All That We Have Lost
Leliana
"She just won't... talk to me," Alistair says, despairingly. "She hasn't spoken to anybody since... Jowan."
She looks at him, and says, calmly, "She will find you when she is ready."
It is true - the two Wardens have carried each other through this Blight. Morgana needs him.
She wonders whether Morgana herself has realised this yet.
The others have all retired to their tents, getting what sleep they can (especially Alistair, who, like Morgana, tries to make the most of any he can have in between the awful nightmares) but Morgana is still sitting, staring into the fire. She doesn't even look up when Leliana sits next to her.
They have sat there for a couple of minutes, when she murmurs, "I should have let him go."
"Morgana?"
Now she finally looks at her, and there are unshed tears in her eyes. "I should have just told him to run, to go, something. He wanted to help."
Ah. And so the wall collapses, Leliana thinks to herself, wrapping an arm round Morgana and hugging her close. They watch the fire together, and after a moment, Leliana has an idea.
She remembers a song she heard the first time she came to Ferelden - it is a song of absent friends, of grief. She would hear it often, and for a long time she wondered if the song was haunting her.
Music opens people, bonds them.
She asks Morgana if she knows it. She nods, and Leliana sees a light come on behind the woman's eyes. She passes her friend her old lute, and she strums the first few notes; it is halting at first, probably learned from a book and not played in a long time, but as she relaxes into the music, it comes more easily, the notes flowing. Leliana begins the verse, and after a few lines, she hears the other woman's voice join in - quiet, under-used, but it has the potential to be strong. A little like its owner, she supposes.
She smiles briefly to Morgana, who gives her a small half-smile in return, and, in the light of the dying fire, they sing for all they have lost.