Chapter 1, "A Kiss to Save the Day," opens in the middle, less than a week after Hawke battles the Arishok and is declared Champion of Kirkwall. Cullen has been told to accompany Hawke on an official visit to Cumberland. Unbeknownst to Cullen's commanding officer, Meredith Stannard, the beginnings of a romantic relationship between Cullen and Hawke have been secretly blossoming. Now, on their trip to Cumberland, everything is about to change…
CHAPTER 1: A KISS TO SAVE THE DAY
Throughout the day, Cullen rehearsed the barefaced lie he would write in his evening report.
Starting early in the morning, when he and Hawke set sail, heading west out of Kirkwall Harbor, alone on a tiny, single-masted boat, Cullen shuffled words in his head, moving them like pieces in a puzzle. He sought out innocuous patterns. Simple statements that read as unquestionable truths. He sprinkled in details to add touches of realism. Stock phrases to confirm what his readers already thought. By noon, he had composed his evening report more than a dozen times. Each time he felt satisfied with the picture his words would paint, he chided himself for creating a premeditated lie. After all, nothing worth hiding had occurred. At least, not yet. And then Hawke would catch his eye as she brushed back her windblown hair. She'd flash him a smile far warmer than his templar title should invite. In his head, he refined his fiction one more time, building the shield of words that would protect him while he sought out what he knew he wanted. She gave him strength, and everything about him and Hawke was a matter between himself and the Maker. This time, Cullen refused to feel shame.
Once the sun hung large and low on the western horizon, Cullen had memorized his description of the first of three days spent on his journey to Cumberland, accompanying the apostate Champion. He would wait until the hour before midnight to unlock his logbook and record these words. The late evening was when he normally wrote his daily report. He planned to describe how they spent their morning tacking between small coastal islands west of Kirkwall harbor, following the trade ships that dwarfed their boat. He would write about how the weather remained fair when they reached the open sea, and how the wind caught their boat's sails, blowing them westward at a good clip while they kept sight of the coast on their northern horizon. He would state that the Champion said little. Nothing beyond clarifying the orders he gave when her aid was needed in sailing the boat. He would add a note about the Champion's injured shoulder, how it caused her discomfort, but how she worked without complaint. Somewhere in his report, he would state that the Champion was a cooperative supporter of the Order, and that she never once challenged his authority.
His report would say nothing of the questions Hawke asked about sailing, or how she made him name each part of the boat and show her how the rigging worked. Nothing of the lighthearted jokes about their new lives as sailors, or how they took time to point out uncommon seabirds. How they raced beside the long, shiny backs of a pod of whales. Or how, at high noon, they sat shoulder to shoulder with their backs against the cabin door. They shared a loaf of bread and a wedge of cheese. He cut slices of summer sausage for them to eat. And not a single word about Hawke pointing to the triangular patch of sunburn on his chest where his shirt lay open. Nothing of the cooling herbal lotion she dared to rub on his skin, and how she winked at him and ordered him back to work.
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The Chantry trained their priests and templars to act as an army of historians.
Each night, they performed a ritual as sacred as the recital of the Chant. Avowed members unlocked their logbooks. They spent an hour in reflective meditation, all recorded in words. They listed their acts of devotion to the Maker, the sins they attempted to correct, and the salvations they granted unto others. If correspondences needed to be received, the last evening hour was when this was done. Every word written and read were subject to weekly inspection. On Archivists Day, falling each month on the fifteenth, the Chantry's librarians catalogued a new month of text.
Across the White Divine's realm, rivers of ink flowed from the tips of thousands of pens. In carefully chosen words, Chantryfolk recorded history exactly as they believed it should be told.
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Just before sunset, Cullen and Hawke sailed into a deserted cove off the shore of the Planasene forest. Cumberland was still two days away. The boat handled well with a crew of two, Cullen as the helmsman, and Hawke learning how to trim the sails. She took to the art of sailing fast, allowing Cullen to hold the tiller using a light touch. They worked together well, despite Hawke's shoulder. For much of the day she moved stiffly, favoring her right arm. Cullen wanted to ask about her injury but not while sailing. Tomorrow he would show her how to steer the tiller. Better she rest her injury in the off chance they ran into trouble.
Cullen didn't expect trouble. They were sailing well patrolled sea lanes and their boat was too small to attract attention. Even smugglers preferred ships more than twice the size of theirs. Back in Kirkwall, Cullen and his men used this boat for forward scouting. Now, away from the city, sailing this swift little sloop, he and Hawke looked no different from long distance messengers. In a sense, that was what they were.
