i want to lie down somewhere and suffer for love until it nearly kills me

[ungovernable]

WHO: Hercules Hansen, Benevenuta Thevenet, + dogs.
WHAT: A touchingly romantic reunion, probably.
WHEN: Cloudreach 14th, let's say.
WHERE: Skyhold.
NOTES: I lied.

It doesn't take long for news of Warden Hansen's escape to filter up to the hold proper. She is made aware of it with a promptness that almost offends her; the girl who bears the news is a kind thing who means well, who looks for something that she won't find in Benevenuta's straight back and taut mouth and accepts her dismissal with poorly hidden disappointment thoroughly ignored by the lady in question. Seen, remembered, but not acknowledged. It's - good. That he is here. It's what she wanted, and in satisfaction she finds her own wanting immediately abhorrent - a weakness unforeseen and nothing he invited from her.

He lives and he returns. Good. He does it himself, under his own power; better, but the fierce pride is something to be tamped down, not hers to grasp. He made her no promises and voiced no expectation, and why should he? She entertains him of an evening now and again. She might entertain any number of men so and what business would it be of his? None. And he is a man grown who knows as much, and they are not -

They are not something that dashes down to the Wardens' camp and flings itself about the place like something out of cheap melodrama. She is informed of his escape and she says something she doesn't recall in so many words later about the will of the Maker and his great mercy and does not rise from the desk at which she works. The plans for the housing expansion are coming together nicely, and she attends closely the discussion begun by that girl Katniss, and keeps her records, and

she still leaves the door open a little, so that when Max comes to her as is his recent habit, he only has to nudge it a little to join Husband at her feet and settle angled toward the warmth of the hearth.