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The “Herald of Andraste” looks about as willing to come to terms with his new title as the Chantry is. Cullen will admit to being amused at his reaction—the poor man acts like he has never interacted with anyone who isn’t another Dalish elf in his life. This will certainly be a rough transition for him.
He introduces himself as Saven, though his accent lightens the word to sound more like “seven,” and Cullen has to double check with Ambassador Montilyet to make sure he has it correct. He is a mage, though he holds himself like a scout. Leliana says he is something called a “First,” an appointment Dalish clans have as an apprentice to their clan leader. Why a clan would send such a valuable member as a spy to the Conclave, especially since he did get caught and isn’t a terribly good spy, Cullen cannot guess.
Saven the Dalish mage has a hundred questions for him. “Do templars do anything other than hunt mages?” he asks directly, sounding for all intents and purposes as if the question is completely innocent. Cullen describes the Order as best as he can, not wanting to let the opportunity to explain the templars to the single mage in all of Thedas who doesn’t already have a bias against them slip through his fingers. Saven nods sagely all the while, hazel eyes attentive.
“Why are your Circle mages summoning demons so often?” he asks next. Cullen doesn’t know what to say to that, so he fishes for the best answer he can. The look Saven is giving him like everything he is describing is absolutely insane grows.
“That’s, er, interesting,” he says politely before practically running away.
They have a small misunderstanding. Saven wants to learn to fight templars to better defend himself, and Cullen has one smite him before he hears him screaming and realizes two very important things: he should not have done that, and he very much should not have done that.
Saven is a healer, he learns later on that day. Which makes Cullen an absolute arse.
He does not want another mage to be scared of him, Maker, please, and definitely not this one. He tries to help as best as he can, being friendly, offering lessons where angry templar-aligned onlookers will not disturb them. That works—Saven has the ego of a new recruit who has absolutely no idea what he is doing, but it seems to help him let go. He casts differently than the mages Cullen is used to, using his staff more as a blunt object than a focus and shooting spells from the hip. He also has an annoying habit of zip-zapping around, which can be useful if they manage to hammer it into something disciplined. He aims for the weak points in Cullen’s armour automatically, thinking before he strikes rather than trying to overwhelm him with pure power. It shows a tactical mind, one that could grow into a skilled fighter if nurtured right. Cullen honestly doesn’t know if he trusts anyone else to do the nurturing.
Saven slides something to him across the table when they are eating one day. It is a flat stone, small enough to fit into his palm, with a triangular rune carved into it.
“A simple heat enchantment,” Saven explains. “For your help with my training. I will procure better tokens as I can.”
Cullen picks it up, passing his thumb across the rune. It lights up, and the stone heats to a pleasant but not scalding warmth.
“Er, thank you, Herald. Sorry—Saven,” he says. Leliana had lectured him earlier to express gratitude over any odd favours or gifts, elsewise it might be considered disrespectful. It is the Dalish currency, she had said. They like things to be in balance. Saven smiles at him, the flaxen mess of hair around his ears lifting. He murmurs something in Elvish, perhaps an acknowledgment, and taps his fingers lightly on the table.
~*~
Cullen is worried about him when Haven falls. The man is clearly panicking, it doesn’t take a leader to see that, but he seems to have accepted his role as a martyr. Cullen has to put both hands on his shoulders and squeeze to get through to him, but once he does, Saven nods, and he sees for a moment why he had been selected as second-in-command to his clan.
He says something in Elvish that sounds too much like a farewell. Cullen leads Haven’s remaining inhabitants through the tunnels without looking back.
He hates himself when they send the signal flare and the mountain collapses. They make camp and do not search for him, until the Tevinter of all people comes up to him and says, “You’re sitting about as well not looking for him as I am, aren’t you?”
Dorian comes with him to search, channeling a heat spell that he claims Saven of all people taught him. He has a satchel of potions, and he uses all but one of them when they finally see weak sparks get released into the night. Cullen grabs Dorian and tugs him to the spot. Saven looks dead, like a corpse, except he is not one yet—Dorian manages to barely bring him back from the brink, and Cullen wraps his mantle around him and cradles him to his armour, trying to move as fast as possible.
Once they reach camp, Saven tugs and piteously asks him to stay, so of course he does, because if he truly is Andraste’s Herald then who is Cullen to deny him? He hovers near him on the journey to Skyhold, wary, like a guard dog Rylen says. But no one else went out to look. And he is helping them so much even now, much more than he has to. Cullen ensures he is left alone and gets a full rest each night, that he is not to be disturbed. They are already discussing the possibility that Saven will be made Inquisitor, and if he will, Cullen knows his role.
