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Chapter Text

A light, alone and unwavering
A lion, roaring but caged
A lever, to move all the world if it must
A city, in grief and in rage

Three mouths for the orders and prayers
Six eyes for the city of slaves
Three hearts for the grieving of all we have lost
Six hands for the poor in their graves

Six hands bound in steel and in order
Three hearts must stand still in their bones
Six eyes to be blinded and blinded again
Three mouths to be silent as stone

A light, alone in the flicker
A lion, in blood and in pain
A lever, too splintered in all of its trials
A city, the victor again

The air tasted so different here, and settled on their skin with an unfamiliar texture. It was something in the sea-spray, in the smell and the weight of it all, that had hit Cullen and Lux like a shock when they had first stepped down at the docks. For all that they had spent their last few days days surrounded by the ocean already, a far cry from the ferry at Kinloch that had been all of their boating experience, Kirkwall was still different. Something that would remain true for a long time yet.

The first surprise had been that air. The first and truest indication of how far they were from home, and how permanent a change this would be; the new air hemmed them in from all sides with no way back.

The second surprise was that, a sennight into their new tenure at the Gallows, Cullen had chosen to sit with Lux in the mess hall. His shoulders were tight and higher about his ears than normal, and the other Templars looked at him askance, murmuring to themselves.

Rumours had followed the pair of them over the sea from Kinloch, dogging Cullen's steps like a shadow he could not shake, not even in the dark of night. Winding and wicked things that spoke, sideways, of him being unfit for service. There was much about what had happened to him that she did not know, and perhaps he would never tell. Not to her, at least. Such secrets were for friends, of which neither of them had any.

He'd had many, once. He'd lost so much more than she'd ever had.

A sudden urge took hold of her to stand and confront the watchers, the whisperers. To say Whatever it is, it is not his fault. He was hurt and afraid. He is a good man.

Her legs did not move, and neither did her lips, but she stared at them (usually unwelcome, unsettling, unintentional) until they glared at her and moved out of earshot.

"Thank you," Cullen said quietly, and that had been the third surprise.

"You are alright?"

Rather than respond immediately he stared at her sidelong for several moments, until she wondered if she'd said something wrong.

"Yes," he said finally, shoulders returning to their usual position.

Words still came hard to her, but they seemed necessary in this moment. And so, with the effort of erecting a wall brick by painful brick, she attempted them.

"It is not your fault."

"Isn't it?" He laughed, strange and unhappy. "How would you know? Nobody else saw what happened to me. What I might have done after."

Her brow furrowed slightly, glancing back at the Templars now firmly at the other end of the room, before returning her attention to him.

"Then they should not." She searched for the words that might help, might comfort, but landed only on: "They should not speak as if they know."

Another bout of staring, much longer this time, tilting his torso towards her so he could stare more properly. Strange. People did not like it when she stared, and Cullen in particular had always been clearly uneasy around her. But today he matched her gaze with a frown, as if seeing her clearly for the first time, and wondering where she'd come from.

Which was strange again, because she had always been here.

"They shouldn't," he agreed slowly, working his way through the logic that she had laid out, as if it was that simple.

The silence that fell between them was almost companionable this time as they continued to eat, though he still stole glances at her as if waiting for… what? Accusation? Interrogation? Blame?

She had nothing to blame him for.

"I haven't been the outsider in a long time," he tried to explain, the comfortable silence loosening his tongue. And for him to be comfortable in her silence was another strange thing.

Had he ever been the outsider? Even in Kinloch, when they were children, he had fit in exactly as he should into the life that he had always wanted, and blossomed with it. She couldn't remember him ever being alone, and she remembered much.

"So I'm not… used to it, I suppose," he went on. "Being lonely, being on the outside. Not like you."

It wasn't wrong. It wasn't wrong at all, and so she failed to understand why he winced, suddenly turning his eyes back to the table as if something urgent had happened upon it that required his immediate attention.

"I'm— that was—" he said, pushing himself to his feet as she blinked slowly at him, having no idea what was. But he did not explain, and would no longer met her eyes. All he did was walk away with stiff rapidity, the back of his neck hot as her confused gaze followed him until he was out of sight.

Once again, she was alone. But that was nothing unusual. As Cullen had said, she was used to it.

The fourth surprise was that he came to eat with her again the next day. He arrived with a tentative sort of posture, like a stray dog that expected her to move away, and the silence that followed him was exactly as stilted as it had always been in any of their interactions at Kinloch.

"I… that is to say—" he said, saying nothing. Meeting her eyes and then losing them again as if trying to handle something fragile with clumsy fingers. He had never been this careful around her before. But it was… pleasant, to be treated as if she could be hurt.

He floundered in the silence as she gave him nothing in return, staring politely. In return he stared first at her face, then at the table, then at something apparently fascinating on her left ear. He cleared his throat, found it insufficient, and then cleared it again, attempting to noise the silence away without having to find the ending to his sentence.

It settled back down despite his efforts, bringing his shoulders back into tight unease, which she still didn't understand.

"Cullen," it was unusual for her to break the silence first, but he looked as if he was choking very quietly on something. "You are alright?"

"Fine!" he said to her ear in palpable relief, loosing some of his anxious stiffness. "Fine. I just… wanted to say, that I was sorry— am sorry— for yesterday. That was unkind."

A little furrow burrowed into her brow. "I don't understand. You were correct."

Completely losing focus on her ear, his eyes flicked back onto hers, his own furrow much more deeply entrenched. Searching for some further explanation that she certainly didn't have.

"That doesn't make it less unkind to say."

"Did you mean to be unkind?"

Even she, mostly blind to reading people, could see the instinctive no arrive on his tongue. It was plain in the quick uptick of breath, the way his shoulders moved to face her fully. The quick desire to conciliatory, to not be that kind of person, which she'd seen on people's faces before.

Her silences never changed, patient and mildly questioning, but Cullen, as she was starting to learn, had a broad variety of silence. Like a change of temperature in the air as Kirkwall's sea winds shifted, she felt the silence shift from uncomfortable, relieved, defensive, to finally settle close to yesterday's comfort.

"… a little," he admitted softly. "And I'm sorry. You don't deserve that."

Though her silences never changed, nor did her expression, something puzzled peered out from her eyes, and seemed to take him by surprise as well. It occurred to her that he had never spoken to her for so long before. Certainly not enough to know that she did express herself, however little, past the impassivity of her face.

"You seem… uh. Uncertain," he tried, as confused as she was about where this conversation was supposed to go next.

"Nobody has ever apologised to me," she said, watching in fascination as the furrow between his eyes deepened even further. She'd thought it had gotten as deep as it could possibly go.

"That's not right, I've seen people bump you so many times in the—" he blinked as realisation came dawning, a sudden shaft of light breaking through the clouds to illuminate a past he must not have seen. "… people don't usually talk to you at all, do they?"

"No."

"Ah."

Mouth opening again, he shifted restlessly on the bench, even more uncomfortable in his perceived part in her isolation. Guilt several years late and which he clung to oddly, like it had become more valuable over time. Like it was something he must possess.

"It was not your fault," she said as he failed to continue, and still her responses seemed to confuse him. "There were so many others."

"There were. And nobody bothered."

As yesterday, the conversation withered, that sense of guilt still humming under his skin like a distant storm-cloud and making the better silence not quite as comfortable.

Glad as she was to begin understanding his weather patterns, they were much more changeable than she'd expected.

It took an entire day for her to turn over a response in her mind. He was correct, and she was correct, and yet it seemed as if he needed something from her, something that she either couldn't understand or was not equipped to provide.

But he had chosen to sit beside her, when once he might have even chosen loneliness over her company. Had chosen to speak to her, when they could have simply sat in silence. Had thanked her, when she was used to fading into the background, simply doing as she was ordered. It would be pleasant to understand how to speak in return. With the new ceiling of their new barracks above them, and the strange contours of her new bed beneath her, she thought.

Surrounded by the quiet breathing of her new brothers and sisters in arms, it was entirely new and yet familiar. Six days in, she had already memorised their faces, their names, a series of observations that had no shape or meaning yet. Meanings like 'danger' and 'careful' and 'do not leave alone with a mage'. Sometimes 'kind', sometimes 'trust', if never 'friend'. Things which she used to function within the space she was given.

Changeable, mercurial Cullen, who had chosen to come back, to sit beside her when he so clearly wanted to leave the past behind him, was a strange and unsettled meaning that she would like to understand.

Chapter Text

"... you were never," Lux said carefully on the third day, drawing Cullen's curiosity as he came to sit with her again. "Responsible for the whole circle."

So she'd taken what he'd said yesterday, and spent the entire day turning it over carefully in her methodical mind, trying to find the response that he hadn't truly been expecting her to give. Then again, he'd been thinking far too much about their exchange as well, and how odd it was that she just seemed to… accept whatever was done to her.

Odd wasn't the right word, perhaps. Not unsettling, either, though he'd thought that about her plenty back in Kinloch. He hadn't been cruel about it… at least, he hadn't intended to be cruel. Avoided her, certainly.

The less he thought about how truly thoughtless he'd been, the better.

Sad. Yes perhaps it was sad. Like a resigned prisoner, who didn't expect any gentleness.

"I suppose you're right," he said slowly, unsatisfied by this conclusion. She should be annoyed at him. Or relieved. Or glad or not-in-need-of-his-company or something. Surely she assumed he was only sitting with her because he had nobody else to sit with, that this 'guilt' was simply a symptom of needing at least one person to listen to him?

Clear, calm eyes, the surface of a moonlit lake. Steady and deep. Looking into them made him feel much too observed, right down to the bone. On the verge of drowning, of being perceived beyond what he could control. Could she see through him, to the scars of Kinloch? Those secret and terrible hours when he'd thought he would die, alone and unremembered? Or was she looking at him through the veil of rumour? The uncertain questions and the pressure of her attention should overturn any comfort he might find in her company.

The comfort of her company?

There was little comforting about her, with her intent staring and her stilted, heavy silences that made him feel like he was under interrogation. The shadowed whispers of the Gallows all coalesced in that impassive gaze like a knife-edge, an active threat, a confrontation that she seemed unaware of creating in his mind.

It was much better to be alone.

Three times already he had convinced himself of this. And three times he had sat with her.

He was guilty, and so he had sat with her.

She was unwelcoming, unintentional, and he had wanted to flee.

He was lonely, and so he had sat with her.

She interrogated him, unaware, and he had wanted to bite.

In truth, Cullen should have been doing everything in his power to leave Kinloch behind, to shake the shadows of the past and step into some kind of shaky dawn. But everything was new and uncertain without end, his entrapment in the circle in miniature. There it was only the strength of his faith that had saved him. But faith was easier in the face of demons than in the face of one's fellow man. Easier in the face of death, than in the face of enduring.

Lux understood loneliness, though perhaps not in the same way. She understood the nightmare of the circle, though certainly not the same as he. And so she had questioned nothing, blamed him for nothing, and was the one steady and certain thing in a sea of incertitude. A lighthouse, like the one that had guided them here.

He was grateful, and so he had sat with her.

She opened her silence to him, unasking, and he was only too glad to hide within it.

On that third day, the food did not catch in his throat quite as hard as it had done since the circle broke, and his shoulders did not ache quite so much from holding them close.

And then a fourth. A fifth. Seven times in a row toed the line between a choice and a habit.

Seven times in a row made the silences familiar.

Seven times in a row, and it was almost a comfort.

"It's different," he said one day, glancing at her sideways as she blinked, caught off-guard perhaps by how ordinary, how… comfortable his opening salvo was. "The food."

With too much fish, and too many of what he could call unnecessary Orlesian flavour experiments, the food in the Gallows had been… an adjustment. And to add insult to culinary injury the food was often lighter than the hearty, heavy Ferelden food he was used to, and so mealtimes in the Gallows had left Cullen faintly unfulfilled and oversalted since he'd arrived. That couldn't be much good for the gloom and doom that seemed to dog his heels at all times.

The frequency of his nightmares had more at their source than poorly digested seafood and strangely heavy sauces, but it was certainly not an aid.

And sometimes his food stared back at him, which wasn't comfortable for anyone involved.

"Yes," Lux said, knocking him out of the kitchen and back into the present moment.

Well what else had he expected? He exhaled the barest breath of a laugh, taking her response for what he now felt he recognised. Not a dismissal, but an avenue for more conversation. She'd had little of it, after all, and needed some of the path laid out.

"Do you like it? Or do you prefer the food back home?"

One wouldn't expect 'do you like the food' to be such a complicated question, but she stared at him as if he'd just asked her opinion on the politics of the Divine.

"I," she began, and then ended, with even that word dissolving into the general background murmur of the mess hall.

He'd rarely been on this side of their awkward silences before. In earlier days he would have been impatient, had seen enough people show their impatience with her as she tried to respond to something seemingly simple. But he had nowhere else to be, and nothing else to do but eat and wait, and wonder for the first time why it was so difficult for her.

The silence built upon itself in layers as she looked at him, his food, her own food, and then back to him, clearly trying to come up with something to keep the exchange going.

"It is. Different. But good," she said slowly, as if an Orlesian was about to leap out at her from the shadows in offence. "I. Like it?"

"You don't need my permission," he said in mild amusement. "You can simply like things. You know that, don't you?"

Did she? He peered at her closely as she simply said "Understood", which was not a reassuring answer at all.

"Lux."

"Yes?"

His fingers tapped the table, scarred by decades of Templars and their trays, not sure if he should push the issue. It might be easier to keep talking and let her involve herself with 'yes' and 'no', which she seemed most comfortable with. But if they were going to have any kind of conversation with each other, in what would hopefully be their new home, he'd like to understand how to have one.

Besides, a problem to focus would be a good distraction from silent duties and nightly terrors. Why not make the problem his new-and-old colleague?

Come to think of it, he didn't know anything about her at all.

"What's your favourite food?" he asked. Another simple question, which didn't merit the hesitation she afforded it.

"I don't know."

Of course. Why in Andraste's name did he think this would be easy? Sighing, he put his chin on his hand, spearing another forkful of what passed for meat in this city.

"Something, surely?" He'd heard she was a Chantry orphan, but even they had their opinions on what was acceptable to feed growing boys and girls, typically nothing that the sisters ever provided. "Or something you deeply dislike?"

An unpleasant distress rippled in her eyes that he couldn't fathom, and he saw the 'I don't know' form into an orderly line in her throat before she even spoke it.

"It's alright," he said quickly. An absurd relief surged through him when her shoulders relaxed fractionally and her eyes settled again. The ripples from his carelessly thrown query faded slowly away, and he took a little breath. "It's alright not to know."

Her usual nods were sharp and military, and gave anything said to her the air of an order that she was absorbing with great intent. This one was significantly slower. More confused. More human.

"What." She paused, brow furrowing faintly, and then tried again. "What is your favourite food?"

Cullen hadn't realised before now just how much he missed home. Not simply Ferelden, but home. The realisation came on light, swift feet, as favourite food all too quickly became talk of family dinners, hot food on cold nights on the farm. He hadn't fully realised, not until this precise moment, with missing home starting to flood around him, what being in Kirkwall would truly mean.

He hadn't even written to tell them he was being sent away from Kinloch. The thought twisted a little coil of shame in his belly, but he quieted it with the idea that it would only worry them. Perhaps he would write in time, when things were better. When he had something to write of that would make them proud.

And Lux had listened so intently, as if she was starved for the food, for the company; her eyes alight for the warmth he was painting in the air between them, which he pretended not to ache for.

It had been good to have such an attentive audience. But it was only later, in his barracks-bed with darkness overhead, that he realised how sad a reaction that had been. Not strange in a Chantry orphan, but still odd in its intensity.

And how could anyone live so long and not know what they liked? Surely one just… found out, in the living?

Turning over in the narrow bed, he rolled the strange pile of observations around in his mind, seeking to understand. It was better than sleeping. Better than thinking of all the things he should have done, or dreaming of all the things he was unable to.

He simply needed something else to occupy his mind. The shame of unsent letters and the shadow of Kinloch's breaking would go away with time.

Chapter Text

If Samson was being honest (which he was with himself on occasion, just to make things interesting), not everything was Meredith's fault. She couldn't control the weather, which had turned into a malicious rainstorm just so that he couldn't venture outdoors on his time off. Left to lurk around the corridors like a tick on a dog.

But she'd made this sennight's duties miserable, which had led to a deep desire to leave the Gallows for his own health, which had made the rain seem even more terribly timed.

So, all things being equal, everything really was Meredith's fault.

The Knight-Commander of the Gallows, who acted so above it all, but had a chip on her shoulder as wide as the Waking Sea. You'd think, with all the blood magic she saw everywhere, that Meredith would have more important worries than whether Samson was up to something.

The fact that he was frequently up to something was completely beside the point.

Samson rolled the vial of lyrium between his fingers, feeling it sing even through the glass, warming him like the wine he wasn't going to get at the Rose tonight. Not the worst thing on a miserable day like this, when the darkness clung to the corners like month-old cobwebs. With a little shrug, as though all the weight of the Gallows was on his shoulders, he pushed his hair out of his face, nodding to the Templar on duty outside the infirmary door as he passed. So he couldn't guard the storeroom without someone to keep an eye on him, but Julian, who was an arrogant and entitled prick with a hair-trigger temper even on a good day, was allowed to guard injured mages on his own. That seemed fair.

Then again, what could you do, when it was pricks all the way down?

The Gallows had opened its arms to the broken, the beaten and the brutal, and kitted them out with armour and authority. It had led to a grim sort of gratitude towards the Knight-Commander, which in turn bred a loyalty that wasn't easily shaken. A smart move on Meredith's part. But it also meant that you had a lot of bitter people with swords in a small space. The mages learned to be very careful and quiet, not always effectively, but they did better than some of the other Templars, who'd never learned the skill of not pissing people off.

In the Gallows, you either kept your head down, or you lost it.

And so he kept his own down and turning, on the lookout for a quiet corner to enjoy his ill-gotten gains. Alert, he heard her before he saw her, marching around the corner with that eerie regularity that never changed. A perfectly normal amount of noise from her armour, neither a Templar who loved to make their presence known, nor one that liked to creep about. The only normal thing about her.

"Ser Samson," Lux said as she rounded the corner to find herself face to face with him, her voice about as inviting as an ice-floe.

"Do we know each other?" he replied smoothly as he slipped the vial into a pocket, as if he didn't already now who she was. Even if he hadn't made it his business to know everyone's business, you'd have to be blind to miss all six foot something of her marching down the corridors like she didn't know walking was an option, or the other giant Ferelden scowling at the walls that had obviously done him some great personal wrong.

Cullen Rutherford and Lux no-last-name-given, previously of Kinloch Hold and, crucially, sent here after the disaster of their circle, which couldn't have been a healthy change of employment. But whatever might be wrong with them, they were fresh faces, and it was always fine entertainment to see what species of new and dangerous idiot Meredith had recruited to her cause.

She blinked big, pale eyes at him in a pallid and unmoving face, under a little crop of practically colourless blonde hair, and if he believed in ghosts, he'd be looking at one. The ghost straightened up even more impossibly to attention, looming over him a sight more than was fair. Military to the bone. Likely all about the rules, ready to tattle for the sake of order and discipline and getting into the Officers' good graces.

Just what he needed, another Meredith.

"I apologise," she said flatly, which didn't sound like much apology at all. "My name is Lux."

"Ser Lux," he affirmed. "And you know my name already."

"I know everyone's name." Well, that wasn't creepy at all. "And their duties."

Maker's balls.

"Am I away from my post, Ser Lux? Have I had some unexpected duties assigned on my time off?" It was light and sardonic, just a friendly little exchange between two fellow knights, brothers-and-sisters in arms, but he could already feel his hackles rising at her implied threat. The smile he paired his words with held a bit more of knife than nicety, but if she noticed it, she was completely unmoved.

"No."

"Thank the Maker for small blessings," he muttered as he edged past, seeing the questioning little furrow between her brows and having no interest in an interrogatory conversation. All the way down the hall, he felt her eyes bore into the side, and then the back, of his head, the sensation lingering uncomfortably too long even once he was out of sight.

Creepy.

The other one, Cullen, was dutiful as well, clearly wanting to do right by his training and responsibilities. It was that grim gratitude that Meredith engendered again, taking in all the mad dogs off of the streets. But he seemed more human at least. Humans could be negotiated with, were easier to deal with than whatever she was.

Lux continued haunting the halls, staring at him whenever he passed, and Cullen continued to glower. And every now and again, Samson had started to give friendly little nods to first one, and then the other. She had noted it as unusual, but hardly suspicious, while the more jittery of the two blondes had initially marked it down as both unusual and highly suspicious.

Samson, naturally, waited a few more sennights of companionable nodding before passing idle conversation in the hallways, which Cullen seemed to appreciate; a little levity in his loneliness. And which, amusingly, seemed to puzzle the ghost.

She'd gone, with her confused furrows and hesitating silences, from a mini-Meredith that he'd expected to always have trailing him for his sins, to the most terminally lost woman he'd ever seen in his life. A perfect soldier, he'd grant that. Obedient and regimented to a fault, the officers could simply set her going and there she would go, without question or variation. A strong fighter. And not a single idea of what to do without instruction, or how to deal with him when he went off of the limited conversational scripts she was so clearly working off of.

It was probably a little cruel to enjoy seeing her off-balance all the time. To know that she had no idea if she was being lied to, and only half an idea if something was a joke.

But Maker if it wasn't entertaining to see the confusion in those big eyes, surprisingly expressive despite the rest of her face. She was confused now as he gave her a sly little smile and a nod, rolling a vial of ill-gotten lyrium in his fingers openly. Waiting for her to notice the obvious.

A dangerous game, with her so dutiful. But where was the fun in safe bets?

"Ser Lux."

"Ser Samson." Her eyes tracked the movement of the vial, of the lyrium gently shifting inside it. The softest song, calling out to that empty place inside every Templar, the one that the Chantry carved out of you. Did she have more emptiness in her than most, acting as if she'd never been in the world before? If she did, she hid her hunger and bitterness better than he ever had. "You should have already been given your lyrium this morning."

He appreciated the precision. No accusation. No 'you were given'. You should have. It was scheduled. But she hadn't been there to see it. Couldn't refute it with the accuracy she needed, and so couldn't refute it at all.

It was exactly that sort of thinking that made her so fun to lie to. Because when he shrugged, lifting his eyebrows in studied sincerity, and called it 'a little mix up', there was a wonderful hesitation her eyes that went down like whisky.

How could she say what was true, when she didn't have the evidence of those all-staring eyes? Nodding slowly, unsure of how to proceed and getting no direction from the man who held all the threads of this current conversation, she could only watch as he pocketed the vial and clapped her on the shoulder. Stiffening ever so slightly at the contact, but not objecting.

"Ser Lux."

"Ser Samson."

Those eyes still crawled up the back of his neck as he walked away, but they didn't bare his teeth this time. It was just what she did. The sun rose, the ocean roiled, and the ghost Stared, committing everything to her already terrifying memory. But whether she understood half of what she saw or not, he made sure that the next time he approached Cullen was far away from those eyes.

He was a risky gambler. But he wasn't a fool.

"Well lad?" Slinging an arm around Cullen's shoulders, Samson gave him a lopsided grin as he dug something out of his pocket and held it up between them. For the fifth day in a row, the sky sobbed its angry tears long and hard over Kirkwall, and Cullen looked as close to climbing the walls as he felt. "S'miserable out today. Fancy a pickup?"

"That's." Cullen clearly wasn't quite as firm as he meant to be in the face of vial, the lyrium's perfect blue catching the light as Samson shook it gently. "Not allowed."

Samson snorted. "If you really had a problem with it, you wouldn't be standing here telling me the obvious. You'd be saying," he shifted his voice to a perfectly flat affect. "'Ser Samson, this will have to be reported'."

The breath of a chuckle escaped Cullen, despite his best efforts.

"Is that supposed to be Lux?"

"Mhm. S'why I'm sharing this with you and not her, boyo. She'd already be halfway to the Knight-Commander's office by now."

Of course Cullen should be doing the same. If not anything as drastic as a report, he should at least chide him, confiscate the lyrium and march away to put it back, with nobody's name on the line. But Cullen only had two people who really spoke to him, and though he didn't say it, Samson knew he enjoyed his company. And he was definitely a sight more entertaining than Lux was. Probably reminded him of his buddies back home. He seemed the type. Plenty of friends, well-liked. Took to the company like a fish to water.

He wouldn't want to lose that again, not over a little lyrium. Samson kept up his friendly smile, seeing the thoughts printed all too clearly across Cullen's wrinkled forehead.

What was the harm?

That's right, no harm at all.

"I suppose we could share," Cullen said slowly, convincing himself of the idea with practically no effort on Samson's part, which was always his favourite amount of effort. The younger man had a habit of tying himself in knots with nobody's help. One of these days he wasn't going to be able to untangle himself.

"We could," Samson agreed, before delving into his pocket again. "Or we could—"

"Samson!" Cullen's voice was an alarmed hiss, trying to press the two vials of lyrium back down over Samson's poorly suppressed laughter.

"So two's a problem?"

It did sound silly when put it like that. With the sharp edge of alarm fading at not being immediately discovered, Cullen's lips twitched, buoyed up on the crest of Samson's amusement.

"Fine. But that's all you have, isn't it?"

Samson grinned, wide and sincere.

"Cross my heart."

Chapter Text

No matter the Circle, the Knight-Commander's office was always a forbidding place where not even the most dutiful Templar liked to be called. But even in this, the Gallows enjoyed being more forbidding than most. And Knight-Commander Meredith reigned from within, as unassailable as the sea-cliffs that gated the city, as solid as its chains. As brutal, some said, as its bloody history.

Even within a month, the rumours and stories about the Knight-Commander swirled around her in obscuring contradictions.

Competent. Clever. Charismatic. These were the things Cullen and Lux had heard said about the Knight-Commander, when she was only a recruit. More all of those things than Knight-Commander Guylian had ever been, except to his favourites, who said it was all politics, that she and the Grand Cleric had taken advantage of his death to place her on top once the dust had cleared.

And other more unkind rumours, about precisely why a nearly all-male cohort of soldiers would find a female recruit so clever and charismatic, and which often made Cullen glance at Lux in awkward, uncomfortable apology when she was present.

Vicious. Venomous. Vindictive. These were also the things Cullen and Lux had heard said about the Knight-Commander, when she had come to power. That she was much more concerned with politics and public power than Guylian had ever been. That she had given the Templars more authority to function in the city than they had ever thought possible. That she promoted only officers who agreed with her blindly. That she promoted those who truly deserved it.

Neither of them knew what to believe, or if any of it was even true. In the Gallows, rumours flowed like money in the marketplace. And given how quickly the Gallows had latched onto the rumours of Cullen's removal from Kinloch, they knew better than to take any of it as truth, unless they had seen something for themselves.

But everyone, even those who admired her, agreed that the Circle had been very different once, though they said 'different' in varying tones, with varying meanings. More room to breathe. Less eyes in every corner. Mages who did not rush through the halls to their rooms as though the shadows in the corners would swallow them up.

If that was true at all, then that was a worrying thing, though it was impossible to say whether it shed a concerning light on the Knight-Commander or on the city at large. Cullen said little, and Lux even less, only listening as everyone tried to convince them of some new facet of Meredith that was as true as the morning sun, cross their heart, they saw it all for themselves. Or at least they had heard it said, from a reliable soldier's friend.

Everyone, even those who feared her, agreed. The great beast of the Gallows, that the politics of the city had nearly crippled, had been raised back to its limping legs by her hand, and made to march again. For good or for ill, it marched. And she had ensured that it would never be struck down again, not without great cost.

For good or for ill, the Gallows stood strong under her command.

Samson despised her, her officers, her new rules and strictness, and said that she saw demons everywhere that didn't exist. The massive and rotten heart of Kirkwall was never more rotten, he said, than when Meredith spoke of it.

"Didn't fall apart on us before she showed up," he groused once. "Didn't all collapse into evil, cackling blood mages and possessions as far as the eye can see."

"It's better to be cautious," Cullen said, that ever-present little frown on his face. "Apostates don't understand the true risks of their power, neither do many young mages in the circle."

Yet Uldred had been an older and wiser mage. Had known all the risks and thought himself above them, whispered something in the back of Cullen's mind. Dragging young mages who trusted and respected him into danger. Power is a temptation to anyone, even a First Enchanter. No mage should be blindly trusted.

Samson groaned, as loud and dramatic a thing as he could possibly make it, and brought Cullen back to the present. "Got that right out of the first page of the rulebook, did you? We were Templars long before she got the crown, lad. But she wants everyone dancing to her tune. Or ones that act like they know the steps, like Alrik and Karras."

Meredith's favourite bloody Lieutenants. Not because she liked them— Samson was sure that not even the Divine herself could find it in her heart to like someone like Otto Alrik— but because they knew how to make her feel like everything was going her way. Crisp salutes, regular reports that were definitely only half as thick and a third as honest as they were meant to be. But it kept her eyes off of them while Karras and his temper left the mages and junior Templars alike in constant fear of being trampled.

And if they ducked out of his way and tried to keep to the corners, Alrik was lurking there in the shadows like a spider. Samson had never met a man who delighted in lurking as much as Alrik did. Probably came lurking out of his mother.

"You do not like anyone," Lux pointed out with her usual talent for stating the absolutely obvious.

"Any officer of Meredith's gets their own sleeping quarters, an office, and my eternal loathing for free," Samson quipped, raising his fork and snapping the morsel off of it with all the aggression their officers deserved. "They're all as bad as each other. And you didn't hear it from me but they might be worse than the queen bitch herself. It's no wonder she hasn't found a new Knight-Captain yet. You need to be a specific sort of bastard. Or a blind idiot."

"Or they might surprise you, and keep things in balance," said Cullen, in that particularly stupid show of optimism that Samson saw peeking through every once in a while. A ridiculous faith in 'the way things ought to be' that he'd usually attribute to Lux, on account of her apparently not knowing better.

"I didn't live this long by being surprised."

"If what you say is true, then the Officers," checking himself, Cullen lowered his voice as if anyone had ever cared to hear what they were saying, "were unfit to begin with."

"Which says a lot about the Knight-Commander taking them on, doesn't it?"

Cullen obviously didn't want to believe that the authorities he had been clinging to for security could be flawed at their core, but had no ready response, and simply his jaw in silence as Samson went on.

