Elena arrived at Leliana's office just as Josephine was stepping out. She nodded to the diplomat as she breezed past her, hoping to avoid small talk. As she entered, Leliana looked up from her desk, the briefest flicker of surprise passing over her face before it smoothed back into her usual calm smile. Elena leaned forward, resting her hands on the surface before her.
"I'm being followed. Is it your people?" She spoke as soon as she heard the door closing behind her, her voice kept low to avoid any eavesdroppers.
Leliana allowed herself another look of surprise at Elena's words. "Are you sure?"
Elena nodded, "Yes. Someone in a black car—similar enough to the taxi models that it wasn't immediately noticeable. It's been trailing me for at least a month. Is it your people?"
Leliana frowned, "Sit down, Elena. No, it is not my people. Trust me, even you wouldn't have noticed my people."
Elena rolled her eyes as she sat in one of the plush chairs opposite Leliana. "There are a number of interested parties who could be behind this; I hate to say it, but not all of them are because of Inquisition business."
The Orelsian woman nodded, "I think the best course of action would be to discuss the, shall we say, more sensitive aspects of this problem now, in private and bring whatever we settle upon to the attention of our colleagues. But I need you to be honest with me, and not hold back information."
Elena licked her lips, contemplating. As much as she didn't want to divulge some of the intel she was sitting on, she knew Leliana was right—and it was better to talk it out with the Spymistress than have all of her dirty laundry aired in front of Cullen and Josephine, especially Cullen. She didn't know how much she could ultimately trust Leliana, but it was her only option at this point. Taking a deep breath, she nodded and leaned forward.
"What do you want to know?"
Leliana decided to assign a team of two of her people to shadow Elena for a the next day or so, in order to make sure the situation with the black car didn't escalate before they could put whatever plan they agreed upon with the other Vice Presidents into action. Elena was relieved that there was a meeting that afternoon, since then she wouldn't have to find a way to give her shadows the slip to see Cullen, though she certainly wasn't looking forward to explaining the situation to him–not the least because it would certainly put a damper on their mid-week plans.
She sighed as she walked onto her floor from the elevator. The discussion with Leliana had been cathartic to say the least—Elena knew she had been keeping too much buried deep, and finally confiding in someone who could understand, at least on some level, was such a relief. Certainly Dorian knew most of what she had told Leliana, but they didn't talk about it. She hadn't told Leliana about Cullen, of course, though she probably should have. Still she had held back, telling herself that that it was different; her past only concerned her—and their consequences only affected her. Cullen could be affected if it got out that they were seeing each other.
Elena's dark thoughts were interrupted suddenly as she opened her office door; her eyes immediately going to the bouquet of flowers that sat on her desk. She wanted to squeal in delight, but managed to restrain herself to rushing across the room to look for a card. She took a deep breath in, savoring the lilac, orchid, lilies, and crystal grace. After a moment she spied a white card.
Beautiful flowers for a beautiful forward to seeing you again—C
She grinned: Cullen had sent her flowers! It took all her self-restrain not to dance around her office like a young girl. She slipped the card into the pocket of her dress—naturally because she didn't want anyone else to see it and put two and two together, definitely not because she wanted to look at the message throughout the day. Maker's breath, what had she done to deserve such a thoughtful man? She wanted to run down to his office right that minute and thank him, but she knew that would be inadvisable—besides, they would see each other later that day when the Vice Presidents had to prepare for the finance guy coming in on Friday, and Leliana would bring up their conversation from that morning as well.
With a soft sigh, she sat in her chair and booted up her computer; she could wait until the afternoon. It wouldn't kill her to be patient.
Much to her surprise, the morning did pass quickly—she was busy looking over Josephine's list of potential Grand Cleric allies, both trying to locate them and see if they were still alive after the Conclave. It was bleak work, in a sense, but she enjoyed the thrill of hunting down obscure (and if she was being honest, sometimes classified) information. By the time afternoon rolled around, she had nearly finished the list.
Standing, she stretched, and with one last glance at her flowers, headed out the office door. Grabbing Krem on her way, since he had the last say on who got into her office and should probably sit in on the conversation about her safety, they made their way to the boardroom.
The meeting began as usual with each of the Vice Presidents making their reports in turn, finishing the preliminary part with Elena updating everyone on her work finding Chantry allies. Cullen was economical with his words, where Josephine tended to be long winded, and there always seemed to be something Leliana wasn't saying. By the time they were all finished, nearly an hour had passed.
Cullen turned to Leliana when there seemed to be lull in the conversation. "Where are we in evaluating possible bombers? Last time we spoke, you and Miss Trevelyan were still combing through dossiers."
Leliana grimaced, "not as far as I would like. Despite our efforts and reasonably unique descriptions, there isn't much out there yielding results."
"Could he be a front for another organization or person?" Elena chimed in.
