lelιana ( adorable нereтιc ) dragon age. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fightingale) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
faderift2016-04-03 10:14 am
fightingale) wrote in faderift2016-04-03 10:14 am
(open-ish) out of the slumbers of my head
WHO: Leliana & open-ish - see notes
WHAT: FREEDOM. talks about freedom/the Chantry/wherever it takes us.
WHEN: throughout late-late-late Drakonis and early/mid Cloudreach, can be after hearing some rumours.
WHERE: Default setting will be the Rookery, others possible on request.
NOTES:
1. Likely referral to imprisonment and torture in narrative, others to be added if they come up.
2. It's not exactly open-open because I'd like to be able to keep the different threads unique and avoid burn out on the topic, but if you are interested then just shoot me a pm or talk to me on plurk and we can figure it out!
tldr I am flexible with who/when/where and such, but hammering out some info first would be greatly appreciated.
3. Prose or brackets are totally fine, I'll match style :]b
WHAT: FREEDOM. talks about freedom/the Chantry/wherever it takes us.
WHEN: throughout late-late-late Drakonis and early/mid Cloudreach, can be after hearing some rumours.
WHERE: Default setting will be the Rookery, others possible on request.
NOTES:
1. Likely referral to imprisonment and torture in narrative, others to be added if they come up.
2. It's not exactly open-open because I'd like to be able to keep the different threads unique and avoid burn out on the topic, but if you are interested then just shoot me a pm or talk to me on plurk and we can figure it out!
tldr I am flexible with who/when/where and such, but hammering out some info first would be greatly appreciated.
3. Prose or brackets are totally fine, I'll match style :]b
Too long has she stayed her hand. First it was her ignorance that silenced her, and then it was loyalty, the belief that Justinia wished to make the world better, stronger. A more just world, where all would benefit rather than a rare few. As time has passed, though, and as the Inquisition grows, Leliana has realised more and more that Justinia's peace and her vision for the Chantry were not enough. For all that Justinia had once been a worldly woman she had not fought in the Blight, had not fought side by side with mage and elf alike. She had moved as a player of the Grand Game must, small moves, small changes, and stability had always been her first thought. It was Justinia who had threatened to deny aid to Celene in the settling of mage and Templar if Celene did not cease the elf rebellion simmering in Orlais before the burning of Halamshiral. Justinia was a good woman, a good friend and teacher and mother, and she had great vision. Even so she had been blinkered by the prejudices that ran rife throughout Thedas, the small mindedness that seemed to define each country in different ways. No one should be enslaved or punished simply for being; no one's personhood should be compromised by the simple facts and circumstances of their birth.
Most often she is in the Rookery and must be sort out between scouts and ravens bringing reports, or meetings with the other Advisors. The tower is cold, and candles flicker from a shrine to Andraste and make shadows dance. (And, if visitors come late in Drakonis and early in Cloudreach, they may find evidence of Dorian's prank, for which there will be dire consequences.)
no subject
As ever, she can't help but peer about eyes widening because she is still somewhere inside a girl from the wilds who grew up in a simple shack with a simple roof, with wood and dirt floors, with books yes but no trappings like this. She gave Kieran the eluvians, she gave him Orlais too where he grew up not with opulence but with possessions, with books, with things he could have as his without having to steal or hide them. Skyhold at least has her study and she's reminded that she should invite Leliana there one day to get her out of the rookery for all that it's much the same; books and papers, strange plants growing as they will instead of a lute, a space where a boy can play and do homework instead of four- no five (Leliana you need help) nugs.
"I worked the glass myself. In Serault," she offers because there are no others here who know that, and she should offer it, even as her eyebrow rise at the last statement because really, Leliana? "I forged it at Celene's request but I had discovered the secrets of it long before. It was a sanctuary, not only for myself but for Kieran where both of us could be safe from Flemeth's reach."
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It is easier, almost, to fall back into seriousness and severity, Leliana's brow stitching with the admission. Celene's request, but Morrigan's need, and her expression is not-- it is not beyond her control, but it does waver into something more complex and difficult to pin down, for a moment. "I see."
