#might make a longer post analyzing Leah in this sense

[troperrific]

@amoransia

Hi! I agree!! I do think Leah also cares immensely for Priest as a person; I think I generalized the Church side way too much on this post. I should've made it clearer, lol. Actually, while I was typing this reply, I thought that maybe she does care for him, but she'd still be capable of putting those feelings away for the greater good, but then I remembered how she was willing to give away the location of Asmodeus' purified wing in order to save -

Barbara, instead of focusing on exorcizing Beelzebub 🧐 So yeah, I think you're completely right!! Leah's more conflicted about it than Imuri is (since she's not human), so it's not as clear as Imuri's disagreement, if that makes sense?

Hope you don’t mind me answering this as a post, because I have waaaay too many thoughts about this.

So, when I was talking in the tags about who’s currently thinking about Priest as a person, it was more about inner reasoning and what takes priority rather than whether what they’ll have Priest do after.

Like, the inner reasoning that takes priority to the Witches and the Church as factions, regarding waking Priest up, is his role as a key piece in the grand scheme of the fate of the world. Essentially, it’s about what he symbolizes and what he can do rather than him as a person.

With Imuri, like you said, it’s about who he is specifically to her. Her beloved, the guy she’s in love with. It’s a personal reason, so she’s the one seeing him as a person.

It’s difficult to say what weights more in Leah’s mind, but the reason she presents to Imuri in chapter 70 so they can go get Priest together does explicitly mention that they should do so because a) it’s their responsibility that he reached such a point and b) she wants to talk and apologize to him. This sort of inner reasoning does make me think she’s still thinking of him more as a person than a soldier or a weapon or a symbol.

But whether she’d put her feelings aside for the greater good or choose to prioritize Priest as a person and friend is a more complicated matter.

First, because although the situation with Barbara does show Leah is willing to choose her loved ones over the world, it’s worth mentioning that Barbara is much closer and more important to Leah than Mr. Priest.

That nuance is important. This is also why Priest worries about Imuri first and then about other people more as the series progresses.

And second, well…

Because Leah has swayed between the two for pretty much the whole manga.

In a more ‘lower stakes’ way, but sure. One of the clearest examples is regarding her role in separating Imuri from Priest.

In a general sense, Leah sorta takes the middle way when it comes to her role as a “spy”. On one hand, she abides by the Church’s orders to spy on Imuri and Priest, and is often intruding on their dates or lurking nearby. On the other hand, she acts more like a chaperone than anything else, and still lets them interact plenty, because she sees how happy Priest is around Imuri, even if that’s technically detrimental to her mission in separating the two.

There’s a scene in… chapter 54, I think, where Leah and Barbara are at their hotel during the aftermath of Priest destroying the school, and despite Barbara questioning her, because they should be monitoring Imuri and Priest as per orders, Leah does not follow them to the remains of the school, allowing them that moment of privacy and intimacy and comfort, while she thinks about the way Priest relies on Imuri, emotionally speaking (and we do see how he needed that time alone with Imuri, to be comforted and vulnerable and forgiven. it’s doubtful he would have gotten that had Barbara and Leah followed them).

So here you have Leah prioritizing Priest as a person.

But back in Part 2, Leah did go against Priest’s wishes to respect other people’s privacy, going behind his back and doing her best to collect samples for DNA analysis from both Leviathan and Imuri on the basis of pure suspicion and try to hack Imuri’s phone and laptop.

An example of Leah prioritizing her duty to the Church and the greater good.

So Leah has not fully committed to either thing as of yet, in my opinion.

I have no idea what’s Leah going to do about this situation, or she’s ever going to pick a stance about Priest’s situation, but it’s worthy mentioning that there have been quite a few panels dedicated to her hesitation:

So who knows what her (possible) eventual decision will be.

Her caring about Priest aside, there are other factors that influence her hesitation between the two “choices”: the fact that she’s the only character who doesn’t really use ideological or philosophical arguments to justify herself, her dislike of overriding other people’s agency and even beliefs (to the point she’ll apologize to Barbara for not letting her die, and call it “stabbing her in the back”, because it denied Barbara’s own resolution), her lack of confidence in her own judgment, her belief that she (and thus her actions) is insignificant and inconsequential, her self-perceived debt to the Church (they not only saved her, but her actions caused a domino effect that killed 79 of their exorcists) and consequently, her submissiveness to her superior officers, her great sense of empathy (she’s always listening and watching others, trying to understand multiple sides and people), etc.

Leah is probably the only character who doesn’t implace her values onto Priest, nor does she want nor expects anything from him.

But her occasional passiveness also doesn’t help (though, admittedly, there’s very little she can do to actually help him).

Considering that this is the Sloth arc, I wonder if Leah will be pushed to make a decision (as uncertainty and inaction can sometimes fall under the sin of sloth)…

Sorry for rambling, this was such a long-winded way to say that I don’t know what Leah would choose.

But, regardless of what she chooses, she’d definitely see herself as a betrayer (be it because she chooses the world over her friend, or makes a decision that’d still hurt Priest and choose him over the world).

Thus her placement as the Judas to Mr. Priest’s Jesus in Part 2.