open; Give me a field, give me a big sky

[foxsays]

WHO: Araceli, Morrigan, Asher and you
WHAT: Catch-all for Bloomingtide
WHEN: Bloomingtide (post-5th Bloomingtide for Araceli)
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: A proper catch-up for all three characters below with specific starters and some open headers, if you'd like something specific feel free to hit me up! If you'd like a backdated thing for Araceli or Morrigan, let me know and I'll sort that too, I know I've been gone for a fair bit sorry!
Araceli's threads will all be post 5th Bloomingtide when she gets back from her mission in Antiva!
For some ooc details on Morrigan things, please see here, a rookery post will go up shortly for research helpers!
Warnings for talk of violence, blood and language in Asher's threads.

Comments

iii/wildcard

[byblow]

Alistair comes to "help" with "research"—a lie that he could sell better if he spoke more of his time scouring Thedas for clues to red lyrium or Corypheus' fate with Hawke or stopped creeping into Skyhold's dark, dusty basement library like a particularly large and clumsy thief, perhaps, but even so no one has questioned it—and today he lingers in Morrigan's study after Kieran has run off to learn something more valuable (allegedly) than how to faithfully recreate an ogre battle with carvings and figurines.

When he goes Alistair stays on the floor, examining the craftsmanship of a soldier, and doesn't look at Morrigan when he says, "He's a good kid."

Obviously. But it's a credit to her.

"Was it hard, raising him alone?"

[arcaneadvisor]

"A fact I am sure astounds most who meet him." And would astound more if they knew that Alistair was involved. If they knew about everything else. Not that they will but she does wonder sometimes what the people that know about him really think, even if she knows she won't ever get the full truth out of the three here. It's a strange question - yet perhaps it's not, not when she considers it. Perhaps that's what people are supposed to ask, perhaps it's only people like her that would expect something sharper, something more awful. Something about how her mother raised her or any number of stories about the Chasind and what they might get up to in the Wilds.

"When he was small and screamed for hours without end until I could scream back at him simply to see if it would make him stop?" Kieran makes her smile, even the not as fun memories because well, children are messy, and complicated, they shriek and she didn't know what she was doing because Flemeth never told her things like that, and if she asked, she never got a proper answer. Just something to make her feel about an inch tall, to remind her of how ungrateful she was. "Why do you ask?"

For once it's not a loaded question, as she puts down her quill, head cocked to the side all the better to watch him.

[byblow]

"Selfish reasons," he admits, though that's only part of the truth, presented as the whole of it with an air of simpering self-mockery. "My mother is alive. I'm trying to decide how hurt my feelings are."

He is aware of the hypocrisy. Maybe absentee parenting runs in the blood. (Maybe not having any genuine parental figures makes the prospect of trying to be one paralyzingly terrifying.) But Kieran has Morrigan and neither of them particularly need him, and Alistair only lasted a couple of months before making some kind of effort, and it's different. Slightly.

He puts the soldiers down and positions the other toys with absent-minded care. It's more attention than a grown man should give figurines, maybe. But he isn't quite playing with them. It's fidgeting.

"But I really want to know, too. Was he always good?"

[arcaneadvisor]

Whatever she was expecting, it wasn't that, both eyes wide and she needs a moment, not even able to pretend to be spiteful - the first words out of her mouth are what she thinks he might want to hear, an attempt at the status quo after all since, well, she might want the same. Something close to normal.

"Am I to offer my commiserations?" Honestly she's confused because wasn't there that whole song and dance in Denerim ten years ago? That dreadful creature that made her strangely glad it was just her and Flemeth in the Wilds with no one else to come creeping at the edges of their life? A tragic story about kings and women of low birth, Alistair wanting a family and it all ending disaster because what doesn't, and now it comes again when the world teeters on the brink. "How did you come to learn of this? And now, of all times? Though mothers are somewhat expert at that."

I am trying to avoid it, is clearly what she is trying not to say because she's probably already made that plain in past conversations with how painfully aware she is of every mark Flemeth has ever left on her, even if no one else can see them. Well, Alistair can. Zevran, Leliana, probably Shale too, but Alistair perhaps a little better than most; what she was then, and what she is now is so very much a product of Flemeth. What she tries to be with Kieran is still that in trying to be the opposite.

The figurines are some of Kieran's favourites, joined as they are by the gifts from Leliana's after the chocolates that came with them were duly vanquished.

