Title: Precipice
Author: Jade Sabre
Notes: I wrote this a while ago, but beta miscommunications (thank you Quark for all that you do!) + a baby mean that I'm only just now getting around to posting it. I still uh haven't actually beaten DA:I, but you know.
Theoretically I will write more about these two, should I ever again find myself with free time and half a brain. Also, I owe a large portion of my love of Cullen to Crisium's fics, to the point where I accidentally borrowed a bit from her in this one. I mean, made an intentional homage to her genius. Yes. That's it.
Hope you enjoy!
"Hey. Curly."
Cullen started to lift his head from the report in his hands, realized who was speaking, and settled for flicking a glance in the dwarf's direction. "Varric?"
An uncharacteristic silence followed, just long enough for him to consider looking up again, and then Varric said, "Have you seen the Herald?"
Now he did look up; the question had been entirely too nonchalant. "Since the council meeting? I don't believe so." Varric didn't move, so he asked, "Why?"
"Oh, no reason." For all his fondness for Wicked Grace, the dwarf was doing a terrible job of hiding his concern. "Just thought she might have come to talk to you."
"Why?" he asked again, studiously squashing any...well, thing the statement might have inspired within him.
"Because she's not talking to anyone else," Varric said, frustration evident in his voice; he sighed and wiped a hand over his face and said, "Look, did she seem...odd to you, today?"
Well, obviously, he wanted to say; ever since Isabelle Trevelyan and the rest of her party had rode up from Redcliffe with the not-so-free mages in tow everyone in Haven had been in a bit of an uproar, to put it mildly. That the Herald herself had been paler than normal, slow to smile, her laugh nonexistent...he'd noticed, of course, but he wasn't going to bring it up and add to the tumult. "Yes," he said, "but given your ordeal—"
"You don't know the half of it," Varric said. Before he could agree, the dwarf said, "And neither do I, and that's the problem. She hasn't said two words to any of us since leaving Redcliffe." Cullen waited, and he finally said, "And I'm worried."
At least he hadn't been the first to say it. "I haven't seen her," he said again, "but I could send someone—"
"You don't want to go yourself?" Varric said, raising his eyebrows, and Cullen felt his neck start to burn.
"I don't want to—draw attention to her, if she doesn't want it," he said carefully. "And people are concerned enough about the mages without worrying about the Herald's silence—"
"And which one concerns you more, hm?" Varric said, some of the tension easing out of his face, almost as though he were enjoying Cullen's discomfort. Well. Given the dwarf's profession, it was likely he was enjoying it. "If it helps, I think she'd talk to you."
"Why?" he said, and as the word left his mouth he knew he'd said it too quickly.
"Because she likes you," Varric said, and he definitely was enjoying this, and Cullen was too old to be this tied into knots over something so simply stated. "I mean, she likes me too," and Cullen managed not to make a face, and the dwarf looked disappointed, and concern reluctantly returned to his expression. "But you weren't there, and I was, and I think that's part of the problem. And you—you and I both know that when a mage chooses to turn against their own—well." It was the closest Varric had ever come to mentioning Hawke; Cullen waited, and he ended lamely, "You know it's not...good."
"And you want me to find out why, for you?"
"I want you to find out for her," he said, surprising Cullen with the sheer protective force in his voice. "She has enough on her green-glowing hands without taking this on all by herself."
That Cullen could hardly argue with, though he wanted to argue at length about whether or not he was a suitable candidate for helping the Herald carry her loads. She was, after all, the Herald of Andraste, and he was merely the commander of the Inquisition's ragtag troops; she was a mage, and he a former templar, and if that wasn't enough, she was...well. More than he—
"Stop dilly-dallying," Varric said, and then he was gone. Cullen blew out a breath and looked back to the report in his hands; but in the space of their conversation, it had turned to gibberish. And he knew, without looking, that the stack waiting in his tent would be equally useless until he at least inquired after the Herald. He didn't necessarily have to bother her, if she didn't want to be bothered, but he could at least make sure she was resting. For the sake of the Inquisition, and, yes, the ease of his own mind.
She wasn't in her room.
