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Loghain considered himself an intelligent man. Perhaps not the genius some history books made him out to be, but smart, a problem solver, someone who excelled at reading a situation and acting accordingly. So it was with great frustration that he found himself at a loss as to what game the Warden was playing at as they marched south from Denerim.
Her companions had been understandably distant, throwing him veiled distrustful looks as they traveled, or in the older mage's case, openly hostile glares. But the girl, the Warden, had been amiable towards him: making sure rations were evenly divided in his favor, ensuring he was acquainted with and understood their plans, even gracing him with the occasional smile under sad grey eyes. He didn't trust Wardens in the best of circumstances, and his current situation was far from what he would call the best. So what was she doing?
Perhaps she had intended him to die in the Joining ritual. Appease Anora by not outright executing him but still have him done with. Perhaps his survival was a fluke in her plans and now she had to find a new method to dispose of him. He watched the back of her auburn head as they walked, her hair cropped unflatteringly short sometime between the Landsmeet and their departure early the next morning, and chewed over the question.
At dusk they found a secluded clearing off the road, setting up tents and building fires in an uncomfortable silence. He felt eyes on his back, animosity less disguised than it had been on the road, waiting for him to flee like a coward or attack like a cornered feral dog: to prove himself the monster that they believed him to be.
But Loghain was not a coward, and thanks to the Warden, he had nowhere to run.
He was already dead.
So he sat on a fallen log away from the others and ignored their withering glances, sharpening and polishing his blade, although it did not need it. The ritual was familiar, and the practiced motion slowly relaxed the tension from his shoulders and back.
As he worked over the steel, he slowly came to realize he was no longer alone, the repeated sound of whetstone against steel covering the sound of her feet approaching. Loghain inwardly cursed his inattention, though regarded with bitterness that if his travel companions wished his death his reaction time would likely not do much to save him. She didn't speak, standing just behind his elbow, but he could feel her watching him with her sad grey eyes.
"You're very light on your feet for a warrior." He said by way of greeting, breaking the strange silence she carried with her. "I take it that was your mother's influence. Bryce was never what anyone would call subtle."
The girl seemed to start, eyes focusing on him like she'd only just noticed his presence."You knew my parents."
"Of course I knew your parents, girl." He remembered her too, the tall, lanky girl with the long red braid who so often ended up playing the dragon to Cailan's heroic prince when Anora insisted on being the captured damsel.
She hesitated, almost turned to go, then stopped, her hands dancing around her hips where weapons would have sat were she armed. A nervous habit, he concluded, similar to his own itchy palms in moments of stress. Loghain ran a rag over his greatsword and returned it to its sheath, setting the weapon aside as he waited for her to reach the conclusion of whatever internal conflict she seemed to be struggling with.
"Walk with me?" It was phrased as a question, which surprised Loghain. The girl had every right to order him to do whatever she wished and he would have expected her to revel in it. Instead, she demurely requested his acquiescence, which only acted to further his suspicions.
"Why?" He grunted, making no move to stand.
"I need to check the perimeter for darkspawn."
They both knew that her response did not truly answer his question. He signed in resignation. "I assume you'd prefer I did not bring my weapon."
She shrugged. "If it makes you more comfortable to have it, go ahead."
Loghain didn't realize that his face had reacted to her blatant show of faith until her brows pulled down in response, the stern, challenging look she had worn in the Landsmeet flashing in her eyes. "You're not going to kill me, Loghain."
She was not afraid, not of him and, he suspected, not of anything.
He left the greatsword where it lay.
On his feet, he saw that the Circle Mage, Wynne, was watching their exchange with barely contained fury shimmering behind her eyes. She didn't like him, that was very clear, but he wondered which of his innumerable sins she took offense with in particular. The Warden waved to the woman, flashing a smile that very clearly stated she was fine and needed no mothering, then started walking, trusting that he would follow.
For several minutes the air was dominated by the sound of their feet moving through long grass and past the occasional rustling shrub as she led him just beyond the tree line where the camp was obscured. Then she cleared her throat. Loghain took his eyes off the path ahead to glance at her, but she wasn't looking at him, attention focused on the trees around them with such intensity that he suspected she wasn't seeing them at all.
"Can you tell me about them? My parents." Her voice was small, like a wounded bird. Even as a child she had been confident and loud, proud, and honest to a fault. At the Landsmeet she had displayed much the same, her demeanor a dizzying echo of her father at times. This, whatever it was, was unfamiliar to him and he approached it with the same caution he would a suspected ambush.
