How much we'll tell down there, how much,
and how very different we'll appear.
What we protect here like sleepless guards,
wounds and secrets locked inside us,
protect with such great anxiety day after day,
we'll reveal freely and clearly down there.
(The Rest I Will Tell To Those Down In Hades -- Constantine P. Cavafy)
The first snow of this winter season falls during the still hours of the early morning.
When they break their fast, the ground outside becomes covered in a thin, quickly disappearing veil of white and Dog rushes about in the corridors and out in the courtyard, his big paws leaving soggy marks all over the floor. There are no servants to clean them up so they walk around it.
As they eat, Loghain is seated between Cauthrien and the Antivan, right next to the group of Orlesians. There's a bowl of unidentifiable porridge in front of him and he supposes it would taste at least decent if the hapless cook had bothered to use at least a smidgen of herbs or salt.
"The plan is to investigate the village before nightfall then?" Cauthrien glances sideways at him over her mug of tea – she is the only person he knows who wants warm draughts with her morning meal – and speaks with a voice that is deliberately low. A line of worry across her forehead and a note of the same in her voice; he nods and swallows another spoonful of porridge.
"It is," he confirms.
"Because of the darkspawn attacks?"
She is on the edge of her seat, casting apprehensive looks at the others, unused to being surrounded during even the briefest of conversations regarding their missions, he suspects. Loghain exhales heavily, putting down his spoon and with it, the last attempt at eating at all.
"Yes."
Last time Cauthrien was in Highever he had sent her to hunt down Bann Valdric's men and set an example of how he intended to deal with the insurgents. She had bowed her head and accepted - the unspoken words so tangible he never had to ask what her thoughts on the subject were - but she was safer out on the roads than she would have been meddling in Denerim so he didn't let her voice any complaints. When she returned, she did so with the report of five hunters having starved to death, refusing to acknowledge Loghain as their regent and Cauthrien had never looked at him the same way again, her gaze avoiding his for many weeks afterwards.
He doesn't blame her for acting strangely in these halls. Besides, he is the only one who can interpret the guarded woman correctly, to the untrained eye she isn't anything but her usual cold and composed self. He has told her this before, intended as comfort. She had, however, merely given him a rueful smile in response.
"Lovely," Cauthrien mutters, putting a rolled up piece of meat in her mouth. "More darkspawn."
Loghain looks over at the other table where his commander sits with her brother and a few of the soldiers sent here in advance. Elissa isn't eating either, he notices. There's a quiet discomfort in the room, mirroring that before battle and he is half expecting her to call to arms as she raises her head and meets his gaze over the untouched food and subdued voices.
But she does no such thing. She merely looks into his eyes and he returns the glance.
And once more it feels as though she has the tip of her sword at his throat.
.
.
.
.
It's much too quiet.
That is the first thing that strikes Loghain as they venture out of the castle and walk the path down to the harbour and its surrounding village. In the others' faces he can see that they agree.
It's a silence not explained by the aftermath of a Blight or at least not solely by it, because a Blight or any sort of war leaves the scenery torn and here it is not; it's silenced as though someone has put a thick blanket over the village and suffocated it in one big, sweeping stroke. Leaving nothing behind.
Over the last couple of months – and above all during the weeks since they left Denerim – they have seen destruction and wastelands, villages harvested in their entirety by darkspawn hordes, and yet this is something that seems different from all of that. Perhaps it's because they are in a poor state as an army and feel the disadvantage. Perhaps it's because of the deliberateness to this; they all seem to share the idea that this is not coincidence, judging by the facial expressions of the Olesians and their discussions, low enough not to be heard as anything but noise.
"Andraste's mercy," the teyrn sighs, squatting down to examine a large pile of food that has been thrown on the ground outside one of the two windmills that are framing Highever. It's a basket full of flour, spoilt vegetables, salted meat and something that smells strongly of milk, or what once was milk. "This is eerie."
Elissa is right behind him, looking over his shoulder.
"It's not fresh," she concludes quickly.
