how it can hold me up and kill me in the end; 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”

How much hurt can one heart hold?

How much pain can one soul suffer?

These are the questions the plague Leliana. These are the questions the dig deep into her soul, anchoring down into the core. She doesn’t know. Once, she might have said that she had an infinite capacity to love, to bear the burden for others. She might have had an endless trust in the strength of her heart, in the way that she could expand to take in the hurt of others. She might have trusted in her ability to bounce back, to endure. She might have said that for all of her weakness, there is one thing she does better than most:

Survive.

But now she is not so sure.

She does not feel like herself any longer. She doesn’t recognize the face that greets her in still waters. She doesn’t recognize the very beat of her own heart. She is hollow and quiet and broken. She shies from others where once she flung herself into the worst of it. She pulls away, tending to wounds that may never heal. It all becomes so much, too much, and when Darling pulls her close, she can only collapse into it.

It is almost too much when Vulgaris begins to make his way toward her.

It is almost too much to bear and tears escape to fall down her cheeks. She flinches at his touch but doesn’t pull away. Instead she just closes her eyes because she so desperately wants it to be something that she can hold onto. She so desperately wants it to be something that she can trust again.

And so she does.

Foolish, perhaps, but she cannot hold out against it. Despite the fear in her throat and the million things that tell her she should turn from this, she succumbs to it. Despite the logic and the sense that rage in her mind, she merely turns herself over to the wave of emotion that rises in her throat. “I want to believe you,” she finally says, her voice low and soft. “I need to believe you.” When she opens her eyes again, they are bruised, the curves of her red mane curving around her jaw, the flowers blooming in her hair.

“I need to know that my Vulgaris is still somewhere in there.”

Behind the man who caused the scars on her wings.

Behind the man who dragged her to this prison.

Behind the man who abandoned the home and life that they had been building.

She searches his serpentine eyes. “Please tell me I can find him."