#absolutionem 02

[accipio]

Hawke's father taught him early on that the Fade is not always a churning maelstrom of demons and hostile magic like in the tales. It's more dangerous than that. It often appears exactly as the dreamer expects it to be, a mirror held up to the waking world and warped by the mind that beholds it. An incautious mage may mistake this reflection for reality; lulled into complacence by the familiar, they never wake. Or rather, they do not wake as themselves.

Hawke has played this game many times, and he knows better than most the tricks that a mind can play on itself. When he awakens in his assigned quarters, the plain room exactly as it was when he fell asleep there hours before, he just knows. His surroundings look and feel as solidly real as ever, but there's a subtle skin-crawling offness to everything that washes over him like vertigo.

Never one to wait around and let the demons find him, he grabs his wooden staff from where he'd left it by the door and heads outside, not even bothering to change out of the threadbare trousers that serve as his nightclothes. Physical armor is useless here.

He doesn't have to wonder what awaits him on the other side of the threshold. He knows exactly what he's going to find. He steps forward onto weathered cobblestone, the same stone that was carved from sea-battered cliffs by Tevinter slaves over fifteen hundred years ago. Before him rise the twin white towers of the Gallows, impossibly tall, no less stark and pitiless than the empty black sky behind them.

The city of chains welcomes him back. He has been many things, here—fortune-seeker, troublemaker, protector, liberator, destroyer—but in his dreams he is a prisoner. He has never left, and he never will.

He walks on, not because he wants to, but because he knows that the only way out is forward. He expects to be accosted by the usual suspects: despair demons, his failures made manifest.

(Bethany, her body a mangled ruin, her lifeless stare a silent accusation. Mother, reaching for him with another woman's hands, lurching forward like a puppet on a string. Why didn't you protect me, son? Why didn't you protect me, brother?)

But they don't appear. The Gallows steps are deserted, the gates open and unguarded. There are no fires burning in the braziers, just as there are no stars above. Instead, everything is lit by a diffuse purple glow that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. It renders the scenery curiously flat, shadowless. A fragment of some poem or other worms its way into his mind: No light, but rather darkness visible.

The back of his neck prickles with instinctive, animal dread as he steps through the gate and into the courtyard. It, too, is empty, save for a solitary figure standing in its center, rigid and unmoving like a soldier at attention. Waiting for him.

Hello, Knight-Captain.

The templar's silverite armor is more brilliant than it ever was in the waking world, its gleam undiminished by the lack of any natural light source. He is beautiful, perfect, a storybook knight made real, but no poet could ever dream up the frigid contempt with which he regards Hawke.

“You forget your place, mage,” the Knight-Captain says. Hawke stares at him, torn three ways between confusion, fear, and perverse fascination. “But I shall remind you of it.”

Hawke's gaze drifts to the oddly-shaped weapon in the templar's hand. He realizes with dawning horror that it is no weapon at all. It's the sunburst brand.

He scoffs, feigning nonchalance. “You lot really need to come up with some better material. That doesn't sound tempting at all. Your plan is to do what, exactly? Hold me down and brand me tranquil?”

The Knight-Captain (demon, he mentally corrects) appears unimpressed. “No,” it answers, the familiar voice stripped of all warmth, all humanity. “Only to give you what you want.”

Hawke's stomach lurches. No more talking. He calls upon his magic with ease, its flow unobstructed by whatever had dammed it back in the waking world. The demon, however, remains one step ahead of him. It raises its empty left hand, and a Silence slams down upon Hawke with the force of a physical blow. He staggers back, reeling from the nauseating sensation of emptiness, a limb suddenly severed.

Demons can't do that. Can they?

“Shit.” Maker, he's really in it now.

@absolutionem

[accipio]

He realizes that he picked a rather poor moment to bring up the Chantry’s many abuses against mages. Time and place, idiot. One needn’t be very perceptive to sense that the topic causes Cullen pain. Hawke ought to remember that he isn’t the only one with regrets—he’s well aware that Cullen collected a lifetime’s worth during his time in the Order. Some men would try to dull that pain with the anesthetic comforts of their preferred poison, be it drink, lyrium, or flesh, but not this one; that much he knows for certain. Cullen is the type of man to wear his mistakes like a hair shirt, to count out each and every one and write them upon the ledger of his soul. Why’s he so certain? Because he’s the same, of course. Like recognizes like. Sad Self-Loathing Bastards Club, membership: two. 

“Ha, there’s a thought. Wipe away all the unpleasant history, keep the pretty sparkles. I wish it were that simple.” His eyes linger on Cullen’s chest, where he knows the phylactery rests, tucked away out of sight beneath his breastplate. “I know it can’t have been easy for you, to reevaluate all that you were taught to believe. But for what little it’s worth, I don’t think everything the Chantry drilled into your head was complete druffalo shite. It’s noble to want to protect people, to be the bulwark that stands against evil, even if Meredith and her merry band of loonies twisted that into something…a tad less noble.”

But Cullen lost his way well before he even met Meredith, didn’t he? Templars gossiped like old women, and there were always plenty of rumors to peruse if one knew the right recruits to ply with an ale or two. Hawke heard whispers that Cullen’s near-death experience at Kinloch Hold left him paranoid and hateful, that his transfer to Kirkwall was less a promotion and more an attempt to shuffle off a potential liability. Those rumors always rubbed him the wrong way, though he had little reason to doubt the truth of them and even less reason to care what people said about Knight-Captain Stick-Up-His-Arse. Now that he knows Cullen, has seen glimpses of the pain that the man carries with him, he understands why. He hopes, perhaps presumptuously, that one day Cullen will trust him enough to share those memories with him, or at least understand that Hawke would never judge him for the scars he bears.

“Thank… me?” Hawke feels like he’s stumbled into a scene from one of Varric’s tales, or perhaps some awful wish-fulfillment fantasy he might conjure up during a moment of weakness. Cullen should not be thanking him for anything. He opens his mouth to retort that his attempts to ‘help’ Kirkwall left the city a war-torn ruin, but he stops himself. Despite everything, he wants to believe that Cullen’s rosy opinion of him might not be totally misguided. “I… Er. That means more than you know.”

Who’s helping me with my burdens…? Nobody, of course. The Champion of Kirkwall carries no burdens; he feels neither grief nor guilt; he endures all manner of tragedy with a shrug of his shoulders and a cheeky comment or two. He likes to think that he does a passable job maintaining that fiction, but Cullen sees right through him. “Maybe I want you to be that person,” he whispers. “Maybe I want to carry your burdens, too.” For some odd reason, he’s reminded of the day his magic first manifested, of the frozen puddle in the heat of summer. Even as he slid laughing on the ice, he knew, deep in his heart, that everything would be different from then on. “Not as the Champion or the Commander. Just me, just you. No titles to get between us.”

He fully expects Cullen to push him away. He already has the apology ready—sorry, don’t know what got into me. A temporary lapse. Won’t happen again. It’s a lie, of course—there was nothing unintentional about that kiss—but he’s willing to pretend that it was only an adrenaline-fueled error in judgment if it means salvaging their friendship.

What he doesn’t expect is for Cullen to wrap his arms around him and crush their bodies together, to hold him as though he weighs nothing, to return the kiss with the desperate hunger of a man starved. Hawke melts into the embrace in a manner not at all befitting the dashing heartbreaker he’s made himself out to be. He was right: Cullen does taste like lyrium, bright and enticing, like a spark of raw magic. He kisses back messily, greedily, stoking the spark into a full-on conflagration. The sounds Cullen makes only encourage him to grip harder, to grind their bodies together in an attempt to provoke force from a man he knows to be more than capable of exerting it. Perhaps it’s lucky that Cullen breaks the kiss when he does, lest they subject the denizens of the Fade to something truly indecent.

He makes a small, contented sound as Cullen nuzzles against him, the heat of the kiss cooling into warm contentment. He’s glad to have the other man supporting him—his legs have gone downright gelatinous, and he’s not sure whether he’d be able to stand without swaying embarrassingly. “Maker, that was…” Feeling very stupid all of a sudden, he racks his brain for an appropriate word. “Incredible. You’re incredible.” He takes the opportunity to do something he’s wanted to do for quite a while: he reaches out to trace Cullen’s lip scar with his index finger, an expression of boyish wonderment on his face. “Has anyone ever told you that the scar makes you look rather fetching?”

Cullen watches Hawke play with the phylactery, eyes a bit too shiny, fondness there betraying the gravity of the conversation. He too places his share of the phylacteries over his neck, tucks it under his chestplate, safe and warm against his skin. "The nastier part is ripping mages from everything they've known, to throw them into a Circle and chain them to it through blood. Divorced of that history, most templar rituals are...beautiful, really."

But is it truly beauty if it comes at great cost to others? It's a question Cullen wrestles with to this day—has he lost his faith completely, or has he only lost his faith in the Templar Order, the Chantry itself? Try as he might to replace the religion he grew up with, the Chant that brought him comfort and safety in the caged madness of Kinloch Hold and Kirkwall, he's unable to walk away from it all. Perhaps that's unworthy of him. Men have renounced the Maker for less.

The thought of Hawke in a Circle like Ferelden's or Kirkwall's sends a stab through his ribs. A cowed, deferential Garrett Hawke wouldn't be the Hawke he cares for, the one who wormed his way under his skin years ago. Yes, he found the facetiousness insufferable at first, but as the situation in Kirkwall deteriorated, the more he realized he enjoyed being nettled, being forcibly taken out of the drudgery and misery of his command. Like a mabari whose stubby tail is pecked by a bird of prey making a game out of it.

Sparks of light in an endless darkness from the unlikeliest of sources—the apostate his superior hated, who made his order look like imbeciles, who made a fool out of him.

