We must resist

[arcaneadvisor]

WHO: Morrigan; open
WHAT: Checking in on friends, checking in on the mage and rifter situation and research. Wildcard and shapeshifter lesson discussions available!
WHEN: Post-rift opening in Skyhold onwards, basically a big catch-all
WHERE: All over Skyhold
NOTES:A few so please bear with me:
1) Morrigan is seeking out rifters since what happened to Sina, there’s a starter just for them
2) For the same reasons she’s seeking out members of the mage council
3) If you’re interested in shapeshifter lessons, there’s a handy sticky post here
4) The research Morrigan is doing is based on the Hinterlands expedition here

Library - artifact research;
Since returning from the Hinterlands, she’s devoted more time to the artifact that had returned with them, or rather to the notes that had been made about the surroundings. It makes a change to reading the book on the Veilfire runs and making her own notes from what Pel had directed her to, taking her deeper into history, into Avvar culture and Ferelden legends for a change. Each time Flemeth is mentioned she makes what might be a grimace or might be a smile.

Spread across the table are copious notes taken in the Hinterlands, including sketches of the artifact, as well as a symbol drawn on the floor in the ruin, a few more of the strange statues, the piles of bones.

Another perspective would be welcome, as would a distraction in all honesty.

Gardens;
Instead of the usual peace, Skyhold's garden is a battle.  Not a serious one to most but to the children playing Wardens and Darkspawn it's very much real, shrieking and lunging, hacking and slashing with swords.  One little boy holds Morrigan's attention more than the others; this is a rare moment of peace, when things have been on edge lately.  As it is, she's kneeling, planting the seeds she brought with her, a few she's carried around since she left the Wilds, others brought with her from Orlais and beyond.  Simple, quiet work, no devious plans some might think she has, just a break from researching out in the fresh air. 

And no, contrary to what some might have you believe, not a single one of the seeds will grow into something poisonous.

Seeking rifters;
She's met a rifter or two since she came to Skyhold, and talk of them has been everywhere but hunting them down to talk was never a priority until the rift had opened within the very walls.  Now?  Well she has theories, theories she cannot test herself but looking for them might help, and it's a different sort of magic, something new to draw her attention when not working on whatever scraps of elven lore they've uncovered thus far.

Wherever the rifters might be, she seeks them out eventually, appearing around a corner seemingly from nowhere, perhaps after a particularly intent crow or cat has watched them before disappearing.  The introduction is the same each time, for she only knows one or two in passing.

"Greetings, you may call me Morrigan.  I wonder, might you have the time to talk a while?"

Seeking the mage council;
That they've made a little Circle themselves here is still a notion that disquiets her, something that she keeps an eye on without joining in, unwilling to be held to whatever rules they've made but it wasn't just anyone who opened a rift in Skyhold.  It was a native, a native mage and when she arrived in the first instance it was after an Abomination rampaged.  It hardly helps matters that she's Dalish as well.

There are too many Templars here for her liking as it stands, unsure of what reprisals there might be.  So she waits, quiet and patient, seeking Adelaide LeBlanc in particular simply because they've spoken before but it is opinions she is after, a sense of how things truly lie.  She's lingered before, to watch, to listen, to judge silently and she never could abide things being caged.

wildcard;
[Or feel free to find Morrigan elsewhere!]

Comments

[arcaneadvisor]

“And whose fault is that, I wonder.”

No, it isn’t Morrigan’s business specifically but the other figures of import are seen: Josephine with that little board with messages, Cullen and his troops, the lady Cassandra training often but the spymaster must be found, and still you trip over her many eyes and ears more than you do her. Morrigan knows her own reputation, she’s not a fool nor is she oblivious, and so it’s known that she researches elven lore and that there are a few place she can always be reliably found.

“So you go without sleep and sustenance?” What she means is entirely, she can already guess that Leliana likely gets little and less of either of them for she’s seen no bed at least in the rookery. Seeing Zevran in such a state has her rattled; ten years cannot pass without them all changing but this level of self-flagellation is only fit for a Templar or a Chantry sister herself. Last she checked, Leliana wasn’t either. Morrigan is newer here than others, is it truly so bad that this is considered normal?

What she says instead is quieter, softer. Voices carry and Leliana being angry at her would stop her being so angry at herself perhaps but it won’t help. “Crows are crows, they would always have come, the tales they tell and they rival bards. Do you wish to inspect each and every person so their whole life is spread before you like an open book? That cannot be. Zevran will mend.”

