#belle dolan

[thevikingwoman]

Belle Dolan from How to Win War and Influence Nobles by @kaoruyogi​

Belle is amazing, and the star of this great Modern Girl in Thedas story. 

Fic Writers Week, Day 2: The Muses

I love the creativity everyone puts into their fics, the characters and the environment around them. For this day, I wanted to try my hand at mood boards, so I could show my appreciation for this special character.

(statue of Lady Justice photo by Deval Kulshrestha - Creative Commons licence)

[kaoruyogi]

How to Win Wars and Influence Nobles (Ch. 30)

Rating: E for Explicit/NSFW Content!

Check it out on AO3!

You’d think a video game lawyer could just drop into a pseudo-medieval universe filled with magic and demons and be totally okay with it, right?

Nah.

In the wake of her brother, Spencer’s, disappearance, Belle dropped into Thedas with luggage, but without a clue. After a brief but memorable panic attack, she resolved to be the best goddamn lawyer Thedas had ever seen. Even if she was the only goddamn lawyer Thedas had ever seen. And even if that obstinate asshole, Cullen, wouldn’t stop giving her the side-eye every time she walked into a room…Or every time he walked into a room with her in it…Or every time they walked into a room together…Or–Fuck it. You get it.

**WARNING** Scene involving childbirth below! It's not at all graphic, but it's there. I separated it from the rest of the chapter with my usual divider line of asterisks, anyway, just in case. Also, please see my notes at the end of the chapter! ^_^

Chapter 30: The Reality of Miracles

Cullen had always held some ambivalence for the term “miracle.” He heard the word overused in recent memory, but a true miracle always bore an eerie duality in its happening. It was duplicitous. On one side of the coin, miracles were wonderful. They seemed to prove the existence of the Maker, of something greater than one man, of something that could choose the righteous to survive above all others.

But the other side of the coin was darker. Black and wretched. The reality of miracles was that they must always be preceded by deep misfortune and calamity. The very nature of miracles required that their subject avoid death or disaster by only the narrowest margin through immeasurable strength of will or divine luck. The subject of a miracle would, therefore, be unlikely to consider what happened to them to be a miracle.

Cullen had been the subject of and borne witness to several miracles. His survival at Kinloch Hold was a miracle only because everyone around him died. His siblings’ survival during the Fifth Blight was a miracle only because their parents and hundreds of others died. Max’s survival at Haven was a miracle only because he avoided a crushing death under a mountain of snow by his chance position near an abandoned mineshaft after dozens of people died.

Thus, when Cullen first heard the phrase, “the miracle of childbirth,” he was dubious about its use. After all, how could the coming of life into the world result from the narrow avoidance of death? He remained dubious about the phrase for most of his life, never having been present to bear witness to such a miracle. His father had chased him out of the house during the birth of his siblings. The Circle healers had chased him out when the occasional pregnant mage gave birth. He chased himself out under all other birthing circumstances he had almost seen.

It was only upon the birth of his own daughter that he understood “the miracle of childbirth.” The entire ordeal was a brutal exercise in unending terror. A concerto of the unceasing screams of the Void. A whiff of the hot and rancid exhalations of ever hovering death.

At first, it all seemed manageable. Late morning wound into late afternoon, and Belle’s pain came in waves. She sat up in their bed, propped up by half a dozen pillows. The elven midwife called into the palace from outside the gates ducked in and out of the room to work minor magic over Belle’s stomach. She said all was well. But after shrinking periods of minutes, all did not appear well. Belle’s body would contract, twisting her neck and fisting her hands into the sheets so hard her knuckles turned the color of sun-bleached bone. Occasionally, she grabbed onto him instead. She inhaled through her nose, and her lip quivered as she blew the held breath out through her mouth. Sometimes she vomited. Sometimes she cursed. Sometimes she cried. Sometimes she did all three.

Cullen was helpless. He hated it. He would have taken the pain from her without a second thought if someone gave him the chance. Instead, he did what little he could to bring her comfort. He held her hair back when she vomited into the ornate porcelain basin the midwife called silly. He measured tiny sips of water for her. He tied her curls up and away when she asked, though he regarded his efforts as slapdash at best. He let her crush his hands with every wave of her pain, his own negligible by any comparison. He held her up when the midwife suggested she walk about the room to speed the process.

Their mabari seemed to feel equally helpless. Charles paced around the bed, laying his heavy head on Belle’s hand in the quiet moments between contractions. Cullen began to signal him to move away, but she said she liked him there. She stroked the dog’s short fur with her eyes closed in the dwindling absences of pain.

The sun dipped away beneath the palace walls, and late afternoon gave way to late evening. Her spasming agony worsened by the hour. The midwife massaged magic into the small of Belle’s back, though it did little to alleviate the pain. She showed Cullen where and how to touch his wife to keep her blood flowing in the right direction and coax the child out of the womb. He ignored the dark scars on Belle’s bent knees caused by his temporary death all those years ago.

When the midwife stepped out, Belle turned to him, sweaty and severe and scared. “If I die—” she said.

“No.”

“Don’t fucking ‘no’ me, goddamnit. If I die, you have to let Mia and my parents help you. I don’t want you alone when you raise our little girl.” A fat tear sliced through the perspiration on her pink cheek. “You need your family, and she needs hers.”

His vision blurred, clearing with the streak of moisture down his face. “You will not die. You can’t. I can’t…” The notion choked off his voice.

She gave him a wavering smile and wiped away his tear with her thumb. “I promise. I’m doing everything I can not to die. But if I do, you can make it, okay? You and her. You can make it. And you better, or I’ll turn into a spirit thing and cross the Veil to whoop your ass.”

Cullen laughed. It came out thick and stunted. He nodded and kissed the back of her hand. He held it to his forehead to conceal the two additional tears that loosed themselves in an attempt to betray him. His mouth began to move in silent prayer, begging the Maker not to take her away, not to leave him with the biting memory of another death, not to compel him to mourn every time he looked in their daughter’s eyes.

“Do not take her,” he whispered through trembling lips. “Maker, I beg you, please do not take her from me.”

Late evening succumbed to the murky blackness of early morning. The part of morning which could hardly be called morning. Belle was exhausted. She laid back and closed her eyes and stopped breathing more than once. The midwife tasked Cullen with keeping her awake, and Belle might have spurned him had her contractions not been all but constant.

When the time finally came for her to push, she made a valiant effort. Her moon face turned red, eclipsed by excruciation. She laid sloppy hands on his cheeks, and she pulled him to her, and she wept that she couldn’t do it. He promised her that she could. He asked the Maker not to let him be a liar. She pushed and screamed for so long he had trouble remembering a time before pushing and screaming. He would swear he never heard her take a breath, though she wailed and grunted with all the force of a torrent.

“I can see the head. Just a little longer. A few more hard pushes.”

Cullen’s heart crammed itself into the back of his throat. It beat there, loud and fast, obscuring his words and dizzying him. Belle pushed for a little longer. She pushed a few more hard pushes. The midwife gasped and made a sound like she discovered a lost and ancient treasure. A baby cried. Belle’s body went a little slack.

She was still alive. Still conscious. She made a delirious sound he realized was laughter as she sobbed and panted. He began to breathe again.

Belle held out her arms and wiggled her fingers for the source of the piercing and squeaky little shrieks. “Give me my Sadie,” she said, hoarse and happy. “Give me my little Sadie Jo.”

They had agreed on the name not long after discovering their child would be a daughter. She was named for Belle’s mother. Her middle name, Josephine, was meant to honor a dear friend they thought they might never see again. Even after returning to Thedas, they decided to keep the name. It had grown on them both, and they could not imagine a raising child called anything else.

The midwife wrapped up squealing little Sadie in linens much too fine for such a use, and she set the baby on Belle’s chest. Belle laughed and cried and grinned, and Cullen kissed her damp forehead. He kissed his daughter. Their miracle.

When all was said and done, the midwife excused herself for a moment. Cullen thanked her and watched her leave, and he caught a glimpse of the world outside their room before the door closed behind her. More aptly, he caught a glimpse of Sera slumped over Rainier’s shoulder, both of them half asleep. He also caught a glimpse of the glimmer of Dorian’s outfit and the tip of Iron Bull’s horn. He tilted his ear to the door and listened.

The midwife’s voice said, “They’ve had a healthy baby girl. Mother’s doing well,” and a flurry of relieved noises followed. He had no idea how many of their friends had been waiting there, nor how long they had waited, but he felt a sudden pang of gratitude for their presence. No one had any need of their gracious worry now, however. There had been a miracle.

*****

It was a gray day that morning. Belle would be happy when she woke. She loved gray days. She loved gray days, and she loved their new daughter. He had little doubt she would want to see the two together, but she was asleep. And Cullen would not wake her just yet.

Although his primary reason for not rousing his wife was that she needed rest more than anyone he had ever known, he had to admit some selfishness in his ulterior motive. He had read, in at least one of the half dozen books he purchased upon finding out Belle was pregnant, that it was crucial to the bonding process for babies to have skin to skin contact with their parents. He did not recall when the book or books recommended he start that skin to skin contact, so he opted to try it just then. In his view, he could not hold her soon enough.

He doffed his tunic and snuck over to Belle’s side of the bed where Sadie lay in a small padded basket atop a sturdy table. He almost tripped over Charles, who had curled up just beneath the makeshift bassinette. The mabari lifted his head at the sound of Cullen’s bare footsteps, and he eyed the man before him for a moment. Despite being the object of his own hound’s suspicion, Cullen felt certain that his choice to rescue the dog from his Orlesian fate was the right one. True to Cullen’s word, Charles would make the perfect protector for Sadie.

The mabari continued to watch as Cullen reached into the basket to lift out his daughter. Charles’s ears perked up higher at Sadie’s little snorts and squeaks, but they returned to their tentative position when she calmed against Cullen’s chest.

She was so very small in his large hands. Tiny and amazing. Her birth-swollen features were still muddled, her eyes still gray at never having seen the sun, but she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. She was hot against his skin, and he looked down at her and hoped her cheeks would always be this round. He closed his eyes and put his nose to the fine tuft of near colorless hair atop her head. Her scent was otherworldly. She smelled of softness and newness, and he breathed her into himself.

Then Sadie began to fuss, and Cullen began to panic. The realization that all the books he read had not prepared him to be a real father poured over him. They were all theory. They told him only what to do if a fictional baby fussed. Not one of them told him what to do when his newborn daughter, his Sadie, started to fuss.

Out of this sudden and crushing sensation of inadequacy and terror, he began to pace and sway. His daughter began to settle. He breathed out a slow sigh of dizzied relief, and soon he found himself humming a soft tune he had enjoyed in Washington. It reminded him of what he felt with this fragile new life in his arms, this overwhelming urge to protect. He would lay down his life for this tiny girl. The odd word or two of the song slipped through his lips as he hummed.

“May no man’s touch ever chain you,” he sang, and then he hummed again. “And as for the clouds, just let them roll.”

Sadie, his beautiful and perfect Sadie, huffed and snored against his chest. All the world melted away. All the politics and the Orlesians and the Inquisition sloughed off of his shoulders, and it was just him with his daughter and his sleeping wife, and it was just them and the gray day outside the window.

An unsubtle knock and the opening of their door whipped his head around. His grip on his daughter tightened, and he heard Charles stir and stand at attention. Cullen tried to recall where he put his sword.

Josephine stepped into the room, a world-worn and weary look marking her. She blanched when her eyes landed on him, and he remembered his shirtlessness. Then she saw his daughter in his arms, and it was as if every practice of courtly decorum she had ever learned evaporated in an instant.

She cooed a bit too loud and said, “Blessed Andraste, she is so beautiful!”

Cullen put a finger over his lips before pointing to his sleeping wife, and Josephine grimaced her apology. She crossed the room to speak in whispers and to see the child.

“Oh Maker,” she said, holding a hand on her chest, “just look at her. Congratulations, Commander. She is perfect.”

“She is,” said Cullen, proud as anything that someone else saw what he saw. He turned to allow Josephine a better view of his little girl’s tiny face. “I would like to formally introduce you to my daughter, Sadie Josephine Rutherford.”

Josephine clapped the hand not on her chest over her awestruck mouth. Her hazel eyes welled up, and she shook her head. “Me? You’ve named her—I—” It was the first time he had ever seen her at a loss for words, and it brought a wide smile to his face. She swiped away the tears that tumbled free and beamed. “I am truly honored. Truly.”

“I am glad. Belle picked her name, and I quite liked the sound of it.”

Josephine let out a soft giggle. “As do I.” She cast an appreciative look toward the bed.

Cullen watched Josephine watching Sadie for a few long seconds. He began to feel slightly uncomfortable at his state of undress and the nearness of her head to his right nipple. “I can only assume you needed us for something?”

“Oh, of course. Apologies. Just moments ago I could think of nothing else, and now I’ve become so distracted I did not even remember why I came here.” Her dourness returned by a half measure. “Just a few moments ago, Maxim met with the Exalted Council. He declared that the Inquisition will remain active as an honor guard and investigative force for the Divine. Then he left the chamber.”

“Can he do that?”

Josephine shrugged. “He just did. And he has strongly suggested that the Inquisition take its leave tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow morning? I don’t know if Belle can walk, much less travel. It’s too soon.”

“I know. I have arranged for a healer and a wet nurse to meet with you this afternoon and to travel back to Skyhold with us if need be.”

“She won’t want the wet nurse. She has been quite adamant about feeding Sadie herself.” Cullen glanced at his wife. Her eyes remained closed where she lay.

“It is merely a precaution,” said Josephine, placating him with a gentle gesture of her hand. “There can be a great many difficulties involved with feeding a newborn, I am told. If anything, the wet nurse will simply be available to provide assistance and instruction for Belle.”

“She and I will discuss it when she wakes. But please make certain the healer arrives first.”

“Of course.” Josephine looked from him to his daughter and smiled again. “I will leave you all to rest.”

“Thank you.”

Belle stirred in their bed just as the door clicked shut behind Josephine. She gave him a bleary grin when he approached. The left side of her mouth tilted up more than the right. She was a beautiful mess. A few loose curls embedded themselves in pillow-shaped dents on her cheek, while the mass of her hair remained tied in Cullen’s helter-skelter knot. He leaned over, keeping a careful grip on the baby, and pressed a lingering kiss to his wife’s forehead.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

She motioned to him in a vague and lilting wave. “Well, all this is so cute I think my ovaries might just explode. Which would just about match the rest of the décor down there. It feels like someone shoved a nuke up my pee hole and let ‘er rip.” She winced as she adjusted herself to sit up a little. “Jesus.”

Cullen said, “I’m sorry,” because what else could he say? He felt more than a touch responsible for her pain.

“It is what it is,” she said with a slight lift of a shoulder. “So Max decided fuck diplomacy and just declared the Inquisition would continue, huh?”

“You heard all of that?”

“Kinda tough to sleep through one of Josie’s more purposeful knocks. She cried at Sadie’s name, didn’t she? It sounded like she was crying. She totally cried.”

He puffed out a laugh, trying so desperately to keep Sadie from waking. “She did.”

“Yeah,” said Belle with a long and self-satisfied nod. “Called it.”

Without warning, a molten hot liquid trickled down Cullen’s stomach. He flinched and stepped back on instinct, and his wife snorted. It did not take him long to realize what that molten hot liquid was or its point of origin.

“You’ve officially been indoctrinated,” said Belle. “I was wondering whether piss, shit, or puke would get you first.” She held out her hands and flexed her fingers. “Gimme my girl. You can get cleaned up and put your shirt back on. Or don’t put your shirt back on. Do you.”

The world was a vastly different place when she held their daughter. Belle had somehow remained the same woman he loved and metamorphosed into a doting mother all at once, and all in the blink of an eye. She glowed with that child in her arms. He watched her look down at Sadie, and he saw a future stretch out and yawn open before him. He saw lazy mornings and smiling faces. He saw scraped knees and round tear-streaked cheeks. He saw his family huddled together and overflowing with love.

“I love you,” he said to his wife as he sat on the bed beside her, his bare skin wiped clean of newborn urine.

