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The life--the existence--of a death knight of the Lich King was, in some ways, little different from that of any soldier.
There were hours of blood and blurred steel, where the world contracted to the circumference spanned by his sword-arm. There were days of marching and strategizing; black pins driven into maps and markers moved over them like pawns on a great game-board, charting the glacier-slow but inevitable advance of the Scourge.
And, just as with every army, there were times where there was nothing. Times of endless drills and exercises, of idling, of looking out over the white vastness of Icecrown and simply...waiting.
The great bulk of the Scourge was very good at waiting. After all, they had the patience of the dead. Skeletal warriors would simply collapse where they halted, shamming the peace of the grave. Ghouls would rot gently until they were roused by their masters. Those who had, one way or another, retained their minds, though--they had to find ways to fill the time.
Thassarian had no patience with the schemes and petty politicking that occupied too many of his fellows. The vicious hierarchies that they built would be rendered meaningless by one command from their master. Everything would--so why bother at all? Distantly, he knew his dismissal as a kind of bent pride, a stubborn remainder of his mortal self.
But they all bore those, like scars. It could not be helped; without them, they would be no more than the mindless creatures at their front lines. Whether it made them weaker or stronger, he did not know. So they built allegiances, temporary truces, rivalries...
If someone would ask Thassarian outright if Koltira was his friend, he might have answered with a derisive laugh. They are Scourge. Friends were for the living. Comrades, brothers in arms perhaps, but--no. Not friends.
Of course, one skill he retains is the ability to lie.
*
His quarters are adjacent to Koltira's. The wall between them is thin enough they can hear each other's movements. Soft steps echoing on ice-cold floors. The scrape of armour set against the wall for cleaning.
On certain long days, in Northrend's short, harsh summer, one or the other will walk the short distance and open the door of the other's quarters. Neither of them bother with knocking. Then, they sit together until the sun sets and their work begins. Their masters do not like the light.
Sometimes they talk, in low reverberant voices, not the businesslike talk of training and strategy (or the past--never that), but meaningless murmurs about the wind and the colour of the sky. More often, they say nothing; they sit side to side, not quite touching.
And when they are at war? They move like they have one mind--like they are two hands, left and right. Perhaps that is why their curious connection goes unremarked. The Scourge never argues with results.
*
It takes redemption to break them, of course.
Their friendship was born in the dark. When they step blinking back into the Light, it falters on unsteady legs. There will always be Acherus, there will always be the Knights of the Ebon Blade--but there are old allegiances, old debts owed. They will have to become courteous enemies.
It is Koltira who makes the first move towards his future. In his new armour, hair loose around his sharp features, he almost looks the way he did the first time Thassarian saw him...
(When he sunk a runeblade into his heart. That also comes with redemption: the past creeping up between them, like a crooked mirror.)
Now Koltira is about to leave Acherus, and Thassarian does not know when they will meet again.
"Wait," he says, and Koltira halts for a moment.
Two long strides and he is at the balcony's edge. He pulls the elf into a clumsy embrace, armour clinking against armour, and for a moment their cheeks brush together and both of them go still.
Thassarian realises that it is the first time they have touched, skin to skin.
He pulls away and lays a gauntleted hand on Koltira's shoulder. "Good luck."
Koltira smiles. "And to you, brother."
The word wrenches his stomach like the sight of something beautiful; he returns the smile.
(And the crooked mirror wavers for a moment, like it could shatter.)
Then, he stays at the balcony's edge and waits until the bony gryphon carrying Koltira away is long out of sight.
*
The pieces finally click together, smooth as the teeth of perfectly tuned gears, somewhere on the border of Lordaeron.
The hooves of his deathcharger leave a trail in the half-dead soil, but he does not care. Whatever follows him out of the Plaguelands, he can handle. If there is something here that can threaten him, it lies ahead, in the land he once called home. He has not been in this land for a long time, and the twisted familiarity of it is like a poison kiss--but he has no room to mourn it. He is too filled up with purpose.
He can still hear the sounds of battle ringing in his ears, of Scourge abominations and Forsaken troops alike tearing through his lines. When he was asked to lead the campaign in Andorhal, he had almost laughed--it was a foolish, misbegotten war they fought here. The world was cracked through and through, and the heroes who had brought down the Lich King were asked not to make it whole but to scrabble in the remnants, like rats.
Still, he had agreed. War was his only skill; it is what he was made for. What else could he do?
The answer comes to him after the decision is already made, after he has already mounted Dusk and started riding hard to the West. The pieces click together, and he grins into the wind, wild and a little mad.
There are facts that he knows, sure as the sun will rise. One, the battle for Andorhal was won by the Val'kyr. Two, Koltira would never have used them by his own will. Three--
--three, Koltira is gone, and before Thassarian had time to think it through he was riding towards the Undercity in pursuit.
Because war is not the only thing he is built for.
And all of a sudden he feels alive, with all life's vulnerability and fire. His swords are sharp and thirsty and he is riding into battle, but not for the Alliance or for vengeance or even for the Knights of the Ebon Blade.
He is riding out for love; it makes all the difference.