In time. Not quite the same but a scar is what you make of it.

[fightingale]

She scoffs, again, and for all her apparent incredulity there is a weight in her chest that will not abate. It might have been there for months now, or years, and she can barely think of a time when she did not feel this way. This desperate, protective need to guard, like a dragon with a treasure horde.

"That a Spymaster works in secrecy? Oh, yes, that is a revelation, I can imagine, an entirely just criticism. Thank you, Morrigan."

Anger burns in her words, a vicious heat that's as like to scorch Leliana as anyone else. Secrets, always secrets, disseminated to the correct ears, the people within Skyhold and beyond who will serve their purposes loyally, the advisors who need to know as much as possible to guide their action.

This is absurd. "I do what I must."
If some nights she does not sleep, or does not sleep much? So be it. If she does not eat a great deal? What of it? There are other things that must take up her time. She has enough to carry on, and that is sufficient.

And then Morrigan's voice softens, and somehow that is almost worst, almost more painful. It was easier when Morrigan was all sarcasm and scorn, not-- this. Whatever this might be. "And what if they had been here for something other than Zevran? To kill Josephine, perhaps? To strike down one of the Herald's companions, hmm? Or, what if they had been here to stop the meddling of our arcane advisor? There might have been any reason they were here, and were lucky that it was not an immediate assassination."

She hates that she says that, she does, and there is a rawness in her voice that she cannot push away because she is tired and just because Zevran had not been killed yet when he was rescued does not diminish the crimes against him in any way. She cannot dismiss a friend's suffering so easily. She cannot disregard it.

"The Inquisition cannot rely on luck."

[arcaneadvisor]

Two can play at that game. Morrigan folding her arms usually signals that someone should get out of her path, that nothing good is going to come of standing against her but Leliana had not been so cowed in the past and she won’t be now, she’s sure of that.

“You know exactly what I meant, do not treat me as if I am a simple-minded child. There is a spymaster and then there is this - all this time I have been in Skyhold and but once have I seen you outside your tower and you were quick enough to flee back to it.”

What would happen were she to reach out a hand and throttle her. Maybe a little lightning, a good knock of her head against the wall. Bards go through worse all the time, they all went through worse during the Blight. All these agents scurrying to and fro but no one Leliana trusts enough to step away for longer, and she’s angry herself not at Leliana precisely though she can already feel the throb of a headache at the back of her skull but at all of this. Twould be polite to call it a shambles.

Instead, it’s another question. People say foolish things in anger, a long shot with Leliana but still worth it when there’s a strange sort of honesty born of whatever name they’d give this. Not allies but not enemies, a strange sort of trust filled with suspicion but then all things are as such. “Because you think you must? Because it is expected? Is being the master not having others do much of the work for you.”

Because this isn’t normal. Morrigan is hands on, Morrigan trusts people only to fetch and carry, even those two things with doubts and yet...

“Fate, chance, luck; whatever you wish to call it tis good and bad and neither, even both at once. The sky itself might open and swallow us; if there are those present who do not know the risks they take simply by setting foot within Skyhold then they deserve it should their own ignorance be their demise. I have lived long enough taking care of myself, we all have, and yet we know that still the next day might be the one where we die.” You make your peace with it in your own way; Morrigan knows that Kieran will survive no matter what, that she will always have done as much as she can should something happen to part them sooner than either would like. “I suppose tis as good a sign as any that you are still human, to care so much.”

Maybe too much, given the job, she always thought such a person would have to only weigh it in costs and benefits, in pure numbers, in advantages, not the way Leliana phrases it. Oh of course to lose their ambassador would be dreadful, or to lose skilled bodies but it doesn’t hit Morrigan’s ear that way. Or is she looking for a girl she barely knew, a girl garbed in a Sister’s gown who wished to stop a fight when the wolves came howling?

“Did Zevran not describe fate as a tricky whore once?” And if that sticks in her mind because of how Flemeth would speak of fate or chance, then that’s only for Morrigan to know.

[fightingale]

At first she can hold her tongue. Morrigan is sharp and she can be brutal, and her words wash Leliana easily. Chastising, intended to prompt a response, one that Leliana circumvents easily until one word falls.
“Flee.” Not a question, barely a breath, with rare incredulity and derision woven in. “That seems rather more your vocation, than mine.”