“I love you, too,” she said. She chuffed. “You’d better love me after all this, damn. I hope that healer can magic my vagina back together. That’d be nice. I would genuinely appreciate not worrying if my fucking uterus is going to fall out when I pee.”

Cullen shook his head. Belle had never been anything but straightforward. It was a blessing, really, strange as it was. He had no stomach for insincerity or frivolity in matters of communication. “I’m certain there is something they can do.”

“Let’s hope so. Incidentally…” She paused as a coy look overtook her. “Sorry our daughter’s accidentally Orlesian.”

“No.”

*****

The journey home to Skyhold was a trial of faith and patience. The healer Josephine enlisted was very skilled, and had done wonders for Belle in the time allowed. But she still suffered a great deal of pain while traversing the roads of Orlais. Cullen rode beside the carriage at all times, listening to the anguished whimpers seeping out of his wife and child with every bump and stone beneath the spoked wheels.

He wanted to stop the caravan. He wanted to stay put long enough for his wife to heal. Neither option was available to him. The Inquisition needed to beat a hasty return to Skyhold while leads on Solas’s spies and plans were plentiful, and while the members of the Exalted Council were stunned enough to accept Max’s decree as fact.

The trip was made much more arduous by the hardship of learning to be parents in transit. For over a day, Sadie refused to latch to Belle’s breast to nurse. Belle sobbed into Cullen’s chest each time the wet nurse took their daughter away to feed. It would not have been so bad in Washington, he had to admit. They would have had formula and breast pumps, and Belle could have nourished the child herself instead of passing her to a stranger.

Even after the latching problem was solved, neither Belle nor Cullen slept during the night. Sadie’s shrill cries woke half the camp on an hourly basis. She needed to be fed or changed or burped or rocked. He had never heard a newborn quite so loud. Belle told him it was a family curse. He might have liked to know about such a thing before maintaining the misapprehension that he might ever sleep again.

Cullen had grown accustomed to being awake at all hours of the day and night. His withdrawal symptoms and perpetual nightmares saw to that. But even he was slouching in his saddle by the time they rode through Skyhold’s portcullis. Through the shaded window of the carriage, he saw Belle’s eyes rolling around, lids fluttering in an attempt not to drift into the blissful abyss of sleep. Sadie nursed with gusto, much as she had done on a constant basis throughout their journey home. He wondered if she had been possessed by a demon of gluttony at the moment of her birth.

Dov, Ilana, Spencer, and, to Cullen’s surprise, Rosalie were waiting in the courtyard when the Inquisition retinue returned. They all beamed, and Rosalie fidgeted. Cullen helped Belle and Sadie onto solid ground—Belle still had some trouble closing the distance between the carriage floor and the earth, up or down. She did her level best to smile at their family, though her sagging eyes belied her exhaustion. Cullen suspected his did the same.

Dov looked spryer and more excited than Cullen had ever seen him. Eudora’s magic had clearly done him some good. Spencer’s attention was wrapped up in Charles, who bounded up to the man as if they had known each other their entire lives. Ilana asked in her most gentle and understanding tone if she could hold little Sadie, and after some hesitance, Belle handed the baby to her. Ilana took her with all the care of a woman that had just remembered what it was like to hold an infant of her own, and she smiled down at her granddaughter. Dov hung his head over his wife’s shoulder to join in the outpouring of love.

Cullen wished his parents could have met his little girl. They would have been proud, he thought. They would have loved her fiercely, and they would have adored Belle. His father liked a woman who spoke her mind. His mother had been proof of that. She would have seen Belle as kindred right away, and frankly, she would have harassed him about why it had taken him so long to make his move.

As Rosalie hugged Belle too hard, and Belle warned her about the dangers of milk stains on everknit wool, he thought about the first time he met his wife. She called him all manner of names he did not yet understand. She threatened him. Her knee very nearly met with his testicles. If someone had approached him after she fell unconscious and told him that soon he would love her, that soon he would marry her, that soon she would give him a perfectly round and squirmy daughter, he would have had them shackled and thrown in the dungeon for their obvious insanity. It would not have stopped it from being true. He loved her desperately, and he married her because he knew he could never be parted from her, and she gave him a perfectly round and squirmy daughter he would die to protect.

Dov told them he made some modifications to their tower, and Belle gave him a wary look. He bade them follow him up, and Ilana carried Sadie along. Belle seemed almost relieved to be divested of their daughter for the walk. Cullen helped her up the stairs while she laughed and griped about their plenitude.

The tower was dark when Dov opened the door. No fire in the lower fireplace. No candles flickering on tables. No sunlight streaming through the shuttered windows.

“Let there be light!” said Dov.

A dull and metallic flick echoed through the space, and all at once, there was, in fact, light. An assortment of rounded glass fixtures was strung up about the room, dangling from the ceiling and jutting out from the walls. Each random bowl or glass held a series of glowing strands that reminded Cullen of the expensive light bulbs in Washington. Together, they cast a warm and welcoming glow throughout the lower half of the tower.

“Holy shit, Dad,” said Belle, mouth and eyes agape. “You really did it.”

“Yeah.” Dov walked into the center of the room as he looked around and crossed his arms. He had a proud look to him that tugged at the corners of Cullen’s mouth. “Braided up the wires with leather so no one’ll get shocked.” He pointed to said wires. “Had to get kind of random with the bulbs since we didn’t want to pay a glass blower if this didn’t work. The whole thing’s powered by one rune. Dagna was already on the right track when I went to see her the first time. She was just having trouble with the alternating current.”

“Wait. How was she already on the right track?”

“Cullen never told you? He gave her a bunch of your chargers and asked her to try to make them work.”

Cullen’s hand found the back of his neck. His wife contorted to look at him. “What?”

“Maker’s breath, that was so long ago. I had forgotten. It was meant to be a surprise. I wanted you to be able to listen to your music whenever you liked.”

Belle’s mien shifted in the way it always did when she was about to tell him he was adorable or sweet. “That was really sweet of you,” she said, exactly as he thought she might, and she took his hand. He gave hers a little squeeze. “Thank you.”

“We rigged up the upstairs, too,” said Dov, plainly more enthusiastic about his work than the small displays of affection going on around him. “And the undercroft. Doing our place next, and Dagna said she was going to talk to your friend, Max, and see if he wanted it in his room, too. We’re talking about trying to put a generator wheel into the waterfall under this place.”

“This is really awesome, Dad. Seriously. Really fucking awesome.” Belle stepped into the center of the room to embrace her father. He patted her on the back. “Thank you,” she said into his neck.

“You’re welcome, Cutie.”

Sadie seemed to realize something was happening that did not involve her. She began to wriggle and whine in Ilana’s arms. Cullen was standing close enough to sniff out the reason. Belle moved to take up the child, but he stepped in before she could. He was determined to be a good father and a good husband, and that meant he would change his fair share of soiled diapers and calm his fair share of tantrums.

Belle told her parents she and Cullen were going to change Sadie and maybe, just maybe, try to take a short nap. Ilana said they could always send someone to get her if they needed a break. She truly was a kind woman, and Cullen was glad for her presence as their daughter’s grandmother. Belle thanked her before following him up the stairs.

He was grateful for Belle’s foresight in preparing their quarters for Sadie’s arrival. She had a portion of the large room cordoned off with wooden screens to create a separate space for the nursery, and she filled it with a soothing blend of charm and necessity. She had a fine changing table, crib, waste bin, and chest of drawers crafted of cherry wood, and she littered the space with pillows and cushions and stuffed animals. He had not the slightest inkling where she got it all. He knew only that the haphazardly sewn stuffed bee with a tiny bloodstain on it came from Sera’s unskilled hand.

Belle had been painting a mural in the room she picked for a nursery in their home in Washington. One wall was beginning to look like a misty and wooded mountain range in the haze of morning. She bought a dozen shades of green paint to make certain it turned out as she hoped. It was more than halfway finished when they were pulled back to Thedas.

She let out a long groan when she laid in their bed, and Cullen smiled. He opened the diaper. He tried not to gag at the sight of the mess before him, and for the most part was successful. Charles followed him in, and even the mabari balked at the brown-green horror. Cullen had helped change Rosalie’s diapers in his boyhood, but one never truly acclimated to the particular color and texture of infant waste. Nor did one ever truly acclimate to the odor.

The flesh of Sadie’s face had calmed since her birth, and he began to see little hallmarks in her features. She had Belle’s ears and chin. Her hair was fine and soft as spiderwebs, making it impossible to discern its future color. It felt too early to know with any certainty, but he believed she had his nose. “The Rutherford Snoot,” as Belle once called it. He gave Sadie a delicate tap on her Rutherford Snoot, watching her blink in her infant shock and return to squirming.

“You are every wonder, my sweet,” he said to her. “Every wonder in every world.”

Belle was already asleep when he brought Sadie out of her nursery. He set the baby in the ruffled bassinette Josephine gave them, and her namesake wriggled in her swaddle at the newness of it all. He sat down in the ornate chair Belle positioned at her bedside for nursing, and he took in the splendor of his family, and his heart felt full. Sadie battled against her closing eyes in a final attempt to take in the strange world around her. Belle lay still, save for her slow breaths. She was crystal in that moment, fragile and cutting and glowing in the mellow golden sunlight, and she was magnificent. Oh but she was magnificent.

Despite his awareness of Solas’s new threat to Thedas, and despite all the work he knew to be piling upon his desk as he sat there, Cullen was at peace. His life had not gone at all as he had planned, yet somehow it was so much better than he ever dared to dream. Not only had he survived his life as a Templar and as Commander of the Inquisition, but he had managed to build life anew out of the rubble of a man he had become. He had seen horrors. He had seen worlds. He loved, and he was privy to love. He became a husband. He became a father. He would never be satisfied with his atonement for the wrongdoings of his past, never feel worthy of his new life, but in that moment he found a kind of serenity in himself. In that moment he knew. All was well. All would be well. His eyes drifted shut.

Those who were joined together would never be put asunder.

*****

Notes: Finally, a little peace for our beleaguered Commander and his beleaguered Belle...

Side note: I know there's a whole lot of stuff about being new parents in this chapter that you might find...off-putting? But my sister and my best friend recently had babies, and I thought it was really important to represent what that's like. It's exhausting and frustrating, and sometimes it's super gross. I wanted to be real about it because I'm a little, teeny, itty bitty little bit tired of seeing the trials of new parenthood glossed over, or even out and out lied about. So there you go.

We're almost to the finish line!!! I'm so grateful to you for being with me through this massive journey, but I'll be gushing about that way more in the end notes of the next (last!) chapter. <3<3<3

[kaoruyogi]

How to Win Wars and Influence Nobles (Ch. 29)

Rating: E for Explicit/NSFW Content!

Check it out on AO3!

You’d think a video game lawyer could just drop into a pseudo-medieval universe filled with magic and demons and be totally okay with it, right?

Nah.

In the wake of her brother, Spencer’s, disappearance, Belle dropped into Thedas with luggage, but without a clue. After a brief but memorable panic attack, she resolved to be the best goddamn lawyer Thedas had ever seen. Even if she was the only goddamn lawyer Thedas had ever seen. And even if that obstinate asshole, Cullen, wouldn’t stop giving her the side-eye every time she walked into a room…Or every time he walked into a room with her in it…Or every time they walked into a room together…Or–Fuck it. You get it.

Chapter 29: Fucking Lying to Fucking Everyone

“Ooh. Ooooh Jesus fucking balls.” Belle reached up and hammered the roof of the carriage with the side of her fist to signal the driver to stop. “Ahhh.” She hissed in a breath.

“Is something the matter?” said Josephine from her seat opposite Belle. The ambassador had long since become accustomed to Belle’s persistently foul mouth, and she no longer got quite so scandalized when Belle issued a string of curses.

Belle hissed in another breath. “Ooh. Gotta pee.” She shut her eyes and tilted her head back. The carriage didn’t stop. It kept rocking away, sloshing the full capacity of her bladder from side to side. “Gotta pee, pee, pee.”

She banged on the ceiling again. “It’s a right fucking now sorta thing, dude!” she said from deep in her diaphragm.

Josie leaned her head out of the small window. “Please stop,” she said just once at a very reasonable volume.

The carriage stopped. Belle squinted her pained gratitude to her friend before flinging the door open. On this stupid carriage ride from Skyhold to Halamshiral, she had gone from thirty-seven weeks pregnant to thirty-eight weeks pregnant. As a result, she had to piss. Always. The only time she didn’t have to piss was the five second window after she had just finished taking a piss. Even then, there was a little tingle. And it was always urgent. There was no slow buildup to the moment her schoolteachers would have called “an emergency,” no ten or twenty minutes during which she could just hold it. There was only ever the terrifying sensation that her bladder would evacuate everywhere and on everything in ten, nine, eight…

She exited the carriage, half hopping and half sliding, like an elephant seal, and she waddled past several Inquisition soldiers toward a small ridge. They saluted her, because of course they did. Only men under Cullen’s instruction would salute a beached whale as it ran past to piss behind a bush.

Belle muttered to herself as she shuffled. “Oh God. OhGodohGodohGodohGod.” Her feet kicked up dirt because her hips and legs had shifted to make bending her knees a gargantuan effort. She ducked behind a shrub just large enough to cover her when she squatted. She was grateful she’d chosen only Antivan-tailored maternity wear to bring to the Winter Palace when she wasn’t in her expanded Inquisition uniform. It was easiest to pull up and down. Fereldan would have been better, but she didn’t want to piss any Orlesians off. Of the more neutral nations’ alternatives, Antiva’s puffed sleeves and empire waisted long gowns seemed the best option. Nevarrans cut their pregnant women’s clothes too tight, and they seemed to enjoy slapping little pieces of armor on everything. Tevinter, aside from being a non-option because it was Tevinter, belted their garb to the point of ridiculousness. Rivaini maternity gowns were essentially shifts, meant for an easy transition from pregnancy to nursing—Belle ordered several of them in bright colors for use at Skyhold. The Anderfells didn’t send a tailor.

When Belle finished, and her bladder twinge returned to a level that didn’t induce blind panic, she tottered back toward her carriage at the center of the caravan. Cullen stood beside his blue roan stallion, both having taken up a strategic position between her and the blissful discomfort of her seat. Her husband’s face was marked up with stress, pinched and crinkled in too many places.

“Are you alright?” he said when she was still a few feet away. “Did something happen?”

Belle rolled her eyes. “Same thing that happened the last fifty billion hojillion times I stopped the caravan. I had to pee. She’s sitting on my fucking bladder.” She gave him a peck on the lips when she got close enough. “You gotta quit worrying.”

Some of the crinkles smoothed. “You can hardly blame me. She’s due in two weeks’ time. Rosalie was born two weeks before she was expected.”

“That may be true, but Rosalie was baby number four. First babies are pretty much always late. I bet Mia was late.”

“By nearly a week.”

“See? We’ll be in Halamshiral in a couple hours, and this Exalted Council thing should only last a few days. Then we’ll turn around and be home in Skyhold just in time to wait another week. So chill.”

Belle kissed him again, and he held her hand to help her back into the carriage before the caravan spurred on. With the rocking recommenced, she retreated into her thoughts for a while. If she was honest, she was as worried as Cullen about when their baby would decide to burst onto the scene. She believed what she’d said. Most first babies arrived late. But there was no certainty in those statistics. If anything, the fact that every first baby she’d ever met came late, herself included, meant she was bound to be the exception that proved the rule.

She was all too glad to be torn from her spiraling thoughts when Josie suggested they go over their strategy once more before they reached the edge of the city. Max would lead the negotiations as the figurehead of the organization, and he understood enough about nobility from his upbringing to do a fair job with some assistance. Belle and Josie were there to back him up and chime in as needed.

Belle’s extra duties included playing the roles of both the sympathetic pregnant woman and the pitbull attorney. She was happy enough to do the latter, should the opportunity arise, but the former annoyed her. She hated playing the pregnancy pity card when it came to matters of professionalism. In Washington, an opposing counsellor once told her to take a break—not asked, told—and she threatened to have him sanctioned for discrimination. It hadn’t mattered one iota that she really needed to piss at the time.

