The blizzard was unrelenting, but this was nothing new to Cullen. Skyhold was, after all, sitting atop a mountain, and the change the seasons brought were felt in the intensity, but not the absence, of the cold winds.
Cullen was used to the cold. Having grown up in Ferelden, he was exposed to long, dark winters with just a glimpse of the sun around midday. What were considered normal winters in his homeland were the stuff of nightmares in Orlais and Nevarra. In Kinloch, it did not matter if it was winter or summer; he wore the same armor, and the enchantments in those and in the Tower itself shielded him, and his charges, from the weather and changes in the outside world.
No. The worst winters were the ones in his nightmares, when he would be blown by the blizzards, and he would find himself spiralling out of control, and he was sure he would fall—
He'd usually wake up to the darkness, only to fall back asleep instantaneously, because his body was just so exhausted.
Next in his nightmares were the Gallows, the stone faces of the Twins and the other slaves with their angry red eyes. Monoliths coming to life. Screams of mages and the blood of his brothers-at-arms. Bodies broken by abominations with burnt and mangled limbs, wearing Circle robes and Templar armor and Chantry gowns and peasant clothing, running through the streets of Kirkwall, leaving a trail of blood at their wake, the blood of children and women and men and dogs, shattered glass and burning houses, an explosion of fire that reeked of piss and shit...
But those were not the worst dreams. Those were tolerable, and his training and experience as a soldier had taught him how to handle the trauma of war. No. Banish these thoughts, these demons to Andraste, he prayed forcefully every time he saw these dreams. He reminded himself that Kirkwall was not his fault alone, and at some point, he could make peace with that. Andraste guide me, let me serve the Inquisition as penance for my sins and the sins of the Order was his prayer each day and each night.
What he could not live with were the dreams about a young lass in Ferelden, barely twenty at the time, with dark red hair and bright green eyes, a mage of promising skill before the world went awry. Sometimes she just wept, a small subdued thing chained at the dungeons, too frail, too broken to even eat or speak, until in her despair she screeched about her lost love and the betrayal of friends and wanting to die and take everyone with her in a turbulent blizzard, and he awoke with cold sweat.
Other times, she was a demon of Despair and icy Fury, her hair a mangled mass over her gaunt face, her slender figure in Circle robes reduced to a waif in dirty rags rattling broken chains, but her eyes were blazing a green, hellish cold fire amidst the turbulent blizzard, and she was calling for the blood of betrayers and false friends and cruel jailers, after her blood mage friends escaped the Circle and left her alone, she weighed on his chest and he couldn't remove her, and he knew she was trapping him in a nightmare and all he had to do was kill her, no, he didn't have to kill her, not again, he killed her once out of duty, no it was not just duty, it was also pity when he drove his sword to her heart because she had succumbed to demons and madness and it was all Uldred's fault not his, this was a dream and all he had to do was wake up, but he couldn't, and she was weighing on him, clawing on his chest as if trying to reach his heart, she wanted to take his heart because he had stabbed hers, and dear Maker her cries were pitiable and her plight was unjust but this was just too terrible, too terrible, Maker, he didn't want her to hurt others like she swore she would, no Maker, Ira, it was not my choice, forgive me, I forgive you Ira for your bad choices, please let me go, please go in peace, and she was weeping in rage and his heart was bursting in his chest and he couldn't breathe—
"My darling, wake up," came a soft voice, warm and familiar.
"Cullen, wake up," it said again, and steel rang behind it. "Commander, that's an order!"
Inquisitor, a part of his brain said. Trevelyan. Green hand, black hair. Evelyn Marie. Oval face, kind eyes, full cheeks so rosy and round. My darling.
Her voice, sweet but commanding, beckoned him.
Evie, he remembered, and with a last, pitying look at the waif with red hair and green eyes, he felt a weak arcane bolt hit him on his chest, and the waif's bony talons on him loosened.
Cullen Stanton Rutherford opened his eyes and saw Evelyn Marie Trevelyan, Lady Inquisitor, Herald of Andraste. He realized he was in her bed, in that grand suite she illuminated and warmed with magefire and glyphs.
"I don't advise that you fall back asleep again, my darling." Her voice grew more tender, and he could smell lavenders. "Want some tea?"
With a flick of her wrist she summoned the canteen of hot tea she kept at their bedside table. He saw her open the bottle with her magic but offered it to him with her glowing left hand.
Cullen didn't know if he could move. Maker, it was too hard.
