#my fave parts are the bit about cata's nicknames for people - 'morri' vs 'zev lel anni' etc.

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

a short scene post-Redcliffe, pre-Battle of Denerim. Catalina Tabris finally comes to conflict with Morrigan over an issue; ironically, not over the “I need to sleep with your boyfriend as part of a magic ritual” issue.

A day’s walk to Denerim remains when they stop late into the night. They will be awakened early in the morning and so no one speaks or wastes time pitching a tent. Morrigan has moved her bedroll away from the rest of them, as she always does, when the dog sticks his head into her pack and pulls out a satchel of herbs, and with a bark, soft muffled by the herbs but also presumably out of courtesy so as to not disturb anyone else. Morrigan stops him before he gets far. It seems a halfhearted teasing of her now, and he slinks away toward Alistair’s bedroll, and she turns back to her own to see Catalina sitting crosslegged on it. “Hey,” she says, fiddling with her necklace, still not meeting Morrigan’s eyes.

They have not really spoken since Redcliffe.

“Your warden strength will only do you so much good without sleep,” Morrigan says. Catalina’s elven eyes in the dark glow like some beast of the wilds, fixed impassively on Morrigan.

“You don’t gotta leave,” Catalina says.

Morrigan hoped they would not have this conversation. Against her better judgment, she sits, lowering herself to equal ground. “I am here now, am I not? I am not leaving.”

Catalina snorts. “Not now y'ain’t. But soon as we crack the archdemon’s skull, poof, you turn into a crow and wing off and then you’re a giant spider hiding with all the other giant spiders and your kid grows up sleeping in cobweb hammocks and doesn’t know that his mama’s human.” She looks at her hands. “If it’s not some kinda monster worse'n a giant spider.”

“It will be a child,” Morrigan says, “as any other.” She thinks. Mostly.

“Will it be like Wynne?” Catalina asks. “Like - thing in her head? Like that? ‘Cept it’s a sodding Old God and not a nice spirit.”

“No spirit is nice,” Morrigan corrects. “They are manifestations of attributes that can be corrupted or amoral as anything else may be.” It is something she has told Catalina before, answers to her endless inquiries about magic that she directed at Morrigan to avoid any taint of Chantry bias. It is something that Catalina has not quite grasped.

“Faith saved Wynne,” Catalina says. “Faith’s good.”

Her open-mindedness was something that Morrigan once appreciated, and still often does, but in times such as these she takes it too far into stubborn naivety. She bears the scars of human cruelty and continues to trust blindly. It is so frustrating and in some way admirable. If not for it, Alistair would never have accepted Morrigan, not when they first left Flemeth’s hut so long ago and not in Redcliffe so recently.

“As you insist,” Morrigan says. It is not a matter worth argument at this time. “If I were to guess, I would imagine that the Old Gods were much like powerful spirits, amoral and influenced by the will of those who believed in them.”

“And since it’s Tevinters who’re shit, Old Gods turned to shit too.”

“That is the idea,” Morrigan says.

They both sit there in silence. The rest of the camp is quiet. Morrigan does not know whether anyone is listening or not.

“But you still don’t gotta leave,” Catalina repeats. “You don’t… don’t gotta be like your mother, hide away from everyone.”

“And how much of what you do, how you have become, is like your mother?” Morrigan asks. Catalina’s eyes go wide and she turns her head away, looking down at her hands twisted together in her lap. “Could you so easily turn away from the path she set you upon? Is the person she raised you to be not who you are?”

“S'different. Nothing ‘bout being alone all my life but for my child.”

“And if I told you that is a life I am okay with living?”

“I ain’t okay with you living like that,” Catalina says, staring sharply up at Morrigan again. “You gonna tell me honestly? Really? After all this you want to go back to that life?”

“And what do you propose I do instead?” Morrigan snaps. This is a moment when she does not appreciate Catalina’s stubborn naivety. She should learn when to let go of people. Of Morrigan. “Do you truly think that this is the life that we - that you - shall continue to live after the blight? You do not think that Leliana will return to a cloister, Zevran to Antiva, Sten to Par Vollen, Wynne to her Circle? They shall not stay with you. Why can you not let me go as you will them?”

Catalina frowns. “Haven’t really talked about 'after,’ an’ they wouldn’t be talking 'live away from society an’ everyone and never see anyone again ever’ like y'are.”

“Society is full of Chantry influenced fools who would never be so accepting of anything I do as you are,” Morrigan says. “How do you -”

“Morri,” Catalina sighs.

Morrigan hates it - hates her, when she says her name like that. Morri, her name truncated like a child’s speech, in the same way that Catalina called her cousin in the alienage Anni rather than Shianni, the same way that everyone in the alienage called her Cata. It is the way that she says Zev and Lel, something so familiar and familial, far too affectionate for Morrigan to easily become used to. She wishes that she had not become used to it. She should have held her distance.

“How do you propose that I keep myself and the child safe from the Templars?” Morrigan asks, resuming the thought after too long of a hesitation. She can see that Catalina looks triumphant, like Morrigan’s silence was wavering resolve. “What would you have me do, live in Denerim and raise the king’s bastard child in the shadow of his palace, living as his secret mistress behind the throne in the same manner as you yourself plan to live?”

Catalina flinches. Morrigan swallows the small stab in her heart. If Catalina says, you know what, fuck you for that, bye, and walks away from this conversation, it will be so much easier. She will let Morrigan leave without protest if she hates her.

“Grey Warden mages can live free of Templars,” Catalina says. She does not remark further upon the jab, but she closes her eyes like she is still struggling with the sting of it. “I tell 'em you’re with me, with the wardens, and they leave you alone.”

“I will live in no one’s debt,” Morrigan says, raising her head higher, trying to glare down at Catalina as best she can. “I will ask no one to protect me.”

“Wouldn’t be a debt. We’d be even, if you save me and Alistair from the archdemon, and we keep the Templars away, it’d be fair, no one owes anything…” She looks at Morrigan with wide eyes, a plea. “You can’t live all on your own.”

“I can and I shall,” Morrigan says sternly. “And you shall not follow,” she repeats. “Ever.”

Catalina shakes her head. “Can’t promise that, Morri.”

You are a stubborn fool, Morrigan wants to say, but to criticize Catalina only makes her double down on whatever decision she has made. She does not let go. She will not, and judging by the look on her face through the dark, a kind of sadness that Morrigan has barely seen matched, there is no way for Morrigan to do as she must without breaking her friend’s heart.

“Don’t gotta be like this,” Catalina says, and Morrigan wonders if the first word that she has dropped from her sentence is you or it. You do not have to be this way or It does not have to be this way.

But either way - “This is how it has to be,” Morrigan says. Catalina shakes her head but does not lodge another verbal protest. She looks tired suddenly, so tired, and Morrigan does not want her to fall asleep right here. She would have to find and use Catalina’s bedroll instead of her own, and Catalina’s most likely smells of dog. She almost says, mostly because she is sure that it would get Catalina to concede, I am sorry, but she bites her tongue on the apology. She has never made one and she will not begin now. “Do not waste your energy fighting this battle that you cannot win. You must save it for the coming battles that we must win.”

Catalina snorts, blowing strands of hair out of her face, but she stands without another word and walks away. Morrigan watches her fade into the darkness. She will try again tomorrow, undoubtedly. She will force Morrigan to disappear without a goodbye as soon as the dust of the battle settles or else be trapped in more arguments such as this forever. Maybe that, to vanish without a word, will finally make Catalina hate Morrigan enough to let her go.