The towering white and gold heights of the Winter Palace came over the horizon first, and soon the low built slums of the rest of Halamshiral appeared. As the Inquisition retinue rolled through the city streets, Belle noted that not enough had changed since Max helped elevate Briala into power behind Celene and Gaspard. The elves living within the city looked to be as impoverished as ever. Children, thin even for their lithe builds and covered in filth, stared in awe of the soldiers and carriages as they passed. The whole situation nauseated Belle. It felt too familiar. She watched as Sera, who had been riding ahead near Max and Cassandra, stopped her horse to lean down and speak to two or three of the children and toss them a bag of coin for whatever information they’d passed along.

As the gates of the Winter Palace closed behind the last of the Inquisition soldiers, Belle couldn’t help but feel hypocritical. With all the power she’d been granted, she was there for a purpose other than freeing the impoverished from their Thedosian ghettos. In that moment, her duties felt selfish. The gates ensconced the guilty away from their atrocities and their neglect, and now she was locked in with the monsters, trapped and masquerading as one of them. It was no wonder Cullen hated the nobility with such fervor.

Josephine accompanied Max around the gardens to socialize with the nobles whose asses he was expected to kiss. The two had become much more open with their relationship while Belle was gone, and they allowed each other a number of adorable favors and little intimacies that made her smile from across the courtyard. It brought her some relief to see nobles from all over Thedas seem to be kind and accepting of the full-bloomed love between the Inquisitor and his ambassador.

Cullen helped Belle out of the carriage and saw to it she was hydrated. He fetched two dainty glasses of water, gave one to her, and held the other until she needed it. He asked after her welfare every few minutes. It was very sweet, but he was helicoptering. She couldn’t entirely blame him, though. She had been stabbed the last time they were there, after all. It made her feel safer to have him so close, especially knowing he wouldn’t be in the chamber for most of the Exalted Council’s proceedings. So she let him hover.

They found all their friends as they meandered and mingled. Varric had been waiting just inside the gates to waylay everyone for a little while with all his new stories of being Viscount. Belle told him she would have hugged him, but that she was pretty sure her belly would knock him flat on his ass. He said it wouldn’t have been the first time.

Thom Rainier had finally decided to go by his real name, and he gave Cullen a jolt of a handshake when they met again. He congratulated them on the pregnancy and caught them up on his dealings of the past two years. Belle was pleased to hear of all the good work he’d being doing with the surviving men from his battalion and with those imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. She offered her legal assistance should he ever find someone who might benefit from it, and he told her he would start a list form which she could take her pick. A scintilla of regret eked into the back of her mind at the thought of so much pro bono.

Vivienne had remained very much herself with the passage of time. She proffered her felicitations for the marriage and pregnancy, but she made an offhanded remark about Belle’s willingness to marry down. Belle reminded her Cullen was at least five inches taller, which meant she’d married quite a ways up. Vivienne offered to treat her to a proper spa day after the baby was born, and she gave Cullen a backhanded compliment about the inevitable but conciliatory handsomeness of the child. The couple moved on with a foul taste in their mouths and promises of free pampering. At least they had broken even with the woman.

Dorian and Iron Bull lingered near one another in the tavern, making eyes across the room while everyone caught up. “You’ve become rather rotund since the last time I saw you,” said Dorian with a jaunty lift of an eyebrow.

“And somehow you’ve become even shinier,” said Belle. She poked one of the dozen little silvery diamond plates on his chest.

He laughed and drew her into his arms. “I have missed you very much, you know. Things can get very dull without your sharp tongue around.”

“I doubt anything could be dull with his sharp tongue around.” She stuck out a thumb toward Bull.

“Ah.” Dorian cleared his throat. “Yes, well, never dull there.”

“I am glad you two found each other,” said Cullen, much to Belle’s grinning surprise. “It’s good to know you’ve found something close to the happiness I feel with Belle.”

Dorian rolled his eyes and groaned. “Maferath’s balls, Commander. Must you always be so sweet and endearing? It’s enough to make my teeth rot.”

“Oh shush, butthead,” said Belle as she let her head fall to rest on Cullen’s shoulder. “I like him sweet and endearing. Don’t ruin him.”

The newly appointed Magister laughed. “I’m not the one who ruined him. The Cullen I first met would have run away gagging if he heard someone talking like that. You, my dear, are the one who ruined him.”

“Fine. So don’t un-ruin him.”

“I’m still standing right here,” said Cullen.

“Cutting your usual dashing figure. I will miss you both when I return home at the end of all this. Bull and I can never seem to finish a game of chess.”

“Then stop playing strip chess you fucking fiend,” said Belle.

“Now let’s not be hasty.”

“How long will you be in Tevinter?” said Cullen.

“For the foreseeable future, I’m afraid. If I truly mean to change things, I need to do my part in the changing. You two could always visit. I go to the border of the Free Marches several times a month if you’re not inclined to fear for your life every moment in Minrathous.”

“For your chess games, huh?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.” Dorian peacocked a little.

“We’ll see what we can do after she gets here in a few weeks.” Belle rubbed a single circle over her belly. “Shit’s about to get weird.”

A doleful, longing expression passed over his face. “You know, I envy you that.”

“You guys could always adopt. I’m sure there are a zillion little orphan boys and girls who would kill for such rad dads. And you know you’d be able to protect them cause Bull’s a fucking murder machine. You’re no slouch in the death-dealing department, either, mind you.”

He chuckled. “Perhaps once I’ve managed to fix enough that Bull can actually live in Minrathous. But for now, I’ll settle for seeing your little bundle grow up on your very frequent visits.” He glanced in Bull’s direction, and Belle’s eyes followed. Bull tilted his head toward the door and stood. “Well, if you don’t mind, I’m feeling a bit exhausted from my travels and am in rather desperate need of a long nap.”

Belle nodded with a licentious smile. “Oh I’ll bet. A real long nap. I bet you’ll feel so good after your real long nap. Looonn—”

“You are one of my dearest friends. With that in mind, do shut up.”

She giggled, and he headed for the exit. She called out after him. “Enjoy your long nap!” He swatted the air behind him before vanishing through the doorway. She took a sip of the second glass of water she’d finally removed from her husband’s hand.

“I suppose that’s one more chess game they won’t finish,” said Cullen.

Belle spat her water everywhere.

After she finished apologizing to the three people she’d moistened, and after sitting with Cole to listen to some of Maryden’s newest tunes, Belle and Cullen decided to peruse the wares of the merchants set up in the courtyard for the occasion. The goods were mostly useless. Baubles and vanity weapons meant to hang from walls instead of belts. When they were midway through the makeshift marketplace, a booming bark thundered from a stall behind them. Belle lurched, nearly spilling what remained of her water down the front of her dress. Cullen spun around, prepared to defend his wife with nothing but his balled fists.

She turned around to meet her would-be attacker. Instead, she saw a massive gray dog that looked exactly like a Cane Corso. Its pointed nub of a tail twitched back and forth, dragging its ass into an ecstatic wag. Its mouth hung open, pink tongue lolling out over too many teeth.

“Whose mabari is this?” said Cullen, loosening his fists so as not to scare the shopkeeper.

The masked man answered with a thick Orlesian accent that Belle almost didn’t mistake for French first. “As of this moment, Ser, he is no one’s.”

“No one’s?”

“Someone brought him to the palace, that much is certain. I saw him drinking from one of the fountains. Then he tried to catch one of the fish. Rather than letting the guards kill him, I took him to see if I might find his owner. No one has claimed him since yesterday.”

Belle and Cullen approached the dog, and Belle held out her hand like a paw. The mabari gave it a few short sniffs before licking all of her knuckles at once. She smiled and scratched behind his ear. Cullen took a knee in front of the dog.

“Another Fereldan stranded in Orlais,” he said, sounding somewhat faraway. He held up his fist like a SWAT team member signaling his partners to stop. The dog’s intelligent brown eyes snapped to Cullen’s hand, and he sat. Cullen laid his hand flat, palm down, and the dog laid down. Belle shot a quizzical glance at her husband.

“How much do you want for him?” said Cullen to the merchant.

“What?” said Belle. “Hey wait a second, this is a conversation. You can’t just unilaterally decide we’re getting a dog now.”

A stitch knit itself between his brows. “But you love dogs.”

“Yeah, and it’s a big decision to get one. One we have to make together. We’re in the middle of a goddamn upheaval. We don’t even know if we’ll be living in the same place next month.”

Cullen turned his attention to the mabari. “You don’t mind where you live, do you?”

The dog barked and licked her hand again.

Belle’s eyes widened. She shook her head and chided them both with her tongue against her teeth. “Don’t try to weaponize his cuteness. It’s beneath both of you.” The dog barked again. “Hey now,” she said to him. “Cullen, we’re already about to have another mouth we have to figure out how to feed. I want a dog too, but this is something we should talk about.”

“Aren’t we talking about it now?”

She felt the incredulity spreading over her face before she heard it in her voice. “Well, yeah, but—I mean—Cooler heads, right?”

Cullen stood, taking her hands in his and looking her in the eye. The glowing amber of his gaze still made her just a bit weak in the knees. “Mabari are very intelligent. He will be the perfect protector for our daughter. And in the unlikely event we need to hunt for our food, we would have a much better chance at catching something with his help. He’s a Fereldan. He cannot be left alone in Orlais. It’s a travesty.”

Belle stared at her husband for a long while. The stich in his brow rose and rose until it threatened to meet his hairline. She looked at the mabari panting beside her. “What are we going to call him?”

She watched her husband all but leap out of his skin. She had never seen him so giddy. It made her laugh despite herself.

“Charles,” he said.

“Charles? Like Charlie?”

“No. Charles.”

“That’s weird, though.”

“It’s not weird.” Cullen turned to the giant dog. “You like the name Charles, don’t you?”

Charles barked. His tongue flapped up against his nose.

Belle bit back a laugh. “Fine. Charles it is. But I reserve the right to call him Charles Barkley.”

Cullen narrowed his eyes at her. “Is that the name of a person?”

“The world may never know.”

*****

The sister moons cast sibling shadows in every direction when they rose high over Thedas on the third night in Halamshiral. They propagated at dozens upon dozens of angles to create a complex mosaic of light and dark. Belle stared out the window of the immaculate room she shared with Cullen, tracing through the maze of varied darkness to find the blinding reflections that glinted off the nearby gold and silver towers. Her hair had gotten too long, she thought just then, though she couldn’t say why she thought it.

She made her way back toward the bed where Cullen and Charles slept. Her restlessness left the sheets on her side in tousled disarray, and she sat in the blank spot she’d abandoned when she gave up on sleep and stood however long ago. She watched her husband sleep while her mind ticked like a broken clock stuck in time. His lips moved a little, and he murmured something about a chicken, and she smiled. It almost always made her smile when he talked in his sleep.

But Belle knew she wouldn’t sleep for some time yet. Too many things rattled through her thoughts, not the least of which was the unshakable feeling that she was fucking lying to fucking everyone. She was lying to the Exalted Council, save for Divine Leliana Victoria, about the extent of the very real Qunari threat Max kept running off to handle. She and Josephine spun up an easily punctured tale of the Inquisitor’s valiant efforts to stop a spy or two, knowing full well a small army had plans to blow up the Winter Palace. All of it to save her client’s—the Inquisition’s—ass. The bar ethics committee would have had a field day. She would have become a cautionary tale spread through every professional responsibility class in every law school in every state where she was licensed. That there was no bar ethics committee in Thedas brought her little comfort. She had managed to maintain her oaths until now.

She was lying to Josephine about the extent of her concern over Max’s growing mark. Just after he followed the first dead Qunari’s trail through an eluvian, his mark began to glow more brightly than ever. And it was spreading. As Belle sat awake that third night in Halamshiral, Max’s mark had already crept like toxic vines up and up, pausing just below his elbow. It hurt him. She saw him grimacing as he clutched his cracked fist when he thought no one was looking. Josephine asked Belle if she thought it could kill him, and Belle said no. It was a lie intended to bring comfort, but it sat like acrimony in her gut.

She was lying to her husband about the extent of her fear of their baby being born on the road to Skyhold. She told him over and over that the baby was going to be late. First babies were always late. But she’d had her bloody show last night. It happened in the dark, and she told Cullen about it when he woke to her scrambling to clean up. He said they should leave for Skyhold at first light, and she told him it could still be weeks before the birth. That part wasn’t a lie. She put her hand on his cheek and kissed his forehead, and she told him not to worry because she wasn’t. That part was a lie.

Belle laid her too-long hair back on her pillow to try to sleep again. She counted tiles on the ceiling and stones in the walls, and she wondered when Arl Teagan had turned into such a tumbling dickweed. He’d been so friendly when they corresponded in the past. Now he’d spent two days ranting about the Inquisition’s invasion of Ferelden with Grey Wardens in its ranks and touting his country’s exile of the Wardens, like he hadn’t helped the Wardens a decade ago and been a key supporter of Fereleden’s Warden king and queen. Belle contemplated who could have shifted his perspective in such drastic fashion while she counted. She fell asleep before she got very far.

The third day of the Exalted Council proceeded exactly as the first two. Teagan was snarling his nonsense, Duke Cyril de Montfort was oozing praise and sprinkling less than subtle hints about the Inquisition marching under Orlais’s banners, and Divine Leliana Victoria was playing the skillful foil to help buy time. Max and his horrifying arm were off God knows where with Sera, Rainier, and Vivienne to try and put a stop to the Qunari demolition crew. All Belle could hope for at his point was that he would come back with some tale of triumph and bravery to save everyone’s asses by convincing the Exalted Council of the Inquisition’s continued utility and necessity. And for her wicked Braxton Hicks contractions to cut the shit already.

“Arl Teagan,” said Duke Cyril, “I fail to understand how the Inquisition’s continued presence at your Caer Bronach—” his pronunciation of the keep’s name seemed intentionally atrocious “—constitutes an invasion. It has been far from exclusive, from what I am told, and your country maintained no control over the place for decades.”

Teagan sneered past Divine Leliana Victoria at the Orlesian. “Of course you don’t understand. Your country has been trying to invade Ferelden for more than a hundred years. Far be it from you to claim to know the appearance of an invading force.”

“On the contrary, Arl. It is for that very reason that an Orlesian, above all others, would know precisely what an invading force looks like. We could produce one with little more than a flick of the quill.”

“And that’s exactly what you’re trying to do now, twisting the Inquisition into Orlais’s control.”

Belle couldn’t believe they were still on about this. Three days of the same thing. Circular arguments upon circular arguments. She hated circular arguments.

She cleared her throat, drawing the eyes of the dais. “As Ambassador Montilyet and I have mentioned,” several times, “the Inquisition has already substantially decreased its presence at Caer Bronach over the past two years, and we would be more than happy to release primary control of the keep to Fereleden on the conditions that we be allowed to maintain a small number of troops and scouts there, and that Ferelden would not allow the keep to fall prey to highwaymen or other dangerous influences. But you have refused to provide such assurances, Arl Teagan.”

“And I will continue to refuse.”

Belle glanced at Josephine before replying. The ambassador had dark circles under her eyes, and her posture listed here and there under her exhaustion. Tiny strands of frayed hair spoiled her usually perfect coiffure. Belle had never seen her friend in such ragged shape.

“Why is that?” said Belle, turning her attention back to Teagan.

“I will not promise to allow a foreign force to maintain even the slightest presence on in a fortress on Ferelden soil.”

“With respect, the Inquisition is far from foreign. Almost every person in Caer Bronach today is Ferelden. But what about the second condition? Why are you refusing to give us the assurance that Ferelden won’t let the keep fall into the wrong hands?”

“I do not rule Ferelden. I do not presume to assure you or anyone else of our willingness to maintain our own forces anywhere.”

“So, to clarify, you want the Inquisition to abandon a keep we took from murdering bandits to protect the citizens of Crestwood because you don’t want us there, but you can’t say you’re willing to garrison soldiers there to provide that same protection? I’m not certain the citizens of Crestwood would be so thrilled to hear how quickly you’re tossing away their safety for the sake of removing the Inquisition’s presence. Not to mention those who have started families with the Inquisition personnel stationed at the keep for the past three years.”

“I am not implying anything of the sort,” said Teagan, whose cheeks were turning pinker by the second. “I am simply not empowered to make any guarantees on behalf of King Alistair.”

