I got a right to be this way; LELIANA

[leliana]

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

The time after—after the fight, after the death, after the way Rhonen crumbled underneath the hooves of the masses—is confusing and complex. She loses herself in the tangles of it. Loses herself in the way that it splinters and fractures. She loses Dovev in the chaos in Pangea. She loses her sister and family. She loses herself, she thinks. She is disoriented with fever, weak from the sudden onslaught of it paired with the exhaustion that runs deep in her bones. Her healing is there, she can feel it still, but it is small and diminished. It is no longer the grand tool she has wielded throughout her life, but it is there.

It will return, she knows. It will come back.

Still, she walks slowly, a frown creasing her brows, her eyes on the ground before her. She does her best to recognize when there are others near so she can step back into the shadows, so she can loop around them, doing her best to stay away from the crowds so they are not endangered by the air that she breathes.

But she doesn’t see him coming.

Doesn’t see him until he’s there and comforting her.

She closes her eyes and breathes in heavily, soothed by his steady presence. “Chaol,” she coughs his name, “you can’t be near me like this.” She tightens her wings around her barrel, twisting her head to the side. “I can’t get you sick too.” But he mentions her daughter and she angles her head back if only slightly, one ear flicked in his direction in the tangled mess of her mane and forelock.

“Adna is safe. She’s in Tephra with my uncle Magnus.”

She pauses and then glances back at him, trying to shift her weight away so that she doesn’t rest so heavily against him. “Can you send her a message for me?” She ignores the way that her heart twists painfully in her chest. “I need someone to find her and tell her that I’m okay but that I can’t be there for a while.” Her eyes drop. “I can’t risk getting her sick, even if Tephra is a safe zone. I need to go try to find a way to heal myself and do what I can to heal others as soon as I’m well enough to.”

She lifts her chin a little to find his gaze.


“Would you do this for me?”

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