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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | After the battle of Voldrune for Jenzelle and Brendol, Syarra and Roper return to their Kaskala home to deal with the remaining logistics of the fight, and decide who will go where as they tighten the noose around Kaela's remaining moves. 4k-ish words. Dark romance. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
The yurt in Kaskala seems to have seen little use in recent days, but the local kvaldir invaders seem to have learned to give the area a wide berth. The oven sits intact but cold nearby, and the door is locked. Today, though, there are two people approaching the area with the familiarity of long inhabitants. Two death knights, in damaged armor.
Syarra's hair is pulling halfway loose from its braid, and her helm missing. There's blood on her armor, and a distant look in her eyes.
Roper's helm is also missing, although it's hard to tell exactly how he's doing. His expressive face seems caught in a high focus of something just beyond where they are, as if he's ten steps ahead of the moment he's in and having difficulty not leaping there instead of remaining in the present. He rides next to Syarra closer than would be safe if the creatures of shadow they rode were living horses.
Only as they get in closer where they ordinarily halt the deathchargers does Roper's attention snap to her, moving a hand. "Sya," he says, a faint echo in his voice, just barely loud enough for her to hear him.
It is loud enough, though, and her gaze shifts to him instantly. She searches his expression for a long moment, and then says, "We're home. For now."
She dismisses the undead horse without bothering to dismount, landing heavily on the ground but not stumbling.
Roper does the same, but it would be stranger if he didn't. He doesn't do anything to suggest to anyone watching that there might be something wrong with Syarra. His posture is casual, a striding near a swagger as if they'd just been out on a date — a living person sort of date, rather than a death knight one — and they're just getting home now, nothing unusual at all.
But he's walking next to her, rather than in front or behind her, and when they get to the yurt, he unlocks the door and opens it, and he holds it for her, rather than walking down the ramp.
Syarra's brows draw down slightly, but she accepts the open door and walks down into the dark yurt. She knows where the candles are, the dusty half-burned stubs from the last time they came through Kaskala. She starts setting them up and lighting them as she waits for Roper to lock the door.
Once that is accomplished, she says quietly, without looking at him, as if continuing an ongoing conversation, "I know I shouldn't have… but things happened how they did, and it seemed like the best decision at the time."
Roper locks the door behind him, as usual, testing it once, as usual. He takes off his helm and throws it carelessly at the armor stand, not even close to landing it on the place it goes, not at all like usual. He rips off his gauntlets with enough lack of care to cause the faint sense of pain from it, tossing them to the side without looking, as he stalks to Syarra like a man about to commit a murder —
— to place both hands on each side of her face and pull her into the kind of kiss that feels more like a punishment than affection, bruising hard enough to hurt them both, cut lips against teeth, but in that brief moment of pain comes a breath of a tenderness before he pulls back and sets his forehead against hers. "Fuck, Sya." He doesn't sound angry, or disappointed. That might be relief in his voice, mixed with something darker, more possessive.
Syarra watches him approach with only a mild curiosity, making no effort to prevent any possible violence. Then she presses into the kiss, with a low sound of something between pleasure and pain.
"Mine," Syarra breathes through her bleeding lips afterward, still resting her head against his. Then, louder, she adds, "But if I'd been a little faster, I'd have taken her head."
"Yeah you fucking would have, cut right through the bitch's face," Roper murmurs, and if the words are brutal, the tone is almost sweet, affectionate. His eyes are open, staring at her. "You knew I was gonna be there." There's an odd note of a threat in his voice, but who it's for is slightly ambiguous. "I wouldn't have let her take you, even without the fucking paladin. You're mine. Not hers."
"So many paladins," Syarra says, and her gaze goes distant again, losing focus and seeming to look somewhere through him. "I think I would have come back, if they had to call. On purpose, this time. For you."
