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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


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    they are wicked things, leliana and dovev
    #1
    i could dig myself out of the loneliest of graves for you, could be taken down like a dog that got itself a mouthful of blood and liked the taste, could give myself up belly-up. crane toward you like a heliotrope in the sun.

    His mother didn’t come home like she promised. It’s been days and now there’s blood every time he coughs. He doesn’t know that she’s isolated herself while she tries to make sense of the world once more but he’s too scared to stay still any longer. Despair is at least old enough to wander from their secluded little nest in the forests but he has no clue where he’s going this time. The cold air stings his lungs every time he breathes in, makes him cough and gag until he’s certain his throat won’t open up again. But slowly, agonizingly slowly, he’s able to inhale once more.
     
    The wind whips his forelock from his dark face when he reaches the river, where he stumbles in the cold mud. He sucks in his breath in a hiss when the icy waters touch his legs but he can’t stop moving now that he’s in the open. The monster who looks like Shiya might see him, might rip him apart if he stops long enough to be found. (Another cough. Another spattering of blood.)
     
    He passes through a desolate kingdom, void of its inhabitants save for a few lost souls or those too tired to care about the plague. Despair envies them, almost. The ache in his joints and the fever consume most of his thoughts but still he feels driven to find some place where he can lay his head. When he crosses into the pampas, he doesn’t quite recognize the scent. Somewhere in his dizzy head, though, this place smells like home to him. Like Dovev and Shiya when she comes home in the mornings. A weak smile makes itself at home across his lips as he stumbles forward.
     
    Despair leans himself against a tree bordering the edge of the territory, praying it will help him steady his legs. He breathes a slow sigh of relief to have found a place that offers at least some semblance of comfort.

    here is the field in my heart that bears your name. here is the whole country, aching and tender,
    i named after you. here is my whole entire heart.
    @[Dovev] @[leliana]
    #2

    I don't know what I'm supposed to do, haunted by the ghost of you

    She still haunts the Pampas, even though it has been days since Adna has returned.

    She remains, her belly still swollen with child, with a child born of something she can’t bear to think about. She does her best to stick to the borders, to the shadows, not bothering anyone and hoping to stay out of Vulgaris’ way. She has remembered what he told her, remembered how he said to stay away from him, and she doesn’t have the courage to see what might happen should he find her again.

    Still, she sees the child when he stumbles into the kingdom, and her heart stops when she sees the familiar serpentine shape of his face, of those sage green eyes that look so familiar to Vulgaris.

    Leliana cannot stop herself from stepping forward, from moving to him. “Are you okay?” Her voice is quiet, her face thin but still pretty beneath the crimson of her forelock. Without waiting for his answer, her healing pushes forward, rushing out of her and into him. She can’t beat back the disease completely, can’t do anything but blunt the edges of the symptoms, but she does everything that she can.

    She eases his headache, softens the ache, soothes the fever.

    It is more exhausting than usual, her own weakness showing in the way the healing fatigues her, but she hides it away. She just studies him, wondering why her heart ached to look at him. He couldn’t be Vulgaris’ son, she tells herself. That would make him about the same age as Sabbath and—well.

    She just couldn’t let herself think about what that would mean.

    “My name is Leliana,” she offers quietly, giving him a small smile. “Are you okay? Do you live here?”



    @[despair]
    [Image: avatar-1975.gif]
    the heaviness in my heart belongs to gravity
    #3
    i could dig myself out of the loneliest of graves for you, could be taken down like a dog that got itself a mouthful of blood and liked the taste, could give myself up belly-up. crane toward you like a heliotrope in the sun.

    Despair watches as she approaches but he’s too tired now to run away any longer. So he remains, a tired sort of smile forcing itself to his lips because he knows first impressions are so important. He learned that the hard way with Dovev. (His father didn’t love him because he didn’t smile right, because he was too aggressive with his hunger for approval. Always his fault.) But she seems less concerned by the shape of his mouth and more fixated on his eyes for whatever reason. Maybe she hates serpents and their angry slit pupils, he thinks, so he forces them brown again with a simple blink. And then she asks if he's okay.

    But how to answer? How to explain his eternally crumbling world? Perhaps another day.

    So he traps the secrets in a box and sits on it while the raging desire for kindness yowls inside. “I could be worse,” he says, but his voice breaks and he coughs, sending little flecks of blood onto the ground again. Still, he smiles and shrugs his shoulders like all is right in the world regardless. The expression fades a bit when he feels the razor’s edge of the agony in his head begin to subside a little, to a quiet throbbing that he can tolerate more easily. He tilts his dark head curiously as he watches her.

    Something about the pain in her eyes reminds him of Shiya, of Adna and he wonders if all women will stare at him that way. Was he really so hard to look at? His lips form a frown and he takes a step back, not realizing his symptoms have eased thanks to her. Instead he assumes that he has intruded this time, until she speaks again. She’s so kind to tolerate him a little longer, he thinks.

    My name is Despair. I don’t really live.. anywhere.. But my mother hasn’t come back for me in a while.” He pauses and wonders if he should really share anything about his mother, knowing they are each hunted by the unknown monster. But he wants to trust her, wants to cling to any semblance of warmth that comes his way like it’ll keep him from drowning in his own darkness. “I wanted to keep waiting but I’m afraid to be alone.

    He laughs again, embarrassed by his own admission, and this time his cough is dry. His throat doesn’t feel like it’s ripping itself to pieces after and he’s so grateful for it. The boy swallows hard and finally lifts his chin to meet her eyes again.

