"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
take me, take me back to your bed. i love you so much that it hurts my head.
say, i don't mind you under my skin. oh, let the bad parts in, the bad parts in.
He’d wandered off the mountain, stumbling and confused as to where he was even going to or where he had come from in the first place. Now he idly searches the forests for some sort of clue as to what he should be doing but he swears he’s passed this clearing at least a hundred times. How many days has he been lost in here? Any time he tries to remember anything, though, it feels like his head might split open from the agony of it. He’s become content not to recall anything at all.
His body is riddled with scrapes and scratches. Splashes of dried mud cling to his legs and oxidized blood smears across his lips from an earlier meal. Who knows what he ate, in all honesty. Maybe it was a deer, maybe it was a child. (Does he have children? He shrinks from the question in fear of another blinding flash of pain punishing him.) But then there is a sound of someone nearby and he supposes it would be worth his time to investigate. Not like he has anything better to do.
When his eyes see the delicate curves of her body, something tries to rear its head from the depths of all those memories locked up tight in the recesses of his mind. Something about the red of her reminds him of happiness. Red like passion, he thinks, but a dull ache threatens him not to continue down that path. Red like desire, he decides when he moves closer to her. He’s so careful to be quiet as he keeps his head low, eyes trained on the slope of her hips greedily. Even the idea of their skin meeting sets him on fire with want and hunger.
The moment consumes him entirely as he lifts himself up on top of her, holding her tight with his legs resting just past her hips. His teeth find the base of one wing to keep her beneath him as he forces himself inside her. The copper of her blood pours across his tongue and down his chin as he has his way with her, brutal and uncaring of her body. It feels like an eternity before he’s done, a shiver of satisfaction racing up his spine. His jaws slowly release her abused wing and he slides off of her at last. A sheen of sweat coats his body as he tries to catch his breath, but he’s careful not to look at her now.
Somehow, this feels wrong despite the monstrous flood of want when he saw her. There is still some other fraction of him crying out with need but he doesn’t know how to answer its call as its howling turns mournful. The taste of her blood turns bitter in his mouth.
I don't know what I'm supposed to do, haunted by the ghost of you
For days, Leliana has felt a tightening in her chest—a swelling that grew increasingly uncomfortable. She felt a itch between her shoulder blades, a nervous flutter that spoke to things to come, an emptiness in her belly that hasn’t made sense. She hasn’t been able to shake it, even when she argued with herself that it was nothing. But today, that tightening is a skittering of nerves over her flesh, a static electricity that keeps her roaming around her home, wondering at the ache in her bones and the weeping wounds.
She doesn’t see him coming.
Later, she would wonder if it would have been easier if she had.
Instead, she feels him first and her face goes slack with surprise. He has always been so gentle with her, so caring—never once forceful. Her mind goes blank as she tries to argue that it is merely passion; her body goes stiff, her muscles locking. But the argument leaks from her as the time continues to stretch thin. The violence escalates and she bites her lips to keep from crying out when his teeth sink into her wing.
They remain serpentine. This remains surreal.
Tears begin to fall down her cheeks as the reality of the last few years begins to shatter beneath his brutal touch. This happiness she has erected, to have knocked down, to build up, crumples beneath his weight. She wasn’t meant for the happy family, she thinks as her blood floods his mouth. She was such a fool to think that she had ever deserved that—that she would ever deserve such a thing. She was such a fool.
He slides off her back and her legs tremble, her knees threaten to give out, but she doesn’t fall. Her head drops, the curtain of red of her mane falling forth and shielding her face. “Why?” her voice is small and quiet, her stomach clenching, her battered wing held close to her. Tears continue to fall softly down her cheeks as she swallows hard, trying to gather her some sense of stability. “I don’t understand.”
take me, take me back to your bed. i love you so much that it hurts my head.
say, i don't mind you under my skin. oh, let the bad parts in, the bad parts in.
The piece of him that remembers her, that adores the way she smells when she’s pressed tight against him and the perfect light in her laughter, is raging now as it slams its fists against stone walls. He can feel something within him demanding justice but he remains oblivious to the details of it. Instead, he casts a sideways glance at her as she begs the question of why. He blinks slowly, asking himself the very same as the depth of her misery begins to creep its way into him. Why did he want her? Why did he lose control just from the feel of her body against his? It made no sense to be this ravenous for her when everything else seemed so gray and bland to him.
The forlorn shards of his memories command him closer to her where he can press his lips to her neck. It feels like this used to be the right thing to do, before today perhaps, but now it is horribly wrong. He steps back and tries to fit the pieces together with little success. Vulgaris begins to take a thousand foot leap, nose diving straight into all those broken pieces of who he used to be. Let them slice him open and butcher him.
“I think.. I need you. But you need.. to stay away from me,” he says, brows wrinkled as he tries to think but remains without answers to give her. “I can’t remember. I can’t remember. I can’t…”
His head begins to pound as the past tries to flood into him and he winces at the pain, backing further from her now. He can’t ask her for help, not after what he’s done. The confusion clouds everything and he turns to run from this god awful storm of emotions as they threaten to devour him whole. She is something pure and perfect, he tells himself in the hopes that he’ll remember next time. If there is a next time. She is something that he must stay far away from. His chest feels tight as he flees from this place, gasping for breath.
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