arcaneadvisor | ooc: inbox/plot with me

Ever since that moment of-- what does she call it, madness? A stunning lack of judgement? Wishful thinking? (Not the latter, when could she ever be accused of falling victim to the latter since she left the days of her girlhood behind in bogs and swamps of the Wilds?) - of whatever it is they will call it, that tastes like regret that tastes like Antivan plum brandy, and despair, and almosts, and almosts, and things that were almost hers but weren't, they haven't spoken.

Runners conveying messages aren't speaking, and Morrigan has her pride, she would lick her wounds in peace until she can pull herself back together as if it never happened. (It should be easier, she isn't good at this, the mockery sounds too much like Flemeth in the dark.) She doesn't expect a visitor, and the knock doesn't startle her but the voice does, makes her turn her head sharply and bite off a curse.

"Come, tis open, and tis only I."

(There is someone else, fortunately he's off at his lessons. She can't quite make her legs find themselves to walk to the door.)

They are magical lanterns, elven in origin. Used originally in scrying. Like so many things, little is recorded about them after the fall of Arlathan.

She opens the door swiftly, steps inside, and the efficiency of the action could be the speed of a woman who is always busy, or someone who is accustomed never to lingering at doors due to risks and rumours, or someone who is simply impatient.

When she presses it shut it takes a moment longer, palm flat against the wood of the door a beat or two after the catch has clicked to ensure it will stay shut. Facing Morrigan takes a moment longer, again, but she does it.

"How are you?"

Oh. [Pel can be heard scratching something down.] I thought they might be related to Veilfire Runes, but clearly not. This book is in Tevene and I've been going back and forth with a lexicon. One word that stands out isn't Tevene at all--Cad'halash. Does that mean anything to you?

How ridiculous they must look were there anyone to bear witness to them, fortunately that's not the case and she scoffs, giving Leliana an incredulous look. All that nothing and she comes out with 'how are you' as if they're simply two people?

(Is this how it is? Surely it can't be so simple, she's horribly out of her depth, she hates it, she who knows so much more than any of the rest of them suddenly struggling to keep her head above the water.)

"As well as can be expected," she grants at last when she could say a hundred different things, when that is just sharp enough without being too terrible. When she is hurt but doesn't wish to make it worse. "I believe I should be the one to ask that of you, after everything."

It is only now that she can rise, to move around the desk to close the distance - the stories were...alarming, to say the least. And Morrigan so rarely pays attention to them when she knows just how quickly gossip grows arms and legs, and starts running along itself, braying like a fool in motley.

Cadash Thaig, I have been there before. [Her voice is soft, the way voices always are when memories of ten years past are stirred unexpectedly.] Dwarven, of course. You might wish to ask Shale as well, or a Warden as much that was dwarven is now infested with Darkspawn.

[Shale, she imagines, will be about as helpful as Shale ever is when dealing with squishy things.]

Leliana does not flinch at the look or the words, simply holds Morrigan's gaze and watches as she draws closer. Her own body is rigid, hands behind her back, shoulders drawn back, posture solid and upright.

"I'm fine," and immediately it is dismissive. 'Fine,' as though she has not done anything more challenging or interesting than stand in a room all day, as though she is not in the habit of tearing piece from herself.

The stiff sort of silence after it is unbearable, and Leliana finds herself opening her mouth to speak and break it before it becomes a weapon Morrigan can turn against her. "I-- was aware of your absence."

Which is a very poor way of saying you missed someone, really.

"Aware of-" She cuts herself off, brows pulling together before her voice can rise, before she can say any number of things that sit behind her teeth in the back of her teeth where the terrible things are, the words that you pull out when you want to hurt because they hurt you on the way, the ones you like to worry at after you've said them, expecting to feel some cut or gaping hole in your mouth, surprised by the absence of anything but the ache deeper down.

She doesn't slump, even now she's Flemeth's daughter, and ten years away she has made herself more, but it's a near thing.

"I trust the Western Approach was fruitful for all your silence?" No she's not hurt, whatever would give you that impression? The lack of eye contact, the way it bleeds into her tone, the way she curls her fingers to keep herself to herself this time because last time it was more than she imagined before it became exactly what she feared? "There are so few here to make the days interesting when you are gone. Who am I to speak with of my work?"

Who is she to pester who understands, who can she be silent with, who will understand when she is hot and cold, when she can be sharp then almost sweet?

