Response to a Dragon Age Writers' Corner Forum (link on my profile) challenge: "It's all pretty much accepted the Arl Howe is a right bastard. He's evil, and power-hungry, and all that awful stuff. But was he always like that? Or did he have a good side to him too? I want to see a short story about the softer side of Howe; could be him taking care of his people, or a pleasant time with his family, or something. Because even evil people have their good days."

So here are the good days - the ones where he shows humanity. Separate seasons, over several years.

Spring

Rendon Howe

Sometimes he looks at his sons and sees himself in them.

Less in Delilah, who has been fortunate enough not to inherit too much of his angular features and world view, but when he looks at his sons...

Things have never quite been the same after White River; his hands shake and tell him when it's going to rain, he never sleeps without nightmares, and a combination of old memories and old age mean that his daggers are no longer as quick and true as they were.

What he sees in his sons makes him proud and frightens him in equal measure - he remembers how he turned on his father (but it was to do what was right, he knows it, and of course the guilt doesn't gnaw away at him) and wonders.

They are the images of him as a young man; the same anger, the same relentless energy, the same nose. Thomas looks up at him, smiles at him through the study window, and he smiles back, briefly, the smile fading as a draught sneaks into the study, into his bones.

Autumn is coming.

He hates to send his son into this relentless winter, but he has to go. He pretends that it's not because his son has come of age, could so easily be considering for the arling for himself. Pretends that it's not because he sometimes looks into the eyes, his wife's eyes, and doesn't know what he sees there. The lad has been questioning his decisions, become far too interested in the running of politics. He's seen a display of the less-than-noble skills he has inherited, so much like him in his prime, and it worries him to think how many meetings his son could have sneaked into, keeping to the shadows and hearing every word. Of course, none of it would make any sense out of context - no-one is perfect, and the things he loses he does for the greater good. Or so he tells himself when he lies awake at night.

Nathaniel protests, of course, as he knew he would - too much like his father to take it lying down - but he overrules any arguments. "You are a noble's son. Act like one. The distance to the Free Marches is not insurmountable, and you will be one of many."

So what if many of the noble lads becoming squires have been disgraced? His son is not one of them, and he can hold his head high.

He lays a hand on his son's shoulder, speaking meaningless reassurances, and sees the half-smile (how many times has he seen his son laugh recently? He has to wonder, and it saddens him that the answer is, not many) of trust. His son nods, quietly slipping out of the door with a bow on his back and the few possessions he can take.

He watches him go. He must think him cold, but what else can he do? His son could easily beat him if it came to it, and he can't have him getting involved. Sending him away, keeping him away from all this, is a mercy.

After all, what man takes a knife to his own son?

He uses the same reasoning when he lets Thomas go off to war. The resemblance between them is even more obvious now he's older, and the boy makes him smile - the ready wit, the strong will and lack of naivety are from him, he is sure of it.

This way, he is protected from politics, and he wants to go. He tells himself this even as half of him fights it - he has seen the horrors of war; it leaves marks so much deeper than the scars. The other half reminds him of the running of things, that he needs his son out of the way.

He gives in after nights of arguments, of half-eaten food left at the table where one of them has stalked off.

He hugs him, trying hard to pretend that it's not because he's frightened of letting him go. The same half-smile, the same nod. Sword at his hip and few possessions, he clanks out of the castle, turning to give his father a wide grin before he does so.

Rendon returns it, pride warring with worry, grin the same as his son's and shivering at the cold.

There are two letters that winter.

One has him smiling at first - Nathaniel is slowly but steadily learning with bow and dagger, won a fight with one of the nobles' sons... because the son was treating a commoner badly. A downward turn of his mouth. He understood them once, but he can barely remember it; now they are the hungry he watches helplessly, that always ask for more, too much...

The second, two months later, has him sobbing into the oak desk, one hand holding the crumpled letter with the cold words informing him of his son's death. His smiling, always smiling, son, so like and yet unlike him, of broad shoulder and quick mind. He orders lashings for the servant that awkwardly stands in the doorway, interrupting his grief, and then he locks the door.

No food, little water, just him sitting at his desk, staring at the walls.

A summer wedding, Delilah says. Not even to his face - she is far away now, and all left of years of love is a note.

He is not sure whether to sob or spit - a peasant. What about the line, the wealth? What about looking after him?

He has lost everything, he realises, and it shakes him to his core.

He watches the same happen to another man, much like himself, once a friend. At his hands. He feels a twinge of guilt, but pushes it down. Every flame, every corpse, is for what he has lost, and it's so easy to lose himself in the carnage. His daggers are slower, but they are fast enough.

When he comes back to himself, covered in blood and shaking, he looks at his men, looks at the dead bodies of the Couslands, and wonders what in the Void he's done.

He sees the upstart, sees the anger.

So this is how he will die. He has avoided the Fade for too long, he knows, but surely it could have been a noble death, in the heat of battle, fighting to defend Ferelden?

Instead, he will die in a stinking dungeon, his men quickly killed around him, kneeling. Kneeling.

He wonders if he regrets anything, and, for once in his life, is honestly not sure. He ignores the poisonous words spouted by the famous Warden, focusing instead on the important things. Loghain. Cauthrien. A nation behind them, and no proof for the Wardens, for their bastard pretender.

There is still hope.

He exchanges insults with the Warden, as honour calls for, but his last thought is a startled realisation. He's warm. It's spring.