Chapter Text
“So,” she said, “a ladies’ man, is it?” she asked, looking up at him once they'd left the tavern. There was just a shadow of that smirk at his lips as he tilted his head in the direction they'd go in, torchlight punctuating their path to the keep.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said. “But Templars aren’t required to be chaste, as it happens.”
“I see,” she said, taking another sip of her mead. There was something stupid inside her that didn’t like thinking of him with other people, but it had no business even being there. They were barely even friends.
“And you?” he asked.
“Me? Oh no, I’m not a ladies’ man at all,” she said, smiling but not looking at him.
“I can’t quite tell what to make of you,” he said as they ascended the stairs to the keep. She did look at him then.
“Well, I’m elvish, and a mage; I like long walks on the beach, halla, and my mabari…” she said, with a little grin, then took a sip of her mead. His smirk became wry.
“In Kirkwall, at the Hanged Man, when I was still a Templar, you were holding court. You had every man at the table eating out of your hand.”
She snorted.
“Hardly,” she said. “I was just trying to prevent a bloody skirmish in the middle of what had been up to that point a very pleasant evening.”
“No… neither Tethras, Warden Hawke, nor the apostate could take their eyes off of you.”
She looked up at him and shrugged.
“Varric was looking for a good story. Anders was…” she sighed, pushing a curl back from her face. “I was Anders’ commander in Amaranthine, and we became close. He got protective, I think especially because I’m a mage.”
Cullen arched a brow.
She laughed, shaking her head. “It was never romantic.”
“Hmm,” he hummed. “And Hawke?”
“I’m Carver’s commanding officer; we’ve always had each other’s backs.”
“Nothing more than that?” he asked, and there was something in his voice that made her look up at him, but his eyes were on their path as he shifted his body so that his arm was behind her, guiding without touching.
It felt chivalrous and... protective? Like he was always on some level aware of ensuring she knew the way.
She shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I wouldn’t. I learned the dangers of getting things muddled with brothers in arms back in Ferelden.”
They’d passed through the main hall and were now navigating the maze of corridors that connected all the parts of Skyhold.
“I had heard something about that,” he admitted.
She laughed.
“I was blushingly chaste in all my years at the Circle, and within a year of leaving, I found myself in a bizarre love triangle with a knight and an assassin. Zevran taught me enough to make me cheeky, and Alistair broke my heart.”
She could sense him tense slightly, and her smile was slight and soft.
“It’s all right. I loved him and he loved me. Very well, for a time. But a king cannot marry an elf or a mage, and I was far too proud to be his mistress.”
She felt his gaze on her. After a beat:
“Would you have married him?” he asked.
Her expression shifted into a rueful half-smile.
“Probably, but it would have been a terrible decision. I was young and finally had the chance to be a bit wild and free, and the last thing I needed was to be locked up in another gilded cage. But I loved him and it hurt that even he wouldn’t treat me as an equal, didn’t think I was worthy.”
He was tense again. This time when she looked up, the intensity of his gaze sent a frisson through every part of her.
“If there was anyone unworthy in that equation, it wasn’t you,” he said.
Trying to shake off her sudden transformation back into a smitten naif of sixteen summers, she gave him a little grin.
“I thought you’d stopped idealizing me long ago,” she told him.
“I did,” he told her, cool and unwavering. “That doesn’t change the facts.”
She laughed and shook her head.
“Now, now. Alistair is a good man, and more importantly, a good king. He’s what Ferelden needed and needs – far more so than either of us needed each other.”
She grinned up at him then.
“Listen to how mature and well-adjusted I sound! You’d never know that I drew stick figures of him that I’d practice my fireballs on for a year after I left him!”
Cullen's Iron-Willed Commander mode relented as he laughed at that.
“So what happened in your travels across Thedas?” he asked.
She shrugged.
“It’s hard on the road. I think Carver and I had a few near misses, but they would have been mistakes, and we knew it. At this point, he and the Wardens are the only constant in my life, and he’s my right hand – can’t bollocks that up because we’re confused about what our bond really is. We’ve figured it out by now, though. As for anyone else, well...”
She shrugged again, and smiled.
“I’ve met a few interesting people, but just a very few. It’s always fight fight fight, danger danger danger, travel travel travel, you know?
Then she looked up at him.
“What about you?” she asked. “You seem to have learned the art of making girls swoon.”
He laughed, then cast her a half smile as they took a turn down a narrower corridor, moving slightly behind her as a young man carrying a tray of pastry toward the great hall passed them.
"Evening, Rhys," Cullen said with a nod.
"Evenin', Commander," the young man replied with a smile. He cast her a glance, looking like he might have said more, but instead just looked back at Cullen and nodded. When Cullen nodded back, continued on his way.
Then the high commander's focus was once again unwaveringly on her, that half-smile back on his lips.
“The years may have taught me a thing or two about using my attributes to my advantage.”
She snorted, but before she could respond, they’d stepped into the keep’s garden, and it was beautiful.
“Oh, Cullen,” she breathed.
--
As reactions went, he couldn’t have wanted a better one. The garden was lush and lit with lanterns that were elvish in origin, arranged in number and placement in such a way that even at night the colors of the blooms were still vivid and clear. The smell of florals and herbs floated through, and she left his side to run into the middle of it, turning in place to take it all in.
