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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | With tensions heating up between Alliance and Horde, and mistrust of the undead in the post-Wrathgate Northrend campaign, Roper and Syarra strive to figure out a way forward for the Ebon Blade as a neutral party with a focus on their enemy the Scourge. 2300-ish words. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
The nearest mailbox for the Sunstrikes is still the one in Unu'pe, but that's just a gryphon ride away and back, and it's not like Roper needs to sleep. Or rest. And with three square meals a day carving through the ongoing efforts of Zul'Drak with the Argent Crusade pushing through it, it's not like he's going Hungry. When he gets to the camp of the Ebon Blade, it's still early morning, although it's a little hard to tell it with the way the light is almost blinding on the snow, and the way the Ebon Blade has deliberately set their camp into the deeper shadows of the trees, a darkness suffusing the place in both actual shade and deliberate aesthetic tone of the place.
Roper doesn't bother with greetings to the knights standing in place like eerie statues. He just heads straight to a section on the farside from the gryphons and bats, angling for where he knows he'll find Syarra. He's wearing his helm over his face and his full saronite plate, but that's nothing unusual these days since Wrathgate. Violence to the Scourge is always imminent.
Syarra is at the edge of the camp, keeping her guard shift. Fully armed and armored herself, her dark hair is hidden from sight beneath her helm. She half-turns when she recognizes Roper's stride and gestures with a tilt of her head for him to join her.
"Hey." Roper moves to stand against the fencing of the camp next to Syarra. He leans against it with his left leg propped up, bent at the knee, his left hand resting on it to start up an impatient tapping as he looks around. "Anything?"
"Attacking? Not recently." Syarra lets out a low sigh. "Still need to watch. Any news on your side?"
"Yeah. None of it good," Roper's voice has a touch of the husky note to it, but the drawl is so far gone his accent almost sounds crisp in comparison. He's keeping his voice low, his head tilted down to angle it at Syarra, and not carry. "Got the packet from Alaisa," which means the Cobalt Company newsletter, "And a note from Captain Sparkwire. We're approaching the 'seriously fucked' range."
Syarra straightens, turning slightly toward Roper, and speaks in a voice barely above a whisper. "What happened? Did one of theirs die?"
"No. If they do, I don't think we're getting fucking letters. Pretty sure we're getting privately employed executioners." Roper hesitates, and there's a moment where he might simply be evaluating how close other things are to them, looking without seeming to look. He taps faster on his leg, and then, without stopping, picks out a bag from within an imbued netherweave bag. Quick flicks of his gauntlet opens it, and he pulls out two different letters of the most recent Cobalt Company newsletter and Jo's letter, holding them out to Syarra. "Here. See for yourself."
Syarra hesitates, and then reads the newsletter first. There's no change in her stance, and her expression is hidden by her helm, but there's a darker current in her voice when she says, "They might be at war? We've hardly been married a month."
"Yeah, don't they know that's second anniversary shit," Roper drawls, but there's a cutting edge of anger threaded through it, and his left hand clenches into a fist before he picks the tapping back up. "I fucking knew this would happen. At least there's nothing filed, nothing that could be used against you of a paper trail."
"Or you," Syarra says, resting one hand in the other, as if cradling where the ring is embedded. "At least they've been reminded we're neutral. They won't attack out of hand."
"Yet. And who would fucking stop them? Varian could be losing diplomatic ground every fucking day if he keeps this up. Thrall just had an entire fucking attempted coup and a disaster. The Horde doesn't tolerate weakness in their leaders. This is exactly what I fucking — " Roper's voice rises for a moment, and he halts it, pauses, lowers it back down, calmer sounding, as he slows the tapping, slouches better into casual. Nothing to see here. "We lose those two, we lose the proclamations holding us in place where we are. We need both of them to stay in power, and keep thinking of us as a good thing. So. We make sure everyone here is playing it nice. Fucking national security risk to piss off Cobalt Company at this point."
"Yes, we'll have to be very careful to give the right impression," Syarra gives a subtle nod. She reads the other letter, the one from Captain Sparkwire, and freezes in place. "Oh, what the fuck."
"Yeah." Roper makes a there it is gesture with his right hand, a rolling of his wrist, and he deliberately doesn't look in the direction of the camp of certain death knights. "So. That's kinda our problem."
Syarra hands the letters back to him, and turns to look at him with her fiery gaze. "It's not even just the postscript. Colson. Do we need to leave, to make sure… but then we won't be here to prevent anything. At least she says she understands we're not like the Forsaken, right before the warning to not be like the Forsaken. We need them on our side."
Roper takes the letters back, folding them carefully with the gauntlets, and sets them back into the bag, to put that bag inside the other bag. It's a system. "Yeah. So. How do you wanna play it? I could put a stop to that shit here, but it's…gonna be more of a short term solution. Threats and leverage that I've got will work, but not for long, and not if I turn my back. But, it would buy us time. Otherwise…" He spreads both arms out in an open gesture.
"I could talk to people," Syarra says, glancing toward the camp. "Try reason. It doesn't always work, but maybe long-term… Cobalt is going to be working here. It's such an opportunity, we just need to not ruin it. And I can't do anything directly, because I have two marks against me now."
"We can try talking. And if it doesn't work…there's always my way. But if you start that cold, you gotta stay that cold after. And long term, they're always waiting for a chance to get out from under a thumb, so you get knives in your back when you aren't watching. But, if they fuck this up now." Roper sets his left leg down, tilting his head up to the sky for a long moment. "Reason with them. I'll touch in with Colson. And Sir Dane tolerated me enough before to not kill me on sight. Let's see if that's lasting."