She cannot, of course. She cannot fully understand or comprehend, but at least she can see it in some way. She understands the shape of fear and of needing somewhere to hide, and she only feels sorrow that Morrigan has had that blade hanging over her and Kieran some ten odd years, when Leliana was able to shed some of her own fears when they saw Marjolaine in Denerim. (Some parts of fear could never be lost when intrigues were involved, when Marjolaine could have laced the ground with traps and cups with poisons in the shape of words and secrets readied to be bared, but Leliana learned to work beyond that long ago, for Justinia's sake if not her own. Morrigan does not have that luxury.)
"The relief must be considerable, then. I am..." What? What can she say here that will not sound trivial? "I am sorry such measures have been necessary."
no subject
The rot spreads and grows. Leliana's faith seemed more pure, more true when it was the faith of a girl in a spit of a village swallowed up by horror.
"I suppose you can," she says after a long moment, when the silence has been allowed to grow fit to burst because she can make those admissions now. Where all of them were bound by the horrors they witnessed, by stumbling into pasts that seemed to spring up like mushrooms after a rain, it would be foolish not to be aware that there is something that goes deeper with the two of them, of women they were meant to trust that hurt them so, that left their fingerprints behind as surely as scars from battle. (Morrigan's scars at least are all inside, she is spared having to look upon them unlike Leliana.
She is grateful for that, it makes it easier to pick at them without a person to ever see.)
"My mother is my mother, she will never be satisfied and I must remain ahead of her, I am sure that differs little to the Game - there is always a blade very close that wants nothing more than to take your place because it fears what you might become? We do what we must to survive, you know that as well as I do, how else have you lived so long as a bard, as the Left Hand?"
no subject
She does not anticipate the comment about how dull it would be if Leliana were all sweetness and light to hurt. By all rights it should not. These are jests, lightly spoken. And yet there is something in it that strikes one of the few raw points she still has, ones she has not allowed herself but that have persisted and lurk beneath the surface all the same.
"And yet so many had been insistent that they wanted to see that dull little girl again," Leliana replies, and there is a cool flatness in it. Even words and tone mask a good many injuries, for all that she is certain this is not one, simply a poor semblance of one. She must remember that some barbs are more subtle than others.
"But isolation has been my means of survival. Remembering the cause to which I am dedicated and not seeking things for my own. The trick to surviving the Game is not being blinded by selfishness or personal agenda. Working for Justinia's goals rather than ones of my own devising allowed clearer perspective." She shakes her head. "You protect Kieran. I cannot imagine anything more personal than that."
no subject
"That is not what I meant," but it is not as sharp as it might be, and what irritation there is remains quiet, for Morrigan herself rather than Leliana as she looks up again. "And perhaps unstopper your ears, I said the faithful, not you specifically. You hardly speak for all the Chantry - had they not ostracised you when you spoke as you had about the Maker, believing that you felt his love still in a world where they said he has turned from us all?" But does she still believe that now when things are darker because even someone faithless as Morrigan is can see that the shadows press closer, crowding to get in the way that spirits press where the Veil is thinnest.
It is no coincidence, it never is, that such times brings faith and monsters bursting to the surface once more.
"I did not mean to offend," she adds because well she can do that much now because she doesn't wish to upset Leliana like she might have in the past. "She was not a little girl then but I had never been given to anything that wasn't wicked beneath whatever pretty face it might have showed the world - do you know how many beautiful flowers in the swamps could be made into the worst sorts of poisons?"
That...that feels more like an admission than she is comfortable with, and she's almost glad when a nug wakes and comes to inspect the stranger so rudely disturbing it, squeaking at her booted heel until she sighs, bending to allow it to sniff at her outstretched palm. "Were you close to Justinia? I know you were her Left Hand but my time in Court has taught me that I would prefer to go to the source of such things; I had not thought you would return to this life after all you had done unless this truly is personal for you too. You must believe in her cause. Difficult though that must be at times."
Does she need to say Halamshiral, or can she leave that to hang in the air given where she was, who she was with, the work she was involved in?
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The question is somewhere in the region of teasing, though it falls rather flat. A moment stretches, pull tight and thready as though it might snap, and then she adds, "The Wilds and the Orlesian Court were less different than I had imagined."
Had Marjolaine not found a pretty thing and crafted her into something cruel? And had there not been something terrible in the heart of her from the beginning, that she could be so shaped, and so compliantly? She had not only given herself over to Marjolaine, she had done it knowingly, clasping ignorance eagerly, but she had become her. Outstripped her.
