[OPEN] I know dark clouds gonna gather 'round me

[mactears]

WHO: Loghain + OPEN
WHAT: A catch-all for Loghain for November.
WHEN: Throughout the month of November.
WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall, Sundermount.
NOTES: None yet, will update as needed. Starters for specific characters under the cut.

I. SUNDERMOUNT (OPEN + MORRIGAN)


The woodsman who had placed the cabin up for let likely hadn't expected for Loghain Mac Tir, the Traitor Teyrn of Gwaren and father to the Queen of Ferelden, to become his tenant, but there it was. He paid well for this private retreat in the wilderness, and with a promise to make some modest improvements to the property, one can scarcely suggest that the land owner himself is coming away at a loss.

There's a single-paddock stable attached to the cabin, which is where Sooty now rests eating from her feed back, while Loghain chops wood for the wood stove. Lying on the ground some distance away from him is a peculiar-looking dog--clearly part mabari, but with the unmistakeable ruff of a wolf around the face and hackles, too. Every so often, she rises up from where she rests in the grass observing Loghain's work with intelligent topaz eyes, and trots off into the undergrowth, only to come back sometime later to find another place in the sun to rest.

When he isn't in Kirkwall, this is where he spends a great deal of his time:  fixing up this run-down cabin, and trying to befriend the strange dog that now hangs out around the property.



II.  WARDEN OFFICES (ALISTAIR + NATHANIEL)


Alistair and Nathaniel Howe wish to speak with him.

In Loghain's experience, this can go one of two ways:  he's being ousted, or he's being murdered.

Nevertheless, at the appointed time he arrives outside the Wardens' office and knocks once to announce himself. "It's Loghain," he calls, then rests his hand on the latch without pressing it yet.



III. THE LIBRARY AT NIGHT (TEREN)


While much of the drama surrounding his initial appearance at the Gallows has died down during the intervening months, the easiest time for Loghain to conduct any research in the library is still after dark, when the rest of the researchers and students have long gone to bed and there's no one but himself present to peruse the shelves.

He'd laid out his old notes from Maric's initial disappearance across his chosen work station, along with maps of northern Tevinter and some other assorted reference books, and paces behind his desk, as is his wont, while considering them. The wolf-dog that rests beneath the table dozes, but every so often opens her lambent gold eyes, ears pricked and alert.



VI.  DARKTOWN (ANDERS)


It is some time after the company's return from Blackmarsh that Loghain makes his way into the streets of Darktown, dressed in a set of unremarkable brown and grey work clothes so that he won't be so easily noticed or identified. The dog isn't with him; she's well enough--and independent enough--to be left to her own devices on Sundermount during the daylight hours.

Reaching the clinic, he steps over the threshold and searches out Anders in a glance. Not wanting to disturb him from his patients, however, he hands back, patient.



V.  LOWTOWN (CARVER + OPEN)


Loghain isn't much of a drinker, but the only place to do that around Kirkwall appears to be the Hanged Man--which is where he is now, seated alone at a seat in front of the hearthfire, gaze alternating between resting on the fire and examining the occupants of the tavern. A few people have, over the past several months, identified him, and even given him some trouble, but generally not at this hour early in the evening, before the city has time to get drunk enough to make its worst decisions.

So here he sits with a tankard of ale, unwinding, and making himself available for conversation to whomever happens to come along.

Comments

[faithlikeaseed]

He does remember that voice--and it gives him a moment's pause to hear it, the first faint sluggish flicker of shame chewing at the back of his thoughts. That moment out there in that dismal southern swamp hasn't been so easy to set aside, not least because there'd been so many witnesses to it. Yet-- "Thank you, Warden--I would." --he's told himself he won't keep running from it, or anything that reminds him of it, even if he hasn't been doing so well at the last.

But every chance life hands you is a chance at improvement. He settles into the offered seat with his staff near at hand, cradling his drink between his hands as he leans in toward the fire. "How has your new friend been finding Kirkwall?"

If there's one thing he's learned thus far about Fereldans, it's always safe to start with the dogs.

