( closed ) No longer I can justify the bloodshed in his name

[fightingale]

WHO: Leliana & various closed threads (for now - open stuff later)
WHAT: Wicked Grace night goes horribly wrong and Leliana is kind of dying
WHEN: forward dated to the night of the 22nd, post-assassination attempt
WHERE: Leliana's creepy Rookery chamber place
NOTES:
1. Pretentious images in the main post and starters in the comments because I'm a bit ridiculous.

2. Content warning for attempted murder/violence/poison/all that implies.

3. Party style threading is welcome and encouraged, it might make it a bit easier to discuss side matters after the initial discovery.

4. This will probably open up for including other threads and stuff that can be forward dated, but initially just closed.

5. There will be some terrible poetry in here and I'm not even sorry; it is only one in a series that will be left around Skyhold and will be posted later. Belle, Jansen & Libby are beautiful humans for enduring my rambles.

Comments

[fightingale]

For all the darkness in the tale, Leliana has the edge of a smile. Not a proper one, but the echo of one that rang out long ago and has distorted and faded as it has reverberated across years. Morrigan feels so warm by comparison - the irony of it when she has so often called Morrigan cold (cold-hearted, specifically) is not lost on her. She is dying, not rendered artless, even if her voice and her mind do not feel like her own.

She feels Morrigan at her pulse, and turns just enough to gently nudge Morrigan's nose with her own. It feels so simple, oddly childish, and yet there is something pleasant about only have touches to communicate a good deal of her meanings. (It offends her that she dares to consider such a thing a relief, as well, but she and Morrigan started to communicate without words the day they both stubbornly refused to let the other think they were fleeing. Perhaps they doomed themselves that day, or perhaps it happened long before or not until Morrigan kissed her. She can hardly say.)

Part of her is tempted to just let Morrigan keep speaking, to drift back into sleep because her eyes feel ever heavy and every part of her aches, and a fiercely defiant part of her refuses to be anything other than awake. That part of her makes herself roll a little, grimacing as she does, so that she is partly on her back and partly turning towards Morrigan. There is not much she can do to express appreciation for the story when a single word has left her throat aflame, but Leliana closes to press a light, dry-lipped kiss to the pale expanse of Morrigan's throat, unmarked by scars they way Leliana's own is.

[arcaneadvisor]

Is that not so often the way in Thedas; here is a tale, it is a brutal and bloody thing but look, here are two people and they loved each other, and maybe it isn't always so grand as a goddess (if she ever was one) giving form to a mortal and sending her aid (if she was ever simply just that) but well, there were other tales she could have murmured in Leliana's bed, but that one found sat on the tip of her tongue and spilled out. "I told Kieran about all of you," she tells her because they don't talk about this very much really, not in so many words. They talk about Morrigan as a mother, and Leliana has sent a gift, and Kieran knows the names of all her nugs enough to have a favourite, and to know that he would really prefer a brown nug were he to have one of his own. "I told him of all the stories you would tell around the fire or as we travelled, he is still too shy to ever ask you for one himself."

She's glad. She doesn't know what Kieran would say to Leliana, or if he would be hurt when she isn't the woman from the stories but he knows something is going on, too perceptive, too knowing. Now isn't the time for that. (It will be. She holds to that. One of them must believe, must carry something fragile and if Leliana thinks her hands too bloodied from death, from carrying out the edicts of a dead woman then let it be Morrigan who finds lost things and brings them to life once more.)

A quiet laugh escapes her, so she brushes her nose against Leliana's with enough intent that it can't be mistaken for anything other than booping her. What would the rabble say? The Left Hand of the Divine, the Nightingale, and the Arcane Advisor, the Witch of the Wilds, in bed together, booping noses together as if they're half their age? Ridiculous but it settles her. She had been afraid when they had warned her Leliana couldn't speak. Maybe there are some things she fails to grasp or simply doesn't care to but she understands Leliana enough now.

"You will have me barred-" She means to scold, since surely the healers will seek to keep her out sooner than anyone else - not that she does herself favours by looming, or lurking, or snapping - even as she moves to steady Leliana, adjusting herself to support her better but one kiss and her words are stolen from her as surely as if she had drunk that poison too. One hand leaves Leliana's to come up and stroke through her hair, then to cup her cheek and brush a thumb over her bottom lip; here she can be open, she can be so very terribly fond without fear. "You seek to make us match." It's a hoarse whisper, not on purpose, because this is still so new, look what you do to me, she thinks, bending to kiss Leliana's forehead as gently as she can.

