Khaeris Dawndancer

Haunting

Khaeris lay in a bed that wasn't her own. The sheets were rich. The rug she put her feet down on each morning was thick and soft. The curtains over the window were finely made. The window itself looked over the Court of the Sun, not the Bazaar.

Pollux hadn't come home that week. Other Pollux, not her Pollux.

Gone on a business trip. Zandalar? Had he said that? He supplied the military, he'd said, but was that what this trip was?  Maybe somewhere else. She realized should probably be ashamed she hadn't listened closely, but she wasn't ashamed. Despondency came and went in waves.

Though alone every evening, Khaeris could not be disappointed in this. He was too strange. It was both too familiar and too jarring to see his shape. His silhouette was complete and unmarred. His eyes were green here. It hadn't been his 'birthday.' He was generous, and he'd been kind to invite her to stay at his home. It had startled and touched her when he'd let her remain even while he'd left. She could have been anyone.

But he was not her Pollux.

The furnishings leant to squared corners and sleek lines. The same as her Pollux. He still had a rather large and frequently used tinkering workshop in his home and technology was all around her. He had the same smile and the same sense of humor. His voice was the same, even if the cadences weren't exact. He didn't hold his tongue nearly as much as her Pollux.

And he was whole. He wasn't directly in the military--a supplier, not a front liner. He was confident in ways her Pollux was not. He was less jaded, less scarred--both literally and emotionally. He was rich and flaunted it, reveling in the attention and winning people over with smiles and charm so smooth you might not even feel it wind around you. His suits were custom tailored to him, the fit flattering and the styles new.

It felt surreal. It felt subtly wrong. Everything here did. She rolled over, heart quiet. She wanted to pretend she didn't belong here. But she knew she should have been comfortable in this universe. She should have felt some sense of home, right? This was her origin. She would never see the place (the time?) that was Home. She should settle in and find her feet.

Instead, she pulled them in under the warm blanket. Tomorrow, she'd carve out time for another look. Another heartbreak.

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She had been shocked, and she knew her complexion had gone ashen. The records were complete. Woodenly, not musically, she had thanked the clerk as she absently floated out of the Registrar office.

Pyraelia was dead here.

Dead. Of her hemolytic disease. Her sister had not saved her. No pact. Her parents were still alive... Fiorenze had a daughter she'd given her sister's name. But her Pyraelia was not here.

Khaeris found her steps had taken her, unsought, toward the Shielded Mind. It was not the Shielded Mind. Not the clinic where she'd spent hours on the porch laughing and talking with Pyraelia.

It was a general goods market of shops. She dashed down the steps as soon as she'd climbed them.

____________________________

Was the war the same there?

Had her Helal been at Darnassus? Was the Kaldorei city saved in the other timeline? Was everyone safe and celebrating the defeat of the Legion? Please. Please please.

She'd seen the Battlemage. His runes had shimmered as he confidently strode the streets of the Royal Exchange. She'd sought him out, but then hesitated. This wasn't her Helal. His eyes were both intact. His gaze had caught on her with no recognition, though his wolfish grin for her had been all too clear to read even across the Royal Exchange. It had made her heart jolt and her eyes widen.

The Registrar had smiled benignly at her when she'd looked at those records, too. They were starting to know her well.

This was not her Helal. Her best friend. Father to four. No, this man was still Heir. This man had no children. Had not married Aeni. No children.

She had ducked beyond the crowd and lost him, all the while stroking the runed and enameled bangle her Helal has procured for her.

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Andaeros Dawnflare. His strong shoulders and that big, confident smile. ... But. But not following Feywren as a bodyguard.

Not her Andaeros. The Registrar knows that he's still a Spellbreaker. Never discharged dishonorably. Never broken and rebuilt and better for it. No. All the swagger she'd seen on this one made more sense as the pieces slide into place. Did he still tell terrible puns? Did he do calligraphy? Tattoos?

_________________________

They don't let her near the Adzior estates. Her Peacock and the monk are not there. Who are they, here? Ashraen was no where to be found.

_________________________

Caz wasn't with the ballet any longer. Their old coach couldn't say where he'd gone, but he had been gone years, before the Scourge.

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Kenarin didn't own a shop; neither in Dalaran, nor, from what she could gather, in Stormwind.

_______________________

And Iloam had never existed.

______________________

Every night Khaeris finished climbing the steps to Pollux's home, her dance bag hanging over her shoulder and the scraps of her notes from the Registrar's office crumpled in her hand.

This was supposed to be her time.

If that was the case, why didn't it feel like she belonged in this world? She felt more like a figment of imagination manifested. A half-forgotten story.

She slipped into the stranger's house and made herself tea, as silent and as heavy as a ghost.