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.

Chapter Twenty-One: Campfire Alliance

Loghain was not well pleased with their two new tagalongs, even though the woman's fine hound and the story of how she acquired it - if true - spoke well of her. It was not that he expected their presence, however long it lasted, would be any impediment to their ultimate mission - he wanted it kept from Chantry ears for as long as possible, but who less likely to run tattling to a Priest than a pair of surfacer dwarves who hadn't even managed to report on a dog-beater? They were even somewhat welcome additions, as long as they pulled their weight. The woman, Laz, was a fierce warrior with her dual waraxes, and the man Varric's fine crossbow was enough to compensate quite a bit for his slick character. Loghain wanted very much to figure out the engineering of that weapon. There was no bowstring, so presumably the bolts were loosed by a powerful spring mechanism. But setting up camp at the end of their first long day showed exactly why he was unhappy with the sudden growth of their party.

Laz and Varric had their own supplies, including tents and a few light provisions, so that was to the good, but when the tents were set up around their nicely crackling campfire that night, it was clear there was a slight discrepancy. Five people, four tents, one a little larger than the others. Loghain scowled and whispered harshly in Elilia's ear before the camp was fully laid out.

"You and Seanna should take the large tent. I'll sleep in Seanna's." Elilia gave him a cool look, grabbed his bedroll from the pile of their packs, and took it into the large tent to lay out beside her own. The dwarf Varric watched with amusement and interest and smirked at Loghain's forbidding glare.

"Hey, I'm not going to criticize the sleeping arrangements," the dwarf said, a laugh in his voice. "Kind of puts a nice new spin on the story of how she faced you down before the ruling class of the entire nation, usurped your power, spared your life, and won you to follow her against the Tainted god Urthemiel. Would make a bigger seller if one of you'd died in the slaying, but the payoff is all this winter romance in the face of an Orlesian invasion and the chance that it will all end with one of you mortally and nobly wounded and dying in your lover's arms, bathed in tears. People gobble that shit up."

"I will not be the subject of one of your vulgar romances, Dwarf," Loghain growled warningly. "Nor will Elilia."

"Vulgar! You wound me, Ser."

"Don't tempt me."

Elilia ducked back out of the tent. "Now now, gentlemen, let's not be discourteous," she said, more to Loghain than Varric. To the dwarf she said, "Ser Varric, I do hope we can rely on your discretion, of course. This man and I are to be married, if all goes as hoped, but there has not been any formal announcement to that effect - and in our position, there are those who would use any hint of unbecoming conduct against us."

Loghain snorted. "The man is a writer of trashy codswallop and sensational literature. He has no discretion." And he's a foreigner, he thought, but didn't say. He was trying mightily to set aside knee-jerk reactions to foreign accents in favor of strengthening his country. It had cost him a lot to suggest King Alistair call for the dissatisfied legions of other nations make a play for life in Ferelden, but the extra hands would be welcome provided they made good effort to live as citizens of their adoptive homeland. They'd get a lot of trash, doubtless, but even refuse had its uses, and bullshit could fertilize many crops.

Varric drew himself up to his full and, for a dwarf, quite impressive height. "I, Messer, am a gentleman, and like any true gentleman I am moved by the plea of a lovely lady. My Lady, I shall be the soul and beating heart of discretion and repeat nothing that I see or hear while we travel together." Then, eyes avid and speculating, he muttered under his breath, "Not without permission, anyway."

Loghain turned his attention back to the setting up of camp, resigned for the moment to the interested scrutiny of one of the wolves of the literary world. Mentally, he cursed their meeting with the dwarves. Not only did it put a significant damper on the possibility of any real…"activities" between himself and his intended while on the road, but there was no way in heaven he was going to allow Seanna to tutor him from the book of natural philosophy he'd brought along in front of this inquisitive crow and his so-called sister. He'd actually been looking forward to that, a little, but he wouldn't expose his ignorance in front of a supercilious foreigner, particularly one who styled himself as a man of letters.

The three of them had agreed between themselves to take turns with the cooking, and drew straws to see who would go first. The lot had fallen to Elilia, who grimaced and made a joke about her campfire cuisine, but Laz Brosca cheerily preempted their plans and offered to cook this first meal herself. Loghain hoped that did not mean they would be treated to the sort of recipes favored in Orzammar - nug pancakes and deepstalker steak - but evidently Laz had been a surfacer long enough to pick up something of Ferelden cookery for she combined her ingredients in the cookpot to end up with quite a competent lamb and pea stew. She even dished up portions for the mabaris, and Paragon dove into her meal with good doggy gusto. Champion and Haakon sniffed the dish suspiciously for a moment, unsure whether green things were really edible, but eventually they ate and seemed to enjoy it. Haakon finished his and went to beg more from his mistress, whining shamelessly until she gave in and shared some bits of lamb from her own bowl. Champion came to sit beside Loghain but did not deign to beg. She pretended full satisfaction and rested her head upon his knee. The results were the same - he sacrificed a couple of nice-sized chunks of tender meat from his own supper and she ate them from his hand with dignity and due appreciation. Puppies needed lots of food to grow big and stay healthy. He was not entirely happy to have them along on this journey as they were too young to pitch into battles as they'd done today, but they'd acquitted themselves well and he was proud. If they encountered more trouble along the way - which was a blue-blooded certainty - he'd remember to order Champion to stay back, and would tell Elilia to do the same for Haakon. Pups ought not to fight like dogs any more than boys ought to fight like men, and he remembered with bitterness his own very youthful introduction to the art of killing people. There had simply been no choice at the time.

