He meant for it to help, to ignite a lightness in his darkened soul, but everything crashed inside of him. Walking kept him distracted, kept him from thinking about her, about the possibilities. After she fell into the fade, he'd often take meandering constitutionals around Skyhold before bed in the hopes he'd wear himself out so sleep would be instantaneous. By day, it was easy to throw himself into work, a hundred people needing to speak to him, needing to use him for whatever purpose was required of the commander. Night was when it struck him, when he was no longer the commander and only Cullen. When the final report was sealed up to be trundled off to Josephine, Leliana, or the Inquisitor in the morning, he'd lower the lantern light and find himself alone. His room was no longer the almost homey refuge from before, but a desolate prison. Each breath rattled through the thin air, amplified by the lack of feet stomping past his desk, the lack of bodies filling up his space, the lack of anyone breaking apart the endless void. He thought he was alone in Kirkwall, that he'd kept himself beyond the other templars, certainly beyond the mages or any civilians in the city. This was a whole new type of loneliness; the cliched frozen man with his nose pressed against a window pane watching the roaring fireplace and happy family inside.
"Lana," Cullen whispered aloud. His eyes burned from exhaustion and he screwed them up tight. "I wish you were here. I wish you were always here." Digging into his pocket, Cullen's fingers ran over the phylactery but he felt no life stirring inside. That wasn't what he intended for and he kept reaching until he grabbed onto the black crystal wadded below. Laying the pendant upon his chest, Cullen cupped a hand over what had once contained darkspawn blood. He never meant to keep it, she was right to suggest someone look into it, use it for anything to help. Then she fell and he couldn't part with the only piece of her she ever gave him.
When he needed to hear her words, to know she felt even a fragment of what he did for her, Cullen would flip through her journal. But if he needed to connect with her, to give himself a rung of life worth clinging to, he'd wrap his calloused palm around the crystal and squeeze hard enough to leave indentations. Now he rolled it around on his sternum, struggling to find a peace of mind.
"I wish I was better at this," he whispered to the pink room. "Better at talking to you, better at explaining what I'm thinking to you. I know you were in pain, it...Maker, I felt it too. Which isn't to say it was the same, that- Am I screwing it up without you even being here? Naturally. I wonder sometimes, if you'd reached out to me from your Keep, would I have gone to you? Left the order, stood by your side and abandoned the chantry to its own devices? A part of me wishes to believe it, believe I was a better man even then. If I had, if I'd been there for you, even responded to your one letter, for the love of Andraste, told you you weren't alone, I-I..."
He had no answer. In his heart, Cullen wanted to believe that if he'd done something for her she'd never have traveled to Seheron with the king, never fallen into such despair she took the Calling, met Hawke, and lost her wardens in the process. As if he could have shielded her from machinations beyond the both of them by some imaginary power of love. It was ludicrous, but it felt like the proper punishment for him. She tried, opened herself up, risked everything for his sake and what did he give her in return? Backed her into a corner? Made her feel terrible because she couldn't love him, may never love him? Was it such a surprise she chose to stay behind? To leave him?
For the first time in months, he felt the thirst clawing up his tongue - one that couldn't be slaked by any water or mead. It came at his most vulnerable. Even after five years of being free from the chantry and three from its song, the lyrium never left his mind, not fully. One philter and he'd feel whole again, right, not stripped for parts with his veins drained. He could drift away into the certainty that came with it, to have duty drilled into his marrow the way it once did. No more questioning every choice or wondering why. Cullen gripped tight to her pendant, swallowing repeatedly to try and drown out the thirst.
"I will be strong enough, I am strong enough for this. To reach the end of this..." Cullen's mantra drifted away as he wondered what would happen to him if after all this heartache they found nothing, or worse, came too late? Would there even be a reason for him to keep fighting? "Lana, I... Why does he call you Lanny? Why do they both keep on with that one?"
