The sun wasn’t quite above the window sill yet. A subdued light brushed the withered plants in her flower box, then crept like a thief the rest of the way into her room. The cold came with it, though it felt warm compared to the icy body beside her. The air moved and breathed.
It seemed alive in comparison.
Lantern, or Jeffrey if she was still feeling compassionate, had made good on his promise during the night. Paper flowers were all over the bed, as were little figures of happy people and happy things. Gazebos and silver colored lakes with paper boats on top and scrap families watching. The breeze knocked one of the figures off the window sill.
It fell slowly, settling like a feather really until it landed on her cheek.
He’d made good on his other vows too, being there every time the sickness welled up in her stomach or the heat became too much. Through the shaking and the agony, he’d been attentive. In a sad way, it seemed like he was giving her all of the attention she had wished for before. All that remained in the foggy blur of her memories from last night was the assurance that he had been there and he had loved her without gain.
That attention was absent now though. A blanket was between their bodies, but the pressing chill could be felt through it. Her hair didn’t seem disturbed by his breathing, if he was even doing so, and one of his eyes was awkwardly, disturbingly open half-way.
It was worth it.
“My time is short...”
Redemption kills, class. Not spiritual redemption- we’re speaking in the metaphysical today I know, but try not to get confused. There’s a very defined value grade of purity and corruption. These are not the morals your family punished you for disobeying. This, my students, is a very measurable and tangible system.
The fel kills. It twists, ruins, warps, and spreads- but in the end things die. The new life that mutates there in the carrion must be eradicated immediately, and the best way to do that is to deprive it of its ONLY life sources, which is to say, the fel it was born of. Now, what you need to remember is that cleansing an environment is much harder than cleansing an individual.
Residual fel energy will always remain in the earth where necromantic rituals have been cast and innocent blood has been spilled. Simpler people refer to these things as hauntings. Ghosts, spoiled crops, these are all problems they will account to the will of the gods or the spirits of their loved ones, but those are only SYMPTOMS.
In individuals, one need only separate a fel caster from their black magic before their body begins to break down. This can occur naturally on its own, but usually a fel caster will stop at nothing to continue their dark practices. I urge you not to rely on the ‘good’ intentions of born again fel weavers, because they are in essence committing suicide and any mind that would consider that is unreliable to begin with.
What you want to do is to silence them for a prolonged period of time, remove them from the source of their power, and watch them as their physical functions shut down. Ambition and struggling will probably be the first thing to go, as they settle into lethargy as was witnessed after the orc invasion of Azeroth. While not fully understood, that lethargy did not prove lethal in the orcs, meaning there may indeed be a glimmer of hope for the individual seeking redemption.
This is unlikely though.
However it comes to pass, once someone has become so entrenched in the Fel, their body wracked by soul shattering, draining, abuse of the nether, they are nothing but husks.
Death is a mercy, class.
If you find yourself believing they don’t deserve such a mercy, well, perhaps the Light should be praised that it will not be your decision to make. Death will find them on its own.
Next lecture we will be discussing the Earthen Ring and Cenarion efforts in the Plaguelands and the differences between the individual and the environment specifically. Please bring your text books as I will be calling on daydreaming pupils to read aloud.
Every word rang so vividly in her head then as consciousness returned. It seemed surreal and forewarning, as everything had been lately. Drifting up from the tower’s entrance below, the scent of coffee and a young man’s voice came through the window.
“You sure she didn’t visit the clinic last night? Light, I spent like six hours doing paperwork so she could get better. You don’t think she was just blowing me off, do you?”
Raoul’s nervous laugh.
The reply was too distant to hear what was said or even if the speaker was a man or a woman.
Raoul laughed again and the glass doors at the bottom of the tower squeaked when opened.
Every passing word made her nerves stretch tighter and by the end she gave him a shake. He couldn’t be dead. Light, he wasn’t supposed to die.
Not like this.
