Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The dream was the same. It never changed, and neither did Jaina have any power to change it. She could try to rouse herself with every ounce of the tangential awareness she kept within the dream, but it would do no good. She could only watch. She could only feel and drift in and out of the same mixture of memories and fiction. Though each time she had the dream, it became harder to tell what parts of it her brain fabricated and what parts had been real. Perhaps it was easier to accept it all, or deny it. Jaina often chose the latter.

Because while the dream tormented her across the years, it had proven itself correct in many ways. And that was what made it so abhorrent.

At first, she’d relished this first part as a cherished moment. An escape. A respite. But as time went on, it became the worst part of all.

Jaina hated the lie it told. The safety it promised. The feelings she knew would twist and turn and fade into nothing but a hollow pit within her gut. Something of shame and guilt. Something of regret. Something, maybe, of an anger she never allowed herself to feel in its fullest form.

But the dream didn’t care. It began as it always did, fading into a scene of sunlit Quel’thalas. Perfect and unruined. Golden and glorious.

There, Jaina stood in the loose embrace of her soulmate, lingering. They were saying goodbye. It was all too soon. They’d only met a week ago, when Sylvanas had arranged for her to visit the land of the elves. Her sister had met Jaina in Dalaran, and had noticed how the soulmark on her hand so closely resembled her sister’s. From there, it had been a whirlwind. A thing Jaina didn’t think she would ever find, found and then given so freely, so wonderfully.

Her mark was on the back of her hand. It glowed fiercely as she cradled Sylvanas’ jaw with it--a bright and brilliant blue. They’d only just met, but already their bond had been forged so deeply that the glow was brighter even than Jaina remembered her parents’ being. It had only been a few days since they’d decided to seal it with the kiss. Sylvanas had been so sweet, so hesitant with her at first, and so cavalier as she took Jaina’s hand in hers and placed her lips on the swirling pattern that graced the back of it.

And Jaina had been so eager to return her own kiss to the inside of Sylvanas’ wrist, where her mark was. The inverse of her own--negative space to her positive--in a shape that Jaina always thought of as a moon. A crescent moon with symmetrical, geometric shapes that Jaina interpreted as snowflakes. How she’d laughed when she learned that Sylvanas’ family had a nickname for her because of that mark--how they called her Lady Moon.

“I don’t want to go,” Jaina would hear herself say each time. Her voice was so young. Only twenty-three, golden-haired, brave, and optimistic. That felt like it was eons ago.

“But you must,” Sylvanas answered, as she always did. She smiled into Jaina’s hand, turning just slightly to press her lips to the palm of it.

Her own voice was different, of course. She was alive. Her skin was warm. She had a bit of the high, nasal accent of the elves, but beneath that, the scratchy timbre of a soldier who shouted over battlefields. A Ranger General.

An archer with broad shoulders and whose bare back had been a sight that took Jaina’s breath away not too long before this. Her arms were strong and confident as they held Jaina around her waist.

She was nothing like Jaina had imagined her soulmate would be. She assumed it would be a man, for one, despite the fact that she found herself attracted to both men and women. She assumed he’d be human, like her. Kul Tiran, even. As a child, she would draw him as a hearty, rosy-cheeked sea captain, or a shy, bearded Tidesage who grinned at her from beneath the cowl of his robes.

But no, her soulmate was an elf of Quel’thalas. A beautiful and important woman, whose duty called her away just the same as Jaina’s did. She was stern and steady in the public eye, but mischievous with her younger sister and her favorite Rangers. She had confessed to years and years of loneliness in the comfort of Jaina’s arms, and went on and on about how glad she was to have finally found her. Jaina had waited twenty-three years for her, but Sylvanas was nearly two-hundred.

And now that Jaina had her, she knew she wouldn’t have it any other way. Sylvanas was perfect for her. She was determined to be just as perfect for her as well.

“I know,” Jaina lamented, thumbing her cheek again as Sylvanas turned her head back. “I suppose this will be our reality and I need to accept it.”

“I suppose,” Sylvanas offered in somber agreement. “But it won’t be forever.”

