She is so selfishly in love with the moment he turns and sees her, and she promises herself that she will remember every single detail of it for the rest of her life, no matter what happens next. It is the way his beautiful silver eyes go wide, the way his mouth opens with a shock she understands intimately. The way he inhales sharply and all she can do is smile at him like she is made of porcelain and frozen in this perfect moment of pure joy.
He moves to her, and she is too distracted at first to notice the evenness of his stride, too busy pressing herself into the warmth of his body and laughing beneath his kisses which feel so different without the thickness of cool bark between them. She touches him everywhere, her lips to the corner of his mouth and to his jaw, to the curve of his neck and down to his chest, and it is so impossible to do anything but breathe raggedly and smile and fight back the tears that always ride the wake of such wild emotions.
“I don’t know.” She says, exclaims, breathes out into the warmth of his cheek. “I don’t know!” Because suddenly her thoughts have fled her and all she can do is revel in the impossibility that she is flesh again. That she is warm and soft and alive like she hasn’t been in years, and that he is whole and steady and there is no stumble in his steps as she leans into the curve of his waiting body.
It is enough to make her forget that he had left her and she had vowed to forget him. But as she remembers that truth and pauses long enough to pull back and look at his face, listen to the vow in the quiet tone of his voice, she realizes that it is a past she is willing to let go of. That nothing matters as much as the way he presses his head into the curve of her neck and she leans around to kiss him softly. There are broken pieces in her chest, things shattered by him and by her and by a life that always seemed to happen too roughly, but she knows that in moments like these she can begin to heal.
She gentles again, and her now plain brown eyes soften with affection as she reaches to trace the crest of his neck all the way down to his shoulder, where she settles with a whispered exhale. “Why did you come back, Nikolaus?” She wonders without criticism, marvelling at how out of place the question feels when whispered beneath a warm sun and between two entirely whole bodies.
And then, though she is careful not to let too much of the tension build beneath her dappled gray skin, “Do you think this is true death?” True, as opposed to before when Leliana had yanked her back from the brink. “I wouldn’t mind.” She tells him quickly, in case he is worried that she is scared. “I’m just glad to be here with you. You are all I’ve ever wanted.” Her voice grows quiet with this whispered promise, and she presses it to his withers with a kiss.
linnea
these wildfires grow and grow until a brand new world takes shape
@[nikolaus]