10-25-2018, 01:09 AM
Vulgaris
In a way, he understands. He choked all his emotions down whenever they bloomed and told himself that he didn’t deserve that kind of happiness. Any time his heart rattled its cage, he beat it into submission and left it too bruised to ever feel some semblance of love again. Because monsters don’t know how to love and they shouldn’t pretend they do. Of course he asked Leliana to love him for just a night – he knew that alone was more than he could ever deserve from an angel like her. But she came looking for him and she breathed life into the mangled pieces of him that he buried in the back yard.
He can hear her crying and it hurts worse than having his face ripped open, he realizes. Who is Shiya? The question makes his stomach knot itself until he can hardly breathe and so he says nothing. When she speaks again, he pauses and answers without looking back at her because he knows he’ll give in.
“You are perfect, Leliana. I don’t know how to love someone like you,” he says and for once he’s telling the truth. She’s the golden light of morning and he’s the black depths of silent oceans. They were never meant to know one another, let alone fall in love. Monsters like him found other abominations and simply reproduced, turned the ancient wheel of time until they died. Monsters like him were meant to be forgotten while she was born to be memorialized.
When she says his name this time, it sounds like a bullet wound and it rips straight through him. Maybe Shiya wouldn’t try to eat Adna but he would never take even the slightest risk when it came to her. He’d slaughter all seventy of his brothers and sisters before he let anyone harm her. But she deserves a home where that’s the furthest thing from her mind.
He turns his head to watch her from the edge of his vision and he forces himself to speak. “I can’t ever see her again. I can’t let anything happen to her or you.” Vulgaris replays their mornings on loop in his head. “I love you both too much to ask you to stay.”
He sinks deeper into the tar-black pit of himself and drowns in the familiar ache of being alone. It hurts worse than before he met her but he doesn’t fight the way it floods his lungs and hurts all the way into his ribs. But the sounds of her sobs draw him to her without him realizing. His lips find her cheek in their old familiar way before he curls his head over her neck.
“I’m nothing without you but I’ll die a thousand deaths before I let anyone hurt you. That’s why you have to go.”
He can hear her crying and it hurts worse than having his face ripped open, he realizes. Who is Shiya? The question makes his stomach knot itself until he can hardly breathe and so he says nothing. When she speaks again, he pauses and answers without looking back at her because he knows he’ll give in.
“You are perfect, Leliana. I don’t know how to love someone like you,” he says and for once he’s telling the truth. She’s the golden light of morning and he’s the black depths of silent oceans. They were never meant to know one another, let alone fall in love. Monsters like him found other abominations and simply reproduced, turned the ancient wheel of time until they died. Monsters like him were meant to be forgotten while she was born to be memorialized.
When she says his name this time, it sounds like a bullet wound and it rips straight through him. Maybe Shiya wouldn’t try to eat Adna but he would never take even the slightest risk when it came to her. He’d slaughter all seventy of his brothers and sisters before he let anyone harm her. But she deserves a home where that’s the furthest thing from her mind.
He turns his head to watch her from the edge of his vision and he forces himself to speak. “I can’t ever see her again. I can’t let anything happen to her or you.” Vulgaris replays their mornings on loop in his head. “I love you both too much to ask you to stay.”
He sinks deeper into the tar-black pit of himself and drowns in the familiar ache of being alone. It hurts worse than before he met her but he doesn’t fight the way it floods his lungs and hurts all the way into his ribs. But the sounds of her sobs draw him to her without him realizing. His lips find her cheek in their old familiar way before he curls his head over her neck.
“I’m nothing without you but I’ll die a thousand deaths before I let anyone hurt you. That’s why you have to go.”
" ancient language, speak through fingers. the awful edges where you end and i begin. "