"Because," the king's voice broke from the door and Cullen sat bolt upright, his hand clenching around the protect the pendant. "That's what she told us all to call her. Sorry for listening to that part," he sounded broken himself, his good eye red rimmed as if from too much drink. But the man'd only had a pint. Alistair slid into the room and crumpled onto his bed, "All of us during the blight, we called her Lanny. I asked her once why that one, and not the Lana the mages used. Apparently, someone in the tower called her Lana and she didn't want to think about him."
Cullen narrowed his eyes and laid back, "I do not know who you refer."
"Jowan, it was Jowan. The one who..." Alistair paused, a snort reverberating in his bruised but not broken nose, "broke her heart. Then I went and did the same thing, bad enough to cover over her oldest friend becoming a blood mage and all but leaving her as a sacrifice for the templars. Maker, I'm an ass." He dropped his forehead into his lap, then groaned as his cheek brushed against thigh. "Just, tell me we'll find her, that she'll be right as rain and Lanny'll come waltzing back into our lives as if she never even left. I can't, I know she..."
Even with his head muffled by his lap, Cullen could hear the tears welling up in Alistair's eyes. He screwed his own up tighter to stem any threatening to rise. Barely pausing in his anguish, the king continued, "She was in pain, because of me, because I... For the love of the Maker, I knew all about her bad turns and yet I thought she needed time to herself, to fix it alone without me. You were right, she stayed behind because of what I did."
"No," Cullen's lips moved before his brain could shout at him to stop, "it was me."
Alistair lifted his head, snot dribbling down his nose, which he wiped away with the back of his hand. He let the tears continue unabated. "You? You didn't do anything. She blighted loved you."
He hated this man, hated him beyond reason, beyond a point of no return. They'd only tried to kill each other twenty four hours prior. Alistair didn't deserve to know a single thing about him. "She didn't. I pushed it on her, placed my own feelings upon her head, and she told me she wasn't ready to return them."
"I...uh," Alistair extended a hand out as if he needed to pass Cullen a kerchief or something. "I'm sorry."
"Why? Maybe she couldn't face up to telling me the truth of it, that she'd never feel for me what I did for her, so she remained behind." He'd never said aloud what flitted through his mind at the darkest hours. Cullen needed to blame someone, and he couldn't put it upon Lana - not again- so he turned to the next likely candidate, himself.
He expected the king to shake his head, huff off to sleep, or make some snide joke. Instead, the man slapped both his hands against his thighs, startling Cullen. "That is pure bullshit if I've ever heard it, and I'm surrounded by nobility constantly. I've heard every grade of bovine feces. Lanny, Lana, whatever you call her, she'd never in an age, in two ages, three give up on someone she cares even an iota about. And if Leliana noticed, spotted it enough to try and stick it to me years later, Lana cared deeply. I don't know why she wasn't ready. I assume it was my fault, most things are, but I knew that woman for eleven years."
"I thought you were only together for the blight," Cullen spoke up.
"Exactly, one year as lov...more and ten as friends. I've watched her rain fire down on people who'd so much as look crosseyed at people she'd befriend. She took on the crows for an elf that tried to kill us. Her friends were family, end of story, and she'd fight through anything for them." In the middle of his tirade, Alistair leaned so far forward he was in danger of falling clean off his bed. Suddenly realizing it, he didn't scoot back, but reached a hand down to the floor to anchor himself. "Look, Lanny, she didn'
t do the romance stuff much. She tried, but things kept getting in the way."
Things such as a nosy king of Ferelden, Cullen thought. Then his traitorous brain threw up a familiar refrain: duty, command, never becoming attached for fear of suffering loss, thinking he didn't deserve it.
Alistair touched his bruised cheek and hissed from the pain. "If she tried with you, even a little bit of letting herself fall, shirking her duties and stopped being aloof, then she was far more gone than you can imagine. And now I'm sick and tired of trying to give a pep talk to the man who blackened half my face. If you don't mind, sleep's all I want to hear now." Without even prying off his boots, Alistair spun around onto his bed, faced the wall, and buried his head into the pillow. His feet hung off the edge, the man not caring a whit -- he was already asleep.
