faderift | you still can't look me in the eye

Entry tags:

you still can't look me in the eye

WHO: Leliana & various!
WHAT: catch all for July/Solace
WHEN: from roughly the 8th on throughout the month.
WHERE: Skyhold, various.
NOTES: set ups all in prose, but will happily match brackets if you prefer them! Open starters and a bit of a timeline on Leliana's health in the post (more to be added as we plod through the month), closed starters in the comments. If you'd like to do something that isn't in the open feel free to get in touch with me via pm or pp @karmacharging!
WARNINGS: Likely reference to illness, attempted murder, actual murder, and the range of terrible things that come with being the Nightingale. Will update as necessary, and endeavour to label subject lines.

OOC Recovery Deets.
After the team returned from the Brecilian Forest on the 27th, Leliana was given a series of potions with the ingredients that the team has acquired. Her recovery was not immediate, given the brutal effects of the poison, but the groundwork was laid. By the 1st of Solace she was able to speak again, although her voice sounded terrible, and some of the scarring had receded. By the 4th she was able to stand, although No One Approved. Since the 6th she has been walking, but only a very little. She normally has to sit in the presence of others, but from the 14th onward her strength has noticeably improved, although she's still thinner than she was before. Report on the Plot here.

OPEN.
8th - 11th - The Rookery.
It is safest to linger about her tower, still. Better that she be seen beyond it and that her recovery be confirmed, and yet if she were to falter or fall or appear weak that would only do harm. Her mind has recovered far more quickly than her body, and some motions still feel strange and foreign. Writing takes longer than it used to, but she is nothing if not determined. A hideous sort of stubbornness has been one thing that has never changed, not since she was a little girl.

She is writing or reading letters and orders and reports near constantly. Beleth and several scouts did much in the way of dealing with smaller matters, while Charter saw to other more pressing matters. Despite their efforts, however, there were a good many things that only the Nightingale could see to.

Pausing in her writing, Leliana flexes her hand, shaking it out a little, before looking towards the staircase. "Enter."

14th - the day after the Snow Battle Royale.
Though she did not stray down to the valley for the fight itself - such a move seemed a singularly poor decision. The Nightingale was not a social butterfly, and though it would have been an opportunity to assert her good health it would have been... inappropriate, she suspects, to attend.

That is not to say she didn't watch from the Rookery, and receive regular reports from her scouts on the progress and any Events of Note, whether they were interpersonal reactions or displays of skill, or just particularly amusing instances of people being decimated with snow.

Now she walks through the valley, observing the remains of the fortresses, still largely intact with the cold that always lingers this high in the Frostbacks, snow and ice crunching underfoot as she moves carefully, curiously, through the field. The cold bites into her lungs, and she swallows a cough that threatens to rattle her back, resting her gloved hand against the polished ice.

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"A good many seem afraid to ask," she replies, a little dry. Her voice carries a constant strain, a roughness that is too much to pass for a pleasing sort of rasp. It is the harsh scrape of gravel, the thin drag of something over metal.

Though she deduces it is actually a question, Leliana does not reply right away, staring a the colours splashes across clear sky and highlighted on clouds, brow creased and a frown dragging at the corners of her mouth. "I am ill at ease, but neither will I allow myself to be silenced."

More literally, however: "And my throat hurts." With an air of comedy, that, only barely.

"All that time lounging around in bed and you have lost none of your reputation," she teases, bold enough to do so when they're actually out here where the breeze can tug her hair slightly and ruffle the feathers at her shoulder. "Perhaps you might exchange the foul tonics for tea?"

It's a hopeful invitation. There's much to catch up on, she knows that but she knows what it was like to lie next to her and just breathe, to have her arm around her so she could feel the rise and fall of her chest to reassure herself when it was dark and she panicked. Not that she would say that. Morrigan doesn't panic. "Do you know whomever was responsible for the act? A taste of their own medicine perhaps, I am no healer but any touch of magic might speed them along." And even for Morrigan - or for Morrigan now, it's cold and quiet, her hands curling and uncurling; Leliana is here, Leliana is alive and well and mending.

Leliana is capable of joking even, enough to make her roll her eyes and pretend to scowl. "When you insisted on pushing yourself...You are worse than Kieran, you realise?" Speaking of the lad, she delves into a pouch, carefully removing a small ornament fashioned of fabric and stone that she sets between their hands, fingertips brushing Leliana's. "He hopes this speeds along your recovery."

The very faintest of smiles lingers at the corners of her mouth. "So long as you do not offer me wine, I would be glad to consider almost any alternative."

