To Duty Bound
Thirty years, was it? Loghain has barely lasted three.
He supposes he should not have been all that surprised. The Wardens only took him out of desperation and more than a little spite. Let the traitor make amends with his life. But it hadn't happened like that at all, now had it?
No, when the Blight came to an end, the Hero of the River Dane spent his time dealing with those damned Orlesians, spilling across the border in the name of rebuilding the Warden order. He had very nearly suffered a heart attack…or, more probably, a knife in the back after so many arguments with his newfound "allies." It's a minor miracle he didn't wake up to find a pack of Antivan Crows standing over him, just like that elf he had hired in his pre-Warden days.
But it hadn't come to that. Cooler heads had prevailed, heads from Weisshaupt Fortress, heads wise enough to leave Sebastian in command of the Ferelden branch. A swordsman from the Free Marches, Sebastian had quickly shown himself as a battle-hardened veteran and a dyed-in-the-wool pragmatist, much like Loghain himself. The two got along famously, even if they had their fair share of screaming matches, most of which consisted of Loghain defending his mass-recruitment strategies and Sebastian (correctly) writing it off as a paranoid scare tactic meant to intimidate the Orlesian Wardens.
But it all amounts to so very little these days.
The visions consumed him, surrounded him, seduced him. He dreamt of dwarven ruins and woke to the sound of darkspawn gibbering in his ear as if they were in the room.
Maybe it was his age. Perhaps thirty years after induction said less about the process and more about the human body. Loghain scoffed at the notion that he was an old man, but he had long since given up the illusion of youth. Things broke where they once bent, and he found himself leaving the troubling aspects of his duty, like chasing down darkspawn runners and cowards, to the younger, more eager Wardens.
Whatever the case, Loghain has begun to experience what this knighthood (if you could call it that) had dubbed the calling.
Orzammar is not as bad as Loghain had expected. Dwarven pride walked hand-in-hand with no small amount of pretense and grandeur. Rather than cramming himself into Orzammar's dwarf-sized environs, Loghain is able to walk freely through broad streets. He strolls, inasmuch as a man like Loghain could possibly stroll.
He takes in this strange, new place as much as he can, not so much because he enjoys it, but because he realizes it is the last place he will experience as something other than a soldier. In a flight of fancy, he even allows himself to be talked into visiting a local tavern by an ale-hunting warrior.
That is where he sees him.
"Topsiders," a warrior snorts derisively, openly glaring at the human who has claimed a table for himself, although he is doing his best to engage someone—anyone—in conversation. He boasts of royalty and brotherhood and bravery. Everyone in the bar who is anyone knows him for drunkenness and petulance and nuisance.
Loghain knows him as a Maric's bastard son.
They make eye contact. It's really no surprise to either man that a brawl breaks out.
"You've got one hell of a right hook," the blond (what was his name? Alexander?) drawls in a mixture of contempt and sarcasm. The fact that his face is bruised and bleeding quite badly doesn't seem to bother him.
"I can't say I'm surprised to find that you kick like a mule," Loghain returns evenly. Drunk as he is, the other man still manages to catch the slight, but whatever vitriol he has winds up evaporating when a dwarf curtly reminds them not to speak. They're already in hot water for getting into a bar brawl. Irritating the armed guard escorting them to prison will get them charged with resisting arrest.
Alistair (ah, yes, that's his name) sulks, and Loghain sighs. It is a long walk.
"Still a murderous bastard?" Alistair says conversationally. He can't attack Loghain with his sword (confiscated) or his hands (separate cells) so he'll just harass the git as much as he can.
"Still a selfish brat?" Loghain doesn't even have to look up from the hole he is burning in the far wall to know Alistair is glaring.
"Selfish? Me, selfish!? Oh, that's rich, coming from the power-hungry monster who killed his king, poisoned Arl Eamon and went to war with half his country for his own ego!"
"Yes, boy, you are selfish," Loghain spits, finally turning to lock eyes with the man in the cell across from his. He could rise to Alistair's bait, but it's so much more effective to bruise his fragile ego. "You ran out on your obligation and abandoned your duty as soon as your Warden-friend made a decision you disliked. That is the most childish thing a person can do, putting personal feelings before his duties. How do you do it, on one hand claiming no desire for the throne yet acting as if you are entitled to anything?"
