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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Roper and Syarra return to Kaskala for Tuesday to get a break from dealing with the living while they figure out their next moves to fight the Lich King, and Syarra learns how to play Go Fish like a spy. 9k-ish words. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
Syarra lights one more candle and then returns to her attempts to dust and otherwise freshen up the air in her yurt. It isn't untidy, but it has grown a bit musty in the weeks that have passed while the death knights were busy elsewhere. She's not wearing a dress tonight, but not armor, either. It's just her usual casual clothing, blouse and pants now tailored to fit her current physique. Her feet are bare and she steps quietly, shaking out the curtains around the bed and dusting the top of the paper screens.
There's the sound at the door, and an influx of cold air that makes the candles flicker for a moment before there's a muttered, "Fuck," and the sound of a howling wind pushing the air back out, away from the candles, before the door is shut again. Roper is dressed in his mixed saronite and cobalt armor, his helm still on for a few beats longer as he descends the ramp. He removes it, revealing a clean face with hair still slightly damp and now slightly mussed over his forehead, and tosses it at the armor stand to land it on the top expertly.
"Hey."
Syarra turns quickly toward him, dusting rag still in hand, and her loose, dark hair falls over one shoulder. "If anyone living were coming, I might suggest to let the wind in. Change the air."
"Fuck the living," Roper says, working on removing his gauntlets by the armor stand, his stand casual and a faint smile tugging up his lips. "Tonight, anyway. I'll deal with them again tomorrow, but for the rest of today, I don't want to give a single fuck about what they do or don't fucking like or want."
A certain tension goes out of Syarra's shoulders, and she nods, stepping toward him. "They need so much. All the time. And to think that they criticize our hunger."
Roper laughs, reaching out his first freed hand to Syarra, making a quick little 'come here' gesture. "Yeah. No kidding." He moves his head side to side. "That's where we're still at though. We only need one thing, but they don't want us to ask for anything. So."
Syarra sets the rag on the paper screen and closes the distance between them, reaching her hand toward his. "You would think they'd be pleased, given how we direct our focus. Let them keep their clean hands." She glances briefly toward a folded paper on the low table.
Roper's attention goes from Syarra to the folded paper, taking her hand to pull her in closer, and then pulling his hand out of hers to go straight to her hair. He's got his consistencies. He up-nods the paper. "What's that?"
Syarra rests gently against the spikes of his armor as she brings her gaze back to meet his. "It doesn't matter. She'll come around, in the end."
Roper levels a longer look at Syarra. "Aze?" He doesn't wait for a response before he shakes his head a little, and there's a working of his jaw as he wars with himself between the need to know something and the fuck the living attitude he has at the moment. As usual, the need to know wins out. "What's going on?"
"Nothing important. It's just as you said… they don't want us to ask for anything," she presses just a touch closer. "And when we do, they can't handle it."
Roper makes a tch sound, running his fingers along her hair. "Well, then fuck her for today. But tomorrow." Roper meets her eyes with that intense, piercing stare. "Tomorrow I want to know, important or not. We'll deal with it, even if it just means doing nothing until she cools off."
A smile flickers for a moment on Syarra's face, and she pulls back. "I should let you take your armor off, before anything else. Any problems on the way home?"
"A little. There's something weird going on with the kvaldir. I ran into a huge grouping of them on a beach where I could fucking swear there was nothing for them to be doing there. Closer to one of the fucking Forsaken holds in Dragonblight. Nothing I couldn't handle, but it was fucking weird. Don't know if it means there's something happening or if it's just more of Northrend's bullshit." Roper resumes removing his armor, but not before he runs his hand once more through her hair.
"One of the Forsaken holds," Syarra raises one hand like she might help him with the armor, but doesn't yet. "Venomspite, or a different one? I was over in the Howling Fjord, but I haven't spent much time in the Dragonblight yet."
Roper leans slightly forward towards her hand, as if in suggestion, watching her face closely. "I think so. I haven't gotten close to it. Too much of a risk that I'll run into an actual sin'dorei out there who realizes I'm speaking in fucking catch phrases," he drawls. "There were some wrecks, looked like Alliance ships, but nothing alive." To be fair, Roper's never been good at spotting ghosts.
"Hm, recent, or the old expedition?" Syarra takes the movement as an invitation and steps in to help him unclasp his armor.
There's a brief, fleeting softening in his expression as she moves to help, and then it's gone, replaced with an arched brow. "I wanna say, based on how fucking wrecked they were and how good the ships were, old. But I didn't get close enough to really tell, and Northrend is fucked up enough that I could be wrong. But I'd put it on old. Probably old Lordaeron navy."
"I can go by there, if you like," Syarra says, beginning to work on the armor. "I've mostly been fighting vrykul lately. No sign of any of the other death knights."
"Don't know that it matters. But it was weird." Roper helps the armor along, although his right hand seems to find a reason to brush against Syarra's hair more often than you'd think necessary. "Ebon Blade, or that fucking squad?"
"That fucking squad is what I was looking for," Syarra lifts part of his armor away. "The Ebon Blade I think is further north. Probably trying to find a way into Icecrown, like the living."
