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For the past few weeks or so, the castle had been caught in the midst of one perpetual celebration. The Inquisition was more than deserving of it after all that they’d done to defeat Corypheus. Cullen, never one to enjoy excess, gave himself the time to mingle among his soldiers and take the weight of a commanding title off his shoulders. Josie was having an extravagant time planning galas and dinners rather than negotiating with precocious nobles and scrapping for aid against impossible odds. Preparing parties was her version of relaxation. Even the Inquisitor, who’d sacrificed so much in this exhausting war, was slowly beginning to let down his guard. Maybe, in time, he’d allow himself to heal. But that was not something Leliana was about to speculate upon. She learned long ago not to let herself close to anyone new: especially when their personal problems echoed hers so perfectly.
In spite of how grateful she should have been for the freetime, Leliana was finding herself at a loss. She still had work to do, of course—plenty of clean-up from a mess years in the making —but there wasn’t nearly as much intel pouring in through her contacts. Most of her spies were enjoying the time away from imminent danger. Many of them were gone from the hold to check up on their families. The few that remained on her ledger were mostly caught up in mild reconnaissance to tie up loose ends or simply keep her updated. During the fight for peace, there was so much to do that, on some nights, the spymaster wouldn’t sleep, but now, there wasn’t even enough to take up the day. The lack of information pouring in had her on edge. Perhaps there wasn’t as looming a threat as Corypheus, but the world still teemed with danger. The ones that troubled her were the ones out of sight.
In the lulls between reports, she found herself reminiscing on a time before the death of the Divine, when the past was not so heavy a burden. Songs and laughter rang through her mind. She could see the steps of dances she flew through with effortless grace. Stories flew from her lips with such intense passion and lure, she could almost feel herself living them. And maybe that was all her past was. Just a story to pass from page to page, nothing but a memory long-gone and half-forgotten. Maybe she would never feel the music lift her heart so high again. Maybe she would never feel her feet graze the earth without fear of falling. Maybe the world she knew now—a shifting perspective, ever searching for the next possible threat—was all that was left for her. All that she would ever know again.
What was it that gave the world its glow in those years? It wasn’t as if she were without sorrow. The shadow of suffering had followed her since birth. Her mother’s death, the training that shaped her into a knife sheathed in silk, the treason and betrayal, the torture—dear Maker, the torture —and the resulting catastrophes that followed her world’s shattering. She had every reason to be spiteful and raging. Her torment could have left anyone a husk of their former self, but somehow, that was not what she became. Looking back, it came down to two people who changed her life for the better: Divine Justinia and the Hero of Ferelden.
Justinia was only known as Dorothea when they had first met. She was a mother to a child too lost in the dark to ever find her light. She brought Leliana into the eyes of the Maker: something the woman would never be able to repay. There was too much to say about Dorothea. She saved Leliana from more than she could ever know. And Leliana couldn’t save her in return. Her loss was one she could hardly bare. The guilt alone was staggering. The grief surely would have swallowed her had she not had the Divine’s legacy to maintain through the Inquisition.
The Hero of Ferelden… that was different. Leliana revered the Divine, but with the Warden, it was love. Pure, unadulterated love. The Hero was not the Hero to her. Not really. The Hero was the woman she’d spent hours serenading with sappy love songs and silly tavern dances. The Hero was the elf she’d never grown tired of, joking and storytelling until the laughter hurt. The Hero was the mage she’d seen herself in: someone swarming with rage and sorrow and pain who helped her to soften into a creature more tender. The Hero was the girl she fell in love with. Dorothea had helped her find the light, but Maker above, the Hero was that light. Dorothea returned her sight when Leliana was blind, but the Hero was the sun and the moon and the stars. The Hero was the world she wanted to see.
As strange as it was, Leliana didn’t like to say her lover’s name when the Warden wasn’t there. The Hero was someone idolized through title, so her name itself was something intimate. Everyone else called her the Hero of Ferelden, or Warden, or Commander of the Grey, but almost no one else referred to her by her original name. Every time Leliana uttered it without a reply, her heart only sank that much further. In some ways, the yearning for what could be was worse than grieving what was.
The spymaster’s memories were interrupted by a figure stirring in her peripheral vision: someone coming up the rookery stairs. She jumped from her chair in alarm, startling Baron Plucky into a fit of squawks and cage-rattling. The figure’s head peeked out from behind the stairs, their brow knit apologetically. “Oh, sorry, Leliana. I didn’t mean to surprise you.”
