Unspoken

Chapter 3

The next morning comes and Morrigan is already awake and wandering around the beautiful garden of the fortress. A lot of different flowers and herbs are growing all around the place. She isn’t surprised to see a whole bunch of elves root, probably the oldest and most famous herb for medical use. As she keeps strolling through the garden a very familiar smell hits her nose that made her stop and stare at some small white wildflowers.

Andraste’s Grace – of course they would be planted here, she thought to herself. She has not seen this flower in a while actually but she could never forget the sweet smell of it, it immediately reminds her of Leliana, not only because Andraste’s Grace are her favorite flowers, no, she used to smell like them as well. And she kinda liked that. She always smelled really nice in general, which was a welcome change from traveling with Alistair, not gonna lie.

Morrigan looks up when she hears the voice of the ambassador. Josephine seems to get along really well with Leliana, that’s why she planned to speak to her to maybe figure some things out about why the once so cheerful, flirty bard changed so drastically to the cold spymaster and killer she at least appears to be nowadays. Maybe some of it is just a masquerade but she still needed to find out what happened within the last few years of her absence.

Josephine makes her way through the garden and looks a bit surprised to see the witch standing near those flowers.

“Good morning, Morrigan” she greets her, avoiding to say Lady Morrigan, like the Inquisitor asked her to.

“Good morning” she greets her back with a polite nod. “I was hoping to meet you eventually” she continues.

“Oh?” Josephine raises her brows in surprise “I hope there is nothing wrong with your quarter? Do you need anything?”

The witch chuckles. “Not at all, tis perfectly fine. But I would like to talk about something else, if you might have a moment to spare?”

The ambassador looks at the taller woman surprised once again, not entirely sure what to expect from this request. Of course she has an idea where this could lead. There are only a few things that might interest Morrigan at all and even fewer things she would ask her about. She decides to play along, driven by her curiosity.

“Of course, how can I help you?”

“Let’s go for a walk” Morrigan takes a few steps towards the stairs to the fortress walls, asking the ambassador to follow her.

Josephine follows her up to the walls of Skyhold, a cold breeze blows by between the watchtowers, but the sky is clear blue and the sun is rising. It’s very quiet, not many of the villagers are awake yet. Morrigan walks a bit further and stops around the middle of the path.

“I have noticed you get along quite well with the Spymaster” Morrigan starts. “May I ask how long you know each other?”

“We crossed ways a long time ago, we moved through similar circles in Orlais. I believe we actually met in Val Royeaux. But didn’t become good friends until years later, after the blight, in fact.”

Morrigan leans her ellbows towards the wall, looking down to the village.

“So you spent some time together after she came back to Val Royeaux, yes? Can you tell me what happened to her that made her change this much?” she looks up to face Josephine now. She can feel her heart picking up speed, not sure what kind of answer she will get to hear.  Secretly hoping it not entirely her fault.

Josephine sighs.

“A lot” she answers, leaning her back at the wall. “I assume she mentioned Divine Justinia at some point of your journey?”

Morrigan nods. But doesn’t say anything else, to not interrupt her.

“I will not go into much detail or Leliana will cut my throat for it, actually, she probably will for just talking to you anyway… but she and Justinia knew each other for a very long time and she was probably her closest friend she ever had.” She pauses for a moment before she continues. “As you probably know, Divine Justinia died at the conclave. This is one of the things that broke her, she was devasted and … very angry for a long time, on the edge of losing her faith in Andraste and even the maker himself.”

The witch swallows. It’s true, Leliana mentioned Justinia quite a lot, now that she thinks about it. She always seemed to admire her. And now, Morrigan actually feels very sorry for the bard. She never met another person who had so much faith in the maker as Leliana did, hearing she almost lost this was a shock, even for her.

Josephine keeps going after another short break. “Perhaps you are aware, that you are one of the reasons, she changed this much, as well.”

“I am. At least since the moment I met her in the winter palace.” Morrigan responds calmly but she could feel a stinging pain in her chest.

„Tell me, Morrigan, what was going on in your mind after the final battle of the blight? Why did you have to hurt her like that? I would really like to understand.“

Morrigan remains silent for a moment. Josephine appears to be very protective of the bard, she noticed this before, in the winter palace. Those two spent an impressive amount of time together and whispering during the ball in Halamshiral. Could it be that they are more than just friends?

