(2023-07-18) A Beauty, A Joy, and A Priceless Heart - Rated A

Details

Author:	Athena
Summary:	Siamus continues to recover from Wrathgate, and hypothermia, nascent pneumonia, laryngitis, spiritual crisis, and his death twenty-two years ago will not stop Siamus Fallon from dealing with the allergies he's been slowly developing for months for Zath and Avrenne. The three of them begin to strengthen the lines of the triangle of relationships between them, and Siamus doesn't die. What do those Light priests know, anyway. Romantic RP with Mature Themes Rated A for Adults Only, please see CWs and Rating for own preferences. 25k-ish words.
Rating:	A for Adults Only 18+

Chain: Siarenne

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drinking, alcohol, grief, crying, polyamory, romance, romantic touching, kissing, seduction, possessive language,explicit references to sex, graphic descriptions of nudity/body parts, sailor language

At some point in the night, Siamus shifts again, not away from Avrenne but more toward Zath, lapsing onto his back. He drops a hand onto Zath's sleeping form in that sort of bonelessly childlike bonk way and no doubt wakes Zath up in doing so. Sorry, Zath. But there is Siamus's hand resting on you now.

His breathing is still thin but it is even, regular, and his sleeping expression is smoother than it has been in the last many hours he's spent sleeping.

Zath, as Siamus may well be familiar with by now, has not moved at all during the night, using Siamus as something to steady his back against and shifting to accommodate when Siamus moves but otherwise sleeping as though dead. He wakes first, eyes popping open immediately when he is bonked, but stays where he is.

Avrenne barely stirs. She adjusts slightly, her hand still on Zath, wrapped over Siamus, her head on Siamus' shoulder, pressed close against him, and sighs in her sleep.

Siamus frowns, a line digging in between his brows. He rasps something, shifts restlessly — and then gives a full-body jolt and is awake, gasping for breath.

It isn't the blind and heedless repeating panic of before; he stares at the ceiling, eyes strained, and takes his hand from Zath to drop it to his own chest, as if he needs to verify externally that he is, in fact, breathing. After a moment, he exhales, relaxes. Blinks, and tries to orient himself.

Avrenne doesn't fully wake, but she stirs more — and again, it's not purposeful, the suggestive movement of her hips as she moves her leg up along Siamus', this is pure reflex after sharing a bed for a week in recent memory — murmuring Siamus' name in a sleepy voice.

Zath turns toward him and sits up in one smooth motion, gazing at him with gentle concern.

"You've slept for several hours," he says. "This is good."

Siamus takes a moment to process this data, but once he does, he blinks and offers Zath a slightly sardonic smile. Go, me.

He turns his head to consider Avrenne against his other side. She is still asleep, or appears so; he shifts slightly to press a gentle kiss to her forehead, and then distentangles himself from her, also gently, to move toward Zath, wrap an arm around him. "Hungry," he admits in a thready rasp. Perhaps this is merely informational, as he does not seem inclined to let go of Zath.

Avrenne makes a faint questioning sort of sound, and there's a pause before she, in the absence of Siamus, curls up into herself, making herself as small as she can, as she pulls both hands to her chest as if she's keeping something safe there. There's another deep sigh, and she relaxes back to sleep. Five more minutes. Zzz.

Zath turns a soft gaze on Avrenne, because come on. But then he tears it away and back to Siamus.

"What would you like to eat?" he asks. "Besides anyone currently in this bed. Your heart isn't yet up to the strain, my dear."

Siamus huffs a soft laugh. "Ahhh," he says, which might be meant as a groan of disappointment but lacks the correct tone in whisper-form. "What d'ye suppose I'm allowed to have? More broth? Would an egg and toast kill me?"

"Likely not, I think now. Your temperature feels less corpselike, and you slept well. Let's see how you do. I think you will eat better if it is something you actually want. I'll go and fetch it, hm?"

"Thank ye, lovely." Siamus smiles at Zath, drowsy-eyed. "Good to me." He touches the other man's jaw briefly.

Zath leans in to kiss him briefly, or at least that was his intention. It ends up being a bit less brief than expected, a hand slipping into Siamus's hair and a tongue into his mouth. Before he can cause Siamus any Cardiac Issues, however, he reluctantly withdraws and heads out of the bedroom like Orpheus leaving the underworld (I am the narrator, I can mix mythologies, there are 5 people reading this at best).

I thought I was the narrator.

So did I.

Siamus watches Zath leave, still smiling. When the door has closed behind the other man, he rolls to his other side, contemplates Tiny Avrenne. He shifts as if to wrap himself around the smol curl, and then hesitates; instead, he lifts a hand and skims her cheekbone with his thumb, trails fingertips along her jaw and then down her throat, rests his hand on her shoulder. He doesn't say anything.

Avrenne does that partial waking, as though she's thinking about it, considering five more minutes. "Siamus?" It's soft and sleepy, and she might not be actually awake just yet.

"Aye," he whispers. "Pet. Ye slept well? Ye look soft."

He doesn't seem to mean in the conventional sense; he's using the word more in a sense of cozy, relaxed. Softe. But also he takes his hand from her shoulder and slips it into her hair. Because she is Soft.

Avrenne's eyes blink open, once, twice, a warm and drowsy smile forming on her face as she gazes up at Siamus. "Mmhm." She uncurls from her Sleeping Position, stretching out slowly, luxuriously, as though she has not yet fully pulled together the where and what and when she is. It takes her only a moment (clunk, clunk, brain thoughts go), and her eyes open more fully, thoughts clicking once more. "Siamus." Her voice is still a little husky with sleep, and she reaches out a hand up to his face, a light touch that is both affection and also temperature check.

His eyelids flutter at the touch. "Aye," he agrees again. "Thank ye," he whispers. Something of a non-sequitur, for the 400th time.

"Hm?" Avrenne has only just woken up. She does not follow the leap. "For what?" She turns to Zath to find out if he knows, only to land on an empty side of the bed. She moves up into a sit, brushing back Siamus' hair from his face. "Captain Tyrrell was here when you woke?" She sounds like she believes it was true, but she's making sure.

Siamus is distracted from whatever he was thanking her for. Or perhaps he is just glad of the change in subject, glad not to have to answer. He glances over his shoulder at Zath's place. "Aye." He looks at her again. "Went to get — food. For me." The embarrassment in his expression isn't masked. It is embarrassing to have someone bring you food.

A moment later he shuts his eyes on a flash of chagrin. "I should ha'e — tides forgi'e, I didn't think. Will ye eat? Ye can — when he comes back. I'll ha'e something else."

Avrenne smiles at him with open affection. "I expect Captain Tyrrell will bring up a full tray for us all. We all have brought up enough for everyone when we have gone down for something." Everyone's been in the being brought food category, buddy. "Don't worry, Siamus, we are all taking care of each other as well as you." She leans forward to press a kiss to his lips, a soft one, a happy sort of sigh at the contact.

He responds automatically, shifting toward her, into the kiss, his hand tightening in her hair. "Avrenne," he breathes.

And then he draws back to study her face, his own grave and drawn. "My voice," he whispers, as though he is breaking some grim news to her.

Avrenne remains close, looking at him, a soft heat in her eyes. "Yes?" It's a gentle question.

He licks his lips. "If I can't — sing. Again," he ventures. There is grief in his gaze, even as he tries to wall it off. "I may ha'e to — rearrange. The fleet. Somewhat."

Somewhere, Sintha Fallon just rolled her eyes and muttered jellyfish, for no particular reason.

Avrenne brushes her hand along his cheek, her expression gentle. "That would be true," she allows. "If you cannot sing again. But, Siamus, it's been only two days since the battle. It takes time to heal from smoke and fire and strain. I know that myself. I lost my voice after the Fall of the City. And you hear me now. I can still sing." She studies Siamus' face, her eyes dark and thoughtful. "Unless you are concerned that there is anything else? Some reason you would not be able to sing even after your throat healed fully?"

His gaze slides away from her, though his face is still turned toward hers. He swallows twice. "I couldn't," he whispers. "I tried, and I —"

"You couldn't reach it, during the battle, far from the sea. Why would that halt you after?" It's a soft query.

"I couldn't — sing," he tells her. "I — stood. And didn't. And now, if she's —" He touches his throat, an almost involuntary gesture.

Your husband is a very superstitious man, Avrenne.

Avrenne's expression grows softer, and she sets her hand over his, a very light touch. "Oh, Siamus. No. How could she ever abandon you, wish not to hear from you, her most loyal man? She's waiting for you; she must be." Avrenne might know possibly something of it. "If you are concerned, we are summoning Brother Eli, after you've had something to eat and drink, and if you would like to dress or not, when you're ready. Surely he will know more. Don't despair just yet."

Relief floods his expression, and he returns a meltingly grateful look to Avrenne's face. Brother Eli. He nods.

"I should — dress. Aye."

Avrenne looks back at him with love in her eyes. "When Captain Tyrrell comes back, we'll see to it." She smiles at him, stroking her hand along his as though he's beloved and she can gently absorb him into her through touch. There's that sense that the room might be dropping away from her, and she's caught in the staring at him like a fixed point.

As if on cue, or as if his player just returned from dinner, Zath enters the room with a tray. On it are two plates with eggs and toast, two different types of juice, milk, two cups with tea, containers of milk and sugar, and a bowl of strawberries. On closer inspection, one of the plates is actually two plates stacked on top of each other, one of the juice glasses is actually nested inside another glass, and it appears as though about a third of the strawberries are missing. As if nothing on this tray holds any particular significance, he very casually places it on the nightstand on Avrenne's side of the bed.

"Breakfast is served," he says.

Siamus struggles to sit upright, eyeing the tray. "Where in hell," he wonders in a rasp, and looks up at Zath. "Strawberries? Here?"

This is a good sign, re: brainpower.

Zath, for some reason, turns a little pink. "Dalaran has been sending care packages," he says.

Avrenne turns her attention from Siamus to Zath as he enters the room, and she notes the contents of the tray, her expression going softer at the sight of the strawberries. She sits up more fully, her hands on Siamus to try to helpfully adjust the pillow behind him, and turns a brilliant smile on Zath. "Thank you, Captain."

Zath is avoiding her gaze. "Help yourself to anything that appeals to you, Siamus, but if you start to feel ill, please take a break and let it settle, hm?"

Siamus does not reach for anything, because the tray is on the other side of Avrenne and he is a gentleman. But also he is probably not strong enough to lunge across her toward it. "May I — tea?" he rasps.

Avrenne waits for Siamus to settle into a sitting position before she moves to pick the tray up to place it first over her own lap, because heavy (for her) and she needs to set it down. "Captain?" She looks to Zath for the decision.

Siamus looks at Zath too. For the love of all that's holy, let a man have some hot caffeine.

"Try a few sips and see how it settles," he says. "No more than a cup please; it can overstimulate the heart if it is weak. Er, the heart, that is, not the tea."

"I do not have a weak heart," Siamus informs the room in a dry whisper. "Let me feel half-civilized again, aye?" Tea is Dignity.

"A day ago tea could apparently kill you," Zath says crisply. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves."

Avrenne picks up the tray again, this time intending to settle it over Siamus' lap, to reduce how far he needs to reach for his hot caffeine and eggs. She doesn't remark on the state of his heart, as she picks up a plate, and selects out several of the strawberries. Once that is in her lap, she picks up one of the cups of plain tea, adding nothing at all to it.

Siamus also takes up a cup of black tea. He does not yet reach for a plate, but drinks tea slowly and a little bit as though he fucken dares his heart.

"Have as much as you like," Zath says to them. "No need for it to go to waste."

"You already ate?" Avrenne asks as she reaches for one of the strawberries first, twirling it idly at the stem between her fingers much like she did the night of the Thenedain Remebrance Ball. There's something almost playfully teasing about the look in her eyes, if he looked.

Zath, still avoiding her eyes, lifts her plate to reveal the one stacked underneath it. It is slightly greasy and scattered with toast crumbs. He sets her plate back down on top of it, then gestures to the juice glass nested inside another.

Avrenne makes a "Mm," sound in acknowledgment of this information. Then she raises the strawberry to her mouth to bite into it. She isn't likely deliberately making it into a little bit of a seductive thing, but there might be something inherently a touch of it in the nature of eating a strawberry held between her fingers.

"Thank ye, Tyrrell," rasps Siamus. "How are —" He gestures with one hand toward the outer door vaguely. His expression has gone somber again. "How is it? Down there?"

"Help is pouring in," Zath says calmly. "Support for the military is at an all-time high."

Siamus nods wearily. "Shame about the bloody circumstance to merit it," he says with a touch of his usual sardonic sharpness, and then it fades. "I should — contact the fleet. About supply and… extra hands."

Avrenne nods, setting down the stem of a second strawberry. "Sintha and I sent out a few letters yesterday, to be sure the Fleet knew you lived. I contacted several people I know in Stormwind, Dalaran, and Ironforge, to see what could be done on short notice. We can draft those letters to the fleet later, if you would prefer. I can write them if you tell me what you would like done, or Brother Eli can help with ensuring that word is carried back as necessary to coordinate. Miss Coit is also here, and can have anyone she knows to summon brought here to relay your orders. But, for now." She deliberately takes a sip of her tea.

"I suspect the fervor will die down soon enough — civilians suffer a sort of compassion fatigue if they think too deeply about wartime losses for very long at a stretch — but for now, we may as well take advantage of the support."

"If they need infarmary hands, Miss Coit should be instructed to summon Platt back from Lady Kate, and have him bring Siles wi'. Platt's the ship's surgeon, was here earlier for the siege, wi' the rifle delivery. Siles is a Light-priest." Siamus drinks his tea, his gaze gone narrow. "The 'Witch should still be standing by for cargo or personnel, if ye find out where she's needed." He nods at Avrenne, tries to clear his throat, has run out of whisper.

"I will see it done," Avrenne says, and it has that ring of someone having proclaimed that now nothing will stand in the way of getting it done. "I can handle the rest. I can speak to High Commander Wrymbane as well, see if he has any opinions on what would be best." She flicks her eyes to his tea and then back up to him. "I realize it may not be to your preference, but if you will take some honey in your tea, it will soothe your throat more." It's not either suggestion or order, just information.

"Drinking more in general — besides alcohol — will also speed your recovery along those lines," Zath suggests. He hesitates, then says, "I could pass along a message to the High Commander. I'm to meet with him later today it seems."

Avrenne flicks her eyes to Zath, something sympathetic in her face. "I shall need to think of the questions. Asking only 'what do you need' is often too vague to be of use when it is on this scale of recovery; his list is likely a league long. I have memorized most of the Fleet personnel but not all of them yet, to know who might be of the most use for what Wintergarde requires immediately. We should summon Brother Eli before you need to go. And if Siamus might be able to get dressed in something simple to meet with him, after a rest from breakfast, perhaps?"