“When can I see you again?” Jaina asked.

She knew that Sylvanas didn’t know. She didn’t either. The Kirin Tor had called her to investigate this new plague that had been tearing through northern Lordaeron. Master Antondias had requested her specifically, and stated in his letter that it was a mission he only trusted to her, his brightest of pupils. Sylvanas, for her part, was due to meet with some other military leaders of the Alliance to organize a relief effort to the affected communities, and to oversee the contribution from Quel’thalas of highly trained elven priests.

It was a responsibility that would cut short their visit. They hadn’t even gotten to talking much about the future--how they would live and where. Jaina assumed she would have to spend much of her days in Quel’thalas from then on, but she hardly minded. Sylvanas’ Rangers had been wonderful and welcoming to her, and assured her they would take good care of their beloved Ranger General’s soulmate when she was busy in the field.

“Soon,” was Sylvanas’ answer.

And that was where the dream twisted--on the lie. It had been a lie even then. A lie they told themselves and each other. A lie that Jaina hated. A lie that haunted her now--over a decade later, nearly every night as she tried to rest. But it would never let her rest.

She watched now, pulling back from her younger self, becoming a ghostly spectator as she watched her own face contort in horror. Jaina watched as Sylvanas’ face melted in her hands--warm, sunkissed skin falling away to reveal a face pallid and cold. Her eyes melted too, then ran down her face in a streak of black tears, until they were replaced with glaring, angry red. And then she screamed. She screamed the horrifying, impossibly loud and piercing scream of a banshee.

It rent through Jaina and her younger self. It cracked the very fabric of this scene. The trees and their golden leaves withered and died. The sky and the golden sun cracked as if they were made of glass--shattering into a million, million jagged pieces. Twisting spires toppled and broke into rubble as if they were made of toy blocks.

And when everything faded away, there was Jaina, watching her younger self again. Months later, they didn’t meet again. The undead were razing both of their nations and there was no time. Soon was a thing that would never be. Because here, Jaina was kneeling on the streets of Dalaran, clutching her chest and screaming, unable to tell anyone who ran up to her what was wrong.

Because Jaina had just found out what it felt like to die.

Because she knew that there was something wrong after. The pain was sudden and terrible and brief, but then it lingered and lingered, throbbing--a heartbeat going out slowly. But after, there was an awful, awful pull. A wrenching that was beyond physical. That was all the words Jaina had for it still. And then there was nothing.

And then there was her, shaking, retching, gasping for breath on the street. Reaching out with a shaking hand that no longer bore a mark that glowed, but one that was fading, settling into a silvery sheen.

A memorial. That’s what people called them to be nice about it. But there was nothing nice about it. Jaina screamed again, because this meant that Sylvanas was dead.

And nearly a year later, on the shores of another continent, when she would learn that the woman she planned to love for all of her life still walked this world, the mark remained silver. It never glowed again. Because Sylvanas was undead.

Because one cannot have a soulmate that doesn’t have a soul.

It was only after she felt that death again that Jaina was ever allowed to wake from the dream’s clutches. Sometimes, it would be so cruel as to let her watch herself weep on the street for hours upon hours. Tonight, it was kind enough to release her.

Jaina woke with a gasp, clutching silken sheets to her chest. But she didn’t feel the pain of a sword threatening to rend her in two and ripping out her soul. She was fine. She was right where she’d fallen asleep--in her room in Boralus.

Though that was new enough that it took her a moment to remind herself of that fact. So much that she felt a need to say something to the darkness that shrouded her--a variation on a mantra she often had to repeat after this dream. “It’s only a dream. You always have this dream. You’re Jaina Proudmoore. You’re now the Lord Admiral of Kul Tiras. This is your bedroom.”

She was still sleeping in her childhood quarters. Her mother had insisted on moving out of the Lord Admiral’s suite, but Jaina told her to take her time. She wasn’t in a rush. She just needed a bed to sleep in.

