Rhyanon had expected Anders to be angry about finding out about her relationship with a templar, but he hadn't said anything at all. The next day, when she comes down to breakfast in the main hall, he is laughing with the other Wardens as though nothing at all has happened. Rhyanon frowns in confusion but sits down at the end of the table, slightly separated from the rest of the group.

"Aw, come on, Commander," Oghren protests. "You ain't fooling any of us. Yer one of us, and sittin' clear over there won't change that."

Anders watches her from atop his mug, smiling slightly. "What's the plan for today?" he asks easily.

Is this what they're doing, then? Being different people around other people? Fine. She can do that too. "I want to spar with the new recruits," Rhyanon says. "Oghren, you can help."

The dwarf's grin is a little too eager, but she'd been expecting that, and she doesn't mind. "Sure thing, Commander," he agrees readily.

"Eat up then," Rhyanon says to everyone, waving her hand over the table. "You'll need all the strength you can get."

"I thought you wanted me to fight!" Anders protests, after Rhyanon has knocked his staff out of his hands and chided him for using magic. "This is how I fight!"

"You'll need more than spells to stay alive as a Warden, trust me." But she softens a bit. She knows damn well that combat training hadn't been a major part of the Circle's curriculum. At least not for Anders. It had been different for her, she'd been good at it, and Irving had pushed for her to be trained as a war mage whether she'd wanted it or not.

On the ground, Anders grits his teeth, but he pushes himself to his feet and stands staring at Rhyanon, hands clenched into fists at his sides. He's got stubbornness in spades. Good. That'll help.

Anders picks up his staff again and holds it in a tight two-handed grip. "Loosen up," Rhyanon suggests. "You have to react to where you think I'm going to be, not where I am."

He tries. He relaxes his stance a bit, but he's still hyperfocused on her, almost paranoid. It makes it easy to get in under his guard. He's trying too hard. And Rhyanon realizes that she's been fighting against people who actually know how to fight, for nearly a year now. It makes it hard to teach people who don't. She sighs. "Let's take a break."

Anders hesitates, as though afraid that she is trying to trick him. But when she begins walking over to the small table where their gear – including skins of water – waits, he follows her. Rhyanon tosses him one of the full waterskins and takes another for herself. She leans against the wall and watches Oghren, who seems to be doing better with his group of new recruits. They fight surprisingly well, although Rhyanon realizes that most of them have had some kind of combat training. What they have to learn now is how to rely on their new Warden senses. And how to work together as a team.

Anders is watching them too, standing on the edge of the training yard. He's made progress in fitting in with them in the main hall. When they're sharing a meal and it's easy enough for him to tell the kinds of jokes that bring easy laughter. Combat is different. He and Rhyanon both are all too aware of how most people fear mages. Throwing around ice or fire seems to make that fear blossom a lot more quickly.

Rhyanon remembers how she'd felt at the beginning of the Blight. She'd maintained that separation from her disparate group of followers for weeks, until something had slowly chipped away at it. Someone. Alistair, who had a gift for bringing people together even as he swore he'd never be a leader. Hot tears pool in her eyes, and Rhyanon shakes her head, trying to clear the memories that blindside her unexpectedly in the middle of what should be ordinary moments.

"Are you alright?" Anders asks softly.

"Fine," she lies, shrugging him off. She stalks over to the low fence ringing the combat yard. Oghren sees her, and barks an order to his recruits to call it quits for the moments.

"Like what you see, Commander?"

"They're moving too slow. And not communicating well enough. In the field, they'd be slaughtered."

Oghren grunts, but he's smiling. He agrees with her assessment, even if he won't say so. "Guess we'll just have to take 'em out then, and see how they do."

Rhyanon nods.

"I don't know how I'm supposed to do... this," Rhyanon admits.

Seneschal Varel stares at her from the other side of the large desk in the late Rendon Howe's study. "I'm not sure I know what you mean, Miss Amell."

"I don't want to be in charge of Amaranthine!"

"With all due respect, that isn't what you told the Queen."