The scrap of paper tickled down her collar bone now as she was sitting up and it landed in the pool of blankets. Lakes and flower and paper families were disturbed as she made an earthquake of their foundations.
An earthquake would have been more merciful than the cast off blanket that covered her treasures he’d so painstakingly made for her in what could have been his last hours of life.
“Get up, get up! I’m going to send you away so I can delay your arrest! You don’t need to go to prison. Not yet, not till she’s tried. Get up!”
Fingers shook him as she clambered over him and stood at the edge of her bed. Auburn hair was mussed, strands of it hanging in her face in a way that always annoyed her to no end. Now was not the time to obsessively brush it back or concern herself with how unkempt she looked. Trembling hands patted his cheeks and she felt her own breath, the sound of his eerily absent, quicken.
“Light, Light, Light. Oh shit!” She turned madly for the door, catching on her desk chair and knocking it over as she did. The wooden frame clattered loudly to the floor and she stumbled against her door in the process.
If you are dead I am sorry.
At least though, baby, you died with me. One last night of Jeffrey and Amy.
How we were supposed to be.
Her cheeks paled and rather than bolt the door as she originally intended, she tore it open and stared into the hall.
“Raoul? RAOUL? Fuck-”
She turned and stared blankly at the body of what had once been the most important man to her.
The most important person.
Though she’d sworn up and down not a single tear more would be shed for him, several spilled down her cheeks now and she rubbed the sides of her arms quickly.
Take that piece of me with you, Jeffrey. Take it with you and keep it close. Always.
“Light, Light, Light.” Numb lips whispered it as she stared fearfully at him.
This was one way to come to a decision, when Fate stole the chance from her.
At his name being cried, and with such emphasis, Raoul dropped both of the coffees in his hands and bolted up the stairs. Light brown and caramel like Svafa Hawkins’s hair spilled down the bottom steps in rivulets and heavy waterfalls. If Raoul had been out of his mind to stop and observe it, he would have wondered if the blood Svafa had spilled during her life had looked the same when it fell.
But his mind was in a different place.
“Hawkins, I’m coming!” He was out of breath when he reached the top, more so for his sprained leg begin agitated than for lack of endurance. A nurse with a round, childish face had patched him up as dawn was breaking over Stormwind, and it had yet to reach Kalimdor yet. It was just now reaching Dalaran.
Though she’d fixed it well, this sudden sprint was threatening all that she had healed. What had happened? Was it Sangrey? Was it Betty? He hadn’t thought to check in and see if their prisoner was still just that- he, Light-fuck what was going on?
He saw her standing there in the doorway, facing away from him and into the room. She looked terrible. Instead of judging her in revulsion, it softened him and only inspired his want to protect her.
“Hawkins, I’m here. Light, are you okay? What happened?” His arms wrapped around her first as he reached her, protectively hugging her back and away from whatever was in the room. There was safety in his arms. The love was hesitant and would like never be as sure as steadfast as the love that had held her last night, but it was something she could trust.
Or could she? Could she trust him not to shove her away once he saw Jeffrey there? Could she trust him not to judge her without waiting for an explanation? The truth wasn’t much better than what he might assume.
He smelled like fancy coffee and flowers. Maybe because there was one tucked into the pocket of his overcoat.
I’m here, Hawkins.
“I think he’s dead. He isn’t breathing and I think he’s dead.”
One shaky hand rose and she pointed at the young man there in her bed. The papercrafts were hidden beneath her blanket and her sick bucket near at hand.
Jeffrey looked terribly out of place.
And so much like a corpse.
“Light I think he is, Raoul. I woke up and he was there and he was dead!” She turned and hid her face against his chest, clinging to him if he didn’t shove her away.
Raoul please still like me.
Please understand.
Please don’t think I’m bad when I wasn’t.
Please?
Her thin frame shook and she wept softly. The pleasant smells did little to ease her anxiety and the more she focused on them, the more she obsessed.
Peacebloom and coffee and the bouquet she’d carried that pretty summer day when they’d exchanged vows that were so quickly broken.
