A/N - So, I'd been playing my human mage as privileged and largely pro-Circle. Then she got to the closing discussion from Cassandra's quest and... something happened. (I do not own Dragon Age.)
His concentration fixed on a map of the Western Approach, Cullen didn't immediately look up when he heard someone entering his office. Abstractedly, he waited for them to announce themselves... but after the door closed, there was only silence. Silence, and a palpable tension that made his skin prickle.
He looked up to see the Inquisitor standing there. But he'd never seen her in a state like this before. Red as her close-cropped hair was, she could be described as fiery only in the sense that she was rather good at setting her enemies aflame. To see her flushed, fists clenched, eyes blazing, was... disturbing.
"Inquisitor?"
Her lips drew back from her teeth. She took a couple of steps forward.
The prickling was getting worse. Some deeply unpleasant possibilities were suggesting themselves. He sternly overruled his hand's inclination to reach for his sword. "Themis? What's the matter?"
Her lips made it to a full-on snarl. There was just the desk between the two of them now.
"Themis... honey... whatever it is, just tell me and I'll do what I can to fix it."
"Fix it?" With a bound she was on the desk, one footed planted on Adamant and the other on Harding's report. She leaned down. "How are you going to fix it? Give me the last fifteen years of my life back, maybe?"
Oh. "That I can't do."
"You think you get to judge us? You don't even know how fucking hard it is for your hair to not be on fire right now!"
"Um. Thank you."
"What do you mean, thank you? You shouldn't have to thank me for not setting you on fire! That's fucking basic! I don't thank you for not spitting in my food!"
"Good point."
"You never liked us angry, did you? Fear was good, fear you were happy with, but not the stuff that comes with it. Anger, resentment, the things that might actually make us harder to control. We were supposed to be fucking grateful you took us away from our families and locked us up. You told us to mutilate ourselves, and you were more than happy to finish the job if we didn't do it well enough!"
She gulped a breath. Cullen had a sense she might finally be getting near the heart of the matter.
"They knew," she hissed. "They always fucking knew."
"Who? Knew what?"
"That Tranquility was reversible. As for who, every Lord Seeker ever, apparently. Maybe others. Maybe the Divine knew all along what Pharamond would find."
"Cassandra told you this?"
"Of course it doesn't matter to you. Nobody ever threatened to hollow you out for – for being a person."
"It matters."
"Oh, right." She straightened up and folded her arms. "Kirkwall was worse than the Ostwick Circle ever was. Where did you used to work, again?"
"That's why it matters. Can we maybe talk about this without you standing on my desk?"
Themis scowled, but sat down in the southern Approach and lowered her toes to the floor.
"All right. Now, if you want to discuss what went on in Kirkwall, and why I didn't do more to stop it, we can do that. But aside from the part about the Lord Seekers, you already knew everything you've just been yelling about. So why now?"
She looked away, picked at a fingernail and kicked her feet.
Good. Right question. He resisted the urge to fill the silence himself, and waited.
"I don't know," she muttered.
Cullen kept quiet.
"I... thought I was on board with the Chantry's way of doing things. I thought it was right, what they had to do when my power manifested. But then Cassandra told me what she found in the book, and suddenly there was this... rage."
"You'd never felt it before?"
"Not... I don't know. Showing anger has never been a healthy thing for me to do. My family was big on self-control, and of course when I had templars watching me for corruption or uncontrolled magic... worse still. I've been suppressing my anger out of existence since I was young. But when I got furious, it felt – familiar."
"As if it had been there all along. You'd just taught yourself not to feel it."
"You sound like you're speaking from experience."
He smiled ruefully. "I spent a long time suppressing everything but anger."
"I shouldn't have yelled at you. Sorry."
"Never mind. I've given many mages cause to yell at me, and most of them died or got made Tranquil before they had the chance. We'll just say you stand in for one of them – this time. I'm not about to be your dummy for every templar who ever treated you badly."
She snorted. "Between being a Trevelyan and a good little Andrastian, I had it easy. There aren't more than one or two templars I've got a personal beef with. Another reason why my rage surprised me."
"Well, it's not just the templars you're angry with, is it?" he asked, turning to lean on the desk beside her.
"What do you mean?"
"The not-setting-my-hair-on-fire part of your rant - that's nobody's fault, is it? Nobody mortal, anyway."
"I lied. It's not actually all that hard. I'm better trained than that."
