UninspiredPoet @uninspired--poet - Tumblr Blog

Mar 17

Shadows Need a Little Light - 1 of ?

Practice and Preach

I have a lot of thoughts about Midnight. First up is how fucking angry Valeera would be about it if Valadrin were a thing. This will start a new series of vignettes.

4588 Words

Read it on Ao3!

A golden key rests on Valeera’s desk this afternoon. Having a desk is already enough of a problem. Having a key on it is something too far over a line she hasn’t quite drawn for herself yet, but knows enough to estimate the rough dimensions of its boundaries.

At least she doesn’t have to ask about it. Naleidea volunteers when she sees Valeera eyeing it, “The Lord Regent dropped that off this morning. It’s for an apartment not far from here—just over the skybridge to the south. What he said exactly escapes me, but something about you needing more permanent accommodation in the city.”

Valeera does not need an apartment in Silvermoon. She does not want it.

Still, she says something, because she has to, “Ah, so Lor’themar’s legendary coin purse strikes again. First the best room at the inn, now a whole apartment, just for me?”

“I suspect this was more Thalyssra’s doing and his errand,” Naleidea offers with a dismissive wave. She is an insufferable gossip and Valeera loves her for it. It makes standing around here between her assignments bearable.

It does not make this key more bearable. She brushes against the tepid metal of its permanence with her finger tips. Even that too is warmer than it should be, drenched in Silvermoon’s Light-blessed eternal summer. The city swelters under the Sunwell’s surging and Valeera is no exception. Every part of her screams to run off to the cool dark, but she must stand here, basking in the day, and wait.

She hates it. She hates herself for agreeing to this. She hates whatever part of her—some odd sense of duty or blood-bound loyalty—that caused her to blurt out an unthought “Of course” to Anduin’s pleading and insistence that there was some way she could help.

“You’re probably right,” she agrees with Naleidea.

But there is only metal. No hint. No note. No inscription. No ancient Amani carvings or Haranir murals to decipher. Valeera would much prefer any of these puzzles over the simple reality of the situation.

By no choice of her own, she now has an apartment in Silvermoon. She does not want to have an apartment in Silvermoon.

The inn was already too much. She insisted as much back when she accepted this task. But Lor’themar had insisted back and then gone scrambling after another problem, leaving her to either accept or deny him in absentia. It felt rude to deny him in any other method but face to face.

Once again, she has no choice in the matter. It was resolved without her, while she was off in the Voidstorm, sneaking a champion into an ethereal outpost earlier today. The answer is firm and indirect as many things in elven society are. She must accept because it is polite and genteel of her.

Valeera is no noble. She was not born to be polite or genteel. Her parents were peasants and their best quality was dying when she was young, before Quel’thalas was ravaged by the Scourge. Now it is healed and they are still dead and Valeera barely remembers them. No one cares who they were or were not because it doesn’t matter anymore. She is an ally to kings and regents and all manner of titles, and holds a few of her own even though they torment her as much as this key does.

But she can’t stand here and stare at it anymore. Naleidea is starting to notice.

So Valeera changes the subject and stabs one of her daggers into the table for emphasis. “Naleidea. That name of yours is a mouthful. What do your friends call you?”

“Are we friends then, Valeera?” Naleidea fires back from behind her own desk, noticeably dagger-free.

She is too smart for her own good. And a terrible gossip. Just awful, really.

“I’m everyone’s friend,” Valeera deflects. “I’ll settle for calling you Nal then. Nally is too diminutive for you.”

A smile quirks Naleidea’s glossed lips. “Nal and Val, you could say we’re best p—”

“Don’t. I regret everything,” Valeera cuts her off.

They share a polite laugh. It is the same polite laugh that everyone here has. Even when they’re deep in their cups and wreathed in bloodthistle smoke, they laugh like no one can know it’s funny. Silvermoon stifles in ways that have nothing to do with heat and Light.

Valeera makes a rare mistake. In her contemplation of fake laughs, she looks at the key again.

Naleidea’s eyes follow, as does the inevitable end of her observations, “You could go take a look, if you’re curious. I doubt they’ll send another champion your way today.”

The vague implication of “they” is exactly the problem. Valeera knows that Naleidea truly means the elven collective that gathers in the center of the city, rotating names and titles and stories that Valeera knows all too well. What Valeera knows to be true is that “they” are a collective, yes, but when it comes to things that concern her, one voice is louder than the rest. It’s the very voice she’s been avoiding since she arrived in the city.