"He seldom gets into trouble but he has a streak of mischief in his as any boy his age might when his mind wanders, or when he truly wishes to get into things he should not but...there is no malice in it. None of it comes from a dark place, not even surrounded by Orlesian brats as he was."

[byblow]

Alistair shrugs at commiserations, with a half smile to match, having not yet made up his mind about how angry he is or how much sympathy he wants—but aware, at least, that he doesn't need any pity. Not from Morrigan. She and Zevran: the very concrete proof that it could have always been worse.

"She's here. She's the Grand Enchanter. Fiona." Alistair pronounces every syllable. Fi-o-na. Easier than mother, but still weird, somehow. "Zevran found out and made her talk to me."

As a silent, invisible compliment to Morrigan, he says that without any hesitation. She won't care that he's elf-blooded. She won't care what it means for Kieran's bloodline, except to the extent that it could hurt him, which it won't, because no one will ever know. Alistair looks up at Morrigan only as an afterthought, checking her face for incredulity rather than disdain, and adds, "She used to be a Grey Warden. One of the ones King Maric traveled with before he decided to let them back into Ferelden."

So it's utterly ridiculous on multiple levels, but—not impossible. Not even implausible. The timing checks out. Maric lifting the Wardens out of exile at least partially because he was thinking with his dick also checks out.

Alistair considers the configuration of soldiers on the ground, thinks of rearranging them again, and instead puts his hands on his bent knees where they can't be childish. They'll be there for Kieran when he gets back. Morrigan's evaluation makes him smile.

"He has turned out remarkably well, considering all of the Orlais he's been... exposed to..." He trails off and gets quiet there at the end, and says mostly to himself, "I probably have to stop making those jokes now."

He doesn't want to. He probably won't. He's still all Fereldan where it counts.

Kieran, though—

"Do you think you ever could have given him up? If he weren't—special. If it wouldn't have been dangerous."

[arcaneadvisor]

Perhaps this might be a rare moment Alistair wishes to record for posterity somehow because she is rendered utterly speechless, swallowing carefully as she makes sure she heard that, unable to hide the shocked look on her face. It feels like being slapped.

"Grand Enchanter? And of course, Zevran, when did he excel at meddling so? Does he feel the need to take over for Wynne since she has departed?" No, Morrigan doesn't care at all that Alistair is elf-blooded since the only blood in someone's veins that would ever make her sneer is if they're noble, and if they prize it as if it runs with liquid gold and lyrium. (Although it does make her wonder about the eluvian now, given what she knows, if Kieran was comfortable there is down to that somehow even if it shouldn't be so. A question for another time or likely not at all.) And then there's the next part. "Is a Grey Warden not for life? Until the Calling takes you if battle does not take you before that? How does one go from Grey Warden to Grand Enchanter?"

Alistair--

Alistair how are you managing to make Flemeth look like a relatively uncomplicated mother at present?

"Did you wish to know?" That's not really her question to ask here honestly but well, she'll ask since he brought it up, since Zevran still isn't someone she particularly cares about very much at present, and when technically she could say it concerns her. It's dangerous ground though for all the discussions they skirt around with Kieran and Alistair, about what to say, but she doesn't know what to do with this Zevran poking and prodding at this. Right now she just remembers being in that room when Leliana told her that it had been Zevran too who had known of Anders, of how much damage that had done.

"Make all the jokes you wish about Orlais, I cannot stand the place and I will be glad not to return after my time with the Inquisition is at any end - though it does bring to mind some comments that were made about your cooking." Why is she so bad at jokes, she's not the funny one unless she's being spiteful and she's trying so very hard here.

It's hard to breathe when he asks that. She'd thought herself ready, and now she could laugh when she thinks on it, how tired she'd been, how frightened, how ill-equipped. But she shakes her head, a smile spreading across her face, a touch sad but so very fond it hurts, it aches. "No. I will not pretend that at first sight I loved him as the stories say, that when first I held him in my arms that all my vision narrowed only to him but no. No matter what, he is my son. At first-" Will the shame and guilt of her plan that night, of Kieran being little more than a pawn the way she once was to her mother ever stop burning? She clears her throat, continuing on once she can manage a shaky breath. "At first he was something I required but...but I loved him. He was my son. I knew he would be in danger with me, and in danger without me, with or without the soul of an Old God simply for being my son. I...I cannot imagine my life without him, my life would be so much poorer without him in it."