#andalaeynna

With a soft sigh, she pulled her robe around her as she sat by where the lingering fire remained for warmth, she stared up at the sky. Settling back onto a hand, she simply gazed into the dark nothingness that lingered and hung like a glorious tapestry. Sometimes she wished the sky would simply devour her. Swallow her up and make her disappear, so she wouldn't have to face herself and the sometimes foolish ways she responded to things.

It hadn't always been like that, of course. Once upon a time she didn't really care what people thought of her. Once upon a time she had been unapologetic, very selfish, and placed no one above herself. It wasn't to say that she didn't still do similar things. On the contrary, Laeynna remained as self-preserving as she ever had been, often under the impression that those around her would be more likely to hurt her than they would to be a supportive role in her life. She had no one to blame for that except herself, of course. She had once been an awful person who deserved that. No shortage of enemies. No shortage of people she had used and disposed of when they were no longer practical to her. No shortage of others she had promptly stepped on just to rise another tier of whatever made up ladder she was trying to ascend.

Had she thought Andaeros might do the same? In the beginning, yes. She had also assumed that his affections were fleeting. Convenient. That she was a momentary plaything for him. She had thought it for so long, in fact, that she had braced herself for that impact. Just assumed it was an inevitability. She hadn't really believed she was good for anything long-term and she had told him that as long as he had want for her, as long as he had need for her, that he would find her at his side. But she'd always assumed that one day he would wake up and decide that was it for him. That he had found the end of the pathway they were travelling together and it was time for them to go in different directions.

She’d thought it would happen in Silverpine originally. Then she thought it would happen shortly after moving in with him. She thought it would happen when he came back after his extended job that kept them divided. And she thought it would happen around the time that she cut her hair and let it return to that moonlight blonde colour it was naturally.

Yet he remained. Yet he still wanted her. But was it her he wanted or some concoction of her that he had drafted in his mind? How did he know that the ‘her’ he wanted was the real one? Wasn't it possible that… it wasn't? And what if she just sabotaged herself again? Every time she got close to something like Andaeros, like happiness, like comfort, Laeynna had managed to proverbially set the entire thing on fire. In fact, she had tried multiple times to sabotage her relationship with him intentionally. Perhaps out of a misplaced idea of doing what she thought was in his best interests, though she couldn't have possibly made that determination and it was insulting of her to even try. A lot of it was out of fear. More fear than any kind of self-perceived altruism.

Born a coward. She'd die a coward.

Andaeros called her strong. He'd said it so many times before. That for all she'd been through, for how she survived it, for acknowledging what she'd had to do to be where she was today, that she was resilient. She never felt strong or resilient. He wasn't necessarily wrong. She just… She could only see herself the way she did. She doubted she'd ever see herself kindly. She definitely would never see herself the way he did.

Pulling her thumb over the beautiful ring he'd bestowed upon her at the lake's edge, Laeynna's gaze dropped down to her hand where it graced her third finger. And now he wanted to marry her. They'd talked about it. When she thought he was either dead or simply having chosen not to return, they'd had to. Laeynna couldn't keep herself together the way she thought she could have. If something happened to him, she needed to know how to move forward and she wasn't even certain that she could. For all that she had tried to keep herself at a distance, for all that she had tried to remain somewhat emotionally detached, that hadn't been possible. She supposed that wasn't how hearts worked, though. There was no controlling something like that. In the same way that surely, Andaeros couldn't have controlled falling in love with her either or the undeniable pull he'd had to her when initially they'd met, despite the repercussions that came from just such a connection.

Talking about marriage, about a future, was entirely different than having it set in front of her. At the time, it had been a… A turbulent conversation. But the feelings they had were just as turbulent. Not for any lack of affection between them, but ideas like marriage and family were weighted and prominent. Terrifying for them both. Andaeros had loved once, a deep, intense, very devotional love. He had poured all of himself into it, and the results had devastated him. They'd practically hollowed him out, leaving him to be a shell of a man. Opening his heart to Laeynna had been no simple feat for him.

He had feared living with her. He had feared any kind of a future with her. She'd understood that. It was so much a part of the reason that she had assumed they would never find themselves where they were now. She never wanted to push him or to feel pressured. She'd never wanted him to think she was giving him an ultimatum. On the contrary, she had decided that when he had enough of her, she would quietly vanish from his life, perhaps like she had never been there at all.

And that would have been it for her. Love had been a… a frightfully unkind thing for her. Distressing and unpleasant in many ways. The kind of experience where she had felt more intensely than she could have endured. For a woman who didn't much like feeling anything except a lot of anger, love, compassion, devotion, those were clumsy things that contained an intensity she didn't know how to wield with grace or eloquence. Where she had found herself wondering if all of that turmoil, all of those nights in wine bottles had been worth it, she had still put herself through it. For him.

