Title: Alouette

Rating: M

Mood: romantic, erotic, a little sad, maybe

Words: ~3000 of ?

Author: sleepyowlet

Disclaimer: Dragon Age belongs to BioWare, and I'm not making any profit.

Summary: Loghain goes on a diplomatic mission to Orlais with Maric. Stuff happens.

Babblerama: Did it seem to you too like Loghain was much too happy in his cameo in Awakening? He is being sent to Orlais. Orlais! I started thinking...

Also an answer to the CM "The Impossible" challenge.

By the way – the hunt wasn't born from my sick brain, this was actually a pretty popular past-time in the 17th /18th Century in continental Europe. The buildings I described did actually exist – and one of the most famous is still there – just google "Dresdner Zwinger", and you'll see what I mean.

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Alouette – Chapter One: In which he meets the Empress and has a lark

by sleepyowlet

"Alouette, gentille Alouette Alouette, je te plumerai..." (trad. Canadian children's song)

The Road to Val Royeaux was a long one, but the Maker had favoured the royal entourage with lovely weather; so at least Loghain wasn't wet and miserable. The Orlesians had continuously moaned about the ugliness of the Ferelden landscape, the rain and the mud, but Loghain noted that Orlais didn't look much different from his homeland; it had the same woods and meadows with the occasional river or pond. What he did notice, however, were the faces of the peasants working the fields. Where the inhabitants of Ferelden showed various degrees of grumpiness, the Orlesian farmers and other small-folk looked fearful, discretely waving their women and children away to hide inside their houses. Loghain discounted the thought that this was because they were foreigners, the silent communication and swift execution looked too practised. They were afraid of anyone resembling a noble.

His suspicion was confirmed when he courteously thanked a serving girl in a tavern for bringing him food – and the girl blanched and hurried away, not to be seen again. He had felt sick with revulsion when he had realized that she had reacted to his plate-armour. The rumours about the despicable treatment of the common folk by the Chevalier seemed to be true, all of them. He changed into his second set of armour after that, a sturdy work by dwarven smiths that didn't elicit such reactions, only donning his Chevalier plate when they were about to enter Val Royeaux weeks later.

His first impression of the Empress was not a favourable one. She stepped down from her throne to meet them, her lackeys gathered around her, fawning and prostrating themselves while she looked on, unconcerned. No self-respecting Arl or Bann would behave like the so called Orlesian nobility did. The woman was stuffed into a dress so burdened with gemstones and pearls that he wondered how she was able to walk at all, her face was covered in a thick layer of white paint that made it hard to actually see her features, fake lashes covered her eyes and made it impossible to read them. Her hair glittered with jewels and gold dust, and he shuddered in revulsion when her painted lips drew themselves into a smile.

"King Maric! Welcome to Val Royeaux. It is a pleasure to finally meet you in person."

Maric sketched a bow and answered with his usual easy smile on his face.

"Your Majesty, I'm afraid the descriptions I have heard do not do your beauty justice."

The Empress laughed and Loghain was reminded of clinking glass, cold and brittle.

"And you are just as charming as the people say. Tell me, how do you like my city?"

And so they continued, and Loghain let his attention wander away from them to the other occupants in the audience hall, especially taking note of the guards and their position, already planning where to attack, should things get ugly.

A discrete elbow nudging at the side of his cuirass brought his attention back to the conversation.

"Yes, this is Teyrn Loghain Mac Tir," Maric said, the amusement in his voice unmistakably.

Loghain said nothing, only gave the woman gawking at him a terse nod.

The empress just laughed and fluttered her fan.

"I see his reputation as a grim, taciturn man is well deserved," she tittered and waved at one of her attendants.

"Come, there is a feast waiting in your honour. Let us make merry and forget the dreary world for a while."

Loghain suppressed a grimace and followed his King and best friend, carefully keeping an eye on their surroundings. This was going to be a long evening.

...

Loghain rose early in the next morning and had a servant show him to the practice grounds. The palace seemed deserted which didn't surprise him, most participants of last night's banquet had been deep into their cups and were probably sleeping off their hang-overs. Loghain himself had carefully stayed sober – it wouldn't do to be drunk out of ones skull in enemy territory. Maric, unfortunately, didn't hold the same opinion.

Only a few guards were sparring when he arrived in the ostentatious courtyard, with a couple more using the practice-dummies. Loghain watched for a moment, whatever could be said about them, these guards were in fine shape. Shrugging to himself he warmed up and chose a dummy for himself.

A few minutes later he saw someone approaching him from the corner of his eye, so he turned around to face the newcomer, a woman in a set of chain-mail.

"Yes," he prompted her tersely.

