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| Details |
| Author: | Luridel |
| Summary: | A "Self-Portrait" prompt response. Mordecai walks home by himself. See content warnings. ~1200 words. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
Chain: Prompt Responses
Mordecai waits until Colson and Cressidha’s gryphons are completely out of sight before he turns to walk back to the inn. The robe he’s wearing, blue and black with gold accents, is long-sleeved, meant for work in cooler temperatures, and Mordecai is uncomfortably warm.
He wants to take it off.
He wants Colson to take it off. Colson’s hands on his skin, warm and solid and grounding. Colson always touches him with such reverence, such love–
Mordecai trips over the edge of the curb and pitches forward on his hands and knees into the sidewalk.
Cheeks burning, he mumbles, “Ow,” and brushes his hands off before healing himself. The sting in his palms subsides as the Light washes through him. There’s dirt on the robe. He needs to get back to the inn and change.
Did anyone see him fall? Mordecai looks around.
Yes. Yes, and a figure takes a step towards him, undead-blue eyes gleaming from beneath a hood and long sin’dorei brows. Mordecai catches sight of those eyes and freezes in place.
Not Syarra. A man. A stranger.
He could run. But he remembers Callum - “Do we chase him?” - and holds still instead. Dalaran has laws. If this stranger tries anything, Mordecai is out in the open. Exposed, but also visible to the public.
So here are his options. He can remain frozen. He can run away. He can walk away. He can talk to the stranger.
The stranger takes another step. In a voice with an uncanny echo to it, the stranger says, “You look like Mordred Harbrooke.” The tone isn’t very friendly.
“Shield,” Mordecai says, and with the burst of speed granted to him by the casting of the Power Word: Shield, he bolts down the street at a full sprint. He half-expects to be yanked back to the death knight by a hand of shadows, but no such thing happens.
Instead, behind him, he hears a softly-echoing laugh.
Mordecai does not stop to look to confirm that he isn’t being pursued. He runs, dodging strangers in the road as need be, his arms moving correctly the way he’s been taught.
(“Pansy.”)
He can hear Mordred’s voice so clearly in his mind that for a moment he nearly looks around just in case, but it’s nothing but his own imagination. He knows that.
Beautiful, strong, and enduring, Colson had called them. The flowers. The flowers with the name it stings a little just to think.
(“The word is odd for its origin, for how it has come to be used. It originally meant ‘thoughtful,’ and the flower a symbol of remembering.”)
The closed door of A Hero’s Welcome, the inn, is fast approaching, and Mordecai notices just in time to avoid crashing into it at full speed. He nearly stumbles with how quickly he comes to a stop, but at least the stop isn’t a collision. As he lets himself inside, he looks behind him, but the sin’dorei is nowhere to be seen.
Good.
Mordecai climbs the stairs and lets himself into the upstairs room. He spends a moment turning on the lights and peering into the corners of the room the way Colson does, but he doesn’t see anything unusual. Safe enough for now. He locks the door behind him.
It takes a little while for Mordecai to catch his breath. He drinks some water, because Cressidha gave him some earlier today, and leaves his bag by the door. He kicks off his shoes by the wardrobe and yanks the robe up and over his head much more roughly than Colson would have, if he’d waited for Colson to get home. Some force of habit has him hang the robe on a hanger and line the shoes up neatly against the wall, but conscious thought is not involved in this process at all any more.
He ran. Of course he ran.
(“Running and hiding like a fucking pansy again.”)
His heart feels like it’s still pounding a mile a minute. He steps into the bathroom and shuts the door.
Who was that man? What did he want? How did he know Mordred? Did Mordred owe him money? Mordecai doesn’t have answers to a single one of those questions, and he can feel them starting to knot and tangle together. There’s that feeling of the world narrowing that sometimes comes at the onset of a panic attack, and Mordecai starts to reach up towards his heart, but he hesitates.
(“Coward.”)
The Fear Ward would help in this situation. But Mordecai has also been trying to use it less, not to rely on it for every single little situation. To prove to Colson that he doesn’t need it on the battlefield; that it truly is Colson who makes him feel safe there, not the Fear Ward.
Colson isn’t here.
Colson wouldn’t want him to suffer.
Mordecai traces the Fear Ward over his own heart. His heartbeat slows. He blinks.
Standing in front of the bathroom mirror is a young man of twenty-six wearing a sleeveless white undershirt. His hair is a mess.
(“Don’t hurt me.”)
Mordecai stares hard at his reflection, looking for any sign of independent movement, but there’s nothing unusual. His inner turmoil is back on the inside, where it belongs.
His reflection stares back.
It hasn’t even been fifteen minutes since Colson left and he’s already having some sort of derealization episode just because a stranger looked at him funny and mentioned his brother. That has to be a new record.
The man in the mirror blinks. His eyes are such a soft green.
That’s me, Mordecai reminds himself. That’s my reflection. It doesn’t feel real. “I’m in Dalaran,” he says out loud. “I warded myself to try and avoid a panic attack. I’m the real Mordecai.”
A hand reaches out to the mirror and touches cool glass instead of another hand. The sensation feels so far away.
His thoughts have slowed along with his heartbeat.
Hazy.
He should find something grounding. A sensation, a touch. Cold water on his hands. On his face. It drips down the face of the man in the mirror like rain on a statue.
“That’s me,” Mordecai says. “I’m real. This is going to pass.”
It will. Eventually.
Time is so slow.
He feels it when the Fear Ward ends, and the sensation of him gripping the edge of the sink becomes more tangible somehow.
Maybe he can call it. The Light.
Even through the mire of his thoughts, one thought shines like a bright thread. I want to live.
There is no whoosh of air to herald the appearance of the [Guardian Spirit] and the wings it grants Mordecai, only the sudden surge of warmth and Light. A soft golden glow is cast on the bathroom wall behind him, and in the mirror he can see the image of widespread golden wings of Light projected outwards from behind his shoulders.
He breathes, and his body feels like his own.
The spell only lasts for ten seconds, but those ten seconds are long enough for him to feel grounded again. His name is Mordecai Aspenwood, and he is brave, and kind, and patient, and he knows these things to be true because Colson has said so, and Colson does not lie to him. He is alone, but he is safe, and he has nothing to fear. The Light recognizes his conviction, his determination, and for those ten seconds it protects him.
When the spell fades and the warmth recedes, Mordecai looks into the mirror and sees himself smiling. He didn’t realize he was doing that.
It’s not such a surprise. He’s been smiling often, these days.
He’s happy.