Coffee and long nights and a case that had solved more mysteries than the Goldshire Killer. A case that had solved how their hearts - how their bodies- worked.
“Stay right here, okay?” Raoul kissed her sweetly and returned the hug before trying to set her aside. He paid little attention to the bucket or the peek of paper, drawing only his radio and a sharply-pointed, elegant wand.
“George we’ve got Sangrey in custody right now, he could be dead. Amavia’s dorm, send an agent. More if they don’t report in once they’re here. Yes, I- no, I didn’t ask. Why would I ask? Never mind I have to go.” The radio was cast angrily aside, and any safe money would have bet it had to do with whatever George had said.
Raoul’s steps were more certain then as he approached the bed and unkindly set his wand to Jeffrey’s throat while setting tight restraints. He didn’t check to see if Jeffrey was alive. A great deal of him didn’t care, and the rest only cared in so much that it wished he was dead. Peering at Jeffrey with distaste, he dragged him from the bed to the floor and nudged him against the wall with his polished shoes.
“Fucking bastard...” He muttered before going to get the device he’d thrown. In all the thoughts pouring through his mind, he never stopped to look at Amavia.
Quickly she snatched a bathrobe from her armoire and slipped the light blue fabric over her arms and belted it around her waist. Amber eyes stayed fixed on the floor and she shivered despite the fabric clothing her.
“I told George I’d testify against my mother. Light, I can’t think straight.” Her hand raked through her hair and she glanced once to the cuffed man.
This is how it should be.
The evil warlock in chains.
The heroine and the hero kiss and the scene fades to black.
Timidly she approached Raoul and tried to take his hand. Her own shook and she tried to sink against him once more.
“This is how it’s supposed to end, isn’t it? Right?”
“You did what?” Raoul sounded betrayed by it. “After everything he did? Why? Why, Hawkins?” There was disbelief, but mostly betrayal, and Raoul parted away from her just enough to kick Jeffrey. If he wasn’t dead, he soon would be after this treatment.
“Because she broke the Law. Beyond the hurts, beyond the evils he did to me, George told me to forgive and once that had passed judge them by the Law.”
Arms wrapped around herself and she shuddered.
“And she broke the Law. Countless times and in so many ways. Light, lover, she may have tortured your aunt. She tortured his father. She lied to me. Killed children. My father.”
Fingers pulled at her hair and she shuddered again, wetting her lips. “He will be tried and who are you or I to say he won’t hang still? Light knows he deserves it. But I won’t compromise the Law and Justice out of spite. Never.”
“He tortured YOU, Hawkins!” There was accusation in his voice and another spiteful kick was delivered, this time as a heel to Jeffrey’s chest. Finally that won a kind of noise out of the half-dead man, and at that Raoul all but slid to his knees and started punching him.
“You son of a bitch!” In consciousness, there was nothing but pain and an overwhelming confusion. The words, the voice, gave Jeffrey some clarity as to what was happening and he wasn’t surprised. Arcane restraints around his wrist when he tried to lift his arms to block the blow didn’t surprise him either. It made sense that she would turn him in.
When he was vulnerable, when he could struggle. Right then he just wished she understood that was unnecessary. He would’ve gone willingly for her. Part of him already felt like it was locked away. Hope died when he realized he wasn’t going to be able to stop Raoul’s retribution, and a sinking acceptance overtook him.
If he was a stronger man, he would have held his chin higher just so Raoul didn’t have to aim. He deserved it. But he was weak, especially now, and his face instinctively turned away from the blows.
“Raoul! Stop it, Light, stop it!” She tried to pry him off their suspect and kissed the back of his neck. “We can’t be like that! We can’t be like them!”
Thin fingers clutched at his overcoat, sinking into his fabric and desperately trying to pull him away. “He did torture me and I’m so sorry he’s torturing you now! Don’t let him win. Don’t give him this, Raoul.”
Eyes flickered to Jeffrey and she whimpered once.
He didn’t deserve to be treated like this.
