SquidgeWorld Archive

Carry The Light

***

By sundown on the second day he knows, he's probably going to have to be bound if he's going to get through this without hurting someone, or himself. It's not if, anymore, it's how long can he hold off. His fingers stay twined in sweat clammy rough linen sheets to keep his hands from making any bad decisions for him. Fists. He is honest with himself, for once. They're really more fists than hands. It's less holding himself back, now, and more just holding on.

The walls here are stone; gray, thick, gritty, and it smells of water, earth, and the musty, mossy undertone that says, underground. A basement, or a dungeon. Good. Wooden walls might not be enough. The Seeker is a shrewd woman. She won't believe the lies that are going to come spilling like thick sickness from him. There's no way to fool this one the way he sometimes can lie to himself. She won't let the beast out. She wouldn't. She promised. Or threatened.

His mouth is dry, like dusty burlap when he works his tongue against the roof of his mouth, trying to work up enough spit to swallow without his throat hurting. Fingertips hurting, pins and needles, from how hard he's holding onto the coarse linen underneath his back. Straw prickly and rustling in the thin mattress as he shifts, seeking any position that doesn't make his joints grind like rust and sand deep inside.

By now it must be noon. Surely, by now. One vial. One. Every day, noon. She'd promised. A third of the ration he'd been up to, by the time fire and hot stone rained out of the Hightown sky. Knight Lieutenants and above had been allowed to request extra lyrium rations, after the Qunari came raging out of their barricaded enclave to wash the cobbled streets in whatever blood they could find to spill.

The Knight Commander's orders, changing the way lyrium was apportioned, the curfew for mages, turning the mark of Tranquility from a safe refuge to a punishment. Little changes, a pebble at a time, moving the mountain of tradition out of her path. He'd known, by then, what enough rope to hang them all looked like. But he took it. His name on the requisition form, among the names of the Knights Templar he hoped were loyal. Loyal to Andraste, and the Maker, and what the order stood for. Not to the Knight Commander. And his name again on the signature line, black sweeps of ink, steady, sure. Because she took it, Meredith and her knights. Somebody had to be as strong as they were. There had to be someone with enough power to stop…whatever might happen.

***

He blinked, eyes dry and itchy. How much time had gone missing while he had stared into the dark, mind empty of everything but the swirling fog of fever. Was it not noon yet? Maker's breath. He rolled on his side, squinted past the blur of exhaustion at the big sandglass in the corner. Half past ten, then. Well, what did it matter, after all, what difference could an hour or two early make? It couldn't hurt to ask.

I won't beg, though, he promised himself. A flash of Samson rose from the roiling muddle of memories, vivid. The mad had been no more than a pale face in the shadows of the alley beside the Hanged Man, a mud-streaked hand reaching out to him, palm up, fingers shaking. The reek of sour cheap wine, stale sweat, the old piss and mud and old fish guts smell of Lowtown.

"I can smell it," his old bunkmate had said. "On you. In your blood. More than you need. They must like you, golden boy. Little lion of Honnleath, the old bitch used to call you, did you know it? Help an old friend, for old time's sake, man."

"Be strong, Ser," Cullen had admonished, bright ring of steel in his voice. "Don't beg."

Samson had sneered, a wry twist of his dry lips. "I ain't begging. Only saying. You can spare a vial. I'm only saying what's true. That's not the same as begging."

Cullen remembered how he had sighed and dropped a few bright silvers into the brown grimy palm held out to him. Filled the man's hand with metal instead of reaching out and taking his hand.

"Lot of good that'll do, son. Money can only buy what people are willing to sell you." Samson complained, bitter, dry. He'd had a knowing arch to his brow that Cullen had wanted to punch off of his face, and then set aside the urge as unworthy of a Knight of the Order.

"You'll be standing in my shoes, sometime. Heh. Well, shoe. When they use you up, when she gets tired of dragging you around on that lyrium leash. Or when you put a foot on the wrong side of the wrong line in the sand. I hope your old friends are better to you when that day comes, than mine are to me, Meredith's pet kitty, I hope they treat you kinder when you're a toothless alley stray like me."

"Am I supposed to be a wild lion on the loose, or a cat, or a Ferelden hunting hound on a leash?" Cullen threw back at him his own word, and the insults he knew passed from tongue to tongue in the Hightown markets. "Make up your mind."

Samson turned away, muttering, but Cullen had caught enough of his words to understand. "What's a lion on a leash, but a pet?"

Shaking off the memories, he rubbed warmth back into his hands, and stole a glance at the sandglass again. A quarter ‘til eleven. He could ask. After all, the worst they could say was no, not yet.

