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

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

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.

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Any message that contains eluvian tends to have Leliana assuming that there is something dire to be discussed, something important and pressing and possibly dangerous. She is not, as a general rule, accustomed to messages that are not urgent in some way, and so when Morrigan asks her to meet with her she attends quickly, moving with long, silent steps.

The steps shorten, slow, and stop when she observes Morrigan in the garden, Leliana's brow catching with a concerned furrow before she reminds herself to approach.

"I thought some calamity had descended on us," Leliana finally says, announcing her arrival in a way her silent steps will not. "Though perhaps I was mistaken." Unless Morrigan has taken to reading in times of crisis, which is not without possibility.

The flair for the dramatic belongs to a witch as much as it belongs to the bard, but how else is she to make sure she is able to drag Leliana away when she wants her, not knowing how things truly stand between them? (She could make a request, but she doesn't know if she would enjoy the taste of rejection were she forced to swallow it if Leliana refused the offer if she made it plainly, brushing her aside.)

"I would have come myself if that had happened, have no fear," she remarks with a small smile, looking up from the book in her lap that she tucks neatly into one of the pouches at her waist as she rises. "This however is something not to be spoken of out here when this place holds secrets as well as a bucket built by a drunkard, come."

A quick glance behind her and she leads the way to the room that's long fallen out of use, half-reclaimed by vines and broken odds and ends prior to her eluvian being installed within as she unlocks it, removing the wards. Once done she ushers them inside then seals it behind them. She will have none following after all, not when certain parties are so very nosy.

"You will recall that I said the eluvian provided sanctuary? I would show you that, if you are willing to see it with your own eyes."

She cannot help her brows raising a little at the comment. "Gossip and bizarre fancies are not guarded nearly so carefully as some secrets," Leliana agrees, easily enough.

If some secrets were circulated then there would be considerable problems all around, and the guarding of some secrets too well was an injury that stung, even now. Did you know that Alistair thought I was enamoured with you? could be casually dropped into conversation, and yet she steps around it, unsure the humour and the absurdity could fully translate were the joke handed over to the air. Once a thing was committed to voice, there was no snatching it back.

Curiosity is an inevitability - so to is fascination, and she follows Morrigan, watching the wards and the assessing the room, the absent habit of a bard of many years. "Do I strike you as needing sanctuary?" she asks, faintly bemused. "Or is this simply a tour?"

Her body language, at least, indicates a willingness, an interest as she steps forward and looks between Morrigan and the eluvian.

"I realise that anything remotely elven is a fertile breeding ground, but the utter nonsense I have heard, that I have had to dignify with a response." In the back of her throat she makes a noise of disgust, shaking her head, as if it wasn't bad enough that she had to hear Beleth Ashara shouting the word eluvian for all and sundry to hear in the cave. Subtlety might be something worth teaching the girl, for the enemy might not always know exactly what they are being asked to transport or to do, but it's hardly her place to tell Leliana how to do her job.

She'll needle Cassandra all she likes but Leliana has earned her respect after all.

Trying to nip certain rumours regarding the eluvian in the bud takes too much time away from work she might be doing, even when she simply wishes to read in peace and quiet or to stitch up tears in Kieran's clothes. Rolling her eyes, she sets her hands upon the mirror, the glass rippling beneath the touch like a living thing as it flashes purple, beckoning Leliana through before she answers.

She does give her time though. This is a world between worlds, something forgotten to everyone and time itself almost, still such a vast space for all that it is not with other eluvians set in their plinths, the very air charged.

"Sanctuary for me. That is what I said. This place is where I came after the Blight when I had Kieran so that I Flemeth would not find us. So that we might be safe from her. I named it the Crossroads."

"Anything tied to you," Leliana corrects, quietly but not entirely inaudible. Her conversation with Alistair-- well. Perhaps it is worth remembering that it stemmed as much from Leliana as Morrigan herself. Moreso, perhaps.

There are many things in this world she does not know. Mysteries, histories, and the eluvian represents something of the forbidden. She wonders if it should be forbidden to her, a woman who has benefited from the way power balances in Orlais, for being the sweet child of a human rather than an elven servant. She has been so clumsy and so ignorant, and she carves pieces off herself. Some part of her is truly horrified at Beleth's interest in being a bard, when she knows how cruelly and terribly the Orelsians think of the Dalish, and even her own foolishness of ten year ago. It had been stupidity, cruelty, and nothing less. Even Sketch thinks ill of her, perhaps not for her views of the elves, but for her tendency to twist things to be more interesting and to embellish, and there are so many ways to read and analyse and ways for her to ruin what she touches.