"It was weeks since we got the reports of the attacks," Loghain says, stepping forward to have a better look; the teyrn turns his head at the words, trying to rise quickly to his feet but has to lower himself again as he falters a little. Loghain holds back a sneer. The idiot should be resting. Elissa's pursed mouth tells him she agrees with this, at least, even if she would probably behead him for saying it out loud now. Or saying anything at all, truly. Her face has been steely all morning, her gaze avoiding his. She holds out her hand for her brother to grab and Loghain grants the other man the favour of pretending not to notice how difficult it still is for him to get back up.
"This waste is hardly that old." Cauthrien has walked up to them as well, using her blade to poke at the remains of human life; she grimaces slightly as the smells rise.
"It appears they've just been overrun," Elissa says, pressing something back in her voice, something dark and almost too contained. "Some of the ones who managed to flee the Blight and the civil war... they must have returned. To be attacked again."
There appears to be little to say in either response or protest to that, so they don't linger – Cauthrien takes the lead with the Antivan who almost looks bored in that arrogant manner he has, which makes Loghain suppress a desire to whack him over the head with his sword. The two of them disappear behind the corner of a small shed that the windy climate in the north has not treated too well, returning with a rusty helmet and nothing of importance.
The village is still empty.
"I feel the trace of darkspawn," Hedin announces suddenly, holding out a hand in the air, like he's expecting to catch it in his palm. Loghain can't feel more activity than usual and when he looks at his commander she shakes her head as well.
"Do you know if it's fresh or not?" Shirei asks and shakes off a lump of snow stuck at the bottom of of her staff.
"Not yet."
They proceed further along the small roads that lead deeper into the buildings, down to where the Chantry is located and the castle is visible in the distance.
"Hedin is starting to feel the Calling." Loghain turns his head to meet Shirei's bright green eyes. They appear quick and clever and mismatch her otherwise heavy-set frame. She observes him, as though she's waiting for a similar confession from him. The Joining is thought to kill a man your age, the damned Orlesian had told him months ago and Loghain had considered it a blessing. He still does, though there is a gentle pull at the back of his mind, reminding him of duty and need and a faint shadow of atonement that sometimes is all too visible, even if he knows better.
"I see."
"That's why he feels what the rest of us don't. Sometimes he can sense darkspawn by old remains of their blood."
"It sounds inapplicable for battle," Loghain steps aside not to walk straight into an overturned basket of chopped wood. "He is bound to be led astray."
The mage shrugs. "The upside is that he can sense them from far away and track them long after they've left a place."
Even the wind is stilled here, Loghain thinks as they reach the fisheries and blacksmith down by the water. Highever is a flat, open landscape and it should be torn by nature in every way, not grow calm and peaceful and dead, not like this. He tries to shake off the uneasy sensation of knowing – somewhere in his mind, somewhere in his body – the source of the discomfort but not being able to reach it.
"So that is the normal course of things then?" he asks, to say something.
While he sleeps badly – which is not a novelty in his life; no general worth his salt, no general who leaves the war rooms, can claim to be a heavy sleeper – and has his dreams invaded occasionally by the ugliest creatures he can imagine, the darkspawn taint has not been unkind to him. It serves as a reminder of the fact that he is mortal – a banal truth that is easy enough to forget for a man in his position, he has learned – and that he has only a certain amount of time at his disposal. It exacts things from him. Loghain finds that he appreciates it.
"I think so," Shirei confirms, falling silent.
Loghain nods, simply. It never hurts to be aware of what is to come.
He is about to linger behind to ask the Commander about the next step of their investigation when he feels the loud beat in his head, the swirl in his blood and they stop - all of the Wardens at the same time, controlled by the same force – in front of the Chantry's large doors, taken aback entirely with the premonition.
With little more than that moment to prepare themselves, they are thrown into in battle.
The emissary is the first one who appears, but not the last. Answering to his call, there are soon a swarm of darkspawn coming from left and right, storming the little group of humans. They have barely fought together as a group and it becomes evident here, cornered between houses and presumptions and different ways to do battle – the Orlesians spread out and Cauthrien gives the field a quick look before leaping to cover the teyrn while Hedin does the same. They barely avoid a collision.