“Let us not become the evil we hate. Please?”
One final blow was delivered with all the hate and indignation that Raoul could muster. He allowed Amavia to pull him off them, back up to his feet and far enough so that he couldn’t even kick him. His skin was hot and his blood was rushing, but she was right. He wasn’t Sangrey and if he couldn’t keep himself in check now, what was to stop him from slipping down that same slope?
This was how people like Sangrey were created in the first place.
Jeffrey sucked in weak breath through blood-filled nostrils and spit out a tooth with a weak but hysterical laugh. His face was drenched in blood now, and one eye was squeezed shut in preparation for the swelling that would keep it that way. The other was wide and red-rimmed with tears.
Had it ever looked so blue? Even before all of this ever started?
“You-... you look good together, like that.” He cried another laugh and pathetically pulled his legs in closer so they were folded underneath him. His head went back against the wall and he coughed in a depressing way.
“Don’t you say a goddamn word, Sangrey, I swear I’ll-”
“You’ll what? Hit me?” Jeffrey laughed like it was an idle threat, or as if he didn’t care. He really didn’t. He would have done the same if someone had hurt Amavia even a tenth of the way that he himself had.
That blue eye lingered on them together like that, and hadn’t missed the kisses in passing. It would have been lying to say that didn’t hurt him more than the brutality. But he was tired. So tired.
You should’ve let him kill me, Amy.
That would have been merciful of you.
I guess I don’t deserve that though.
I still love you.
“Raoul...look at him, fuck.” She stepped away and tore open the drawer of her desk. A rack of vials shook and clanged inside, glass clinking against each other. One of the healing potions- there were so many less than when she bought them -was tore free and her robe swirled around her hips as she moved back towards the bloodied man.
The potion was uncorked and she moved to kneel there, next to Jeffrey.
Next to Sangrey.
“We have to be better than this. We have to be good people. If we let the anger overtake us we can be just as bad as those that hurt us.”
Raoul was quick to try and wrap his arms around her from behind and tear the potion away.
“He’s goddamn lucky I didn’t kill him, Hawkins! Let him be happy with that!” It was a growl, but more towards Jeffrey than her, and it was his own turn to try and pull her away now. He was stronger though, and not worn down by sickness on top of that.
Jeffrey nodded at her, agreeing with Raoul there. He wasn’t happy with that though, and he fully intended to agitate the man into killing him. He’d have done it himself already if he wasn’t bound so.
“Right, Amy. A big strong man like that I’m lucky he didn’t kill me in one blow, you know-” He winced as he coughed down against his shoulder. Everything in his mouth felt like copper. “It’s a wonder how a petite little girl like Valerie ever got the advantage over him. I can’t imagine it was a fair fight, you know. She must have made him real weak in the knees first-”
If his stomach was swelling to the bursting point and he didn’t groan in agony as he crumpled in on himself, he would have kept going. That was unnecessary though, and if Raoul hadn’t been busy trying to pull Amavia away, he would have likely taken the bait and killed Jeffrey right there.
“Shut up, Sangrey! Nobody wants to hear it!”
Rather than just incite anger in Raoul, he lit a fire beneath Amavia and she struggled in Raoul’s grasp.
“Fuck you, Jeffrey! You don’t know! You don’t understand! Fuck you!” Her arm tried desperately to free itself from the grip Raoul had and she made a noise of sheer anger and frustration when it remained pinned.
Auburn hair hung in strands in her eyes again and those amber suns he’d paid worship to were golden with the temper riding her. The past weeks had been hard, losses and revelations she’d never expected had torn her already unsteady world to pieces. Voices in her head, memories that did not belong, feelings and dreams that woke her sobbing in the night were all HIS fault. And now he dared mock the only person who understood her?
Who understood what he had done to her?
“Light damn you! And the Law! You better feel fucking lucky that I adhere to that still, baby.” It was spat like a curse and she tried to free herself again.
All those sweet things he’d done for her last night were fast fading.
Could one night undo what he’d done to her?