[fightingale]

For brief moments, the entire situation feels a little less surreal and less imminently dreadful.

There is a knock at the door, brisk, an announcement of an arrival a moment before the door opens rather than a request for permission to enter. Outside the room Leliana's agents stand guard, and the woman who enters is one of the same healers that has visited almost every time Leliana has needed tending to since it was discovered that Adelaide and Anders' magic could not help help her.

The woman looks to Leliana, and takes little mind of Morrigan. She is a healer in the same way that Leliana's other agents might be scouts or knives. It is but one of many skills, and she is in Leliana's service. On a tray she holds three different vials of potions and tinctures, each a murkier and more sludgy colour than the last.

Morrigan might feel Leliana's sigh rather than hear it.

Leliana, for her part, despises being seen like this - not with Morrigan, but like this, weak, a shadow. A fraction of herself. She hates the awareness of how limp and dull every part of her is. She hates that she is being brought potions that feel as though they do nothing, that she has to force them down, and that this is the only sort of fight presented to her. She will live, she will not be silenced, she will fight this until her death, but the tactics are failing her and she wonders if she might fight this to her own death, and very soon.

"Sister Nightingale," the healer begins.

Leliana tilts her head slightly, the very faintest of nods, and squeezes Morrigan's hand very lightly, though it takes a good deal of effort just to offer that much. It occurs to her that she has not moved yet, and the healer clarifies, "Your potions, my lady." Not unkind, but--

Resigned, Leliana thinks. She sounds resigned.

[arcaneadvisor]

That knock should be her cue to get up. To put some sort of distance between them to quiet whatever rumours already buzz about them; since the dance they have grown ever louder but when Leliana is so cold, when she already lost time because Zevran wished to spare her pain through not telling her where to find her at first, she remains where she is. She does sit up, meeting the gaze of a healer she's argued with.

(She's argued with all of them, if this were slightly less serious and Leliana still had her voice then she might be able to tell them it isn't personal. But she can't, and so here they have been outside the door when Morrigan is coming and going, someone she can take out her temper on.

They do argue back. They have spines at least.)

Whenever Kieran has been ill she's managed to disguise everything in teas and broths, sweetened and flavoured until he can't taste whatever healing herbs there are when she sets her hand on his brow but the smell of these vials has her nose wrinkling as she carefully eases Leliana upright. All she should have to do is tip her head back a fraction to swallow, to let them slide down to do their work. If they work. She chews the inside of her lip until there's blood in her mouth.

"Still the same as before?" Morrigan asks because Leliana can't even question her own treatment here. "I am sure the sooner you get this over with the sooner she might rest again."

Get out, Morrigan thinks savagely, all the angry vicious jealous pettiness of her girlhood manifesting in one arm around Leliana. Have you people not taken enough, demanded enough from her, leave her be, let her have peace.

[fightingale]

"The same, yes." The scout - what is her name? Leliana cannot think of it and its driving her mad - glances towards Morrigan but but at her, and if Leliana did not think her scouts moderately more tactful then she might have fancied that she rolled her eyes. "To reduce the swelling, to provide nourishment, and to soothe the throat."

With each summary the scout points to a different vial, unstoppering the first as she approaches the bed. Leliana is slouched against Morrigan, and endeavours to hold herself up, to sit straight backed and steady as she is always able. The gesture results in her swaying for an uncomfortable moment before resting against Morrigan again, head bowed as she grits her teeth and her fingers curl towards her palms.

'Infuriated' is not the word for how she feels, and neither is 'humiliated,' but it carries shades of them both. Diminished is another that carries too much resonance, and she forces herself to hold her head up as the scout approaches.

The scout - Royan? no, not that - looks at Morrigan cooly. "Perhaps she would be better rested without company taking up her bed and her time," she replies, before looking to Leliana, vial at the ready. "Nightingale, time for the first one."

[arcaneadvisor]

"Might one of you be so kind," it takes all her effort to stop her keep her hackles from rising entirely when she's here in Leliana's bed, when she could shake each and every one of them as if they were personally responsible as her voice is falsely kind, falsely cheerful, "to let me know the ingredients later? Herbalism is a skill of mine." Leliana would vouch for her, had she the voice she thinks and well they've been working together since she arrived, tis hardly a shock that she would want to know, that she might know something that could offer some sort of assistance when magic alone has done more harm than good.