Cullen licked his fingers to dampen the candle. By the light of the moon hovering in the window he watched the smoke dance off the wick. Rolling onto his back, Cullen wrapped his hands around Lana's pendant in prayer and recited the first words to rise in his troubled mind, "I have faced armies with You as my shield, and though I bear scars beyond counting, nothing can-can break me...except your absence."
Chapter Twenty-Two
Acceptable
9:41 Skyhold
"All right, try it again and maybe get it right for once," Cullen grumbled, pacing back and forth across the grounds. It felt as if half of Skyhold paused in their duties to come watch; cooks, stable hands, even the horses themselves seemed curious to see his soldiers square off against the Hero of Ferelden. It was not going well.
Lana raised her hands for a moment, prepared to begin any of a dozen magical assaults they'd discussed earlier, when she turned to the man orchestrating all of this. "A moment, please." Unknotting the belt knotted around her waist, she slithered out of her sapphire robes revealing only a white corset and shortened pair of breeches beneath. Smiling sweetly, she passed the robe to Cullen. "It's growing rather warm out here."
"Uh huh," he nodded dumbly, watching her saunter back to her position as if unaware how her exposed skin glistened in the sunlight, the swoop of her shoulders cried out for his fingers to caress across them, or the unfathomable canyon dipping below that sweetheart corset instantly captured his gaze. Snapping his head like a bee flew into his ear, Cullen willed back every dirty thought crossing his mind. A few choking noises broke through his ranks, and he turned to find blushes rising upon various green soldier's cheeks. He didn't appear to be the only one struggling. What does one do when the greatest known hero in your lifetime gave you an erection? He had no answer as he was yet coming to terms with that fact.
"Okay," Lana nodded her head and the easy smile vanished, her luscious lips puckering in concentration. Before the soldiers had a chance to recover from their flush of infatuation, a blast of ice burst across their drooping shields. Thankfully, a few bore enough sense to scurry behind their only means of defense when Lana unleashed her second spell. Cullen had no way to know what it was beyond suggesting she avoid the entropy spells until the newest recruits managed primal. If he was back in the circle, every last soldier here would have been chucked back to the chantry with a suggestion they take up the cloth instead of the shield. He was shrugging off both primal and entropic spells before he needed to shave.
Expecting another obvious attack in the form of fire or ice, the recruits huddled together forming an almost decent shield wall - with gaps that'd let a chevalier through, but at least it wasn't pointed at the ground. Mana crackled in the air with enough fade energy to light the entire barn on fire, but Lana stood perfectly still. Nothing born of nature blasted off her fingers. Her radiant eyes were lightly closed while her thick eyelashes fluttered hinting at something working beneath. As both of her hands turned upside down, her eyes snapped open and a wave of magic washed over the recruits.
One by one, their shields drooped to slip from limp fingers; metal smacking into itself echoed through the Skyhold courtyard as ten soldiers fell dead asleep on their feet. If it weren't for their tight huddle, they'd all have hit the ground themselves. Instead, heads landed upon each other's shoulders forming an upright pile of armor and people. Snoring was the only sound breaking above the sudden quiet.
"You have to be kidding me," Cullen sighed, he reached up to massage his forehead and the growing headache, which caused Lana's robe to smack him in the face. He forgot it was dangling off his arm.
The mage tilted her head watching her subjects dream when they should have been fighting, "I did not expect it to affect all of them."
"It shouldn't have worked on anyone. A sleep spell?!" Cullen paced towards her, his boots kicking apart the few clumps of sod left in the area. "Any first year templar can shrug that off, an initiate with the ability to pinch himself can shake it free. This is embarrassing!"
"They're not templars," she said, a surprising gentleness in her voice. He expected her to show the same anger, perhaps even greater. They were preparing to siege Adamant by using the downtime to train everyone who'd never faced magic before and arming them with every skill possible. But instead of shouting with her own commander voice he knew lurked deep inside, she smiled and her eyes softened, "They look so sweet sleeping, like a pile of puppies."
