Chapter Text
Chapter Seven: Wedding at the Winter Palace
This, thus, was what the Maker brought to pass –
Cole comes to Cassandra’s door, a week after the nominations were announced. “There’s something I want you to have.”
It’s a locket, a gold one, so simple that it’s impossible to say if it’s of Nevarran or Fereldan make. She holds it in her palm, afraid to open it.
“Don’t worry. I did it the right way,” Cole says, misunderstanding her hesitation. “I left money for the seller. A lot of money. For the two lockets, and the paints.”
The locket swings open easily with a click.
She’s startled to see herself inside – and yet the likeness seems strange. In the portrait, she has a certain light in her eyes, a soft smile.
“It’s how he sees you,” Cole says, motioning for her to put it on.
The chain is unusually long. The locket goes right over her heart. It’s heavier than she expected. Matches the physical ache inside her.
The Divine couldn’t be seen to own a locket like this with a man’s portrait in it. It would raise questions, could be used falsely against her. Leliana would probably make her destroy it, Cassandra thinks, suppressing a shudder. But this would be safe.
She thanks Cole profusely. He shrugs, not looking for any kind of thanks.
“He said it’s usually the other way around. But I thought you should have this one. You already know how you see him. You won’t forget that.”
And then it was three years since the Inquisition defeated Corypheus. Three years since she became Divine Justinia with Leliana as her Left Hand. But it feels as though she’s accumulated three hundred years of turmoil, just for this day.
In their quarters at the Winter Palace, where the Exalted Council will convene tomorrow to help decide the Inquisition’s fate, Leliana helps her dress.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Leliana murmurs. “You wouldn’t even have to know I was there.”
Cassandra shakes her head. “But come get me if I’m not back in an hour.”
“One hour?” Leliana says sternly.
Cassandra swallows. “Half an hour.”
Even that seems too much, Cassandra thinks, and still not enough, when she sees Cullen leaning against the railing of the balcony overlooking the garden, exactly where Leliana had suggested they meet. Private, but not secret, she’d said. It seems to take an age to reach him, beyond how her long robes restrict her movement.
He looks a little older – but stronger than ever. “Cassandra,” he says, the first to speak, and she realizes she’s been holding her breath. No one has called her by that name for a long time. Hearing his voice alone is almost overwhelming.
“Cullen. It’s good to see you. You look so well.”
“You look…”
He is seeing her in the sacred vestments for the first time. By now she’s seen the whole range of reactions it can provoke. Her uncle – who struggles to walk now, and hasn’t practiced his magic for years, as far as she knows – touched one of her sleeves with awe, as delicately as though it were a butterfly’s wing. The Inquisitor laughed out loud and said, “You look like a meringue.”
Only Cullen looks at her exactly the same way as he did three years ago, with as much joy as hurt.
“Anxious,” he says softly, and she blinks. That was one word she didn’t expect to hear.
For a moment her mind clears. She says something about the Fereldan and Orlesian ambassadors, and he nods in response. Apparently she’s coherent.
“Thank you for your letters,” she blurts out, far too formally for this point in the conversation. She’d meant to say it at the very beginning, but the sight of him had neatly displaced the thought, for all she’d rehearsed it. The distance between them seems to double. “I apologize that I have not been able to write back more often.”
“Scattered thoughts don’t merit such attention.”
“Your words do not want for merit, when they come to me from your hand.”
She can tell that he adds to his letters a little each day, sometimes crossing whole lines out, only to write them back in below. She writes to him in the same way, when she can.
Lingers over every unfinished line.
Feels their words strain beneath the weight of all they wish they could say.
… yet I feel that I stand in your shadow. Has it seemed to you…
… thought that if I did the right thing, eventually my heart would follow. If that is what has happened…
… when what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. Could it be that…
Meanwhile, here, overlooking the palace grounds, they keep on conversing, apparently with ease again, though Cassandra hardly knows what she’s saying. She asks him about the sanctuary he has been preparing to found for former Templars, and those who have succumbed to the adverse effects of lyrium. He says, “I’ve said I would never have managed to stop taking lyrium, if not for you. The others don’t know this, of course, but – it was the hope of being together with you some day that kept me going. I feel fortunate to have had that. It may have been short-lived, but it was not false. And it is from that still that I give hope to others.”
She says something in response.
He replies. His voice is hard and bright.
She says something else, and he replies again.
They keep this up for some time, talking faster and faster all the while. Right before her very eyes, he is becoming less and less himself. She realizes with a start where she’s seen people talk like this – after trauma. Trying a little too zealously to hold themselves together.
His answers don’t quite make sense anymore. “It’s a child who sulks when he can’t have everything he wants, thinks the world and the Maker unfair because of it. Should I get hung up on the one thing I can’t have? I should think on my other blessings. I have my work, my health, my mind. That is much more than most have had. Isn’t it?”
She finds her voice. “Cullen, I think you should sit for a moment.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re scaring me.”
He looks genuinely taken aback. Sits down suddenly on the steps. She gingerly sits down beside him.
She’s about to tell him to take a few slow breaths, when he blurts out, “Forget everything I’ve said so far.”
“Cullen – ”
“Cassandra. Maker help me, Cassandra.” He holds her in his gaze, searching her expression. “The only thing I wanted to tell you was that I love you still. I resolved that no amount of suffering would take that away from me. I love you, Cassandra. I always will.”
She tries to tell him the same, but he holds a finger up to her lips without actually touching her –a touch would shatter them both. “Don’t say it,” he says. “I shouldn’t have – I knew you would feel obligated to – you are the Divine.”
“No less have I longed for you,” she says, finally giving herself away. “I think about you every morning, every night. I wanted to tell you sooner. Forgive me.”
“Forgive me,” he says brokenly.
“Do you…” She exhales. “Do you wish we hadn’t…”
He shakes his head. “If we had only been friends, we might be better friends now.” He paused. “But no, Cassandra, I have never regretted anything we did. I could never regret anything about you. Even the pain.”
She closes her eyes. “I feel the same way.”
His voice sounds as though it’s coming from a long way off. “Do you think you made the right decision in yielding to the Maker’s will?”
She bows her head. “I do.”
“Do you ever think you should have chosen differently?”
“I do.”
What they have done, she thinks, they have done. This impossible wedding of what they want and what they cannot have. If this is as much as they can get, then she will do her best to cherish it. She will die trying.
Knowing their time is almost up, she gets to her feet, stammering something about Leliana expecting her back. She hates that she’s strayed back into not saying what she really means. She makes one last attempt.
“Cullen, I am so sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” he says at once. “I’m sorry I said you looked anxious, when you arrived. I was the one who was anxious. All I could think was how beautiful you look.” He is crying now. “In white.”
Back in her chambers, Leliana is waiting serenely, the picture of patience.
“I was going to give you a few minutes’ grace,” she says, rising.
Cassandra shakes her head.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Leliana asks softly.
The question in her heart escapes. As in – she feels the loss, as it spills from her mouth. “Must I keep choosing?”
Does the Maker love a lost cause?
For once, Leliana does not set about answering her. She just helps her out of the headdress and robes, sinks into bed beside her, and holds her for as long as she can.
Rocks her, though she will not go to sleep.
Sings her lullabies.