Chapter Text
Winter had come to Skyhold. Cullen stood on the icy battlements, his cloak pulled tight around him as he looked out across the frozen valley. It was beautiful and forbidding, the dark rock of the surrounding mountains now almost obscured by a veil of white, the sky above pale grey and promising another storm. Almost at the same instant he thought it, the breeze picked up, bringing with it the first drifting snowflakes. Cullen shivered, and pulled the fur collar higher around his neck. There was no-one else in sight: Skyhold’s population had been much reduced with the defeat of Corypheus and the threat of a mountain winter, and those who remained at the fortress mostly had the sense to be indoors. But Cullen welcomed both the solitude and the cold. As the snow began to fall in earnest he took a deep breath of frigid air and closed his eyes.
His head and joints ached dully, an ever-present throb that would become less bearable as the day wore on. Time had eased the intensity of it, concentration could push it from his awareness, and enough elfroot could banish it entirely for a time… but it was never truly gone. The soft, thrumming power of lyrium pulsing through his body had been replaced with the endless ache of its absence.
He had expected that things would get easier with Corypheus’ defeat. When Inquisitor Lavellan had returned from the Temple of Sacred Ashes, triumphant, impossibly unscathed, the relief Cullen had felt wasn’t solely for the sake of Thedas’ safety; he had believed that, surely, more than one battle had been won for him on that day. If he could forego the lyrium during a war, with the heavy mantle of Commander on his shoulders, it would surely be easy in peacetime. But it was not so simple. There was less pressure, less relentless work, but that proved a double edged sword. With the world at stake, he’d barely had time to think; he had functioned because so much depended on it, even as his head pounded and his skin crawled with chills and he barely slept for fear of waking the soldiers in the tents around his with his nightmares. No matter how much he needed the relief of lyrium, the Inquisition needed him more. With the pressing threat gone, and too much time on his hands, it was harder to push away his body’s cravings. What would it matter, now? If he lost his mind, or his life, to the bliss of a blue philter – well, he had done his duty when it really mattered. And at least the fight would finally, truly, be over.
This was self-indulgence; he would not give in, he knew. He had promised the Inquisitor. He had promised himself. The demons of Kinloch Hold had not broken him, and neither would this. He set his jaw and opened his eyes to stare into the eddies of snowflakes.
And through them, a dark shape moving caught his attention. Just cresting the steep incline at the far side of Skyhold’s bridge, a lone figure stumbled unsteadily through the snow.
That snapped him out of his reverie; Cullen balked at the very thought of travelling in this. He remembered all too well the bitter cold of their exodus from Haven, and that had been early spring. Few would brave the journey in winter proper. After the defeat of Corypheus, the endless series of deliveries, messengers, dignitaries and envoys had slowed to a trickle; as the snowfalls increased and the temperature plummeted, they all but stopped.
Watching the traveller approach through the gusts of falling snow, Cullen immediately felt that something was not right. They were barely keeping their feet, veering from side to side as though drunk; there was some kind of staff on their back, and the weight seemed to be throwing off their balance even more. They staggered towards the bridge – Maker, the bridge. A rush of cold fear went down Cullen’s spine, and he pushed off the wall in front of him. The Skyhold bridge stretched across empty air, bordered by a scant lip of raised stone. Attempting to cross it on unsteady feet, in this weather, was suicide.
Just as Cullen turned for the stairs, he saw the traveller stumble and drop to their hands and knees. After a moment, they heaved the weapon from their back into the snow beside them, and tried to get back up – but dropped to their knees again.
Cullen let out the breath he’d been holding, before he hurried across the battlements and down the stairs as quickly as he could over the icy stone. When he reached the gatehouse, he found two guards seated on upturned crates, pulled in close beside the corner stove and its tiny fire. The guardswoman facing the door saw him first: “C-Commander!” she yelped, leaping out of her seat and saluting as he entered. Her companion was only a heartbeat behind her.
