talks, weathering petulant barbs and heated words that skirted the edge of outright threat with a chilly indifference she was certain got under Greymane’s skin more than anything she could say did. He knew he could do nothing when his own allies had turned on him, leaving him little choice but to abdicate to his far more reasoned daughter.
Tess Greymane was no less passionate about the rights and reparations owed to her people, but she was not a single-minded zealot who would just as quickly throw them into the fire for revenge while the entire world teetered on the brink.
Watching the old wolf impotently stew as he resigned himself to barking at Anduin’s side was, if nothing else, a drop of entertainment in a sea of tedium.
So she would be lying then if she said the sight of Jaina bursting in unannounced did not thrill her to some degree, a sudden break in the monotony that promised new developments, and what intriguing developments they were.
“Have I done something to offend you?” Nathanos asked as soon as they left the chamber. His mouth was pressed into a grim, crooked line of displeasure and if he held his hands any tighter behind his back he was liable to break something.
“No,” she said simply, pausing some ways down the hall but not so far that she could no longer see the door.
Nathanos’s brow shot to his hairline. “I don’t understand,” he said flatly.
Sylvanas cocked her head. “Should I not trust you, Blightcaller?”
He deflated with a heavy sigh in a manner not dissimilar to a sulking bulldog. “You could have sentenced Velonara to this, she loves chatting to the living,” he grumbled, “and what am I to tell Cedric?”
She smiled far too sweetly. “That you are being given an extremely important task for the Horde’s longevity?”
“Oh, the honour simply floors me. Why are we agreeing to this? No, wait, there was no we here. Why are you agreeing to this?”
“Given Lady Proudmoore’s disposition towards the Horde, the sight of such a staunch opponent to this treaty coming to accept it will be a powerful one, no?”
“And you believe she’ll come around? She’s as bad as Greymane.”
Sylvanas flicked her ears at the comparison, frowning slightly. “No. Proudmoore refused to engage with any of us but she understood which threat was worse even if her hatred kept her from outright cooperation. Greymane had no such perspective.”
He grunted, “I suppose. I still don’t like this and I do not trust her.”
The doors opened, and Anduin and Genn walked briskly from the chamber. Sylvanas offered her most condescending smile when the latter looked at them and the old wolf snorted moodily before following his boy King down the opposite end of the hall and out of sight.
Jaina stepped out only a moment after, brow pinched, shadows under her eyes, and slowly rolled her head and shoulders as if trying to shrug off a great burden. She bluntly ignored the two guards glowering at her.
The thick and heavy battle robes she wore now were a far cry from her old Kirin Tor garb, shedding what little remained of a brighter self for the weathered and bitter reality. Sylvanas tried not to linger on that thought, she did not want to dwell on possibilities that never came to pass, entertained only by her most loathed and insipid impulses.
It had been years since they stood so close and she shoved the memory of Jaina’s hurting, confused eyes from her mind like she were crushing a fly in her palm. It served no purpose but to make her falter and that was intolerable, especially now when the Horde needed her to be impervious and unwavering.
Their eyes met and Sylvanas schooled her expression, tilting her head in courteous acknowledgement.
Jaina scowled but nodded back, and turned on her heel to leave the same way as Anduin and Genn.
Sylvanas watched until Jaina was out of sight, only to realise Nathanos was peering at her with far too much understanding. He opened his mouth and she levelled a withering look at him, to which he smartly swallowed whatever he planned to say and took a sudden burning interest in the detailed coving overhead.
Giving him a moment to completely forget whatever it was he thought he saw, Sylvanas turned and began making her way out of the Violet Citadel.
He fell into step beside her, clearing his throat. “Back to Ogrimmar then?”
She smirked coolly and drawled, “Don’t you want to inform Cedric as soon as possible?”
Nathanos grumbled. “I’d rather have something of substance to tell him, you know how he hates uncertainty.”
“Oh, very well, your suffering is delayed until the details are worked out.”
“Truly, your mercy is boundless.”