Out of the corner of Belle’s eye, she saw a blonde elf scurrying up to Josephine. The young woman leaned in to whisper something in Josie’s ear. “Well, you may not be empowered to make guarantees, but I am,” said Belle, struggling to focus. “I can guarantee that if the Inquisition remains at Caer Bronach, no Ferelden property will be turned over to bandits or marauders, and the citizens of Crestwood and their families will be safe.”

Without warning, Josephine gasped and leapt up from her chair. She didn’t say a word to Belle or anyone else. She just ran out of the chamber, nearly clipping the elf’s heels with her toes. The audience to the hearing erupted into a riot of whispers. Belle winced as another phony contraction squeezed through her.

“This is highly irregular. Does Ambassador Montilyet have something better to do than argue the Inquisition’s case?” said Teagan, every seething syllable overenunciated.

“I apologize. Ambassador Montilyet has been called away on a minor emergency,” said Belle, lying again through her gritted teeth. This practice contraction hurt more than the last batch. “We can continue with your leave.”

And continue they did. After about fifteen minutes of back and forth between the Arl and the Duke, with Belle’s occasional interjection, she watched as another young messenger slid up behind Divine Leliana Victoria and whisper something into the side of her huge hat. A hand on Belle’s shoulder startled her, and she whipped her head around to see Cullen’s face very close to her own. He wore a familiar expression, unreadable to those who didn’t know him well, but painted over with unease to her. His autumnal eyes flicked about before locking with hers.

“Max has been seriously wounded,” he said quietly.

“Jesus.”

“He asked me to retrieve you for a few moments. He was very insistent.”

Belle was halfway to her feet when Divine Leliana Victoria said, “Duke Cyril, Arl Teagan, perhaps we should take a short recess. A matter has just come to my attention that I must see to.”

“Of course, Your Holiness,” said the Duke.

“Of course,” said the Arl.

“Excuse me,” said Belle, and she waddled out of the chamber with her husband.

Cullen held her hand as they started their trek across almost the full length of the palace to get to Max’s quarters. “What happened?”

He shook his head. “I’m not entirely certain. Rainier was carrying Max over his shoulder when they came back through the eluvian, and half of Max’s marked arm was missing.”

“What the fuck? Missing? Arms don’t go missing.”

“Rainier said Max cut it off himself. Max ran ahead after the Viddasala while the others stayed back to fight a number of Qunari she’d left behind. He came back screaming, holding his arm, and he took Rainier’s sword and cut it off.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Vivienne did what she could to stop the bleeding, and they brought him back. He’s been raving. Something about Solas.”

“Solas?”

“I don’t know why. But he told me to bring you to him at least five times before I agreed.”

“I don’t get why he was so insis—Gah!” Another fraudulent contraction wrapped Belle up in a tight torment, stopping her words and her feet. She hunched over with her eyes clamped shut. She squeezed Cullen’s hand so hard it stung.

“Belle! What’s happening?”

She blew out a long, slow breath with the ebb of the pain. “It’s fine. I’m fine. Braxton Hicks. Just more Braxton Hicks.”

“That was not like the others,” he said. He looked angry.

She smiled at him, though from the furrow in his brow it wasn’t terribly convincing. “Yeah it was. I’m fine. Just all this walking. Let’s go, come on.”

They managed to make it to make it to Max’s room without further incident, and Belle managed to persuade herself into believing her own words. The contractions weren’t real. They were practice for when the baby would come in two or three weeks. They hurt worse, but it was just because her idiot body needed a bit of a dress rehearsal.

The scene in Max’s quarters was the calmest version of a horror show Belle had ever seen. She reckoned that was because most of the horror happened before she got there. Divine Leliana Victoria was already there, holding the free hand of a weeping Josephine. The Antivan’s other hand carded through Max’s sweaty hairline in a soft rhythm. His pallor was somewhat gray, and half his arm was gone. White bandages smattered with dark red blood and yellowed plasma clung to what remained. Belle covered her mouth to keep from cursing.

“You’re here,” said Max upon catching his mildly delirious gaze on her. “Good.”

She didn’t know what to say. She wanted to ask why he went berserk and hacked off his own arm. She wanted to ask if he was okay. She wanted to ask if he’d been listening to her all those times she’d told him to be safe. All those times she’d thanked God he came back in one piece. For the first time, he hadn’t done either.

“I’m here,” she said instead, and she walked to his bedside.

“I had to tell you,” he said, more than a little weak and more than a little frantic. “Now. Before you worry about it for another second.”

“Tell me what?” A thousand possibilities streamed through her mind. She stilled herself with her mantra. Predict, prepare, preempt.

“Solas. Solas wanted me to tell you he’s sorry.”

“Sorry? For leaving the Inquisition? I don’t—”

“Sorry for tearing you and Spencer from your lives.”

Belle’s stomach churned, and she thought for a second she might throw up where she stood. “What?”

“It was his fault. His hubris, he said. The very first time, with Spencer, he thought he could take advantage of the Breach to tear down the Veil.”

“Tear down the Veil?” said Divine Leliana Victoria.

“It’s his aim. Fen’Harel. Solas. He gave Corypheus the orb. Didn’t know he’d do so much wrong with it. He thought he’d just tear down the Veil. Then Solas—Fen’Harel could take everything back.”

Belle felt Cullen’s tense breaths splash across the back of her neck. His features were just as tight. “He caused all of this.”

“He thought he could do it,” said Max. “But all he did was pull Spencer through. He thinks it happened because of where Spencer was. I didn’t really understand any of that. But it latched onto your blood, Belle.”

“And he just…kept trying?” She fought her tears and her urge to vomit.

“After we sealed the Breach, he tried again. Then after Corypheus. Then again two months ago. The last two times, he really thought it would work. Hubris,” said Max again. “He won’t try again until he’s certain. He’s sorry it happened.”

It was Solas. Solas who she thought was nice. Solas who had always seemed just a touch off. He was the cause of her thrice ruined life. Belle’s entire body trembled. Her rage boiled. “He’s fucking sorry?”

“We have to stop him. It’ll kill everyone. Everyone. If he does it.”

Cullen’s large hands found her shoulders. “We will,” he said.

“I’ll fucking kill him myself, I swear to God.” A tear raced down her cheek.

Max lifted his partial arm as if to take her hand. He looked embarrassed when he realized what he’d done. Another tear loosed itself, and she reached down to take his other hand. He gave her a weak smile.

His eyes darted between Belle and Divine Leliana Victoria. “Can you two try to adjourn the Exalted Council for the day? Tell them I’ll be there tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” said Josephine, still weeping. “No, you must rest. Two days, at least. Please, my love.”

“It has to be tomorrow. I promise, it won’t take long.”

“I can do that,” said Belle.

“Of course,” said Divine Leliana Victoria.

“Thank you.”

Belle held her husband’s hand all the way back to the Exalted Council chamber, her rage bubbling and frothing in the space made by their pensive silence. Leliana parted from them several minutes before, wisely choosing to avoid the appearance of favoritism. She was already seated when they entered the room.

Belle stepped forward. Cullen hung back. She stood before the center of the dais to address the council.

“I apologize for the unusual nature of this request, but the Inquisitor has asked that the Exalted Council adjourn for the remainder of the day so that he might personally address all of your concerns tomorrow.”

“I see no problem with that,” said Duke Cyril.

“Nor do I,” said Divine Leliana Victoria.

“I do,” said Arl Teagan. Of course. “There is no point in delaying this process to wait for his defenses any longer. If he was able to request our adjournment, he is just as able to come here and speak for himself.”

“He’s not, actually,” said Belle. “He’s been wounded, and he needs to rest for the evening. He has assured me he will explain everything himselllll—”

Pain ripped through her body like a scythe. She curled in on herself for a moment, made blind and breathless by the purity of her agony, and she grunted against it. She tried to straighten her torso, to explain that it was just a dress rehearsal, but the excruciating Gehenna only continued to build. She held onto her round belly, and she screamed, and she was one hundred percent sure her asshole was about to fall out.

Strong arms, Cullen’s arms, lifted her and carried her away. He was shouting something to someone, but all she could hear was the cacophony made by her body’s attempts to rive itself in half. That idiot body had skipped dress rehearsal and jumped right to opening fucking night with a sold out crowd. And she was furious.

*****

[kaoruyogi]

C’est Si Bon

I saw this post yesterday about a 1950′s AU Cullen, and this morning I woke up with the full story in my head. So here it is! It’s a little long, so I put part of it under a cut for the sake of people’s dashes.

For @lyrium-blossom ​, @kagetsukai ​, @mssaboteur ​, @ladydragon1316 ​, @veritasrose, @laraslandlockedblues ​, and anyone else who’s interested!

Pairing: Cullen Rutherford x Belle Dolan (1950′s AU one shot)

Rating: T for Teen

Today would be the day. Cullen decided it as he rose from his old bed in his old room in his parents’ old house. Today would be the day he ventured out. He had been outside since coming back, but he also had not. He had yet to journey beyond the corner three houses down.

Fear kept him at home those six months. It was not a rational fear, he decided about two months into his self-imposed confinement. But it was fear, nonetheless.

He ran his fingers through his hair and puffed out a humorless laugh at himself. He was what they called a “POW.” Pee-Oh-Doubleyou. Prisoner of war. Captured and kept alive. Alive as his enemy saw fit to keep him. As it happened, they chose not to keep him very alive. They locked him away, fed him food they told him over and over was poisoned until he was so starved he ate it anyway because even death would be better than the void in his gut, tortured him, tortured his platoon, killed them one by one.

His puff of a dead laugh was not aimed at all that, but at the irony of his present condition. All he could think of when he was over there was his freedom. Now he had it, and all he was doing with it was locking himself up afresh. Self-inflicted isolation.

So, today would be the day. Cullen dressed simply, comfortably. White cotton tee shirt, tired blue jeans, black and white sneakers—the left one had a smudge on it he reminded himself to clean later—and his black leather jacket. The jacket would not have been his first choice for outerwear before he went over there, but now it helped. His brother gave it to him when he got back. Said it was for luck. Cullen hadn’t the faintest idea how a jacket could be lucky, but then he still kept at least one of his dog tags on his person at all times. So he took the jacket, and today he wore it.

He left his room. The first step. His mabari, Charles, followed him through the house. Cullen was the only person in that house who called the dog by his proper name. All his siblings insisted on calling him Charlie. Cullen found it quite irksome. He petted Charles on the head twice.

Cullen gave himself a onceover in the bathroom mirror before he left the house. His mother always told him he was such a handsome boy, and he might once have been. But a scar—a remnant of the dozens or hundreds or thousands of beatings he suffered—now marred his face. It rose from his upper lip to his cheekbone, pink and shiny and horrible. He did not like the man staring back at him. He put a hand over the glass before he walked away.

He brought Charles with him when he left. The poor mabari had not been on a proper walk in ages, and it was as good an excuse as any to have him at Cullen’s side. The large gray dog rarely left Cullen’s side, as it happened. It gave him great comfort to have Charles with him as he walked, like taking a piece of home with him into a vast and terrifying wilderness of concrete and brick and people.

Cullen walked past the corner. He walked down the street. He nodded his greeting to an elderly neighbor as she watered her begonias. He approached Main Street. He gripped Charles’s leash tight in his fist, doing his best to ignore the onslaught of noise around him. Screaming children. Metal roller skate wheels grinding on cement. The rumble of the occasional passing Cadillac.

To his surprise, he arrived on Main Street without incident. He watched Charles watch their surroundings, and it put him a touch more at ease knowing someone had his back. Together they passed Adan’s Pharmacy. Then they passed Sims Grocers, Cabot’s Malts N’More, two beauty salons, the cinema, and the library. They made it all the way to town hall without a word or glance from anyone.

Cullen thought he had done quite enough for today. He and Charles turned around to head home the same way they came, feeling rather accomplished they had come so far. Even Charles held his head a little higher.

As they approached the library, the front door opened. A young woman, about his age, exited the building. She wore a dress the color of a robin’s egg covered in tiny white dots, and it swayed wide around her pale calves as she walked. Her slightly curved nose was buried in an open book, and her red hair was gathered into a ponytail, forming a single fat curl that brushed her collar. He could not see her entire face, but he would know her anywhere.

Belle. She was the girl he grew up admiring. As children, they went to the nearby lake with their classmates to swim in the summers. He used to watch her red hair in the sun as it dried into wild but gentle curls and listen to her boisterous laugh. In high school, he walked her home on Thursdays. It was out of his way by several blocks, but he never said a word about that. He listened to her talk about all the magnificent things she wanted to do with her life, and he did his best to bring out her boisterous laugh for himself. She smiled at him once while she sang her solo in the school choir. She embraced him once after his parents died. She kissed him once in the dark after their last high school dance. He left the smudge of her too-bright lipstick on his mouth until the next morning.

Cullen’s heart tightened in his chest as she approached him. He had not seen her since before he shipped out to basic training. What if she grimaced when she saw him? What if she disliked the man he had become? What if he was so broken and wrong she did not recognize him at all?

But all those questions proved pointless. Belle’s attention was so rapt on the contents of her book, she walked right past him. He heard her humming while she went. “C’est Si Bon,” by Eartha Kitt. His sister, Mia, played the tune once when her boyfriend, Marcus, came over for dinner. Cullen was not one for anything Orlesian, but he liked the song well enough.

Against his better judgment, Cullen called after her. “Belle,” he said once at too low a volume. When she did not turn, he said it again, much louder.

Belle gasped hard, and her book tumbled from her hands onto the sidewalk. Guilt filled Cullen’s gut at the sight. She whirled around with a blend of shock and ire on her face. It melted away the moment she laid her hazel eyes on him. She smiled. His heart leapt into his throat.

“Cullen,” she said, and she rushed back toward him, leaving her book on the sidewalk. “I’m so happy to see you!”

“I-It’s good to see you too, Belle,” he said. He felt foolish under her gaze. It was a silly notion to call out to her like that. He had no idea what to say to her.

“It’s been a long time. You look well.” She meant it. He did not expect her to mean it.

Before he could reply, she cast her eyes down and let out a happy, “Charles!” Cullen had forgotten she was the only other person that called the mabari by his proper name. Belle knelt down to pet the dog. “It’s been much too long since I’ve seen your handsome face, Charles.” Charles grunted and licked her hand, and she only just managed to stop him licking her face as well.

“You look very well, too,” said Cullen as she stood.

“Thank you.” She paused for three seconds too long, her eyes wandering over his face. They were beautiful eyes. “I missed you, you know,” she finally said. “You never told me when you were shipping out. I would’ve come to see you off. Given you something for good luck or…something.”

“Ah, yes, I—” His free hand reached up to rub the back of his neck. An old habit. “I’m sorry. At the time, I didn’t think it was much to fuss over. I thought I…I thought I would be back sooner.”

Belle smiled again, exposing the wide pointed canines she had ever since her baby teeth fell out. “It’s alright. I probably would have cried all over you anyway. Turned into a damn sobbing mess and not let you get on the bus. So it was probably for the best.” She was the first non-adult he ever heard curse when they were young. She had not changed a bit.

“I missed you, too,” said Cullen before he could stop the words leaving his mouth. Surely, she would think him too forward now. She would leave, and he would never see her again but for the occasional casual coincidence.

But she laughed. She laughed her boisterous laugh, and something fluttered in his chest. “Well, good! I’m glad to know my missing wasn’t one-sided.” She laid an absent pat on Charles’s ribs. He panted happily at the loud thump it made. “Let me buy you a malt or a Coke or something,” she said after a moment. “Cabot still likes me, and he’ll let me take a couple of his glasses to the park or something so we can catch up. If you’re up for it, that is.”

“That won’t be necessary. I can pay fo—”

“Hooey. I’m buying. To make up for the good luck gift I never got to give you. I won’t hear another word about it except ‘yes,’ and ‘thank you, oh wonderful, kind, fabulous Belle.’” She lifted her chin with her superior little grin.

Cullen chuckled. He had not laughed much lately. “Alright,” he said. “Yes. Thank you, oh wonderful, kind, fabulous Belle.”

“Ha!” She clapped once. “Good! Oh.” She turned and ran two short steps to recover her library book, and she dusted it off on her two short steps back. She hooked her arm over his crooked elbow, smiled up at him, and said, “Shall we?”