"Or Kirkwall rots everyone eventually, it just starts from the top."

~~~~~

Those words stuck in Lux's mind even a fortnight later. It was much more unpleasant to believe that their best intentions would be inevitably twisted purely because of the weight of the city's sorrow.

A terrible thing to believe, like a lead weight around a drowning neck. But the alternative, that their superiors could not be trusted, were even dangerous, was also a frightening thought.

Lux was not well accustomed to fear or hopelessness. One needed to hope to lose it. One needed to feel to fear. So much had been ground out of her as a child to ensure that she would be perfect, that she would never falter, that her only guiding light would be her officers. It had been easier when she had been kept alone. Once surrounded by other recruits at Kinloch, the tide of humanity had slowly eaten away at her stone foundation, and by and by she had understood loneliness. Found some measure of joy at a kind word or a touch. Realised, frail and uncertain, that she could find pleasure in things, like the few books in their library, and it was not wrong to do so.

She had wanted more of it. Slow and painful, had begun to unpeel herself, to open some dying core of herself to the sunlight.

A terrible state to be in, in the weeping hallways of the Gallows. Open and vulnerable to fear, to hopelessness. To the fearful prospect that the ones we are beholden to trust are not safe.

Three times, it had become a fearful prospect.

The first had been a silent corridor, the closed door of a room. A soft sound of pain, almost imperceptible past her sound of her own steady marching.

Nobody was meant to be here. There were no classes, no duties. No patrols except her own. Puzzlement stilled her steps as the door suddenly swung open, cracking through the silent air like a warning, and Knight-Lieutenant Karras strode out. He didn't notice her, relegating her to furniture as many did, and passed on his way.

A frisson of alarm beneath the puzzlement, she stepped into full view of the doorway to see a mage… Alain, that was his name, flinch before straightening up with a respectful nod.

For a moment, neither of them spoke, though Alain began to inch past her, ready to dash down the corridor.

"You are hurt," she said with a little frown, watching him jolt briefly at the suddenness of her voice.

"Ah. Yes, I fell and landed on my arm wrong. I'll just go to the infirmary," he said, giving her a bright and reassuring smile that she should have no reason to doubt, even though he didn't meet her eyes.

Always and eternally easy to lie to. But she had heard the pain, the fear, seen Karras walk away with that awful victory on his face, the way Alain seemed to not want to turn his back to her even as he wanted to leave, and knew. Knew so little, understood even less. But knew enough to know that she could not leave this in silence.

"Alain."

The fact that she knew his name at all seemed to take him by surprise, arresting all attempts at exiting the situation.

"Yes… Ser?" On guard. Still and yet nearly vibrating, something held in place by force.

"You are. Afraid?" she asked cautiously, trying to modulate her voice into something more comforting and, judging by his expression, completely failing.

"Erm." This clearly wasn't where he'd expected the conversation to go. Meeting her eyes at last, they stared blankly at each other for what she had been told was a socially uncomfortable length of time. "I'm sorry?"

"If someone has frightened you," she offered, "hurt you, I shall report it."

"No!" he said quickly, such open and obvious panic flaring in his eyes that it startled the both of them, and he immediately tucked back into himself. "I'm sorry. I mean. There's nothing—"

"But I heard—"

"Please." There was something terrible on his soft face now, too much wrongness that was scratching just under the surface, and it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention.

"I." She swallowed, the awareness that he saw her as just another Karras nearly stilling her tongue. It was an awful and understandable vision, and she did not have the skill to try and circumvent his fear.

Samson would know what to say. He always knew what to say, how to put people at ease. And Cullen would know what to look into, and how to go about it. But neither of them were here, for the Maker had seen fit to place only her; a tool utterly unequipped for the task before it.

"I wish to help you," she tried. "I mean you no harm."

Wary confusion crept in on the edges of his expression, his muscles tight. So close to the edge of fleeing. And he could. Another polite nod, another deflection, something about being late. Unless he was still afraid of how she might react?

Please. Do not be afraid of me.

"Why?" he asked instead, and she felt a little flicker of relief. Why was good. Fear did not breed many questions.

"I am supposed to protect you." Confused all the more by how his frown deepened, uncomprehending.

"Are you?" Not a question. Accusation. Hurt and afraid and too young to hide either.

"Yes," she said simply. Because it was simple. It was the simplest thing she had ever learned, and she did not understand why people looked at her strangely when she said it, or why some of her fellow Templars looked at her as though she were a child. "It is what I'm made for."

Protect the mages from the people who fear them. Who don't understand them. Protect the mages from their magic, when it threatens to harm them. Protect the people from the magic, if it rages out of control. Protect your brothers and sisters in arms from the magic, if it becomes monstrous. Protect them from their own hearts, when the fear and the anger and the power makes them cruel.

You are a shield and a sword for those given the Maker's gifts, for their guards, for the people. For good, for right. But obey, obey, obey. Your leaders will always know what is right.

How could both things be true?

He stared up at her, as everyone stared. There must be something broken in her, that she couldn't make people understand these simple truths.

"I will escort you to the infirmary," she said, trying again to lift the silence and fold it into something softer.

He hesitated for a long moment, before the tight line of his back loosened, and he nodded. Waiting for her to make the first move. With a sharp nod of her own, she began to march down the corridor, checking herself to a more moderate pace so he could keep up with her.

As they moved, he offered little for her curiosity, wrapping the quiet cloak-like around him, until she finally ventured to speak again.

"Did he bring you here? There was no work assigned to anyone in that room at this hour."

Those lines tightened again. His jaw. His neck. His shoulders.

"No. It was stupid of me. It had been a difficult day and I just wanted a moment to breathe, so I stayed behind after my work. Just to be alone. He must have been," his voice shook, "keeping an eye on me."

A hand on the shoulder might be a comfort, if hers were not gauntleted in Templar steel. Stilling the uncertain lift of her fingers, she frowned as they walked. She had only space and an ear to give him.

"It was not," she said at last, "your fault."

It was important that he believed that. But whether he did or not, he kept it away from her, turning his head to look at the wall. Swallowing, she tried again, gathering a few more words like bricks to carefully place one before the other.

"If you wish to do so again. I could escort you. So you are not alone, when you are alone?"

The bricks hadn't come together in the sense she wanted them to, but he didn't mock her for her struggling sense as she expected. The silence a little softer, as they reached the infirmary door.

And though she was not owed any reply, she felt a little bloom of warmth again as he paused to find her eyes again, his hand on the door, already half-closed between them.

"It might be a good idea to not be alone," he said slowly. Eyes a little brighter, a little warmer than unshed tears. Still wary. Duly suspicious. But less in terror of her being. "When I'm alone."

She nodded once, sharply. Unlovely and uncomforting, as blunt as the stones of the tower. And despite all of that, he almost smiled, the door finally clicking in place between them.

Chapter Text

"Chantry orphans," Samson suddenly said one afternoon, his chair tipping perilously on its back legs as he mused up at the ceiling. "Get last names."

"They do?" Cullen frowned a little. It seemed an innocuous enough comment, if it wasn't for the fact that it was Samson bringing it up. But any underlying meaning would have to filter both through the noise in the mess hall and layers of a fogged brain that hadn't gotten enough sleep.

Samson shrugged, glancing at him. "Don't know how they do it in Ferelden, but I'm guessing the Southern Chantry likes to keep some things consistent. In the Marches, the orphans get last names if they don't come with one. The babies without notes or anything tucked in the swaddling cloth." His eyes might have flicked to Lux, who was stolidly finishing her food, but Cullen's were already there, his frown deepening.

"Something about legitimacy," Samson's voice went on. "Social identity. Avoids awkward questions on casual introductions. Also a pretty convenient way for the Chantry to always keep tabs on its 'children' who owe it so much."

"Lux," Cullen said slowly. "I don't think I ever asked—"

Samson snorted. "Thought you had to have brains to play chess."

Cullen shot him a withering glare, which Samson parried with one of his more self-satisfied grins, and then Lux's voice dropped between them like a boulder.

"I was not raised by the Chantry."

Cullen's surprised "what" was accompanied by a loud thump as Samson's chair brought him back to level ground, unsurprised but duly interested.

"Thought so."

"But—" Cullen attempted to point out, thoroughly confused. Orphans were, nearly always, left to the Chantry. Precious few places could afford the upkeep of their own orphanages, and certainly wouldn't be able to provide the education or security that the Chantry could, and so for many it was as much the most sensible option as it was the only option. And she was quiet and dutiful, knew the Chant by heart and prayed every night and morning. The perfect Chantry representative. He couldn't imagine her being from anywhere else.

Maybe if you had spent less time trying to work through the logic of it and had actually asked her, like the friend you're pretending to be, you would have known.

The guilty little thought made him scowl at the tabletop, knowing that it was right and finding himself deeply annoyed by the revelation.

"The man who raised me said he found me as a baby," she went on. The strange precision of the phrase prompted him to shoot a quick look at Samson, who simply shrugged with his eyebrows raised. Not father. Not caretaker. Simply 'the man who raised me'.

She always tried to be accurate.

"You never called him father." Bless Samson for asking the complicated question.

"I was meant to call him Commander."

"And nobody around found that odd?"

She simply stared. "We lived alone. There was nobody for us to speak to. He said it would distract me from my work."

"Fight, pray, obey," Cullen murmured under his breath. Someone in Kinloch had asked her once how she spent her time, and had laughed at that response. The three things she was excellent at.

And, as he was starting to realise with sudden and painful clarity, the only things she'd been raised to understand.

Lux gave a sharp nod of affirmation, and the lack of any other reaction twisted something in his gut. No sorrow for a childhood lost. No anger for the life and the friends she could have had. But why would she have any, if she had never seen children her age? Had no idea of what she was meant to have? She didn't even seem to realise that what was done to her was monstrously wrong.

Fight, pray, obey. And no doubt the child had been discouraged again and again from showing any fear, any sadness, anything that wasn't precise and perfect and dutiful, until she couldn't feel anything at all. A weapon for the Order's hands.

Yet still, those expressive eyes. Something vital and alive that hadn't been killed, that was struggling for breath.

"Bastard," Samson said, and Cullen nodded emphatically. But it wasn't as simple as all that, was it? One bastard did not a nightmare of a childhood make.

"How old were you, when he sent you to the Order?" Cullen asked, but she just shook her head slowly. No, of course she wouldn't know. It was unlikely she knew how old she was even now.

She was so quiet that people assumed she'd just always been there, like the stones of the tower. Not the youngest of the recruits, he'd put her at having been around eleven or twelve, but already with a wealth of training that made her unfit for the other recruits of her age. It had been unpleasant, humiliating even, to have this silent and overly serious girl in the same sparring sessions as the older boys, her stance perfect, her training much more disciplined than Cullen's could ever have been. Awkwardness and intense staring her only responses when anyone tried to talk to her, until nobody wanted to talk to her at all.

They had all been young, uncomfortable, bitter, and stupid.

Young and stupid was still something of an excuse at the end of the day, weak though it was. But there had been adults as well. There had been so many people who were supposed to know better than them. Someone, somewhere, should have seen a child who had no idea how to speak to her peers, who never played or associated with anyone, who did nothing but sit quietly and work unless told otherwise, and should have asked more questions.

"Why fix anything," Samson said, apparently reading Lux's entire history off of Cullen's face. "When quiet children are easier to deal with?"

Cullen shifted uncomfortably, "That's horrible, Samson."

"Doesn't make it less true," he retorted with another shrug, as if this wasn't a devastating truth. "Everyone likes easy. Even the nice ones."

"Do you?" Lux asked suddenly, re-entering the conversation with all the grace of a mabari on a wet set of stairs.

"I'm not one of the nice ones," Samson shot back with a grin. Whatever he may have thought of her story, Cullen certainly couldn't guess, but he'd jumped at the opportunity to return to the usual ground of their half-confused, half-teasing conversations (Lux being the first half, Samson being the second, with Cullen being mostly an explanatory middle ground if he was present).

As expected, she furrowed her brow at this not-response to her question.

"That is not what I asked."

Samson heaved a dramatic sigh, giving Cullen a look as if he was performing on stage, giving broad gestures to the audience in the vein of will you look at what I've got to deal with?

"I like things easy, just like everyone else. Always better to avoid something awkward or more trouble than it's worth."

"But you speak to me."

Cullen stifled a sudden snort into his cup as Samson stared at Lux for a long moment. And what a rarity it was, to see Raleigh Samson finally experience Lux's uncanny ability to render someone speechless with innocuous statements.

"Well shit," Samson finally said with a chuckle, scratching his cheek. "You've got me there. So maybe I like a challenge. Sometimes."

Cullen's second snort was smaller, but much more meaningful, and Samson immediately narrowed his eyes at him.

"Something you want to share with the class Rutherford?"

Sliding back more comfortably into his chair, he decided to respond to Samson with a careless shrug of his own. "You always make things harder for yourself than necessary."

"That's fate, lad. I've had a hard life, I have. My father sent me to work in the pub when I was only ten—"

"That's not what you told Maddox," Lux pointed out again, though this time he was ready for her.

"Aw." Resting his chin on his hand, Samson smiled, not looking bothered at all to have his dramatic childhood retelling interrupted. "I'm flattered you're so fixated on me."

If there was ever a face that communicated the exact moment of surprise before being hit by a cart, he was looking at it now. Snickering, he was only too happy to let her pre-cart surprise sit there a while, but Cullen went and took pity on her.

"He's joking Lux," he clarified, and the line of her shoulders relaxed a little.

"Oh."

She didn't need to look relieved about it. Samson narrowed his eyes theatrically, not truly offended but glad to play the part.

"You spoil all my fun Rutherford."

"You'll live. You're used to the hard life. And you do like to make it harder."

"Only if I'm getting something out of it."

Cullen shot him a quick, smug look, like the first and the absolute last time they'd played chess together.

"So what are you getting out of talking to Lux?"

"What is this, interrogate Samson hour?" Samson grumbled back, pitching his impression of offence deliberately so that not even Lux could be in any doubt that it was playful pretence. "You're lucky I get bored enough to talk to either of you at all."

Cullen caught the corners of Lux's eyes creasing in quiet happiness at being included in the joke. A single portion of a deeper smile, that curled his own lips in response. In all these years, he'd never really seen her smile. He'd certainly never given her cause to. It was a pleasant thing, to be partially responsible for that warmth. To know, or hope, that she too felt some loneliness fall to the wayside.

"We're blessed," he said, not sure which blessing he acknowledged more.

Samson too caught the eyes, tracing the happy crease of them for a long moment in something like victory. Trust him to know where to find rare things, and just how bring them to light. Grinning a little, keeping it cocky at the corners lest he be accused of any finer feelings, he slouched back in his seat.

"And don't you forget it."

~~~~~

It had kept her warm for several days, to know herself less alone. That was a blessing. To be placed such that you could be the bearer of that feeling, that banishment of helplessness, that too was a blessing. That was what a protector should be.

The second fearful prospect was not behind closed doors. It was an open corridor, and worse for it, because when Ser Julian raised his hand to a quaking mage, he was not afraid of anyone seeing. Not afraid of any officer, any Knight-Commander, not even the gaze of the Maker itself.

He did not expect a wall of armour to interpose itself, as sudden and sure as Andraste's wrath.

"Ser Julian," she said firmly. Hand still suspended, he slowly dragged his eyes up to meet hers, blazing like a pyre. "You are late for your duty in the library."

"She—"

"If you are any later, I will have to report it."

Volcanic anger suddenly curtailed, it spit and bubbled and looked for another way out, bent on burning. And there was no other target now for that hand, which he raised even higher, pulled back much more viciously.

She did not flinch, holding his gaze steady. Puzzled by the way he stopped himself, the way the anger she was so used to seeing abruptly flickered into nothing. Dropping his hand, he growled and pushed past her, venting his frustration with as much noise as he could possibly make. It was well. Everyone would know to flee in the face of that clanging. It was public. Less seemed to happen in the Gallows when it was public.

And yet anyone could have passed by here not a few moments before.

Maker, she was tired, and she didn't understand. Turning on her heel, she shifted her attention to the mage, still stuck warily in place, as if she hadn't been sure if she was free to flee. Grace, her memory said. Alain's friend. Unharmed.

"You are alright?"

She nodded, affecting some sort of clumsy curtsy. "Thank you, ser."

Lux just nodded once in response, not quite understanding the servility that dripped with sincerity, and made to turn around.

If she'd turned only a fraction sooner, she'd have completely missed the baffled look on Grace's face, but the sight of it confused her enough to stop her mid-step.

"Is something wrong?"

"Don't you want to interrogate me? Ask what I did wrong?" She paused, giving her a searching look. "Or tell me what I did wrong?"

"Ser Julian was about to strike you."

"… yes?"

Once again, Lux felt she was stuck in a conversation that had strange undercurrents to it, that she had no idea how to navigate.

"It was wrong of him," she said firmly.

"So." Grace's eyebrows raised a little, her eyes widening. "You saved me. You'll want me to show you my gratitude."

A little furrow pinched Lu'x brows, and she turned to face Grace more fully, to stare down at her, the other woman immediately shifting her feet in readiness to dodge a blow.

"That is not necessary, Grace."

The doe-eyed look dissolved like smoke in a sudden breeze, revealing a snarling suspicion underneath. Her entire posture stiffened, her arms folded tight and defensive against her chest. "How do you know my name?"

"I know everyone's names." This did not, as usual, seem to comfort anyone.

"I see."

"I didn't mean. To startle you."

Grace frowned, trying to read something in her eyes. Some evidence of deceit?

"I recognise you," she said at last. "You took Alain to the infirmary."

"Yes. I did not hurt him."

Surely one of these assurances would offer comfort? Lux stared blankly down at Grace as she stared narrowly up at her, the silence anticipatory, and wondered why the woman seemed intent on picking her apart instead of simply leaving. As if she could dig hard enough and break through to some deeper truth, some ulterior motive, that Lux was somehow hiding from her. Lux couldn't remember hiding anything in her life.

Was it so strange a prospect here, to be protected?

"No," she Grace finally agreed. "He told me. And that's not your style is it?"

"I. Don't understand."

The idea that she wasn't going to be struck or have to show gratitude (and a strange and specific way she had said those words) seemed to give Grace courage. Whatever she'd seen in Lux, whatever she had heard from Alain, it seemed to have put Lux in a very specific category. Something to bare her teeth at instead of fearing.

"You know everyone's names," she said, her arms still folded tightly, her teeth pratically bared. "Very believable. Or perhaps you just know the names of a handful of mages. Ones who you can save and call by name, make them feel grateful and important."

"That is not what I—"

"Alain certainly thinks you're nice." Grace sounded like she thoroughly disagreed.

"He is also nice."

"He's an idiot," she said shortly, still trying to bore right into Lux's eyes with sheer will. "… are you really going to guard him, if he wants to be alone?"

"If he would like me to."

"Maker," she muttered to herself, more exasperation than prayer. "And I suppose you'd do the same for me?"

"If. You would like me to?"

Impossible for the glare to sharpen further, and yet it did, every answer she gave another misstep.

"If it's a choice between you or Julian," Grace said, thoroughly unhappy, "Or Karras. I'll take it."

What was this conversation? The confusion in Lux's eyes only deepened, trying to keep up with Grace's sudden changes in direction and finding herself entirely lost.

"I am not. Forcing you to make a choice." An offer. That was all. Frowning a little, Lux gathered up her words and tried again, laying them out very carefully. "You should not have to be. Reliant on anyone, for your protection."

Grace stared at her again. She had a particular, uncomfortable way of staring, which seemed to say that Lux had said something very, very stupid, and was was making her aware of it.

"Do you know where you are?" she said.

"The. Gallows?" That didn't seem to be the answer she was looking for. Grace scoffed while Lux struggled for some kind of followup, losing interest in her impromptu interrogation and hurrying away down the corridors.

Lux watched, eyes fixed on the woman's back until she turned a corner and disappeared from sight, leaving her alone, strangely tired, and more confused than ever. What did everyone want from her? She'd be happy to give it to them, if they would only tell her.

"Ser Lux?"

The voice tugged her to attention like a string down her spine, fatigue not forgotten, but packed away in the face of authority.

Knight-Lieutenant Alrik seemed to materialise in doorways or corners, or arrive around turns when you least expected it. It had given Lux an uneasy jolt several times, to look up from her drills or cast her eyes around during guard duty, only to suddenly alight on the cold blue of his gaze like something flashing in the dark.

It should not be an unusual thing, for Lux often watched people herself, taking stock of how they moved, natural and comfortable, or how their feelings moved across their faces. Wanting to learn. And he was, of course, a Knight-Lieutenant, and it was well within his duty to observe. To ensure things were in order.

It was impossible to tell from his expression how long he'd been standing there or how much he had seen, and he gave no indication as he looked her carefully up and down as he always did, as though looking for any flaw, any dereliction of duty.

Finding none, he seemed satisfied, and beckoned her to follow.

"Come. I require your assistance with assigning the sparring matches for tomorrow."

Clear instructions, at least, were a comfort. She saluted, the clang of her breastplate reverberating in harmony with the instinctive "Yes Knight-Lieutenant" and followed, ever obedient.

Chapter Text

Of the things he'd had to leave behind at Kinloch, Cullen did not regret losing that childish pride that had bristled whenever the angle of Lux's sword was more perfect than his during training drills. Nor did he mind the fact that he still had to adjust his feet twice to meet where she placed hers on instinct.

Some of it had to do with maturing past that sense of bitter competition. But some of it, admittedly, was the crawling dismay at the thought that she was perfect in her sparring drills because she had never been allowed to do anything else. The least he could do, in such circumstances, was not be such a poor loser about it.

And once he could see past the annoyance of losing to her, once he allowed himself space to watch the way she held herself, he had even won a few times.

And once he allowed himself to see it clearly, her eerie precision was even beautiful.

His eyes tracked down a long arm as they locked blades again. Gangly at first glance, stiff at attention, but elegant in the motion of battle.

She twisted her shoulders, the solidity of her stance keeping her anchored as his momentum went abruptly sideways. Barely catching himself on the barrier that separated the sparring pair from the jeering onlookers, he flipped back around with a powerful overhead swing that she only just dodged. Energised by the thought of finally finding a weakness in her defence, a trap he was still prey to sometimes, and much too regularly, he thrust forward with his full weight, completely missing the way her back foot had lifted.

All at once the horizon pitched out of his vision, a dull and brief pain spreading across his back, the fruit of his folly. A rare blue-sky Kirkwall day before his eyes, and well-trodden sawdust all beneath him.

"Maker," he managed through breathless laughter, the hurt pride of a child a far distant thing, buried under more urgent scars and smiles at a joined table. "I did it again, didn't I?"

"You did." Mere observation. No false comfort or hidden mockery, straight as any sword. It eased him more than he'd ever expected.

The sunlight caught the short strands of her hair like a halo as she stepped into his view, faintly flushed and eyes bright with exertion. Creased at the corners as he gladly took her extended hand. Pleased that he was not angry.

That warmed him, more than he could ever admit.

"Good work," he said instead, eyes drifting to the way her hair had been sent into disarray by the effort, to the slightly deeper pinkness on her cheeks that must have to do with the heat.

"Thank. You," she managed, no less happy for being a little more awkward than usual, and after a brief moment she let go (had he still been holding on?) spun on her heel, and marched away in readiness for her next spar, leaving his hand oddly bereft.

Over his shoulder, Samson disguised his laughter— deliberately poorly, Cullen felt— behind a cough.

"Something got you distracted?"

"No," Cullen said, and if it was just a shade too quick to be seen as genuine, and if his hand had been hanging in space just a fraction too long, what of it? Samson's grin could imply all it liked (and it often liked to imply much more than was its business), but would get no confirmation from him.

Still, the hand which he hurriedly tucked to his side remained warm, and wonderfully so.

Once again, another shudder of loneliness fell away.

~~~~~

Good work.

The phrase fizzed pleasantly somewhere under her skin. Over years Lux had become inured to being ignored, fading into the background like a piece of furniture, only noticed when she was to be used. Muttered about unkindly as if she was not even there. It had been a lonely thing, once she'd started to understand loneliness. Children were kinder. Stray dogs and cats on patrol. The Tranquil. She was often assigned to watch them, a simple way to get both her and them out from underfoot, and cared for them deeply in her own quiet and awkward way, because they were the few who had never made her feel lost. Who spoke logically and clearly, saying nothing she had to interpret, and did not mock her for her silences. But she did as she was ordered, as she had always been taught to.

And for all the years of being of use, of being precise and obedient and dutiful, no praise. She had never sought it, and so it should not matter. A tool did not receive praise for the job it had been made for. It should not hurt, this realisation that had been slowly building as the years grew longer, that she could not be the perfect tool that the Commander had intended her to be.

She wanted, as no tool should.

Wanted company. And kind words. And the warmth of a hand, the way friends touched one another as if their bodies were not meant simply for duty.

Good work. Her hand was still pleasantly warm as she took her seat to watch Cullen's next match, tucked into her lap as something infinitely precious that she was afraid of breaking.

Eyes tracking over the grip of his hands, the way he placed his feet. The intent focus of his face. He was a more competent fighter than many of the Gallows Templars, a testament both to their Kinloch training and how hard Cullen had worked. Nobody could fail to notice that. And it was hard work at times, with much to still learn from the Gallows best. Few, but truly a marvel to watch, worth careful study and long, long practice to try and match.

Mettin, with terrifying power behind his swings that left your muscles shuddering and ears ringing, an overwhelming force. Jerran, who was always faster than you would ever expect, a flurry of blows and jabs that was impossible to keep up with. Moira, whose strategic eye placed her where you suddenly had no defence, a masterclass in using your enemies strengths against them.

A quick flash of steel and blonde hair caught the corner of her eye, and she watched the Knight-Commander move away, as quietly as she'd come to observe, to make Maker only knew what conclusions in her office. Cullen's efforts would have been hard to miss, and she felt a little flutter of pride in her chest for her friend. How hard he worked deserved to be acknowledged.

Attention sliding away from the Knight Commander's back, she saw Knight-Lieutenant Alrik take her place to supervise. She moved her eyes quickly away from his—

The third fearful prospect was an outlier, and puzzled her. Knight-Lieutenant Alrik had drawn her away from some work or other as of late, carrying and fetching and sorting papers as his cold blue gaze laid ever on her like chill fingers, and yesterday she had felt again that sense. A strange and strangling closeness, a need to protect. But she did not understand who was meant to be protected, with only the two of them in his office.

— and found Julian staring at her from across the ring.

Her next opponent, according to the lists that Knight-Lieutenant Alrik had had her write out. Capable. But suddenly and uncommonly clumsy during his sparring at times. Sword pommels to noses. Accidental strikes to the side of the head. Nothing that was provably intentional, or regular enough to draw notice.

He held her eyes with an odd sort of expression, completely alien to the usual scowl that was always present on his face, that mark of his ever-simmering temper that needed no excuse to explode.

Calm. Placid, even. There had been a shade of it when he'd lowered his hand that evening in the halls, nearly too quick to comprehend. But that sudden and deliberate calm was firmly present now, and sent a little crackle of anxiety down her spine as he stared at her, intent.

It was an effort to re-fix her focus on Cullen's match with Jerran, still watching Julian out of the corner of her eye.

An ill-timed thrust, Cullen slipping under his guard, Jerran's sword flying to the ground in a cloud of sawdust and swearing.

Staring, Staring.

Shaking hands— Jerran was always a good sport— retrieving swords. Another crackle of worry, watching Julian's hands flex on his knees as he prepared to come forward—

"Change of schedule, Ser Lux."

She looked up, blinking in surprise in the face of Samson's smirk.

"Samson?"

"No need to look so disappointed."

"No. I." Her eyes drifted over to Julian, again, who was speaking to someone— Ser Thrask it seemed like— with his usual scowl firmly back in place. "Nobody mentioned—"

"Very last minute change. Imagine my surprise," Samson said, waiting for her to turn her attention back to him before widening his eyes and putting a hand on his chest, "when I got told I had to spar today. Never do it if I can help it."

"But." A frown. "You should practice, Samson. You are a very good fighter."

"Love it when you say such sweet things, Ghost," he gestured her to her feet. "But I don't like the work, you should know that by now."

Rising, her eyes traced over his face, faintly puzzled but trusting.

"Unless. You get something out of it?"

Another sharp smile, shading to almost delight at the corners. The shadow of a dramatic bow, not enough to be too obvious to the onlookers, and he waved her ahead of him like he was escorting a noble lady into a ballroom.

"You're learning."

~~~~~

Textbook. They could use her for training manual illustrations.

Rolling out his shoulders, Samson started to circle, almost idly prodding at Lux's perfect defence as he considered how to throw the match without being too obvious about it, so he could get back to his life.

He could do exactly what Cullen had done, try to rush her and— a quick parry— get knocked onto his arse. And while it was tempting, that was as blatant a ploy to end the match as it got, because Samson didn't rush anything. Which meant he'd get pulled back to do three more of the bloody things.

Curse his reputation for preceding him.

Samson considered, letting the muscle memory of his feet take over to the beat of the practice swords thudding against one another.

Alternatively, instead of the both of them taking forever to wear each other down until one (him mostly likely) made a mistake, he could actually make the effort and try to catch her by surprise. What Cullen had attempted, but better. Less over-eager, with a little more thought.

She'd have been trained in a little hand-to-hand for emergencies, all of them had, but nobody expected to have to do it in the middle of sword sparring. That wasn't the done thing.

But not, technically, disallowed.

Sighting his opportunity, he pretended to rush her, forcing her to dodge out of the way, and 'losing his grip' on his sword in the process. Clearly having no choice but to resort to unarmed combat, he flipped around halfway into his forward rush, and tackled her around the waist.

She went down with a surprised little noise he'd never heard her make before.

Mental note: Find opportunities to hear that more often.

Perfect training kicking in a second too imperfectly late, she tried to buck him off, but he just secured his knees on either side of her legs, planting his palms beside her head, and grinned his best and most infuriating grin.

For a moment she stared up at him, big bright eyes just a bit too wide from him being just a bit too close.

"That," she managed between breaths, face flushed far too much to excuse on the exertion. "is allowed?"

"Everything's allowed until you get caught," he said, which immediately made her frown in disbelief. Hurtful, he'd delivered it with such confidence, too. But before she could rightfully call out how much that statement didn't make sense, he dipped his head towards her ear, his eternal stubble just grazing her cheek.

Oh yes, he'd seen her light up when Cullen had praised her.

You learn something new every day. A new favour to be gotten. A new way around an inconvenient rule. A weakness in a perfect defence.

"Very good," he murmured, biting back a quick laugh at the immediate exhalation of breath near his cheek, the surprised stiffening of her spine under his weight. Not uncomfortable, not objecting. He'd learned to read her well enough by now to know where those hazy lines she was trying to construct lay, and there was plenty of fun to be had without crossing them.

Even without looking he could see her staring up at the sky, wide and startled, pink as a sunset, and the bitten laughter rumbled from his chest into hers.

Maker, she made it so easy. But everyone liked things easy.

"The world won't play fair, Ghost," he added, pulling back enough to catch her eye and direct her focus. A more serious intent. A glance towards where Julian had been sitting, straining to get his hands on her. Who would not have knocked her down for a game, just to see her go red.

A friendly warning. A sight more gently than he'd intended to make it, which he wasn't going to examine even with a sword at his throat. It belonged in some drunken abyss where he couldn't remember the details, along with how warm she felt under him, the soft crop of hair against his cheek, the thought of her gasping in his ear if he—

Bloody hell, Samson, save it for the bunk.

With all the effort he'd put into smuggling Maddox's little love letters out of the tower, earning enough goodwill that the mage was happy to make him any infusion he wanted to take the edge off when the lyrium wasn't enough, Julian had somehow managed to blunder in exactly where he wasn't wanted. Not that he had any suspicions, you needed a brain for that, but the prick's lumbering around and pointed interference in what Maddox was up to had made it so much harder for Samson to get what he wanted.

So pissing Julian off was the only motivation Samson really needed. And if it saved her a broken nose and a trip to the infirmary, that was just a bonus.

"And now that they've seen it works on you, they're all going to try and play a little dirty. Not just the bastards you'd expect it from."

He waited for her to glance the same way, watching her eyes as they landed on Julian's empty seat and traced a wide arc along the other Templars, the surrounding noise finally breaking through their bubble of surprised silence. Watched her nod slowly, understanding, and then rolled off of her at last. Grabbing his sword, he smirked, gestured with an uncaring sort of disinterest to the crowd, and swanned off without looking back.

Chapter Text

He couldn't breathe.

The barrier under Cullen's hands sucked all the air from the room, except for what he kept desperately held in bursting, burning lungs. Whatever was in his body was still his. His, only as long as he could keep it there.

Screaming, still screaming. Or had it died away already, and he was only hearing echoes upon echoes rattling around the curved barrier walls? Cavernous in its reverberation but caved-in all around, boulders, pressing, keeping him on his knees and sobbing with pain that he could not think past, could not pray past, that none of his training could let him breathe past, because it wasn't real.

He felt like a child on the barest edges of escaping a nightmare, being told that things that were not real could not harm you, trying to explain to deaf ears how untrue that was.

Blood, seeping under the barrier as if it was not there, as if it did not cage him, pressing pressing. The screaming, steaming blood of his comrades, his charges. Children. Claws, reaching. Tugging at all the invisible strings in his mind that were real and not real, his hopes and his fears and his need for all of it to end, if he would just let it in please let me out

What will you give me?

On the cusp of anything. He might have given everything. Wondered every night since that moment—

Claws, reaching, pressing. Piercing the barrier, the flesh of his palm against it, a scream lost in the hundreds that already existed, wheeling in the round of his cage anything anything make it all stop—

Sweat and sea-salt, panic and pain, lungs devoid of air. Cullen clawed through the night air of Kirkwall, struggling to breathe, his heart still bursting back in Kinloch, his chest ragged and empty.

Two lantern-bright eyes appeared above him in the darkness so suddenly that if he wasn't still trying to breathe, he might have yelled in alarm. But he could not move, nor breathe, nor scream.

Back again to take me.

Let me out.

"Cullen." A voice, steady as a rock for a drowning man to cling to, barely audible past the hammering in his ears. A warmth around his trembling fingers, a warmth against his chest, holding back the clawing thing trying to escape. Solid. Real.

"Breathe."

I can't. I can't.

"Cullen. You are safe."

The ceiling of the barracks. The breathing of sleepers. A room full and alive.

Here. Not there. Now. Not then.

Air caught on the edge of his broken throat, and he shuddered under her hand.

The cage fell away.

"Breathe."

Filling his lungs, painful, full of splinters. A focused, furrowed brow shifting into clarity. Eyes that were no longer reflective and uncanny but human. Warm and alive and full of concern.

"Lux," he croaked out. Painful to speak, but he needed to hear his own voice in the world. Needed to be real. Needed to be here, not in some illusion. Not in Kinloch, not ever again.

"I am here."

He could build a fortress on that certainty. If there was nothing else in Thedas, there was this.

Climbing the rungs of her fingers until he was upright, the sea-breeze chilling his sweat, he came back to Kirkwall.

"You are alright?" she asked, her voice close in the silence, her eyes moons in the dark, and he could not let go of her hand.

If he let go, he would fall into the Waking Sea, and Kinloch, and the lake of blood.

"Cullen?"

"I didn't," he swallowed hard, eyes flicking around the room. "Realise I was so loud."

Night upon night, he'd managed to keep it quiet, burying his panic into the threadbare fabric of his pillow, heaving terrified silence. Don't be overheard. Don't be reported.

Damaged. Broken. Unfit for service.

What becomes of a broken Templar, when the kindness of the Chantry runs thin? He wouldn't be able to face going home. He—

"You were not loud." Voice, steadying. His eyes anchored back to hers. "I was already awake. You were distressed. I came to wake you."

"You—" He frowned. "Were awake? Why?"

Her eyes, always frank and direct, suddenly slid away from his to glance at the door.

"I was not tired."

Evenings of Wicked Grace, trying to prove somehow that Samson had extra cards up his sleeves, had not taught Cullen as much of the game as it had taught him this: she couldn't look at you if it wasn't the truth.

"Lux."

"How often?"

No. He let go of her anchor so abruptly that he had to steady himself on the sheets, nearly losing himself again, and cleared his throat in what he hoped was a 'everything is under control' sort of way. "We should go back to sleep before we wake anyone."

"Cullen." Why wouldn't she leave? Why did she have to keep hovering over his bed like the spectre of the nightmares he was trying to ignore?

"Go to bed."

Glaring at her did nothing whatsoever. She seemed to have no intention of getting tired and leaving, even if he turned his back to her and pretended to be asleep with her eyes boring into his back. The stones around them would run out of patience long before she would.

"Fine," he snapped quietly, kicking the sheet away from his legs and getting briefly, embarrassingly tangled. And she continued to loom, staring patiently, which didn't make the process any faster. "But not here. Will you turn around?"

A sharp nod, and she turned her back so he could exit his bed with a little more dignity, grabbing for a pair of breeches and loose tunic to regain the rest of it.

"Right," he whispered once he had more than his skin between them. Dragging both hands through his hair, he restrained himself only barely from grabbing his roots and hoping that if he tugged hard enough, he'd wake up and realise it was time for the morning drill. Not about to walk out the door to tell Lux anything about anything at all. "Outside, then?"

Maker, her silences could be terrifying. She nodded again, waiting for him to move first, as if he was going to dive out the window the moment she strode ahead. Not the worst idea, if he could get away with it. As if she'd let him get away with anything. Scowling a little, he led the way to the door and levered it open with extreme care, lest anyone else decide to know about his business.

The hallway was utterly silent as most of the Gallows breathed its uneasy sleep, but that was hardly privacy. Careful to avoid the night-watch's patrols, sparse as they were, they moved through the halls in search of some privacy.

"There's a old stock room on one of the upper floors," Cullen murmured half over his shoulder, rounding a corner he knew to be completely empty, and slamming directly into someone.

"Maker's b-" he began, startled.

"-ALLS," the shadow concluded, in a very distinctly Samson-shaped voice.

"Samson?"

