" And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing:
whether you have lived in despair or not."
Soren Kierkegaard, "The Sickness Unto Death"
Danish philosopher (1813 - 1855)
The camp was silent. Most of her companions had gone to bed hours ago. Shale and Wolf, the Mabari, were somewhere out on perimeter guard. She would have to redraw the night guard roster at some point, but for the present those two were on permanent duty. Shale didn't need sleep. Wolf took his sleep in short naps whenever he felt like it and when there were no Darkspawn to chew. And at least those two could reasonably be guaranteed not to defy her and try to kill Loghain when she wasn't there to prevent it. She doubted the same could be said of anyone else in the camp. Her eyes fell back to her task. Hands moved mechanically. Mind spun in vicious circles.
I am Muirnara Cousland. Daughter of Bryce and Eleanor. Sister to Fergus. Aunt to Oren. Last survivor as far as I know, of all those named. I avenged them. Vengeance does not end pain.
The whetstone scraped delicately over the edge of the silverite dagger. The edge was smoothed to a razor's sharpness hours ago. She seemed oblivious to this, the stone continued to make its passes in a regular, mind numbing rhythm.
I am Muirnara Cousland. Leader of a band of misfits collected from all over Fereldan. An elf who when we first met tried to kill me, and has ever since tried to bed me, without success. A mage who thinks she's my grandmother and who dishes out advice that I don't take, on a daily basis. A Qunari who thinks I should be at home bearing children, a witch who never gives me the slightest idea what she thinks, a templar...No!
Scrape. Scrape. Whetstone fell to the floor with a curse, the dagger followed it. She had promised herself she wouldn't think of him. Not tonight. Not the man who had loved her, and who now would look on her as yet another betrayer. The man who she had pushed into marriage to a woman that he didn't want, to consolidate his hold on a throne he wanted still less, and who then she had betrayed a third time by sparing the life of the man he wanted most to see dead at his feet.
I am Muirnara Cousland. Lover of Alistair Theirin, bastard heir to the throne of this land. And now his enemy. His enemy for the sake of a man who is somewhere down by the river, and who probably hates me as much as Alistair does, and for the same reason. Because I spared his life.
So that didn't work. Trying to numb her mind with repetitive tasks only brought her thoughts back to the one place she was trying to avoid. She picked up dagger and whetstone and held them in her hands, staring at them, unseeing. The only thing before her face now was the look on Alistair's face when she had accepted Loghain Mac Tir's surrender - the look of a man who has just received his death blow, from the last direction he would ever have expected it.
There were footsteps coming up through the trees. Instinctively her hand went to her dagger hilt, though over the last weeks she had learned to judge her newest brother's footsteps as well as any of her group - not to mention that odd, tugging sensation that told her in which direction he was, as surely as her sense for darkspawn, and for the same reason. Alistair had had the same resonance in her head, but the two felt different - she had deliberately not tried to analyse just how different, because that meant thinking about Alistair again.
The dark shadow coming out of the trees resolved itself into Loghain, stripped to the waist despite the coolness of the autumn night, and clad only in an old pair of leather breeches below that. His dark hair was slicked back to his head with water, and the towel he carried over one shoulder was wet. He tossed it down beside the fire, and then, rather unexpectedly, sat down beside it, carefully out of arms length of Muirnara and equally carefully not in the spot near the tents where Alistair had always sat. Someone must have warned him about that, it was a mistake he had never made, even on the first night. A degree of sensitivity that she would not have credited him with possessing.
"Warden" His voice was carefully neutral, an acknowledgement of her presence, no more.
"Loghain." Her own voice could have been a copy of his. "There is another towel behind you. Zevran left it there. It should be dry by now if you need it."
With a nod of thanks he turned away to pick it up, and Muirnara's brow furrowed. His hair wasn't slicked back at all - it simply wasn't there.
"I cut it." Loghain's voice was muffled as he vigorously toweled his head, and she started slightly. He looked across at her, and the sardonic smile that she had last seen on his face as he knelt before her, waiting for the death blow was back again. Though possibly tinged with a small amount of more genuine amusement. "I take it that was indeed what you were looking at?"
"You look...different" That seemed a safe enough statement. His face before had always had its frame of dark hair, and those two braids hanging down. Now the hair was cropped to no more than an inch all over, slightly unevenly, possibly with a dagger blade. It made him look younger, the grey hairs were less visible, the hawk's face bare and unshadowed. If he had just cut it himself, then he had done a better job than Alistair used to do, back in the days before she had taken over cutting his hair for him. Alistair had had a genius for hacking off his hair in a manner that would raise the eyebrows of a scarecrow, tufts sticking up at every angle. And here she was, thinking about him again...was there anything in this whole camp that didn't draw her mind back onto the same destructive path?
"Muirnara, this serves for nothing. You made a hard choice, a general's choice. He chose to make that harder. One of you had to be the strong one, and it was never going to be him."
She blinked. "And when did you start reading minds, Loghain Mac Tir?"
