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Leliana’s room in Skyhold was small and humble. Josephine kept apologizing over it, fretting this way and that over room assignments, assuring her she could talk to someone about this. Leliana insisted she needn’t bother. Her small cot in Lothering had offered her less than this, and she’d been more than content there.
Not just content. Happy, even. Peaceful.
Something sharp slices through her at the thought. She hadn’t known peace in a long time. Sometimes she wondered if she ever did.
She made her way down to the throne room. Crack stones scattered the floor, and she hopped delicately over them as she made her way towards the War Room. She had lots to say today. She suspected a spy amongst their ranks.
That’s silly. All her ranks were spies.
She suspected a different spy amongst their ranks. A spy not loyal to her. A Venatori.
She turned over in her head all the ways she could pose her plans to the Inquisitor without Cullen telling her she’s being absurd. Such a stone wall of a man, a sword thrust conspicuously in every direction, and yet he could still find it within himself to protest her covertly eliminating a single life.
She was still mulling over the best phrasing, when a new voice banished any other thoughts from her mind.
“Is she here? Is she here? Tell me where she is!”
“Your ladyship, if you please,” Josephine tries uselessly to calm down the new arrival. “We’ve only just arrived here. You shouldn’t see our fortress in such a state of disrepair.
She knew that voice better than anyone’s. It has brought her down for panic, from crises of fate, and had laughed beside her late into the night. Her heart ached at the worry in it.
She turns over her shoulder, not daring to believe it.
But there she was: Faith Cousland, The Hero of Ferelden. Her long, icy hair hung in waves around her, grown out from the last time they met. Of course it’s grown. It had been so long.
Faith’s eyes went wide and she spotted Leliana. She stopped in her tracks. Josephine stops with her, relieved to not have to chase her down anymore. She catches her breath for a moment. She opened her mouth for a more civil discussion, but before she could get even a sound out, Faith launched herself forward once again.
Josephine threw her hands up in the air. She gives up.
Faith ran towards Leliana, her former constant companion, in Blight and in life, and threw her arms around her. Leliana returns the embrace, scarcely believing that she was here.
“I heard about Haven,” Faith murmurs through the emotion in her throat. “So many died. Too many to count. I didn’t know…I didn’t know if you–”
“I’m here,” Leliana soothed. “You have not lost me.”
Faith leaned back and took in Leliana, the sharp eyes and the red hair. She seemed so different now. There was something more brutal about her features. A defensive slant to her brow. The seeking shadow of eyes. She didn’t look sweet as she once did. She looked almost…ruthless.
It must be the lighting, Faith decided.
“Lady Cousland, shall I prepare a room for you?” Josephine calls from where Faith left her.
“No need,” Leliana called back.
Faith smiled at her.
Faith’s closed the door behind her, and Leliana’s lips were already on hers.
“I’ve missed you,” Faith whispered, throwing the hood off of Leliana’s head and tangling her hands into her hair.
“And I, you, my love,” she responded.
Leliana unbuckled and peeled off the armor that Faith wore. It clattered to the crowd heavily, like it was eager to be out of their way. The heavy armor Faith always wore made the reveal of her soft body all the more tantalizing. Leliana ran a hand reverently down Faith’s chest. Faith’s eyes fluttered closed at the contact, the first touch she’s felt there in so, so long.
Leliana guided her backwards, lowering her onto the simple bed. Leliana came down on top of her, kissing her purposefully. Their hands roved over each other eagerly. There was so much to remember. Faith almost scrambled for purchase in her efforts to get closer. She hooked a leg around Leliana’s waist, pulling her as close as possible. Leliana ran her calloused archer hand down her thigh, down to her knee. Faith gasped into her mouth.
“Some warrior you are,” Leliana teased from on top of her, “letting me have my way with you.”
“Is that so?” Faith replied breathlessly.
A moment later, she rolled Leliana over until she was perched on top of her. Leliana gasped when her back struck the bed.
“Some rogue, letting me get the upper hand,” Faith retorted.
“Oh, you’re quite mistaken, my dear,” Leliana pushed herself up until her face was inches from hers. “You have exactly the amount of control I mean you to.”