This wasn't cause for particular alarm—it was still only midafternoon—but she wasn't in the Chantry, either, less surprising as that was where Fiona had gathered her mages for the time being and everyone else had found other places to be. But she wasn't at the stables or the smithy or the apothecary, nor the tavern, and he couldn't think of anywhere else in Haven to be. So he lingered at the tavern's bar, trying to ignore his soldiers trying to ignore him, nursing an ale and wondering how to ask after her without making it sound as though the most recognizable person in the Inquisition had disappeared into thin air under his nose.
"Something eating at you?" someone asked, just as he was taking another sip, startling him into a gulp followed by a cough, and as he lowered his mug he saw—Sera, Maker help him, leaning against the bar with a strange combination of a smirk and skepticism on her face.
"No," he said, which only strengthened her expression.
"Is that so," she said, looking down as she traced a circle on the bar with her forefinger. He set his mug down and loosened his grip on it in a careful show of unconcern, as unconcerned as her voice as she continued, "Because I have it on good authority that Varric asked you to look after Lady Trevelyan, and that you've spent the better part of the last hour looking for her, and now you're standing at the bar hoping she'll, what, just walk in and say she's all right?"
"I—" He floundered, and she smirked, and he felt his neck redden again and just how the Herald came by such—people—people they needed, he reminded himself. And Sera's specialty was gathering information and noticing what others didn't want noticed—and doing something about it; and that was, no matter how sneaky and smug she might be, precisely what he needed. "Yes. No, but—"
"She's not here," she said, and he wasn't sure what was worse, smirking or smug pity. "Came in here after you all finished your big meeting up at the Chantry, asked for a bottle of Flissa's strongest stuff, and took it."
"Where?" he asked, trying to focus on the salient question and not the extremely worrisome idea that she was—
"Out the door," she answered, and then she held up her hands and said, "You don't follow someone who wants to go drinking alone."
He sighed, and it was a worried sigh. "Thank you," he said. "Any idea—?"
"You know the Lady," she said, which wasn't much of an answer and after all wasn't—he knew her, certainly, but not as well as those who followed her footsteps. As he abandoned the dregs of his ale for the cold outdoors he felt again that, no matter what Varric might think or Sera's smirk might imply, he wasn't the person they should be asking—that surely there was someone else, someone more qualified, someone she'd prefer over himself. He trudged out the main gates, figuring that if she wanted to drink alone she wouldn't have stayed in the village, but that left the alarming possibility that she was wandering the snowy woods alone and possibly drunk, and he hadn't thought her so foolish. And it worried him more than he felt he had a right to be worried, and—the Herald's safety was integral to the Inquisition's security. And if he could hold onto that, perhaps he could maintain his professional integrity, if nothing else.
"Has the Herald passed this way?" he asked one of the gate guards.
"Yes, sir," she said, nodding towards the mountain slope. "Just said she was going for a walk. That was..." she looked over at the other guard, who shrugged, and finished, "at least two hours ago, I'd guess."
"Thank you," he said, turning in the direction she'd indicated and setting off before letting out another breath, a puff of frustrated steam in the air. The hardpacked snow crunched under his feet—if he could find her trail, it at least wouldn't be too difficult to find her, and though the gold-orange color of the late afternoon sun on the snow tried to set him to worrying again, he reminded himself that she was at the very least a mage and capable of conjuring a fire if needed. Finding reassurance in the thought of a drunk mage setting fire to things went against half a lifetime's training, true, but a glance at the gaping green breach in the sky went a long way towards reminding him they ultimately much larger problems.
And then—there, a set of footprints, leading...to a boulder? He followed them to the rock's base and looked up, and there, curling out the top, a plant, stripped of its leaves, and then he looked down and...had she jumped off? The hole in the snow seemed to indicate as much, and the footprints continued from there; he hunched his shoulders and followed her footsteps, meandering here and there among the trees, apparently harvesting every elfroot along the way, doubling back occasionally as if she'd missed one. Perhaps she was a meticulous drunk? Or perhaps she wasn't drunk at all, and Sera had just been trying to bait him. The trail seemed to go awfully far, and its lines were mostly straight, and he saw no sign of spilled drink along the way, and in any case it seemed...unlike her, to turn to drink. But, as Varric had pointed out, mages didn't sentence their own without provocation, and while siding with Tevinter was certainly...provoking, the dwarf seemed to think there was more to it. As he kept walking, now following the far curve of the lake, over the waterfall, he found himself hopeful that perhaps she would tell him something, even if it were only why she'd decided to go where only the occasional patrolman and Leliana's spies went because they were atop a mountain and it was cold. He hoped she wasn't cold.
