this is the first day of my life; leliana

[leliana]

I see a ghost out on the water; I swear it has my face
I bend and drink the lonely down, the lonely down

She loves him, but she does not know him—not really.

She loves him, but he withholds from her, gives her only bits and pieces, and like the starved woman that she is, she clings to them, takes the jagged edges and holds them to her breast. 

She knows that there is something about him that is restrained, something about him just out of reach. Dovev had hidden that from her too. He had held back the demons, giving her only the crumbs. Oh, they think that they are protecting her, but instead she feels starved. There is a hint of sadness in her eyes when he silently refuses her ask, but she shakes it away, tucking it away for later, for her to unfold and study.

She was never enough.

Not enough to share everything with.

Not enough to view as a partner in life.

Never enough.

Still, she doesn’t want to burden him, or beg for that which he withholds, and so she wipes the sadness from her gaze, instead gulping in air as she breaches the ocean of her thoughts at the hint of anger in his voice. It stirs something in her—something that reminds her of angry voices and demanding hands and the fury that now crosses Vulgaris’ expression. “No,” the word escapes from her, strained.

“He probably doesn’t even remember me.” None of them do. The bone-armored stallion who stole her heart. The patchwork stallion who loved him and broke her. The mare who had been both his mother and lover. The child without eyes simply born into it all. Leliana, simply caught in between.

What a wicked web had been weaved.

“It doesn’t matter,” she lies, because she wants it to not matter. She wants to not feel so much pain at the memory of it. She wants to guard this love from such shadows. “I’m whole now.”

Another lie.

At his confession, some piece of him that she squirrels away, she sighs, her breath fluttering over the edges of his scales. “Me too,” this time a truth exchanged, her heart rattling in her chest.

Her brows knit at his next words, and she takes them in deep—the serpentine man giving her more now than has ever given her before. How could she be so greedy when he has provided her with all of this? How could she be so selfish? There is part of her that feels shame, and she reproaches herself for ever thinking of asking him for more than he already gave. “I’m yours,” another truth, although she does not know what it means to give him something so broken, so hallowed out when he deserved so much more.

But something in her belly flutters, and her smile turns dreamy as she shifts, the slick scaled wings at her sides lifting slightly in response. “We’re both yours,” she corrects, wondering at the wonder of this.

I’m gonna stand here in the ache until the levee on my heart breaks

@[vulgaris]