"In the bruised flesh," he groaned, pressing a careful hand to his ribs. "What were you trying to tackle me down for, lad?"

"I thought nobody would be here," Cullen shot back, rolling out his shoulder.

"Right, there isn't supposed to be."

"You're here." Perhaps, Cullen thought with a faint hope, if they pretended that they'd been sent to look for him when he was discovered missing, they could simply go back, and this entire situation could remain where it belonged, in the deepest recesses of his extremely healthy subconscious thoughts.

"We are all here."

Cullen sighed. "Thank you, Lux."

Samson's eyebrows rose as he looked between the two of them slowly. And with the slow and deliberate care of the Mildly Inebriated, he jumped to a conclusion.

"Sneaking off to be alone?"

"Yes," said Lux, completely missing the implication that had smacked Cullen so suddenly red in the face.

"No!" he snapped quickly, before Samson's smirk could get too knowing. "Not like that, Samson. I just… needed some air."

"And she's here to…? Supervise your breathing?" Now he really was grinning, and Cullen wanted nothing more than for Kirkwall to collapse into the sea and take all of them with it. "A little mouth to mouth?"

"I said it's nothing like that," Cullen ground out as behind him, to Samson's delight, Lux started to go faintly red around the ears and nose with an 'oh' of realisation.

"Like the idea, Ghost? If he isn't interested, I could offer."

She blinked pinkly at him, formulating a response, and Cullen bit down the urge to respond to Samson with 'you'll do no such thing'. Lux was perfectly capable of drawing those lines for herself around a peer, should she want to.

It was difficult, with Samson's slanted implications that she had to work to understand. But she was learning, and Samson found endless joy making her practice. If she could get around him, she could get around anyone.

"No," she said finally, and Samson gave a good natured little shrug.

"Shame."

"Can we please—" Cullen's head was starting to ache again as he saw his future laid out before him like a vision. Lux wouldn't let him go back, and Samson wouldn't leave them alone, so the only way was forward, together. "— just find a quiet place to go?"

Of course Samson knew all the quiet places. And he insisted they stop by the kitchens to pick up some food. Neither of them were sure where he'd produced the bottle from, with all the showmanship of a street-corner con artist, but he seemed to have had it on him the entire time. And despite that, it wasn't even empty.

It was nearly pleasant. A quiet room with its tall, narrow window— a regular Gallows feature, letting in just a strip of moon-and-starlight across the stone floor, like a crack of hope in the darkness. Bread and cheese and a pot of something unidentifiable with a savoury smell that made Cullen's stomach rumble.A swig of whatever alcohol Samson had seen fit to choose, strong and terrible and relieving, loosening his tongue. Careful, still, not revealing too much. Nightmares, screaming. The worry of disturbance. That was enough.

Lux listened attentively. A little frown on her face, her shoulder pressed again his, as if she could keep him steady and present with her warmth, but didn't pry where he drifted away from the details. Samson listened, as always, with more attention than he actually displayed. The man had a knack for looking like he wasn't listening to anything with any amount of concern.

"Got to talk to the healer," Samson said finally, reaching across Cullen to grab the bottle. "Or the Knight-Commander, she'll set things up."

They both stared at this sudden show of support for the Knight-Commander's competence, but it was Cullen who spoke up first.

"You hate her."

"She's a bitch," Samson said with feeling as Lux blinked uncomfortably. "But she isn't stupid. She won't want to lose a Promising Young Templar."

Even well on his way to becoming half drunk, he managed to pronounce the capitals with clarity, along with his clear disdain for anything that Meredith considered Promising.

"Comforting," Cullen muttered. "You have more faith in her confidence in me than I do."

"You should have more," Lux declared as she waved the proffered bottle away with a little face, a new and amusing expression of disgust that Samson kept offering the bottle to her specifically to see. "You're worth retaining."

As if it was as simple as that. It was warming, that faith she had in him. A little alarming in its blindness, but warming, just where his heart needed it most.

"Thank you, Lux."

"You're not getting thrown out for a few nightmares, believe me." Warming to his topic, Samson shifted around to make himself more comfortable at the expense of Cullen, who now had to contend with a pair of legs slung heavily across his. "They'll move you somewhere so you can't wake everyone up, until they can get you set up with a schedule of sleeping draughts. Knock you right out until morning, it's good stuff."

"Speaking from experience, I'm sure."

Samson's smile grew ever more crooked, not even pretending to deny the accusation. "Seen it happen once. He even let me have his last dose. Didn't need it by then, and it was a shame to throw it out. Best night I've had in years."

"Maker, Samson," Cullen sighed. "Do you just drink anything someone puts in your hand?"

"At least once." Raising the bottle in a toast to nightmares and their futures, which might all be the same, he demonstrated by emptying it in short order. Glass tinkled almost merrily in the new, softer quiet as he set it back down. "And if I survive it, at least once more."

Shaking his head, Cullen smiled a little despite himself. "Because you know we're here to drag you back."

That got a sharp laugh, perhaps a little too loud for secrecy, but none of them cared in this moment as Cullen's shoulders shook with suppressed amusement, and Lux's eyes creased in that warm, tentative smile.

"Everyone likes someone reliable in their corner."

Of course they did. And at least for tonight, this corner was all theirs, the three of them. In their own little island of just themselves, there was peace, and full bellies, and warm shoulders against shoulders, and legs on legs.

Piled up together anyhow, like home, Cullen found it easier to breathe than when he was alone. Easier to talk about meaningless things, chuckling quietly and ignoring the darkness outside the door. On nightmare nights the hours often passed like days, an interminable loneliness while the world slept around him. But tonight, he wouldn't mind if the night lasted longer.

Samson was the first to fall asleep, half-slumped on the floor and snoring quietly, leaving the two of them in that blanketing, comfortable silence. He'd never dreamed that he could be comfortable in a silence with her, that there could be a silence that was theirs.

Blessings, great and small.

"Thank you," he said quietly. "For not asking in front of him."

She nodded, slow and careful. Soft. When had he ever thought she could be soft?

"Will you tell me?"

"Kinloch."

The word fell heavily between them, with all the weight of all the stones of their lost tower. The peaceful silence again a difficult one, full of boulders apt to crush them if they pressed too hard, delved too deep.

She did not respond, but nor did she look away as some did when the word crossed his lips, her eyes silver and concerned in the moonlight. Swallowing, he went on, hating how hoarse his voice sounded to his own ears, the memories closing around his throat again.

"I heard them say," he said instead. Anything to not open the door to what she was really asking. "That you ran back into the tower. They locked the door behind you."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"The children," she said simply. "The Tranquil. There were people to protect."

As easy as that? He frowned, the thumping in his ears a threat, but as yet a distant one.

"They might all have been dead. You could have been trapped."

"I would not know. Until I saw for myself."

So simple, as if the world operated on any rules, had any sense to it. As if blood mages and demons hadn't been waiting for exactly that kind of blind trust. He swallowed again, slow and a little painful.

"And did you?"

Bodies. Blood. Every face familiar, though they might never have looked at her twice. Her excellent memory would have readily provided every name to those faces as she ran through the tower, floor after floor. He had recognised enough himself, and still couldn't begin to fathom the clarity of that horror.

"Yes."

No elaboration, and perhaps that was best.

"Do you think of it, sometimes?"

"Yes," she said again, much quieter. "I think often about how I failed them."

He frowned at that, settling his hand over hers.

"Is that why you were awake tonight?"

Even as she looked away, he could see the lie line itself up in readiness on her tongue again.

I was not tired she had said. If that were even a little true, she would be holding his gaze with that steady intensity that he had grown so accustomed to.

"Please, Lux." A small and fragile plea. She did not owe him her trust, but he would like to have it all the same.

"A nightmare."

"Of Kinloch?"

"I am not. Sure," she said haltingly as she sought his gaze again. "I think of them, but I have never. I never remember dreaming. But it was. Dark. Corridors. Locked doors. And hands. Pulling. Holding."

He nodded slowly, not fully understanding, but wanting to calm the confused anxiety in her eyes. What else could it be but Kinloch? She'd run through those corridors again and again, had to contend with so many of those demons trying to ensnare her.

"It wasn't your fault, you know."

"You were not there." And how could one speak of anything they had not seen? Like the people in the Gallows who revelled in rumour, who had built an image of Cullen before he had even existed before their eyes.

"This isn't the same," he said softly. "I know you by now. You'd have done everything you could. I do believe that."

Belief. It had felt like a shaky idea of late, slipping rapidly through his fingers like sand no matter how desperately he tried to clutch at it. Prayers catching on the edges of his ragged throat, giving him little peace.

He was glad to find other avenues to that peace. Training harder in combat. Helping the Knight-Commander with orders and paperwork, his mind revelling in the responsibility, the organisation, that she continued to hand him more of. She seemed to understand that thrumming need under his skin for something reliable. Saw him, and gave him what he needed. Control. Peace.

To be seen was a wonder. He mused on that as steady silver eyes held him and held the darkness at bay. Just as lonely, just as in need of being seen… and he'd been such a fool at the start, treating her as a distraction, another avenue to his own peace.

"I'm sorry."

She blinked slowly, puzzled by this sudden shift in the conversation, and he nearly wanted to laugh at how unfair it all was, that one could be so insincere to her and she would never know. Perhaps it was best to pretend that he had always seen her with the honesty, the warmth, that he saw her with now. What did it matter if it was not real at first, she would probably say. It was real now.

"Never mind," he murmured, squeezing her hand carefully. "You're a good person, Lux. A good friend."

A little hesitant curl of a lip, as slow and wonderful as a sunrise, dual stars shining in the half-dark as they creased happily at the corners. And if he dreamed of that tonight, it would be a night much better spent.

Chapter Text

"You can be a good Templar without being much of a good person."

Samson always spoke with such confidence, as if he'd seen so much more of the world than either of them had, and understood more deeply the workings of it. The former was true, and though he spoke little about his upbringing in Kirkwall, it was obvious that he had worlds of experience beyond a farm boy from Honnleath an an isolated girl who was only just learning what her favourite foods were. The latter was… debatable. He understood the world and people, in his specific and cynical way, and had been right often enough to feel as though he was right forever.

But it was always confident, and he was more than happy to air the fruits of that confidence as they sat together, cleaning and polishing their swords.

"I don't understand," Lux said, for once not staring him dead in the eyes, utterly focused on her task with that terrifying precision of hers.

He grinned, gesturing to himself like a fine work of art. "Take it from me. I was a good Templar for Guylian once. Could do it again, like putting on a fresh tunic. Doesn't make me a good person. Never has."

She frowned at her sword, a wordless half-objection that made him snicker as he went on.

"Templar's a job like anything else. You can be good at your job and be a right piece of shit nobody likes."

"Like Julian," Cullen pointed out, reaching over Lux's shoulder to grab a fresh polishing rag.

"Julian's a bit shit at his job too," Samson mused thoughtfully. "Too angry. The other one… whatshisface. Vernhart. Does his job to the letter. Patrols, paperwork, saluting the officers, never seen him give a mage a clap around the ear. Full marks. But ask any Templar, even the decent ones, and they'd push him into the sea for free."

"But." She paused, still looking down at her sword but too confused to continue, as though she'd received conflicting instructions and had found herself trapped between them. "Those are not Templars."

She caught Samson shooting Cullen an amused look out of the corner of her eye, as if she was missing all the nuance of the matter. And the worst of it was that Cullen, though he didn't look amused in return, didn't contradict him.

It had become difficult to speak with Cullen about this point lately. The more time he spent doing tasks for the Knight-Commander, who had begun to send for him with increasing regularity, the more he and Lux seemed to deviate from one another.

Not on the point of cruelty. Cullen was a good man, and would never advocate for cruelty. He did not like the officers taking advantage of their position any more than the rest of them did, and had frowned deeply when she had haltingly, without taking any names, explained what she had seen with Karras and Julian. But the voice of the Knight-Commander and of his nightmares were powerful things, shoring up his existing certainty that undue kindness could not be afforded either. Dispassionate duty. Order and control. A Templar could do well, could do better, being that.

After all, he'd assured her, the Knight-Commander had kept Kirkwall away from the edge of ruin for years.

But it simply could not be. A true Templar was meant to do more than simply guard the doors and patrol the halls. Just as a good and true healer, she was sure, was meant to do more than simply shove an errant bone back into its socket and send you stumbling back onto your duty, though they might both have done what was required of them.

A young mage afraid of setting the sheets alight in their sleep should know that there was someone who would help them. To douse their fear as much as the flames. A Templar's armour was meant to be a shield for those behind them, not a fortress to protect only themselves.

Surely these were not such impossible ideals, that they could not exist in the world?

They can exist, Cullen had reminded her once. But nothing comes without risk. And in the Circle the risks are deadly. We saw all of them come to bear at Kinloch.

That, she could not deny.

And even in this, Kirkwall was different and worse than Kinloch had ever been. Standing at the back of one of the classes, alert and prepared to quell any errant magic in case the younger mages' practices should go out of control, she'd heard one of the senior enchanters speak of the long and bloody history of the city. Of slavery and pain and wickedness. The fragility of the Veil around such sorrow, and how demons pressed against it, so close together that they had no edges, blending into endlessness. How they whispered and tempted and promised, and how not all tragedies had wicked intents.

Sometimes, being too kind could have more and bloodier consequences.

In Kirkwall, it was said, the demons could reach for you through the veil whether you were a mage or not. But even if that was not true, the danger to the mages was real and present.

She was a not a child. She understood the burden of their duty. If a mage was possessed, if blood magic was leveraged to control bodies and minds, the entire circle was at risk, more than anywhere else. Kirkwall was waiting to fall, waiting for the Veil to stretch and tear. She knew well that there were checks and balances for good purpose.

It was not as simple as changing the world, and fixing the mistakes where and when they happened, because mistakes would be paid in blood.

But where in that vigilance were raised hands and dark corners, and quiet sobbing behind doors? Why were there no checks and balances for those? Mistakes less bloody, but no less wrong for that.

She knew why. Alain had told her not to tell for fear of Karras' fury. And when a child is quiet, the world assumes it is well, because it's easier than asking, and having to bear the burden of fixing what's broken.

Quiet. Unquestioning. Obedient. Bruises were mere accidents in darkened halls.

It takes only a cruel few, and an unthinking many.

And it was easier for her to criticise, who had not yet been worn low by this hideous, rasping edge of Kirkwall, that seemed always and always to say 'be afraid. Be afraid.'

The Templars who cared at all about their duty and had been here for years were exhausted, because it was a heavy and a grim duty. The lives of an entire circle. The threat of Annulment if they failed. And the weight of their belief, belief in their duty of care, brought them even lower.

To be blind seemed a kind of survival to many. To do the job. Not to believe in anything but orders.

Many of them, she was sure now, had not asked for this. Had not believed in the work. Had been placed in their positions because nobody else knew what to do with them, or because they were strong and followed well. They wanted only to see the next morning, a little less tired.

It did not excuse anything. But it explained much.

Then again, she had not wished to be a Templar either. Had not wished for anything. Been given no choice, was simply raw matter that had been shaped towards her Commander's ends. A tool, perfect for its use. But she did believe, which she didn't think been the goal. A weapon had no belief. Only a wielder, and the task for which it was shaped. Yet she believed in her duty to protect so strongly, so completely, that if she didn't have that faith she was sure there would be nothing of her at all.

There were enough ills and blindnesses that came with that as well. She had never been able to see Uldred, or his followers.

A good heart was not enough. No amount of good intentions had saved Kinloch.

She thought often about the girl who had wept, saying she was tired of eyes on her all the time, and wished that she had been able to understand what was behind it, that she had been able to protect her before she'd taken the blood into her hands to carve her way out. But thought in equal measure about the boy who was dead, laid low by one swipe of an abomination's claws. With warm laughter in his voice when he had asked her to fetch him a book from a high shelf, and who would never laugh again.

That the circle had not been annulled had been a miracle. It would be too much to hope that another miracle would happen.

Cullen believed in the work, Samson had pointed out once. Jumped right in with hero worship in his eyes, not raised by hand like cattle and sent off to slaughter. And look where believing got him. Screaming nightmares and jumping at shadows. If that's what belief gets you, you can keep it.

But he did believe. Whatever had happened to him, he believed even now. As much as they might have drifted apart in how to apply that duty, she was certain that he only wanted to prevent another Kinloch. He had chosen to stay, to give of himself whatever he thought would help.

She had no choice but to stay, and give everything.

Ser Thrask too had not chosen. The Chantry had decided his role, and he had been a good and obedient child and cleaved to its will. But he was a good man, and so put all of that into his work. What a Templar should be.

From the first day of their meeting, the older man had been a rarity in the Gallows, in that he had been kind to Lux. A rarity again, in that he cared for the mages under his charge despite the pain it might cause.

That he had never been promoted to anything beyond a mere Knight, passed over time and again by those much younger and less compassionate, was another strange failing of this place. The story (for the Gallows was full of stories, and tongues eager to air them) was that his swiftly rising star had been snuffed out with finality by Meredith's ascension to Knight-Commander, for the crime of not being the kind of Templar she demanded of the soldiers under her command.

"All the same story," Samson had said bitterly. "If Guylian liked you, Meredith'll have it out for you until your dying day."

But Samson, with his sly favours and coincidences that just happened to benefit him, with his sharp comments and 'harmless jokes', seemed almost to revel in the Knight-Commander's enmity. He had placed himself squarely into the role of the kind of Templar that no Knight-Commander would easily tolerate, and made a vicious game of seeing what he could get away with without being caught.

Ser Thrask had no such ambitions. He continued as he had always done: kind, moderate, and compassionate wherever his limited power would allow. That this was unfit, even unacceptable, in the eyes of the Gallows was another tiring weight on Lux's spirit.

It had been easier in Kinloch. The strangling ivy was a sparse danger more easily pruned. The soldiers more willing to report, the officers more willing to listen.

Here, it had so efficiently encircled the throat of what was correct that it threatened to rob Lux of her voice as well.

But Ser Thrask did not falter, which was a worthy lightness. And in the way that light calls to light, he had seen her try. Struggling for meaning, both within herself and without, in the stones of what was meant to be her home and her calling.

"People say he has a daughter he barely ever speaks to," someone had said. Who knew if anything echoed in the Gallows rang true? He certainly never mentioned it, and Lux had not understood how to ask. But she grew more secure around him. Came to him more and more with the puzzled questions of life that a child would have for a parent (This is correct? This is normal? I am not broken?), and he would look at her with the strangest sort of sadness in his smile.

More and more, clutching at the hand he had extended to her with a odd desperation. As though she had been missing something vital that was now being granted to her.

Her Commander had never been a father. She wasn't sure what a father was meant to be. And the adults at Kinloch had taken her silence as a gift, giving her only as much instruction as was required for their ends. Confident, always, that she would obey. What more did they need from a child than obedience?

Questions, doubts; she had expressed none, she had been granted none, and now they ate at her as she struggled to find ways to release them. Cullen listened, kind, sympathetic, but had little to say, his own doubts overriding; his own thoughts, more and more, at discomfiting odds with hers. Samson only scoffed, and told her not to twist herself up in knots over what would never change.

Ser Thrask saw her try. Saw her tire and refuse to falter. And despite her failure, despite her doubts, did not draw back his hand.

"We have to try and change things from the inside," he'd told her, his voice holding none of that much-too-softness that Alrik's had, that seemed to pull you under like a clinging bog. "We will, Lux. We must hold. It is difficult, and it hurts, but that proves you have a heart. So we hold, for the ones who can't."

Whatever happened then, we must hold now. Whatever happens after, we must hold today.

His assurances, his convictions, were warm grass underfoot. Soft but not arresting, and she had nodded intently, holding them her to her heart like a child in the darkness beset by monsters.

But very few understood the simplicity of 'those are not Templars.'

"You would say that," Samson said in the present, grinning like he'd lighted on the world's finest joke, as Cullen shook his head and bumped him with his shoulder.

Lux had had it drilled into her bones to maintain her weapons, and had done so with no particular love or hate, with the same flat sense of duty that she applied to so many things. In the Duty, the world fell away, and there was only the doing. It kept away fear, and doubt, and regret, and all of the thousand little creeping weaknesses that her Commander had ultimately failed to remove from her. Or perhaps he had been successful, and she had failed by opening herself to them again.

But by opening herself, she also welcomed light. Warmth. Not that any of it mattered, when little of either had been offered before now.

Now. Now was… good. Not all of now, but this particular now, in this little room with the heavy, sharp scent of armour polish, the warmth of other bodies, the sounds of other voices, and the sword still in her hands. Company and conversation had come to make the work enjoyable. Cullen and Samson were not sat beside her out of assignment or obligation.

It was a choice to be present. To allow her to be more than hands completing a task.

Samson waved a greased rag in her direction, encompassing her whole being as he elaborated on his point. "Your whole personality is 'Templar'."

He snickered as Lux's back straightened and her shoulders turned to focus completely on him, looking mildly puzzled.

"That is not true."

His eyebrows went up in immediate theatrical surprise. "Oh, she's got answers."

"I enjoy. Reading," she went on a little hesitantly, flicking her eyes briefly to Cullen, who gave her an encouraging nod. That, they'd learned to Samson's extreme amusement, was something she'd discovered in Kinloch, creating a comically methodical list of hobbies to try with the utmost focus. "And. Woodcarving. And the colour green."

"And horses," Cullen murmured, earning a sharp look from Samson that he studiously tried to ignore.

"Well someone's been paying close attention."

"I'm holding a sword, Samson."

"And a shit job you're doing of it too."

"And dogs," Lux said suddenly, and Samson laughed, thankfully sliding his focus away from a sternly flustered Cullen to smirk at her again.

"Maker, yes. How could we forget about dogs. Specifically, the dog?" he said in pointed amusement, always too quick, too ready to slip past her defences. "Your one guilty little secret."

She shifted slightly, like she'd truly been caught in the act of doing something terrible, and immediately chose to busy herself with her sword again rather than face Samson's chuckling.

Chapter Text

The Dog was a filthy, tiny thing with enough sense to creep its way onto the ferry to the Gallows without anyone noticing, but not enough to get back. Stranded in an unfamiliar land, it had retreated to a quiet corner far away from patrolling boots and sparring practices.

Lux seemed to have a knack for quiet corners. Purposeful, perhaps, because those out-of-the-way corners always needed an eye being kept on them, in case hidden ills were happening in them away from the public eye.

Nobody thought to ask her where she was going with a pair of old tunics, a rag, and a small tub of hot water. If she wanted to do some laundry out in the sun, that was her business.

But if Samson happened to be wandering nearby, well that was sheer happy coincidence, just as he was always very coincidentally right where someone might need him.

Always right there when Maddox needed a letter sent. It was mad that the boy couldn't send a few soppy letters himself, for the sin of being a mage. What was Meredith afraid of, that Maddox'd decide to throw it all to the winds for love and attempt a breakout?

Young love wasn't that desperate and suicidal, not even in Kirkwall. Not when Meredith had been starting to threaten every punishment under the sun for what she called 'Dangerously Subversive Activity.' A fun phrase, that was deliberately vague enough to cover anything she liked.

But what Meredith didn't know wouldn't kill her, despite all the things that should. And Maddox was grateful. Samson always liked gratitude, it got you so many little things you didn't have to ask too loudly for yourself, like it was their idea to begin with.

Pocket warm with another token of gratitude, he could say he'd been looking for a quiet corner to indulge, that he had just happened to see. But the truth, as it always was, was that he'd seen her walking with her curious accessories, and liked to make everyone's business his own. At first he'd thought it was some dutiful work. Her hobbies were small, hesitant things, a foal still learning to walk, and she had no interesting secrets to speak of. But Roderick, who she was meant to be partnered with today, didn't seem like he was quite senile enough for a rag-and-water bath.

With how the lyrium had burned a hole right through his brain, it probably wouldn't be long before he forgot how to dress himself. Remembered most of his duties though. Drilled into the bone. The Chantry didn't need brains in their Templars when the body kept going.

Roderick had stared blearily at him when he'd asked where she was going, his head swaying as if he was expecting someone to suddenly appear next to them. "Who?"

"Ser Lux. Really tall. Stares a lot. Looks like the Maker forgot to colour her in."

A vivid description if he said so himself. But the man was worse than useless.

And so, curiosity unsated, Samson had just happened to wander out into the fresh air. Propping himself against a wall, enjoying a moment in the rare warm sunlight and well out of her view, he continued to happen to be there.

The pup submitted to the indignity of being bathed with surprisingly quiet whimpers, seeming to understand that this was no kind place to be caught. Under layers of mud and filth and judicious but gentle scrubbing, it finally emerged as soft and pale as her own hair, earning a delighted sound from her, nearly inaudible even in the quiet. Another one he'd never heard before, and maybe he felt a little selfish joy at the fact that Cullen must never have heard it either.

Maker's blood, she was making it a nest with her own tunics to keep away the chill from the stones at night. Making an exasperated noise at her little project, though where it came from who could say, he made his arrival on the scene a decently noisy one so she wouldn't be caught off-guard.

She looked up, eyes flashing with fear, and just as quickly melting with relief when she saw it was him. True, he was a prettier sight than, say, Alrik, who seemed to be everywhere, especially when Lux was concerned, the same way that Meredith seemed to know everything Cullen was doing.

Personally, Samson wouldn't want to be an officer's pet for any money, but that was the Golden Boy and Girl of the Gallows for you. Probably thrived on it; they'd be making Knight-Corporals and then Lieutenants before he knew where he was, and then maybe he could hate their dutifulness properly, without the memories of laughing around the card table getting in the way.

More likely they'd never get promoted. Horror of horrors, they'd probably end up being the kind of officers the Gallows actually needed. Like Thrask, who should have been Knight-Captain twice over. Just wasn't enough of a bastard to hang on while the others dragged him back under them and ground him down.

Just as well. He liked them much better around his table than behind Meredith's authority.

Squatting to scratch the puppy under its chin, he scoffed in amusement as it responded with a huff that was bigger than its entire body, sending it off balance.

"Dumb little things, aren't they?" he remarked, glancing at Lux with an expression she couldn't quite read. "Give 'em a little kindness and they'll follow you anywhere."

"They are loyal." Huffing over Samson's fingers again, it trotted over to Lux with great ceremony and proceeded to trip over some invisible, most wicked object, tumbling directly into her lap with a yelp of alarm. A smile lit up her face like sudden lightning, there and gone again as she curled her hands carefully around it, her touch gentle and nearly afraid. "You are unharmed."

The puppy hardly seemed to think so, looking up at her with large and reproachful eyes that, for a brief instant, held her entire world.

"Loyal's got nothing to do with being smart. Or good." He gestured vaguely to the Gallows looming behind them, even though she wasn't looking at him at all. Meredith and her lackeys. Loyal to her to the bitter, bloody end. "If you're loyal to the wrong person, they could make you do anything."

"Unless it's wrong to do."

Samson' snort was a loud, explosive thing that made the puppy burrow further into her hands.

"How could I forget. You always want to do the right thing. Dumb as your little friend here."

She frowned a little, softly stroking the pup's head. "Right is important."

Samson didn't dignify that with a reply, still watching her, reading some secret text only he could see.

"Going to try and take it with you? Can't hide it or keep it quiet."

"No." It does not belong here. It should be somewhere far away, where it can breathe. To do anything else would be cruel.

"But you want to."

"Yes." Maker, yes, she wanted this perfect, warm, soft little thing that was not afraid of her, that did not have to fear secret cruelties behind her kindness, that would not use her loyalty as entertainment. "But I will not. It must go back to the main city and I. Will try to find it some home."

He just shrugged, as if it was all the same to him, as if he didn't understand that nothing belonged here that was meant to thrive. It yawned with all its mighty, fierce little teeth, and nudged her hand again.

"Hello," she whispered to it, her heart quaking.

"Naming it?"

"I will not keep it."

"Got nothing to do with keeping it. Name's a quick way to make it feel like it's special, Ghost." Another grin, a joke she wasn't quite getting. "You want it to like you until you're done with it, don't you?"

Her frown was immediate, just as expected. "That sounds cruel."

"Poor phrasing," he said, raising his hands in contrition. "But you want it to like you. And knowing you, you'll get attached the second you name it, and it'll break both your hearts."

"Names are," she sighted around for an appropriate word, though he didn't know why she bothered when she always inevitably settled on, "good. Everything deserves a name."

"Always so ready to get hurt." He snorted again, rising to his feet. "Still can't figure out if that's courage or stupidity."

She blinked up at him, the puppy almost entirely gathered into her arms like it was anchoring her to the world, then looked down at it again with an air of decision.

"Courage."

He made another noise of exasperation, excavated deep from the soul he was surprised he still had. No wonder Cullen was always sighing.

Courage. Exactly what nobody could afford, which she wore on her breast like a child who'd never seen the world in her life.

"Of course."

"You don't like it."

"Does it matter?"

Maybe it was a trick of a light, but he'd like to think there was something almost amused about the way she looked up at him for a long, searching moment, the faintest curve to her lips, before saying: "No."

But for all of that, it had still taken a fortnight before she had leave to go into the city.

"They're saying," they overheard as Lux quietly scraped some food off of her plate, Cullen helpfully picking out any food a dog would not be able to stomach, and Samson less than helpfully asking how she'd spent her whole life in Ferelden without knowing a thing about dogs, "that there's another Blight starting across the Waking Sea."

"Andraste's tits, as if we don't have enough to worry about," grumbled a slightly younger and much more pleasant voice that she knew to be Ser Galen. Lux kept her eyes on her plate, not wanting to draw any attention to her little act of thievery. Surely it wasn't really thievery. There was no rule as to what she did with the scraps on her plate. But there would be questions that it would be best not to answer.

"Refugees pouring in at the docks, and more to come you mark my words." The first voice— Ser Vernhart, always pleased to be at the centre of a rumour— dropped into a half-whisper, not low enough to be unheard by everyone who wanted to listen, simply low enough to pretend at secrecy. "And plenty of apostates and criminals, like as not."

"The Knight-Commander hasn't sent anyone down there to keep order?" One of the recruits' voices piped up. Margitte? Young, eager, entirely drawn in by this apparently confidential conversation.

"Of course she has, girl," Ser Vernhart went on, with as much authority as thought he'd seen it himself. "The Knight-Commander's already locking the city down. Sat the Viscount down and told him his job. Nobody gets into the city proper unless they have," a pause, a laugh. "Legitimate business."

Ser Morris, older and rougher and more cynical, rumbled something that might have been laughter, or might have been displeasure, it was impossible to say with him. "And how much coin is legitimate business going for, these days? Can't be cheap."

"It's early days. You can bet the price'll keep going up."

Early days. Early days of more paperwork piled on Cullen's shoulders, eager for order and responsibility to keep the fears of himself and the Gallows at bay. Early days of longer duties and less leave, unless it was to patrol or to investigate reports of blood magic.

The early days of the city, swelling full with the tide of Ferelden's poor, beginning to sicken. The Knight-Commander had made it clear that she suspected it would only become more difficult, and the stricter routines were to reinforce greater discipline and alertness.

"There will be no time for leisure soon enough", she'd said grimly to Cullen, who'd nodded, his back as straight as the tower itself. Whatever the Blight would bring, The Templars would bear it. The City and the Circle would hold.

A fortnight of a hammering heart as Lux silently bore and completed each longer bout of duty, wondering if the puppy would still be whole and safe when she reached it. Filling handkerchiefs with scraps of food from their plates and wondering if she would be questioned. But the Maker had watched over her. Alrik's eternal gaze seemed absent, and Karras's rage was directed to other halls. There was no need for the cover of darkness, only the Gallows' general disinterest in anything Lux was ever doing, as long as she did what she was told.

Quiet children saw and heard much much. And quiet children could do much without question.

By sheer and complete coincidence, Samson and Cullen had been assigned time off as well, though by rights they should not have, with the slowly increasing burden of vigilance. Cullen had remarked on it. Samson airily commented something about the hand of the Maker in a particular way that made Cullen glower at him, and look as if he was about to march back inside.

But Lux had already lifted Courage, half wrapping her in her cloak, and he paused. Looking first at one pair of large eyes and then the other, Cullen heaved a sigh, clearly feeling his own fatigue heavy around his shoulders.

"I'm certainly not going to leave you to Samson out in the city," he said, to which Samson looked much more amused than offended, play-acting his disappointment at having his wicked ways curtailed.

They'd both come with her, one shoulder or the other shielding the wriggling bundle from a ferryman who, she'd been told, wasn't paid enough to care what Templars did when they weren't on duty.

"Got to drop it off just before we leave, or it'll be after you the whole time we're walking around," Samson pointed out, and she held it closer as it yipped happily, seeming to understand every word.

A few hours at least. Samson and Cullen would want a drink. They could look at the markets. There was time. She must have looked pleased, because Cullen gave her a smile that settled inside her ribs as he leaned in to scratch Courage under her chin. And then, as one, they ventured into the city proper.

The eyes of the city were as that of the Gallows, magnified a hundredfold, and had certainly seen them step off of the ferry. In their armour and duty, those eyes would mark them, their purpose, their routes. Known in ways they did not know the people of the city, unless like Samson one had been born and breathed and bled here. For Cullen, for Lux, their patrols had had felt very like their first few days at the Gallows. Unbalanced, threatening, but never tipping into trouble. Even then, the stipend that the rank and file were given to keep themselves busy was as good money as anyone's, and the merchants and entertainments were only too glad to solicit it. The cutpurses and beggars only too glad to eye it. So as long as Templars minded their business, Kirkwall would mind its own.

But as they set out into the heaving crowds and winding streets of the city itself, feeling the sea-air against skin rather than metal, it almost felt like they were not soldiers at all. The city absorbed them, unnoticed, as it did everything. Allowed them to wander, to marvel over little wares from Orzammar, Nevarra, Antiva, Orlais, and try every strange thing that Samson thrust at them from a streetside vendor of dubious repute.

Lux would have liked to say she had forgotten why she'd come to the city to begin with, but she hadn't been born with the blessing of forgetfulness. Hours, passing like minutes, heavy in her hands, until it was too late.

"Lux?" Cullen asked carefully, putting a hand on her shoulder as she stood frozen in place, the sunset beautiful and cruel at their backs.

"I. Do not." She swallowed slowly, holding the little thing closer to her chest as she nuzzled against her.

