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| Details |
| Author: | inkie |
| Summary: | In the early morning hours after delivering the ominous news about Tol Barad to Siamus, Lena wanders Fallon House and encounters Mr. Shine. He illuminates the Tol Barad situation for her, and then they both need a drink. They discuss the paths that led them here and the choices they might make for their futures. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
Arc: Season 14
Siamus Fallon has retreated upstairs to closet himself in his office with a pot of strong tea and a list of urgent letters to be dispatched. Skylarke has departed for the Tidewitch and Miss Curran has retired to her usual guest room; Fallon House is largely quiet once more.
The lamps in the library still burn although its recent occupants have dispersed. A new occupant has settled in their absence: Shine sits at the reading table farthest back in the room, just before the grand casement windows. One of those windows now stands ajar to the night breeze. He is entirely absorbed in something on the table before him. Whatever it is, it apparently requires additional light, because he's brought in an extra lantern from somewhere and set it at the table's corner while he works.
Light footsteps sound at the door, and Lena Coit enters. Her hair is down and a little tousled, and she's wearing what seems to be a modest, faded blue nightgown with a darker blue robe over it. She doesn't notice the man in the far-back table, and moves to one of the bookshelves, checking over the spines.
Shine gives a cursory glance up and then back down at the table again — perhaps he's expecting the other visitor to be one of the maids — and then double-takes and peers at Lena.
After a moment, he clears his throat politely. "Miss Coit," he says.
Lena jumps, and turns towards the voice. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize anyone was in here. I didn't mean to bother you."
Shine sits up and sets down the tool he was holding. "You're not bothering me, miss. I thought it better to let you know that I'm here than to startle you by lurking. Would you prefer I leave?"
"What? No, you were here first, and I'm just idling, while you're…" Lena peers at him, running one hand through her hair to tidy it. "What're you doing up this late?"
He smiles at her. "I still sleep sailors' hours, I'm afraid. Like Fallon. It gets ingrained. I'm rebuilding Vane's watch." He gestures at the items spread out before him.
On inspection, these prove to be an empty brass pocketwatch case, the various tiny cogs and components of the watch laid out orderly beside it on a piece of dark cloth. Arrayed beside the cloth are tweezers, a set of tiny screwdrivers, and a jeweler's loupe, as well as a couple of less-familiar implements.
Lena smiles back automatically, and moves over towards to the table, tying her robe's tie just a little more tightly. She looks down at the many small components. "This looks… complicated. And rebuilding, you said? Are there pieces missing?"
"It needs a new escapement assembly," Shine says. "It was thrown out of position and the pallet fork cracked." He smiles at Lena a little sheepishly. Nerd stuff.
Lena starts to lean over to look more closely, but a lock of hair falls over her shoulder. She quickly straightens so as not to tangle anything in the… escapement assemblies and pallet forks, possibly.
"You ever met Cobalt's captain? She's really into this kind of small, delicate stuff," Lena seems to realize that might sound a bit prejudiced, because she quickly adds, "I don't mean because she's a gnome. She's always making these little clockwork things."
"I saw her at the Gala," Shine says. "Lady Sintha thinks very highly of her as well. She's an engineer of the Gnomish school herself. Sintha, that is." He looks down at the items carefully arranged before him. "Timepieces are my wheelhouse. Timepieces and navigational instruments, nothing more exotic."
"Must be useful shipboard," Lena says, circling to drop into the chair at the table across from Shine. "Navigation, at least. Though I imagine it's handy to know the time as well."
Shine's smile fades a little. "It was," he agrees, and picks up his tweezers again to lean over the cloth of components. "I still adjust Fallon's between voyages, some of the time. Instruments, that is."
He gestures vaguely with the tweezers. "I made his watch, as well. The silver one he always carries." A little note of nerd-pride creeps back in.
Lena bites the inside of her lip a little, and leans an arm on the table. "Sorry, I just assumed you were, well…" Lena doesn't finish that thought, shifting instead to, "Yeah? Do you sell them, or just for friends?"
"Just for friends. A hobby," he says, and tilts his head to gaze at her from his solitary eye. "You assumed I was what?"
"I guess I don't really know you," Lena says, resting her head on her hand. "I'd just assumed you were with the fleet, at some point, but then you seemed… unhappy, thinking on it?"
"Ah," says Shine. He returns his attention to the watch components. "I was with the fleet. I was Fallon's lieutenant of marines. We came up together through Proudmoore Academy." He picks up the jeweler's loupe and fits it to his eye, and then deftly and with surprisingly smooth speed, his tattooed hands begin to fit the watch parts back into the case, one precise, tiny piece at a time. "I resigned my commission after Theramore, and came back here with Fallon."
