He watches her with interest, the Elven apprentice who seems to be the only one to back-chat her mentors. His first week on the job, and after many hours of staring at the library doors in boredom at the lack of life in the tower, he jumps when the door opens with a bang, a senior enchanter storming out after a small lithe woman who seems to be furious.
Cautiously edging ever so slowly towards the library doors lest he be thrown across the room by said angry elven mage, he raises an eyebrow when he sees that the enchanter she is arguing with is none other than Wynne, a respectful woman who rarely ever argues or gets angry. He hears that they are discussing abominations, and once he makes his presence known the elder woman nods at him whereas the girl crosses her arms over her chest and sends him a glare that surpasses even that of Greagoir with its ferocity.
"Ah, Cullen, I see you are unfortunate to be overhearing my discussion with my apprentice, Amatae." Wynne speaks, motioning to the bright blonde, pale skinned mage next to her. Said girl merely shrugs, before unfolding her arms to speak again.
"It is more than a discussion Wynne, for you are simply content to argue with me when you know I make a perfectly reasonable point! You, human man." She looks at him pointedly, the venom in her voice at addressing a human in this situation painfully obvious. "When one has humanity and can feel love, regret and friendship, one is not an abomination despite how they may look. Am I right?"
"No, abominations must be killed immediately without question." The answer is automatic, not really thought over, just the response that the chantry had drilled into him after years of templar training. The glare the elf sends him at his answer is enough to make him cringe right into the metal of his armour and wish to hide inside, though.
"You human's are insufferable! Irving couldn't have given me Leorah for a mentor could he? No! Jowan gets the lovely elven mentor, and I get an insufferable human who is unwilling to even consider what my views are on sensitive matters!" At some point the girl had stopped addressing them and had turned sharply on her heel, throwing her hands up in the air in frustration whilst talking to herself. Pausing in her walking away only once, she turns again to face them with a pointed finger to speak again but seemed to decide against it, instead continuing on her way back towards the library.
Wynne merely shakes her head in defeat, rolls her eyes, wishes him well and follows the girl. And although Amatae did not see the flicker of pain and hurt flash across Wynne's eyes at the girls voiced disdain, Cullen did and therefore vowed to himself to do one of two things.
Either be repeatedly nice to Wynne to cheer the woman up, or confront the girl and ask her to stop saying such things to an elderly woman who clearly cared about the young girl. Looking around the doors to the library, he saw the elf freeze a whole bookshelf in seconds and instantly decided on the former; he liked his insides where they were, thank you very much.
When he sees her again, she is walking down the corridor that leads to the apprentice's quarters, her hands moving in quick gestures as the male human mage walking next to her listens with wonder and awe. He is not the apprentice she is normally found with, and thus he assumes – correctly once he sees where the man's eyes really were lingering – that the mage isn't listening to a thing she says.
The thought hadn't even formed properly in his head when the girl seemed to read his mind, and Cullen raises his eyebrows and holds back a gasp of surprise when the girl raises her hand and slaps the mage brutally across the face so hard that Cullen can see the mark on his face from all the way across the hall.
He knows what's to come next, naturally, and the thought of her hard eyes simply looking over at him is enough to make a very strange, light sensation to take over his stomach. It takes a few moments for him to recognize the feeling, and once it registers to him that it is a cross between excitement and something else, he groans in denial. He cannot, will not, must not allow himself to fall for this mage who's head snaps up at hearing his groan.
"Bored already, are we? I must say, you don't strike me as the type to be a murderer." She practically glides across the floor towards him, lighting a few candles in the hallway as she does so, before stopping in front of him and crossing her arms over her chest.
"Sorry?"
"Murderer. You don't look or seem like one, and yet you've committed yourself to a fate that involves the slaying of innocents." She shifts her footing, stands up fuller and looks him straight into his copper eyes with her bright green ones.
"How old are you?"
"I- What?! Oh, I'm nineteen, twenty next month. Although I fail to see-"
"Exactly, you are nineteen years old, so you cannot accuse me of being a murderer simply because I have the duty of ending the lives of those who have become possessed. Now, off you go apprentice, I won't have you loitering the corridors. Oh, and I'd advise you be a bit nicer to your mentor, she does care despite what you believe. Run along, now" He says the words without thinking and with a superior tone that he never knew he had. The girl –although he can hardly call her a girl due to her being only two years younger than he – is also shocked at this; she opens her mouth to speak, fails to find words and instead nods at him, wary in her eyes as she moves to the door behind him that leads to the upper levels.
Seven months pass with all their meetings going the same way; she talks and tries to win some form of argument, and he always finds a way to beat her, to make her more reasonable. She gets frustrated by this, and Cullen senses that he's the only one who ever wins an argument with her. He's right about that, although the apprentice doesn't let him see it and soon enough Cullen finds himself falling head over heels for the only mage who has the backbone to stand up to Greagoir when he shouts at her for loitering again.
Only during one of these brief, snappy conversations, the apprentice slips sideways on the hem of her robes, and Cullen's arm winding around her waist is the only thing that stops her from cracking her skull open on the wall and having an appointment with her loving mentor. He catches her at such an awkward position that somehow – and he curses the maker himself for managing to make it possible – Cullen's lips lightly brush her own as she tries to pull herself upwards and end up meeting him as he leant to catch her. It takes all he has to stop himself from kissing her, and from the look behind her eyes she either feels the same thing or is trying to hide disgust.
She unwinds herself from his arm –blushing furiously – and mutters a hurried goodbye before leaving up the stairs.
Cullen never again has a full conversation with her where he doesn't stutter at least once.
By the time her harrowing comes, he dreads it when Greagoir tells him that he will be the one to cut her neck should she turn into a demon. He hates the idea, curses the images of her bleeding body in the middle of the harrowing chamber, and nearly sobs when he sees her next looking sickly pale and worried. It is no surprise to him that that exact same night both are called to the chamber, one to pass a test and the other to kill should she fail.
Irving chuckles at him whilst Greagoir frowns when he flings his sword to the side like a diseased animal once the woman wakes, and Wynne immediately steps forward to start to check if the girl is indeed alive and well. Cullen had never felt more joy than when Wynne announced that she had passed and would live. He wouldn't be killing her, not now at least.
She leaves the next day, and although his heart aches with despair and his mind hates him for ever loving such a thing as her, he is even worse when she appears to him multiple times months after when he is trapped within a cell that messes and plays with his mind.
One moment she is there, holding the hands of little copper haired children with jade eyes, other moments she is in the cage with him, tormenting his mind with images that he only ever sees in dreams. He doesn't realize that when she appears a final time that it is really her, and she crosses her arms and tells him to pull himself together, although the concern in her voice is heard only by him. Her mentor is stood behind her, arguing against him when he tells her to kill every single one of the mages in the upper chamber.
She shakes her head, her blonde hair tucked behind her ears as she looks at him in sadness. She refuses to kill the mages, saying she cannot and will not slaughter innocents simply because they may be maleficarum. His heart goes to her, and he is certain she doesn't know what she's about to walk into.
And then he sees her hands.
Hundreds of tiny, little white scars adorn the hand that used to be so flawless all those months ago, and she follows his gaze and winces under the anger that has flared up inside of him. She used to agree with him on these things, used to say that sacrificing blood for magic was ridiculous and foolish and yet here she is with scars on every inch of her arms and wrists that he can see. He asks her one last time to kill the mages, and once again she refuses, turning away sadly and walking up the staircase towards the harrowing chamber.
It's the only argument he loses with her, and the price is his sanity.