My Love

by Sabrina Zbasnik

  "Have you come to reprimand me as well?" she asked, her eyes glaring at her hands.

  "I..." he sat up higher and turned his head to her, even rotating his shoulder to look fully upon her. But she couldn't lift her eyes to face him. "No, I didn't. I understand, you hoped to bypass an incursion by our forces, to save as many of your people as possible."

  Lana gasped, a sob choking in her raw throat. Tears prickled in the back of her eyes, but she fought against them. "You don't actually believe that, do you?" She finally broke away from her staff to stare into his face. The stoic commander breathed in from the heartbreak rolling through her body. He blinked his own eyes before turning away.

  "No, but I..." Cullen fell silent, his exhausted eyes glaring at the harsh sunlight.

  Leaving her staff laying across her lap, Lana folded up her fists and banged them together. The rapport of knuckle meeting knuckle, bones knocking each other about gave her a satisfying jolt of pain. Her fingers could ache for days after casting so much magic in one go, for now they were down to a dull throb made worse by the cold of the mountain. "I lied to Hawke," she said throwing her head back. Instead of glaring at the sun, Lana slipped her eyes closed, the warmth stinging her skin. "No, I lied to myself too. But I knew it was a lie even as I pursued him. Needed him dead, needed to feel his final..." She pulled in a shuddering breath against her aching throat and stared down at her flexed fingers. They'd been cleaned, even the blood under her nails scrubbed away, but she still felt it. Not just darkspawn ichor, or bandit gore, but the blood from her own people, the ones that he slit open. No, the ones he convinced other wardens to kill.

  "He twisted them, perverted what's inside of us, what we need to, have to suffer to- I haven't felt this depth of anger since, since..." her thoughts trailed away and she glanced towards Cullen. With his head bent low, his eyes closed, he appeared to be in prayer. It'd been a long time since Lana dared to impose upon any higher power. With each passing day she felt less clean, far too impure to even step foot inside a chantry. Whether it was the taint growing inside of her or the river of blood following her every footstep she couldn't say.

  Taking a calming breath, Cullen turned towards her and whispered, "Uldred?" She nodded, her voice shattered. The blood mage who destroyed her home, her friends, took everything she'd left behind. It was the first time the depths of her soul twisted into ice itself, an endless void from which no warmth would ever spring free. But upon splitting open Uldred's skull, the ice chipped away and melted to leave behind splinters of what once was. She'd patched them back together by never returning to the tower, never truly facing what was lost. Ignorance was her healing, she did it even now. There was no time to mourn Nathaniel, no time to... No, she simply didn't want to drag herself down to those depths for fear that she might not come up for air. And now, now she knew she'd have to kill her fellow Wardens, have to freeze them, crush them, mutilate their bodies the same as she did her old mage friends -- her true family -- turned into demons and malifecarum. Again.

  Her fingers twisted around the staff in her lap, rolling across the names until she stumbled upon an old one. She traced along the loops spelling it out repeating the action endlessly as she stared through the garden. Cullen remained quiet beside her, either waiting for her to continue or lost in his own memories. Maker, she'd only suffered Uldred's wrath for a few hours, but he'd been in their for weeks. Watched as all of his friends...

  "I understood," she said blinking against the tears streaking down her cheeks. For once, she wasn't crying for herself.

  Cullen twisted his head like coming out of a fog, "Understood?"

  "Why you, when I found you in the tower behind the... I understood why you were so angry at mages. At all of us."

  "No, I shouldn't have. It was wrong of me to put that on you. To...you were there to help and I-I. Andraste's tears, forgive me," he crumbled into his hands.

  Lana broke away from the name to run her fingers up and down his shoulder. When he wouldn't break away she cupped her hand behind his and gently pulled is from his face. Cullen still wouldn't look her way, but he turned his hand in hers and clung tighter to her. She spoke, "That anger is...it ruins better people. Often forever. I only climbed back from the edge because, because I could ignore it. What you must have faced, I can't even imagine it."

  "I'm doing what I can..." he sighed.

