I think this one needs a little (okay, a lot!) of explanation. I am not only a computer gamer, but a table top gamer, and to say I owed somebody a game would be putting it mildly. Unfortunately, all I had in mind was Clarimonde. So I ran a home rules game based on her story for my best friend. I also have another friend who's been screaming for "MORE Clair, dammit!" When she heard where this game had gone, she demanded I write it for her and send it. Since the game covered a 36 hour period with zero sleep, lore got thrown out along the way.

So...For Chaviji, Runetotem US, Horde; and Branwyn & alts et al, Runetotem US, Alliance... And everyone else who wants to risk reading it...

Forget to Remember.

I wanted to die. There was no other way to put it. I was not a fool; I had known this day was coming, but to actually face it, no. My hands were stained with blood, but there was nothing new about that. I had killed so many. What was different was that this blood had not been spilled by me, that this blood flowed from one I loved. He had been limp for awhile, his silver shot head pillowed in my lap. He was...dead. Baudoin. Dead. Gone. My buttress against everything that came against me, fallen. This hurt more than my own death had, a hundred times worse. I felt colder than I had then. Emptier. Less.

"Clair." Jaina's voice was desperate, "I..."

She had no words, but then, what was there to say? Baudoin was gone...

"Only because you leave him fallen. Cast the circle. Call the power. Raise him. He would return to your side, forever..." If the words, the thoughts, were Arthas's, I could rage, but he had been silent and small in my mind since it had happened. His full attention was locked upon me, but he had not put voice to that focus. Likewise, if it came from my runeblade, I could throw it from me, rage at it, but it was shocked into silence. That thought was entirely mine... which meant I could not turn my back on it. I could raise Baudoin, the vaunted Ironfist of the Order of the Silver Hand. I could snatch the oaths he had given me, the very depths of his love, and yank him back to me.

"Clair. I..." Jaina attempted it again, but her voice failed. Once I had pitied her, chased by so many, and caught by none. Now I envied her. "Clair. We need to go. We can't stay here like this. They know where we are, now."

If I stayed, perhaps the Legion could accomplish what others said was impossible. Perhaps they could destroy what Arthas had built. Perhaps they could destroy me. Then I could...

My hands moved of their own volition, cradling Baudoin's head as I lowered it gently to the ground. "Clair will not leave his remains." My lips formed the words, it was my own contralto voice to give them sound, but I did not speak them. My eyes moved to Jaina, who now regarded me with a mixture of cold relief and more than a little dread. She recognized when Arthas spoke through me. "Even I could not compel her to do that."

"We do not ask that of her. We would not leave Baudoin...living or dead."

"Good. Bring him, and I will handle her."

So, I was handled all of the way back to Lordaeron, left alone only when I slept the sleep of the dead. If it wasn't Arthas moving me, it was Jaina hovering over me, her eyes dark and her face pale. Word preceded my progress, Bayard met us on the road, and he didn't need to say a word. His eyes, the very set of his chin, told me he had already been informed. He dropped his horse into step beside mine, studying me. "Is...she...?"

"No." Jaina snapped in response, riding behind me. "She's not well. Most of the time that is Arthas riding her."

"And my father still lies dead?" Those eyes, so much like his father's, measured my face. He was a mage of the Kirin-Tor. He had some idea of my power, some idea of my abilities. He realized that if Baudoin still rested dead, then neither Arthas nor I had attempted to raise him.

"He does." She sighed.

He nodded slowly, resting a hand upon my shoulder. "Mama." He breathed, and Arthas released his hold upon me, retreating back to his cautious watch and wait.

"Bayard, my son." I breathed through lips that didn't wish to unlock. My son. Baudoin's son. The only we had birthed through blood and desire. The only one who was truly Baudoin's legacy to this world.

"Anelas awaits your return." He murmured. "The news has hit him hard. Renata, more so."

I frowned. Baudoin had stood as an implacable father to my firstborn, and to the one I had brought home later. Neither were born of him, Anelas belonged to Arthas, and Renata was anyone's guess, but he had raised them both as if they were just as much his. His heart had been that big...

Bayard dropped beside me, silently shadowing my way to Lordaeron, and I studied him. He had much of Baudoin in him, none doubted his paternity. He had his sire's brandy eyes, fringed with the same excess of lashes. He had Baudoin's stubborn jaw and narrow lips, but he had also been marked by my smaller stature, far from the Ironfist's bulk. While his father had been a Hillsbrad farmer in finery until his last breath, Bayard De Nemesio was the noble heir my father had torn himself up wanting. "Does the line hold?" He finally dared to ask, and I sighed.

"Baudoin's fall has buttressed the line for now." None who had stood beside him wished Baudoin's death to be in vain. They'd hold...for now. He had bought time, and a glorious death... One I would not take from him. I understood what it was to stand without that final chapter, to have lost the right to die as I had lived, a paladin of Lordaeron. "Bayard. You need not fear."

His eyes turned to me, puzzled and concerned. There was plenty to fear, that expression told me, and he found the statement incomprehensible. The Legion moved again, on our doorstep. That had been the call to bring Baudoin out of retirement, to bring the aging Ironfist back onto the line of battle. "My mother?" He queried slowly.

"I will not raise Baudoin." Let him lie, in rest. Let him go to that place I knew was there, that place that sheltered Uther. If Uther was truly gone, he would not come back to me, but he had. He had continued to watch over me, love me, beyond his death. His love powered the sword at my side, riding on the opposite hip from the runeblade gifted to me by Arthas. "I will...let him lie."

Equal parts relief and despair crossed my youngest son's face, I had made solid the words he prayed for, and dreaded, all at once. On one hand, I would not bring his father back as an abomination, that which had made him a paladin, a servant of the Light, forever dead within him. On the other, I had just turned my back on Baudoin, to let him go. Bayard had been raised from childhood with a parent he knew was dead, and seemed none the worse for the experience. I had still been there. I had tucked him in bed; I had soothed his fears and his fevers. I had fed him, hugged him, loved him, in spite of my death. But he understood that I was wrong. I was dead. That which had shone from within me was forever doused...

"I replaced that with more, Clair. So very much more... You glow with power. Beauty, incarnate."

I frowned at Arthas's assertion. Yes, and Baudoin had been the one to truly make me believe I was still beautiful. Not Arthas. "I am forever in your debt, my Prince." I returned, truthfully. If I had not been raised, I would have left my children without me. Baudoin as well.

"Lay the Ironfist to rest, however you see fit. Return to your estates and put your affairs in order. I will give you as much time as I can."

His attention turned from me slightly, now that I had shown some signs of thinking again, he loosened his grasp upon me. "So we rise against this threat to Azeroth?" I asked, and his attention sharpened back upon me. Only as his Consort General would I find the wherewithal to avenge Baudoin's death.

"Azeroth is mine, Clarimonde. Mine. Not the Legion's. Yes, we rise against this. And yes, I will give you what you need to grind your husband's killers into the ground beneath your bootheels, my General, my Consort."

I grinned in spite of myself. There were times I loved him so.