faderift | [open] this old bastard is still around

Entry tags:

[open] this old bastard is still around

WHO: Loghain + OPEN
WHAT: With time to think comes time to come up with creative ways to avoid processing your grief.
WHEN: Throughout March.
WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall, his cabin on Sundermount
NOTES: None, will update as needed.

At some stage, Loghain realizes that he has time to catch his breath and think clearly, and this presents a problem. Because he's thinking clearly about a lot of things, mostly to do with Seheron, and all of these thoughts leave him emotionally compromised.

...This is probably fine.

I. THE GALLOWS

The Wardens' office is small, but there remains enough work to be done for Loghain to spend hours here when work takes Alistair and Nathaniel elsewhere. He spends his time pacing behind the office's single desk rather than sitting at it, leaning over it to consider maps and documents that might provide leads about the Wardens' usual enemies, the darkspawn, and their unusual enemies--themselves.

His hours here are unpredictable, but tend towards the very early morning, or late in the evening, with a lit candle, a cup of tea, and the wolf-dog Primrose resting alertly near his feet.

II. KIRKWALL

Being a Warden or a member of the Inquisition forces doesn't necessarily pay well, but it pays enough for Loghain to afford the occasional trip into the city to acquire things for himself (or for Sooty, or Primrose) that the Inquisition doesn't have on offer. He manages two or three trips into Kirkwall this month, and can be found prowling through the Lowtown markets in search of something that might resemble a decent dog collar, or better horse tack.

III. SUNDERMOUNT

Loghain can thank Celia for most of his practical skills with regards to the mending of broken things; and after the brutal winter that swept through the Free Marches, his little cabin on remote Sundermount is in need of some tending to.

It is here that he chooses to pass most of his time, with either stabled in her nearby paddock or left to graze the loose grasses nearby, while Primrose prowls the wilderness like the half-wild thing she is. With lumber felled from nearby trees, Loghain mends holes in his roof, patches up the interior walls where the draft can get in, and generally sees to the maintenance of his small patch of property. It's hard labour, and it's the perfect distraction from the gnawing, aching hole in his heart that reminds him, whenever his hands and thoughts are idle, that Maric is truly dead.

On warmer days, he takes Sooty for rides through the foothills, or hunts for game with Primrose. On colder nights, he sits quietly indoors with his old journals and notes, drinking whiskey while deliberating miserably over what he could have been if, years in the past, he had simply kept looking.

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One of Adalia and Chari's favourite pastimes is flying around Sundermount together, Charis hunting for his own dinners and Adalia just trying to stay astride her broom. She's gotten better at it, and she can usually keep up with Charis now no matter how excited he gets. They're an amazing duo, at least in her mind, and she is finally beginning to think he might be ready to join in combat, if he wants to. if. but that's not a question to pose now, while they're both having a good time flying around. Later, maybe.

It's not often that they come across other people while they're flying around — other people they haven't brought themselves, anyway — so when Adalia notices the humanoid shape beneath them, she whistles a command to Charis. He banks to the left, falling behind her to hide in a tree, in case the person walking around is likely to attack a dragon. Adalia herself flies lower down, coming closer and closer until she can make out any identifying features — and then exclaims happily, excited.

"Loghain! Hi, what are you doing out here?"

His first indication that they have company comes from Primrose, whose wolfish ears suddenly prick alertly. She looks up and utters a low growl of warning, but the sound cuts off abruptly as she catches Adalia's scent. Loghain turns in the brush and looks up as well, and startles to see Adalia descending towards them... on a flying broomstick.

In his shock, he almost doesn't register her question at first.

"What?" he starts, his tone blunter than intended; he clears his throat and attempts to gentle his tone, but the sight of a flying broomstick isn't going to get out of his head anytime soon. "I, ah. I live here. Just beyond that copse of trees." He turns and gestures across the woods.

Inquisitive, Primrose comes nearer to Adalia to sniff at the broomstick. (is it food? no? rats.)

Honestly, half the reason Adalia didn't land before she came to investigate was because she was hoping this kind of reaction. Her smile only gets wider at Loghain's confusion, though she tries to make it slightly less obvious that she's delighting in his bewilderment. She lowers herself even closer to the ground as Primrose comes to sniff, letting her get close to the broom.

"I didn't know that! I come out here with Charis as often as I can to let him fly around, I had no idea that was your house! Speaking of — can I call him over, or do you think that would upset Primrose too much?"

Adalia's all for forcing friendship on reticent individuals (kind of what she's doing right now, really), but when it comes to wolf-dogs who could probably kill her kid if annoyed enough, she'll be a bit more respectful than she's usually given to. It's not fair to upset an animal just trying to live its little wolf-dog life, anyway, and Charis doesn't need the stress of stressing her out either.

