My Love

by Sabrina Zbasnik

  Warm fingers ran up his arm, and he turned to fall deep into her eyes. "How are you doing?" she asked in a gravel voice.

  "Me?" Cullen started, shaking his head. He was tended to by Orlais' best like some spoiled brat while Lana lay upon the fetid filth of a dungeon. Cupping his palm around the curve of her face, he noticed skin slit open and filthy upon her cheeks and forehead. "These should be cleaned," he said. His thumb lightly brushed near one when Lana grabbed onto his wrist and tugged it down, her lips twisted in pain.

  "From my cane going boom. There's probably some splinters of wood embedded...Maker only knows where." She wrote her injuries off as little more than a hangnail but Cullen winced. Lana wasn't supposed to be caught in that crossfire, the terrorists wanted only the Commander. Because of him, she got hurt.

  Laying her makeshift cane down, Lana grabbed both her arms onto Cullen and began to hobble towards the bathroom. He followed, feeling weak and useless. The Divine glanced up from the blood stains she'd been staring at, the ones scattered over the counter where Lana confronted Detan.

  "I'm going to have a talk with our spy," Leliana said, all emotion wiped clean from her words, but when Cullen glanced back he saw the same pain etched across her face. If she hadn't brought Detan into their lives, Lana wouldn't have been hurt. Wouldn't have nearly...

  For her part, Lana nodded at her friend before slipping into the bathroom with Cullen right behind her. Their bathroom contained more or less that, a great porcelain tub resting up upon brass dragon talons. Water steamed up to the gold lip, while a trio of towels rested in a white wicker basket beside it. Lana ignored the tub and began to lean over for their more modest toilette. A sunken in washbasin, easily removed to dump the cold water out the window, was flocked by a dozen bottles. Her fingers aimed for a healing ointment, the contents inside the bottle nearly crystal clear.

  "Let me," Cullen interrupted her laborious movements and snatched it up. She huffed once but let her head slip down in acknowledgment that he was right.

  Pulling apart the wound linen, Cullen doused a handful in the balm before touching the wad to Lana's face. She crumpled her nose, flinching when it touched but didn't say a word. Clear liquid dripped down her filthy cheek, washing away blood and debris to reveal a thin welt below. "I don't see a splinter in there," he announced.

  "Good," she nodded, her teeth gritted. Lana lifted her face up fully into the light and Cullen gasped at the full damage. A good dozen red welts, some bloody and all coated in grit ran from her forehead and down her cheeks.

  Swallowing down his own pain at the sight, Cullen dumped nearly half the bottle into the linen and began to try to soothe her aches away. He nearly lost her, in an instant the Maker could have taken her away from him...again. And because of him, because someone out there wanted to kill him, to make a point to...it didn't blighted matter what they wanted. He'd have been the cause of her death. If he'd had to have lived with that...

  Her fingers wrapped around his wrist, holding the linen still, and Cullen started from the darkness clenching around his heart. Slowly, Lana released her hold and wiped her thumb across his cheek, catching tears he'd barely noticed. "I..." he stuttered, always bumbling around her, never certain about anything. That was his curse. His hands fell to his side and he sneered at the ground. "I thought I'd have to comfort you," he whispered, peeling open the inner thoughts rattling around in his soul.

  Sighing, Lana cupped both her palms around his cheeks and brought his forehead down to hers. It chilled his flushed skin burning hot with rage, shame, fear. "I suspect you will have to, later," Lana whispered back. His eyes opened, focusing on her. "It takes awhile to catch up with me. Always has, sometimes weeks."

  "I suppose that helped during the blight." Cullen tried to lift his hands but they felt like dead weights.

  Lana snorted and she rolled her dry eyes upward, "That one's still catching up with me."

  "Lana, I--"

  "It's not your fault," she interrupted, already knowing what lurked in his heart.

  "How can you say that?" he whined. The evidence was clear; if she'd not been with him, not known him, not loved him then she'd never have gotten caught up in it.

  Taking a deep breath, Lana rolled her palms against his cheek, dragging mud through his hair. "Because I want to blame myself even though I know that's not right either. We all missed it, and we all share some or none of the blame."

  "I thought, I..."

