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It was the first hour of Thedas' freedom from the blight. Smoke and dust hung heavy in the air, the ground a mess of blood and rubble and embers flickering with dying light. People were reunited, some alive, many dead. Tears were shed of sorrow and relief alike, and had only just begun to dry as the survivors of Elgar'nan's occupation began to spread out across Minrathous in search of their loved ones and their homes (or at least what remained of them).
Rook sat perched on the rooftop of a building still miraculously standing, legs dangling over the edge as she surveyed the clusters of people moving about the wreckage below.
The street directly beneath her had been one Neve had shown her on Rook's first day back in Minrathous. She'd told her it was a shortcut to the docks, and wasn't she lucky she had a local to show her around...
Or course that was before the dragon. Before the blight.
Rook took a deep, shuddering breath. Neve was alright now. Well, as alright as someone made to be Elgar'nan's blighted puppet could be. Davrin and Bellara had taken her to see Tarquin and Ashur. Rook had considered offering to go along, but thought better of it. She imagined she was the last person the remaining Shadow Dragons wanted to see right now, seeing as she was the one who got them into this mess in the first place.
There would be time to stew in her guilt another day. A lifetime's worth of it, no doubt.
Today, they won. Against all odds, they defeated Elgar'nan and convinced Solas to bind himself to the Veil. It was a kinder fate than the Dread Wolf deserved, a small, angry part of herself kept reminding her. She had very well considered fighting Solas, or taking revenge and tricking the smug, lying bastard right back. Maker, it would've felt good to see the look on his face when he got a taste of his own methods, realized the elven god of trickery had been tricked.
But Rook could not damn the world for a taste of petty revenge. She would not become like him, because Thedas deserved better than Solas. Frankly, it deserved better than her too, but the very least she could do was try to act as close to something it did deserve as possible. And that meant helping him. Even if he was a massive, massive prick.
She couldn't help but chuckle to herself at the insanity of it all, how much she'd changed. If you'd told her only a few months ago she'd become the kind of person who talked things out instead of punching first and asking questions later she'd have laughed in your face and bet 100 gold against you for good measure. If you'd told her she'd had the opportunity to punch the smirk right off Solas' face, and instead she (with the help of Morrigan and the inquisitor, mind) forgave the bastard? Told him to set aside his guilt and save the world he had so desperately sought to erase? And it worked? 200 gold against you, and you'd have to buy her drinks the rest of your life.
But here she was. Crazy what having to save the world does to a person. Even a scrappy treasure-hunter with a penchant for picking fights she had no business winning.
What was it Varric had said? That's why I recruited you, you just don't know when to quit, kid.
Rook was interrupted from her thoughts as she heard the crunch of rubble under boots from behind her. She didn't need to glance over her shoulder to know who it was. She'd come to recognize those footfalls anywhere.
"I was wondering where you'd wandered off to," Lucanis said softly, in that voice he only ever used when they were alone. The one that made Rook's chest tight and her cheeks warm.
Rook let herself smile, and reopened an undiscovered cut on her lip as she did so. A souvenir from her battle with Elgar'nan, no doubt.
"Well you've found me," she started, and glanced over her shoulder at him. He too adorned a plethora of new scars, and his once dark blue uniform was grey with soot and ash.
"I should've known better than to sneak away from the First Talon. Remind me to never challenge you to hide and seek."
Lucanis smiled, but did not laugh. Instead, he approached Rook, and with the ginger precision of a trained assassin, lowered himself to sit beside her.
Once he had settled, their fingers just barely touched where they were placed on the rugged stone of the dilapidated rooftop.
"I was...worried," Lucanis said, in a surprisingly small, boyish voice. He looked to Rook again, and when she met his gaze she felt her stomach clench at the pleading look in his eyes.
"You said...you promised you wouldn't disappear. Not again."
Rook placed her hand on top of his own and tried not to let the gentleness bleed into desperation.
"I'm sorry I made you worry," she said, with a sincerity that surprised her and felt foreign on her tongue.
She gave his hand a delicate squeeze, and ran her thumb across one of the rings adorning his calloused fingers.
"I'm not going anywhere. Can't get rid of me that easily," she said with a teasing smile, and she could feel it grow as Lucanis shook his head with a matching, though reluctant, one of his own.
"You're impossible," he muttered, flipping over his hand so she could lace her fingers through his own. She happily complied with the silent request.
"You love it," she said, in her usual joking tone, giving him a playful nudge with her shoulder. He only gazed at her, his scar-riddled face softening to a look of ease. Contentment.
"I do."
Rook felt her face go very warm at that, and let her head fall to his shoulder to disguise the blush most certainly staining her cheeks. He tightened his grip on her hand, and let his own head rest gently atop hers.
This was nice. New. In a way that kind of scared her...but nice.
And she must have said as much, because she felt the vibration as Lucanis hummed in agreement.
They sat like that, for many moments. Watching as Thedas entered its second hour of freedom from the blight. The wind began to carry the smoke across the water, the sun began to peek over the now much more visible horizon. The chatter of people around them died down as they migrated to the parts of the city that had faced slightly less destruction in the wake of battle.
