#lachlin

[hamfeather]

Guess who just learned that doing something ironically is the gateway drug to doing it (mostly) unironically

Characters belong to @comicaurora

[embersign]

♥Commission for a Patron of Lachlin!♥ ♥THANK YOU!♥

[lachlin]

Therapy.  He’d heard of others doing it.  He’d overheard others doing it, too.  Lachlin didn’t confide much in many.  Mostly because he wasn’t that great at making friends to confide in.  He was always on the defense about something, always fending off some sort of attack regardless of what it actually was.  There were people that cared about him despite his demeanor and behavior, but that shield of pride always prevented him from opening up.  Vulnerability felt like weakness, and he always had something to prove to the world.  But lately, he found himself existing in a plane of both indifference and dread.  It was an aura he’d felt before, and one he’d previously medicated himself.  From behind a bar counter or in The Row, he chased fleeting mercies paid for with coins lifted from the pockets of those more fortunate.  It led him down a path, haunted by the syndicate that controlled his sense of freedom, and ultimately most other aspects of his life too.  Lach had come a long way already, and he wasn’t ready to give up just yet.

It was a Sunday when, on a whim, the thought of counsel crossed his mind again.  He had his usual awkward introduction with the person who led the LMA, one Peter Nightenquill, and set up his appointment for the following Tuesday evening.  

He almost didn’t go.  Like with everything else, he was ashamed to ask for help.  No one he was close to knew about it.  There was no one to hold him accountable, no one to be disappointed in him.  Except…himself.  In the past few months, through the aid of friend and acquaintance alike, he’d managed to stay away from the drug that consumed his life for the past seven years. With the half dozen buds of thistle he carried with him now, he knew he walked a fine line.  And if he didn’t go to this appointment he’d made, there was more than just a chance he would stumble.  

So he went.  A quel’dorei by the name of Thanoras Lightstriker had been assigned to Lach and had met him upon arriving at the LMA building.  The placement of the appointment lacked the comfy couch he’d heard about in passing, but the room had four walls and a door, which he was eternally grateful for.  At first, the rogue found it difficult to talk about himself and the events and feelings he grappled with.  But Thanoras was kind and patient.  He nudged Lachlin along with questions to bridge one thought with the next, and listened as the ren’dorei found things to share.  The strategy was perhaps typical and formulated, but it was this way for good reason.

Now, someone else knew of his heartache, and of his incessant battle with sobriety.  Someone else would hold him accountable for it and check in on him to make sure things progressed in the right direction.  Or at the very least, be an open ear if ever it didn’t. This sort of counsel was a long conversation, and one of too much substance to be had in a single night.  So it would continue, forthcoming and soon.  Starting next Tuesday.

[hamfeather]

Here’s a species swap AU that I squeezed in before mermay ended!!

[lachlin]

Once upon a time, Lachlin had a coin purse.  Had.  There usually wasn’t much jingling inside of it except a few copper coins, but that was beside the point.  It was missing and he wanted it back.  He could’ve sworn he had it the evening before at the job faire near the embassy, so that was logically the first place he thought of to look.  All up and down the road he paced, circling the pond’s edge, rounding the embassy building itself, but ultimately found no trace of his meager belonging.  

He hadn’t spent much time here outside of yesterday’s festivities, and he paused before heading back into the city to watch a few of the brightlances test both themselves and different arms against the training dummies.  Sad nostalgia began tugging at him as he did, finding himself missing the lessons from happier times, but a passing bird carrying an unmistakable spot of color caught his eye.  As the crow landed in a tree branch overhanging the small training yard, Lach focused not on the bird, but the red flower parked in its beak.

This landing in the tree was but a temporary rest, and as birds were oft to do, it flitted away again. Lachlin would not be able to chase it far unless it landed again, but still he would try, and went dashing off into the tall grass and trees that existed between the city and the mountains that walled Stormwind’s northern border.  He hurdled tree roots and brush with an ease he hadn’t known a month ago, and for a time, he was able to successfully tail the bird darting between leaves and tree branches.  But eventually, the sight of it was lost in the dark silhouetted foliage overhead.

