- it's in the eyes, i can tell you will always be danger -
we had it tonight, why do we always seek absolution?
LILLIANA
She closes her eyes. It's the easiest way to keep them there - the horrors of her past. She shuts them and keeps them away from herself and Leilan. Her ears flick back and the red mare sighs, using all of her self-control (and her gift) to keep them contained. Frostbane and Underworld have no place in Beqanna. This isn't the time to reminisce about a war that this land knew nothing of (and why would they, when they have had so many of their own?). Lilliana has shed herself of some secrets but these older ones - the ones that lurk in the murk and mire of her soul - stay buried.
Lilliana is determined to keep it that way.
It should be easy to do when there are so many other things to think about. Her children. The proposal to move the kingdom seat to Icicle Isle. Growth and prosperity for Taiga, something that it has long deserved and now needs. It should be easy to think about the many things that they (along with Lethy and Neverwhere) need to speak of. Lilli had intended to keep this conversation only on politics. But instead, Leilan is a mirror. He (ironic, given their first meeting) reflects what Elena had once told her and that's what Lilliana hears when he speaks: Defend your kindness, Lilli.
The chestnut had thought she had understood what Elena had meant, then. That defending her kindness would come from dealing with Ghaul and Draco. That it would come from the moments like one she has just shared with Leilan. Where Lilliana would cast herself on the judgment of others again and again, so they knew her. So that they knew her faults and knew that she was capable of great mistakes. That she couldn't be trusted.
What Leilan says is something that Elena has known all along - from their shared days of laughing rivers and lean, lanky legs. "I never meant for anyone to get hurt," she says, quiet and aching. Lilliana falters with it - an emotion too heavy even for her - and the red woman leans briefly into @[Leilan], her slender shoulder pressing into his for support.
It doesn't last more than a second, and then like a phantom, the touch vanishes. The warmth, if it lasts, is the only haunting reminder that it happened at all.
Their conversation turns with the tide. The Freyr speaks of being asked this question before (by who? she wonders) and Lilliana listens as he speaks of his ambitions. How he stopped wanting things for himself. About how he has left chaos behind him. Leilan doesn't want anything for himself - at least not anymore - but there is nothing in him that shows (or that he says) that he doubts himself either. It emboldens Lilliana who flicks an ear in his direction and follows with a slight turn of her head, peering up at him from beneath her curling forelock. "What has Lethia told you of our aspirations for Taiga?"
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind