Leliana
I walked below deck, slipping through the narrow hallways, mumbling apologies to the various templars and sailors I inadvertently brushed against. A chill shuddered through me at the sounds of clanging metal and the predictions of soldiers. They ranged from a ridiculous optimism to replete despair and all the layers between them.
"Hey, cheer up." one of the more optimistic spoke. "The High Seeker herself is on this boat. That's as good as a guarantee of success signed by the Maker."
I stood, watching in shock as the mood lightened and the creased brows and worried frowns of the skeptics evaporated.
Foolish, I realized. They are young and foolish. Cassandra is a mortal woman…armored in the same metal and wielding a blade from the same forge. But there must be a strength in her that they see…yet it deludes them into belief in success.
I laughed at myself and continued my search. But who am I to tell them so? My leader's mantra was "I will not lose." It did not inspire confidence…until Salem proved the words, time and time and time again.
I sighed at the darker memories of older times and placed my forehead against the door I had been seeking. Faint rustling came from within and I debated the virtues of announcing my presence. No. I could not afford to let Kathyra turn me away again.
I opened the door and entered, silent as a shadow. The physician glanced up, but her eyes held no anger, no fear, just a simple resignation.
"I thought you might come." she sat on the edge of a bunk, looking vulnerable and miserable. "What do you want, Leliana?"
I remained where I was, though I wanted to step forward, lift her eyes to mine, and speak with vision what words could not. "What have I done, Kathyra?" I asked. "What have I done to hurt you, or give you cause to fear?"
"Nothing." she shook her head. "Why do you ask?"
Confusion creased my brow. "So that I might know what to apologize for. I have sought for the rift so that I might mend it, but I must confess that I am blind in this matter."
"Can you not content yourself with what I have given you already?" she asked, seeming almost desperate to end the conversation.
"No." I kept my voice calm, soothing, as though I were approaching an injured animal. I dared to take a step closer. "I have either inflicted a new wound or torn open an old one, and I am not content to take your word and leave you to suffer. I am…I am your friend, Kathyra."
"I do not have friends." the physician muttered. "I have the Seekers, and I have my patients, but I do not have friends." the word was laced with venom and spite.
"You have me." I attempted to console her.
"Do I?" she asked, at last meeting my eyes. "How can I have something whose existence I keep questioning?"
"What?" the question took me aback.
"You cannot be real." Kathyra shook her head again, as if to clear it, as though I would vanish from her sight. "You are beautiful in spite of your scars, you are kind to your jailers, forgiving of your torturers. You are loved by the only person strong enough to kill a god…it is as if you have walked from the pages of the most far-fetched tales and into the waking world. And in this…in this tale I would be…I would be, by virtue of birth and blood and fate…well…a villain."
"Is what you are afraid of?" I wondered aloud. "A self-imposed unworthiness?"
"That and…other things." she sighed and buried her head in her hands. "You make me question things, Leliana. Thoughts and feelings that I have long considered truth. I once believed that if…if…if ever someone loved me, I would never leave them; that even in death, there I would follow. And that night…that night…I saw the fire in your warden's eyes, and the pain in them like a never ending hell. And you…you walked away from the magnitude of her love and her grief…I did not know what to think until I realized that you did it for the sake of love. And then…then you offered me understanding and compassion when I confessed the Divine's scheme; when I revealed my heritage you did not fear or hate or place any judgment against me. And mages, beings I have always considered the height of evil…you have made me focus on their humanity and realize that they are flawed and tormented beings as we are, and that Seekers have no greater understanding of Truth and that the templars are not divinely imbued couriers of justice but that we are men and women in a terrifying world where we are blind and you can see…and I want you to be real and I want…I want…"
Sorrow filled me as I recognized the expression in her eyes. It was the same tremulous hope that had filled mine the night I bared my soul to Salem, the night I expected her touch to be denied, her kiss to be withdrawn, for my own supposed truth to walk into the light…that she was too good for me. But Love holds no judgment, only itself, and it is a gift that outstrips all understanding and that we have tried to understand it and brought it so grievously to ruin…this is why the Maker speaks again.
"Take my hand." I extended it to the older woman.
Kathyra reached and pulled back. "I shouldn't."
"Please." I reached out once more, stepping closer.
The physician's trembling fingers interlocked with mine and I knelt before her, looking into her eyes. "I assure you, I am real." I told her. "And that I know your confusion and bewilderment, for I experienced it myself. I am not inhuman, Kathyra. I am flawed, and judgmental, and I know all too well the paralyzing grip of fear. The night you came for me…it was not the first time I walked away from Salem, though I loved her no less fiercely then than I do now. I feared her love because I feared her death and in my weakness I abandoned her when she was blind and injured."
"But…" she spoke, and I shook my head, determined to shatter her illusion.
"Kathyra, I am a murderer." I confessed. "I have killed in cold, indifferent blood. I played the Game with abandon and glee. I carry those burdens forever in my soul and the scars on my body are a constant reminder of the great darkness that I could have been. The great darkness that once I was. The image you see of me…it was painted by a different hand than mine."
"You changed." she acknowledged. "And only because another believed that change was possible for you…but Leliana, I haven't changed. I am now who I have always been…whatever I have done was against my will or an act of desperation. I cannot reconcile those actions in my soul, and I…" she gripped my hand so tightly her knuckles turned white, "I want so very much to forgive myself and I can't!"
Her eyes rimmed with tears and they fell silently amidst the creaking of the ship and the clatter of the crew.
"You can find the strength." I reached up and wiped away her tears. "That much I know."
"Do you…" her lips trembled, "…do you think…that if someone were to love me…as you are loved…that I could see in myself what they would see and finally…finally forgive?"
My heart bled for her and I closed my eyes, thinking of Salem. How my warden's acceptance and love of me had weakened all of my barriers, had made me believe in the beauty of the mortal heart, had returned to me the beauty Marjolaine stole. How she had let me make peace with my past…but that she screamed out, trapped in her nightmares. That she could forgive an assassin, a bard, and her torturer but never, never, no matter the love I poured into her, turn those merciful eyes inward. How she could never absolve herself from her family's massacre, or the innocents killed in the Blight. That she carried on her shoulders the impossible burdens of the world.
I opened my eyes and looked at Kathyra. "I don't know." I whispered.
And in that moment, as realization crossed her features, I witnessed the death of a dream and the birth of a hope. She knew…for good or ill…that I was nothing more…
Than human.
