gunsmoke and cigarettes

She couldn't help but look back on the course that her life had taken in the last year or so; even before the Voidstorm hit, there had been a shift in the air once she'd managed to land strong, back-to-back opportunities with Eerie. They'd both felt it, feverishly discussing plans and dreams, and what was next. They'd stopped only looking at the armor and kits they'd like in windows, and started being able to actually budget for them. They'd "made it", in their own way - and at the time, that'd meant anything on a spectrum from "we can afford a two-window apartment" to "we can afford to move out of the Row to elsewhere in Silvermoon".

Granted, they'd had to make a few questionable decisions to fully secure that - who didn't, after all? - but between Rae's work as Preyseeker, and Eerie adapting shockingly well to becoming Illidari… well, it really hadn't been so bad, had it? Sure, there was a massive, swirling storm over their homeland for a time that promised endless destruction and death. Sure, said day job for Rae had consisted of "get yourself into mortal peril at least four times a week for the sake of an elaborate payout" and "try not to surrender your own pain and despair to the man using it as a power source", but it'd been worth it, financially, until she'd gotten this job with the Cast Company.

And then, she'd gotten said job with the Cast Company. By all that was holy, Rae couldn't even begin to quantify how much that decision had upended so much of her life; for decades, she'd been a know-nobody, low-coin merc, grabbing whatever jobs came up and striving to ensure her basic survival. Yet, somehow, she'd landed this - and with it, she'd pulled in a stable income, a place to live, a gagglefuck crew of people that she… well, Rae wasn't sure if trusted was the right word. Maybe appreciated. Yeah. That was better. People that she appreciated enough to expect they'd keep her alive, and she would do the same for them in turn. It'd pushed her towards a man who both her sister and her friends had called "her healthiest attachment in ages", and challenged her enough that she'd sent a letter to the strongest arcanist she knew for mentorship. (The fact she managed to get accepted, still, for such a position? Barely conceivable.)

More and more, she'd done this back-and-forth dance with the person she knew herself to be, and had been for decades: in and out of the clear knowledge of being that mercenary, the street kid, the punk, the arsonist, the cutthroat, the sniper, the attack dog, and the much-less clear idea of being the scholar, the spellblade, the trickster, the strategist, the friend, the one capable of genuine laughter. She still smoked like a chimney, though: that much was consistent, no matter what happened.

Eerie had changed, too - more than just the sense of being a devourer, of course. She'd become calmer, more level-headed, more empathetic, more honest. Rae had watched as her sister embraced all of the warmer parts of her own personality, instead of shoving it away: they didn't fight as often, now. It rarely became a serious, bare-knuckle brawl; it felt more like they either gave each other space to process, or sat down to hash it out. Briefly, Rae was tempted to question who this new person was that wore her sister's face, and what she'd done with Eerie. But, she recognized that reflection, too: the cool-tempered watcher, ensuring her sister remained out of harm's way. It was the role she'd served dutifully for decades, looking out for Eerie, and one she knew she'd pick up again in a heartbeat if fate so asked.

What a change, all of it. What a twist to the story, after all.

Rae smiled to herself, a faint echo of the fuller gesture, and cracked her eyes open to watch as the last traces of the sun disappeared below the horizon line in the distance. Soon, the world would grow dim and quiet in the late-spring evening, and maybe - if she got lucky - she may see fireflies, blinking their way through existence in that quietude.

She'd had enough time to ponder this - the art of becoming, and the reality of being - when the sound of faint footsteps on the floating stairway caught her attention. She turned to look over her shoulder, and Eerie appeared, carrying a platter of food in hand that she set down on the spire floor as she settled in next to her sister.

"Brought you snacks," Eerie offered. "Figured you'd have munchies, if you were done mopping the laundry."

"I see that." Rae snorted, picking up an apple from the tray and taking a bite. "It wasn't even that bad, Eerie, you know we've had worse." She shouldered her sister, ignoring the faint sting from her healing sunburn, and Eerie let out a little huff in reply.

