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“I think that's as good of a plan as we can have right now,” Inquisitor Rylla Lavellan declared with a sigh of finality. “If anyone can pull it off, Rook, I believe you can.”
The younger woman did not respond. She was staring at her clasped hands on the table, a deep furrow resting right in between her eyebrows. Rylla watched her, waited. She had not known Rook long, but it wasn't hard to get the impression that extended quiet was outside the realm of normality here. The Inquisitor tried again, clearing her throat loudly. “Rook?”
Rook’s head jerked up, a movement that bounced the abundance of wild red curls that flowed from her head down her back. “Yes? What? Yes,” her response was rapidfire and did nothing but prove she had stopped listening. If this were the behavior of some highborn noble Rylla was being forced to deal with, she would have been privately enraged. But Rook was no noble; she wasn't even really a soldier. All Rylla saw was a kid trying her best.
“Are you alright?” The Inquisitor asked, prompted by this thought.
Rook blinked rapidly as if she had once more forgotten her table was shared. Her eyes were almost violet, Rylla realized: a sky at dusk. “Ah, I'm fine, Inquisitor,” Rook claimed, shifting uncomfortably. This overt politeness did not suit her, and she seemed to feel it, too.
Rylla offered a tired smile. “Rylla, please,” she requested, “‘Inquisitor’ is such a mouthful. No one should have to say it while sitting in a tavern.” Her gesture indicated the tavern around them, emptied in order to facilitate this meeting but still bearing the mark of a place intended for drinking, betting, and brawling.
Rook chuckled, “Rylla. I’ll buy that.” She peered across the table, eyes tracing the pattern of Rylla's vallaslin. “And you’re…Dalish, right?”
“Clan Lavellan.”
“Solas must have loved that.”
Rylla let out a harsh laugh. “Thankfully, the only thing he likes as much as being right is someone proving him wrong, and he's never stopped being wrong about me.” She leaned back in the chair, listening to it creak from age and use. “And you? I assume you weren't born ‘Rook.’”
Rook shrugged as though prepared to tell a dull story. “Nah. Born in the Free Marches. My birth mother sold me to slavers who took me to Tevinter. Eventually, one of the Crows rescued me and took me on, so…Valkyr de Riva. That’s my name since.”
She said this as though it were all quite mundane, even as Rylla’s eyes grew wide and questioning. “That…” she scrambled to find the right words, “...sounds like quite a lot to live through. Even before you added Elven gods to the recipe.”
“Maybe I was getting bored,” Rook returned with a grin, fierce and unrelenting. A smile of someone who refused to be broken; she would need that. The young woman didn't dwell on the subject, instead tilting her head to tap the sharp corner of her own elven ear. “So, how many times do elves have to save the world before people start treating us decently, do you think?”
Rylla was taken off guard by this question, but smiled, scratching the shaved half of her scalp. “Oh, at least once more.” She leaned in, resting her right elbow on the stained table. “Did you know the Hero of Ferelden was an elf, too?”
“You're joking.”
“Let's hope the answer is three, I suppose.”
Rook snorted in a way that suggested she doubted it before going quiet again. Rylla watched her with refreshed curiosity. She could see bits of herself in the other elf – not an exact reflection by any means, but similarities. Two determined elves thrust into positions of responsibility they had never asked for. Rylla couldn't tell if she felt pride in these parallels, or just pity.
“Can I…” the sentence burst out of Rook almost violently, as if it took her off guard as well. “Can I ask you something…personal?”
Rylla did not answer immediately, taking time to consider the question. Did she want to answer anything “personal” right now? Josie would have had a prim and proper fit at the labored silence, but Rylla wasn’t going to give a ‘yes’ if she didn't mean it. After a weighty moment, she finally answered, “You can. But if we're going to sit and talk for a while…do you mind if I take this off?” She gestured to her left arm.
Rook’s eyes flickered over her left side, clearly unsure of what she was speaking about. That didn't stop her from saying, “Sure,” all the same. Rylla resisted the urge to laugh. No, they certainly weren't too similar.