Rhyanon glares at Varel, knowing he is right. "I'm a fighter," she growls. "Queen Anora gave me this assignment because I stopped the Blight, not because I'm good at paperwork." Or making the kinds of decisions that he's asking her to make, holding people's lives in her hands. She had commanded armies, sending soldiers to die at her word, but managing an arling feels altogether different, and Varel has to know that.

But the seneschal is not easily swayed. He is remarkably stubborn too, in his own way. "You also received a well-rounded education in the Circle, or so I've been led to believe."

Rhyanon sighs. "I... guess you're right."

"And of course, I am here to assist you." He says this a little more softly, for which Rhyanon is grateful. It makes it easier to believe that he truly is her ally.

"Fine. Send them in."

By the time Rhyanon has fixed her outfit, straightened her hair, and walked from Howe's office into the adjoining small audience chamber, Varel has organized the small group of petitioners who have come seeking her assistance. The first is a farmer whose land has been ravaged by the Blight.

"My children are starving, Serah. I've run out of... well, everything."

"I'm not unsympathetic too your problems, believe me," Rhyanon says. But even to her own ears, she sounds too stilted, too formal. She closes her eyes for just a brief moment, and calls up the memories of what it was like traveling across most of Ferelden when the Blight was raging. Not just farms, but whole towns were trampled underfoot by the darkspawn hordes. She had met countless numbers of refugees, and if reports can be believed, hundreds or thousands of people are still fleeing the borders of this country for other lands that may be safer. Perhaps that is an idea worth proposing.

But the farmer stubbornly shakes his head when she suggests it. "I won't leave here. These lands were my father's and my grandfather's, going back generations. I may not have much, but it's more than I'd have in Orlais or the Free Marches."

"So you're determined to stay."

"Aye."

"What are you looking for, exactly? Money?" There isn't enough of that for her to just go handing it out. As much as her bleeding heart may want to.

"I'll earn my keep. I'm no charity case."

At that, Varel steps forward to whisper in Rhyanon's ear. She winces at his suggestion, but it is pragmatic, despite the inherent danger. "How would you feel about becoming a Grey Warden?" she asks the farmer carefully.

His eyes widen, as though he can't quite believe what she is saying. But the reaction isn't fear, as Rhyanon had first thought. It's awe. "I... I'd be honored. And my first son would join up too, if you'd have him. Devick's been training with the City Guard, though he's not yet taken the oaths."

Rhyanon smiles. "We'd be honored to have the both of you, then. Welcome aboard."

The next issue brought before her actually shocks her with its brazenness. The young man in front of her was apparently caught red-handed, breaking into the Keep in an effort to burgle the property.

"Are you an absolute idiot?" Rhyanon asks softly.

The man looks up at her with piercing blue eyes hidden behind a curtain of dark hair which has been left to fall free, disguising his features. Harsh shadows projected by the bright lamps hung high up on the walls give him an even more sinister demeanor.

"You're the one squatting in my home," the man accuses. Rhyanon looks to Varel for help. The seneschal seems to have paled.

"Master Howe." There is no question or hesitation in his tone. Varel steps up to Rhyanon and whispers in her ear.

As the seneschal steps away, Rhyanon turns again to the criminal brought before her. "What are you doing here?" She's still speaking in the same quiet, careful tone, the pitch of her voice basically requiring this man to look at her, so she can study him, and try to gauge the truth in whatever he says.

"You killed my father, and you have the nerve to ask me that."

"Your father was a coward and a traitor. But I didn't kill him."

"You may as well have."

"Your quarrel is not with me, nor with the Wardens. Though if you insist on making it so, you will lose the quarrel."

"What is this? Some kind of mind game?"

Rhyanon shakes her head. "No game. I'm offering you a choice."

Unlike the previous ceremony, Nathaniel Howe's Joining is a private affair, all business. Rhyanon is the only one keeping the necessary vigil to be sure that the youngest son and last scion of the Howe family survives the night. She's been through this enough times to be relatively sure, once he's slipped into a deep sleep, that he will wake up as their newest Warden, but she stays anyway. Perhaps because she still remembers what it felt like to claw to alertness after the terrible nightmares of her first night as one of the Grey. Alistair had been by her side then, and she hadn't trusted the templar, yet his presence still seemed preferable to being alone.

