#'kenna what do you recommend if you seem to have so much bad to say about every car?' a mustang!!

[lostandbackagain]

instead of saying "you look sour/pissed/unhappy" my coworkers and I are now saying "you look like you drive a jeep"

[loversandantiheroes]

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Category: F/M Fandom: Dragon Age: Inquisition Relationships: Female Inquisitor/Cullen Rutherford, Female Lavellan/Cullen Rutherford Characters: Cullen Rutherford, Female Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Female Lavellan (Dragon Age) Additional Tags: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Lyrium Withdrawal, Lyrium Addiction, Mild Gore, Hurt/Comfort, first comes the hurt, then comes the comfort, I swear there will be comfort

The threat of Adamant looms, and the cracks begin to show.

Perpetual love and thanks to @songofproserpine for the beta reading <3

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“And people say I’m stubborn!” Cassandra shouted after Cullen as the door shut.

Aadhlei stood staring at the door, thunderstruck.  “Maferath’s balls, Cassandra, what was that about?”

The Seeker folded her arms with a sigh, arranging her face into a rough semblance of her usual irascibility.  But there was an unusual, uneasy edge to it, the expression ill-suited to her face. Cassandra was worried.

“Cullen told you of his decision to stop taking lyrium?”

“He did.  I can’t say it’s a decision that hasn’t worried me, but it was clearly important to him.”

The image of him came to her, bent over his lyrium kit.  Some go mad, others die.  A cold little knot landed heavily in her stomach.

Maker don’t you dare, she thought, and swallowed hard.  “Am I to take it the attempt is going poorly?”

“Most attempts do,” Cassandra said with a sad shake of her head.  “He is ill, yes. He pushes himself too hard. He always has, but more so now.  The man has not stood still since we received word of Adamant. He has seen two Circles fall, and more than his share of demons because of that, even before Veil was breached.  He is afraid that he cannot protect our people, or you, from what we will face. He is a stubborn man, driven, but that same stubbornness has twisted in on him.”

“He thinks he can’t do it without the lyrium,” Aadhlei said.  For all his anger at the Order, Cullen still held - and, she suspected, always would - an unflagging loyalty to the people that served in it.  The Templars were instruments crafted with a purpose, and even as he shed the chains the Order imposed he still sought that purpose, still sought to prove they could do the good he’d been raised to believe in.  But now the Order was all but shattered, and so few Templars still stood that had not been cut down in the war or stained with red lyrium.

A familiar wave of regret twisted through her.  Thoughts of Therinfal Redoubt and the things they had found in its deserted halls clutched at her with a thousand tiny hooks, each one a bright and burning red.  For the thousandth time, she wondered if there was more she could have done, if there had ever been a chance….

Too late for that, she told herself.  It’s done, let it lie.  She dropped her head, letting the straggled mess of her hair hide her face.  All the wear and worry of the past two weeks seemed to be landing in her at once.  And above it all sat a new weight, a heavy, pressing concern that what was wrong with Cullen was beyond her ability to help.

Pulling her focus back, she realized Cassandra was still speaking, either unaware of the her distress or electing not to acknowledge it.  “Cullen has the chance to break that leash to prove that it is possible, to himself and to anyone else who would follow,” she said, more than a little pride in the words.

“What can we do?” Aadhlei asked, trying to brush away her tears as discreetly as she could.

“Not we, Inquisitor.  I have done what I can.  He wants me to recommend a replacement for him.  I will not. It is unnecessary, and quite frankly it would destroy him.  He has come so far, and weathered so much already, I will not take this chance away from him simply because he is afraid.”  

Cassandra took a step back, spreading her hands.  “I cannot claim to know what he needs, but I know that he is capable.  He can do this, he just needs reminding.  And he needs care that he is too stubborn to seek out on his own.  In that I must defer to you. You are the healer. And your bedside manner is certainly preferable to mine.”

Aadhlei sighed, long and tired.  “We were to gather at the war table in an hour.  Please inform Josephine and Leliana the meeting is postponed until we may all attend.”

“As you say, Inquisitor,” Cassandra said.  The Seeker regarded her a moment longer, mouth pursed.  “May I ask you something?”

Aadhlei nodded, barely listening.  Already she was running down remedies in her head, trying to think of things to say, things to do.  Anything that might help.