There are so many points to address, it feels like, and she is not entirely sure how to raise them withMorrigan. For the time being Leliana ignores them, and focuses on Kieran, instead. It's a cheap tactic, probably. She doesn't much care. "So far as I understand, Kieran can do little wrong in your eyes." Very dry, that. "'Being worse than Kieran' is practically a condition of existence."

Her fingertips twitch slightly under Morrigan's, surprise at the contact rather rather than recoiling. Her expression is one of faint puzzlement, and she finally picks up the little nug with a bemused sort of smile. For long moments she is silent, examining the creature's expression, its little feet. "I am sure it will." And, after a pause to carefully set it back down, "did he give it a name?"

"Were I to offer everything but?" It's easier not to look directly at Leliana when she asks that since she was sent away once with the taste of peach brandy [check thread] on her lips, and Morrigan might not wish to have a rumour repeated back to her face, but that doesn't ever mean she's deaf to them. But she can remember Leliana's touch from that day in her study, her hands on her, the taste of her mouth, the way she'd trembled and felt ready to fall apart.

Easier to laugh and to give a little shrug instead. "He is my son." Always it comes back to that but it's a very simple truth in this life that she cannot deny anymore than she could deny the beating of her heart: Kieran is her son, and she will always love him, and she will place him first in her priorities no matter what comes. "But...you are not so terrible. Tis hardly fair to place anyone next to him; I have said it before, have I not? That I am glad to have found you again." It shouldn't take so much of her, to reach for Leliana's hand more deliberately even just to lace their little fingers together and yet...

"He believed you to be the expert: tis your nug, he felt it would be wrong to name it for you." Indeed, she had tried to encourage him to give it to Leliana in person but when it comes to any of his trinkets, Kieran is shy, preferring to send them along with Morrigan or to somehow manage to slip away and leave them when her back is turned and the intended recipient is away.

Were she not so tired, Leliana might laugh a little. As it is, she keeps her gaze fixes on the sunset, until the weight in it urges her to look to Morrigan. Not to comment, but to look. They are both skirting skirting around matters, even without it being a deliberate sort of action.

"An expert? High praise, indeed." She shakes her head a little bit, smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "I will have to give it considerable thought, then, to ensure it is something worthy."

Schmooples III, perhaps.

"You say now that you are glad to have found me again. If I leave you likely to repeat it..." She trails off, all false innocence. "I can hardly be blamed if you indulge me."

At least they have the luxury of this, when for a time it looked as if it might be over before it even began. Maybe she might have demanded answers once, or sought to hurt so she wouldn't be the only one in pain but she's a different woman now, one accustomed to living a life for more than just her. (He's changed her, that's what people have said. She doesn't argue with it beyond the sake of the argument itself.)

"You might tell him. He is very fond of the things." Try as she might to press her mouth into a thin line, her lips purse, a single of huff escaping out of her. If she had to choose a pet? She'd give him a nug over anything else.

Impossible, she thinks, fondly enough that it aches almost, that she doesn't even think when her hand settles atop Leliana's, lacing their fingers together to give her a tug. She's missed it. Missed having someone so close, the warmth and weight of her. "What shall I tell you? Words are but words after all, deeds are often louder I have found." And if her heart hammers loud in her chest, if she thinks it might burst free, she only betrays herself in how she squeezes Leliana's hand, in how she glances up at her from beneath her lashes. Two can play the game and sometimes she isn't past being coy.

Leliana makes no reply to that; she only smiles, pleased, though she makes some half-effort to suppress out of sheer habit, looking towards the orange gold glow in the clouds. It casts her skin in light and shadows, the contrast making her features softer and sharper in the same moment.

Look to Morrigan is impossible to avoid, with the surprise and simultaneous lack of it, when Morrigan sets her hand over Leliana's. She draws in a deep breath, flexes her hand to squeeze Morrigan's own, and for a moment just inhales and exhales again. Adoration is simple to know, but affection such as this has been unknown to her since Marjolaine, and with Marjolaine it had been a cruel and effective deception. Morrigan, though, Morrigan had held Leliana was weak, through shivering and coughing fits and burning fevers.

For a moment she feels transfixed, and entirely uncertain, but it was Morrigan who had taken chances before, and some part of her feels well aware she must be the one to move, now. She shifts closer on the bench, until she can brush shoulder to Morrigan's.

"Deeds can be dramatic and lack in genuine sentiment, of course. Bards are well versed in such things."

Some might say that Leliana is beautiful despite all that she has seen, but Morrigan would argue otherwise. Leliana has always been beautiful, and the flower that blooms through adversity is no less sweeter than the one in some high-walled garden attended to day and night, sheltered from all harm. It would be so easy to cup her cheek, to close the gap between them, to kiss her here as if they were two very ordinary people. But they aren't, and Morrigan might not care but Leliana must, and since she cares for Leliana, since she has likely compromised so much already? She will hold herself back for now. Gone are the days where they could have been free and wild, they have sturdy doors with sturdier locks and impressive wards should anyone seek to find them now.