"Theramore," Lena says, letting out a faint sigh as she watches him work on the timepiece. "I was there at the time, too, so I don't need to ask. Not with any fleet though." Lena pauses for a moment, and then asks, "You ever go out to Tol Barad?"
"Aye," Shine says, still watching his quick, delicate work come together. "I remember ye."
He lays down the tweezers, takes the loupe from his eye, and picks up one of the screwdrivers before looking up at her again, a line between his brows. "Tol Barad? Aye. Not for years gone, but aye. Between the wars."
Lena's shoulders tense, a barely noticeable reaction to the recognition, but then she relaxes as he moves on to an easier (for her, at least) subject. "Do you know what's so important about it? That's where Fallon had us scouting, but I'd never seen the place before. Suppose I still haven't, save through demon eyes."
"He had ye scouting Tol Barad?" Shine's attention sharpens and he lays down the watch and screwdriver. "It's important, aye. And Kul Tiran, technically, though the isles haven't trafficked with it much since they left the Alliance. Used to be a naval staging ground, from the Second War through the Third. It's where the fleet was based to patrol the Baradin waters against pirates and the like." He tilts his head to study Lena. "Ye saw how it's set, before the jaws of Baradin Bay?"
"We were more circling around, looking for enemy movement," Lena says, a crease coming between her brows. "Which then I can see why Fallon was upset, if it's a naval staging ground — reason to be concerned. It sounds like it's changed a lot since then, though. Some kind of a pirate town on one side — you heard of Rustberg?"
Shine's jaw sets. "Aye, and that's what happened when Kul Tiras stopped patrolling the Bay and left the isle to its own devices. A grand joke I expect the freebooters all found it, too, to move in on what had been Fleet territory. Whole place drives Fallon mad, though I couldn't tell ye whether it's pirate insolence or Tirasian neglect that makes him rage more."
He sits back and folds his arms. "There's also the trouble of the citadel."
"The citadel?" Lena asks, straightening up in her own seat. "I'd guess it's empty by now, if Kul Tiras has pulled back?"
"No," says Shine. "I don't expect it is. We'd best hope it isn't, at least."
He stares down at the table and watch for a minute. "The isle — it's a pair of isles together, joined by a bridge, in fact, and they call one of them 'the peninsula' though I couldn't tell ye why, it's not fixed to anything else but the other isle — was settled in the days of Arathor. They built a citadel at the heart of the southern half of the place. More than a thousand years it stood there, until the orcs sacked it in the Second War. It was Stromgarde's territory by then, and when the Admiralty joined the Alliance in that war, they began using the place as a staging ground for the battles in the Bay. It was from their base on Tol Barad that they retook Dun Modr from the orcs.
"The orcs recognized its strategic position, saw it as a gate stood between them and the Kingdoms, so they assaulted the place with…." He hesitates. "Dragonfire."
After a moment he smiles ruefully. "Sorry. I'm used to having a care about mentioning that, because of Fallon." He shakes his head. "At any rate, they slaughtered most of the Stromic population of the isle and left it in ruins. The Admiralty came back afterwards and claimed the place for Kul Tiras as a naval base, and Stromgarde was willing enough to let them have it by then.
"It was Kul Tiras that rebuilt the citadel, but not for the island's defense any longer. They had the Kirin Tor come in and lay arcane wards in the walls, and made it a prison. For some of the worst and most powerful. There are demons imprisoned in the citadel on Tol Barad, among other things.
"Kul Tiras and Stromgarde formed a joint force called Baradin's Wardens to watch over the prison. The Admiralty and the kingdom both pulled out of the place in the Third War — Stromgarde because they were recalled home to battle, and Kul Tiras after the war and Theramore. Baradin's Wardens stayed behind to keep the prison, blessedly for all of us, but so far as I know it's only them and the Rustberg pirates who have the run of the place now."
He spreads his hands in a shrug. "The Admiralty still supplies them, or was doing it at least until the Wrathgate. I couldn't tell ye whether they are now. It's a sore spot with Fallon, their abdication of responsibility there and what it's meant and could mean for the Bay, but no one else in the Alliance has stepped up to take over the running of it, either. Maybe because of the state of most of the kingdoms after the war. Maybe because nominally it is still Kul Tiras and no one wants to stir that political nest of snakes by asserting a claim.
"So there sits a strategic naval access to the whole of the mainland at the mouth of Baradin Bay, which also happens to house an arcane fortress prison full of demons and powerful mages and the like, and no one properly has the managing of it at present. One of these days that's going to prove a bloody disaster for the Alliance, if no one steps in before then."
Lena listens patiently to Shine's accounting of the islands' history, her head tilting curiously at the connection of 'dragonfire' and 'having a care because of Fallon'. She doesn't interrupt, though, simply nods. Information stored away for later use. As Shine continues to describe the prison, her curiosity is slowly replaced by alarm.
