Disclaimer: I own absolutely and completely nothing. Bioware has that particular pleasure.
Summary: A City-Elf/Bann Teagan collection of drabbles and one-shots based on a prompt table from an LJ-community. These will be more or less in chronological order with the faintest traces of added plot here and there. Will vary from drabble length to one-shot.
Author's note: On the end, please.
In this chapter: She sees beyond the image.
035.
Leliana does not pray.
"Why are you so gloomy? Look at your faces, one would think the world is ending!"
Several faces turn to her. Leliana is a bard, she sees things, reads that written underneath the surface. This time, however, she hardly needs effort. They seem so tired, all of them. There's tiredness and worry and sadness from a corner, impassiveness and little more hatred hidden beneath unsaid words. And all around them, the rain falls. It is enough reason to make anyone feel under the weather, pun intended.
"It is raining," Sten answers her calmly. The obvious, nothing else. Why thank you, she had yet to notice any of the large droplets consistently splattering onto the tent – or those torturing each and everyone when going anywhere. Qunari.
Leliana likes Sten. She just doesn't understand him, the closed box in which he lives – don't be more, be what we say, do what we say, go where we say – and especially cannot understand how or why he accepts it so easily. Still he's a good man, in that dubious oddly backtracked way to be of everyone who is part of this group. She keeps waiting for the day when he will crack a joke around her – there is a betting pool, after all.
"The world is sort of ending," adds Jowan, not even bothering to look up from his poultices – which pay for the bet he has lost and the five sovereigns he doesn't have. Amazingly, he is fairly good at those, hands up and down, left and right, fast and dexterous. She senses no fear. "It's why we're outside in this ungodly weather."
He is also a sort of a pansy for someone who is supposed to be a Grey Warden and a blood mage.
"Don't be ridiculous, Jowan," she tries to continue, pushing her good mood to the surface – Loghain looks down from that high pedestal of his and his gaze yells Orlesian with a trace of disgust even Sandal would fail to ignore. "The Blight is nearly at an end!" – Tasha smiles, that little smile which is just barely there and is mostly her only way to smile since the Landsmeet – "We should be pleased, no?"
"I am thoroughly ecstatic." Zevran snickers somewhere on the background. It is understandable. Jowan cultures this odd sort of dryness while forgetting a backbone, foolish man.
When did she start to know these people? When did they became closer, needed, anticipated when she opens her eyes in the morning and the blurry images carry robes and blades instead of color? It reminds her of a time far before when she divided sleeping quarters with a dwarf and an elf. So much that, at times, Zevran seems to carry a staff and the large axe which Oghren favors is much much smaller, easier to carry.
"You should get out of the rain, Leliana," says Wynne, sounds like Sketch.
The bard allows a small smile to come on her lips while the heavy drops fall around her, against her hair, down her armor and skin. Everything feels fresh and clean, everything is perfect, the cold, the wind, the voices muttering and commenting back and forth, the simple gift that it is to be who and what she is.
She would like to tell them how wonderful it is to be with them there. How different it is from the Cloister where her friends were little and the walls seemed to close around her every day. She would like to tell them all of this, to thank from saving her from walls and memories, from Marjolaine who still haunted her, from her ghosts sleeping at a corner while she prayed to whatever entity. She would like to do so so much.
"Come on." There is Tasha, giving her a poultice from Jowan's stash – and he glares at both, such a waste – while pushing her into safety and shelter. There is Wynne with a flask in her hands, Zevran with a comment which takes a giggle from her throat without permission, Oghren sleeping, Oghren with his big feet on her way and a bonnet, why a bonnet covering his face, oh the snoring, she can understand. Even Morrigan who's never with them throws her a blanket, covering her legs and the place where Alistair isn't.
She has no mother. She has no father. No siblings, no cousins, no aunts and uncles or grandparents to be nurtured by. But she has something else, she believes, and her gaze encompasses her family, moves towards the field around them, the muddy grounds and heavy drops which persist to continue falling. Around her, the play continues and moves, as if she is little more than a spectator. Words of care and dislike, counsel between laughter and annoyance while outside the rain falls, pat pat pat against the floor.
"See, Assan. I was right." Big brown eyes and furry skin on her knees moves, slobbers all over her armor and his look seems almost a question, almost even if not quite.
"The Maker exists," she whispers, smiles with a happiness that's just hers. "Right here."
She has no reason to.