Work Text:
"Cullen," Leliana called as he moved to follow the Herald from the War Room, "There is something we must discuss when you have a moment. Meet me in my tent, if you would."
Cullen turned to ask what on earth they would need to discuss that the other advisers shouldn't also hear about, but Leliana was already brushing by him before he could speak.
Later, watching his soldiers spar in the field just beyond Haven's gates, his shoulders sagged. Cullen knew he was no spymaster; he was perfectly competent at troop movements and war strategy, but he had neither the patience nor the skill for Leliana's battles, fought with secrets and lies instead of physical combat. At least a traditional battle was fair. It was honest.
"You shouldn't keep Leliana waiting," Cassandra said as she approached him.
"I know, I know. I'm just dreading whatever she has to say. I don't like all this spy business. Why didn't she ask you? You both worked together under the Divine."
Cassandra shook her head. "That, I do not know. But I am sure she has her reasons." With a sigh, she turned to survey the landscape in the distance. "Leliana and I disagree on a great many things. Perhaps she thought you would be more receptive to whatever news she has come across."
"It doesn't bother you, then?" Cullen asked over the clanging of steel meeting steel. "Her keeping secrets from you?"
Cassandra hummed. "I would be lying if I said it does not. But while I may not approve of her methods, I do trust her judgment. If Leliana keeps something from me, I must assume that she does so for the benefit of our cause, and not out of maliciousness."
"That's a lot of trust to place in a professional liar," Cullen said, more to himself than to Cassandra. "But you know her better than I. I suppose I should defer to your better judgment."
Cassandra offered a slight smirk at that as she walked back to her perch on the outskirts of the training field.
Cullen took a deep breath, then turned and slowly made his way to the spymaster’s tent. He knew better than to keep her waiting any longer than was necessary, but he dragged his feet all the same.
He had never actually been inside her tent before, despite its proximity to the training grounds. If accused of fear, he would deny it and state that he merely had no reason to visit because the three of them regularly met in the map room. While true, it was also a deliberate deflection. He was afraid. Not of any inherent danger, necessarily—Leliana meant him no harm, surely. But the things she did, and the attitude with which she did them...it brought a shiver to his bones that had nothing to do with the cold mountain air. Cullen was a fierce warrior in his own right, but against Leliana he knew he was outmatched. She was a secret-keeper, first and foremost, and he had seen her do more damage with a word than he could have hoped to do with an entire garrison. The fact that she was blindingly quick with a dagger didn’t hurt, either.
So, yes, he was scared of what she had to say. Even if he would admit it only to himself.
“Commander.” She smiled and gestured for him to enter as he approached. “Thank you for meeting me.”
“Of course,” Cullen replied as he slowly stepped inside. Mostly out of curiosity, his eyes darted over the papers littered across the nearby table; he was unsurprised to see that she had covered each piece with a blank piece of parchment to hide the contents, keeping prying eyes at bay.
He returned his gaze to Leliana, who stood to meet him and crossed her arms. He was the taller of the two, though it certainly didn’t feel that way sometimes.
“Do you sympathize with the mages, Cullen?”
Immediately, he balked. The Herald was heading to Redcliffe at that very moment to attempt to recruit the rebel mages to their side, and Cullen had made no secret of his disapproval of the idea and his belief that they would be better-served by contacting the Templars. Leliana had disagreed with him, though not as loudly as he’d disagreed with her. Was this a dressing-down? He’d thought they could disagree (perhaps forcefully) as colleagues without causing undue tension, but perhaps not.
He sighed. “I’m not unsympathetic to their cause, Leliana. Truly, I’m not. But the mages are an unknown and, frankly, a volatile quantity to consider adding to our already-fragile Inquisition. The Templars, agree or disagree with actions the Order has taken in the past, are a known and respected group in Thedas. Allying with them would be the wiser move, could help with getting the Chantry back on our side, and would offer us additional protection if the mages became a larger problem.”
Leliana smiled and held out a hand to keep him from continuing into a second wind. “I already know your feelings on the Herald’s decisions, and I respect your point of view.” She lowered her hand. “Considering your...experiences...one could hardly blame you for your skepticism about the mages and their cause. No one is claiming that you’re being unreasonable.” She shrugged. “At least, I know that I am not.”
Cullen shook his head. “I...apologize for going off on a tangent. But if you don’t intend to rehash our earlier discussion, why are you asking me whether I sympathize with the mages?”