"I'm gonna have to try tracking some of them down pretty soon. The Ebon Blade. We're still not coordinating with the living enough and obviously we're not getting anywhere either. Would be good to know how bad the blood is now. But that squad…" Roper's expression goes cold and there's a dangerous look in his eyes. "Did you see it, when I talked to that fucker Mevlin, about the Lich King?"
Syarra nods, a quick flash of rage in her eyes that passes quickly. "I'm not sure if the others did. If Aze knows. But that was a person who chose his allegiance."
"Yeah. I wondered, from before. It's part of what I wanted to see, if he was chained. But that. He let it slip with that little taunt." Roper makes an amused huff, shifting some of her hair behind her ear, his finger tracing the blade of it. "That's why I always say, as long as they're talking and a spy is in the room, they're giving me something. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. Even the lies they choose mean something. But it means in this case…we're dealing with unchained death knights who can fuck everything for us. We need to destroy them. Every single one of them. And we might need to keep that little tidbit about them having free will from the living. Better for us if they think that's the Lich King. Because otherwise it shows them exactly what we don't want them to see we could be."
"That's not an idea I want to put in anyone's head," Syarra says, lifting his shoulder guard off and setting it aside, letting his hand trail over her ear. "The idea that given free will, we might choose evil. It isn't fair, that's true of all people, but… we have too much to lose. I'll keep it from Aze, if she doesn't know. I don't think she would have been looking for that."
"I was careful. Made it sound just like a brag. And it was in what wasn't there. What you and I both know should have been there." Roper twitches slightly, a tension that forms and releases. "And it's not something anyone who wasn't… they wouldn't understand. Fuck, you know I still can't — " He makes a strange, scoffing sound, looking down to busy himself with his vambraces. "I look back in my memory and it's like my brain tells mehe's got no weaknesses. I don't do that with fucking anyone. I always look for the angle of pressure points, what's weak, what could be used. And it's like. He took it away. I wasn't even allowed to think it. And I still…sorta can't. Because all the memories are so fucking tainted. I can't trust anything about them."
Syarra places a cold palm against his cheek, trailing her fingers down. "I tried to explain, I think, to one of the Argents who asked. Early on. I could not have broken free on my own. It would have never occurred to me to even try. I look back, and it is just… darkness. Familiar darkness, and it is terrifying to think that he might trap us there again."
Roper sets a hand over hers, pressing it harder into his cheek just shy of pain for either of them as he leans his head forward. "Hey. He fucking won't. He won't. We're fucking never going back to that. And I swear to you if he ever, somehow, takes you, I will force every paladin in fucking Azeroth to their knees to unchain you if that's what it takes to get you back. It's never happening again. He doesn't get us."
"I, also, would never leave you to that," Syarra says, closing her eyes. "When we face him again - and we will - it may help if the Argent Crusade is at our side. If they can trust us that much."
"Yeah. That's the plan. And we had an in. But now… we need to go around. Adjust the approach. Maybe try working directly with them out here again." Roper holds her hand there a little longer and she can feel it, that brief moment of indecision, where he clearly wants to press down a harder, break her fingers or his own cheekbone or both, and then he releases them both instead, focusing back on the armor. "Might be useful to use our hunt as an approach. Warn them about the 'Scourge' knights in specifics, and that we're destroying them."
Syarra nods, continuing with the armor. She seems entirely unconcerned about Roper's near-decision to break her bones. "If we pick the right one to warn. But that's the living again. Maybe we should go north soon, rejoin the rest of the Ebon Blade. Spend more time with our people."
"We could. After this…" Roper makes a rolling sound of disgust to encapsulate the entire Kaela situation. "Is handled. It's proven if nothing else that you need more bodies on the ground sometimes. A bigger team. Grow your influence, and it's gonna be a good time for it if they've gotten stuck, because someone will be bored and impatiently itching for productive violence." Roper would know.
Syarra nods. "We just can't afford to completely lose our focus. We need to protect our reputation from people like Mevlin, yes, but we're here to kill the Lich King." Syarra sets his last piece of armor aside and pauses, looking at him.
"Short and long term goals," Roper agrees, stepping into her to pull her against him — carefully. It has the quality of someone deliberately holding back, some urge to push too far still lingering in him as he sets his face against her hair.
Syarra twines her arms around his shoulders, melting into his arms. If she's holding onto him just a bit too tightly, well, there's a lot worse she could do. "I think Aze thought we would torture him. Mevlin."
Roper relaxes slightly into the hold, and shrugs in a bare there movement. "I would have. Someone like that deserves to die fucking screaming. But, if she was gonna insist on the kill, we already know she has weird things about killing people tied up in ropes." There's a dismissive tone to his voice gone huskier. Some people get weird about killing people. For some reason. Whatever. "So, he got mercy he didn't deserve. But the kind of slow death he should have had is when I don't have an audience judging it. Just one savoring it," he murmurs against her hair, fingers trailing a path of frost along her back.
"I would have liked that," Syarra says, with a touch of wistfulness in her voice. She shifts her shoulders against his hand. "I suspect that was why she insisted, to stop us from doing what we wanted. Such a waste, because she didn't even enjoy it."
