the good ol' days may not return || exist & leliana

[leliana]

I waited for something and something died
so I waited for nothing and nothing arrived

He is warmth; he is soothing. He is sinking into a hot bath, aches working their way out of her muscles without her trying. She almost collapses against him only because she knows that she can, because she knows that he is strong enough to hold her. He envelopes her, and she is reminded that there is good in this world, that there are souls that you can trust to hold your own without fracturing it. It brings a frown between her brows, a subtle tremor to her heart, but ultimately, it steadies her, and when he pulls away, she does not feel as if she is crumbling at the edges. Instead, she feels whole—feels herself returning.

Until, that is, he sees the scar.

She had just done murmuring, “I missed you so,” when she hears him, and she flushes in response. She was still so unused to the silver mark on her cheek, just as she was unused to its crescent twin upon her shoulder. Marks she could have healed, had she wanted to, but that she chose to bear instead. Marks that reminded her of her own foolishness, of what happened when you gave yourself so wholly to another. Zoryn may have been the one to rip flesh and lay her open, but she was the one who did it to herself.

“It’s n-nothing,” she stammers in her voice of fog, shaking her pretty head, but the moment passes, and she is glad for it. Her hazel eyes move to the horizon where her sister stands, carved from copper, beautiful and wild. But her wild had an edge now, something different, and Leliana frowns against it, taking a hesitant step forward before pausing. Something erupts within her, something that leaves her feeling opened and hollowed out. A desperate longing for the same curve that Exist not wears, a hunger to be a mother, to feel that warmth swell within her, that life grow between her bones.

The jealousy causes a deep and bitter self-loathing to stir, and she shakes her head to rid of it. Now was not the time to think of all that she did not have, to think of that which could have been. She would never bear Dovev’s children, she would not start a family with him; it only brought her harm to long for it. So she moves forward, missing the emotion on Canaan’s face, tucked into his voice.

She comes up on Exist’s other side, and presses the velvet of her lips to her sister’s forehead, sweeping her forelock to the side in the way she has always done. “I am so happy for you,” she murmurs, and it’s true. Exist would be a beautiful mother. Then, taking a step forward, she reaches her healing out into her sister’s belly, letting it wrap around those twin heartbeats. Her lips brush the wings and she murmurs a sentiment she once told her sister, so long ago upon that mountain, “Now they get to exist too.”

it's our dearest ally, it's our closest friend
it's our darkest blackout, it's our final end