"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
09-08-2018, 06:42 PM (This post was last modified: 09-08-2018, 06:42 PM by Dovev.)
dovev
html by Toli, overall design and quote style based on "Dovev" by Laura
He was bored out of his fucking mind here in this place. Wasn't it supposed to be run by a bunch of hot chicks?? What the fuck happened to THAT? Not a goddamn hot chick in sight.
Well. Except the one he couldn't touch.
But whatever.
The visions were giving him a fucking headache again. Visions or whatever the hell they were. People he'd never seen before, images of him there too. Things he'd never done before, never said before. Why the fuck would he ever-- So it was driving him crazy, and his black body was covered in a sheen of sweat. And blood. Always blood.
It was wet again today, not cracked and dried. Bones shifting and pressing forward, thrusting outward to cover him more in this impenetrable armor. There was probably a lot of pain, but he was long passed feeling it. Pretty distracted anyway. Beautiful faces, completey gorgeous. If he'd met any of them, he hoped he fucked them. Would be nice to know for sure. Heartfire probably knew everything. But information was never given freely and he had nothing to give in exchange. Nothing but destruction, which she could handle on her own. A lot of it.
Right, so, why the fuck was he here, again??
He snarled, and threw his front feet down hard, thumping to the ground and his hair crashing forward over him. He fucking hated being here, and not knowing anything. Violence, he remembered Violence, remembered being possessed and puppeted around - and liking it. But everything else was broken, fragmented and confused. Most of it was probably lies anyway, lies that Violence put in his mind. Or Heartfire. Or even Ashley.
He knew that name... Where did he know that name? Master. Teacher.
Ischia.
Magnus. Cerva.
Zor--
Fuck, this shit hurts!!
His eyes slammed tightly shut, muscles tensing and locking up. He lifted his head to yell for her, to call Heartfire to him to finally make sense of this crazy shit, but he halted. A scent in the air he might know, or maybe not, caught by flared nostrils. Hard, obsidian eyes turned towards it - to her - and then his body followed, walking straight for her, this stranger with an almost-familiar smell. Fucking huge, too, but he wouldn't let that distract him.
He was a man on a mission, and he had her in his sights.
I've got blood on my hands. And it just won't wash off Try and save me, you can't. Cause I'm too far gone.
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 haunted by him.
By everything about him.
About the way he had held her when they first met, tenderly at first and then possessive later. How he had pressed promises into her skin and dreams into her heart. How she had built her hopes around him, somehow finding it in the bloodied, bone-armored body of the stallion.
She is haunted by his love. By the way that her world crashed around her when the truth came out, the truth blocked from his memory. The truth of a mare who was both mother figure and lover. Of a child who didn’t deserve the pain. Of a sadistic stallion who loved it.
She is haunted by his absence.
By his presence.
She is forever marked by his time in her life, forever changed.
So perhaps that is why mindless wandering took her here today. Perhaps the ghost of his scent dragged her to the edge of the foreign kingdom, her hazel eyes dark with worry and fear and bruised with the ghost of him. Her stomach grows every day, turning her normally lean figure round with the blessing of her child, and she struggles to travel as far as she used to.
So she rests near the border, her wings crimson and dragon, the leather of them resting far enough away that it’s easy to see that she has changed, that her body is now a vessel. That is now carries a visible mark of the new love that has seeped in and through her, the snake stallion haunting her in new ways—the ghost of him never quite revealed to her in full.
She thinks on it, often. Dwells on the ache in her heart when she watches him leave to fulfill the many duties that the land needs him for—the many ways so many need him.
She aches now, hungry for something she can’t name, that Vulgaris will not give.
Hungry for a love to consume her. To take her under.
Not to hold her delicately and apart but grab her and plunge into it headfirst.
Such thoughts break when she sees him.
Her face falls open, cracked wide with surprise and then grief and then a wave of emotion she cannot bear to confess. She almost staggers beneath the weight of it, but manages to stay upright, her dragon wings shifting instantly to the onyx and ivory of him, the familiar bone pressing into her. Her healing reaches for him instinctually, winding through him and finding all of the familiar wounds—fresh and old—to knit back together again.
The intimacy of it, the way it knows the pieces of him that break first, almost undo her.
She doesn’t move but his name escapes her mouth, split apart with everything that rises in her, “Dovev.” Her throat closes and her velvet lips press shut, and she wonders at how after all this time the mere presence of him nearly manages to undo her.
I’m gonna stand here in the ache until the levee on my heart breaks
html by Toli, overall design and quote style based on "Dovev" by Laura
He was going to fuckin figure this out, was going to ask her name - no, demand it. Demand everything. Fuck this place. And fuck these damn visions.
It was clear that she must know him the second their eyes met.
So maybe not all of them in his head were lies.
But then everything changed.