Apparently her efforts to express emotions are not appreciated. Leliana sends a critical and long suffering look to a section of the ceiling that she suspects should suffer as a result of her own suffering or irritation or whatever you might wish to call it. They keep saying they want more of her, for her to express, and yet she tries and apparently succeeds only in aggravation.

She feels as though she should bristle; she does not. She feels exhausted.

"We have a long list of the dead, and another of those who should be rendered thus." Flat, quiet. Days spent staring at a desert where looking at the sand too long could burn your eyes. "I apologise that I am not a readily available jester."

That is unkind, and she knows it, closing her eyes because she wants-- something. She wants this to be reassuring and comforting and steadying, instead of leaving her thrown and off-kilter. Morrigan had always seemed to enjoy making people suffer for her own whims, in the days of the Fifth Blight. Maybe now this was all an elaorate rouse for Leliana's humiliation and hesitation and hurt.

Maybe it is Leliana who is being unfair.

"There were very few reports that came through," Morrigan points out because the fact that there was a period of utter silence from so many is alarming. Silence from the Inquisition isn't something that should happen, even for a few days, and it hadn't been pleasant, and Kieran had kept looking at her, haunting her steps for two solid days as if it had been the days when nothing else in the world existed but the two of them, his hand in hers or on her arm.

"That was not-" her voice rises, not quite sharply but close, always seeking to be contrary perhaps but maybe that's how it is when so much of your life has been a thing not your own. She sighs, shaking her head. Her voice lowers. "That was not what I meant." I missed you, she wants to say but can't. It's too big an admission when they haven't said a word to each other since the dungeon, since Leliana sent her away.

And yes, she understands necessity and the rumours that followed since the dance but it stung. It still stings. She's hurt, more than that she's embarrassed and that shames her.

"There was silence from the Approach, I had hoped it went well and that it was worth it, that silence did not mean you had found any we might have known." How long is Jonas going to cast a shadow too, and how long is Leliana going to have to wade through the dead? "I had not expected you either."

As much as it had tired her to do it, to retreat back from the one person she might truly call a friend and ally within the walls of Skyhold, she had done it out of necessity because she understands. Yet here Leliana is, and Morrigan doesn't know what the next move is supposed to be, and she hates it.

"We were in the Fade," she replies, but it comes very slowly, as if she must extricate each word from tar before she can speak it. She is not sure that she can quite process it, even now, she who is so careful and sharp and analytical. Echoes of the Fade seemed to linger with her, fears that she would sooner had never been drawn to the surface. Some had concerned this, the fragile circumstances between them, and there is a defiant part of her that will not be cowed even by the Nightmare.

Leliana takes one step forward, and then another, and she is not sure what expression her face has fallen into. It feels like sadness and hunger and searching all tangled together. She feels brittle, like the slightest pressure will force her to splinter, and yet she keeps moving forward until she is standing just before Morrigan, and it is an echo of that night in the dungeons, of the Crossroads, of the gradual decay in their understanding of personal space.

"I have been silent because I cannot chase you from my thoughts." Her breath threatens to catch, but does not. "Inviting you into them seemed nothing short of foolishness, when..."

When, indeed. When there is so much to be done, when it is not-- when they do not know what it is. When Leliana cannot be the person Morrigan seems to want, when she speaks of how Leliana has changed.

"And yet, here I am." At a loss, it seems.

Edited (icon selection problems idk) 2016-06-07 20:21 (UTC)

I will, of course. So the Lights were taken there, but I haven't worked out why or by whom. Once I have a little more of this translated, I'll put in for an expedition, if that's all right.

"The Fade?" It's been ten years and she remembers it, though her own experience wasn't nearly so shattering as those her companions had to deal with; she is glad none of the rest of them knew then how far the demon had to reach to convince her, a Mage that actually kept her wits about her. "You have been there before, you awoke, as did we all." What was different this time, she asks with the way she tilts her head same as all the ravens in the rookery, eyes keen and bright, brows pulled together. "Who is we? How many? Tis a long journey even from Val Royeaux to the Approach, longer still to Skyhold. There was no word."

And that's when Morrigan flies. There was no word, she thought the Nightingale had made a cut and is that so wrong an assumption for her to make? But she does manage half a smile, at least moving around the desk with one hand braced on it to keep herself upright, just to be safe.