That high percentage of “they” is who she thinks she has to thank for this metallic burden on her desk and in her eyes. The gold of it reflects in her green.

“I suppose you’re right,” Valeera offers with a shrug she makes as noncommittal as possible.

Naleidea is at the level of associate that doesn’t know Valeera any better yet. She’s fine with the woman thinking she’s flippant and easily bored. It’s served her well enough in these few weeks, and, since this crisis seems to have no end, it will need to continue to serve her even longer than that.

She takes the key and spins it deftly on one finger to further that impression.

Naleidea looks back down at the jumbled mess of papers on her desk. At least in this battle, Valeera glimpses victory.

“Number fifteen Elder Terrace,” Naleidea tells her. “At least I had the sense to write that much down.”

“Give yourself more credit than that. I’m sure you could just show me the way there, and maybe help me explore the place,” Valeera suggests as she moves from her desk to Naleidea’s and leans on it, still spinning the key.

But the woman is made of stone. Or straight. Valeera isn’t sure which, but she responds to all attempts at flirtation with a complete lack of response. Maybe that’s the polite thing to do, like laughing in a way that doesn’t mean anything, or accepting gifts you don’t want. Or maybe she knows she’s just a distraction and doesn’t care to be.

“I am certain you can find it on your own. And while I love a good house tour, I have too much to do here to give myself an afternoon off,” Naleidea says as she scratches off something on her notes.

The address, Valeera realizes.

“Suit yourself then,” she says, catching the key in her palm, letting its too-heavy weight rest there for a time.

Just like that, she’s out in the sun again. Heat and Light and the ever-present contrast of the Voidstorm don’t help the matter. Valeera feels so exposed out here, but no one looks at her funny for it. She fits in. She’s just another blood elf. And to those who know better, she’s too important to deny. They even let her in the parts of the city that have been closed to the Alliance. She doesn’t care to go there now that she knows it’s not forbidden to her. She doesn’t want to think about why she feels it should be either.

She hazards a glance down at the streets below. The auction house bustles with activity, as usual. In the moments she can’t stand to wait at a desk, she stands at the railing and watches the people ebb and flow out of it. This then leads her to the pavilion by the bank, which is empty save for Halduron Brightwing, who is having a particularly animated conversation with a tauren in heavy armor. Valeera’s eyes then have to wander, as they always do, to the Sanctum of Light. Here, she can only see silhouettes against the glow from within. She recognizes Lor’themar’s but none of the others. They are not what or who she is looking for.

Perhaps this is a day of relief. Her quarry is often elsewhere. Valeera has heard tales of her adventures in Zul Aman, making friends with the granddaughter of the troll chieftain who tortured her long ago. She’s often at the Sunwell, doing her part to keep up the very miracle she commanded to happen, and the only thing that keeps this city from being consumed. That is why Valeera watches for her—to avoid her. The righteousness of her is so thick that she feels she’s breathing it in with every breath of warm air she sucks down.

Valeera wonders if this apartment has any of that fancy arcane temperature control she’s heard about. She could do with some cold.

She keeps watch on the black shapes against warm light as she crosses the sky bridge, just in case they change.

Number fifteen Elder Terrace is a pretty standard elven apartment. It’s a large, single room with a loft, sectioned mostly by decorative screens, rugs, and the suggestion of elegantly arranged furniture. And it is furnished at that. The room divides itself neatly along with its contents. A seating area is made from a comfortable lounge and shelves filled with Thalassian books. A kitchen is suggested by a sink and a counter that curves along the wall. There’s only a small stove—mostly for heating tea. No one cooks at home here. That would be uncouth. The loft becomes a defacto bedroom with a curtained bed and a dresser with matching gold accents. There’s a bath hiding behind a divider under the stairs.

Valeera tosses her key onto the table of the would-be dining room. It has four chairs around it, which is three too many, and three more than she has in her apartment in Stormwind. This she keeps in secret, otherwise Anduin would try to pay for it. She needs something that is hers, so she always told him she had a place in Dalaran. He’s never thought to ask about where she’s been staying since the city was destroyed.

That’s fine with her. She revels in slipping by unnoticed. There’s nothing she hates more than being considered.

Four chairs means she hasn’t been and maybe, just maybe, her fears are unfounded. There’s a bottle of wine waiting for her on the table and a plate of cheese and crackers but no note. No letter. No apology.

