AN: Oh hey. I might have been really excited about getting to this chapter. I might have had a really awesome time writing it. I might have spent way too much of my day working on it. I might not be sorry at all.


Chapter 10

~ Not A Templar ~

The Iron Bull comes at me with a dull-edged axe like a maelstrom, and I lift my shield as I whirl to avoid him. This shield, my shield, still feels foreign on my arm. Harrit made it for me, and it's a fine weapon-large and sturdy and emblazoned with Inquisition heraldry. But the balance isn't quite the same as the Templar-issue shield I carried for so many years, and I'm still growing used to its heft.

But I won't go back to the old one. Because I, Cullen Rutherford, am not a Templar anymore.

I swipe my practice blade at the Iron Bull's knees, and he half groans, half laughs as he falls and I hold my sword to his thick neck.

"Not bad, not bad," he says. "I must be getting soft." His voice thunders as I offer a hand to help him up. I hum noncommittally-I don't believe for a single moment that this Qunari was bested so easily. He's been testing me since Aderyn arrived back from the Iron Coast with him and his mercenaries in tow. It's been casual. Subtle. If I weren't so used to that same kind of testing from my some of superiors in the Templars, I might not have spotted it at all.

I grab a waterskin from the table near the yard, and I toss one to the Iron Bull as well. My muscles ache more than I want them too, and I wish he weren't looking at me like he could see it-and I wish that aching muscles were the worst side effect of lyrium withdrawal to hide from the Qunari.

I also with Aderyn would stop collecting such inquisitive allies for our Inquisition.

"So," he says as I take a drink. "How long have you and the 'Herald of Andraste' been knocking boots?"

A cough rattles my chest as I spit my mouthful of water into the snow. "Sweet Maker," I sputter. "We're not-I wouldn't-we've never done any such thing."

"What do you call it then? Taking a tumble? Rolling in the hay? Making love?"

"No, Andraste's grace, man. No."

"C'mon. If I've learned anything about your people, it's that when there's that much intense eye contact happening, there's usually a great deal of other contact going on where no one can see. If you catch my drift."

"I-I understand perfectly." I look everywhere but at his stupid grin. Intense eye contact. Maker, I'll have to be careful about that. Or maybe I won't, because locking eyes with Aderyn is one of the few things that grounds me in this world gone mad, where the sky bleeds demons and I am not a Templar anymore. "I assure you that no such...contact...is taking place."

"Ha. Commander, you might be a little looser on the attack if you had a little more contact in your life. If you catch-"

"Yes, Bull. Yes. A blind nug could catch this particular drift." I take a deep breath, purposefully putting my sword out of arm's' reach. "We are simply old friends."

"You two got history. Anyone with eyes can see that. What I can't quite figure is why, when our Lady Herald woke from her creepy, Tranquil slumber, you two didn't start fucking like rabbits."

He looks at me as if he expects me to tell him that he is perfectly right, that I should probably go, because I have some urgent boot-knocking and hay-rolling to take care of. Because rabbits, you know.

"Is there a reason that you've shifted from your subtle interrogation to this more direct one?"

"Noticed that, did you? Maybe I just wanted to know if you'd say something about it. Good on you, Commander." He tosses the waterskin back in my direction and starts to head off toward his mercenaries' camp. "I was serious about the contact doing you some good, though. Just think about it."

I curse furiously under my breath, and the Iron Bull just laughs as he saunters off. I've never seen someone so big saunter in my life.

"Commander-" behind me, a messenger, Kevan, pipes up. Hair falls into his eyes and he smooths it across his brow as I turn to him. He can't be more than thirteen or fourteen, around the same age I was when I left home. Haven is a harder place than the monastery, however, and I try to smile at him every time we speak. "Sister Leliana is looking for you in the Chantry, sir. She wouldn't say why."

"Very good, Kevan. Thank you," I murmur. My smile is a little less encouraging than usual, but my mind is frayed just now, and my legs protest as I turn them up the hill towards Haven's Chantry. Maybe Leliana will have good news from some secret espionage. Maybe I'll get to see Aderyn while I'm there.

Except, the truth is that I think she's avoiding me. She's been in and out of Haven a few times, and the last time we truly spoke was in the Hinterlands, before she went to Val Royeaux. I held her hand, and we laughed of old stutters born anew. I can still feel the softness of her palms and that tight-knuckled fist she made when she was in so much pain. My chest still tightens at the thought of her hurting so badly, all alone.

