AN: Thanks to CJK for beta and utterly useful hand-holding and to (Ser) Kimbo for inspiration, too.
There has been unrelenting snowfall for three full days.
The upside to this is that it makes the roads safer to travel, less crowded by both darkspawn and humans and the only impending dangers are those of freezing to death or being trapped somewhere by a heavy snowstorm. But they have braved those odds so far, and Logahin is not inclined to change this pattern. As they plod through the village – no more than a handful of houses spread out around a small Chantry and a tavern – he listens to the Orlesians mutter among themselves a few steps behind.
He has found that, aside from the fact that the sheriff releases a lot of the burdens the teyrn has previously shared with Loghain, he also provides a steady source of hints and tips about possible recruits. Furthermore: thanks to Jenner and his skill with badly veiled threats and brutal intimidation, they sometimes have a source of gossip that precedes even the sheriff.
Loghain adjusts the hood of his heavy fur cloak. From what he has gathered over the years of serving kings with starry-eyed fondness for the Order, the Wardens are famous for recruiting the bravest, most fearless and skilled fighters across Thedas. It clashes oddly against the apparent willingness – especially among the Orlesians – to simply walk into the nearest prison dungeon and offer the goblet to anyone still standing up. He has already warded off one murderer and one raw-boned boy said to have raped a bann's daughter, deciding that he will rather fight the remaining darkspawn of Ferelden on his own than risking an order based on self-serving scum of the earth, ready with a dagger the moment his attention falters.
He remembers, too, Elissa's words, their mutual agreement: nobody against their will and never without knowing. Her reports from Orlais has only strengthened this idea.
Today they are stopping by the home of what Jenner describes as a skilled rouge, wanted for the death of two knights. And after quickly dismissing the houses that appear abandoned – wide-open doors in the middle of the winter, caved-in roofs – they stand outside a surprisingly well-kept home where candles are burning.
Loghain knocks, hearing the others come to a halt behind him. Hawise stands by his side, removing her hood as the door opens and a man appears. He is young, still built more like a boy than a man, the gentle features of him blurred in a slight roundness. There is nothing in him that appears capable of causing death.
"Yes?" His face turns ashen the moment he sees them, and as his eyes fall on Loghain there is a second of adjusting images and remembering titles after which he appears ready to burst into tears. "What is this about?"
"May we come in?" Hawise forestalls Loghain, already pushing at the door to get inside, away from the cold and into the warmth. The man steps aside with a muffled protest.
The home is sparse, but doesn't have the appearance of being a temporary location; it is decorated, welcoming, the shelves are full of items and a few toys lie scattered in a corner. People live here.
"We are Grey Wardens," Loghain explains, already starting to resent the recruiting play they put on. It feels like a long, dull performance not fit for even the worst of playhouses. "And we are searching for Locke."
"I-I am Locke, ser."
"No, he's not." Another voice fills the room, belonging to a woman who steps out of what appears to be the bedchamber. Behind her, clinging to her skirts, is a small boy. The woman holds him back, pushes him into the bedchamber again as she steps forward. "I'm Locke. What do you want?"
"You're wanted for murder." Jenner, ever the blunt fool, crosses his arms over his chest and watches the reaction of his words sink in. "We would like to propose a different solution, however."
The man shakes his head, positioning himself in front of the woman as though he would be capable of serving as a shield for more than a second. Still, there's a sudden flare of something in him as he looks up at Loghain, defiant and desperate.
"Don't-"
"Landon, stop," the woman hisses. "You're making it worse."
"How could I possibly make it worse!" he turns around, and Loghain spots the momentary panic in the woman's face at his reaction. This is much too easy, all of her weak spots laid bare; it leaves a foul taste in his mouth. "They're taking you away!"
"What did you do?" Loghain looks at Locke, who meets his gaze.
She has the look of a fisher or a maid, not someone capable of taking down two armed men. The only imposing part of her is the way she carries her determination and pride, Loghain thinks, waiting for her confession.
"I killed two knights. In... self-defence." She speaks evenly, but as the boy runs back out again, her voice falters a little, her hands reaching for him protectively as though Loghain is going to snap his neck.
"How did you manage that? You don't have the look of a warrior." Hawise eyes the other woman.
"She's an excellent archer," the young man, Landon, interjects. "Been a hunter since she was a little girl."
Locke nods. "I am. And I was... lucky."
