Work Text:
Stone surrounds, its unnatural warmth leaking into her through the soles of her boots. The air is stilted, clinging, dry as it had been aboveground, in the Frostbacks. How she misses the cold, bracing winds of her homeland, and the humidity of her Southern swamp. There is no buzzing of insects. No greenery. Orzammar is unlike anywhere she's been, and yet it had failed utterly to prepare her for the desecrated corpse that is the dwarven kingdom.
The strange, ambient light of the Deep Roads doesn't fade as the sun would fall from the sky, continuing to bear down on them, unending, as 'night' passes and comes again. Something she hadn't the time to notice in the city. The area they've settled down in is at least hued in a soft gray blue rather than the ghastly yellow of the proper tunnels—'tis distorted by torchlight, perhaps; lowered visibility is a small price to pay to be away from the faux sunshine.
Leliana huffs, re-settling on her knees to alleviate the sharp pains Morrigan imagines are shooting up her spine. The chest before her remains stubbornly locked. Could be rusted shut—it's certainly old enough, no doubt. Oh, and the dust, that's likely contributing to her difficulty. Morrigan can feel it clogging her lungs, falling into a coughing fit every time she breathes too deep.
With a shake of her aching hands, Leliana returns to work. And with a pass of Morrigan's staff, regenerating magics flow through her.
“Oh! Thank you!” she giggles, the fool. 'Tis likely their dear Chantry sister will take this small 'kindness' as evidence of a thawing heart; woe be to her, for it is, in truth, most practical. While Oghren and Brosca charge the horde, they two fight at range, stood in one another's shadow, relying on their different disabling abilities to stall would-be attackers. Morrigan benefits directly from her good health. “It's impressive how well you've taken to healing.”
“What's impressive is how long you've been struggling with that blasted thing,” Morrigan retorts, annoyance spiking. Wynne was who taught her, inefficient in her patience and compassion, but using creation spells shall always remind her of Mother. No level of pragmatism can assuage the bitterness and disgust brought on by her memory.
She should have refused learning; then, Wynne would be here in her place. She'd probably appreciate the opportunity to explore these lost thaigs, coming face-to-face with history and culture unknown. Maybe, if they find enough useful among all the bones and rot, she'll change her tune.
The chest pops open. Leliana sneezes at the erupting dust cloud, quickly hiding her face in her sleeve. Brosca looks up from the map she's charting—the reason they've loitered here so long Oghren's passed out against the wall, drool dribbling down his lips as he snores—and wordlessly hands Leliana a silk handkerchief.
It's wine-dark purple, Morrigan notes absently. A good color to pair with the soft periwinkle of her eyes, the apple-red of Leliana's hair, the myriad of oranges and yellows dyed on her clothes.
Morrigan averts her gaze. It's absurd. Leliana isn't a warden, and she doesn't have the requisite equipment even if she was. Brosca is easier to watch, the buzzcut and intricate, full-body tattoos sparking merely aesthetic attraction. (Sisters, she's called them.) Alistair is at least not not her type, even if he is incredibly irritating. Worse than Sten. Better than Oghren. Zevran is taken, off-limits...
...As Leliana is. Morrigan is already a fringe member of the group, partly by her own essentialist design but mostly, she's aware, as a side effect of poor socialization since childhood. Regardless of whether her advances would be accepted or rejected, Morrigan can't rationalize muddying the party dynamics purely for pleasure's sake, not with Ferelden, and, more importantly, Brosca's life—the life of her first friend—hanging in the balance.
Mother would mock her, call her dramatic, pathetic, wretchedly sympathetic. Perhaps she's right, for even dead she haunts Morrigan's thoughts—she will be coming back, yes, but surely not before year's end.
“Must we comb these tunnels in their entirety? The Blight shall not idle 'til our return to the surface.”
“The loot, though. Think of the loot, Morrigan!” Brosca argues. “We need more raw supplies if we're to do anything.”
“Where would we be if we didn't have these three ice arrows, Morrigan?” Leliana continues, voice full of light-hearted humor. She thinks it's funny, to've expended such grand effort for such paltry reward.
