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The Templar knelt in the circle of light, swaying back and forth as he stammered the Chant. In front of Alistair, Leyden froze, her eyes fixed on his face.

"Friend of yours?"

"In a manner of speaking."

Something about the way she said it made Alistair's chest tighten with jealousy. Ridiculous, really, because Leyden was with Leliana … but the way she looked at him across the campfire at night, the way she walked with him at the end of the day, listening so intently to everything he said, her grave attention to him—he couldn't help thinking that maybe there was something there. Maker, how he wanted there to be something between them.

He drew his attention back to Leyden with an effort. She was trying to reason with the Templar, and he was on his feet now, pleading with—something, a spirit or a demon that only he could see, to take Leyden away, to stop tormenting him with visions of her. The Templar was babbling, words of love and pieces of the Chant and desperate pleas and fearful cries falling out of him. Alistair wondered if he could ever recover from what he had been through here in the Tower, and was ashamed to find that he hoped not, if it meant Leyden would want to be with him instead. What kind of a horrible monster was he, Alistair asked himself, to hope this man would stay broken out of his own selfish desire for a woman who was currently pledged to someone else entirely? Perhaps he was the one possessed.

They left the Templar where he was—they had to get to the chamber above, to stop Uldred before things got any worse, and as they climbed the stairs, Alistair saw Leyden looking back over her shoulder.

"He was such a gentle soul," she whispered. "He didn't deserve this."

"Do any of us?" Alistair asked, and he pushed past her into the chamber.

He couldn't help thinking of that day as he climbed the steps to the battlements, watching as Cullen went into his office. Never in a thousand ages would he have imagined Cullen could pull himself together as well as he had. Even in Kirkwall, there had been a sense that Cullen's sanity hung by a thread, and Knight-Commander Meredith's own madness hadn't helped. Here in the Inquisition, Cullen's torment looked different—there was pain in his eyes and in his face, suffering, but there was a calm in him, too, as though he had won through to some place of peace. Leyden would have been pleased with that, Alistair told himself, wincing as he felt that familiar dull pang of jealousy and resentment. A better man could have left that behind, forgiven those who loved her for having what he had wanted all for himself.

Perhaps he should apologize to Cullen, try to clear the air between them. Certainly it had to be time now, didn't it? He didn't knock, afraid that if he announced himself to Cullen the Commander would ask him to go away. As the door opened, he heard Cullen give a great cry of rage, and then something was flying past his head, splintering on the door behind him.

Cullen froze, his eyes wide. "Maker's breath! I—I didn't hear you."

"So I see." Alistair looked down at the debris at his feet. A wooden box, shattered pieces of glass, a blue liquid standing in puddles on the stone … "Lyrium?"

"Yes," Cullen admitted unwillingly.

Alistair closed the door behind him. "You want to talk about it?"

"No."

Without moving, Alistair raised his eyebrows.

Cullen glared at him.

"Let me guess: too much lyrium? Effects taking a toll on you?" Cullen's face remained stony, and Alistair realized what the pain he had seen must be the result of, and the peace, too. "Effects of not taking it?"

Sighing, Cullen nodded. His shoulders slumped.

"I congratulate you on still being alive."

"You're too kind."

Alistair ignored the sarcasm. "Not many have the courage to do what you're doing."

"You think I don't know that? I'm trying—I want to be an example, to show other Templars that we can break this chain. I—" He clenched his teeth and groaned, catching himself on the edge of the desk as his face went white, but he waved off Alistair's attempt to help. "I'm fine. I'll be fine."

"Which is it?"

Cullen growled. "I never meant for this to interfere. After … after Kirkwall, I chose—I didn't want to be tied to the Order, not this way, not any longer. And then Cassandra came, with the offer to join the Inquisition, to make a difference, and I—" He shook his head. "I shouldn't …"

"Yes, you should." Alistair took a step forward. "You're right; the Templars need to stop poisoning themselves. You've made it this far—"

"For whatever good it does," Cullen snapped. "Promises mean nothing if I cannot keep them; my words, my efforts, mean nothing if I cannot follow through."

