This story was inspired by the following Dragon Age Kink Meme prompt: "I don't know why but I'm obsessed the idea of a pregnant Marian Hawke. I want Hawke to have one night of steamy, passionate sex with her M!LI. (I prefer Cullen but Fenris or Sebastian will do. Not Anders!) He then leaves her right after due to guilt or an argument. Cue the angst! Marian ends up getting pregnant and doesn't tell her LI because she doesn't think he would care. He's still in love with Hawke but doesn't know how to go about fixing things. He then somehow finds out she's pregnant. I want guilt, jealousy, and arguing (lots of angst) but resolving in a happy ending."


CHAPTER 1

Cullen sleeps with the glow lamp left on beside his bed. Cullen doesn't sleep. He drifts from counting rows of tiny dimples on the plaster wall just beside his head to a carnival's cacophony of images. One minute he's laughing with men he thinks of as brothers. In the next, bulbous flesh ripples out from the stone walls, ballooning around him. These monsters loom larger than their shadows. So Cullen runs. He runs up the stone stairs in the center of the tower, chased by what had once been a mage but is now an assemblage of gruesome body parts ripped inside out. Cullen runs without his armor or his sword, his bare feet slapping the stone steps, spiraling upward until he stumbles. He stumbles again. His foot slips on the next step. He falls, dropping down through the center of the tower, down into the darkness, falling too fast to gulp the air rushing past him. Just before he crashes into the tower's central pit, he forces out the faintest whisper, an echo of a scream.

Cullen jolts awake.

He chokes out a shout, heart in his throat, nightclothes soaked in sweat. The glow lamp beside his bed casts him in a sickly pale yellow light.

When the shaking stops, he shivers.

He strips off his nightclothes and uses the tail of his shirt to mop away the sweat chilling his chest. He wipes the foulness under his armpits and dries his back. Gets up. Walks to the foot of his bed where he takes out a heavy blanket from a trunk and unfolds it, covering his sweat-damp bedsheets. He sits down and leans back. The glow lamp casts a lurching shadow across his belly where his forearm blocks the lamp's light. Each night it takes him longer than it should to climax.

For years he has pictured the same face. Large eyes, caramel skin, him moving inside her as lithe limbs clutch his body. That sharp edge of her heel digging into his back. Their breath shuddering ever louder. But this time, she is not the woman whom he imagines. Not during the moment just before he comes. He sees another face, a different woman who he knows here in Kirkwall. A woman who saved him.

Cullen cannot decide how he feels as he spills across his abdomen.

Empty.

Both of these women saved him. The first when all he wanted was to live, the second when he couldn't care less.

He catches his breath as the second woman's image lingers, her face softened in his memory by the passage of a few weeks of time. He tries recalling each of her features just as they were while she was lit in overcast light on that day he met her out on the Wounded Coast.

Hawke.

The moment he met her, he knew exactly what she was, even before she ripped a blast of ice from the fade. The horrors surrounding him staggered and froze, holding still just long enough for him to shatter them with hard strikes from his blade. The battle against Wilmod, those demons, and those shades ended just as quickly as it started. Hawke asked Cullen if he was okay. His muscles shook uncontrollably as his blood roared through his veins. He had known something was wrong—terribly wrong—but he hadn't expected the horrors that lay slain at their feet, littered across the windswept rocky campsite. Cullen could hardly speak. His heart pounded in his throat. Yet Hawke remained calm. Concerned. 'Are you all right?'

She was Fereldan, just like him. He could tell by her accent and by the style of clothing she and her companions wore. Never once that day had it crossed Cullen's mind to arrest her. That thought should have. Hawke was an apostate mage.

Cullen leans back against the chilly wall and lets his legs flop over the side of his bed. He looks out his window, out to the darkness surrounding the Gallows.

In his mind, he can still piece together her features. Hawke's long, narrow nose and her angular chin. That cropped mop of windblown black hair and those piercing blue eyes that locked on him from behind a messy curtain of side-swept bangs. She had a nice smile and her voice remained calm despite the madness they had just cut down. 'It's over now. Catch your breath. We'll stand guard and wait.'

Once her image feels fully formed in his mind, Cullen tries to forget her. He reaches for his shirt and mops the sticky spill from his skin. He wipes clean the tip of his cock. He wonders if Hawke has ever bedded a templar. Do apostates bed templars? He thinks not. Most of the circle mages in Ferelden shared their bodies with anything that moved.

But not his girl. Not Neria.

Neria had promised herself to him, and Cullen believed her, even after she left, but not once she returned. The last he heard, Neria is still bedding that templar recruit who joined the Grey Wardens. Cullen has also heard rumors of other men in Neria's life. Just like every other mage, her promises meant nothing in the end.

