TRIGGER WARNING: This story contains mutual non-consent and captivity. If you feel you may be triggered by this, please enlist a pre-reader or read with caution.
She sees him in the training yard some mornings, if she rises early enough. He's a deep red flash beneath Skyhold's strong towers, sword like the surface of a river beneath the wisps of weary dawn. It's never quite bright enough during his practice for his hair to glint like the beacon it was in Haven.
But she doesn't need a shock of gold amidst the shadow of his armor to know where Cullen is. The Commander of the Inquisition's Forces has his own presence, leaves a strange sense of warmth in his wake, and it's an easy trail to follow.
This morning, at least, Heloise watches him with a cup of coffee in hand and tries to think of how she'll phrase her request. No matter what she says, she's certain she'll seem as if she's just asking to get him all to herself. And yes, that's… a consideration. But, far more importantly than her flirtation with Cullen, Leliana asked that these matters stay confidential, and he's one of the leaders of the Inquisition.
Who better to join her than him?
Hel waits until he's set down the dull practice blade and simple buckler. Sweat darkens his hair, and he darkens it further when he upends a bucket of water over his head, shaking himself like one of those dogs Fereldans are so fond of. He drops the bucket back in the well and turns the crank, clearly going for a second, and she realizes it's time to make her move.
She sets the coffee down on a convenient heap of stone — Maker only knows what the Inquisition's masons will turn it into, or if they plan on making anything out of it; it's been there a month or more — and makes her way to the well.
"Cul — Commander," she says, because she cannot handle making this even a little bit personal. If she even tries it, she'll end up being completely transparent. "May I borrow a moment of your time?"
And Cullen, damn him, says, without hesitation, "Of course. How may I help you, Inquisitor?"
Some part of her stings, because she doesn't want to be just his Inquisitor. "In the War Room yesterday evening, Leliana mentioned a few confidential communications. I'm sure you recall?"
"Yes," he allows. The scarred corner of his mouth twitches up. That half-smile always sends a faint jolt through her, of both warmed attraction and surprise; for some reason, she keeps expecting the scar to keep that side of his mouth immobile. "The ones she wouldn't even entrust to her spies."
"Those very ones. I'm glad to hear you found it as odd as I did."
Cullen pauses a moment, looking just past her left shoulder, before he shifts, as if uncomfortable, and says, "Did you plan to deliver them alone? I… cannot call myself comfortable with the idea. I know you're quite capable of defending yourself, of course, but I would still feel more at ease if someone went with you." Another pause, as he rubs at the back of his neck.
She can't help the way her own mouth curves. "Why, Commander, are you offering to accompany me?"
They both stop at that. Cullen gives her a full smile, though slowly, like he's trying to suppress it. Still, his eyes crinkle at the corners, and he says, surprisingly soft and warm, "I suppose I am, at that."
"Well, excellent," she says. "Because I was going to ask you, anyway."
The preparations to leave Skyhold, of course, are as always an exercise in tedium, frustration, and trying not to frighten her new Quartermaster. She can see why Threnn hadn't been popular, but at least the woman hadn't scared nearly so easy as the new fellow. Heloise is fairly sure she distressed him today almost as much as she had that time she'd asked about his qualifications.
Apparently, asking to be provisioned for a two-week trip, with only two people, requires him to do an entirely different sort of packing. Well, fine. She and the Commander both need to settle their affairs, so leaving the following morning works just as well.
Leliana, as Seneschal, will of course be left in charge of most matters requiring Hel's attention, but Cullen will have to be a touch more involved in figuring out who makes decisions and duty rosters and supply decisions while they're away. For the rest, they have Josephine and Cassandra. Matters will continue apace, especially after a quick War Council meeting — with Cassandra invited, and notes from Josephine on the attempts at chartering a ship to Antiva — just to make sure everyone is briefed.
If Leliana wears a secretive smile on her plump lips, Heloise attributes it to the way Cullen practically frets about the prospect of leaving his post for a fortnight.
They leave before dawn, at an hour when Cullen would normally have just begun his constitutional and Heloise would be trying to convince herself to leave her bed and find some coffee. The first traces of light seep through gray clouds, weak as watered wine, and paint the world in shadows and dim highlights.
The horses, when they make their way to the stable, seem sleepy. Dennet gives them a mildly irritated look as his stablehands affix tack, but he doesn't complain at being dragged out of bed before the sun has bothered to shine. Heloise supposes he must be used to it; she and the Inner Circle of Skyhold come and go often enough, and often at ridiculous hours.
Heloise finds herself relieved once they've both mounted up, their saddle bags affixed. A word to Dennet, a last look at Skyhold's empty courtyard and the weak light trying to glint off the windows of fine Orlesian glass, and then she looks to Cullen. No words pass between them, but "let's go" is easy enough to communicate without words, and as one, they urge their mounts forward.
They keep the horses to a walk as they make their way down the Frostbacks, though they find that her bloodbay and his delicate-looking white-and-blond warhorse don't share the same walking pace. Just like her rider, Sweetcream seems driven forward, moving in some sort of amble gait, while Question — unlike Heloise — is more content with a classic walk. It makes conversation difficult, because Cullen keeps having to twist in the saddle if he wants to hear her over the mountain winds and the quiet hoofbeats.