"Blasted emissaries should have retreated underground!" Hawise shouts over the noise of a spell scratching the top of her helmet but leaving her standing; firing rapidly in the direction the magic came from. "It's no longer a Blight!"
"Shut up and fight!" Elissa barks – her sword buried in a hurlock's neck and her boots kicking at another to prevent it from coming closer – and her voice rings clear in the air, despite the turmoil.
And just as the darkspawn emissary is falling, the shrieks attack on cue, which is what Loghain has time to think and almost point out, before he feels a sharp blow to his back as Jenner is thrown off his feet and takes both Loghain and Elissa down with him.
"Shit," he hears her hiss as his elbow crashes into her side and the hilt of her sword hits him in the chest. The Orlesian entangled with them utters a foreign sentence – all curses, Loghain presumes – before pushing the Commander away.
Loghain and Elissa get up at the same time, using each other as a support as they drag Jenner to his feet as well, ignoring his grunting disapproval. He almost shoves their hands away as he stands again, swords drawn and only seconds from beheading the second emissary who is running in the opposite direction, managing to escape in the chaos.
"Shrieks!" Hedin roars and he refers not to the ones they are already fighting but another group appearing from the pier and the sheds.
"Be ready!" Someone else – the mage – screams as a response and immediately after the words have reached them, Loghain sees her run into the crowd of attackers.
It's so fascinating he nearly forgets to fight.
Shirei stands in the middle of the crowd, shrouded in a stark blue light while she's chanting something and then, as her spell slips from her outstretched hands, Loghain understands with full force why she is a Warden. The energy pulsating from her body throws the shrieks off course, fells some of them completely and cripples the rest by confusing their sense of direction. Hawise's arrows seem to be in perfect synchronisation with this power; she evades and fires with an impressive accuracy, far superior to his own archery skills.
They manage the second wave of the shrieks as well, all of them left standing as the soaring increases rapidly yet again, and Loghain almost groans.
This time it plays out differently. The darkspawn clog up the pier before him and when he turns his head he spots another horde from the another direction – hurlocks, genlocks, alphas and one large emissary who towers behind them all, seemingly in control. Elissa darts up, gesturing to Shirei and Cauthrien to follow suit. Loghain signals to the Antivan and the rest of the Orleians to gather and form the second line and just as they are, as they make the pattern, the crowds scatter.
He hears something that sounds like a voice, and watches the creatures spread into formations, running in streams and far too deliberate groups.
And when he sees Elissa engulfed in one mob and the mage in another while the oncoming troop pays no attention to Cauthrien, there is no doubt about the enemies' motivations.
"Go," Loghain tells the elf, who has already taken a step forward, aiming for the alpha about to lift the Commander up by the throat.
Then the darkspawn coming from the sea demand all of his attention and he cannot finish another thought in what appears to be forever, except a few crude words strung together when they manage to round on him. He cannot say how many of them there are, but he can tell that they certainly have the upper hand and that he appears to stand alone. The rest of them are occupied and Loghain finds himself pushed back, forced to retreat down the slope and further down, his feet stepping blindly backwards as he fights off a couple of shrieks rather badly with his shied. Over stones and slippery pebbles they go - his lacking attempts and their well-organised rhythm of fighting - until finally he slides down on the ground, taking a blow to the head and another one to his shoulder as he lands ungracefully on the snow-covered pier, his sword gliding out of reach.
The alpha who bested him lets out a triumphant noise and Loghain sees nothing but the glimmering axe in the air above him as he looks up, flat on his back and waiting for the blow. He closes his eyes. A shuffle of noise and darkspawn beat in his head, screaming, wild and rebellious here at the end of things. Perhaps it will drown him as it carries him across, to the Fade.
"No, don't kill him."
The voice.
Loghain blinks, raising a hand to wipe away the blood and dirt from his forehead that trickles down into his eyes; his mouth tastes of grit and held-back pain and he can't see properly who stands before him. But his head throbs, heavy and steady beats of familiarity except it feels different. It's not the alpha. It's not a human.
That voice cannot not belong to a human; it is as though the earth speaks, growling and low, like the rumble of thunder and the hissing of the wind.
