"I don't want to think about tomorrow, my own," Loghain had said softly, laying Risa back onto the mattress. "Help me to remember tonight."

Risa had unlaced his tunic even as he was sliding hers off her shoulders, baring her form to him. It was nothing he hadn't seen before, but he looked at her as if this was the first time he'd seen her laid bare before him.

She felt his fingers gently tracing the huge white semi-circle on the left side of her rib cage, where the high dragon the cultists thought was Andraste had picked her up and worried her like a wolf with a deer haunch. And then the shoulder, with its ragged claw marks, where she'd been horribly mauled by a rage demon and healed. The scar across her hip where he had scored a vicious wound on her at the Landsmeet. The small white scars, in shoulder, neck and chest, where darkspawn arrows had felled her in the Tower of Ishal. She found herself quietly telling him the story of each disfigurement, her body a map of her adventures, pressing herself urgently into the gentleness of his touch.

He kissed them all, lingering especially on the white line across her hip. "This one I regret – but the injury I will most lament is the one I will leave here." He pressed his hand flat over her heart, and Risa started to cry even as his lips met hers tenderly. She traced his own scars, kissing and caressing them – a lifetime, a history written in his hide as well. And then she had pushed him over, onto his back, and straddled him, sighing as she rolled her hips and drew a guttural moan from him.

The days before Loghain packed his few belongings sped by all too quickly, a whirlwind of time spent with Gareth and Risa all day. Loghain and Risa spent their nights in each other's arms, sometimes making love frantically, as if their very lives depended on it. Sometimes, it was simply for the comfort of being held all night.

On the day Loghain rode out from the Vigil, Risa had accompanied him in silence to the stables, helping him attach the saddlebags and mount up. Her expression never changed, and there were no words – though he caressed her cheek one last time, kissed her one last time, before mounting up.

"Here," he'd said, handing her a tightly rolled parchment. "You'd best keep this one safe for me, love."

It was his map of Ferelden… showing new borders in which more territory had been carved out of Orlais. His dearest possession – and something he clearly could not take with him.

She'd walked away without a word, and anyone who did not know her would mistake her outward calm for lack of feeling. Loghain understood only too well the pain hidden in her heart – he'd mastered that knack decades ago.

By the time he had clucked Traveler into a walk, Risa was up on the battlements, to watch him go until he disappeared into the distance.

"I don't like it," Oghren said soberly, waving a turkey leg to punctuate his words. "She hasn't been out of that office except for meals and to see her little nuglet."

"Well, gee, what could be upsetting her? I mean it's not like her husband's been sent right into the welcoming jaws of a pack of wolves, right?" Sigrun snorted, drinking more of her ale. The Wardens generally ate together for the noon meal – for some it was breakfast, others lunch, still others dinner, depending on their shift.

Risa and Loghain had presided over these meals for years together, along with Howe. Now Nathaniel sat alone at the high dais with Varel, Woolsey and Garavel more often than not, trying to keep the Vigil and the Wardens running smoothly.

"Someone oughta talk to her. It ain't healthy."

"Right." Sigrun handed Oghren her coin pouch, after dumping her coin into the top of her boot. "Here."

"Whazzat for?" Oghren asked, puzzled.

"To carry your balls in when she rips them off."

"Be serious. We ain't seen her except when she uses the necessary.

"I am serious." Sigrun shook her head. "She's like one of Dworkin's bombs, and like them – you don't know when it's going off, but when it does…. BOOM." She shrugged. "But if you wanna juggle with explosives, it's your funeral."

"Says the member of the Legion of the Dead." Oghren snorted.

"Yeah, makes me kind of an expert, dontcha think?"

"Risa."

She didn't even look up from her paperwork. "Anders. What can I do for you – I'm a little busy."

He came over and sat on her desk. "No, you're not. You're avoiding everyone and everything, though."

Risa's eyes met his. "There are a lot of details that go into running a keep of this size, Anders, along with the Wardens and the arlings' guards and army."

"Of that I have no doubt." He took her quill from her hand and put it in the inkwell. "However. The Keep, the Army, and the Guard. Those jobs used to be Varel's, Woolsey's and Garavel's. And should still be theirs. Your job is the Wardens. And your son."

Risa's eyes narrowed slightly.

"I know it must be difficult, but…."

"Difficult." She was looking at him with the perfectly blank look that Oghren and Sigrun referred to as "stone hewn". Immutable. Unflappable. Unfortunately, Anders knew enough to know that this usually presaged a volcanic eruption of temper.

He sighed. "Tear my head off if you have to. But don't make Gareth feel like he's lost both of you."

Risa blinked, then looked back down at her paperwork. She carefully picked up the quill again.

"Thank you, Anders. That will be all."

"Risa…."

"That will be ALL, Warden."

"Fine!" Anders paused at the door. "So when he asks again, same line: Mommy loves you, she's just really busy right now, right?"

He walked out without looking back.

Risa put the quill down, pinched the bridge of her nose, and slid out of her chair to stand and face the fireplace.

She was still standing there quietly when Dog slunk in, whining softly, to lick the tears from her face.