Bitter solitude

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Rating: Mature
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: F/F
Fandom: World of Warcraft
Relationship: Jaina Proudmoore/Sylvanas Windrunner
Characters: Jaina Proudmoore, Sylvanas Windrunner
Additional Tags: Depression, Hurt No Comfort, Melancholy, Sad Ending, Sad
Language: English
Series: Part 2 of Melancholy
Stats: Published: 2025-04-26 Words: 2,080 Chapters: 1/1
 Bitter solitude
by QueenMelsRevenge

Summary

And standing here, in the cold shadows of a hot desert watching those she cared for laugh
without her, all she felt was a gnawing black hole. A pit that dug ever deeper through her
chest.

She loathed it. Loathed feeling like this. Sylvanas balled her fists and grit her teeth as the raw
feeling of a Wail built up in her throat, slowly coming to crest like a wave.

Notes

Felt melancholy enough to write a part two. Hope you "enjoy" it, dear reader.

See the end of the work for more notes

And yet. And yet she couldn't help but feel a pitiful happiness for them.

Seeing her Rangers - her friends - so clearly enjoy themselves so brazenly after after all that
happened should have brought nothing but relief. Happiness for them. But it was tainted and
embittered. A poisonous creeping of rot over the growth. Infecting should have been a good
thing.

Instead it felt like it tore her chest open all over again. Showing the desiccated but fragile
heart still inside. She may be a dead thing, it may no longer pump blood through her face.
But she was not an unfeeling one.

And standing here, in the cold shadows of a hot desert watching those she cared for laugh
without her, all she felt was a gnawing black hole. A pit that dug ever deeper through her
chest.

She loathed it. Loathed feeling like this. Sylvanas balled her fists and grit her teeth as the raw
feeling of a Wail built up in her throat, slowly coming to crest like a wave.

She gasped out and forcefully slammed her eyes shut as she let go of the tension in her fists,
the leather groaned in relief as she brought her shaking hand up to her neck and fumbled
around her collar.

She touched the Hearthstone that was gifted to her what seemed like eons ago and she
painstakingly focused through the cold and suddenly the dusty and dry desert air made way
for the scent of decay. The sweet smell of rot and the slight tinge of salt from the sea. Smells
both comforting and alien at the same time. Sylvanas felt at home in them now. They were
the smells of dead things.

They were the scents that most represented what she had become. And yet. And yet it didn't
feel good here. Didn't fit. Even with her memories a box with more holes than walls. She
remembered the smells so well. The sweet floral scent of flowers both wild and curated. The
smell of fish ever so faint from the small wharf on the bay.

She walked across cracked soil and crushed desiccated plants under her heels with every step.
She looked around the ruins of what was home and is no longer. The old blacksmiths house
and workshop. His burnt bones that were draped into the cold and dead embers of the forge.

She did not linger. Didn't examine the lack of emotion at seeing someone she knew like that.
She walked over cracked cobblestone past the carpenters workshop. Leaving naught but
footprints of dust in her wake. Past the crushed remains of the house of a girl she used to be
sweet on.
Studiously ignoring how she couldn't look up and out to her destination on the hill. Even as
the path she tread on became steeper. While the buildings became sparser until the path
turned rougher still as it wound up the hillside.

Sylvanas took a final look behind her and saw the wreckage of what used to be Windrunner
Village. And all she felt as the cold weight of being alone and empty. She closed her eyes
tightly. Feeling the burning of tears she would never be able to shed again. Tears she has felt
burn in her molten red eyes many a time.

Tears that haven't fallen since they seared into her cheeks as her soul was torn from her body.

And then the raw feeling in her throat came up. It boiled up like the roiling explosion of a
volcano as she opened her mouth and Wailed. She screamed of pain both past and present. Of
pain she knew she would be unable to escape in the future. Dead trees cracked and collapsed
into dust, mortar and stone cracked as the horrible sound pummeled the dead land in front of
her.

She screamed and she screamed and she kept screaming until it stopped. Until the burning in
her throat both died down and roared up differently and she gasped for a breath she hadn't
needed in decades yet felt more urgent than ever.

The helpless cold sting of solitude pressed in on her all around and Sylvanas didn't know
what to do. She put one foot in front of the other in a daze. Not quite knowing what happened
anymore.

She walked past death and destruction. And before she realised what happened, she'd already
pushed the door open of decay and set foot in its jaws. She blearily pushed past the pair of
torn apart corpses and on to the stairs. Her curiosity demanding she look around to what
remained but her eyes and head refusing to cooperate. She walked past the bridge leading to
Vereesa's tower. It was long since emptied when she left for Dalaran.

She walked past and felt the weight of regret around her neck like a yoke of stone.

She walked past her her old room and the dusty bones that lay strewn within and all was cold.
She pushed past and felt her face pinch in a scowl as she looked at the entrance of Alleria's
old tower. Looking back to the pained memory of her sister. Her beloved Alleria. Her role
model. And seeing the snarl on her face as she looked at her the same way she did after
Lirath was murdered by trolls. The flash of an arrow as it shot into her shoulder just as she
managed to flinch away flew through her memories.

Sylvanas snarled and quickly moved past. She would not find solace here.

She quickly walked up the next flight of stairs until she came upon the torn open door to the
balcony. Claw marks leading inwards and having torn apart the doors. And as she stepped
outside she looked at the statue erected in her honour.

