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

[arcaneadvisor]

"Even after all that happened?" Her question is more gently phrased than the previous ones, with a careful nod towards his white eye.

She cannot imagine wanting to return to the Wilds. She doesn't miss it. But then she had nothing. She had loneliness. She had a world she could only observe. She had her mother's sharp rebukes, she had her nights in other skins not her own. Leaving the Wilds had given her another life, had given her everything and she has never looked back, not once. But she doesn't begrudge him for still having a fondness for a home, she simply can't really understand having one in the first place.

"You speak of Leliana and our dance?" Surely that rumour had spread just as quickly as the rumour of the eluvian; Celene's pet apostate and Witch of the Wilds dancing with Lady Nightingale and Left Hand of the Divine? Scandal in Skyhold indeed. Luckily none had been close enough to see just how real Morrigan's blush had been but for Leliana herself.

When next she speaks though, her voice goes as cold as any spell of ice or frost she has ever hurled from staff or fingertip; once she had not cared for mages in their towers, and still she does not, not exactly, but she can remember the children of Kinloch Hold. There are so many young mages here that Kieran counts among his friends. Little boys and girls around his age to take lessons with, to play any number of games with, to steal treats from the kitchens with, some to devise mischiefs with, and others to be quiet and gentle with in the garden when fears come creeping on silent feet. That is what had her writing to the mage council when she never would. What had her writing to Vivienne of all people to warn her. He cannot know, that is for Vivienne and Leliana to know separately, and Morrigan to remain a nameless source of good authority. "I know of an abomination he did not spare that we saw in a Circle once, one that went by the name of Uldred." But she stops herself before she can become sidetracked, before she can remember any nightmare where she has seen Kieran's face lying dead before her. "Zevran, who are you to make that judgement? You are not an advisor within the Inquisition. You are not one of the Wardens. You are not one of his companions from Kirkwall. You are not a mage that would have a judgement of such matters? Why you?"

[ombranera]

"The Crows are but part of Antiva, Morrigan. They are not the whole of it." What happened, happened. There is little more to be said on that matter- and for her question of herself and Leliana? Zevran offers little more than a look.

Down an eye he might be, but he is not blind. Nor are most people that knew them or knew enough what the sparkling beginnings of attraction might look like.

The look becomes more distant the more Morrigan speaks, ice meeting carefully crafted civility. A smile of the like he has not turned upon her since the first few weeks of their association, when he'd been poking at everyone to find what made them tick. Who was he? No one, clearly. How kind of her to offer that reminder. As brightly cheerful as possible he takes on an old affectation- something demure and pleased to serve. Something he learned in the Crows- what is expected of an elf from their betters. "I shall take great care to recall my place beneath you and all others from now on, Damma. You will not have to worry about my having the gall to disagree any longer."

Zevran sweeps into a servant's posture, head tilted, hands clasped behind his back, eyes on the ground. "Did you wish anything else, or am I to be dismissed?"

[arcaneadvisor]

"That is not what I meant."

Leliana is damaged. Not broken, but Morrigan is wary of pressing too hard when she knows what it is to be marked by someone she called mother, and she cannot ever try to imagine a figure like Marjolaine; then all this happened, and she is angry that people Leliana counted as friends kept the truth from her when she's been allowed close enough to see how deep that knife has struck, how it has twisted in her. Even if it wasn't whatever it is between them, even if it was only a friendship, it hurts to see Leliana the way she is because she has been lied to, deceived, kept in the dark.

She doesn't sigh. She takes a breath. Leans forward against the desk, moving her fingers over the dragon as her shoulders slump because she is tired. She is...if she admits it she is frightened by what she's found at this Inquisition when it's struggling the way it is, when it seems to be gaining so very little ground. When she's brought her son here. When there's nowhere safe for him in this world.

None of this is what she expected when she said she would leave Celene's side to come to the Inquisition.

