Note: Non specific reference to dub-con

29 August

Cullen stared into the campfire without seeing the flames.

Fel, fed and at least partially tidied, had fallen asleep curled around her kitten. Stanton had stayed awake a little longer, struggling to keep his eyes open and take part in the quiet conversation between the Chargers. Dalish was on watch, to be relieved later by Krem, and Cullen himself could rest a little knowing their safety was seen to by experienced, competent hands.

Still, he was reluctant to lie down. The dreams rarely bothered him these days, but it had been a long time since he had been used to falling asleep without hearing Killeen's breath a soft whisper in the dark: first from the other side of the tent, or the room, and recently and wonderfully, from just beside him as she lay against his shoulder.

It seemed impossible that it had only been since Haven that she had been by his side through the long nights — that they had known each other for years, had been friends, comrades-in-arms of a sort, that she had been in love with him for so long and yet they had never, even for a moment, crossed the line into the tender intimacy they now shared.

Not even come close … except, perhaps, once —

He's looking for Killeen.

He's looking for her to apologise, although he's sure he's not sorry to have saved her life — but she's angry with him, utterly furious, and he finds he can't contemplate the night of dreams ahead of him knowing that.

She had nearly died. She could die, on any given day — or he could.

He doesn't want that to happen while she's angry with him.

She's not at the Keep. One of the Guard tells him she's gone out for a drink, names a tavern in Lowtown, and Cullen heads in that direction. The hour has grown late, and he watches the shadows in the alleys he passes, hopes Killeen is not drinking alone and that at least one of her companions has the sense to remain sober.

It's because he's watching those shadows that he sees her, sitting propped against the wall.

"Killeen?" he asks softly, and she grunts an affirmative. He approaches carefully, making sure the alley is otherwise empty, and kneels beside her. "Are you hurt?"

"Drunk," she says succinctly.

"You can't stay here." He puts a hand under her elbow, urges her to her feet. "I'll walk you back to the Keep."

"Can't," Killeen says, and makes a grab for her breeches as they start to slide down. "I'll get 'nother chit. Drunk and disorber - orderly. That'll make two an' they'll dock me."

Cullen props her against the wall and, since she doesn't seem able to do it herself, pulls her trousers back up. He assumes she's decided to piss in the alley until he catches the distinctive scent of semen. The realisation that he's found her too late clutches at his heart. Kirkwall is no place for anyone to be alone and incapable of self-defence, but for women there are a greater number of hazards.

I should have come looking sooner, he berates himself. I saw she was upset, I know what she's like when she is — I should have come sooner.

I should have never let her out of my sight.

He fastens her belt, and his voice is calm as he asks,"Are you all right? Did he — are you injured?" At her derisive snort, he goes on, "Can you describe him?"

"Why, in case I want to see him again?" she asks. "Not likely." She raises her hand, waggles her little finger at him, and starts laughing.

Not as bad as he'd feared, then — some opportunistic bastard taking advantage of her inebriation, but not a forceful attack. If she'll still find the memory funny when she sobers up, he has no idea, but at least for the moment she's not distressed.

Doesn't know what he'd say to her if she was, except that it would be quite possibly be more than he should.

"Come on," he says, arm around her waist to steady her.

"Told you," she says, "can't go back."

"I'm not taking you to the Keep," Cullen tells her. "I'm taking you to the Gallows."

Is taken completely off guard when she twists sharply out of his grip, shoves him and backs away. "I'm not a mage!" she says, voice shaking. "Not a mage!"

He reaches for her again as she wavers on her feet. "Killeen —"

She slaps his hand away hard enough to bruise. "Not a mage!" she says again, back to the wall, and when he moves closer, tries to punch him in the face.

Cullen grabs her wrist as much by instinct as intent, blocks a blow from her other hand and yanks her close, pinning her arms to her side. Killeen struggles desperately, struggles as if she's fighting for her life, and Maker, Cullen knows the Gallows has no sweet reputation but he's shocked to realise the name has come to carry such a weight of terror.

"I know you're not a mage," he says. "I'm not taking you to the Circle. Calm down, Killeen. I know you're not a mage. I'm taking you to the Templar quarters where you can sleep this off somewhere safe."

Her struggles lessen, cease. "Not a mage," she whispers.

"I know. It's all right."

It's no easy task to get her to the Gallows, but he manages it, helps her into his room and lowers her onto the bed. It's hardly regulation for him to have a woman here, but he's in favour with Meredith and is confident the Knight-Commander will listen to his explanation should Killeen's presence be discovered.

He himself will spend the night on the floor.

Killeen rolls over and falls asleep without a word.

Cullen strips his armour and sets it on the stand, although it'll have to go to the armoury tomorrow to have the scorch marks dealt with. The day has left him rank with sweat and he pulls off his shirt, pours water from the jug into the washbasin.

Behind him, he hears Killeen gasp. "Your back," she says softly.

It hurts, he knows that, turns to peer over his shoulder and catches a glimpse of purpling bruise. "We're magic resistant, not magic immune," he says. "It'll mend." He pauses, washcloth in hand, turns to face her. "So long as you don't go throwing yourself on any more apostates."

He hears the anger in his voice too late, as Killeen winces a little. "I didn't know you were so close. There wasn't time …" Her tone is unmistakably an apology, and for good measure she adds, "I'm sorry."

"Surely by now you know what a mage can do," Cullen says, sponging himself quickly. "You're no green recruit."

"I said I was sorry," she says, a little edge to her voice. "And I didn't ask you to throw yourself in the way, Cullen. You have to take some responsibility for those bruises yourself."

