You Can't Save the Spider *and* the Butterfly

Oh my god trying to find an excuse for Morrigan of all people to be lost in the woods and Leliana finding her? Wow. Also, as much as I love purple!Hawke of either gender, I get the distinct impression he wouldn’t  impress Morrigan as much as he impresses himself. :p

“Aren’t Witches of the Wilds supposed to, you know, be able to navigate the wilderness?”

Morrigan twitched mentally as she stepped over a twisted mass of roots. She considered, for the briefest moment, allowing the branch she’d held out of the way with her own staff snap back behind her as she passed so that it might strike him in the face and put an end to such japes. She’d tried once already, perhaps an hour ago, to throw him back with a quick telekinetic burst but he’d sensed what she was doing and managed to shield himself before she could finish the spell.

“You never answered me, you know,” he prompted as he passed over the same root cluster she had a moment earlier.

“Nor do I intend to, fool.”

His footsteps quickened, and she cursed herself silently for replying. “I might be a fool, but I wasn’t the one tricked into answering just now,” he laughed, catching up to her. “But really, the question stands. Shouldn’t you be able to turn into a bird or a wolf or something and sniff the way out of this forest?”

“’Tis not a forest I’ve previously been to, you idiot, so no. And since we don’t know which way the nearest exit is, we are going to continue in one direction until we come across a road or settlement. Then, you can go your way and I can be free of you.”

“You could also be free of me if you’d teach me how your mother becomes a dragon. Then I could carry you to the next settlement, leave you to go about your way, and I can go do dragon things.”

“For the last time, there is no such thing as your imagined dragon things! I swear, between the Warden’s obsession with griffons and yours with dragons… How in the Void did either of you function before being saved by my blasted mother?”

He turned to bow floridly to her, even while he still walked (now backwards) through the wood. “With charm, of course,” he grinned. The grin gave way to panic less than a heartbeat later as his heel caught against another snarl of roots, sending him ass-first into the dirt. “And some bruises, I suppose,” he added wryly as he picked himself back up again.

But Morrigan was no longer listening to him, if she’d even listened to begin with. There were voices ahead, and the lilting accent of one of those voices was disturbingly familiar. She crept ahead, cautious, pausing behind a bit of bramble when the trail and the two women came into sight. Sunlight reflected off the first’s coppery hair, and just as she had so many years ago, she alternated between speech and gentle humming almost without thought.

Morrigan knew these Chantry women were hunting the both Warden and this buffoon, and that so long as the former bard didn’t recognize her she could turn her charge over to them and be on her way. But there was a crashing a few dozen yards down the trail, and after a few moments her companion broke through the underbrush and into the narrow little road.

“Morrigan, I found the road!” The poor fool seemed so proud of himself. “Wait, Sister Nightingale?”

“…Hawke? And did you say Morrigan?!”

The other woman with Leliana—the Seeker—stormed forward and immediately began to lay into Hawke, simultaneously blaming him for the events in Kirkwall and asking for his help resolving the situation that had developed from them. Leliana, on the other hand, was scanning the tree line for any sign of her old companion.

“Hawke, when you called out to Morrigan, did you mean… Our Morrigan? The one who traveled with the Warden, like I did?”

Hawke shrugged. “So she says. Doesn’t look much like Flemeth other than the gold eyes, though. She’s right—”

But when he turned to point her out, he realized she was already gone.