Summary: Something's not adding up about the Herald of Andraste. The Inquisition begins to become very suspicious. Cullen is given his own assignment in their attempts to unravel the mystery.
Author's Note: Forgot to add this stuff on the top of the first chapter. Thanks for reading everyone! Big stuff happening soon with conscripting the mages vs. the templars.
Chapter 2: Lions and Bears
After the exhaustion and pure nerves from the Temple of Sacred Ashes settled down being in Haven made Luca incredibly uneasy. At night she was hounded by constant nightmares and during the day she was constantly scrutinized.
Luca wondered what she meant to all these people. Some of the villagers simply thought of her as truly holy and acted so reverently around her that she once had to catch a girl who had tripped horribly while trying to imitate a formal curtsy. Although, thinking back now, the patchy blush that had spread all over her cheeks when she realized Luca had her hand on the small of her back was a little less than pious.
To the leaders of the Inquisition, she must seem a liability. Josephine constantly asked her prying questions about her past trying to dig up anything that she could use to sell the Inquisition to nobles. Leliana, who seemed oddly familiar to Luca, only watched silently but dug deeper with a stare than Josephine ever could with a barrage of questions. Cassandra didn't really like the lack of faith she had sensed in Luca. On the slightly brighter side her opinion of Cullen's incompetency had softened after she (along with several of Haven's kitchen girls) had watched him run drills with his men and Luca was relieved he only seemed disappointed that she had no real military leadership experience.
As for the rest of the Inquisition, she disliked talking to Solas. He not only had his head fully stuck up the pucker of the Fade but also had a mysterious judgmental streak that ran strong. She really could not believe the disdain in his eyes when she mentioned that she had issues with blood magic. This left only Varric really and they could joke around for so long, so Luca spent a lot of time staring up into the Breach, walking around the frozen lake or making small talk with Cullen's recruits.
It was a relief to journey to the Hinterlands.
Cullen walked into the war room slightly later than he had planned, Harritt had accosted him to complain about how his recruits were maintaining their equipment angrily waving a rusted sword. When he got there Josephine and Leliana were already deep in conversation.
"You haven't managed to get anything out of her Josie?" Leliana said, a slender hand resting under her chin, "That is very strange indeed."
"I've heard a dozen stories from her of mercenary exploits but never a single mention of anything else. Deflects every question of parentage or heritage. Do you think she could have been an agent at the Conclave, Leliana?" Josephine asked, questioning look on her face.
"If she is an agent, I don't know who would have sent her. With so many templars, mages and chantry clerics from across Thedas there, not to mention the retinue of servants, who would place an agent with a low-ranking mercenary company?" Leliana paced around the war table, in her element as spymaster. She looked up to notice Cullen.
"Have you noticed anything interesting about our Herald, commander?" Cullen noticed there was the lilt of a tease in her voice. He groaned internally, she must have noticed his staring, he hated how Leliana read him like an open book.
"N-no, not in particular. Are you suspicious of her or something?" Cullen cursed himself for stuttering even that little bit.
"We think our Herald is keeping something from us, but we cannot figure what it is. She is already very wary of me I think, I caught her attempting to duck into the Chantry basement when I was trying to introduce her to Bann Loren the other day," Josephine mused.
"What do you think she is trying to keep from us?" Cullen wasn't very good at gauging people, but the looks the two women were exchanging made him feel uneasy about what was to come.
"Her entire background it seems. The Herald is being conspicuously guarded about innocent information" Leliana looked at Josephine, then at Cullen again, "She is so wary of us already, but I think she would more open to you."
"Why, why would that be?" Cullen gulped, although internally he was strangely happy of the outside acknowledgment of her possible attraction to him.
"Commander you cannot be unaware of your…appeal," Josephine said with amusement in her eyes.
"Yes and I think that it would not be unpleasant for you to talk to her more" Leliana added, smirking slightly.
"Alright, alright stop playing games with me. We have a thousand things to attend to beyond this. What exactly do you want me to do?" Cullen huffed.
