In the end, cold crows piece together
the night: a black map
I've come home – the way back
longer than the wrong road
long as a life
Black map – Bei Dao
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It rains in Gwaren.
At first, as they ride down the mountain pass and up on the main road, it's a drizzle that eventually increases as the day goes by. Huddled together under the scant protection of a canvas fastened in a tree, they let the horses rest while Elissa hands Loghain bread and cheese from her pack.
"Lovely view," she says, nodding towards the wet, soggy fields ahead, vast areas of green and grey only interrupted by sprinklings of the kind of brushwood that threatens to swallow entire villages unless heavily maintained. It has always been a place in need of domestication, the land itself as barren and unfriendly as the stone surrounding it.
Loghain snorts. "Indeed."
Elissa gives him a sidelong glance, prodding quietly at his thoughts, but she says nothing else.
When they reach the outskirts of the town, the rain is accompanied by heavy wind from the sea and the damp, salty smell Loghain will always associate with this place.
He has not missed it.
Even so, it bears a distinct mark of home that he feels now – a dull, heavy beat in his chest - as he enters the village gates by someone else's side, someone who has never been here, at that. They pull up their horses at the sight of a dozen knights far in the distance and as they approach, Elissa looks at him again.
"As long as it has warm baths and food, I am going to dub Gwaren a haven," she says, smiling.
"You certainly have modest demands," he says dryly.
And then the cluster of men is upon them, offering the sort of misplaced and disproportional welcome this place always seems to offer its heroes.
Loghain can't pretend he thinks he deserves it any more this time.
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The first two days after their arrival are frenzied.
The house they have been granted is a large freehold just outside the heavily populated parts, near the water and far enough from the mindless noise of the townspeople. Currently it is also, they learn, bustling with knights, soldiers and a handful of freemen who have heard the rumours and are willing to offer The Hero of Ferelden a helping hand. While the reconstruction of the once-impressive farm is well under way already, there is plenty of work to be done, not to mention the structural and strategical plans for the place that need to be developed, churned out. Even with everybody pulling their own weight the hours seem to disappear into a thick fog made up by the sheer mass of it all. Loghain finds himself pulled into it, drowning in it, grateful for a chance to forget the other Gwaren for even the briefest of moments.
He is left alone, to a much greater extent than he could have foreseen, not believing the cheap lie of Wardens being cleansed of their pasts as the chalice is passed on to them. There are sparks of recognition in strangers' faces, of course, and the knights eye him as though they wait for him to remember their names, or fates, or something equally impossible.
He does not.
If Loghain goes back into the memories of the past two years, there might even be one or two of them who have served directly under him, he thinks. He had stopped learning names during the Blight, had barely registered faces, found that it mattered very little who died on his command as Loghain himself breached all lines between reason and the utterly absurd.
After three days in the new headquarters, two lesser banns from the south arrive. And on the fifth day, most of Gwaren stands outside their growing headquarters, bringing gifts and promises of more manpower if needed. It takes them by surprise, the crowd that arrives as Loghain, Elissa and a few of the freemen surveys the grounds, measuring the spot intended for the stables yet to be built. Suddenly they are just there and Loghain catches himself thinking that is scarcely a good testimonial to the security of their feeble gates.
"Commander," an elderly woman says, holding out a basket full of freshly baked bread and curtseying deeply as Elissa steps forward. "My lady."
Unladylike as always, the Warden-Commander wipes sweat off her forehead with a corner of her longshirt and rubs her palms on her trousers before accepting the gift.
"Thank you," she says, offering a polite smile.
"It was nothing, my lady."
In the silence that falls, Elissa appears confounded. Waiting for the realisation to unfold in her, Loghain supposes as he watches her put down the basket. She is their Hero. And these men and women do not expect her to parade about in her Blight armour or stand on a flight of stairs, waving and posing for statues and paintings. They expect her to save their lives, if necessary.
