Here's the second couple of extra memories I wrote but didn't fit into the overall story. The first one is a wee bit cheesy putting Lana in the middle of the Qunari invasion in Kirkwall. I'd thought maybe I should explain how she knew Cullen was in Kirkwall to recruit him, then I realized who cares. She knew because she had to. A wizard did it.
I wish I'd been able to get the second in the deeproads in somewhere but it was a bit too bittersweet to work. It's one of my favorite short scenes.
Enjoy!
9:34 Kirkwall
Lana's fingers raked across the grey skin of one of their Antams, fire bursting in their wake. The qunari stumbled back, shrieking about her being a sarabass as his skin enveloped in flames. The smell was best not spoken of in polite company. Their visit to Kirkwall began so well she forgot to check the forecast for chances of qunari invasions.
"Commander!" one of the wardens shouted, waving a hand at her. "We should find Stroud."
"Where is he?" Lana called back. They began surrounded by qunari but made quick work breaking their masses down one by one. The qunari expected an easy win, rushing down the stairs to face unarmed men, women, and children huddled in fear. They didn't anticipate an entire warden regiment meeting them head on.
"He's in Lowtown," the second warden answered. She'd only met them the day before, all part of the Free Marches order, all as nameless as the wind to her. You need to get better at remembering names, Lana.
"And where are we?"
"Darktown."
"For the love of the Maker," Lana shouted, firing an ice bolt at a qunari rushing towards them, "was the mapmaker in Kirkwall an imbecilic drunk? Who names part of their city 'insert-word' town?"
"Don't have an answer for that, Ser," the first one, the one with the red beard but no hair saluted at her. He'd been doing that all morning, and into the afternoon.
"How do we get to Lowtown?" Lana asked, shaking her head. Why couldn't this be easier? This should be easy, the hard part was yet to come.
"Um," the red beard pointed in the direction up the stairs where flames danced across the steps and more qunari slashed their way through Kirkwall's people.
"Please tell me there's another answer," Lana sighed. She itched to put a stop to this madness, but getting involved again would have her sanctioned even worse than before. Sure you stopped a blight, but did you have to put Alistair on the throne to do it? As if she had any say in what he did. You take the crown, I'll take the blame.
"I believe I have one, Ser," the young one said. He was eerily young, looked at best sixteen but spoke as if he was forty five. She'd assume elf if it weren't for the round ears. "Follow me," he ran them away from the steps up and further into this Darktown. Terrified citizens, innocents caught in the crossfires, shrieked past them, all begging for help. She wished she could grant it; burns, scrapes, and worse across the skin of the people trampling each other to escape. But healing these people would take time, would be a distraction, would put her and her party in danger. Lana turned away from them and hitched up her robes.
The young one turned the rest of their party to the right and deeper down a decrepit tunnel. Lana spun to follow when she heard a crack reverberating through the ceiling not near them, but above entire families scurrying to escape. Instinct took over and she parted the veil in record time, catching the falling beams - thicker than a man - in her fade fist. Debris and dust rained down on the fleeing people who all collapsed in terror at what they thought was their end. One by one, each glanced up, spotted the broken beams hanging above their heads as if by magic, and began to run away.
"My lady," a hand landed on her shoulder almost disrupting her spell. Lana dug in deep, biting on her lip to raise the beam. She needed to practice more on her lifting spells. "We should keep moving."
"I know," she grunted, struggling to set the beam carefully down when another broke from the crumbling ceiling. Dropping the first caused the ground to rumble below her feet, and Lana threw both hands up to pin the remaining ceiling above her. If she let it go, it'd kill Maker only knew how many people screaming in panic for someone to help them.
She kept one eye on the ceiling, buckling from her holding it in place, and another on the people. Go faster. Maker, go faster. I can't hold this forever.
Gritting into everything inside of her, Lana lifted the debris higher flattening the spell out to catch any falling bricks. Oh no. Her tongue ran dry as a templar fully clad in their skirt armor stepped towards her display and looked up. He pointed at it, and his head whipped around to find the mage responsible.
No, please. You can't be that stupid. Don't be that stupid.