But just as he is about to prop himself up, Dog comes darting forward with a threatening sound that only a Mabari with a mind set on killing can produce. Loghain momentarily thinks of making the animal come to a halt out of sheer curiosity but before he has caught his breath, the creature that spoke before gives a terrible roar and stumbles down, as Dog tears into his throat. It produces another sound – this time from the alpha, who shifts his attention from Loghain to Dog who throws himself at the much larger creature without hesitation, a low growl rising from his body and in an instant, the other darkspawn is dead, too.
Still struggling to breathe and feeling his will to try leaving him rapidly, Loghain gives up on all efforts to rise. In the distance he can hear the battle go on but here by the water, all that disturbs his fractured trail of thought is Dog who prods him with a wet, cold nose before giving a chain of loud barks.
And that's all he has time to think before he drifts off.
.
.
.
.
There is a fire when he wakes up.
A fire that is making crackling, hissing sounds from somewhere beside him, giving the room a warmth that seems almost unnatural. Of course, he realises as he opens his eyes and cannot properly focus on any spot – and when he thinks the chair in front of him appears to bleed into the surroundings, tinted with every colour and never completely still – he has likely had something for the pain.
Loghain edges a little in the bed, fingers clutching the thick blanket he is buried beneath. Something is tugging, in turn, at the thin, still sleep-confused strand of his thoughts. He is not alone in here.
"You're awake," Elissa says, stepping into view. Her arms are folded and from what he can see, she is not dressed in armour, which means the battle is over. Before he has asked, though, she nods. "We killed... most of them."
"Most?"
The word tears unpleasantly at his throat and he winces, swallowing a few times.
"Some appear to have got away." She looks as bothered by this as he is, to hear it. When she is walking closer to his bed, he notices that she has bandages across her stomach and wears the tunic turned up above it. "Hedin set out to track the scent he found, afterwards. But he couldn't tell us anything."
Talking darkspawn, Loghain remembers with a sudden stroke of clarity. Last time he had heard of talking darkspawn they had been collaborating with another group of Orlesian Wardens, nearly costing Ferelden another king. He inhales sharply, closing his mind around the confession. If he is going to admit something he doubts he even heard, like a child speaking of ghosts, he's bloody well doing it while fully sober and standing upright.
Elissa eyes him suspiciously. "What?"
"What?" he echoes and this time it is less painful to speak.
"You were going to say something." She has dragged the chair to his bedside, with the slow and careful moves of someone in pain; as she sits down, the scent of poultice and herbs is so rich it almost stings and he feels carried back in time to scenes similar to this one but with other faces and other motives.
"I... no," Loghain wants to sit up, but it seems a hopeless prospect as there's something thick and sore and aching in his chest – as he puts his hand there he feels bandages and the tingling trace of magic still tangible on his skin. "Your dog is well trained."
"Of course he is," she says, sounding very annoyed at his change of subject but doesn't steer it back to whatever she wants to speak of either. "I came to change those, too."
She nods towards the wounds he has just disturbed, revealing a small supply of bandages and pastes.
"I can do it myself," he snaps, wondering if they have taken the liberty to throw away his warmest set of clothing to wear under armour. He is not wearing it, at any rate. Most of his chest is covered in a blood-stained compress. "If memory serves me right you are an atrocious nurse."
Her face tightens a bit around the comment.
"Fine," she says, tossing the things she brought on the bed. "I don't care. You will live. They will be festering but you will live. Shirei said you would require a good night's sleep and some more potions."
"I will take my chances then." Loghain makes an effort to reach for the little pile of bandages and manages to get hold of them before falling back into the half-seated position; he wonders if the sodding humiliation is part of her plan, too. Maker knows he may deserve it. "But if I survived the Joining I might survive a festering wound or two."
Elissa sits back in her chair, watching him as he stubbornly begins removing the first corner of the cloth. He feels his entire body tense in protest when the sticky paste that has been attached to him gives in to his tearing and loosens its hold of skin and hair. Sodding mage must have overdone the thing, he thinks, vaguely, feeling the pain echo in his head.