"And he was gonna die anyway," Roper agrees. "But all information is useful in some way. You know more about her from it." He considers for a beat. "I don't know that I would have cared, alive. I can't really tell, but I think I'd have been an ally. We're useful and I never had any fucking illusions about people being innately good just because they're alive."
Syarra is silent for a long moment, before she says, "I don't know, about me. I feel like I've patched enough together to make some sort of sense of that story, but I don't think I could predict what she would do, in a situation she never faced."
"She was a paladin. But, given how…maybe she'd have understood how sometimes it's the darkness that shows the way to the light, and if you're fucking picky about how you save the world, then you can waste the one chance you have to do something about holding off the inevitable end. So maybe she'd have gotten it, who we are. And some part of her has to have been there, when you came back, and made the same sort of choice to stick around."
"Some part of her," Syarra says, and it sounds like both agreement and a question. "Whatever it is that led Aze to try instead of running away. And Celaven. She never did look away from the darkness. Maybe she would have understood."
"And she's not here anyway." Roper's voice is almost softer, the husky note of it dark and strong. "What do you want? What kind of ally do you want to get, who else do you want on your team, and where do you wanna go? Short term. Long term."
"First, I would like to reach the Argent Crusade," Syarra says quietly. "Connect with people who can see us as allies, even though they never knew either of us before. The Argent Crusade freed us, and that creates a responsibility. That bond is what we'll need to rely on, long term."
Roper makes a 'mmhmm' sound, tracing a line down her back, frost following it. "Agreed. It's what I wanted to start in the Plaguelands, for the same reason. They're also our biggest danger after we clean up out here, that we don't want them fucking turning around and looking at us like we're the next on their to-do list. We want them to see allies in their cause. We both hate the fucking Scourge, and we can work together on it. So we start pushing that again."
"And hope after we eliminate the Scourge, we can find another common cause," Syarra nods, arching her back slightly. "If we had handled that before, it would have been easier to deal with Mevlin. We wouldn't have had to wait for Westwind to speak with them. There are just… always so many things to handle, and the living are so slow to trust."
"Westwind, and Mourn, were supposed to be the way in. Slow and steady, working with people they knew before so we don't have to try to make cold contact. But Mourn isn't moving, and if Westwind does now, she could poison them against us. So we can put pressure on Mourn, but we've also made progress with our reputation. Us, specifically, you and me. We've got references to back up what we say."
"We help people," Syarra says in a low, incongruously dangerous voice, tightening her arms subtly around Roper's neck. "People must have seen that by now. And in the Coterie, I am always careful. So maybe we go around Westwind. I could try her contacts, or others I've spoken with before."
Roper leans closer as her arms go tighter, his hand landing on her lower back and holding there. "I like the others first. Westwind being fucking paranoid that we're going around her could get her bomb trigger finger itchy, and worse — whatever she's got for not attacking us first might not apply to any of hers. She can stand back and pretend she didn't do shit, and still get someone after us. And that'll be Mourn's mess to clean up if she does, but better to not make it easy for her to fuck up. And there's no reason you gotta go in cold. Could take someone with you that we know we got. Show up with proof that you're on their side. Use someone else's reputation to get in."
Syarra considers in silence for a time, and then says, "Celaven could work. I met him in the Plaguelands, before. And he was at Light's Hope for the battle. I think… he would be pleased at the evidence that we want to be good allies. The Aspenwoods are another option, but I don't know how willing they would be to tie their reputation to ours."
"Cressidha did, at the Sunwell offensive. She knew. Mordecai did it with Farshire. Don't know that Colson would, but." Roper shrugs. "Just need to get in, and then get as many of us working with them as we can. Build it up."
"There's Briellen, too, perhaps," Syarra starts to step back, towards either the table or the bed, but doesn't release Roper's neck. "Some of the others need convincing, rather than being able to help us convince. But surely the Argent Crusade and the Ebon Blade want the same things."
Roper moves forward with Syarra with all the ease of a dance partner responding to a cue, and if there's something almost stalking in his manner, it's more an innate sort of intensity than a real threat. "Common enemy. Works like a fucking charm every time. The question now is just how you want to go in. Slip in as allies who ask nothing and willing to do anything we're asked, or equals with our own plans and expertise they should be listening to. Both paths can go where we want to end. But what do you want?"
"The first plan hasn't gotten us where I wanted," Syarra says, taking another ambiguous step back. She looks into Roper's eyes, a faint question in hers. The table and its letter, the bedroom? "It's gotten us somewhere, at least with individuals, and with the Coterie. But I think we shift into the second, for the Crusade. We're not their leashed monsters, we're their allies."
Roper's gaze shifts to the bedroom for a half beat, stepping forward to match her. "Yeah. We do have what we want from the first part. Just enough to get us in. But it's easier to go on as you want than shift it later. You can do it. But if you think you can build it with what you've got now, or you can tell me what you want going in, then that's how we'll play it."
