HOLLOW BONES.
a Tower!fic involving Cullen, Faye, and a comforting bedtime story gone all wrong.
When Faye was sixteen, Cullen finally got his promotion to full Templar status.
During the day, full Templars usually policed the upper floors where harrowed mages and Senior Enchanters lived; or guarded the doors to the outisde. The apprentices were the ones who stood on the lower floors. Thus, while she had seen him here and there since his promotion, it had been a while since she properly got to sit and talk with him. (It was considerably more difficult for an official Templar to slip away from his duties to sit with her in the library, afterall.)
Faye hated to admit it, but she kind of missed him.
Cullen, a full Templar at last and twenty summers old, was at this point undoubtedly a man. Which partly bothered Faye, because it felt like she was getting...left behind. It would still be years until she was ready for her Harrowing and in the meantime, she was still just another apprentice. Even if they'd been friends since she came to the Tower, Cullen had been...growing up, lately. And now he was all grown up and she wasn't and –
If you couldn't tell already, Faye had a bit of a crush on Cullen – part crush, part hero worship. To her bunkmate Arwen's intense dismay, Faye had taken to waxing poetic on Cullen's more positive qualities and wondering out loud what it might take to earn his attention.
Meanly, Arwen snapped to the girl underneath her, "You've got a chance, you're not very big. Shem men seem to like elves because they think they can push us around, because we look all delicate. Does something for their egos, I expect." Faye lifted her head and gazed wonderingly up at her.
Arwen Surana was Dalish, in training to be a Keeper's First, when some Templars hunting through the forests for an apostate had happened upon her and forcibly taken her to the Circle. She had nothing but contempt for most humans and put up with Faye very grudgingly. Her surly disposition was only balanced out by the fact that Arwen was beautiful – silvery white hair and turqoise eyes, her frame lithe and delicate. She had the grace of a cat as she walked around the Tower and Faye knew that if Arwen was even slightly nicer to people, she'd have a hoard of suitors. As it was, they stayed away in fear of having their limbs set on fire.
Faye couldn't exactly do anything about her coloring, but maybe...
A little over two months passed before Cullen was assigned to the solo night watch on the apprentice floor. Solo watches were a little tricky, and so it had taken him some time to prove himself worthy of trusting with the assignment.
Of course, that night, Faye broke curfew intentionally (for the very first time in her life) and snuck up on Cullen as he stood next to the window by the staircase. "Boo," she giggled softly, clasping her hands behind her back. Cullen flailed for a moment before spinning around, hand on his blade's hilt. "Calm down, it's just me," she blurted out quickly. He relaxed as soon as he recognized her and groaned in relief.
"Andraste's mercy, Faye. You're not supposed to do that to someone who's trained to use a large sword!" Still, he motioned for her to join him next to the window and gave her a crooked little grin. "How's life? We haven't talked recently, have we?"
They talked for a long while, Cullen removing his helm and placing it on the windowsill after Faye commented how on how awkward it was talking to a metal buckethead. (This may have had more to do with the fact that she wanted to see his face again, but shh.)
After the conversation reached a lull, Cullen took a proper look at her. It had been awhile since they simply talked - while it was easy for apprentices to slip away, it was much harder now that he was officially sworn in. He'd thought Faye looked much the same at first, but there was a pallor to her skin that wasn't there before and something a bit...different about how her robes hung on her. "Are you feeling ill?" he asked, a note of worry in his voice. Despite the fact that there were only four years between them, he'd always felt the urge to watch out for her.
(Once, Carroll had accused him that his feelings of protectiveness went beyond the call of duty, but Cullen had ignored him. Faye was more like a younger sister than anything. They were just friends – as much as mages and templars could be friends, anyways.)
Faye flushed slightly and looked away. "I'm just trying to – lose a bit of weight. I'm not sick, really." When she carefully glanced back up at him, she was startled to see Cullen looking down at her coldly. In the moonlight, his features suddenly looked harsh, as if they were carved out of stone.
She took an unconscious step back before Cullen reached out and grasped her arm. The gauntlet he wore was cool against her skin and she paused, staring up at him. He'd grown so tall – he hadn't been so much bigger than her, once. But in full armor, which he hadn't started wearing until recently, the bulk of the metal made him an even more imposing figure. He could probably crush her arm with that one hand if he simply gripped hard enough. Faye shuddered – and then let Cullen assume it was the night chill.
"I've...I've got something to tell you. Stay, will you?"
Faye's breath caught in her throat and she gave him a wide-eyed, bewildered look. Did Cullen know that she was trying to – that she was doing it for him? Was this him telling her that there was someone else he already liked-
He didn't crush her arm or tell her any such thing. With a quick pause, and a glance around the hall, Cullen removed one of his gauntlets to bare his hand. He looked so nervous that Faye relaxed her posture and without a second thought, hopped up onto the windowsill. She reached out entwined her fingers with his, giving him a quick squeeze. "Alright, I'm listening. Tell me a bedtime story, Cullen," she smiled wanely. She tried very hard not to blush at the fact that she was holding his hand, because she knew it didn't mean anything. [Even if his palm was warm and rough, and his hand encompassed her own almost entirely, and Cullen idly grazed his calloused fingertips back and forth against her skin as he spoke.]
"Her name was Ava," he began, "And she was six. She came to the Circle right after I began apprenticing here, about a year before you did. She was really little, too young for most of the classes, and usually the senior Enchanters just passed her around amongst themselves." He turned his head and glanced out the window – beyond the glass and the bars lay a lovely view of Lake Calenhad, starlight reflecting off the water's surface.