"I know that. But that shit was potent, Raerae, I could smell it from ground level. You sure you weren't sold, like, industrial-grade stuff?"

"Nope. Which is why I bought it."

"You're gonna kill yourself, one of these days," Eerie sighed.

"Eh, we all die eventually," Rae retorted, taking another bite of her apple. "Might as well enjoy the ride to the grave, else you're just boring."

"Let no one ever say that's what we were," Eerie muttered solemnly with a nod. "Alright. Fine. Just be careful, yeah? Don't go falling and eating shit. You'll die from this height."

"Sure, sure. Hey - do you ever think about… the way life is? How it just kinda pushes you into becomin' something else? Story changes, your road goes different, and then before you knew it… boom. Different person." Rae looked over, watching her sister for a long moment.

"I don't think about it," Eerie replied thoughtfully. "At least, not in detail. You know me: if I did that, I'd drive myself absolutely nuts. More than usual. But, yeah - sometimes, I guess? Definitely the 'different person' thing."

"Tch - yeah, no joke. Guess it's been on my mind, y'know? How everything flipped onto its feet and yet went completely batshit, all at the same time. How we're all… constantly in this process of becoming something, even if we don't know why, or what it'll be just yet. Story's ever spinning, and shit."

"Damn. Okay, poetics," Eerie laughed. "I mean - yeah, makes sense. You've kinda given your life a whole fuckin' overhaul, Rae. I'd be more worried if you didn't think about this, every once in a while. I guess it's kinda like cooking, in a way?"

"What?" Rae looked over, one eye narrowing in blatant confusion as Eerie snorted.

"Like rendering fat off pork, or something. You do it to change the flavor, make the meat more tender. Center it, in a lot of ways. Think we've hit that point where we're finally rendering out the fat."

"Huh."

"Yeah."

Silence passed between the two as they thought that idea over, and soon enough, Rae looked skyward, lips pursed at a small angle off-center as she ran the comparison. Sure, it was true enough: Rae had fought for this, hadn't she? Fought for a free and clear opportunity to just… be what she wanted? Free of expectations, and entirely with the ability to choose for herself.

She didn't think it would actually happen. She always figured she'd die how she lived: scrabbling for the basest sense of security, and of truth to it all. Remembered by few, loved by even fewer, forgotten eventually by all. But, the evidence to the contrary was directly in front of her, and the reality of that set in with a startling clarity that shook her the rest of the way from her high.

"Guess we'll let it render, then," Rae mused quietly. "See what comes from it."

Eerie slung an arm over her sister's shoulders with a nod. "Yeah. I'm sure it'll be good, Raerae. It's about time it was." The curiosity about what was to come - what would be next - was something that had followed both Flameveil sisters from their youth. The drive to see things through to the end, never leave a story unfinished, to watch, and watch, and watch, and revel as the world changed and they moved to accommodate so much new knowledge so quickly. Rae, herself, had never dismissed it; it was a valuable asset, dreaming of what was to come. She wanted to know where the story would lead - both for herself, and for those she cared for.

She'd worked, tirelessly, to afford a home far from all that Eversong and Silvermoon held: all the bloom-laden memories, all the hollow-eyed and faintly-cool promises of a summer never to arrive, all the grief and rage that came with it. She and Eerie had made it happen - they had a place of their very own, now, with beach chairs and a semi-trusted goblin-made umbrella framing a backdrop against a few islets across the bridge from the backside of their property. The Cast Company had held openings on their plots of land, and she'd taken the leap without hesitation. The promise of seasons - real, honest, tangible, tumultuous seasons - had been too strong to resist, even knowing she would be mere miles from that damnable bridge.

It was no surprise that the moment she crossed the border between southern Eversong and the rest of that wide world, her communicator pinged with an alert for some tasking or another back in Silvermoon. She silenced it.

This was for her.