"Ah, must we dress him…?" Zath says with a hint of a sly smile.

Siamus snorts. He makes a mild face and then acknowledges as though it pains him to do so, "I could do wi' some honey. And if I'm dressed and have a table, I can draw some plans, letters. Lists. For ye." He clears — fails to clear — his throat again and nods at Avrenne.

Avrenne smiles back at him, reaching her hand out to touch his cheek lightly. "The table may need to be the tray here, but I think we can manage something. And I will be here to help you with it, later." She has eaten very little of her breakfast. A few bites of the egg and toast, and three strawberries and nothing more. Her tea is gone at least. Siamus, of the two of the others, knows how very little this is of what she would eat.

"Siamus, does your wife always eat like a bird?" Zath inquires as he begins sorting through Siamus's clothes. He knew right where they were and made a beeline.

"She does no'," says Siamus, but sets his free hand reassuringly on Avrenne's knee. "Time to time, when circumstances." It is a vague and pleasant dismissal; let a lady eat like a bird if she wanna.

He does, though, cast his own sidelong look at her, then down at her plate, then back to her. He suggests — mildly — another bite of toast with a tip of his chin at same.

Avrenne smiles warmly at Siamus, and takes another bite of her toast. It's not a large bite, but she manages to get it down. She leans over to press a kiss to his cheek, lingering for a moment as she breathes in. "I should get dressed myself."

"I ate seven strawberries," Zath observes almost absently. "That is six more than I have eaten at any point in the past twelve years. But after Siamus's astonishing display of courage last night it felt petty to cling to such a small aversion."

"An aversion? To strawberries?" Siamus is distracted by Avrenne's departure, smiling vaguely after her. He picks up and eats a strawberry himself, heedless of any symbolism in his breakfast fruit.

Avrenne looks over at that revelation, and there's another bright smile, as she takes out the little black bag from her cloak. "I am very glad to hear it, Captain. They are one of my favorites." She walks across the room with that habitual elegance, but nothing more, aiming for the bathroom.

"I had a strawberry patch at the estate as a young man," he explains to Siamus. "It burned under distressing circumstances a dozen years ago. Mildly distressing, to be sure, by comparison, but we do not get to choose the things that haunt us, I suppose."

Siamus looks disquieted all the same, and surveys Zath. "I'm sorry to hear."

Avrenne walks to Zath in a detour by the bureau to set a hand gently on his arm in that light way she does, looking at Siamus with something apologetic in her expression. "It was something of my fault. We spoke of them, twelve years ago, at a ball. His family sent a proposal offering for me soon after, and my father rejected it out of hand. And, well." She looks to Zath, with that same apology, not giving the rest of it away, but letting him explain it how he'd like. Siamus might be able to connect some dots. "I'm glad to hear that it is no longer lingering." She moves as though to continue her path to the bathroom.

"It was not by far my first such rejection," Zath says. "But my mother had begun to — her mind was not as it had been. She went into a rage and blamed the strawberries. Or my interest in them. It doesn't matter. It was a terrible day, but it was not the strawberries' fault."

Avrenne pauses at the doorway of the bathroom, possibly smiling at that, and then gently closes the door behind her so she can change.

Siamus is still surveying Zath. "No," he agrees, "never a strawberry's fault." The words sound like a joke, the tone does not. But who knows, whisper-tone is tough.

Avrenne is changing fairly slowly. One might almost suspect she's doing it on purpose to buy time.

Siamus glances at the bathroom door and back to Zath. "I'd no' realized ye'd been through… the marriage dance twice," he says dryly. No wonder Zath isn't into her. "But then I don't remember half all the young ladies shoved at me o'er years. Perhaps some o' them made the round more than once." He holds out another strawberry to Zath.

"You can see why I was so infuriated when she came to Northrend chasing after my hand, given that she cost me my precious strawberries." He leans in to take the offered strawberry in his teeth, biting off all but the stem.

It's only once the strawberry is in his mouth that he seems to fully realize what he's done, and with Siamus's gaze on him he suddenly seems unsure what to do next. He chews twice or thrice, carefully, and then swallows in a way that suggests he ought to have chewed twice or thrice more. He holds Siamus's gaze uncertainly for a moment.

"She told me what singing means to you," he says then, very quietly, as though to match Siamus's whisper. "And about your faith. And about your search for Derek Proudmoore's remains. That is how we were able to piece together how to help you." He gives a slow apprehensive sigh. "I know that… what we are… does not lend itself to a need to… discuss the details of daily life, or the past. I understand that. And yet I find that I want to reveal myself to you, and it pains me when I realize how little I know of you beyond… what you enjoy. I wish… I wish that we were… more. Or less. Whatever it would take for you to confide in me as you do in her."

He seems to hear himself immediately and repent, wincing slightly.

"I"m sorry, that's foolish. She is your wife, your partner. She must know these things in order to build a life with you. All the same… there you have it. What I wish, what I … feel. For all the good it does either of us."

He ends this little monologue with a faint, resigned smile. There, the smile says. At the very least he has unburdened himself. And now he seems on the verge of turning away, rising from the bed.

Siamus, watching Zath with a shadow of perplexity, lays the strawberry stem aside on his plate. He reaches his hand out to touch Zath's shoulder. "Zath," he rasps. "I don't – " He hesitates. "I've no' — meant to keep a thing from ye, lovely. I'm no' a man who… talks on himself is all. I'll tell ye anything ye like to know. Only ask it of me. I've no' been trying to – " Another pause, and then he adds dryly, "Most of the people I take to bed don't have questions about… my religion."

His dark gaze searches Zath's face. "I've no' asked much of ye because I know you're a private man. I assumed it went in both ways, that ye'd no' much interest in knowing more. And as I said, I'm no' a man who'll just talk on himself. More's the case when I doubt it's wanted."

He glances at the bathroom door, and then back to Zath. He doesn't have to lower his voice because, you know: stuck at whisper. "Half what Avrenne knows, she sorted on her own. The woman's… unnatural canny. She'd sorted what a tidesage was and that I am one before we'd finished negotiating the marriage contract, based on clauses I set regarding… our children." He shakes his head wonderingly, admiringly. "I'm no' — lying wi' my head in her lap explaining my childhood." He knits his brow and glances again toward the door. "As to how — I ne'er told her. About Proudmoore's rem – "

A different look crosses his face. "Ah," he rasps. "Ta." He looks at Zath again, narrow-eyed and resigned. "Apparently if ye've things ye'd like to know, my sister will be more than happy."

Zath watches Siamus, soft-eyed, through the entire speech, but at the end suddenly gives him a strange, wobbly smile. "She said she adores me," he says. "Your sister. What does that mean, in Sinthan?"

Siamus arches a brow. "Well, I've no' got a dictionary wi' me, but I believe it means she is passing fond of ye."

Zath looks at Siamus flatly as though to say, No, that can't be it, never mind, I'll ask someone else. And then waves it away, quite literally, with one slender white hand.

"You're right," he says, backtracking a bit. "I am a private man. A very private man. And yet I have bared myself to you." He holds Siamus's gaze. Please understand him, Siamus, don't make him Say Things.

Siamus reaches out an arm, beckons for Zath to slide back against him. Pardon the breakfast tray, careful there.

Zath does as Siamus bids, as always. He seems a little awkward, but not unwilling.

Siamus wraps his arm around Zath's shoulders, kisses the side of his neck. "You're the loveliest man. Every bit of ye. And I'm grateful to ye. For sharing wi' me. I do know how private, aye?" He pauses ruminatively, rests his chin on Zath's shoulder. "I'm grateful, Zath. What — would ye want? Of me?"

Zath tenses immediately. "Nothing. I'm sorry. If what I said earlier sounded as though I were asking you for something. I was only trying to express what I felt. My feelings are not calls to action. I was only… baring myself again."

"Stop," Siamus orders him quietly, a whisper, and doesn't release his hold. "Stay. I didn't mean — ye said ye wished ye knew things of me, or that I confided. I know you're no' asking me for something, Zath. I'm telling ye that ye can have it, though. Anything. Ask anything of me, lovely, it's yours." He kisses Zath's neck again, and then his ear. "I can't deny ye anything."

Zath's tension melts away, and he reaches to turn Siamus's face toward him for a kiss. Then he whispers against Siamus's lips, his eyes closed, his manner reverent.

"Why not?"

Siamus stills a moment, breath caught, balanced on a precarious edge of something. "Because," he whispers back at last, "I need ye, my lovely. My love."

He kisses Zath. Maybe he is trying to punctuate the endearment, maybe he is trying to distract from it, but ha ha any way.

Zath shivers and returns the kiss, exhaling audibly as though releasing a long-held breath. "I love you," he murmurs hastily, untidily against his mouth, as involuntary as the exhale itself. "I love you, I love you… I love you. Siamus, I love you… Light, I love you, I love you so wretchedly…" He sounds pained now, exhausted, like a man finished heaving up his breakfast. Ooop, almost finished. "I love you." The last is almost tearful. Apologetic and somehow at the same time angry. I can't help it.

Siamus shifts to get both his hands in Zath's hair, and the breakfast tray on his lap slides precariously. In a minute they are going to have to get him out of bed and dressed because that bed is gonna be a lot of Egg and Juice, and neither of those is a sexy euphemism for anything. Siamus does not seem to notice. He is busy trying to use his tongue to stop Zath's feelings from falling out of his mouth.

He does stop the Feelings Cascade for a moment, and then Zath notices the tray, and lunges to rescue it.

"Damn it," he mutters as he sets things in order. "Pull yourself together, Zathary, before you make a mess of the sheets in the least interesting way possible."

"Zathary," rasps Siamus softly, with a wicked glint in his eye. He is clearly both teasing — ha ha I know ur full name — and also somehow making 'Zathary' sound like one of Lordaeron's Top Three Sexiest Names.

He sits back just enough to help Zath with the tray rescue, and to guide it from his lap toward the other side of the bed, before reaching for Zath again. "Zathary," he repeats, his whisper smiling, drowsy, "my poet. Will ye tell me it again, one time?"

He probably does not mean the thing about the messy sheets.

Zath slides his arms around Siamus and rests his chin atop his hair, a thing he can do when they are not standing up. It is a nurturing, protective gesture that is also convenient in that it prevents eye contact.

"I love you," he says, barely audible. "Desperately. And you have only yourself to blame."

"I have no'," rasps Siamus, "heard that said in… I don't recall." He gives a whisper-laugh. "No' the part about having myself to blame. I hear that fair regular." He lifts a hand to trail his fingers down Zath's cheek, and then freezes a moment on a caught breath; something has just struck him.

It passes; he relaxes into Zath's hold and strokes the side of his unseen face. "Love."

He might be addressing Zath, he might be ruminating on the word, it might be shorthand for a longer phrase.

"I have not said it in… eight years," Zath says. "And only to one person before that. But I have been… telling you. In every way that I dared."

Siamus slides his hand around the back of Zath's neck, urging him to shift for another kiss. "Love," he says. "Ye have me."

Zath lets himself be guided, lowers his head and kisses Siamus with a slow, fervent intensity until such time as something interrupts them.

Siamus, his hand around the back of Zath's neck, does not seem in a hurry to be interrupted. Even if his breakfast is getting cold. Mm, congealed egg. His hand finds Zath's thigh and his fingers dig in there.

Avrenne once again seems to be trying to make as little noise as possible — opening the door gently, as though she thinks maybe that Siamus has drifted back to sleep, and she's attempting Stealth return. Avrenne is dressed for war again – and more fully this time. Here again is the not-quite-an-Alliance-scout outfit, but now it has been paired with her hair up in a tight, professional chignon, and cosmetics have been applied with a skilled, light hand to make her eyes more intense along her lashes and brows, something applied to make her seem sharper and serious; there is an element of suggestion of a soldier in her now, in her bearing and face, someone unafraid of an active warzone and about to go out to tour the facility and pick up slack. She still has her wedding ring on her hand, but she now also wears the seastalk case on a very short chain at her waist.

For a moment, she has her full mask on – Cool, Composed Duchess, as though she’d been applying it in readiness with her cosmetics and hair, simply assembling the whole thing at once – before her eyes land on Siamus as though drawn to a compass point. Her expression lights up at once, and the mask drops into genuine warmth and affection as she looks at the two of them there, in what might be considered a delicate situation.

Zath has no idea that a Lady is present, otherwise he might not let that little glimpse of his tongue show at the corner of his mouth as he adjusts the angle at which he is deep-kissing her husband. Or, you know, perhaps might not be delving for her husband's tonsils at all.

Siamus attempts to use his grip on Zath's thigh to pull Zath over, onto his lap, as he threads his fingers up into the other man's hair. Something about the shift in position, his attempt to rearrange himself on the bed, means that another shift in the room snags a loose corner of his attention; he opens his eyes and spots Avrenne.

He draws back from the kiss at once, releases Zath's thigh. He doesn't let go of the back of his neck. He tries to clear his throat, tries to sit up straighter. He's smiling his ironic sort of ballroom smile.

Zath immediately senses that Something Is Occurring, and he also detaches himself, trying to gather the shreds of his dignity without outright abandoning Siamus in a hurtful manner. There there, friend of mine, we are very close friends.

Avrenne is smiling her bright smile back at Siamus, a soft happy glow to her, her hands resting in front of her in a light, idle clasp.

Awfully good friends, here.

Siamus inclines his head to Avrenne in greeting and surveys her glitter-eyed, still with that smile. He takes his hand from Zath's neck. "Ye look battle-ready, Lady Fallon," he rasps at her; it sounds like A Very Compliment.

Zath seems to fully take Avrenne's appearance in for the first time, and mm, yes. He also approves. Quietly.

"It's an active warzone," Avrenne replies simply, as she crosses over to the bed to the both of them, leaning in to press a kiss to Siamus' cheek, her hand touching Zath as though to prevent him from moving further away from Siamus. "It's reinforced with crystal imbued leather, enchanted heavily against just about everything that it possibly can be, and highly resistant to juice stains." There's a touch of a playful tease at the last. "I will be careful, and I will be back."

Siamus's eyes take a drowsy moment to open after the kiss — lot of Siamus-kissing going on right now, and Siamus approves — and then his smile widens at her and he sweeps her with another appreciative look. "Do, please, aye." That request seems to apply to both being careful and being back.

"Where are you going?" Zath asks with a slight frown.

"I need to check in with a few people here in Wintergarde, and mail several things," Avrenne says as she withdraws from them both with a soft smile, already starting to walk across the room towards the door, threads of composure already weaving through her as she goes in preparation. "I will not likely be far, and I will not be gone long."

Siamus watches her go, and whispers to Zath, "And I ought to get some breakfast in me and some clothes on me, I expect. Start feeling like a proper man again."

