"--For what it's worth," it comes out as a whisper, "I often dreamed of this day, in amidst all of the nightmares." Windrunner Spire is battered and broken, like the three of them, but Sylvanas feels something still akin to comfort as she pauses in what was once her own bedroom, a long time ago. "You, *here*, with me. Alive, beyond any hope of mine that you might still be." Now, they stand on different sides, and that burns more than she will ever confess. - forsakcn.
IC ASKS // always accepting!!!
@forsakcn
The worst hurts she had suffered in her long life were never physical.
The loss of a brother, of her mother and father; the years apart from her son; leaving her sisters; losing them, too, if not to death. Family broken, no matter where she looked. Those are the deepest scars, deeper than any of the myriad that marked her skin.
Had her heart been ripped from her chest, it would not have hurt as much.
When one fights endless war, there are things you ought to think of to anchor you. Things you think of when you begin to feel numb to the fight, when you have to question what it is you fight for --- when you are at risk of drowning in the dark, not that of manipulative whispers but of pure hopelessness one wandering alone in the farther corners of the universe can find herself in, when goal seems impossible to reach.
Alleria was never weak willed. Her heart was strong, as was her mind. It did not mean she had no need of such anchors; instead, it meant she had often held on to them like lifeline, the difference between standing strong or spiraling away. Arator had special place, but he had not been only one to be in a way anchor to her when she needed it most.
Home had recurrently been in her thoughts; the woods of her beloved Quel’thalas, the Spire in which she had lived all her life. Similarly, so had her sisters; Sylvanas and Vereesa had never been far from her mind or from her heart. Alleria had regretted not being able to say her farewells to them before departing, though she knew that had been part of not allowing herself to be dissuaded from her choice to venture beyond the Dark Portal; and she missed them, dearly, every day for a thousand years, holding on to the certainty she would one day return and be reunited with her family again.
Nothing was the same, when such reunion finally came to pass.
The last time she had seen Sylvanas had been through a vision; even that, many years before. The Light had granted her that vision, and she had been overwhelmingly grateful; full of pride at the sight of her sister, then Ranger-General of Silvermoon, full of love for her and her son, full of sorrow that they stood in Stormwind, celebrating heroes they no longer expected to return, mourning one they would consider lost for many years more.
Sylvanas had written the words for her memorial; Alleria never liked much the statue of herself watching over Stormwind, yet the words engraved at its base, filled with sorrow and sisterly love, were different matter.
She is her sister no longer. Sylvanas had died years before, a defender of their homeland, a hero of their people, only to be brought back again by the monster she had given everything to defeat. She resembles Sylvanas, yes, but even physically there have been changes; those are the changes that matter little. What makes her a stranger to Alleria is not that; it is the words she cannot forget, Vereesa’s warnings of darkness that had taken her, the story of manipulating even their own sister in attempt of having Vereesa join her in undeath.
“So have I.” Agreement comes with heartbreaking; it is true and it is honest and it hurts all the more because of that. Alleria had faced no small amount of nightmares of her own; she would not compare them to what Sylvanas had suffered, but time had not been kind to either of them --- was not, even now, denying both the joy of reunion they had wished for, even standing in such distant places in the universe.
“All I wanted was to come home. To be with my family again.” Emotion is not kept from admission, though Alleria steels herself not to break, not to lose sight of all that is different and wrong and changed, never to be recovered. Of why her sister is lost to her, and such dreams and wishes no longer matter. “But there is no longer a home for me to return to.”
Family broken, no matter where she looked; shattered to pieces that could not ever be mended again.
