This group, Elissa concludes as soon as they've left the pleasant distractions and noises at Vigil's Keep behind, must surely be the worst combination of people she has collected so far. Not only is the silence between them like thick, oppressive heat but the few conversations that her group of Wardens do manage to sprout are horrendous or uncomfortable, usually both at the same time. They clash in unexpected ways, too – before midday Nathaniel is all but snapping at Anders whom he ordinarily can handle and Loghain is closing himself off entirely, ignoring the two other men's suspicion and searching gazes.
The open air doesn't offer any consolation either. There are no nooks or spare rooms to hide in, no mass of others to bear the brunt of frustrations; for most of the day the four of them walk in a stiff sort of silence, one that isn't natural and has very little to do with practicalities and everything to do with the fact that they simply do not like each other enough to even try.
Of course, Elissa quite likes Anders. It is impossible not to – even if she doesn't like him as much or in the very specific ways he assumes – but it seems it won't be enough in this company. He walks by her side, whistling or cooing over that cat she almost regrets giving him.
"So, is it true that you ordered apostates to use blood magic on that possessed boy in Redcliffe?"
Elissa tries to remember the Tower, how the mages are locked up there from early childhood in that strange place and never really meet people. She tries to remind herself that mages are bound to act like fools. It's just that she hasn't ever met a mage quite like Anders.
"Could you please find a more suitable topic for idle conversation?" she half-sighs, half-commands.
"But is it true?" he persists, shooting her a fiendishly charming grin. There is something to be said about her weakness for these kinds of tricks, she thinks, losing patience with herself.
"Yes."
"Wow." Anders sounds like he had not believed in the rumours before, a little edge of something that can be either doubt or disapproval slipping into his voice. While it is simple to forget and equally simple to brush off as impossible, Anders is actually very serious-minded about magic, Elissa has learned.
She sighs, indulging him despite herself. "It was hardly my best decision. But the Circle had been overtaken by Uldred and we were running out of time."
Because of Loghain, she thinks, looking at the broad shape of his back in front of them.
Elissa brushes her hand over Dog's head in passing, as he returns to her side after a little detour to stare suspiciously at Nathaniel and be patted by Loghain. As has become his habit by now, Dog growls at Anders who protectively puts a hand around the inner pocket where he keeps the kitten during travels. From the bulge comes a little hiss.
"You know, Ser Pounce-a-lot, mages created mabari dogs," Anders says, still not understanding that irony transfers badly to animals or if he does, caring very little about it. "Maybe I could make you just as smart as those stupid dogs."
Ser Pounce-a-lot meows appreciatively from inside the robes and Elissa tries not to think about how disturbing it is to have conversations with things inside your robes, no matter what it is. It seems like an area that was made to be silent.
I am not stupid, Dog tells her with a sad whine and a tilt of his head.
Of course you aren't stupid, Elissa replies by rubbing his ears. You are the smartest mabari in all of Ferelden, you are.
Smarter than cats? Dog implores.
Smarter than both cats and most mages, she assures him.
Dog appears comforted by this and continues quietly by her side.
Though the clouds above their heads look threatening, they manage to go a full day without rain or any other nasty surprises, which makes them neglect rest in favour of covering the miles between the Vigil and Knotwood Hills. By sunset, they have reached their destination, such as it is.
In sharp contrast to the landscape they have travelled through, this looks like a scene from the Blight, complete with the barren trees and the scent of decay.
"Why is this area a wasteland?" Nathaniel says, almost to himself. He runs his hand over the leaves of a dried bush by the side of the road; around it there's a splotched surface of rotten, once-ripe berries. "It makes no sense."
"Darkspawn?" Anders suggests, standing closer to the bush to get a better view, as though the dead little piece of vegetation would hold any important answers.
"Maybe it's like the Blackmarsh?" Elissa says. It's a silly old childhood story, of course, but that place, the mythical marsh is rumoured to be haunted and hollowed out like a ghost town. Like the village in Highever that seemed to just have disappeared into thin air, she thinks with a slight shudder. She vastly prefers the childish ghosts to the suggestions that her adult mind offers. "We are headed there one of these days, so we should be able to compare."
Anders looks nonplussed. "The Blackmarsh?"
