Disclaimer: I own absolutely and completely nothing. Bioware has that particular pleasure.
Author's note: this is basically a spin-off of Denerim and Rainesfere though it can be read independently. Just a random idea which I may or not continue, not so sure. It just needed to be written down.
Premise: f!Amell helped Jowan but Duncan was not present to conscript her. This means she was arrested while Lily was sent to Aeonar. Jowan escaped, Uldred has yet to rebel and the Tower is in relative peace. Artwork by the very talented ChampiontheWonderSnail.
Word count: 1.767.
The mages of the Tower had long stopped counting the days after their arrival. The Tower is their home and prison all in one, their protection and doom at the same time. They do what they can, try to live as well as possible. Any other option has been taken away far before by the Chantry's hands.
The continuous scratches drawn on the cell's walls show that the woman inside does, indeed, count the days until she is able to leave. How many days, how many hours have passed since she has been thrown inside, a way like any other to pass the time. Could she practice again soon, to be in class, to take an apprentice? While she is dreaming, why not join some place as a healer? And a flying dragon. Stupid wishes but all she has to do inside the square meter of prison cell she is allowed.
All in all, she has never been so bored in her entire life.
At first rest had been nice. Her head had been buzzing, screeching painfully with every remembrance of the last events. Jowan and Lily, the repository and the blood covering her from head to toe. The first days, Diana had been more than happy to curse the two idiots with all the insults of her particularly small inventory. She was not a violent person. She wasn't, really. But then again, maybe that has changed because all the punishments that she has devised for both fools – or maybe just Jowan, Lily had been punished already – had turned strangely bloody and oddly satisfying. Her imagination only grew so far before that became repetive.
It is deadly boring. Not that it is a bad thing that she has been forgotten since Aeonar isn't really on her top vacation spots but really, she confesses to the mouser which persists in coming to her for food, there is just nothing to do. Stare, look, play with the edges of her robe and the wall isn't giving her anything new after fifty days. Reread the Chant of Light can only be interesting for so long. Even when adding notes, pushing comments into every margin and, generally, making a blasphemer out of herself.
The fiftieth day marks a change.
She has reached an all-time new low if Cullen's entrance is something to be amazed about. If it brings ideas about how Irving has just gone mad or Gregoir who should have known better than leaving her with the guy who said he would have killed her. But nothing personal, I wouldn't like killing you, your neck was just a great target and my hand was itching.
Maker help her, she is going mad.
The wall refuses to answer her. Bitch.
"Hello, Cullen!"
He shakes as if she has just hit him with lightning. On a regular normal every day of her life, she would never do this. Cullen is harder to speak to than anyone else in that Tower and, in that list, she is including both the Knight Commander and the dragolings. But, closed bars, dark stone all around her and the only thing she can do is try.
"Ah." Bright start of conversation, we have progress. The templar's hands shake momentarily, her food takes a precariously dangerous stumble into the abyss and his mouth trembles. Yes. Fear me, Templars everywhere. And Jowan too because she's going to kill him for making her to this out of sheer boredom. "I am not supposed to talk to you."
Gregoir needs to die. Slowly, painfully and with her staff jammed somewhere.
"I'm not going to attack you or anything," she complains – not whines, she doesn't whine. Jowan whines for her, it's much better for her reputation. "I'm just." She waves frenetically to the rest of the cell. "Bored! Nothing to do. I've been here for ages and no one talks to me! I'm going to end up crazy if this keeps going and what would just be a bad thing. You don't want it to happen. I might bite my way through the bars. Or drool myself into drowning." Or turn, most likely, into an abomination. A little dry part of her, which seems to have been cultured during those months, pipes in on and on about how that might be a welcomed change.
But, by the love of the Maker, if he left, she will be alone again. If she is alone, dear Lord, she will just start banging her head against a wall because nothing, nothing can be more painful than what she is experiencing. So please, please, please, she asks repeatedly, don't leave, wow, why are you inching towards the door, you dumbass, don't you.
He stops, half an inch out and then returns. Slowly, slowly because she's a big bad abomination and just that close to jump him through bars of her cell.
