Chapter Text
It starts as an itch on the back of his neck. Khadgar wouldn’t have noticed at all, lost in comforting ennui of pen nibs scraping blank parchment, if his desk partner Ailena hadn’t nudged him.
“Are you alright?”
It’s enough to still his pen and shatter the soporific rhythm he’d built to study in. His first instinct is to check for annoying habits, but that wasn’t right. When he worked Inscription the worst he did was mutter under his breath. Ailena’s wide blue eyes stare at him perturbed rather than irrate, meaning that wasn’t the case. He has his fingers on the back of his neck, where he realizes there’s fluid under his nails. He draws his hand back, but the sight of scarlett freezes him in place, pairing quickly with the corresponding sting of broken skin at the base if his neck to form a complete picture of what had occurred.
“I’ll be going to the healers.” Shame blooms around the base of his spine. He was supposed to have grown out of picking his skin by now, the nervous habit left behind with his less than adept childish self. In spite of it, Khadgar keeps his voice and hand steady, standing without a wobble.
Ailena has the grace to hide her disgust at the sight of blood, glancing at what he had completed so far on of his project on parchment. “Be sure to hurry, you’ll want to turn that in before Inscription Master Woodall has his evening wine.”
He nods without really responding. Reaven had been called away to The Hinterlands to look into an infestation of wood lice near Aerie Peak and wasn’t likely to return for another week yet, so instead of turning to the gardens he heads to Sanctum where those studying the ways of the Light kept their books and occasionally tended patients with minor wounds. As soon as he walked through tall arch of the doorway, someone pokes their head around a bookshelf.
“Khadgar?” To his relief, the voice is soft and friendly, belonging to Rae, one of the Priestesses in Training. Good, High Priestess Freyna always watched him like he was about to combust or steal a book. Plus, Rae took Mana Buns as payment where the high priestess always demanded silver.
“Hey, Rae. Sorry to bother you, but could you take a look at my neck?”
“Sure thing! I can always count on you for practice.” Her head swivels around, seeking a place to sit. She eventually picks a chair and drags it closer to the entrance. Once it’s planted with the vibrant blue seat cushions facing him, she gestures for him to sit. “What sort of trouble are you having with your neck?”
Khadgar almost scratches at his face, stopping just in time to avoid smearing half-dried blood across his cheek. Heat crawls up his neck so it’s just as well he sits facing away from her. “Just a scratch. It would be nothing if I wasn’t bleeding so much.”
“You know I don’t mind treating scrapes and cuts-” Her fingertips are warm where they pull away the collar of his robe, “oh.”
In Khadgar’s limited experience, it’s never good news when a healer says that. Fighting the urge to swivel around, he asks, as calmly as he can, “What is it, Rae?”
“Khadgar.” He can’t fight it anymore and turns to see Rae’s stricken expression. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t think on them too much, Khadgar.”
Antonidas’ study was meant to be relaxing, with haphazardly stacked books of every size decorating any free space available and collections of inkwells scattered about the rest. In the Dalaran evening, in the shade of the mountains, it was lit only by the fires of a handful of braziers. The option for more light was available, but forgone. He crosses the room to where Khadgar sat, placing a goblet of wine on the desk. “The Marks are merely indicators, they have never been definitive of the type of relations they foretold.”
Khadgar stares at the goblet, a fine one made of pearly enamel with amethyst inlaid in the shape of the mark of the Kirin Tor. Meant for guests, not students. He thanks Antonidas in a low voice, surprising himself since he was certain there his faintest whisper would be strangled in the vice of his throat. For a long moment he stares at the way the orange firelight sways over the goblet, then shrugs and reaches for it. If a whisper could escape, perhaps wine could trickle in.
Antonidas is watching him, an observation Khadgar could no longer ignore. With a considerable amount of effort, he seeks to quiet the restless thrum of his own mind. “I’m sorry. They’re a little unsettling.”
They. He’s counted six in total in his room before he received summons. The back of his neck. His left forearm just above the mark he received at age nine. His right shoulder. The inner skin of his right wrist. His left hip. His lower back. Six marks, all black, all with the beginning sigil of death.
