moonshadows

She knows something is on his mind, and not just from the way his haphazard defenses are bristling. They're sparring again for the first time since the meeting of his cabinet, and his attention is not on her performance. The rhythm of attack and defense is soothing him - but the strongest evidence for her Kal'shan's mind being elsewhere is that he's kept her going long enough that she can feel her muscles tremble. After one last block, she leaps back and drops the glaives.

He rocks to a halt at her unarmed gesture of surrender, blinks, and focuses on her as though seeing her for the first time. "Is something wrong?"

Oh yeah, he's been out of it. "I need a break."

He blinks again. "Yes, you do."

Their hooves make no sound on the rubber mat; she follows him in silence, takes the stripped wire and drinks obediently. He shifts restlessly.

"Have you completed your uniform?"

Wire still in her mouth, she shakes her head.

"Finish it. I want you to start accompanying me in the mornings, beginning next week after our bonding session." He's just started chiding himself - that was not how he wanted this conversation to go - when her face lights up. "I want people to get used to seeing you at my side," he says more gently. "Do you-"

He breaks off. He had been about to ask if she had any problems with that, but the look on her face makes it clear that being seen at his side is as enthralling to her as his uncovered eyes. Gratitude, and maybe something that could be called fondness, sweeps through him. Insecurity evaporates, replaced by a fragile sort of confidence: the fluttering trust that whatever he says or does will turn out to be the right thing. He swallows and assumes the mantle of authority, mildly baffled as always when that makes her misplaced worship stronger.

"Do you think you can get the uniform completed in time to attend Week's Dusk dinner with your grandparents?"

The growled demand electrifies her and she stands up straight, pride and devotion radiating from her. "Yes, my Kal'shan!"

"Good." The tone he uses implies that this is barely acceptable. She doesn't seem to care. "Now, if you have recovered, I want you to show me what you have learned. You have proven that you can defend; now prove to me that you can attack, as well."

He strides back to the center of the room and waits while she retrieves her glaives. At his nod she attacks, and he lets the refreshing experience of pure defense wash over him. It's not long before he starts appraising her technique. She broadcasts her moves, and she's still clumsy, but that's to be expected. Agility gives her a respectable amount of speed, but she doesn't have the strength to put as much force into each blow as she should. Well, that will come later. It's more important that she learn technique first; grace and power will come with experience. He begins testing her, deliberately giving her openings to see if she takes them. One by one he leads her through the positions, teaching her through experience which offensive maneuvers to use when, delighting each time she successfully executes the correct strike - regardless of how clumsily or weakly done it was.

It reminds him of when he was learning the warglaives. The memory of facing off against a laughing doomguard surfaces, disconnected from the events that came before or after it. From the broken time, then - the period of time he spent in Zin-Azshari, being violated and rebuilt into a weapon to be aimed at his own people and loosed. Why had no one ever understood that it wasn't his fault? He’d never asked to be taken prisoner and tortured by demons. He’d never wanted dreadlords violating his mind until he no could no longer tell truth from delusion. He’d certainly never yearned to bring ruin and destruction down on everything he'd ever known.

Had he?

The world shudders beneath his hooves and his lungs heave as panic chokes him, but there is no air. He doesn't remember. Surely, he could never agree to any course of action that would bring harm to his brother, and especially not to Tyrande! Surely....but is that the truth, or a manufactured memory implanted by his tormentors? Was he really such a monster? Was his brother right to chain him beneath the earth?

She watches, terrified, as he suddenly sways and drops to his hands and knees, blades forgotten on the floor, gasping for breath. Did she hurt him? Did he hurt himself? His mind is a whirling mass of razor-sharp fragments; no way she can get inside to see. Not knowing what else to do, she kneels in front of him and begins stroking his horns. It takes a minute before his breathing starts to calm. She keeps up the soothing rhythm, humming a Nathrezim lullaby as she does. Another minute, two, and he shudders as the shards retract by twos and threes. She does not stop until he lowers himself to the ground slowly, as if in pain, and lays his head on her lap. Even then, she keeps running one hand up one horn while the other finds his outstretched hand and clasps it.

It doesn't take much more than a nudge to send him into a deep sleep.

The bladestorm really did a number on him this time. She bites her lip to keep from crying as she surveys the damage. Anesthetic-soaked veils will do for the fresh wounds, gelled to keep them in place until they heal. Most of the machinery is fine, just nicked. The parts that got knocked loose are easy enough to fit back into place, but the barricades...

She eyes the broken walls warily. Something got loose, something big, but where is it? Quickly, she stretches a ward across the gaping hole and ventures into the blocked-off galleries of torment. Whatever it was, its trail is easy to follow – there are huge holes blasted through his barricades and her walls – but she encounters nothing moving as she goes deeper and deeper until finally, she's at the Terminal Boundary. Realization hits her like a kick to the gut. These shards that litter the thick membrane - these are the ones she saw tearing up his mind. They are what tore through the barriers keeping his past sealed off. Whatever happened, whatever memories these fragments encompass, it is a threat to his sanity greater than anything she's yet seen. Grimly, she mixes gel with sealant and covers the lot of them with a veil that she then seals into place. The wall she builds to replace the shattered barrier is the strongest she can make, multi-layered and warded to answer to her touch.

With luck, she won't have to deal with that mess until she's sorted everything else out.

The walls and barricades the fragments chewed through are easy enough to repair, and it isn't long before she's back in his conscious mind. Movement from the pen made of self-loathing draws her attention, but it is only his sense of responsibility.

She blinks. The largest pieces of shattered dreams still stick out of it, bleeding, but there are a lot of bandaged wounds where there used to be broken promises and the ruins of good intentions. Quickly, she shifts to the artistic, native visualization, and the lumbering doglike shape morphs into the wounded boy. He smiles shyly at her and darts up, tugs her hand with his one good one, then darts away into the sickly trees and ruined buildings. Tentatively, she follows as he leads her between rotting trunks and tumbled stones until finally she emerges into a tiny clearing filled with dead leaves and browned grass. A patch of healthy, emerald-green grass no more than two handspans across, bathed in a column of silvery light, cradles a single cut blossom that glows in the moonlight like a star of flame. The boy is crouched on the other side of the clearing. He smiles at her again, this expression much older and sadder, and gently strokes one brilliant petal with a feather-light touch.

"Why are you showing me this?"

He doesn't answer in words. Instead, he stretches carefully out until he's lying on the withered grass outside the beam of moonlight, unbandaged eye fixed on the flower. With the arm not in a sling, he reaches out until his fingertips rest on the grass, the cut end of the flower's stem just out of reach. She gets the impression that he does this a lot, yearning towards whatever that flower represents.

"I'm not sure I understand, but thank you."

The boy smiles at her a third time, the innocent confidence of a child making her feel unworthy. She smiles back, and retreats.