She leans back against the wall, keeping her eye on the pallet where Nathaniel tosses and turns. Varel had asked if they should move him to one of the Keep's bedrooms, but Rhyanon had shaken her head. The others had spent their first night laid out on bedrolls in the main hall. This seems appropriate.

Nathaniel's hand flies out toward her, and Rhyanon wonders if that reaching out is conscious, or just a reflex. Or an accident. But she gently rests her hand atop his, letting him know that she is there, if he's aware enough to recognize it. His eyes blink groggily open, and he pulls himself up to a sitting position. He lets out a low, gutteral moan. "This is the worst hangover I have ever had," he mutters. And his eyes widen and he scrambles backward, away from her, once he notices who it is sitting next to him.

Rhyanon holds up her hand in a gesture of peace. "How are you?" she asks calmly. Unlike in the courtroom, this is not a ruse to make him more inclined to listen to her; she genuinely wants to project an atmosphere of calm. They can be on the same side, if he will allow it.

"Get away from me," Nathaniel growls.

Rhyanon keeps her distance, but she refuses to abandon him completely. "I can't do that," she says honestly. "You're one of my soldiers. I have to know that you'll listen to me when it matters."

He stares at her for a long moment, jaw hanging open is transparent disbelief. But then he snaps his mouth shut and gives her a dubious nod. "I'll do as you ask. Commander."

"That's a good start. Now, answer my question. How are you? I know the dreams can be murder. Especially the first night."

"That's what this is? Some kind of... side effect?"

Rhyanon shrugs. "It's the best explanation I've ever heard. But as you may have noticed, there aren't exactly a whole lot of Wardens around that we can ask."

She's held the title for barely a year. But she's earned it. As much as he may hate her, Nathaniel looks at her with respect.

"Come on," she says, starting toward the kitchen. "Let's see if we can find you something to eat. The appetite is another side effect you'll notice."

Ten minutes later, they're sitting on bar stools at the huge wooden prep table where the cooks do most of their work. Nathaniel works at a huge leg of roast chicken, and a great deal more life seems to have flooded into him along with the food. Rhyanon relaxes a little. If she's being honest, this reminds her – almost – of stolen late nights in the Circle, with Anders or Jowan.

As Nathaniel eats, Rhyanon pours herself, and him, some weak ale, and she grabs a plate of bread and cheese and puts that in the center of the table as well. "I know you dislike me," she starts. That's putting it mildly, but her hope is that she can build a kind of bridge between them. She learned quickly during the Blight that not everyone she'll need to work with will like her, but she also has a relatively good sense of people, and her feeling is that Nathaniel Howe does not hate her as much as he may want to. If she listens to him, lets him talk, he may give her an idea of what he's really looking for.

Rhyanon pops a small bit of cheese into her mouth and chews slowly, then swallows. "Seneschal Varel says his guards found you sneaking into the estate," she reminds him. "What were you looking for?"

Nathaniel's brow furrows in confusion, as he searches her face, clearly looking for a trick or trap of some kind. But she's honestly curious. "This was my home. I just wanted to make sure a few things were... kept safe."

"I won't hold you back from anything here. It belongs to you much more rightfully than it does to me."

"I appreciate the thought, Commander. But Vigil's Keep has been given to the Wardens. I won't fight you for it. Besides, I have the feeling I'd lose."

Rhyanon smiles. "You just might. But I'd rather have you on my side than fight against you."

Nathaniel's face takes on a serious look, as he finishes gnawing on his chicken and sets the bone down on the plate. "Is it true, what you said? About my father being a traitor and a coward."

Now this is dangerous territory, a place where Rhyanon knows she will have to tread carefully. "I'm sorry," is what she finally says.

To her surprise, Nathaniel's anger seems to melt. Into what? Disappointment? "I'm... not surprised," he admits.

"I'm even more sorry?"

