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It probably said a lot about him that, after landing sprawled in the eluvian's chamber and determining where he was again, the first thing he did was check the journal he'd kept tucked in his belt. It hadn't worked in that cell...wherever in the world that had been...and part of him expected this to just be another trick. A punishment of some sort, continually inflicted for crimes he had long been ready to confess.
But he saw the writing appearing, saw the trouble, and the emotion that wended its way through him was complicated at best.
Cullen dashed off a message, hand trembling almost too hard to hold the quill, then focused on forcing his body to obey him. Weeks without food, with barely enough water to survive, with only enough space to pace six steps in any direction in the often absolute dark, had left him impossibly weak. He quaked and shook like an old man as he used the wall to pull himself to his feet, back to that damned mirror, teeth gritted.
His first step nearly sent him crumpling to the floor.
The second was only a little steadier.
But he kept going because he had to keep going, and by the time he reached the courtyard, he was able to keep his forward momentum by sheer bullheaded determination alone. (Even as the world swam around him with every blink of his eyes, a watercolor blur of sensation and shapes.)
He was needed. He needed to know everyone was all right.
But he saw the writing appearing, saw the trouble, and the emotion that wended its way through him was complicated at best.
Cullen dashed off a message, hand trembling almost too hard to hold the quill, then focused on forcing his body to obey him. Weeks without food, with barely enough water to survive, with only enough space to pace six steps in any direction in the often absolute dark, had left him impossibly weak. He quaked and shook like an old man as he used the wall to pull himself to his feet, back to that damned mirror, teeth gritted.
His first step nearly sent him crumpling to the floor.
The second was only a little steadier.
But he kept going because he had to keep going, and by the time he reached the courtyard, he was able to keep his forward momentum by sheer bullheaded determination alone. (Even as the world swam around him with every blink of his eyes, a watercolor blur of sensation and shapes.)
He was needed. He needed to know everyone was all right.
