A Candle in the Darkness (A Dragon Age: Inquisition fanfiction)

Memories

24 Firstfall, 9:41

"Look out!" came the shout across the battlefield, and Cullen looked up from a dispatch just in time to see the top of the tower crumble and collapse. Figures could be seen falling through the air, and his heart fell with them ... but with a certain sense of inevitability. Knowing that this had been the disaster he had feared it would be brought a certain sense of relief; there was nothing left to be afraid of now.

Then there was a green flash across the sky. Cullen's heart leaped up again; he knew that color of green. He had seen it often enough glowing in her hand. He grabbed Eustace, who happened to be the nearest soldier. "Go find out what happened. Get as close as you can."

"Yes, ser."

Cullen returned to the dispatches, but there was an angry hum in his ears that made it hard to concentrate. His temperature was up, too, but there was no time to worry about that or even to think about how to block the whispers of memory the hum was shaping itself into. The battle still needed him, no matter what else was happening.

The demons—the real ones, not the ones of his memory, he reminded himself—were swarming the battlements. Spotting several of the Chargers nearby, he called to them. "Let's get up there!"

"Aye, ser." Krem grinned wildly. "Been waiting for our chance."

"Me, too."

They scaled the ladders, screaming as they charged into the fray. The volume of the battle drowned out the noise in Cullen's head and kept him from thinking about the bodies that had fallen from the crumbling tower.

At some point, he found cover for a moment's breather and that was when Eustace came up to him, bleeding from a minor wound just under the hairline. "I found—found out what happened—ser," Eustace panted. "She—seems like they're in the Fade."

"In the Fade?" Cullen repeated. "How are they in the Fade?"

"Someone who was close up—said he saw her mark thing flash, and there was a big hole in the sky, and everyone fell into it."

"Efficiently put." She wasn't dead, he thought. Again, somehow, she had survived the unsurvivable. Of course, she would have to come back out of the Fade, but surely she could manage that, too, just as easily as she did everything else. Suddenly he was irrationally angry with her. How dare she terrify them all that way and just calmly waltz into the Fade?

"Commander?" Eustace was looking at him strangely. "Are you all right?"

"Perfectly fine!" he snapped. "Go have that wound looked at."

"Yes, ser."

Cullen went back into the battle, spreading the word as well as he could that the Inquisitor and her party seemed to still be alive. He could feel the ripple of rejuvenation that spread among the forces at the news. These men and women believed her to be holy, whatever she might think. Had Andraste known how special she was, for that matter?

When the battle was over and the breach was closed and they had, against all odds, taken Adamant Fortress, there was a sense of relief all over the field. Soldiers made fires and boiled tea and tore into jerked meats and hard biscuits and went to sleep wherever they happened to be, and for the moment Cullen let them. They had fought hard; they deserved a good long rest.

He didn't consider resting, though. There were the wounded to be looked to, pyre details to be organized for the dead, the trebuchets to be looked over to see if they could stand the trip back to Skyhold ... His mind revolved on the myriad details of packing the army up, and he didn't notice that the itch under his skin had increased in intensity or that the whispers in his ears were louder than they had been before. He drowned it all out with more work.

From somewhere in the battlefield, he heard the clear, familiar voice, coming closer, getting louder. "Have you seen the Commander? Does anyone know where he is? Was he wounded?" There was fear in her voice.

He stood up from behind the trebuchet he was inspecting. "Over here, Inquisitor."

Her head snapped up, her eyes finding him, and he could see them light up from where he stood. That should have made him happy; somewhere inside him he knew that. But the mark was still glowing faintly on her hand, reminding him that she had been in the Fade. Demons lived in the Fade; had she been touched by a demon? Would she turn? Did non-mages turn? His head was pounding.

"Cullen!" She was running toward him now, but slowing as she came closer, the happiness fading from her face and being replaced with puzzlement. "Are you all right?"

"Perfectly fine. Welcome back, Inquisitor."

Antonia reached up toward him, and he took a step back.

"Do I take it that you have emerged from the Fade unscathed?" he asked. He looked her over; there seemed to be no ill effects. Relief warred with annoyance inside him.

"I have, yes." There was a hint of sadness in her brown eyes. "And most of the others, as well. But the Grey Warden, Stroud, he stayed behind to cover our escape."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

Antonia nodded. "I was, too."

They stood there awkwardly. Cullen wanted to hold her, to kiss her, but he also wanted to shake her, to shout at her, to tell her to stop complicating his mind with things he shouldn't want.

At last he said, "Is there anything you need at the moment? Because I have many things to do before we return to Skyhold."

Her jaw clenched. "No, thank you, Commander." She turned away, looking so small for someone so important, someone touched by the Hand of the Maker. Out of the darkness, he saw Varric and then Dorian appear, both of them walking with her, supporting her.

Cullen returned to his work. He was burning up, and the memories were louder in his ears than the sounds of the army.