“Sivair, Hassup.” Having such a reduced force at Skyhold had its advantages: he could reliably put names to faces for once. They were both young, and had seen more than their share of hardship – Sivair had been a refugee from the Orlesian civil war, and Hassup was the only one of his family to survive the Ferelden Blight. He opted to spare them the harsh reprimand they likely expected. “This is terrible weather for guard duty,” he conceded briskly, “but at least one of you has to be upstairs actually keeping watch. Someone is approaching, and it seems they need aid.” He saw that Sivair’s teeth were chattering no matter how she tried to clamp them shut. The winters in the Dales were mild, and her cloak looked far too thin for this sort of chill. “Sivair, go and inform Ser Morris that I am requisitioning you a warmer cloak,” he instructed. She saluted, visibly relieved, and hurried from the room. Cullen turned to the other guard. “Hassup, you’re with me.”
Cullen braced himself against the cold as they left the gatehouse. “I hope you’ve got warm socks on, Hassup.” The wind was freezing and thick with snow as they stepped out onto the bridge, and his eyes watered as they headed into the face of it. He trudged across with the guard in his wake, focussing on the dark shape just visible through the storm. The traveller had managed to rock back onto their haunches in the snow, but with the visibility so poor details only came gradually; a greyish cloak with the hood drawn up, dark leathers, gauntlets, all of it now dusted with white. The weapon that had been cast aside was not a staff at all, but a wrapped greatsword, which seemed rather at odds with the traveler’s slight build. As they drew near, stepping off the bridge and into the slight shelter of the barbican, the visitor’s head finally lifted to regard them. A shifting gust of wind whipped the stranger’s hood back from their face, to reveal a head of shockingly white hair and an elf’s pointed ears. Cullen immediately knew this was no stranger at all. “… Fenris?”
Fenris was thinner than Cullen remembered, his hair longer and bound back – but there was no doubt this was the same elven warrior he had met in Kirkwall, almost grey with cold.
Hassup cleared his throat. “Commander?” he ventured, shifting from foot to foot and chafing his hands against the chill.
“I know him. He is a friend of…” Hawke’s his mind finished, but the ramifications of that were too many for him to consider in the moment. “… Varric’s.” Fenris stared dully at him, swaying where he crouched. “Hassup, bring the weapon.” Cullen inclined his head towards the fallen greatsword. He went to Fenris’ side, kneeling in the snow beside him. “We have to get you out of this storm. Can you put your arm around my shoulder?” To his relief, the elf complied, scrabbling for grip in the fur of his cloak. Cullen stood again, hauling Fenris up with him, and took a few hesitant steps – but the slighter man’s feet wouldn’t hold his weight, and his grip failed. Cullen shook his head. “There’s nothing for it. I'm going to carry you.” He stepped in front of Fenris, stooping so he could haul the elf up onto his back. Fenris’ arms wrapped weakly around his shoulders like a child’s, and Cullen frowned – the Fenris he’d seen back in Kirkwall would have reacted to being picked up with nothing short of violence. He was also alarmingly light: being tall for an elf and given the muscle required for his choice of weapon, he should have weighed far more. Cullen grit his teeth and headed back out across the bridge.
By the time they reached the gatehouse, Fenris’ frame was limp against his back and Cullen was hunching far forwards with his hands hooked behind the elf’s legs to help keep him in place. Walking through the snowstorm had been as unpleasant as he’d imagined, and it was a great relief to step into the shadow of Skyhold’s walls and out of the worst of the wind. Cullen’s face was freezing, his eyebrows and hair dusted with snow. How long had Fenris been travelling through this weather on foot? There had been few days in the last fortnight without snowfall.
Cullen carefully lifted Fenris higher on his back, and headed straight up towards the infirmary. “Hassup –” He glanced behind him as best he could, to see that the soldier was struggling up the lower stairs behind him with Fenris’ covered greatsword clutched diagonally across his chest; its tip had left divots in the snow as he heaved it along. Cullen blinked, wondering – not for the first time – if the weapon outweighed its owner. “Please take the sword to the Undercroft and see that it is cleaned and dried. And request one of the mages from the tower to come to the infirmary urgently.”
As he turned, he just caught the slightly desperate glance Hassup gave the double staircase that led up to the Great Hall.