Meera,

I am honored to receive your invitation for continued correspondence between us. I wish, however, that our first discussion must not center around such an unsavory and difficulty topic. Of course, life has rarely considered our wishes (perhaps Commander and King aside).

I feel you have two options.

One is to make him exactly what he has all these years claimed to be, a Grey Warden. Make no mistake, if you choose to send him to the Wardens, he will join or he will perish. Once joined it is for life, a shortened, difficult life, especially in light of the recent difficulties at Adamant, the continued silence from Weisshaupt, and what you have learned of the Calling. It is also a life of heroic service. The Wardens take their oaths seriously. Such a life may be what he has been seeking by masquerading as a Warden. From a more practical standpoint, their numbers are greatly diminished and though the bards will tell you numbers did not win against the Ferelden Blight, I did not single-handedly deliver all of Thedas. If I had been able to number a hundred more men before I spent a year gathering dwarves and mages and the like, even men such as your Rainier, perhaps we would not have lost quite so many Fereldens as we did.

Two is to forgive and is the more complicated and surely more difficult choice. From your description of his actions in regard to you personally, his service to the Inquisition, and his surrender to the authorities in Orlais, it would seem the man truly regrets his past misdeeds. Redemption, however, doesn't always follow forgiveness, most especially if the sinner can't forgive himself the sin. He may never be able to embrace what you can offer him, may never be able to make more of himself than what he is now, broken and sorry and grieving for the man he could have been. It may be that granting him freedom will only tighten his chains. Be that as it may, I will offer you a bit of wisdom from some long-dead Chantry philosopher:

To err is human, to forgive, divine.

He may not see the wisdom in forgiveness but I think you and I do. In fact, I believe you and I must.

There are no easy choices in these roles we've had thrust upon us.

My King, who is at the moment pouting because the children have bested him in a game of lawn darts, sends his regards.

Respectfully,

-A. Regina

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Quizzy,

Weisshaupt was not my kind of place. It was fucking cold, for one thing, and for another, no one listened to me there. Blighted assholes.

I ran away. I bet if you send Blackw the bearded guy, he will, too.

Seriously, though, the Wardens up there are a bunch of dicks and not in a good way. Don't make him suffer more than he already does having to take care of your ass (which is a very, very fine ass).

Miss me and tell Varric to stop stealing all your money at Wicked Grace,

-H.

P.S. He still sleeps more hours than he's awake but when he is awake, he's more himself each time. Grateful doesn't begin to cover it.

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"He didn't do right, right? He zigged and he shoulda zagged and he gave it to the bigs but not the right bigs or for the good reasons and not the bad ones, but now he's trying to be better, yeah? Don't give 'im up."

Meera took the offered cookie, burnt around the edges, soggy in the middle, and leaned her head onto Sera's shoulder to watch Iron Bull and Cassandra spar below them in the yard, she and the elf's feet dangling together over the edge of the roof.

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"Darling, it is imperative that the Inquisition show no favoritism. Of course he has been helpful and gallant and a host of quite lovely things while he has been with us. That does not excuse his past bad behavior. He must be held accountable. Who better than we to do so?"

Vivienne's hand was a featherlight weight on Meera's shoulder but her eyes were dark and deep.

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Cole curled his long, pale fingers around her arm, tugging awkwardly until they were aligned, side by side on the stairs to her quarters, his hair tumbled into his face, the eye she could see glowing strangely in the half light from the candles. She shivered as he opened his mouth and then closed it, shuffled his feet, and then exhaled noisily, a surprisingly human sound.

"The name breaks free, pulls the pain with it. A black wall to shield the self when the sky is rainier." He shook his head, sharply. "I want to help. He wants to help. If he is wrong, I am wrong." He gulped, another loud, jarring sound from the normally noiseless boy, and Meera rubbed her hand up his arm. He flinched, eyelids and eyebrows, and then he threw his arms around her and squeezed, hard.

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"Opinions, Princess, are like assholes." Varric smirked as Meera's arrow went wide, wider than her usual terrible aim, thunking dully into the grass yards away from where it needed to go. "Gotta be prepared to be distracted. Try again." He patted her companionably on her back, his smirk spreading into a laugh as she huffed and glared at him but lifted the bow once more to her cheek. "Anyway, opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one and everyone thinks their neighbors' smells like shit."

"And yours?" she asked, pulling back on the bowstring, squinting down the field at the straw target with the painted bullseye.

"No matter where he came from, he's here now. Sometimes, that's all you got."

The bow twanged, a high, sweet note.

The straw burst into flames.

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Magister Gareon Alexius for apostasy, attempted enslavement, attempted assassination of the Inquisitor: service to the magisters of the Inquisition

Chief Movran the Under for animal endangerment and threats against the Inquisitor: exiled* to Tevinter.

