Thank you all for reading! Special thanks to suilven for her excellent betaing!

Leliana sighed, looking around Blackwall's barn workshop unhappily. "He is gone."

"And you don't know where he is?" There was skepticism in Cullen's tone.

"No. No, I don't. The last known whereabouts of Warden Blackwall before we found him in the Hinterlands are from years ago, when he left Jader on a recruiting mission just before the Blight. Since then, he has no contacts, no history …"

Alistair, leaning against the barn door, said, "He's not a Grey Warden."

"Yes. Which suggests that he is certainly therefore not Blackwall."

Cullen looked from one to the other of them. "He isn't? Then who, or what, is he?"

"The Void of a fighter, is what he is," Alistair commented. "That's why I didn't tell anyone but Leliana when I knew he wasn't a Warden."

"And why I told no one at all. I did look into his past, but he could be anyone Warden Blackwall came into contact with after he left Jader, which leaves me with no indication of where he might have gone." Leliana was sorting through the carefully laid out tools on the workbench, as if one of them might give her a clue. She looked up at Cullen. "Send someone for Scout Harding, will you? I believe she is still in Skyhold."

Cullen nodded, going to collect the scout himself.

Harding looked as down as he had ever seen her. "This is about Blackwall? I thought as much. It's why I didn't leave."

"Do you know where he is?"

She shook her head. "Only this note he left for me, which says he's sorry and he never meant to hurt me."

Cullen took the note, turning it over in his hands. It was written on a scrap of paper, with some writing on the back. Some kind of broadsheet.

Back at the barn, he turned the paper over to Leliana while she was grilling Harding. The scout knew nothing more than she had told him, and he felt sad to have to rake her over the coals when she clearly was heartsick over Blackwall's desertion.

Leliana looked at the back of the paper. "This was missing from last week's reports! I see my mark there on the bottom." She frowned at the few lines of writing that remained. "Lieutenant Cyril Mornay? Where have I heard that name before?" Alistair started to speak, but Leliana held up a hand, her face abstracted in thought. "I have it! There was a massacre years ago, of a lord and his family, and Mornay was part of that."

"And this has something to do with Blackwall? Or whoever he is?" Alistair asked.

"It must. Why else would he have stolen this from my reports?" Leliana sighed. "Mornay is being executed in Val Royeaux; someone will have to go there to look for Blackwall."

Both Cullen and Alistair groaned. "Back to Val Royeaux?"

"I'm afraid so, and with the Inquisitor in the Hinterlands …" She let the words trail off, looking at the two men significantly.

If possible, they both groaned louder, but Leliana wasn't to be moved. She simply stood there and looked at them until they were done complaining.

"I'll go, too," Harding volunteered, but Leliana frowned at her.

"I don't think so. Whatever there is to find … if you are to see him again, it should not be in the midst of a crowd."

Harding looked very much as though she wanted to argue, but Leliana made sense.

Abruptly, she said, "I believe I will go with you. Josie can hold down the fort here, as the saying goes."

Cullen raised his eyebrows, but he didn't object.

So the three of them, and Leliana's increasingly present shadow, Nathaniel Howe, journeyed back to Val Royeaux. They were feted there, put up in an embarrassingly lush hotel, after what the Inquisitor had done at the Winter Palace—and Alistair, as well. The King of Ferelden seemed a bit embarrassed by the Orlesians' enthusiasm for him.

The four of them attended the hanging, a rather noticeable group, especially since the crowd had moved out of the way to give them space.

An armored soldier was reading the charges against Mornay, a small man who knelt on the scaffold looking weary and defeated. He didn't appear to hear the charges, or care much about what was about to happen to him. Cullen imagined most of Mornay's caring had occurred while he was on the run, hiding from the consequences of his crimes. He had a hard time feeling badly for the man.

