Thank you for reading!

Even here, deep below the tower, was evidence of buildings that had been here for a very long time. Mostly there were crumbled walls, but they were clearly dwarven in craftsmanship. Even as Varric recognized the work of his people, he stumbled over a set of armor half-buried in the muck. Bending, he picked up one piece, studying it. "This is Legion of the Dead armor," he breathed. Fabled warriors, the Legion of the Dead was the kind of bedtime story dwarven parents told their wastrel children, hoping that someday their errors would end in honor.

"Legion of the Dead?" Hawke echoed.

"It's an Orzammar thing. No matter your crime, if you join the Legion and vow to die fighting darkspawn, your name is cleared."

"Not unlike the Wardens," Sunshine said, looking at Blondie.

Somewhat surprisingly, he smiled. "I had a friend from the Legion once; a girl named Sigrun. Not nearly as dour as you'd expect. Actually, she was probably the most cheerful person I've ever known. Sickening, if you didn't know what she'd been through. First the Legion, then the Wardens. Dead and damned twice over, she'd say, and then she'd laugh."

"She sounds lovely."

Blondie nodded. "She was."

Meanwhile, Hawke had been doing what Hawke did—searching the remains of the armor for anything worth scavenging. She came up with a piece of parchment that had been more or less protected from the muck by the armor. "'Hearing of Tethras Garen's crime first gave me the courage to confess my own and join the Legion,'" she read, with several pauses to wipe mud off the parchment.

"Tethras Garen?" Varric peeped at the parchment, and she lowered it for him to see. "'Sentenced to die in the Deep Roads for murdering his sister, not even offered the chance to join the Legion.' So what's this guy doing here?"

Hawke had read ahead. "Tethras Garen was innocent. The Carta did the crime. The Legion was sent after him."

"Poor bastard," Varric said, looking around them. "Rotten place to die."

"Literally," Blondie added, holding his nose.

Something about the story teased at Varric's memory. "Why does that sound familiar?"

"Well, he has your name. That might have something to do with it."

"Maybe." He shook his head. "It'll come to me."

Hawke led the way as Varric continued to wrack his brains for the story. Usually, stories came right to him, but this one felt buried.

"Early Exalted Age, I think," he muttered to himself. "Hundreds of years ago."

"Do you think they found him?" Sunshine asked.

Hawke looked around them. "Somehow I doubt it. This doesn't look like a place where the lost are found."

Varric frowned at her. That had been surprisingly poetic, for Hawke.

She grinned. "What? Jealous you didn't think of it first?"

"A little, yeah."

Up ahead, Blondie cried out in disgust and removed his boot from a fetid pool of green water. "Ugh. This is much … wetter than I remember the Deep Roads. Varric, I think I found another of your dwarves."

This set of armor was half-submerged in the pool, eaten away by the moisture. From the part that had been buried, Varric plucked another piece of parchment. This one was fragmented, threatening to crumble in his fingers. "'Paragon Garen refuses to give up. We're the eighth Legion unit …' Eighth!"

"You don't think a father would care that much for his son?" Hawke asked him. She gestured to the sword on her back. "Look what my father did for me and I hadn't even been born yet."

"Good point. Ah, that's where I know the name from. Tethras Garen should have been the heir to the Garen clan." Varric looked relieved to have remembered. "Exiled for a crime he didn't commit. They searched for him for years, but no trace of him was ever found."

Hawke had rounded a corner into a small enclosed room. She looked down at a set of what had once been very nice armor that was hunched over near the ancient remains of a small fire. Tethras Garen had died here. "I think I know why, Varric. He's here. He's been here all this time."

"Every Garen heir from that time on took the name Tethras in his honor," Varric said softly. "One of them became a Paragon in his own right and founded my clan."

"So this is your … cousin, sort of. I'm sorry, Varric." Bethany put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"This is a pretty small tower to contain all our dead relatives," he muttered.

Hawke chuckled. "Fitting that your ancestor and my father should have found their way here." She looked down at him and their eyes met. She heard Varric catch his breath and felt such a stab of longing she could have gathered him into her arms right here, in front of the others. Breaking the eye contact, she crouched down next to what was left of Tethras Garen. "Atrast tunsha," she said, hoping somehow the words would release whatever of his spirt was left here. "Totarna amgetol tavash aeduc."

The rest of them all stared at her. It was such an uncharacteristically devout thing for her to do.

"How do you speak dwarven?" Bethany asked.

"Why do you speak dwarven?" Anders added.

Varric didn't need to ask. She hoped he didn't have to. She hoped he was picturing the nights she had sat up, unable to sleep, reading up on his culture when she would rather be studying him.

"Thank you, Hawke," he said, his voice rougher than usual.

She put a hand on his shoulder, steadying herself as she stood up. "Perhaps both of us will leave this tower with a new perspective on who we are—and what we want," she said, speaking for his ears only. She knew she would be … assuming they ever did leave the tower.