“There have been rumors around Skyhold for some time.  About you and the Commander. I knew that he had long held you in high regard, but tell me, is it true?  Are the two of you-”

“Would it be a problem if it was?” she asked, words worn to a needle-sharp point.

Cassandra gave a slight shake of her head, a strangely satisfied look on her face.  “No. He needs someone. As do you, I suspect.” She cast a quick glance over Aadhlei, as if finally taking in the state of her.  “I don’t suppose telling you to get some rest before you see him will do any good.”

A short, barking laugh escaped her.  “Maker, as if I could sleep after - no, Cassandra.  No it would not.”

“Then go.  I will see to the council for the time being.”

The sight of him stayed with her as she rushed up to her quarters.  Ashen-faced and shining with sweat, making for the door on legs that bore him up through strength of will only. The worst of it had been that jagged catch in his voice as he’d passed her, muttering for forgiveness.  The shame in his voice, the defeat, had been overwhelming.

Her traveling clothes hit the floor in showers of dirt and sand.  Every inch of her ached. Exhaustion left a tingling thrum in her limbs that made it feel as if she was still on horseback, rattling around in the saddle.  All she’d held onto on the long, punishing ride back to Skyhold had been the promise of a hot bath and the thought of Cullen’s arms around her again. She hadn’t written.  Not once since they rode out of the Western Approach. There had been no time. All the world for her had been fitful sleep and hoofbeats. Maker, she regretted that now.

What if I can’t fix it?  Wounds she could heal.  Breaks she could mend. Maker’s sake, she could even stitch up holes in the sky these days.  But what could she do for wounds she couldn’t see?  When the break was not a bone but something deeper and far more essential.  When his body was tearing itself apart for want of a thing that poisoned his mind.  What then?

Her mind kept returning to his words the day he’d told her about the lyrium - some go mad, others die - worrying over them again and again like a tongue on a loose tooth.

“Maker, don’t you dare,” she said aloud.  Pointing a shaking finger skyward, she called up in a stern but breaking voice, “You hear me?  Go kick over someone else’s ant hill. Or better yet, get off your omnipotent arse and do some fucking good for a change!”

Steady, child.  Kenna’s voice, cracked and kind.   You’re no good to anyone all twisted up.

Aadhlei braced herself against her desk, a strangled sob caught in her throat.  Kenna, her foster mother, had taken ill one winter, not long before the war broke out.  A cough came creeping in with the sharp winds and settled deep in her lungs. No remedies would touch it, no matter how hard Aadhlei tried.  As the weeks wore on and her condition worsened, Aadhlei grew desperate. In the end she had given Kenna a sleeping draught to keep her settled and, in one last frantic attempt to save her, she had tried to heal her by magic.  A powerful spell, not dangerous, but strong .  The sort of thing she had always been discouraged from using, lest she risk drawing the attention of the Templars that roamed the village from the Chantry.  

And it did nothing.  But she was stubborn, a bull-headedness fuelled by love as much as fear, and she had refused to see the truth of the matter: Kenna was old, and Kenna was dying.  And so she had kept on trying again and again, pouring magic into the old woman’s flagging body until she had run herself dry, collapsing out of sheer exhaustion.

When at last she woke, Kenna was dead.  Her first failure. The first taste of real loss.

Hardly your fault, poppet.  There are some hurts in this world that aren’t yours to heal.  But that doesn’t mean you give up, and that doesn’t mean you sit about and do nothing.  So you steady up, now. You’ve work to do.

“Aye, mum, so I do,” she muttered.

She threw open her wardrobe, breath shuddering through the tears that flowed steadily down her cheeks, grasping half-blindly for something clean and uncomplicated to pull on.  A small pile formed beside her - things that were an ungodly mess of buttons, laces, and buckles - before she pulled free something ivory-colored and lace-trimmed. Either some form of fancy night dress or a long chemise meant for more formal wear.  “Fuck it, that’ll do,” she mumbled, pulling it over her head. If it stained, Maker knew she could afford to have it replaced. Her apron hung near her potion cabinet and she tied it on rapidly, stepping into a pair of soft leather slippers and thumbing the catch on the cabinet.  