Mornay was asked to speak in his own defense, but he remained silent, his eyes on the sky high above them. The headsman hauled him to his feet, draping the noose around his neck. Cullen was sickened. He believed in the rule of law, but to stand here, as this crowd was doing, and watch a man lose his life … for some kind of entertainment? That wasn't right.

"And they call Fereldans barbaric," Alistair muttered under his breath.

The soldier stepped back. "Proceed."

But before the headsman could open the trapdoor beneath Mornay's feet, suddenly another man was on the platform.

"What is he doing?" Leliana said softly, recognizing the familiar black beard at the same time Cullen did.

"Stop!" Blackwall called out. "This man is innocent of the crimes laid before him. Orders were given, and he followed them like any good soldier."

A murmur swept through the crowd, who were loving the novelty of Blackwall's sudden appearance.

"What is he trying to do?" Alistair asked.

But Cullen knew. A sick sensation churned in his stomach, worse than his reaction to this public hanging. Blackwall had been the leader; it was he who had given the order for a woman and her children to be killed. There could be no other reason.

"He should not die for following orders!" Blackwall shouted.

The soldier stepped toward him. "Then find me the man who gave that order."

Next to Cullen, Leliana sighed and Alistair groaned. On the scaffold, Blackwall turned, his eyes finding the Inquisition people in the crowd. "He stands before you. Many of you know me as the Grey Warden Blackwall, but I am not. I never have been. He is dead, and has been for years." He looked away from the Inquisition, down at his boots. "I assumed his name, hiding like the coward I am from my own, and from the consequences of my own deeds."

Mornay spoke for the first time. "After all this time, it is you." He looked as though he was seeing a ghost. Cullen suspected he must have thought his former commander dead long ago.

"Yes." Blackwall didn't look up at his former subordinate. "I gave the order. The crime is mine. My name is Thom Rainier."

The crowd's reaction said they knew that name much better than Cullen did.

Nathaniel spoke under his breath. "Your Inquisition seems to be playing host to any number of disgraced former noblemen."

"He was a tremendous fighter," Alistair said, equally softly.

The soldier and the headsman caught Blackwall by the arms. He didn't resist as he was hauled off the scaffold and away. Mornay was released and taken back to his cell, presumably, to await Celene's judgment on his level of culpability. At the very least, he wouldn't hang today. But how many of Blackwall's former men had already hung for his crime? How many had suffered while he was hiding who he truly was?

Leliana turned to Cullen. "They will take him to the city jail. Will you go there and speak to him while I look into our options?"

"Don't you wish to wait for the Inquisitor?"

She shook her head. "There is no time to get a message across the mountains and back, not before they determine what to do. We have this window of time in which to act, and act we must."

Cullen glanced at the two Grey Wardens, but both were nodding. He was surprised that neither was more angry at Blackwall's—Rainier's—impersonation of a Warden. Himself, he thought a man who abandoned his men and ran and hid, leaving them to face the music, richly deserved to bear the full weight of the consequences coming to him … but Leliana was determined, and he would do her bidding, at least so far as speaking to the man was concerned.

Nathaniel went with Leliana, hovering at her shoulder as he did so often these days, and Alistair fell into step next to Cullen.

"If you think I will not go after him with everything I have, just because you're here, you are sadly mistaken," Cullen told him. "Leliana has something of a blind spot when it comes to Wardens, but then, you know that. Apparently it extends to those who pretend to be Wardens but aren't." Cullen made no attempt to keep the long-held bitterness from his voice. He, too, had loved Leyden Amell, long before the Wardens took her. Leliana and Alistair had never known the true Leyden … or so he told himself.

To his surprise, Alistair didn't rise to the bait. Instead, his lip curled with a bitterness deep enough to match Cullen's own. "True."

Neither of them made any further comment, and they walked in silence to the jail. They were immediately led in to speak to the prisoner, who sat in his cell staring at his hands. He didn't lift his head as they walked in.

"You could have told me, you know," Alistair began.

"I told you that he died fighting darkspawn."