He is. Cullen cheers with the Inquisition as he hoists up his sword. The sun behind Saven’s head blots out his form, lighting his hair on fire. Up there, he looks confident. When he speaks to Cullen later, he looks bemused.
“I don’t really understand what I am supposed to do,” he says. “What am I… inquisiting?”
Cullen chuckles. “You know the times when we were all arguing and you walked in and politely told us to shut up? It’ll be more of that.”
Saven makes a face. “So I will be herding children?”
“More or less.”
“Just like with my clan.” Saven shakes his head, but he smiles a little, and says, “Do you want to come see the garden?”
~*~
The garden is his pride and joy, Cullen learns. He tends to it with loving hands and magic, and he even has a specially picked group of servants who come in and water the plants in the… heat house, Cullen thinks it is called, that he eventually builds.
“Not everyone has a green thumb, Cullen,” Saven tells him one day while he is attempting to teach him how to clip elfroot without damaging the stalks.
Cullen’s hands are too unwieldy for this, too tremulous. “If you’re trying to discourage me, it’s working.”
“Not you.” Saven snorts. “You are doing fine. The land is vallas’alas, it is good. It likes us being here.”
“Now you sound like Cole,” Cullen mutters.
Saven’s hand covers his. “Here,” he says, “Let me show you. You must be more tender to the earth—it is a living thing. See how I touch you, like you have blood, like you have life. Treat the plant the same way.”
Yes, Cullen can certainly feel how he touches him. He scratches the back of his neck with a dirtied hand and tries his best to replicate the same delicacy on the small shoot.
“There!” Saven’s fingertips drum against his forearm. “Very good. I will make a gardener out of you yet.”
“I doubt it,” Cullen says, but Saven smiles at him brightly, and he can’t help but smile back.
~*~
Saven is a graceful figure riding atop his hart. It is a majestic beast, with dark antlers stretching across a proud head and warning stripes against its flanks. It also seems to hate absolutely everyone but Saven.
He slides off now, murmuring to it in Elvish. Cullen approaches hesitantly, knowing the animal’s large, soft brown eyes are deceiving. Surely enough, when he gets close enough the hart snorts in alarm, looking at Cullen as if he is the ugliest thing it has ever seen.
“Atish, Assan. Vir sumeil.” The language sounds lovely on his tongue, and has the added effect of making Cullen feel like twice the uncivilized barbarian that he is. He raises a tentative hand to calm the beast, and it rears up, snorting in annoyance.
“Oh, don’t do that. Yes, I know.” Saven’s accent thickens as he speaks first to Cullen, then the hart. “Go in the stables, Assan. The apple boy you love will take care of you.”
He points him towards the stables with another word of Elvish, perhaps the only thing the animal actually understands. Saven runs a hand through his hair and grins sideways at Cullen as the hart trots off.
“He doesn’t like you,” he says easily, like it is a simple statement of fact. The sky is blue, Cullen is a blubbering idiot, the Inquisitor’s hart does not like him.
Cullen scratches his neck awkwardly. “I did not mean to, ah, disturb him.”
“Eh.” Saven waves dismissively. “He will always be disturbed by the amount of shemlen here. What is it you need of me, Commander?”
That is not a… comforting statement, but Cullen forges bravely onwards. “One of our supply lines in the Emerald Graves has been waylaid by red templars…”
~*~
Saven uses his magic at the war table like it is another limb. He holds it how Josephine holds up her clipboard, keeps it at rest how Cullen rests his hand on the pommel of his sword. He draws in sparks sometimes to illustrate a point, waves to close the doors or the windows, summons small flickering flames when it gets dark. He lights Josephine’s candle without being asked, regularly to the point where she does not do it herself. In fact, the women seem to have taken his casual magic use on their behalf for granted. They do not have to shift this piece on the far end of the map, Saven will do it. They do not have to check if the door is locked, Saven can do that. If one of them needs to put something aside, Saven can float it for them. It is honestly a little frustrating how much he simply does for them with no complaint.
“Inquisitor,” Josephine says at one meeting, wringing her hands, “About the water runes you were working on for the basins...”
“Oh, yes. I honestly can’t believe how unhygienic people are willing to live here! You’re all going to catch some sort of disease and die off, and we can’t have that. I’m prioritizing the one in the healer’s quarters first, of course.”
Cullen frowns. “Surely someone else can work on that, Inquisitor? You have enough on your plate as it is.”
“It’s nothing, Cullen. Besides, I feel as if it’s primarily my responsibility.”
His frown deepens. “I don’t think it is,” he argues, trying to sound gentle instead of scolding. “Why don’t you let Dagna work on it? You haven’t been to the gardens in a moment.”
