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  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


    this is the first day of my life; leliana
    #1
    Vulgaris
    "  when she's coming for my heart it feels like armageddon. "

    The moon is nothing more than a sliver of white in the night sky that offers only a little light to the land below. His moss green eyes watch as navy-black clouds lazily drift over the moon and stars. Vulgaris is restless, tossing and turning in his every attempt at sleep even as the hours creep into a very early morning. An agitated sigh leaves him as he rises from the ground. Tonight will bring him no respite from all the anxious thoughts plaguing him so he might as well return to the river to see what other sleepless creatures have gathered there.

    In truth, there is some latent piece of him that is incessantly drawn to Leliana. He does not mean to seek her out again so soon but the night feels so cold without anyone against his side. The serpent boy imagines what she’ll look like when their child grows too large to hide from curious onlookers. Will it have her hopeful eyes? His cheeks burn hot when he thinks of these things and he’s glad no one is speaking to him yet or he might trip over his words. After tucking all these precious questions somewhere deep into the belly of his heart, he lifts his head to examine those around him.

    There, in the distance, he sees her dark red mane twisting and curling in the light breeze. His heart flutters for a moment before he steels himself against such frailty.

    Vulgaris continues forward, meandering as though his path will not inevitably lead to her unless by chance. He approaches her from behind and feigns surprise at the recognition halfway through passing her by.

    Leliana, are you alone?” he asks as he turns to face her. His lips briefly kiss at the delicate place where her jaw meets her neck before he pulls back. Too eager, he thinks. Too vulnerable. All his softness retreats from his skin and burrows deep beneath his ribs where it knows it is safe. Still, some glimmer of warmth curls the corner of his lips into a grin. Perhaps she cannot see it in the darkness of the night.
    @[leliana]
    Reply
    #2

    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


    She cannot pretend that she has not thought of him.

    She cannot lie, even to herself, and say that he has not permeated her thoughts—her dreams turning serpentine in the way that the curve and turn onto themselves. There is something within her growing, she can feel it, the barest beginning of something that her gift curls protectively around. It is nothing but a seed now, nothing but the beginning of hope, and she holds it tight, clutching the idea of a child to her breast in earnest. She has longed for a child since she herself was one. She has longed to be a mother.

    And now, this man of scales and fangs, has gifted it to her.

    So, of course, she thinks of him.

    Of course she dreams of him.

    So perhaps it is not surprising that her thoughts are lingering on him as she stands near the river once more, the night air cool as it ruffles the crimson mane from her neck. She thinks of the strangeness of him,  the alien beauty, the darkness that seems to slip so closely to the surface. She thinks of the way her flesh broke open before his hunger, the skin splitting so quickly and the blood welling to the surface. It should scare her more than it does. The violence in him, the need—but it doesn’t. Instead, her pulse races.

    It races even more when she feels his touch, a shiver racing up her spine in response.

    It doesn’t bother her that he has stumbled upon her by happenstance, and she is not wounded by the faux surprise in his eyes. Instead, all she feels is the blossoming of something strange in her chest, her lovely face washed silver in the moonlight. “Vulgaris,” her mouth lingers on all of the syllables, drawing them out like honey as she greets him. “I am,” she is always alone, she thinks. For someone who longs for companionship, it is surprising how often she finds herself here: left to her own thoughts. “Are you?”

    There is a part of her, bruised and battered and scarred, that expects another on his heels.

    It’s what life has taught her, after all.

    She doesn’t show such fears, such trembling insecurities, but neither does she reach for him the way that she wants to—the desire to trace his scaled neck bubbling in her veins. Her wings respond to his closeness by shifting, turning scaled and snakelike, pressing into her still-slender sides. Instead of letting her velvet mouth trace the shape of him, her hazel eyes trace the lines that draw up his face before coming to rest on his gaze, holding it as the silence between them grows, pulsing with things left unsaid.