Still, the entire situation is so absurd that she can't quite keep the smile off her lips, and they only spend two days in the Frostbacks. They keep Leliana's messages in his saddlebag, and once they're on more level ground — or at least tolerable hills, not the steep inclines and nosehair-freezing cold of the mountains — the horses keep pace with each other better, and Heloise is actually able to draw Cullen into conversation.
"There was this half-collapsed barn, once," she tells him, "and so there we were, four newly-minted, mostly-unintentional apostates, all squished in together and trying to ignore four irritated sheep and what must have been the worst-smelling goat in all of Thedas."
It gets a smile out of him. "Quite a change. Cassandra, Leliana, and I did our share of sleeping in odd places on our way to the Conclave. Winter comes early in Ferelden, and you take warmth where you can get it."
"I'm not sure I can imagine the Seeker or the Left Hand of the Divine sleeping in a barn," Heloise replies, with just a hint of a tease in her smile.
"But you can imagine me there, I see." Cullen chuckles, then admits, "Actually, neither could I, at first. I'd expected at least Leliana to complain, but she said anywhere that wasn't Bownammar, no matter how cold, was a fine place to rest her head."
Heloise repeats the name in her thoughts a few times, decides it must be dwarven, and says, "Someplace in the Deep Roads?"
"So it would seem. I thought it wiser not to ask." He gives her his crooked half-smile again. "I think our worst was a freeholder's brewhouse. Not nearly so bad as a barn."
She laughs, because how could she not? "I take it you smelled like beer for days?"
"We'd mostly washed the smell out by the time we reached Haven. I can't believe we paid money to sleep there."
They ride until after sundown, trying to put as much time on the road as possible. Heloise pitches her tent mostly by feeling the ground and partly by firelight. She doesn't mention to Cullen that she's put up and broken down so many tents in quick succession that she's almost sure she can do it in her sleep, no fire necessary.
After all, the fire is nice. Slightly necessary for cooking. Definitely necessary for warmth.
In the end, though, Cullen throws down a ground blanket, a bed roll, and then sets up an oil cloth tarp, presumably to keep rain or dew away. When she raises an eyebrow at the Commander's lack of a tent, he shrugs.
"I'm used to it, and it's peaceful enough," he tells her, quiet. "I used to sleep out in the open during lambing season, before my parents sent me to the Chantry."
Of course his family had owned sheep. Given he has a surname, they probably owned quite a bit more than a flock and pasturage, but still. Heloise has no trouble imagining a younger, ganglier Cullen carrying lambs around on his shoulders. Honestly, it makes perfect sense to her that a man so driven by his faith and desires to help and protect others might have grown up a shepherd.
She says nothing of this. Instead, she smiles, and says, "Well, enjoy your night in the open, then. I'll go check on the horses, and then I think I'm going to get some sweet, merciful sleep."
She hasn't spent a night alone, outside Haven and Skyhold, in years. Even in the field, she usually shares her tent with either Cassandra or Cole, and before that, she always slept back-to-back with one of the other Ostwick mages.
She shivers for a few moments underneath her blankets, wishing that Cullen had just joined her in the damned tent. But he's dealing with enough as it is, she thinks. It's just the two of them, the horses will be adequate warning, and he was bred for and born in this kind of weather. Let him get some peace where he can.
In the end, though, she drifts off to sleep, lulled by the nighttime sounds of Orlais into dreams of changing light and curling shadow, of being too solid to join her wispy and religious relatives. She dreams of light playing on the canals in Ostwick, outside her childhood home, of her father's placid smile, her mother's cold blue eyes, and her oldest sister's honey-colored skin.
"You'll never be like the rest of us," her oldest sister tells her, eyes serious and the afternoon sun casting her hair into some sort of dark bronze, turning her shades of gold from head to toe.
"I know," Heloise replies, because she does. She always had. The magic had been a surprise, but being bundled off somewhere, not part of her mother's plans — that hadn't been.
And then someone is jerking her up, out of the syrupy, sun-warmed dream. Her bedroll is thin and the ground is cold, and the air is freezing. She makes a choked noise as she forces her eyes open, trying to see.
The person grabbing her is not a ruddy-complexioned blond Fereldan, but someone dark of skin and hair, a gray-brown shape amidst the shadow.
And Heloise lashes out, doesn't even think about it. A touch to his shoulder and the cold air turns colder, ice gathering to immobilize. Frost lines her attacker's eyelashes, but she just pushes the frozen man away from her.
After that it's up from her bedroll, shoving her feet into her boots without bothering to lace them. Trusting the tongues to hold her feet in. Even as she stands, she can hear booted footsteps, cursing in at least two languages, and metal bashing against — something.
She pushes aside the tent flap and sees Cullen, wearing only his arming coat and a pair of trousers, with sword and shield out. Three more shadows gather around him, and though none of them are landing blows — that she can tell — they're keeping him on the defensive.
She extends a hand, gathering thoughts of cold again, but a pair of hands grabs her from behind. She struggles in the stranger's grasp, trying to chop behind her, trying to kick out. She must shout, or make noise, because Cullen turns to look her way.
The last thing she sees before the person behind her covers her mouth and nose in a sickly-sweet smelling rag is Cullen starting toward her, and a pair of tanned arms wrapping around his neck from behind.
And then everything goes faintly nauseating, right before it turns black.