But she's been back from Orlais for nearly a month, gathering allies and waiting to arrange meetings with Templars or mages. She hasn't sought me out, and I won't chase her down if she doesn't wish to see me. I'm not the same boy who followed her around the Tower, stammering and blushing through those stone halls. Running the Inquisition's forces is a time consuming task, after all, and keeping an extra close eye on Aderyn Surana is no longer a justifiable part of my job description.

Besides, maybe I've been avoiding her a little bit, too.

Because a lot has happened since I was that Templar boy. I lost her. The Tower fell. I was tortured. I went to the Gallows, the Gallows that hardened me, that twisted my thoughts in more sickly knots than a demon ever could. I was a Templar, after all, a Templar that had seen the worst of magic in the worst of times. And then a Templar that saw the worst of Templars in the worst of times.

What had I said to Hawke when she asked about Alrik's 'Tranquil Solution?' There is an argument to be made for applying the Rite more widely. Like we did to too many mages in the Gallows. Like we did to Aderyn. Maker, I believed it when Greagoir said we were granting her a mercy. Too many mages view the Rite as no better than death, I'd said.

Except I believed that it was like death, too. I'd seen it. I watched the woman I so admired lose all the life in her tilted, dark eyes, the eyes I always wanted to catch across the library so I could drink every ounce of them, so I could parse out little shards of meaning in all her inscrutable gazes. From that moment in the Harrowing chamber, when I looked on as she wept, when Greagoir pressed that brand to her forehead, I thought of her as dead. Gone. Lost. Even still, I condemned those who thought the same for their friends-and especially for themselves. You have been granted a mercy. I wanted so badly for them to believe they'd been granted a mercy.

Aderyn doesn't know any of this. She doesn't know my vilest thoughts about mages and magic. She doesn't know the blind eyes I turned, the active roles I took. And I'm afraid that every time she looks at me, she'll see just a little bit more of the man I became, the man I allowed Uldred and Meredith and the Gallows to make me. And I can't expect her to do anything but hate that man, because he is fearful and tortured and small.

But I am not that man anymore. I am not a Templar anymore. The headache tightening the muscles at the base of my skull won't let me forget it.

Inside the Chantry, the usual echo of activity fills the nave. People trading, talking, arguing, praying...it's a strange center for a movement, I think. My mind can't help but stray to the rather extensive dungeons beneath us every time I walk through the door. They're the same dungeons where the Hero of Ferelden found Brother Genetivi. They're also the dungeons where we held Aderyn, where I saw her for the first time in a decade, feverish and unconscious and maybe dying.

I push dark thoughts from my mind as I push toward the war room. There, Josephine stands in the center of the room, her hair frazzled and hand massaging her temples. To the left, Cassandra seethes, and to the right, Aderyn and Leliana both stand stock still, chins high and eyes ablaze. I bite my tongue to keep from cursing for what would be the thousandth time in a hour.

"Welcome, Commander," Josephine sighs. "We were just having a...civil discussion about the formal invitation we received from Grand Enchanter Fiona to meet with her in Redcliffe."

Aderyn's eyes fly to mine. The turn of her head is barely perceptible-the last ten years have changed her from girl who spoke with her hands as much as her voice to a woman who spares no energy for unnecessary motion. But her eyes, rimmed with thick lashes, still know exactly how to find mine across a room. And now, as always, they beg me to understand some hidden meaning stored behind rich, brown irises.

"And the Templars? What of our efforts there?"

Aderyn snaps her eyes away, and I can't help but echo a smidge of the anger that's so plain to me in her tightening brow. Don't you understand? I want to ask. If we're going to help the mages, we need them. We do.

Josephine rolls her neck before she speaks. "I've approached several Orlesian nobles about petitioning the Templars for an audience. I believe we could win one, but I'm not at all certain that a peaceful alliance could be achieved."

"Which is precisely why we should be going to Redcliffe," Leliana says. "Why turn down the allies already courting us for allies we'd have to court? It is not to our advantage."

"The Lord Seeker isn't himself, but the rest of the Templars could buy us much needed legitimacy-" Cassandra begins.

"Don't pretend you give a damn about legitimacy, Cassandra," Leliana spits. "You don't trust the mages."

"And you care so much about convenience? Don't accuse me of-"

"Sincere or not, Leliana has a point. Redcliffe is not far, and we have been invited to a meeting. We should attend," Josephine says.

