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Maiev watched the way Issari reached high on her tip-toes at Illidan’s side, her arm reaching up to pull a leaf from his hair.
She was always around him, fussing. She was always a step close, vying for his approval. Maiev supposed they all were. The Illidari had back the only person that cared about them.
“Issari,” he said, his voice as gentle as his impatience would allow.
She backed away, her bright red curls bouncing with her steps as she let the leaf fall to the floor, twisting back, forth, caught in the lip of the breeze.
Maiev clicked on her bracer, looking away as she felt his gaze; heavy and unwelcome bear down upon her.
Down.
The last time he had looked at her, before he came back, he’d had to look up.
Up, as he’d tried to breathe; as he’d tried to survive; as he’d realised, this was it.
Up, from his knees in his cell; from his chains, that echoed off the walls as he paced, nine steps there, nine steps back.
Up, at her.
She had been so used to seeing the way his hair, parted. Long, silky threads of black falling past his tilted ears, the right one missing a part at the tip. She had often stared at the curve of his tattoos, wondering what they felt like to touch, to have.
She’d touched them, once.
“Knees,” Maiev had commanded, the word falling flat from her exhaustion. She’d returned from above, after several anxious, sleepless hours with her sisters. One of them hadn’t returned from her mission for several days. But tonight, her headless body had been left, paces away, with a dagger between her breasts.
It had been the longest she’d been away from him since she’d taken her self sacrificial post as his watcher and jailer.
And all she could think about as she stood upstairs - Elune’s light burning, mocking all that she could have been - was him.
Had it been a hundred years? A thousand? Time, was inconsequential.
Until she wasn’t here.
“And here I thought you’d abandoned me,” drawled Illidan as he’d sank to his knees, tilting back his head as he had looked up; up at her. “I was so worried,” he’d said, his mouth curling to a mocking smile; a smile she could see with her eyes closed.
Maiev then lifted her hand, whispering under her breath as she touched the front of his cell, the shimmer of magic glowing bright, then fading to nothing. A key, hung from wrist and her neck, followed, as she’d turned each of the locks of his cell, free.
Illidan’s smile, fell.
“What…are you doing?” he’d hissed, shuffling back on his knees, weighed down by his chains, as she stepped inside.
But Maiev had just sat before him, on her knees, and looked down.
Illidan, looked up.
“I don’t know,” she’d said, simply, before she’d reached out with a hand and touched his chest, a finger tracing the curve of a tattoo, blazing as green as his eyes. Illidan had froze, still, his body tense, the fel of his eyes shining bright as he tried to understand.
Her fingers had slid over them, surprised at how smooth they felt. And hot. She breathed, sharp, as her finger continued to trace along pec, down his chest, and back up. Up to his shoulder and arm, fingers slipping through his hair.
“Do they hurt?” she’d said, not out of concern, not out of pity, not out of anything.
He’d stayed silent, for a long while. It felt good to have them touched. Why did it have to be her?
“Not anymore,” he’d said, his words nearly whispered.
Her hand had fell, to her lap.
Illidan had looked up; Maiev, had looked down.
“What do you want?” he’d asked at last, trying to understand.
She didn’t say another word.
Illidan stood before her now, the breeze coiling through his ebony hair, loose and down. Maiev felt her breath catch in her throat.
“What do you want?” he echoed. She must have been staring, wordlessly, for too long.
“I still don’t have an answer,” she lied, turning away.
She heard him smirk; she felt his fingers catch hers.
Maiev, looked up.