"I...I apologise Zevran. Twas unworthy of me." That's hard. She isn't good at apologies. She never received them, she's never given them but she doesn't want to have what's happening with Leliana happen with him. "She is hurting, and I am so angry, and I do not know how to fix it, how to stop this before she is entirely lost. She counted you a friend and the things she says to me now…But I should not have..."

When her throat closes, she makes herself meet his gaze, lets him see that she is pain too because she is - she has come to care, despite herself perhaps, in ten years she has softened, and she can't quite believe what Leliana has become, and when she was there the day she was told the truth?

"I apologise," she repeats, softer, head dropping into her hands. He can accept or not, he is free to go and leave her to be alone to brood over her own work in her study the way Leliana is alone in her rookery if he chooses, she won't stop him.

[ombranera]

Until he is dismissed, he keeps the posture. Waits like a calm, proper little house elf for the great Lady to take the authority she has so obviously claimed in this. And then-

And then she apologizes. It is enough of a shock that he blinks, breaking the mask, the posture, the tone. No one apologizes when they do or say such things to him save Alistair, and only because he has been made aware of how it makes him sound to say as such. More himself and less the mask, he does not forgive for it goes without saying that it is not something so easily forgiven. Not from someone that ought to know what it is to be looked through rather than at for whatever reason. Morrigan knows better. Perhaps time in Orlais has made her forget. Carefully, he murmurs.

"Why do you care for Leliana? You were never friends during the Blight." Tossing back words asked of him some time ago likely is not the most fair thing, but he is not all that concerned about fair in the moment. "Counts. She counts me as a friend. While you and I have not spoken, Morrigan, I have begun mending that bridge. As much as she will allow such things to be mended with this Nightingale business."

A mentality he knows well and struggles against himself.

"She has become more than what Marjolaine ever crafted her to be. Breaking through that, for me- it took the Blight. It took Jonas and the lot of you. To draw her back from that ledge, all that can be done is to remind her of the compassion in her faith. None of us are as we were- but she need not be so hard. Giving her something to be that gentle towards...that will do much."

[arcaneadvisor]

Years in Orlais haven't been the thing to change her, and even the servants liked to do their very best to avoid this strange thing in their midst. The servants rumours were more kind, more understandable, but there were always rumours, and how many servants were employed by others to spy? Zevran would probably be able to guess if she asked. That she kept Kieran hidden, that in the court he was simply a well-spoken lad was nothing short of remarkable.

The more time she spent from him doing her work, the less time anyone had to connect the threads.

It's a girlish gesture that Flemeth would have slapped her for with an open hand and enough nail to catch the delicate skin at the corner of her eye, but she learned early not to flinch, to take herself deep enough into the wilds as something else before she ever let it hurt her. "I do not know," she admits softly. "It began as working together. Our goals align: I have knowledge she requires, she has resources I require, twas uncanny that it seemed to mirror my arrangement with Celene with less arguing though I am sure there are some corners who will be more fervent with their accusations of my use of blood magic here with the heretical Inquisition."

Part of her wishes she could smile at that the way she did when she and Leliana managed to joke about it when they danced, one night when they both seemed to be less and more themselves, when things were easier, when Leliana saw her in the dress she described and held her close enough that Morrigan's breath caught in her throat. No one had held her so close. (Alistair doesn't count, not because of their ill feeling, but it wasn't the same, it was necessity, nothing more that brought him to her bed.)

"Motherhood changed me, I see no reason to deny that around any of you now, I swore I would never be what my mother was to me. He allowed me to be better. To be...to be less severe. I thought of our time together and I hoped the best for you when there were rumours. I heard more of Leliana given that she was in the court though our paths seldom crossed but she of all of us - did she not stand to have the most to gain? She was truly free, was she not? Marjolaine was dead. And now she calls caring a burden. I try to show her something she helped me to save and she calls herself a destructive force and tells me that it should be locked away from the likes of her."

The laugh comes then, low and bitter, almost like the laugh Morrigan had once but it cracks and she can't look at him, she can't look at anything, not her work, not her staff, not Kieran's toys scattered on the floor, not his cloak hanging from a chair that she needs to stitch from where he snagged it on a branch playing. "I come to truly appreciate stories and love them, she decides she is done with them, that I am to stop looking for her. She blames herself for deaths she could not stop, for being human. My mother never allowed me to ever be my own person, I was always what she wished me to be. I have learned to be otherwise. I would see Leliana remember that again."

