A/N: Thank you to everyone who reads and reviews! And to 0wallie0 and creepypasta-queen- for beta reading.

...-...

Varric had returned to his own tent, and Sera and Dorian were passed out, curled up tightly in the few blankets they'd been afforded. Commander Rutherford looked like he might nod off at any moment, but he was still awake, somehow.

They'd finally managed to get him to play. He was about as bad at reading the others as Finley was, but unlike her, he was easier to read. So while Finley typically came out somewhere in the middle, with people not able to tell if she had a good hand or not—half the time she didn't really know herself—they'd been able to read him like a book, and by the time everyone was nodding off, he'd told the majority of the stories.

They'd mostly been from before he became an actual templar, though he had offered one of a time when he had to make a house call to Varric's friend's manor in Kirkwall. It had been a new dimension added to the great Garrett Hawke, though Varric had been cackling as he listened, unperturbed at the risk to his friend's reputation. Apparently there had been flashing lights in the windows, and the neighbors had been convinced that the Champion of Kirkwall was dealing with mages. The commander hadn't been able to stress enough how Garrett was a warrior, always swinging around a two handed blade, even in crowds of people. He'd never hit any innocents, that the ex-templar had known of—Varric had been quick to agree—but it had been annoying. One of his friends, a captain of the guard, had had her hands full dealing with him.

But that night, it had been mage related, so Commander Rutherford had been woken up in the middle of the night because obviously regular templars couldn't be sent to the Hawke estate. It would need to be at least a knight-captain—Finley had been curious to know he'd been a higher ranking templar, as she'd very rarely dealt with those in the Wilds.

He'd mentioned before that he'd been a knight-commander for a while, and she wondered how that was different. She'd never really known much about ranks and the like, as her goal was always simply to outrun them, regardless of who in their little bands might outrank the others.

His story, though…

Cullen had led a few others down to the Hawke estate, and they had done their best to take the threat seriously. It was hard to take anything seriously when Garrett was involved, apparently—something Varric had again agreed with.

If there had been mages there, by the time Commander Rutherford showed up, they were gone, with only Garrett and his love, Isabela there to greet them. The two had been naked and more than happy to encourage the templars to sleep over and make the night a real party.

They never had figured out what had caused those lights.

Varric hadn't commented on that.

However, the memory had brought a smile to the commander's face, and it had eased the circles under his eyes, the weariness in his shoulders. Even in the dim candle light—despite Dorian's offers, Sera had insisted he keep his magic to himself—Commander Rutherford had looked…handsome.

It was a passing notion, fleeting, really. Now he looked as he always did, a stern, worn man.

Or so Finley kept telling herself.

Despite it all, she kept finding her gaze lingering on him, and her mind wandering back to when she'd fallen asleep on his shoulder.

She wasn't sure what to make of him anymore. There was this odd hope, barely a whisper in the back of her mind, that he was someone she could truly trust.

Varric had just left, and she wasn't sure if she should ask their commander to leave, or invite him to stay and pass out with the rest of them. They didn't really have enough blankets, though.

It was odd. Before the attack on Haven, it would have been a given that she'd want to keep some space between them. However…

He'd come back for her.

Yes, it hadn't been just him, but he'd led them. He'd come back. Even in the Wilds, she could count on one hand the number of times anyone had ever thought her worth stopping for. Almost all of those instances had been during the Blight, too, when she and the other mages had agreed that they needed to keep together to outsmart and outlast the darkspawn horde.

While it was true that the inquisition likely needed its Herald, this hadn't been an instance of her slipping and falling a few yards behind. They'd had to scour the valley for her.

And they had.

He had.

Perhaps it was foolish, but it meant more to her than she suspected any of them could know.

And so, despite reason and past experience, she found that she couldn't bring herself to completely mistrust him.

It made her feel clumsy and awkward around him.

"May I speak with you outside?" Commander Rutherford interrupted her musings. His voice was low as he motioned over his shoulder, the action a little sluggish. He needed his sleep. However, the glimmer in his amber eyes said he wouldn't take no for an answer.

Quietly shirking her blanket, she managed to step around the sleeping duo. By the time she was past them, he was already outside. She ducked beneath the tent flap as quickly as she could, so as not to let too much of the cold sweep in.

