Rook

Ever since her forced sabbatical from Minrathous, Rook had seen a lot of weird shit. She'd scoured ancient temples with Varric and his contacts in the Lords of Fortune. She'd watched him charm spirits in the Fade into forgetting their antagonism with the promise of his latest book. They'd fought and befriended a reclusive golem. She'd had a front row seat when one elven god engaged in a ritual designed to move two others to a new prison, resulting in the sky raining demons and the release of two gods.. She had that same elven god taunting her in her dreams.

But one of the weirdest—and most terrifying—things she'd seen to date was the underwater prison that, apparently, was Ghilan'nain's playground a millennia ago. It was now under Venatori control. Really, the prison had simply undergone a lateral move from one horror show to another.

She was grateful for two things during the ordeal. First: That the enchantments holding the ocean at bay still managed to hold after so much time, though the parts that leaked and sprayed salt water all over had been more than enough to turn her stomach and make her palms clammy. Second: She was grateful that they'd managed to pull Lucanis out alive.

Looking back, it was a miracle she hadn't turned into a gibbering mess during the excursion. In record time, she'd gone from burying her panic at the sight of gigantic things swimming overhead digging a neighboring hole to house her pity for the Crow they'd found there. She tried to hide it under a few quips and focusing on the next fight. She pointedly ignored the failing wards and emaciated corpses left unburied in the sand. Lingering on them would let her panic break loose.

When she'd laid eyes on the Crow for the first time, his speed and brutal efficiency took her breath away. It was truly impressive to witness. He'd been singularly focused on eliminating the cultists, violet wings arcing behind him and lending inhuman strength to his every move. Scarred hands snapped necks and ruthlessly impaled one man on a crystal shard. The Venatori never stood a chance.

Watching him kill was like watching a trained dancer: utterly captivating.

It was only in the heartbeat after the violence the she got her first real look at the man. High, proud cheekbones were hollow from a year of starvation. Torn, ragged clothes hung from his too-thin frame, though that loss of mass did little to hinder his lethality. Dark, guarded eyes tracked her every move like a predator bracing for the next strike.

Rook did what she could to show him she wasn't a threat, but he was understandably wary. She wasn't a Venatori, but neither was she a known entity.

"You're possessed by a demon," she realized after a moment. Her eyes went wide and the bottom of her stomach fell out. "But you're not a mage."

"It's complicated."

At his utterly ridiculous, completely human response, she did something she knew would have Tarquin up her ass for the rest of her life.

She released her dagger.

The Templar would rant and rail and call her a colossal fucking fool, but every instinct screamed at her to extend that sign of trust. Lucanis needed to know she meant him no harm, and she needed him to kill a couple of gods. A voice suspiciously like Varric's whispered for her to give him a chance.

'Broken and hurting people need those little shows of humanity the most,' he'd once told her.

And that's what she did. With Lucanis in tow, the three of them fought their way through cultists, demons, and the undead. Rook did everything in her power to both bury her pity and pointedly ignore the wall of water only held at bay by ancient magic. Neither pity nor fear were useful. It was easy enough to forget when she was fighting for her life, and she knew that denying pity at the first would abate it later. Something told her the Crow would hate to be an object of pity, so she wouldn't allow herself to fall into that trap. Compassion was one thing, but wounding someone's pride was something else altogether.

Ignoring her fear was harder. It lurked on the edges of her mind and pounced in the quiet moments in between. The soughing of the water against the barrier set her teeth on edge. The flicker of colorful fish set her heart racing in her throat and the shadows of larger creatures had her composure unraveling.

But it was the knowledge that it could all come crashing down in a heartbeat that had her nearly sick with nerves.

She'd always hated deep water. The dark, unknowable depths had long made her blood run cold, and she'd avoided the docks in her youth. Then she'd nearly drowned the same day her last family member abandoned her, and only a Shadow Dragon's timely intervention had allowed her to keep breathing. The memories of choking on cold brine and fighting against the numbness in her limbs to stay afloat were brought rushing to the forefront by this hellish prison. That old animal terror pricked along her spine and made her hands tremble uncontrollably.