How many of them are reaching for that after all, scrabbling with dirt and worse beneath their nails for some vestige of being a whole person? Morrigan ripped her own skin from her mother's fingers and hasn't stopped running since. Leliana's past is at least dead, if she would let it lie without feeding the ghosts.

[ombranera]

"It is easier to walk away on your own terms, from such things. Marjolaine did not grant her that in throwing her away, Divine Justinia did not grant that in dying before Leliana might have had a chance to choose how much more of herself she would give to this Chantry. As much as circumstance prompted you and I to make our decisions- we made them. There is no questioning that." Leliana never had to choose. The freest of them in their youth, the most bound now by obligation and duty and what masks she chose to wore. It was a wearying burden, Zevran knew that much well, and he'd done it without faith.

Without divine order burning brightly across his shoulders or guiding his knives.

"I do not know enough of the woman to say if she used Leliana for her faith- but were I in a master's position and Leliana in a Crow's- you use whatever you can to get the most out of your tools. The Left hand of the Divine is a tool- and Leliana has hammered herself and honed herself to this sharp edge. Perhaps a reminder that you do not fear playing with sharp things might help?" There is a gentleness yet to Leliana, under the cold hood, under the prayers. "I think, perhaps, I have earned enough wiggle room to tease her again. I shall see if that helps."

[arcaneadvisor]

"At least she was able to kill Marjolaine. I will admit, a part of me envied her that." It's not an easy admission to make but how could she ever face Flemeth herself when there was always that risk that her mother might seize her chance to possess her once and for all. "I had thought that of us all when we parted, she might have the world at her feet, to find that it brought her back to the Chantry and to the life I thought she had left behind...do we always tread the same path? Must each and every cycle of this world repeat as it does with the Blights until finally it comes to an end?"

Even for her that's bleak but well, she's replayed the moment in the eluvian over and over again, her and Leliana, their mouths like unswept glass, so close yet so far, the things said and yet unsaid. How utterly fragile it all is and how much is at stake. That people do this so easily is beyond her.

"You know my feelings on the Chantry and mothers, that it is a title one can wield better than a blade in the right hands, with more devastating damage that none will ever see. Tis difficult to joke of knives for fear she might say she will cut and cut again to do whatever is necessary to be whomever she must be for the Inquisition." Her legs are so heavy when she rises but she does, hesitating only briefly when she comes to stand before him, one deceptively delicate hand fluttering to touch his wrist very lightly. "And I am sorry. Again. For all of it. If you ever become a parent Zevran," hahahahahaha, "you will understand how many of your wits will also take leave of you at inopportune moments too."

Insert your choice of the Arishok laughing with salad.jpg here.

[ombranera]

"Whether or not that helped- I cannot say. Killing Taliesin closed a door for me, but a door closed does not always settle the soul, yes?" A tip of the hand, that. All he had said to the party afterward was that Taliesin had been a friend of sorts. Only Alistair and Jonas knew that they'd been lovers, been more. Only Alistair truly understood the depths of his regret standing on those stairs. That Marjolaine had been lover and beloved of Leliana was common enough knowledge at the time. Parallels to draw- Zevran can see the good in killing her.

He can also see the harm.

It is a terribly light thing, the brush of her hand- and unlike with Alistair, with Leliana, his reaction isn't habit nor is it instinct- but he smooths into the motion all the same as though this is something they do. He turns his hand, lets it drift enough to tangle his fingers in hers. They are both of them cracked in similar ways. Aching for contact, fearful of reaching out. Aware of what they had too little of and daring only to steal what scraps they are certain they might keep. "Mmm....Were you Alistair I might find some amusement in holding this over your head for some time- but you are not and the fear of a parent is thoroughly unfamiliar to me, this is true. You are forgiven, Morrigan."