He had been stupid to expect otherwise. Mages can never be trusted. Not with anything, especially not matters of the heart. So why must he think about another mage again? Hawke is nothing more than a pretty smile. In the end, nothing between him and her could ever work.

.

.

Weariness always strikes Cullen in the middle of the afternoon. He stands in the shade, off to one side in the front courtyard of the Gallows. He keeps his back to the wall. Hawke is here again. He doesn't understand why.

She is talking with Solivitus while picking through the man's box of herbal recipes. Solivitus writes something on a piece of paper and blows the ink dry before handing it to her. When a Fomari merchant passes a written message, normally it's a matter of guild business but Hawke is an apostate. She shouldn't be here.

The relaxed posture of her lanky frame reminds Cullen of the confidence she displays every time they meet. Hawke never cowers and her words never falter. Despite what she is, the sword of mercy embossed on his breastplate means nothing to her. Instead, she strolls the Gallows with the casual air of a noblewoman walking through a market.

Seeing her makes Cullen think about the debt that the Order owes to her. Every time she visits the Gallows, she always asks him about Keran. She did what he should have but could not. The day Keran returned, Cullen felt cheap giving Hawke the four goal sovereigns he had in his pouch. What a meaningless token for saving Keran's life.

.

.

Later that night, Cullen lies in bed. The quick spasms of the muscles in his midsection remain in shadow where his forearm blocks his glow lamp's light. Hawke's name spills from him as he comes. Her self-assured gaze lingers before him as her image fades.

Cullen rolls to his side and stares at the dimples in the plaster wall, just beside his bed.

.

.

It's mid afternoon and the recruits have just finished weapons practice. Cullen leaves them and jogs out to the front courtyard. He searches the square, eying each patron at the merchants' stalls and then he lopes down the stairs to the ferry docks.

She isn't here.

On most afternoons Hawke stops by the Gallows but not today. At least, not yet.

Earlier at breakfast Cullen overheard Karras describe a female apostate who sounded just like Hawke. The Gallows aren't safe for her any longer and Cullen needs to warn her.

He waits, leaning back against a wall in the shade, eying the passengers that disembark from each ferry.

When the dinner bell rings the docks are empty. Other than Cullen, no one else is here, not even the ferryman.

.

.

Three days later Hawke arrives at the Gallows in the afternoon. She talks with Thrask while a Grey Warden named Anders stands beside her. Cullen hates the man on sight. Back in Ferelden, he knew of this mage, a blasphemer who twists Andraste's words to his liking. Ferelden's Circle fed Anders, clothed him, taught him, and housed him but the mage spat everything back in their face. For years Anders had been nothing but trouble. And then the Wardens took him in. Now he is here.

Cullen gazes across the emptiness in the center of the courtyard, his eyes focusing on nothing. He waits for Hawke to finish with Thrask. Waits for her to walk across the sunbaked paving stones and approach him on her own accord.

Eventually she does.

She says hello. Cullen exchanges pleasantries with her as Anders taps his foot. When Hawke is ready to leave, Cullen finally says what he needs to tell her.

He looks her in the eye. He has heard rumors about her, he says, and he hopes they aren't true.

She listens, her posture never stiffening, eyes never narrowing, remaining fully calm. She nods her head and wishes him well.

All the while, Anders hovers over her, his body far too close. "I wouldn't trust this templar if I were you. Let's go." He turns away without another glance back and walks toward the docks.

Hawke appears as if she is about to leave but, instead, she takes a step closer to Cullen. "I'll be at the Hanged Man tonight," she whispers. "Meet me there."

.

.

After dinner and the evening chant, Cullen wanders over to Lowtown. He wants another chance to speak with Hawke, and not just because the templars know of her. She took the time to listen to him that day they met on the Wounded Coast. He told her about the attack in Ferelden and about the nightmares he still has, all as she nodded her head, taking in every word he said. She understood. Since then, he's tried talking to her in the Gallows front courtyard. He has told her more about his past, but other people are always around.

Cullen knows how to find the Hanged Man tavern but, until now, he has never gone sits at a small table in the back. Anders is with her, as is the city guardswoman and a beardless Cullen walks forward,the din of voices in the tavern grows stare at him. Those who stand move back.A room full of unfriendly eyes follow Cullen's every walks over to the bar.

He asks the bartender for two mugs of ale. As the bartender pours Cullen opens his coin pouch. He counts out a few copper plus an extra coin for a tip.

"No need." The bartender says. He pushes the mugs forward. "It's on the house, Ser."

