Stormwind is very different to how Alleria left it.

 

Which is not to say that she was there such a great deal, but still - two separate black dragons had left their mark on the stonework, if the chatty woman at the bakery was to be believed, and the population had transmuted and diversified even before Sylvanas had given them reason to house thousands of refugees - and the refugees of refugees as well, the people of Gilneas cast far from their land for several years already, also courtesy of Sylvanas.

Every day brought a new reason to regret not riddling her sister with arrows.

A moonwell was consecrated in the hills behind the city last week, and the dead-eyed, shocky state so many of them arrived in turns to steely, black resolve for someone new every day.

She had been reluctant to approach it that night, newly completed and a clear source of comfort to a people sorely in need of it. But a priestess had called her over when she hesitated nearby, dismissed her latent, sunwell-induced fears so easily that she had come.

“The light is only part of the whole,” the woman had told her. Her voice had the measured cadence of one used to instruction, and she bore herself with the stillness of eons. “ All of our priestesses are the chosen of Elune. Is the moon incomplete, when she wanes? Or simply in shadow?”

The cloth she swept through the water lightened gradually over time. Sanguine corruption faded out through pink, dispersing a little more with every sweep, until eventually it glowed a white so bright it seemed almost blue, pale and bright as the moon. The priestess laid it out carefully on the stone of the edge, so that all the water that runs off will return into the Well.

“It is Elune that has brought you to me tonight, and I would offer what peace to your heart that I can.”

She rummaged through the pack at her feet and produced a pair of fine gloves in the same delicate, shimmering material laid out beside her.

“Here. Take what time you can with your lover. There's so little happiness in the world right now.”

Their story is known across the city - painted as some great romantic tragedy, when for her it is just small and constant absences. She loves him with such aching certainty that she doesn't know what to do with it; doesn't understand how they could have diverged so totally without any loss of devotion.

The last, weak light of the day recedes with haste as she makes her way through the city, and when it returns she’ll be on a ship bound for Kul Tiras. A guilty sort of relief washes through her on realizing the lateness of the evening - Arator takes evening meals with them, and she loves her son, adores him, but he inherited his faith from his father and his distress with her choices is clear. Turalyon watches her ears closely when their son is there, and she knows they inevitably dip but she's never had the trick of lying with them that her sisters so easily mastered. She doesn’t regret her choices - better safe than close, as she’d recited to herself and to Turalyon so many time over that lost millennia - but that surety doesn’t make them easy.

Arator trusts his father, and Turalyon trusts her, so he tries to understand though the struggle is clear - his discomfort with Void is at least as deep as those who would have seen her people rejected from the Alliance in the first place.

They have a little house in Old Town, large enough to let them negotiate around each other, and there are animals everywhere. Cats, dogs, rats and horses in every direction she looks, let alone the obscure and exotic pets that accompany the champions that pass by. The Xenedar was free of animals of all kinds, and she thinks she wouldn't mind a pet.

Light spills from the door as she approaches - whether Turalyon knew she was coming or simply left it open Alleria isn’t sure, but when she enters the house, he’s back near a corner with his fist already halfway to his heart.

She returns it. A private habit, it’s their go-to sign of affection now, something Alleria had started doing when the urge to take his hand was painful, and of course he had noticed.

Arator greets her in his quiet, serious voice, but clearly in preparations to leave. To her surprise, he draws her into a hug before he does.

His arms are strong - he's almost as broad as his father. The affection that wells in her is almost overwhelming, and to her embarrassment her eyes burn a little.

“You've grown so big,” she says softly, stupidly, and his arms tighten around her.

“I ate all of my vegetables,” he confides. It's not the strongest joke, but it may be the first she's heard from him. “I love you,” he tells her, so serious. “I'm glad we're getting to know each other.”

“My son,” she says, and that thrill is there even now. Their son. “You're everything I could have hoped.”

He kisses her cheek, has to bend a little to do it, and she looks away hastily to hide the glassiness of her eyes. Years of work and sacrifice but the best thing she’s ever done has a soft, deep voice and an impossibly sweet smile.

“What did you say to him?” she asks Turalyon in the kitchen after he leaves.

“Nothing of particular import,” he replies, but he’s clearly very pleased with himself. She throws a tea towel at him and he catches it out of the air, looks at her as he winds it around his fist and smacks a loud kiss upon it before grimacing at the mustiness.

She washes down the plates that they used, and Turalyon moves around the kitchen behind her. She keeps herself occupied through the mundane task by imagining him fucking her over the sink, harder than he ever really is. Maybe it’s a little sadistic, but they sought satisfaction in each other frequently, and the lack wears on her much more now he’s close, no longer out of sight through the thick and lonely walls of Xe’ra’s imprisonment.

There's a look of reverence that he would get, his eyes on hers, when she took him in her mouth. As though he can't imagine what good grace has brought him to this place, with this life. There’s a deep, painful irony to it now, but he had confided to her once that thoughts of her is what held him so easily to the Light. That in her love, he found grace.

God, she misses kissing him.

Turalyon disappears from the kitchen for a while, and when he comes back he’s changed into long leather pants and thick mageweave, a winter robe from his days in the priesthood. It’s small across his shoulders, but with buttons that close tight over his wrists to go beneath heavy gloves. The gloves he wears are no great thick winter wear though, but the delicate and pretty gift given to Alleria for the both of them, a boon in exchange for her company on a quiet night.

