Chapter 2: Find
Cullen woke with his head on a pillow feeling warmer than he should have for having been passed out on the forest floor all night. It was when he tried to sit up, cradling his still aching head, that he sensed the protection glyph faintly glowing beneath him. It fizzled away when he moved, the faint breath of Evelyn's magic disappearing with it. Evelyn's old magic. Not the blood-fueled pain that hurled him into a tree last night.
She's still in there somewhere. If she took the time to do all this for him even after throwing him out on his arse, then the woman who was Evelyn Trevelyan was not lost to them, to him, just yet.
He pulled away the worn blanket that she'd also draped over him and tested his limbs. Nothing seemed injured unless she'd healed him while he slept as well. It hurt him to think that she made sure he was cared for when she was obviously the one who needed the attention. It hurt him more to think that while he and the rest of their friends had been reaping the benefits of Evelyn's sacrifices, starting new lives and fulfilling new goals, she had been silently collapsing into whoever that person was he met last night.
Did she feel discarded? Used? Alone? Why didn't she reach out to him? To any of them?
Most of all it hurt him that he dared to feel his own hurt over her private pain.
Nothing was helping her less, however, than him sitting in the dirt with his regrets. Cullen rose, dusted himself off and walked back towards Evelyn's front door. When he saw it wide open and dark inside despite the now rapidly rising sun, he knew what he would find.
He sighed at the empty dwelling. She had left some time in the night. The sparse furnishings were all that remained in the small shack, if ever there any been much of anything else there. Whatever belongings Evelyn might have had in her possession, she'd taken. The only things left were the dried stain of her blood next to the bed and a knife with its handle wedged into the gap between the slats of a small nightstand.
Cullen closed his eyes and tried to steady his breathing. An image of Evelyn drawing her good wrist along the propped up blade forced its way into his head. He wondered what she was doing last night, or what she had meant to do, just lying in bed bleeding. She certainly hadn't looked like a person intent on summoning a demon and yet even as he ran his fingers along the crusted blood on the knife he could feel the dark pull of powers that he never thought he would feel in association with Andraste's Herald.
He still believed her to be that. The Herald. He believed it from the moment they first spoke. He never told her that though. Perhaps he should have. She always said she wasn't comfortable with the moniker despite living up to it so selflessly time and again, so he'd never actually told her.
Cullen pulled the knife with Evelyn's blood from the table and sheathed it in his boot. He turned away from the miserable remnants of the previous night and left, determined to find her. It had been years since he tracked a mage and without lyrium or a proper phylactery he would be little better at it than if he was no Templar at all but he had to try.
It wasn't long before he realized with both sadness and relief that the hum of her blood and his Templar senses were falling into synchrony. He could feel her, and though it was faint, his body moved with it and he knew he could find his way to her.
He wished it wasn't like this. His first taste of her essence was from a distance and it wasn't invited. Would she forgive him? Maker, he imagined there was more he should beg forgiveness for than just this.
How could he have let this happen? What a fool he'd been, selfishly thinking he had all the time in the world to mull over his own indecision and when he was ready a perfect little Evelyn would just be waiting for him with open arms. He winced when he remembered she only had one arm left.
The verdant forest seemed to shrink away from him and its vibrant colors were replaced by the black shadows of his thoughts. She'd succeeded at every turn for all of them and in return they had failed her.
His horse was waiting for him in the little village and he set out immediately. On foot there was only so far she could have gone. He followed the low murmur of her magic as it called to him from afar. He even closed his eyes, letting his horse judge their steps as he used his senses to guide them to her.
He rode all morning and all afternoon stopping only to rest his mount. He found her as the sun was setting. She was sitting on a small hill next to a welcoming fire in the approaching chill of evening. A cloak was wrapped around her and its cowl hung low hiding her face, but he knew it was her. He tied his horse to a tree and walked over to her but didn't speak.
"You're more persistent than Dorian." She didn't bother to turn towards him, her voice still tired and flat. "What do you want, Cullen?"
He wanted to pick her up, touch her, shake her, hold her. He wanted to yell his anger and whisper his penance in her ear. He wanted to say so many things, but instead he decided to think back. Cullen searched his fractured memories of that day he'd felt his worst, when the withdrawals had pushed him to the edge, when he tried to talk Cassandra into removing him as the Inquisition's Commander. He needed to remember what Evelyn had said to him that day when he thought the only thing there was left in life to do was to disappear into silent obscurity and let the pain win.
"What do you want, Evelyn?"
That day, she hadn't so much given him a choice but made him see that he had a choice to make. To give in or to persevere. He had nothing to offer her but what she had offered him back then. Self-determination and the support of a friend.
She didn't answer him right away. She didn't even answer him for hours. He sat next to her by the fire for a while. Then he set up a small tent he'd brought along with his supplies. He got more wood for the fire and built it up as the moons rose. He sat next to her again.
"I want to sleep, Cullen."
He barely heard the words. The softest whisper.
"I'm...tired." Louder this time, but only for the choke of a weak sob at the end.
"Have you slept?" He knew that wasn't the only kind of 'tired' she was talking about, but it was a start.
"I can't sleep anymore. It was hard before, since the Conclave even, but now…" She lifted her head back to look up at the stars in the sky. Her hood fell and revealed her face. More gaunt than he remembered, but still beautiful to him in the moonlight. Her eyes were swollen and her cheeks were streaked with tears she didn't allow him to hear fall.
He didn't let himself reach out to her, even though every fiber of his being down to the raw core of his soul wanted to take her in his arms. She wasn't ready yet. He knew that feeling too. She had respected his pain. It was his turn to respect hers.
"What you saw last night...the...the blood. It helps sometimes. It's not normal sleep. Fucking Maker, it's blood magic, how could it be fucking normal, but still, it's something. I don't dream. I don't think I know what the Fade feels like anymore." She laughed then. Bitter. Exhausted. "Maybe that's a good thing."
"You've been using blood magic to help you sleep?" He tried to keep his voice as neutral as possible. His shock, he stifled. His anger, he quelled. His sympathy, he put aside for now. For now, he just needed to keep her talking.
"Yes." Was her only reply. Not a challenge, not an apology, not a justification. Just the truth. "Will you make me tranquil?"
Cullen was shocked again, this time at the sincerity in that question. They both knew what his answer would be, and yet, there was a tiny thread of an actual request in that terrible entreaty.
He knew he should say something now, but nothing he could think of seemed enough. He wanted to be her comfort and her solace, as she had always been for him, but he found himself lacking somehow. He wanted to drag her away back to his farm, battle back her demons, force her suffering away, pull her into the light and make her whole again. His frantic desires for her well-being battled with the more tempered knowledge that she needed to take this first step on her own.
"No, Evelyn." He put as much steel and finality into his words as he could. This was one door he had no reservations about slamming shut for her. She had to choose to climb upwards herself, but he would let her spiral downwards no further than this.
When she started crying this time he heard her and his heart soared that she let him hear. She sat, huddled, looking small and tired and she wept out into the open night. He didn't try to stop her, but he did allow himself to cover her only hand with his own.