"I was wondering if you might spar with me, Your Grace," she said in a melodious, deep voice that had, of course, that irritating accent.

"There are plenty of guards about. Ask one of them," he growled ungraciously, and turned back to his dummy.

"I could, but they always go easy on me. Should I really encounter an enemy... and you have a reputation for being quite fearsome and merciless."

Loghain turned back around and sneered at the woman. So she wanted to test her mettle against him? Perhaps it would be amusing to show this Orlesian chit what it would be like to fight a Fereldan.

"Very well. Let's start then."

The silly goose had the gall to grin at him, drew her sword and raised her shield.

He had her disarmed and on her back with his sword at her throat within moments.

"Pathetic," he spat, taking a step back and waiting until she had gotten to her feet again.

She wasn't smiling any more, her mouth was set in a grim line now, but she bravely faced him again. He trounced her again and again, sneering at her, but she always came back with the kind of dogged determination he associated more with Fereldans than Orlesians. So he relented a little and started giving her hints, nodding in approval when she took them.

"Hold, please," she finally panted, her face a deep red.

"Not used to this kind of exertion, are you," he mocked her, but she only smiled.

"No, I'm not. But I'd say that it is more my teacher's fault than mine. In Orlais it is very difficult to to be taken seriously as a woman who wants to fight in my position. So they talk down at me and coddle me ... and I don't really learn anything. Thank you for not doing that," she said, gave him a curt bow and left the hall. Some of the guards were looking at him very strangely, but he didn't pay them any heed.

The day was spent in various past-times the Empress thought up, and Loghain came to despise the woman more and more. Maric was quite happy to let himself be entertained, and seemed to enjoy not having to take care of a whole kingdom for once. Not that Loghain couldn't understand him, he was quite glad that he didn't have to oversee field maneuvres right now – as much as he liked being a soldier, sleeping in a small tent for weeks wasn't exactly his favourite. He could take a load of servants with him, of course, but he preferred not to ask his men to endure things that he wasn't ready to endure along with them. So he spent most of his time watching Maric, even though that was hardly necessary. He seemed like a charming, gullible fool, but Loghain knew that there was a shrewd mind behind the easy smile, and that he wouldn't be taken in by glittering things and hollow words.

He went back to the practise grounds the next morning, and there she was again, the woman who had asked him to spar.

She gave him a wave, and bounded over to him like an overeager puppy. She still carried her helmet and arming cap in the crook of her arm, and Loghain could see her face more clearly this time. Her hair was of an indefinite, mousy colour and tightly woven around her head in a braid. Her face was a little too irregular to be called beautiful, with her eyes wide-set, green, and luminous, a short nose and a too big mouth. The face of a cat, he thought, and greeted her with a nod.

"I'd like another lesson, if you don't mind," she said, tilting her head to one side.

"You never told me your name," he said in return, reaching for his shield that was slung across his back.

"You never asked,"she replied with a smile that showed teeth that were slightly irregular like the rest of her features.

"Well?" he prompted her, becoming impatient with her facetiousness.

"Alouette. They call me Alouette."

"Very well, Alouette," he said, his tongue having difficulties to wrap itself around those foreign syllables. "Let us begin."

So they did, and somehow it almost felt like training a young recruit, even though this woman wasn't very young, he thought, remembering the dainty creases next to her mouth that deepened whenever she smiled.

When she called out for him to stop, she gave him a long, considering glance.

"I'd like to thank you for your time, somehow, Your Grace. So I would like to show you something in return, if you are willing."

Loghain slung his shield on his back and crossed his arms over his chest.

"And what would that be?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Val Royeaux," Alouette said, "but not what you have seen so far. I'd like to show you what strangers usually don't see, I'd like to show you what my city is really like."

Loghain nodded slowly. Knowledge like that might come in handy, and if she planned something crooked, he'd be able to take care of himself.

"Good, meet me here at dawn tomorrow, and don't wear that heavy plate. Too conspicuous."

"Very well," he said and they parted ways.

This afternoon the Empress invited them to a hunt. If this travesty he was forced to witness could be called that. The nobility met in a big courtyard that he was told was built exclusively for this purpose, decorated with lovely fountains, planted with quaint little hedges and stubs they called trees. Then they were issued weapons, dainty bows and crossbows. And then, wild animals were driven into the courtyard, where they stood, confused, panicked, tired in the unforgiving afternoon sun and were shot at. Loghain was beyond disgusted, and considered not participating in this abomination – but then he looked at the pitiful creatures, bucks and fawns, mostly, and in quick succession emptied his quiver and gave them a quick, merciful death.