"The village there existed not that long before the rebellion," Loghain says from where he stands, behind Elissa, a few steps away with Dog circling around and between his legs, eager to be praised or at least acknowledged.
"Wasn't the local lady a baroness from Orlais?" Elissa looks at him, fighting the urge to smile at the sight of Dog practically glowing with joy when Loghain curls both hands in the mabari's fur, rubbing him thoroughly.
"She was, yes."
"I remember the stories my father told me -" Nathaniel cuts himself off, as though he just realises he had been making conversation but then decides he will have none of it. Elissa gives him a lingering glance, rubbing her neck. He meets her eyes and picks up the thread again in a different tone. "They said the baroness was a giant demon who had devoured them all."
"Right." Elissa nods, scrambling through her mind for phrases from hopscotch afternoons and huddled evenings in front of the fire with Fergus who had pulled her into his embrace and sworn to scare her witless before she could leave the room. "When darkness comes and swallows light..."
"Heed these words: the Baroness will never die," Nathaniel fills in, inclining his head. Something passes between them, something light as air and fragile as nothing else in the world but still undeniably there.
"Maybe she was possessed," Anders says, stifling a yawn.
"That is a ridiculous tale," Loghain snorts. "A far more likely explanation is that the villagers rebelled against her and she had them all killed. If anything haunts the marsh it is bound to be blight wolves and bereskern."
"I did not say I believed in the stories," Nathaniel clarifies curtly.
Sighing, Elissa clears her throat.
"We have walked all day," she says, standing at the edge of the chasm with her legs wide apart and hands on her hips as she looks down and speaks to them at the same time. "Let's rest for the night. Whatever awaits us down there it can wait until morning."
"You want us to make camp here, Commander?" Nathaniel's tone is a shade less hostile than normally even if his frown reinforces the familiar edge.
"Yes."
"We will fare better here than holed up down there." Loghain almost demonstratively places his shield on the ground.
"Anders and Nathaniel, you pitch the tents and scout the immediate surroundings." Elissa doesn't allow more reflections or protests, holding up a hand to underline her authority. It's almost uncanny how well these gestures flow in and out of her by now. "Loghain and I will gather wood."
Holding her gaze for a second, Loghain nods his acceptance of this command.
It drives her feelings into strangely spiralling loops to be this wrapped up in duty and secrecy and him all at once, with each one of those things so entirely separated. He is here and for the first time she is allowed that smile that is skimming right over the sharp edges of doubt and regrets, the glances weighed down and heated up by the memories of last night and the quick and ever-so-unintentional touch as they head together into the forest to gather wood. And at the same time there is also the rest of the bloody world and how it so neatly has draped itself over her shoulders.
Anders watches them leave with a smirk on his lips. She had known it from the way he has been looking meaningfully at her all day, but this still confirms an uncomfortable suspicion, making her more self-conscious than she could have anticipated. Of course it doesn't mend matters that she's the commander and as such she hasn't exactly been distinguishing herself with her leadership qualities over the last few weeks. This – whatever it is and whatever it threatens to become – will scarcely put her in a better light. One simply does not mend the wounds of a civil war by sharing a bed with the one who started it; even with her lack of regard for decorum and propriety, she realises that.
"Should I take the first watch with Nathaniel?" Loghain asks, undoubtedly sharing her thoughts on the topic.
"Yes," Elissa says, smiling warily to herself at the way he always masks his own orders and statements with questions. She wonders if he truly thinks it a subtle method or if he is merely used to being around idiots.
"Very well."
Even out of sight and earshot from the others, it proves difficult to find their roles, conjure up the slightly mended but mostly intact shapes of the people they have been to each other for well over a year now. It's still so raw, like a fresh wound prickling at her skin and the possibilities and obstacles form endless mountains in front of them.
They gather wood and twigs from the ground, working quietly side by side in the yellow, sickly grass. Loghain doesn't say anything; she wishes he would. She is desperately far away from her element and Alistair had always talked, even in the awkward not-quite-morning after their first night in the same tent he had been unable to stop the torrent of confessions and hopes and fears. Elissa had been secretly grateful as he put his own feelings into words and then promptly went on and did the same with hers. Loghain, of course, would never do such a thing - with him silence can mean both agreement and quiet contempt and she is never entirely sure she can tell those two apart. Crouching down beside him, Elissa feels his body as a warm presence in the otherwise chilly air, and as she reaches for a bunch of dry branches beneath an oak, her path intersects his and their arms cross mid-air.