They dropped anchor in the cove some distance from the shore. Once the mainsail and jib were down, there was nothing to do but relax as waterbirds called out to one another. Cullen felt oddly weightless spending the day dressed in simple canvas trousers, leather boots, and an open shirt. His armor was stowed with other supplies. Hawke sat in the stern, dressed as lightly as he. It seemed as if they had slipped into a parallel life where fate had treated them differently.
"Do you think your friend Isabela would be impressed with us, sailing all this way from Kirkwall on our own?" Cullen called out.
Hawke laughed. "Isabela would only be impressed if another sailor spotted us playing runaway mage and naughty templar while at sea."
Cullen imagined the former pirate leaning against the bar in the Hanged Man, greeting him with her mischievous smirk before making bawdy accusations, teasing him about his friendship with Hawke, just to see how long it would take to break his reserve and make him laugh. "Isabela has always been predictable."
"It could be worse," Hawke replied. "In fact, I'm certain it's worse. At this moment she's probably writing a fictional account of our journey that rivals the worst imaginable Antivan adventure story. With our luck, she'll read it aloud in the Hanged Man. By the time we return from Cumberland, half of Kirkwall will think we've taken down a high dragon in the wilds of the forest using nothing beyond our wit and our bare hands, but only after the fiery beast interrupted our wild, half-naked role play."
"Only half-naked?" he dared himself to say.
Hawke grinned. "Isabela knows the elements of a good story just as well as Varric. She would preserve your sense of templar propriety to keep the tale believable."
"I think she'd make the story more comical at my expense."
"A little of both," Hawke laughed.
Off in the distance, a few yards from the edge of the shore, a heron waded through the water, fishing for its evening meal. Cullen watched the bird's slow purposeful movements. It brought back memories of going out on a fishing boat with his Chantry brothers, back when he lived in Redcliffe.
Life in Kirkwall was nothing like how his life had been in Ferelden. At Kinloch Hold, most of the templars were as close as brothers. They joked as they ate their meals together. They played cards and games of chess during their breaks. They read the same books and led the same lives. Sure, there were times when they disagreed about the meaning of their duties, but disagreements had to remain civil when templars slept five to a room. In Ferelden's Circle, Cullen never felt alone. He always had someone to talk to, and not just templars, even mages. Kirkwall was different. Templars stationed at the Gallows were a short ferry ride from the trappings of city life. They met with friends outside of the Templars. Many had families in Kirkwall, others spent their nights at the Rose. Those who slept in the Gallows retired to small, private rooms, entirely on their own.
Cullen met Hawke weeks after he arrived in Kirkwall, but he didn't think of her as a friend until months after she had returned from her expedition into the Deep Roads. By that time, she had already begun reestablishing her family's wealth, and her brother had signed up as a templar recruit.
Cullen saw Hawke during the Summerday Annum. She was in Hightown, standing a block from the Chantry, watching the festival procession pass by. A sea of children tromped through the streets, all of them dressed in flowing white gowns. Behind them, men shouldered heavy platforms adorned in flowers, as they paraded brightly painted papier-mâché sculptures of famous heroes. Hawke offered Cullen a lamb and potato pasty she had bought from a Ferelden food vendor in Lowtown. He hadn't eaten a savory meat pasty since coming to Kirkwall. This one used barley flour to make the shortcrust, and the meat inside was succulent, seasoned with onion and rutabaga. He and Hawke struck up a conversation about Ferelden food and the mild nature of Kirkwall's winters. A week later he saw her reading the Chanter's board. He stopped and said hello. When she invited him to join her for a cup of Antivan coffee, he failed to refuse. Perhaps it had been rash to accept her offer of friendship, but she had been kind to him since the day they had met on the Wounded Coast. Conversation flowed easily as long as they avoided the one topic that mattered the most. Over time, Hawke became one of few people in Kirkwall who made Cullen feel safe enough to share his private thoughts. They grew close, even when he knew they shouldn't. Yet, for her, he felt justified in making an exception.
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As the sun sank beneath the horizon, Cullen leaned against the boat's sun-warmed mast. He closed his eyes. For an instant, he imagined himself resting against Hawke, his cheek pressed into the curve of her neck, his face lost in her hair.