Leliana folded her arms and leaned back against the table, her face carefully expressionless.
“I know a great many things about a great many people, Cullen.”
Unsure where she was going with this, he could only nod for her to continue.
“Part of the Game, whether one is talking about the Grand Game itself or merely the practice of using knowledge as a tool, is knowing when to play your cards and when to hold them.” Despite herself, Leliana’s eyes twinkled as she spoke about the Game. Cullen could never understand how someone found such glee in what he considered to be an exhausting series of one-upmanships, but it was clear that Leliana enjoyed being so skilled at it.
“Sometimes,” she continued, “information is used immediately and to great effect. Other times, it is held in reserve for a time—days, months, sometimes years—before a prime opportunity to use it is presented. Sometimes, the information is never used at all.”
“Strategic use of information is useful in military applications as well,” Cullen said, unsure what kind of response Leliana was expecting from him but wishing to participate nonetheless. “Though obviously not to the same extent as your...types of operations.”
“Indeed,” Leliana nodded. “Knowledge has a great many uses. So I ask you again, Cullen: do you sympathize with the mages?”
Cullen tilted his head slightly, a confused look on his face. He did sympathize with them, however limited that sympathy was, and he had already told her as much at least twice now. What was she really asking him, then, if not what she appeared to be asking him?
“You were in the Circle when the last blight broke out,” Leliana continued. Cullen visibly stiffened at the mention of the Incident, but did not stop her from continuing. “You saw terrible things there, and not-unreasonably you felt that the Rite of Annulment was warranted. You begged the Warden to eradicate every mage in the tower, though she refused to do so.”
“Those were dark times for all of us,” Cullen answered through gritted teeth. “I was tortured. Nearly all the Templars in the tower were murdered at the hands of maleficarum and the abominations they called up. The Warden chose to stay her hand, true, but it was a mercy I did not believe the mages deserved.” Remembering that terrible night was difficult, even now, and he fought to tamp down on the anger he felt rising within him at what he and his brothers-in-arms had suffered. He took a deep breath.
“I...I am not proud of the man I was then. The Warden saw innocents where I could only see future blood mages. She was...wiser than I. More willing to see grey where I only saw black and white.” He lowered his head. “I felt it was warranted at the time, yes, but I am glad the Warden did not heed my demands. I have...seen what the Rite of Annulment truly is. Even I could not stand behind such brutality now.”
“You speak of the events in Kirkwall,” Leliana said as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Of Knight-Commander Meredith.”
“Yes,” Cullen replied as he looked back up at the Spymaster. “We knew there were maleficarum operating in and around the city. But Meredith...she was mad. We saw her getting more and more stringent, clamping down tighter and tighter, but we were afraid to speak out. Even as she issued the Rite of Tranquility illegally on any dissenters she caught, still we said nothing. I saw mages turning to blood magic for reasons completely different from what Uldred had done. Not in a mad rush for power, but because Meredith gave them no other choice.”
He shuddered as the memories came back to him. “Those who turned into abominations during the final fight for the city, when Meredith issued the Rite of Annulment without proper authorization and began to just cut them down...I pitied them. It was heartbreaking to watch their desperate transformations and to have to destroy them moments after.” Cullen was shocked to find a single tear running down his own face. “They only wanted to live, even if in captivity, and Meredith denied them even that.” He shook his head. “It was terrible.”
Leliana approached him and placed a hand on his forearm, a sympathetic look on her face. “It was terrible,” she agreed. “Just as the attack on your Circle had been. I am sorry you had to live through such things, Cullen.” She squeezed his arm and pulled back again. “But you became a better man through those trials, did you not? In Kirkwall, you—you, Meredith’s second-in-command, you, who earlier had called for the Warden to kill even mages you knew to be innocent, it was you among the Templars who refused to follow the Knight-Commander’s orders to cleanse the mages of Kirkwall. You stayed your blade when it counted, and caused others to stay theirs.”
“I suppose so.” Cullen rubbed the palm of his hand across his cheek to dry off the tear.
“Then is it possible,” Leliana said as she returned to leaning against the table, “that you sympathize with the mages more than perhaps even you realize or are willing to admit?”
Cullen shrugged. “Maybe so, but even the utmost sympathy for the mages would not change the fact that I feel the Templars are the wiser option.”