"But you did have a point. Let's see... you were born with magic. Nobody knows why that happens, but no doubt the Maker could have prevented it if he'd wanted to. Then, because the Chantry – His Chantry – decreed it, you had to submit to the judgement of non-mages who could never truly understand what you have to go through. Then there's this," he touched her left hand, "and on top of all that, you meet a... creature who's actually been to what was the Golden City, and he tells you the Maker wasn't there at all."
"He might have lied."
"Why lie to some insect you mean to squash? Don't tell me that hasn't crossed your mind. My point is, in your place I'd be angry with the Maker too. Or be having a crisis of faith. Or both."
She didn't speak, but the corner of her mouth turned down, and she swallowed audibly.
"If it's any consolation, the only part of this that surprises me is that you didn't know you were angry."
"I... you thought before this I was angry?"
"Oh, yes. Right from the start you made me nervous – and no, it wasn't that I fancied you, that came later. It took me a while to put my finger on it, but finally I realised how much you reminded me of Lachlan Surana."
"The Warden? Of course, I should've realised you knew him."
" 'Knew' might be putting it a bit high. I don't think anybody at the Circle really knew him – certainly none of the templars. The thing about him... I noticed it most when someone was in trouble. Not him, of course, the first time he ever got into trouble was the day Duncan recruited him..."
"What?"
"Ah." Cullen smiled drily. "You've only heard the official version, then. Remind me to fill you in some other time. Anyway – I expect it was the same at Ostwick – when one apprentice gets into trouble in front of others, most of those others will look anywhere but at the templars. Some might meet your eye, let you see they're afraid – or angry, or resentful – but just occasionally you'd get one who'd do neither. Who'd look straight back at you and not show a single thing. That was Lachlan. Whenever I looked into his face, I couldn't guess what he might be thinking, I just always had this feeling that he was... making notes. And when I met you... you gave me the same feeling, sometimes. Especially when the Chancellor was carrying on about having you dragged off in chains. I'd see you give him that making-notes look, and suddenly it was ten years ago."
"Well, I can't say I'm not flattered to be compared to the Hero of Ferelden, but I think I'm missing something. How do you get from that to me being angry?"
"The bit you're missing is what happened the last time we met. I've told you about... well, you know … look, uh..."
"What did you do, and how high is it on your list of things you're not very proud of?"
He rubbed at his neck. "Is it that obvious? It's a strong contender for number one."
Themis folded her arms. "Well. I've never heard of the Warden going anywhere near Kirkwall, so I'm going to guess this was just after he killed Uldred."
"Yes."
"At which point I'm certain you weren't the only one calling for Annulment."
Maker, she's good. "The loudest, though."
"Which would have involved the deaths of mages the Warden knew and may have considered friends, who I expect had been through just as much as you had."
"Yes."
"And he got angry. But how do you know that it wasn't just then?"
He sighed. "I don't, not for sure. It was just the way he looked at me. It was the same way he always did, but... not. When I looked into his eyes that day, I was certain of two things. One, if he hadn't been in the middle of negotiating for the mages' help stopping the Blight, he'd have killed me painfully right there, and never lost a wink of sleep. Two, he had been very angry for a very long time. It had only just become safe for him to show it. I could be wrong, of course, but after what I saw that day... well, there was more than one reason I found it hard to trust mages."
"And yet you trusted me."
"Oh yes. You, Lachlan, the few others like you – mages that controlled are going to be the last to let demons in. That's how I see it, and so far I've been right as far as I know. So with fear of corruption out of the way, as long as you needed the Inquistion, I trusted you."
Her eyes narrowed. "And then you sealed the deal by making me the head of the whole mess. You sly dog."
"No – well, yes and no. By the time we got here, I knew you better than I ever knew Lachlan. My part in the decision wasn't all that calculated."
"And what makes you think the Themis you think you know isn't just another careful facade?"
"What makes you think I'm not actually an undercover templar just waiting to bring you down and tranquilise every mage I can get my hands on? There comes a time you have to decide whom you trust."
"Shit. I knew you were only pretending I could beat you at chess."
He smiled and ventured an arm around her waist. She didn't move closer, but didn't shake him off either. Instead she looked into his face, brow slightly furrowed. He wiped the smile off and waited.
"Cole," she said finally. "Not ours, the original. Did anything like that ever happen on your watch?"
"No."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure. I've spent much time tabulating my sins, and that level of incompetence was never among them."
"Incompetence?" There was an edge in her voice and expression that made him put his hand back on the desk. "Is that the most appropriate word you can think of?"
