lucanis' most attractive quality is that he's an effortless 'yes, and -- 'er. he and davrin especially 'yes, and -- ' each other constantly, even at the death threat stage, culminating in the 'first talon first warden' grotesquery (affectionate) as its most potent form once they're over that. few things are as charming to me as a willingness to bond over the bit and boy. when you're making weak jokes while facing down an archdemon lucanis will stand next to you and go 'she didn't want to talk, rook!!' like he was born to do nothing else. and that's part of why I love him
freaked out broken grieving, a wreck of his former self, come hell or high water. within five minutes he will say something that startles me into laughing so hard I have to put the game on pause for a while. only purple hawke can equal him in this regard
the darker side of this is that it is also how he communicates with illario but in a way where they lob resentment and self-loathing disguised as levity back and forth without ever really touching it or bringing it into the light, never leaving space for air to get in to stop the wounds from festering. I think it might have been less like that once upon a time -- just the playful bonding part, the mutual back and forth game of it, and not the wounding, since lucanis keeps doing it with others without that layer to it. sort of like intuiting where a river of love once ran by the evidence it left behind in the landscape, before something slowly dried up and left some toxic sludge behind along the floors of the river valleys
