A/N: Thank you for reading!

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Cullen stared down at the paper in front of him, not really reading it.

The night before, Finley had had the worst panic attack he'd even seen. She'd hyperventilated to the point that she almost passed out, and nothing he'd said or did had helped at all.

She'd been so focused on the little things, the pieces and pawns, that she'd forgotten the king they were after. And talk of that maleficar had brought Corypheus back into frightening focus.

He'd been upset at first, to know that she knew the whereabouts of dangerous mages. To know that she'd known and never mentioned it. And then he'd been horrified to hear the fate of the people she'd led when she was…what, twelve?

He'd done the math that night, as he'd laid on her bed, holding her after she'd finally cried herself to sleep, still clinging to him desperately like he could somehow save her from the monsters of the world.

She'd calmed down enough to tell him more of the maleficar in the woods—he'd tried to change the subject, but she'd gone back to it on her own—and in one of her repetitive whispers about how strong he was, she'd let slip that it had happened a few years before the blight, almost five.

That meant, if Ser Caudry's speculations as to her age were accurate, that Finley had been twelve.

A nameless twelve-year-old girl had decided to use the templars hunting her to try to bring them to a real monster.

And instead, she'd enslaved them.

No, not her.

She'd tried to do something good.

He couldn't hold it backfiring spectacularly against her.

She'd been twelve.

He dropped his pen and reached up to rub his face.

He'd wanted to know more of her, to not feel like they were strangers, even as they fell in bed together, but now he wondered if his wish wasn't that of a fool's.

Monsters for parents, monsters for caregivers, monsters in the woods.

He thought back to the times she'd watched him warily, as though unsure if he would turn on her, hurt her. That sting of resentment that she couldn't trust him didn't come. Instead, he wondered how she could trust him at all.

How did she trust anyone?

Maker help him, but any system that left a twelve-year-old being chased by grown people with swords…

She'd said she'd gone to the Wilds after Ser Caudry and them…but it hadn't sunken in somehow.

According to Ser Caudry she would have been seven.

Seven years old and wandering the cold, dangerous woods.

Branson had run away to be an Avvar once, when they were children. He'd barely made it a mile in the woods before getting lost. When they'd found him, he'd cried about a witch that had threatened to turn him into a toad.

Cullen had decided then and there that witches weren't real, because his belief in his assurances that Branson wouldn't become a toad were the only things that seemed to make his brother feel better.

Branson had been eight, when that had happened.

He'd barely survived the woods two days.

She was seven…

The system had been broken for so damned long… how could it even be fixed? Could it? With such rampant fears of magic and the bad it could do, how could the world ever see mages as anything but dangers?

Surely, there had to be a way to make sure that things like living in dangerous wildernesses wasn't considered preferable to—

"Commander?"

Cullen jerked upright, stopping when his gaze landed on Finley. She didn't look much better than when he'd left her that morning—he'd left her twice.

The first time, she had wanted to get things in order so that they could explain how Sera and Garrett had any Inquisition papers that might be found on them. She'd bid him to go get some more sleep as she'd pulled out coal and started writing 'Suck an Egge -S' on the wall.

Then, she'd let off some steam wrecking her room, scattering papers everywhere. A maid had been called up to clean it, and Cullen had caught the woman on the way down, quite overwhelmed and refusing to clean up anything.

He'd been ready to go to Josephine to ask about what to do with the woman—they didn't need people who wouldn't follow orders, in his opinion—when he'd reached Finley's room to find the mess was rather spectacular.

Finley had told him that the maid had helped her make it, too. He'd worried that they were involving too many people, but Finley had simply whispered that the woman was a friend of Sera's.

Regardless, with the room trashed, and the message written, it looked like Sera had come in during the night and stolen the papers needed for them to know who to help in Orlais.

And of course, the Inquisition couldn't very well do anything about her theft, because she'd fled to Orlais, and they couldn't go there.

Despite assuring him that she was fine, Finley had looked terrible. The circles under her eyes had never been darker, her posture was tense, and she still looked like she might cry at a few points, as though her mind had wandered back to Corypheus or how weak she thought herself to be.

Cullen had assured her that she wouldn't fight Corypheus alone. He'd told her that she would have the army at her disposal, him at her disposal. Maybe no one person was strong enough to stop the ancient magister, but together, they would.

He hadn't been able to tell if it had helped her any when she'd told him she'd come see him later.

And then he'd left her the second time.

Now she stood in his office, holding a few pages—some of which were a bit crinkled—and watching him with a look that seemed to be gauging how well he was at the moment.

He rose from his seat and motioned her over, "You wanted to see me?"

