Blue Children

[moonshadows]

He hovers just below the threshold of consciousness, aware that he is still slumbering and reveling in the warmth and comfort of it. The scent of the bed linens, the feel of the mattress beneath him are reassuring beyond words. His chin rests on a head covered with silky hair, and slow, warm breaths puff gently against his chest as the one in his arms drifts deeper in the realms of sleep than he. Warmth, comfort, security – right now, everything is right in the world and he does not want to move, knowing somehow that if he does, this perfect moment will shatter. He clings to this cocoon of peace, trying to ignore the little voice that whispers that this cannot possibly be real, needle-sharp doubts trying to puncture the perfection and expose it for the lie it is. Stubbornly, he tells the voice to go away, and finally it leaves him to enjoy this position of lazy comfort.

“Wake up, sleepy heads!”

The timbre of the woman’s voice, the warm, gentle tone, the words lovingly spoken in the language of his birth, all fill him with indescribable joy. He knows this voice, knows it as he knows the contours of the face nestled against his chest, the shape of the body breathing slow and even, limbs entwined with his.

“Come on, the sun has set. Time for my Blue Children to rise and shine in the night sky!”

“We don’t wanna,” he complains sleepily.

The harsh, demonic edge in his voice shreds the cocoon: the shape in his arms is just a pillow. The bed becomes the Warlord’s bed. His body is adult, muscled, horned and hooved and winged and clawed and fanged. Behind the cloth tied securely around his head, his eyes burn green fire. He howls, a wordless cry of pain and loss, claws sunk deep into the hapless pillow so that he does not sink them into his flesh, wishing despite everything that he could bleed out this anguish and find some relief that way.

Objectively, he knows that this torment is a good sign, a sign that he is much less broken. He hasn’t thought about his mother in years, much less allowed himself to remember her voice. But that’s not why it hurt so much to wake up, and reluctantly he admits to himself that while he still misses his long-dead mother, what really made him cry out was being denied the closeness he and Furion once shared, and the reality of that shattered bond.

Harsh, panting breaths echo off of stone walls. For the first time, thoughts of his brother hurt because he misses his twin. The rage, the resentment that had sustained him for centuries, no longer seem so important. This is his brother, his other half. How could they have grown so far apart? How can they hate each other? The fragile shards of his reconstructed pride protest the idea of just letting go of everything he’s suffered because of Malfurion, of relinquishing his right to avenge the wrongs done to him, but it is drowned out by the voice of a seven-year-old child newly-orphaned. Maybe he should hate his twin for everything he’s suffered, maybe he has that right, but he doesn’t care anymore. He wants to see his brother again. He wants that unity, that bond they shared.

He wants to go home.

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She looks surprised and a little confused to see him this early in the day, much less in her bedroom. “Kal’shan?” she murmurs sleepily, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.

“I cancelled my morning appointments,” he says simply. She will understand that he needs her, needs what she can do to soothe whatever hurts he is suffering. “I…did not sleep well.” It’s only half a lie; what sleep he got was better than any he’d had in centuries. Only after waking up did things go downhill, but the phrase will remind her if the first time he’d used it, saying without uttering the words that he needs her to do her job, the job she is unaware he knows she is doing.

That knowledge hangs thickly in the air between them and causes her words to ring slightly off-true when she says, “You probably twisted your wings. Let me rub some cream into them.”

The thought of her gentle fingers on the membranes of his wings fills him with a different kind of longing, but one more familiar and easier to deal with. He nods and retreats to her outer room, already in his usual chair when she emerges with the jar of special cream she imports from the delta region. The cool substance warms quickly as she gently massages it in, herbs causing his membranes to tingle most pleasantly as they soften and pulse with increased bloodflow. For a bare instant he allows himself to think of what he would do, were she not a child, and then he seals that unholy urge away – and the other longing with it. Only when both sets of inappropriate desire have been shoved out of sight does he allow his rage to relax, and the blades that whirl around his mind retract. He knows she will take the opportunity to enter his mind, and he concentrates as hard as he can, but the soothing calm spreads through his thoughts without him detecting the slightest hint of her presence. Slowly, he relaxes muscles he hadn’t realized had been tensed.

A thought flashes through his mind, the idea of showing Tessa their home in Suramar, but no – Suramar sank when the world was sundered, and whatever underwater glory it may have acquired will have rotted and dried in the sun since he plucked the Eye of Sargras from its casket and left his Warden to die in the darkness. Instead of painful longing, however, all he feels is gentle mourning for his slain childhood.

“Do you want to talk about it?” his Champion says quietly, hands now massaging his shoulders.

The echo of stabbing pain flares briefly. “No. I want-” he yawns suddenly. “I want to sleep, but I doubt I will be able to if I return to my bed.”