"I do," Cullen's heart stammers in his chest but he powers through it. If there's anything he's always been good at is bearing the consequences of his actions, no matter what. "Because I think you're a good man, Hawke. You left Kirkwall before I could thank you," afraid of an Exalted March, surely, "for everything you did. I learned of what happened to your family, and I..." His voice quivers for a moment, swallowing as he finds the right words, "...I couldn't stop thinking about how you did all that for Kirkwall—you helped so many people, gave them hope—despite all that happening to you. And it makes me ache. Makes me wonder who's helping you with your burdens. So yes, I want you to be honest, because as infuriatingly charming and handsome the Champion of Kirkwall is, I'd like to know Garrett Hawke too."

It's not easy, Cullen understands now, the weight of leadership a quantifiable burden to his frame. One man cannot bear the hopes and dreams of an entire city, an entire organization, and not break in some way. Cullen recalls telling Cassandra that no, he didn't know where the Champion of Kirkwall had fled to—and good thing too otherwise he would've been forced to lie, which he's never enjoyed, particularly not to friends. Hawke had done enough. He and Varric were in agreement on that.

Caught up in the tangled, bittersweet knot of sympathy, it takes a couple of breaths for Cullen's mind to catch up to his ears. Cloudy skies part, shine a new light upon many encounters in the past, so many comments and glances. Frightening and exhilarating, to have been so stupid, to have been so wrong, then the freedom that comes with knowing that's still possible despite his age, the bright possibilities left in its wake.

Suffering from a surfeit of bravery Cullen's answer is no less bumbling, wide-eyed with disbelief the first few seconds, then answering the next with a brief, cautious brush of lips. But then Hawke's sincerity burns Cullen to his core. so he too decides to the Void with it all. Muscular arms wrap around Hawke's waist to bring them closer. Like after a river bursting its shores and swelling its banks, Cullen kisses Hawke with the fervor of land revitalized, years of fallow fields leaving him starved for touch.

Blunt fingernails on his scalp wring a groan out of him, directly into Hawke's mouth.

To be bound to someone as long as it's reciprocated. No, perhaps it isn't so bad after all, he thinks happily as he guides Hawke into a more graceful rhythm, nuzzling as he licks up at the corner of Hawke's lips. "Soft..." he comments as his cheek stubble catches on that dark beard. The pine-scented oil did its job, brother be damned.

[accipio]

The ritual is beautiful. Cullen recites the Chant with a tender reverence that’s enough to make Hawke forget that such a spell could ever be used to do harm. Irrational longing flares within him, along with a twist of jealousy that really ought to be beneath him. He wants Cullen to look at him like that, to speak to him as though he were something to be cherished. It’s stupid and presumptuous, and he has no right to expect anything of this man, let alone reverence, so he tries to push it from his mind.

He watches his phylactery twirl on its makeshift chain before it finds its bearings and points towards him, surer than any compass. “That’s incredible. I always thought the ritual would be… nastier. Painful, somehow, to better fit its purpose as a chain to bind mages.” He holds Cullen’s vial in the palm of his hand, then, thinking better of it, unlaces one of his boots and copies Cullen’s trick with the string. Sure enough, the vial points the way back to its owner. “Maybe being bound isn’t so bad when it’s reciprocal. Funny thing, that.” 

He slips the chain around his neck, the vial resting over his heart, and wonders why he feels as though they’ve suddenly turned a corner, wandered onto treacherous ground that may swallow them up if they’re not careful. His thoughts drift back to something Cullen said earlier. You don't have to undercut every statement you make with glibness. You don’t have to pretend with me. Except he does. Oh, Cullen may not realize it yet, but the truth is there’s nothing beneath all the flash and flourish. Revoke the impressive title, peer beneath the glib veneer, strip away Varric’s blatant falsehoods and his own half-intentional mythmaking, and what do you end up with? A refugee with ambitions above his station, an apostate fugitive, a failure who couldn’t even protect his own family.  

Rationally, he knew that Cullen would see beneath the mask eventually. They’ve gotten too close too fast; he can’t keep the templar carefully at arm’s length like he does with most people. It’s an entirely predictable outcome, so he doesn’t understand why it frightens him so much. “Earlier, you said… You like it when I’m honest?” He keeps his tone neutral and light, but he knows that something of his inner turmoil must show on his face. “Why?” What is there to like? is the unspoken second half of that question.

But doesn’t he at least owe Cullen honesty? Maybe it will spell the end for the tentative something that has bloomed between them, or maybe it’ll turn it into something else entirely. Either way, it’s the right thing to do, and contrary to rumor, he has been known to occasionally do the right thing. “Fine. I care about you, alright? A lot. Too much, maybe. I mean, it’s not like we were friends before, and you have no reason to care for me, and–oh, to the void with it.” 

Hawke proceeds to make either a catastrophically stupid mistake or his only intelligent decision to date: he lets his heart do the talking, which is to say that he buries both hands in Cullen’s hair and presses their mouths together in a kiss that’s simultaneously first-teenage-blunder-level clumsy and wrenchingly heartfelt.

"It was not intentional, I assure you." But Hawke is onto something. Oakmoss is a restorative, while elderflower has pain relieving properties when applied topically. The ingredients are readily available throughout the forested areas of Ferelden, common thus cheap, like the ubiquitous elfroot. Yet, unlike elfroot, their scent also reminds Cullen of home, of the trees hugging the edges of his beloved lake near Honnleath. Soothing both to the nose and skin, and moisturizing besides. "Lothering, huh?" He'll remember that. "Can't say the simple folk of Honnleath kept to the same traditions, or at least I didn't hear of it." But to be fair to the few peasants who lived near their vicinity, their farm was not exactly in a town proper, more like next to a highway, servicing an inn, and the travelers it often housed. "Q—quite the opposite?" Oh, sweet Maker. This is flirting, isn't it? Garrett Hawke is flirting with him. It's happened too many times now to be a coincidence. He could chalk it up to Hawke's gregarious, chatterbox nature, but the compliments are simply too specific to be purely banter.

Pressing his nose onto Hawke's chest shuts him up, gives him a needed reprieve to consider his next plan of attack. The man smells good, safe and solid in a way no others have. "Carver's an idiot," Cullen replies without thinking, wincing a bit at his tone. He should apologize, really, insulting the Champion's brother like that. Instead, Cullen stares straight into Hawke's eyes and laughs gently, well aware of the brothers' less-than-friendly-but-no-less-loving relationship. He and Branson used to fight like cats and dogs too. And Carver deserves it—the pine smells lovely mingled with musk.

"Hawke," a gentle but no less cutting tone, unguarded, devoid of his habitual embarrassment, emboldened by that touch to his shoulder. "You don't have to pretend with me. You don't have to undercut every statement you make with glibness. I...rather like it when you're honest. When you're not always on, and allow your tongue to rest so your heart can speak instead."

Bearing his heart once more, perhaps too soon, Cullen does his best not to diminish his own confession by acting embarrassed and, instead, focuses on Kirkwall. "No, it wouldn't be, though sometimes I wonder if it was better. Ser Alrik, Meredith's increasingly unhinged behavior, the maleficarum who ran unopposed throughout the city—sometimes I wonder if she isolated me on purpose, kept me numb on lyrium and boredom, so I wouldn't challenge her, wouldn't challenge the other templars who abused their authority. I was not a good man back then, Hawke, but even then I would've done something about men like Otto Alrik if I'd known about it."

That comment about his arse hits his head as subtly as a fireball. Lucky, that, prevents cullen for dwelling on his past mistakes from pure shock. "A-are you looking at my arse?!" Perfectly formed, huh? Again, too specific for mere good-natured ribbing. It's the sort of dialogue one of Varric's protags would tease their love interest, then in the next scene...

Oh, Andraste's tits!

Brief as it is, the sudden bite of his blade across his flesh gives Cullen a new focus. Enough to gather his wits, observe Hawke as he fills the ex-lyrium vial with his lyrium-tainted blood. Years ago this wouldn't had been possible, even in the service of Kirkwall—to hand off his blood to a mage, an apostate of all things, was anathema to his very person. Yet here he is, almost a decade between himself and the man he was in Kirkwall, and too much has changed for such an attitude to still be part of him. He trusts Garrett Hawke in a way he trusts no other mage in Thedas, he realizes. It's both frightening and freeing, to know he's not yet free of his fear of mages, but to also know how far he's come from the mage-hating bigot he was, that he's now able to place such trust in one.

Mana called forth, stones gnawing in the wind, a spell called forth. It unsettles Cullen still, the same as the surprise of falling. But, like falling, it also carries an undercurrent of excitement. Sometimes he wonders if the southern Thedosian fear of magic isn't based only on historical precedent but also jealousy. It's hard not to be when watching masters of their craft like Dorian, Solas and Hawke. They make it look easy, natural, elegant. So unlike the brutish violence of swords and shields. Even a spell as benign as this, to preserve food and now blood, seems like a miracle.

"Hold them steady," Cullen asks once the blue-green glow fades, brushing the side of Hawke's palm for a moment as reassurance. Right, his part. How did this go again?

Eyes closed, Cullen's left hand curls underneath his right, its index and middle finger raised straight out, thumb, pinkie and ring finger joined at the thumb pads. The hands as the spell's focus instead of a staff. "Blessed are the righteous," he recites solemnly, fingers warming up by a soft white-gold glow, "The lights in the shadow," the glow transfers to the vials, now humming, "In their blood the Maker's will is written." The glow intensifies, then subsides, leaving behind the vials, looking no worse for the wear.

