The lay together cast in gold from rays of a summer sunset.
They lay together on their sides, tangled in each other upon scarlet sheets. No inch of skin sacred to the chill that creeps along their cooling bodies.
They lay together as husband and wife. Another first time they share.
Maerwynne calls it a dream as they catch their breath, though Cullen's woken in panicked sweats too often to believe that. Dreams are shadows, old torments and ghosts. Not laughter. Not love. Not this.
Even so, he keeps an unwavering gaze on his wife as though he might blink her away. It's a lingering temptation to shatter the peace, to tell her how lovely she looks with reddened lips and tangled hair that clings to her dampened forehead in places. Instead, he moves his hand from the small of her back to sign his affections in swirls up and down her spine.
Maerwynne shivers beneath his fingers whisperings, shaking away sentiments spilt across her skin before she even knows they're there. "That tickles," she rasps, voice rough and ripped from a throat as worn as the rest of her. Still, she slips him a smile with her usual ease. A lazy effort spun from the purest silk.
Cullen's grin comes harsher. All teeth and narrowed eyes and the thin lines that deepen around them. It softens the longer it goes unnoticed, settling into a lopsided smirk that has the scar above his lip tilt just so. "It's supposed to." He snorts, undignified, at Maerwynne's gasp of mock disbelief and the pout that's quick to follow. "I thought perhaps you might've drifted off." He holds his breath for Maerwynne's groggy protest, her yawned insistence that it's all for show and she's not even tired, not one little bit.
The need to breathe comes before her objection does.
Even if the fade has almost claimed her, she's enough life left to keep scarred fingers twisting the same patch of his pale curls like she's caught in time and to mumble a Rivaini ditty, so soft that every so often she makes no sound at all. Cullen joins in as best he can, as best his memory allows, humming along to keep the language of her mother's land safe from a tongue that's fluent in Fereldan, barked orders and little else.
He taps the rhythm across Maerwynne ribs as she starts to slow. A subtle encouragement that goes unnoticed until tapping turns to a glide of feather-light touches past her hips, over the subtle curve of her backside to the pebbled skin of her thigh. When he dares a dip into even softer places he's rewarded with a sharp scratch of blunted nails against his scalp. Whether she meant it as gratitude or not, he nuzzles the tip of his nose against her forehead in appreciation and feels, more than he hears, her breathy chuckle.
"This is perfect," he whispers, and she hums in agreement. Perhaps it wasn't the perfection most people dreamed of. Just a quiet contentment, the softest sigh against his lips and a promise of forever, even knowing what their forever might bring.
Forever.
It'd been something to dread once. A long walk to madness, if he even made it that far. A shackle forged from faith and vows meant to keep him from straying too far from the flock.
Forever.
Forever.
Now forever lay half asleep beside him, the rise and fall of his lucky coin growing slower. Slower. against her chest.
Cullen brushes his fingers against the old silver with wonder, as though it had never belonged to him at all. "You wouldn't believe how nervous I was the day I gave this to you." Thinking back to the star-scattered lake, when their kisses could still be counted on two hands, he says, "I thought perhaps you might have-". He stops sharp when, in return, Maerwynne jerks herself upright and tries her hardest to gouge through the flesh at his shoulder. Cullen darts a look upward to see her wide eyed and still, staring at nothing just past her clawed grip. "Maker's breath, what's the matter?"
Maerwynne responds with a dozen blinks as if the world has gone dark then pushes against him so hard she grunts from the effort. She scoots away like a frightened child when he lays unmoving, the scarlet sheets dragging beneath her until they bind her just out of reach. Her nose wrinkles and eyes screw shut in pain or fear or both at once until she stills with a gasp and bites her bottom lip.
Cullen moves to beckon her back but stops, hand hovering mid-air, as their golden sunset drowns in the mark's brilliant green. All too quick Maerwynne balls her hand into a fist and shoves it beneath a pillow.
Out of sight, out of mind.