  "I know," she sighed.

  "When I woke without you, I was certain you were all right. You'd gone off in pursuit of them, were assisting the guards, or even you were with Leliana planning, and the whole time you..." Cullen swallowed, his lips whiffling as breath barely passed though. "I believed you invulnerable."

  A sob broke in her throat and he looked up to find tears running down her cheeks. "If they'd killed you, if I hadn't...saved you. Maker, I was already making plans to find them all. Destroy them. It's..." She dug her fingers into him, pulsing the tips against his flesh as she repeated a mantra, "You're here, you're alive, it's over."

  "Is it?" He knew that one man down, even the handful they finished off were nothing compared to the nest hiding underground. It'd take time, effort, resources to smoke them out and even then another could pick up the mantle and carry it ever onward. It never ended, not as long as people rattled their sabers in the darkest of corners.

  Lana huffed, air blowing out her cheeks. "Cullen, don't...I need that, to cling to. It's the only way I..."

  Wincing, he folded his hands around her waist and tugged her tight. "No, you're right. I'm alive, you're alive. We're good."

  She hooked her fingers into his biceps and in a stripped, questioning voice answered, "I suppose so."

  Cullen broke from his tight hug to look down at her. She'd stopped her tears without any troubles, but the ointment he'd inelegantly doused across her cheeks dripped down her clearing skin towards her dress. "Oh, Maker, I..." he ran his fingers over her collarbone, trying to capture the liquid before it stained anything.

  Smiling at his ineptitude, Lana began to slowly unbutton the top of her dress. As she revealed the eternal depths of her cleavage, he felt a flush race across his body only to be replaced by shame for letting lust take over now. Cullen turned away, his vision focusing on the closed bathroom door to give her privacy, when Lana's fingers gripped onto him.

  "It's okay, you can look," she insisted, an almost laugh in her voice. It wasn't that he was trying to be chivalrous, though some of that clung to his bones despite how often they'd been intimate. Cullen feared the reaction his body would have to gazing upon hers. This wasn't the time, not when she'd, when he'd...

  Her fingers wrapped around his stomach, tugging him towards her until she nestled her face against his back. "I should get clean," Lana said, and Cullen nodded, prepared to walk out, "and so do you. We can kill two darkspawn with one fireball."

  "Lana," he rotated in her arms to find she'd already stripped off her dress leaving a structured slip behind that suckered tight to her skin. "I don't want to, if you need..."

  "What I need is a bath," she said, her beautiful eyes staring through to his soul. "And I think, what you need is me."

  Cullen flexed his fingers, his head dropping down. She was right, but the burning winding up his bones tugged him down into despair. Twisting away from her face, but not her embrace, he shuddered apart the ice floes crowding out the surface of his pain. "Loss is...it was a part of the life, my life," he spoke to the door, watching his nails claw the air. Black bits of the burned man's flesh had worked under them, as well as the mud of their mass grave, while he dug through the corpses praying to not see her face. "People die, during war, or in service, even-even not sometimes, and I..." He pinched his nose high, trying to shake it as if he bit into something bitter.

  Her lips pressed against his back; he could feel her smooshing her face tighter to him. "It's different this time," she said.

  Like slitting the string, his head lolled
towards his chest. "Yes, it is. I don't know if I can...if I'm able to face up to," his sentence floated away, unable to speak the words building to bursting in his throat. He was trained for this, to enter the field of battle, ignore the loss, the fear, and do everything within his power to make certain his side came out victorious. No matter the cost.

  Two years of grief warped that in him, burned away his failsafes, and froze solid his ability to disconnect, rendering it as unreachable as a griffin's nest. Cullen's filthy hands grabbed onto hers holding so tight to him. He couldn't do it, couldn't watch her run head first into danger not knowing in his mind and body if she'd return or what her falling would do to him. Endure, that was what'd been etched across his soul for as long as he could remember. He'd built himself to be untouchable, unbreakable, aloof beyond measure. And in one moment, all that steel armor shattered away leaving him vulnerable and, yes, scared. What could he be with that fear crawling under his skin? What could he become for her?