"I never wanted to be king," Alistair's voice fades ever-so-slightly from anger to depressed exasperation. Why does everyone keep pushing this? "All I wanted was for her to understand, but she didn't. She never even tried. She just used me up and threw me away so she could have you on her side."
"How are you any different? Didn't you cast her aside when you ran away from the castle with your tail between your legs?"
"That was different! I had every right to be mad at her! I had every right to kill you before Riordan went and opened his mouth!"
Loghain half-smiles, half-grimaces at that. Ah, Riordan, what a fine mess you've made.
"I did not ask to be inducted into the Wardens, you know," Loghain does his best to pick his words very carefully. Alistair will never understand, never even try, but that doesn't mean Loghain has to blunder his way through things just like him. "But I accepted it, as a man defeated and as a soldier of Ferelden. I realized my life had been taken out of my hands, and if, by some chance, that life could be returned to me in the name of my country, even on someone else's terms, I would take it."
"Oh, just stop it! You can't do the kinds of things you've done and pin it all on Ferelden!"
"I did them because no one else had the stones."
"You did it because you were tired of being the king's second, first with Maric, then with Cailan. Always the general, never the king!"
Loghain thunders to his feet, hands on the bars as if he intends to bend them aside in his hatred for the ingrate who would presume to question his motives. The hatred in the room is palpable, with egos so gravely injured that it makes their bodies look pristine.
"Don't you ever doubt that I love my Ferelden!"
Alistair handles it all surprisingly well. He has stared certain death in the face many a time before. It is an old friend.
"Well, you've got a funny way of showing it."
Loghain looks ready to grind the bars into scrap metal, but eventually relents. There's nothing to be gained from that. He backs away, both in body and tone.
"Yes, I could have taken the crown if I had truly wanted it. It would have been easy to declare myself regent when Maric was lost at sea or to take advantage of some opportunity or another to declare martial law, but I didn't. Everything I have ever done was for Ferelden."
"I'm sure Ferelden loved it when demons started invading Redcliffe and the Circle Tower."
"I hadn't intended—"
"Or that time you sent your armies rampaging all over the Bannorn because not everyone was willing to smell the shit you were vending."
"They refused to see reason!"
"Oh, but then there's my personal favorite! How about that time you left your only real allies to die because you didn't like Cailan being a good little puppet?"
Loghain opens his mouth, closes it, attempts to speak again. He discards the idea and returns to his seat on the cold, comfortless stone. (Funny that the dwarves would worship something so dreary.)
The silence drags on for more years than either man has lived.
"You know," Alistair's voice is surprisingly light. "You really do a great impression of a fish, what with that gasping-for-air-because-you-jumped-onto-the-bank thing you do."
It is so surreal, so utterly unexpected, that Loghain almost finds it amusing. It's not enough to get him to talk, though, so Alistair pours more words out of his mouth to fill the silence.
"You remember, from earlier? When you were trying to tell me what a great man you are for being such a monster? No? Ah, well, it's okay. You forget in your old age, you know?"
"No, I don't know."
"Ah, that's right. It must be that senility kicking in again!"
"I don't know what she saw in you."
It is Alistair's turn to be shocked and more than a little dismayed. "You take that back right now."
"You are lazy, incompetent, and irritating. It's no wonder she chose me over a man like you." If there is anything Loghain has learned how to do over his many years, it is how to twist a knife, whether into a man's gut or his pride. Years of warfare will teach you the former, while spending enough time in any king's court is a crash course in the latter.
"You take it back! Right now!" Now it is Alistair's turn to grind the bars. There are tears in his voice, if not his eyes. "You don't deserve to talk about her! Not ever! Not after you let her die!"
Loghain closes his eyes against the nudity of Alistair's grief. "It was not my decision."
"Perhaps it is something of the Magi," Loghain muses.
Alistair grunts at that, still spurned by the last barbaric attempt at a conversation nearly an hour ago. He isn't sure how to play it. If Loghain thinks he's interested, that will certainly broach the subject. If Loghain thinks he's asleep, he might just keep talking anyway without anyone to stop him. So he gives his noncommittal grunt, hoping to dissuade Loghain.