Inside was an odd mish-mash of prepared potions.  There were still a few bottles of the basic tinctures she’d mixed up for Cullen, and she scooped them up.  Three squat bottles of a purplish-red liquid sat lined up on the far right side. Midnight Oil, she usually called it, something she’d put together to keep herself going when sleep wasn’t an option.  A bad thing to make a habit of, but a help when necessary, and right now it was deeply necessary.  

Aadhlei grabbed two of them, considered, then took the third as well.  She cast a long, hard glance at the small wooden box on the bottom shelf, the one she kept a few lyrium potions in.  If worse came to worst and she had to heal him with magic, if he’d even allow it, taking one now might not be a bad idea.  Yet she had found herself almost unwilling to take them after Cullen had confessed he had given it up. It felt wrong somehow, offensive, almost, knowing what the substance had cost him.

In the end she decided against it, closing the door a little reluctantly.  A faded green shrug lay across the back of her desk chair, and she slipped it on, too hurried to drag on a proper cloak.  She pulling her big leather satchel off its peg, stowing the tinctures and two of the potions inside, and slung it over her shoulder.  

Popping the cork from the third potion, she knocked it back swiftly and set off down the stairs for the Commander’s office.

The path felt like a gauntlet, deflecting staff and redirecting messengers with short barks of “Later,” “Fine,” and “On my desk.”  Solas, looking worn enough himself after the journey back, regarded her perplexedly from his desk as she passed him, making with more than a little haste for the door to the catwalk.  The coldness of the air hit her like a physical blow. The nervous buzz in her limbs subsided bit by bit as the potion began to take effect, but it did little for the tight coils of tension that wound up her back and around her ribs, squeezing tighter as the cold sank into her.  Maker, why hadn’t she thought to take a damned cloak?

Unthinking, she pushed open the door to Cullen’s office without knocking.  A mistake, to be sure, and hardly courteous to boot, but she was still too unnerved for the sake of courtesy, and now too cold to want to linger on the doorstep.  As the door swung open she heard Cullen’s cry of frustrated anger and a flash of movement and brought the large, heavy bag up like a shield, ducking her head behind it.  Something collided with it hard, ricocheting off to splinter against the door frame. The remnants of his lyrium kit lay scattered at her feet, a small shattered phial of crystalline blue glinting prettily in the weak torchlight.

“Maker’s breath!”  Cullen lay half splayed against his desk, breath short and eyes wild, the momentum of his throw and the shock of her appearance knocking him off what little balance he still had.  “I’m sorry! I didn’t hear you enter, I didn’t, I would never, are you -” He let out one long, shaking breath as she lowered the satchel and he saw she was unharmed. A fraction of the shock drained from his face, but what replaced it was a look of such utter misery it hurt her to look at.  “Forgive me,” he said again.

Kicking the broken box away, Aadhlei closed the door, considered, then bolted it and crossed to do the same to the others.  The last thing he needed was another interruption. “Talk to me, Cullen,” she said, willing her soothing voice to service, the one she kept in reserve for the sick or gravely injured.  “What’s wrong?”

The creases in his brow deepened, shoulders slumping.  “No, you’ve been riding for days. You don’t have to-” he began, and then his legs finally gave out and he collapsed against the corner of the desk with a groan.  Aadhlei rushed to him, taking his weight, waiting for his breathing to slow and whatever spell had gripped him to pass.

“Aye, I do,” she said.  “Come on, you need to sit.”

“I never meant for this to interfere,” he said as she eased him into his chair, sounding so small it was as if he was a child in armor, waiting to be punished for his failure.

“It’s alright, Cullen.  But I need you to talk to me, and I need you trust me, alright?”  She swiped a hand across his brow, felt the heat of fever under a slick of sweat.  It gave off a sour smell, but beneath that Aadhlei realized she could smell the faintest scent of burning, like a lightning strike.  “Are you in pain?”

He hesitated.  Then, again, so very small, “Yes.”

“Where?”  

“Everywhere.  All over. My joints are on fire.  And my head.”

“Dizzy?  Sick to your stomach?”

A nod.  “Both.”

She began unbuckling his vambraces and pulled off his gloves.  His hands were like ice, and covered in that same thin, slimy sheen of sweat.  “Squeeze my hand, hard as you can.” He began to mutter a protestation and she put a finger to his lips.  “Meant what I said. Hard as you can. Tougher than I look, remember?”