He frowned slightly as he watched her face for a long moment. Searching for the information she couldn't express, and had no idea how to communicate.

"You're trying to help it the only way you can," he said, his tone still careful, still searching. She didn't mean to be difficult to understand. "You can't do more."

"Thinking about what happened to you?" Samson put in with unerring, uncomfortable, unwanted precision, and she didn't meet his eyes as she nodded.

Had they hesitated at all, before they left her on the Chantry steps? Did they look back as they left? Did they wonder…

"Will she be safe?" she said to the cobblestones, and they had no reply.

"Don't know." Samson shrugged, and Cullen, painfully, said nothing to contradict him. "Safer than the Gallows?"

She nodded firmly. Of that she was sure. It would be an uncertain life on the streets, but it would be a life.

Another shrug, as if it was all the same, and none of it truly mattered. "Best you can do."

"Better leave her near the Hanged Man," Cullen suggested. A kindness, to give her some direction. "There's always some dropped food, or a drunk feeling charitable."

"Or feeling like kicking a stray."

"Samson," Cullen said sharply.

The other man raised his hands with no remorse whatsoever, keeping an extremely pointed silence (pointed enough that even Lux noticed) until they reached a corner near the back door of the tavern. Kneeling again, feeling Courage burrow back into her hands and take up her entire world again.

"Hold, Courage," she said quietly as she rose to her feet, her hands already so cold from the loss of the little beating heart in its perfection.

Just as had Samson predicted, she felt her own heart break.

Good. Better than walking past, secure under her plate. To care for nothing and to risk nothing. To suffer nothing, not even for the sake of those who could not bear that suffering.

A reminder that if broke, it mean she still had a heart after all.

Chapter Text

Lux had been delighted for Cullen when he'd told them about his impending promotion, pale eyes lighting up so suddenly that he couldn't help but smile. For all that expressionless expanse of her face, now and then rippling gently with fresh understanding of how to display her feelings, her eyes were always lively. Something her so-called Commander had not succeeded in taking away from her.

He wondered if it had angered the man, the knowledge that he had not managed to hollow her out completely for his purposes. Or had he simply not looked closely enough to notice that tiny remainder of life, and considered himself triumphant?

The power of authority, wielded in all the wrong ways. The responsibility of care, completely neglected.

But now, here, this was exactly what they had hoped for. A Knight-Captain who could keep the Lieutenants in check. Who would see to the fair and stable running of the Gallows. Someone who wanted to do some good, finally in a position to do so.

Cullen and Lux's ideas of what was fair and what was permissible had deviated in ways that neither of them felt comfortable discussing, wanting too much of each other's company and fearing the shadow a potential argument would bring. But in the face of this happiness, all of that simply fell away, and they were at the table again on those first few days, younger and afraid but together. Aligned.

And she trusted him. Had always trusted that he would do what was right.

Samson had simply smirked in that way that implied it knew more about what Cullen was thinking than he did; the kind that seemed precisely keyed to tick Cullen off.

"Finally get to be a big man. Just what you wanted from the start."

The sharp edge of Samson's wit had been laid squarely against Cullen's neck since the news. Not aggressive, but certainly nothing entirely friendly. It was no secret that he hadn't liked Cullen's increasing work for the Knight-Commander, who had come to value his skill for organisation and logistics, and Samson had dropped more than a few 'playful' barbs into conversation about Cullen's desperate bid for rank and authority, as if he was just like the others.

The sense of control gave him security, it was true. But he didn't revel in it. He wasn't… it wasn't going to be like the others. He meant to take his responsibility seriously. To be what an officer should.

But telling Samson that had made no difference. He'd just shot back with a 'That's what they all probably told her'. And perhaps it was childish, but it hurt Cullen to know that he had so little faith in him.

"No offense boyo." Samson grinned crookedly as Cullen slowly moved his meagre belongings to a box, on the Knight-Commander's suggestion that he be installed in his office and quarters the day before his official promotion. "I believe in myself. Don't have room to believe in anything else."

A terrible way to live. And he knew that saying that would open up more opportunities for that edge at his neck. He'd rather not lose his last day in the barracks to the argument that Samson was so hungry for.

After a moment of silence, Samson volunteered an effort to keep the atmosphere a little lighter. "You'll get first crack at all the dirty books. Don't forget to share the wealth, eh?"

Circle libraries were not precisely bastions of high art and literature. Beyond the minimum requirement of educational arcane texts, nobody from on high seemed to care what filled up the rest of the shelves. Of course, the officers and the senior enchanters were in charge of looking over anything that entered the Circles, to ensure it didn't contain any seditious or forbidden or, Maker have mercy, scandalous material. Anything deemed too magically dangerous was, in theory, disposed of by the senior enchanters, and anything too saucy was handled by the officers. More realistically, both types of material would simply end up in various private quarters under dour brown covers.

Knight-Commander Greagoir had been quite permissive about the more physically stimulating reading material, a leniency had trickled down to all but the most unpleasant officers. Permissive, provided there was no overt display of it that he'd have to explain to a tutting Chantry sister. They never seemed to understand that a few raunchy books were infinitely preferable to bored young mages and soldiers seeking other forms of excitement, and that none of that energy could be simply 'prayed away with due diligence and faith'.

But even in this the Gallows had the air of a prison, particularly with the Knight-Commander's new emphasis on discipline. Discipline meant setting an example for the people of the city, which meant no partaking of the Blooming Rose's intimate services, cautious visits to the Hanged Man, if any at all, and absolutely no pornographic literature or illustrations of any kind.

It had entirely failed to lead to more disciplined soldiers, but it had made them very aware of supply and demand. A real merchant sensibility had begun to thrive in the rank and file.

Cullen just shook his head seriously, pretending that he wasn't hiding a smile as he re-folded a tunic for what felt like the fifth time. "What's a dirty picture going for these days?"

Folding his arms, Samson leaned against the wall with a thoughtful hum. "Two rounds of night watch."

"Two? Just for a picture?"

"Tough market. Ser Arselick's snapping up every scrap of paper that comes in, letters and all."

"The letters need to be checked. It's just a formality."

"You know he's keeping them, to make people come and beg him for them."

"There's no proof of that, Samson," Cullen said sternly, less concerned about trusting to rumour and more about what would happen to Samson if he was caught spreading them, along with his new epithets for the Knight-Lieutenant.

Samson, as always, simply shrugged like he wasn't already in trouble and on half their usual allotment of lyrium, which was probably contributing to his creativity. It was an incredibly expressive shrug, that said a lot about his opinion on Cullen expecting proof to just fall into his lap, and a lot more about how it was frankly none of his business.

"A pamphlet could probably get me a whole sennight off," he said, getting back to the point.

"Well I certainly won't be giving any of them to you, Samson."

"Ah, a bastard like all the rest," Samson shot back without much edge, and Cullen was glad for it. "A delaying bastard, no less."

Right. Of course he'd noticed the nervous folding and unfolding. Cullen made an agonised noise as Samson just grabbed the fabric from him, chucking it into the top of the box in an untidy heap, and then shoved the whole thing in his arms.

"You've got until sunset."

Two rapid changes of conversation was two too many after a long day, and Cullen stared at him blankly until Samson scoffed.

"Officership really does make you brainless doesn't it? You, me, Ghost. The Hanged Man, to drink to your bloody promotion." So saying, and smacking him roundly in the centre of the shoulders, Samson sent Cullen stumbling into the hall like a confused cow wandering into the village square.

It only occurred to him on the way to his new quarters, that Samson had been very sure that the three of them had been given leave at the same time again.

The hand of the Maker indeed.

He really should look into it. Samson couldn't keep having these coincidences for his own convenience.

Then again, what was one last night, before looking into it actively became his responsibility?

"Captain Rutherford."

Hand still on the handle to his door, he looked up into the rather forbidding face of Ser Emeric. A good man, who had been here a lot longer than he had. Conscientious with his work, even if the years of lyrium had made him a little jumpy.

"Ser Emeric," he said with a nod of deference. "I'm not quite Captain yet."

"You're planning to head into the city."

"Yes." He didn't question how the man had heard. The halls of the Gallows echoed whenever they felt like it, broadcasting glimmers of information and completely swallowing the rest.

Ser Emeric's eyes flicked down the corridor before fixing on his again, a muscle working faintly in his jaw.

"Mharen still isn't back. It's been a fortnight now."

Cullen bit back a sigh. "Ser Emeric, Mharen is Harrowed mage, and a very responsible one. First Enchanter Orsino has given her work to do in the city. We know this."

"And I haven't seen her anywhere. Not anywhere," he insisted, as Cullen finally swung the door open and strode inside to set the box on the bed.

"There's no evidence that there's anyone targeting women in Kirkwall." Keeping his voice steady and reasonable, Cullen wondered at the connection between his going out and Emeric's theory of Mharen's disappearance, trying to follow his train of thought.

"But you're planning to head into the city."

Ah.

"Ser Lux—"

"Yes."

"— is not going alone," he said calmly, trying to ignore the palpable relief in Ser Emeric's voice at having his fears understood. "Will not be left alone. In any case, she towers over most people. Someone like that is hard to lose in a crowd."

A logical argument, but on his worst days, Ser Emeric could not see logic beyond the shadowed corners of his own mind.

Methodical, detailed, excellent at the kind of logistics that kept a building full of soldiers functioning. Stubborn about missing details and reports. He could easily have been made Knight-Captain in Cullen's place, had the lyrium not turned it all against him.

And it was difficult, face to face with his future, not to think about what a Templar's duty had in store for all of them. Unpleasant to realise that the only real difference between him and Emeric was the inevitability of years.

It would come for all of them differently, at different times. But what young Templar didn't see the members of the old guard that were hale and hearty still, and fool themselves into hoping that they too could keep it at bay?

What young Templar didn't hope, in their heart of hearts, that while it must happen to them, it might never happen at all?

Emeric's bouts of paranoia, still relatively mild, were at least preferable to seeing Ser Roderick in the halls. Another decent fellow, with a long history of fine work behind him, but the lyrium had left him permanently confused and forgetful, with a drunken sort of stagger as he marched about on duties that he could still manage.

Where else could he go, anyway? Who else would take what was left of him?

What, indeed, would become of any of them, when they were no longer of use?

That was a fear for later, for never. He was blessed, because he would have more than enough duties to drown it all out.

Still, in the wake of shaking Emeric's hand from his arm and his irrational fears from his mind, with a promise of Yes, you'll see her tomorrow, there is no danger, and Mharen will return, of course she will, his new quarters felt much too quiet. He had become too used to the quiet breathing around him.

In here, he could likely scream in the depth of a nightmare, and it would bother nobody. Nobody would care at all.

Before the idea of nobody could settle too heavily on his mind, he shook his head sharply and strode to the old Knight-Captain's office, too long empty of late, only to find the Knight-Commander's assistant waiting placidly for him at the door with an armful of books. So this was the future of an officer, people waiting to give him responsibility wherever he turned.

"Knight-Captain Rutherford." Her voice was level and calm, with no indication at all of how long she might have been waiting for him. That was how all the Tranquil were. Eerily calm, with a straight line of logic in both thought and action. It put him so much in mind of Lux, a connection that the other Templars had noticed as well, and had plenty of unkind things to say about.

He pushed down the little thought of how much more alone she would be now. How he would miss sharing a table with her and Samson. But an officer was not really meant to have friends among the soldiers. It ran risk of favouritism, and exactly the kind of leverage someone like Samson would love to take advantage of.

"Elsa," he said with a nod. "I'm not Captain until tomorrow."

A steady, implacable gaze followed him as he opened the door and gestured for her to go before him, but she simply shook her head, handing him her burden. "In the Knight-Commander's eyes, you are ready."

It would not do to show how touched he was by the Knight-Commander's faith in him, or how it sent a little crackle of worry down his spine at the need to prove himself worthy of it. Nodding sharply, he strode forward and heard her shut the door behind him. How heavy it sounded, how final, closing him in with the quiet. With his new rank and responsibility.

Ready.

By the Maker. He truly hoped he was.

Chapter Text

What playfulness Samson had displayed that morning had nearly evaporated by the evening.

By his own admission he had grown too sharp by the difficulty of the day and was impatient to dull it with drink, and had led the way almost directly to the Hanged Man, except for stopping at every street stall on the way. He had previously begun a long and only partially successful mission of convincing Cullen to partake of various unidentifiable things, and continued his task with a will as Lux let her eyes wander. Observing. Taking in the busy streets and the weight of the air, heavy with the scents of the market.

Rosemary. Leather. Fish. Something warm and savoury sizzling in the air. Something sweet, spilled from an errant bottle and wasted onto the cobblestones, a tragedy of the jostling crowds.

A sharp, metallic smell that should not have belonged here.

Blood. Faint but distinct, curling around the corner of an alleyway like some grim invitation. It caught her nose and removed room for any other scents or senses, focusing all her attention upon it in its lack of belonging. Too far from a slaughterhouse. It was not correct.

Someone hurt?

Ignoring the sharp hiss of Lux behind her, unarmoured and unarmed, she strode into the darkness. Into heavy silence, the market now sounding a world away.

"I'm not saying I believe old Emeric about some blood mage offing women in the streets, but—" Samson's voice, close enough to know that they had followed her in.

The edge of an arm, just barely catching the light. A man— no, young, practically a boy, she could see that as her eyes slowly adjusted to the deeper gloom— who was no danger to anyone. Still. Stiff. Barely visible in the gathering shadow, as behind them the city continued on unaware.

"Poor bastard," Samson muttered under his breath, and she felt both men crowd in around her shoulders. Cullen's startled breath against the side of her head. "Let's go, before we're next."

"He might still be alive," Lux said, barely aware of how Samson tried and failed to tug at her elbow.

"Good for him. What in the Void did the Maker build you out of—"

The boy had no shoes. Even in the shadow his feet were filthy. He had had no fine boots to take. No fine clothes. No belt to hang a pouch from. No pockets in threadbare clothes to hold money.

What could anyone have possibly wanted?

Behind her again, a bitten off curse as she moved forward, fingers slipping from her arm. A lake of red soaking into one knee as she carefully lowered herself to try and find the boy's pulse.

"Maker's breath." Cullen's voice was quiet, his nearing shadow falling over them both as she waited. "There's so much blood."

No visible weapons. One wound. Deep. Messy. A filthy alley, in a filthy part of Lowtown. Stitches and bandaging would not be enough.

The barest whisper of a heart.

"Alive."

"Oh praise the Maker," Samson's voice drawled not particularly sincerely. Impatient. Further away. Given up on dealing with either of them, and lingering on the street instead.

At least he hasn't left, the thought rose unbidden in her mind. That's a kindness.

Cullen stepped even closer, and Lux looked up immediately at the sound of his tread, feeling again the fear of being caught, of reprimand. Silhouetted by the slanting moonlight behind him, his shadow standing tall against the opposite wall, for a moment she was suspended between two identical darknesses, unable to read his expression as he reached for her shoulder.

"He needs a healer," she insisted, watching his hand with a flicker of caution. But Cullen didn't try to pull her away or admonish her. He simply touched her shoulder, waiting like a shield.

"He needs five minutes and a shallow grave," came Samson's voice again as she rose with the boy in her arms. Too light for his size. Cold. Nothing like the too-warm blood that immediately stuck her to shirt. A sharp turn put her face to distant face with Samson, who stood with his arms folded, leaning against the corner of brick that separated them from the life of the market. Light catching on the edges of another unreadable expression.

"It's city guard business," he reminded her. Not once did he even spare the boy a glance, flicking dark, tired eyes to hers before directing his attention to the market itself. The wait, the risk, was weighing on him, sharpening both his irritation and exhaustion, and he made no effort to hide either from her. "They won't thank you for interfering."

She held the boy tighter, a single line of stubbornness tightening her jaw. Samson snorted.

"Nobody's taking your stray away from you."

"He's right," Cullen pointed out sensibly. "We do have to take him to a guardsman."

"And get blamed for your trouble."

"You don't have to come, Samson."

"Of course I bloody don't." He waved a hand, encompassing all the things he didn't have to do, and pushed away from the wall. "I'll get us a table. Won't wait for you if you get arrested, that'll be between you and Meredith."

His back was tighter than it had ever been, as he moved away from them without looking back once. All they could do was watch him, and Cullen heaved a little sigh as he touched her shoulder again.

"It's alright. He's just…"

Just what he was, she would never know.

It didn't take them long to find a guard on this busy market day. The woman had looked askance at Lux's too-blank face, at the blood on her clothes, but had taken their report and the boy in hand without a word to either. Tired. Grateful. All they could do was hope that it wasn't too late a kindness.

A worrying thing, perhaps, that nobody remarked on the blood at all, not even in the tavern. But then, they were all deep in their cups. Samson was deeper, drinking with a sort of vengeance that Lux couldn't understand. Greeted them with a too-sharp smile, all bared teeth and hardly any welcome, and gestured for another drink.

Another drink. Another. More quickly than Cullen could keep up, rolling his eyes at Lux simply accompanying them with empty hands, as she always did.

Another and another, and the sun sank. Rolled eyes had long turned to concerned frowns as Samson snatched up his bottle and wandered out out of the tavern with all the expectation that they would follow.

The problem was Meredith, Samson had said eventually, between one drink and the next. The root of the trouble was always Meredith. Yanking at his leash like she had the right of it. More duties, more scrutiny. Punishing him before he'd even done too much wrong. Starved for power like she didn't have enough already.

"She is angry at you," Lux put in, tactless as always.

"She hates me because she's a jumped up bitch," Samson retorted shortly, shooting Lux the kind of look that even she could read, which read 'the enemy of your friend had better be your enemy if you know what's good for you'. "Strutting around pretending she's half as good as Guylian ever was, beating everyone back into line who still isn't buying it."

He was properly drunk, and lyrium starved, and seemed to almost delight in being angry about it all. It was the first time she was experiencing the serrated edge of that bitterness for herself. Cullen had experienced it from time to time. Had once told her that he simply let the tide of venom wash over him, giving Samson a quiet ear until he'd spent himself. But judging by Cullen's face, it was worse than he'd ever seen before.

And that was the trouble. The more poison Samson purged, the more there still seemed to exist. And he would became angrier instead of calm, and days later he would push. Take a larger risk. Do something more unkind. Riding what was left of his venom and his alcohol to try and hurt the Knight-Commander's established order in ways that would only make trouble for everyone else. And it would hurt him some day, because he was angry and couldn't always be as careful as he believed he was.

He had to understand. She would help him to understand.

"But you also make her more angry," she said, feeling Cullen's hand settle briefly on her arm, too late to stop her.

"Lux."

"Don't make this my fault," Samson snapped, his glazed eyes zeroing in on her with absolute precision. Too sharp to really be as drunk as he should be. "I'm just taking my due. And if it does makes things difficult for her, it's what she deserves."

Lux didn't agree with the harshness of Meredith's iron grip, nor the stories of what she had done to establish her power once she'd attained it, if even a fraction of them were true. But whatever Meredith may deserve, Samson's poison would hurt him first.

He was their friend.

"Samson," she said flatly, but he just snorted again.

"'Course you think she's fine."

There was something about that you. The blunt dismissiveness sat heavily in her belly as she stared at him, suddenly off-blance. Felt as though she wasn't his friend in this moment, not a sibling in arms, but so specifically a female Templar. Blindly in support of another, regardless of what was true. It had happened to many of them often enough, this sudden demotion from comrade to woman in the midst of a conversation.

She just hadn't thought it would come at Samson's hands.

An all too sudden lesson that the vicious serpent of his mind could strike at out at anyone if he felt he was under attack. Perching his chin on a fist, his eyes dragged slowly over her face, down the throat that was still working out an answer, before coming back up to her eyes.

"All the officers probably love you, don't they? Because you don't have a thought behind that pretty face when they order you around. Yes ser, thank you ser, slap me again ser. A real dream you are."

"I only—"

"Wonder what else they think of making you do behind closed doors. Alrik's favourite toy."

"That was uncalled for." Cullen said sharply as Lux stilled

Something must have shattered, for these sharp splinters to hurt her throat so, to prick at her eyes and make her blink so rapidly.

"It speaks! The Knight-Commander's new favourite weapon."

"Samson, stop it."

"Samson, Samson," he mocked, eyes locking resentfully onto the way Cullen pressed his shoulder against Lux's, her imperceptible lean into the pressure for comfort. This wall they seemed to be making against his assault. "Always Samson. Why don't you tell her to stop it? Because you think she's right. The little Golden Boy and Girl of the order."

Lips pulled too far back over his gums, Samson's grin was now more of a snarl, sharp and hungry and aimed squarely to tear out Cullen's throat as Lux pushed herself quickly to her feet.

"Good looking and only too happy to bend the knee. Already got you behind a Captain's desk. Soon enough she'll have you under he—"

"Samson. You are too drunk," Lux said as she heard Cullen's breath catch in his throat, hurt flaring so tangibly that it could have burned her. Her voice was still flat, uncompromising as ever, solid as the body she interposed between them. She was not sure how she spoke or how she managed to stand, when she only wanted to curl into herself instead. But she could not afford to falter, however he tore at them.

Not in this moment. Not when there was duty to be done. She grabbed for Samson's arm and he wheeled back with surprisingly undrunken agility. It made everything worse, to know what he was alert enough to be aware of all he was saying, and still chose to say it.

"You will come back to the barracks," she said.

"Or what? You'll leave me here?" he spat, glaring daggers at the both of them. "Run off to report me? No stain on your pretty records."

"We should leave you here," Cullen said sharply. "Until you're ready to be civil."

"There is no or," Lux insisted. "You will come back to the barracks. It is not safe to leave you alone like this."

She couldn't look at either of them, and it pained Cullen that he'd failed to protect her from hurt.

Swallowing down his own anger, disappointment, hurt— bitter and hot and worse than any of the drink they'd had tonight— Cullen pinched the bridge of his nose. If they wished to, they could dash their bitter oceanic fury against her solidity like a cliff-face, and she would just stand there, all night if necessary. Waiting until they were exhausted, and then drag them back by force. Even if he'd been serious about leaving Samson behind, the man should realise that Lux's stubbornness could outlast mountains. But reason only worked on reasonable men, which Samson was barely in any condition to be.

"By force, then," Cullen grunted, closing a hand around Samson's arm as he rose in one smooth motion, dragging him along.

"Oy!"

"Lead the way." Swinging Samson's right arm over his shoulder, he grimaced at the unholy smell that should only be produced by darkspawn and the ten-day-dead, and shot Lux a Look.

The things I do for you.

Samson, despite his sizzling anger, didn't make any more attempts to push them away, and Cullen wasn't sure if that made things better or worse. Musing over the issue had carried them all the way back to the Gallows, but somewhere between the door and their beds, with a final burst of mutinous energy, he'd shoved Cullen away, straightened his tunic, given them a thoroughly sarcastic salute, and disappeared into the corridors as fast as his unsteady tread would let him. Leaving them both in the silence that he had made so deeply uncomfortable.

Making the familiar turn towards the joint barracks, Cullen's feet carried him halfway down the final corridor before he paused.

"Cullen?" Lux's eyes flickered with concern, putting aside her feelings to immediately turn her attention to him. It was kind. And he wished she wouldn't do it so easily.

"I'm supposed to…" he gestured vaguely in the opposite direction, and both gesture and voice withered in the face of her stare.

It had been a simple enough plan. Here was where he was supposed to say: The Knight-Commander didn't want me to waste time settling into my new quarters on my first day as Captain.

He should have said it earlier. He wasn't sure now why he'd put it off. Perhaps he'd hoped to prevent the whole day from having an air of goodbye, but all he'd really done was delay it into a bitter aftertaste that hung heavily on his tongue, waiting to fall.

The plan, this morning, had been to head straight to his quarters at the end of the day.

Whether he woke in the barracks or not, there would be no getting away from the resentful faces of some the soldiers who still felt he was too young, too inexperienced, too Ferelden for this honour, nor the sly comments of the ones who, like Samson, suspected they knew why. But he had wanted to avoid one night of mutters and glances. His new quarters had seemed like a fitting distance to begin with.

He would need that distance. To be impartial. To be fair.

But now… when the blood on her clothes must be a match for how Samson's barbs had made her bleed...

If only she would say something. Question him again, prod at the raw edges of the intention he'd left unfinished. Suspect, so he would not have to admit to the shame of weighing his discomfort against her hurt.

Not this silent waiting. Not this patient endurance that pulled at his mind and his mouth, making him say more than he planned to. Admit more weakness than he'd ever want to.

Standing above him after his nightmare, seeing and not comprehending his fear, but determined not to leave him in the dark, until he'd given in.

Once again, he gave in to her.

Jerking his head in place of reply, his feet found another path, and she fell unquestioningly into step with him.

Not the barracks. Not his quarters. Certainly not lingering in the corridor any longer, where the myriad eyes of the Gallows had room to stare, looking for food for its starving maw. Neither soldier nor captain. Just Cullen, as he had been that night in the wake of his nightmare. As they had sat in the stock room, with that spear of moonlight laid across them, and he had touched her hand and told her she was good.

She had been so… surprised to be seen. Pleased in that strange stray-animal way. That resigned prisoner being let out to breathe. That he had given her something so small and it had landed in her hands so large was a fact he had had difficulty contending with, and more than once he had found himself wondering what else he could give, to remind her that she deserved it. That she was alive and real and seen.

The very second the door had closed behind them, he felt the weight of the entire building come off of his back. The eyes and ears of the Gallows had not yet found them here. There was nothing for it to twist and digest until it was something unrecognisable, and then spill out of its thousand smirking, sneering, mouths. Here, nothing more could be made of his words or his actions. Not Captain, nor rival for promotion and favour, not past ally-turned-enemy, nor future target of insincere loyalty.

Tomorrow Lux would need a fair and good Captain. Tonight, perhaps simply Cullen would suffice.

Full of intentions to comfort, planning a dozen comforting phrases and how he would squeeze her shoulder in warm camaraderie, he turned to meet her steady, earnest gaze and faltered.

"I have something for you," he said instead, busying himself with his pockets and trying firmly not to think of the way the light slanted through the window to linger gently on pale hair and eyelashes, the same way it glimmered on the cobwebs in the corners. How it had lightened his heart the last time they were here. Nor the warmth of a hand under his.

Maker, it was wrong to consider such things now. He was to be her Captain.

There it was, still safe from this morning. A little treasure extricated from the books that had been deposited into his arms as his first call of duty. It was gentle responsibility to begin, a kindness both welcome and unexpected from the Knight-Commander, before the greater weight he had soon to bear.

"There's no place for it in the library. And I thought…" And now he felt foolish, holding out the soft strip of fabric that had pooled on the desk before him, slipping out from the pages where it had kept some distant reader's place. An old history book from the furthest and dustiest shelf of one of the Hightown mansions, donated to the circle in generous charity. A long forgotten marker.

It was only a simple thing, to tie one's hair back, which she had not the length to even need. No delicate embroidery nor sheen of finery. Unremarkable. To be used and forgotten.

But soft. And a warm, darkened green that made him think of grass under cooling trees.

She liked green. A sudden and foolish thought, that had brought him here.

"It is," she lapsed into silence, searching for the word. "Pretty."

"I'm sorry," he said at once, voice hoarser than he would like under the weight of all the quiet. She was a soldier, and he was a fool.

"I." This pause was a different one, which he recognised only from having heard it before. Not a searching, but an effort of allowance. "Like pretty things."

Though faint, there were still echoes of her belief that she should like nothing. Want nothing. A belief that she had shifted with painful slowness, clearing some space in her soul for living. The act of recognising pleasure, something that was hers to know and own. She had discovered a liking for precious few things so far, and he remembered each one without meaning to. He would remember this one as well.

"Templars are… not meant to have personal effects. But it's only a little thing."

Her hand hung in space, as though she wasn't sure it was truly hers to have, and he felt his heart break. Placing it for her so carefully, a tiny green meadow in the hollow of her palm. Revelling, and trying so hard not to revel, in the faint warmth of her fingers under his, as he answered her unspoken question.

"Yours."

She stared at it for a moment, and then back at him. And smiled. A curl of the lip a little larger than before, even a parting. A flash of teeth, barely there. A small, hesitant flicker of lightning that lit the room so brightly that they were in danger of being discovered, for all that it passed before he could have his fill of it.

Chapter Text

"Yesterday," Lux managed to Samson the next morning, before falling back into silence. She'd kept her distance all day while he was trying not to make eye contact with a headache. Quiet and uncertain, like he'd bitten her and she wasn't sure if she should put her hand out again. But she was as predictable as the sunrise, that woman, and wanted To Communicate, something Samson, in equal measure, Did Not Want.

Not that she'd given him the option, marching up to him with concern in those big eyes as she got close enough to get a look at him, as if she actually cared whether the hangover had left him alive. But her first and only foray into the conversation had been yesterday.

She floundered in her own silence for a bit, trying and failing to put words together, adn he watched her with eyebrows high as he scratched at the stubble on his cheek.

"What about it?"

That stymied her, staring like he'd broken out into a flawless Orlesian song and dance routine.

He slung an arm over her shoulders, amused when even she blinked rapidly at how completely horrific he still smelled. The late night, the sweats, and yesterday's clothes had left a firm patina of grease and stickiness all over the arm across her shoulders, and much else besides. It had the benefit of making her shift uncomfortably, and hopefully redirected her desire to have a discussion about last night's foul mood as he slumped against her, as crooked as his smile.

"You need a bath."

He hummed, leaning his weight against her further. "Probably. Going to join me?"

"I don't need one," she pointed out sensibly, stupidly, and then paused in the face of his expression, trying to work something out. "Oh. No."

"Can't blame me for trying," he said, his grin quick and sharp. The teasing edge ebbing away as she responded to his usual behaviour with faint but unusual discomfort. Still tender from whichever blow had landed so hard yesterday.

He didn't like it much. Hadn't thought anything he said would last longer than being swept under 'Samson, you're drunk' and maybe an invigorating punch to the jaw.

Cullen had been an inch away, and she'd stopped him, which he somehow didn't like either. It meant she'd gone and piled up whatever ugly feelings she had behind 'what had to be done' and was still operating on automatic. Like making sure he got home.

There was something bloody wrong with her.

"Right, I'll—"

He made to step away, and to his immense surprise and irritation found himself first locked in place, and then taken forward against his will. Rather than risk letting him stumble in the vague vicinity of a tub and presumably get lost on the way, the Ghost had decided to escort him like he was a bloody child.

This really hadn't been part of the 'distract her from last night' plan. In fact the plan was going rapidly out of his control, in the direction of a bath he absolutely didn't want in his current state. He wanted, nay, needed today's lyrium and a hot meal to shore up his stomach, not to be treated like another mangy stray on the streets.

"Arms up."

"You don't—" His voice was immediately muffled as she flipped his tunic over his head, forcing him to raise his arms before he got irrevocably trapped in a prison of foul-smelling fabric. Freed with a gasp, the sudden light assaulting his exhausted eyes like it had a grudge, he only just managed to blink her into focus.

"Woman!" he grunted, smacking at the hands that had reached for his breeches with alarming efficiency. "I can do those myself, I'm not dead."

It would have been less offensive if she'd actually insulted him, not just stared as if she wasn't sure she believed him. But she at least gave him the dignity of turning around (after he'd gestured impatiently), which meant she didn't see him get tangled up in his own pants and nearly pitch himself headfirst into the tub.

Dignity. Running a hand through his hair, and instantly regretting the motion when it came away with more grease than the kitchens in the Hanged Man, he lowered himself into the water and glared up at her.

"Satisfied?"

Another long moment of staring, and then she had the audacity to flicker those creased eyes at him. If he had a heart, it would be feeling just the slightest twinge of guilt.

But he didn't, and so it wasn't, and he kept on glaring at her as she got on her knees next to the tub.

"What are you doing?" Surely even she remembered that bathing usually only needed the involvement of the person in the water, especially since she wasn't interested in the more participatory and fun kind.

"Your hair needs washing."

"I'll do it myself," he said hastily, immediately trying to move his head away from the sheer indignity of it all. A terrible idea, as pain launched itself out of the shadows like an over-excited debt collector and struck him between the eyes. He nearly sank below the waterline with a hiss. "Maker's holy taint."

She pulled away with a concerned furrow, watching him carefully like he was about to drown himself. Not even having the decency to leave him to stew in his absolute misery.

"Look I'm wretched but I'm alive, I can wash my own hair in my own time. And anyway you're no delicate Chantry sister, knocking me around like you are."

"Courage was more well behaved."

The gall. He stared, a little blindsided at what was…

"Was that a joke?"

"An observation."

He shook his head, wincing a little as it attempted to ram red hot spikes into itself with every motion, and settled carefully against the side of the tub. After a moment, he gathered up some water to slowly pour onto his scalp, in a bid to keep her from trying to nursemaid him again.

"Your dog didn't have a lyrium hangover on top of a booze one. And you weren't talking as much."

Annoyingly, she responded with silence. And after far too much of both that and not being able to see what she was thinking, he tipped his head back to find her face.

The furrow was still there, though it was a lot less concerned for his well-being now. It had settled into a much more familiar, much more unpleasant, question of how to put words together. So she hadn't been distracted. Only delayed, as irritatingly inevitable as the next damn day.

Well. Better to set the fire yourself than wonder when it was going to happen.

"Out with it," he said.

"Yesterday. You were unkind," said little miss understatement.

Rolling his eyes was a surefire way to risk another headache on top of the one she was giving him. He risked it.

"Probably wanted to hurt you." And if she was waiting for him to apologise. Reaching over, he plucked the soap from her hands to give himself something else to do instead of listen to all the nothing she was giving him.

"Bloody stupid thing to say anyway," he muttered under his breath, watching her without quite looking. And he wouldn't admit to being pleased that some of her discomfort melted.

"Yes."

"Charming. Thought you were the nice one," he groused, purposefully making a fuss with no heat to it. Where's our wise and wonderful Knight-Captain Cullen? Knight-Captain Sullen," he added with little cackle. He'd have to say it to the man's face soon. "First day got him busy already? Not like he'd slum it with the rest of us if he wasn't, mind you."

"Someone said he was. Investigating a disappearance."

Someone. They'd have to hear everything about him second-hand now, wouldn't they? Fortune's wheel had taken him far out of reach.