She'd had enough of pain, recently; Sira, at least, was on her feet, intending to attend some event or another outside of the city. She hadn't specified what, or where, or for how long, but she had asked Rae to find a way to conjure an arm for her to hold for the duration of the night. Rae had agreed. It had taken sixteen attempts and her running through at least four full waterskins between them, but eventually, she'd gotten the spellwork right; that sort of transmutation was never light work, but she'd been determined to see it through while she waited for word from Fe about the project for Sira's new arm being taken underway.

Beyond that, however? Sira had worked - tirelessly, Rae might add - to assuage her friend's guilt. She'd known the risks, she'd said. Signed the employment contract with them in mind. Made the choice to help with the bridge repair, and made the choice to continue despite the dangers that had presented themselves. It wasn't Raenessa's fault, in Sira's eyes - but that guilt was something that Rae couldn't simply dismiss with poetry and promise.

So, she'd left Eversong. The last thing she needed was reminder after reminder, right now, of her own self-perceived failure; she had a feeling that if she showed up with two broken hands, again, she might gain a few looks and questions that she didn't have the willpower to answer.

Rae didn't have any particular destination in mind, having requisitioned a dragonhawk for the sake of just… flying. She didn't have the means, nor the funding to keep one of her own, of course - but this would do. A bit of time, blessedly, to herself.

Consequently, as the breeze and a grip on the reins steered her south, she tipped her head back for a moment and let intuition guide for a time. She could plot roughly where she was by the smell of the air - it'd be some time before she left the ruin of the Eastern Plaguelands, and that would be time that she could use to let everything else that had been crowding her mind so heavily flutter away in the breeze. Distantly, the memory of a death knight wearing a comrade's face passed through her mind, followed by the distinct shock of decay stripping her flesh from its bones without mercy, and the even more distinct pain of having it restored - reversed. She'd felt every moment of the work as her life had been forcefully preserved. She shoved the thought away, stifling a retch at the recollection, and proceeded to tune every other thought that seemed coherent or formed from words away.

She only looked down again when the smell of distant rot began to ease, and she found herself rapidly approaching the border towards the Hinterlands. That would do.

In those pine forests, she found a comfortable place to land, nestled up in the clifftops and with adequate space for the dragonhawk to rest after the journey; she'd left before sunrise, and it hung at a perfect midpoint in the sky, now, leaving Rae in a light-dappled clearing with a satchel full of notes, study materials, and a lunch she'd packed just before she left the city.

Briefly, she debated throwing all of her communicators over the cliff's edge, and allowing herself to be completely isolated. That thought, however, passed as well. That wouldn't be acceptable, she knew: she needed to at least be available to Eerie and the Company, if few others. So, she simply set them aside, stripped away the travel layers she wore, and spent her day in the sunlight as she read through a dense tome in Draenic on magical theory and application, copying entries into her notes, and testing her spellcraft against it in small bursts. She didn't want to do anything productive; not in the sense of being around others, or feeling any sense of obligation, at least. There was a mounting pressure to be present, to be available, to be ready, and that wasn't the sort of pressure Rae thought she could handle, today.

Eventually, after she'd eaten her lunch and noted the telltale sign of a tan setting in through the steadily-darkening freckles on her shoulders, she stood, brushed her legs off, and kicked away her shoes as she approached the cliffside. The dragonhawk had fallen asleep - she woke it with a whistle, watching as the beast fluttered over. She double-checked the security of the chain holding the hawk's whistle around her neck, nodded in satisfaction - and jumped.

Air screamed past her as her target rapidly rose to meet her descent; she'd planned for this. There would be no solid land, but the mercy of water beneath her, somewhere northeast of Shaol'watha on the coastline. She straightened her body, aiming her hands in front of her, and squeezed her eyes shut as she broke the surface of the ocean below.