The words are unjust. Morrigan left Celene’s court to join the Inquisition. She left the Wilds at Flemeth’s behest, neither instance fleeing, and yet that lingering need to watch ever over own shoulder and, Leliana did not doubt, keep on moving was likely as woven into Morrigan as her magic. She is cold and harsh, she is a winter storm, and she is afraid of her mother and ever-dreading. “Fleeing from templars, wasn’t it? And then from your mother, and I suspect even from your own conscience, if such a creature exists."

Anger is seizing up her shoulders and her back, as if she were readying to draw a bow or strike with a knife, before she makes herself stop, steady, breathe. What would Morrigan understand of her role? She must protect Kieran, but Leliana must protect far more, and she feels at times that she damns herself with each action taken. Leliana leans forward, hands resting on the desk, bound up in leather and hidden away as much as the rest of her.

“Yes,” she starts, “I am a master, indeed.” It is not an acknowledgement of any agreeable nature. "And what manner of master would I be, then, if not every ounce of me were dedicated? If I let them proceed with anything less than the certainty that their actions are the right course, and that their safety is paramount? If I would not carry the task out myself, and gladly, then I am making them no more than a sacrifice.”

And yet, it was she who called back her scouts, she who condemned Haven by failing to have her people out and their eyes ever watching. Her mistakes, her judgments, and Evelyn’s life was lost because of it. It was her over-caution and determination to protect her scouts that killed a good woman, and so many others.

“I must consider every action. The hands that act might as well be mine, for mine is the conscience that must bear the cost. My scouts and my agents will not suffer for the sake of my convenience nor my orders, and neither will this Inquisition. Not when I already cost us our Herald.”

A good person, a friend, even if that friendship was cut short. Her breath is slow, even if she does not allow it to shudder or hitch.

“I cannot turn away.” Cannot tear her gaze from all that is unfolding, from where actions might be taken or what the costs might be. Blind eyes are not a luxury she can afford. “And humanity is a heavy burden .” You must be so glad to be free of it, her younger self offers, helpfully, all faux innocent tones and batting eyelids.

No. She shakes her head. "Just because we could die does not mean we can be reckless."

[arcaneadvisor]

“How dare you.”

A lesser person would have fled before she even opens her mouth. She’s no mere child, her magic has never been out of her control but the air about her is colder for all that there’s a fire in her eyes, her hands curled into fists so hard the knuckles have gone white, nails biting into her palm.

“You are the master when it comes to that I would suppose.” The words burn when they leave her mouth, an acid burn she can taste. Hurt first before you can be hurt, if that fails, you do in kind, but she didn’t expect it, not like that, and where once she would have laughed and savoured the taste of it all, now she just feels sick. “I wasn’t the one to run and hide. How many Chantries did you pass between Orlais and Lothering Leliana? Or is it Nightingale?”

Morrigan knows her name, knows how her mother would bark it sharply, how Alistair’s mouth curls in distaste whenever he’s had to utter it. Orlesians are drawn in and repulsed all at once, this wild thing they don’t know what to do with when even their hunts take place in carefully maintained woods.

“You know nothing of my life, of my sacrifice-” and it’s that word that breaks, that sticks in her throat and cracks, something awful terrible thing that is shaped like a boy she loves with a fierceness that could frighten her. Because it’s her life, her sacrifice. Even having such choices is more than many can ever imagine and she’s carved this out by herself, her words, her research, her actions, her fingers practically scraped down to the bone to have all that she’s had. Is it fleeing when it’s worth more than your own skin? She can’t think of it like that, pride won’t allow it, she walks tall now, she walks through the palace in Orlais where the Chantry sits in all its splendour without any apology.

Morrigan lived between worlds in a place she can scarce describe. That cannot be called fleeing, not the wonder of such a thing. Who is this woman she’s snarling at? What happened to the girl she spent a year fighting alongside?
Anger has been the only thing to keep her going at times; it doesn’t fill a belly but it keeps you upright, forces your spine to straighten, to keep fighting, and so she stands almost as a statue before Leliana, only her breathing to betray her, the flex of her fingers.