Or not sleep in. Exhaustion had been her constant companion thanks to this damn dream. Thanks to the same silvery mark that glinted on her hand in the moonlight. Of course, the moonlight. How poetic and awful that was.

Jaina tossed the blankets back and rose from her bed. She went to stand near her desk--the same one where she’d drawn the pictures of burly sailors and kind Tidesages--never an elven General. She leaned against the polished wood and looked out at the moon.

It was only a waning sliver. Tomorrow, there would be no moon, or maybe the next night. Maybe the dream would leave her alone and let her sleep. Maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe the woman who wore the face of the one she’d been meant to love would finally invade her city and they could end this prolonged suffering, this thirteen year long funeral march.

Jaina didn’t really want it, if she were to think of this all in her right mind. But for tonight, she would look at the moon and wonder how it might end--with Sylvanas’ arrow through her eye or her ice piercing that cold, dead heart of hers.

---

Shaw was a good man. Jaina valued his intelligence and his thoroughness. He was endlessly loyal to the Alliance as well.

But today, she didn’t particularly want to hear another word from him.

Still, Shaw went on, leaning over the war table toward her in his impassioned plea, “I know it’s a bit soon, but if we can just have you pledge the fleet to protect our attack--”

“Absolutely not,” Jaina cut him off, pushing the tokens that represented her ships back away from the shores of Zuldazar and its proud harbor of Dazar'alor. “We just got that fleet back, if you recall.”

“And the Alliance needs it,” Shaw insisted.

“And Kul Tiras has not yet pledged to the Alliance, if you recall,” Jaina reminded him.

“But you--”

“Must do what is right for my people? Very astute of you to point out, Shaw,” Jaina declared, pushing the tokens further, all the way to their home port in Boralus. “And since the Alliance was so kind as to continue the aggression in Zuldazar while I was imprisoned, and attempt to kill a great many of the Horde’s ranking members in the process--including Trade Prince Gallywix, whom you did not kill, mind you--then I believe the safest place for the fleet to be is guarding this very harbor.”

This, at least, stunned Shaw into silence for a moment. A blessed moment. Even more blessed by the fact that Valeera Sanguinar audibly laughed loud enough that it carried from across the deck of the ship, where she stood with arms crossed at the cabin door.

Even more blessedly so as Anduin joined her with a chuckle of his own, placing a hand on Shaw’s shoulder and offering him a consolation pat as he agreed, “Jaina has every right to be concerned, and every right to refuse.”

“You’re supposed to be helping me to convince her, my king,” Shaw muttered.

“I would be remiss to make Auntie Jaina do anything she didn’t want to do,” Anduin told him. “And a fool. If she doesn’t think it’s time to strike at the Horde, and that the risk to Kul Tiras is too great for them to aid us, then I would say we should consider waiting. Jaina is merely advising that this is too risky a move now, not necessarily later.”

“The risk of a swift offensive is far less than any you might take with waiting for them to attack,” Alleria Windrunner chimed in.

Her voice was clipped and stern--deeper than either of her sisters. She glared at Jaina with blue eyes that swirled with the void. Nothing like the soft grey that Sylvanas’ had once been. A streak of blue tattoo covered one, while a silvery mark that resembled a sun with an arrow piercing it covered another. Jaina knew that Alleria had never met her soulmate. They had died before she could meet them. Alleria never knew the pain of that death, or the loss of anything but possibility. Her mark only spoke of what could have been, and her husband didn’t seem to mind it, as he bore a similar mark from a person he too had never known.

Wars had taken the opportunity from many people, lest Jaina forget. Wars that happened thousands of years before she was born, even. But at least Alleria never had to see the matching mark to hers on the face of her enemy.

And yet, she always had a special glare for Jaina, and always made it known she was watching her with it every time they met. She seemed to be searching for weakness, hesitance. And Jaina would look back at her hard, trying to convey that no one in this room hated what Sylvanas had become more than her. Though Alleria probably was a close second. She’d give her that.