He waited until she had paced over to him to start walking. Camp was quiet, with everyone sans a few guards curled up into their sparse selection of tents. In the end, that wasn't so bad. Four or five people to a tent kept people warmer, or at least Finley figured it must.

One of the guards nodded to them as they passed, his lips just barely quivering from the cold.

She hoped they would find the keep soon.

It wasn't until they could barely feel the heat from one of the outermost camp fires that Cullen finally stopped, his boots crunching into the snow softly. Her boots did the same.

"This is about my name, isn't it?" she whispered, looking at him and then away, off toward the pines that grew in the distance. They were little more than eerie shapes in the darkness.

She…liked him, but she hadn't quite been able to make out his opinion regarding her name—or lack thereof. Did he think it a betrayal that she'd lied? She hadn't meant it as one.

And if he did think that, maybe she ought to be the one who was offended…

"It's about your past," he corrected, his voice quiet. Even so, it seemed a bit too loud in the stillness, and he lowered it further as he continued. "If you've anything in it that could be used against us, we need to know."

She picked at her sleeve. Despite the holes her clothes had accumulated during her run in with the archdemon, she hadn't anything to change into, and so what string could be spared had been used to mend the gashes and tears in the fabric. It left her looking almost as patchworked at Cole. "Such as?"

"How did your magic come in?" Cullen crossed his arms, rocking from heel to toe once as he stared down at his feet. "The common narrative is that you either can't or refuse to use fire spells and the like, so finding out that you burned down a house would be damaging, though I'm sure Josephine could find some redemption story there in regards to why you don't cast such spells now."

"I've never been able to use offensive spells," Finley said, her voice a bit strained. It wasn't exactly a lie. She did focus on defensive spells. Better to outrun the templars that to kill one and draw more out searching. She ran her fingers through her hair and tugged her braid over her shoulder, playing with it idly. "And my magic…my first spell was a healing spell. I would rather not say more on the matter."

She heard an incredulous laugh and looked up to see that Commander Rutherford was watching her, disbelief plain on his face. His brow arched as he looked her over, skeptical. "You…healed someone. Your very first brush with magic was healing?"

Shoulders slumping, she rolled her eyes and huffed. Had he not heard the last part? "Perhaps my magic had been stirring before then, but it hadn't manifested. I hadn't made any candles flicker brighter, no objects floating, nothing." One end of the ribbon she used for her hair was frayed, and it finally began to unravel, catching on one of her fingers and leaving a long string to hang loosely. She scowled at it. "Then one of my t—friends was hurt. They said he would die. I didn't want him to." She brought her ribbon up and carefully bit off the string, trying not to make a face at how disgusting the cloth tasted when it accidentally hit her tongue. "Suddenly there was this part of me, and I knew I could make things better." She paused. "Well, that's not true. That part was always there…it was just…more focused?"

"And so you healed him? Just like that?" He took a step closer to her.

Her eyes widened at the skepticism in his voice, and she crossed her arms. "Tis not like I wiggled my fingers, and he was all better, Commander Rutherford. The spell was appallingly crafted, all emotions and no structure. I pressed my hands into him and healed the worst of it. I don't even know what the problem was, really…" As she thought back, she tilted her head, eyes unfocused. "A punctured lung, perhaps? I don't know." She waved her hand dismissively. "But I healed the worst of it. I healed the part that would have killed him right away, but infection and blood loss could have ended him too, had there not been anyone around to sew him up and tend to him. It took almost all of my magic, and I was unconscious for a day or two after."

"So these sleeping spells of yours are quite common," Cullen tried to joke. When she rolled her eyes toward him slowly, he couldn't help a quick smirk. It didn't quite leave him as he tilted his head, gaze never leaving her. "You're a healer, through and through."

"I am." It surprised her a little as she agreed. She'd never really considered herself thus before the Conclave. Did she heal? Yes. But she hadn't gone out of her way to do so, instead choosing isolation where she could tend to plants and animals…in a largely healing capacity.

Perhaps her need to pretend wasn't as great as she'd thought. Or perhaps it was like she'd thought when she was a child: pretend hard enough, and it will be real.

Commander Rutherford's hands were resting on the pommel of his blade in his usual relaxed stance. She'd always assumed tension had brought his hands there before, but perhaps it was because, like her, he just never knew what to do with them. "And this friend you saved, he hadn't a name for you?"

