Chapter Five
Damn
Damn it all!
He was barely aware of his surroundings, only caught the occasional gasp of a chantry Mother or Sister waving her brittle hands at the man radiating rage as he stomped past their doors in the early morning hours. In another mood, Cullen would have grimaced at startling them and slunk away. Now, all he did was glare with the full force of command and they gasped at his audacity before sliding back to their own rooms in the Cathedral.
Damn that man, the smug bastard who knew...he knew the whole damn time that if he merely played his cards right and bided his time he'd win. She'd return, of course she would, she had once before and...and the bastard didn't change at all. Cullen wrapped a hand against his forearm and dug in with the nails. He wasn't good enough. Sure, he rose to the ranks of Commander within the respected Inquisition but what did that compare to a King? And while he was perhaps an early crush, that man -- that Maker damned man -- was her first love. How could he compete with any of that? Alistair had a nation and Cullen had...had...
He lashed out, his fist smacking against the stone wall with such force clumps of dust rattled off the tapestries hanging above it. There should be pain, but his body was numb, his limbs ice and heart sludge in the snow. He thought he had her, finally. Nothing else between them, but...
Roaring from the depths of his throat came the thirst, always clawing on the edges, prepared to overtake him at a moment's notice. His skin itched as if the muscles and sinew below were trying to pop out and free him from the agony barely coating the surface. If he stopped for a moment, the ringing in his head and need in his veins awoke the slumbering dragon buried in his gut and anger overtook him. An anger he struggled to keep at bay. It was never this bad the first time he broke free, but maybe Kirkwall kept him distracted. He needed his duty to...
Andraste's grace, he was as bad as Alistair.
The pain of pinching radiated off his arm, and Cullen pulled his hand away to find pinpricks of blood welling up across the verdant stretch of his shirt. He'd managed to cut himself through the fabric and hadn't even noticed. Cursing at the mess, he unbuttoned the cuff and rolled the sleeve up before it stained permanently on her... She gave it to him, smiled with a soft question as he opened it. She begged him to tell her if it was all right as he tried it on and to make it the truth. It was perfect; no frills, no pointless buttons, soft to the touch but sturdy for constant use and as green as the fields of the Hinterlands in late spring.
You made her cry.
He smacked the back of his head against the wall, wishing he could drown back the anger percolating inside him. No matter how much he willed them back the visions and memories of the past months always returned. Alistair, dead certain that they'd find Lana, that they'd save her, while Cullen fumbled in the dark. How the king risked everything he had for this woman who wanted nothing to do with him. And yet, they were talking again, attempting another friendship because...because Alistair knew Lana better than Cullen could ever hope to. Cullen could almost convince himself that he was being too hard on himself, weighing his own waning convictions against an unfair advantage. But even as he held her body, her sleeping head pressed against his chest as her warm breath warmed trickled across his skin, he wondered to himself if he'd known the truth about the phylactery from the start would he have pursued her? When darkness crept through him, the thirst yanking every certainty from his brain, he felt in his heart the answer: no.
You swore you'd never hurt her.
She deserved better than that, better than someone who had no faith in her, in himself, in anything. Crumbling to his knees, Cullen realized he wasn't mad at Lana for wishing he had the conviction of Alistair, but at himself for not. Pinching his eyes tight, he saw a flash of their time trapped in the fade. Lana, not his but the king's version, swollen with child and so happy, all her hard edges buffed away by being surrounded in family.Maker, Cullen gasped as the idea stabbed against his heart. Could he ever make the real Lana as happy as that one?
You promised you'd never hurt her. You made her cry.
"Shit," he cried out, his solitary curse echoing down the abandoned hall. A dozen chantry Mothers prodded their heads out of their doors, about to admonish him. But all their tsking silenced at the broken man wandering past, his head hanging flush with his chest as he stumbled back to his room.
By the time he reached their door, all the rage washed clean from his body leaving only a depthless despair in its place. He didn't feel like he deserved anything, not even to shrink back alone to the Inquisition. He was failure personified, his touch withering all he dared bother. No fresh lights burned in the dark rooms, and he cast a cursory glance over at the divan but didn't spot Lana. She must have gone to the bedroom. Cullen tried to pinch himself to decide if he should impress upon her or let her be when a gasp broke from the floor.
