All Cullen can do is hold on; he even manages to hold in most of the noises he'd like to make -- the ones that sound like an angry cat.

He does spare a moment to think about the other letters he's going to write, soon. (Not everybody's alive.) But it's true: though the costs were heavy... they could have been so much worse.

This is the real reason he does not protest Alistair's manhandling.