Chapter Text
Cullen has always found living his life easiest when he's able to break it down into routines.
He was a well-adjusted and affable kid, and he had his core group of friends, but none of that spared him when he was reliably the first to hand in his homework each day. It earned him jeers and jabs all throughout school, from his siblings and his classmates alike, but he never missed an assignment or had an overdue library book because of it.
It was that same sense of order that had propelled him towards the Royal Military Academy in Denerim, as soon as they would accept him. The structure there was reliable, and to him, comforting. Idleness made him uneasy. He graduated early, with commendations, and it wasn't long before Cullen had worked his way from Officer Cadet Rutherford to Captain Rutherford.
And that's when the routines began to crumble. His promotion to Captain was bestowed upon him after Kinloch, a hostage situation in a large, remote boarding school that was so glossed over, with so many details redacted in the reports provided to the media, that it almost made Cullen question whether he had ever even been in that hell, despite the scars it left on his body and his psyche.
Then came Kirkwall. He was shipped out before the dust had settled at Kinloch, at special request of his new Major, Meredith Stannard. He covered those scars, quick and dirty, and settled into new routines. But the damage had been done, in Kinloch, and as much as he tried to ignore that fact, the demons of his memories wouldn't leave him be. He buried himself in his new role as second-in-command, focusing solely on seeing to the execution of his orders. It harkened back to his life in service before Kinloch, and the familiarity of it comforted him in some way. But it made him complacent, also. Perhaps, he wonders now, if he'd been more present, if he'd clung less to what he thought he needed to get by, he wouldn't have ended up on the wrong side of the moral divide that would cleave Kirkwall in two.
With Stannard dead, it was expected that Cullen would take a promotion and pick up where she left off. But he couldn't. The panic attacks had never left him after Kinloch, but they'd abated to the point he'd been sleeping decently before Kirkwall imploded in on itself. They returned with the smouldering ash that rained down on the city, and the mere thought of serving any longer, of setting himself up for another Kinloch or another Kirkwall, was too much to bear.
He'd long since served his minimum commission, and was granted an honourable discharge. He gravitated towards Denerim—it was the last city he'd known, that he'd felt comfortable in, and it felt natural to settle there. Except, nothing settled. Nothing within and around Cullen was the same as it'd been during Academy. Everything in Denerim was too much, too overwhelming, too loud. A car would backfire down the street, probably entirely unnoticed by everyone around it, except it'd send Cullen huddling behind whatever served as decent cover in his sparse apartment. He slept less than in any other period in his life, and it showed. His sister, Mia, came to visit in his third month there. Cullen could count the number of times he'd seen Mia cry on one hand, with fingers to spare, but when he'd opened his apartment door to her, she'd crumbled into tears with one look at him.
And now he's in Honnleath. He'd grown up a short distance from the village, and still, almost fifteen years later, nothing has changed. At eighteen, that thought would've filled Cullen with some sort of existential dread.
At thirty two, it's about the most comforting thing possible.
He wakes up early in the morning, often before the sun, and he heads down the rickety, old stairs in his rickety, old house to the kitchen. He makes a cup of coffee in his single-serving French press—a housewarming gift from his brother, Branson—and drinks it, leant up against the counter. Two sugars, no cream. He still drinks coffee despite the insomnia, because it doesn't seem to make a difference. He's gone weeks without it, and he went just as long without sleeping a full night, too. Beyond that, it's another way he reminds himself that this place is home now, that he's not in service anymore, because this is decidedly not the instant coffee that he'd never been able to get used to. There's never any grit left behind by undissolved grounds, the brew is never watered down, and there's as much sugar as he likes. Some people might read the morning paper while they drink their coffee, but the only way to get hold of a newspaper in Honnleath is to take a turn with one of the communal ones at the grocers or the tea house. And that suits Cullen fine because, right now, he'd rather not know that there's a world outside the little enclave he's managed to craft for himself here.