She was raised to do this - parts of it at any rate. But nobody can be raised to be a hero, he knows, and lets his gaze linger on her as the visitors scatter; perhaps this is the first time it strikes her, with full force, what sort of life she has created for herself now.
"It's too crowded," she admits under her breath that evening, as they share a table in the room that temporarily serves as their dining hall.
"At least you have your own bedchamber," Loghain reminds her, reaching for another cob of bread. They have made a thick onion soup from the vegetables already handed to them, and eat it with salted pork and generous servings of ale as the sun sets around their collective work. It's good food and a fine brew of ale that has a rich bitterness to it – a gift from the bann of Southron Hills.
"Right. I forgot about that." Elissa nods briefly, very much a commander in that moment, as a shade of something passes over her face. "It's first thing on my list to clear a room for you, I promise."
Loghain feels his lips curl in a smile. "Thank you."
They eat in silence for a while. Their table in the middle of the room is the figurative seat of honour, Loghain realises, observing the knights and the soldiers walk in circles around it, as though they assume they would not be welcome. Throwing Elissa a glance across the bowls of food, Loghain wonders if they are. She wears an expression here that he has not seen before, a different kind of composure that gives off the impression of having been sewn together by a slight insecurity regarding the new responsibilities and a genuine devotion to the same. He recognises it, having seen it in both Maric and Rowan. He had even seen it in himself.
"There was a pile of letters today." Elissa breaks the silence and finishes her pork by throwing it to Dog. "We should sort them out tonight."
Loghain nods. For the past days they have barely sat down together for anything other than meals and while he would rather not admit it as it comes with a flurry of unwanted associations, he has missed her company.
"Do you have time to give me the grand tour of Gwaren first?" she asks, as she empties her mug and looks over her shoulder, as though looking for more. She is probably doing just that, Loghain thinks with an inward smile. "I can't believe I have been here for days without having had the chance to leave these grounds."
"Considering the size of Gwaren, yes, I think we should manage," Loghain raises an eyebrow sarcastically, but refrains from making another disparaging comment about his former home. He doesn't say how much he wants to get out of here, either, how strangely confining it feels to be among all these people and have their eyes on him, almost being able to feel the effect of their preconceived knowledge of him blending with the new images of Warden Loghain. A sensation of being studied, measured against previous incarnations of himself that leaves an oddly hollow taste in his mouth. Hardly anything has changed in him, of course. He is still the man who lined up the bodies of the people in Gwaren as feeble borders against the darkspawn and left them to bleed; he is still the man who sacrificed their beloved king on the battlefield and lost the war anyway, and he is - unchanging like stone - the man who has always ruled through force and intimidation because he has never found any other means at his disposal.
"Good," Elissa says, disrupting the glum chain of thoughts; her voice is crisp and clear and young in his turmoil of old, stale sins. "I need fresh air."
Loghain inclines his head in a silent agreement to that.
It's when they slip out of the house and reach the outskirts of the grounds he realises how much he has missed not only her company but being alone with her, as well. She's walking quietly beside him, Dog in tow, and Loghain glances at them, feeling something soften inside him, coming to rest.
They quickly make their way through the familiar, rain-heavy landscape, past the path leading up to the teyrn's estate and down into the tightly populated area where all the commoners live, or more accurately, since Gwaren is a town of charcoal burners and fishermen, the area where most of its population lives.
"Wardens," a young man greets them from a distance.
"Commander," a knight says, bowing as Elissa walks past. "Good evening to you, ser."
Elissa still looks vaguely uncomfortable with the attention, Loghain notices, as he leads them between the small hovels and larger houses until they stand outside the Chantry. He has assumed it is a building she would want to see, and when she shoots him a brief but content smile, he knows he was right.
Stepping inside, he notices that most windows have been replaced.
Like Loghain has already learned, Gwaren greets him with a flood of new faces and unfamiliar shapes. It's full of old houses with patchwork walls and badly mended roofs and on the narrow paths between one place and the other, Loghain sees men and women he has never seen before in his life. And there's a clumsy haste to all of it, to the pieces they have restored since the Blight ran them over and the way they are intended to fit in with what not even darkspawn hordes and civil war could erase. A patchwork of too many different wills and intentions.
