Eleanor went to change her clothes; for as beautiful as her new robes were, there was something to be said for a flannel and a pair of leggings. The boots she kept on, though, understanding now why Cullen had never traded his well-worn pair in for a new pair back home; these couldn't be beat. Cullen stripped off his armor but kept on his uniform - a uniform of his own devising, to be fair, but it was something he felt like himself in, at least while on this side of the Rift. It was the first time he had been able to choose his own attire after a life with the Templar Order, and the outfit had simply stuck. It made him feel good to have some kind of uniform, not just because of his rank, but because it was one less thing to worry about, and it had come to be an extension of himself. It didn't stop him, however, from appreciating the decidedly un-Theodosian comforts of a beat-up t-shirt, or the soothing toxicity of how many dozens of stolen cigarettes.

He smoked one now as he looked over his bookshelf, and the stack on the floor that had become an extension of the storage unit, bending down to pick up a little green volume. Cigarette pursed between his lips, he flipped the the book open, thumbing through a few pages until a wrinkled and folded scrap of paper fell out. Tossing the book aside with a thump, he stood up straight and unfolded the paper, pulling the cigarette from his lips and holding it carefully between his index and middle finger.

"'Dear Mia, I'm still alive. Your loving brother, Cullen.'"

He spoke the words softly, a little grin creeping across his face as he read. He shook his head. "Mia. I am a terrible brother," he sighed, but there was a kindness towards himself in his words, a kindness mixed with regret. He should write her tonight. Would write her tonight. Would tell her about Indiana and the Blight and the last year… and Eleanor. Would have to tell her about Eleanor. He was already prepared for the teasing; no matter that they were adults, he could always count on Mia to treat him like a little brother. And he was, he supposed, and would always be her little brother. Even if he hadn't written to her in more than a year. Nearly two. Flames, he was a terrible brother.

"Interesting reading?" Eleanor said, descending the ladder in small hops, not quite daring to slide the whole way down. The wood had been worn shiny and smooth by years of use and no longer offered much in the way of traction.

Cullen waved the parchment like a small flag and said, "Letter from my sister. Ages ago. She chided me then and chides me now."

"Maybe we can take it in shifts," Eleanor said, standing on tip-toe and reaching up to wrap her arms around Cullen's neck. He held his own arms out to the side to give her space, and then held her tightly with his wrists, fingers on both hands already occupied.

"Please don't," he said, turning his cheek to receive a kiss. Eleanor obliged and let him go, allowing him to set the paper down on his desk. He'd been here just nearly two weeks and it was already a mess, but he put the note in a visible place. He really did mean to write. But then, he always really did.

"Alright, well, Swiffer is fed. Now it's my turn. Let's go see what we can scrounge up."

They walked to the Herald's Rest, deciding that if they were going to take a break, then they were going to do it properly, and that meant drinks were in order. Cullen didn't exactly have a proper place to have a meal in private in his quarters, the memory of pushing books and scrolls aside to reach his dinner all too fresh in his mind, and he didn't see fit to impose that on Eleanor. They had been eating with the Inquisitor most evenings, but it wasn't a permanent solution.

It occurred to Cullen that if they stayed here any longer they might actually need a place to live.

Together.

He looked down at Eleanor as they walked slowly along the battlements, her hands tucked under her arms, little coils of hair loosed from her braid, and tried to figure out why the thought gave him any pause at all. They'd been living together for nearly a year, hadn't they? He'd even moved his things into her room before they'd fought the Archdemon, and once everyone else had headed off back to Thedas, he'd been there alone with her for more than a month while they sorted and packed.

But it still felt like her house, like he was living in a borrowed place - a borrowed place he was quite happy to hang on to, albeit, but it was Eleanor's home, Eleanor's space, and he had taken up residence there first as a near necessity. He hadn't really had time to think about it, and hadn't been in the mindset of living together when he had first taken that little upstairs room. He was more worried that the Blight, and by extension himself, there to stop the Blight, were encroaching on her space. Not sharing it. Maybe it was time to cease those worries - indeed, if it had ever been time to have them - and move on to whatever was next for them. Together.

"Ground control to Commander Cullen?" Eleanor asked, tipping her head to the side to look up at him.

"Hm? I'm sorry, my love."