"That should do it." Cullen opens his eyes, digs into his pocket and takes out a piece of leather string. "You can hold them in your hands like a seeking stone, but," he threads the string around the neck of Hawke's vial, makes sure it's well-wrapped before allowing it dangle in the air, "It's easier like this." The makeshift phylactery floats, glows bright white as it points towards Hawke and shakes excitedly at the presence of its source. A magical compass.

"Try it on mine now."

[accipio]

He shakes his head, fondly exasperated, and adds ‘smelling good without even trying’ to his mental list of Cullen’s crimes. “Oakmoss and elderflower? Of course you smell like a Fereldan forest. Maybe that’s why I like it. Reminds me of home.” A bittersweet memory of Lothering strikes him, then—he was maybe fourteen, skipping out on mass and pestering the craggy old peasants his mother told him not to speak to lest their rude provincial ways rub off on him. They had almost nothing, yet they were more than willing to share it, ushering him into their one-room cottage and sharing local legends over bowls of stew. “Where I’m from—Lothering—the simple folk used to sew twigs of elder wood into their clothing. Warded off hedge witches and maleficarum, supposedly.” He grins, a touch of wickedness creeping into his expression. “Guess it didn’t work, in your case. I don’t feel very warded off at all. Quite the opposite, actually.”

His comeuppance for all the teasing arrives sooner rather than later, in the form of Cullen’s face pressed into his chest. Now, why in the name of Justinia’s holy knickers is his first impulse to tangle his fingers in those wheat-blond curls and hold Cullen there forever? Having apparently thrown off the dictatorship of his conscious mind, his body moves of its own accord to do just that. He narrowly avoids disaster by resting his hand on Cullen’s shoulder, as though that had been his intent the whole time. 

“The first two are fairly self-explanatory. The third is probably the oil I use for my beard—Carver always complained that it stank of furniture polish. The fourth is… refreshingly honest.” He doesn’t know which he finds stranger, that Cullen is apparently surprised to learn that the vaunted Champion of Kirkwall sweats like a mere mortal, or that the templar bastard likes it. He never imagined that Cullen would admit to something so shockingly carnal.

(His mouth is suddenly dry. He pretends that it has nothing to do with their current topic of conversation.)

“I, uh. Like that you like it. I mean—what?” Cullen pulls away, which is both a disappointment and a relief. His higher brain functions return to him, bringing with them the realization that he’s so, so fucked, only to vanish again as he watches Cullen worry at the scar on his lip with his tongue.

“Is it wrong that I’m grateful to her for burying you under clerical work?” Unvarnished honesty seems to be the running theme here, which is fortunate because Hawke wouldn’t know tact if bit him on the arse. “Spending your days filling out inventories and requisition forms must have been boring as sin, of course, but it also meant that you had fewer opportunities to get hurt. And… well.” He shrugs uncomfortably. Honesty, Hawke. You owe him that. “You had fewer opportunities to hurt others, too.”

Right, back to business before he really puts his foot in it.

“It’s not a compliment. It’s only the truth. If I wanted to compliment you, I’d probably mention something about your perfectly formed arse.” He winks, then schools his face back into a mask of seriousness.

He takes the sword, wills his hands not to shake, and makes a shallow cut on Cullen’s palm. He cradles Cullen’s hand in his as he fills the vial, the warmth of the fresh blood radiating through the glass.

The significance of this moment is not lost upon him. Cullen, who fears and hates blood magic above all else, has willingly offered his blood to a mage. Hawke knows how templars think, knows that they believe any mage, every mage, to be a hair’s breadth away from turning to blood magic at any given moment. He’s certain that the Cullen he remembers from Kirkwall would have run him through before he allowed him to touch even a drop of his blood. He’s equally certain that the Cullen in front of him now would not permit this with any mage but Hawke. Hawke knows better than most that the dubious honor of being the one good mage is no honor at all, but at the moment all he feels is a rush of warmth—and, alarmingly, affection—at having earned Cullen’s trust.

The vial fills before he has the chance to do any further navel-gazing. He caps it and lays it on the flat of his palm, next to its twin. “Right, then. First, the preservative spell.” He hasn’t had cause to use this particular spell in years, but it’s simple enough to perform. He reaches into his reserves and calls forth a small trickle of magic. The vials glow a cool blue-green for a moment, then return to their normal state, seemingly unchanged. “Hopefully that did it.” The gravity of what they’re about to do begins to sink in in earnest, and he glances nervously at Cullen, suddenly feeling a childish yearning for reassurance. “I think I need you for this next part.”

If Cullen could read Hawke's thoughts—or if Hawke were a blood mage, who could read and control minds according to common belief—then he'd known Cullen doesn't think it's an admirable trait. What is a knight without a cause, after all? Person or idea, though sometimes the two blended together as they had for the Inquisition. Turning people into ideas, however, always carried the danger of idealization, of putting people on pedestals in the worst ways.

(He saw it in Lavellan, how much it wore on her as the Inquisition grew. To cease to be a person, to become a symbol, a cause, a banner to rally to. Commander of her armed forces as he was, Cullen never found the right words of comfort, his own past blinding him to such dangers, causing him to engage in such behavior with his past superiors. Shamed by that, he maintained a professional distance, ever the dutiful soldier, sharing little beyond what was strictly necessary or what he couldn't hide, like his struggles with lyrium addiction. Perhaps that'd been the wrong approach.

More mistakes for his conscience to wrestle over.)

"Danger and safety?" What else could a soldier want? The skill to be dangerous, to smite one's foes, and the strength to protect those one loves. "As flattering as that sounds, I'm afraid it's only oakmoss and elderflower. They, uh, help with the aches." Fascinating how Hawke wrings these facts out of him as if nothing. With others there's always the impenetrable barrier of stoicism, cautioning him not to share too much lest it be wielded as a weapon by the enemy—mages, namely.

But Hawke had always been good at disarming people.

(That Cullen wants Hawke to know things about him and Cullen, in turn, wants to know things about Hawke will be an epiphany he'll revisit throughout many nights, when he tires of the nightmares and, instead, pours over the day's events with the zeal of a historian and the doggedness of a mercenary.)

Now Cullen's curious, too much so to bother donning on his cloak of affected professionalism. Wordlessly, he shifts forward, nose pressed to Hawke's chest, closing his eyes and inhaling the pocket of scent there reverently. "Lyrium potion. Campfire smoke. Pine. And, well," cheeks flushed again, "Musk. But not the bad sort. All men have a particular stink to them, and no amount of perfume will save us from it. The trick, like my mother said, is to find the ones you actually like."

Why Cullen remembers that particular comment from his childhood will never make complete sense. Perhaps because it was the first time he understood what love looks like, his mother ribbing his father about his stink after running up and down the road to the farm. Or perhaps the knowledge of how there were men whose sweat he could stand better than others in the various barracks he lived at. idly, he recalls Samson had been such a man.

"I mean, I—uh," he pulls back, "Oh, sweet Andraste—I like it, alright? You sweat, same as I do. It's...reassuring to know you're mortal too. Especially in this place."

Maker, now Cullen's done it. The pink tip of his tongue briefly flicks to the indent of the scar dividing his lip, a nervous tick. Better to focus on silly novels than the sappy drivel coming out of his mouth. "That wouldn't surprise me, actually. Being a templar meant a lot of boredom, with moments of chaos here and there. In some assignments you could spend months with not a maleficar to smite, while in others," Kirkwall, "You couldn't step outside without stumbling into an abomination. Plenty of time to write novels on the side." And the more inappropriate the better, surely, to stimulate such bored minds.

That's life, isn't it? Proving you right, but not in the way you meant it? Making an arse of one's assumptions, shifting the paradigm as easy as the tides, making one question everything they thought true. "If it helps, I was often too busy to escort apostates to the Gallows. As the city began to fall apart piece by piece," literally, at the end, "my administrative duties grew and grew. I became Meredith's glorified seneschal. The silver lining? Our chances of fighting kept decreasing. Until that fateful day outside the Chantry, that is."

But they hadn't. For that, Cullen will always count his blessings.

Cullen expected scolding, asked why he's torturing himself with a reminder of his past failures. What Hawke offers instead cuts to his core. “It’s not… I—I don’t…” He sighs through his nose. His voice takes on the faintest timbre, suddenly afraid of the vulnerability at display. "I am not used to compliments. I see it as my duty, nothing more. But...thank you, Hawke. I..." he shoves the empty lyrium vial into Hawke's hands, offers his hand to the sword's edge, "...here."

[accipio]

Born iconoclast though he may be, Hawke would be lying if he said he didn’t envy Cullen for his ability to believe in something larger than himself. Hawke has no faith in anything but his own fallibility. He doesn’t understand how Cullen can step blindly into the unknown with the unshakeable conviction that there will be something solid underneath his feet.

(But then, isn’t that what Hawke is doing now? What they’re both doing?)

"Yes, exactly that. You smell like..." He trails off, trying to find the right words to describe it. There's the ozone tang of lyrium, the air right before a thunderstorm, a threat and a promise both. On Cullen, though, the lyrium scent is fainter, undercut by the smell of leather, forest greenery, and a hint of something pleasantly flowery. "Like danger and safety all at once."

Andraste's arse, did he really just say that? Now that he's gone and thoroughly embarrassed himself, he can at least try to embarrass Cullen a bit to even the score. “I told you those books were informative. Too informative, maybe. I can’t help but wonder if some of the authors had contacts within the Order. Or maybe they were templars themselves, writing under pseudonyms.” He smirks at the idea of some grizzled Knight-Commander putting all of his illicit fantasies to parchment as Lady Begonia Throbbingsby, whose dirty imagination and ostentatiously purple prose made her a favorite of the Hanged Man Book Club.