Sliding deeper into the room, his world darkened at her body prostrated on the floor in front of the couch. "No," he whispered, fear pounding under his flesh, visions of the same horror he felt when he thought her dead blanketing his vision to a searing white. He was about to cry out, when Lana lifted her head. By the Maker, she was okay. Honor sat beside her head, her tongue lapping over her cheeks to try and catch tears. The tears he caused.
In a broken voice, she whispered, "I know you're not him."
Cullen smoothed his hand over his eyes to try and wipe away the emotion. In a steady voice he asked, "Lana, what happened? Why are you one the floor?"
"I," she pointed at the divan, sniffles punctuating her pauses, "tried to come after you, but..." Now she struggled to rise up to her elbows and a bone rattling groan burst from her, "my legs didn't work and...and I fell."
"Blessed Andraste," Cullen plummeted to his knees beside her and he felt the tears rain down his cheeks, "I'm sorry, I never should have...I'm so sorry."
"It's not your fault," she whimpered, folding deeper in on herself. Her hand curled up the arm of her dress smudged in dirt from the floor. "It's mine for..." Lana's head snapped up and through her cascade of tears she stared at him, "I swear, Cullen, I don't think of you as Alistair. I...I don't want you to be him. Never, I..."
"Shh..." he plopped down beside her and tried to comfort her while keeping his hands knotted around his legs, "I, I was wrong to question it, to doubt it. Lana, I..." Folding his chin to his chest, Cullen picked apart all the pain that squatted in his heart for the past three months. "Finding you, searching for you, it-it wore upon me, broke me. Some nights I was, did...did he ever tell you why we got into the fist fight?" Lana's mouth slipped closed and she slowly shook her head no.
"We reached a boiling point, when your phylactery...it doesn't matter. Doesn't excuse it. All that does is prove he believed that you were alive and I," Cullen sunk even deeper into himself, "I didn't." He didn't realize he was openly weeping into his knees until Lana's hand graced across one.
"I don't hold that against you," she said, her own stained eyes wide in compassion. The depths of it stung him even deeper.
"But I do. After everything you suffered, two years in...and I couldn't even bother to try and find you myself. It took someone else, him, to drag me out from behind my desk. It's...I'm not..." His words faded to blubbering as Lana wrapped her hands around his chest and she managed to drag herself closer. Settling her head upon his bent knees, she softly caressed his leg as if she was trying to revive his overworked muscles. He watched her silently worry her hand up and down him, the tug of his pants against her calming touch shaking him out of the stupor. With his heart in his throat, Cullen reached a finger out to run across her hair. Lana didn't pause in caressing him, so he added another two until his whole hand held her head.
"I'm not good enough for you," he whispered, grimacing at the stark facts. He knew even when they were both nobodies, only a mage apprentice and a knight-lieutenant in the Circle tower, that she was beyond him. And now? To think even for a moment that he'd deserve a scrap of the Hero of Ferelden'
s time never mind her whole life, it was ludicrous.
Lana paused in caressing his leg and wrapped both of her arms around his knees in a strange hug. "That's not true." She lifted her eternal eyes to him and shook her head, "Don't, don't treat me like I'm some perfect thing hoisted upon a pedestal. I'm not. For the Maker's sake, I can't even get off the damn couch."
"You are to me," slipped out of his eternal wallow. He yearned to stroke her cheek but he felt dirty, his skin sickly with a filth that'd never come clean.
Snorting, Lana's eyes narrowed. She struggled to rise up and, with the tip of her finger, she prodded into his chest, "Bullshit. What about me and tea? I know that annoys you." Cullen curled downward, his eyes watching her finger push lightly into his sternum as she continued to make her point. "I leave books everywhere, all the time, sometimes ones I don't even remember getting much less reading. Once, I got into a three hour long argument with someone about...Maker, I don't remember, and when I went to look it up I realized we were both wrong."