Saven looks surprised, as if he hadn’t expected Cullen to remember the one hobby he is extremely passionate about. “I… don’t know if I can spare the time, what with everything…”
“That you are doing for other people?” Cullen finishes with a small smile.
Saven gives him a little laugh, ducking his head in defeat. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Show me how the elfroot is growing, after this,” Cullen suggests, and his eyes light up gold in the sunlight.
“Yes,” Leliana murmurs. “Tend to your elfroot with the commander, famously known for taking breaks in the garden. I think it’s a marvelous idea.”
Cullen shoots her a look—not now, please—but she smiles at him innocently. Saven nods, either not catching her teasing or genuinely agreeing with it.
Maker help them all.
~*~
Cullen both deeply respects and is terrified of Hawke.
When he first sees her the terror strikes him first. She is sparring with Saven—innocent Saven, who did not ask to bear arms against the Champion of Kirkwall—and he would recognize the viciousness of her forms everywhere. Saven can barely keep his footing, it is clear enough, but… he is keeping it. She wins, of course, because she could have won in seconds and swiped his head clean off his body if she truly wished to. When she looks at Cullen she pins him down and freezes him straight through his core without any magic at all.
Those piercing blue eyes say everything. Hello, Knight-Captain, and an old friend, and Cullen? Just that. Just his name.
She is the same except she is different. There is no pity in her gaze now when she speaks to him, and he doesn’t know whether to be honoured or offended. She speaks to him how she once spoke to Meredith, with pride and a determination that he always found impressive. There are no side glances, not like the way she once held his gaze when Meredith cast him aside and snarled, stupid boy.
He’s missed her.
She makes jokes about him and Saven within minutes of seeing the two of them together, because of course she had picked up on that, even if the man himself apparently hadn’t. They have drinks together and she strikes Cullen with her words, calmly, because she can. He takes the hits. When he prepares to haul Saven away for the night, she stops him.
“You’ll take care of him,” she says.
He nods. “It is my duty.”
“No, Cullen.” And she is not calling him Knight-Captain, like he thought she might to sharpen the blow. “I’m telling you, you will take care of him. You clearly care for him. You’ll draw your line this time before it ever hurts him.”
This time. Cullen only nods again, unable to speak, and she gives him a look that is almost a smile before going back to Varric.
She is a stupendous woman, Hawke. He doesn’t know why she of all people forgives him.
~*~
For one Void-taken moment Cullen thinks Saven is going to kiss him.
His withdrawal has him in one of its worst grips. He is explaining it all to Saven, all his secrets spilling out sticky and hot like tar, when the Inquisitor steps forwards and takes his face in hand. Cullen’s clamorous mind does a very good job of shutting the fuck up.
Saven’s thumb stroke his cheek. “Mala suledin,” he murmurs in a voice like fog on a lake. “You will endure. You are strong, possibly the strongest of us. I cannot imagine anything defeating you.”
His facial tattoos—Cullen cannot think of the correct term right now—run down his lips, moving with every word. Cullen wonders if they were painful to get. They are flattering against his skin tone, a warm, bold white declaring he is not afraid to hide who he is. Cullen wonders for a wholly inappropriate moment if he is tattooed anywhere else.
Saven draws back and Cullen’s fool mind catches up with him. The man is a healer, of course, and only here to see to his well-being. Cullen had… pushed his luck a little at Adamant, perhaps, returning to his Inquisitor’s tent when he wasn’t required to do so and all but running his fingers through his hair. But Saven had needed it, needed to be calmed, and Cullen wasn’t improper enough to offer him more.
Saven feeds and waters him and then says something very interesting in Elvish that he refuses to translate. Cullen’s first thought is that it’s something dirty, but then he thinks no, of course not, Saven doesn’t even know how to think that way. But he gets redder and redder as Cullen pushes, and it makes him wonder.
He asks Solas, when Saven is away, what “emma salin” means. Solas gives him a very flat look for a very long minute, and it is uncomfortable for both of them.
“I believe you mean ‘enasalin,’ Commander. It is the Elvish word for ‘victory.’” Solas regains his dignity first.
Contextually, that would make some sense, but why would Saven refuse to translate? Cullen frowns a little and double checks, “And ‘emma salin’ doesn’t mean anything?”
There is another long, uncomfortable pause. Solas says, “Why are you asking?”
So it does mean something. Cullen is beginning to worry Saven put a hex on him or some such curse. If everyone he asks will react like this, it certainly has the effect of one. He says, “I, ah—one of the kitchen girls said it.”