He felt Evie lightly touch his arm, and he saw the green glow of the Anchor and shuddered at its otherworldly glow, and he saw the vaulted ceilings of the Inquisitor's suite illuminated by her magefire, and Maker, suddenly Evie was gone, he was asleep again—
The waif was back, sunken cheeks, rotten skin, mottled red hair, vengeful green eyes, rattling the broken chains on her bony wrists. She was wailing, incomprehensible gibberish that hurt his ears, but he understood her, somehow—lost love, betrayed trust, broken self—and again she was weighing on his chest, trying to make his heart burst—
Cullen felt something cold, damp, wet, and he forced his eyes open. He realized that the tea Evie was offering him must have spilt on her bear fur blanket, hence the cold and damp, and he was back in Evie's arms, he smelled lavender, Evie smelled of lavender because she had bathed the night before with lavender soap, and last night he wanted her but he was just so exhausted, and she promised him she would be beside him until morning, yes, she would have breakfast with him, and he remembered her good-night kiss tasted of mint, Evie, so beautiful Evie—
He still felt exhausted, his eyelids heavy, but there was no trace of red-haired, green-eyed, waifish Despair.
Only Evie, her kind brown eyes awake, her black hair framing her oval face and falling to her bare shoulders, so fair and voluptuous and delicate. Evie.
He never knew that the scent of lavenders could offer him so much comfort, so much solace.
He could not resist weeping tears of shame and humiliation and despair and gratefulness and love.
Evie sat propped against the headboard of her large bed, humming softly. Her chiffon peignoir was damp in the parts where Cullen's tears fell. She idly played with Cullen's golden curls, but she saw the way his eyes were shut too tight for sleep. She was drowsy, herself, but she knew she had to observe him for any of the signs Cassandra warned her about.
She was thankful that Cullen was not nauseous tonight.
Evie was a healer, but Cullen's hurts were beyond her magic to heal. What he needed was someone to listen to him, to understand, to help him help himself. There were no shortcuts to matters of the heart and mind.
Nor would she have Cole erase his memories. With wisdom brought about by adversities and responsibilities so suddenly thrust upon her, she understood. Besides, if Cullen wanted it, he would have asked for it. Evie, as Cullen's lover and as his superior officer, will respect such a choice, even if it was more burdensome: Cassandra had warned them that the road towards rehabilitation would be dark and troubled, and that it would grow increasingly harder before it became better. And her own experience as healer had taught her that there were some hurts that were beyond magic but not beyond time and the strength of will.
What she did instead, was to offer alternatives to soften the blow to Cullen, to alleviate what little pains she could remove. She managed to convince him to sleep in her suite sometimes, and surreptitiously had Cullen's loft slowly renovated because she knew he would not occupy her rooms whenever she was away from Skyhold. Whenever she could, she slept beside him, but despite their passion she noticed that he sometimes woke up from nightmares.
Like tonight.
There is no easy way out of this, she heard Cassandra's voice in her head. He is strong, and he will overcome this, but it is hard. We may help him simply by being here. By listening.
And so Evie waited for Cullen to tell her, so that she could help him help himself.
Cullen could never have guessed that the scent of lavenders could comfort him so. Resting against Evie's generous bosom, he felt nothing but utter contentment. Here, he was safe, warm, happy.
Evie. Just saying her name, even in his mind, comforted him. He loved Evie, he thanked the Maker for Evie, so strong, so powerful, so loving, so warm, so understanding.
He had lost track of how many nights he had awaken from his nightmares, only to see Evie with him. Sometimes he would wake up from his nightmares, roused by Evie's snores, and his sudden movement would also jolt her awake. Groggily, she would hold him and soon enough, with their limbs tangled, she would fall back asleep and her snores would fill the room. Those times, he would be unable to go back to sleep, but he did not mind. He liked observing Evie, a mage so powerful ways in ways more than one, sleeping peacefully, leaving all her worldly cares behind as she wandered in the Fade, her thick black hair sprawled all over her pillows.
Sometimes, however, he awoke in the middle of the night to see her awake and worried. Like tonight, and the lines beneath Evie's dark brown eyes were betrayed the fact that she did not have a good night's rest either. But the urgency in her voice alerted him, made him angry at himself: he would not add to the piles of troubles that the Inquisitor was already carrying.
This was why he never told her just what kinds of nightmares were plaguing him. Those were his burden to carry, and they were just too heavy, too heavy, sometimes.