Leliana nodded. “And your position is a respectable one, Commander. I only ask that when the mages arrive, if they arrive, you treat them kindly. You are somewhat unique in that you have seen the insides of these Circles. You’ve seen what they felt pushed into by power-hungry Templars. You clearly have sympathy for them, and I do not doubt that. Show them your sympathy, not your shield.”
“I will try,” Cullen replied with another sigh. “Thank you for...reminding me, I suppose, that I do not hate mages.” He rocked back on his feet. “Is that all you needed from me, Spymaster?”
Leliana grinned and it made him immediately uneasy.
“Actually, it’s not why I called you in here at all!” She chuckled. “But the conversation took a turn that was helpful, so I followed it.”
Cullen gave her an exasperated look. “What do you need from me, then?”
“You may not hate mages, Cullen, but you don’t necessarily like them either, however sympathetic you may find their cause to be. Correct?”
He crossed his arms. “Correct.” Leliana wasn’t one to waste words or time, so she had an angle here. He just had to figure out what it was.
“Even at the Circle, long before Kirkwall.”
“Even worse then,” he admitted. “I hated mages during my time there.”
“The Warden came from your Circle, you know.”
Cullen frowned. “I remember. Her familiarity with the mages likely influenced her decision to spare those she could.”
“I traveled with her party for a time,” she continued. “To help defeat the Archdemon.”
He knew this, though Leliana rarely talked about it. This had been before she was the Left Hand of the Divine, when she was merely Sister Leliana. He’d heard the stories. But, to his recollection, they had never met before the Inquisition brought them together.
“I’ve heard as much,” he said. “But I don’t believe I ever encountered you. The Warden didn’t...” as he thought about his encounter with the Warden in the Circle, he puzzled. Had Leliana been there? He couldn’t quite remember, his mind having been exhausted by then from the torture. “The Warden hadn’t brought you in, had she?”
Leliana shook her head. “She had not. I only heard of the destruction when she and her companions returned to the camp when it was all over.”
There was a pause between them, Leliana seeming to wait for him to say something or make a realization. When he did neither, she went on.
“My love and I are very close, even apart,” she said, and Cullen gaped in surprise before schooling his features.
“You—your—I apologize, I don’t mean to gawk. I just didn’t know that you and she were...”
“Yes,” Leliana said with a wistful look, “we were. We are. The distance is difficult, but even countries apart, I carry her with me always.”
Cullen nodded respectfully. He’d heard rumors, of course, but Leliana was notoriously secretive about her past and her personal life. He couldn’t blame her, naturally, but to have her relationship with the Warden confirmed was a surprise.
“You understand why these things are kept quiet, of course.” He did, and indicated as much with a gesture. “Common knowledge of our relationship, especially in such volatile times...it would bring danger to both of us.”
“I can only imagine,” Cullen agreed. Leliana’s look then changed from wistful to what he could only describe as predatory, and once again he felt that she was leading him somewhere he couldn’t yet see. Even knowing she (most likely) meant him no harm, he remained on edge.
“The Warden tells me everything, you know,” she said. “Even before, when we were only traveling companions—friends—she came to me for comfort. There are no secrets between us. And I have a very good memory.”
Cullen had no idea what she was getting at, so he again had no clear reaction, but his sense of unease only grew. She continued.
“You’ve always disliked mages, Cullen? Even back then? Even...”
He was about to exclaim his frustration with Leliana’s relentless talking in circles when she wiggled her eyebrows at him. He was briefly confused by the gesture, and would have said as much, but the knowing look in her eyes triggered something deep in his memory. Terror rooted him to the spot.
Sifting through my thoughts...tempting me with the one thing I always wanted but could never have...
The things he’d said at the Circle, desperate to stop the taunting of his tormentors rifling through his mind.
Using my shame against me...my ill-advised infatuation with her...
Leliana hadn’t been there, that much was true. But she knew. She had always known. For over a decade, she had sat on this information imparted to her by the Warden, who likely thought nothing of sharing it.
A mage, of all things.
Leliana’s expression was one of pure triumph, like a cat stalking a mouse that knows it’s already won the upcoming encounter.
“It was the foolish fancy of a naïve boy,” she said with the glint of victory shining in her eyes, directly quoting his words from over ten years ago.
All color drained from Cullen’s face, and he fought to keep from staggering back at the impact of this realization.
“What...” he gulped, moving to wipe fresh sweat from his brow. “Why are you telling me this? Why are you telling me that you know this?”