Syarra nods. "And maybe my sister can speak for us. She's still Horde, but she's with the Argent Crusade."
"She's also out as…" Roper flicks his fingers with a clicking of the saronite. "But every living ally helps." He deliberately sinks back against the fence, a loose, relaxed stance that is in no way reflected in the tighter, angry edge of his voice gone deeper and darker. "Fuck. All we need now is for fucking Kaela to come in like a wrecking ball, kill one of Cobalt's wearing our fucking tabard, and we can just sit in the fucking bloody rain of it pouring down as everything crashes back to the fucking bottom."
Cheery.
"That can't happen," Syarra says automatically, though it definitely can. She makes a frustrated sound low in her throat. "I hate this. Being tied to people I don't trust, people who could sink us at any moment. It's like no matter what we do we'll always get pulled back down to whatever level others have set for us. But this is what we have, and we have to work with it."
"It's the cards we got," Roper agrees. "One way or another, you play the game. Straight. Honest. Cheat. Lie. Steal. Or kill off the person about to flip the table," he drawls.
"We've just got to keep an eye on their hands," Syarra says quietly. "And keep our own cards close. So, our cards. You'll contact Colson. And we could encourage the more stable death knights to engage. Forge? Mourn backfired."
"Define 'stable,'" Roper deep drawls and he sounds like he's smiling, but he spreads his hands out to his sides in an open gesture. "All of us here are here for at least mostly the right reasons. But we need protocols fast. Torturing prisoners in front of the living is a great way to make sure they see the monsters. It's one step away from someone slipping and trying to play off a cut into living flesh as a love tap, just a playful flirting." Which, in fairness… He moves his head side to side a little. "Those of us who have been too isolated among ourselves and forgetting how to be around the living need to be fucking reminded that we aren't fucking alone on the planet."
"Keeping them away from the living won't help that," Syarra says, turning to look back out over the troll-infested countryside. "I'll try to make it clear, what is and isn't acceptable. But we need them not to isolate. I've spent so much time among the living with the Coterie, and with my sister. And you've had Alaisa. It's kept our perspective from shifting too badly."
"Exactly." Roper taps his left hand rapidly against his leg. "It's why I said from the start — every one of us who could needed a living asset. Some of us are too fucked up to pull theirs, but those shouldn't be fucking forward facing, first contact."
"This is such a disaster," Syarra murmurs. "I want to say we're not ready to integrate, but I don't know if time would help or hurt. Anyway, we'll keep focused on the mission. I've told Aze to visit here, Thursdays. She's just at the camp nearby, it doesn't make sense for us both to go back to Kaskala. But then, that also means she'll see, if they…" Syarra shakes her head.
"Yeah." Roper steps in closer, lowers his voice further, tipping his head towards her. "You have any way of finding out what the Dark Lady is gonna do about all this? Because right now, if the fucking Forsaken keep pushing, and the Alliance goes to war…" He inhales deliberately to exhale a heavy sigh. "Honestly, I gotta wonder if this was somehow Arseass' plan, that he goaded that fucking Putress into all of this, so that we'd fracture just as we were finally getting close enough. If he did, it was fucking brilliant. Because we try to work two fronts, we're gonna lose the one that matters, and there won't be Horde and Alliance lines. It'll just be fucking Scourge."
"I don't appear to have the same connections as Cobalt Company," Syarra says dryly. "But the Coterie is working on how to deal with the Forsaken they've taken on. There aren't many, because all of the other officers are terribly vain, but I could try to make inroads with one of the ones that seem unlikely to have been involved."
"Even just decent rumors would be better than what we have right now." Roper's helm moves up slightly as if he's listening for something, and he pauses. The moment passes, and he directs back to Syarra. "I don't like so much guessing."
"I can't speak to her, but I can give you my guess of the Dark Lady's mind. She has no reason to jeopardize the war against the Lich King," Syarra shifts closer to Roper. "I don't know how much you recall of her history, but her hatred should run as deep as ours, if not more. And… I believe she still feels kinship with the sin'dorei. I didn't believe she would have ordered that attack, and I think now she must be furious."
"If this is right though, she lost control of her people. And who knows how deep that goes. So, now what? Weeding out the rot from the rotten? She can't even make an example of one of the fuckers now, the Alliance did that."
"Yes, she lost control," Syarra says, sinking in on herself a little in her armor. "There's no other explanation. But it wasn't just the Alliance. In the newsletter, it said the Horde was there. The Dark Lady must have been. That much, what happened there, I should be able to find out. It was public, others must know."
"And what's next. If she's about to burn a bunch of fucking Forsaken on a fucking pyre while they're still existing enough to scream the entire time, that'd be good to know. Free lunch and a publicity nightmare, what wouldn't be to like," Roper drawls, reaching out a hand towards Syarra's hair before he halts the motion halfway. He sobers, clenches his hand into a fist and sets it back to his side. "We'll figure it out. We gotta start from the bottom again, so fucking be it. But let's see if we got enough to stop the drop."
Syarra sighs, and nods. "I'll head back to Dalaran. See what I can find out from the Forsaken in the Coterie. Bonfires or forgiveness, but I don't see the Dark Lady as a forgiving leader. Still, that will be after I talk to our overeager companions here about how to relate to the living. Then we'll meet back up, compare notes?"
"Fine." Roper nods, stepping well into her personal space, his left hand moving over her right, the tips of his gauntlets clicking faintly. "Sya?"
Syarra turns her hand slightly, raising it to the touch. "Hm?"
"Don't forget your promise: if anything goes wrong, we figure it out together." There's almost a threat in his tone, but something incongruously gentle in the way he moves his fingers over hers. "That includes a fucking all out war."