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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | The day before Remembrance Day, Natalyah and Lathrik finally move into Lucy's House, which comes with furniture that must be evaluated for Brooding Capabilities, and also a slightly ominous potential for an ex-husband to come sniffing around. It also contains memories, regrets, and hopes. This house can fit so many feelings in it. 3100~ words. Romantic and personal plot RP. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
The day before Remembrance day is memorable for at least a small group of people in Stormwind, as the Dinnsfield-Kensington-Whit household at last moves from the gremlin house of Old Town to a charming cottage house in Old Town, the former residence of one Lady Lucille Moore, the end of an era of ownership by House Moore, and the start of a new chapter of life within the well built walls.
In the end, there wasn't that much to move from one place to the other, Lucy's house having much of its original furnishings of significantly higher quality. Natalyah's two trunks of her trousseau, the engineering ice box, the boiler plate, the six person dining room table and chairs, their cups and cutlery, a bag of Lathrik's clothing, the mana potion bin, and approximately six crates of mana potions were brought from the old house to the new house. All of Natalyah's decorations made their way into Lucy's house, set out on a work table upstairs to be hung up again in new places.
The others who came to help have left, leaving the couple to the rest of the late afternoon. Natalyah, in her human form, dressed in her work clothes of a dark gray shirt and black leather pants, with her hair tied back by a white handkerchief embroidered with THIS COULD BE PROFANITY AND YOU WOULD NEVER KNOW, balances on her simple canes as she looks around the entryway with oddly solemn velvet brown eyes, in the new quiet left behind.
Lathrik, in the new absence of company, and after the effort expended in moving the heavier furniture, heads straight for the couch, an unfamiliar entity, performing an odd little ritual of trying to find the right place on it, and relocating several times. He may have to wear a brooding spot into it.
"Shame Tabiana couldn't join us, though I wouldn't ask her to help in her state," Lathrik comments, mostly to distract from his restless shifting.
"Really? She's pregnant, not suddenly made of glass," Natalyah says archly, as she pushes her way through the rooms towards Lathrik, frowning at his couch antics. There is so much room for her in the new house, but the downside is everything is a lot farther away. "As a matter of fact, she can do almost anything she could do before. I hope the Fallons aren't treating her like she's suddenly too fragile to do anything. She'll go stir crazy not having anything real to do."
"Aye, not made of glass," Lathrik says. "Just bein' stretched, and crushed. I remember what ye said about it."
Natalyah plops back onto the couch next to him, kicking off her shoe, and setting her canes against the coffee table (with coasters, but also an abundance of glasses rings as if someone habitually forgot to use the coasters until it was too late). "Are you still worried about it? All the stretching and crushing are still normal, and all it really means is that she deserves to be treated well for the really hard job she's taken on. She's probably also been crushed and punctured and slashed and who knows what else by weapons and so on. She's strong and capable, and likely wants everyone to see her like that, not as some poor little thing to be pitied for having a baby." Natalyah scoots closer, reaching for one of Lathrik's arms to snuggle against.
"Pity? I respect her job," Lathrik says. "But I wouldn't ask someone who's been crushed or punctured or slashed to move a bleedin' table, either." He wraps his arm around her shoulders, drawing her closer.
"As if you wouldn't do it yourself to move a table even if you were," Natalyah points out as she pokes his chest. "Except you wouldn't stay crushed or punctured or slashed anymore, because I would heal you." Somehow, it comes out sounding a bit like a threat.
She looks over at the chairs across from the couch, and then back over to towards the entrance, and a stormy shadow passes over her face, dropping her head down to his shoulder.
"Aye, ye would," Lathrik says, content to stroke her arm with his fingers, until her gaze wanders. "We're finally here properly," he says, tilting his head in an effort to look at her. It's an observation made, but one that comes with the hint of a question.
She looks back up at him, and puffs out her cheeks before blowing out a breath. She swipes her hand through the air, encompassing the room. "It sounds so stupid saying out loud, but it's just that it feels like it's still the house, but it's not the house. I've been here so many times, but this isn't what it looked like when I was here, and so it's like thinking that I've come in and changed it all up. Which is ridiculous because it had already changed. I just wasn't here for it.
“Like the kitchen, did you know there used to be a wall there? You couldn't see through to the living room, and it had a door. And there was another wall just here that would go into the dining room, but they had removed the door already. Same thing upstairs, there used to be three bedrooms here, when Lucy, Scilla, and their aunt lived here. It's like remembering an entire other place without it actually being gone.
"Sometimes it makes me sadder, because I know I missed so much. Other times, it makes me happier, because I can see Lucy in the changes, and it's like getting to know her as she grew all the way up, and what she was thinking in the years I missed," Natalyah says, moving her face closer to the Comfort Spot of Lathrik's neck.
"It's not stupid," Lathrik says. "Time hits like a runaway cart sometimes, hard and sudden, and it won't stop even if you're not looking. Ye must have a lot of stories, here. I'd like to hear them, whenever you've a mind to tell."
