It's the smell that's the worst.

Not the smell of rotting flesh, bodies gone soft and ripe with maggots after too long in the summer heat. She's been a guard in Kirkwall, has found bodies in cisterns and cellars and shallow graves and has learnt to ignore the sickly sweet odour that can't be gotten out of clothes or hair with the most vigorous of washing.

No. These bodies haven't rotted. They've been roasted in an instant in a blast of heat and power beyond imagination, shrivelled and frozen in their last second's posture of prayer or flight or despair.

She makes her way between them, sword out, every sense stretched to the utmost to detect the next demon, following the man stalking ahead of her through this nightmare.

"Kill. Kill, come on."

That doesn't make any sense to her, because she's right behind him, will always be right behind him, even in this nightmare of cooked and roasted corpses that stretched ahead of them further the she can see.

"Come on, now, Kill."

And they smell like they've been cooked and roasted, they smell like a Lord's kitchen preparing for a feast, and her mouth floods with saliva in an uncontrollable, disgusting reflex as if —

"Kill. Kill, come on. Wake up. Wake up, Kill."

And Killeen was in her own cot in a chilly tent outside the gates of Haven, Cullen bending over her, his hands firm on her shoulders, face intent and frowning in the dim light of the brazier.

"Wake up, come on now, wake up," he said again.

"I'm —"

The smell was still in her nostrils, though, and before she could get out the word awake her mouth filled with sour saliva and cold sweat prickled on her face.

Cullen unceremoniously emptied the wastepaper basket by his desk onto the floor, seized her by the arm and hauled her up to lean over the edge of the cot. Killeen retched uncontrollably, even after the remnants of her dinner had spattered into the bottom of the basket and there was nothing to bring up but sour bile.

"You're all right," Cullen said, his hand on her back. "It's over. It's past. You're all right. You're safe."

Killeen managed to catch her breath enough to speak. "Maker, I'm sorry —"

"It's all right." His voice, like his hand, was steady and warm. "It's all right. You're all right. It's over, now."

"I —" Shameful, humiliating tears.

"I know. I know, Kill. I know."

The spasms left her, finally, and Cullen let her roll back onto the cot. "Sorry."

"What was it?"

Killeen shook her head. "I can't —"

He gripped her shoulder. "Kill. It's a nightmare until it's a memory. Tell me what it was."

"Oh, like you tell me?" she snapped.

He went away from her in an instant, without moving, hand still on her shoulder but so completely withdrawn she wouldn't have known he was still in the tent without it. The one thing she's never asked, that he's never volunteered, the one step into trust that neither of them has taken — what exactly is it that wakes him in a cold sweat in the small hours of the night?

"Maker, I'm sorry, Cullen, I —"

And he came back to her just as fast. "No." He squeezed her shoulder. "You're right. It was an unfair question."

He stood, picked up the basket, and set it outside the tent entrance where the ambient night-time temperatures of Haven would freeze the contents solid before they could smell.

Killeen expected him to lie back down again, but instead he sat on the edge of her cot. "Wine?" he said. "To freshen your mouth?"

"Maker, yes."

He could reach the desk from where he sat, and poured her a goblet, poured himself one as well. Drinking gave Killeen an excuse to lift herself on her elbows, because flat on her back with Cullen leaning over her was too close to her secret imaginations to be entirely comfortable.

Cullen took a long draught from his own goblet. "They show you what you most want to see," he said.

"The demons?" Killeen ventured.

"Some demons. Desire demons, the kind that took over the Circle Tower. They offer you what you most want."

"So …" Killeen pushed herself to a more upright position. "So if someone offers me a pay-rise and a transfer somewhere warm, I should scream for a Templar?"

It wrung a laugh from him, barely more than a whimper. "If that's the limit of your ambitions, you're probably safe. But …."

Killeen waited. When he didn't go on, she offered, "But if it isn't?"

He looked away. "They showed me … her."

Killeen sipped her wine with the sense of stepping out onto thin and cracking ice. "The Hero?"

"Yes." Cullen drained his goblet. "The things she said … the things she did … you can't imagine"

She could imagine, though. Could imagine a demon wearing Cullen's face, taking her in his arms, whispering words of love. Strong, slender hands running down her back, sliding up to cup her breasts, those scarred lips whispering words of undying adoration before they pressed kisses to her neck, her collarbone, and below …

Oh, yes. Killeen could imagine.

"I'm so sorry," she said softly. "That must have been …"

"Horrible?" Cullen said, meeting her gaze with the hint of a smile.

Killeen refused to smile back. "Unbearable," she said.

He looked away, looked back. "Yes."

"But you survived it."

"Someone survived it," Cullen said. "I'm not always sure it was me."

Killeen wanted, so acutely it was a physical pain in her chest, to hold him, to show him with the strength of her arms that whoever came out the other side of that nightmare it was a good man, a man who was loved, a man who would be safe from all the terrors in the dark of the moon for now and every tomorrow.

But it was not her arms he wanted around him, it was not her reassurances which would keep the demons at bay in the depths of the night.

"The smell," she said. Instead of touching him, instead of offering the comfort that only the woman he loves could grant, she gave him the friend's trade-off — my shame for yours. "Like roasting meat. It made me hungry."

Cullen grimaced, and she wished desperately to take the words back, to have him not know, not ever know — until he nodded, and said, "Me too."

He was lying. The Commander lied rarely, and badly, and he was lying now.

Lying to make me feel better.

"Thank you," she said.

"You've woken me, often enough," he said lightly, and stood. "It's still a while before dawn. Try to get back to sleep, if you can."

Killeen sketched a salute, and lay back down. "You should, too."

The breath of a laugh. "I know."

He didn't, though. She heard him moving around, saw the warm bloom of lamplight through her eyelids, and then the rustle of paperwork.

"Cullen."

"Still here."

"Mages go through the Harrowing, don't they? Go into the Fade and face demons there?"

"Yes."

"So she probably already knows. How it can be. Probably something similar happened to her."

Cullen was still a moment, so still that Killeen could hear nothing but his breathing and the crackle of the lampwick and the slow whisper of snow against the roof of the tent. "That's not … a pleasant thought."

She had to push the words out past the lump in her throat. "She might need someone to talk to. Someone who understands, too." Someone who can understand what happened to you.

Another silence. "She might."

It was the most she could do — perhaps not the most someone else could have done, someone who didn't feel their eyes burn with unshed tears at the thought of the Herald's pretty face soft with sympathy, her hand resting gently on Cullen's arm, but it was definitely, absolutely, the most Killeen could do.

For now, she promised herself. Tomorrow I'll do better. Tomorrow I'll be a better friend, the friend he deserves.

One step at a time.