Time Passes

The morning has bled into the afternoon before Avrenne returns to the inn suite. When she returns, it's with that same quietness, turning the handle of the inn's outer door carefully as though to not disturb anything or anyone. She removes her boots by the door, and smooths her clothes over once more. There's no injuries on the duchess, and it doesn't look as though anything struck her directly at any point. Her hair is still up, and her wedding ring is in her seastalk case. Composure remains wrapped around her like a cloak, her face set in cool, severe lines.

Very quietly, she makes her way to the doorway of the bedroom to open it slowly and peek inside, ready to shut it once more and pretend she wasn't there if there are still Dignity Stuff Happenings going on.

Dignity has happened. Some indignities may have happened as well in the interim, but if that is so, the various traces of them have been neatly erased before the Duchess's return.

Siamus is sitting upright in bed, propped on pillows, and is dressed, to the extent of a shirt with its collar open, an unbuttoned waistcoat, and trousers. The breakfast tray has been emptied of breakfast (foods and dishes) save for a single cup of tea that looks suspiciously like chamomile with honey (ugh), and he is using it like a lap desk: a tidy stack of blank paper, a small leatherbound ledger, and a fountain pen occupy the tray now. He is just in the act of folding a letter.

Wrathgate, hypothermia, nascent pneumonia, laryngitis, spiritual crisis, and his death twenty-two years ago will not stop Siamus Fallon from getting Work Done now.

There may be a bite mark on his neck.

Zath is tidying up the suite. He seems to have gotten a few more supplies of various kinds and is currently engaged in putting them away, dusting various things, and even reorganizing some things that a layman would say were fine exactly as they were.

He may have teeth exactly the size and shape of the bite mark that may be on Siamus's neck.

Avrenne opens the door more fully to enter it, her face lighting up at the sight of Siamus, although for a beat longer there's still the Composure, before she lets it drop away from her like a dress to the ground to reveal simply Avrenne beneath it. "Siamus," she says warmly, as she walks towards him in the bed, a hand held out to him.

Siamus lays down the folded letter, his expression warming, and lifts a hand to welcome her gesture. "Your Grace," he greets her.

The softness in his gaze is unmistakable, and his smile signals that he is going for that sly, slight hint of in-joke teasing that he usually layers beneath that title. It is hard to do Tone correctly in a whisper, though, so what Avrenne hears is up to her.

There's nothing but an answering warmth in Avrenne at it, her smile brightening further, as she sets her hand in his — no warmer than her usual neutral — and continues forward to lean in to press a kiss to his cheek once more, a lingering touch, with a soft sigh of happiness at it. She withdraws just enough to straighten, remaining there at the bedside to take a seat beside Siamus, and flicks her eyes to Zath. "I believe I now have the pertinent questions to ask the High Commander for you, Captain, if you will be so good as to pass them along for me when you confer with him. I did happen to encounter Lady Cressidha, while I was out. She is maintaining a shift on the wall for the defenses at present, but it will be ending in about two hours from now, and she would like an opportunity to speak with you to see how you are, if you would be willing to do so."

"Of course," Zath says immediately, with a certain softness to his tone that they have heard more often than most, but still not with great frequency.

Avrenne smiles at him, and turns her attention back to Siamus, as she reaches her other hand to her seastalk case to open it. "From what I can gather of the state of things, which are still more than a little in flux at the moment, what is most required at this time are healers for the infirmary who are skilled in non-magical healings; at this time, everyone who could have been healed by magical means has been so, and those who remain require now extended care to heal naturally." She removes her wedding ring from a small velvet pouch next to her seastalk blossom, and closes the case once more, holding her ring in her hand for the moment. "As for the defenses, Naxxaramas remains a threat, but not substantial enough to break through defenders that remain. Although, those who are capable of manning a long range gun may be of most use to relieve some of the wall's defenses and shore up small gaps.

"That is short term, at the least. I would have you ask, Captain, if High Commander Wyrmbane would like additional munitions that can compensate for reduced personnel, such as cannons and large scale explosives, or if he would like more temporary people to fill the gap until more permanent hiring can be made."

Zath nods, finishing up tidying the contents of the nearby bureau as he listens.

Siamus watches Avrenne's handling of her wedding ring absently. "Platt and Siles?" he asks her.

"Mr. Platt would be of the most assistance at present, although they will not turn away any additional healer to relieve those in the infirmary. Many of Cobalt Company remain there as well, volunteering for shifts," Avrenne reports. She flicks her eyes to Siamus, down to her ring, and back up to him, holding it out to him in offer, and straightening her other hand out in suggestion for him to place it back on her finger.

Siamus takes her hand and reaches for her ring with his other hand. He slips the ring carefully back on to her finger, his own touch lingering a moment as if the ring needs precise adjustment against her skin, and then he brings her hand to his lips to kiss it gently, his gaze upturned toward her face. It is a curiously… shy? gaze.

Avrenne has a glow to her, radiating it out, an echo of their wedding day, and it takes her a moment, her fingers curling around his and her eyes on his face with that emotion shining through, before she prompts Siamus, "Shall we summon Brother Eli, then, if you are ready to speak with him?"

Siamus's expression smooths immediately and he draws back, sitting up. He nods, his gaze grave and solemn and plaintive. He lifts his hand to his throat, nods again, drops his hand and looks to Zath.

Zath turns toward them with a crisp businesslike air. "I shall open the portal when you are ready. Siamus, if you could focus your mind on the portal as well as just extend your hand to it, it may help him to recognize your presence in the summons and make it easier."

Avrenne reaches her hand up to touch her hair, as though verifying that it's up, and she nods to Zath. "Where do you want me, Captain?" Oh, that phrasing was a choice. Welp. Too late now, words have hit the air, and any backtracking will only draw more attention to it. She rises to an elegant stand, looking to the room for the implication suggestion of where she should stand this time.

Zath does not tell her where he wants her. He does, however, tell her where she ought to stand for the ritual, by pointing to a spot on the floor. "With you there and Siamus… there, that should balance the three of us."

The three of them certainly need some sort of balancing.

Avrenne nods and before she moves there, reaches over to touch Siamus' face briefly, her eyes soft. "The laughter is still there, even if it is not for everyone to see," she says gently, which is a very odd thing to say unless you know what she means. Also, interesting, because she's gone without her Composure around Zath, clearly. She withdraws, summoning her Composure back in full — Game Face On — to stand where Zath has directed her, her shoulders squared and chin up, hand raising already out in a steady, elegant line in readiness.

Siamus sets aside his lap desk tray arrangement and slides to the edge of the bed to push himself out of it. He stands — unsteadily, but he stands — at the indicated point of the triangle. He is watching Avrenne for a moment, but then his gaze snaps to Zath and he nods.

Zath calmly tears a hole in the universe. Shadow pools around his hands and pours into his eyes, obscuring white and blue both. Tendrils of shadow reach from the dark rent in the room's reality and connect to outstretched hands, like some unsteady child seeking its parents' guidance. As the tendrils connect, the wavering tear takes a firm oval shape, holding itself open, a stable doorway.

Siamus reaches for the doorway-vortex, the shadows reflected in his dark gaze.

There is time for a slow count to ten, and then a lean, brown-skinned man in deep green and charcoal robes steps from the void and into the room.

Brother Eli's hands are folded in the sleeves of his robe, and he looks from face to face around him as if verifying he did not just accidentally answer the incorrect summons, whoops, beg your pardon. "Siamus," he says, his resonant voice warm. "Lady Fallon." He turns to Zath and bows slightly, a respectful inclination of head and shoulders. "Captain Tyrrell."

"Brother Eli," Avrenne says back cooly, though not cold, dropping into a polite, deep curtsy of respect.

Zath zzzZZZP!s the portal shut. "Brother Eli," he says with a half-bow.

"I'll no' be used to that manner o'travel for a time, yet, I expect," Eli says dryly. "Older a man is, stranger a new road strikes him."

He looks at Siamus again and his vividly green gaze softens. "Sit down, Siamus. Ye've no need to stay afoot wi' only me here."

Siamus tries not to look too relieved as he drops back down to sit on the edge of the bed. He also tries to look like he didn't drop. That was a dignified settling.

Avrenne settles her hands in front of her in a light clasp — left hand over right, her wedding ring on display — moving to stand near the side of the bed, her attention supposedly on Eli and not on Siamus dropping down to the bed. She saw nothing. Possibly. Maybe she missed it.

"I am glad," says Eli, "to see the three of ye well as ye are. Bloody days, it's been, and the fleet awaiting word of ye." He manages to make it sound as though the Fallon fleet has been on tenterhooks for news of all three of them, but he touches fingertips to Siamus's shoulder when he says it. "We were all well relieved to ha'e word from Lady Fallon and Lady Sintha."

After a silence he adds gently and to all of them, "I am grieved for your losses, as well. The tides will carry them."

Zath's gaze goes briefly flinty at that, but only for a moment, and then he returns to polite, respectful neutrality.

Avrenne's expression softens. "It will be a long time healing, and every precious life lost will be mourned, but all is not lost. The Alliance remains, and it holds. There is some solace in that." Her gaze goes from Eli to Siamus, pausing to see if he'll explain why they've summoned the Brother there.

"Aye," says Brother Eli kindly. "Ye've a brave and gentle soul, Lady Fallon." He, also, looks at Siamus with an expression of mild expectation.

When Siamus only continues gazing, and no explanation seems forthcoming, Eli moves to settle himself on the edge of the bed beside him, and pats Siamus's knee in a familiar, avuncular fashion. "I'm here, Siamus, as ye call. Aye? Will ye tell me now why for?" He casts Zath a look of somber acknowledgement that suggests he has at least a partial suspicion.

Zath raises his silver-streaked brow a quarter-inch. Problem with that, Tidesage? it says.

Eli's smile is thin and faint but it is a smile. He drops his gaze, turns it back to Siamus.

Avrenne steps forward a little closer to Siamus on the other side of him from Eli, and gently sets her hand on Siamus' shoulder, a small reminder of I'm here, as she waits for him to speak.

Siamus draws a breath. "I can't sing," he whispers, and gives Eli a pleading look.

Brother Eli's brows go up and he shifts back a little, visibly startled. This is clearly not what he had expected he was summoned about. "Ah," he says kindly. "Ye've lost your voice?" He sweeps an inquiring look from Avrenne to Zath, as if verifying that this is a Thing and Siamus isn't just changing the subject on him.

Avrenne nods and flicks her gaze to Zath. He was there, he has the first hand knowledge and the voice strain himself to confirm the how and why.

"Hypothermia and smoke inhalation," he says. "Nothing that won't heal, given time, but our repeated assertions to that effect seem to have comforted Siamus but little. Perhaps there is some deeper comfort you might offer?"

"Ah," says Brother Eli. "Hypothermia, Siamus? Tch." He pats his knee again. After a moment he asks carefully, "And how did ye come by a hypothermia, so far from the water, then?"

Avrenne's hand on Siamus' shoulder is gentle, a light pressure, and she strokes her fingers there in familiar rhythm, her gaze steady on him, her expression veiled with poise, but her eyes warm.

Siamus looks to Zath. "I left the field," he rasps, and for a moment seems to shrink between Avrenne and Eli, looking terribly small and ashamed, as though he is admitting to cowardice and desertion. "From the battle. Into the snow."

"There were dragons," Zath explains, as though this is a completely reasonable exonerating detail. "Red dragons, setting the battlefield ablaze. By then most everyone was already fleeing one direction or other, including myself — but the stubborn may have gotten quite an eyeful of dragonfire indeed."

"The dragons burned the plague that had been unleashed on the battlefield, to prevent the spread of it any further. All of those alive now are those who managed to leave the field in time. Not a single soul caught in that plague was able to be cured or has been able to be successfully resurrected," Avrenne adds, her voice steady, but her hand curling a little harder on Siamus. "As I understand it, a full retreat was officially called for by multiple sources, including High Lord Fordragon himself."

"Not even all of those who retreated swiftly were able to escape. There were simply too many people crowded together too closely. It was an advantageous position for the battle we thought we were waging – but not for the one the Forsaken sprang upon us," Zath says.

There is a pulse of warmth from Avrenne's hand at the mention of the Forsaken, swiftly quelled. She nods decisively to Zath.

Eli had stopped looking around at faces as soon as Zath said dragons, and has been watching Siamus steadily since. "I see," he says, and his voice is a cold, black depth.

He looks to Zath again. "I am the more glad, Captain Tyrrell, to see ye here safe as well, and all the more grieved. Ye may imagine that the news asea has been… less certain, and more confused." He pauses. "I had heard o'the Forsaken treachery. Ye may be certain I'd ha'e remembered hearing news of… red dragons, before now."

"Mm," Zath says ambiguously. His eyes move from Eli to Siamus.

Avrenne's own gaze hasn't shifted from Siamus, as if she can hold him steady there by simply looking at him.

Siamus moves his knee beneath Eli's touch, almost as if to twitch it away from him. "They told me," he rasps softly. "About Crestfall."

Eli nods. "I had… assumed Captain Tyrrell meant to. When he came to speak wi' me about it."

"Yes," Tyrrell says firmly, and with zero apology.

"Sintha now knows as well," Avrenne adds in a calm, cool voice. She has shown Eli a potential deadly rocks ahead, perhaps in gratitude for his support in other times. You're welcome, Eli.

Eli casts a look at Avrenne. He may or may not have translated that warning.

"Ye ne'er told me," Siamus whispers. "Years, Eli."

Brother Eli nods. "I did no'. And I believed, at the time, I was in the right. I was no', and I am grieved for it. Your Captain Tyrrell told me of your — troubles wi' it all."

"I fled," rasps Siamus with sudden venom, "from a battlefield, because I couldn't bear – "

Eli's hand on his knee again quells him. "As best I've heard, ye fled because the field was plagued and afire, as most other fortunates who survived it did."

"Yes," says Zath, almost angrily. "For fuck's sake, Siamus."

Siamus draws a sharp breath and glares at Zath, and then it fades wearily. "Aye. Aye."

Avrenne holds steady by Siamus, her hand gentle and unwavering. "It was an official retreat," she repeats gently. "You were meant to flee from the battlefield, and to remain would have been in defiance of orders of commanding officers of the battle. Every soldier alive now are those who were able to obey that order, as good soldiers do. Sometimes the only correct path is a retreat. The red dragons were then able to do their work to halt the plague from spreading any further."

Zath gestures to Avrenne as though to say, Yes, a.k.a., for fuck's sake, Siamus.

"Aye, no, I know." Siamus waves a hand wearily. "I told — myself, the ones I was wi', I told them — just. Why didn't ye tell me, Eli? What it was plaguing me?"

Maybe not the best time for use of the verb 'plaguing' but #oksiamus.

"I didn't know it was," says Eli.

"Ah, mind-reading isn't one of the gifts of the tidesages?" Zath says wryly. Just being very helpful as usual.

