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jack-and-pax · 4 years

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Tales From Mouth Othrys

Pax: Magical Daycare II

In Luke’s enraged exit, he didn’t notice Axel on the other side of the hallway.

He did almost run into Mercedes and Pax. For a moment, his eyes widened with fury. Then, they relaxed. “Hey! Jack’s boy. And… Sadie?”

“Mercedes,” she supplied.

“Like the car?” Most of Luke’s fury faded to confusion.

“Like in Call of the Wild,” she said blankly.

“Huh,” Luke said. “You haven’t been questioned by Flynn yet.” The last part was a cross between a statement and a question.

The dark circles under Luke’s eyes made Pax wonder if Luke had slept since the donut shop blew up. Pax had heard rumors of nightmares. That could make anyone cranky.

“Shall I tell her that I take priority over her sleep?” Mercedes asked. “I’m quite flattered. She seems important to the camp.”

Luke released a shuddered breath, exhaling the last bit of his anger. “She and Jack have a strict morning schedule to get their voices as powerful as possible for the day. I’m sorry. It’s been a long morning. I’m just very impressed by your involvement in capturing Julian.” Luke set a hand on her shoulder.

Mercedes stiffened.

Axel paled at the mention of his first kill. Fortunately, the medals didn’t make any noise when he touched them.

Mercedes artfully kept her eyes off Axel and firmly on Luke’s hand. Pax got the feeling she didn’t appreciate being touched. Pax would bet that she was running through several ways to break Luke’s hand.

She cleared her throat. Her mouth opened, as though to speak, but no sound came out.

Then Luke walked past. He gave them one last charming smile as he waved a hand. “I’ll see the two of you later during sword practice. We’ll have to see how skilled you are with a blade.”

He was gone, having never seen Axel on the other side of the door. He also didn’t seem to realize they had been eavesdropping. Or that the hand he’d put on Mercedes shoulder was discolored from whomever he hit.

For a breath, Mercedes clutched her shoulder like Luke’s touch had been poisonous.

Pax took her hand. Belated, he wondered if she hated being touched in general. “You okay?” he asked.

Mercedes stared at him in a way that said few had dared to touch her hand. She glanced down at the contact. “I appear to have attracted a parasite.”

“At least it’s a cute one,” Pax tried to comfort, wondering if he should let go. Her fingers shook.

Mercedes watched Luke disappear at a bend in the hall. Hollowly, she said, “Earlier this week, I thought there were only Romans in the world and demigods didn’t have a choice: either death by monsters outside or forced servitude in the walls of New Rome. Now, I find out my half-brother on the Greek side is trying to form an army to stop a force as unstoppable as New Rome’s and he is clearly unprepared. Seeing the Greeks exist, feeling them, gives me the creeps.” She sighed. “There is so much work to do. And it starts with getting rid of this parasite.”

Pax almost didn’t catch the last part. She snatched her hand back to shove him into the room.

Axel, who had been listening warily, scrambled to catch up to them.

Pax almost flopped onto his face when he saw the interior of the room.

This room did not belong on a cruise ship. It belonged on a Frankenstein movie set.

There were rows of shelves on one side of the room, containing—Pax blinked in surprise—spice bottles and vials. Others had scrolls and ancient-looking tomes. On several neatly spaced tables, there was laboratory equipment set up for some kind of experiment. In the center was a full fire pit, with a massive, humming suction duct above it. Pax had no idea how it was catching all the smoke—it should have been spilling all over the place. But, Pax didn’t care. What he cared about was the archaic, cast-iron pot above the fire, bubbling with a strange liquid.

Just behind the fire stood the looming statue of three women—or a woman with three heads?—holding lit torches, swords, and other ominous items.

Other tables had skeletons or jars for dissection.

A black cat napped peacefully on the ribs of a massive skeleton. It lazily opened one eye to see the three of them approach.

They passed two metal rods with sparks flying between them. Tesla coils?

By the science equipment stood three other people. One was the chubby, sun-burned boy who had ruined their camouflage. “Come onnnnnnn, Al!”

“Don’t call me that,” another boy said.

The other occupants in the room were clearly siblings. One was a girl, maybe Pax’s age, with curly black hair tied into a ponytail. She was short, maybe only five feet tall. Her skin had a healthy Mediterranean glow to it. Her face was tinted pink, like she’d been crying, and she rubbed furiously at her eyes.

The other was a boy. He was awkwardly tall, maybe close to six feet. Freckles spackled his pale features, ones that hadn’t caught up to the maturity of his height. He must have been older, at least fourteen?, but Pax couldn’t decide how much older. He leaned over a Bunsen burner, using a match to light the bottom. There was a bruise forming under one eye, a product of Luke’s temper.

He and his sister wore burned and stained lab jackets.

Pax’s breath caught at the most startling feature: their eyes were emerald green. For Pax, this made them unfairly hot and obviously witches.

