faderift | i tried to write your name in the rain

"There are a lot of people who need to see him," she says, picking up an unrolled bandage and fidgeting with the end of it, pressing it in her hands. "Not just me."

And it's - harder than she wants to admit. She can do this. She's done this. She knows the shape of the silences and where to put her hands and when to be quiet and she doesn't need lies or comfort and she won't cry, but it is hard, sometimes, and she couldn't breathe.

Sitting out here rolling bandages because she couldn't breathe sitting next to somebody who won't, soon. There's a hot rush of shame at the thought; like it's so hard for her. She's not dying.

One could suppose that it is unkind, in some way, to have such a conversation with a young woman when she is so compromised by the knowledge of a friend's looming mortality. No matter how concerned Leliana might be, however, and regardless of how fond Morrigan might be of the girl, Leliana is a spy. A person's vulnerabilities were their own to guard. It was as Justinia had once told her, before she was Justinia and before Leliana was a companion to the Hero of Ferelden; even when others take advantage and abuse our weaknesses, they are still our weaknesses.

The Game played on, regardless of whether the pieces were willing. An unhappy thought, really.

"I think congratulations are in order for your editorial. I become more impressed with each volume," she begins, before sipping her tea. "I was very sorry to see certain portions removed for the most recent publication."

Even if you leave Orlais, she thinks, you don't really leave Orlais. Case in point. And - in the point of leaving them out, too, she supposes. Celene and Gaspard grapple with one another still, and the Vauquelins have done nothing overt in support of one or the other; neutrality might be punished in the aftermath, still, but perhaps less viciously than if outright sets herself against Celene and the woman keeps her throne.

"Were you." This, too, neutrally delivered; a flicker of a smile forced up a moment later. That she wishes she were not merely back at the healing tents but, honestly, anywhere but here doesn't take a spymaster to divine.

The knife edge she walks in Halamshiral or at court is one that involves, as much as possible, not being interesting. For a split second she wishes she hadn't been brave.

"My editors felt it wasn't relevant," she murmurs.

Sometimes - a lot of times - Morrigan wonders if the stories of the many daughters of Flemeth are just the one daughter, at different points in time. The girls they were, the women they are, the women they will become, if that's something that Flemeth gives them (she might have said once that perhaps Flemeth did not give her life but just as a mother knows her child, a wise child knows their mother, and Morrigan knows she is Flemeth's blood and Flemeth's bone, and mercifully not whatever twisted thing that has seen her last so many ages of the world.) Shapeshifting is one of the better gifts, and Kieran is the other that allows her to open her arms easily as breathing.

Taller than Kieran, shorter than Leliana (more upright than Leliana was) but simple enough to gather her in, to croon nonsense for a moment because there is always that moment when the words don't make sense, when pain is a terrible wounded animal thing. When you only wish for it to stop. She was alone once. Hurting. Frightened. There is so much hurt, so much pain, and grief, and misery in the walls of Skyhold for these ancient stones to drink that she wonders what dwelt here in ages past to call it home, to preside over a place and pour power into it, if it fats itself still on it.

But there is Gwenaelle, and Morrigan's eyes darting to the stranger fast as a bird or a deer. "I heard that another had departed," she explains to give her a moment to collect herself should she wish it, "and of a friendship shared. You were there when Leliana was indisposed for Kieran, I wished to do what I could in return."

She still isn't good at saying she cares but she can be here, resolute in a way witches are.

"Yeah, well, I don't care about them." Which implies exactly what Bellamy means: that in this, he's only interested in Gwen; he only cares about her, and what she wants. Inside a tent with a dying man or outside a tent with a dying man. Priorities get very narrowed down when you have a short list of people worth a damn, and somehow Gwen has gotten to be one.

"Go and sit with him. Or go for a walk if you have to get out of here. Or keep rolling bandages, whatever you want, but don't do any of it 'cause you want to stay out of a healer's way. You're a lady. I thought you knew how to be selfish."

He tempers his sentiment by holding out his hand for the bandage she's got clutched in hers. Or maybe holding out his hand for hers. Or both.

"Your editors," Leliana observes, without any deliberation, "are fools. They cater to the tastes of those unwilling to think, or they are themselves unwilling." Both alternatives are dangerous, one though negligence, one through blindness. "There is certainly little more relevant than leadership in Orlais at any given time."

Orlais could devastate in wars, and it could defend against Blights. Orlais was considered a leader in culture and art, even when it was a rival, an enemy, an aggravating sibling depending on where one's country fell in the political landscape. Leliana did not believe Celene a monster; it was not so simple, and Justinia had her hand in what happened. However, that did not mean Leliana was delighted by her rule, or that she wanted to see it extend on this course.