"It was worse news than I even understood, then," Lena says quietly, leaning a little closer to Shine. "That day of bloody disaster is probably closer than you expect. The Horde's got ships there, we saw them. I assumed it was a strategic point geographically, and bad news because of that. But if they want something with the prison… if they're throwing in with demons or other things…"
Lena shakes her head. "I might sound a hypocrite on that point, but I have not thrown in with demons. I enslave them. There's a difference. They're not our allies, even if we use them sometimes. But the Horde, and pirates, and a place full of seductive power. No wonder Fallon was worried. How strong are the wardens? Is it just a token force, jailkeepers? Or could they hold out against an invasion?"
Slowly, Shine lifts a hand to put it on top of his head, and gazes at Lena with his lone eye round. "The Horde," he repeats hoarsely. "Ye saw the orcs at Tol Barad."
"Not exactly," Lena says carefully. "We weren't that close up and personal on Tol Barad itself. I didn't even go ashore, except for my eyes. But I spied red sails, and… well… given the chase afterward, yes, they were orcs. In ships. Near Tol Barad." Even if everything adds up, she's only going to report what she saw.
Shine drops his attention back to the table and his work. After a moment, he sits up, arranges his tools neatly on the now-empty cloth and rolls it up, closes the watch-case and moves it aside. He rises from his chair. "I'm going to have a drink," he says. "Would ye like one, miss?"
"I wouldn't say no," Lena says, shifting to rise from the chair herself, and pulling on the top of her robe in a kind of rote gesture of modesty. "That's the news we brought back to Fallon tonight, and I… well, I suppose that's why I'm not asleep, myself. I don't live on a sailor's schedule, not when I'm not aboard ship."
"For the best," Shine tells her. "I daresay ye shouldn't if ye needn't."
He crosses the length of the room to the console table by the door and finds the decanter of whiskey. "Whiskey's your drink, if I recall," he says over his shoulder.
"Ah… yes," Lena confirms, turning to watch him as she rises. There's a brief flicker of surprise in her eyes, that he would remember the detail. "From habit, mostly. So whatever else is fine, too."
Shine nods and wordlessly pours two tumblers of whiskey. He sets the decanter down, takes up the glasses, and crosses to Lena to hand her one. Then he moves to one of the couches by the hearth and drops into it.
Lena takes the glass and follows him. She pauses as she steps onto the patterned carpet, considering the available seating and possibly the awkwardness that distance can make in conversation. Then she moves over to the same couch and sits carefully next to him, far enough away not to touch. She smooths the robe over the skirt of her nightgown with one hand, and takes a sip of whiskey with the other.
"Your drink of choice, then? Or also just habit?" she asks, turning to him.
It's his turn to look faintly startled when she settles beside him, but then he shifts back into the corner of the couch and draws one leg up so that he can face her better at an angle. "I'm not sure I can unbraid the two. A thing's a habit long enough, it becomes a choice, I suppose. Or the other way round." He has a sip. "It's not exactly the stuff we came up drinking in Hook Point as lads, but ye won't hear me complain of it, either."
"No? What was that, moonshine?" Lena smiles, dropping her eyes to her whiskey. "Or, well, I grew up on a farm, so maybe that was a little different from Hook Point."
Shine smiles crookedly. "Sometimes it was moonshine, aye. I expect ye come by as much of it at the dockyards as ye might on a farm. More often it was just rotgut whiskey, though. Fallon had got me a bottle of the stuff from home that he was holding by for my birthday this year, for old times' sake." He laughs softly and lifts his glass for another sip.
Lena laughs, taking another sip herself. There's a faint blush to her cheeks now, probably because this is her third drink of the evening, though she doesn't mention the brandy.
"I can tell a difference in the flavor, for certain, but there is a kind of nostalgia, isn't there?" Lena holds up the glass, examining the color. "For the things we liked when we didn't know any better."
"That there is." Shine salutes her with his drink and has another sip. He swirls his glass meditatively and tips his head to gaze up at the map of Kul Tiras over the fireplace.
Lena takes another sip to that, and then follows his gaze. "Do you want to go back there?"
Shine is silent a moment. "Aye," he says finally. "Home is still home, no matter where your loyalties lie. And I've family there." He pauses. "Family I get on with, unlike Fallon." He has another sip.
"Stormwind's a fine enough place, but there's none so beautiful as Kul Tiras. Talking of nostalgia. Green sails and green roofs in Boralus, the mountains and the skies of Tiragarde, the sea close enough around that ye can smell it no matter where ye go."
"It's all still there, so maybe you will get to go back there someday," Lena says, and maybe there's just the faintest touch of bitterness to the words. Speaking of bitterness, she takes a bit more whiskey, and then smiles before continuing, "I hope you do. Maybe this business with Tol Barad will open doors there."
