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.
Chapter Sixty-Seven: Shut Out
I think you should go.
Go? Where?
I don't care. Anywhere. To the temple of Andraste - you wanted to fess up to the Guardian about the extra ashes you took, right? Just…go.
Will I be welcome to return?
I don't know.
Loghain wet his face and hung his head over the basin, dripping. Go, she told him. Don't come back, she'd implied. Maker.
He looked up into the mirror that hung on the wall above. Monster's eyes stared back at him. They fit the face, and the soul beneath it. A monster: now it was merely official. He cocked his fist and slammed it into his reflection, shattering it. Blood and glass dropped into the sink, and his blue dragon eyes mocked him from the dozen or so shards that remained stuck in the frame. Everything he'd ever done, he'd done for the concept of home. He'd sacrificed everything for home: he'd allowed his father to die, he punished his body to the point of brutality and beyond, he'd even precipitated a civil war because his fears of invasion were too strong to let him see the true, inner threat. And never once did he ever feel that he had a home. Not until Elilia.
Elilia. The woman was nothing if not a shock to the system. Their first comradeship, during the Blight, was tainted by his prior actions and he expected nothing from it but to be sent to his death against the Archdemon. He met her every friendly gesture with doubt and suspicion, seeing her forgiveness as a lie, until he realized that the unvoiced accusations he saw hovering about her like a swarm of bees were his own self-recriminations. His surprise to discover she was offering honest friendship was greater than the surprise he'd felt long ago when he'd realized he had somehow become friends with a chattering boy-King.
But it was friendship, nothing more, and when she asked - not ordered, asked - him to sleep with the Marsh Witch as part of some live-saving ritual he did it, against his own reservations, because she was his friend and she'd asked. Never once did he even consider the possibility that she might one day be his lover as well as his friend. He would have laughed long and bitterly if anyone suggested it.
Seeing her again after so many years, he wasn't looking for and certainly was not expecting her love. When she offered herself before the Battle of Sulcher he accepted with no thought there would be anything more to it than a single night - he did not, at that time, believe that there would be more than a single night left to him. But since that night she'd given him a life and a home he'd never known. And now…
It didn't take long to prepare. A single man who knows how to live off the land requires little more than a bedroll and a blade. He left the fine Arcdemon armor and the matching, gold-inlaid shield and wore the same dusty old leather vest and coat he'd worn more than a year ago when he shared an apple in the Denerim low market with a boy prince. With a bandaged hand and his new spectacles in place, he went to the palace to say his hellos and farewells to his grandchildren.
Duncan and Little Anora - he could hardly think of her as a "Baby" any longer - looked upon his new attire with interest. Anora was clearly enchanted by her reflection in the twin silverite discs, while Duncan wanted very much to know how he could see through them.
"Enchantment," Loghain said. "My friends Dworkin and Tarquin made them for me."
"Why do you wear them?"
"I have…I have an eye problem," Loghain said.
"May I look through them?"
He couldn't say no. He closed his eyes and kept them closed while the boy took the spectacles off his face and put them on his own. He did not open them until the glasses were again hiding his new flaw. He did not want to give the children nightmares.
"Grandfather, why are you dressed for traveling?" Duncan asked.
"Because I'm going on a journey."
"What? But you just got back from a journey. This is the first we've gotten to see you and already you're leaving?" The boy held his fists out and shook them in anger and frustration. "Do you never sit still?"
The boy's reaction startled a laugh from Loghain, though it saddened him. It was, as they say, a fair cop. "Not much, I'm afraid," he said.
"Must you really go, Grandfather?"
Must he? No, not really. There was certainly nothing demanding he return to the temple on the mountain and make restitution for his misdeed, if misdeed it was. Even if Elilia never relented, never took him back, he was not wholly bereft of family. He had these children, and he had his daughter, and even his son-in-law no longer seemed to completely resent his survival. But how long could he stay here, with them, before he found himself very much in the way? He had a habit of stepping on people's toes. No; it was better to leave, allow distance and time to work their magic, and return to the hope, slender though it might be, that everything would be all right. Elilia needed space, and he suspected she had a good reason for it. If he was correct he had but two wishes: that both came through it well and strong, and that she allowed him to share in the life they had created.
Ah, if wishes were horses…
"The journey is not absolutely imperative, my boy, but I fear I really must go all the same: Denerim isn't big enough for me at the moment."
Prince Duncan gave a long-suffering sigh. "Well, all right, if you really must go. But come back soon, all right? I haven't had you all that long and it feels like its been mostly goodbyes."
He hugged his grandson tight. "I know. I'm sorry."
It was several hours more before he managed to tear himself away from the children. It would put him on the road late, but what did that matter? He was hardly afraid to travel in the dark and his night vision was good even before his eyes went wonky. It was considerably better, now.
"Come, Champion, let's be off," he said, and the dog fell into heel behind him.
The corridor outside the children's rooms was filled with people. Champion Hawke, her sister Bethany, the blood mage Merrill, the white-haired elven knight Ser Fenris, Varric, Laz, and the dog Paragon. They looked dressed for traveling. Lounging posture straightened to attention when he appeared.
"So, Boss - where we headed?" Laz Brosca asked as she shouldered her pack.
"We?" Loghain said in surprise.
"His Majesty asked me to accompany you, General," Ser Fenris said.
"And Her Majesty asked me," Bethany Hawke said.
"I go where Bethany goes," Champion Hawke said.
"And I go with Hawke," Merrill said.
"I'm not missing out on another good story," Varric said, and patted his pack, which had the squared-off appearance of containing a large, and presumably blank, book.
"Paragon an' me are just along for the company, Boss," Laz said.
"This is a bloody expedition - I was just going for a ride, is all."
"Uh huh. Yeah. Right." That was Varric.
"Men like you don't go on rides, Elder," Merrill said. "They go on adventures. I think I'm about ready for a new one."
"I can't feed you all," Loghain warned.
"Their Majesties provided us with provisions to last us a good while, if we're careful, and I'm a good hunter, even if I can't shoot pigeons and squirrels," Hawke said.
"What about horses? I'm not providing those."
"The Crown was kind enough to make the loan of horses and ponies for us, as well."
"What? Is Anora afraid I'll jump in the river or something?"
"Or something," Varric said.
"She said a man like you always needs a competent healer at hand, and that Teyrna Elilia's friend Seanna was busy taking care of Her Grace. She's just worried for your well-being, Ser," Bethany said.
"And what of you?" Loghain turned upon Fenris. "Is Alistair looking out for my well-being, now, too? Does he think me too old and feeble to look after myself?"
"I did not think to ask His Majesty why he wished me to come along, General," Fenris said. "If you would like me to, I shall."
Loghain sniffed, sighed, and then snorted. "All right, if you're coming come along then, but you'd better not fall behind or I'll leave you there."
In truth he was glad to have the company. This gaggle of idiots would keep him well occupied and he wouldn't have time to think. Thank the Maker.