There had never been any freedom when living in the Circle. It was a gilded, golden cage. Aspen had been a bird, her wings plucked. It was why she had helped Jowan.
Aspen could never be free, but he could. Her best friend could. Jowan could find the happiness Aspen would never be granted.
It was why she could not blame him for running. Jowan had taken his chance at freedom, even if it doomed her own. Her own was an impossibility, but he was free.
Would she have done the same, given the chance? Abandoned her only friend and fled? Aspen did not know.
Duncan might have thought conscription was granting her freedom. It was not. The Grey Wardens were a cage of a different kind, the bars no longer gilded.
These new bars were the Darkspawn she had to fight and the Taint that ravaged her body. They were armor patterned in blue cloth and silver chainmail.
The bars were the staff pressed into her hand, a tool once meant to channel her magic now turned towards war.
The Grey Wardens were a cage. They were not a freedom, with the Blight tearing the land to pieces and assassins dodging their footsteps.
They were a cage - until they were not. How can being a Grey Warden be anything other than a blessing when being a Grey Warden brought her Leliana?
Leliana who was so kind and sweet. Leliana who told her stories of heroes long gone.
Leliana who cradled Aspen’s face in the palms of her hands when they kissed. As if Aspen was something precious that it would hurt her to lose. Leliana who would take hold of Aspen’s hands and promise her the world.
When Aspen left to search for a cure to the Calling and the Taint, it was not for the Wardens. Though that is what Aspen told the world, it was not for the Wardens.
It was for Leliana.
Aspen wanted to be able to wake up next to Leliana every morning. Aspen wanted Leliana's blue eyes to be the last thing she saw every night.
Aspen wanted to be able to grow a garden for something other than ingredients for potions and poisons. She wanted to grow Andraste's Grace to braid into Leliana's hair.
Aspen wanted to grow old with the woman who captured her heart but showed her freedom.
Aspen wanted nugs and Marabari pups scampering underfoot. She wanted to know that her death would be of old age and not the Taint.
Aspen would give up half a dozen years of her life in order to gain a lifetime with Leliana.