It's almost like old times, yet not. Halamshiral in the spring is a riot of blooms in perfectly manicured flower beds, the trees newly garbed in their fresh green mantles and there's a sweetness in the air despite the bitterness of what lies ahead. Orlais seeks to collar us. Ferelden wants to see us disband, and I can't help but agree that we've served our purpose. At any rate, the Exalted Council will resolve matters, one way or another.
The Inquisition is a beast that has gradually run out of momentum. We sprawl across southern Thedas and beyond, our tentacles everywhere. A tree falls in the Emerald Graves, and we hear about it. A caged bird sings in Val Royeaux, and we know which elegy. We can share the exact poison a certain duchess used to flavour her husband's tea.
Mostly, I'm tired. It's a combination of putting out the constant small fires – petty squabbles – and also the Thing I Won't Talk About to all save Cullen.
My Mark.
It's been getting worse. After nearly a year and a half without giving any trouble, it's started up again with a dull, deep-rooted throbbing. Often, the afflicted limb goes numb. Green sparks crackle around the fingers. Then the pain burrows through the marrow, leaving me wide-eyed and sweating at night. I'd prayed for equilibrium of sorts, but evidently that's been in vain. I've scoured the library, have requested that Dorian inquire discreetly in Minrathous, but so far nothing reassuring has turned up.
Solas knows what to do. Damn him.
My imaginings furnish me with a dozen ways to die. In my nightmares, I become a rift, dissolving in Cullen's arms in an explosion of malignant green crackling fire that vomits up demons and worse. The world burns with me as every evil in the Fade pours out through the space in which my frail body used to exist.
Nearly every night it's the same – I scream myself awake and if it weren't for Cullen, I'd no doubt have inadvertently destroyed Skyhold with gouts of fire. He holds me, smooths the hair from my sweat-slick brow and whispers pretty lies that it's all going to be better.
Whatever the nobles throw at me during this council, it's nothing compared to the battle I wage within. Bring it on.
We have time to socialise beforehand, as people posture, measure up their opponents. The Great Game at its best, to see and be seen. Our smiles bare teeth. Hands unconsciously stray to belts where we would carry daggers.
Two years have wrought such changes in my friends. I wish I could say it's like old times, but it's not. The urgency that once drove us together has gone; this is a time for closure, for endings. For the happily ever afters. Yet seeing them again reminds me of why we fought so hard. Love. Loyalty. As tawdry as it sounds. No one can take away what we shared, and no matter where our paths lead us from here, we'll always trade knowing glances, a lingering clasp of a shoulder, a particular quirk of a smile. We know what we've been through. We've been tempered by dragon fire.
However, when Cullen asks me to marry him, I lose the strength to stand. It's like he's knocked all the breath out of me and I have to take a nearby seat. The galumphing fool of a mabari hound that's attached itself to him lays its great, slobbering head in my lap, and I ruffle its ears.
"Cullen…"
He's all bashful chantry boy, blushing, stammering apologies.
I can't, I want to tell him, but my world is disintegrating as fast as I want to hold onto it. Quicksilver.
How much time do we have for happiness?
I'm going to tear out your heart.
He wants me to marry him. My breath rattles in my throat, my world constricts, grows dark around the edges.
Two years have passed without word. If Solas truly cares about how real our fucking love is, he'd not have left me. There. The bare-faced truth of the matter sharper than any blade, burning hotter than red lyrium through veins.
Cullen isn't Solas, but I love him. That is true. A different kind of love, for sure, but love nonetheless.
How could I not love a man who's displayed such patience? Such loyalty? Who's been there to hold me when I simply can't any more? His quiet strength, his adoration burns brighter than the sun, and selfish that I am, I cannot turn my face from him. Without Cullen I am nothing, I have no reason to continue, and I bury that burden of self-loathing as deeply as possible.
Old hurts are sealed beneath thickened scar tissue, but they're still there. Old betrayals are easier to ignore when I can distract myself, pretend, and yet somewhere along the way, love has set down roots, grown into a crooked tree bearing bittersweet fruit.
Oh, he knows, he can see the shadows at war in my expression. Yet he places his hand over mine, squeezes lightly.
"I understand if you can't."
I blink at the tears that want to roll down my cheeks. The Inquisitor cannot be seen to give in to unseemly emotion in such a public place.
"Oh, Cullen. I will. I do." With those words comes release, my heart opens. "For whatever time we have left, I'll have you by my side. I choose you."
His smile is radiant and observers be damned, he crushes me to him so that I can lose myself in his embrace. He is my pillar, this human who's brought me a gift of unexpected sunshine at a time when I believed that all hope was lost to darkness.