“Alleria has a point,” Shandris noted. She was slumped against the table, looking deeply exhausted. No doubt due to the early hour that was an affront to her nocturnal nature, and the fact that she had worked tirelessly to ensure the Horde was weak enough for this attack to be possible. “We don’t know what they’re capable of. Well, at the very least, Jaina hasn’t seen their latest tactics.”

“Jaina is well aware,” Jaina answered for herself, taking a moment to rub her temples. In public, she always wore gloves, so that her mark was not on display. These days, she wore another layer on top of it, a golden gauntlet on only the marked hand.

If asked by anyone who wasn’t aware, she would say it was to protect her casting hand. In reality, it was just another piece of armor to protect not from what was outside, but what was within it. A shame. A rot that would spread through her heart if she thought about it long enough, or caught herself looking at the silvery mark.

“All I’m saying is that attacking them is a better option than just sitting here, and we’re not going to be able to do it without your ships,” Alleria protested, reaching out to the command table to flick over the figurine of a Kul Tiran frigate.

Overhead, the gulls chattered. Jaina disliked having a tactical meeting aboard the open deck of a ship, but apparently this was what the Alliance had chosen as their command post while they curried favor with her mother and attempted to rescue her. She’d have a chat with them about moving this kind of meeting indoors, where it belonged, when they were not trying to get her to turn around and immediately bring the nation she’d just been handed into a war in any official capacity.

Because, like it or not, their actions had already brought Kul Tiras into this war, and extended it upon their own eternal conflict with the Zandalari. And apparently, asking to take a week’s respite to get started on governing her nation and recuperating from her time in Thros was too long for Jaina to absent in their efforts to drag her further into all of it.

Alleria’s jaw clenched in the relative silence. The harbor was never silent, and though no one spoke, they were surrounded by the noise and liveliness of a busy port. Waves crashing. Sailors laughing. Cargo being loaded and unloaded. The docks creaking and sails straining against their lines.

All sounds familiar and foreign to Jaina at once. No wonder she’d had the dream every night for a week. Things were quite stressful. Well, things were always quite stressful for her. Enough that she often wondered why she’d bothered to come back from her self-imposed exile during the battle against the Burning Legion.

The elder Windrunner sister couldn’t take it anymore, though, and burst out with, “Think about what good sitting and waiting has done you before. How well did it work at Theramore?”

White hot anger seared through every bit of Jaina’s nerves, setting them alight. She was certain that Alleria could feel the gathering of mana, the ice that wanted very much to form at her fingertips. But Jaina didn’t let it. She banished it.

“I think I’ve heard enough,” she hissed through clenched teeth, clinging onto civility.

But she had no other choice but civility. Because as much as she wanted to slice Alleria’s head clean off with a blade of ice for that remark, it wouldn’t do any good. It wouldn’t fix anything. It wouldn’t let her rest. It wouldn’t keep Kul Tiras safe, or the Alliance satisfied. It wouldn’t stop the Horde from attacking.

It would only be more loss and blood. More grief. And Jaina had had enough of those things to fill many lifetimes--even one as long as Alleria Windrunner’s.

“Alleria,” Anduin whispered, reaching over to take her arm. “That was uncalled for.”

“Jaina’s cowardice is uncalled for,” Shandris offered, standing up straight and moving toward the other side of Alleria.

“Please,” Anduin tried, reaching out his free hand to Shandris.

His mark was also on the back of his hand, not too far off from where Jaina’s was on her own hand. It was still unchanged from when he was a boy--just a slightly darker patch of skin, not unlike a birthmark. Anduin had not yet met his soulmate. He still had time--the grace of potential.

Shandris batted it away, taller and stronger than her High King enough to make it seem a foolish gesture to begin with, and turned back to Jaina. “Do you want history to write Kul Tiras into its annals as the cowards that stood in the way of the defeat of the Horde? To stand in the way of the vengeance my people deserve? Do you want all of my work to be for nothing?”

“I want none of those things,” Jaina assured her, willing the bile in her throat back to where it came from. Trying with every ounce of control she had to be the calm that Anduin needed. If nothing else, she could be that. “I want time. I do not want to lead the charge as an aggressor when we have done just as--”

“Just as much?” Shandris spit. “Tell me, Jaina. Did we burn their people? Did we set flame to all they loved, all they cherished?”