  "Cullen," she whispered, drawing him out of his bottomless self-hate. Slowly, Lana tugged her fingers free of his grip which he let fall. She didn't yank them away but leaned her cheek against his back while speaking. "Let me help you." Delicately, Lana's aching fingers reached up to undo the first button on his tunic. As she moved down the row, popping every one off with more tenderness than he ever managed, Lana pressed her lips against his back.

  While stripping off the shirt and letting it tumble to the floor, Cullen felt more naked than he thought possible. Everything he'd strived for, every choice, every decision to make the world better and to what end? People only wanted him dead, for their own means. Did he truly help anything? Unaware of his internal torment, or perhaps because of it, Lana skirted her fingertips across his chest. Down the scar from Haven when he had to kill his own templar, across another gained at Kinloch facing the same, trailing the mage fire from Kirkwall that burned away his certainty, the roadmap of every time he locked his heart further away inside his chest for his safety, his sanity. Lightly, she trailed down not to his breeches, but the bandage wrapped upon his arm.

  Pursing her lips at the wad of linen below her fingers, Lana whispered while inspecting it, "How bad is it?"

  Cullen felt insolence rise at how much attention he received for it, "Not at all."

  "But it's..." She began to unwind the bandages, strips of linen trailing across the floor like bunting. They could easily decorate the sanctuary of the Grand Cathedral in what tumbled off Cullen's arm. "Maker," Lana sighed, still unwinding, "how much of this is there?"

  "I fear the healer in charge was rather proud of her bandage collection," he sighed.

  A whisper of a chuckle broke from Lana at his impertinence and he in turn felt a smile twitching up his lips. "It's very thorough," she said, finally reaching towards the end as a bit of his own blood stained the tan bindings.

  "Yes," Cullen sighed, putting a whine in his tone he didn't truly feel in his heart, "thorough enough I suspect my arm would have withstood a mabari bite."

  She smiled at that and finally pulled free the final end to reveal his gash courtesy of a terrorist's blade. "Hm," Lana ran her fingers above it, lightly waffling his arm hair, "it's done well. Cleaned, stitched, I rather doubt there'd even be a scar." Her eyes drifted up from his failure to dodge and he fell into them.

  "Maker," Cullen gasped, cupping her bruised and maimed cheek, "if I'd lost you..."

  Tears welled up in those comforting browns, but Lana blinked them away. She patted his hand against her cheek, then gestured to the tub. "I don't know about you, but I'd like to get all the filth of...everything off of me."

  His head hung low, Cullen's vision skirting over the thin underclothes clinging to her body. Rotating his forehead against hers, the contact soothing him, he sighed, "You're correct."

  Lana patted him once on the cheek before sliding back. Despite only having a pair of trousers left to tangle with, she managed to undress faster than him. While folding up her shift and keeping it far from the muddy dress, Lana kept up a conversation with herself about some other person she knew who adored bandages and would find any excuse to get one, particularly the ones with hearts painted on them. Cullen didn't answer much, but he couldn't stop his eyes from wandering over the curve of the small of her back, the glisten of her beautiful skin, the rolling fullness of her breasts as she bent over, the delicate fingers sliding down her stomach.

  'It's okay to look,' he repeated her permission in his head. While he could never deny how he craved her body, in that moment as he canvassed every inch of her from those daisy yellow toenails up to her sheered locks, gratefulness enveloped him. When he slithered out of his own breeches, and began to yank free the socks, he felt Lana's curious gaze traveling over his body. She seemed to need to look too, as if to make certain that it wasn't all some fevered dream. They were both real.

  After tossing his socks towards the door, Cullen turned back to find the tips of her teeth nibbling against her bottom lip. That was enough to shatter what little resolve he could manage around her naked body. Absently, his hand moved towards his crotch, as if he could hide the fact from her, but Lana chuckled and snatched his fingers away. "Here, help me into the tub, please. I can't lift my leg high enough."

  She guided his hand to curl around hers and tugged him closer to the water. After shaking away the foolish embarrassment, Cullen slid nearer to her. Holding tight to her hand, he slid his spare one around her naked waist, the cool skin puckering as he helped her upwards into the tub. Water sloshed over the side, heading for his hastily tossed trousers as Lana paddled towards the edge of the tub and an ornery smile twisted up her lips. Patting the water with her hand she urged him to join her.