The plump, shorter boy tapped his fingertips together like an evil henchman. From the way his eyes seemed to glitter with ideas, Pax knew he was more an evil mastermind. “But, Al—”

“Alabaster,” the green-eyed boy corrected again. With routine ease, he set a beaker of clear liquid above the Bunsen burner and sprinkled something into it. The liquid twisted dark and ominous.

“Think about it like a lovely tit for tat. You know my pranks drive Luke nuts,” the blond boy said.

The younger sister nodded her head feverously. Her eyes blazed with rage. “Matthias is right. We can get back at him!”

Alabaster scowled, sniffing the contents of his beaker. He pinched something out of a vial on the table and dusted it into the boiling container. His eyes focused on the experiment intensely like he feared acknowledging their words or what had happened. Pax wondered if the boy had ever been hit before. Pax wondered what that would be like—to remember the first time you’d ever been hit.

Alabaster’s shoulders slumped. “If anything is used from this laboratory, he’ll know where you got it. I will seek revenge upon Luke on my own time, in my own way. Put the ingredients away, Hanson.”

Matthias Hanson stopped tapping his fingers together. A deep sigh bellowed from him as he slunk a step towards an ingredients shelf. With another prolonged sigh, he set a vial into an empty slot. “Chris bet ten drachma that no one could get it from you.”

When Alabaster refused to acknowledge his pouting, Matthias took a back step towards the exit, where Mercedes, Axel, and Pax had stalled.

The green-eyed girl folded her arms and glanced up to the ceiling. Any hint of previous tears vanished as a smirk lit up her face. “But… we can’t be held accountable if someone were to steal things from the laboratory.”

Alabaster didn’t look at her, though his lip did twitch. “True. But, you don’t have the talent for theft or silence, Hanson. Idiotic, loud distractions? Yes. Not theft. Now, unless you want to try something—”

“I don’t like being a guinea pig, Potter!” Matthias said, putting his hands up defensively. He backed the rest of the way out the door. He snapped his fingers and made finger guns at Mercedes, Axel, and Pax as he moonwalked past them. A loud thump sounded when he stumbled into the door.

Mercedes glanced at a watch on her wrist and shoved the Pax brothers further forward.

The green-eyed girl focused on them, her eyes going wide. She tugged on Alabaster’s sleeve.

If Pax had to guess, that blush had something to do with seeing Axel’s bed head. His ruggedness often had that effect on women and the right kind of boys.

“What are these?” Alabaster asked, not looking up. As he poured some of the beaker’s continents into a vial, he asked his sister, “Lelly, is your Mustela vial ready for trial?”

She snatched something from a drawer and shoved it at him, still smiling shyly at the three of them.

Alabaster set his beaker down, so he could take her vial. Its continent was green and fizzed slightly.

Mercedes snorted and gestured towards the Pax brothers. Axel opened his mouth to answer Alabaster’s question. Mercedes beat him, her response locking the Pax brother’s and Witch Boy’s futures together.

“New guinea pigs, apparently,” she said.

“Ah, what fortuitous timing,” Alabaster said. He straightened and walked up to them. He extended a vial to either Pax brother; Axel, the ominous dark brew; Pax, the fuzzy green one. Reflexively, they took them. “Here, drink this.”

“Ajax,” Axel said, sounding more annoyed than worried.

Pax would show Axel not to worry about him doing something awesome. He popped the cork topper off his vial. When a witch tells you to drink a mysterious brew—

“Don’t!” Axel shouted this time. His free hand reached for Pax’s face, but he was too slow.

Pax tossed the contents into his mouth, excited for some magical goodness.

***

Thank you for reading! This short is quite a bit lighter than the other ones, and I hope you’re still enjoying! See what Pax turns into next week in Magical Daycare Part III.

#PJO #HOO #Percy Jackson and the Olympians #Fanfiction #TFMO #Luke #Alabaster #Lou Ellen #Pax #Axel #Matthias #Why you shouldn't accept potions from strangers #I don't know... it worked out okay for me.....#But I liked being a newt...

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felseekers · 5 years

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lost anchors

Victory for Kul Tiras had come at a cost, as it so frequently seemed to, but the price they’d paid had earned them their fleet back, had earned Jaina some measure of atonement, if not peace, and earned both the Kul Tirans and the Alliance as a whole a moment’s respite.

It was hard not to feel just a little bit proud, a little bit triumphant.

Not since the initial voyage to Boralus had Jaina been in Stormwind’s keep, but she’d been preoccupied in the library for some hours, losing track of the time as she hadn’t allowed herself to do for years. It was quiet now, mostly just a few guards making their rounds. From one corridor, the sound of hushed conversation emerged, and the only thing that turned Jaina’s feet towards it was the somewhat-familiar cadence of Captain Shadeweaver’s voice, carrying far and clear as it typically did.