"Seeker?" he croaked, and grimaced at how hoarse and cracked his voice was. "Lady Penderghast?" A groan escaped his clenched teeth unwittingly as he rolled off the straw pallet onto hands and knees. "Anybody?" he called, "Who's on watch?" Better. The old note of command crept in.

In the dark rectangle of the doorway, a glow of lantern light cast the shadow of a tall, armored silhouette on the opposite hallway wall. The light came closer, and the shadow, until Garrett Hawke stood in the doorframe, on the other side of the sturdy metal bars. A cell then. A cage for the beast. Thank Andraste.

Cullen reached out, found the wall. Cool, flat-faced stone, well built, with joints too tight to slip a knifeblade between. He leaned on it, gathered his legs beneath him, and stood. He'd knelt before Hawke once. Best not to make a habit of it. The man's ego was big enough.

"How's the raving and thrashing around going, Knight Commander Rutherford?" Hawke smiled.

"Could you at least pretend to know my name and rank, Hawke?" Cullen rasped. "I'm sure this pretense that all Templars are the same to you fulfills some juvenile sense of…"

He broke off, as a cold, metal-tasting wave of nausea rose up in his throat, choking off his words. He pressed his knuckle hard to his upper lip, just under his nose, pinching the nerve there hard against his gums, until the urge to sick up everything he'd eaten in the last week subsided. You didn't clean up after abominations and Qunari rebellions without learning how to keep your meals down regardless of who you'd just stepped in.

"Funny thing," Hawke drawled, that infuriating smirk still on his lips, "But that's Viscount to you. As of a couple days ago. You missed the ceremony. Lots of speeches and formalities. Everyone saluting everyone. Chanters reciting from Transfigurations. It was incredibly boring and stuffy. You'd have loved it."

Cullen steadied himself on the wall, made his way to the cell door, stood face to face with the apparition. He closed his eyes, shook his head to clear it, and looked again. If it was a demon, it was a talented mimic.

"That… strangely isn't quite the worst vision a demon has tortured me with. Close, possibly. But no. You'll have to do better than that." He hoped that what his mouth was doing looked enough like a smile for Hawke to understand.

Hawke smiled back, that melodramatic stripe of red battle paint flaking as his nose wrinkled. "Can't wait until you sober all the way up and find out I'm not joking, for once."

He turned away, lantern sending shadows swinging dizzily across the small cell. There was the clink of stoneware against pottery cup, sound of water.

"Here," he said, holding a brown glazed mug with no handle between the bars.

Cullen reached to take it with one hand, then both when he discovered that he couldn't trust his fingers to move as he directed them. He leaned against the chilly metal of the door. Hawke kept hold of the mug, right hand cupped beneath, the other laid over the templar's, steadying his shaky grasp. The water tasted of the oak wood of the bucket, tannic, the tiniest bitterness on the back of the tongue. He hadn't known he was thirsty until need took over, his throat working in long pulls as he drank, not stopping to breathe.

Then the cup was empty and he did take a long breath, and Maker, Hawke smelled good. How did a man with so much old blood on his hands carry the clean scent of wind coming down off the Frostbacks in spring? He closed his eyes, took another slow breath. It was a cold blue smell, like fir needles and something almost crystalline, like melting ice. Or maybe it was like scattered glint of sun off running water, the deepest pools in the snow fed streams when they first melted every year... and Void take it all he was holding onto Hawke's hand with both of his. The cup was in two pieces on the floor at his feet. Every breath brought the tart fizzing taste of lyrium across his lips. He could smell it, in Hawke's blood. The apostate must be taking unchancy amounts, surely, for it to rise off his very skin like mist off a lake.

"I'm going to need that back, at some point," Hawke observed, dryly.

He dropped the mage's hand, almost flinging it away from him. "My apologies, Serrah. I find I am not… myself."

Hawke poured him another cup of water from the pitcher and set of cups that sat on the small side table in the corridor.

"No harm done. Hells, Curly, if I'd known years ago that you wanted to hold my hand, maybe I'd not have thrown my lot in with that broody elf. Of course, he did offer me a mansion. A crumbly one full of mold, but still." As always, the elder Hawke rambled of inconsequential things to draw unwanted focus from the crisis of the moment.

"Fenris suits you well. A skilled warrior. Sensible attitude about magic." Grateful, Cullen let himself be drawn into Hawke's sidetrack for a moment before went on, "I'd meant to ask…"

His ally glanced at the sandglass, a sidelong flicker of his gaze without turning his head. "It's not noon, not for another forty minutes. Cass – the Seeker says that…"

"No. That wasn't. I can endure, for now. I had intended. That is," he stalled. He had meant to ask exactly what Hawke had assumed, but now that the man was standing in front of him, no. He couldn't. It was too humiliating. Better to ask for what he knew he needed, not what he most wanted.