It’s unlike Liadrin to leave out the sentiment and apologies. Perhaps this isn’t her doing at all.

“Maybe this really is just Lor’themar being polite,” Valeera says to herself as she reads the label on the bottle. It’s a boring, mid-shelf vintage. Safe. Generic. Impersonal.

She takes it to the bath, not bothering to find a glass in the cabinets between here and there. Just the bottle will do. If she has to wait, she can at least wait while being clean and getting tipsy on mana wine.

There’s no need to worry about heating water here. Magic takes care of that. Magic takes care of everything. The lights dim at a whispered word from her—magic. There’s a broom in the corner that will sweep the place for her with another—more magic. Her bathwater comes out the tap perfectly warm and smelling of water lilies thanks to more miracles of arcane. It washes the otherworldly grunge from her skin, and leaves only a faint ring of purple, void-stained sand to circle around the drain when she’s done.

She towels her hair off and contemplates the half-drunk bottle of wine. She’s been here over an hour now. No one has come looking for her yet. No one has come to claim a thank you she doesn’t want to give for a thing she doesn’t want to have in a place she doesn’t want to have it.

Not yet, at least. Valeera is all too familiar with things that are too good to be true.

It happens the moment she gets truly curious. She’s taken a bite of the cheese and crackers and is letting it settle on her tongue a moment, trying to taste poisons she knows all too well where there are none. She does this while running her fingers over the spines of the books on the shelves, trying to decipher some code in their titles. She wears only her leotard and not the rest of her gear, but she knows her daggers are nearby, laying with the rest of her things on a stool by the bath.

The knock comes and it almost annoys her. Being right all the time is such a terrible burden.

“You might as well let yourself in. I know you have a key,” Valeera challenges.

The click of the lock tells her she is once again terribly correct. As does the familiar clank of heavy armor.

Liadrin does not say anything. She breathes in like she’s about to make some stupid comment in her stupid booming voice that’s going to make it all fine. But she doesn’t. She shows at least that much restraint. At least for a moment.

It has been months since Valeera has seen her this close. She styles her hair differently now, in a high braid supported by a circlet. Her cheeks are gaunt and her golden eyes harrowed. She looks so tired, but it does not take anything away from the power of her stance and the determination it bleeds. Even in her silence, she is righteous.

That’s the thing about Liadrin. She always thinks she’s doing the right thing. She usually isn’t.

“I see you’re settling in,” is what she finally decides to open with.

Valeera shakes her head. “You know, I was beginning to think this was really Lor’themar’s doing. That just maybe, you’d have the sense to think better of it.”

She’s met with the fire and fury of the Sunwell itself. It gleams from Liadrin, from the gold accents of her armor to the glow of her eyes.

“I thought you would appreciate discretion. A place to conduct your business in private,” Liadrin says through gritted teeth.

Valeera wonders if the very ground beneath her will burn with holy fire from this. What does it take to hold it back? How hard must she work?

“And by conduct my business, you mean yours,” Valeera tells her.

The wine lingers sour and bitter on her palate. It wasn’t very good. Liadrin should have known better.

“You would have had me visit you at the inn then?” Liadrin asks.

“Don’t use me as an excuse for getting what you want,” Valeera demands. “Because you always get what you want, don’t you? You ask and the Light provides and we all have to deal with it, don’t we?”

The firm knit of Liadrin’s long brows softens a moment. She does not understand because she can’t. “What do you mean?” she asks.

“For years, Liadrin, you have tried to get me to come play house with you in Silvermoon. You have offered me promises and pardons I didn’t want and every time I have told you no. Well, here I am. Another miracle to check off your list,” Valeera offers.

“I did not bring you here.”

It is both a true and untrue statement. One that cannot be denied or accepted. Yes, Valeera came to Silvermoon at her own accord. No one is keeping her here save for a commitment she made at her own volition. But in this room, this place, with this key and this circumstance, Liadrin very much did do that.

There are lines, you see. Lines that are drawn in sand no one can see. Not the kind of sand that circles the drain with the last of the bathwater, nor that which coats the arena floor. But still, it is a sand Valeera knows well and Liadrin has never understood. She does not know borders and boundaries. Doors are never closed to her. If they are, she prays, and they open.

“Well, you didn’t need to rent an apartment to fuck me in,” Valeera tells her.