She stopped, however, when the sound of Captain Shadeweaver’s voice abruptly rose to a shout, “...hope your little power play was worth it, but I doubt you’re capable of thinking about anyone but yourself, Vivial. Don’t feed me that garbage now and expect me to believe it.”

Another voice, presumably Vivial, responded, but too quietly for Jaina to hear. Captain Shadeweaver, however, exploded. “You expect me to care about your ‘secret’ struggles when you brought this on yourself?! He never asked for this. He never even planned for this. He went back because your family thought you were getting in too deep. Because it’s all about you, right?”

Jaina prepared to turn and leave, but suddenly a void elf woman, with dark violet tresses falling across her shoulders, strode briskly by, her face a stony mask as she acknowledged Jaina with a nod. Jaina was ready to escape as well, but Captain Shadeweaver herself emerged, her blind side facing Jaina, and slumped against the wall, sinking down until she sat against it, her face buried in one hand.

She didn’t know what possessed her to stand there and watch instead of getting herself out of this situation, but she waited, torn between approaching the captain and letting the whole odd encounter slip by.

The Captain Shadeweaver sitting on the floor, however, was vastly different than the Captain Shadeweaver Jaina knew from their trip to Boralus, from the battle that ensued as they reclaimed their fleet, and that, more than anything, kept her where she stood.

She didn’t remain undetected for long, though--one of Captain Shadeweaver’s ears twitched slightly, and she looked up to lock eyes with Jaina at the other end of the corridor, her face drawn and haggard with exhaustion. It was a stark reversal from how Jaina normally saw the captain, so bright and full of vivacity she’d initially envied, but come to appreciate with time. She could not ever recall, however, seeing the captain so empty.

“Lord Admiral.” even her voice was more subdued than normal, hoarse from yelling, as she swiped at one side of her face with one hand. “You seem to have caught me at a disadvantage.”

“Are you all right?” Jaina ventured, reaching out with one hand despite the physical distance that made a gesture of comfort impossible, and she drew her hand back. “That was--”

“It’s not me I’m worried about, Proudmoore.” Captain Shadeweaver’s face twisted into a scowl, and her shoulders slumped as she released a heavy sigh. Turning her head away, she picked herself up off the floor of the keep and stretched her arms. There was a look on her face that said she was desperately trying to decide whether she wanted to say anything or not, and that, too, brought Jaina up short.

Captain Shadeweaver, in all the time Jaina knew her, had never been the type to hold her comments. She spoke her mind, and sometimes Jaina found it refreshing, but others she found it insufferably annoying. She’d almost have preferred the captain’s usual quips to this kind of detached, despairing defeat.

In the end, the captain noticeably withdrew from the conversation, and Jaina found herself disappointed. “I’m sure you’ve got things to do before we head back to Boralus, Lord Admiral, and Elune knows I do, too--I’m sure we’ll speak again later.”

Her pace was brisk and long and loping in its gait, the gait of someone who’d spent time aboard the deck of a ship, and Jaina watched her leave with a kind of concern warring with dismissal.

Shaking her head briefly, Jaina turned and followed the captain’s path, albeit at a slower pace. They did have much to do, as always.

But Jaina made a note to herself for their upcoming trip back to Boralus to speak to the captain again.

The Silent Tide was slowly becoming familiar to Jaina.

It still had its perpetual clutter on the deck, its raucous crewmates led by their equally rambunctious captain, its oddly worn-down and well-loved charm. This was a ship that had been home to many people over many long years at sea, and it showed.

Captain Shadeweaver’s demeanor had returned to something approximating normal as Jaina arrived to prepare for the ship’s departure. She made jokes among her crew, slapped them amicably on the shoulder as she swept past, on her way to her next task, her steps long and sweeping and almost dance-like in their grace. She was in her element, confident and self-assured.

Part of Jaina thought she might’ve just imagined the unusual encounter with the captain in Stormwind’s keep the night before, but if she looked beyond the surface, Jaina could see the subtle differences: Captain Shadeweaver’s shoulders hunched by a nigh-indiscernible angle, and her attention wandered as she heard reports from her crew. Her grins, while wide and toothy as always, looked just a little forced, just a little insincere.

Jaina busied herself checking the cargo manifests that one of the captain’s crew handed her, ensuring they wouldn’t be leaving anything behind for their trip to Boralus. She was startled out of her concentration when Captain Shadeweaver’s voice abruptly cut through the white noise of the ship’s chatter like a blade.

“What do you mean we had a misallocation of space?!”

Quickly folding and pocketing the manifest, Jaina strode through the ship until she reached the source of the shouting--Captain Shadeweaver, holding a half-shredded parchment piece with a look of incredulous, exasperated frustration on her face. The crew member she was facing--Eastland, Jaina remembered his name was Eastland--looked sheepish and cowed by the captain’s rage.

