I don't think there are any Inquisition spoilers in here. :)
"What's your name, boy?"
It was a question he found himself asking often. The only variation was at the end, boy to girl, sometimes even kid.
In the decade he'd been with the Grey Wardens, he'd even sent on a wide variety of tasks.
Guard the fort, they said. So he did, watching men far younger than him laugher under his breath as he walked the up the stairs every day, shoulders sagging.
He went to Orzammar when they told him to, certain the Wardens were handing him a death sentence. Being with the dwarves turned out to be freeing- few knew who he was and even fewer cared. He fought the darkspawn in the Deep Roads, the Legion of the Dead at his back when he faltered.
When they'd sent him to clear darkspawn from the country roads and farms of Orlais, he'd gone. He hadn't minded much, even as the Wardens he was with spread his name around just to torment him. Just call him Loghain, he would tell the commoners, and people would laugh knowingly. He still didn't mind. Wetting his blade with darkspawn blood felt good when it was to protect hardworking people who knew little of politics and plotting. It was worth the aches and pains he woke up with in his bedroll.
He even suffered the indignity of obediently trotting after more senior Wardens as they traveled from one fancy lordling's manse to another's as they bandied around their great prize, the Hero of River Dane. Look, they were saying. Look who we've leashed. And almost always they were given gold and soldiers in return for seeing his humility.
He'd wondered if Maric would approve. He very well might have, given his sins.
The only task he truly relished was recruiting. It took the Wardens several years before they trusted it to him. Enough time spent silently following orders made them realize he was serious about being a Warden.
"What're your name?"
He went to prisons, to farms, to keeps. Anywhere he could find willing hands. No one told him, but he had the highest recruiting number of anyone in the last one hundred years. Very impressive, as he never once used the Right of Conscription.
Some recruits knew about his past. Most didn't care. He had won a battle against Orlais forty years earlier and then lost his title without honor. Not unheard of among Wardens. He got more teasing for his age than anything. It was refreshing.
The recruits that went through the Joining, the few of them that survived (he often wondered how that, when Joined at fifty-three, he had lived when so many younger did not) became fully-fledged Grey Wardens.
A farm boy from Emprise du Lion who had grown sick of the snow. A casteless dwarf with muscle like steel. Twin brothers from Starkhaven who'd run into trouble with the law. A city elf who'd killed half a dozen men- one when he'd tried to rape her, the others when the mood struck her. Most people wouldn't have given her the chance at redemption.
Most people wouldn't have given him one, either.
When he looked at the elven woman he saw his mistakes, the big mistakes, the ones not about a tactical retreat that had upset so many. He had lost his morals in the fight for the Ferelden throne long before he ended up losing the rest.
He told her one night, when they others had gone to bed. She listened, hardly speaking as he revealed his part in the enslavement of the Denerim elves. How he'd gone from the only soldier in Ferelden who'd given elves a chance to the one letting them be sold like cattle. How the elven Hero of Ferelden had tried so hard to forgive him.
He didn't feel relieved or unburdened when he finished, only tired.
"You're not that man anymore," she told him, teeth bared. "But you're lucky it wasn't me. I would have killed you."
She didn't treat him any differently after that. They were Grey Wardens, and few came to that Order without sin.
To them, he was just Loghain.