She pulls back, instinctively. Loghain, in an odd fit of something akin to courteous behaviour, hands her the branches she was aiming for. When Elissa searches for his gaze with a sidelong glance, he looks away.
"You have been travelling the Deep Roads before," she says stupidly instead, returning to safer grounds. "So you know what to expect."
Loghain nods, the glint in his eyes telling her he is glad to be speaking of this too, instead of all other options. "Darkspawn, lava, deep stalkers and spiders," he summarizes.
"Giant spiders." Elissa tries to suppress a shudder but evidentially fails since Loghain lets out a snort. "Oh, because all of your fears are of course perfectly sensible."
"They are."
"Right." She gives him a wry smile, quick and still somehow shielded.
He is a choice she made long before last night; all things that have happened between them have been choices - she is not young enough to think of her desires as something beyond control. It's just that she no longer recalls making the choice and thus has no idea how to undo it, how to loosen the bonds should she want to. And at this thought, there's a flooding sense of being caught. Trapped. Ensnared in a vulnerability that threatens to leave her stark naked and at someone else's mercy and in her mind she is abruptly sixteen years old again, crying as she pleads with her mother not to send her away to marry some old man she has barely even met.
Loghain watches her in silence.
"We should go back," she says, needlessly, thinking her voice sounds like it's coming from a great distance.
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There are some things, Loghain thinks as they trek down through the narrow, ill-boding passage, that one never quite forgets. The Deep Roads are one of them. Although it has been more than thirty years, he will never forget this sensation, this particular weight in his body. How the very surroundings down here encompass and trap you, bury you in damp, grey stone with no single source of light. How it all somehow becomes a song and a rhythm, urging you on.
Last time he was this deep underground, he had been young and desperate and walked every inch with a sense of absolute despair tightening his throat and hardening his voice. The first thing that welcomes them in the underground this time around is a small horde of deep stalkers, followed by a group of genlocks. It's a simple enough fight and only stalls them for a couple of minutes.
"This place reeks of darkspawn," Nathaniel observes pointlessly as they descend further. He discards a broken arrow and tosses the quiver onto his back again, marching onward.
"Welcome to the Deep Roads," Elissa says, dryly. She walks in front of them with Anders who is lightening their path with a glyph of light swirling in his right hand.
They have only covered a short distance before they are interrupted once more by darkspawn – this time in company with a loud-mouthed dwarf who is being dragged away by one leg, kicking her capturer with the other and spitting curses as she's carried across the floor of these tilted corridors.
Elissa leaps into the fight within seconds, backstabbing the large hurlock who is forced to release the dwarf. It proves to be a good first move, since the dwarf, once she's regained balance and found her swords, is a masterful warrior. As Loghain tackles an emissary, he can see a flurry of four swords in the corner of his eyes and hear a crescendo of immediately synchronised voices and a second later the group of darkspawn is rather dramatically dead.
Once the dim noise of the battle fades, Loghain spots Elissa and the dwarf standing among the corpses, sizing each other up with the same kind of apprehensively delighted expression. They appear to be seconds away from slapping each other's backs.
"Excellent fight," Elissa nods.
"Yes. You too. Are you alright?"
"Not injured." Elissa confirms this by shouldering her swords again, straightening up. "You?"
"Already dead." The dwarf chuckles. "Well. Thanks for the assistance. I need to get back in there now, crazy as that sounds."
Elissa delays the reply, probably pondering the statement and its implications. "You're headed for somewhere further inside the Deep Roads then?"
There's a brief moment of silence again before the dwarf nods. "Kal'Hirol, as a matter of fact. I think the darkspawn are breeding an army there."
Brilliant, Loghain thinks tiredly, striding closer to the two women. With the impending threat of the aftermath of that ill-fated ritual gone and the Archdemon dead, a darkspawn army is exactly what Ferelden needs. He catches Elissa's gaze, feeling her silent agreement to the unspoken question.
"I'm the Commander of the Grey Wardens in Ferelden," she says. "I'd like to come with you."