None of this seems right.
"Were we close?" It almost seems a laughable question. "Are you close to your lungs?" For they give you the means to breathe and to live, and that was what Dorothea had been to her.
"She saved me," Leliana says more simply, pulling away slightly, moving towards the window. "Closeness does not do it credit. Mentor, sister, friend, mother - saviour. She found me at my lowest and she freed me and redeemed me." Or she gave me the tools to do it myself, that's what Justinia would prefer she said, but it was never what came to mind for Leliana first. "Without her there would have been no Chantry Sister aggravating you in the Blight. I would have been long rotted away."
Perhaps some melodrama is inevitable, having such a conversation with a bard. "I returned to what I was best at, because I am the best, and because when the Revered Mother Dorothea was Named to ascend to the Sunburst Throne there was none other she could trust so well. I believed in her peace. For that, all things were worthwhile." Leliana pauses, frowns, and looks back towards Morrigan. "Why the sudden interest?" What is your game?
remember that time you said 'carnage of a tag' well i present this to you now
After all, it has only ever been her. There has been no one allowed so close, there have been no dancing partners and the way she had gasped or flushed so red hadn't been a ploy. She isn't that good to fake them or to hide them.
"There are fewer rules in the wilds about setting people on fire or encasing them in ice, how any of you get through the day I cannot fathom," she teases, or tries to. Is this how it goes? Are they close enough to allow that or will this become what it threatens to each time with them, two snapping wounded things trying to gain the upper hand where neither wishes to reveal the damaged flank for fear of another bloodied strip being torn clean away? Beneath everything, those who know how to survive know that civility is something you shed far quicker than your clothes. "Yet in the end I like to think I am more than simply a garment my mother wished to wear for herself." Even now she cannot stop the bitterness from entering her voice, and that tiny jagged piece of hurt, a shard of glass that tears at her. "You are more than what that woman shaped you to be, even if you left pieces of yourself behind when you stole yourself back from her."
That's the part that gets left out. That you are snatching yourself out of the jaws of a terrible thing before they snap shut. There are heroes in stories, just like there was a Hero in the one they were a part of but sometimes you must be your own in a way folk never think of or never speak of, in quiet ways, in ways you wouldn't want them to speak of because it aches, because you can't turn back the hands of time for selves that came before and suffered so.
It isn't the answer she's expecting, and she looks at Leliana in surprise. "When did she-- Was it back then?" Ever has there been something complicated and ugly, a thick tangle of knots and vines that chokes out everything when the word mother is ever breathed, one that only seemed to grow and swell with Kieran. She has pruned it back somewhat - she is a good mother, she likes to think, he is happy, he has friends, he sees the world, she teaches him so much and she tries to cause him so little harm, she does so much that he might never know anything close to what she did, as if she can make up for what she did before he ever drew breath when he slumbered beneath her heart, for when she raised him in a world between worlds, for her absences, for the lies in the court, for the dreams and nightmares, for something she knows that he knows about himself but doesn't have the words for.
Is it a debt Leliana owes her then that she carries out even now, even with that woman dead? If a Mother might lead her flock, if Morrigan might still feel the lash of Flemeth's words, what might this woman do that had changed so much, that had moved Leliana to lead this thing forward without even a Herald or, more correctly, an Inquisitor now?
"Could a woman in her position trust anyone?" Do you expect her to believe that Leliana? Trust in the heart of Orlais, playing the Game with a more shrewd hand than any Empress seated upon her throne? "So many of us return from stories, the past calls to me to find it before it is utterly lost - but can I not wonder at what became of someone who had the world before their feet ten years ago and yet stands before me now with names given to her once again?"
