#warriorverse

She remembers being a child in Honnleath, before the blight and before Ves and before shedding the heavy Sulzbacher name for the equally heavy Cousland name. She remembers being friends with Rosalie first, one year her senior, and then Branson next. Branson was a few years younger than Amalia, but she got along with him fine. Mia came next and then, finally, Cullen Rutherford.

She remembers that he was three years older than her and golden. Golden hair, skin touched by the long hours with his father and farm hands in the fields, and fundamentally benevolent. She first saw him through a curtain of her then-black hair after Branson had tripped her as she trotted alongside Rosalie, smiling down at her. She was only six at the time, to Cullen’s nine, but she knew. She knew that he’d go on to do great things, knew that he’d escape Honnleath like she wished that she could, that he would find a great love like in the stories her mother used to tell.

The world seems so simple when you’re less than a decade old.

Now, though, nothing has really changed. Amalia is still friends with Rosalie and Branson, though only by the letters she sends and receives from the South Reach. Cullen is still all of those things he was as a child, except now he’s been tested by the Maker in tragedy, war, and now one of the Magisters who first entered the Golden City. Selfishly, she’s glad that it’s Cullen. She’s almost thankful to the Maker and Andraste for all of the shit they’ve mucked Cullen through - and the shit that they’ve mucked her through - because it brings the two of them to now, this exact moment in time.

The truth of what nearly happened at Fort Drakon ten years ago had come out at the war table, but Cullen hadn’t looked at her any differently. They’d had the night together at the Winter Palace, after Amalia’s disastrous decision to dule that Duchess in front of the entire court, and Cullen remained stalwartly at her side. And then, when she’d gone up to his office to try and escape her meddling family he’d asked her to go back with him.

To Ferelden. To the Redcliffe arling.

To Honnleath.

She had been hesitant. Matthias surely wasn’t still there, but Amalia also didn’t want to risk seeing her father again, no matter the circumstances. She also didn’t want to see where so many of her happiest childhood memories took place - always at the Rutherford farm or sitting underneath the shade that Shale provided and never inside of her home - after the blight and after ten years of abandonment. But Cullen smiled so sweetly at her, took her right hand and pressed a kiss to her scarred knuckles, and said please.

(He never kisses her left hand, always her right, because she once told him that she’s nothing more than the Anchor on her hand and the history of the fight with the archdemon so many years earlier.)

Cullen had taken her to the lake, had given her his coin, and then taken her back to Honnleath where the bulk of the force they’d traveled with had finished the job they set out to do. Amalia doesn’t mind that they’ve gone through the small home, and dungeon beneath it, that had been her childhood abode. Doesn’t mind that they’ve taken her grandfather’s writings and research and loaded them in heavy boxes on the back of the bronto-drawn carts. She’s not a mage, just mage-blooded enough to pull off rituals as seen by the time she spent with Morrigan’s grimoire and the survival of her Grey Warden siblings. Amalia, at heart, is a warrior. If her grandfather’s works will help the Inquisition mages, then they shall be taken back to Skyhold.

It helps that Wilhelm Sulzbacher was a bastard of a man to everyone in his life, including his elven wife and golem. Amalia has nothing left for him, or her father, Matthias. It helps that he was also a bastard of a man to his elven wife, and elfblooded daughter. It’s almost cathartic to see the Inquisition soldiers - Amalia’s soldiers - carting everything up out of the dank basement she was so terrified of.

Cullen had let her watch for a few moments, standing in the spot that Shale used to stand in, before he took her back to the Rutherford house. It had been cleaned, probably at his request, and then…

Well, and then Cullen made good on his promise.

When she’d been nervous at the Winter Palace, he hadn’t pushed her into sex. They’d shared pleasure, yes, but not sex. Amalia hadn’t wanted their first time to be because of a duel and she agreed with Cullen’s sentiment: neither wanted their first time laying together to be in Orlais. They’re Ferelden at heart, and no amount of satin bedding or hearty foods could convince them otherwise. He’d promised her as he brought her off on his fingers that she’d know nothing but pleasure from him. He’d take her back across the border into Ferelden, he’d find a place comfortable for both of them, and if she wished it they would lay together.

Of course, being in the throes of an orgasm made Amalia agree to anything he was saying. Cullen Rutherford is a strategist at heart and a man of his word. As soon as the missive had crossed his desk about needing Wilhelm’s research, he knew that it was of the upmost importance that Wilhelm’s granddaughter, Amalia, be there when it was retrieved.

The fact that he had his childhood bedroom prepared, cleaned, and fitted with more expensive sheets before their arrival is none of anyone’s concern.

Except Amalia’s, but she’s not very concerned about that. She’s more focused on the way his skin feels against hers, hot and slick, and the way that pleasure still lays heavy in her limbs. Cullen has her pulled as closely as possible to him, legs tangled, as his hands roam up and down her bare back. He has been right when he’d told her that she needn’t worry with him. When Cullen had tried to press into her body for the first time and Amalia had flinched - barely noticeable but she knows that he notices everything about her - they’d prepared more.

