A/N: Short one, as this bit of the next chapter got hived off. Another to follow once re-writes are done - give this one some love, though!

Killeen stood where Cullen had left her, leaning against the battlement, for a long moment after he had turned the corner of the stairs and disappeared from view.

He was going to kiss me … he as good as said that he felt as I do, and then … he was going to kiss me.

There was, clearly, an emergency of some sort. Therefore, she herself, Lieutenant Killeen Hanmount, had things she ought to be doing.

He almost kissed me.

Sobering up was definitely on that list.

I'm almost sure he almost kissed me.

Propping up the keep's fortifications like a love-sick maiden in one of Varric's books was most certainly not.

What was it, exactly, that he said? He asked me if I was sure my feelings were one-sided. That's … well, it suggests he … but had I told him my feelings were for him?

No.

The touch of his lips on her forehead and cheekbone surely had not been an accident … except they had been standing close together. And what had he said? Killeen replayed it in her mind. I've thought about what I might say in this situation … You're my second in command. We're at war. And you … I didn't think it was possible. It seems too much to ask — but I want to —

He had not said which situation. He had not said what it was that he wanted to ask.

Killeen knew should be mustering out her squad, sending runners to Rylen and the others. There might be little time to waste.

And yet she could not command her feet to move.

I cannot move my legs, she thought in Josephine Montilyet's voice, and the memory brought a snort of laughter that shattered the spell that bound her. Shivering a little in the cold, she began to make her way back to Cullen's office, cautioning herself against jumping to conclusions. They had been thrown together in recent days, by their work, by necessity, by Cullen's struggle with the twin demons of lyrium and memory. His gratitude, her proximity … Killeen was familiar with the brief liaisons that sometimes occurred in the barracks, born of need and convenience, dying in the light of the next dawn.

And she had been drunk. Was, still, drunk.

She stepped into Cullen's office, having to concentrate a little to get the door latched behind her.

He had said she deserved someone who thinks you'd give meaning to all his days and nights … who'd think about you every moment he was away from you and look at you every moment you were together.

He had not said he was that man.

And he had not actually kissed her — she had only thought he was about to. A kiss brushed against forehead or cheek: however it had made her feel, those were places a man could kiss his mother, his sister, his friend.

And he was a decent man, a kind man, and he did wish the best for her. You deserve someone who loves you, he had said, and kissed her cheek.

The rest , the implications, the product of her fevered imagination.

Still, she could not quite crush the tiny spark of hope that it had not been — for even if it had been a momentary yielding to temptation of a man whose lover was away more often than not, that still meant that she tempted him, even if only briefly, even if only for a dozen heartbeats on a cloudy, wind-wracked night …

And what will you do if that's the case? Killeen asked herself. Dress up like a girl and prop yourself fetchingly against his desk? He was betrothed or nearly so, if what she had overheard was true, to another woman.

To the woman all their fortunes depended on.

Killeen cast one longing look at the bottle of Qunari spirits on Cullen's desk, and went to plunge her head into the ice-rimmed water of the horse-trough, preparatory to calling out the troops.