"You've started bleeding again," Elissa observes dryly, as the remains of the greyish poultice and salves are mingling with dark red on his chest.
"Are you going to sit here and point out the obvious all night?" He has never found her as insufferable as he does right now, her voice grating at the very edges of his patience and momentum.
She suddenly gets to her feet, the rustle of her clothes close to his ear and then she has snatched the discarded bandage and thrown it away while dabbing a clean one to the wound. Loghain is about to protest meekly, but instead he holds both his breath and his tongue.
"Wait-" she is leaning over him now, pressing the cloth against his chest with one hand while she pushes him back onto the pillows with the other. For a second their eyes meet and she looks at him, intently, a trace of something in her eyes that he hasn't seen before, a wistfulness or perhaps gentleness that leaves him slightly unsettled. He certainly has been given enough draughts today. "There you go."
"Just-"
"Just shut up and stay still," she interrupts, as though she's filling in the blanks of his own sentence.
Loghain clenches his teeth when she, once the bleeding has ceased, pours a badly smelling, warm liquid on his chest and he can feel it, seeping into him; then she eases her touch and when it returns it is very soft. She offers a dry, warm bandage and careful fingers that run along his chest to fasten the new compress.
Averting his eyes he does not see when she leaves his side, nor does he hear it because he feels the potions rage through his veins again, their powers reassuringly great.
"You did not leave me," he says, sharper than he intended, making it sound like an accusation. It might be, still.
She stops, half-way out of the room but still close enough for him to hear the pointed scoff at this remark. If he knows her as well as he thinks, he suspects she is also shaking her head, jaws clenched.
"Don't be absurd."
And he leans back against the pillows, relaxing as much as the hum of sedatives and abiding pain allows him to, wondering how long the cease-fire will last.
.
.
.
.
The following morning, the snow has melted.
In the same constellation – reinforced on his own orders by every man and woman currently working on restoring the castle, leaving only a handful of guards behind – they head back into the village. The soldiers are eager to be out, leaving room for the recently battered to walk at a slower pace.
Loghain glances at the commander by his side, one step ahead as though she's deliberately going faster; there's the same odd sharpness between them, comparatively cold and distanced from the interaction that has followed the Landsmeet. They have always found voices and words, shared them and agreed like soldiers on duty.
It is not the same.
But they can, of course, always trust the darkspawn to force them together again. Trust the blood oaths to swirl them into the same spot, from which no escape is possible. After having admitted what he thought he heard, Loghain had certainly not counted on both agreement and a similar confession from his commander. Yet that is exactly what he has been given. And while it is soothing to realise he was not seeing ghosts after all, he would have preferred it to the alternative. Talking bloody darkspawn.
Elissa finds her voice first this time.
"Do you think it could have something to do with her?" she asks, pulling Loghain aside. They begin to walk down towards the sea, putting distance between themselves and the others who are still cleaning up the ghostly area around the houses in the harbour.
"It seems far too soon."
"Oh, for an ordinary... yes," she winces around the words, just as he does whenever he tries. "We don't know what this... would be like."
Loghain has not allowed this recent memory to surface one single time since it happened and even now as they stand here, speaking of it, giving it a voice and a shape as well as frightening possibilities, he finds that he pushes it back deep into his mind. There's resentment there, and some wounded pride, and he can't yet bear to untangle the mess.
Elissa steps out on the pier next to the small fishery where the scent of rotten fish is rising from large brimful baskets of the last harvest; there's also a tree legged stool and a small table where a knife glimmers in the sunlight. Loghain spots a half-empty mug of unknown liquid beside it. This, too, is the scene of someone simply disappearing without putting up a fight.
"Before we left Denerim, I contracted a rogue to track her," he admits, stooping over the table to look at the scales and trimmings, but the smell makes him start back. "A woman of great discretion."
He had expected the Commander to berate him for it, given her frustration with other decisions he has ventured or his own without her approval, but she merely nods.
"So did I."
"She must have known we would," he turns to face Elissa who is looking out over the horizon, one hand holding back her hair and the other firmly placed on her hip. She resembles a clichéd painting of a returning, conquering hero.