Her underwear's a little slick with thoughts of him and he can tell, because one powerful thigh nudges up behind her, slides between her legs and up, offers pressure for her to bow her back against. She leans forward over the sink, turns her head to the side a little as much to spare him the sweep of her ears as to look at him, grinning down at her.

Those gloves are a gift she’s fervently thankful for when he works her pants open, barely enough space to get a his hand in and against just the peak of her. He knows just how she likes to be touched, the harsh grind she prefers, and hasn't failed to please her in the entire time they've been together.

“Tell me, my love,” he murmurs, as close to the line of her ear as he dares, “just what were you thinking of to pass the time?” Dangerously close - she can see a few lonely threads of gold at his temples, half-hidden in the distinguished silver of his hair.

Her breath is already coming faster from the contact, easily brought close with the frustration of constantly dwelling on imagined touches, and she doesn't bother with any false shyness - wriggles down and grinds against his thigh in hard circles.

“Of you fucking me,” she tells him bluntly.

“And what did I do?” he asks, and his eyes are so dark already, that smirk so self-satisfied, but the friction is wonderful and he’s earned it for his sneakiness.

“My pants down just far enough,” she tells him, “thrust right in, fucking , just -” she speeds up, drops her head forward over her arms and writhes back against him. They’re skirting a dangerous line with this, have hit the sharp snap of pain before when a button on his wrist has failed, but she can’t bring herself to care for danger when she’s so fucking close. She cants back for a better angle against him and he groans, grabs her hips and moves her so she’s pushing blindly back against the cock housed safely behind leather and massages her clit between hard fingers, the catch of even such smooth fabric a blessing, until she chokes and comes shuddering against him.

He makes a rough noise and when she raises her head again slowly, drops half-shaking to his knees and turns her around with his hands, gets her slipping pants back up scarcely fast enough before hooking a leg over his shoulder and pushing his face against the fabric and inhaling hard against her covered, wet cunt.

They have exactly enough give for it to feel good, grinding the seam of her pants into her, but it’s not enough - pushes her back towards the edge but not close enough to tip over.

The smell of her, the grind is clearly driving him on, panting desperately against her as he strips his cock with brutal urgency. Finally he mutters something, which becomes ‘want to see’ and she takes her legs back, half-falls to the floor and gets her pants down, kicks them off and lays out on her back, legs wide apart to show him.

He's careful, so careful, as he moves back to give her room, eyes riveted and panting as the room echoes with the sloppy sound of her fucking herself on her fingers, fast and increasingly hard, undulating into it.

He's balanced on his knees, leaning forward on the hand not around his cock as close as he dares, expression intense as he focuses right down on her core and this does what his nose grinding through thin leather couldn't, sends her moaning back over the peak, the muscles of her entrance contracting in an even rhythm around her fingers and a quick flicker of her thumb over clit intensifying it until she bucks against her own hands, no control over how she's reacting.

Turalyon grunts, his seed splattering onto the floor between them, breathing harsh and loud.

The stone is cold beneath her, a chill through her bared backside, her feet, her bones, her heart. They have tried to talk each other through sexual congress, but for Alleria’s part it feels lonelier than not trying at all, makes her feel further away from him rather than closer. This sort of thing is better, but not by much - and the edges of the rift is crumbling a little more beneath her feet every day.

He approaches their limitations with good humored tolerance, but she’s seen him press her pillow to his face, grief creasing deeper lines in his handsome face than age ever would.

He sees the moment she starts withdrawing - always knows just what she’s thinking, after all this time, as she does him. They’re some kind of opposites, to fit together without even trying.

“We'll find a way around it,” he tells her with such utter faith that for a moment she is almost convinced. They were not in this position because he lacked in faith, though, and Alleria has always been far more analytical and far less sure than he.

She levers herself to her feet, and remembers not to offer Turalyon her hand. When they go to bed that evening, she twists herself tightly into a blanket and suffers the heat for as long as she can stand for the sake of his arms around her.

##

Alleria has hot, dark dreams of riding Turalyon’s thick cock, bare hands against his naked chest for balance, the callouses of his thumbs passing over her nipples. Her hair sweeping across his skin as she leans down to kiss him, sweet and deep and long, and she wakes in the dark to the slightly sharp discomfort of climaxing around nothing. Her skin itches with the echoed memory of his beard scraping rough against her, but it’s just the blanket, catching her hair and curling it back around to poke at the nape of her neck.

Perhaps it's greedy to want more, when she's had so much longer with him than she might have, as he continues on a thousand years past a human lifespan. But every moment of her captivity was a moment with him stolen, and so too is every moment spent in this war. If love is the only necessary force to keep them true they'll never falter.  But if it is not, she will eke out every moment that she can.

Besides her Turalyon lays asleep, undisturbed by her waking, breathing so slow and deep it seems to pause interminably between inhale and exhale. She lays her hand down on the sheet between them, scant inches away from where his lays slack, half-curled, and imagines she is holding it.

Even in sleep his face creases in discomfort, and he rolls away.

and now

the years surprise us

how all our times apart

have become our vows