Maybe that was why he'd wanted to marry her to begin with. Maybe to him that was the amount of devotion he needed. Maybe seeing her shoulder all of that had encouraged him to understanding that Laeynna was a woman of her word. That she wasn't exactly fickle or short-lived and fleeting with her affections. A romance with Laeynna was never going to be a simple one or a singular night. But perhaps neither of them had realised it at the time. Certainly, that had become apparent as days and nights dwindled onward.

She could have theorised until she turned every colour in the rainbow and would have been no closer to the truth. Admiring her ring, the amethyst stone so perfectly set. The twisting of vines. The dark colour of the ring itself. It was a beautiful, sombre thing. He'd picked the perfect ring for her. No. More than that. The amethyst was the stone she had said she'd liked the most. It was the stone she'd given to him. And here it was, completing the cycle and returning to her. In the craftsmanship of this ring, Andaeros had thought of little else other than her. How terrifyingly lovely.

Did she deserve it? That certainly was a question. No. She didn’t think so. After all of the back and forth? After how difficult it had been, at times, for Andaeros to get her to communicate with him? Even now, instead of talking with him about her feelings and her concerns, she was sitting out in the dark, chilly night, mulling over them. He’d repeatedly tried to remind her that the burdens in life were meant to be shared. That joy and sorrow alike should have been shouldered together. That she didn’t need to be so caught up in what he felt he ‘needed’ to do rather than what he ‘wanted’ to do.

He didn’t need her, after all. He wanted her. She wondered, for a moment at least, did she require being needed? What was the difference between those two ideas, really? A need was a… compulsory thing. A want was more important, perhaps, for it incorporated the true sentiment. A need could be unhealthy. Certainly a want in excess could be as well, but it came down to where each feeling originated from.

Laeynna sighed and that breath, as so many others had before it, disappeared into the world around her, swallowed up by black darkness.

She’d always worry. About everything. If she was good enough. Worthy. Deserving. If she was who he really wanted. If she was who really was meant to be in this spot here and now. She’d wanted so badly to change the way she approached life. The way she approached her own perception of self. She’d tried, certainly. Tried not to care how others might have thought of her. Tried not to create some self-perceived reality. Tried to be more outgoing and conversational. She was always trying. And she was often trying so hard that it was exhausting and taxing. 

If she didn’t think it was obvious, she was wrong. People always knew when others were trying, especially when they were trying too intensely.

At the same time, was it a crime to want to be liked? Was it a crime to want a place to belong? Was it a crime to want friends, joy, happiness, safety, and security? If everyone else in the world could have those things, why didn’t she feel like she deserved the same thing? And certainly there were worse men and women than her, those who had committed terrible atrocities, and likely they still had their own circle of support.

Were her flaws so terrible that she felt like she was doomed to a life of solitude?

No. Of course not. Laeynna Emberflame or Zinnvais Luridveil, no matter what name one used to refer to her, was no more or less flawed than anyone else. It was a difficult thing for her to see, but somewhere in her head, she knew that she deserved more. That she had every right to chase after more, to claim more, to speak up and say she wanted more. Knowing it and acknowledging it were really the first steps, weren’t they?

So she deserved happiness with Andaeros. Would she bring him happiness? By his reckoning, she already did. He wouldn’t have asked for her hand if he didn’t want her damn hand in marriage. She didn’t know how to be a wife, however. Definitely didn’t know how to be married.

In her younger years, plenty of girls she’d known had their betrothals, all a bunch of complicated relationships where there was no love. Instead, they performed their duties as was expected of them and hosted myriad affairs on the side. Laeynna didn’t want that. Not for either of them. The only real marriage she had seen in practise was between her parents. Reknon and Seilahs were betrothed as well and sometimes it seemed like one loved the other. She’d heard it said from time to time in younger years when she and Ankalei were growing up together. Just saying it, however, didn’t necessarily make it true. Laeynna couldn’t remember a single time seeing either of them actually be in love with one another.

Although she supposed there was a difference between just loving someone and being in love with someone, only further complicated by the notion that there were so many different types of love. 

But if she didn’t know how a proper, healthy, constructive marriage was supposed to go, how could she be involved with one? How could she properly love Andaeros as his wife if she didn’t know how a wife was supposed to properly love a husband? Maybe she was just supposed to keep doing what she was doing. What if it wasn’t enough, though?