"Good evening to you, Wardens." The Revered Mother smiles at them – it's not a woman Loghain has seen before in his life – as they walk past her. "Maker's blessings."
"And to you, Mother." Elissa inclines her head respectfully.
Loghain nods curtly, frowning at the sight of the Chantry's roof that appears to be barely holding up.
Celia would have had his head for that, had she been alive. Had he still held any power over this land. His bloody teyrnir. But Gwaren was always hers, he thinks; it belonged to her, never to him.
When he had been gone for too long, Celia would take him down to the town – insist on it, her voice clipped around the suggestion – and surround them with the people they were governing over. It was done without scathing remarks or accusations but it said mercilessly what she wanted to say: this is your people. Unlike him, Celia had known them; she had been able to tell them apart.
Loghain could spend years waging wars against the bandits or strike down hard on corruption, he had reformed much of the archaic excuse for defence around the gates and improved the economy of the freeholders, but Celia was the one who had the loyalty of the freemen and the approval of the nobles because they trusted her.
He doesn't blame them.
"That is a painting of your wife, isn't it?"
Elissa's question tears at the silence and for a second, Loghain is not certain he has heard her correctly, but when he sees the direction of her gaze, he understands. His commander stands beneath a large, framed painting of his dead wife who is beaming down on the Chantry from her position among the benefactors on the wall. Teyrna Celia Mac Tir. Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow.
"Yes."
"She was very beautiful."
"Yes," he replies, thinking it an unnecessary statement. Celia was the sort of woman who turned heads when she walked by and there is little else to say about that.
Elissa seems to see other things in the portrait, however, tilting her head to observe it more closely and watching it with a sort of closed-off expression on her face before shifting a bit and turning back to him.
"I see where Anora got her colouring," she says, half-smiling.
"You did not think it was from me then?" he asks, sarcastically.
"No, you are not quite vain enough to wear a wig. I think."
Only the raised eyebrows betray her even tone, Loghain realises and finds himself amused at his own capacity of forgetting that Elissa never fails to return any remark or dry joke he might throw her way. Most people do not reply, but she does. She replies to his attempts at humour the same way she responds to everything else – with those exact, measured steps between needling his pride and challenging his set ideas. And when she does cross the lines with unafraid steps mucking up the very ground beneath, he finds that he doesn't mind having his dignity prickled by her, after all.
If anything, it clears the air - scrapes it bare and leaves him lighter.
"Was the painting made after her death?"
Loghain nods. "It was. I doubt she would have approved of it being quite this gaudy."
"It's hardly worse than some of the others in here."
The ceremony for Celia had been large, organised by a much too young Anora and held in the frost of the late autumn; they had been standing down by the water, Loghain remembers, and he had felt, although it had seemed strange to him since he never truly made her a part of his life, how something began to fall apart that day. As though he had grieved not only for the woman who had been his wife, but also, selfishly, for a certain shift in his own existence – a solid ground, a form of momentum slipping out of his reach.
"I was in Denerim when she died." Loghain reaches for Dog who has spotted a mouse in the other end of the room and looks slightly too eager to chase it, never mind furniture or burning candles. "It was Anora who had that painting made."
"I see," Elissa says, simply. If she wonders anything else, she doesn't let it slip even as they remain in the Chantry for a moment longer.
The night has fallen when they get outside again, and they take another road back. As they pass something worth pointing out, Loghain does so, dutifully even though they have begun to stride quickly in the chilly breeze with Dog half-running in front of them, scouting the terrain. Loghain observes a group of hunters head into the forest, adjusting their bows and quivers in the blue-grey light from the moon that breaks through the clouds. Beside him, Elissa is silent for a long time; when she has not said anything by the time they can see their farmstead from a distance, Loghain looks over his shoulder to check if she is still there.