Avrenne flicks her eyes to Zath once, and then back to Siamus.

Siamus and Eli both give Zath a Look. It is a very similar look.

"And in the end, Brother Eli did speak of it, when he knew that it was still lingering in you Siamus, when Captain Tyrrell asked him of it," Avrenne says. "Brother Eli could have continued to conceal it. He did not." She's just giving information again.

"I didn't know I'd done harm in concealing it," Eli says gravely. "But now ye've been told." He looks between the other two again and then back at Siamus. "I'm sorry, Siamus. Ye recall Brother Mathis was my senior then. He and your father thought it best, and it wasn't my place to gainsay; nor did I, young man that I was then, ha'e reason to think them mistaken." He studies Siamus kindly. "Has it been — a weight lifted? To know of it?"

Siamus lifts his gaze to Zath again, turns and looks up at Avrenne. "Aye," he says. "I think — aye. Will be, at any rate. I've no' — I will be. Aye."

Eli looks to Avrenne. "Did he sleep, last night?" He turns the same look — and implicit question — on, oddly, Zath.

"As far as I know," Avrenne answers. She drops her eyes with a flicker around them. "But I do sleep fairly deeply, and do not always wake when another does until I am woken." There's something concealed in her voice, kept cool and even, and she lifts her gaze a moment later, her mask firmly in place.

"He slept better than he has — particularly sober — in all the time I have had to observe such things," Zath says. His eyes dare Brother Eli to have a problem with his observation of these things.

Brother Eli has no problem with this. Either that or he is so good at poker. He nods at Zath, and then at Avrenne. "I'm glad to hear it. And ye will speak wi' me on it, Siamus, aye? If there's more ye wish to know, or it tears at ye still. I'd ne'er ha'e left ye wi' such a wound in your heart, if I'd known." He pats Siamus's knee.

Aww, man, now Siamus needs to not be perceived for a minute. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, nods once, his jaw tight. "Aye," he rasps. "Thank ye."

"And the matter o'your voice, then?" Brother Eli asks patiently. He continues to perceive Siamus whether Siamus likes it or not. "Ye lost it wi' the smoke and the cold?"

"Mine was somewhat damaged as well, but I was at least properly warm the whole time. His body temperature plummeted dangerously for quite some time," says Zath.

"Many lost their voices for the same reason," Avrenne agrees. "There are dozens of cases of laryngitis, and some of hypothermia, though few as severe, throughout Wintergarde from the survivors of the battle. It's believed he will make a full physical recovery. However, if you might be able to ascertain if there was any other…possible other damage done that a tidesage would be able to perceive where a Priest of the Light would not?"

Brother Eli makes a sort of ha ha those guys? face about Priests of the Light, but what he says, respectfully, is, "I'm sure the brethren o' the Light know their work. Fine healers, one and all." To Siamus he says, "Let me see ye, brother."

Siamus sits up a little, and Brother Eli reaches a gentle hand out and wraps it around the back of his neck. His verdant gaze unfocuses, and there is a slight, watery tremor in the air, a cool brush of something like mist. It feels, to any who know the nuances, rather like a shaman's power.

Avrenne's attention remains fixed on the tidesages, her gaze attentive and solemn, her hand remaining on Siamus' shoulder.

Eli lifts his hand from Siamus and sits back again. He smiles gently, gravely. "As the Captain says," he tells Siamus. "Smoke, the damage to your body and blood — it will mend, wi' time. Ha'e ye been having anything for it?"

Siamus's shoulders have eased. He nods. "Honey," he rasps.

Brother Eli looks amused. "Ah. Aye, they would say." He shakes his head. "Salt water, aye?" He flicks a look between Zath and Avrenne. "And the honey will do ye good as well," he concedes. These mainlanders are ok, we will give them a little credit.

Avrenne gives Eli a small smile, as she inclines her head. "We will see that he gets some. Thank you, Brother Eli," she says respectfully. "Your help and counsel are greatly appreciated."

Siamus reaches for Eli's sleeve, catches on to him. "Brother," he says.

Eli looks down at his sleeve, surprised, and then up at Siamus again with concern. "Aye?"

Siamus looks from the tidesage to Zath and then back to Eli. He hunches slightly, and tries not to look at Zath. "I couldn't — I can't sing. I couldn't. When the plague — the wind. I didn't."

Eli studies his face, looks at Zath, and then looks at Avrenne.

"Is there any reason to believe that the Tidemother would refuse to listen to him sing and speak to her, when he can physically sing again?" Avrenne asks, curling her fingers more on Siamus' shoulder. She sounds as though she does not believe that there is. "Do you detect any change at all in his connection to her?"

"Ahh." Eli's expression creases with pained compassion, and he puts his hand on Siamus's other shoulder. "I cannot — feel that for ye, Siamus," he says gently. "I cannot tell it for ye. That's why the blood must prove itself, when a child is born wi'it — there's no way to see the child and know. But I'll no' soon forget watching an infant cousin of mine set on the sand and laughing to call the sea-foam up to where he could splash his hands in it. And I cannot imagine she'll ha'e turned back on ye, either. There's one lady who's always come when ye called for her, Siamus, and she'll be waiting to hear ye call again. You're no' — she'll no' be punishing ye, lad, for a thing ye couldn't help."

"There's no mercy in her," Siamus whispers, as if by rote.

Eli pats his shoulder. "There's no cruelty, either, Siamus. Ye know better than that, brother. She is, and that's all."

Avrenne's gaze has gone soft, her mask slipping, as she reaches her hand from Siamus' shoulder to his hair to touch him there, threading her fingers through the curls.

Siamus exhales and closes his eyes again. He tilts his head into Avrenne's touch and nods slightly at Eli. "Thank ye, Brother," he rasps softly.

Zath has just been hanging back watching, and he hasn't moved recently, but now tears stand unshed in his eyes.

Avrenne strokes her fingers through Siamus' hair to the rhythm of the Amhrán Na Farraige, looking at him with love shining openly on her face. The Composure has slipped off entirely.

In fortuitous timing of not at all completely controlled by external forces, there's a brisk knock at the outer door, and Avrenne's head turns to the sound, composure snapping over her expression. "Oh. That may be for me. I am expecting someone." She leans down to press a kiss to Siamus' cheek. "I will be back," she murmurs against his skin. There's a dip of a polite curtsy to Brother Eli, and she releases Siamus to go answer the door with that regal walk of hers that makes it seem, oddly, as though she's been expecting the king of Stormwind, popping by at her request.

(It is not King Varian. It is, in fact, a florist delivery.)

Zath continues to stand and try to reabsorb his tears before the Old Man He Doesn't Know Well sees them.

Siamus straightens with a deep, rasping breath. He nods to Eli. The tidesage smiles back at him, then leans in and takes both of Siamus's shoulders and rests their foreheads together. Siamus closes his eyes and grips the other man's forearms.

They sit for a moment in a silence that has a fervent air of both religious devotion and real affection, and then they release each other and settle back. Siamus is more clear-eyed now, and calmer.

Eli rises to his feet, turns to Zath and extends both hands. "Captain. I hope to see ye again under happier circumstances, and know ye better."

Zath clearly has no idea what to do with the both-hands-extended thing. He awkwardly mirrors the gesture, still pretending his eyes aren't wet.

Eli illuminates this by gently taking one of Zath's hands between his own and clasping him firmly. His gaze is warm. "Stars guide ye," he tells Zath. "Our Siamus is a blessed man, aye?"

He releases Zath's hand and, without a further word to either man, moves toward the door and the sitting room beyond.

Siamus takes another deep breath, tries to clear his throat, can't. He casts a sidelong look at Zath and ventures a smile.

Zath moves slowly to kneel beside the bed, not unlike a small child at prayers. Eyes downcast, he reaches toward Siamus, ultimately sinking forward to lay his cheek against the sheets, face turned away, even as his hands grasp at whatever of Siamus he can reach.

Siamus stares at this apparition for a moment, even as he reaches back to take Zath's hand. He draws Zath's hand to his own thigh, and leans sidelong toward him. "Ah, lovely," he rasps. "Are ye well?" His fingers stroke lightly through Zath's hair.

"I made you feel ashamed," he says, half muffled by the sheets, in the same tone he would say, "I burned down your estate."

Siamus sucks in a breath, startled, and then folds himself down as if to shelter Zath's hidden face. "Lovely," he says. "No, love. I – "

He wraps a hand around Zath's shoulder and kisses his head. "I ha'e been called superstitious enough times in my life to know it. Sailors are a superstitious lot, they say, aye? Well, and I am. There ye have it. You're — I know I've… tried your patience. I don't want ye to think me a child. Is all."

"I do not think of you as a child." Zath pulls back, kneeling by the bed still but looking Siamus in the eyes now, more calmly if still a bit tearfully. "I find your faith very moving. I almost envy it. I only snap at you when you are being self-destructive. Such as not telling anyone about twenty years of nightmares."

"How was I to know," Siamus asks very, very dryly, "that no' everyone has nightmares?"

It's okay Zath. He's joking.

He sobers again though. "I thought ye might — I thought it might seem foolish to ye. For me to — be afraid, again. Of having…" He shakes his head and touches Zath's cheek. "I'm no' a self-pitying man, Captain," he tells Zath softly. "But if the sea judged —"

"While I have no connection myself with a deity," Zath says gravely, "I have known and respected enough people of very deep faith to know that such things are as real and palpable as any arcane or fel force I have wielded. It is natural to feel fear when something you rely on seems to slip through your fingers. I felt great anxiety when I saw what the fel had done to my arcane abilities, and those abilities did not even come along with a sense of personal connection or love or approval. Of course I understand how you feel."

Siamus slides his hand into Zath's hair, pushing it back from his brow. "When I have my voice," he tells him, "ye come wi' me to the coast. I'll introduce ye to her."

Zath looks at Siamus as though he might have a deity indeed. "Yes," he says. "I… would like that." He seizes one of Siamus's hands and gives it a fervent kiss. "For now," he says, "I ought to go and meet with a person or two I have agreed to meet."

Siamus nods, smiles, touches the edge of his jaw, thumb stroking his beard. "Aye. Come back when ye do."

Zath crawls over to kiss Siamus properly once before he goes.

Siamus kisses and is kissed properly.

It's only a few minutes after Zath leaves that Avrenne enters through the open door, carrying in her arms a vase with a relatively large well balanced and professionally made bouquet, with a focal point of royal blue fringed gentia, surrounded by fillers of pink euphorbia and pink eglantine, as well as now very possibly recognizable white heliotrope, with line and skeleton framing to shape it of mignonette and yellow gorse, with a dark green foliage of lesser celandine. There's a wonderful blend of scents coming from it, warm and sweet, something of fruit and summer in it, with that note of ambrosial quality of mignonette as the high point.

Avrenne herself is wearing a bright expression that grows brighter as she sees Siamus, moving to set the bouquet on the bureau.

Siamus had seated himself on the bed again, settled back against the pillows, but without the tray back in his lap yet, and the blankets folded away from him. Just sitting. As ye do.

He smiles reflexively at Avrenne's return; the smile widens and tips dubiously at the sight of the flowers, and his brows go up. "Tides ha'mercy, Lady Fallon, where did ye gather those in Northrend?" he rasps. His gaze admires the bouquet.

"Stormwind, by way of Dalaran, part of a greater shipment of supplies from an associate of mine. Portals," she explains, as she adjusts one of the leaves of the celandine to better show one of the smaller yellow flowers to its best effect. She turns her face to Siamus, as she reaches up a hand to her hair to begin taking the pins out of it. "Would you like me to tell you what they are, or do you want to simply know what it says?"

He considers the arrangement shrewdly; his expression says both that he was not prepared for a pop quiz and also that he fucken loves a pop quiz. "I see the heliotrope," he rasps. "And that's the mignonette." He gestures. "So I recognize… myself." His tone is dryly self-deprecating: Ego? Siamus Fallon? "And I know — is that gorse? I know it. Though no' from the book; I know the plant, I mean."

He subsides against the pillows and spreads his hands. "And we've come to the limit o'my expertise, I fear. I will have to beg my lady's translation."

Only now does he seem to realize she's taking the pins from her hair, and this distracts him entirely. He watches her.

Avrenne takes her hair down one handed as she sets a hand to each of the flowers in turn with the other, her eyes on Siamus rather than the bouquet slightly behind her, as though she knows where each and every single flower is in memory and does not need to see them to touch them. "Eglantine. Gorse. Fringed gentia. Mignonette. Heliotrope. Euphorbia. Celandine." A smile and she repeats the order, touching each flower again as she speaks the sentence, "I wound to heal, with enduring affection of the intrinsic worth of Siamus Fallon, loyal and persistent, knowing there are joys to come."

He knits his brows and studies her. "Will ye explain, Your Grace?" he asks her.

"It's what I wish for you to know," Avrenne says quietly as she looks back at the bouquet. "You were hurt, but you're healing, in more ways than one, and you are enough, as you are Siamus, cared for by so many without needing to do anything more than be who you are, and that there will be better times ahead." She moves her hand near her waist, though perhaps in a different way than usual, and she turns her head back to him. She walks to the bedside, her hair down, as she sets the pins into a pocket of her pants.

His gaze catches sharply on that gesture by her waist, lifts to her face. He waits for an intent moment, searching for something more, perhaps — his whole posture subtly yearning into expectation — and then he inclines his head to her courteously and offers her that slight, sardonic smile, his eyes gleaming. "Better times ahead, aye, I should hope. I'm sorry to ha'e put ye through such times as these so soon, Avrenne. I'm sure ye had better hope in your new husband." He reaches a hand out to her; the gesture, by contrast with his manner, has a slightly wary, hesitant feel, as though he is reaching for (say) a fox that he has been told bites but he also really wants to pet.

Avrenne reaches back for his hand, and there is a flicker of something around her eyes, sorrow and pain both, before her hand moves again to her waist in an all too familiar gesture, halted partway, and she raises it to Siamus' face instead. "Siamus, I." She holds his gaze with effort, clearly fighting dropping her eyes. "If I have given you any reason to think so, that I have had even the briefest of moments of regret, then I beg your forgiveness with all that I am." There's a thread of something in her voice, and she holds herself steady by force of will. "Nothing could be further from my feelings. I know I am not the most demonstrative of women, but I." She sits down and leans in closer to him. "I have never had a moment's doubt or regret in my choice of you from the moment I signed our betrothal contract, Siamus."

For a moment there is something vulnerable in his gaze, soft and darkly uncertain, as he studies her.

He smooths it away, tugs her by the hand closer to him. "No, Your Grace, forgive me if I've e'er given ye cause to feel ye've done aught wrong by me. You are the most perfect of ladies and of wives in all respects, and a joy to me, I swear to ye. I fear I'm just no' in the habit of having been betrothed to a lady wi'out being a crushing disappointment to her." That's definitely a joke. See? Ha ha. He lifts Avrenne's fingers to his lips again.

