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A supple redhead stepped forward from the shadows, moving like a fox, fluid grace and shrewd unselfconsciousness. She looked up, clear blue eyes the color of the sky at the very inception of dusk meeting his with a jolt that quaked down his spine. “I… I remember you.”
“Really?” The redhead raised delicate eyebrows in a highly skeptical arch. “I shouldn’t have expected you to-you were hardly lucid at the time.”
“I take it you’ve met,” the Seeker interjected, her voice sharp but warm.
“After a fashion,” the redhead admitted, still looking at Cullen, but with eyes gone long distant. “I wouldn’t say we’d ever been properly introduced.”
“Cullen Stanton Rutherford, formerly of the Knights Templar, at your service,” Cullen said, his voice gone gravelly and uneven in spite of his attempts to sound light and teasing. “And thank you for my life, though I shouldn’t blame you if you regretted saving it.”
The redhead’s eyes widened in something very like shock; if she was faking, she was extraordinarily good, and what motive she would have for faking in the first place was far from known to him. “Regret it? Why?”
Cullen wondered if it was only his sensitive conscience that made it seem as though her tone hardened and took on just a bit of an edge with that last, loaded word. “I was Knight-Captain in Kirkwall.”
“Yes, I know,” the redhead said impatiently. “What of it?”
Cullen blinked and rubbed the back of his neck. “I-During the Mage Rebellion, you understand?”
“Ah.” The single sound was surprisingly empathetic, loaded with compassion. “I see.”
“I… I’m sorry. I’ll… send you a list of possible replacements… if you’d be willing to entertain my suggestions, that is.” Cullen, fighting down a complex surge of disappointment, relief, bitterness, embarrassment, began to pivot on his heel, a templar’s customary sharp turn at attention.
The redhead reached out, resting one delicate hand on his forearm, just above the elbow. “You were following orders, no?”
“I was,” Cullen admitted, his throat tight, his stomach tying itself into surprisingly ambitious and elaborate knots. “Bad ones. But orders I-”
“Orders you’d been waiting for since we met? In Fereldan.”
“I-yes. I wanted-”
“To be sure magic couldn’t anyone ever again? To avenge your friends?”
Was this unworldly, almost fey, little redhead referring to Fereldan or to Kirkwall, Cullen wondered with a splintery sort of detachment that seemed to keep stabbing him with sharp and stinging little bits of anger, shame, fear. It scarcely mattered. “Yes.”
“The Champion of Kirkwall agreed to this?” the redhead’s voice was still cool, composed, but clearly doubting.
“After a fashion,” Cullen said shortly. “She didn’t say so, I didn’t have time or inclination to ask. I’ve since thought-I had the impression she only went along with it because she thought it was the best way to talk the sense back into Meredith.”
The redhead glanced over at the seeker, who gave the barest hint of a nod. Neither of them seemed inclined to give any further reaction.
Cullen frowned, watching them. “I think Haw-the Champion annulled the Circle to protect the city-mages included-as best she could.”
“Yes,” the seeker said crisply, as she and the redhead exchanged another glance. “So do we.”
Cullen’s frown deepened as he reached up to rub the back of his neck. “What-” He broke off as the redhead stared at him. Very pointedly. “Oh.”
He sighed. “No, sister, I assure you, I was not-am not-Hawke. I wish I had such motives in mind, if only to ease my conscience and quiet my dreams, but I was merely following orders, and orders that seemed terribly necessary at the time, I assure you.”
To Cullen’s surprise, it was the seeker who gave a sharp, skeptical snort. “Truly?”
“Do you think I would lie about it?” he snapped, suddenly angry. “I’m scarcely proud of it; the knowledge of what I’ve done and why-”
“And yet,” the redheaded sister-or whatever she was now-interjected with cool serenity, “there are several dozen mages in The Gallows who not only could but have testified that, on appeal, you spared their lives.”
“I… might not have. That… was Haw-The Champion’s doing, not mine.”
“The Champion’s friend, Varric, tells me she protested, yes,” the seeker confirmed. “And appealed to you. And you said-”
Cullen shifted, and looked away from the redhead, feeling embarrassed and exposed to a degree he hadn’t experienced since… well. “That I would like to save all we could, spare those who had not succumbed to demons but surrendered to our judgment and appealed to our-all too uncertain-mercy.”
“Did Meredith truly ask if you would stand surety against the danger they presented to the city?” the seeker asked. If Cullen didn’t know better, he’d have thought she sounded most unsuitably… eager and… enthusiastic?
“She did,” Cullen said grimly. “I told her-” he broke off, glancing toward the redhead and quickly away. The sight of her both drew and repelled him.
“Yes?” the redhead prompted, though she sounded less questioning than… proud? Teasing, perhaps. Almost affectionate, but, no, surely not. She barely knew him, though she knew the things blessedly few others did. The things he wished he didn’t know about himself. He didn’t even know her name.
“I told her I would. I believe that is the very duty templars are meant to uphold.”
“I see,” the redhead said gravely.
“In that case,” Cullen said, “I’ll be on-”
“And why should anyone be ashamed of that?” the redhead asked, her fingers tightening just slightly on his arm, “My name is Leliana,and I am very pleased to meet you-again, Cullen."