Leliana smiles as his accepts the promotion and then pivots to compliment her further. She doesn’t break eye contact, even though there still lives within her a quiet girl who shies from such things, but neither does she engage further in it. Instead she remains still, letting the smile that warms her crimson lips speak more than she ever could on the subject. How could she truly ever tell him how grateful she was to have someone like him in the kingdom—someone who trusted her and could help her grow this kingdom.
But such things are too difficult to verbalize so she keeps them tucked away.
Instead, she watches until he finally asks the follow-up question. Her lips press together in thought as she finally glances away, her hazel eyes looking toward the horizon. Once, she had been just a girl who had been living within Tephra’s warm waters; now, she was a woman who wore its crown. Once she had been a girl who had been just a healer capable of stitching others together. Now pure magic flowed through her.
“I don’t know if regret is the right word,” she finally answers as she looks back to him, “but I do long for the simplicity of what my life was before. I long for how easy it was to just be a healer.” She didn’t know what it was to always trust yourself; to know that, at the end of the day, you would know the right move.
“I can protect others now, but I can also harm them,” there is a bruising in her eyes as she thinks about those who were hurt by a simple action she had thought would only serve as a warning. “It goes against everything I have always believed about myself, and now I have to live with that.”
it's only you and me there until the darkness calls
let's face the dawn together; we'll brave whatever comes
@[Jakub]