Chapter Text
"Hm," Lady Proudmoore said, turning the relic in her hands, the setting sun casting strange shadows against her. "Well done, I didn't think it could be recovered."
It was something a wayward adventurer shared some information on, a powerful artifact out in the swamp-wood of Drustvar. There had been Horde poking around the area as well, and the last thing Shaw needed out there was his agents to also contend with some goblin witch upstarts, so he got some backup in the form of Captain Fairwind and John J. Keeshan and took the trip.
"Yeah, it was kind of easy, actually," Fairwind said with a shrug. "Nice change of pace. No curse or anything."
Keeshan facepalmed and walked away without dismissal, as if hoping to unassociate himself from whatever bad karma Fairwind had just brought upon them. From behind them, Wyrmbane knocked on his desk on the ship. Shaw rolled his eyes. "We took care in retrieving it, and Drustvar is very... overt with their curses. Nothing of the sort this time," he said.
Lady Proudmoore nodded. "I trust your eye, Spymaster. I'll have this put away somewhere safe. Thank you for recovering this." She gave Shaw a nod and turned on her heel to leave.
"Job done well then," Fairwind said, turning to Shaw. "How about a little celebration?"
“You’re hauling azerite in the morning, or have you forgotten?” Shaw asked, not fully in the mood to tolerate Fairwind’s habitual flirting.
“Hence the word little,” Fairwind pointed out with a little waggle of his eyebrows.
“I need to go write a report of the recovery,” Shaw said flatly. “You should probably avoid drinking any more alcohol for the night and perhaps, for once, leave port before ten in the morning.” The captain’s current earliest departure time had been a quarter past ten, a record set a month and a half ago. He was supposed to leave at eight. Of course, he had a litany of excuses and reasons as to why it never happened then, with half of them even being ones that admitted some failing on Fairwind’s part.
“Should? Maybe, maybe, but—”
“Have a good evening, Captain.”
At the very least, Shaw had managed to get the man to acknowledge a dismissal nowadays. “Aye, you as well, Spymaster.”
Shaw lingered on deck for a moment, watching Fairwind as he head back to the Middenwake, before he looked to Wyrmbane. "You're superstitious now?"
Wyrmbane grunted, not looking away from the map of Nazmir. "I've seen too much in the past ten years not to be, especially in regards of magic."
Shaw figured that was fair enough.
Nights were long while at war, especially when one was stationed away from home. While Shaw had gotten use to standing on a ship, sleeping on one was always something that escaped him; he felt as if he was about to fall out of his berth whenever he lied down. Combine that with the general night terrors Shaw was recently afflicted with, and he found himself buying out most the coffee in Boralus. It was nothing he wasn't used to, though, and after an hour of trying to get some sleep, he just raised himself from his bed and started on his next day's work. It wasn't all terrible; Shaw always seemed to find himself behind on paperwork anyway.
When the sun rose, it was business with usual, looking through and sorting reports with Alleria for the champions. It was late morning when he noticed that he was missing one, one that was supposed to be from Fairwind. He suppressed a sigh and glanced across the harbor, finding Fairwind’s ship still docked. Shaw supposed that at some point, Fairwind’s terminal inability to leave on time would do some good, even if relatively minor. “I’ll be back,” he told Alleria, and then he was crossing the harbor.
Fairwind was stood at his table, papers scattered across it with various paperweights valiantly holding the line and stopping the wind from carrying them straight into the water. He had a mug in his hand, nursing something or other—most likely coffee, from the dark circles under his eyes and the way he stared down at his maps like he was a man with a traumatic head injury but was still highly confident in his reading ability. “I’m missing a worldvein report,” Shaw told him as he approached. He’d let the not leaving on time thing go without comment for the moment.
Fairwind glanced up to him and frowned. “Could’ve sworn I got them all to you. You sure?”
Shaw lifted his eyebrows, silently asking if the captain believed it was Shaw who had mixed up the papers rather than him.