Syarra takes another step, this one distinctly toward the bed, and then answers, "Obviously, we know the Scourge. We can tell them how their camps will operate, the weapons and tactics they'll use. The big thing right now is that no one can get to Icecrown, from what I've heard on Horde side. If we can find a path…"
"Then we're the heroes leading the way in," Roper concludes. "And some paths we can go where the living can't because they're needy with shit like 'air' and 'temperatures above instantly freezing,'" he drawls, stepping with her in approaching eerie sync.
"Mm," Syarra agrees. She takes another step back, releasing Roper with one hand to reach behind her and pull the curtain aside. "We could try around the coast. Over the water. Or perhaps there's a flooded cave system."
Roper flicks his brows up. "Something someone's dismissed because it's deadly. Could work."
"Something only people like us could make use of," Syarra nods, letting the curtain fall behind them as she backs into the room. "Mondragon and her squad are important, but I think we need to split our focus. We risk falling behind."
Roper shrugs, a brief rise and fall of his left shoulder. "It's all the same drive forward in the end. Same fucking end. And nothing wrong with pushing several things forward at the same time. Who do you want, where, and how many more do you want to do it? We can only be in so many places at once with who we've got, and some of us might be real fucking shit at certain parts."
Syarra shifts her weight backward and then says, "If we meet back up with the main force of the Ebon Blade, we'll have more. We'll need to defer to Mograine, but we can do that and keep our own counsel when we need to. And I don't think it's productive to ask Mourn to stop protecting Rae, for instance. I could start slipping away for reconnaissance? Or you could?"
"Are you asking me to go and spy on people and places?" Roper asks, the drawl deep and amused, and a lopsided grin on his face as he leans in closer to Syarra, something bright enough in his expression for a half second to give that lightning glimpse of a different man from years ago, who he once was.
"Is that a yes I'm hearing?" Syarra asks, with a small, amused smile. She pulls him down toward the bed with her weight. "I could always ask you to plumb flooded caves instead."
Roper sweeps an arm around her with a controlled fall, landing over her with a cage of his body, with a brief laugh. "I'd do it, for you. But it'd be a fucking waste of what I can do. I'll get what you need from the Ebon Blade and the Argents."
"I would never want to waste you," Syarra looks up at him, her hair spread around her head in a dark tumble. Something darker flashes in her eyes, and she says, "No witnesses today, for once. It's been too long."
Roper's expression grows sharp enough to almost cut, the tone of his grin shifting as he tilts his head. "Oh yeah?"
"What would your plan be in this situation, strategist?" Syarra asks, a hint of a playful smile on her lips, at odds with the intensity of her gaze.
"Depends. If I was here to get information, I might see what I could get you to tell me while I let you think you were torturing me," Roper says, his voice as dark as midnight, moving his hand to hers and bringing it to his face, setting her fingernails just below his eye. "Let you gouge out my eye and tell you the story I'm meant to, holding it in my head so you think you're getting what you want." It's not the first time he's suggested it. "And make you talk, because anything you're saying gives me more on you, even when you think you're in control."
Syarra's smile falters, even as her nail digs into his cheek. "You can already have anything on me that you want. I'm yours. You only have to ask. Or not even that, with you, sometimes."
Roper's smile goes softer, leaning closer. "I know. If I was here to get information," he repeats. "I'm not. I'm just here for you."
"What would you want from me?" Syarra asks, moving her hand to brush his hair back from his face. A faint mark on his face from her nail lingers behind.
"What I want?" Roper leans slightly into it in a way that doesn't seem entirely voluntary. "Everything." The smile moves up again, a brief grin.
"Then I'll have that from you as well," Syarra says, and her smile returns, something a little too predatory in it to be read as simple affection. "Everything you are."
"Yours for the taking," Roper says and there's a dark intensity in it, the grin fading into something else, and even though he's still over her, there's a sense of surrender to him.
"Then give me something," Syarra says, the edges of her smile softening. "Tell me something you don't think I know about you. And then I will, too."
Roper laughs, and tongues a tooth for a moment but the intensity of his gaze doesn't lessen. "Alright." He moves a finger against her hand in a slow, deliberate tap. "When I do this. Like this. It doesn't mean I'm…impatient or bored or anything. It's a memory aid and a fucking tell of a habit both. I learned how to visualize information I get as like a…puzzle, in my head. I see the actual pieces in forms. When I get something new, I tap it down, into the puzzle. It helps me remember it. And so every time you've ever seen me do this." He taps slow and steady. "It means you've given me a piece of a puzzle. Information that's been put down in my head."
Syarra's lips part slightly as her eyes track to his tapping finger. "You do that so often. At the beginning, it was nearly all the time."
Roper flicks his brows up, leaning closer, still tapping slowly. "Yeah. I had a fucking lot of puzzle to fill in. Just this tap though. The others mean other things, other tells."
"Other speeds, rhythms…" Syarra shakes her head, mussing her hair slightly on the bed but keeping her gaze on his. "No, you gave me that. I can figure out the rest someday." She looks at him in silence, moving her hand back to rest on his hair. Eventually she says, "For me, something I don't think you know. Did you ever figure out the turtle?"