The dwarf looks momentarily baffled before another oddly cheerful smile crosses her face. "Sigrun," she says, holding out a hand. "Legion of the Dead."
"Elissa."
"Should we get going then? The darkspawn don't wait."
"Actually, are we sure about that?" the mage retorts in an annoying, whiny voice as they progress further down, deeper into the darkness of the stone. "I mean, have we asked politely or do we just assume-"
"Shut up." Nathaniel cuts him off and that, Loghain thinks, might the first and only time he has agreed wholeheartedly with a bloody Howe.
The rest of the forenoon – at least he assumes it's forenoon – is relatively free from dangers and darkspawn save a few flocks here and there. Once they breach Kal'Hirol's walls and manage to slink inside the magnificent structure, however, the beat in his head and chest picks up significantly. Elissa grants them all a moment to catch their breaths. Loghain observes her in an unguarded moment, looking over to where she's standing and, judging by the bits carried through the heavy air here, getting the basics of the fortress' history from Sigrun.
As they start moving again, Elissa stalks closer to him and adjusts her heavy helmet with a pointed little smile. He struggles to hold back an exasperated groan or a reluctantly amused grin – or possibly both. After a silent argument carried out in stern glances and sighs this morning, she had been putting her helmet on, as they got ready for departure. At first she had hesitated and Loghain had worried he would have to explain why that stupid helmet suddenly seemed so important - or rather why he had allowed himself the idiocy of expressing it and then, as though she had only been teasing him, she picked it up and let it down over her head without a word.
It's as hopeless as he remembers, trying to hold to a strategy in the Deep Roads. While the enemy is predictable enough, their surroundings are far from it and Loghain finds it useless to even try to foresee anything. To fight down here is a quiet form of giving up. Giving in to the way the stone is made: darkspawn tunnels bleeding into dwarven-made passages and halls, winding roads leading into ornate rooms where he would only expect caves.
In a cramped tunnel they stumble across newly hatched monstrosities of a kind neither of them recognises. Sigrun stoops over one of the defeated ones, using a sword to roll it over.
"Well, that can't be a good thing," she says, matter-of-factly.
"Darkspawn?" Elissa asks, looking from one face to another. Loghain is inclined to agree that it probably is, in some form, but before he has time to respond with something beside a nod, they are interrupted by the a roar of rapidly moving battle in an adjacent hall.
Then all the disadvantages of the Deep Roads come in to play at the same time.
In a large quarter where it seems likely that dwarves had practised trade of some kind when Kal'Hirol was inhabited by more than ghosts and darkspawn, they find themselves in a three-way battle - much to their surprise. Loghain quickly concludes that the smaller group of darkspawn seem tougher and stronger – and decidedly more organised – than the darkspawn that well up from everywhere around them, from all the small cracks in the stone and from behind every corner. But they fight each other, initially uninterested in the small group of Wardens.
"We should try to gain control over the bridge," Elissa says in a low voice. "They'll pick up on our scents soon enough but if we make it across we should be able to draw them towards the smaller passages and pick them off."
Loghain nods. This is no room for fighting large battles.
At first it goes well, making their way up towards the bridge without drawing too much attention, but then one of the stronger darkspawn gives a cry, having spotted them.
"You!" He roars, pointing his sword at Elissa. "All who serve the Architect must die! The Mother demands it!"
"The Architect?" Nathaniel asks, glancing at her.
"The Mother?" Anders frowns.
Elissa merely shrugs. "No idea."
"This is hardly the time for a discussion," Loghain snaps a second before the first darkspawn attack – from both sides of the bridge, no less, and everyone regardless of motivation, too, it seems.
For a while they manage to fight back to back with success, keeping a tight unity of shields and swords and magic in the very limited space; the conflict between the darkspawn ceases, however, and all attention is focused on the intruders on the bridge and not before long they are losing ground. Elissa orders them to keep pushing forward, seeing a possibility there that Loghain can't see and he's irritated with her for being so impulsive until he, too, notices that if they only manage to get off the bridge and fight their way a few feet to the left, they can get themselves to a decent spot of safety in a nearby room, keeping their backs safe. It will be much like running into a dead end, cornered by darkspawn, but it's an improvement over being stuck in the middle of a large space with enemies striking from every angle. With one of her swords raised, Elissa points out the direction and they snap into a new course of action.
