run love, im the truth you're afraid of; any

[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

Some days, she convinced herself that she could no longer smell him. She convinced herself that he was fading from her memory, that with each breath she was burning him from her mind as if he had never taken up space there. She flew above the forest, wandered along the familiar curves of Tephra, and she could almost believe that he had never existed, or that he never existed to her. It was just a brief interlude in her life. She woke up and ignored the ache in her bones and piercing pain in her chest.

It was a lie though. Of course it was. Her wings still changed when she dreamt at night, still shifted into his likeness, still curled around her barrel with the memory of his weight. She still looked for his figure when she landed in the meadow, when she walked its borders. And it still hurt. With each breath, each memory, it scorched her insides, a silent pain that she bore silently. If she ignored it perhaps it would eventually go away.

So she almost did not believe when she saw him. She almost thought it was a mirage, and she took a stumbling step forward, breath catching her throat as she caught and righted herself. It was him. In the same spot that he had found her, spread out on his side, blood staining his coat, pooling around the base of ivory armor.

She made a small strangled sound but refused to step out from the crowd. She couldn't bear to look him in the eye and have it confirm everything that she knew, that he loved, and was loved, by others. That he had turned from her to return to his family. That the passion with which he had held her was temporary.

That she was temporary.

Anguished, she dropped her head down, chin against the mahogany of her chest, and pulled her crimson wings right around her. Her healing, however, had other plans. It responded to the metallic scent in the air, the coppery reminder of pain, and it unraveled from her chest. She did not stop it as it sought him out, moved through him fluidly, remembering all of the lines that drew him up, all of the familiar bruises and gashes. She healed him wordlessly, a final gift she lied to herself, as she collected the rope of her powers and coiled it back within her. She ignored the bruises that blossomed beneath her skin, the freshly opened wounds at being so near and yet so far from him.

For a moment, she lifted a feathered leg and then placed it down again, lifting her chin so that she could look at him one more time. Her face was cool, calm, a mask for the turmoil that raged within her. She pressed her lips together and then nodded, the breeze shifting the crimson coils of her forelock across her forehead.

Part of her hoped he would look up, see her standing there amongst the crowds as they milled around her. The other hoped that he would ignore it.

Maybe she could still get out of here in one piece.

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