“Of course,” he said, and the three of them began their walk together.

Today would be the day.

*****

[kaoruyogi]

Hey! For DWC, how about "Pigeon" for Leliana and Belle?

Hey! Thanks for prompting me this, @lyrium-lovesong! I hope you don’t mind that it’s kinda brief and pretty much all dialogue. It just felt right. ^_~

For @dadrunkwriting

Pairing: Leliana and Belle Dolan friendship

Rating: E for Everyone

Flying Rats

Belle stared at Baron von Plucky while she waited forLeliana to double check the numbers on a contract that exchanged lightespionage for a stock of rare herbs. The raven stared back. Belle pursed herlips and tilted her head at the bird, and he mirrored her as best he could. Shelaughed a little.

“Why ravens?” she said.

“Pardon?” said Leliana.

Belle stepped away from the massive black bird and sat downbeside the spymaster. “Why does everyone here use ravens as messenger birds?”

Leliana looked amused at the question. “What else would weuse?”

Belle shrugged and made a noncommittal sound. “Pigeons, I guess.”

“Pigeons?”

“Yeah.” Belle nodded. “That’s what people used a long timeago where P and I come from. Carrier pigeons.”

The spymaster squinted and shook her head. “Pigeons are nobetter than flying rats.”

“My dad says that.”

“He sounds like a smart man. Everything eats pigeons,including people. It would become very difficult to tell who was interceptingour messages because they wanted to read them, as opposed to simply hunting fordinner.”

“People don’t eat ravens?”

“Do they eat ravens where you come from?”

Belle stuck out her tongue. “Blech. No.”

Leliana chuckled in her sly way. “Well they don’t eat themhere, either. Ravens are much smarter than pigeons, in any case. They’re easierto train. They also fly higher and can go longer without stopping to eat. Pigeonsare useless birds. Fat and stupid. And slow.”

“Guess that’s why we invented telephones.”

“I suppose so.”

“Well, maybe if y’all stopped using ravens and started usingpigeons, you could incentivize someone to magic you up some telephones.”

Leliana smiled. She was a tough nut to crack, and it alwaysfelt like an achievement when Belle managed to do it. “Maybe.” Leliana signedthe contract on the table, sealed it, and tied it with a tiny red cord toprepare it for delivery by raven. “But Baron von Plucky will have to do fortoday.”

“So stubborn,” said Belle with a grin and a shake of herhead. She saluted Baron von Plucky as she walked past on her way to the stairwell.“Good luck, and Godspeed, Baron.”

*****

[kaoruyogi]

How to Win Wars and Influence Nobles (Ch. 25)

Rating: E for Explicit/NSFW Content! 

Check it out on AO3!

You’d think a video game lawyer could just drop into a pseudo-medieval universe filled with magic and demons and be totally okay with it, right?

Nah.

In the wake of her brother, Spencer’s, disappearance, Belle dropped into Thedas with luggage, but without a clue. After a brief but memorable panic attack, she resolved to be the best goddamn lawyer Thedas had ever seen. Even if she was the only goddamn lawyer Thedas had ever seen. And even if that obstinate asshole, Cullen, wouldn’t stop giving her the side-eye every time she walked into a room…Or every time he walked into a room with her in it…Or every time they walked into a room together…Or–Fuck it. You get it.

Chapter 25: What the Fuck Now?

Cullen’s newness to the world was like a second infancy. It was adorable and impatient, sweet and frustrating. He had questions about everything in their first month of living in Orange County. He asked Belle some questions she didn’t have answers to, and he asked her some questions that didn’t really have answers. The fecundity of his imagination was boundless. It was impressive, and it was exhausting.

She showed him how to use the internet on her laptop early on. She watched him do what she had done when she first got to Thedas. Research. He clicked and clicked and clicked, treading dozens of varied informational pathways a day, drinking up knowledge like a man in an oasis surrounded by a million miles of desert in every direction. She supposed he was a man lost in the desert, really. In the back of her mind, she worried he would reach the point of knowing more about the world than she did.

Cullen began by educating himself on the topics that interested him the most. He started with war. The long-documented history of tens of thousands of battles took his pouring over for nearly a week. Faster than Belle could have consumed all that information. At one point, however, the geographical proportions of the world popped onto the screen alongside the current global population. The size of Earth and the amount of people on it put him in a state for two hours. His brow furrowed and unfurrowed, and he paced around their suite’s living room trying to reason it out.

“These numbers cannot possibly be correct. How can there be that many people in this world? Nearly eight billion?” he said, distracting Belle from her neglected Tumblr feed for the fifth time since his pacing began.

She let her wrist go limp as she flicked her attention to him, knocking her phone into her bare ankle. She groaned, and half sighed her reply. “Dude, I dunno. A combination of the spread of mass religious beliefs that advocate copious reproduction, improvements in medical science to stop people from dying from literally everything, and really shitty birth control methodologies up until the past couple decades. You could have Googled that.”

Cullen glowered down at her. “I apologize that it is not yet my first instinct to beg answers to my questions from a machine.” His tone was razor sharp.

Belle set her jaw hard. So did Cullen. Several brutal seconds into their tiny standoff, she relented. She shut her eyes and inhaled. The cool, conditioned air buzzed in through her nose and blew out through her pursed lips. When she opened her eyes, much of Cullen’s ire had melted into a complicated kind of remorse.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“So am I.” He brushed his hand across her shoulder before returning to whatever dark corner of the internet he’d found in his endless clicking. A passing gesture of love stretched thin by proximity and inactivity.

Cullen’s click-click-clicking lead him next to history. He told Belle he intended to focus on the history of her nation, but she suspected, after seeing images of several very steepley, thousand-year-old-looking churches splashed across her 4K laptop screen, that he had wandered well past the United States. Those same steepley, thousand-year-old-looking churches dragged him into religion. She knew he’d discovered the sordid and bloody history of Judaism when, following a dispersion of disgusted grunts, he sat on the couch beside her and swept her into his arms. He clutched her tight, wondering aloud how her people seemed so happy after all they went through. She thought to bring up the elves, but decided against it when he buried his nose in her hair.

Religion lead back to war, as it so often did. Belle watched as Cullen found himself at a loss for what to read. He thought he’d exhausted the contents of the entire internet. She pressed her lips together to bite back a giggle at the sight of his mild distress. But the next day’s malaise, coupled with a rapid response by hotel security to his courtyard palm-tree-dummy training session, brought him back up to their room with questions about physical maintenance. He asked Belle first. She put a hand on her soft gut and reminded him that she was the last person he should be asking about exercise. She ate another Cheeto, and he took to the internet once more. When she woke the following morning, she found him with a towel draped over his shoulder preparing to shower after lifting weights and jogging in the hotel gym while she slept. He was settling in alright, she reckoned.

Eisiminger called them to his office after two weeks of radio silence. He told them that there was no record of any radical group calling themselves “the Inquisition” in any database in any country. Belle said that of course there wasn’t. Why would there be? What kind of sense would that make? She spouted off about shell corporations and airspace rights and that movie, “The Village,” and Eisiminger leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. She didn’t have to feign her anger when she told him that what she and Cullen experienced was real. It was real, and it was painful. The bit about the pain was no lie, either. The anguish of being ripped away from the people she’d grown to call family, not to mention her actual brother, clawed and gnawed at her with incessant persistence. Cullen corroborated her every word.

When she ran out of steam and all she could do was sit and seethe, Eisiminger apologized. He didn’t apologize for his occasionally suspicious glances or his sporadically accusatory tone. She didn’t expect him to apologize for that. That was behavior she would hope for in a detective, had she presented him a real crime to solve. Instead, he apologized for the lack of progress on her case. He told her that, with no leads and nothing more on which to follow up, he was going to have to put her case in the “inactive” file. She put on a dramatic show of anger to hide her relief, tearing up and scowling, demanding something more be done. Eisiminger apologized again, and Cullen put on his own dramatic show of comforting her. Eisiminger went on to recommend that Cullen apply for a U-visa if he planned on remaining in the country, and handed him a form. Belle knew full well that the single form was insufficient, and said as much before she and Cullen stormed out of the Homicide Bureau’s offices. She wept real tears when they got into her little blue car.

On the third week, Belle sent her parents home to Washington. They protested for hours before and during dinner at the little Italian restaurant in Downtown Brea that was always too busy. Cullen sat at the outer edge of the booth and faced the door while they ate and argued, still hypervigilant, still nervous. Belle was too, if she was honest. They both jumped when someone dropped a plate. He reached for his absent sword. Everyone cheered at the waiter. Belle’s hand trembled until Cullen took it in his under the table. Her father narrowed his eyes at her in a silent question, and she answered him with a near imperceptible shake of her head.

Not long after, he capitulated. He caved first, as she suspected he might. He tried to bring Ilana around by reminding her that they should probably get ready for Belle and Cullen to move north, because Belle was a shoo-in for that job at Microsoft, of course. Fear and discomfort passed over Ilana’s face for a moment. She said something in a voice so soft that the discordant eaters around them drowned it before it could reach Belle’s ears.

Belle’s father nodded, and Ilana swayed with the cadence of his hand running up and down her back. “We’re only a few hours away if he comes back.”

Ilana’s eyes went watery, but she nodded too. Belle and Cullen shared a communicative glance. It was time to tell her parents why Spencer wasn’t there, why she and Cullen were so jumpy, why he needed a U-visa.

She sat her parents on the sofa in their suite after dinner. Unwelcome news was always taken best when surrounded by the comfort of one’s own belongings. Cullen sat in the chair next to Ilana, and Belle stood. She was accustomed to making presentations, and standing gave her a feeling of control over what was about to happen.

“I’m going to start telling you what I have to tell you in a second,” she said. “But first, I need to know that both of you know I’m not crazy. I’ve never exhibited signs of any mental illness that would alter my perceptions of reality, right?”

“Right,” said her father.

“Of course not,” said Ilana.

“Okay. Dad, you’re an engineer, and I know you’re not that kind of engineer, but what do you know about wormholes?”

He cocked his head. “Not a whole lot. The bit with the hole in the folded piece of paper is about it.”

Belle let out an irked little noise. She paced in front of the lifeless black television. Two steps left, two steps right. “So—and again, I swear I’m not crazy—what I told the police—what I told you—is about half true. Spencer and I were in a place called Thedas, and Cullen really does come from there, but—” The words caught in her throat, causing a strangled squeak. “Thedas isn’t anywhere on Earth.”

“What?” said Ilana.

“It sounds insane. It sounds one hundred percent batshit cuckoo coco-nuts, I know. But I was waiting for an Uber outside my apartment to take me to the airport, and this green hole thing that I can only assume was a wormhole or something like that just appeared on the sidewalk and sucked me up. Just sucked me and my bags right up.” Belle pantomimed with her hand, flicking her wrist and closing her splayed fingers. “And when I woke up, I was someplace else. The geography of the land was different than here, and the seasons were different from here, and I didn’t just stay in one place while I was there. We,” she said as she gestured between herself and Cullen, “rode halfway across the continent on horseback and in carriages. We would have hit some modern civilization by then, right? Then, one random day, another wormhole thing just poofed into existence in front of me and Cullen and ate us both.”

“Wormholes?” said Ilana. The blankness in her tone welled up anxiety in Belle’s chest. Her flowy T-shirt felt three sizes too small.

“Yeah. Wormholes. That’s why Spencer isn’t here, why he didn’t come back too. They were just these blips. Opened and closed.”

“My confirmation of what she says cannot mean much to you, such as things are,” said Cullen, “but everything she says is true. In Thedas, we call these wormholes ‘rifts.’ Spencer fell out of a rift about three months before Belle did, but that’s how both of them arrived in Thedas. And it’s how Belle and I were taken from Thedas to arrive here.”

Belle’s father cleaved the long silence that followed before it grew too great to bear. “So Spencer…” He stopped, searching for the words, searching for the question to which he might even begin to put words.

“Spencer’s alive and well. He’s actually pretty happy there. He met someone.”

“My sister, Rosalie.”

Ilana wore confused horror like a mask over her usually happy face. Belle’s father opened and closed his mouth like a fish drowning in air. She hadn’t planned this, she realized. Hadn’t done it right. Predict, prepare, preempt. She forgot to follow her mantra, and now she was ruining her parents’ lives. They were sitting in front of her trying to figure out if they should commit her. Slap her in the loony bin with the rest of the crazies. Deport Cullen to nowhere or hold him in ICE lockup on indefinite detention because they would never, ever figure out his country of origin.

Belle stood in the prison of her anxiety, spinning out into oblivion. Then her father asked, “Why you?”

“Huh?”

“Why you? And why Spencer? I mean, I love you, and don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but neither of you are that special.”

Belle laughed. It was a delirious thing, and it burst out of her without warning. She wasn’t helping the case for her sanity. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “No one there knew either. And it’s not like I can run around asking proper astrophysicists why without sounding bananas crazy.”

“Okay,” said Ilana. “I believe you.” Determination had replaced the mask of confused horror. Determination and certainty.

“Me too,” said Belle’s father.

“Really?” said Belle.

“Yeah. And, honestly, it’s more plausible than human trafficking.”

“Why?”

“You really think you, of all people, would get kidnapped and escape and come back here without telling every single person you talked to some crazy story about how you punched at least one guy in the face?”

“Or stabbed one to death,” said Belle.

Her father gave her the side eye. “Or stabbed one to death.”

Her parents flew back to Washington two days later.

Four weeks after Belle and Cullen’s unceremonious landing in Orange County, she had her Skype interview with the council of counselors for Microsoft. Vic’s friend, Josh, sat between two women, and across from one woman and one man. They were friendly, and they asked her all the questions Josh told her they would ask when she’d spoken to him on the phone three weeks earlier. She felt as prepared as she could have been, having spent a year without any technology just before interviewing for one of the largest tech companies in the world. She offered a few quips, and the council of counselors laughed just the right amount.

Cullen sat on the sofa two feet away and watched the entire process. After almost an hour and forty-five minutes of back and forth, the council of counselors muted their end of the conversation to deliberate. Belle watched their mouths move, but they were too far from the camera, their mannerisms too subdued for her to make out what any of them said. She reached for Cullen’s hand out of view of her webcam. The warmth of his calluses on her palm and her fingertips reminded her that she had been battle-hardened. She had been through so much worse than waiting for a few lawyers to decide whether she was skilled enough to work for them. She had been stabbed, for Christ’s sake. Twice.

The council of counselors unmuted their microphone, and Alicia, the woman sitting across the conference table from Josh, told Belle that Josh and the other two women were going to be stepping out for the duration of the conversation. Belle said her farewells, and Josh winked toward the camera on his way through the metal doorframe.

When the door to the conference room closed, Alicia folded her hands in front of her and smiled. “Okay, so let’s talk relo expenses. If you have a down payment, we’d like to help you with moving costs and closing.”

Less than half an hour later, Belle was e-signing an employment contract. She started sobbing halfway through the at-will provisions, and Cullen took her up in his embrace. She clung to his powerful forearms as they wreathed around her neck and shoulders. His galvanizing presence reminded her how lucky she was to have him. She loved him so much it was like a stone in her stomach. The certainty that she could provide for them was an indispensable boon, a small but sturdy umbrella in the torrent of fucked up shit raining down on them every day.

But their relationship wasn’t all peaches and light. As time passed, as Belle wrapped up the task of un-disappearing, as she met with everyone she needed to meet, and as she waited for her parents’ video tours of prospective houses, she and Cullen began to go stir crazy. They played a dangerous waiting game that threatened to rend them from one another by exposure. Between them, they managed no more than an hour or so apart each day. He had his burgeoning workout routine, and she had the odd friend with whom to eat lunch and avoid chatting about her disappearance. The other twenty-three hours of the day, they were locked in their suite, alone, bored, and bickering over tiny annoyances.

Sex helped. It staved off the ennui and frustration, and it tethered them to one another in a way that felt natural, unforced. It was also almost the only exercise Belle got in the absence of her daily need to walk up and down five thousand flights of stairs.