"What do you want to know?" He grumbled, pushing aside a branch ahead of him.
"I haven't spoken to anyone who really knew them since this whole thing began. No one here had ever even met them, and Eamon… I think he wanted to spare my feelings, there was always something more pressing to discuss when I tried to bring them up."
"Something that would benefit him, I would wager." The disdain in Loghain's voice was tempered with age. "Eamon has always been more concerned with his own ambitions than anyone else's feelings."
She swallowed, head nodding slightly to confirm his assertion. "And Fergus… I don't even know if Fergus is alive or if he knows." She took a deep breath, swallowing down emotion. "Did you know them well?"
This, Loghain understood. The girl's life and her freedom had been ripped away in one horrific moment, and after that her existence had been one increasingly terrifying nightmare after another, into which he had played no small part. She wanted normalcy, she wanted to mourn, she wanted to be, for just a moment, the daughter of Bryce and Eleanor Cousland rather than The Warden.
"I did. I was honored to consider your parents my friends, for a time. They were good people. It was—” he stopped, his face falling back into a grimace. It would be best to avoid bringing up their death. The fact that he had not known about Howe’s involvement at the time did not mean he didn’t bear culpability for it, or that she wouldn’t blame him. She looked at him inquiringly and he quickly went on to cover the near flub. "Bryce— your father was brash and bold, like you are. He was decisive and could be a real pain in the ass when he set his mind to something. I and a lot of other people respected him for it. He cared in a way a lot of Lords don't."
Loghain saw a small smile turn one side of her lips before she spoke. "He fought in the rebellion for this land and these people, he said it wouldn't be right not to keep fighting for them."
Loghain nodded. That sounded like the Bryce Cousland he knew: a man of noble ideals that didn't always translate with the way the world functioned. He wondered absently how different his Civil War would have gone had Bryce and Eleanor been alive for it, if it would have happened at all. He afforded the girl another look. She would have been spared her fate had Howe not betrayed her family, but where would that have left the world?
"What about my mother?"
“Eleanor was a force of nature. Even as a lady at court she never lost the raider she was raised to be. Fiercely loyal to her family and those she considered friends and vicious when she thought they were in jeopardy." He chuckled, finding himself drawn into his memories of the Couslands. "Getting on Bryce's bad side was stupid, getting on Eleanor's bad side was suicide."
"She wanted me to be a lady, a real lady, in fancy frocks hosting dinner parties and laughing prettily at the jokes of lesser lords." She shook her head, hair falling into her eyes. "I had no interest in the things I was supposed to. I climbed trees with Cailan to avoid Anora’s tea parties, I ripped and ruined every dress she put me in. My needlework was atrocious." She smiled and her eyes seemed to shimmer, though with laughter or tears Loghain couldn't tell. "I embroidered her a handkerchief once, it was the most hideous thing you ever laid eyes on, and she carried it every day."
"They loved you very much." He commented, unsure of what to say.
That seemed to be the right thing.
"They did." She smiled warmly at him. "Thank you for humoring me."
He bristled slightly at her gratitude. "No thanks are necessary."
"Thank you, regardless."
It had to be a game, a ploy of some kind. No one was as generous as she behaved. No one who lived through what she had could be so kind. His mind slipped back into the roundabout circle of trying to determine what she wanted from him, what the point of it all was, as they continued their walk of the perimeter.
"Do you have any questions for me?" She asked suddenly, pushing through brush two steps ahead of him. "About the Warden thing or anything else?"
The number of questions he had for her was innumerable, more than could be asked in a short meander, and asking too many, displaying his ignorance and confusion, would be unwise until he figured out her end goal. "I have one," he said, voice flat. The one which pressed most heavily against him and the answer to which was worth more to him than the asking would give. "Why spare me?" The question had been bouncing around his brain ever since the Landsmeet, ever since the Bastard had furiously demanded his death, and the girl, looking for all the world like her Mother, firmly refused him.
“You’re a capable warrior and a brilliant tactician.” She answered quickly, face as lacking in affect as his own. “You can do more good as a Warden than you can dead.”
He nodded condescendingly. “That’s a perfectly reasonable justification, and I’m sure Eamon was thoroughly convinced by it.”
“But you’re not.” One corner of her mouth inclined slightly. She sighed, feet stalling as her hands once again danced restlessly around her hips. “When I was a little girl, while my mother fussed over my etiquette, my father would tell me stories about the rebellion. About how he met my mother, about King Maric and Queen Rowan, about the rebel queen who I was named for. He told me all about the Battle of West Hill, the Battle of Denerim Harbor, and all the skirmishes he fought in.” She took a breath and Loghain found his palms had become itchy. He knew where this was headed, and he was no longer sure it was a conversation he wanted to be involved in.