That is what being the Nightingale means.

Still, Morrigan beckons and she follows, and it feels as if she has hit a wall of humidity or plunged into cold water for how her breath suddenly feels laboured and strained. It takes her a few moments to adjust, looking at Morrigan with focus and a control that forbids her from showing how hard it is, those first few moments. "I am glad you had somewhere," she finally settles on, entirely honest in the way that she so rarely feels she can be, these days. "It is... very beautiful."

It is an old and lost place, and that makes it precious almost immediately.

"And to yourself, I would imagine." Morrigan cannot resist. If she is to be remembered for dancing with the Nightingale well it is as they say - it takes two to tango. (Why must she hear that in Alistair's voice, complete with his ridiculous eyebrows?)

It's hard to remember sometimes, since she seemed another person, another girl, a skin she skimmed off when she cried and bled alone that the eluvian felt so odd to her and yet...not. Not entirely. Not as odd as it might have been or it should have been for all the research had said to her; it should be unwelcoming to a human, to herself and Kieran for all that they are yet it hasn't been, but it can't simply be because they're mages, unless it's this particular part, unless it's because of what she'd done, how she'd done it. Magic is a strange and shimmering thing even when you're born with it, the eluvians especially that even when she considers herself to be the expert, she still knows so little in the end.

But this was home. Perhaps that makes all the difference, that in the end it allowed itself to hold her and a boy for as long as they had need of it until they departed as if they had never been there at all, leaving nothing but a name and any faint lingering impressions.

"This is a world between worlds - I called it the Crossroads; the place where roads meet." And indeed, all around them are many more eluvians, some flickering faintly, some broken entirely, though most are dim and lifeless though one is a rather ornate thing. Merrill will have to come through, she realises that already even as she stands here with Leliana, but there could be no other person she brought through first, not now. "The ancient elves left no roads, only their ruins in corners so far from one another much like Skyhold, like those we encountered in the Brecilian Forest - you remember them, do you not?" Perhaps it's a very different Morrigan here, unburdened, unguarded, smiling as she walks taller but freer, in a place she knows so well.

"They made this Leliana. This world between worlds, and the eluvians were much more than simple mirrors."

"And me," she agrees. Yes, she could be scandalous all on her own, just as well as she could be invisible.

Considering how Leliana is struggling to adjust to the Eluvian, she has to say it is a wonder to see Morrigan talking so easily - standing so easily and moving, while Leliana feels as though she is caught in pitch. It takes more effort to hold herself tall and not to slouch forward as one might when weary from travel. Perhaps it is no wonder that Morrigan is so much changed - this place, this sanctuary, might have had as much an effect as Kieran himself.

A world between worlds, constructed solely by ancient elves, by people who lived so long ago and with so many remnants of them destroyed that it was hard to grasp what power they might have held. Leliana looks around her. Such sights are rare. Seeing such things for the first time were rarer still, something sacred, and for a time she is silent, drinking in all that she sees around her.

"It was a place where others could not follow them," she starts, slowly, and there is concern in her expression when she looks to Morrigan, takes a slow step towards her, and then another. Well can she imagine it in her mind - maps twisting outward, reaching all parts of Thedas. What boon it would be, to be able to use such a thing for her spies and her scouts, to give them safe and secret ways in and out, to travel unseen--

-- she stops short, and so do her steps. "Morrigan, I should not be here. This is a sanctuary, it is... something precious." Just as the ruins in the Forest had been, before it had been corrupted and filled with monstrosities and tormented souls. She shakes her head, and her gaze drops. "I am a destructive force. This should be shared with the elves, and locked away from those like me."

Sometimes, given what she knows of the ancient elves and what she can guess given history, she does wonder at what Flemeth might be or what her magic truly is, or if she simply had much more pressing concerns when she adjusted. After all, pregnancy surely had to be far more taxing than whatever Leliana is feeling but it wouldn't do to allow her to stumble and she moves carefully, coming just close enough to offer support if it is wanted.

It is what a friend would do. She's sharing this with Leliana, something she has shared with no other after all.

