leliana

[leliana]

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