Whatever they have between them has lasted nearly a decade at this point. In all that time, they have always met in inns and alleyways and ruins. They have never been to one another’s spaces or shared one for more than a night. Liadrin knows that Valeera’s hearthstone goes to Stormwind. Valeera knows Liadrin lives in a very nice set of apartments in the Court of Blood, and that Salandria moved out of them just a year or so ago, but still comes over for tea twice a week.

But she doesn’t know much else. She doesn’t know what shampoo Liadrin uses, or if she suggested the one that was left here on a shelf by the bath. She doesn’t know what type of tea she drinks with her adopted daughter. She doesn’t know what shop she buys it from. She doesn’t know how many chairs Liadrin has at her dining room table or who sits in them to justify the number.

Valeera can’t know these things because they cross the line in the sand that only she knows and she knows so well. But Liadrin can’t see it.

“That was—that was not my intention. I merely sought to give you a place in this city that was both comfortable and private.”

Another true and untrue statement.

That’s the difference between being righteous and being right. Valeera does not have to believe in anything to justify herself. She knows what she does and does not want and doesn’t need a god to tell her if that’s good.

She knows a cage when she sees one, even if it’s well-furnished.

“I’d rather we be just honest with ourselves,” she says. Valeera drapes herself over the back of the lounge, letting her still-damp hair cascade in a curtain of gold over the red of the upholstery. At least she matches the furnishings. “That way, it stays simple. I need it to stay simple, Liadrin.”

She can’t say what she means. Just like she can’t laugh too hard or turn down gifts given in good faith. This city burns and the only way to avoid being singed is to shy away from the truth of it. Liadrin’s won. Again. There is no stopping her streak.

So Valeera can only remind her why she’s fighting so hard to keep it up. She can only challenge her to win again. With her eyes only, she pleads, “<i>Fuck me in the apartment you rented to fuck me in then. Make it just be that and nothing else.</i>”

Her own little prayer is answered with the echoing sounds of a sword and shield being laid to rest by the doorway. They slump against the curved wall in a cruel mimicry of Liadrin’s shoulders.

“I’m tired, Valeera.”

Another truth that’s also a lie. Of course she’s tired, but she wouldn’t come here too tired to do something about it.

If Liadrin won’t make this simple, then Valeera can. That’s a dance she knows. It’s the easiest she’s ever learned.

She meets pleading eyes with burning ones as Liadrin steps into her space, gauntleted hand gliding over the back of the lounge and reaching. Holy and fel clash only for a moment before Valeera is on her tiptoes, pressing her lips to Liadrin’s. She can end the discussion. She can stop more words from leaving them. It’s all so easy.

Liadrin lets her. Valeera knows she’s letting her. For all her righteousness, she hopes to lose here. She longs to give in. In the end, this is easy for her too.

Valeera isn’t sure who won this time. She doesn’t take the time to ask herself if she’s taking back control of the situation or if Liadrin’s winning streak strikes again. She is too busy scattering pieces of armor around the apartment that is both hers and not hers. Some of them are familiar to her, but others are new and strange enough to require her to break the lock of her lips for a moment to locate what holds them to Liadrin.

Liadrin herself is strange in the same new ways. That high braid, its height perhaps inspired by Valeera’s own ponytail, is too intricate to take out. The circlet has to go, though, and it is the last to fall in the trail of armor that leads up the ramp and to the bed. She was always a hard woman, even beneath shining steel, but the edges of her that Valeera’s fingers run across feel sharper now. She is lean in an unhealthy way, a way that speaks of denial and refusal to sate her body’s needs when there are more important problems to face.

Perhaps that’s what causes the keening sounds that fall from her lips a little too easily. Has desire too been so ignored, like hunger and rest?

It’s so easy to just be an answer to a problem. A key to solving a puzzle. Valeera loves puzzles.

She loves the way that Liadrin sighs into the water lily scent of her hair. She loves how the hardness of her body softens and jumps at her touch as she slides her hands beneath the tight shirt Liadrin wears beneath her armor.

Liadrin has to go and ruin that by finding her voice again, “Aren’t you angry with me?”

“Of course I am,” Valeera says into her neck.

“Then why are you doing this?” Liadrin asks, but does not stop her.

Valeera scrapes at her with her teeth. “Because I’m being honest for both of us.”

