Chapter Text
Her bedroll is lukewarm when she wakes, and her mind is empty of nightmares.
The former, Amell considers a win – she spent the better part of a decade attempting to master fire and heat-based spells while possessing absolutely no affinity for either. The latter… the latter has been relegated to a corner of her mind labeled only as it is what it is.
Which, objectively, is ridiculous. Who wouldn’t enjoy a night of uninterrupted sleep?
A few years ago, she doesn’t think she would have treated the question as anything other than poetic. Or that she might have answered it with her own name – though that may be underestimating the resilience of her paranoia.
But there is safety in the known. In the expected. And Amell hasn’t had a night without nightmares in years.
How many years? She could not say. It could be a year or two. It could be an entire decade, maybe more. It could be that she has never had a good night’s sleep in her entire life; it certainly feels that way.
The simplicity of it is disorienting. She keeps waiting for it – for the lingering echo of an enticing demon, for the song of the Calling, for the darkspawn’s whispering chant in a language she never learned and yet understands completely – to creep back in as she lies on her back, staring unblinking at the dark sky as it slowly pales at the edges.
But there’s nothing.
And somehow, that’s worse.
She appreciates her limited ability to maintain the heating spell a bit more as she pushes herself upright and extracts herself from the bedroll. Her boots are cold when she slips them on, fingers stiff as she laces them tight, and the small fire from the night before has long since burned itself out. Summer may be right around the corner, but Ferelden seems unconvinced; her breath still fogs the air if she squints hard enough.
Strangely, the cold is familiar enough that it almost manages to feel warm. If her bones – aching for a warmth no metaphor could provide – could speak, they would surely declare her insane in her old age.
Old at forty.
Twenty years ago, Amell would have thought that an unrealistic assessment. Most people she had known then, confined behind the thick walls of the tower, lived well past that age.
Five years ago, she had been all but certain she would never reach her forties at all.
She does not relight the fire, no matter how tempting the thought. She has dried rations for breakfast and no schedule to keep, but the urge to move is relentless. She needs to put distance behind herself. She needs to feel the burn of her muscles, her callouses smoothed by the metal of her staff.
It makes little sense, this hurried tempo, considering she has chosen the longest route she can imagine between Vigil’s Keep and Kinloch Hold – but there is no one she owes an explanation to. She has waited nowhere. She has nowhere to be.
She might as well not exist.
In a way, Amell is dead, without ever having truly died.
She turns at the waist, hand already extending with the last strip of dried meat toward Barkspawn–
and finds only empty air.
The motion dies halfway through. Her stomach lurches, and she flings the meat away as far as she can, breathing through the nausea until the clear morning air dulls it to something manageable.
Her modest camp is dismantled with practiced efficiency. She pulls her map from her pack – her fingers brushing over the words my dear friend, you have been given a second chance on a badly folded letter tucked between the parchment – and forces her focus back onto distances and directions.
She does not expect the day to be an eventful one. Ever since she turned onto the West Road from the Pilgrim’s Path, it has been quiet. Before, there had been encounters – darkspawn, refugees, the occasional corpse – but those thinned, then vanished entirely the farther she moved from the Keep, and from the distant ruins of Denerim she had tried, and failed, to avoid.
The fires were impossible not to see.
She wonders how many times a place can be rebuilt before the certainty of ruin outweighs the will to try again.
The sun climbs quickly, and with it, the air begins to warm. It is nowhere near the heat she has known in her visits of Rivain or Tevinter, or that one time in Par Vollen – where the thought of cutting herself out of her own skin for a little relief had become disturbingly appealing – but for a spring day in Ferelden, it’s positively hot.
Amell should feel safe. The sky is clear. The road is empty of both pleasant and unpleasant surprises. The smell of blood, smoke, and destruction has finally faded from her sinuses.
And yet her heart is beating as though the bushes along the roadside are making threats.
And, as far as she knows, maybe they are. This is the aftermath of a Blight – and a double one, at that. Darkspawn roam confused and aimless, loose in a land that barely survived them. And here she is: Warden extraordinary, veteran of the Fifth Blight, former Commander of the Grey.