When he's had his fill of coffee, he throws on his thickest, warmest cardigan and rides his bike down the hill to the shore.
The expanse of black sand gives way to a jigsaw of jagged brown-brindled rocks, dotted with driftwood logs. And amongst the rocks, there's a large tide pool that's formed. When the tide is low as it is this early in the morning, it's like an ocean all unto itself for all the small fish that end up trapped inside. A pair of little orange starfish are usually there amongst the barnacles and the anemones too, and small crabs now and then. It's calming and grounding, surrounded by the cool briny air, and it's his favourite place to sit to watch the sunrise. Of course it's not always sunny in Honnleath, not by any stretch, but even when it's overcast and raining, Cullen still comes to sit most mornings.
After the tide pool, Cullen goes into town to take care of whatever needs taking care of. This morning, it's groceries. He has a small garden of his own, next to the house, but he doesn't have a green thumb for everything… or for most things. And besides that, you can't grow eggs and cheese in the dirt no matter your gardening prowess.
He rides over to the grocers and nods at Roland, the shop owner, as the little bell above the door chimes his entry. Cullen has no idea how old Roland is, beyond "old," because he ran the same shop when Cullen was a boy trailing in after his mum, and he'd been "old" back then too.
Cullen takes a basket from the small stack by the door and begins to weave through the few aisles of the shop, collecting his groceries. It ends up being a hodgepodge in his basket, as always, because he doesn't ever prepare anything more complicated than roasted meats and steamed vegetables, toasted bagels with peanut butter or jam, porridge, and handfuls of cereal straight from the box. The whole process is another small novelty that he hadn't realised how much he'd missed while in service, until he was no longer in it.
Roland clears his throat heartily from the front of the shop, which Cullen knows is how he prefaces any conversation he's about to strike up. "You seen the new bloke walking around?" he calls out.
Cullen's the only other person in the shop at the moment, so it has to be a question for him even if it wasn't directed at him. "Can't say I have, Roland," Cullen answers, as he pulls back from the dairy fridge.
"Washed up on one of the boats. Yesterday, they figure." There's no clue as to who "they" are but Cullen has no interest in pressing it. "From the city."
'The city' is local terminology for any place in Ferelden that isn't Honnleath, it seems. The only doctor in town is from 'the city,' and he came from Redcliffe. Cullen himself has told various people several times that he used to live in Denerim, and still he's known as the veteran from 'the city.'
Cullen makes a noise of acknowledgement as he heads towards the till.
"Traipsed all through town, so much jewellery on him he was lit up like a Satinalia tree. Fancy clothes, too." Roland reaches for Cullen's basket before he's even set it on the counter, putting each item into a paper bag without looking.
"He came through the shop, then?"
Roland grunts and shakes his head, the end of his long beard trembling with the motion. "Nah. Gerry by the docks seen him, told me about him."
Cullen can't help but scoff inwardly at that. Honnleath is small and insular, and that means the locals are nothing but a bunch of busybodies that notice each and every change in the village, no matter how subtle or insignificant. Even when he'd moved back, there'd been rumour and gossip about him for weeks, and he'd even grown up here.
"Well, I'm sure you'll all keep an eye on him, Roland," Cullen says, handing over some money. The corner of his lip twitches up when he sees a brief grimace cross Roland's face. He's a nice enough man but it doesn't hurt to take a shot at his—and everyone else's—nosiness now and then.
Roland grunts and pushes Cullen's bag across the counter. "Who knows why he's here, is all I'm sayin'," he says as Cullen heads for the door.
"Why indeed…" Cullen mutters to himself, stepping out into the street. He reaches for his bike with his free hand, puts the bag of groceries into the makeshift basket on the back, and walks it a short way down the sidewalk before hopping on.
He rides home, quick as he can up the hill. The only why he knows the answer to is why he bought the small house that sits all by itself on the small hill so far outside the centre of the village.