"This is getting us nowhere," Ser Joanna says with a frustrated sigh after hours of deliberation and discussion. "Cassandra, Josephine, Leliana, you can go. I want to speak with the commander in private. When you come back, I'll have a decision ready for you."
She rubs her forehead as the three other women leave without a sign of protest. Cullen watches them go, then, when the door closes, turns his attention to Ser Joanna. Her muscles are tense, almost rigid, and he can see by the tightening of her fingers in her hair, the hard set of her jaw, and the narrowing of her eyes that she's on the verge of an explosion.
Not that he can blame her. Since she and the party got back to Haven with news of the rebel mages' decision in Redcliffe, they all four of them have been going around in circles trying to decide who to choose as allies. Her patience, already thin to begin with, has been very severely tested, and he's surprised it took her this long to dismiss the others. But he doesn't think on that long. They're alone now, and they can talk as only templars and ex-templars can.
Unsurprisingly, not long after the door closes, Ser Joanna slams her fists into the table, lets out a stream of incredibly colourful swearwords and epithets, and begins to pace up and down the room. He watches her, grimacing faintly, sharing in her aggravation. Of all the ridiculous, intractable situations to be in…
"Shit! Fuck! Dammit!" she growls, carding a hand through her hair and almost tearing at it. She turns around on her heels and looks up at him, a scowl etched into her face and rage in her eyes. "What the fuck am I supposed to do here? Uphold my vows to the Order and save my fellows, or uphold my vows to the Order and save the mages? If I abrogate one in favour of the other, what will the consequences be? Which side would it be worse to abandon? And what will they think of us for the one that we save?"
Cullen shakes his head. "If I knew the answer to any of those, I wager we'd have long since made a decision," he admits. "Who do you reckon is least bad?"
"I don't fucking know, that's the problem," she snaps. She ceases her pacing and folds her arms, rocking back slightly on her heels. "Either side has its advantages and its disadvantages. Saving the mages would get the Tevinters out of Ferelden, but what would the common people think of it? With the templars, meanwhile, we might get more of a public relations boost, but all the mages would see is a templar abandoning the mages to save her own kind. And that's just to start with!" She screws her eyes shut, shaking her head while Cullen nods slowly and leans on the table.
"What do you think your superiors would do?" he asks after a while.
Ser Joanna grimaces. "Again, I don't know," she says. "Some of them would have saved the mages. Others, the templars. Neither would have been wrong to do so. Our vows are clear enough on what we must do in situations like these… but when you've got both at once? There's nothing to say which takes priority. Dammit."
At that moment, Cullen realises something. "You're more worried about doing your duty as a templar than all the rest," he says.
She slowly nods. "I am," she says bluntly. "The ramifications of my decision, whichever it may be? I can roll with them. Maybe. But if I don't do my duty, or if I pick the lesser duty of the two… and I can't rightly decide which it is."
"Leliana would have you believe it's saving the mages," he remarks, somewhat wryly.
Immediately, Ser Joanna's scowl returns. "Oh, yes, Leliana, the woman who tried to tell two templars that their abilities are 'pure speculation'. I understand her supporting the mages, but acting as if she knows more than us about what we do? Bullshit. Why do you think I asked her and the others to leave? Only Cassandra comes close to understanding what we do… and even then."
"It was rather ridiculous," he agrees. "But should your duty really be your primary concern?"
She sighs and drops her head. "Probably not," she says, with that much less vehemence than before. "But I won't abrogate it. My duty's been what's guiding me since this all started. It gives me a touchstone, if you will, something to keep me grounded and sane. I can't just… leave it. Even when it's yanking me in two directions."
He won't argue with her on that. "What does your gut tell you?" he asks.
"My gut's no less confused than my head," Ser Joanna admits. "Part of me thinks I should go to the templars and drag them back to glory because the Lord Seeker certainly won't. The other part says I should go to the mages and save them from their own wretched stupidity. I mean—allying with Tevinter! They knew that had to end in trouble!"
