ATONEMENT.

“The world has its guardian. Of a sort.”

Khadgar fulfils those duties now – in action and in spirit, if not in name. Guardian is a word he speaks now with caution where once it had been with respect or admiration or sometimes a fond exasperation. Where Medivh had been distant – summoned only by the king, present only for difficulties in which he could help – Khadgar is a constant. 

It’s plain enough that without him, Lothar would perhaps have made some rash decisions that involve punching men whose ‘politics’ passes the point of tiresome and enters meddlesome.

The road towards relief, towards a shaky and unwise acceptance of his friend’s return is derailed by the mention of what Medivh has done. How different might everything have been, now, without that influence? His son, his men, his friend and king, how they might now have been where they ought. Khadgar tells him that the fault cannot be Medivh’s, entirely. That the fel-touched influence of something great and terrible had driven him to it.

But it had worn Medivh’s face and spoken in his words, and Lothar cannot forget that.

“Can a man atone for this?”

He sweeps out an arm, takes a step back from Medivh. There’s naught to see behind him, but the gesture is clear: this, all this, is your fault. Conflict, and suffering, an alliance that will lead to war like no man has ever seen, and himself at the head of it all. “Peace is a dream I can no longer find! Day by day we hear more reports of the horde, of the influence of the fel. Gul’dan’s army grows and so does his influence. Only two weeks ago I heard reports that it is not only orcs who follow him, now.”

He arrests himself, takes a sharp breath to halt voice, already raised, from becoming a shout.

“Old friend,” he says, and there’s something nostalgic in the words, regret and a note of pleading. “Tell me how we can fix this.”

“ Only if those he seeks forgiveness from give him the opportunity to try. ” 

Still he knows the love of the people exists; adoration made tangible with a statue in place in the town square --- a monument for a man they had believed in. He carried no crown, no sword, no shield. Instead, there was a staff in hand and the feel of magic bright that would dance at his will. It’s he who they believe in, he who exists in minds and hearts as a hero --- the guardian --- that fell. That had been his great sacrifice.

There is regret; a sorrow felt for what had come of whispers; what had fed on the softness of his heart and what he truly believed. Guardian carries a burden; title with a weight incomprehensible to those who don’t understand. Frustration eats at patience, selfish and self centered he knows --- it’s not so simple, he’s said over and over again. A guardian. A protector. Duty bound to something he believed no one understood ( and perhaps it’s in those thoughts that something wicked festered; twisted words and strings of memory into the piece they wished for ). 

How could he leave a world to rot, leave those innocent to die? How could he break the promise truly meant to protect those loved? 

Medivh’s gaze remains despite the arc made by arms. He listens with intensity and a brace well hidden by the robes worn. He knows, he’s seen it; the before, the after, and the way it came to be. This he hoped would help him stop the cycle; halt the path and obstruct the way of those lost by the evil of the fel. “ We both know of war, Lothar, just as much as we know of peace. We can fix this. ” 

She’s all keyed up, twitchy with nervous, furious energy. “What do your people know about honor?” 

It’s a hiss, unwarranted given the Orcs history. The slaughter of the draenei, the pollution of their homeworld– even all the chaos in this new land is their fault. She knows. Durotan made sure they knew. Still, sometimes her father’s stories, legends of the old days in Nagrand feel more real than the truth. That they’re monsters now. That they always were.

Credit where credit is due, though, for all she’s a scrawny specimen of her kind, she doesn’t seem afraid of the magic in the air. Neither, though, does she seem willing to attempt to breach it. She juts out her jaw, prominent and tusky and green. Beneath the anger, the pride, there’s fear. “How am I to defend myself without a weapon?”

She doesn’t want to go to the camp.

“ Enough to understand, to notice. ” For he knows honour too, he sees it just as clear as the sun that shines through the windows of Karazhan; beacons bright that peer out from the mountain peaks. Impossible to ignore. He sees it in the armor worn of warriors and friends, sees it in how they hold oneself, how honesty of the heart ( a good heart ) is carried with ease. He knows himself to be a little different, will and morality bending like the magic conjured by the motion of fingers. “ I’ve traveled, far more than most can, far more than most ever will wish to. ”

A smile. 

“It has been a long time since I slept the night through.”