It doesn't work.
"She saw the world through a haze of lyrium and the arcane. It must have allowed her to see people in a very strange way, enough, I think, that she saw something worth loving in you."
Alistair told himself he would always hate Solona Amell for betraying him and Duncan and the Grey Wardens and everything decent in the entire world. He cried for her, yes, but those were tears of frustration and regret. He never cried at her death, thinking she deserved it more than a little.
But now, thinking of how she must have died, he drowns in could-have-beens.
Alistair weeps for the first time in years.
"Did you come all the way out here to make my life miserable?"
They can't have been here for anything more than an hour, but it feels like an eternity. When he heard his jailers would be leaving the two in incarcerated for the evening ("enough to for you sodding drunks to do some sobering up"), Alistair had been darkly amused. He would get to annoy the ex-teyrn all night. True, he would have preferred sliding a blade across his throat, but Alistair would take small comforts when they came.
But there isn't anything fun or ironic about any of this. It's all just a lot of raw feelings and old ghosts named
(don't don't don't)
Solona.
"I am here for far more important things than a single bastard," Loghain sneers. He really knows how to kick this dog when it is down. Still, it's enough to knock Alistair out of his mage-haze, so it's perversely welcome. It's a lot easier to hate Loghain than to mourn Solona.
"What are you here for?" Alistair could not physically care less, but he wants to get his mind off
(don't don't don't)
other things.
(good boy)
Loghain fixes him with an appraising stare. It's more than a little condescending.
"What reason does any Warden have to visit the dwarves?"
"If you're here to kill some darkspawn, you'll have to get cracking on that right quick. I've been down here for the last year, making myself useful. You'll never break my record—not unless you start tomorrow morning, unarmed and alone. Yes, people don't realize it, but suicidal tactics are the best way to die a hero in Orzammar!"
"I'm sure you would relish that."
"You have no idea."
"She wasn't perfect, you know."
Alistair sighs. He can't sleep. He can't even fake it. Loghain is going to continue torturing him. Alistair steels himself for whatever Loghain has to say.
"I shouldn't have to tell you that, but she wasn't. So stop mooning over her like she was the world. She was the world to you, but she was just another woman to the world."
Alistair prays for sudden heart attacks, fainting spells, choking on his own spit—anything that will shut Loghain up for good. The Maker is taking the night off, apparently.
"She saved Ferelden, but she didn't fix it." Loghain sits with his elbows on his knees, one hand cupping a pale cheek. "Her precious mages have put Ferelden in an unenviable position."
"You never liked mages." If Alistair can't fight it, he might as well hang himself with his own tongue.
"On the contrary, they are an asset like no other. Anora saw that as well. It is why she has kept her word to the Warden—a liberated Circle is a grateful Circle."
"Anora lived up to her end of the bargain?" Alistair rolls over to face Loghain. He can't even stand to look at the man, but it's much easier to catch someone in a lie when you can read their body language. "Will wonders never cease?"
Loghain sours briefly at the barb against his daughter, but he lets it go.
"Anora freed the Circle from Chantry control, and it has the Chantry fit to be tied. The Divine has threatened an Exalted March if she doesn't dissolve her 'Circle of Heresy.'"
"I should have known that's how it would end," Alistair snorts darkly. Like father, like daughter. Vipers and liars, the both of them.
"You misread me. Anora has not surrendered to them yet, and I doubt she ever will." Loghain resists the urge to roll his eyes at the sick joy in Alistair's eyes. Never mind that Anora came to her decision purely out of spite toward the Orlesian Divine and not at all out of a promise to a single dead girl.
As long as Solona lives on in some way, Alistair is mollified, even if his ego is too badly bruised to acknowledge it. So young and so easy to read, he is.
The Warden order dictates that initiates sever all ties to their past lives, but Loghain cannot resist the urge to slander Orlais or sing his daughter's praises.
"It's all a game, if you ask me. The Chantry fits Orlais like a glove. They're simply looking for another reason to invade. But we'll see how well that goes when a Tower full of unfettered Magi rise up against them in their undying loyalty toward their savior-Queen."
