She was lonely, desperately lonely. It was a state unbefitting the Warden-Commander. Unbecoming for a Cousland. Downright pathetic for the Arl of Amaranthine. So she swallowed it and continued going about her duties as usual.

It had been ten years. Ten years since the Blight, ten years since she became a hero, ten years since she decided not to become Queen of Ferelden, ten years since the ritual that had been the final nail in the coffin to her relationship with Alistair.

Relationship.

It had been a desperate little fling. Perhaps not to him, but she had - yielded - to his courtship only with the prospect of certain death on her mind. She wasn't proud of it. Perhaps she'd broken his heart. But she hadn't wanted him to die, and she hadn't wanted to die herself, either. The ritual had been for the best, or so she hoped. Wondering where Morrigan was and whether her child (heir to the throne, no less!) was an abomination threatening all of Thedas. Secretly, she often thought she should just have given her life instead.

She'd been with Nathaniel for a while, but that hadn't worked out. Of course it hadn't. Earl Howe had been standing between them almost as if she hadn't killed him at all. As much as he may have wanted to, he hadn't been able to forgive her, and he'd looked too much like the man who'd killed almost her entire family. They'd been broken from the start. Had hardly managed being friends after.

How ironic was it, she wondered, that the best sex she'd ever had in her life had been a one-time thing with a woman she'd met in a brothel? That sounded all wrong, she mused. She hadn't been a prostitute. From what Lenore had gathered, she had probably been a customer. Or liked the atmosphere. She had been odd, but beautiful, dangerously exciting, and so talented. Lenore couldn't really remember what had been going through her mind when she'd started shamelessly flirting with the pirate in front of Alistair, Wynne and Morrigan. She'd never been with a woman before. She'd hardly even been with a man before. It had probably shown, but if the pirate had minded, she'd held her tongue. Had been busy using her tongue for something else. The memory was still the one Lenore came back to when nothing else would do.

She often found herself wondering if Isabela was still alive. How long did a notorious pirate captain live? Probably not long enough.

. . .

News travelled fast to the Warden-Commander, and when the rebellion hit Kirkwall, she knew even faster than Denerim. Stories of Anders, her Anders, whom she had found funny albeit a little too immodest, blowing up a chantry; stories of the Champion's defeat of a possessed Knight Commander of the Templars, and of the bloody uprisings of mages everywhere in the Marches. Then again, Amaranthine was closer to the Free Marches. Significantly closer, she realised in the next weeks and months. Like a reversed Blight, people came across the sea to seek refuge in Ferelden. Highever and Amaranthine were hit hardest. The number of refugees was much smaller, of course, but Amaranthine hardly had the capacities to feed her own people. Thankfully, many of them tried and made it to Denerim. Let Alistair deal with it, she thought. He had the means.

...

She did not often allow herself the weakness of a night at the Crown and Lion, but it was the tenth anniversary of their defeat of the archdemon, and there was no one to celebrate with, so she did this for herself, got to let her hair down for once.

Literally as well as figuratively.

Lenore Cousland had always been a tomboy, but after years of fighting darkspawn and training new wardens, wearing a pretty dress for once and letting her long, silver hair flow down her back actually felt oddly freeing.

Maker, what had she come to?

Most of the people knew her, of course, and kept a respectful distance, though she imagined they were bewildered at the odd sight of her out of armour. Though she had two daggers safely hidden away, one in her boot, the other in an unobtrusive pocket of her dress that had been designed specifically for that purpose. Even her finery was pragmatic. She would not have had it any other way.

She sat in an armchair at a small table at the back of the tavern, in the shadows, drinking a deep red Tevinter vintage. She enjoyed watching the other customers without being easily watched herself. The most interesting thing tonight was a drunken, very... whimsically dressed, dark-skinned woman at the bar. To have been able to see her properly, Lenore would have had to leave her shadows, and she was reluctant to do so. She'd always loved shadows, had developed an entire fighting style revolving around exploiting shadows and darkness and her enemies' blind spots.

The woman at the bar seemed to be very intent on getting hammered as quickly as possible. Other customers stared at her with undisguised sneers on their faces, but also many a lewd stare. Lenore was pulled in by the sheer self-destructive abandon with which the woman was drinking. She couldn't possibly go on like this for long.

And then two men approached her, talked to her in low voices, faces spelling trouble. She tried to wave them off. Lenore couldn't hear what she said, but it must have been dismissive, the way they started glaring at her. One of them grabbed her wrist, pulled her off the bartstool, and the woman stood, shakily. Just as Lenore wanted to get up, she drew two daggers with a strangely familiar grace and moved, eerily swift and precise for someone that drunk, kicked one of them to the floor, while she trained a dagger at the other's throat.

There was a moment of almost complete silence in the room, like the second before the storm hits, and Lenore had seen enough to know that it was either now or never. Despite her fondness for shadows and hiding, she knew how to make her presence known. She hadn't become larger than life for nothing. She stepped from her corner and cleared her throat.

"Your Arl has decided to grace you all with her presence tonight and she does not particularly fancy witnessing a barfight." She could still perfectly manage the cold, haughty, slightly ironic tone she'd been taught to use with commoners when she'd been a girl. "It will certainly only lead to a whole lot of paperwork. So would you two gentlemen kindly get lost, and would you sheath your weapons, Isabela?"

She looked different, ten years had been a long time for her, too, obviously, but Lenore knew her fighting style just too well. Isabela had trained her in it, after all. And she'd had that same fierce grace in bed.

The men reluctantly obeyed and a few conversations were taken up again, while Lenore approached the other woman. She couldn't help letting her gaze rest briefly on the too exposed chest, the almost bare thighs, then she pulled it away from the bronze skin and looked into fathomless dark eyes instead.

For a moment, Isabela blinked at her, then she exclaimed:

"Oh, it's you, sweet thing. I heard you might be around town, but I didn't expect to meet you here. Then again, this godawful city doesn't even have a brothel." Her voice was slightly slurred and she almost slipped off the counter as she tried to lean against it. "Anders sends his best. Oh no, wait, he is too busy blowing up chantries." She sounded bitter. Lenore had no time to think about her words, she needed to deal with this first. The state the other woman was in made her cringe inwardly. Part of her wanted to help her not make a fool of herself, but another, much more selfish part of her did not want her memory of the woman spoiled.

"You're very drunk, Isabela. Maybe you should lay off the booze and rest? Do you have a room here? Or is your ship riding at anchor...?"

"Ship!" Isabela sneered. "There is no ship."

It had been the wrong thing to say, Lenore realised. Isabela had a belligerent look about her again. Like she wanted to get into a fight, just for the hell of it.

But Lenore hadn't dealt with Oghren for years without learning how to calm a drunkard looking for a fight. She reached out and gently put her hand to Isabela's naked shoulder.

"Why don't you tell me all about it? My table is over there. What are you having?"