Her complaining bears fruit nevertheless. Brosca stands, rolling the map and tapping Oghren awake.
“Who-what? Huh?” he grumbles, hand loosening 'round the handle of his battleaxe as he processes who stands before him. “You finally ready, Warden?”
She hums in answer, already striding forth. They fall into position behind her, Leliana left, Oghren right, Morrigan at the rear. The two in the middle begin conversating, Oghren's words sleepy and slurred, Leliana's lyrical and bright. Morrigan presses a chilled hand to her burgeoning headache and ignores them. Brosca, for her part, stays focused on her cartography project, drawing a star with chalk every few feet. Salvage, as a priority, almost supersedes stopping the darkspawn. Almost.
Speaking of. The party halts as one, ears tuned to the telltale growls of stealthed genlocks, overcome by their own bloodthirst. Morrigan steps back from the tunnel's long shadows, staff raised in preparation for a mind blast. Any moment now...
Something lunges at Leliana, dagger dropping an inch before driving into her eye, tearing into her neckline as its arms fall back to its sides. Its twin compatriots attack a heartbeat later, hoping to capitalize on their distraction, on Morrigan's spent spell.
But they're simply outclassed. The three genlocks die fast, torn apart by their high-damage warriors. Morrigan can't wrest her attention from the red line trailing Leliana's clavicle, a barely-there breach in skin. A memento from yet another near-death experience—not that they can afford to think in such terms. Indeed, Leliana cares more for the damage to her clothes, grumbling as she assesses the damage.
“I'll sew it closed after we make camp,” Morrigan offers—orders, rather, utterly without thinking. Leliana chirps an agreement despite them both knowing she's plenty capable of doing it herself. She's flushed from combat, distracting Morrigan from the possibility of recanting. Her smile is lovely; her pale pink lips shine with gloss, supple and smooth. Morrigan watches her drink from her canteen, watches her wet, velvety tongue peek out to collect the escaping moisture.
She feels like a pervert. She feels like a man. She's lusted before, but not like this: shameless, hungry. Predatory. Perhaps it's the time factor; she cannot go one day, dawn to dusk, without seeing her face, hearing the lilt of her voice...If Wynne'd come instead, Morrigan would've had a break; the thought has her, strangely, disquieted. Nevermind.
Morrigan heals Leliana of her scratch, scoffing at her gratitude. Brosca rifles through the dead's pockets, and they resume.
“Are you well, Morrigan?” Leliana asks, somehow genuine behind the teasing.
“Why.”
“You're...sweaty. And your ears are red as cherries! It's cute, but so unlike you.”
“You believe you know me so well?”
“I want to.”
“So, you admit you don't,” Morrigan snaps, shoving the rush of affection behind a glass barrier at the back of her mind—visible, tapping for her attention, yet contained. Her dealings with Leliana are complicated enough, given their disparate backgrounds.
“Not for lack of trying, Morrigan,” Leliana assures and rebukes at once, tone threaded with damnable gentleness. Expression halting and careful.
Morrigan...doesn't know what to do with it. All she's learned of reading people has been for the sake of her own defense, not-
Oghren chimes in, “Room for-”
“Darkspawn! Watch for their blood!” Brosca cuts off, heaving her weapon off her shoulder with a grunt as she dodges a hurlock's longsword.
(Another ambush. This is getting tiresome. Exhaustion tugs at her bones, vestiges of expired adrenaline pools in her veins. Her knees and shoulders...Rejuvenating magics shower them, but as they come from Morrigan, they, too, are a drain on her.)
Their initial attack failed, the twin hurlocks flee 'round the corner—one is caught by Oghren's pommel strike, dying fast to the party's concentrated efforts.
“Morrigan! Emissaries!” Brosca next yells, and Morrigan's gaze jumps between the enemies until she finds the pair at the back, wreathing magic; she paralyzes one, casts crushing prison and curse of mortality on the other. Oghren squeezes through the fifteen others to finish off the first before her spell wears off, barely avoiding being bashed into a glyph of paralysis on the way.