Leliana, with enticingly sudden swiftness, gripped Faith her nails into Faith’s back and pulls the warrior down on top of her, kissing her fiercely. Faith moaned as Leliana left trails of claw marks down her back.
The Warden rocked against her. Leliana bit her lip, letting the feeling of her love overtake her.
Their reunion wasn’t swift. It was a languid multiple-day affair. Leliana’s humble room was more than enough for the pair of them to reacquaint with one another. It was almost like they remembered it, traversing Ferelden, slaying darkspawn, ending the Blight, and finding moments of respite with each other.
At times, Leliana was called to the War Room to give updates on Venatori movements. As soon as this was completed, she’d return to her waiting Warden and resumed their reunion with fervor. Occasionally, Faith would become impatient and wander Skyhold, hoping to catch up with her love even a moment sooner. Sometimes, she waited by the War Room, practically bouncing up and down in her anticipation, which made Varric chortle every time he walked by.
“You know,” he would say, “if you were anyone other than the Hero of Ferelden, someone would shoo you off from their top secret war meetings.”
“Well, good thing I am the Hero of Ferelden, then,” she would reply. That seemed to amuse Varric very much.
There was one particular afternoon where the couple seemed particularly averse to waiting. The Inquisitor, an adorable and stalwartly noble elf woman, had been traipsing up the stairs to debrief Leliana on some important development.
“Leliana, I–”
As the Inquisitor crested over the stares, she couldn’t fathom what was taking place at the very table she’d had countless debriefs with Leliana over the past several weeks.
Faith, the Hero of Ferelden, shining beacon of Thedas’s freedom and survival, had her tan back to her, glistening in a sheen of sweat, her wavy blonde hair cascading like a waterfall. Leliana, her trusted Spymaster who she barely ever saw crack a smile or appear riled in any way, had her face buried in the Warden’s neck from her standing position in front of her. The Warden’s legs were wrapped possessively around Leliana, pulling her close. Faith threw her head back as Leliana’s lips explored her.
“Oh, oh, oh ,” the Warden moaned. Her back dipped lower and lower back onto the table with each exclamation.
It made no sense to hear the Hero of Ferelden moaning. She should only shout battlecries and stir soldiers to action, and occasionally whisper tactics to her obedient companions.
But if she was shaken by the sounds of the Hero of Ferelden in passion, nothing prepared for the the sound of the famously stoic Spymaster of the Inqusition.
“Mmmm, yes!” Leliana cried as Faith tilted forward to bit the softness of her neck. “ Ohh .”
Faith’s back fell all the way back and collided onto the table, Leliana following atop her. They kissed fiercely, hands and mouths everywhere, breaths mixing in ragged sighs. Leliana kisses trailed down Faith’s stomach, and Faith’s eyes rolled backwards…landing directly on the Inquistor. From this new angle, however, they could see their unexpected new arrival. The Warden eyes her quizzically from her upside down angle. Leliana looks up and follows her eyeline, spots the slack-jawed leader of her movement.
“I-I I’m so sorry,” the Inquisitor stammers. “I was just coming to debrief on–you know, I can come back later.”
“No, by all means,” Leliana teased, not moving from her position braced over the Hero of Ferelden. “Let’s debrief.” The Warden giggled beneath her.
The inquisitor turned and rushed back down the stairs. She hears the laughter floating down the tower behind her. And those moans she never imagined she’d hear from the woman who elicited them.
“Ahhh!”
“Mmmm! Yes, my dearest!”
“I love you, Leliana. I love you.”
It was much of that for days on end. Reveling in each other, making up for all their separation, declaring their love in as many ways as they could think of.
Eventually, as the relief and passion smoothed into something more sustainable and content, they spoke more candidly. They caught each other up on their lives since splitting off to follow separate responsibilities.
“Have you heard the Calling yet, my dear?” Leliana asked one night as she lay in bed next to her lover. It was a question that didn’t loom over them as much as it perhaps should. They knew that at any moment, Faith’s Grey Warden blood could call her to the Deep Roads to die fighting darkspawn. However, Leliana could also die at any moment at the wrong end of the blade. It hadn’t worried them when they first met, but as they aged, and their capacity for love grew, it became more and more prominent in their minds.