He was only half listening when the Empress gushed her approval – he was too busy staring at the blood seeping into colour coordinated gravel and keeping himself from wringing her scrawny neck.

...

She was there at dawn dressed in simple leathers, as was he. Loghain shifted a little uncomfortably under her appraising gaze before returning it. She had a lovely figure out of armour, but she looked pale and tired; dark shadows were beneath her eyes, but she shrugged him off when he commented on it, saying that she simply had had a long night.

She led him out of the palace via a servant's entrance, and off they were through the winding roads and alleyways of Val Royeaux.

A snarled command, and Alouette was pushed into him, and he had to grip her waist to keep her from falling.

"What the..." he bristled, but she clapped a hand over his mouth and shushed him.

"Don't. We are dressed like simple folk, so we get treated accordingly. That was a Chevalier – they can do whatever they like to the people."

"I remember how they treated mine," Loghain snarled and released her.

"I assure you, they don't threat theirs differently."

They moved on, until Loghain found himself in an overgrown roof-garden with a great view over a market place.

"Now look, Your Grace, look at them. This is my Val Royeaux. Husbands, wives, children. Selling, buying, playing, simple everyday life. That is what I wanted to show you. These are the people of Orlais, not the nobles, not the Chevalier. Them."

Loghain looked at the scene below and had to admit, if there hadn't been the occasional shout in Orlesian, that he could almost believe that he was back home in Denerim.

"Where exactly are we?" he asked to change the focus of their conversation.

Alouette sighed, shook her head and let herself fall back into the soft grass.

Loghain had to stretch out beside her to hear her answer.

"This house belonged to my grandfather. After he died... I lived in it for a few years, but now I don't really have a use for it any more. The family was a little upset, but there was nothing they could do about me inheriting it... I've always been his favourite."

"You miss him."

"Yes, I still do. He taught me a lot... and he always told me about Ferelden."

Loghain snorted.

"About the rain and the mud, no doubt; and her uncivilized, barbaric people," he said bitterly.

Alouette shook her head.

"No. About the wild beauty of your land, the mountains and the forests. He told me that the people of your land were harsh but honest, and that they, even some of the nobles, still had a connection to their soil that we seem to have lost a long time ago. He always spoke fondly of Ferelden, said that instead of trying to make you like Orlesians, we should perhaps try to become a little more like you. Or that we should leave you alone."

Loghain couldn't help but laugh.

"Indeed. And I'm supposed to believe that story? A laudable performance, my dear, but I'm not fooled."

Alouette sat up, her face pale and her lips pressed together into a thin white line.

"There is a little bird on your left vambrace, isn't there? It looks as if a child has drawn it, and if you lift your shield, it's in a perfect position to be seen by you."

She jumped to her feet and started to pace.

"Florian knew about his views, since my grandfather was quite vocal about them. So he decided to punish him by giving him command of the Chevalier reinforcements sent to eradicate what he termed this 'pitiful, dirty, little rebellion'. My grandfather had no choice but to obey. He always called me Alouette, which means lark in your language, so I drew him a little bird, which he had etched into his vambrace."

She took a deep breath and stilled, looking down on him with a furious expression on her face.

"I wanted to know, if his armour was now worn by a man as good as him," she said, her voice cutting like a knife," but it seems that is not so. You, for all your achievements and titles are not half the man he used to be, you are not able to see what's in front of your nose, and you are not able to overcome simple prejudice."

Loghain couldn't say who pounced first, but a moment later their limbs were entangled in the grass, hands urgently pulling at clothes. There was no sound but their own laboured breathing, the distant murmurs of the crowd and the chirping of insects in the fragrant grass.

There was a long, white neck bared in front of him and he bit it, wrestling the woman in his arms on her back; she in turn drove her fingernails into his shoulders. Every piece that came into view, lovely and luminous in the sun, he marked with his teeth – breast, abdomen, thighs – but when he was finally faced with a thatch of daintily trimmed brown curls he gentled, and substituted teeth with tongue.

He kept his mouth on hers when he finally drove into her, swallowing every moan and cry as he took her harshly, without much consideration in the grass of her beloved grandfather's home.

He was a little shocked at himself as they lay together afterwards – he had always been a gentle lover, had never treated a woman that way.

He turned his head to her to apologize, but when his eyes met hers, that brilliant green was full of laughter.

"Maybe my unenlightened fellow countrymen are right; you Fereldans are brutes."

He shook his head with a rueful smile, and proceeded to prove to her that he was not, before insisting that they returned to the palace. He didn't want to leave his best friend alone at the tender mercies of the Empress longer than necessary after all.

He needn't have bothered, Her Majesty had been indisposed all day.

...