"It isn't my place to speak on that," Gwenaëlle says, the words having a rote, rehearsed taste to them; she doesn't look down, but she does look past Leliana rather than meet her gaze. She does believe Celene to be a monster - and Gaspard, too, but of those two...

Guenievre sleeps silent beside her at night and when she dreams she hears them screaming.

"I am hardly a politician."

"Someone else's deathbed isn't the place to be selfish. And I'm not doing anything to stay out of the healers' way. I'm not in their way." The sharp way she'd started subsides and she curls her fist around the bandage, tight enough her knuckles whiten, before relaxing her grip (making herself relax her grip) and putting it in his hand. "No one's in their way, in there," she says, quieter.

"He's past that. I'm just - I'm here, anyway, and I need something to do, and it might as well be something useful."

Because if she just sits or walks or waits--

she'll go mad, she needs this, the busy-work in the times she isn't actively attending him.

"He'll be gone soon," Gwenaëlle says, wetly, to Morrigan's shoulder; it's another few moments before she can muster the composure required to let go and to straighten, but when she does her eyes are only a little brighter than usual and the glimmer of a wet smudge on her cheek will dry quick. "Soon. It's - all goodbyes, now."

It's both easier and harder than it was, with Annegret; easier because she isn't the only pair of hands, the only sore heart. Harder because she isn't the only pair of hands, the only sore heart - she wraps her hands around her own elbows, tight, holds so still it must be deliberate. She might rock herself, if she didn't. Everything she doesn't know how to say is a fist around her throat and she just -

"Thank you." For coming. That and only that, on its own, is more than she'd think even to ask for, much less expect to get; not that she wouldn't want, but she knows so well the back of people. The ease with which she sometimes feels forgotten. Solitude of habit, not preference - hesitating to ask for what she couldn't bear to hear no to. Hesitating to ask when no would be better, still, than only silence. Then- "I've. We've. Been helping a little, for the healers. I know a little. Nothing magic."

Obviously. She flexes her hand, though, remembers; now doesn't feel like the time to go into it, but Morrigan will hear, and soon.

"Noted. I'll keep an eye out for mud-resistant materials."

Possibly that's a joke; if so it might be like ...less than the countable fingers on one hand that he has made since he got here. The question is nosier than being in his space even if he doesn't particularly want anyone there, either, but--it's an easy question, even if the answer is sort of multipronged. He tilts his head, messy hair trying uh, some more, to escape. "To save the world, of course. Aren't we all?"

Okay no, that's. Ah, he entertains himself. "More specifically, if you like, some of the Inquisition's publishing suggested - strongly - they were short on craftsmen. And presumably money; one imagines that's the root cause of entropy in any infrastructure. I am one and have the other." He shrugs one lean shoulder, gestures over to a cleared spot in his work space where apparently at some point he was sketching. "The pamphlet's over there somewhere."

"I'm here because this is the only place with rift mages that might know how to keep me alive," she remarks, tartly, gesturing with the hand that bears the shard; she's already got a hint of a suspicion as to what he's talking about as she moves toward the table, holding her skirts out of the dust, but waits to confirm -

Her own face looking up at her. Does she really look like that? It's the same thought she has every time she sees the final copies, and...yes, probably. In the picture, though, she's solemn; when she turns around, holding it, she's trying not to smile.

"It isn't an official Inquisition publication," she says, careful of preening too obviously - Cullen is absolutely going to hear about this - and gesturing with the paper. "But I do have the sanction of the advisors and they do approve my drafts. For the record."

He is here because of her. It works. If she weren't starting from such a low place, she might dance around the undercroft, it's so pleasing.

Edited 2016-08-18 05:11 (UTC)

He keeps his gaze fixed on her face, or what he can see of her face, anyways, thanks to angles and the fall of her hair, depending which way her face is turned. And when she puts the bandage in his hand, Bellamy's fingers curl up--to accept the little weight, and to close up around her hand too, in a brief pressure.

"Just make sure you're okay." Gruff advice, in contrast to the press of his fingers. He doesn't overstay there; he'll let her go if she twitches, or pulls away. It's a small gesture anyways, one that mostly goes on out of sight. "wWhatever that means, however you get peace."

Peace is such a fragile thing anyways. So is life. And dying--selfish was a bad word for it, maybe. But the dying are dying anyways. Saying that aloud would never come out right. Bellamy doesn't know Asher, cares only because Gwen cares, because--for whatever reason--he cares about her.

"Better to know," Morrigan says because isn't this what she does? Rips the caul off the eyes, strips away the illusions as easily as if casting dispel. Jonas was the first friend she'd ever made, and not knowing wherever he is now? It doesn't so much rankle, not with ten years, with their own agendas but he did a lot for her. "To be there."