(Well congratulations for nearly giving an old man a heart attack, Adalia.)

"I didn't know that! I come out here with Charis as often as I can to let him fly around, I had no idea that was your house! Speaking of — can I call him over, or do you think that would upset Primrose too much?"

The idea of a tame dragon still sits uneasily with Loghain... but plenty of others would undoubtedly say the same about Primrose; the half-feral get of a mabari and a wolf, still more comfortable roaming the hills than putting up with the enclosed spaces within the Gallows. Loghain glances at her and gives a quick whistle, to which she responds by obediently trotting back to heel. He drops a hand to give the wolfish scruff around her neck and ears an affectionate scratch. "She'll be all right," he says, his voice filled with a gruff kind of affection as he looks down at the animal. "Mabari are smart about these things."

With Loghain's permission, Adalia twists on her broom, looking back toward where Charis had flown off to, and whistles another command. It takes a moment, but a blue-grey shape emerges from the treetops and glides down to land next to Adalia, leaning forward to sniff at the air, attention trained on Primrose. Adalia takes the opportunity to land, slinging the broom over her shoulder.

"Well, what were you and Primrose out here for, anyway? Am I interrupting something important?"

Much as she'd be loathe to do so, Adalia can leave people alone when they need to be alone. She'd rather hang around and talk to Loghain, but if he needs her to fuck off she will do so.

...she might pout when she's gone, though.

He is slowly venturing out of the city in wider and wider Circles, taking care with each trip. Free Marchers might object to a Tevinter mage wandering around freely, but Thor would like to know more of the terrain outside the city. He lives here for now. He needs to know the area.

And apparently the area has a wolf-like animal. Thor catches sight of it moving before he spots the man nearby. A few minutes of observation say that they're together, and is that not interesting?

Eventually Thor starts to approach, keeping an eye on the wolf-dog.

"He is with you?" he calls out.

The wolf-dog watches with uncanny intelligence as Charis swoops down to join his mistress's side, but despite emitting a low whine of combined curiosity and confusion, she obediently remains at Loghain's side. Loghain himself seems torn between considering the unlikely tame dragon, and the broomstick enchanted enough to fly.

(What else will the mage kids think up next these days?)

"Am I interrupting something important?"

"Not at all," he assures her after a pause, allowing a grim smile onto his face. "I take her--" Primrose, of course, "--out to hunt on occasion, especially after too much time spent at the Gallows. The wolf in her needs the space to roam." He looks up to Adalia again; it is too easy to recall the sight of the child in her Fade nightmare, and perhaps some of it shows on his face, just for an instant.

He clears his throat and chafes a hand against the day old stubble on his jaw. "I was about to take her back to the cabin. There's tea," he adds, with a slight raise of his eyebrows, "if you'd like to rest up before heading back to Kirkwall." He assumes that she will be heading back to Kirkwall at some stage.

It is very likely that the wolf-dog spots him first, having paused on the crest of a hill to look down at him with eyes given uncanny intelligence by her mabari heritage. When Loghain comes into view behind her, it's with a pair of dead rabbits slung over one shoulder and the lead of a blue roan quarter horse held in the other hand, giving some indication as to what he and his companion animals were doing out here in the wilderness.

At Thor's approach, he fixes a wary look on the man, but relaxes after a moment; his posture is nonthreatening. For now.

"He is with you?"

"She is," Loghain calls out in turn, a confirmation as well as a correction. Slowly, he resumes his walk down the slope, carefully leading Sooty behind him while Primrose, reassured that there is no threat, roams ahead. Loghain glances towards the newcomer, squinting a little. "You strike me as slightly familiar, though I can't place why. Are you with the Inquisition?"

Thor smiles at the question, more than a little amused by it as he waits for the man to get closer.

"I am... endeavoring to be with them. There is resistance." It is his own private joke and thus he's more pleased by it than he should be. When the other man reaches him, Thor holds out his hand. "Thor, of house Asgard, of Marnas Pell. You likely saw me helping around the Gallows while the illness was around, as perhaps I saw you."

The man's face should be strong enough to stand in his memories, but without an introduction Thor generally forgot most of who he passed. People in general are background noise when there are important matters at hand. Of course, that was before he knew one hunted with a she-wolf.

"Thor, of house Asgard, of Marnas Pell. You likely saw me helping around the Gallows while the illness was around, as perhaps I saw you."

Loghain's hands are both occupied, one with the copse of dead rabbits, and the other with Sooty's lead rope. He opts for dropping the rope for the moment; Sooty is a gentle-mannered horse, and won't wander off. "Loghain Mac Tir," he responds and accepts the hand that is offered to him, though his expression maintains its almost stern countenance for the time being. He knows precisely where Marnas Pell is. "Yes, I recall your arrival now."