"You lied about Gwaren," she says, as though proving her presence. And it's a strange thing to say so he frowns at her, almost expecting a laugh or an accusation. "It's not dreadful," she adds.
"Indeed." He steps over a briar bush reaching out of the ditch and stretching out towards the road.
"It's not." There's a wistful note in her voice, if only for a second, then she turns her head to look at him, smiling a little. "I love the smell of the sea, for one thing."
"You grew up with it."
"Yes." She rakes a hand through her hair, her eyes fastened on a faraway spot. "My father used to say that he loved the sea, but that it unfortunately comes with fishermen."
Loghain can't help but grin. Of course Bryce would have had the same issues. After the first year here in Gwaren, Loghain had already felt that if he never had to intervene in another fishing boat incident again in his life, it would be too soon.
"Highever bears many resemblances to this place," he agrees, as they are entering the gates to their Warden home, with Dog already leaping far ahead, headed for the horses by the look of things. They can't seem to break him of the habit of riling them up.
"And fishermen are always fishermen?" Elissa makes an amused face.
"They are at that."
Elissa greets the knights as they enter the building, rounding a group of soldiers who are resting on the stairs and giving them long looks when they walk past.
"I suppose teyrns are always teyrns, too," she says and chuckles a little.
"Indeed," Loghain replies, closing the door behind them.
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"Whoever gave us the honey-baked apples will receive special protection against the darkspawn," Elissa declares and sinks down on her chair by the desk they have to share, for the moment being.
"It was a woman from town," Loghain replies from the opposite side of the too-narrow table, not looking up from the stack of parchments he is leafing through. He sits stooped over his reading, his chin leaned into his hand. Occasionally he picks up a quill and writes a note in his own journal, then he puts it down again and continues reading. They have received their second batch of correspondence from Denerim this morning.
"Ah, yes."
She can scarcely believe it has been a fortnight since they arrived, can barely keep track of time at all this season, it seems. They have so much to do that the days fall about each other in a great blur and the only constant thing is this – their rhythm, their pattern of Loghain in his chair, and she in hers while the letters arrive and the orders go out and the sky shifts colour outside their window.
Loghain shuffles the papers, scratching the back of his neck absent-mindedly.
He is lost in concentration and Elissa smiles to herself, thinking he wouldn't notice even her most obvious staring at this very moment. For a second she gives herself permission, allows herself the pleasure of letting her eyes wander over him where he sits, taking him in. His face, serious and unaware, a tint of summer on his forehead and cheeks, made light-brown by the time spent outdoors. His arms in the thin linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up in the heat; the veins on his forearms laid bare and almost impossible not to trace with a light fingertip brushing over the blood in them, trailing the path to his heart and, well -
She draws a sharp breath.
Loghain glances up at her, suddenly. "What?"
"Hedin has sent four new Wardens here," Elissa says, stupidly, grabbing hold of the letter in front of her. She has yet to finish reading it, but as her eyes skim over the cramped handwriting she can conclude that at least her blurted statement is true. Hedin and Hawise have recruited ten Wardens and four are being stationed in Gwaren.
"That's good news," Loghain comments, evenly. He doesn't make any remark about his own letters, which digs deep into her reserve of self-restraint as she refrains from leaning over the desk trying to have a look.
Looking at the letter in her hand instead, Elissa reads it in its entirety.
"He is headed for the Deep Roads," she says when she has finished it, all previous gaiety fading away to give room for something much darker in her. "Now. I mean, he is probably already on his way there."
That makes Loghain put down his quill and look at her, at least. Elissa leans back in her seat, tugging at her lower lip. It beats heavily in her chest, the new knowledge of Hedin's fate, not because it is unexpected or even because she cares a great deal about him – she has remained fairly indifferent to him, their relationship impersonal and polite – but because it drags with it a reminder of the future. This is their fate. His death is their deaths.
"It will bring him peace," Loghain says after a while, sounding neutral.
"I suppose it will, yes."
He catches her gaze over the table, holds it for a long while, as though he is trying to interpret something unspoken. Elissa smiles faintly.