"Disappearance. You mean Keran?" Samson waved his hand airily, beginning to wash himself off. "Boy's probably run off because he realised being a Templar isn't all flashy sword fights and being a hero."

"His sister is worried." Logical. Reasonable. Largely irrelevant.

"Not like he's the first. Embarrassed to face his family. He'll turn up again when he's hungry and cold enough."

A little frown, not reassured despite the confidence in his voice. "Four have disappeared—"

"Run away."

"—this month," she finished, unfazed by his correction.

"So the Knight-Commander got a rotten batch of recruits this time. Probably happens in every circle. Turn around."

"Keran was. Pleased, to be here," she said, turning around again as Samson emerged in a wave of suds and looked for something to cover what she'd left of his modesty. "He spoke often about becoming a full Templar."

"For somebody nobody talks to, you sure know a lot about everyone's business. Wilmod came back, didn't he?"

He had. More silent and reserved than he had been, and when asked he would simply say that he had needed a few days to breathe. It was an understandable thing, with how the Gallows felt like choking you these days. If they could get away with it, it could have happened to anyone.

And so it had been all the more fearful when the rest of it happened.

Nobody was allowed to talk about it, but everyone knew.

Wilmod's death had cast a pall over the Gallows, and provided a grim answer to the question of those missing recruits, who had never reached their families. How much of it was truth, only Cullen would be able to tell, because he'd been the one to follow Wilmod creeping away from the building in the middle of the night. The only one to see what had actually happened.

The one who'd had to kill him.

Possession. It shouldn't have been a possible for a non-mage, but Cullen wasn't known for lying. So when he'd been overheard giving his report, and spoke tersely of limbs contorting, a mind fracturing, a demon wearing Wilmod's body like armour, with nothing left of the boy except the blood on Cullen's blade, everyone believed.

Mages had forced the demon into his body, and he had been here amongst them for a week. Had that been true? Or had it been half overheard and changed beyond recognition in the telling? Not Gallows mages. Cullen had gone out of his way to make sure that part of his report was communicated with no mistakes, knowing too well how little it might take for the Gallows to begin devouring itself.

Apostates, from Tevinter of all places, hiding in the influx of Ferelden refugees that had eventually begun to choke the docks. Patrol and investigations followed those refugees, fighting for every scrap of the Lowtown slums that they could hold on to. Followed the rest of them as spilled over into Darktown, making it darker with their poverty and misery. Ready hands and minds for the already existing Kirkwall gangs if they were lucky, and readier bodies if not. You were a mercenary or an example. You hid smuggled goods under your floorboards, or you were next to be sold. And by no means were you ever a good witness, not even to armour and sword.

Or maybe, most lucky of all, you'd happen on what some idiots would call goodness, and Samson had identified as a more enterprising 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours' attitude. Shivering on the fringes of the darkness, refugees and native Kirkwallers alike had made little outposts of bloody-minded determination, using their weapons and their wits for something other than beating one another down. A crate liberated from a smuggler supplying a Hightown party could feed five families for a fortnight. A grateful mercenary patched up would protect the child who'd found him.

A nice thought, none of it really mattered. Fear or favour ended up the same way for the Templar patrols trying to get information. Blank faces at best, and silent doors at worst.

No Ser. Of course not Ser. Never heard a thing, Ser.

It wasn't exactly charity. Healers were expensive. Frightened apostates with a talent for spirit magic or a knowledge of poultices were grateful, and gratitude worked for free. The simple sodding economics of misery. And with Meredith not wanting anyone to talk about what had happened, not wanting to weaken the image of the Gallows, it wasn't like Cullen could explain that he was looking for the dangerous allies of deranged minds, who didn't particularly care for freedoms or who they killed. No, he just looked like a big armoured man kicking down doors looking for sobbing children to drag off.

When people get used to you being a certain way, it always comes back to bite you in the end. The Gallows had made its reputation. Now it had to bloody lie in it.

Apostates were always found in the end. Never the right ones. And those who didn't managed to kill themselves and a few Templars to get away were caught, mutinous and muttering. Rotting the Gallows from the inside, the Knight Commander said.

She found rot everywhere these days. To try and get ahead of it, close to snapping under the strain of keeping things in check, she'd given the Captain and Lieutenants more responsibility. And with it, power, to be used at their discretion. In Samson's opinion, which was always correct and never listened to, that was just an invitation to more disaster.

Give a bastard an inch…

Chapter Text

The Knight-Commander had found a willing hand in Cullen, who bore every new responsibility with the care it deserved. And as the work increased, Knight-Lieutenant Alrik had pressed Lux for more and more assistance after her regular duties.

Of course she had obeyed. What reason was there not to?

The rotas and division of labour, the everyday minutae of paperwork and organisation, that allowed the Gallows to run, was in all fairness a burden meant to be split among the officers. But Knight-Lieutenant Karras had little patience for papers, and so it fell to Knight-Lieutenant Alrik, and thus to Lux. Not difficult work, but tedious and endless, and her eyes often ached by the end of each day, leaving her little time or energy to do anything else.

Tonight, as she laid down the papers and stood before his desk, he did not look up from his work.

A minute passed. And then another.

The minutes wore on, stretching into silence, without him dismissing her. It was not that far past when she should usually be back at the barracks, and it was not unheard of to arrive late if an officer required one for duty, but his lack of reaction was enough to prompt a flicker of unease. Had she done something wrong?

"Permission to be dismissed, Knight-Lieutenant?" she said, her voice paling faintly at the edges.

He glanced up at her immediately, lyrium-blue eyes like chips of ice running down her spine. "Is the work complete, Ser Lux?"

She pulled herself to further attention. "Yes, Ser."

"And tomorrow's?"

Hesitation, the obvious question finding its way onto her tongue, but all she heard herself say was: "No, Ser."

"Then do your duty," he said flatly. "Permission denied, until your work is complete to my satisfaction."

It was his right. As an officer it was his right to keep her here, until she had completed any duty assigned to her. But she had done everything asked of her today, and felt so strangely tired. She wanted to leave. Wanted to be in her bed and not feel his gaze on her, watching all the time as she worked.

"Yes, Ser Lux?" he said, looking amused as she simply stood there, silent and still. As if permission denied had rooted her to the spot. How easy it was for two simple words to tear her night's peace away from her, and strangle her tongue.

"Yes," she managed, feeling an odd tightness in her throat as she turned to sit again, his eyes tracking slowly over her as though looking for a hint of defiance. "Yes, Knight-Lieutenant."

It had been the first time he had kept her far, far too late. Nobody noticed.

It was not the last.

"What does this report tell you?" he said. It had been a few days now of blessedly early dismissals. She was grateful to be granted them, helping to battle that bone-deep weariness that she couldn't qualify, and now never seemed to go away. The report was not a complex one, but she took her time on it all the same, carefully absorbing every detail, then raised her eyes to find him watching her closely again.

"Pirates. Smugglers at the docks. One crate of missing lyrium as of three days ago. Repeated twice."

"Well paraphrased," he said with an indulgent smile. "The situation is not critical of course. The Knight-Commander is confident that the missing shipments will be found before long. But it raises a concerning possibility, don't you think?"

"I." She hesitated as he fell silent, expectant. Not one of his usual rhetorical questions. Beyond asking her to summarise reports, the Knight-Lieutenant had never truly asked her anything. He was content simply to command, as the rest of the officers were, treating her like a dutiful piece of furniture.

It should have felt… good. As when Cullen— Captain Rutherford, she corrected herself— used to ask her what she felt. But the Knight-Lieutenant's interest in her opinion went the same way as his praise, landing heavily like a weight around her neck.

"There is risk." She said slowly, those freezing eyes pinning her in place, making her words feel clumsy. "Of a shortage of lyrium. In the Gallows."

"Very good," he murmured softly, and the weight seemed to tighten. "A dangerous risk. Do you believe the Gallows is equipped for that risk?"

"No Ser."

"Do you believe they should be?"

"Yes, Ser."

"Good." He seemed pleased as he sat back. "Then you're well placed to assist me in equipping them with what they need."

So pleased, in fact, that he had no interest in engaging her in any further conversation, and they settled back into their usual routine. He spoke and she listened patiently, waiting for what he needed from her.

"Knowledge, Ser Lux. That is our greatest advantage against what cannot be battled with steel, even with your…" a pause, his eyes flicking across her in slow assessment that made her want to shift, "prodigious endurance and discipline. I must understand the threat the Gallows might face, whether it happens or not. I must see."

See. The word curled unpleasantly, coldly, in the back of her mind, winding its way down her spine to her stomach.

"You will stop taking your lyrium, effective immediately."

And there it dropped, frozen and weighty and robbing her of her breath for a brief moment. Dangerous bubbled up in reaction. Deadly followed quickly behind. And duty crushed them both down. They needed information. Her endurance would be of use.

In any case, it was hardly up to her. The Knight-Lieutenant had given his orders.

"When you're given your daily allotment, you will bring it to me. I've had your duties rearranged for the next seven days," Alrik went on, that same calm and implacable tone that could not be refuted. "You will remain here, with me. No training, no patrols, no investigations into the city. We will work on reports and rosters, and other assignments that any potential symptoms will not interfere with in too deadly a manner."

Strangely nervous at the prospect, her mind latched onto the detail that made little sense. Why should she be given her lyrium at all, if this experiment had been approved? Yet all she heard herself say was: "Yes, Knight-Lieutenant."

"Good." His smiles never quite reached her eyes, reading the clear question in her own and leaving it unanswered. Rising from his seat, he stepped around his desk to stand before her, a little closer than was usual. "I don't wish to worry the other soldiers with talk of symptoms and shortages that they may never face. As such, you will tell nobody of what transpires in this office."

There was… sense in that. She nodded slowly, not entirely that instant indication of obedience that he liked from her, and he raised his eyebrows in mild question.

"Ser Lux?"

"What if somebody. Asks?"

"You are assigned to me, doing the duty asked of you," he said smoothly. "That's not untrue, is it?"

"No, Knight-Lieutenant."

"Then that is all anyone need know." Catching her chin as her eyes flicked away from him, his closeness, that smile never wavered. Voice never rising from that composed softness.

"Look at me."

She did not want to. Whatever had settled in her stomach was melting into nausea, overwork, fatigue. An instinctive flinch at his touch that she had to tamp down, forcing herself to keep still. More than anything in this moment, she wanted to leave.

"Consider it an order, soldier."

Blue and deathly cold. Nearly painful, that scrutiny, pulling her apart. Pleased at her obedience.

"Very good."

The first day had felt unusual, filling her with a vague discomfort that was as much due to the break in her routine as the loss of lyrium. The second was much the same, if a little heavier in the head. Like a cold. Everything distant and unclear around the edges. Ser Alrik asked her question after question every day, and she did her best to communicate her symptoms. The third day was… best described as heavy. Had she already said that?

The fourth day was—

The sixth day was—

Thoughts, tangled and confused and too slippery to grasp fluttered through her mind.

Am I being punished?

"Punished?" She must have given voice to something, a fear slipping from her lips, for he sounded truly surprised. "What reason would I have to punish so perfectly obedient a soldier? No, this is an honour. A way to serve the Order and the Gallows."

A hand, and then another, pressing lightly into her shoulders to keep her mind steady. Hot, far too hot, unable to turn and see him.

"Pain and privilege can look much the same from the outside," he said quietly, too close to her ear.

The room (another day?) did not spin exactly, but it shifted unsettlingly before her tired eyes, the loss of lyrium making a few hours feel like hours. No. Days? A heavy, grounding hand landed briefly on her head, and she gratefully returned her focus to her work.

Then surely he must have walked away. Hadn't she heard footsteps? She must have imagined the feather-light sensation of fingertips slipping through her hair and down the back of her neck that made her shudder, because when she raised her hand to feel for them, there was nothing there.

"Difficulty focusing?"

She swallowed again, her throat cracking, and wondered how he was behind her again, when he had only just walked away. (another day? or had it only been an hour. She could hear things that she was certain were not there. Was he there at all? Or was he in the corner, in the darkness behind the door?)

"No ser." She could manage.

"A lie," he said almost pleasantly, and she felt his hands settle on her shoulders again, too heavy, like her leaden limbs and the tongue that did not want her to speak, pressing her into the chair until she might become one with it and never be able to stand. "What does one do with a such a good soldier, when she lies?"

"I am. Sorry."

"Just this once, I suppose. I'll be kind," he said, and she could not see his face in the silence that followed, but he nearly sounded amused.

Were his hands still on her shoulders, or at her neck?

"It's proper to thank kindness," he prompted. So softly she strained to hear him.

In the darkness behind the door, she swore he was smiling.

"Thank. You. Knight-Lieutenant."

"Good." He hummed, checking her pulse with hotcold fingers, taking her chin to check her eyes. "You really are nearly perfect. I wish I could have seen how you were shaped. There are plenty of Templars who would be much more use, if they were as obedient as you."

It was praise, of a sort. A job she had done to satisfaction. But it wound around her neck and settled heavily inside her, keeping her in the chair. She wanted it gone. Wanted to reach inside and fling it away, but her arms wouldn't move.

"The truth, now."

Breath was heavy. Too hot and too cold and it mingled with his in ways she didn't want to breathe in.

"Difficulty," she admitted, not sure where he was now. "Sounds. Flickers."

"Things that aren't there."

"Yes, ser." He would tell her what was true, wouldn't he? Who else could she ask?

Another hour. Minute? Day. She only knew—

Panic.

She hadn't meant to. Maker forgive her, she hadn't. Such a sense of danger, of fear overtook her, overtaking everything, and she had forced herself to rise from the chair that was trying to drag her into the earth. Towering over him, his surprise faint and distant, falling away. Arm moving, and he stepped back quickly as she pushed, for her sudden and desperate need to have space, to breathe.

Oh Andraste. She hadn't meant to strike a superior officer. Froze in place, fighting with the horrible feeling of danger that made her want to run.

"I. I." Fear. Of what? Retribution? Disobedience? Of the flicker in the dark, behind the door, behind her back, touching her shoulders?

No anger on his face. No disappointment. Good. One good thing in everything that felt so terrible. Took her arm patiently, and redirected her to face the desk again.

"Paranoia. Fear. Normal to feel, at this stage of the symptoms, Lux."

"I. I am sorry."

"Hands on the desk," he said calmly, pressing her palms down as her arms seemed to lose all strength. "Don't move."

She obeyed, keeping herself still by sheer force as he took her chin again with the idle motion of handling a quill, and checked the dilation of her eyes. Asked questions she could barely understand. Fingers at the pulse in her neck. In her hair. Despite all her discipline, she flinched at his touch, his fingers burning unexpectedly like tiny brands.

"Pain?" he asked quietly, his voice too startlingly close, his hands too real. "Or discomfort?"

She tried to think, swallowing past a cracking throat, her voice raw and broken as it escaped. "Discomfort."

"Then endure, soldier."

Endure. Endure and do not move. Part of his office. Oddly safe, in his office. Outside of it, she found herself worrying where he was. What he could see, what he knew. Here, she could at least be certain. She could not remember leaving another day, minute? Tired and tired and feeling and seeing and hearing things that he said were not there, as she struggled to explain them for him to write down, watching her fall apart with undisguised fascination that filled her with sickness. Some dayhour, he had left her behind the desk, alone. Work that needed doing. She was to Wait. Certain that she would not move.

Cold. Colder than it had any right to be, for the sweat beading far too hot on her forehead.

A creak.

Door? A panicked breath.

Not hers. A nervous Oh Maker.

Unexpected voice. Familiar.

Blinking slowly, she raised her heavy head. Round cheeks. Scared.

"Ser Lux?" squeaked the face. Wide eyes. Dark.

An hour. Minute?

"Ser Lux?" it repeated, and she blinked again.

"Ella." Sad about her mother. Wrote a letter. She remembered. Remembered her being worried. I can't just write to her. Why not? Lux had asked that. Poultices. Sharp medicinal smell. Blinked at her, wondering. Why not? Not forbidden. I will place it with the other letters. It was a small thing, but she had smiled. Like it was a gift. Wrote a letter. And worried again. No reply? Too long. Ser Alrik had a stack of letters here. Ella's name. Yes. Letters cascading from under her fingers. Snowflakes.

"You're- oh Maker."

Ill. She felt ill. Ella. Scared. Did she look so frightening? She did not want to scare her. Her letter. On the ground.

"Your." She frowned a little, the word slipping from her fingers. On the ground. Her letter. Her mother's letter. She had been sad.

"I'll…. I'll get someone."

Lux shook her head, trying to think around cotton. "No. Ser Alrik is. Not here." So she should be not be. Punishment, if you tell anyone you were here.

Wide eyes. Pale. Afraid. Ill?

"But-"

Her mother would be sad. Lux tried to shake her head again, and exhaled slowly as she heard footsteps running away, leaving the door wide open. Ser Alrik did not like the door open, when they worked.

A day. A day?

"Get up." Another voice, rougher. A man. Familiar?

"I'm supposed to-" The words, so simple, eluded her grasp again. Silken, impossible, pooling at her feet.

Silence. Thinking? A tap on the desk. Sharp. Clear.

"Knight-Captain wants to see you right now." Exasperation, familiar. "Not going to disobey the Captain's orders are you, Ghost?"

No. No of course not. The Knight-Lieutenant had his orders, but the Knight-Captain… The weight of rank. More urgent orders. The room pitched as she pushed herself to her feet.

Hands on the desk, do not move. Palms sweating, sticking. He isn't here. He isn't here.

Knight-Captain. Right now.

As always, with orders. Her body tugged itself to attention, pulling away from that clinging desk. Back straight, legs on the march. Needed no guide. She could find the Knight-Captain's office blind, because she must. She had been ordered.

The mind would adjust. The body must obey.

Long corridors. But open. No door. It felt better to breathe without doors.

"Far enough," she heard the voice say, and she hesitated uncertainly, hovering in a corridor that was neither their destination nor their beginning. The door they had come from was far out of sight. "Look over here."

Where was here? Neither their destination, nor their beginning.

"Damn it, Lux."

Irritated. What had she done wrong?

Face, frowning. Close, filling up the corridor. Hand at her chin, focusing, directing. Don't.

She would not, could not, flinch. Skin burning. Tried not to avoid his eyes. Too close. Running away, standing still. The walls were empty. Easier. She did not want to look. Too close. Touching. Don't. Please don't.

Gone. No more fingers. No more door.

Tightness around the jaw, the eyes not blue, not cold. Familiar.

Samson.

Oh. She was glad to see Samson. Samson always knew what to do.

Worried? Unfamiliar. Her frown, not as deep as his. Trying to identify her fault in the gathering, clinging, silence. The silence had followed her outside. Weighing down her tongue. Difficult to ask. Only to wait. Tracing, by inches, the movement of his mouth as he finally spoke again.

"Ah fuck."

Chapter Text

Well of course he'd taken her to Cullen instead of shoving some lyrium at her (coincidentally and unprovably present in his pocket), and sending her on her way. He was a bastard, but there were many degrees of bastardry he'd like to claim ignorance of. The kind that the likes of Alrik revelled in, if he was any judge.

And, being a bastard, he was.

It was a simple enough plan, to just send her through Cullen's door and let the both of them deal with whatever was going on. Enjoy the rations he was owed in peace.

That's why he was standing inside with the both of them, was it?

Bloody hell.

Cullen had looked alarmed the moment he'd laid eyes on her. Paler than usual, acting weirder than usual, her eyes too wide even for her, sweating like she'd been running a fever on a high summer's day.

"Maker's breath," Cullen said uselessly, not doing much for the Maker or any of them at the moment. "What's the matter with her?"

"Lyrium shakes." Samson's reply was prompt, completely accurate without being even slightly helpful. "Got to be a sennight at least."

"But how—"

"Damned if I know. Do you have any?"

A deep frown. "… no. I already had my dose."

"And you don't get any extra?" Samson clicked his tongue in mock despair at the entire system. "No keys to the pantry? High Command isn't all it's cracked up to be, is it?"

The curly headed idiot just gaped from at him from behind the Captain's desk, trying to blink some sense back into the world before he registered that Lux was very determinedly staying still and on her feet, like she had something to prove against gravity.

"Sit down." Cullen ran a hand over his face, staring at her as she quietly folded herself into a chair, and Samson slumped gracelessly into another. Arranging those chess pieces in his head, clear as if Samson could see right into his skull. He needed answers, but there was no point in questioning her in this state. And he could probably go and grab a dose of lyrium for an emergency, but that would risk alerting the responsible parties before he was ready for them.

And there had to be responsible parties. She barely made decisions on her own, and this wasn't one any Templar would ever make.

"Samson." The logical ship of thought docking right on time.

"Cullen."

"By coincidence," he went on. Slow, careful, with the air of testing a unreliable looking bridge. "Would you have forgotten to take your dose today?"

He was very deliberately not looking at Samson's smirk, as Samson made a big and dramatic show of patting his pockets for his single extremely official dose that he'd certainly not taken today.

"Would you look at that."

"I'd rather not," Cullen said through gritted teeth. Samson produced the little blue vial with all the well-oiled ease of a con artist on a street corner. Moving it in front Lux's half focused eyes, he shook it to get her attention, but she stared at it more blankly than she usually did.

"I must not."

Samson shot Cullen a loud, well-enunciated look that said see (and even held it until the man noticed), and Cullen frowned.

"Who—" And wasn't that just the question? Along with 'why' and 'how long', maybe a 'where' for variety, but he remembered just in time that she wasn't fit for any of them.

"Ser Lux," he said instead, pulling himself to his fullest height and pressing authority into every syllable to get through to her. "Take your allotted lyrium. Captain's orders."

Like it was the Maker's own voice, her head snapped around to look at him. Reaching for the vial with unsteady fingers, a puppet on well-tuned strings that anybody with a rank could play.

What tune had Alrik been playing?

"Yes, Knight-Captain," she said, her voice flat and dutiful, just like that empty headed marble statue that Samson had run into in the corridors so many times at the start. But whether she was closing herself down until she found her feet again, or Alrik and his game had burned the brain and personality out of her, he didn't know.

It wasn't any of his business. He hardly cared. Helped her get her hands around the thing, holding onto it until he was sure she had a grip.

The crack about Alrik had been to hurt her. Not stick a finger right in a wound he didn't know was there.

No matter how badly the hands shook, a Templar always had a tight grasp on their vial. Better anything than risk breaking it. Better death than risk losing it. He watched her curl around it like it was the last drop of water in the Western Approach, morbidly fascinated to see even a fraction of her iron discipline scatter in desperation for the Chantry's gifted leash.

How happy they all were, to keep wrapping it tighter around their throats.

A full dose always felt so much better when he'd been on his half-rations. More potent. But once you've had it all taken away from you… would it feel like it was the first time?

Impressive, the way she forced her hands to steady as she slipped his vial between her lips. Didn't waste a single holy drop. Shuddered as the blue began to seep into her system, tracing slow fingers down her spine. Damp lips parting in a relieved, silent gasp that he was definitely going to remember for a quiet night in the bunk.

Even better than the first time, it looked like. The Maker's bleeding blessing made manifest.

Cullen glanced away as he sank heavily into his own seat. Frowning, considering. Giving her time to right herself.

"Where was she?"

"Found her in Alrik's office," Samson said with a little shrug, propping his boot against the side of the desk as he proceeded to not elaborate at all. Finicky little details like why he was creeping around an officer's door should merit the same lack of attention as his vial of lyrium and their leaves coincidentally matching up whenever it suited him. A little miracle. The hand of the Maker himself. "Alone. Sat at the desk like she'd been pinned there."

A deeply unpleasant answer, or at least the vague outline of it, was sitting right between them on the desk, but their good and fair Knight-Captain never liked to exert himself by jumping to a conclusion.

"Knight-Lieutenant Alrik needed help with an increased workload," Cullen said slowly. "I was… informed that he might reassign some knights' duties so he could have more assistance."

"Oh well done Knight-Captain."

"Shut up." Quick, harsh, Cullen's own guilt cutting him deeper than anything Samson could come up with. It was amazing the knots he could tie himself into without much input, like flicking the side of an unsteady house of cards. "I didn't— how was I supposed to—"

I should have looked into it was written big and shiny across his forehead as he fell into an uneasy silence, waiting until Lux had had time to breathe. And he was right. Should have known exactly who Alrik wanted to reassign. How much and for how long.

I could have noticed she was missing a bit harder. Like I make everything my business. The thought crawled uneasily up the back of Samson's spine, and he ground his teeth until it slithered back down.

She breathed. He stewed. And Samson made a show of relaxing his chair, taking advantage of a break from duty. Half an eye on the ghost, who was putting up a good face, but didn't look all right around the eyes. Probably take a couple of days to get her right again.

"Lux?" Cullen asked finally.

"Knight-Captain." Her eyes shifted to stare unsettlingly into his again, and Cullen's shoulders sagged in visible relief.

"Cullen," he said, his voice gentle. "Just Cullen right now."

Mister strategy could read someone's face about as well as the ghost could use hers to express, which wasn't saying anything. But you'd have to be deaf and blind to miss the implication of what she'd said before.

I must not—

She liked her precision, and if you knew how to listen for it, it could tell you plenty. And despite evidence to the contrary, Cullen wasn't always a fool.

"Who said you weren't to take lyrium?"

"I." She turned her eyes to Samson. A familiar creepiness, full of focus and located in the present, not that he was pleased to be the present focus of it right now.

"What're you looking at me for?"

She stared. He stared. Cullen stared, and then sighed.

"Nobody will be angry with you." Cullen's voice was calm, as reassuring as he could make it. "Was it the Knight-Lieutenant?"

"Yes." She almost sounded relieved, if she could sound like anything.

"Can you tell me what happened?"

Another hesitation. Another glance at Samson why him, and Samson let out an exasperated breath as he figured it out.

She never said anything she wasn't sure about.

"Roderick already sees things sometimes, you know that," he pointed out to Cullen.

Cullen paused, realisation hitting him slower. "Oh… yes."

"Don't know what they promoted you for, when I have to do your job for you."

"This isn't the time," Cullen said sharply. But it was easy to see how a little sparring was a welcome distraction. For all of them. Like nothing had changed, and the three of them were still around a table in the mess hall. Where the ghost would pause a little, eyes creasing faintly at the corners, whenever either of them nudged her arm. Nothing like that suspicious, eerie stillness from when Samson'd taken her chin not a little while ago, to see if she was still in there.

A knock jolted the three of them to the world outside of the office, and Cullen frowned even more heavily.

"Come in," he said, gesturing for Lux to keep her seat. "Lux, you have the day off. Stay here until you're fit enough to give your report."

Orders, not offers. A kindness, in the current circumstances.

She nodded slowly, settling imperceptibly into her seat. The door creaked open to reveal Ser Moira, eyes fixed forward and at attention, with a tired sort of strain around her eyes. If she found anything strange about the Knight-Captain apparently hosting his old friends as guests, she had the good sense not to say a thing about it.

Julian had already sidled up to Samson not four days into Cullen's promotion, making slanted little comments that nearly made him choke on his dinner with laughter. If they wanted to do favours for him, thinking he had the new Captain's ear, he wasn't going to go out of his way to refute them.

Cullen's ear was one rumour. His bed was a much more entertaining one that he'd heard. And his favourite, that he had both of the tall, fit Fereldens wrapped around his finger. Somehow? He'd love to know how he managed that, and how many nights in a row it happened.

"Knight-Captain. Am I interrupting?"

"Not at all, make your report." The sooner done, the sooner they could get back to the matter at hand. "Is it urgent, Ser Moira?"

"It… yes. It's about Ser Emeric."

"Another thread to his conspiracies," Samson drawled, tipping his chair back even further. Cullen shot him a little glare, and he responded with a broad shrug, feeling the uncertain air in the room begin to stabilise further into familiarity. It'd be a good distraction, something for Cullen to get his Captainly teeth into as he soothed another one of Emeric's Episodes, promising to look into so-called evidence that led nowhere. He'd probably ask Lux to pore over the reams of conflicting statements the man always seemed to produce. Harmless busywork for their methodical minds to immerse themselves in, both of them feeling good about putting Emeric at ease. No better way to get them out from under Alrik's creepy shadow and back to their lives.

To her credit, Moira ignored him completely, keeping her eyes forward. Waiting for the official response.

"At ease. What about him?"

"He's been killed, Ser."

Chapter Text

A Templar is ready to die from the day they take their vows, the Knight-Commander had reminded Cullen. Not unkindly. In her own hard-edged way, he knew she meant it as a comfort. Emeric had known the risks, and chosen to face them all the same. It was to be commended as much as mourned.

Cullen wasn't sure how many of the third sons and daughters of noble houses had known, when they took their vows, about a readiness of death. The Knight-Commander was a rare sort. She had spoken little, if any, about herself, but Cullen could read the line of her back and the glint of steel in her eye well enough to piece some assumptions together. She had not been handed to the Order, neither a spare noble-born nor an orphan brought up in the Chantry's embrace. The Knight-Commander had chosen the life, seeking to overtake some pain, some fear that he could not fully read, and would never be bold enough to ask.

He felt a sharp chill in his chest as he remembered how many times Ser Emeric had tried to appeal to him with new information. How his dismissals must have pushed the man to desperation, to act alone and thus be left to the mercies of the very evils he sought to hunt.

He had reviewed the evidence to the best of his ability. There had been so little to grasp, he couldn't have known.

But even so, he had failed his duty. And while Emeric might have been ready to die, those poor women had made no such agreement. There was no true justice for those who had died, who he had failed as well. Their families, who had no whole bodies to bury. Simply been a dark and ugly thing, a madman performing blood magic in some shadowed underground for his own purposes. All that his death had done was prevent more grief. It would knit nothing back together.

Emeric died as he lived, Samson had said rather unkindly. Barely remembered, just like the rest of us.

Cullen had been too tired even to sigh at him, not least because there was a little truth to it. There was too much to do, as the Gallows seemed to move faster than he could keep up with it, as though this death had begun an avalanche of bad fortune. Emeric's duties to be divided amongst the rest. Other reports to be investigated. The story of the blood mage had seeped into the stones of the Gallows despite his best efforts, setting the Templars even more on edge than before.

A group of mages escaping. Ser Karras and two junior Templars, Bosely and Genan, killed in the effort to bring them back. Ser Thrask had reported— and his reports were always without reproach— that Karras had threatened to put the entire group to the sword without a thought. Blood magic again, the mages' leader turning into a killer when they'd been cornered. Self defence in the face of execution. Fear. Desperation. It was at least a more laudable motivation for blood and death than the woman who had taken those recruits and forced possession on them. The man who had killed those poor women and pulled them apart.

Bloody consequences did not always have bloody intents. Would the man have done it at all, if Karras had not threatened the life of all the mages under his charge?

It had been Karras or the mages, frightened of their own consequence, and he'd had to be struck down by Ser Thrask to prevent innocent lives from being taken in his viciousness. Not a difficult decision, for anyone with a conscience. One of the mages who had been brought back had even had a sort of grim elation on his quiet face, and Cullen wondered again at what empty rumours the Gallows spread so loudly, drowning out the sound of much quieter and darker truths.

Perhaps it was a sort of justice, at the cost of two better men who had fallen. But who would explain that to their kin?

Whatever its intent, more blood magic, more blood magic, it's damage was done. There had always been the cruel few. And in the wake of Wilmod and Emeric, — Maker's mercy, even Karras— rose the angry, the fearful, the ill-informed and the self-righteous, and the Gallows began to rot before his eyes.

Bosely and Genan had family in the city. A Knight-Captain's duty, to write to them. More duties to be divided to compensate for the loss. More eyes to be kept on the Templars as stories spread and twisted, and the shadows in the halls seemed so much darker.

And Ser Alrik—

After her report, Cullen had asked Samson to take Lux to the infirmary. A full day of rest, two if she was not too stubborn to agree. More duties to be divided while she recovered.

In the wake of everything, it had taken five days before he could summon the man to his office for questioning. Lux had been long back to her duties by then, and despite all his efforts, he wondered how often she was still forced to see him in the halls.

"On my honour," said Ser Alrik. "It was for the good of the Gallows."

His eyes were the same kind of bright, chilly lyrium blue that made the Knight-Commander's gaze so piercing, that cut through bone. Composed. Assessing. And he held Cullen's gaze without hesitation, so steady and honest that, had Cullen not seen Lux for himself, he might even have taken him at his word.

And that was all they had. Her word against his, and her word was so silent, so unsure, that it might not be there at all.

"I am making use of the tools at my disposal, Captain Rutherford," he went on calmly. Cullen clenched his jaw so hard that the ache ran all the way down his neck, and it sharpened his reply.

"They are soldiers, Knight-Lieutenant. Not tools."

"Assets in our fight against those who would see us weak." Voice composed. Much too frustratingly calm, as though it was Cullen who was being unreasonable. "Do we not set our strongest soldiers to the more difficult duties that they can bear? Would you keep an intelligent Templar confined to the training yard when they could lead?"

Like yourself, Knight-Captain. Cullen heard the sly appeal to his own ego loud and clear, even over the grinding of his own teeth.

"That is not in dispute."

"So you understand." Too composed, the way he stood there as if the office was his own. "Soldiers like Ser Lux are gifts." Gifts. The audacity of him. "Uncomplaining, enduring. They do the work nobody else wishes to, and the work that needs doing. I would not have been able to get this far with anyone else."

Quiet. Compliant. No. He certainly wouldn't have gotten as far as he did.

"I own that I should have told you," Alrik continued with studied remorse, perhaps taking his silence as acceptance. "But I had hoped you would understand the need once I brought my information to you and the Knight-Commander."

"An unfounded hope." Cullen's voice was as cold and calm as Alrik's own gaze, as he laid his hands on the table to lean closer. "You could have done irreparable damage to a fine soldier."

Condescension lived so loudly in the curl of Alrik's lip. He'd seen it often enough, the noble-born knights and the officers explaining how things were done to the stupid little peasant boy. In that regard at least, Kinloch and the Gallows had much in common.

"I regret, of course, the toll it took on her, but she was in no danger," Alrik said softly. "I hope Ser Lux has recovered well?"

"No more, Ser Alrik," said the Knight-Captain, only barely forcing down the hoarse edge to his reply. The man's tongue lingered horribly on her name in his apparent concern. As if curious to see how Cullen would respond to it. What he suspected.

