2
The dwindle of candle light was more noticeable each time his tired eyes had to reread the reports. More often than not Cullen found himself lost in the feel of the parchment on his fingertips, his thoughts drifting away from the matter at hand. The night was growing late enough to silence the ruckus from the tavern, the wintry gale lulling the residents of the keep to sleep. Reading through the document a third time without any registration was sign enough for Cullen to retire for the night. His fingers dropped the reports and he sighed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Almost reluctantly, he put out the candles and departed from his office.
A faint light glimmered weakly from the Inquisitor's tower, a dying star amidst the dense snow clouds that swiftly enclosed the keep. His steps slowed as he wondered what she was doing, if she was hiding from yet another misstep or simply avoiding sleep. She fled to her quarters without so much a word to anyone. The guards said they could hardly catch a glimpse of her. Cullen had grown to know Lavellan well enough to sense something was amiss.
When she was first brought in, after the explosion at the Conclave, Lavellan had his senses of self-preservation on edge: a Dalish mage, next in line to hold the title of Keeper, the lone survivor? The destruction at the Temple of Sacred Ashes was so thorough, it seemed impossible for anyone to survive, lest they orchestrated it all. It was anyone's guess what sort of power and knowledge she held. She aught to have been kept in that cell until judgement was due, especially with that cut spewing magic on her palm.
As if the situation wasn't dire enough, the Herald played a perilous card and recruited the rebel mages as allies. A stranger mistrusted, feared to a point, with an unpredictable weapon of destruction decides to pour even more magic into the mark? To allow freedom and hand their fates over to the rebel mages, responsible for so much chaos, inciting their revolution only to break into factions and infight? How could that bode well for anyone in Thedas? How could that possibly have been the solution? Whatever her reasoning was, he assumed she allowed her own being a mage to be a crippling bias. When word of the elf's actions reached Cullen, it was all he could do but not tear her apart on sight. But what help would that be? They needed the mark on her hand. Otherwise all their efforts would be in vain. They would all be buried alive and attempting to lift their own gravestone.
Full of doubt, his heart was in his throat as he watched the woman, slighted to a sliver of a mortal by the oppressive and terrifying glow of the Breach. She approached it steadily, unflinchingly though not without a palpable sense of fear. Energy crackled around her left hand, intensifying as her feet carried her closer to the rift. There was no going back now. Mana thrummed from the mages, each one summoning every last bit of power they could manage. His skin crawled instinctively. Looking back on it, he was almost shamed to admit he summoned his own deflective energy, just in case the mages turned. Yet the Herald's judgement proved sound. Staves thrust into the ground, they imparted their energy to the Dalish mage, her left hand outstretched and glowing with unearthly power. How she was able to withstand such a surge was a mystery. Her mark channeled a blinding, writhing bolt of magic into the Breach, the rift pulsing and contorting in protest.
Fear and anxiety knit his guts and his body reflexively postured for combat. Just when he was about to dismiss the whole spectacle, everything screamed white. An explosion sent them all hurling backwards, heads hitting the stone with thuds silenced by the scraping of armor and clatter of weaponry.
The ringing in his ears was interfering with his vision, but he managed to see Cassandra stumble up, her body still reeling from the force of the blast. Cullen pushed himself up with haste, stepping past those who have brought themselves up to their feet. He found himself praying they were not about to scour the temple for pieces of the Herald for a proper burial.
Amidst crumbling stone, she kneeled, unscathed. A tendril of hair fluttered with each of her desperate breaths. She glanced around as if to see whether or not her do-or-die maneuver had worked. He still held on to the suspicion that she was hoping she'd have died that day.
The Breach was sealed. The shouts and whoops of joy and relief were more deafening than the explosion itself. In the celebrations that followed, it seemed as if it no longer mattered who was a mage and who wasn't. Every mortal soul in Haven was simply grateful to be alive, to hell with the social stigmas for a night.