"You'll often store cakes and biscuits in your pockets for later," Cullen mumbled out, smiling at the memory. Lana's tirade paused and sheepishly she reached towards her hip where no doubt a treat left over from her time with Leliana rested.
"I...how did you know that?"
"When you're beyond annoyed with someone, you flap your arms up and down as if you intend to take flight and grow so flustered you can't speak a word," he chuckled, letting the memory he'd kept walled away return to the light. Cullen preserved so many memories of her far from his conscious mind; after her loss he couldn't bear to think upon them.
"That..." Lana absently ran a finger down her cheek and he spotted a blush rising up through her beautiful skin. "That's uh, yes I do that. Not as often anymore, because there were some wardens who may have put on a play where they, uh..." She swallowed, digging into the back of her neck as she now glared up at the ceiling. Reaching forward, he gripped both of her hands in his, massaging the back of them with his thumb. Lana didn't break from her vigil on the ceiling, her blush brightening even by the dim candle light.
"I'm sorry," Cullen moaned.
"It wasn't the worst play ever," her eyes broke from the ceiling and she shrugged. "Sigruin has a real talent with the flute. Had." Her face fell with that correction and he saw her playing out her faults anew, because of him, because he'd given in to his own misery.
"It's the lyrium, I... I fear I've lost what certainty I had before. It gave me a drive, a conviction and without it I feel adrift and..." his head slopped down, "I panic more, lose myself to-to remorse, regret, I'm so sorry. To hurt you, to, Maker, you fell down because I--"
Lana threw her arms around his neck, straining to reach, and pulled his forehead to hers. She didn't kiss him, only pressed their skin together by that single connection as they breathed each other in. He'd tried a few calming exercises when he first gave up lyrium, count of five in and out until the urges passed. Puckering up his lips and fighting through the damn ego insisting he didn't need it, Cullen pulled in a breath and waited before exhaling. He went again, imaging the air wiping away his pain. It didn't really work, but he liked to pretend it did. After a few more, he lifted his eyes to find Lana matching him breath for breath.
"I keep blaming myself for not assaulting the Fade and rescuing you. Two years. You were trapped in there for two years and all I did was grieve. How can you forgive that?" He'd tried to shake that thought away, but it hounded him every step away from the grey warden prison that held her. If he'd been strong enough, Lana wouldn't have to have suffered in there, she wouldn't be in the state she is now.
Her eyes opened and so close to him he fell transfixed into the golden halos circling her pupils. "No. Maker's breath, Cullen. No. I can never blame you for that. I went into the fade, okay I didn't go in willingly, but I stayed behind. I thought I was sacrificing my life to save others..." Her fingers slid off his neck to cup around his cheeks. Lana swallowed a few times, her lips breathlessly sounding through something before she spoke, "If anything, you should hate me for that. For abandoning you when I didn't have to." By some foul trick of the Maker his grief transferred to her and the strident, certain woman collapsed in on herself. Her chin brushed over her chest, her eyes boring into the floor, but she kept a tight lock on his face as if she didn't want to ever let go.
"It's my fault for all of it. Every damn day, as always. No matter how hard I try, it keeps going wrong," she stuttered and he heard the sobs begin again.
"Lana," he cupped her chin and tried to lift her heavy head. While she obliged him, her eyes skipped past, terrified to look into his.
Her nose flared, sucking down a sob that escaped through her mouth instead, "I'm so scared, terrified that... I know you're not Alistair, that you'll never make the choices he did. That's not the problem. It's me. In all of this, I'm still me. I'm still the same person who... By the void, I don't know what I did wrong, what I keep doing wrong to-to make everyone abandon me."
"Oh, Lana," stricken, he ensnared her in a hug, trying to pull her weeping face to him as if that would somehow wipe away all her pain.
"If I, losing you would be...I can't imagine it. Don't even want to, ever, but, what if I do it again? What if I push you to do something you don't wish and-and you'll want nothing to do with me? You'll leave me."
Maker, that was why she was so worried about the Inquisition. He felt an even greater fool at the obviousness laid out before him. Locking his arms tighter around her, Cullen shook off his tears but it wasn't enough. To stall for time, he pressed a kiss against her forehead and found his lips trembling. All her life, the people she counted on and needed vanished either to death or choice. All his life, he'd kept himself walled away afraid of the same.