There is no game, not with her. Perhaps that makes it even more galling that with others when Morrigan honestly has so little to gain when she certainly can't take real personal satisfaction from it anymore the way she might have once, when she would have crowed, and smirked, and made light of it to see if she could break that mask.
wow if that's how it's going to be
"I would think that any person who intimated any such attachment between they and I wanted something. Secrets, powers, a means to undermine the Inquisition, or to further their cause. I would think that they underestimate the Nightingale," she adds, a sort of clarification. "Coming from you, perhaps you wish to win more support or influence, or resources for your research. Perhaps you would be seeking more security for your son. We would find ourselves circling as we ever have." After a moment she sighs, shrugs, and rubs her face with her gloved hand. She is Sister Nightingale to most, but she has always been Leliana to Morrigan, and her tiredness shows through for a moment. "And I would think that you know well enough that if you wanted any of those things you could simply ask for it, or you would find ways to appeal to me that did not involve insulting your own sensibilities or mocking an old acquaintance." It doubles back and weaves around and, honestly, she has no idea where they would be.
With another equally tired gesture, Leliana indicates for Morrigan to sit, checking that the door is properly shut and locked before sinking into a seat of her own. "I first met Justinia when she was the Revered Mother, Dorothea. Marjolaine had... framed me for treason and I found myself imprisoned, for a time. Dorothea roused me to action, gave me the tools for my escape, but more important than all the rest was that she gave me hope. Nothing that I am would have been possible without her, certainly not the young woman whose faith lead her to join the lone wardens."
Idly, Leliana's gloved fingers trace the grain of the wood, and she continues. "She trusted me because of who I was before she ascended, and my trust was entirely hers." This conversation is not easy, and yet seems... necessary. "Stop looking for her, Morrigan. I chose to follow Justinia. I chose this, to embrace what I am. The girl from the Blight was nothing more than a foolish delusion. This is who I really am. It's that simple."
i don't even know if this makes sense i'm very sad and tired
"Then tis a good thing that I require none of that and that you know me to be blunt." They both know that's not entirely the truth but equally they know that Morrigan doesn't play the usual sorts of games, that she might not tell the entire truth but that she does provide the help that is required, that she brings a great deal to the table as it stands. "I have kept Kieran safe alone for a long time, I enjoyed Celene's patronage though not without argument as I am sure you are well aware now though I far prefer you and know you to be a great deal more honest about your desires than someone vying to keep hold of what she has before she would see any change in the world that doesn't benefit her first. But we do what we must. Even she knew nothing of Kieran." So it is something then that he's known more in Skyhold though that's more an inevitability but at least Leliana is trusted with the information, given that she knows more than most.
Taking the offered seat, the nug thankfully loses interest in her for the moment before those little paw-hands can decide to bat at her legs, or worse, at her own hands for further attention. Ten years and she has even more of the creatures Morrigan passed over innumerable times on her journeys across Orlais.
"I remember parts of the story," she says very quietly, little deceiver running through her head but now she's better at putting fragments together and filling them in when she's spent the past ten years doing nothing but that. "Do you mean literal tools or something else - you will forgive me, there have been lessons I have been teaching others who might seek to walk alone, who would do well to know how much is already within themselves." No one should have to make themselves small and disappear after all, should they? They should all be able to walk proudly, tall and free, their heads held high, answering to no one. "You believed in something that earned you nothing but scorn from those about you but still you believed, is that not the same as now? How many would seek to tear down what this Inquisition stands for when it brought together the Mages that fled the Circles together with the Templars that turned from the Chantry with a Divine who stood for a great deal that worried the faithful? I do not pretend to be privy to the specifics of Celene and Justinia, but I do not pretend I did not know more than the rest of her court. That girl is still there, she is simply no longer a girl same as the girl I once was is no longer a girl. I know how to sheathe my claws better now."
And that she can say with something that's actually a laugh because she can read Alistair's face so easily, and who would ever have thought that she and Alistair would ever be at a party hosted by such exalted folk, dressed in their finery and discussing their son like adults?
"Our lives should be our own though, no matter how we come to take hold of them. It is so easy to damage another, even when done with good intent, I have tried so very hard to keep my life from ever touching Kieran's in a way that might do him harm."
no subject
Dry, as if this were an easy joke, and as if the both of them did not know better.