By the grace of the Maker, and her lacking height, he couldn't spot her through the rampaging masses, but she felt him tugging against any mana in the area, trying to dampen down the only thing keeping them all alive. Why were they so stupid?!
When his feeble attempts at draining her failed, the templar lifted a hand to his mouth. She shouldn't have heard it over the screams of pain, the cries of terror, and the cracking of the ceiling about to crush them all. Something caused the cacophony to fade and clear as a bell, the man shouted, "Knight-Captain Cullen!"
Her head snapped from the warden tugging at her to give up and the fleeing refugees, to the templar jogging down the stairs. Blood stained the front of the Knight-Captain's armor, turning it a glittering crimson. He was coated in qunari gore, some of it streaked through his blonde curls and into exhaustion lines carved across his face. It was him. After all these years, to find him here of all places in the middle of this chaos. She hadn't spoken a word to him since the tower, since he... Lana felt herself slide back a step and the ceiling wobbled. Shaking off the panic in her heart, she lifted her hands higher and doubled the spell. No one was dying on her watch.
With a sword extended, Cullen paced through the crowd as another four templars joined him. He moved with a certainty she didn't remember from that awkward young man in the tower; this one knew his place in the world, reveled in it, and that scared her even more. First he glanced up at her work, then he whipped his head at the innocents still fleeing.
"Help these people," he said, "I'll find the apostate."
"Ser?" the first templar asked. They didn't care about the injured, they only hungered for mage flesh.
"Do as I said. Who knows how long that will remain," he jerked his head up towards the ceiling, and then he moved like a shark in the weeds hunting through the masses. Lana slid back further, trying to blend in while also keeping her hold. She had to stay in visual range or it'd all be lost.
"Commander," the young warden hissed, "we need to head into this escape hatch." He jerked his chin at some trap door on the floor where the last of the wardens scurried inside.
"You go, I'll handle this," she said. The Knight-Captain wasn't projecting mana clashes through the crowd - he was being careful, searching every face for obvious strain, every lifted hand for exactly what she was doing.
The young man shook his head, "I'll not leave you alone, ma'am."
"Very well," she wasn't about to argue, her plan was barely that. "Back up slowly, and keep a watch on the templar."
She needn't have instructed the last part, Lana couldn't keep her eyes off him. What she remembered was a soft spoken man with bristly hair that stuttered around her. His honey eyes would melt whenever she laughed, which in turn made her melt. What she saw was a predator carefully prodding through the underbrush for its victim. She didn't expect mercy in the middle of this qunari invasion, but the evident hatred turned her stomach. What did they do to him?
What did she do to him?
Lana backed up into a railing and her hands drooped, causing the ceiling to shake. At this distance, the slightest disturbance could send it all tumbling down. Screwing her eyes up tight, Lana glanced behind her to find the Waking Sea churning below. Home was just across it, safety, where she didn't need to fear the templars cutting her down. Not the time to be getting homesick. Nodding at the water below, she ordered the young man, "Can you get down there? Swipe a boat?"
"Of course, Ser, but..."
"Do it!" Lana ordered. He slotted his daggers upon his back and leapt over the banister to scurry down it as if he was a spider. If not an elf, then perhaps the kid bore goat in his blood. The crowds were her safety, but pinned tight to the edge she had nowhere to escape to when they thinned. Slowly, the Knight-Captain worked through every escaping face, tipping back hoods and inspecting hands to find her.
Sweat dripped off her brow, not from the magic straining her, but an inexplicable fear climbing up her legs. She'd never been afraid of the templars, knowing that if they were challenging her then they were dangerous, rogue. But what if he ordered her to stop? What if he threatened to cut her down if she didn't desist her magic? What if he killed her without a word? She couldn't attack him. No, of that Lana was certain.
Her eye rolled up to the ceiling and she spotted the templars ushering the last of the people across the gap. As the final heel slipped to the stair, Lana yanked back her magic. The blue light faded from the ceiling and a ton of rock and rotted wood smashed into the empty passageway. They were safe, she breathed as she dropped her hands.