He nodded against her finger.  The hand closed, squeezed just barely as firm as a handshake, then shook violently.

“You feel hot or cold?”

“Freezing,” he said.  As she moved her hand from his mouth he caught it, pressed it desperately to the side of his face, and closed his eyes.  “Forgive me,” he said again. Not just an apology now, but an appeal.

Aadhlei bent double, pressing her forehead to his, feeling the fever baking off him in waves and not shrinking.  “There is nothing to forgive, Cullen.”

She did not expect him to laugh, or the for that laugh to sound so hard and bitter.  He pulled away sharply, letting her hand fall.

“You should not sound so sure.”  There was a horrible, manic sparkling in his eyes, feverish and wild.  “You have no idea the things….you asked me once what happened in Ferelden’s Circle.  Shall I tell you? It was taken over by abominations. One of the senior mages, Uldred, decided a Blight was a fine time to push for an independent circle.  When the Grand Enchanter refused, Uldred and his ilk resorted to blood magic to get their way. We shut the Circle down so the maleficars could not escape, but that only trapped us in there with them.  The Templars were slaughtered or corrupted. Most of the mages who would not bend the knee to Uldred’s coup were bent with blood magic or killed outright. Demons took care of much of the rest. My friends were cut down in front of me.”  

A haze fell over his eyes, not dimming their fire but making it distant, and Aadhlei shivered.  She had treated enough soldiers now to recognize that look, to know where he had gone, and that all she could do was hold on and wait for him to come back.

Cullen took a long, measured breath.  Then another. A third breath, sharper and shallower, and Aadhlei thought briefly of a man preparing for a deep, sudden dive.  “I was tortured,” he said in peculiar, toneless voice.

The word hung in the air, pendulously, like a body on the gallows.  It seemed to hold such a foreign weight on his tongue that she wondered truthfully if he had ever said it aloud, ever allowed the admission of such a deep and private injury to be spoken.

“I don’t even know how long.  Days, I think, but it felt like years.  No food, no water, no lyrium. Demons scrabbling at my head.  Or maybe it was the maleficars, I can’t be sure. I cannot be sure of much.  It’s all…I...they tried to break my mind and I - how can you be the same person after that?”

He carried on, barely blinking, seeming to breathe only to keep the words moving.  “For years I was nothing but fear and anger rattling in a suit of armor. Still, I wanted to serve.  What else was there for me to do? And they sent me to Kirkwall.  Maker help me, I thought I knew then.  I thought I knew what needed doing, who needed protecting.  I thought I knew who the enemy was. Meredith used that against me .  Told me what she wanted me to hear and hid what she knew even I would oppose.  I was her bloody lapdog for years while she abused the Mages - abused our people for standing up against her - and she used us to do it.  And the Chantry did nothing.  Not for anyone.  Andraste preserve me, neither did I.  I trusted my Knight-Commander,” he said, his face contorted in revulsion.  “I aided her, for god’s sake!   I defended her!  By the time I saw through her, when the lies were finally too large to swallow and I saw the fear in the eyes of our charges for what it was, it was too late.  It all happened again. Kirkwall’s circle fell. Innocent people died in the streets.”

At last his eyes focused again and locked onto her with a desperate ferocity.  “Can’t you see why I want nothing to do with that life?”

“Of course I can,” she said, striving for a soothing patience, but her voice shook with tears she could barely keep in check.  She wanted to help, she always wanted to help, but what cure could she offer for this?  What remedy for wounds of conscience and memory? She sucked in a breath, trying for reassurance, for understanding.  “Cullen, you don’t have to-”

“Don’t!”  He turned his head away, throat working.  

He wants the blame, she realized with an awful sinking in her chest.   Wants disgust and anger, not sympathy.  It’s all he thinks he deserves, especially from a mage.

The urge to reach for him, to give some kind of comfort was overwhelming, but she kept her hands locked on the edges of his desk, the knuckles slowly turning white.  Not yet.

“I’m not going to blame you, Cullen,” she said softly.  He winced, too raw for softness, but she kept on. “If that’s what you want of me, then I’m sorry, because I can’t do that.  I won’t. When they sent you to Kirkwall, they didn’t send a Templar, they sent a man who was scared and wounded and looking for someone to blame.  And that made it very very easy for the wrong kind of people to hook their fingers into you and get you to follow. That you’re trying to do better now, that you’re trying to change and make up for that - and bloody well succeeding at it - takes more strength than I think you give yourself credit for.  And that it hurts you so deep says you have far more goodness left in you than you think.  In my experience, bad men have little time for remorse.”

