Seeing Red
Their search only brought the shield to his knees. He would break her and she would let him if only to mend the hurts. || Cullen x F!Trevelyan Mage (One-Shot)
Part IV of the Order and Chaos series, sequel to The Moonlit Mare
Inspired by a mutual love of torturing and mending characters. Set at the end of Before the Dawn where they go to confront the tranquil helping Samson to just as they ready to march on the Arbor Wilds. Here, the good Commander learns that red lyrium even in proximity is detrimental to his recovery... and his life.
Author: Illusionary Ennui
Disclaimer: If it's not in the games, codex entries, or the wiki, it's mine. All else, hail to Bioware.
Story Rating: M
Story Warnings: Angst, Drama, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Drug Abuse/Rehabilitation, Withdrawal, Sexual Tension, Nudity.
Edited: 01.10.2015
Dust to dust, these ashes
Shattered pieces left to dance
In your hands, I'm free.
He promises Maddox a grave, but perhaps he was closer to one himself.
Maker, he tastes it in the air. Like fire, a sweet, eerie song. Like her, but wrong.
The wrongness pretends to be her. The real her - she's there, bloodied and worn. He knows she can feel its magic. Tempting, teasing. But it doesn't sing to her, not like it sings to him.
He cannot hear his name fall from her lips, only that song and the blood in his ears, thundering, begging to let it sate him, to change him. Consume. He doesn't feel her hand slip into his, tightening, pleading.
Tears streak downward, carving white-hot lances down his cheek.
How can she not hear it?
His blood burns but he cannot move. He wants it. He reaches for it. The red glow dances, pretty flames - liars, one and all. It should be blue, the Maker's fire.
He does not reach it. It burns, too hot. He can't breathe, his throat closing. Why does it hurt? His legs crumple beneath him, fragile kindling snapped. Bile paints his tongue. He still can't breathe. It burns him until every nerve lights with its rage. It wants him, wants inside. Promises, promises.
"CULLEN!"
She breaks through, but all he can see and taste is red and poison. Convulsions he cannot feel lurch him in every Maker-given direction. No control. Wild. Hurting him, hurting her. Foam and spittle splatter her leathers. She deserves better.
"Let… me… die…"
No more, she had said. With those words, she sent them all away, even as one of them pressed something into her hands like a secret, hidden thing.
"They're gone," Inquisitor Mara Trevelyan breathed, her own hands shaking. Pale auburn tresses, knotted and limp, clung to her skull, twisting in the high air, the windows open for his sake. But this? Her fingers clenched around the mocking thing in her hands. Her back turned towards him – she turned away.
Don't leave me. He begged, but the words tripped on his tongue, a heavy, confused thing. The silk beneath him stank of sweat and sickness, clinging to naked skin. Every fibre, every breath ached and rattled. It yet burned, flickers down his spine, in his veins. Too many times had it struck out – she wore the bruises without care, but the healers? They left him numb to save their own skins, yet the tremors still came.
He cracked open an eye, blurry, and half caked by sleep. Shadows etched the pain onto a beloved face, the pain he brought marked in bruises beneath her eyes and on her skin. No, not his pain. He saw it then, the sun giving its glow in her pallid hands. Blue, the Maker's fire. Inside, his stomach turned sour and let him taste again the porridge forced on him out of pity and necessity. He only remembered because she held the spoon.
Wrong… it's wrong. His mind spun like cotton. Questions needed answered, but he did not know what to ask. Blue. Why is it wrong?
Dark eyes fell upon him, upon the wreckage, the hurt. They fight to understand, to dig through the pain, but he cannot speak, cannot answer her. A part of her blamed herself for this – she should have kept him away, safe. But this… this couldn't be the answer.
Corrupt. Pain. The thoughts came clearer; brighter, livid constructs. It steals will. Steals me from you.
Days and days of the madness painted her face like the quick strokes of her pen when she wrote to him. One glance and she felt her heart tear asunder, the ampule still clutched to her breast.
No.