“And he told me stories about the Hero of River Dane.” She shook her head gently. “A man who had the most humble beginnings and risked everything to fight for what was right, to save his people from oppressors. I remember telling my father that’s what I want to be. I don’t want to be someone’s wife, I don’t want to be a lady, I want to be a hero like Loghain Mac Tir.”
Loghain swallowed to wet his suddenly dry mouth. “I fear that I turned out to be a disappointing idol.”
She fixed him with an intense, steely look. “I spared you because I believe you’re still the Hero of River Dane. You’re still a man who does what he thinks is right and what he thinks is necessary for the good of his country. You were just wrong about what was right."
He searched her eyes in vain for some sign of deception, something to prove that this was an act. Anything to offset the gut-punch of guilt radiating out from the pit of his stomach. He had labeled her a traitor, accused her of regicide, sent assassins and worse after her, and yet she still believed he was a good man. Loghain wasn't sure himself if he believed that, but this girl truly did.
"If I may say so, I think you grew into a fine lady, even without the frocks." Loghain's voice was muted, his usual lack of emotion quavering slightly as the words slipped from his lips. The startled expression and subtle flush she gave him spoke volumes to her surprise at such a compliment.
"I would never have expected you to think so." The comment was only half voiced, more to herself than to him. Loghain's thoughts again ricocheted to the various torments his choices and actions had subjected her to. Intermingled with the shame was a small voice that insisted this was a slip, that she had been attempting to goad him in some way and that his response had stymied her attempt at confrontation. He latched onto the voice, watching her expression for any evidence that he could use to strengthen it.
“You never seemed to like me much,” She remarked thoughtfully, smiling sadly, her eyes on the forest floor ahead of her.
Loghain gaped at her, his hope of some illicit motivation for their conversation shriveling. He quickly wiped the emotional response from his features and cleared his throat. “What makes you say that?”
She shrugged, tossing him a sheepish glance over her shoulder. "You were always nearby when we played, keeping one eye on us no matter what else was going on. I remember how gentle you were with Anora, like a completely different man than you were with my father and the king. And Cailan, you treated him like he was already King even though he was only ten." She chuckled at the memory, then sobered. "But me… it was like I didn't exist."
Loghain's tongue felt heavy. Maric would have laughed at him were he around to see it. The great Loghain Mac Tir, who less than twenty-four hours prior had been actively seeking this girl's death, was now fumbling for a way to explain his indifference to her as a child without hurting her feelings. “It’s not that I didn’t like you. You were…” He struggled for words, rubbing his eyes with one hand. "You were an obstacle."
She blinked at him. “A ten-year-old girl was an obstacle?”
He sighed. "You probably don't know, why would you, that Cailan and Anora were not promised to each other at birth. Maric wasn't overly concerned with his son's future until many years after the Queen's death. I was never overly concerned with the issue myself because the situation seemed straight forward. The moment I had a daughter there was no question in my mind that she would marry Maric's son. But then the Couslands brought their daughter to court." He stalled, rubbing his itchy palms against his thighs. "You were the right age, pretty, and you and Cailan got along like thieves. More than any of that were your parents' political ties. The Couslands are an old, well-respected family and the Mac Eanraig clan has ties all over Thedas. That's a lot for the daughter of a farmer to compete with. I was suddenly concerned for my daughter's future, and you, child though you were, were the thing which stood in the way of her advancement."
"But Maric was your best friend." The girl listened with enraptured eyes, their walk halted entirely by her interest.
"It says much about your view of the world that you think that would be the end of it. There was a fair amount of pressure on Maric to match his boy with such a well-connected bride. Bryce and I shouted at each other for hours, several times we nearly came to blows." Loghain's face contracted into a frown. "In the end, the King made his decision, and Bryce stopped bringing you to court. I have always suspected that were it not for Maric's love for me, you would have sat the throne beside Cailan."
She was quiet, studying the ground at her feet, then she laughed bitterly. “I didn’t know that.” She laughed again, the sound sounding very much to Loghain like a sob.
“Why is that funny?”
“That’s twice I was almost queen.”
The defeat in her voice was palpable, a sudden wet sheen on her eyes making Loghain uncomfortable. He had of course known that she and the Bastard had been engaged to be married, Eamon didn’t keep his plans close enough for word not to get back to him in Denerim, but had not taken time to consider the situation following his Joining. Doing so it was obvious: the Bastard's anger with her at the Landsmeet, her hastily sheared hair, their abrupt departure from Denerim, the sadness she could not seem to shake from her eyes.