"Strange to think of it, though," she says, flicking invisible dust from the sleeve of her tunic to have something to do. "I knew it was approaching but not that it was this close."
Loghain looks thoughtful, folding up a letter and putting it neatly on top of one he has already read and - she assumes - replied to. When he reaches for the inkpot Elissa notices he has ink stains on his skin and unthinkingly she stills his movement with her hand over his arm. He pauses, looking strangely at her. For a second, as the surprise wears off, she is even able to flatter herself enough to think that he seems unnerved.
"You have ink there." Elissa presses her thumb to a stain, to underline her point.
He looks at his arm, then at the desk, searching for a handkerchief or a towel or anything else they do not keep around the office. Elissa finds a clean bandage on a pile of books on the floor – and like her mother used to do when Fergus or Elissa had scraped their knees and needed care, she wets it, using her tongue.
Loghain says nothing as she hands him the thin cloth; he takes it from her hand and their fingers meet briefly, his are warm as always, hers feel almost sweaty despite being cold.
She straightens up, pretending to go back to reading while he cleans up the ink.
"Time is a strange thing to measure," he says as they are settled again. She is grateful he picks up the conversation, making no mention of any foolishness on her part. "All the more so if you risk your life every day."
Elissa nods. "I wonder if any Warden expects to last the time we're given before the taint takes us. It seems incredible to me. To be this lucky for so long, I mean. I hardly expect to be alive in thirty years."
"Neither do I." He says it with a wry little grin but it stings in her, the truth behind the words, the way his face seem to relax a bit as he makes a comment like this: a casual remark or a joke intended for her. Small details reflecting back on all those other things he is, besides the cold principles and ruthless pragmatism he has build his life around; the shreds of goodness in him, of humour and dedication and ideals. And how he becomes a different man in the tiniest, almost indiscernible fractions of those moments when he lets his guard down.
The fluttering, disarming way these moments float into her, as though this is their intention.
She wishes she held up better. That her walls were higher, that they were stronger, thicker. Or rather that she had no such barriers at all and was a different kind of woman, the kind men could look at and understand. A simpler sort, warmer and more open. Perhaps for the first time in her life, she wishes she was transparent.
Not that it would matter, not to Loghain. To him, she is that fixed mark in his recollection – the commander, the Cousland girl, Bryce's youngest, possibly his friend lately. Elissa sighs heavily. The ridiculous notion in longing for something that only exists in her head makes her almost hate him for a moment, yet that is precisely what she does.
She longs for him.
She longs for someone, something to rip apart her solitude and touch her, remind her of what it is like being skin-to-skin and completely, defencelessly raw with another being; she wants to be human again before she forgets how, before the heroic posturing traps her in her own body. Easier said than done, to grant such a foolish desire to someone like her, who doesn't know how to care for others or how to let others care for her; all she knows is how to protect herself against it, how to enclose and defend. And now she wants out.
It is going to be too late very early in her life - the dangerous drumming in her blood will see to that even if she can escape the swords and daggers – and she wants someone to breach the distances she puts between herself and the world, long before that. Shake her up, wreck her defence apart and be worth the risk and the pain.
And she thinks, now that they have grown into each other in this rather blatant way, that it would have to be someone like him.
Which is so ridiculous a thought that it makes her cheeks flare up in protest.
"Just... kindly inform me when you start to feel the Calling," she says, clumsy and warm and awkward, her leg bumping into the desk as she rises to her feet.
"Yes." There's a wrinkle forming on Loghain's forehead as he glances at her. "I have no intention of keeping it a secret."
"Yes," she repeats, feeling like an idiot. "Good."
She has the distinct impression of being watched as she retreats from the office – her own office, no less, because she is such a dignified commander at present – and it makes her clench her teeth even harder around a frustrated groan.
A large goblet of wine, she thinks calmingly to herself as she strides down the corridor. A large goblet of wine and a bath. That will do nicely. Or rather, that will have to do nicely.
