"So tell me honestly, Cullen. Were you pressured into this?"

Mia was perched on the edge of his desk, staring at him frankly with those sharp brown eyes. For all their years apart, she had hardly changed. The laugh-lines around her mouth were slightly deeper and there were vague creases at the corners of her eyes, but otherwise she looked precisely as she had on his last visit home before he'd left Ferelden.

He'd known what was coming the moment she'd asked to see his office.

"No," he said.

She shook her head, sending her curly hair bouncing. "Because by my calculations…"

"No." He interrupted her before she continued with the sentence. "I mean, yes… your calculations are correct but that's not..." He swallowed. This was the exact conversation he'd been afraid of, the one Leliana had warned him about. He drew a deep breath and walked over to the window. Maybe it would be easier if he was staring out at the snowy landscape and not at his elder sister.

"When I was assigned to Kinloch Hold, she was there. She was one of my charges."

"Oooh," Mia said suggestively.

"It wasn't like that."

"I'm only teasing."

"Kindly stop. This is… this is difficult enough as it is." He ran a hand through his hair. Where to start? "I developed inappropriate feelings for her, but I never would have acted on them. I was trained to believe such relationships could not exist."

"That's when you were with that Templar girl?"

He tensed. That Templar girl… his first. He tried not to think of her. When he did, it was as part of the nightmares. He'd forgotten he'd mentioned her in his letters. That had been back when he'd been better at writing. Before…

"It was before I was with Annlise," he told his sister. And during, and after. The thing with Annlise had been brief and intense. Not explicitly forbidden but certainly frowned upon. They'd kept it quiet and their inevitable breakup had been mutual. He'd been too focused on training, on his work. She had wanted more than he could give. Yet even so many years later, he couldn't think about her without feeling a hollow pain in his chest.

"So you had a crush on her?" Mia prompted, steering his thoughts back to Solana.

"I… yes." He scratched the back of his neck. "When the Circle... she saved my life. But I… I couldn't even look at her. She was a mage. I didn't see her again for a decade. I was… troubled."

"You never did tell me what happened there?" Mia asked with surprising gentleness.

He shook his head. "I'd rather not speak of it, even now. Suffice it to say a large number of mages took to blood magic and staged an attack. I was… not the same after that. I didn't write because I couldn't. I couldn't put into words everything that had happened."

He dared to look at her. She didn't seem angry. Her eyes were full of sympathy.

"I encountered Solana again only recently. She was concerned about the Breach." And Wardens practising blood magic, but no need to go into that. "She joined the Inquisition. I was surprised to find my feelings for her unchanged, despite the years apart. Every moment I spent with her, the feelings grew. She is incredible. She is a force of nature. All the stories they tell about her are true. I wanted to marry her the moment she admitted she shared my feelings." He didn't mention how he'd asked her to move in with him two days later, but he felt himself colouring at the thought. "The pregnancy was unintentional, but is not unwelcome."

Mia was staring at him.

"What?"

She shook her head and smiled. "Look at you, having feelings."

He stiffened and she laughed, hopping off the desk. "I'm sorry to pry, Cullen. I know how uncomfortable it makes you. I just wasn't sure, I mean you don't seem particularly close."

Trust Mia to always put things plainly.

"How do we not seem close?" he asked defensively.

"I don't know. Body language. I suppose public displays of affection are unlike you."

"They're not." The words came out before he could stop them. He closed his eyes. Maker's Breath. "It's been a difficult month."

When Mia didn't say anything he opened his eyes to find her looking at him with eyebrows raised. He knew she wanted him to say more, but how did he begin to give voice to feelings he didn't even like admitting to himself?

"I shouldn't say." He reasoned he wasn't being cowardly, it really was none of her business.

Mia came closer. "Nonsense."

"Mia…"

"I'm your big sister. If you're having trouble, I want to know of it."

"I wouldn't say it's trouble precisely."

He was still smarting about Anders. But when he'd seen Solana in the courtyard... the way she'd looked at him… oh, Maker, the look in her eyes. Like she was holding back tears. He'd been too harsh. He was too brash. He couldn't communicate properly. That added to how distanced he'd been from her recently…

"I'm just, not very good at marriage…" he said. "She deserves better."