"Well. I know that you touched it just like this," he says as he demonstrates the same absentminded touching. "Habitually. It was worn on the head, older, and it was just ceramic, nothing expensive. You went right to it, like a comfort. So, something sentimental, something that mattered to the Other Syarra enough to cause an echo for you. Someone made it for her, and she kept it because she loved them, and touching it probably reminded her of them."
"You only mentioned it once or twice," Syarra murmurs, turning her head to the side. "Maybe that isn't enough to offer, then, unless the details matter."
Roper chuckles, and he lifts his hand off hers to make that same little 'come here' gesture. "The details always fucking matter."
Syarra turns back to him, and thinks for a moment. "There's a children's story. I don't know if it's sin'dorei originally or came from elsewhere. About a rabbit and a turtle. Do you know it?"
Roper's expression flickers, and there's a dip in the temperature of the air around them. A touch of the echo reverberates around the edges of his voice gone into a rasp. "I don't think I — I don't think anyone ever told me children's stories."
Syarra shifts her hands to his shoulders, with a slight pressure to pull him closer. "Well, then I can tell you this one. They're not very complex. There's an animal race, for some reason, and two of the animals involved are a rabbit and a turtle."
Roper's left brow goes up, but he just makes a small head gesture of 'go on.'
"The rabbit is fast and… flashy… and everyone thinks the rabbit will win. It hops ahead of all the other animals," Syarra says, hopping her right hand down his arm. "The turtle is slow and boring and clearly not going to win. I suspect you see where this may be going."
"The turtle wins, and you're the turtle," Roper says, and moves his hand to her hair, brushing along it. "Minus the fucking boring part."
"Yes," Syarra nods. "So the turtle… it's older than you are. It was meant as a reminder and a comfort, at a time I was…. discouraged, I think. From my sister."
Roper sinks down lower, a flick of his brow in an almost jaunty way. "It's cute. And it explains why she reacted like that when I mentioned it to her. I was using something that was probably something she'd remember the Other Syarra doing, caring about, and pointing out that this one still had some attachment to it. Didn't know it was from her though. It was just a useful detail. You get an echo from it?"
"Not quite like… the other times," Syarra says, her gaze going distant. "It didn't take me out of the moment, like in the temple. Just disorienting. Like touching something I thought was lost, inside my mind."
Tap. Tap. Slow and deliberate against her hair. "Do you think you'd feel anything, if it was destroyed?"
"Don't," Syarra says automatically, and then frowns. "It seems like I might?"
"Hey." Roper taps just once more, brushes back her hair from her face, and there's something almost soft in his expression. "Alright. Something to protect then. The turtle lives as long as we can keep it safe. Gotta respect my elders," he drawls.
"And good instinct, to use it on Aze," Syarra smiles. "Perhaps more effective than you guessed."
Roper shrugs. "It's what I was fucking good at. Even when I didn't know, I'd seem like I did, or I'd pick the right answer before I knew the question."
"Guessing the rest of the puzzle to fit, once you have a few pieces," Syarra nods, as much as she can lying back on the bed. "So… that's the piece I give you today."
Roper taps, deliberately, a slow beat, his eyes on hers. "Another piece. And I'm always going to be greedy for another until I have every. Single. Piece."
"And then? If we have eternity… what happens, when we're both fully known to one another?" Syarra doesn't look away.
Roper shakes his head. "Don't know. Not like I've fucking ever done it before," he drawls. "We'll find out." There's a pause and he almost looks away, but he keeps his eyes on hers, voice dropping to that whisper sound, like he's telling her a secret. "But I'm not interested in you because I don't have the full puzzle. I want the full puzzle because I'm interested in you. And maybe that's the thing that matters."
Syarra holds his gaze, and there's a faint smile as she repeats, "Maybe that's the thing that matters. We could do this more often, instead of hurting each other. Or… in addition to."
Roper laughs, pressing down onto her just long enough to better wrap himself around her, and roll them both to the side, reversing their positions, with her partially on top of him against his side. "I could teach you how to play 'Go Fish.' It's the card game, but it's also a spy game. Of fishing for little information pieces of the other. You talk around things, until you find something out about the other person. 'Is the ceramic turtle a gift from your sister?' that sort of thing." A beat. "And you play the cards."
Syarra rests an arm on his chest, looking down at him. "I think I'd like that. Do you play with Alaisa?"
"Yeah. That and the 'Answer a Question and Ask a Question' game. It's what it sounds like. Someone asks something, and for every answer you give, you get to ask another question. You get to pass three times where you don't have to fucking answer, and you still get to ask, but on the third pass you make, game ends." Roper's arm is still around her, and she can feel that same tension — as he deliberately holds himself back from crushing her closer. "She keeps fucking winning it because I always pass if she asks me anything about you, and I don't tell her fucking anything about you directly. Just me."
"Preserving my mystery," Syarra says lightly, settling in closer. "But you do trust her. So it doesn't seem too dangerous, as a game? Not between you and me, surely."