“Because you are not all-seeing, all-knowing. There comes a time when they must spread their wings and they must bear the consequences. You cannot be with them all hours of the day and night, even if you could do as I do you couldn’t accomplish it.” It is enough, is what she wants to say but she can’t, she doesn’t know how to and if Leliana would listen or if she’d just scoff, come back with some bard’s retort. “They are all people and if they do not understand the role they have placed themselves in then the blame can lie only with them, setting foot outside of Haven and now Skyhold throws their safety to the wind. You cannot change that.” And she can understand wanting to keep something safe but Kieran is a boy, unprepared for the world whereas Leliana has men and women pledging their service the same way any of them did. Where was anyone to worry for them when they went to fight the Blight, the ragged few between Ferelden and doom? “Protect them if you will, do not use them to martyr yourself when they have minds that are their own.”

If there is any proof that Kieran has changed her, it is that. The Morrigan before would never have cared, she would have thrown them all at their enemies again and again, until one gave to the other.

She rolls her eyes, unfolds her hands and checks beneath her nails for blood. “Oh so you are Corypheus and all his followers now? Don’t be a fool. How can you lay the Herald’s body at your own feet, have you taken leave of your senses entirely?” The anger isn’t for Leliana. It’s for the others. For Cassandra, for Cullen, for Josephine. “Was it up to you to stand between her and all harm?”

She had companions, as did Jonas. Perhaps tis best not to say that though.

“And what would I know of conscience when I possess none.” She means it as her mother would mean a slap, her voice echoing in the rookery, black eyes and beating wings, the temptation to let her body shift and to be gone, to be free and untroubled by the world but one cannot live a life like that. Had it been possible then there would never have been a meeting of a Witch of the Wilds and Wardens, she and Leliana would never even know names let alone faces. But there’s something that hurts when she says it. That nagging voice that grew louder each day Kieran grew. What are you? Who are you? Can so many truly be so wrong?

[fightingale]

“You are not the only one to know sacrifice.” The Nightingale's voice is cold, not quite forceful enough to be brusque but barely edging around it. Parading it was unnecessary, childish. (Her own behaviour is childish, she thinks, but she has started down this path and Leliana is not entirely certain how to stop, when everything has been damed and constrained for so long.)

For a while she is silent, content to let Morrigan air out her toxicity, the vitriol that charges her words and always has, regarding her as cooly and carefully as if Morrigan were merely commenting on the weather, as it were a matter of disinterest, until that last stroke of a sentence, that hurt— betrayed tone that had no place here and yet belonged nowhere but here makes her brow flicker. Her expression betrays her, just for a moment, a flinch from a knife being twisted when she has managed to suppress it for so long that finally giving way is all the more disappointing.

“It was my orders that kept us from being warned,” she bites back, fingers pressed hard against the desk before she straights, back too upright and posture too correct. If she did not see, in this instance, it was her own fault. “I called back my scouts. I put their lives first, and robbed us of the warning that might have allowed us more time. I could hardly have allied myself with Corypheus any better - I practically held the door open to him.”

Time, that ever elusive creature, and she had cast it aside so recklessly. That which might have allowed them to evacuate, to secure themselves, for Evelyn to break free as the rest of them had. Time provided countless opportunities, and she denied them even that.

“Call me a martyr if it satisfies your disdain,” Leliana continues, for she is no fool, she remembers just how little Morrigan cared for her. Even if they saved each others lives more than once, an alliance does not a friendship make, not then, and not now. “Mock me however you deem necessary. Your barbs do not concern me. Your life, though? Your very safety, and Kieran's? That I will fight for to a bloody, gruesome end, as I would for any person here.”
(She is sure she started speaking quietly, but that sounds closer to a yell tearing from her throat.) Her hands hang at her sides, and she itches for something to do with them. "And yet— and yet that very sentiment is what killed our Herald.”

It is a precarious, painful position that she finds herself in, so desperate to protect and as if she will tear people apart with that very need. She could carve a bloody path through Thedas to protect elves, mages, to fight for all the people who are unprotected and abused, and what would it win her but more lives lost? More blood, more brutality?

“Fleeing is no longer what I am master of,” Leliana concludes, harking back to Morrigan’s remark. “Nor do I bring mercy, nor hope. My closest friend is death, and he and I walk hand in hand.” She is not the person she believed herself during the Fifth Blight. Perhaps Morrigan will leave her in peace, with that laid bare. There can be no bones to pick with someone who was an illusion.