“It’s glorious,” she said, twirling. He was smiling, hopefully not too foolishly. “You’re so lucky!”
She leaned toward a group of crystal grace blossoms and inhaled. She turned back to him, beaming.
“Do you come here often?” she asked.
“Occasionally,” he told her. “Usually I’m occupied with my duties, but I do make the time now and then.”
She’d found a bench among a particularly fragrant batch of flowers and patted the spot next to her. When he sat down to join her, she shouldered into him a bit.
“You haven’t told me anything though,” she said, taking a long sip of her mead. “Who have you loved? Who’s broken your heart? Whose heart have you broken?”
“Jumping right in then, are we?” he asked with a chuckle, taking a swig of the whiskey he’d managed to keep through the party and their walk.
“Of course,” she said as though it were the most obvious thing.
“I can’t say that I’ve been in love in the time since I left the Circle,” he said. “I’ve been… close with a few women, I wouldn’t say any hearts were broken.”
“Close, he says,” she replied with a grin.
He was sure he was turning as red as a doe-eyed virgin.
“I was a Templar, not a monk,” he reminded her.
“Back in the tavern, you did quite a good impression of a rake,” she countered, looking at him, curiosity and something else he couldn’t quite divine in her gaze.
“Physical proximity can be a powerful thing,” he said. None of this was cautious, most likely none of this was wise, but she was here, in another garden, in a different world where suddenly nothing was forbidden, and she was looking at him in a way that would be so easy to read on anyone else, but she was impossible, untouchable.
But she wasn’t.
And he wanted nothing more than to touch her; trace her lips with his thumb, bury his hands in her untamed curls, kiss her until they both lost their breath.
He was leaning into her again, and then, she touched him. She raised her hand to his cheek, stroked the pad of her thumb over his cheekbone, and he leaned ever so slightly into her touch, then turned his face to kiss her palm.
“Cullen…” she turned his face and he looked into her eyes. Her lips were parted, her skin glowed in the moon and lantern light, and if she didn’t kiss him he thought it quite possible that he’d go mad.
“We’re going to Minrathous.”
“What?” he said; his blood felt as though it was freezing in his veins. “Tevinter?”
“Well, that’s the only one I know of,” she said, but there was gravity to her tone that belied the lightness of her words.
“Why could you possibly need to go to Minrathous?” he asked, trying to keep his tone even. “You’re aware that they enslave elves there, aren’t you?”
She dropped her hand from his cheek.
“Yes, I am aware, Cullen,” she said, frowning slightly now. “I feel confident that anyone who tried to enslave me would find me a match for at least most of their magisters.”
“But why even take the risk to begin with?” he asked. He felt his own frown deepening.
“Because the southern aversion to even acknowledging blood magic might exist outside the realm of demon bait and pure evil makes it difficult to explore ways to cure the Taint,” she told him.
“So you’ll go into a pit of vipers who won’t be able to wait to put you in chains and keep you as an amusing pet?”
“I can take care of myself,” she said, her jaw tight.
“Against an entire nation of slavers and maleficar?” His voice was rising.
“You make it sound like there’s an army of abominations just waiting for me at the border,” she said. “Stop being dramatic.”
“Really?” he demanded. They were sitting too close. This was spiraling. He couldn’t stop.
She apparently could, though.
“Cullen, please don’t let’s do this,” she said, holding up a hand, sounding more tired than he’d ever heard her. “I wanted to see everyone, have a fine night before I went. I wanted to see you. I don’t want to fight.”
He took a breath. Tried to will the tension in his body away.
Grim realization dawned as he looked at her.
“You don’t think you’re coming back.”
There was a long pause then. She looked away from him, up at the stars. After a few moments, she spoke.
“It’s a distinct possibility,” she said finally, quietly. “At this point, I’ve been living with the Taint for ten years. The progression to the Calling tends to be significantly faster for Wardens who’ve had high levels of exposure to darkspawn, such as, say, during a Blight,” she said, turning to look at the flowers. Then she looked down at her hands.
“I’m hearing voices,” she said quietly. “The occasional song. A bit creepy, that.”
She looked at him then.
His jaw was tight.
“Why did you come here, then? With so little time left?” he asked.
She smiled at him.
“You must know, Cullen. No matter how dense either of us has been, by now, you have to know.”
And in that moment, he did.
“Look,” she said earnestly, meeting his gaze. “I can’t wait for another decade to pass for us to find excuses to be near each other. If this lead in Minrathous doesn’t work out, I’ll be lucky to get another year, at best.”
She reached up to touch his face, ran her thumb along the scar on his lip. He closed his eyes briefly, resisting the urge to hold her hand to his lips, to pull her to him, to try to make her safe and healed and his through the force of his will alone.
Instead, he opened his eyes, focused entirely on her just as she was here, right now, in this moment.
“Well, the Maker has had a fine set of plans for us, hasn’t he?” he asked quietly.
“Psht, your Maker hasn’t the imagination for stars this crossed,” she told him, her thumb putting the slightest pressure on his lip. The temptation to trace his tongue along the slender digit was nigh unbearable.
“So,” she continued, her voice low, warm honey over lips as she met his gaze with a look of challenge and invitation.
“How much longer are you going to wait before you kiss me, then?”