Reprieve

Before her arrow could seek out the heart of Paul Le Trene a flash of light enveloped the advisor and he became enclosed in a force field. Leliana gasped and dropped the aim of her bow, stunned by the sight. She utterly failed comprehend the cause or the nature of the field until a voice spoke beside her.

"What do you think you are doing?"

Leliana spun on her heel and Morrigan raised a hand, an arc of electricity sparking between two fingertips. It felt as if the blood left her body and Leliana thought she might actually drop to the stone floor of the balcony so weak did she become, with confusion, panic and… relief?

"Morrigan, I," she swayed and took a step backwards. She dropped her bow to her side and shook her head as if to clear it.

With the air of a wary adversary, Morrigan stepped forward again, out on to the balcony. "That field is not going to last forever, Leliana. When it drops, your 'target' will likely start yelling for guards, if he does not collapse to the floor in puddle of his own making first. What are you doing? Why are you not in Val Chevin? And why does Cian keep telling that Aedan is lost and hurt?"

"Cian?"

Had the boy visited Aedan in one of his dreams?

"We do not have time for you to play the stunned ingénue. You forget who I am, I see through your masks, Leliana."

"Morrigan, I did not want to do this, I had no choice…"

"I have no time for your whining. Tell me you are not here to harm my son."

"Cian?" Leliana realised she made little sense by simply repeating the name again, but she could not seem to make her mind work properly. She had crossed into another territory, a place she had never been before, mentally. She had been prepared to take an innocent man's life, against her will, not as an assignment but as a price, a bargain, to save another man. Now that it had not happened, that she had been prevented from following through, her thoughts felt disconnected. On the one hand, she felt an enormous relief, but on the other panic and grief threatened to overwhelm.

"Morrigan, she will kill him. I have no choice."

Turning, she regarded the man within the field, frozen in time, his expression obscured from view behind the slight opacity of the wall of light. But she could imagine his face, the horror, the confusion. And despite this brief reprieve, she could see no way out. Unless…

"Kill who? Leliana," Morrigan sighed and then her head jerked upwards, her eyes widening. "Tsk."

A quiet yell floated across the space between the buildings, cut short by a bolt of lightning that arced through the air and followed by a soft thump, the sound of a body hitting the ground.

Morrigan turned to her once more. "Now are you going to tell me why I just attacked one of Celene's advisors?"

Sensing her time ran out and Morrigan's patience with it, Leliana spoke quickly, a rush of words. "Marjolaine captured us, the night of the ball. She has Aedan; she is torturing him, Morrigan, doing terrible, terrible things to him." Her breath caught and her hands shook, but Leliana forced her emotions aside a moment, stopped thinking about her husband's broken body. "She is working for, or with, Felix Mason. If I do not kill Paul Le Trene, she will kill Aedan."

Morrigan looked stunned. Her face held an expression Leliana had never seen before, no mocking, no derision, not even a shred of pity, merely quiet shock. She recovered quickly, however.

"This is exactly why we should have killed her."

The pity and disdain had returned. Morrigan had been with them that day in Denerim, she had been present when they had confronted Marjolaine. It had been an odd choice to take her, but Leliana had not wanted her dirty laundry aired in front of their entire party and so only she, Aedan, Zevran and Morrigan had made the visit to her former mentor while the others had been left to amuse themselves in the Market District. Aedan had asked Morrigan to accompany them knowing she would keep the details to herself and side with them in a fight if necessary.

Leliana had been relieved, enormously so, when Aedan had asked Marjolaine to just walk away, to leave. In an effort to forget her past, to change her future, she had felt killing Marjolaine would not fit with the plan she had for herself; it would not be a merciful act. Aedan had obviously agreed, but then, Aedan had proved himself a merciful man - until he had been confronted with Rendon Howe. That meeting had changed him forever. He'd not had years in a chantry to get over the deaths of his parents, his nephew, and at the time, the supposed loss of his brother. It had been fresh in his mind and the Arl had taunted Aedan with what he had done to Eleanor and Aedan had snapped, something within him had broken, and he had fallen upon his enemy in his very first berserk rage.

This situation would change her forever as well, Leliana realised. It already had. The feeling of disconnection persisted. She no longer knew herself…

"Leliana, really, you must concentrate. 'Tis a wonder you ever did this professionally."

Morrigan's voice interrupted her thoughts and Leliana blinked slowly, almost sleepily at the witch.