And then suddenly the trees parted and he stopped at their edge, though the path continued, because there she was, sitting on the edge of a cliff, her legs apparently dangling into nothing, a bottle at her side—but unopened, and relief and terror flooded through him, more strongly than he would have—for the Inquisition, he reminded himself, but the sun was melting against her hair and the skin at the nape of her neck and she was sitting on snow mere inches from a hundred-foot drop and he wanted—
He cleared his throat.
She started, the tense lines of her shoulders stiffening as she twisted to look at him, and he found himself reaching out a hand to steady her though he was far too far away to help. Her narrow-eyed expression went wide with surprise and she froze, and he didn't dare move lest he startle her further, and so for the space of a birdsong they held their positions, he uncertain, she precariously perched, breaths puffing out in cloudy silence.
"Cullen," she said finally, relieved and surprised, and he dropped his hand and she immediately said, "Er—Commander," and her cheeks went red and his hand went to rub the back of his neck and she shut her mouth and dropped her gaze and said, "Is there something you need?"
"Not particularly," he said, not sure where to look himself.
"Oh," she said, and she twisted away.
"Are you all right?" he asked, the words tumbling out sooner than he'd meant and faster than he'd expected, but she was sitting on a ledge and he was worried, regardless of whether or not he had any right to be; she was here, and he wanted her to be safe.
Silence greeted his question, and so he took one step forward, and then another, boots scuffing the crisp outline of her footprints. She turned her head, enough to present him with a view of her ear, and so he continued until he was within arm's reach. When she still didn't speak, he said, "If you'd rather I leave—"
"No," she said, tight and swift, her hands gripping tufts of grass peeking through the snow. "You can stay, if you like."
"If I stay," he said carefully, "would you please consider coming away from the edge?"
"Not yet," she said, and his heart sank, "but you're welcome to join me."
He hesitated, every cautious instinct in his body rebelling against taking the final step, but she tilted her head back and looked up at him, and—he'd seen her embarrassed, and overwhelmed, and determined, and always insatiably curious, and now she simply looked—tired, and sad. And so he sat at her right side, ignoring his instincts and the cold snow beneath him alike, not quite brave enough to dangle his legs next to hers nor to rest his hand near hers; but some of the tension in her face eased, and he contented himself with that.
"So," she said, forcing a levity which usually came so naturally into her voice, "what brings the commander of the Inquisition's troops to the far side of Haven?"
"I could ask the same thing of the Herald of Andraste," he countered, and she winced.
"Isabelle. Please," she said, when he opened his mouth to protest. "I've had enough of being the Herald today." She looked down at her hand, tugged at the rugged grass, and said, "For a lifetime, really, but there's not much to be done about that, I suppose."
He watched her fingers in the snow, long and sturdy, a scholar's hand turned to work, and said, "Aren't you cold?"
"That's—oh," she said, looking at her hand with remote surprise. "Not really. Whenever I start to feel cold I just—if you don't mind," she said, looking at him, and he couldn't remember the last time a mage had asked before casting a spell in front of him. And the thought of the Herald of Andraste needing to ask was almost foreign, but she was still looking at him and so he shook his head. If she caught his hesitation she didn't say anything; she simply flattened her palm against the snow, and even in his lyrium-deprived state he could still feel the barest hints of mana as something—jolted through the ground. He felt his hair start to stand on end even as the ground beneath him grew warmer, and then she withdrew her hand and shrugged. "Not as good as a fire," she said, "but I'd probably burn down the entire forest if I tried."
"I see," he said, his fingers tingling, resisting the urge to run a hand through his hair. "Thank you. I think."
She snorted. "I've answered your question," she pointed out, if less playfully than usual. "It's only fair you answer mine."
He swallowed. "I was looking for you."
"You were?" she said, a faint note of something breathless in the question. Then, less flustered, "Is something the matter? Do they need—"
"Oh, no," he said. "Varric was—worried."