Frustrated, he stopped to catch his breath.  Hunched over with a hand planted into a nearby tree, he panted and scowled at the ground.  Had he been seeing things?  There were probably a dozen types of red flowers in the city; he could’ve easily mistaken it for something else.  When he stood upright again, he saw that red again, but it was not carried in the beak of a bird.  With his eyes so focused overhead, he hadn’t noticed just what he’d chanced upon hidden away in the trees.  Here there was a garden, but not just any garden.   Several rows of tilled soil lined the tiny hidden grove, and along each one, carefully cultivated blooming plants.  Their leaves were lined with prickles and colored in a green-to-rust gradient, as if they’d been dipped in blood.  Their blossoms were a prickly too, round at the base, with petals of deep alizarin red. Bloodthistle.

In a moment of awe shaped not by a sight of beauty, but one of apprehension, the rogue simply stared before crouching next to one of the plants.  He didn’t know why he did it, but he picked and pocketed several of the flower blossoms first.  Then he quickly snapped several leaves and stems and bundled them in his cloak. Something as valuable as this wouldn’t remain unguarded long, and after his hasty gathering of the plant, he retreated back into the trees, toward the heart of the city.

[lachlin]

The voices never stop.  They push, they bully, they plead.  They will not relent, not even for a moment.

Lachlin drew in a sharp breath that burned his lungs like fire, but he could not help but draw in another.  And another.  And another.  He opened his eyes and stared at the blurred earthen colors some ways off until they drifted into focus.  A ceiling; wood.  His eyes drifted to one side.  Wooden walls.  Oil paintings of a human woman and a bowl of fruit.  A silken banner of blue with gold embellishments sewn into the shape of a lion's mane.  

There will be those who doubt you.  Who question your resolve, your ability to harness powers that have caused the downfall of weaker wills.  Together, we will prove them wrong.

He sat up, looked down at himself; a shell of a man he had once been, but whole.  His skin shone with a deathly sort of pallor, reminiscent of a world devoid of the sun.  He was not persisting through undeath, as the sound of his heart thrumming in his ears made that ever so apparent.  And somehow, none of this surprised him.

A few feet away, upon a small bedside table, rested an envelope with the unmistakable seal of Anduin Wrynn, broken.  Within, a letter he had read no less than a dozen times.

But you are stronger than the voices.  You can glean their secrets and draw upon their strength. Become a weapon for the Alliance... even as you skirt the edge of darkness.

[lachlin]

Lighthouse

“I don’t work with shadows.”

“They’re elves corrupted by the Void.”

“Don’t be such an idiot.”

“This is not the appropriate place for--… For someone who indulges such… unique proclivities.”

In the hurricane of his own self-disparaging thoughts now resided actual words spoken by actual people with actual weight behind them.  Lachlin felt worthless on his own, but the opinions of other people belittling who and what he was gave that feeling so much more gravity.  At least in the cemetery the dead kept their opinions to themselves, and the headstone on which he drunkenly perched wasn’t under constant threat from a coating of glue.  

He missed how things used to be: when he was wanted, when he had purpose, when he had no need for protection.  But mostly, he missed when he was happy.  All of it was squandered and lost under the surge of his pride, drowning any reason to ask for help.  Now that he finally had, he was afraid that what little he had left wouldn’t weather this storm he’d created.  It strained his focus, his friendships, the small amount of dignity he still managed to grasp. Lach took another drink from the flask.

He felt dizzy.  It had been a month since he’d last found comfort in the warm burn of liquor. Or was it two?  He wasn’t really sure anymore.  But where there was once a tolerance was now only a queasiness and a feeling of sick. He felt he ought to eat something to settle his stomach, but the only place he could think to go at that late hour was the headquarters of the City Watch.  He didn’t get the impression he was wanted there by most, and most didn’t understand why he lingered.  But it was one of the few places he could be where his mistakes would not follow, and one of the few places he could be safe.  

