this is all of me for all the world to see; leliana

[leliana]

I know what it is but I'm hoping that all is well
no harvest of green but it's still my heart to sell

His words were firm, harsh, and perhaps part of her would have been cowed by them, but she doesn’t. She steps back as he does, her eyes finding his, searching them. “I could never leave you,” the words hung in the air, but she remained distant. “It’s never been an option for me.” Even when she was his second choice, even when he had turned from her—even when every inch of her rebelled against this all.

She had lost that choice a long time ago.

“I—I told you, Dovev.” Another tear falling down her cheek. “I love you.” She drew a steadying breath, swallowing. “Even if you…only care for me. I still love you.” Even when she didn’t know him—at least not all of him. She still didn’t know the full truth of his love with Cerva. She didn’t know why he had lost his memory or why his body was always broken and battered whenever she found him. There were things that he kept distant from her, but it didn’t matter, because she had loved him from the very first.

But their privacy was shattered when the gold stallion and the filly approached. “Magnus,” the word barely left her mouth before she focused on the child, and she exhaled suddenly, the air whooshing out of her mouth. “Oh,” her healing reached forward for the child, wrapped around her, through her, but other than a few minor aches, a few minor bruises, there was nothing for her to heal. She couldn’t bring her eyes back, couldn’t bring her mother back. Her magic was powerless in this situation. She was useless.

“Your daughter,” she knew the truth of it, but still it stung, and she glanced away to look at Dovev for a moment, grief clear in the lines of her face. She looked to Atrani, and her heart shattered in her chest, the pain radiating throughout her. “I am so sorry,” the words were soft but in the silence, they carried.

“I am so sorry.”

What had she done?

I put everything I had into something that didn't grow
like going on a wild hunt, shooting arrows without a bow