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

This was, in many ways, her nightmares come true. This was a hurt she could not soothe, a wound she could not heal. This was something beyond her powers. Even if she worked until exhaustion, she would not be able to save him from this; she would not be able to hurt the torment that lay in the eyes. Peering at him, her hazel eyes soft and wide, she cannot decide what hurts worse. The pain he is in, visible in the tensed muscles and bruised depths, or the way that he stares at her with such heat, the challenge in the tip of his chin. There was no love, no passion here; just what she perceived as regret, as anger.

Her heart shattered in her chest, but she bit it back.

It was worse to see him in pain.

It was absolutely worse.

When he got to his knees, she watched silently, her healing uncoiling naturally as she focused on his weak motions. It began searching through him, almost as a reflex. She hunted for abrasions, infections, anything—but she could find nothing. She could not find a single source of pain and so the cooling tendrils of her power returned to her. She could not fix this; she could not help. The idea that she was so utterly useless before such pain undid her, and were she not trying to remain strong, she would have sunk to her knees. As it was, she remained upright, clinging to her calm, remaining steady as she needed to be.

It wasn’t until he motioned that she moved at all, her shoulder twitching slightly as she sought to interpret the signal. It didn’t make sense; not when she had felt the heat roll off him, the pain and fury simmering just below the surface of his motions. Still, she did not deny him—was unable to turn her back on him. She moved several steps forward and lowered herself gracefully, folding her crimson-dipped legs beneath her. She kept space between them, despite the way she ached to fold into his side, to press herself into him as if nothing had happened—as if she didn’t know he had a lover somewhere else waiting for him.

Of course, even if she could forget that, even if she could deny those internal protests, she could not get the image out of her head of his burning eyes, the hard edge to them. So she left space, feeling the heat that radiated off of him but not leaning into it, just breathing slowly, steadily. Her wings rustled at her side as if preparing to flare and then settle over his back but she stopped the motion, frowning slightly but then dropping her head.  She could not fix this, she thought. She could only make this worse.

So why was she still here?

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