Life imitates art, as the old cliche goes. For obvious reasons, phylacteries often made appearances in the aforementioned novels as mementos and symbols of devotion. Hawke always thought it at best a bunch of sentimental piffle, and at worst a blatant romanticization of the oppression inflicted upon mages. That’s another generous helping of crow piled onto his plate.

And Maker, do I ever have an appetite for more, he thinks, wincing slightly as Cullen makes a shallow cut on his palm. He reluctantly reminds himself that they’re only doing this out of practicality, though he can’t help but wonder why the act feels so oddly momentous.

“You know, I used to think that I might get a taste of your steel, sooner or later. Things with Meredith would come to a head, or I’d stand between you and some escaped Circle mage, and… Well, you can imagine the rest.” He watches as Cullen collects his blood with well-practiced expertise, then accepts the vial when it’s handed back to him, warm and solid in his still-bleeding hand. “I suppose I was right. Just not in the way I imagined.” 

Cullen is refusing to meet his eyes again. He frowns, wondering who taught this man to be ashamed of everything within him that is natural and human. Whoever they are, he’d very much like to give them a good arse-kicking. “Cullen,” he says, voice soft but firm. “That”—he nods at the vial—"is not a weakness. Far from it. You ought to be proud of how far you’ve come." In a whisper, like he’s imparting a secret, he adds: “For what it's worth, I'm proud of you."

"Former templar," Cullen corrects, a curl to his lips, the scar pulled high in mischief. It shouldn't be this fun to mess around with Hawke, he should, instead, fall back to his sombre, no-nonsense attitude from back in Kirkwall.

But as he said earlier, that templar's gone.

"I suppose blood is a type of soup." Some day Cullen would like to ask Hawke about his upbringing away from the Circles. Perhaps that is why, despite his profession, a part of him always admired the man—one's more likely to come up with unorthodox solutions when not constrained by the trappings of society, by not playing by its rules. He, obedient, precocious child that he'd been, never developed a healthy disdain for authority. Not that he'd call Hawke's tendency to say to the Void with rules as healthy. But still. It was impossible not to be in awe of a trait that can came so easily to him, while it was still something Cullen struggled with. To question more, to not allow the comforts of the status quo to blind him to the injustices of the realm.

I know you won't, Cullen wants to answer, but finds his mouth a desert. Instead, he merely nods.

"Maker save me," sighing, exasperated, Cullen shifts, enough strength returned he's capable of standing once more. "Irresistible? What, like in those romance novels all over the markets?" His face is on fire, an emotion he dares not stoke churning in his chest, bordering on painful. Hawke enjoys this, doesn't he? Exerting his influence, teasing Cullen until he malfunctions. No, he's not going to give the bastard the satisfaction—not to mention, strangely enough, that a part of Cullen knows Hawke wouldn't want him to give up that easily. "The Knight-Commander confiscated many, said she didn't want us to get ideas—but in the end it was a losing battle."

Truly a losing battle, he thinks, as the enormity of the ritual they're about to undertake will bind them both to each other in ways that, he's sure, features in one of these stories.

He unsheathes his sword from its scabbard, picking the sharpest edge. It'd be easier with a dagger, but it's not impossible with a longsword. "Just a small cut," he voices gently as he lines up the fleshier part of Hawke's hand, right beneath his thumb, with his sword and presses down ever so slightly. It's a sharp sword, well-used and well cared for, that it doesn't take long for blood to bead then flow. Dexterously he upends the opened vial, and collects about a forth of its capacity before he stops. "Alright, good." He caps it immediately, then hands it back to Hawke.

"My turn now. Wait, let me just..." He hands off his sword, flipping it to its clean edge (no contamination) while digging into his pocket. What he retrieves is not quite a potion vial but rather one for lyrium, standard issued to templars, empty of its contents. "I, uh, keep it as a reminder," he explains lamely, shame eating at his guts. "That it held lyrium before should help out."

[accipio]

He winks. “Well, that’s lucky. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m a mage, and I seem to recall you being a templar.” He scrunches up his face at Cullen’s suggestion that they use alcohol as a preservative. “What a waste of perfectly good booze. An unnecessary one, besides. One of the many perks of being an apostate is that you learn all sorts of things that aren’t taught in the Circles—one of them being how to preserve food with magic. Blood can’t be all that different from soup, can it?”

Cullen’s reaction to his declaration of trust makes him feel like they’ve just promised a lot more than the exchange of phylacteries. His heart hammers with fear—of ruining this somehow, of the pain that comes inevitably with getting close to someone—and unexpected resolve. He won’t turn and run. Not now, not this time. Whatever Cullen wants of him, he will give it. Even if it hurts him in the end. Especially then.

“I know you won’t,” he replies, voice low and rough with emotion. “I won’t make you regret it.” It’s as much a prayer as a promise. 

“Now,” he segues, clearing his throat, “about me tasting you.” His eyes sparkle with predatory amusement, lending him the mien of a very large, very self-satisfied cat. “I used to think it was some sort of manipulation tactic employed by the templars—you know, distract the robes by walking around smelling like you’ve bathed in lyrium —but apparently it’s entirely unintentional.” He smirks. “You have no idea how irresistible you are to us. Sad, really.”

Much as he’d like to keep this up forever, they do have more important matters to attend to. He gives Cullen his sword, then holds out his left arm, palm up. “Do it. I trust you.”

"I would've been, yes. But that Cullen died in Kirkwall."

Death. Change. From Kinloch Hold to Meredith, both situations taking from him, and never giving back. The first youthful innocence, the second blind obedience. Faith too, perhaps. The beginnings of his disillusion with the Templar Order, the Chantry, the dissonance between what they preached, and what they practiced. Knowledge cannot be unlearned, and life is permanent—we cannot go back, not even for a second.

"It takes both a mage and a templar to make one properly. Fittingly, it also takes a mage and a templar to access the caches where they're stored." He knew where the phylacteries where at Kinloch Hold and the Gallows, knew how to perform his part in working the magical locks and wards, but never had cause to. Kinloch Hold had been Kinloch Hold, and Kirkwall kept him too busy. "But we are not making a proper one. We'll still need a stabilizer for the blood though. Alcohol can work in a pinch."

His heart swells at that confession, threatening to leap out of his chest, leave him bloodless. He feels bloodless, weightless, as if floating. Garrett Hawke, Champion of Kirkwall, apostate extraordinaire, trusts him, Cullen Stanton Rutherford, former Knight-Captain of Kirkwall.

"I—" His eyes sting. He closes them, swallowing roughly, gathering himself. Now's not the time for such sentimentality. They are in danger. Besides, no words could convey the emotions he's reeling from at the moment. A manic energy rests within, but he wills it to subside lest he makes a fool of himself. "Thank you, Hawke. I won't betray your trust."

Uh-oh. That sly grin on Hawke's face unseats him, shines a spotlight on him that unnerves him. "I—if I let you?! I wouldn't—" Andraste's ass, why must his mouth move faster than his mind whenever he's nervous? He's outside of himself, watching himself say this nonsense, incapable of stopping it. "—I wouldn't dislike...that." And why must his voice squeak as if a pubescent boy? Thirty plus summers in this realm.

"Maker, just give me my sword. Let's get this over with."

He's not going to think about how he smells of lyrium. Nope. He's not going to think how mages are known to be fond of that smell either. Not at all. Look at him, his perfectly pale cheeks, not the creeping flush on his face, how he's worrying the tender skin inside his lower lip.

[accipio]

Hawke startles, surprised that Cullen has read his intentions so easily. Then again, it only makes sense that a templar would be intimately familiar with the creation of phylacteries. “...Yes. I thought you’d take issue with the…” He trails off, making a face. “...The blood magic. There’s no sense in pretending that’s not what it is.”

He’s distinctly unsurprised that the templars use underboard methods for tracking escaped mages. It’s not as if they’ve ever played by their own rules. He’ll save his righteous anger for when their lives aren’t in danger, though—what’s important right now is that a makeshift phylactery is not only possible, but feasible. “Good,” he says nodding. “I mean, not good-good, but it works out well for us. I assume you know how to create one?”

Is he sure? His father’s disappointed face flashes before his mind’s eye, triggering a rush of hot shame. His parents gave up everything to make sure that he and Bethany never set foot in a Circle, never had to endure the myriad abuses that were the lot of Circle mages. Can he throw that sacrifice away? Can he tie a leash around his neck and hand it to a man who, once upon a time, would have killed him simply for the crime of being born a mage?

He really shouldn’t. It’s foolish. Dangerous, even. Goes against all his principles, to boot. But he believes, despite everything, that Cullen is a good man. Hawke would put his life in that templar bastard’s hands, would do it without the slightest hesitation. That’s all that really matters, in the end.

“Yes.” He looks Cullen in the eye. For once, there’s nothing remotely facetious in his tone. “I’m sure. If I’m to be bound to a templar, I want it to be you.”

Reciprocity. He’s so accustomed to templars demanding trust from mages and offering none in return that the proposal catches him off guard. Surprise mingles with a sudden rush of affection, an unexpected lightness in his chest. Cullen trusts him. Really, really trusts him. 

“You might say that.” He grins slyly, his buoyed spirits making him playful. “It’s impossible to not be familiar with it. I can smell it on you, Cullen. Probably taste it too, if you let me.”

"Hawke," Cullen snorts, acid patient, "If you could turn me into a toad you would've, in Kirkwall. You would've found me a nice little box, then taken me to the Hanged Man, where I'd be crowned Knight-Captain Ribbit." His ribs must be on the mend—it doesn't hurt to chuckle a couple of times.

"Hm, I think I was worse," a teasing lilt to his words, resting Hawke's hand rest atop his chapped lips for a moment. The hot tide of his breath, the beating of his heart, Cullen feels them with his mouth, allows it to bury itself into his soul, inside a locked box of precious memories he has no right to, but still takes.

