also WHY did I think leliana was boring when I first played DA:O
her introduction is this random unassuming chantry lay sister just butting into your (3 heavily armed people covered in blood) conversation with about a dozen hostile soldiers of loghain in a tavern and immediately jumping into the fray to help once you try to defend yourselves (despite being woefully outnumbered)
and then the dust clears and you ask her "so what was that all about" and she tells you she's a heretical mystic and wants to come with you on your extremely dangerous last-ditch attempt to save the world
this is the current opening to my sereda aeducan/leliana fic spanning from the end of DAO to post-DAI, plus a snippet of a (slightly saucier) scene from a bit later on that I couldn't get out of my head
not sure who else has WIPs going atm? tagging @shredsandpatches @supercantaloupe @leporellian @sherbertilluminated @wardencommander-surana @respectablecapers and anyone who would like to :)
Long was his silence, 'fore it was broken.
“For you, song-weaver, once more I will try.”
- Andraste 1:14
Lady Sereda Aeducan, Warden-Commander of Ferelden, Arlessa of Amaranthine, honored member of House Aeducan and Princess of Orzammar, living Paragon, and follower of Andraste was a woman of many loyalties— each taken as seriously as the next. Her loyalty to Leliana was less official than her titles, but all the more enduring.
As for Leliana’s loyalty to her… well. No one could have it all, could they?
Even a Grey Warden with Blight-tainted blood living on borrowed time, having narrowly escaped certain death at the hands of an archdemon with some useful apostate magic, now with a scarce few decades left in her future. A scarce few decades only if darkspawn or an assassin didn’t get to her first and cut them short.
Even a Paragon, who would be invoked by countless dwarves in battle and love and death for centuries to come, could not have everything in the world she wanted.
---
From the gritty stone below her, a soft voice rose to her ears, lilted Orlesian and rosy and impish. “Oh, my dear one. I didn’t mean to startle you so.”
Leliana. She lifted the dagger away, glinting in the low reddish light of the sparse lanterns, and sheathed it behind her. And she kept Leliana pressed to the ground— both of them enjoyed that sort of arrangement. Or at least they had the last time they’d seen each other, nearly a year past.
Sereda pushed that from her mind and tutted, catching some of Leliana’s short boyish hair in her gloved hand and curling it around her finger. “This is how you choose to return?” She missed the warmth and feel of Leliana’s cheek against her skin, but it was worth it for the dark and glazed look in her eyes.
Leliana’s breath at least was hot on Sereda’s face as she replied, her chest falling and rising. “One of the sisters at the outpost told me you had gone to scout a little yourself. I could not resist.”
“And just what is a pretty lay sister expecting from the Deep Roads but an unpleasant death at the hands of darkspawn?”
“I’ve heard a beautiful and mysterious warrioress lurks down here, hair loose and flowing, ready to pounce on the unsuspecting traveler.” Leliana had always liked it when her hair slowly slipped out from its coils while they were in bed together (lovemaking, as she would say). And Sereda knew she liked even more when she had taken it out of her braids to begin with, to sprawl across a pillow or bedroll, to hang like a veil over Leliana’s face, to pool on sweat-damp skin. She could feel against her own neck now that some stray hairs had already escaped. “I had to see for myself whether the stories were true.”
so insane playing a dwarf origin in DAO and only experiencing the fade through darkspawn nightmares and the sloth demon
like lady aeducan in my playthrough has never dreamed in her life and then she dreams for the first time after being framed for her brother's death, getting exiled and then nearly dying in a blight, and being framed for the death of a noble AGAIN except this time it's a human king. and she's like okay this is annoying but at least it's normal for wardens and it's just darkspawn anyway I can handle those
then lady aeducan gets to the circle and gets trapped in a literal labyrinth of nightmares full of demons and has to surrender her own extremely precious sense of self to get out of it by shapeshifting and she's like hm. this place really does suck
got another fun idea for the sereda/leliana fic which is "leliana as left hand disguises herself as a mage visiting the orzammar circle in order to investigate the orzammar chantry and also just how insane bhelen is getting and how close the city is to rioting again. sereda has been fostering a collaboration between the mages and smiths to figure out a way for dwarves to maintain their stone-sense while at the surface so that other nobles can do more damn surface diplomacy for themselves. sereda walks into the circle and sees leliana there and is like What Are You Doing In My City"
coming to terms with the fact that my sereda/leliana post-DAO fanfic is going to require so much brainstorming about warden politics + dwarven politics for the ways it'll be diverging from canon. it's fine I can do this it'll be fun
thinking about sereda retreating back underground after leliana becomes the left hand and/or divine victoria to avoid her because she thinks it's the one place leliana wouldn't be able to follow..... and sereda feels like leliana has chosen the chantry and especially justinia over her, and that their relationship has been falling apart for years on both ends due to leliana's commitment to the orlesian chantry and sereda's commitment to the wardens in ferelden (which neither of them have been able or willing to find a proper compromise to). makes it even crunchier that sereda became andrastian after leaving the stone, but she's never quite as committed to that or the chantry as leliana
sereda would probably make a project of reclaiming more of the deep roads for orzammar bit by bit, rebuilding aeducan thaig, even setting up a grey warden outpost or two... coordinating things / working with the legion of the dead and other wardens that can be spared (or who are hearing the calling and on their way out)... with sigrun, oghren (for better or for worse), nathaniel, alistair for at least the beginning, velanna if she could be convinced. also maybe she even meets renn and valta for some of that time idk
but then of course leliana as divine would want to make a trip to orzammar to support the andrastians there and try to make peace with and reassure the rest of the city, since beatrix III (or maybe justinia?) had been considering an exalted march earlier due to burkel's death and the other uprest about the orzammar chantry. so when the aeducans get notified that she'll be visiting sereda is like "are you kidding me"
the power of toxic yuri truly is unparalleled. I cracked open my sereda/leliana (post-DAO through post-trespasser) fic notes and draft for the first time in a little while, and discovered an insane amount of notes, a few drafted scenes, and many planned scenes that I don't remember having written at all. when did this happen. was I possessed