Roper's hands clench, sliding along her skin, down to her neck — a living woman might have felt that brief pressure as almost dizzying for the constriction to her pulse, but barring one, it's only a pressure — and into her hair, where his hands gentle, stroking down along the messy braid, down to the tie. "Sya." It's as though he's steadying himself with it. "We don't know if we can fucking come back from the Light. Maybe you could. I don't know if." He shakes his head, staring at her face as he undoes the tie, working his way up the braid. "I barely listened to it when I was alive. But if they do destroy me, even if they cut off my head and burn me to ash, if there's a way to crawl back out of that grave, I am. I'll be crawling back to you. Count on it." It would possibly sound more romantic, if it didn't sound so much like a threat, but here we are.
"What was it like. In the…" He makes a gesture with his head, probably indicating the paladin shield. "It didn't fuck you up worse? I couldn't feel you in it at all. Nothing. It was like you were somewhere else, even if I could see you right in front of me." This would ordinarily likely be where Roper would keep her hair down, but instead, oddly, he's finger combed it just enough to separate it back out into three strands, as he neatly and tidily re-braids it.
Syarra doesn't answer for a long moment, still staring through him. "I don't think I'm fucked up. There was no pain. I don't know why, but there wasn't. It just felt like… being held. Except that I…" She shakes her head and returns to the present moment, leaning forward a little to make it easier for Roper to braid her head. "I knew I'd ruined everything. The paladin was dead, and I didn't get Mondragon, so what was the point of anything else?" She draws in a breath, and then winces in pain. In a conversational tone, she adds, "I think some of the metal's embedded."
"Yeah," Roper agrees, setting a hand over the breastplate, his expression and voice both soft. "And you didn't ruin fucking anything. Paladins do that shit. You know that. And she did it because she saw what you did. Proof of an ally. Long term, you just nailed us an in. But, baby. You were holding back." That hand on her armor twitches, and then steadies. He ties off the braid, and steps away. He's probably getting his blacksmith tools.
"I was fighting how I always do," Syarra mutters, starting to carefully take off her gauntlets. "At least, how I do when people are watching and judging. Though I broke some rules. I should not have summoned the gargoyle, but I wanted a distraction. I couldn't have us look like them."
Roper pulls open a bag, and takes out a blacksmith's toolkit of tongs, hammer, and file, setting them on the table. For a moment, he looks angry, but it's that sudden anger, the kind that is his version of Syarra's deliberate blanking of her face. He forces it off, revealing more of a man than a monster, for a moment. "And you didn't. And it worked out, and we walked away with another good notch to our reputation. But we can't just hobble ourselves for fucking ever. They're gonna have to get used to us, accept enough of what we do. A palatable death knight works for small stakes, but in big ones, we need to be the good monsters, even in the ugly truth of what we can do." He clutches the tongs, a hard fist, and gestures with his other, a // come here// of his fingers, where he kneels down. He admits, as if not sure how much she saw or perceived, "I fucking lost it. For a minute there. I forgot everything. The mission. Tactics. I wasn't thinking of anything but you."
"I saw you coming for me," Syarra says, stepping over toward him and feeling carefully at the edges of the damage with her bare hands. "And when I was frozen in place, I could still see you. I didn't mean to do that to you, in front of everyone. To force you to show your hand."
Roper waits until she's close enough to touch before skimming his bare hand over her right shoulder, where the eternal wounds from her death linger. "That's how this works, baby. Let them see me. Let them remember me. Let Kaela think she's fucking got me." His eyes go to hers, intense and dangerous. "Let her think she's got this all figured out so that the next time you pull it all out at her, she's gonna falter." He reaches his other hand down to undo the buckles of the breastplate, running his fingers along it for any extra damage where it might have been driven into her.
"And if she's thinking to use me as a weakness, good. That's predictable, and I always fucking plan for it. She doesn't have any proof of yours, just mine. That's the way it should be. Let me take the hit, show some of my cards, so while she's staring at them you can shove your sword through her fucking throat." There's a little shiver of the candle flames as the air goes a little odd for a moment, before Roper pulls it back in.
The damage is localized, at least, jagged edges embedded into the already healed flesh where Kaela's swords found their mark. She raises her hands, letting Roper work.