A lion's roar bellowed. Rage bloomed, breaking through. It spurred him, reached in to wrench him away from the abyss. How dare they? How dare they corrupt him? Corrupt her?
The thin sheet nearly brought him back to his knees. It twisted and pulled. He stumbled, his feet two leaden things struggling to answer his demand. His fingers closed around the vial, cold and glittering. Wrong. He heard her scream again, her nails biting into his forearm. Her cries died in its song but her hands, so soft, so innocent, curled about his cheeks and the song was gone.
"Cullen, stop." Her words, a desperate whimper, bought him a moment, a moment for her to see beyond the madness. She was safe, they both were.
The uncorked glass shattered somewhere down the mountain, scattering azure dust along with the last of his strength. Better. Gone. Her arms – warm, too warm - held him together and they sunk to the flagstones, a tangle of limbs. Everything emptied onto the floor, bile and oats, and whatever comfort he could offer.
Her fingertips threaded into his hair, the sweat-slick curls parting as she held him up. A sleeve pressed to the corner of his mouth and she wiped away the remnants of sour vomit. Even as she tried to smile, her lips mouthing sweet promises against his brow, she told herself another lie, that all his pain was her doing. He chose this path but she took him where his steps should never have sounded.
Red lyrium – how its song must have trilled, beguiled.
"I will not lose you. Not to this. You are strong, Cullen. Stronger than it. Come back to me… please…"
Her words trickled into the warmth, abating flame and leaving only numbness. They echoed like a prayer, his prayer. He was quieted, stronger. Perhaps he was. But only when you're holding me do I feel it.
"Stay." A compulsion, a child's thing left suspended in the night. A fortnight and the sickness yet churned in his stomach, but he can think more clearly for once. His body still ached and throbbed, every movement struck with fire, but he knew his thoughts, and he knew her. Wanted her. Wanted her warmth, her comfort even as the mere weight of the sheet scorched his naked flesh. For once, selfishness overcame duty to the cause.
"You should stay." Leliana, her hood drawn to shadow a warm gaze, took the report back from tired clutches. The Inquisitor's eyes flickered from one pale face to the other, conflicted. A tell-tale signal, the bard deciphered the truer desire of her leader's attention. How could she deny the commander what he needed most? Cassandra refused to seek another to replace him – no other commanded such loyalty. If their army was to persevere, they needed their commander as much as the Inquisitor needed her heart. A gloved hand squeezed her shoulder, her voice like fresh-spun silk. "He needs you and we need him. There is nothing we can do until we hear more about Corypheus's movements. Now, pretend I was never here. Wilhelm still guards the door."
It melted from her, the burden of her crown, her title. One kind offer took it from her for a moment, a fragile thread made free. She stood still until the door clicked shut, the tumbler locking into place. The last chain slipped free.
Her name drifted from his lips, the syllables muttered in slow cadence. Each effort took time, little by little answering a demand inside the muffled haze. How could she reject him when her touch seemed all that kept him whole? Tender fingertips grazed his brow. He pressed a kiss to the pulse tripping in the thin wrist as she let the cloth fall from his forehead. Even beneath it, the skin burned. Wrung out, the cloth sunk into a bowl of water by the bedside. Focus brought the heat from air, her magic wreathing her hand in coolness and chilling the bowl. Her hand she returned to his brow where its chill drew away some of the redness filling his cheek.
"Feels good." A sleepy baritone muttered, his face nudging the cold fingers to drift lower. Over a moan, he tried to lean into her palm where it cradled around his neck, feeling the heat run from her touch. "Really good."
The wet cloth dabbed away the sweat dripping from his face, tendrils of salt and poison taking their leave. At last he felt human again, human in her hands. Clumsy fingers curled around her wrist, pulling her closer. They planted the palm upon the bed where he might touch her better, her body close enough to bathe in that heat as he did. His calloused lengths snaked over her shoulder, his thumb laid across her pulse and fingers tangled in her hair. He strained to put his lips to hers, his whole being trying to reach her, to thank her with the words he struggled to say.
Her eyes grew darker, a tumult of something whose name he could not forget.