He had held her once before, holding her for hours until her exhaustion gave way to sleep, holding her all night until morning. All of that happened during the horrible week her mother died. He and Hawke sat together in the library of her mansion, Hawke clinging to him like a rope mooring a boat to a dock. He slowly rocked her in his arms. Only after she fell asleep did he leave a trail of secret kisses in her hair.
On that night, he saw himself as wrong for wanting more from her. Wrong that he wanted to kiss her lips before undressing her slowly, worshipping her exposed skin until he knelt before her nakedness, his tongue inscribing profane verses stricken from the chant as he brought her to ecstasy. Instead, he spent that night holding her while she slept in his lap, the two of them together on the divan in her library. Him lazily paging through a book of Orlesian poems while reading the rhythmic meter of her breath. Every time she made little sighs and sniffles in her sleep, he caressed her cheek. Feeling her weight and her warmth pressed against him spelled out what he had long wanted, even though he had been too ashamed to ask. For how long had he mistook his want for weakness, rather than seeing it as a gift of strength from the Maker?
The next morning, her scent lingered on his tunic beneath the familiar aromas of his padded doublet, metal plate, and leather. He wore her all day as he worked at the Gallows, bringing this spirit of her back to his quarters, making her all the more forbidden.
When they next met, their intimacy was more than the emotional closeness of two friends. The two of them moved deliberately when near each other. Words became weighted with new meaning. An exchange of smiles became steps in a slow dance. In broad daylight, they engaged in a daring seduction, him briefly touching her bare skinned arm with his gloved hand, her lingering when he did this. Their exchange of pleasantries in the Gallows courtyard had become an excuse to hear the sound of the other's voice. The way she bit her lip while her gaze lingered over his face, always before she said she needed to leave. One afternoon, he watched her walk away toward the dock. He imagined himself running after her and catching her in his arms. Later that night, it was not her body he wanted, but the warmth of her company. The simple comforts of the sound of her sleepy breath. The little sighs. That small noise something between a sniffle and a cough.
During the month before the Qunari attack, they never found enough time to talk. So many unwritten letters were composed in his head when alone in his room in the middle of the night. Letters he never dared to pen.
Each night he lay in bed like compass needle pointing toward wakefulness. Always during the middle of the night was when he wanted to talk to her the most. Staring off at the wash of moonlight on his bedroom wall, he let his soul slip across the courtyard. Down to the docks, crouching low in the back of the ferry. Up the long climb to Hightown while shadows cast by lamplight shifted like fiends until his faith in the Maker's grace dispelled them. In her mansion, light burned in the library. He always found her there, again and again, bare feet drawn up beneath her as she sat on a divan, lost in the text of a book until he was close enough to touch her wrist. His memory of her weight falling into him on that one and only night they spent together made up for the lightness of the pillow he clutched in his arms. A long month of nights when consciousness and dream mingled for hours.
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One might say that Cullen engaged in a grievous breech of protocol the day he arranged the details of Hawke's trip to Cumberland.
Only four days had passed since Hawke defeated the Qunari. News of Kirkwall's newly named Champion spread fast through the Marches. The Qunari had hardly begun to leave when a message arrived from Cumberland's Chantry. Their Grand Cleric wished an audience with the Champion, hoping to learn more about the heathens and how they had been expelled.
When the request arrived, Kirkwall's remaining leadership fell into dispute. Elthina began to assemble a delegation of Chantry representatives who would travel with the Champion to Cumberland. The nobility jostled to be included, and they voted that the delegation should be delayed until a viscount was seated. Meredith disagreed.
On the evening of the day the message from Cumberland arrived, Meredith asked Cullen to meet with her privately.
Meredith sat behind her desk, her face harsh and cold. Her steel blue eyes fixed on him as she motioned for him to sit. "With those heathens on the move again, Kirkwall has no time for the endless formalities of a Chantry-led diplomatic delegation. Some of the Qunari refuse to leave and others wander the coast. What if they are gathering forces for a second attack?"
"That is possible," Cullen replied.
"I have written to the Divine. She thinks Cumberland's request is important. I want the Champion to go to Cumberland without delay. Are you prepared to accompany the Champion to Cumberland?"
"I am." Cullen fixed an impassive expression on his face.
"The sooner we arrange for you to leave, the better. The Order at Cumberland Circle will see that you are well received, although, their Chantry will occupy most of your time. Do not hesitate to remind their Divine Mother that you are my second in command. Your voice represents Kirkwall, not Hawke's. I trust you to keep a close eye on the Champion."