Even when embrace is broken, hands do not leave his old friend’s shoulders – though whether they act to keep Medivh at arm’s length or to hold him close for fear of his leaving again, even Anduin himself cannot say. “Not all of us have had the rest granted by our graves.”

Because he had buried Medivh. Stormwind had mourned their guardian, and Anduin had mourned his friend. There can be no denying that this is either a trick or a miracle. He hopes for one and expects the other.

“And how have you? Returned?”

He’s half-expecting the kind of explanation that Medivh used to give him when they were young men, and when he was curious of all the ways the world worked, all its nuances, how a mage’s touch could shape magic to defeat even the strongest of warriors. It’s magic, my friend, would be all that he would get, no matter how many questions he asked.

“What am I to tell the council? That our guardian has simply returned?” The accusations rising in his throat like bile taste just as bitter, and he takes no joy in framing the thoughts. Hands fall away at last as he remembers the betrayals that few have been told about. There is yet one that is widely known, that cannot be denied.

         The guardian had not saved their men from ambush. The guardian had not saved his son. Something pained settles on his face.

“Am I to allow you all the same powers and freedoms you once had, knowing now what dangers they pose?”

“ It is not something so easy to explain. ” A squeeze of his hand upon the shoulders of a man who bears a burden too heavy to carry alone ( a burden forced, where two of three, once there, now gone; and now with the betrayer having returned ). The thought causes his mind to drift, the slight glaze of eyes distracted by the sins both committed with knowledge, and those without memory. But here he gives that smile, the one too sly, too teasing, too close to a memory of a time before where armour had been too large and mage’s robes too long. “ It seems this world still needs a guardian, ” a pause, “ or at least, the guardian has a need to return. ”  

Where would he be, what would he be without the duty tacked on and a need to sacrifice oneself like those before? 

“ Perhaps I cannot rest, the endless wheel of my vocation still exists --- perhaps I’ve yet to prove myself. ” Good, the word carries a weight that causes the tremor within, the once thought arrow that pointed north on moral compass skewed with the touch of green. Different now he swears, where there’s clarity in his mind, and a silence where whispers once existed. No touch of fel, no green hue in his eyes with a trick of light or the presence of something that had remained unseen, felt only through internal struggle. 

Medivh doesn’t speak for a moment, eyes that had once set on his dear friend’s remaining there, soft in gaze. Another smile, and another squeeze; where Lothar’s hand had left, the mage’s remains --- touch a necessity even for him. This is real; no trick of mind or torment made to play with the heart and mind of a man who had done so much wrong despite the desire for that right; skewed only by the chaos that clashed with the arcane he so easily wielded with his hands and mind.

Of course she’s agitated– the green flush of her skin tells the whole story. Mannoroth’s blood, fed to her as a youngster along with the milk of her mother, pushing the rage, bubbling up the Orc’s natural hot temper into something that can barely be contained. Agitation is as ingrained into her as the green is in her pores. Deescalation isn’t something to be found in an immature Orc girl.

“I said give it back!” She’s screaming, hands outstretched for the mace in the man’s grasp. “It’s MINE.”

The pity of her rage is that Hedda is not imposing. More than scrawny, halfway to emaciated, the dregs of the defeated Orcs still running wild in the world.

“ Trust me, you will do more harm to yourself than you would intend. ” 

Sigil in the air, electric blue like the bright of his eyes, the mace is heavy in his hand --- unfit, where the world of the warrior is only understood by the breadth of space of a battlefield. Often, he’s merely a watcher, a guardian that protects in the distance, perched. His fight begins with the flick of a page, spoken at a table, and brought forth with fingers and the whispers that leave his tongue. 

It is Medivh.

Right down to the expression, to the dry curl of humour behind his words; the tip of his head, the sharp edge of his smile. An expression that Lothar has seen a hundred times, one that generally signalled imminent surprise – the clash of sword against spell, muscle against magic.

There is no hint of the Fel in his eyes, nor of the dark-eyed demon that had torn its way from his old friend’s skin, intent on destruction. But nor had there been before. Still he wakes from clawing nightmares of catching a flash of green in Khadgar’s dark eyes, of something hidden and dormant taunting him. Taking another friend, the last of them.

    Or perhaps not the last.

