1.
Leliana hides in plain sight, wearing chantry robes like a stolen skin. She's an oddity by accent alone but she charms people as she always has, winning them over with smile, stories, and song. Sharp eyes soften, distrust giving way to warmth, admiration. Sister Leliana said with the tiniest hint of respect, all traces of mocking gone, washed away like footprints in the sand.
Orlais may be lost but some things are not easily left behind.
2.
Marjolaine's betrayal festers, and there is no outrunning it, her, not when she's in the tilt of a head, in the curl of a smirk; when she's everywhere and nowhere at all. Leliana still wakes with Marjolaine's name on her lips like a prayer; Marjolaine's name on her lips like a curse. There's before Marjolaine and after Marjolaine and Leliana's stuck living somewhere in between.
3.
"You will find solace here," the Sister says, and Leliana envies her surety. Marvels at it. Her eyes bright, steady. Hand cool and uncalloused against Leliana's own. The Sister's never touched a blade in her life—Leliana the one who's held lives in her hands, who's felt pulses flutter like tiny birds in the cage of her grip—and yet here she is, soul bleeding out between a chantry sister's fingers. Undone so easily.
How can you be so sure? How can anyone?
That's part and parcel of faith, she supposes.
Leliana only knows this: she isn't certain of anything at all.
4.
Sleep does not come easy. Not after torture and imprisonment, and hands reach, grasp, come up painfully empty. It's a long moment before she remembers where she is, where she isn't. She wraps her arms around her legs, presses her forehead to her knees. Little girl habits not indulged since Mama, since Lady Cecilie, and she yearns for her mother(s)'s fingers in her hair.
She prays for the Maker to guide her but the only answer is her too loud breathing.
5.
It's easier during the day, when light slants upon Andraste's carved face and the Chant sounds all around. Leliana lifts her voice in prayer, her heart in song, and believes she will be found.
6.
Leliana is no stranger to duplicity but Sister Leliana feels less and less like a lie these days. Her face clean, hands empty, fingers splayed open. Extending a kind hand, a kind word. It's a simple life. Quiet. There is no intrigue, no violence or danger. The only hurts are the ones she glimpses on the Chantry-goers faces; the ones she wakes up shaking from in the dark.
It might be a lie but it's a lie worth living.
7.
"The Maker is not gone," she says, and they don't outright laugh or jeer, but Leliana is more familiar with the Game than they'll ever be. They smile politely, all but dripping with condescension, and when their gazes skitter over her she can feel their judgement like a palpable weight. Leliana hikes her chin, letting none of her strain show in her eyes or mouth. I've suffered worse in Orlais, she thinks, and it's true, but she thought—she doesn't know what she thought. Some things don't change no matter what country you're in.
8.
"Do you miss Orlais?" Bethany flushes; she really blushes quite prettily, Leliana thinks, lips curving as Bethany stammers over herself. "Sorry, that's such an obvious question—"
"It's no bother." And it isn't, not for young Bethany Hawke, who can't seem to drink her full of Leliana's stories, who listens with so much quiet yearning it's painful to look at. Moonbeam-eyed, Marjolaine would say, voice laughing, lips brushing the shell of Leliana's ear. Leliana brushes the memory away like a bothersome fly. "And I do, very much, but also not as much as I'd thought. Does that make sense?"
"Not really," Bethany says, no doubt remembering Leliana's laments on Ferelden's wet dog smell, her odes to pretty dresses and feet.
Leliana laughs; makes a face. "I don't really understand it myself."
9.
I'm right where I'm supposed to be, Leliana thinks, and time will prove her right.
She likes to think it already has.