It's a profoundly alien feeling to see a statue to memorialise to walked this earth. Though
admittedly, she is a dead thing. Even if she still haunts Azeroth and it's denizens as a
nighttime story to scare the children into behaving.

She walked past and swallowed the pressing feeling of wanting to tear that accursed statue
down inch by inch. Stepping beyond only to come upon the edge of the plateau overlooking
the bay and the half sunken wreck still perched and rotting atop the rock it was thrown upon,
waves still crashing into it.

She roughly dropped down to sit on the edge. Her mind empty and her heart full of nothing
as she looked on. The slow crashing of the waves and the slight breeze that ruffled her hair
and cloak.

This was home, once. And now it was nothing but the rotting remnants of the past. Decay
enclosed within the crumbling confines of walls that housed a dynasty for millennia.

This was where loneliness had reigned for ages. Where the weight of responsibility would
slowly crush every bit of a soul until only a broken shell doing her duty remained.

Where the mantle of a name being the thing that would forever separate her from the world at
large was born. Where innocence would be lost until only calculating strategy and bitter duty
would remain.

This was how she died long before her body went cold. How the leaden feeling of duty and
responsibility was thrust upon her. Where obligation and dynasty chained her to the alter of
sacrifice and demanded her to give it all.

And she did. She gave it everything. Everything she had and more and it wasn't enough. She
made her best friends die for her horribly to delay the inevitable. She sent thousands to their
deaths and watched many more than that die.

In the back of her mind she knew that her train of thought was only burying her deeper. That
it only exacerbated the issue. Made the walls despair press that much harsher from all around.

But it faded into the shadows as her eyes burned and her face felt tight.

Ranger-General. Monster. Young woman. Banshee Queen. Sister. Warchief. All faces of
Sylvanas Windrunner. Some forced upon her. Some taken from her prematurely.

The pressure in her chest grew stronger. Her scar throbbing in cold pain as as she stared
sightless out over the choppy waters. Staring in misery as the waves grew rougher and the
wind picked up. She barely blinked as her hood flopped around and her hair was blown about
by the wind.

She pinched her eyes shut tightly as the wind became louder and louder and louder. A
crescendo of roaring in her ears reaching a fever pitch. Drowning out everything. Everything
was just ice cold, the smell of salt becoming stronger and stronger. The yawning abyss of
pain growing and growing. Vertigo steadily building—when a warm hand suddenly cupped
her neck below her ear and instantly stopped her as the roaring suddenly quieted down as a
warm body gently pressed against her back.
She had not even realised she was shaking until she stopped doing so. Blinking in shock up at
Jaina's concerned expression. Jaina had summoned a shield around them. The heavy plinking
of rainfall Sylvanas had not even realised was there pattering against the glowing barrier. The
sound of the wind howling barely audible beyond the dull pounding in her ears and the
barrier.

Jaina's warm, scarred thumb gently stroked against her cold rain slick skin and Sylvanas
shivered. The sensation of her smooth of the oddly smooth bumpy skin rubbing against her in
a lazy pattern a comfort she didn't deserve. She opened her mouth to speak but all that came
out was a weird exhalation that caught halfway in her aching throat.

The worry in Jaina's eyes grew more intense as she swiped her thumb soothingly again and
smiled sadly. "Hey there. You've been gone for a while, Sylv," Jaina said gently.

How was she supposed to respond to that?

Sylvanas sighed and looked back down to the waters sloppily crashing into the rocks and on
the beach. It didn't take long before Jaina spoke up again, softer still than before, "What
happened?"

It was quiet for a long moment. her scar ached. The abyss in her chest drowning out thought.
"What didn't happen, Jaina?" Sylvanas asked in turn. Her chest feeling like it burst. She
turned halfway and looked up with blazing eyes and ears pinned back. "I am surrounded by
more people than I have in decades. We are at peace. There is no looming threat on the
horizon. I am no longer needed. I am no longer necessary - just a stepping stone to people
more and better than I can hope to be." She seethed, a hot flame fueled by cold melancholy.

"People I care for around me and I stand separate from them all. Leaned on like a pillar. And
left to crumble to dust like one. Who knew being dare I say happy for those I cared for could
be so bitter?" Sylvanas spat. Her nostrils flared and her ears pinned back flat to her skull.

She looked at Jaina's face. The scarred skin and the worry creasing the skin around surprised
eyes.
"I feel so fucking alone! Cursed to rot away in the shadows and on the sidelines. Isolated
from everything as the world and everyone in it moves on without and around me. That's
what happened Jaina. That's what's been happening for years!" She growled in anger. She
squeezed her eyes shut tightly and her face hurt. She was losing the battle in keeping her
expression cold and detached when all she ached to do was to to scrunch up and sob while
her throat felt like she swallowed lead.

Jaina's hand softly touched her shoulder and squeezed softly and Sylvanas just shattered.
Broke apart like cracked and glued together pottery. Her fists balled and the damn flowed
over as she let out a pained gasp. She tried to speak again but another hand touched her
forehead as a Jaina closed the distance again and cradled her head to her stomach. Shivering
in response, all Sylvanas could do was sob brokenly.
Crying ugly tears she could never shed with a warm hand on her head and the a despairing
cold pit in her heart.
End Notes

Thank you for reading. Hope you liked it and any comments and/or feedback are welcome
and appreciated.

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