"Morrigan, will you help us, please?"

She could only ask. It was all she had left. If Morrigan refused to help her, Maker have mercy, she would have to…

"As I am your next logical target, I would be a fool to refuse."

Relief threatened to carry her to the floor of the balcony once more. She had not stopped to consider that Morrigan would be her next target and now she did, briefly. Kill Morrigan? As much as had passed between them, Leliana did not think she could have followed through. But then, she had not thought she could kill Paul Le Trene either. Shaking her head, she whispered, "Thank you," and her breath caught.

Morrigan made an impatient and dismissive gesture.

"How did you know to be here?" Leliana indicated the balcony, her and Aedan's room.

Morrigan let out a sharp sigh. "I was a fool to think Cian would have no connection with his father. These dreams of his. He has hounded me for the past two days, and today he approached me in near hysterics." Morrigan gave her a level look. "You must understand, Cian is not usually an over-demonstrative child." She shook her head. "Hysterics. Aedan is lost, Aedan is hurt, something about cake and a whip?"

Leliana felt the blood drain from her face, her body, a second time and she had to steady herself once again. They had whipped him. "Oh." She wanted to collapse.

"Paul will recover soon, I'd rather not hurt him again, as amusing as it is to throw bolts of lightning about the royal palace. We should continue our conversation over there." Morrigan indicated the balcony opposite and began to disrobe.

Leliana watched a moment, shaking her head in confusion. Was any of this real? Perhaps she had actually killed Paul Le Trene and succumbed to an hysterical fit of her own? Morrigan stepped out of her undergarments and paused a moment.

"Would you bring my clothes? Unless it would amuse you to have me confront my counterpart naked?"

The air about her seemed to shimmer and shift. A form leapt from the mist, a giant spider, and it scaled the wall and skittered along the roof until it reached the opposite balcony. The mist obscured the spider and Morrigan reappeared. Leliana put her bow aside and gathered the clothing. Tucking the garments through her belt, she jumped up and caught the guttering with her fingers, swung her legs up and over, clambered onto the roof, and sprinted after her former companion. She dropped lightly onto the Le Trene balcony and handed Morrigan her clothing.

Morrigan waved a hand over the unconscious form of Paul Le Trene and then proceeded to dress once more.

"He will sleep for a time. Let us carry him inside and shut these doors."

They did so, Morrigan at his shoulders, Leliana at his feet. They laid him out on the couch and Morrigan closed the doors. Leliana sank into one of the chairs opposite the couch and gazed about the sitting room in stunned disbelief. A thought occurred.

"Marie?"

"She is not here. Marie only spends her holidays with Paul. She lives with his sister," Morrigan gestured vaguely, "in the countryside." A wistful look crossed her features. "Cian has visited her there, they are… good people."

Leliana blinked in surprise. Morrigan sounded so different when she spoke of her son. She had first noticed it that morning when the three of them had met, but she saw it again now. Everyone changed, she knew that, sometimes only in subtle ways. But she, herself, had found motherhood to be very defining. Obviously it had affected Morrigan too.

Morrigan sat down in the other chair and both of them looked across the low table to regard the slumbering form of Paul Le Trene.

Leliana looked from the couch over to Morrigan, studied the other woman's face, but it had become inscrutable once more.

"Morrigan, thank you."

Morrigan turned her oddly yellow eyes upon her and waved a hand. "Do not thank me yet."

"How did you know to be in our room?"

"I did not, not really. Call it a coincidence if you like. I simply looked for clues. I was at the door to the suite, about to leave, when I heard you enter from the balcony." Morrigan gave her an odd look, one eyebrow raised. "To say your presence surprised me would be an understatement. I watched you," Morrigan dipped her eyes a moment. "I watched you talk to his shirt. It puzzled me, both your actions and the fact that you did not feel my presence. You have always been more perceptive."

Leliana nodded and rubbed at the crease between her brows with two fingers.

"I am not myself."

"Another understatement." Morrigan met her gaze. "But when you pulled out the bow, I stepped forward, just in time it seems." The witch gestured her, indicating it was her turn.

