Chapter Text
One breath Cullen is heaving his shield up and over his head to protect from the rattling force of a blow that shakes him down to his very bones, the next he is stumbling through damp sand – his sword sheathed, his shield holstered on his back – with damningly familiar armour encasing him. Cullen blinks again, and then once more, but his vision remains clear and unwavering. He knows, now, with a sudden certainty, that what he is seeing is no vision conjured by demons from the fade – for one, no creature of desire would show him visions of this maker-be-damned coastline, and that even when he was trapped there, they had never been able to so perfectly replicate the heady thrum of lyrium as it wound its way through his veins, bringing with it that surety of strength and clarity of thought that so easily soured to paranoia and delusion.
Another long moment later, after taking further stock of his condition, Cullen recognises exactly where he is on the Wounded coast.
More importantly, he recognises when.
This is the day he set out to the coast outside Kirkwall in order to search for one of the missing knight-recruits, Wilmod, and more importantly is the day he met the indomitable Garret Hawke and his patchwork group of companions.
Grunting slightly at the thought of the oncoming headache that was Hawke, Cullen started forwards from where he’d stumbled to a halt, and for lack of better ideas began trudging his way up the slope to the ruins where what used to be knight-recruit Wilmod had made his camp. It doesn’t take him long. Once he gets there, Cullen can see not-Wilmod bending over a campfire and tending to the flames.
Maker only knows what possesses him to do what he does next rather than just end this abomination where it stands – perhaps some faint sense of fondness for the recruit that used to be so keen to learn despite his uncertainty, or a desire to try and salvage the situation, because despite the hairs on his arms prickling, and the roiling nausea that always came upon him around traces of blood magic, he still thought that he might be able to save the boy before him from a fate he wouldn’t wish on any being – and so rather than unsheathing his sword from where it was resting against his side, he steps forwards towards Wilmod and clears his throat.
The boy startles, but before he can say anything, Cullen speaks.
“Knight-recruit Wilmod, may I ask what you are doing here? Both you and Knight-recruit Keran have been missing for quite some time.”
Andraste’s sake, you’re being too soft, he’ll never respond to his Knight Captain like that.
“Oh! Knight-Captain Rutherford, ser! I-I- uh …” he trails off into silence, unwilling, or perhaps unable, to say any more.
Cullen raises a single eyebrow and levels a dry, disappointed look at Wilmod, one that he had cultivated over his time with the inquisition that could set even Rylen to shaking in his boots.
“Andraste’s sake Wilmod,” he sighs, “I cannot help either you or Keran if you do not tell me where you have been. I will either have the truth from you now, or the Knight-Commander will take it later.”
By the maker, he was bringing Meredith into this now – already sliding his way back down into habits best left forgotten in the cesspit of Kirkwall.
“Mercy, ser, mercy. Please, I can’t say anything!” Wilmod cries out.
Cullen takes a single step towards the recruit, and, drawing every ounce of the Commander into his voice, hand wrapped around the pommel of his sword, snaps out “For Andraste’s sake, Wilmod, give me the truth now and I can help you!”
Wilmod yelps out another “Mercy! Please don’t hit me, ser.”
At that damningly familiar line, Cullen hesitates in his attempted interrogation just long enough for a wry voice to sound off behind him:
“I though Templars only interrogated mages in this manner. Nice to see that you’re branching out.”
And there, in all his self-assured glory, was Garret sodding Hawke.
Flanking him was his brother, Carver, who muttered out a quick “Don’t, it’s the knight-captain.”, the ever-present shadow of Varric, and the pirate Isabela. Turning to face the newcomers and says, still stunned by Hawke’s sudden youthful appearance, much the same thing as the last time - “Well met stranger, but this is templar business, and I’d thank you to stay out of it.”
He knew Hawke wouldn’t listen, and that it would be better if he didn’t, but he couldn’t help but fall back on remembered protocol and mannerisms – the Order dealt with its own, after all.
Before Hawke can formulate yet another witty comment, the figure of what was now definitely not Wilmod drew itself up impossibly tall, and cried out “To me!”, transforming into the warped, spindly body of a shade. Four other mutated figures sprung up from the ground, all of them abominations, and launched themselves towards their foe.
Snapping into action, instincts honed by all the time fighting at Lavellan’s heel against the otherworldly foes of the Inquisition, Cullen unsheathed his sword and parried the first slash of dagger-sharp claws to his face, directing the clawed hand down and away from him before flipping the grip of his sword round to catch the beast upside the head with the pommel – granting him the half-moment of reprieve it took to sling his shield down from its resting place and into his palm.
Behind him, Cullen could hear the muffled clang of daggers hitting flesh, the whistle-thud of Bianca’s arrows and the thrum and crash of Hawke trying to fight discreetly.
Another swipe of the claws lands on his shield this time, as he brings it swinging around in front of his body, and counters that strike with one of his own, catching on the meat of the Shade’s arm and scoring a long line down the length of it, drawing an ear-rending screech from its jaws as it rears back away from him. This exchange of blows continues for a while, Cullen sinking into the rhythm of the fight – strike, parry, dodge, parry again – until a panicked curse from somewhere behind him and to the left draws his attention. He whirls in place, his training to act as the shield of any party he’s in sending him bounding over to where Hawke is being cornered by an abomination at such close range that he would struggle to use most of his wide repertoire of spells, and catching the glancing blow at an awkward angle on his shield before Hawke can even bring the bladed end of his staff up and around to counter the attack. Focused as he is on guarding his teammate, Cullen forgets the shade he was just entangled with until a sudden white-hot line of pain burns itself down the right side of his face – its claws rake their way across the edge his jaw and score down the soft flesh of his neck, before being deflected by the silverite edge of his gorget.
Suddenly dizzy, he stumbles back, sword clattering to the floor as his hand clamps itself to his neck to stem the flow of blood. It is with great effort that Cullen manages to swing his shield in a wide arc, the edge biting into the shade’s neck and felling it in retaliation. With his job done and his legs suddenly feeling like they are mired in a swamp, he sinks gracelessly to his knees, gloved hand struggling to keep its purchase on the slippery surface of his neck, blind to the remains of the fighting going on around him.
As his vision starts to grey around the edges, Cullen sees a worried pair of eyes float into view, and his last view is those sad Amell eyes above him.