The sea of eyes follow Cullen as he approaches Hawke and her companions. The only sound in the Hanged Man is the clacking of Cullen's boot heels. Hawke smiles at him. She slides over on the bench, making space for him to sit.

"I got this one for you," he says to her. He places the mugs of ale on the table.

The guardswoman looks him straight in the eye. "Have a seat, Knight Captain." Her voice carries the cool tone of authority.

"You have absolutely no jurisdiction over me," Anders states.

"You're right. I don't. Indeed, there are aspects of this world that do not revolve around you."

Anders sneers and the dwarf makes a feeble joke.

Cullen settles beside Hawke. "You wanted to talk," he says to her.

"I want to drink." She raises her mug and yells out, "To a successful expedition!"

Her companions join in the toast. "To the expedition!"

Cullen knows nothing about the expedition they toast, but he raises his mug, clinks it with Hawke's and then with the guardswoman's before taking a swig.

The air around him explodes with the raucous sound of Fereldan voices. No one in the tavern stares at him any longer. Hawke's companions shout to hear each other over the noise as they huddle around their table. Anders and the beardless dwarf unfold a map and engage in a heated discussion. The guardswoman makes a joke with Hawke. Cullen can hardly follow a word anyone says above the noise. He leans back and drinks his ale. Each time he catches Hawke's eye, he smiles.

She always smiles back.

After another round of ale, Hawke leans into Cullen's shoulder and speaks into his ear. "Varric rents a suite in the back. Let's go. It's private. We can talk."

Immediately she is on her feet, beckoning him forward, so he gulps the last of his ale and gets up. No one seems to notice as he follows her up the stairs.

Cullen enters Varric's suite. He notices the unconcerned way in which Hawke leans back against the bolt and locks the door behind them. This woman trusts him far more than an apostate should. Although, after all she's done, Cullen will never do anything to harm her. He and Keran owe her their lives. He'll never turn her in. Even so, her confidence exceeds that of most people he knows. Already, he admires Hawke far more than any templar should.

Maybe it's the buzz of alcohol in his blood, but he is certain Hawke will never allow him to be hurt, not while she is with him. He is sure of this even though he can't understand why she bothers. Hawke would shield him. She's done it before and if the floorboards beneath them suddenly heaved and splintered, demons bursting through, shooting up to towering heights, Hawke would not leave him to face demons on his own. He knows this. He has seen her call forth the Maker's spirit and cast His holy light. This woman has defeated demons, turning them to dust before his eyes. On that day Hawke met him, she had no reason to risk her life yet she did, even after he beat one of his recruits when blinded by fright and rage. Hawke had been right. He shouldn't have been out on the coast alone. He shouldn't have. But Hawke had been there. She fought at his side.

Hawke walks across the room, turning her back to Cullen. As she bends forward to rummage through a cupboard, all of her length and lankiness gives way to the fullness of her hips. A pair of glasses clink as she stands upright.

"Varric wouldn't mind if we drank a Nevarran red," she says. "Although, he'll have words with me if I broke open anything else. So, a simple Navarran tafelwein?" She waggles the bottle and two glasses before setting them down on the table. She pours the first glass nearly to the rim and offers it to him.

"Just half of that," he says, feeling a sudden need to stay alert.

She shrugs, takes the glass, and knocks back half of it, gulping it down as if it were ale. Using the back of her hand she wipes her mouth. "Suit yourself." She pours wine into the other glass, filling it halfway, and she passes it to him before topping her glass off.

Everything about Hawke's posture exudes the casualness of an old friend. She sits across from him and kicks up her feet onto a chair. "Do you know of any work I can do for the templars? I'm raising money for an expedition. I need some more coin."

Cullen frowns. His stomach tightens. Why must she ask this? Does she not understand what he said earlier that day in the Gallows?

Chantry law leaves little doubt on what he should say, but civil law in Kirkwall bends and flexes like a bow. Shoot the right target and everyone ignores the arrow's foreign fletching and poison tip. Cullen feels confused over the pliancy in Kirkwall's law. So many convoluted webs of nepotism. Obligatory payments of bribes. He tried to make sense of it when he first arrived. He still tries, but his mistakes outstrip any praise he has received.

And now, here is Hawke. Cullen knows the price of unpaid debts just as well as he can recite Chantry law. He knows the touch of the Maker's spirit and he once knew right from wrong. When he was younger, such things were much easier to know. Right and wrong were clearer when he was a young boy, working through his afternoon lessons. As an infant he had been given to the Chantry, handed off to the lay sisters, women seeking salvation for prior sins born out of ignorance and need. Women who wrapped their strong arms around him as he sat in the warmth of their laps. Their soft breasts pillowing his back. His thin legs dangling below his shorts, small freckled hands holding open a book as he and a lay sister struggled to read its words. All those afternoons listening to one self-assured voice or another, speaking softly, right beside his ear. Together, they deciphered the words of the Maker, learning the messages He had given to the children who were left behind.