Nathaniel smiles a little, bonding with her despite his better judgment. It would be easier – and more prudent – to keep her at a distance. But Rhyanon Amell is not anything like any of the commanding officers he had in the Free Marches. In just one night, she is already dissolving the barriers that exist between them. He shakes his head, then nibbles at a bit more of the cheese on the table. "My father and I didn't exactly get along."

"So you didn't come here seeking vengeance for him?"

"I don't know. Maybe I did. But I think what I really came looking for is something more like... I don't know... my place in the world, I guess. But this house isn't mine anymore. If it ever was."

"It can be if you want it to."

"No way. I have no desire to be the Arl of Amaranthine. Avoiding that fate is the one good thing about getting shipped off to the Marches. Besides, you're far better at it than I ever would be."

"How could you possibly know that?"

"Because. You didn't have me killed when you had the option."

Rhyanon gives Nathaniel a day to get his bearings, but even so, by mid-afternoon he's out in the training yard watching the other new Wardens spar under Oghren's direction. The dwarf is all too happy to give up the responsibility of training the new recruits to the human who can't stop yelling from the sidelines. Rhyanon and Oghren sit together on a bench against the stable wall, looking on. Rhyanon hadn't realized just how good a resource Nathaniel would be.

"He cleans up well," she comments.

Oghren grunts. "Drink?" he asks, offering her his flask. Rhyanon takes him up on it, though she should know better. Her Warden metabolism will help her handle the dwarven brew. Oghren grins as she takes a swig. "You sure do know how to pick 'em."

"It's an accident, believe me."

"Yeah, I know. Otherwise, I'd never have gotten a spot on your roster."

Rhyanon frowns. "You don't believe that, do you?"

"I dunno. I've been stuck in my own head too much, Rhyanon. I need to be out there hitting things."

"You think that's the solution for me, don't you?"

"It couldn't hurt."

"It very much could hurt."

"You know what I mean."

"I do. And you know, I think you're probably right."

"Thought I might find you here."

Anders looks up from the book in his lap. He settles back into the library armchair and tries to look relaxed. But he's still a little tense. Rhyanon wonders if he is, for some reason, afraid of her. "Is it okay if I come in?"

"Of course. You don't have to ask, Rhyanon." She nods, conceding to their shared history, and steps into the room.

"What are you reading?"

Anders grins at that, and shifts a little so she can see the book. "Kids' stories. Fairy tales. The ones we used to read in the Circle, do you remember?"

"There was that stupid one about the princess trapped in the Tower who escaped because of her really long hair?"

"Yeah. That would never work."

"I'm surprised you'd find a book like that here."

Anders shrugs. "Yeah well, Nathaniel grew up here, right? I wonder if he's read it."

"You could ask him."

"Grouchy-pants? No thanks."

"Fair enough." Rhyanon likes to think that she's slowly begun building a bond with Nathaniel, but she knows the man's personality doesn't mesh well with everyone, and it would clash against Anders' perhaps more than anyone else. "There are rumors of a band of darkspawn ranging in the outlying farms. I'm taking everyone out tomorrow to fight them."

"I'll get my healing kit together."

"Anders?"

"Mmm."

"You sound so serious. So..." she shrugs, because she can't find the words to explain what's wrong. But something is. Something's off. Back in the Circle, she would have known what it was.

"I can be serious," Anders reminds her.

"I know, but you... aren't. Not like this. Not unless something is wrong."

"You don't have to worry about me, Rhyanon. I promise I'm fine."

She searches his features, but he's gotten better at concealing his lies than she is at reading them, and eventually she has to let it go. "I'll let you get back to your reading."

He nods, watching her, to see what she'll do. To see if she'll stay. When she leaves the room, essentially because he told her to, he tries to pretend he isn't disappointed.

Once Rhyanon has left the library, Anders leans back in his chair, running his fingers over the book that he no longer has the concentration left to read. He doesn't want to lie to her, it makes something twist up in his stomach. But the way that she looks to him... it's like when they were little. She still looks up to him. And it would destroy him – even more than he's already been destroyed – to disappoint her. He's doing an okay job of maintaining his front, taking things one day at a time – one minute at a time, sometimes. For now, he's safe enough in the library, a place he's chosen not only because it feels safe but because as far as he can tell, very few other people ever come in here. And tomorrow, they are going out to hunt darkspawn. That will distract him well enough. It will get him through one more day.

