Work Text:
"WHAT!? WHERE IS SHE?!"
Anya winced as her Queen's shriek echoed through the entirety of the keep’s west wing. She had expected Sylvanas’ reaction at the news to be anger, but this degree of rage was…well, perhaps not exactly unexpected, considering the context, yet still a bit surprising from the generally stoic Banshee Queen.
Sylvanas had been on the warpath, looking for her wife and unable to find her anywhere for a few hours already, but this latest report from Anya had made her well and truly furious.
The reason for the Banshee's aggravation was simple: Jaina was very sick, and she had kept working herself to exhaustion. Listless, with heavy bags under her eyes, coughing up a storm, and feeling miserable, Jaina Proudmoore still worked. It was a part of her nature to be a workaholic idiot that didn’t know when to stop or take care of herself, her sense of duty so pronounced that she would attempt to carry on with her duties even while feverish and in spite of continuously being found and carried off back to bed by Sylvanas.
The Elf accepted that it was simply something she was going to have to put up with, considering how insanely stubborn her wife was and how many arguments they had gotten into about this very subject so many times before. Just this past week was the best example of this:
“You're working right now?”
“Yes, I have a lot of paperwork to do, still.”
“My love, you need to rest. I understand that you want to do your best for our people and your duties are all very important, but if you are already so exhausted and sick that you're feverish then that is an indicator that you should stop already.”
“I can’t because then no one will be able to pick up the tasks. You know how long organizing things takes, and this peace…this peace is much too important to risk over bureaucratic muck-ups. I can rest after.”
“You taking a day for yourself to rest and recover isn’t going to burn the treaty to the ground when it has held for over three years. Bureaucratic muck-ups happen occasionally and we’ve yet to see the system collapse because of it. You need to sleep in order to get better. Then you can also get back to work faster.”
“I am already more than halfway through these. If I could complete them, perhaps I could stop then.”
“Jaina, you really should lie down and sleep. Your work is important but so is your health, and currently it is your health that should have the priority. The paperwork can wait.”
“I’m functional enough as I am right now, and these reports will not read themselves.”
“You have a fever. That is the very definition of not being functional.”
“I am functioning right now. Hence, functional.”
“That’s not good enough! You need rest.”
“You would subject your ailing wife to bickering with you about this instead of letting me complete my work and be able to go back to bed sooner? Taking away the time I could be employing to get through this faster? Forcing me to use my voice when my throat is already sore and aching?”
“…You can’t use the sick card to continue working. That is the complete opposite of how this goes.”
____
“Jaina! I thought I put you to bed an hour ago!
“Haven’t you heard that there is no rest for the wicked, my heart?”
“You are anything but wicked!! And don’t you start with that, you know very well that the lists for this shipment can wait until the end of the week before they need to be done. Why are you insisting on doing them now?”
“Because the trade route that these things go through have been very tense lately. It goes through Night Elf territory, and they are still not particularly keen about Horde caravans passing through Ashenvale. The faster these lists are made and verified, the faster I can send copies to Tyrande so she can be assured that there are no flammables or other ‘hazardous substances’ that might be used to harm the forest.”
“Even Whisperwind wouldn’t be so unreasonable as to expect you to work while coughing up your lungs, Jaina! By the light of the Sun I’m taking you back to bed!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“I thought we agreed we wouldn't bully the ailing one?”
“Me trying to get you to go back to bed and rest so you can recover from your illness is NOT bullying you!”
“Don’t raise your voice, darling, my ears are more sensitive when I’m sick. You know this.”
“…”
____
“Jaina…”
“I have work to do and I refuse to stay in bed all day like you want me to. I have deadlines to meet.”
“Self-imposed deadlines. You can move them back and work on getting better faster by sleeping more than four hours a night, which by itself is already an improvement over your hours as of late, and it makes me want to scream.”
“I’m tired of being sick.”
“It’s been three days. It took you three weeks of constant stress, very little sleep, and overworking yourself to get sick to begin with. Three days is nothing in comparison, and considering the way you refuse to see a healer, get a potion for this, or even rest as you should, you’re only delaying your own recovery all the more.”
“I hate going to the healers.”
“And I hate my wife sounding like a barking dog whenever she coughs, but that is how things are at the moment.”
“…Fine. If I agree to drink a health potion, will you let me work?”
“No!”
____
And so the week had passed. It was an endless uphill battle to try and get Jaina Proudmoore to sleep and allow her body to recover as she should, though at least she was eating properly and keeping hydrated thanks to the Warchief’s fussing.
Today had been another such day, except Sylvanas had been unable to find and carry her obstinate wife back to bed because Jaina had wised up to the game and was now continuously teleporting throughout the keep in intervals to throw off any Banshees that might be pursuing her. Both Sylvanas and the Dark Rangers had found themselves stumped at trying to pin down the Lord Admiral’s location, and it made the entire ordeal all the more exasperating. Still, it hadn’t been entirely bad, as it was almost like a training exercise for all involved and the Rangers had begun having, secretly, a bit of fun with it.