And then it's over, the sting of absence made no better by acquiescing to his sound logic. Right, try to sit up. Let blood flow properly in his veins, with gravity instead of against it. Bring life back into his limbs.

His thoughts drift to the many mages and templars he met after Kirkwall. Cullen thought it a romantic invention, a literary cliche in those awful novels. His younger self, the zealot Knight-Captain of Kirkwall, thought it a rumor spread to discredit their work, make them out to be lecherous villains—which would've been better than what Otto Alrik ended up proving true. In light of that, the literary cliche was preferable—templars running off with the phylacteries of their mage lovers, uncaring about sides in a religious war, seeking each other throughout all of Thedas. Some stories ended well, and others...

(The corpse of the templar in the Hinterlands, golden filigreed phylactery, Orlesian in make, clutched in his skeletal hands. It'd felt like blasphemy not to see it through. In Redcliffe she was, waiting for him, hoping against hope they'd see each other again. In the end it wasn't to be, but they'd promised her the next best thing—peace, away from the fighting, in the Inquisition.)

Hawke's notably mild, neutral tone shakes him from his reverie. But I don't think you will like it. The empty vial in Hawke's hand. His furrowed brow, staring at Cullen as if he's afraid of the reaction the idea will cause.

Tracking.

Magic.

Ah, of course.

"You're thinking of a phylactery," Cullen states as if reading the morning missive. "Sometimes," he dusts himself off a bit, rubbing at the edge of his mouth with a knuckle, "When a dangerous apostate was loose and we couldn't wait for their actual phylactery to get to us from the White Spire—or wherever it might be—we Knight-Captains and Knight-Commanders were allowed by order of the Grand Cleric to create makeshift ones."

Because how could the Chantry allow something as inconsequential as procedure to keep them from enacting the Maker's justice? Cullen always found it a bit perfidious, to allow mages to believe they only had to worry about one phylactery, when in reality others could be created without their consent as long as samples of their blood where available.

But why is Cullen telling Hawke this? This will not engender trust. And he wants Hawke to trust him.

Wait.

What?

"Hawke, a—are you sure?" An anchor and a chain. This is a level of trust reserved for, well, lovers. Cullen's mouth struggles to work as if fighting the blush out of his throat. "I mean, I—that is to say, um—oh, Andraste—"

Get it together!

"Damn it. What I meant was that yes, I can help you make one. And yes, I'll be able to track it. Normally they are only made from magical beings—mages—but I've drank so much lyrium for so long you could, theoretically, make one of me too." Theoretically. Because why would the Chantry use that as a link when they'd already chained templars with the lyrium itself? Pointless. "I assume you're familiar with the signature of lyrium?" It's a rhetorical question—of course mages are. They can guzzle the stuff and not get addicted.

Lucky them.

[accipio]

Hawke can’t help but think of the desire demon again, of its very telling choice of disguise, its ominous threat to give him what he wants. Is what he wants a cage, with a templar holding the key? No, he immediately decides. Of course not. He’s spent his whole life running from that fate; the very idea of it is loathsome to him.

Perhaps the demon meant something less literal, then. Something like the bond of devotion between a knight and the one for whom he bears his shield. There’s a sort of intimacy in trusting someone enough to allow them to protect you, to let them see you at your most helpless. Hawke considers the gentle yet unyielding strength of the hand in his, the weight of the newfound bond that has taken root between them. Hm. Perhaps being a damsel in distress isn’t so bad.

“You’re not dying,” he repeats, breathless, his doubts scattering in the face of Cullen’s ironclad conviction. He realizes belatedly that he ought to least be slightly argumentative, if only for old times’ sake. “I mean, you’d better not be. Or I’ll turn you into a toad.” Transfiguration spells are actually outside of his magical repertoire, but Cullen doesn’t need to know that.

He’d never found Cullen particularly persuasive back in the days when the Knight-Captain punctuated nearly all of their interactions with some pronouncement or other on the dangers or magic and the profligacy of mages. To Hawke, Cullen was just another lunkheaded templar thug, a petty tyrant who resented everything that he couldn’t force into obedience. And maybe that wasn’t strictly wrong, but it wasn’t the whole truth, either. “We both were,” he says mildly, grinning like a smitten idiot as Cullen lays kisses upon each of his knuckles. Maybe it should shame him to be doted upon like a maiden from one of those awful books, but fortunately Hawke has no shame. "But we got over it. Miracles do happen."

As much as he’d rather not see what else the Fade has in store for them, he knows that Cullen is right. They need to find their way out of here, and if he were a betting man (which he hasn’t been since he lost five sovereigns to Fenris at diamondback), then he’d wager every coin to his name that this blighted place will do its damnedest to separate them. Easier for the demons to pick them off if they’re alone, after all. “I hate it when you’re right,” he grumbles, hesitantly letting go of Cullen’s hand and rifling through his pockets for anything useful. Maybe he'll get lucky and find a pair of sending crystals. And maybe a Qunari will be elected the next Black Divine.

His pockets turn out to be empty save for a few coppers, an empty potion vial, and a crumpled scrap of paper. Well, so much for that. He racks his brain for any magical means of keeping track of each other, perhaps some sort of tracking spell… and then the empty vial catches his eye. “Cullen,” he says, careful to keep his tone mild and neutral, “I have an idea. But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

Cullen does feel like death warmed over, but he is not dying. That'd be too merciful. Instead, like the blue, he knows he has months, years perhaps, of withdrawal symptoms to look forward to.

If there's no crystals growing inside him already, that is. But he'd heard, he'd read from various accounts, some dubious and others reliable, that one knows when the taint sets in. Beyond the infernal warmth, which is all but spent, there's nothing but the familiar post-battle exhaustion, the dregs of adrenaline. If only he could close his eyes and sleep—but that's a terrible idea in a place like the Fade.

"I'm not," Cullen swallows roughly, flexing his fingers against Hawke's, strength slowly returning, "Going to cage you, Hawke. I never could. Maker knows I wanted to, but it would've been a waste. You're a good man who did more good for that city than any of its templars. Andraste would've cursed me if I tried."

No one's cried over him since his final day in Honnleath. His mother hugging him tightly, her gentle sobbing soaking his shoulder as she told him how proud she was. His father too had cried, though his display of emotion was more subdued, less obvious—just one tear down his face, caught at the tip of a nose shaped much like his. "My little templar," she'd said, ruffling his curls, "I'm so proud. Andraste keep you."

Yet their faces are gone, lost to the lyrium. In his memories they are an amalgamation of his and his sibling's features (gods, he forgot to write Mia again), close enough to the truth but not quite.

No, he's not losing anything more to it. It's taken enough.

And Cullen wants to remember this, burn it into his soul as a brand—not the Champion of Kirkwall but Garrett Hawke crying over him. He looks so vulnerable and beautiful, his habitual bravado soberingly absent. So bright, like staring directly into magefire, seeing a hero shed its trappings of glory and fame, reduced to flesh and blood like everyone else. To see fear and fondness in equal measure in his brown eyes.

"As long as you don't tell Varric about this, it's a deal." And Cullen laughs at himself with easy grace, a tender moment the man he was in Kirkwall could've never had.

"I'm not dying," he tells Hawke as he stares into his soul, stated so self-evidently, with such conviction it's blasphemy to argue against it. His eyes have returned to their lyrium-less brown. Though their bloodied sclera remains, white slowly radiates back out from his pupils. His scarred lips kiss every single knuckle in Hawke's hand, a promise with each beat. "It's alright, I couldn't stand myself in Kirkwall either. Maker, I was an ass."

His shuddering grip, lyrium-withdrawal though it might have been from, soothes Cullen—an old friend, a gentle swaying that has nothing to do with the red, present before it. He'll be alright. They'll be alright. They just need to rest for a bit.

"Hawke," he asks, suddenly serious, "This is the Fade, yes? We need to rest before we continue, but we should find a way to make sure we don't lose each other." Kirkwall is easy to traverse, its cobbled streets memorized for them both, but who's the say the demons won't sift through more of their memories, change their current location to something more labyrinthine? Or something all together different, unrecognizable?

[accipio]

Oh, no. No, no, no. He is not doing this again. He’s already lost too many people he cares about, and he’ll be damned if he loses any more. “Don’t even think about it. I can practically hear the self-sacrificial nonsense rattling around inside that thick skull of yours, and you can kindly shove it. You’re not going anywhere.”

He sounds far more confident than he feels. Icy fear seizes him as he takes stock of Cullen’s red-tinged eyes and trembling hands. The symptoms will only get worse, he knows. Can Cullen survive red lyrium withdrawals? Can anyone? 

“I swear to you,” he rasps, his throat tightening, “you’ll beat this. It will not have you. Not while I’m here. You can call yourself an ex-templar all you like, but you’re not fooling me—you can’t very well leave a Chantry-hating apostate to his own devices, can you?” Unflatteringly honest translation: I’m afraid to lose you. Please don’t leave me.

When he relays this story to Varric for the purpose of its inclusion in his official biography, he’ll be sure to leave out the part where he tries very hard not to cry and fails. He sniffles as manfully as possible, which is to say, not very. “Please don’t tell Carver about this,” he croaks, squeezing Cullen’s hand.

He can’t help but shiver from the cold that seems to cling to Cullen like a curse. He wishes he had the mana for a basic warming spell. Then again, attempting to use magic on Cullen in his current state is probably unwise. He rubs his thumb across scarred knuckles, praying to a god he’s not even sure he believes in that both of them will still be around to share the stories behind their respective battle scars in the months and years to come.

