Work Text:
Some plan for the kingdom of heaven
and some take their chances and bet lucky seven
I don't know what to believe, I just show up and breathe anymore
And I wanna lay my head down on you
because you're the only solid thing in this room
-Lay My Head Down, The Indigo Girls
When the letters on the page began to swim, Cullen wasn’t immediately alarmed. Tired, is all, and the light of the candle not precisely steady. Just to be sure, though, he ran his usual precautions. Asked himself the date, the place, and the mission, then checked his answers against the ones Cassandra wrote down for him every morning. Ah, see? Correct. He was still in full possession of his faculties. Satisfied, he regarded the rest of his office, from the seemingly-innocent desk where so many uninnocent pastimes had transpired, to the view of the courtyard from the window, to the black-eyed abomination in the corner--
--no sooner had Cullen drawn his sword than the hallucination vanished.
The edges of the desk wavered in his vision, then split, and there were two desks, two sets of ledgers, two mugs. The two pens began to sway in a breeze that didn’t exist, then began to write of their own accord, scratching across the paper, writing horrible, horrible things--
Cullen squeezed his eyes shut. Remember the fire, he recited to himself, clinging to the familiar words of the Chant that had helped him through this before. You must pass through it alone to be forged anew...
For a moment, upon opening his eyes, he saw one desk. One pen, where it should be, with no scrawled taunts and obscenities marring the pages of the requisitions report. For a moment, his eyes showed him the truth. But only for a moment.
The distance between his office and the war room had never been so insurmountable. By the time he crossed the courtyard, he could no longer determine which voices were real. The shadowy figures dogging his steps, untouched by the light of sconses, were not real, he reminded himself, and in the same heartbeat he thought just a taste and this all goes away, and then came the thirst.
His steps fumbled under him and he had to catch himself on the wall, hazily grateful that it was late enough most people were asleep. He missed the taste of lyrium, the sweet freedom of it, the confidence and self-worth that it bestowed. False, he reminded himself, it was all lies, but the gap between knowing that and truly believing it had never felt so wide. Just a taste…
No.
No. He’d come too far.
His hands shook as he pushed the door open—too quickly, too hard, the heavy wood slamming against Skyhold’s stone, startling the occupants of the war room. He should’ve been more careful—appearances matter, reputation matters, her reputation matters--
“Cullen?”
Kiara half-turned towards him, one graceful hand resting on the war table, the other raised as if she was in the middle of illustrating some point. Her expression brightened with delight, replaced just as quickly by a polite mask of professionalism.
“Ki—Inquisitor.”
His voice, he was pleased to note, didn’t shake.
Unlike everything else, the edges of Kiara were sharp and clear; hope surged through the fear as he focused on her eyes, on the stormy grey that was his only tether to reality.
“My apologies for the interruption," he heard himself continue, falling back on old habits of politeness, “is now a bad time?”
Kiara knew something was wrong the moment she saw Cullen, framed by the war room door and backlit by a torch casting light on his golden curls. She didn’t think Josephine would notice—indeed, Josie never paused in her recount of Lord Basile Maron’s recent humiliation. Kiara kept one ear tuned to her (it was important information, and also amusing) as she crossed to Cullen. He stood as straight and steady as always, but his coat was gone, his skin appeared clammy, and there was a barely perceptible tremble in his broad shoulders. She reached for him, then hesitated—he always wanted to project dignity in front of others—but he grabbed her hand and held it likea drowning man holds a tether. His eyes darted all over the room only to snap back to hers desperately; she wondered with a stab of sympathy what it has he thought he saw around them.
“Actually,” she said, “it’s good you’re here. I needed to speak with you about Sutherland’s crew. Josephine,” she turned and gave the ambassador her most apologetic smile, “can we pick this up later?”
“Of course, Inquisitor.” Josie wasn’t fooled, Kiara realized, but unlike everyone else in this blasted organization, she was discreet. From the little smile on her face, she thought this a lover’s tryst. Good.
Following along with the ruse, Kiara took Cullen’s arm and threaded hers through it, speaking in a conspiratorial undertone as she led him out of the war room. Later she wouldn’t remember what she spoke of—gossip, observations on the weather, whatever inconsequential nonsense she could think of to distract him from the panic radiating from him—but she kept it up until she closed the door of her chambers behind him and Cullen dropped to his knees and hid his face in her belly.