But it all stopped being funny when Anya finally found Jaina and had spotted the mage coughing blood. She’d felt obligated to go and report it to the Dark Lady at once, hence the screaming.
"WHERE. IS. SHE!!"
The Dark Ranger swallowed hard. She hardly recalled the last time her Queen had been this furious, and the way those red eyes burned promised death to anyone that got in her way. She made a mental note to ask Velonara to switch shifts with her so the other woman would be the one guarding the Lord Admiral for the next week. Her girlfriend wouldn’t mind, would she?
“In the War Room, my Queen. She just wrapped up a meeting with High Chieftain Bloodhoof when she gave into her coughing fit. I could distinctly smell the blood on her hand when she covered her mouth and waved Bloodhoof away.”
Sylvanas growled low in her throat and vanished in a mist of darkness and fury.
Anya shuddered and ran a hand through her hair before massaging her ears gently. Sylvanas truly was the Banshee Queen, not only because she was the first among them to be Raised as such, but also because she had the most powerful shriek amongst them, capable of affecting even other Banshees with its power. Anya made a mental note to definitely ask Velonara to switch shifts with her for the next week.
_______________________
“JAINA!!!”
Jaina jumped, startled at hearing her name screeched with a fury that she had never heard directed at her before. She hastily tried to teleport away only to find herself encased in strong arms and with blazing red eyes boring into her own.
Sylvanas took in a deep breath and had to force back another magically-powered shriek lest she harm the ridiculous woman in her arms, as she confirmed Anya’s words and smelled the blood in Jaina’s hands.
“You’ve been coughing blood, Proudmoore.” The Banshee rumbled dangerously. “And you kept insisting you were functional and well enough to do your work and all the rest of the nonsense excuses you have been giving me to continue killing yourself over the past week.” Her grip on her wife’s arms tightened just slightly; it was hard to keep control of herself with how angry she was, but she would never harm her beloved even if unintentionally. “Were you ever planning to tell me of this? Or were you going to wait until I found you lying fainted somewhere, unable to move or speak?”
Jaina yelped at the tone and the way her wife’s eyes speared straight into her soul. "It's not that bad! It's just an occasional tickle that happens if I cough too hard or my throat is too dry, and I’ve been doing my best to prevent that!" She waved a half-empty waterskin through her magic, given that her arms were pinned to her body with the way Sylvanas had her trapped. “See? It's fine, I'm staying hydrated and I'm making sure not to cough too hard to force the phlegm out, which is when the problems start.”
Sylvanas was unconvinced and she looked pointedly at the Lord Admiral’s hands. “I can smell the blood, so why don’t you stop lying to me and accept that it was much worse than you’ve wanted to admit?”
At once, Jaina’s demeanour grew serious and she met the Warchief’s gaze straight on. Her first reaction was to be angry, because how dare Sylvanas imply she was lying? But when blue met red, she was able to clearly see the concern that was buried under her lover’s fury, and she softened at that.
Sylvanas was worried about her. Of course, Jaina had known that her wife was worried from the very beginning, but this was the first time her reaction to Jaina’s shenanigans had been so explosive, and it had undoubtedly been triggered by her somehow finding out that Jaina’s throat was perhaps a little rawer than she’d said it was. The furious reaction was due to her extreme apprehension over Jaina’s health needing to be turned into something proactive. Thus, Sylvanas had turned to anger, which was known and even somewhat comfortable to her. The Warchief didn’t deal well with being helpless, and anger helped cover up the fear that Jaina might be secretly dying (or whatever else the silly Banshee had been picturing in that beautiful head of hers) and had refused to tell her.
She knew what she had to do. She slowly freed herself from her wife’s grip, noting absently that Sylvanas wasn’t stopping her, and lifted her hands to Sylvanas’ face, cupping her cheeks gently before pressing their foreheads together.
“I’m fine,” she murmured softly, her fingers lovingly tracing that strong jawline from the base of her ears to her chin. “I promise you I’m fine. It's just a little coppery in the back of my throat but it truly isn’t so bad as it seems and I’m taking care to not have fits like what happened just now. I inhaled wrong and choked a bit, which is where the blood you smelled came from.”
Jaina stood on her toes to pepper small kisses on Sylvanas’ forehead, her eyes, her cheeks, and on the corners of her mouth, each kiss punctuating a word. “I’m not dying. I’m not hiding anything from you. I’m all right, and soon I’ll be back to full health. I promise you I’m all right.”