  "And I'm failing at it," she responded, turning away from him to watch as the blue butterflies returned to their branches. With no one to disturb them, they landed confidently, their wings twitching as they drank their fill. Cullen shook his head at her, his anger bubbling over as if that could convince her she was wrong.

  Her finger traced the name again and she tipped the staff up to him to show it off. "Gareth," she read it off her heart. There were just as many names on there that were little more than a roster call now, but this one she knew well. This one she wouldn't forget.

  "I don't remember a mage named that," Cullen said, then he paused to add, "or templar."

  "He was a warden," Lana explained. A temperamental smile twisted up her lips. "I recruited him from the Pearl in Denerim."

  "The Pearl? Do...do wardens often have dealings in brothels?"

  Lana laughed at his question, "More often than one would expect. It seems like every manner of back deal in Ferelden is done at the Pearl. Must be the excellent broth they have. But I didn't find him on business. I spotted Gareth working the crowds during a festival. He was supposed to be advertising for the Pearl by performing a few simple feats of agility, dashing about on wires stretched above the crowd. Rather banal things done to impress while wearing as little clothing as indecency could allow. I didn't notice him until someone in the crowd attempted to assault one his co-workers. The man sprang off a high wire, grabbed onto a beam for leverage, and plummeted onto the thief without disturbing another person. I offered the position to him on the spot.

  "He was eager to become a hero. Many in Denerim hoped that the great Hero of Ferelden would find potential in them. Turn them into slayers of darkspawn. They didn't know, didn't understand what the Wardens take from you. But I did. I stood by watching as every man and woman took in the taint, doomed themselves to an eventual death. If it weren't for me..." Lana shook her head, she was telling Gareth's story, not mewling about her own sorry state. "Gareth survived the joining, popped up even quicker than was usual."

  "And the other wardens were accepting of a..."

  "Prostitute?" Lana asked. "We take all kinds, a man who traded sex for money was far from the worst of the lot. He was committed to the cause having been at the battle in Denerim, watched his own friends be cut down by darkspawn. Funnier than you'd expect too, wit as dry as kindling."

  Cullen's fingers gripped tighter to her hand, pressing into her, "What happened to him?"

  "There was a cave-in in the deep roads. We were trapped with darkspawn pressing in on all sides. We could escape but someone...someone had to buy us time, and Gareth volunteered," her fingers circled that name, remembering his shaggy hair shaved along the side, those wild gray-green eyes, and the way he always mashed up his eggs with a spoon until they were goo. "He was the first warden I ever lost. The first I ever ordered to his death, but not the last."

  Silence slipped across them both, only the whistle of a few swallows dipping in and out of Skyhold's eaves breaking it up. Cullen's fingers dug tighter to her and he dropped his voice to a bare whisper. "The scar you spotted upon my chest, from Haven..."

  Lana nodded, she remembered it well.

  "I didn't receive it from debris. As we were pulling back to the church in a retreat, a red templar pounced upon me. I ordered the other soldiers to finish taking the wounded inside, certain I could finish off one alone. But when... The helmet fell off and even through the corruption branching inside her skin, I knew her. It was one of my templars from Kirkwall, one I'd helped train. She believed in the order, put her faith in it with a fervor I'd have thought impossible. And look what it did t
o her. What it did to us all. My arm slackened, I couldn't, wouldn't attack her. So she drove her blade into my chest. The armor shrugged off most of her attack, when my arm moved of its own accord and I," Cullen sneered his gaze away, "I cut her down."

  There was the true darkness of war. You could keep going, keep rising every day refreshed if you convinced yourself that the enemy on the other end wasn't a true person. They were deserving of death by dint of being a lesser creature. But then what? What life do you find when that darkness fades and you're supposed to return to your fields and market stalls? When all that beats in your heart is a certainty of who deserves life and who does not? Corypheus was mad not to think he could be a god but to even want that power.

  Cullen's fingers dug deeper into the back of her hand, pinching against the skin. He gripped tight to his head too, as if trying to will away a headache. Circling her thumb in his palm, Lana asked, "What is it?"

  "It is--"

  "Cullen," she glared at him, knowing he was about to excuse it as nothing.