Saltwater embraced her in a frigid blanket as she pushed herself to the surface - when she broke for air, she shook her hair from her eyes and grinned as she felt the sun beat away every inch of that cold on her face. She paddled to the rocky shore not long after, seating herself on a rock and letting her legs dangle in the water as she watched the waves crash against each other in that eternal dance they always seemed to hold.

She stayed there for hours; the dragonhawk had since come down, itself, to dip through the water with elegant turns and maneuvers, catching fish in its beak and eating its fill. Rae watched for a time before eventually diving back into the water, herself, to splash water up at the creature and begin a lighthearted game of it. Never once during that time did her thoughts slip to the past week. Never once did she feel the urge to curl in on herself, or sleep, or fight, or cry. She was grateful for it. A few times, she'd coax the dragonhawk into flying her up, again, so she could run and jump, diving into the waves below; it was a cycle, over and over, each time she broke the surface of that water bringing some sense of divine relief. A weight lifted, washed away in air and sea.

Eventually, though, the sun grew low on the horizon, and Rae could feel the effect of the day on her body; her skin was flush with warmth, redness having long-since taken over on the high points of her cheekbones, her shoulders, the tops of her thighs. She pulled herself onto the dragonhawk's back, soaring up the side of the cliffs again and beginning to gather her belongings. She pulled layer after layer of clothing back on for the journey north, wincing at the sting it caused against her tender skin. She'd heard that the Bonfire Bash in Stranglethorn was going to be four days long, this year; she'd need to be prepared to face much worse than the consequences of a few hours of sunlight, she figured. This was a good start to that.

As much as she could chastise herself - say it was irresponsible to forego her duties in favor of this day, say it was irreconcilable that she'd leave Sira to her own devices while under her own workings - she couldn't find it in herself to genuinely believe it. As she walked back to the waiting hawk, she glanced at the holocrystal she always carried, and snorted as she saw a veritable barrage of messages from her sister.

where are you? rae raerae raenessa flameveil if you fucking died i swear to all the gods rae i'm serious you never just run off like this WHERE ARE YOU???? did you go to get laid IS IT THE WIZARD BOY you know what nvm i don't want to know see you later love you be safe dont end up in jail

Rolling her eyes, she tapped out a quick message in response, comprised of "Relax, I'm fine, took a day off", and hefted herself onto the dragonhawk's back, securing herself for the flight. A few more pings from the crystal noted Eerie's likely-irate response.

"She can deal with it," Rae murmured. "I'll explain later."

And, honestly? To feel the beginning of summer, and to feel a little more elven after the past few weeks had nearly beaten it from her?

It was everything following that had, somehow, gone catastrophically bad. She'd raised a portal field on either side of the bridge with Ed's assistance (as it turns out, being supercharged with a much more experienced caster's mana and influence happened to make advanced calculations ridiculously simple for a few precious moments), enabling whatever collided with the airspace on one side to be short-range teleported to the other. The bridge had, initially, been damaged by goblin aircraft; as a result, this was the method she could think of which would be safest to ensure it didn't happen a second time.

She'd imbued the planks of the bridge, too, with runes to ensure that they'd be sustained with the need of in-person maintenance perhaps once a month; that hadn't taken too much time, and she'd been able to work through it quickly. That's when the construction began, spearheaded by two engineers. She didn't know either of them - not well, at least - but she knew that Mittlefink was notoriously psychotic, and Victoria, who was leading this excursion, was just back in the field after the loss of her arm and subsequent acquisition of a prosthetic.

Needless to say, she'd seen more efficient strategies in demolition crews.

The plan (insofar as one could call it that) was simple enough: those capable of flight would ferry Sira and Nepenthys to the other side of the bridge, along with a few other engineers who would be responsible for wiring up and installing the alarm system that Victoria had rigged in the event that something breached the portal barrier. Sira and Penth would be on the far side to secure the bridge to the landing posts while another Company member kept it steady on their end; Ed and Rae would be on the near side to do the same. The same shaman who'd healed Rae's hands - Hele, a good soul, even if a little odd around the edges - would be monitoring the winds to ensure things remained stable and in favorable conditions.