"It doesn't take mind reading." He was shrugging a shirt over his shoulders as he spoke. When he continued, his voice was more formal. "Warden, I have been in this camp for weeks now. I have watched you torment yourself over and over. There comes a point where the self torture has to stop. He forced your hand. You did not want the Landsmeet to end the way it did. But you knew what had to be done. He was and is a boy, a boy who believes that all the fairy stories come true, and that there will always be a happy ending somewhere. Cailan was the same. But you and I, Warden, learned in the same hard school, that the happy ending is far beyond the reach of most of us. Sometimes all that you can hope for is an ending."
"Thus speaks the general to the foolish soldier?" Her voice was ragged, there were tears not far behind it, held down with an iron will.
"Thus speaks an older man to a young woman who has had to bear too much." His voice was unexpectedly gentle. "You are much of an age with my daughter. And for a father, daughters never grow up, they remain six years old, with pigtails, forever. Anora is a strong woman. But she is also capable of tormenting herself over decisions. And I say to you what I have said many times to her. Question yourself by all means, but once the decision is made to the best of your ability, make it, and go on. Do not cripple yourself."
"You are not my father, Loghain." Her voice broke then, memories of Bryce Cousland attacking her defences from another direction. The words however were something that Bryce could have said.
"I am not your father, Warden." Loghain agreed. "Nor have I any wish to be. But I knew your father, and respected him. I think you know well what he would have said to you."
She dashed the traitor tears from her eyes, turning away for a moment so that he would not see them and getting up to put more wood on the fire. The kettle that hung over the fire on a metal tripod was bubbling gently, she tipped some of the contents into the teapot that sat warming close by, and added a piece of honeycomb. "Would you like tea?" The question was a peace overture, of a guarded kind.
"I would. Thank you" He pushed a mug over to her, and watched her as she filled it, then her own cup and returned to the seat by the fire.
She took a sip from her cup, curling her hands around it for warmth, a chilly wind had got up in the last hours since darkness fell. Her green eyes met Loghain's for the first time since he had come to the fire. "So why have you cut your hair?"
"Because I am no longer a general" The answer held some amusement
"That doesn't make sense"
"Yes, it does, Warden. A general stands back from a battle. He watches it, he makes strategic decisions. But unless the battle goes badly wrong, he is isolated from the fray, because his men need him to be able to make decisions instantly, not in the middle of a close combat where all thoughts are on survival" He ran an hand over his head. "Now I am once again a foot soldier, in a different war. And as my best sergeant once said, long hair is a luxury a foot soldier cannot afford. You can trap it under a helmet, but the first time that helmet is knocked or dragged off, you have given your enemy a handle to catch you with, and yourself an obstruction for your eyes. If the choice is to pay for your vanity with your life, then better to shear it off. If you live to see the peace, then there is time to grow it again."
That stung. She found herself, probably as he had intended, remembering the duel at the Landsmeet. Her helmet had indeed been knocked askew by a blow which she had dodged literally at the last second. She had ripped the damaged helmet off as she spun away towards a wall, and in doing so, pulled her hair loose from the tight chignon she normally twisted it up into. Half blinded by the silver-blonde cloud, she had been taken unawares by Loghain's next attack, and all that had saved her was the muscle memory gained over the hours and hours that Zevran had insisted she spent learning to fight with a blindfold on, trusting her other senses to judge her attacker. She had taken many scars in those training sessions before she had learned to judge the opponent's moves by the movement of air, the sound of a blade cutting towards her, the heavy breathing of an assailant.
He was watching her, and she could see the same memory on his face. "You knew all of that already though, Warden. But you didn't make the logical decision from it."
There was a challenge in his voice. She looked down again. Thoughts flickered through her mind, old memories of her mother brushing her hair as a small child, then closer memories of Alistair beneath her during their lovemaking, her hair a silken curtain falling around them both, his hands buried in it, twisting the curls through his fingers.
And if Loghain Mac Tir is reading my mind yet again at this point, then I wish he would mind his own business
She pushed the vicious thought away. Uncertainly she touched the tangled hair that she had roughly twisted up at the nape of her neck after her own chilly bath in the river, and realised that her other hand was already on the dagger she had sharpened earlier. Her hand shook slightly as she turned the blade over in her fingers.
He watched her for a few seconds, then took a pace across the circle and lifted the dagger out of her hand. "Remember what I said to you about crippling yourself after you have already made a decision? That goes for slicing your own fingers, as well as for tormenting your mind." She looked up again, but there was no mockery in his face. "You've carried too many things alone, you've had to do too many things yourself. This is a very small thing - let me do this for you, Muirnara."
Her name again, not the bland, impersonal title of Warden. She looked at the dagger blade in his hand. "I don't want to do it here. If Wynne came out and saw you with a blade at my throat..."
"True." He offered her a hand to help her up. "My tent, then. At least I have a light in there, and space enough to move."
There was a feeling of being invited into enemy territory. She hesitated a moment, then accepted the hand and came to her feet. "Loghain Mac Tir, if you were always this persuasive, then we would never have won at the Landsmeet"
He held the tent flap open for her to precede him. "Madam, if you were always this easy to persuade to see sense, then the Landsmeet would never have been necessary at all."