This is one area where Morrigan is curiosly out of her depth; she had no time for grief during the Blight and never has she been close enough for anyone for it to ever to touch her. Always away, always apart. Watching it from a careful distance. The closest she came was Leliana and Leliana had been saved, snatched back as befits someone like Leliana who lives her life courting death and danger.

"I had no idea you would know such things," she admits, unable to keep the surprised note from her voice; Gwenaelle is not any young Orlesian lady yet that still doesn't seem a thing many of them would know. "Many of us learn such skills when we have no choice otherwise, and they serve us well. That makes it no easier, however."

"Not much of it's very useful, here," she says, a sparse smile prompted by that surprise - Gwenaëlle knows what she is. Knows how what happens behind closed doors does not always match so well to the pretty portrait of what happens outside them. "But I know about dying. My mother was doing it slowly my whole life."

And then, eventually, she finished.

"I thought - that there should be someone here he hasn't got to comfort." Someone who knows about burying her own grief deep and holding someone else's hand, putting all of the messy parts of a moment in a puzzle box and keeping it closed for as long as it needs to be. It hurts, it's tiring, it is a sort of labour that cannot be indefinitely maintained without release -

but it's necessary, sometimes. Gwenaëlle knows.

At that, Leliana exhales a quiet and gently incredulous breath of laughter. Laughter might not be quite the right word for it; it implies joy or mirth, and neither of those are present.

“It is impossible to be Orlesian nobility and not be a politician, just as it is impossible to avoid the Game. I invited you here. You may speak as you feel.”

There is no smile. "Spymasters are adept at keeping secrets."

She just bets. Her expression pulls into a frown as Leliana laughs, her gaze lowering, dissatisfaction and dubiousness written into every line; of course she's good at keeping secrets. Even Gwenaëlle isn't quite stupid enough to think it means she should be trusted with them.

"Then I'm a poor one," she says, frankly, pressing her hands together in her lap to stop herself from fidgeting with them. "And how I feel is disinterested. I'm not the only writer in Skyhold; if you want a treatise on the throne, I'm sure there's someone here who'll write you any opinion you'd like them to have."

She hadn't written any of it with the expectation of it being published, not really; she'd known the knife her editors would take to the words. If she'd been wrong, she'd have regretted it -

she writes risky enough things without coming for Celene.

All things considered, Gwenaëlle is a very sensible girl.

"I am sure I could twist opinions I desire out of people," Leliana agrees, with little hesitation. She knows what she is, knows what others understand her to be. "But you wrote on the matter voluntarily. It was of interest enough that you gave it your time, even when a friend lay ill, and when it might have been forgivable to lend your writing less time than you otherwise might. You, for all your disinterest, care."

Leliana pauses, and leans back very slightly. "I apologise. I did not invite you here to issue a lecture. That is hardly a fitting way to thank someone, I think."

The apology is both sincere, and playing a part. Just because it is one does not mean it cannot be the other, and she picks up the plate of tartlets to hold it in offering to Gwenaëlle. "I highly recommend the caramel."

"There's a civil war going on in a country that I have to live in," Gwenaëlle says, a little mutinous, taking the caramel dutifully but setting it down beside her teacup, untouched. It isn't a gesture with a purpose behind it besides that she does as she's bid but - it's hard to be hungry in front of Leliana, and being thought rude is almost better than how awkward it is to uncomfortably nibble something she doesn't want.

People think she's rude all the time. For some reason. Possibly reasons like-- "If we're inviting people's opinions on the basis of their incidentally not being suicidally indifferent to things that directly affect them, you'll soon be saving the world by committee with every idiot with the sense to be presently afraid of the sky."

She is a clever girl; a bit too clever, sometimes, for her own good, and a bit prone to being willfully obtuse when it suits her better.

Leliana cannot quite find it in her to repress her quiet amusement. An easy alternative was presented, and the topic was stuck to, rather than simply being set aside for now. It is, Leliana feels, now more than acceptable to proceed however the conversation might lead, rather than being overly cautious with one Morrigan favours.

"Is that right?" She is not offended, because she has met girls of Gwenaëlle 's ilk before. Haughty, tempestuous things, that strike at the air where they can, only to retract to their claws. It was easy to write of Celene with contempt and let it be edited away. It was easy to complain at a Spymaster's interest. (Easier, at least, than try to make a difference and be truly defiant.)

"My mistake," she replies, unfazed and quietly amused, before sipping her tea. "I had thought your convictions to hold some merit. But, if you are akin to every idiot with the sense to be afraid of the sky, I will reconsider my assessment."

