Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Age or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other fans like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

Rating: T

Spoilers: Takes place ten years or more after the events of Dragon Age: Origins, from the background of a female Human Noble pc who has recruited Loghain and persuaded an "altered" Alistair to marry Anora and rule as King despite his survival, and persuaded Loghain to perform the dark ritual with Morrigan. May contain spoilers for Origins, Awakening, and Dragon Age II as well as the novels The Stolen Throne and The Calling.

A/N: Obviously Loghain did a lot more to rile the bannorn than just assume the regency and call them to action, which will be addressed in later chapters undoubtedly. I just wanted to get something off my chest within the context of his rant that always bothered me: Ferelden nobility seems so wrapped up in the idea of INDIVIDUAL independence that they're quite willing to allow the whole damned country to go to the devil.

Chapter Twelve: The Sweet Taste of Victory

As Loghain had promised they arrived back at the army encampment bright and early the next morning. Healing and other such duties had proceeded apace without them under Teyrn Fergus's guidance, but there was such a lot of things to do that it was likely they would not be ready for the triumphant march back to Denerim for another day at the least. Loghain had not had a chance to properly absorb the fact of the victory, and the battle seemed to have taken place so very long ago that he was surprised to still see dead on the field. Great pyres stood ready to receive the bodies of the fallen Ferelden soldiers as well as the one Circle mage who perished, but there was apparently some confusion over what to do with the six dead dwarves and the dead werewolf, not to mention the scores of slaughtered Chevaliers. With a deep sigh and an expressive roll of the eyes, Loghain cut through the chaos by simply asking the dwarves and werewolves what they'd like done for their dead. The dwarves, of course, wanted to take their fallen back to Orzammar and "return them to the stone," which they were quite welcome to do, and the werewolves seemed puzzled at the thought that anything should be done for their late brother-at-arms. "If the humans have some problem with leaving him to be properly eaten, then they are welcome to burn him with their own dead."

"What about the Orlesians?" Fergus said, when Loghain told him these things. "There are so many."

"They'd stand as one hell of a warning, for some months at least," Loghain said. Alistair heard and was, predictably, shocked.

"We're not just leaving them there, are we?" he said, appalled. "We have to burn them, if not for propriety's sake, then for the smell and the illness dead bodies spread."

"Smell and illness? There is no village nearby," Loghain said blandly.

"But this is an important trade route regardless!"

"With Orlais," Loghain said patiently. "And even if you're really fool enough to continue to treat with them after this, they might not be willing."

Anora stepped smoothly into the breach, olive branch at the ready. "Very true, father, but there is value in being perceived as merciful. If we were to properly burn the Orlesian dead and return the ashes to their homeland, that would send the message that Ferelden is prepared to be magnanimous, which might net us nothing from Orlais herself but which could be looked upon with great favor by other nations. We could gain allies from such a move. Then, too, sending Orlais such a very large container of ashes as would doubtless be necessary would send another message…"

"That message being, 'Don't fuck with Ferelden,'" Loghain said, concisely if crudely. "All right, then, waste wood if you're going to, but if you're going to burn 'em, burn 'em separately. No Ferelden who died for their country ought to suffer the indignity of being mixed up in the ashes of a bunch of painted ponces. Nor the werewolf, neither, though evidently they don't care about such things. He - or maybe 'twas a she - may not have bent knee to any human lord but it fought alongside us bravely and should be accorded all appropriate honors as a soldier of this nation. The mage, too, though I know the Chantry will moan about that. We should honor the dwarves for their sacrifice as well, though they're making their own arrangements for the disposition of their dead."

"I'll talk to the Lady of the Forest and find out the werewolf's name…and gender," Elilia interjected, with a lopsided grin. "I'll make sure it's entered properly in the record of the fallen. I suppose I can do the same with the dwarves and the mage - I talked them all into fighting for us, after all. You've got most of the regular army sorted already, don't you, Fergus?"

He nodded. He was looking at his sister rather strangely, Loghain noticed, and he thought he knew why - even though ordinary people couldn't exactly sense the Taint they could always tell that something was slightly "off" about Wardens, and Elilia had lost that wrongness. "There are still soldiers unaccounted for, partly because some of the dead have been…difficult to identify. The unfortunate results of friendly-fire, both from the mages and the golems. We hope still to find the rest lost among the scores of Orlesian dead and wounded."

"What are we doing for the Orlesian wounded, by the way?" Alistair asked.

Kill 'em, and add 'em to the burn pile, Loghain wanted to say, but kept his peace.

Teyrn Fergus looked embarrassed. "Nothing as yet, Your Majesty. Our Healers are stretched to their limits as it is, and I did not wish to commit valuable resources without your express approval."