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



    @[vulgaris]
    [Image: avatar-1975.gif]
    the heaviness in my heart belongs to gravity
    Reply
    #3
    Vulgaris
    "  when she's coming for my heart it feels like armageddon. "

    He wonders if she would be angry to know he was a father before he knew her. Are his sins any less if he swore she would be the last, though? Shame covers him like a cloak and he finds himself avoiding her eyes at the thought of how many children he’s senselessly fathered. Nothing ever filled up all that empty inside him and his heart is still as dark as they day he first killed. Still, there is a pinprick of light left in there for Leliana to tear wide open like curtains in an abandoned house. Every part of him wants her to kiss him like it’ll baptize him, like her love is going to wash him clean and make him whole again.

    (How could he ever be whole when he’s given away so many pieces of himself?)

    She says his name like a hymn and already he’s resting in the palm of her hand, hers to crush or keep as she pleases. Dreams of filth and infernal tongues flood his mind but he pushes them under for now. His angel (his, always and forever his) replies that she is alone. Vulgaris wants to coil around her warmth and keep it all for himself like the greedy monster he is. Her question almost startles him though and he looks her in the eyes now when he answers her.

    I’m always alone when you’re not near,” he says in a voice that is just breaths above a whisper. It isn’t clear whether or not he means it but he doesn’t hide from her gaze either. Lying is a second language for him that he slips in and out of so fluidly, after all.

    His eyes, suddenly vibrant and alive, watch her wings change to mimic the scales across his face and torso. How could she possibly be drawn to something so vile as him? How could someone so divine every willingly carry his child? A slow sigh escapes from him as he steps closer to her before he reaches out to gently rest his lips on the side of her neck. Just beneath his kiss, he can feel her pulse softly racing through her veins. The hunger does not come. All is quiet within his mind as he breathes her in.

    "Why am I so strong and so weak around you?"

    He doesn’t quite admit his defeat aloud but he does resign himself to his fate as he leans further against her. Their chests press tight together so he can trace his lips over the places on her shoulder where he’d dragged his teeth across before. God, he'd tasted every inch of her she was willing to give. Vulgaris expected angry scabs and rough wounds to memorialize that night but he finds only more perfection beneath his eager lips. The four letter word surfaces in his mind but he crushes it before it can blossom in his heart. Not yet, not when she doesn’t know him for what he really is.

    He knows that she’ll leave on that day. Leliana will turn and walk away from everything he has to offer and he’ll be left alone in that abandoned house once again.
    @[leliana]
    Reply
    #4
    I see a ghost out on the water; I swear it has my face
    I bend and drink the lonely down, the lonely down

    Would he think lesser of her if knew what a scarred thing she truly was?

    Would he think of her as a broken, used toy to know about the way she had been hollowed out? She had been but a girl when she had been swept away by the dark—what felt like forever turning inside out and leaving her utterly alone. She had handed her heart away so easily, so eager to lose herself into something that had felt epic only to find it rotten from the inside out. It had left her scarred and alone—shattered. It had taken years to pull herself back together, to bring even the semblance of wholeness back to herself.

    Would he think less of her to know her scars?

    She cannot bear to ask him, cannot bear for him to know all the ways that she has broken along the craggy rocks of empty love before—giving her heart to a man who had never picked her first. Giving her heart to a man who had turned from her and warmed his bed with so many others. She had never been enough.  

    It almost causes the breath in her throat to catch, all of the ghosts crawling out and into her flesh, but his voice banishes them, opening the windows wide and letting the light pour in. She tilts her chin up to him, watching the shadows cross his features, the scales of him shimmering beneath the moonlight. He is beautiful, she thinks, but it feels foolish to tell him this. It feels foolish to tell him that she feels more whole in his presence than she has in years, that he somehow manages to beat back her demons.

    It feels foolish to admit this aloud.

    His question, accepted as only truth by her, makes her pause, her lovely face contemplating the words, turning them over in her palms so that she can consider them from all sides. But she doesn’t have the time because he’s there again as they stand chest to chest and his mouth is roaming her shoulder. She shudders once, closing her eyes as she feels the barest hint of fang and is reminded of the danger he brings.

    He could tear her apart.

    He could be the end of her.

    Still, she cannot tear herself away. Instead she curves her neck and presses her cheek to his back, resting on the serpentine curves of him. “Vulgaris,” his name escapes her again, whispered like a confession into him. The emotions rise within her, confused and muddled and beautiful, and she struggles to pick them apart, to understand how quickly he has made her come undone. “Why do you feel like home?”