"Ser Alrik said. That much of what I felt was not. True."

"I understand. But I require a complete report. Can you tell me everything? Everything you thought you felt and saw?"

Keeping herself still and at attention even in the chair, she gave him her report. Her voice, always flat, dutiful and precise, stumbling and grasping over peaks and valleys that he couldn't see, but she struggled to navigate. Squaring the vagaries of her memory with the precision required of her. Touches that surely weren't there. A sense of panic, yet why should there be panic? She had struck out at him, she was sorry, she had nearly hurt a superior officer—

There was a dull, dull pounding in the back of his skull, the same colour as her eyes, dazed and unfocused and still fearful. And he felt a heat building at the base of his spine, rising rapidly like flame. "These experiments of yours stop. The state of the city is fraught enough without you risking the health of our people."

"Surely—"

"You no longer have the right to reassign duties. I will inform the men."

The silence was a sharp one, edged with ice and displeasure. Alrik had been an officer long before he had. And perhaps there were a dozen ways to handle this more diplomatically, but he was beyond caring. The man had been running rings about him, too pleased with himself and his own secrecy. Cullen could not make him admit to anything that would give Lux any peace, nor anything that would give Cullen any concrete reason to keep her away from him.

All he could do was keep her busy, on his own orders. The weight of his rank would shield her from further requests of her time, he hoped… Maker willing, it would be enough.

Pulling himself to his fullest height, he levelled all the force of his stare at the man across the desk. The heat had risen to his throat, and every word breathed fire.

"Have I made myself clear, Knight-Lieutenant?"

Cullen held that too-piercing gaze, willing the defiant silence to break. Held it unmoved and unmovable until Alrik turned away from him.

"Indisputably, Knight-Captain."

The door closed behind Alrik, leaving the office in silence.

Cullen felt no victory in it. No justice done.

Chapter Text

Before Cullen had ever become captain, before the deaths and the magic and before the world had started to tilt, Lux had recognised Karl from Kinloch, though their paths had so rarely crossed back then. And she had met him many times since in the Gallows, warm-handed and soft-voiced. He had spoken kindly to her in the halls, the way Ser Thrask did, though as a mage he had no reason to. He had been a friend, a kindness.

The particular day that she had escorted the Tranquil back to their quarters from their stalls in the courtyard had been a pleasant one. Ser Derrick had given her a pleasant smile as he did to everyone, and a comradely nod as he released the Tranquil into their care. They were perfectly capable of reaching their quarters on their own, but it was simply… safer, for mages to have an escort to ensure that they reached their destination. Especially the Tranquil.

On the floor of their quarters, she'd found him waiting patiently, and her heart had dropped into her stomach.

A sunburst brand on his forehead. Joining them as placidly as if he had always been one of them.

She did not understand it. He had been Harrowed. Had passed the test proving his control over his magic back in Kinloch. And above everything else was too gentle, too quiet. Could have done nothing.

Tranquility was a final and fearsome measure for mages who could not control their power. There were thankfully few of those, with good training and good teachers. Fewer still who feared death or possession at their Harrowing enough that they requested the branding for themselves, judging the cost of their emotions a reasonable sacrifice as long as they could be certain of survival.

Yet why were there so many Tranquil in the Gallows now?

It was never meant to be used as a punishment. A control imposed. Yet there could be no other reason he was here, his face as blank as hers, his voice as level. Stripped of all his tears and his laughter, as though it had been some sin to have either in this place.

Karl had showed no unhappiness or unease with his power that he would request such a thing. And Harrowed mages could not be made Tranquil without their consent. They had proved their control. It was not allowed. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

To take someone and bend them into compliance, into obedience, to never ask if they wished to live, to separate them from so much, when they had done so little to warrant it.

It had frightened her, a bone-deep fear that nobody had been able to quell, and nobody could explain the sense of it. Not Ser Thrask, not Cullen, who was now Captain and should surely know, not Samson—

And that was all. Who else was there with the patience to listen to her?

Ser Thrask's unhappiness, Cullen's exhaustion, Samson's shrug. It was the Knight-Commander who made these decisions; not even her Captain was privy to all the ways of her mind.

There is nothing to be done, Ser Thrask had said gently. And under the weight of that helpless answer, she had not known what else to say.

Why, why, why were there so many?

It had been difficult to look at him. To speak to him. She did so all the same, and for many days after, for it wasn't his fault that she could not bear it. But she had spent that night sitting on the edge her cot, staring at the wall of the barracks until the morning arrived. Her chest shivering, forcefully quieted under the burden of her armour, the burning sword emblazoned on it as surely as the sun on an undeserving forehead. Something sharp caught in her throat and the corner of her eye. And she did not understand why.

And worse, when she was not on duty, an officer had taken him away. His sudden absence as frightening as his presence, another shuddering and sleepless night, where was he? Why had she not been there? She had failed them so completely, her hands bound in so many ways.

And still they could tell her nothing. All she was given, a few days later, was another horribly familiar face, and she felt that shuddering nearly overtake her.

"Maddox?"

"Ser Lux." Placid. Kind. He liked to work the forge. Doing little repairs. And folding little paper birds.

Why?

She asked again. She had to ask again. Hoped that maybe some sense could be made of the world, but again none was granted her. Not Ser Thrask. Not Cullen. Not—

Samson. But where was Samson?

"Expelled from the Order. Sent away late last night," Cullen said, looking tired and a little ill. Unsleeping. "I only found out from the Knight-Commander this morning. He had been passing letters for Maddox for who knows how long."

Letters. Letters. Expulsion. The sudden lack of lyrium, the weight of an entire burning sky pressing down on shoulders like restraining hands.

Tranquility.

"But." The word wavered as it passed though the trembling that had made a home in her chest. "Maddox—"

"You don't understand." Cullen's head was pounding, a sourness crawling up the back of his throat. "It's not about the letters. It's about… what could happen."

The Knight-Commander had hardly had to lay out for him what he could see so vividly. The danger. How Samson had been so willingly used for the sake of… what? Favours? Was this his loyalty to the Order? Would he open their doors to those who sought to kill them, if the price was high enough? Oh it had only been letters, yet Samson had never even looked at them. How could any of them say what those letters contained, and what dark corners of Kirkwall their messages were intended for?

Cullen was not a blind fool. He knew that no Knight-Commander could be infallible. But he understood her alarm, the necessity of the cruelty in removing Samson from his post, as perhaps nobody else in the Gallows truly would. Uldred and his students had done nothing, at first. But they had smiled and asked innocent questions and pushed their bounds so carefully, making private spaces for themselves that nobody questioned until the blood. Until the endless death even they'd had no idea how to stop. Until the barrier, and the pain and the thirst and the waiting—

And young men and women could be kidnapped in the night, twisted and broken by force. Malice, planned and cold. And women were killed in dark corners and still nobody knew how one man had so much learning of darkness.

And yet… Tranquility was such a final and fatal thing, for a young man sending letters.

Books and papers, books and papers, that was what they had found in that madman's den under the streets. Powerful magic. Notes that only a learned mage could have. It was a thought that whispered to him on nights he could not sleep, and the nights were many.

Maddox was a young man. It was not the same. But what could he say, when the Knight-Commander had ordered it practically in the middle of the night? He had awoken to it all, though he barely slept these days, and wondered why he hadn't heard anything. Why had the world been so cruel as to keep him asleep, on that one day of days?

He had questioned, stood before her desk with the same pounding headache, the same nauseous sourness. Been told in no uncertain terms to drop the discussion where it stood, to show that he, at least, was no Samson. That he was was loyal to her and the Order. Understood with another jolt of nausea that she had not trusted Cullen not to request leniency in Samson's punishment. Not trusted him not to object to Maddox's fate.

A sharp and sudden panic shook him at the thought of Lux standing before the Knight-Commander and daring to question in that awkward way of hers. The Knight-Commander now had no patience for questions, and had glared at Cullen as though he, too, was in danger of betraying her, though she had built upon him a near-complete trust.

He had at least known how to ask. Lux, with her But and her No would tie Samson's noose around her own neck before he could stop her, and then she would join him on the streets. Streets where at least Samson's quick wit and clever tongue would serve him. A home that he had some familiarity with, familiar faces he could turn to.

She? She had nothing outside of the Order. Her upbringing had made sure of it. The city would swallow her, and leave nothing behind.

Clenching his fists hard enough feel his nails ready to draw blood claws piercing his palms, he let the pain ground him long enough to draw breath, the Knight-Commander's voice ringing strong behind the certainty of his words.

"We will not discuss this further," he found himself saying, half alarmed by his own desperate determination. Not a statement. An order, and she was beholden to orders. "Focus on your duties."

His heart ached to see the way she responded by instinct, her spine locking her to dutiful, silent attention even in her unhappy confusion. It had been so difficult for her to begin speaking. To feel that she could be somewhat human before him. And he, with the weight of his authority, had robbed it from her again on the grounds of a single but.

Necessary.

Behind sore and tired lids, in the darkness, his nightmares had returned. And few terrible times, he was no longer behind the barrier.

He had foolishly thought it a mercy, the first time the nightmare had changed. A sign that his weary mind had finally found peace, was seeking a way forward out of the terror. Then he had turned towards large, staring eyes, that tuft of almost-snow hair, the barrier flickering between them as she fell to her knees. Weakened and trembling and still so silent, enduring as the demons of the tower sought to break her. Struggling to remember the prayers that would give her strength, to remember anything but pain and fear and exhaustion.

At times, the demons had cold blue eyes and grasping hands. At others the tower was a dark basement; a demon forcing its way into her spine, or a shadow trying to cut her apart piece by piece. And always her eyes stared into his as he stood an arm's length away. Without speech. Without motion. Unable to do anything but watch her be broken for the sin of being so easy to silence.

The failure of Kinloch, of Wilmod, Emeric, Alrik, could not be allowed to happen again. There were too many lives at stake, and he wasn't sure whether he was more afraid that hers would be the first, or the last. He saw with clear certainty the many paths she would take through the Gallows in her all-encompassing desire to protect. To ensure that the Tranquil were defended. To protect the apprentices, the children. To carry every soul in the building out on her back if she could.

Not because she had been raised to it, hollowed and shaped until there was nothing left but purpose. But because she was good, and kind, and wanted to do right by all the world that cared so little for her, despite how little she recognised her own wanting.

It would kill her, as surely as expulsion would.

His friend, who he had very nearly lost to silence and closed doors.

He should have seen something.

He couldn't fail her again.

If she listened, if she stayed quiet, if she kept her head down, she would keep it.

Lux had to understand. Cullen would make her understand.

"You have a kind heart," he said carefully. Trying, in some way, to mollify the sharp edge of his own order, even as he pronounced kind like a failing. "You want to protect everyone. And we can't risk someone taking advantage of that."

Easy to lie to. Her fearful, unending kindness might have more and bloodier consequences than anything Samson could have ever done.

Attentive and straight-backed. Eyes painfully large in her too-pale, too-drawn face, ringed with darkness to rival his. Exhausted. Unhappy. Still strangely afraid. There was much to fear, true. All he could do was direct her to keep her away from it. All she had to do was listen.

Perhaps it had to be so, to keep her alive.

"Have you slept?" His voice was soft. Wanting and refraining from the touch of her hand. To comfort her, just as she had heard his nightmares. And while this office was hardly that quiet, moonlit place, he could find the time. Make the time. He wanted to hear her. "Have you eaten?"

Before today, she might have asked him the same questions. And he might have offered that they eat together as repentance for both their neglect.

Before today, she might have even smiled at him. But today, she did not even hold his eyes, turning the lantern of her gaze away from him to look at the wall.

"Permission to be dismissed, Knight-Captain," she said instead. A quiet plea, that hung like heartbreak over the desk between them.

The lack of a true answer was a kind of defiance, the best she could manage to communicate her unhappiness to him, who had made it clearer by his actions than his intent that he was no fit person to hear it. He could stop her. Demand that she answer. And it would make him no better than Alrik, cruel in that face of her lack of will.

If only she would say something. Or show anger, frustration. March away from him and slam the door. But she waited. Silent. Still. Obedient. As she presumed he expected from her.

He only had himself to thank for it. Could only swallow down the heart that had climbed into his throat and pressed against his teeth, wanting to apologise, to unmake whatever his order had erected between them.

"Permission granted."

Chapter Text

Samson was dying.

Most people would disagree, on account of how he was still alive, but they weren't having the headache that he was having. They'd just say it was a hangover. And they might be right, but if it was, it was the first bloody mother goddess of hangovers, that birthed all successive hangovers into the world.

The bitch.

For what the lyrium had cost him, it had barely lasted any time at all. A little hit of semi-satisfaction, a few hours of relative peace, and then it had left him emptier than ever. Burned another hole in his belly that he'd tried and failed to fill with cheaper and worse booze as he counted his days and his coin, waiting for both of them to earn him another hit. That dwarf with the tattoos must have cut it with something. Make it less effective. Make him need to come back sooner. It wasn't as if he had a lot of options, and the ones selling the blue knew it. They could cut it how they liked, and charge how they liked, and you were grateful.

Three days since. When had her hallucinations started? He'd never been without lyrium long enough to find out for himself. The dullness came first, he knew that from the Gallows. The vague ache, like he hadn't had enough sleep, like there was a cold curled around his head and squeezing like a snake, that just seemed to get worse the longer he didn't have a full dose.

The shakes and the sweats were new, but he could drink enough to pretend he could barely feel it. Cheap and horrible, tearing up his throat on the way down. And the way up, if he was unlucky. But cheap was good. It meant he had enough left over for food most days, if he could stomach it.

Begging was scarce; work was scarcer with all the refugees fighting for a job. Still, he had a couple of people he knew. Could probably talk his way into getting a job guarding something overnight for shit pay, his reputation as Templar a decently shiny coverup for his grubbier personal reputation. But that would come and go as he could find it. Harried mages looking over their shoulders at the Gallows, wanting a way to cross the sea? There were more of those all the time. He never looked too closely at whether they were familiar faces or not. All he cared was that they'd gladly give the shirt off their backs for what he had. Connections. Information. Knowing exactly which captains were leaving the docks with a little extra room in their holds, for a price.

And for those who couldn't pay, like that elf boy from the alienage the other day, there were other options. Samson didn't like Captain Reiner much, he'd pegged him for a bastard of some stripe or the other the first time they'd met, but nobody was doing this out of the goodness of their heart.

What was it the ghost had said about him once? Good at people. He wished he wasn't bloody good at people. For one, where had it gotten him? For another, it meant he knew of at least three so-called 'traders' that had 'slaver' written all over, and he knew they'd pay him well once he was ready to fall far enough.

Reiner was nasty, but no slaver himself. Always with an eye towards the money though, that was hard to forget, especially when he'd pointed that boy in Reiner's direction. The man hadn't said a word about his empty pockets.

The girl from a few days ago hadn't had much either, come to think of it. Olivia? Strange sort of familiar face. Not from the Gallows. Still, he'd swear he'd seen a glimpse of it in the Gallows anyway. Maybe the drink was finally doing to him what the lyrium had done to old Roderick, and he was going to start seeing things and tottering into doorframes.

Point was, Reiner was being damn near charitable about it all. And if Samson was less good at people, he wouldn't have noticed.

And if Samson was a better man, he might even have cared.

Last coin of conscience spent back in the Gallows to get him fuck all. All that mattered now were the couple that were still clinking in his—

Fingers fumbled at his belt, snatching away a pathetically light coinpurse before he'd even had time to lift a finger.

"Oy," he slurred, but somehow the Kirkwall sky didn't move, the ground stayed stubbornly under his back, and the thief felt no sudden glimmer of remorse for his state. He caught a flash of a filthy, young face that felt oddly familiar before it dashed off. Like he'd seen it before.

In an alleyway, covered with as much blood as dirt. Carried from the brink of death in stupid, idealistic arms.

Surely the Maker wouldn't have such a vindictive sense of humour. But then the Maker had always smiled and spat on him in equal measure, and it had been raining down pretty hard these days.

"Bastard," he ground out, hoisting the sentiment into the air like a brick to brain the boy with. In the silence that the pattering footsteps had left in their wake, the word landed flat and heavy, giving him no satisfaction whatsoever. She should've let him bleed. Should've left him in that alleyway and walked away. Just like everyone who had just walked past Samson while he was barely clinging on to consciousness in a Lowtown gutter. Nobody's business but his very own.

"Samson?"

A vindictive sense of humour after all.

Lux loomed over him, blocking out half the sky. He could just about make out the tiny, barely-there furrow between her brows, as if she'd learned how to look concerned from a poor illustration.

He hadn't been Ser Samson to her for ages now. That formality had been long lost behind shared tables and shared secrets. If you could really call dogs and nightmares secrets. Even her little sins were the most boring things he'd ever seen.

"Raleigh," she'd tried, the first time she'd become comfortable enough with him to dispense with Ser, her tongue wrapping awkwardly around his name. He hadn't expected it, snorting into his drink and giving her a look somewhere between disgust and amusement.

"Andraste's tits. Just stick to Samson."

"Raleigh is your name." she pointed out.

"So is Samson."

"You don't like. Raleigh?"

She really did have to make everything into some sort of interrogation. Rolling his eyes, he'd tipped his seat back until it touched the wall behind him, giving her a quick once-over as she stared back stiff as a statue.

"You want to talk to me like we're friends?"

"Yes." All painful earnestness around the eyes.

"Then stick to Samson."

And so she had. So the loss of Ser in her mouth today was no loss at all. But the sight of her was an ugly reminder of what he'd been so nearly successful in forgetting under the drink. He wasn't Ser anything to anyone, not anymore. His sunburst shield, his armour, his sword, his lyrium. The whole blasted identity that they'd spent years hammering into him, that was meant to be him, yanked off of him like skinning a deer and tossing the carcass out to rot.

Or was he the starving dog, ready to bite anyone just for the taste of something? Both, more likely. Bleeding and raging for blood. The Chantry had a funny way of damning you coming and going.

"Samson."

"Heard you the first time," he managed, sticking the words together with exaggerated care. An arm, still heavy with drink and general dissolution, was waved vaguely at her. If he was going to die, he'd like it to be in peace, without her inane Samsoning.

Shockingly, her shadow over him was unmoved by his shooing. Instead he felt a hand grab him under the elbow, still unfairly strong, and suddenly the sky tipped and swayed in a dizzying arc until it was back overhead. The whole horrible act of acrobatics left him slumped against her, feeling nauseous and thoroughly irritated that she didn't seem bothered by the weight or the smell.

"Where do you live?"

"Gerroff," he snarled, failing to bare those dog-sharp teeth at her.

She didn't, and he hated that he didn't hate it as much as he should.

Without a word, she just started to move with no destination in mind except away from his most recent place of residence. And by virtue of being locked to her side by an arm around his waist, he had to follow. After a few steps of determined silence he finally ended up telling her where to go, or she might have kept going in a straight line and walked them both off the docks and into the sea. The sooner he gave in to her stubbornness, he reasoned to himself, the sooner she'd leave him alone.

When did he get so stupid?

Now he had a hangover and an unwanted ghost haunting his… one couldn't call it a house. One could, if pressed, call it a hovel, though that would be stretching the definition past decency. There was room to lie down. Sometimes it even kept out the rain.

"Make yourself comfortable," he said, giving another broad gesture that might have knocked him off his feet if she wasn't holding onto him. Even with the extra support, he wobbled ungracefully and leaned further into her, ending up with his face nicely tucked into the crook of her neck.

"There it is," he muttered bitterly as she kept moving him towards the pathetic excuse for a cot.

Silence. Not that he needed to look at her to know that she was either furrowing her brow or blinking those big eyes in bafflement, waiting for him to continue. He knew enough of it by now. Could read her like a badly written book.

"The lyrium. Can smell it on you."

They both knew that that wasn't how it worked. Lyrium didn't just hang around under the skin or in the sweat like a newly filled glass, wafting promise and forgetfulness through the air before you even got your lips on it. But he could swear, right now, that it was true, because the smell of her went right into that starving, hollow pit of his stomach. Humming with the song he'd heard too little of, trying to find an echo of it at the bottom of bottles or packets of powder and always coming up short. Too plausible, the thought of grazing his teeth in red tracks along her pale, sunless, shuddering skin. Too present, the fantasy of nearly being able to taste it, her, both, on his tongue, the heady sweetness of the blue mixing with salt-sweat.

She levered him much more gently onto the cot than he'd expected, and sank to her knees to begin tugging off his boots with her usual bloody-minded efficiency. Heedless of the Maker-pissing test of will he was having to deal with.

"You need to rest," she said, those pale eyes so suddenly close as she looked up at his, dark and bloodshot. Always seeing too much, especially when he wasn't ready for it. The only comfort was that she hadn't gotten any better at understanding half the things she saw.

"I need my shield," he rasped back. "My life."

He didn't need the pity. Or that uncomfortable, quiet, sadness, and he dropped himself sideways onto the cot just to get away from it. He needed leverage. Petty revenge. Something to break and for it to matter to someone.

"I want to help."

As she rose back to her feet, he glanced up to catch her gaze again. "Can you get me lyrium? Nick it out from under your favourite Captain's nose?"

She'd learned how to hold herself less at attention, especially around him and Cullen. It wasn't quite humanly relaxed, but enough that he caught it when she froze up at the suggestion.

"I. Samson. I can't—"

The distress in her eyes was a pleasure, a chance to snap his teeth at someone and feel like they'd flinched. It was almost worth the disappointment as he remembered that he was, in fact, in the presence of the world's most useless Templar. Of all the corrupt sods hanging off of the Gallows' teats, the only one who cared if he lived or died had to be the one least equipped to do anything for him. The one he least wanted to see.

Soap, leather and polish. Big, staring, steady eyes that made him want to throw something at her, and hair that looked like it was dandelion-soft. A spear of cold, clean light illuminating the grime he'd managed to cultivate like he'd meant it all along. Too clean in this filthy place, as if she wanted to shame him by just existing. All he felt was a deep and overpowring urge to filthy her, to bring her down to his level, crack her in half and maybe find that lyrium still present and waiting for him between the shards of glass.

"Then what're you hanging around here for?" He didn't bother trying to wave her away again, using what little energy he had left to turn away. Sinking into the cot like it was the softest bed in Hightown. How long had it been since he'd found his way back on his own before collapsing? "Your charity's complete, you brought another stray to safety. Commendations, applause."

"You have eaten?" she asked, in that thick-headed way she had of forcing statements into questions right at the end.

"Piss off," he said to the wall. It might listen more than she was.