No. They had not. But Jaina had seen Sylvanas’ eyes, that day she took her ship to defend Anduin and his army at Lordaeron. She’d seen something in them--a bitter shame she felt gnawing at the edge of every waking moment, echoed behind bright red rage.

She’d known then that losing the Undercity was as grievous a blow as it was meant to be. She knew then that she would rather be anywhere but there, and that facing other past crimes in Kul Tiras was far preferable than casting another look in the direction of that cursed place and the shade of the woman who she’d run off from it.

Jaina clenched a gauntleted fist, but said nothing. There was no correct response. That was the whole problem with what was being asked of her this morning.

“It’s as Alleria says,” Shandris needled even as Anduin reached for her again, still pleading. “You are unwilling to attack their Warchief directly. You won’t touch Sylvanas.”

“Shandris!” Anduin shouted this time. “Please! Is this what you call diplomacy? Jaina is our ally, and our friend! Remember that, please!”

The boy king cast a worried look at Jaina. No doubt he saw the glow of arcane pooling in her eyes, threatening to whiten them out. She could blow this ship up. She could level these docks. She wanted to. A part of her wanted to. A part of her always longed for an end. Anything final, not always death, but something.

But not today. Not today. Jaina’s will was iron. Her heart was not, but she tried her best.

“Why would either of you worry about what I will or will not do with Sylvanas?” Jaina asked her, voice quiet and low. “After all, Shandris, one cannot have a soulmate that has no soul. She hasn’t been anything to me since she died. Of anyone here, it would be the greatest relief to me to put an end to the banshee who wears her face.”

No one aboard the ship had anything to offer in reply to that. And why would they? Who would challenge her, the greatest Archmage of her age, eyes burning with unspent arcane as they’d burned with unshed tears all these years. They all knew. It was no secret. No, Jaina’s shame and grief had always been a public affair. That was precisely what she’d hated the most about all of it.

“As I said before, I've heard enough for today. We can discuss this again tomorrow,” Jaina told them. “Inside the keep. I will have my mother prepare an appropriate room for your command post. As much as we enjoy ships here in Kul Tiras, such sensitive matters of state are best discussed behind closed doors and not on the deck of one.”

---

That evening, Jaina had hoped that only darkness would greet her from the night sky. But still, a sliver of the moon lingered, mocking her from the window of her bedchamber. The larger one, of course. Azeroth's second, dimmer moon rose later in the night, and never seemed so mocking as its sister.

Her mother promised to be finished moving out tomorrow. Jaina cautioned her to take her time still. While the Lord Admiral’s quarters were rightfully hers now, it felt odd to steal her parents’ bedroom from her mother. So many things felt odd about this place. Boralus was so like what she remembered, and yet also so very different.

Time could change a lot. Jaina reminded herself of this every day. Time was said to heal all wounds. And it healed some. She’d done her best to forget, even as her dreams reminded her over and over. She’d had her share of lovers over the years, those who either had already lost their own soulmate or hadn’t found them yet or just didn’t care. She’d watched the marks of others wink out and silver as her own had. She’d held Sylvanas’ younger sister through her grief at the loss of her own soulmate at Theramore, and watched the tears fall onto the silver mark that now occupied Vereesa’s cheek.

But she’d spent most of her nights alone. Even when she entertained suitors, she would make excuses not to spend the night. She’d tired of explaining why she tossed and turned at night, or would wake at odd hours to distract herself with a book or some paperwork.

Jaina changed into her nightdress, hoping for a reprieve. Even just a few hours. Just a little rest. She needed it so badly.

And she needed to be thinking of anything but Sylvanas right now.

She’d given up praying years ago, or she’d try that too. Whatever gods there were would not be so cruel to her if they were as supposedly benevolent as their advocates insisted. The Tides, the Light, and all of their subsidiaries didn’t seem to carry the same weight to her. At least, not when Jaina knew they never seemed to answer any of her prayers.