He regarded the new mabari in their midst. Paragon was probably a bit more than a year old, and so it wasn't entirely too early for her to be trained to fight. She had that rangy, loose-limbed look adolescent hounds bore until they reached full maturity, but would undoubtedly be a fine dog when she had her growth. Her coat was a deep russet color, tinged at the edges with a hint of black that deepened into an outright splotch over her left eye and ear, and another on her back. She looked well-fed and well-loved, which was good, but it was equally clear to Loghain that she was training her people more than her people were training her. That was actually probably for the best as well. There were a lot of mabari in other lands these days, he'd heard, and it rankled him because there could be no question in his mind that those poor creatures were not being given their due respect. Paragon was smart enough to insist upon hers.

After the cleaning up was done, Loghain expected Seanna to beg a story of their new companion. She and Elilia made utter fools of themselves over that ridiculous book of theirs. Loghain had opened it up once, curious, and closed it again as the first thing his eye landed upon was a passage about breasts that "strained like wild horses to escape the corral of her bodice." He did not know what "lady" the passage referred to, but the mental image created by the phrasing was, to him, less titillating than disturbing. Other men might find it an attractive picture, but he preferred breasts that behaved as a cohesive unit with the lady they were attached to rather than as independent entities with will - and evidently movement - of their own.

But to his surprise, the gentle little elf-mage instead asked about their presence in Ferelden. "You said you came to find an old friend," she said. "Who was that?"

The dwarf sighed. "Kireani Hawke," he said, a bit sadly. "Otherwise known as the Champion of Kirkwall. Circumstances beyond our control forced us to go our separate ways, but I thought perhaps to warn her about the Seekers. Her maternal line was Kirkwall nobility, but Kireani herself is an unrepentant Ferelden girl. I thought maybe she might have come home, but small though the country is it is a bit like a good old needle-hunt through a very large haystack. Still, I met two Ferelden Heroes, so it seems to me a good omen. Maybe I'll run across Hawke yet."

Loghain rather hoped he did. He'd heard something of the exploits of the Champion of Kirkwall, and it seemed to him a crime and a shame that such a person was not in Ferelden where she belonged, properly respected and rewarded for her services instead of set on the run like a common thief for saving the Kirkwall Circle from Annulment. Of course, some said she was involved in the plot that destroyed the Chantry and killed the Grand Cleric and her Priests, but with the way Loghain felt about that particular institution at the moment he could almost applaud that as well. Kireani Hawke should return to her native land and make her skills useful to the King and Queen. She should never have left in the first place, but under the circumstances - threat of imminent destruction and all - he was willing to be forgiving. He was in a position to know all too much about unfortunate lapses in judgment.

Elilia asked the more burning question, which was how exactly two dwarves from different lands happened to find each other and decide they were siblings. Laz laughed and storyteller Varric allowed her to take lead.

"I was knocking heads for this mercenary company in Highever when Varric came in on the boat from Ostwick. I guess we noticed each other because of our hair - redheads ain't too unusual among dwarves but bloody-blonds just ain't seen all that much. We talked, found out there was at least a nug's chance in a deepstalker nest that we were related, and the idea was so funny - me so bass ackward and Varric so fine and dandy - that we decided that even if it wasn't true it oughta be, and that's that." She laughed again. "Varric was born on the Surface, so I guess he don't know he should kick dirt in my face and walk on my hands instead of bringing me into the family."

"I always wanted a sister," Varric said, comfortably enough. "I had an older brother, and that didn't work out too well - long story - so I thought I'd give a female sibling a chance to stab me in the back and strand me in the Deep Roads to die."

The storyteller turned his gaze upon Loghain, who blandly ate his stew and said nothing. "Your turn to ask a question, I believe, or aren't you playing?" Varric said.

Loghain affected surprise. "Is this a game? I was under the impression that the ladies were simply satisfying their curiosity. However it is, I have no questions."

"Well I have one. How did you manage to get out of Orlais alive?"

"I walked, for the most part. Occasionally I bartered rides. How else should I have done? I'm not particularly fond of sea travel these days."

Varric chuckled, a rumble in his chest. "Come on, there's a story here and my gut says it's a good one. A lone Ferelden adrift in the middle of a nation that would have wanted your head anyway, and charged with 'sowing seeds of sedition in the lower classes?' You should be a particularly ugly decoration on the battlements of Val Royeaux right now, or at the very least rotting on a wheel. Instead you're here in native heather, nice and cozy with a woman who's probably going to have a hell of a lot of power in this country pretty soon, and you even led the Ferelden army against the Chevaliers in what can only be described as a stunning victory, even if I doubt it was a definitive one. Come on - I won't write it down or anything but you can't leave me wondering, it's bad for my constitution."