As they are inches away from getting off the bridge with Elissa in front and Loghain as the last man, he feels the emissary's spell hitting his back before he has time to shield himself. With Anders busy casting healing spells in another direction Loghain has no defences at hand and is blasted off the bridge just as the other in front of him reaches the end of it. As the group of Wardens turn around, before heading into the nearby room and their best shot at getting through the battle alive, Loghain catches Elissa's gaze from afar for a fraction of a second, his mind spiralling as quickly and feverishly as the curse in his body. There's a whole field of enemies between them.
Before they are separated further by a new stream of darkspawn led by an emissary who nearly burns the staff out of Anders' hand, Loghain realises he can only hope Elissa will do what he would have done. He can hear her through the turmoil and for a second he is afraid she will order the rest of them into the battle as well, that she will come to his rescue like the gallant hero she can't afford to be and he would disrespect her for being.
"Retreat!" she calls louder, and he exhales."Pull back! Dog, come here!"
Loghain's companions make a hasty scrabble backwards as he is thrown further back in another direction by a hurlock and feels the spell losing power over him. Doggedly determined to at least try to beat the odds, feeling a slowly burning frustration fuel his movements, he raises his sword again and leaps back into the battle.
It is difficult to say for how long they fight, separately and together, from their corners of the room.
Loghain only knows that he takes a severe blow to his side, manages to rise again and beats the attacking genlock to death with the flat side of his blade in a terribly unrefined fit of rage. Efficient enough, though, he thinks as he presses forward – the tiny sense of triumph lost again as he falls under a hurlock's blade and feels the ground slip beneath him, feels his head go blank and his limbs go numb. Around him the noise seems to fade and he hears himself gasp for air – deep, breathy sounds, near convulsing – and thinks it was a long time since he was this close to dying. Thinks it almost calmly, as though it is merely an observation.
Everything is drowned out after that, his skin peeled off and his bones washed clean in the painful surge of being pulled through the veil and over to the Fade – or at least that is what he assumes is happening until he forces his eyes open and realises that Elissa is kneeling beside him and that there's another shape behind her, raising its arms. Loghain blinks.
"Save it." He hears Elissa's voice, made taut and cut up by pain, by the sounds of it. "Heal him first."
"Commander-"
"Anders."
There's a rustle of fabrics and a clinking sound of metal indicating that they're all gathered around him; Loghain feels uncomfortably exposed.
"He fights magnificently for someone his age," the cheerful dwarf points out and Loghain tries to turn his head, a pathetic stab of irritation at her words – someone his age, indeed – but his body is merely a statue, immovable like the stone around them.
"Ouch," Anders says, a trace of amusement creeping into his voice. "You might want to stand far away from him once I cast the spell, Sigrun."
Idiot, Loghain thinks, not sure if he means the mage or the dwarf.
"Everybody, get moving. Nothing to see here," Elissa says, still affected by her own injuries if her voice is anything to go by. He wants to scold her, too, for foregoing Anders' magic for his sake, but he cannot find any words yet. His throat feels dry and hollowed. "Clean the place up and prepare to descend further."
In the relief of the tapering pain and the lack of audience, his body relaxes finally, his thoughts disappear and once more he sinks into the darkness only this time he does it with Elissa's hand curled so violently around his own that he nearly winces.
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Instead of relief at being outside again, staggering up towards the light and finally feeling the setting sun warm their faces, Elissa feels anger.
She's angry. And it's an anger without a proper source which makes the scattered streams and threads run amok until she can't tell where anything is headed or why.
She's disappointed because they fought a mediocre battle – and she wonders if she has recruited mediocre Wardens or if she is a mediocre commander or if the failure can be ascribed to both of those things and if that is the case, then what in the Maker's name is she doing here, parading about like a fool. Loghain nearly died and she is furious with him because she would have been responsible for his death and she hates him a little for that, which runs counter to all sense but sense has left her for the moment, anyway. And she's desperately angry about the darkspawn, in a dignified and mature way that involves the desire to curl up on the ground and scream until they go away and leave her alone. During the last fight she had been so exhausted that she all but crawled on the floor – Sigrun had been knocked unconscious and Loghain was not allowed to fight; Dog had soldiered on valiantly as usual, trying to serve as a distraction but been tossed aside by an enormous golem and in the end, Nathaniel had slain the darkspawn general who was, according to his own words, working for The Mother. Whoever that is.