  He gulped and hung his head, "I am exhausted more readily since, since ceasing the lyrium. It is trying to...to not, I wish I were stronger. That I was capable of..."

  "You're the strongest man I know," Lana exclaimed. Despite the public spot, she reached across herself, twisting in her seat to cup her fingers above his knee. He didn't brighten from the touch, but his lips parted like a parched man taking that first cold sip.

  "Not the strongest person?" he asked, batting away the discomfort from her noticing his pain.

  Lana shrugged, "I know Hawke, so..."

  Cullen chuckled, "That is a fair point. I would not want to tangle with her."

  "I didn't want to draw attention to..to drag out your own fight against lyrium withdrawals," Lana started, her fingers back to fidgeting with her staff. "To throw off the chantry's yoke and free yourself- What you're doing is..." Her head collapsed into her chest and she moaned into it, "Losing yourself is terrifying to think upon."

  "Why do you care?" he whispered back, the fervid voice causing Lana to sit up. His broken eyes hunted over hers, "Even back in the deep roads you seemed reviled by the idea of the lyrium. Why would a mage bother?"

  "I didn't realize I wasn't supposed to..." Lana sucked in a breath and shook her head, trying to will away the anger in her words. She grew tired of explaining why a mage would do this, why a mage would do that. She couldn't speak for every mage. All she had was what she would do, what she felt. "You didn't grow up in the circle, not the way a mage does. I may not have been a templar, been involved in your day to day life, but I knew them. Watched them change over the years, have memories slip away, thoughts dissolve while speaking. Their minds foundered upon an internal sea while everything inside withered leaving only a shadow behind." Her fingers dug into the bench, trying to claw away the burn of anger and grief in her heart. Cullen fell silent. She felt his eyes watching over her, but she didn't face him.

  "Lana, I..." he ran his hands up his face, distorting his scruff. "Maker's breath, I'm sorry for assuming, for...I don't know. This fight wears on me and I know I can find myself a touch-"

  "Grouchy?" she threw out.

  "I was going to say curt, but grouchy is probably more accurate," he placed his hand beside her and she scooped it up in her fingers. At first he stared at their entwined hands again, then he risked a glance at her. She wanted so badly to kiss him, to wrap her arms around him and whisper she understood. She knew what it was to go it alone even when surrounded by others who tried to help but never could. Instead, she circled around his fingers, gently curling hers around his leather glove.

  "White and I," she whispered, the memory rising in her memory, "we talked on occasion about a way to try and cure lyrium addiction. To combat its ill effects. He..." she paused and licked her lips, struggling against her constricting larynx. "He more than hoped to free templars, he wanted to reverse the damage."

  "Did he love her? His...that templar he, you know, became a blood mage for?"

  Lana shook her head, "I don't think so, not the way you're thinking, not romantically. He was not that type of person. But he did love her. The way he spoke of her it was like the moon describing the sun. Someone you could never share a space with but who filled your entire sky. He said, before the illness took over, that she was starting to forget things. Little words here and there, simple names, where she'd placed her belongings." She didn't realize she'd started crying until she screwed her eyes up, the tears blurring her vision. Willing away the emotion in her voice, Lana asked him, "Have you begun to lose...?"

  "I," Cullen shifted in his seat but he kept a hold of her hand, neither of them willing to let go. "I don't believe so. It's hard to tell, I... There are some memories I wish I couldn't recall, many at times, but," his fingers caressed the back of her hand and he smiled at her, "some I never want to lose." She grinned through the pain, grateful for their little reprieves, each moment together lightening her heart. Cullen's smile faltered and his eyes darted away, "Does, do you lose yourself from the taint? Will it act the same?"

  Despite being in view of a chantry mother and Maker who knows else in the garden, Lana reached over and cupped Cullen's cheek. His eyes darted guiltily at the intimacy, but he didn't shake her off. Pushing his scruff back into place, Lana smiled at him, "No, mercifully. We keep our minds, and I...I have no intentions on ever forgetting you."

  "I was worried for you," Cullen blurted out, his lips dancing close to her palm. "When word came that you'd tried to breach Adamant alone, and then seeing the marks on your neck, I..."

