Portrait of a Family: A Dellamorte Family Character Study
It's the one-year anniversary of my favorite fic I've ever written. In celebration, I thought a repost was in order. This is a fic set pre-Veilguard, examining why the Dellamortes are Like That.
Excerpt:
This woman has held many titles. Many names. All of them bought with blood. Sometimes she feels that she is a woman in pieces. She was Caterina first. Then she was a fledgling, a Crow. A wife. A mother. A grandmother. First Talon. The last one is the bloodiest of all.
Across the years she has lived and the many lives contained within them, she feels as though she has lost parts of herself. Littered them across the landscape, strewn far and wide. She feels as though she could take someone on a tour of it, tell them where she lost each and every piece, the way that when you lose parts of your heart, you never get them back. She could say here, this is my first loss, the first crack in the glass. Some part of her feels that if she could turn back time, follow back each branching, winding crack to the beginning, she might stop it all before it begins. She knows the time and place as well as she knows this villa, every window and door, every hedge in the garden.
Sometimes, at night, she walks the grounds, the moonlight catching in the bits of silver in her once-dark hair, and she looks for them. She is always looking for them. Feels that she will never stop; she isn’t sure she wants to. The villa is full of ghosts, but she is the only one haunted. The only one here who remembers them as they were. Remembers this villa as it once was: a home.
A Halfway to Whole side story. Illario's POV. Caterina's birthday, death, and everything after. Angst, obvs. 4.3k.
This does contain some small spoilers for Halfway to Whole, but I don't think the fic needs to be read to enjoy this since it all takes place before the events of the fic itself.
It's Caterina's birthday, and Illario can't figure out why they're celebrating the birthday of a woman who can't even remember something said five minutes ago, much less her own fucking birthday. They are having a party for a woman who will blink at the candles as though they are a language she once knew and has since misplaced. What is the point of honoring the day someone arrived if that person has already begun to depart?
Lucanis insisted on this farce of a celebration. Of course, he did. He'd said it might be her last birthday in the same grave, sanctimonious tone he used about Satinalia…"Perhaps her last, Illario, we should make it count." Good. It better be the last because this shit is just depressing.
The house makes it worse.
Lucanis has moved into it full-time, as if the place itself required his personal penance. It sits on the hill like something that has already survived its own funeral: tall windows gleaming, everything clean and pristine, the air thick with the smell of old polish and older sickness. They have live-in nurses. They have around-the-clock care. Caterina can afford an army in scrubs and soft voices. But no, that is not enough. Lucanis has installed himself here like some latter-day Andrastian martyr, as though suffering in proximity was the same thing as love.
Illario hates coming up here. He hates the way all the nurses and staff look at Lucanis in admiration as if his abandonment of Illario with the company was the more noble cause. Everyone looks at him as if he's the one who is absent. As if he hasn't spent the day clawing through round after round of contracts and crises, and now he's expected to stand in a room to clap and sing and smile at a woman who will look at him with mild, courteous confusion when he leans down to kiss her cheek. To pretend that marking the passage of time is anything but a cruelty when time is the very thing undoing her.
Illario walks right in the front door and through the familiar foyer. The house is spotless, like the perfectly preserved museum that it is. The same pictures on the walls, the same antique furniture. He's always found it a bit macabre to have the gigantic family portrait hanging in the front foyer when almost everyone in it is dead. His grandfather, his mother, and aunt. Only Caterina remains, and she can't even remember their names.
Illario would prefer to get lost in a crowd. He read something somewhere once about large parties being the only place to have any privacy, and he agrees with that wholeheartedly. It would be nice to say his hellos and disappear, either having a little fun in some forgotten corner or sneaking out early entirely. At a large party, there is always someone new to entertain, to be surprised by, always a new group to drift to, to reinvent yourself over and over again. Nothing is permanent because nothing is static.
To his dismay, there are only five people in the main living room. Teia and Viago. Caterina's friend and neighbor, Silvia. Lucanis. And of course, Caterina. It leaves him nowhere to hide.
Teia and Silvia sit on either side of Caterina's chair, set up like some sort of birthday throne. There are balloons and banners hung up in the room, and Caterina glances about with a bemused expression.
"Look, Nonna. Illario is here," Teia says, the words loud in the relative quiet of the room. He's always hated that Teia called her that, but he hated Caterina more for allowing it.
Illario forces a smile. "Caterina." He bends to kiss her on both cheeks. At no point is there even a flicker of recognition in her eyes. She smells wrong. Like antiseptic and the unmistakable stench of someone who can no longer remember to go to the bathroom for themselves. He doesn't know how the rest of them stand being so close.
"Goodness, there are a lot of people here," Caterina says. There's not. He feels like he remembers Lucanis saying something about too many people feeling too confusing for her, but he's not sure because whenever Lucanis starts talking too much about Caterina and appointments and meds, he just tunes him out. Caterina hadn't wanted him to make medical decisions for her after all.
Illario unbuttons his suit coat so he can sit down comfortably. He's a little overdressed, but then he always is. It's easier. It's always given Caterina one less thing to pick at him about. Besides, he looks damn fine in a suit.
"Glad you could make it," Lucanis says, appearing at Illario's side. He makes the comment with a glance at his watch and all the unsubtle judgment of reminding him he's late.
Fuck Lucanis. "I wouldn't miss it," he replies, with his winningest smile. "So, how are we doing today, Caterina?"
When Caterina just sits there placidly, Silvia jumps in. "We had a great day today, didn't we, Caterina? We went to the botanical gardens."
Teia smiles. "I've heard they have a new art installation from Rosseletto in the gardens that's just to die for."
The conversation swirls around Caterina without her participation or input. She sometimes speaks when spoken to directly, but mostly she just sits pleasantly while everyone talks around her. It wasn't so long ago that she commanded a room, that she directed conversation and topics with ease. Illario wonders idly if anyone else is thinking of that, too.
But conversation lurches to a stop when Caterina turns to Teia. "Where are the children?"
Teia shifts uncomfortably, clearly taken aback at the random question. "They're with a sitter right now," she replies smoothly.
"Oh," Caterina frowns, having found something clearly lacking. "Adriano told me that he was running an errand to get them this afternoon."
The room is silent because no one wants to tell her that her husband is over forty years dead. Who are the children then? Her daughters, who are dead too? Illario finds he wants to interrogate her, find out what she's asking, what winding direction her broken memory has taken her. He wonders sometimes if they dig deep enough, ask enough questions, if she'll somehow wake up out of this confusion and suddenly remember them all. Sometimes he thinks that might be worse.
Lucanis stands then. "How about some cake?"
"Do you need any help?" Viago asks stiffly, clearly looking for an escape from the living room.
That leaves the rest of them uneasy prisoners attempting to make small talk. Maker, maybe he needs a vacation after this. A weekend in Rivain, perhaps? The beach would be nice. He could sit in one of those coastal resorts and not be sober for even an hour, all the while surrounded by recent divorcees and bachelorette parties paid for on daddy's dime and handsome cabana boys. That sounds nice.
Maker. He'd even take being at work right now over this. Illario likes his job. But more than that, he's good at it. He knows he is. Half of real estate is just getting people to like you, and Illario has always found that distressingly easy. People are simple: greedy, dishonest, jealous. Most of the time, all he has to do is make them feel like someone else might want the property more, and it's as good as sold. Nothing raises the value of a thing faster than feeling like someone else might get it instead of you.
Thinking about work and the potential promise of the beach carries him through the next few excruciating minutes before Viago and Lucanis appear, a cake carried between them, sparkler candles burning as they set it down in front of Caterina.
Everyone sings. It sounds like a funeral dirge.
Caterina can't even blow out her own candles. Lucanis cuts the cake, and everyone tells him what an incredible job he did. Because, of course, he made the cake. And of course, everyone will praise him in the same way they do for stopping his life to take care of Caterina. He wishes the cake tasted terrible, but instead, it's delicious, and somehow that just makes him even angrier.
Anger seems to be the prevailing emotion of his life these days. At least when it comes to his fucking family. If he was to pinpoint it all, he thinks it might have started the moment Caterina drew a clear dividing line between him and his cousin, the day they also found out her diagnosis, from her lawyer of all people. But if he's being honest with himself, he's pretty sure it started long before that. Caterina's diagnosis just cemented Lucanis as the gilded heir to everything.
And there's nowhere for this anger to go. He would like to scream and rage at his grandmother, but she cannot even remember who he is. He would like to accuse and fight with his cousin, but that only makes him the asshole. So he is left with this impotent rage. No one to understand and no one to direct it at, so he just sits and suffers through the afternoon without so much as a crowd to perform for.
At the end of it, he bends down to give Caterina a kiss goodbye. "Happy birthday, Caterina."
Her flint-like gaze is sharp, and for a moment, he thinks she's returned from whatever place she goes when she's not really here. "Well, that's very nice of you, but it's not my birthday."
She says it with such confidence and certainty that he is taken aback, put on his back foot. The immediate and reflexive need to correct her bubbles up. But it's Lucanis who smoothly slides in to save the moment.
"Are you certain? We have all this cake, and I was pretty sure it was for you." On the surface, it feels like a light tease, but Illario can feel the undercurrent of concern. Knows his cousin well enough to see that things are getting worse.
He walks out without looking back. Before he even pulls out of the driveway, he books a flight out of Treviso and breathes freely for the first time in hours.
***
When Caterina dies, it is not a surprise.
Illario is there, at the house he typically avoids because Lucanis had called and told him he thought she didn't have much time left. He was right. Mere hours later, she took her last breaths in the hospital bed that had been moved to the main living room. Lucanis had been holding her hand, and Illario had been standing at the foot of her bed, feeling much like he had on the day they'd found out about her diagnosis.
It had felt like some strange practical joke then, too. There was no way his grandmother, whose intellect had always been dagger sharp, could forget so much. Every time she looked at him and couldn't remember his name, he waited for the follow-up of laughter, the admission of the joke. But it never came. It didn't feel real that she could just…forget him. And what did it say about her that she remembered Lucanis more clearly than him? What subconscious message did that send about her?
So even now, as the hospice nurse confirms she's gone, he's waiting for the punchline. For Lucanis, who doesn't cry or seem sad at all to laugh, for Caterina to sit up, and for them all to be in on it at last.
Illario had been the first to say the quiet part out loud. That he hoped Caterina died. And soon. That he wanted her dead long before this moment….and now…she's gone. Really gone, and he can't stand it. He feels as though there are ants crawling all over his body, and he knows in that moment that he has to go. He has to move. He has to leave.
So, he does.
He gets into his custom-wrapped lime green sports car. There is something comforting about being behind the wheel, something about the level of control. He takes every turn too quickly, relishes in the feel of the acceleration pushing him back against the seat, the whisper of danger that accompanies being this side of reckless. His music blasts loud enough that he no longer has to think, no longer has to feel. It's a release of sorts.
People should die in the middle of the night or on stormy days, not bright mid-May afternoons. He drives until it is dark, until it feels like the sky reflects his mood. He stops to get something to drink on the way back to the house because he cannot do this sober.
When he returns to that catastrophic failure of a home, the body is already gone. The hospital bed already taken away. There is just Lucanis, who looks as lost as Illario feels. His cousin keeps checking his phone as if it has any of the answers, while Illario pours them both a drink.
