Two glasses and a bottle of what appeared to be West Hill brandy appeared on the desk, followed shortly by the scraping of a chair across the stone floor. The commander flicked his eyes upward only long enough to note the dwarf now seating himself opposite the desk.
"Something I can do for you, Varric?" Cullen asked, turning his eyes back to his reports.
"Are you aware there is a massive hole in your ceiling?" Varric replied, uncorking the bottle and pouring several fingers- practically a whole fist- of brandy into each glass.
"Yes, quite. Not a single person has entered the room without commenting on it." He frowned as he continued to write, gesturing to the glasses with his quill between sentences. "Was the tavern full?"
"No, but between Bull and his chargers it may as well be," Varric said, chuckling. With one thick finger he pushed a glass carefully towards the commander, then picked up his own. He slowly swirled the brandy, and fixed Cullen with a level stare. "So tell me about the Hero of Ferelden."
The tip of the quill snapped as it scratched harshly across the width of the parchment with the sudden jerk of his hand. Cullen stared deerlike at the jagged line and thick splatter of ink now ruining his report. Eventually he cleared his throat and carefully set aside the broken quill. "Excuse me?"
"You knew her before she was the Hero," Varric explained.
"Briefly, a very long time ago," Cullen said curtly.
"You served in the Calenhad circle, where she lived before being conscripted to the Wardens. Surely you must have something to say about her." Varric couldn't help but grin at the former templar's obviously growing annoyance.
"Varric, if you're writing another book I hardly see how anything I have to say will be of any use," Cullen said, yanking open a desk drawer and hunting for a fresh pen. "So if you would excuse me-"
"Oh, I'm not writing a book about the Blight," Varric interjected. "Or I wasn't, though it would be a great setting... Anyway, no, that's not why I'm here. We were hoping you might have some kind of insight on where to find her."
"And what in the Maker's name gave you that idea?" Cullen demanded. He plucked a small paring knife from the desk and with quick, irritated motions set to sharpening the tip of his new quill.
"Leliana," Varric said. "She was, as I'm sure you know, one of the Warden's companions during the Blight."
"Then go bloody talk to her."
"She and the Seeker have been hunting the Warden for at least as long as they were hunting Hawke. Whatever knowledge our Spymaster has, it isn't enough." Varric paused and took a sip of his brandy. "But you knew her when she was an apprentice. Maybe something you have will give us a clue."
Cullen sighed. "Trust me when I tell you that nothing I have to say will do you any good. It's been twelve- no, thirteen?- years since I had anything to do with her."
"Look, Curly, I'm doing you a favor by coming here myself. When Cassandra heard you were ever even in the same room with the Warden, she wanted to come over here and rake you over the coals herself. Trust me when I tell you that's not something you want to happen."
The commander stared across the desk, jaw set, for a long moment.
"I can go get her, though, if you would rather-"
"Maker, no," Cullen said quickly, defeated. He sighed again, laying quill and knife at the edge of the desk. His papers he gathered quickly, carefully together and stacked them out of the way. With one hand he pulled the other glass of brandy towards himself, certain he would need it if he was to spend the rest of the evening talking about the Circle, let alone about her. He took a sip, letting the alcohol burn a path down his throat before speaking again. "What is it you want to know, exactly?"
"Anything you have to tell. What was she like? Where would she have gone, if you had to guess?" Varric asked.
Cullen sat back in his chair, thinking for a moment. "Lyanna was-"
"Lyanna? That's awfully familiar for someone who only knew her 'briefly'," Varric said, eyeing the commander over his drink.
"At the circle she was just Lyanna," Cullen said tersely, frowning. "Apprentices didn't have titles."
"Apologies, messere, for the interruption," Varric said, lifting his free hand. "Carry on."
Taking another drink, Cullen continued. "She was top of her class. I recall her studying late into the evenings in the libraries. Not even necessarily because she had to, but because she enjoyed it. The reading, the theory. She probably read every book in the tower twice. And if she wasn't in the library, she was in the greenhouse. I think she must have loved plants as much as she loved books, and knew the name and use of every herb and flower you could think of."
He ran his finger around the rim of the glass, gazing almost absently into the amber liquid as old memories returned to him fresh as though it had been yesterday. Varric kept quiet, though he made note of a certain wistfulness creeping into the normally reserved commander's voice.
"She was a very talented healer," he said. "She was apprenticed directly to the Senior Enchanter who ran the tower's infirmary, but even as an apprentice she made better poultices and salves than Wynne herself did. My guess is Lyanna would have eventually become First Enchanter, if she had remained at the tower. Provided she..." Cullen caught himself before he said survived Uldred's uprising, swallowing the words and hoping Varric didn't press for an explanation.
"Above all," he said instead, "above all, she was kind. To children on their first nights in the tower, to stiff old enchanters, even... even to the templars. She had a kind word and a gentle hand for everyone."
Unable to help himself, Varric smirked and added, "And I suppose the first time you met, she was the most beautiful thing you had ever lain your young eyes upon."
To Varric's surprise, Cullen didn't glare or snap. He tapped his fingers on the desk, and a small smile brushed his lips. "No, she wasn't, actually. She was... probably all of fourteen. Skinny, taller than half the apprentices her age. Tall as I was, in truth. All knees and elbows. Eyes too big for her face. Not to say I was any better. I was sixteen, fresh from the farm, certain I was going to spend my life being a hero and hunting apostates in the name of Andraste."
"I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you knew her better than you let on," Varric said, carefully, hoping to keep the commander talking.
Cullen let out a long, slow breath, and nodded. "I... yes," he said. "Though I highly doubt anything that happened then will be of any help to Cassandra."
"Let's let her be the judge of that," Varric suggested. "Why don't you just start from the beginning, and we'll go from there."
"We didn't speak to one another for... three, maybe four years after my arrival. She was just another apprentice in a sea of them and I was preoccupied with my training. Apprentices and initiates rarely, if ever, have reason to talk."
"But..?" Varric prompted.
Cullen smiled again, that same small, faintly wistful smile. "But sometimes, they do have reason. And that day, we did."