Her hands leave his shoulders. “I can enchant your blankets-”

He grabs her wrist as she steps away. “No.” Shame at the thought of her seeing the wreck he made of his bedroom – even though she has already seen it – shreds the cocoon of relaxation, followed by a wave of self-loathing. The bladestorm churns angrily around his mind, keeping her out and increasing the irritation and anger at himself. What kind of beast was he that he’d turned his room into such a ruin? Furthermore, he’d snapped at his Champion for wanting to help and undone her efforts at repairing the damage he’d done to himself. She didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of his rage, and he didn’t deserve to have her fix him when he’d only turn around and undo her work, as he was doing now. Perversely, he revels in the pain he is inflicting on himself, the validation of every negative thing he’s ever been called or thought of himself as. Worthless. Horrible. Beast. Monster.

He’s not a monster! declares his memory of her, and the self-loathing vanishes in a jolt of sober realization. It’s not the worst breakdown he’s ever had around her, but it’s a more severe backslide than he’s suffered in months. The blades retreat, silently begging her forgiveness and inviting her back inside his mind, but Tessa does not move, her wrist still held captive, his dulled talons pressing into her flesh.

“You can sleep in my bed,” she offers tentatively.

The hand not holding her wrist massages his temples. “No,” he says wearily. “I am…not gentle on my bedclothes. I would not want to ruin yours if I suffered another…” he breaks off, unwilling to say the word and admit to having nightmares.

She grasps the hand holding her wrist and tugs gently, urging him to his feet, and he does not have the emotional strength to resist. She leads him to the couch and he releases her wrist, guessing her intent. Instead of reaching for his horns, however, she vanishes into her room and returns with the heavy comforter. As she tucks it around him, he feels the warmth and remembers the first time she’d tucked him in like this. Unlike that time, he is not watching her coldly, waiting for her to slip up somehow. His eyelids are already sliding down, and he feels himself drift pleasantly off before he can reach for her to pull her into his arms.

==================================

She sits on a chair, knees hugged to her chest, watching him sleep. Whatever nightmare woke him up, it’s something fairly serious – his mind was in significant disarray before he undid her attempts to right things in there. She’ll have to go slowly and carefully; just fixing the damage won’t work unless she can find out what’s causing him to hurt himself. It bothers her a little bit that she’s so calm about his habit of mental self-mutilation, but if she lets herself worry about every little nick and cut, she’ll never get him fixed. So even though her heart bleeds for him, she ignores the damage and goes hunting.

Even as she picks her way through broken galleries of stained and filthy memories, her own thoughts keep returning to the empty spot on the couch next to him. He would welcome her there; indeed, he almost demands her presence at his side. Maybe it’s just that he has actually accepted her for consideration making her self-conscious, or maybe it’s the subconscious whisper of what he wants, but she would swear that as much as he wants her in his arms right now, there is someone else he would rather be holding. Suddenly, she stops her search through things long forgotten. His sense of responsibility is guarding the broken barrier leading into one of the galleries she hasn’t touched yet; this has to be where the nightmare originated. When she tries to edge around and inside, however, the construct blocks her way.

This is new. Usually the construct leads her to the places that are damaged; it’s never blocked her before. She has no time to ponder, however, because an agonized cry resonates through the halls of his mind and the responsibility construct nudges at her insistently. It didn’t need to; all her vague doubts and half-formed uncertainties vanished with that slent scream and she races for the front of his mind even as her body unfolds and she hurls herself across the gap between chair and couch. Regardless of what she thinks or feels, he needs her. His hands blindly find hers as she reaches for his horns, and he pulls her into his arms, cradling her sideways in his lap, every muscle trembling. She crosses the final ward and emerges into the front of his mind in time to frantically gel a veil and trap rampaging fear-shards. The insectoid shape of his rage stretches spindly legs and flows out of its enclosure, and she retreats completely as he wakes up.

Somehow, he is both surprised and not surprised at all to find his Champion in his arms as he awakens. For the moment, it is enough and he clings to her gratefully, shaking free of the remnants of a nightmare where he had fought through hordes of demons to rescue his brother, only to be rejected for being the very thing he had fought against. He wants to howl, to bellow his agony to the world – and at the same time, he wants to turn his back on his twin, rejecting before he can be rejected. He hates, he hurts, but he doesn’t want to do either and so he does the only thing he can to find relief: he buries the desire to go home, to reconcile with Malfurion, and the fear that his gesture will be met again with-

The thought is cut off, the memory locked away. One day, he will be whole and sane and able to contemplate this again without being broken by it. Until then, he cannot afford to torment himself with something he cannot have. And speaking of things he cannot have…

Reluctantly, he loosens his desperate grip on the flushed form of his Champion, then fights the urge to tighten it again. She is his Champion, she presented herself for his consideration! He can do as he pleases with her! …but she is a child, his dark, unholy urges should never be released on her innocent flesh. Surely she would forgive him if he – but if he did, he would be a monster in truth despite her sometimes-misplaced faith in him.

Gently, he caresses her cheek with one trembling finger, fighting his bestial urges back under control.

“You had a nightmare,” she says softly, sparing him the effort of finding something to say. Her head rests sweetly on his shoulder.

Oh, my Champion, why must you be so young?

Again, soothing calm spreads through his thoughts until nothing seems to matter but the fact that she is devoted to him alone. Arms holding her protectively, his eyelids slip shut a second time and he slides back into the realm of sleep, unafraid of what might be lurking there to attack him, trusting in his young Champion to defend him from himself.