Morrigan settles to a passive role, focus split between allies and other mages. Leliana will let her know if someone makes it passed Brosca.
When did she become so dependent, so trusting?
Oghren stuns the emissary as her paralyze fades, its fellow now felled. He cleaves into it, sundering armor, ripping through tainted flesh. Weathering the attacks of those who'd followed him.
Brosca knocks one of those down, a second falling on its ass to one of Leliana's shattering shots. Morrigan heals Oghren, sending a wave of regeneration. Eleven—no, nine enemies remain, none with magic. A relief, to be certain. Too many times, a fireball or cone of cold has turned the flow of battle against them, and there is nothing more terrifying than when their warriors—or warrior, singular—are put down at the start, leaving the squishy survivors scrambling.
Three turn their way—Morrigan and Leliana's. Scattershot. Horror and stinging swarm. Morrigan downs a lyrium potion, casting rejuvenation on the woman beside her a breath later. The main threats dealt with, it's easy to fall into instinct. Those left are mere cannon fodder.
It would be sad, if Morrigan was predisposed to empathy. Alas, irritation is the most she can muster. She heals a stab wound to Brosca's back, digging through gaps in her massive armor, and sighs.
Leliana peers over at her, ever vigilant. Strands of loose, growing hair threaten her vision; she tosses them back, unleashing another arrow. Morrigan will ask to trim her hair, tonight. An obnoxiously-intimate ritual, but Morrigan has the steadiest hands of their group, after the redhead herself.
'Tis pragmatism. Simple pragmatism.
“Well, I'm exhausted,” Brosca grumbles. Oghren falls dramatically against her, loosing a chuckle at her shout. She shoves him into a wall with a toothy grin, propping her elbow on his shoulder as she surveys their tunnel. “Should we double back, or camp at the next clearing?”
“Next,” Leliana answers. “The intersection we passed through is too exposed. Any further back isn't practical.”
Brosca nods, and they march. Saying little as the group energy nosedives. So much remains between now and when they may at last lay down to sleep: putting up the tents, setting traps around the perimeter, unfurling blankets, making and eating dinner, each step slowed by the inane chatter of her companions. Morrigan has a moment of...appreication, for her isolated beginnings, staring down the long hour ahead.
But then Leliana's shoulder brushes hers, and she is reminded instantly the positives of having a friend or two.
Push and pull. Touch-averse versus touch-starved, and more. 'Tis difficult to self-orient, dragged from one extreme to the other with no discernible rhyme nor reason for the shift.
“I...have I ever told you I really like the way you wear your hair?”
Morrigan startles, dragged from her ruminations by the half-whisper to her ear, minty breath tousling loose strands of inky black. “I do not require your approval, though it is fortunate—for you. 'Less you prefer to borrow a tie?”
“I trust you.”
“'Tis unwise.”
Silly, to argue such over such a trifling-
Leliana's blue eyes cut into hers, strangely intense. Their usual genial warmth is absent, yet Morrigan senses no threat, no anger nor frosted neutrality. Their conversation, however, seems to possess a second layer she can't sketch.
“I want to,” she says, a semi-awkward callback, and Morrigan marvels at the simplicity.
She thinks of her life in the Wilds. She thinks of her mother, and of templars, and of foolishly-brave Chasind warriors. She thinks of bedding a man who despises her, and she him, and carrying an old god back into this world. She thinks of the unexpected sisterhood she's fostered with the warden, her first ally, companion, friend. Shared dinners and camp chores, helping Wynne navigate to her feet after a fight. She thinks of a golden mirror.
“Marvelous,” Morrigan replies, and it's not nearly as sarcastic as it could have been.
Leliana smiles, and Morrigan lets herself smile back. Perhaps it's the exhaustion talking, allowing doubt to flourish, but Morrigan wonders whether it would be so bad to want and to have something wholly unpractical. Something potentially disastrous, and how else could it end?
Maybe it won't. End, that is.
Morrigan's smile grows. She pretends her heart thunders because of leftover adrenaline.
Leliana leans into her side. Presumptuous. Warm.