Still, with permission given, the Inquisitor reached under the shoulder of her blouse and felt for the buckles that bit into her skin. She disconnected the straps snaking up her left bicep, allowing the stiff prosthetic forearm to slide off. Rylla grabbed the wrist and pulled it all the way off, letting out a sigh of relief. True to her assumption, Rook looked as though she were stunned to see the arm removed. “Between you and me,” Rylla said conspiratorially as she placed the prosthetic on the ground, “I hate wearing this thing.”
Rook recovered well. “Why do you have it, then?”
“Well, it's fairly new.” Her head lolled away from her shoulder, stretching her neck. “I only got it when everything started in the South. Sometimes it makes things easier; if I don't feel like people asking about it, things like that. I deal with one or two Orlesian nobles who love to judge first and ask questions later, so I’d rather skip the part where they question if I'm capable." Rylla grimaced, “But the damn thing makes me feel like I'm going to tip over. I got used to not having anything there.”
Rook’s head bobbed slowly, thoughtfully. “I knew you didn't have the mark anymore, but…I guess I never thought about why.” Something flashed in her eyes that Rylla could not identify. “Solas took that too, huh?”
“He did.” Rylla glanced down at where her arm ended above the elbow and knew she didn't want to talk about Solas anymore right now. “So? What did you want to ask?”
Almost immediately, the younger elf began to fidget, shifting in her chair while simultaneously using her thumbnail to increase the depth of a divet in the wooden table. “Right, well…like I said, it's a little personal…” She brought her hand back to her lap as her eyes remained down. “You were in the Inquisition when you first met your…” she paused, brow furrowed as she wrestled with something before she continued, “Your…man…friend? Right?”
Rylla stared, utterly baffled, brain scrambling to understand what Rook was talking about. Once she realized, she could only ask incredulously, “My husband?”
“Right! Him!” Rook grinned sheepishly. “Sorry, I wasn't sure if it was a, you know, married sort of thing.”
“Yes, that was abundantly clear.”
Rook laughed then at her own expense. Rylla liked that about her. “But you met him,” she pressed again, “when you were…Inquisitoring, right?”
A small smile played on the Inquisitor's lips upon hearing yet another ridiculous phrasing. “I wasn't Inquisitor when we first met. They were calling me ‘Herald of Andraste' at the beginning. But I was the, ah…assumed leader, I suppose.”
She could remember it well: the first moment that she walked into the war room and saw Cullen there, brilliant and golden as a distant sun. He had been uniquely focused and serious in contrast to the rest of the room. Rylla might have thought him nothing more than a handsome accessory if that had been their only interaction. But later, she had smiled at him and witnessed the commander blush and stammer to a degree that instantly intrigued her; a passing glimpse at the sweetness nested in his heart. When she had dug in, she found a warmth and gentleness the Templars had failed to extract from him, even though they had tried. He was a great man and, more significantly to her, a good one. The fingers of her right hand absentmindedly hovered over her torso; he'd be a good father, too.
It was good that Rook wasn't privy to these musings, and she didn't seem to notice Rylla getting lost in them since she was in the midst of her own. With a deep breath, the younger woman across the table said, “I guess what I want to ask is…how did you do it?”
“Do…?”
“How do you love someone when the world feels like it's ending?” Her eyes were fixed on Rylla's now, unrelenting violet against green. “When you have to think about whether or not your decision could get someone killed? Or you could get that very person hurt? How do you let yourself…do that?”
A small, strangled noise of surprise ushered out of Rylla. She hadn't been sure if she ought to expect a real question or a joke in disguise. Maybe she had privately been expecting the latter and that had left her unprepared
The Inquisitor let out a long breath as she collected her thoughts. “That's…a big question.” Her eyes turned up to the ceiling in thought. “I asked one a lot like it once.”
“And?”
And she had asked Varric. Varric, who had always been wiser than he wanted anyone to know. Sitting next to him in the icy atmosphere of Skyhold, trying not to cry in frustration. “I can't ask someone to love me if I’m going to die any day now,” she had claimed. At the time it felt heavy, but in retrospect she had been pouting a little. Taking a moment to feel sorry for herself.
Varric just chuckled, because he was a storyteller, and he knew how this was going to end. “You do realize, Freckles, that any one person could die any day for any reason. This wall could fall on us and boom - done. The wall wouldn't even care that you used to be the Herald of Andraste.”