"Possibly, though there are only a few organizations with the resource to pull such a thing off—and most of those would more than likely admit to the act." Leliana answered.
"Perhaps a person, then?" Josephine ventured. "There are a number of agents that used be active in the past few years but have since gone silent, perhaps they were preparing for this?"
"Who did you have in mind?" Cullen asked.
Before Josephine could answer, Leliana spoke up, shuffling through a few files sitting before her. "Well, there's the Sithis Brothers—assassins known for sniping high-level targets connected with the Orlesian civil war, the Angel of Little Death, who, admittedly was more focused on espionage and intelligence extraction than the assassinations she performed in the Free Marches, or the Seheron Soldier, ghost-like assassin said to be operating around the Qunari conflict with Tvinter. All of them have been inactive for about three or four years, although only one of them has last known whereabouts anywhere nearFerelden, so it's doubtful."
Everyone suddenly turned their attention down the table to Elena, where she was fumbling with the glass of water she'd accidently knocked over like Leliana spoke. Krem quickly grabbed her some napkins from the side table and helped her mop it up.
"Sorry everyone. Clumsy today. Carry on," she muttered, trying to keep the water from spreading over anything important.
"More dead ends, it seems," Cullen mused. "Do we have any leads on the USB drive the Divine left Elena?" He cleared his throat. "Miss Trevelyan, that is."
Elena bit the inside of her lip, trying not to smile at his slip of her name.
"Only that there's a large volume of files on it, but nothing concrete as to what those files might contain. Solas can't figure out how to get past the encryption—they're still working on it," Leliana supplied. "And before you ask, no, there's still no word on the red substance, just more reports of it spreading throughout the alieanges–whenever we try to obtain a sample, our lead mysteriously disappears."
The others nodded, filing the information away in their notes as another lull hit their conversation.
"Well, don't forget, we have a meeting with our financial advisor on Friday," Josephine said by way of wrapping the meeting up. "Unless anyone has anything else to add…?"
Leliana cleared her throat and glanced at Elena to see if she wanted to take the lead; Elena shook her head slightly, indicating that the other woman should go ahead.
"It's come to my attention that an unknown party is shadowing Miss Trevelyan. And has been since nearly our return from Haven. There has been no move made to harm her, or threats of any nature, but still, the situation is not ideal. After going over the options, it's mostly like someone associated with our mysterious bomber. I've assigned two of my people to follow her and make sure it doesn't escalate. We'll reevaluate the situation in a week's time, unless anyone has some suggestions?"
Elena could feel the weight of everyone's gaze on her. She knew she shouldn't feel guilty about what was going on, but she couldn't help it. She didn't like the idea of taking away Inquisition resources to focus on her own problems—she knew how to survive, how to take care of herself; surely Leliana's people could be put to better use. But she'd already tried arguing with the Orlesian lady earlier that day, and they'd just gone around in circles.
Hesitantly, she looked around the room; Josephine's look of concern only deepened Elena's guilt—if this wasn't Inquisition business, if this was someone from before, or her father, perhaps, she hated the idea of drawing her colleagues into her personal problems.
Taking a deep breath, Elena glanced at Cullen, her heart immediately squeezing painfully in her chest at the look of worry in his eyes.
"I…I have an idea," Krem spoke up, cutting through the dense air of the room; everyone turned to look at him, and he continued after Leliana nodded. "I used to work for this guy, he does a lot of private security work, and he's really good at what he does. Maybe we could hire him to be your bodyguard?"
"What's the name?" Cullen asked, voice a little sharper than necessary.
"He's one of them Qunari; goes by the name The Iron Bull."
"Well," Elena began, eyebrows raised. "That would certainly be intimidating if I started walking around with a Qunari, but wouldn't it be a little obvious that we've caught on to whoever is watching me?"
"Is that really a problem?" Cullen asked across the table. "So they realize you know you're being watched; you would still have a Qunari bodyguard if they tried anything."
Elena considered his words while Leliana and Josephine hashed out how much they could afford to pay a mercenary, versus how much it would cost keeping Leliana's people tailing Elena twenty-four hours a day. Finally, it was agreed that Krem would contact his old boss, and set up a consultation.
It was nearing the end of the day when the meeting finally ended. As she was making to leave, Elena felt a touch at her elbow. She looked up to see Cullen standing next to her, head bent slightly so that he could speak low in her ear.
"Might I speak with you a moment in my office?" He asked softly, so only she heard him.
Elena nodded and casually followed him out of the board room to a crowed elevator, and finally into his office. He ushered her in, hand brushing over the small of her back as he did so, before he followed inside and closed the door behind them. Elena turned around to face him, a frown creasing her brow when she saw he was upset—arms folded over his chest and a matching frown fixed on his face.