[arcaneadvisor]

Once some part of her would have delighted in getting any reaction from Leliana, when her face was more open, when she spoke of stories and sang in that voice that soared above everything, high and clear as the bird she takes her name from now. When most of what you have known is hurt, being pushed down in your place, there's a certain savage joy in it, an ugly animal thing, the part that wants to rip and tear because it doesn't know a gentle hand. Morrigan gentled herself, gentled her own two hands because they had to hold something so small and fragile for so long. Of course it still exists – Morrigan shifts her shape, she copies the very soul of animals, wolves and cats, every sort of bird, spiders and stinging swarms, even corrupted monstrous things that would send a hunter running from them.

Now she's tired, tired the same way she is when she picks through ruins to come up with only fragments, dirt and blood beneath her nails. It troubles her, and then it troubles her that she's troubled at all. A thing for another time, she cannot afford a distraction in this argument.

The absurdity, the honest shock of it almost pulls a bark of laughter from it but that would be too much like Flemeth, Flemeth who laughs at the world because she is so much more wicked than it could ever even dream of being. "And how exactly do you come to such a brilliant conclusion? You have sharper wits than that." That's almost an Alistair argument, to place yourself at the foot of the pyre waiting for the torches. But it's a sign, a sign that someone Morrigan knew is in there but twisted out of shape. "I cannot say what I would have done in such a situation but from what I have heard of the Herald, then I doubt she would have dragged you before her clapped in irons to mete out justice. Even had you left scouts out there, this is Corypheus before any of you had a true inkling of what he is, what he once was. What would their last moments have been?" That's a cruel ploy, a cheap trick but she could understand better if Leliana had allowed them to remain and they had all died.

"Was her life worth more than theirs? Are they not all people? All with a life that started the same, screaming and covered in the blood of another, a life that will one day end. How many lives did you save by saving more eyes and ears? Lone wolves fall, but a pack can thrive for untold generations."

That Morrigan would know.

Mention of Kieran rouses something of the viper, the narrowing of her eyes, and how she bares her teeth. "I have spent ten years caring for Kieran, do not think you can speak so casually of him and his life, I am enough to stand between him and what comes. Yet you are not alone, Leliana. You have assembled what already rivals whole nations in Thedas, with barely a true ally to your name but for squabbling remnants of broken things. Does it behoove you to have to keep replacing them? Would you truly have been able to replace those you lost at Haven?"

Pragmatism is a strange thing, something that seems so obvious but it can be used either way in an argument if you've lived your whole life by that principle, and for all that bards play ridiculous games, there still has to be a core of that deep within. Knowing what must be done, weighing up the best way to do it, the best outcome with minimal fuss or blood. Tis hard to return to a party with tears on a gown and blood dampening the fingertips of gloves.

Morrigan scoffs. "And people think I the dramatic one," she mutters, half a smirk there for a brief moment. "I had heard your closest friend was the Divine, though death is likely a more honest master though never a friend, death can never be a friend, some of us should know that well enough."

[fightingale]

You have sharper wits than that, says she, and Leliana moves away from the table, frustrated. Hurt, perhaps, but it is no hurt she does not deserve. Her wits should be sharper, better, she should be achieving more, should be seeing matters for what they are, rather than feeling that she were viewing them from beneath the water's surface, a drowning woman looking up towards the sky and making out the shadows of the world above her.

What is worse - that Morrigan stands and continues to argue with her, or that she does not agree, and does not turn her viciousness against her? It would be easier to be condemned. It would be easier not to argue. It would be easier if Morrigan were so appalled or so nettled that she would simply leave. Even speaking of Kieran did not spark sufficient rage to feel like a relief, or disgust to make her leave, though she would have to admit neither had been her intention. The sentiment that she would fight for Morrigan and her boy was genuine, even if it had caused offence. (And it would have seemed laughable, ten years ago, for Morrigan to offer her what could be considered a compliment, let alone to consider that Leliana would have returned to this life and become a master of it, that Morrigan had become gentle. That Morrigan was a protector, and Leliana was a knife in the dark.)


"Justinia was more than a friend," Leliana starts, though it lacks the bite of an order not to speak of someone she has no doubt Morrigan would only speak of with disdain. She saved me, Leliana thinks of saying. Her vision and her dreams might have saved us all.

Her voice is quiet, rough, and strained after a long stretch of silence.

"What do you want, Morrigan?"