“Oh, no, it’s…” She forced her nerves to settle and sighed, poking a finger through the crow’s cage to stroke his puffed feathers. “Not to worry, Inquisitor. I was just lost in thought.”
“You don’t have to call me that anymore,” the elf chided softly as he ascended the remaining stairs. “‘Cyr’ is fine.”
“You’re still the Inquisitor, are you not?” Leliana asked. “Just because Corypheus is defeated doesn’t mean your rank is worth any less.”
“I hear it enough from nobles and dignitaries begging for my attention,” Cyr said nonchalantly. If only he realized how badly thousands upon thousands of lesser-known nobles clambered for even an inkling of his popularity. “I’d just like to be Cyr for a little while, you know?”
The spymaster forced a smile. Yes, she knew, but she refused to acknowledge. Cyr could not be her friend. He was too much like her and too much a figure for a future she wanted. She could not stand to grow close and lose him like she had so many friends before. “Of course.”
Cyr’s eyes twitched ever so slightly, his smile waning for only a moment. He knew she was hiding something, but he couldn’t quite tell what. Yet, at the same time, there was something he was hiding from her. She could tell in his stiffened stance and flighty gaze: the way his weight shifted from foot to foot, the slight fidget of his fingers as they curled against his palms, the tensing of his features from Baron Plucky’s distress. It wasn’t anything urgent, if her years studying the elf was anything to go by, but there was still something he had to restrain from saying. With a steadied gaze, she continued, “Was there anything you needed?”
“Oh, yeah, uh,” Cyr stammered, gesturing back towards the stairs in an attempt to remain casual, “Josie wanted a word. She’s down in her quarters.”
“So she sent you to fetch me?” Leliana couldn’t keep the playful suspicion from her tone. “What is this about?”
“She didn’t say,” he said with a shrug. He was a convincing liar, but the Nightingale was much better. She could call his bluff. “She wants to talk to me, too. And she did mention that it was pretty urgent, so…”
Leliana’s brow quirked curiously. Better an odd surprise than falling back into more depressive nostalgia. “Lead the way, then.”
Cyr’s features momentarily flashed bright with excitement before settling down to neutrality, turning and signalling for Leliana to follow. The seneschal smirked smugly to herself as she trailed the Inquisitor, certain she could assume the surprise before its appearance. Josie had been relatively withdrawn from her lately. Had she been planning this? It would make enough sense. She wondered what it might be: a new lute? Josie was quite fond of the bard’s unique musical stylings. Or perhaps Boulette and Schmooples II had returned? Sparrow, the agent assigned to care for the nugs in their free time, had been in Orlais for a while, and Leliana hadn’t seen her pets in quite some time. It would be a pleasant change of pace from screaming birds, as much as she adored the feathered creatures. Whatever it was, she was sure it would bring a smile to her face. Josie was overly-thoughtful and exceedingly kind, so any possible gift was something to cherish.
Reaching Solas’ vacant study and exiting to the crowded lobby, Cyr was having trouble containing his joy. At first, it was only evident in the face as he kept glancing back to make sure Leliana was behind him. Then, he sped up his pace, beckoning the woman with every other step to hurry. It was difficult to clue into exactly what this surprise was while navigating between the loquacious nobles demanding to be greeted by the Inquisitor, the Left Hand of the Divine, or both.
At times, Leliana could barely track where exactly Cyr was leading her. It wasn’t exactly towards the ambassador’s quarters. It was more towards the throne, framed at the head with golden beams of soft, dusty sunlight falling through windows, the glass painting patterns of the Inquisition insignia across the room. The entire scene visible above baubling heads was enough to set Leliana’s heart back into its melancholy, thinking back to the days spent studying in the Chantry, surrounded by nothing but the word and spirit of the Maker. Creator above, how she missed those memories. How she missed the days she spent free of the past. How she so greatly missed smiling . Simply smiling out of genuine, untethered joy. Even in the wake of legendary success, she found her faith wavering. Would she ever truly be free of this burden?
It was then that the crowd cleared, Cyr stepped to the side, and the seneschal saw her surprise. The figure standing at the head of the room beside Josephine. Leliana’s face fell, unable to believe it. The messy fringe of kinky black hair on her head; the glow of her staff’s stalled magic against dark, scarred skin; the silver glint of the Grey Warden crest on her shoulder as she turned to face her; every curve of her body, her face, her smile.
