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Tired, burnt, and coughing, Dorian sat on the edge of the rock face which formed one wall of their cave. It was fully dark, stars shining peacefully in the sky like nothing at all had happened that morning, but sleep was impossible. Scenes from the day played and replayed- the archer’s brutal death, the descent of the rage demon, and finally the agonized screams of fatally burned soldiers they had been forced to leave behind. Dorian buried his face in his hands. Their company of sixty was down to just thirty-one, and many of them were badly hurt. The apostates, never content with one victory, were likely already following them, which meant another move in the morning. The effort it would take to pack up camp- to move the injured- to see the despair on the faces of the survivors- was too much to bear. You should have been able to stop the demon, a small voice said. It sounded like his parents, his tutors, older magisters, all woven together into a reedy entity. There was a time when a rage demon was nothing to you, and yet today you stood by while all those people burned. He’d panicked, when it came down to it: frozen by memories of fighting through the Fade, he’d stood shaking, right hand loose on his staff, until he heard the cry to flee. Others had assumed the demon had him under a spell, which meant that the shame was his to keep. To the victor goes the spoils. A twisted irony.
A noise on the path startled him, and he tensed, although he was too worn out to fight, but it was only Cullen. At the sight of him, exhausted, burns on his face and hands, furred mantel lost, Dorian’s heart sank, filled with guilt.
“May I?”
Dorian nodded, and Cullen settled himself next to him, legs hanging over the ledge. The motion was made awkward by the burns on his palms. “Have you gotten those looked at yet?”
“No need,” Cullen said, his voice dulled by strain to monotony. “There were injuries which needed more attention.”
Dorian couldn’t think of a response. He, too, carried burns and cuts too minor to bother with.
“How are you doing?”
“You always ask that,” Dorian said. “How are you?”
“How do you think? This is a setback. Cassandra and the Inquisitor may be facing similar attacks. Redcliffe and the Hinterlands have fallen back into chaos, even after all of our efforts spent there earlier in the year. Winter is coming on and we have yet to find a permanent refuge. However- we now have fewer mouths to feed and proportionally more supplies. A smaller group will be an easier burden for a city to assume, which means we’re more likely to be taken in. We have heard no proof of the Inquisitor’s death, and some proof of her life, which requires us to assume that she has survived this long.”
“Always the optimist.” Dorian knew it was killing Cullen to cast any kind of positive light on the day.
They sat in silence, the stars creeping by overhead. Finally, heart pounding with nerves, Dorian drew in a deep breath. “May I confess something?”
Cullen looked at him, surprised out of some contemplation. “Yes, of course.”
“Today, with the demon-” Less than a sentence in and he was already faltering, choked with shame and grief. He took another breath. “I was not under its spell. I was- Let me explain it this way: In Tevinter, part of a mage’s training involves entering the Fade. The things I saw while I was there- it is a realm that responds to human emotions, which is why it is such an effective trial. The demons manifest as the worst parts of your life, the parts of yourself you hide. I still see it in dreams, and when the demon emerged this morning it- brought that back. I panicked, and I let people die. I’m sorry,” he said, and his throat was so tight that it came out as a whisper. Hands shaking, he sat and waited for Cullen to pronounce his judgement, but he was silent for a long moment. When at last he spoke, his voice was as soft and hesitant as Dorian’s had been.
“When I left the Templars, the- withdrawal period was long and difficult. The desire still stirs in me sometimes. You come to need it, for more than just the courage it gives you. It becomes vital, drowns out every other instinct.” He paused. “Not long before you arrived, the Inquisitor was summoned to consult with some miners about a deposit they had uncovered. On Cassandra’s advice, she asked me if I would be willing to come with her. It had been years. I believed that it would be fine. It should have been fine. I- we were not even in the mine yet and I was stricken by it. I could smell it, Dorian. The craving rose like a dragon. I was useless on the mission and likely terrified the miners. The Inquisitor had enough evidence from that incident to dismiss me from my post. So, yes: I understand what it means to be compromised.”
