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The draenei kept up the festivities for far longer than Hatuun had given them credit for, unaccustomed as they were to the abandonment of light. Yet even still they dispersed to their homes or lodgings only a couple of hours before the sun were to grace Azuremyst as sure as a talbuk grows horns, like it had endless excess of radiance to waste. Only the rowdiest guests remained, or those who had found companionship in conversation, so the occasional corner still thrummed with soft speech as the workers cleared the tables and carried off the heated thermocrystals to cool.
The body of the crashed ship high overhead promised shelter and threatened collapse in equal measure, and Hatuun struggled to see a city’s walls in its place, even with Ataanya and Romuul’s schematics in mind. He struggled to stop this foolish pastime even more so. Eredath beckoned, begged him to look upon her crumbling and scattered stones: bones lying in wastes, ashes dispersed. Never would her spirit be laid to rest, never would she know the comfort of home.
Hatuun had yet to see the ruins of this Shattrath the folk had spoken of at the ceremony. Doubtless, her fate was much the same.
Yet somehow Velen had not dispensed with dreams.
Velen’s guards stepped aside on approach to his quarters, as if the blunders uncovered in Bloodmyst were not enough. So much for security, slipped into Hatuun’s mind habitually, but this was no Bloodmyst, and he was no demon, so he kept pace as expected, as encouraged—a guest invited to a home. Trust. Trust was hard to come by, yet Velen doled it out as though unafraid of it striking him down one day. Whether that was a vice to scoff at or a virtue to cherish, Hatuun could not yet decide.
Dressed down in nightrobes, ceremonial garb put aside, Velen looked both unfamiliar and the nearest he had been since their reunion on Argus. A vision of simpler times. Something pulled in Hatuun’s chest as Velen lowered his tome and rose from his chair, his eyes filled with… a frankly ridiculous amount of longing. It urged Hatuun to draw his own gaze away.
Silence weighed, and Velen seized it. “I am glad you decided to stay at the Exodar, at least for the night.”
Hatuun grunted. “Reinforce it as you might, it is coming apart.”
“I know.” Velen sighed. “It has seen… more than it should have. One day we will lay it to rest. Romuul and Ataanya will see to it.” Deep-set frown lines mustered a timid smile. “Have you thought about my offer, then?”
Hatuun rounded up his storming thoughts. “You have been managing thus far.” Not well, by any means—but managing nonetheless. “So, tell me. Why have you asked me for aid now? What changed—now, after millenniums without?”
Velen allowed him a rare satisfaction of seeing him fumble for a response. “I have told you. I have missed your wisdom, your guidance—”
“No.” He needed to be sure this was real. That this was not a charity project to prove that the Tishamaat was something more than a dusty relic of a fool’s optimism. His voice quivered. “I need to know why, Velen.”
Velen’s face crumpled under pain and understanding, his shoulders suddenly beset with a heavy weight. He lumbered to the bed and sat down. “This ship has seen much, like I said. Perhaps its greatest trial was on the eve of our voyage to Argus. A Legion general led an attack, and I could not stop him from taking our light—no more than I could stop his end. This general was Rakeesh. I did not realize it until it was too late.”
It had been a lifetime since Hatuun had last heard the name of Velen’s young son. The name burned. He stayed silent.
“I do not wish to lose anybody else,” Velen continued, “be it to the fel, or feud, or neglect. I do not wish for you and I to fade into nothing, Hatuun—not if I yet have the power to change things. I left my family behind and could not protect yours. Now I would like to keep what little family I have left.”
A bitter scoff left Hatuun’s throat. “Perished in a crash landing, did they not? On Draenor, you said. Like so many others. And you still have the nerve to ask me for favors.”
Velen smiled sadly. “I hope you will forgive me my impudence, then, for this is no mere favor. I need you, Hatuun. I want us to stand side by side again, so that we may move forward together.”
Already, forgiven. One after another, Hatuun gave Velen his small, quiet forgivenesses, for things that deserved it and those that did not, ever since he returned. Although Velen surely knew this by now, they did not need to speak of it aloud.
“It has been a lonesome road,” Velen went on. “Many in our community feel the same, alone and untethered, ever weighed down by a burden we should not be carrying. I truly believe the Tishamaat is the right step to begin to remedy that. I wish to heal old bonds and forge new ones, strong enough to last. But I cannot do it alone, Hatuun.” A corner of his lips twitched with mischief then. “That would make me a hypocrite even if I could.”
“That it would,” Hatuun said, only to stumble over a hitch in his breath. Damn it all to the fel. The tightness in his chest clawed up to his throat, crushed a rasping sigh out of him, and damn Velen for looking at him with such earnestness… Fool. Fools—both of them. Hatuun had already made up his mind regardless of what Velen had to say, had he not?
“I… I hear you, Velen.” Impossible not to. Impossible not to reach out to the first outstretched hand in years too many to count. Velen’s eyes welled up with the hope Hatuun had only one way of dealing with—crushing it like a bug to entomb in something far stronger: determination, persistence. Survival for its own sake. Why else had the krokul endured as long as they have? What did he have left other than his own life, a withered husk that it was?
The Tishamaat—Velen—was asking the same questions. Determined to hunt down answers.
Well. Hatuun had nothing if not tracking expertise to offer.
“I too, ah…” His heart raced, like seizing a window to dash from one refuge to another through hostile lands. He willed it to still, but it had a mind of its own. “I… have missed you too, Velen, and…”
Slowly, cautiously, Velen stood.
“…It has been… painful. And I do not expect that to change—much. But I am willing to try this. I will be your councilor once again.”
Velen’s eyes could have been pools of the Light itself—the awe, the relief in them so close yet just out of reach. Perhaps, if he stayed near, Hatuun might one day feel it again.
“Hatuun.” Velen stepped close. “Thank you, my friend,” he breathed, and took Hatuun’s misshapen hands, and kissed his knobbly knuckles—then one by one his cheeks, and the ridge of his brow. “My dear Hatuun. Thank you.”
Hatuun let himself be kissed. “I have done nothing yet, you old hoot.”
“You are here. That is enough for me.”
And Hatuun had no choice but to believe him, for he felt much the same.