Title: Memorare
Author: Jade Sabre

Notes: Once upon a time, a week before her birthday, Loquaciousquark said to me, "I wish someone would write a fic where x happens," and I noncommittally said, "Yeah, that'd be great huh."

And once upon a time before that time, Quark said to me, "Here Lies the Abyss broke my Inquisitor, and I could never figure out how to put her back together after that."

Writing the one turned into the other turned into this fic, which is thus for an incredibly specific audience of one and yet still, I think (she insists), worth sharing with the rest of you. So I am indebted to her for allowing me to borrow Eppie Hawke and Priory Trevelyan, and hope I have returned them better than they were when they came to me.

Title from the prayer of the same name.

The baby makes Trevelyan smile.

He wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for the fact that so little else has since she emerged from the Fade, Wardenless and full of new truths about her Mark. He understands she feels guilty, yes, and Adamant has taken a toll on them all—more on him than he cares to admit—but something eats at her. He means to ask her what it is, but reorganizing the army in the wake of their first real test has taken much of his time, and most of the rest of it he has spent sleeping; and part of him thinks she has been avoiding him—or if not avoiding him, then avoiding spending enough time with him for him to ask. He'd be hurt, if he wasn't avoiding showing her the extent of his exhaustion.

He misses her, but they've been so busy.Their relationship is such a new, tenuous thing, and he worries—he doesn't know what he's doing, but he thinks they should talk.

Not now; for now, she is smiling, and besides the midday meal is hardly the place for heart-to-heart conversations. The healthy midday repast at one of the tables lining the Great Hall, shared amongst the Inquisitor's inner circle, carries with it an extra touch of celebration that the Champion of Kirkwall—Hawke, just Hawke now, Cullen—still lingers in their halls. She's meant to go to Weisshaupt for days, but her lover—husband now—has convinced her to stay awhile longer, to let their little one rest before another journey. And Trevelyan is not the only victim of her charms; the baby has the entirety of Skyhold in a jolly mood. New life in the face of so much death—a blessing, Cullen thinks, watching the Inquisitor sitting next to him as she holds the baby so that her parents can eat. She plays with Leda's toes, deftly redirects her attempts to snatch any and everything off the table, points to various objects and tells her their names. She is clearly comfortable with children, more than comfortable, her shoulders relaxed, her gestures carrying an ease he isn't sure he's seen in her before.

The sight is enough to set a man to thinking, rather like the glint of noon sun off her golden hair, the softness in her cat-green eyes. In the brightness, with the Champion laughing and the Inquisitor smiling and even Cassandra looking less annoyed than usual at Varric's jokes, he finds his thoughts wandering, looking past their current silence, an idle flash of a future, of other children, blonde curls and green eyes, of friends gathering in peace.

"Would you like to hold her?" Trevelyan asks, crashing into his daydream with the startling reality of a grubby-handed dark-haired child reaching for his furs as she has so often been wont to do. Before he can say yea or nay, he finds his arms full, and as he struggles to adjust he catches Trevelyan's secret smile, as if perhaps she too sees a path to the other side of this mess.

The hope is little comfort when Leda takes one look at his face and immediately crumples hers. "It's the scruff," Hawke says, sitting across the table next to her husband, over her daughter's wails. "She's not used to it."

Cullen would run a hand over his chin self-consciously were it not for the crying babe. "Hawke," Fenris says, exasperated but, Cullen thinks, also amused.

"All right, all right," Hawke says, reaching across the table and collecting her child from Cullen's awkward grip. "She's tired. You're tired, aren't you, little one? Is it time for your nap?" she says, holding Leda up to her face, rubbing her nose as her daughter blinks in momentary confusion. "Do you need sleep?"

"She is her mother's daughter in that regard," Fenris says, and Cullen is struck by how—relaxed the elf is, the open fondness in his expression as he regards his family.

"What are you trying to say?" Hawke says, still nose-to-nose with the baby.

"Your affection for sleep is well-documented."

"Is not," Varric protests. "I specifically left the fact that the Champion is notoriously lazy out of the book."

"Slander," Hawke says, "from my most trusted friends. From my husband. Don't listen to them, dearest. Mummy understands you need your rest." Leda sniffles as if to agree, voicing another sad fuss as she squirms. Hawke shifts her to a cradle and says, "I'll be back. Please don't take my plate. Or my wine."

"I won't allow it," Fenris says, and she narrows her eyes at him.

"This is not an invitation for you to drink it."

"Hawke," Fenris says with a meaningful look at Leda's flailing fists.

She sighs. "I'm trusting you," she says, and then she departs, and Cullen turns back to the table, catching Trevelyan watching Hawke with a longing look. She has often spoken of children, nieces and nephews, and he remembers she has never been so far from home, from family. He on the other hand knows he has at least one nephew, but—

"So," Varric says in a knowing tone, and Cullen barely avoids a scowl, "little Leda putting ideas in your head?"

Fenris raises an eyebrow and he is blushing (and if anyone should have respect for the idea of privacy, it is the Champion's lover, he thinks), but Trevelyan has thankfully missed the question, unless there is another thought behind her curious look. "I—"

"You're finished, my lord?" a servant says, and Cullen blinks at him.

"Yes, yes, take his plate," Dorian says, waving a hand. The servant collects it and continues down the table. "Southern table service. So mouthy."

"Dorian," Trevelyan says, a bit severely, Cullen thinks, until he notices the sudden storm on Fenris's face. Bereft of his bride and child the elf's expression is more familiarly sullen, and the look he gives the magister's son is downright poisonous.

"Fereldan, I presume," Vivienne says, and Cullen's hackles rise at her dismissiveness. "In Orlais—"

"Your glass, messere," another servant says, reaching across Fenris.

"No," Fenris said, reaching for Hawke's glass, "she doesn't—"

Their arms collide and Hawke's wineglass falls over and rolls; the servant dives, almost into Fenris's lap, and the unmistakable sound of glass shattering upon stone follows. "Messere," the servant says, dropping to his knees at Fenris's feet, "I am so—"

"Never mind," Fenris says, though whether his annoyance stems from the servant's clumsiness or his anticipation of Hawke's scolding, Cullen cannot say. He shifts in his chair and then hisses in sudden pain. "Just—"

"Did you cut yourself?" Trevelyan asks, and in a moment she too is under the table. Judging by Vivienne's sigh and Dorian's snobbish amusement, this is not typical behavior for the child of a noble house; then again, she has shown herself to have a propensity for finding her way into impossible situations. "No, no," she says, shooing the servant out from under the table, "go find a broom, I'll take care of it."

"My deepest apologies," the servant says, bowing repeatedly as he backs away before fleeing. Understandably, given Fenris's scowl.

"Inquisitor," Fenris says, his cheeks flushing noticeably as Trevelyan appears in Hawke's chair holding his foot. "I must—"

"It's no bother at all," she assures him, heedless of his sudden death grip on the table's edge. Cullen suddenly regrets not telling her more about the elf—not that he knows much, but perhaps some warning of his prickly reputation would have dissuaded her from treating him as—well, an injured child. "Although I don't see—"

In a moment, Cullen realizes the flush on Fenris's cheeks is not from the reddening of his skin. Before the moment is over, Fenris is alight, his foot gone from Trevelyan's grasp, hitting the floor and propelling him into her. In a moment he has her by the throat, lifting her one-handedly into the air.

"The hell?" Varric says, but Cullen barely hears him as he vaults over the table, scattering dishes and glasses alike in a clatter as he lands on the other side and without pausing lowers his shoulder and slams into the elf. He is denser than he would have expected, pure muscle—but of course, he's a greatsword-wielding elf—but the shock of the impact is enough to startle him into dropping Trevelyan, who manages to land on her feet.

He has Fenris by the collar, the linen stiff against his fingers, as he says, "What do you think—"

"Cullen—" Trevelyan says behind him but he is already dropping Fenris as if he were hot coals—which he is, the markings on his chin and forehead turning an eerie and unmistakably familiar shade of red.

"You," the elf says, green eyes turning upon Trevelyan, "did this."

"I did not," Trevelyan says, voice rough, hands out, fingers on the hand closest to him twitching as she slowly approaches. Cullen narrowed his eyes a fraction, attempting to defer to her by fighting his every instinct on the matter. A sword, why doesn't he have a sword? "Listen—"

Fenris roars—there is not other word for it—the markings along his entire body catching fire, burning red even through his shirt, and a cry goes up in the hall as its occupants scatter. Cullen grasps at where his sword should be—foolish, to think they were safe—comes up with his knife but finds himself hesitating—there was a time he wouldn't have hesitated, but before he can decide what to do Trevelyan snatches it from his hands and throws it. Her aim is flawless, but the elf is gone and the knife thuds into the table behind where he stood a moment ago and he is—

He is charging Trevelyan and again Cullen throws himself into his path, deflecting his bull rush into the wall. The roar abruptly ceases as he knocks the wind out of him and Cullen inhales sharply and suddenly his nose is full of lyrium, and it doesn't smell right but it smells of memory and song and power and he is too close too close but he can't move, desperate longing rising from the ashes of his addiction where he's put it to pyre again and again and he wants it, he wants to taste it again just once even if this lyrium is not—

"Cullen?" He hears Trevelyan's voice even as the elf regains his breath and immediately headbutts him in the gut. He staggers, grasping the elf's arm out of instinct and want, scrabbling at the lines of fire as if to claw them open. Fenris drags him along like a fetter and yet he hardly slows and he moves too fast and this is familiar and—

"Cullen!" Cassandra shouts—Cassandra knows lyrium in ways Trevelyan does not, and Trevelyan may support him now but Cassandra sat beside him those first shivering nights of withdrawal calling him back to himself and at the sound of his name in her voice he lets go and hits the stone floor, hard enough to shake sense back into him. Lyrium. Red lyrium. And somehow—

Feet pass by his eyes, running, booted and then bare and glowing, and he looks up to see Trevelyan fleeing—no, not fleeing, luring, drawing the elf towards the throne and away from the crowds of people pouring out the door in the back. Cassandra grabs his hand and pulls him to his feet, shouting about going for weapons, and then she is gone and the mages gather around him, watching the Inquisitor dart around the end of the table and throw chairs in the glowing elf's way. "Shit," Varric says, grabbing his crossbow from where it had clattered to the floor. "I'm getting—"

"On those stumpy legs? Please," Dorian says. "Why don't you do something with that device of yours?"

"Like what?" Varric asks, gesturing with Bianca. "Am I supposed to shoot him?"

His tone is exasperated, but there's real fear underlying it; they cannot hesitate forever. Dorian shakes his head and takes off at a run, shoving nobles and servants aside, clearing a path for the incoming soldiers. "Sir!" one of them calls, and Cullen, his eyes on Trevelyan as she skips up the stairs to the throne, suddenly finds a sword in his hand. He waves his free hand to express his gratitude and the soldier says, "What should we—?"

He takes his eyes from the chase long enough to look to Vivienne, who shakes her head. "I'm afraid," she says delicately, "I don't know what effect the lyrium would have on our spells."

"You've cast at red templars," Varric says.

"Yes, but they use lyrium to nullify magic. This—"

"This is an abomination," Solas interrupts, his expression dark, his voice—angry, murderous, though his body is perfectly still.

"We fought the Knight-Commander," Cullen says, gripping his sword, his hands still trembling, nose burning, but he will master it. Fenris has stopped at the foot of the steps, though his body quivers with energy, his feet barely brushing the ground as the fires burning in their bowls dance higher in his mere presence.

"Yeah," Varric said, "but we didn't—aw hell—"

Fenris has decided to move, is shouting in a language Cullen doesn't know as he charges up the steps, as Trevelyan throws herself into a roll out of the way, emerging on her feet with her hands out, knives in either hand—but knives require close quarters and the elf can—

"Stay out of reach!" Cullen bellows, fear seizing his heart and propelling him forward, shaky legs somehow taking the stairs two at a time. Fenris turns his head to look at him, green eyes going red and he knows he remembers he will not hesitate, but even as he reaches the foot of the dais Trevelyan has decided to take advantage of Fenris's distraction and in one two three quick steps she poises to strike—

Fenris's entire body spins to meet her, one hand deflecting her knife while the other connects with her head, the red blazing as she cries out, staggered. In another moment Cullen is at the throne but the elf's entire arm is red as he sinks it into Trevelyan's chest, lifting her up, and Cullen's freezes as though it is his heart in the elf's hand and her eyes are wide and screaming even as her mouth is mute and Fenris spits words—

The entire hall rings as the rear doors slam open, and in the ensuing silence a single voice, female, flat with anger and power, speaks. "Fenris."

