Cullen was starting to think it had been too long since anyone had brought him water. He had no way to so much as tell day from night and he knew perfectly well that conditions such as these were likely to distort a person's sense of time; nonetheless, since Cassandra had gone away he had had the impression that her orders to deliver fresh water through the door's feeding slot twice a day were being followed faithfully, and with typical Seeker punctuality. Enough for him to have a feeling for the schedule.
It was possible, he supposed, that he'd simply been asleep and missed it; but his sleep had been light and nightmare-haunted lately, and so far the sound of the flask being replaced had reliably woken him up.
Maybe he should go over and check. He didn't feel like moving just yet, though. In truth, he'd been moving very little lately. Kneeling, reciting and staring at candles was out; lying on his side facing a wall he could not see was in. Every day or so he switched ends and lay on his other side. Currently he was on his right. He had a lot of thinking to do, chewing over his memories and newly-unsuppressed feelings. Since the dam had broken there had been quite a bit more weeping. For his family. For the colleagues and friends he'd lost. For the mages he'd harmed; deliberately, carelessly, or through inaction. For the many innocent dead in Kirkwall, and since. And maybe, just a little, for a man who had endured things nobody should have to endure, and still ended up thinking he hadn't suffered enough.
There had been times when he'd been unable to face Cassandra, and spent her visits huddled on the mattress with his back turned and his arms wrapped around his head, hoping she'd think he was asleep. He doubted she'd been fooled for a moment, but she'd left him alone. She was content as long as he surfaced often enough to assure her that his mind remained in passable working order. The one time she'd approached him had been after he'd finally given in and asked for a blanket. He'd been having one of his bad spells when she returned, and had expected her to just leave it and go; instead, she'd draped it over him. It had been oddly comforting, lying there with his eyes closed and pretending to be asleep while she... looked after him.
Maybe he should find someone else to look after him. Maybe he'd been keeping himself alone for too long. Cassandra herself was out of the question, of course. Too far above him. And scary. It had been hard, opening himself up enough to ask for her help with getting off lyrium. A year ago he probably wouldn't have managed it. Perhaps, if he worked at it, he'd be able to talk to women about... other things.
At any rate, when the word had arrived that the allies for whom she was waiting had run into some kind of trouble and she had needed to take her troops to find them, she'd been sufficiently confident in his resilience to let him stay put. She hadn't even pressed the food issue, just asked him to promise he'd start eating again when she got back, to give him a chance to recoup his strength for the onward journey. Until then, they'd agreed, as long as there was an empty flask by the door when the full ones were delivered, nobody would enter. If anyone could understand the benefits of isolation and fasting, it was a Seeker.
Only now there was something wrong. The conviction was settling steadily into him, bone-deep. Something to it, or paranoia and a cracking sense of time? He ought to get up and check on the flask. Whether it was full or empty, he clearly also ought to consider opening the door.
Footsteps. Too many. A voice, talking fast; a voice he knew. Varric?
Something was definitely wrong. He stirred, trying to work the kinks out of his back and legs. When, sure enough, the door opened, he squinted and kept his face to the wall to give his eyes time to adjust to the new light. He probably ought to be afraid, but strangely his overwhelming feeling was one of indignation. This place was his. It had been violated.
"What in flames is this?" snapped an unfamiliar male voice.
"This," Varric's voice responded, "is Ser Hugh, some kind of big shot with the breakaway templars back east. Owner of that armour you've been making such a fuss about. I hear he's very valuable to our captors alive and sane, utterly useless dead or mad, which is why the last of the lyrium in this place went down his throat over a week ago and everyone's off trying to get hold of more. In case I'm not being clear enough, there. Is. No. Lyrium. So how about the three of us get out of here and you let me hook you up?"
The dwarf was dancing fast, and Cullen had an idea most of that speech had been for his benefit. Two hostiles. Under the correct impression that Varric wasn't here of his own free will, and the hopefully incorrect impression that he was trying to help them. How had they got in? Where were the rest of Cassandra's people? Who were they? He thought he could guess that last one for himself.
"The door wasn't locked."
"Does he look like he's going anywhere?"
"A renegade templar? He must have been getting it from somewhere before they took him."
"Don't you think he would've told them everything he knew about that when the shakes set in?"
"Maybe, maybe not. It's worth a try." There was a ragged edge of not-quite-concealed desperation to the voice, and Cullen was suddenly certain his guess had been right - these were former templars too. Addicts.