It's Shine's turn to laugh a little bitterly. "Or close any number of them. But no, I've some… trouble with ships. Since the war. I don't know that I could manage the sea-crossing."
He tips back the last of his drink and gets up. When he returns, it's to set the decanter on the coffee table in front of them. "Though Lady Fallon did tell me once that if the family goes someday, it might be they bring a warlock with them, and I could be summoned home." He flicks a look at Lena as he refills his glass. "Does it work across so long a distance?"
"Oh, yes," Lena says, draining the last of her whiskey. She should probably not be keeping up with Shine, but here we are. "I've summoned folk from a different world altogether, I don't reckon distance in the same world would matter. As long as…" her hand tightens on the empty glass. "As long as no one tangles up magic anymore."
"Ah." Shine nods. He leans forward to lift the decanter from the table and gesture with it at Lena's glass. "Could this new dragon do something like it, d'ye think? It was a dragon the last time, I recall. Though we don't much discuss dragons around here."
Lena holds out her glass for a refill. "I'm not sure. The last one was the guardian of magic, and this one is… of the earth. I've heard magic is… different… now, but I'm no practitioner of the arcane. From my side, I've had no problems with summons in recent days. Can I ask on that? Why don't you talk of dragons? It's a thing with Fallon?"
Shine sets the decanter back down after pouring for her and then settles back comfortably in his corner of the couch again. "Aye. I didn't realize ye didn't know it. Talk of dragons, dragonfire — in certain circumstances, even just fire — makes him… twitchy." He has a sip of his drink and eyes Lena. "Ye haven't been told it, and it's not my place to tell things in general, but I'll tell you because I know he trusts ye and I know ye respect him.
"Fallon's been in the navy since he was… nine years old, or so? Which means, despite his age, that he served in the Second War. He fought in the Battle of Crestfall, when the orcs and their red dragons decimated the fleet. I'd wager half our ships were lost to the fires, including the whole of the Third Fleet under the command of Derek Proudmoore. It was hell for most of the grown men who lived through it, let alone for a ten-year-old child."
He sits silent for a moment and then drinks again. "I am only recently given to understand, in fact, that he died in that battle. One of his uncles was able to bring him back. At any rate — as I say, makes him twitchy."
"Oh, Light, and here I am setting things on fire," Lena presses the whiskey to her forehead for a moment, like she's got a headache, but then she just takes a healthy gulp of the amber liquid. She's clearly relabeling certain memories in her mind. "And… Wrathgate, that must've been just awful. And that one girl I summoned for him on the ship, I've seen her set herself on fire before. Ought I warn him? Or her?"
"Tides a'mighty, he's got a girl sets herself on fire?" Shine's tone is a sort of weary, incredulous Kids these days. "Ye'd best warn one of them, at least. Maybe her, since it might… ah, put him off her to hear it." He shrugs and has another drink. "The Wrathgate was hell, I believe. Hell for everyone there, to hear it told, but aye, he… ran half-mad with it after, for a time. Captain Tyrrell and Her Grace brought him round, bless the pair of them."
He eyes Lena with a faint smile. "And ye do set things on fire, so I hear. But in part it's what he's hired ye for, and if he's given ye the order, he's not taken by surprise."
"Yes," Lena says, with a faint smile. "He never has balked at anything I've brought in as a strategy, fire included. But I'll take more care how I talk of it — I didn't mean to be reminding him of a thing best not thought on. And I remember he was not well after the Wrathgate, but few were. I didn't think on it overmuch of it at the time. Captain Tyrrell himself had lost… Light, like half his family more or less. It's a blessing the Lady Fallon could travel there." She takes another drink. "As for the girl in question, I don't think she does it recreationally, so it might not even come up in, um, context. But if I ever actually talk to her myself I'll warn her."
Shine drops his head to the back of the couch and laughs. "Recreationally," he repeats dryly, and drinks again. A moment later, his mirth fades. "Aye, the Captain had a black time of it, tides save him." He turns his head against the couch without lifting it. "Were ye there yourself, then?"
Lena leans back against the couch herself, a brief amused smile on her face and her robe falling open slightly to show part of an embroidered yellow flower on the fabric of her nightgown. She turns her head towards Shine as he speaks, mirroring his movement, and her cheeks are a little flushed from the whiskey.
"Yes… and no," she says. "I wasn't on the battlefield but back in Wintergarde, holding up the line against Naxxramas. I was there when they started trickling in, the few that did."
Shine winces sympathetically. "Its own kind of pain." He studies her one-eyed. "Ye held the line against Naxxramas? And ye were there in the end, when the place fell, weren't ye? As well as at Icecrown."