    She answers his question with one of her own, exhaling softly.

    Don’t break me, she wants to plea, but it is a silly, selfish thing to ask, so she folds it away. Instead, she just rests against him, inviting him into a glass home that has shattered so deftly before.

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



    @[vulgaris]
    [Image: avatar-1975.gif]
    the heaviness in my heart belongs to gravity
    Reply
    #5
    Vulgaris
    "  when she's coming for my heart it feels like armageddon. "

    With her pressed tight to him, all his skeletons peek from his closet and every vile secret threatens to bubble up from the singularity of his heart. He wants to give her everything – the best parts of him, all the bloodied sins, and every nightmare that wakes him in the middle of the night. God, he’s so full of secrets that letting them out might make him disappear altogether, leaving nothing but his skin and teeth for her to love. This identity he’s built for himself is all that’s held him up long enough to meet her, anyway. How quickly would she run away if she knew the deepest shadows of his soul? (Or would she try to drink it all in and let it drown her like some modern Ophelia?)

    He sighs. She has known pain and heartbreak but in different ways than he has. Loneliness has driven him mad, left him pining for Shiya when she should have been a monsoon to the candle flame of his desire. It disgusts him to remember but it lingers there like a blister almost ready to burst. Maybe it’s why he slipped so easily into her palm and stayed there for a while. Such a pleasure to burn with want beneath her touch.

    And still, he wants to let her in, wants to show her the gallery of his evil before he could ever allow her to care for him. How could she kiss his scars away without knowing how they came to be? How could the bird love the serpent who eats her?

    But the words are already there and he can’t take them back any more than he could sever himself from her now. He touches his lips to the place where her mane ends and her spine is just beneath the skin. A single bite here and she’d die within minutes. (Ghosts of his past, all twitching and bright red while their bodies give up hope, come to mind.) But he remains gentle and kind. He’s never harmed a girl once he’s slept with her. Their bodies become some kind of sacred once they’ve been offered up to him and he could never tarnish them, especially not this one. She’s the gilded altar of his heart, the Hail Mary of his hope.

    If she gave the command, he’d find his other lovers and crush their windpipes just to see her smile.

    A shiver trails its fingers along his spine as he rests his chin across her. Surrender has never felt so sweet, he thinks. Her words are a lullaby when they reach him and he smiles so peacefully at the sound of her voice. But her question is also a nail that crucifies him, nails him to the wall so love can finally have its way with the serpent. He’s been running so long that he thought it might never get the chance to sink its claws into him. Such a foolish monster, he is.

    I don’t deserve someone like you, Leliana. I think you should know that before we go on like this,” he says quietly. Part of him doesn’t want her to hear but the earliest hours of the morning are silent aside from their breathing. “I’ve hurt a lot of people. I’m gonna keep hurting them too. I don’t know how else to be.

    It’s the honest truth of the matter, really. Unless he’s curled into the safety of her warmth every hour of every day, then there is no joy when he isn’t breaking someone’s smile. All the anger he’s tried so hard to lock into the cellar of his soul just comes boiling up. Next thing he knows, he’s consuming any purity he finds in the world like it’ll baptize him from the inside out.

    I can only promise you that I’ll never let anything hurt you – not me or anyone else. I’ll rip the gods from the skies before I let that happen.

    Maybe she can feel how tense he is now. Maybe she’ll ask him what he means, and he’ll have to crawl away from her light. Regardless, it’s too late now and he has to live with what he’s done.
    @[leliana]
    Reply
    #6
    I see a ghost out on the water; I swear it has my face
    I bend and drink the lonely down, the lonely down

    Leliana is not the kind to shy away from the shadows.

    She has been drawn there from birth. She has always found herself staring too long into them, something in her dove-heart fluttering and racing at the possibilities. Perhaps it this that kept her clutching to a love that threatened to shred her. Perhaps it is this that kept her seated in the middle of the inferno, the roar of it in her ears and in her heart. It’s been years, but there’s still the faintest of scars on her shoulder, on her cheek, where the patchwork stallion had ripped at her—leaving her with the flesh peeled away, revealing the bone underneath. He had been so angry when she refused to heal it. So angry that she had been insistent on keeping the wound, a reminder of her weakness, a reminder of her failures.

