A/N: So I said, "No new stories for Inquisition." I said, "I am definitely not romancing Cullen." I said, "Under no circumstances will I ever write a Cullen story." ... Well played, BioWare.

Seriously, though, these two and their people are such fun to write - I hope you all have as much fun reading. I love feedback - constructive criticism always welcomed - and I encourage suggestions if there are any particular scenes you want to see as this goes along. Many, many thanks to Oleander's One for encouragement, hand-holding, and all-around friendship! I have a nice buffer on this one, so expect updates every Friday for a good long while.

18 Drakonis, 9:41

There was a morning when Antonia Trevelyan woke up and almost knew what she was doing. It was a larger accomplishment than it sounded: Since she had fallen from the breach in the sky, the changes in her life had been many and the learning curves vast, and she had come back here to her hut and wept with frustration and fear more often than she would ever admit to. She believed she had covered it rather well—except from Varric, whose keen eyes seemed to see inside her on occasion. But he had said nothing, for which she was grateful.

Getting dressed, she left the hut, heading for Haven's Chantry. It was cold outside, as it always was, even though in the rest of Thedas she thought it was spring, with the sun's warmth just bringing the plants to life. Haven seemed to exist out of time, somehow.

She heard snatches of conversation as she made her way through the camp: "Really? I hadn't heard", and "What's that in the pot?" and "Well, I won't stand for that", and "Look, it's the Herald of Andraste!"

Antonia had finally stopped looking around when she heard that name, wondering where this blessed Herald might be. She had a hard time believing that she had been touched by the Maker's Bride—she was just a minor noble from Ostwick, who had been assisting at the Conclave in a clerical position. Not that there was anything wrong with that. She took pride in her family heritage, and in the studies that had made her a useful addition to the Conclave. Growing up, she'd been left alone in the family estate in the country quite a bit, and had whiled away her time by studying. By far the youngest in her family, she had always known her role was to be part of the Chantry, unless an extremely advantageous marriage could be arranged for her. As a young child, she had been told by her father that he intended her to be a Templar one day, which is how a young member of Marcher nobility had trained in the use of a greatsword with one of the Free Marches' greatest swordsmen.

By the time she was in her teens, talk of her becoming a Templar had died away, but by then she had grown to love her bouts in the training ring, using her muscles in addition to her brain, learning a different kind of focus, so she had kept it up.

The irony that the only survivor of the Conclave would happen to be someone learned in both books and battle was not lost on Antonia—but to believe that Andraste had somehow chosen her for this role was to believe that the Maker's Bride had also somehow intended the Conclave to be destroyed, and with it so many good people, and for this chaos to be unleashed on the world, and that Antonia could not fathom. It was easier by far for her to believe that her survival, and the mark on her hand that somehow spoke to the rifts in the sky, were coincidence, and that she was still a person, just like all those she passed on her way every day.

But she couldn't argue with every person who addressed her by the title, and she had come to see the wisdom in what her advisors argued—that the people needed to believe, whether she did or not. The people needed to think that Andraste was looking out for them, and that she had sent a Herald down to Thedas to reassure them that somehow everything would come right.

Shaking off her deep thoughts, Antonia looked up. She smiled when she saw Cullen, the Commander of the Inquisition's forces, waiting for her outside the Chantry.

"Are you here to see that I don't trip over my feet or get lost on the way to the War Room?" she asked.

"Not at all. You've never seemed prone to either one—don't sell yourself short." He walked with her, holding the heavy Chantry doors open with the courtesy that was such an intrinsic part of him.

When Antonia had first been shown around Haven and told about her role in the Inquisition, she had been reluctant, overwhelmed, still fighting against what appeared to be her destiny. Leliana, who led the Inquisition's spy corps, had been unyielding in her insistence that Antonia embrace her role, her eyes gleaming with the zeal of a true believer. If Leliana didn't believe Antonia had been touched by Andraste, she faked it very well. Cassandra, who was Antonia's unofficial jailer in those first days when they still weren't sure what to make of her, and had become her trainer and companion in the days since, had been instrumental in forming the Inquisition—if Leliana was a true believer, Cassandra came close to being a zealot. There had been no escape from the scrutiny of either woman, no chance to relax or to come to terms with how she, Antonia, could fit into the Herald's body. Josephine Montilyet, an Antivan whose family Antonia knew slightly, oversaw the Inquisition's diplomacy, and she rarely had time for more than a brief chat.

It had been Cullen who made time for Antonia to continue the combat training that kept her centered, Cullen who answered her many questions, Cullen who made sure she was taking time to eat and sleep in her otherwise hectic schedule. Antonia was grateful to him—if he had ever had doubts about her fitness to act in the role she'd been assigned, he had never expressed them in word or deed, and his easy warmth and confidence had gone a long way toward making her feel comfortable in Haven. If it hadn't been for Cullen and Varric, she'd have either run screaming down the mountainside or gone completely insane, she thought.

"What's on the agenda today?" she asked Cullen now.

"I believe the usual—spies and diplomats and soldiers. Something like a child's strategy game, I sometimes think. Did you ever play such things, growing up?"

