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Rook hears it before she can act. A sharp rap on the doorframe. The silence has hung over this part of the lighthouse for weeks. Especially on this side, there’s only the occasional mutter sounding from Emmrich’s study, the sound of Varric spouting idioms from the other side of the wall, or the occasional blub from one of the fish. She barely registers that her silhouette haloed out with a blue glow thanks to the light from the aquarium in front of her. The corridor gives her enough space and privacy that having someone look in while changing is not a thought that has ever crossed her mind. Who would be here at this time of night and not even have their footsteps heard walking up the corridor?
The half-whispered Antivan drawl catches itself with a “Rook?”
“Lucanis!” is what follows, sharp. She imagines her horrid mix of Dalish and Vint is far less pleasing to the ear. That’s the first thought. It takes another second for her to turn back, face the aquarium, and pull her shirt over her torso. “ Sorry… ” A gulp. Did he see something he shouldn’t have? “I wasn’t expecting visitors.”
She throws a cautious glance over her shoulders. Lucanis leans up against the door frame, eyes firmly trained on the ground and arms crossed over his torso. He shakes his head and Rook swears that there’s a smile playing on his lips.
“You’re always visiting us. It’s alright,” Lucanis says. He blinks, long — but softer, like a Mabari’s mouth might hold its favourite chew toy. There’s a familiar shadow that falls over his brow. Spite .
Rook thumbs at the hem of her shirt. A light linen, something a little less heavy for sleep. She knows Lucanis is well-acquainted with the midnight hours, but even as he opens his eyes again there’s a tiredness trapped in them. He’s been thinking. Or, rather, he’s been in conversation with himself again. The nights spent on the trail of Zara Renata know this version of him — the dusks that turn into restless dawns where Spite has no doubt been nicking at his heels. She cannot claim to understand it, but she’s watched Harding sit outside the conservatory sharpening her single arrow, throwing glances towards the kitchen.
“Have I missed something?” She starts. When he doesn’t look back up, Rook coughs. It’s enough to bring his eyes to hers. And when the realisation sets in that she’s finally modest, he straightens his posture and leaves the comfort of leaning against the doorframe. “Did Neve find a lead?”
“No,” he says, and there’s less disappointment on his tongue than she expects. “I wanted to talk to you.”
Rook tilts her head and suddenly she’s forgotten about sleep. The business of the day has snapped her back awake.
“Right, okay.”
“It’s not serious,” he follows, his hand flexing. He clicks his tongue. “ Well… ”
Hands instinctively find comfort at her hips as Lucanis rounds the side of the meditation chamber. His focus leaves her for a second, browsing across the poorly organised trinkets from their travels so far. He lingers a little too long on the half-open wardrobe, where her robes from the street vendor in Dock Town spill out — neglected after a few sedentary days here in the Lighthouse.
“We had to fish you out of the lake in Arthalan the last time we were out…” His voice trails off alongside his best attempt to avoid making any sort of eye contact with her. Instead, he turns towards the blue and three fish approach to meet their stranger at the glass. A hand quickly swats at the air beside him and Lucanis huffs. “Spite says this tank is ironic.”
Yes, it might just be, Rook says to herself. And even in the depths of her thoughts, it is a hushed and forbidden sacrament. She sits down and the plushness of the lounge does not soften the blow. A dull hum is what she gives him back. This topic has been a long time coming. The waters of Thedas are far too closely associated with her already, and her new friends are more than versed in how to stop her from drowning entirely after a handful of near misses. When Varric and Harding had asked her to help stop the ancient Elven God Fen’harel from completing a ritual to tear down the fade and destroy the world as they knew it, they had mentioned nothing about needing to learn how to swim .
“You were never taught?” Curiosity plays in the darkness of his eyes as he searches her face. The trail he leaves behind burns a little on her skin.
Rook tongues at her bottom lip before biting, pushing out, “And you were?”
He sits down beside her, nearly as much perching on the edge than actually sitting. A mouth opens to speak but is stopped by the sudden shift to the side. A push. Spite wants a seat too. He stops, his whole body tensing and relaxing within a matter of a few breaths, then turns to face her entirely as if the disruption had never transpired.
“All the Crow children learn one way or another, but a handful simply refuse. It is a skill encouraged by the Talons. Some contracts require it.” Lucanis laughs. It’s a rare sight, but it’s soft — almost like he shouldn’t be laughing in the first place.
“I’m guessing the Demon of Vyrantium didn’t refuse,” she jests and he winces a little at the title. A redness creeps onto his forehead like someone is jeering at him. When Rook drops the smile and fixes her posture, it doesn’t go away. After a while, she recalls that it is difficult to have an unbiased conversation when there are three in this room.