Avrenne doesn't seem to be laughing, her expression gone soft and loving with an edge of a desperate sort of hope, that look in her eyes that's been there for more than a month, but rather than drop her gaze she holds his as she strokes her fingers along his cheek. "Siamus." Funny how his name sounds like something else. She searches his eyes for a moment before she speaks. There's that intensity to her, dark and serious, as though she is trying very hard to say something that would take only three words, but using many instead.

"You could pay off the entirety of my loans, sign over all your fortune to me, and release me from our vows, so that I might marry anywhere I wish or not at all if I so chose, and all I would do is return back to you to marry you once more. You could lose everything — your wealth, the estate, your power, your title, your body as it was, and have nothing remain but the man you are, and I would remain by your side and rebuild a life with you. You are the most perfect of husbands for me, and I cannot tell you how greatly I admire and esteem you." Well. She has. Once. But he's not supposed to know that.

As he listens, his mask seems to fall away, a fragment at a time, the smile fading into soft solemnity, his dark gaze taking on a strange and almost pained shine of… hope? Longing? By the time she finishes speaking, he looks nearly stricken by it. He continues to stare at her in silence for a long moment; when he catches himself, he drops his gaze swiftly, tries to clear his throat. Can't.

You have given him a respiratory condition, Avrenne.

"Your Grace," he rasps to the hand he is still holding. "Lady Blanche. I — your devotion — the words ye've said to me, of your devotion, I am… Avrenne. I canno' imagine a finer woman than yourself. Truly. Ye honor me."

Avrenne's breathing has gone shaky, and there's a sheen of tears in her eyes with an intensity of emotion, but she seems to resolve herself to a course, as she moves her hand along his face and tries to gently encourage it back up to her to look her in the eyes. "Siamus."

His expression shifts uncomfortably. He's trying to reach for his mask again, the dry, sardonic — he can't. He just had here it a minute ago — no, too late.

His gaze meets hers again, dark and desperately uncertain.

Goddammit, Fallon.

Avrenne on the other hand looks more certain than ever, brushing her fingertips along his face, a touch so light, as though he's precious and beloved, his bare face unmasked the most perfect thing she's ever felt. She smiles at him, that radiant glow, her eyes warm and steady, as she metaphorically leaps off the cliff into the water, a mermaid unable to leave him wondering and uncertain of what is below the waves.

"I love you, Siamus."

He flinches.

He does not, though, stop gazing at her, nor release her hand. He continues to stare, and for a moment there is a stark, heartbroken glimmer of wonder in him.

He takes a slow breath, squeezes her fingers, tries:

"Avrenne. I'm no' — ah, Avrenne. I've told ye I'm no' — a man for sentiment, but I —" Pause. Try again. "I'm no' a man for sentiment, and I know ye did no' seek it from me, and I would no' care to burden ye with it. But I confess —"

You can do it, Siamus. What do you confess?

"I confess — that I feel something for ye."

Whew. Nailed it.

Avrenne doesn't look disappointed, but she might not have leapt to any sense of what that something is, the fingers of her left hand curling around his in a gentle squeeze back. "It's alright," she says reassuringly, moving her right hand along his cheek, the glow undiminished as she looks at him with open love in her expression. "I did not fall in love with you on the condition that you would ever love me in return. It does not matter if you ever feel anything more for me beyond a fondness and respect. It will not alter how I feel about you. I am not unhappy — I have never been unhappy with you — since the moment I realized how I felt, that day in the harbor when you came to my aid." Uh, that's been awhile.

"I don't need you to be a man for sentiment; I only need you to be Siamus Fallon." She moves her head forward to set it over their linked hands, looking up at him as she did on their wedding night. "Nothing you could feel for me would ever be burden, nor a disappointment. All I want is you as you are, trouble and all."

Siamus slow-blinks as he also does the harbor-math. He is good at math. The harbor was… a while ago. Before they were —

"Since… but we were no'… ye hardly knew…" There are so many words coming out of Avrenne right now and Siamus is stumbling to keep up. "Avrenne?" he asks. Please show your work.

"I knew the shape of you," Avrenne says, closing her eyes as she rests her head on his hand. "That night of the Remembrance Ball, I had an agreement to act as though I were genuinely entertaining all potential marriage options, for one night. I chose you as the first. And I knew all too soon that I was genuinely enjoying myself, for the first time in over fifteen years, knew that I could have spent the rest of the night speaking to you. I ended that dance the way I did because it was too true, and I could see Morgauna watching us.

"When I was in a difficult position, you were the first that came to mind to ask for help. And you did, gallantly, as willing to lend your aid and offer to leave without rancor. It felt as though I had a great meeting of another mind, and every moment I spent in your company I wished I could prolong it.

"That night of the Gala, that speech of yours, I cannot tell you how much it touched me. To hear the words spoken so fervently, of things I hold so dear to my own heart. And then, when I sought respite, there you were, with your own troubles and thoughts, willing to see to mine. Every moment spent in your presence a reaffirmation of a man of such intelligence and passion, of light and humor, and a reverence for what matters. When I offered my help, you took it, committed yourself to the course, willing to work with me.

"In that harbor, I saw it in full — who you are. The sort of man who would place himself between a lady and something that is doing her harm, who would catch it upon himself rather than let it touch her, would offer up the rest of his life in marriage should he link his reputation to hers simply to honor her. I left you that day because I knew I loved you, and I had been told you were looking for a specific wife, and all I wanted for you was for you to find her." She smiles. "I did not realize it was me."

"I saw you, Siamus," Avrenne says, opening her eyes to look at him. "And I have seen you since in every small moment. You took it upon yourself that day of the lighthouse, rowing as you did to strain yourself rather than let it fall on me. You looked at my contracts, read them seriously and in full, understood what they meant. You met me partway at every turn, respected my opinion and my mind. You carried me that night, made certain my reputation was secure. You stayed for me, when I know how you must have wished to leave when Naxxramas appeared. Over and over, in action and in matter, you have been the man I saw, and I love you."

"Avrenne," he rasps, and he sounds bewildered. He gazes down at her. "I do — respect ye. I do. From the first, more than I can tell ye. A brilliant — a brilliant lady. Wi' such a light in ye, and the conversations — Avrenne, I… enjoy. Everything about ye. Ye make me —" He draws a ragged breath. Whatever is happening in his chest right now is your fault, Avrenne.

His expression shutters over, warily, though that pained light in his gaze still shines. "Will ye no' go?" he whispers, as he had done at Zath. "Will ye no' leave?" Unlike with Zath, the question is not a demand driven of fury or despair, but a soft, fatal certainty: Won't you?

"No," Avrenne answers simply with a gentleness, reaching for him to pull him into her. "I told you, mo ghrá: I will never leave you. I do not abandon those who are mine, and you are mine, Siamus. I will be there for you, your fixed star, until my last breath, and if there is anything beyond that, then I will be there for you still. I love you."

Siamus resists her pull, still staring at her. "Mo ghrá," he whispers. "When ye said to me — on the lighthouse — that ye'd stay —"

He thrusts his other hand roughly into her hair. "I will never. Ye know it of me, aye? That I'll no' ever abandon. Leave. I'll come back. Ye know it of me?" He doesn't shake her, but his hand tightens in her hair and there's that sense of desperate impatience in him: Tell me you get this.

"I know." There's such a shine to her, as though he'd declared his love, or perhaps simply affirmed that he is Siamus, and this thought is such joy to her that it brings out the radiance. "You told me so: 'by law and by my fealty both, I will come back to you.' My husband, the most loyal of men. That is who you are, Siamus. That is who I see, and who I love in you." In her voice is the faith in it, the surety, in both his word and his loyalty.

"Ye can't go," he tells her, warns her. "Ye can't, Avrenne. I need ye. I'll no — chain ye, but I need ye. Ye can't — take a star from her place, aye? A man can't find his way."

"I will never go." Avrenne's eyes have that love in them, that faint desperate hope. "You do not keep me here with chains, Siamus. I am here because it is who I am. A fixed star. You will always be able to find me, no matter what happens."

He takes a deep breath. "You are," he tells her, "exactly the woman I was looking for — the 'specific wife' — and I don't know what I did at the time to give an impression that ye might no' be, and I hope I've no' given it since. I'd no' have married ye otherwise, Avrenne, and I've told ye it — or thought I have — over and over since. There is one wife for me, one partner and Lady Fallon, and she's you, Avrenne, canniest and most loyal and loveliest lady. Ye've gone from your way to learn what ye didn't have to, to… revere what wasn't yours because it's mine, and – "

That's a lot for his voice or lack thereof. He tries to clear his throat again, looks around for the tray with its teacup. He's obliged to take his hand from her hair to lean and reach for it, and that takes him a moment; he seems reluctant to do so.

When he's had a sip of tea, he sets the cup aside on the nightstand and turns back to her to take both her hands. "I trust ye wi' my House, my name, my future and myself, and when I say I'm honored ye let me see all of ye, wi' your hair up or down, solemn or laughing, a sharp Duchess or a sleepy mermaid, I do mean it. Honored. Ye bring me joy, Avrenne. Do ye understand? You're a joy to me, mo ghrà."

His gaze hangs on hers steadily, still pleadingly, as though he is hoping she can read the code in his words. It was a lot of words to expend in a raw-throated whisper when he could probably just have said three, but, you know. Allergies. Or habit. Perhaps the signal got through anyway.

Oh, you know her well enough by now, Siamus; the girl doesn't miss a Language In Between. She's canny like that.

It's possibly reassuring that nothing seems to take her by surprise, that she's known it — heard it or felt it or seen it with an unnatural canniness — as she listens with that attentive silence he's come to know, that glow to her of happiness and love hearing words spoken that she may know already but matter to her to hear, waiting for him to finish speaking before she says anything more — right up until the last two words.

Those hit her like a tidal wave, a drawn in breath, that look of shock, as she holds for a moment, before she searches his eyes back, and there is the revision happening, as there was that day of their marriage contract, where she is clearly going back and redoing calculations having realized she might have misapplied the wrong X in the formulas. She seems overcome, her breath coming in and out of gasps (oh, shit, she's caught the respiratory condition), as she drops her head to their hands, a small sound escaping her, before she begins to press ardent kisses to his hands, building up an escalating sense of a beautiful sort of storm about to rush over him.

"Ah," he rasps roughly. "My joy, my mermaid. Come here." He tugs at their joined hands, tries to draw her closer, onto his lap. "Avrenne. You're good to me, aye? You're a good girl."

He does not seem to mean it this time as a deliberate provocation; it is heartfelt. She is a Good Girl. Lady. Person.

He tries to clear his throat. Still nope.

Avrenne goes very willingly, pressing kisses to every inch of skin she can access, which is now actually significantly reduced from where it was before, tucking her head against his neck. At the phrase, she bursts into that delighted laugh, spiraling out from her like honey spooling through the air, her breath warm on his skin as she shakes gently with it, holding his hands back with her own.

He does join her in laughter this time, a little shakily, that exhaled rasp that passes for his laughter at the moment. "Are ye so surprised?" he whispers. "I've no' done ye justice as a husband, if it's so, and I'll beg your pardon." He attempts to kiss her back with similar urgency, though it is difficult because she is kissing him and if he isn't careful they're just going to collide or something. He lets go of one of her hands to wrap an arm around her and make a soothing sound.

One free hand is all she needs to be able to use her own balance, pulling back just far enough to be able to look him in the face again. There's a telltale blush started at her cheeks — classical conditioning at work — as she beams at him. "Siamus." It's the way she's been saying his name for awhile; it probably makes more sense now why. She closes the gap between them to his lips, trying to convey in the motion her happiness, her own desperate sort of joy, using the skills he's taught her over the past months.

He releases her other hand now to catch her in his other arm, fingers sliding up into her hair, and answers her kiss ardently. In a couple of minutes a healer is going to disapprove, but Siamus isn't that impressed by Light priests anyway.

Avrenne, on the other hand, might not care much for their religion, but has nothing but the utmost respect for the healing capabilities of Light priests. She sets her hand gently on his chest as she breaks the kiss to press a few smaller ones across his face, and then tucks herself back against his neck, straddling him at the waist, curled up in his arms, breathing deep and quick, but clearly trying to lower the heat to a simmer rather than a boil.

"When you recover," she says and her voice is its own smoke now, though in a very different, desirable way. "We will have to consider some sort of schedule or rotation perhaps, between Captain Tyrrell and I, or we'll wear you out in truth. At least we have the data from before to start to make some reasonable estimates, but there will be some additional factors, so we may need to have a separate ledger for that, to control better for the various influences." There's almost a distracted tone to her voice, of her thinking out loud, possibly finding some stability in thinking about data and math instead of her husband between her thighs not well enough to do anything about that.

Siamus laughs again raspily. "Ah, but I'd die a happy man, worn out so." He shifts between her thighs, perhaps hopeful anyway that Avrenne will be willing to murder him thus — they have recently learned he won't stay dead, after all.

There is a light tap at the door. Goddammit.

Siamus's hands still on Avrenne and he looks in that direction. He looks back at Avrenne.

Avrenne presses a kiss to his neck, breathes in deeply as though to hold him there for a second longer, and pulls back. There's love in her face, and an obvious disinclination to murder him, even in a what-a-way-to-go way. "I will be back," she says, leaning in again to press another quick kiss to his cheek, before she moves off him with a practiced elegance holding her steady, her hand going briefly to the tray with the papers and the fountain pen to prevent them from sliding off — she has remembered they exist and where they are — as she leaves the bed, to walk out of the bedroom with decisive strides to the door.

Sintha is waiting outside the door. "Hello." She surveys Avrenne archly. "I saw the Captain in the yard and if you and my brother were here alone, I was reluctant to interrupt."

"Ta?" calls Siamus from the bedroom. "A word wi' ye, in fact?"

Avrenne smiles at Sintha with a brightness, and impulsively throws her arms around her in an embrace as if Sintha had just said the most wonderful Avrenne has ever heard; it is very possible the reason for her actions is unrelated to anything Sintha has just said at the present moment, and is instead more to do with actions done some time ago now having come to a culmination.

Sintha blinks and stiffens. After a moment, she relaxes again and patpats Avrenne gently. There, there. "I know," she whispers. "I'm brilliant." She draws away. "I'm coming!" she calls to her brother.

Avrenne pulls back as well, looking at Sintha for a moment longer. "You are," she agrees. "He's happy." It's almost a whisper, as though Avrenne is testing it out, letting it hit the air as a concept, that Siamus Fallon might have possibly been made to feel happy after all. She steadies herself, and looks back at the bedroom for a moment. "Do you want to speak with him alone?"