So many she could be asking that question, perhaps even ways she should be. What does she want in Skyhold, in the Inquisition, with her mysterious items that need to be protected? What does she want in the Rookery, from Leliana? What has Morrigan ever wanted? Leliana leans against the railing, hands holding onto it and her head low, and it could be that she is an angry, dangerous thing coiling and controlling herself, with such a posture. She almost wishes it were so, because if she were then she would not be so exhausted. The railing would not be a crutch, and her head would not hang quite so low, she would not sound so tired.

[arcaneadvisor]

There is a rule you learn when you are a girl that has seen her own tear streaked face reflected in a shattered mirror hurled down in the mud and leaves: you never let someone hurt you if you can hurt them first, and Morrigan has gotten good at that, very good at it. She isn’t surprised that it can come back so easily even after ten years where she has pushed it down. Copy the soul of an animal and you never forget it, be raised by a hand as likely to strike you as to hold you and you certainly never forget it. Maybe that’s what has her thinking. Morrigan cannot copy the soul of a person, a question she’s been asked before about if she can become another person, as if it were so easy a thing. Yet here Leliana is, but at the same time she is not, she is something new and sharp in all the wrong places. Morrigan lives for her research and for Kieran, and one is enough to protect the other and though the offer (or reassurance) is welcome, she isn’t about to let Leliana see that.

“Leliana’s friend? Or the Nightingale’s friend? Could such a woman have friends?” It’s deliberate to not clarify that she means Justinia in the last instance, let Leliana take that how she will so Morrigan knows who and what she’s dealing with here. What Morrigan knows of the late Divine will always be less than what Leliana does but when Celene wanted her in the court for her perspective, she knows she can see it without being blinkered by whatever is instilled in little girls about what a Divine is, what a Divine should be, how she should be loved.

There was nothing unconditional in Morrigan’s childhood.

I want to know who you are. I want to know what happened to you. I want to know who let this happen, she thinks but does not say, instead just watching Leliana go because the other woman knows Morrigan likes her silences, like to pause and to wait. She follows a moment later, leaning herself to peer down, ignoring the eyes of the ravens she feels on her back because she knows such birds; if she has a favourite shape it has been such a bird, to flit as a shadow, to be the omen a person fears when one bird watches them for too long with eyes too sharp and knowing.

“Perhaps want is not the right word for it,” she admits at last, voice low and quiet after the shouting. “I wonder how any of it has come to this. After the Blight, I had thought…” There’s a moment where she falters, looking down so it’s harder to see the way her mouth twists, how it still hurts even when it shouldn’t. It’s an admission again but she had so much time when Kieran had to be kept close, when he slept or when she rocked him in her arms and she did wonder what the rest had gone on to do because one doesn’t spend a year fighting through the worst creatures imaginable and then forget about them utterly. “I had not thought you would return to a life that you freed yourself from.”

Freed sounds better than fleeing, than being forced out rather than die.

[fightingale]

And there it is, although she cannot flinch from Morrigan’s words this time, neither internally or so clearly that Morrigan would see it. Could such a woman have friends, and Leliana can’t help but find it a little funny, when they have never been friends in all these years. Morrigan had despised Leliana, and recognised her hypocrisy when she heard of the Nightingale, even if she had born no such name then. Both sides of her merited disdain. It was no wonder that she it would surprise her that Leliana would claim to have any friends at all.

“I have made many friends over the years,” she replies, calm, even and resisting the tightness that threatens to latch about her throat. “Allies and enemies are both an inevitability in such work.”
But ‘ally’ is the more accurate word than friend, she supposes. She met Josephine when she was a bard, yes, though those were still the days before she was the Nightingale, when she was freer than she has been in a long time. And now that she is the Nightingale, even Josephine was not trusted automatically, as a friend doubtless should be. Her integrity was tested before she was welcomed to the Inquisition, rather than her character simply being relied upon. (This is a lesson Leliana will re-learn, soon. She will remember that all must be tested, before they can be trusted.)

Friends feels like an imposter on her tongue.

(And there is that suggestion of softness, again, and Leliana feels certain she should pull away from it, lest she disturb this delicate balance, this concern within a heart that she had accused of being filled only with loathing, even for Morrigan herself. There is love there now, she thinks, and that is important. That is the very reason she must be as she is, why she cannot run from who she is. Better her than Morrigan. Better her than anyone else.)