[mactears]

The look on Myr's face just then is one Loghain well recognizes; he's seen it on the faces of other soldiers come home from battle, hale but not whole. He won't wound the young man's pride with asking after his health.

But Myr is certainly right: it's always safer to start with dogs.

"How has your new friend been finding Kirkwall?"

He chuckles some and reaches for his tankard, picking it up. "Not well at all," he admits, takes a drink, then sets it down again. "I've taken up residence on Sundermount for the season, to give her some respite from the city, and from other people. She'll come into Kirkwall with me, time to time, but I suspect the wilds are more to her liking. She's only partly tame."

[faithlikeaseed]

"And she's mending well, I take it? After being in such a bad way when you found her--seems a monstrous thing to do to an animal."

He'd been there when Loghain had brought her in, but hadn't followed after the Wardens who'd crowded in to check on the dog's condition. No need for his own meager skills at healing with a spirit healer present; and besides, he hadn't any right to intrude on that camaraderie, especially not after--

Myr cuts the thought short with a swallow of his own drink. No use in dwelling. No use in prying at it. If he can just ignore it long enough, it will go away. (It won't. Nor the mad urge to apologize that tries to crawl up the back of his throat--)

"Had I heard it right she's only partly mabari, too?" But maybe he can keep it tamped down long enough to have some semblance of a normal conversation; maybe he can manage something near a smile.

[mactears]

(There's less camaraderie there than Myr might realize; Inessa still curses the ground he walks upon, though Loghain would be glad to admit that he's grown gruffly fond of Anders, in the intervening months since his arrival in Kirkwall.)

"Yes," he answers, still evidently content to speak of Primrose in her absence, "there's a bit of wolf in her. Not entirely uncommon after--" A pause, but then he continues, "--after Ostagar. Mabari left behind after their soldier companions fell in the battle bred with the local wolves. They've a natural affinity for one another." Realizing he's just described his new companion as something rather fierce-sounding, he adds with the ghost of a smile at his lips, "She's a gentle heart, if a damaged one."

[faithlikeaseed]

Keen as Myr is to ignore his own troubles, he catches the hesitation easily. Ostagar. He dog-ears the thought and the questions it brings a moment in favor of the safer conversation. "I'd be glad to meet her, sometime, when she's more at ease with people--if she wouldn't take it amiss." It'd taken long enough, but Garahel had finally convinced him that the tales of mabari intelligence weren't exaggerated (much).

A pause, a breath, as he knits his fingers together around the circumference of his tankard. When he begins again, most of the color's leeched out of his tone. "What did happen at Ostagar? Beyond the usual retelling that passes here in the Marches.." No need to elaborate on just what that was; any history was a distorted shadow of the real events, warped the moreso when strong emotion adhered to it.

“Though if it isn’t something you’d speak of, I’d not take it amiss.” His curiosity too often gets ahead of him.

[mactears]

Truthfully, he's surprised more people haven't come forward to ask him that question.

Loghain remains pensively quiet for a time and watches the flames of the fireplace. He doesn't look like he's ignoring Myr so much as considering his response; a decade ago, he was still hot-tempered and prone to the occasional fiery outburst in defence of his choices. The Wardens have changed much in him.

He takes a breath and responds. "Our army was fatigued and weary, having already fought back two waves of darkspawn by the time the night of the final battle arrived. I was to lead a flanking charge once Jonas Cousland and Alistair--" Yes, that Alistair, whom Myr must surely know by now, "--lit a signal fire atop the Tower of Ishal, but they were delayed. By the time the fires were lit, the battleground had become a killing field; the flanking charge would have doomed my men, as well as my King."

Slowly, he brings the tankard up to his face, but holds it a moment, staring into nothingness. "I sounded the retreat, and left the rest to die." He lifts the mug and takes a steady pull from it.