That thought – that hope he clings to – is enough to make him the first one ready and waiting to go, as dawn breaks the next morning. Rhyanon, when she joins him at the stables with a couple of the others in tow, looks at him with all-too-obvious worry on her face, but Anders shrugs off her concern. His difficulty sleeping isn't her problem. He puts a smile on his face and chooses to direct his comments toward the other Wardens, most of whom have started selecting horses and settling their gear into saddlebags. "Good morning," Anders says pleasantly. "Who's ready to kick some darkspawn ass?"

Predictably, Nathaniel glowers at him, but Anders chooses to ignore the other man's sour disposition. "Let's go!" he says cheerily.

He's a little slower when it comes to getting up onto his horse – he's never really had occasion to learn how to ride, and he knows that he is bad at it. But the animal Rhyanon has chosen for him is docile enough. The beast is still war-trained, they are going into combat after all, but she's patient, and puts up with Anders' inadequacies without any obvious complaint.

Rhyanon surprises him by looking completely in her element. But some long-ago part of him remembers her talking about horses when she was little, when she'd first come to the Circle, before she'd forgotten that part of herself. Maybe that's what this is; maybe she is finding that part again. The idea fills him with a swelling joy, for Rhyanon at least, if not for himself. He finds joy – or tries to – in other things. The sun is making a valiant attempt to peek out from behind heavy cloud cover, and the day is rapidly growing warmer than he'd expected from its earliest hours. He sees things that make him, briefly, want to ask Rhyanon to slow down, things like wildflowers struggling to grow in the ashes of a Blight-stricken land. He wonders if she even sees them, or if she's already completely focused on the upcoming fight.

After a couple of hours of riding, he starts trying to look for signs of the darkspawn Rhyanon had been so certain they'd encounter. But all he sees is peaceful farmland. The landscape seems almost totally deserted. Every now and then, though, there is something that proves people still live here. Once, a group of children runs toward the fence surrounding the pasture where they carefully guard a few scrawny sheep, climbing up onto the wooden posts and waving and shouting at their passing heroes. Anders waves back at them, and hopes that they'll stay safe here in this contested space. The novelty of the encounter fades, though. It seems that even on the move, he can't quite keep his thoughts from encroaching, bringing darkness and fear with them, overwhelming his mind even though he'd do anything to push them away. He fights a silent battle with himself. Every now and then he looks around to see if any of the others have noticed, but it seems like they haven't. His horse doesn't even seem skittish underneath him, and he has been told that the animals can sense fear. He licks his lips, and keeps moving forward. One minute at a time.

At midday, Rhyanon stops their group in the middle of a field under a sparse stand of trees, so that they can stretch and eat and water the horses at a nearby creek. Anders stands with his horse, feeding her an apple, as he keeps an eye open for threats while listening to the others' conversation. Rhyanon is still watching him. He is still pretending to be fine. In truth, his skin his itchy, his body ready for a fight.

Thankfully, they've only been back on their mounts for half an hour or so when he feels it. The darkspawn are close, and whatever has changed inside his body that makes him a Grey Warden now makes it obvious. Their presence is like an oily slime that he can feel inside of him.

Rhyanon, who can obviously feel the approaching darkspawn just as well as he can, and has a lot more experience with it, begins issuing orders. Anders hangs in the back of the group, ready to cast long-ranged spells and standing by to act as a healer when necessary. He doesn't strictly need Rhyanon to tell him what to do, and she seems to trust him to make the best decisions for himself. But it's not just himself he needs to worry about, it's the whole group.

He's trying to get a handle on everyone's fighting styles, on who might be the most at risk. But he hasn't paid as much attention as he should in combat training, and he's only been a Grey Warden for maybe a week. And this all suddenly feels like far too much to handle all at once.

