I can't get you off my mind; LELIANA

[leliana]

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

She hates herself for how his nearness makes her feel like water is filling her lungs. She hates herself for the way her body responds to it without her consent, the way that her flesh cries out, even the gentlest of touches from him making her throat close up. A tear escapes her and falls softly down her cheek and she dips her head away, attempting to hide it. She doesn’t say anything as he asks her questions, not for a moment at least. She just takes deep breaths of cold air, trying to steady the unease in her bones.

“I-I,” her voice is shaky, and she closes her hazel eyes, “I just don’t think I’m ready.”

It is painful to admit. Painful to acknowledge. Physical affection had always come so easily to her. It has always been her instinct to wrap those she loves and those she barely knows in the glow of her healing and then the warmth of her embrace. She draws them near, presses kisses to their foreheads, slips into their side, curling into them. This loss, the way what has happened has cut this clean from her, is bitter. It is difficult to swallow that it has changed her—that the columns of her heart, of her very being have once again shifted. In the aftermath, she is more guarded, shying away from touch, drowning in it.

When she finally opens her eyes, the gold-green of them are dim, but she still fights for the barest hint of a smile. It takes everything in her to shed the weight of her grief when she turns her attention to her daughter. She does not want Malca to be born with a shell of a mother. She does not want her to not have the same love that Adna and Sabbath had. She does not want these circumstances to deny her that.

Her face warms slightly when she looks down at her daughter, as Malca moves to feed once more, but as soon as her daughter looks way, the mask of it falls away again. She is a shell, she thinks. She was once full of love and laughter—a depthless well. She has found the bottom.

“I am tired,” she answers, unable to say the full truth.

@[Chaol]