"Lucky?" Loghain asks, noticing how the boy glares at them, as Locke once more urges him to leave her and Landon bends down to pick him up. The boy is too old to be held against his will, however, and soon struggles free again.
"I... there was a... Look, how do you even know about this? It happened months ago. During the war." Her gaze falls on Loghain. "We all do what we have to during a war, don't we?"
"I like your attitude," Jenner says, talking a step towards her. "Unfortunately for you, I don't believe what you're saying."
"Please, I can-" Locke begins, retreating, but Jenner follows.
"Stop that, you fool," Loghain growls just as something sends the Orlesian headlong into the wall with a loud crash, a chair toppling over and a glass jar breaking.
Both Locke and Landon gasp, rushing forward as though hoping to cover the source of the power: the boy who has freed himself and stands in a corner, shivering, with hands outstretched and a terrified expression in his face. The air around him still glows faintly.
"Well," Jenner drawls, getting up from the floor and wiping his hands on his cloak. "This just became slightly more interesting."
"No," the woman shakes her head, near tears. "No, no, please. This is not what you think. He isn't... he was just trying to protect me. He... oh, Maker help me!"
"He's just a child," Landon says, holding the boy in his arms. "He's..."
"That's your son?" Hedin asks, calmly.
"Y-yes." Locke looks up, her face distorted in grief. "He's never done anything like this.. it was... he was afraid they would kill me."
Loghain can draw a fairly clear painting in his mind of what must have happened to the knights. His knights, most likely. He can't bring himself to care about their fates, knowing enough of both war and the spoils of the same to think they probably deserved it. The present situation is too delicate for his blunt sense of justice, however, and he forces back threads of both memory and tiredness as he hears Jenner laugh darkly.
"I doubt the Chantry and the Circle will see it that way," he says. "Not to mention the sheriff."
Hawise tilts her head, looking at Locke with a new-found respect. "We could use you in the Order. In exchange for our silence, of course. Isn't that so, Loghain?"
"I can come with you!" the woman exclaims, hurrying forward. "I will! Just don't hurt my son!"
"No, Locke," Landon pleads, reaching out for her but she is already far away, her eyes kept on Loghain.
"Oh, I'll go with you, I will! Just don't tell anyone about him. Please." And then Locke is on her knees in front of Loghain - he steps back, disgusted. "I beg you. You can do anything you want with me, but don't take him. Don't take my son!"
"Get up from the floor," Loghain commands, but his voice doesn't seem to register in the choir of sobs rising from the boy and the desperate pleas from his parents. Why he would need a desperate mother who might be moderately skilled with a bow, he fails to understand. Then they can just as well recruit aged beggars and small children next.
"No, you can't take her away from her son!" Landon cries, trying to pry the boy's arms away from Locke's kneeling body but is met with a low hissing sound. "You can't! I'm no fighter, but take me instead if you need soldiers. Please."
"I will go with you," Locke says again. "I... if I must, that is what I will do. But don't send the Chantry after him. Please. Please."
"He will forget, he's so young." Hedin points out, calmly.
He won't, of course. That boy might live to become an old man but he won't ever, not for one second, forget this. Loghain shakes his head, trying to rid himself of the ripple of memory in his blood as he forces his attention back to his fellow Wardens.
"She comes willingly," Hawise raises an eyebrow in Loghain's direction.
"I do! I do, ser." Locke echoes, over and over, her hands tugging at Loghain's sleeves and he flinches, grabbing hold of her much too harshly, his fingers nearly reaching around her thin arms. Her eyes widen at the pain and he pulls her to her feet.
"I told you to get up," he says coldly, to drown out the throbbing heat in his chest; his head is crowded with noise and that awful trace leading back somewhere he cannot allow himself to walk. "I will not recruit you."
"But ser-"
"I will not recruit you," he repeats. "Even if you survive the Joining, you would make a useless soldier."
For a short while Locke seems insulted, before the meaning of his refusal sinks in and her face lights up with a faint hope.
"But her son... she might be a mage," Hawise cuts in as though Loghain would be unable to reach this conclusion on his own. "And even if she isn't, if she's good with a bow we can use her."
"I have seen neither magic nor any particular strength in her," Loghain shrugs, watching the boy run to his mother's side and sees how Locke is reining him in among her skirts, pressing him against her own body. "We are done here."