The elf's head turns, blazing eyes baptizing the white locks of hair on his forehead in blood; he flings Trevelyan aside and she hits the floor and in a moment Cullen reaches her, kneeling to cradling her as she gasps and trembles. In another moment he is racing down the stairs with her in his arms; Fenris starts to follow, and abruptly a rock borne on the wind slams into his midsection. The blow should level him, but instead he rocks on his feet, gaze fixed.

Safe in the table's gully, Cullen looks to see the shadowed form of a woman outlined against the mountains beyond Skyhold, the unmistakable shape of a staff slung across her back, and for a moment the stones beneath his feet are rubble and studded with half-melted twists of bronze crackling with tainted magic as the smell of burning flesh permeates the air and he is watching that form as it walks away, as he allows it to walk away and leave him with the ruins of—

Trevelyan stirs against him, and Fenris says, "Mage."

Before Hawke can answer, an arrow flies at the burning body of her lover—husband—but this too misses as the elf is no longer there, his feet leaving the ground as he flies as he is brought up short by a wall of flame erupting at the foot of the stairs. Cullen does not think he imagines the shaking of the floor as the elf lands, cursing. He draws near to the others and Sera appears, bow in hand and lips pouting, and Hawke wheels on her and says, "If you try that again I will burn your bow to cinders."

"Someone had to try something," Sera retorted, still put out, but Hawke pales behind her tight-lipped anger and Cullen—understands.

"Yeah," Varric says, glancing at Trevelyan's barely-conscious face before transferring his attention to Hawke. "What are we going to do?"

"We can't—" she pauses as Fenris apparently pushes against the flames and they strengthen in response, pure roaring fire matching his angered cry.

"Go on, dear," Vivienne says, and everyone looks at her, startled; but Cullen sees the thin sheen of sweat on her upper lip and of course she is the one maintaining the wall, impeccable, impenetrable. "We'll take care of the rest."

Hawke looks through each of them, though Varric catches her gaze and holds it, steady, and slowly she shakes her head; when she looks away from him and squares her shoulders she's the Champion again, assuming the burden herself, walking into the fire alone.

The flames part as she approaches them, dancing higher as she stands amidst them. Fenris sits on the throne, the light in his eyes dull, the tattoos on his steepled fingers muted, and Hawke's hand reaching for her staff stills, and she says, "Fenris—"

"This magic," he rumbles, the red flickering at his chin, "is what comes of letting mages walk free."

"No," she says, fingers closing around her staff, "it's—"

"I will not listen to your lies!" he snaps and in that moment his eyes blaze and he is a red-streaked blur throwing himself at Hawke, who swings to the side a split second before he slams into her. He meets Vivienne's wall of flames but instead of burning the lyrium glows and he bounds back, deflected off the magic. Hawke races to the other end of the dais and as he turns to follow her the flames dwindle enough to allow them to see through, to watch as Hawke turns the floor to ice, crouching with her staff crossed before her as a guard.

Fenris ignores the ice, his feet barely touching the ground as he races towards her, fist pulled behind his ear ready to strike, but Hawke dives beneath him, knocking his feet out and sliding across the ice to relative safety on the other side. Fenris hits the ground and rolls and the ice shatters and red-licked shards rush at Hawke, who deflects them with a sweep of her staff.

"How long—" Cullen starts to ask.

"Long enough," Vivienne replies, her voice tenser than Sera's bowstring.

"We ought to do something," Sera says, clasping her bow and an arrow between her hands, eyes fixed on Fenris as he again charges Hawke and she again dances away, raining fire around him.

"No," Solas says, his voice commanding in a way Cullen's never heard before. "So long as the lyrium remains in its channels, she has a chance. He has a chance."

"How?" Trevelyan rasps, and she shifts so suddenly that Cullen barely has time to set her on her feet; she sways and he catches hold of her waist and she leans against him, crossing her arms tight. "He can fly."

"Hey, she defeated the Knight-Commander, and Meredith didn't even like her," Varric says, failing to inject any levity into the statement. "Just be glad there aren't any statues."

"She's not actually hitting him," Sera says, watching Fenris whirl amidst the balls of fire crashing around him. "How's she going to stop him if she won't hit him?"

"Afraid, mage?" Fenris calls, as if he heard her. "Afraid to scar your prize?"

"You're not exactly," Hawke says, slightly lighter than Varric, though Fenris shoving his hand into the ground and sending red-lined tremors through the pavers interrupts her. In a desperate attempt to ignore his uselessness Cullen can't help but think of what Josephine will say when she sees the damage. Hawke braces her staff against the ground and grasps it with both hands, putting her forehead to it and leaning, and the invisible wave of her magic collides with Fenris's in a crack that splits the cushioned seat of the throne in two.

"Oh," Trevelyan says, and then—red lyrium, racing up the throne, alighting on the sprites on the arms, the eyes of the winged woman at its crown glowing as her arms rotate, the bowls in her hands suddenly turning to spinning discs of death.

"Spoke too soon," Varric sighs as the sprites take to the sky, disappearing into Skyhold's impossible high ceiling. Fenris wrenches his hand from the floor and settles onto the broken throne, the lyrium pulsing in his skin as he watches Hawke crane her neck to follow their flight.

"Much-of-a-catch-right-now-Maker-be-damned!" Hawke flings the words out like a shield, as if even in the midst of such a battle—Cullen cannot imagine; or perhaps, as married to the Order as he once was, he can—she refuses to be cowed. That she manages to sound tall and strong whilst ducking a pair of dive-bombing sprites, their gilded wings glinting in the noonday sun streaming through the windows, is perhaps what made her the Champion.

Well, that and being spitted upon the Arishok's sword. They are dearly lucky Trevelyan does not permit weapons at the dinner table; a holdover of her mother's, she'd once said, but it may very well save—

He looks at his hands, where once he held a sword, and curses.

With a sweep of her arm Hawke conjures an enormous wall of ice, glistening in the sunlight, the sprites caught within its frozen mass like gold dust in crystal. She is spared having to destroy them by the winged woman with the spinning bowls, who makes short work of the sheet of ice and its contents as it inexorably approaches Hawke, the shards scattering in the wind from its wings. The two regard each other for a moment, the animated statue beating its wings and blowing errant locks of Hawke's hair into her face, Hawke lifting her staff as she brushes her hair back, and then suddenly Hawke's hands emit fire, a torrent of blue-white flame buffeting the staggering statue. Hawke bears down upon it, the fire forcing it to the ground as it melts, gilded feathers twisting together and pouring into the cracks in the stone at her feet until the once-proud statue is a molten lump on the floor.

Trevelyan makes a noise of distress as Hawke looks up at Fenris, still sitting on the throne, and says, "Is that the best you can do?"

With his eyes entirely red and glowing it is impossible to divine his gaze, and Hawke nearly does not see the sword as it rises and takes aim, but the blade whistles as it slices towards her and she throws herself to the floor. She scrambles to her feet as it begins another attack and this time deflects it with her staff, hurtling it through Vivienne's wall of fire; it hits the stone with a clang, and the lyrium-light along its edges dims as Fenris takes to his feet.

"Fenris," Hawke says again, her voice a little shaken. Trevelyan's hands worm their way into Cullen's, and her grip crushes his fingers.

The elf pauses for a moment, staring at her, and the lyrium slows its rush; Hawke's lips lift, just for a moment, and his brow darkens and he shouts, "No!"

"Fenris—"

"I will not listen to your lies!" he snarls again, the lyrium brightening again, red burning into white as he lifts to his feet, an intangible wind whipping his hair. "You have already poisoned me with your magic, but that ends here. Your reign of terror will be over and Leda will be—"

"Leda," Hawke says, startled.

"Do not speak her name!" he howls. "She will not pay for my mistakes. She will be free and you—"

"Fenris," Hawke says, backing away as the light continues to build, less building from within and more gathering from without as though he is consuming—magic, and Varric suddenly knocks Cullen's legs from under him, sending him to floor along with Trevelyan as he yells, "Get down—"

Cullen sees Fenris curling in on himself and puts his head down and covers Trevelyan as best he can and suddenly a wave of—power, lyrium-magic snapping out like the first sounding of a gong, a huge crashing wave that knocks the wind from him even as he lies on the ground and the air is—cracking, tinkling like hard rain pelting a roof and he holds onto Trevelyan as the aftershocks rock the floor. He is dazed and can barely make out Fenris's voice—shouting again, words barely resembling as such—can barely lift his head to see the elf still burning, standing on the rubble of the Inquisition's throne, and dimly he thinks of—Meredith, remembers a guard captain undaunted by even the most powerful attack—

An arc of lighting, no longer aimed to miss, hits Fenris square in the chest as Hawke staggers to her feet, leaning heavily on her staff, and the elf stumbles, loses his footing, slides to the floor. Hawke lashes out again with her staff, pure spirit more blinding than the sun through the unglassed windows, a steady, relentless attack as she presses forward. The lyrium glows to deflect the blows but some still hit their mark and Fenris's chest alights with each pulse. He throws his hands out to either side, power gathering in both until all that remains is light, and still Hawke advances, each twirl of her staff bringing her a step closer, and closer—

"Hawke," Varric hisses, but in a moment she has finished a series of gestures with her staff and swings it to the side, just for a moment—

just long enough for Fenris to strike and bury his fist in her chest.

He does not lift her from the ground. They stand before the ruins of the throne, mere inches between them, bathed in sunlight and lyrium pouring in from above, scattering across the shards of glass at their feet, red and blue and white and burning, burning like the white-hot halo of Fenris's hair, the crystal glitter of Hawke's. His sides heave like a horse past its limits; Hawke's breath comes shallow, and fast, yet her voice is only a touch winded as she looks into his glowing eyes and says, "Well—"

"Silence."

"—this certainly gives a very literal meaning to the phrase 'my heart in your hands.'"

The entire hall stills, even the dust motes suspended in the light, as silent as the stars; and then Fenris's entire body shudders, shaking Hawke around his hand, and the light in his eyes fades and he looks away and says, "Hawke."

"Fenris," she says gently.

More gently than Cullen can imagine, but the elf's labored breathing only intensifies. His gaze snaps up to hers and in a ragged voice he says, "Kill me."

Any trace of a smile on her face vanishes. "No."

"Please," he says, as though his is the chest being torn apart, and the lyrium flares and she cries out and he freezes, hand still a ghost inside her.

"Feeding on fear," a low voice says near Cullen's ear—Cole's voice, though there's no sign of the man. "He can't be afraid. You're free, but he can't shake the shackles—"

"No," she says, though the sound is thinner. "Absolutely not."

"Leda—"

"Will never see you like this," Hawke says, and as if with the last vestiges of her strength she reaches up and touches the lyrium on his chin. She winces as if it burns, but her fingers remain, steady.

"If you—"

"I can't," she says, and her fingers fall away, her arm going limp. "She needs her father, Fenris. I need her father." Her voice fades to a whisper. "Please."

"Master the master," Cole murmurs. "Ignore the song—think of lullabies, flat notes lovely, loving—"

With a cry Fenris wrenches his hand from her chest, and immediately Hawke swings her staff around with more might than Cullen thought she possessed. It cracks against his skull and the elf crumples to the floor, the light vanishing from his tattoos, though they still run red. Hawke collapses next to him, bowed over his body, and for a moment no one can breathe, as if all the air from the room has vanished.

In the next moment it comes rushing back in, along with the realization that without the window glass the air is cold, and Cullen sits up as Trevelyan rolls onto her back and Varric is already on his feet and running to Hawke's side, calling her name as he stumbles up the stairs.

Trevelyan pushes to her elbows and sees, for the first time, the remains of her throne room. "Oh," she says, dumbly, "what a mess."

Something tight in Cullen's chest expands, a hard knot of fear and lyrium-daze coming undone for the moment, and he laughs, harder than is perhaps appropriate. Trevelyan reddens, but she reaches up and puts a hand to his cheek; he covers it with his own as she sits up and for a moment she rests her head against his and they breathe, together, and for a moment the silence between them bears all the words they haven't said; and then her lips ghost his and she pushes to her feet, running a hand through her hair and sighing. He joins her, one hand ready to steady if her necessary, but all her attention is on the still-somewhat-blinding glass-scattered end of the hall as she follows Varric.

Glass crunching under his boots, the dwarf reaches Hawke and puts a hand on her shoulder. "Hawke?" he says, giving her a gentle shake.

"I'm fine, Varric," she rasps as Trevelyan and Cullen reach the edge of the stairs. She lifts her head and Cullen is surprised to see her cheeks are wet, tears welling in her eyes, but she hardly seems to notice as she rests one hand on her unconscious husband, sliding her fingers through his hair, watching as the locks fall back upon each other. And then she stands, and looks out across the hall, and says in a low, dangerous voice, "Who did this?"