Never.
“Then don’t,” Jeffrey lifted his eye back up to her, head lolling back against the wall. “I told you I’d rather die than hurt you again, and it seems I’ve done that unintentionally.”
Fingers lightly splotched with his own blood began to squirm and twist against themselves. “I’m grateful for last night, Amy. Getting to spend one more night in your arms was more than I deserved. You probably didn’t mean it, but to hear you say you still loved me meant the world to me. I love you too. I always will.”
A sharp breath was sucked in and it was all he could do not to cry now. Maybe for Amavia, and look how much that had taken to break him? But not for Raoul. He wouldn’t give the stranger violating his wife a sliver of satisfaction or a glimpse of weakness. There had to be a special place in the nether for men that stole wives. If he was lucky at all, it’d be adjacent to the special place in the nether for men that hurt their wives.
“I guess we’ll have to see and find out...” He closed his eye again and continued twisting his fingers. No more fel. He’d promised her that and he’d keep to it. No more escaping or running from the law, he’d promised to meet justice for her.
But well, it never hurt carry a little bit of wolfsbane for when life was no longer worth living. Raoul would have to learn to check sleeves from now on. Amy too. If she was ever going to be the hero she so deserved. Though it wasn’t enough to break the bonds, as they simply expanded with him, he shifted until his fingers were black claws and he was able to tear along the backs of each opposite hands.
Just a brush of it in the blood stream.
No wonder it was illegal.
Maybe the curse was the only good thing Line had done. The only thing he’d done right by his son. Would he even care now?
“I just have... one condition...” He already felt woozy, and Raoul dragged Amavia further away in anticipation of Sangrey breaking free somehow. They always did.
His blue eye snapped open, red-rim looking more milky and poisoned now.
“She gets the commendation for this.”
Amavia let Raoul hold her now and didn’t fight, rather she leaned against him and felt drained. The sickness had tapped her of her strength and his words her will.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sangrey. Your brother will be here soon and he’ll make sure you go back to the Hold. With you locked up tight again maybe you and Valerie can be cell-friends! Wouldn’t that be ironic?”
How dare you, Jeffrey. How dare you try and ruin what little happiness I have left now.
Were her temper not running so high she may have noticed his eye sooner but it took her a moment and she stared.
“What tricks are you playing now?”
“No tricks, love. Just putting my heart in a safe place since I don’t think you want it back and no one else can have it. I love you, so much. So-” His lungs felt like they were filling with water when in truth it was more of the milky fluid from his reaction to the wolfsbane.
“So-” His claws curled in and felt stuck there, body too tense and rigid to move anymore of his own accord.
“I love you so much. My Amy. My Quill. My wife. My first... my only.”
“Gods-Light-fucking somebody-” Raoul threw Amavia away from him then, not meaning to hurt her but not having time to be gentle. In the drama of it all he’d been frozen but he knew a death speech when he heard it. He’d written a few for Valerie himself. He’d lacked the conviction then to carry through with it though, and if that was one thing Jeffrey Ellis Worthington would always be superior for, it was conviction.
As the worgen’s throat began to swell shut and his tongue expanded until it was puffy and hanging from his maw, Raoul tried to undo half of the damage. He’d done almost all of it himself but he couldn’t let Sangrey die. Not after what Amavia had told him. Law. Justice.
Fair trial and a life in prison if that was deemed suitable.
“You’re insane, do you know that?!” Raoul shouted, drawing a small pocket knife and trying to drain some of the milky fluid by nicking along his arms and collar. He pierced the two separate tips of Sangrey’s mutilated tongue and watched them seep pearly beads, but it just wasn’t enough. This wasn’t any strain of wolfsbane he’d ever seen before. But since when had the Good Doctor’s research ever called for garden variety materials?
Or maybe Jeffrey Ellis Worthington had feared the worst from the beginning. Maybe he’d kept some hidden away just in case he proved a lesser man than he hoped to be. If that was so, the planning served him now.
