Bored in the Shadowlands, Part II

"Jon. Jon Chess. My darling husband," Alia said. "JON! JONATHAN CHESS!”

The fellow known as Jon Chess looked up from where he had been silently brooding, staring off into the space above his Suramar Spiced Tea. "I'm sorry, Beloved. Did you say something?" 

Alia glared at him. She had to repeat the mantra over and over in her mind. Must not sheep husband. Must NOT sheep husband "Yes dearest. I want you to tell me what has made you so bewildered and befuddled."

"You mean, aside from, the rare beauty of my wife?" he said, reaching for her.

"Oh no!" she said, dancing backwards out of his reach. "It is not going to be that easy, not today." Ordinarily she would allow herself to be pleasantly distracted and kiss and be kissed soundly, but she was not about to let him off the hook, however pleasurably the prospect. "You've been moping around, sullen and brooding when you think nobody is watching."  She sat and poured herself some of the tea, which Jon made - and consumed - by the pot.  "Now spill... and I don't mean the tea."

"I... am not happy with my assignments," Jon confessed. "The Lord High Admiral has me helping the Fae, the Venthyr, even the Maldraxxi... and doing paperwork. Admiralty PAPERWORK. " His voice rose on that last. Alia knew Jon hated paperwork most of all. "Maybe I should quit, and go back to freelancing...?"

"Or maybe you could quit being an idiot and ask her?" Alia commented.

"I can't do that! I execute the commands my Lord High Admiral gives me. it is not for me to question orders."

"Jon," Alia began in a soft voice, "That is perhaps the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say, and let me tell you - you've said some really stupid things."

"But...: Jon tried to interject, but Alia cut him off.

"If you have questions about your current assignment, complaints about how you're being assigned, objections to how you are being asked to proceed, don't you think that you owe the Lord High Admiral to make your views known?" asked Alia.

"But..."

"You have never taken orders blindly. Jaina has always told you what the objective is, and then given you the reins to resolve the situations in question, using your - sometimes questionable - judgement? She sets the strategic objective, and then releases you to do the job in whatever way you have seen fit?"

"Yes but..."

"In fact, wasn't deniability one of the main pillars of the value you brought to Theramore and now to Kul Tiras? To make some hard choices, some choices between bad and worse, so that Jaina wouldn't have to? You have been the necessary knife in the Dark, the poison in the cheese, the...

"I have never poisoned cheese!" Jon replied hotly.

"Perhaps not, but who killed a squadron of Goblin pilots during the War of the Thorns?" she asked rhetorically. "Who destroyed that Horde raiding force burning Westfall by giving the entire force ale that gave them the trots for weeks? Maybe you didn't poison cheese, but everything else has always been open season, for the right reasons."

Alia kissed Jon on the forehead as he sat back, grumbling quietly about the sanctity of cheese.

"Jon, you have always been the fellow given the assignments which require the hard choices; you have saved lives by making those choices. I know it, Jaina knows it, it was what Elling Trias recruited you for, and the reason you spent months in Ravenholdt. Genn Graymane, Tess, Anduin... all of them know that you do what must be done. Fel, even that smarmy bastard Shaw knows it - and takes advantage of it, when you let him."

His hand shot up in protest, but the Magna of the Kirin Tor swatted him away.

"So don't spew me a line about how you're a good soldier who follows orders." Alia continued, as she worked her way onto his lap, smiling radiantly when his arms wrapped around the woman he called Beloved. "You are a lousy solider, a worse servant, and a sneaky bastard, by both birth and inclination."

"True..." Jon muttered. 

"It is also true that you are an adept of the Shadows who reveres the Light. A kind, compassionate man with a sharp blade in one hand and a jar of venom in the other. An honest man whose capacity for duplicity is unmatched in Azeroth and beyond." She kissed him soundly. "So if tomorrow you still are unhappy, go see Jaina. Talk to her. More importantly, listen to her!"

"As my Beloved commands." Burying his head into her neck with a begrudging acceptance, Jon pulled his wife into him. She rose to her feet before Jon could escalate matters of affection, however. 

Alia did not leave him with nothing, however, and a heartfelt kiss to his forehead, his cheek, and finally his lips settled the issue. "I have a Loremasters' council meeting in Dalaran. Make us something delicious for dinner, and then I will supply... dessert." She added with a wink.