A shade of uncertainty passed over his eyes as a well of emotion filled hers. Something in him wanted to answer that, swelling painfully. He slowed, but only barely. He'd always had a one-track mind, after all, and nothing was going to stop him from getting to her. He's fucking unstoppable.
He was less sure as her wings changed, shifted to match him, and it pulled sharply at something in his chest, plucked it like a fuckin taut string. Made him ache in a new and baffling way. His head tilted to the side a little, like he might be able to avoid seeing those wings, looking like that, making him feel something totally fucking weird start unraveling chaotically inside him.
He had a hold on this. This wasn't gonna fuck with him.
Then there was more, and this time he couldn't help but halt in his steps, sucking a gasp of air. His eyes lifted from those gorgeous, really fuckin gorgeous wings, to stare into hers with a silent question. Beneath his mask, his brows furrowed, pulse kicking up. He could feel the heat, the warmth flowing through his body with a purpose. It felt...
He wasn't sure.
Something more than familiar.
But it made his face soften, and his breathing slow. He swayed forward, and stopped, lost his sight like a hazy illusion as they closed. What the fuck was she doing to him? But don't fuckin stop 'cause it feels really fuckin good. Things were happening inside him, smoothing tattered skin, righting fractured bone, stopping seeping blood. He groaned softly, black eyes opening slowly, first on the ground and then gradually to her face.
And that was the end of everything.
A beginning of something.
"Dovev."
He was started again, like a reboot, like a machine. Back on his one-track goal - her. Propelled forward by her soft voice, the sound of his name on her angel lips. Spoken like she had every right to. And you know what. He was pretty sure she knew the kind of man he was. Call it a hunch.
The kind that doesn't hesitate.
The kind that steps right up and takes what's his.
And one last step was all he needed, and his mouth claimed hers, stole that despicable name from her perfect lips. Took from her what he could never deserve, and how did he even know that? But it must have been true with how his damn chest hurt, how something in him felt desperate to steal this moment, however brief, because he knew it wouldn't last. He could never have this.
She'd leave again.
As she should.
Baby I loved you. But only for a night Some moments can be worth more than lifetimes
I see a ghost out on the water; I swear it has my face I bend and drink the lonely down, the lonely down
He is similar enough to the ghost the haunts her that it nearly wrecks her.
It nearly unravels her until she’s flung wide, the thread that make her up coming undone at an alarming rate. It’s close enough that she can almost ignore the confusion in his eyes. The way that his head tilts and eyes glaze over. The way that they look at her but somehow don’t see her. As if she is nothing but a ghost. As if she wasn’t even really there.
But he’s at her side so quickly that she can’t breathe.
She can’t stop to process.
Because his mouth is in her like he owns it, and it’s so similar to that first time they cradled against one another that her heart breaks. It shatters in her chest completely and she sinks into the tumultuous waves of him, getting drunk on the fire of his passion.
She tips her head back and revels in the touch for a moment, but the joy that swells in her at being near him wars at a sorrow that spreads like wildfire through her, tears forming in the corner of her hazel eyes and then sliding slowly and surely down her mahogany cheeks.
She knows she is not the same girl he left behind. She is not the young and naive girl he found in the meadow. Her heart, although it aches for him, no longer belongs to him alone and even standing here so close that she can feel the heat radiating off of him, smell everything that brings a tidal wave of emotion crashing over her, part of her is gone.
Part of her is curled next to the scaled stallion with guarded eyes and a gentle touch. She is standing with her cheek on his cool back, feeling the echoes of home in his pulse.
Dovev left and tore a hole through her.
Vulgaris found her and filled it.
But even if she had not found and loved another. Even if she had not started a family with the scaled stallion, the serpentine girl growing in her stomach, she knows him. She knows his touch.
And she knows when she is with nothing but the shell.
His mind, his beautiful and precious mind, has been tampered with before and she remembers what it’s like for the curtain to be lifted. She knows when someone has broken past walls they shouldn’t, and although every part of her wants to ignore the signs and deny, she knows in her heart of hearts that something is not right. That something is terribly wrong.
“Dovev,” she says his name like a prayer, like a plea, and she pulls back from his touch, the ache in her growing. “Say my name,” her voice is so quiet at this request that she is almost not sure that he will be able to hear it. She almost hopes that he doesn’t because she is not sure that she can bear to hear him admit that he does not know what it is.
I’m gonna stand here in the ache until the levee on my heart breaks
html by Toli, overall design and quote style based on "Dovev" by Laura
It was roaring within him with wild abandon, spreading like a damn tsunami and taking him unaware. The strangest sensation. Something like..
Something like joy.
Something he'd never experienced. He was certain. This was new, and terrifying, and irritating. And addicting. He never wanted it to stop. People like him just don't get such things. They don't get beautiful women with love in their eyes. They get blood at their feet, blood across their face, murderous glares from those that don't even know what murder is.
