Chapter 6: Break

Evelyn stood in Cullen's office staring at the staff Dorian left for her. It rested proudly on a weapons rack next to the former Commander's broadsword like it had been there forever. Like it belonged there.

It was more slender and a bit shorter than her old staff, crafted from a single piece of solid obsidian. She ran one finger down its length. It was cool to the touch and the enchantments on it sang to her but the melody was dissonant after so long without tuning her magic to a fighting focus. Secured to the top was a curved blade of silverite with an intricate etching of a dragon carved into the surface of the metal. It was almost too beautiful to use. She would have expected no less of a gift from Dorian.

I miss him. I miss them all…

It was a small desire, a strange wish, wanting to spend time with friends again. She'd thought herself past that. In fact, it felt better when she thought she was past that. She still couldn't say for sure why she was here. Why she was on this farm, why she was standing in this office, why she was with Cullen. Somehow she could accept him at the boundaries of her solitude, but only him.

In fact, she mused, he was just like his stalwart broadsword, standing in unobtrusive vigil next to a staff that was collecting dust and becoming more useless by the day. And she, like the staff she just convinced herself she wasn't going to pick up, would continue to be useful only in the setting of dust collecting. Better to leave the thing were it was. Both the staff and her misplaced desire to reminisce. If she sought them out, her old companions would want things. Perhaps nothing tangible as she had nothing left to give in that regard, but they would want to know where she'd been, how she was, what had happened. She didn't care to tell them and it wasn't for them to know anyway.

She decided some time ago that she would rather miss a memory than to try and build new ones on a foundation of sand. Everything around her was sand. She could almost feel it between her toes. There was nothing for her ridiculous desires to take root in. No foothold in which her needs could find purchase. So it was easiest to continue to need nothing. Easier to withdraw. Easier to walk away.

Which she tried to do to the staff. She turned on her heel, meaning to walk out of the office and away from the gift she had no business taking, but instead she ran into Cullen. She looked up, fully expecting him to move so she could pass, but he didn't.

She was almost about to feel frustrated at being penned in when all she wanted to do was go back outside and continue to search her head for silence, but she supposed now was as good a time as any to tell him she had to refuse his request to help 'train' his wayward Templars.

'Former' Templars. You know something about that. Being 'formerly' something. Formerly many things in fact. Do you even remember anymore?

She folded her arms across her chest and tilted her head stubbornly, more so at the annoying bent of her own thoughts than at Cullen. Either way, these 'former' Templars would have to find their fighting form again without her assistance and she was about to say exactly that when a breeze blew in from the open window in the corner and she caught a whiff of his scent.

He smelled of sweat and sunshine and the wild Ferelden grasses that grew in abundance around the house. It dazed her for a moment. The...feeling it gave her. The memories.

So you do remember?

It appeared to be a day for unexpected stirrings of emotion. Admiring gifts, missing old friends, simple wants and impulses she'd long thought dead. She found herself wanting to lean into him to catch more of the scent in her nose.

What foolishness.

Cullen gestured to the staff, "Dorian said it's quite light and should be easy enough to maneuver with one hand. I know you favored casting with your right and using your staff with your left, so you'll have to adjust."

The nagging at the back of her head persisted, almost in defiance of the ridiculous fancies that seemed to be plaguing her today. Who is he to tell you what you "have to" do?

"I'm perfectly capable of using a staff with my right hand, I just didn't like casting with my left when I had the Mark." Why are you explaining this? "It…" She shrugged the shoulder of her amputated arm trying to shake away the pins and needles pricking her beyond where the appendage ended. "It hurt." It still does.

"Mm." Cullen looked down at her arm. He frowned and nodded his head as if he understood.

He doesn't. And what kind of a response is that, anyway? Can he say nothing helpful?

"Oh for Maker's sake, shut up!" Evelyn snapped out loud at the infuriating voice in her head through clenched teeth. That particular barb wasn't from a demon. It was all her. Her and her doubts and her anger and her bitterness and she was so annoyed and frankly sick to fucking death of it all.

Cullen's eyes went wide and he stuttered, "I...uh...I'm sorry…"

"No! Not you!" Evelyn waved her hand as if it would erase her crazy outburst. "It's...not you…" She shook her head. "Just...never mind."