“Illario and I were pushed into the canals when we were young. Caterina used to watch us from the promenade until we’d stopped floundering about, then walked back into the shadows like nothing had happened. That same lesson occurred every day, just after sunset, until we volunteered to jump in ourselves. After a few weeks, I could hold my breath and swim the length of the canal by Crow’s Road.”
“And Illario?”
Lucanis hums. Silence, and then, “I never thought he liked the water much. He was always a few days behind me in accomplishments.”
He stares, then looks down. The redness fades for a moment, yet returns — though this time painted across his cheekbones. Rook dares not to follow that gaze, but she does indulge herself for a second in wondering where it might have ventured to.
He turns his head to the side. “ Mierda . I sound like an ass. I asked about you and now I’ve insulted my cousin. How did we get here?”
If this is an attempt to change the conversation, it’s working. He’s run a hand through his hair twice now – all while finding more comfort in the fish than the conversation he clearly intended to have with her in the first place.
“No, Lucanis, I did not have swimming lessons,” she says and the words slip off her tongue after desperately clinging on with all their worth. Her sigh is an unexpected lure for the hand that comes to rest briefly on her shoulder. His fingers do not know what to do there. They fidget and squirm, worker bees playing with the stitching on the fabric, weighed down by a gentle palm that slinks over and down her arm. He pulls back before his hand can touch her own and clears his throat.
A breath dances on his tongue. It’s easy to see when he sits beside her, open-mouthed, searching for the right kind of word to give apologies and ask for clarification all at once. There are others more practised at this kind of thing. Emmrich would treat the matter gently, saying her lack of aqua-affinity does not impede her capabilities to lead. Taash would scoff, perhaps, and say water is for people who can’t master the land. Bellara and Harding might both give quiet acknowledgements and haste the topic away like some bad fume sticking to the tiles in a bathroom. Neve and Davrin’s response is even easier to imagine. They’d suggest she learned. Quickly. For the team, of course, and saving the world. Because that’s what matters at the end of the day, isn’t it?
This is why, when she watches Lucanis search within him for a reply, Rook cannot help but wonder what circumstance has brought him to her room so late in the evening to ask of such things.
“But the Oranavra clan camp by the coast?” He asks after a while. His brows knit closer. Lucanis doesn’t wear confusion well. His mouth scrunches up to one side. Someone who didn’t know him that well might think he had something unfortunate stuck in the back of his teeth.
Rook is too focused on this particular aspect of him to immediately clock on to the specifics of his question.
“I never told you the name of my clan.”
“Ah.” The simplicity of the sound hangs in the air between them and, when Lucanis shakes his head, Rook watches as he mutters sharp and pointedly beneath his breath. “Viago said he recognised your markings—” He makes a quick nod to her face. Her vallaslin , he means. “—from a contract given by a Dalish clan the near side of a decade ago. A Tevinter centuri hit, I believe. When we were last in Treviso, Viago made a passing comment about how yours was exactly the same as the man who approached the Crows asking for help.”
She puts her fingers to her face as he talks, gently tracing the line that loops from her temples to her throat. Vallaslin drawn to honour June are not rare amongst the Dalish. She’s spent enough time with the Veil Jumpers recently to realise that. Irelin has a wonderful design dedicated to June, though admittedly more common in style indicative of Arlathan and the surrounding area. Clans tend to etch the same sort of design within themselves – a showcase of belonging, camaraderie, and unified worship. But Rook’s has these extra flecks, leaves, over her cheeks. A claim of family from a clan she can hardly remember. There is only the sea salt and the pain of the blood writing on her face. She tried so fiercely not to scream that day, but the Keeper needed a Second. They told her it was the only way a mage like her was allowed to stay.
Missing the sea is a nostalgia buried deep in her chest, overridden by the anguish of being torn away from it.
“I forget how much the Crows know,” Rook hushes.
“We don’t know much. Not any more than your Shadows do,” he reassures with the hint of a smile. “We just see a lot.”
She pulls her touch away from her collarbone. Could this man have been something to her? How old did he seem? What was the colour of his hair? In an instant, her heart burns with a million questions for Viago de Riva – a million more questions than the many she already had from him and Teia in the first place. The image of a father, a brother, a cousin or a friend flicks through her mind. But the fade is a fickle thing. Pain clouds those memories. Now they are mirages in her dreams and oases for the needy wanderer in her nightmares.
“They – they, no. I suppose that was never really my role,” Rook says, losing control of her tongue a little. “I was a mage and they wanted a new Second. We had… fishers… for water things.”
“Okay.” Another chuckle from him. He’s never laughed this much in front of her before and the conversation does not exactly call for humour. “Perhaps this one particular Shadow Dragon doesn’t know a lot.”
Rook scoffs, biting down on the inside of her cheeks to not grin wildly at the insult.
“First you walk in and point out that I can’t swim, then you say I’m stupid,” she says, jabbing her knee against his. It summons another laugh from his lips – less polite than the ones before. Within moments he sobers, aware of lines emerging at the side of his eyes when he smiles.