Lach had somehow befriended a particular guard, who happened to be Valorian’s son.  Araellion tended to feed him like it was part of his daily routine, without question and without guilt.  The two didn’t speak much, but a few days prior, he’d said something profound to Lachlin that, at the time, was pretty embarrassing.

“I’m proud of you.”

The words joined the noise swirling in his head, and though they could not hope to drown out the others, they became something to reach for; a lighthouse to guide him ashore.  

He capped the flask and put it away.  The universe, and everything residing within it, had a balance to it.  The Light and the Void.  Life and death.  Truth and fallacy.  His very existence couldn’t escape this inevitable truth.  He couldn’t always have bad days.  The scale must tip the other direction eventually.  It had to.

[ @lawful-songheart​ ]

[lachlin]

Enough.

It was midday in Stormwind City when Lachlin retrieved his mail.  There was never any good news in the box, just bad and worse (mostly the latter). Today was no different.  Another letter had come to him in the familiar envelope with the familiar scrawl of his name on the front, but he didn’t dare stand in the street and read it.  Instead, he retreated to that apartment above Quelity Imports, and settled in the open window with a pillow at his back.  

Before he tore open the envelope, his eyes fell to the street below.  It was a typical day with typical faces meandering the street; unremarkable and forgettable.  He knew he had been followed because he was always being followed; that’s how this organization worked.  Perhaps one of these strangers’ faces would become familiar the more he looked, and perhaps he would catch a glimpse of the precise individuals that tailed him.  But not yet and not today.

Lachlin looked to the envelope and tore it open with little care.  Whoever had written it deserved none.  Inside was the typical letter, and a black card, embossed with a golden design of flourished brush strokes and an upside-down five-pointed star near the top.  Text near the bottom read, ‘THE DEVIL’.  His attention then fell to the letter:

We have eyes everywhere.

We know where you are walking, who you are talking to.

We know every time you open that window, every breath you take.

You can’t outrun us, and you can’t outrun your fate.

After receiving three of these such letters, they carried less fanfare and fear.  The rogue’s expression was blank as his eyes scanned the words again, the threat within them.  But what was different now was his mind.  He still yearned for the euphoric feeling brought on by a bloodthistle high, but he hadn’t indulged in over a week, and in fact, hadn’t touched tobacco either. The desire for those fleeting moments of fake happiness would fade with time, but the anger Lach had for these people only welled and rose.  Normally, he might try to skulk in the shadows until either everything blew over, or they found and confronted him and made good on their threats.  But they’d made a mistake with the second letter: they’d threatened Yvelian.  And for that, they would pay.

The silver cigarette case was hard to let go of.  There was a time where Lachlin held the case in higher regard than even himself, not because of its physical value, but because of what it represented and who had given it to him.  But the person who had gifted it to him, while in earnest loving the rogue more than anything else in Azeroth, had also encouraged the reckless behavior that had gotten him into so much trouble, and set him on a path that led to this moment.  And in this moment, it was time to let go.

Lachlin pressed the case and every coin he had either saved or would elsewhere never be missed toward the man over the counter, then held out a small piece of parchment with a design scrawled upon it in charcoal.  The owner of Curious Curios, a silversmith with more years in the craft than not, looked at the offering before him, then took the paper, and scanned the vision of the creation he was to bring to life.  He drew a deep breath, then picked up the silver cigarette case next, and flicked a loupe down over one lens of his spectacles for a closer inspection.  

“And when did y’say you needed this by, elf?”

Lachlin hadn’t given his name; it was safer that way.  “Tomorrow afternoon,” he said plainly.  “And when you’re done, burn that piece of paper.  I was never here.”

A slight frown pulled at the aged features of the smith as he continued to examine the etchings in the cigarette case. The monogrammed “L” at the center didn’t detract much from its value.  There were plenty of others who had a name prefixed with that letter, and even still, it might be easily buffed out and customized some other way.  He looked up to perhaps strike a bargain, to save the tiny trinket the destiny Lachlin had asked for, but found himself alone.