Those conditions did not arise, and this plan did not survive contact in the slightest.

Instead, the bridge was sent flying; Rae and Ed managed to keep themselves stable when Velathra had lost her hold, albeit not without a brief scare. Ranek's harness failed, the rope keeping him tethered to the middle support slipping, and Rae had to flashstep across the bridge to secure it just before another loss of control sent her flying over the edge. Ranek had caught her, eventually pulling her back up to safety; once Ed reached her, he got her to her feet before the pair made their way back to continue work. Naturally, in a perfect world, this would be when they (along with Sira and Penth on the far side) secured the rope bridge in place and completed the job.

However, in Rae's experience, Azeroth was not a perfect world - and was, in fact, a murderous death-planet intent on killing its own denizens in increasingly-creative ways, ever since the Sundering.

Instead, the wind shook all of those trying to secure the bridge so badly that it couldn't be secured at all - Andy, holding the bridge in place on the far side, lost his grip, and that was when it all went from "perilous, but manageable" to "lethal". The bridge collapsed from the far side, and nearly all that were on it slammed into the cliffside as it swung down before falling into the chasm below. Rae had managed to pull herself up, but she watched as the others fell.

She saw Sira hit the ground, unconscious after hitting the cliffside at the perfectly wrong angle.

She saw Penth do the same.

She saw Ed crash into the stone below.

She saw these people, who she'd been trying - desperately, desperately trying - to see as friends each get caught, either by a slow fall charm from Ed's quick mind or by the ground below, and be crushed.

She hadn't gotten down the cliffside quickly enough, in her opinion. Ed's arm, when she reached him, was mangled - she could feel the break in it, and she had to muscle away the urge to plant a hand to his cheek and reassure him when there were others injured. She moved on, triaging person after person, every bit of book research and field observation she'd done coming to bear as she barked out orders and worked to stabilize those she could.

And then, Velathra had brought up Sira.

The silencier's body was crushed entirely, from the left side; Rae saw the staggering amount of blood coating her clothing, as well as the bruised, swollen ruin of her face and the way that her arm just wasn't. It was pulp, held together by small stretches of skin and fabric. Her leg hung wrong. Rae could hear the rattling sign of fluid in her lungs, and she knew it to be blood.

She didn't remember most of the work she did as Penth came up the rise, only that she fell fully into the rhythm of the work and did everything she could to save her friend's life. Sira was, fully, one of the four friends that Rae had on this stupid, miserable planet. She was terrified of losing any one of them - but as her hands moved over Sira's body, placing splits, bandaging cuts, binding that crushed, forsaken arm, she couldn't help but wonder what overflow of terrible, awful luck had made them all prey to this series of events.

She mentally cursed the plan for the bridge; there had been safer options. There had been a million-and-one ways to do this, but the approach taken had nearly killed a half-dozen people. The menders took over, and the feeling of warm hands on her shoulders broke through the last of her concentration as she turned to see blue eyes watching her, and one of the only faces she knew she wanted to hold onto. It took no coaxing for her to wrap her arms around Ed's waist and pull him into a hug before the fear of it claimed control of her, and for the second time that day, Rae let herself cry.

Ed pulled up a soundproof barrier around her, murmuring to her that she didn't ever need to apologize for moments like these - the reassurance was enough to break her down further, in the simple knowledge that he chose that kindness for her. He chose to reassure her, even when she couldn't bear to look Sira in the eye later on, if she survived; Rae had personally brought Sira into the Company, and that made this incident and Sira's injury her fault. Still, Ed chose comfort over scrutiny, and that single mercy was enough to pull a single, broken sob from her lips from behind that blessed barrier.

When the others called on him for a portal, Rae pulled away, wiping her face and stuffing her grief and fear back into the compartment she kept it trapped in within her mind; she nodded, letting him do his work, and instead went to Nepenthys' side to wrap an arm around her friend and hold her hand as she passed Ed's mercy on, providing quiet reassurances of her own.

