#dwc12020

The world has changed.

When Jackary had become worn down through the Legion and the Nightmare’s relentless attacks, he’d picked up sailing heavily again. Constantly on watch, constantly guarding, the world had become chaos ever since a single sword was plunged into. Azeroth’s very core - a sword that wounded the Emerald Dragon far more than he let on. The ground had cried in pain and burned his feet, the grass bit his heels, begging for healing or to stop the flood of Azeroth’s blood.

Even at sea, Jack could still hear her crying, feel her suffering. 

Like an open wound, so too did Jack’s resources bleed out, his exhaustion in the encroaching war, this.. Battle for Azeroth had dragged the beast down until he finally returned to shore. To his rocky relationship with his partner, his boss, his remaining world.

It had only meant to be for a few hours, a few days at best. The dragon had just needed to recharge alone in a small forest clearing. The Dream called to him and he willingly settled in the small grove on Atlas, curling into a ball to let the exhaustion overtake him and so his mind settled in the Emerald Dream, aiding in the remnants of guarding it. 

Just a few days...

It was an uncomfortable, jarring feeling that snapped the dragon awake, his peridot hues glanced around, pupils strained from how thin they were in surprise. Where he had awoken was not the grove at all but in a building of stone, covered in mossy growth that took years to grow. It was a temple, a closed off shrine to protect the sleeping beast and all he had been left with was two items to indicate the one person that had known where to find him.

The first was his stuffed tanuki ‘Piffur’, who had been resting near his snout and the other was a small make-shift bed nearby and a workstation, the smell of Darnath and his tools old and faded, it must have been some time since he was last there. These two things alone caused the aching muscles to force Jackary to pull himself to stand, not even bothering to care how he looked in shifting from his draconic figure to a far more recognizable elvish one. Bones cracked with movement, concerning the man further with all of the drastic changes.

He couldn’t feel his Dragonsworn, which further had Jackary finally stumble his way through the shrine and out of the door where he was greeted by a beautiful and horrific sight. The tiny grove he had settled in to nap was now overgrown, fully lush with an entire jungle around him. Trees populated everywhere and the path to the newly erected shrine hadn’t been cleared in so long that the walkway was covered in weeds and tall grass from the forest bottom.

How long had it been?

It was to be the first of many difficult realizations that would come to pass in a single day.

There was something to be said about memory loss or the pain and agony it took to recover from it, there was another to be said about returning to ones old life after they remembered, two years later.

Novarin had done just that and he’d come home to find his partner missing and best friend nowhere to be found. Orgrimmar was topsy-turvy and though he wasn’t sure just how his best friend had managed to spot him in the chaos, their meeting had been bittersweet.

In truth, Nova had awaited for Sin to scream at him, to smack him around, to tackle him and release all of that pent up aggression that two years must have swelled and bore deep within the Demon Hunter’s chest and yet he was greeted with arms wrapped around him and words barely choked out. To be reunited with Sin had been truly like coming home, safe again in his best friend’s grasp and yet as the two struggled to convey how much they’d missed one another and how hard Sin had struggled with the news that Nova had fallen in battle and yet here here stood? It was emotional, to say the least.

The pair had parted ways with promises to meet each other at the house, Sin had assured Novarin he still lived at the same place and the window was still open for the rogue to sneak into, but it had further made Nova realize an underlying truth.

He and Sin had always called one another their Platonic Lifemates, they lived together, slept together, hunted together, the two were attached to the hip and while they both struggled to really put a finger on it or grasp the concept that two people could be in love without feeling sexual favour towards one another, they always held each other above everyone else, including their own love interests.

It was the reason Nova made his first stop to a jeweler’s in Dalaran, having eyed a set of rings so long ago that he had thought about giving as a gag joke but now, two years of being separated, the Rogue was in front of the case again, those rings still on display. As he stared at the set, the rogue bit his lower lip and chewed, lulling over to himself the pros and cons of actually keeping to his word and asking for Sin to marry him. The man was his best friend, his companion and lifemate, they had everything a relationship was built on but Sin preferred women and Nova was much more loose and free.

Could it have worked?

Fingers tapped the glass case carefully, his gloves protecting any smudges that could have occurred. “That set there, aye? Wit’ th’ black n’ gold. I’ll take ‘em... finally.” He teased the jeweler, who Nova had been surprised she even remembered him. It was the first step in changing his second chance life around and he wasn’t about to let anything slip through his fingers ever again.