Thank you all for reading! Special thanks to suilven for the beta and the encouragement!
It was a measure of how the time weighed on everyone's hands, sitting here in Skyhold waiting for Corypheus, that Varric had agreed to play chess with him today, Alistair thought. Lilias may have forgiven him—or at least put her feet on the road toward doing so—but her dear friend the dwarf had most assuredly not.
Still, he was a reasonable chess player. Not exceptional, like Dorian or Cullen, but not hopeless, either. The two of them were well-matched, and the game had been diverting so far. And it appeared Varric wasn't cheating, which was a pleasant surprise in and of itself.
So it was a disappointment to Alistair when Varric's head snapped up in a patently false manner and he pointed across the garden. "What do you make of that, Your Royal Majesty?"
Alistair suppressed an urge to snap at the dwarf's insistence on the most ridiculous versions of his title, since he knew from experience it wouldn't help, and he kept his attention firmly on the board. "Not falling for it, Varric."
"No, I mean it. It's the Raven." Varric was halfway out of his chair now, the game clearly forgotten, and Alistair paused with a rook in his hand, convinced now that either there was something distracting in the gardens, or Varric had gone mad. Either was a perfectly reasonable possibility, really, but Alistair would far rather not have to explain to Lilias that one of her dearest friends had become a lunatic.
He turned in his seat, watching Varric hurry over to … Morrigan? It was Morrigan, wandering the garden—staggering, really—with one hand to her head. If there was anyone Alistair didn't trust more than he didn't trust Varric, it was Morrigan. Still, he apparently had to accept that his nightmares seemed about to come true today, so he put down the pawn and followed Varric.
"My mother," Morrigan muttered thickly.
"Who?"
"My mother. Mythal."
"Mythal's an elven god," Varric whispered to Alistair, although Morrigan didn't appear to know either of them was there, so there seemed little need for the whispering. "She's long gone with the rest of them. Why would Morrigan think Mythal was her mother?"
Thinking of Flemeth, with a shudder, Alistair said, not completely facetiously, "You never met her mother."
"You know," Morrigan said suddenly, turning to Alistair and grabbing him by the collar. "You know what she wanted of me. What she always wanted of me. It's why I sent you after her."
"Yes, yes. She wanted to eat you."
"Not eat me! Consume me. Take my body for her own to extend her life." Morrigan laughed hysterically. "Only it wasn't Flemeth. Not all Flemeth, no! It was Mythal, grasping at life after life."
Alistair frowned. "Flemeth is Mythal?"
"Flemeth is Mythal," Morrigan repeated heavily. "And I am tied to her … for eternity." She laughed again, a wild sound that reminded Alistair uncomfortably of the first time he had met Flemeth, in that lost little hut in the middle of the Korkari Wilds.
"Why tied?" Varric asked, looking from one to the other of them, trying to divine the story from their faces. "Because you drank from the Well?"
"It is the price. Isn't that rich? All these years trying to escape from her, only to tie myself willingly to her from my own thirst for knowledge and power?"
"Serves you right," Varric muttered.
"Perhaps it does, dwarf." Morrigan blinked rapidly, some of her normal self-possession beginning to return to her eyes. "Perhaps we can use this."
"Use it how?" Alistair asked.
"I … do not know. The voices of the Well speak to me. They tell me I can match his dragon. With the power of Mythal supporting me, I can be even greater still. I—" She rubbed her forehead again. "I should lie down. The past hour has been … much. Too much."
"Let me help you to your room," Alistair offered, feeling like it was the only thing to do.
Morrigan laughed again, this time sounding more like herself. "To think you have lived to hear yourself make that offer."
"Lucky me."
When he came back, Varric was waiting for him. "What was that, Your Kingliness?"
"Morrigan."
"You think she'll be all right?"
Alistair shrugged. "She always seems to land on her feet."
"You think she was telling the truth?"
"Some of it."
"But not all."
"No. Never all."
Thule reached the top of the stairs, looking around the rookery, surprised by the silence. Usually it was bustling up here, birds flying in and out, scouts taking down messages and scurrying up and down the worn wooden steps, Leliana leaning tensely over her desk, reading dispatches and giving clear, concise orders. But now, even though it was only late afternoon, the birds were hooded in their cages, the scouts nowhere to be seen, and Leliana sat in the chair behind her desk, her feet propped up, her arms crossed over her chest, watching for him.
He shrugged off the feeling of foreboding that had settled on his shoulders and mustered up a semblance of his normal smile. The realization made in his rooms last night with Cassandra still weighed heavily on his heart—support her for Divine or support someone else to keep her off the Sunburst Throne, the result would be the same. He was going to lose her, one way or the other. And the idea of going on without her, regardless of what might happen with the Inquisition, was the keenest pain he had ever known.
Looking up at Leliana, he could see that he hadn't concealed his emotions anywhere near well enough. Or perhaps she had been ten steps ahead of him, as she so often was, and had predicted exactly this dilemma.
"Inquisitor."
"Spymaster."
She acknowledged the pointedness of his use of her title with a small smile as she gestured her head toward the seat opposite her. "I suppose you have some idea why I wanted to see you."
He looked around the empty Rookery. "I do now. And … I can't."
"Of course you can."
Thule shook his head. "No. If I support you for Divine—don't you see how she'll take that?"
Leliana frowned at him impatiently. "If you say so openly, then that is what will happen. But if you speak quietly, to the right people—"
"She'll still find out. Or figure it out. Or, worse, be suspicious."
The smile on Leliana's lips was almost generous. "To think that the decision of who should be Divine comes down to one man's love."
