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: May contain spoilers for Origins, Awakening, and Dragon Age II as well as the novels The Stolen Throne and The Calling.

A/N: If you wondered why my last chapter was so short, this chapter is why. Tough to write, and not because I didn't know what to say.

Chapter Thirty-Two: Hard Knocks

"Oh what beautiful gardens," Seanna said, as they stepped through the gates into the courtyard of the Keep proper and found themselves surrounded by late-blooming autumn roses. "I was expecting more Gwaren austerity here. Who planted them all?"

"Teyrna Celia," Loghain said, a bit curtly. He ushered them through the courtyard at speed, as if it were a place he didn't care to linger long, though the dogs particularly seemed inclined to dawdle. A guardsman opened the main doors for them and gave a smart salute. Elilia wondered if he was always so well-disciplined, particularly on a holiday, or only when in view of his former Teyrn.

Seneschal Cort met them inside and favored them with a bow, and said that rooms were available for all of them. He led them to the living quarters and Loghain found with little surprise that he was installed in the same suite of rooms he had occupied as Teyrn, not noticeably altered from those bygone days. Indeed, when he opened the door of the wardrobe curiously, he found his own clothes still hanging inside, smelling strongly of camphor.

A bit unnerved by the discovery, Loghain turned to the window and stood looking out of it for a long time, restlessly fiddling with the sylvanwood ring on his finger. Since he first put it on he felt different, as if a scarcely-noticed tickle in his blood had been soothed, and the buzzing in his head had faded considerably as well, but he worried. Maybe the Orlesians couldn't track him any longer, but what could the witch do to him? He supposed it didn't matter much in the end. It seemed he'd underestimated that particular opponent considerably.

She seems to favor you, the Dalish Keeper had said, but he'd seen no sign of that himself in meeting her, even before he'd killed her - or whatever it was he'd done when he drove his sword into the skull of the high dragon whose form she had assumed. Granted, he'd never exactly attempted to speak civilly to the witch, either on that first long-ago meeting when he was but a stubborn boy with a chip on his shoulder larger than his head, or that final time when he'd been brought to the little hut for the sole purpose of ending the witch's life. In his experience, when he killed things they stayed dead, and the fact that the witch had not bothered him a great deal. What sort of magic granted that kind of immortality?

He heard Champion grunt from her chosen space on the braided rug at the foot of the bed and it made him smile despite himself. The dog had eaten so many handouts that her belly was distended to twice its size and she actually waddled when she walked. She was sound asleep but somewhat disturbed thanks to the efforts her digestive system was being put through to process so much food. He hadn't eaten all that much himself but it was still quite a bit more than he'd been eating lately, and it made him a little tired and lazy.

There was a knock from the corridor. "Enter," he said. The door opened just enough to allow Elilia to slip through the gap.

She'd taken off her armor, and stood there in her loose blouse and leather breeches with her hair down and a thoughtful frown on her face.

"You want to talk," Loghain said unnecessarily. He gestured to a chair. "Have a seat."

She ignored the chair in favor of the bed, and perched herself on the edge of it. She patted the mattress next to her invitingly and he sat down, a bit warily.

"I expect you already realized that it didn't take me three days to wrap my head around what you called me," she said softly.

"I know."

"I always thought myself so high-minded. My initial reaction…shamed me."

He didn't have any ready response to that, and she didn't seem to expect him to speak. She sat for a minute with her head lowered. When she spoke again she did so in a rush. "My cousin, Arl Bryland…he's half-blood, too. It's not exactly uncommon, after all, particularly for the nobility. I shouldn't have been shocked by the idea."

He snorted. "That's probably exactly why you were shocked," he said. "Elf blood mixed with noble isn't terribly rare, though Leonas' appointment to the arling was one of the major affronts to the Landsmeet when Maric began setting the nation to rights during the Restoration, even though the rest of the Brylands were dead. But my blood isn't noble. My blood is as common as clay. And if the bannorn had known it wasn't just common but half-elven, they'd have raised arms against their king rather than let him make a Teyrn of me. But in fairness, Maric didn't know it, either. Perhaps I ought to have told him, but I doubt it would have made a difference in his decision. He could be remarkably stubborn once he had an idea in his head, and he had dreams of making Ferelden a land where elves could live among humans as equals."

"Your parents…they loved each other?"

"Yes."

"Were they…married?"