"It's not that I don't want to tell them, it's just that I've no idea really where to start," Natalyah says, staring morosely at the floral patterned chair across from them. "I could tell you that that chair right there was their aunt's, and it's been here for as long as I can remember, and that fabric might survive even burning in hellfire. And that the yellow one is new, and must have been something Lucy bought for Scilla after she took over the house and buying things.
"I could tell you that the first time I came here was because I was trying to chase down a Stormwind Sister — they're rare in the city, and it was before I learned how to use Shadow sight, so I was rushing through the streets trying to get a better look at it, and it flew into the backyard here, and I had Rhodes lift me up to see in, and it was halted the garden perfectly. So, I banged on the door to convince them to let me through so I could see it, and Lucy came with me, and we studied it for as long as it stayed. She was 8, and very serious about it all." Uh oh, her voice has picked up a wobble, and her eyes have started to fill with tears.
Lathrik shifts to gently stroking her hair, a faint line between his brows. If he has started to wonder if moving in here was really a good idea, he doesn't say it. "Stormwind Sister," he says. "What are the colors on that one?"
"It's dark browns with a white dot to solid band across the center of the both wings to the inner margin hindwing, bright orange tips of the forewings, light brown submarginals on the hindwing, and a distinctive pattern of dark blue and dark orange on basal forewing on the interior, and on the inner margins for both fore and hind wing on the exterior," she answers, distracted from her sorrows by her passion. "It's really very distinct if you know what you're looking for. I had a dress made for it, but I tore it at some party I think, and it wasn't ever repaired. It's not in my trunks, at least. I don't think it would fit, anyway, even if they had. Some of them don't, because they're from when I was younger, and shorter."
"Perhaps we'll see one, and ye can point it out to me," Lathrik says, eyeing the floral chair, his new nemesis. "Sounds like quite the interesting look it has."
"You don't see them much in the city anymore. They don't like urban areas as much as others," she says, as she looks up at him. She frowns at him, and then the chair, and back and the frown disappears into an impish smile and the start of a laugh. "Why are you looking at that chair like you're considering smiting it to test if hellfire doesn't burn it, but the Light will?"
"Because I was considering exactly that," Lathrik answers seriously. "D'ye know how hard it'll be, brooding while staring at that cheery pattern?"
Natalyah's wicked laughter rings out, as she squishes herself closer to Lathrik. "Oh, no, what a horror! And what might happen if all that brooding doesn't air out on the regular. Are you taking it as a challenge then, or do we need to put something like a sheet over it to hide the cheery? Or should we just hang some curtains from the ceiling entirely to block off the whole room?" she teases mercilessly.
"Curtains… could work," Lathrik grumbles, avoiding her gaze. There are the faintest streaks of red on his cheeks.
Natalyah stretches up and licks one of the streaks of red in a soft touch of tongue. "You're very cute, you know," she tells him affectionately. "All right. If it will make you feel better, we can do some curtains. We can even save up and reupholster the chair someday, and you could smite the old one to pieces if you'd like. This is our house, after all. As much as I want some parts to stay just Lucy, even she wouldn't have kept this place static. The most Lucy thing we can really do is change it as we go. If she was still alive, that's what she'd be doing. She was never going to have a museum-like house. We get to make things comfortable for us."
"Aye, 'cute,' what every man wants t'hear," Lathrik grumbles, but her words do seem to relieve him some. "I wouldn't've asked it of ye, 'Talyah. Changing things. Ye saw how I was livin' before. I can make do."
Natalyah scoffs, and tosses her hair, which means some of it hits against his face and chest. "And you think I can't? I'll have you know that I lived in a cabin by the edge of the woods in Gilneas, all for the proximity to the Zebra longwing, and then I lived in the woods, sleeping on the dirt and grass," she says archly. She huffs as she settles back aggressively onto his shoulder. "But that's not here and now, and so we both made it out of the woods, or streets, or whatever. We don't make do, not anymore. We make things happy, and we fill the house with laughter and love, and we remember Lucy." (This is a threat.)
Lathrik reflexively flinches under the brief assault of hair; hair-in-eye is a serious condition after all, relaxing again when she settles. His hand travels up to the back of her neck, brushing her hair aside and just resting there, a light pressure. "Still don't know what I've done to deserve ye," he says at length. "Or any of this. But I'm thankful. Remembrance Day is tomorrow. I'll be leavin' early to get my assignment. Ye planning to go for Lucy?"
The words cast a heavy cloud over her, her expression caught halfway between a surge of stormy anger, and a deeper grief. "I — yes, I am," she states unequivocally, with a suspicious sniffle. "Sinners and martyrs. Somehow it feels worse thinking of it like that, that she's just part of a huge sweeping flood of people lost and now remembered all in one lump. I hate it so much. So many people lost and all we can do is remember them, like it can even amount to anything compared to all they were, and what happens when all the people who would normally remember someone are all dead, too? It's like they get lost on an entirely other level. Not everyone gets a huge statue at the gates."