"You and Zevran," Leliana breathes, and she cannot find it in her to be exasperated or amused. Instead, she is simply clear, blunt:
“You cannot be freed from yourself, Morrigan.” A sorry truth, that. “This is who I am, who I always was. You were right, you know. When you called me a ‘little deceiver,’ in Denerim. I did not know it at the time, of course... I believed Jonas so willingly when he assured me that Marjolaine and I were not the same, but he is but a man. He cannot know all, and he cannot see into our hearts.”

The Maker could, of course. He could see into her heart, and He knew she was not an innocent and loving child. She had walked a more virtuous path, or at least had tried, before falling back to what she was truly gifted at. She understands that well, now. Sacrifice in the name of the Maker is necessary, and Leliana’s sacrifice is herself. No matter what she must do, what becomes necessary, she will see it done and Thedas will be better for it.

Her pause lasts a moment too long, and though she does not turn to Morrigan, exactly, her body is more open in her direction. Close enough. "At least I no longer deceive myself, and I am aware enough that I might turn what I am to a greater cause."

[arcaneadvisor]

It might be that Morrigan will never have friends. She had Flemeth. She had encounters in the Wilds and in towns, villages, but she has never had a single person to rely on, to place her trust in; how easy it is to betray a person so close to you, doubtless Leliana knows it even better now than she did then but Leliana was there in the main camp. She sang at the camp. She seemed close to them in a way Morrigan couldn’t be, wouldn’t be. The same reason why she is glad Kieran can make friends of his own easily enough; it was easy to be spiteful, more difficult to say that some small part of her was envious.

“How many have you kept. Is there a difference, in your line of work?” They’re names to put on things, as if the whole world is a thing that can be neatly labelled and put in a box, as if the world has ever been that way; man is good at imposing its collective will on things but there are forces in the world that will always push back defiantly. “You call yourself the Nightingale; are Leliana’s friends the Nightingale’s friends? Are her allies Leliana’s allies?” Who are you, she wants to ask yet again because that is the crux of this, who and what Leliana has become when she said she was not Marjolaine and when Morrigan has been able to be herself for so long. Is this the way of the world, that when one walks free of the shadows and shackles another must enter them? Life is better with Kieran in it, life is better when she can see the joy in things, when she removes the armour she always wore out in the world to wrap her arms about him.

There was an envy of being able to be so free as Leliana once made herself, to sing joyfully, to love tales told a thousand times without looking for the ugly truths they masked.

“Well Zevran has spent far too much time around the imbecile Alistair, half his wits are likely gone.” Easier to put that buffer between them both now, because Zevran already sees too much of Morrigan so the twist of her mouth into a smile is sympathetic and annoyed. Some people see too deeply, she would prefer that they didn’t.

Leliana cannot know what it was like to break free of Flemeth, nor can the Nightingale but the words sting, they burrow into that place of her that doubts to feed something dark and hungry. Leliana cannot know that Morrigan has vowed to never let herself be Flemeth, to never isolate a child and bring them up with only what the mother wished for them to know. Bad enough that she had no plans to love him at first, bad enough that he was part of an escape plan. He is her son and she has walked through the fire to get to where she is now.

“No?” It’s hard to keep her voice level, to sound almost amused at the notion. “I remember what I called you.” I remember I was angry, I was jealous, I could hardly breathe for how easy it was for you to kill her and be done with it. “You pretended to be a Chantry sister for so long though men are so good at lying because all too often they like to pretend that they are so noble. That the blood doesn’t harden beneath their nails. Why must you look to others for who you are?” There is a reason Flemeth denied her a mirror, denied her something to see herself, something all of her own that hadn’t come from Flemeth’s hand or from her lessons.

Morrigan’s lies are often omissions. If she is not asked then that is not her fault, why should she volunteer more than is required? She is a different sort of liar to Leliana but she does not lie to herself, she does not try to twist herself into what is needed or required; she has always been helpful, but that doesn’t mean she has to be nice about it, or kind. Freedom comes in knowing yourself and caring less what the others might say.

The scoff is out before she can stop herself. “Calling yourself Nightingale. You are Leliana, there is a part of you that cannot be so simply hidden else you would not have pulled back your men at Haven.”

[fightingale]

Morrigan insists, as ever, at being far too cutting with questions that might be painless to some, but find their targets with swift brutality. Leliana is not so vulnerable or soft as to flinch, not any more, and she does not kick back with the childish name calling of a decade ago, though she is not without guards that raise and anger that coils and readies itself to strike.