Yet the festivities only served to be salt on the wound when Corypheus laid siege to the town. Cullen knew it was fool's hope to survive Corypheus's wrath a second time. No one has such bountiful luck. When Etain offered up to face the Elder One alone and trigger the avalanche while the rest of Haven escaped, Cullen was taken aback. Here was a Dalish foreigner, accused of murder, offering up her strength and life in an effort to save the people of Haven; complete strangers, who all but sneered and avoided her for weeks upon her arrival. It was no secret Corypheus was after her mark, and the night would end in either her blood or his. Why she did it, he still did not know. For admiration? Fame? For her name to live on in history? Because of the want to do the right thing? Or to atone for whatever terrible misdeeds she may have been hiding? Whatever it was, she pulled through. They lived while Corypheus had received a devastating blow.
The shocking, if not unnerving surprise was her survival against all odds, against all reason. Again. He would never forget the forlorn feeling of going on another futile scout behind the main refugee line. It was a waste of time and effort. But it seemed death itself did not want the mage, and she shuffled toward them blindly, bruised, broken and frozen from head to toe. Sheer will kept her feet plowing clumsily through the snow drifts. In that moment, the question of whether she was truly sent by a divine power no longer seemed senseless. Although she became a beacon of hope, an unsettling thought took hold in Cullen's mind as he carried the battered, unconscious elf back to the camp. What was she capable of? How far would she take this? How could she possibly be alive? Of one thing he was certain of; she was the thorn in the Elder One's side, morphing into a poisoned dagger, and as of yet, he could not reach far enough to yank it out.
It gave him a rotten feeling to think of what their lives would have come to had the mage been left to answer to her false accusations. There would be no fighting chance. Without the mark, it would have all ended with the Breach outside Haven. The world as they knew would plunge into chaos, easy pickings for Corypheus.
His stomach twisted and turned when he thought of the lyrium… had he not stopped … or worse yet, of having to go through hell alone. The mere thought made his skin crawl and teeth clench; the blinding headaches, intense enough to blur his vision; the mornings his limbs would refuse to listen, every joint and muscle protesting in pain against his command to move; sunlight so bright he thought his eyes would melt out of their sockets. And the nightmares… No. He feared the mere thoughts of the pains would bring them out again.
Etain had chosen to support his decision… despite all that had happened. Sometimes - on bad days - he wondered what would have happened had she refused, or not cared. She wasn't the only one that helped, no, but she was one he'd least expected.
Countless times Lavellan had dragged him out of his dread and fury onto the battlements into the fresh air, urging him to walk the long walls and speak of, well, anything. She would distract him with questions on templar techniques and swordsmanship, forcing him to answer her in detail and forget about the pain. When talking would not suffice, she'd haul him down into the yard and coerce him into training her, claiming it necessary if she were to be a true knight enchanter.
When that wasn't enough, she abandoned sleep to read or work with him into the early hours of the morning, On a handful of occasions, he'd fallen asleep near her, and she'd been witness to the his fitful sleep. She calmed him when he woke, drenched in a cold sweat, eyes wild from fear.
Nor had she turned away from him each time he lashed out in anger, shouting things uncalled for, insulting her in ways that made his skin crawl from revulsion. Despite all, Lavellan remained.
A lone figure drifting in his periphery drew his attention out of the memories; the last of the party to return to Skyhold, his staff slung across his back. The man's pace was slow, his feet trudging through the snow as he hesitatingly approached the main stairs. He stopped at the first landing, his hands curling into fists as his gaze drifted up to the lonely light high in the tower. Cullen was too far away to glimpse his face to guess what he was thinking, but the apostate remained still for a while - long enough for Cullen to make his way across the battlements to the rotunda doors. Cullen's brow furrowed as Solas continued to stand still at the stairs, pelted by the snow. He glared up at the fortress with a look of utmost pain and dread, as if the walls would suddenly close in on him and crush his bones to powder.
Cullen left the man to his brooding and proceeded indoors, across the keep to his new chambers. With his nightmares less frequent and the nights growing colder, he had moved to the main quarters of the castle.
