Dragon Age One Shots

Regency Cullen 25

Gwen!

Agony sloshes through his marrow, his arms straining with the pain of her still body slumped in his grip. In every sea battle, every cross with pirates and the enemy, Cullen's anger ran cold as a blizzard. But now? With her face paling, her blood spilling down his palm as he tried to quench the wound she took for him? Lava boils in his veins, the hot anger demanding he turn around to destroy the ones who did this.

But then what? Cullen continues to scrabble away from the dead bastard he left behind. The ringing from the gunshot pounds into his ears, wiping away all sound. His only hint that Gwen remains with him is a flinch in her face when he presses to tight to the wound.

"I'm sorry," Cullen whispers, struggling to climb through the cave. What if he is wrong? What if this leads nowhere? Should he turn back? Parley with the pirates in the hopes that they'd at least help her? Save her?

What could he do trapped at the back of a cave?

A sound rattles from behind, tinny and far in the distance, but the longer he listens the more he can make out. Voices! And boots tracing the sound of the shot. Forgetting the pain in his worthless knee, or the unbearable moans from the woman in his arms, Cullen picks up the pace. Rocks jut from both sides, curling and twisting to him. In the dark, he takes hits to his jutted-out elbows, his feet, his sides. He ignored it all. All that matters is getting out of there. Getting free.

Why didn't I listen? Why did I have to leap straight into action? You wouldn't be hurt, you wouldn't be dy--

Light cuts through the rocks ahead, Cullen's tear-stained eyes focusing. As he turns a tight corner, he spots more of the promise of freedom opening wider. Green circles outside, the shoreline far different than where they crashed. Did he reach another part of the island?

His heart leaps, hope finally reaching him, when a shadow steps into the only escape. Then two more, clearly armed with pistols waving.

No. No, no, no...

They circled around. They found him. They would--

"Throw down your arms, and you will not be harmed!" a commanding voice echoes from the lip of the cave. It twinges through Cullen's swollen ears, striking a chord deep in his memory.

"Delrin?" he mumbles, shaking his head at the impossibility. "Lieutenant Barris?" he calls louder, rising to his unsteady feet.

A lantern swings in, illuminating the angelic face of one Lt. Barris. Those green eyes widen in shock, the man gasping, "Captain Rutherford." Quickly they dart down the man whose grip is waning on the dying woman. "His Grace requires assistance, quickly."

Two more Navy men rush forward, their hands gripping to Cullen's elbows as they help him to rise. With trembling steps, he walks out into the light of day. Waves pound against a shoreline in the distance, his eyes darting straight to a frigate anchored in the water.

"Sir?" Barris asks, "What are you doing here?"

"It is a long tale, Lieutenant." He shakes his head, trying to find clarity in this turn of events. "Please, take her." Delrin raises his arms to take Gwen's stilling body, but Cullen freezes. His eyes drift down her face, the lips he'd hoped to kiss in a matrimonial bond wasting to a haunting white.

"Sir?" Barris prompts again, the young officer aware of the old man stumbling in exhaustion.

With a resignation, his heart screaming that he may never hold her again, Cullen acquiesces. Barris eyes up the blood smeared across Cullen's palm and the black musket ball in her neck. Cullen can't imagine the pain she must be under, and a bullet she took for him.

Nodding his head, Cullen orders, "Take her to the ship, treat her." He shakes his head, trying to rise up to his rickety legs. "Give me your weapon," he tells one of the ensigns.

"Sir, what are you...?"

"There are dangerous smugglers inside. I will lead the charge to..."

A rumble echoes from inside the cave, and in a split second, the entire structure falls in on itself. The ensigns grab onto Cullen, yanking him away as Barris turns from the destruction. Dirt erupts in the blast, no doubt set off by the pirates trying to cover their tracks. Well, he wouldn't hear of...

So soft he nearly misses it, Gwen moans from her faint. The military sword tumbles from his hand, Cullen turning to watch her struggle to breathe through the bullet caught in her neck. No, no please.

Falling to his knees, Cullen's hands try to wipe away the pain knotting up her cheeks but nothing will work. "Help," he whispers, praying to God or any in the Divine that will listen.

It is Barris who says, "We will, Sir. To the boats! Fast, before..."

Before he loses her.

_______________________

The doctor finishes winding the last of the bandages around her neck, blood and pus blooming from where the bullet once rested. Cullen tried to grit his teeth and watch, fearful to turn from her for a second, but he blanched at the muscle torn off her body for his life. Gwen rests upon a high cot, her body swaying with the rocking of the ship.

After tossing the musket ball into a pan, the on-ship doctor wipes his hands upon a bloody towel and turns to leave. Cullen clings to the beam, his fingernails slicing into the wood as he leans with the rock of the ship taking them back to civilization. It shouldn't be long, a day or two at most. All Gwen needs to do is wake up.

A warm hand claps to his shoulder and he turns to the Lieutenant. Barris' eyes brim with sympathy. He'd questioned the old seadog about what he was doing on the island, Cullen lifting every secret off his chest save one. There was no energy left in Cullen's body for subterfuge, no bile for lying to a courageous man who deserved only praise. Even if...

"Lucky thing we were investigating the same time you were," Barris announces loudly as if to seal in the explanation for the other officers standing around. As if any would question a Duke who rose to the height of captaining his own ship.

"Thank you," Cullen whispers while abandoning the post. He crumbles to his weary knee before Gwen's bruised and battered body. The tears won't stop prickling just on the edge of falling, his heart frozen in his chest. Circling his palm down her arm, he catches her still fingers in his. Those sweet fingers that'd hugged his nephew, that picked the lock on his cage, that held his cheek through the storm, that caught him when he needed her most.

Now they lay still, silent in his trembling grip.

Wake up. Please. Fight.

"I should return on deck," Delrin says as if he needs to explain himself to Cullen. Still, the Duke nods, barely aware of where the ceremony stands now. Before turning, Delrin claps Cullen on the shoulder one last time. "Faith," is all he can whisper before nodding the two men away from the crumbling man.

Cullen tries to crawl closer on his knees, wishing he could pull her into his lap, will her to heal, to rise with a smile on her lips. To assure him that she would live. That she would be safe.

"Please," he whispers again, his lips forming the panicking plea against her feverish forehead. "Please come back. I..." His tears tumble off her forehead like a slow summer rain. "I need to see you again."