A gasp echoed through the malestrom, and she glanced up from the backs of heads all craning to see the destruction she just saved them from. Cullen, framed by Darktown's refugees, stood dumbstruck watching her, his sword extended but the muscle limp, the wrist languid. His mouth opened and closed a few times in disbelief. She only met his eye for a heartbeat before leaning over the railing and falling towards the sea below. It'd have been an impressive splash if she didn't catch her own body on the way down with magic, slowing it to a gentle speed. The young warden had enough sense to hold the boat below her drop. Lana's legs jammed onto a wooden bench and she clattered backwards into the boat. Far above her, she watched as Cullen stuck his head over the railing to find her. He didn't curse at losing his target, or shake a fist in rage, only gripped tight to the banister and watched as they paddled the boat further away.
Maybe there was something of what she knew yet remaining.
"Ser, that was unwise," the young man spoke up, his arms straining as he clipped through the water with both oars. Lana scrabbled over the bench to sit beside him and grab the other.
"Perhaps, but I wasn't going to let people die right in front of me. Grey Warden code or no."
"The templars, they don't take kindly to apostates or any mages outside the circle," the man explained to a mage who'd been outside of one for four years and inside one for fifteen. "If he'd caught you, he could have killed you."
"I don't think so," Lana shook her head. She couldn't wipe away the image of those honey eyes stricken in shock, "He knew me. And I, I know him."
9:36 Deeproads
Struggling for a breath in the never ending heat of the deep roads, Lana broke away from the man below her. The man, the templar, the one she just rode like a wild bronto twice without question. What are you doing, Lana? You know what he is, what he could do to you with barely any probable cause. She berated herself, her eyes slipped shut tight. Lana's hands tried to slick off the sweat coating her chest, when a sweet moan broke below her.
Sweet Andraste. Cullen stretched out upon the abused bedroll, arms flexing behind his head to drag out every delicious muscle she wanted to lap her tongue over. There was no cockiness to his movements, no proud grin or sleazy eyes. A gratefulness washed across his face, the sweetest smile she'd ever seen knotting up his lips while his honey eyes focused on hers.
"You're probably exhausted," she said, struggling to drag her voice up out of its husky depths. "More than exhausted after, um, uh..." Lana broke into an exasperated grin at her own involvement when Cullen's fingers trailed up her hip. Maker, she'd missed masculine hands rolling across her skin, his own heat overpowering hers while those powerful palms massaged her old scars. He could have shaken her off, turned aside, certainly passed out after facing down so many darkspawn, on top of... But no, Cullen kept staring up at her in awe, his eyes rarely blinking as if he was scared she'd vanish the moment his lids slipped shut.
She'd feel foolish and put off by the near hero worship wafting across his face if she didn't feel the same, craving every inch of him in a way she hadn't for anyone in years. Why did he kiss her? Cullen knew she was a mage, had known for nearly a decade now. He had no reason to feel anything but contempt for her after what happened in Ferelden. And now she got him stuck in the deeproads, giving him an even greater reason to wish to have nothing to do with her. It seemed idiotic, impractical for this man who devoted his life to the order to impress himself upon a mage.
But by the Maker, she was so grateful he did. A few furtive glances risked when his vision was turned were all she thought she could afford on this trip - the same she'd dare back in the tower. Now, he lay fully naked below her, his strong hands kneading her curves with a gentleness she'd always seen in him. Cullen smiled, his thoughts turned internally, as his eyes drifted miles away.
He's a templar. You know that, Lana. You know his thoughts on mages in particular. Whatever you do, do not get attached. People outside the tower would hear stories of the hedonistic mages and often assume that sex was traded like sweet treats in circles. While it was nowhere near the eternal bacchanalias most non-mages assumed, Lana was a bit of an outlier. The others could enjoy experimenting with nearly no-strings attached sex and keep their hearts out of it, but not her. At first she'd assumed it was a young age or inexperience that kept her knotted up in this dream of love. Six years as the Warden Commander, knowing it would be improper for her to romance anyone who served below her she tried for the emotionless affair, but each one failed more spectacularly than the previous. She accepted she'd always need to find that connection beyond the physical. It seemed her curse that she was given the life a person with a carefree heart would love and yet she couldn't bring herself to want it, to enjoy it.
