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There is no established road linking the Western Approach and the rest of Orlais. There is an utter lack of living things for one-hundred kilometers around Adamant Fortress, long stretches of blighted sand dotted only with the occasional phoenix nest and the even more occasional oasis. The nearest population center is Val Fermin, and so is their first opportunity for clean water and real beds. They ride their horses as fast as possible without risking them stroking in the heat, and even then it's estimated to take them nearly a week to arrive in Val Fermin. It's breakneck pace compared to the slow, determined crawl of the army towards Adamant, but it feels like an eternity in clothes crusted with sand and the scent of sweat both human and equine combining into something truly appalling.
On the fifth day straight of riding, Gwyneth blacks out atop her horse. She regains consciousness almost immediately, but she's already on an unstoppable trek towards the ground. She only has enough time to twist her head away from a direct collision before she's hitting the ground with her left shoulder.
"Inquisitor!" shouts Cassandra. A horse whinnies, and Gwyneth can't tell if it's hers or Cassandra's, but there is a small commotion either way as everyone in their party brings their horses to a halt.
Someone dismounts their horse, hitting the ground running with muffled steps that Gwyneth can hear through the sand. Cassandra, she thinks, until she's lifted into a pair of arms that are much larger and firmer than Cassandra's.
"What's the matter with her?" Cullen demands over her head. She wants to speak up and assure him that she's fine, but she cannot manage to coalesce her swirling thoughts into actual speech. "Maker, someone get some water!"
"Dry, drained, desert." Cole's voice is somehow both far away and all around her. "Can't move, can't think, so thirsty, never been this thirsty in my life. Would drink anything, even elfroot tea. Maker, I'm so hot. I can't think—I can't breathe—I can't move—"
The cool but shocking relief of water being poured on her face sends a reaction through her that is more involuntary reflex than actual response. She gasps and shoots up in Cullen's arms, almost flailing herself straight back onto the ground. But Cullen is strong and steady, and he manages to hold onto her despite her rather successful imitation of a beached fish.
"Andraste's tits!" she yelps.
"Sweet Maker, man; I wanted you to pour it in her mouth, not drown her in it!" Cullen lowers her to the ground and kneels there with her in his arms. His hands begin gently, but firmly tapping her cheeks. "Inquisitor. Gwyneth. Open your eyes. Please, Gwyneth—please look at me." His hand passes through her hair, and over her head he directs a harsh bark. "Would someone bring her some drinking water?"
Within moments, a waterskin is pressed to her lips. She has enough motor control to open her mouth, and the water flows quickly in. It moves too fast for her to swallow it all, but she gets several gulps in before it begins flowing out of her mouth. She jerks her head away, coughing, and manages to curl up slightly, griping tightly to Cullen's elbow. The water has flowed immediately into her hair, mixing with the sweat already there and helping to plaster her braid to the back of her neck.
"That's it," Cullen says gently, gripping her chin, "Breathe, in and out. Can you open your eyes?"
She cracks her eyes open, letting in the harsh and unforgiving sun. Her eyes immediately water and she squeezes them closed again, moaning and twisting her face back towards Cullen's chest. He's removed the bearskin and much of his armor in deference to the heat, and is now wearing only his surcoat and chest plate. The worn fabric of the surcoat drapes over her face and shields her eyes from the sun, plunging them into blackness behind her eyelids. She whimpers in relief.
"It is sun sickness," says Solas, tones uncharacteristically urgent. "She is fair and likely already weak from her use of the Mark at Adamant. The heat has made her ill; we must get her into shade quickly."
"Have you noticed where we are?" Cullen snaps. "There's no shade for miles!"
"Then I suggest we make shade, Commander," Solas replies, voice gone hard and unyielding. "At the moment, the sickness is a rather mild case—but if she is allowed to stay in the sun, it will worsen, and sun sickness can be fatal."
"There is an oasis," Cassandra says, "Marked on the map, several miles from here—if you ride fast, you may be able to reach it within the hour."