"You said that the Grand Enchanter was concerned about saving the lives of her people," Cullen recalls. He's not disagreeing, of course—the decision seems as monumentally idiotic to him as it is to her. Still, he would discover the full extent of her feelings on the matter.
"If we excuse an alliance with Tevinter to save lives, then we might as well excuse a mage turning to blood magic to save their own hide," Ser Joanna says. "Tevinter will eat them alive, anyway. Did I tell you that one of them honestly thinks all the stories about Tevinter blood magic and sacrifices and the magocracy are just Chantry propaganda, decided to make people hate mages? All she could see was that mages are free and police themselves in Tevinter. Apparently she missed the memo that only the high-born in Tevinter are truly free and that those stories had to come from somewhere."
Cullen shakes his head disbelievingly. "Now that is stupid," he says. "If they think Tevinter's a better alternative, they've got another thing coming."
"That part of my gut tells me to leave them to their fate. Leave them to suffer the consequences of their foolishness," she says. When his eyebrow shoots up, she nods, expression grim. "But that's cruel, I know. I would be failing my duty as a templar if I did that, for that reason."
"Would you?" he asks, somewhat bitterly. "Plenty of others would think the same. And do it. I probably would have done it at one point. Or…" Cullen sighs. "Maybe not probably…"
"Our vows tell us that we must protect the mages from themselves as well as from common people," Ser Joanna recites smoothly. As she does, the scowl slips from her face. "It would be a failure, at least according to the ideals of the Order. I suppose these days many people wouldn't regard it as such, but just because the many think it doesn't make it right. But that's not a discussion I really want to have right now."
"Fair enough." Cullen briefly closes his eyes, trying to fight off the headache that's beginning to coalesce inside his skull, and he recalls the day he took his own vows. How young and naïve and—different—he was then. "Our vows say that the protection of the mages and the common people is our first priority," he says after a moment. "I suppose when you look it at that way, you should go to Redcliffe, get the mages out of that alliance. But…"
"But?" Ser Joanna prompts him.
Cullen looks from the table to the mark on her hand, then out the window, where he can just barely see the edges of the Breach. "Perhaps, just this once, the magical catastrophe takes priority," he says. "Perhaps our other vows can be—abrogated—in favour of doing whatever it takes to stop this, and it will be no stain on our souls to do so."
Her gaze also shifts to the window, and he looks back to see her expression become thoughtful. "I suppose so," she says finally. "I'm not really comfortable with that line of thinking, but you may have a point. Desperate times, desperate measures…"
"Maybe that's what it comes down to, in the end," he tells her. "Forget about all the rest, or try to, anyway. Who do you trust most to seal the Breach?"
Ser Joanna moves over to the window, presumably for a closer look at the Breach, and he turns to watch her. For a long while, there is silence as she leans on the windowsill and gazes out, and Cullen continues to observe her. If he examines her muscles a little longer than perhaps he should, for she does have very nice muscles, very well-toned arms and legs, a strong and straight body with no curves to it whatsoever—well, he pretends to himself that he doesn't. It's as simple as that.
Finally, she drops her head into her chest and says, "Honestly, I trust our own lot more. My own lot, I suppose. I know there are spells that dispel other forms of magic, but I don't know if they'd be sufficient on the Breach, or if they might have unintended side-effects. The same goes double for all other kinds of magic. If the situation were not so serious, I might be willing to chance the use of magic, but as it is, if we pour even more magic into an unstable hole in the sky caused by magic… the consequences could be catastrophic."
Cullen nods. "This isn't something that can be left to chance," he says. "I don't doubt the mages would have their own way of dealing with this, and I'm sure it's legitimate. But how much stock do you want to put in that when so much is at stake, when there's even a chance that it might make things worse?" Of course, if Ser Joanna does end up going for the mages after all this, he will respect her choice, but a large part of him is relieved that she's more inclined to his way of thinking.
Why wouldn't she be? She is a templar. Not a maniac, not like Sers Alrik, Karras, or Mettin of Kirkwall, or too many others that he could name, and she's more than a little doubtful of the Order and its current state, but that doesn't change what she is.
