A/N: I meant to 'bank' this chapter until tomorrow morning, to give myself more time to finish the one after, but I can't keep my readers waiting ... so the next update may be more than 24 hours.

Killeen woke, completely and instantly, when she heard Cullen moan softly in his sleep.

He had been back a week, was … better than he had been, was true, but it was a cautious, qualified truth. Killeen made sure he ate, made sure he slept, kept hold of as many of the tasks she had taken on in his absence as she could. The Inquisition was receiving more and more ex-Templar recruits, and knowing he was an example to them of the possibility of shedding lyrium's chains seemed to help Cullen.

Mostly, he was successful in hiding the moments when his hands shook, when sweat stood on his brow despite the cool mountain air.

Except from Fel. Killeen had seen the little girl watching her Ser Bear, frowning in thought, had taken a quiet moment to explain to her that Cullen had been sick, but he was getting better, and it would embarrass him to talk about it or be talked about.

Fel had nodded, once, decisively, had never mentioned it again, but had shown extra attentiveness to Cullen at their breakfasts, filling his teacup as soon as it was empty, slipping one of her own rolls onto his plate when his back was turned. Both of you feeding me up, Cullen had joked when he caught her at it, I'll need Harritt to let my armour out soon.

And frozen, when Fel got up from her chair and flung her arms around him, before returning her embrace as gently and carefully as if the little girl was made of glass.

"Don't let her do that again," he said to Killeen later. "If I —"

Oh, Cullen. "You wouldn't."

He touched the blue-black bruise on her wrist with one finger, silent, drew his hand back.

Killeen captured it in her own. "Cullen. You weren't yourself."

So low she barely heard it: "How do you know?"

She had searched his room, his office, whenever she had the chance — daily, twice, three times a day — stomach knotting with the fear that every opened drawer, every moved blanket, would reveal a bottle of blue liquid.

Or, worse — an empty bottle.

When Cullen had caught her at it, she'd expected anger, stammered an apology.

He'd only shaken his head, said wearily: "You won't find anything."

"I — I have to look, Cullen, you —"

"I know. I know you do. But there's nothing." A long pause. "Because if I — if there was, you'd take it away, or try to. And I might —" A long look at her wrist. "And that would be unforgivable. Is unforgivable."

There had to be the right words to take that look off his face, there had to be. "It's a bruise, Cullen, I've had as bad sparring, Void, I've given you as bad, sparring. Remember the time Krem taught me a new sweep and I dumped you arse over teapot straight into the rail? You had a bruise on your leg that had you limping for a week."

That had won her a small smile at the memory. "It wasn't my leg that was bruised."

A small smile, but the first she'd gotten from him since his return, and Killeen had breathed a long sigh of relief. It will be all right, the same words she'd told Cullen over and over, for the first time believing it herself. It will be all right. Eventually, it will be all right.

One night he had shown Killeen the scrap of parchment he had found in Samson's camp, a letter addressed directly to him. Drink enough lyrium and its song reveals the truth, Killeen had read silently. The Chantry used us, you're fighting the wrong battle. Corypheus chose me as his General and his Vessel for power.

"You know he's barking," she said flatly, offering it back to him.

"Yes," Cullen said, and put the parchment in the fire.

But his dreams had been worse, that night, had left him shaking and chilled and barely able to talk. When Killeen had stoked the fire and turned to spread her own blankets across him, Cullen had reached for her blindly, held her as desperately as he had on the first night of his return. Whispered, as if afraid to let anyone, even himself, hear his words, of his fear at times that Samson was not wrong, not about the Chantry.

"I was eighteen. I'd been with the Templars since thirteen." Voice tight, the muscles on the arms around her like wood beneath the skin. "How could I — could any of us — know? That we were choosing — choosing losing everything, eventually, memory of family, of friends, of who we love? Or else — or else this."

Again, Killeen had held him until he calmed, until he slept, and longer, listening to his breathing until she slipped into dreams herself.

And had woken in the morning with his head still nestled against her shoulder, his arm flung across her chest, the scar on his shoulder-blade beneath her palm. With only the slightest movement, she could have traced that scar as she had longed to, could have slipped her fingers beneath the neck of his shirt and felt the smooth skin, the thin line of raised tissue, beneath.