"Well, we certainly don't want to take care from our own men, but we should definitely treat as many of the Orlesians as we can save."

Fergus looked pained. "And do what with them, Your Majesty? They number in the hundreds, possibly even more than a thousand. I fear we have not the manpower to take so many prisoners, and then there would of course be the logistics of holding them, and presumably feeding them."

"We cannot take them prisoner," Anora said firmly. "They are too numerous. Slay them."

"What? No!" Alistair protested. Anora cut him off aggressively before he could say more.

"And what are our options if we do not, Alistair? Waste our few healers' talents and our limited medical supplies on men so badly wounded that many shall doubtless perish regardless, only to stuff them into every dungeon we can find from here to Denerim to rot and starve because we can barely feed our own citizens? Or perhaps you would prefer that we heal those who can be healed and then send them home to Orlais, there to rejoin new regiments and march against us anew? That does not strike me as sound planning, either."

Though her words were harsh her expression, for a wonder, was not. She looked, if anything, rather haggard at that moment. Maybe even sad. "This is the part of ruling you've yet to master. Sometimes being King means you must be cruel."

He hung his head, abashed. Most un-Kingly, but that was Alistair. "You're right, of course," he said glumly.

Elilia put a hand on his shoulder. "Think of it this way, Al - any Chevalier who couldn't run from the battle was most likely hurt very badly, and most likely the best thing we could ever offer them at this point is a swift and merciful death. For the ones who would have made it…well, at least its quick, and an honorable death for a soldier. More so than dying in prison, at any rate."

Alistair called over his shoulder to Loghain. "Did my father ever master this part of the job?"

Loghain shook his head. "He did it, when it was necessary. Can't say that he ever got particularly good at it, though. But that's what I was for."

"Doing His Majesty's dirty work."

"Sometimes it was dirty. Most of the time just dreadfully disagreeable. All of it an unfortunate necessity of ruling a nation, perhaps particularly one so wild and little united as this."

"Little united."

"That may be exaggeration. Might be closer to the mark to say 'not united at all.'" The King turned to look at him, questions in his guileless eyes, and so he condescended to expound. "We fielded five thousand regular army. How many more could we have fielded had more of the bannorn been able to rally their troops for us? Twice that? My guess is closer to three times that. How much easier this battle would have been if we'd had fifteen thousand men on the field. I'm sure they didn't refuse their aid, that would be stupid of them, but they would have prevaricated, sending back word that there were complications with their equipment, or delays in troop movement, anything and everything to avoid having to make a definite promise as to exactly when they could send their men. And all because they're too small-minded to see past their own little demesne to the welfare of the whole. Do you think that little prick Kendalls would have bothered sending out his troops if he didn't live practically at the feet of the royal palace?"

The little prick in question was standing not too far off, and was predictably offended, but when he made to make some protest Loghain shot him a thunderous glare and he subsided. "I see the shields of Highever, Dragon's Peak, West Hills, Redcliffe, South Reach, and Gwaren, and I see the shields of the Amaranthine regulars, as well - and most of them sent far fewer men than I'm sure they had, but at least they sent them. But where are Oswin? Whitewater Falls? Dunlan? Rainsfere? Where are two score of banns? They come out of the woodwork at the Landsmeet, to squabble like mongrels over pig knuckles, eager to wrest some concession or other from the Crown and the rest of the nation for their own little rat-spit pickings, which are all they care about. Its always been a bloody wonder to me that anything is ever resolved in this damned country, and most of the time it just gets argued over continually forever. Don't believe me? Just try getting the fucking hemorrhoids to stand and fight for their country when there's no King on the throne. Maker's breath, I don't miss politics."

Bann Teagan bridled at those last few sentences and put himself quite in the former Teyrn's path. "You demanded that we - " he began, furious.

"I demanded only that you defend your homeland," Loghain said, as he pushed the nominal Arl of Redcliffe onto his backside in the mud rather gently, all things considered. "I don't count you among the vultures who opposed me just to make a play for the Crown, Teagan, but your little outburst on the floor that day fed the flames of dissention nicely. I was wrong about the Darkspawn threat, and maybe not altogether correct about the immediacy, at least, of the threat from Orlais, but the civil war that erupted after that did much to ensure the devastation of our nation. Perhaps I could have stood to be more diplomatic when I addressed the Landsmeet, but by the Maker, I never realized before that day that I would have to kiss ass to get the lords of this nation to stand and defend it. Blame me for naiveté, I suppose."

Evidently King Alistair had recently tasted some of the bitter flavor of trying to pull his rag-tag country together, because he smiled sickly and made no attempt to defend the man who he considered an uncle. "Hard words for the bannorn, Loghain," he said. "And yet you claim to love this nation?"

