Chapter 4: Dream
Cullen walked through the field behind his farmhouse. Pup was barking happily at his side begging for a game of fetch. The sound of his playfulness was muffled, however, and the normally bright colors of the Ferelden countryside were muted. He looked up to the sky and saw the Black City far in the distance.
He was dreaming. He still had nightmares, though less frequently and they were easier to deal with nowadays. The scene of his new home was not something he'd dreamt of before. He absently threw the ball out in a random direction and Pup ran after it. He tried to remember what he'd been doing before he fell asleep.
Evelyn.
He'd been trying to comfort Evelyn. The events of the day rushed back in on him. Evelyn silent. Evelyn crying. Evelyn leaning against him more from exhaustion than by choice and eventually falling asleep on his shoulder. He'd been loath to disturb her, even as uncomfortable as she must have been, lest his smallest movement deny her any rest she could get that didn't involve spilling her own blood. So he sat still, propping her up with his own body and eventually he too must have succumbed to sleep.
Pup came back but he didn't have the ball. In his teeth he held a piece of ribbon. It was faded blue and frayed at the edges. He took it from the dog and held it, studied it and ran it through his fingers. He knew this ribbon. It was the one Evelyn always wore in her hair. He remembered she used to twist the ends of it in her fingers when they stood around the war table at Skyhold arguing or planning. It was the same color as her eyes. He'd spent countless meetings trying not to be distracted by those eyes and the movement of her fingers as they twirled around the ribbon and in her hair. He used to pray that Leliana and Josephine wouldn't notice him staring at her instead of the maps and markers.
"Stay." Cullen ordered the Mabari and it complied, sitting down, content to await its next command. He walked forward, clutching the ribbon in his fist and scanned the area. At the edge of his property, where the weeds swayed with the breeze his eye caught sight of something wispy and dark blowing away on that same wind. He quickened his steps.
It was hair. Dancing about in every direction, long strands, short strands, single strands and handfuls. He ran.
When he reached where it was all coming from he saw Evelyn sitting calmly, nearly hidden by the tall grass. She stared with an empty gaze ahead and didn't acknowledge him at first. In her hand she held a dagger and her head was a mess. She'd nicked her scalp in a few places and blood trickled down from the small cuts. She'd shorn her locks clean away in some spots and in others she'd been less successful.
He was still processing the sight before him when she spoke.
"Did I fall asleep?" She asked. "I can't remember the last time I just...fell asleep."
"Evelyn...what…?" Cullen looked around as if some clue would appear to explain this dream. When he found nothing he looked back down at her, unsure of what to do or say.
"I'm sorry," she said, "I didn't mean to pull you into a dream."
Cullen's head started to spin and he felt all the breath leave his lungs as he put the pieces together, not really wanting to believe them.
"Evelyn," he said carefully, "is this your dream? How…" he choked on the words but forced them out. "How do you know what my farm looks like? Were you…were you here?"
She didn't answer. She just stared at nothing.
He crouched down beside her and snatched the dagger from her hands with an urgency he couldn't explain even to himself. "Evelyn. Tell me."
"Why?" She closed her eyes. "Will knowing I came here change anything? And before you bother to respond the answer is no, Cullen, it won't." She opened her eyes again and this time there was a fire of emotion in them. She kept talking. "It won't change anything. Nothing changes anything. So what does it matter?"
"You matter, Evelyn." His words sounded small and not enough to combat her assertion of the opposite.
"Do I? I matter as far as I can give. As much as I can be used for a purpose. I was as strong as I needed to be for a very long time, but I don't need to be strong anymore. Frankly, I'm sick of it and I don't have to explain anything to you or anyone else." Petulant now, she drew up her knees and hugged them close to her chest, closing him out with her body language.
This was the most she'd yet spoken to him, her tongue perhaps loosened by the hidden unreality of the Fade, saying things that might not be so easy in the bright light of the real world. He wanted her to continue and he was desperate for her to believe other than the despondent thoughts she was holding close.
"Do you think your strength was all that mattered to everyone?" She couldn't believe that. Could she?
When she answered him, it was a bitter pill to swallow.