"Then follow through! I know what you've suffered—"

"Oh, you know what I've suffered? Have you watched the people you were charged to protect be taken over by demons, become abominations? Have you been forced to fulfill your vow by cutting them down, the old, the sick, the children? Have you seen your friends slaughtered by the very people they had come to care for, the very people they had watched over?"

Alistair remained silent, sensing Cullen needed to get this off his chest.

"Have you been tortured?" Cullen asked savagely. "Have you spent hours, hours, trying to retain your sanity while demons tried to break your mind, while they used the very thing you loved against you? How—" He let out his breath in a long, shuddering sob. "How can you be the same person after that?"

He wasn't asking Alistair. His face was turned upward, beseeching the Maker for an answer that had never come, would never come. After a moment he gave a shuddering sigh, rubbing a hand over his face. He ran his fingers through his hair and then the hand ended up on the back of his neck, squeezing the muscles there.

"Well, you can't, obviously," Cullen said in a calmer voice. "You saw me, after. You saw what I said to Le—to her, how I treated her. I wanted—Maker knows how much I needed her right in that moment, but she was … she was already lost to me. And then she—you were gone, and I was left at Kinloch, left to serve in the scenes of unimaginable nightmares. So I petitioned to be reassigned. I begged. And they sent me to Kirkwall." He gave a short, humorless laugh. "I trusted my Knight-Commander, I even went along with her, believing that in order to prevent what had happened in Ferelden mages needed oversight, discipline. Her fear of mages ended in madness. Mine could have, so easily. It needed only a nudge, only a step, and I would have been there with her, next to her. And because I wasn't strong enough to stop it, Kirkwall's Circle fell. Innocent people died in the streets." He turned stricken eyes in Alistair's direction. "Can you doubt how much I wanted to put that life behind me?"

"No. I don't doubt it in the least," Alistair said quietly. "But it seems a … challenging time to start over, what with everything that's happened."

"I always have liked a challenge," Cullen said, a faint, wry smile turning the corner of his mouth.

"You seem to have found one."

Cullen sighed heavily. "I thought this would be better, that I would gain some control over my life. But these thoughts won't leave me! She comes to me at night, the whispers, the … demons in my head. I can't—I can't!" He groaned aloud. "How many lives depend on our success? I swore myself to this cause—how can I give less to the Inquisition than I gave to the Order?"

The words gave Alistair a jolt. He knew himself to have been guilty of giving less, far less, to Ferelden than he had given to the Grey Wardens, and to no one's benefit.

Cullen was staring at the remnants of the lyrium at Alistair's feet. "I should be taking it," he said softly. Then, again, more loudly, "I should be taking it!" He turned and punched the bookcase to let out his frustrations.

Alistair was torn, because he felt the torment in the other man, and he knew from his own brief tenure in the Templars what those cut off from lyrium suffered—but Cullen had come so far, shown such strength. How could he stand by and let this man give up? Leyden had loved Cullen once; didn't Alistair owe this to her?

"So that's it?" he asked. "Things get difficult, and you back down?"

Cullen looked at him, his brown eyes glaring at Alistair across the room.

"You've built an army, Commander. Who will lead it if not you? To whom will you abandon your men? How will you explain to them that their Commander gave up?"

"That's not—"

"Then you are capable of leading your men."

"Yes, Your Majesty," Cullen snapped, his voice stronger.

"Then do it, man! Be the man … you always should have been."

For a moment, they stood there, looking at one another, Cullen's eyes blazing fire. Then he sighed, and his hand lifted to rub the back of his neck again. "You're right."

Alistair grinned. "I hear that so rarely. Could you repeat it?"

Cullen looked at him, a very clear "don't push it" in his eyes, and Alistair wiped the grin off his face. "Tell me something, Your Majesty."

"Yes?"