He tosses the cloth back into the basin and grabs a clean shirt. "Maker's breath, Killeen, if you think I care about bruises — you were very nearly killed. Do not do it again."

"Oh, yes, ser," Killeen snaps. "You're not my commanding officer."

"If I were your commanding officer you'd be on latrine duty for a month," Cullen says. "Since, instead, I'm your friend —" The word comes out without him thinking about it, but it feels right. He's harbouring her in his quarters to evade a well-deserved disciplinary chit, after all, and that seems to him to be very much the sort of things friends would do for each other — if he had any. "All I can do is ask you. Use a little sense. I know you have some."

"If you will," she says, and after a moment he nods.

"Now get some sleep," he tells her. He has a bad night ahead of him, he can tell, the fight today and his injuries have the lyrium from his last dose running very low, the song the barest murmur in his blood. The dose he should have taken yesterday is in his drawer, and Cullen knows he should take it — but he's oddly reluctant to, in front of Killeen. He doesn't know just how it hits him — none of them do — but he's seen other Templars whose response is humiliatingly intense, always makes sure to take his dose alone in case he's one of them.

And if he is, he absolutely does not want Killeen to see him, eyes glazed, muscles twitching as he fights to master the strength singing through his veins, to contain a power greater and older than time itself within the bounds of his mortal flesh.

Instead he makes up a pallet on the floor and lies down, trying to find a position that doesn't involve the bruises on his back being in contact with the floor. For a while, the discomfort is sufficient to enable him to fight sleep, but eventually his eyes close and —

It's not the worst of his dreams, this one — not one of the ones that tormented him almost to madness in the first year after Kinloch's Circle fell.

It's only the one where all his friends are killed in front of him while he's powerless to do anything but watch and scream.

"Cullen, help me," Simeon sobs, "Cullen, help, Maker, help me! Help me!"

And he can't, can't help, can't stop it, can't even die with them —

A different voice, low and even. "Cullen. Wake up. You're dreaming."

He opens his eyes to his own quarters in the Gallows, to the present, to Killeen Hanmount leaning over him, hand on his shoulder.

"Are you awake?" she asks, and Cullen nods, not trusting his voice. His throat aches as if he's been screaming in his sleep and he suspects that in fact he has been. "Do you have any wine?"

He doesn't want wine, he wants lyrium, wants it urgently, wants it now. Doesn't tell her that, nods again, and points to the shelves behind his desk.

She pours two goblets, waters both, and comes back to sit cross-legged on the floor beside him, putting one of the goblets in his hand. "This'll help," she says matter-of-factly. "Spiced is better, but this will help."

Cullen sips. "Wine is your solution to many things, it seems."

"Only things I can't stick with a sword," Killeen says. "And I prefer beer. No, it's not the alcohol. It's the taste. Ever notice how things in dreams don't have a taste? A smell, sometimes, but never a taste." She sips her own wine. "Once your tongue knows you're awake, the rest of you tends to follow." Cullen raises an eyebrow and she gives him a level look. "Do you think you're the only one who gets bad dreams? I share a room with five other sergeants. Before that I shared a barracks with twenty recruits. Everyone has a bad night, sooner or later."

Not like mine, he wants to say, almost does say. Sweat breaks out on his forehead as he realises how close he's come to telling her — telling her things that will change the way she looks at him forever.

Killeen rises easily, gracefully, to her feet, fetches the cloth from the washbasin and returns to kneel beside him. She leans towards him, already closer than he can usually tolerate people to be without his armour, and wipes his face.

Perhaps because it's the cloth touching him, not her hand, he finds he can bear it. It's almost pleasant.

It's oddly insufficient.

"You look so tired, these days," she says softly, and she is close, too close, not close enough — the wine, watered as it is, is making his head spin and he finds himself thinking that in another moment she will — he will — his imagination stops, there, at what he or she would do, he only knows that he is so tired, has been so tired for so long, and if he — if she —

"Try to get some sleep," she says, leaning back, and the moment is gone.

Now, with hindsight, Cullen realised that it had not been the product of his sleep-deprived imagination, that feeling that Killeen had been a breath away from … from something he had not, then, been able to imagine past the horrors of his history and the cool blue song of lyrium in his veins. He wondered what would have happened had he reached for her, had she leaned closer to him —

It would have been a disaster. Maker, he'd barely been able to endure another's touch in those days without thinking of the worst, last days in Kinloch. Would have flinched from her, or worse — and would have dragged her with him through the worst of his nightmares when he had finally decided to free himself, once and for all, from the chains of lyrium.

He could see, now, that she had loved him then, had wanted him — could see too, how thickly the dulling blanket of his addiction had lain over everything he could have, would have, felt.

They knew, he thought, old anger, old grief. They knew what it would do to us because it had already happened to them.

"Cullen," Mia said softly from behind him. "Are you all right?"

He turned and gave her a reassuring smile. "Thinking a few things over."

She drew her cloak more tightly around her and came to join him by the fire. "When they're little, they make your arms ache," she said. "When they're older, they make your heart ache." At his look of incomprehension, she smiled. "Children, Ser Bear. Children."

Cullen rubbed the back of his neck. "We'll return Fel to her family," he said, feeling himself blush a little at the nickname.

"Aye, they must be half-mad with fear for her," Mia said. "But it wasn't them I was thinking of. You're fond of her."

"I told you, she's not mine," Cullen said.

"I know," Mia said. "Children have a way of working their way into your heart, though, Cullen, even without ties of blood."

Cullen paused, looking into the fire. "I hope so," he said at last. "I hope you're right."