"Perhaps the rumours whispered in Celene's court are not so false, there is much I know that does not come from the Circle, and I have learned much more since last we parted." Maybe it's the wrong moment to tease, to try to be coy as if she were years younger but here they are, and one of them should make the attempt. If Leliana is being foolish, then perhaps now is the moment to take Zevran's advice. "I am not afraid of dangerous things, no matter how sharp they might be, not with my mouth nor my tongue."

Morrigan is just as liable to cut herself with her own words as she is another, either what she says or does not, when she says them or when she holds them back so they sit in her throat to choke her.

"Yet here you are," she agrees, and the hand that isn't on the edge of the table reaches for Leliana, slowly enough that she can recoil should she chose to. "I have missed our talks. I am driven to distraction with you here, by this, but tis so much worse when you are gone."

If you would keep me informed of your progress, I would welcome it. In the meantime, I can look over some notes of mine own to see if there is anything I might have overlooked.

[Translation: Jonas what the fuck why can't you follow the simple instruction of 'do not follow', why was that so hard?]

"Can we..." Leliana trails off, shaking her head. "We can talk about the Fade later." There is a certainty in her voice that doesn't entirely match the questioning in her gaze, the request that it carries rather than an instruction. "It was horrifying," is something she does allow, after a pause, allowing Morrigan something, at least. "We couldn't use our crystals."

I tried is arguably something she should volunteer, but does not, and there is a part of her that dreads she will latch onto the chance to talk about something that isn't them, that nebulous, invasive thing.

Morrigan coming to meet her around the desk is a relief, simply put, but it is also terrifying. The teasing is terrifying, the lightness with which it seems Morrigan can approach this, and Leliana looks up sharply with the comment about sharp things, even as her fingers lightly brush against Morrigan's (so much as a hand can brush another when it is gloved, but even so.) It seems an odd contrast to words that compare Leliana to a brandished knife, and yet both things are irrefutable true, real.

I am driven to distraction, says she. Leliana's eyes slip shut, her breath a single slow shudder as she leans forward to rest her forehead against Morrigan's. She feels undone, uncertain how to proceed, and there are few things she hates more than that, even as something in this admission feels like a relief.

Understood. I'll let you know.

[The transmission ends.]

"You were no longer of this world, of course you could not." That's more to herself, because it makes sense, because it's the Fade and every rule they think they know goes out the window there, and after the talks she's had - or the most recent one when the ghosts crowded so close to Leliana she could almost hear them - she nods, a murmur of assent following without more words.

Morrigan is a mage, and her own horrors...her own horrors she can imagine so easily now, because she plans for them constantly and has to worry about them when she burned bridges she is carefully repairing now. Kieran, always always Kieran. And Flemeth. She cannot imagine what Leliana has seen, what must sit so heavily upon her shoulders now.

When she was younger she could be coy and could joke about a hundred terrible things, she could be cruel but longed for someone to be able to hold her gently in their hands even if the strangeness of it seemed absurd. If so much of her had balked at ever allowing herself to be stripped so bare and vulnerable before anyone that they might hurt her so easily. There's so little with Leliana though that isn't laid bare to the bone that there's a freedom that comes with it, that allows her to smile, to curl her fingers enough that the other woman can move away should she wish it (she would never wish to trap, to turn her hands to claws unless her whole shape is twisting, she remembers too well how it feels to be on the receiving end.)

"Leliana," she murmurs, in her low roughened voice, daring to pull her closer, wanting to tug the hood down to brush her hair behind her ear but she settles instead for a hand on her side, calming her as one calms any skittish wild thing. The irony isn't lost on her. "Come here, I am going nowhere." I will not flee, she means. And I have lived this long through a world with as many shadows and ugly biting things nipping at my heels.

For once, Leliana obeys, though the movement is only slight at first - a step forward, leaning into the contact, before she thinks better of it. Her hands anchor behind Morrigan's thighs and she hitches her up, lifting with the intention of setting Morrigan sitting on the desk. It's both forward and strangely not, a slow and cautious thing done as she watches Morrigan to try and guage her reaction. It is a bid to steady them both, to let her lean her weight against Morrigan without the risk of pulling them both down, and it feels like--

It feels like a relief to lean against someone without exerting some fashion of control over it. More truthfully, doing anything without holding herself back and maintaining an uprightness befitting a marionette with the string from its head pulled tight is foreign and she shifts with some strange mix of discomfort and curiousity. She can't quite decide if she wants to refamiliarise herself with this or not, how to do it if she does, because doing something because a part demanded it was different to doing it herself.