He thinks about a toast, thinks about saying something, but then he looks at his cousin. He doesn't look sad; he hasn't even cried that Illario can see. He thinks that the worst part of Caterina's illness might have been that she stole Lucanis from him.
There was a time when they had felt united against her, both of them shouldering the weight of her impossible expectations. Lucanis had even stood up for him when Illario dropped out of college, and decided to join the company early. There had been a time when they had been able to communicate with each other with nothing more than a shared glance. It had been a comfort once to believe that Lucanis understood, that there was at least one person in his life who knew him. Now, Lucanis feels like a stranger.
He knocks back his glass. And another. And another. And another.
Until the grief crystallizes into something sharp, something mean. Something he can twist away from his own fragile heart.
***
Lucanis has never been good at answering his phone. So when the texts go unanswered, and the calls do too, Illario thinks little of it. Lucanis had resisted even getting a smartphone for long enough that he knows he hates so many aspects of them. He doesn't even have social media.
But there's something about this time that feels different. Something about this silence prompts Illario to drive up to Caterina's house. Illario's frustration mounts with every red light and slower car in his path. He doesn't fucking have time for this.
Work’s been a mess lately. A profitable mess, which is supposed to make it better, but doesn’t. He’s got a client trying to swallow up condos in every tourist city worth naming, turn them inside out into short-term rentals. It’s the kind of deal people build careers on. It should feel like a win. It is a win.
But it’s also an endless churn of paperwork, contractors, time zones, the calls bleeding into each other until he can’t remember which city he’s arguing about anymore. It's long hours spent in the office, every hour accounted for. So he’s got a booth waiting for him at his favorite club. Music loud enough to drown out the need to persuade. Drinks strong enough to make the edges blur. If he's lucky, and he usually is, someone worth going home with and losing himself for a few more uncomplicated hours.
And the last thing—the last thing—he needs is to walk into his grandmother’s house and feel that old, familiar weight settle in his chest. Because once it’s there, it doesn’t leave.
Lucanis hasn't bothered moving out since she died. Right after she died, he was coming into the office again, seeming like he might sink right back into old routines. But he doesn't come into the office at all anymore. Illario isn't even sure that Lucanis is working, and that, more than the silence, feels wrong.
If Lucanis's car wasn't sitting in the driveway, Illario would be sure he wasn't there at all. The place looks empty, haunted. Not a single light burning in the dark. It feels even more foreboding as he pulls into the driveway. He can count on one hand the number of times he's been back here since Caterina died. He enters through the garage rather than the foyer, flicking on lights as he goes. The place is as it ever was, which only makes him feel more like something is wrong. If Lucanis is living here, why doesn't it feel like it?
He steps into the darkness of the living room, groping the wall blindly for the light switch. When it comes on, he very nearly misses his cousin, lying on the floor. At first, he's almost sure he is a corpse, but then he jolts in surprise.
"What the actual fuck, Lucanis?"
Lucanis sits up, face scrunched against the sudden brightness of the room. He is sick; that much is obvious. His cousin's transformation into a stranger is now complete. Illario barely recognizes his face in the beard he's now sporting. He looks thin too, tired despite the fact that he's been lying on the ground. What the fuck? How long has it been since he's seen Lucanis? He tries to do the math, comes up empty.
The worst part is Lucanis's confusion, which feels too much like Caterina's. "You haven't answered your phone in days," he says, unable to form words to say anything else.
Lucanis searches for his phone, and Illario takes in the space for the first time. As much as the rest of the house is untouched, it's clear that this is where Lucanis has been living. There are dirty plates, bowls, and take-out containers on the tables. It's not dirty in the sense that he's trashed the place, but for his usually neat and meticulously clean cousin? This is an emergency. The world tilts around this revelation, around the dark circles under Lucanis's eyes and the slow, death-like way he moves to search for his phone.
"It's dead," Lucanis says as though discovering it for the first time. As though he really is just discovering this now.
How long has he been up here in this haunted house like this? In her house. And he just…what? Left him here? Guilt follows the thought, sharp and immediate, curling low in his stomach. "Do you need to go to the hospital?"
The question comes out reflexively without preamble. He has no time to dress it up…to make it sound less like an accusation. Something is wrong, really wrong, and he doesn't know how long Lucanis has been like this, but it's clear that it's been long enough. Long enough for Lucanis to hollow out…long enough that Ilario didn't notice.
There's no fight in him when Lucanis gets up, no spark of life when he asks in a flat voice why he'd need to go to the hospital. That's worse. Illario pokes at him, prods and needles in a desperate way as he tries his best to pull Lucanis back into the familiar orbit of their relationship. But Lucanis refuses to play along, and he feels farther away than ever as he disappears into the bathroom.
The anger is there, like it never left, unused, with nowhere to go. Like it didn't get buried along with Caterina. He wants to burn this entire place down because she's dead and somehow still keeping Lucanis hostage. He used to think that if she were just gone, it would mend everything between them, but it's been almost a year, and he's pretty sure Lucanis doesn't give a shit if he dies.
Illario sinks down onto the couch, his head in his hands. Fuck. He can't bear to lose Lucanis, too.
He cancels his plans. He's not going anywhere.
***
Suitcases greet Illario when he steps in through the garage, two of them, shoulder to shoulder by the door. He hasn’t used the front entrance since Caterina died. These days, there's no reason to. Lucanis keeps to the guest room and the kitchen on the main floor anyway, leaving the rest of the house to settle into a sort of polite neglect. Coming in this way blunts it, just a little, that sense that every wall, and portrait and shadow still belongs to Caterina.
Illario drops by often and without warning, as though trying to catch Lucanis out. He hasn't found him on the floor in the dark in months, and some days, he feels silly to expect it.
He finds Lucanis in the kitchen. He's cleaning, which feels like a good sign. Lucanis allows the cleaners in twice a month, but the rest of the time, he insists on cleaning the place himself. Illario thinks it's kind of ridiculous; he hasn't done dishes or made his own bed in years. But it's not just dishes…the entire kitchen looks scrubbed clean and gleaming in the late afternoon light.
As he strolls in, he tries and fails to put the pieces together of what's happening here. "Are you moving?"
Lucanis turns the water off, dries his hands. “Yeah. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”
Of course, he has.
For the first time in years, Illario feels like he knows Lucanis again. He knows his therapist’s name, the medication schedule, the exact time Lucanis forces himself out of bed. He knows which days are worse, even when Lucanis pretends otherwise. He knows the signs; he's been collecting them, measuring them, watching and waiting. Looking at Lucanis no longer scares him despite the fact that he's kept the beard and only slightly trimmed his hair. He finally feels like something between them is mending.
But whatever is happening here makes him feel as though he's missed a step when walking.
"So, talk," Illario says. Maybe he is moving. Maybe they'll be able to get rid of this place at last. Besides, living in your dead grandmother's house is depressing even by Lucanis's standards.
"I'm moving to Minrathous."
This is a joke, surely. "Right, and I'm retiring early to a beach in Rivain. Come on, Lucanis."
But Lucanis doesn't laugh. "I fly out in the morning. I've got a job lined up, and I'm looking at a condo."
What the actual fuck?
The pieces click into place: suitcases, clean counters, Lucanis standing upright, alert and decided. He should be thrilled that Lucanis has finally returned to making plans beyond today or tomorrow; he should be glad that the haunted look to his eyes has faded.
“When,” Illario asks, very carefully, “were you planning on telling me?”
“Illario-”
“No, no,” he cuts in, waving a hand like he’s brushing something trivial aside. “I’m fascinated. Truly. Was it going to be a text? ‘Boarding now, text when I land’? Or were you feeling sentimental, maybe a postcard after you landed?”
That old familiar anger rises in his chest. It's been buried these last couple of months deep beneath the fear of losing the last person he has left, not to disease or accident but to something of his own making. It has been impossible to feel anything else around that feeling in his chest. Ever since he found Lucanis on the floor of the living room, he has felt like he shouldn't leave him alone too long, like he has to keep checking in, swinging by, making sure he's still breathing. But Lucanis is fine enough now, clearly.
"Illario-"
"I put my life on hold for you, and this is how you repay me?"
Cancelled trips, ignored calls, nights he could have been out partying spent instead up here watching shitty movies and trying to gauge if Lucanis wanted to live or not. Like he could calculate the exact moment things would get worse.
Like he hadn’t already almost missed it once.
"I didn't ask you to do that! I just feel like I'm suffocating here…and I just…I had to do something for myself!"
The admission lands like a kick to the chest, something old and rotten and grotesque. Caterina hadn't picked him, and it seems Lucanis won't either. Suffocating? Lucanis doesn't even know the half of what it feels like to not be able to breathe in this house. His cousin had already abandoned him once when Caterina got sick, and despite everything Illario has done, he's doing it again.
He laughs, because the alternative is…something else entirely. "So what, this move is a way of starting over?"
Lucanis says nothing. That's fine; the silence damns him enough.
“You’ve been planning this,” he says, stepping closer now, eyes sharp, searching. “Job, condo, flight…you don’t just trip into that. How long?”
Lucanis looks at the ground. “A couple of weeks. I didn’t know if I’d even get the job.”
A couple of weeks. Weeks of normal conversations. Of routine. Of him not bothering to say a single fucking thing. Illario studies him, like he’s trying to find the fracture line, the place this all started to crack. Maybe if he follows it back far enough, he can keep things from getting this way. Who is this person in this kitchen anyway?
"What fucking job?" What could be so much better than here?
“It’s at a school district-”
Illario laughs, loud and abrupt. “Of course, it is. How quaint. Nothing says fresh start quite like going government.”
“Could you please try to understand?” Lucanis asks, softer now.
And there it is…that tone. The same one he used on Caterina any time she got too agitated and couldn't remember who or where she was. Illario doesn't know how long Lucanis has been using it on him, but he's done being handled.
He hardens his expression before anything else can show through. He shakes his head, stepping back like he’s already bored with this conversation. “Fuck you, Lucanis.”
"‘That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
‘Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
‘Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?"
- T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Sunset casts Minrathous in swaths of hazy orange light that feels so reminiscent of Elgar'nan's moving of the moon that Neve casts her eyes skyward just to be sure that the sun still hangs there in the dust. A handkerchief tied around her face keeps her from breathing the worst of it, but the dust gathers, coating everything in sight, leaving behind a fine layer that accumulates day after day no matter how carefully it is brushed away. She makes her way to the docks, to the ship that is waiting.
Ships used to arrive to the Minrathous ports every hour of every day. Big ships that had traveled from Kirkwall and Orlais, Antiva and Rivain. Little ships that flitted up the coast from Marnus Pell and Vyrantium. The smaller vessels still come and go along the coast, where it is safer, the sharpness of their triangular sails cutting through the gray water of the port. It is far rarer to see the white billowing sails of a true ship. And for all Neve hears about the dangers of the seas, the unpredictable tides, the currents that have changed, still, it is here.
Already, crates are being unloaded; there is movement on the ship and on the dock. There is a sense of relief in the air, of a shred of normalcy appearing and clung to. Neve pauses at the gangplank, letting two people carrying a large crate between them move past her.
"Taash around?" she asks.
"They're in the hold," the man replies. "You a friend of theirs?" The question is asked before the sailor gets a good look at her, but she sees the moment he recognizes her, the way his head ducks in apology.