"Varric," she sighed, staring resolutely at the ground, and then she shrugged her shoulders and said, "He would be."
"He's not the only one," Cullen said, and her fingers stilled; he dropped his gaze to his own hands and said, carefully, "I understand that what you endured—"
"No," she said, the word bitten off but not unkind. "You don't. None of them do, not even Dorian, and he was there, and I don't—" She dropped her head back, looking up at the sky, and said, "I don't know how to explain it to them. I tried, and they just...looked at me. And I can't blame them," she said, as he tried very hard not to just look at her. "I probably would've just looked at me too."
"What did you tell them?" he asked.
"Nothing I didn't tell the rest of you," she said, "and maybe that's the problem, but I couldn't..." She shut her eyes, her brow creasing in pain at some memory, an achingly familiar expression even if he'd never seen it on her face in particular. "Not to them."
His throat was dry, and not simply from the cold; he was treading on thin ice, from a commander's perspective, though she was neither subordinate nor superior, not exactly, but he knew himself well enough to know that this was about more than simply ensuring a fellow's well-being for the sake of duty, or surviving another day. And she was pretty, yes, but more than that he liked her, a strange sort of feeling that had crept upon him each time she'd come riding back to Haven with her wide silly smile, a feeling he'd never expected to have again, let alone for anyone in the Inquisition, let alone for a mage titled the Herald of Andraste. But here he was, on the edge of something more than just a cliff, and yet he didn't want to—intrude, or presume, or worst of all have his gestures of friendship misunderstood, and yet—
"Could you tell me?" he asked, half-holding his breath.
She looked at him, and he thought that beyond the sad tired pain she looked...hopeful. "Are you sure you want to hear?" she asked, and he thought she also looked afraid.
He let out a breath; his answer, terrifying though it may be, was easy: "Yes."
She looked at him a moment more, and then, as a tinge of color rose to her cheeks, she looked back at the ground and said, simply, "They died for me."
He waited, and then her shoulders heaved and she said, "They were coming from everywhere and we had to get to the portal and Cassandra and Varric just—looked at each other, and they nodded and they were gone, just so I could get back, and Leliana was—changed—they did something with the Taint, but she survived it, but she was—murderous, and angry, and cold, and still willing to die for me and I watched, all I could do was watch, Dorian had to drag me back and I—" She took a deep, shuddering breath, said thickly, "I don't want—I didn't want, or ask for them—but they didn't even hesitate, and I don't—I can't look at them without seeing it and I can't look at them because I don't deserve—but I don't want to—I don't know—dishonor the sacrifice but I'm not worth—"
"They clearly thought you were," he said, wishing he had something to offer her, a handkerchief if not a hand to hold, something more than words that made a sob catch in her throat.
"No," she said. "This might be," and she held up her left hand, green light flickering along its edges in time with the larger breach beyond her, "but that I have it is just—it's an accident, and I'm just a—mage who was lucky enough to survive."
"It is...difficult," he said, almost without thinking, "to be the one who survives, when so many others fall."
"Yes," she said, looking at him oddly through her tears, and this time he looked away first, swallowing back his own memories, some more recent, others dulled with time—but he remembered how he'd felt, fresh with helpless fury and the overwhelming despair of being alive. "And no one—no one seems to notice the difference between this," and she waved her hand, "and the mage, and I don't know how to make them understand that I'm not—anything more than what I am, and that this—and I don't want people dying for this and thinking they're dying for—" She shook her head as if to ward off the thought, but it escaped her in a whisper. "Me."
Her stuffy-nosed breathing filled the silence that followed, as he tried to decide—what? He'd seen how the people of Haven looked at her, heard their whispers, and while he didn't know how he himself felt about the whole thing, whether she was blessed or chosen or merely lucky or strangely cursed, he could hardly think to reassure her. People were arriving every day to serve the Herald first and the Inquisition second on nothing more than the hope that serving the Prophet's chosen would bend the Maker's ear to their terror and their plight, and nothing he could say would lift that burden from her shoulders, no matter how badly he might wish to. That he wished to, very badly, as he looked at her face in profile, cheek blotchy, nose scrunching as she sniffed, brow furrowed as she squinted across the lake towards all the people who looked to her—he wished to, but he didn't know how.
