"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
she said “oh, I know that love is all about the wind how it can hold me up and kill me in the end”
She comes to him in dreams.
Her body rests within the heart of Tephra—nestled away for the sleep that comes to her so rarely now—and her mind opens like a flower. The starlight along the slender curve of her back, the breath of oceanic air that expels from her lips. Flowers rustle in her mane that drapes over her dappled neck and her mind wanders. Uncaged and with a stirring of petals around the magician’s sleeping body, it takes flight.
She soars over Tephra and through Sylva and somewhere she slips behind the veil of reality into a plane she has never before experienced—at least not like this. She can feel it warping and bending around her; the way that it ripples, the edges of it falling like a curtain caught in the breeze. In it, she feels like her old self and yet that power still flows through her like magma. It is just contained, controlled.
She finds him or he finds her but it doesn’t matter.
Her face blossoms into the kaleidoscope of emotions. The overwhelming joy of seeing him, the agony of knowing that this moment is fleeting, the hurt of knowing he chose Loess over her. All of it crashes into her and she gasps for a second, her eyes widening slightly as her chest heaves. It nearly rips the fabric of the dream in two, rending it from root to stem, but she stabilizes, finds the floor of the dream once more.
“Vulgaris,” his name is sweet on her tongue, poisonous on the edges of it, and when she looks at him, it is with the hazel eyes that he knows best. There is a glow within her, trapped like a coal beneath a banked fire, but it is her. When she steps through the rippling pool of the dream, she does so slowly, cautiously.
The world around them is impossibly quiet—just a sea of stars and a home that divides them.
When she is near enough to feel the heat of him, she pauses and shudders and waits.
" i could be ugly in loving you. filthy and soft-mouthed. wolf-tongued and terrible.
i could carry my heart in my mouth like a bird dog to you, so gently i wouldn’t leave a mark. "
He usually refuses to sleep, these days, but his sister insisted on watching the twins for a while. Vulgaris tries to fight it at first but it only takes a few minutes for him to drift off in the warmth beside the hot springs. In his dreams, it is always dark and he wanders alone through Loess beneath a starless sky. Everyone has left him to find a better life and he wishes them well. He dreams of the life he deserves in the home he has ruined.
But tonight there is someone walking toward him and he pauses, one leg still lifted in the air. When she finally comes into focus, he feels his brows furrow in confusion as he tries to make sense of her being here. Is he the Leliana that he loves or the one who took a crown and promised to bring war to his doorstep? Is she just part of his lonely mind or the real thing, come to destroy him when he is most vulnerable? His leg slowly lowers to the ground just to take a step back from her when she speaks his name.
He doesn’t even notice that the stars have returned to his empty skies to harken her return. Her eyes are not emptygold but he is wary of magicians. Always has been, really. But he can’t bring himself to move away from her when she steps close enough that he can feel her warmth radiating from her glowing body. The serpent doesn’t bridge the gap between them either, though.
“Have you come to bring the heavens down on me already?” His voice is cold and he keeps the emotion peeled away from his words as well as his face.
His heart, bruised and scabbed a hundred times over, rises and prepares itself to ram against the indifferent stone walls of her love again. Vulgaris is tired but there is not a shred of him that knows when to give in and go home. He will welcome outright defeat before he ever learns how to pronounce the word ‘forfeit’. Her eyes are soft and scared, though, something the war-hungry Leliana probably couldn’t replicate even with all her power.
“Why would you hurt yourself seeing me when you know what lies on the horizon? Go home, Leliana. Just this once, don’t waste your time on me.”
It hurts him to say but he means it. He kisses her face and sighs as he takes another step back.
she said “oh, I know that love is all about the wind how it can hold me up and kill me in the end”
Maybe this is the time they have broken for good.
Maybe their love can only hold up to so much pressure. Maybe it was the final straw, the last breath, that did it in. As a girl, she always dreamed of having the kind of love that could fly into the belly of the sun and emerge without so much as singed feathers but life taught her such things never exist. She has spent so many years crumbling beneath the weight of the love; maybe the second she let go, it finally gave in.