There was a long, long moment of silence behind him, too long for his liking, and he resisted the urge to look over his shoulder, in no mood to see her staring at him. And finally footsteps, a wooden creak. Alone, and oddly annoyed about getting what he'd wanted.

~~~~~

The next time she'd come to see him, he was in much better condition to host company. And the next.

He never asked her what was happening back there when she came to visit now. He didn't need to, because when the Gallows tightened the entire city tightened with it. From the outside, it was a lot easier to see the strings that connected the Gallows to the City, the Keep, the Chantry, each strangling the other while they all kept slowly drowning.

The Viscount being killed should have been news. In Kirkwall it was just another death. Things should have wobbled a bit and just righted themselves until a new one was appointed. That was what Kirkwall did, it was a limping, bleeding beast that refused to die.

The Viscount hadn't been doing much ruling to begin with, he was too afraid of the Knight-Commander sitting up and taking notice of him, so his loss hadn't been much of one. All they'd needed was to hold on until a successor had been appointed. But the second that delicate balance that had been keeping the city steady had been affected, out of the debris had strode Meredith, grabbing the city's leash and bringing it bear at her feet just like she'd always wanted. Martial law, with nobody willing to refute her.

They said she was blocking any attempt to appoint a new Viscount. And you didn't say it too loud, if you wanted to be saying anything else in future.

He brooded a little about that, but it was hard to stay out of temper over what one could actually call a meal, his traitorous mouth watering the moment she'd opened the door. Soft bread. Cheese that wasn't harbouring life. She'd even gone out of her way to get him a fish and egg pie from that shop he'd spend his last coin on whenever they were in the city.

How dare she.

"That nutcase from Darktown's gone underground, too," he commented, pushing some hair out of his face and grabbing at the pie first like it was going to disappear. "Thought he'd be all up in arms over it all."

She furrowed her brow a little. "The healer?"

"Mm," Samson hummed around a decadent mouthful of greasy pastry. She looked tired and starved like that bloody puppy before she'd found, but didn't exactly move to join him. Always needed permission, the idiot. "He used to plaster papers about mage rights all over town."

She blinked at him, startled by this information, and he messily pulled the pie in half and dropped it in front of her. Her fingers hesitated, reached. A flash of muted green around her wrist as her sleeve pulled up.

"Unconfirmed, officially," he went on, curious eyes still on that little border of colour. "Or Meredith would've had him strung up or Tranquil long before now."

"He's committed no crime," she pointed out as if it mattered, and Samson barked out a laugh, nearly choking on his bite. Coughing himself close to death, he finally wiped at his eyes and shot her one of those blatantly obvious looks he always used when trying to have a conversation with her.

"He's a mage with an opinion, isn't he? That's enough for Meredith." Even if she didn't like it, she knew it was true. It had been true when they'd both been in the Gallows, and he'd bet excellent coin that it was truer than ever.

"He's either gotten tired of yelling," he went on, "Which I wouldn't bet on; nobody that loud shuts up for free. Or someone's finally knocked some sense into him. Shame, it was good, soft paper."

Or maybe he'd gone to ground to come up with something louder. He seemed like the type. Taking another bite, revelling in the taste and and frankly surprised that he hadn't rotted his tongue too much to taste it, he chewed in silence. Out of the corner of his eye, she nibbled her half like it was going to bite her back. Cullen's captainship didn't seem to be suiting her much.

"I," she tried after a while, and then settled back into silence, trying to find the words among pastry crumbs.

"Out with it."

"Alrik." The name caught in her throat, just a little. But there was a little rebellion in that lack of 'Ser'. Fun. He wondered if the bastard had earned the disdain that day Samson had found her, or if he'd managed to do something worse since to have the Golden Girl be so uncivil about him. "Has been killed."

"About time," Samson said smoothly, trying not to let the silence weigh on them too long as he shifted himself off of the edge of the cot, starting to rummage busily, noisily, around the space. "I hope it hurt. Got to celebrate that. Now you don't drink so I'll do enough for both of us, and I know something rolled good under here—"

"I do not. Feel relief."

Fuck's sake. Sitting back on his heels, he ran a hand over his face.

"We could just drink, ghost. I'm not the one to talk to about this."

She deflated a little, which on her just meant she was now at a human amount of stiffness. Which was perfectly and completely fine, and they could avoid having a conversation about it, which was exactly what he wanted.

He groaned, grabbing at the bottle blindly before hoisting himself back up, thoroughly annoyed.

"You probably still feel like shite because it doesn't change what happened."

"Does it." She waved the open mouth of the bottle away, too preoccupied to give him his favourite little face of disgust. "Get better?"

How in the Void was he supposed to know that? The faith in his knowledge would be touching if it didn't make him vaguely uncomfortable.

"Wouldn't know," he said, tipping the last few drops of water out of his cup and squinting into it, judging it clean and fit for the drink before being generous with himself. "Can't get worse?"

She nodded slowly, misery in the motion, and took another bite. Enduring, then, until you came out the other side. Kirkwall was good at teaching that.

"You're accessorising now." It wasn't to lighten the mood. It was just to make things his business.

"Yes."

"'S cute," he said. "Don't go looking too cute. Got enough material for the bunk as it is."

"Samson."

"And here I thought you liked me honest." A hand on his chest, he'd be the picture of shocked innocence if he wasn't so visibly enjoying the little redness across her nose. "Least I admit it, not like Cullen."

There it was. Sunrising all over her face, red and startled.

"He does not."

"Wouldn't bother you if it did." With the air of a much younger and cheekier man, he downed the last bite of pie before she could take it away for bad behaviour. "Tried to pin him down in a sparring session yet? That'll really get him going."

Glancing up again, he gave her one of those crooked grins that she never could read.

"I know it'd work on me, if you're in the mood."

"You are terrible," she declared, an uncharacteristically poor defence as she finally screwed up her nose at him. Then again, this wasn't like sparring, and she was as useless on the field of banter as she was fairly terrifying in actual combat, now that she's started learning how to anticipate him. But just like that day in the sparring ring, she was delightfully off-balance again, with no direction for how to react. Her entire focus back where it belonged, where was most entertaining: on him and his slanted, too-knowing smile that was always both a sly, heavy-handed tease and an offer, if she ever decided to reach out and take it.

Distracted, at least while she was here, from the weight of Alrik's shadow.

Chapter Text

Beneath the Keep there came a wail
Of criminals waiting the noose
The poor man he said 'I'm branded and beat'
Then he struck at the walls and stamped his feet
And the Keep came falling down!

Beneath the Gallows there came a cry
Of slaves in whips and in chains
Then all of them said 'we cannot go on'
Then they pulled and pulled until the dawn
And the Gallows came falling down!

Beneath the City there came a scream
Of blood and bone and pitch
The demon it said 'I never will die'
Then raised its shoulders up to the sky
And the City came falling down!

"That's the game," Margitte had explained to Cullen in the middle of morning training. "A few children in the middle, the rest around them with hands linked, circling. And you sing. The ones in the middle screech and squall and stamp and do everything the song says, and then everyone collapses in a heap."

"Maker, I remember that. My sisters always put me in the middle because I was the youngest," Paxley chuckled. "Didn't I just scream about it."

"A grim rhyme for a child," Cullen murmured in cautious amusement. The new scar that had split his lip during the attack had killed the Viscount still tugged at every shape of his mouth in ways that he wasn't used to. "Arm up, Paxley, you're leaving your side undefended."

"Do the children only sing about sunshine and roses in Ferelden, Knight-Captain?" Julian, a delight to the conversation as always, and clearly not trying to be sociable.

Despite his composure and focus on his task, Cullen bristled defensively at this slight to his home. He knew his share of grim little songs and tales even from as small a village as Honnleath. Death, the blights, plagues and old wars had left a scarred and storied history across Thedas. It bled into the present in playground games of kings and conquering, of blight and bone.

Even so, Kirkwall put them to shame at times. For a city to have seen so much blood, so much misery, was it any wonder that its walls bled a darker present than anything Ferelden might have to offer? Slavery, blood rituals on scales larger than anyone could even conceive, seeding grief and darkness into the very stones and stretching the Veil to breaking point. Too many people, even ones he would consider reasonable, believed that the city was cursed, a fact as immutable as the sky. Ghosts and visions. Demons. Disappearances. Alleys that shifted and basements that twisted in uncanny ways. He had seen enough of them for himself. That the city moved and breathed was an impossibility, but one even Cullen could nearly believe in quiet, exhausted moments. It ate at the edges of your attention, like a presence. Watchful. Hungry.

Perhaps that was why its songs were so much grimmer than what he was used to. Children played in the grounds they knew best. Rhymes and games to turn this… strange survival into a game that they could laugh at, before the city hardened their edges with the living of it.

And for all that, something about being born and raised in this city engendered a deep, angry, vicious sort of pride. A pride that bared its teeth with bloody knuckles and said I endured, and the city had no victory over me. It is mine and I am its.

Even Ser Thrask was shot through with that iron resilience. No less strong for his silence and his moderate air. So long had he been opposing the Knight-Commander's stricter measures with his gradual stubbornness, that Cullen believed that the man would always return to his feet, regardless of what blows he took.

There was a security in that, the same kind of comfort and certainty he found, increasingly, in Lux. If Karras and Alrik had taught him anything, it was that an officer above all else needed people they could trust. To not abuse their authority or hide behind orders. To not take advantage of dark corners and closed doors.

"Slavers at the docks, Knight-Captain." Ser Thrask looked much more tired than usual as he gave his report. With the loss of both Lieutenants, his experience and reliability had been invaluable, his shoulders necessary to help carry the burden. "They'd been taking advantage of mages trying to flee the city."

"Maker's breath," Cullen sighed from behind his desk, rubbing at his temples. "Any casualties?"

The silence between them was long enough that it made Cullen look up with a frown.

"Ser Thrask?"

The man pulled himself further to attention, clearing his throat.

"Yes Knight-Captain. None from our men. One… girl, a young lady, trying to get away from them. They didn't seem to have captured anyone else, but we… were not in time to save her."

Briefly, behind Ser Thrask's calm professionalism, Cullen though he saw a flicker of raw, animal anger. Discontent. Frustration. Utter exhaustion. As the Knight-Commander's orders grew harsher, and those loyal to her interpreted her orders to their own convenience, mages seemed to disappear from the Gallows by the day in bids to escape. If they were lucky, the patrols never found them, and they could all believe that they had reached some sort of peace. If they were unlucky, they found bodies, or worse, bills of sale that were too old and far too late.

The fear of those bodies and bills, of tragedy or Tranquility, did not seem to be enough to stop their attempts. Thrask had spoken on it often enough; the fear within the walls of Gallows was all the stronger. The Knight-Commander went too far.

Yet Thrask said nothing that day. And Cullen did not ask why he was suddenly silent.

Perhaps he should have. He was a good man, and Cullen had no desire to see him break when something could be done. But there was always too much to do. The Knight-Commander's summons more frequent as she saw some emergency or other that needed to be seen to, which seemed some days to consume all of his waking hours.

"You wanted to see me, Knight-Commander?" Cullen saluted, standing before her desk. The creak of the door had not shifted her from her now usual place by the window. His footsteps had not taken her attention from the city, as though to look away would invite destruction.

On the desk lay Alrik's letter to the Divine, and Cullen wondered again at the audacity of the man, that he could place such a horrifying solution before the Knight-Commander, before the Divine herself and expect to be heard. That he, having been rejected by both, dared to write again, as if their wills hardly mattered, as if he could impose his upon theirs in his sheer brilliance.

How had he reached the point of such confidence, said a whispering little part of his mind. The man should have been put on report the second such a proposal had reached the Knight-Commander's ears. That she had simply dismissed him and left him to his own devices had no doubt been the root of his arrogance, a confirmation in his rotted mind that he was free to continue as he saw fit.

She had never told anyone of it. Not even Cullen. He wished, fervently, that she had trusted him enough. At least he would have known to look harder. Perhaps he would have seen something all the sooner. Had she not thought there was danger in the prospect?

Or had she been so certain that her word was law, and Alrik would simply bend to it?

Though it took little to raise her ire these days, the Knight-Commander had been furious to be so mistaken.

Maker forgive him. Even though he had not known the truth, Maker forgive him. It threw into terrible question all the men and women that Alrik had made Tranquil, on the power of his word and his rank. His so-called reputation.

Those Tranquil were the price they had all paid for not acting. It was a price that could never be undone.

"You must know," she said suddenly. It was often like this now, this long silence as she looked out over Kirkwall, and he standing at attention. This sudden conversation, that seemed to have no bearing on why he'd been summoned, as though the Knight-Commander had forgotten that she'd expected him. "You must know that a month ago, I had asked the Divine for the Right of Annulment."

It landed like a blow, sudden and vicious, and though he kept himself carefully to attention, Cullen reeled.

It was not a right requested lightly. It was… desperate. A final attempt when everything else had failed. An acceptance that demonic possession had gone out of their control, for demons were always hungry for those with power, and would seek to take more and more. A choice between razing the Circle or risking a massacre in the city. The right to execute every mage in the Gallows. From the First Enchanter down to the—

There are children in this place!

"The Right of Annulment? Knight-Commander—"

"A precautionary measure, Knight-Captain Rutherford," she said, her voice so utterly certain, so stone-hard and sword-sharp, seeking to kill any objection before it ever bloomed out of his mouth. "When the Circle falls, the demons will not wait for permission."

Kinloch had been a hair's breadth from Annulment when it fell. But Knight-Commander Greagoir had waited. Beyond doubt. To request the right with such cold calmness…

His eyes fell, despite himself, to Alrik's letter.

If we simply make every mage in Kirkwall Tranquil now, there will never be any risk of possession.

'Precautionary measures'. Cold, calm and distant, in the making of such weighty, such horrifying decisions.

Had she hesitated, before rejecting Alrik's proposal? Please, Maker, say she did not hesitate.

"Do you think," said the Knight-Commander again, and his hurriedly fixed his attention on her back. As if she knew where his eyes had strayed. "That I would use such a right before the need for it? Before we have done everything else?"

"Of course not, Knight-Commander."

"The Divine does not share my concern in this matter. No doubt we are enough distance from her throne that many could stand be slaughtered before she accepted the need for Annulment."

Glancing over her shoulder, the grim and exhausted lines of her face nearly cast the shadow of a smile.

"Do I go too far for you, Knight-Captain? I do what I must. We are, as ever, alone."

We.

The Gallows? Or Kirkwall itself?

"And we endure." There again was that pride, and perhaps he had his answer. "Kirkwall has birthed many strong children, for good or ill. I trusted Alrik."

Sudden changes of conversation had become part of the routine as well. She had so much to worry about, and Cullen was at least glad that she could speak freely before him. Before it tore her down, when they most needed to be strong.

Turning on her heel, she looked more weary than ever as she laid her hands on the desk, eyes fixed on the paper before her. How many times had she taken it out, brooding over the passages of Alrik's mind? Revisiting his gall to write to the Divine in the hope of overturning Meredith's authority.

Had she slept at all? Her eyes were ringed darkly, the pupils sharp and far too intent. Her skin a shade too pale, as though she were on the precipice of a fever. More and more, she seemed as though she found no peace, no sleep.

"I tell you this now to impress on you how alone we are. The Viscount and the Grand Cleric will stand behind us only so long as it serves them. Our own men may look to take advantage of our trust. We must make our own strength."

"Yes, Knight-Commander."

"To prepare to be opposed, when we do what must be done."

He hesitated a little at that, but nodded as she turned back to the window.

"What an officer needs, Cullen, is certainty. And if you cannot find it around you, you must create it yourself."

For a long moment of silence, she seemed to forget he was there, as she stared out over Kirkwall. He waited, frowning into the silence, the letter and her admission pulling constantly at the edges of his attention. What was it that needed to be done?

And then, softly, in the quiet, so softly he barely heard it:

"The demon it said, 'I never will die'."

"Knight-Commander?"

She didn't turn to look at him again. "Old games. We were such foolish children. Dismissed, Knight-Captain. I want those newly promoted recruits fighting fit."

"Yes, Knight-Commander." With a formal salute at her back, he about-faced and marched towards his day of duty. What needed to be done was papers, training, duties and patrols. The running of the Gallows, as smooth as he could make it. Imagining, perhaps, another quiet murmur as he closed the heavy wooden door behind him.

"And the city came falling down."

Chapter Text

The Gallows did not all fall at once.

It sickened, slow and inevitable. A tower crumbling, weary and worn until the stones could bear no more wearing. A tree rotted to hollowness, standing only because no storm large enough had chanced to knock it down.

The storm, in its largeness, began when a single man shifted.

The storm, in its loudness, began with silence.

Ser Thrask. Moderate and kind. Silent, silent, his words growing ever quieter as they fell on deaf ears.

Some said they should have known. Should have suspected he was behaving differently. Others said, who can predict when a man loses his mind?

Cullen had been there when it happened. Told Lux some of it, because Ser Thrask had been good to her, and he'd wanted her to hear the facts before the rumours of the Gallows poisoned her ears.

The facts were these: A kidnapping, facilitated by Thrask. An alliance with blood mages from the Gallows itself. A plan to force the Knight-Commander's hand.

The facts were these: He hesitated at the end, unwilling to shed blood, and one of the mages… Grace, wasn't it? Grace, Lux had replied, her voice level. Grace had killed him on the spot.

What else could he expect? said some. It's no more than he deserved.

The facts were these: The victim rescued. One mage alive, returning to the Gallows in shame and fear of what his fellows had done. Alain? Alain, she had responded. Automatic.

They both knew their names. He had no need to confirm them, no real reason to ask except to prompt her to speak, so that her attentive silence was not so heavy around his neck.

The traitor's body left where it fell.

But Cullen would not tell her where.

He deserves to be brought back, she did not say. Had become so terribly silent before him, but without any of that anger simmering under Thrask's mask. She had only listened, those two names pulled out of her as if against her own will, eyes wide and lost and more tired than ever.

"I thought that you deserved to know," Cullen said quietly. The Knight-Commander has forbidden it, he would have said, if she had only asked. Instead she simply nodded, sharp and precise, awaiting her dismissal again.

"Thank you, Knight-Captain," she said. If she needed comfort, she would not seek it from him.

"Lux—"

"Permission." It was the barest catch in her throat that crushed his own, the words dying where they lay. "To be dismissed, Knight-Captain."

A tower, unassailable. Breaking, breaking, unable to weather, unable to bear more bearing. He could only nod, not trusting himself to speak.

The Knight-Commander had been silent as well. Her anger over Alrik had been a sharp spike of fury, his arrogance a mere reinforcement that she must remind the men of who she was. To remind them of their loyalty. Their fear. But Thrask had been a far deeper blow. He had betrayed her, targeted her openly. Had intended and schemed to bring the dagger to her back. Had perhaps, she said with such low intensity made Cullen more fearful than any of her rage, pretended to her rank. Thought himself the new Knight-Commander, with dark magic at his side to enforce his will. They thought her so easy to break.

They would be reminded.

Curling in on itself like an injured creature, the Gallows held its wounds close and precious. Tightened around every throat in a bid for its control. The echo of Meredith's hand was present more than ever, tangible even if you were to never see her. Her very breath tinged the air of the Gallows, harsher and harder than it had ever been, and everyone breathed of it. Saw signs and shadows where there were none, felt always on the precipice of ruin if they were not alert, aware. The hands of the Gallows scrabbled for control that they were not even losing.

Like losing lyrium, Lux thought. The loss of the ground and the weight of the sky.

Something was falling, and it was a terrible and gradual thing. Slow and inevitable, no matter how she tried to hold it up.

No loitering in the halls. No unattended mages. All doors to be open at all times. No deviating from the schedule. These were part of the rules that had made the Gallows such a nightmare in the first place, that had given the mages no time to breathe, no place to hide.

But now, with the Templars taking any excuse to visit their wrath on their charges, and turning perceived or invented signs of defiance into grounds for punishment, it was salvation.

Lux wielded those rules like a war club, her voice flat and final. All too aware of the naked relief on the mages' faces at her arrival, she extricated them from isolated corners and away from Templar steel under the guise of reprimanding them for being late or lingering where they should not be. Escorting them to their friends, their teachers, to public spaces, on the grounds of them needing supervision lest they wander off again. Faced the stymied Templars, time and again, and their accusations that she was overstepping the bounds of her duty, that she was interfering with theirs. That they were being treated as if they were untrustworthy.

Perhaps all these things were true. But she had broken no rule. However they may hate her for it, she had done nothing that would allow the Knight-Commander to find her wanting.

For if she was to be dismissed, who would protect them? Who would look to the Tranquil? Alrik was dead— the memory still came with a hollow coldness where she wished there was relief— but she knew by heart the names and faces of those who were cruel, and there were too many of them. Could not even trust those who were kinder, because she didn't know how to tell truths from the lies of survival in their mouths.

She would remain dutiful. She would remain obedient. She would tell precise truths that were not technically lies. Deeply afraid that the moment would soon come where she would have to disobey openly, and this fragile barrier that she had created would shatter.

Who would take you?

Maddox stared placidly at her, the sunburst a wretched scar on his soft, pleasant face, and then suddenly said: "You are crying."

Startled, Lux raised a hand to her cheek, feeling a cascading wetness, and wiped at her eyes. Once more. And again. And still her cheeks were wet.

"I cannot stop."

"You must, before your duty ends," he said calmly, patting her hand as Karl used to. In some memory of the true comfort they would once have been inspired to give her. Where he lay now, she couldn't say. Free from his Tranquility at so great a cost, unmourned and alone.

Kind. They had only ever been kind. Their crime was simply that they had been easy to hurt.

The enormity of how she'd failed them threatened to finally crawl up through her throat and drown her from the inside. Afraid. So afraid that if she turned, they would take another of the Tranquil away to do Maker knows what, and leave their bodies in shadow where she could no longer protect them.

"Yes. I understand."

There had been a strain around Ser Thrask's eyes for many, many days. Some distance he had put between them that she could not understand. Worried that she had done something to displease him.

"No. No." The question had seemed to upset him, seeing and not seeing her as he reached out gently to fix some of her hair. "No, Liv— Lux. I could never be displeased with you."

She had not known how to ask whose name he had nearly taken, or why her tiredness seemed to make him all the sadder.

The day they finally realised that Karl was not coming back from whatever 'business' the officers had had for him, all he had been able to say was: "There was nothing we could do."

"We were. I. Was. supposed to protect them," she had said, feeling clumsy and far too young, unable to wrap her grieving tongue around the words.

He took her hands— they were trembling a little, she realised dimly— still careful. Gentle in the face of her fracturing. More gentle than she deserved.

"We can't be everywhere at once."

"I promised."

He smiled sadly. "We only said we would try. That we would do our best."

"It's the same."

"Is it now?" His voice was quiet. Wondering. Despairing. "Is every word you speak, your word given?"

"Yes."

It had to be.

She should have been everywhere at once. With Alain. With the children. With the Tranquil. She should she should she should.

With him, though he had not seemed to want her wherever he was going. How easily he had kept her away from it all.

He had been good to her, and she mourned the softness of his expression. With all of the Gallows turning him into a harsh lesson in obedience, his death into the harvest of his own madness, she mourned the warmth of his hands around hers. He had done something drastic and terrible that had somehow ended in less tragedy than it should have. Had sped up the crackling, shivering, crumbling of the Gallows that she now bent under. And still she mourned him.

She had never possessed anything that she would feel its loss. Yet now she felt that something of great importance had been taken from her, something she had no clear name for, had never been allowed to want.

He had left her. Or she had failed him.

Alone in the jaws of something monstrous, while he had been lost in some quiet grief that she could not understand and had not been able to follow him into. And still and still and still she mourned him. Missed him. His gentleness. Missed Samson's sharpness, that had dulled to something unrecognisable at times. Missed Cullen, who she had not seen for many months. He had been taken away, and Knight-Captain Rutherford put in his place.

There was no more talk of leaves. The Templars saw the face of the city only in the course of duty, and at all other times remained in weary wariness, waiting for some invisible war that only the Knight-Commander could sense on the air. Their job to be obedient, to be alert.

What did it mean, to be a good Templar?

Was it one who adhered to the rules? One who obeyed their superiors blindly? One who protected the people at the expense of the mages? Or one who wished to hold them both in balance? One who looked for any excuse to snuff out magic, or a force simply to make sure it didn't rage out of control?

A good Templar must be just.

A good Templar must be compassionate.

A good Templar was made to protect all the children of the Maker.

Could one hold such things together in one body without breaking?

She thought of Cullen, strangling himself in the cords of command to pretend he was not fracturing and couldn't be put back together.

She thought of Samson, drowning himself in drink to pretend he was not burning with no hope of extinguishing.

And her.

She was no revolutionary. She was frightened, and the Knight-Commander was the Commander that had ruled her as a child, and she and he stretched the entire height of the Gallows, blocking out the sky and telling her to stop crying, you are a soldier, you are a weapon of the Maker, of the Order, and you will do as you are told.

Lux could walk her patrol in her sleep. Without deviation, without hesitation. She set her feet for Samson all the same, her patrols now the only time she had to ensure he was alright.

My Maker, know my heart.

She was so very tired. Heartsick and lonely, too familiar with that coldness inside her that she now had names for. Perhaps it had been better not to feel. If there was a way to hollow herself out again, she would take it gladly.

Samson was half trying to sleep away his wretched pain, barely looking up as she peered into his cracked-open door. Gesturing vaguely for her to stride inside before rolling slowly onto his back to stare blearily at the ceiling. She looked down at him, this reminder of how the Order failed, in all his sickness and virulent, bitter hunger. A husk of 'a good Templar'.

Her friend.

Lowering herself silently to the ground, she pressed her back to the painfully hard frame of the cot and stared at the opposite wall as though she could see Darktown in all its rot, thick with chokedamp and the loss of hope. Lowtown above it, and then Hightown, each layer pretending not to recognise the foundation upon which it was built, content to let the forgotten fall lower and lower.

And above it all, like parasites engorged with blood, piercing through every layer with fear to keep themselves fed: The Gallows, The Keep, The Chantry.

And still, overlaid on it all, she saw the Gallows halls, walking them again and again and again even in her sleep, and did not know how long she sat there.

"I don't want to go back," she finally breathed, her admission so little and broken in the darkness.

There was nothing but silence at first, and rough, uncomfortable breathing, before Samson suddenly spoke.

"Pretty face like yours, you won't be hurting for money if you left."

He laughed, a horrible, ragged little cackle that slurred on the edge of unconsciousness, and brushed her hair with his fingertips in a disjointed gesture that could have either been a ruffle or a nudge, if it had ever connected.

"Or you could offer be a mercenary. But who'll take you, Ghost?" he rasped, shifting himself into more comfort, rattling the cot's frame against her back. "Where'll you go when this is the only life you've ever known? When your bastard of a Commander probably fed you lyrium like mother's milk?"

She knew that he didn't mean to hurt her. He was simply correct, and so being, fell into a shallow and fitful sleep in the wake of her silence.

She curled up at the foot of his cot, in the filth, and wept.

Chapter Text

The day after the whole business with Alrik, she'd tracked Samson down to irritate him with a "Thank you."

"He needs pissing off." Samson had shrugged, moving ahead with the sound of her ever-steady step trailing behind him like an armoured duckling looking for a mother. "Keeps him humble."

"And if," she had asked in that awful, too piercing way she sometimes had, "he was your friend?"

"Don't—" He'd rounded on her as fast as he could before the silence could fall. "Don't ask me questions I have to think about. You won't like the answers I come up with."

But the silence did fall. She'd let it fall on purpose, giving him no reprieve from it. And it was a long and painful thing that had grabbed hold of his jaw, tightening it into something like anger.

"Just be glad I hate most of the people here," he'd shot out, needing to shatter the silence long enough to move, before it froze him in place with her damned staring. Spinning on his heel, goal entirely forgotten, he'd walked away again just to get away from her.

Even without looking he could still see her just… standing there. A little point of light in those darkened halls.

Hearing that steady, uncannily regular tread at his door was almost like being in the Gallows again. Sharing a meal once in a while, with one of those little creased-eyes not-really-smiles that he knew exactly how to get out of her, was nearly nice. When the sun was high and he'd had his fill, he even wondered about getting that night job for shit pay, and getting on with this new living. But then the emptiness made his hands shake, and he'd scour every corner of his wretched little living space for coin, for more blue to replace his blood.

Cullen had even come to see him, once or twice. He never brought him any of the blue, and he'd completely failed to petition Meredith to let him come back. But he brought him some coin from his fancy new officer's stipend to soothe his guilt, and soothe at least one aspect of the hunger. It was a shitty sort of normal, but it had started to become almost familiar, the three of them in this new stretched, distant and miserable shape.

It was the late nights when Samson wondered if he was far enough gone to beg Meredith to take him on again. Cullen had failed with reason and good intentions. Maybe, said one of Samson's nasty little thoughts, he's not trying very hard at all. But Samson could appeal to her petty sense of vindictive victory.

And he'd been a good Templar when Guylian was around. He could still pretend to be that man, so long as the lyrium flowed. Another dutiful bloody showpiece in Meredith's collection. As long as he never had to lose the blue again.

Let her win. She'd already won the city. What was keeping him from crawling back?

Morality? That was a laugh. He didn't really care what she did, only how it came down on his neck. Dignity? A few rounds of scrapping with gravity had left him in the gutter and gotten rid of the last of it. Nothing could embarrass him.

And even if he did lose something in the process, enough lyrium could take the place of so many missing bits. Dignity, pride, all of it. He just had to lower himself far enough for her to say yes. Could pretend that he'd seen the error of his ways, that he agreed with her and everything she was doing. They had crack down on the mages, dangers to Kirkwall, etcetera and so on.

All he had to do get his foot in the door, and he'd manage the rest.

He'd get tidied up and go begging first thing tomorrow. Shaking his head at the irony of it all, he uncorked a half-finished bottle and decided to complete the job. Cullen would be surprised for a start. He had a beauty of a salute to show the officers, all dutiful and alert. Good for a laugh, and for looking good where it mattered.

And then, without any warning except for the silence that had come before it, the world exploded.

~~~~~

There had been panic and confusion on this edge of Lowtown the second that red light had cut through the cloud. Lighting up Hightown like a Feastday candle. Kirkwall was all cliffsides and tallness, and everyone had held their breath, waiting for whatever mess had happened in Hightown to come crashing down. It always did. All the way down.

Red. Red like a fevered sky. And then had come the noise, hot and so loud, so loud that you couldn't even see, because the sound took over all your senses. Burning the air with red, smoke in the lungs, too hot to see. Hightown dying, edges curling in flame.

Samson been staring right in the direction of the damn thing as it went up. It was like the Maker's own hand had punched up through the ground, shattering the Chantry into the sky. Or… what was the old rhyme? The demon under the city, lifting its mighty shoulders and shaking the earth, shrugging off every weight from its back. Annnnnd the city came falling down.

Something rattled the ground, fit to knock down his walls. Someone screamed. Samson reached under his cot for his last vial of lyrium, tearing it open with his teeth.

Downing, drowning, floating. Laughter from somewhere. From him. Rough-edged and wretched, manic, bouncing off of the flimsy wooden walls.

Nobody had ever touched the Chantry before. Kirkwall had been on the brink of ruin a thousand times, but the Chantry had always stood strong, a spike rammed into the centre of the city in the pretence of keeping it steady. Tight hands on lyrium leashes. Drip-feeding loyalty and fear, ripping bits out of Templars piece by bleeding piece to fill their plates. Letting Lowtown and Darktown starve while the glitter inside the Chantry, he'd noticed, never seemed to fade.

Kirkwall was and had always been a hideous place, a cursed ship sailing on blood and suffering, the backs of slaves being replaced only by the backs of the poor, open to the whip. More blood for the stones. More blood for the sails. More blood to wet the lips of those reciting the Chant. And Kirkwall had always survived. Victorious, beating out every little human life that clung to its hide. But attacking the Chantry, now. Whoever had done that had touched the untouchable. Shattered the real seat of power that had nothing to do with the Viscount or the Templars, and cracked old Kirkwall's spine.

He didn't know if it was a good thing. But it was a thing that had never been done.

Someone, somewhere, was shouting something incoherent about mages. About the Knight-Commander. Every able-bodied Templar still on patrol to report immediately.

Immediately. Whatever she had in mind, here was a door flung wide open for him. He wouldn't even have to beg, someone would toss his armour at his head and snap at him to get in line. Double doses in an emergency, if mages were involved. And he could be back.

But if there was ever a woman bloody-minded enough to break Kirkwall's back the rest of the way, it would be Meredith. She'd see them all at the bottom of the sea, even if the city took her with it. And Samson was exactly the kind of rat that was never caught dead on a sinking ship.

Still, big ships took time. And while all hands were all deck, trying to keep it afloat, he could slip on a uniform just long enough to fill his pockets. A little crate or two for his troubles. It was only what he was owed, and he was owed much more besides.

"Beneath the Chantry," he managed hoarsely as he got to his feet, the lyrium lighting him up like the sky, wetting his lips the way nothing ever could. "Beneath the Chantry there came a…"

Cry? That'd been done. A roar. Red and hot and angry, like the light burning through the clouds.

"Of Templars losing their bloody minds." That didn't work. He ran his fingers though his hair and straightened his shirt, looking and feeling more human than he had in days. Templars and mages all leashed. Not bad. He might have a career in creepy children's rhymes.

"Then somebody said." Dagger in the boot, just in case, and another swig of booze for luck. "I'll do what I must." Shit, now he had to find something that rhymed with must. He shoved the door open, swinging crazily in its one secure hinge. Even after the explosion, the sky was still red, somehow. The air still hummed and simmered. Something, he didn't know what just yet, had shifted.

Dust hung in the air, drifting down from Hightown like the shouting, distant and indistinct.

"The Maker's fist dropped." He didn't bother to lock up behind him. There had never been anything worth taking. "In fire and dust. And the Chantry." Another bark of a laugh, disbelieving; a bloody-knuckled child on a dirty street, raising his fist to the sky. "The Chantry came falling down."

Humming, Raleigh Samson swaggered out into the city.

Chapter Text

"The Grand Cleric has been slain by magic. The Chantry destroyed."

The Knight-Commander's voice had already been ingrained in them to demand attention. Obedience. And now that voice cracked through the air harsh and sharp, audible through every window like thunder, a storm breaking right above them, the sky splitting in two.

"As Knight-Commander of Kirkwall, I hereby invoke the Right of Annulment."

Cullen froze, his blood pounding in his ears as he failed to pronounce the But that should have been.

Annulment.

Annulment.

Oh Holy Maker.

She rounded on the Templars behind her as though she could feel Cullen's horror, the First Enchanter's objection of The Circle did not do this! falling against her armoured back like unarmed hands. It would have been such a simple objection if her eyes had been wild and untenable, but she held Cullen's gaze steadily. Hardly calm, she was tight with fury and the fear that she had long mastered and leashed to serve her duty. But steady. Too reasoned. Too ready. Her voice the edge of a blade, and he another in her sheath.

The soldier she pointed to stiffened, her gesture pulling him to forceful attention. There was no thought of disobedience, not in the face of that cold anger.

"Send for the rest of the Order," she said, every word falling as the debris of the Chantry did on the horizon. Crushing. Brutal. Fatal. "Every Templar on patrol. Every recruit in their bunks. Any able bodied soldier in the city. Every mage in the circle is to be executed."

How readily she pronounced it, as though it did not contain the weight of so much blood within it. As though it had not torn a wretched silence into the world, within which the other Templar's armoured footsteps echoed. Rattled through Cullen's head, drowning out the Knight-Commander's voice as she turned to him, her eyes diamond-bright and twice as hard.

Her glare sharpened at his lack of instant obedience, struck dumb and as stone in the courtyard. "With me, Knight-Captain."

"Commander," he managed as though from a great distance, watching himself follow.

The Knight-Commander didn't take Cullen far, only moving them a private corner some distance from the two other Templars who had accompanied them. Her eyes were still fixed on the doors that a frantic First Enchanter had rushed back through to ready his people for the worst.

"Once the others are here, you will speak to them," she said busily. "Rally them. An Annulment is a difficult thing, even for an experienced Templar. The newest ones will need your encouragement."

"Knight-Commander—"

"The people will demand justice, Cullen. They will call for the blood of those responsible. I aim to give it to them."

"We—" He wasn't sure how he managed it, only that he did. "—have no proof that the mage is from the circle."

In the speed with which she rounded on him, the air should have caught ablaze. Cullen didn't flinch, but she didn't raise her hand either as he expected, only clenching it tighter, tremblingly, around the hilt of her sword.

"Proof? You would wait for proof? We have proof enough. The Grand Cleric lies dead, felled by magic and buried under the very stones she served. Will you wait for the same to happen again? And you will answer for the lives taken? To their families?"

One quiet evening, when they had both been more tired than he had ever remembered being, she had asked him if he had any siblings who were mages. He had said no, finding nothing strange in the question, nor in the low, weary way she said that he was blessed to have none. That his trial in Kinloch had been enough.

For months, he was sure that she had never stood as close to him as she did now, such that he could see clear into her eyes. There was something terrible fuelling the determined fire there, something he would almost call unholy, if that in itself were not a sin to think without cause.

Is this not cause?

"Meredith."

Her name, the care with which he handled it, made her jaw clench, her shoulders stiffen. As though he had raised his hand to strike her.

"There must be some…" His throat was dry, cracked, heaving every word out with a breathless pain as he went on. "The young apprentices."

"I take no pleasure in this."

He believed it. And yet surely, surely…

Words failed him, each syllable too fraught, too agonising as he tried to fight them around a throat that had breathed loyalty for so many years, for this woman who had seen more than a broken failure. Who had trusted him. He would not be unworthy of that trust now, not when she was on the precipice of something none of them could come back from.

Behind the barrier in Kinloch, all that had sustained him was prayer and faith. When words failed, no clue of which ones would strike her as fatally as her own name had done, there was at least prayer. During the fall he had sought strength and guidance from the Maker and Andraste. And after, when the nights were long and he wondered if he was too lost, too broken to be saved, he had sought…

"Let those who seek redemption be delivered.
Let those who have—"

"You dare," she hissed, her voice low and vicious as she took a step forward. Had she her way, her eyes would have struck him down where he stood. "You dare to quote the Chant of Light to me? I, who have stood between this city and ruin, time and time again?"

"Meredith, please…"

By the blood of Andraste, were her eyes haunted. Phantoms he could not reach, that she would not let him touch. Had never quite trusted him enough, though she had trusted him with all the running of the Gallows.

There was something painful in that.

The first wave of Templars began to file into the courtyard, ready and yet so unprepared for what was to come. Disbelieving still, that they had heard their summons correctly. The weight of their swords unwelcome for any who still had a soul.

"No more, Knight-Captain," she said tightly, stepping away from him. "No more."

From where he remained, rooted in place, Meredith's words to the other Templars faded and flickered as though he were falling. An ocean away, a step away. Here and there and nowhere at all, the ground dissolving from under his feet. Nausea churning his stomach, the magic of the barrier pressing around him again.

He had his orders. Had to believe that the Knight-Commander knew what she was doing. To think otherwise was…

She had to know what she was doing.

She had requested the right before there had ever been danger.

She saw more and much father than he did. And Maker knew that she had kept some things from him; there must have been some reason for this terrible caution that she had never told him about.

There must have.

To think otherwise…

His breath caught like agony in his chest, his armour too tight. And yet a dull and far-away ache. The barrier, the claws, this city, their swords. Promises and threats and blood and fire. A flash of short, pale-blonde hair. He never saw her reach the floor of the tower upon which he had been caged, and wondered how far she had gotten. How many she had saved. How many they had failed. How many had failed them. That Circle and most of the lives within had been lost to the demons, no matter how they would wish it otherwise. And here?

Something felt terribly wrong. Terribly? Too elsewhere. Too young. They had both been so young.

"Knight-Captain?"

Andraste's tears, some of those bodies had also been young, and younger.

"Knight-Captain?" Lux repeated steadily with no raising of volume nor change in tone, clattering the same pebble against a stone wall with inexhaustible patience and expecting it to make a dent. Steady as the Kirkwall cliffs, and he clung to it to bring his head back above water.

"Ser Lux." His voice was dazed and distant. Disbelieving. And her lack of a surname had never been more apparent. The address felt both too familiar for his professionalism and too distant for his heart.

The faintest furrow in her brow, her eyes full of too much for him to understand even if she would ever allow him to do so again.

"Cullen?"

His name, in her voice, somehow caught in his own throat. He closed his eyes to get away from her concern, held out carefully in sword-calloused hands.

It could kill her.

"You've heard the Knight-Commander's orders?"

"Yes," she said simply, and he couldn't understand why she didn't move to join the others, Meredith's voice pulling at the strings of her training like everyone else. Harder than anyone else.

"Your orders, Knight-Captain?"

A strangled, hysterical laugh fought for purchase in his throat for a moment, rising and dying before it had even gotten to live.

"My…?"

The Knight-Commander's orders were absolute. The chain of command wrapped around both their necks, their wrists, their feet. What did it matter what he thought? How could she expect his orders to be any different? Wasn't she afraid at all that he would force her back into line? That he would order her to obey and turn butcher? Surely she had no reason to trust him now.

He wondered what an effort it must be, to keep her muscles still. To stay here, staring attentively at him with those lake-clear eyes, when Command rang loudly behind her. What a risk it must be, to hope.

"Your Orders, Knight-Captain," she repeated patiently.

"Do," he said hollowly. Fingers loosening, that tight grip he had kept on her sleeve to keep her from walking into darkness. Relinquishing his command into those hands. Trusted. Reliable. "What needs to be done."

He knew her precision. Knew he could not say more, but she would understand. Her freedom to chose what was needed. What was right.

It would kill her.

And so would obeying, as surely as if he had wielded the blade himself.

"Yes, Knight-Captain." Even his rank, today, she held gently. Waiting. His eyes flickered open, still seeing Kinloch and blood and barrier. But she was there. She had never reached him, never known he was there, alone and afraid. But she was there. Here. Steady, a rock in a swirling tide of past memory and present fear.

He should have taken her hands. Could only watch, numbly, as he saluted her, and she saluted back, before spinning on her heel and marching away. Never quite disappearing into the group that had begun to move towards the building, readying gauntlets and helmets on their way. Always an attention too straight. A step too regular. Even fully armoured and helmed he could find her like a beacon. Watched as she disappeared, and knew with cold certainty that they would not see one another again. Not until the bloody work was concluded. Until Meredith was satisfied.

Let those who have sinned be forgiven.

Chapter Text

Let those who cry out from the shadows be comforted.

When Kinloch Hold had begun to fall, there had been a child. Lux's armour had been, was, would always be, made for sternness and shielding, and if it conveyed any comfort it was the security of her implacable strength. It had never been meant for gentler comfort. Nevertheless, she had lifted the sobbing child into her arms, cradled his head into her chest-plate far more gently than her gauntleted hands should have allowed.

"You are safe."

There had been nobody that day to tell her what to do, but she had known her duty, which had been placed and strapped upon her on her like armour. To kill demons, to keep order. But below that, below steel and flesh and laid into her very bones, sung protect, protect, protect.

She had heard later, that Enchanter Uldred had summoned a demon of Pride, and had lost all control of it. Politics and tensions and arrogances that she did not understand. She only understood that there had been a child. Several children, clinging to the cloth belt at her waist, silent in terror as she searched for Wynne, the mage with the soft voice and the kind face, to give them solace while she looked for others. Bodies and bodies, with names and voices that her precise memory would never let her forget.

Demons in the tower had meant that any mage was at risk of possession, and so going back inside was the height of danger. Her heart, little and foolish and with no experience of anything, could have let such evil out into the world.

But there had been a child that day.

This day, were would be no demons to battle. Only those of her Order she was meant to call siblings, which made it all the worse.

alone in the flicker

beneath the Gallows

those who cry out

came falling down

The Gallows seemed empty. Deathly silent. No doubt the mages had barricaded themselves further inside. The Templars marched in, armour echoing oddly in the tall ceilings and empty halls. Hesitating, shuffling awkwardly as their footsteps filled the space with a thousand unseen threats. Uncertain in the weighty, textured silence, that was shattered so suddenly by First Enchanter Orsino's voice.

It seemed to come from the air itself.

We have not done this! We will fight!

Pleas and threats in equal measure. Palpable certainty, as certain as Meredith had sounded when she had sent him in and a few armoured bodies shifted uneasily.

There were in the right, were they not?

"I don't know if we…" Ruvena's voice, Ser Ruvena now, different in her helmet. Her first time in full plate. The recruits had only barely become full Templars. Had been so pleased, so proud. Ruvena had written to her mother immediately, full of ink splatters and incomprehensible scrawls, and had sheepishly asked Cullen to write on her behalf before she wasted more parchment and got put on report by the Quartermaster.

Letters. Would Ella, who had not even passed her Harrowing yet, be able to write to her mother again?

Ruvena was nudged sharply by whoever was next to her. "We're Templars now. No turning back. We have our orders."

"Yes but—"

"Remember the mages who'd started kidnapping recruits? Forcing demons into their bodies."

"Shut it Paxley," Jerran's voice growled. Swords in hand, their armour too heavy and hot, they were more on edge than ever as they moved through the vast and empty spaces, eyes on every shadow that might jump at them. "Those weren't Gallows mages."

"I know that Jerran," Paxley snapped back, voice high and sharp with badly disguised fear. "But they could do the same to any of us. Maybe they have already. My point is, the Knight-Commander doesn't just do things."

"You're the one who thought she was the reason the recruits were going missing in the first place."

"And I was wrong, but she'd have a good reason for something this big!"

"The Knight-Captain." Lux had no diplomacy to calm them down, nor the skill with words to rally them to any better cause. Was not particularly loved that a friend would give her words a charitable ear. She would, inevitably, say the wrong thing, or the right thing in the wrong way. Inhaling slowly, she continued. "Does not agree."