But here, in this dream-like moment, this impossible meeting..
Here, he was free.
Here, he was with her.
Her head tilted back for him and he groaned, and spread more kisses over her skin, barely reining himself in to take her slower, savor her, less desperate. Taking her less selfishly, no longer clinging to the tiny seconds that would end so quickly. He may not have much time, but he'd damn well make sure she enjoyed it too. Make it worth it.
Soft tastes of her skin, pressing as much genuine affection into her warmth as he could. He loved that she was here, so near, so he kissed it into her neck. He loved that she didn't run from this haunted monster, that she met him with a secret passion she kept locked away, wouldn't show him. If he had more time, he could... but he wouldn't have more time. So he kissed that into her too. He loved that she healed him, without even knowing him. Or she did know him. Or maybe she didn't...
Whatever. He loved it. And kissed that into her skin too.
Every touch grew more tender, every heartbeat more painful. Like he was sinking a blade into his own chest. Maybe Heartfire wasn't as lethal a dagger as this one. Because this was seriously starting to hurt like hell. And yet he couldn't seem to stop, didn't even want to. Let it hurt, then. Let it kill him if he dies like this, with her. He should've wondered why it matters so much, but he didn't want to. He didn't want to question anything in that moment.
He did what he always had.
He pushed it all away where it doesn't exist anymore, in the far recesses of his mind. Nothing else could touch him now but her.
"Dovev," he heard her say, a strained plea that honestly turned him on a hell of a lot more, and yet punctured his chest deeper at the same time.
"Say my name."
He stiffened and went still, pulse skyrocketing and breath stuttering across her skin. Fuck. Ugh, fuck. He's going to lose her. Already. Again? Fuck. He could play it off, call her Baby and be done with it, distract her with better things, so many incredible things. Somehow he didn't think that would work just now. And it kind of felt wrong. For whatever reason.
Instead, he paced suddenly away from her, body set in hard lines and clearly agitated. He shifted so instantaneously from enjoyment, almost a ghost of happiness, to immediate anger and frustration. Always one extreme or another.
No! he shot back with a glare, spinning to face her again with cold, hard eyes, and marching right back to stop before her, his face near hers. You don't want that, he told her less sharply, warned her in a soft, dark voice.
She couldn't possibly want that.
Baby I loved you. But only for a night Some moments can be worth more than lifetimes
He is a wildfire, and he consumes her. She is breathless with it, shocked by how quickly it all comes flooding back—the way that he pulls her under, dragging her down with a weight around her ankles. She is here but she is not. She is young and they are curled together in the meadow. She is young and he is pressing feverish kisses into her flesh in the damp heat of a cave. She is young and she is his. His.
But it’s not that time. It’s not, and she’s not the same.
And he isn’t either.
He breaks away at her soft plea, and the air is suddenly colder—too cold. She swallows hard, and she can’t stop the tears that quietly slip down her cheeks, the tracks they make down across the scars. She can’t help the flood of emotion as it beats against her chest, her pulse hammering.
“Dovev,” a prayer, again. As if saying his name could break through whatever was keeping his memory locked away. As if saying his name could erase all of what has transpired between them. As if it could make it like it never happened at all—as if they had never lost another, never let the demons be too much.
He’s harsh and angry, and she wonders why she invites such fury into her breast, why she is drawn to those whose emotions turn so quickly, the passion’s edge having the same keen edge as their hatred. But she doesn’t withdraw or flinch or move. She’s been exposed to it too much, and she just watches him with her calm, hazel eyes, the same sadness pricking the corners of it, the edges of her mouth turned down.
“I do,” is all she says.
Even though she’s not sure.
It would be so easy to slip back into his touch, into this false reality that they were creating. She could be someone new, and he could be him, and they could start over—they could find happiness.
But it’s a lie, and she knows it.
So she just smiles, the motion far too sad for what it was, and she reaches out to trace her lips across his cheek, against the bone armor that she knows so well, the wounds that she has since healed.
“You don’t remember me,” the confession creates an ache that spreads in her chest, and she shakes her head in spite of herself, trying to rid herself of the needles that prick so deftly at her heart.
“It’s okay,” she whispers, although it’s not. None of this is okay.
She pulls back again, finds his gaze, and holds it.
“Leliana,” it pains her to have to tell him this, and she holds her name close to herself.
“My name is Leliana, and we one knew each other.”
We once loved each other. We once lost each other.
it started with a perfect kiss, then we could feel the poison set in
She said his name again, and damn he really hated how it seemed to push inside him, sing to his blood, make it dance to her whim, beat for her. And why did she stand there? Why did she stand there so calmly in silence and let him pace and rage as if she knew he'd never hurt her. That was all he ever did was hurt people. Didn't she know that?