"He left you," he said as realization dawned.
She nodded and shook a shuddering breath, turning away from him. Her shoulders began to quiver and he could hear her gulping down gasping breaths as she suppressed tears.
Loghain didn't know what to do. This strange, impossibly kind girl, who in a matter of minutes he had come to feel so responsible for, was in pain, again, because of him.
"Hero," he said her name softly, reaching out one hand for her shoulder. His fingertips brushed the smooth leather of her jerkin and she spun to look at him with red-rimmed tear-filled eyes. He didn't know what she saw in his face, but she threw herself against his chest, arms thrown around his neck, pressed her face into the rough linen of his gambeson, and began to sob.
Loghain stiffened, arms held out from his sides, and internally panicked. He did not deal well with emotional women in normal circumstances, and what Hero had gone through was far from normal. He considered what he would do if it was Anora soaking his armor with her tears. Since killing the man responsible wasn't an option, he instead put his arms around her and gently patted her back.
She quieted, sobs receding to sniffles, and laid her cheek against his chest, making no move to extract herself from his inept embrace. "He— he said I cared about doing what was right— more than I loved him." She managed between shuddering breaths.
Loghain closed his eyes and let out a quiet sigh. "Because you didn't execute me." Another thing he had taken from her.
She nodded.
His mouth felt dry, lungs empty. “I’m sorry.”
He felt her head shake gently against his chest, sniffing again. “You don’t need to apologize.”
“I do.” He responded firmly.
Hero pulled back from him, wiping her eyes with her wrist. When she looked up at him her eyes were still wet, but they were hard. “I made a choice. That isn’t your fault, Loghain.”
“A choice you wouldn’t have had to make if I had made a different one.”
“We all made choices.” She said in what he had come to recognize as her Warden tone. “You chose to quit the field at Ostagar, I chose not to kill you. We each have to accept the consequences of those decisions, but you bear no responsibility for those that I made.” She took a deep breath, deflating slightly, her attention drifting away from his face. “Alistair has his own consequences to deal with.”
“ Alistair is an idiot.” He sneered. She laughed, the sound muffled through her lips, and glanced back up at him with grateful eyes. Loghain put a hand on her shoulder. “I would rather be accused of putting what is right above all else, than valuing vengeance more than those closest to me.”
Tears welled up in her eyes again as she smiled. "Thank—"
Loghain cut her off with a raised eyebrow and she laughed again, properly wiping her eyes dry. "We should get back," she said, voice as casual as Loghain could remember it, and her pale grey eyes clear.
"Before they all assume I've murdered you and set fire to the forest," Loghain responded with a grim nod.
"I'm sure they wouldn't go that far," Hero retorted flippantly.
As they emerged from the treeline they found Wynne waiting for them, arms crossed and face screwed up with worry. Her expression broke seeing Hero and she puttered to the girl's side like a matronly schoolmistress.
"There you are, I was beginning to get worried— oh." Her movement stuttered. "My dear, have you been crying?" The mage threw a dark look at Loghain.
"It's nothing, Wynne. We were just—" she faltered slightly and Loghain deduced that she was not yet ready to discuss her separation from the Bastard King openly yet.
"Hero requested that I accompany her on her walk of the perimeter, we spoke of the late Teyrn and Teyrna." Loghain volunteered soberly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a wave of relief pass momentarily over Hero's features.
Wynne raised a suspicious eyebrow at his use of the girl's name, then turned her attention back to Hero, giving her a motherly, inquiring look.
Hero nodded, confirming Loghain's words. "I'm afraid I got a little choked up on the subject, but it was good to speak to someone who knew them." She gave him a glance that spoke volumes to her appreciation for his discretion.
Wynne's shrewd eyes flicked between the two of them, then she sighed, her arms relaxing to her sides. "I understand completely, Dear Heart. But you must come sit by the fire and get warm, you'll catch cold and even I can't help with one of those." She slid an arm around Hero's shoulders and evacuated her from Loghain's presence as quickly as she could while still appearing considerate to the girl's apparent esteem for the man.
As she was hurried away, Hero looked over her shoulder at Loghain and smiled.
Loghain remembered that smile. More than fifteen years ago it had shone on the face of a little girl who declared, wooden sword held high, she would slay the dragon and save the kingdom.
She would, he knew.
And he would help her, in whatever way he could.