"Why didn't you tell me you were in trouble? That you were being followed?" His voice was guarded, but she could sense an edge of some deeper emotion hovering just below the surface. "Maker's breath, I wouldn't have let you come to my apartment on your own, that's for certain."
Elena twisted a lock of hair through her fingers, "I didn't realize it until this morning, honestly, Cullen. And Leliana, well, she deals with this sort of thing—it's her job."
"And it's my job to keep you—and everyone at Inquisition—safe. You should have told me," he insisted, pinching the bridge of his nose.
She frowned, struggling to understand why he was upset. "I wasn't worried about being kept safe—I can take care of myself! I was worried about figuring out who the hell was stalking me."
"And if they had attacked you," he almost thundered, only managing to constrain his voice at the last moment, conscious, no doubt of the many people just on the other side of the wall. "you would have been worried about being safe then. What if they attacked you at work? I need to know this sort of information. How could you keep something like this from me?"
The air between them crackled with frustration and Elena felt needles traveling up her spine as she realized he was well and truly upset with her. She could feel her own annoyance rising, matching his.
"Are you mad because I impeded your ability to do your job? Or because I didn't come running to you to save me at the first sign of danger?" She realized the latter statement was out of line the second the words were out, but honestly she couldn't figure out where he was coming from.
Cullen stared at her, hurt burning behind his eyes.
"That has nothing to do with this," he snapped in reference to the second part of her question.
"It has everything to do with this! I can take care of myself, Cullen. I have been for a very long time. I do not need you to rush in and solve all my problems," she snapped, irritation at his patronizing attitude coiling hot and sick in her stomach like an asp.
Cullen crossed the room in a storm, seizing her shoulders and bringing his face close to hers. Elena met his burning gaze with her own, refusing to back down or be cowed by him.
"For Maker's sake woman, you could have been kidnapped, or worse." His tone shifted, his eyes growing sad as his voice dropped to a whisper. "You've disappeared completely from my life once already; I can't go through that again, not now."
At his words Elena felt all of her anger go out of her, and suddenly she felt very tired—tired of lying, still, of being afraid, of keeping secrets. The truth was she had kept this from him almost out of habit and that really, really bothered her.
Finally, she let out a soft sigh. "I'm sorry, Cullen. Asking others for help doesn't come easily to me."
He dropped his arms, his face relaxing from one of frustration to worry. Quickly, he pulled her in him, and hugging her close. Elena hummed and settled into his embrace, wrapping her arms around his middle and pressing her cheek to his chest. She knew they shouldn't show such affection at work like this, but no one would see them in his office, and truth be told, they both needed the comfort.
"I'm sorry too," he murmured into the crown of her hair. "It's just quite a shock to hear from someone else that my girlfriend is being stalked."
She giggled, her lips curving up on their own violation as she pulled away just far enough so she could look at him, a coy little smirk on her face.
"So I'm your girlfriend?" she purred, quirking up an eyebrow.
She knew it was silly—labels: boyfriend, girlfriend. They were adults, after all, but she couldn't help the little flutter in her stomach when she heard him say it.
Cullen chuckled at her sweet reaction, and cupped her chin, gently lifting her face to his.
"If you want to be," he murmured, bending down to press a slow, firm kiss to her lips.
Elena sighed and leaned into his touch, tilting her head back so that she could kiss him with more force. She felt rather than heard the soft rumble at the back of his throat when she brushed her tongue over his lips, and the sound went straight through her. Their kiss heated as he opened his mouth to her and she felt the smooth glide of his tongue against her own. Slowly, he walked forward, backing her up until she felt herself bump into his desk. In one smooth motion, Cullen lifted her onto the desk's edge, his hands teasing at her bare thighs where her skirt had rucked up. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, fingers tangling in the curls at the base of his neck. Cullen skimmed his hands up her side, briefly cupping her breasts, before he captured her face, his thumbs brushing gently over the curve of her cheeks.
After a moment, they broke apart, her soft, shy smile reflecting back at her on his handsome face. She gave a gentle laugh and rested her forehead against his.
"So, our first fight, eh?"
He chuckled, "something tells me that we'll be okay."
They stayed like that for a moment, heads pressed together, happy to get a moment alone with everything going on. How am I so lucky, she mused.
"Well, you already sent me flowers—so I guess the making up part is taken care of," she teased, happy that she could finally thank him.
Her heart sank however, when Cullen pulled away sharply, eyes widened.
"Flowers? Elena, I didn't…I mean, should I have bought you flowers? It's not your nameday, is it?"
He sounded worried and she couldn't decide if she thought it was cute that he was distress at the prospect of missing her nameday or if she was terrified that if he hadn't sent her flowers, who had? Who could have known that signing the card "C" wouldn't have alerted her to the fact that something was very, very wrong?
Quickly she pulled the card out of her pocket and handed it to him.
"You mean, you didn't send me this?" she asked, holding her breath until he shook his head. "Well, shit."
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