“ – I’m not in the mood to be put on my back,” he says, and along with his words, the tension drains from the line of his shoulders. Not entirely – there is some part of himself still held back, unwilling to give into what must surely be a trap, a trick, already thinking that it is Khadgar who must be the one who will know for sure. But he’s tired of carrying around this steel-sharp and brittle burden. King. Never a title he was meant for, and a desperately lonely place to end. “So I suppose I can only take your word for it.”

Fists uncurl from robe, slow, and then all at once he pulls Medivh in close, arms thrown around. It cannot be comfortable, to be pulled against the full plate he’s still wearing, but he does not care. If this is a trick, then he is both selfish and foolish enough to wish to be be tricked, until he is forced to accept it

“ You sound tired, my friend. ” Voice filled with relief, mirth and something else along with that moment of struggled breath. He looks it too, the wear that comes with a crown worn and a duty given. He sees it in the fine gold filigree of armour and the lion emblazoned upon forged steel. It’s a place he knows the warrior will fit with some ease, where the heart is strong and the resolve carries the strength of an idea: to do good. To protect. But of course, Medivh understands. what he occupies, where he now has to sit had been meant for a brother. 

A clearing of his throat, and arms that wrap around metal warm from the sun which had touched them. Lothar’s hugs always had a force to them he found to be almost too much, like his rib cage threatens to fracture and his lungs are squeezed of the air they’re supposed to hold. Metal against metal, there’s a scrape and dull clatter that comes with the embrace. It’s good, it’s real, and it’s a touch of comfort he realises only then is something a small part of him has yearned for. 

Perhaps he too, wasn’t sure if this was real; wasn’t sure if this was him. For how was he to know himself without the corruption that had spread since the wake of power? How was he sure even now, that it was gone --- defeated by a lion and a boy mage who wished to save Azeroth and their king? LLane. The idea comes, flickered memories stained with the hue of a green that once had blinded him, consumed his thought, his mind and body. It causes a falter in that smile, and an ache in his heart he knows will forever remain. 

There is a heavy moment of silence before Medivh speaks again, as if the Tower itself waits, mere moments of mortality too trivial to consider when the power that slowly rose between them cast everything else aside.

And those words… Khadgar would have laughed bitterly had his throat not closed with newly revived despair. Guardian– who alive could in good faith claim that title? Who would dare to? 

His childhood dream, so long cherished, had been discarded without real regret. They had asked him, after the gate had fallen, of course. Presumed, before Llane’s body had even been interred. Of course he would take the place he had once abandoned, would he not? Despite the fact that the Council’s arrogance and apathy had driven him from the only home he’d known once he’d realized they would never change. And the loss of thousands of souls, hundreds of thousands, of a King, of a Guardian– the last Guardian– had done nothing to inspire that revolution.

If it were up to them, he would shut himself from the world, as had Medivh within the prison of his mind. Ignoring all beyond these walls until their enemies were quite literally at their very gates.

No. They would not have Azeroth. Not so long as he drew breath.

“You were the last.” The words hurt as they escaped him, each one leaving behind a rift, the final admission of what had been and what would never be. “The world cannot bear another.”

The figure advanced, then, and Khadgar somehow stood firm, slowly widening eyes fixed to the semblance of the man he had once known. Knuckles tightening, bleeding white, he watched as the Guardian extended a hand, pausing before they touched until the anticipation of it took every ounce of restraint the young mage had to remain in place.

“I remain because I must.” Gaze shifting up, meeting those familiar eyes, he exhaled shakily, his expression growing steadily more determined. “The answer we need is here, somewhere. Who else can be trusted to find it, when even you fell?” A complex blend of accusation and grief colored his voice until it faltered and fell to a whisper, “It accepts me, yes, but this place? It was only ever yours. It always will be.”

“ The world needs a guidance that only one can really offer. ” He wonders how many tomes had been read, how many pages of the books that lay here in their silence, filled with secrets had their spines stretched by young hands that had taken ( but not, at the same time ) the mantle left to gather dust. The last guardian, truth only comes in blood and training, in a tradition and a ritual that the other had not taken yet. That there, the double edged sword; the blessing one could easily grant that comes with responsibility. Khadgar may choose, that he knows different: choice. 

He supposes that he too had a choice, that he too could have done things, could have been someone or something else. But fate lines were deceptive, would break and stretch and propagate across a space, only to do so again, and again, and again until it met with the end at which it intended. Sargeras was a clever thing, and he knows now of the uphill struggle and his inevitable end. A bitter thought, and guilt weighs heavy upon his shoulders. 