"Well I knew he was happy," Sintha says in a fond, gentle scold. "Did you only just, darling?"

"Ta?" Siamus calls again.

Sintha rolls her eyes at Avrenne. "Coming!" she says.

Avrenne laughs, a little swirl of sound that carries like a gold thread through the air. "Go," she says, stepping to the side. "I need to get something from downstairs. I'll be back in a little bit."

Sintha nods and steps aside, then heads for her brother's room, already drawing her air of impatient snark around herself.

Time Passes

Avrenne is gone for an amount of time that you could call a 'little bit' perhaps in the sense that she is small, but it must have taken at least some few minutes to negotiate exactly what she wanted, or perhaps she got stuck talking logistics of Wrathgate recovery efforts again, both are possible and likely. When she returns, she has a glass of salt water and a small jar of salt. She lets herself back into the suite, and pauses at the sitting room to remove her shoes and take down her hair again.

Siamus is sitting up in bed again (or still) and writing again (or still).

Avrenne lights up at the sight of him, crossing to the non-tattoo side of the bed this time. "Siamus," she says, holding out her hand for his left, her other hand holding onto the glass of lukewarm-warmish salt water. "Sintha?"

He takes her hand and lays down his pen, smiling warmly up at her. "Went to run some errands for me." He lifts Avrenne's knuckles to his lips briefly.

Avrenne nods in acknowledgment, setting the glass on the nightstand. "Salt water," she explains, before she lets go of his hand in order to carefully move onto the bed to sit by his side, relaxing against him. "I have some logistics to work out with you, regarding shipping of supplies in particular. There are, as Captain Tyrrell said, many who are willing to support the relief efforts. I think I have managed to mostly prevent the worst of the chaos to focus efforts, but it will be of great use to have the Fleet be a singular transportation for some points, before we end up with scattered merchant ships all over the place and delays." She did, after all, say that she does try not to make the same mistake twice, and she would remember him next time. Admittedly, it wasn't difficult to remember.

He nods and fits his arm around her again. "The 'Witch is still at Valiance and ready to move. Silverwind is in Starmwend and likewise; she can be laded and sent as soon as."

"Then, whenever Captain Tyrrell returns with what the High Commander has decided, I can finalize those." Avrenne sighs happily, which is either a result of Siamus, or she really likes successful logistics planning of war. Could be both.

Siamus pats her hip. He knows it's the latter.

Tyrrell blows into the outer room like a cold wind, almost literally — he has passed throgh the lower floor so quickly that chill outside air is still clinging to his coat. He shrugs it off and hangs it up in the outer room, rips off his gloves as though they have ants inside them, and stuffs them into the coat's pockets.

Siamus sits up a little and looks toward the outer room. "Tyrrell?" he calls. Who else could that cold wind be?

"Yes, that's appropriate," he says between audibly clenched teeth. "Let's leave off the 'Captain,' just as the High Commander has done."

Avrenne frowns, tensing slightly, looking in the direction of Zath's voice.

Siamus presses himself further upright, his brows drawn down. "What? Come here, lovely, what's he said?"

"The 6th wasn't due for dwell time for another six months," Zath rants as though in mid-conversation as he enters the bedroom, eyes ablaze. "And now we're to be patted on the head like children and sent back 'home' to 'rest' while the lion's share of the 7th — men and women who have been deployed here the same amount of time as we have — get to stay."

Siamus's frown deepens. "What? Why? What the hell for?"

Siamus, please recall, has missed Some News.

Avrenne, however, has not. She's regarding Zath steadily, and silently for the moment, with compassion in her eyes rather than answering indignance.

"My question exactly," he snaps. "All he had to do was make a few rearrangements in the existing units; he doesn't need to train up a whole damned new set of people. There's a bloody war on!"

Siamus nods coldly. There is, indeed, a bloody war on.

Then he pauses. A brow tips down again. "Rearrangements in the — ah, beauty. Did ye — ?" He surveys Zath.

"The 6th, 8th, and 10th are all being sent back," he barrels on, unwilling or unable to address Siamus's query, "and the worst of it is, they're bringing the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th here. When they were promised six more months to be with their families. It's outrageous!" He clenches his fists, pacing back and forth at the foot of the bed.

Avrenne's eyes track Zath's movements, once again not shining the light on the information he's concealing.

Siamus is at enough battery now — over 50%, certainly — to know that he's missing something here. He is a commander himself. "Zath, why would he do it? That's no' — surely three units of the 7th Legion can't be so exhausted as that."

What is the adjective besides 'exhausted' that you are not saying, Zath? his dark eyes say.

"They're not exhausted; they're – " He stops his pacing. Puts his hands over his face. Takes in a deep breath.

"Tides ha'mercy," rasps Siamus, white-faced. "Zath, ah, tides below." He's drawing away from Avrenne, reaching for Zath. "Who? How many?"

Avrenne watches with soft, dark eyes, holding steady where she is, as she reaches over to the tray of letters and pen to lift it up, and sets it aside below her feet — there's room on the bed there. She certainly doesn't take up all that space.

Zath lifts his face from his hands, calm again. "We lost three," he says. "The 8th lost their healer and their captain. The 10th — Light, they lost everyone but their second-in-command." He starts to pace again. "We had a perfect system. Recruit the most resurrectable people on the planet. Rotate them through, so no one goes insane. Low turnover, long careers, training builds on itself. And then the fucking Forsaken come along and – " He turns and kicks the dresser. Luckily he is still wearing boots.

"Zath," says Siamus sharply, a moment of his own Command voice, even at a whisper. "Zath, lovely, my love, come here. Three? Ye had hardly — come here. What three?"

He turns on Siamus, eyes suddenly wild, lost. "Don't," he pleads. "Don't make me say their names." He does come to him, though, and sit beside him on the bed on his usual side.

"Captain," Avrenne says gently, reaching out a hand to him as well. There's an offer in her eyes, that she will say them for him, if he cannot speak them.

He stiffens, then nods permission, collapsing to hide his face in Siamus's shoulder.

Siamus wraps his arms roughly around Zath and makes a low, soothing noise, or the voiceless ghost of one, a sort of vibration in his chest. "Oh, lovely, my love, no. I won't — ah, tides. Ye don't ha'e to —" He rocks Zath slightly. His eyes are teary, though he doesn't weep.

He glances at Avrenne, still white-faced.

Avrenne closes her eyes briefly, and turns her face to Siamus, her expression compassionate and with a quiet grief. Her voice has a soft reverence, as serious as though giving a gentle eulogy for each, of their names. "Sergeant Galandra Lazal'dris." A pause, a moment of silence for her. "Sergeant Umalda Blackale." That same pause, that same silence. "Lieutenant Kieley Boles." Her voice wavers slightly on that one at first, but she steadies it, as she delivers it with the utmost respect.

Siamus makes a strangled noise, closes his eyes and puts his face against Zath's hair. He rocks him again. "Zath," he whispers. "Ah, and I'd only just —" He takes a deep breath, tightens his arms. "I'm so glad I met them, aye? Tides, I'm so glad."

Zath looks up sloooowly from where his face was hidden in Siamus's shoulder. He looks like a man who was preparing to have a complete meltdown and even had the tears ready, but who is now distracted by something astonishing. He just gazes at Avrenne for a long moment, and then says quietly, "Thank you."

He turns to Siamus then and kisses him gently, stroking his hair with the hand he's not using to support his own half-collapse. Slowly, he attempts to extricate himself and sit on the bed in a more dignified manner.

Avrenne smiles faintly back, her eyes soft.

Siamus will not let go of him, though he loosens his hold. Sorry, buddy, you live against Siamus now.

Zath adjusts to account for now being an extension of Siamus, but still manages to achieve a semi-upright posture.

Good man, Tyrrell.

Siamus draws back a little more, to afford Zath bonus dignity, but leaves an arm around him. He studies his profile. "Ye bear up," he rasps. "I know. But if ye need no' to, Captain — ye don't ha'e to, here. If ye need."

His tone is not what could be described as sentimental. It's not brisk, but it is the offer of a man who knows what it is like to be a man who would not necessarily accept such an offer himself. It is a suggestion as cordial as if Zath had drunk a glass too much at a dinner party and Siamus is offering him the couch for the night so he doesn't have to drive home. His eyes are still very dark, but the tears have blinked away.

Avrenne, who has already offered her couch of her nightgown and her arms for such purposes and would clearly do so again, remains on Siamus' other side, as she reaches out her hand to Zath to lightly touch his shoulder in that way of hers, her eyes on him.

"You are both…" He looks from one to the other, his glib tongue seeming to fail him for a moment. "…Priceless," he finally says, but clearly he feels the word isn't sufficient. He looks to Siamus. "I did not tell her their names," he says. There's something in his tone, in his eyes, that suggests, I know you appreciate this too. Fucking amazing, right?

Siamus casts Avrenne a melting look. "Thank ye, star," he says with Military Gravitas.

He looks back to Zath. "She is a shining and unnatural canny lady, and my joy. I ha'e a beauty and a joy." He strokes Zath's hair back from his forehead in a gesture with somewhat less Military Gravitas. "Both priceless," he agrees. Though presumably of a slightly different pair this time because his ego isn't that bad.

Zath runs a hand slowly back through his hair once, twice. Three times.

"I suppose it's… they can't just put the remainders under my command. Too many, for one. But also, those that are left of the 8th - They've been here since the first, as I have. There were only seven expeditionary units, to start. But they called the seventh the 8th, to avoid confusion and — I'm rambling."

Avrenne turns that same soft, faint smile up at Siamus at the look, and then sets her attention to Zath. "It's alright," she says gently, in that reassuring tone.

"Ye can ramble," Siamus observes patiently. "Will ye — a drink?" He studies Zath again.

"Have you had any water recently, Captain?" Avrenne asks, for no reason in particular or anything.

Zath looks between the two of them flatly.

Let them take care of you, Zath.

It's what they want.

Zath scrutinizes the both of them for a moment, then says, almost indulgently, "I suppose I am rather thirsty."

Siamus did not mean water but you do you, Avrenne. Water goes with whiskey sometimes.

Avrenne is just trying to help with the inevitable possible hangover. "There is another cup in the other room, if you would care for whiskey as well, Captain," she says as she sits up fully, turning to face the door as she starts to concentrate, to summon water. "And please let me assure you, I am not in any pain." Which would be strange if he didn't know her magic comes at a cost.

The contrast between her and Cressidha could not be more stark, particularly with recent memory to bolster it. There is nothing casual about the way she summons this water — she places her hand in the air for the sigil of water, and Zath, more than Siamus, can tell how difficult this must be for her, the way she moves slowly through it, like her finger is in a groove in the air and she is pushing it along a lock. The arcane flickers in multiple colors around her fingers as she goes. She turns her hand, palm upright, and there's no pop of a bottle there. Instead, there's a strange blurring, as though it's coming through first as an afterimage, and then there —

A bottle of clear cut glass with a glass-and-cork stopper, filled with water that has the taste of mountain spring water fresh from a glacier, icy and bracing, with a soft, clean finish to it. She beams with a brightness, as she closes a hand shaking with a continual mild feedback loop of the arcane in her fingers, as she offers it out to Zath, glowing with the offering. It clearly means something to her, for him to accept it.

Siamus smiles tenderly at her and lifts his hand to smooth her hair back now.

Zath inclines his head to her with reverence befitting a kaldorei as he takes the bottle from her and unstoppers it.

"I had best not have any alcohol just now," Zath says, without offering further explanation. He sips the water and savors it as though it were whiskey, or perhaps as though Avrenne had just offered him something else of hers to taste.

There's always something personal about a mage's water. She has a brief pause of a moment watching his face as he takes a drink, and she relaxes back into that bright smile as he seems to savor it. Her hands now take the place of the most shaky in the room; the arcane is having trouble dissipating from where she's pulled it in to her, as though there isn't room for it with the fire already there, or that she has not been able to control the pull of it fully, and now it has nowhere to go, leading to a repeated current through her. It clearly isn't causing her any discomfort. It's merely disruptive. She leans her head into Siamus' hand, flicking her eyes to him. She did it! Another water summoned.

Siamus leans over to kiss the side of her head. He is proud of her. His eyes say so.

What his mouth says is, "I would no' say no to a drop of whiskey myself." Hopeful. Anyone? Yes? Please? Help a man out, here.

"Not until a healer specifically tells me it's all right," Zath says in his Captain Voice. Then, in a different voice, "Or of course, until I'm not watching."

"Are ye watching?" Siamus peers at Zath. "Drink your water, man, it's lovely water."

"Well, you could always stave off the desire for it, if Captain Tyrrell here will be willing to drink some and let you taste it from his mouth," Avrenne suggests in that mild way of hers. Just an offer of information.

Zath had just taken a drink of water, and now chokes on it.

Cough cough cough. Splutter.

Siamus laughs. "Do a man a favor, Captain?" he asks silkily. Or, well, not silkily, in that rasp. Like raw silk, maybe.

Zath wipes his mouth. "I will do you any number of favors when they are important." That faint hint of rose has crept into his snowbank complexion.

"Tch," Siamus disapproves. He leans away from Avrenne to smooth Zath's hair back and kiss his temple now. Everyone gets pets and smooches.

"Well, I certainly can't do it. I will likely sing some sort of bawdy song and fall asleep on someone," Avrenne says, her voice a little dry and mildly self-deprecating.

Zath's eyes do a Thing, then dart to Siamus. "Shall I fetch the lady some whiskey?" he says mildly.

Siamus laughs. "Ah, no, I'd no like my little mermaid sleeping at the moment. Will ye no, for me, Captain? Else at this rate ye may as well just fetch me a glass. I promise I only want a touch of it."

"I shall fetch you a small glass of whiskey," he says. "Just a taste." He drinks some more water, then corks the bottle and sets it down on the bed as he rises. Then he seems to have a second thought, and reaches back to snatch the bottle before leaving.

Siamus watches him go, fondly. He turns his head toward Avrenne without taking his eyes from the direction Zath went. "What time is it, joy?"

Avrenne watches Zath with something soft in her expression, and she turns the same look to Siamus, settling against him a little more. "Between 5pm and 6pm by now, if I recall correctly." It's habit. She actually does know, clearly, by her tone. "I would need to check a watch for the exact time, if you want to know more specifically. Are you hungry?"

"I could eat," he allows. "Perhaps ought, wi' a drop of whiskey." Look, he is being Medically Responsible!

Avrenne makes a soft sound of agreement, her eyes dropping for a moment to his lips, before they flick back up to his eyes.

He did not not notice that, and leans over to kiss her tenderly.

There's a deep contentment to the returning of the kiss, but she does keep it relatively brief, drawing back to look at him with drowsy, wine-drunk eyes, a faint blush starting at her cheeks.

He puts his hand on her thigh. "I would like," he says, "a bite to eat, and a drop of whiskey, and to get out of my clothes again. And perhaps for ye to put on that lovely nightgown again?"

