"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.