A/N: Thanks for the kind feedback! I'm going to try to update about once a week. I'm going to go off canon in some parts as I imagine Josephine's reactions during scenes she's not really featured in. This one got a bit introspective. I hope you enjoy!

She nearly, nearly loses sight of the woman. For a brief moment, she sees only the Herald of Andraste, the mark, the power.

They sealed the breach. It seems impossible, but it happened. Everyone was outside celebrating, and she stayed in the Chantry, writing memos. Regret feels heavy in her chest now, as she wonders if, perhaps, she would have had one last moment with the Herald before this had she taken the night off for once. Before the horrors of death, demons, screams, and pain. Before the stupid, stupid nobility of one stubbornly heroic elf.

In this moment, fleeing up into the hills, Josephine pauses, out of breath. She looks down at the scene below and sees, for the first time, what those who call her the Herald of Andraste must see: something more than mortal, something legendary, extraordinary.

Then Leliana appears next to her and the illusion vanishes. She remembers with a cold, piercing shock that the tiny figure down there is mortal. Lady Lavellan stands, sword bared, alone, facing Corypheus and the huge dragon, a tiny and frail speck against the immense darkness.

A hand on her arm. "Josie." An urgent shake. "Josie, come!"

She resists, unable to look away from the scene below. Snow swirls around them and the horror seems to slow everything down. "How could we have left her?" she muses to herself, barely realizing she's speaking out loud.

"Josie." Leliana's voice begins to sound panicked. "Josephine, there may be demons or an avalanche or...or..." She trails off, managing to pull the ambassador along a few more feet into the mountains. "We cannot waste what she is sacrificing for us." The ambassador knows Leliana is confused by her reaction. Normally Josephine is calm, collected, rational. Normally, she would accept the sacrifice of one for many.

Josephine doesn't really understand what's changed herself. She turns to march forward, feeling like a great weight is trying to pull her back to the stand off between one, small, brave woman and great darkness. Somewhere, something has shifted in her mind: though she knows it's hopeless, she can't help but feel that if anyone were to get out alive...

Silly girl, she chastises herself. What would you do? Charge into the fight and talk Corypheus to death?

Everyone has a role. Right now, hers is to follow the others to safety and begin rebuilding after such a horrible tragedy. She tries not to think of the lives already lost, and she tries, especially, to ignore the one that may yet slip away, a fragile life like firelight.

She tells herself that her eyes are burning because of the dry and unforgiving wind.

When the earth rumbles and the ground quivers beneath her feet, when a far-off mountain unleashes an angry torrent of snow down into the wasted valley, Josephine feels the piercing hope inside her vanish. Even Leliana seems to shrink beside her with a small gasp. They can barely see the avalanche behind them, now so far into the mountains that Corypheus' dragon looks like a mere dark speck against the empty sky.

They finally reach the campsite and Josephine nearly buckles under exhaustion, ignoring the frantic activity of the soldiers and workers around her as they sort the materials they could save from Haven. The sounds are overwhelming to her ears, which feel on fire from the persistent, harsh cold. Leliana has moved away to speak with Cullen. They beckon her forward.

Roles and duty.

When the Iron Bull, Dorian, and Sera stumble into the campsite some time later, she must turn away to conceal the frustrating burning in her eyes. Stupid, stupid, self-sacrificing, noble woman. She has even sacrificed herself for those who could best defend themselves. The three have only a disjointed tale of demons and the Herald's hands, pushing them down into an underground passage ahead of herself. None of them realized she wouldn't be following immediately.

Josephine allows herself a moment of weakness as a still, sad silence falls over the camp with a scattering of snowflakes.

Roles and duty. She repeats this to herself over and over again, trying to convince herself that perhaps this is, or was (her hand clenches briefly against her face), the Herald's role. And her own has not yet finished.

Roles and duty.

Turning back to Cullen, Leliana, and Cassandra, she focuses on damage-control and short-term strategy for the Inquisition.

She tries to ignore the hollow weight in her chest.

Josephine is not there when they find her. Roles and duty, and so she only catches from afar the great flurry of activity, only notices the crowd gathering when the distant sounds of shouts and excited motion reach her position under a tent, writing memos.