"Is it too late to recruit mabari pups instead?" Cullen groaned, but turning towards the barely even eighteen year olds all snuggled up on their feet. It was an almost heart warming sight. Maker, how did they look so young? "Can you wake them?" he asked.
"I have no idea. I've never tried to aside from, you know..." she mimed lifting a staff in her hands and bringing the end down into someone's skull.
Snatching up two dropped shields below their feet, Cullen banged them together - the ungodly noise breaking her spell its echoes reverberating against every stone in Skyhold. As each soldier rose from their slumber, they glanced around to find whose head shared their shoulder, then with a solitary horror realized their utter failure. Every eye swung to the commander in guilt. He should reprimand them beyond reproach, perhaps pull out the old "Do you have any idea what you could cost us if you fail?"
Instead, Cullen sighed, "You know what you did wrong?" The recruits bounced their heads like scrounging chickens. "Good. Take a break. I think we all need it." Raising up the shields turned into cymbals, Cullen spotted dents from where he smashed them together. They'd need to be repaired, and in the meantime replaced before they continued with another round. Which is what he should have put the recruits through again. There was no time out in battle, no 'go ahead and catch your breath, I'll wait for you.' Something was making him soft, and he feared it was the same thing making him hard as well.
The side armory held a number of damaged but useable shields. Nodding at the recruits tumbling to the grass, their heavy heads in hands, Cullen yanked open the door. While the true armory held the anvils and a forge, this was little more than a storage closet for excess weapons not worth using but not worth tossing either. At barely enough space for one person to slide through the piles of broken armor, ripped leather, dented shields, and shattered swords, Cullen didn't expect anyone to follow him. Tossing the shields he smashed together in anger onto the ground, he started at the sound of the door closing behind him.
Lana smiled at his questioning eyes and jerked her chin in his direction, "You have my robe."
"Oh, right." He forgot he tossed it over his shoulder, all of Cullen's wrath focused on waking up his recruits. "It, uh..." pulling it off his body, he felt a cold draft ruffle up the sweat pouring down his back, "may be a bit wet now."
Those delicate fingers picked her robe out of his hand and she leaned closer, "I hadn't planned on putting it back on." Without a care, she tossed it behind her, the sapphire wool blanketing out over a pile of empty hilts. Cullen gulped, his mouth running dry from the hunger in her smirking eyes. She slipped closer to him and her breasts skimmed across his own chest, but she didn't reach out to wrap her arms around him, only stood achingly near.
"Wh...What did you
intend?" He gazed down past her grinning cheeks, her blooming birthmark, and right into that damning cleavage. Lana was blessed with her fair share which the white corset, by some miracle, added to. Cullen bit down on the wild idea to dip his hands down the front of the straining fabric and free her breasts.
"I..." Lana reached a hand out, placing her elbow upon his shoulder, "noticed you." She added the second to the other side and stretched up on her toes. A moan rattled in the back of his throat, probably in the back of his soul as well. Those enigmatic eyes bore into his, her nose glancing upon his cheek as she tipped her head to the side and brought their lips together. After a few hours drilling in the brutal sun she shouldn't taste so sweet, but Maker, Lana was perfect, the last vestiges of the fade sparking off her lips. He yearned to drink her dry, to lap up every inch of her and then hunger for more.
She slipped away from his lips and rose up to whisper in his ear, "Parading around in that thin shift of yours, it's downright scandalous." Cullen craned his head to meet her eyes and found them ogling his body. Disbelief washed over him from her blatant lust for him. That wasn't possible - there was little for anyone on him to find enticing. For years he accepted his place in the hierarchy of attractiveness, almost grateful for it in Kirkwall as he drew so little attention. Lana's interest in him was baffling, and yet, Sweet Andraste he was so grateful for it.
"I never expected anyone to care what I wore," Cullen whispered in his sonorous tone. His lips brushed against her ear and Lana sighed from the bottom of her chest.
Humming under her breath as her fingers pulsed against his back, she smiled, "Does this mean you intend to wear nothing from now on?"
"Ah..." he chuckled, "your mind is deceptively devious, Lady Amell."
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