Despite the ruin surrounding them and the aches in their bones, it was peaceful.
In the quiet of said peace, Rook realized something so ridiculous it brought a laugh to bubble past her lips. Startled by her sudden outburst, Lucanis pulled his head back to glance down at her skeptically.
"Please tell me you haven't lost your mind. Did you hit your head during the fight?"
"Pfft no. I mean, maybe. But that's not what's funny," she said, and Lucanis grumbled something in Antivan under his breath that she pretended not to hear.
"Forgive my suspicion, it's just that randomly bursting into laughter during peaceful moments with your boyfriend is generally a symptom of head trauma. Or insanity," he snarked in that biting, teasing tone that Rook loved so dearly to rouse out of him. She grinned a small, wicked grin.
"You're my boyfriend, huh?"
Lucanis looked away from her bashfully but rolled his eyes all the same, all the while doing nothing to separate their conjoined hands. She saw that his cheeks had darkened a tinge, and she quietly felt vindicated for how he'd made her blush something fierce not long before.
"Of course that's what you took from that. And considering the conversations we've had recently, I can't think of a better word for it, can you?"
"Not just the conversations," Rook muttered in a low, suggestive tone, and couldn't bite back the laugh that erupted from her when Lucanis gave her a swift shove with his shoulder.
"Mierda, you drive me crazy. I can't believe I love you."
Rook's heart suddenly felt as if it had begun beating quite fast, and simultaneously like it had stilled in her chest. She didn't even bother hiding her blush this time.
"A terrible decision, really. Though I suppose it works well in my favor, considering I happen to love you too," she said, trying her best to maintain that cool, easy-going casualness in her words. To not stutter and betray the raw, vulnerable truth behind them.
Whether or not she succeeded was impossible to parse from Lucanis' expression. He smiled at her with that lovestruck look that made her want to grin and weep and kiss his stupid, beautiful face in equal parts. Mostly she did the first, though her eyes burned with the threat of tears when he placed a kiss on the top of her head and moved to sit closer to her, their joined hands now settled on his thigh.
"Well then, please indulge your boyfriend and share with him what you found so funny before?" He asked, with a satisfied lilt of confidence in his voice that made Rook's stomach feel funny. Said feeling was quickly quashed when she remembered what it was that had occurred to her only moments before.
"Oh yeah um...I uh-- I don't think I've ever told you my real name," she said with a sheepish laugh, rubbing the back of her neck with her free hand. Lucanis became very still for a moment, and when she glanced at him she saw his face awash in confusion.
"You mean...it's not Rook?" He asked, and Rook shook her head.
"Rook is a nickname Varric gave me that just kinda stuck. I want to keep it, don't get me wrong. I'm just as much Rook as I am my other name. But uh, yeah. I do have another name."
She was rambling. She knew she was rambling but as the words tumbled out she had a hard time stopping them (Varric would've said something clever about that, too). She felt unbelievably stupid that she'd known Lucanis for however long now, and never once considered to tell him her real name. Truthfully, she'd been going by Rook so long that she just kind of forgot she even had the other one.
Lucanis looked thoughtful for a moment, then smiled, softly.
"Well it feels shameful for me to not know my girlfriend's name..." He said, with another playful nudge to her shoulder. She rolled her eyes but couldn't help the matching smile tugging at her lips.
"Mona. My name is Mona."
Rook, or Mona, or both, she supposed, had not expected how nervous she would become sharing something as simple as her name with him. Perhaps it was the past it was tied to that made her skin buzz with worried anticipation as the words came tumbling off her lips.
Lucanis' eyebrows raised, a moment of surprise, before that same old look that made her weak in the knees and warm in the face was staring back at her once more. Carefully, he moved so her hand was held in both of his, and he turned to fully face her.
"Well Mona," he began, and his lips quirked in the threat of a smile as he said the new, unfamiliar name. He brought her hand to his lips and placed a delicate kiss on the back of it, maintaining eye contact with her all the while. She found herself holding her breath as he did so.
"Forgive me for not mentioning earlier, but you look beautiful today."
She knew that couldn't possibly be true: she was covered in dirt and blood and had hardly slept for days. Her hair was matted with what she hoped was mud but was fairly certain was blight ooze, and she had no idea how many cuts and bruises she'd accumulated during the battle with Elgar'nan.
But as the honeyed words left Lucanis' lips, there was no doubting he believed them- his voice was soft and warm and so full of want it made Rook's eyes threaten tears all over again. She didn't fight them this time, feeling the warm trail cut down her grime-caked cheeks. And she laughed, a bubbly, giddy laugh.
And she kissed him. She couldn't hold back any longer, her free hand grabbing at the lapels of the shirt peaking from beneath his leather uniform. His hands dropped her own to settle on either side of her face, pulling her closer to him, and she let the hand not white-knuckling his shirt stay resting on his thigh.
It was a couple hours into Thedas' freedom from the blight, and atop a rooftop in the wreckage of Minrathous sat two heroes, an assassin and a treasure hunter, about to begin the next chapter of their lives.