The doubt in her voice made him laugh, a harsh bark of sound. "You know, I asked my father that very question once when I was a lad - I believe my exact phrasing was, 'Father, am I a bastard?' His response was to pat me on the head very kindly and say, 'Only every now and then, Pup.' So I don't know whether or not my parents were married in the eyes of the law and the Maker or by some heathen ritual or merely mutual consent, but they considered it a bonded marriage and so shall I."

She was silent for a moment, thoughtful and considering. "Has Anora really no idea?"

"I daresay that girl has plenty of ideas, she always has, but no, she doesn't know she's quarter-blood."

"I'd say it's past time you told her, don't you?"

"And what purpose would that serve, except to upset and endanger her?" he demanded. "The more people who know the more trouble it is to keep it quiet, and if word got out that the queen's blood was common and impure the Chantry would have her marriage annulled and the banns would have her ousted from the throne faster than you can blink. 'Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.'"

"It's not like she's going to tell anyone," Elilia said. "And if you think I can't be trusted to stay quiet then you're quite welcome to kill me. She deserves to know."

"Why do you think this is so important?" he asked. "She can never know who my mother was, she died ages ago. All she can really know now is that she was an elf."

"You can tell her who your mother was. It's important to know where you come from - it's the only way to know where you're going. Tell her what kind of woman she was, what sacrifices she made for you and your father, how much they loved each other and what they had to overcome to be together. Tell her the little things that you remember, even if you think she'll consider them unimportant, and tell her the big things, too - even tell her how your mother died, because she needs to remember now more than ever why Ferelden doesn't want to bear the yoke of Orlesian occupation ever again. Tell her about your father, too, and your grandparents, and any other family you had. Andraste's ass, tell her about your dog."

That startled him a bit, and then he grimaced. "I didn't know you were listening."

"Kiveal couldn't keep a secret to save his life," she said, primly. "I had to drag every bloody word out of you with a chain fall, so it figures that the only time you'd unburden yourself to tell an actual unprompted story about your past it would be to the hound. If I know anything about you at all then it's a dead surety that Anora knows nothing about any of this."

"I…don't actually have any other family that I know of," he said haltingly. "If mother ever mentioned anything even remotely Dalish she'd clam up instantaneously, and father never spoke - of anything, really. I don't even know where he came from originally. I know he wasn't native to Oswin, where our freehold was, but only because the men in town said as much."

"A tradition of silence it's high time you broke," she said. "Anora needs to know everything you can tell her, so she can know herself and where she comes from. I…would like to know these things, because I would like to know you. I've always felt that I understood you, the way you think and why you act, but I'll never be able to understand completely until I understand what made you who you are. But I won't press you. I know you're adverse to storytelling."

"I…suppose I ought to tell you," he said, slowly. "It's not like you don't already know the only dangerous secret of my family that I am aware of."

She smiled and kissed his cheek. "You can take your time, I won't push. I just want to know one thing right now, and I'll leave you be until another time."

"What's that?" he asked.

"Were you really raised on a farm? Anora seems to have her doubts, and frankly so do I. You don't learn to fight like you do by driving a plough or reaping wheat."

"Oh really? A scythe can be a formidable weapon. Perhaps one day I'll tell you about the little farm girl who attacked an entire gang of highwaymen that had waylaid me on the road to Denerim."

She cocked an eyebrow. "Cauthrien?"

"Indeed."

"Did she actually save your life that day, or…?"

"I may have killed the last of the bandits before she made it all the way across the field, but her charge was quite impressive regardless. The reaper she wielded was larger than she was, by quite a lot."

Elilia chuckled. "Hard to picture. But you sidestepped the original question. Farmer or not?"

"I was born on a farm, and was raised there until the Orlesians took it away from us. I don't think my father was a born farmer, however. He was a soldier in King Brandel's army before it was defeated, which is evidently what led him to meet my mother. I suppose he lost heart when the King was killed, or perhaps just his taste for bloodshed, but he put down his sword for a time and picked up a plough instead. I can't say that our harvests were ever any too impressive, but he had a fine way with horses. Raising Ferelden Cob was how we kept the farm a going concern, up until the lords imposed their killing taxes."

"And he taught you to fight."

He shook his head. "My father had a head for strategy, and I learned much by watching him. But he favored the greatsword, as you do, and wasn't exactly skilled with anything smaller. No, my mother taught me most of my fighting skills - dagger, longsword, and bow - and I picked up the shield for the first time during the Rebellion. Maric said I needed it, since I seemed bound and determined to use myself as a shield. Wilhelm was so tired of fixing up cracked ribs and punctured lungs that he threatened to refuse me healing the next time I cleverly blocked a war hammer with my chest."