    Do you have other children?” he asks, gesturing weakly at her belly. As soon as the words leave his lips, he wonders if he’s asked an uncomfortable question, the way he goes nervous when people ask about Shiya. His eyes resume staring at her legs shamefully.

    here is the field in my heart that bears your name. here is the whole country, aching and tender,
    i named after you. here is my whole entire heart.
    @[leliana]
    #4

    I don't know what I'm supposed to do, haunted by the ghost of you

    It is a good thing that Leliana cannot read minds because his thoughts would break her.

    She is already dangerously close to the edge, held together with nothing but strength of will and the barest of threads—the barest hold on sanity for the sake of her daughters. Still, for all of the fears that beat like thunder in her breast, all of the suspicions that rise from the back of her mind to cloud her vision—he is but a child and she cannot bring herself to put the weight of her sorrow on his shoulders.

    He blinks and changes his eyes and it’s enough to shake her from the fog. She gives her head a little shake, trying to force clarity on herself, and focus on him anew, trying to shed anything else.

    She gives the barest hint of a smile at his insistence that he could be worse and she wants to draw him to her chest. For all of her struggle with physical affection since the attack, it has not yet contaminated her maternal instincts and she wants to shield this boy, wants to protect him. Perhaps it is because he looks like a young Vulgaris and, despite the shaky truth in the back of her head of his parentage, she yearns for a piece of her once serpentine husband. She longs for a piece of him that is yet undamaged, that is not cruel.

    “It’s going to be okay,” she whispers, for his benefit and maybe even her own. She forcefully wipes her expression clean, leaving it kind and soft—even if the effort of erasing her grief exhausts her. “Despair,” she says his name softly and it twists her heart. When he mentions her mother, she considers asking more questions, but he looks worn out and tired, and she doesn’t want to know—not really.

    Instead she just takes a small step toward him.

    “I do,” and for the first time, a genuine smile radiates across her face like sunshine. “I have three daughters. Adna, Sabbath, and Malca.” Her heart and joy. Her anchors. The gravity of her life. “They will be back soon, I am sure,” she says, despite the fear in her heart that it has been days since she has seen her eldest daughter. “Would you like to find a place to lie down? You can stay with me, if you would like.”



    @[despair]

    i love him too much it's not fair
    [Image: avatar-1975.gif]
    the heaviness in my heart belongs to gravity
    #5
    i could dig myself out of the loneliest of graves for you, could be taken down like a dog that got itself a mouthful of blood and liked the taste, could give myself up belly-up. crane toward you like a heliotrope in the sun.

    Despair feels less like himself and more like a cigarette that’s been forgotten, all ash and liable to fall apart at the slightest touch. He watches her shake her head, smile at his humor even when he feels like death is eagerly tracing its fingers along his spine. His ears turn forward when she says it’s all going to be alright. It seems like an empty promise but he’d like to believe her all the same. Despite his exhaustion, her step towards him makes him tense and nearly bristle at the movement, but he steels himself and allows her closer. His small chest rises and falls a little faster as fear drips down his veins.

    Her face grows kind as she thinks of her daughters though, a face that assures him she is built out of love and sacrifice as many mothers are. Despair tilts his head at the mention of Adna and a weak smile forms on his lips. “I met Adna. She was with my father, but he pretended not to be my father,” he says, remembering how Dovev tried to shoo him away at first. The memory is cruel and twists the knife in his heart as it remembers how hungry it is for approval, which Leliana offers up readily, even if her eyes hold all their tears in the corners of them.

    Her offer comes as a surprise and he finds himself laughing in between coughs, unable to suppress the little sliver of joy that arises within him. “Are you sure? I don’t want to be a bother. I feel like I always am.. a bother..

    His smile tilts, threatens to fall from its place as his question hangs in the air. Leliana could dismiss him and he would leave without another word, grateful just for the momentary lapse in his misery. She has already been such a blessing in his ever darkening days that he really wouldn’t mind if she did change her mind. Despair would simply resume laying in the muddy forest floor while he waited for Shiya to come home. If she ever decided she wanted to see him again, he thinks.

    here is the field in my heart that bears your name. here is the whole country, aching and tender,
    i named after you. here is my whole entire heart.
    @[leliana]
    #6

    I don't know what I'm supposed to do, haunted by the ghost of you

    Her own grief is drowned out in the shadow of his own.

    She nearly forgets it; for the first time, she is able to set it aside and focus on a problem greater than her own. Her healing continues to come out of her in waves, slipping into his bloodstream, rooting out the worst of the plague’s symptoms. And still, despite the empty and hollow numbness she has felt for so long, she is able to feel a sharp sting of agony when he mentions Adna—when she mentions his father.

    He had to mean Vulgaris. There was no one else that Adna would have been with. (She still doesn’t know about her daughter’s blossoming friendship with Dovev—would maybe never know.)

    Her pulse trips, her heart stammers, and she is, miraculously, able to keep her expression neutral.

    She swallows hard and fights back the panic that rises in her, the wave of fresh agony that she is to face this living, breathing symbol of Vulgaris’ infidelities. She fights it back because when he speaks again, it doesn’t matter. He is just a boy and she has her once husband’s serpentine face and the joy that fights through the clouds of his expression is enough to break her resolve. She cries out softly, “Oh, my sweet darling.” The words rush from her simply and she finally moves forward to close the distance.

    It is not her place—of course it isn’t—but she still leans down and presses her crimson lips to his forehead in the summer manner that she would to her daughters. “You are not a bother, precious boy.” She ignores the ache and the truth that sits around the corner. She would deal with it later. She would face it later. Instead, she just holds him close to her chest and whispers softly under her breath.

    “You will stay with me,” she reassures him. “You’ll never feel like a bother again.”



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




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