Dragon Age One Shots

Regency Cullen 21

Warm copper pools on her tongue, Gwen shaking her head as she swallows blood. Her own or...? Light pierces through her hooded lids, the pain slicing from the back of her brain forward. She raises one hand to try and shield and unexpected sun. When moving to lift the other, she finds it tethered.

The storm, the ship, the shore...

Cullen!

Blinking against the white haze swept across her vision her ears fill with the pounding of waves sweeping over a rock-strewn beach. The ship was split in twain by the spout, her larboard end shoved against the large boulder not even ten meters from the shoreline. Any further in the storm and she'd have been paste.

A presence rests beside her, Gwen turning her still tied-down body to the form slumped over. Matted blonde hair smears across the face, the chin tipped down, his clothing ripped to shreds as it hands off a still chest. Fear clutches tight to Gwen's heart, her marrow-chilling with a cold far deeper than any the Atlantic can muster.

"No!" She tries to reach for the body beside her, noticing the cool blood staining down the front, but her tied hand stops her. Frantic, she claws at the rope, coiling it tighter around her wrist until a red welt rises from her skin. But she's free.

Launching from her crumbling prow, she turns to the fallen man, her eyes finally able to see the broken spear of wood impaled through his chest. Please. Please, no!

Gwen rolls her fingers through the soggy blonde hair, picking the chin up, and is met by an unfamiliar face. Relief floods through her first, then shame at her celebrating the death of a different man. At that moment, a groan echoes from near the rock.

Scrabbling over the splintered floorboards, Gwen peers down the teetering remains to find Cullen laying a deck below. He must have fallen through in the chaos and the hole saved his life.

"Cullen!" she cries, already sliding over the edge. The fall is into brackish water, but Gwen doesn't flinch as her skirts balloon out in the waves. Her bare feet scrape over rocks, no doubt scattering more of her blood into the salty sea as she reaches for him.

Slowly he sits up, a hand to his forehead. He focuses his gaze upward at the crumpled hull of the ship, already moving to stand.

"Wait," she finally pulls herself onto the rock beside, her fingers smoothing over his hair to look for more wounds. "You could be injured," she chastises as if she's his nurse.

Those amber eyes narrow at her, Gwen shaking off the urge to run, and slowly the melt. He runs his splintered hand over her forehead and whispers, "You are."

She winces when he touches the gash, Cullen doing the same at his accidental move. The pair stare across an abyss she built by keeping her past where it lay. Gwen wants to reach over, to hold his hand and confess everything, but the creaking of wood above tells her to move.

"We need to get to shore," she announces, scooping a hand around his waist.

The captain of many ships narrows his eyes at her bossing him around, but he acquiesces. "Agreed." Together they stumble off the wooden planks of the splintered ship and through the bracing water. Dawn has risen, but the storm churned the seas cold, all of which is seeping into their only clothing.

As they reach the shore, Cullen slips from her grip, his wounded knee crumpling him to the rocks below. With only the pound of the surf and their belabored breathing for sound, they stare across the sealine punctured with the bones of their ship. Is anyone else alive? Is any of it salvageable?

Slowly, Gwen catches the eye of the man she's shipwrecked on a cold, rocky shore with. In some other tropical location, without the press of questions and silent glares, she dare think it romantic. But here it's a wary look he pins to her.