"I'm actually not so certain," she replies thoughtfully. "Morrigan is used to other people being convinced by her lies, I think. She knows how to have her way. I think she believed me when I promised not to seek her out."
"That seems unlikely."
"Does it?" She frowns. "Besides, what means do you assume she has at her disposal? Certainly no powerful contacts or gold to speak of. She is alone."
He scoffs. "Do not paint her as some martyr in need of pity and compassion."
"Hardly."
For some time neither of them speak, both intent on avoiding the wrong steps along this path.
"She will not have any reason to put your name to this," Elissa says suddenly, as though he has asked her a question. "You don't need to worry about that deed discrediting your name, at least."
Something darkens in him at that, a note of fury.
"Do you truly believe that I care so much for my pride and so little for everything beyond it, Commander?" he snaps, suddenly feeling the control slipping out of his hands entirely and that hard lump of rage loosening up a little as he gives it words.
"I didn't-"
"Is that why you believe I have spent thirty years in the service of my country? To have a bloody statue erected in my name?"
"Well-" she begins but sighs, silencing herself. Loghain watches her turn away.
She thinks very little of him and while he cannot fault her for it, nor fully explain to himself why it irritates him that she does, it is something that he can't deny. He knows it is partly anger and partly a self-pitying notion that the one person - in all his life - who has managed to bring out more decency in him save perhaps Maric and Anora, is so quick to disregard all of it.
Around them the air is damp and hanging heavily over their heads, promising rain or snow before nightfall. The smokey fog rising from the water wraps them in a sense of being all alone where they are, as though the others up in the village are being swallowed by the same void that must have swallowed the villagers.
Loghain hates the sea.
With an embarrassingly large effort, he squats down in front of a big lump of what appears to be clothes and a pack and confirms that it is – one pair of obviously discarded breeches as well as a bit of canvas covering a catch of carp. It takes no more than a light touch for his fingers to slip through the soggy surface of gills and fins and be knuckle-deep in rotten food. As he washes the stench away, kneeling to the best of his ability, Elissa pulls out a handkerchief from the pockets of her trousers and hands it to him.
"No," she says after a long while, as though she has taken her time to ponder the question. She keeps her gaze fastened on him, searching, and as she continues there is a different tone in her voice. "I don't think that about you."
"Thank you," Loghain replies, not even bothering to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
They linger at the pier, walking back and forth.
Dog wanders in between them, eager like a pup and constantly setting off at random to investigate another shape in the grey clouds around them, returning to receive praise or Elissa's absent-minded pats on the head. Loghain wonders how long she has had the dog and is about to ask when she suddenly stops, Highever Castle peering down at them from the heights. He stops, too.
"I always hoped something would happen so I could get away from there," she says, her voice low but audible. "At first I thought it would be a knight who carried me in his arms, off to adventures."
She half-smiles, looking away again. Loghain isn't certain why she suddenly agrees to speak to him at all, let alone of anything more intimate than darkspawn; he has been told at times that he does not communicate particularly well, and if this is true then the same goes for his commander. But he feels a relief at her words, lets them in.
"I would have expected a teyrn's daughter to have her ambitions set higher than a paltry knight," he replies.
Not that he knows what daughters of teyrns are truly dreaming of, not that he allowed his own much of a choice in the matter. Loghain puts on his gauntlets again, the icy metal offering at least some protection from the wind.
"Then I wanted to escape on my own," she continues, seemingly oblivious to his remark. "Or with Hestia. We would fight the dragons."
"Children always dream of flight, I suppose," he says eventually.
"Did you?"
Did he? Had he been dreaming of anything at all? He must have, he knows, as the question settles into his mind, into the badly sorted fragments of a past he had put on hold already before he had lived it through. Out of necessity or fear, or a combination of the two perhaps. Elissa looks at him while he remains silent, her gaze merciless. What does he remember? That day when the Orlesians came, a whispered command not much later – You are a big boy; you will look after yourself – and then somehow he was already a young man who made promises to his father that he still isn't certain he has kept. Loghain has cleansed his own past, scraped it bare and holding on to only the things that shaped him. For better and for worse.
