Dragon Age One Shots

A Friend In Need, Cullen & Delrin

"Any word?

Cullen paused, his conviction evaporating as he watched Ser Barris lean closer to the long drop from Skyhold's walls. The once proud head hung low, his armor knotted from the unending stress heaped upon his shoulders. If he answered, would he push Barris to a deadly extreme?

Weary, broken eyes turned from his gaze over the drawbridge to the wincing Commander. "Ser?"

"No," Cullen coughed out the truth. "There were no signs of her in..." The report from their scouts in the frostback basin died upon his tongue. Templar gloves dug into the stone of Skyhold, wrenching it to grit as if Barris was trying to strangle the truth from the bones of thedas. No answers would come to him, the rock as silent as the wind.

"Two weeks," Barris' voice trailed off, eyes lifting to the scar in the sky. "Two weeks and nothing."

The Commander flinched at tears not only in the Knight-Commander's words, but streaking down his cheeks as well. For the first days of her unexplained disappearance, he was often in the war room hurling out ideas, suggestions, directing his men to aid in the search. As the day turned to weeks, and the mettle melted from his spine, Ser Barris' steps haunted the battlements of Skyhold. He'd skip meals, forgo sleep, all to maintain a vigil upon the door never knowing when she'd walk through it.

His widow's walk.

"The chances of there being an answer grow slimmer with each sunrise," the mourning man moaned. Below them, a battalion of horses broke into a trot out the gate. Yet another expedition sent to find the woman who seemed to vanish into thin air. "I keep thinking," Barris' lips trembled, the words gutted as more tears fell, "that I must gird myself to find only an empty body and nothing more."

"Do not think that," Cullen said. "We haven't scouted the entire area. There are a lot of hidden caves, brush to obscure scouts. If she fell, or was injured, then it might take longer to..."

"Ser," Barris paled so sickly his skin turned qunari grey. "Two weeks, about to be three. If she was injured then... If she fell, the only ones who will find her are scavengers." Voicing the fear that'd lurked in all their minds since the first report, giving it substance, drained the fearful man of what he had left. He turned away, his bowed head trembling, the tears silenced from the void.

"Delrin!" Cullen cursed his name as if he was blaspheming. "Look at me," he thundered, striding towards the man. Still, Barris wouldn't turn, not until Cullen strapped an arm over his shoulders and forced him to. "You cannot give up, not now. Not like this."

"Why? Why fight? Everything I try to...the Order, my love, gone. Taken while I...while I slept. You know it as well as I do what it is to lose...everything."

Friends ripped out of their own skin. Blood of companions smeared over the walls. Bodies so burned he couldn't know who they once were. Colleagues twisted until only a sliver of their humanity remained below the red lyrium. The Order he swore his allegiances to ripped apart from scheming and unabashed lusts for power. He knew what it was to walk into the darkness, certain that light would never touch him again.

He wouldn't let Delrin suffer the same.

"The fight is not over, soldier," Cullen tried to puff his chest up even with the ache growing in his gut. He knew the odds. "She is out there somewhere, she needs you to find her. To do whatever it takes to pull her back here. Do you hear me?"

The heavy head rolled to the side, Delrin's shattered eyes trying to hone on him. "Three weeks..."

"Can become four, or five. We won't stop. You won't stop. Trust in her to fight. Trust in yourself to fight. Pray to the Maker, pray to Andraste. Do whatever it takes to bring her back home. Do you hear me?"

"Ser..." the man's weak voice tried to lift, but his gut was stone cold.

"I said 'Do you hear me?'"

"Ser, yes Ser," Barris stood up taller, a spark rising inside. It wasn't much, but it was all Cullen needed. The man moved to salute, but the old Commander wrapped him in a hug before he could accomplish it.

"Hope, cling to it. Pray for it. Do not let it go out," Cullen ordered his friend. Their arms opened, Barris trying to snuff away the tears of despair. Before he could slink off to lick his wounds, Cullen reached out to grip his arm. "Your light will bring her back."

______________________________________

"Get out of the damn way!"

A cacophony erupted near the drawbridge, everyone racing to crowd around a wagon, but none could stop the Knight-Commander rushing as fast as his legs could carry. Ser Barris practically hurled the onlookers to the side, his hands reaching out through the void when warm but weak ones caught the tips. The templar crashed to his knees, prayers and tears falling in equal measure as his wife tugged his hands to her lips.

Cullen watched from the worn down widow's peak, his hands crossed for warmth under his surcoat. In the end, it took four weeks, a raven's bones bearing a message being the big break, and a campsite hidden in the mountains. Though, the details didn't matter. Husband, who fell to his knees on the stone for a miracle, was gifted it. Wife, battered and bruised but alive, returned to his arms.

The old Commander smiled. It was nice to have a happy ending.