(Prepared, of course, meaning that he’d put his mouth on her again until she peaked once more.)

There was never a moment in which Amalia Cousland felt like Cullen Rutherford was just fucking her to own her or taking what he wanted without considering what she wanted. His body over hers, so broad and muscular and golden, hadn’t felt like those moments before Alistair had kicked the door to the machine room down. Cullen’s hands handn’t felt like brands upon her skin - well, they had, but the good kind of brands. The kind of brands Amalia can see herself becoming addicted to. The way Cullen held her as he pressed into her hadn’t made her panic with claustrophobia or cry out in terror.

Amalia isn’t even sure she can call what they did fucking. That seems too… Primal of a word for what they shared. Love-making, maybe. It had felt like love, and she knows that she loves Cullen but can he love her? If he doesn’t, could he? Her past weighs heavy on her shoulders, and she can’t even escape it. Everyone knows the story of the girl who took the final strike on the archdemon at Denerim, of the Grey Warden who refused to let her die, of the Ashes that brought the girl back to life. The scar on the left side of her jaw, from just below her mouth to underneath her ear, is proof that she did die at the hands of the archdemon, that when Ves used the Ashes of Andraste leftover from healing the Arl of Redcliffe that they not only brought Amalia back to life but darned her face back together and left a mottled line of proof.

And now she’s the Inquisitor. The Herald of Andraste. She half believes it herself, because why else would the Ashes have worked? Why else would the Joining not have taken?

Why else would Ves and Alistair, both set on keeping her away from the Conclave and the fact that their Calling was shouting at them to be there, sent her with Bethany and Carver to see if they could find the other Wardens?

Why else would she have been the only survivor? Another moment of death and loss, and Amalia is still standing.

Before she knows it, she’s crying. She doesn’t want to worry Cullen, he already carries so much on his shoulders, but she can’t stop. Before long the heady, heavenly feeling of being in his arms, of knowing him and his body, twists and sours into panic and sorrow.

“Amalia?” Cullen asks, pulling only slightly away from her. Just enough to see her face, really, and she wonders what she looks like. Hair and eyes leeched of color because of her brush with death, scarred face, Anchor… She can’t possibly be the woman he thought he’d be in bed with. The woman that he thought he’d end up betrothed to. “Amalia, darling, what’s wrong?” His voice shakes and he cups her face with one hand, tilting her head up until she’s looking at him.

And, well, she can’t let him think he’s done something wrong.

“I am,” She finally warbles, shaking her head as best she can when she’s laying on her side tangled up in him, “I’m wrong. I should have died in Denerim, and I should have died during the Joining, and I should have died at the Conclave. How can you stand to look at me, Cullen?” Her voice breaks as she begins to cry in earnest, tears blurring his face as he looks at her.

“Oh, darling,” He whispers, bringing her close enough that his lips can press against her forehead, and then her nose, and finally on the jagged scar that reminds her of what she was willing to give up to protect Ves and Alistair. “I don’t care what should have happened,” Cullen finally says, pressing himself as close as possible, “I only care what has happened. Everything leading up to this moment, with you in my arms, is all that matters.”

“But we’ll never be free of it,” Amalia allows herself to sink into him, to press her nose against the side of his neck and drown in oakflower, eldermoss, and the faint scent of leather. “We’ll never be free from people knowing who I am, what I’ve done. I don’t care if it’s all good, if they think that I’m the Herald of Andraste. I just want a normal life. I want you to have a normal life, and I can’t give you that.”

Cullen shifts and for a brief second, Amalia is afraid that she’s chased him away. He only sets her down on the mattress and disentangles himself so that he can prop himself up over top of her. His hand cups her neck, large enough that his thumb can press and lightly rub back and forth over her scar. He smiles down at her, his own scar pulling slightly as he does so.

“You needn’t worry about me,” Cullen kisses her briefly, “Especially not about whether or not I want normal. I don’t care about normal, Amalia. Maker’s breath, the only thing I care about having is you. That’s all that matters to me.” She hiccups, tears still trailing over the sides of her face as she looks up at Cullen, and tries to believe him.

“But would you be happy with me?” Amalia asks, voice pitifully quiet. “If we were to stay together past the Inquisition, I mean.”

“If?” He asks instead of answering, “If? Amalia, I am in love with you. I would lay down my life for you. I don’t know what will happen past the Inquisition, I don’t know what will happen in ten years or twenty, but I know that I want you by my side.” He looks so serious, golden, that Amalia’s breath is taken away. “I want to be by your side.” He says, softer than he spoke before.

“You love me?” She asks, reaching for his face, “You love me?”

Cullen smiles crookedly, and it’s like the sun. It almost fully chases away the storm clouds that had settled in her chest. They’ll never truly be gone, not with what she’s seen and what she’s been through, but in Cullen’s arms and his bed, they don’t seem so scary. They don’t seem so all-consuming like they had been only moments before.

“Of course I love you,” Cullen says, “I can’t imagine a world in which I don’t love you.”