"Yes, but you didn't tell me about you."

"That was my secret to keep. Until it wasn't." Rainier's hands clenched together.

"Why did you pretend to be Blackwall, once he was dead?" Cullen asked.

"To stop the world from losing a good man. To take from it a man who didn't deserve the name. I tried my best to be Blackwall, to live as he would have lived, to do right by those I met in his name." Rainier's face twisted in grief. "It wasn't enough. I should have known it would never be enough."

"A good man steps in to keep another from dying in his place," Alistair said. "You did that."

"Too late." He looked up at them. "Why are you here?"

Alistair stepped up to the bars. "Because you aren't alone. Because a man can make mistakes—terrible mistakes—and still be forgiven for them. Because the man you became is worth saving."

Cullen looked at the King in surprise. He wouldn't have expected Alistair to be so vehement. Was it possible that Alistair saw something of himself in this disgraced non-Warden in front of him?

Rainier got to his feet, rage and anguish in his face. "Don't you understand?" he shouted. "I gave the order to kill Lord Callier, and his entourage, and I lied to my men about what they were doing. And when the truth of what we had done came to light … I ran."

Disgust twisted Cullen's stomach, and he felt the familiar headache coming on, his hands flexing, reaching for the lyrium that no longer ran in his blood. There was no question in his mind that the man before him deserved to die—or that Rainier knew it, too.

"Those men—my men—paid for my treason while I was pretending to be a better man!" There was a plea in Rainier's voice. He wanted to be left, he wanted to pay the price for what he had done. If it had been up to Cullen, they would have turned and walked away and left him here to atone as best he could.

"Have some faith in yourself, man, in your own worth," Alistair snapped. "You are better than this! You have more to offer the world."

Rainier bent his head, weeping. "I have nothing. I am nothing. I deserve to die."

Cullen rolled his eyes and left the jail. Alistair watched him go, understanding in some ways why the ex-Templar had such a problem with what Rainier had done. Cullen was a leader, a commander. He took seriously the needs of the men under his command, and he took responsibility for their welfare.

But Alistair knew how a mistake could be made; how you could promise to do something and then find it all gone wrong under your feet and you in a position you should never have been in in the first place. Ferelden would have been better off if he had left Anora on the throne. He knew that now—had known it then. Who knew what harm he had caused with his inept bumbling? It could be worse than Rainier's single order. He couldn't bring himself to condemn a man for a tragic error, especially when it was so clear how hard Rainier had tried to make amends.

"What exactly did you do?" he asked, his even, reasonable tones somehow breaking through Rainier's sobs.

Struggling to get control of himself, Rainier said, "I betrayed the Empire and assassinated a general, with his wife and his children and his retainers. For gold."

"Oh." That was bad. Very bad. Even Alistair had trouble forgiving it.

"You see? Don't waste your time on me, Your Majesty."

"Did you know the family would be there? I mean, did you—"

"I know what you mean. And no. I'm a monster, but not such a one as that. By the time I knew he had his family with him, it was too late to call it off."

"And your men? Did they not object?"

Rainier shook his head. "I told them they were defending their country. They believed me. Maker knows why. I didn't deserve their loyalty."

"Because you ran?"

"Because I was a greedy, arrogant fool. But also because I ran." Rainier sighed, sinking down on the cot, the springs squeaking beneath him. "Blackwall found me in a tavern while I was on the run. I was a waste of life, a drunken sot, but he saw something in me, wanted to recruit me."

"Wardens take all kinds, deserving or not." Alistair thought of Loghain, of how angry he had been when Leyden suggested recruiting the former Hero of River Dane. Had she done it, he couldn't have stayed, not for her or anyone … but she should have, nonetheless. He could see that now, years too late.

"So Blackwall said. I agreed to come along—he had a way with words, and I nothing else to do with my wasted life—and we headed for Val Chevin for the Joining, but he wanted to stop on the way."