“No, not yet,” Faith replied somberly. “I’m actually working on that. I’m traveling with some friends, trying to find a cure.”
Faith stretched out beside her. They were both dressed in hardly anything. They spent a lot of the past few days this way. They’d gotten their initial daily exploration of each other out of the way early in the night. Now, they could just talk without being distracted by it.
“A cure for the Calling?”
“We’ve slayed dragons, Leliana. I’d hardly call curing the Calling the line to draw for impossible tasks.”
“Are you alone?” Leliana asked curiously.
“No, no, I have some friends I’ve traveled with before.”
“Alistair?”
“No, no, he’s far too busy with all his kingly duties,” she replied. “After you were called away, I actually found some new adventurers to travel with. Oghren among them, actually.”
“Oh, dear,” Leliana laughed, lying back on her bed as she reflected on the rude dwarf she once knew. “Dealing with Oghren? Perhaps your task is more daunting than mine.”
“There are others, too,” Faith said. “There’s actually…Do you remember Rendon Howe? The man who slaughtered my family? His son travels with me quite a bit now. Kind of a funny story.”
Faith’s eyes sparkled when she mentioned him. Leliana scowled for a moment, but collected herself before Faith could notice.
“Can I ask you something Leliana?” Faith asked suddenly.
She had been quick to change the subject from Nathaniel, Leliana noticed. She doesn’t mention it.
“What is it?”
“While I’ve been here, I’ve walked the grounds. People say odd things about you. Sometimes I walk by the War Room and listen in and…you just seem…different…”
“Different how?”
“I heard you the other day,” Faith continued. “You wanted to kill someone. Just like that. Not in battle. Not to save a prisoner from the clutches. You just…wanted to. They’d wrong you, and you wanted to.”
“Well, they wronged me,” she said. “That explains it, doesn’t it.”
“I spoke to the Inquisitor. She said you say things like that all the time,” Faith continued. “And Josephine, she was even joking about. Niceness before knives , she said, like that it’s a thing she needed to remind you of.”
Leliana felt herself tensing. She suddenly felt like she wanted to hide. Or lash out.
“Do you have a point?"
“Leliana, when I first met you, you pleaded with me to spare some thug who tried to kill you,” she said. “When we first met Zevran, and he tried to kill us, you begged me not to. And I loved you for it. I really did. But now…I don’t even recognize you.”
“I could afford to be naive then,” Leliana explained icily. “I was just a pawn in a game you were playing. You were the hero, and I was just your little helper. I don’t have that luxury anymore.”
“Leliana, you know were more than that,” Faith frowned, defensiveness of her own forming her stony expression.
“It doesn’t matter what I was,” she responded. “What I am now is a spymaster. I’m responsible for stemming the tide of the Venatori. Do you think I should just shock them into submission with the extent of my mercy? Should I let cowardice lead my actions?”
Faith shot to her feet. Leliana felt the sudden distance between them.
“The Leliana I know would never have called mercy cowardice,” she said. “When I met Nathaniel, the son of the man who killed my family, do you think I wanted to spare him? Do you think I wouldn’t have killed him and felt I had done the world a service?”
Leliana closed off hearing that name again. Faith felt something for this Nathaniel character. She knew she did.
And if she didn’t, it didn’t matter. The love that Faith had now, it is for a girl that no longer existed. If she did exist, Leliana wouldn’t even know how to begin accessing her.
“Then maybe I am not the woman you knew,” Leliana bites back. She gets to her feet, making her way towards the door.
“Leliana, wait…”
“I have people to murder in cold blood,” she retorted frostily. “Is that what you want to hear?”
“You’re being unfair.”
“Thank you for making sure I was alive,” Leliana says coldly. “Your quest is complete. You may now return to camp.”
“Leliana, stop.”
“Hurry along,” she says. “Nathaniel must be waiting.”
Leliana slams the door closed behind her.