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The chess board, when it arrives, swiftly forms a new routine in the Warden headquarters. No matter what the day has involved, it ends in Elissa's chambers where the Warden-Commander and Loghain continue their ongoing, never-ending game of chess.
They come up with assorted pretexts of course, for reasons he neither can nor want to reveal to himself. As though the pretexts alone would not be suspicious, the Maric-voice in his head sometimes remarks, as Loghain heads for the commander's chambers. Why would a general and a commander need those lies?
But they do or think they do.
The truth is that they play chess.
It's a quiet, undisturbed moment outside of the rest of their lives here, aside from other Wardens and politics and recruiting and Loghain finds the game itself vastly more enjoyable than he can recollect. Elissa is clever and analytical, but lacks endurance and allows her strategies to be interrupted by new ideas. She wins through intelligence and creativity and Loghain beats her – often enough for him to develop a genuine liking to chess – by wearing down her patience with persistence and bold moves.
Tonight, however, they are not playing. Their recent correspondence has suggested that the darkspawn attacks continue to increase in the north, which will demand their presence shortly.
Loghain stands just outside her door in the corridor upstairs, watching her at the desk. The soft surrender of her body when she knows nobody is watching, a different sort of woman appearing between the cracks of the armour. She drinks something from a mug, sighing a little and leaning back, stretching the muscles in her neck with a slight grimace. They had their first encounter with darkspawn outside the house yesterday and while it had not been a difficult battle it had – ironically - caught them unprepared and unaware. Loghain had strained his shoulder, one of knights had taken severe stab wounds to his chest and Elissa, he remembers now, had been roughly knocked off her feet by a hurlock.
He clears his throat before he enters, giving her a chance to gather her composure. It leaves a trace of satisfaction in him that she merely lifts her gaze at his arrival, smiling at the sight of him.
You do need excuses, Maric says in his head, snidely. Poor old sod.
"You wanted to discuss the route for the coastline." He thumbs the maps in his hand.
"Yes."
The room seems smaller every time he sees it. Loghain lets his eyes sweep over the stacks of books and various piles of debris she has littered the floor with in here. On most surfaces there are teacups and goblets or plates, half-eaten apples and unfinished letters spread out among inkpots missing their covers, which will make her curse next time she tries to dip a quill in them - he knows because he sees it almost every day. Elissa may not want servants, but she certainly needs them.
After having cleared some space for his maps, Loghain sits down beside her.
"Ideally, we can leave at the end of Parvulis," he says. "That should give us enough time to recruit here."
Elissa nods, leaning forward. "This road should be passable, should it not?"
"Yes."
"Yes, that will give us some overview of the coast, too." Loghain watches her fingers over the lines of the map, follows it as she drags it across the coast and up to Amaranthine where she pauses, making a little grimace. "And then we're in Amarantine."
"Then we're in Amaranthine, yes."
They have not gone into any details of the future that involves Elissa's arling, have not had the time nor, he suspects, the inclination for it; it still seems far away, too. Yet he of all people knows that it's a matter that will demand their attention sooner rather than later.
Loghain considers the road that seems to be their chosen one, raising a hand to rub at a spot on the back of his neck where it feels as if everything inside has stiffened to a lump of steel. The greatest measure of his years is that his body demands more time to recover, that it heals slower, his muscles and bones like creaking old leather requiring an amount of attention he forgets to grant himself.
"From the attack?" Elissa asks, glancing at him.
"It's nothing."
"Oh, is that so?" She smiles. "Here, allow me."
And before he has time to protest, she has allowed herself, in her usual manner or lack thereof. It seems done almost by instinct - her hand on his back, as she rises to her feet, standing behind him - like it would be the natural thing to do.
When did he let her come this close? Loghain feels a strange lurch in his chest but he doesn't stop her. Why in the Maker's name doesn't he stop her?