"Loghain-"
"You would do well to remember that I am in charge," Loghain cuts her off, sharply, extending his admonition to all three Wardens. "For as long as we are in Ferelden, you are under my command and you will follow my orders. Now, get out!"
Jenner is about to say something, but Hedin's hand on his arm is quicker. "He is right. I agree with him."
They leave the house as they came, wordlessly and disjointedly, a group separated by the same lines that are meant to draw them together. As Hedin exits with Hawise and Jenner in front of him, their steps quickened by irritation, Loghain feels a hand on his back. When he turns around, Locke stands there, the boy still clinging to her. They both look at him as though he is someone else, someone he can't remember being; not through the whole weave of time that unfolds itself backwards in his mind can he find a notion like this, and it almost discomposes him.
He is condemning them to an uncertain future, to the kind of life he recalls with a shudder, and they look at him like he has saved them.
"And the Chantry?" Locke asks, her voice no more than a whisper.
"I'm not a templar," Loghain replies, biting down on the many things that is wrong with this situation and the many things both of them will have to overlook for now.
"Thank you," she says quietly. "I have... nothing to give you in return. But thank you. We will not linger here, I swear. We'll... we will find somewhere else. And I promise that my son... I will not let him... not again."
Loghain nods.
"So," Jenner says briskly as they leave the village. "Now that you have wasted yet another recruit, perhaps you would like to enlighten us how we are to fill the ranks in this fish-reeking excuse for a country?"
"I could explain," Loghain sneers into the darkness that has fallen. "But logic would be lost on you."
"Yes?" Jenner snorts. "Well, if this is how Fereldans build their armies, it is no wonder it took you so long to drive us out."
"Be quiet," Loghain says and amazingly they are, all of them, for the rest of the dreary walk.
Later, as he sits in front of the fireplace after a warm bath and a plate of the grey, flavourless food the inn serves, he opens Elissa's latest letter. He has been saving it, he realises, as he unfolds the slightly damp sheet of paper she has used for wrapping the neatly folded stack of pages. To have enough time on his hands once he sits down with it, he tells himself.
Her letters have not become any shorter.
Aside from the long, detailed stories of what she is doing, she has also acquired the habit of copying large masses of text from the books she finds in her studies, sending them to him along with notes and scribbled half-finished thoughts of her own so that every page feels like a conversation by the fire, full of odds and ends sewn loosely together by sheer will and a lack of sleep.
Her letters have not become any shorter, and tonight he is endlessly grateful for this respite from reality.
.
.
The winter seems kinder in Orlais.
The winter seems hesitant here, as though it's still waiting to properly crack open over their heads, drowning them in snow like the season always does in Ferelden; there's a milder air here, a less unforgiving cold. It also seems slower, like it is never going to end.
It has been a strange new year so far, Elissa thinks, hurrying up the stairs to the Headquarters' library. She has become familiar with the long, steep steps now, walking here up and down several times a day. Strange and hollow, as though this winter is detached, a period of time torn off from her history, carrying nothing but waiting to be filled with content.
And she certainly keeps herself busy.
All day, every day, she speaks to everyone she can imagine having something interesting to tell her – and to quite a few who clearly don't. In the evenings she attends dinners, roaring gatherings with too much wine; occasionally she is asked to accompany a group of Wardens to the town square or the Chantry, often she spends the evenings in the company of Cauthrien or Zevran, going over impressions and stray information, or else she spends them in the library. She trains, feeling the lack of battle take control of her body; she walks around in the city; she keeps her wits about her at all times and picks up more gossip than she could ever think possible. The Order here is divided, to say the least. There are those who want to break out of the tight political control, those who swear their loyalty to the Empress and those who spit on the bond to her; there are those who claim themselves Wardens, not Orlesians and those who believe the very opposite; there are, it seems, fractions for all opinions and a terrible tangle of chains running between and beyond.
Elissa stands in the middle, trying to reach around it all, nursing a faint hope to understand it.
When left to herself, she reads, she devours the texts in the old tomes and the newer scholarly works; anything she comes across that does not land properly in her mind, doesn't have notes of understanding, she promptly looks up and transforms into detailed notes.
"Commander?" The title makes her frown, its shape seems to resound oddly against the stack of books and the unfamiliarity of everything here. The Orlesians rarely use anything but her name and Cauthrien and the knights don't follow her to her library sessions. "A letter for you."
