[private] haunted by the ghost of you; dovev

[leliana]

I don't know what I'm supposed to do, haunted by the ghost of you

She doesn’t flinch from him. Even though touch has been so difficult for her lately, she doesn’t flinch when he comes up her side, when he walks slowly up. She exhales slowly and with it, her golden light of healing unspools from her chest. It floods into him and it is nearly a relief to feel it move through her. It is nearly a relief to heal when it has been days since she has tried. It is even more a comfort to follow the usual paths of his body, to trace the veins she knows well, the wounds in all of the familiar spots.

He is not as injured as she has found him before, but she tends to what she does find.

She takes her time, focusing on him instead of the sting of saltwater in her wounds, focusing on him and him alone. Her breathing comes easier when she feels him there and, for the first time in days, she is able to feel the knot in her chest loosen, even a little. So much of her wants to fold into him, wants to collapse into him, bury her face into his mane and smell nothing but the familiar spice of him.

But she knows he is not hers anymore.

Maybe he never was.

The reminder stabs at her and she closes her eyes, breathing through the pain, all the different ways that her life has not turned out the way she expected it to—all the ways she has failed. When she finally opens them again, he is staring at her, and she tries to not think about how much it hurts to look at him. He has seen her wounds, she can tell, but she can’t bring herself to explain to him what happened.

Instead, she searches his face, her eyes bruised and her expression empty.

“How are you and your children, Dov?” She swallows. “And Heartfire. Has she healed?”

She’d rather this pain then having to explain how the rest of her life has crumbled around her.