“Macabre. Is there a point?”
“Time is always going to be short, Freckles.”
Rylla kept her eyes on the ceiling as a lump blocked her throat. Time is always going to be short. Every time she thought she had exhausted her tears, a new store surfaced.
But Rook didn't need that right now. She had barely even mentioned Varric since they met – maybe it was too painful for both of them. Rylla forced herself to swallow, breathe, and put the hurt away for right now.
“For me,” Rylla said, having composed herself, “I had feelings for Cullen for a long time, but I was terrified to act on them. Then one day I realized…” She turned her head to look out the window next to them, watching the busy docks. “I realized that if he were to die, it wouldn't hurt me any less just because I didn't allow myself to get close to him. I would still mourn, still weep. And I would have all those terrible feelings and still regret that I never said or did anything.” Just the thought of it still made her chest feel constricted. “I decided that, for me, the potential for pain was worth the chance to experience loving him in whatever time I had left. So I told him, and then he had to make his own choice in that regard. If it was too heavy for him, I would respect that and never bring it up again.”
Rylla looked at Rook, who was observing her closely. “I'm guessing that wasn't the case?” The other elf asked with a crooked smile.
Rylla chuckled, “No. He was quite pleased with my reasoning.”
Rook joined in the laugh, once more picking at the table with incredible focus. Rylla watched her a moment. She looked so small, so young, though she couldn't be much younger than Rylla had been at the start of the Inquisition. She hadn't felt like a child when it had been happening to her, but in retrospect, she might as well have been. Rylla inclined her head slightly. “I can't make that decision for you either, Rook,” she explained quietly. “You have to decide for yourself what you want, what you need, and what that is worth to you.”
Deep furrows creased Rook’s brow. “I get it. I think.” She shook her head, letting out a huff that lifted a few stray curls away from her face. “Gods, the first time in my life I've wanted someone to tell me what to do and no one will touch it.”
Rylla chuckled. “That is the way of things.” She considered a moment before venturing, “Can I ask who it is? This person you're thinking of?”
A rust colored eyebrow arched. “Is this an official inquiry?”
“Just good old fashioned curiosity,” Rylla's lips parted into a grin. “Indulge me. I haven't had good gossip in ages.”
Rook laughed, and Rylla got the impression that this honesty had earned her a truthful answer. “It’s, um…his name is Lucanis.”
Rylla tilted her head. “Your assassin?”
“That's him.”
“Huh.” Rylla lifted her eyes thoughtfully, trying to picture such a scenario. She did not know Lucanis Dellamorte personally, but he had accompanied Rook to meet here once before. He had been quiet, on edge, skulking, and, now that she thought about it, keeping a close eye on Rook. At the time she had taken it for paranoia, but perhaps…
Rook seemed to read her thoughts and sheepishly said, “I know it probably seems odd–”
“No,” Rylla smiled across the table, “No, that…that makes perfect sense, actually.”
That seemed to surprise her, which made Rylla think she was the first person who wasn't utterly baffled by the pairing. But she wasn't lying– it did make sense. Lucanis was a man she understood to have demons (one of which was literal, according to reports from Harding.) Wouldn't he want Rook there to light up his darkest corners? Not like the sun, no, she was far too wild for that comparison. But she was like a bolt of lightning: fierce and loud, exciting and bright. And she needed someone who could occasionally contain the explosion, ground her, like a rod in the earth. Thinking of it that way…why wouldn't they be drawn together in the midst of these unusual circumstances?
Rylla ventured, “Does he feel the same?”
She caught a flush in Rook's face, pink against her myriad of dark freckles, far more than Rylla had. “He does,” she answered, self-conscious but not doubtful. The older elf smiled.
“Then I think you'll figure out how to make it work for you both.”
Rook's head bobbed and she looked significantly less tense than before. “Thank you,” Rook offered, “for talking. And listening.”
“Of course.”
There was a fresh determination in her face now as she stood, knocking her knuckles on the table. “I should get back to the Lighthouse.”
Rylla stood as well, almost instinctively. “Good luck, Rook. With everything.”
“Thank you, Rylla.”