During their refractory periods, or their post-argument periods, or really any period not occupied by a solid fuck or something solidly fucked, they watched movies and TV shows and listened to music. Cullen had over thirty years of catching up to do on the media that helped form Belle’s personality, and she was more than happy to use it as an excuse to ease the occasional tension. They situated themselves on the couch, her ankles always crossed over his thighs, and dug into their respective snacks—that douchenozzle nibbled on apples and strawberries while she stuffed her face with Doritos and chocolate—before she hit play.

Cullen’s opinions, as in most cases, formed quickly. He liked John Wayne. He disliked Alfred Hitchcock. He said he thought RomComs were feckless, but Belle caught the worry on his face when it seemed like the main characters wouldn’t end up together. He scoffed when she pointed out that he practically was Mr. Darcy. She laughed so hard when he and Matthew Macfayden made the exact same sound in unison that she had to pause the movie with Keira Knightley’s eyes half closed. Cullen conceded.

When it came to music, he surprised her. He favored classical and neo-classical composers, which she anticipated. He grimaced at most EDM, though he tolerated ambient electronica, and he slammed her laptop shut when she started playing her favorite death metal track, which was to be expected. But he asked her to play more of her indie and alternative music, like Ray LaMontagne and Feist and Fleet Foxes, he loved the blues, and he latched onto jazz singers like Billie Holiday. Belle should have known that he would be contrary and old fashioned, even in a different world.

She glanced up at him once, a few minutes after telling her realtor to make an offer on a four-bedroom house with granite countertops in the kitchen and a plum tree in the backyard. He sat at the desk in front of her laptop with his chin resting on his fist. “God Bless the Child” emanated from the speakers as his eyes scanned over some half-visible article about the Yukon gold rush. She watched him for a moment. He squinted and craned his neck toward the screen, and he sighed when he returned to his resting position.

As she watched him, for the first time in more than a month, she didn’t think, well, what the fuck now. For the first time in more than a month, she thought that maybe their lives weren’t ruined. For the first time in more than a month, she thought there might be a future for them that didn’t exist in the past.

He smiled when he caught her staring.

*****

“Just breathe.”

“I am breathing.”

“Yeah, but do it slower.”

Cullen glowered. “Was there no other way to get to Washington?”

“I am not driving for nineteen and a half hours in a rental car. Maybe someday, in our own car, for fun and shit, but I’m not doing it just to move.”

Boong, boong. Flight attendants, please prepare for takeoff.

Cullen jumped at the announcement and squeezed Belle’s hand so tight her fingers began to tingle. His other hand clutched the armrest near the open window. The too-close Orange County morning sun glared rabid on the tarmac outside the thick plexiglass. She wondered if he knew how much she had to love him to give him the window seat.

“Do you need a Valium?” said the leathery woman in the aisle seat. “Or a Xanax? I’ve got both.”

Belle smiled her sweet, phony smile. “Nooo, thaaanks,” she said in the way only someone from Southern California could say it. “He’ll be okay. It’s just his first time flying.”

“This is unnatural,” said Cullen through his teeth.

The leathery woman giggled and reached across Belle’s lap to touch Cullen’s thigh. Belle made an ugly face in her shock and repugnance. The goddamn nerve of some fucking people.

“It’s science, honey. Perfectly natural.”

Belle cleared her throat and nudged the woman’s arm. They shared another phony smile as the leathery woman withdrew to her own space. She set about the task of ignoring everyone around her by putting in earbuds and starting “BIG” on the little screen stuck to the seat in front of her.

Belle shook her head, turning her attention back to her terrified…boyfriend still didn’t sound right. Cullen stared out the small window. The jets on the wings just behind them whirred to raucous life. She couldn’t feel her fingertips anymore. “Do you want to close the window?”

“What?”

“Do you want to see everything, or do you want to close the window?”

“I want,” he said between shallow breaths. “I want to see.”

“Okay.”

Everything began to rattle as the Airbus lurched down the runway. Cullen’s chest heaved. He had to be getting dizzy. The plane sped up until everything outside became a blur of soiled beige and shiny black. He gasped when the aircraft lifted off the ground, and the rattling all around them stopped. Her fingertips started to burn.

He leaned his forehead against the mottled plastic window frame and watched the ground recede. His breathing slowed amid the awe that spread over his face. His mouth hung open, and his grip on Belle’s fingers loosened. The pins and needles set in as the blood poured back into her digits. The plane flew west on its takeoff flightpath, and the wide blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean stretched out beneath them. Cullen looked out ahead, and said, “I have never seen so much.”

“So much what?” asked Belle.

“Everything.”

For the whole hour of their flight, he stared out that window and held Belle’s hand. She watched him watch the deserts fade into mountains, and the mountains blossom into forests. “You were right,” he said when the Pacific Northwest clouds shrouded the earth.

“About?”

“The clouds. It’s like a sea of cotton. And I have never seen sky so blue.”

When they began their descent, Cullen watched the rain part around the wing behind them. Belle explained that they were going so fast they cut through the air and the rain. She helped him pop his ears as the earth came into view once more in shades of gray, blue, and green. She endured the pins and needles in her fingers a second time when they went wheels down.

SeaTac was a much larger airport than the local one from which they’d departed. The volume of people was larger too. Belle rushed them through the terminals to avoid allowing Cullen enough time to become overwhelmed by the crowd. Once they reached the baggage claim, he scowled at the chute until their luggage appeared, both bags flipping end over end. He lifted them off the conveyor belt with enviable ease. Belle saw a few people watch him do it, and watch him for a little too long thereafter.

She had to stop him when he tried to unzip his bag to check on his sword and armor—he wouldn’t let her ship it ahead. It had been difficult enough explaining the blade and plate to TSA when they checked in. They didn’t need to be detained on their way out.

It was raining when they exited the terminal. Belle suppressed a grin at Cullen’s tentative mastery of sliding glass doors. He put his hand out from under the awning to feel the rain on his skin, and he looked at her with a kind of satisfaction. “Rain is the same everywhere,” he said.

She smiled. “Did you think it was going to come up from the ground?” He shook his head and kissed her forehead.

Her father picked them up in his green SUV a few minutes later. He told them he would have been there faster if anyone knew how to drive in this fucking airport. Belle let Cullen ride shotgun to avoid his carsickness.

“So, Cullen, how was your first flight?”

“Harrowing.”

“Ha,” said Belle.

They stopped at the car dealership on the way to her parents’ house. Cullen told her he wanted to ride home with her father, and she gave him a dubious look before he closed his door and they went on ahead. She verified the car on the lot was the car she ordered. It was bigger, bluer, and sportier than her last vehicle, which she’d sold in Orange County to make their move easier. She made her down payment, signed the paperwork, and followed a few miles behind her men. By the time she reached her parents’ house, her things had been unloaded from the SUV. She parked in the driveway beside it and went into the house.

“Belle? Is that you?” said Ilana’s voice from the kitchen.

“Nope. Just a murderer, here to do some murderin’. Don’t mind me.” Belle hung her raincoat on the rack near the door. “How many people do you guys give your keys to?”

“Oh, anyone who will take one, really.” Ilana’s voice grew closer as Belle followed it into the kitchen. “Dad just goes to the park sometimes and hands them out to vagrants. You know, in case they feel like robbing us blind or relieving us of our lives while we sleep.”

Belle laughed and hugged her stepmother. “I bet they appreciate that. No one likes a house that’s hard to burglarize. And murder is so much harder when the door’s locked.”

“It’s good to see you, sweetie. How’s your new car?”

“Fast.” An oddly familiar scent filled the warm kitchen and Belle’s nostrils. She sniffed the air. “What are you cooking?”

Ilana beamed. “Well, I did some Googling, and I found some recipes that I thought might make Cullen feel more at home. I decided on roasted mutton, potatoes, and root veggies. It’s weird, but I realized I’ve never cooked a parsnip before.”

Belle’s mouth watered. A year and a half ago, the thought of roasted mutton, potatoes, and root veggies would have sounded okay. Just okay. Never as amazing as it sounded that day. Despite being in her parents’ house, a place that was a second home for so many years, the food in the oven would be the first thing in a long time to give both her and Cullen even a fraction of that kind of comfort.

“Where is he, anyway?”

“Your dad took him into the garage to make sure his sword and armor made it through the flight okay. That’s so weird to say.”

“I know. Believe me, I know.”

Belle made for the door leading out to the garage. In front of the door, a heap of red Rubbermaid tubs marked “Camping” blocked her view of most of the room. “—t kind of steel is this? A few of the machinists I used to work with would be really into this craftsmanship,” said her father. The soft ping ping of a knuckle rapping against metal punctuated his remarks.

“It’s silverite. Steel armor is ill suited against enchanted weapons or magic. Templars are given silverite armor after completing their initiation. I was used to it, so I commissioned a modified version of that it upon joining the Inquisition.”

Belle rounded the Rubbermaids to see Cullen kneeling on a moving blanket on the floor with his armor spread out piecemeal. Her father sat on a tool bench. He was hunched over with a touch of awe on his face, running his fingers over the Templar insignia on one of Cullen’s bracers. “We don’t have silverite here. I wonder what the chemical composition of this stuff is.”

“Everything all in one piece?” said Belle, drawing their attention away from the armor.

Cullen stood. “It seems to be. It’s difficult to know for certain, but I don’t want to strike it without any way to repair it.”

“It’s pretty cool,” said Belle’s father.

“Did you boys have a nice ride home?”

“Yup. How’s your new car? You want to take me for a ride later? Maybe let me—I don’t know—drive it?” Her father gave her a signature Dolan family shit-eating grin.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Belle. “God, so desperate.”

Her father stood with a guttural groan. His pain had gotten worse while she was gone. She wished Eudora could have fixed his back too. He patted the spot between her shoulder blades where her tattoo proclaimed, “A Man Chooses,” in strong black ink. She hugged his waist. Cullen watched with a wistful look, a small smirk curling his lips and crinkling his scar.

Belle took her father out in her new car, as promised. They went to an empty school parking lot so he could do slippery donuts on the wet asphalt. They cackled together as the tires squealed and he cranked the steering wheel to the right, then to the left. She had missed him.

During their drive back to the house, she asked him what he and Cullen talked about after they left her at the dealership. He said, “Stuff.”

She struggled not to cry at dinner. Her backward nostalgia hit her like a truck the moment the first forkful hit her tongue. Her eyes burned, and her vision blurred. She could just make out Cullen hoovering the meal like it was his first, or his last. The flavors stoked memories of the early moments of their tenuous friendship, of dinners with Sera and Dorian and Bull, of lunches with Max and Josie and the visiting nobility, of Spencer. She barely maintained the wherewithal to tell Ilana that the food was delicious.

Her dreams were fitful that night. Barbarous and bathed in green. Her friends and her brother died and came back over and over, each death more heinous than the last. She tried to intervene. She screamed, she battled against the weight of her feet, and she called out to them to flee. Not one of them recognized her. Not one of them listened. They just died. Again and again, they died.

She and Cullen went to their new house the next morning. It was sunny. They met the realtor and the escrow agent for their first and final walkthrough before signing the closing documents. Everything was as Belle imagined. The bedrooms were large and clean. The master bathroom had a shower that was separate from the tub. The tan granite countertops in the kitchen gleamed. The plum tree in the backyard clung onto its last few leaves, each one the color of Cullen’s eyes.

Sparks didn’t fly when she signed the closing documents and handed over the cashier’s check. The heavens didn’t open, and the angels didn’t sing. It was all rather anticlimactic for the accomplishment of such a lofty goal. Her pen just scratched across some papers, and a stranger just took tens of thousands of her dollars with little more than a tepid “Congratulations.” He handed her the keys and a copy of the paperwork, and he and the realtor left.

Belle and Cullen stayed behind in the silence of their new home. He’d knocked on and jiggled a few things during their walkthrough, no doubt testing the flimsy modern craftsmanship. What wouldn’t seem flimsy after living in a place as staunch and fortified as Skyhold? But in the new silence, he just stared at the high living room ceiling.

“What do you think of it?” said Belle.

“It is…different.”

“Different than what?”

Cullen shifted on his feet. His movement was silent on the new carpet. “Since I was a boy, I thought I would live and die in a Circle or a Chantry House. That was the only way a Templar could honorably leave the Order. After joining the Inquisition, I did not have the luxury of time to consider what I might do if by some miracle I survived, let alone if we won. But I suppose I believed that, should I ever have a home of my own, I might have at least a hand in building it. This is simply…beyond my expectation.”

Belle laid down on the living room carpet. She sprawled out beneath the skylight, letting the muted warmth of the sun soak into her pale skin. She closed her eyes and breathed deep the lemon cleaner-scented air. “Well, we got a good deal. Cause I’m a Tom Slick, hotshot motherfucker who gets good deals. That’s what I do.” She smiled.

Cullen chuckled his three low chuckles. “I suppose it is.”

The sound of socks shuffling on carpet got loud and close, then the sound of someone laying down rustled up beside her. The weight of Cullen’s head came to rest on her stomach. She carded her fingers through his hair. They laid together in the sun puddle for a quiet minute or a quiet hour or a quiet day before she said, “You know, most of my furniture is old, hand-me-down crap. We need new stuff. So, if you want, you can still have a hand in putting this home together.”

Cullen wrapped his hand around her wrist and removed her hand from his hair. She frowned. He kissed the back of her hand, then pressed her palm to his chest. His heart beat a steady rhythm under her touch. Thuh-thump, thuh-thump, thuh-thump. She opened her eyes, and the sunlight bleached her vision.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Anytime.”

*****

[kaoruyogi]

DWC! Royalty AU. Belle and Cullen perhaps? ^_^ I'm feeling fancy today...

You’re getting a little twist with your Royalty AU, m’dear!!! I hope you like it! <3

For @dadrunkwriting

Pairing: Cullen Rutherford x Belle Dolan (Royalty AU one-shot)

Rating: T for Teen (sexual themes)

Your Highness

Belle was ambivalent about masques. On the one hand, themasks at masques were itchy as sin. On the other hand, the masks at masquesprovided one with a necessary degree of disguise.

That degree of disguise was the only reason the palaceguards had allowed Belle into the ball. That and a stolen invitation. In herview, the youngest daughter of the House of Nancarrow had no place at such anoccasion anyway. That her family expected a thirty-one-year-old prince,especially one so outwardly conservative as Prince Cullen, to select athirteen-year-old child bride was beyond sense and reason.

Belle’s place at the ball could have been considered equallyquestionable to the noble families in attendance. As she glanced around theroom at the barely concealed faces of the young ladies deemed most beautifuland most fertile and most noble in all of Ferelden, she recognized every singleone. Being a Friend of Red Jenny—indeed, oft being mistaken for the ladyherself on account of the color of her hair—knowing her targets on sight was anecessity. She watched them preen, fanning themselves and denying every horsd’oeuvre. She smirked, and snatched up a stuffed mushroom from a still-fullplatter as it passed.

While she smirked and chewed, the heraldry sounded. All thefancy ladies turned toward the steps of the vestibule, each adopting a morevulnerable and coquettish look than the last. Belle picked a piece of parsleyfrom between her teeth with her tongue.

The herald bellowed his announcement. “Lords and Ladies, presentingHis Highness, the Crown Prince, Cullen of House Rutherford!”

Everyone bowed and curtseyed as the man appeared at the topof the steps. Belle joined them, though she did not cast her eyes down as therest did. She watched the blonde prince’s lip curl into a snarl at theformality of it all. The scar he’d earned leading Fereldan troops into battleagainst Orlais wrinkled. He schooled his expression before the mass of eyesrose again.

He scanned the crowd for his first dance partner as themusic began. Belle raised her chin toward him, accentuating the swan line ofher neck and the pilfered diamonds dangling to the top of her breasts. Her bluegown displayed them all quite well, especially her breasts. The dress and thejewels would be gone in the morning, sold to feed the families in the Denerimalienage. So, she let herself be seen before they vanished once and for all.

And seen she was, by the exact person she’d hoped. PrinceCullen smiled his trained, cordial smile at her as he approached. Heoutstretched his hand and bowed. Belle curtseyed, deep enough to give him asplendid view, if he desired to look. He did.

“My lady, will you do me the honor?”

“The honor is mine, Your Highness.”

