04-02-2019, 05:23 PM
" every scar will build my throne. "
All he had to do was breathe the words and she came running, careless and hurrying to lean against her baby brother as he wept. She kissed his tears and cooed soft words until he grew still against her breast. Darling always found herself like this. There was always someone crying out for help and she was always a bleeding heart aching to catch them as they fell. It has cost her so much but she fears her heart may stop beating if she ever stops offering it up on a silver plate. At least with Vulgaris she knows what to expect. She knows the anguish he carries and the torment he will bring, but she embraces it all and smiles so sweetly every time the knife is plunged between her ribs.
She returns to his side when she sees a stranger approaching, all red wings and eyes that hold an ocean of pain behind him. Once false move and all that hurt would come flooding out, she thinks. Vulgaris says nothing to explain who this is but offers her a nervous sideways glance and lowers his head in shame. Just like his father. But she just continues on smiling as she nudges him forward. He swallows hard and obeys as he sulks closer to his (former?) flame. Everything in him wants to wrap her up in his embrace and blanket her skin in delicate kisses but he keeps the space between them for now.
Silence. A thousand different apologies die in his throat and choke him. Darling sighs softly as she steps closer to Leliana. Her eyes are tired but lively as she looks over the scars on her wings, the thin curve of her cheek and the face so tired of crying.
“My name is Darling, Vulgaris’ sister. The eldest of the bunch,” she adds with a light laugh, though something in the corner of her lips hides the glimmer of truth to her words. Not the actual oldest by a long shot, she thinks, and not his sister in the way Shiya was. But she hasn’t reminded Vulgaris of all that just yet. For now, he only knows a handful of family names and he’s told her of the little family he has here in Loess. (Even though their names felt like broken glass across his tongue, he spoke each of his daughter’s names proudly. He fell in love with saying Leliana’s name all over again.)
They must look strange, next to one another. Vulgaris favors their father with his sharp edges and awful teeth all exposed like a crocodile while Darling favors their mother, all soft and summer with the kind of strength you can only learn the hard way. Finally the serpent boy lifts his head enough to meet her gaze fully.
“I.. I thought you left. I had hoped you found something better than.. all this,” he admits as he turns to gesture at Loess, the dungeons, and their past as far as he could remember. “I didn’t want to be king. I didn’t want to be anybody.”
He shakes his head in slow disappointment. His eyes remain trained on something far off from here and this moment, anything but this reality. Darling turns her gaze from him and back to Leliana then as she moves closer to lightly brush her forelock from her face with gentle lips. Her smile grows pained as she tries to gather the right words to make all their ugly past just vanish. But she’s only one woman, pale and weak.
“Some day he’s going to get tired of running, but that doesn’t mean you have to wait for him,” she says softly against the tired girl’s cheek. “Just because you won’t break your back for Vulgaris doesn’t mean you don’t love him.”
VulgariS