It remains to be seen how he's going to feel about it, in the long term.

"What brings a magister out into the wilderness?"

"Loghain Mac Tir," he echoes, wondering at and savoring that name. Isn't this something. He has heard the name, there is a fair chance everyone has, and now he is meeting the man himself. Thor wonders what Odin would do in this moment, but it does not matter in the end. Odin is not here. Thor is.

"If you find a magister in the wilderness you could ask him," he says, returning his hands to his pockets after the shake. "Though I doubt one would travel this far south. They have more important matters to deal with. If you mean to ask what brings an Altus out here, then I am looking over the lay of the land. Corypheus attacked the Inquisition at Haven, by all accounts, and he may choose to attack Kirkwall as it is easier to approach than Skyhold, also by all accounts. And hunting brings the almost-king out here, it seems, but what brought him to Kirkwall in particular?"

"I was never 'the almost-king.'" This Loghain says without tempering his tone, without addressing the rest of what Thor says; it's petty to latch onto that barb, an insult that would have been just another inconsequential remark to let slide off his shoulders months ago. But not now, not so soon after Maric--

His eyes are hard, steely, before he turns to reclaim Sooty's lead rope from where it dangles from the gentle-mannered horse's halter. "What else would bring a Grey Warden to the Inquisition," he says gruffly, picking up the remaining threads of the conversation, and begins to trail after Primrose back towards his cabin. "To find a way to combat Corypheus."

That is not the reply of an almost-conqueror. Thor, not the largest fan of reading up on former leaders of Thedas, finds himself curious. Had the whole debacle not been for control, or did Loghain simply fall short of his goal and is bitter about it?

"Well. What would make Grey Wardens take over a country? That is surely not to combat Corypheus." Mac Tir has not bothered to hide that he's upset, but Thor does not feel like letting himself be bothered by it in return. He's in the company of Loghain Mac Tir. Loki will probably be jealous. "But rumors say you have taken the Anderfels and as that is close to home it has me... wary, we shall say. Grey Wardens are supposed to be formidable foes and I would not like to see a possible invasion from them."

This fellow is not ingratiating himself well with Loghain, and the more he walks, the blacker his scowl grows. Not that Thor can see it, with Loghain's back turned to him, and he makes no effort to slow his pace to let the brash Tevinter walk with him apace.

"Do you begin all conversations with complete strangers in such a way?" he asks laconically over his shoulder; whatever the situation with the Wardens, no part of him feels compelled to share the information about his Order with this man after having known him only a handful of minutes. "The situation in the Anderfels is not so easily dissected. A diplomat or politician would be better able to satisfy your curiosity than me."

Given he hasn’t been particular about avoiding colleagues and allies, there would be no reasonable way for Kostos to avoid everyone he’s ever slept with. He doesn’t really try. Some of them he works with frequently; one is his closest friend. He isn’t a child about it.

But Loghain, he hasn’t spoken to since Nevarra. He doesn’t know what to expect. So if he’d noticed who he was joining for the ten-minute trip across the harbor to the Gallows, before turning around would have been obvious, he might have considered it.

In the absence of that option, he refuses to look concerned. He mainly looks at the water. But he says, “Warden,” casually aside in greeting, and also possibly in parting. That would be fine with him.

Charis seems equally curious, straining his long neck forward to try to catch more of Primrose's scent —

until he strains too far, and he falls flat, having overbalanced. Adalia laughs and Charis picks himself up, chittering embarrassedly, sticking closer to her side this time and not paying Primrose any more attention. Almost as though he's ignoring her, to try to ignore that he fell down in front of something interesting. Adalia, meanwhile, nods excitedly.

"Yes! I do the same for Charis, I try to bring him out here weekly at least so he can stretch his wings and hunt properly. Maybe we could — well. If you wouldn't mind the company, and you think Primrose could stand having him around —"

She doesn't finish the sentence, but her meaning is hard to misinterpret — double hunting date!!! They bring friends out to Sundermount with them often, and Adalia will never bore of Charis' company, but it could be fun to have regular partners! And if Primrose could get used to Charis, maybe they could even be friends!

Pity — or whatever close cousin is in Loghain's eyes, now, is... not an emotion Adalia is used to having directed at her. For a moment she's uncomfortable, avoiding his gaze, but it passes for both of them, and she brightens considerably at the idea of tea.

"Sure! That'd be great, thank you!"

"Only the ones with people walking their wolf," he replies cheerfully. There seems to be a stiffness in the man before him; clearly they are not becoming friends here. Thor has yet to decide if that is a shame or not because he does not know enough about the man to say.

