▸ Column · Warcraft — Azeroth and Outland, the age of the Betrayer's exile
ILLIDAN STORMRAGE replies.
Replied to by Illidan Stormrage, with a rebuttal from Arthas Menethil.
The letter
My younger brother Kael was broken in the war — his spine crushed under a collapse — and for four years he has fought a dependence on the numbing draughts the healers first gave him for the pain, relapsing three times. Now he has moved back beneath our mother's roof. But my worry is not Kael. It is our mother. She has begun hiding his draughts, reading every message that comes by raven, sending me word at the midnight bell to report whether he finished his supper — all while telling the village she is "managing." I journeyed home and watched her cancel a healer's appointment she had waited half a year for, because Kael seemed "off" that morning. I cannot tell whether she is a devoted caregiver or whether her own fear has curdled into something that is making his recovery worse. Twice I raised it gently; both times she wept and said I do not understand what it is to watch him suffer — and I do not live there, so, fair. But she is vanishing into his illness in a way that may break her health and his sobriety both. How do you make someone see they need help too, when they have decided that needing help is a luxury reserved only for the sick?
Illidan Stormrage replies
You ask how to make her see. You cannot make anyone see — I burned my own eyes away precisely because no one else would look at what was coming, and they named me Betrayer for the looking.
But hold to the distinction that decides everything here. Your mother believes she is sacrificing for Kael. She is not. Sacrifice is a thing chosen with open eyes, its cost counted and paid knowingly — I knew the name that would be mine, and I drank the demon's power anyway, knowing. What she is doing is not that. She is drowning and calling the water devotion. She has never counted the price; she cannot even see it. That is not strength. It is a slow surrender wearing strength's face.
So your cause is real. Hold to it. She weeps and tells you that you do not understand, and you let that end the conversation. Do not. Her tears are not a verdict. My brother Malfurion wept too, and sealed me in stone for ten thousand years, and the enemy I warned of came regardless. Being cast as the one who does not understand is the tax for saying the hard thing aloud. Pay it. Say it again.
— Illidan Stormrage
Arthas Menethil weighs in
Illidan tells you to say it louder and wear the villain's mask. Of course he does — he never met a certainty he wouldn't burn his eyes for. But look again at your mother. The hidden draughts, the watched ravens, the "I am managing" — I know that woman. She has decided she alone can save Kael, and that any control is justified by the saving. That is Stratholme, before the torches. Uther tried to tell me, gently. I called it weakness and walked past him. Do not become her louder echo. What she needs is someone willing to doubt beside her — not another voice certain it sees clearly.
— Arthas Menethil
▸ Read next