One of the servants, in this case a soft-spoken elven boy, stands in the doorway. He glances up at her, holding out his hands. Elissa has seen the way Zevran looks at the elf servants in the house, their servile gestures and deep bows somehow more pronounced here than they ever are in Ferelden.
"Ah." Elissa tucks the book under her arm to reach for the sealed package. "Thank you."
They have become a routine among the other routines, now, these regular messages from home - one that never fails to put her in a good mood. Either it's Fergus' verbose complaints about cowering servants and petty banns, or Loghain's dry and sparse summaries of unsuitable recruits; Elissa soaks the words up and saves them for when she can't sleep and wishes she was somewhere else.
It's not until she looks at the hand-writing of this particular letter and recognised the hand-writing as Loghain's that she realises she has hoped it would be, and the realisation, as it sinks in, sends a little jolt down her spine.
She leaves the library, grabbing a mug of tea when she passes the dining hall and then, huddled up on the bed, she starts reading.
Elissa,
All is well.
You write that my letters are dull and uneventful. They are. Highever in the winter is dull and uneventful. Do you wish me to wax poetic about the snow? Perhaps you can hire a bard for this. Orlais is full of them.
Elissa snorts quietly into her tea, cradling the mug in her hands and swirling it around slightly. As a child she used to imagine that the next sip would taste differently if she did that, expected the flavours and tastes to switch places. It never happened that way, of course.
The political fractions should be treated with caution. I would not advise you to dig too deeply there. You are at a great disadvantage.
Dog misses you, I believe.
Loghain
.
.
.
.
The ambassador's office is dreadfully cold.
Elissa is shown in by a young woman, a pretty elf maid with expensive clothing and a posture that differs from most servants she has met so far. This one is important, she has a position.
"Lord Bydon shall see you shortly, Commander," she says, curtseying as she holds the door open for Elissa and slips away again.
The reason for the chill is the open window by the bookshelf, Elissa realises as she gives herself a moment to take in the view of the room. It is not a very large or imposing chamber by any means, but it holds a few impressive items – on the wall she spots a very old framed map and in a corner by the desk, on a richly decorated stand, is an artefact in the shape of a celestial globe, depicting the stars in the sky. She strides across the room to inspect it more closely.
"Commander?"
"Ah," Elissa turns – caught in the act, just as she is about to drag a finger along the meticulously painted star constellations - and composes herself immediately. "Ambassador Bydon?"
"Well, if it isn't a Cousland," the man says, grinning at her. He is a heavy man, with a broad face and a thick, grizzled mane of hair – a rough shape of human, nothing refined in his features or his voice. His grin fades. "My sincere condolences for what happened."
Elissa should recognise this man, something tells her. He has served Ferelden for many years, both here Orlais and back in Denerim but she has to search through her entire recollection of Landsmeets and long lessons with her parents, making sense of who's who, before she finds a vague memory of him.
"Thank you." She nods.
Not wasting time with small talk, Bydon gestures for her to sit down by the window where a tray of tea and bread awaits them. He closes the window, to her relief, and sits down opposite her at the small table.
"How are things in Ferelden? I understand King Alistair is already as popular as his father ever was."
"The king fares well," Elissa says. Not that she knows much about it, not having spoken or written to him since the coronation; but he would be fine, of course, she always knew he would.
Out in the corridor there's a clattering sound of trays being dropped and muffled voices raising up from the fading noise. Bydon shakes his head.
"Ah, the servants in this country. Hopeless, the lot of them," he says, smiling knowingly. "I tried to bring my own, but my wife would not have it."
"She is still in Denerim?" Elissa picks up the boiling hot tea and attempts to take a sip.
"Indeed. Running the household with her iron fist."
"You must miss her then."
Bydon merely chuckles at that, like she has said something utterly hilarious.
"What brings you to Orlais?" he asks instead of answering her question, titling his head to observe her fumbling with the too-hot tea and the oily bread that slips between her fingers in a rather graceless way. "I have heard of your heroic achievements during the Blight – well, nobody in Thedas has missed that – and we were surprised to learn you boarded a ship to Val Royeaux as your first mission."
Elissa keeps her facial expression tightly composed. "I saw it as one of my most important duties to learn as much as possible of the Grey Wardens, of course. And after the events following Ostagar, I wanted to personally make certain there is no hostility between us and our Orlesian brothers and sisters."