Sylvanas slowly began to untense with every loving press of lips against her cool skin, the hands that had tightened into fists when Jaina first disengaged from her not-quite-loving embrace slowly uncurling. Something deep within her unclenched as she felt her beloved’s warmth pressed to her, as she heard the only slightly-raspy breath that passed through her wife’s throat as well as the steady rhythm of Jaina’s heart beating in her chest. She felt something within her soften and relax when Jaina’s hands tenderly grabbed her own and the mage twined their fingers, a gesture that Sylvanas had found, to her dismay, she genuinely loved and looked forward to.
She sighed deeply and glared lightly at her wife, her ears still pinned back to her skull though not as intensely as they had been before. "‘It’s just a little coppery,’ she says. ‘It's not that bad,’ she says." Her grumbling brought a small chuckle from Jaina and she couldn’t help the twitches of a smile that prodded threateningly at the corners of her mouth.
Jaina pressed one last, lingering kiss on Sylvanas’ lips and was happy to have it returned. “Feel better now?”
The Banshee sighed again and hugged her stubborn Lord Admiral to herself, a thrill going through her when Jaina returned the embrace just as sweetly. “Somewhat. I’m still angry at you and we’re going to need to have a long talk about your definition of ‘all right,’ but that can wait for later.” Her hands rubbed Jaina’s back in a soothing pattern, and she took comfort in her wife melting into her, Jaina having chosen to recline her head against Sylvanas’ shoulder. “You are not going to be doing any more work today. I can’t believe you had a meeting with Baine when speaking is the last thing you should be doing. Also, I hope that you’ve been drinking warm things as I’ve repeatedly been trying to get you to do.”
Jaina rolled her eyes and shook her head. If anyone had ever told her that she’d be here four years ago, she would have laughed in their face. Yet how the Tides decided a ship’s course was truly a secret kept beneath the waves, for this was what her life was now: a wife that loved her and worried about her enough to be ready to actually fight her for the sake of taking care of her. It was…cute. A little unnecessary, a little extreme, but very, very cute, and Jaina couldn’t help but melt at how big a softy her big, strong, stoic Banshee was.
She enjoyed sleeping with her wife, though, so she kept those thoughts to herself and chose instead to reply to the pointed statements. “I drank an entire mug of tea throughout my meeting, so don’t worry about that. As for not working anymore today…You know, I would generally argue with you about this, but after the scare I gave you,” and the one you no doubt gave everyone in the keep as you misted your way to me, “I think I will not fight my lady wife…this time.”
The words had barely left her mouth that Sylvanas had swept her into a bridal carry and begun making her way to their rooms, blithely ignoring the looks that the servants and her Rangers were giving her in equal measure. She had finally gotten Jaina to accept getting some rest and she was going to take advantage of that before the mage changed her mind. They could all gawk and gossip as they liked.
Sylvanas made it to the bedroom in record time and gently deposited Jaina on the bed, quickly divesting her of clothing until Jaina was left completely bare. It was a testament to how anxious she still was about her wife’s health that she didn’t linger on the generous curves of Jaina’s body, and instead pulled the covers over her immediately. While seemingly counterintuitive, Sylvanas was well aware that Jaina slept best when two conditions were met: One, she was naked, and two, she was cuddling with Sylvanas.
The Warchief thus proceeded to shuck off her armour and underclothes as well, throwing them haphazardly on the floor, a concern for another time, and then slid under the covers, glomming herself onto Jaina immediately. She expected the flinch as her cold skin made contact with Jaina’s warmth, but as in the past two years, it never came.
For her part, Jaina sighed softly and moulded her back to her wife’s front. She’d long since grown used to the coolness of Sylvanas’ skin, and she even found it a comfort now. It was unlike anyone else’s, and it was a relief to have her near, to feel those rough, calloused hands trace the plains and valleys of her body with gentle touches and teasing traces. To feel how loved and cared she was, in that silent way that her beloved found most comfortable communicating in.
Sylvanas’ body would absorb her heat soon enough, but for now she savoured the Banshee’s innate coolness and the relief it brought to her slightly-overheated skin. Her fever was gone, but her temperature was still a little higher than usual, so it was wonderful to feel the full-body cold of Sylvanas’ frame pressed to her.
She hummed softly in contentment when she felt soft kisses to the nape of her neck, and she laid her hand atop the one her beloved had around her midsection, twining their fingers again.
Sylvanas gave that hand a gentle squeeze and buried her nose in the back of her wife’s head, enjoying the clean, lovely scent of Jaina’s hair. “Sleep, please. I’ll be with you the whole time.”
As promised, Jaina did as Sylvanas asked instead of arguing mulishly. She felt comfortable and happy and she was ensconced in the strongest yet gentlest arms ever. Her will to fight had been sapped completely, and she surrendered both to her beloved’s pleas and her own body’s needs. Her eyes drooped and she yawned lightly before finally closing her eyes and falling into a deep sleep filled with soft red eyes and the warmth she had been missing without realizing it.