Perhaps, Elissa thinks even more tiredly, she was one of the broodmothers they had crushed in the the darkspawn's own trap.
They rest as soon as they are above ground. Even if nobody complains about it, Elissa can see the grey shadows in their faces, the shivering, shaking aftermath as the constant battle is leaving their bodies. She feels it in herself as well, that way of breathing that resembles climbing, grasping at fresh air and holding on for dear life. Allowing herself a moment's weakness, Elissa leans forward to catch her breath, rests her hands on her thighs and closes her eyes. Everything in her aches. Especially her shoulder – the same shoulder as last time, mere weeks ago – and a spot in her lower back that feels like hard stone and itches at the same time. Some interesting poison as usual, she assumes.
"We killed everything in there. Everything." Sigrun, clear-headed and bright beside her, as though she can read Elissa's mind and sense her need for optimism. "I wouldn't want to be your enemy."
"Don't be then," Elissa blurts, noticing a little frown on the other woman's face before she adds: "I mean, come with me. Join us."
"Huh." Sigrun is considering, her face scrunched up in a half-grimace before she shrugs. "I suppose that would work. I mean, I don't know if you can belong to both Legion of the Dead and the Grey Wardens, but... why not?"
"You are dead anyway," Elissa says, not realising until after she's said it how it comes out. Perhaps she should stay quiet for the remains of today.
But Sigrun laughs and it's a comforting thing, like feeling fresh air again after the Deep Roads or the sunlight after a long winter. And there's a deal, simple as that.
They keep moving in the growing darkness, Elissa leaning heavily on Anders who mutters something about staying away from cheese and pastries. Nathaniel and Loghain walk behind them and whenever she turns her head to check on them, it appears Loghain is refusing to be aided despite a stiff grimace of pain on his face.
"Isn't there a village right across this field?" Elissa asks Nathaniel.
"Yes," he confirms. "It even has an inn, if my memory serves me."
It isn't a big village, no maze of alleys and paths, just the houses on the side of the road and a square. Like Nathaniel said, there is an inn located to one side of the modest sprawl of buildings and Elissa is ready to fall to her knees and thank the Maker as they find the door open and the innkeeper ready to serve them. Once they have thrown their sparse belongings into the rooms upstairs, they wash up to the best of their abilities and head down for a hot meal. As she sits down opposite Sigrun and beside Loghain at a small table, Elissa feels how starved she is, her stomach almost screaming at the scent of food approaching.
"On the house, my lady," the innkeeper says, putting down plates loaded with roasted chicken and dried meat, onion broth and large loafs of bread on their tables.
For a while, nobody says anything, too busy devouring the meal and letting the ale quench both thirst and that awful feeling as the rush of battle and self-discipline wears off. Elissa drags a slice of bread through the remains on the bottom of her bowl of broth, glancing sideways at Loghain. He eats properly, at least, even if he still looks very pale. When she reaches for her mug of ale, she notices Sigrun is watching her and Loghain both, her eyes eventually landing on him.
"So, you're her father?" she asks, picking up a piece of chicken with her fingers.
Elissa chokes on her ale and tries to mask it by coughing. The noise makes Anders and Nathaniel come to a halt in their chat with the barmaid – a chat that appears to be dwindling into a competition in the art of sweet talking a woman, a competition that Nathaniel unexpectedly is leading, at that – and frown at her.
"I'm not," Loghain replies, levelly. There is nothing but unaffected calm in his tone; Elissa wonders if there is a part of him that feels a little wounded, because she is - on his behalf.
"Oh." Sigrun looks a bit confused. "I thought... You seem close."
"He's my general," Elissa says helpfully when she's recomposed herself; she doesn't want Sigrun to feel awkward and she most definitely doesn't want to dig any deeper into what Loghain is and isn't. "We've rebuilt the Order together. The mage is new, he was on the run from the templars when I recruited him. Nathaniel is also new, and he's a Howe; they used to rule over Amaranthine before the Blight."
