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

He hadn’t come for her.

Each day passed and that fact didn’t change. He did not come for her. She haunted the places where they had first met, his breath on her cheek waking him up; she wandered the borders of Tephra, the water lapping at her ankles, as she looked out toward where she knew the island lay waiting, the knowledge that he was there, just out of sight, causing an ache to grow within her bones.

Eventually, she had accepted that he wasn’t going to follow her; that all he had wanted was one night. It hurt—more than she had ever expected. She tried to think around it, to throw herself into the work of healing, but no matter how exhausted she was at the end of the day, he was there. She could not sleep, not without dreaming him, and so she took to wandering, searching for something she knew was impossible.

Tonight, as she walked, her wings were that familiar onyx of his hide, the appendages of them visible with ivory; it hurt to carry a piece of him with her, such as tangible reminder, but it felt suiting tonight. She wrapped the leather of them around her barrel, the weight similar to when he had done the same.

But it was different. It wasn’t him.

The copper hit her first, and she swung her head up, nostrils flaring. The scream came second. She did not hesitate; instead, she flung herself forward, the branches lightly scraping her sides as she hunted for the source of the sound, the source of that smell. It was too much blood. Too much. She could taste how thick it was on the air and she knew, in the twisting of her gut, that it was death. This wasn’t just an injury.

Her nerves skittered, but she didn't stop.

She had never tried to heal someone this close to death, but she could try. She had to.

When she burst through a break in the trees and saw him, it felt like the air rushed out of her. He was on the floor, bleeding more than she had ever seen him bleed. The rib sticking out from his barrel was different than the rest of the bones that covered him; it was abnormal, painful, piercing flesh that even his body knew to keep knit together. She cried out and then pushed her gift forward, pressing it on urgently.

His name was on her lips, but she couldn’t waste the effort to say it.

Everything within her focused on this one task, this one monumentally important moment. She gulped in the air, winded, the strands of healing moving quickly through him. It did not take a short amount of time. An hour had passed before she knew it, and she felt her neck slick with sweat, the red tendrils of her hair sticking to it, but, still, there was more to do. She had fixed the worst of it, brought his bone back to its rightful place, sewed up the flesh, but she could feel infection brewing, internal organs crying out.

She hit her knees in exhaustion and groaned against her teeth, but continued moving her way through him; every inch of her ached to touch him, but she knew if she did, she’d lose her concentration, she would lose her focus, and she couldn’t risk that. She needed every inch of whatever gift had been bestowed upon her. (If only, she thought wildly. If only Exist was here too. She needed her sister.)

Finally—finally—it was done.

The bruises vanished, the blood staunched, the skin pressed back together.

Her eyes fluttered open, vision blurry, as she looked at him, and her gift recoiled, settling into her chest. Good. He was good. She could see his chest rising and falling. She reached out, muzzle brushing the part of him she could reach, touching the tip of his nose, before she felt her consciousness slipping.

She slumped to the earth, body falling to the blood-soaked forest floor, and let the darkness claim her.

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

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 dreamt of him, even as she slipped into the undertow of her consciousness.  It was so real; she could imagine the heady scent of him wrapping around her. How many nights had she thought of this exact smell? How many times had she gone to sleep with his phantom touch, the warmth of his body pressed up against hers? It had been so pleasant; so unspeakably perfect. But each morning she had woken up and he had been gone. Each morning, she woke to find he was no longer there. It hurt all the more for it.

But now, now she could feel him. She wanted to curl up against him, move so that she was pressed to his side, but she couldn’t move. She wanted to whisper his name, tell him how much she had missed him, how much she had thought about him, but the words were clogged in her throat, her tongue cemented in her mouth. She was underwater and she couldn’t breathe—but it didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt. Not here.

She thought she could hear him, something in his voice both desperate and urgent, and her thoughts twisted in the back of her mind, the barest of motions. Was he calling for her? She couldn’t tell. Something in her told her to stay down, to let the fog rest over her, to give into it. Nothing but pain awaited for her on the surface. Nothing but his absence. Here, she could at least trick herself into thinking that he was near. She could pretend by the warmth on her back, his scent, that he was around her.

It wasn’t until his teeth broke her flesh that she stirred, the sudden, visceral pain bringing her to, nostrils flaring to drink in the cool air. Her eyes fluttered open, her thick lashes framing amber eyes as she came back to the surface, as she found her focus again. He was there. This wasn’t real. He was there.

“That...” her voice was barely audible, a whisper that pushed between barely parted lips, “that should feel better.” An echo of meetings past, enough to cause her lips to curve into a weak smile, despite his voice that had switched from such urgent concern to such hot rage. She groaned in the back of her throat at the pain in her bones, at the sharpness of the cut, but didn’t otherwise say anything else just yet.

If his fury surprised her, she didn’t show it.

Instead, she pushed herself to her knees, head light and fuzzy, opening her eyes so she could drink him in. He was alive. He was alive and close enough to touch. After a moment of silence, his fresh anger washing over her, she gave him another weary curve of lip, the fatigue still draping over her shoulders, wound on her cheek healing slowly. She shifted and then braved the distance between them, pressing her cheek to his, mouth tracing down his neck as if to reassure herself that he was, indeed, completely healed.

She pulled back and dropped her head down, looking up at him through her lashes. “You should know better, Dovev.” Voice still weak, thin with fatigue. “Even if you do not want me in your life,” the words burned in her throat, “you should know better than to think I would let you die.”

No matter the cost it took to keep him alive.

For him, she would pay it.