"Yes."
"You're welcome on deck, just watch your step."
This is what she likes best about the Lords of Fortune: they're not ones to make a fuss. To put on airs for her. Neve waits for another crate to be moved and then hurries up the gangplank. She steps over to the cargo hold, the hatch moved away, and glances down into the gloom.
"Well, look what the tides dragged in," she says, a hand on her hip.
Taash glances up, and their face lights up with a smile. They ride the next bit of lifted cargo up to the deck, jumping down and pulling Neve into a bone-crushing hug in one smooth motion. "Here I thought I'd have to come tracking you down."
"As though I don't know every ship that comes through this port." What she doesn't say is that it's far easier these days with how few of them there are.
"I need to finish up here, but can we get drinks after we're finished?" Taash asks.
Neve smiles. "I know a place."
Neve melts into the background. There's a peculiar comfort in being surrounded by people, but mostly below their notice. The Lords know who she is, but they don't much care, and their indifference feels almost luxurious. So, she sits back and watches the crew.
A pair of shoulders brushed in passing, lingering a heartbeat longer than the crowded deck requires. Lovers, or trying to be. One sailor drags his feet just enough that someone always reaches the next task first. Laziness, maybe, or an exhaustion so old it's become habit. Two women chart careful courses around each other, never close enough to risk having to interact. A power struggle, a fallout from an argument? Tiny mysteries, petty grievances, monotonous problems that plague all people no matter whether they call a ship or city home.
She finds, with a start, that she'd forgotten how much she missed them. There was a time when her days were spent mostly untangling cases of jealousy, infidelity, lies, and dishonesty. Cases so small they barely deserved the word. She used to complain about them, think them tedious, spending her days wishing for work that actually mattered.
Now, she finds herself a little wistful for those early days when she was still making a name for herself. The days before she was searching out the dead in a city of corpses. Funny, she thinks, Minrathous didn't beat the hope out of her all at once. It started by making those petty little problems seem inconsequential.
She isn't sure which crime is worse.
It is in this moment that she has the prickling feeling of being watched, an awareness snaking up her spine. She can feel it, this attention on her. It's uncomfortable, but never malicious. She glances around as though she'd be able to find the source, but already, she knows that she won't. Off in the darkness of the water, she sees a series of soft glowing lights, bobbing with the waves. They could be wisps, or a trick of the light. It's hard to say. She tries then reaching back, as though turning her attention back on them might give her answers, but the moment she does, the lights and the feeling dissipate.
"Ready?" Taash asks, appearing at Neve's side.
She twists away from the water, from whatever had been out there. "Absolutely."
Neve replaces her handkerchief, and Taash ties their own, and together they leave the relatively clean air of the docks and head back into Dock Town proper. Neve leads the way through the serpentine streets, asking questions as they go.
"How was the trip? Always glad to see you in one piece."
Taash shakes their head. "Still looking for the patterns. No single route seems to work twice. There's no relying on the old maps or navigation. You just have to know your shit."
"Any trouble beyond rough seas?"
"No. We used to see Qunari dreadnoughts all the time, especially coming through the strait. But…it's just nothing. You'd think with Tevinter ripping itself to shreds, they'd want to capitalize on it, but they don't. No offense."
How many hundreds of years of fighting, and now that Tevinter is destroying itself from the inside, even the Qun don't want it? It feels unfathomable. It's just another thing that has changed in this world.
"None taken."
"How're things here?"
Neve shrugs. "About the same."
"A lot of those crates are full of food. Grain and rice, you know, the stuff that can feed a lot of people."
If they have the means to afford it, is something Neve doesn't reply. But by this time they're approaching the Metropole. Since it's not raining, the place looks less like it's falling apart. It's late enough that they've stopped serving dinner and people have tucked themselves into corners to sleep in the main area, but mostly those who come here for aid drift back to wherever they call home for the evenings. It's the only time of day where the Metropole feels like the Shadow Dragons'. It's the only time it feels like it used to before.
Somehow, it is still too empty.
What was left of the Shadow Dragons have worked tirelessly to rebuild Minrathous. Walls have been rebuilt, streets cleared, storefronts reopened. But people are harder to replace. Even before Elgar'nan walked the city in the flesh, the Venatori had been stringing up her fellow Shadows in the streets, from bridges and walls. They'd done their work thoroughly. Still, those who were left had worked with Solas in the end, had stood as the last bastions keeping Minrathous from falling completely. A war of attrition that made their numbers even sparser, scattering them into obscurity. Besides, with the Archon abolishing slavery, the Shadow Dragons have become yesterday's enemy. The magisters and slaveholders with enough coin simply packed up and fled to the outer cities of the Imperium, where they pretend the decree is temporary and history can be waited out.
Judging by the papers, the lie is holding.
Taash, at least, is enough novelty to fill the silence. They're as recognizable here as Neve is, but infinitely more welcome this evening. Shadows pop out to say hello, hungry for news out of Rivain, for evidence that the rest of the world has returned to normalcy. Neve lets Taash shoulder the hope, and she slips behind the bar instead. Reaching for a bottle of whatever has been scavenged or made for a little oblivion. There are few options. The one she finds has no label. Homemade, judging by the cloudy amber liquid. It smells potent enough to strip paint, and she has to turn her face away before pouring two fingers into a pair of chipped glasses.
Neve's reappearance at the table scatters the last of Taash's well-wishers, and for that, she's grateful. She just wants time with her friend without interruption. "Can't vouch for the quality, but should get the job done."
Taash clinks their glasses together and drinks it down in one gulp, only grimacing slightly. "You seen anyone else lately?"
Neve nods. "I was in Treviso a couple weeks ago, and then visited Emmrich and Willow in the Necropolis."
"Did you actually manage to see Lucanis, or did he just send someone to the villa gate to tell you he's 'indisposed'?" Taash asks, voice pitched low with judgment.
Neve feels a sort of absurd desire to defend Lucanis even though the way he's treated all of them is at its core indefensible. "He was there. Almost wish he wasn't though. He seems worse. The Crows have stopped sending aid though. It's just Lucanis."
Taash frowns. "Seriously?"
"They can't do it forever, and we don't have anything they want….except the Crossroads."
Taash crosses their arms. "The Crows want the Crossroads? For what?"
"Trade."
Taash considers that. "It would solve a lot of problems if it was even possible. Bet the Caretaker would love that. How'd they figure they'd move shit without a fucking floating boat?"
"Viago suggested we ask the Caretaker what it wants."
Taash shakes their head. "That's vashedan. The Crossroads doesn't belong to us…"
Neve nods. "I know…I've just been thinking that maybe….maybe they should get used. Some of the mirrors are near enough each other…we could move goods more easily…speed along rebuilding…keep people from starving."
Taash listens to every word, their frown growing deeper. "Fuck."
Neve can't see any other answers. Trade isn't going back to the way it was before, that much is certain. The Crossroads were once used to house people, to keep them safe. Why not open it to trade and the Antivan merchant princes? Neve is tired of living atop a mass grave, and if this means they don't add any more bodies to the tally of the dead, isn't it worth it? Especially if they managed to find and ask the Caretaker. It should have been Rook's call, but in her absence, perhaps if the rest of the team agrees….
"I'm all out of good ideas these days. All I've got are bad ones."
"Well, I don't like it."
Neve sighs. "Me either." They let the subject drop. Neve sips at her drink, relishing the burn.
After a moment, Taash leans forward, voice pitched low and hope shining in their eyes. "Any updates on…you know?"
The drink turns to lead in Neve's stomach. She knew they'd be asking, and she wishes she had more to give them. She wishes, not for the first time, that she had good news. That she could tell them there was hope, that Harding was definitely alive. That they would find her. In the wake of Minrathous, Taash had held out hope for Harding's return. It made sense. Bellara had come back to them, Rook too, if only for a short time. Why not Harding? They'd all looked for her around every corner in the city, but there had been nothing. Neve had promised them they'd find her.
"Nothing since we last spoke."
Just a series of dead ends. Tearstone, what was left of it anyway, had been scoured with no sign of Harding…or even the blight pool she'd fallen into. Neve has spent the intervening months casting as wide a net as she dares, contacting Orzammar and Kal-Sharok, hoping for something, anything. She's come up empty every time. Orzammar had never been friendly, but Stalgard's simply stopped answering her letters. She can't say she blames him, exactly. It has been eighteen months - maybe she is just chasing ghosts.
Taash looks unsurprised, but Neve can still feel the disappointment, the way they carry this old hurt. She doesn't think that time heals all wounds; she thinks that maybe they just get better at burying them, obscuring the pain from everyone else. Grief is a funny thing. Some days, Neve wakes, and it's as easy to carry on with life as it was before all of this, but there will be a sound or a smell or a corner of her city that is so irrevocably changed - that it hits her with a force that feels as though it will destroy her entirely. And she must carry on anyway. They all must.
"I'm sorry." As though it's enough. As though she could make the words big enough to be a balm for this wound.
Taash waves the apology away, but Neve can see the disappointment in the lines of their shoulders. "I know you're trying. If there's something to find, you'll find it."
Their vote of confidence is equal parts reassuring and guilt-inducing. "I hope you're right."
There's some movement at the open entrance of the Metropole, and old habits die hard. Neve's hand is already on her stave as she turns more fully, only to realize it's Davrin walking in with Assan a step behind. He looks tired, but there's an unmistakable relief when he sees them. She's already on her feet, as is Taash, so they can greet him properly.
Neve has never been one who was big on physical shows of affection. She didn't grow up in a family that hugged or even said they loved each other. But there is something about the way she feels upon seeing her friends in one piece that she cannot contain in words, that feels safer instead to press between their bodies. And if Davrin holds her a little tighter than is strictly friendly, or if she stays a moment longer than she would for anyone else - neither one of them mentions it. Instead, she steps behind him to greet Assan.
The griffon is nearly as tall as she is, and he clicks and squawks and twists his neck enthusiastically into her hands.
"Not doing your pull-ups, I see," Taash says, knocking at Davrin's chest.
Davrin meets the teasing with a tired but genuine laugh. "Not exactly a lot of opportunity for that walking the roads in Ferelden."
"What brings you here? Is everything alright?" Neve asks, suddenly realizing that his unexpected arrival can only mean that he brings bad news.
Davrin's mouth tightens into a line. "Looking for you, actually. Something strange happened while I was in Ferelden."
It's not what she was expecting. "What do you mean something strange happened?"
"My team and I were in a village in the mountains. The people there were drugged and then the chantry was set ablaze with them in it….and we got there too late." Beside him, Taash swears, but Davrin continues. "In the night…I heard some scratching beneath the window of the house we were staying in. This is Nevarran grave script, right?"
He pulls out a notebook and holds it out to her. She stares at the symbols, willing them to match what she's seen in her own apartment. She's stared at them and Willow's translations enough over the last couple weeks to know them by heart. They aren't the same, but he's not wrong. This is grave script. "Yes. It is."
"There's one more thing," Davrin says, and produces a leather-bound journal. He flips to the last page. "The apothecary who we think helped drug everyone before they sent the chantry on fire? This was his."
Scribbled all over the final page is one single word: Rook.
It feels like being handed another piece to the puzzle she's been working herself to the bone to solve. "We need to get to the Necropolis."