“...Did you really just apologize for saving my life? Maker, I can’t fucking stand you sometimes.” A pause. Silence. For neither the first nor the last time, Hawke curses his big stupid mouth. “Cullen, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean–”  Warm lips against the back of his hand, gentle and soft, a strange contrast to Cullen’s freezing hand. He blinks, his brain having suddenly ceased to function. “I. Ah. I’m glad, too.”

The warmth of the kiss radiates up his arm, filling him with a giddy feeling he doesn’t even dare put a name to. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll be alright. 

His eyes sting, his throat's raw. The realm contracts. Hawke. Is Hawke alright? In his lyrium-fueled delirium, did Cullen fail?

"As alright as I can be," he answers, voice gravel but softened by relief as he hears the question asked. Hawke's alright. He didn't fail. It wasn't in vain.

Preternatural warmth clings to his limbs, but it's waning, as sudden and vicious as the seas retreat before a tsunami. Will I crash? Will my mind be washed away?

I still want to remember. Even if it's painful.

It's unfair to have gotten so far for it all to end here. The hunger's infernal, disorienting him to the point of nausea. But there's nothing in his stomach, only the yawning abyss of a craving never to be fulfilled.

"D-don't give me lyrium," he unfurls from his fetal position, tears welling at the corner of his eyes as he stretches achingly slow into a supine position. "Even if I beg for it. I want to," Die, "go as me. With what remains of my mind."

No. Cullen refuses. He tries to sit up but his back spasms with stabbing pains, so he abandons the attempt immediately after. "Andraste's ass, I am not...I am not letting the red win."

Hawke's warm hand atop his own, rough and scarred, the callouses from his mage's staff both a balm and an anchor. Not long ago he would've recoiled from such truth, its touch. But now, today?

Despite the red lyrium coursing through Cullen's veins, his hands are ice. It would've shamed him in the past, a reminder of his weakness. Today, however, he doesn't care—doesn't care about the blood's drying tacky and flaking between his knuckles, how his fingers shake from the tremors of withdrawal. Too exhausted to feign distance, too frightened of what might come if he faces it alone.

He flips his hand, wraps his fingers around Hawke's, squeezing. There's still life in his frame. And he's not giving up. Not now, not ever.

Still have time. Not dead yet.

Stubborn, indeed.

"Please do," behind a curtain of curls, sweat-sodden, he smiles weakly. "I'll be as happy as a mabari, trying to bite at the stream."

"I'm sorry about all that." He swallows loudly. His voice comes out breathy and soft. "Glad you're alright."

His eyes slide close. Time compresses. For a moment Cullen lies frozen, heart in his throat, hand gone slack. But then a different source of heat courses through him—courage, like the first time he casted a successful Smite, the first time a girl kissed him to breathlessness, the first time he saw a man naked, and knew want.

Want. Need. With the last of the red lyrium burned up, it coils in his belly, a ringing in his ears.

Slow as if he couldn't believe the privilege he was indulging in, cullen raises both of their hands, fingers still locked, and kisses the soft, furry skin at the back of Hawke's.

A knight's token of devotion.

[accipio]

The burst of magic leaves Hawke feeling utterly depleted, like he’s just run a mile after a three-day bender. He uses the last of his energy to drag his sorry carcass over to Cullen. He then proceeds to flop face first onto the cobblestones with all the grace and style of a sack of potatoes tossed from a second story window. “We’re alive,” he says to the ground, his voice slightly muffled. “I honestly didn’t expect that.” A beat. “Are you alright?”

Stupid question. Even strung out on adrenaline and too exhausted to think, he still knows that the answer is a definitive no. Neither of them are alright. There’s a good chance they’ll never be alright again.

Back in KIrkwall, he saw Cullen in action against demons and abominations. Meredith’s Knight-Captain fought with a level of focus and expertise only attainable through years of training and a viciousness born from faith distilled into zealous hatred. He was everything that an apostate should fear, and everything that a templar should aspire to be. But that viciousness, potent though it was, was nothing compared to the inhuman ferocity with which Cullen tore the demon to shreds. Hawke has never seen anything like it, and he never wants to see anything like it again. If a part of him thrills at seeing such raw ferocity on display, unleashed on his behalf, then that’s between him and his own guilty conscience.

He turns onto his side, raises his head to look at Cullen. Maker, the poor man is wrecked. His eyes are bloodshot, his skin clammy and pale, and there’s a manic intensity to his expression that frightens Hawke. He tries not to show his fear, figuring that at least one of them has to keep it together. Abandoning his previous resolution to keep a healthy physical distance between them, he reaches out to lay his hand on Cullen’s own, not caring a whit about the blood.

“It smells awful, too. I’ll have to hose you down after this, I’m afraid.”

Thousands of blades pour down Cullen's throat, into his veins like molten lava. The song fills him, becomes him, so unlike the serenity of regular lyrium. No, the red is Blight, a disease crafting a horde, seething, seeking. And Cullen tastes its bitter, melancholic rot in the back of his mouth.

He hears and sees Hawke—his heartfelt pleading, his pain in display—but his body is not his own. Puppeteered by an alien force, commanded into a purpose uncaring for his consent. It is angry, so, so angry. And it wants others to revel in that anger, or feel its wrath.

Well then. If that's what it wants, then—

We are here.

We have waited.

We have slept.

The burst of raw magic makes Cullen's skin tingle, but it cannot cut through the armor atop his skin forged by the red. He hasn't drank as much as Samson thus its effects remain in the realm of the uncanny, not horror—broken blood vessels in his eyes, dark eyes framed by bright red sclera. Pallor to his already pale skin. Teeth clenched so tightly his mouth tastes like copper coins, again, though that could also be the lingering red lyrium. Everything tastes, smells of ash and blood.

And sweat. Samson's.

Samson's?

"You are not Samson," Cullen spits bloody as he staggers upwards, a red haze surrounding his frame, reddish glow to his irises. The red's clarity might be rage, but it's still a form of clarity. He sees things clearly now. The enemy. "Raleigh Samson died years ago in my arms. You are a demon putting on an impressive play, but your audience grows tired of these theatrics."

Cullen doesn't have a sword—but he doesn't need it. The red is so powerful Cullen knows he could march for days without rest, break a man like bread. The burst of empowerment coursing through his body leaves the blue in the dust. Already he craves another vial, because the trade-off is that the red won't last at long, that it needs constant re-upping. Burn hot, burn hard, or die.

We are sundered.

We are crippled.

We are polluted.

His heart threatens to leap out of his rib cage. So be it. If this is how he goes, then let it be in a blaze of glory. Let it be in service of another, one life traded for another. His feet move of their own accord, pushing up and forward with such speed and force there's a clap in the air, a cacophonous chime as his fist connects with Samson's plate. Growling—in pain, ecstasy—Cullen pulls at the shard of red lyrium impaled into Samson's center mass.

And rips. And tears.

We endure.

We wait.

Samson shrieks in pain, attempting to pry Cullen's fingers off the red lyrium to no avail. The whole shard comes out of his chest with a moist crunch, the reek of blood and offal thick, leaving behind a diamond-shaped hole in the man's abdomen. For a second the general of the Red Templars tries to process what's happening, poking at the edges of the gore with shaking fingers. Then, he falls, colliding backwards into the ground as its true form of a desire demon, its male form captivating but very much dead.

It dissipates into a cloud of smoke, returned to the Fade.

We have found the dreams again.

We will awaken.

"Maker's breath." Cullen shudders, blood spray on his face, gloves crimson slick. "I—ugh!" He sags in place, staggers, then goes down on his back, moaning. "Hawke," he coughs, closing his eyes as he grins, half-mad, "This tastes awful."

The tremors are violent. Cullen curls upon himself, the torment of a year's worth of withdrawal hitting him in the span of seconds.

[accipio]

This is not real, Hawke tells himself. It’s an illusion, a demon’s trickery. But demons don’t simply invent falsehoods whole cloth; no, that would be too simple. They twist the truth, sift through memories until they find something they can fashion into a weapon. Samson is that weapon. This nightmare-made-flesh, so corrupted by red lyrium that he probably sweats it, exists somewhere in Cullen’s past and Hawke’s future. 

Maker forgive me. What have I done?

Had part of him known back in the Deep Roads, he wonders? Had he gazed down at that strange little idol and sensed the evil lurking within it? He doesn’t know. He only remembers his relief at finally having a ticket out of the Lowtown slums, at the chance to give his mother a life that didn’t shame her to live. 

None of that matters now. His was the hand that cracked the dam, and he is to blame for the flood that followed. He is the one Samson should despise, not Cullen. If he could divert the creature’s attention, give Cullen time to get his bearings–

“Better a hound than a faithless jackal,” he cuts in, affecting a bravado he doesn’t feel. “If this is how you repay those who show you kindness, then remind me to never try getting into your good books.” He may as well have saved his breath. Samson is clearly determined to torment his former brother in arms. When that degraded husk of a man grabs a handful of Cullen’s hair and pulls, Hawke imagines himself turning every bone in the bastard’s body to jelly with a burst of force magic. “Get your filthy hands off him,” he snarls, ready to make that mental image reality. But then the words Elder One come out of Samson’s mouth, and the magic gathering at Hawke’s fingertips is doused by a frigid wave of shock.

He only hears about a third of what’s said next, but it’s more than enough. Corypheus. Army. Red lyrium… growing? On people?

“That’s impossible,” He tries to sound confident, authoritative, but he just sounds like he’s pleading. “Corypheus is dead. I killed him. I saw his lifeless corpse with my own eyes! What you’re saying, It doesn’t make any sense.”

Oh, but it does. It makes a horrible, nightmarish kind of sense, but sense all the same. Hawke just wishes it were otherwise. He wishes with the kind of fervor that’s reserved only for the truly hopeless. 