"This was from before." A careful clarification and will there ever be a time when she isn't swept up in the wonder of it? "Before Tevinter ever laid a finger on their empire, Leliana. All the eluvians join, each and every one though I cannot say where they all lead or how many have been lost - Merrill says hers will lead to Kirkwall though that would be a last resort. This...will not last. This place is collapsing, and I cannot say how long ago they first constructed it but for now? It has a value. And not only to us. There is a reason the enemy wished to lay hands on it."

It's something she would prefer not to speak of but if she does it here then there's no chance of that sort of rumour spreading unchecked before it's ready, and she has the feeling Leliana will at least be grateful for that, but she's stopped short by the reaction. Unable to stop herself, she reaches out, one hand at Leliana's elbow, brows pulling together, not angry. Confused, perhaps a trifle hurt.

"Leliana...I wished to share this with you for you gave me the aid to recover it once again. For you would know the value of like so few truly would. You wish for more, you said so yourself, does this not remind you of that? I have worked to ensure that our world does not become mundane, I believe you do the same in your own way." It's easier to be closer here somehow where she can drop her guard and remember watching Kieran take his first steps where they were both safe, where nothing could ever touch them for those fleeting months and years. "You lock yourself away. I wish you would not."

Morrigan's expression surprises her enough that she does not fully anticipate the contact. She is absently aware of it, of course - she is a bard, it would be close to impossible for her not to anticipate an open motion like that. Leliana's jaw clenches a little, a means to check her own uncertainty. It feels foreign - not just being here, in this strange space that staggers her breathing and her steps, but here, with Morrigan reaching out to her and her expression a puzzle that Leliana isn't sure she's reading right.

The words come, and she thinks she might be only half hearing them, with how she's looking at Morrigan overly aware of the hand that has caught her.

"I do what I must," she says, and it is not the first time she has said such a thing, and not the first time it has been uttered to Morrigan, either. It seems unkind when Morrigan has brought her to someplace so sacred and so precious to her, and Leliana pauses as she tries to find the way to articulate everything. Her arm shifts, only enough that Leliana can lay a hand along Morrigan's forearm without pulling away from her contact, an effort at reassurance. (The Nightingale is not the one to look to for reassurance, surely, but the confusion and the trace of injury and Morrigan being one of the rare people who has not turned on her or lied to her in these past months, who knows her, makes it necessary.)

"I lock away the things that aren't useful. I cannot be what I must be and be as I used to. If I were, then I would not have had the means to help, to preserve something so precious as this place." She opens her mouth to continue and closes it, uncertain how to proceed for a while. "Being other than what I am could endanger so much."

Aside from Kieran and their dance, this is the most she has touched another in so long that when Leliana shifts it feels as if her arm has caught fire, causing her to glance up sharply, the magic of the Crossroads only drawing further attention to it. That it was allowed is what surprises her, that Leliana didn't move away, didn't have some subtle little turn. That she made more of it. Enough to make Morrigan smile softly, ducking her head ever so slightly before she looks about again, at this world that could be just them and no one else, only mirrors and lonely sentinels to watch over them. Would it be so terrible to simply exist, to lay down their burdens for a time as she had once, when Kieran had been small enough to rest comfortably in the cradle of her arms?

There's more to say, and she can say it here where escape isn't so easy.

"You wish for more for so many, that is hardly a secret. That the mages be free, that the elves no longer be thought of as second class - indeed, that they are thought of at all is an idea most do not even consider for a moment. I know of sacrifice. There is-" Ten years ago, even less than that again and she wouldn't have been able to do this, her throat would have closed too tight, she would have been too angry, too hurt, would never have allowed anyone to see her this way. "There is so much I have sacrificed for Kieran, to allow him to be a normal little boy with as normal a life while guiding him and preparing him for what lies ahead. Is that not much the same?

"When I left my mother at last, when I left all of you and went over the Frostbacks and disappeared, I could finally be free. Or as free as I could be knowing what she is. I know what it is to have someone leave their marks on you in the name of something else. My mother could pretend to be a great many things when she wished to be and when I was young there were times when I did believe that she was a mother that loved me, when we made a game of leading Templars to their deaths as I ran shrieking deeper into the Wilds as bait. But I know what she did to me, what she would have done. How I was used." Ten years and growth she might have had but she still needs to turn away to speak of this, just enough distance to dredge up the right words to manage it as her voice echoes strangely, something she never understood but came to miss when she had to return to the real world once Kieran had grown enough. "You are allowed to be a person. I was never one until I left. I use what she taught me for my own ends but no longer am I beholden to her, and my path is now my own. You are allowed that. Once I believed that survival had meaning, that power had meaning. Those are not the only things in the world that matter. There is not always a weakness in caring, it is a strength our enemies will always lack. A good mother," and she says it so quietly it's almost lost, because well, she has so many doubts about herself and she's sure that Leliana must have them about her too, "would want her children to be happy."