"For parts of it, yes," Lena says, curling in a little closer to the couch. "It was a major operation, both times. In Naxxramas, my part ended with the… I suppose I can talk about dragons to you. The frost wyrm, Sapphiron. And in Icecrown I fought one named Sindragosa, damn near suffocated in ice. But we got through. To the Lich King." Lena lowers her gaze to the whiskey glass cradled in one hand, her expression somber. "Got through that, too, in the end. More or less."
Shine settles down further in the couch himself, properly slouched now, and studies her. "More or less?"
"Well, I died," Lena says, contemplatively. "There was a moment there, it seemed like maybe I'd just end up being Scourge. My whole life an exercise in trying to dodge the inevitable. But then I felt the call back. From… the king." She doesn't clarify that one any further. Instead her brow draws down like she's trying to concentrate on something important, and she says, "I thought it would be the end, but the… Scourge is still there. Maybe it's the beginning of the end."
Shine stares at her. Still staring, he lifts his glass again for a sip.
"Well," he says at last. "That story took a turn. You're a steel-clad lady, aren't ye, Miss Coit?"
He turns his head against the couch to contemplate the map of Kul Tiras again. "The beginning of the end. Aye. It does feel… It does feel it, these days." His does not seem like an optimistic assessment. He tips his glass back and forth absently.
"I think of Barbour," he says at last.
Lena winces and raises her own glass again for a drink.
"I wish I'd had a chance to know him better," she says after. "What do you think of?"
He is silent a little longer. Then he slides down further on the couch and props his feet on the coffee table with remarkable disregard for his usual decorum. "Ah, he was a good man, Tam Barbour." He lifts his glass in a salute. "He was the old Admiral's bosun, and one of the men — I mentioned it — who went through the hell at Crestfall in the Second War. It broke a piece of him. Never could set foot on a ship after that. So he came here, still in the Admiral's service, and stayed."
He drinks contemplatively, not looking at Lena.
"And there was no more safety in it, in the end, was there? He wanted to be away from the sea and the fires of Crestfall, and the sea and the fires came for him all the same. She takes what she will, and the question is will she come for ye with your back turned, or will ye be facing her down?" He tilts his glass idly again. "Fallon's a brother to me and this house is my own, but the world's tearing itself apart out there and… I don't know whether it's right, that I'm… this, now. I was a marine. And a bloody good one. And if a man can't sail, he can still fight. They fight wars on land, too, I'm told."
Lena smiles briefly, letting herself sink down on the couch next to him, but she doesn't prop her feet up. She is still in a skirt. "Yes, that they do. I've been in my share of battles, though, so I warn you they have just as much fire and death as the naval kind."
Then she falls silent herself for a long moment, before she says, "We're always deciding what we are, each day. Do you think he was happy with what he chose?"
Shine wraps both hands around his glass and rests it against his chest while he thinks. "I think that of the choices he thought he had, it was the happiest he could have made. He loved the Admiral, he loved the family, he was loved by them in turn, he had respectable work he was good at, and he lived comfortably." He shifts, adjusting a shoulder against the couch. "I know losing the sea tore at him every day. I know he grieved the life he'd thought to have, but I think he'd made his peace with the new one. But never with the loss of the sea. Ye never do get over her."
He looks sidelong at Lena. "I'm not afraid of fire and death, ye know. Well, no more than is sensible in any man. I'm not an eejit." He smiles wryly.
"I didn't say you were," Lena says, meeting his gaze. Afraid or an eejit, she doesn't specify. "Few of us see through the life we thought we'd have, but I'm glad he was at peace with most of it. As for the sea… I suppose the first time I saw her was in the wreckage of the life I thought I'd have. The way Fallon describes the Tidemother, it feels like the sea I know — the world I know. And things have gone… very many different unexpected ways since then. But I'm at peace with the choices I've made, too."
She draws her knees partway up on the couch, turning towards him, and says, "Who would you want to be, if you decided to be something other than who you are now?"
He considers this, still resting his glass against his chest. "Anything I wanted, I'd say back with the fleet and a rising officer again. But — barring that, a man who does some good in the world. Fights back, faces down the dark, looks out for people — not looking after the way I do now, but looking out as I did then. Build something of my own, apart from Fallon's shadow. Never an insult meant to the man, mind ye. He's my oldest and dearest friend and and done more for me than anyone else would, and I'm grateful to be part of this family. But I'm also thirty-five fucking years old and a former lieutenant of marines." He starts to lift his glass for another sip and then his eye goes wide and round and he sits up a little. "Begging your pardon, Miss Coit. I beg your pardon."
Lena waves that away vaguely with her own nearly-empty whiskey glass, raising the other as if to settle him back in the couch. "Lena, please, and you know I'm no lady to stand on ceremony. I don't reckon Fallon'd take it an insult, if you wanted to do good in the world, would he? That'd be a hell of a thing to take issue with in an oldest and dearest friend, I'd think."
