Cullen's hand closed on his sword hilt before he was fully awake. Unsheathing it, he jumped out of bed whilst still trying to work out what had interrupted his sleep. Ten years of nightmares were enough to know it, when for once an abrupt awakening was not self-inflicted.
A quick tally of his senses came up with two anomalies; light from below, and footsteps on the ladder. He relaxed, if only a little. Somebody meaning him harm would doubtless have been more stealthy. Still... to judge from what he could see of the sky, it was the middle of the night, and while the air had a reassuring absence of monstrous wingbeats, explosions and screams, somebody deciding to wake him at this hour could not be good. He didn't lock the doors below - it would have disastrously slowed down access to both the battlements and to himself in the event of an emergency - but his soldiers knew not to enter after he'd retired unless the matter was truly urgent.
As always when grim news was in the offing, there was that quiet, gnawing fear - had something happened to the Inquisitor?
He wasn't exactly in what could be called a state of undress. At Skyhold, a room partly open to the elements was too cold to sleep like that. Nonetheless he preferred not to appear in front of his soldiers without being properly turned out. (Cards with Josephine notwithstanding.) He forestalled the visitor's arrival with a call of, "Yes?"
There was a muffled grunt, then, "It's me, Cullen."
A familiar rush of relief. Once again he'd let her out of his sight. Once again she'd made it back.
He put his sword away and went to kneel by the top of the ladder. She was not far below, leaning back with the merest tips of one hand's fingers supporting her weight while the other hand held up a glowlamp. He tried not to be distracted by the thought of the drop beneath her. She'd land on her feet. It was what she did.
As usual, she grinned at the sight of him. Unusually, it didn't quite seem to reach her eyes. Maybe it was just the light... but then, her waking him up in the middle of the night wasn't normal either.
He decided to take it slow. "Aine. When did you get back?"
"Oh, couple of hours ago. Made a final push not to spend another damned night under canvas."
And then found you couldn't sleep in your own bed either, I'll wager, he thought as he observed the shadows under her eyes.
"Sorry to wake you, I..." The grin faltered. "Don't get any ideas, all right? I'm not after anything south of your shoulder just now."
Well, at least I won't need thumbscrews. "Come on up. Uh, unless you'd rather..."
"No, here's fine." She stuck the lamp's handle back in her mouth and resumed climbing.
He returned gratefully to the bed's warmth and waited while Aine shucked her boots and cloak, shuttered the lamp and slid in beside him, mostly-dressed as he was. Resisting the impulse to embrace her, he simply watched her profile become clearer as his eyes readjusted to the little starlight that filtered into the room.
Finally he concluded that she needed a nudge. "We got the bird. So you succeeded."
"Oh yes." He'd never heard her sound so bitter. "In terms of the Inquisition's objectives, the mission was a resounding success."
But the Chargers... "Talk me through it?"
It wasn't a complicated story. (Varric would have said that the good ones never were.) Two small groups, to drive the Venatori away from the vantage points from which they could have sunk the Qunari dreadnought; the Chargers falling to a counterattack, but holding long enough for the ship to make it safely out to sea.
"Iron Bull's grieving," Aine finished, gaze still firmly directed up. "He's doing the whole, 'No problem, boss, they knew what they signed up for,' thing, but... well, you'd think a secret agent would be a better actor."
After a pause, she said, "Cullen?"
"Sorry. Give me a minute. I'm thinking."
Thankfully, she did as he asked. Had she enquired, he'd have felt obliged to answer; and it would not do, whilst in bed with Aine Trevelyan, to confess that he was thinking about Vaish Hawke.
Not that he'd never set eyes on her without the metal shell which served as both protection and camouflage – or ever wished to. So many people had taken her straightforward-soldier-type demeanour at face value, and been blindsided by the keen intelligence beneath, her power to slice through however-many layers of padding and stab a problem right in its beating heart. During one of their verbal sparring matches he'd muttered some offhand comment about not understanding women, and she'd responded acidly, "You'll find it helps to think of us as normal people. You know, like you do with men."