There was a heavy footstep close behind, and in his stomach a lurch of quite disproportionate revulsion at the thought of one of those... people touching him. He swiftly flipped himself over, and sat up with his back against the wall. It was an oddly good feeling to have his joints protesting their lengthy immobility, and not... anything else. There was one shadow looming over him, two others by the door.
"Pretty spry for a man a week out from his last lyrium," growled a new voice, a woman's. It sounded as if was coming from inside a helmet.
Cullen tried to speak, but all that came out was a harsh caw. He cleared his throat and rasped, "Nearly a month, actually."
"Horseshit. You'd be losing your mind by now."
"Wrong." He took a breath and forced himself to keep rattling on, hopefully distracting them from him getting to his feet. "I'm Knight-Commander Cullen, formerly of Kirkwall. I knew a man there who was expelled, and survived it. I don't know where this story came from that madness or death's inevitable. Maybe you should think about that before you do anything foolish."
"You're Knight-Commander Cullen?" said the man. "What are you doing locked up down here?"
"As you pointed out, I'm not locked up. All of this is my choice."
My choice. A simple truth, one he'd taken for granted, hit him like a bucket of water in the face. He hastily pushed the thought aside.
His vision was clearing up now. Varric was one of the figures by the door, stood watching him carefully. He twitched an eyebrow when their gazes met, but if there was a message there, Cullen couldn't decipher it. There was no sign of Bianca. The other two were humans - and were indeed in scored, shabby templar armour. The one by the door, the helmeted woman, had a bow strapped to her back and a candlestick in one hand. The man was thin and unshaven, with a days-old bruise on his forehead and a tic in his left eye.
Not that Cullen was a great example of abstinence, he had to admit. He wasn't certain whether he was unshaven, too, or had passed the tipping point into having an actual beard. He was days out from his last proper wash, a week from his last change of clothes and two from his last meal or sight of daylight. And he knew perfectly well a person couldn't stay in an enclosed space like this for a lengthy period without it getting kind of ripe.
Dammit, maybe he should have just let Varric keep talking.
"Look, we don't need to debate where the misinformation came from," he said, running his mouth to buy time to assess the situation. Two people in armour – and armed, although they'd have to use knives in these close quarters. They were debilitated from lack of lyrium, him from fasting. He could maybe take down one of them by himself. Maybe.
He shoved off the wall, stumbled forward and grabbed the man's breastplate, then hastily backed away again. "Sorry. Bit dizzy. Haven't eaten." He leaned against the wall again, eyeing the new configuration carefully. The man had backed up a step, the woman forward. They were blocking his view of Varric.
"You tried to get off without having a stash in reserve?" said the woman. "I don't think so."
"You're right. I entrusted it to someone. She's not here, and if you can't find it I'm not going to be able to."
"We haven't checked the other cells. Maybe she put it there."
"Maybe. Or maybe you could stop. I know it hurts, and I can tell you it's going to get worse but then it's going to get better. The hard part isn't the physical pain, it's the memories. What you've done. What you've witnessed. What's been done to you. All drowned in lyrium, but what does that really get you? A week ago I remembered my parents clearly for the first time in years.
"Look, we need good people, and you're obviously good, or you wouldn't have made it here. Whatever you've done, I can fix it. I can make them understand you didn't think you had a choice. If you stop now. Because you do have a choice."
He kept his eyes fixed on the man's. Was there some uncertainty there? What was the woman thinking, invisible inside her helmet?
It was too dark to read expressions with any precision, but it was clear enough when he reached for his knife. Cullen was fast enough to grab his wrist.
"Your other choice," he said. "Is to still be at arms when Varric gets back."
Two heads swivelled, two bodies shifted, and Cullen could see he'd been right. The dwarf was gone.
He played the bluff as best he could. "You two are really off your game. He's been gone for for a while. He and Bianca won't have any trouble with you."
"There's nobody else in this place."
"There's Bianca. You really ought to stand down before you get introduced." He was starting to get a distinct sense of futility. He wasn't going to be able to talk them down. His body had been eating itself for two weeks; no matter their disadvantages, he couldn't take them in a fight. If Varric didn't come back – and why would he? – Cullen would die in this place. He'd been prepared for that, but not like this.
The man shoved him back against the wall with a force that knocked his breath out. The knife was drawn.
Cullen braced himself against the wall, planted a foot on an armoured thigh and shoved as hard as he could. The man stumbled backwards, knocking the woman over before he managed to right himself, just in time to get the blanket in his face.