"And now they don't?" Sigrun takes a large swig of her ale.
"Now I rule over Amaranthine."
"By the ancestors," she shakes her head, grinning. "I used to think the Legion had a strange collection of desperate souls, but you're something else."
Even Loghain's mouth curls into a half-smile at that, Elissa notices, as she dares throwing a glance in his direction again. At the sight of it – his rare, still somewhat incredible smile – she almost forgets how angry she still is.
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"Sigrun will make a fine Warden," Loghain says later that night in the privacy of his bedchamber. He feels the need to say something because Elissa has been uncharacteristically quiet since she stepped inside and let the door snap shut behind her in that imperious manner that never fails to irritate him.
"Yes." She stands still in front of him, holding a vial and a bundle in her hands.
"They are all-"
"Did you doubt me today?"
He waits for a while with his answer, urgently aware of the significance of her question. Her face is hard, painfully young and worn at the same time and he knows she is really asking several things, as she often does; a brief frustration at that behaviour sinks into him.
"You are not a feeble-minded idiot," he says eventually and the answer is clumsy, overly surly even for him. He doesn't expect it to go over well and regrets it the moment it slips over his lips.
"No," Elissa agrees, unwrapping the small bundle that appears to contain a few supplies. "I'm your commander."
She speaks the words differently, gives them a new rhythm that is both icy and a bit heated, as though she's hiding anger underneath the composure.
"I am aware," he replies, dryly.
"I will send you to your death if necessary. Never doubt that. Take off your shirt." She nods grimly towards his chest and holds up a vial as though wanting to make sure he understands her intentions.
"There is no need-"
"There is."
Despite the growing irritation at being ordered about in his own room, Loghain does as she says; he has to admit he's still wounded under the effects of the healing spell and any release from the pain is welcome. He slumps down on a chair, feeling ancient. Too tired to tend to his own wounds, almost too tired to care if they fester and lead to his death because his head is leaden and his chest aches. He glares at Elissa. She has no business coddling him like this – he is not a Maker-forsaken child and regardless of what she preposterously claims he is not in need of her aid – but all anger seems to have left him with the last potion he took, leaving only mild reproach in its wake.
"Elissa," he begins as she's rubbing a bandage soaked in ointments over his side where he took a near-fatal blow. She, on the other hand, is angry. Her touch is anything but gentle; she's handling his skin like she thinks he is made of stone and he begins to wish he were when he feels a fingernail press deep into the edges of one of his injuries. Elissa closes the distance between them even further, her body framing his. He looks at her hands as she's working, the rough, calloused fingers cool against his body. The mage had said he would likely run a fever until the worst injuries had mended themselves overnight. It might be the blur of potions, ale and pain, but he doesn't quite understand her tonight. There is something else in her words, slipping out of his reach.
"Loghain," she says, sharply, mirroring his own unfinished sentence.
She gives him a challenging look, a little flinch tugging at her features as she kneels beside him, fastening a clean bandage around his waist and Loghain is momentarily distracted by the pressure of fingertips right above his waistline.
And with that she looks up at him, clearly expecting an answer of some kind. He wonders if she has asked him something that he didn't hear or spoken of anything that merits attention. Rubbing his face slightly, he finds himself at a loss for what to say. Or do, for that matter. Instead he catches hold of her hand as she reaches for a bandage on the floor beside her and pulls her up, a little too forcefully for his mangled body, before he leans down to kiss her.
Judging by the muffled sound of agreement, it wasn't an entirely stupid action, he concludes with one of his hands still wrapped around hers, the other buried in her hair.
Loghain is only vaguely aware of reality at the moment, balancing on its every edge and boundary and he cannot say for how long they kiss or how he ends up in bed. One moment, it seems, he is sitting in a chair with Elissa in his arms and the next his hands are flat against the sheet as he's struggling to find a position that doesn't hurt, careful not to put any pressure to his wounded side. When he feels cool hands slide out from underneath his body he realises Elissa is helping him.
"There," she says, still that rough shape of her voice that makes it sound strangely impersonal despite the intimacy of what they are doing. "I will leave two vials of the healing draught Anders gave to me."
"Very well."