Loghain tossed his head like an impatient horse. "A man may love his homeland and despise its government quite easily. But I've proven that I can do nothing to change it, so I suppose I have no right to bitch. And it could always be worse. The sodding Free Marches can't even solidify into a genuine nation."

"You'd rather we ruled in the manner of Orlais, with the Crown seizing all power and granting the privileged few only the right to lick the King's boots and trample the peasantry?" Teagan said, more subdued but still smarting and fuming.

"If the Maker Himself came and told me that was the proper way to run the country I would spit in His eye and tell Him to piss off," Loghain said. "We need solidarity and organization, not tyranny. As it is we have a King and Queen attempting to rule over a grand mess of smaller Kings- and Queens-in-their-own-minds, and we should not be surprised at the resulting chaos."

Nobody seemed to have anything more to say to that, or more likely nobody wanted Loghain to say anything further since he looked, at that moment, close to murder, so orders were given and the various nobles drifted back to their own little regiments, not a few of them thinking mutinous thoughts. Fergus Cousland, loyal defender of the throne that he was, did not exactly feel that what he'd heard was incorrect, but Loghain had stood by the man who slaughtered his family, whether or not he'd had prior knowledge of the actual sacking of Highever, and so he went about his duties much disturbed in mind. His sister seemed to trust the man, perhaps even to like him, and Fergus trusted Elilia. Perhaps Loghain was a man of honor despite it all, though he did not think that honor was spotless…

After a time Elilia sought him out, bearing with her a scroll of parchment upon which she had noted not only the names of the allied deceased but the living as well. "Thought it would be good to get them on official record now," she said as she loped up in her rangy way. "The werewolves won't want to stand in the city square for official thanks, after all; the Chantry would probably brand our poor mages if they took their proper bows, and the dwarves want to head straight back to Orzammar 'before they lose their stone-sense,' which is too bad, because the golems would look marvelous in a royal procession." She noticed her brother's discomfiture, and correctly divined the cause. "Long dark thoughts about Howe, right?"

"Why did you spare his life?" Fergus asked. She didn't need to ask whose life he was referring to. She shrugged expressively.

"He surrendered."

"There had to be more to it than that."

"There's a lot more to it than that, but it boils down to that in the end. Perhaps you'll understand better if I put it this way instead: I spared him because I get him."

"You…'get' him…" Fergus said doubtfully.

"I get him. I understand where he's coming from. Maker help me, I could see his side of things. He was wrong, but I would have been equally wrong had I been the one in his position."

Fergus scoffed, "Elilia, you would never do - "

"Oh, but I would, Fergus, and I have. Maker willing, you'll never have to know just how far I've gone in the pursuit of what I saw as my duty. Some of the things I've done may be worse than anything Loghain had a hand in. And because I understand him, I understood exactly why someone like that would ever take a knee rather than fight to the last bloody breath, as that slimy bastard Howe did. By that time he knew he couldn't stand alone before the wolves and protect Ferelden, but he needed to see whether I could before he'd step aside and let me. And he yielded, knowing I was virtually honor-bound to slay him regardless, to show not just me but every jack in that Landsmeet that he knew I was. And if I could bring him to his knees, who among them would have had the stones to defy me further?"

Teyrn Fergus smiled wanly. "And you saw all that, did you, in the heat of the moment, with his neck turned to your blade and your future King calling for his blood?"

"In the heat of the moment I saw a proud foe proudly girding himself to accept whatever punishment I saw fit to mete out. No, I had set myself to win an ally that day, if at all possible, though I confess I never thought he'd actually submit. He doesn't exactly have a precedent for it, does he? I wanted Anora for Queen, and she wanted her father alive. She'd still have married Alistair if I'd killed him, I'm sure - she's her father's daughter and she does her duty, regardless of how distasteful or outright dishonorable she finds it - but she wouldn't exactly have been my biggest fan thenceforward. Then, too, its better to have a man like Loghain at your back than at your throat. I think yesterday proved the wisdom of that."

"Sister, I think it would be wise for you not to show Loghain too much favor," Fergus ventured, a little timidly. "The men have been delighted to bandy about the most unfortunate and unsupportable rumor - "

"That Loghain spent the night before the battle in my tent, Big Brother?" Elilia interjected. "And what if he did?"

"Please do not bait me, Sister," Fergus pleaded. "I seek only to protect your reputation."

She laughed harshly. "My reputation requires no such protection, Brother, I assure you. And unfortunately I am not baiting you, either. Loghain and I spent the night together. Is that truly so very terrible to think of?"