It had gone better than expected so far. Only... the plan had been to break for the door, and apparently his legs hadn't received their orders. He grabbed the wall again, hoping the dizziness would pass quickly.
He saw the incoming fist in time to turn his head so that it glanced rather than connecting solidly, but it was still enough to destroy what balance he had left. An outflung arm to arrest his fall got him a painfully twisted wrist, and then there was a weight on top of him, a knife-tip inches from his face. He blocked as best he could, knowing his strength was failing, wondering if it was the Maker's will that he live just long enough to be free of the lyrium.
Fuck that. The thought was startling in its passion, not to mention the profanity – he rarely cursed even inwardly. He'd prepared himself to not survive the withdrawal of lyrium, and now, out the other side and feeling everything so much more vividly than he had in years... he wanted to live. He really wanted it. It wasn't for him to know the Maker's will, so he was going to fight to his last breath.
It was taking him both hands to hold the knife back; when his assailant pinned one of his wrists, he felt steel at his throat almost at once.
There was a desperate, oddly reluctant ferocity in the man's eyes. His own heartbeat thundering in his ears, Cullen took a breath - his last? - and whispered, "You can still stop."
He was wrong. The downward pressure on the knife abruptly ceased and the grip on his wrist slackened. The light in the other man's eyes went dull; one started to slide closed, the other bulged out. Presumably the bolt - Cullen noticed flights protruding from the now-corpse's temple - was pushing on it. Then the head fell forward onto his shoulder. He pressed his lips together, turned his face to the wall and struggled futilely to shift the dead weight off him, panic rising at the thought of getting lyrium-tainted blood in his mouth, or into the fresh cut on his throat...
The load was yanked away. "You okay, Curly?"
Still facing the wall, he took a few calming breaths before turning to see Varric leaning over him.
"Gotta say, you look terrible," the dwarf continued.
"Are there any more of them?"
"Just those two."
Cullen raised himself onto his elbows. "Then how in the Maker's name - what's going on upstairs?"
"Well. Curly. I guess you know the Seeker's been gone for a few days." When Varric spoke of the Seeker, there was no need to ask which one. "She left enough people here to see off any roving troublemakers. A refugee family came by yesterday with a tale of some gang of renegade templars terrorising the roads, accusing all and sundry of being mages, blah blah blah, and good Ser Bernard decided to go after them. He took most everybody and headed out at dawn."
"How many?"
"About thirty. He left two guys behind. Both dead now." He indicated the female corpse. "That one there was a pretty good sniper."
Cullen sighed. If he hadn't been moping around down here... no. He'd just spent two weeks working through what guilt he deserved and what he didn't; this was no time to start taking on responsibility for someone else's mistake. "And you?"
"Locked me up in one of the nicer cells, upstairs." He looked around ostentatiously. "You really spent two weeks in here on purpose?"
"I could say similar to you. You couldn't get a door open?"
Varric shrugged. "We're in the middle of nowhere. Where am I going to go? Besides, at this point I think I'd rather just get it done than have the Seeker chasing me all over Thedas. So when our friends here found me, I managed to convince them to keep me alive on the basis that I had a contact who could get them some lyrium."
"Do you?"
"Not close enough. It was good you distracted them. Conning addicts is tricky – probably wouldn't have ended well if I'd had to leave with them."
"Well, if you hadn't come back, I'd be dead now. Thank you."
"What, you thought I'd leave you to die?"
"Not to put too fine a point on it, why didn't you?"
Varric chuckled. "You need a reason? How about, some bunch of idiots broke my home town and then headed for the hills – I mean, we had perfectly good reasons, but you were the one who got stuck with picking up the pieces. Also, I like you."
"Arguably, I was one of the idiots too."
"Take a thank-you when it's offered, Curly. You ready to get out of here?"
Looking at the two corpses – the latest lives to be wasted – he thought of the matching armour waiting for him upstairs. Once there had been a young man for whom donning it had been a dream come true; a dream now drowned in pain and anger, poisoned by cruelty, fanaticism and lies. And it wasn't his fault.
He knew, now, he would never wear that armour again. He knew, now, it didn't mean his life or his usefulness was over. More than that, he believed it now. He pulled the pouch with its single coin out from under the mattress and hung it around his neck. "Yes. I'm ready to leave." A wave of dizziness came over him again as he got to his feet.
"Easy does it. C'mon, lean on me."
"Thank you." A hand on the dwarf's broad shoulder, Cullen allowed himself to be steered out of the room.
It dawned on him that he was starving.