She took his hand, and he took her waist. They paused foronly a moment before following the motion of the music. She pressed herselfthree inches closer than would have been appropriate for a lady of her age andbreeding, if she had any breeding of which to speak.

“You found me,” she said in a low voice.

Her prince chuckled. “You made it rather easy.”

“I cannot be blamed for the color of my hair, YourHighness.”

Cullen’s fingers squeezed at her waist. His silk-glovedthumb caressed her knuckles. “Nor the cut of your gown, I suppose?”

Belle clicked her tongue thrice to chide him. “YourHighness, you cannot believe me capable of tailoring such a fine gown all on myown. Let alone that I would do so with such a scandalous intent as youinsinuate.”

Her prince held her closer as couples began to fill in thedancefloor around them. He spoke in hushed tones, concealed to all in earshotby movement and music. “Shall I see you tonight?”

She smiled, coy as a cat with a secret. “You are seeing menow.” A little frown turned his lips, and that scar stretched down. “Lina isworking in the kitchens tonight. She’s a friend.”

“A friend?”

“Not that kind of friend. You know full well I can’t tellyou who those friends are. Lina is a normal friend. She’ll leave the doorunlocked if I ask.”

“You have not already asked?” Cullen was warm against her.Very warm.

“That would have been rather presumptuous of me, now wouldn’tit? After all, you’re meant to be selecting a wife from the replete stock offine, frilly ladies here tonight, aren’t you?”

He made a tiny noise of disgust. “You know full well I haveno interest in any of that. Nor any of them.” His fingers squeezed again, andshe imagined him squeezing elsewhere. “I do, however, have an interest inseeing you out of this undoubtedly stolen gown.”

“Perhaps you should have me arrested and stripped of it, YourHighness.”

Cullen’s amber eyes bore a familiar hunger as he stared downat her. “I would rather strip you of it myself.”

The music slowed. “As you wish,” said Belle before parting arespectable enough distance between them to curtsey. They watched each othermove, ready for this dance and all the dances to end.

“Thank you, my lady,” he said.

“I am at your disposal whenever you desire, Your Highness.”

Belle watched him as she left for the kitchens. He stiffenedwhen he took the Lady Tremayne onto the dancefloor, his posture and expressionwound up tight once more. Belle laughed to herself and continued. She didn’tworry over Lady Tremayne or Lady Chegwin or any of the other noblewomen therepresent. Neither did she worry over the price her diamonds and her gown wouldfetch in the morning. She already possessed the most valuable thing inFerelden. She possessed Cullen’s heart. And he possessed hers.

***** 

[kaoruyogi]

How to Win Wars and Influence Nobles (Ch. 21)

Rating: E for Explicit/NSFW Content!

Check it out on AO3!

You’d think a video game lawyer could just drop into a pseudo-medieval universe filled with magic and demons and be totally okay with it, right?

Nah.

In the wake of her brother, Spencer’s, disappearance, Belle dropped into Thedas with luggage, but without a clue. After a brief but memorable panic attack, she resolved to be the best goddamn lawyer Thedas had ever seen. Even if she was the only goddamn lawyer Thedas had ever seen. And even if that obstinate asshole, Cullen, wouldn’t stop giving her the side-eye every time she walked into a room…Or every time he walked into a room with her in it…Or every time they walked into a room together…Or–Fuck it. You get it.

Chapter 21: Nerves of Shit

A person might have been persuaded to believe that when the Inquisition defeated Corypheus, there would be less work. This person might have been persuaded by those around them, or they might have persuaded themselves. This person would never really know who had been quite so convincing.

Belle might have been this person. She’d been certain that there would be less work dropped onto her desk in the month following Corypheus’s defeat. If anything, she thought the work load might be about the same. It might break even, at best. Never in her wildest speculations did she imagine that her workload would nearly double.

Since Max had returned victorious from the Temple of Sacred Ashes, requests and demands from the Thedosian nobility began flooding into Belle’s office, piling higher and higher every day. And she only got half of them. Nobles from Rivain to Tevinter to the Anderfells began pressing the Inquisition for its involvement or abstention in matters to the north, and every arranged marriage on the entire continent seemed to require some official decree or sanction to sustain its validity. So much work hit Belle’s desk that it was becoming difficult to see even an inch of the dark wood grain that held it all up.

Belle was not the only one for whom the work continued to multiply. Max was still needed all over Orlais and Ferelden, as rifts continued to open and darkspawn began popping up in both expected and unexpected places. Belle never really garnered a full understanding of darkspawn, only the gist that they were unnatural and bad, like sentient zombies. Within several weeks of his victory, Max was already on his way to someplace called “the Deep Roads” to help investigate the cause of a number of unusual earthquakes. He wasn’t a geologist, and he didn’t even know what tectonic plates were—not that Belle was such an expert, but, having lived in Southern California her entire life, she knew a thing or two—so she couldn’t understand why he, of all people, just had to be there.

Leliana had been elected Divine, which Belle surmised was the Thedosian pope, but she still had her fingers in every kind of pie under the sun while her transition was underway. When it came to shifts in social issues, mysterious deaths, or colossal religious reform, one needed look no further for a source than Leliana, or Divine Victoria, as she was to be called. Josephine was just as busy as Belle, dealing with the other half of the deluge of requests and demands. Cassandra embarked on a furious letter-writing campaign to rebuild her order of not-Templars-but-kind-of, the Seekers of Truth. Sera flitted in and out of Skyhold like a devious hummingbird with all her Red Jenny business, occasionally dragging Dagna along with her. Varric turned down bi-weekly requests to return to Kirkwall, and from what little Belle knew of the place, she couldn’t blame him. Cullen went to Edgehall to help the locals establish a new city guard in the wake of a massive pseudo-political upheaval.

The Arl of Edgehall had died, thereafter leaving several interested parties to engage in about ten or twelve years’ worth of infighting and shenanigans that left the Edgelhall Arling without a clear Arl. Hundreds of people died, walls rose and fell, and orphans were misappropriated. In the end, all it took to settle the region was a little elbow grease from Belle, Josie, and Leliana and a series of witty, dad-joke-filled missives to and from King Alistair. A new Arl was appointed with deference to work done to aid Ferelden and the Inquisition, and everyone seemed satisfied with the choice.

Cullen only agreed to help set up the city guard in person after Max did everything short of issuing a signed order. It should have been done by the locals, Cullen contended in his protests. They understood the needs of the people. But Max was dead set on presenting support from the Inquisition after all the organization had done to stabilize the Arling. Cullen begged Belle to accompany him before he left, and he made some good points in his pleas. There was still a little unrest in Edgehall, and it would serve everyone’s interests to have an attaché from the Inquisition visit with the new Arl while Cullen helped with the guard. Belle’s justification for staying was stronger. She had too much work to do in Skyhold. A heavy workload was Cullen’s kryptonite, his opposing element. It never failed to snuff out his resistance in a dispute.

He went to Edgehall without her, dragging his metaphorical feet the whole way. He planned to stay for ten days, though Belle persuaded him that he could stay longer if the new Guard Captain needed help after that.

Belle hadn’t convinced him to go because she wanted him gone. She wanted him near her, but she knew beyond her own desires that he needed to go for the good of the Inquisition and the people of Edgehall. They deserved a city guard trained by the best. Cullen was the best. When he left she smiled and waved him out of the portcullis, miserable as she watched him take a piece of her away. Her heart in his saddlebag. He wrote every evening so she would wake up to his letters, and she wrote every morning so he could fall asleep with hers. It was sweet and disgusting, according to Cassandra and Dorian.

Adding to Belle’s daily misery, on top of the crushing workload and the faraway boyf—partn—Cullen, her MP3 player’s battery finally gave out. It died four days after Cullen left, and Belle panicked. On a strange and silly kind of instinct, she rummaged through the months-untouched luggage encapsulating her former life, seeking her charger. School House Rock and Little Mermaid graphic tees and pair upon pair of yoga pants and denim jeans flew around the room amid her frenzy. Her charger was nowhere to be found. Not only was the micro USB cord missing, but every cord she’d packed seemed to have grown legs and meandered off. Her laptop power brick and cables were missing. Every wall and cigarette lighter plug was gone. Every tiny micro USB or USB-C cable and every miniscule adapter was lost. Belle crumpled and cried that morning. She cried for too long over the deprivation of menial things she could no longer use and could no longer have used. She returned to her duties after a brief eternity, puffy-eyed and lonely, and her paperwork swallowed her for another four days.

She was reading over the fiftieth or hundredth or seventeen billionth marriage contract to cross her desk when her door creaked open. She’d lost track of the time, and a rumble of her stomach led her to believe that someone might have brought her lunch. She flicked a glance at the door with a modicum of hope lifting her spirits only to see Jim standing in the opening. His bland face wore a bland expression of bland trepidation, and Belle’s shoulders drooped. She had come to expect nothing of import from the scout, and he had always delivered.

“Leave whatever it is right here,” said Belle as she placed an absent hand on the lowest pile of papers. Her incoming and outgoing document stacks stood in mismatched heaps in jarring favor of the former.

As she resumed her writing, Jim said something that she assumed was inconsequential, until “Rutherford” and “here” interspersed with the rest of his nothing words. She perked up at Cullen’s surname, though it was unlike Jim to refer to him in such a way.

“He’s back?” Belle set down her quill pen and flexed her hand. She ran her thumb over the groove on the last knuckle of her ring finger in a futile attempt to smooth it away. “He didn’t say anything about coming back early.”

“N-No, my lady. I said that the Rutherfords are here. In the courtyard.”

“Rutherfords?” She overenunciated the S to the point that it sounded like a series of Zs. “Plural?”

“Yes, ma’am. The Rutherfords are here. Your brother is greeting them, since he and his men were training in the courtyard when they arrived.”

“What?” The word came out long, low, and dumb. Jim fidgeted in the doorway. “Rutherfordzzz?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Belle’s expression dipped between perplexed and worried as she stood. She walked toward Jim, knowing she could see most of the courtyard from a spot on the battlements behind him. He opened his mouth, but a flippant wave of her hand and a vague shush shut it for him. Her fingers came to rest in star shapes in a low, rough crenellation.

In the courtyard, someone stood in the way only a twenty-three-year-old, too smart for his own good or anyone else’s, easy breezy brother of hers could stand. Across from him milled a sea of golden blonde curls in varying lengths and styles in front of a two-horse wagon. Two women and a man, cloaked and beleaguered, smiled as they opened and closed their mouths at Spencer. The shorter of the women turned to a man with dark hair and the two miniature humans tucked at his sides. The man reached over to clasp arms with Spencer. Another miniature human, bigger than the other two, emerged from the golden blonde sea with a mop of curls to match his full-sized counterparts.

Belle knew their names without hearing the introductions underway below. The tallest of them was Branson, Cullen’s younger brother. From this distance, they could have been the same man. The miniature human beside him was his son, Alden, born of a mother who died in the days following his birth. The tallest woman was Cullen’s youngest sister, Rosalie. She beamed, making wide gestures at the grandiosity of Skyhold all around her. Then there was Cullen’s older sister, Mia. She smiled a polite and tepid smile, though her head swung about from time to time. Her husband, Marcus, clutched their son, Owen, who had dark hair to match his father’s. Marcus also restrained their daughter, Dawn, by her tiny hand while she attempted to run off to explore, as four-year-old little girls were wont to do.

“Shit,” said Belle under her breath. She marched back into her office, fussing with her hair. “Fuck.” She fussed with her clothes, tugging and smoothing away imagined wrinkles until the garment no longer held its natural shape. “Oh my God. Shit.” She fussed with her neck, digging her ugly, naked nails into the flesh above her high collar while she tried to think of a way out of the inevitable situation into which she was about to be forced.

“M-My lady?”

“Fuck!” She jerked. She’d forgotten Jim. There he stood, staring at the nervous wreck of a woman she’d become in less than a two minute span of silence. Her nerves of steel had gone to shit. Nerves of shit.

“He’s not here,” she said. “They’re here, and he’s not here. I don’t know them. I don’t know if they know about me. What the fuck, dude?” Her voice went whiny, and she stamped her feet. She hated herself in these states of peevish fretfulness. “I’m so bad with siblings. I’m great with parents because, well, I mean, hello? Shit. I-I’m halfway to smart and I don’t have any crazy piercings or anything, and, like, how much more can you hope for at first sight, right? But I’m, like, never as cool as the siblings. They always think I’m a nerd. Big ol’ dork. Shit! And I’m dressed all weird…” She swept her outstretched hands over herself in demonstration. “But I look okay today, right? I look okay?”

“You look l-lovely, ma’am.” The sweat on Jim’s palms became obvious with the manner in which he opened and closed his gloved hands in front of him.

“Thank you. I don’t know why I’m asking you. This is stupid. I’m being stupid. I mean, I should just go down there, right? Just go down. Just, like, introduce myself, right? Yeah. Okay.”

Without waiting for another unnecessary word from her accidental sounding board, Belle exited her office through the door she used to get to the kitchen. Cartoon tires screeched in her ears when she stopped a few feet from her tower and pivoted to run back inside. She tore a piece of parchment and set to scribbling.

I know what I said. Come home NOW. Family’s here.

Belle rolled the paper up with the flat of her hand against the desk. She handed the small tube she’d made to Jim, who still stood dumbfounded in her doorway. “Get this to the Commander, ASAP.” She said it like she always said it. Ey-sap. Again, she made for the courtyard. Quiet stretched its vacuous fingers from where she left Jim. “That means now. I don’t hear your fucking feet moving.”

“Ah! R-Right away my lady!” His shuffling feet left a momentary respite in their wake. Cullen would be home soon. He would be there with his family, and he would sing Belle’s praises to his siblings, and they wouldn’t think she was a big ol’ dork.

Nerves and hunger mixed in her stomach, forming noisy butterflies to nauseate her. She had a terrible look on her face while she half-trudged toward Cullen’s family. She thought of all the things she should say, all the things she shouldn’t day, and all the things she didn’t understand. She settled on a simple greeting and hoped the milieu would drum up appropriate topics of conversation.

Belle was not an inconspicuous person. Red hair and a wardrobe composed of bright colors made her less than subtle. She could not sneak up on people from anywhere in their line of sight. It came as no surprise when the Rutherfords spied her coming from halfway across the courtyard. They watched her with furtive glances, still giving their halfhearted attention to whatever Spencer was saying to kill time.

Once they deemed Belle close enough, Rosalie was the first to break with social protocol. She turned her full gaze and her full body toward Belle. Belle smiled, casual as she was able, and waved. “Hi. I’m—”

“Belle!” Rosalie almost shrieked. She squealed as she ran the few short steps toward Belle with her arms outstretched. Belle grunted at the impact of their bodies, and she laughed out of an uneasy blend of amusement and compulsion.

“Oh, it’s so nice to finally meet you,” said Rosalie, squeezing Belle’s body in a vicelike grip too firm for someone her size. “Oh, I’m so happy! Oh!” Rosalie released Belle to hold them apart at arm’s length. “You are Belle, right? I would feel so terribly stupid if you weren’t Belle. It’s just you have red hair and I could only assume—Oh, but the Nightingale—the new Divine—has red hair too, doesn’t she? Are you the Nightingale? The Divine? Oh dear, I—”

Belle laughed again, this time out of relief. “I’m Belle. You had it right the first time, don’t worry.”

Rosalie squealed again and bounced, sending her long blonde curls into the air for a split second before she wrapped Belle up once more. “Ah, Belle! It is you! Thank the Maker!” Rosalie did not sound like her brother. Her dialect, if Belle had to place it, sounded more like Sera’s.

“It’s very nice to meet you, too. You must be Rosalie, right?”

The youngest Rutherford sibling pulled away again, aghast. “Oh no, I forgot to introduce myself. Ohhh…” She fretted and shook her head. “I’m so sorry. Yes. Rosalie Rutherford.” She released Belle altogether to curtsey. She took Belle’s hand in the way someone must have told her women of high society take other women’s hands. “A pleasure to meet you, Lady Dolan.”

Belle curtseyed in answer, a gesticulation she’d never liked much. The practice of appearing both benevolent and unyielding was made exponentially more difficult by bending. “The pleasure is all mine, Lady Rutherford.”