She feels as though she is holding herself over a precipice rather than simply leaning against Morrigan, but maybe that is the cost of being so heavily armoured. She is better prepared for a precipice than for intimacy, and there is a quiet breath that is not a laugh but certainly isn't anything else as she pulls down her hood and lets her mouth graze against Morrigan's jaw.

"I feel like I should think of something clever to say," Leliana murmurs, a little wryly. "Very clever or very romantic."

And she can't think of a single thing. Typical.

Breath catching in her throat, she still manages a laugh, surprised to be certain, and not quite delighted but definitely pleased. Sometimes it's easy to forget (or not easy, this is Morrigan, she collects everything in the same way that crows and magpies collect interesting shiny things, so perhaps she was simply more comfortable with forgetting) that Leliana is so strong. No one has ever done this and it's the newness of it coupled with that sense of finally that softens her smile.

She isn't one with romantic notions who will come out and say that yes, her spiteful words ten years ago were to hide some hidden feelings. But time has changed her, softened her, and she has never been here before, not once. She wants to be. And perhaps strangely there is no one else she would trust with this than Leliana.

(Morrigan is sure she must know somewhere. In that way that they share messy mirrored parts that overlap imperfectly. Morrigan is utterly her own creature for better or worse for the first time in her life.)

For the first time since their dance she sees Leliana as Leliana. One hand strokes through her hair because she can, because it lets her steady herself enough to think when Leliana is stealing her wits once again.

"I think you and I have said more than enough to one another," Morrigan replies because it's Morrigan, and she does so like to get the last word when she can. "Let me offer an alternative."

Only Morrigan would say all that before leaning forward for a kiss, but a Witch of the Wilds still has a reputation to maintain.

This is not what she came here for. Leliana could not truthfully say what she had come here for, but it wasn't this. It wasn't affection. Some visceral, desperate need to see Morrigan and confirm that she was solid and real and well might have been part of it; this giving way had not. Without intending to she leans into the contact of Morrigan's stroking her hair, and perhaps that is part of what makes this so inevitable and appealing, in its own way. With Morrigan she is a shade more impulsive, more real, like some part of her is prompted by the proximity to someone who pushed and barbed her so long ago. Old fascinations overriding her newer severity, even if the severity has been several years worn in.

Morrigan speaks, because Morrigan is incapable of not getting the last word in, and Leliana exhales something that could have been a near-silent laugh if Morrigan's mouth were not meeting hers. It seems so strangely chaste, and so much more real for Leliana not feeling as though her fingertips and lips were buzzing and numbing from brandy. After pressing her hand to Morrigan's lower back just for half a moment, steadying, Leliana pulls both her hands away to start pulling away the gloves and bracers. That is a secondary focus, though, and as such takes longer than it might, purely because Leliana is more interested in pressing a lingering kiss to the corner of Morrigan's mouth, to her jaw and to her chin before her lips graze upward and she hangs in the breath between kisses, savouring or inviting or daring, and maybe all of those things woven together with a thread of trepidation. Morrigan has always reminded her of storms, the way her magic smells when it gather and seems to linger on her skin after casting, and she is not entirely certain she is not simply caught in the eye of a storm now as she slowly presses the bare palm of her hand to the exposed skin of Morrigan's lower back.

Months ago - and that it has been months still catches her by surprise sometimes, that near half a year has come and gone since she joined the Inquisition, since her and Leliana's lives joined once again - she explained the Fade to a new arrival. The nature of it. Leliana does not need the lesson in the same way but Morrigan has spent so long wondering at how she came to be this way that she will hold her close for as long as she is allowed, because whatever Leliana might throw at her, has she not been through worse? The silence, the possibility of rejection and appearing foolish? That was the terror. It smacked of failure.

Or maybe it felt like fleeing. They're good at being cruel, and that first remark set them on this path where neither could back down without giving ground, without starting to tally victories and defeats.

She wanted this in the eluvian, if she is honest. They were so close there too when Morrigan felt her skin thrumming with the magic. The dungeon isn't a regret but this feels more real, and those are Leliana's hands marked by the bow; it shouldn't affect her but Morrigan is always so bare by choice and all she sees is Leliana's face, ever cast in shadows by that damned hood. Morrigan is always the wild thing, the thing to be chased even as she arches into Leliana's touch with a gasp, eyes half-lidded. Leliana is control as one would expect of a bard and an archer who must pick her shots and breath so carefully, who must focus, but then there is someone with faith and passion beneath all that, someone with fire and a spark. She finds one of Leliana's hands, runs her fingers across her palm to the wrist and allows her magic to flicker over her pulse, almost close enough to kiss but not quite, lips brushing Leliana's as she smirks.