"I'm sorry about taking you to the Undercroft."

"What?"

As he reached her, she motioned to him. "I didn't think about the red lyrium being down there."

Cullen did his best not to think back to the call he had heard down there, to how hard it had been to think of much else, and how much he'd wanted to go to the lyrium on the table and just take it.

"I'm fine," he replied. It was true enough. He'd worried he would have an episode after, but the only thing he'd really suffered through was the longing, and that had fallen from his mind when he'd gone to see Finley the night before about the magic going off. Her terror had left him almost completely forgetting about lyrium all together.

The thoughts had come back in the quiet of the night, of course. That was why he'd done the math, to think of something else, though he'd regretted it when he'd realized just how young she'd been.

He gave her a firm nod, hoping she'd believe him. "I'm a bit tired, but I'm fine. You look like you could use some sleep, though." When she merely rolled her eyes and started to hold out the papers she was holding, only to lower then again, he arched a brow and let his gaze wander down. "What's this, then?"

"When I was going through these reports, I didn't understand them."

He couldn't help but frown. After everything she'd gone through recently, she was already throwing herself back into work?

Maker, but she needed to stop pushing herself too hard.

He considered having an argument they'd already had—ironic that he was the one advocating for less work being done—but instead decided to go over the papers she had. Perhaps he could distract her or slow her pace, giving her some miniscule moments of rest.

He looked around his office and then stepped out onto the ramparts to call the nearest soldier over and ask for a chair to be brought up to his room. When he stepped back inside, Finley was eyeing him.

"I can lean against your desk."

"You look like you might pass out," Cullen started to argue and then stopped when Finley cast a heal on herself. It did little to make her look better.

Maker, was she using magic to keep herself awake?

Had she learned that running from templars?

He shook off the thought, moving to his desk and pulling his chair out a bit. "Sit. I'll take the other one when it gets here."

While she gave him a look that said she thought he was being ridiculous, she did sit down without any fuss. Before he could ask her how she was feeling, she was holding the first paper out to him. "I don't understand the terms used. You've used them before, but I never really needed to know them to figure out what was going on."

He looked down at the paper. A few technical terms for weapons and army ranks and groups were dispersed through it, and he suddenly felt foolish to have assumed she would know what he was talking about. He rested against his desk and held the paper so that they could both look at it as he pointed to the first word she'd underlined.

"So this part is talking about…"

They were into the second report when the chair finally showed up, and in the eighth when Ser Othelle did.

Cullen had worried that the rest of her audience from the night before might not leave the maleficar in the woods alone, and sure enough, Ser Othelle was there to know more about the creature.

"It is a templar's duty," he had responded, standing straight and tall, when Cullen had tried to dismiss him. For a moment, he'd thought it might be a jab at himself, but if it was, Ser Othelle didn't make any indication.

"He is an abomination that cannot be taken by one man, or six." Finley's gaze lowered a second, no doubt thinking of her own folly—when she was twelve—and then looked back at him. "And it's deep enough in the woods that you'd have to pass through good people's territories. They won't assume you're there for him. They'll think you're there for them or some Circle mage who ran off into the woods, and their moves will be preemptive. You won't have time to explain yourself."

"Why didn't you band together with the other mages out there? Everyone knows there's hundreds of you."

"I'm not sure about hundreds," Finley murmured, frowning. "But we didn't because he has those he can call on, too. People too afraid of him to say no. What good is it if we all die or end up his puppets?"

Ser Othelle had become agitated at that. "It's a templar's duty—"

"And we were—and are—not templars," Finley replied. "We are people, healers, naturalists, hermits, who just wanted to be left alone. Allowed to live. We knew we were not strong enough to beat him, so we left him to his corner and stayed in ours."

"And where is your corner?" There had been vitriol in his voice, and Cullen had started to snap that the man needed to watch his tone, when Finley answered him.

"Lost to the Blight."

Cullen put a hand on Finley's shoulder and then moved away from the desk to stand in front of Ser Othelle, blocking his view of their inquisitor. "I am as bothered by the creature's presence as you are, templar. That doesn't change the fact that we have other issues that require attention. Issues more pressing than a creature that doesn't lash out beyond the Wilds."

"Issues we can't even address—" Ser Othelle started. He cut himself off when Cullen fixed him with a look that said he wasn't opposed to tossing people off the ramparts. He certainly felt like doing it at the moment.

"Outside."