“Just what I said, cap’n.” Eastland indicated the paper held in the captain’s grip, near to white-knuckle tight. “We don’t have enough bunks for our crew and guests combined.”

Somehow, the captain’s grip on the parchment tightened even more. “How is that possible? We have the same number of crew and the same number of bunks that we had when we first arrived in port here. How, may I ask, did we lose some? And how am I just now finding out about it?!”

“Well, Captain...” Eastland did Captain Shadeweaver the credit of looking her in the eye, which Jaina had a feeling was the only thing that saved him from the captain’s immediate retribution, “...we’d have normally talked to Kyrian about that sort of thing--he handled the finer details, you took on the big picture...”

Jaina wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Captain Shadeweaver’s face turned even more apoplectic with fury, and Eastland seemed to realize too late he’d said the wrong thing. “One,” Captain Shadeweaver said, deceptively calm, “I think I made myself pretty clear on the matter when I told you not to bring Kyrian up again. Two, you didn’t answer my second question: how did we lose the ability to house our crew and guests?”

“We ended up with some last-minute additions to the crew manifest and some cargo had to go onto the ship by order of Matthias Shaw,” Eastland indicated the parchment the captain still held in her hand, noticeably more crumpled than it’d been earlier, “and, well, we meant to tell you, but...”

Captain Shadeweaver sighed heavily, a sigh full of exhaustion and impatience and resigned acceptance all at once. Finally, she turned and acknowledged Jaina’s presence with a nod. “Proudmoore--I guess you heard the unfortunate news. You’ll be taking my quarters for the trip back to Boralus.”

Part of Jaina burned to ask who Kyrian was, and why he was forbidden from being mentioned aboard the ship, but she’d wager it was pirate business from before Captain Shadeweaver’s Alliance days. “And just where will you stay, if I do?”

Captain Shadeweaver shrugged. “I'll stay awake, maybe keep watch overnight if my crow’s-eye crewman needs a rest. Not the first time I’ve done it, doubt it’ll be the last.” With a sharp whistle, the captain garnered the attention of two deckhands, who straightened at her summons. “Boys! Get the Lady Proudmoore’s belongings to my quarters--we’ll be sailing off within the day.”

Turning to stride briskly away to whichever task awaited her next, Jaina didn’t even have time to protest the decision, and by the time the Silent Tide was shoving off from the Alliance docks, she found herself in the captain’s quarters, taking in the scenery.

Captain Shadeweaver herself hadn’t accompanied her--she was at the ship’s bow, preparing to set their course. She had told Jaina to make herself at home, however, and while she didn’t know if she could get precisely that comfortable, it would do for a temporary workspace.

At the center of the room was the captain’s desk, an obviously well-loved and well-worn piece with its share of gouges and scars from where blades had been scraped into its surface and various ink stains from accidental spills. It was smooth to the touch aside from the deeper marks, but Jaina found a suitably flat space at the desk’s center, and set up her small work area there--inkwell, and quills, and two stacks of parchment: one filled out, letters she’d read, and the other, blank, for the intended responses.

Hours passed, and Jaina fell into the rhythm of writing out her replies and plans for whenever they arrived in Boralus. The candle she’d lit earlier, already half-burned down, reached the end of its wick, and Jaina got up to search for where the captain kept her replacements.

After a cursory look in the most obvious places within the captain’s quarters, Jaina figured she ought to find the captain herself to ask rather than digging through her belongings, and set off for the ship’s crew bunks, really just a series of hammocks at the ship’s center. All of them were filled, but none of them were concealing a night elf that even came close to resembling the captain.

Withdrawing her head, Jaina set her steps towards the galley, almost unnerved by the quietness of the ship--the hour had to be later than she’d thought, or perhaps the crew was still unused to a more rigid schedule, working with the Alliance.

Within the galley, it was dark and empty, except for the seat at the head of the table, where a tiny candle was lit, illuminating the face of Captain Shadeweaver, deep lines of exhaustion etched into her face and a mug in her hand.

It took several seconds for the captain to take note of Jaina’s presence while she determined how to approach her in this state, but Captain Shadeweaver spared her the trouble. “Proudmoore,” the captain greeted her in a somber, tired tone, holding up her mug half-heartedly, “I see I’m not the only one up at this hour.” Kicking out the chair next to her--the chair at her right, Jaina realized--the captain continued, “Have a seat if you’d like.”

Jaina took it, but suddenly felt like her question about where the captain kept her extra candles felt too light for the atmosphere in the room. Captain Shadeweaver’s gaze was distant as she studied the tabletop, one fingernail tracing a mark in the wood, and Jaina found herself asking instead, “Your crewman mentioned someone called Kyrian earlier--who is he?”