Solas frowns, but Cullen’s last-second lie seems to elucidate the situation for him. “To you,” he clarifies, and Cullen nods.
“Yes,” he lies. “She said, um, ‘me… something… emma salin.’”
Sudden and sharp: “Would you stop repeating that?”
“Oh, er, sorry.”
“She was probably dared by her friends to say it to you,” Solas sighs. “Adding intent, it roughly translates to, ‘I want you within me,’ and if she said ‘mi,’ she was making a crude sexual metaphor referring to you as a sword and she as the… sheath.”
Cullen can feel himself being lit on fire, painfully, like he is being slow-roasted over a great pit. Saven had… to Cullen… what?
Solas clears his throat, recovering from Cullen’s abject humiliation first. “Is that all, Commander?”
Cullen stammers uselessly for a good minute before nodding and stumbling out of the veranda. Damn that elf. Both of them. Maker, he needs to go pray.
~*~
Saven kisses like does everything else for the Inquisition: barely at first, as if he is taken aback by the idea that he has to do anything at all, and then slowly coming into his role like he had wanted to study every angle before making an earnest attempt.
He seems surprised Cullen is even interested in him, as if the daily trips to his office to chatter away about peaceful inanities, and the care and sweetness he carries that another healer has never shown, and the way he brightens when Cullen musters up a semblance of a smile for him don’t matter in the slightest. Cullen has few doubts for once, thankfully, because even without a direct admission from Saven himself, the man has just spent the better part of an entire chess match staring slack-jawed at his mouth. There is something to consider there. Not a very complicated something.
They don’t seem to know how to behave, after that—if anything, things go back to normal. Saven sneaks looks at him sometimes, though, shy ones, as if there is something about him that he can’t quite imagine is true.
In another impressive display of what Rylen considers indecisiveness but Cullen simply thinks of as him coming into his own, Saven decides he wants to train with swords. It is nearly unheard of for a mage, save the Chantry-sanctioned Knight Enchanters, but Saven has already expressed clear and vocal distaste for that practice. He wants real steel, wants to feel the weight in his hands and the force behind his blows. Cullen is proud, in an odd way, considering where they had started. He feels almost as if he had some influence on the matter (though that is probably a sign of hubris and something he should pray on). He agrees to train Saven and, well.
They are an ill-suited match. Cullen is harsher than he means to be, prompted by worry and images of unknown future demons piercing Saven’s weak guard, batting aside his sword-arm when it drags. Saven picks up on this and scowls at him throughout the whole affair, digging his stubborn heels in and seeing fit to complain about nearly everything. One day on the first week they clash too hard, words are exchanged, and the session ends early.
Cullen is annoyed, yes, but also afraid, and frustrated. Can’t Saven see that he cannot afford to slip up? If he leaves his right arm free for casting and refuses to bear either a shield or a staff for mobility reasons, then he needs to know how to move, needs to be nearly perfect, in fact. A misstep can mean death, hesitation can mean death, not listening to Cullen will mean death.
He goes to sleep that night with a little brown barn cat and wakes up to it turning into his Inquisitor and thinks, but doesn’t say out loud so it doesn’t count, What the fuck. But the sheer panic in Saven’s eyes eases his mind back and makes him pause, just a little.
Saven absolutely refuses to look at him for that morning’s Council meeting, very obviously so, enough that even Josephine is trying to ask Cullen with solely her eyes what in Andraste’s name transpired between them. Leliana asks, politely, if everything is going well with their training. Saven tenses like he expects Cullen to discard him off of Skyhold’s battlements like he is flicking mud off his coat.
“He is doing well,” Cullen says honestly. Saven glances up at him for the first time that day, absolutely shocked. Cullen attempts a little smile, but he looks away before he can catch it.
Cullen tries to go easier on him in training that day. Saven is unnaturally quiet, saying very little and obeying when Cullen adjusts him without complaint. It makes him feel some regret, enough that he stares awkwardly ahead during a short break and mutters something that is more an acknowledgment of the day before than an apology. Saven responds in kind. Good, great. That’s good then.
But Saven stops visiting his office. Cullen finds himself on the ramparts one evening, searching for him before he even registers what he is doing. A dull flash of green gives the Inquisitor away in the dark—he is there in the training yard, batting at a dummy with precise, measured strikes. It is hard to tell from this distance, but his footwork is acceptable and his rhythm is steady. That’s good, then. Is it? Isn’t he doing what Cullen wanted?