"If you were chosen," he said finally, feeling like an idiot for pointing it out, "then someone somewhere thought you were worthy."
"And if I wasn't?" The look she gave him was one that said she'd gone round in circles with these thoughts and trod ditches into the ground without making any headway. He was almost certainly an idiot.
"Then you've still managed to prove yourself," he said, and when she opened her mouth to protest he said, "That you worry about the people following you speaks volumes about your character. They know you care, and they respond to that."
"I only care because they keep coming," she said, and then, "Well, that's not quite right, but I—"
"They wouldn't come if you'd run away," he said. "If you'd tried to avoid the work, or sided with the magister, or—you're doing good work, and they're coming for that."
"They're coming based on stories about someone called the Herald of Andraste," she said.
"That's you," he said.
"I don't feel like it," she said, almost petulantly, but her sniffs were subsiding and she was half-looking at him as if what he was saying was helping, and it made him feel curiously bold.
"Maybe if you did, you wouldn't be you," he said, regretting the words in the time it took them to leave his mouth, a regret that vanished the moment she laughed.
It was a small sound, a far cry from her normal exuberance, but it was a laugh all the same, the corners of her mouth turning up even as she eyed him with disbelief. "That must be it," she said, raising her eyebrows. "If I felt confident about what I was doing then I wouldn't be any good at it."
He exhaled a laugh of his own. "Well," he said, "the Chant does advise humility when dealing with divine matters. You seem to be doing quite well in that, at least."
"Why thank you," she said, her half-grin crinkling the tear tracks on her cheeks. "Now if I could only figure out what I'm supposed to actually do—"
"You seem to have figured it out," he said, and she snorted. "Or at least, you're trying, and by all accounts doing very well, and—"
"Very well until I do something everyone disagrees with," she said, finally drawing her legs up from the edge, resting her chin on her knees.
He waited, and then said, "You made the right decision with the mages."
"Did I?" she said. "Leliana was so angry with me, when moments before she'd been so angry with them—but no one else was there and I don't know how else to explain and—" Before he could contemplate a response she said, "Was it even my decision to make? Tell me," she said, and for a long moment she didn't speak, choosing to pull at the grass instead. And then, with her face half-buried in her knees, her muffled voice said, "Who's in charge?"
"Of what?" he asked, though he suspected that he knew, that she was asking a question he'd often asked himself in the War Council and his tent and standing in front of his training troops, and sometimes asked himself when watching her ride in from the Hinterlands, exhausted and smiling, and was trying very hard not to ask himself now, when she was asking herself.
"The Inquisition, of course," she said, still hiding her face. "You?"
"I command the troops," he said. "But the Inquisition is more than her military arm. And she should be, if she is to be a legitimate source of authority."
"Authority over what?" she asked. "And who wields it? Leliana's a spy who won't to leave the shadows, Josephine's a diplomat, always focusing on individual negotiations, she can't worry about that and everything else, and Cassandra flat-out refuses to take responsibility for the whole thing. So who does that leave? Don't answer that," she said immediately, wrapping her arms around her legs. "I don't want to know."
"Wouldn't knowing help?" he said.
"I already know too much," she said, lifting her head but not looking at him. "I know, for example, that when the Council meets there's four people with decades of experience between them, all avoiding the question, and that when I stand there with you I feel—I'm a mage from a noble family. I know how to read books and wear fancy dresses and ride a horse if it's on a lead because nobody's going to give an unleashed horse to a mage and I suppose I know how to close Fade rifts but it's certainly not something anyone ever taught me and I don't know why I'm standing with you and I do know that I certainly don't deserve—I'm sorry," she said, rubbing her face. "I'm repeating myself. I haven't had...much else to think about, lately."
"I'm sorry," he said, and she looked as startled as he felt by his words and under the sudden surprise of her gaze he found himself stumbling to finish the thought. "That...you've had to think...about—that you don't feel—I'm sorry," he said, and then, because he knew it was true, not because it was a good idea to say it, "that you've felt so alone."
"Oh," she breathed, staring at him, cheeks flushing under her freckles as he felt his own neck turn uncomfortably warm, and then his ears, and he couldn't quite meet her gaze but his eyes kept dropping to her lips, still parted in surprise, and that was—appealing, and entirely inappropriate, to be suddenly thinking about what a wide, generous mouth she had, and to distract himself he cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his impossibly hot neck and looked at the sky.