"It's not about not trusting her. I do, actually, trust her. It's being careful when there's a hierarchy. I don't know yet where I fit fully in hers, who she'd sacrifice for me, if she had to. And I don't know if she realizes that she couldn't pick me over you and still keep me intact," Roper murmurs. "It's a good game to play. She learns more about me now, and I get info on her that I should have had. She knows me already. Really knows me. I can hear it in the questions she doesn't ask, because she doesn't need to. And you and me…it'd just be fun. Part of the game is starting to realize what someone doesn't know about you, and what they wanna know, and seeing how well you can hide your real intentions, that sort of thing. 'Go Fish' is more entertaining, because you're dancing around it. Ask and Answer is direct, a bit of a test, to see if you can get someone to pass enough."
"My hierarchy is, at least, clear. You above all others," Syarra releases the tension in her arms and rests her head against Roper's shoulder. "I would be willing to try the games, with you. As for Alaisa, any word on when she might arrive?"
"No, but there's some fuckery going on in Stormwind. Don't know how much you know about our politics, but we've got a House of Nobles, like a council with the monarchy. Her dad's on it. It's one of the reasons why she's a powerful ally. From what I heard, there's some vacancies. Three or four seats — not really clear, heard both numbers — and they're filling them. And I'm guessing that she's gotta do shit there, causing a delay." Roper sets his hand on Syarra's head, and there's a pause, a moment before he can let it just rest there, controlling an urge.
"I haven't been following human politics," Syarra murmurs. "Things are quiet on the sin'dorei side, as far as I can tell. I don't have many contacts there. Elowel Aro'ephel, and the other Hands. Elivia's sister. That Royal Guard. Does she have responsibilities to the House of Nobles?"
"Not like she's gotta do anything. But leaving for Northrend in the middle of politics as a spy with her dad on the House? No. Not a good idea. And not good for us, long term. She can probably tell us when she gets here what just fucking happened with the balance of power, and how much this new House might be willing to push back against the King's edict on the Ebon Blade, or how much they'll think about expanding it. So, she's where she should be."
"Do you know if the Ebon Blade is a deciding topic?" Syarra asks, walking one hand slowly across his chest. "Horde relations, that matters to us as well."
Roper shakes his head. "No idea. I'd need to get back to Stormwind and spend time around in the circles of it to get that kind of information, and I don't know that I even could like this. A hood doesn't look too fucking weird in the winter, but this close to summer, it'll make me stand out, and all it'll take is one slip for even the most circular questions to suddenly seem fucking suspicious." There's a movement of his jaw, a touch of something like anger, but then it's gone. "Alaisa will know. She'll care enough to find out. And we'll deal with it."
"She's a well-placed ally," Syarra nods. "I should work harder on cultivating Aro'ephel and Bloodsong, so that we can keep a closer eye on the other side. I just have no lever for Aro'ephel, and only the slightest with Bloodsong. But anyway… it will be good to talk with Alaisa, when she's here. I'll be curious to see what she'll make of my sister, too."
Roper makes an amused snort of a sound. "I don't think I've got enough time to teach you 'Go Fish' well enough to play against Alaisa, but it'd be fucking funny to have her play Aze." He moves his other hand over to hers, setting it up in a mirror of hers on his chest. "Here, I'll give you an example of how to play. First things first, you gotta get a question in your head, something you wanna know. Let's say the turtle, right? I wanna know why you have it.
"But I can't ask for that card directly. I'm fishing, so. I start off with something like," he pauses and walks his fingers to the side. "'Did you like doing arts and stuff, as a kid? You know. Painting? Ceramics? Tying bunches of sticks together and calling it art?' Like that. You bury what you want, and you ask around it. You asking about my tapping…might be that you ask, 'Do you get songs stuck in your head a lot?' because you're trying to eliminate if it's just a habit of tapping out a beat in my head."
"Mm, I see," Syarra shifts her head against his shoulder in a nod. "Circling it in a way that they can't tell what you're after, so they're not sure what to hide. So it's defensive and offensive. Obscuring your own attack while you try to find where to defend."
Roper grins at her, pleased. "Yeah. Next question after your first is where the skill comes in. Because you gotta redirect. I've mentioned ceramics. You might not immediately think of the turtle. But I say something like, 'Do you like any little creatures? Rabbits? Turtles? Toads? Birds?' and you put those two together and you might think, 'aha. My ceramic turtle.' So it's gotta be something weirder. 'Would you keep something poorly made if you liked the person or would you trash it as soon as they left?' That sort of thing. I'm asking because I'm seeing if you'd keep a gift for sentimental reasons, but you don't know that yet."
"And then in the end… what are the win conditions?" Syarra drops her hand back to his chest. "Either get what you want to know, or successfully find out what the other wants to know?"
"It's a bit like…you get to the point where you reveal that you've collected all your cards, and you know something about them that they didn't tell you directly. So, in this case, I'd say to win, 'The little ceramic turtle you have in your room was a gift given to you by your sister that she made you at some point.' And you tell me if I'm right. If I got there before you could answer yours enough, I win. If I'm fucking wrong, then the game can keep going, but I just lost all my cards. I can't ask anything about that one, and I gotta pick a new question to answer, while you work on yours. Whoever can reveal a full set of cards enough to say they answered a question wins."
"So then if one does figure out what one's opponent is after - if I realized you were after where the turtle came from, for instance - I would try to lead you to a wrong answer? I would assume outright lying is not allowed, but answering in such a way as to imply things that aren't true. Then I buy time to get my own answer."