Cullen and Trevelyan look at each other, and he is equally surprised to see that she is—frightened? "We don't know," he said, covering her hesitance. "One moment everything was fine, and the next—"

"He knows," Cole says, there one moment and gone the next, and Hawke startles and sits back down heavily, one hand reaching for her staff, the other again coming to rest on Fenris.

"Sparkler with the baby?" Varric asks and Hawke nods, glass falling from her hair with the gesture.

"All he told me was Fenris and red lyrium and—she seems to like him," she says, looking down at Fenris's form as if to reassure herself that he is still breathing.

"It'll be all right," Varric says, and Cullen has never heard the dwarf soothe before, would not have guessed him to be so capable of it without a joke.

"Liar," Hawke says, and then she looks up and squints and says, "What—"

Cullen turns to see Cole—or rather, the top of Cole's hat, as his head is bowed with the effort of dragging another man by the arm. Somewhat heedless of his cries of pain as he bumps up the stairs, Cole deposits the man at Hawke's feet and straightens, crossing his arms, head still bowed. "He knows," he repeats.

"I don't know," the man gasps, pain evident in his voice, "what you're—talking about—"

Cullen looks down at a man wearing Inquisition livery, and Trevelyan inhales sharply and says, "You—"

In a flash Hawke has his shirt in her fist and is pulling his face up to hers. "Who sent you?" she demands, her voice snarling in a manner disturbingly reminiscent of Fenris.

"I didn't—"

"The servant," Trevelyan says. "You knocked over the wineglass—"

"Hawke's wineglass," Varric adds helpfully.

"You will tell me," Hawke says, capturing the man's gaze with her own, and again Cullen is reminded of Fenris's eyes, blazing, though Hawke's contain nothing but her own light. "You will tell me who sent you and what you did—"

"I gifted him with the red lyrium," the man says. "A southern mage like you—"

"Venatori, then," Trevelyan says.

"She killed my master!" He spits in Hawke's face, but she doesn't flinch, her eyes more murderous if such a thing were possible. "I was only reclaiming what was—"

His shirt catches fire around Hawke's hand, and he shrieks as she throws him to the ground. "Fenris is a free man," she hisses, both hands on her staff.

"Hawke," Varric warns.

The fire vanishes, though judging from the man's agonized wails the burns remain. "You're right," Hawke says, staff trembling in her grip. "Not my house. He's yours, Inquisitor," she says, and she turns away, shoulders shaking as she bows her head.

Trevelyan glances around and waves forward a pair of soldiers who grip the man under his arms and then look to her expectantly. "Take him to Sister Nightingale for questioning," she says. "I'll sit in judgment—well," she says, casting another mournful look at her throne, "eventually."

The soldiers nod and carry him away, though no one speaks until the echoes of his whimpering have vanished. Hawke hasn't moved, and Trevelyan glances at Cullen, questioning, but while he knows her he doesn't know her and the enormity of this—and even from here the scent of lyrium lingers, an insidious perfume he barely notices until his nerves begin to thrum with want. He should excuse him before he starts shaking, before he does something—

"We're too late," Cassandra says behind him, and they turn to see her leading Blackwall and the Iron Bull, all armored and armed, weapons hanging uselessly in their hands. "Is he dead?"

"No, no," Varric says, not quite masking Hawke's noise of distress.

"Might as well be," Iron Bull says, holding up his hands against the flurry of glares aimed in his direction. "Poor bastard."

"What—" Blackwall starts.

"His foot," Trevelyan says. "While we were down cleaning the glass, he must have—injected him somehow."

Varric crouches at Fenris's feet, very delicately lifting one by the toe. Hawke remains turned away. "I...don't see a mark," he says. "Though I'll be the first to admit I don't know how the damned things work."

"What are they, exactly?" Vivienne asks, her tone perfectly professional, her gaze only a little hungry.

"Lyrium," Hawke says, her voice quiet and flat. She finally turns back to them, but her eyes are fixed on Fenris's barely-breathing form. "A Tevinter magister made channels of lyrium in his skin for—" She shrugs, a tired gesture, worn from too many years of guessing. "Intimidation? His own personal inexhaustible supply? Just to see if it would work?"

"Does it?"

"Oh, yes," she says, slightly self-deprecating. "You can certainly draw power from them. I wouldn't suggest it now, of course. Or ever, seeing as either he or I would have to kill you for trying."

"Wait," Sera says, and Cullen looks for her, finds her crouched in careful balance atop the remains of the winged statue. "That's lyrium? Glowing in his skin?"

"Obviously," Solas says, sounding as if he has mastered some of his anger.

Sera sends him a dirty look. "Obviously people don't glow normally, I get it, but it's not magic, right? Just lyrium. In his skin. Not his blood or anything, just his skin?"

"Yes," Hawke says, eyes narrowed.

"So he's like a big walking talking grumpy rune?" She raises her eyebrows but the expression gives way to giggles. "Kind of like what you'd think a rock would be if it would walk and talk, right? Eyebrows."

"A living rune?" Cassandra repeats, skeptical.

"Something...like that," Hawke says, eyes still narrowed—not in suspicion, Cullen realizes, but as if she's working something out, waiting for Sera to give her the pieces.

"So it's simple, yeah?" Sera says.

"What's simple?" Cassandra demands, but Trevelyan's expression suddenly catches along with her breath.

Sera leans back as she puts on a sort of pompous voice, though the effect is marred by her nearly toppling off the statue. "Oh no, lyrium's gone tainted, ruined rune—" for a moment her voice shifts, "rune ruined, heh—what'll we do?" She hops off the statue and raises her arms and says helplessly, "If only we had a runemaster—oh wait." She crosses her arms and says, "We do."

"Sera," Trevelyan breathes, "you're a genius."

"Bet your frigging arse I am."

"Her?" Cassandra says, and Cullen privately agrees with her somewhat terror-stricken glance at the door to the Undercroft.

"A runemaster," Hawke repeats, and for the first time something like life is in her voice. "You honestly—"

"If anyone can help him, Dagna can," Trevelyan assures her, voice brightening with the thought of being helpful, and a smile tugs at Cullen's lips. "Come on, let's pick him up."

Cullen hangs back as the other warriors step forward, though Iron Bull shakes his head. "That stairway's too small. Nearly broke a horn last time I went asking Harritt to weld something."

"A shame," Blackwall grunts as he takes Fenris's legs and Cassandra reaches under his arms. "Bet you could carry him one-handed."

"Bet I could," Iron Bull agrees, unmoved.

Hawke and Trevelyan step forward to help, and Trevelyan looks to Cullen, who gives a small shake of his head and crosses his arms. She frowns for a moment before comprehension dawns, and he looks away as she glances at Cassandra. Useless, the lyrium-voice whispers in his head, only strong enough because it has fed, and though he can argue against it he cannot resist following the others as they make their way through the door and down the narrow, winding staircase, Sera gleefully leading the way. Torchlight flickers over the steps but Fenris is his own eerie lamp, fogging the air with a diffuse light that deepens the shadows. A literal slave to lyrium, he thinks, and he can feel the red lyrium whispering in his ears and the thought of all his brethren—former brethren—sharing this fate pounces upon him unawares and he is suddenly furious, with a dead magister, with Samson, with Corypheus, and the lyrium promises, promises to help him but he will not listen. He will not listen, he thinks, muzzling the anger with the Chant, steel my heart against the temptations of the wicked; but in the tight cramped space he will go mad, and he is overwhelmingly relieved when they emerge in the Undercroft proper, the mountain air fresh and invigorating, warmed in the forge's fires.

"Clear a table," Trevelyan says, a little strained, and Cullen heads for the nearest workbench, glad to put distance between himself and the unconscious elf. In the moment he takes to consider where its contents might go Sera darts forward and brushes it all aside with a crash.

"What's all this, then?" Harritt demands, but Dagna rushes forward, clapping her hands together.

"Sera, I told you—oh, look!" she says as they lay Fenris upon the table. Cullen sighs and sets to scooping up the detritus. "He really does glow!"

"Told you so," Sera says, finding a ledge to sit on. "Not supposed to be all red, though."

"No," Dagna says, a pallor cast upon her cheer. "What happened?"

"Red lyrium," Trevelyan says. Cullen hands his burden to a disgruntled Harritt and turns to find Cassandra dealing with the rest of it. "Hawke, this is Dagna, our arcanist. Dagna, this is Hawke, the Champion of Kirkwall."

"And this is my husband," Hawke says as Dagna squeaks and bows. "Can you help him?"

Her voice is unsteady but not desperate, and Dagna takes a long, hard look at her before turning to Fenris. "Red lyrium, you said? In the markings?"

"He's like a rune, yeah?" Sera says as Dagna runs a gloved finger over one of the lines in his hand. "And you make those all the time."

"Oh, yes," Dagna says distractedly, taking off her glove and repeating the gesture, humming a little. "But this is tricky."

"How tricky?" Trevelyan asks.

"Well if it were just a matter of impurities, I could find a way to flush them out, I think," she says, rolling up his sleeve. "This is beautiful work. I'd read a little about the possibilities of infusing someone with lyrium, but I never thought I'd—"

"But red lyrium is different from impurities?" Trevelyan interrupts, glancing at Hawke's darkening expression.

"Well, yes, because you see, you can't just filter it out with more lyrium," Dagna says, standing on her tiptoes to brush Fenris's hair aside. "It corrupts everything it touches. Every time I've exposed regular lyrium to it, it turns red, too. I'll have to drain him completely—"

"Wouldn't that—" Varric starts, and then he looks at Hawke and falls silent.

"—probably reline the channels, just to be sure, and then pour the fresh lyrium in. It should work," she says, turning away from the table. "I'll need my knives—"

"Do you have to add the lyrium?" Cassandra asks. "Could you not—"

"I'm not changing a thing without his permission," Hawke interrupts.

"Besides, his body probably wouldn't survive without it," Dagna says. "How long has he had the markings?"

Hawke shrugs. "Decades."

"Right. So fresh lyrium it is." Dagna steps back and considers him for a minute longer, then starts listing words in what Cullen presumes is Dwarven. Sera hops off her ledge and half-disappears into a chest, throwing tools over her shoulder with presumably unnecessary clatters and clangs.

"And you're sure you can do this?" Trevelyan says.

Dagna pauses mid-list, the cave ringing with Sera's mayhem and someone's off-tune humming. "Well," she says, "I've never done it before. And everything I've read on the subject has been very theoretical. But I should—there's always a possibility that maybe I'll kill him. But if we leave him like he is, the red lyrium will definitely kill him."

"I'd prefer we avoid both those scenarios," Hawke says, not quite managing amusement. "I've always said that if anything's going to kill him, it's going to be me."

Dagna tilts her head and looks up at her. "You're the ones with the cute baby?"

"When—"

"Who brought—"

"Sera," Blackwall says.

"I only borrowed her for a minute!" Sera protests, emerging from the chest waving a tool over her head. "Is this your pissana-whatsit?"

"Valisana, yes. My father doesn't speak to me anymore," Dagna says to Hawke, who blinks. "But I still write to him. Dads are important. I understand. I'll do everything I can."

"Thank—"

"Want to help?" Hawke blinks again as Dagna produces a bucket and hands it to her. "Not with the delicate stuff, but I need someone to catch the lyrium as it drains."

"I—"

"The Comm—Cullen and I will check on Leda," Trevelyan says as Hawke hesitates, looking at the mountains beyond. "Stay with him."

"Thank you," Hawke says, and the two women share a long look amidst the swirling chaos of Sera bringing Dagna tools and tripping Cassandra as she rises from the floor, scattering her armful of parts and trinkets to the four corners of the Undercroft while Harritt dives after the ones trying to skitter off the edge.

Cullen pinches the bridge of his nose against the sound, but the nascent tendrils of a withdrawal headache erupt in a kaleidoscope of colors swirling before his eyes, whispered rushes of nothing sounding in his ears. He forces himself to turn around and walk, carefully, one foot at a time, until he has reached the door and a touch at his elbow tells him Trevelyan has caught up. She mercifully says nothing, although the creak of the door as it opens sears through his brain and he staggers into the relief of the cool stone wall beyond. He squeezes his eyes shut and waits for the nausea to subside, wishing she were not standing beside him to witness this, unspeakably grateful for her presence.