Mia snorted. "Where in the Void is that coming from?"

"You know me." He gestured to the scrolls and books littered across his desk.

"I do," she said. "My serious brother, always working hard, never opening up. But if she didn't know that when she married you then she's the fool."

"Don't say that. She's not."

"If she's not a fool, then she knows and accepts who you are."

This had been a mistake. "It's one thing to accept something on an intellectual level. It's quite another to live with it."

"Cullen, before you go any further, I'd like to point out that she's pregnant."

"I'm aware of that, thank you."

"Pregnant women are notoriously irrational. If she's said anything…"

"She hasn't."

"So where are you getting this from?"

He growled and paced across the room. He didn't want to have this conversation. "We argue. A great deal. Recently it feels as though I'm either working or arguing."

"How very familiar." He glared at her and she chuckled. "I'm not talking about you. Although those last few months you were at home… I'm talking about marriage. Cullen, can I be honest with you?"

"You've never felt the need to ask my permission before."

"Funny." She closed the space between them and put a hand on his arm. "You don't let people in. You remember that time Rogir Fickly from the farm across the way bullied you? And we all knew something was wrong. You came home with a black eye for Andraste's sake. But you wouldn't tell us and you wouldn't let us help? And you needed to deal with him yourself?"

"I don't see what the…"

"My point is that marriage isn't like that. You can't shut her out the way you shut out everyone else. You have to let her in. And let me tell you, it's not easy. Many a time it feels like having a stone in your shoe. It rubs at all the raw parts parts of you. Things were the same in our first months together too."

"Really?" That surprised him. Mia had always been both warm and direct, the things that he struggled to be. The things that he thought a good marriage required.

"Oh, yes. It takes an adjustment period to get used to having someone so close, to negotiate how your two separate lives become one. And if the stories about Solana are true, as you say, then she's as fiercely independent as you are, dear brother."

"That's true," he admitted freely.

"And you've been living in your own head so long you don't know the first thing about closeness."

"That is not true. We're close."

"Are you?"

He shifted uncomfortably. "I don't think I should be disclosing that -"

She rolled her eyes. "I'm not talking about what you get up to in the bed chamber. I'm talking about sitting down with her and telling her you're unhappy."

"I'm not unhappy."

"You seem unhappy to me."

"I'm fine. I'm married to the Hero of Ferelden. I have a command I could only have dreamed of as a boy. I have the opportunity to make a difference, daily, to the lives of hundreds of people. I'm happy, Mia."

"If you say so."

"Don't do that. You always do that."

She smirked.

"And if I was unhappy it would be my own doing. I refuse to give the Inquisition less than my best. We're at war."

"Don't explain it to me," she held up her hand defensively.

"It's the timing that's all wrong," he continued, regardless. "I should be looking after her, seeing to her needs. But the lives of so many people are in my hands. I can't neglect my duties."

"I understand," Mia said.

"I'm going to have to leave her," he blurted.

Mia's eyes grew large. "What? Don't you think that's a little…"

He covered his face with his hand. "We're marching in a couple of weeks. I don't know when I'll be back."

"I see."

"For all I know, we could be fighting for months."

"Have you told her?"

"Not explicitly, no. But she's aware."

He paced the room again.

"I'm frightened, Mia." He couldn't imagine admitting that to anyone else. "It's not just her condition. It's… she makes me… vulnerable. I don't know how else to say it. When I've gone into battle before… I've never had someone waiting for me. I don't want what I feel for her, for our child, to compromise my ability to lead. Sometimes I have to make tough calls, I have to take risks. How can I do that knowing she's here? Knowing what it will do to her if anything happens… she lost her first love to war. I can't put her through that again."

He drew a deep breath. His words hung in the room and he was immediately ashamed of them. His sister touched his shoulder, but she didn't say anything.

"There's more. A… person from my past arrived here this morning. I don't trust him. He won't be coming to battle because our enemy might be able to turn him against us." All of the Wardens were staying this time. It had already been decided. After what Hawke said Corypheus could do to them…

"He'll be here, with her," he told his sister.

"We could take her back to South Reach?" Mia offered a small smile.