Stay, he thinks, followed by a pathetically proud leave me alone. He is uncertain which one of these prospects burns with the greatest need in him, burns beyond reason and sensibility because he has lost his grasp of those things long ago. This is bloody insanity and yet he assembles his excuses for it, allowing them to fortify his words, spread out into his hands as he reaches for her once more.
She sits on edge of the bed, unfolding a clean towel and drenching it in the same strongly smelling liquid she used before. Her face – what he can see of it – is closed in concentration and restraint as she begins to clean the injury on the back of her shoulder.
Loghain takes the towel from her and continues. It has never been a talent of his, tending to other people's injuries. He doesn't like the forced closeness of it, doesn't care for the mess and fuss of nursing and – even worse – the accompanying tears. You cannot talk people out of crying, he has found. But Elissa is absolutely quiet as he upsets the fragile surface of flesh that is about to heal, sits perfectly still even when the wound begins to bleed again in protest against the strong ointment and Loghain quickly has to wrap it up in bandages. She merely raises her arms to ease the work and he ties the ends of the bands, sinking back with a grimace.
"Thank you," she says, quietly.
She looks like she is about to get to her feet; when she doesn't, he hesitates for a second, then he strokes her arm, lets a hand run over the small of her back and up along her side, fingers tracing the scars there. Even now, even half-way across the Fade and numbed with pain to a point where he knows he won't be able to do anything about it, he feels hot stirring want at the sight of her. There is something buried in this moment, he thinks as his thumb flickers over a little bump of scar tissue right above her elbow, something about learning the secrets of her body, the history of her scars.
He hasn't seen it since it was fresh and deadly, the scar from the Archdemon that is still a soft shade of red along her side, reaching around her waist and chest; he can almost feel the stench of battle again as his palm brushes over it. When it does, Elissa lets out a little sigh and turns her head, her eyes wide and bright.
"Loghain," she says again, her voice softer now, a gentle mutter under her breath.
Then she suddenly slips down beside him, her grace and pliancy even in this condition reminding him of her age and of his own – that little stitch at the back of his head, the memory of Sigrun's comment – and he has to forcibly push it away. Elissa helps immensely by running a finger over the lines of his face, skittering along his neck and jaw, up and down and across the planes of his back, which makes him shiver slightly. She slides up as close to him as the injuries allow, one hand raking through the hair on his chest and stomach, in an oddly chaste way. He closes his eyes, briefly, cursing the injuries when he remembers the night at Vigil's Keep and the hurried, hasty encounter that they had left like shamed sodding maids sneaking back to their rooms. He will do it properly some day, he swears to himself. They will do it well and properly with the doors locked. It's about the only thing he can offer her as far as promises go and it gets stuck in his throat, the vain absurdity of it grating against his tongue. Elissa gives him a searching glance.
For a long while they remain quiet and motionless just like that, without doing anything but resting and allowing time to pass around them, between them. Loghain is about to suggest that she should leave, when she instead shifts position carefully so she's resting with her back against him.
"Uncomfortable?" she asks; when she speaks, he feels her voice in his chest.
Loghain's side is still straining, making him reluctant to move and even breathe; he feels half-dead and parched, but he shakes his head.
"No."
"Good," she says, drowsily. Then she raises his hand to her mouth and kisses it and he is left with the impression that he is being forgiven for something, although he can't figure out for what.
His mouth rests over the pulse of her neck, her lips grazing his knuckles and fingers, one by one; his arms that circle her as she's settling in his embrace. This is much more intimate than anything else; Loghain is fairly certain he has never been this intimate with anyone, not in a great many years, not in this blatantly obvious way. If that is a pathetic notion for a man his age who has been married at that, then so be it, he decides. He wraps his arms tighter around Elissa, experimentally.
She makes a content noise.
Before he falls asleep he thinks that he must make sure she isn't still here in the morning, thinks despite the undeniable comfort that he will berate her for this, that he will berate himself, that she is being foolish and then sleep claims him abruptly, interrupting his scattered thoughts.
When he wakes up, sore and aching in a room that is drowning in mild and grey morning light, he is alone.
A/N: Thank you as always to CJK for beta and to all of you who take time to read and comment on this story. It means a lot and makes my day!