"I don't remember," he answers finally, so truthfully it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.
"You're not that old." Elissa sounds slightly tired, but accepting, as though his lack of memories somehow has been answer enough for her and whatever it is that she wishes to know.
"It has little to do with age." Loghain picks up a handful of pebbles on the ground near the wooden piles holding the pier up. They've returned to the land now, at least momentarily. Dog barks from a bit further ahead, having spotted some familiar faces in the village and is gone in a whirl of grey fog and whipped up earth. "And more with necessity."
"Yes," she says. "That sounds like you."
He can trace the shadow of an insult in those words, but it slips away again, shifting like the sea.
Loghain looks at the flat pebbles in his hand; as he tosses them back into the water he remembers another cold winter's afternoon like this, when Anora had made him teach her to play ducks and drakes. She had seen other children do it and Loghain had stood with her on the shore in Gwaren, showing her how to throw the stones to make them skip across the surface until they were both fed up with her lack of success. She never did learn and held grudges towards both the ocean and pebbles for many years.
"I have not been in Highever since the funeral," he says after a while, not certain if Elissa is still there. The chill of the damp air makes him pull the cloak tighter around his shoulders, folding his arms across his chest to keep the warmth in.
And he has kept so many silences over the years that he has to struggle to put his thoughts into words. It's far too much for one person to contain, Sister Ailis told him once, talking about what Loghain's father had told her of their past. She had told him this again, more urgently, after the rebellion was done and Loghain found himself incapable to telling her even a fraction of the things he had done.
But he has found that she was right.
Maric used other people, let them lend him their ears while he spun tales and myths, dropped hints and scraps of facts – this is what we did, this is how we did it - with his contagious charisma and that self-deprecating smile, so well-rehearsed after a few years that Loghain only turned away.
Rowan, he learned years after her death, wrote everything down.
"I had forgotten." Elissa is there, right by his side; their arms are brushing against each other. "My mother and I were staying with relatives in South Reach. Father said it was... oh, you know."
Going through his memories of that occasion, Loghain only faintly remember the guests.
"It was all arranged very quickly?"
He had been summoned to the Coastlands almost ritually for several months by then, each letter as urgent as the next one, but this time it had been the actual thing; Maric's body had floated ashore with the bodies of the few guards he had brought with him and Loghain had confirmed it, bowed over a barely human-looking King of Ferelden.
"Yes."
Loghain had refused all suggestions that involved bringing the body back to Denerim. Stubbornly and to a fault, of course, judging by many reactions. The nobles and their retinues had marched to Highever instead, on his orders, to partake in the burial of their king.
"He should not have been on that ship," he says, not meeting Elissa's gaze that he feels on his face. Maric would not have been on that ship if he had still trusted Loghain, if he had had the sodding decency of listening to the man he made his right hand and allowed him to alter the idea. At some point, Loghain recalls not without shame, he had offered to go himself. Maric had met that with the only possible reaction - a bitter laugh.
"Was he travelling to meet the empress?"
"He was." Loghain keeps his eyes on the horizon. "Maric entertained the idea that we ought to extend our... diplomatic endeavours."
Elissa hums in agreement. "I remember. It wasn't among his most popular ideas."
"No, it was not."
She shifts where she stands, probably as frozen as he is.
"Maric did not want to be remembered only for his war," he says, voice fading a little.
Now that is all he will be remembered by, Loghain knows with a jolt of pain unlike the physical one of the last few days. The rebel prince who waged a bloody rebellion on the oppressors, drove them out and trusted the commoner made teyrn who later threw the country into another bloody war. He can see the history books being written already. Immortalised in ink.
Loghain shrugs, trying to brush away the stiff posture and the bone-hard thoughts; he turns his head somewhat and notices that the woman next to him is watching him with a unfamiliar and unreadable expression in her face.
"He won't be," Elissa states, firmly, with a certainty only someone who is either very brilliant or very stupid can possess. He has not decided which it is in her case.
"Perhaps not," he says, trying to bring himself to agree.
AN: Thanks as always to CJK, who has the patience of a saint. And lots of thanks and love to those of you who read and comment and are generally awesome.