Got the devil in my eye, Feel the devil by my side; Leliana

[leliana]

The confusion in his eyes—the uncertainty that flickers in the depths of it—nearly undoes her. She wants to pull him close, cradle his head, whisper that it’s going to be okay, that they will figure it out. She wants to plant kisses up and down his jaw, memorizing the angles of his armor, uncovering the places where it lifts and pulls away from him. She wants to unwind all of the years and the hurt and the sorrow that washes across her features, that stands between them as unspeakably large gulf. The naked desire is writ clear across his expressive face, the lovely softness of it turned downward in thought, her crimson lips of crushed velvet pressed together, breath caught in her throat.

At his question, she closes her eyes—the moment nearly too much.

How does she tell him how much she once longed for it to be his? How does she tell him how long she spent wanting nothing more than to start a family with him? She wanted to mother his children, carrying for a brood, watching over him and healing him when the world broke him once more. But, as in all things between them, the desires of her heart had never been fully realized. Everything that she had thought that she wanted, crumbled to ash.

“It almost was once,” is all she can manage to say, her lyrical voice choked and full of emotion that she cannot bear to face. “I wanted it to be.” Her wings shift at her sides, the ivory and bone of them bleeding away to be replaced with the oil-slick scales of Vulgaris, the snake of them curling protectively around her rounded stomach. She had wanted a family with Dovev, but she had found something else instead—and although the gravity of him now threatens to completely dismantle her, she does not—cannot—regret what has transpired instead.

She does not regret finding Vulgaris. Falling in love with him. Bearing his child.

(She could never regret the life that warms in her stomach now.)

Her face is stripped clean and raw with emotion, but she manages to hold his gaze, unwavering.

“But no, Dovev. It’s not yours.”

it started with a perfect kiss, then we could feel the poison set in