Dragon Age One Shots

Regency Cullen 5

An inhuman groan peels from Cullen's lips as he lowers his weary body into the steaming water. The old tin tub clangs as his backside sinks to the bottom, more water slopping over the side than he anticipated. Too many days trapped in his office and not enough in the field.

"Sir," a lone voice calls from the sitting room to his sleeping chambers. "Do you think you will require my assistance?"

Sighing, Cullen tips his head back and says, "No James. I believe I can handle a bath."

"I'm needed down at the southern wing of the estate, but if you think..."

"For god's sake, Jim. I'm a grown man. I do not need to be coddled like a babe." Cullen spits, weary of the constant groveling. He winces at his tone even if the anger feels right.

"Very good, Sir." Only the sound of the door closing answers after that curt dismissal. No doubt the lower stairs would be gossiping about their brute of a Duke for that one.

Bunching his knees up, Cullen drags his head down below the soapy surface. Just before his face slips under the water, he pulls in a breath to embrace his submersion. The other officers had hazed him something awful when he appeared on deck, green as the algae. A true sailor, a man worthy of the salt, could hold his breath for at least four minutes underwater. Cullen trained his lungs every chance he could, even as he was expected to remain dry on deck. He never could last longer than three minutes before aching for air.

Concussions rattle around him, the explosions dampened by the water swarming around him. His tries to keep his eyes closed, salt already crusting over his lashes, when a hand pushes against his back. Cullen's eyes open upon a lagoon of blood swirling like wet fog from the mass of bodies tumbling to the sea.

Gasping, he sits up fast in the bath, the jangled memories seeping off his body like nightmares come dawn. Some nights he turns to find it is his brother's or father's dismembered hand pressing against his back. Others, it's the same nameless limb as from the Atlantic. The ghosts will not cease haunting him, the man entrusted to their care, the one who lost the battle but won the war. The dead care little if their sacrifice was warranted.

With both hands, Cullen massages across his temples, trying to worry away the unending cloud. To think, the day had begun rather delightfully. Caroline invited him a bowl on her lawn. He'd adored the game as a child, and often won quite a few tournaments as he aged. At first, it was relaxing to fall back to the familiar, Caroline directing him to the proper manners of the day, guiding him to who mattered and who was on the outs. For a time, he felt all of 17 again, uncertain about this nobility curse placed upon his head, but trusting that he'd somehow figure it out.

Then his knee twisted on a throw, the ball careening so wildly off course it looked more of a cannonball aiming to take out a leg. Cullen kept himself upright; a Duke rolling upon the ground in pain was undignified after all. But the reality crashed hard around him. He wasn't a spotty youth savoring time in the sun, he was a broken man tricked by fate into the life he tried to run from. All his efforts to try and prove himself beyond the family title and all he got was a game leg and the same yoke as before.

Reaching for the end table, Cullen uncorks one of the medicine bottles. The stench reminds him of horses, not the animal itself, but something in the care needed to keeping them going. He's not certain what's in it, only that the doctor's told him to rub it into his knee every other day for the pain.

Funny, he thinks to himself while loading up his palms and slathering the herbal oil over his knee. If he were a horse, they'd have put him down for such an injury. The musket ball wobbles under his skin as he rubs. It'd been trapped too dip for the doctors to remove before, but somehow in the year hence it moved. He often finds himself pressing against the ball, wringing it through a small pocket under his skin. While there is pain for such a move, it is nominal, and the feel oddly centers him while he sits in dull meetings.