She wonders if she sounds believable. She has repeated these phrases so often over the past months that she has, at least, started to believe herself.
"Ah, yes. It is said the Empress is abandoning her previous stance on Fereldan diplomacy after Ostagar," Bydon says, gulping down tea with a large chunk of bread. "But you know that already, surely. You are set to have an audience with the Empress, are you not?"
Elissa nods. "In three weeks time." She doesn't add: she has certainly kept me waiting.
"It is also said that the reckless and unexpectedly hostile turn during the Blight has cost our nations a good twenty year's worth of diplomacy," he continues, not managing to keep an edge out of his otherwise neutral voice. "You can thank teyrn Loghain for that."
Despite being so used by now to hearing his name everywhere, speaking of him with everyone, defending him with silence and the occasional word, Elissa still feels a slight stab at the sound of him name. It hits somewhere deep inside, among doubts and fears and maps of their uncertain existence. There is a little voice, however silent these days, that tells her that they might be right.
"It's just Loghain now," she says curtly.
"I heard." Bydon nods. "You are either a very clever girl or a downright fool. That's the word on the street, at least."
"And what do you think?"
"I do not have opinions, Commander. I mediate them." He smiles wryly. "When I feel an opinion of my own developing I usually take a brisk walk."
Elissa can't decide if she appreciates the man's sense of humour or dislikes him on account of being so inanely flippant. Possibly the latter. She knows he served the king for many years. She tries to imagine him at Maric's court, serving under him – and in reality of course also under Loghain – with this attitude and it brings a smile to her lips, despite her efforts of hiding it.
"I meant about the diplomatic endeavours," she clarifies. "Surely you are allowed opinions on your own work?"
Bydon looks at her, eyes narrowing slightly, before he replies. "It seems what is being said now is merely the same old rumours of the ill wind that will blow south again. Maric, Maker rest his soul, sought to heal the breach. That, I believe, is a honourable project."
"I agree completely."
Elissa smiles as sweetly as she can, although she has been told on several occasions that it only makes her look frightening. As she picks up the cup once more, drinking the now considerably cooler tea she knows this, whatever they will speak of for the rest of the visit, will lead nowhere. But she has gathered enough to know how to get further.
She is still her mother's daughter, after all.
.
.
.
.
"Zevran?"
He stops half-way into his quarters as Elissa, still out of breath after having ran most of the way back home from the appointment with Lord Bydon, reaches him.
"Ah, is this the day when you are going to fall into my arms, at long last?" he smiles, crooking an eyebrow. "Finally overwhelmed by your urges?"
"No, it's not. My urges are very much under control." She leans against the wall, discarding a layer of shawls; her neck is too hot and she feels a trickle of sweat running down her back. "I do, however, have a task for you."
His smile fades as the echo of a scene like this, hurried and desperate, falls between them; he nods, letting his eyes go blank as he meets her gaze.
"Is that so?"
"The ambassador, Lord Bydon, has a servant," she begins, almost stumbling on the words."She's... I believe she is not just a servant. There's some kind of power there. She might very well be bedding him, the poor girl. He is all politics, impossible to talk to. She, on the other hand..."
"And you want us to bond over the impossible masters we serve?" Zevran asks, his voice thick with amusement. "Now, this is a more exciting prospect than watching Ser Cauthrien scowl at Orlesians all day. She is a very dull woman, my dear Warden."
Elissa snorts to hide her grin. "I want you to find out as much as you can about the diplomacy here. What the gossip mongers say, what she thinks of Bydon and what he thinks of others – if you understand what I mean?"
"I do. You want a little spy."
"Yes. A very subtle one, at that."
Zevran chuckles. "I'm your man, my dear."
"Good." She reaches for him, puts a hand on his arm and smiles. "Thank you, Zevran."
As she enters her own chambers, where Cauthrien sits at the desk reading a book – probably the one about Orlesian warriors that she has been absorbed in for the past few days, Elissa gathers – she drops the discarded shawls and fur cloak over a chair, letting out a little groan of mental exhaustion. The remains of the politics and social manipulation are making her head sore. She feels like staring at a spot on the wall for hours.
"Interesting day?" Cauthrien looks up, momentarily.
"Very." Elissa sits down on the bed, kicking off her boots and spots, when she is about to lie down, two letters on the table beside her.
"Those came when you were out," the other woman says, nodding at the letters.