Cullen sips his wine, the oaky tannins rough in his mouth after he swallows.

"I'm sorry," he says. "The Order now handles its business internally."

Hawke frowns at him, chin dimpling under her upturned mouth.

His stomach tightens again. He needs her to understand the magnitude of the words in Karras's report, partly for her own good, partly so he is never troubled with the task of arresting her. He owes her this, and he is certain that in her heart she is good. For as long as Hawke lives in the spirit of Andraste's words, he can overlook what she is.

He swirls the wine in his glass without drinking it. "The Templars commend your service. I believe you keep the Order's interests at heart, but the Knight Commander is concerned about an apostate mentioned in a report."

Should he speak of Ser Karras by name? If Hawke worked as a mercenary for hire, Cullen wishes not to know. After all, she is planning an expedition and putting her past behind her. Any sins from prior days are left for the Maker to judge, and not to be weighed by men's biased hands.

He decides not to name any names. "A senior knight filed a report about renegade activities performed by another knight. This report described a suspected apostate." Cullen sips his wine, letting its hints of cassis and blackberry linger on his tongue. "Even if the Knight Commander fails to acknowledge the weight of your positive contributions, the Order will forever be in your debt. So, while I assume these other rumors aren't true, any further involvement between you and the Order is likely to lead to trouble."

Karras's report on the Starkhaven affair had not named Thrask's accomplices, but his descriptions fit Hawke and that dwarven friend of hers far too closely. Unless she lays low, it will only be a matter of time before they find her.

"What is your opinion of Ser Thrask?" Hawke asks hims as she toys with the hem of her shirt.

Cullen laughs at her audacity, a laugh with the power to wash her words clean from this world. "I am not at liberty to discuss the Order's business with an outsider."

Again, her face knots into a frown. She looks down into her drink, avoiding his gaze.

"Hawke, I meant what I said today at the Gallows. There are rumors about you, and there is only so much I can say in your favor, especially if these rumors are used against you."

"There is only one rumor that matters," she says. Her words take aim at him, standing erect as a row of archers ready to fire.

Cullen swirls the wine in his glass and holds it up to the light, watching how the red tears of wine paint a high curtain before slowly rolling back down the inside of the glass. He feels tipsy. He's warm around his collar and his cheeks tingle with heat. "Earlier, you said you were financing an expedition. Do you mind if I ask what kind?"

"I'm working with some Dwarven merchants. I'm their business partner. We plan to enter the Deep Roads. If my investment pays off, I should do well. My mother is petitioning the Viscount to return our family estate in Hightown. The money from the expedition will help settled prior debts."

"Petitioning the Viscount?"

"My grandfather was Lord Aristide Amell. He would have been Viscount himself, you know, but that's not how matters worked out."

Back when Cullen was a child, a few of the young lay sisters read and wrote as well as the Chantry priests. These women wore their hair in elaborate braided coils. They made him scrub all the dirt from his fingernails before they sat him at a desk so he could practice writing his letters. As he grew older, he wondered what those ladies had done to end up in the Chantry. Now, he wonders about the poor decisions their parents or grandparents had made.

He asks Hawke the obvious question. "When your family's fortunes and titles are restored, will they lend their public support to the Order?"

"We always have," she says, although her tone suggests that choice was never involved.

Cullen overlooks this. Instead, he says what he believes is right. "I recommend you no longer seek involvement with the Order's business. At least, not at this time. It would not be prudent to become entangled in situations you do not understand, especially as an outsider. No matter who the templar knights may be, do not offer to become involved in their affairs."

"Even if that knight is you?"

"I only offer you my deepest gratitude." He reaches for the bottle of wine and refills his glass. "Please, do not make your situation more difficult, not when you have a choice."

"And you claim to know my choices?"

Her dispassionate stare unsettles him. He looks away to the ghost of himself reflected in a mirror on the wall behind her. He and Hawke should be passing their time together without arguing. Two Fereldans, relaxing, drinking wine. This is all he wants.

"I'm sorry," Hawke says. Her expression is as apologetic as her words.

He believes her, and not because he wants to but because he needs to. A belief as unshakeable as the unwavering home of the Pommel Star at the tip of the Southern Flame.

"Is Keran doing well?" she asks.