"Did you… I- Are you well enough?" A gentle hand stroked his thigh through the sheet, a touch of fire.
"NO! No, I mean…" He panted, his breath caught. He didn't mean to shout as she snatched back her hand. Did he want that part of her, that act which distracted the tempest the pain once wrought by drowning it in her? It had helped, but he could not justify the pleasure. Couldn't justify how much he loved her more than every touch and caress might burn him. He had promised that he would not use her so – it was a promise he meant to keep. How could such hands hold so much power and yet offer only kindness, only ardour? "Just… stay. With me."
He couldn't stop himself from tugging at the toggles of her jerkin, his hands roaming each inch of skin until she lay naked beside him, huddled in his heat against the sculpted curves of his frame. He loved how her hair spilled onto his chest, the way his arm cradled her close and her forearm hooked over his waist, cheek lay in the hollow of his shoulder.
And despite the heat, he knew only comfort as sleep found him, a dreamless wonder where the demons could not find him.
The awareness came first. She became aware of her breath, slow and steady. Then the Orlesian silk pooling about her waist, the mountain air painting her bare skin. Her ears twitched, the slide of metal scraping leather. At last her eyes fluttered open to the morning light, pale shafts of gold crisscrossed across the bed. She heard it again, metal snapping. Propped up on an elbow, the Inquisitor turned, stretching like a cat to straighten the languid lines of her body as the Fade finally released its hold.
She saw him there. Her commander, her heart's desire. Half-dressed. Golden curls left wild, unkempt from their once tamed coif mussed by sleep and sickness to spill into his eyes and around his ears. The burgundy fabric of his loose braht lay open, hanging half-cocked from his shoulders, one arm through while the rest fell from his belt, lifeless. It cast shadows where hard muscle contracted as he worked the padding for his gauntlets about his forearms. Some part of her relished in those moments, spellbound by the steady, familiar strides and glide of his fingers until the buckles, leather, and metal would fit together like a second skin.
Wilhelm, his mabari sat at his feet – ever loyal and quiet since Cole brought the litter to them and he found Cullen, imprinting on him almost as she feels she had.
"Were you watching me?" His voice, tinged with a certain playful lust, slipped between her legs, snapped her from that revelry. Still, it lingered in the quirk of his scarred lip - he knew well she loved it, the confidence he inspired. But it was not confidence that drove him from her then as he worked the catch of another gauntlet.
"Where you going?" A dodge, cutting short whatever desire might pull him back into that bed. Something lurked deeper in those tired, blood-shot eyes. "You've barely risen from your sickbed."
"Our bed is where I'd rather be." Harsher now, the hunger clipped. The act ended with the rattle of his breastplate and undertunic set back to their place upon her desk. The bed dipped low where he sunk onto its edge. He allowed her to see it, the fine scrawl of Leliana's hand marking a bit of parchment from its place tucked into his belt. The warrior reached for her, leather gloves framing his lover's face, his mouth hot against her lips. His teeth caught on her lip, hesitant in longing. But it was the Commander of the Inquisition who drew away, his narrowed eyes like golden flames and his darkened timbre transformed into a lion's defiant seething: "Samson will pay."
End of Part IV of VIII - Next Part: If They Dared
(See Author's List for Link)
Author's Note: I blame my beta for this one, the hurt/comfort junkies that she and I both are. She wanted withdrawal and healing madness, so this is what I came up with. Probably going to take all these one-shots/ficlets and put them in some sort of order to make a series. This one would actually be the fourth - I've got another one that slip between and then another three after at least, but they're still works-in-progress. But, I hope you enjoyed this one!
Love you, Cullenites.
Also, a group of us had a discussion about what the bit of red fabric wrapped around him is. I think the consensus was that it was some stylized cassock to denote his former position as a member of the chantry. However, after a little bit of research on my own, I've decided to call it a "braht" or brat, a item used by ancient Celtic kilt-wearers. It's much like a cloak with the arm holes and belts about the waist. It works for me and while be continued to be used at the term.