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"Keep him close, and he will betray you. Each time worse than the last."
Loghain ran his hand up Maric's bare back and smoothed the sleeping man's hair. It was early in the morning, and the sun just barely peeked up above the horizon-- Maric had curled up, head on the other's chest, and slept soundly all night. Finally, however, the continued stroking of his hair roused him from sleep.
"...Mm." Maric propped himself up a bit, looked down at their bodies, and back up at his partner's face in the dark room, lit only by traces of sunlight through the window. "What time is it?"
"Dawn."
"Why are you awake?" Maric looked a little baffled. "Aren't you tired after last night?" The prince gave a long pause, and then his expression softened in the inky darkness. "More nightmares?"
Loghain nodded, taking Maric's hand to kiss it. "You'd think they might cease after the years."
Maric touched his face gently, lovingly. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"No, I don't want to talk about it," he snapped-- at the prince's recoil, however, he regretted the words and moved to hold him closer. "...That was unworthy."
"It's alright, Loghain..."
They shared a kiss, and the dark man finally softened just a bit. "It was about the Korcari Wilds."
"You mean the one about...?"
Flemeth, the Witch of the Wilds, willing the sylvans with just a flick of the wrist to reach down and pluck him off his feet. He'd screamed, legs flailing and hands gripping at the vines as they coiled around his neck and tightened. He'd choked, gasped, dangling there from the trees like a ragdoll, surrounded by the hanging skeletons of other travelers that dared oppose her. He was strong enough to keep the vines from cutting into his skin, but that was of little importance-- death by asphyxiation was high up on the list of horrible ways to die.
Maric had narrowly escaped panic, begging the witch for mercy with the previously useless manners he'd been raised to use. Flemeth was impressed by his class, and so she dumped Loghain to the dirt in a wheezing, coughing heap.
As if matters weren't bad enough, after discussion, she had been oh so very kind as to provide them with impossible riddles. The first was that one day the blight would come to Ferelden, and that Maric would not live to see it. At the time, it was too vague to be very frightening, but now that they had been through the Deep Roads and seen the darkspawn face to face, now that they had felt the thick black blood on their hands and caught the stench of death, it was much, much more of a threat. Loghain dreaded the thought of Maric dying and having to face the blight without his prince, his king. What would he do? Would he be able to keep Ferelden safe? Would he ruin it with the weight of a dying nation on his shoulders?
The second was worse. The second, he dared not think of for too long, and yet, it was all he had been able to think of for hours. "Keep him close, and he will betray you..."
"Loghain--"
"Each time worse than the last."
The room became silent, and the two clung to one another. Maric watched him with those concerned eyes, full of love, full of a concern so deep that all Loghain could do was hold onto the prince and hide his face in the other's shoulder, vulnerable, with his heart there for the other to take. Maric could heal it or crush it under his boot, Loghain didn't care-- he loved Maric and it was an impossible thought, an idea worthy of being called treason, to betray the one you loved. Repeatedly, at that, worse and worse each time.
The Teyrn did not want to be known as a traitor. Especially as a traitor to his king. Nothing, nothing could be more abominable that to betray Ferelden's king.
"Loghain..." Maric touched his face, bringing the other back to reality. "Loghain, I know you would never betray me."
"How do you know?" They stared at one another. "Why do you trust me? You're a prince, and I'm a criminal. I'm a murderer."
"So am I!" Maric sat up and took his love's face in his hands. "Whatever mistakes you made before, you've redeemed yourself. You've redeemed yourself twice over, three times over! You are my commander, Loghain Mac Tir, and you mean the world to myself and to Ferelden. Don't you see the way our soldiers look at you? Don't you see how they fall to their knees when we walk by? Didn't you see how they sobbed and reached out to touch us when we emerged from the Deep Roads? They love you, Loghain, they love you and Rowan loves you and I love you. I love you, so much, and I need you to know that."
The following silence was heart-wrenching.
Loghain had not allowed himself the privilege of crying since he was little more than a boy and his dog had died in his arms, after the Orlesian that stole her finally threw her back to him out the back of a carriage. He had not allowed himself the privilege of tears, and yet, now he fell to vulnerability in Maric's arms and cried, kissing him.
They held one another, healing their pain with love, and the sun seemed to shine just a little brighter.