Kind eyes and a friendly laugh echoed in her head. "No. Nothing you'd count as a name. Nicknames, maybe."

For a moment, she thought he would ask further about that, but instead, he simply moved on. It was a blessing and a curse. "And your parents never named you?"

She flinched, without meaning to. The memories of them were still too fresh in her mind, the blizzard having conjured rather melancholy times. She would have rather had it draw her back to thinking of the Conclave, terrible as that sounded. "I was very little when they died. If they had a name for me, I do not know it." She clasped her hands in front of her. "I have never practiced blood magic or conjured demons. I have never harbored blood mages from templars. Truthfully, I avoid them whenever I can, on the rare occasion I do cross paths with one. I have never killed a templar…before joining the Inquisition, and the only ones I killed then were either infected with red lyrium or mad from the war with the rebel mages. Surely these truths matter more than whether Finley was given to me by a mother or friend or just myself?"

Cocking his head, Cullen motioned toward her. "When you lived in the Wilds, the Avvar and Chasind never had names for you?"

"I was little more than a passing guest in their lands, at best, so no. They referred to me as magic-touched or a wanderer sometimes, but never gave me any names."

Cullen crossed his arms at that, considering her words. "That sounds like you didn't live with the Avvar."

"I did stay at a hold or two during the Blight. But those times caused all kinds of madness." She shrugged. Why did who she had stayed with matter? Perhaps she oughtn't to tell him anything about the Wilds at all, but… "They've certain practices when it comes to magic that I don't agree with."

"Like what?"

"No." She held up her finger, face drawn. She might not mind telling him little things about herself, but others were still well out of bounds. "I'll not tell you their secrets so that you can march these templars against them. They've their ways, and those ways have worked for them for a very long time. We lowlanders simply do not understand things as they do. Leave it at that."

Even in the dim starlight, she could see how he'd tensed at her comments. However, rather than argue, he simply took in a deep breath through his nose. Closing his eyes, he considered what she'd said before nodding. "Fair enough. So long as their secrets are not yours—"

"As I said, they aren't."

"And there is nothing in your history that could be used to paint you, and consequentially the Inquisition, in a negative light?"

"Is there anything in your past that could be used to make the Inquisition look bad?" She retorted, leaning toward him, brow arched, hands clasped behind her back.

He seemed genuinely surprised and took a step back before looking away and rubbing the back of his neck. "I'm not the Herald of Andraste."

"Neither am I." She rocked back, placing her hands on her hips and drumming her fingers against them slowly. "That darkspawn said—"

"I told you before that I am a man of faith," Cullen interrupted. He reached out and caught her braid, letting it fall slowly from his fingers. A trill ran up her spine, and she didn't bother to try to tell herself it was from the cold. She held her breath as he kept talking. "And I choose to keep that faith and not to believe some twisted monster, when it is rather apparent that you are a force for good."

Her heart damn near stopped.

The number of times people had said, unprompted, that they knew she was good was fewer than the number of times people had come back for her.

The light flickered in his eyes, making them gleam, and accenting the contours of his face. His stubble was almost long enough to be called a proper beard. She had the oddest urge to run her fingers across his jaw and feel his stubble prickle against her palm.

Looking back at the camp, she simply sighed. "Well, then. I should think that's all there is to it, isn't there?"

"I suppose so," he motioned back to the tents and began to walk slowly, their feet seeking their earlier prints, to make the path back a little easier. As they grew close enough to hear the soft crackle of flame, he lightly put a hand on her shoulder. "Thank you. For talking to me instead of just trying to give me a headache."

Finley patted his hand, awkwardly, hoping that he'd assume any flush to her cheeks was from the cold. "Someone keeps reminding me that we do work together, commander."

"I should, uh, go make certain that nothing has gone awry before I go to sleep," he murmured, already scanning the tents for any signs of distress. There wouldn't be any, but he would be vigilant, and make sure that everyone was safe before he dared to close his eyes.

Sera wasn't the only one who blamed him for what had happened at Haven. She could tell.

He walked with her back to her tent and stopped in front of it, briefly, to give her a swift bow. "Good night, Herald."

For the first time, she didn't mind that title so much. Another shiver ran up her spine as she nodded. "Good night, Commander."