arcaneadvisor | ooc: inbox/plot with me

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."

"Urgency is a relative term," she concedes, drawing back just enough to catch Morrigan's gaze, eyebrow a little quirked. It is... strange and pleasant and has anxiety balling together in her cut, the threat of having something vulnerable and making herself vulnerable with that same thing. Part of her wonders if this is too foolish even with prompting and needling and concerns from people who did not know the lay and the truth of it. Perhaps it is possible still to backtrack and to pretend none of this had come to pass.

She already knows that she does not want to, and that is condemning enough.

"Teasing is unkind." Quiet and utterly unaffected by this apparent cruelty, as if she is making the observation for the sake of someone else who might be devastated by Morrigan's wit and as if she had not come in here wielding her words and her tone with some viciousness of their own. "And the dress is not very discrete, hm?"

Which skirts an Issue, and Leliana glances down, idly (deliberately) trails a finger along one of those silvery scars.

Only Zevran knows that Morrigan even has a life that extends beyond Kieran, her work, and varying attempts at friendship, at least coming from Morrigan's own lips. And Zevran again shares something of the same fractured life, and was thus the only person who could be approached for advice without compromising herself or Leliana. Everyone else was too much of a stranger, or Alistair. (If there is one who must surely be worse at this than her, let it be him, let her always have that to hold above his head even if the jests are friendlier these days when they play at spirited re-enactments of the Battle of Denerim where Alistair shows more passion for winning than even Kieran does.)

"I could be worse," both of them know that, but she is smiling, teasing again though she is too old to truly be coy. It's just them. "I am the wicked witch of the Wilds after all, such is my nature, you were never put off. Not even when dressing me in your mind to all those around us."

Unlike then though, tis not most disturbing now. Tis most welcome. Only she has to stifle a gasp and a laugh at that touch, the way her body shudders. No, no she is not ticklish, that would be absurd.

"Less discrete or more unkind?"

Quiet and forgettable, she thinks, as questions go. Especially forgettable, she thinks, in the wake of that not at all ticklish reaction, which has her looking at Morrigan with quirked brow and a little twinge at the corner of her mouth.

"Morrigan."

Her name sounds awfully akin to, what was that? while her fingers trail all the more lightly up Morrigan's sides and over her ribs.

There are words that die in her throat, caught in a gasp that's half-laughter as she tries to fight the instinct to hold perfectly still because Leliana will never forget this, she can feel it in her waters as she starts to squirm away, body curling in on itself. Her jaw clenches. She is a Witch of the Wilds. A daughter of Flemeth. The Scornful Sorceress. Arcane Advisor to Empress Celene.

She will not be reduced to this state--

"Whatever you believe," her voice is steady, it is resolute and unwavering, "you are most assuredly wrong."

Don't you dare. Even as her body tightens in anticipation.

There would be a certain amount of satisfaction in ignoring Morrigan's warning. There is even a brief moment when her fingertips ghost over Morrigan's skin, Leliana leaning closer.

The particular quest is abandoned. Leliana, instead, keeps all her touches light - agonisingly so, because after the Fade she wants certainty and solidity and warmth. Her lips are the suggestion of a kiss, of its immediate possibility, against the point where neck and jaw meet; her hands slip, still feather light, until could anchor at Morrigan's hips if she let them. Whether it is teasing or playing a game born in ticklishness or simply an open invitation for Morrigan to accept rather than having tp refuse, she doesn't know. If it is the latter she hardly knows what the invitation is for.

"Am I mistaken in thinking you and I have begun something?"

An... entanglement, an involvement, a more than before.

There will come a day when Morrigan will get her out of that armour, locking and warding a door behind them so she can make her pay for each and every moment of this until they are both gasping. For the moment she is shaking again - she is a novice at this, there has been only that night with Alistair, a night she doesn't think of because he did it to save the his life, a friend's life, and the life of a man he hated, and she did it to gain something she never thought she would love. Nothing prepared her for this. That it is so sweet, so tender, that Leliana who said such things in the eluvian and fears what her hands have touched? It makes it all the sweeter and she would capture this moment forever if she could.

"You are not mistaken in this," she clarifies because of course Leliana would be maddening in this. "Tis most unexpected. But never unwelcome, believe me when I say that: never once is this unwelcome."

This is her heart laid bare, cut neatly in two and pressed into Leliana's palms when she gives herself to each and every touch. A different person, perhaps a better person (a simpler one, a foolish one, a kinder, gentler one who has not seen or felt the teeth that the world has) would wish them to have felt less pain but Morrigan is realistic. Their pain makes them who they are, and perhaps there are times when she has wished and will again but they are who they are, and it has shaped them into this.

"Never doubt that," she repeats, and kisses her again, her hand on Leliana's hip, the other under her chin; her touches are heavier, deliberate. I am real, I am here, I want this and you are wanted, I am going nowhere, you will not be rid of me so easily.

Morrigan's words are enough to make her eyes slip shut and leave her wanting just this, for a little longer. This space with just them and a window to forget the world outside. Her hands anchor more steadily, certainly, at Morrigan's hips, the warm heels of Leliana's palms pressing heavy against the crests of bone and muscle.

There's no breath of a word in response. It feels unnecessary, really, when instead she's able to lean into the kiss, dragging at Morrigan's lip with her teeth, slow and carefully and cautiously possessive--

-- and then a knock at the door comes.

"Lady Morrigan? I'm looking for Sister Nightingale. Rennard mentioned she'd come this way." A quiet voice with a Starkhaven accent and a somewhat apologetic tone, one who has been sent to deliver messages to Morrigan and who ferried chocolate spiders to her before.

Leliana's hands flex, grip hardened for the barest moment as she looks over her shoulder, utterly venomous, at the door. She is still silent, still does not speak, and very slowly turns to look back at Morrigan.

This is the worst.

Rarely does Morrigan have a problem with Leliana's messengers. Something, she suspects, that has everything to do with Leliana selecting those who will have very little reason to either care about Morrigan in the first place, or to certainly avoid those who would dare to show any sort of outright rudeness towards her.

"Damnation," she snaps, head jerking in the direciton of the door at the same time; it would funny if this were not so very fragile and they were not so very aware of that. But they cannot be selfish - when have they ever belonged entirely to themselves in the first place? "I must allow the Inquisition to have you back it would seem," a reluctant mutter, almost petulant.

There is time for a last brief kiss, for her lips at Leliana's ear to whisper.

"Kieran still goes to bed far earlier than you or I. I will send word when he is safely tucked in for the night that we might...resume our discussion."

(For the benefit of potential prying ears, she is here to help the Inquisition too.)

Her hands flex, and though that kiss is brief that makes it no less fierce, an edge of bite to it, before she soothes Morrigan's lip with something just barely more gentle.

As for the words, they feel more tenuous. More brittle and likely to splinter off and catch her if she is not careful. Morrigan's words are broken glass and need to be handled carefully. Leliana is not entirely at ease, not entirely certain either of them know what they are doing or what they want, and in the moment where pulling apart is necessary, wonders if she has made a critical blunder. What if this is a part of the Grand Game, for all Morrigan's disdain of it? What if this is not what she believes it to be?

She kisses Morrigan's cheek as her agreement, and even with the knots tangling in her gut, appears remarkably calm. Some part of her is aware there might be some of that stain Morrigan uses darkening her lips bled into her own, and she finds herself more thrilled by the thought than concerned.

Her own feelings on the matter are, in a word, complex.

"Later, then." A murmur, before she lets her fingers trail away from Morrigan's sides, and she makes for the door. Loudly, enough for the scout to hear, "I am on my way."

ooc: inbox/plot with me

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