  While she drifted to the northern end, Cullen hopped up over the rim of the tub. Scalding water tried to pry off his flesh and he sucked in a breath waiting for his weak body to adjust. Standing half up in the tub, he heard a gasp from behind and glanced over his shoulder to watch Lana's famished vision staring meticulously at his back end.

  "My eyes are up here," he coughed, already feeling a blush rising to his cheeks, both sets.

  "Perhaps," she chuckled, "but your ass is demanding all my attention."

  Unable to withstand such concentrated focus, Cullen turned around and flopped into the tub. Waves undulated from his addition, water slopping up to Lana's sunken chin and more splashing over the tub's edge. Ignoring the heat of the bath, Cullen slid his back down the slick wall of the tub and stretched his feet out. The left one surfaced beside Lana's face and she looked over at it.

  "What is this doing here?" she pouted, increasing her faux exasperation for dramatic effect.

  Feeling a grin rising in his stomach, Cullen popped the right next to her and said, "Floating."

  "Maker's breath," she groaned, snatching one up in her fingers. "You don't see my feet waving in your face!" Even as she admonished him for it, Lana kneaded her fingers across the balls of his feet triggering a soothing wave of pleasure from his beleaguered toes up to Cullen's calf.

  Andraste's pyre, his tongue slackened from how she massaged away the knots in his feet, paying attention to the toes gnarled from years butting up in armored boots. When Lana paused, moving to the next, Cullen managed to get a sentence in. "Forgive me for being tall."

  "You're forgiven," she smirked, working her skills upon his other foot. "But only because I'm generous." Finished plying him apart and back together, Lana let his feet rest but they hung right beside her shoulders, pinching into her if he shifted. While she fit perfectly into the tub, he had to keep himself scrunched up to fit, or sometimes didn't bother at all.

  Cullen leaned forward to grab onto Lana's hand. He missed her fingers but caught around her wrist. At first Lana smiled, already sliding closer, but when he tugged on her wrist she gasped in pain and curled inward. Dropping his grip instantly, Cullen scooted towards her. "Are you...?"

  Shaking her head she rose from her forehead skimming near the water and slipped on a half
smile. "It was the manacles, they...you know."

  Despair dropped into his gut, scraping him hollow from the red welt rising up against her thin skin. As if he was scooping up a baby bird to return to a nest, Cullen palmed her wrist in his hands. She watched him wash water over it, the refracting light causing the swelling to sparkle almost as if she was wearing a bracelet tight against her skin instead of...

  Softly, he placed his lips against the thin skin of her wrist, trying to wipe away the damage from fear and hatred with a touch of love. It was stupid, he knew that in his mind, but some silly part of his heart for a moment thought it might work. Cullen lifted away from her wrist, his eyes opening to find that the welt remained, and probably would for days. Failure overflowed his skin, when Lana pulled her hand away from his. He expected her to slip back to her side of the tub, but wet hands burst from the water to grab onto his hair. Guiding him down to her, Lana pressed a kiss so tight to his lips, Cullen slid until his back bumped into the tub's wall.

  Heat rose through his body, tempting his fingers to canvas her hips and slide back around to her luscious ass. Lana's hands drifted down from his curls to land upon his shoulders. Using the leverage she pushed herself up to break the kiss, but those beguiling eyes rolled open and she smiled so perfectly he yearned to draw another one from her.

  "I love you," tumbled out of his throat with such breathy lust, it was a wonder it didn't come out "I need you."

  Lana swallowed, a flush rising to her cheeks, and she dipped her forehead to his. Her lips worked through a few words she never said before gently plucking a single kiss from him. Before Cullen thought to return it, she turned around and settled into his lap.

  No longer feeling ashamed of his reaction to her beautiful body, Cullen savored the sensation of her buoyant backside bumping into his excited state. Wrapping his hands tight around Lana's stomach, he buried his mouth against her shoulder, planting soft kisses across her radiant skin. He nearly lost the ability to do that, to hold her, to kiss her, to curl a finger over the scar across her right hip until she broke into ticklish giggles. All because of him.