[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

He breaks through the fog—just a little, but more than she’s felt in weeks. It’s a point of clarity that touches her mind, splitting open the clouds and pouring down into her. She nearly blinks against it, nearly feels the saltwater and the brine clear from her mouth so that she can breathe. She can forget in this moment. Forget that she’s broken and beaten and falling apart. Forget that she’s hollowed out.

His eyes go to her lips and her breath hitches, just a little, her heart stuttering to life in her chest. It’s a breath of time. A moment where it flutters wildly at the look in his eyes. An electric shock to her heart that he accomplishes with just a look. With just his presence being so near to her.

The moment stretches, and she wants to get lost in it.

Where she is just a girl and he is just a boy and he is looking at her with liquid heat.

But it snaps and recoils violently when she asks her question and he looks away. She feels herself slipping away again, regret and guilt and that wild, reckless joy falling between her fingertips. Her gaze falls downward, the green and the gold of her eyes dimming as she feels the fog roll back in again.

He asks why she hasn’t healed again and she can’t answer him the way he wants. “I don’t deserve to heal,” she says quietly, her eyes finally looking up again and to the horizon. She deserves to wear this badge of pain and sorrow. She deserves to remind herself about what a fool she is.

But then he asks about her wound and she trembles slightly, remembering that moment when he had found her. When he had risen over her and that rhythm that had once meant love meant something else entirely. Her eyes shutter and she pulls herself inward, finding refuge in the shadows of her heart.

“Don’t make me say it,” she pleads quietly. “I can’t. I can’t make it real.”