Captain Shadeweaver stilled abruptly, and Jaina hurriedly tacked on, “I only ask in case it’s a threat or potential complication we haven’t discussed yet.”

“Right.” Captain Shadeweaver said tightly, and the tension in the air rose. “He’s no threat, Proudmoore, you’ve got my word on that. Beyond that, I doubt you’d care to hear the details.”

She changed the subject, to something she hoped would be less of a sensitive topic. “Were you arguing with someone in Stormwind’s keep last night?”

The captain’s grip on her mug tightened, and her free hand, resting on the table, clenched into a fist. “If you’re asking for the sake of our efforts to keep the peace with the Alliance--”

“I’m not asking because of that,” Jaina interrupted, and found it rang true, “I’m asking because it seemed like it troubled you.”

Captain Shadeweaver held Jaina’s gaze for a long moment, as if gauging the statement for honesty, before breaking it and letting her fist relax again, scratching at a score in the old, worn-down table. “It’s not me I’m worried about, Proudmoore.” She said quietly, and Jaina remembered her saying the same thing in Stormwind’s keep. “Vivial Starstrider--that’s the person I was arguing with--just doesn’t have much perception outside of herself and her goals. Kyrian is her brother--and he used to be my first mate.”

The obvious question of what happened to him rested heavily in the air, but the captain didn’t wait for Jaina to ask it. “Vivial was one of Magister Umbric’s big researchers into the void, and Ky told me she was always getting sideways looks from the family for her magic research over the years. When she signed on with Umbric, they drew a line and asked him to come back to talk some sense into her before she embarrassed the family any more than she already had. He ended up getting dragged into their void nonsense and...well, he was never the same, I’ll put it that way.”

Jaina considered what little she knew of how the void affected the void elves, and grasped for a question to ask that wouldn’t feel insensitive. “Did it overwhelm him?”

Captain Shadeweaver huffed and took another drink out of her mug. “No, not like you’re probably thinking. The void just...isn’t as compatible with him as it is with some of the others. I didn’t even find out what’d happened until a few months ago--I just thought he’d dropped off the face of the world without a trace. Lady Xaaria’s been trying to help him, but...it’s a slow-going process.”

“The first time I was here,” Jaina indicated the chair she now sat in, “I noticed you kept this one empty...”

“Yeah, it’s pretty sentimental of me, huh?” Captain Shadeweaver made a self-deprecating sound as she took another drink out of her mug. “Keep imagining he’ll be good to come back one day and we’ll just pick right back up where we left off, but...I know that’s not the case.” Her grin that time was a little more normal, a little more like the Captain Shadeweaver Jaina knew, but there was a sad edge to it, as well. “Guess that makes you my honorary first mate for the evening.”

A faint burning feeling on the back of Jaina’s neck reminded her that she ought to be careful what she wished for in regards to the captain’s demeanor, but didn’t regret the loss of tension from the room. The air was lighter between them, and Jaina felt safe to change the subject again. “I was going to ask where you kept your spare candles--the one on your desk burned out.”

“Ah, right.” the captain drained the remainder of whatever was in her mug--Jaina caught the faint earthy scent of some kind of tea--and set it down on the tabletop, pinching the candle out. “I imagine you didn’t come all the way down here just so I could unload all of that onto you.”

“I didn’t mind.” Jaina said quietly as they walked, mindful of the rest of the sleeping crew. “You didn’t seem like yourself. It was unusual to see you so...downtrodden.”

“Didn’t realize you were keeping track.” from this angle, Jaina couldn’t see the captain’s face, but it was all too easy to imagine the sly look on her face.

“Your personality makes it difficult not to notice.” Jaina shot back.

The captain laughed as she pushed the door to her quarters, sitting ajar, fully open. “Fair point, I suppose.”

While she rifled through the top drawers in her desk, Jaina busied herself organizing the reports and replies she’d already finished, sorting them by importance so she could send them out whenever they arrived. “You keep surprisingly tidy quarters, for your ship being constantly cluttered.”

“It’s organized chaos, Proudmoore--I’ve had a couple hundred years to get the system down.” Captain Shadeweaver produced a new candle from one of her desk drawers and yawned deeply. “There you go.”

Jaina reached out to take the candle, and hesitated once it was in her grasp. “You could sleep while I work. I’ll be awake for some time yet.”

“If I’d known you planned to be awake all night anyway, I might’ve just made you work in the galley instead.” Captain Shadeweaver teased. “Don’t worry about it--I’d rather you have it available as an option if you wanted it. The crewman I’m swapping bunks with later is supposed to be free in a few hours, but I’ll doze there,” she nodded towards the chair in the corner, “until then, if that’ll appease you.”

Jaina wanted to say that it didn’t particularly matter to her if the captain slept or not, but the room felt fuller with her here, and she’d have fallen on a blade before admitting it, but she’d almost have preferred the captain stay anyway.