“Right, yeah,” Fairwind said. He put his mug down on the table and began to carefully rifle through piles of papers as the wind blew.
Shaw glanced at the mug contents. Definitely coffee, and Fairwind didn’t care for coffee. “Rough night?” he prompted, perhaps against his better judgement.
“Something like that,” Fairwind muttered. He paused for a moment, and Shaw could see that he was wrestling with the idea of saying something or not—whatever it was, it was troubling him. “I was sleepwalking."
Shaw blinked. "I wasn't aware you sleepwalk." That was something that got mentioned fairly quickly in any in-depth sleuthing of someone. It was an oddity, but a banal one, so many people didn’t shy away from gossiping about that to strangers. Shaw would have known day one if Fairwind was a sleepwalker.
"Neither was I." Fairwind’s frown deepened, he seemed genuinely troubled by it. "Think I would've known that by now from all my time on a ship."
“There’s something else about this that’s bothering you,” Shaw said.
Fairwind stared at nothing for a long moment. "A guard woke me up."
"Pardon?"
"I went to bed on the Middenwake, and I woke up at the south end of Boralus because a guard shook me awake." It was with that Shaw realized that Fairwind was disturbed by it. "I— does that happen? Does someone just go from never sleepwalking to hiking across the city?"
"I don't know," Shaw answered honestly. "Are you sure you've never done this before?"
"I'd think someone would tell me after ten years of living on a ship," Fairwind said. He took a drink of his coffee and grimaced. "Did you get some sleep?"
"No, but I usually don't," Shaw said.
"You're always like this?" Fairwind asked, looking to him. “No wonder you’re always so... well.”
Shaw did them both a favor and ignored the comment. "I have never really needed that much sleep to begin with."
Fairwind hummed before chugging down the rest of his coffee. "I feel like I'm on death's door, to be honest with you."
"Are you going to be fit for an expedition?"
"Yeah, I got a good crew. Worst comes to worse, my first mate can handle things."
"Good," Shaw said as Fairwind struggled with a yawn. He flicked through a pile, tugged one paper free, and examined it. His missing report. “Stay sharp, Captain.”
"Aye, you too."
The day dragged on for far too long, and there was nothing more that Shaw wanted to do than crawl into his bunk and have the depths of sleep take him, but the several reports on his desk from Arathi were more than enough to dissuade him from doing so right away. With a tired sigh, he took a seat at his desk, breaking the wax seals and beginning to read through them. Troop dispositions, reports of Horde activity, a war machine the likes of which they hadn't seen before, ogres being a hindrance to both sides...
A sudden sense of something being very wrong took hold of Shaw, and he jerked himself awake, adrenaline crashing through his body in an effort of self-preservation. He hadn't even realized that he had fallen asleep at his—
He wasn't at his desk.
Shaw struggled to get his bearings for a moment, panic rising in him for a moment before realizing he was pressed against the cabin door, hand grasping the doorknob tightly. He was still in his cabin, and that was fine, but he somehow made it to the door. Sleepwalked, his mind supplied, but Shaw didn't sleepwalk. That wasn't something he did. He had never done that. He thought to Fairwind, how unsettled he seemed that morning at the fact that he was doing the same.
Fairwind.
Shaw threw open the door and hurried up top. The skeleton crew stationed startled at Shaw's sudden appearance, avoiding eye contact with him as they straightened up. He ignored them entirely, hurrying off the ship and down the stairs to the harbor, blood pumping hard in his ears. "Fairwind!" he called as he boarded the Middenwake, hoping for a response in return. He made a beeline for the captain's quarters, heart sinking when he saw the door ajar. "Fairwind?" he called again, looking inside and seeing the empty, unmade bed inside and his coat resting on his chair. Damn it.
He was elsewhere then, a tavern, maybe. Hopefully. Unlikely. He probably wouldn't go out if he was exhausted, and he wouldn’t go out without his old coat. Where then? Where would he walk to in his sleep?