The Hero of Ferelden.
And she feels nothing.
Not a single darkspawn. Not a flicker of taint.
Nothing.
A year ago, she could have walked through rebuilt Lothering – pretty as a picture, just as it had been before the horde – and known exactly where a garden might survive, and where the soil would turn anything planted in it dark and dead at a single touch. Now, there could be a whole ogre buried beneath the village square and she would never know.
Lothering.
She could reach it by nightfall, if she chose to. The promise of a proper bed, a warm meal, and news from other mouths weighs against the thought of facing yet another ghost from a life that no longer feels like hers.
If Lothering still stands.
The last she heard, its closeness to Redcliffe made it an inconspicuous enough target that the darkspawn – and whatever cursed entities Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain fostered – avoided it entirely. But that information is weeks old now. Since then, all she’s had are scraps: rumors passed hand to hand and mouth to mouth by travelers, each adding their own little twists and spins to the gossip.
She should, at the very least, see if there is still a Lothering to speak of.
Amell is quite certain that is what she’ll do. That it is the sensible choice. That it is well within her capabilities.
That certainty lasts until the afternoon, when she scales a shallow rise in the road and catches the first hazy outline of what must be a building in the distance.
And then her heart promptly attempts what can only be described as its last hurrah, and it only stops once she hauls herself off the West Road and plunges into the trees.
The hand not clenched around her staff shakes violently as she tries to shove damp hair out of her eyes, fingers weak against her sweat-slicked skin.
She barely feels her legs beneath her as she stumbles deeper into cover. By the time she reaches the thicker trees, the only thing keeping her upright is the staff driven into the muddy ground, both hands locked around it, knuckles white.
Her pulse hammers against the cold metal. She clings to that rhythm, breath by breath, eyes fixed on the leaf-littered forest floor.
Leaf. Leather. Library. Letters.
No. Not that.
She braces for the surge to return, but it does not. Her heart no longer races, but it does not feel settled, either – only restrained, held in place by sheer will. By the time she drags herself fully back under control, the sun has begun its slow descent, light filtering through the canopy in a burnished, fading orange.
Amell straightens with care, testing her balance before wrenching the staff free of the mud. She lets it hang heavy in her grip and waits as the last tremors bleed out of her legs, one by one.
She looks back over her shoulder toward the village she cannot see – yet can reconstruct with unwanted clarity – and tries to decide what comes next. Clearly, she has overestimated herself. That much is undeniable. Though there’s no doubt in her mind she could force her way forward if she had to.
Every aching part of her begs her not to.
A bark tears through the quiet.
Then another, and another – echoing from a deeper part of the forest, but closer now. Approaching.
She doesn’t expect a fight, but she also doesn’t not expect one, and her body knows the steps of this dance well enough: feet set apart; staff raised; a shield snapping into place, reality gently warping around it. Movements so deeply ingrained, they no longer require conscious thought.
When a dog bursts through the underbrush – sailing cleanly between two trees before landing squarely in front of her – she nearly burst out in an ugly, breathless laugh. She might’ve been wrong this morning.
Surely, this has to be a nightmare.
Because the dog – the mabari – that pants in front of her, smart eyes locked on her own, is Barkspawn.
Of course, Amell knows she’s mistaken the very moment the thought forms. This dog is smaller, its coat darker, with a white patch claiming nearly the entirety of its front paws.
And it’s alive. Which Barkspawn is not.
But it’s friendly all the same. There is tension coiled in its muscles, yes – but not aimed at her. The way it tips its head and lolls its tongue is unmistakably open.
“Hi there,” she says quietly, hesitating only long enough to let the shield dissolve before offering her free hand.
The mabari accepts the invitation with two quick sniffs, then shoves its head under her palm with enthusiasm. She manages two scratches before it suddenly whines and twists away, as if struck by a belated thought.
“What is it?”
More whining. The mabari hops back, circles once, then angles its head toward the forest.
“You want me to come with you?” Amell asks, stepping forward before an answer could arrive.
