Work Text:
It’s easy really, summoning the storm. The harder part is reigning it in, preventing it from growing hungrily into something more destructive. That’s an almost bitter twist of thoughts there, that it’s grown more difficult to summon something soft than something murderous. It’s almost a challenge in the end, and she relishes that, puts more and more focus into the spell until she can finally start to see gentle flurries of snow drift down, dance slowly in the air.
Sylvanas’ hand reaches out, waits for snow to gather in her palm. Her skin is cold enough to not even melt it, Jaina notices, tiny pieces building up into a small pyramid.
She would almost swear she sees a smile at the corner of her mouth, some unconscious ghost of happiness drift through her mind, but Sylvanas catches her watching, and whatever was there is gone in an instant.
“Funny thing to waste magic on, Proudmoore.”
“It’s not a waste it’s- Sometimes things can just be beautiful, you realise.”
Something in her expression darkens, almost strangely so, like she twists the shadows around her to hide her own face. Waste of powers indeed. “Beauty is fleeting. Everything dies eventually. Especially the small things.”
“And you can’t appreciate them while they last?”
Sylvanas doesn’t reply, just glares at her from under her hood. Her eyes glow almost bright enough to burn, to settle cinders under her skin. Somehow, it's still magnetising to have that heavy gaze settle on her, carving deep. Still, Jaina doubts Sylvanas’ intention was to spark that obsessive sense of curiousity running through her mind.
“Fine. If that’s what you believe.” Jaina twists her hands in the air once more, changes her spell to leave a gap in the snow around them, leave them bereft of even the tiniest bit of cold.
Sylvanas seems to frown slightly when the snow stops falling on her hand. Slightly. Always only slightly. Her face is so still, bare of all but the tiniest flicker of emotions. Jaina is beginning to think the only feeling she ever allows to run rampant across her expression is that burning anger she is so notorious for.
She wonders, quietly, not daring to ask, if her ears still twitch and react to her emotions like most elves. Vereesa especially is so expressive, enough so that she can just about read every thought that passes through her head. Sylvanas is.... Almost silent in comparison.
It just makes her more curious.
“Why did you make it stop.” Sylvanas says, crunching up what snow remained in her hand. She tosses it to the ground, but there’s too little to even see. Even with her lack of expression, there’s something about the way she stares at it still that makes Jaina wonder.
“You hated it.”
A pause, a breath, enough to notice the hesitation. “I never said that.”
“You certainly implied it.”
She falls silent again, but Jaina doesn’t push. Pushing would mean forcing an answer out, would likely make Sylvanas defensive once more, and whatever answer she spat out would hardly satisfy her curiosity. She wants to know, properly, and for certain. She waits.
A minute, maybe more, and Sylvanas stands there, silent, unmoving. Not meeting Jaina’s eyes, just staring out at the snow falling around them, the snow she can no longer feel unless Jaina lets her. An ugly frown passes across her face briefly, something almost childish and petulant, before her face is wiped clean again, and she looks back at her.
“Can you bring it back?” It’s quiet, so, so quiet, but there no other sound to steal it away from her ears, and somehow her words are strong enough to echo in the back of Jaina’s mind.
Jaina just smiles, raises her hands again to undo the change to her spell, makes the snow dance around Sylvanas. Some lands on her nose, and she flinches slightly, turns back to glare at Jaina once more, but the glare is half-hearted, more for show than anything else, and soon enough she is turning back to it, both hands outstretched.
The snow falls harder, enough that Jaina pulls her hood back up to cover her head, but Sylvanas doesn’t move, stands with her back to her, snow piling up on her form like a statue. She almost wants to teleport in front of her without warning, to catch and treasure whatever soft expression is likely on her face, but that would be too much. Approaching Sylvanas is like approaching a wildcat, and Jaina is never quite certain if she’ll ever be able to see that softer side of her that she knows is hidden beneath layers of ice.
Jaina would rather be shown such secrets willingly than steal them by force.
Instead she looks beyond her, admires the sight of Kul Tiras in snow. It may not be entirely natural, may just be something she spun out of her own hands, too intimately known to be surprising, and yet there is a beauty to it that she enjoys, a small thing that only makes her homeland more beautiful.
She almost doesn’t notice Sylvanas moving until it’s too late, a dark smudge against otherwise pure white, silent as the grave. She glances down, and Sylvanas is too close to her, and she starts when she notices the broad smile on her face.
“See?” she says. “I told you-”
She doesn’t even see Sylvanas’ arm move until a large clump of snow hits her face. It freezes her to the bone, snow sneaking in through her clothes to melt cold against her neck.