Eleanor never ceased to be amazed by the man's capacity to get lost in thought. One moment he was there, and the next, he was miles away. "I asked, do you wanna go in through the front doors, or sneak in up here?"

"I would say we should sneak, but they're going to see us either way."

"Few minutes more peace and quiet, though," Eleanor offered.

"Indeed," Cullen said, and went to the door straight ahead, holding it open to allow her entrance. "My lady," he said with a little bow.

"You save that for Evelyn," she said with a small nudge to his chest as she walked past. He laughed quietly as he pulled the door shut behind them.

They sat at a quiet little table in the corner, as far away from noise and eyes as they could. They weren't as much of a spectacle as they had been when they'd first returned from Indiana, the commander with his stories of valor and bravery - or so people had the impression, Cullen had the suspicion, thanks in no small part to a certain dwarf - and Eleanor, the strange and exotic one-of-a-kind mage from a land no one had heard of or seen. But there was enough of a buzz that even now people turned their heads and whispered behind their hands, much as they had with Evelyn for years. Some still did.

Cullen left Eleanor while he went downstairs to see what he could get for them, and she sat, staring out the window as the light faded over Thedas.

These two weeks had given her some small insight into what Cullen must have felt when he had been - been what, stuck? - in Indiana. There were just enough similarities to make her feel like she hadn't gone very far: sitting in a bar, about to have a beer, staring out the window at a sunset that reminded her of trips through Tennessee, or West Virginia, except that if she thought about it too long, the landscape seemed much older, much more wild - and by rights, it was. There were dragons and monsters and magic on those mountains, in those forests, and if she turned her head she could see not just people of different colors, of different nationalities, but of different races, races unlike what she understood as race, elves and dwarves and Qunari. And here she was now, with a power in her blood that belonged more in this world than her own, and yet still didn't seem to belong, didn't belong with any kind of safety or security or peace. Eleanor felt like she was torn between both worlds and yet not really a part of either, little parts of her pulling and pushing, and never at the same time or at the same direction.

At least she had Cullen, she thought, even if he was a symptom, a side effect, of this whole wild journey. At least she was not entirely alone. She hadn't thought of herself that way before; though she was by herself on that great big acreage, she had never really thought about the absence of others, of any other, as a part that was missing, as a void. It was just a fact. She was by herself, and that was fine. But now, after the past year, when she thought about herself back on the farm, if she thought of herself without him, she attached the word "alone" to it. And she didn't want to be alone. It was a good thought, and a sad one: a small loss of her independence but in service of something greater, something she felt was greater, anyway, and maybe that's what it came down to. Maybe Cullen had been, or was still, what she needed to help her find her way through all of this… this…

"Eleanor?"

She picked up her head and found Cassandra standing over her. Eleanor lifted her eyebrows, a little surprised, and reached out to pull out the seat next to her, offering it to the Seeker. Cassandra seemed confused for a moment, almost off put by the gesture, until she realized that Eleanor meant the gesture sincerely, and slowly, the tall woman took a seat.

"I wanted to say…" she began, but seemed hesitant, overly careful in choosing her words, and instead chose none at all, instead making a little disgusted noise and leaning forward, putting her hands on her head.

Eleanor just smiled gently, reaching out to touch Cassandra on the elbow. The Seeker turned her head to look at Eleanor, and Eleanor gave a little wave, tipping her head slightly to the side to meet Cassandra's rich brown eyes.

"That is exactly what I mean," Cassandra said, picking up her head again, turning in her seat to face Eleanor more evenly. Eleanor didn't interrupt, only adjusted the collar of her shirt and leaned on an elbow as she waited for Cassandra to go on. "I won't pretend that I was ever incredibly close to the commander. But he did trust me with his… You know that as a templar, he took lyrium for some years?" Eleanor nodded, and Cassandra went on. "When he joined the Inquisition, he gave up that life and stopped taking the lyrium."

Cullen had told her some of this, in more rushed, almost panicked words, the night he had come seeking some kind of solace from her after their first all-too-close encounter with the darkspawn on Eleanor's farm. He had sat on the edge of her bed, shaking, and she had offered him a cigarette, and he had put his hand on her cheek. There had been other small moments, moments when he seemed suddenly lost, not in thought but without it, and she wondered if there were something more behind those moments than just an occasional spaciness on Cullen's part, or his occasional uncalled for snaps of anger that seemed out of character for a man of his temperament. But he had never volunteered any more information after that night, and she had never asked, sensing that it was something that he would rather forget.