For all he has not told her the extent of—everything, she seems to understand. She does not press him; they take the stairs at his pace and he is ashamed at how slow it is, but she doesn't break her silence until they reach the top. "I'll check on the baby," she says, but even her quiet voice echoes and he winces, the flickering torchlight wreaking havoc on his eyes. "Take what time you need." She blows out a sigh and says, "I'm sure everything will still be a mess when you're ready."

"You're sure?" he says, for form's sake.

"Yes," she says. "Use my room. It's closer," she says, cutting off the protest springing without thought to his lips. "And I promise, no one is going to be watching you."

He thinks it a promise she cannot guarantee, but they are not two feet past the door before a swarm of people surrounds her, Josephine at their head, bemoaning the state of the throne room and asking about repairs. The cacophony nearly drives him to his knees but he is able to slip away unnoticed, though once through the opposing door he falls against the railing and dry heaves over it. He grips the banister with shaking hands, forcing whispered words through his lips, I shall weather the storm I shall endure, until he believes them again, until he can stumble his way up the stairs and half-walk, half-crawl into the blessed tranquility of the Inquisitor's vast and comfortable bed. He buries his face in one of the many—too many—plush pillows and chants until the darkness swallows him up, and all is silent in prayer and thanks.

o.O.o

"Do you think," Josephine says, hurrying to keep pace with Trevelyan as she makes her way to the guest quarters, "Vivienne will know some way of repairing all that glass with magic?"

"If anyone would, Vivienne would," Trevelyan says, rolling her neck as they ascend the stairs and emerge into the crisp air above. "Surely she's witnessed at least one duel ending with someone being thrown out a window."

"Certainly," Josephine says. "I once saw—Dorian."

Trevelyan looks and sees Dorian leaning against the ledge, sitting Leda upon it, her tiny chubby legs kicking against the stone above a drop of Maker preserve her, she doesn't want to know. "I thought she needed the fresh air," he greets them. "I heard glass breaking. I take it everything's resolved?"

"For now, at least," Trevelyan says, resisting the urge to snatch the baby away from him. "How is she?"

"Oh," he says, "well enough, though I suspect her nappy's ruined and she's been attempting to eat my rings—no," he says, shifting his hands, and she pounds at her leg with her fist. "But I thought I'd let someone else handle that. Are you volunteering?"

Josephine makes a somewhat terrified noise and Trevelyan sighs, though she takes the baby with no little relief. "Thank you, Dorian," she says as Leda hooks her fingers into her ear. "Start with Vivienne about the windows, Josephine, and..." She is being petty and she knows it, but she can't resist adding, "Go ahead and see about asking the carvers to get started on a new throne. Something simple. No statues this time."

"Of course," Josephine says, and then, just before she turns away, she adds, "I am glad this has been resolved without loss of life."

Trevelyan nods, though the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach adds so far, and she jiggles the baby to distract herself. Dorian notices. "I take it our dear liberati is not yet safe?"

"Dagna's working on him," she says, pulling back the baby's nappy—definitely ruined—so as to avoid looking at him. But then a thought occurs to her, and she says, "Hawke said that Fenris's tattoos...that a magister made them."

"Did she," Dorian says. "Given that he was a former slave, it's hardly surprising information."

"Dorian, someone tattooed lyrium into his skin," she says. "She said it makes him a...a conduit. Have you ever heard of such a thing?"

Now he is the one avoiding her gaze, looking out at the mountains as if he can see beyond them to his homeland, a slight frown on his face. "A lyrium-infused slave," he says slowly. "I have no doubt such experiments are not uncommon—it would provide immense power—but success is nigh-unheard of. Fenris, isn't it? Little wolf..." And then his face pulls into one of disgust, equally evident in his voice: "Danarius."

"You know him?"

"Certainly not," he says, affronted. "I limit my company to only those suspected of blood magic. Joking," he says, when she instinctively recoils. "But one can hardly avoid hearing the names and gossip swirling around every magister in Minrathous, and I seem to remember hearing that he'd boasted of finally having made a slave fit for display. I suppose that means he'd been experimenting for a while, with less success. Not how one ought to treat one's slaves, at least not in polite company." He shrugs and says, "That's all I can remember, I'm afraid. He didn't exactly seem the sort Alexius would invite over for dinner."

"The Venatori spy said Hawke killed him," Trevelyan says.

"Good riddance," Dorian says. "You know, I seem to remember there being a battle with a magister in Varric's book. I skimmed it at the time; magister stereotypes are so boring. But if he was writing of Danarius...well. Perhaps I owe the dwarf a reread. Don't tell him I said that."

"I won't," she says. "Don't...mention it, though. Not where Hawke can hear you."

"Indeed," he says, a slight scowl still on his handsome face, and for a moment they stand in silence, broken when Leda decides she has had enough of her hunger and her dirty nappy and starts to wail. Trevelyan shifts her to her hip and Dorian's lips twitch. "Well," he says, "I wouldn't want to keep you from your work."

"Coward," she says, and her reward is a smile.

"Far be it from me to call the Inquisitor a liar," he says, sketching a bow. "I'll go see if I can help Madame de Fer with your windows, shall I?"

He departs, and Trevelyan takes Leda into the room she shares with her parents. She hesitates, not wanting to intrude again, but fresh nappies conveniently hang drying near the fireplace, and in short order she has the baby changed and dressed again. This doesn't solve the problem of feeding her, however, and after a helpless moment of looking around the room for an answer she departs, hoisting the baby higher on her shoulder so she can look around as they walk. She thinks to head for the kitchens, hoping there will be something soft for the baby's toothless gums, but instead her footsteps carry her to the Chantry garden.

Leda's insistent gnawing on her shoulder pauses for a moment as she lifts her head to take in the breeze whispering through the leaves on the trees, the statues, the quiet babbling of a hidden fountain. Trevelyan closes her eyes and takes a deep breath herself, not quite sure what she's searching for. She usually finds peace here, the faint perfume of incense and the gentle melody of someone Chanting a reminder of the home she's left behind, but her soul is restless, prowling the edges of her being, and she thinks there is more to it than nearly dying in her own stronghold. But the baby cries again before she can dwell any longer on it, burrowing her head into the crook of Trevelyan's neck.

"Ah, Inquisitor," says a familiar voice, and she turns to see Mother Giselle approaching. "I am pleased to see you have survived the chaos unharmed."

"More or less," Trevelyan says.

"Indeed," Mother Giselle says, studying her. "Do you have a moment?"

"I—" Trevelyan says, as Leda surfaces and begins gnawing furiously on her fist.

"The child is hungry, I see," Mother Giselle says, and in a moment she has taken the baby from Trevelyan's arms and holds her up. For a moment Leda stares at her, clearly suspicious of the strange face, but then the gold-thread embroidery on her robes distracts her, and she grabs at that instead. "Now," Mother Giselle continues placidly, and Trevelyan blinks, distracted by the embroidery herself. "The soldiers say you banished the demons at Adamant, and freed the Grey Warden mages. I understand from Sister Leliana that the truth is somewhat more complex, but no less extraordinary."

"Oh," Trevelyan says as politely as she can, more concerned with the thought that at any moment Leda might lose her fascination with the embroidery.

"Yes," Mother Giselle says, as if waiting for Trevelyan to catch up, but she focuses on the baby instead, uneasy for a reason she can't explain, and so finally the cleric continues. "She said that you spoke with a figure in the Fade that seemed to be the soul of Divine Justinia. I know you have been quite preoccupied since your return, and the events of today are troubling. But if you have the time, I'm sure many of the faithful would like to know what Justinia told you."

Her heart drops before she has time to fully understand the statement. Of course people think—and of course they would want to know—and she's been hiding from the fact that she has nothing to say. Mother Giselle at least might be able to break it to them gently. "I learned the truth," she says, for it is all she has to give. "The Maker didn't give me the mark on my hand—I was struck in battle. And Andraste—" the words stick in her throat, but she forces them out "—didn't send me. The figure everyone saw with me was Justinia."

"Ah," Mother Giselle says, and to Trevelyan's surprise she sounds thoughtful, not disappointed. "So it is as you have always maintained. You must feel quite vindicated."

The statement contains a question to which Mother Giselle already knows the answer, and Trevelyan can't meet her gaze. Instead she focuses on Leda—tiny, curious Leda, a drool-covered fist clenching the expensive silk, and lets the words fall how they may. "I may not have believed, but part of me always...hoped," she says, a confession, and she feels floodwaters gathering in her eyes, pressing against a dam inside her chest. "I'd hoped it was true. That I was the..." and oh she was foolish, and she is ashamed to say it, "Herald of Andraste."

"And who's to say you are not?" Mother Giselle says, and again Trevelyan loses her mental footing, like trying to climb a particularly crumbled slope in the Hinterlands. A prize awaits at the top if she can only reach, but this mountain has no peak because it's not true. "Forget the Mark. Forget the figure standing over you as you fell from the Fade. The people needed a sign that in this harsh and unforgiving world, there existed some reason to hope. And they found that in you."

Trevelyan stares at her, and Mother Giselle takes a moment to look down at the baby, who immediately lunges after her hat. She shifts her to a cradle position and murmurs in Orlesian, tapping her nose with a wrinkled finger, and Trevelyan finds her voice.

"But it's not true," she says. "The evidence for me having a divine mission was proven false." She is almost angry, but she knows the anger is merely a facade for the shame and she will not be proud, not now, the one who boasts not, nor gloats, she shall know the peace of the Maker's benediction, and she will not risk the chance of gaining that peace for the sake of vanished dreams.

Mother Giselle tsks, though whether at her or the now-fussy baby, she doesn't know. "This is the trouble with metaphors and the educated. A farmer cannot understand the truth of the Maker, so he learns that the Maker is a man, but greater. A mage learns the same thing, knows it to be simplistic, and feels clever for realizing it is not literally true. But a metaphor is not a lie," she says firmly. "It is a tool to help people understand something beyond them...and we need such a tool."

Trevelyan can't help shaking her head, reaching for Leda, her mind a jumble of needing to feed the baby and metaphors and how very Orlesian, not to care about truth, and a desperate fear that if even a Revered Mother doesn't think it matters that she has wasted so much, too much, caring, and for what? It was never true, and that should matter, does matter, but if she is alone in thinking so—if she is the only one who cares (and why should anyone else? it isn't their life), if it doesn't matter what everyone else goes on thinking then why, why does she feel torn asunder at the thought of carrying on? She doesn't want to be a liar, but is it a lie if everyone says it is true?

Yes, says her heart.

"Aaaaaaaaaah!" says Leda, somehow reaching and finding hair long enough to grab on Trevelyan's head.

"I hadn't thought of it that way," she says neutrally, distracting herself from her desire to scream by trying to shift the baby to a lower position.

The Revered Mother smiles gently. "A life of service to the Chantry means learning to share the wisdom of the Maker with all His children," she explains, almost beatific in the surety of that lifetime of service. And for a moment Trevelyan is jealous, jealous of the cleric, full of the enormous injustice of having the life she'd wanted flaunted before her, of assuaged doubts forever beyond her reach. "A farmer, a noble, a warrior, and a mage will all see different aspects of the Maker in their lives. They must each hear the story that will reach them...and each of those stories is valid." She lets the silence lie, though Trevelyan fights the baby's grasping fingers rather than think on her words. Then, almost amused, she says, "Now, is there anything I can help you with?"

"I need to feed her," she says, no quite able to hide the desperate relief in her voice at the change in subject. "Her mother..." almost died at her father's hand, and he in turn may yet die at Dagna's "is...busy."

"Ah," Mother Giselle says. "I have no children of my own, but we often give the orphans goat's milk to drink. Perhaps someone in the dairy can help you?"

"Of course," Trevelyan says. "Thank you, Mother Giselle."

The cleric inclines her head and Trevelyan practically flees her company, jiggling the now-wailing baby as she tries to think of the fastest way to the animal pens. For the first time she can remember she feels worse as she leaves the garden, but she can't dwell on it; she has responsibilities, though luckily Leda wards off anyone who might wish to approach her with their concerns as she makes her way across Skyhold. The milkmaids, after overcoming their initial shock at seeing the Inquisitor, are only too happy to provide her with milk, and one of them even shows her how to dip a rag into the bowl and then bring it to the baby's eager lips. She thanks them and tries to leave, to find a quiet place to sit and feed the baby and think, but at the first withdrawal of the rag Leda screams with rage, so in a moment the milkmaids have her settled on a stump at the edge of the goat pen. The air, which always reminds her of early spring or late fall, not cold but nipping at her exposed skin, is full of the sounds of goats and horses and sheep and moreso their smells; she probably has manure on her boots, and if her mother could see her now...

If her mother could see her now, she'd be home.