“Sylvanas!” she shouts, growling in frustration when Sylvanas dances out of the way of her reaching hands. The smile she wore has only grown wider still, a greater show of emotion than she has seen from her in quite some time. She can’t even appreciate it, not now, not with the uncomfortable feeling of cold, cold water creeping through her robes.
She swipes blindly at her again, and this time Sylvanas laughs as she dodges, and when Jaina curses at her, she only laughs harder, sets out on a run, making Jaina stumble after her, still trying to shake frozen strands of hair out of her eyes.
Sylvanas is toying with her, she knows, not quite running as fast as she possibly could, slow enough that Jaina doesn’t lose her, but fast enough that she can’t quite catch her, always managing to slide out of her grasp at the last minute, leading them in a wild chase across the fields for long enough that she is beginning to lose her breath, long enough for it to be surprising when she realises how strangely enjoyable it is to chase her across the snow, like one of the games she used to play with her brothers long, long ago. A simple, half-forgotten type of pleasure.
Sylvanas slows down for a single second to tilt her head back to look at her, gauge how close she is, and it’s just enough for Jaina to close the distance at last, throw her arms around her in a rough tackle that lasts only a second before the woman in her arms turns to smoke, and Jaina stumbles again.
Fine, Jaina thinks to herself. If she is going to cheat, so be it.
When Sylvanas turns to run again, Jaina keeps her expression clear, waits until she’s running a step too fast, and turns the ground beneath her feet to slick ice. Sylvanas falls bodily into a large pile of snow, grunts when Jaina teleports on top of her, leans in to press her further into the snow.
"Got you." She murmurs, breathes it out close enough to her skin to see her twitch in response.
Jaina is only really pretending to hold her down, and she doesn’t fight when Sylvanas moves in her grasp, twists herself around until she can face her at last. They stare at each other for a handful of breathless moments, silent, not quite willing to end whatever game this is but also not quite willing to dive into honesty. In the end, Sylvanas just shrugs, smirks again.
"I'm at your mercy," she says, slips back into her usual sarcasm, "whatever will you do with this opportunity, Lord Admiral?" She's smiling at her now, wide enough that she can see that tiny hint of her fangs, wide enough to catch Jaina’s eyes for more than a few seconds.
But not quite enough to make her feel bad for summoning her own snowball in her hands, shoving it down the front of Sylvanas’ shirt.
Sylvanas shrieks so loud that Jaina almost can't hear her own laugh in the seconds afterwards, and there’s a half second where she slightly fears never being able to hear again before the ringing in her ears subsides. She is glaring at Jaina now, that weighted gaze that Jaina really can’t take seriously when Sylvanas looks so close to the image of a drowned cat, hair ruined, snow clinging unmelting to her skin.
“You are without a doubt, the worst woman I have ever met.” Sylvanas grumbles, slumping back, sodden and defeated. Dramatic as always.
“You started this, if I recall.” Jaina says, keeping an arm pressed against her neck. Lightly, barely enough to count as part of this game. Really, it’s more just an excuse to touch her, to be able to lean in so close that she can start to feel just how cold Sylvanas is, colder even than the snow.
Strange, all of this is so, so strange, but somehow it is all the more magnetising for it. In ways Sylvanas reminds her of those old books of magic she would read as a much younger girl, the ones with looping, confusing words, that promised to teach her so many secrets if she could ever learn how to read their pages.
Jaina leans in further, cups her hands around Sylvanas’ face, watches, curious, as her own body warmth finally starts to make the snow on her lips start to melt. She’s so busy staring that she only just manages to notice that Sylvanas is smiling again, more honest this time, barely more than a twitch of her lips.
“Do I get a prize for winning?” She asks.
That smile stays small. But it stays, and Sylvanas doesn’t try and wipe it away, hide it like she does everything else. “Whatever you’d like.” She says, and this time it’s easy enough to read in her eyes what she desires. What she so clearly wants but does not want to say.
In a way, Jaina wants to tease her more. To deny it and watch how she reacts, whether it’s possible to force her into honesty.
She kisses her instead, stops even pretending to hold her down in order to pull her icy lips against hers, until she is surrounded by that intense, burning cold.
Her robes are soaked through with cold water, now. And it only gets colder, more seeping in from everywhere Sylvanas touches, the ice on her skin melting where they meet. At some point, Jaina will have to be responsible, stand up and dry them both off, but even considering that is too much of a distraction from the woman melting against her now, hands so strangely gentle where they rest against her waist.
They stay in the cold for a long time, after that. Long enough that Jaina almost forgets how cold it is. Long enough for her to miss it again, when they slip back into the warmth of the Proudmoore Keep.
She only misses it until Sylvanas finds her in a quiet corner, wraps her ice-cold arms around her in silence, freezing her further still.