[mature] right against the wall, leliana.

[leliana]

I don't know what I'm supposed to do, haunted by the ghost of you

For days, Leliana has felt a tightening in her chest—a swelling that grew increasingly uncomfortable. She felt a itch between her shoulder blades, a nervous flutter that spoke to things to come, an emptiness in her belly that hasn’t made sense. She hasn’t been able to shake it, even when she argued with herself that it was nothing. But today, that tightening is a skittering of nerves over her flesh, a static electricity that keeps her roaming around her home, wondering at the ache in her bones and the weeping wounds.

She doesn’t see him coming.

Later, she would wonder if it would have been easier if she had.

Instead, she feels him first and her face goes slack with surprise. He has always been so gentle with her, so caring—never once forceful. Her mind goes blank as she tries to argue that it is merely passion; her body goes stiff, her muscles locking. But the argument leaks from her as the time continues to stretch thin. The violence escalates and she bites her lips to keep from crying out when his teeth sink into her wing.

They remain serpentine. This remains surreal.

Tears begin to fall down her cheeks as the reality of the last few years begins to shatter beneath his brutal touch. This happiness she has erected, to have knocked down, to build up, crumples beneath his weight. She wasn’t meant for the happy family, she thinks as her blood floods his mouth. She was such a fool to think that she had ever deserved that—that she would ever deserve such a thing. She was such a fool.

He slides off her back and her legs tremble, her knees threaten to give out, but she doesn’t fall. Her head drops, the curtain of red of her mane falling forth and shielding her face. “Why?” her voice is small and quiet, her stomach clenching, her battered wing held close to her. Tears continue to fall softly down her cheeks as she swallows hard, trying to gather her some sense of stability.  “I don’t understand.”

o m g