***
If the Volkarins are annoyed with the propensity of their friends to arrive at their home at increasingly strange hours, they are too kind to say so. The only sign of their surprise is the casualness of their attire, clothing slightly more rumpled than usual, as though it was thrown on in a rush. Neve would feel bad, but the moment Willow had realized what news they brought, it had no longer mattered. It had been easy enough to send word to Bellara as they stepped into the Crossroads, for her to meet them at the Necropolis eluvian. Neve had warred with herself the entire way about whether she should also send word to Treviso, but in the end, she'd decided not to. She doesn't know what this is, only that it must be connected to Rook in some way. Instead of answers, she simply carries more questions, and it feels like a cruelty to try and offer Lucanis any hope that might be snatched away.
Still, it feels wrong.
They're all crowded in Emmrich and Willow's shared office. It's more cluttered than the last time she was here, as though Willow has redoubled her efforts since the last visit. Neve is not ignorant of the fact that Willow had activated the silencing wards on Johanna the moment they'd all stepped inside, though. Neve glances at the skull in distrust, wondering what poison Hezenkoss is filling Willow's head with whenever they're not around.
The group waits in near silence while Willow reads through the papers Davrin brought, Emmrich craning over her shoulder. Neve watches Willow's brow knit tighter the more she reads.
Beside her, Bellara's fingers are laced with hers, holding on so tightly it borders on painful. It's good to see her. Better than good. Bellara has pulled back a little since Minrathous, since being blighted. Every time Neve sees her, she's looking for signs that it's returned, that whatever had been done to the blight in Minrathous hasn't held. But her skin is clear, her eyes bright. Some miracles came late; the guilt stayed.
Bellara was there at the end. Too spent from holding back Elgar'nan to change what came next. Neve knows that Bellara has always been good at blaming herself for what happened in the end. They're all fluent in that language: the if onlys. If only they'd been faster. If only they'd seen it sooner. If only they'd had one more spell. If only—
Neve carries her own guilt close to her chest where no one can ask after it. When Minrathous first fell, she'd blamed Rook. It had never really been her fault, not really, but Rook had made a decision and her city had suffered, and she'd wanted someone to pay for it. Someone to feel it as much as she did. It had been easy to twist it onto Rook, easier still because she'd accepted it. She hadn't pushed, and she hadn't argued - she'd just taken it. Every unkind word, every cold response, the guilt is overwhelming knowing that Rook had so easily sacrificed herself, in the end. For Minrathous, sure, but for all of Thedas, too. How could she have ever doubted her commitment? How could she have ever accused her of not caring enough?
Bellara seems to have sensed the shift in Neve's thoughts; she squeezes her hand, and it brings her back to the here and now, to Willow's confused expression.
"They're names. Familiar names. But I don't know why I know them."
Davrin folds his arms. "Why would names appear below a window in Ferelden?"
"Why would random grave epitaphs appear in Neve's apartment?" Bellara asks. "It feels like…some sort of message."
Taash leans back in their chair. "Shit's weird. You said the names were familiar. Are they like…in the Memorial Gardens or whatever?"
"Are these names important somehow? I thought it might have been some ward or something," Davrin says. "But….taken with all those people dead in the chantry…feels like something worse."
Bellara shivers at the mention. Taash and Neve had already heard the story, so they'd been prepared when he'd laid it out for Emmrich, Willow, and Bellara. Still, there's nothing to be done about the horror of it. She wonders what else he's seen in the months he's been away. She's not certain she wants to know.
"While those names could certainly be from the Memorial Gardens….they feel more familiar than that. Were they in an article we've read recently, my dear?" Emmrich asks.
"Could be," Will says before twisting and staring at the bookshelf behind her. "Epitaphs and names….epitaphs and names….what if…" Suddenly she approaches a stack of books beside the nearest bookshelf.
Neve catches sight of the title of the book. Sees Rook's name — Camina Ingellvar — etched across the front of it in golden letters. "What is that?"
Willow sighs. "A scholar had all of Cam's scholarship rebound and published a few months ago."
"Don't worry, Willow already gave him the what for at the faculty soiree," Emmrich says proudly.
Mourn Watchers are ridiculous. "You think the answer is in there?"
Willow opens to the page. "The epitaphs and the names. They're from the Shadowed Catacombs where Cam did her dissertation."
Neve remembers; she's read it. Once, in another life. It had been a sort of joke. Emmrich had earnestly supplied them all with copies, thought it was a shame that they'd never read Rook's scholarship. Neve had read through the dense descriptions and explanations enough to ask questions and tease her friend at their book club meeting. Rook had turned a rather alarming shade of pink when she realized what Emmrich had done.
Taash sighs loudly. "Congratulations, you're being haunted by academic scholarship."
Willow opens to a page and twists the book around. "The names match, the epitaphs from Neve, too."
Davrin shoots a glance over her way, and Neve meets it; it's clear they're thinking the same thing. "How far are these catacombs?"
Perhaps, whoever or whatever is sending these messages to them, they're trying to send them to this place. Trying to get them to go and see. Neve knows that no matter what the group's response, this is a trip she'll be making anyway.
"Assuming they haven't moved, perhaps an hour into the depths of the Necropolis?" Emmrich replies.
"Anyone want to take down odds on if they've moved or not?" Neve asks. She's keeping her tone light, bored, but internally something is shifting in her. This really is a lead. This really is something.
Willow's hands rest on her hips. "Well, I'm not getting any sleep tonight anyway. I vote we go."
"There really is no time like the present," Emmrich replies with excitement.
***
Neve has never spent enough time in the Necropolis to discern the different forms of darkness. Rook had always been able to measure the hours in the perpetual gloom, and logically, Neve knows it is the middle of the night, but it could be midafternoon for all the sky looks the same to her. The lifts that take them down into the deep are slow, rattling things. This is a section of the Necropolis that she has never ventured into, and that is true for all except Emmrich and Willow, who kindly answer all of Bellara's many questions as they descend deeper into the gloom.
Taash has taken a seat on the floor of the lift, is toying with one of their axes. "Do you think we should have grabbed Lucanis first?"
At the mention of his name, the entire car falls silent. Willow meets Neve's eye before answering. "No, I think it's best we investigate first."
Taash shrugs. "If this was all about Harding and not Rook….I'd want to know. Even if there's nothing to find."
Bellara bites her lip. "I don't think that's how Lucanis feels…I don't know. He doesn't really talk to me."
"He doesn't really talk to anyone, Bel," Neve says, trying for reassurance. "I think…I think we all just remind him of her, and I think it's too hard."
"What it is, is shitty, but I don't disagree with Neve and Willow. Let's figure out what we're dealing with here first, and then…we'll loop him in. If there's anything to loop him in about," Davrin says. He glances about as though looking for Assan in the half-darkness, but they'd left the griffon happily making a mess of Willow and Emmrich's garden. He's too large to fit in the lift anyway.
But even that image isn't enough to banish the uneasiness Neve feels, can see reflected in everyone. There's something of betrayal there too, but perhaps there will be nothing to find. At least Lucanis is saved the hope that's rising in her the farther they drop into the depths.
When the lift finally shudders to a stop, and Emmrich's magic opens the metal grate, they follow him out onto the sand-covered stone. Davrin steps close to her, and so she hangs back.
"I think we need to be ready for a fight," he murmurs.
"Why?"
Davrin shakes his head. "I get that you've been having this weird benign haunting shit, but there's no way that whatever this is isn't all linked to that chantry burning."
"You think there was more to it than blind religious belief?"
"I think the apothecary in that town got possessed by a demon," Davrin replies. "And I think we're willingly following its clues."
"It feels better, doesn't it, to assign every cruel and terrible thing to a monster or a demon? Sometimes people are just as bad. You don't know it was a possession and neither do I, but you couldn't have saved them either way."
"Ever take your own advice?" Davrin asks, with a sideways glance at her. There's a faint smile on his lips and something that looks like fondness in his eyes.
Neve manages a smile then, too. "Not if I can help it. I wouldn't exactly count that as one of my better attributes though."
The Shadowed Catacombs are far larger than anything Neve pictured in reading Camina's dissertation. It becomes immediately apparent why she'd spent the better part of two years here identifying the dead. This place holds none of the tableaux of the Memorial Gardens; instead, the bones of the dead have been carefully and meticulously stacked, running the length of the tunnels. The skulls of the dead have been arranged in arches and shapes throughout. They are lucky that magical fires burn in the sconces so that they can see, but they cast long, grotesque shadows on the ground and around every corner. Neve clenches her stave a little more tightly.
The feeling of being watched has returned, and she glances about, but it seems not even the wisps have followed them this far.
"Do you feel that?" Neve asks.
Bellara and Emmrich are the only ones who nod. "The Veil here…it feels…." Bellara shakes her head, as though unsure how to describe it.
"Chaotic," Emmrich supplies.
"Honestly, I'm just surprised this place is where we expected it to be," Neve says. Perhaps it is the cynic in her, but she'd expected to find the catacombs missing, gone, this to be another dead end in a long, long series of failures.
"We should keep moving," Willow says.
No one argues.
As they move deeper, a sense of disquiet descends on the group. Neve feels it before she understands it — a pressure settling over her. Every instinct honed in Dock Town, every case that began with the feeling that something wasn't right, rises like ice beneath her skin. The tunnel they're in opens up to a larger chamber, deep and shadowed.
Ahead, something moves. Not quickly, but laboriously. At first it's only a disturbance in the darkness, the suggestion of a body where there shouldn't be one. At first it is shadow, and then it is something more concrete, the silhouette of familiarity. One step. Another.
Each stumbling forward movement looks stolen, looks like a struggle. The figure stumbles, keeps going, hand pressed against their ribs. The other hangs uselessly at their side, fingers grasping the air as though reaching for something that is no longer there.
Neve's pulse pounds in her throat, her breath caught in her lungs. The figure draws closer.
It can't be.
The woman lifts her head, and for one impossible moment, Neve doesn't recognize her. Her body is thin, emptied. But then the light catches her face, the scar across her nose, the stubborn set of her mouth.
Rook.
Willow surges forward before anyone can think to stop her, before they can discern whether this is an apparition or a demon or some other trick of the Fade. The woman who is Rook stops as if struck. Fear flashes across her face first; recognition follows so quickly it hurts to witness; her lips part.
"Will?"
It is more the memory of a voice than true sound, but then whatever has been holding her upright finally gives way. She folds where she stands, like a marionette with its strings cut, and collapses entirely.
By then, Willow has reached her, is pulling her into her lap with trembling hands, and it is only then that Neve realizes this isn't a trick.
"There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust."
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
"Promise me," Lucanis had said at the end of the world, "if Solas betrays us again and you see an opening, you take it. And so will I."
He'd simply had no idea how damning extracting that promise from Camina's lips would be.
Elgar'nan is dead, but the world is still ending. The Fade is tearing itself to shreds, unraveling in long, ragged tears, as though some long, spindly fingers have hooked themselves into the very fabric of creation and begun to pull. Lucanis can feel it in his bones, behind his teeth — the terrible tilt of the world, the sickening sensation of something fundamental slipping out of place. Spite is howling inside his skull, frantic and feral. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. The air tastes wrong. The sky feels wrong. Everything is wrong.