She pushes the thought away, and with it the tears, and concentrates on feeding the baby. Leda, at least, is wholly content, she thinks, as the baby grabs at the rag and sucks from it greedily. She tugs it from her fist and dips it into the milk and barely manages to get the milk-soaked end into her mouth before she has grabbed it again, tugging at it as she eats. Occasionally she looks up at Trevelyan and the edges of her mouth open in a smile, and after the third or fourth time this happens Trevelyan says, aloud, "This should be your mother."

She pictures Hawke how she left her: pale, determined, grateful and afraid, and she does not understand, that the woman can look at her without blame, without resentment. Varric is the one who brought her here; Trevelyan is the one who asked her to stay. But she didn't know, when she asked, what she was asking; is what she gained worth the cost? Corypheus without a Grey Warden army; Fenris dying by inches in a cave in the mountains. She has no scale on which to balance lives; she is not the Maker, much less his prophet, much less appointed; she is no one, but there is no one who believes her when she says so.

She cannot sustain her thoughts, and so she focuses on the baby. When she is done eating she sleeps, the rag still half-in her mouth, and with an inescapable smile Trevelyan gently teases it out, shifts her in her aching arms and carries her back to her cradle. The noise and hubbub of the Great Hall nearly wakes her, but people part before her like—like the Veil at her Mark (and so she is marked—anchored, but to what?), and she escapes to the guest rooms with little more than an encouraging smile in Josephine's harried direction.

She lays the baby in the cradle, and with her seems to go the rest of her strength; she is suddenly sapped, but she can't leave the baby, and in any case she dare not risk interrupting Cullen's rest. He is so tired, and to know lyrium flows so freely...no. There is a bearskin rug in front of the hearth, and she drags it closer to the cradle, lies down so that she can reach out with one hand and set the cradle to rocking, should she hear the baby stir. Her arm is a strong if unyielding pillow; exhaustion takes care of the rest.

o.O.o

Cullen dreams.

As a boy, his dreams had been normal, he supposes, nightmares and pleasantries muddled and fluid, sometimes sending him running to his mother, other times lingering regretfully long after he woke. Studying to be a templar meant reexamining his dreams, recognizing them all as works of spirits and demons, interesting, perhaps, but ultimately meaningless; to dwell on dreams was to ignore their danger, to misunderstand a templar's duty. Templars had to be able to ensure mages did not succumb to their dreams and could hardly do so if enraptured with their own.

None of his teachers ever mentioned lyrium.

Yet from his first sleep as a templar, the lyrium had given the Fade of dreaming a sharpness, a definition, turned it from the mystery of dreaming to a place. Mismatched and inaccurate, yes, still with spirits and demons lurking at the edges unwilling or uncaring to talk to a non-mage, but it was a realm, and dreaming became less a blind following of some entity's idea and more an exercise in observation. As time passed he became accustomed to the clarity, to the sense of being if not a denizen then at least a recognized guest, an observer rather than a participant. Without the threat of possession, and with the awareness that he could, if he chose, walk away from whatever a spirit tried to present to him, the Fade became a refuge, a respite from the memories that tortured his waking hours.

He had in fact grown so accustomed to it that he didn't understand when it slipped away, when the last dregs of lyrium left his blood and in a desperate attempt to escape the pain of living he tried to sleep and found—chaos. If muddled memory left him anxious, dreams made him helpless—once again at the mercy of demons, exaggerating facets of his pain he'd almost forgotten, more a prisoner of his mind than ever. He'd woken gasping and remembering and if Cassandra hadn't been there he might have—he wouldn't. But he might have.

He has learned to live with the waking pain, with the itch, the whispers that he is the lesser for the choices he's made, has learned to quiet the doubts in all but his darkest moments—and if he's only learned to lie to himself, at least he's starting to believe it. But for the first time in ten years he has no comfort in dreaming, no rest in sleep; he has renounced his privilege, is once again a stranger in a strange land, and the land takes a savage delight in exacting revenge for his abandonment. Now the lyrium only makes it worse—a reminder of friendlier times, a glimpse of the paths he's left behind, and a deep dark driving hunger that the demons are only too happy to exploit.

Cullen dreams, and wishes he were dead.

The world is drenched in blood, the air thick with it, scarlet and pulsing in the light as though he travels in a river of it, and his ears ring with screams, with the clang of sword on shield, screaming pleas for mercy mixing with the terrible unceasing roar of abominations coming undone and his arms are too heavy and his legs too slow and people are dying by inches, dying in fits, and he chokes on fire and drowns in the blood and they are begging, begging for his help (who are they? family friends enemies abominations mages templars bandits innocents murderers he wants to help he only ever wanted to help) but everything he touches turns to ruin in an instant—

precious relief, white and gleaming before him, he takes it (be strong, Cullen) he drinks it (this is strength, and he cannot remember his name) and the song, the Maker's song (he only ever wanted to serve) sings in his veins—

wrong all wrong red and crackling and growing solid breaking splitting pieces jutting out of his skin wrong the song dark and frenzied and his brothers-in-arms brothers at least he will die with them (he left)
he left
His throat is raw with screaming and burning bile rising to his mouth and he tastes the blood he tastes the shards of glass cutting into his tongue and soon he will have no voice he will be nothing but the song and now he is the one begging, begging for relief, for respite, for the Light, the rock, he clings to the light and the rock through pain unknowing; this is not the song he will sing he will the Maker will someone will rescue him, though his eyes are swallowed up in death, though the demons drag their talons and rend his soul to shreds, and he reaches back blinding, ripping tearing shoving aside grasping wrestling reaching—

The grass is green beneath his feet.

He stares at it, the blades peeking between his toes, ticking his skin, a thick carpet of grass and it is soft, so soft, and his skin—

His skin was on fire, wasn't it? Burning and bleeding, pierced and cracked, and yet it is whole and smooth; he holds out his hand and turns it, one way, then the other, and it is his hand, callused and strong; his fingers flex, fine. Why isn't he wearing shoes?

His head aches from the change and the death (he was dead, wasn't he? Is this what happens when you die in your dreams?) and the light around him is soft too, easy on his eyes, and the air is warm and slightly moist like the Waking Sea in spring, making his thick woolen clothes almost uncomfortable and the trees are unfamiliar, their leaves dark and glossy, and he thinks the grass doesn't quite fit—

He hears voices.

His first instinct is to hide and he does so, slipping to the edge of the clearing, leaning against the rough bark of a tree. The bark is too real for dreaming; he is clearly asleep. This is not his dream, and the calm rationality of the thought startles him; in an instant the lingering echoes of his dream vanish, and the pervasive calm of this one sinks into his bones, regenerating, rejuvenating, and he remembers the clarity of the lyrium dreams. But—he hasn't taken any, and this is not his dream, and what sort of spirit might conjure this he doesn't know. The thought should fill him with caution, if not outright fear, and yet the feeling slips away; he breathes deeply, his limbs relaxing. A demon of sloth, perhaps? Yet he doesn't desire sleep; for a moment, he is whole, as he has not been—since—

The voices grow louder, more heated, and he leans around the trunk of the tree to see the far end of the clearing. A statue of a dog, perhaps, recumbent and watchful, stands over two figures, one agitated, the other placating. Familiarity strikes him, and he steps carefully through the trees (where are his boots?) until their voices distinguish themselves and he stops short—

"I am sorry," Solas says, the smooth crown of his head gleaming in the muted light.

"I desire no one's pity," Fenris—yes, Fenris, Hawke's Fenris, white hair, skin still marked but tattoos strangely empty—retorts, arms crossed, shoulders hunched, wary, ready to strike. Cullen wonders at the force of will that repels the calm even he, in all his stubbornness, cannot shake.

"It is not pity," Solas says. Cullen has not spent much time with the elf—he thinks the apostate avoids him, and cannot particularly blame him for it—but there is a steeliness in his normally gentle voice, stiffer than mere aggravation, and he cannot quite place what it is. "It is regret."

"Whatever you have done," Fenris says, still defensive, and with the clarity of dreaming Cullen thinks he is afraid, "I assure you I do not care. Now leave."

"It is not so simple," Solas says, and Cullen—too intent on his voice, too forgetful to be wary, too out of place in a dream that is not his (though neither, he thinks, is it Fenris's)—places a silent hand on the trunk of the tree for balance, and that is all it takes for Solas to pause mid-breath and turn his head.

Without another word Fenris is in motion, stalking towards the trees, and so Cullen steps into the open with his arms spread. Fenris's scowl turns to bewilderment as he stops short and snarls, "What are you—"

"This is a place of refuge," Solas says, and that unfamiliar note is authority. "He cannot forget again. You shall not disturb—"

"I didn't mean to disturb anyone," he says. "I'm not even sure how I found this place."

"Bad dreams?" Fenris says dryly, but anger lurks beneath.

"He does not bother you?" Solas asks.

"A templar? No," Fenris says. "You, mage, are a different story."

"Former templar," Cullen says, not that it particularly makes any difference, but something in Solas's level gaze changes.

Fenris senses it and shifts his weight, still ready for an attack, but Solas raises an eyebrow and says, "The lyrium, of course. I see." After another moment of consideration—considering what, Cullen doesn't know—he relaxes, hands joining together behind his back, once again the helpful apostate. "Then rest, Commander, as I have been trying to advise our friend—" Fenris bristles "—to do. This place will not last forever, but while it does...take refuge."

He turns away, and walks into the trees; the clearing quiets, and the missing details suddenly strike Cullen in full force: birdsong without rustling in the bushes, a gentle breeze that leaves the treetops untouched. Light, but no sun. So they remain in the Fade after all. But this is not a normal dream—not even a lyrium dream—and he does not know how long they will be here; from his restless shifting, Fenris has come to the same conclusion.

"Do you know this place?" Cullen asks, for lack of anything better to say.

"I think it is supposed to be Seheron," Fenris says shortly, his brow furrowed as he trains his gaze on the statue. "I do not think he has ever been there."

"You think Solas did this?" he says, startled, though immediately he feels foolish for not considering it sooner.

"Who is he?" Fenris asks, still glaring at the statue.

Cullen shrugs. "A mage. He arrived shortly after the Breach appeared and saved the Inquisitor's life. He knows a great deal about the Fade. But..." He looks around again, wondering how far the trees extend, how high the sky rests above their heads. "Someone once commented to me that we take the lyrium not just to stop the mages but to understand their perspective." Fenris finally looks at him, and he says, "I'm fairly certain Meredith had him transferred or demoted for blasphemy, but the Fade is different...but not like this," he says, shaking his head. "Never like this."

"I wouldn't know," Fenris says shortly. "This is the work of a somniari."

"A what?"

"Somniari," the elf says, and then he is pacing, a coil of undirected energy. "Mages who may enter the Fade at will, who can shape the Fade as easily as a demon. It is not a power I wished to encounter again. Arrogance," he spits, hands twitching until he crosses his arms again. "He thinks he is showing me mercy by bringing me here. This is nothing but a cage."

"What lies beyond it?" Cullen asks.

"Does it matter?" He stops mid-stride and plants himself, running a weary hand over his face, the lyriumless markings stark in their emptiness. "It does. Demons. Pain beyond memory. He has saved me by caging me and I do not like it."

Cullen, caught between the peaceful lull of the clearing and Fenris's raw agitation, does not know what to say. "I'm sorry."

"You are trapped as well," Fenris says.

"True," he says, and he can taste his claustrophobia, the paradoxical pressing edges of a limitless space, the thinness of the thick carpet of grass beneath their feet. Yet for all they may try to push against it, it will not give, cannot be pierced. Does he trust Solas to let them wake?

Does he have a choice?

Trevelyan trusts him; Trevelyan is not a mage, but her experiences in these matters is greater than any other non-mage he knows. He wonders if she knows Solas can do this. Probably, though he would think she would have...told him. Given what she's seen, perhaps she doesn't find it particularly remarkable anymore. Not worth mentioning, even; he wonders what she would say, where she here, and he feels the surprisingly painful ache of separation, of wanting to be near her at all times and yet knowing he cannot.

"They went into the raw Fade, you know," he says, not particularly sure why, wanting to distract the other man, though bringing up the horrors that lie beneath the veneer of truth around them is perhaps not the best topic of conversation.

"Yes," Fenris says.

"Hawke," he says, though perhaps mentioning her is a mistake as well; perhaps this is why he has such trouble making friends. "And the Inquisitor."

"She told me," he says, and the silence is awkward because of course she told him, she's his wife. Trevelyan told him the tale, after all; but not everything, not what troubles her most, and he worries she does not know he would do anything, everything to help her. "You," Fenris starts, and he startles out of his thoughts, and the elf looks equally out of sorts. "You...love her, then?"