"I'm sorry," she croaked in the silence, "I'm so bad at this."
"Not as bad as me," he laughed but felt the sorrow bobbing through it. "Lana, please look at me," Cullen slackened his arms. It took her a moment, but she lifted her eyes to his. He held tight to her hands between them. "I swear to you, to Andraste and the Maker, I'm not leaving the Inquisition because you're forcing me to. I don't feel any regrets at all, and none towards you. By the void, the idea of being free to be with you, to not have to worry about a soldier or aide wandering in when I kiss you is...dizzying and thrilling to contemplate. I will not turn around and leave you, because I can't imagine being without you, not again."
Her lip stopped wobbling and she seemed to be taking in his earnest words. After a time, Lana removed a hand from his to wipe away her tears, then returned it. "I'm an idiot," she sighed, a wisp of a smile flitting around her lips.
It heartened him to see it and Cullen felt his own cloud lighten. "If so, then I am twice an idiot."
"A twidiot?" she said, and a thread of mischief ran through her eyes. Cullen let a laugh echo in his throat even though he didn't entirely feel it, but he wanted to. He moved to wrap his arms around her again, but Lana hissed as he glanced across her shoulder. "That," she groaned, tenderly touching it, "was the part I hit on the floor."
"I should..." Cullen whipped his head around, realizing for the first time that they were sitting on the stone, "it's freezing here, you shouldn't be down on the ground like this. I can get you a blanket or..."
"Cullen," her hand glanced over his and he turned to her, "take me to bed. It's been a long night, and I think we both need sleep. You're looking rather ragged around the edges." She pointed at his red eyes as if she didn't have the exact same.
Bowing his head, he let Lana lock her hands around his neck so he could lift her into his arms to carry to the bedroom. It would probably be considered romantic if he hadn't just overreacted, shouted at her, ran from her, and returned with his tail between his legs. Without looking at any of the imposing decor, Cullen lowered Lana to the bed, her hands falling slack against the mattress. He turned away so she could undress in privacy, but he felt her hand straggle up his back.
"Come lay down, please," she patted his side
, her eyes gazing up at him.
Nodding, he slipped around the bed making certain to not touch the posts, and fell below her still patting hand. Exhaustion held at bay by a thousand stampeding emotions rattled up through his legs. Groaning from age taking its toll, Cullen stretched out across the bed, grateful that they didn't have to sleep on the ground any longer. Lana scooted near him, and as she laid her head against his chest, he draped an arm over her, snuggling her closer. Maker, how could he have endangered this?
She seemed to be thinking the same as she whispered, "Does, does that count as our first fight?"
"I, um, suppose it does," he felt even stupider for it. In his heart he knew she wanted him, loved him, but that destitute part of him, the one broken free by the lyrium, kept chipping away at the only certainty in his life.
"Well," Lana rolled her chin up so she could look into his eyes. From his vantage point on the pillow he could only see her through the fan of her lashes. "I think that makes us official then. Congratulations Mr. Rutherford, you're saddled with a mage," she chuckled, her fingers stroking the shirt across his chest.
"And you're stuck with a broken down, ex-templar, Ms. Amell," he said.
"Not broken," she interrupted, the deprecating laugh replaced by a seriousness burning in her eyes, "hurt. Hurt can be healed. We can heal." To back up her statement, she dipped into the veil and a blue spark trailed her fingers. A surge of magic caressed down him, the sensation cool and bright vanishing the itching of his skin in its wake. Lana sat up and placed her fingers against her own bruised shoulder. "One for you, and one for me."
"I love you, Lana," he caught her fingers not to stop the magic but to press her close to him, to feel as much of her as he could, "even if I'm terrible at showing it."
She snickered at that assessment before sighing. Her warm cheek burrowed into his chest as she settled down onto him. Holding her, keeping her safe, loving her -- that was what he signed up for. To have her love in return, to protect him, to hold him back -- that was what he lived for. It was going to take time, and the Maker didn't plan to make it easy, but he was going to give it everything inside of him.
My Love Page 98