He would. Although his Knight Commander need not know that he thought of Hawke as a dear friend, and that he sometimes called her Mari when they were alone. "I will take full responsibility for the mission," he said.
"Then select a dozen templars to accompany you. I will arrange a ship with a trustworthy crew."
"How soon will I be leaving with the Champion?"
"The sooner, the better. Otherwise our own Chantry will create a delay while half the city invites itself to become part of the delegation."
Cullen saw an unexpected opening. Without another thought, he took a gamble. "What if I left with the Champion tomorrow? Rather than you arranging a ship, I can take the scouting sloop. She's easy to sail and won't require a crew. Unlike a ship, the scouting sloop will hardly attract any attention and she's fast enough to reach Cumberland in three days, if we travel light. She's no different from a messenger boat."
"And you propose to go alone with the Champion?"
"We will make better time this way. Plus, the little sloop is a far less attractive target for pirates. Anyhow, the city is in no position to spare resources right now. Even a dozen of our templars will surely be missed."
This was not the first time Cullen had arranged for officially sanctioned templar business to suit his personal desires. He waited for Meredith to call his bluff. She stared at him. She drummed her fingers on her desk.
"All right. But I want Hawke on her way to Cumberland at sunrise. No delays."
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Since the morning, Cullen waited for the right moment to ask Hawke about a concern that had eaten at him for days. Now, with the sun setting and the boat anchored for the night, he said it.
"When I heard something horrible happened at the Keep, I knew you were in the middle of it."
"I looked for you when the templars arrived."
"The Knight Commander told me to stay at the Gallows in case something happened. I was worried. You were up against those heathens! What if you had been captured?"
"I'm fine."
"Fine? Hardly! I heard what happened to you in there. You nearly died. And now look at you. Your right arm is practically useless."
"It's not useless. I spent most of the day working the sails."
Cullen dropped to his knees beside her. "Why didn't you ask for our help? The Order would have protected you."
"I don't see why the Order would protect someone like me."
"That's not true! I swear it! The Order will protect you far better than those mages, especially Orsino and Anders. Their kind does nothing but stir up trouble. They would rather see Thedas burn before acknowledging any of the good that the Circle does. I will never understand why you trust them."
Her body tensed and her face drew into an irate frown. He worried he had ruined their evening, and that this time she would see him as the malicious spirits that he still fed. But she reached for his hand and took hold of his fingers. With the pad of her thumb she brushed an arc over his knuckles. "People in the Order like you lend me their protection."
"If I had been at the Keep, would you have requested the Order's help?"
"I wanted aid from the Order and from the First Enchanter. The Gallows' politics are meaningless when Kirkwall burns. They postured while I made tactical decisions. We needed to storm the Keep and rescue everyone we could. There was no time for a game of picking sides."
"I would have gone into the Keep. I would have brought my very best with me."
"Against the Arishok and his guards?" Hawke shook her head. "I needed more than trained swordsmen."
"My templars would have driven them back."
"Perhaps. But I think your templars would have been outmatched. Look." She let go of his hand and reached for the buttons at the top of her blouse. She unfastened her collar, working her way down to the center of her chest, her movements as plain as a soldier of war.
Cullen watched in horror when she peeled back the bandages covering her shoulder. "Blessed Andraste! Those butchers! We would have kept the heathens away from you and from the Viscount too. The Order would have done this. I would have."
"You are no mage. You might have been killed."
"How can you say that? Do you trust Orsino and Anders more than me?"
"When outmatched, I trust the might of fire pulled from the fade more than the sharp edge of a templar's sword, and I trust the skill of a powerful spirit healer."
"They almost got you killed. We would have brought healers for you."
"I needed more than blessings and potions when I took the brunt of the Arishok's blade."
"But the templars I command would have been there for you."
"And what would you have done?"
"I would have helped." He would have. He would have ordered forty men forward into battle and forty more to secure the Keep. He would have fought by her side, shielding her from the Arishok's blows. He wouldn't have let her fall. He would have done something.
"I never thought you actually believed those novels you read."
"Which novels?" He sounded peevish.
"The Antivan Adventures series."
"What? Those books are just stories. Entertainment. What's there to believe in?"
"Those dashing swordsmen who save ladies from the grip of death, all with the power of a kiss?"
"You're making fun of me."
"In a good way," she laughed.
"Look, I would've done something useful."
"I know. You would have."
"You're just humoring me."