Cullen does not take the time to respond; before Cassandra has finished her sentence he is returning to his feet and taking her with him. She groans in protest, but he ignores her in favor of lifting her up onto his horse. He arranges her so that she is riding side-saddle, which she hasn't done since she was a child, and quickly hops up behind her. His arms bracket her so that she won't fall off, and she pillows her head on his shoulder. The metal underneath is unyielding and far from comfortable, but she is too tired to lift it again.
"One of you ride back to the soldiers and tell them what's happened," Cullen says. His voice is commanding, loud in her ear and reverberating in his chest. "Whichever one of you has the fastest horse, ride ahead to Val Fermin and alert everyone at the rendezvous point."
"I don't need a horse," says Cole, before the strangest shifting of energy happens.
"Sweet Maker, where did he go?"
"Cole is able to travel in ways which mortals cannot," Solas says. His voice sounds close, as though he's standing right next to the horse—and indeed, she feels his cool fingers on her feverish brow a moment later. At once, her whole body feels cold—almost unpleasantly so, but it's such a relief that she cannot help but whimper out her delight at this turn of events. "There. I have cast a mild cooling enchantment on her skin—it will keep her cool as you travel. But keep as much of her covered as possible; the enchantment won't protect her skin from blistering. And travel fast. It won't last long."
Cullen covers her with his surcoat. "Cassandra, I'll be needing that map."
"Maker watch over you both," she hears Cassandra say, before Cullen kicks his horse into a gallop.
When she wakes up, it is without memory of falling asleep. Her body is cradled into a comfortable position by sand and blankets, Cullen's bearhide serving as pillow—a fact that she recognizes easily in her now-intimate acquaintance with it. The smell and feel of it are a comfort to her as she wakes up, as she turns her nose and sucks in a large breath. Although her limbs still feel heavy, she can at least now move them without feeling like she is trying to pick up Bull's warhammer singlehanded.
She opens her eyes onto dusk, and the flickering light of a fire from several feet away. Cullen is sitting on a rock on the opposite side of the fire, and the sound of trickling water can be heard from nearby. For the first time in hours, she feels strong enough to hold up her own weight—so she sits up, perhaps slightly too fast in her eagerness to examine her surroundings, and leans heavily against her own knee.
They are sitting in an oasis, which makes sense when her hazy memories from earlier return to her. It must be several hours later now, and the desert is cooling off. Because of the foliage in the oasis, it still remains warmer than a typical night in Skyhold—and significantly warmer than the nights they've been experiencing in the desert thus far. The last few nights have been some of the coldest of her life; the last few days, the hottest.
"Gwyneth?"
"I'm okay," she says immediately, to head off any anxiety Cullen may be feeling about her condition. "I'm okay." She turns her head and meets his eyes over the glow of the fire. It's then that she realizes that she is under the shade of a low-hanging deathroot tree. She smiles slightly at the irony as she swipes her hand down her face, attempting to clear her eyes of dust and dry sweat.
Cullen rises from his boulder, comes around the fire and kneels next to her. He presents her with a waterskin, which she takes and puts to her lips. She only means to take a sip, but the moment the water passes her lips she realizes how truly parched she is—and begins taking long gulps, large as her mouth will accommodate.
"Careful," Cullen says, covering her hand with his and pulling the waterskin away. "You can have all the water you want, but you have to take it in a little at a time. If you drink like that, you'll vomit." He releases the skin and lets her take another sip, smiles when she does as he recommended. "There you go. I've done it to myself—it feels like you'll never get enough water, when you're thirsty like that. And I have been. But you make yourself sick, and you feel so much worse."
Gwyneth releases the waterskin, uses her tongue to clear all remaining water that clings to the fine hair on her upper lip. "Thank you. I, um…" she sighs, looking up at the moon in the twilight sky. "Well, this is embarrassing."
