and you say that i hurt you in a voice like a prayer, leliana

[leliana]

I waited for something, and something died
so I waited for nothing, and nothing arrived

Everything has emptied out of her—and yet when she looks at him, she feels it flood through her all the same. Her heart constricts in her chest and she wonders at how she has more love to give to him still, how he has so easily crushed her heart before, obliterating it to dust in his palm, and how she would gladly give him the opportunity to do it again. Her eyes trace his handsome face, the way he won’t look her way and she wants to break before him, wants to apologize, wants to beg for a forgiveness she doesn’t need.

She wants to bridge the gap between them but she remains rooted.

Shiya’s words echo in her ears, the fear, the doubt, the agony and she finds she cannot move. Cannot try to reach for him and comfort him. Cannot turn and finally leave him alone.

Instead, she remains still, eyes dropping when he confesses that he doesn’t know where to begin. She doesn’t either. She has no idea how to go about fixing this—to even try to repair the chasm that has opened up between them. But he’s talking again and her eyes lift, uncertain, bruised. The words are everything she has ever hoped she would hear from him, everything that she’s ever wanted. Her stomach twists with dangerous hope, stabbing in her belly at the mere idea of it, blossoming into thorns.

His lips find her cheek and a soft whimper leaves her, eyes closing as she leans into his touch, endlessly greedy for it. “Vulgaris,” she tests his name again, wondering at how it tastes like salvation, at how it soothes the rawness in her throat. She knows she should push him away. She knows she should protect him from this disease that tangles in her veins. She knows she should protect her family from Shiya.

From this darkness that spreads around him.

But she can’t.

She just can’t.

Instead she folds into his chest, mouth lingering on his scales and then travels up the powerful curve of his neck to his jaw. She is so hungry, she thinks. So hungry for all of him. For the way that he can flood into her life and build her up again. She craves it, all of it, and her gentle kisses turn greedy for a moment, feasting on this moment that she hadn’t expected. Her teeth skim over his flesh, and her breath goes slightly ragged before she pulls away to press her forehead into his neck, still intertwined with him.

“I don’t want to leave you,” she whispers, her voice huskier than usual. She kisses his neck again, roaming over it, uncaring to the consequences, wholly selfish in the way that she wants to devour him, in the way that she wants to sink into him. “I never wanted to leave you, Vulgaris. I never wanted to leave.”

There’s a pause, her breath catching in her throat. “But I have to keep our family safe.” She closes her eyes. “Shiya,” the word tastes like poison, the wicked words of his snake sister twisting around in her.

“She threatened our girls. I can’t let her hurt them just because I am too selfish to give you up.”

it's our dearest ally, it's our closest friend
it's our darkest blackout, it's our final end