Where would they both walk to?
A cold feeling settled into Shaw's stomach as he left the Middenwake, hurrying down the harbor and up into the city proper. The summer had slowly begun to turn to autumn, leaving a crisp feeling to the night air that almost burned the lungs. The guard by the flight master gave Shaw a curious look as he rushed by, and Shaw skidded to a halt after a second thought. "Have you seen a man, long red hair, seashell necklace, might seem drunk?" he asked the guard.
She considered that for a moment. "Aye," she said, and pointed south.
South. Fairwind might fall in the canal by the seagate. Or—
Shaw nodded a thanks and kept moving. With worry pumping in his veins, he hurried down the stairs and to the seagate. With another guard stationed there, he asked the same thing, and was directed yet farther south. Shaw nearly wished Fairwind actually had fallen into the canal and that they were in the process of fishing him out.
When Shaw spotted him, it was outside the gates. Shaw pushed himself farther, sprinting the remainder between them, ignoring the looks thrown his way from the stationed guards. "Captain!" Shaw called out, only to be ignored. He grabbed Fairwind by the shoulder as he reached him and was thrown off by the violent jerk from Fairwind in response. "Flynn," he pleaded, watching the man as he continued to mindlessly shuffle forward. Shaw took a moment to observe him, noting the glazed look in his half-lidded eyes, how he seemed completely unaware of absolutely anything.
Shaw took him by the shoulder again, giving him a rough shake. It did little to pull Fairwind from whatever this was, and he just shrugged Shaw's hand off. Shaw took a moment to think, feeling panic start to bubble up again, and he struggled to push it down. Focus on the immediate; he needed to rouse Fairwind.
"Sorry," Shaw mumbled to Fairwind, and then he punched the Kul Tiran square in the jaw.
Fairwind let out a startled yelp, stumbling to the side as a hand shot reached to his face. "What's the damn—" Fairwind's protest died in his throat as he took in his surroundings. "This... may be a problem, then," Fairwind remarked. He looked to Shaw as he rubbed at his jaw, his slightly dazed expression turning to concern. "Hey, you okay?"
"I—" Shaw stopped, realizing how rattled he actually was from all of this. "I woke up, and I was..."
"Sleepwalking," Fairwind finished, his voice pitched low with a discontent understanding. "So, this is, in fact, a problem, if we're both suddenly doing it after a trip through Drustvar."
"Yes."
"What do we do, then?"
Fairwind looked incredibly tired, even if Shaw's punch startled him back to wakefulness, and Shaw himself could feel the coaxing tug of sleep pulling at the back of his own mind. This was a problem with a serious time constraint, and it wouldn't be long before things got bad. Shaw closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples, trying to think. "I believe the best thing we can do here is outsource a plan to someone who isn't currently deprived of sleep."
It wasn't long before Shaw and Fairwind, along with General Shandris Feathermoon, Keeshan, and Kelsey Steelspark, were all gathered in Shaw's cabin. "It's always something with Drustvar, isn't it?" Steelspark asked into her own mug of coffee after Shaw had caught everyone up to speed.
"Unfortunately," Shaw said. "If this isn't resolved soon, the Captain and I are going to be put out of commission until it is, and that may be permanently." From beside him, Fairwind dipped his head, suddenly shooting back to attention when his chin hit his chest. With bleary eyes, he reached for his coffee mug.
"You believe this is related to the artifact you three recovered?" Shandirs asked, her ears dipped in thought.
"The sleepwalking started happening after that, yes. I've never sleepwalked," Shaw stopped. Was it sleepwalked? Sleptwalk? He shook his head, this wasn't important. "—never sleepwalked before this."
"It must be really serious if it's enough to derail your thought process that bad," Steelspark remarked.
"I need solutions, not smart comments, Steelspark."
"And I just woke up, so it's gonna be a minute before you get any of those."
Shandris looked to Keeshan. “Have you been sleepwalking?”