"Don't concern yourself," Cullen says. He holds the water skin to her lips again, and she accepts a small gulp. "Solas seems to think that an eventuality like this may have been unavoidable when one takes into account the heat and your fair skin."
"Solas is fair as well," Gwyneth says softly. "I didn't see him falling off his horse."
"Solas didn't close a fade rift and destroy a dozen demons with a wave of his right hand less than four days ago," Cullen says. He sweeps her braid off her back and drapes it over her shoulder, presses his large hand to her shoulder blades. "Solas also hasn't been dragging himself all over the worst corners of Thedas for weeks upon weeks. You've been running yourself ragged since we came to Skyhold; it's miraculous that your collapse didn't happen sooner."
"I owe it to the people we lost at Haven to destroy Corypheus, through whatever means necessary."
"What good will it do, if you destroy yourself in the process?" Cullen presses the waterskin into her hand and thrusts off his haunches, crosses the clearing to where his horse stands sleeping next to the tree it's reined to. He flips open a saddle bag and pulls out another canvas bag. "Are you hungry? I have salted meat and hardtack."
"I'm not particularly hungry, no." Gwyneth sets both hands to the task of unbraiding her hair. "But I can't remember the last time I ate, so I suppose I should." Her hair is matted in several different ways, coarse and thick from the salt of her own sweat and the sand clinging to it. She grimaces as she attempts to pull it all apart without yanking half of her own hair out. "If I promise to eat something, will you let me bathe first? I feel completely filthy."
"Of course. I may even…" Cullen turns back to the saddle bag and, after a moment of rummaging, emerges victorious with a slightly green bar of soap. Gwyneth recognizes it as a bar of the elfroot soap that has been passed around by the bucketful courtesy of the healers in Skyhold. The claim is that it soothes sore muscles and promotes the expedited healing of burns, cuts and bruises, but Gwyneth suspects that it's as much about that as keeping Skyhold as hygienic as possible—for the benefit of visiting dignitaries as well as the noses of all involved.
Elfroof, Gwyneth has discovered in her time with the Inquisition, can be employed in the production of just about anything; from soap to tea. The medicinal taste and smell is always strongly present, but it isn't necessarily a bad one. Cullen brings the soap to her and she takes it, holds it up to her nose. Stuffiness she didn't even realize was there clears from her nostrils, making it easier to breathe.
"Thank you," she says. Cullen holds out a hand to help her up and she takes it. He pulls her to her feet in a firm, constant motion that sets her slowly but steadily on her feet. She nods her thanks and shuffles behind the deathroot tree in pursuit of what little privacy can be had in such a situation, stumbling slightly at first but gaining surer footing in short order. Once behind the tree she gingerly strips herself of clothing, minding bruises and cuts both several days old and from this afternoon. Her shoulder feels as though something is torn, and will no doubt require treatment from a healer, but it can likely wait until Skyhold or at least Val Fermin.
She has bandages around her ribs that she had almost forgotten about. Now she remembers them being hurriedly applied by a field healer, some former circle mage horribly out of her depth, on the run from critical case to critical case in the hours after the worst of the fighting at Adamant had abated. She received her bandages between Cassandra's dislocated shoulder and a mess of nasty burns on Dorian's face, so Gwyneth cannot really fault the workmanship—they've held up to four days of hard riding.
She removes the bandages carefully, and then gingerly presses her fingers against the blue-black clouds of bruising on her side. It aches, as she knew it would, but not terribly so. The elfroot soap will help.
On the edge of the water, she kneels and first runs the water through her clothing, ridding the worst bits of grit. As they dry on the bank she wets the soap, runs it over biceps and forearms, her stomach and then her legs. She scrubs underneath her arms and between her legs, lathering up coarse hair which has caught so much sweat and dust. The hair atop her head she treats with special care, massaging the soap into her scalp and dunking her entire head under water once she is satisfied with its cleanliness. The soap is then abandoned on the bank as she wades out. It's a natural well, likely the result of water running deep underneath the sand from when this area of Orlais was still meadow hundreds of years ago. It's quite shallow, but at its deepest point it covers her up to the hip. She sinks into it and lets it support her for a few moments, only nudging herself with slight motions of hand when she feels herself drifting too far from center.
