(open-ish) out of the slumbers of my head

[fightingale]

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

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.)

Comments

[fightingale]

The response coaxed a smile from her, though whether it is wry or genuine is something Leliana herself is not entirely certain of. A world without Morrigan teasing her, Maker forbid that ever be a possibility. More grimly, a world where another friend turned against her, tried to manipulate her, that would not be well done at all, and Leliana schools her expression into something more even. “It would not be advisable.”
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.”

[arcaneadvisor]

"I am not so foolish." She says, then reconsiders, curls her hands and looks down at them because it's easier when it makes her recall exactly how she felt when Leliana told her what Alistair and Zevran had done. "I would have someone I might rely upon here who does know me." That isn't easy but whatever might be out there listening she is trying and she has been trying, she will keep trying until she has exhausted all other possibilities.

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?"

[fightingale]

Ah, Jonas. The man who had been there through so much for each of them. She is silent a moment, and only nods.

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.