"I can bear it. Perhaps, though, while I can still control my actions, it would be best, if." He rubbed the bruised feeling hollows under his eyes, raked clawed fingers through the springy tangle of his hair. Started again, "I've known Knights on punishment rations of Lyrium to become quite violent, out of their heads. They didn't know what they were doing."

Hawke looked away, at the floor, at the wall, at his feet. Bit at the callus on the side of his thumb, and sighed, heavily. "Aye. You've a beast of a smite on you. Rather not have that aimed at me again while you're stark out of your gourd. Stings like a love tap from a Sten. Gave Daisy a headache and she had to have a lie down."

Keep the mad Dalish blood mage apostate away from me. The words ran through his head so clearly, he thought he'd spoken aloud.

A keen observer of people, Garrett read the words in the slight flinch Cullen couldn't control. "No, none of that," he reassured, "You're past needing a Spirit healer. It's down to just waiting out the worst of it, now. No need for magic or mages to do that."

Cullen nodded, ran one hand up and down the smooth metal of one cell door bar. Safe, steadying. "Please, convey my sincerest apologies to her. It's true, I doubt there's much more that magic can do to ease this…" he waved his other hand in a vague gesture meant to encompass the undisciplined wreck he'd become in the aftermath of the mage rebellion and the Knight-Commander's death.

"Might need a friend, though," Hawke said, voice carefully casual.

"That... yes, I suspect I will," Cullen agreed. His knees felt weak, as if the sinews had stretched and thinned.

"I'll go get the Seeker, and some rope. Plain hemp'll have to do. Unless you want I should fetch Isabela, and then you can have your choice of colors in silk. I'd fancy burgundy, or a dark merlot maybe, with your coloring." Hawke teased.

"Serrah. Please. I do not find this a matter for jest," Cullen protested.

Hawke grinned at him from under the dark fall of messy bangs across his forehead. "Curly, if you wait for a laughing matter to come along in Kirkwall, you'll never laugh. Sodding Void, maybe that's what's wrong with Fenris." He whistled as he strode away down the corridor, a popular bawdy tune about a the length of a mage's staff. He left the lamp.

By the time he came back, with the Seeker beside him, Cullen was pacing, too large an animal in too small a kennel. Six strides each way, with a glance at the growing pile of white sand rising to the next mark in the glass at the end of each trip across the cell.

The dark haired woman narrowed her eyes at him, as one might size up an opponent in a duel. She might not be wrong, Cullen had enough presence of mind to admit to himself.

Hawke held a battered tin mug through the bars. "Here, better have a drink now. Easier with your hands free, yeah?"

The liquid in the cup was a strange shade of murky green. Cullen assumed it was elfroot tea. He wedged his uncooperative fingers through the handle so he couldn't drop it, and tossed it back. Pale ale, better than the swill they served at Hawke's favorite dive, almost as good as Ferelden blonde. And the tart bite of lyrium, a cool spark mingled with the bubbles of the ale. He wiped the spill of foam from his mouth, licked it from the back of his hand without thinking.

Hawke winked at him, "Only fair to buy a fellow a beer before tying him to a bed, or so our lovely Captain Isabela tells me."

"Ugh. Do you ever cease your vulgarities, apostate?" Cassandra chided.

Cullen nodded at the Champion in thanks. It was a kindness that many would not have thought to offer, that he need not fight to keep the tremor of need from showing as he reached to take the offered vial, that he need not choose between trying to toss the potion back as if it were a casual thing, or turning shamefaced away to hide how badly he wanted it. This way, it could be about a drink between comrades in arms, a joke, a harmless prank.

"Only when I'm dead, Seeker," Garrett told her.
She rolled her eyes. Actually rolled her eyes. Hawke was possibly the most corrupting influence Cullen had ever seen that wasn't literally a demon.

"Knight Commander, if you wouldn't mind stepping back a bit." She suggested, holding up a large brass cell key.

He did as she asked, retreating to the farthest corner, the deepest shadows. He felt blood rush to his cheeks, the tips of his ears, a hot flush along his neck. She thought he'd truly be capable of attempting an escape, then. As if he hadn't been the one to come to her asking her aid with his cure. As if there was escape, as if the alleys of Lowtown weren't just another prison.