The night had been long, once they'd all reached the clinic; Sira, of course, needed emergency surgery, and Penth needed treatment for a broken arm. Rae's heart stung again as the weight of it pressed into her: if it hadn't been for Rae's insistence, her invitation, her confidence that this Company would be good for each of them, Sira and Penth would have been fine. Intact. Safe. Rae may have died on that bridge, instead - but it would have been a welcome trade to see them whole.

She remained by her friend's bedside in the clinic, not sleeping or accepting food; instead, she preoccupied herself with coffee, and the silent grief of her own decisions. At one point, she reached out over the holocrystal to an artificer she knew while the menders changed Sira's dressings and gave her another dose of pain medication; Fe, for all of her faults being certifiably batshit, was the best prosthetist Rae could think of. She'd been planning on keeping her savings for one of Fe's pieces in the event that this job had blown off one of her own limbs - but seeing Sira get use from it?

That'd be much better off, anyhow. She got the confirmation and nodded before putting the crystal away, excusing herself as the afternoon rolled around - she'd been by Sira's bedside throughout the night and the entire morning, and she knew she needed to at least try to return home.

When she did, she'd holed herself in her study; Eerie had come to her soon after, and practically begged Rae to just tell her what was happening. They both broke down in gruesome unison; the stress of Sira's injury, plus Eerie's transition into the Illidari, Rae watching as Sira, Nepenthys and Edelion had almost died, on top of rehashing their all-too-familiar history with their mother and the fact that Rae had nearly died a whopping three times the previous night had them clinging to one another with thick, terrible sobs. They faced that pain as one, and Rae curled herself into her sister, ignoring the cold that rushed through her skin, and let herself have one final, good, long, ugly cry. She'd done more of that in the past twenty-four hours than the previous twenty-four years, and it showed in the ache that left itself pressing behind her eyes and in her bones as she and Eerie sat together afterwards, discussing everything and nothing.

Their upstairs neighbor (beloved man he was - Lytheris was the singlehanded reason that Rae and Eerie had survived in the Row for their first weeks, and in turn, they'd run off his ex-husband when the asshole came back to try and take things that didn't belong to him after the divorce) called through the vents and offered them flower seeds, to which they accepted; in turn, Rae promised him some of the leftover curry potato salad and jjamppong noodles she'd been holding onto. It was the least she could do for that piece of normalcy among all of the rest of it.

It took some time to recover from the emotional outburst they'd both had before the conversation eventually steered around to lighter matters. It faded entirely once the twins had resolved to run a rather pressing errand involving a business owner who knew a little too much of Rae's contacts, and making certain that said information didn't escape to the wrong ears. Rae had taken that by storm, and the conversation had grown heated enough that she'd nearly pulled a pistol before Eerie stepped in, her frigid demeanor quickly freezing the room as Raenessa made her point exorbitantly clear. One didn't get to fuck with a person that Rae considered one of her own and go without consequences. Even worse, if you knew more than you were supposed to - she'd be content to make sure you forgot whatever knowledge you'd accessed, very quickly.

She'd be lying if she said she didn't enjoy it. She'd be lying, too, if she said that the knowledge that Eerie was the level one, now - that Rae could, in fact, kick a chair over, punch a man in the throat, and have to be bodily dragged off before she was put in a cell for assault was possible - didn't help to ease some of the long-buried, frantic energy in her soul. Eerie had her. Eerie had promised to reel her in. So she let her sister do that, and took contentment in allowing a bit more of that rough-edged, sharp determination through for a while. Just long enough to get the job done.

The trip home after that wasn't as conversational; neither was the moment they both flopped onto the couch in their cramped living space, Trouble making room for himself stretched out on both of their laps. They'd kept the Row apartment; it was a useful base of operations for them in the city, and the house that Rae had bought with her pay seemed too cavernous, sometimes. Especially on days like these.