“Fuckfuckfuck-” Raoul jerked the worgen forward and stared into a smoldering orange eye just in time to see it burn out.
In the little heap she landed in on the floor there was only shock and terror.
So many memories flooded through her mind and made her shudder and weep.
The first time they met, her sassy comments in the harbor and his floating lantern and the flapping of his pretty red scarf as he made her laugh. As he entrapped her with eyes so blue it made her breath catch.
Cold winter breezes as she set up clues for him to find and make him smile in a mock mystery. The way she watched him from afar as he fumbled and finally pulled the chest from the harbor, that special spot they first laid eyes on each other, and nibbled one of those horrid holiday candies.
His pretty clothes and the first bubble of moonglow in that delicate glass he handed her. Their first date. His promises that he’d do anything she ever asked of him. The flowers he’d given her were dried on her dresser at her mama’s.
Sneaking out. Kisses in Darnassus and the promise she’d run away with him. That first embrace in the Swamp of Sorrows and the way his body moved against hers. Vows, promises, rings, their souls, it all washed over her as she stared at him from beneath the curtain of her hair and watched a part of herself die with the light in his eyes.
Baby, I loved you so and I’m sorry to see you go.
But you suffered, Light did you suffer, and maybe it’s better this way.
Maybe George was right.
It didn’t stop the yellow and blue and white ribbons in the Harbor tree from tickling against her skin now or the ones so like them on her wedding dress from giving a silken illusion beneath her palms.
Amber eyes stayed on the ember orange till they faded, till every breath of life was gone from her first, her once promised only, and the man she had married.
Slowly she crawled over to Raoul and tried to move his hands away, tried to pull him away from the body.
“He’s gone. Light, he’s gone. It’s better this way...call George, let him know.” Limply her hands fell away if he moved or not and she sat there on her knees, hair a mess and eyes red rimmed.
Not a single tear more spilled out and she sat there mutely now.
That part of me is dead too.
Take it to the grave with you.
“That won’t be necessary. George Worthington is here.” The agent announced with a salute as she stepped into the room. She was a battlemage and if not for her fiery red hair, she would have resembled a picture of Annabelle Worthington. Fitting.
George was even more fitting as he strolled in behind her. His smile fell when he saw them, and Raoul let the worgen go. He picked Amavia up with him, dragging her if he had to, and moving her to the bed so that she was faced away from the scene. His hand felt the sweat and heat on her forehead and it gave him hope that Sangrey had been lying, or at least, that it wasn’t as it sounded.
How could you at all though, Hawkins?
He’s a monster.
Why wasn’t I enough for you now?
Am I somehow short of THAT?
Brushing back her hair, he glanced solemnly back to George and then to the corpse.
“Leave us,” George waved a hand lightly at the battlemage, who obediently stepped outside. With all the grace of an Archmage, and none of the tension-easing jest that made him so adorable, George swept across the room and knelt down beside his bound brother.
The arcane restraints were severed with disgust, each movement causing the billowy cloth to shift around his legs and wrists. If Raoul wasn’t watching it himself, he would have said George was incapable of looking as heartbroken as he did right then.
“George, I’m so-” He cringed when George only held up a hand to silence him.
“Thank you, my apprentices. You’ve apprehended and slain a dangerous criminal. I wish I could stay and congratulate you further, but I’m afraid I have a brother to bury now. Please excuse me.”
George used his sleeve to wipe away as much of the milky fluid as he could before he lifted the large worgen. It looked effortless with the arcane to give him strength. Jeffrey looked smaller in his big brother’s arms. Like a dead horse, his tongue hung out of the side of his maw and his dead eyes stared.
Without glancing at either of them again, or waiting to hear any objection, he left the room and took the body with him. The battlemage stepped in the, baton in hand, and saluted them. She was impassive about all of this on the outside, although within her heart was hurting for George. She’d shared a few nights with him, but she didn’t know him all that well. Still, it was hard to think of him burying anyone he loved.
Would he bury a daughter next?
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