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Hawke looked Cullen square in the eye. “Just out of curiosity,” she said mildly, “why didn’t you ever try to apprehend me, Knight-Captain?”
Cullen gave a chuckle, not even a dry one, raised one feathered shoulder a mere millimeter, and dropped it in reply. “Self-preservation?” he hazarded, just to see her reaction.
He wasn’t disappointed. Hawke raised an eyebrow and continued to look at him. Skeptically. “No,” she said, thoughtfully but firmly, “that wasn’t it.”
“No,” Cullen agreed with a sudden flicker of speculation and confusion. “I always wondered-I sometimes had the impression you might just go along quietly if I asked politely.”
“Sometimes,” Hawke returned wryly, “so did I.”
She didn’t say, and he didn’t ask, but Cullen was nearly certain the words “after my mother died,” hung in the air between them.
“So,” Cullen prompted as Hawke demanded again, “Why didn’t you?”
“Why didn’t you?” Cullen retorted coolly.
Hawke pursed her lips. “I might have… if not for Varric. And Fenris. I might have even for them… had it been any other circle of magi in Orlais–or even Fereldan.”
“It seems we are in accord, then,” Cullen observed quietly.
“And now you ask why I stayed in Kirkwall, then?” Hawke suggested. “Or why I didn’t return to Fereldan–you know the King suggested I might at some point?”
“No,” Cullen said. “I didn’t know, but it speaks well of him. And I don’t ask why you didn’t flee to Fereldan and the safe haven of the Circle, Hawke, because I know. You were the Champion-even if your family was gone, you had your friends, and a city full of refugees who looked to you-trusted you-to protect them.”
“A trust I failed,” Hawke said bitterly.
Cullen parted his lips to protest, but she was continuing, less questioning and more musing over something that had occupied her well and often, “That’s why you pretended not to notice I was a mage-by letting me do what I could to protect them, you were doing what you could. To protect them… and me.”
“That’s giving me rather a lot of credit for insight, don’t you think?” Cullen protested, reaching up to rub the back of his neck.
“Yes,” Hawke retorted, her lips twisting into a grin as she turned to look at him, “And it’s the truth-”
“You were the Champion,” Cullen repeated. “The people of Kirkwall would have torn me limb from limb had I attempted it.”
“Perhaps,” Hawke said skeptically, “though they don’t seem to have been at all bothered to prevent the rest of the templars from driving me away. But you knew I was a mage from the very moment we met-before I was the Champion.”
“You did blast a series of demons with lightning,” Cullen reminded her, his own lip twitching with amusement, “it was a bit hard to miss. Or forget.”
“Unmistakable and unforgettable,” Hawke said flippantly, but with traces of both bitterness and something almost wistful. “That’s me!” She laughed, suddenly a bit self-conscious. “Oh, but Carver would have been livid if he’d been there to see it!”
“You had just saved my life-or at least evened up the odds considerably,” Cullen said. “I figured I owed you something.”
“Sure, at the time,” Hawke agreed, “but by the time the Qunari were razing the city, I got the distinct impression that Knight-Commander of yours had been itching to clap me in chains for months-at the least!”
“Oh,” Cullen winced. “She had. But you-”
“Had some money no one would have been terribly sad to see re-appropriated and an old family estate the whole damn city knew had been sold to slavers-”
“And a rather surprisingly influential member of the Merchants Guild making it clear he could do rather a lot of damage to the regular delivery of our lyrium supply-”
Hawke laughed, a real laugh, free and fluttering and unfettered. It sounded so young. For half a moment, Cullen could almost see Amell smiling over her shoulder.
“And you knew my cousin,” Hawke said softly, almost as if reading the memories held in his smile, “ so when Meredith wouldn’t listen to any of the other reasons-”
“Well, by then you were the Champion,” Cullen reminded her, his face hot with embarrassment.