“It is as I said. Information is powerful, Cullen.” She smirked as she gestured at the visceral reaction he was having. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
Cullen felt sick. They may not be friends—did Leliana even have friends?—but they were compatriots in a way, he’d thought. But Leliana was just using him. The way she used everybody, it seemed. Even winded from the shock of her revelation, he stood to his full height and jut out his chin in a challenge.
“What is your aim here, Leliana?” Anger bubbled up inside him. “To spin a tale for the rebel mages that the Commander of the Inquisition is a hypocrite, hating mages by day and lusting after them by night?” He fought not to raise his voice to keep passers-by from stopping to eavesdrop, but his furious gestures were loud and clear. “To force me to allow the mages more freedom of movement than I ought, out of fear that you might let slip something you learned a tenth of an Age ago?” Unknowingly, Cullen had closed the distance between them to a single foot in his simmering fury. Leliana remained unmoved and impassive, which only frustrated him all the more.
“Do you intend to blackmail me, then, Spymaster?” Where before the title was nothing more than a formality, now he spat it acidly as if it were a swear word. Leliana's ability to appear completely unaffected by his anger only further enraged him, and he’d taken a breath to launch into another tirade when he was stopped short by Leliana’s chest heaving with what was clearly a held-in laugh. Her impassive face cracked into a barely-stifled grin.
She tried to clamp it back down by covering her mouth with both hands, but the dam was broken and she laughed more loudly and genuinely than Cullen had ever seen. The more she tried to stop herself, the harder she laughed, and before soon she was bent over double and clutching at her sides, tears of laughter streaming freely down her face.
“Oh, Cullen,” she choked between guffaws, “of course I’m not going to blackmail you with something so deeply embarrassing, it has nothing to do with who you are now.”
Cullen wanted to stay angry, but of all the reactions he thought his reaction would have garnered, this was not one of them; he found himself utterly baffled. Upon seeing his deeply confused reaction, Leliana launched anew into a hysterical laughing fit. She all but dragged herself up and over to a chest in the corner, unlocking it (with great difficulty) and retrieving a weathered piece of parchment that she laboriously folded to conceal all but the bottom of, then passed to Cullen from her shaking hands.
He dragged his eyes away from the spectacle before him to the parchment. A letter, it seemed. He glanced at the signature and gasped in surprise—it was from the Warden, who took great pains to remain impossible to find. He smirked despite himself; of course Leliana would know where she was. And of course she would keep that to herself. He shook his head as he began to read the postscript presented to him.
P.S.
Does Cullen still have that awful curly hair? You simply must tell me about the state of his luscious locks. It was a regular topic of conversation in the Circle—“What does he wash it with? What does he dry it with? How does he get it so wavy?” Don’t judge: life is boring when you’re never allowed to go outdoors. We had to make our own fun.P.P.S.
You HAVE TO bring up The Circle Incident (you know the one) and tell me how he reacts. The poor man might just melt into the ground before your very eyes. Take pity on him, do it in private—he’s a sensitive soul. But not so sensitive that you can’t tease him incessantly, yes? Please do report back with your results.
Leliana had regained control of herself by the time Cullen finished reading, so she got a clear view of him rereading the postscripts multiple times and sputtering more each time. Eventually, he could do nothing more than droop his shoulders and place his head in his hands. Leliana gingerly retrieved the letter from his hands and placed it back in the locked chest, giggling to herself as she did so.
Cullen could feel his face burning red with embarrassment. Not only was he being teased, but he had overreacted to it to such an extent that there was no way Leliana wouldn’t tell the Warden every sordid detail of this encounter.
He sighed deeply, bodily, and dropped his hands to look at her. She was, naturally, grinning ear-to-ear. Cullen shook his head and smiled back wryly, mostly at himself.
“You are an evil woman, Leliana.”
She laughed again, albeit more reservedly. “Secrets and stories are their own currency, my dear Cullen.”
“So they are,” he replied with a shrug of defeat. He’d been had, and he could admit it. He took a more relaxed pose, draping one arm against the pommel of his sword and resting his other forearm on top. “But could you, just...” he took a deep breath, unsure whether making a request would only lead to more incessant teasing. He drooped his head. “Please don’t tell the others.”
Leliana chuckled deeply from within her chest, and he looked back up to catch her winking at him as she shooed him out of her tent to return to work.
“Me? I would never.”