"Yeah. That's the part you're gonna be real fun to play with," Roper says, and his voice has a pleasant rasp to it, almost warm, as he walks his fingers over to hers. "It's just like the card game. You can't fucking lie, and you have to answer what's asked, but. You can lie like a Paladin. Tell the truth, but so carefully that it's almost not true. You keep as much information to yourself as you can, or put in things that are true but irrelevant, while still answering it honestly. It's all in the details of what you do and don't say."
Syarra interlaces her fingers with his, and answers in a low voice, "Yes, that I can do. But you always read more from me than I think I'm giving away. I hope… you wouldn't be disappointed if I lose. At least, at first."
"Naw. It's what I did. What I was good at enough to make someone bring me back. If you want, any time I beat you at it, we could spar with just weapons and you can fucking kick my ass," Roper offers, and there's still that warmth in his voice, but tension in his hand with hers — and he's not holding it back as well, the pressure increasing just a little too much in a slow slide towards pain. "But with either of them, I win either way, even when I'm losing. Because it's with you."
Syarra smiles, answering the tightening of his grip with her own. "I would agree to that. I suppose that must be why I was brought back, though I was never told. Given enough time, maybe one day I will out-fish you, and you might 'kick my ass'." Syarra twists her hand, a sharp motion to put pressure on both of their finger joints. "Speaking of fishing for information, did you find out anything more about the tombstone?"
Roper inhales a breath he doesn't need and it takes him a second to reply as he stares at their hands, accepting the possibility of pain with a lopsided smile. "Yeah. Most important thing — it wasn't made for him now. That thing was in the ground for long enough for some discoloration. And it was professionally done, the stone good quality. If I had to guess, I'd say it's his old one, from when he died the first time. Stolen or taken. Which is fucking weird, because it means that someone either noticed we got him and went all the way to wherever the fuck he was buried before, got it, and came all the fucking way back…or they had it all along and they were just…waiting to send it in. The puzzle feels more like the latter, but I don't know. There's the thing with the living sister. Maybe she dug it up and sent it through the fucking mail."
"But was he buried before?" Syarra keeps up the pressure, but doesn't push over into pain yet. "I'm not entirely clear about what exactly happened to Westwind's squad. If they were killed by Kaela Mondragon, then did she not just have them raised directly? If he was buried and she stole the body, it's possible he took the gravestone himself."
"It'll give some answers, if I can track it down. Because someone made that headstone, someone stuck it in the ground, and then someone took it back out. If I had what I did before, I'd already be able to tell you each of those," Roper says and there's a deep bitterness in his voice for a moment. "But I don't. I can only tell you what I can see off it, and that I have some ideas for how to get to those answers. But it'll take fucking time, and I don't know how much we need them sooner. The only important one to answer is if the sister is in on it. If Kaela has a living ally on her side, then we need to get the living in on this to kill her if she's cooperating willingly. We can't do that one."
"If she has a living ally, that's a different problem," Syarra says, twisting her hand slightly further. "And one the Alliance should solve on their own, if we alert them to it. As for the gravestone - we'll see if it's important once we know what it is. I wonder if it still mattered to him, to be remembered in that manner."
"I don't give a fuck either way. He's just a puzzle piece to put into place now as we destroy the rest of them," Roper says, and he moves their hands up closer to his face, eyes on Syarra's. "Sya. You flirting, or you starting something. Because I'm going to break your fingers in a second if I don't let go." It's a dark, midnight whisper, and it's ambiguous if he wants her to let go or not — his expression says let go, but his voice is suggestion to hold on.
There's a moment of silence, and Syarra's face goes blank as her gaze shifts to their interlinked fingers. Then she takes a breath and relaxes her hand, trying to pull away. Her voice is flat as she says, "Let's call it flirting."
Roper lets her pull away, that tension in his hand as he keeps himself from pushing against the edge of the Hunger. He moves his hand back behind his head, propping himself up a little more, while his other arm stays around her, his hand burrowing into her hair. He looks at her a moment longer before he shifts in closer to press a kiss to her forehead. "Okay. Flirting," he agrees. "I meant to be less…" A vague movement of his head. "But the fucking kvaldir…and you know how unsatisfying they are." There's a hushed quality to some of his sibilants, his voice low.
"I should be fine for today," Syarra says, a little bit of animation creeping back into her face as they move away from a certain kind of edge. "Vrykul suffer well. But… even when I'm not thinking about it, I'm thinking about it. Somewhere underneath my thoughts. I need to watch that more closely. But if you need…"
"I don't need it. I want it. That's not the same thing," Roper says, and he keeps his hand carefully in her hair, inhaling as if he can breathe her in. "It's always fucking there. It's just closer than I want it to be today."
"I don't mind. You know I don't. I heal. But… we don't have to," Syarra says, closing her eyes. "It's important that we choose."
Roper presses another kiss to her, a little more pressure this time, his gaze intense and focused. "It's important that we choose," he repeats, that same softening of his sibilants, a hushed edge to his voice. "And I'm choosing the man today. For as long as I fucking can anyway," he adds, a dry thread weaving through the husky sound.