What she did know was that the more she spun around in this proverbial circle, fearing the unknown, and assuming she didn’t have the emotional fortitude, the only person she was really going to hurt was Andaeros. Hurting herself? Sure. She’d done it for years. She could do that again. But hurting Andaeros? That was unacceptable.

She couldn’t really know without trying. Laeynna had often been more of the mind to simply vanish when things got hard. Or ‘too hard’ according to her. It was what made her own attempts to stick things out so impressive, because to do so was uncharacteristic of her. This felt like another situation where she couldn’t give up so easily. Andaeros certainly deserved better. They had already gone through so much together. Being together hadn’t been easy for either of them and they had both paid consequences for choosing that pathway. If she backed out, it would have been like saying that nothing they’d done with one another had been worth anything.

That couldn’t be further from the truth.

Andaeros made her a better person. Rather, being around him, being with him, gave her the strength and courage to consciously make that decision. Things had been hard, but they had also been rewarding. She loved him. There was no doubting that. Fear, in and of itself, was not a terrible thing. Not the worst thing. It kept one alive, but if it was fed too much, as it had oft been in Laeynna’s case, then it would only prevent one from living. She didn’t want to live a life where she wasn’t really existing. She wanted to live and she wanted to do so at his side in any capacity.

As she eyed the sky, she wasn’t really sure she had stumbled onto any great realisations or found any answers to the questions she had. If anything, it only felt more weighted and heavy, that sinking of reality that she would, one day, become Laeynna Dawnflare. If he was interested in that, of course. She didn’t have to take his name. But as she mouthed it wordlessly to herself, she liked how it felt. She could imagine how it sounded. A bit lyrical, really, and more accurate in representation of her person.

She was neither an ember nor a flame.

She wasn’t dawn either, or a flare.

But to be married would be the dawning of a new journey. A new chapter to add to so many chapters that were in existence and yet unwritten.

There would be more difficulties in the future. She knew that, too. This wasn’t going to be the first time she sat in silence and thought about everything. Questioned everything. Worried about everything. Laeynna would always worry and fret and concern. Maybe that didn’t have to stop. Maybe she just needed to understand how to coexist with it. She couldn’t be fixed and she didn’t need to be. She simply needed to work on how to best thrive in the face of that adversity, to be as flowers when at a disadvantage.

And to come back from withering.

As she eyed the tent where Andaeros was sleeping, she eventually found herself sitting in its entrance, just watching the outline of him. She wondered what he dreamt of. Hoped that he dreamt of her. Of them. Of the future where so many things were uncertain, but where the certainty was that she loved him. And that he loved her. That perhaps, it was a very good beginning for a marriage.

People took a great many wonders for granted, it seemed to Andaeros. Portals were one that he thought about often. People jaunted, to and fro, hither and thither through swirling aether without a care for the intervening space. Distant lands and alien horizons became tourist destinations, but Andaeros never took for granted how vast the journey was that was saved each time he endured teleportation.

The Outlands. What would have become a graveyard if not for the Dark Portals, was somewhere people traveled often, given new life through trade and culture and pilgrimage. But, people hardly gave thought to the unfathomable space between, for how great a distance the Great Dark Beyond stretched between Azeroth and what was once the living Draenor. It was, to the greatest astromancers and telemancers of Azeroth, a guess, how many millions of miles separated those two titanic worlds. For all they, or Andaeros knew, they could have been on opposite sides of the Universe. Between here and there, could have been everything.

And between here and there, how many millions of worlds existed? How many millions of people on those millions of worlds? How many decisions made by each soul? How many of those worlds flickered out in apocalypse or were saved in utopia because of those decisions? A cosmic coin, flipped heads or tails, every time every soul chose. A trillion coin flips atop a trillion spinning plates floating in an unknowable expanse of Everything with Nothing in between.

How many of those decisions, how many of those coin flips, how many of those cosmic crossroads where two decisions met, ended in Love? With every soul born into the Universe, what were the odds that two similar flames could find each other in all that chaos and smoke and become something greater than they were alone? To choose one another.

No, it was no small thing for two people to Meet. And it was no small thing for two people to fall in love.

How many decisions and people and events outside the scope of two people did they have to pass by to find each other. How close had they come to never finding each other at all?

Andaeros couldn't help but chuckle to himself as he sat atop the overlook they'd cleared for camp, overlooking the pines and sat beneath the rolling auroras. He was a sap. Romance was such grand a notion in his head. He really needed to reign himself in, but it was hard with the ring in his hand. He afforded himself a bit of leeway, as a treat.