"The Magi are in for a nasty surprise if they're putting Anora on a pedestal. Andraste she isn't."
"I could say a few choice things about your mother if you insist on speaking that way about my daughter." Loghain thinks that will be enough to end it, but the challenge in Alistair's eyes says otherwise.
"Give me your best shot. I've heard it all before. Trust me."
"I don't think either of us ever understood her." Loghain stares not at Alistair or the bars or a spot on the wall anymore, but into a place and a person three years gone. It is very early in the morning, and they're both more than a little addled with ale and sleep deprivation. "Maker knows I didn't. Why would this Warden, this woman, who had everything to live for and every opportunity, including a man she hated and had every right to send to his death in her stead, choose to die? Why would she give up the respect of the dwarves, the Dalish, her own Magi and all of Ferelden to throw it all away and spare the man who was only ever cruel toward her?"
"I've asked myself that question every day since Denerim." Alistair's voice is so quiet that it hardly leaves his mouth. He doesn't think Loghain has heard him.
He isn't sure he wants the other man to have heard him. He doesn't want to hear what Loghain has to say because, most terribly of all, he's beginning to see the edges of Loghain, eternal warrior and shameless opportunist, flake away. Alistair is slowly beginning to see the shamed soldier, the loving father and the man who is acutely aware of his mistakes.
Alistair isn't learning to forgive and forget. Loghain is unforgivable, and people like Duncan and Solona are unforgettable. But now, just a little, Alistair sees that Loghain is a man, with flaws and faults and shortcomings and too much humanity to be the storybook villain.
"She was better than us, better than any of us," Loghain's voice is so full of something—something Alistair can't describe or name or even really understand—that Alistair feels afraid. He's afraid that, one day, he might be able to understand Loghain a little bit. "She put everything aside for her country and her duty. I took orders from her simply because I had no other choice. Now, I see it was the best choice. There was no one who loved Ferelden more, who gave more, who was more. I call her 'Warden' because that is truly what she was. I shall count myself lucky if I can die with even a fraction of the grace and maturity that marked her."
These are the last words Loghain ever speaks to him.
Loghain studies the map as if it was a treasure, and, really, it is. Maps are a lovely thing, especially when being put to use. He plots the course of his future on this slip of paper the King of Orzammar has given him.
"C'mon, Warden," a stocky warrior calls out to him. "We're breaking up camp and heading back home."
Loghain doesn't even bother to look up from the parchment, still mapping out the best course to the Dead Trenches.
"I'm not going back." No, the song in his blood is too strong now. He must meet that hellish chorus and smite as many of them as he can before he is overwhelmed.
The dwarf almost thinks to ask why, to beg him otherwise, but he knows better. This man has come from the surface looking for a place to die. He won't rob the Warden of that.
"May your path be stone-blessed, Warden."
Loghain nods curtly at the words, protectively places the map behind his armor, and marches toward his final battlefield.
Hours from now, he will meet the Legion of the Dead. An hour after that, he will be dead.
Alistair is overjoyed to see Loghain has been sprung from his cell by the time he wakes up the next morning. And now it's his turn to be footloose and fancy free again. Life is looking up.
"Come on, Warden," the jailer uses the title as a pejorative. Hardly any of the dwarves seem to remember Solona Amell came to Orzammar with more than a golem and a war hound at her side. Most of the population thinks he's simply a loony human, but they tolerate him because he fights the darkspawn so they don't have to.
He's almost used to it by now, but hearing that old name used with such scorn… He narrowly resists the urge to beat an apology out of the dwarf.
But that wouldn't be very Warden-like, now would it? The gears in his head finally begin turning.
"Halt in the name of the queen!" The guard wears the red-brown leathers of a Ferelden soldier. "State your name!"
Alistair looks over the gatekeepers and the fortress beyond. Queen Anora has gone a long way in repaying her debt to the Wardens. The place is about as fancy and imposing a fortress could ever hope to be. He hopes he can find a place here. It won't be easy, not after running out on them in a time of need, but he's learned that the best thing to do is often the hardest path to walk. So he will walk in with his head held high and take this new-old life one step at a time.
"The name is Alistair," the blond smiles for the first time in a long time, "and I am a Grey Warden."