"If we use this road," she continues conversationally, while her hand is rubbing along the side of his neck. Her palm is warm but the fingertips are a bit chilled which, he tells himself fervently, is the reason he is shivering somewhat under her touch. "How long would you say it will take us to get from here to Amaranthine?"
Her fingers are strong, working rhythmically over his muscles that soften with each stroke, a rush of blood heating up his shoulder, his arm, spreading down into his hand. He lets out a stifled sigh and attempts to focus on the map. It proves less simple than expected.
"A week, perhaps," he manages, as Elissa's thumb pushes into a knot deep inside the flesh, causing him to dip his head forward and close his mouth over a little moan of pain. She eases the touch, then repeats the procedure and this time it hurts a little less.
"A week? Truly?"
"Take into account that the road might be overrun by darkspawn. It is rather rough to begin with." He winces and feels his shoulders stiffen again as Elissa seems to press against his muscles with renewed strength, using her body to increase the pressure of her hands. He feels the warmth of her stomach against his back and – he learns as she stoops over him to look at the mark for an old mountain pass on the map – her chest pressing into the back of his head.
Grinding his teeth quietly, Loghain takes a deep breath. In his head, Maric laughs at him.
Not that Loghain can blame him. This is rather pathetic.
"Hmm," Elissa makes a little sound that indicates she is mulling over what he has said. As she does that, she lets her fingers near the collar of his shirt, still massaging him, with an open hand now, slowly and gently. His skin is hot under her hand, or her hand is warm against him, he no longer knows the difference. "Do you have a better suggestion?"
"I would advise using that road all the same," he says, doing his best to keep himself anchored in his mind, not his body. "If we plan for the worst."
"The worst being a week's journey?"
"Yes."
Elissa's other hand is on his back now, as well, working its way up to his non-injured shoulder. As though she senses he is about to raise a protest, she pauses. But he doesn't say anything because what is he going he to say? And when two fingers find their way under his collar, Loghain loses the trail of thought completely.
This is not right.
He has been content with their friendship – more than content, considering it a surprise and an oddity he never could have imagined finding or looking for in anyone – and not ever thought it insufficient in any way. The bonds they have shared over this year have been the bonds he once shared with Maric and Rowan, the kind of unconscious yet clearly drawn friendship and closeness only battle and necessity can forge between people; the kind he never thought he would have again.
And he finds that he can't endure the idea of the temporarily shifting lines around them, their roles being redefined in this way. He is too old to enjoy that sort of thing, too impatient, too brutally honest.
She leaves such a stark sound in him if he lets her, if she is left to wander this far inside his defences; a hollow sort of longing that isn't going to be satiated with scraps of pitying affection or lingering delusions about childhood heroes – or whatever it is that she can possibly have for him – and he cannot even allow his mind to consider anything else. It would be a foolish thing, counter to all propriety and reason and –
Elissa's hand that is cupping the back of his neck is decreasing the pressure until she is suddenly all but caressing him, her fingers tracing lightly over his skin, leaving a path of heat in their wake.
Loghain sits back in his seat.
Do not do this to me, he means to say – no, worse, beg of her – but he doesn't because he feels anger flare up instead, slow and hot and burning at the pit of his stomach, fuelled by his wounded pride and lost momentum. He does not know what games she seeks to play with him, he only knows he is not playing. Turning around, he reaches for her hand, encircling her wrist with his fingers and as he does that, Elissa looks at him, her eyes wide and open and naked and he quiets his breath, guarding himself at the honest lack of pretence in her gaze.
She parts her lips, about to speak. He waits. There is something at the back of her gaze, a challenge or a question – perhaps an admission.
And then the sound at the door makes her pull away from him abruptly, immediately averting her gaze. Loghain can't help but feel that he is not the only one with wounded pride and the thought is confounding. Elissa presses her hands to her tunic, smoothing out invisible creases.
"Commander?" comes the voice from outside the door they have left ajar. "Commander, the new Wardens are here."
A/N: Thanks to CJK for being the fabulous beta for this story (not to mention a patient, patient woman) and thanks to all of you who read and review and make my day.