"I do not know where Aedan is being held. I only know the location of the armory where from where I retrieved these weapons, and that if I do not return, they will, if Paul Le Trene does not die, they will…" she could bring herself to say it again. The shock of Morrigan's presence, the brief reprieve, the impossible choices she had to make, all of it struck her at once and Leliana shook with it. She covered her face with her hands and wept. She tried to pull back, she tried to stop the tears, but failed utterly – knowing that the impossible choices still remained and that this reprieve would be short lived at best.

A hand fell upon her shoulder and Leliana looked up in surprise. Morrigan had never voluntarily touched her, or anyone, so far as she could remember.

"Tears will not solve our problems."

Morrigan's tone belied the harshness of her words, however, and Leliana nodded gratefully, taking the interruption as an opportunity to pull herself together.

Morrigan continued. "Leliana, you are a strong woman, and resourceful. I am not without my talents. Tell me all you know and let us make a plan."

They talked for over an hour, proposing ideas, rejecting them, refining them. Leliana grew confident, and then as they poked holes in one plan after another, her shoulders dipped. Finally they hammered out an arrangement and fell silent, both of them regarding one another thoughtfully.

"We have a plan, then."

They had a plan. Leliana knew if they discussed it further they could tear it apart, but she refused to let her thoughts wander in that direction. Instead she gestured Paul Le Trene. "Should we do this now?"

Morrigan seemed about to make a smart remark but then thought the better of it. She nodded.

Leliana slipped one of the finely edged blades from her wrist cuff and laid it on the table. Unfastening the padded flap to her belt pouch she retrieved one of the vials, the poison. She held the small glass bottle for a moment, indecision flooding her. This very poison had been used to subdue Aedan the night she had been kidnapped; it had been on the blades of the rogues found in the palace shortly after Alistair's coronation and just before his wedding. This poison could be deadly, but used properly would induce a coma like state from which the victim might recover. Jean had known how to apply and use just that amount, thankfully. She hoped she did. But if Paul Le Trene did not appear dead, their plan would fail and Aedan would pay the price.

Leliana applied the poison to her blade, calling on all the knowledge Zevran had imparted to her about the campfire. "Sometimes too little is better than too much, and sometimes too little is not enough," he had liked to quip, the ambiguity of the statement tickling his sense of humour. She gestured for Morrigan to dispel the sleep.

"This discussion will take up precious time. 'T'would be easier to apply the poison first," Morrigan suggested.

Leliana regarded her wary ally. "Should he not have a choice?"

"Do you?"

No, she did not have a choice, not really. Did that mean no one else should? Leliana waged war with her conscience again. She had been prepared, not prepared, but able to kill this man. Now she hesitated to poison him in order to save his life. The fact that he was an unwilling participant in their plan tore at her. Surely if they spoke to him he would agree? Leliana shook her head. Would she agree to be poisoned to save the life of his wife, his daughter? She truly could not answer that question. Paul probably would not be able to answer it either and – they did not have enough time to convince him.

Kneeling beside the slumbering body on the couch, Leliana traced a fine line across the inside of his forearm and then sat back.

He stirred and opened his eyes. Morrigan gestured and the eyes drifted shut once more.

Guilt stabbed at her and Leliana blinked rapidly, feeling a simultaneous flush and press of tears. "Paul, I am sorry, so sorry," she whispered to the unconscious man. And she would be, for the rest of her life. It almost felt as if what she did now was worse than outright killing this man. They had tortured him in a way. He had felt the fear of death at least twice this night, and now he lay in an unwilling slumber. These thoughts caused her stomach to flip and roll and Leliana trembled.

"Leliana." Morrigan's tone contained both concern and warning.

Again she pulled herself together. This was only the beginning, in a way. They had a lot further to travel – tonight and over the next few days. She looked up and acknowledged the other woman.

"How long will he remain unconscious?"

Glancing at Paul Leliana pressed her fingers to his throat and nearly fainted at the lack of pulse. After what felt like an eternity she felt a flicker, then nothing again.

"A day? I do not know with any certainty." Crouching down she plucked the dagger from the floor. "You saw the dosage? How I…"

Morrigan shrank back. "No. If need be I will cast sleep upon him until my mana is exhausted. So long as he appears dead for now."

"I must return to my escorts." Leliana cringed. Had they already punished Aedan in her absence?"

"Word of his death will reach Marjolaine before you do, Leliana."

"Morrigan…"

"We are not done yet, Leliana, we have barely begun."

Leliana nodded and stood up. "I don't know when I will return."

"Hopefully it will be before we burn an innocent man upon a funeral pyre."