"Should I take another bath?" Avrenne asks, her leg moving under his hand in a suggestive way that, this time, is on purpose.

His expression does something that, for a moment, does not look like lust, exactly. "Will ye sing again?" he whispers. "The Amhran, for me? While ye do?"

Avrenne smiles sweetly at him. "Of course." She reaches up her hand to touch her fingers against his cheekbone in a light touch. "Thank you for teaching me it," she says, solemn and serious, a deep gratitude in it.

Zath returns with a small tray, containing one (1) small glass of whiskey, some tea, and a plate with apple slices, nuts, and cheese. "You should probably eat if you're going to have whiskey," he says, having thought of that all by himself.

"Thank ye for learning it, mo ghrà." Siamus bends to kiss her again gently, and then sits up to look toward Zath's return.

Avrenne has a glow of happiness to her at that, and then turns another bright smile to Zath when he enters, as she moves to leave the bed. "I will be just in the other room. I should take a bath," she explains. Oh, boy. Bathing on just the other side of a door, Part 2.

Siamus lights up at the sight of the tray in a way that he normally only lights up at a lover. "My beauty," he whispers tenderly, and it might be at Zath or it might be at the whiskey. "Come to me."

That faint hint of color touches Zath's face again - glacier at sunrise. He brings the tray to Siamus and offers it out, bracing one knee on the bed in order to reach him.

Siamus leans to take the tray. His hands are still unsteady, or perhaps newly unsteady as the day wanes and he has been actually upright and working for several hours, so he doesn't lift it altogether from Zath's grip but guides it toward himself. "Ye do keep saving a man's life, lovely, don't ye? Sit wi' me."

It is a little bit of a Direction.

Zath does as he is told. There is a slight tension about him now, though not an unpleasant one. He glances toward the bathroom door.

Avrenne's hands shake as well. They're buddies. But hers seems steady enough to at least open the door of the bathroom and close it behind her quietly. A moment later, the water turns on, as before, and it covers the sounds.

She struggles with removing her clothing; her hands are still unsteady enough that the zippers give her trouble, the fine grip necessary very difficult for her, and it's taking much, much longer. She seems to think, however, that it's something she needs to do on her own, or she's not considered other possibilities, and she continues on, slowly but doggedly getting her uniform off. She has to turn off the bath part way before she starts on the lower half. There is no immediate sound of someone getting into the water even after the water stops.

"Closer, love," says Siamus. It is less of a Direction this time, a gentler suggestion. He reaches for the whiskey glass with a shivering hand, lifts it and has a swallow, closes his eyes and exhales satisfaction. He leans over to offer Zath his mouth.

Zath drifts toward him as though pulled by some cosmic force, and takes a slow, thorough second-hand taste of Siamus's whiskey.

Siamus makes another soft sound of satisfaction against his lips. He draws back and slides his hand into Zath's hair, his thumb moving to stroke his temple. "I knew Kellan Sparce," he says in a low rasp, "some twenty years. He was one of my first lovers. We were no' — he'd been married, since, and we'd grown old and fond, but —" His eyes shine with sudden tears again. "The man I lost to the kvaldir, aye? Captain of my Nimble."

He has another swallow of whiskey, sets the glass down carefully, and picks up a slice of apple. "Will ye tell me anything? Of any of them? Ye know I won't press ye, if no'."

Zath turns to gaze toward the doorway, but not at it precisely; his gaze has gone unfocused. He takes a breath as though to speak, but then just lets it out. He waits a moment, then tries again.

"Sgt. Lazal'dris was the newest of the lot," he says. "Joined us for the qiraji conflict, after we lost Leafblade and the elder Crowley. Our new little scout called her Snowdrop. I never knew if she minded or not. Lazal'dris was over seven thousand years old; she had seen the last qiraji war. The War of the Shifting Sands. She knew Shiromar, the night elf priestess they now call the Scarab Lord. They were old friends."

"Ah, tides." Siamus touches Zath gently, says nothing else, waits. Also eats an apple slice, because he is being responsible.

Avrenne is free! She will not be lost forever in these pants.

There's, at last, the sound of someone getting into water. And again, as before, it takes a few moments, but the soft scent of lotus drifts out first.

"Siege Engineer Blackale was the sixth of seven daughters. Her family hardly missed her, she said, but she still wrote them every week, on Wednesdays, even when we were trapped in a hole somewhere. She would send them later. She had more hair on her arms than most men do. Of all of us, she talked of herself least. She drank like a fish and would agree with anything anyone said, even two people who were arguing. She would somehow find a way to agree with them both."

His eyes are shimmering with unshed tears.

From the bathroom is a soft, barely there sound of a woman humming, low in her chest.

Siamus manages to slide the tray aside from his lap and shift closer still so that he can gather Zath up in his arms. He continues not to say anything himself.

"Lieutenant – " His throat closes up. He clears it. Tries again. "Like Hall and the Crowleys she was in the original 7th Legion, when it was just one of many, Wyrmbane's. A runaway, sixteen, lied on her enlistment papers. She was twenty by the time she was brought into the new 7th, and I didn't find out until last year that she'd asked to be put in the 6th. The one he'd given me. I still don't know why. I never said a single kind– "

He crumples slightly, folding in on himself. Squeezes his eyes shut.

"Keiley…" he whispers. "She was… a fucking nuisance."

Siamus wraps his arms tighter, puts his face in Zath's hair. "Shhh, shh shh," he says, the way Avrenne has heard him do. "My poet, my beauty. She knew ye, aye? She saw ye. She knew ye saw her." His voice is thick. "She was — I won't say a charming girl, she was decidedly no'. But I liked her well for it." A pause. "Ye know me. And Blackale was a laughing lass and a peacemaker. I never knew the other. I wish I'd known all of them better. But ye did, ye knew 'em, and they'll no' go unremarked, your brave ones."

He kisses Zath's temple, his ear. "Kellan came into the dream, when I lost him. I don't think — I grieved him enough, and he came into the dream. Will ye grieve your girls? E'en if only wi' us? But somehow? We'll mourn wi' ye."

"No," Zath says suddenly, fiercely. Not a refusal, a denial. And then immediately, "I'm sorry. No. I'm being childish. Mourning is the proper thing to do for the dead. But — they weren't supposed to die. That's the point of us. They're not supposed to be gone. I shouldn't have to — I was going to be stuck with them forever. I don't even know how to begin to– " He takes a deep, steadying breath. "But I know. I know. I'll… I'll try."

"I would tell ye," whispers Siamus roughly, "of the tides, but it's no' my place. It's only my place to sit here if you'll ha'e me, and hear what you'll say. Aye? But I will."

"Yes." He exhales a long, slow breath. "Yes, thank you. I'll… when the words come, I'll know who to say them to."

From behind the door, while Avrenne moves in that slow, luxurious way, a woman accustomed to savoring her moments of indulgence, comes the relatively soft singing of the Ahmrán Na Farraige. By now, a very familiar song.

"Good man, Tyrrell," says Siamus again, another semblance of that brusque Military Gravitas. He draws away — slowly, this time — to collect his tray again, and glances toward the bathroom door. A smile softens his expression.

He looks at Zath sidelong as he picks up his whiskey glass. "Ye did too, ye know. Come into the dream. For a time."

Zath's gaze drifts toward the bathroom door again even as he addresses Siamus. "I would have had you dream better things of me," he says wryly, touched with sadness.

"Ye were a comfort in it, when ye came," Siamus says without looking at him, and has a sip of whiskey. "Ye could make the fires go out, for a moment or two. Wi' your lovely cold hands." He sets the glass down, still without looking at Zath, and helps himself to a slice of cheese.

Zath laughs softly, and leans over to subtly nuzzle Siamus's unruly hair. He inhales deeply before drawing away.

"Look at you, eating. Such a good boy."

Siamus smiles sidelong, wryly. "Ah, it doesn't work on me, love," he says, as though Zath knows what he's talking about — Zath certainly knows what he's talking about, but Siamus is not aware of this — "Ye'd have to try 'Admiral,' perhaps. Or no'."

"What if I called your efforts 'admirable'? Is that close enough?" His smile suggests that he's aware it's a very weak joke.

"That, my love, is a very weak joke," Siamus tells him kindly, and gives him a rakish smile.

"I am a very weak man," Zath returns wryly. "As you have had ample opportunity to observe."

"I have ne'er," says Siamus very seriously, "observed any such thing of ye, Captain."

As the song of the sea fades, there's a brief pause, and then Avrenne tips her head back again, and sings another.

This is a different song, in tone and style. The words are also not in Common, but that is all it has in, well, common. It's an old, old dialect of Lordaeron. The song might be possibly familiar to Zath, a remnant of a dirge meant for soldiers, many centuries past. It had been used in a popular opera twenty some years ago, a minor revival of this relic, and one young girl at least chose to learn it, for her own reasons.

Her voice soars in the higher notes, and dips into low vocalizations of that bone deep and soft sorrow, sung with feeling, grief of loss and unwavering remembrance at once. The notes rise again, that sound of her pushing her voice out, reaching for the soldiers in the other room, a comfort of touch of her voice, a wrapping around, and ends on one final high series of vocalizing, a last note held for a moment, before she lets the silence ring, as she sinks down below the water.

The notes of the song seem to pierce Zath like blades; he closes his eyes as though in pain, leaning against Siamus for shelter. At the deeper notes something shakes loose in him and his chest hitches in rough, wrenching, silent sobs. By the end of it tears are streaming down his face and he's limp and boneless in Siamus's arms, incapacitated by grief.

"Cry it out, they say," he whispers with sudden venom. "As if it were dust, to be rinsed away by such a feeble thing as tears. I could cry myself to sand, and blow away, and they will still be gone. What good are tears?"

"We're born from saltwater," Siamus tells him. "And we're mourned wi' it as well. Ye don't wash a thing away, love. Ye gi'e it to the tides."

"Blackale hated the sea," Zath says miserably.

"The sea doesn't mind what ye think of her," says Siamus. "She only is. Your Blackale was as much her child as any other. We don't all love our mothers," he adds dryly. Siamus does not, perhaps, have the relationship with his mother that Zath did. Even if he has not murdered her. "But if it comforts ye then have a drink yourself and weep in whiskey for her. I know the lass loved a drink."

Avrenne resurfaces, and she is quiet now, washing her hair. The shaking in her hands finally stops.

"Dwarves didn't come from the sea," Zath says stubbornly. "The Titans made them out of stone, and then something went wrong. Or so the latest evidence says. But at any rate, I… I'm not ready to let go. Of any of them, sea-born or otherwise. I'm still — I still can't accept it. Part of me is still fighting." He shakes his head, clearly frustrated at himself. "Any gesture I make now would be false, meant to placate those who are concerned about me. I will not insult you in that manner."

He takes in another deep breath, then lets it go.

"The best thing for me now, I think, is to put it away for now. When the time has come to mourn, I will know it. Just as I did for my father, my mother, my sister. I can speak of them now without pain. Most of the time. But for my 6th — it is still too soon."

Siamus nods. "Aye," he says, and offers Zath the whiskey glass inquiringly.

Zath takes a small sip without taking the glass away from him, just resting a hand lightly on it to guide it to his mouth.

There's the sound of Avrenne rising out of the tub, that splashing of water, one leg, then the other, and the water draining out of the tub.

Zath's eyes flick toward the bathroom door again, his gaze distant.

Siamus has a sip of the whiskey himself, sets it down, eats some more apple and cheese. He glances at the flowers on the bureau, and then flicks a look to the bathroom door himself, smiling softly.

"Are you still sorry I 'gave her to you'?" Zath says wryly, and very softly.

"No," says Siamus, just as softly. I mean, he's whispering, also, but you know what I mean. "I'm no'. She is my joy, Zath. I'd no' expected it, but I'll no' do wi'out her, I don't think. My mermaid lass." He looks over at the other man. "I can't thank ye."

"I knew you'd get on," Zath says with aloof dignity and a hint of smugness.

"Tides," says Siamus. "Ye sound like bloody Sintha. Pair of ye." He shakes his head wearily.

Zath flushes very faintly yet again. It sure has been a couple of days of a lot of that.

Avrenne emerges from the bathroom in a way that is not entirely different from before – that same gentle turn of the handle, the slow opening of the door, as though she is attempting to not disturb something. This time, however, her eyes are not downcast, she is not still lost in some thought. Her head is up, and when she is framed there in the rectangle of the door, she is once again larger, the presence of her strong even in the softness of herself without the mask of the Duchess.

She is once more dressed in the nightgown of cream and lace, and the material has molded to her body, outlining her in details, curves and lines. Her skin is flushed, chest and cheeks, her hair a dark gold. It’s wet enough that a drop of water slides down the side of her neck, running a small trail to her collarbone, and she reaches up her left hand, wedding ring on her finger, to brush the back of her knuckles against it absently, trailing the blade of her finger up along the path of it. Her other hand has hold of the black bag, the strap of it wound around her wrist like a cuff. Her eyes go to Siamus like a fixed point of a known place he’ll be, and she lights up, smiling at both of them there, eyes flicking from Siamus to Zath and back to Siamus.

There is, rather notably perhaps, given how private the Duchess is, a distinct lack of discomfort or reserve. She is as bold as Siamus knows her to be in the most private of moments. She strides forward, aiming to walk around the outer edge of the bed towards her side of it.

Siamus holds his hand out to welcome her, and then looks at the tray on his lap. "I will need," he says dryly, "to borrow some dignity again. Because I don't think I'll get out of these clothes all on my own. Zath, will ye?" He tips his head toward the bathroom.

It may not be quite 7 PM yet, but Siamus Fallon has had a lot of major allergic reactions today and is ready for bed.

Zath casts a bewildered look between Siamus and the feminine vision that has just crawled into bed with him moments before he is requesting to be helped out of his clothes elsewhere.

"You wish for… me to…" Another glance at Avrenne. "Certainly, if… or shall I just perhaps take the tray, and…?"

Avrenne sets the bag into the interior pocket of her cloak hanging up there, and sets her hand in Siamus' for a moment. "I can handle the trays, Captain," she says, reaching for the one of the food and whiskey, bending at the waist, and it is not her fault if there is something faintly suggestive of it, of the way her hips press against the edge of the bed.

The bathroom smells like lotus, as if you've buried your face into her nightgown and inhaled deeply.

Siamus looks at Avrenne. He pauses, considers. "Would ye rather help me, pet?" he asks her gently. "Wi' the clothes?" You may not be present for peeing, sorry Avrenne. Some steps are still a bridge too far.

Avrenne's expression goes a little vulnerable, and soft, as she looks over at Siamus for a beat before she gives him a sweet smile, her eyes flicking down and up him, a slight wicked look to it. "Oh, yes." It's not quite the tone, made subtle now, rather than blatant as before. "I would."