“ Spite ,” he says in a growl. The space on the lounge left free for the third party could not feel fuller.
“I can’t hear him, you know.”
Lucanis tuts. “You wouldn’t want to hear him—” He interrupts himself “— She wouldn’t want to hear you .”
“But what if I did want to hear him?” Rook probes.
Lucanis turns back to her, eyes wide. The glance yells out caution and, accompanied by pursed lips, tries his very best to stare blankly and disapproving of the notion.
“I’m certain he exists to spite me ,” he says, shaking his head. “Trust me, you don’t want to hear it.”
Rook leans back, her shoulders brushing against the plush green velvet, but the base of her spine arching with a click. A smirk dances where a smile once stood. Lucanis has shuffled back into a more comfortable position, though still more perching than Rook might like. This is her room, but she shares the Lighthouse with all her new company. And if he can’t relax sitting next to her then how are they supposed to kill two blighted elven gods and stop Thedas from collapsing in on itself? A task too big, maybe, for two people who can barely broach the topic of one not being able to swim without stumbling over every letter in the alphabet.
Lucanis swallows and speaks again, “What about Minrathous?”
“Slaves don’t get swimming lessons,” Rook exhales with a raised brow. The joke will have to be enough to stop the topic from turning sour again. Yet, he still glances at her – brown eyes catching the blue from the aquarium light – with enough concern to drown the whole fade. “And once I was freed, I spent more time mastering the magical elements, not the geological.”
“Someone should have taught you.” Lucanis does not protest, but his huff swells out in a way that seems foreign to his lungs. And though a hint of coffee catches in the breeze from his clothes, not an ounce of caffeine could wash away the dark shade of languor beneath his eyes.
Rook scoops her knees up to meet her chest, hands coming either side of her shins to tuck them on the lounge and avoiding Lucanis’ personal space.
“Are you offering?” she asks. The grip on her skin is incessant, or else her hands might wander to another’s. “That’s why you asked in the first place?”
“I —” His voice fades out and into a light hum again. He twists the pointed end of his beard between his forefinger and thumb. Another attempt to say something is interrupted by the gentle closing of his eyes and the pressure of his tongue licking up at his top lip. He shakes his head while he continues, “I suppose that was a strange way of getting to the point.”
Possibilities cycle through her head. Neve once dove in headfirst to grab Rook in the water, her floundering body slowly inching closer to being dragged under the pier. A string of apologies followed, and Lucanis and Davrin watched as Neve attempted to dry the robes stuck sodden to the elf’s lithe frame. Learning to swim is all well and good, but ineffective if she cannot climb out of whatever she’s fallen into.
“As long as you don’t push me into the Treviso canals, I’m game.”
“No promises.”
“Lucanis—”
Rook swats at him, gentle yet warning all at once.
“Fine,” he says, a smirk playing its own game on his lips. “I won’t push you into any canals .”
“No pushing me at all, please!” Rook says. She follows it with another touch against his shoulder that is far too soft to be anything more than a light prod. It lingers there for a moment, then abruptly retracts.
Lucanis stands, arms returning to the usual spot over his hips, and casts his eyes down to her. The smile sits comfortably on his lips. Tonight is full of rare surprises, it seems.
“I’ll speak to Taash. They might know of shallow shores somewhere in Rivain in a spot that the Lords have reclaimed from the Antaam,” he says, matter-of-fact. “A sunny day would be best. For the clear waters, of course. Wouldn’t want you learning in the cold.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll sort it all. You've got enough on your mind.”
She opens her mouth and the protest burns on the tip of her tongue. Yet she withdraws her closing remark. He must have a lot more on his mind than her. You can see it on his face. Not enough coffee in the world could hide that.
Instead, Rook offers, “Thank you. Really.”
Lucanis nods, goes to turn, then turns back. He shifts on the balls of his feet. Rook glances up, unable to narrow the curiosity in her eyes. Before either of them can open their mouths to speak, Lucanis rounds the side of the lounge and heads towards the door. The air sits where he last stood and Rook freezes in looking up at the space he occupied – met only by the blank stares of the fish in the aquarium back to her.
The steady rhythm of his footsteps stops and, for a moment, she reminds herself that she had not heard him approach earlier. The lightfooted Antivan Crow had slinked off into the night.
That is until a tender exhale sounds out and the quiet farewell that joins it…
“Spite says goodnight.”
Rook shifts onto her knees, giving her enough height to look over the back of the lounge to Lucanis hovering at the doorframe. His back is to her, but he angles his head down so that his eyes lay behind the shadow cast by his brow. A shield to obscure his gaze. But she knows where it lands. The hand stroking at his shoulder just over where she had prodded – hairs on his forearm standing on edge – gives it away.
“Goodnight… Lucanis .”