this is all of me for all the world to see; 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

It was painful, to pull away from him, to feel the sting of the cold air against her open wounds instead of the warmth of his touch. She had lived within that ghost of a memory for but a second, soaked in the few moments of time stretched too thin—and then it had been gone, snatched from her very fingertips. She did not tremble, but she felt the quivers in her belly, the trembles in her bones. She felt the way that her body revolted against the space, her very cells dragging her forward to home, to him, to his side.

She resisted.

Despite the urge to drop her gaze, to study the ground beneath her feet, she forced herself to look him in the eye, to meet his rage with her calm, her expression smoothed over as if she did not have tumultuous sea of emotions bubbling and simmering beneath the surface. “Because I still want you,” she said quietly, her voice steady in spite of everything, in spite of the pain of her wounds and the fear she still felt after her encounter with Zoryn and, oh, most of all, in spite of the way she longed for him now.

“I know,” she closed her eyes and swallowed, struggling to form the words. “I know you have a child, a lover…a family.” Her voice broke on the last word, a gasp as if it was a dagger to the belly and not a word she had once considered so sweet. “I know all of that and yet, I stand here, and I still want you. I still ache for you.” She looked away for a second, breath unsteady, the emotions boiling up her throat and disrupting the white-knuckled grip she held on her control. When she glanced back, there were tears in the corners of her eyes, the surface of them shiny with emotion. “I still love you, Dovev.”

It was the first time she had said it out loud, the first time she had admitted it even to herself, and even though the words felt treacherous on her tongue, they felt right—the weight of them settling amongst the curves of her jaw. She shook her bleeding head. “I am a fool to feel this way.” Her wings shifted at her side, turning into that familiar onyx and ivory and constellations, holding her when he could not.

“I am selfish and foolish and I should bear these wounds. They are nothing more than I deserve.”

She could smell him, and part of her wanted to bridge the distance, but she restrained herself. He did not want her, not really, and despite the love that singed her breast, she did not want to be the one to ruin his family—to shatter his child’s chance at normalcy. She had grown up an orphan with her sister. She did not want to thrust any of that unhappiness onto an innocent. So the distance remained. Cold and infinite.

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