"I'll take the tray," Zath says swiftly. "Make things comfortable here for you."

"Thank ye, man," says Siamus with a grateful nod. He shifts to clamber out of the bed; he is still unwontedly clumsy, but he manages to get onto his feet under his own power.

Avrenne lets go of the tray, straightening, to walk back around the other side of the bed. She'll have to pass right by you Zath to get to Siamus.

Zath gives a subtle shudder as she passes, keeping his eyes on the tray. As soon as there is a path for him to do so, he takes the tray toward the door.

Avrenne steps in to Siamus, that sweet smile on her face, hands reaching out for his shirt, fingers on the topmost buttons as she tips her head to look up at him.

He smiles down at her. "Partnership," he suggests in a whisper. Not because he's being sexy but because whispering is what he can do right now. "Ye can break them if ye want."

That seems like a joke. Avrenne is not in a button-breaking hurry for her invalid husband.

"I've thought about it," Avrenne says, that slightly wicked look in her eyes, as she works the buttons with a direct point-A-to-point-B swiftness, fingers nimble and sure, but she brushes her fingertips along him in little strokes of his skin in between each, as though to sneak in every small touch she can. "A lot."

"Someday," he assures her gravely, with that gleam in his eyes. He's definitely feeling better. "Tomorrow, maybe." There's a thread of laughter audible even in a whisper.

"Oh, I have several particular things I would like. At least two for the list. You have never been in bed with a shirt on before, and now I have ideas," she says, a sultry note in her own voice. She moves her hand to first one of his cuffs, then the other, before she sets both hands at his waist, somewhat unnecessarily, to slide them both up slowly over his chest to his shoulders to help him out of it. "I would need to find out where one gets buttons repaired. I don't know how to sew one back on." To be fair, she has a personal tailor.

"To be fair," says Siamus solemnly. "Ye have a tailor, Your Grace." He pauses. "And so do I, in the city. He's mended his share of buttons for me. Though it would be charming to see ye try, perhaps."

Avrenne makes a humming sound like a trapped laugh, as she gets the shirt off him, and sets it on the bed. She steps closer to work at the buttons of the trousers, her eyes on him rather than what she's doing. "Well, next time you are at the Estate, I will go through enough buttons to give one a try."

His smile heats back to life. "I'd enjoy that, Your Grace." He does not make any effort to help her with his trousers, though he is almost certainly capable of that much, by now. But this is Avrenne's Job at present: Undress your husband, little lady. It isn't undignified, it's a sexy game and he is still in charge.

Avrenne's main strength is in her legs, which helps as she keeps hold of them, sliding her fingers against his hips, and sinks very, very slowly down to her knees, her eyes on his as she does, head tipped up, the flush from the bath making her look as though they are already halfway through her own pleasure. Her nipples have already gone taut, showing through the nightgown obviously, and there is something now incredibly suggestive in the way she arches her back very deliberately.

Siamus gazes down at her, his pupils dilated to black pools. He puts his hand in her hair in a manner that suggests he would do something with her head if it weren't medically inadvisable right now. He kind of looks like he wants to do it anyway. "Ye vision," he tells her. "I've got plans for ye."

Avrenne leans into his hand, as she helps him step free of the clothing, her tongue darting out to lick her lips, teeth grazing her bottom lip as she gazes drowsily up at him. "Oh, yes." There it is. The sultry note is deep in her voice now. "I'll be patient." It's not just that he can't, it's part of the game now. Make her wait, Siamus. Build the tension.

"Good girl," he tells her softly. Magic words. "That's my good girl. Will ye do me a favor later?"

Avrenne's eyes flicker closed, as she yearns into his hand now. "Anything," she says, opening her eyes on a flick up to his.

"Good," he tells her, sliding his other hand into her hair. "Ye trust me, pet?"

"Always." There's a world of faith in the world, that deep trust in her eyes. He might have that sense that he could ask her to step off a cliff, and she would. She hasn't risen back up, as she sets her hands now on his thighs, soft and light, fingernails nothing but suggestions.

He cradles her face, his gaze inky with desire. "Good," he says. "Later. Ye can show me." He brushes his thumb across her lips and then — possibly more reluctantly than Siamus Fallon has ever done anything in his life including turn his back on Kul Tiras — he releases her and steps away. Still in charge.

Avrenne makes a soft, needy sort of sound as he does, and holds her position for several beats longer, running her hands now over herself a little, before she finally rises back up to her feet with elegance born out of nothing but ingrained practice after so long.

"Ye can get in the bed," Siamus tells her casually. She has Permission. "I'll no' be a moment." Yes, there is still bathroom required. He surveys the distance between himself and the door, and sets off stoically.

Avrenne takes several deep breaths, and climbs back into the bed beneath the covers, moving to her side of it, closing her eyes as she sets her hands over each other, on top of the covers, left over right where her ring can catch the light. She already looks flushed from the bath, but it's possible some of it is now generated by the woman on her own.

Zath appears briefly in the doorway, immediately gets a Vibe, and does a Grandpa Simpson minus the hat.

"Zath?" calls Siamus's voice from the direction of the bathroom. "Will ye help a man back?" Yeah he detected that Dire Aura.

Zath Grandpa Simpsons his way right back into the bedroom and all but holds up his hand beside his bed-adjacent eye as he passes and heads for the bathroom.

Avrenne has her eyes open, watching him as he does. He misses all of her expressions, unfortunately, but he might hear a soft 'mm' as he passes by.

Siamus is already washing up at the sink when Zath appears. He flashes a smile over his shoulder and rakes Zath with an up-and-down look that may have some leftover Avrenne Heat in it. Or perhaps this is new Zath Heat. "Borrow your arm?" he asks. "For the walk back?"

"Of course," Zath says, moving to his side and extending a forearm gently.

Siamus takes his arm. He doesn't lean as heavily as he had yesterday or even this morning, but he is definitely much less steady on his feet than he was even a couple of hours ago. It's been a long day for a man in his current state.

He makes his way, with Zath's assistance, back to the bed and his waiting wife. He clambers in and slides over against Avrenne, leaving plenty of room on the other side. (The tattoo side.)

Avrenne looks over at them, smiling, still definitely heated, even if she's pushed it down to a simmer, leaning into Siamus.

Zath is pointedly not looking at them both as he helps Siamus into bed. Uh oh, he's spotted the carelessly discarded clothes now.

Siamus slips his arm around Avrenne's shoulders and tucks her against him. He's watching Zath, also with a smile.

Zath starts toward the clothes with Purpose.

That's fine. Siamus appreciates a man who tidies up clothes. "Thank ye, Tyrrell," he says.

Zath is really really intent on the clothes that got strewn over the bed. He is folding them so flawlessly they could be put on display.

Avrenne's hair is rapidly drying, the fine strands going from dark gold to lighter and lighter warm gold tones, as she sets her head on Siamus' shoulder and hand on his chest in an idle way.

Siamus waits patiently. He approves of a job well done.

Zath takes the clothes and goes to set them on top of the dresser. He would not appear to be aware of the presence of anyone else in the room. He is really intently focused on those clothes. He sets them down and then considers the dresser. It appears to be very perplexing.

"Tyrrell," says Siamus.

He goes very still for a moment. Then he turns, casually. "Mm?" His gaze is somewhat vague.

"Will ye do me a favor, lovely?" Siamus disentangles from Avrenne enough to prop himself upright on the pillows. He shifts his attention back to Avrenne, reaches for her, gathers her toward him.

"Sit here wi' me, joy," he murmurs to her — whisper-murmurs — and tugs her over into his lap, indicating that she should sit reclining against him, between his legs, her back against his chest. He tucks his arms around her and kisses the side of her head, then lifts the blankets away to one side. His gaze is on Zath.

Very deliberately, still gazing at Zath, he lifts a hand to cup one of Avrenne's breasts, strokes her budded nipple through the fabric. "Lovely," he says to Zath. "Poet-tongue."

With his other hand he gathers the skirts of Avrenne's nightgown and draws them upward, just enough to half-bare her thighs.

"I'm told I'm no' meant to see to my lady wife, but I fear she's a touch heated. Will ye show her what a lovely mouth ye've got? For me?"

Zath goes white, and then pink, and then a strange combination of both. He swallows audibly and glances at Avrenne for confirmation.

Avrenne relaxes against Siamus. There isn't even a hesitation in her, that same boldness he knows of her, as he touches her in front of Zath. Her hands go to one of his on her breast to touch his wrist as if to hold him there, the other up behind her to his hair. It is very obvious to him that she is not afraid in the slightest, no touch of nervousness or sudden shyness.

There's an indrawn breath at the verbal suggestion, and she tips her head back more against Siamus with a low, soft sound, exposing the side of her neck.

Her eyes go to Zath, dark and hot, and she very deliberately, very slowly, spreads her thighs wider, her legs coming to rest against Siamus'. "Please."

Siamus smiles: At Avrenne's willingness, at Zath, at both. He tips his head down to kiss the side of her throat, his eyes still on Zath.

Time Passes, And Some Things Happen

"Siamus?" She asks softly, her hand moving to his face, as she checks on him, reassuring herself she didn't just save him and kill him at once.

"Aye," he breathes raggedly, and wraps an arm tight around her, kissing whatever part of her he can reach. "Aye, pet."

After a moment he adds, less breathlessly and with some amusement. "I'm no' dead, if ye were afraid. I feel, in fact, well-mended."

Avrenne gives a shaky, warm and soft laugh of relief at that, the sound a touch in the dark as intimate as her body against him, resting her head on his chest listening to his heart beating, stroking her hand lightly on him, as though to encourage it to keep doing that, good job heart, just continue doing that. "Siamus." It's not a scold, although there's something indulging in it, edged with that deep satisfaction.

Her hand on Zath moves up along him in idle, soft strokes, following the lines of his scars up his body toward his face to touch him there, moving her hand to cradle his cheek, sight unseen.

"I appreciate," Siamus whispers wryly, "your willingness to murder me in the circumstances. Ye might ha'e murdered me if ye'd refused." He turns his head to check on Zath. After a moment he asks, with soft and delighted disbelief, "Did ye make a soulstone, my beauty?"

"I did." It's very quiet, and he is very still, leaning gently into Siamus's body and Avrenne's hand on his cheek.

"Bless ye," says Siamus with sincere tenderness, and shifts enough to kiss Zath's temple.

"Someone has to keep his head," he murmurs, a little sulky.

Avrenne makes a soft humming sort of sound in her chest, stroking her hand gently along Zath's face. She's still somewhat boneless in Siamus' lap. "Well done, Captain."

Siamus laughs softly.

"I've no' a weak heart," he tells Zath, or the both of them. He might mean more than one thing. Or maybe he doesn't but it's a metaphor anyway.

"I don't have a weak mind, Siamus, but I can still get a headache strong enough to make it impossible for me to see clearly," Avrenne says mildly, as she pats her hand on his chest over his heart. "Your heart is very strong. But it is still healing. It is good we did not do it harm it in our enthusiasm for you."

"Avrenne," Zath says quietly. "Can you see well enough to get a towel in the dark?" Something about the subtle emphasis on in the dark at the end conveys that if not, please just do not bother, for there will be No Light.

"I don't need to see them to know where they are," Avrenne replies. "I have them fixed still." Which is kind of a strange thing to say, the tone a little distracted, as she stretches up to press a kiss to Siamus' cheek, stroking her fingers on Zath's cheek in echo of it. "I'll be just a moment." She stretches up slowly from Siamus, and there's a small, restless shift of her hips on him again at the sensation of it.

She could go again.

She's resilient like that.

Regardless, she disentangles from them both, slipping out of the bed, and moving with such surety that you'd think she had perfect night vision.

Zath curls a bit more into Siamus's side, quiet and still.

Siamus rolls onto his side to face Zath and drape an arm over him. "Will we sleep now, lovely?" he asks drowsily, and nuzzles Zath's hair.

"I don't know," Zath says wryly, but still quietly. "Will we?"

"I think we will," Siamus affirms. He is definitely Sleepy. It has been a heckuva twenty-four hours. Again.

Avrenne moves into the bathroom, pauses only a moment to wet some of it, and there's a sense of warmth as she heats both the water on it and towel, before she returns to Zath, reaching out her hand to him with once again such surety as though she knows exactly where he is now, trailing her hand down from his shoulder to his hand, and pressing the towel to his hand with a gentle touch.

"Thank you," he says softly, and begins to tidy himself up, attempting not to disturb Siamus overly with his movements.

"Pet," murmurs Siamus to Avrenne, and rolls back slightly to pat his chest. "Come."

She already did that twice. Oh he means to bed.

Avrenne smooths back Zath's hair from his face. "You're welcome." She strokes her fingers through his hair once more, before she pulls away to walk back around the bed.

She does not collect her underwear from wherever it is. That is not a fixed object. She has no idea where they went, and she does not seem to care. Instead, she lifts up the nightgown, pulls it over her, and hangs it up almost absently on the hook with her cloak. Now she isn't the only one still wearing clothes. She slips back in under the covers, pressing herself to Siamus' side with a happy sigh, her head going to his shoulder, and her hand to his chest.

"I don't suppose, if you would like to call me 'Avrenne,' Captain, that I might be allowed the use of your own name? I realize it was not our agreement before, but I would like the use of it, if I may," she says as she strokes a soft line down Siamus' chest.

Siamus smiles in the dark and tucks his arm around Avrenne. Two birthday cakes. Both naked.

"Call me whatever you like," Zath says calmly into the darkness, and then immediately adds, "Except Lord Tyrrell." A brief pause. "Or Count Tyrrell." A slightly longer pause. "Or Zathary, or Lord Zathary. Or Your Lordship. Or anything with Tyrrell in it."

But other than that, anything's fine, I guess. Steve, for example.

"Poet," whispers Siamus.

Avrenne's laugh unspools in the air around them, hot as a summer night with bright sparks of fireflies and stars alight within it, delight and amusement all at once, rich with affection. "Zath, then," she says, her laughter a bright gold thread though her words.

"Zath, then," he agrees, solemnly.

Siamus turns his head at Avrenne's sweet laughter to breathe in the scent of her hair. He may be dozing.

Avrenne makes a soft humming sound, brushing her fingers along Siamus' chest in that slow way, as if to say breathe easily, in and out, just like this. "I love you," she says quietly, into the dark. She doesn't address it to either of them fully, with no name attached, and thus it might be understood that it applies to both. She might be willing to sleep, or rest at the least, despite the early hour. It's been a Time the past few days. It’s several long minutes of silence before her breathing evens out, goes slower and deeper.

Somewhere in the other room, a cut glass water bottle with just a bit of cold fresh-glacier water stashed away in a secret place blurs and then disappears.

Zath remains quiet and still. Could also be falling asleep. Who knows.