"What if I had quit? Or failed? Or just...stopped. I could have. Maker knows, I wanted to. But I didn't. I didn't even consider it. Maybe I should have because no matter what, the more I shouldered and continued to survive, the more I was given to carry. Should you push someone to the edge just because they can take it? If someone is strong does that mean they can't be broken? No reprieve, no respite and when you've used them up they're sent on their way?"
Every pointed question was like a knife in his gut. Each small falter in her voice was a twist of the blade.
"If I was only good for doing what I did then it doesn't matter that I was here, does it? It doesn't matter where I was, where I am, what I do, it just doesn't matter. It didn't matter for the Hero of Ferelden, it didn't matter for Hawke, it doesn't matter for me. They're both dead and they're better off for it. Should the Hero have stayed alive only to die in the deep roads? And what kind of life did Hawke have on the run before she came to the Inquisition?"
Cullen had nothing with which to counter the sad reality of her logic. He let her continue, though it pained him. She needed to speak her piece. All of it.
"The strong help the weak and must content themselves with the fact that there is no reciprocity. The world takes, it doesn't give back and we move on. Yes Cullen, I was here. I was here and I realized there was no help for me here or anywhere nor would there be ever. So thank you very much for finding me, but it was unnecessary and far too late. I should never have expected to share in the happy endings. That was my mistake, and one I won't make again. If that sounds bitter to you I'm past caring. I'm past counting my blessings. I'm too angry. Too sad. And far too tired."
Her tirade now over, she was silent. Her thin shoulders slumped and her hand came up to run through her mangled hair. Loose ends fell down into her lap. Cullen felt stifled by the heavy weight of Evelyn's heartache in the air. Even at a distance he felt as though he could be swallowed up by it. He shuddered at the thought of her carrying such self-destructive poison inside her for so long. That she hadn't yet succumbed to a demon, using blood stained magic no less, was a testament to her own damning statements. She was strong. And it was killing her.
It killed him to see it in her, what he'd once held inside himself. Once upon a dark time in his past he wanted so badly to be the weak one, to be spared the pain, the suffering. But instead he endured because he was strong, moved by a force inside him to not only survive but to thrive. For so long he hated it, hated every weaker soul still alive and hated himself, embittered and lost thinking each day would forever be the same with no way out, no exit, not even the death he'd prayed for more than once. He'd lived in that world for so long, seeing things through a veil of anguish that pride wouldn't let consume him completely.
He could say it was Cassandra who had offered him his way out, and tangibly she had giving him true purpose with his previous command, but it was actually Evelyn who brought him fully back to life. Slowly and with great care, coaxing him away from despair and moving him diligently towards hope, using her steady strength to pull him through.
"You're right Evelyn." She was. She was right about everything. The world took and took and never gave back. Her feelings were valid and they needed acknowledged, but that didn't mean there was no way out.
She looked up at him, eyes wide and swollen with unshed tears. "I...you shouldn't say that." She shook her head, letting shame and guilt for her own feelings creep in. "I should be...better than this...but I just…"
"You're right about the world and how it has, how we have, failed you. But now, it's time to choose. Is this what you want?" He held out the dagger to her. "Or do you want to come with me?"
He wanted to stop himself from saying what he said next, this needed to be only her choice as finally turning away from lyrium had been his choice alone, but he couldn't stop himself, selfish though it was.
"Evelyn, please, please I want...I need...please say you'll come with me?" His plea was nearly concealed by the sound of the wind and the crickets in the distance. He dropped the dagger in the grass and extended his hand to her.
They looked at each other, not speaking, barely breathing for a long time in their dream until the edges of his vision started to blur. The scene around them wavered and turned to shadow as wakefulness intruded on them. She never answered him, but just before he left the Fade, he felt her take his hand.
A/N: I'm writing this quickly (well, quickly for me at least), just to get back in the groove of writing, so I'm not really obsessing about each chapter or wording or editing, I'm just trying to write for the fun...even though this is horrible angst that I'm having fun with! Anyway, thank you so much for reading. I'm looking forward to turning Evelyn towards happier times now in the next chapter!