Disclaimer: I own absolutely and completely nothing. Bioware has that particular pleasure.

Author's note: guys, while I hate to repeat this, please tell me what you think about the story. Just a small sentence, a good opinion, tons of critisizing, complaints and so on. I would really just like opinions. I will try to keep this going, if rather slowly for some time.

In this chapter: She is an illusion and he doesn't want it anymore.


004.

Cullen doesn't understand what happened. There are flashes of memories in his mind, too quick to be understood, too fleeting and confusing. He reaches for them, tries to see them better but they always escape before he can catch a glimpse. When he wakes up, there's a light cage all around him and the mage is sitting by his feet, calm as she never is. He also notices the ceiling is up, the floor is down, he is laying on it and the entrance to the Harrowing chamber was never a good place to fall asleep. Even without the mages being brought in and out at arbitrary moments.

He cannot remember just right what in the world is going on. What is he doing there, he asks himself, struggling to move, why and how is Diana right by his side, staring at him with impossible large eyes. And silent. Maker help him, she seems oddly calm and oddly uninterested by his presence. His head also hurts.

"They threw us inside and left again."

Diana refuses to look at him still, toeing a piece of gravel absently with a careful foot. She looks clean, cared and once more the young apprentice who wandered the halls. This is wrong for whatever reason but his head hurts, the floor is making every piece of mail dig into his back and he just can't make sense of this.

Instead, Cullen sits down and searches for his sword. And finds absolutely nothing, of course.

"Where are we?" He asks keeping the words why are we alive for himself. They cannot be said just yet. Another movement and he is touching the light wall, pushing and prodding and finding no way to cross it as per previous expectation. A smite, perhaps? Or that would work if he wasn't sapped to the bone. A spell? Can such spell be done?

Diana, oblivious brat that she is, continues playing with the damned rock like it's her favorite pastime. This also sounds wrong. Doesn't seem to fit. Doesn't seem correct. Why and how and his head hurts so much so answers elude him like water through closed fingers.

"You won't be able to leave," she continues yet again in that oddly calm and factual way, not even bothering to reply to his question. "I have tried. Spells. Lightning and Ice. It doesn't work."

And that sounds even odder but for the life of him, he cannot be sure why.

"And Glyphs? Neutralization, you did that earlier", he ponders, daring to touch the shield harder. It is familiar, the sort mages learn as children but so much more powerful. The Templar rubs his hair thoughtfully, wondering where his helm disappeared into. Not his, someone else's, caught between the prison and Chapel but still, where is it? The holes in his memory grow and multiply, making him feel like he has turned eighty in while sleeping.

Once again, the foolish mage says nothing, barely raising his head in acknowledgement. Instead, Diana slips towards the ground, sitting right by his side, hair tumbling down her sides. It touches his arm, right where the mail ends and the gauntlet begins. Clean and golden, as if she has spent hours grooming it.

And that also tastes wrong, like a puzzle piece falling out of place.

"Amell?"

She leans against him, silent and smiling. His head hurts, his concentration is sluggish but he still has enough presence of mind to pull back, just a little and just enough to look at her face. Clean and uninjured when there should be something on her forehead. Done between the Chapel and the office. Or maybe just after? Cullen raises his hand without truly thinking about it, touching metal covered fingers to the place where blood should be. Something there, something strong enough to knock someone unconscious. He had seen her go down, had he not?

Her head turns lightly, leans against his hand like a cat and a smile is on her face, careless and wrong, so wrong he has no words to describe it. It makes his hand drop like her skin is suddenly on fire..

Not Diana, he thinks, scrambling away like a man facing his worst nightmare. Diana was dirty and smelly and weird and completely insane. She did not like his touch. She kept away as much as possible except for conversation, as that kept what little was left of her sanity in place. Diana was injured. Diana was. He had done it, after all.

No helm and no injury, the fact that he is there and she's not because this is not her. Like a puzzle, everything crumbles into place.

Cullen feels like screaming.

This illusion talks with her voice, speaks with her lovely mouth, wears her face, her body, her eyes and comes even closer, enough to make his skin crawl and his stomach rebel.

"You know this is what you want," she whispers, gently, gently as she never does, a hand almost touching his cheek. "You asked for it, did you not? Watching behind us, listening to us whispering, wondering what we spoke of. You dreamed. You wished. You begged."

Cullen knows. But he also knows this is nothing more than an illusion, a cruel one at that. In his mind, he can hear the real mage, shrill voice as she is dragged away, and his rationality probably took a leave of absence because.

Did you really? For serious? Someone speaks, screeches into his ears. What kind of pervert are you to stare at me like that? Ew, ew, what in the flipping Fade, look elsewhere, those are my breasts!

"Just take it. Why not? What pulls you back?" And like an enchantment she comes closer, almost touching, almost there and too close. "No one is here but us. Nothing matters. What stops you?"

The Tower, Templars, vows and the fact that I'd make you swallow my staff if you touched me. Talking about this, why are you still perverting on my form? Stop ogling, you dumbass or I'll feed you to the apprentices.

The Templar doesn't since he can swear the real mage is right behind him, right there watching and isn't even close to being pleased, that's why. And while he's on this subject, might as well wonder just how his conscience morphed into the insane mage.

"No. No." Cullen takes a step back, back against the blinding shield. "You're a demon. You're the demon." And the features change like a ripple through water, Diana and a purple face, blonde hair and darker strands, magical robes and nothing, nothing at all.

This is not me, you jerk.

"You're not real."

The illusion struggles against his mind, clings to every moment in a library, to every second at the door of a cell, clings and it's useless because he knows Diana and Diana is pretty, insane and happy, avoiding his touch like her life depends on it.

"Commander, if you don't get up here and help after getting me here, I'll beat you to an inch of your death with your helm!"

Cullen starts laughing, tethering in the edge between sanity and lunacy, and fails to notice two things.

The demon is nowhere to be seen. And the voice, the one screaming over his laughter, is real.