Then Samson slaps Cullen hard across the face, and Hawke loses the ability to form coherent sentences. His mouth tastes like metal. He can’t focus enough to channel his anger into a spell. He doesn’t notice the hairline cracks in the cobblestones that radiate out from his feet like the strands of a spider’s web, growing larger by the second.

The slap is nothing compared to what comes next. It isn’t really even a kiss; it’s a violation, meant to degrade and humiliate. At first, Hawke thinks that Cullen will fight back, knock Samson on his arse with a well-timed sucker punch, but instead he sags in Samson’s arms, accepting his fate with the resignation of a man who knows that his punishment is deserved. That, somehow, is worse than the kiss itself.

Seconds later, Cullen is on his knees, choking like he’s just swallowed something poisonous, and Hawke realizes that he has. Red lyrium is grown in living bodies. 

It’s more than any man can take. His heart pounds in his ears, deafening him to the crackle of magic in the air around him as he loses control. “No!” 

What he unleashes is less a spell and more a burst of raw magical energy. It surges outwards like a rogue wave, towards Samson and Cullen both. 

The stories Cullen had grown up with, supped on with his letters and the Chant of Light, weren't so raunchy as the erotica popular in Kirkwall's markets. Even so, the same building blocks were there—the defense of the weak, a devotion to others so soul-deep it was as much part of faith as the words of Andraste. To serve and to yearn to serve, a concept so compelling to his nascent sense of self it'd ruined Cullen for everything that came after.

He'd been too young, too eager, to understand the weight of his actions. A child of twelve couldn't comprehend the sacrifices he'd be called to make in the future. Neither could an eighteen-year-old, holding his first vial of lyrium thinking only of that yearning, purpose so holy, so romantic, it was his shield against the strangeness of the blue. The false focus, serene but disturbing, was an acceptable cost of his duty. So Cullen drank his first, his tenth, his hundredth and his thousandth vial without protest.

Somewhere after Kinloch, at Kirkwall, that devotion soured. Meredith spewed her poison alongside the lyrium and he drank both unquestioningly. His Knight-Commander would not lead him stray, he rationalized. Mages were weapons to be controlled, they both learned at the hands of maleficarum, their minds shattered from demons they summoned. Her madness had not yet revealed itself, righteous blue swapped for corrupting red, and that point of commonality between them meant Cullen was willing to ignore more than he should've.

"It is not like the childish stories tell it, Knight-Captain," Meredith, hunched over a report of yet more apostates killing templars, her face shining with cold fury had explained, "We are not to protect them any longer. We are to save them from themselves. And in doing so, we will save Kirkwall."

And so Cullen abandoned the stories from his childhood. Sharpened himself for a harder realm, let go of a boy's naivete, and became the shield he needed to be.

But man is fallible. Shields have flaws. And no matter how many cuts, Cullen could never excise the core of what defined him.

"Always needs a cause. Always needs someone to protect, this one," Samson stares at them both with manic glee, but then glares in annoyance as his eyes fall down on Cullen. "Like those damn dogs you Fereldans are so fond of. So devoted! So damn stubborn!"

With a pained wheeze Cullen pushes against the cold tile, a rivulet of gore trickling down a nostril, "S-shut up, Sams—" To move is to hurt, but he has to. They're both still in danger. It's his duty to take the blows.

"—didn't tell your friend here you pleaded with Meredith to reinstate me, did you? That when she refused, you sent me money for passage out of Kirkwall? Of course not. You've always loved suffering in silence. You make it look good, Commander. Meredith's golden boy. Andraste's hound."

Shame eats away at Cullen, rubbing his nose in a crack on the ground, sinking into it, hiding from Samson, Hawke. His mouth tastes like iron. His eyes sting.

"What happened to me, Champion," metal claws reach for Cullen's scalp, lifting his head by his curls until blood beads at their root, "Is what happened to everyone who didn't believe in the Chantry's nonsense anymore. I spent Cullen's coin on dust, then I found myself a better supplier, a better fight. I followed the Elder One, and he kept me fat and happy with the red. All I had to do was lead his armies. Simple, really."

"Madness, all of it. You, your men—force-feeding it to unwilling templars, growing it from captured innocents. Corypheus might've used your addiction against you, but you knew his plans from the start—and you followed them willingly!"

What little color remains in Samson's face drains. Then, with a snarl, he shoves his face into Cullen's, so close they can breathe in each other's words. "Pains you, doesn't it? Seeing me fall this far, seeing your beloved Templar Order turned into tools of war?" Samson's gauntlet-ed hand roughly slaps Cullen's right cheek, leaving it smarting, blushed. The thin, white line of Cullen's scar glows against pink-red. "Wake up, Cullen! That's all we ever were! Tools, to be used, broken and disposed of at the Chantry's whims!"

Cullen's eyes shut in pain, a drowned sob wracking his throat. Tears welled freely from his eyes. This is a nightmare worse than Kinloch, as bad as seeing, feeling Samson die in his arms. Awash in pain and torment, no way out, the city of chains forever clawing at his heart.

"You are a child. You were always a child. Not even the Knight-Commander could beat the devotion out of you. It made her angry, you know, those rumors about you and the mage from the Circle of Ferelden. How often you reminded her we were supposed to protect the mages. Your hero worship of Hawke. She thought you soft, Cullen, sweet on mages, which is why she worked so hard on you."

Cullen's dark eyes, red-rimmed and moist, lift at last. "Andraste as my witness, Samson, you were a good man once. I am so sorry I failed you. I am so sorry I failed all of Kirkwall. I could've, I should've—"

"Now Cullen, let's not get sentimental. Let us save that conversation for later. You know I don't kiss and make a show of it—unless the Champion is into that sort of thing? Would you like that, Cullen, let him watch us?"

Whatever answer Cullen might given is lost in a flurry of motion. Samson surges forward, licking up at Cullen's scar, gripping him, then shoving his tongue inside Cullen's mouth. Wide-eyed at first, but then going slack-jawed, Cullen gives into it, groans, fight gone out of him as only a man who embraces the inevitable can, and enjoys watching himself burn away.

Until something razor-sharp pours down his throat.

Cullen goes down on his knees once more, gagging, the dawning horror that he's swallowed red lyrium and he needs it out, out, out of his mouth, his body, at all costs.

[accipio]

Back before the situation in Kirkwall became untenable, Hawke used to amuse himself by visiting the Lowtown market in the hopes of expanding his collection of smutty romance novels. The bookseller’s stall was almost always surrounded by a small crowd of wide-eyed young women (and a few young men) whispering excitedly amongst themselves about the exploits of their favorite knightly heartthrobs. Would Ser Tristan ever be reunited with his lost love? Would Ser Yvain’s broken heart ever heal from the hedge witch’s betrayal?

Hawke could only pity them. His interest in the novels was largely confined to snickering over the awful prose with Varric after too many drinks, but these poor things were thoroughly taken with their fantasies of pure-hearted templars who defended the weak and protected the honor of young maidens. A visit to the Gallows would disabuse them of that notion, he thought. There, the so-called champions of the just showed themselves for what they really were.

But now one of those so-called champions of the just is standing between him and a demon, and Hawke realizes several things in quick succession. First, that he’s an imbecile, which really should have been obvious; second, that there might have been some kernel of truth in all of those awful romance novels; and third, that if Cullen gets himself killed, then Hawke is going to march straight to the Maker’s side and drag his stupid noble arse back to the world of the living.

(Leave him out of this, Cullen said. Does that mean what Hawke thinks it means?)

He can feel the force of Cullen’s smite from where he kneels several feet away. He doesn’t quite manage to hide his flinch. It’s a strange feeling, like missing a step going down the stairs, exhilarating and terrifying all at once. Giddy from adrenaline, he finds himself wondering what a direct blow would feel like. 

Fortunately, he doesn’t have time to dwell on that dubious thought. The demon vanishes, consumed by the column of holy light. Good riddance, Hawke thinks. He’s just about to say as much when everything abruptly goes to shit.

The music, Varric had repeated, his eyes bright with the beginnings of the madness that had claimed his brother. Can anyone else hear the music? Hawke hadn’t known what in blazes he was talking about at the time, chalked it up to stress or nerves or both, but now–

He hears the music now. It’s mournful and plaintive and so, so wrong, and it’s emanating from the man-shaped horror that forms itself from the remains of the desire demon. That wraps its gauntleted claw around Cullen’s neck.

Move. Now. He scrambles to his feet, ignoring the protestations of his aching muscles, but he’s not fast enough to stop the creature from tossing Cullen aside like a child’s doll. For a sickening moment, Hawke fears the worst. He half-runs, half-crawls to his friend’s side, searches frantically for a pulse. “Cullen? Oh Maker, please don’t be–”

His fears turn out to be unfounded. Cullen is very much alive, and he’s just dropped yet another bombshell on Hawke. “Wait. Samson?”

He stares at the creature, horrified. Samson is less a man and more an amalgam of red lyrium and metal. Where the Sword of Mercy was once emblazoned on his chestplate, there’s now a wicked-looking red shard embedded in flesh and armor both. The face he remembers, gaunt from addiction and poverty, is unrecognizable. 

You could have saved him. You could have helped him, done something, anything, but you didn’t. You left him to rot, just like you did with all the others.

“What–,” he chokes out, swallowing down the bile that rises in his throat. “What happened to you?”

Samson is laughing at him, laughing at them both, but Hawke can’t for the life of him understand what he finds so amusing. Then he remembers that comment from earlier, remembers that Samson might have been handsome once, with his dark hair and broad shoulders, and everything slots itself into place.

He glances between Samson and Cullen, utterly poleaxed. “He’s not… He must be lying. You and him? You and me?”