There’s hope that this second chance he’s been given --- he may atone. He may help.   

“ You won’t find the answer if you continue to allow yourself to be pulled back. ” Accusation, though he knows the struggle felt. He’s forgotten the years himself, how long it took until it all became familiar ( though time was a thing that was strange, came in lapses, leaps and bounds where often the mage had slept --- sometimes purposeful, sometimes unintentional; that was the struggle ). 

“You’re not my friend.”

Words are fierce, heated with the certainty of belief that burns in his bones. Medivh is dead. Medivh had died twice over, and Anduin may not have noticed the first time, but the second had been unavoidable. 

          (‘He was still a good man, in the end, you know.’                    ‘I know.’)

         “My friend is dead. I don’t know what you are, but you’re not him.”

And yet – he hasn’t thrown a second punch. Hasn’t drawn his sword, for all that he’s had the time and the opportunity. Because it looks like Medivh and it sounds like Medivh and the connect of knuckle against jaw had been solid and real. Whatever this is, it isn’t a dream. It’s not some hallucination or mirage.

He gets two fistfuls of robe, pulls whatever’s wearing Medivh’s face close enough to look into his eyes. Not a hint of green, not the faintest edge. They’re the eyes of an old friend, eyes that he knows all too well. Eyes that he recognises.

“So why don’t you tell me what you are, before I cut you open and find out.” A threat he’s not entirely certain he could follow through on. Not with this face staring back at him. Not when it will feel like losing him all over again. He shakes the body in his grip, hard. “Tell me!“

A stretch of his neck to gather breath, and hands that once had fallen to his sides move to lift and touch at wrists. The unsteady fury within the warrior almost tangible with the bare distance between them. Eyes meet, and he speaks still with a steady calm that contrasts harsh when matched against Lothar’s. “ Your friend is very much alive. ” 

A Guardian is not a passive being, not meant to stand idly by and watch and allow himself to be harmed in the face of danger and in front of threat. The power remains within him, courses through his veins like a current quiet beneath his skin. 

He doesn’t want to fight. He doesn’t mean to harm. 

( Yet, memory there within his mind that obstruct the laminar flow --- there is duty, and there is good intention, and yet... even a good man may wander the wrong path with suggestion and the relativity of the expanse of worlds and realms ). 

One thing remains, however. This is still, and this will always be his friend. 

The silence had been his companion so long, he almost mistook the voice for a reflection, a memory given form by the path his mind had followed so often. By a specter it always found here, if he allowed it the liberty to stray long enough. The ancient walls of Karazhan warped what was real even as they accepted him, as they sheltered him and offered a strange, dark manner of consolation.

And yet… that vision had never before spoken to him, even here, where Medivh’s presence had always been strongest. Or at least, it had never before spoken aloud.

Slowly, he turned to face that possible threat, hands flexing at his sides, arcane light flaring briefly in his eyes only to flicker and fade when he saw who stood before him. It was no ghost, he knew, no dream. Khadgar’s lips parted soundlessly and closed once more, questions, recriminations, remorse and relief all tangled tightly behind his teeth. The Guardian himself was only a few feet away, his familiar garb unchanged, expression indulgent as it had so seldom been in life. His presence was a beacon, the signature of his Art unmistakable to another practitioner so familiar with his energy.

It was not the first time Khadgar had questioned his own sanity in this place. Merely his most compelling reason for doing so.

“No.” Voice cracking, uneven, the young mage swayed, his hands gripping the battered table before him, the carvings along its edge biting into his flesh, grounding him when he might have faltered. Reality was no definite thing here, nor time, but he could not help but search for the wounds that were no longer there, for the taint of corruption that had ultimately stolen the Guardian from them all.

“It is a shell, its insides gleaming, riches of knowledge hidden from the world. But it is only a shell. Nothing lives here since your loss, not truly. Even me.”

The Guardian’s gaze falls to follow hands, lifts to measure stance and settle on shoulders that hold the invisible weight of a burden carried. There is a place apparent, void of presence meant to be at the apprentice’s side --- his. He doesn’t know how many years have passed, how many winters chill the stone of the tower and carry the whisper of ghosts through the corridors to keep him awake. 

