Author's Notes: We're almost there...
"Wait!"
Cullen had not meant for the request to sound like an order, but it did. Brusque and loud, the bellow echoed across the peaceful town centre. Eleni looked round from the horse she tended, her hand darting up and down the beast's long neck in an attempt to soothe it. The sound had clearly startled them both.
"Cullen?"
The former Templar slowed to a halt a few paces from her. In his damp cotton undershirt, the cold was biting, and the thin film of sweat that coated his body chilled him to the bone. He stood awkwardly, nursing his exposed wrists with delicate, timid touches while he shuffled from one foot to the other. Eleni finished strapping the saddle on her horse before walking to Cullen, closing the gap further. Watching one another, their unsynchronized breaths clouded the air between them.
"I—you—" Cullen swallowed against the growing knot in his throat. He wasn't certain of his intentions, and had not rehearsed what he wanted to say (though years ago he made letters, eulogies and songs for this moment, none of his old words came back to him.)
He wanted a lead in, some way to address how the years had changed him since they parted; how mages no longer kept him up at night, how the curse of lyrium no longer dogged his steps. When he considered the years, Cullen could not source them. They lay in anachronistic, scattered heaps – memories of flayed mages and Kirkwall and death; King Alistair's coronation; Lucretia in his arms; Samson's brilliant smile and resounding laughter. In that instant he wanted her to know him as people will never know each other, hear his inner most thoughts, see the nightmares that have ebbed away in his mind, and shaped him into the man he is today. Cullen thought she should know these things, or what he said would not be meaningful; his apology would not right what had been wrong.
In the end, he could only grasp at the simplest straws.
"I—I'm sorry."
"For what?" Eleni said softly, her gaze shifting from his as she spoke, focusing on the indistinct landscape around them. After a moment, she sighed and squeezed her eyes shut. Her hands balled into tight fists by her sides. "If you're talking about what happened at the Circle—"
"It's not just that," Cullen interrupted. "I am sorry for not seeing you for what you were. When we met I was young, drunk on Templar lore and tales of gallantry. I loved the Maker the Chantry, and the Order, and I loved you, but I had no idea how to love each in turn. You were a mage, and caring for you should have opened my eyes to the injustice you endured. I kept them closed, pretended I knew what love was when they forced the harrowing upon you and I resigned myself to my duties. I loved you so much I would kill you without hesitation, or would watch as they turned you tranquil."
Cullen paused for breath and shivered. Eleni had fixed her gaze on the floor.
"I am sorry I did not take your offer to talk," he said, and prayed the sight of his flushed cheeks were lost in the darkness. "I wish I had gotten the chance to know you better, that I didn't believe in the Chantry's teachings so feverously that intimacy became impossible. Perhaps if I had seen the light—learnt something of you that was beyond The Order, beyond the binaries of mages and Templars, I would not have..."
The sky overhead was dotted with bright stars. Cullen looked to them for council as he replayed those awful memories in fragmented, blurred cuts, woven together by timeless seams. Though much of what had been said at the Circle was lost, and the faces of her companions merely dark faces in the gloom, Eleni's crestfallen expression was always clear as day. Rubbing the cold from his forearms, Cullen shivered as he sighed, and willed what remained of his apology into words.
"I'm sorry for what I said the last time we met."
He glanced fleetingly at Eleni, saw her twisted lips, and furrowed brow. She was staring at his chest. Her shoulders fell unevenly as she breathed.
"What the mages did—what you endured. Your rage and horror were natural."
"Yes, but they should not have been directed at you. The things I said were unkind, untoward. I would have been dead, like the rest of the Templars, if it wasn't for you. I—I was just too blind to see it, too indoctrinated by the Chantry's fear and hate to make my own judgment. Eleni, I—"
He noticed her hands on his chest before the kiss. He traced the hot pads of her fingertips as they widened against him, and moved to grasp the loose fabric of his shirt, pulling him closer. Her tongue wriggled into his mouth with an urgency that shocked him, rooted him to the wet mud beneath his boots. He tried to breathe; he tried to speak, but only managed to entwine his tongue with hers.
It was over as soon as it started. Cullen held his breath long after the mage pulled away and strolled back towards her horse, wordless, but smiling. Caught in a dazed stupor, he stood and observed her, his fingers curling to his lips to touch the wetness that lingered there.
As Eleni clunked and shuffled her things – whispered secretive, quiet words to her horse – he came to terms with the mounting distress that boiled at the base of his gut. His body was alight with worry—worry sparked by the electricity of her kiss, the senseless resolve she abandoned in that one gesture. It was a goodbye kiss, an ending kiss—her final farewell.
"You promised—"he said, still unsure how to formulate a coherent, complete sentence. "You promised you would tell me why you are here, why you're travelling alone."
From the way she gathered herself – checking the bridle incessantly, digging through her rucksack – Cullen assumed she would forgo the inquiry entirely, leave him with a kiss and an unanswered question on the jagged knoll in Honnleath. To his delight, and swelling apprehension, she turned around, her duties forgotten. Her teeth gleamed at him through the dark.
"I'm dying."