Elilia and Seanna both were looking at him now. "'Sowing seeds of sedition?'" Elilia asked. He sighed and shrugged.

"What did you expect of me? Orlais was plotting invasion and I hoped to distract them. I had no further place with the Wardens, felt I had no place at home…most people in Orlais are perfectly decent, lacking only the backbone to stand up and tell the greedy bastards ruling their lives that they won't take it anymore. But they've been under the yoke so long that many of them seem almost to like it." He shook his head sadly. "I'd be there still, trying to foment something, threat of execution or no, but when I fell ill it suddenly occurred to me that dying in Orlais was the worst possible fate I could imagine for myself. I took the bloody Chantry's bloody expensive cure so I'd be sure not to spread my disease here at home, and I walked. Out. Of bloody Orlais."

"Just that easily?" Varric persisted. "I mean come on, they surely had a decent description of you. Seeing you for myself now, I have to say you're pretty damned distinct."

"I didn't say that I didn't leave Bloody Orlais a little bit bloodier than I found it," Loghain said, voice as dark as his lowering brow.

"For what reason on this good green earth," Elilia said, exasperated, "were you 'sowing seeds of sedition' in a quarantined Alienage? For I know you must surely have ventured to such a place, to catch Bloody Lung of all the damned diseases in Thedas."

He shifted uncomfortably and his pale face reddened. "I wasn't trying to foment revolution there," he mumbled. Elilia regarded him sharply for a time, then her face softened as she realized the truth he didn't want to talk about. He had tried, in his own clumsy way, to make some restitution and penance with the City Elves for what he'd done to the Alienage of Denerim, and had accidentally taken sick along with them. Like so many things that had happened during the Fifth Blight, his callous selling of Ferelden citizens, elven or not, into slavery was perplexing to her, to say the least. He'd had a reputation, before then, of being quite high-minded about elves, and fair-handed in his dealings with them. Elves living directly under his offices in Gwaren had been considered uncommonly lucky, given a latitude they simply did not enjoy in other places in Ferelden and even allowed to bear arms.

Even Loghain did not know precisely what had possessed him to sign that thrice-damned contract with that oily Tevinter, Caladrius. Howe had said it was only wise, of course, but when had he started accepting Howe's recommendations over his own reservations? Even thinking about that consultation was difficult. In fact, memories from most of that year were oddly fuzzy and indistinct. Then there was the matter of the apostate sent by someone to kill Arl Eamon. That apostate had claimed his employer was Loghain himself, and Elilia seemed to have believed him, but Loghain…did not remember any such thing at all. Killing Eamon would have been something he was quite happy to do, but while he rather reluctantly accepted the value of a good assassin it was a dodgy practice at best, prone to messy failure - as the resulting consequences of that assassination attempt had proven. He was morally certain that if he had set someone to kill the Arl he would have at the very least hired a proper professional and not trusted to the good faith of a runaway mage. It made no bloody sense, tactically. If he hadn't come to trust Elilia he could easily believe that she'd made the entire episode up just to bolster her claims against him - and, he had to admit, if he hadn't felt the effects of the ashes of Andraste himself he might still believe she'd made up much of it. He still suffered no pain in his joints, and felt younger and stronger than he had in many a moon.

Elilia clapped him on the back, companionably, and surreptitiously rubbed the back of his neck in more loverish fashion. He should be glad - and was, truly - that she had such capacity for forgiveness. He could only make an effort to be deserving of it. He favored her with a small smile, but from the corner of his eye he caught Varric's knowing smirk and much of his good feeling evaporated. Blasted interlopers. Cock-blocking interlopers. He gave the dwarf his best scowl. Evidently it was pretty good.

"Hot damn, if you could distill that look and put it in a bottle it would be the deadliest poison in Thedas," Varric said, mightily impressed.

A/N: Varric's arrival in my story only very shortly after the events in DAII means that I'm compressing the timeline of canon quite a bit, but I refuse to feel guilty about it since canon timelines are frustrating creatures anyway. As to certain implications found herein: for an excellent take on this check out Arsinoe de Blassenville's stories; there were too damned many blood mages in Denerim for there not to be something very dark and nasty going on. Just Caladrius on his own was enough to make me think twice about just how much free will was involved in certain decisions. I was quite disappointed in-game by the fact that the nest of blood mages in the back alley were apparently completely without agenda given how well-funded they and all their high-priced mercenaries were, and its patently ridiculous to believe it. Then, too, sending Jowan to kill Arl Eamon doesn't make much sense to me. Meddle with templars and piss the Chantry off, send someone you don't know to perform an assassination that is political suicide (at the very least) if it fails - which, with a rank amateur, is almost assured - and then keep the head templar alive to tell the tale. If it wasn't blood mages messing with minds then I think it was Arl Howe looking to set up a backup plan in case he needed blackmail material against Loghain or something he could use to get rid of him if he became uncooperative. The Circle shields mages from the outside world as much as possible, it seems, so to me it seems probable enough that Jowan might have been bamboozled into thinking he was speaking to Loghain himself when it was really Howe - "portraits" aren't always labeled, after all.