Judging by the forlorn expression on the elf's face and the odd behavior of Lavellan, Cullen knew there must have been an argument, and not of the mild sort. He pushed aside the inkling to check on her, to see what had gone so wrong, locking himself in his chambers with a heavy heart.
Off-putting and disconcerting as it was at first, Lavellan's being a mage became less daunting. He still carried a moderate wariness for her abilities, but found himself willing to work around them. With them.
They'd reached an understanding, a mutual respect for each other. She helped him though the lyrium addiction, and he remained her rock as she shook in terror and anxiety behind closed doors and away from scrutinizing eyes. Lavellan hid the price of her decisions, verdicts and actions well, sustaining a mask of grace and valor convincingly enough. Yet each judgement, each mission took a toll on her spirit; she'd lost some of her humor and confidence. She grew even more somber, and she hardly slept, more often seen haunting the ramparts than in her chambers. Not that any of them had fared much better.
Only when Solas' company grew more frequent did her troubles relent. Cullen was by far not oblivious to Solas's fascination with the Inquisitor's mark, and even less so to his growing preoccupation with the woman herself. The solemn man was drawn to her like a moth to the light and heat of a flame. And she, isolated in her position, reciprocated in kind. Several times Cullen's protective instincts screamed in protest at how glowing Lavellan's smile grew, how bright her eyes gleamed with naive surrender to affection. They were in no place for such distractions. He feared she would grow too inattentive to focus on the matter at hand, to remain efficient and safe on her expeditions. Such things were a foolish misstep on a leader's part; ones he avoided at all costs.
What he saw in Solas was no less disconcerting: the melancholy way in which his eyes dimmed after she left, or whenever he was out of her sight. Numerous times Cullen was perplexed to see the man look on at Etain with a crestfallen smile and remorseful eyes. Why would he look at a woman he loved with such ruefulness unless there was something to hide, something to regret? But Lavellan never saw it, and Cullen had not the heart to tell her.
Cullen had reached his chamber and locked the door behind him. The hearth spilled blessed warmth and light into the room, the night cold enough to force the shadows to shiver in every corner. Throwing more firewood into the pit, the Commander turned to shedding his heavy armor. His bones still ached nominally from the endeavor at the elven temple, bringing an uncomfortable scowl to his face as he stretched.
The temple. He was yet uncertain as to what happened and what it meant, save for apprehending Samson. As soon as the snows permitted visibility enough to descend from the mountain, Samson would be in his hands.
Cullen yet reeled at what had Samson had become. Prior to all this, to Corypheus, he had been a good man at heart. He was banished from the Templar order for a charitable gesture, delivering messages between two lovestruck mages. Sympathetic to the mages, Samson knew Meredith was twisting the Templar Order from its purpose, and he had aided Cullen in bringing her down. But where Cullen was able to turn his talents over to the Inquisition, having at least that to atone for his misgivings, Samson was left to his own devices. Facing him would be as looking into a crooked mirror; a reflection of what he could have become himself - left without purpose and succumbing to the lyrium.
Cullen rolled the tension from his shoulders, perishing the spine tingling thoughts from his head. The Commander sat on his bed, glaring into the fire. He would deal with Samson when the time came. It served no purpose to dwell on his fears now. Samson was a mere pawn in Corypheus's game. Whatever he was meant to bring to the Elder One, Lavellan had found it before he could claim it. Cullen only prayed that what she retrieved was worth the damage to her reputation once word got out. And if fate truly favored them, if Corypheus could be defeated, the Herald of Andraste's delving into the realm of elven worship would be forgotten. If not, he feared even Josephine's extraordinary talent of twisting rumor and noble favor to purpose would not be enough.
One step at a time. Sleep slowly weighed down his lids, and Cullen's amber eyes tired of glaring at the fire. He lowered himself to the bed with a sigh, the feeling in his gut warning him of the trying days to come.