"We are fortunate then that I am no bard." If she turns her head so that she can speak the words in Leliana's ear, just so happening to brush a kiss there, no one that might happen past will be any the wiser but them. Leliana's hands aren't as frozen as her own when she casts spells but she still wants to chafe them between hers, press kisses to the palms, to each fingertip marked from years of working with the bow. When Leliana fought alongside her in battle she never needed to worry about anything that breached the warriors when she summoned her magic to cast a powerful spell - an arrow would find it each and every time, and it would be Leliana's. "What would you have of me? To split myself at the seams and lay bare my very soul for you?"

Ever the dramatic, but all of this since the dance has felt a little like this for her. Tales never say if that's how it's meant to feel.

To think; more than a decade ago the thought of Morrigan opening up to her would have been enough to make her swoon. Now she hardly knows what to do with the very jest or threat or whatever precisely that had been of it. Leliana's eyebrows raise, and she considers highlighting that of the two of them it is Leliana who exploits, and Morrigan had better guard herself more carefully.

She does not. She simply enjoys the brush of a kiss and the sway of Morrigan's voice and the glow of the sun and the clouds.

Instead, with a certain note of wryness and teasing together, "That is a little dramatic, I think."

Leliana would never be so dramatic, surely. Never at all. She does, however, reach up to brush some of Morrigan's hair back. Never mind would-be witnesses and whisperers. Leliana finds herself... unconcerned. They have no place in this. There is a long pause, and—

"I think you've gotten sentimental in your old age."

If Leliana were the type to exploit her son, Morrigan feels sure she would know it. She has been careful with Kieran. More careful than she has ever been with anything else in her life, and true, Leliana could be playing her very well with her gifts of chocolate spiders and knights, even a sending crystal but now a part of her would like to think better. (She wasn't the only one left shaking besides._

"You are in your tower too long if you find that dramatic. I was worse ten years ago." Sharper, caustic, acid to the eyes with the same accuracy as her spells; when you've been hurt, you find all the gaps in the armour. Bards aren't the only ones to know those sorts of tricks.

It's an easy thing then, to catch her hand and to kiss the palm. Then, a touch pettily, with one of her smirks, "You do not know how old I am."

"You were worse," Leliana agrees, almost flippantly. "You were the worst of all of us."

Perhaps even worse than Oghren— no, she can't make that joke. No one was worse than Oghren, a man who she loves dearly as their comrade, but who she also found herself wanting to strangle, from time to time.

Her smile softens a bit with the kiss to her palm. This is so very, very strange, this softness between them, the give afforded of spending hours in Leliana's bed without words, only afforded embraces. It has set them in a strange place, now, a tenderness that Leliana had only really allowed herself in part because she had thought she was going to die. In retrospect, if she had been so certain, it might have been kinder to be distant to Morrigan rather than demanding closeness. Alas, Leliana was not so selfless as that.

"Old enough to be sentimental, obviously," Leliana replies rather dryly, before leaning forward to murmur against Morrigan's ear. Her fingers are entangled with Morrigan's, and they are sitting in the sunset, and they are exchanging banter instead of anything more romantic, and it is terrible. "If you've no great objection, I would like to kiss you."

Here. In the garden, in public, never mind that there is no one here. There are always eyes, always people watching. She is disinclined to concern herself with that, in this moment. Not over Morrigan. Not over... well. Sentiment, evidently.

"So eager to return to your bed I see? I can arrange that." Only she smiles still, no sting in it.

Zevran had asked Morrigan if she had wished to see Leliana, if that was the way she wished to remember her should the worst come to pass. That mad urge to laugh when he'd warned her that it wasn't pretty when nothing in Morrigan's life could ever be described as pretty save for the shell. Morrigan hadn't snapped though - her declaration had been quiet and proud. That she had strength enough for both should the worst come, that she would be there. That Leliana would not be alone. Not after being alone so long.

She still has that now. Someone who knew her for a long time should be there and Lothering was as far back as memory stretched, and she wouldn't have regretted it, even if she had slipped away instead of growing stronger in Morrigan's arms each night.

"Says the woman who names dresses up her nugs as a girl might her dolls, and gives her ravens names." Instead of turning, because that would mean disturbing Leliana and no longer being so close that the hairs on the back of her neck are prickling, she smiles. Smiles wide enough to let her see it. Unafraid. Morrigan who always was afraid, even of simple friendship.

"I have no objections." Always the last word. And then she does turn, two fingers under Leliana's chin and her breath is caught; still recovering but her hood is down, and here, in this quiet and with the sun turning her hair to copper, to flame-- "You are so beautiful, impossibly wonderful."