"What word would you use?"
She stood abruptly, stepped forward and spent several moments contemplating the window before answering. "Callousness? Contempt? How about evil? I don't think the word you'd use for a, a cook who mixes up the sugar and salt really covers it."
"Evil? There was no malice there, they just..."
Themis whirled and advanced on him again, teeth bared, eyes glittering. "Just what? Just thought so little of him, they could forget he existed long enough for him to starve in the dark? Who were they protecting, dumping a new arrival in a cell in the first place? Saving themselves the trouble of getting him properly settled, more like! How is that better than hating us? At least if you see us as monsters, you actually see us! You..." She shook her head sharply, took a deep breath and looked at the floor.
Cullen judged that this was another good moment to keep quiet.
When she looked up, she was more like herself again, though still flushed. "I almost didn't ask, you know. So sometimes you let your feelings cloud your judgement. So sometimes you erred on the side of protecting from us rather than protecting us. You're only human. But seeing us as inconvenient trash you could just shove aside - I don't think that's in you."
He swallowed a lump in his throat. "I hadn't thought of it like that. Themis? You've been saying us."
"What?"
"You said us. You were never in the Circles where I served, but you used the first person. Like all mages are one big 'us'. You've never talked that way before."
"Ooh. Wow." She tugged at her lip. "Maybe getting in touch with my anger has had side-effects."
"Like being better able to identify with the mages who had it worse."
"There but for the grace of being born a Trevelyan. In Ostwick. Or anywhere but Kirkwall, really."
He lowered his gaze. "It was no secret that Meredith wielded the brand under circumstances which were supposedly against the Chantry's rules. Just the occasional 'extreme case' at first, but then after she realised she could get away with it... and there were plenty of rumours flying about my colleagues abusing their authority. Many of them were just rumours, but... I managed to put a stop to some of it, but a lot of the time Meredith overruled me, and... and, it was so easy to tell myself it was just a few bad apples and once we'd got the mages settled down there'd be plenty of time to root them out, and anyway if anything really wrong was going on, surely the Seekers would get involved... " He rubbed at his forehead. "Only now I think most of the Seekers gave as much of a damn about mages being abused as the general public does. As long as Meredith was keeping some semblance of order... it's hard, admitting that the organisation you've worked your whole life to be a part of has rotted. The lyrium helped me not to think too much," he finished bitterly.
Meeting her eyes again, he saw that they were still flinty and added, "I'm sorry. You didn't come here to listen to a bunch of excuses."
"No, I see how it made sense at the time. I used to think the same way. I must have been fourteen, fifteen before I accepted that an individual templar could do wrong, let alone the whole system... because who was I to question them? Or any mage?" Her chest hitched, and she blinked hard. "We were the ones who were rotten, who were dangerous and corrupt and dirty..."
Cullen, who had been dithering throughout her speech, finally decided to go with his first instinct and carefully put his arms around her. When she pressed close, he tightened his grip, stroking her hair.
"I was eight years old and suddenly everybody was ashamed of me," she mumbled into his collar. "Of course I'd done something to deserve it."
Only one answer came to mind. "You're right to be angry."
She shivered and clung tighter. He wished he could give her fifteen years back. He wished he could at least make a little girl understand she had nothing to be ashamed of. He wished he could stand between her and everything that would ever hurt her again.
He couldn't do any of those things. Punching her father in the face someday wasn't entirely off the table, but first he'd have to find out what the man looked like.
After a minute her breathing evened out. She rested her chin on his shoulder and asked, "Why haven't we been interrupted yet?"
"If the guards saw that look on your face when you walked in here, there's probably a gang outside drawing lots to see who has to come in and rescue me."
Her giggle was a brittle sound, but it was a start. She pulled away. "I should go."
"Not outside. Not yet. Go upstairs, wash your face, take some time. I won't bother you."
"I might want you to bother me."
"Then you know where to find me. Go on."
He eyed the bootprints in the Western Approach as she climbed the ladder. Just my luck. The first time she's in my bedroom, and I'm down here. Once she was safely disappeared, he opened the door to find there were indeed a few soldiers hanging around; the reason nobody had dared the threshold was likely Cassandra, leaning on the battlements a little way away, gazing out at the view yet somehow clearly first in line for his attention.
He waved the others inside, then went to rest his elbows on the wall beside the Seeker. There were clouds gathering around the mountain tops, the sunlight shading their undersides pink.
"How is she?"
He sighed. "Human."