He watches Camina stand there amid the collapse of everything, battered and exhausted and somehow still managing to be hopeful, holding out that fucking dagger. Offering trust and mercy, and one last chance to Solas, as though the world isn't already bleeding out at their feet. As though hope alone might be enough to stitch it back together.
For one impossible, devastating moment, Lucanis wants to believe her.
But Solas betrays them anyway.
Solas is halfway up the steps when Lucanis hears him say, "To stop now would dishonor those I have wronged to come this far."
Camina's desperate glance back over her shoulder at him is one of the many images he will carry after this day is done. But in the moment, he has no way of knowing it will be the last time she looks at him. There is a question in her eyes that seems to ask, Are you with me?
The answer is as it ever was: always.
She sprints up the steps at Solas, the spirits she calls upon reaching up from the ground below, the clutch of their bony fingers slowing him, making him stumble. In all the time he's known her, she has never been a very proficient fighter. He'd noticed it the first day he met her in the Ossuary. He hadn't understood why she wielded her magic like a blunt instrument, why every spell and twist and turn was clumsier than any fledgling he had ever seen. He'd learned later that it was because she is an academic, had been trained to protect and ward. But she was never like him — born and honed into a weapon until little else remains. She holds her staff up anyway, fighting for this world.
Camina always knew this was a weakness. She spent hours in the courtyard training and learning. He'd even sparred with her a fair few times, but she never had any hope of besting him. She'd asked him more than once for his assessment of her abilities — he was the mage killer after all. And he'd stumbled through some awkward assessments, watching her amethyst eyes for any sign he'd somehow overstepped.
Now, he wishes he'd said more. Wishes he had woken her up at whatever passed for dawn in the endless brightness of the Lighthouse. That he had insisted on training her himself. Maybe then she would have had some hope at besting Solas now.
Solas is injured, but he is still a god. And she is just one stubborn woman.
Solas's magic lashes out at her, the green sparks knocking her off her feet. Spite is furious, and Lucanis lets that rage and fury guide him. He has killed one god today; what is another?
"LEAVE. ROOK. ALONE," Spite yells as together they pounce at Solas.
Neve is back on her feet too, the icy shards of her own magic flying Solas's way. Lucanis trades blows, his rapier scraping the length of the lyrium dagger's blade. By then, Camina is at his side, her familiar necromantic magic an onslaught aimed directly at Solas.
There is a pulse of power; he and Neve are knocked off their feet. His head slams against implacable stone, and everything is blurry for too many painful seconds. When he manages to lift his head, Camina has her hands on the dagger, wrestling Solas for control. Their fighting is ugly, desperate — action and reaction.
Lucanis ignores the ringing in his ears and rolls his shoulders as he stands, readying to leap at Solas once more. Another pulse of Solas's magic, and this time he tries to roll, to dodge whatever spell is coming his way. It turns out to be pointless because a barrier has emerged, protecting him as much as it keeps him from rushing to Camina's side. He thinks it must be Neve, but the magic isn't hers. He whorls quickly, looking for the answer, to see who it is that is keeping him back. Morrigan and the Inquisitor are here.
"Solas!" The Inquisitor pleads.
How useless their attempts to persuade the Dread Wolf; Solas has control of the dagger now.
"Camina!" Lucanis screams the moment before Solas plunges the dagger into her side. He sees the blow coming, the awful arc of it, the way her dodge is far too slow.
Solas looks almost surprised to see the blow land, and Lucanis wonders if he is remembering another ally he had stabbed in much the same way. Camina seizes the opening, grits her teeth, and rips the dagger from where it was plunged, her blood spraying out, coating the ground. In another world, he thinks he might be proud of the way she uses a move he knows he taught her. The way she drops low, sweeping the dagger around to knock Solas off his feet. He knows she's sliced the backs of his legs in the process, and Solas groans as he collapses to his knees.
"Now your blood is on the dagger, too," she spits.
"Rook!" Morrigan calls, a warning, a portent.
But it is far too late. Tendrils of magic are already reaching, already seeking, already curling around them both. It happens slowly and then all at once. The Fade tear hangs open above them all like some terrible maw, and they are lifted, both of them flying into the air. The magical tendrils have pushed Camina and Solas together in some facsimile of intimacy, their bodies flush as they struggle against the magical bindings. They hang there for a moment in their struggle, suspended, caught.
And then it swallows them both before it disappears.
"Nooooooo!" The word emerges from him in a primal scream as he watches the woman he loves disappear for the second time in so many weeks.
He staggers to his feet, running at the space she just was as though he might still be able to catch her. As if there is still some echo of her to grasp onto. He glances around wildly, looking back at Morrigan — the shade of Mythal — surely she has a way to fix this, a means to make this right, to bring Camina back?
"Bring. Rook. Back!" His demon rages, and for once, he doesn't mind the way Spite rips the words from his throat.
"'Tis done….at far too high a price," Morrigan says. "The Veil repaired, sustained once more. Where they have gone, I dare not even think to follow."
"Then send me! I will go," Lucanis pleads. He'd told himself never again after Tearstone would he feel so desperately hopeless again, never again would he allow her to go somewhere he cannot follow. If only it was up to him.
It is the pity in Morrigan's eyes that is an answer in itself. He falls to his knees beside the puddle of her blood, stays there so long it runs against his knees, seeps into the leather and stains it.
There is just something about it: the winding down of summer, the cooler nights, and the promise of autumn in the air. "Life begins all over again in the fall," Fitzgerald wrote. A fresh new school year glimmers there, brand new and redolent with the promise of renewal and restart. A clean slate. She is ready for it, excited even. Counting down the days until she gets to be in her classroom with her students once again.
For much of the last year, that feeling of joy and excitement was one she was sure was lost to her forever. But after a spring and summer of careful, deliberate rest and work realigning herself with her job and her own sense of self, she is so fucking relieved to find it has returned. The excitement feels like an old friend welcoming her back.
The last Saturday night of summer vacation happens to fall on one of the hottest days of the year, and so does the teacher dinner Camina is hosting. Teacher dinners were Varric's thing. Once a month, he'd gather everyone at his home for a night of food and drink and commiseration. When he'd died, they'd stopped, and Camina had spent the last year wondering if she should bring them back. Wondering if anyone wanted them back as badly as she did.
Lucanis, of course, was thrilled at the prospect of hosting all their friends. Of getting to show off his garden that's fully taken over the side yard, and cooking a whole meal for them. He officially moved in two weeks ago, but if they're honest, he was basically living here most of the summer anyway. They're already talking about expanding his garden next year, and a potential addition to the house, to make it a bit more theirs.
"Okay, I just moved the cooler to the shade because all the ice was threatening to melt out there," she says as she comes into the kitchen.
Lucanis has an array of pizza toppings laid out on the counter, is busy getting his homemade sourdough pizza into rounds to throw on the grill once everyone has made the pizzas they desire. "Did you get the grill on?"
She nods. "Of course." Spite swims lazily from his spot on the counter, and Aphra watches him with interest, her ears at full attention.
Lucanis glances at the clock over the oven and then continues working. "Mierda, I should have started all this ten minutes sooner."
"Put me to work," Camina says. "What can I do?"
The look he gives her is fond exasperation. She has certainly learned a few things by spending time with him in the kitchen and watching him try new recipes. He's spent a whole month perfecting his grilled pizzas this summer, but she is still rather hopeless in the kitchen.
"You can set out all the packaged ingredients," he says, mouth an upturned grin.
"Are you sure you feel confident delegating such an important task, chef?"
He passes behind her on the way to the sink, but she feels his hand snake around her middle. "Calling me chef would imply that you ever follow my instructions, and we both know you don't."
She leans a little into him. "I thought that was part of my charm."
His chuckle is bright in the kitchen. "You're right, it is charming when you burn the food."
"That was one time!"
"Yeah, because I haven't given you the opportunity to do it since." She tosses the nearest towel in his direction, which he easily bats away, but they're both laughing now.
And then their friends begin to arrive. Aphra is thrilled at all the potential for attention from everyone who enters. Emmrich and Will arrive first, carrying a salad in a gigantic multicolored bowl. Davrin, Bellara, and Neve with drinks tucked into reusable totes and Davrin carrying a twelve-pack. Harding and Taash are late, but no one is surprised or bothered since they're too busy eating the bruschetta Lucanis made with tomatoes from his garden.
"This all looks just wonderful, Lucanis," Emmrich says as the group makes several pizzas, sprinkling toppings on their sections.
"And for dessert, he's got peach cobbler," Camina says.
The entire group 'ooohs' at that. "You're ruining the surprise," Lucanis replies with a shake of his head that does nothing to obfuscate how proud he is that everyone is excited for his food.
Camina watches him cook pizzas on the grill while their friends sit and talk and drink together on the patio, settling at the table or following Aphra through the grass. Emmrich asks Lucanis about work, and it no longer twists her gut to think about how Lucanis's time at the school district is rapidly coming to an end.
The audit is winding down. By mid-September, it will be over, and both he and Rana know their time is running out. Rana already has something lined up at a local nonprofit, so she'll land on her feet. Lucanis, meanwhile, plans to take a beat, reassess, to figure out where his heart wants to go next. He's never had that luxury. Whenever they talk about it, she can hear the uncertainty beneath his careful optimism. The fear of too much empty time, the fear of falling back instead of moving forward. He's more worried than she is; she'll be by his side either way.
Love, she's learned, isn't all grand declarations or impossible sacrifices. Sometimes, it's simply taking turns carrying the weight. It's listening and making space. It's buying something for the dog or helping the other person plant a garden. This love is quiet, gentle. If the road ahead feels at all uncertain, she simply remembers she's not alone in it.
A box waits in the kitchen. The books inside are nothing fancy, spiral-bound copies from the district printer, their covers plain and practical. But when she looks at them, her chest tightens anyway. Varric's book. And hers. Finished at last.
Lucanis is the only person who has read it. He'd called it phenomenal. She suspects he would have found something kind to say no matter what was on those pages, but she chooses to believe him. Some gifts are too precious to examine too closely.
She's not sure what happens to it now. Maybe nothing. Maybe it only lives here, passed hand to hand among the people who loved him. That feels like enough. She wants them to have it, that piece of him she's gotten to sit with this summer. To laugh with and disagree with and extend those through lines of his thinking into something that is also hers.
She'll hand them out at the end of the night, just before everyone leaves. No speeches or long discussions. She doesn't even care if they actually read it. Maybe they won't. But they'll have them, something he touched, something he left behind.
The pizzas have all just come off the grill, and everyone is gathered around them, laughing and talking over one another as they fight over pieces and cheese stretches out over plates. The evening hums with life, with friendship. It feels so reminiscent of those dinners on Varric's back deck that she almost wants to glance around, almost feels that if she looks hard enough, she'll see him just there. He'd be proud, she thinks, of the way they've survived it all. How even the worst years can't quite stamp out these ordinary joys.
This won't be the last hard school year in the same way it wasn't the first, but still, here they are, all of them excited for whatever the next might bring.
She's standing back, a bit apart from it all when Lucanis finds her. Of course, he does. His hand rests gently on her waist, and he presses a kiss to the side of her head.
"Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool."