Six soulmates, and he’d see them all die. He wishes he were closer to the desk to drum his fingertips against the surface, it was less distracting and had less risk of sloshing his wine than tapping his foot.
“Understandably so.” His words are knowing but hollow, the way lectures were when the lecturer knew none of the students had a chance of retaining the subject. “Khadgar, I called you up here to discuss a grave matter with you. We have known for years you’re a gifted student. There is no doubt given your natural aptitude for spell deconstruction you would have rose quickly to prominence within our ranks.” Would have , Antonidas said, past tense. Alarm bells sounded in Khadgar’s head. “The appearance of these marks, however,” here it came, Khadgar braced himself, “has caused The Council to make the decision final.” Oh Light, he was going to be kicked out. He can’t even imagine for what. He’d been (caught) in the Underbelly one time . “We’ve made you the sole Guardian Initiate.”
If he hadn’t been braced, his jaw would’ve fell open. As is, his foot freezes and his brow furrows. “What? Why?”
He’s abrupt, but Antonidas must have expected that since his expression remains as unmoving as the face of Khadgar’s chalice in the firelight. “You were always on the list, based on your aptitude and affinity for knowledge.” A polite way of acknowledging Khadgar’s nosiness. “But we were always looking for other signs as well.”
“Other signs.” Khadgar repeats, the furrow in his brow drawing so tight the skin in the center of his forehead pinches. “Multiple soulmate deaths counts as a sign?”
Khadgar doesn’t like the Archmage’s expression, cold and clear like sheared ice, the way he imagined an executioner must look. “Great men make many sacrifices.”
There’s a rush within his ears, drowning out everything else the Archmage says. Khadgar has no experience with love, so he dismisses that route immediately. But a soulmate, in concept, isn’t so hard to understand. Someone you are connected with, someone you understand. Someone who can settle in an empty room with you and allow you to feel like you still belong. The Council thought he was going to sacrifice those people for their greatness.
“...best to cover them for now.” Antonidas finishes. “Don’t you agree?”
“Hmm?” Khadgar allows the growing buzz of his mind wick away, leaving a bitter stone of resolve in its wake. “Yes.”
He leaves that night, glancing over his shoulder multiple times at the glowing monolith Dalaran made. It hovered for a full day at his back, as if the city itself watched as he abandoned his future.
Menethil Harbor is closer, frustratingly so, though by the time he made it to the packed earth roads of the Wetlands he knew better than to think a finger’s distance on his travel map was anything less than a day’s travel. Still, better than the multiple fingers he’s traversed already, and the fingers he had left to go to reach Ironforge.
Menethil was closer, but it wasn’t Stormwind’s Harbor, nor did it hold promise of a new beginning the way a capital city did. If he were to begin anywhere, it could only be Stormwind.
How that sentiment would haunt him, when all was said and done.
“You’re marked.”
Lothar’s tone is just the right shade of casual to make Khadgar’s neck hairs stand on end. He refuses to give in to the urge to glance around, though, knowing the other men are too preoccupied with rations and building tents to assist Lothar in whatever mischief he might cause. How had the Commander known? It takes longer than it should for Khadgar to remember their first meeting, as well as the fact that one of his marks hovers over the one granted to him by his former teachers. Wary, he replies. “Yes. Most are.”
“I didn’t think mages formed human connections. Unless you met a particularly well-suited book, that is.” He smiles like he meant to deliver a joke, but the veneer of humor is brittle and when Khadgar scrutinizes him Lothar’s gaze is too intense to be convincing.
“I have multiple.” Curse Lothar for being attentive, and the thrice-damned road and Llane’s military pacing that wore down what little self-control he had, and most of all curse himself and his inability to swallow the truth before it dribbled out unbidden and unwanted by all around. But Lothar had none of the fear or disgust others might, only bone deep empathy.
“That’s a heavy burden.” Then, for reasons Khadgar can’t begin to comprehend, the warrior’s shoulders lower and he takes on a sorrowful air. “But you are young, yet.”