She guides Liadrin to the edge of the rounded bed in the rounded room with its rounded curtains. Everything is so frustratingly circular in Silvermoon. Valeera yearns from right angles.

She finds a near match to them as Liadrin follows her lead, falling back into the crimson silk of the sheets. She takes off her own top for Valeera, revealing the straight lines of musculature and the criss cross of scars. She holds out strong arms straight, waiting to catch what won’t fall into them.

In other venues, other days, other circumstances, Valeera would long for that embrace. She would never say as much or even think it to herself. Never. Shadows are not a thing that can be held, after all.

Today, she is done giving in. She needs another win. She needs it so badly.

She makes Liadrin wait while she opens the top drawer of the dresser. She finds what she assumed was there already and is once again so painfully right. Valeera aches from her battles. She fights them so hard day after day, but as she holds the toy and its harness in one hand and the other, she aches in other ways.

“Really, Liadrin?” she asks.

“I can explain.”

Valeera doesn’t want her to. She doesn’t let her. She strips Liadrin of her leggings and underthings. She crawls atop her as she slides the harness up to her hips and pulls the straps through their buckles. Maybe a little too harshly. Maybe a little too tightly.

She doesn’t explain herself as she lines up the attached toy. She only lets out the smallest sound of relief as she pulls her leotard aside, and sinks herself down onto it.

Liadrin watches for a moment of stunned silence as she rides her. Only a moment—a time of calculation and curiosity, where she’s perhaps struggling to think whether this is right or righteous or both. Whether she’s won or not. Whether she cared to compete at all.

She must decide then, that it doesn’t matter. She grabs Valeera’s hips and sits up to meet her. Whatever it is they have. Whatever it is they do. However wrong or right or neither it is, they both do it.

So Valeera fucks the anger out of herself. Liadrin apologizes for it with a hand that slides between them and deft fingers that help work her into a frenzy that is as hot as her rage was. In what few times they have come to some measure of argument, this is always how it’s been resolved. And that’s fine. That’s easy.

Valeera comes so hard she can’t fucking stand it. She can’t stand this woman and her righteousness. She can’t stand this city. She can’t stand being so close to her in it.

But no one else makes her feel this way. No one else has her aching for another orgasm before the edge of the first even fades. No one else looks at her with both a steady confidence in the fact that they can give her what she needs and a frustrating knowledge that they’re the only one who can.

In the end, Liadrin does not say she’s sorry. In the end, Valeera neither thanks her for her efforts nor tells her exactly what she thinks of them, or why they make her want to smash something.

In the end, Liadrin is too busy biting her lip, and Valeera’s mouth is otherwise occupied while her knees find out exactly how plush the rug that covers the hard stone floor of the loft really is.

---

The next morning, Valeera is at her desk again. She thumbs the hole her dagger left behind in the polished wood of its surface—one of three she’s made just this week.

“You look well-rested,” Naleidea points out. “I trust your new accommodation proved to be comfortable last night?”

Valeera eyes her over her shoulder. Naleidea is, as usual, bent over in her books, scouring through notes and scratching more with her quill. While the woman is a terrible gossip, she is not the most observant, and Valeera does not think she’s taken enough time away from those papers to see the truth that lies before her.

Valeera is not well-rested. She’s well-fucked and just as annoyed about it as she has every right to be. At least Liadrin had the courtesy to leave before dawn. If she insisted on staying for breakfast, Valeera would actually have had to say something to her. There’s no way she can think of to fuck through making pancakes together, or why that too is not something she is capable of, nor ever will be.

“You could say that,” she tells Naleidea.

“Glad to hear it.”

The echo of her words rings hollow and distant. That’s just fine. It’s comfortable. Distance is a good thing. Distance is easy, at least for Valeera. The lack there of, that’s what’s hard.

She hazards a glance out of the tall, open archway of the Reliquary’s headquarters. Down, past the railing, past the bridge over to the Sanctum of the Sun, next to the bank. Behind the sheer blue of the curtains that fall to either side of it, Valeera can just glimpse a shape she knows all too well. It’s distant and obscure, but she can swear Liadrin is looking up at her.

“You know what they say,” Naleidea says from behind her. “Home is where the heart is.”

Valeera’s dagger makes a fourth hole in her desk.

“I’m going to get us some coffee,” is her excuse for it.

uninspired--poet

Read this immediately.

#valadrin #valeera sanguinar #lady liadrin #good writing