"No, I'm not." She pulled his hand into her lap, turning it palm up. She massaged the mounds of his palm and each finger joint. Just like every time before, there was no sense of judgment. Only the warm press of her fingers against his skin, soothing his nerves. They sat in silence as she slowly kneaded his hand and then took hold of the other. When she was done massaging his other hand, she entwined her fingers with his.
"I wish you had been there," she said. "It was a mess from the start. Meredith and Orsino argued while people were held captive and Kirkwall burned. Maybe you could have broken their needless deadlock. You could have ordered your soldiers to storm the Keep along side Orsino and me."
"And after that was done, the Knight Commander would have called for my head."
"Not if that decision saved more lives and the Knight Commander was given full credit for it."
"Perhaps."
"And, once that battle was done and the healers and medics stitched me back together, I think a kiss from you might have been a nice distraction."
"Hawke… It's not that I wouldn't have wanted to… It's just… We can't do something like that. Not where people would see us."
"No one's watching us now."
She gazed at him, mapping the trail her fingers would soon follow. In that moment, he was certain they had arrived at the place their month long dance had spiraled around. Whatever misgivings he felt in the past, it was too late to change what they were about to become. He breathed her name as an expression of assent uttered at the end of a prayer. "Mari. You're asking for something far different from what we have been."
"We've been friends for years. You spend your evenings off with me. And, far more than once, you've slept in my house."
"There is a long history of people welcoming templars into their homes, offering them an evening meal and a clean bed."
"On nights you miss the last ferry, you could have slept in the Chantry."
"Why would I burden hardworking sisters for charity when your mansion has ample guest rooms plus food to spare?"
"People already talk about us. They assume you sleep with me rather than in a guest room on another floor."
"Your servants know the truth." The words spat out of him harsher than intended.
"Bodahn thinks you are courting me." She squeezed his hand. "Given who we are, it should be easy to be discreet. In everyone else's eyes, nothing will have changed."
"Everything will have changed."
Everything.
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He kissed the sea salt spray that had dried on her hand and her sun bronzed arm. Kissed the length of the long, puckered scar cutting too close to her neck. The jagged line against the right side of her chin, stitches still holding her skin together despite the work healers had done for her.
"What if you hadn't survived?"
Her head tilted toward him, hesitating halfway to meeting his lips. Her eyes studied his face.
Surely her lips had kissed others, years ago, just like his.
Alone at sea with Hawke, Cullen felt weightless on the tide of liberation. He claimed an unmarked point on a map as an act of deliverance. Against the sun chapped skin of her bottom lip he whispered the words of a prayer. Blessing her and blessing the font of strength contained within her.
Blessed was she who stood before the corrupt and wicked and did not falter. Blessed, the peacekeeper, the champion of the just.
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At sunrise on the following morning, Cullen unlocked his logbook. He wrote how he spent the evening kneeling beneath the stars, his body facing in the direction of the prophet Andraste's birthplace, all those hours engaged in silent solemn prayer.
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Three years earlier, had someone told Cullen that he would end up sailing to Cumberland with an apostate who had long been his friend, someone he trusted and wanted as a lover, he would have laughed at the sheer absurdity of it. An apostate mage. Foolishness. He would have brushed off the accusation as an insubordinate taunt.
Kirkwall's templar recruits openly mocked Cullen when he was assigned to the Gallows. He arrived a month after the blight ended. Although he had already been away from Kinloch Hold for a few months, when he was given passage across the sea from Ferelden, two mages from Kinloch Hold were on the same boat. They were being transferred too.
Before the end of Cullen's first day at the Gallows, rumors about his relations with an apprentice mage had swept through the Circle's halls. Templar recruits assumed Cullen's transfer had been a matter of punishment. The next day, the Knight Commander asked him to lecture on the dangers inherent in all mages. When he tried to speak, half of the templar recruits jeered and called him a hypocrite. The other half walked away.
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Unlike the recruits in Ferelden, the Kirkwallers always slouched. They called out crude jokes during exercises and practice. They made sarcastic comments during lessons, assuming the paid any attention at all.
The morning that Cullen was assigned to the recruit's training, he met them an hour after sunrise. He ordered them to run three laps around the perimeter road that circled the Gallows island. After they grumbled and groaned, the pack set off in a jog.