- T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Lucanis returns to the villa with the rising of the sun. He takes the Crow's Road in the half-darkness, silently leaping from eave to eave, sure footing taking him along the well-worn paths he's traced countless times before — the rote familiarity welcome as he counts down the minutes until oblivion. It's close now; he can feel it with every step closer toward the villa. He need only do his usual checks and check-ins to ensure it is secure, and then he can retreat.
It is almost a disappointment to find it another quiet night, no threats to speak of. Lucanis has spent the better part of the last eighteen months cutting down House Dellamorte's enemies — reminding any Crow or House just exactly why Dellamorte is the first. It has been a long and bloody campaign to secure the place of a dying House. Not everyone has been content to blindly let an abomination lead the Crows. He has learned that religious fervor often far outweighs logic — that there is no arguing or convincing he can do that isn't at the end of a knife.
It is such a waste, he thinks, to have to slaughter so many from his own cuchillo houses simply because they would not accept what he is. Would not accept that he is not somehow controlling Caterina through blood magic or worse. The worst part is that so many remained loyal to House Dellamorte all the way to the end. And that when he had plunged his daggers into their chests, when he had slit their throats, when he had watched the light in their eyes extinguish, he had known that they believed he was the true threat to House Dellamorte.
Caterina, at least, seems content with the current state of things. Her approval, as elusive as ever, is not something he can boast despite doing everything asked of him without question. Still, it is so much easier to exist with someone telling him what to do, the contracts he must take, the meetings he must attend, the Crow Houses that must be slaughtered wholesale. It was why he had returned here, after all. It had been the only path he could see. In truth, it had always been the only path there was. Caterina named him First Talon in front of all the Crows, and there was never going to be any escape from this life. He had thought, perhaps, he might put it off a while. He had hoped, at least, that he would not be returning here alone. He had believed, naively, that it wouldn't be so bad if she were by his side.
There is no sense of homecoming to the rooms Caterina had prepared for him. They are the First Talon's rooms, bedecked in all the finery fitting his station. He barely uses half of them. Lucanis has never been a man of excess; it was not a choice. The villa he called home always stood in stark contrast to the reality of his training. Before the Ossuary, he'd had an apartment in Treviso. A quiet, unassuming space, the kitchen taking up most of it — lots of windows to let in the light. It had been the first place in his life that really belonged to him. The furniture and walls didn't hold memory or ghosts or judgment. It was simply his. Sometime while he was presumed dead, Caterina had it emptied, all his possessions brought back to the villa. And when he had, at last, returned, this room had been populated with his things. It had felt oddly violating to see all the furniture and books he'd picked out and placed in his apartment with care suddenly here. It all still looks out of place in this room. A bureau here, a desk there. He hadn't asked for this in the same way he hadn't asked for the title of First Talon, but what do his wants matter now, anyway?
He removes his armor and weapons automatically, routine and muscle memory taking over. He is grateful that so much of his life can be given over to perfunctory movement, how little thinking it takes to lay out his knives, cleaning and oiling the blades. His gloves are blood-soaked — ruined, he thinks. He'd been sloppy, but he'd been spoiling for a fight he didn't get. And in the end, it hadn't mattered anyway. The contract is done.
Somewhere, buried in the back recesses of his mind, there is a door, and he can feel the pressure mounting inside of it as his demon paces, frustrated behind it. They do not speak, and they do not fight. Lucanis's waking hours are his own, his mind blessedly quiet. His sleeping hours, however, belong to Spite. That is the deal they made when tangled up so much in each other's grief.
Losing her felt like it happened in triplicate. There was his grief, the gnawing open void of it all. There was Spite's, the animalistic, feral edges of his demands for her return that have never entirely ceased. And then there was everyone else's. Their sorrow and their pity, their very existence a reminder of her. It had been too much; it is still too much.
And so he reaches for the sleeping tonic on his nightstand, downing it as quickly as he can, the astringent, bitter taste as familiar as it is unwelcome. He lies back against the bed, embracing the empty nothingness of the oblivion it offers. He cannot sleep any other way these days.
He looks forward to and dreads these moments before oblivion in equal measure. His body still, his mind whirring, his demon aching to escape his confines. Lucanis drifts, feels as though he's drowning in the quiet, but she feels closer in these moments between wakefulness and sleep. Though she never set foot in the room, he still listens for her footsteps among the many in a house stirring for the day. He feels somehow that if he listens carefully enough, he'll hear her familiar tread, the soft sounds of her breathing beside him. That she will return, plucked out of a rift in the Fade, and all of this time and pain will be just a pleat in time, a wrinkle he can tuck away and never think of again.
When he wakes, he is alone. Again.
The sun shines with mock brightness through the windows of his room, the curtains drawn back by Spite sometime as he slept. The sun's position tells him it is early afternoon. He is draped over his desk, a stack of papers beneath him, ink staining his fingers. Spite was writing again. His mouth is dry, and his teeth ache. A side-effect of the tonic, and one he never quite manages to banish.
He runs a hand down his face and wishes he had slept longer. He does not wake rested, not with Spite as active as he is. Some days, Lucanis wishes he didn't wake up at all. If Spite did not retreat on his own, he is not sure he would fight for that control again. It would be so easy to fade away. Perhaps that is why Spite does not fight for more than he has been given.
He looks down at the pages scattered beneath him. Spite's writing is a cramped, dark scrawl; each word looks as though it is scratched into the page. It is a miracle he doesn't break more quills. No part of Lucanis really wants to read whatever Spite has written, but it is impossible not to glance through it, not to see whatever compels his demon so.
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Spite's ramblings make little sense. Who is a third Spite is referring to? There is only him and his demon here. If only there was someone else, someone to make sense of all this for him. Someone to calm Spite. If only upon waking, Lucanis wasn't met with the bone-deep certainty that his happiest days are behind him.
He stands and attempts to wash his ink-stained hands in the bathing chamber. The ink flakes away the same way old blood does, and neither he nor his demon speaks to one another. Spite hangs just there, just outside of his periphery. If he doesn't look, he doesn't see him. He prefers it that way.
Caterina awaits him in the office. It used to be solely hers, but she's had another desk brought in, so now it is theirs. He's always hated this room, never went into it unless he was summoned. Now, he walks into it every day, walks inside like a target to a waiting blade.
At least there is coffee that awaits him in the enchanted carafe on the sideboard. He steps there first, pours himself a cup. This is one of the few pleasures of his life, and he savors it, draws out the moment before he has to face Caterina.
"You were back late," she says, every staccato stop of the words laced with disapproval.
The question goes unasked, but he hears it anyway. "It's done."
He senses her displeasure in his curt response in the slight pursing of her lips, but she does not inquire further. "Andarateia has requested your presence at the Diamond tonight."
"Whatever for? It was her birthday last month," he mutters as he sits down at his desk. There is a stack of missives to go through; no doubt everything Caterina has already looked through and has decided is not important enough to handle herself. If the contracts and the late hours don't kill him, the paperwork definitely will.
"I'm told a delegation from Minrathous is coming. They want more help from Treviso."
He waves a hand. "Teia can handle it."
Caterina looks unsurprised. "Good. Perhaps she will listen to me finally about ceasing aid."
"What?" The Crows have been sending aid to Minrathous at his behest since before Elgar'nan attacked their city. Since the dragon attack had blighted Dock Town, and he'd been so drowning in guilt he'd been able to do nothing less than send supplies and people and help.
"We cannot continue in this way, sending aid to Minrathous for nothing. Our own people are struggling. The Antaam may be gone, but the scars they left linger. Trade routes are still mired. Take the energy spent on them and invest it here."
"It could have been Treviso -"
"It wasn't."
"I'll go. See what they want, at least."
Caterina doesn't seem annoyed or even surprised, and he has the distinct feeling he's somehow played right into her hands. But the truth is, if Caterina outright bans him from helping, he's not sure he can tell her no. He's not sure he can do anything at all. He has become exactly what she wanted. The perfect First Talon. He does everything she asks, pliant to her every whim. He welcomes it; he doesn't have to think or consider or decide. In so many ways, he wears the title but bears little of the weight. She is still in charge, still pulling every last string. And he does not fight it at all; instead, he has sharpened himself into the shape she likes best and handed her the hilt.
What else is he good for if not to be her blade?
There was an evening, a moment, a time, when she had found him in the gardens after a nearly silent, melancholy dinner with her and Illario in that old, haunted dining room. He'd retreated there, taken refuge beneath the moonlight, trying to breathe air that wouldn't fill his lungs, drowning on dry land. Strange, how the mind reaches for old stories whenever it finds itself at the jagged edge of grief. His had reached for the drowned sailor — the Antivan folktale of the man whose eyes became pearls, who forgot the cry of gulls and the deep sea swell while the currents worried his bones into silence. Still he pleaded with the sea to let him descend once more, to rescue the love trapped within the whirlpool's heart. He'd never understood that level of despair, the futility of bargaining with forces older than memory. He understands it far too well now.
Months of numbness, unchanging stretches of nothingness, and suddenly, a great heaving thing in his chest, the weight of his grief catching up to him. He had not heard the click of Caterina's cane, didn't realize she was beside him until she spoke, words quiet, full of a tenderness so foreign he wasn't sure the woman beside him really was his grandmother.
"When I lost my Adriano," she began, "it felt as though the world had ended."
He had never heard her speak of him, his grandfather. He is not sure he had ever heard her say his name. Humiliated, he had wiped the tears from his eyes and looked at her, waiting to see what lesson she was there to bestow. It had been years since she's raised her cane to him, but still he braced; where would it descend?
"They brought his body here, and I paced outside the room. Unable to go in because if I did I'd have to see him dead, I'd have to see that he was really gone. And when his pyre burned, part of me wanted to throw myself upon it."
A hand upon his shoulder; it had taken everything in him not to flinch. "We endure because we must. It will be a wound you will carry with you always, but you will carry it because your House demands it."
Before he could form words to reply, she was gone, and so was the moment, the shared vulnerability. They haven't spoken of it again or since. But he always was good at recognizing a command when he heard one: endure.
And so he has. Like a marionette on a string, he does everything demanded of him. He works until the light changes outside his office, until the sun has very nearly set. And then he returns to his rooms and dresses, puts on the armor and the mantle of First Talon. He feels as though he is losing a piece of himself every time he does this, every time he buries more of Lucanis and becomes the First Talon. There is a numbness, a quiet that settles over him; it is almost as welcome as oblivion.
Behind the closed door in his mind, he can feel Spite thrashing. Angry and trapped, frustrated and fighting, he can feel his demon's unhappiness every time he carves bits of himself away to fit into the frame of First Talon. It doesn't matter; it doesn't get to matter. It is what it is. Spite or no Spite, this was always his future.
Because appearances matter, and that's been drilled into him more times than he can count over the years, he won't be taking the Crow's Road to the Diamond, though he'd prefer it to the carriage that jostles through the streets. He makes his way to the foyer, pulling on his gloves as he steps toward the covered veranda where it waits. He is surprised to find he is not alone; Illario is there.
He doesn't see much of Illario these days. Lucanis half forgets his cousin's existence most of the time. After he was let off of house arrest, Lucanis expected Illario might leave. But he hasn't. He's still staying in the guest house, away from the main building of the villa. He's still present at the family dinners Caterina insists on every single week. But beyond that, Lucanis doesn't know how he fills his hours. As First Talon, he certainly has the means and resources to have him tracked or followed, to have every hour of his time accounted for. He simply hasn't had the energy to care.
