He'd heard it said that the darkest hour is always before the dawn.
In a makeshift camp outside of Val Royeaux shortly before sunrise, the phrase had never rang more true to Blackwall. He pushed at the embers of the dying fire with a stick, staring into the blackened ashes in the moonlight. He'd started the fire when he couldn't stay asleep to keep him warm, but he found that nothing warmed the coldness he felt.
Today, Mornay was to be executed.
He longed to be at Skyhold waiting for the sun to peek over the mountains, his head buried against Zaire Cadash's copper hair, his body curled around hers.
When he thrashed in his sleep from the nightmares, she ran her fingers through his hair, soothing him. Telling him that he could fight the Calling, fight Corypheus, that he was strong. If she'd known what the nightmares really were…
Any good in him had gotten wrapped up in that tangle of blood and suffocating falsehoods. I let her love this lie.
A string of knots formed in his gut. His fingers wrapped around the stick and shook until it snapped in his hands. He couldn't let Mornay die while he walked free. There would be no winning hand to this game. He could either live with that blood on his hands, or he would die having a shred of decency and honor.
My greed. My orders. My responsibility. Growling, he threw the stick into the fire and closed his eyes.
He'd tried to find a way in his mind to justify staying with the Inquisition, with her. In the end, he'd come up with nothing. His secrets, his self-loathing; it would eventually destroy him. In turn, it would destroy her.
Blackwall's duty, Grey Warden or not, was to protect those who needed it.
In Valammar, one of the Dawkspawn got past him and made its' way to her. She kept shooting it until it wrapped its fingers around her throat and threw her to the floor. In seconds he was at her side, bashing it aside with his shield and decapitating it. He reached out his hand to help her to her feet. She smiled up at him. Later, she thanked him like only she could. Only her. The bruises on her neck hurt for them both. Her physically, but for him in his heart. Tracing the splash of freckles down her thigh with his hand, he saw more bruises, material proof that only harm would come of him being there. A Grey Warden would have sensed the danger.
She'd determined that the false Calling interfered with his ability to sense them. She paced her room late at night, concerned that he'd go mad. Standing in front of him and glaring up at him if he tried to tell her that he was fine. She'd believed in him, and she had made decisions based on incorrect information from him.
If he could have admitted he was just a man, a man who made mistakes, who had changed, would she have believed him? Would she still have seen the good she claimed? Could she still have loved him?
Believing perhaps that he followed the Calling, she would never know of Thom Rainier. She had curled her hands under her chin in her sleep as he tucked a blanket around her the night he'd left. He wanted to touch her hair, to kiss her forehead, to tell her how much he loved her. How sorry he was.
Instead, he left, afraid of waking her.
Someone may as well have ripped his insides out with the stick, and thrown them in the pathetic remnants of the fire, too. He prayed to the Maker. Not for forgiveness for himself, as perhaps Thom Rainier might have.
"Maker, keep her safe." Tilting his head upwards, he wondered if she looked at the same stars he did, if she hurt as much as he did. He hated the thought. "Goodbye, my lady," he murmured. He sat by the dying embers of the fire on his final night of darkness, waiting for what could be his last sunrise. It didn't matter if she loved the man she called Blackwall or if she could have loved the man underneath the mask.
Neither would see another day as a free man.