Mayor Gregory Dedrick of Crestwood for murder and gross negligence by a public official: death.

Grand Duchess Florianne de Chalons for treason: hard labor.

Magister Livius Erimond for attempted enslavement, bearing false witness, serving a false prophet: Grey Warden justice.

Ser Ruth for murder (blood sacrifice): innocent.

-L.

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"Boss, I've done worse. Would do worse, if I wasn't Tal-Vashoth." Bull shrugged, a quick, uneasy movement of his shoulders as Meera peered at him with beetled brows and a not-quite-sober expression, her elbow nudging his companionably on the bar. No one else was around; they'd closed the place down hours ago with Bull's bellow of, "Out, right now, all you fuckers, out!"

No one wanted to argue with a man with horns, even if he did have a bum knee.

"There's orders, there's loyalty, and then there's friendship. Ain't easy when they try to run over each other." He watched her tip back her mug, chuckled a little when she licked toward her chin at the drops that tried to escape, gold and bitter. "Let's get you another, killer."

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Dorian grunted as his staff went skittering away, darting just out of reach as Meera advanced on him, her staff held defensively after the overhand strike that left his hand smarting. Calculating angles and trajectories as fast as possible, he dove to the left, his fingertips grazing his staff just in time to see her marked hand flicker to life in a gesture he recognized with a swear and a yelp and a dirty, weak shield that shattered with the force of her fireball. Her little grin was triumphant and sly as the ground beneath him began to quiver and heat. Dorian bucked, rolled, and arced lightning from his fingertips, hissing when the purple sparks fizzled inches from Meera, dissipated by her own, stronger barrier.

The feint worked. The Templar standing as his partner whirled, slashed, and Meera stumbled forward, her knees taken neatly from beneath her as her own Templar remained still as a statue, caught in Dorian's static cage.

"As I said, dear heart, you can't save the whole world." He released the Templar with an airy wave as Meera sprawled backward into the dust, groaning.

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Morrigan flicked at a leaf on the plant Meera was currently babying, only half-listening as the girl dug in the dirt and hummed tunelessly to herself. The sun was weak, covered by skittering clouds that promised sleet before the day was done, and only the two women continued to brave the icy winds outside Skyhold, Meera for her straggling garden and Morrigan because she remained curious about this young woman thrust so hastily into leadership, this young, powerful mage who commanded fierce loyalty and inspired blind faith despite, and sometimes because of, her magical gifts.

Morrigan refused to believe she was jealous even as her own son talked nonstop about "Meera the brave and true". Children's foolishness, easily bought with a few sugarplums and sweet words. She was not so easily swayed and yet…

"The more you do for others, the more they will expect from you," she heard herself say. Morrigan had to resist the urge to run her hand over the Inquisitor's suddenly bowed head.

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"Good, yes?"

"Mmmm," Meera agreed absently, staring down at her plate. An unidentified glob of a meatlike substance rolled under a carrot and she jabbed at it with her fork, ignoring the affronted glance from Cassandra when she set it daintily aside in her napkin. It had been Cass's turn to pick the menu and while Meera liked the rich brown sauce and hearty vegetables, she did not like the texture of whatever animal had been sacrificed on the altar of Inquisition bellies. She felt Cullen nudge her shin with his boot under the table and glanced up in time to see him take a huge bite, his eyes twinkling devilishly at her.

"It's bear, isn't it?" she asked, setting down her utensils with a clatter. "You told me it wasn't but it really is, isn't it, that big dumb one that Dorian kept teasing until it tried to maul us."

"No," Cassandra said at the same time Cullen swallowed and nodded.

"I hate both of you," Meera sulked, crossing her arms over her breasts and refusing to be placated by Cullen's hand squeezing her thigh under the table.

"Not nice being lied to, is it?" Cassandra said smartly, but she smiled when Meera shot her a glare.

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"I don't bend like that, Cullen!"

"Shh, sweetheart, just lean…no, no, the other … Meera!" There was a gasp, a loud scrape of heavy furniture over a wooden floor, a deep masculine sound that could have been pleasure or exasperation, a heavy thud, and then Jim and Sera made equally-disgusted faces as they beat a hasty retreat from the door to Cullen's tower, the sounds from within definitely not meant for public consumption.