"Next time, she'll have one less person on her side," Syarra says, trying not to breathe too deeply and shift the armor. "And I need to find a way to be all of me and not turn our allies away. I try to be kind, and I break people's spirits. I try to be palatable, and…" she gestures at the damaged breastplate. "But if we change tactics suddenly on the battlefield, when it's the Lich King on the other side of the runeblade, they might turn on us. I'm not sure how to get to a place where that doesn't happen. I'm barely there with Aze, and it took… so long."
"Yeah. And we're running out of time." Roper checks around her back, making sure every strap is cleared before he gets the tool under an edge of it. "Clay, though, might be a way into the Argent's graces enough to get us working with them, instead of on the fucking edges. They're our worst fucking danger if they snap on the field, and just see the armor and nothing else."
The way he's talking has the usual sound, but his expression has gone dangerous, as he starts to pry the armor away, slicing through healed flesh. "Besides, you're hot when you're breaking people's spirits." There's an echo in his voice, the husky set of it now a deep, rough scrape. He braces as he inflicts pain, ready for any instinctual counter attack.
Syarra pulls away with a hiss of pain, tearing her own flesh more as the armor pulls free. Her hands dip toward Roper, claw-like, but then she closes them into fists and holds them in place. Success, this time.
"And you're hot when you're tearing people apart," Syarra says, breathing through the pain. "Our enemies. Tearing our enemies… Clay doesn't care about us. You heard her. It was a tactical decision. Whatever it was I… it wasn't the same for her."
Roper's expression should probably have turned to worry at the near-miss of lost control, but that definitely wasn't it — there's a dark smile twisting his mouth. He keeps his hands on the armor, inspecting the damage to Syarra, rather than it, with a dreamy look to his eyes. His voice is low, intimate, and dark enough to worry how close he's walking on the edge of feeding off her pain. "Tactical decision is good enough a place to start. They don't have to love us. They just have to want us to stay here."
There's a wavering as he stares, before he blinks, forces his attention to the armor, makes his hand reach behind to the back of it, feeling where it's still embedded. "That guy. Vond Satterly. He's the one I met before, in the Plaguelands. The paladin on the gryphon who went fucking crazy and tried to destroy me, thinking I was someone else."
"What!?" Syarra startles, dropping her hands to her sides, with another faint pulse of pain at the movement. Her expression darkens dangerously, and her voice is low and threatening as she continues, "He never said anything about trying to kill one of us. But he would hide that… does he know it was you? I didn't mark him as playing a deeper game, but if that's how it is…"
Roper's laugh is oddly warm, as he probes around where the armor is stuck in the back — not as badly as the front. "Don't think he recognized me. Never saw my face, and I was just some anonymous Ebon Blade. Didn't give him my name. It was early days, almost a year ago now. He might have convinced himself it didn't fucking matter." He pushes the rest of the armor off, letting it hit the floor of the yurt.
"Doesn't fucking matter," Syarra mutters, distracted enough that she hardly reacts to the pain or the sound of the falling armor. "Just because you weren't destroyed… but not for lack of trying."
"It's not like I'm not gonna remember it until every drop of his bloodline evaporates into dust," Roper drawls. "But I walked away then for the same reason I fought next to him today. Same reason I put with that Atley's guy's shit. The more I can prove that we're in control, that we aren't the monsters they want us to be, the more we force them to recognize it. And it doesn't matter if the one's slinging the shit are convinced. We can convince the others watching, who see an asshole instead of a righteous paladin or virtuous knight, when it turns out the monster sticks it out and does the right thing." Roper sits back, closing his eyes, inhaling deeply. He sounds calm, but that might not be something entirely to be trusted.
"Besides. Could be leverage. If he gets even a shred of conscience about it, fucking no one does guilt like a fucking paladin." He opens his eyes to look at Syarra, a quirk of his smile on his face that reads more as affection in the moment with her pain still around him.