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

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

His concern, his anger, washed over her, but she didn’t mind it. She simply leaned into him, thankful to have him to help hold her. She had pushed herself too far; she knew that. Her gift whimpered in her chest, completely spent, and she admonished herself for attempting to overexert herself, for thinking that she could control the fates and weave new tapestries into destiny. However, she knew, she knew that she never really had a choice. Not when it came to him. Her gift would recover. She would recover.

And he would live. That is what was most important.

At his lecturing, she just gave him a kind smile, amber eyes tired but lit lightly for him. “You mean, ‘Don’t do it again please.’” Her laugh was thin but it rang like silver bells in her mouth at the teasing as she reached over to pull gently on his forelock, mouth trailing sweetly down his cheek and then under his chin. “Stop trying to get yourself killed and I will stop putting you back together again.”

The truth was, that for all of Leliana’s softness and quiet nature, there was steel beneath it. She may not be loud or bright or intense, but there was an understated strength, an unwavering core. She would bleed out for Dovev, and she would follow him, and she would not place demands on him--but she would also not blindly listen when he commanded her. It wasn’t in her nature. Not in her DNA.

“It’s my gift, Dovev. I will save whoever I want, whenever I need to.”

She breathed in his scent, felt the rush of his pulse, and she smiled, her own desire, foreign as it was to her, simmering just below the surface, trapped beneath the fog of her exhaustion. Part of her wanted to ask why he was always on the brink of death when she found him, why the wounds did not seem to come just from the bone armor erupting from beneath the surface, but she also had a feeling that he didn’t want to explain that to her, not yet. He may press into her, touch her, hold her, but there were still critical parts of him that he kept locked away from her; she knew he wasn’t ready to share them.

At his words, her heart lept into her throat, and she closed her eyes against the shocking power of it, against the need that clawed at her. He wanted her. Like he had wanted her in the cave, the heat of it, the desire. Like he wanted others, she reminded herself. Not like she wanted him; not the way that she was coming to need him. She opened her eyes to study his face and lied to herself. It would be enough, to be wanted by him in this way. She could make it be enough. He didn’t have to share his heart.

(Lies. All lies. She hungered for that part of him, that part that felt so impossibly out of reach.)

“I am yours,” she repeated, whispering the words into his neck.

“I have been from the first moment we met.”

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

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 brushed off his demands with a shake of her lovely head, lips curling. “That’s not your call to make, Dovev,” she leaned over, her breath ons his cheek, her teeth pulling gently at the corner of his mouth, testing and teasing, tasting the salt on his skin. “I want to save you, and I will. If you insist on tearing yourself apart, then I will have no choice but to pull you back together again.” She met his gaze with her own, not matching the heat of his, the frustration, but holding it steady and not backing down. She was cool under pressure, steady when others nerves may have jangled. She did not fear him.

Even though perhaps she should have.

She closed her eyes at the sound of her name on his tongue, the richness of it. He lay his forehead against her, and she murmured in response, the words difficult to decipher, the noise soothing and calm. “Shh,” she whispered, her heart aching at his confessions. “It’s okay. I’m here now.” She didn’t move her head from where it lay, pressed up against his own, but her wings unfurled, the appendages long and graceful, back to feathers again, although the color remained black. The edges reached for him, brushing along his sides with soft strokes, tiny brushes down his sides, across the ridges of the bone and to his very flesh.

“I have barely slept,” she made her own confession, feeling his breath as it rippled across her skin. She moved then, shifting to the side and coming to press her chest up against his own, loving the warmth of him, even though some of it remained shielded by the armor that slowly overtook his body. She leaned her cheek on his back and rested there, closing her eyes. “I spend most nights thinking of you.”

Wandering the borders of Tephra, the warm water lapping at her ankles, the salt breeze tangling her hair and pushing it from her face. Even the curled warmth of her sister had not always been enough to steady her nerves, to let sleep come to her. “I didn’t think that you’d want me to come find you again.” It had been bold of her to hunt him down once, but she wasn’t going to force herself upon him.

“Or I would have been there, every night.”

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

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 hesitated at his warning, her mouth lifting from his flesh, hovering there so that her breath rippled out over him. It was difficult to pause, more difficult than she would have anticipated, her own desires beginning to bubble beneath the surface, simmering there, stoked by his slow touches but more so the words he gave her, the little pieces he bestowed upon her. She closed her eyes and focused on her breaths, inhaling him in deeply and exhaling slowly, forcing herself to restrain, to keep herself from touching him.

He stepped from her and she ached, feeling vulnerable and alone without him near. One crimson-dipped leg lifted as if to follow him, to close the space, but she slowly pulled it back to the ground, listening to him, ears tipped forward. Her wings shifted from the leather to the black silk, just enough form to be held  upward by her side, but the rest pooling around her, clinging to her. She stilled, not following him yet.

But, before she knew it, he had closed the distance between them, and her lids lowered softly, her head tipping backward to expose her throat. “Would it be so bad to unravel?” she questioned, her voice a touch lower, an unusual husk seeping into its fog, darkening it in her mouth. It twisted around her innocence, the curiosity that peered out form her amber eyes, the desire to know, to understand him.

“I would put you back together again,” she breathed, her head dipping toward his flesh but pausing, hovering, desperate for just one more touch. But she listened to his pleas and abstained, kept herself from letting her lips trail down his neck, instead focusing on the way that he reached out to her instead. When his teeth closed on her flesh, her breath caught in her throat and she gasped lightly, unable to stop herself.

Answering his plea with one of her own, she murmured his name, “Dovev.” A single shiver raced up her spine as she opened her wide amber eyes, caught his gaze. “Why do I feel like you are frightened of me?”

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