"Stopping lyrium," Cassandra went on, her voice a little softer now, "is not an easy process for anyone. You… well, I suppose you would have heard it; the song, some call it. After twenty years of that call, the commander stopped. And he entrusted me to make sure that… that he was rational in the weeks and months after he ceased its ingestion. He did… he did well, if such a thing is not both an over and an understatement."

Cassandra quieted and folded her hands, looking out the same window Eleanor had been glancing out only moments ago. She took in a deep breath and her shoulders rose and fell. "After he stopped… after it stopped affecting him, he seemed better than before. Clearer. Happier. There were side effects, of course, even years later, but from what little I knew of him in Kirkwall… Perhaps it's my own perspective. Or perhaps what happened to him in the Free Marches was enough to darken him as a person for a very long time." Cassandra rolled her eyes and pushed her chair away slightly. "What I am trying to say is, I thought I knew what Cullen looked like when he was happy. Healthy. But now…" Unexpectedly, she reached out and put one long-fingered hand on top of Eleanor's. "You suit him, Eleanor."

Eleanor didn't know how to respond. Those last, simple words took Eleanor entirely off guard. Cassandra had never spoken to her this way, didn't seem the type to speak to anyone this way. Eleanor reached out with her other hand and placed it on top of the one of Cassandra's that had folded over her own and gave the woman's strong fingers a little squeeze, for lack of anything else to do.

"Thank you, Cassandra," she said slowly, letting her hands slip away. "That - it means a lot."

Cassandra smiled a brief smile, gone in a flash, but it was so sincere and so warm that Eleanor felt as though she had been caught up in the quickest but most sincere hug she had ever known.

"Seeker," Cullen said, catching sight of the two women sitting together as he as ascended the stairs, laden with a tray full of food and drink, "everything alright?"

"I do believe so, Commander." Cassandra said, and stood, pushing in her chair, but not looking away from Eleanor. "Everything seems as though it will be just fine." She clasped her hands at her waist and with a small nod of her head bid Eleanor adieu.

Cullen set the heavy tray down on the table in front of Eleanor and took a seat opposite her, his chair screeching a bit as he pulled it out, sitting down heavily as he asked, "What was all that about?"

Eleanor shook her head, but even as she did, she couldn't help but see Cullen, this ex-Templar, this Commander of the Inquisition, in a slightly different light. From the moment she'd seen him, she'd thought him strong. The more she'd come to terms with his presence, the more she knew that his strength was a strength of body and mind. The more she'd loved him, the more she'd been willing to allow him to be strong for her. But there was more to him than that. There was a flexibility in him that she had known in him when he had adapted to a world that was nothing like his own, and she'd admired it. It was one of many qualities about him that she found herself fond of, though she could name others by the dozens. Eleanor knew now though that he had not only the flexibility to change when forced to, the way he had when he had had to defend her home from the Blight, but had also the resilience to force himself to change, to bend and not to break of his own accord, to make himself better, to better help the cause that he believed in - and to shed the remnants of something that had clearly caused him grief, despite the experience that he had garnered from it. It was an intrinsic quality in most people, regardless of what world they were from, Eleanor thought, to fight change. She was certainly guilty of it herself. But this staunch, stoic, firm man, this commander, had welcomed change in so many ways, had embraced it, and now sat before her with a smile on his face, raising a glass of beer to his lips with just enough space between his mouth and the mug to say, "And you accuse me of getting lost in my own head."

"Guilty as charged," she said, reaching for a still-warm loaf of bread.

"Looks like I'm going to have to take you away."

"I do believe you already have," she said, and grinned a little grin as he nudged her foot with his from beneath the table.

A/N: So I've gotten a lot more support for this in the last twelve hours than I ever thought I would, so I'm gonna share it with you guys, too: I started a parody Twitter feed telling the story of Dragon Age: II in the style of Pacific Northwest Stories (Tanis/The Black Tapes/Rabbits). If that's something you might be interested in, check it out SFMStories. It's really goofy, I promise.

And if you're not listening to the PNWS/PRA podcasts, what are you even doing with your life?