Rosalie giggled and blushed. Though she and Cullen shared a nose and some of their expressive features, she looked most like him when she blushed. Her eyes were blue, and the rest of her face bore a delicacy foreign to the other Rutherfords. “I’m about as far from a lady as a woman can get. Nowhere near your stature. But thank you.”

It was all Belle could do not to guffaw when the young woman mentioned stature. Everything Belle had was made up to suit the needs of the Inquisition. Leliana’s suggestion that Belle’s background be left vague enough for gossip to spread was adopted without argument. Rumors flew about her being the bastard daughter of King Maric, half-sister to King Alistair. Some people assumed she was the last child of a noble house in the Free Marches, adopted by a new family to keep her safe from the murderous intent of the unknown assailant still at large in Thedas. The Inquisition did nothing to quiet this scuttlebutt, and not even the drunkest noble would forget his manners enough to ask.

Rosalie’s blue eyes widened. “Oh!” She turned and waved behind her, motioning for the rest of the family to join them. “This is my brother, Branson,” she said.

Branson leaned forward, took Belle’s hand, and kissed her knuckles. Belle pressed her lips together to stop the amalgam of emotions from flying out of her face. He also had blue eyes, and they watched her as he stood. “A pleasure to finally meet you, Lady Dolan.” His voice was like Cullen’s, but not like Cullen’s. The pitch and cadence were different, and he had the same dialect as Rosalie.

Branson ushered his son forward. There might as well have been neon lights flashing over the kid’s head, buzzing and screaming their proclamation. This was what Cullen looked like when he was nine years old.

“This is my son, Alden,” said Branson.

Alden had an endearing confidence about him. Swagger. He mimicked his father, taking up Belle’s hand and kissing it. “Pleasure to meet you, my lady.” He bowed too deep, wobbling a little to keep his feet beneath him.

Belle bit back a grin and gave him an exaggerated bow in return. “I’m very pleased to meet you, too, Ser Alden.” The boy snorted. “And you, Branson.” The father smirked. Belle looked anywhere but at that smirk.

“This is our sister, Mia,” said Rosalie.

Mia stepped to the forefront, the matriarch of all that remained of the Rutherford family. Her married surname was Welles, but her face and build ensured she could never be mistaken for anyone but a Rutherford. Despite being shorter than Rosalie, Mia was by no means a short woman. Her hair hung behind her in a braid that peeked out from behind her cloak when she curtseyed. The movement was not a practiced one. Mia held none of the puffery or bluster displayed by her siblings. She had a fire and a humor in her chestnut eyes and a boldness in her carriage that communicated to anyone looking at her that she had seen what the world had to provide to people in her position, and she was undaunted.

“I’m glad to finally meet the woman who’s stolen my brother’s heart away,” said Mia in a voice more robust than her sister’s. She had a coyness in her grin that set Belle at ease by a small margin. She swept Belle into a gentler hug than Rosalie had provided.

“I’m thrilled to meet the sister that helped shape the man whose heart I may or may not have stolen away,” said Belle. The two women shared a short laugh, and Mia backed away.

“This is my husband, Marcus.” Marcus shook Belle’s hand, and they exchanged pleasantries. “And these are my children, Owen and Dawn.”

Owen had his father’s hair and his mother’s nose. That Rutherford nose. It unified the family, leaving Marcus looking a bit out of place. The boy took her hand and bowed a little. Belle appreciated the gesture from the shyest of the young cousins.

Dawn, every inch of her the picture of her namesake, tottered up to Belle. She looked back at her father for approval. When he nodded, she said in the smallest caricature of a little girl’s voice, “It’s nice to meet you. Do you want to be friends?”

Belle melted. She let the flow of her newly liquid body drop her into a crouch, as close to eyelevel as she could get to the sweet girl. She put a hand on her chest in an embellished gesture of shock. “Friends? You want to be my friend? Me?” Dawn nodded. “Thank you! Let’s be best friends, okay?”

Dawn giggled like a golden windchime before slamming back into her father’s leg to grip it tight. Belle stood. “You’ve all met my brother, Knight-Captain Spencer Dolan.” Spencer thumped a fist on his chest and bowed, wide smile displaying his orthodontically perfect teeth. Belle remembered that smile studded with silver braces and lime green rubber bands, somehow still charming.

“Yes,” said Rosalie. A timid and predatory grin took hold of her expression, all too familiar on the faces of people looking at Spencer. “We’ve had the pleasure.”

Belle rolled her eyes to herself. “He told you that Cullen’s not here, then?”

“Yup,” said Spencer. “I told them he’s in Edgehall on Inquisition business. I also told them I’d be happy to keep them company until he gets back.” He pointed his smile at Rosalie.

Belle rolled her eyes at him then. “Thanks a heap. I just wrote to him before I came down, and he should be back sometime tomorrow. I’m sure you’re all exhausted and probably about as hungry as I am right now. If it’s okay with you, I can have someone get your things and stable your horses, and I can take you to your rooms.”

“Rooms?” asked Mia. She overenunciated the S to the point that it sounded like a series of Zs, and Belle smiled.

“Yes.”

*****

“This is too grand,” said Mia, neck craned as her eyes fluttered over the intricate details of the room Belle chose for her and her husband. A Bann vacated only days before, and it was rather grand, indeed. Belle placed Branson and Rosalie in somewhat smaller rooms nearby, and they seemed happy enough for the space.

“It’s just grand enough, in my opinion,” said Belle. “You came a long way, and you’re on vacation.” She sang the final word, coupling the impromptu tune with her vacation hands—loose cha-cha fists swung in time with a couple awkward bobs of her head. Marcus snorted, and Mia looked at her like she was nuts. Owen had already taken a seat by the massive window and opened a tired book, and Dawn ran in itty bitty circles over the round rug in front of the fireplace.

Belle began to second guess her impulse to give the Rutherfords the finest the Inquisition had to offer. She’d done something like this before, and she watched an entire family shift its estimation of her from sweet to snobby. Buying a block of rooms in Las Vegas, a place Belle abhorred for nearly every reason people loved it, so her boyfriend’s family would be happy had backfired. They didn’t understand the gesture or her reason for making it. It wasn’t meant to show them that she had so much money or so much privilege that she could do something extravagant, but to show that she was willing to spend so much or use her pull to make them feel special.

“We can’t accept such generosity,” said Mia, too serious for Belle’s comfort.

“Well, I-I could only put you in so many places, and I won’t have you sleeping in the servants’ quarters or the barracks. I just—I meant no offense. I just wanted to show you how important it is to me that you feel comfortable with us. You came a long way, and you’re Cullen’s family. Hence—” Belle put her hands up, helpless against her own logic. “Grand.”

“But we don’t want special treatment. If this room is needed—if we’re displacing someone of greater importance, that is—we’d be happy to sleep elsewhere.”

“No, no, no. You’re not displacing anyone. And if you were, well, frankly, most of these people could stand to be taken down a peg or two. In any case, you are important. You’re very important, and I want you to be as comfortable as I can help you be while you’re in our home, as big and weird as that sounds. I won’t force you to stay in this room, but I’d be grateful if you would.”

“I like it in here,” said Owen. His voice was soft, but his tone was firm. Hallmarks of a boy who was an introvert not because he disliked people or because they made him nervous, but because he believed nothing should be said when it didn’t need to be said. His uncle hadn’t had a hand in raising him, but he’d turned out a bit like the man anyway.

Marcus cleared his throat. “We’d be delighted to oblige, Lady Dolan.” He gave her a cheeky bow. Belle smiled.

“You’re sure?”

“We are.” Marcus said it. Mia didn’t look it.

“Awesome. And please call me Belle. I still have a bit of work left to finish for the day. Do you mind if I send someone up with some lunch for you when I stop off in the kitchen?”

“Send someone up?” asked Mia. The couple glanced at each other.

“Yeah.” Belle was already walking out of the room, her urge to flee betraying itself in her harried strides. “Yeah, I’ll just have someone bring something up in a couple minutes. I’ll let you get settled for a little while, but I’ll be back for dinner. Okay? I’ll see you in a bit.” The door closed behind her, and her gut fell into her feet.

She fucked it up. Fucked it all up. She was certain as she walked down to the kitchen to make a sandwich and have food sent to Cullen’s siblings that she’d done everything she could to fuck it all up. They hated her. They had to. She was a spaz and a half. Who could abide a spaz and a half, especially a spaz and a half that was shtuping their estranged brother? No one in their right mind, that was who.

Belle stewed in her perceived failure for the rest of the day. It made her work more tedious, it made her snippier with scouts and messengers, and it made her bowls irritable. She still felt green when she left her tower to meet the siblings for dinner. What a feather it would be in the cap of her horrid first impression if she shat herself right there at the table.

Spencer had already made his ass right at home next to Rosalie by the time Belle arrived. Belle glared at her brother as she sat, and he flared his nostrils at her in a silent wisecrack. Branson and Marcus stood when Belle moved toward the table, and sat when she sat. She did her best not to allow her queasiness to manifest on her face as dinner was served. She needed everyone to enjoy the roasted goose, not think she was trying to poison them all with fetid fowl. In their mercy, the Rutherfords ate it. They heaped meat and vegetables onto their plates and thanked Belle and the Maker for the food. Belle smiled and watched, and she took a bite or two while everyone fell into conversation.

The group’s discussion flowed easily after the first few tense moments. The topics were perfunctory, filled with surface information most of them already knew about one another. Belle and Spencer bounced off each other, as they had always done. Branson, much to Belle’s surprise, kept pace with them, matching wit for wit at every opportunity. Rosalie tittered and giggled through it all, dropping in a few key words in a few key moments. Spencer watched her too much, and Belle kicked him under the table. Her swinging feet only served to embolden her brother, however, and every time she connected, he smiled broader and charmed the youngest Miss Rutherford harder. Belle wasn’t concerned with Rosalie’s virtue. She could handle herself from what Belle knew of her. Belle was more concerned with what might happen if Cullen caught wind of their flirtations.

Across the table, Marcus and the children laughed and ate, participating in the chatter and rabble when they saw fit. Belle knew the least about Marcus at the beginning of the evening, and she knew the most about him by the end of it. He had been a member of South Reach’s city guard when the Rutherfords fled there from Honnleath. He became a farmer only after Mia agreed to marry him, which she refused to do for years because she believed her siblings were too young. Meanwhile, Branson wedded and bedded another young woman in secret, and she was pregnant within a matter of months. Marcus was quite animated when he told the story of Mia throwing up her hands and saying, “Fine, I suppose I can finally marry you,” much to the delight of her affectionate sister. Everyone at the table laughed.

Except Mia. Belle watched throughout the meal, and Mia never crossed over from courteous to jovial. She wore a lukewarm smile for two hours. She picked at her food, moving it around the plate like a child trying to convince her mother that, yes, she had eaten her broccoli. No one else seemed to notice, or no one said anything. Belle, situationally self-absorbed as she was, wondered if she had done something wrong. Maybe it was their greeting, or maybe it was the room. Maybe Mia hated goose and was too polite to say anything. Whatever the reason for Mia’s reticence, it plucked at Belle’s anxiety until she couldn’t eat either. It was all she could do not to leap up and flee the table to wreck the communal privies.

The party parted with cordial farewells. Belle prayed to God and whoever else might be listening that Cullen could repair whatever she had done to offend Mia. She returned to her tower dejected and ill, despite the seeming success of the dinner. She set about the work she’d shirked to meet the siblings and dine with them, and she worked until the growling in her gut shifted from sickly to hungry and a headache began to blossom in her right temple. It was late enough that the cooks and kitchen workers would be gone for the night, so she made her way across the battlements and down the stone steps. The brisk night air cooled her airways with each breath, and the cold splintered and spread to her nerve endings to make her shiver once. She enjoyed the sensation. It made her feel tangible.

A small gasp startled her when she opened the kitchen door. She jumped, bringing one hand to her chest and bracing the other on the table beside her to keep from falling. Mia hovered over a semi round loaf of bread with a large knife sticking out of it. One of her hands sat on her chest, the other braced against the table. The two women stared at each other for a moment, eyes wide and bodies mirrored, until they let out a cumulative breath.

“I’m sorry,” they said, their voices overlapping.

“I’m sorry,” Mia said again. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I know I shouldn’t be here, I only—I can leave if—”

“No, no! Please stay. I just came down to do what it looks like you’re doing. Do you mind if I have a slice?”

“Of course not. It’s the Inquisition’s bread, after all.”

Mia cut the loaf and handed a piece to Belle before taking one for herself. They bit into the dark and doughy bread in unison, each chewing in silence. Belle distracted herself with the flavors rolling over her tongue and with thoughts of why she’d never liked pumpernickel before coming to Thedas.

“I have trouble eating food I didn’t have at least a hand in making,” said Mia. “I’m not accustomed to being served.”

Belle hadn’t considered that. It occurred to her then that she hadn’t considered much in the way of how Mia must have felt. She and her husband, children, brother, sister, and nephew had all made the journey from South Reach to Skyhold with the probable intent of seeing Cullen. They’d left their lives that were so different from Belle’s only to be greeted by a stranger upon their arrival and left alone in strange rooms that must have been alien when compared to the repose of their family home. Belle knew the feeling too well, and her guilt weighed heavier for it.

“I had trouble eating when I first got here, too,” said Belle. “It took a while for me to get used to it.”

“But I’d imagine you’re well accustomed to eating food prepared by other people. I feel silly even bringing it up.”

Belle recalled four star restaurants, then she recalled McDonald’s. “Not in the way you’d think. Don’t feel silly, though. I feel terrible for not even thinking about it. That was really thoughtless and ignorant of me. I apologize.”

“Oh no, don’t feel bad. It’s only—” Mia paused for a long while. She looked at the floor as if the words she’d thought to say had fallen onto the smooth cobble. “You know, I thought I had a good idea when I told everyone we should come and surprise Cullen. It’s been so many years since we’ve seen him, and he was finally writing more, and the Inquisition did so much to keep us safe. Perish the thought that he might not have wanted to see us or, Maker forbid, that he might actually be away when we arrived. Such is the nature of surprises, I suppose. Surprises and my silly, stubborn brother.”

“I know he would have wanted to be here. He loves you all very much. He’s been talking about when we might have time to come and visit you.”

Mia smiled. “He loves you too, you know. He writes about you more than he writes about himself sometimes. I suppose that’s why Rosalie thought she knew you so well.”

“She probably does.” Belle laughed, and Mia’s smile widened. For the first time since they’d met, peace settled over them. “I should have been more hospitable when you arrived. It’s just I’ve been overloaded with work since Max—I mean the Inquisitor killed Corypheus. That and I was terrified none of you would like me without Cullen here to sort of soften the blow of…well, me, I guess.”

“Nonsense.” Mia spoke with her mouth full before shuffling some of the chewed bread to the side. “You’ve been very hospitable. You’ve already fed us twice. Three times.” She held up what was left of her slice of bread. “And you gave us nicer rooms than we ever thought we’d see in our entire lives. The room you put us in is nearly the size of our entire house! It’s a bit daunting, honestly. How does one person take up all that space?”

“I think their egos take up most of the space.”

Mia chuckled. It was a pleasant sound that reminded Belle of Cullen’s laugh. Three soft chuckles, lined up and spread out. “I can only imagine. But I appreciate everything you’ve done. For us and for my brother. He sounds different in his letters now than he did a year ago. Not that he was writing much a year ago. I’ve had to search halfway across Thedas for that man more than once, but this is the first time in years I’ve felt like I won’t have to do that again.”

“I’m really glad to hear you say that,” said Belle.

“So am I.”

They left the kitchen with fond good nights uttered between them. Belle’s fears, although still heightened and vibrant with every thought of every possible outcome of the rest of the visit, began to dissolve. By the time she shed her clothes and laid down for the night, she almost looked forward to the following day. Cullen would come home, and she would see the joy on his face when he reunited with his siblings and met his niece and nephews. Belle thought of all their faces, picturing them in the soft light of a Hallmark world or a holiday commercial for something other than Lexus SUVs topped with ungainly bows. They would share stories and be a family, and she would see every kind of love that Cullen had to offer. It would be beautiful.

Then Cullen would kill Spencer.

*****