I take a deep breath. How many times has this makeshift war room seen this kind of wall-rattling argument? Too many times for such a short time.

"The truth is, we can't approach the mages without approaching the Templars first," I say. "We'd have chaos. Abominations. We can't close the Breach if we're constantly fighting to keep our people safe from each other." Leliana turns to me, blue eyes sharp and dangerous as daggers from inside her hood, and Josephine groans audibly.

Perhaps that statement could have used a little more tact, but I couldn't let it go unsaid. Because the entire mage rebellion shipped to Haven? With no oversight? No safeguards at all? It would be chaos. I know what a mass of unstable mages looks like.

It looks like the halls of the Tower running red with the blood of my friends. It looks like the ashes of Kirkwall. It looks like demons pounding at my skull. Is this what you want? they asked all those years ago, crawling through my memories, all dressed up in Aderyn's face. I can taste her in your desires. I can bring her back. Her soul for yours. Her soul for yours. If you wish it, you can have it. You just have to want her. Don't you love her? Her soul for yours.

The real Aderyn, the one I refused to save, stares at me. She tucks a lock of her shoulder-skimming hair behind a pointed ear, and I almost wish that she would shout, scream, call me a bigot and a brute. Instead her eyes bore into me, and I imagine that she can see my most shameful thoughts, read them as intensely as she used to read her books.

"No," Leliana says. "Bringing Templars and mages here at the same time would be chaos. We can have one or the other. Templar oversight did not stave off chaos even when they locked mages in towers-it won't work in Haven, either."

"It worked for centuries!" I hate that I can hear hints of an old whine rising in my throat. We can't trust them, Knight-Commander, not even Irving-they could be abominations, they could have demons, they could kill us all, they could ask me to trade my soul for hers, and I might say yes. I shake my head to clear it, to rattle out the last echoes of demonic shadows in my lurking memories. "The Order needs reform, yes, but that doesn't mean we go straight to the mages and give them the freedom to slaughter each other."

Aderyn leans forward and rests her hands on the war table, and the others quiet to catch her coming words. Her tilted eyes accuse me, but I won't flinch. How can she not see that mages need something? She was there. She saw what Uldred became.

"Tell me," she continues. "When exactly did locking mages in towers stop working? When did those centuries end? Was it before or after you watched your Knight-Commander brand me with lyrium?"

You have been granted a mercy. "I-no, that's...that wasn't right, but Ferelden's Circle wasn't-"

"Ferelden's Circle wasn't the Gallows? So...it was acceptable that my friend felt so desperate to avoid Tranquility that he turned to blood magic to make himself appear better at his lessons? It was acceptable that many felt so confined in that Tower that they followed Uldred to madness? It was acceptable that Templars abused mages, that everyone abused the Tranquil that I was...that I was utterly helpless for most of my adult life?" She blinks those sparkling eyes; her cheeks flush and her nostrils flare and her small mouth tightens with every word.

"Tell me more, Knight-Captain. How many Rites of Tranquility did it take before the Circles stopped working? How many mages pushed into desperation? How many children taken away their mothers, how many runaways killed, how many lives had to be ruined over those centuries before you could look at this whole tangle and say it didn't work anymore? And how many more will it take before we decide that we can have mages in groups without first acquiring Templars to police them? Well? Knight-Captain?"

Leliana and Josephine and Cassandra shrink away, and the room becomes just her and me, her face pale and angular in the candlelight. I've seen her biting ferocity turned on others before, but this is the first time I've been on the receiving end of Aderyn Surana's anger. As she stands her ground, as she gazes at me, unblinking, I know she has already won this battle. I know that she will go to meet with the mages, and I know the Templars-the men and women I so recently called my own people-will be ignored and vilified. I know that no one will bother to guide them to a better future.

I could lose my voice protesting, but instead I turn to leave the room.

"That is not my title anymore."


I bury my hands in my fur-lined coat as I sit on the dock, staring out at the frozen lake and the mountains beyond. Snow reflects starlight until the world sparkles, and it might even be beautiful but for the stain of the Breach against the silver sky.

I should be sleeping-tomorrow I have to organize a company of men to move out with Aderyn and her eclectic friends. Tomorrow I have to continue doing my job, even though I can feel the nightmares lurking at the fringes of my mind, even though it's been months since I took lyrium, even though I'm fairly certain I'm going to fly to pieces at any moment.