Antonia shook her head. "I was alone much of the time. I suppose I could have played against myself, but who would I have crowed to when I won?" She smiled, glad to see Cullen's smile in return. He tended toward the serious, but as Antonia grew more comfortable with him she was finding a light-hearted side of him peek out in response to her occasional irreverences. She'd never been a person who was comfortable being serious all the time—even in the dark days they were living through, Antonia felt they needed humor to remind them what they were fighting for. Thus far, Cullen and occasionally Varric were the only people she felt comfortable showing that side to, and when they responded in kind, she felt for a moment like the Antonia Trevelyan she knew.

As they came into the War Room, Leliana and Josephine were leaning over the long table, murmuring intensely about some problem. They looked up as she came in, and for a moment Antonia saw herself through their eyes. At 26, she was far younger than all the others in the room—while she'd never been forward enough to ask, she knew Josephine was in her mid-30s, and the others appeared to be roughly contemporary with the Antivan. In addition to her youth, Antonia was slight of build, her shoulders narrow. She wore her hair short-cropped and it had a tendency to tousle—she hardly looked like nobility anymore, and she certainly didn't appear to outward glance as a warrior. And to her cost, Antonia well knew that her big brown eyes and open face were far too expressive for any kind of competent spycraft. It was moments like these, standing there under the scrutiny of people who actually knew what they were doing, that she felt least like the chosen of anyone.

"Herald, why don't you come look at the fortification plan for the gates?" Cullen said, coming to her rescue as he had so often before.

She followed him, bending over the schematic, frowning at it. Reading schematics was another skill she'd never possessed before, but learning how to study them and find the flaws was a challenge she enjoyed, like the swordcraft. By the time she and Cullen had finished going over it and fine-tuning it, the atmosphere in the War Room had changed into something more collaborative, and they were all able to continue the meeting.

At the end of the meeting, Antonia felt she was being dismissed. Cassandra walked her out, leaving Cullen, Leliana, and Josephine together at the table. It was hard to decide how she felt about that. In some ways, Antonia resented being treated like a child. In other ways, she understood it—after all, she had fallen from the sky in rather mysterious circumstances, and they didn't really know her yet. And in yet another way, she was glad. To have stood up and asked for a larger role in the decision-making would have made this all very real, cementing her change into the Herald of Andraste, and Antonia just wasn't certain she was ready for that yet.

Later, after a long lunch with Varric and Cassandra—who sniped at each other constantly, but seemed to enjoy their mutual hostility—she changed into her combat gear and headed out for the training ground. The shouts could be heard distinctly in the clear, cold air around Haven. The men enjoyed the work they were doing, and they believed in their leader. In return, Cullen took his responsibilities toward them very seriously.

There seemed to be more than she remembered, which Cullen confirmed as she joined him. Locals from Haven and even some pilgrims from other parts of Thedas were coming to join them every day.

Antonia had to wonder why. What brought them to this cold, inhospitable place in the back end of nowhere, to follow a young girl who had no more idea than they did what she was doing there?

Cullen turned his head, the corner of his mouth quirking up. "None of the new recruits have made quite the entrance you did, I have to say."

She smiled. "I suppose I did get everyone's attention."

"That you did." He walked toward a man who was holding out a bound parchment to him, talking as they went. "I was recruited to the Inquisition in Kirkwall. I was there during the mage uprising, and I witnessed the devastation it caused. You can ask Varric sometime if you want a first-hand account. He's the storyteller." Cullen took the parchment, looking it over quickly. With a brisk nod, he handed it back. "Cassandra sought a solution. When she offered me a role within the Inquisition, I left the Templars for a new cause. And I'm glad I did—now it seems we face something far worse."

Antonia nodded. "The Conclave destroyed, a giant hole in the sky—things aren't looking good."

"Which is why we're needed," Cullen said. "The Chantry lost control of both the Templars and the mages, and now they sit there arguing about a new Divine while the Breach remains. But the Inqusition can still act, even if the Chantry won't. Our followers would be part of that. There's so much we can—" He stopped himself, gesturing at her training gear. "But you know all this, and I doubt you came out here for a lecture."

"Well, no," Antonia agreed. She grinned at him. "But if you have one prepared, I'd love to hear it."

Cullen laughed. "Another time, perhaps."

They looked at one another, and something shifted in the air between them. Up until that moment, Antonia had seen him as a mentor, as an older man who had been kind to her, as a friend. Now she realized with some surprise, looking up into his eyes, that Cullen was quite an attractive man, and she felt a warmth flow through her that she had not expected at all.

Whatever Cullen was thinking, it appeared to be just as unexpected to him, because he looked away, clearing his throat nervously. "There's … still a lot of work ahead," he said, but his voice was softer, somehow, than it had been a minute ago.

Fortunately for Antonia's peace of mind, and she imagined for Cullen's as well, they were interrupted by a scout reporting in. Cullen raised his eyebrows in her direction, with a small smile. "As I was saying." He left with the scout, leaving Antonia grateful that he seemed willing to ignore whatever had just happened between them.

She took to the practice ground with a ferocious intensity, trying to convince herself that this was neither the time nor the place for any feelings of that nature, but deep inside her that warmth still remained.