[private] haunted by the ghost of you; dovev

[leliana]

leliana

she said “oh, I know that love is all about the wind
how it can hold me up and kill me in the end”

What Leliana wouldn’t give to go back to those times.

What she wouldn’t give for but a momentary do-over—a chance to get it right.

It flashes in her eyes, across her features, that painful desire to find the start once more. To be nothing but the calm one watching her comet of a sister light up the night sky. To be nothing but a shy healer walking through crowds and easing wounds, suppressing hurts wherever she could find them.

But such a girl is a long ways away from who she is now, from what she has become.

And, despite it all, she finds that she cannot regret it. She cannot regret the hurt and the ache and the way she has fallen so deeply in love, her beautiful daughters. She will never regret what brought them alive.

She doesn’t expect his sudden movement, even when she saw that sudden and dangerous shift in his eyes, and she inhales sharply as he presses into her. She folds to her knees because she doesn’t have the strength to stand up against him and she closes her eyes, a frown building between her brows and tension pulling at the edges of her mouth. She trembles against the violence and the sudden wave of panic that it brings in her—the panic that sears through the fog, the rare anger that is suddenly sparked into life.

“No,” she says, and the word is almost a whisper, a soft murmur, a moan. Then suddenly: “No.” Firmer, her eyes opening and something like steel glinting beneath them. “No!” and she pushes against him. Tears fall down her cheeks. “No, you don’t get to lecture me. You don’t get to talk down to me.”

Her expression is raw, her injured wing clung tight to her sides. “I have never been enough, Dovev. Never.” Her voice trembles and then finds its feet, growing more and more steady. “Not for you. Not for Vulgaris. Never.” She shakes her head, her own words finding purchase in her chest.

“All I have ever done is love you and watched you love others. Watched as the ones I loved most walked away or turned into someone I don’t recognize anymore. You don’t get to lecture me for trying to find some piece of joy.” More tears, her thin face shaking as she gasps for air, shaking and struggling for oxygen. She opens her mouth and then closes it, closing her eyes as she fights for clarity. “All I have ever wanted was a family. I wanted the kind of family I never had as a child. I wanted children.”

The fight leaks from her and she sinks down into the water, the sudden outburst draining her.

“I thought I could find it. I thought I had found it.”

She closes her hazel eyes as a tear falls down her cheek and she listens to the sound of the tide.