Cassandra had told him to find help. The strange Fade creature Cole, whom he did not like very much, had offered to remove his memories, his pain. But he found that he could not. Without these memories, he would succumb to the temptation of taking lyrium again. No. He would not succumb to lyrium again; it would help him deal with his nightmares now, but at the price of his soul and madness for the rest of his life.
Tonight, however, he felt exhausted. "Evie," he whimpered, holding her with what strength was left in his arms.
"Shadows fall
And hope has fled
Steel your heart
The dawn will come."
Inquisitor Evelyn Marie Trevelyan was the Herald of Andraste, but not Andraste herself: her voice was not as sweet as her disposition or her affection for Cullen. Her voice, which only boomed in the battlefield because of magical amplifications, was actually small and throaty.
Cullen was sure Evie meant it as a lullaby, and a source of inspiration. There were nights when she hummed melodies from the Chant as her fingers played with his hair. And he found that her throaty voice offered more comfort and devotion than all the choirs of the Chantry.
"The night is long
And the path is dark
Look to the sky
For one day soon
The dawn will come."
Cullen felt so tired, so weary. Where was that dawn? He thought wildly, where is that promise of hope? Let it come soon, let me wake up at dawn with Evie.
The winter storm outside was subsiding, so the Inquisitor did not hesitate to rekindle her warmth glyphs: winters in Skyhold were nothing like the mild snows she remembered in the Free Marches.
Cullen's nightmare tonight was one of the particularly bad ones—he was literally paralyzed in his sleep by some terror she wished she understood.
She wondered what particular fear gripped him, what particular shadow of his past or figment of his mind or both haunted him. And she knew the only way she could help was to listen to him as he unburdened his heart.
"Do you want to talk? I'll listen," she told him. She had lost count of the many times she had asked him this, and the many times he softly rejected her.
Outside, the blizzard continued howling. Evie felt Cullen quiver, and she knew it was not from the cold. She braced herself for another denial, and held him closer. Not for warmth—she was a powerful mage and her glyphs were strong—but to tell him that she was there, ready to help him if only he would let her.
She was about to kiss his hair and fall back to sleep when Cullen began his tale.
"Barely a year after taking my vows as a Templar, I almost fell in love with a beautiful red-haired apprentice… Ira Amell."
Cullen's voice was soft and quivering, that Evie strained to hear his first words. Soon, however, his voice steadied. "She was talented, the kind we don't see very often. We talked, on occasion, and she showed me the wonders of elemental magic and sometimes made it snow inside the tower, because I told her I missed snow and how my siblings and I made snowmen. When her Harrowing came, I held the sword at her throat, and I prayed to Andraste to guide her. She passed so easily and I thanked Andraste with all my heart… but just hours later, she joined blood mages who tried to escape.
"I thought Ira and I were friends, but she fell with a bad lot and they betrayed her. They escaped and they left her, and I had to chain Ira in the dungeons as the Knight-Commander made preparations to transfer her to Aeonar. And I tried to speak to her, I tried to ask her why she turned to blood magic, because she didn't need to, she was already quite adept. But she was silent, and I think something broke in her, and she didn't speak at all for days, but when she did, she wailed in gibberish."
He broke in a sob. "Ira, she wasted her talent and her potential, she was huddled in a corner, she tore her clothes and wailed for days and nights and rattled her chains. Sometimes she called for her friends, the ones who had left her behind, knowing she would die or be Tranquil. She blamed the Templars, and she looked at me as if she didn't know me. Until Uldred returned, and Ira succumbed to a demon of Despair."
Cullen's voice grew more frantic. "You see, Uldred returned from Ostagar and summoned his army of demons to take over the Tower. At the time I was guarding the dungeons, guarding Ira, by myself. Hosts of fiery demons tried to break the door. I tried to fight them, but they were too much for me, and soon I was overwhelmed. It was then that Ira saved me, she conjured a terrible storm of ice and lightning and destroyed them all. But when I turned to see her, I saw that she had turned to Despair. Maker, she was Ira but not Ira, she was always a slender girl but now she was a grey waif, she was no longer slender but shrunken, like she had died and something else had taken over her, and she had broken from her chains and was rattling them...
"I knew my sworn duty as a Templar," Cullen wept. "I can still hear her wails. I knew she was not allied with Uldred, because she could easily have killed me when she defeated his demons. She had not wholly lost her mind because until her last breath she wailed of lost love, cruel jailers, and betrayed trust. So I made it easier for her and me: I stabbed her through the heart, and cut off her head. And then she was no more. Her blizzard broke, and Uldred's minions captured me."