He'd agonized over it. He battled between tradition and vogue in his thoughts for weeks before he'd even begun to approach craftsmen. Laeynna was, in Andaeros's most esteemed sentiment, a woman of dissonance, of dichotomy. Laeynna in some moments respected tradition, and followed it, and in some moments he felt she raged and railed against it, as if she were trapped by it. Fashion, to Andaeros, could be fleeting. What was in vogue one decade was mocked in the next. And so he'd decided, instead, on sentiment. Sentiment was always warm, no matter the weather.

He'd not gone with gold or silver. Obsidium was a dark metal, and when it was wrought and shaped and folded, it lightened into a charcoal grey-black that reminded him of the dark colors of the dress he first saw her in. She had always seemed fond of dark things, as well. It was shaped, given the motif of vines, of leaves, of thorns, because of her great love for plants, so central to her. Its gemstone, not diamond, not ruby, not sapphire, not emerald. He had chosen Amethyst, or perhaps, she had chosen Amethyst so long ago. When they had courted.

Andaeros chuckled to himself, an inward thing that was more a huff than a sound. He still needed to keep quiet to not wake her. Courting. It was such an innocent word, full of butterflies and laughter. It was a word that felt like someone's hand in yours. It felt like a kiss on the cheek. But, it was what they'd done, even if they hadn't necessarily intended to. They had started as simple letters, sharing fondness and jokes. And then they became invitations. And then, before long, they became tokens.

She had sent to him an amethyst, so richly purple, unshaped, and raw. She had called it her favorite, and it became one of Andaeros's too. He had kept it, and he thought it fitting it should be the stone fit atop the ring he'd give to her.

It glittered as it caught the light, just as she did.

He opened the tackle box he'd brought with them to fish. It was one of those invitations. It was, to Andaeros's recollections, perhaps their first "date". It was a mutual love that they shared, and they shared it over getting-to-know-you questions and a little lake in the Hinterlands.

The fishing line wrapped once, twice, around and around, ending in a knot attached to the bobber. It'd keep the ring above the water when he cast it. He was putting an awful lot of faith into this fishing line and into this knot. It was, perhaps, not a terribly bright idea to tie such a precious thing to something meant to be thrown into the depths of cold waters. But, it was a decision. A coin-flip that the cosmos would answer if it worked out. A coin-flip that would lead to another decision, but one that would be hers.

It was, to Andaeros's mind, no small thing for two people to meet. It was, to Andaeros's mind, no small thing for those two people to then fall in love.

But surely, it was no tall order for the universe to flip a few more coins in his favor.

It had already flipped so many heads in a row already, what was one or two more?

Filled with sketches of her that he'd done from memory. Sketches that he'd done candidly, while she busied herself with her reading and studies. Sketches of her done in so many styles. In straight lines, in life-study, in minimalism. Excerpts of prose and poetry borrowed from romantics more eloquent than he, and his own attempts to convey the richness and depth and breadth and vivacity of his love for her. All of it bound in leather, tied off by deeply purple ribbons that held a satin finish.

He hoped she would like it.

Things had been somewhat stilted since his return. Their interactions had been… diplomatic, was the word he'd ascribed. Not for lack of trying on his part. But, their time apart had thrown off the natural rhythms and beats of their relationship, and Laeynna had displayed a measured composure that, to Andaeros, had felt somewhat cool, very slightly dispassionate on his return.

He understood it, he did. He had told her he was leaving for work, but he had been gone for a long while without word, without correspondence.

When she had been lost to the Nerubians, when he had learned she had been missing, he was plagued by worry in his private moments. Before they had even committed to one another, before either of them had realized the depth of feeling they held for one another, in the nascency of their love, he was still taken by worry. He could only imagine it more the harrowing for her, knowing how intensely she felt, how intensely she loved.

It had been a repeat client of his. The archmage had respected Andaeros's work, both magical and martial, and his discretion, and the gold he'd offered for a month's work was too rich to pass by. Warding a wizard's tower, a full suite of defensive magics to secure it from all manner of threats.

He hadn't known how isolated he was going to be. He'd not been allowed to travel there, only brought to and from the tower via portal, which was an unpleasant experience for someone with portal sickness. He hadn't known where in the world he was, though, he'd had some ideas when he stepped outside to work on the tower from the heat.

He hadn't been allowed contact with anyone outside of the tower. All reagents and supplies he'd needed were brought to him promptly and without question. He'd eaten conjured food, and slept on a mildly comfortable, but lamentably Laeynna-less bed. He'd had worse sleep and worse food when he was a soldier, he'd remembered thinking a few times over the course of his absence.

He had been blind-sided by the archmage's eccentricities, but he was there, the work needed doing, and he was being paid very well. Payment that could make both he and Laeynna just that little bit more comfortable.