She seized his shoulders immediately, wrapping her arms around him as best she could. “Oh Cullen,” she whispered, “Cullen, darling, can you tell me where you are?”
“Skyhold Fortress, seat of the Inquisition. The bedchamber of the Inquisitor.”
The shame in his voice tore at her heard. When the anchor hurt, or gave her nightmares beyond anything she’d ever experienced in the Fade, Cullen was her rock, her steady, calming presence of solid support; asking for help is not weakness, he had told her so many times.
Oh, what she would give for him to believe that of himself.
“Tell me what it is you’re seeing,” she prompted gently.
“An abomination to your left.”
She knew there was nothing there, but she looked anyway. “There’s nothing there. It’s just us here, I promise you.”
Cullen shuddered. “I know that, but everything I see tells me otherwise. Everything looks false. Wrong. Faces in the shadows, voices—telling me horrible things—I feel their hands, their magic, the walls are closing in, I—I—”
“Breathe, my love,” Kiara murmured as she threaded her fingers through his thick curls. He always craved her touch at times like this--physical contact, he had told her, helped ground him in his body, in the reality of it, bring him back from the horrible places that lyrium withdrawal tried to take him. She curled over him, trying to envelop his much larger body with hers, to shield him, to steady him. She scratched her nails lightly against his scalp, humming a soothing non-tune, and stroked the back of his neck with her free hand, and held him for all she was worth as he shook.
“This will pass, Cullen, I promise. Come now, breathe deep for me.”
Gradually she felt his hitched, ragged breaths become slower if not necessarily calm. Some spells could calm a panic attack or dispel hallucinations, but the last thing Cullen needed right now was exposure to magic. And yet he willingly placed his heart in her hands, hands that had pulsed with power even before the anchor...
“I’m here, my love. You’re not alone.”
All at once the tension drained out of him; he sagged all the way to the floor, and Kiara, caught in his arms, could do nothing but sag with him. His hold shifted, less like a drowning man and more like a lover, and she gathered him to her as she leaned back against the door, his head tucked under her chin. Tears had ruined the lace of her doublet, but never mind.
For a long time she held him on the floor. His heartbeat calmed; warmth trickled back into his skin. Eventually he turned his head just enough to press a kiss to the sensitive skin at the hollow of her throat.
“Better?” she said into his hair.
“Better.”
They remained silent for a time, hidden by the warm shadows cast by the fire. “I used to think it peculiar,” he finally ventured, voice rumbling pleasantly through her chest and belly, “that I can always look to you and see truth. I cannot always trust my own eyes, my own mind, but you...you are the one thing in this world I always know to be real.”
“I suppose it’s the anchor,” she mused. “Perhaps my tether to the Fade acts as some kind of reverse mirror, showing you reality when your mind tries to show you lies…”
“No.” Cullen lifted his head, blue eyes red-rimmed but focused. Kiara huffed—he hadn’t even listened to her thoughts—but the small, exhausted smile on his lips gave her pause. “I don’t think it peculiar anymore. You are a lighthouse to a sailor at sea, Kiara. To find safety with you is the most natural thing in the world.”
(Kiara felt herself blushing, which after all was a bit silly, but he really could make her feel like a young girl with her first crush.)
“I’m not sure I deserve your love--”
“Hush,” Kiara interrupted before he could continue down the road of self-loathing. “Do I deserve your love?”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “You deserve the love of a good man.”
“And as you love me, I have it.” He didn’t try to argue that. She tilted her head, trying to catch his eye. “If I deserve your love…” She felt him tremble slightly when their eyes met, and she spoke with all the quiet fierceness that made her an effective Inquisitor, half ordering and half begging him to believe, “then so too do you deserve mine.”
Cullen sighed. “Well, I’m hardly in a position to argue with you right now, am I?”
“When you’re feeling better, perhaps we can discuss it more energetically?” She did not miss the hint of a smirk on his face, or the way the tip of his tongue just wetted his lips. “But for now, try to get some rest. If not for your sake, for mine.”
Cullen lay his head on her chest, and Kiara let her hands drift up and down the long muscles of his back. She listened to their twin heartbeats, to the sweet evenness of his breathing, and the wind around Skyhold, and the crackle of the fire, and waited until she was certain he was asleep before she allowed her own eyes to close.