Not able to hide her delight, Elissa picks them both up, weighing them in her hands. Fergus has a handwriting much like her own – sloppy and uncontrolled – and his letter is thicker, several pages every time. The other one, the one she opens first, is no more than two sheets long. Which is almost twice the length of his last letter, she realises, still smiling.
Elissa,
All is well. Your letter was, as ever, nearly impossible to read. Are you afraid you will run out of paper or is it a deliberate choice, using every possible corner and margin?
You have my condolences for having to meet with Lord Brydon. The man is absolutely worthless. I believe his skills go as far as eating and pawing the servant girls.
She laughs quietly, flopping over to lie on her stomach to continue reading. He writes about the usual things: how he has little success recruiting, the impossible Orlesians, the badly masked guilt over the state of the Coastlands, the plans for the future. But he is somewhat less terse in this letter, there is a texture to his words that makes them sound like him, like the Loghain she can hear in her head; hear his arrogance and sarcasm, the irritation and scathing bickering but also – and this is a most unnerving thing – those decidedly warmer notes she remembers, too.
Be careful with the Empress. She is much cleverer than the Fereldan caricatures of her make a show of. But you should be able to handle yourself quite well, I think.
Loghain.
Elissa reads the last part for the second time when Cauthrien suddenly clears her throat.
"What does Fergus write?" she asks, and there's a hint of something sharp in her voice, Elissa hears, straightening up a little in bed, glancing over at the unopened letter on her pillow.
"Oh. He is... well. Busy. Occasionally snowed in. He sends his best regards to you," she says, hoping he does.
Cauthrien hesitates for a moment. "How... kind of him. Give him my regards, too, Commander."
"I will," Elissa smiles, looking over her shoulder.
She replies immediately tonight.
First to Fergus, narrating the stories of the city, telling him about that night when two junior Wardens lured her with them to a brothel because she can see his face light up at that tale; telling him, too, about how bored she is by politics and treading carefully and smiling pretend-smiles and how much she misses him. Then she replies to Loghain, a different tone and almost a different language, but the same thoughts running through the lines of ink on the parchment.
By the time she writes her own name at the bottom of the last sheet, her hand is so stiff that she can barely let go of the quill. Breathing into her palms, Elissa reads the last part of the letter again, already regretting words and phrases. She has never been an ardent letter-writer, has seldom had anybody to write to, and the finality of written words suddenly bothers her a little. Then she is bothered by her own worry, wincing as she seals the letter, getting to her feet quickly to become occupied enough for a moment, to eventually be able to fall asleep.
.
.
Loghain is not, and has never been, a very good soldier.
Being a soldier means forced comradeship, means unwanted brothers-and-sisters in arms and pointless pretences of not noticing the hierarchic differences between each other; he is not one for brawling crowds and then there's the idle idiocy of it, too, that wears him down. Otherwise fully capable men and women reduced to drunkards or packs of sodding children, sitting around sharing stories that bear little truth.
Don't be such a pigheaded bastard, Rowan used to tease and Maric used to grin and pour more wine into his glass regardless of how strongly Loghain protested.
The Orlesians, however, have no Rowan or Maric in their ranks, so Loghain avoids them successfully almost every night at the inn, burying himself in self-assumed work and – when the weather allows – taking walks with the mabari, looking for darkspawn. Of all the things he has counted on and planned for since the Landsmeet, being bored is not one of them yet here he is, an itch in his very skull from the lack of interesting or at least moderately upsetting conversations, the absence of battle and strategy, the empty slots in his mind usually occupied by politics and war or planning.
He keeps busy to the best of his ability, even if that sometimes is something as pathetic as hunting darkspawn in the forest near the inn.
Tonight, unfortunately, there's a storm approaching.
Loghain sits in his room, having finished sorting through another pile of letters and requests before the evening meal and finding unexpected pleasure in the undisturbed reading that clears his mind efficiently of anything but the text before him. He doesn't even hear the footfall until it's too close for escape.
"You don't look well."
It's Hawise's voice, no doubt about that. He doesn't turn his head to look at her, but she rounds his desk and solves that matter immediately.
"Is it too much to ask that you knock before entering people's private rooms?" Loghain sighs.
"The door was open," she says, coming closer. She carries two goblets.
He curses the dog silently.
"I do not wish to drink," he leans forward, elbows on the table and fingers rubbing at his temples. "And I certainly have no need for your concern or your company."