Keeshan, who was leaning against the wall of the cabin, shook his head. “But that might be because of how I sleep.”
Fairwind, who was heroically hanging onto this conversation, frowned. “What does that mean?”
“I only sleep for twenty minutes every couple of hours.”
“What? That’s sounds terrible. Why?”
“Because my dreams are filled with orcs slaughtering my company,” Keeshan said flatly.
Keeshan’s insomnia made Shaw’s own look like staying up an hour later on the weekends. He could never decide if it made the man a liability or an asset, but he did know that the man was too valuable to disregard in this war over something that he was managing well enough on his own. Fairwind, met again with the realization that some people live worse lives than his own, hid his face in his coffee cup.
“Sounds like we found the solution, then,” Steelspark said.
“I’d rather address the problem than ignore it,” Shaw replied.
"Well, to solve the problem, we have to know what's causing it.” Shandris crossed her arms. "Is there anything about falling or being asleep that seems magical?"
Fairwind hummed before stifling down a yawn. "Nope, just sleeping. And then waking up somewhere else."
"You said that our Captain here was walking somewhere outside the city, right?" Steelspark asked.
"Mhm," Fairwind hummed again.
"Crazy idea, stick with me here, but what if you... went to wherever your subconscious was leading you too?" Steelspark pushed back the fringes of her hair. "If it started happening after a Drustvar trip, then clearly it's a curse trying to lead you back somewhere."
Shaw frowned. "That seems needlessly risky."
"You got any better ideas?" Steelspark asked.
"Kelsey has a point," Shandris pointed out. "We could keep watch of you three, follow you to wherever you go, and have this taken care of by dawn."
“Uh, I can’t,” Steelspark said. “I’m leaving at dawn with Falstad for a mission.”
Dammit, that was right. He should’ve remembered. “Sorry,” Shaw said.
“It’s alright,” Steelspark replied. “I mean—”
“Do me a favor and go back to your bunk without comment.”
Steelspark shrugged, gave a two fingered salute, and then hopped down from her chair and left Shaw’s cabin. “You’re still with us, Shandris?” Shaw asked.
“It would be foolish to not make sure that two men vital to the war effort break whatever magic hold is on them.”
“Hey,” Fairwind started in protested.
“Just making sure you’re still awake, Fairwind.”
“So… we go to sleep, then?” Shaw asked.
“I’m not comfortable with that,” Keeshan said.
Neither was Shaw, and it must have shown on his face, as Shandris said, “Well, I suppose only one of you needs to, and the rest of us could follow.”
They all looked to Fairwind, who shifted in his seat uneasily. “Aw, come on, that’s not fair.”
“Nothing to do with fair,” Shaw said. “First one to fall asleep leads us there. If you were to bet on who that would be out of the three of us, who would you bet on?”
Fairwind scowled at them all. “I’m never helping you lot with anything that requires me to leave my ship again.”
“Do you think it’s too late to arrange transport to Drustvar?” Shaw asked Shandris, ignoring Fairwind’s remark. “I doubt that we’re going to be led to anywhere within the sound or valley, so we may as well start there.”
“The flightmasters don’t typically like flying out their gryphons at night.”
Fairwind started a large yawn, one that was poorly stifled down after Keeshan snapped, “Stop it!” at him. Shaw put his elbows on his desk, clasped his hands together, leaned forward so that his clasped hands covered his mouth, and closed his eyes and suppressed his own yawn.
“…What?” Shandris asked as Fairwind now drowned himself in his coffee.
“Yawns are contagious,” Shaw said as he opened his eyes.
Shandris looked taken aback by the statement. “What?”
“When someone yawns, the action tends to spread involuntarily to the rest of the group,” Shaw explained. “Do night elves not experience that?”
Shandris grinned. “No, cats experience that.”
“Could try the ferries,” Fairwind offered after he took another large swig of his coffee. “They’ll probably chart us fine.”
“Worth a shot,” Shandris said. “Let’s go.”