Perhaps, it is different for Khadgar. Perhaps before, the whispers and nightmares were simply just the presence of another, an unwanted, a demon carried like a taint since birth, dormant until the wake of power. Sargeras. The name echoes, resonates at a frequency that shakes the bone beneath his skin. That’s when it had all begun, after all. Perhaps...

“ Don’t you wish to be the new Guardian? “ 

He remembers then, the cruelty of suggestion - replacement of a function, loss of the title as protector, of the duty as the guardian this world had needed. Sargeras plucked at humanity’s weaknesses, of fear and abandonment, aided by the corruption that ran in his blood and poisoned his thought. He remembers the way reflection had been tinted with a green that even now haunts him, even now causes him worry. It had consumed him once before.    

@conruptela

The ghosts that resided here had not departed with the last Guardian. Khadgar had thought perhaps they would, when he’d finally returned. That the whispers, the lights that flickered at the corners of his vision, the cold drafts that flowed where no wind could ever be, that they would fade as would his grief. Eventually. Time, it was said, healed all wounds.

And time was, if nothing else, a closer companion to him now than most.

Perhaps they felt as he did– that something here had been left unfinished. The awareness of it was a nearly tangible weight, shifting along his skin, stirring in the back of his mind, leaving him unsettled and restless, pacing the hallways that Medivh had for so long, and finding only dust and regret.

The library was some solace, and Khadgar spent many silent, productive hours there, reading and cataloging the tomes that in many cases were the last of their kinds in existence. It was there, one day, that he came across a book that once he had discovered with awe. A book that had spoken to him, murmured its secrets, spun him its tale of betrayal and loss between its ancient pages.

He had not, himself, returned it to its shelf.

“Master.” Feeling foolish to speak aloud after so long, his voice raspy with disuse, Khadgar traced the book’s binding, bowing his head a moment as memory, even if briefly, lived again.

It’s a habitual wander, a route often taken in the company of tomes; of spell books and stories and secrets inherited alongside the title of the Guardian. The company which often was all he could have, was once all he could deal with. He understood their language, felt the power and the meaning beneath fingertips as he touched ink and parchment. 

They say walls talk, but people whisper, incomprehensible at times, and others not so much. Yet still they’d once incited the same reaction like a sharp nail against sensitive skin, goosebumps, the tremble of a hand as it reached for Atiesh, for any semblance of safety, for any sense of a reality grounding. The suffering taken in silence, for none would understand the power unlocked and the clockwork that ruled his life. 

He permits himself here, in his return for a small game, a small tease. Memory hidden with a mist yet to clear ---how he came here, why he came to be; those were questions asked, yet with no answer received. A book rests upon a table --- out of place from how it once was, and he places it back between two others on the shelf considered it’s home. Then distance, only for a moment, to shock, to surprise, and to add a little grandeur to entrance. 

@conruptela

The tightness in his chest last only a breathless moment.

He’s had dreams like this. Sometimes it’s Medivh, sometimes Llane. Sometimes it’s Callan. Sometimes it’s all of them, strolling across a courtyard in warm yellow sunshine, like they’ve never been gone.

       (He can never catch up to them.)

The dreams are always warm, nostalgic, even if they’re bittersweet. The reality is cold, horror rising in his veins at the implications, the possibilities. The upward hitch of his lips is trembling, fragile.

    “Old friend –”

He moves closer, he curls his fingers. No time to draw his sword, but his fist, when it swings, it fast and sure and steady, unlike the cacophony of his jack-rabbit heart.

Crystalline concentration; void of the fractures once known that propagated with the green vein of the Fel and the whisper of another that dwelt within, there is no need for Medivh to use speech to cast. It would be easy, a gesture quick to pluck at invisible threads in the air, create that figure with magic’s string formed by a knowledge arcane, and to most, unknown. It would be easy to defend oneself, to still the hand that comes with a means to harm --- fingers clasped, curled tight with purpose. It would be easy. 

And yet...

He knows the strength of the lion, of the friend who would leap before he looked ( march and fight his way through hell for those he trusted to call his closest friends ), he’s felt it once before --- roughhousing, play and tricks and training for a mage against a warrior. Unnecessary, he argued, for those born of flesh rarely could match those who knew the world like he. ( But of course, Lothar would prove him wrong, would move like a force that refused to relent ). So the fist makes contact --- intentionally so, and the Guardian staggers from the blow.