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, Origins DL content, and Dragon Age II as well as the novels The Stolen Throne and The Calling.

A/N: This is the stuff I forgot I wanted to add to the last chapter. It actually worked out well enough in the end since this gave me an opportunity to toss in some things I'd been looking for a chance to shoehorn in.

Chapter Sixty-Three: Background to History

"So…why did you let Vaughan out of Howe's dungeon?" Loghain asked, after they had repaired from the bath to the bed. "I understand what you mean by willful wickedness, but I would have thought that impulse could be served just as well by knifing the bastard in the gut. You were thinking something, weren't you?"

Elilia sighed. "I was thinking he'd speak up for me at the Landsmeet, which he did. That maybe wasn't all there was to it. Maybe that wasn't even the real reason I let him out. I don't know."

Loghain wasn't a man given to press for details, but something told him Elilia wanted to speak of it, maybe even needed to. She had held it in for a decade, after all, and he knew from personal experience how hard it could be to keep silent for too long. He didn't tell her to have out with it: he didn't have to. She saw it in his face and, with a deeper sigh, snuggled into his shoulder and bared her soul.

"I let Vaughan out because Howe was the one who locked him up," she said. "I knew he was a sick bastard, I knew he belonged in prison - at the very least. But Howe…I hated Howe so much for what he did to my family…I couldn't think past that. I couldn't think past that even though, at the moment I killed him, I felt…sad…about it. When I was a little girl he was Uncle Rendon. He used to carry me on his shoulders, tell the best stories…I couldn't help thinking about those things. It just made everything that happened so much worse, so much more…senseless. To this day, I still don't really understand why he turned on us. I know he was bitter…but it still makes no sense."

She propped herself up on one elbow and looked at him intently, with a faint undercurrent of anger. "I really never wanted to ask you this, but…why did you stand with him? I mean, I realize now that there were influences, but you knew what he did at least as far back as Ostagar."

Neither the question nor the anger underlying it surprised him; if anything, the only surprise was that it took her so long to ask. "I had every intention of confronting Howe about what happened at Highever upon my return to Denerim," he confessed. "He didn't give me the chance. He rode out under flag of truce and met the army just outside South Reach. He had papers, letters in your father's hand that were vague but which seemed to suggest he had stronger ties to Orlesian interests than I would have guessed of him. It was enough, at the time, for me to feel Howe may have been justified in his actions. I wanted to investigate further, but of course Howe destroyed most of Bryce's documentation when he sacked Highever. 'Accidentally.'"

Elilia collapsed back onto the bed. "Damned Orlais. We can't seem to shake the bastards off. If they're not actively pushing us down, the fear and hate they inspired in us are ripping us apart from the inside."

It was Loghain's turn to sigh. "I know."

She placed her hand on the middle of his chest and toyed with the hair that grew on it. "Hating Howe…wanting revenge…I think it poisoned me."

"Hate does that," Loghain said. "It can also give you strength when you think you've reached your limits. Unfortunately it's not so easy to let go of. You did a lot better on that score than I ever did."

"I still hate the bastard."

"It doesn't seem to consume you. A lot of people in your position would have taken great pleasure in killing Howe and Nathaniel and Delilah, too. After all, he took away your family - why not take away his? But you didn't do that. Instead you gave Nathaniel a chance to redeem his family name and now Delilah is Arlessa of Amaranthine."

"I made Nathaniel a Warden. That's a lot like killing him."

"Is that why you conscripted him? So he would die?"

"Well, no. I needed help, he was clearly skilled, I thought he had a good chance of surviving the Joining…"

"In my experience, serving with the Wardens is also pretty much the fastest route to restoring lost honor, too."

"Maybe so."

She lay quietly for long enough that he thought she had fallen asleep. Then, to his surprise, he felt her shoulders shaking. He looked at her and realized she was trying to hold back tears. He wasn't sure exactly what made her need to cry, and it really didn't matter anyway. He turned toward her, gathered her into his arms, and kissed her. She broke down completely, and sobbed with her arms around his neck as he kissed her tears.

"Thinking about what you've lost?" he asked.

"Yeah, I guess I am." Suddenly she laughed, though she didn't stop crying. "I never got much chance to mourn. I certainly wasn't about to cry in front of Duncan. Alistair would've fallen to pieces if I broke down, Wynne would've lectured me on my sacred duty, and Leliana would've broken out some gem about the Maker and I wasn't exactly feeling the faith at the time. Morrigan would've seen it as a weakness potentially exploitable, and Oghren would just belch and pass out. I don't even want to think about how the Sten would've reacted. Zevran was probably the only one who wouldn't have been judgmental about it, and he would've used it as an excuse to try and seduce me - like everything else."