Maker grant me strength. For one, small, sickly moment, I think it doesn't feel like the Maker is with me much at all these days. He's turned his favor on her.

I groan in disgust at my own thoughts, rubbing my hand against my pounding head. I don't want to be that kind of monster. I don't want to be that kind of man.

"Can I join you?"

I whip my head to find Aderyn standing behind me, clad in furs and moonlight. She stands with her arms crossed and her shoulders hunched, so different from the woman she was earlier today. Right now, she looks like a woman I recognize, the sometimes awkward, uncertain girl I so loved to be awkward and uncertain with.

"Of course," I murmur, though I know it's not a matter of course. Not after today. But she settles on the dock beside me, letting her legs dangle beside mine, and even after our fighting, her presence quiets my lurking nightmares by the barest of margins.

"I'm sorry I shouted at you," she whispers.

"You didn't-I don't know if what you were doing qualifies as shouting, exactly. It was...a very reasonable volume."

"I'm sorry I spoke to you like you were a monster, then. You're a good man. I know that."

I flinch. She can't know how many times I've accused myself of being that very thing, only to loop back around to all of the justifications that kept me so loyal to the Order and my commanders for so long.

"I told Leliana to send some of her people into the Templar ranks, to make it known that the Inquisition welcomes any who are unhappy under the Lord Seeker, and I told Josephine to make sure we have access to the lyrium they need to make a real choice." she says. "I know...I know that isn't exactly what you wanted."

"No, thank you. That's good-maybe it's better. I hardly ever know what's right anymore."

She huffs a small laugh. "You know, sometimes I'm so sure that I know what to do. Or at least I'm sure that Andraste wouldn't have put this mark on my hand if my instincts were bad. And other times I think, 'dear, sweet Maker, who the fuck do I think I am?'"

I laugh. "What do you do during those second times?"

"I sit on docks with my oldest friend." She looks out over the icy lake, and a smile skims the calm sheen of her features for a fraction of a moment. "I want you to know that I don't think Templars are all bad people."

"Aderyn-"

"Wait. Just...let me finish." She turns her head, and her eyes meet mine. Her whole face is painted in grayscale, eyes black in the moonlight and hair glittering in concert with the snow. "The problem isn't the people-it's the power. When you put a Templar in charge of a mage, you give them the opportunity to abuse that person. When you teach them that mages are terribly dangerous, you give the Templars cause to do so. But when you put a mage beside a Tranquil and tell them that the person they're standing beside is as good as dead, you give them opportunities, too. And there are mages who aren't above taking advantage of them.

"That's really why I didn't want to go to the Templars. Because I want to empower the mages. I don't want to purposefully put anyone at the mercy of anyone else like I was always at the mercy of everyone around me. It's not right to put innocent people in a situation where their safety is entirely dependent on the benevolence of people taught to fear them or look down on them or both.

"And maybe we'll all die in a massive inferno of drunken, magical, demonic revelry as soon as the mages get their first taste of personal responsibility, but I have to believe there's a better way. I have to believe the first step toward change is through an extension of trust. I have to."

As she quiets, her eyes find the black silhouettes of mountaintops, and my chest tightens. 'I was always at the mercy of everyone around me' grates against 'You have been granted a mercy' in my ears. I can't erase my responsibility in the haunted edges of her gazes, and I can't say that, given the opportunity that I wouldn't do it over again exactly the same. Because I was a Templar, and I would do my duty, even when my duty was terrible.

"Please say something," she whispers. She searches my face, and I force a smile to my face despite my guilt.

"I thought talking was never really our thing."

"Shut it, you," she says, wrinkling her nose but returning my smile.

I tell her to make up her mind about whether I should speak or 'shut it,' but wit has never been a very comfortable thing for me. I'd probably stammer over my words. It would come out wrong and awkward and tangled.

Besides, she's smiling now, her face soft as snowfall in the night. I just want to be near the curve of her waist and line of her jaw and the point of her ears. I want to believe convictions, and I want to believe in her. I want to believe that she is the Herald of Andraste, that all of this is for a reason, that I'm here for a reason and she's here for a reason and we're sharing this dock and this starlight for a reason. I want to share this moment with her, untouched as the lake before us. Maker preserve this night, I pray. Maker preserve us.

"Aderyn?"

"Yes, Cullen?"

"I trust you."

She breathes deep of cold, Haven air. "Thank you."