[open] molten eyes and a smile made for war; any

[leliana]

I see a ghost out on the water; I swear it has my face
I bend and drink the lonely down, the lonely down

He is all barbs and wire and if the conversation draws blood, she does not show it. She knows him well enough, brief as their conversation was, to recognize a defense when she sees one. She does not hold his guard against him—does not think less of him for needing it. Instead, she simply sees the hurt underneath and the worry within her grows. It is difficult to see him wrestle with demons that he will not discuss, to see him bow beneath the weight of a life that he does not share with others—bearing the yoke alone.

“Sometimes is not enough,” she says quietly, her hazel eyes intent on him, and the meaning clear.

It is not enough for him to be well only sometimes and to be in agony the rest.

It is not enough.

But she doesn’t need to dig further, because he soon coughs up the pain, placing it between them and letting it hang in the air. It sucks the air right out of her lungs, and she inhales sharply. There is not pity in her eyes, but an empathy, a shared pain. “Ah,” she finally says, her lyrical voice cut short, her own eyes bruised. “I know how that feels,” she whispers, as if speaking too loud would make the hurt come back, as if it would manifest in front of her and force her to wrestle with her ghosts in the here and now.

“It doesn’t get easier with time, but you get stronger,” she says, although she is not sure she believes it. Even now, the reminder of it, the memory of it is enough to cut her to the quick. It is enough to make her feel like she is young and in the center of the storm, her body fresh with the bruises and lacerations, her heart aching for that which could never be hers. “And you move on—eventually, in your own way.”

She thinks of Vulgaris and the smooth scales that cover his body. Of his own ghosts in his eyes, the sins that he will not tell her, of the past that he will not share. Her heart aches with want, with the need for him to share that piece of himself, with the need to share it. She always grasped for things outside of her reach. She always loved those that could not be loved—not fully, not in the light, not like she wanted.

(But, still, she loved them. In the shadows. In the quiet.)

“I would say that Noah is good,” she turns with him, allowing the conversation to pivot gracefully, knowing that eventually she would steer it back to his past so that they could take it apart together. So that she could stand beside him and let him unpack it, let him pull out the toxins. But not now. Not in front of his daughter. Not when she is bright eyed and beautiful and finally brave enough to approach.

At her question, Leliana laughs—the sound lilting and soft.

“In my own way,” she gives a conspiratorial grin to the young girl. “Would you like to see?”

I’m gonna stand here in the ache until the levee on my heart breaks