"You are a good mother." That first, because it needs to be said, to be reiterated, when Leliana herself was one who was incredulous about how Morrigan of all people could be anything but a toxic influence on anyone, let alone a child. She does, however, put Kieran first, does protect him. She loves him better than Leliana would ever have given her credit for being able to love, as if Leliana had any right to assess how any person loves, how they feel and they act - as if she were any more than what she has sculpted herself into being.

Leliana sighs, and her hold on Morrigan's arm (while never hard or tight or gripping) loosens just slightly, as if it could slide away. "When I wish for more, I cannot. And when I have done all that I have done, I cannot. Everything else must come first." The mages, the elves, the Inquisition, the fight against Corypheus. The individuals that make up all of those things must come first, even moreso than the causes, because they are what give the cause worth and meaning. They cannot be forgotten as individuals, as people as Morrigan had emphasised.

Morrigan is trying to save her. She has been trying to save her, she realises, in small ways, and that makes something in her chest tighten. It makes her feel--

Lighter, almost, followed by a sharp drop.

"The person I am-- I chose to be this. I made that choice long ago. This is not my denying myself anything." Which she knows already to be less than true, because she denies herself much, but that was something she knew when she took on the mantle of Left Hand.

A quiet laugh escapes her, and even though the light of the Crossroads is strange it can't quite mask the colour it brings to her cheeks. "There are many times I have doubted that, and likely will doubt it still in years to come. He has a destiny, and even I cannot see where that will lead him, but I will do what I can to protect him. No child will grow up as I did." Kieran will have friends. Kieran will see the world. Kieran will know warmth, security, light, laughter, being allowed to have things simply because he wishes them, not only because they are necessary to surviving.

Yet even now it still shames her that even for a moment he was merely a means to an end. That the way she argues so loudly the way she did with Zevran is because he wasn't something she wanted once, just a thing, just a step, a necessary thing to accomplish something the way that she was to Flemeth. How alike they are, yet how she opened her heart where Leliana closed hers tighter, locked it away.

(And she is so angry at a woman she never met, at a woman dead, a woman mourned as some beloved mother, as if no mother can be without flaw or fault.)

Uncaring for once if it looks pathetic, it's Morrigan who holds a little tighter - how many times has Leliana pulled away? How cruel was their argument about fleeing when they both trapped themselves with something that they both fear? "Your wishes cannot be what inspires theirs? We have all-- we have all of us done terrible things, let us not pretend that. Let us not pretend that any of us are pure as the driven snow of the Frostbacks. You and I alone; we have lied, we have used others for our own ends, we have twisted and deceived. But," and here she hesitates, not because of Leliana but because of herself, because there will always be doubt when it comes to her, her choices, what she's done, what she's doing, what she will have to do, it won't ever go away, "I believe..."

This is hard. Harder than admitting to Jonas that she hadn't expected to call him a friend all those years ago when he had kept coming with gifts, when he had given her grimoires, come with news of Flemeth's death, agreed to her offer. This has meaning. More than power, or survival, than strength, than the things she clung to tighter than another child might her mother's skirts.

"I believe that we change. That we learn. That we can be mindful and move on with the past to be our guide, to keep us from ever making the same mistakes that were made again. We have both of us been hurt, I think we are determined not only to never again to be hurt, but to never inflict those hurts either."

You are not Marjolaine, but if she said it so bluntly she knows the response she'd get. Instead she keeps trying, trying to understand how they moved in such different directions, how Justinia sunk her claws so deep into her, how Leliana has become this way, and again she is so angry at each and every soul who hid the truth of Anders from them that she can almost feel the lightning along the fingertips of her other hand. Slowly she uncurls the fist at her side, taking a steadying breath before she continues.

"When did you make that choice? Did you make a choice?" How many times are choices not choices? How many times have they seen that, when they have had to choose between the lesser of two evils, between walking through fire or over broken glass - is it a choice when you decide if you would prefer to burn and blister or to bleed? "You are denying yourself a life that is yours. I am sure she would tell you that, if not her then it would be the woman who handed you your life in that cell all those years ago."