"The other Wardens … why weren't you affected in the same way as they were?"

Alistair shook his head. "I'm not certain. My best guess is that I am the only living Warden who was in Fer—" He remembered Blackwall's secret just in time, and said instead, "who was near the Archdemon when it died. I know what that sounded like, what it felt like. They didn't." His jaw clenched, the old anger taking him again. "Maybe if they had been here, if they had helped us, even a little … they would all still be alive. And so would she," he finished in a whisper.

"Alistair." Cullen had never used his name before, and Alistair's head snapped up at the word. "You have to let her go."

"Have you? Can you?"

"I … don't know. But—I shouldn't do this," Cullen said, a smile playing across his features. "But it appears I'm going to. Hawke … she wasn't involved in what Anders did, but she has taken the brunt of it. She's lost her sister—she's lost everything. Perhaps I can't let go of the past, but I have no future hanging in front of me, no one who needs what I can give. I hurt only myself. Can you say the same?"

Suddenly, those brown eyes were clear of the pain and the confusion that had been in them when Alistair walked in; they rested on him with a challenge, and Alistair was afraid, desperately afraid, it was a challenge he could not meet. "I—I—I have to go," he said hastily, and he left the room, hoping that he had done Cullen some good, and shame-facedly certain he didn't have the strength the other man possessed.

Varric was trying to write, but the words wouldn't come; his quill hovered motionless over the page while he tried not to think about Sunshine, and how drawn and in pain she had looked in the Fade, and how lost and hollow-eyed Hawke looked now. But he couldn't stop thinking about them, and eventually he gave up and threw the quill down on the pile of papers in front of him and got up.

He walked out to the gardens, largely because he thought he stood little chance of seeing anyone there he didn't want to talk to … and because he thought Daisy might be there, which she was. If anyone seemed as confused about what had happened in the Fade as he was, it was Daisy.

She looked over at him as he fell into step beside her. "Varric? What are you doing out here?"

"Taking a walk?"

"Have you ever done that before?"

He shrugged. "There's a first time for everything."

"I suppose so." But she looked doubtful.

"How are you holding up, Daisy?"

"All right." She sighed. "Better than Hawke."

"Yeah. That was a tough blow, losing her sister like that."

"Yes. I wish she could understand why Bethany chose to stay behind, though."

"I'm not sure I do, either."

Merrill looked down at him in surprise. "You saw her, Varric. You know she never wanted to be a Grey Warden in the first place; you were there in the Deep Roads; you were the one who told me what happened. And then, just as she started to relax and find a family there, it fell apart, from the inside out." She shook her head, her eyes far away. "When your clan turns against you, it's difficult not to turn against yourself."

Varric remembered that day at Sundermount with a shudder. He had never seen anything like it; he hoped never to again. He kept silent, not feeling that he had any right to argue with Daisy on that particular topic. "Any chance you could find yourself a new clan, Daisy?" He really meant Chuckles; he had seen the way the two elves were drawn to one another, the way their eyes sought each other's in a room. You could practically feel the connection between them, the understanding. Except that he knew Daisy always held something back, and he was damned sure there was more to Chuckles than he let on.

"You mean …" Merrill's cheeks turned pink, but her eyes were troubled. "Where did he come from, Varric?"

"Chuckles? Hard to say. He just walked into camp one day. The Seeker was suspicious, but then the Conclave happened, and Chuckles was the only one who knew how to help Stones, so he stayed on. He was the one who found Skyhold, I ever tell you that?"

"No."

Varric launched into the story, and Merrill nodded in all the right places, but her mind was elsewhere, studying on the mystery of Chuckles, and she looked like she didn't like where it was taking her. He made a mental note to keep an eye on her, and on the other elf. He had seen enough of the people he loved hurt on his watch; he didn't want to stand by and let it happen to Daisy.

Abruptly, she turned aside from the path, back toward the main building. "Come on, Varric."

"Where are we going?"

"We're going to talk to Hawke."