So why, Lana Amell - the cold one, the distant one, the studious one, the broken one - did you leap onto the first templar you found? Maybe it was the armor, the deeproads, how long it'd been since she'd touched a man aside from the hearty pat on the back. You know why, the tiny voice in the back of her head spoke up, trying to raise a thread she'd buried deep in her heart ages ago. No, that was foolish, beyond foolish. And it didn't matter either way. Nothing could come of this, nothing would grow of this beyond their time in the deeproads. She knew it in her soul, but Maker - Lana traced her fingers along Cullen's stomach, the muscles fluttering as he sighed at the contact - she didn't want to let him go.
"I should let you get some rest, for real this time," she said, her eyes bouncing away down the road as she tried to wad her hair back in her hands away from her damp neck.
"Lana..." Maker, the way he said her name, whispered it as if he breathed it a hundred times behind closed doors so no one knew, as if he had it tattooed upon his heart. She slid down to him, her hands rolling across the filthy stones of the roads to steady her face beside his. Tenderly, Cullen graced the back of his fingers across her cheek and she turned to it, a melodious sigh rolling out of her throat. He grabbed onto the back of her head, his hand burrowing into her hair, and he pulled her down for a kiss.
They'd tried almost every kind of kissing before: terrified and tentative, hot and wet begging for more, tender pecks, mouths smashing into skin to cover moans of pleasure escaping through their bodies. This was none of them. Parting his lips, Cullen's amber eyes screwed up so tight while he cupped his mouth around hers, as if he was trying to whisper his every thought, every hope, every dream, his soul through a kiss. Lana matched him in kind, her own lips softening with each press of his, welcoming him, needing him, wanting him - not just his body, but everything that he was.
Sighing, Cullen broke from her, the back of his head bouncing against the bedroll. The sting of his retreating stubble bit into her top lip. Absently, Lana ran her tongue over it causing him to smile wider. "Is there much work ahead remaining for us?" he asked.
"I, I am uncertain," she said, blinking rapidly to wipe away the emotion brimming in her veins. Business. They were here on a job, an important one to fix her mistake. And you bedded him, Lana. Why? "If we're lucky we'll catch White soon," she assured the naked man still pinned below her thighs.
"Ah," he swallowed, his delectable adam's apple bobbing, but no emotion crossed his face. "Do you require me to help protect against any, um, things in the deeproads?"
She smiled at the offer, and couldn't stop herself from parting her fingers across his forehead. Sticky with sweat and the grime of the roads, she didn't care. Somehow it made him even more handsome; he bore it because of her, to help her when he didn't have to. "I can handle it myself, I assure you. If there are any darkspawn attacks, I promise I will rouse you."
Cullen's flushed lips broke as if he was about to argue, when he sighed and bobbed his head. "You are the warden here. I'll attempt to rest for a few hours before we resume."
"Good," Lana agreed. A part of her, the section of her soul she thought withered away after the landsmeet, wanted her to stay straddling Cullen until, until she was physically unable to. She didn't want to leave his warmth, his toned and tempting body. But the rest of her knew her place and her duty. Sliding over to her exhausted thigh, Lana broke away from him to land naked ass first into the dirt.
"Lana, I..." Cullen struggled up to his elbows. He reached over to caress her knee as she sat up reaching for her abandoned clothing.
While unknotting her robe's belt, she turned to him, expectant. "Yes?"
"I've never, I mean, I-I, uh, don't know what to say in this situation."
"Neither do I," she said, "it's new territory for me as well. Rest and...just rest."
Satisfied that he'd done his chivalrous duty, the templar dressed quickly in his underarmor and curled up on the bedroll. Lana watched him slumber, his hands pressed together as if in prayer under his head, while those sandy curls plastered to his sweaty forehead. She couldn't stop swiping them away from his skin to fluff back up, her fingers rolling through his coiled hair. By the Maker, when he stirred in his innocent sleep something inside of her did as well. Not the mindless lust of before, but something far more terrifying in her heart.
If she didn't get away from him and the Free Marches soon, she may not be able to give him up at all.