Inside, Cullen and Meera were tangled in a heap on the floor, the book he'd tried to help her get down from a tall shelf ripped neatly in two, one half in Cullen's hand along Meera's back, the other in Meera's hand trapped between their bodies. He moaned to ensure their audience had retreated, loud and lewd, and Meera had to sink her teeth into the muscle of his chest to muffle her giggles. He nuzzled her temple and then couldn't resist peppering her face with kisses when she couldn't seem to stop laughing, rolling over so she was tucked neatly beneath him. He continued the pecks, nose, eyebrows, chin, cheeks, until she'd finally calmed enough he could steal her breath, and the remaining merriment, with his mouth, a slow, thorough kiss that had them both sighing out when it ended.

"I love you," she whispered, lifting her fingers to comb through his hair, the curls he rarely bothered to tame since she'd told him they were beautiful winding about her fingers.

"I love you, too," he returned, brushing his thumbs over her cheekbones, his eyes glowing cat-amber in the thin light from the windows. "But that book isn't going to have any answers in it."

Meera scraped her nails lightly over his scalp, then again when he made a low almost-purr in the back of his throat and rubbed his dark gold afternoon stubble against her neck "Well, no, not now that we ripped it in two," she agreed equably but her gaze drifted over his shoulder and clouded.

Determined and sympathetic, Cullen nipped at the lobe of her ear, his fingers already loosening the belt at her waist. "Let me distract you," he demanded, finding her skin warm and supple and soft, and she surrendered with a hitch of breath, her eyes fluttering closed.

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Josephine set down her delicate china cup, her finger tracing the rim. She didn't lift her eyes from the cup, from the slow, careful circle she was making, around and around and around again. After a few moments, Meera reached across and took Josephine's hand in her own and squeezed.

Josephine squeezed back but, still, she didn't look up. The tea grew cold between them.

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"Others talk of politics when you are a woman of faith, a child of the Chant." Giselle's voice drifted over Meera where she knelt before the altar of Andraste in the small chapel, a soothing lilt. "You were chosen by the Maker. Walk in his, in her, shadow."

Meera reached out and touched the hem of Andraste's robe, her fingers scraping across the cold stone.

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"Is it selfish of me to want to forgive the unforgivable? To want to continue to care about someone who has betrayed me, and what I believe in, so thoroughly?"

Solas's brush stuttered, a line meant to be thin and elegant turning into a dark, heavy slash.

He stilled, listening to the creak as Meera resettled into her chair, able to picture her without turning, her legs crossed and tucked underneath her, her back bent, chin propped on her fists, elbows propped on her thighs. A most indecorous pose, terrible for her back, ill-befitting the leader of a small army bent on saving the world, and yet he knew if he turned, if he looked at her, she would still manage to exude the calming comfort and shining, incandescent light that had nothing, and yet perhaps everything, to do with her role as savior.

Meera Trevelyan, he suspected, had most likely always been more than she seemed.

"No," he said finally, his brush falling away from the wall. "No, my friend. That would be just like you."

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Meera sat atop her gilt and garish throne, legs crossed primly at the ankle and tucked neatly to the side, her stomach knotted and tense, her fingers clamped so tightly together in her lap that her knuckles were white with the strain, and her face as placid and still as she could make it. Thom Rainier looked up at her, his eyes as bleak and as grey as a winter storm. To her right she heard Josephine's quill tapping anxiously on her parchment. Beyond Blackwall was a sea of faces, some friendly, some hostile, some simply curious, all waiting to see how the mighty Inquisitor, the Herald of Andraste, would judge this traitor among them.

He was already angry with her for using her influence with Empress Celene to have him released into her custody, already outraged that she had saved him from the fate he'd finally accepted. Already resigned to accept whatever she thought he deserved for he had refused to speak to her since they'd returned to Skyhold, turned his back on her when she visited him in the cells, and had no answer for the question she'd asked him so many days ago.

She hadn't been sure, herself, until she'd seen him brought before her in chains once more, if she had an answer. It was there, though, inside of her, and her voice rang through the hall, "You have your freedom."

Everyone, including Thom, gaped. "It cannot be as simple as that," he denied but she had not missed how his eyes flicked to Josephine and then away, the little gasp from her Ambassador, the complete and utter silence that otherwise filled the hall. Something deep inside her loosened.

It wasn't that simple because he wasn't a simple man. "I barely know him," he grumbled when she decreed he must atone as the man he was, not the man he'd pretended to be but, in the end, he did what she'd hoped, what she'd prayed, he'd do: "My sword is yours."

"No, Thom," she said gently, rising from her seat. The guards at Thom's side made a move to block her but she stopped them with a gesture, palm upraised, and then she lifted that palm until it lay against the rough beard covering Thom's cheek, until her fingertips found the vulnerable, parchment thin skin under his eye. "Your sword is yours."

"My lady," he whispered and she smiled, felt it fill up her eyes, dimple her cheeks as a weight slid from her shoulders, from her heart.

"Take your post, Thom Rainier."