The minute the Crows have finished "helping" Cullen re-lace his trousers, the Crow mage has them all start moving again.
They gag her, even though she has no words left, and the wooden ball in her mouth feels even more invasive now than it did before. She discovers that not only does the gag let her control her breathing, if she breathes just right, the air passing through its holes creates a really obnoxious whistling noise.
She whistles for most of a mile, until the Crow mage cuffs her on the back of the head. As if Cullen has some sense for violence done to her person — or as if he'd been listening to the whistling, perhaps just because it was a sign of defiance — Cullen looks over at her.
He doesn't meet her eyes. Or maybe she can't meet his. Maybe they just can't look at each other.
They only go another few miles, perhaps five, until they reach an abandoned farmhouse. The Crows push her and Cullen into a corner of the main room.
"Try and rest a while," the Crow advises. "We will not stop for long, and we have far to travel."
Of course, he then immediately does something to guarantee that Cullen won't sleep. He sets a wall of repulsion glyphs — which is sensible, if frustrating — and continues to lay down a spirit barrier. The snap and pop of the mage's mana, the warped weft of the Veil, both make her teeth buzz. They cause an itch on the back of her tongue, too.
She can only imagine what it feels like for Cullen. Does it worsen his craving for lyrium? Or does it remind him of something he encountered during the fall of the Ferelden Circle?
He glares at the barrier, gagged and bleary-eyed.
One of the Crows unties them, as if guessing that no one's about to sleep with their hands tied behind their backs. Another even removes the gags, and mutters something in Antivan, too low for her to catch, even if she spoke the language. His eyes are downcast, though, and his tone is vaguely sympathetic, or perhaps long-suffering.
She settles down as far away from Cullen as she can. It's less because she needs space than because she expects Cullen will need it. She closes her eye and tries to imagine anyplace but this.
But the cold of the farmhouse settles onto her skin, sinks into her blood and her bones. She starts to shake, and though she rubs her hands together and along her arms, there's no stopping it. She wonders, briefly, if she's shaking from more than just cold, but that's a vain thought.
What does she have to be traumatized over? What the Crow demanded of her, she'd have done willingly, under other circumstances.
No, the shakes are just her being unused to this southern climate. Orlais is generally warmer than Ferelden, but this near to the Frostbacks, there's hardly a difference.
Cullen never removes his gaze from the barrier. It casts flickers of purple over him, bathes him in a mix of spirit-light and shadow, and his expression is so hooded, so inward, that the sense of warmth and weight he carries with him is gone.
Still, he must somehow notice the shudders that roll down her spine, because he says, "It may be better for you over here. If you can st—" A pause, a half breath of a sigh, and then he says in a lame finish, "If you can."
Heloise can't help the choked, horrible laugh. She always thought that if she could laugh, she could live, but it hurts. She silences it as quickly as she can. The real pain it causes her and her utter disgust with herself makes that easier.
Once she has her throat back under her control, she asks, "Can you?"
His voice is absent, as if he's only half-listening, when he asks, "Can I what?"
"Stand being near me."
That draws his attention, enough for his eyes to flick to her, though he never turns his body away from the barrier. "Stand — what? What are you asking me?"
She can't say more than that. She knows better than to try. Still, the blank incomprehension and even defensiveness in his tone draws his name from her mouth, voice still ragged from screaming she doesn't remember.
"Oh," he says, softly. Like she's given him some sort of revelation. And, again, more fervently, half a whisper, half a prayer, "Oh."
She doesn't say anything more. It hurts too much, in her throat and deeper. She aches down to her bones, from exhaustion, from the lightning, from what she's been made to do.
"Inquisitor," he says, and stops, because she flinches.
It's reflex. At the word, at that word, in his surprisingly gentle voice, her entire body twitches in automatic revulsion.
"Don't," she gasps. "If we were ever any kind of friends, don't. Not that name. Not while —"
"No," he says, after a moment of silence in which he'd stared out at the barrier again. He picks up again with, "I understand. May I call you by name, then?"
"I'd prefer it," she says, and even though he isn't looking at her, he gives her a solemn nod.
"Heloise. I do not… blame you, for what's passed. I hope you can forgive me my own role in it."
She laughs again, and again, it's a terrible sound. It tears through her. That he doesn't blame her fills her chest with warmth, but the rest of it rips her heart into small pieces. She thought she was beyond this sort of pain, but apparently this she knows too well, returns to too easily.
"What role? You didn't want that, any of it. That was the point."
Silence sits between them. The barrier buzzes, separating him from the present as much as it separates her from escape.
At length, he says, "Nor did you. Winter comes early and lingers long in the south. If you can, come closer. We'll keep warm."
She goes. Briefly, uncertain of her welcome, she rests her palm against his shoulder. For the first time, he turns to look at her.
And she can meet his eyes. It's quick, so quick, and it hurts. There is some kind of old pain in his eyes, robbing them of warmth, but he's not so far away anymore.
So she sits down, leans against him. As the minutes drag on, sliding lazily by, she realizes that the sense of weight, of heat, has begun to return to him. Until, slowly but surely, Cullen Rutherford is present, has pulled himself away from whatever nightmare he was reliving — perhaps by force — and is real.
He's not whole, and he's not hers, but at least he's with her.
"Thank you," she says, soft.
"Your fidgeting is a good distraction from the barrier," he says.
She wants to protest that she doesn't fidget, but, well, it's probably true. She tends to shift around uncomfortably when she's anxious, and she hasn't been this anxious since the Inquisition had locked her in a cell.
"Glad I could be of use," she tells him instead.
It gets him to crack a smile, and the jagged edges of the stone in her chest start to heat up and hew together at the sight of it.
Maker, he's so close she could kiss him. Some part of her, the worst part of her, almost wants to. And yet that's the last thing she should want, the last thing she should even be thinking of. That gap is necessary, is vital.
Even should he care for her the way she does him, does she truly want to taint those feelings by associating them with this?
She looks away from him, back at the barrier, and then closes her eyes. She says, quiet but firm, "You should sleep, too. I know you must be exhausted."
The Fade reaches out for her before she hears his reply. She's dimly aware of the sound of his voice, a beacon of bright sound amidst the darkness of the Veil slipping over her eyes, and then the world is something else, something strange.
When she wakes,she's still cradled against his shoulder. Cullen has fallen asleep, too, if his slow, deep breaths and the way he's rested his stubbled chin against the top of her head are any indication. Sometime in the night, someone draped his furred-and-feathered cloak over the both of them.
The ruff tickles the back of her neck, but she makes no move to scratch it. Instead, she closes her eyes again and lets sleep claim her again. Before it does, she feels Cullen shift in his slumber, feels a warm hand splay along her back.