follow my voice, I am right here; vulgaris

[leliana]

leliana

she said “oh, I know that love is all about the wind
how it can hold me up and kill me in the end”

It hurts to be this near to him, to feel the heat of him coming off in waves.

It hurts to feel him, to smell him, to know that this moment is fleeting and they are ruining whatever shred of happiness they could even have now. He snaps his jaws and she shakes the earth and maybe this is what they were always meant to be. Maybe they were never heading toward happily ever after. Maybe this is it. Maybe they were heading toward this crash, this collision, this fire engulfing the what ifs.

“Don’t tell me you love me,” she finally manages, her voice raw, her face scrubbed clean. “Don’t you dare tell me those lies.” She struggles to breathe—to find the ground beneath her. She feels a rare anger that is cleansing. It is so white hot that she can tell herself that it is pure. It burns through the paper thin gossamer of the old her in the dream, threatening to shred the dream in its entirety right here and now.

“You never loved me.”

It is easier to believe these lies. It is easier to tell herself that it was poisonous from the start. It is easier than trying to accept the complexities and the mistakes made on both sides. Easier than trying to reconcile that love wasn’t enough to save them, after all. “If you loved me, you would have fought for me.” Her tears are hot on her cheeks, her voice shaking but still firm. “You wouldn’t have let me walk away.”

She is shaking now, trembling like a fault line, and she wants to feel him against her. She wants to remember what it’s like for him to feel like home, like a sanctuary, and not this gun against her temple.

“So don’t lie to me.”

Her heart is pounding in her chest and somewhere, tucked away in Tephra, her body gasps, trying to draw in the humid air, struggling against the weight that clogs her throat.

For a second, she crumples against him, presses her forehead into the strength of his neck. Her lips are against his jaw before she can pause and she burns like the heavens. She would have this, right here; she would have this reminder forever, she thinks. He tastes like the beginning and the end and she could get lost in the middle of it. She kisses the corner of his mouth, the sweep of his throat, his brow.

She kisses him for the last time.

She kisses him goodbye.

@[vulgaris]