Cullen blinks, clears his throat, and Fenris—eases, some of his guard dropping as a hint of amused familiarity crosses his face. "Er," Cullen says, and then, because this is a place of dreaming and lies, the place where truth wins out, "I—yes."

Fenris studies him, the amusement more palpable. "You haven't told her."

"I—no," he says, embarrassed at how simply the elf puts it, as if it is obvious he hasn't told her and yet obvious that he should. Of course he should. But she's so rarely present, and they're so often busy, they've just—"I haven't had the chance."

"I see," Fenris says, but in the next moment the amusement turns sour. "I apologize for nearly killing her in front of you, then."

"You remember?"

"Oh yes," Fenris says with the same twisted tone, bitter irony Cullen doesn't understand. "The pain was—not enough. The madness might have been, had I not been brought here. But the pain—it is a living thing, and one learns to live alongside it."

He sounds—old, and Cullen realizes that beneath the prematurely white hair he has aged since they first met—and haven't they all, of course, but he hadn't thought of it, couldn't imagine the toll returning to this life might take on someone who'd tried to leave it behind. Fenris is a father now; Cullen can't imagine having that within his grasp, let alone what life might look like on the other side, no matter how badly he wants it. He won't let himself consider how badly he wants it, not with the nightmares, not with Desire lurking—and here they are safe, for a moment, and for a moment he tastes—

He shies away from the wanting and says instead, "The red templars," at first simply to change the subject, and then suddenly dreading the answer. "Do you think they remember?"

"Until they are consumed," Fenris says with a shrug. "These," he gestures to his markings, "burn, but they remain in their channels. Your comrades are not so lucky."

The weight of his nightmares deepens with the face of every templar he's ever known—no matter that so many of them never lived to take the red lyrium; he feels as though every brother-in-arms he's ever had has died, horribly, has suffered unimaginable pain and prolonged agony and he has failed—and for a moment he wishes to forget. He could forget; he could be strong again, could save the Inquisition—

he will save his soldiers—

he cannot save his soldiers; he can only prepare them as best he knows how, and pray to the Maker for their safety. He alone will never be enough; he alone is all he has to give.

For a moment, the peace he feels comes from within, stronger and steadier than any dream, and as he relaxes again he notices the elf anew. Fenris isn't watching him, not precisely, in the quiet waiting way of someone accustomed to pain and loss, to giving space to grieve and nearness to support in their turn. Cullen cannot bring himself to meet his gaze and looks instead to the statue, struck by the sudden sensation that it is the realest thing in their surroundings, down to the worn ears and moss-ridden cracks. Someone else's dream, someone else's memory. "I stopped taking the lyrium," he says, admitting more to himself than anyone else. "I was afraid to forget."

"A wise decision," Fenris says, echoes of a private grief in his gravelly voice. "It is not worth it, the forgetting."

"Neither is the remembering," Cullen says. "Sometimes."

Fenris snorts, not disagreeing, and they stand in comfortable silence; magical cage or refuge, the stillness of the space is a potent spell, and Cullen cannot bring himself to resist, not when he has been so tired. Judging by the slump of Fenris's shoulders, the other man has come to the same conclusion, and timeless moments pass in simple, easy breath.

And then Fenris draws a deeper one and says, "I have decided to make new memories. In time," he says, and Cullen senses the outline of advice offered, tentative, assured, "they will replace the old."

He wonders if the removal of time is the answer—but no; the Fereldan Circle is a decade old, and still fresh at the oddest moments; and the elf bears visible reminders of his own slavery. The choice, then, to look forward, and to look for the good in the going. He knows this, but it has been so long since he has had good to look to—and unbidden Trevelyan comes to his mind's eye, and his thoughts turn to wanting; and a smile tugs at his lips.

"Hm," Fenris says, lifting his hand, and with a start Cullen sees that the tattoos are filling with lyrium—lyrium, the link between the living world and the Fade; of course it would cross into his dreams. "I doubt we will be here much longer."

"Well," he says, not sure what to say, "I apologize for the intrusion."

Fenris shrugs. "It was not your choice. And if this did some good..." He trails off, and then says abruptly, "You should tell her."

"I will." He grasps for something helpful to say in return. "Your daughter—" Fenris raises an eyebrow, wary, and he finishes lamely "—is very cute."

To his surprise, the elf laughs. "Yes," he says, clearly pleased, his smile somewhat rueful. "Yes, she is."

There is perhaps more to say, but suddenly he feels the tug of the waking world; Fenris gives him a nod, which he returns even as the trees turn to smoke, and the dull misty light dissolves into dawn.

o.O.o

Leda will not stop crying.

Trevelyan paces the ramparts, jiggling her within her blankets, exhausted and defeated. The baby's nappy is dry and she is warm, which means she is hungry, but the milkmaids are abed and Trevelyan doesn't want to wake half of Skyhold venturing into the pens alone. At least along the ramparts the wind whisks the wailing to the distant peaks; the guards nod respectfully as she passes, pity in their eyes. She has given her finger for suck, various bits of cloth and blanket for gnawing, but these obviously will not satisfy; she has sung every lullaby she knows twice over, and in desperation she now croons the Chant, low and warm in the baby's ear, hoping that under the increasingly beleaguered cries Andraste might still hear and have mercy.

She has to do something, to think, but she is so tired and her only thought is a jumble of guilt, of this child needs her parents, of lies and the thinness of the mountain air, the clarity of the stars overhead. Her slippered feet ache from the constant pounding against the stone and she thinks her arms have frozen in their hold, and still the baby is crying. The baby is hungry, and it's all her fault. That doesn't even make sense; she passes through Cullen's empty office, through the second ruined tower, casts her eyes towards the stairs up to the next, finishing the Canticle of Andraste, moving to Transfigurations by habit as much as anything.

"Here," says a voice in her ear, and in blinking she opens her eyes to see Cole before her, head bowed, the brim of his hat brushing her shoulder, one slim finger touched to the tip of Leda's nose. The baby quiets immediately, eyes wide; and in the next moment they are closed, mouth half-open, breath whistling through toothless gums.

"Isn't she still hungry?" Trevelyan says, and as the words leave her mouth she feels the wretchedness of her own ingratitude.

The spirit-man, or whatever he is, tilts his head even as he backs away, hopping so lightly to the edge of the rampart he almost flies. "Tired," he says, "papa, milk. She's so—" he pauses, crouched and staring at the sleeping baby "—simple, when she's unhappy."

"Is that unusual?" Trevelyan asks, leaning against the wall at his feet, fighting to keep her head up.

"Yes," he says. "The grown-ups know too much, worry about too many things, great roaring crowds each clamoring for attention, too loud, but she knows exactly what she wants." Trevelyan tilts her head back and finds him peering at the baby, eyes disconcertingly wide. "Why do people lose that?"

"Like you said," Trevelyan says. "We know too much."

"You're unhappy," Cole says.

"I'm tired," she says, a deflection from the concern in his voice, but of course he can read minds and she is being foolish, again, and she sighs a rueful laugh. "I know too much."

He does not reply, but she senses him working through something, and so she closes her eyes and relaxes, waiting. Finally he says, "She didn't send you. You know for sure. Would you like to forget?"

"What?" she says, to buy herself time, to face the equal parts revulsion and desperate longing the question inspires. To forget, willingly, to abandon the truth in favor of unknowing, and was the uncertainty better? The pain of knowing will pass, perhaps, eventually; all pain does.

"But it will still ache," he says, somewhat insistent now. "Wounds long closed, phantom pangs, ghosts of pieces missing. I could make it all go away."

"But it would still be there," she says, and this isn't a conversation she wants to be having right now. "Honestly, if you want to help—"

"Yes," he says immediately, "please."

Her heart gives way, annoyance melting in the face of his earnestness, and behind it she finds guilt; is she too proud to accept aid, or merely afraid? But there's nothing he can do, and she doesn't want to disappoint him.

"Something," he says, peering down at her looking up at him. "There has to be something."

"Tell me," she says, and then she stops—and she is afraid. She presses on. "Tell me she doesn't mind, that they're using her name. That she—" Tears prickle behind her eyes, a hot lump forming in her throat. "That I have her blessing, regardless."

She closes her eyes so she doesn't have to face his confusion; he's a spirit, after all, and the Maker abandoned them long before the First Sin was even committed. If there even was such a sin. She doesn't know, and the not knowing is—

"But the one who repents," Cole says slowly, "who has faith," and his voice catches on a tune, follows its wanderings through the next lines, "unshaken by the darkness of the world, and boasts not, nor gloats over the misfortunes of the weak, but takes delight in the Maker's law and creations, she shall know."

He stops; she's singing along without realizing it, and finishes the verse. "The peace of the Maker's benediction—but I don't," she says, and suddenly she is angry, with the Maker, with the Divine, with the whole wretched Chant, soothing even as it twists the knife.

"But you're all those other things," Cole says. "And you know."

"If this is your definition of faith unshaken," she says bitterly, "I'd hate to see what you consider doubt."

"Can't move," he says. "Air too thick for breathing, barreling, mind not enough, can't, claws coming tearing striking, kill or be killed, are those my hands holding the knife? I can't—I can, couldn't, shouldn't—am I right, or aren't I?"

The baby in her arms might well be made of lead for the sudden weight pressing on her chest, the tightness in her throat. She'd run away if she could; her feet are made of stone, one with the ramparts, Skyhold's bones rooting her to the spot. Everything is a mistake.

"Do you even believe?" she asks. "Do spirits believe in Andraste, in the Maker?"

"Some do," he says. "Your people teach mine of the Maker. Some think he exists."

"And you?"

"I don't know," he says. "If it makes someone feel better to believe he does, then that's enough. But most people don't look to him for comfort. They look to her, and she's real, even if she wasn't."

"What?"

"You've made her real, with the Chant and the stories, with loving her. Not just you," he says, "but all of you. She's real because you love her." He pauses, a breeze whistling through a crack in the mortar beneath his feet. "Because you made her real, she loves you back."

"That doesn't make sense," she says, because it does, in a way, real but not true, but she needs her to be both with a fierceness that sets her heart to aching. There is but one Truth, and she doesn't know what it is.

"I'm sorry," Cole says, and the depth of sorrow in his voice only makes her feel guilty all over again. "I don't either."

"It's all right," she says, though it's not; but it will be, maybe, somehow; she's survived worse, she's sure. "I suppose it's selfish of me, wanting to know if I'm on the right path or not. No one really knows, do they?"

"What?" he asks, curiosity brightening his voice.

"If they're doing the right thing," she says.

"So many lives, wasted," he says, "death-dealing demons deserving, but what of the others? Violence, too violent, party tricks turned to blood." And then, rusty, probably picking the words out of her memory again, "Let the blade pass through the flesh; let my blood touch the ground; let my cries touch their hearts. Let mine be the last sacrifice."

"Something like that," she says, and she blows out her breath in a sigh.

Silence reigns between them, stretching for so long that she thinks he must have moved on to other hurts; but then, into the thin clear sky, he says, simply, "Andraste fought wars too, little chanter."

She inhales sharply, looks up and his eyes are wide, luminescent moons in the ghost-white pale of his face, hopeful and sure, and she opens her mouth to reply but her throat closes, words failing her, and so she nods, trembling.

"Good," he says, and then he tilts his head and says, "They're finished. She'd like to see the baby, if you don't mind."

"Oh—" she says, but he is gone.

She stands alone under the twinkling stars, staring at flickering torchlight half a fortress away, and then the baby stirs in her arms and she's not alone, not exactly. And so she slowly, carefully makes her way down the stairs, past a few fires in the courtyard and their boisterous patrons, up another set of stairs, through the mostly empty Hall. The shards of glass have been piled like snow against the far wall, fractious moonlight spilling across them, laughing across the ruins of her throne—her throne, presumptuous, perhaps, the Inquisition's throne but the one she'd picked, and she'd been...fond of it. Foolishness, like so much of what she does; Leda squirms again in her arms, and she turns away from the heap of gold and bronze and passes through the door to the Undercroft.

A single torch lights the stairs, and with the baby in her arms she is twice as careful as she navigates the shadowed edges of each step. At the bottom she emerges into further darkness, the forge's fire banked for the night, the mountains in the distance a dimly shaded white against the mouth of the cave. Even as her eyes adjust there is a sudden blinding flash; blinking, she turns her head to see Dagna, standing on a stool as she prods a motionless Fenris on his table. Motionless—but the lyrium in his tattoos is white again, molten and pure, and a breath she didn't know she'd been holding escapes her, a shuddering sigh that leaves her hollow.