He'd brushed it aside at the time, but Hawke's advice had a way of getting inside a person, and there had come a time when it had dawned on him - she had a point.
So now he was using a trick he'd found useful, asking himself what he'd have done if a male colleague had told him a story like this. Not let them into his bed, obviously, but that was beside the point. There was something bothering him...
Got it.
"You said, 'We decided to have the Chargers stand.' Whose decision was it, exactly?"
Now it was his turn to wait. Finally, very quietly, "Mine."
"Tell me."
She told.
He stored away without comment the information that, when the chips were down, Iron Bull had frozen. "Tough call. Though you do make decisions like that in the War Room all the time."
"I know, I know, we push our little pieces around and these people live, and those people die, and when the casualty lists come back I can usually put a face to some of the names. But this time it was the Chargers. This time I had to watch. And I still decided so... easily."
"As you should. It was an easy decision."
"But you said..."
"I said tough, not difficult. I liked them too, but half a dozen mercs don't begin to stack up against an alliance with the Qunari. If you had the same decision to make over again, would you change it?"
"No," she whispered, then more firmly, "If I'd mucked about, tried anything like pulling them out slowly while we raced down to reinforce them... we'd probably have lost the Chargers and the Qunari."
"Exactly. Someone was going to die no matter what, and you made the choice that was best for the cause. Iron Bull flinched. You didn't."
"Well, they were his people."
Cullen reached over and gently tugged on her head so that she took her gaze from the ceiling and, after staring past his shoulder for a few moments, reluctantly met his eyes.
"I believe that if it had been Cassandra and the others on that ridge, you'd have made the same call. Maybe a moment more hesitation, but not enough to affect the outcome." He tapped her chest. "There's a heart of pure dragonbone in here, one that means you can stand firm and make decisions like that. I'd never have endorsed you for Inquisitor if I didn't think so."
"You think I'm willing to throw my friends' lives away, and that's a good thing?"
"I think - I know - you're capable of setting aside personal feelings for the sake of the greater good. If it were necessary for you to look me in the eye and send me to my death, you'd do it. And yes, that's as it should be."
Aine shuddered and pulled the bedclothes higher. "And you'd go."
"Of course." He turned onto his back, him now the one determinedly gazing at the ceiling. His next words almost didn't make it out. "You did."
A heartbeat's pause, then, "Haven. Oh, Cullen. Were you already feeling...?"
"I was trying not to. I never imagined you'd feel the same. The moment I really fell for you was the moment I thought I'd never see you again - when you realised what you had to do and didn't bat an eye. I spent the next two days kicking myself for not going with you. In between telling myself you were definitely dead, because hope was," he swallowed, "...unbearable."
An arm slid around his waist. He pulled Aine close and took a few deep breaths.
After a little while she said, "I think I'd have liked you to be with me too. But I couldn't have let you come. There were too many officers down."
"Yes. If I'd abandoned my troops we'd have lost even more refugees. But I kicked myself anyhow. Don't do that, by the way. Learn from what happened, don't dwell on it."
She snorted.
"I know," he said. "But try not to."
"I have been. Trying. I don't have any right to feel miserable anyway."
"Yes, you do. You know you did your best. I know it, the Bull knows it and probably the Chargers did too. You get to grieve. You get to miss them. Feeling bad about it is right and proper - you just mustn't let it get in the way of your decisions."
Silence again. Then a choking sound, and he felt her shoulders start to shake.
She'd never cried in front of him before. He hoped nothing more was expected than for him to go on holding her.
He lay wakeful, for a long time after her sobs had given way to the even breathing of sleep. All the swarms of people at that Conclave, and the one who had walked in on Corypheus' ritual and ended up branded with the Anchor... had been her. A natural leader – not only the charisma to pull together a fighting force, but the backbone to do whatever it took. He knew it made her uncomfortable when someone brought up the idea of her having been Maker-sent, so he didn't, but he was endlessly confused about how she could not believe it.
Such fine words he'd had to offer. What of his own dragonbone heart? If it happened again, could he watch her go out to die and not be with her, no matter who else needed him? Could he bear to be the one left behind?
He was starting to believe he couldn't.
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