Absently, he ran a fingertip around the bottom of the mug, sucked the last drops of lyrium infused ale from his skin. The lock turned with a slick grind of moving metal, clacked open. On silent hinges, the door swung open, then clanged shut again with a precise click as the latch dropped shut. Hawke's hand warm and hard on the bare skin of his forearm. The Void-taken apostate moved like a rogue; he hadn't heard his boots on the bare stone.

"Be strong. Do not falter. It is a worthy task you have undertaken," the Seeker said from his other side.

Her hands were cool, surprisingly smooth for one who trained so long each day, as she took his wrist, felt the pulse beating fast and weak there. Between them, they led him to the cot, helped him lie back. He jerked away as the first scratchy loop of hemp settled around the wrist of his sword arm, forced himself to be still, sinews standing out in stark relief on his forearms.

"Relax, Curly, I do this all the time with – well, all the time." Hawke pointed out.

Cullen squeezed his eyes shut against the images the Champion's words conjured. "Not helping, Hawke." He snapped.

"It might," Hawke retorted, "Try thinking some happy thoughts. Don't you have some Lady Knight waiting for you at the Gallows, with arms on her like Captain Aveline? Do you fancy the sword and board wenches? I'd figure you for a lady who likes the two handers, if you follow. Or is that against your vows?" He nudged Cullen's elbow with a dark chuckle that sounded as if he were at downstairs bar at the Rose than kneeling on the flagstones of a plain bare dungeon cell.

"Champion!" The Seeker scolded, "That is hardly appropriate. I will thank you to keep your debauched thoughts to yourself."

She laid her hand on Cullen's shoulder, firm pressure through the rough weave of his tunic. "Commander, let us pray together. I am reminded of Andraste's address to the troops."

Hawke was quick and efficient, for all his joking. He'd already finished binding Cullen's right wrist, and circled around the foot of the cot to the other side. The Seeker tightened her grip on him, giving a slight shake to bring his eyes back to her face.

"You who stand before the gates…" she prompted, and he continued with her, falling into the old rhythms of the chant he'd memorized as a recruit trainee.

"…You who have followed me into the heart of evil, the fear of death is in your eyes; it's hand is upon your throat. Raise your voices unto the heavens! Remember: not alone do we stand on the field of battle. The Maker is with us. His Light shall be our banner, and we shall bear it through the gates of that city and deliver it to our brothers and sisters awaiting their freedom within those walls.

"At last, the light shall shine upon all of creation, if we are only strong enough to carry it." They finished together. The Seeker nodded firmly, her dark eyes solemn and shining with faith. With belief that Cullen envied.

"Maker deliver me from true believers," Hawke muttered, tucking in a last end of rope at the foot of the cot.

"I will not point out the contradictions in that statement, Ser Hawke," Lady Cassandra observed.

"You just did. You all right there, Curly?" He shook Cullen's ankle to get his attention. "Hey. How're you doing, so far."

Cullen sighed. "I'm barely able to walk across a room without shaking, and there's half a week I cannot recall in the slightest. The last thing I do remember, the mages have rebelled, the chantry lies in rubble, my Knight-Commander went mad from some new form of corrupted Lyrium, and an apostate friend to known smugglers and pirates is my Viscount. Those events aside, I'm fine."

"It is not safe to leave someone alone when they are restrained," the Seeker changed the subject.

"It's not my first turn around this dance floor," Hawke replied, "And it's still my watch."

"You are the new Viscount," she argued, "Your seneschal has organized a full schedule of meetings with your advisors."

Hawke kicked the metal cup across the floor with a clatter. It fetched up against the door. "They can bloody well sod off and bugger themselves," he snarled. "I didn't ask to be Viscount, and if they're going to make me, then I'll Viscount my own way, not theirs. If the nobles don't like it, they can sack me and give the job to someone else, which will suit me fine."

The Lady Cassandra made an odd noise, far back in her throat. From the way her mouth twitched, Cullen thought it might actually have been a choked back laugh.
"I believe you will make an excellent Viscount. Very well, finish your watch."

She turned to go, unlocking the door and shutting it behind her. Still, she hesitated in the hallway, as if she wanted to speak.

"The Champion is a thief, an apostate, and he keeps low company," Cullen said, turning his head to look at her. The coarse ropes had already begun to itch against his skin. "But he is a good man, you may rest assured."

"Stop ruining my reputation," Hawke complained, "King's pawn to e4."

Cullen groaned in complaint, "Not the Antivan Defense again. Fine, Chanter's pawn to c5."

"Templar to f6, then," Hawke spoke almost before the Commander had finished his last word.

The lamplight was eclipsed, leaving the room in shadow for a second, as the Seeker passed in front of it on her way back down the corridor.
***