"Of course, the templars' abilities may be insufficient to stop the Breach, potent though they are," she admits after another thoughtful silence. "Granted, I don't suppose either of us has ever seen what we can do as a group, have we?"
He shakes his head. "No. At most I've seen us acting in groups of three or four, in the Battle of the Gallows, and that was only barely enough to stem the tide of abominations and blood mages. But the entire contingent working together, in conjunction with your mark… it could work."
"Except now we're doubting it, just like we doubt the mages," Ser Joanna points out wryly. Cullen lets out a soft groan and rubs his forehead again. "All right, there's less doubt here, I'll give you that. I still would dearly love to know why my own abilities don't cancel out the mark, anyway."
There's something that hadn't occurred to him until now. Cullen looks at her. "Is that why you're unsure if the templars can seal the Breach?"
Ser Joanna shrugs and says, "Partly. If my own abilities don't nullify the mark on my hand—well, one, what sort of magic is it, and two, given its connection to the Breach, how do I know our abilities will work on it? They may not have any effect at all."
And here he'd thought they were getting somewhere. Maker. "What about the rifts you've closed?" he asked. "Have you tested your abilities on them?"
"Once," she says. "Dispelling all magic in the area did seem to disrupt the rift for a time and weaken it. Calling down a pillar of light and then following it up with a dispel definitely weakened it. They weren't enough to close it, but… I guess that's what the mark's for. Ah!" Cullen sees her eyes light up with sudden realisation, and he smiles slightly. "Well, there you go. Problem solved."
"There you go," he echoes. "With that in mind, I expect it's to be the templars?"
She nods firmly. "Yes, the templars. I wish I could go to both them and the mages—I want to help the mages. But the Breach takes precedence over everything else." With that, Ser Joanna pushes off from the windowsill, heads back around the war table and to the door, opens the door, and says a few words to the guard outside. "Go get Cassandra, Leliana, and Josephine. Tell them I've made my choice. And then go to Harritt and tell him that I want my armour repaired and polished to a fine shine. I'll pay him double if he does it well and if he does it fast. I want that armour ready for when we march to get our allies."
"At once, Your Worship!" the guard says, and Cullen can hear his armour clanking as he runs off. He can also see Ser Joanna's muscles seize up as she tenses. When she steps back inside and turns to look at him, she's cringing.
"'Your Worship,'" she says distastefully. "I do not like that. I know I've said that I believe Andraste must have chosen me, but the style is… excessive. I'd much rather be called 'Ser'."
Cullen nods in sympathy. "I understand. I remember when they named Hawke the Viscount of Kirkwall. The poor man had a horror of being called 'your Excellency' all the time. As a mage, even as the Champion, he could never have reasonably expected it, and I don't think he ever got used to it." He can't help but smile slightly at the memory, even as he wonders where in the world Hawke is now, and Ser Joanna chuckles.
"And I certainly couldn't have expected this, templar or not," she says. "That's why I'm getting my armour all polished and shined. We can capitalise on my reputation all we like, but if I approach the templars as a fellow templar, I think they'll be more inclined to listen to us."
"A wise idea," he says. "And you being a templar might restore public faith in the Order, as well." That part isn't as important to him, but he can see how much it matters to her.
"It might," she says. "But then it's on me to make sure that that faith is upheld, that we remain worthy of it. My every action will have to be guided by what the common people would expect of a templar, as well as my duty. That's not… Shit. I don't like that, either."
"You can worry about it later," Cullen cautions her. "Let's just focus on the templars themselves for now."
Ser Joanna nods vigorously. "Yes, of course. The templars. Andraste's arse, I hope this will be worth the trouble."
He makes a small noise of agreement, and they wait in fairly comfortable silence until Cassandra, Leliana, and Josephine enter the room. As the three other women take up their positions around the table, Ser Joanna almost smacks her hands on top of it.
"I've made my choice," she says without preamble. "We're going to the templars."