Chapter Text
Fi’laëwel Lavellan had spent months, years even, preparing for this moment - months of training, of investigating, of fighting - and to be quite honest, it all felt a little, well, underwhelming . Oh, she got her big, glorious fight, to be sure, one that even included some sort of dragon that looked like an archdemon, but wasn’t actually an archdemon. It’s just that at the end, when it was just her and Corypheus, it had almost seemed too easy. She had somehow called the orb that had started it all to her using the mark on her hand and opened a rift over the one time magister without even really thinking about it, as if she had been acting purely on instinct. And then he was gone, the rift closed up and him with it.
At least she was alive, which was more than she had expected going into this fight. She shook her head to try to clear the thoughts from it, the few stray blonde locks that always fell out of her ponytail now plastered to her face with sweat. A mistake - she felt lightheaded enough that she thought she might lose consciousness, and when she looked down, she noticed an alarming amount of blood on her side, a slow trickle still coming from a wound somewhere under her armor. Not good, she thought, just as her vision began to blur and swim. Her final thought as the world went black was that she was right after all, and a hope that her death wouldn’t completely destroy Cullen.
*****
Not dead after all, Fi thought as her eyes fluttered open. She almost wished that were the case - there wasn’t a single part of her body that didn’t hurt just then, with most of the pain radiating out from the wound in her side. She didn’t even remember it happening, likely because she was so caught up in the heat of battle, the bloodlust and adrenaline keeping her going when she probably should have fallen long before she did. Or maybe it was sheer stubbornness that had kept her alive through the fight. Not that it mattered, because here she was, alive and more or less well, somehow back at Skyhold and in her own bed. And Cullen, asleep on a chair that he had pulled next to her bed.
She untangled herself from the blankets and tried to sit up, a feat that was easier said than done because of the pain she felt all over. A groan escaped her lips, louder than she would have liked. Cullen stirred beside her at the noise, quick to rise as always. It was something she hated - he never got enough rest for her liking. “Fi! How are you feeling?” he exclaimed, bolting upright and taking one of her hands in his own. “Let me call the healer.”
“Cullen, no. I’ll be fine, just… let me get my bearings,” She hated the annoyance in her voice; he was just worried for her, but she couldn’t stand to be fussed over. She managed to scoot over to make room for him, patting the spot at the edge of her bed that she had just vacated. “Sit closer. Please.”
He nodded and did as she said, his heavy weight settling on the bed next to her a pleasant sensation. The warmth from his body pressed against her, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders to pull her even closer before dropping a kiss onto the top of her head. “I was terrified for you, love. All that blood…” he shook his head, his already pale face blanching at the memory before he attempted to compose himself. “And then you just… I thought… I thought we had lost you for good. That I had lost you and… Maker, Fi, I felt the world drop out from under me.”
“Come now, Cullen,” she said, using the sternest voice she could muster, both to reassure him and keep her own emotions at bay. “You know I’m made of sterner stuff than that. And anyway, I promised I would come back to you.”
His chuckle was such a welcome sound right then, lovely and deep, something she didn’t hear often enough. Something she wanted to hear as often as possible, for as long as she could. “You did indeed. Still, it was touch and go for awhile - you’ve been asleep for over a week and the healers weren’t sure at first if you would ever wake.” He dropped another kiss on her head, then cupped her face to tilt it upwards to his own. His kiss was soft and warm and gone before she really got the chance to enjoy it. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t, Fi.”
She hated the way his voice wavered, hated that she was the cause of it, even if she was just doing the duty they both knew was necessary. He had already been through so much and he didn’t deserve that worry, that pain. She pulled his hands from her face to hold them in her own with a reassuring squeeze. “Hush, vhenan. You would have mourned for a time, and then you would have moved on.”
“I don’t know about moving on, not completely,” he told her with a shake of his head. Her heart ached at the thought, even as it rejoiced at the depth of his love for her, love she didn’t believe she would ever find. “It doesn’t matter, at any rate. You’re alive and you’ll be well again soon.”
“I suppose I will. And what will we do now, Cullen, now that the battle is done and Corypheus is gone? I suppose it’s too much to hope for a life lived out in obscurity somewhere in the middle of nowhere?”
His grin flashed bright, and she had a fleeting thought that he was almost too beautiful to look at straight on. “Oh, I don’t know about that. We’ll have more duties here for some time, but after that? We can do whatever you’d like, I suppose.”
His use of ‘we’ caused a flutter in her belly. She was grumpy by nature, easily irritated and often difficult, but she could hear the complete lack of doubt that he would be by her side regardless of where she went. “Perhaps… perhaps we can visit my clan after this? And then your family? Mia and I have exchanged a few letters and she misses you. And I’d love to meet her, too. What do you want to do next?”
A thoughtful look passed over his features, his head tilted for a moment as he played with a loose strand of her hair. “A family visit sounds good, both to yours and mine. It has been far too long since either of us have seen our families. After that? We can go live in the middle of nowhere, if that’s what would please you. I’d like to do something for other former Templars, to help out if I can do so. Beyond that, I don’t much care where I am, so long as you’re there with me.”
“That sounds perfect.”
And it did, she realized to her own astonishment. She had never thought to live a quiet life, but sitting close to the man she loved, her body aching after the biggest, most dangerous fight of her life, she realized there was nothing she wanted more than to just be , with Cullen right by her side.