These are the questions that tumble through her mind as she stares at his empty face, the features carved from stone. Her belly trembles—a fear she is incapable of feeling these days—and she feels her hold on reality crumbling beneath her. She frowns as he continues to push her away, to fortify the walls that have already been built between them, and she curses herself for ever allowing this to happen.
Why bring her here?
Why put herself through it?
She doesn’t have the answers—doesn’t know why dreams took her to these shores—and she is left with the rubble in the aftermath. She is left with his rebuttal and the ice in his voice. She is left alone.
“The first time that you left,” her voice nearly breaks but she catches it and continues, “when you drove me from Loess, I told myself that we had a love that could survive it. I told myself that you would find your way back to me.” Even when she had to lie to Adna every night—telling her stories of why her father didn’t want them living in his home any longer—even then she had believed in them.
“The second time you left, when you found me and hurt me, when you found me and walked me into a trap of your own making, I told myself that our love could survive it too. I told myself that we would find a way—that we would find forgiveness and rebuild trust. I told myself that we wouldn’t be broken.”
A tear finds its way down her cheek and her dream body begins to break apart, tiny cracks making their way across the mahogany of her skin so that the golden glow from within could begin to halo her.
“But I never thought,” here her voice does finally break, and she longs for the body back in Tephra. “I should have guessed,” She longs for the protection of her magic—for the way it pulls her into the undercurrent until she can’t breathe or feel or think. She longs for the shield, no matter how numbing. “I should have known you would be the one to stop fighting—that you would be the one to give up on us.”
Her face shatters and she feels the pressure building in her chest, that desperate, keening pain that sluices through the rest. It is agony to feel now. It is agony to memorize the edges of his cold face.
More tears fall down her cheeks, weakness that shudders through her—sending shockwaves through the ground, rippling through the dirt and sand. “I will go,” she finally manages, clutching for reality again.
“I won’t be coming back, Vulgaris. Not like this. Not ever again.”
She takes a step back, petals falling down to the ground between them.
“I am done letting what we call love tear me open. I was such a fool. I won’t be anymore.”
" i could be ugly in loving you. filthy and soft-mouthed. wolf-tongued and terrible.
i could carry my heart in my mouth like a bird dog to you, so gently i wouldn’t leave a mark. "
He was not born a monster. But hate planted a seed in him and call him son while time nurtured that seed into a lush forest where everything that blooms is black. He thought Leliana turned that forest green and gave it life where before it had only a hunger for the kill. A month ago, he would have sworn up and down that their love had cleansed all the ash and soot from his tar black soul and taught him how to deserve her. But this winter has thrown a shade over him and everything is ink-colored once more.
He was not born a monster but he is the best at what he does.
Vulgaris watches her crack and he grits his teeth as he forces himself to stay put. Leliana tears into him and he knows he deserves every word, so he bears it even when it threatens to rip him open so that he can bleed out right here. She thinks he’s given up and he laughs, a sound so full and booming that it even startles him. She doesn’t feel the scorching heat of the thousand suns of his love trying to burn through him no matter the cost. He’s glad that he hides it that well.
When her despair rumbles through the ground, he steps closer, unafraid and unapologetic for the storm they brew together.
“Then go. Forget what it’s like to feel. Forget everything we ever had if it helps you,” he says, close enough for her to hear the way his fangs all clack together on the words. “I will love you until the stars lose their will to burn, until I forget everything but the shape of your lips.”
His words are soft but they come spilling out in a roar, jaws snapping like he might tear her face from her skull just to get to his golden enemy. But he remains put as his words just keep coming
“I love you more than you could ever know, and right now that means making sure you hate me.” The words curl out in a snarl, his lips now against her ear. “I love you enough to give you your vengeance and I want to make sure you don’t regret it for one second.”
Even now, the smell of her hair is heaven and he wants to bury his face against her neck, but he refrains. She wasn’t born an angel but she’s learned how to make a man pay for his sins and he’s ready for the ax to fall.
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.
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