The thought has barely formed in his brain when the darkspawn are suddenly there, on top of all of them. He barely remembers scrambling down from his horse. Everything after that is just reaction, pure survival instinct. The moves ingrained in him don't come from Warden training, but from something more primal than that: Circle training.

He isn't like Rhyanon, he hadn't been taught to use his magic in battle the way she had, but even still, the Circle had taught them all how to direct their mana under duress, because it's situations like this that were the most dangerous, the most likely to corrupt an untrained mage. These kinds of stresses and fears are the reason the Circles were ever created in the first place. So Anders knows how to keep his cool, how to find a calm center deep inside himself from which to make decisions that aren't entirely conscious. He taps his mana, and he reacts to the ever-shifting web of allies and enemies nearby. Ice and lightning race outward from his hands and sweep up waves of darkspawn. He listens to their howls, and the gnashing of teeth and booming of their meaty paws against shields and weapons. He listens to the yells of challenge unleashed by his companions. The clash of battle is sweaty and loud and overwhelming. A weapon swings down toward him; an axe, probably. He dodges out of the way and sends a bolt of lightning into the hulking darkspawn.

Once they are no longer surrounded, when the threat is no longer imminent, he can turn his attention to healing. He'd kept plenty of mana in reserve, knowing that this is what he'd really need to use it for. It's only then that he realizes he'd lost track of Rhyanon in the battle. How could he have let himself do that? Guilt floods him, but it doesn't last for long, it can't. Not when Oghren is waving him over, shouting and barking. "Take care of her," the dwarf grunts.

Anders nods, picking Rhyanon up in his arms. She's dangerously still, dangerously pale. He forces himself to look up at least enough to be certain that the rest of their small group of Wardens can guard against any lingering darkspawn that may approach. And then he kneels down in the damp grass, laying Rhyanon down in front of him.

He puts his hand on her chest, above the heart, and reaches out with his mana, questing out for some sign of what's wrong. Rhyanon reacts to his mana intertwining with hers, she spasms and moans. Anders takes her hand in his free hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. "You'll be fine," he promises. "I'm right here."

It gets easier as he lets himself fall into the nearest thing to a healing trance that he can risk on a battlefield. He lets his mana guide him, showing him what's wrong with Rhyanon, and how to fix it. There are the expected bruises and cuts, of course, but he doesn't let himself get distracted by those. There are much more dangerous symptoms he has to quell. The fever. The sudden loss of consciousness. And, yes... there it is: poison. Expecting it, searching it out, doesn't necessarily make it any easier to deal with, but at least now that he knows what the problem is, he ought to be able to solve it. It's delicate work, though. He has to purge Rhyanon's body of the intruder that is seeking to corrupt it without damaging anything that's supposed to be there. He casts out his mana in delicate webs, ensnaring the poison and drawing it out. Bit by bit. Drop by drop. He can feel Rhyanon stabilizing underneath his careful touch, growing stronger every second. She stops shaking. Her eyes blink open. "Anders?" she murmurs.

He smiles. "Hey, there."

Rhyanon struggles to sit up, and Anders supports her as she works to get her bearings. "What happened?" She still sounds slightly groggy.

"One of those darkspawn hit you with a poisoned blade."

"And you healed me."

Anders shrugs. "It's what I'm here for."

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it." He helps her to her feet, and the two of them make their way over to the rest of the Wardens.

"He's a handy man to have along," Nathaniel concedes, nodding toward Anders.

Rhyanon nods too, but doesn't elaborate. "Do we think there are any more darkspawn nearby?"
"Haven't seen – or felt – any," Oghren says. The rest of the group chimes in their agreements.

"You still need to rest," Anders points out to Rhyanon. "We should head back to the Keep." Rhyanon still looks reluctant, until Anders puts his hand on her shoulder. "You've done a good day's work, Commander. You've done enough."

Rhyanon looks among all of the Wardens gathered before her, and nods. So far, she's had the biggest scare among them, and she isn't willing to risk taunting the gods by pursuing the darkspawn any further today. "Come on," she announces. "Let's head back."