Her absence had a palpable effect; like the buzz left in the air after a storm. Rylla sunk back into the chair and sat in the empty tavern for a while, looking thoughtfully at the divet Rook had clawed into the table.
It was a few minutes before someone entered behind her and Dorian walked into her peripheral vision. “Playdate over already?”
She smirked. “Oh, yes. Short and pleasant. No one pulled each other’s hair.”
“Sounds dreadfully boring.”
Rylla chuckled and shook her head, continuing to stare at the table. She hadn't thought she was giving anything away, but Dorian leaned in, watching her carefully. “Are you all right, my dear?” He asked, managing to sound bored even while being caring.
Rylla weighed the question for a moment, the same way she had considered Rook’s question earlier. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs to the point it was almost painful before releasing it.
“...I think I might be pregnant.”
The response was a resounding, shocked silence. “...Oh,” was all he finally uttered. She thought he might be at a rare loss for words until he asked, “Whose is it?”
Rylla groaned and set her boot against his leg to shove him away. “My husband, you ingrate.”
Dorian pressed a hand to his chest, feigning shock at the indignity of being taunted and pushed around. “Well! I'll have to be the one to teach your spawn manners, I see,” he harrumphed. Rylla laughed, momentarily relieved at just saying it aloud instead of rolling the possibility endlessly in her mind. But as her laughter trailed off, so did the relief, replaced instead by something much colder.
Dorian’s hand dropped. “Rylla?”
“I'm really scared, Dorian.”
Her voice had come out so much smaller, shakier, than even she expected. There was a pensive moment before Dorian – her friend, her best – let out a breath and pulled up a chair next to hers. “You haven't told Cullen, then?”
“No,” she sniffled, “I want to wait until I know for sure, but…I had to tell someone before I drive myself crazy.”
“Making me keep secrets? It's truly as if we have never met.”
She laughed, though it was choked by the tears starting to gather against her eyelids. All she had thought about was how small and young Rook seemed, and she was an adult. Now, now of all times, Rylla was going to bring a baby into this world? She reached out and gripped Dorian’s hand. “I'm scared,” she repeated quietly.
Dorian watched her, and she caught the corner of his mustache twitching from behind the veil of tears in her eyes. “Well…stop it.”
“Dorian–”
“You’re not alone, Rylla.” He squeezed her hand softly. “First of all, your Cullen is going to lose his bloody mind with excitement. And Maker knows he doesn't need more excuses to dote on you.” He leaned forward to catch her eye. “And if you're worried about your child being born with absolutely no fashion sense - which you should be, by the way - I am here to intervene.”
She did laugh at that, a genuine laugh, even though it rattled her body so that her tears rolled down her cheeks. Her lips quivered into a smile, “I'm sorry Varric won’t get to meet them.”
Dorian looked down. “I know,” he responded, allowing a rare earnest moment to bloom.
Not for too long, though. He was still Dorian.
“All right, that's enough feeling,” he said with finality, bringing his hands back as he stood. “I only see you a few times in a year and I refuse to let crying become a regular occurrence.”
Rylla laughed again, wiping her eyes. She stooped to pick up her prosthetic before she stood as well. “Oh, Dorian, you do care!”
“Well, your face tends to get all red and puffy, and it’s not easy to look at.”
She immediately wielded the false arm to jab him in the side, to which he gave a wounded yelp.
“Such abuse I suffer,” he sniffed. “And to think I was going to let you use the sending crystal to talk to Bull tonight…”
Rylla gasped, excited, “Oh, but I want to!”
“Then you better start being nice!”
Rylla tucked her prosthetic into her left underarm, not wanting to fuss with putting it back on. With her right hand free, she looped it into Dorian’s elbow. “I'll behave if you do,” she promised, throwing a glance back at the table she had shared with Rook.
She had so rarely been asked for advice in anything that wasn't fighting gods or monsters. It had been nice to be listened to about the heart.
Maybe someday she would have a similar conversation with a little half elf girl with her father's golden hair and her mother's green eyes. And maybe they wouldn't have the weight of the world on their shoulders when that happened. The very idea sent a surprisingly pleasant flutter through her stomach.
She leaned her head on Dorian’s shoulder as he guided her out.
Maybe, since she wasn't alone…it would be ok after all.