Captain Shadeweaver took the chair in the corner, and Jaina returned to her paperwork, though it didn’t hold the same urgency that it had earlier. Fatigue burned at her eyelids, and while she made a valiant attempt to stay awake and finish what remained, at some point during the night, the unbroken quiet of the captain’s quarters and the sound of the captain’s breathing lulled Jaina off into sleep, right at the captain’s desk.

Morning came, and found Jaina at Captain Shadeweaver’s desk, with a new ache in her neck and a--fortunately long-finished--bundle of parchment under her cheek.

Something thick and warm rested over her shoulders, though, and Jaina reached up to feel soft leather, oiled and treated for use during a storm. It had to be one of Captain Shadeweaver’s jackets, the kind worn when one needed to stay warm and relatively dry in cooler climates at sea, and the shoulders didn’t fit quite right across Jaina’s own, but it was a surprising gesture of comfort from the captain herself--it couldn’t have been anyone else.

She went up to the top deck of the ship, the captain’s jacket left carefully hung over the back of the chair, and found their second day at sea had brought a storm.

It wasn’t serious--not bad enough to make the captain consider altering their course--but certainly unpleasant for those whose duties kept them above-deck. Anyone who wasn’t required to be up top found themselves in the galley, with some of the tea the captain seemed to prefer--she forbade them to drink anything stronger while they waited to see how the storm developed.

For a time, Jaina had stayed in the captain’s quarters, but her dedication the night before had paid off, and her reports were finished well ahead of schedule with just a half hour or so’s extra work. It left her curiously bereft of purpose during the ship’s steady rocking while they weathered the storm, and she found herself following the quiet sound of conversation to the galley, where at least half the ship’s crew had congregated. The other half had to be in their bunks.

Captain Shadeweaver, at the table’s head, noticed Jaina’s presence too quickly for her to turn and leave, and her face split into a wide grin as she kicked the empty chair at her right away from the table. “Proudmoore--come down to make sure the rest of us are staying out of trouble?”

For all her outward exuberance, Jaina could see the captain’s slow blinking and knew that exhaustion had to be dragging at her, while she was clearly trying to manage the duties of a captain and a first mate all at once, by her own admission and the argument she’d had with Eastland back in port. She slowly crossed the room but didn’t yet take the offered seat--the rest of the table seemed to be engrossed in their own conversations. “I wanted to ensure there have been no changes to the ship’s course or status.”

Captain Shadeweaver was already waving a hand dismissively. “Nothing new--my helmsman told me the wind isn’t bad, it’s just the sheer rain volume that’s posing a potential complication. He recommended a skeleton crew watch over the deck and make sure we don’t take on too much water, and I agreed--no point in all of us sitting out there, watching the rain.”

They let the quiet sit for a moment before Jaina cleared her throat and said, “Thank you for the jacket.”

“Oh, that?” Captain Shadeweaver raised a brow, and looked surprised Jaina had even brought it up, maybe even a smidge uncomfortable. “Don’t mention it. My helmsman came to fetch me when the weather looked like it was going to take a turn. Didn’t feel right to just leave you there without trying to at least make you a bit more comfortable.”

It wasn’t exactly entirely out of character for the captain, but certainly it seemed out of the ordinary. Her mild discomfort as she balanced one ankle over her knee proved that much. “Do you know how much the storm will delay our arrival?” was all she asked in the end.

“No, not yet.” the discomfort on the captain’s face melted away as they returned to the safely businesslike topic of their voyage. “We won’t be able to tell until the storm passes and we figure out exactly where we are in relation to Boralus. Hopefully the storm will pass by the end of the night. We’re gonna be overflowing on bunks if it doesn’t.”

The storm did not pass. Jaina occupied herself in the captain’s quarters with the various tomes she’d borrowed from Stormwind’s libraries for several hours, and every so often checked in with the captain herself, whose report remained largely the same. They were definitely off-course by now, since the wind had begun to pick up, but Captain Shadeweaver had assured Jaina that she could make up for their lost time once the storm was over.

It was sometime around sunset that the door to the captain’s quarters inched open with a faint creak, and brought with it a hot, earthy smell. Jaina turned from where she’d taken the chair in the corner and found the captain herself, two mugs of tea in her grasp. She set one down wordlessly by Jaina and took the chair in front of her desk with a deep sigh.

“I don’t suppose there’s been much change in the weather?” she had to ask, but Jaina had a feeling she knew the answer already.

“No, not much.” Captain Shadeweaver took a long drink of her tea and set the mug down, lacing her fingers together. In the low light, she looked even more exhausted than she had the night before. “All my crew’s hammocks and spare cots are full, and some people are still taking shifts in them, including the extra passengers. Remind me to tear Shaw a new one next time I see him.”