It's gone completely dark now. Cullen can be seen by the light of the fire, a prominent silhouette. His features are remarkably Ferelden; long nose and strong brow and square jaw. There are no shortage of Ferelden men in the Inquisition, nearly all with that same distinct profile. They stopped being a novelty to her long ago, despite being markedly different from the high foreheads and cheekbones of most Marchers. There's something about Cullen, though. Something that strikes her every time.
"Cullen?" Gwyneth says. The sound of her voice bounces off the natural land formations surrounding the oasis, hundreds of years of water lapping gently against the soft sand stone having formed something of a cliff. It amplifies a word that had been said in a tone barely above a whisper into something that can be heard through the entire oasis. Cullen looks up, and she sees him struggle to locate her in the water before his eyes finally alight on her head bobbing above the water like some absurd buoy. "I don't suppose you have a change of clothes?"
"No, I'm sorry." Cullen scratches the back of his neck. Gwyneth can envision the chagrinned expression on his face. "I didn't think to bring any along, and if you did they're likely halfway to Val Fermin by now; I sent your horse ahead with Cassandra. We do have blankets."
"That'll do." Gwyneth continues staring at him from her mostly-submerged vantage point, envisioning herself to look something like a gurgut in a hot spring, waiting to pounce on its pray. She adds, "She wasn't injured by my falling off her, was she? My horse?"
"What? Oh, no. No, she's fine. Just…tired like the rest of us, I imagine." She sees his head shift towards her again. "Do—do you want me to turn around? While you get out? Is that what you're waiting for?"
"A bit, yes."
"Alright—I—Sorry, yes, I'll just—" Cullen rises from the rock he's sat on, shuffles uphill until he's almost nose-to-nose with the sandstone of the cliff face. Gwyneth chuckles under her breath as she hurries out of the water and over to the campsite. Cullen, without turning his head, says, "The blankets are over where I laid you down—there should be half a dozen or better. Thought I'd come prepared, given that this is a desert."
"Smart man." Gwyneth selects a heavy wool number, warm but itchy, and wraps it around her shoulders like a cloak. It's large enough to wrap around her twice, but she bunches it up in front of herself and lets it hang to just below her knees.
"At times," Cullen chuckles. His head twitches towards her instinctively as he hears her coming closer, but still he doesn't turn his face towards her. Gwyneth is almost touched by this dedication to her request, despite knowing that it must seem somewhat unconventional to a military man. He's likely seen hundreds if not thousands of naked bodies just having lived in barracks for as long as he did. One more body would be nothing, even given their…as of yet ambiguous relationship. That does not stop the fact that only she and one fellow mage from the Ostwick Circle have ever seen her naked since she reached her physical maturity.
She isn't even sure if it's something she's self-conscious about; she's always been comfortable with her body. But sharing it with someone else is something she has only done once in her entire life, and never with a man. A man has never seen her exposed stomach, her naked breasts, the thick hair between her thighs. The thought that she might be considered in any way abnormal is a concerning one.
"I'm covered now," she says to him from less than a foot away.
Cullen turns towards her. His eyes immediately alight on what she at first thinks are her bare shoulders, but realizes is her hair when he says, "Your hair…" in an almost awed tone.
"What about it?"
"I just—forgive me, I've never seen it down. It's so much…longer than I thought it was. And curlier."
"If you think it's curly now, wait for an hour—you haven't seen curly yet. It sticks out from my head…oh, about this far." She holds her hand out to a point which, admittedly, is an exaggeration—but not by as much as he thinks it is, judging by how lightly he laughs in response.
"Well…for what it's worth, I think it becoming."