  Lana's hand slipped away and she wrapped herself back into her blanket of shame. "I overreacted, under-thought. It was a mistake that I do not intend to repeat."

  "Lana," he sighed, "you can talk to me. Please."

  She knocked her teeth together, summoning away the walls built in her mind to protect herself, "I suppose you, I owe you..." Her fingers massaged her staff, running the length of it so quickly it was a wonder she didn't pry up a splinter. "The Wardens were my home, were the only place left that I thought an apostate was safe. But now... Clarel ordered my death, her Wardens didn't even blink. I, no, that isn't why. In the fight to escape I had to stab one, blind him. I killed a warden, another warden. Some delusional part of me thought that if I could save them, then I could overcome Nathaniel's loss. Every loss. Return to that commander they needed, find a home."

  Slipping her hand out of Cullen's grip, her fingers dug under her shirt's collar and unearthed a string. Yanking it over her head, Lana revealed the pendant she'd worn for ten years -- her covenant with the wardens. Despite the passage of time, the darkspawn blood still oozed inside the crystal; magic or perhaps its own taint kept it from clotting. Lana dropped it into her hand and closed her eyes shut. Tapping past the typical fires of the fade, she willed the hottest lava imaginable from her fingers into the crystal. The ichor bubbled as the heat melted and twisted the crystal. Slowly, the boiling darkspawn blood merged with the crystal itself turning the once clear pendant crimson-black. Lana yanked back on her magic, and she dangled the white hot necklace off her fingers so it'd cool.

  It was a promise she made out of fear, out of naïveté, out of a need to belong. Despite all that, she honored it, carried it with her into every battle she could. She believed in stopping the blights, but in doing so she poured that same taint into innocent people's blood, turned them into wardens. And when they needed her to save them, to guide them away from Corypheus, she wasn't there. The wardens had no use for her and she had none for them.

  Prodding the crystal with her pinkie, Lana sighed at the cool touch. She cupped it gently in her fingers and watched the dead promise. A crack broke the length of the quartz from her fast heating and cooling, but no darkspawn blood poured out. Every last drop merged with the crystal, bonded together for eternity.

  "Whatever happens at the siege on Adamant, I cannot return to the wardens. I will do everything in my power to save them, but..." she closed he
r fingers over the pendant and passed it to Cullen, "it's time I gave up."

  He accepted the black pendant and watched it in his own gloved hand. "You're giving this to me?"

  "I am uncertain what to do with it. Maybe Dagna or any of your other researchers could do something with it. I...cannot look upon it anymore."

  Cullen nodded and slipped her old pendant away in his pocket. He seemed uncertain about it, but once it was secure, he caught her drifting hand in his and held it tight. "Can you leave the wardens?"

  She shrugged, "I'll always be tainted, but I don't think anyone in the order will try to track me down." Her head slipped down and she faced the far burning question inside her heart. "I am uncertain where I will go. Once when I was tired of it I imagined returning to the Circles. Finally becoming that Senior Enchanter I was supposed to be. But now..." She waved her empty hand out into the gardens towards a few of the handful of free mages without a tether to the world, apostates in all but name.

  "You could," Cullen twisted uncomfortably in his seat, "remain with the Inquisition." His winsome, honeyed eyes stared at hers, before he coughed and fluffed up the back of his hair. "I mean, the other circle mages are here, and they'd certainly welcome your expertise in so many matters. If you, um, had any reason or want to stay. Here, I mean."

  Maker, she nearly cracked in half from the awkward way he danced around the question he was too fearful to ask. She yearned to tell him everything he wanted to hear. That she'd gladly remain in Skyhold, put her all into helping to stop Corypheus and devote herself to whatever happened after. But, she knew Fiona would want no truck with her. The Grand Enchanter had asked less than politely if the Hero of Ferelden, a world respected mage, would back the rebellion. When Lana refused, despite perfectly good reasons the ex-Warden should have known, Fiona turned on her. They'd seen each other across the grounds around the hold, but the elf would always turn on her heel avoiding Lana with every available opportunity.