"Lucanis." Illario's voice is soft, an entreaty.
Lucanis stares at his cousin, tries to feel something, anything. Illario had betrayed him, had sold him out to the Venatori. He tries to grasp at something — rage or anger or sadness, but there's nothing there beyond the hollowness that's settled into his bones.
Any softness that might have existed is gone now. Perhaps it was never there; perhaps it was just quiet he mistook for care because he always was more generous with Illario than he's ever been with him. "Let me guess, off to play Caterina's loyal Talon at the Diamond?"
He is reminded, unbidden, of when they were boys. Illario used to steal things from his room. Books, seashells from his windowsill — small, inconsequential things. And then he'd display them proudly, openly, as though begging for Lucanis to ask about them. He never did. He never knew why Illario did those things; he still doesn't. As a child, he had felt as though he was missing something important, that asking would somehow reveal his own weakness or ignorance.
There is something happening here, something Illario is doing, and once again, Lucanis isn't sure what it is, what it means. And, just like when he was a boy, he knows that asking will do more to show his own weakness than yield him answers.
"What do you want, Illario?" he asks, not rising to the bait. Illario would not seek him out for nothing.
Something flickers in Illario's eyes, an emotion Lucanis cannot discern. "I could come with you. We both know I'm much more charming than you are."
Lucanis tries to shoulder past him. "No."
"Come on, Lucanis. It's true! Perhaps you'll get your way if I'm there!" The words are laced with some sort of desperation Lucanis cannot quite pinpoint. Illario doesn't care about Minrathous or this meeting; what is he trying to do?
"Why do you care?" Lucanis asks, the words out before he can stop them.
Illario looks bolstered by the question, eyes flashing. "I don't. I'm just bored out of my mind. Give me something to do, cousin."
The curiosity that rose in him withers. What does it matter? What does any of this? "Do whatever you want, Illario," he says; the words sound defeated even to his ears.
Illario steps aside then, looking for all the world like he has lost something here. Which simply doesn't make any sense. "Good luck, First Talon."
The title is deposited at his feet with so much bitterness that Lucanis has to look away. Once, he would have given up the title of First Talon to Illario without question. He never wanted it, but now, when he cannot hand it over, when he has nothing else anchoring him to living anyway…
Lucanis half expects Illario to pad along after him, but he doesn't. Illario didn't actually care about coming, not really. He wanted…Lucanis isn't exactly sure. The carriage door closes; he is alone.
As a rule, Lucanis avoids the Diamond. He avoids the Grande Market, Cafe Pietra, anywhere memories of her press too close. A lifetime of memories in Treviso, and it is the ones from those months with her that are the most vibrant, the most present. They overwrite everything else — a palimpsest he cannot escape. In the Diamond, it is impossible not to look for her. Impossible not to listen for the lilt of her Nevarran accent making a joke with Chance, or checking in on Jacobus. Impossible not to expect her to be at his side, tracing the path to the eluvian.
He drifts through the Diamond like a ghost; Crows shift to let him past, the greetings few and far between. There was a time when entering the Diamond felt welcoming, a relief to be among so many Crows in a familiar place. Now, it just feels like the precursor to exhaustion.
When he arrives to the meeting room on the second-highest floor, he is one of the last to arrive, though it's clear the meeting hasn't yet begun. Teia and Viago are already there. Ashur and Neve are too. Neve looks the same as ever, graceful and poised beneath the wear and exhaustion she carries as much as he does.
"Lucanis," Neve says with a smile. Her eyes are warm; the smile is genuine. She moves as though to hug him, but seems to think better of it, halting there awkwardly half-outstretched towards him.
He does his best to summon a smile, something that will convince her that despite ignoring her letters and avoiding her for months, he is fine. "It's good to see you, Neve."
"It's been a while."
He sidesteps the obvious concern in her tone. "How are you? How are things in Minrathous?"
Her mouth tightens, eyes dimming a little. "Surviving. But we wouldn't be here if things were good."
Of course not. "Excuse me, I should check in with Teia." He steps away before she can ask him questions, before he will be forced to lie or struggle through half-truths. Neve is too clever by half, and the only chance he has of avoiding her pointed questions and the weight of her concern is simply to limit how much he talks to her. He can feel Neve's disappointment in him as he steps away, but he lets it ride. He's here, isn't he? It has to be enough.
"Teia," Lucanis says as he approaches the Seventh Talon.
She smiles widely. "I'm so glad you could join us, First Talon." There's some admonishment there, but there's no graceful way to acknowledge it, so he doesn't. He feels a sort of specific pain whenever he's with Teia, the pain of knowing he is a disappointment to her as well. That dealing with him requires some generosity of spirit, some amount of shoring up beforehand.
"Glad to be here," he says instead. It's not even entirely a lie.
The meeting begins, and Lucanis is grateful that there is so little asked of him now. He can simply sit at the table and listen. The concerns of his own House have kept him well enough occupied that he has not spent much time at all concerned about broader Treviso unless it was intertwined somehow with his affairs. Flooding had been the immediate concern. Treviso and Antiva's other coastal cities have always been protected from the dangers of more open water by the safe embrace of Rialto Bay. Elgar'nan's moving the moon had changed that. The Merchant Princes are antsy, frustrated at their inability to move their goods the ways they used to before the blight. That while ports are reopened, the seas are more treacherous to cross than ever.
Neve and Ashur's petitions are simple ones: their people are starving. For all of Tevinter's pretending at decadence, the moment the supply lines were cut off, it was revealed how little there really was to go around. Antiva has been fine, most of its farms and countryside spared entirely by the blight. There is more than enough food; what there isn't enough of is work. Fewer ships to unload, fewer merchants willing to brave the seas, means that excess sits in overfilled warehouses with no way to leave.
"We have been providing aid since long before Elgar'nan's attack and asking for little in return," Viago says, steepling his hands. "It is not that we do not want to help, but at a certain point we have to stop doing it for free."
"What does Treviso need? We were able to build the tidal gates to keep Treviso and Salle from flooding. We have magic and engineers, we have-" Ashur's voice is desperate.
"Reliable trade routes?" Viago asks. "That is what we need. If we could open up the Crossroads-"
"That is out of the question," Neve interjects.
"Why?" Viago asks. "The Crows, Watchers, Shadow Dragons…all use them to move small shipments, deliver messages, for travel back and forth. Why shouldn't they be used to move goods? If we opened them to merchants, it wouldn't matter that the ports are unusable. Goods are spoiling in dockside warehouses because they cannot be moved quickly enough anymore."
"And our people starve in the streets because you won't share," Neve accuses.
"Let our Merchant Princes use the Crossroads, and your people will want for nothing," Viago replies simply.
"That permission isn't mine to give," Neve is looking at Lucanis pleadingly, begging him to jump in to say something.
"Then whose is it?" Viago demands. "If not yours? You were one of the people who resided there, were you not?"
Both Viago and Neve are looking at him questioningly, and he finds the words elude him. Because they are perilously close to talking about her. And he cannot do that. He cannot sit at this table, cannot remain in this seat while they all casually bring up her name, what she might have wanted. He's not sure what's worse: listening to other people misremember her or that she is so often forgotten completely.
She had not come down from the Archon's Palace, and somehow, that meant she was forgotten. He wasn't in any state to fight it, to insist the world repeat her name, that she be remembered as a hero. She was a nobody before Varric plucked her from obscurity, and it is only in the Necropolis's halls that her name is spoken of at all.
Neve is still looking at him as though she expects him to say something, to do something. "The Caretaker, the guardian over that place, only really answered to Rook."
Rook. That wasn't her name. Not really. In the back of his mind, Lucanis can feel Spite stirring with the thoughts of her, the familiar contours of it. He tries to fortify that shut door between them. The last thing he needs is Spite making a scene here.
Viago seems undeterred. "Everyone has a price, do they not? Speak to this Caretaker. Find out what needs to happen."
"And in the meantime?" Neve stares at Viago in disbelief. Beside her, Ashur puts a hand on her chair as though he is trying to keep her from jumping out of it, across the table, at fighting Viago on her own.
"House Dellamorte will get supplies to the Shadow Dragons," he says. It's not an apology, nor is it enough, but it will have to do. Perhaps Caterina doesn't even need to know if he uses his personal accounts instead of the House's. What else is he going to spend it on?
Neve sits back in her chair, looking like she still wants to argue with Viago, but she doesn't. She looks tired, her face wan. He doubts she's sleeping enough. Part of him wants to invite her back to the villa, sit her down in his kitchen and not let her leave until she's eaten a home-cooked meal. He'd even make that fried fish she likes so much if it meant she stopped looking so haunted.
But he hasn't cooked in a long, long while. He's not sure he could survive an evening of her attention anyway.
"We appreciate all that the Crows have done for us. You've been steadfast allies, and we won't forget it," Ashur says.
Teia at least looks sorry. "It's not that we don't want to help more, but things in Antiva are not what they once were. And with the unrest in Tevinter, and with Orlais….We have to look out for our own."
Beneath his veil, Lucanis swears Ashur grimaces. "And we thought we had to make hard choices during the war."
"If you have a problem that is more easily solved with a knife, you know where to find us," Viago replies. The offer is a kind one, but it will not feed hungry citizens.
The meeting ends, and Lucanis knows it is in his best interest to disappear quickly, to throw himself out a window and onto the nearby rooftops into the night before he can be stopped, but Neve is at his side in an instant.
"We need to talk," she says, voice low but urgent.
She leads him out of the meeting chamber and down a cramped hallway, trying doors as she goes until she comes to one that opens easily, some sort of storage space by the looks of it. She beckons him inside. It's his guilt that propels him forward, that has kept him here instead of offering up some excuse and retreating back to the villa and to the sleeping tonic that will be waiting on his nightstand and the oblivion that will follow.
He is not sure he has ever seen Neve look quite so defeated, her face twisted with concern. "Are you alright?"
Anger, he had expected. Yelling even. Her concern feels like a cresting ocean wave, comes down upon him heavily, knocking the air from his lungs. He cannot meet it or shoulder it, finds himself sinking ever lower. Neve used to be one of the few people he trusted with his thoughts, his fears, his concerns. His friend.
"I'm fine," he replies, words familiar and practiced and false. He finds he cannot meet her gaze.
She draws back as though his words have hit her with a physical force. "Strange. You're not answering letters…you haven't been to one of the dinners in months. No one has seen or heard from you."
"My responsibilities-"
"Fuck your responsibilities," she says, brow furrowed.
He cannot get her to drop this, and so his own recourse is to twist the knife away from him. "My responsibilities mean that your people aren't starving."
Neve's face twists bitterly. "For now, but even the First Talon of the Crows cannot single-handedly keep my city from dying."
"And neither can a detective," he murmurs. "Ashur could have done this meeting alone. Why are you here? Is there something you needed?"
And then her arms are around him. It takes a moment for his mind to realize what's happening, to catch up. His hands hang there for a moment, useless before he realizes the expectation to return the embrace. He cannot remember the last time he was held in this way, the last time someone sought to give or receive comfort from his bloodstained hands.
Neve's emotions were always buried things. Care tucked in sarcasm, hope beneath well-cultivated cynicism. Which has always made the moments she allows her care and love to show important. He tries to feel anything beyond the current of guilt dragging him down, down, down.