She hunches inward, pressing herself harder against Lathrik, inhaling deeply to center herself again.
"I wouldn't want a statue," Lathrik says distantly. "You'd get the Reniya Hartrims of the world pokin' fun at it because they don't know who it's a statue of. An' birds would make their mess on it, too. Plus with all the news comin' out about the Titans and their stone constructs, you've gotta wonder what happens if they come back and decide to use the statues for somethin'. Then we'd have statue versions of us wanderin' around."
He refocuses and shakes his head. "But aye. I know what ye mean. Some people write books, to remember. Does she… have a proper grave yet?"
Natalyah nods. "Of course she does. She was buried somewhere in the Stormwind Cathedral cemetery," she says, swatting a hand out in the general direction of the graveyard. "Cremated, and an urn, because that's what Lucy would have wanted, apparently. I don't like it. The whole burning the dead thing is too orcish." The distaste and an edge of rage like a storm on the horizon is obvious in her voice.
"Aye, well. Ye missed the whole plague episode we had in the city," Lathrik says. "People died, their corpses wandered the streets, infected others, on repeat. I was made a paladin in the wake of all that. If Lucy was out fightin' the Lich King herself, after all she likely saw out there, ye can hardly blame 'er."
"It doesn't do anything," Natalyah says, a deep bitterness in her voice. "As a matter of fact, there are people who even sell 'corpse dust,' specifically meant for raising the dead as ghouls. I learned that three weeks ago, as part of resurrection training." She points a finger at chest, for one reason or another. Ploink. "You don't need the body to be intact, not for good or evil or some whatever in between. Necromancy or true resurrection pulls on something else."
"Corpse dust requires a caster," Lathrik says, frowning thoughtfully. "The plague didn't. It was a… disease. If there was another outbreak, burning would prevent that, at least. Any other method and we'd be looking at a necromancer, or a death knight."
"But that's not what killed her. She died because of the Lich King, and then she just didn't come ba — back," she says, a hitch in her voice that has a shadow of fur flickering around her hands like a dark flame. She sniffles again and readjusts her position.
She almost gets comfortable again, before she half lurches upwards. "You need to know, I don't think he'll be so monumentally stupid to come back here, but then again, he was such an absolute moron to cheat on and steal from Lucy that I can say nothing about the man's intellect in the positive, but Lucy's ex-husband might possibly come around the house at some point. 'Gavin Harbrooke.' He's charming and slippery, and I don't know how much longer he'll be in prison, if he even is still in prison after everything."
Lathrik starts to say something about the Forsaken, but thinks better of it, seeming almost relieved at the sudden topic change. "What d'you think he'd come back here to do, potentially?" he asks. "This, 'Gavin?'"
"Light's sake, I don't know. Why do stupid men ever do anything?" Natalyah asks, somewhat rhetorically. "It's not like I have any insight into what goes on in their heads. But what I do know is that men like to think they're entitled to things. So if he does come sniffing around, sober or otherwise, you have permission to smite him. And if you don't, I will anyway." This is a — oh, actually that one is a real, genuine threat.
Lathrik is silent for a moment, perhaps considering if Natalyah has placed him in a category outside of 'men.' What he says, though, is, "I'll see what I can do. Don't s'pose you'd sanction me baiting him into assault?"
"Sanction you? Dammed graceless gods, Lathrik, if I knew him any better I'd help you do it," Natalyah says, and although there's storms of hot lightning in those eyes, her mouth is all laughter, and she stretches up in that impulsive affectionate way of hers to kiss him.
Lathrik leans into it, meeting her lips firmly, deeply, until some thought jars him out of it and he pulls away. "Ye don't think he'd go harin' off to the Twilight's Hammer cult, do ye?" he asks.
It is not the thought that Natalyah might have thought he had, and it's obvious that she's jarred from a completely different route as she blinks at him, and then shakes her head more like a dog shedding water.
"What? Nnn— " The sound of the word no dies before it completes to a vowel. She frowns, her face caught between two extremes of disbelief and suspicion. "Ten years ago, I'd have said no way. But ten years ago, he was part of a wealthy noble family, surrounded by beautiful women, and on the track of easy failing upwards nepotism success. But now? He's a convicted felon of a fallen House, divorced, and probably penniless, but with all these old connections. Light's mercy, he's probably some sort of Twilight's Hammer recruiter's fantasy."
The thought that follows leaves him staring at the door, but where his usual intensity would result in a faint glow, now his eyes seem to darken. And then the spell is broken, leaving him blinking and reaching for a mana potion.
"I'll let Elle know. We'll keep an eye on 'im," he says.
Natalyah watches the mana potion consumption with some curiosity, and then pushes up off him, reaching for her canes to get herself back up to a stand.
"Well, if he shows up today he can stand out there and rot in the cold," she declares with a toss of her hair. "You and I are going upstairs to test out the couch in the bedroom."
For…brooding?
The look she gives him is wicked and heated. "And we're not coming back downstairs until I'm satisfied."
I don't think she means to test it out for brooding.