Or– well. A type of answer.
The mabari barks, the sound somehow joyful, then darts back into the trees.
That seems to settle the matter.
She glances back once more toward where Lothering must sit, as if giving it a final chance to change her mind, to lure her back. It does not. Maybe it is a goodbye of sorts. Maybe it is simply relief – because it is not fear or weakness keeping her back, but the insistence of something else demanding her attention.
Another bark; this one sharper.
Perhaps she should feel ashamed, she thinks distantly. For turning away from a place that might need her. From a place that once aided her. From a place she failed once already, in a way.
She does not.
She follows the dog into the trees and lets Lothering fade behind her.
Time slips loose as she follows – through branches and roots, through breath and motion – until the trees finally thin and they step out onto open ground. The sun still hangs above the horizon, if only barely.
They emerge onto a plain dotted with limp weeds and muddy pools of deceptive depth, but none of that holds her attention.
No. That honor belongs to the darkspawn.
Ten, at least, spread in a purposeful circle, with a few corpses already lying farther away. At their center, a man with a sword and a shield stands back-to-back with another mabari. They are fighting valiantly – but valor alone isn’t enough against superior numbers.
The dog at her side decides it has accomplished its mission, and like an arrow let loose, surges forward, barking as it barrels toward the fray.
The farther it gets, the more it starts to look like Barkspawn.
Her grip slicks with sweat. But this is not the time.
She might not be a proper Warden anymore, but twenty years of killing darkspawn don’t vanish just because the taint no longer corrupts her blood. Ten of them might sound daunting, but it isn’t – not if you know what you’re doing.
She is not as fast as the mabari. She does not need to be.
With a lift of her staff, several shields snap into place, encompassing the man and both dogs just as one of the mabari launches itself onto a hurlock wielding twin blades.
There are no emissaries. Her attention snaps to the archers.
As always, the part of her that bristles whenever perfection eludes her itches to use fire, for the sake of bettering her skills. But perfection is a luxury, and this is not the moment to indulge it.
Ice spells, then. Two quick pulls on the Fade; two invocations; two darkspawn freeze mid-motion, bodies locking into brittle stillness.
The stonefists that follow finish the work quickly, frozen limbs shattering as they hit the ground.
Behind the shield, the man takes a head clean off one hurlock and drives his blade into another’s throat. The mabari work in tandem, dragging a third down, their teeth sinking into arms and shoulders until muscle gives and the creature is torn apart.
Five darkspawn remain.
Fast – before the man or the dogs can close the distance – Amell snaps her staff to the ground, calling forth the roots of the earth. They burst through the soft dirt in a spray of mud and a sound she can only think of as belonging to this spell, twisting around their tainted enemies. From there, it’s only a matter of focus and control, guiding the vines where they will be most effective: crushing chests, snapping necks.
Four bodies hit the ground at once.
The fifth is not caught. It must possess some scrap of intelligence the others lacked, because it doesn’t hesitate, backing away from the – now clearly lost – skirmish before turning and disappearing into the trees.
Not the ideal outcome, but one she can live with. One darkspawn alone won’t cause much harm.
Overall, the fight ends before it can truly begin. There hasn’t even been time for the adrenaline to set in. Still, she slows her breathing deliberately and allows herself a moment to just be.
Twilight has given way to night, the sky sunless now, the first stars already pricking through the dark.
The mabari that led her here trots back, tension completely gone, and bumps its head against her thigh. She chuckles, scratching behind its ears.
“And here I thought he’d decided we were a lost cause,” the man says behind her, faintly amused. “Thank you for your timely assistance.”
She does not recognize the voice. Twenty years ago, that would have been unthinkable.
“You handled yourself quite well on your own,” Amell replies, turning to face him.
Even then, recognition does not come immediately. Her gaze moves over him – tall, broad-shouldered, blond hair threaded with silver at the temples – but it is not until she meets soft amber eyes that something in her goes oh.
It is not sudden, and it does not steal her breath. She cannot say she has imagined this moment in any recent past, so there are no expectations to shatter; and yet her reaction feels… lacking.
