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On Guard

Dragon Age Origins Cullen Rutherford x Female Surana Warden Ser Cullen is attempting to guard the library in Kinloch Hold, and determinedly ignoring the Grey Warden attempting to speak to him. Especially after what happened here not long before....Especially when it's HER.

He doesn't know how to handle seeing HER again.

Warden Surana & gang have had to return to the Circle Tower on a quest, and she takes the time to try to get some sense through to her old friend and first love, but he isn't listening. She isn't even sure who he is any more. Set a short time after the events of Broken Circle Written for @chaos-company’s Angstpril 2022, Day 22, Caught Off Guard (On AO3 here) ===================================================

Damp had a way of encroaching upon the senses. It could slip undetected beneath one's perceptions, an infiltrator sullying everything around it: it became the nausea growing at the back of one's throat, cloying at the flesh like an infection; the suspicion that one's armour was chafing due to some fundamental disintegration within its straps and padding; the creeping conviction that the air entering one's lungs was doing some ill amongst the good. A simple detail, and one that was endemic to places like this, yet near-impossible to remove, and its effects still insidious even if one manages that. And then, that was assuming that it does not return - which, of course, it does.

The templar shifted his stance a minimal degree, relieving the pressure and resulting pins and needles in one leg and easing his weight onto the other. With a minor false move, barely a mistake made, but a mistake made nonetheless, pain shot suddenly and violently through one whole side of him, jarring his nerve-endings from the buckling cramp in his calf up to the underside of his skull. He suppressed a grunt of discomfort in the echoing chamber. Around him, the Kinloch library remained unchanged. Even the dust in the air hung heavy with age, here; every softened shelf and sagging book was as immovable as it was corroding, the room permanent yet ill-fated as a tomb. Nothing changed, and yet all would deplete. It would erode, in time - every piece of it. Not soon enough.

Pain speared through the templar’s skull once more, this time behind his eyes. It had been doing that all morning, increasingly so. He shut them, waiting in the dark for a returned control, then forced them upon once more before that control came. An assassin drawing from its sleeve, the dull light greeted him with knives, unexpected yet no blunter for that. Suppressing another grunt, the soldier made war with himself, fixing his eyes once more on the archways of the double-doors ahead. Below his gaze, a circular table took up much of the chamber, all else in the room angles around its circumference, but peripherally, flanking the doorway, all he perceived were the shelves, the dust.

Ser Cullen flexed his jaw, experimenting as he shifted the pressure within his temples this way and that, rolling it around in his head as one tests a broken bone or rolls a fretted coin over one’s fingers. His armour had been poorly affixed this morning - one pauldron was sitting slightly higher than the other. Not enough to see, he would wager, but he made a study of the discrepancy against his shoulder blades.

Responding to a source of movement that did not appear to be ceasing, the templar’s eyes lowered at length, passively observing the figure ahead of him. Elven, female: she was on the far side of the table, its notable breadth between them, its surface bearing tommes and notes of her colleagues. Her white hair was falling long and loose - an array that he was unused to seeing on her, at least in reality. She appeared to be in some form of distress: her cheeks were wet, eyes red, mouth moving with emphatic words. The knight watched as her hand made impact with the table: it bore more rings than it used to. Enchantments, no doubt.

"....Apologies, Warden Surana. Was there something further you required?" He watched the mage start, eyes widened, mouth agape. “What? Cullen. Please. Have you even been listening to me?” “If the Wardens have everything they need from our library, I can escort you back to the main gates.” The templar moved his attention on, or, he went to, but then the mage did something that demanded unwilling focus: it moved. Stepping forwards, it began to come around the table, approaching him. The templar’s legs jerked backwards, launching him a step backwards without his consent. His skull responded, as did the deadened pain in his calf.

“Cullen…” The mage’s brows furrowed in a mimicry of emotion. “This is me. Why are you…?” It extended a hand towards the templar; Cullen flinched and stiffened, jaw tensing as he forced himself under control, his skull responding to the movement with what felt like shards of shattered bone. It continued. “What happened…I - I can’t even imagine. We need to be able to talk about this... You’re not alright. Let me help...” Cullen’s eyes were fixed upon the hand, hovering half-extended towards him. At his back, his skin was thinly slicing itself away from his spine, curling and gathering in retreat. A possessive force attempted to steer him to smack the limb away: he resisted, tendons flexing in his head and neck. It - she - was still speaking. It became easier to ignore, bar the ongoing sensation of his skin’s retreat, until, with a dull impact, the unthinkable was done. The mage’s hands smacked against his breastplate. The temptation of impulse was sudden and brutal, less a seductress’ whisper than an abrupt, unwelcome seize from an uninvited hand. It would take three movements: pin that arm behind her, her face to the ground, a sword through her neck. Freedom, bliss, holy retribution blowing the roof off of this tower and finally letting in air. For a moment, the migraine left him, just at the thought. It pressed back in. “Warden. We are not in Weisshaupt. Step back. I will not ask again.” Finally, after hesitation, the invasion ceased. The issue retreated, removing itself once more. Meanwhile, the pain in Cullen’s temple pulsed, drilling down deeper. This would not leave, even with her exit. Not without help.

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