Birds of a feather, flocking together; these terrible children holding hands against shadows. Gwenaëlle's lips press together and she doesn't say anything about peace, or the likelihood of anyone sensible finding any -

she curls her fingers in his, and does not immediately let go.

Peace is imaginary, she thinks. Life is hard and, contrary to popular perception, so is dying. Everything is tiring and tiresome and then it ends and it doesn't, she is sure, mean anything. Not really. Is the Maker really waiting for them? It's hard to think so when shades haunt the Fallow Mire and Corypheus rips the world apart at its fucking seams. And now Asher, who is so strong, who couldn't pull his hand out of hers any more if she didn't let him.

"I'm fine," she says, but she still doesn't let go.

What it says about Gwenaëlle that the idea of being thanked for what she'd done makes her equally uncomfortable and is even harder to respond to probably doesn't bear thinking about. Or at least, she isn't going to think about it, and there is spite and sharp claws for Leliana to look at instead of the soft underbelly her awkwardness would have exposed - so no one has to. And that's sort of like it not even existing, isn't it?

If no one looks at a thing, it might as well not be there.

Gwenaëlle wishes no one were looking at her, presently. To her credit, she doesn't flush or fluster; barely reacts at all when her own words turn quick against her skin. Dismiss me, she thinks, curling her fingers around the teacup and pulling it closer. I'm not interesting, there are a hundred of me--

(And that is how she's still alive, the knife edge on which she does not dance but balances precariously; sharp enough to make a spymaster smile, but not enough to cut. Never worth the trouble of destroying.)

"Being afraid of the sky has some merit, too," she says, blandly. "When it tears open and rains demons upon us. We're all standing in the rain, Sister, I only made the observation it's getting us wet." Figuratively speaking.

"Once I might have taken a great pleasure in telling you how we are all dying each moment. Not so prettily as a bard," as a certain bard, Leliana back then might have had a way of saying it that Morrigan would have scowled furiously at but still would have liked, and that would have made her more spiteful again. Such was her way. "Pragmatism is not to be overlooked. They are of a use now, as they were then, as they will be again, mayhaps there will come a time they will not be associated with grief."

How many times has Flemeth's name passed her lips of late? How many times has Morrigan been Morrigan throughout only to be thankful for the small mercy of the sending crystal relaying only her voice, not the sudden brittle quality of her smile, the muscle the jumps in her jaw, the way her hands curl into fists tight enough to dig bloody crescents into her palms after all these years. She who wished her mother dead--

Gwenaelle will need to forgive her if she must sweep that to the side, at least for a moment.

Moving to sit, she gestures for her to do likewise; long hours of travel, long hours of thankless work. "That is very selfless of you. Shall I tell you of when I met the Hero before he was the Hero? Twas not so very unlike this when we departed the Wilds. Grief clung to him. And to Alistair." A story is a story, and this not the happiest of tales but it's something at least.

"Okay," says Bellamy, but he also doesn't let go. So long as she's content to leave her hand where it is, so is he. As gruff and macho as he acts, he's spent his share of time holding people's hands. Not that it's hard. It's much harder to know what to say. He's had a lot of people die; he's killed a lot of people. All different weights and none of them easy. The action of the healer's tent goes on around them, and, blessedly, no one is paying them very much attention.

"You sure you don't want to come to Orlais with me?" he suggests, after a few seconds of silence. It's kind of a joke.

"Perhaps a kind soul will see fit to equip us with some manner of hat," she replies, faintly dry. This blandness feels—

Out of place, perhaps, with the girl she has observed; so sure and loud and offensively Orlesian, and yet. There were elements to Gwenaëlle that reminded Leliana of herself when she was Lady Cecilie's ward, a young woman who had fancied herself so much a songbird trapped in a gilded cage, a living embodiment of a tired metaphor.

So many are eager to catch eyes, are so ambitious in the Game, that they might relish the opportunity presented by having the Nightingale's ear. She should remember, though, that Gwenaëlle's friend is dying, and that is the sort of thing to put people out of sorts.

Leliana sips her tea. "How do you enjoy Skyhold? It is very different from Halamshiral." (Less charred, for one.)

Few things have ever made Gwenaëlle as uncomfortable as having the Nightingale's ear; to be ambitious in the Game would be, she's known for years, tantamount to suicide. She has no knack for it and no real desire, beyond a futile one to please a dead woman she's never truly believed she ever could, to achieve anything more than being left alone.

Leliana is not leaving her alone, and it's a problem she hopes being dull will solve, because it feels distinctly as if nothing good can possibly come of it.

"I've made the best of my situation, I think," she says, with a shrug, which is not exactly what was asked. "I wouldn't have chosen to come here, but we don't choose everything in our lives." Or indeed most things.

i tried to write your name in the rain

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