The following afternoon was overcast and grey from the rain that swelled in the looming clouds rolling over the mountains.  The rogue, ever aware that he was being followed and watched, had returned from Curious Curios, after he “stole” his purchase back.  A thief casing a shop for trinkets and jewelry one day and returning another to do the deed was unsurprising.  It was also typical and expected of one of Lachlin’s caliber.  He’d done it for the Golden Cards before, and he was a creature of habits not easily broken.

But he hadn’t spent an entire day doing nothing, and he wasn’t without his own contacts and tricks. While not affiliated with SI:7 (then again, who officially was?), everyone who worked in the darker crevices of the city had a contact there, and Lachlin had one last favor he could cash in. As he walked home, he passed by commoner and adventurer alike, bumping shoulders occasionally in the busy bustle of the street.  One such interaction landed a tiny bottle in his hand, and he quickly pocketed without so much as a twitch to his deadpan poker face.  

When he arrived back at the apartment, he was grateful to find it empty.  Yvelian had been a pillar in his sobriety, a beacon of light in his darkness, but the paladin didn’t need to know what Lachlin was up to just yet. He would come clean about that eventually if he wasn’t first found out.  But for now, Lachlin took advantage of the privacy, bolted the door behind him and drew the curtains closed.

In the dimly lit room, he stepped before the lone table, upon which rested an ornately framed mirror the size of a typical piece of parchment.  Before it, Lachlin laid out several objects: a small item wrapped in cotton cloth, the small bottle he had acquired in the street, a handful of wadded linen, and a dagger retrieved from where it was tucked into his belt at the small of his back. The glass bottle was attended to first. It was small, no larger than his thumb to the first knuckle, and sealed with a cork.  Once opened, the concentrated scent of what was undeniably poison drew toward the ceiling; sickly with the familiar piney scent of terocone.  It had been a long time since Lachlin had seasoned a blade with something so deadly, but he attended to it as if the last time had simply been yesterday: calmly and like a practiced ritual.  The rogue poured a drizzle down the length of the dagger, and much like someone would oil a clean blade, he spread and wiped the deadly concentrated concoction toward the tip with the wadded linen, first on one side, and then the other.  When he was finished, the blade found its home again, tucked into the back of his belt.

His gaze fell then to the mirror, then to the small bundle of cotton cloth remaining on the table.  He knew that witnessing what he had commissioned would mean the silver cigarette case was gone forever.  Lachlin sighed as heavy as his heart.  Strength, he knew, could only be found if he was the one that sought it, and clinging to a past that no longer was his to have would not allow him to find it.  This sort of delusion was a game reserved only for those too weak-minded to accept that their world had changed, painfully perhaps, but for the better.  He unwrapped the cloth.

Once he had peeled away every corner of fabric, what rested in his palm was a polished silver piece of ornate mastery.  At the brooch’s core was a skeleton of durable iron, meant to be strong and everlasting, but the silver that clung to the practical piece of the trinket was a work of art.  The silver blossomed and swirled into an ornate design, unmistakably the very same as the one found on the last black-and-gold card he received the previous day.  It was fastened to the pin in such a way that the five-pointed star rested at the bottom, right-side up.  

Lachlin pierced his cloak with the pin and fastened it in place against his collar for all the world to see, but especially for the assholes that kept sending him letters. Displaying a symbol of an organization that lived in the shadows so prominently, in the wrong color, and in the wrong orientation, was sure to draw something out of the murk.  Something that would be made an example of.

He straightened his collar and cloak as he examined himself in the mirror for a last time and pulled the hood back over his head.  When he drew the curtains again and swung open the window, he found the outside to be greyer than before as the storms drew ever nearer.   Lach reclined on the windowsill, bracing his back against the vertical beam of the frame, and gazed down into the street blow where the crowds had thinned to avoid the impending weather.  

And he watched.  And he waited.