Cullen and his doppelganger circle each other like rival mabari, teeth bared, searching for an opening. The real article knows better than to acquiesce to its goading, knows it's proving for weaknesses—at Kinhold Hold the demons riffled through his mind, picking up his memories and emotions with the subtlety of rampaging beasts, trying them on for size, then tossing them aside once bored like spoiled children.

This demon can no more speak logic than a beast of burden can learn to speak. It cannot comprehend the second children of the Maker. It only yearns, to the point of poisonous envy, to possess a soul.

(But then, if that is true, then Cole—)

"A broken tool has its uses," Cullen throws into the ring, purposely herding the demon away from Hawke, lining it properly for the slaughter. Positioning is one-third of battle, he read in a Fereldan military strategy guide, the rest of its passages stodgy aside from that kernel of wisdom he's never forgotten.

Can this demon see into his memories of Val Chevin, of Raleigh Samson, to where all roads paved in lyrium lead? Loss of ability, memories, self, traded like cheap coins for the skill and power of the now. A future cage forged bar by bar, nail by nail, through each swallowed vial. Perhaps Cullen would still consider the sacrifice worth it if there was a worthy cause to sacrifice for. But no, the Templar Order was rotted to the core, its foundation built on zealotry and bigotry, filled with men who wanted to rule over others, not defend the weak. If another cause wanted his mind, body and soul as payment, it would have to do better than an ages long legacy of misery and death.

"Leave him out of this," Cullen growls too loudly, too pointedly—but it works. The demon's focus is back on him, his expression—his mouth, his eyes—bright with realization. "I don't want anything that comes attached to lyrium chains, no matter how tempting." An empty promise, he knows now. He has a right to nothing. Men are born, live and die entitled to nothing. Why would his lot be any different? That he thought differently once upon a time, thinking himself some sort of holy crusader, wasn't clarity—it was madness.

His sword sings. It is a louder song than the demon's, the real deal instead of some cheap imitation filtered through memories.

He sees the opening before Hawke shouts, but the scream does boil his blood into action, guiding his sword arm. It's a clean hit to the demon's side, a beam of light slammed to its side with the force of righteousness, feeding on the demon until it boils it inside its armor, leaving a white-hot column behind. Andraste preserve him, that should be—

"Did you think it'd be this easy, Cullen?" says a voice he doesn't recognize at first, until its lyrium-studded gauntlet reaches from the light, closes on his throat, and squeezes.

Burnt ozone but ferrous, the acrid stink of disease and sweat. Cullen's hands reach for that gauntlet, twitching in discomfort, increasing panic. Red lyrium. And it hurts, so much, its force choking the life out of him.

"And what's this?" Samson, General of the Red Templars, steps out of the light, a shadow of his former self—thinning hair greasy, pulled from his crown, the deathlike pallor of his cursed order, once bright eyes ringed red in blood and madness focused on the red streak across Hawke's nose. "If it isn't the Champion of Kirkwall!"

He slams Cullen against the ground like he weights nothing, body crunching sickeningly as it collides with hard tile. A pained groan escapes Cullen as he scrambles to rise, but only manages to line prone as his fingers dig into the ground, shame and fury shaking him.

"Samson, damn y—"

"Ah ah ah," he wiggles a gloved finger, boot atop Cullen’s head rubbing at overgrown hair, "the adults are talking. Sit tight while I talk to your friend here."

Samson approaches, predatory smile pulling at his entire face, then crouches in front of Hawke. His cursed armor rattles, but the red lyrium attached to it drowns it in a melody unlike that of regular lyrium—it's seethes, coming from everywhere and nowhere, from Samson himself, from the large shard at his center running him through.

"Do you think he'll figure out?" Samson asks innocently, head tilted like a confused dog. "That he has a type?" He turns to Cullen, and laughs.

[accipio]

It shouldn’t be possible. It isn’t possible. When a mage enters the Fade, he goes alone, with only his wits to aid him. There are no miraculous rescues. But Cullen has a knack for defying all expectations, doesn’t he?

He tries to say something, but the demon’s Silence constricts his throat like a physical chokehold. He can only stare helplessly as Cullen charges into the fray. Swaggering hero reduced to slack-jawed spectator. Not exactly one for the tales.

But what a strange spectacle it is. Part of him wants to crawl away in shame, mortified that Cullen is here to witness all of his subconscious fixations put on display, but mostly he’s just relieved that his old enemy–no, his friend–is here to help. That he doesn’t have to do this alone.

He watches, oddly transfixed, as Cullen issues a challenge to the demon. The genuine article looks older and more weathered next to his youthful doppelganger, a battle-scarred warrior next to an alabaster statue brought to life. Hawke finds that he much prefers the real Cullen, imperfections and all. 

Templars are supposed to protect mages. A year ago, he would have scoffed at that, called it naivety at best and an outright lie at worst. Now… Well. He’d never have believed that any templar would risk his own life to save an apostate, either, but here it is happening before his very eyes.

But the demon seems no more moved by the selflessness on display than it is perturbed by the arrival of the man whose face it has stolen. It draws its sword, the metallic sound unnaturally loud in the quiet of the courtyard.

“True Knight-Captain?” The demon’s expression is a cruel mockery of the smile that Hawke has come to hold dear. “Surely you do not refer to yourself. You no longer have any claim to that title. You are no templar at all, only a broken tool.” 

The demon’s blade begins to glow–first the same sickly purple hue that suffuses their surroundings, gradually shifting to a cold blue. Hawke can smell the ozone in the air, and if he strains his ears, he can almost make out the faint notes of some haunting melody. Lyrium.

The demon continues taunting Cullen, evidently finding him a more attractive prize than the bedraggled mage at its feet. Hawke can’t really blame it. “Broken as you are, you might still make yourself whole again. Clarity, purpose, power–all are within your reach. All that you desire, all that belongs to you by right–” is Hawke imagining things, or do the demon’s eyes flicker in his direction? “–is yours for the taking.”

Right, he’s had just about enough of this. He reaches inward, scrapes around for what little is left of his mana, strains until his very soul is raw… And produces what is possibly the world’s least impressive fireball. It lands at the demon’s feet with a puff of smoke and a rather pathetic shower of sparks. Harmless it is, it accomplishes its intended purpose: to draw the demon’s attention back onto him and away from Cullen. The creature turns to face him, a smirk plastered on its perfect face, smug as an alley cat who’s just stumbled upon a blind, three-legged mouse. Too smug, as a matter of fact–it leaves its flank quite open to attack.

“Cullen,” he cries, his voice hoarse and raw. “Now!”

The purple sky of Kinloch Hold, mixed with the nauseating, stagnant air of Kirkwall. How Cullen wishes he wasn't familiar with this combined assault against his senses.

The first sign of things not being quite alright was waking up in the half-plate of the Inquisition. The second sign was the deeper offness, crawling through his hair, skin and bones like a fresh draught of lyrium, how the Breach felt back when—

No. It can't be.

I'm no mage. How—?

It doesn't matter. Not now. Someone—the powers that be, surely, because the alternative isn't worth dwelling upon, giving power to—expects Cullen to fight. They have armed him, the weight of his sword and shield resting right on his frame, grounding him to a purpose. Move. Find allies, if possible. Move. Do not let the demons catch you. Move. Keep your guard up, templar—and fucking move!

The furred-lined coat draped over his back does nothing to dispel the chill, shivers down his spine, hands frozen—a cold winter's storm, icy winds keeping the chokedamp at bay, mineshafts howling. Kirkwall has always screamed as if in endless pain, as if the centuries of apostasy, misery and slavery were etched into its foundation, propping it up.

He's never lived in a more accursed place. And here he is, again. Forever.

"I have faced armies with you as my shield," begins his supplication, the same verse from Trials he recited as he crossed these steps every day for years, watched the twin ghastly spires of the Gallows grow larger, more imposing. "And though I bear scars beyond counting," and the sounds of his steps are wrong, un-greaved and un-sabatoned, the leather of his boots whining pathetically in comparison to his templar amor. "Nothing can break me except you..."

Through the gates, into the courtyard. No Meredith this time, no red lyrium. Yet, warns the doomsayer in Cullen, but the need to chastise himself dies to the scene in front of his eyes—Hawke on his knees, looking up at an armored figure in awed horror, ethereal statue of a sainted knight come to life.

The raised left hand, its—his!—visage pinched in concentration, holding a skill Cullen's all too familiar with, used against apostates just like Hawke.

"...absence."

Your worst enemy is yourself, boys! Master yourself and no apostate nor demon will defeat you!

Another silence slams upon the battlefield, but it's no spell. Instead, it is a dash forward learned from Blackwall (Thom, he corrects himself), a chevalier skill meant to disorient the enemy and put Cullen between himself and those he's meant to protect.

Hawke!

This creature, this demon, wears Cullen's face better than he does. It is too handsome, too pristine, blond curls like spun gold, the same as in depictions of Andraste. Face unmarred by age, the scar to his lip absent. Youthful vigor and hubris, sickening, all of it, down from the Templar-emblazoned pauldrons to its sunburst-embroidered skirts.

"You forget yourself, templar," Cullen curses, kicking away the branding iron from the Knight-Captain's hand, contempt so strong it flies out of view. "We are supposed to protect mages." He doesn't stare back at Hawke, merely raises his left fist in mockery of the creature's self-same gesture, shield still attached to his forearm. A Lasting Cleanse, denying the demon's denial.

"You and me," Cullen issues a challenge as he raises his sword and it begins to glow white-gold, as bright as the Knight-Captain's silverite armor, "Smite for Smite."

"Let's see who's the true Knight-Captain, Ser Rutherford."