"You can ask, but she would never agree to it. She wants to be where she can make a difference."

"How about we knock her out and kidnap her?" Mia suggested. Cullen glared at her. "You should tell her these fears," she said seriously.

He nodded. Arguing with Mia was pointless. But he knew he wouldn't. Solana had enough to worry about without him making his fears hers. Rather he not put into her head the idea that he might not return, or that Anders might lose control again.

Hawke closed the door behind him and let out a breath. All in all that had gone better than he could have hoped.

For one thing, the man he loved was still breathing and had not been cleaved in half by the overprotective Commander. For another, Justice hadn't chosen to make an appearance.

Anders stood outlined by the narrow window of Hawke's small quarters. He was staring out at the Frostbacks, but when he heard the door click shut he turned. The cocky confidence of the last hour was gone. Now he looked at Hawke with large eyes, fretful as a pup caught peeing on a rug.

"So why are you really here?" Hawke asked, trying to keep all emotion from his voice.

Anders had shown up at his quarters before sunrise. How he'd gotten into the fortress, Hawke was hesitant to ask. Anders' face had been nervous and hopeful as he'd announced "surprise" through the crack in the door. Hawke had taken him straight to the Inquisitor. Probably not the greeting he'd been hoping for.

Now those large honey-coloured eyes met Hawke's. "I missed you."

Hawke's breath caught. It took everything in him not to cross the room and simply take the man in his arms again. How many of these cold nights had they ached for him? He restrained himself.

"These are good people, Anders. I don't want anyone getting hurt."

Anders wrapped his arms around himself and pouted. "I have no intention of hurting anyone."

"You don't, but what about our friend?"

"From your letters, I was under the impression that the Inquisition stood for justice. It's taken in the mages, hasn't it?"

Hawke sighed and sank down onto the bed. An uneasy silence fell between them, the kind that had become all too common in the past four years.

"Did you really mean it?" Anders asked at length. At Hawke's questioning look, he elaborated. "Did you mean what you said to the council, that if they threw me out you'd go too?"

"Of course I did."

Anders' lips fell open as his brows drew together. It was a familiar look. Hawke's love had always confused him. "I wasn't sure you still…"

Hawke waited, but Anders didn't finish the sentence.

"You should have told me you were coming," Hawke said when he was certain Anders wasn't going to say more. "I could have smoothed the way for you."

Anders finally sat beside him. "You would have told me not to."

"That too."

"And if you explicitly told me not to, I couldn't go against that."

Hawke flopped backwards onto the bed. "You make me sound like I'm your handler."

Some days it did feel like that. He wondered if Anders had always shown poor judgement or if that could also be attributed to his possession.

Anders lay down beside him, curled on his side facing Hawke. "You'd rather I wasn't here."

"I didn't say that."

"I make things complicated for you. I'm sorry. I didn't think this through."

He never did. With another sigh, Hawke reached over to brush a stray hair from Anders's face. This resulted in a flicker of a smile. It also meant Hawke didn't have to answer, didn't have to verbally address why he wasn't happier to see his love.

Because the man he loved scared him.

He wished he could go back to the days before the chantry explosion, to the blind and innocent trust. He'd thought that he'd been protecting Anders, that he'd been coaching him through the emotions tearing him apart. When Anders had woken drenched in cold sweat, trembling with tears for those he'd lost to Templars and to the darkspawn, Hawke had held him and whispered against his ear and soothed him with kisses. When Anders had arrived at the mansion in the early hours, pacing the floor and pulling at his hair, Hawke had wrapped him in warmth and love and reassurances. He'd helped Anders free mages destined for Tranquility, he'd campaigned at the highest levels for mage rights, he'd even written to the White Spire reporting the harsh conditions those in the Kirkwall Circle were expected to live under. He'd thought that had been enough.

Right up until the moment that building had gone up, all those people had died, he'd thought he'd done enough.

Being with Anders had once filled his entire being with warmth. Somehow this man who'd dedicated his life to helping the unfortunate, who delivered babies and rescued innocents, who had experienced so much… somehow he loved Hawke. But now when Hawke looked into his eyes something cold always shuddered in his stomach.