Syarra gives a brief flicker of a smile in response, pressing the torn and already-healing new rend in her flesh to give another flash of pain.
"We should make sure he's aware, then," she says. "See which way he falls, guilt or denial. And maybe next time I won't hold back, and I'll see who still stands with us. If I can prove I'm still in control, even with the necromancy."
She looks down at Roper's damaged breastplate. "How's yours? Do I need the tongs?"
Roper looks down at it, shaking his head. "Naw. Metal bent the right way. Sword like that is meant to bypass the armor, not crumple it. It'll pull off. I've got a bigger problem." He jerks his chin down to his sword. "Crack in the right hand blade. I'm gonna need to fix it. Make a new one." And that means going back to Acherus.
Syarra eyes the blade. "Getting to Acherus is easy. Getting back… not too difficult, now that the portals are working. We'd need to split up, though."
"And I gotta get to Stormwind. That cannon was Darkmoon Faire. No idea what the fuck Kaela was doing with it, but I've got a few weeks to find out. I also need to track down that third, the one who Kaela didn't take. Still not convinced she wasn't in on it. But with me not with you, if Kaela can move fast enough, it might be the perfect time to strike at you." Roper's hand hovers for a moment over the ruins of Syarra's under armor. "I could shadow you like Mourn on Westwind, but you're not fucking weak or defenseless."
"If Kaela comes for me alone, I will not be… palatable," Syarra says, and it sounds like a promise. "I can't follow you to Stormwind. Or I could, but I'm not as good with body language as you are, and it would set us back if I'm noticed." Syarra pauses, thinking. "The cannon. I think she meant to shoot Brendol with it. But where? And why? I have no idea. Maybe you'll find clues."
"I don't like that she even fucking had it. It means she's got connections or she's been deeper in Stormwind than I thought she'd be by now. Both are a fucking problem. Whatever is on the other end of how she got that cannon…" He shakes his head. "Could be that the Cult of the Damned has done what they did at Valiance, but in the fucking city, through the Faire. No one questions the Darkmoon Faire, and it'd be a perfect cover for a cultist. Come get your fortune told and oh, yeah, your mind fucked with. Suspicions put in your head. Manipulations to do what Kaela wants."
Okay. Someone might be professionally paranoid.
"From the Darkmoon Faire?" Syarra frowns. "It always seemed rather harmless to me. But.. if it's infiltrated by the Cult of the Damned, then that could be a problem for everyone. Definitely worth following up on. I could… tail you, if you want backup? Keep out of sight, stay out of the city."
"Not worth it. We need to dig in deeper here. Gotta maintain what we've got. Kaskala's defense. Your relationship with Aze. And someone needs to be on call in case Ebon Watch gets bitchy with Cobalt again. And that Taya. She said something about a sister in the Argent Crusade. You think you could get Aze to find out who? I've got that Vice Admiral to talk to, and I can't show up with everything falling apart. I gotta walk in while we're in the black." Roper sits back onto his heels. "The Faire will be back start of October. One way or another I'll have answers by then, and if they've got a cultist, I'll expose them."
Syarra hesitates, and then nods. "Aze can be a good asset. She was in Silvermoon, maybe she will be again. I'll ask her this Thursday, when she comes to visit. If I find Taya's sister, then… what? We just make sure she isn't killed?"
"And maybe if she needs to know her death knight sister wants her. No idea what the Argent Crusaders might do about it. They might investigate, or they might not. But another one taken by one of us might fuck up what we have a shot at right now. Kaela can't get at Westwind, and she can't get at Jenzelle. She took Bren because he's Westwind's brother. Who knows what connection Taya's sister might have to the rest of them. Could lure out Jenzelle, Bren, or Westwind."
"Then at least I'll do what I can to make sure she's informed and safe," Syarra says, sitting next to Roper. "Do we have a surname, or any other information?"