"Can't promise I won't try and seduce you, my dear, but I understand these tears and I'll hold you for as long as you need to cry them."

She kissed his neck and cried on his shoulder. "It's been more than ten years," she said. "You must think I'm out of my mind, bawling about it now."

"I take it you've forgotten Gwaren: how you held me after I unburdened myself to you about what had happened more than fifty years ago. Sometimes old wounds hurt, and that's all there is to it. Sometimes they don't heal."

"You didn't cry."

"Perhaps not. Perhaps I didn't need to, knowing that I was with someone who understood exactly what it was to lose someone you loved so much, so horribly."

She choked briefly, and her arms tightened around his neck. "Stop it, you're making me cry harder."

He moved so that he half-covered her when he rolled her onto her back, and he proceeded to cover her face and throat with his softest kisses. "You are not weak," he told her, in a low voice very much different in tone from his usual. "This is not weakness. This is nothing more than washing out all the stains on your heart."

She choked up again. "I love you," she said. Her hands moved from his shoulders to his chest, and from his chest to his stomach. When she would have reached lower he stopped her hands, raised one to his lips and kissed it.

"Not that I don't like the direction your thoughts are taking you, my love," he said, and kissed her fingers again, "but I do find that particular activity quite distracting, and for the next while I wish to focus my attention quite thoroughly upon you, and you alone."

Some time later, Loghain raised his head from a leisurely and detailed exploration of her inner thighs. She was no longer in tears; the wet tracks on her face had long since dried. She was smiling, and her eyes had a dreamy quality to them, as if she were in the Fade wide awake.

She reached out her hand and stroked his lean face. "I haven't been a proper Andrastian for a long time, but those ashes could make me a true believer yet."

"What do you mean?" he asked, and began to kiss his way up her stomach.

"Your hair is growing in black. Had you noticed?" She reached out and took a lock of it in her fingers. Below where she grasped it the hair was silver; above, roughly two inches of follicle before the scalp, it was black. Loghain, who almost never looked in a mirror - who had no reason to do so, since he grew no beard to shave - had not noticed.

"Black hair is all it takes to make you a believer?" he asked.

"Black hair and the promise of a long life with the man I love."

"I hate to break it to you, darling, but thirty years is about the maximum I can give you, and the last decade or so at the least are likely to be anything but pleasant for either of us. If you wanted a long marriage, you ought to have married a younger man."

"You are a younger man."

"Younger than dirt, perhaps, but only just."

"Thirty years from now, when you're only just reaching the pains and complaints associated with middle age, I will expect your apology for having doubted me."

"You think that Andraste's ashes cured me of being old," he said. "Darling, there is no cure for old."

"Aye, there's no cure for the Blight, either, is there? What is age, really? It's not years, it's miles; it's life beating you up until your body can't take it anymore. Just like a wound that won't heal. And the ashes heal wounds."

"All right, I'll admit I haven't felt the aches I dealt with for decades prior to being dosed with the ashes, but there's a fallacy in your logic somewhere."

"But you can't find it, can you? Darling, I see it better than you do because I, on rare occasions, have had the opportunity to watch you sleep. When you stop scowling, which unfortunately pretty much only happens when you're sound asleep - and sometimes not even then - those scowl lines, my beloved, go away. I noticed it before but it's gotten more obvious since we came back to Denerim."

"More obv - " A sudden thought stunned him into momentary silence. "I…gave myself a second dose of ashes. After spending all that time in the alienage with the Bloody Lung, I didn't want to risk bringing it back to the palace."

"I suspected as much. Darkening hair and an absence of permanent lines hasn't been my only clue. How many times today have you made love to me? Granted your stamina has always been superhuman…"

"Who says I've finished?" He nuzzled her breasts and sucked a pink nipple into his mouth. "Perhaps you're right," he said, when he had the power of speech again. "Perhaps you have found for me the secret to restored youth. If so, I can think of no more congenial way to punish my body back into the infirmities of age than by making love to you. It's certainly better than the way I did it the first time 'round. And fortunately, my dearest, the single dose I gave you was larger than both doses I took, so if I've been given extra time, so have you."