As he tied neat bows in midnight ribbons, through each point of binding in the pages and covers, he found himself wondering if it had been worth it. It felt as though he had lost some of her faith, that he had lost some of her trust, had lost some of their intimacy.

He hoped all she needed was time. He hoped there was no love lost.

Things were getting better, he thought. They spoke more warmly, they touched more often, they smiled and they laughed and they played. But, there was still a certain discomfit he could sense in her.

He would just continue to love her, without condition or pretense, as he had before.

He ran his hand over the leather of that small scrapbook's cover, and smiled softly, breathing out through his nose as if in relief. Her birthday was coming soon, and this would be one gift of many.

He'd hardly settle for celebrating her for only one day.

That obviously didn't happen; she's still here. So then I thought for years and years and years that if she was going to still be alive, there was no way I felt like she deserved to have a romantic relationship or even really close kinship with other people. And. She didn't. So her isolation and her not being particularly close with people was a player choice and intentional for her storyline, her characterisation, the message I was trying to convey with her and her experiences as a character.

With all of that background out of the way...

Laeynna has never looked for romance. Or friendship. She's always very much kept to herself, pragmatic / professional connections, and little else. Whilst she wasn't happy to be doing that, she'd accepted it as either something she deserved for her crimes, or that she had been isolated for so long that it was just better for her and everyone else if it stayed that way. (Familiarity breeds complacency, even when it's a negative familiarity.) It's why her relationship with Andaeros and her friendships at Cakes have been so crucial and pivotal to who she is as an individual now and who she has been growing into during this new chapter that she's going through. (Zaihne also falls into this connection category, though she would dislike very much to consider him anything more than a thorn in her side.)

The rest of this I'll answer in character for her.

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Laeynna huffed out a laugh and shook her head. "Andaeros and I... It was not planned. Not in any way, shape, or form. I can admit that the first time I saw him, I could not stop looking at him. I have never been that way around someone before. I do not know if it was his voice or perhaps the runic tattoos he has all over him." She offered up her shoulders in a shrug.

"Mind, I always observe everyone wherever I am. I have spent most of my life surviving by listening to information, by learning about how people move and converse, how methods of conversation change depending on the company involved. Master Dawnflare, as I called him back then, unwilling to use his name, was no exception. His was a new face. I simply wanted to know who he was. Lord Larethmyr hated him almost immediately. That first night, he scolded and berated and glowered the entire way back to his estate."

After a moment, she looked amused. "Perhaps even he saw something that I did not. When I consider how things are now, Lord Larethmyr may have been onto something." And he might have had good reason for being so displeased. Or would have, if Laeynna had willingly given her heart to him. Or any other part of herself, for that matter.

"Andaeros and I used to write one another. These witty to-the-point sorts of letters, often filled with groan-worthy puns and other silly things. I would send him flowers. He sent me a peacebloom once, told me how important it was to him. And he sent me a geometric art piece he did of a tree. And he sent me a stone of shadow amethyst. All of these things I have kept. I have a trinket box that contains all of his letters and his gifts."

A shy smile pulled across her face as she buried her face in her hands, trying to hide just how red she was turning. Then she found it in her to reclaim her voice. "I... do not know for certain when it happened. I would not be able to pick a date. I just know... things were different when Velios brought me back from the City of Threads. If it had not been for him, I would not have survived. Many people like me, who went through the same thing, did not. I was fortunate. And I remembered being in the dark, that little bit of dim lighting, thinking about the things I had wished I'd said to Andaeros before I left. How many things I still wanted to say."

She loosed a gentle sigh, fiddling with some of the dark hair that fell over her shoulders. "Maybe that was when I knew. Being apart from him and he was the first person I thought of. How desperately I wanted to see him then. After I came back to Quel'thalas, I was afraid he would be disappointed in me, so even after I recovered, I refused to see him. But I had his compass that he gave me before I left and I had to return it. I thought the best thing to do was to give it to him and quietly leave."

Shaking her head, Laeynna laughed again, soft and a bit abashed. "Except he answered the door and there he was. The person I wanted to see more than anyone else in the world. He had me then. He had my heart then. And... I... I think I must have had his." Unable to keep herself from fidgeting, she wove her hands together.

"...It took us a while to say things the way we wanted to. We both have our reasons for this. So we used other ways. I did not realise it then, but it was in how we looked at one another. In fact, it seemed like almost everyone around us knew before I was willing to acknowledge it. We must have looked smitten with one another. I believe we still do. Except the difference is that I can say the words now. In the morning. In the afternoon. At night. There is never a moment that I do not think it. That I do not feel it. Andaeros is so very deep inside of me. I should think even my blood touched by him."