The thought had made her breath quicken.

But if she woke him, and he realised …

I can put it behind me, if you can, he had said at Adamant, and she had been scrupulously careful to pretend that she could. And now, as he battled demons old and new, was no time for her to let him know she had lied: that there had never been a day she had not longed to hold him in her arms, not as she did now as a sister, a mother, a friend, might, but to touch and be touched, to learn the long muscles of his back with her fingers as well as she knew them with her eyes, to press a kiss to the place on the back of his neck which his fingers found when he was lost in thought …

Cullen had stirred, and woke. "Oh — I. Um."

Killeen lifted his arm off her and rolled out of bed in one movement. "I'll fetch breakfast," she said with her back to him, hunting for her boots.

In her imagination, he had stretched out his hand, fingers hovering just short of the curve of her back as she bent to do up the laces.

In reality, he had said: "Thank you," and was pulling on his own boots, face hidden, when she paused at the top of the ladder to glance back.

A third bad night, a fourth, and somehow, it became an unspoken agreement: their new pattern, that she shared not only his room but his bed, chaste as two stranded travellers huddled together against a blizzard's chill, her living presence some sort of talisman against the shades and demons that stalked his dreams.

But this morning, he was dreaming again.

Killeen opened her mouth to speak, to wake him, and then she realised that wrapped in his arms, her back firmly against his chest, she had little leverage if he woke, as he still sometimes did — as he might be more likely to do now — fighting the demons in his dreams. She would be horribly vulnerable.

She began to slip, quietly and carefully, from his embrace, but his arms tightened around her. His face pressed to the back of her neck, he moaned again, and as his body moulded itself against hers and his hands drifted gently from her waist to other, less neutral points, Killeen realised he was not having a nightmare.

Dream, yes. Nightmare, no.

Dreaming, no doubt, of the Inquisitor.

She had to wake him, or move away from him, or both, as Cullen's memory or imagination of the Inquisitor did something to him that, by the evidence, he very much appreciated. Killeen knew she had to — but his lips against her neck, his hands roaming slowly over her, the warmth of his body pressing and rocking against her — it was impossible, it was forbidden, but it felt so good, Maker, it felt good, trails of heat spreading through her body from every point their flesh touched, gathering and pooling in her belly, building and building.

I could just lie here and …

No. That would be taking advantage of his trust, his vulnerability, in ways that were beyond unforgivable.

She wriggled from his grasp and bolted down the ladder without looking back, and fled out the door.

I got up early, he was sound asleep, I went to get breakfast. Whatever happened in that bed after that, I wasn't there, I have no idea.

She stood in the courtyard for several minutes, persuading herself that it was true, that it had happened like that, just exactly like that.

Then she begged her usual sweetrolls and tea from the kitchen and made her way back to the office.

Fel was waiting, as she always did, just by the door.

Killeen nodded to her, took a deep breath, and went in.

She was relieved to see that Cullen was already up and at his desk. It's a normal morning, she told herself. An absolutely normal morning.

Cullen looked up as she entered. He smiled, and seemed about to speak, but as Fel followed Killeen inside he looked back at his desk, flushing slightly.

"Breakfast," Killeen said firmly, setting it down. "Fel, pour the tea." As the little girl did, face creased in concentration, Killeen made herself look at Cullen with nothing more than friendly enquiry, a touch of concern. "I'm glad you slept well."

He coloured more. "I, ah — you'd left, when I woke, I —"

"You were dead to the world when I woke up, and I was hungry," Killeen said.

"And you — ah." He glanced at Fel. "Had a good night, yourself?"

"Slept like a log," Killeen said.

"Oh," Cullen said, looking at her sidelong. Undoubtedly relieved.

"Closed my eyes and opened them to morning, don't think I even rolled over in between," Killeen went on, laying it on with a trowel. "Not that I remember, anyway." She didn't dare look at him as she said it, for fear he would see the memory of yes, oh, yes, of his body against hers, his hands …

A wave of heat washed over her and she dropped her roll, stayed bent double picking it up until a rush of blood to her head would account for the colour in her cheeks.

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Notes: To be clear, I do *not* think it's okay to have sex with someone who is asleep and therefore has not consented.