So instead, she just hoped. Hope was all she had. She was all she had. And she knew she could be a better version of herself for tomorrow’s meeting if she just got some goddamn sleep.

But still, she looked at the moon. That damn moon. Maybe she ought to pray to Elune. She’d given Tyrande the strength to take her vengeance. Maybe she’d grant Jaina the strength to find that end she was looking for.

And maybe then, she could rest.

Jaina turned her back on the crescent moon--the sliver of silver that hung in the night sky. She dimmed her magelight lamp with a snap of her fingers, and crawled into bed.

She pulled the covers over herself. Silk, deep green. Kul Tiran colors. She wondered how long it would take her to get used to waking wrapped in green. How many more times would she have to remind herself where she was?

It was better than Thros. Anything was. Where every regret played out endlessly for her, every failure. There, she was damned to wrap herself in an eternal comfort of the worst days of her life. At least she was back now to just having the dream. It was vivid, but far less so than all those things she’d repressed, all the sweet memories of Sylvanas laughing with her Rangers, of how good her warm skin felt against Jaina’s, of the equally warm sensation of her growing love and fondness for her, shared across their bond so that Jaina could feel it too.

No. Jaina promised herself that she would bury those things again. And she could. She knew she could.

She counted, as she often did. Backwards from one-hundred. Then two-hundred. Then three-hundred. Some nights, she’d get all the way through one-thousand and still not be asleep.

But she tried. Every day, every night, she just tried, knowing that it was very likely the same thing awaited her, the same dream, the same pain.

And when she started the four-hundred count, pain was exactly what Jaina felt. A dull throb in her shoulder, to be exact. Not unheard of, of course. She was thirty-six now. Things were starting to hurt. Her mother had joked with her that it didn’t get more fun in her sixties, so she should enjoy the fact that her pains were only occasional. But it was a little odd.

The mattress was soft and piled with pillows. It had been comfortable and hadn’t bothered Jaina any other night she’d slept on it. She shifted from lying on her back to her side in an effort to banish the pain.

But the throb remained. If anything, it began to slowly intensify. Jaina lost count in the four-hundreds and sighed, reaching up to rub her shoulder to no avail. Great, yet another thing to keep her up at night. Just what she needed.

And then it became bad enough for her to let out a grunt. Jaina kept rubbing at the offending shoulder and cursed, sitting up. She draped her legs over the side of the bed, bare feet touching the cool stone of the floor. She ought to get a rug--autumn was just about here and would be cold in Boralus.

And then it was white hot and searing, a flash of sensation that Jaina wasn’t at all prepared for. A flash of burning pain that certainly was not like anyone had described any sort of familial arthritis or anything like that to be.

With it, and after it, came a flood like a dam breaking. A rush of adrenaline that caused her to start panting as if she’d just run a marathon. Confusion beyond measure. Fear too. Wave after wave of all of these, crashing into her.

Was it another dream? A new terror for her to enjoy?

But no, Jaina was pretty sure she was awake and aware and in control.

So she started her nightly mantra in the middle, just to be sure, “You’re Jaina Proudmoore. You’re the Lord Admiral of Kul Tiras. This is your bedroom.”

It was. She was. The moon peered into her window, as if watching her and laughing. Always watching.

Jaina dug her fingers into her shoulder, trying to dispel whatever this was. Maybe it was her end. Maybe she wouldn’t lose to an arrow in her skull, but to the madness she was most afraid of. The stress of it all was too much. She was so tired. And she was so tired of trying.

But the pain remained. The emotions washed over her again and again. Relief joined them. Exhaustion was somewhere too. Oddly enough, a giddy sense of victory as well. Dread was chief among them, though, as if she’d just seen a vision of the very world’s end.

And as Jaina squinted against the pain again, her eyes opened just a bit. Just enough to see that the hand she held her shoulder with was glowing a dim, but distinct blue.

A blue moon, beset with snowflakes, was glowing on her hand for the first time in thirteen years.

It was only then, when she saw it, that Jaina screamed.