As she stands, she feels a thrill of emotion settle over the camp and the weight in her chest lifts, but she doesn't dare hope. She walks to the center of the site and sees a huddle of figures pass by, one carrying an all-too-familiar sword.

Her breath catches.

And there, in the center, a familiar figure, pale and bloodied, being carried limply into the site.

Alive, she thinks to herself, understanding now the excitement. Alive. (Is that her heart, she wonders, as she feels a strange jolt in her chest?)

She hears the story over and over again from Cullen some time later, once the rest of the camp has been shooed away by the anxious Solas and Mother Giselle. How the Herald came stumbling through the storm, appearing suddenly, spirit-like, limping and covered in blood, some of it hers, some not. There is an awe in his voice that was not there before.

She sympathizes. She feels giddy, and she turns her face up into the snowflakes, allowing them to land haphazardly over her eyes and face. Memos explaining the unfortunate death of the Herald to important diplomats lie crumpled at her feet, and she briefly considers burning them. Around them, the rest of the camp has turned solemn-even the Herald's return doesn't soften the terror of what they saw at Haven, and somewhere inside Josephine knows she should feel guilty for feeling this carefree.

In this moment, though, she realizes that she holds of the Herald are terribly, woefully incomplete. It is a dangerous game for Josephine to let her carefully maintained mental checklists go, but what she thinks (and feels, somewhere deep in her chest, an aching place she never knew existed) of the Herald cannot be summed up in the few phrases she's gathered. Lady Lavellan is not merely the "herald," nor merely selfless, nor merely the protector of the weak and downtrodden. Nor, even, stupidly noble (though Josephine thinks privately that she will have to reprimand the Herald...for the sake of the Inquisition, of course...that risking her life repeatedly is not entirely necessary).

What Lady Lavellan is, then, Josephine thinks with a curl of her fingertips, she hopes to find out.

She sees Cassandra and Leliana begin to enter an argument and, with a frown, Cullen pauses mid-story and goes to join them. For a moment, she allows herself a solitary moment of happiness.

Leader.

The thought enters her head unbidden as the haunting melody rises overhead with a chill. Goosebumps scatter up her arms and she's not entirely sure they're from the cold.

Soldiers and refugees alike kneel in front of the Herald as the song washes over them. Stifled, he words of argument and reason die in her throat. Josephine has been struck speechless few times in her life, and most of them seem to have happened in the last several months. She finds herself casting about for a description of the scene in front of her, something to write to potential allies about, but all she can think of are the stars, the bowed heads, the angular face.

Their eyes meet across the crowd and a shiver works its way up her spine. There seems to be a question there, a sort of plea—and in that question, Josephine once again sees the woman, and she feels stuck between sympathy and a hardened determination.

The Herald finally seems to understand her role. Roles and duty, Josephine reminds herself as a deep sympathy steals over her, making her eyes sting. She knows it's not an easy burden, being responsible for so many others' hope, but this is what they need. A leader, someone to inspire them, challenge them. Someone who can make the darkness and horror recede beneath a blinding light of hope.

She knows it's not easy. Lady Lavellan's pale eyes look desperate, tired, the face still sunken after the ordeal with Corypheus.

Roles and duty. Josephine stares back unflinchingly, then reclines her head slightly.

It is not the answer the Herald wants, but it's the one she gets, and it's the truth. Her eyes seem to shutter closed and she turns back to those kneeling before her, seemingly stunned into silence.

Later, Josephine finally lets herself grieve. Hidden towards the back of the makeshift camp, Lady Josephine Montilyet weeps over a stack of half-hearted memos and letters. She doesn't know why the tears fall so quickly, but they inconveniently mar the paperwork she's trying to complete. She's huddled just inside a low-hanging flap of tent, only the lantern light for warmth. She feels the privacy is worth the numb chill overtaking her fingers and the stiffened grip on her quill. The song seems to have found the memories of those they had lost that night and drag them painfully into the open. She has kept careful lists in her mind of all the members of the Inquisition, even those primarily with them as refugees, and she wipes the tears away in hasty frustration as she realizes they will need to find replacements for some critical roles.

Those eyes avoid hers, now, trying to run from a truth (or maybe a few truths, something in her chest murmurs) they can't avoid any longer. Something that they read in Josephine's gaze the night of the song.

Under that tent, in the cold and the dark and the uncertain, Josephine feels alone for the first time.