Fergus shook his head, his eyes closed. "You were always rather…unpredictable, Sister, but this…this…"

"Loghain is a great warrior, Brother, and he has known what hell it is to be a Warden, which few can understand. I find him quite…attractive, even though he looks as if the Maker were in something of a hurry when He made him."

Fergus barked laughter, though probably not at his sister's mild humor. "I…cannot speak of this now with you, Sister. A later day, when I have had time to wrap my mind around this fresh horror, we will talk more on it. I beg you only, as one who loves you dearly, not to act further upon this so-called attraction until we have had a chance to discuss this thoroughly."

"Until you have had time to marshal your most compelling objections and persuasive threats, you mean," Elilia said, somewhat haughtily. "I shall do as I have always done, Brother, and follow my own heart and mind. It seems to have served me well so far. 'Hero of Ferelden,' and all that. But if we must, we may speak later. Right now I'm going to go track down that cute little mage that healed Loghain. She'll be turning apostate, unless she wants to go back to the Circle and be punished, and I have a job offer for her."

She left Fergus then, and went to find her mage, but she found Loghain first - or rather the other way around. He pulled her behind one of the supply wagons to speak privately.

"Did you tell your brother about what I did to you?" he asked, and with that conversation still fresh in her mind she misinterpreted the question.

"He left me no choice. And of course now he feels that you have utterly besmirched my heretofore impeccable reputation," she said, with an eloquent roll of the eyes.

"In what way?" Loghain asked indignantly.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe because of what happened during the civil war, or more likely because you don't have a title anymore."

Loghain looked at her for a moment in utter bemusement, then shook his head slowly. "I feel morally certain that we could not be speaking of the same thing."

"Wait - what were you speaking of?"

"You remember - the little accident I had on purpose with the ashes?"

"Oh!" She blushed momentarily bright red, the first time he'd ever seen her evince humiliation. "No, no, I didn't say anything about that. I don't think it's a good idea to spread that information around very far, if possible, at least for now. It's going to be bloody hard to explain and I'm sure there'll be a reckoning with the Wardens, which I don't care to think about now."

"Good, because neither do I. Time enough to deal with it all later, when there's a bit of time to think first. Wait - what did you think I was speaking of?"

"Well, rumor has it…"

He frowned. "Rumor…?"

She sighed and laughed. "You're not the only early riser in an army camp, you know."

"People have been…talking."

"They tend to do that, not that you'd know anything about it, God of the Silent."

He ignored the jibe. "Who else knows?"

"Everybody," Elilia said lightly.

"My Lady…"

"Everybody that matters, at any rate. Fergus. The King and Queen - well, the Queen at least, though I expect she'll have told Alistair by now. Probably the other nobles have heard, and by now the tale has circulated quite thoroughly among the soldiers and has most likely grown most sordid indeed. Are you worried about your reputation, perhaps? Or that I would use this in some way to ensnare you? You needn't. I am capable of taking the hint."

"What hint?"

"Not that I've much experience in such matters, but when a man leaves a woman's bed - or bedroll, in this case - before dawn and without waking her, he's saying, 'Thank you, but no more please.' And that suits me well enough."

"You think that I - " His face worked for a moment as he tried to find the right words or actions. The one he settled upon was risky. He took her face in his hands and brought his mouth down onto hers with almost bruising force. She resisted momentarily, but then her own hands plunged into his hair and she kissed back. When he pulled back a bit after a long moment she looked disappointed. "Sometimes a man is just saying that he'd like to let the lady sleep."

"You made not the slightest sign…I thought you just wanted to forget."

"You made no sign either, leastwise to me," Loghain pointed out, his amusement faintly evident in his voice. "Given that we had not a private moment to speak of it, it seemed to me wise to wait for a better moment for frank discussion of what passed between us…and what might come of it."

"What…might come of it?" Elilia asked hesitantly.

"Depends on what you want out of it, I suppose. I can't imagine its something you'd actually want to repeat, but it wouldn't be the first time I've been wrong about something."

She drew back with a sly look. "Well, I guess I'll have to think about that. And soon, if we're truly going to travel together, sleeping rough beneath the stars in the wild places with no one at all to tell us what to do and what not to…"

"Something to look forward to, at any rate. You do realize, of course, that the Crown is going to have plenty of work for both of us, most like, before we can ever see if my foolish little fancy has any foothold in reality? Anora would love to swap you out for one of her more troublesome Banns, I'm sure."

"Probably so, but we're going just the same, as soon as we can break away. Which reminds me, I was looking for that mousey little healer girl - I'd like her to come along. You seem to have been looking for a place to die lately, and it's not happening on my watch."