"So that you could kill a darkspawn and gain a vial of its blood." How Alistair remembered that first sight of a darkspawn, how it had turned his stomach.

Rainier nodded. "Yes. But while I was in the Deep Roads, Blackwall was ambushed. By the time I reached him …" His voice deepened as he continued. "It should have been me who died, not him. So I saw to it that he lived and Thom Rainier died in his place. I became the man he would have wanted to be, tried to be the man he would have been. But it didn't help; the memory of what I had done never left me."

"So why didn't you go on to Val Chevin and go through the Joining?"

"I … was a coward. Without Blackwall, there was no proof I had been recruited, no proof that I didn't kill him myself. I was afraid of being brought to justice for a crime I didn't commit, while running from being brought to justice for a crime I had." He gave a rusty chuckle. "What a fool I was."

"We're all fools at one time or another."

There was a world of pain in Rainier's eyes as he looked up. "Are you drawing parallels in your mind between us, Your Majesty? Don't waste your time. Leave me be; this is where I belong."

He lay back on the cot, covering his eyes with his forearm. Alistair stood looking at him for a long moment, then turned and left the jail.

Outside, he found Cullen and Leliana in the middle of a heated argument, while Nathaniel Howe leaned against a wall nearby with his arms folded, looking supremely uninterested. Alistair ignored him and plowed into the midst of the argument.

"You can't tell me you didn't know! One of the Inquisitor's companions, and you didn't have a full dossier?" Cullen shouted.

"Of course I looked," Leliana snapped. "There was nothing to find. He's been a ghost for years now."

"If he weren't a Warden, you would have found that suspicious."

"What does it matter who knew when?" Alistair asked, earning himself glares from both parties. "The point is, what are we going to do about it?"

"Rainier has accepted his fate," Cullen said, his jaw jutting out stubbornly. "I say we do the same."

"There are other options," Alistair argued. "He could go to the Wardens, for one, be who he was supposed to be all along."

Leliana nodded. "We have resources; we do not have to leave him here. At the very least, we should have him brought back to Skyhold so the Inquisitor can decide what to do."

"I thought you said there was no time."

"There wasn't, but once we have him at Skyhold, there is." Leliana looked up at Cullen, and Alistair could see her reining in her temper, see her reminding herself that she respected Cullen and his opinions. "Could you really leave him here?"

Cullen began to retort automatically, but he, too, caught himself, sighing heavily. At last, he shook his head. "What he did to the men under his command was … reprehensible. A commander has a responsibility to the men who follow his orders, and he abandoned them."

"He doesn't deny that," Alistair pointed out.

"Not denying it doesn't absolve him of the responsibility."

"Or the guilt," Leliana said. "He has suffered that all this time."

"As well he should have," Cullen snapped. "He betrayed their trust; and then he betrayed ours. I cannot deny that I despise him for it."

"But?"

Cullen nodded at Leliana, acknowledging that she had heard the equivocation in his voice correctly. "But he fought as a Warden. He joined the Inquisition and gave his blood for our cause, many times over. He had shaken off his past completely … and yet, now he turns around and owns up to it."

"To save another man's life." Alistair nodded. "He didn't need to do that."

"No. He could have avoided it altogether; no one would ever have known."

"He wanted to change," Leliana said. "He wanted to prove to himself that he had really left his past behind—and in order to do that, he had to own up to it. It takes courage to do what he did today."

"I don't deny that it does." Cullen shook his head. "If it were me, I could not fight next to him again. But I also don't know if I can truly allow him to be put to death, either."

Leliana looked at him for a moment, as if deciding, and then she said, briskly, "The Orlesians will not hang him until they hear from the Inquisitor. They have granted us that much leeway. But he dare not take too much time."

Watching them, it was on the tip of Alistair's tongue to say that he would personally demand Rainier's release … but Rainier had been Thule's companion, and Thule had a right to make that decision himself. He would wait … but if Thule determined to leave Rainier to be hanged, Alistair would act.