One hand splays across Leliana's back where the scout might be able to guess but will not be able to tell where it is exactly, supporting her carefully, thumb rubbing small circles. There is no shame in leaning on a friend (or are they more than that? They didn't get a chance to speak on it, there was an interruption, an intrusion. She could scream that something has come once again and after this she will make time.)

"And perhaps she might not need to rest if others had done their jobs." That is for Leliana's ears alone, not some upjumped scout that will be realise the error of her ways later; ten years ago and the mouth might have been slapped clean off her face, but Morrigan has letters to be sent, and books to be fetched, and no one enjoys an infestation of spiders or tiny stinging flies. Her other hand finds Leliana's beneath the blankets to squeeze tightly. "They are repulsive, I am certain, but did we not survive Alistair's attempts at cooking?"

A little humour to get her through, a hand to squeeze if they are foul and another to help anchor her through it all. Leliana has seen Morrigan when she has been upset, frightened and worried for Kieran, ready to lash out, unsure and hesitant and offering out whatever she is to her. She can give her what she needs now and hope that it's enough, and hold her tight when the scout is gone again and she no longer needs to be the Nightingale again.

[fightingale]

If the scout hears Morrigan's request - she does - she does not acknowledge it. It is one occasion where Leliana might wince about the strict standards to which her scouts conduct themselves. Orders not from the lips of the Nightingale or some short life of alternates are to be disregarded, and for all that Morrigan is someone she has a great regard to, she is not upon that list.

The scout whose name Leliana is still struggling to recall bows to Leliana, respectful, before tilting her head back a little and very slowly pouring the contents of the vial down her throat. Leliana tenses, fingers clenching around the rumpled surfaces of bedsheets. Each vial feels akin to swallowing metal shavings, with how raw her throat is still.

By the time the second vial is done, she is hard pressed to keep from shaking, the strain of holding herself up even with Morrigan's help and with the pain of swallowing make her struggle. Pride is her downfall, now, pride mixed in with a stubborn determination not to give up, though in truth Leliana has no idea how to endure the third vial.

[arcaneadvisor]

It aches to see Leliana like this; even when she wept before there was always something strong within her, something made of steel. No one likes to be reminded of mortality and Morrigan cannot watch without intervening, opinion of this scout be damned.

"A moment," she tells the scout in a voice that brooks no argument, not with the way her eyes flash, as she adjusts herself in the bed to rise on her knees, one hand still holding Leliana's, another still supporting her. "You will not be defeated by a single vial. Nor will you be defeated by some imbecile with a penchant for terrible poetry suited to Val Royeaux."

There's a hint of nail when her hand squeezes, a different sort of pain to focus on even for a moment as she bends enough to look Leliana in the eye.

"There has been worse than this." That is not a comfort, and it brings Morrigan no joy to say it when they've been through all this before, when they've brought out the corpses and picked through them, let the ghosts wander between them as they will. "There was the Circle tower by Lake Calenhad and the horrors there where we were trapped within our nightmares. The werewolves and all that we found within the forests where Zathrian twisted nature against itself in his vengeance. Everything about the Deep Roads. The final battle where the Archdemon raged, the sky the colour of a bruise with every foul beast imaginable pouring through the streets of Denerim. You are the Left Hand of the Divine, Leliana, you will manage this," she murmurs more softly, and she cannot help but rest her head against hers for a moment.

She is trusting Leliana's scout to have some discretion in this, when she must close her eyes and take a breath before she arches a brow, waiting for Leliana to nod. One more moment and it will be over, and Morrigan can ease her back and talk nonsense or simply lie in silence with her until sleep comes, wishing that the first time like this could have been so very different.

[fightingale]

The scout does not quirk an eyebrow. She turns away, moves few steps, and folds her hands in front of her to allow the Nightingale and her-- friend some semblance of privacy.

Leliana, for her part, holds herself up as best she can. Proud, stubborn, strong - the nails digging into her skin are grounding, and though she is struggling, she nods. Morrigan is right. Morrigan knows her, in this. If anything was going to defeat a Bard of Orlais, let along the Nightingale, it would not be poetry. There is a smile, very thin and largely for Morrigan's benefit, but it is a smile all the same.

She is glad to rest her head against Morrigan's, even if only of a moment, before she nods. She nods, knocks on the bedframe to regain the scout's attention, and forces herself to sit up for the last vial. She will endure. She is the Nightingale, and she will endure.