"Most of the rest I meet while holding drinks so I offer them one. But I am short on drinks." He matches pace with Loghain easily now, near his side but not within easy stabbing distance. Loki has taught him a lot. "I am here for the Venatori, in truth, not the Wardens. Houses that border the Anderfels can look into that. How do you tend to begin conversations with complete strangers?"

If there's established etiquette for how to address a former lover after a one-night-stand, Loghain doesn't know what it is.

"Warden," Kostos says to him without eye contact. Loghain looks at him blankly, then away, then back to his face in profile. At the head of the boat, the ferryman pilots them across the channel without seeming to have any interest in the awkward encounter transpiring behind him. Doubtless he's had to suffer through many of them before; one more won't turn his head.

"Kostos," Loghain replies, mainly in greeting, but also because he's at a loss for what else to say. The sound of the boat slipping through the water fills the silence while he hunts for a better response. "I trust you've been well," he settles on eventually. Smooth.

In his experience, such awkward, warm enthusiasm usually comes from those who are, in their own way, very lonely. Simply because Loghain has always considered solitude an old friend doesn't mean the sentiment is foreign to him. He understands.

"This way," he says to Adalia, and turns to lead the way back through the woods towards his cabin.

Like as all, he doesn't speak much on the journey back, though he possesses a patient listening ear and will respond as needed to whatever chatter Adalia directs his way. The path he follows is well worn after a few months spent taking this particular trip across Sundermount, though the snow and the time spent at the Gallows due to the quarantine likely allowed in some new growth. He pauses every so often to kick some encroaching foliage off of the path or do away with a dangerously low-hanging branch.

The cabin comes into view before too long, accompanied by the warm smell of horse. Sooty grazes in the small stable attached to the side of the cabin, and looks up at their approach. "Here we are," Loghain tells Adalia at last; Primrose, having beaten them home, is already dozing at her place on the small porch next to an old-looking wood chair.

"How do you tend to begin conversations with complete strangers?"

"I don't," comes the somewhat predictable response from Loghain. "I leave them in peace, unless given no other option."

His annoyance hasn't ebbed, but some of the true hostility that flared in him at the stranger's initial assessment of his ambitions in Ferelden has faded. The newcomer seems ignorant of his history, and of the harm that his words can cause being disseminated so casually, but perhaps not truly cruel. He grimaces and continues leading his horse homeward. "The Venatori are a formidable enemy. I expect you've provided what intelligence you possess to the division heads already." There. A moderately less contentious subject.

Most of the shopkeepers have learned their lessons by now, but periodically a new vendor will set up in Lowtown and learn the hard way why everyone tends to just give the tall woman the price she wants and not make a fuss.
It's not that she's threatening them, but Teren's voice carries when she haggles, and her particular turn of phrase isn't a forgiving one. The booths tend to get a wide berth, perhaps from the fear that catching her eye means getting turned to stone.

As Loghain makes his way through the market, he'll hear the familiar dulcet tones of Warden von Skraedder reaming out a rookie leather merchant who is all but hiding behind his wares. That price, for this quality? I'd be better off flaying the damn thing myself and throwing my coin in the sea.

Raised voices attract Loghain's attention away from the set of tack he'd been appraising, and he frowns, squinting in the general direction of the ruckus in question. He takes a few steps out into the street, then grimaces. Yes, he'd recognize that snarling voice anywhere.

There's realistically nothing to be done about intervening on the merchant's behalf; doubtless, he'll either learn his lesson this time, or the next. Or he'll pack up shop and skip town. But Loghain steps just into the periphery of the confrontation, near enough to be spotted by Teren with ease, but not enough to suggest he's going to interfere.

The merchant lasts a few more minutes before caving, and just like that, it's over: Teren settles, hands over the coin, retrieves the leather, and all is well in the world. She nearly runs into Loghain when she turns to leave, and stumbles back with a start, clearly not expecting to see him there.

Loghain has to take a hasty step backwards to avoid the collision, and looks momentarily as startled as Teren does. (He really expected her to notice him before nearly walking into him.)

"Teren," he says, more like he's about to say something else than in greeting, then stops short. Ah. Huh.

Yeah, that's a good start.

She was too busy dwelling on her triumph, though all of that goes away at the sight of Loghain. Teren hasn't really spoken to him since The Incident, despite having been on an assignment with him; they both saw each other in ways that were less than preferable, and as always her approach to dealing with such things is to avoid them entirely.
"..Loghain," she greets in a similar tone, blushing faintly and hating herself for it. "Hope you're well." Her tone is curt, but not curt enough to save face. Damn.

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[open] this old bastard is still around

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