"Get to know our Herald better. We tease, but it is vitally important to our cause what kind of person she is, what kind of leader she is. The entire Inquisition depends on her character, Cullen. We must know who we are leaning on so heavily," Leliana's ability to go from Bard to Spymaster always caught Cullen off guard.
"I agree that it is important and I will try my best" Cullen replied, sighing. He had been outplayed.
It was past midday by the time they finished looking through and discussing all of the reports that had come in in the past few days. When they were done Cullen joined his recruits to eat the peas, salt pork and brown bread the cook had made that day, thoroughly enjoying the food and conversations.
By the time he finished leading his recruits on a full armor and pack march, the day was over and he finally had time alone for his thoughts to settle. Ever since Leliana mentioned it that morning he seemed keenly aware that the women and some of the men around Haven liked to stare at him. It wasn't really something he had noticed very much at all before.
He had started to feel subtle changes in himself since he stopped taking lyrium. When he had been on lyrium all those years, there was a constant singing buzz that emanated through his whole body. It colored absolutely everything with a lyrium-induced haze.
Everything seemed more tolerable while you were taking it. He remembered once having suffered a broken arm during a fight, the lyrium had taken the edge off of his pain so much that he didn't get it treated until days later.
That effect had impacted him emotionally too, he now realized. Although he had had a raging crush on an apprentice all those years ago in the Circle tower, as the months and years went on the lyrium had taken his ability to feel deeply away from him as well. Worst of all it had happened so slowly and so insidiously that by the end he hadn't noticed at all.
People who were not templars had always thought it slightly strange that he had never had a lover at his age. But people who did understand the burdens carried so secretly by the templars knew that although many had seemingly forgone that aspect of life by choice, the reality was that the choice had been taken from them by the lyrium.
The first indication that anything had deeply changed in him was the Herald. When he saw her it was as if a dam broke and a decade's worth of emotions towards the opposite sex had flooded out. He felt like he was 15 years old again. He was completely flustered around her and stuck between innocent longings of companionship and to his great shame, pure lust.
He wanted to pick flowers for her. He wanted to see her pinned beneath him moaning. He wanted to be near her, but her very presence made him terribly anxious. The very worst part was that he didn't know if any of these feelings were genuine or if they were all just fabrications from his mind pining for something to replace the lyrium.
Getting to know the Herald for the sake of the Inquisition was not going to be easy.
Cullen was spared for a few more days when Luca arrived back at Haven barely able to ride a horse. Mother Giselle was in tow fretting over her condition. The rest of the party did not look so great either, but Luca was definitely the worst. He rushed over to help her off her horse alongside Mother Giselle, Luca was a completely gawky dead weight and he almost took an elbow to the eye. When she was finally placed on a stretcher, she babbled protests uselessly about how she needed to be back on the horse in order to get to Haven.
"She is exhausted and has a fever, Commander, but she will be fine in a few days" Mother Giselle soothed as she rushed off to the Chantry with the soldiers carrying the stretcher.
Cassandra had her arm in a sling, but otherwise looked fine as she unloaded packs from the horse. Cullen turned to ask and she answered him before he could even speak.
"Our fight with some bandits had the great misfortune of attracting a bear, Commander" Cassandra replied sighing, "It is a great point of embarrassment for me as a Pentaghast that we were forced to run halfway across the Hinterlands"
"Oh." Cullen couldn't help but smile just a little now that he knew everyone was going to be okay. It was so easy to forget with all of the dangers and chaos of blood magic and demons that one simply did not mess with bears.
"Why does the Herald have templar training?" Cassandra cut straight to point as she barged into Leliana's tent.
"What do you mean Cassandra?" Leliana replied as she looked up from a report, deeply interested.
"She has never said anything about being able to use a sword. But I caught her using a dead templar's sword in the heat of battle. Her stance and style were pure templar, pure chantry. When it was over, the sword was on the ground again, the mage was dead and she was pulling her daggers out of the dead templar and complaining about how the mage had the gall to burn up her ironbark Dalish bow"
Leliana had listened intently to Cassandra's story as her mind worked at a thousand miles a minute.
"The mystery deepens, thank you Cassandra. I will have my agents look into this."
"No problem. I want to know who this woman is just as much as you do" Cassandra replied gravely as she left.