Elilia snorted laughter. "Yet still they never forced a helmet upon you?"

"Maric claimed we'd never face an enemy that would be able to reach so high, and Wilhelm said it would make no difference if I did take a blow, as my head was made of harder stuff than that of his golem. Truth is I flatly refuse to wear a helmet - I can't see or hear for shit inside a tin can, and I start feeling too closed in. Plate armor is confining enough."

"You wore that helmet I took off the Hurlock General at the Battle of Denerim," Elilia pointed out.

"Only during the fight against the Archdemon, in case you didn't notice. It bore some enchantment that rendered the creature's breath relatively ineffectual against me."

"I wondered how you managed to plough right through that miasma while the rest of us were twitching in pain," she said. "Thanks for sharing."

"Difficult to share one helmet, isn't it?" he pointed out. "And the reason you gave it to me, as I recall, is because it was too big for you and too small for the Sten. I figured it meant that the rest of you were free to use up those balms the marsh witch made for you."

"Fair point. So what, then - your mother took you out behind the barn and taught you to spar?"

"More or less. Mostly, though, we went into the woods out back of the house, and she taught me woodlore - I suppose you could say that was my one inheritance from my Dalish ancestry. She taught me how to shape and string my own bow, and how to chip out stone arrowheads and fletch my own arrows. She said it would be useful to know in case things ever got so bad that I had to live off the land - I guess that means she had something of a gift for prophecy. Sometimes out there she started to forget that I was human, and she'd almost let slip something that was very decidedly Dalish. When she taught me how to skin a buck she put my hands on the hilt of the knife and said, 'And now we say…' and then shut her mouth so tight her lips disappeared, and just showed me how to make the cut. I think she was on the verge of teaching me some Dalish prayer to their gods, or something."

"Why didn't she want you to know such things?" Elilia asked.

"I can't rightly say for sure," he said. "I do know, however, that she went very far out of her way to ensure that no one in Oswin knew that I was the son of an elf. I suppose she didn't want me to know anything that might slip out someday in front of the wrong person, like one of the sisters from the local Chantry. I was already a favorite target of theirs since our family never went to mass."

"So you learned nothing whatsoever about the Dalish from her, other than basic arrowcraft?"

He shook his head. "In fact, the first time I encountered Dalish I couldn't be sure whether or not I'd heard they ate people. I couldn't exactly imagine that of my mother, but she always looked wild enough, to me. Those tattoos she wore set her apart from the women of Oswin more than her pointy ears ever did. I was absolutely fascinated by those tattoos, when I was a pup. I always wanted to know what they meant, but she never would tell me. And when I was eight or nine years old and declared I wanted to have my face tattooed she sat me down and explained to me in no uncertain terms that I was never again to entertain the thought."

Elilia smiled ruefully. "I wonder what she would have thought of me," she said.

"If you mean your tattoo, I'm not sure. I don't think she'd have minded any, since you've no reason to fear that anyone will take you for an elf."

She looked at him, close unto six and a half feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders, and burst into laughter. He knew exactly what had made her mirthful, and smiled thinly himself.

"I wasn't very big when I was a child," he explained. "Rather spindly, actually."

She composed herself. "So your father was a great fighter, and your mother was a great fighter. Why did they not fight the Orlesians?"

"They did," he said grimly. "The year father couldn't make the taxes. The first time the lord came to collect and father couldn't pay, he took Adalla - wanted to breed her to one of his brainless Orlesian game hounds. I tried to stop him but father held me back, said it was better that he take the dog rather than something else. I understand that now, but at the time I was furious with him for doing nothing while the bastards took Adalla away. Six months later the lord was back, tossed Adalla out of the back of his wagon, and said she had proven 'unsatisfactory' - by which I assume she refused to submit to his whims regardless of how he beat or tortured her. He said father still owed his taxes and left with a promise to return for payment. Adalla died before that happened, but the ponce was back in due course, and since there was nothing left for the bastard to take he decided to take the farm - and arrest father, for tax evasion. I think he would have let them take him, too, but one of the louts laid hands on me and asked the lord what to do with the 'whelp.' 'I don't care - kill him,' the lord says, just as easy as you please, and then father fought back. I'd never seen my father lash out in anger before that day, hadn't thought him capable of it. There were at least fifteen men there that day, guards of the lord, and it was almost more than they could manage to subdue him, even though he held no weapon. While the men were fighting father, the lord grabbed hold of me and made to kill me himself, I think, when mother came flying out of the house with her bow drawn and arrows flying. Once they'd finally knocked my father unconscious the surviving guards had their hands full getting control of her - but when they did, the lord told them to hold her down. 'Make sure the boy sees,' he said, all the while unlacing his trousers…"