Despite herself, Jaina felt one side of her lip lift up into a grin. “I’ll do that.” she said dryly, and returned to her book. The tea that Captain Shadeweaver brought had a full, warming flavor with a hint of spice--it wasn’t a kind Jaina had tried before, and she held the mug up. “Can I ask where you got this?”

“My own creation, actually.” Captain Shadeweaver smirked as she carefully shoved her mug to a free space on her desk. “All the traveling I did, and I could never find the perfect tea. I suppose to say I created it would be technically inaccurate--I took a couple different mixes, put them together, and came up with that. After a great deal of trial-and-error, that is.”

“If you ever decided to get out of the privateer business,” Jaina lifted a brow, “you might consider becoming a tea seller.”

“A tea seller with only one kind of tea?” Captain Shadeweaver’s single remaining eye danced with mirth. “It seems like I’d be catering to a very limited set of people.”

It was fun, this occasional back-and-forth with Captain Shadeweaver, and it came to Jaina with an ease she found only slightly surprising. There was a time, not all that long ago, she might’ve avoided the captain’s various battles of wits both big and small, but now she found them entertaining.

Conversation faded out and was replaced by an easy silence, broken only by the occasional sound of either Jaina herself or Captain Shadeweaver yawning. When Jaina’s vision began to blur with fatigue, she let out a breath and set the book down, looking up at almost the same time as the captain.

“You should rest,” they both said simultaneously, and the captain chuckled. “Here I was hoping to get the last word.”

“You couldn’t have slept hardly at all last night,” Jaina pointed out, “and this is your ship, your quarters.”

“You, meanwhile,” Captain Shadeweaver raised one of her brows, “fell asleep over my desk, and probably had a great new ache in your neck to deal with in the morning--you couldn’t have slept any more than I did.”

“I can debatably function on less sleep, and I likely did get more sleep than you since I know you left before I awoke.”

“Fine, fine.” Captain Shadeweaver raised both hands before balancing her elbows on her desk again, fingers steepled together. “It’s clear neither of us are going to back down, so I have an idea, but I doubt you’re going to like it.”

Suspicion rising, Jaina marked her place in her book and closed it, but didn’t set it down. “I’m listening.”

Captain Shadeweaver’s face was carefully neutral, which was almost as jarring to see as the detached, under-the-weather look she’d had at the beginning of the trip, but none of those things were as surprising as the captain saying, “We could share it.”

“Share it.”

“My bunk--you wouldn’t know, since you didn’t sleep in it last night, but it’s big enough for two.” Captain Shadeweaver shrugged. “Barely.”

There was a single moment where Jaina wondered if the captain was implying something else, but she hadn’t made the suggestion with any of her usual charm or humor. While she was certainly not a shy person in the slightest, Jaina had a feeling the captain wouldn’t openly proposition her, at least not in these circumstances.

“Just to be clear,” Jaina began slowly, setting the book down on the nearest flat surface--a small table near to the side window, “this isn’t an attempt to...proposition me, is it?”

Captain Shadeweaver blinked once, then snorted. “Believe me, Proudmoore, if I intended to proposition you, it would be far more obvious. Subtlety isn’t my strong suit. This is for practicality while the storm keeps my crew--and me--from properly rotating bunks.”

“Fine, then.” she made a point of looking around the patently obviously bed-free quarters. “I assume you keep it hidden somewhere.”

It was hidden, and rather cleverly, for a ship bunk--Captain Shadeweaver tugged a small chain free of a small crack between wood panels and pulled the whole ensemble down, where she secured it to the deck with small wooden posts, bolted into the floor. As promised, it was bigger than normal, but likely not ordinarily intended for two occupants.

Captain Shadeweaver only bothered to remove her outer jacket, her boots, and the patch covering her right eye--not missing, as Jaina previously thought, but badly scarred and no longer shimmering with the bright light that her left one did--before flopping down at the edge of the bunk, pointedly facing away from where Jaina made her own preparations to sleep.

Uneasy was the wrong word for what Jaina felt as she sat on the opposite edge of the bunk--maybe it was something like unfamiliarity, the proximity to Captain Shadeweaver far closer than she’d been to anyone in a long time. For necessity’s sake, she reminded herself, and only for one night.

Jaina felt, somehow, it should have taken longer to drift away than it did--in this unfamiliar situation, with another person at her back, albeit as far away as the bunk would allow them to be--but something about the motion of the ship, even through the waning storm, and having an actual bed beneath her, were enough to let exhaustion finally win out, and sleep rose up to claim her.

Warm.

It was the first thing Jaina noticed upon waking, before even opening her eyes--she rested on something warm, something solid but soft, and it took several beats as she climbed the ladder back to full consciousness that she wasn’t asleep on something, but someone.

