and i still find pieces of you in the back of my mind

[paperwing]

WHO: Sabriel and semi-open.
WHAT: Sabriel goes about her business. Probably feelings. Probably talking.
WHEN: Latter Wintermarch, after she returns from Warden training with Felix and Kaidan.
WHERE: Skyhold.
NOTES: Catch-all, starters below for interested parties. If you'd like to do something, PM me or see this plurk right here and we can figure something out!

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[paperwing]

The leaning, as it happens, helps. It's a stance she's used to seeing him take from her respective corner of whatever room they've shared. Unless its a precursor to turning her into a toad, but that rumour sounds ridiculous even if she weren't Nevarran and knew better about neighbouring Tevinter. She moves again, at least, even if it's only to straighten her posture in her chair and curl her fingers against the page of the book she was reading.

She opens her mouth to reply before she stops, the intake of breath turning to nothing. 'Were it a cure'. It wasn't a cure, and they should know that in case someone else Blighted crossed their paths. But she can't, really, and so she doesn't, snapping her mouth shut and shaking her head as a reminder to herself more than anything.

Sabriel nods, a slight inclination of her head. "I suggested it to Alistair. We didn't know if we could-" well, not her, only him, but she's not going to give Alistair more reason to be thrown from the battlements- "-if we- should interfere. If he would have made it." There were a lot of different ifs, but listing them out isn't important. Nor possible. "But as he has? That's his doing. As soon as he accepted our offer, it was his choice."

Sort of. The Joining doesn't exactly let you choose, but there's a will, a tenacity, and she thought Felix had it, underneath the dying man. She was glad she had been right.

[liberalum]

"If that's so, then I suppose I told Alistair everything he needed to hear."

He'd said it. He'd been blunt as to Felix's probable uselessness in the heat of battle, a gentle mathematician who wasn't even very good at magic and only survived the Imperium for virtue of who his father is. Was. But Felix was -- no, is -- one of the good ones.

A rare breed. Dorian glances down at her book without seeing it, just using it as a place for his attention to settle as thoughts wind around. "So this is who he is, now; a Grey Warden, properly? Not just an excuse to save his life."

[paperwing]

A good fighter was one thing; the Wardens had plenty. For Felix, it had always been more about who he was. Not his status, but who he really was. Someone who would think about what they were doing, who cared. Who could stand for what the Wardens should stand for, because of lot of them weren't. Or couldn't.

"Yes. A Grey Warden among brothers, and a sister. Warden Felix Alexius." Or Felix, if he so chooses. She hardly uses her title if anything if it can be avoided. She gets looks. "We can't change that. That was all we could offer to him." Wardenship for a cure, because it wasn't a cure. "We'll go where commanded, but for the time being, we'll be here. At the very least until whatever is happening out west is resolved." The hierarchy? A bit of a shambles, since they ran off. "I suppose for now, he will report to Kaidan. To Alistair or... myself, also, as we were present when we offered it to him."

Herself is an afterthought. She has no rank, but, the being present at the Joining was an experience. Especially when you were the one to explain everything after.

[liberalum]

It's clear that this news doesn't sit entirely well with him, if only because it's such a fundamental change as to what Felix is about. He may have never been any decently powerful mage in the Imperium, but he remains the son of a magister, beholden to no one, and a gentle academic, who doesn't get commands. At the very lease, obvious unease from Dorian implies understanding.

It should make people uneasy. "This thing in the west," he says. "It has to do with your Calling. The reports from the Approach are vague at best, and clearly missing spaces that you and yours can fill in."

It's not a demand; it comes out as a request.

[paperwing]

"It does," Sabriel agrees, because the first part is easy even if you have very few pieces, and there's no use in denying it.

The second is harder, because yes. Yes, they can, and Dorian can tell, though again, that's not hard to guess. She leans back a little in her chair, biting her lip. Maybe this was why she was wary after all, because Dorian would ask, would turn it into a request. And Sabriel wanted to help; it was why she had taken up arms in the Inquisition, why she had become a Councillor, why she does many things that the Order, in its whole state, would likely frown upon.

It's a secret to keep them safe.

But was it right to keep it from Dorian, considering his ties to Felix?

Sabriel hesitates.

"We know pieces," Sabriel ventures. "But what is likely occuring, perhaps even as we speak? It is a part of why we came here. The Wardens are-"

She stops, words dying. Silent. Sabriel closes her eyes, hand across her forehead. She can't tell him anymore than that. She can't.

[liberalum]

"I can't help you," Dorian says, only after waiting a fraction of a moment after Sabriel swallows her words. "You, your Wardens. Nor Felix. Not if you're not willing to part with these secrets which, I suspect, are going to begin affecting us all."

There is really only a touch of sympathy in his eyes, but mostly frustration. He isn't curious for the sake of curiousity, little in the way of hunger in his study of her.

"And I certainly can't bring anything to the War Table on anyone's behalf without something of substance. You said it yourself -- you came here for a purpose. It can't only be to whisper amongst yourselves and hope the Inquisition does right by your people."

[paperwing]

She knows they will have to tell, eventually. The advisers, those in charge, know some of it; enough to know how imperitive it is that they act soon, or lives be lost. Not that she would deny the liberating of the people in Orlais; that wouldn't sit right with her. But there is truth in Dorian's words. Alistair revealed the Calling. Dorian has pieced some of it together, and it was what Alistair had wanted, wasn't it? Assistance.

Sabriel opens her eyes again, looking at Dorian through her fingers as her hand slides down her face. She is, truthfully, tired of tomorrow. She wants to act now.

"We were called to Orlais." Her words are quiet, almost inaudible. That part's not entirely out of the reach of public knowledge, though. "We could all hear it, The Calling. If that were to happen, what of future blights? Of Old Gods? And so she told us of her plan."