"I do," she told him, making him pause. Her lips reached out and touched his cheek, pulling his eyes closed to savor it one more time. God, that was a nice touch. That was the kind of touch he didn't get. The kind of care his kind didn't know. Why was she so gentle and patient with him when he was the exact opposite? When he was sharp and lethal and swift to cut anyone down.
Why does her softness draw him in, waiting for the net to drop over his head and trap him.
She must be his, he realized.
She touched him this way and she must've been his.
It sounded insane.
He blinked, let his eyes fall to her slowly swelling belly.
It's okay, she told him. She knew he didn't remember her. How did she know he lost everything? This had happened before.. His gaze lifted back to her face when she pulled back, held his eyes in hers and spoke her name. Leliana. Leliana. And they once knew each other.
He wished he felt it, wished he could remember it. For all he knew, she could be just a pawn for Heartfire or someone else, someone who knew he couldn't remember anything. Someone that wanted to manipulate him, trick him. Control him. He wished her name brought it all back, whatever it was. He wished he could remember her, feel these things that felt so real.
It couldn't be fake when it felt this real. It couldn't.
She was real.
Whatever she was.
His?
His gaze slid to her belly again, nodding his chin at her. "Is that mine?" The question was soft, but his black eyes were sharp, rising to her face again and waiting. Watching. Wishing.. it didn't matter.
The confusion in his eyes—the uncertainty that flickers in the depths of it—nearly undoes her. She wants to pull him close, cradle his head, whisper that it’s going to be okay, that they will figure it out. She wants to plant kisses up and down his jaw, memorizing the angles of his armor, uncovering the places where it lifts and pulls away from him. She wants to unwind all of the years and the hurt and the sorrow that washes across her features, that stands between them as unspeakably large gulf. The naked desire is writ clear across his expressive face, the lovely softness of it turned downward in thought, her crimson lips of crushed velvet pressed together, breath caught in her throat.
At his question, she closes her eyes—the moment nearly too much.
How does she tell him how much she once longed for it to be his? How does she tell him how long she spent wanting nothing more than to start a family with him? She wanted to mother his children, carrying for a brood, watching over him and healing him when the world broke him once more. But, as in all things between them, the desires of her heart had never been fully realized. Everything that she had thought that she wanted, crumbled to ash.
“It almost was once,” is all she can manage to say, her lyrical voice choked and full of emotion that she cannot bear to face. “I wanted it to be.” Her wings shift at her sides, the ivory and bone of them bleeding away to be replaced with the oil-slick scales of Vulgaris, the snake of them curling protectively around her rounded stomach. She had wanted a family with Dovev, but she had found something else instead—and although the gravity of him now threatens to completely dismantle her, she does not—cannot—regret what has transpired instead.
She does not regret finding Vulgaris. Falling in love with him. Bearing his child.
(She could never regret the life that warms in her stomach now.)
Her face is stripped clean and raw with emotion, but she manages to hold his gaze, unwavering.
“But no, Dovev. It’s not yours.”
it started with a perfect kiss, then we could feel the poison set in
Her softness drew him in. But like a noose.
He tied it so neatly around his own neck for her and he didn’t even realize it.
He'd probably broken every damn bone in his body at least twice. Had lain nearly dead even more times. Ripped skin, ruptured organs, splintered bones.
But not a goddamn thing could compare to the amount of pain that assaulted him as he watched, seemingly in slow motion, as his own likeness faded from her beautiful wings and someone else's begin to show.
He couldn't watch. Sucked in a sharp breath and turned away quick, started walking. Didn't know where, didn't care. Wasn't stopping.
He couldn't fucking breathe, and he didn't understand any of it.
Oh god, and why the fuck was he crying!
He couldn't think through the pain, so fucking overwhelming. He'd never felt anything like it. Couldn't fucking breathe! Gasping breaths like he couldn't even get oxygen anymore, eyes not really seeing where he was going. And a heart that begged to stop beating.
Tears, uncontrolled and unashamed, slipped freely down his face, mostly hidden by his face plate. And he didn't even fucking understand!! None if it made sense and he just wanted the pain to stop. God, please make it stop. Just keep walking. Don't look back. He was nothing to her. Just a ghost that probably deserved some revenge, and she sure as hell found it.
Good. Then get on.
Leave him be.
A name snaked into his mind and he clung to it, held it close to his heart and wrapped his soul around it tight. He let it repeat over and over in his head, let it fill him and try to chase away the pain of this stranger. Over and over, with every step, until it wasn't a name anymore. It was his every breath.
Cerva never would've done this.
Another tear fell, his face contorted in agony and head held high, eyes burning with a different sort of rage. A wrath of pain, of heartache, of suffering. Of his whole damn existence.
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