"Ava missed her home a lot. She was from Highever, where she lived with her grandmother, and she'd walk around asking everyone how her grandmother was supposed to get along without her. I guess she did a lot of the chores and she wanted to go back quite badly. Finally the Knight Commander told her he'd have one of the sisters from the Chantry check in once in awhile; just to make her calm down." Cullen sighed heavily. His forehead creased slightly as he pursed his lips, clearly trying to figure out how to continue.
"But that wasn't enough, or maybe she didn't believe him. In any case, she started trying to figure out how to leave the Tower. Ava couldn't swim and obviously she couldn't walk across the lake, and somehow she got it into her head that she could," he paused and chewed his lip for a bit, "Fly her way home. They tried to tell her that even mages can't fly, but she found books in the library about animals and got some apprentices to read it to her. Everyone loved her, she was this sweet little girl and so of course they just thought she liked birds."
Faye, who had been curious when Cullen began the story, was growing more anxious as it continued. The Circle didn't carry very many books about the outside world – anything not related to magic or history was quite rare, and so of course Faye had read them all. Including anything on birds. "Birds have...hollow bones," she whispered. "That's why they can fly, because they're so light."
Cullen nodded stiffly. "Exactly. Ava tried to make...herself...light. She snuck her food out of the dining hall and would give it to that cat-"
"Mr. Wiggums?"
"What?"
"The chubby, grey tabby that wanders around and does a horrid job of catching mice? His name is Mr. Wiggums. Anders named him."
"...Sure. Mr. Wiggums. Everyone thought she was just the cutest little thing, feeding the cat, except that was the problem. She was little – she wasn't growing taller at all, and nobody realized how thin she was because she just wore hand-me-down shirts belted with sashes. There weren't any clothes for children her age. She made herself half-sick." He stared down at Faye's hand now, soft and petite, her wrists thin but not entirely bony. Yet.
"Then one day, she made her way to the Harrowing Chamber on the top floor. It was right after a Harrowing had been completed and the door was unlocked so that the Tranquil could come and go to do some cleaning." He paused again, swallowing hard, and Faye was ashen at this point.
"Oh no. Cullen, please, tell me she didn't-"
"She jumped."
Faye made a quiet, choked noise and ducked her head, intently staring at the darkened stone tiles as if her life depended on it.
"Her – her body washed up on the shore of the lake two days afterward. Seven. She was seven and she died." His voice, rougher than usual, trembled slightly. "That's why all the windows are barred now. And that's why they call the apprentices who don't adjust well to the Tower 'flight risks'. For Ava." Cullen bent down to look Faye in the face, his hazel eyes dark and serious.
"I wasn't – I wasn't – not for that Cullen, you know I wouldn't try and leave or jump or –" Faye gasped out, her own eyes tearing slightly. "I just wanted to be pretty, like Arwen-"
Cullen blinked in surprise, backing off slightly. "What? Faye-"
She laughed quietly, bitterly, and closed her eyes. "I know, it's stupid. Arwen's gorgeous and I'll never be, but I thought – if I was just a little skinnier, like she is, that it would help. Or something. It wasn't – not for the same reasons as...as Ava." She bit her bottom lip hard and finally cracked open one eyelid when Cullen didn't respond.
He was giving her a look of confusion, even as his lips quirked upwards. "Faye, you're already pretty," he told her simply. "Surana spends most of her time cursing every shemlen in this Tower – I wouldn't worry very much about comparing yourself to her."
Faye immediately blushed bright red and pulled her hand from his, hopping off the windowsill and out of the light. "Uhm – uhm, I should head back to the dorms before someone realizes I'm missing," she blurted out quickly, wringing her hands together and trying very hard to calm down. Cullen, still bemused, replaced his gauntlet and straightened up, placing his helmet back on his head.
"I'll walk you back," he offered, to which Faye gave a little nod. She followed him back around to the female apprentice dorms, silently turning some things over in her mind. When they arrived at the door, Faye moved to open it before stopping and looking up at Cullen with a smile.
"Thanks Cullen." The Templar shifted awkwardly before speaking through the helmet, adding a tinny sort of edge to his voice.
"It's sort of my job to watch out for you, isn't it? But you're welcome anyways. Don't make a habit of breaking curfew, alright?"
Faye gave him an ambiguous little shrug. "We'll see. But I meant thank you for...caring. Good night, Cullen." She slipped inside the dorm without making a whisper more sound, climbing into her bed under Arwen's while the jarring clinking of metal against stone faded away into the distance.
"He called me pretty," she whispered gleefully into the dark, only to receive a "Shut up and go to sleep shem," from above her.
"Good night to you too, Arwen."
Faye rolled over and curled up under the blankets, slowly falling into a half-sleep, just before she slipped into the Fade.
She knew his compliment didn't mean anything – she was still only his friend, perhaps something like a younger sister. But she could work with that, couldn't she? At least he didn't think she was ugly. She rubbed her fingers against her wrist, feeling how the bone was just on the edge of jutting out unseemingly, and sighed softly into the dark. She wasn't going to let herself be like Ava – she wouldn't jump or waste away just to try and be skinny. She wouldn't. Cullen thought she was pretty. Wasn't that enough?
Tomorrow, Faye decided. Perhaps tomorrow she would let Jowan drag her down to breakfast.
[A/N - So originally, I had this jumbled concept of flying and birds and lightness and eating disorders...but I felt like writing DA fic. So it turned into this depressing little thing. This fic is also part of the headcanon AU of my other DA fics, an AU I should probably get around to naming properly. In my headcanon, Templars and apprentices grow up in the Tower together, and Cullen's got a couple years on Faye, so initially he's just a friend/brother sort of figure, and she crushes/hero worships him. Eventually though, Faye grows up, Cullen realizes she's...kind of..female...and then you've got your nervouswreck!Cullen from the games. ]