And just as this thought crosses her mind, there’s a growing pain in her chest and she feels like it’s tightening up to the point where she’s unable to breathe properly. For a second she is afraid she might get a heart attack, never in her life has she ever felt anything similar to this. What the hell is going on? She is aware that for some reasons, she and Leliana became something people would call friends but why does she feel like this all of sudden? It’s a very unpleasant feeling and it definitely needs to stop.

The witch isn‘t very familiar with relationships of any kind or … feelings but something seems odd to her. 

Josephine observes the witch, mildly puzzled by her unexpected reaction. Is this some kind of trick of her, trying to throw her off the track? But what could she possibly gain from that? It doesn’t make sense that her response is taking so long.

Then a sudden thought occurred her.

She doesn’t know.

How would she, if everything Leliana told her about Morrigan is true – and she’s sure it is, then it would make sense that a woman who spent the first 20 years or so of her life alone in the wilds with her mother, being the only social contact she probably ever had, wouldn’t be able to rank this kind of affirmation as anything but sympathy. Or friendship in the best case.

„I had personal reasons to leave, it might has been a bit harsh to not inform anyone about it, but I honestly didn’t think it would affect her as much as it apparently did.“ Morrigan finally responds.

This isn’t really the answer the antivan was hoping for but she figures she would not get any further explaining out of the witch. She also decides not to clarify the reason Leliana is so upset about their reunion, she will eventually find out sooner or later, and as an experienced ambassador she knows when it’s better to not intervene too much.

Morrigan pushes herself off the wall she was leaning onto. It’s probably time to talk to the bard personally and she has a vague idea where she might find her.

“I shall let you go back to work now, thank you for the update” the witch announces.

“It’s been a pleasure” she responds with a polite smile. “Have a nice day” with those words, Josephine makes her way back inside to her desk.

Morrigan looks around if anyone is nearby then uses her shape-shifter ability to transform into a raven and flies off towards the rookery of the fortress. She is pretty sure she is going to find the redhead there.

She used to enjoy spending time with animals when they were traveling through Ferelden, nugs preferably, but also the warden’s dog and ravens.

After a short flight, Morrigan arrives at the rookery and immediately finds an open window as well.  She hushes through window and flies to the roof to blend in with the other ravens and sits on one of the massive wooden beams. They do look relatively worn out, there are a lot of feathers and dust and dirt on them but they seem to remain stable.
Morrigan looks down to locate the spymaster and she quickly finds her - sitting at her desk, writing something on a piece of parchment. Could be a report, maybe a letter, either way she seems focused. The witch is too curious to resist, so she decides to fly down to get a closer look of her writing.

She doesn’t get close enough to even get the smallest glance of her work when a knife flies past her by a hair's breadth. Morrigan gets thrown off her track but stays in the air, letting out a complaining raven noise.

“You better get out of my rookery or the next knife won’t hit the wall behind you, Morrigan.”

The bard speaks surprisingly calm which makes the threat sound even more threatening honestly. Morrigan transforms back to herself and lands gracefully on the floor in front of the desk. She looks at the bard.


“What gave me away?”

“I do not own a raven with ridiculously amber eyes.” She responds as it should be obvious. Raising a brow.


“Tis a good point, it doesn’t matter most of times but I suppose I should work on transforming them as well.” Morrigan chuckles.


“Good luck with that. Now leave, I got a lot of work to do and I do not wish any further distractions.”

Leliana quickly looks back at her report. She meant to say disturbance… not distraction. Maker, how could one stupid, ignorant witch throw her off guard that easily. She gets confronted with far more pressure just by doing her work as a spymaster and she has no trouble dealing with that. Then this woman intrudes her office and she’s suddenly not able to think straight anymore. When will she finally get rid of those feelings? Hasn’t she been suffering from those one sided attraction long enough already?

Morrigan looks at her for a breath moment longer in silence before she turns around to leave the rookery.


“And use the stairs like a normal person this time!” The bard adds without taking her eyes off her report, when she notices she’s actually leaving.

The witch smirks by those words, stepping down the stairway.