[faithlikeaseed]

Already knowing how fraught a question that was, Myr's not surprised to be met with silence. (He's learned the different qualities of silence over the years, how to infer from the scant cues he's got left to him whether someone's paused for thought or to take affront at his impertinence. Not something he's inerrant on yet--but this seems like the former.) Accordingly he's silent in turn, running one thumb along a seam in the side of his mug in a slow sort of fidget as he awaits an answer.

A knight-enchanter studies both strategy and tactics in the course of his training. Myr will freely admit he's not got a head for the former, but his grasp on the latter's sufficient to fill in Loghain's sparse recounting with more visceral detail. (The history they'd gotten of Ostagar was not the clean, sanitized, picked-apart thing they were so used to digesting in other accounts of military action. It would be a long time before anyone produced one of those, but he can imagine--) "Maker's love," he breathes, at last. "No wonder he," Alistair, "asked how long you could keep hating someone."

And that's all he can think to say for a long moment; his natural instinct toward sympathy, so keenly attuned to smaller and more personal sufferings, doesn't begin to encompass something of this magnitude. (Besides, he's a hunch it's not what's needed.) But the day he runs completely out of questions to ask is the day they lay him on his bier, and he finds one in short order--

"Barring a miracle, was there aught else to be done?" There's nothing of judgment or presupposition of a right answer in the question; sheltered idealist though he might be, he knows there often isn't.

[mactears]

"Maker's love. No wonder he asked how long you could keep hating someone."

"Yes," Loghain agrees distantly, but in truth, he isn't thinking of Alistair so much as the faces of his own men, his own soldiers, who died in the killing fields that day. (Somewhere, he still keeps a roster of the dead, though he no longer lets himself look at it when he can't sleep at night.)

"Barring a miracle, was there aught else to be done?"

He raises his eyebrows, but the look on his face is sour-looking, bordering upon resentful--not that Myr can see it, but perhaps he can hear it. This is a sore subject. "Plenty, depending on who you ask," he says slowly, but certainly doesn't sound as though he agrees. "I'd take back much of what I did during the year the Blight ravaged Ferelden, but I stand by my decision to sound the retreat at Ostagar."

[faithlikeaseed]

He can hear it; it provokes a noise that isn't quite a laugh--and definitely not at Loghain's expense--out of him. "They've had enough opportunity to talk about it, haven't they?" There's something strange and a little bitter--personal--in the rhetorical question. He chases it away with a swallow of his own drink, adds: "And it wasn't anyone else's choice to make, so I'd do better to hear of it from you."

Men had their justifications for what they did, their hedges and scaffolds of belief that supported every decision, but that wasn't a reason not to seek out whatever truth they might offer. And there's much that Loghain knows Myr hasn't heard, and so long as he keeps asking questions he won't have to think so hard. "What--," he begins--then catches himself. "No, I'm sorry; I'm ill-using you by asking. Some thanks for your having saved my life."

Jointly, yes, with the other Wardens there, but such is his shame the fact he made it out alive at all feels like an unearned gift. Someone deserves thanks for it; gratitude might do to ease the knot of guilt.

[mactears]

It's a sharp course adjustment for their conversation. Loghain would be lying if he said he wasn't a little relieved to leave the subject of Ostagar alone--talking about it for too long is like poking a deep bruise that won't mend--but when he looks to the young man's expression, he grows quiet, considering.

Then, bluntly but not unkindly: "Do you feel you owe me a debt?"

[faithlikeaseed]

"I do, Warden." He doesn't raise his head from apparent contemplation of the tankard in his hands. "I wasn't--I didn't belong out there. Not any longer; I'm a liability in battle."

It's an obvious struggle for him to say the words, though his tone's passing even, nearly clinical; they aren't his to begin with and some part of him had resisted their application from the start.

But he isn't so foolish as to ignore obvious evidence of their truth.

[mactears]

There are words of comfort that Loghain could offer him, but they would feel cold, harsh, and so he deliberates over sharing them. Instead he focuses first on the assurance he feels comfortable enough to offer.

"Share another drink with me, Serah Shivana, and I'll consider your debt repaid." Already, he lifts his hand to flag down one of the serving girls darting to and fro about the taproom.