"He is. I keep an eye on him and check him daily for signs of possession. What happened is hard for him to talk about, but he seems alright, I mean, he doesn't seem to be…" Cullen doesn't know what to say. He gulps more wine. The acid tingles in his throat, a slow burn down to his stomach.

"I understand," Hawke says.

"Thank you."

Her long fingers toy with her empty glass, the tip of her index finger slowly circling the edge of the rim. When she looks at him, she gives him a lopsided smile. Such a forgiving benediction. Half drunk, he receives her blessing, her small gift of grace. He needs this, even when coming from a woman like her. He needs to remember all that makes him human, all that others see as good.

He needs to confess.

"After what happened to Keran, after he told me all that had been done to him, I cannot let go of it. I think of how this disaster could have been far worse. It makes me lose sleep. I keep trying to tell myself that I did not fail Wilmod and Keran — that they made their own choices — but I cannot convince myself that I am not at fault."

"Wilmod and Keran were victims of a crime, just like yourself. None of you deserve blame."

"But they were my responsibility. They were under my command. I should have known better. And had it gone for the worst? Oh, Blessed Andraste. So many of us in the Gallows could have died, all in one night, just like back in the tower."

"It didn't happen."

"But it could have. Ever since I was a boy, I only wanted to be a knight. I never asked for any of this. It's always a losing battle. If templars cannot learn to remain vigilant, then what?"

"You do your best and you do what you must," Hawke says.

He wonders where she finds her strength, and he wishes she could share it with him. She mentioned her father once, and a sister who was also a mage who died in the Blight. Cullen had met Hawke's brother and he knows of her uncle and mother. Cullen never knew who fathered him. Never knew the mother who bore him either. Hawke acts as if she belongs, as if she knows her place. She always looks rested when Cullen sees her. Lax, easy posture, quick with her smile. She and he are the same age, although he looks years her senior. At twenty-five, Cullen feels he is approaching fifty. Nonetheless, Kirkwallers treat him like a young boy dressed up in his father's armor.

"There's something I want you to know," he says. "I took time to look into what you asked."

"Pardon?"

"Over the past month I've looked into how the mages in Kirkwall's Circle are educated. They are taught little about the words of Andraste and almost nothing about how the Chantry functions. The Order should help improve their education. If mages understood these teachings, they would be more inclined to act cooperatively."

"Are you so certain?"

"Oh, come now, surely you believe in the Maker and the teachings of His Bride. Didn't you once say that your sister was a devout Andrastian? Tell me, didn't her faith serve her well up until the day the Blight took her?"

"She wasn't confined to a Circle."

"I don't see how that matters."

The look on Hawke's face is incredulous. Although he believes his words are right, he feels inconsequentially small. Her disbelief cast stark light on the ways in which he is different from her.

"I don't know," he says. "There are many things I don't understand. But, if a person cultivates unwavering belief in the Maker, they develop strength to resist all temptations, large and small. Their thoughts become too pure to feed demons. When that happens, they walk in the Maker's light."

Someone outside raps on the door and a voice calls out,"You wouldn't mind allowing your host to join in on your private party?" It was Varric.

Hawke winks at Cullen as she slides the wine bottle toward him. It's nearly empty. What is left hardly fills the bottom of his glass.

Varric, Anders, and the city guardswoman join them. Another bottle of wine is opened as maps are spread out on the table. Varric pulls a heavy book from a shelf and reads passages aloud. He speaks the lore about lost Dwarven thaigs that are lined with broad roads paved in precious metals. Stories about darkspawn that Anders corrects. Chronicles of ancient paragons, recorded by the Shaperate, those Dwarven non-believers.

Cullen watches Hawke drink in words that paint the images of her dreams. She has an adventurer's heart. Cullen wants her to go on her expedition. He wants her to succeed.

With another bottle of wine emptied, the guardswoman calls it a night. Anders agrees and follows the guardswoman out. After Anders walks into the hallway, he looks back over his shoulder and gives Hawke an expectant look. When Hawke walks out of the room, she remains three paces behind Anders, letting Cullen walk at her side. They head down the stairs, into the main room of the tavern. The crowd has grown thin. Only the roughest men remain and they shout gruff threats at each other as their chair legs scrape sharply over the floorboards. Here in the middle of the Hanged Man with Hawke at his side, Cullen feels dangerous.

Hawke follows Anders to the tavern's front door. Just a few more steps and she'll be gone. The next breath Cullen takes feels like his longest ever.

He says her name. She stops. She stands so close to him that he can smell the wine on her breath. Her eyes study his.

"How much more do you need to raise for the expedition?" he asks.

She tells him.

"I think I can help you."

After a moment of uncertainty, she waves Anders off. She asks Cullen to walk her home.