Saven is losing weight. It is noticeable to Cullen, pioneer of accidental weight loss techniques of Skyhold. He shouldn’t be, not at his build. He doesn’t know much about elven physicality, but he can guess that warm skin should not turn to a dull pallor, and that the skull should not be more visible than it was a week ago. If he were to guess, he would say that Saven isn’t compensating for his increased activity level with an increased appetite; doubtless his training as a healer focused less on this aspect than others. As he doesn’t have lyrium withdrawals to blame it on, it only leaves poor care.
“Inquisitor,” Cullen asks him one morning, “Do you eat before or after our training?”
Saven frowns, misunderstanding the question. “No. Why, am I slow?”
Cullen feels his gut clench. Not Saven, he pleads, to whom he does not know. Not this. He has seen too many templars—not Saven.
“Please do so right afterwards from now on,” he requests in as mild a manner as he can. He doesn’t clarify, not wanting to leave space for arguments, but Saven only nods, thank the Maker. He is still practical, underneath his exertions. If Cullen tells him to do something, he will do it. The thought shouldn’t be as terrifying as it is.
Dorian comes up to him a few days later, mouth set in a thin line, moustached flattened. “Saven is sick,” he says without preamble. “And if you meant what you said to him in the garden that day, you had better go and check on him. He’s in the library.”
Cullen doesn’t even ask him how he knows—if he was watching or if Saven told him—before he is practically running out of his office, not even bothering to close the door. Solas shoots him what can only be a judgmental glance as he rushes through the rotunda, pausing only a moment to locate the stairs.
Saven is hunched over a small stack of papers, and—oh, Maker, he looks terrible, which makes Cullen feel terrible, and he has a thousand apologies to spew and a thousand sins to confess, but he can do that later, because Saven, Saven is too light a weight against him, is flighty and weak with his magic, begs him once he is in bed to stay like he doesn’t think Cullen will. Cullen kneels by his side and murmurs fervently to his beads, clutching them in his hands like he can pray Saven back to good health and good humour.
~*~
Saven is laying in Cullen’s bed, with permission this time. Cullen can feel the moment he awakens: every slackened muscle goes tense, and the peaceful ease of his breathing tightens.
Cullen thinks on how he had first gotten Saven’s attention. He rolls his head and murmurs, “Hello.”
Saven’s cheeks pink. “Hello,” he croaks back.
He is easy to mold in this vulnerable state, like warm clay, and Cullen is so concerned—he is so worried—he does not want Saven to go down this path, no matter what the Inquisition makes him into. He reaches with his mouth and his hands and Saven gasps and connects with him easily, starved for even simple touch.
Cullen will give him more than simple touch if it keeps him safe. He cannot deny himself and say he doesn’t enjoy this, that the noises Saven makes when Cullen mouths at his pulse point aren’t immensely satisfying and that he wont think of them—of this moment—later when he is alone in this same room in the dark. He whispers, promises Saven this again if he takes care of himself, and he gets a hasty agreement that makes him smile and wince at the same time. You don’t need to do anything to have me, he wants to tell him, and then, when Saven stops him, gets the opportunity to.
Cullen listens, and understands. It will take more than this, he knows, but this is the least he can give. He is making lazy progress, having gotten Saven’s shirt off and resumed his mouth’s endeavors, when Saven hesitantly informs him that he is sort of, kind of, a virgin.
In some things, at least. Cullen teases him lightly even as he kicks himself in the head, because was he really about to take the leader of the Inquisition in a drafty loft while he was at his most vulnerable? He settles for closing his mouth around him instead, proud of the way Saven bucks and drinking in the cries he makes like they are a reward for Cullen’s worship. They will have to talk, to know how far he’s gone and how far Cullen should go, just how much he likes his mouth and where he would like it, if Saven has done as little as finger himself or done as much as fuck himself stupid on a toy, and fuck, there is an image, and if he sounds like this then his entire clan could probably bloody hear him and Cullen hopes all the people that asked him for favours in his healing aravel could see him now as he absolutely loses himself to only Cullen—
Saven makes a sort of choked off gasping noise when he comes. Cullen swallows him down fully, and a little more for good measure, and then crawls up and kisses him on the cheek. Saven fumbles for him after a minute, and Cullen lets him, burying his head into the crook of his neck before his hips stutter with his own release.
Saven murmurs to him afterwards in Elvish, fingers scratching bluntly through his hair. Cullen wonders what he is saying. He knows what he would be saying—nothing he should admit so early on in their relationship. Is that what this is, now, a relationship? But isn’t it? Hadn’t it started so long ago?
Cullen wants more of Saven, wants him endlessly—how he laughs, how he cries, what he knows, what he doesn’t, who he is, who he will be. Maybe Saven isn’t there yet, maybe Saven stares at his mouth now and nothing else. But if Cullen can watch over him, be his, then it will be enough. He will make it enough.