Shine relaxes back against the couch again. "No, he wouldn't in the least. I just meant I wouldn't like to sound ungrateful or bitter when I say a thing like 'out of Fallon's shadow.' If ye have to stand in a shadow for a time, his is a fine one. I just… don't know that I want to any longer." He sips his drink. "He'd be pleased, I expect."
He turns his head against the couch-back to survey her again. "And yourself? Who do you mean to be? Ye've taken some turns since Theramore, it seems."
"Maybe I'm still figuring that one out," Lena says, punctuating the thought with more whiskey. "I like where I am right now a damn sight better than where I was five years ago. As to who I am, I don't reckon that's changed as much as people think it might. But I think this might be the right path, with the fleet. Figuring out the role I fit in as I go… fighting, spying, keeping people safe. Doing stuff that matters, for people who want it." A little more whiskey, and she adds, "Besides, all that stuff Fallon says about the Tidemother, it makes a lot of sense."
Shine flashes a smile. "Has he made a convert of ye? Have ye been to the family's shrine here?" Then his smile fades and his gaze turns distant.
He shakes off whatever passing thought he'd had after a moment. "The fleet seems a right place for ye, from half of what I hear, and the pair of them — him and Her Grace, I mean — both think the world of ye. Ye'd do well to come over to it full-time, if ye can be coaxed to it."
"Convert me? Don't think that was on the agenda. Anyway, no, I've not been to any shrines," Lena says, with a quiet huff of a laugh. "And I don't generally need much coaxing, to be honest. I think I mean to. Come over." Lena looks over at him, biting the inside of her lip. "But… I'm really not trying to bring up things might make you feel twitchy."
Shine raises his eyebrow and dismisses that remark with a wave of his glass. "Ah, I've my troubles like any man, but if talk of the fleet made me twitch, I'd have a hell of a time in this house, wouldn't I?" His tone suggests it's possible that he just winked at her, but it might also have been a blink. It's hard to tell when a guy only has one eye. "I'm glad to hear it. They'll be pleased, and I expect ye can go a long way wi'the Fallons in your corner."
He turns his gaze away from her, tips back the last of his drink, and sits up to pour another. "And we'll all be glad to know it's that much safer for all the fleet out there. As in Icecrown." He focuses intently on his glass and the decanter. "I didn't thank ye, before. But that was… a hell of a thing ye did. The day of the wave. So thank ye."
Lena looks for a moment like she might turn aside the thanks and the praise, but then she just says, "You're welcome. And I hope if there's ever another such disaster I'm around to do the same again." She finishes off her own whiskey and cradles the empty glass in her lap, then asks, "Why did they stay back, when the wave was coming?"
Shine peers sourly into his own glass. "Because he's mad as a cat, and he's met his match in her." He shakes his head and tips back his new drink in two swallows, then rests the empty glass on his thigh.
"We weren't going to make it," he says at last, wearily. "There wasn't time. Which Fallon naturally took as his fault, for misjudging the thing. So he stayed behind thinking to hold it back for the rest of us. And she wouldn't go without him."
"Ah," Lena considers her own empty glass. "But we did make it — the wave fell short. He couldn't possibly… winds and storms is one thing, that's something else." Lena frowns, and then looks over at Shine. "Mad as a cat."
Shine looks back at her. His eye is dark and there is a glimmer of something like grief in it. "The wave," he says, "did not fall short. He turned it back." He lifts his glass as if for another sip, realizes it's empty, lets it rest again.
"Well," Lena says, grasping for an appropriate response. "Thank the…" Light? Tidemother? Lena shakes her head. "I had no idea he could… something like that. Glad I was there to pull 'em out of it, then, after."
Shine contemplates his empty glass for a moment, then sits forward again for the decanter. "I don't know that any of us expected he could, including himself. He only hoped he could buy us some time, I think. And it cost him." He gestures inquiringly at Lena's glass with the whiskey.
Lena glances down at her empty glass, tilting her head a little to the side, and then there's a visible hesitation before she holds it out to him and the decanter.
"He seemed alright after," she says. "Well, not just after, they weren't really alright. But he's back to work and everything."
"Oh, aye," agrees Shine as he pours for her. "That's the Fallon way. Ye never show anyone a struggle; the only weakness is the one ye let people see." He shakes his head and pours for himself. "Ye never met the old Admiral. He was a piece of work."