“Shit,” Dorian said, and it was all he could muster, and it drew a laugh out of his raw throat and suddenly he and Cullen were giggling like schoolboys until it fell apart into watery-eyed coughing. When they had recovered, the starlight suddenly seemed a little brighter, and the silence between them was comfortable, free of secrets which had been invisible before. On a rush of endorphin-fueled instinct, Dorian laced his fingers through Cullen’s between them.
“We’re going to live through this,” Cullen said, with the quiet confidence of a man who had been knocked down enough times to learn how to get up. He squeezed Dorian’s hand, and ran his thumb back and forth in an idle movement. It was almost a caress, and Dorian’s heart sped up again, but he stayed very still. “We’ve come too far to be stopped now.”
“I believe-” I believe in you was what he wanted to say, but he stuck with, “I believe it. The good name of the Inquisitor will get us further when we are out of the Hinterlands.”
They lapsed into another period of silence, more a mark of their exhaustion than conversational ineptitude. Only their hands touched.
“May I ask you something?” Cullen asked. He turned towards Dorian, searching his face. “You don’t have to answer if you do not wish to.”
“That did wonders for my willingness to answer your question, by the way. Ask away.”
“Why did you leave Tevinter, if you were in line to succeed your father as Magister?”
“You have a knack for asking difficult questions, did you know that?” Dorian sighed. “The simple answer is that I was fed up with the hypocrisy and corruption of the entire system. The complicated answer- Well.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Cullen reminded him, gently.
“I have told no one the truth about this. Perhaps if I do- well, we’ll see, I suppose.” He took a deep breath. “When I was seventeen, my parents gave me a slave.” He continued over Cullen’s immediate disgust. “It was an effort by them to stop rumors of my more- embarrassing proclivities. I was horrified, but- we became uneasy friends over the years, and then easier friends. We were never involved. That would have been- it would have crossed a line and even then I disagreed with that particular Imperium custom. But I- we came to something you could call love. I planned to free him when I reached the age of majority, and we were- we were going to move into the countryside. Have a house together, free from the Imperium.” The memory of the old dream, clouded with pointless frustration, made his throat tight again with tears, and he looked out at the horizon until his vision had cleared. He could see Cullen staring, wide-eyed, out of the corner or his eye, but he couldn’t look at him then. “My parents killed him, and many of the other house slaves, less than a week before I reached legal adulthood. They needed their blood to work a spell. All those lives- I still dream the house as it was when I came home that day. I could smell the blood in the air.” The tears that had threatened earlier came in earnest, and he made a fruitless effort to swipe them away with the back of his hand.
Cullen disentangled their hands and put his arm around Dorian’s shoulders. “Is this ok?” He murmured, and Dorian nodded, and let himself be pulled against Cullen’s chest. He was warm, and more had happened that day than had any right to happen, and Dorian gave up and turned his face into Cullen’s collarbone and cried silent tears. Cullen ran a soothing hand up and down Dorian’s back. “There, now. Shh. Sh. Things will be better in the morning. I promise.” He rested his cheek on the top of Dorian’s head.
After a while, Dorian pulled away reluctantly, and offered a shaky smile as he wiped his eyes.
Cullen looked at him, cheeks visibly pink even in the moonlight. “Would you-” he started to ask, and then seemed to reconsider.
“Would I what? Don’t leave me hanging,” Dorian said, voice scarcely trembling.
“I don’t mean anything by this- but, would you consider coming to bed with me tonight? Tent space is more limited now, and it’s been a long day- of course you don’t need to, I just-”
Dorian interrupted him before he rambled himself into a nervous breakdown. “You expect me to hear that and believe you don’t mean anything?”
Cullen turned somehow even pinker. “I don’t mean anything tonight,” he said, and immediate regret played across his face as Dorian laughed, eyebrows raised.
“So what you’re saying is future nights-” he said, but he left it there because the desire to not spend another night alone, especially that night, far outweighed his desire to tease, and his desire in general. “Yes,” he finished, simply. “Thank you.”
The walk back down into the cave, and the scramble in Cullen’s tent to pull off boots and squirm out of overclothes, was giddy and reminded Dorian of being a teenager- except this was better, because there was no teenage fickleness when they settled down and Cullen wrapped a sturdy arm around Dorian’s waist. Dorian laid his head on Cullen’s shoulder, and sleep found him faster than it had for many nights.