For all they found her unsettling, so many of the Templars had come to respect Cullen, and the recruits adored him. He was firm, but fair, and remembered all their names and where to place them to display their fullest ability. To know his disagreement made them hesitate longer than anything else could have.

Mumbling. Uncertainty.

"Captain Rutherford's a smart man."

"But… she said they blew up the Chantry."

"Mages. She said mages, didn't she?"

"Not from here. She didn't… not exactly."

"Andraste's tears. Maybe there's been some mistake? Ser Lux, maybe you misheard?"

"No."

Panic started to shiver at the edges of the crowd as they pushed deeper in. As they began to stop, hesitating, only to be shoved by someone behind them, until they tangled up in a knot on one of the larger landings, that had doors opening on every side.

"It doesn't matter if they did this one thing." Mettin. Dangerous. "A mage is always a risk. And if the Knight-Commander orders an Annulment, we obey. Or has everyone forgotten their loyalty?"

Pushing hard at any shoulders and arms in his way, he worked through the knot to where Lux was standing.

"Are you a mage sympathiser, Ser Lux?" he murmured, voice low. "Or just a coward?"

He shoved at her chest to make a point, even if she barely moved, and stepped closer.

"The Knight-Commander would have you against the whipping posts outside for either. It's just a matter of how long you'll last."

"Fuck off, Mettin!"

Jerran tried to shove him way from her, furious and explosive in his confusion, but Mettin was ready. Fists, elbows, the hideous screech of armour scraping against one another in close quarters. The knot widened, scattered into a loose ring like a sparring ground, each trying to bring the other to the ground. Jerran was quick, a most capable fighter. But Mettin had always been stronger, and Jerran was too angry. The clang of armour rang up to the ceiling as Mettin struck a blow so hard that Jerran collapsed to the floor. A drawn sword wielded like lightning, its point wedged right into the gap between chestplate and helmet. Not quite cutting. A promise that Mettin let linger in the shocked silence.

"Get up," he said calmly, watching Jerran's chest struggle to rise and fall under the plate. "And anyone else unwilling to do your duty. You can go outside and explain your cowardice to the Knight-Commander. I'm sure she'll be most understanding."

An opening. A grim mercy, before the blades fell. Paxley shifted from one foot to the other, but even he did not step forward.

"Ser Mettin." Lux knelt to help Jerran to his feet, and Ruvena rushed to help her. "Stand down."

Mettin's sword twisted, flicked, half-knocking Jerran's helmet from his head as he struggled to find his footing at Ruvena's hand.

"Whoops."

Another helmet tilted, which had so far been watching the debacle in eerily calm silence.

"If it isn't the ice-bitch of Kirkwall." Julian's voice echoed with uncharacteristic brightness.

Sword lifting. Pointing at Lux like judgement as she rose back to her feet.

"I've been wanting to have that sparring session we missed. I guess the Maker really does provide."

"Ser Julian. This is not the time."

"The perfect time to deal with traitors. And for those of you with bleeding hearts for these dying mages, get out. Or die with them."

"Stand. Down."

"They aren't going to," Ruvena muttered, steadying Jerran and reaching for her sword as other suits of armour crowded near Julian and Mettin, two knots of angry and panicked metal.

Drawing steel on another Templar was not permitted, not even if steel was drawn on you in anger. Not unless there was no other way, and the other could not be reasoned with nor brought down by other means. There were few enough bodies in the Gallows without them whittling one another down. Not unless they were a danger.

What could be more dangerous than this?

Every nerve shuddering with anxious energy, Lux drew her blade, and heard it cut what was left of compromise and reason as it sang through the air. Heard more drawn behind her. Before her. Around her, a circle of steel and death, from which there was only one exit.

The air hummed with violence. The Gallows bayed for blood.

Julian struck first, fast and fatal, and Lux only barely managed to parry it, the echo screeching off of the walls, rippling outwards into more and more chaos.

"This isn't training now," he mocked, the point of his sword shifting, seeking her weaknesses. Somewhere behind her, Mettin locked his blade with one of the younger Templars who had barely learned to fight, and she couldn't breathe. "I won't play fair."

"This is not. Play," she said tightly, going in for a jab and just missing a critical junction in his armour, giving him enough room to crowd her against a pillar. He clearly hadn't expected her blade to get as close as it had, shock on his too-close face as he tried to wrest her sword away from her, both of them too close for their blades to be of any use. She could feel the heat of his breath, and a little point of intent madness in the centre of each eye that wanted her dead.

"Someone should have put you on your knees a long time ago."

The harsh edges of a gauntlet snapped her head to the side, seeing stars, but she kicked out hard and connected with something solid. Filling the air with a crack and a roar of pain. Filling her vision with a look so ugly, so dark and vicious, that she would remember it to her dying day.

there came a scream

bound in steel and in order

those who seek redemption

came falling down

~~~~~

The air was full of smoke and screaming. The Gallows growling under their feet and ready to devour them all.

Everything burned, though if there was fire, it should not have been under her skin.

Julian had been struck down by her own hand, her sword still smoking with bloody execution. Mettin had been injured and had fallen back, still biding his time in the halls but too wounded to last. Karras was dead. Alrik was long and far away from hurting anyone again. It should feel like… something. Something good.

But there was no justice here. No vindication. No relief. It had all come too late for that, buried under the weight of too many sunburst brands, too many evils in darkened corners, and she was tired. Already her head was pounding, and Julian's ministrations had done her no favours. Bruises? Blood? Everything was too fever-hot to tell.

They had fought only long enough for them to flee further into the Gallows. Paxley. Ruvena. Magritte. Moira. Jerran. Keran. Agatha. Hugh. Galen. And her.

Not enough. Not enough at all. And though Paxley and Agatha would not hurt the mages, they might run at the slightest opportunity. But there was not enough of her either. She could hold nothing alone anymore.

And what of the mages, with no reason to trust a Templar at all? Who had sworn to fight for their survival? The little group had scattered, and Lux feared that they were all separating to their deaths, walking well-intentioned into vengeance they had not earned, but wore the armour to deserve. Mages, Templars, they were ready targets for both, had sustained enough wounds from the latter as soldier after soldier kept moving further into the halls, attacking them on sight. Some halls overrun with clanging armour, with spells of Silence and mage bodies. Some crackling with poison and lightning and runes of death, with armoured corpses.

She had hardly opened the door in front of her before a mighty force overtook her like the hand of a giant, and crashed her into the wall so viciously that she saw stars in the sunlit hours. Dull pain, too hot on top of her hotness. A sharp spike in the centre the dullness. A part of her armour dented into her body. Managed, somehow, to keep a hold of her sword through sheer instinct. Lowered it. Raised her free hand, shaking. And was not killed, though the shadow of a mage fell across her, towering, towering, staff raised.

"Alain!" A voice snapped somewhere from the back of the room, audibly impatient and afraid at the hesitation. Elias, she remembered. "It's them or us."

She missed Grace. Today of all days, she would have welcomed the woman being so angry at her for daring to try and help.

"I. Am here to," she paused for breath, having no idea how to change her voice to sound kinder, more comforting than its steady, flat calmness, even as the breath was tight in her chest. "Help."

"Ser Lux?" Alain's voice came from the shadow above her. Confused, the staff slowly dropped back to his side.

"Alain!" Elias barked. A smell of burning air, a crackle. Magic, screaming along the ends of her nerves and her training, demanding action. "Get out of the way, if you won't do it yourself."

"Ser Lux!" Ella. Afraid again. Everyone sounded afraid, even under anger. Arms struggled to pull her to her knees, and she could go no further. The crackle died abruptly, a furious noise in its wake. Careful hands moving her helmet aside so she could breathe better. Open air on sweat. Fingers at her cheek. "Can you see me? My fingers?"

"Yes."

"She's here to kill us."

"She isn't," Ella called over her shoulder, high and panicked. "She said she isn't. She means it."

"She's a Templar," Elias shot back. "That's all that matters. For Andraste's sake take that sword away from her."

"I am here to help," Lux repeated, the words sounding much less clear as she struggled to wrangle them into position.

Silence, thrumming with fear and distrust.

Ella under one arm, Alain under the other, and she found her feet. How she stayed there, even the Maker would not know. Alain said… something to the others. Or to her. Or himself. A sound in her ears like deep water. But the other mages drew away from her and did not hurt her anymore. Alone by the door. That was alright. She was used to being alone.

"They're coming, aren't they?" Alain said as everyone else found their places at the other end of the room. It wasn't a real question. They knew.

A sharp nod. Pain, the room drifting away from her.

"What do we do?" Was he touching her? The position of his arm said as much, but she could feel nothing. The armour was burning hot. She tried to find his eyes, hands tightening around the hilt of her sword.

"We wait," she said, and Alain nodded back, moving slowly away from her as though she might fall, and her eyes tracked him to try and make sense of the situation. Mostly mages. Mostly apprentices. Mages would always fight better at a distance, best at the far end of the wall where they had stationed themselves. Three Tranquil simply watched the exchange impassively, shifting forward to create a small wall behind her. Only one of them was armed with a blade, and the others with heavy staffs, which meant only one could really fight without causing much harm to themselves or their fellows. No doubt they had been in the tower for years enough that they had never need for fighting. And once Tranquil there would be little interest in learning, unless it had felt logical and necessary to do so.

All she could do was hope that the rest of the Tranquil had found allies before it was too late. They should not, technically, be targets in an Annulment. Removed from their magic, they ran no risk of possession. But they were wearing mage robes, and Templars like Mettin would hardly look too closely.

"Wait like cattle to be slaughtered," Elias muttered, hands so tight around his staff that he was in danger of breaking it.

"Wait," she repeated flatly. Firmer. Certain in her place. Between the mages and the danger. "And fight. And hold." Until. Something. Until one side or the other was finished, or some miracle opened a third path.

Outside the door, she heard singing steel again.

blood and bone

for the grieving

those who have sinned

came falling down

~~~~~

There should not have been so many. There could not be these many people in the Gallows hungry for blood. But she couldn't deny the evidence of her eyes, no matter how weary they were.

The helmets should have been a blessing, keeping the memory of their faces from her. But she knew how they fought. Recognised their voices in their cries of pain as, failing to push them back from the door, she would be forced to engage, over and over again. Faces, clear as yesterday. Clear as Kinloch. Would she have nightmares again? Would she live long enough for it to matter?

Again. Stand again. Ella's shaky spirit healing was on the edge of failing, exhausted, but she had enough to bring Lux back to her feet whenever she had needed to rest, the pain too great to breathe clearly. Too close to her rubs, that inward-dented armour, making it harder to move.

Again.

Again.

Maker, though the darkness—

Though the darkness…

She couldn't remember. The sun was low, slanting through the window like the blows she was too weary to dodge anymore, and she needed to rest again. A wall, slick with sweat and blood, held her long enough to bring her knees slowly to the ground.

One moment. Two. Five deep breaths, and still her knees were fixed where they were. Pain, Templar blades slipping between armour, into every weakness she had, tearing her open. Dampness from somewhere. Sweat. Or tears. Or blood. It was all the same. She needed only to breathe again, and stand. And fight. To hold the line, until—

Clear and commanding, Cullen's roar shattered through the air, through the noise, fit to break through every window in the Gallows, to tear off its roof and open it to the outside air. Cut through the buzzing in her ears like the deepest relief.

"Stand down! Templars, stand down."

Everything should have stopped at that voice. The smoke itself should have frozen in place. Stop, stop, everything had to simply stop. To breathe. Maker, it was hard to breathe. The smoke. The heat.

"This is an order from your Knight-Commander!"

The Knight-Commander herself?

The how hardly mattered. All that mattered was that it could stop. She let out a long, shaky breath, something screaming red and hot and too close to her spine. The halls of Kinloch Hold and the Gallows blended in dizzying patterns. Somewhere, perhaps there was crying, and she couldn't be sure if it was her.

"Ser Lux?"

A worried child. A pull at her waist. That was there. This was here.

"It must be a trick."

"I don't think— Ser Lux? Can you hear me?" Alain's voice said quietly. The weight of his hand against her armour, with none of the warmth. It was quiet outside. Confused and wary, that wounded animal, but blessedly quiet, and there was no new pain.

Nodding once, she stopped. Let herself at last slip into darkness.

Chapter Text

Lux needed time, Ella had said, the young apprentice with some rudimentary knowledge of spirit healing, and suitable enough experience with poultices. The wounds needed to rest. Cullen understood that. He'd had little choice but to bow to her expertise, in fact, as the young women had stood between him and Lux's collapsed form and glared at him as if he was another threat.

And after all, it had barely been three days. As he sat, one of those brief vigils at her bedside snatched from the busy work of the day, he found himself too aware of how slowly time could pass. Still better than being away, where there was always a clawing fear at the back of his mind that he would return from his duties and find her gone.

When her grey eyes finally opened, he felt the sky open with them, letting in the light again.

She blinked that slow, familiar blink, trying to understand where she was, before her instincts took over and she immediately attempted to swing her legs out of the cot. The pain pulled her motion short with a sharp wince, and she paused in great surprise at her own body failing her.

"Maker's breath Lux," Cullen said sharply, already halfway out of his seat, hands hovering in space in case she decided to pitch over onto the ground. "You could wait a few moments."

She needed time. But they didn't have the luxury of it yet.

After a moment of careful deliberation, she moderated her pace. More befitting someone who'd had to be painfully peeled out of her own punctured armour before it killed her.

Another image that he would never be able to shake. The way her breath had rattled in her lungs, the way every attempt to move her brought more and more blood, more than any body should rightly be able to hold…

"What." She paused for breath again, perched at the edge of the cot with her back as straight as she could make it. Alive. Present. "Happened? You said. The Knight-Commander?"

"Meredith…" He sighed as he sank further into his seat, pinching the space between his eyes. Too much to explain. Too much he didn't understand. Little, ultimately, that mattered. "No. I tried to reason with her but she—"

And it had happened so fast, so brutal and sudden, that he'd had no time to catch his breath.

"— accused me of being… controlled. By blood magic."

That had been a far crueller blow than he'd expected. Meredith of all people knew how much that would wound him, and she had shown no mercy in whatever paranoia had finally taken complete hold of her. He swallowed a little, not thinking about it at all as he continued.

"Accused the others nearby as well. Turned her sword on us. Maker, I'd had no idea she'd become so…"

What? Paranoid? Unreasonable? He had been all of those things once, and the Knight-Commander had given him grace. Even now, after everything, it felt wrong to levy those same accusations at her. No matter how true as they were. To be seen. To be understood. It was a joy that could make one blind, or bind their hands if they could see. How near he had come to binding the hands of the woman still listening, silent and patient as he struggled for a single word that could convey anything.

"Unwell," he tried instead. There was at least some compassion in that. "She had to be… I had to relieve her of her position."

If only it had been so easy. If only she'd stood down. Lowered her weapon. If only she had stopped, before he'd had to—

He had cleaned his sword as best he could. Done nothing but clean it, in those brief breaks between duty while waiting for Lux to wake. Even now it gleamed like a mirror in the corner of the room, reflecting everything he'd rather not see. In her attentive silence, his voice went on. Quiet. Rough. Wearing away at every edge like his certainty.

"I should have done it sooner."

"She was good to you," she said at last.

"That's no excuse." Sharper than he'd meant. The loss on both sides was not as great as it could have been. But it was far greater than it should have been, and he could never permit himself to forget that. "I was meant to be better. And now that I'm Knight-Commander in her place…"

'Meaning to be better' would have much heavier consequences. They had both hoped so much, that he would be the better sort of Officer. The kind that was fair, who did the right thing. Groaning, he dragged his hand down his face and deflated the final inch into the chair. Was she ever going to stop staring? He wasn't sure he missed that after all, nor the silences that weighed on his conscience and made him want to speak just to keep it away. Was it technically insubordination, to stare at one's Knight-Commander right down to the soul and make him squirm?

"I miss," she said instead of comfort or platitudes, bringing his attention back to her. Eyes slowly tracking over every inch of his face like unfamiliar territory, laying him bare. "Seeing my friend."

He frowned at that, a less forbidding one than his usual. Puzzled. Almost soft.

"I know I've been busy with my new rank, but—"

She shook her head with determined certainty. "I have not seen Cullen. For a long time."

Was she still dazed? He stared at her for a moment, but she stared back, clear and steady. Amused relief and a pang of grief shuddered through him, the realisation that she hadn't had a proper conversation with him in so long. Long enough that he'd forgotten just how strange the threads of her thoughts could be.

"What does… Cullen look like? This friend you miss."

"He is. Serious. But kind," she said simply. "And his smiles reach his eyes."

"Ah." He wanted to rest here, just the two of them. Sink into the chair and not get up until they'd slept for a week. And they could wake up from time to time and talk about things that had no consequence. "I'd like to meet him."

"He's a good man." She shifted a little, and he caught a brief flash of colour under her left sleeve that had made him doubt his eyes. Green. Like shadowed summer grass.

His throat closed, though he could hardly tell why. Reached cautiously for her hand, trying to put no order nor obligation in the motion. Held his breath as she stared at it. Such a lightness in his soul when she accepted it, and lighter still to run his thumb over living warmth.

"Is he here now?"

"Yes."

A slow and steadying exhalation, because if he didn't, he would shatter. He pulled her closer, both careful and slow yet near-frantic. Felt her lean into him, stiff with surprise, and then soften in relief as he wrapped his arms around her, and buried his face in her shoulder. Her breath fell against him as though being set free for the first time. He needed this reprieve from loneliness. Realised maybe a little too late that she had needed it just as badly, and all his attempts at protection had not helped with that freezing cold.

"I'm sorry." Quiet. Breakable. He was sorry for so many things, to so many people, and most of them were not alive to forgive him. "That I took him away from you."

Silence. But warm. Seeing. She didn't have to forgive him. Didn't ever have to speak to him after this. It was enough that she had not pulled away.

How she had endured. Endurance beyond hope. Beyond faith. Because it had been right. Because there was nothing else to do but what must be done. It shamed him and warmed him in equal measure, that she accepted his touch.

Another exhale, nearly catching in his chest as he felt her arms close around him as well. For a few breaths, at least, he had not failed everyone.

"We still have a lot to do," he admitted, finally pulling away with reluctance. Her eyes were relieved. Exhausted. Alarmingly wet. And maybe there would be time for tears later, once most of the work was over. He'd like to make that time for her.

"The Order in Starkhaven's offered to send over some men, and every able body we have is helping the City Guard. The worst of the fires are out, but there's rubble to clear. Injured to seek out under collapses and carry to healers, the displaced to relocate." He cleared his throat, trying to will away the comfort of the embrace that he'd prefer to curl himself back into. Trying to make himself a little more Captain Rutherford again, as the work demanded. "I'll come see you again once I take stock of the progress and assign new duties."

"No."

All his certainty hesitated, completely baffled by that no. "No?"

"I will come with you."

"Absolutely not," he said, taking her shoulders like he was going to shove her back onto the cot. "You've nearly destroyed your body. It needs rest, and food, and as many poultices as it can bear. I promise, there will be work enough for you after."

She frowned a little, and he could have laughed at how unhappy she looked by this development. Her hands moved, mirroring his ridiculously by landing on his shoulders as well. Staring at him with all the usual intensity of someone about to initiate a wrestling match. And then her eyes slid away, roaming around the room like the walls would tell her how to argue with him.

"This is an order?" she asked finally, fixing him with that all-encompassing focus again.

"It isn't." He peered suspiciously into her eyes, more set and determined than he'd seen in months.

"Then I don't have to. Listen."

"This is hardly the time to find a talent for independence." Between the clouds of his worry, a shining sunbeam of pride that he wouldn't admit to. Being proud of her would be counter-productive at the moment.

She remained unmoved, and after a too-long bout of stubborn, silent staring, he sighed heavily.

"Under supervision," he allowed, and she flickered a tired flash of lightning at him. "Very well then. To work."

~~~~~

It felt as if there should have been rain. Heavy storm clouds to weep over all they were not able to do. Or sun, burning away the dark, some promise of better days. But when they exited the Gallows, it was simply overcast as always, half-veiling a pale and exhausted sun. Heralding the days that must go on.

There was work, never-ending. But it felt good to sweat, free of weapon and armour, to use their hands to carry and clear, and feel soot and dirt on their skin. Every breath cleaning away at least some of what they had inhaled in that Gallows air. Making the world more real. With their hands, they could be real as well.

They had both wanted to see Samson. Cullen had said that the new Knight-Commander at least owed it to him to review his case. But all they found was the empty house, mercifully unscathed, and a small but significantly half-empty crate of lyrium that made Cullen sigh in heavy disapproval.

"It means he's alive in any case. Wandering around with his head in the clouds instead of trapped under a building."

Cullen wasn't pleased, but he was relieved, his shoulders loosening in a mirror of her own. Alive was something. Dusting his hands off on his breeches, he grabbed the crate and gestured their way out to a nearby Templar awaiting further orders.

"This is going back," he said to Lux. "And you can tell him to talk to me directly the next time you see him."

"Understood," she said promptly. Samson would be extremely unhappy. But they had both missed his annoyance with them. It would be. Good. To see him more alive again.

Five steps away from his door, something whined, and she froze in place. Spun on her heel to step into the mouth of an alleyway with Cullen's confused voice behind her. Something in trouble. Her mind went over her increasing list of possibilities, from broken legs to broken beams, from smoke in the lungs to sheer, paralysing panic.

Pale fur caught the edge of the light. Larger. Filthy, and so thin. But alive. Here.

"Courage?"

Surely not. There were plenty of strays in a city as large and crowded as Kirkwall. And the puppy had barely known her at all, would have no reason to respond to the name. The fact that dog suffered her to inch closer would have more to do with a need for comfort than anything else. But that didn't matter. Whether it was Courage or not. It was. It was, in the way that she nosed into her hands, pressing against Lux's legs and into her heart.

They both needed a bath. Food. Kindness. All things she would gladly give, if…

A shadow fell over her back. Glancing over her shoulder, she found Cullen looking down at her, silhouetted against the light, his expression barely visible. A looming Commander that for a moment robbed the strength from her hands.

"Knight-Commander-" For all that it was Cullen, the title still strangled her throat as he folded his arms and looked at her sternly, every inch her Authority. As he had to be, so publicly.

Gaze flickering down to the dog still pressed against her, he did not speak for a long moment.

"A dog would be useful to sniff out anyone we miss in the rescue efforts," he said finally.

"I." She stared, the sense of his words settling slowly in her mind. Sinking. Connecting, before her eyes finally lit up, and she straightened to her usual impossible attention. "Yes. Yes, Knight-Commander."

"Rather old to take to training." Was that the barest twitch of a lip?

Courage barked in objection at this slight on her age, but Lux nodded, quick and eager.

"I will train her, Knight-Commander," she promised. "We will not disappoint you."

After what felt like years, she saw him smile again. And though it was tired, it reached his eyes.

"Of that," he said, "I have faith."

Chapter Text

Weeks after they'd given up on finding him, Samson dissolved out of the shadows of the nearly empty mess hall, leaned against the wall with his arms folded. The dark circles under his eyes a little less shadowed, the unhealthy pallor less present. If not for the lack of armour, it was as if nothing had changed.

Less even. Some of that terrible period had been turned back, and he'd never been sent away. Like stolen time had been give back to him.

"Samson?" Lux looked up from her food, eyes lighting up in such delighted recognition that it tugged at the corners of his smile. It was good to be missed, anyway.

"You're always visiting me. Thought I'd return the favour," he said, eyes roving over the walls. Half-familiar, half novel. The same crooked smirk over some joke she wasn't in on. "Hate what you've done with the place."

Something snuffled at him from under the table, and his grin widened. "Andraste's flaming arse. They let you keep a dog. It even looks the same."

Couldn't be the same. That'd be a miracle one step too far, to get back exactly the dog she'd given her heart to. Another stray from the same litter, more likely. A fortunate sibling who happened to look just right.

"You look. Better?" She offered hesitantly.

"Don't I just?" Grabbing a chair uninvited, he dropped himself into it and looked her up and down. "You look like shite."

She screwed up her nose at him faintly, and by the Maker he even laughed.

"You are coming back?"

Tilting his chair back, he cast his eyes up to the ceiling and hummed.

"Back. Thought about it. Thought to myself, 'Samson, it's back to the Gallows or dying in the streets. They've damned you coming and going, and there's no third way out. That's the Chantry for you'."

She stared at him patiently, and if he was a stupider man she might have pulled him under into her stupid ideals, to drown and destroy him as surely as if he'd tumbled into the Waking Sea.

Chair clattering, making the dog startle and press against her legs, he righted himself, leaning close into those eyes and seeing the little furrow in her brow as she picked up on the subtly obvious. It smelled different from the blue. Felt different from the blue, that little vibration she'd be able to taste in the air with him so close. A light in his eyes that she wouldn't have seen in longer than he could remember. Better, even, though the Chantry would tell you there was no such thing.

Low, confiding, inviting her to his new fortune.

"I found a Maker-forsaken miracle, Ghost."

"And what miracle is that?" Cullen's voice sounded suddenly from behind him, his voice as wary as Samson'd expected it to be. Lux perked up again, happier on the subject of Cullen than Samson had seen her in months. A good thing, he supposed, ignoring the prickle of bitterness at the thought that they were getting on fine without him.

"Knight-Commander." Straightening up, he saluted, far too crisp and theatrical to be anything but mockery, and grinned wide at the immediate displeasure on Cullen's face. "Slumming it with the men, I see. Good initiative. I come in peace. Bearing gifts. Well." He spread his empty hands. "The promise of gifts."

For all that they both looked wretched, barely pulled back from the edge of death, Cullen was immediately suspicious. What a bleeding heart Samson was, still trying to do them a favour in the face of untrusting growling.

Maybe idiocy came with being tall and blonde, because it was a fatal sickness in both of them.

"Gifts."

"Miraculous freedom from the fucking Chantry itself."

"Samson, you aren't making sense." It had the same flavour as 'Samson, watch your tongue', more guarded than ever. A little bit scared chantry-boy, a little bit imperious commander. And maybe it was intended to keep him out of trouble, Cullen's own attempt at kindness, but it prompted the shadow of an ugly scowl over Samson's face, before he smoothed it back into a smile.

This close, Cullen could probably feel it as well, on the edge of his perception, though he wouldn't have a clue as to why it felt the way it did. Samson knew, as clearly as if he'd written the thoughts in their heads, that they'd put the fact that it felt so strong and new down to fatigue, recovery, overwork, and their own need for another dose. A sweeping wave, an endless song. It made him visibly uneasy, the idiot, like denying yourself something you wanted so badly.

They'd spent long enough denying themselves, hadn't they?

"There's nobody holding your leashes anymore, boyo. There's time for a way out, before someone picks them up again. Uses you all the way up until you're like Roderick."

Cullen frowned deeply, and Samson could see the thoughts race as he glanced uneasily over his shoulder, and it was like they were younger again. Sharing an extra vial in a quiet corner, him so afraid of being caught that he nearly almost didn't get it down his throat.

What would it cost, for such a miracle? Where did it come from? And what of the city?

A dozen questions and hesitations. Wasn't it always the way? Samson rolled his eyes indulgently, watching Cullen grapple with issues nobody was creating except himself.

"Is it too much to ask to just take me at my word?" he asked lightly, and he'd admit to enjoying how that made Cullen squirm. Had he ever lied to them? Not to their knowledge. "I never promised any loyalty to the Order."

Swear to the Maker, he'd been clear what he thought about Meredith and her kind. It shouldn't have been a surprise, much less a betrayal. Where had he lied? A man who nicked lyrium and collected favours, and always tried to make sure things were going his way. When had he ever promised to be anything else?

"But I've been a friend to you both."

If he wasn't, he wouldn't bloody be here, risking Cullen turning into another Meredith and putting him in irons for questioning over his 'miracle'.

They'd never really trusted him, though they'd trust everyone else under the sun. Everything and everyone else a priority. After all he'd done for them. After he'd even come back, to give them the third option, to break free and be something other than pieces on a board. Cullen was probably delighted to lick the Chantry's boots if he could keep his new position. He'd probably never asked Meredith about pardoning Samson at all, glad to be rid of his stain on his golden record.

"Samson," Lux said, and he shook himself out of a darker thought than he'd expected, surfacing like a red serpent. Stronger, this stuff, and you had to be stronger to keep up with how fast your mind worked. Darker paths probably came with brighter light. "You are alright?"

"Never better." Another smile, crooked and charming and so winning, and he could see how badly they wanted to trust him. Amused, as she moved closer to touch his shoulder. Nothing like slinging him around the drunken Kirkwall streets while he snarled at her or nannying him into a bath.

They'd nearly sacrificed themselves to the Gallows by their own hands. It was almost funny, the thought of her running around the whole burning collapsing while Cullen yelled at her to focus on… he didn't even know. Someone caught behind a beam. Children. Tranquil. Ser Roderick, who might have just sat there while the whole room burned around him, not knowing what was happening. Whatever innocence they seemed to think Kirkwall had. Whatever they seemed so eager to bleed for all the time. But they'd come out the other side, still wretched but a lot more alive. And if the Fereldens weren't so intent on tying duty around their necks, he could give them an actual life, before everyone's glorified death sentence came for them.

"If someone's offering you lyrium away from the Chantry," Cullen murmured quietly. "You know that's illegal."

He knew it back then too, when Samson was on the streets. A problem now, was it, when it might involve him and Lux?

"Samson. If you are in trouble," she said, still earnest despite how many times it'd slapped her in the face. What was she going to do if he was, fight the world and march on the Golden City itself?

Come to think of it, she probably would, and drag Cullen along into the bargain.

"Look at you. When'd you get around to touching people on your own?" he said, still grinning as he chose to completely ignore Cullen, focusing on her face and her lake-cool eyes, pleasant when his mind and body were running a little hotter than normal. Just had to get used to it. Raising his hand, he tapped the back of hers playfully with his fingers, like playing a song. "Trouble. Trouble's what I'm offering to get you out of, Ghost. A lifetime of trouble."

Cullen's voice was careful, assessing. Trying to be so sly about it, as if Samson hadn't taught him nearly everything he knew about being underhanded. "I'm sure we could… talk about this. Tomorrow morning. You could have a meal, and a warmer place to sleep. Lyrium, to clear your head."

Lux gave a slow nod, eyes still tracing over his face in concern even as he paused, his hand stopping it's tapping to settle onto hers for an unguarded second. Extend their nice little cage to include him, because they wouldn't see the way out themselves, too blinded by the work they felt obligated to do. They even thought it was kindness.

Ducking his disappointed sigh behind a wry laugh, Samson dropped his hand back to his side and turned to give Cullen another theatrical salute.

"The Knight-Commander's generosity knows no bounds."

"Oh stop it Samson," Cullen groused, failing to hide a little smile as he finally settled at the table next to them, relaxing. "Eat with us."

He could. Feed that little corner of hunger that still hadn't been sated for all the lyrium and more regular meals. Bracketed by these fools like secure stone walls, feeling their warmth on either side. The Gallows food was still piss-poor, but it went down easy like this. Not really minding her staring, or being pressed against his shoulder as they all bunched up like it was a late night after a nightmare. Eating from the same plate, whatever they'd been able to scrape together that night, and whatever bottle he'd gotten his hands one.

It rankled, that the Golden Boy and Girl thought they owned anyone but him anything. A sure bet, and he'd gambled wrong. They were good at following. Why wouldn't they follow, when he was pointing the way out of the jaws that were due to come crashing down? And they could still have this. It was so bloody simple, if they would just follow.

There was almost-forgotten mischief in Cullen's eyes to his right. Familiar as he volleyed some comment that Samson returned without a thought, feeling his grin lean a shade more genuine. Felt more than saw a flicker of a smile to his left, a little larger than what he was used to, and turned his head to catch it before it disappeared, eyebrows high.

He could still have this. It got under the skin, didn't it? Like lyrium, making you want more all the time. There was some answer here, if he stayed. In little touches and playful barbs and nearly-smiles that he knew exactly how to get.

He could still have this if they came. The truth wasn't doing much good, an effective little plea about 'being in trouble' would make her follow him, and he follow her. Forgiveness instead of permission, in true Samson-style of not asking for forgiveness at all. They'd be glad for it eventually.

Except… it was plain that they didn't need him as much as they used to, and not half as much as their duty and orders.

Suddenly he didn't feel much like talking tomorrow, or hanging around today, the food unpleasantly heavy in his stomach.

Rising to his feet, carefully un-sudden, he grabbed another piece of bread and gave them both a blatantly knowing look, eyebrows doing more implying than Cullen knew what to do with.

"I'll get myself some rest. Don't let me get in the way of whatever this cozy situation is."

"Samson," he said, not sharp enough to hide his amusement. And she let out an exhalation of breath, a flash of teeth. A silent laugh, a little bloody miracle. And if he revelled a little in some warmth just under his ribs, what of it?

Everything as it always was. And nothing was the same.

"Tomorrow's a new day, eh?" he said brightly. It was even true. The truest thing he'd ever said.

Samson had learned by now that Lux noticed far too much, even if she didn't always understand what she saw. So he walked in the correct direction, feeling her puzzled, hopeful gaze trained on his back the entire way through. And once he was free of it, he wandered, until he judged it late enough for the Knight-Commander's attention to be away from the windows and more towards his bunk. He slipped out another way, into the gathering twilight. There was always another way, if you knew to grab it when it turned up.

It was a shame about them. He'd hoped to keep them out of it. Maybe they'd still miss the worst, if they kept their heads down here in Kirkwall.

But he had Templars enough. They had heard the word, and found it good.

Samson stepped out into the courtyard, gesturing briefly, watching a few bodies gather out of the corner of his eye as they prepared to leave with him. To join a few others on the other side of the ferry, and a few more beyond. Templars enough. Young and shattered, bitter and tired. An annulment to weigh on the soul and the never-ending rescue of Kirkwall to weigh on the body. And at the end of it all, the shadow of the Chantry's noose.

But the lyrium would replace all those missing bits. Would burn away all the shadows. He reached into his cloak, just grazing the vial with his fingers, his hunger already building and reaching. His new supply. No longer dependent, but his to use, to give him what he needed, whenever he needed. Power and choice back in his hands, to hold the Chantry at the end of a sword instead of the wrong end of the leash.

Not blue anymore, but red. Like the sky over the Chantry, when the city came falling down.