"The Chantry is based on one man's love—if you want to consider the Maker as a man, and certainly Andraste must have."
"You blaspheme, Inquisitor," Leliana said, but lightly, without heat.
"Does it matter if I do? I'm as consumed as ever the Maker was, and I have no way out that doesn't leave me bereft." It was uncomfortable speaking to her so plainly—they had never dealt so openly together, he and Leliana—but it was freeing, as well. He certainly couldn't speak like this with Cassandra. Or maybe he should have, Thule thought with a sudden pang. Maybe he should have said that losing her to the Sunburst Throne would be like tearing the heart out of his body. But what would that have accomplished but to make the terrible decision Cassandra's burden rather than his own? He couldn't have done that to her.
"I am surprised at you, to have such limited thinking, Thule. Usually you are better than this. I will have to chalk it up to being distracted by Cassandra's beauty."
"Oh?" he snapped, tired of the sense that Leliana was playing him like a fish on a hook. "Well, then if you have all the answers, tell me what to do."
"Nothing. Very simply, you do nothing."
"How does that help?"
She sighed and shook her head at his denseness. "When asked, you say that you could not possibly support one member of the Inquisition at the expense of the other … or you continue to say, as you have done so far, that the Inquisition's needs trump those of the Chantry and you cannot make a statement either way until that is no longer the case. In the meantime, work goes on in the background toward the end that will satisfy us both. You and I know perfectly well that your honorable lady is too forthright for such machinations."
It was true; Cassandra would scorn to campaign for herself in back rooms and balls, and Leliana would excel at such a thing. "It sounds too easy."
"Perhaps. But there is great support for her, as a more … traditional candidate. Trust me when I tell you that mine will not be a simple task."
"And if Corypheus comes before the decision is made and I am forced to make a choice?"
"You should pray, Inquisitor, that he does not," Leliana said simply. She swung her legs down from the desk and leaned across it toward him. "Do we have an accord?"
"We do."
He went down the stairs again with a heart that was both light and troubled. He felt as though he had betrayed Cassandra by making such a deal … but he could not have done otherwise, not when the alternative was so impossible.
As Lilias made her way to the tavern, where she had agreed to meet Dorian for a glass of wine, she found Cullen leaning on the battlements, watching the sun set over the mountains. It was a glorious view, Lilias had to admit, and she had a few minutes before Dorian expected her, so she stopped and stood next to Cullen.
They watched the sky change colors in silence. It had been a long time since Lilias had spent any time with Cullen—they had known each other to speak to in Kirkwall, and traveled in the same social circles occasionally, but never been particularly close. As a brilliant shade of red streaked across the sky, she turned to look at him, and was struck by the peace in his face. He looked, not younger, perhaps, but better rested. More sure of himself.
"It suits you," she said suddenly, "this Inquisition."
Cullen glanced at her, raising an eyebrow. "I suppose it does," he agreed after a moment's reflection. "We are doing good work, important work, and I can assist."
"Not like Kirkwall."
"No." A shadow crossed his face. "Not like Kirkwall."
Lilias nodded, looking back out at the sky and the mountains, feeling envious. While she and Alistair had come to some sort of understanding, she was far from feeling at peace. So much about her time in Kirkwall haunted her, from the echoes bouncing off the walls of that Deep Roads cavern to the memory of the way the silk had whispered as the grotesque creature with her mother's face had hobbled toward her to the screams of the dying as the dust of the blasted Chantry settled thickly on every available surface. No, there was no peace at hand.
She blushed to find Cullen watching her intently, embarrassed at being caught dwelling so obviously on the past.
But he looked courteously away, down at the stones under his hands. "You still feel tied to that time," he observed.
"My life will never be the same."
"No, of course not. Nor mine, for that matter. But—" Cullen glanced at her. "Perhaps it isn't my place."
"Please. I'll take advice wherever I can get it." She blushed again. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded."
He gave her a small smile. "I understand completely."
"You were saying?"
"That … your life may never be the same, but nevertheless you have a choice which direction it goes from here. You can allow Kirkwall and its horrors to drag you down and hold you beneath the surface of despair, or you can break through and find a fresh start."
"How can I, when all of Thedas still thinks of me in connection with Kirkwall and holds me responsible for what happened there?"
"Are you responsible?"
"Yes!"
Cullen shook his head. "No. Or, more to the point, you may be, but so is Varric, who knew where Anders was and did not turn him in; so am I, so was Meredith, because we knew he existed and yet could not find him. So was Warden-Commander Caron here in Ferelden, because she let him go, knowing how unstable he was. Shall I continue?"
"It—I—I should have killed him," Lilias said. "When I first met him, he made it very obvious he wasn't in control of Justice. I should have killed him then, but … fresh from Ostagar, from the Blight, from a year with the mercs … I had seen so much death, I wanted no more of it. Ironic, really, where I ended up, killing my way through Kirkwall." She looked down at her hands, seeing the reflection of the sunset's reds and oranges on them. "I will never get these clean."
"You are a fighter. It's what you do," Cullen told her. "I am a soldier; I, too, have my fair share of blood on my hands. Everyone in the Inquisition does. But you do not have to let it define everything in your life."
"Don't I? I wish I believed that."
"I wish you did, too," he said, looking at her with compassion and understanding. "But only you can come to that belief—no one can gift it to you, much as they may wish to."
Lilias turned her hands over, studying the palms. For the first time, she thought perhaps her destiny lay within their grasp, rather than someone else's. "Maybe I can," she said. "Maybe I can."