[mature] chew it up and swallow it.

[vulgaris]

VulgariS

take me, take me back to your bed. i love you so much that it hurts my head.
say, i don't mind you under my skin. oh, let the bad parts in, the bad parts in.

What have you done?

He turns his head to look at her face, watching the soft lines of her face turn sour in fear and rage. Even the part of him that remembers her had no idea she had inherited his wrath and his sharp tongue. He regards her with a sort of clinical detachment, however, and continues to turn his head from side to side like it will help him connect the dots. Abandoning them? He runs his tongue across the point of one of his fangs and casts a fleeting glance at Quiet’s corpse.

Centuries ago, Leliana tore down the walls that kept him safe from safe pain, but they begin to find a home around his heart once more. Brick by brick, word by word, cold stones pile up until a fortress shields him from the heat of her words or the sharp ache of her eyes. They don’t understand the hunger or the agony, the ecstasy of release once he sinks his teeth into something. And how could they?

“I don’t remember your name or even mine. I know that I love you, but I also know that I am hungry,” he explains, voice flat and bereft of any warmth she might have known it to have a month ago. The summer of his kindness has come to an end, giving way immediately to a winter of isolation and bitter self-loathing. “Everything I eat is someone’s child. You and I will carry that with us every day, Daughter. Our survival spells someone’s doom.”

He turns and looks back at the little corpse once more. Maybe he would have avoided devouring a child before, maybe felt a slow spiral into dread at the realization of what he had done. But the winter churns on, silent and uninterested in such woes.

@[adna] this is bad bad not good. so sorry.