An important piece of her past stands in front of her, and all Amell can manage is oh.
Cullen stands before her.
He takes a step back. That is… that is good. It means this is real. The Cullen from her old dreams never backed away; he stepped closer – whether to kill her or kiss her depended entirely on what kind of demon was trying to tempt her into a deal.
Perhaps she should follow his example, or she risks achieving true death, but Amell finds her legs rooted to the earth, as though her own spell has turned against her.
Cullen opens his mouth – there is a scar cutting across his upper lip she does not remember; is it new, or has it slipped from her memory? – closes it again, then tries once more before his voice finally follows.
“It’s… you.”
He says you like it is a much larger word than it is, heavy with meaning she could not begin to guess at.
“Yes. It is… I,” she answers, slow and uncertain. Not the best reply she could have offered, but the one that came to mind the quickest.
Her hand drifts from the mabari’s head. The dog makes a small, confused sound at the loss of attention. The other mabari – black-furred, sharp-faced, the one who had already been fighting alongside Cullen when they arrived – pokes its head out from behind him and bares its teeth in a display decidedly less friendly than its companion’s enthusiasm.
“What…” Cullen clears his throat. “What are you doing here?”
His fingers are white on the pommel of his sword. Amell doubts he notices he is gripping it at all.
“Traveling,” she says simply. “You?”
“The same,” Cullen replies. He shakes himself, as if only now remembering his body, his hand tearing away from the hilt. “I– I apologize. I’m not certain what to… what to say.”
That makes two of them.
“Are you coming from Lothering?” he asks suddenly. The last of the surprise drains from his face, replaced by something more determined. “Have they any healers?”
Amell blinks, caught off guard by the abrupt turn. “Healers?”
“I’m in urgent need of one. A friend of mine was wounded, and infection has set in. None of the treatments I know have worked.”
That is as good a reason as any to be traveling off-road – for speed, presumably – right after the end of a Blight.
“I would not know,” she admits, her gaze slipping away despite herself. “I have not actually visited the village.” The end of her staff and her boots are exceptionally muddy in a way she won’t enjoy cleaning.
She expects it to feel easier like this, without eye contact. More like she knows how to exist in the body she has inhabited for four decades that felt twice as long. It does not. Nothing truly changes, except that uncertainty now has a companion – something uncomfortably close to cowardice.
Might as well look back. Maybe it gets easier the longer she forces herself to keep at it.
“I see,” Cullen says, barely above a whisper. The lines on his face – most of them not around his eyes – deepen with worry.
This is exactly where Amell should say her goodbyes. This is where she should take the opportunity to disappear, to step off this road the same way she backed away from the West Road.
If she gave herself a little more time to digest the last fifteen minutes, she would. She is not the sort of person who often argues against reason. And reason, right now, would mean putting as much distance between herself and this moment as possible, and forgetting the encounter ever happened.
But something in her riots at the thought. It is not a particularly intense feeling – if anything, it feels like the imitation of something stronger, something proper – but it is a twitch in her chest all the same. A preference, after days, weeks, or perhaps months of indifference.
So Amell does not grant herself the time to accept the reasonable course of action.
“Are you in need of a healer,” she asks, “with or without magical abilities?”
Would you be comfortable around magic?
Around me?
The presence of magic hadn’t seemed to trouble him during the fight, but that could mean any number of things. Adrenaline. Focus fixed elsewhere. Or the simple fact that even mages are preferable to darkspawn.
Or maybe he has changed. She knows she has.
Cullen considers the question, but not for long. “One with magic would be preferable,” he says at last. There is a question in his gaze, though he makes no attempt to give it voice.
Does she wish he would? Amell cannot answer that.
“I am no spirit healer, but I trained under one. I can handle an infection. I could… help you.”
“And would you?” The question comes hoarse.
The urge to look back over her shoulder prickles along Amell’s spine. It feels the same way it did when she stood before Lothering – pretending she was still weighing her options, even as the choice had already been made.
She does not give in to it. Instead, she keeps her eyes on Cullen as she forms the words.
“Lead the way.”