She tried desperately to hide it, especially from the Crow. He'd been trapped in this prison for a year; what was a few hours of misery in the face of that? Luckily, he seemed completely focused on his quarry and escape. Little else seemed to faze him. Neve, of course, saw right through her. Rook nearly hugged the detective when she'd casually offered some candied ginger to settle her stomach on the trip back to Treviso.

"So Lucanis, now that you're free, what are you looking forward to the most?" Rook asked once her stomach eased on the second night at sea.

"Besides a hot bath and real food? Probably trimming my beard."

"Any requests for your first meal as a free man?" She shrugged at his questioning look. "It's something we tried to do for the runaway slaves in Docktown. A homey, hot meal that someone else made and a safe place to hideout while we worked to get them out."

"Those meals were good, too," Neve chimed in from where she reclined against the railing. Moonlight danced over her proud features and Rook fleetingly wished she looked half as compelling as the detective—seriously, the woman had to have songs, poems, serials, and art dedicated to her. "I'd sometimes nab a bite there after a successful job."

"On behalf of the kitchen staff, many thanks," Rook laughed.

"You cook?"

Lucanis' question cut through her forced levity with all the precision of a well-aimed arrow. Rook nodded sheepishly, wilting a little under his keen gaze. It was different than facing down Neve. With the detective, it was clear she was always thinking and searching for something. It was always obvious when she was dissatisfied or opted not to push. But with the assassin, there were no little tells to give away his mood. There wasn't a faint tilt of the head or purse of the lips to go off. He was still and unreadable, like the statues that lined the Treviso rooftops.

"Not so much lately, but I know my way around a kitchen," Rook said, careful to keep her tone light. There was no sense in heaping her own woes on him, especially since he still carried the ashes of the Ossuary on his skin.

"I know I should take it slow for the first few meals, but all I want is Caterina's sopa de pollo and some churros."

She knew all too well how powerful the yearning for home—or, more likely, life before—could be and offered him a small smile. "Maybe Caterina will be se delighted to have you back that your wish will come true."

The memory of those words taunted her now as she showed the silent Crow around the Lighthouse. He hadn't said a word since learning of his grandmother's fate and leaving the Cantori Diamond with the two mages. If it wasn't for the occasional nod, Rook would think he wasn't listening at all. So she continued pointing out the few things worth even a throwaway remark as she ushered him through the library and courtyard.

"Neve's claimed that space, and Bellara and Harding—who you'll meet later—have taken the other two," she said, gesturing with each name mentioned. "The kitchen is dead ahead, but it's in need of more elbow grease than we've been able to give it with… well, everything going on."

Lucanis nodded as he took it all in.

"And be careful not to fall off the edge," she rambled. "I don't know how long the Fade goes on for, or how one plummets to their death in a space influenced by dreams, but I don't really want any of us to find out. Because there are no railings and I don't know how we'd get you back."

Rook winced as her mouth ran away from her. It was an unfortunate habit she'd never quite mastered when nervous. The poor man was covered in gore, both new and old, and was disheveled beyond belief. After the latest blow, he seemed almost hollow. Fragile. Her rambling almost certainly wasn't helping. Rook resolved to keep an eye on him and to dissolve his contract if it became too great a burden on him. It wasn't really his choice to be here, not like with the others. He was repaying a debt through his service—an agreement he hadn't even entered. Or, worse, only entered under duress. By all rights, the contract should be void since the cost of refusal would be his continued imprisonment and eventual death.

"But here—the bathhouse is this way." She hurried up the steps in the courtyard, careful not to get tangled in the barren vines lining the stairs. "It sort of appeared while Neve and Harding were first exploring the place, and it was my first stop after waking up here. But it's plenty big for the four—five of us and has shelves full of soaps and oils."

The air grew warm and humid as they moved into the dim hall hidden behind a curtain of dead ivy. A soft light glowed ahead and the echo of falling water beckoned them on. When they stepped into the bathing chamber for the first time, Lucanis seemed to drift out of his stupor.