The tighter grip surprises her, and she looks at Morrigan with something of it showing in her expression. Morrigan has her literal claws, as bear or wolf or the fangs that the spider sank into dark spawn and blood mages and assassins coming after them. This is different, though, this is not an attack, and attacks are all she is used to comprehending any more. What do you want? she wonders, but cannot say because she thinks it would hurt her, and she is so weary of hurting her friends.

I believe, Morrigan says, and Leliana lets her thumb brush along Morrigan's arm, not tightening exactly but somehow steadier, firmer. Her gaze is steadier, if nothing else, watching Morrigan carefully, trying to assess quite what is happening, because it's rare for someone to touch her, to hold onto her without the gesture being coupled with violence, and Morrigan has been part of so many unusual circumstances these past months that she isn't sure what to make of it. (A poor bard, some part of her reminds herself, and there is a twist of shame and indignance bound together, defiance of herself.)

"Inflicting hurt is an inherent part of what I do," Leliana says, a weak protest, too quiet.

But she frowns, gaze dropping for a moment, moving half a step closer because-- because she wants to tell herself that her voice sounds weak, but in truth there is something steadying in proximity to Morrigan, much as it feels foolish to admit, and she can hear Alistair's mockery and teasing echoing in her head.

"What life, Morrigan? What do you imagine I would be, if not the Left Hand?" She is genuinely at a loss. "Why does it matter so much to you? Justinia saved me, and I was-- I believed that if I followed her word then there would be peace and a better world for mages."

Despite herself there is an unhappy twinge to the corner of her mouth, and she despises herself for it, for letting that show when she knows better, when she is a bard who can control herself.

"When Dorothea-- when Justinia saved my life she gave me a second chance. It is a privilege to dedicate myself to that."

It sounds weaker than she'd like.

One of the things Morrigan never expected to learn when she had a child was how to let herself soften. Flemeth had brought her up to be so hard, to be someone who knew how to survive and Kieran does, there's no avoiding that because this is Thedas, it would be irresponsible of her if she didn't, especially when he carries what he does. But when she held him, she learned that yes, she could be gentle, she could be kind, that it wouldn't cost her to be those things, and that she could prepare him in ways her mother never prepared her. Flemeth made Morrigan in her own image ready to step into, she wished to strip the will from her. Morrigan takes those lessons and when Kieran fails she urges him to try again, to do better, to see where he has gone wrong, to know he will have her, always. If sometimes she had to line his cradle with spidersilk then what of it, it was strong, it was hers, it kept the chill of the winter out. If she curled about him as a wolf then nothing dared to come close.

It would be easier if she could do that now, instead all she can do is offer Leliana a hand, an ear, a word, the knowledge that yes, she's changed, that somehow she is the one who is capable of being honest when it comes to the big things. That they've both hurt, and are so very good at finding the right places to strike at when it comes to others.

How long they spend running, the fleeing remark is perhaps more cruel than anything they ever said ten years ago.

"I do not believe that is all. You hurt those that can afford it, but you help many or more and more would not join the Inquisition each day - you would not have a spy network that has all of Thedas gasping," and now it is no secret, that it was absolutely Morrigan who phrased it so to one of her prospective scouts, "and you would not be arguing for freedom. For truth. For justice. For all of those who have been hurt if that is all you think you do."

This could all go horribly wrong. Honestly she's amazed it hasn't devolved into some sort of petty sniping and a demand to be returned, that she has important matters to attend to, and she's daring to hope.

"Whatever you wish to be Leliana. You had your entire life ahead of you ten years ago when the Archdemon lay dead. You are passionate about what you believe in, your faith and the cause of the mages but you do not need to be the Left Hand to do that. It matters because…because I care." Embarrassment makes her defensive, when she doesn't have better words because she doesn't really understand herself, hasn't sat down and picked apart at it. It simply is, it exists, it lives, it breathes, she only questions it late at night in the dark when Kieran crawls into her bed when the nightmares come and keep her awake, her hand stroking through his dark hair. "Am I not allowed to care?" The last part is so quiet she isn't sure she's voiced it until she catches her lips moving in the reflection of one of the broken eluvians.

"She gave you the tools, Leliana. What you did with them was up to you. You saved yourself."

That Morrigan should sing her praises for fighting for truth and for justice when she might have thought both of them utterly dispensable ten years ago is truly a matter to get her head around. All of this feels like more than she can manage, and that feeling is just a sign that she must do better, fight harder. There was no option for not managing, only to steel herself and overcome.