With an irritated and very audible huff, she turned, reached out and grabbed the staff from its resting place.

"Fine! There!" She exclaimed holding the thing in a death grip.

Cullen was clearly confused at the conversation she was having with herself that he seemed to think he was a part of.

"Fine…?" He echoed.

And she was annoyed by that too. "Yes, it's fine, everything is fine, I have a staff now, so let's just go alright?" She pushed past him, holding her breath so she didn't have remember what he smelled like.

So much for refusing...

There was a small group of Templars already sparring in a field opposite Evelyn's spot behind the house. The sun was high and hot and it looked like they were feeling it on top of whatever other Maker forsaken symptoms they were likely suffering. There was no lyrium to be found here and it was clear they were feeling that too.

Evelyn stomped across the grass and made her way over to them. She sensed Cullen following at a respectful, and safe, distance behind her, clear of the staff that swung forward and back in synchrony with her long strides as she held it in her right hand.

The longer she held the staff, the more accepting of it she was becoming. Or at least it was no longer part of her heated annoyance. In fact, she thought with a small amount of satisfaction, it was soon to be the vessel by which she would expunge some of that annoyance.

Rylen was the first to acknowledge her. He smiled warmly but there were still shadows under his eyes. She knew he'd been off lyrium the longest among his bretheren aside from Cullen and yet he still looked tired. "Care for a match?" He asked as he lifted his sword and shield. "A bit of exercise does wonders I think, Your Worship."

And those were the words that broke her. Your Worship. Fuck them and their 'worship'. Fuck this and every Maker damned day that she was forced to endure. Fuck the dead end of her life and the path that got her here.

"Don't fucking call me that!" She snarled, a beast inside her bursting free. She leveled her staff against the former Knight-Captain and it vibrated with magic she'd forgotten she possessed. When she attacked him, she wasn't just attacking him. She was attacking...everything.

She'd been eroding slowly over time, crumbling away, but this felt like something inside her had suddenly snapped. White hot anger flared before her eyes and a private scream inside her head exclaimed over and over that she was done. She could not abide for one more agonizing second the sadness that was strangling her. A small barely sane part of her knew this would ultimately come to nothing, that her world would not miraculously change just because she picked up a staff again. But she didn't care. She needed this. Finally she needed something other than to be left alone. She needed to break something as she was broken.

So she would break these Templars as they had broken her spirit when she was a child. She would break them the way she was broken by war, when the Circle she'd learned to call home was broken. She would break them the way the Mark had broken her, the way Solas had broken her. Her physical form, her thoughts, her heart, all torn, fractured, trampled. How broken could someone be and yet still live? Just look to Evelyn Trevelyan.

On and on it went. She couldn't rightfully say when Rylen had ducked out of her relentless onslaught and passed her off onto another poor lyrium deprived soul. She could sense some of them still trying to combat her magic with their blunted Templar abilities. She felt it but she didn't care about that either.

Sweat poured down her face, magic poured from her staff, rage poured out of her very being. Though it escaped her notice, thick and heavy clouds had rolled in, the now low riding sun was blotted out and fat drops of rain started to pour out of the sky. Thunder boomed in the distance and she was soaked to the bone, but there was no slowing her or stopping her.

Eventually the last Templar left to face her madness was Cullen, but even he wasn't spared. He stayed out there with her, suffering both the storm of nature and the storm of her. If she'd had her wits about her, she would have noted how he used what was left of his magic-negating power to protect himself from her wild and dangerous casting and not to subdue her. She might have seen the pained set of his jaw as he took the brunt of her too-strong and reckless spells. She would have heard his steadfast silence as he let her try to wipe clean the sorrow of years and the helplessness of life.

When she had no mana left and her body collapsed out from under her in exhaustion, he was there to catch her. They settled in the muddied grass, both too spent to move. The deluge eventually passed and the clouds parted to reveal a night sky filled with stars. For a very long time she could do nothing but pant and be limp in his arms.

"This doesn't change anything." She mumbled when she finally caught her breath. Was she telling him? Or telling herself? Or was it actually a question she wanted an answer to?

"No, it doesn't change anything. It never does, Evelyn. But," she could hear a smile transform his voice even though she couldn't see it, "it felt good, didn't it?"

She hoped he heard the smile in her own voice when she spoke. "It did."