    The memories stir now as she listens to him, her mouth pressed against his smooth scales, her chest to his so that she can feel the steady thrum of his heartbeat—a reminder that she is alive and this is real.

    She quiets at his words, her brow knitting together, worry stealing into her heart.

    “Show me,” she finally whispers into him, pulling back just enough so that she can find his gaze and hold onto it. “Show me your demons.” A soft exhale. “I can handle it,” her voice is quiet but steady, her eyes searching the hard angles of his face. She knows, has known, that there was a darkness in him—something that moves beneath the surface. She does not think that he does not carry sin upon his shoulders, that he does not have blood on his hands. She does not dream that he’s anything but what he is.

    And she wishes—oh, but for a moment—that she could find someone light.

    Someone pure and good who brought softness to her world.

    It would be simple and beautiful but oh—

    It would not be him.

    “I’ve been to hell before, Vulgaris,” she whispers the confession, her voice strained. “I am not afraid.”

    She reaches out to press lips to his cool cheek, resting there. “I don’t want to change you,” because how could she wish him to be anything but what he is? How could she ask a predator to change his very nature? She couldn’t—and she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t ask him to soften, to release his ghosts.

    She didn’t want him to be anything but him.

    “I just want you to let me love you.”

    Her tongue almost trips on the word, the suddenness of the emotion overwhelming, the scars within her burning at the confession, but she remains steady, her hazel gaze never wavering from his. In her belly, she feels the stirring of life, and her heart clenches at it, the moment washing over her.

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



    @[vulgaris]

    hi i respond obnoxiously fast sometimes. i sorryyyy.
    [Image: avatar-1975.gif]
    the heaviness in my heart belongs to gravity
    Reply
    #7
    Vulgaris
    "  when she's coming for my heart it feels like armageddon. "

    His father tried to sew some kind of light into him when he was still a small child. The tired old king tried to weave what little kindness he had to offer into their lives and show him that life was more than blood and pain. Anger was always so much easier, though. Why settle arguments and find compromise with your neighbor when you could just chew his spine from his body and take all that was his? He tried so hard to even comprehend those feather soft emotions and the warmth of goodness but all those delicate things could never take root in him. The sun never shines on his face.

    He lifts his gaze to match hers when she pulls back to watch him. Something deep within begins to coil, twisting and waiting with feral eyes as she commands him. Promises come falling from her lips and he knows that she believes every word she says. But she is not a confessional; she cannot be the place he comes to bury all his demons. This is his cross to bear and he knows this all too well, so he says nothing in response.

    She says she’s been to hell before and his lips part to bare his teeth at the thought. He brushes his nose across her cheek as a low growl rumbles, primordial and burning hot, from his throat. “Do you want me to hunt them? I could make them pay,” he says without thinking. The point of what she says is lost on him and all he hears is that someone has hurt her in the past. Always, Vulgaris thinks to pry desperate apologies from others rather than to wait for their guilt to settle in. He believes his enemies should be made to feel tearful remorse and then have hope crumble to dust before them. What other way could there be than this?

    Leliana kisses him and vows not to change him just like he had dared to hope she would. He breathes a slow sigh against her soft skin and still the hunger does not come to darken his door. Maybe he can’t learn to be some light in the darkness, but he wants to make a home for her within him. Someplace safe where at least she can find refuge from the cruelty of the world around them. Could some fraction of softness be enough for her, he wonders? Would it ever be enough to make her stay?

    I was never afraid until I met you. Now I’m terrified,” he confesses against her ear. And it’s the truth. He’s scared of losing her, of losing their unborn child. He’d nearly forgotten the tiny life within Leliana and the realization sends his heart crashing against his ribs like it wants to escape. They’re going to be a family.

    But then she’s said the word he’s been dodging from the moment he saw her and somehow speaking its name has made it real for him. He takes a deep breath as he stands on the edge of now and eternity. It’s time to take the leap, he supposes.