Leda thrashes against the flash, whimpering, and Dagna turns her head, her teeth glowing as she smiles in the lyrium-light. "You're back! He'll be all right," she says, and then, "at least, I think so. Won't know until he wakes up, but. I've done all I could. It looks all right."

"And you're—"

"I'm fine," Dagna says, tugging at a lock of hair that's escaped her bun. "Tired. Exhilarated! But I don't think I want to work on any living runes anytime soon."

"Too dangerous?" Trevelyan asks, shifting Leda to her shoulder, wincing slightly as the baby lifts her head to look around.

"Too unpredictable," Dagna corrects her. "You can rely on stone to be stone. Flesh, though...too tricky. And I enjoy a challenge."

She tries to take this in stride—it's not much more alarming than anything else Dagna has ever said, really—but she remembers Dorian's curled lip and the way he'd said Danarius, and she can't suppress her shudder. She places a hand to the back of Leda's head to distract herself, and Dagna says, "Oh, and I think she's all right, too. I think. I tried. People are tricky."

"Where—" she starts to ask, but Dagna points behind her and she turns and her eyes catch on a shadowed figure sitting on the ledge, leaning her head against the cave wall. She nods her thanks and takes the baby, who has started to remember she's hungry, if her sucking mouth is any indication, towards her mother.

Hawke sits with her legs dangling into the open air, staring at oceans of snow-capped peaks, the tired droop of her head at odds with her white-knuckled grip on the ledge. Her dark hair lends itself to the shadows, and there are more under her eyes, and Trevelyan comes bearing a tired hungry baby; but it is her baby, and Trevelyan hopes it will help.

She stops five paces back and says, softly, awkwardly, "Hello."

Hawke picks up her head and looks over her shoulder—"Oh," she says, and then, "oh, hello, sweet thing," and she draws her legs into the cave and reaches out her arms, and Trevelyan hands her a flailing Leda, her healthy lungs enough to wake the dead, if not her unconscious father. "Thank you," she says, wrestling to cradle the distraught baby. "I hope—"

"She's hungry," Trevelyan says, helpfully helpless, and to her dismay Hawke's face falls.

"Oh," the Champion of Kirkwall says, and for a moment her expression mirrors her daughter's, all the bleaker for the knowing. Then it is gone, but her voice is unsteady as she says, "I can't—"

And of course not—how many months has she spent away from the babe, helping the Inquisition? and Trevelyan's stomach twists—she'd meant to help—

"Oh," Hawke says again, startled this time; at her side is a bucket of goat's milk and a rag. Hesitantly she dips the rag in the milk and holds it to her daughter's mouth; the moment the baby's lips close around it her wailing ceases, and from the look of concentration on Hawke's face Trevelyan is quite sure the other woman is unaware of anything other than the baby. She feels the whispering brush of a satisfied spirit-man as he passes and thinks she too should turn and go, but instead she remains, empty arms dangling uselessly at her sides, watching mother and daughter making quiet happy noises at each other.

If her mother could see her now, she'd be home.

And Brona followed Andraste, she thinks, and instead of leaving she sinks to the floor, curling up against an anvil, knees drawn to chest, head against shockingly cold metal—shocking, because nothing in Skyhold is as cold as it should be, save iron and steel. It clears the fog from her mind, but the hollow feeling remains; she stares at the distance peaks, the snow greying with the sky, and for a moment—a handful of moments, too few for counting, more than she's had in months—she allows herself to simply be, stripped of titles and signs, anchors and seals.

Her head is cold; her left hand aches. She's out of her league a thousand times over; she wants to help, will help, will do whatever is asked of her. She likes children; she misses wrestling her brothers, misses teasing them into it despite protests that they're all getting a little too old for this. She misses giggling with her sisters-in-law over tea; she likes sharing cookies with Sera, blushing with Cassandra over the naughty bits in Varric's books, laughing off Dorian's comments about her bland sartorial choices. She likes beige. She likes Cullen's half-smile when he thinks no one's watching, likes running her fingers through his hair. She mourns every life she takes; she celebrates every life saved, no matter how exhausted she is in the saving.

She still knows herself. It is a comfort.

"You're deep in thought," Hawke says, and Trevelyan, startled, shifts her gaze to the edge of the cave where the other woman still sits, a sleeping Leda resting against her shoulder. "I don't mean to interrupt—"

"It's all—"

"—but I know that look," she says, and Trevelyan remembers—a kindred spirit. "Found yourself again?"

"I—think so," she says, sitting up, shifting so her legs are beneath her. Hawke smiles, tired, knowing, and something in the expression invites her to blurt, "How do you do it?"

"Find myself?"

"No," she says, though maybe she means yes. "How do you—handle everyone invoking your name for—how—I'm sorry," she says, "I don't know how to ask."

"It's not exactly a common question," Hawke says. "So—an uncommon answer. I let Varric write a book."

Trevelyan blinks; Hawke says, "He'd been writing it all along. We'd joked about it, but after the Kirkwall Circle fell I didn't want anything to do with it. I was homeless on the high seas while the city I loved was eating itself alive and it wasn't—funny. It wasn't a story I thought needed telling. I like my bedtime tales to have happy endings." She strokes Leda's head and stretches her legs out, leaning against the wall, a shadowy figure against the stone with her face half-lit in embers, and Trevelyan envies how comfortable she looks. "But then the other Circles started to fall and people were using my name to condone the slaughter and I—Meredith had to fall. I don't regret that," she says. "But that doesn't mean I wanted—"

She stops, her quiet voice heated, regretful, and a few coals crackle in the fire before she continues. "What I wanted didn't matter," she says. "And I knew that, but I'd always had my friends and a place to lay my head and I was—homesick, and I told Varric to write the book so that maybe someone would read it and know that all I ever wanted was the best for everyone." She looks up and asks, "Have you read it?"

Trevelyan shifts, her cheeks heating. "No," she admits. "We—at the Chantry—my mother—it was the story of the apostate who caused all the rebellions," she says, scrambling to apologize with every word. "It wasn't—wholesome. My sister-in-law loved it," she offers, wincing as she does so, but Hawke is laughing ruefully. "Thought it was, um, romantic. Though that was before the Ostwick Circle revolution."

Her laughter dies away, though her voice is full of irony. "Funny, and the whole point of the book was to show I was just trying to clean up Anders's mess," she says. "As for the romance—well. I let Varric write the book to tell the story of how the Champion of Kirkwall was trying to defend her own, or something to that effect. I didn't...sometimes I didn't recognize myself in it, but—it's the story that mattered," she says. "Or at least that's what Varric is always saying."

"But if it's not true to you—"

"But it is true," Hawke says gently. "True to how Varric saw me. Sometimes it's how I had to be, to make the story work. The story is true, and that's what matters."

"Everyone keeps telling me that," Trevelyan says, "but I don't—"

"Think of it this way," Hawke says. "Did your mother ever read you bedtime stories? 'The River Walker'? 'The Mabari Prince'?"

Trevelyan blinks. "No," she says automatically, and then at Hawke's surprise she amends, "Mother always told stories about Andraste. But our nurse would read us stories, sometimes."

"Oh," Hawke says, momentarily deflated. "But someone did tell you stories. Did you believe they were true?"

"I don't—think so," Trevelyan says, thinking more of how her nephews reacted when she read nursery rhymes to them—mostly jumping on their beds and hitting each other with pillows. "I'm sorry," she says, "I'm not—"

"Of course they're not true," Hawke says, barreling on, as if to save the Inquisitor from herself. "They're stories. But something true might have happened, once, and in any case it's the truth at the heart of the story that matters." The hand she holds to Leda's head now gestures expansively, reaching out to mountain peaks turning rosy with the coming sunrise. "The bedtime stories we tell our children are how they learn that monsters can be beaten, that joy can come from sorrow, that some things are worth fighting for, no matter how hard the struggle.

"That's," and she fixes Trevelyan with a piercing stare, "the point of the Tale of the Champion. That's the story of the Herald of Andraste. It's not about you or the Prophet. It's about what people learn, and believe, when they hear about you." Her smile is crooked. "Yours teaches people to hope, which is more, I think, than can be said for me."

Her stare does not relent as Trevelyan sorts through her words. "You truly believe that?" she says at last.

"I do now," Hawke says, looking to the ceiling with another quiet laugh. "Varric spent years trying to convince me. The first time I read the book, I told him I was going to borrow Fenris's sword and split his skull so I could stuff the infernal thing back where it came from."

The image is vivid, and lingering, and Hawke laughs again at Trevelyan's apparently obvious horror. "I told him he fudged too many details—left too many things out—and the blasted dwarf had the gall to say, 'Hawke, nobody cares about that.' And when I tried to argue, he said, 'I've written the story people need to hear. That's what matters.'"

"And you believed him?"

"No," Hawke says. "But then Fenris read it, and—he agreed with Varric." She shrugs. "I couldn't fight them both, and over time—in the telling of it—you don't matter to them," she says, her half-smile a bit twisted. "It's about the story people need. And you can't control that, and at some point you have to accept it. I had Varric write a book and if you and your mother are anything to go by, it still didn't make a difference. People tell the story they want to hear. You just have to...live up to it, I suppose. In the important ways. Make the story one that helps instead of hurts. That teaches children to be brave, instead of afraid."

She looks almost sorry as she says it, as if she knows—and she probably does—the enormous weight settling on Trevelyan's shoulders at the thought, at the untangling taking place in her mind. "The Chant," she says, slowly, the edges of understanding taking shape as she fills them in with her thoughts. "It's the stories we tell about Andraste. I suppose we don't really know the truth about her, either."

And of course she knows this, but it's different, now, sitting in a cave, wondering if Andraste realized the story being written in her own footsteps. "No," Hawke says, "but we know the truths she wanted us to learn. Forgiveness. Mercy. How to heal the world, one song at a time. That sort of thing."

Love, Trevelyan thinks, and in an instant the hollow emptiness of knowing transforms into purpose. She cannot control what the stories are, but she can try—she can try to model the truth. For the first time in weeks her limbs are light, and more to the point, her heart is—burdened, yes, but not despairing. She can love. She will love, and leave the rest to the storytellers.

Still..."What about the rest of it?" she asks. "The details, the things left out."

Hawke smiles, fondly. "Those are for you," she says. "Let the rest of the world remember I stopped Knight-Commander Meredith in an epic duel in Kirkwall's Gallows. I choose to remember...my mother's floral arrangements," she says, and her confident voice is suddenly unsteady, but she presses on. "Games of Wicked Grace at the Hanged Man. Merrill and her string, Aveline at her wedding, Anders—Anders healing, and Varric pretending not to care, and the smell of the Docks after a storm—" She breaks off and turns her head to her daughter, the naked longing in her expression half-hidden and entirely overwhelming. "Surround yourself with people who know you, and love you, and remember—those things. History will take care of the rest."

Silence follows her words, and Trevelyan isn't sure that they both don't fall half-asleep with their thoughts. Love, she thinks, and Josephine's fluttering hands, and Bull laughing with his Chargers, and Cullen's smile, and she says, eventually, without quite thinking, "Varric's got a Wicked Grace game going here, too."

"Well," Hawke says, equally sleepy, "if he can find people willing to part with their money, he'll find a way to make it happen."

Trevelyan laughs and Hawke half-smiles again, and from not-so-far-away Dagna says, "I think he's waking up."

Hawke's smile vanishes and her hands holding Leda tighten into a grip; not the expression of a woman eager to see her husband, and Trevelyan asks, "Are you—"

"No," Hawke says, voice flat, standing and staring into the darkness. Trevelyan stands too, uncertain, and Hawke glances at her and says, after a moment's hesitation, "The last time something like this happened he—lost all his memories."

Remember, Trevelyan thinks, a worm of worry eating into her newfound contentment. So they are not safe yet, after all. They will never be safe, while Corypheus still roams. Of course not. She knows this, and so she hangs back as Hawke passes through the Undercroft and comes to kneel beside Fenris, Leda still clutched to her shoulder. Trevelyan wanders to Dagna, who's stepped back to give them their privacy; her eyes adjust to the dimmer light, and she sees his fingers twitching, skeletal lines flickering.

She does not know how long Hawke kneels, waiting, how long they stand, holding their breath; the pinkish light beyond turns to gold washing across the snow, and his head turns from side to side, and still they wait. And then, as the cave begins to lighten, Fenris opens his eyes.

Hawke is there; his gaze focuses on her, brow furrowing, and as her lips part in a question he says, roughly, "Hawke."

"Fenris," she says, unguarded relief pouring out of her as she slumps, as he turns on his side, wincing, touches her cheek, moves it to Leda's head. "You—"

He places a finger on her lips, and Trevelyan turns away, lifting her face into the sun spilling over the mountaintops, smiling as the bright fierce line of dawn turns the darkness to day.

