The Landsmeet, if he had died there he would have gone light-hearted and without any regrets. All his friends, his wife and former lover were dead, and he had somehow deserved the sentence. But she had kept him alive, and when another opportunity had presented with the killing of the Archdemon, the elf had found a way to circumvent it. He should have died then, an old man's death for a young woman's life, the fall of a corrupted former hero and the rise of a fresh new principled one…it was only natural, and nature detested emptiness. His life as a warden in Orlais was some sort of purgatory preparing him for death and he had accepted it, he had been calm and serene, he would have also left this world light-hearted if Inquisitor Lavellan had left him in the fade but an invisible force persisted on keeping him breathing…and this is how he had been for years, just breathing, talking rarely and shallowly, eating alone and sleeping with darkspawn's dreams to keep him company. And then everything started again when he let Caridin and his exacerbated loneliness convince him to revive a story from the past…he should have been wiser, but didn't they say that men become more sentimental as they grew old? And here he was madly in love at this old and vulnerable age for even if the taint conserved his physical abilities, it did nothing for his mental state. After all the losses he endured, a young and beautiful woman gave him what he had never dreamt of…she offered him things he didn't even know he was yearning for, a home full of children, a farm like the one he grew up into, a strong and smart son, he could see himself into and a daughter who looked like her grandmother and made him feel that he in some way had overcome the harsh fate and had revived a part of his mother…For he could have killed the whole Orlais, he would have felt only more bitterness when only loving a woman he wasn't meant to love had been sufficient to resurrect a part of his mother and made him feel at peace with her memory.
It was all good, but now his heart was restless, greedy for more time with them, yearning to dive deeper into the boundless love he was offered for the first time of his life, a love he did nothing to deserve, an unconditional and pure sentiment that only few could taste in their lifetime…now, he didn't want to leave, he wanted to stay forever with her like this.
"Loghain…" Kallian whispered and the man's eyes closed as he clenched his jaws hard.
"Please, don't utter another word," he begged with the same strangled, hoarse voice.
His grip on her wrists loosened and as soon as she was able to free her hands she put them on each side of his face. She didn't quite understand what was going on inside his head, but she knew that the calling hanging over him like a sword of Damocles had something to do with this sorrowful anger.
She didn't speak as he requested. She stayed there holding him close until his ragged breath stabilized and he eventually relaxed into her embrace.
Without a word, she helped him undress and put him to bed, never breaking the contact until he fell asleep in her arms.
"Loghain," she whispered softly as she planted a kiss on the bridge of his nose and joined him into slumber.
What an odd sense of humor the gods had, offering this to a dying old man and refusing it to a perfectly healthy and young man like commander Cullen…but why accusing some external source of power when we were the ones creating our own fate and destiny.