She pats down her wayward hair, already beginning to fray in the heat, and smiles. "Thank you." She shuffles back towards the camp and drops herself onto the sand next to the fire. It jilts her bruised ribs and she is unable to suppress a hiss in response—an ejaculation that Cullen quickly picks up on. He's next to her in a matter of seconds, staring down at her from his towering vantage point.
"Are you alright?" He kneels down next to her, the billowing sleeves of his tunic settling over his arm muscles as he folds them to rest on his thighs. Gwyneth doesn't think she's seen him so uncovered before.
"Fine, it's just my ribs."
"Your ribs?" By the amount of alarm in Cullen's voice, Gwyneth can tell that both she and the healer neglected to inform him about her injuries.
"It's nothing—just…I took a shield bash from a Warden back at Adamant. The healer said that one was broken, but not terribly. She wrapped them before we left and I've just taken the bandages off so they're…tender. But nothing I can't handle. There were far worse injuries. At least I…at least I came out alive." The Inquisition had not experienced an outstanding loss of numbers at Adamant, but the fact that any had to die at all—that they are fighting with an army that is essentially refugees and the faithful forced to take up arms, is a heavy weight that she must now carry with her. Added to that weight are the Wardens who died both by the hand of Corypheus and his agents and those felled by the Inquisition.
Wardens such as Alistair. A legendary warden, a veteran of the Fifth Blight—and his death came at her order. The order of someone who until two years ago had never left Ostwick, had barely seen the exterior of a Circle Tower. Someone who had barely reached her majority when the Hero of Ferelden defeated Archdemon Urthemiel and became more myth than person. Someone who, ten years later, may have the same fate ahead of her—and when they speak about her in one hundred years' time, the Inquisitor, will she be spoken of as the Hero is? Or will she be a black stain on Thedosian history, joining the ranks of Hessarian and Loghain Mac Tir.
"Inquisitor—"
"I like it better when you—" she clears her throat and licks her lips to soothe their cracked dryness, "I prefer it when you call me Gwyneth." When she hears her name on his lips, she almost feels like a real person again.
Cullen's eyes soften. He reaches out and with gentle pressure turns her head. "Gwyneth. I understand that the last few days have been…trying. And I understand that, at the time, your injury wasn't the most pressing. But you are…my only concern at this moment. There isn't another person for miles and even if there were, you—you mean more to me. Perhaps that sounds callous, but it's the truth."
"Because I'm the Inquisitor?" Gwyneth responds, genuinely curious.
"Because you're…because I care for you. Deeply. And I—I worry for you. Will you let me see your ribs? I may not be a healer, but I've picked up some…rudimentary field medicine. Most commanders do." He rises and goes to his horse, returns a moment later with long stretches of fabric bandaging and a pot of salve. Kneels beside her again. "I will be gentle, you have my word."
"Cullen, I…you know I'm naked."
A blush fades into existence on Cullen's cheeks. "I know. And if the world were an idyllic place, I would never ask you to—to reveal yourself to me until you were ready. If—if you ever became ready, for I have no wish to have something unwillingly given and it doesn't matter if—" He sighs, squeezes his eyes closed. "I'm sorry. I haven't a way with words. Varric or Dorian would have a much better idea what to say under these circumstances—"
"Varric only has eyes for one woman," Gwyneth chuckles, "And Dorian has no interest in them at all."
"Be that as it may," Cullen says, surprised laughter catching in his throat, "They have…the vocabulary to express themselves. I'll never be able to…write you poetry or a decent love letter, but I can try to assure you, in my…admittedly simple way that I will always respect you. I will only touch those parts of you I must in order to tend your wounds, and my eyes will not linger where they aren't welcome."
Gwyneth nods and brushes his cheek with her fingers, the coarse sensation of stubble scratching across her skin. She pulls her hand away to peel the blanket from her upper half, allowing it to pool in her lap. Cullen goes to work immediately, applying salve with gentle fingers to the coin-sized bruise over the broken rib.
Feeling as though she owes him an explanation but not quite sure where to start, and also wanting to fill the slightly awkward silence that has commenced, she says, "I've…never been with a man."
