Explicit | Cullen x Trevelyan | Hawke x Trevelyan | WC: 500K + (WIP) | DA:I | Epic | Multiship | Slow burn | Fast burn | Complications While Saving the World
Chapter Summary:
Fleeing the would be assassin hiding within the Inquisition ranks, Rose and Cullen strike out on their own path across Orlais.
Fic Summary:
Lady Rose Trevelyan is in over her head.
Her attendance at the Conclave was only meant to distract her from her failures as a daughter. And then it blew a hole in the world. Marked by an unknown magic, armed with only a few relevant skills, Rose fumbles and fights her way across Thedas with a band of shockingly deadly oddballs dedicated to stopping— well, all of it. As apocalyptic forces conspire to break and remake her, Rose is snared between the tentative devotion of the Inquisition’s stalwart commander and the fierce love of legendary warrior Garrett Hawke, two vastly different men both haunted by hindsight.
Excerpt under the cut 👇
It’s not his demons that wake him this time, but hers. He’d extricated himself from the hold he’d had on her earlier and spread out his bedroll in the narrow band of space on the floor and laid there awake fighting guilt, wondering what exactly Hawke had meant by ‘looking after her’ and how far past the line he’d gone. He’d held her. That was all. Not that it hadn’t ignited a fierce longing inside him, but there was nothing untoward.
It’s barely a whimper that jerks him to his senses, sending him grasping for the hilt of his sword beneath the bed. Above him, Rose sits upright, smoothing the blankets over her legs.
“Rose?”
“Nightmare.” Moonlight casts a diamond paned shadow over her, a little like a cage.
His insides tense. She’s a dreamer. Is anything ever just a nightmare?
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No. Could you just… tell me he’s gone?” she whispers.
“Hawke?” he asks. Rose nods. Cullen remembers the need he’d once had to hear reality repeated back to him. Still, there’s a brutal ache in his chest. “Hawke died in the Fade. Alistair, Vivienne, Solas and Cole saw it.”
“Alistair said he threw himself off a cliff— all the fearlings giving chase. But— you don’t fall in the Fade the same. You can shape it with your will.”
“You think he survived the fall.”
“No, I—” Her shoulders slump. “I don’t know.”
“They described the blow he took. The size of the wound. He wouldn’t survive it, Rose. And they wouldn’t have left him there if he would have,” he says. Moonlight reveals a pearly thread across her cheek. He can feel the hot creep of his own potential tears. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” she murmurs.
“Why?”
“Because I need the reminder,” she says. “The dreams are so real. I start second-guessing…” Cullen reaches and lays his hand over her ankle through the blanket, a stolen touch, he admits, but she doesn’t object.
“You should try to get some more sleep. It’s two more days until Val Foret and there won’t be a proper bed tonight.”
Rose lies down again, the ropes of the bed squawking. Cullen follows her example, reacquainting his shoulder blades with the floor.
“Won’t we be exposed in Val Foret? People might recognize us.”
“We’re lying low,” he answers. “Leliana’s contact there is a laundress.”
“And getting there? We’re a bit recognizable.”
“I’ll wear a hat.”
The silence drags on so long he figures she’s gone back to sleep.
“What kind of hat?”
Cullen smiles. “I’ll tell you what. You can decide.”
Silence again.
“You shouldn’t give me that kind of authority.”
“You already have that authority. Technically.”
If only he could hear smiles. He’d like to know if he inspired one.
She doesn’t speak again, the quiet giving way to the whisper of breath through her nose. Cullen finds himself praying silently. He doesn’t dare ask anything for himself, instead reserving it all for her, for the challenges that lay before her and all the others. That she might find the strength to carry on.
His own feelings are immaterial.
The tension in his chest can go straight to the Void.
But when has love been anything other than a festering wound?