.

("I was afraid," Hawke whispers from the safety of Fenris's arms, her own around Leda, circles within circles, a fortress unto itself.

"Yes," he says. Afraid of what, neither needs to say; for now, they cling to the security of their embrace until the fear is not even so much a memory as a distant thought, a vagary not worth the mention. This is not the first time they've performed this ritual, and Hawke knows it will not be the last; for now, they belong to each other, and it is enough.)

.

("Good morning," says a cheerful voice, and Cullen opens his eyes and Trevelyan is there, sitting on the foot of her bed, smiling at him.

"Good—morning," he says, struggling to sit up, making it to his elbows before she has unfolded to plant a kiss on his forehead. "How—"

"It's a beautiful day," she says, firmly, her hand lingering on his cheek, and the warm morning light has turned her hair to gold and her cat-green eyes are crinkled at the edges and Maker's breath, it's not just the day. Whatever has burdened her is gone; he will ask, will tell in turn of his own burdens, will not allow her to shoulder any more alone. "Now come."

"Where?" he asks, taking her hand as it slides away, trying to throw off the covers one-handed. Oh and thank the Maker he was too tired to undress—he is blushing just at the thought—and she is laughing and trying to help him, and eventually he is free and swings his legs to the side of the bed, holding her hand and looking up at her, waiting.

"Breakfast first," she says in that unconsciously commanding way of hers, not that he needs an order to follow her anywhere. "After that..." She shrugs. "It's a beautiful day, and I'd like to spend it with you."

He is helpless, utterly and completely helpless; but this is a weakness he can live with, wants to live with, all the days of his life. Tell her—but he cannot yet find the words.

"That sounds...lovely," he says, and she smiles again, brighter than the sun.)

.

"Well," Hawke says, as carefully vetted servants clear away the breakfast plates, "I think it's time we head on to Weisshaupt."

As she expects, the Inquisitor's face falls, but she is not the one to voice her objection. "So soon?" Varric says.

"I've been here for months," Hawke says.

"Yeah, but Broody and Sparrow just got here," he says. "Isabela's seen more of the squirt than I have, and you can't tell me she's the better influence."

She can feel Fenris sighing at her side, the warmth of him making it difficult to keep a straight face. "Look, one of you is an admiral, and the other one allowed himself to be dragged off to the Conclave and recruited into the Inquisition," she says. "One of you was available to hold the baby while her parents slept, and one of you was busy helping repair the hole in the sky. No, no," she says, holding up a hand, "I understand, it's important—"

"You do intend to depart today?" Cullen asks, a faint frown of concern on his face. A pity, that; for most of breakfast he's looked remarkably well-rested and downright cheerful, if not smiling. At least, not when he thought anyone was looking.

"It's for the best," she says, watching out of the corner of her eye as Sera dangles something shiny in front of Leda's face as the baby sits in Dorian's lap. That Leda prefers a magister's son most of all is an irony not lost on her parents, and Fenris will probably rant about it for the entirety of the journey down the mountain, but for now her daughter is giggling and grabbing and she is content to sit and watch. Dorian bounces her on his knee, eliciting a shriek, and she is again struck by the range of sounds her daughter creates, her daughter who'd been but a wee wriggling thing when she'd left—

No regrets, she'd said; and she is here and Leda is here and Fenris too, and next time—for there will be a next time—she will not be so foolish as to leave them behind again.

Or rather, Fenris will not be so foolish as to let her.

"I am sorry," Trevelyan says to Fenris. "Leliana is doing a thorough inquiry into the entire serving staff."

"She'll probably find more than she bargained for," Cullen says, the frown deepening.

"But not more than she can handle," Trevelyan says, her lips curving.

"No," he says, his face lightening with the consideration. "Never that."

Hawke glances at Fenris and is surprised to see him giving Cullen a pointed look that Cullen is barely managing to avoid. Trevelyan doesn't seem to notice, but then she doesn't know Fenris as well and probably thinks he always looks like that. Which he does, sort of, but that's beside the point, and she nudges him and he breaks his stare and Cullen rubs the back of his neck.

Now she's truly curious, but Fenris changes the subject. "The apology should be mine," he says. "It is bad manners for a guest to attempt to murder his host."

"The height of bad taste," Hawke agrees. "We ought to make amends. Do you think Varania still keeps in touch with her friends in the Imperium?"

Fenris raises an eyebrow. "Assuming she has any," he says, but it is a joke, and she is proud of him for it. "I shall write and ask."

"Oh, no," Trevelyan protests, "you have already done so much—"

"And you've got a contact within the Imperium," Dorian comments, raising Leda to standing on his lap.

"But you're not actually there," Hawke points out.

"And you're an outcast to boot," Blackwall adds from farther down the table.

"So many attacks on my good name," Dorian says, turning Leda so she faces him. "How shall I defend myself? What's that?" He leans in, and Hawke feels Fenris failing not to tense beside her and half shakes her head. He leans away and says, "Order a new coat from the oaf in Requisitions? My dear, what impeccable taste you have."

"I'm sure Josephine would appreciate it if you would quit spending money as soon as she acquires it," Trevelyan says, but she is laughing, and Cullen who thinks no one is watching is smiling at her, and Fenris who knows no one is watching is giving him that look again, and Hawke would like to know just when they had time to talk and more importantly why Fenris gets to be the one giving the commander knowing looks when she's been in this fortress for months watching him pine for the Inquisitor, guarding her tongue because the one time she tried to say anything he practically chased her out of his office and slammed the door behind her.

The small part of her that forgets sometimes wishes Anders were here, just for the injustice of it all, and the rest of her that remembers covers the pang with a smile and says, "To be completely honest, I doubt we'll make it all the way to Weisshaupt."

The laughter vanishes from Trevelyan's face (and Cullen's, though no one is watching) and Hawke catches her glancing at Leda and says quickly, "Yes, it's a long journey with a baby. And—my brother is a Grey Warden, and now that we've solved the question of why they're hearing the Calling I can tell him, and I suspect the higher-ranking Wardens would rather hear about this from one of their own than from an upstart apostate with a terrible track record in starting revolutions."

"Your brother," Trevelyan repeats.

"And are we now volunteering everyone's siblings for the Inquisition?" Fenris says, echoing her tone.

"Oh, no," Hawke says. "Just ours." She almost says something about Bartrand, but with all the red lyrium around—with Varric's haunted red-rimmed eyes, exhausted and homesick and determined to see this through—it wouldn't be funny. The prospect of sending Carver into the wilderness sits about as well with her as the thought of subjecting Leda to the Anderfels, but, as she reminds herself, "He is, after all, a grown man and perfectly capable of fending for himself."

She feels Fenris's eyes on her, steady and encouraging against the high cost of the words to herself and everything she's ever tried to do, and to her alarm tears try to well in her eyes. She won't have it; she promised herself a clean goodbye, a cheerful farewell, for the Inquisitor's sake if nothing else. There is always a cost; the most they can do is make it worthwhile.

"Junior? Really?" Varric sighs. "How time flies."

"How indeed," Hawke says, and Leda laughs again to remind her. Somehow Blackwall's holding her and she's tugging at his beard, delighted, and she thinks she would have loved her grandfather's beard, and her grandmother's pearls, and her eyes sting again. None of that, she thinks, and she pushes her chair away from the table and stands. "On that note, we really must be going."

"Please," Trevelyan says, standing, and automatically the rest of the table rises to follow suit. She doesn't seem to notice, and Hawke smiles. "Accept two of our horses. And a goat."

"A goat?" Sera says. "What, to heave at the Warden fortress?"

Cullen makes a noise rather akin to a suppressed laugh; turning it into a cough, he follows it with, "Our soldiers will see you safely down the mountain, and as far as you wish to be conveyed."

"Thank you," Hawke says graciously, stepping on Fenris's toe before he can open his mouth to protest. "Down the mountain will be more than enough." She doesn't mention that they've already left their bags at the stables, planning on taking horses whether the Inquisition offered them or not.

"All right, mellita," Dorian says, taking the baby from Blackwall and holding her up to eye level. "Be good. Be yourself."

"Thank you," Hawke says as Fenris not-quite-snatches his daughter from Dorian's arms. "And thank you, Inquisitor, for seeing to her. We—"

"Are in your debt," Fenris finishes, a small smile playing at his lips as Leda reaches up to tug on them.

Trevelyan shakes her head. "No," she says, "we are in yours. Maker guide your steps, Hawke. Fenris." She bows and adds, "Little Leda."

"Maker be with you," Cullen echoes, and the others voice similar sentiments.

"And with you," Hawke says, smiling, dipping her head in acknowledgment. "Somehow I think you need him more than we do."

Trevelyan snorts, and on that note Hawke decides it is time to leave and turns away. Varric follows her and Fenris to the door, where he stops her for a hug, his arms hard and fast around her as she stoops to reciprocate. "Take care of yourself," he says into her shoulder, and she tightens her grip on him in response. "When all this is over—"

"Drinks at the Hanged Man," she says firmly, and he nods against her and they break the embrace and she doesn't miss the flash of loss on his face, the echoing tug of homesickness on her own heartstrings. "On you," she says, to cover the pain.

"Closed my tab on the way out of town," he says, shaking his head. "I'm afraid it's all you."

"Then Isabela was telling the truth," Fenris says. At Hawke's questioning look he elaborates, "She claims to have spent the past two years buying drinks in our name, assuring Corff the Amell estate will repay him."

"Of course she has," Hawke says, grinning and pained all at once. "Remind me to wring her neck, next time we see her."

"Take care," Varric says again.

"I will," Fenris says, and Hawke has the curious feeling they mean of her, and she would protest but they both look so serious—and she won't have tears, she won't.

"Say goodbye to Uncle Varric, sweet thing," she says, taking one of Leda's hands in her own and giving him a wave. It doesn't help the tears, but Varric's genteel waving of his fingers in return makes her laugh. When all this is over. "Take care of yourself," she says. "And the Inquisitor. She's a sweet thing. Do right by her, when you tell the tale."

"I will," Varric says, and she won't say goodbye and he wouldn't tolerate it if she did, and so Fenris puts a hand to her back and steers her down the stairs, steadying her as she almost stumbles towards the stables. She regains her footing and concentrates on the steps, one at a time, concentrates on not feeling guilty—not my war, she tells herself, not anymore.

She'll probably be halfway to Weisshaupt before she believes it. Time enough to decide whether to send Carver instead, to decide—

"Do you think the house is still there?" she asks as they cross the courtyard, trampling on the meager grass scattered around the merchants' booths.

"The house?"

"Our house," she says. "In Wilhaven. Do you think it's still there, or do you think the neighbors have occupied it?" Before he can answer, she adds, "I know you didn't bother to tell anyone where you were going."

"They would not have believed me, had I tried," he says, which is an answer in and of itself.

"So we're homeless."

"A distinct possibility," he concedes.

"Again." She means it to be a joke but something in the word stings and his hand is on her back again and she says, "When all this is over—"

"It's never over," he says dryly, and then he says, "Your brother is in Kirkwall."

Her breath catches; she'd thought she was being subtle. "I thought Aveline—"

"She did," he says as they arrive at the stables, and the conversation ends for the moment. Horses await them, and in no time at all Fenris has Leda arranged in a sling around him—and she is jealous, but there will be time for her to learn—and then they are both in the saddle, a goat's lead tied to her reins. Soldiers take their horses by the bridle and lead them to the gate, where their escort awaits; other members of the Inquisition stop and wave as they ride by, and she returns the gesture as gracefully as she can manage while trying to adjust to her horse's gait.

"So," she says as they stop before the gate, while their escort arranges itself around them, "we have a plan?" He raises an eyebrow at her. "Don't look so skeptical," she says. "Sometimes I have plans. Sometimes they're even good plans."

Abandoning the Inquisition in the midst of this particular fight doesn't feel like a good plan, but Aveline is at her post and Carver is with her and the thought—

Fenris—whole, hale, hers—looks at her gravely, but his eyes are smiling and her heart is a puddle in her chest. "Hawke," he says. She will never tire of his voice.

"Fenris?" She will never tire of his name.

"We will see them again," he says.

Fatherhood has changed him while she's been away. There will be time for her to learn—and she is excited for it. Intrigued. Relieved. Beloved, and more in love than ever before. "I know," she says, taking the reins, reaching for him with one hand as she draws her horse alongside his. "With me?"

"Always," he says, taking her hand; and together, they ride through the gate, under the portcullis, out across the bridge, towards the unknown; and together, they will find their way home.