He sets the decanter back on the table. "The man's been in the service from nine years old. He's an officer of Stormwind's navy, commands a private fleet, runs a harbor and shipyard, manages two kingdoms' worth of financials, and now he's on the bloody House of Nobles, all on four hours' sleep. Ye couldn't make him rest if ye tied him down, and he'd never admit to needing a thing besides a drink or a tumble. Ye might see him angry, ye might see him weary, ye'll never see him hurt or needing. Doesn't mean he isn't." He tips back a drink and settles in the couch corner again. "He wears as much a mask as she does. The difference is that his mask smiles."
Lena takes another sip of whiskey, savoring it slowly. She tucks her feet under her on the couch, turning towards Shine. "Hers is not unbreakable, I don't think. Maybe his isn't either." She blinks. "Not breakable by me, though, not my place. Just saying, you can't hold a mask to everyone, not all the time, no matter who your Admiral father was. Maybe they're more honest to each other." She shifts her whiskey hand in front of her mouth, covering a yawn. "I reckon everyone's got some kind of mask or other. Just some are better at it than others."
"Not unbreakable, neither of them, no." Shine lifts his glass for a sip and studies Lena, narrow-eyed and smiling. "Ye know a thing or so about masks, then, Miss Coit?"
"Lena," she corrects with a laugh, gesturing at him with her glass. "Though I suppose if you insist on titles, far be it from me to stop you. I never knew a people so caught up in proper names till I came here. And yes, aye, there's all kinds of things folk put on to cover what they want to keep safe from the world. I'm no exception, and I doubt you are, either."
At that Shine laughs softly and has another drink. He spreads his free hand. "I'm as honest a man as ye see. The only secrets I carry are other people's, and they're more than enough for me."
He shifts to face her more directly, props his elbow on the back of the couch and his cheek on his fist. "Ye're a smart girl, and ye play a neat game of asking questions. Now ye must pay the toll and tell me some things in turn."
Lena raises an eyebrow at that claim, but she doesn't press on it. Instead, she just curls in a little more on the couch, leaning towards him with a kind of playful gleam in her eye.
"I suppose that's only fair. Though if you're asking after me, I hope you'll not be disappointed if I'm just a simple young woman who happened to take up the fel," she says, with an innocent smile, looking up at him with faintly widened eyes. It's just a touch too obvious to be intended to fool — a mask made to be seen. "What would you like me to tell you, Mr. Shine?"
"Well, first of all, if ye want me to call ye Lena, then ye must call me Shine. 'Mr.' is for the Duchess. And if ye want me to believe ye're just a simple young woman, then ye must be disappointed. Ye do make a pretty face of it, though." Still smiling, he has another sip. "Tell me what's the finest thing ye've done since getting free of Theramore."
"The finest thing," Lena says, musing, her gaze going a little distant in thought. "Since Theramore. That's a broad question. Fine for myself, or for others…? And I assume not a hard thing. And a thing I've done, not experienced. Maybe founding W.E.B.? But then that was a thing Captain Tyrrell dreamt up, and I'm only a partner in it. I don't know, maybe I need a definition for fine."
"A fair reservation," Shine concedes. He peers into his glass as though it contains the definition he's seeking.
Maybe it does, because a moment later he says, "All right, I'll give ye two definitions, and ye may answer for either or both, lady's choice." He has another sip and then gestures at her with the glass. "'Fine' the first: The thing most personally satisfying or gratifying to ye. 'Fine' the second: The thing that best measured the distance ye've come on the road to what ye mean to be. So aye, in both cases to yourself, not others. I'm not asking others, I'm asking you."
"That clears it some. Let me think." Lena raises her free hand to her forehead, the whiskey resting half-forgotten in the other. "There's the stuff I've done together with Cobalt or the fleet, but that feels like a cheat answer. Maybe for the second, a small thing. Day when I told my teacher I'd gone far enough in demonology, that I didn't need any more of that kind of power. Might've been a time I wouldn't have turned down any power, whatever the source. But now, I'm not desperate, and the cost matters. That's who I mean to be, someone who considers the costs."
Shine lifts his chin to survey her. After a moment, he raises his glass to her and inclines his head respectfully. "A fair ground for pride. Stronger character than most, I suspect." He drinks to her.
"I won't ask where ye started from because I know it's somewhere in the mainland north and none of those tales end well. And I know ye were a farm girl. I admit I've not met many of those."
"Mine ends better than most," Lena says, raising her glass and taking another sip of whiskey at the toast. "I'm still here. And I figure a farm girl's not so different from other types of girl. Well, maybe different from a noble girl, they've got all sorts of rules they grow up with."
Shine laughs a little dryly. "Aye, nobles are a different breed. Once ye learn the rules, though, it's no more complicated than managing anything else that needs a certain handling. A horse, say, if a particularly high-strung one. Or a ship."
