He is the only one that made her feel any kind of beautiful in this strange body of hers, the only one she ever believed. Mother had tried to help her understand, to help her see this as a gift, as a second chance. That she was no more strange than any of the flowers in her secret garden home. But it is a mother's job to say those things whether they are true or not, to build up her daughter so that she never falls low enough to doubt her worth, her purpose. It didn’t mean Leliana ever lied to her, or that every word she ever spoke was anything but the honest truth. It just made it harder to believe when it came from a place of such beautiful, unmatchable bias.
Perhaps it was a love she had taken for granted.
But Nikolaus had never tried to build her up, never soothed her with the things he knew she needed to hear. He had come through the portal through Leliana’s power, and he had looked at her with such vulnerable, honest relief. It seemed the only thing he ever saw was her, like he could see right through any skin she ever wore to the heart that lived inside it, to the soul itself. He has always seen her for more than she ever fully understood, seen the depths that even she had not fully unearthed in her fear of finding something unrecognizable.
She watches him now like there is nothing else in the world worth knowing, like the only thing that could ever matter is right here with her where it always belonged. She watches him tense, watches the striations of muscle along his jaw as he clenches his teeth in a way that reminds her of his deepest agonies after coming through Leliana’s portal. She knows it is a signal of pain, but as those pink tourmaline eyes fill with worry and search every inch of this grown version of her Nikolaus, she can find nothing physically amiss. He is perfect, as he always was, and for once she is glad that there is no blood to heat her cheeks.
His eyes lift and she is quite suddenly, and so willingly, pinned in place by a swirl of silver that every star in every sky would be jealous of. Does he know how beautiful he is? Can he tell that she still loves him? She smiles when he speaks, and it is like her body is held hostage by him because she cannot remember giving her wooden lips permission to find that old, familiar shape again. But his words take her back in time to a memory that is, in equal parts, perfect and painful. To a boy returned to her from the edge of the world, but returned so broken that even her magician mother had struggled to put him back together.
It hurts to remember how close the healing had come to breaking him.
She takes a step closer, and then a few more, flowing with more grace than should be possible for a beast so made of wood and bark and crooked branch. But she stops before she is close enough to reach out and touch him, because she knows she cannot trust herself not to. “Well,” she says, and those petal pink eyes settle against his face like shedding spring blossoms, “that’s because my bark has always been so much worse than my bite.” And then, because she cannot stop the feelings that flow from her, “Please don't go, Nikolaus. I don't want you to be a ghost anymore.”
linnea
these wildfires grow and grow until a brand new world takes shape