A whimper escapes her. A traitorous noise. Cullen can tell by the way her full lips thin to a line to keep every disobedient instinct In. Down. Away.
What feels like time slowing to crawl is a moment over before it begins. They're silent. Still. Staring at each other with nothing but heavy breaths to fill the quiet, such different pants than those that came before. He can see her rogue's mind search for a way to slip around the issue with as little fuss as possible. Waiting for the stillness to suffocate him until he has to say something she can sweeten with smiles and reassurances she's no right to give.
"Cullen…" she coo's when he doesn't offer an exit strategy, a lure meant to distract him when she realises there's nowhere to run. She stretches a slender leg toward him, intent on tugging at his calf with an insistent foot "You know, If the wind changes you'll be stuck frowning like that forever." She starts to chuckle, but a crowd of one means the joke falls flat fast, fading into a small smile that fails to reach her eyes. Her free arm twitches, though whatever she'd planned she decides against it and spreads her smile a little wider instead. "Everything's going to be-"
"Don't," The commander snaps, side stepping her snare, though the husband regrets the tone as soon she flinches." You should know better than to think that's what I want to hear." He pulls himself toward her, hand falling into place at her back once more. He taps once, twice, a third time until she closes what little distance lingers between them. "This isn't the time for that, tell me how you feel."
Maerwynne settles with her head beneath his chin, her mass of untamed almost-curls tickling his jaw as she presses a kiss to his throat. She sighs and it speaks a thousand things she'd never dare voice aloud. "What do you want me to say, Cullen? It getting worse and you're afraid. Somehow that's worse."
"Andraste preserve me. There must be something we can do."
"There is. You're going to carry on leading our army while I try to...do whatever it is I have to do to convince the exalted council were not a threat. What else is there? Curl up in the corner and wait for my hand to-" She stops, shakes her head, then nods to herself." There's still so much left I have to do."
Pride and panic and exasperation make a nauseating mix in the deep depths of his stomach. "It's hard to tell which is worse to deal with; the mark expanding as it is,or knowing just how much of yourself you're willing to give."
She pulls back just enough to give him a good view of her quirked eyebrow. "You always say that."
"Because it's always been this way. I fear the day you'll give too much."
Something close to guilt gnaws at her brow for the slightest moment. It wasn't quite an apology for years of unnecessary risk, unnecessary worry, but he'd accept it as a tentative victory.
"This is happening Cullen, whether I lay here feeling sorry for myself or carry on with what we came here to do." Her frown deepens before flipping into a smile even she can't fake well, and suddenly the win doesn't feel worth it. "You can't blame this one on a 'lack of concern for my personal safety'."
"It would make it easier."
She laughs at that. "You're going to be alright. No matter what happens, you've pulled yourself through worse."
Cullen shakes his head but not the creases from his brow. "I didn't know then what losing you was like, not like this. I want to believe but… I don't know if-"
"Hey, "she chastises with a rap of her knuckles against his bare chest, "I'm not dead yet."
She's teasing, he knows. Still, it hits him hard enough to steal the air from his lungs. Too soon. Too tragic. Too inevitable. Their forever begins to fade into a prayer for another year, another week, another hour.
"Although, "she continues, "if I were to die here, at least everyone's-"
Cullen silences her with a brush of his thumb against her lips. " Don't", he says again, softer this time, as soothing as he can over the subtle crack of his voice.
Maerwynne shakes her head in a final defeat and closes her eyes. She pouts, like she does, and swallows the joke whole. He can tell it's bitter, that it burns to let truths claw their way out and hold back tears at the same time. "I don't want you worrying about me."
Cullen reaches under the pillow to unfurl her clenched hand like he's tending to the softest petals of a flower too frightened to bloom. He makes sure to capture her gaze as he presses a lingering kiss to her fingertips, each one as tender as the last. "You can let me worry about you a little."
She lets out a sob and it's beautiful in it's honesty.
"Alright," she says with a toothy smile, then seals the agreement with a kiss.