"Nobles as high-strung horses," Lena giggles. "I could see that. Didn't spend much time 'round nobles till recent, except for…" Lena pauses, to take another sip of whiskey, and then continues with an entirely difference sentence. "At the beginning, no one expected me to know any rules. Not the practical ones, like what title to say or what fork to use — those they'll explain to the poor country girl and feel generous for it. It's getting to where I'd best remember, now, but I think I've mostly got it all sorted. And I have tricks to figure it out when not. But the unspoken ones, those you've got to figure out fast."
Shine nods at her and shifts more comfortably on the couch, draping an arm over the back of it. "Aye. Some of those I learned the hard way — ended up at school with a pack of noble lads who were none too happy to have the likes of me — and then Fallon came along and was willing enough to sort some of the rest. He does try, bless him, even if he's too long steeped in it all to even notice some of it."
"In a school with them, Light that must have been a trial," Lena says, wincing in sympathy. "I was never in a place where they had to look at me like competition. Lose-lose for them. They're better than you, and they should be anyway. Or you're better than them, and you shouldn't be. They'd balk the most at the second, so I gather that was the case." Lena clicks her tongue in a faint scold of imaginary inferior nobles. "But I know they're not all the same, though, like anyone. Lot of the nobles I met were in Cobalt, so they already chose to be mercenaries."
Shine nods. "Not all the same, no. The Fallons, the Aspenwoods — one or two of them, at least — the Ferences. And Captain Tyrrell's a noble, though ye'd never know it."
"No, you wouldn't, because he'd never fucking tell you," Lena says with a sudden vehemence, and then she blushes and puts a hand to her mouth. "I didn't mean to… he… yes, he's one of the good ones."
Shine raises his eyebrow and reconsiders Lena. "Bit of a sore spot, then? I beg your pardon."
"No, it's fine, just…" Lena takes another mouthful of whiskey. "Knew him for a while. I should have seen it, feel a bit a fool that I didn't. But that's not on him. In every way that matters he's been an excellent colleague and teacher and everything. Far better than I should expect."
"So it was before the House business and the W.E.B. that you knew him, then. He was your teacher after ye came from Theramore?"
"Mm," Lena says, tilting her glass, suddenly rather interested in how much whiskey is left. "A while after, when I was in Cobalt, when he was on leave from the 7th."
How dare her teacher for a brief period of time not mention he was a noble, that makes perfect sense as a thing to be upset about.
Lena looks over at Shine. "Maybe that's the first finest thing, when I joined up to Cobalt. I think that counts as a thing I did, even if it was a decision other people made, to give me a chance. I had to create my worth there, and it was a lot of effort. It was satisfying that other people could see it. And so much else followed from there."
Shine's brow had tipped down in some mild perplexity at her first remarks about meeting Tyrrell after joining Cobalt, but when she moves on, so does he. He nods at her. "Ye judged your launch well, and ye worked for it. Cobalt's a hell of a company, I know." He tilts his own glass idly. "Maybe if I decide to make a go of it again out there, I'd look into them myself."
"You think?" Lena says, her gaze sharpening on him, at least as much as it can this late at night, and after this many drinks. "I reckon they'd be lucky to have you. You want to know anything about how it works, I can give you the inside view."
Shine smiles at her. "I'd be privileged to have your inside view sometime, Lena."
He leans, stretching an arm out to put his glass on the table before sitting back again. "Sunrise isn't far off now, though, which means I'd best wash up and get some strong tea in me, because the house will be stirring soon. If Fallon tears himself away from his desk at least long enough for his swim, no doubt he'll be in a devil's mood." His gaze drifts again to the map above the fireplace.
Lena's answering smile is warm, and there's a touch of amusement in her gaze. Then, as he comments on the coming sunrise, she reluctantly uncurls to rise from the couch. A little unsteadiness hits her as she gets to her feet, and she reaches over to the back of the couch for balance with her free hand.
"I can't promise when I'll wake," Lena says, leaning over to set down her nearly-empty glass. "But at least I reckon I'll manage to get to sleep. I don't envy you the early swim or the dark moods."
Shine rises courteously to his feet. "I hope ye rest well. Ye've earned it." He surveys her. "… Will ye manage on the stairs?"
"Yes, I'm… just a little tired," Lena says, because being tired is definitely a thing that makes it hard to walk straight. She straightens and smiles at him. "Don't worry. If I can handle the business at Tol Barad, I'm equal to a staircase."
His smile fades a little at mention of Tol Barad, but he nods. "Aye, then I expect the staircase won't give you any trouble." The accent is smoothing away as he begins his shift back into Butler Persona. "Let's hope we can say the same for Tol Barad, tides willing."
"Indeed," Lena reaches up to straighten her hair, and to rest her robe more neatly over her nightgown. She looks back at him with a polite, reserved smile, and other than the lingering blush on her cheeks she might as well be meeting him by chance in the hallway some afternoon. "Tides willing."