haunted by the ghost of you; vulgaris

[leliana]

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

They meld together and she feels a tear hit her cheek; it feels cleansing and the emotions that clash in her breast go to war. She laughs softly and it is the sound of spring rain as she presses a kiss into the ghost of his hide. “I didn’t want anyone to pay,” she confesses as another tear falls. “I just wanted it to stop. I wanted to see the cruelty come to an end. I wanted to know I didn’t turn my cheek when it continued.”

It feels so inadequate to explain the dying star in her chest in such a way.

It feels painfully small to try and she can only laugh, can only shake her head at the way her tongue trips over itself and the way they continue to misunderstand one another. But they don’t on the important pieces. They don’t on what matters and her face tilts upward when his father comes to them. “Thank you,” she breathes, her expression open and vulnerable. “Thank you for caring for him here.”

But her attention can’t be caught by Larva for forever.

Vulgaris has a gravity all of his own and she’s soon caught in the riptide of it. She is pulled back in closer to him and her lips find all the angles of his face she knows so well. The angles that are made anew in this plane, washed in the light of the moon that never leaves. They are gentler, softer, and she falls in love with them in the same way she fell in love with all of his harsh angles that night by the river.

“I don’t need you to die,” she whispers into him, finding her chest against his—finding home. “I need you to live. I need you to fight for that.” Her cheek comes to rest against his broad back and she shudders. “I don’t know what I will be like when I go back.” She had risen from the ash and stood over a land covered in the pockmarks of the war she breathed into existence. She had solidified into a core of her pain.

“But I know who I can be if you come back with me.”

She knows that in their world, there’s still a chance for the sun to rise again.

@[vulgaris]