She reached out a tentative hand and laid it on his arm.  He flinched, hard, and she drew back immediately.  “Whatever happened before, you’re not that man now,” she told him.  “You told me once that you joined the Order because you wanted to help people.  And that is all I’ve ever seen you do. You’re a good man, Cullen Rutherford. If you want my forgiveness, for whatever it’s worth, you have it.  But you’ve come far enough that maybe you should try to forgive yourself, too.”

A strangled sob escaped him and he twisted away.  As if finally unable to bear her kindness any longer, he launched himself to his feet and set to pacing, unsteady but frantic.  

Aadhlei’s heart sank.  Wrong, wrong, Maker help me I got it wrong.

“How can you - why aren’t you angry?” he cried thickly.  “How can you say such things - how can you even stand to look at me?  Can you not see the blood on my hands? You should be questioning what I’ve done, the decisions I’ve made!  Blessed Andraste, how can I atone for something when I can still feel it happening? I thought it would be better without the lyrium, that I would gain some control over my life, but these thoughts won’t leave me,” he said, harsh and strangled, a scream made quiet.    

He fell to an anguished babbling, words falling from him faster and faster.  His hands tugged at his hair, raking it into wild, ragged furls. Tears cut fresh tracks down his cheeks.  It was a terrifying contrast to the controlled demeanor he had always upheld, but the small part of her, the part that spoke patient truths in Kenna’s voice, was almost relieved at his frenzy.  A bone that had set poorly would need to be re-broken again before it could be set true.   Break clean, Cullen, she thought, hopeful now in spite of her fear.

"Blessed are those that stand before the wicked and do not falter.  I cannot falter.  I cannot.  How many lives depend on our success?  Adamant waits for us, a demon army in its walls, and I am meant to lead our people into that!  I must send you into that!  And I do it hobbled for the sake of my own selfish pride!  I swore myself to this cause - I will not give less to the Inquisition than I gave to the Chantry!  I should be taking it!”

With that last he lashed out finally, fist driving into the bookcase with enough force to crack the shelf and send books scattering to the floor.  For a moment he simply stood there, teeth bared and hand bleeding, and then he slowly folded, the fight and fire extinguished all at once. “I should be taking it,” he said again in a voice heavy with defeat.

There it is.

She crossed to him slowly, and this time when she touched him - feather-light, a question of permission made with fingertips - he did not recoil.  “Cullen. Listen to me. Forget the Inquisition, forget the war. Is that what you want?”

A look of horror settled on his face.  “No. Maker, no. I want to be free of it.  I need to.”  Desperation and exhaustion shook his voice ragged, but his eyes seemed clearer and more focused.  

“Then do not put your neck back in that leash for our sake.  Please, Cullen. You can do this. I know you can.”

Cullen pulled his hand away from the broken shelf.  A ragged gouge cut across his knuckles. He stared down at the trembling mess of his hand with a furrowed brow, listening to the gentle patter of his blood against the stone floor.  “The sickness I can take,” he said slowly, “but these memories have always haunted me. Even with the lyrium. If they become worse, if I am not strong enough to endure it-”

“You are,” she said, and carefully cradled his bleeding hand.  “I have never seen a match for the strength in you, Cullen. If anyone can do this, it’s you.”

He hitched in a watery breath.  “I’m sorry. I did not want to - I was afraid let you down.”

“You never could.  I’m proud of you.  But I will not stand by and watch you suffer and do nothing.  You don’t have to do this alone. Let me help you, Cullen. Please.”

Something settled in his face then, something like gratitude, and he seemed all at once steadier with it.

“You’re still here,” he muttered in a wondering voice.

“Aye, so I am.”

He leaned into her with a shuddering sigh, and Aadhlei thought she had never heard such a singularly relieved sound in her life.  He nodded, forehead rocking against hers. “Alright,” he muttered.

Aadhlei shouldered her bag again and pulled Cullen tight to her hip.  “Come on, lean on me. Let’s get you to bed.”