"Their numbers are not so limited as to be instantly called to mind." Remembering Morrigan's self imposed isolation is not difficult. Imagining how alone she must be in the Winter Palace is not difficult, either, when Leliana has long since realised how very isolating it is to be a bard and to realise all blades are turned against you, in the end.

She seems the sympathy in Morrigan's smile, and she disregards it. It is not for her.
"Ah. Do you imply your wits are half gone, as well? That would be a merciful release from this discussion," she replies, far more lightly than she feels. It would be nice to step into simple barbs and retorts again, not these uncomfortable truths that Morrigan has no right to. But there is still a tightness in her voice. "I was a lay sister at the Lothering Chantry. That was everything to me, not some convenient pretence." She is angry, and she is certain she has no right to be. This-- Morrigan herself, it would seem, is clouding her judgment and her reason, making the clear argument warp and more difficult to grasp. Too much is slipping, and she cannot afford it to.

"Are you misunderstanding me? I do not look to others any more - that was the mistake, and I have learned it well. I look in the mirror and I see what I am. I remember the past and I know my present. Do not dare dismiss me as clay that is so easily misshapen, and do not think me the girl for whom you held so much disdain. I am sure there are other earnest young things for you to denigrate with your scorn."

She stiffens, holds herself sharp and straight. "What would the Inquisition stand for if there were no lives it treasured and protected? What manner of Spymaster would I be without spies? I am Leliana, yes, but that does not mean I am who you remember. Better you remember that and spare us both. If you have some point to prove, make it elsewhere. This," and she gestures to herself and to Morrigan in one loose motion that doesn't fit with the rigidity in her posture, "does not matter. Why act that it does?"

[arcaneadvisor]

Not quite a deflection, but not quite an answer, just a reminder of how much she hated the way Celene would insist on speaking so. At least Morrigan has always been honest with herself about her place in the world, and if she has to thank her mother for anything it would be that. She has never known how to fit in and so she doesn't, keenly aware of each and every on her, same as a wolf or hawk or hare might be.

"Oh don’t be absurd, or deflect the way the idiot does, you have never used a shield." If they are dredging up the past, there's no reason for her to not bring it up, choosing to save that first remark for later, when she has had time to think. It isn't fleeing if the retreat is tactical, time to consider before coming back. "If that is the truth then why did you leave to join Jonas? Why are you the Nightingale and not a sister once again? Marjolaine is gone, yet here you stand as spymaster." The pieces fit but not entirely right, though Morrigan only knows the Chantry from a position of scorn but there is a gulf between lay sister and Left Hand.

And she knows women. Powerful women. She knows mothers and how their hands can be; Orlais is Orlais, the only way to get anything is to play the Game. There is something uncomfortable about them all, about the influence they exert and how respect and love are expected, their decisions unquestioned. But she is not so foolish as to discuss that, she well remembers some discussions with Wynne, bruises still fresh that bloomed with pain when touched and this is worse, this goes deeper, goes down to the bone with who knows how many old wounds.

Her own aren't forgotten after all.

"What you were? Is a bard not what she is shaped to be? Tis a simple enough thing to shape a child into whatever you wish for them, I was meant to be a thing that Flemeth would possess in time, to be exactly as she wished for her convenience." What is a Left Hand if it does not move as the mind dictates after all? How is it that Leliana has become harder where Morrigan has become softer, how is it that one of them has learned to put away her claws at times?

"Have it your way," she says at last, turning to face the stairs. If Leliana wants to think of this as fleeing she is welcome to do so, to enjoy her small victory. It isn't that Morrigan is tired but this is going in circles, will continue to go in circles and it was her anger in the past that kept her going, when she was more spiteful and vicious. "I will send word of my work as it progresses so as to keep you informed, I have taken enough of your time Leliana."

[fightingale]

"Marjolaine was right," she replies, simple and to the point. "I simply denied myself the truth." No doubt some a part of Morrigan would be placated, would be pleased by her failure. "And finally you have learned," Leliana breathes, even as she chastises. Morrigan has fought for her freedom, for her son, and Leliana exhales her frustration, easy enough to pass for an even breath.

"As you will." Leliana has no doubts she is dispensable, but one of several that Morrigan would manipulate to serve her whims, had she the time and chance. Just because she would fight for Morrigan does not mean she will let herself fall without meaning, without serving this Inquisition.

She turns back to her work, and banishes thought of the Witch and all her wiles. The Nightingale has work to see to - better that, than allowing herself to be entangled in all this.