This is why she doesn't like Templars. Their common sense is stuffed in some garbage pile with their sense of humor, libido and capacity to think for themselves. No offence meant, of course. Though only because he is her only salvation, her only peak of interest inside the three stone walls and metal bars – twenty seven bars, she counted, three hundred, sixty-two stone slabs.
"W-What do you want?"
Distractions! He'll do.
Diana pushes herself just a little bit closer, enough for him not bolt right through the door. That'd bring everyone's attention back to her. Another bad bad thing. Distractions, that's all she wants, the tiniest bit of human contact because that is what kept her going, what made her smile day after day in the tower. How she can explain this to him? He doesn't know her, not really. He doesn't understand that she might love the Tower but she loves the others more, the way smiles can make stone seem less tough, less harsh, less of a prison than what it is.
"Just talk. You know," she shrugs helplessly, hoping even Templars have some sort of conversation skills. "Something new?"
Anything about this man will be new.
Cullen looks at her for a long time – not uncomfortable, not at all, wow, is this the only thing you're able to do? – almost as if it is the first time he sees her, she thinks. Maybe she should forget about this whole idea. Maybe that is a good idea. He doesn't speak, after all. Just measures her, almost like Gregoir would do, trying to read her every thought, her every intention and that is just plain creepy, what in the world?
"Do you regret it?"
Her mind bashes itself almost literally into a wall, surprise making her slide too close to the metal bars.
She was wrong. This isn't Cullen, he isn't stuttering. Perhaps he is, in fact, a demon bent on conquering her body through an inane quiz. And her head hurts pretty bad, the Maker-forsaken bastard.
"What? Regret what?" Hitting the bars? Yes. Definitely yes, Maker damnit.
The man closes the distance between them yet again, eyes somewhere fixed on the floor, brow furrowed like the effort to speak is too painful for words.
"Helping him out. To get the. The Phylactery," he says, almost bluntly.
Of all the questions, of all the subjects. Diana is the one who stares now, wondering just why the conversation, just why this question of all things. Gregoir would have asked this – just before carting her off to Aeonar. So would Irving, with that disappointed gaze which everyone would deserve one time or another. Conversation it is, so why not?
"Hm." The mage shrugs. "Nah. Not really."
"But he is a maleficar! A blood mage!" Any Templar would say this, any would before smacking her around. Run her through with its sword because she doesn't regret. Cullen says it like a child would, curious, on the border of temptation and watching someone who leaped through and seems fine with it.
"Yeah, well. He didn't kill anyone and he could have." You bloody bastards were the ones trying to make him into a soulless husk. "Come on, you were there." Or was Gregoir's presence too much and it took your eyes out of commission? "You saw he could have killed us all and he didn't. You saw it. 'Sides, he's an idiot, will always be an idiot and I want to kick his posterior several times with something sharp but we grew up together." Would you kill your own brother?
Her comments are censored, her reasons are censored but this makes sense. To herself, finding the reasons as to why she stopped torturing her friend in her thoughts. A brother is a brother, a friend is a friend and those links run deep to her, deeper than the rules of the Tower and the Chantry.
"It's still wrong, you know."
Funny thing, and Diana almost laughs when she notices it, he doesn't look that convict in his words. Bar the usual Chantry drivel.
"So is being a mage and I'm not about to throw myself out of a window. Hrm. Not that I could." Cell, closed bars, walls, even that would be difficult. "You can't change everything that's wrong. You just, deal with it, you know? Do the best you can 'cause everyone else isn't perfect and you're not either. Accept everyone has some faults here and there. Who knows? You might do something incredibly wrong in a week, a month. Attack the Commander, even."
The Templar stares at her all over again and she's just that close to tell him to quit, go back to wherever Templar boys do when they're not stalking innocent little mage girls because that is just plain creepy when he nods to himself. To her? To something, as if he has just reached this amazing conclusion. One which decides the whole world around them.
He tells her nothing as he leaves, damned bastard.
She hates Templars.
Until the following day.
Then, he shows by her door with a greeting, a barely whispered comment and a touch of conversation. Her food twice a day and no one else comes through the door, no one but this man who seems to have forgotten about their previous conversation or the fact that she is a prisoner. Someone who acted against his kind.
And a shy, very shy smile on his lips.
Diana finds she can almost like this Templar, Chantry obsessed or not.
And she's sure, very sure that the wall laughs at her.