Her breath catches; not with Morrigan's gasp, no, although that has her watching intently, gaze sharp as she studies Morrigan's face and commits the reaction to memory with the looming risk that this may be the only time she sees it. What does make her breath catch is Morrigan's hand finding hers, the pleasing presumption of another hand brushing against her own and the flicker of magic that makes her look down with surprise.

Her own skin is warm, but very pale. The freckled she sported in the Fifth Blight are less visible now, hidden away from a lack of sun, and she is so used to contact being something risky, forbidden, that Leliana turns her wrist over with quiet wonder. It is not a slow action, even if it feels that wa to her. Her fingers catch Morrigan's, weaving them together, before she looks back to Morrigan, her dark lips and her smirk and those golden eyes that seemed to always watch so intently.

It feels-- good. It feels comforting, the kind of warmth unfurling in her chest that has been absent so long as to feel unfamiliar.

Leliana's throat feels very dry, her breath a little less steady, and she pulls Morrigan closer (presses her against the cool of Leliana's chainmail) as she finally kisses her, lips parting and skin flushed and warm.

If Morrigan has her way, because she is greedy and hoards bright glittering things such as every trinket Jonas ever pressed into her hands with some shrug, some story, or simply because he'd vexed her and realised the error of his ways, she wants more of this. More of Leliana unguarded, willingly so. Yes, she does like to catch people unawares in the same way a wolf or a hawk enjoys catching prey by surprise, but it means more, like this. Like an offering.

She wants Leliana out of her armour, she thinks, to walk her fingers up her arm with ice at the tips to see how much she shivers, if she'll fight the gasp, if she'll try to keep still, how long she'll manage to hold her composure. She hopes she'll laugh. If she slides them over her ribs then up, if she warms the palms suddenly in something that would be an apology if it wasn't her.

Thoughts for another time because now there is this, there is so much wanting in her that it makes her ache, and yes she's afraid because when isn't she afraid when it comes to things she wants? When so much of her life was spent being denied, when she must look over her shoulder but Leliana understands that so well, and Leliana would never abuse that. There's a sound of complaint that she almost manages, smothered by the kiss because the chainmail is cold and her skin is aflame, flushed all the way down her throat, and goosebumps break out because well, she wears very little.

When the kiss ends, or rather several later, because she is reluctant to part to breathe, so she kisses Leliana again, because she can and she revels in it the way she does her magic, she still manages to sound a little put out. "You might remove the armour next time, tis very cold." The shiver is entirely ridiculous but then are they not prone to that?

(Twas cold in the dungeon, and cold in her rooms all alone after that and all the nights after Leliana.)

Leliana laughs, quiet and short lived but startlingly real, not the near silent breaths of amusment she allows herself or a false construction for the Game, but an actual laugh.

It feels very strange, and she is silent in the wake of it, bringing the warmth of her hands to slide over Morrigan's waist and rest against her abdomen, Leliana holding herself just fractionally apart to spare Morrigan further chill.

"Forgive my sense of urgency," she finally replies, lips moving against Morrigan's cheekbone, a whisper a intimacy not yet indulged. There is too much wanting, she suspects, on her part, and she is very aware that Morrigan said next time and that it granted her a flare of hope and of longing that she is sure she'll burn herself on.

"Morrigan." An exhale, as her thumbs idly map the plane of skin and Leliana resists the urge to slide her hands upward.

"Urgency? Is that what you call it? It certainly took long enough." She cups Leliana's face in her hand, wondering what it was that she saw in the Fade or the Approach that finally tipped her far enough to finally come here. But they have agreed not to speak of it, and Morrigan can push the questions down for later, because she's too wary of this too-fragile thing held in her hands at the moment, the pair of them positioned utterly ridiculously, yet she wouldn't trade any of it.

(Not even the hurts, if she is brutally honest, and Morrigan is not good at many sorts of honesty other than that or shading it with various lies of omission where she holds back the whole truth until it suits her.)

Her stomach tightens; she's ticklish, and there are silver lines where Leliana's fingers are, stretchmarks from Kieran that Leliana won't have the way Leliana carries scars where Morrigan does not.

"Though...a part of me did not entirely dare to hope. I might have worn my gown had I had warning."

ooc: inbox/plot with me

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