The little nug abandoning Morrigan for a moment catching Leliana’s attention, and she makes a little clicking noise with her tongue to catch his attention, as she leans forward and pulls a grape from the bunch on the table. There is an audible little squeak of interest, and Nugistair scurries over to lean up on his hindquarters, one paw rested against Leliana’s leg and the other reaching out to grab the grape. She pets his snout, murmurs something to him in Orlesian, and hands the grape over. Nugs are much more pleasant to think about than politics, as a general rule, and though the matters she glossed over were personal, the lives of the First Blight veterans seemed inherently political, in some way or another. She should make some response to all of that, to the acknowledgement of Morrigan’s independence and her secrecy and Kieran’s safety, but she doesn’t know quite what to say that would be anything meaningful, and there is so much weighing on them already that she stores the information away, nods in acknowledgement and understanding.
“Both,” she admits, after a time. Truthfully, there is a moment when Leliana considers leaving it at just that, in leaving the story as buried as it can be when someone already knows fragments of it. They are a complicated thing, though, stories - they shift with their audience, remake themselves. Part of Leliana wonders what story it is that Morrigan would hear, contrasted with what Leliana lived. "It is hard to pick a lock when you have nothing to you, whether that is the will to carry on or the tools to fight for your freedom.”
Another grape is plucked, Nugistair snuffling around for more, peering up between the two of them hopefully. She rolls it across the table to Morrigan, to see if she will stoop to the terrible low of offering it to him. (She takes her amusements where she can.)
“I agree. But I have changed myself so that others need not. I cannot reconcile what I am now to who I was. I… am not even sure she was ever so pure as I made myself out to be. It is hard to discern.” A shrug. “Freedom is an ideal, Morrigan, and one I fight for. I am content to give up myself to see it won for the many. Justinia's vision for peace was not enough, but what this Inquisition can do must be.”
no subject
Lost as she is in her thoughts, the grape almost slides past her when she considers that. "I suppose in his way Jonas provided the same when he found the grimoire for me to allow me to know exactly what my mother had planned." People grasping for something might say 'we are not so different' but that doesn't need to be said when they know the ins and outs of the particular sorts of ugliness they've experienced, so instead she rolls the grape between her fingers, looking to the nug, then to Leliana.
"If you tell him," there is only one him she can mean when she lowers her tone, "what the Tevinter has done to your rookery will be nothing." If Kieran hears then there will be little living with him either but that she can handle compared to Alistair finding out that Leliana can have her bending forward to offer grapes to nugs.
"Is that what she would have wanted? My mother...she is not a Mother but you will know how the Dalish speak of her when they call her Asha'bellanar; I know that she would have wished me to become whatever she wanted or needed me to be, regardless of the cost." It is hard to reconcile everyone's opinions of Justinia after all because no matter what Leliana says about that girl no longer being there? She clearly loved this woman, and that is what keeps her questioning, what makes her sincere. She doesn't know mother's love from this side. "If her vision was not enough then what is?"
no subject
There is not really time to relish in the moment of Morrigan accepting the grape. It has Nugistair trotting over to her, squeaking and snuffling and blinking his little eyes at her, snout and neck extending in a line to reach up as much as he can. It's adorable, really, and Leliana wishes there was a way to capture such a moment. Proof, perhaps, or simply for the sake of her own memories. Her expression is a little softer, but she holds up a hand, placating. "Your secret is safe with me."
And what a secret it is. A tragedy, honestly, that some things were condemned to silence. There is little chance to dwell on humour, though, in a conversation such as this.
"My actions were born of the need to see her orders done. Whatever was necessary, and whatever she needed. She understood that my methods could not be what a Divine would wish for." It is a cold way of looking at it, but she has learned to be cold. That coldness cannot entirely reconcile itself to the fire that burns in her, constant, and what she says next is... it is presumptuous. Arrogant, perhaps, and radical without question. Above these words Leliana favours visionary and necessary. If people cannot see it, it is because they blinded themselves, and they have none to blame for that but themselves.
"My version. That would be enough. One where freedom need not be a distant goal, but an immediate one. Where the innocent do not have to wait to appease those who so gleefully inflict suffering upon them."
She opens her mouth to speak further, when a knock comes at the door. Enter, she calls out, and a scout opens the door, stepping in to stand just inside the door and looking at Leliana, a message clasped in one of their hands. The Nightingale nods, before looking to Morrigan. "I am afraid I must cut this short."
I am sorry I cannot speak to you longer is what she means, because Morrigan speaking of her mother is not something easily won or coaxed, and to have be done without it coming slung with spite and vitriol is a marvel in and of itself.