A muscle in his jaw twitched spasmodically as he clenched his teeth tight. "She pleaded with him then, I remember that. Not to spare her, not to let her go, but just not to make me watch it happen. The bastard just laughed at her." He shook his head vigorously, as if to dislodge the memory. "Other lords had always wondered why when I set out laws for Gwaren I penalized rape so very much higher than it is punished in other parts of Ferelden, higher than the penalties I set for theft of teyrnir property, even. Do you have any questions on that score?"

She shook her head. "No, I don't."

"It is the worst crime any man can commit," he said, vehemently, "short of outright murder. And I'm not always too sure that murder isn't kinder, at times. Some of the women I've seen - it's like they were dead. They just didn't have the strength to continue on after what they were put through." He was so passionate about it that he fairly quaked with barely-repressed rage.

Elilia placed a calming hand on the middle of his chest, kissed him, and put her head down on his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her almost too tightly.

"I never cried," he said. "Not a tear. It was too big for tears, I think. When it was over and she was dead they put the house and outbuildings to the torch and left. Just left, almost as if they'd forgotten all about me. I remember thinking that mother looked cold laying there with her dress all torn, so I went into the house and got the big quilt off my parents' bed and covered her with it - I didn't even notice until much later that the fire in the roof singed off some of my hair. After awhile my father came to and saw me there, sitting by my mother's body looking like a mage made Tranquil, I suppose, and he took a sword from one of the men mother's arrows had killed and he left. He just left. I sat there for three days, and I couldn't tell you today whether I moved or slept or even breathed. Finally father returned, grabbed mother's bow and tossed me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and we were on the run from that day forward. He'd killed them, you see, every damned one of them. Tracked them down one by one and gutted them all, the lord last. I think he came to regret it, because his rage that day fed my anger later on, and he worried I'd come to a sorry pass if I didn't learn forgiveness. One more thing I suppose I can say he was right about."

"Does it feel any better," Elilia asked after a long period of silence, "having out with it at last?"

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe. A little."

She coaxed him into lying down beside her, and they lay in silence. The sounds of Harvestmere revelry continued to drift through the unshuttered window but that was all outside; inside all was silence and the pain of an old wound reopened in order to bleed out infection. After some time they slept, and that, too, was part of healing.

A/N: The Occupation is one of the biggest issues to wrap my head around in canon - in game it says it was 80 years long, in THE STOLEN THRONE it seems as if it started within Loghain and Maric's lifetimes. I figure this means that the Orlesians allowed Ferelden to stand as a protectorate for a lot of those eighty years, with the Theirins at least nominally in control, but that as the Orlesians grip got tighter and tighter Maric's great-grandfather and then his grandfather started fighting back, culminating in the deposition of the Theirins and Queen Moira's rebellion. Maric evidently has memories of the time when his grandfather ruled since we are told he used to hide his grandfather's glasses in the castle and there was no such amenity as a castle (other than being billeted occasionally by sympathetic nobles) once the Rebellion was on (and codex entries indicate that Brandel was killed) but Loghain at least never indicates a time in his lifetime when his father was anything other than a farmer, so either Gareth was mustered out of service sometime before the actual end of Theirin rule, or Maric is a bit older than Loghain - which is possible as we are never told how old Loghain is, only that he thinks Maric (eighteen at the time) looks "about his age." Loghain is definitely someone who would have seemed (and felt) much more mature than he was, while Maric was still very much a boy and probably looked it, but this would mean that Loghain was awfully young during the Rebellion, even if it were only a matter of a couple of years. But its not like history does not know of extremely young generals who go on to conquer most of the known world (see Alexander the Great). Still, for my money, Gareth was injured at the Battle of Lothering - under the command of Maric's Great-Grandfather, who died there according to codex (I can't remember the name, but since it wasn't Brandel I make him great-grandfather) and was out of the service as Ferelden self-rule came to a whimpering defeat under Brandel.