"That doesn't come as a shock," Cullen murmurs, eyes still focused in on her side. "I've never visited the Ostwick Circle, so I don't know how…liberal or otherwise they were on the subject, but I know that in the Kirkwall Circle, fraternization in any capacity that could result in pregnancy was…grounds for Tranquility. You would have been risking quite a lot to take on a partner while in a Circle. They were slightly less…harsh about same-sex relations, but only because they couldn't result in a child. Of course, when you keep healthy men and women confined within the same building…things are bound to happen."
Gwyneth turns her face away, eyes catching in the middle distance, unfocused. "There was another mage. Her name was Minerva. We were quite young, both of us. Fifteen or sixteen. We had a brief romance. It must have been twelve years ago now. We were…hot-blooded. Pubescent. It didn't last very long, but she and I had been good friends for many years before and remained good friends for many after. She died at the Conclave."
Cullen doesn't reply until he's begun the process of wrapping bandaging, just loose enough not to restrict her breathing, around her ribs. "I'm sorry," he says gently, likely both because of her statement and the fact that he is pressing a steadying hand against the side of her pectoral, where her breast swells from her armpit. "I…can't say that I don't know what it's like. I knew good people who died at the Conclave—Templars and mages both. And of course…we all mourn Divine Justinia."
"Yes," Gwyneth murmurs. Cullen finishes the wrappings and she drops her arms, slumps forward to lean against her knees. She listens to Cullen as he rustles around, winding the rest of the bandaging around itself and recapping the pot of salve. She looks at her marked hand, which in this light almost looks normal; a benign scar from a kitchen knife or catching the wrong end of a staff. She can't see the sickly green color of the rippled edges and it doesn't glow when not near a rift. She can almost forget.
"You told me that destroying myself is not the answer to destroying Corypheus," Gwyneth says, opening and closing her marked hand. "But…what if it is?" She is keenly aware of every sensation at this moment; her hair on her shoulders, the sand underneath her toes, the slight wind blowing past her still bare breasts. There is nothing particularly special about it, but she has experienced enough of these oddly ethereal moments to know that it is one she will remember for the rest of her days, be they in the thousands or only the tens. "What if the answer to killing him, to…ridding the world of the threat of him, is my sacrifice?"
"I can't believe that," Cullen tells her. He takes the blanket and wraps it back around her shoulders, turns her head and smoothes down her wayward hair. "I can't believe that the Maker would send you, with all that you are and all that you mean, only to…destroy you. I cannot believe that that is his plan."
"Let the blade pass through the flesh, let my blood touch the ground. Let my cries touch their hearts, let mine be the last sacrifice."
Cullen's eyes shine with unshed tears. "You are not Andraste."
"No," Gwyneth says softly. "I'm a mage from Ostwick. I've lived almost thirty years of my life in complete irrelevance and now people are calling me a prophet. What protects me from Andraste's fate? The Maker sent us his Bride, and we destroyed her. Now his back is turned."
"I will protect you," Cullen says, palms pressed to her cheeks. She wraps her hands around his wrists and presses their foreheads together, can almost feel the wetness on his cheeks pass to hers. "As long as there is breath in my body, you will not fall. You will live on—you will defeat Corypheus and you will grow old. You will die years from now, comfortable in your bed. Not now. Not by his hand."
He presses his mouth to hers, an action borne of such pure and unadulterated emotion that she can almost feel it on her skin. Her hands go to his head, cradling it and feeling at one like the protected and the protector. He kisses the side of her mouth, her cheek and the dry skin between her brows. His chin rests atop her head, nestling her against his neck. She lets herself be craddled and rocked for long moments, as the world fades away and all that remains is Cullen; the parts of her where he is touching her, and the low and steady rumble of his voice.
"Here lies the Abyss, the well of all souls. From these emerald waters doth life begin anew. Come to me child, and I shall embrace you. In my arms lies Eternity."