It was her. It was her.
“Ainsley?” Leliana muttered, barely above a whisper, her voice lost with her breath.
The Warden’s face broke into a beaming smile, voice cracking as she called from across the room, “Lel?!”
And in that moment, the silence was broken with a symphony of song. Leliana’s chest burst with a soundless cry of uninhibited joy. The sound of her lover’s voice was all it took for the world to burn bright in a blinding instant, solace flooding every bone and vein in her body. Tears burned in her eyes as she released a sharp laugh of elation, her feet fumbling forward without her explicit consent. Ainsley immediately dashed past Josephine, and in the next instant, the Warden leapt into Leliana’s open arms, bodies crashing clumsily against each other. They clutched each other too tightly, warmth pouring into each other with a ferocity beyond reason, the unbridled happiness too much to contain. Ainsley’s legs wrapped around Leliana’s torso and Leliana’s arms gripped Ainsley’s waist, lifting the Warden with all the strength of their spirits reunited at last. At last. She was here. They were together.
Leliana buried her face into the crook of Ainsley’s neck, breathing in that scent she’d once feared she had forgotten: old pages of a weathered book freshly pressed with lilac and lyrium. Ainsley let out a sob that rippled through her entire body, unwilling to restrain herself in the presence of her lover. How long had Leliana gone without another person’s touch? How many years had she yearned for her love’s embrace? Oh, but now she was here. It was her. It was really, truly her.
Ainsley pulled back and took Leliana’s face in her hands, giving a weepy grin as she studied the features she’d so desperately dreamt of. Leliana flushed under the Warden’s touch—her hands were soft, yes, but her grip was firm, refusing to let go after so far apart—and felt tears streak down her freckled cheeks, so incredibly happy to have her here again. The Nightingale drank in every part of the sight before her: the red-stained cheeks pulled tight with emotion, the grin barely wide enough to contain the Warden’s ecstacy, the thin pink scar stretching across her face, and her eyes. Deep brown eyes, dark as the night sky and circled with flecks of golden sun, so full of rapture and relief and love. It was a storied cliché, but Maker above, how easily she lost herself in those wonderlust eyes.
Ainsley hiccuped on a sob as she brushed the stray hairs from Leliana’s face, stroking her fingers through the strands the way she knew Leliana adored. The woman couldn’t keep an elated smile from her face as she murmured, “You’re finally here.”
The Warden beamed again, curling her fingers against the Nightingale’s jaw. “I’m here, Leli. I won’t ever leave you again.”
Without hesitation, Ainsley pressed her lips to Leliana’s with a force too determined to release. Her hands cupped the seneschal’s face as she kissed back, and in that very instant, the world felt bright again. The massive crowd that had gathered around the spectacle didn’t exist. The anxieties fluttering around her head had vanished. All that was there was a song so long unsung, a sky alight with a million stars, and them. Just them. Together.
Leliana didn’t know how long it’d been when Ainsley pulled back, barely able to breathe. Another sob caught in her throat, and she let herself down from her lover’s hips, falling into a fit of weeps. Her arms retightened around Leliana’s neck as she pressed her face into the human’s collarbone, clinging desperately to her slender form. “I missed you so much, Lel. I missed you so much.”
The Nightingale’s arms snaked up the elf’s back and tugged her flush against her stomach, trying to soothe her trembling. “I missed you too, my love. You were always in my thoughts. Every moment. Every day.”
“You were what kept me going,” Ainsley murmured, nudging the cloth of Leliana’s hood away to press a chaste kiss against her skin. “It was always you. Oh, Maker, I love you. I love you more than you’ll ever know.”
In the midst of the reunion, all the thoughts and sensations flooding through to the brim, Leliana’s emotions finally caught up with her. She broke down in a soft whimper of alleviation, tucking her head back against the Warden’s shoulder and hiding the tears in the well-worn armor. Ainsley’s fingers brushed up through her hair, smoothing the tangle along the crest of her skull, as the human whispered every tender I love you she’d built up over the years. Even wrapped in her lover’s arms, she could barely allow herself to believe it. She was here. She was finally here. The grey was beginning to lift from the sky. She could feel the ground shift from its perpetual tilt, the magic of the world coming alive once again. In this moment, everything around them woke with a shuddering spark of light, aglow with the soul of lovers, together at last. Everything was right. Leliana didn’t want to miss a beat.