"Then what does Roper-to-be-Sunstrike the man want?" Syarra asks with just the slightest hint of playfulness in her voice. She opens her eyes to meet his gaze again as she lowers her arm to curl around his waist. "Do you want to try to play Go Fish? Or something else?"
"Need cards for the full game of Go Fish. I'll stop by Valiance, get them off a fucking sailor or something." Roper studies her for a few seconds, fingers moving along her hair and there's that sense again of frost gathering around his hand. "But we could practice it, with things you already know the answer to, if you wanted. Just to get the hang of it. I'll tell you when I've figured out what you're angling for, and you tell me if you've figured out what I'm asking about. And we'll see how long the man lasts."
Syarra considers that, and then nods. "We can try it. Do you have a question in mind already?"
"It'll be something I already know, for the same reason. Just practice. And yeah. I got one." Roper taps a single time against Syarra. "Just pull out a puzzle piece."
Syarra taps once with her finger against his hip. "One puzzle piece. Will you go first?"
"Alright. Did you ever pretend you were a soldier when you were a kid?"
"That's a yes or no question," Syarra says, narrowing her eyes. "Are there any rules on how elaborate my answer should be?"
"Nope. It just depends on what you want me to know, and how direct you wanna be. If you start thinking you know where I'm going, you can misdirect. And it doesn't have to be a yes or no if you don't want it to be," Roper drawls. "'I considered myself a soldier when I was a child, because I was serious about it, and it was not pretend in those moments,'" Roper says in a close approximation to Syarra's voice.
"Then let's try this," Syarra tilts her head. "I was encouraged to pretend to be a mage, but I pretended to be many things, a soldier included."
Roper laughs quietly, as he taps a single, slow tap against her again. "Alright. Go fish."
"On the same theme, then," Syarra says, thinking. "Do you enjoy sparring, physically, or is it a means to an end?"
"Never been much for it. Fighting means I've fucked up, or it used to. Just gotta be good enough for when I do fuck up." Roper's drawl and rasp have vanished, leaving only that clear voice behind. "Alright. You ever swing so hard at something that you broke something of yours? Hand or stick or whatever weapon you were using?"
Syarra stares at him for a moment, trying to read his face, before she says, "Yes. Hand or stick or whatever weapon I was using. And I don't need to say more?"
"Don't have to," Roper agrees.
"And I can ask more involved questions," Syarra says, asking for clarification. "Like, what's one time you remember fucking up?"
"You can yeah, but make it that vague and you'll get — I once fucked up having a fork in the wrong hand." Roper brushes his hand along Syarra's hair and there's something colder in his expression. "And I'm missing gaps in my head. Sometimes I can't answer a question anymore. It doesn't exist. Alright. You ever buy something, a dress or a bag or whatever, and when you got home and started to try to use it, realized it wasn't right, did you just keep it and shove it back, toss it, or go back to the place to return it and get your money back?"
Syarra makes a tch sound, and says, "I know, and that makes it harder. I want to know everything but some things about you don't exist anymore. To your question - just keep it. And mine… how do you react when something frightens you?"
"Depends on if it's something I can kill or not. If I can kill it, I do." Roper twirls a curl around a finger. "You ever get your clothing tailored to you before Cressidha did it — you know, buy something from a store and then have someone make it fit you perfectly?"
"Yes, sometimes. She's very good at it, though. Cressidha, I mean," Syarra's grip tightens around his waist slightly, but then she deliberately relaxes her hand. "Then for you… if you're going for a kill, not for pain, what would be your preferred strike?"
Roper tilts his head. "Are you fishing that I used to be a knife fighter, baby," he murmurs before he answers, "If it's alive, I would go for a right hand strike through the stomach up to the heart." It's a knife fighter sort of strike, something close combat and assumes a maneuverable blade.
"That didn't take long," Syarra says ruefully. "I feel like yours is something about my sword, but I don't quite see how it fits together yet."
Roper grins at her, chuckling and there it is again, brief and fleeting, but a moment of a young man, happy and pleased enough to break through the shadows before it wisps away, leaving only a remnant behind. "Want me to keep going or tell you now?"
Syarra considers. "Maybe one more question, and I'll see how close I can get."
"Okay. Did you ever do any pictures of yourself as a soldier, you know, as a kid or later, just doodle something?" Roper asks and there's a touch of the husky note in his voice as he rubs a curl gently between his fingers.
Syarra hesitates. "It seems like you're fishing about my having my sword custom-made. Drawing the plans, made to order, things that are not quite right…"
Roper laughs, a darkly bright sound, pulling her closer, and angles to kiss her lips. "Got it."
Syarra kisses him back, and for a moment a genuine smile flickers across her face. "Maybe I'm not ready for Alaisa yet. But it's fun, with you."
Roper inhales another breath, pulling her closer — and then exhaling as he releases the growing tightness, a lopsided smile still on his face, even if the edges are a little sharper, and relaxes back, closing his eyes as he holds onto the man over the monster a little harder. "And that's why I'm gonna be fucking Roper Sunstrike."