The journey back to the Marjolaine took nearly the rest of the night. Leliana had to retrieve her bow, tidy her rooms, put away Aedan's shirt. Tempted, so tempted was she to take it with her, but she could not. Instead she folded it reverently, a small smile playing about her lips as she imagined him flicking it out again in a careless gesture, balling it up to stuff into his pack, wrinkling it, ripping it and staining it – as he did all his shirts. Tears dropped and moistened the front of it in two dark stains before she slipped it back into the drawer.

Collecting her bow, Leliana locked the doors behind her and once again swung herself up onto the roof. She descended the palace walls following the exact path she had taken before and collected her cloak. Donning the cloak she moved to the gate and found the guard asleep. She did not pause to thank the Maker, she simply ran.

As she moved through the streets her mind wanted to roam free of Val Royeaux, take her to visit her children, to a happier time with Aedan. She tried to think about Morrigan instead, to consider her motivations and question the trust she had just placed in a woman she did not… trust. Was she a fool to place her life, Aedan's life in Morrigan's hands? Did a bond exist between them only because they had both born children to Aedan? And here, she flushed. Though the years had dulled the pain of his confession and deep down she understood why he had done it, why Morrigan had offered the ritual, it would never be something she could ponder comfortably. Again, it all came down to trust. Leliana trusted Aedan implicitly, in everything he did. He made mistakes, so did she. But his heart, his beautiful heart always meant well, always. She wanted to trust Morrigan, but could not help wondering at the price.

It took circling the neighborhood about the armory three times before she picked out the familiar lane and the back gate such had been her distraction on the way out. She did not have to feign her obvious distress as she dropped into the yard and approached the back door. The dark skinned man melted from the shadow and gave her an odd look.

"You have returned." His tone almost made the statement a question.

"I have."

"It is done then?"

"Save your questions for your mistress," Leliana snapped, tired, frustrated and nervous.

He opened the door and the traversed the hallway to the armory once more. The elven woman watched as Leliana divested herself of all six daggers, the bow, the quiver of arrows, two bottles of poison and two sets of thieves' tools. She missed the sleight of hand, that replaced the same tools twice and the same bottle twice. Of all Leliana's skills, her nimble fingers might count as her greatest and now they did something other than pick a pocket, they sought to help save someone's life.

On the journey back to Marjolaine's she cooperated in every way, allowing her movements to appear listless and defeated. She had a bet to place now, a gamble to see through. She bartered Aedan's fate against Marjolaine's pride and insanity.

Marjolaine had obviously heard the news and when Leliana entered the room her former mentor looked upon her with a familiar expression. Pride.

"You have returned," she practically purred and Leliana knew the words held a double meaning. She simply nodded in acknowledgement.

Of course the idea of Leliana attending her husband dressed as an assassin tickled Marjolaine's twisted sense of humour and so without further ado, she was given her 'reward' and allowed to feed her husband, tend his wounds. In fact, Marjolaine had the tray waiting for her. In retrospect, this should not have surprised her, Marjolaine had always been swift to reward… and punish.

Bastian let her into Aedan's cell and set a lantern on the floor. He returned a moment later with a bucket of water.

"If you are feeling lustful, I would take care of that first. Unless you prefer an audience?" The jailor laughed uproariously at his joke and closed and locked the door behind her.

She barely recognised the man towards the rear of the cell, lying on his side, turned away from her. He looked thin, broken and sick. Her legs shook, her hands shook, her breath caught and she very nearly fainted. Carefully setting down the tray, she crawled forward on her hands and knees and stopped behind him, bringing her hands to her mouth in horror. His back, oh Maker, his back. It sickened her, not just the sight of his wounds, filthy, inflamed, crusted and black, but the memory of it, the sound, the fire, the parting of skin, and the time it took for her to heal, the scars.

She put a hand on his shoulder and watched as he shivered and mumbled. His skin felt hot and dry, fevered.

"Oh, Aedan."

She didn't want to spend their time together in tears; she wanted to be strong for him. She reached for her mantra: She would not cry, she would be strong. But though Leliana felt she remained strong as she tended him, she could not help her tears.


A/N: This chapter is in two parts as it is over long. There were so many details I wanted to cover, such as the preceding conversation between Leliana and Morrigan. So Leliana's point of view will feature twice in a row. Part two: Reprisal, will be up tomorrow.