Captain Shadeweaver’s back rose and fell underneath Jaina’s cheek with the motion of her breathing, and she reflexively moved her arm where it’d apparently been resting over the captain’s shoulders. She briefly thought she might’ve been able to escape the encounter with her dignity intact as she slowly began to roll away, but the captain herself spoke, “Ah, good, you’re up.”

“How long have you been awake?” Jaina demanded, sitting up, and tried to make it not sound so accusatory, because there was nothing she could reasonably accuse the captain of in this circumstance--aside from clearly having been awake for some time and not pushing Jaina back to her own side of the bunk, but she shelved that thought for later consideration.

“A while.” Captain Shadeweaver’s answer was frustratingly vague, but she didn’t seem bothered by the question as she yawned once and ran one hand through her short, violet hair. She’d slipped her eyepatch back on, but even with her single remaining eye, Jaina could see the shadows of exhaustion beneath them, the kind of fatigue that was bone-deep and all but impossible to shake, and often accompanied by the weight of one’s burdens. “I think I need some tea, and if you--”

“He wasn’t just your first mate,” was the first thing Jaina blurted out, and couldn’t have said why she felt it important in that moment, but pieces from the past few days fell into place very rapidly, very subtle and so small that anyone might have missed them, but unquestionably there. “Kyrian. He was family.”

Captain Shadeweaver said nothing, and a stony silence settled over them. Finally, she sighed and got up, reaching for where she’d thrown her long jacket over her chair the night before. She rested her backside on the edge of her desk. “Everyone on my crew is family to me, Proudmoore.” Captain Shadeweaver’s grin was small and a little sad. “Or at least the only family I care to think about anymore. But Kyrian was like a brother, my best friend, and when he became a void elf...things changed.”

“You lost a friend.”

“But he lost everything.” Captain Shadeweaver countered. “He can’t be with the rest of us anymore because he told me the void afflicts him too much to risk being out here--he told me he’s afraid he’d hurt us, and the fear of it keeps him at shore. He can’t sail, he can barely leave Stormwind, for short periods of time while Lady Xaaria runs her few errands out there, he’s in pain and there’s nothing I can do to help him.

“I may have lost a brother,” Captain Shadeweaver finished, looking down at the deck, “but he lost everything. The fact that I now have to shoulder his duties as well as my own feels like a somewhat inconsequential thing to lose sleep over.”

“You still lost family,” Jaina pointed out quietly, “and you should be allowed to grieve for that.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about, Proudmoore.” Captain Shadeweaver arched a brow, lip twitching like she wanted to smile, as she said the same thing she had in Stormwind, in her ship’s galley, and she understood its depth this time.

“I know.” was all she said, reaching up to fix the braid she hadn’t bothered to take down the night before. “But perhaps it ought to be.”

“Hmm. Maybe.” with a long stretch, the captain fixed the strap on her eyepatch before changing the subject. “I’m getting my tea. I could bring some back for you.”

“That would be nice.” Jaina admitted, finishing the braid and getting up to search for the heavier pieces of her outfit, carefully folded and set down wherever there was space.

When the captain returned, she brought tea, and the news that they’d be arriving in Boralus, with their course corrections, in a few hours. The empty captain’s quarters had been left to Jaina once again while the ship’s captain made her preparations for docking, and Jaina carefully searched around the desk to ensure she hadn’t left anything behind.

With all her items safely packed away and moved along with the rest of the ship’s cargo, Jaina came to stand with Captain Shadeweaver near to the ship’s stern, where she watched, safely out of the way, while they coasted into port in Boralus’ harbor.

“It shouldn’t take long to find out what your next assignment will be, Captain.” Jaina knew that Captain Shadeweaver would certainly be needed back in Stormwind somewhat soon, but she would be remiss in not having the notoriously cunning captain solve other issues around the nearby seas in the meantime.

“Good.” the captain turned and lifted one brow. “Also, do me a favor: call me Miri, would you?” Her eye brightened with amusement, looking far more like Jaina typically saw her, full of vibrance and light. “People who’ve slept with me get to call me Miri.”

Jaina felt the back of her neck heat up again, but she managed to keep her tone even and unruffled as she said, “I hope you’ll understand if it takes time to break the habit of calling you by title, Captain.”

When the Silent Tide was fully moored to its dock in Boralus’ harbor, Jaina stood at the plank lowered from the deck to the harbor, and turned back to where Captain Shadeweaver stood, resting her weight on her left side with her arms folded.

“Thank you for your hospitality...Miri.” Jaina told her, tasting the unfamiliar name on her tongue.

Captain Shadeweaver’s grin widened into something that was a little deeper than normal, a little more sincere. “Anytime, Lord Admiral.”

#this may or may not be a characterization nightmare but it's DONE #my writing #ismirah shadeweaver #otp: from shore to shore #sorta bc they're not Together yet but w/e #disclaimer: i have not yet finished the alliance-side story but i know most of what happens and intentionally kept things vague

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