"Not yet. Related to Taya. In the Argent Crusade, or close enough for Taya to think they would have told her. So, a human woman, probably around Taya's age, from Lordaeron, possibly a friend or known associate of Bren, why Taya might have thought her sister would be there. Hell, maybe even known by fucking Mourn, back when he was an Argent." Roper shrugs, a roll of his shoulders as he rises up with the front of the breastplate. "I've worked with worse."
"We could try Mourn, but it sounds like he's gone somewhere I can't follow," Syarra sighs. "I'll stick with Aze and the other Argents, see what information I can find."
Roper has half turned, and he stops in place as that information lands. "What do you mean he's gone somewhere you can't follow." It doesn't sound like a question, but it probably is, given that he immediately asks, "Where?"
"Stormwind," Syarra answers simply, watching Roper. "At least, if Kaela can be believed. She claimed he was there with Ralaea. I assume she has eyes."
In a perfect world, there would be a record scratch sound. In an imperfect Azeroth, there's the sound of already damaged saronite bending slightly in Roper's hand. "Fucking what." He inhales, holds it. Let's the breath go as, "Fuck." His jaw saws back and forth, as he shakes his head. "That's gotta be Mourn's problem. I don't have time to fucking babysit him and Westwind, and anyone else of ours would be too obvious, or too busy to tail them long enough to find their spy out. If Kaela has a spy on them in Stormwind…then maybe she has a spy here for Jenzelle."
"It would… stand to reason," Syarra says, reaching one hand towards Roper's. "Kaela spent some time trying to rattle me, when we were fighting. I believe she found I'm difficult to rattle, and she likely gave away more information than was able to get from me."
"If she told you before she — " A flash of rage, frost icing across his face. It takes effort, as he turns his palm up, letting her fingers move on his, as he pushes the rage back for later. "Then she wanted you to know. That's gonna be a problem."
"Because she can reach Ralaea?" Syarra frowns. "She's still in Stormwind. It's not as simple as luring her out for a walk in the wilderness."
Roper shakes his head. "No. I don't know. Might be that she wanted you to know to pass it on. Maybe force them to move out of her scrutiny. Could be a trap that way. Or we go to Stormwind, where she's waiting to do something here. But that wasn't just a taunt. That was a card, and she either is looking for a bluff or a one up, and I don't know the rest of her fucking deck enough because Westwind won't fucking work with us." Roper slowly moves his head. "If it were me, and I was passing that along, it's because I'd want her looking that way. I'd want her to focus on how I knew it. So, I won't play against her card. I'll go to the edges instead. The other way around. So that if she's guarding against a dagger, instead I'll slip a noose around her fucking neck."
Syarra curls her hand around his. "She's not you, though. And she meant to kill me, so she may not have been thinking of me passing it on. I'm not saying we shouldn't be cautious, but…" Syarra shakes her head. "It's easier, what she's doing, than what we're doing. It's easier to attack from the shadows than to protect unwilling targets who travel recklessly. She's dangerous, certainly, but overestimation can be as dangerous as underestimation."
Roper's grin is slow, lazy, and for a moment, more human than death knight, approval warming his eyes. "That's my girl." Roper tongues a tooth as his expression grows colder. "But, she knew we had Mevlin. She was right on Jenzelle the second she was out of protection from the Alliance outpost. She moved Bren after we found him, practically waiting for us in the middle of Voldrune. She knows her pieces, and she plays a good game. That's what makes her dangerous. She's still gonna lose."
Roper's grin is still there, lazy, lopsided, but the look in his eyes is a threat, as he leans down, his lips moving against Syarra's hand, dried blood from his kiss cracking and flaking on her pale skin. "Because I'm better."
Syarra's expression softens slightly, her lips curling slightly upward, and for once it's clearly not due to the presence of suffering. It lasts only for a brief moment before fading.
"We're better," Syarra counters, her voice growing more serious. "If she were working alone, and so were you, that would be one thing. She clearly has allies, to know all that, some of whom we haven't uncovered yet. But so do we, reluctant as some of them may be. And if I track down Taya's sister, maybe we can have more. In the end, it's the same thing - She's still going to lose."