Some hours it was exhausting. Here, in the Crossroads, they feel more exhausting still, or at least more difficult to overcome, when the very act of moving feels so slow. Some small part of her wishes that she could just give in for a time, lean forward against Morrigan and not be aware of each motion and every possible threat. Surely if there were anywhere safe for that it would be here, in this nowhere place that can only be accessed by magic, that Morrigan has relied on to keep her and her son safe from Flemeth.

Part of her wishes Morrigan would just stop. Stop caring, stop talking, stop trying to make her be a person she buried. It makes keeping that person buried so much harder.

"You make it sound so simple." To be what Leliana wishes to be, hm? "To simply know what that means. To muster the power to do what I do without the responsibilities of the Left Hand."

She shakes her head, and brings her free hand up, anchoring it on Morrigan's shoulder, palm resting against Morrigan's collarbone and fingers curling over the pale stretch of skin. "You have fought to care, Morrigan. I have fought not to. That is the difference between us."

It isn't all there is to say, and it isn't the only difference - Leliana also had people to save her, Morrigan did not. That would be a poor assertion indeed, and Leliana summons up a slightly weary expression that might just be a smile, or the memory of one. "Caring is the heavier burden, I think, by far."

Ten years ago and what was Morrigan doing? Trying to plot a plan to escape her mother while she still had a skin to do it in. That's what's changed. She has as much of her life as she is ever going to have and she's enjoyed it. It's been her and Kieran, moving and yes, running, yes looking over their shoulders, yes parted more often than she would like but she's still had that. She's had more than she ever could have thought of before.

"Would she have you mourn her forever? If she is the woman you say she is," and Morrigan doubts that, she doesn't know all the ins and outs of the Chantry but any woman that makes it settle atop the Sunburst throne and who has another bloody her hands for her is a shrewd player of the Game, even more than Celene likes to think she is, is as just as calculating at her core as Flemeth in moving the pieces to where she needs them to be, in making someone be hers, "then would she not want you to live? You believed that the Maker had not abandoned the world even when the Blight came with only two Wardens left in all of Ferelden. You are still Leliana, a champion of the Fifth Blight, you will always have been her Left Hand but nothing lasts forever. Things change, people change. Life always moves on."

A shiver passes through her. It's so rare that she's touched, and here in this place, in clothes so like those she wore a decade ago, it feels charged somehow, and she takes a half-step forward, leaning closer, her head bowed. "No, I learned that I was allowed. Flemeth...Flemeth did not allow for many things." That is all she can say here, where she feels that somehow it's a risk to say her mother's name, that she might somehow appear at last and breach this final sanctuary. "Sentiment was foolish and forbidden. My life was survival of the fittest, that was all. And then I found out that there was so much more in this world, and that I had been the fool for so many years.

"For all that caring hurts; and it does, I know it, the sleep I have lost, the panic, the guilt that eats holes in me and grows teeth and claws, I would carry it as I did Kieran all those months as he grew, and again before he could walk, and each time his legs grew tired long before mine." Tears catch in the corners of her eyes, she is good enough not to let them fall but they surprise her all the same.

Justinia asked me to help her carry out her will as Divine, she could say. To carry that mantel is a great honour. She does not think Morrigan would understand or care to listen, when in her mind legacies and purpose are interwoven with the horrors of Flemeth's intent. Of course she is incredulous - what reason does she have to be otherwise? Life moves on is an ideal.

"Time passes and tactics change. Causes cannot waver."

Just quietly, that. There is something far too fascinating in the way Morrigan shudders, something that makes her throat dry and sparks the idle thought of what might happen if she mapped a lazy path with her finger before Leliana stops the thought short with a brutal sort of efficiency.

Those thoughts have no place with her, and of Morrigan--
That was an old weakness. And another learned from Dorothea, that when others abuse your weaknesses, they are still your weakness, and Leliana cannot allow herself those, even as Morrigan leans closer and Leliana has to fight herself from pressing into the contact, as well, as if she had taken utter leave of her senses. She must pull back, and she will, and she will remind herself that she is not some bratty young woman who rambled about love stories and pines after Morrigan from a distance that is both literal and not-entirely-so.

"It is a strength of yours, Morrigan." Leliana pauses, swallows, and tries to negotiate her words. "That much is clear."

Not a lot else feels very clear at the present moment, but at least there's that.

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