He leaves before Khadgar can parse anything from that comment. Lothar is impressively light on his feet when he wants to be, and his strides can carry him far in a short amount of time if he wanted. That evening Lothar gets drunker than Khadgar has ever seen him, drunker than a Commanding officer should, and they don’t see each other for days.
Khadgar isn’t a prisoner, per se, but it’s unspoken that if he tries to leave Lothar’s watchful gaze he’ll more likely than not find himself very much a prisoner in some form or another. Khadgar understands that, but he’s no longer the timid child that left Dalaran, nor is he as easily stunted as he was when Lothar first dragged him to Goldshire. This was their dozenth battle together, so when Lothar pulls him back while he himself charged forward, Khadgar wasn’t going to let it stand. They bicker and argue, from the mess tent to the Keep.
“You wouldn’t understand.” Lothar snarls, finally tired of Khadgar’s heckling, enough to turn on him in one of the halls of the Keep.
“There’s nothing to understand. You’re purposefully keeping me from where I’m needed.” Khadgar snapped back.
“To protect you!”
“I don’t need to be protected!”
Lothar’s mouth opens and closes in what could have been outrage had he not looks like a candle freshly blown out. What Khadgar had mistook for rage was desperation, and when the wildness of it faded all it left was quiet pleading. “No, but I need you protected.”
But why?
Khadgar’s left arm twinges, and it hits him. A certainty disguised as a hunch, and without thinking his eyes light up, power pooling in his left palm before he throws it square into Lothar’s chest. It’s the same spell Medivh used on him and he on Garona, though he now has enough control that it he can dampen the force billowing over Lothar’s form. Quickly, before his temper and therefore his courage abates, Khadgar approaches, ripping Lothar’s left sleeve up. The mana for his spell stutters and dies, the toes of Lothar’s soles clattering when they hit the floor. His sleeve remains rolled up, the mark exposed and vibrant on his inner forearm, near the elbow. Where Khadgar’s is. Khadgar stares at it for a long time, his heart wrenching so hard he has trouble taking a breath. “You never said-”
“I didn’t think you would want to know.”
Khadgar sways, but Lothar’s there, his calloused palms capturing either side of Khadgar’s face, their foreheads pressing together. Slowly, Khadgar raises his own hands, and cover’s Lothar’s with them.
The floor, his cheeks, their foreheads, his world narrows to those points of contact and the stability they provide as war and fate set everything else spinning around him. Could he expand his world by pressing closer? Feeling more of Lothar against him? A hysterical bubble of laughter forms and hold in his belly. “You’re not afraid?”
Lothar’s long hair slips down and frames the narrow space between their noses and lips. His eyes are so close now it’s hard to focus without perspective splitting his vision into dual images of one eye each. “Afraid?”
“That I’ll kill you.” Because that is what he was. He’s known since he brought Medivh to the font and saw the mark on the back of his neck. He is the harbinger of their death, at worst their killer and at best to impotent to save them.
But Lothar laughs, low and fond. “Khadgar. I am old and we are at war. Death is inevitable, and far more likely for me than you anyway. But love is a choice,” Lothar steps closer, their bellies now pressed together and legs flush, all his whispers caught in arch between their lips, “and for however much longer I have left, I will love you.”
Khadgar sucks in a deep breath, stalling for the words that never materialize. What to do? How to respond? Grasping for some reaction, any reaction, he rolls their foreheads, his nose mashing into the soft skin of Lothar’s cheek, until their dry lips meet.
Death does not wait. Not at the Steppes, not in the Outlands. Not in Dalaran, or on Draenor. It certainly won’t wait on the Broken Shore. Five of his marks have burned and died, leaving him with ashy scars as his only reminder of their vibrant light. The sixth no longer has a death sigil in it, but one of uncertainty. On that might foretell his own death.
But Khadgar is fine with that, strangely. He’s lived a long life, longer certainly than some of those whose death mark his body. Death is inevitable, Lothar taught him back at what felt to be the beginning, but Love is a choice.
“Archmage.” Illidan Stormrage’s lips curl in a rare smile. Argus burns above them. Khadgar looks to the sky, the sigil of uncertainty and entropy heavy on his mind.
“I suppose there is work to be done.”
And Khadgar will not hesitate to make it.