Cullen knew how long it should take to complete one lap. He ticked off numbers at a slow, careful pace, keeping time by tapping his index finger on the caps of potions and draughts packed in a pouch he always carried. He could identify the contents of each vial by touch. The clean crispness radiating from the curatives. The cool earthy condensation on the stamina draughts. Each time his finger tapped the cap on a lyrium vial, the Maker's fire sang in his blood.
Crisp. Crisp. Earthy. Cool. Crisp. Crisp. Fire. One.
Crisp. Crisp. Earthy. Cool. Crisp. Crisp. Fire. Two.
He tapped out the simple chant until it was time for the recruits to return. He peered down the path. His finger hesitated over a vial half full of lyrium, but no one jogged around the bend. The fiery kiss licked at the tip of his finger.
Finally he heard them, just before they turned the corner. He fastened the cover flap on his pouch and crossed his arms as he waited for them. Only five of the recruits jogged toward him in a tight pack, passing him without comment. Cullen waited for the rest to jog by. His fingers idly fiddled with the flap on his pouch.
He heard more recruits approaching. Three rounded the bend, walking briskly rather than jogging. They chatted about an Orlesian party in Hightown and ignored Cullen when he shouted at them to run.
No one else came around the bend. Cullen sprinted down the path, past the high rock wall, down toward the merchant's entrance, and over to the Gallows' docks. That was were he found the rest of them, smoking tobacco, loitering by the water. Most were drinking hot coffee they had purchased from a vendor's stall.
"I ordered you to warm up by running three laps. I want you running, now!" Cullen shouted.
A sallow faced recruit with dark hair flicked his tobacco ashes into the harbor while glancing at Cullen. The rest of the recruits ignored him.
Cullen stalked toward them. "Surely none of you are deaf. You heard me. Get moving."
"Sounds like a Fereldan dog humper is barking in our direction," said a broad-shouldered man with ash blond hair.
A sharp-faced woman glared at her fellow recruit. "Shut up and finish your coffee," she said. "And stop being so lazy. We'd be halfway done by now if you guys didn't stop for a smoke."
Cullen eyed the group. He still didn't know their names. "She's right," Cullen said. "Get into formation and move out."
The woman nodded her head to the side, motioning the other recruits to move forward. Two downed their coffee in large gulps. Three others put out their tobacco pipes, stamping the ashes under their heels.
Cullen hoped the matter was done. He watched them start toward the perimeter path, but then the man who called him a dog humper began to bark.
"Cut it," the woman said.
The man howled like a wolf until the woman elbowed him in the stomach.
"Save your breath," the woman said. "You'll need it to get around this rock two and a half more times. Anyhow, once he learns our names, he'll dock our pay."
"You heard her," Cullen said. He pointed his chin toward the perimeter path.
Some of the recruits grumbled, but they fell in line behind the sharp faced woman as she broke into a slow jog.
The man who started the trouble stopped and turned around. "Robe chaser, we know why you were transferred. I don't know about you Doglanders, but Marchers don't dote over robes during harrowings. We don't give robes love lockets nor do we kiss them when they are declared enchanters. You idiot. You are a such a fraud."
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A/N: I rarely feel a need to post author's notes on stories. Instead, I prefer to let stories stand on their own without my intent intruding on what you have read. With a bit of trepidation, I'm making an exception for this story.
A year ago, after my first play through of DA2, I had an idea for a novel-length story that spanned the entire decade Cullen spends in Kirkwall. The original idea was partly an exploration of how Cullen grows and develops from DA:O through the years during DA2, partly a behind the scenes/missing scenes political story, and partly an exploration of what might happen if Cullen had a relationship with a mage Hawke.
To me, the difficulty in a fanfic story like this is how to cover new ground while simultaneously making canonical events feel fresh and new when told from a different perspective. After a few abortive attempts when drafting this tale in a chronological order, starting from the beginning in 9:31 when Cullen first arrives at the Gallows, I decided to structure it non-chronologically, alternating between a linear presentation of the story that occurs after Hawke is named champion (and begins her relationship with Cullen), and have that interleaved with flashbacks. Some of those flashbacks will be quite long.
From here onward, the tale will dance between the storyline started above with the trip to Cumberland and a storyline of Cullen's earlier years in Kirkwall, expanding on how those little hints of how became friends with Hawke, among other things, plus flashbacks to Ferelden.
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Trope Bingo Note: This chapter was originally written for the DW Trope-Bingo prompt "A Kiss to Save the Day," in which writers are asked to create stories using popular tropes. I had some fun lamp-shading the trope before deconstructing it and subverting it. ;)