i feel a bad moon rising | any

[leliana]

Leliana

Leliana doesn’t bother to correct her or even contradict her. She would rather that her endings be perfect too, but she learned a long time ago that happiness in her life would be fleeting. She had moments of it, to be sure. She had beautiful, shining moments where it seemed that it would last forever—that she would be able to bask in the sunlight of her joy for the rest of her life—but they never lasted. Each and every one of them was accompanied by its own sunset and then the darkest of nights—the longest of midnights.

Which makes this brief interlude of peace all the more sweet, all the more terrifying.

So she doesn’t say anything, just falling into silence after her apology and then watching as the other mare begins to glow with joy. A brief frown flutters across her features—uncertainty about why Lepis would be so happy when she bore such sad news—but it is quickly chased with the dawning of the same understanding. After all, did she not feel the same joy when she realized that Vulgaris had not been acting of his own accord but because his memories had been wiped? Did the sorrow not also come with relief?

Her frown waivers slightly but a smile does not follow because Lepis is quickly following the trail of her own logic to its next conclusion—to one that does not come with such joy, with relief.

She takes an instinctive step forward and then, remembering herself, stops.

She swallows and shakes her head. “I haven’t given up hope,” she whispers, feeling her own beat wildly in her chest. “I would have given anything to have someone trying to help Vulgaris when Carnage dipped into his mind and replaced him with someone I did not recognize.” She would have given anything to have someone there to help Dovev too, but such things go unsaid. “I failed the first time but that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing that can’t be done. I want to help, Lepis. I want to be able to do something.”

but there you go again, turning golden, right there in front of me