Cullen ignored the part of him that was pleased with how quickly the templar turned on his heels to obey the order. As soon as they were outside, Cullen stepped up so that they were almost nose to nose. "If you feel that we are falling short of our goals, you are most welcome to bring it up, in a respectable manner. I go through several reports that cover such concerns every day, as does Sister Nightingale. Ambassador Montilyet deals with piles of them in an afternoon. We do what we can to address concerns quickly."

Ser Othelle's eyes were as wide as the moons, and he nodded quickly, as though Cullen would simply drop the matter.

He wasn't nearly that lucky.

Lifting his finger, he held it toward the man's face. "I shouldn't have to tell you any of that. You should know that the higher you go in the chain of command, the more a person has to deal with. And instead, you march into my office and talk to myself and the Inquisitor like you think we do nothing."

"I didn't mean—"

"You think it's inconvenient that we can't go to Orlais? So do we. But unlike you, a wrong word from the Inquisitor—or me—could have Orlesian armies marching on Skyhold. We don't need regular armies doing Corypheus' work for him. Or do you disagree?"

"No, ser."

Cullen fixed him with a harsh look, even as the man tried to say something else. "As for the maleficar… she was twelve when she tried to vanquish him." He let it sink in a moment before repeating it. "Twelve. How many monsters were you trying slay at that age?"

"I'm sorry, ser."

"She says that he is a threat only to those who cross into his territory, and it is far from anywhere we can even go. What do you think we should do? Should I mobilize our recovering army and march through the Wilds and hope that the wyvern don't pick off too many? That the local tribes will think we're friendly? That the mages who would side with us if they knew our intentions will assume us allies? The man can take on five templars at once without a problem. How many people should I send so that we'll have enough by the time we make it there to make sure that we can fight him, along with whoever in our forces he manages to corrupt and turn against us? In addition to whoever he already has in his thrall and whatever other blood mages decide to answer his call for help?"

He arched his eyebrows as he waited for a reply.

"I don't know what I would do, ser."

"Then don't tell me that the plans I already have in motion aren't enough." Cullen turned back to his office and pulled the door open. "You're dismissed, unless you have something you'd like to say to the Inquisitor."

Ser Othelle stepped up to the door to meet Finley's tired gaze and said a quick, "Apologies, Inquisitor," before bolting.

Ser Rodrin and Ser Cadwin were standing near the desk, where they had obviously been talking to their Inquisitor, and Cullen's brow dipped as he readied to repeat himself.

"I tried to explain to them that it wouldn't be so easy," Ser Rodrin said quickly.

Ser Cadwin scowled up at him and then looked at the commander, and where Ser Othelle had been, schooling her expression as best she could. "The Inquisitor explained to us more about him already, ser. We understand that it would take more than a few people to take him down and that we can't even get there from here until we can go through Orlais." She looked back at Finley and shook her head. "Dragon cults…really?"

Finley gave her a tight-lipped shrug.

Cullen waited for the two to leave before going to sit down with Finley. She was already holding up the report they'd been on when he peered at her. "There's a dragon cult?"

"No, I just don't want templars tromping through the area Ser Cadwin wanted to go through. There's a lot of plants there that don't grow anywhere else, especially since the Blight."

Cullen stared at her, disbelieving. Even with everything going on, she was worried about plants being stepped on?

Of course she was.

"I lo—" Cullen caught himself and swallowed as she looked up at him, tired and puzzled. She was here for work, as she had so obviously already gotten back to, and he was just falling more in love with her. Meeting her questioning gaze, he offered a faint smile. "I suppose it would be a shame for an army to kill what the Blight couldn't."

"And templars are anything but careful when they're on someone's trail." If she realized she'd indirectly insulted him along with her intended targets, she made no notice.

And honestly, he couldn't blame her. If he'd been chasing someone in the woods, he would have been more concerned with stopping them from doing anything dangerous than whether or not the fern or whatever it was he was stepping on was endangered.

"Perhaps we should set aside these for now," Cullen offered, noting the suspicious look she gave him instantly. "We could pick up with them tomorrow?"

"I'm leaving tomorrow," Finley muttered, tapping the paper they'd been reviewing before being interrupted. "Better to close those last rifts now than wait around for information on whether new areas will open up to us."

"No one would fault you if you wanted to take a few days to rest—"

"The longer I take, the more likely that it's too late for Ser Ross and Ser Caudry." She tapped the paper again. "So if we could get back to work?"

"Yes, Inquisitor," Cullen murmured. As he skimmed the paper, he tried not to think of just who it was that she was working herself so hard for. They didn't deserve such loyalty, and if they did find them 'in time', he wondered if they would even be able to comprehend what she had done for them. He made a note to tell Cassandra to keep a close eye on Finley and a fair pace in their travels, and returned to the task at hand.