moonshadows

He pauses at the door, staring through the physical world to the swirling energies that lie behind it. The lilac glow is her, lines stretching from her mass to the matrix of whatever spell she is working. He knocks on the door twice and she bolts for the bedroom, hiding whatever project she has been working on. Only when she returns to the couch does he open the door. Her smile is a miracle he does not deserve, easing some of the tension inside him. It is a smile that says you are the center of my world and nothing matters to me but you, and his pleasure is marred only by the fact that she is in her borrowed form. He frowns as the door closes behind him, and once it is shut she discards her disguise. Her smile this time says everything I do is for you, and he has to resist the desire to hold her tightly lest anyone try to steal this treasure from him.

"Illidan!"

The name is breathed reverently, as though his presence were as great a miracle to her as her smile is to him. He drops his human seeming and waits, but she does not ask why he is here. After a moment, he takes a seat. He hadn't thought about what to do once he got here.

"Is something wrong, Kal'shan?"

"No. I just...wanted to discuss today's events with you."

She tilts her head to one side, curious.

"You performed very well this morning. The uniform pleased me." He basks in her radiant smile. "I hope you understand why I did not say anything to you at the time." Pride bleeds out along with the words, pierced by guilt and self-loathing and other emotions he refuses to give name to.

"Of course," she says calmly. "If you had, it would have ruined the act."

She understands. Too good to be true, his fear whispers, and he forces it back into its cage. He ruined too many things already; he refuses to let this fail through some fault of his own.

"Did you know that Joshua had no orders to bring you to me?" It's not the question he thought he was going to ask, but now that he has, he's curious about the answer.

"Yes." Before he can do more than open his mouth, she continues. "If I had not gone with him, the guards would have killed him. I figured...whatever was going on, it had to be serious for him to risk his life like that, and if it was that serious..." Her soul draws in, condenses from lilac to deep purple, the precursor to that black shell it had been. "I am your Champion. My place is at your side."

Skeletal hope stirs within the pool of despair and fear. As with her loyalty, nourished by her eager devotion, he admits the slim possibility that he may someday be able to trust her to not leave him.

"There is something else I wish to discuss with you," he says warily, and something in his tone makes her apprehensive. "I did not see or hear you enter the gym. Why?"

She relaxes, and he wonders with brief amusement if she thought he was going to ask about whatever she did to soothe his inflamed mind.

"I stepped through the Twisting Nether." At his raised eyebrows, she tilts her head again. "You don't know...?"

"I..."

"You had no one to teach you," she says softly.

"I had no one to teach me," he agrees, humiliation and bitterness squirming behind his eyes even if her compassion is keeping the rest of his reaction at bay. To have his ignorance exposed like this would normally fill him with rage and irritation, but...not from her.

She stands up, crosses the short distance between couch and chair, and kneels at his feet. One hand is halfway to her hair before he stops himself, but she takes it gently in both of hers and presses the palm of it, talons and all, against her cheek. Her eyelids flutter closed in joyful contentment.

"I'll teach you, Kal'shan," she says reverently, as though this were just another way for her to serve him rather than an area where she was his superior.

He says nothing for a long minute, painfully aware of the razor-sharp claws resting delicately against her skin, almost afraid to breathe lest the slightest motion cause them to slice into her face. The moment stretches, this fear waking other fears, and now he says nothing because he is wrestling with his history of broken promises, struggling to keep the avalanche of his past from crushing his fragile future. He closes his own eyes, all his focus turned inward, and thus does not see hers open, nor the look of concern on her face, or notice that his hand no longer touches her skin. When her hands slide soothingly up his horns, however, he is very aware of it. He surrenders himself to the relaxing sensation, knowing himself to be a broken wreck, hating himself for not being stronger. Is he really such a pathetic failure that he cannot go a day without her comforting touch? Has she spoiled him so badly that he cannot endure the workings of his own mind unaided? The anger rises like a tide, cuts like a knife - and is deflected.

Yes, he could endure. He could do without. But then he would never be free. She has never mocked his moments of vulnerability before; in this, too, he is beginning to trust her. Weakness and need warp suddenly into unspoken order and obedience. Is this really so different from the services rendered by his guards , his chef, his ministers? Has she not sworn herself to him? His servant, his Champion, his to command. His to use. His forever, and ten thousand years of wrath will strike down anyone who tries to take her from him.

Once he has shepherded his fear back into its cage, she weaves reassurance around the bars, her chains of I'll never leave you and Everything I do is for you intertwining with his spikes of self-loathing. For the second time that day she rights toppled towers of fractured functionality and mends the wounded machinery. Part of her weeps to see how easily he can undo her work, how simple it is for a single fear to rampage through the broken mindscape. She sees him struggle against relaxation, clinging to the sharp clarity of his pain, but then he surrenders. She realizes, consciously, that he wants this calm, this fragment of peace, but even simple pleasures have been denied him for so long that his impulse is to deny them to himself.

She does not fill his mind with soft gel or anesthetic foam. Instead, she shores up the broken pieces trying to mend themselves. If his pain ceases completely, he will grow suspicious and she might lose these opportunities entirely. No, she leaves the superficial wounds alone and delves into the tangle of damaged structure, seeking out the twisted edges separated from each other and making what small repairs she can. It is a slippery slope of self-destruction that he is on, and it will not be easy dragging him back up, but there is no purpose she would more willingly devote herself to. She belonged to him the instant she touched his mind, lived only to serve him and obey his command. Surrendering to him was just a formality.

His mind shudders and stretches like a great beast waking up from a nap, satisfied with the devotion she has laid out as an offering. She slips out of his mind, releases his horns, and resumes kneeling at his feet. At her touch, his hand clenches briefly and then opens reluctantly.

"I will arrange for you to be brought to me when I practice." The words are casual, his tone distant. "You performed well enough under the circumstances, but it is clear that you are not yet comfortable with the blades. Your form is sloppy and such things will get you killed on the battlefield."

"Yes, my Kal'shan."

"Joshua will be given free access to you. If there is anywhere you wish to go, tell him and he will tell me so that I can arrange it."

"Yes, my Kal'shan."

"Tessa..."

Whatever he was going to say dries up in his throat as she looks up at him with a profound joy that he hasn't seen since he had his own eyes. The memory is so old that it takes a minute to place it: green shade and golden light, the creak of wood and a tolerant smile, a face so like his own shining with the echo of a single word. Bitterness threatens to pour forth from where that memory had been buried, but her gaze drags him back to the present. He takes her hand gently, mindful of his claws.

"Get some sleep," he tells his Champion gently, pulling her to her feet as he stands up.

She enfolds his hand in both of hers, brings it up to her cheek and brushes his knuckles across her skin. "Yes, my Kal'shan."

When the darkness of his bedroom again surrounds him, the mattress does not feel like stone and the sheets whisper against his skin like leaves stirred by a gentle breeze.