"You make it sound like I'm flogging it on the market." She smiles. "I give it for free. Can you imagine? It's an Orlesian custom."
He glances up at her where she stands, still smiling in that self-contained way that permeates her entire personality, as far as he has been able to tell. It's an odd trait in an Orlesian. Or rather, it's an odd thing to find a decent trait in an Orlesian.
"We don't have to drink. Or talk, even." She sits down opposite him, looking wearily at Dog who looks back, with the same exact amounts of suspicion and curiosity.
"Then there is truly no need for your presence, is there?"
"I have been with the Wardens for eleven years," she says, pretending she hasn't heard him. "For most of those we've had peace. Even so, there are things to do, difficult and time-consuming things to keep the state of vigilance."
Hawise moves a little, still looking at the mabari who has now lost interest in her and gone back to his content slumber next to the fire.
"It's a difficult life, most of the time. It gets lonely."
"Well," Loghain sits back, running a hand through his hair. "I am certainly old enough not to need lectures on the subject."
"Being a Warden is different from everything else. It is not like serving in an army. You don't get respite from the Wardens; if you have the skill they will employ you even in peacetime, find some use for you. And even if you don't, you cannot step out of their ranks, not truly. You are a Warden until you die, and you hear the Calling regardless."
"I am certain I will manage somehow." Loghain picks up a book from the desk, to indicate that he considers the unwanted conversation over, but Hawise is still there.
"You were married, were you not? You have a family?"
He snorts. "That is hardly a matter I intend to discuss with you."
"Have it your way then." Hawise shakes her head, looking intently at him with her arms folded across her chest. "But I know you know what I am talking about."
He does, of course. Her allusions are as blunt as wooden swords.
Like an image from the Fade itself, ghostly grey like old letters and paintings that have not been tended to, he can see himself in Gwaren, a husband and a father. It's the clatter of porcelain in the drawing room where Celia wanted to update him on the latest news or show him the improvements to their home; it's the little girl who grew up all those days he wasn't there to see it and who was afraid of his unfamiliar voice and smell once he returned but who still cried when he left again, hanging on to his arm; it's the shade in the garden where an older Anora would taunt their fat tomcat by putting him up in the apple trees and watching him struggle his way down; it's sitting there as Celia gardened, her hands working relentlessly at the rosebushes while Loghain quietly watched her.
Those were moments - happy moments in a sort of life he never thought he would have and still can't believe he had - that he somehow never allowed himself, not even when he was in the middle of them. It was the quiet repose of family, of domesticity in a place he refused to think of as home. He never understood how or why, never thought it important, he only understood that he missed it once it was no longer granted him.
"We're not Orlesians," Hawise says, her voice startling him when it breaks into his thoughts. "We are Wardens. And we are family, whether you like it or not."
"No," he says. "You are not."
She drags a hand along the side of his desk, looking absent-mindedly at his collection of books and maps and as she picks up a volume and turns it over, reaching for the pile of maps Elissa left, Loghain feels a dark rap of irritation at the back of his mind.
"Don't touch those!" he barks, almost instinctively, with a heat that surprises them both.
Raising an eyebrow, Hawise still has her hand over the map of the Tevinter Imperium. "This one? Is it valuable? I didn't think -"
"Yes," he snaps, tearing the map away from her and shuffling the other maps together. "It is valuable."
He is being a fool, he realises, which makes him even angrier with both her and himself, his unreasonable reaction jarring in his mind as Hawise shrugs and rises to her feet. She picks up one of the goblets and pushes the other towards him.
"The ale is good," she says lightly, a hand brushing over his shoulder as she finally leaves him alone.
Loghain groans. Then he begins rolling up the maps properly, making separate rolls of them rather then one big pile; he finds a crumpled up draft of something between the many pages, a few old messages addressed to the Grey Wardens that she must have forgotten to get rid of – he looks through them to make certain they have taken care of the business referred to.
Among the maps is also the latest letter from Orlais. He looks at it, hesitating to pick it up but does so anyway, skimming through the lengthy scrawl that is slightly more readable now that he knows what it says. And how it ends:
I miss talking to you. This might possibly be the strangest sentence I have ever written in my life, but there you have it.
Elissa
He sighs to himself.
Still irritated and unsettled in the worst possible way, Loghain downs the ale and shakes his head, as though that would clear his mind.