He discovered that the sky was much darker than he remembered, that the orange-gold was turning a reddish violet, that they ought to be heading back soon, if he could convince her to come back, and then she said, "Thank you, Cullen."
"I—" he said, and made the mistake of looking back at her, and she was smiling and her eyes were shy and he felt an answering smile tug at his lips even as he lost the ability to say anything other than, "You're welcome. Isabelle," he added belatedly, in a clear moment of insanity, and yet he was surprised at how...nice it felt, to say it.
And she evidently liked hearing it, as her entire face went red and she immediately returned to tugging ferociously at the grass between them. "Yes," she said. "Thank you. Well, I mean—for listening, and everything."
"It was an honor," he said, and then he watched as she tried to uproot the entire patch. He clearly had the advantage, which probably wasn't saying much as his own stomach was still twisting and his neck was still faintly red, but the setting sun was not on their side, so he decided to risk another question. "May I ask you something?"
"Of course," she said, glancing up at him, cheeks still pink, biting her lip, looking more and more the Isabelle he'd come to—well.
"Why," he said, "are you sitting on the edge of a cliff?"
"Oh," she said, a puzzled frown turning alarmed as she went on, "oh no, you didn't think—oh no, oh, no! Oh," she said again, and now she was looking earnestly at him, "I wasn't thinking of jumping, I've just—it's silly, really, but—oh, all right," she said helplessly, and he suspected it was because he was doing a terrible job of hiding his amusement. "I just—it's far away, and I like the view. At the Circle—the Ostwick Circle wasn't in a tower or anything fancy, just one big building that grew and grew over the years, and there wasn't much to see out the windows, and my parents' house is in the city too, and I always saw the mountains and never—there's so much space," she said, gesturing widely, and he had to restrain himself from reaching out to steady her. "I can't get enough of it. I love looking at it. And this is one of the best spots to look at Haven, and the lake, and the bridge over there, and the sky—" She looked up, and said, "Oh, it's gotten late, hasn't it?"
"Yes," he said, but he was laughing in the word, and she looked at him and he couldn't help smiling, and even in her embarrassment she grinned back.
"That's a shame," she said. "But I suppose we ought to be heading back before Cassandra mobilizes everyone for a search-and-rescue."
"Probably," he agreed, surprised at his own reluctance—well, not so much the reluctance as how poorly he disguised it, if her answering sigh was any indication. "Don't forget your—er—"
"My—oh!" she said, picking up the bottle on her other side and looking at it with dismay. "First I forget this, then you find me...I don't know why anyone expects me to do anything right. I can't even manage to sneak off and drown my sorrows properly."
He laughed outright, and she bit her lip as she giggled. "There are worse things to be bad at," he said.
"If you think of one, let me know," she said, and then she turned until her back was to the cliff's edge and pushed her way to her feet. "Oh," she said, "it's cold."
"You've been sitting on snow," he pointed out, standing himself and making the same uncomfortable discovery, barely managing to avoid checking her backside for snow that needed brushing off. He coughed and she raised an eyebrow at him. "We should go back," he said.
"Probably," she said, looking at the trail of footprints in the snow.
"Well, then," he said, as a long twilight moment passed without either of them moving. "Lead on."
She glanced at him. "And will you follow?"
He caught her gaze and held it, and this time he was—completely calm, even as she was completely—lovely. "Yes," he said.
Her mouth set itself in a firm line and she tilted her head in a fraction of a nod, and then she dropped her gaze and asked, hesitantly, "And will you still...listen, too?"
"Yes," he said, his answer as swift as her question had been slow, weighted with desperation and desire and a very real need for her to know—what, he wasn't yet entirely sure, though he had his suspicions; but she looked up at him with a tenuous smile, nervous and grateful, and that was a start.
"Well," she said, her voice awkward with too many feelings, "it's late, and I seem to have a bottle of brandy that I need to return to Flissa, so...do try to keep up, won't you?"
"Of course," he said, falling into step behind her as she started along the trail they'd made, staying close so as not to lose her amidst the dusky trees.