"I pitied her, Evie, I did," Cullen admitted. "But when Uldred's demons got to me and played with my mind, they mistook my affection and pity for her and… warped it, made her lewd, a mere plaything. But I knew Ira was dead, because I killed her, because of her despair, and nothing would ever change that fact. And… it makes me feel guilty. I should have listened to her when she told me she was lonely. I should have investigated, I could have prevented her from being involved with blood mages. I should have told her that with her talent, she could have seen the world…"
Cullen looked up and met Evie's large brown eyes. "Evie, I wanted to help her. But… after what the demons did to me… you have to understand, they tried to break me. After the Hero of Ferelden saved the Circle, I hated mages because of what a few mages did to me—they tortured me, they made me watch as my brother and sister Templars died or succumb to madness. I hated all mages afterward, and I took more lyrium to forgot all about Ira. Until… Meredith happened."
Inquisitor Evelyn Marie Trevelyan, Herald of Andraste, former Enchanter of the Circle of Magi in Ostwick, she who prevailed over hordes of demons and undead, felt the hair at the base of her neck stand.
Finally, she understood.
What had tormented Cullen, what made him scream at night, incomprehensible gibberish sometimes but other times clear as day: Don't, don't, I'm sorry! I need to do this! was an altogether different demon, and it was not from the Fade.
It was the demon of Remorse and Regret, and one did not defeat them through mere swords and arcane bolts.
Evie collected her thoughts. She was a Circle Mage, she knew what massive demonic possessions were like. She had guessed, from Leliana's tales about the Fifth Blight and first-hand accounts of the tragedy in Kirkwall, the terrors Cullen had lived through, the guilt and remorse and helplessness that crippled him at his most vulnerable points.
The Inquisitor had seen enough of the world to observe that remorse and regret helped men find their motivation—or it broke and crippled them irreversibly. She reminded herself of Cullen's acts and accomplishments: his efforts as the military Commander of the Inquisition from its humble origins to the military power that it was now, the defense and evacuation of Haven, his impressive siege of Adamant Fortress.
She decided that Cullen was neither broken nor crippled by his guilt, remorse and regret. It gave him his motivation—and to help him, all she needed to do was show him this.
"Cullen, you changed," she told him, softly but resolutely, and she held him tighter. "People are allowed to change, to atone, to show remorse. Your actions now will ensure that no more mage will suffer as Ira did, no Templar will suffer as you and your brothers and sisters did."
"I pray it is enough," Cullen moaned. "Evie, my Lady Inquisitor, tell me it is enough."
Evie kissed him with an intense passion, and she asked herself the question that had nagged her since she started this romance with the ex-Templar. Did he love her because he regretted his actions towards mages, or in spite of it, or regardless of it?
Or because despite his past, he was determined to change the future, for the better?
And so the mage decided to be honest to the Templar—her truth for his. "I don't know. But I pray it is."
The Inquisitor's left hand caressed Cullen's face. "The pursuit of justice is not the sole province of those seeking atonement. Those of us who have seen injustice perpetrated upon others need not wait to experience it ourselves before we do something about it."
Evie kissed him, and she could not stop her passion for this man she immensely respected and adored. "More will be needed of us. But it is enough for me to have you beside me through this crisis with Corypheus."
She feared Corypheus, as much as she used to fear the Mage-Templar War. Now she also feared for Cullen's mind, and the fate of the Inquisition.
Together, she prayed, all their efforts and those of the Inquisition would be enough to change the world for the better. And silently, she swore to Maker and His Bride that she would be with Cullen, to help him in his struggle against his demons and his regrets, his quest for atonement and justice.
Cullen exhaled deeply, and Evie felt this sharply before she too fell asleep with him still pinned to her bosom. Outside, the blizzard kept howling, but Evie's spells protected them through the night.
Evie woke up at dawn to see Cullen smiling. He was already dressed and looking more refreshed than she had seen him for days.
He gestured to invite her to a breakfast of rolls and tea he had prepared at the balcony.
Evie got up and took Cullen's proffered hand to join him, and he wordlessly greeted her good morning with a kiss.
Only hours ago, winter winds howled mercilessly at the balcony. But now, the dawn cast a soft, warm glow at Evie and Cullen.
Author's note:This is my gift fic for mirelia853 for the Dragon Age Fanfiction Writers Group Secret Santa Exchange 2016. I hope you like it!
Many thanks to my fantastic betas, Eureka234 and I_Write_Tragedies_Not_Sins! Check out their works, they're awesome.