If she were Zevran, Leliana might have turned that to innuendo. She resists, but there is something of an arch to her brow all the same.

"I will have you know it was Zevran who commissioned that armour for my nugs," Leliana replies, rather crisply, "and I would not deny my birds the dignity of names when they do so much to aid my and this Inquisition. Besides," she continues, decidedly not looking at Morrigan, "they like it when I say their names."

Ah. Hah.

Leliana is prepared for many things. She is not terribly prepared for compliments, and especially not compliments from Morrigan. For a brief moment she feels lost for words, bewildered, as tongue tied as she might have ten years ago, and she flounders.

"'Impossibly' meaning I am not wonderful at all, then." She doesn't stumble on the words; as graceless as they might be, at least she doesn't sound entirely idiotic. Or, at the very least, the evidence of her idiocy is more understated. She—

She might be stalling. Awkwardly stalling.

Would you like her to add that she has a more interesting way for you to lose your voice Leliana? It's tempting but all the same, she would rather not end this moment too soon, not that she thinks it will but she's enjoying it. The things she never thought she'd have.

"That explains a great deal. I wondered why it covered so little, even on a nug." Do you remember Zevran's armour skirts Leliana, of course you do, you had to stand in the back with your bow at times the way Morrigan did with her magic. She didn't need to see Zevran's backside as he raced into battle. "I suppose that an enemy might laugh themselves into their pyre were they to intercept a raven and discover their identity," she supposes, easily enough before she gives Leliana a look that says what do you know. Sometimes she spies. Can Leliana truly tell all her birds apart? Does she note the extra raven that hops about demanding her attentions?

"I think that perhaps I preferred you silent." No, she didn't believe all of Leliana could be a smooth, skilled seductress but the look on her face says it all: what was that? 'Tis cold in my bed all alone' is better than that.

She can have mercy. She can lean close, cup Leliana's cheek and brush her thumb very carefully against her lashes, smiling fondly. But she doesn't quite kiss her, no, instead just brushing their noses together; Morrigan had no objections but Leliana was the one that wanted to do the kissing, she should make good on, this is encouragement and not teasing.

Edited 2016-08-08 10:14 (UTC)

"And yet you keep speaking yourself," Leliana replies, with just a note of dryness. Dryness is safer, easier. It allows her to regain something of her certainty, making jests and treating the rest of the world as a brittle thing, rather than proving brittle herself.

It is so strange a thing, to let someone else have their hands on her. To be aware of skin on hers and not be gauging it as a threat. And these hands are no longer strange and unfamiliar. Morrigan had stood as a comfort when Leliana was shaking and burning without a pyre to stand upon, when her body tried desperately to consume itself.

The bump of their noses makes Leliana exhale a breath, hard enough to huff some of her hair away, before she shakes her head a little at both of them. Absurd.

No. Enough of this— this childish hesitation. Leliana leans forward, a single certain motion, claiming Morrigan's lips in a kiss, as her hands stay lingering just barely on the edge of the bench.

This time they're far more likely to be interrupted but Morrigan finds herself enjoying this kiss more than the last. The last was not their first yet how do you count a kiss in a dungeon when both parties are near drowning? There was an air of inevitability about those first two kisses, and something of desperation about the second, about something real and solid. (Still she has not asked of what the Fade was, worries at it like a cut in her mouth at times but now she is more than likely to leave it to lie still with the other old bones, after Leliana's poisoning.)

The Fade is a cruel place, and Morrigan is used to what people say about her, she doesn't care what they say, truly, she doesn't. But to be the person Leliana came to. To be wanted after she had been told to go.

Without breaking the kiss because she can't, she won't, not until her lungs burn for want of breath, her hands find Leliana's to pry them free of the bench so she can link them together, something settling in her. She will have had this. If she has nothing else than she had this, and she was wanted even if only for a time, and they have had this warm golden moment in the garden with Leliana stronger and alive. No one will take that from her.

She allows her hands to be eases away from the edge; she is glad for her hands to be drawn away and held in Morrigan's instead, although one slips away to cup Morrigan's jaw. It is foolish, absurd sentimentality, and she relishes each moment of it. That alone is as warming as the brush of the sun over their skin, painting both of them in tones of fire and saffron and bronze.

Her teeth find Morrigan's lip, only for a moment, and her fingers lips to thread partly into her hair, and Leliana does not break the kiss, but she does smile against it, crooking the corner of her mouth. She has survived. They are defiant, she and her dread apostate, and it demands that she pull Morrigan closer.

Onlookers be damned.

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you still can't look me in the eye

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still ashamed of that note to myself in the previous tag

Lmaojdfvn it's okay beeb we all do such things

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