    I need you. I love you, now and forever,” he says as he kisses at the corner of her jaw. There's something desperate in the way he tastes her skin and his breath grows ragged against her.
    @[leliana]
    Reply
    #8
    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]
    [Image: avatar-1975.gif]
    the heaviness in my heart belongs to gravity
    Reply
    #9
    Vulgaris
    "  when she's coming for my heart it feels like armageddon. "

    He wants to crack his ribs apart and show her where it hurts the most, to tell her every secret he’s ever kept from everyone else. Vulgaris wants to let her in and lock the door behind her so she’ll be trapped there forever but the house of his heart is not a home. It will never be warm enough or bright enough to nourish her soul and give her what she needs to thrive in this world. Instead, he decides that he will protect her from all the ugliness like him and stay by her side even when the storms threaten to tear everything apart again. Words have never come easily to him but he can show his love in this way, at least.

    He softens around the edges when she declines his offer to consume whatever upset her, relaxes against her while he idly kisses at her skin in apology. Something aches in him to think that someone could forget a girl like her and that feeling bleeds out into his thoughts. Could she ever forget him? He had meant so little to so many that he wonders how she could be different. But fear finds no place within him and he trusts that her words are true. She could lie for the rest of their lives together, he thinks, and he would still offer her his heart on a silver platter as he does now. Leliana makes all that empty inside him into a garden that might actually bloom some day.

    I’m yours.

    The words pour over him like molten iron and his skin feels too hot to even breathe, he thinks. He takes up her offering, however tarnished she thinks it may be, and builds a temple around it to memorialize its splendor. Vulgaris shivers at her next words and opens his eyes to stare at the curve of her belly. It doesn’t yet betray the little life it carries but he knows his child is in there somewhere, curled up tight in its slumber while it waits for its birthday. A smile finds his lips and it is the first sincere expression he’s worn in so long.

    Where do you live, Leliana?” he mumbles against the heat of her skin as he continues to watch her stomach. His head feels dizzy and his thoughts are so far away as he drifts through this moment like a dream. Still, he wants to know that she is somewhere safe. The idea of being in Loess without her has begun to loom over him.

    You could live with me, that way we’re never apart from one another.

    He’s greedy for her time and her affections but he makes no attempt to hide this from her. Instead he lays it all out on the table for her and waits for her to accept or crush him and all his hopes. Even if she did decline, he’d come crawling to her for even a second with her. To him, her face is that of the sun and there is no survival without it.
    @[leliana]
    Reply
    #10
    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 tucks away the sadness, folding it small and hiding it deep.

    This was not the time to let it consume her. This was not the time to be consumed by it.

    She turns blindly into the warmth of him, the alien feeling of her against his scaled body, the promises that they whisper to one another in the dark and the quiet. I am yours, she thinks, again. 

    I am yours. I am yours when the sky breaks and the nightmares give way. I am yours when the ground cracks underneath me and swallows me whole. I am yours—all of me. Almost. Almost all of me. Except the parts too ugly to be loved. The parts shattered beneath heel and time and toxic love. Not those. Never those.

    She doesn’t word such things, doesn’t think to tell him about the parts she withdraws, the edges that she smooths over. She just closes her eyes to the feel of his mouth against her, the quiet beauty of them coming together, the sound of anchor and port. Finally. She smiles at his question, shyly pressing her head into the curve of his neck so that he cannot see the joy that sweeps over her at him wanting her.

    At him choosing her.

    “Tephra, mostly,” she answers softly, “but I wander. It doesn’t feel like home anymore.”

    Not like him. Not the smell of him, the touch of him, the quiet strength of him.

    “I would follow you anywhere,” she finally whispers, ripping what is left of her heart and handing it so easily to him. For all of the demons and ghosts that haunt her, she cannot stop the way that she so quickly follows him, her footsteps echoing as she descends, as she consumes the pomegranate without question.

    He is home. He is sanctuary. He is her future.

    Again, she feels the slightest fluttering in her stomach, the beginning of the life they created beginning to stir, the whisper of a family, and the happiness radiates across her features, softening them even more.

    “Will you take me home?”

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

    [Image: avatar-1975.gif]
    the heaviness in my heart belongs to gravity
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