It was hard not to be impressed. A large pool dominated the center of the room with thick, gauzy curtains hanging down at regular intervals to offer privacy if the bathers so wished. Smaller pools sat further back, most obscured in shadow and were almost entirely shrouded by more of the same curtains. The real stunner though was the waterfall that fed the main bathing pool. It fell through the open ceiling, seemingly from nowhere, and glimmered with hues of pink and gold from the Fade sky. Steam hung low over the water, obscuring benches and shelves cleverly inset into the walls to house soaps, oils, towels, shaving kits, pumice stones, and anything one could feasibly require for a luxurious bath.

"Impressive," he murmured, stepping further into the space and carefully sniffing at one of the bottles.

"It really is. I don't know if it's the magic of this place or the Caretaker or something else, but this place really does provide some fascinating things."

"Caretaker?"

"The one who ferried us here. It's a friendly spirit, if a little sad, and calls us all 'dweller.'" She picked up a couple of large, soft towels and hugged them against herself. "I rather like it."

He studied her with those dark eyes for a long moment before saying, "You're not put off by spirits."

She wasn't sure if it was meant to be a question, but she decided to take it as one. "We're taught to have a healthy respect for them, but not to fear them, in the Minrathous Circle. Besides, Varric and I spent too much time in the Fade for delicate sensibilities. I've found that most spirits are easier to understand than mortals, in their way. There's a clarity of purpose that helps."

Lucanis shook his head and reached out for the towels. "I sometimes wondered about that as a boy. And now I know just how wrong that is."

Rook handed him the towels, head cocked curiously. "Which part? The clarity of purpose?"

"No, that's simple enough. Spite is anything but easy to understand." His attention darted somewhere over her right shoulder before he shook his head again. "Mierda. Children are easier than spirits."

"Maybe because he's a spirit in the Fade while tethered to a physical form?" The idea grabbed hold of her and refused to let go; it was exactly the sort of thing the high ranking Circle scholars would kill for the chance to study. "I wonder if that's warping his perspective of things. Like only ever looking through those trick mirrors at carnivals."

The Crow shrugged and turned away from her to arrange his bathing items just so. "It does not matter. Thank you for showing me around."

"Oh, yeah. Of course. Just… let me know if there's anything else I can do for you." She turned away, hearing the dismissal loud and clear.

Rook's heart twisted as she left him. He'd been through too much and, as of that night, lost too much for it to be truly wise to throw himself headlong into a fight against actual gods. More than that, she wasn't sure he even tolerated her at that point. He'd been painfully quiet, simply listening impassively and nodding whenever she paused for more than a breath.

It was obvious to her that he was a proud man and would likely dig his heels in if he sensed her hesitation to leverage him. She would have to offer him a way out of the contract that didn't reek of pity. Too bad she didn't have the faintest idea how to gently break a contract with an Antivan Crow for fear of heaping more unnecessary trauma on his shoulders.

Back in the courtyard, she glowered at the Fen'Harel statue that seemed to taunt her with its unblinking stare. If it wasn't for Solas' ego and determination to throw the world back several millennia, none of them would be in this mess. Varric would be relaxing in Kirkwall and writing his next book. Harding would be in Ferelden with her ma. D'Meta's Crossing would still stand and Minrathous would never have been ravaged by a swarm of demons. Solas was the start and end of it, the statue a looming reminder of all that had gotten them to this point.

Her last vestiges of control snapped, frayed from the foray to the bottom of the sea and the state of the man they'd rescued and she flipped her middle fingers at the stone wolf.

"I've never been a believer in higher powers, so fuck you for proving me wrong, Solas. And fuck you again for creating this whole nightmare situation in the first place. Fuck. You."

Maybe she deserved to suffer for her mistakes, but the others didn't. She may not know them terribly well, but they were hers and she'd face down the gods to protect them. Rook silently promised to do exactly that as she went inside to continue her research into their enemies.