"I've missed you," she says as she pulls away.
"It's been…" He cannot find the words for an apology or a sidestep to absolve him from the guilt that twists ever more tightly around him.
"I know," she says with a nod. That small acknowledgement is enough to encompass all the months of his silence have meant to them both. "Look, I'm going to the Necropolis. To see Will and Emmrich….things have been happening around me…and I….don't know…I need answers, and maybe it's not connected to R-"
"Stop."
"Lucanis-"
He raises his hands in surrender. "Please, Neve."
Undeterred, she steps forward. "Come with me? Please."
He shakes his head, stepping back, putting distance between them. "I can't."
"Because of your responsibilities?" The final word feels like a mockery.
Yes. No. He wishes it were that simple.
"I just can't. It was good to see you." That, at least, he means. That, at least, feels genuine.
Neve steps around him, opens the door to go. She pauses at the threshold. "I'm not the only one who misses you, you know. And when you're ready, we're all waiting."
And that is part of what makes this so hard. "Good luck, Neve."
And then she's gone, and he feels like he is somehow that sailor who has refused a life raft, still drowning in the vast, unending ocean of his grief.
I Will Show You Fear in a Handful of Dust: Chapter Four: Thunder Without Rain
Summary: Davrin leads a group of Wardens through Ferelden. CW: immolation, death cults, non-canon character death; this one is probably the darkest yet. Read safely, friends. 4.2k, the worst timeline AU, uh...angst, my dudes. What else?
Also on AO3.
"If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses."
- T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
It is not quite cold enough to snow, which means that Davrin and the rest of the Wardens he's traveling with have to trudge through freezing mud as they canvass roadside towns, hunting for darkspawn, and clearing blight as they go.
They had started in the cities first. In places like Jader and Redcliffe, helping the survivors reclaim their land from the blight. It had been slow, terrible work, but someone had to do it. Why not what remained of the Wardens? Why not him? What else was he good for now?
A ribbon of smoke rises in the distance, pale against the bruised evening sky. Home, someone might have called it once. Now it simply means walls. A fire. Maybe a bed if they’re lucky. Maybe even water for a bath. Maybe, for one night, he won’t wake with dew soaking through his blankets and mud drying stiff against his clothes.
But even a bath won’t banish the smell of burning blight from him; that shit clings, never seems to fade. It’s the only way to clear it though. The blight here is different than it had been in Minrathous. There it had died dry, brittle enough to splinter beneath an axe. Ferelden refuses even that mercy. Here it’s green wood. Wet. Fibrous. It smolders instead of burns, vomiting thick, bitter smoke that hangs low over the fields and hills, choking out the watery sunlight. Every pyre feels like trying to cremate the earth itself. He can’t remember the last time he didn’t have the astringent, acrid smell of burning blight hovering in the back of his throat.
Sometimes Davrin catches sight of the little crew of Wardens marching with him through the haze, and they look more like ghosts than people, trudging toward another town, canvassing another road. Dusk gathers around them, and no one has to say a word before the pace quickens. Hope is a dangerous thing. It doesn’t have to be large. Sometimes it is nothing more than a little smoke on the horizon.
It is still a marvel to Davrin how many tiny towns like this survived the blight. The way people retreated into the hills and mountains, took care of each other, isolated, without news for weeks and months. Some of the towns they arrive in don't exist on any map, the buildings new. That's partly why they're here, to take an accounting of how the Blight has changed the land.
But something prickles at the back of his neck as they approach this town. It's very nearly winter, sure, but there should still be some signs of life. The farms and fields they pass are empty of people. Some druffalo and cows graze in a pasture walled in by a wattle fence that follows the road. There are sheep too, already bedded down against the cold, their bodies dots of white amongst the browning grass of the hills.
He throws his attention out like a net as they trek along the road. There is no sound of blight here, no pinpricks of darkspawn catching his attention. But still, something is not quite right.
"Where are all the people?" he asks, turning towards Ilona.
They pull their cloak tighter around their face. "Something's not right here."
"There should be people, right?" Matthias says, coming up alongside him and Ilona.
The crew Davrin leads is small. Just Ilona, Matthias, and Adal. Well, and Assan, who soars above them. Davrin gives him a quick whistle, and the griffon swoops to land.
"Stick behind us, boy," he says. Assan assents with a squawk that tells him he's not happy to be grounded, but also that he has picked up on something wrong in the air, too.
"Stay ready," he says to his Wardens.
Davrin has spent the better part of the last year in Ferelden. He'd told Antoine and Evka to send him wherever the need was greatest, and after about six months in Minrathous it became clear that the need was greatest elsewhere. So, he'd packed his bags and said goodbye to Neve and come down here. Skyhold had been the staging area, and then there were the groups attempting to retake Redcliffe. There are rumblings that Denerim is next, but he's heard it's even worse than Minrathous, so it's more a far-off dream. He's not sure what he thought he'd be doing by coming here, but it's not this. His days are simple, at least. Walk the roads that still exist. Clear what blight and darkspawn there are, and report on what they find in these small villages and towns. Who is still here? What do they need? What can they provide?
Davrin had traveled hunting monsters before the Sixth Blight. He thought he'd seen a good chunk of the world, but Ferelden feels endlessly vast. Information is sparse in these areas. Some didn't even realize the Blight was over or that the archdemon had been killed because no one had come through with the news. Much of what Davrin and his crew have to share with these people feels impossible to explain. In some towns filled entirely with humans, he is all too aware that his welcome is dependent upon the armor and shield he carries, emblazoned with the Warden crest because his vallaslin and ears mark him as other.
Sometimes, when they're unlucky, the villages they come across are empty. It's impossible to know when people left. Perhaps when the blight first appeared, they fled into the cities, went elsewhere to escape. Perhaps they left in the winter, when it stretched long and cold and harsh, and travel was better than starving in place. Perhaps some fled bandits or the violence of those they called neighbors. Desperation pushes people to do terrible things to survive. All that is clear is that they did not return.
This village bears none of the hallmarks of neglect. The fields look worked, the road well-traveled. Homes stand tall and proud and complete. He keeps a hand on his sword as their small group enters the village proper. He feels as though he's being watched, but there are no faces at the windows, no curtains swaying with someone putting them back in place. As they trudge deeper into the town, the source of the smoke becomes clear: the chantry at the center of it is a smoking ruin.
"Maker's wrinkly ballsack, what's that smell?" Matthias says, lifting his hand up to cover his nose.
It's a miracle any of them can catch anything beyond the stench of blight these days, but Matthias is right: there's something here. His stomach roils because the stench is familiar.
"Burning flesh," he replies grimly. "Someone must have been in the chantry when it caught."
Ilona is already ahead of them, using their sword to carefully poke through the still smoldering ruins. "Still hot. Bandits, you think?"
There are plenty of roving bands. Desperate and lawless, they find towns no one even knows still exist and take and take and take. Davrin's put an end to more of them than he has darkspawn in the last six months. It would be bold but not unheard of for them to round up a town and lock them in the chantry before setting it ablaze. He's reminded that not all monsters have claws.
Matthias has picked his way up to the doors of the skeletal structure. "The door isn't barred. At least not from the outside."
Adal is already up the street, knocking on doors and peeking in windows. Davrin doesn't dare attempt to bash the chantry's doors in to get inside. The structure already looks weak; he can tell that most of the roof has collapsed on whatever and whoever was inside. He arcs around the side of it, finds a wall nearly missing where there must have been a window that shattered from the heat. The smell is even worse over here, and finally, with horror, he sees why: there are people sitting in the pews. Well, their burned corpses are anyway.
Their legs and arms are raised as though praying, but Davrin wishes that he hadn't seen enough death to know that's just what happens to a body that's burned. What he cannot discern from his vantage point is why not a single one of these people seems like they tried to escape.
Adal jogs over to him. "I don't think there's anyone in these houses. Should we start opening doors?"
Davrin breaks away from staring at the smoldering mess of the chantry. "Yeah. Be sure to announce yourselves though, someone might be hiding in a basement or cellar."
Adal hesitates a little, her gaze cutting to the corpses. "What do you think happened here?"
Davrin shakes his head. "Nothing good."
He has suspicions about what might have occurred. These tiny, far-flung towns are superstitious places. In the absence of answers, people will look for them wherever they can find them, will assign meaning where there is none. It takes so little. Just one person claiming to have the answers, a few words in the right tune. In such uncertainty, people are all too desperate to follow someone who promises security and safety and truth.
He doesn't know that is what has happened here, but the chantry door wasn't barred from the outside. That leaves few other explanations. He turns away from the smoldering skeleton of the building, but not before something in it catches his eye. Like a shadow moving in the smoke. He pauses, waits, looks for whatever it might have been.
But it's gone.
***
Freezing rain pelts the house their group has claimed for the night. There were no survivors to find, but there was some food to scavenge. With night already falling, their group had little choice but to sleep here for the night. They'd picked an empty house as far from the chantry as they could. At least the rain will choke out the embers, and tomorrow, they can get inside and look for more certain answers.
Davrin takes first watch; the other three Wardens set up their bedrolls in another room. It feels like a luxury to sleep with a roof over their heads, to have cooked their meal in a hearth. There had been an air of disquiet all through dinner, and Davrin wonders what he can do to keep morale up. There's a well outside this house, and perhaps they can all stay another day. Take time to bathe and have another night of easy rest despite the morbid atmosphere.
Davrin unrolls the map he keeps enclosed in a waxed canvas folder, runs a finger along the mark of the road until he finds what he thinks might be the town name: Providence. He opens up his nearby journal and writes a description of the road, how far they traveled along it, and everything about the town they've found thus far. When he and his crew return to Skyhold, his notes and this map will go back to the cartographers who will update the records for Queen Anora. The refugees who still wait to know if the towns they fled survived or what the conditions are for travel will know the best routes to take, if the travel is worth it at all. It is important work, he supposes.
He sighs and leans back in his chair, casting his gaze across the humble room of this house. Assan is curled up at the hearth, almost too large these days to fit through the front door. He dozes untroubled, and Davrin wishes for something like that sort of simplicity.
Not for the first time, Davrin wonders if this is what it means to be a Warden now. He misses Weisshaupt, and the shared purpose of commitment to a unifying cause. There was a camaraderie that came with knowing they'd all signed up for the same sort of death. Davrin knew his life would never be long, but that it would be meaningful, and that had been enough. He'd barely hesitated when it came to killing the archdemon at Weisshaupt, but he'd lived. And then he'd lived through Tearstone, and Minrathous, too. He'd have traded his life for Harding's or Rook's in a moment, but the world doesn't work that way.
And now, he doesn't know how long he'll live. If the Calling even still exists. No one is sure, even Evka and Antoine, how whatever happened in Minrathous to the blight changed the Wardens. But he feels it, that change — even if he doesn't know what that means.
A fair few Wardens put down their swords after Minrathous. He can't say he blames them. They'd all signed up for a life of sacrifice, signed up knowing that they might be the one to put their swords through an archdemon. Years of their lives traded away for the ability to protect those that need protecting. And to suddenly be given time without purpose? There are no archdemons. There will never be another blight. Darkspawn numbers dwindle. The world doesn't need Wardens anymore.
Davrin supposes he could have left, too. But he wasn't sure where else to go. He couldn't return to his clan. Even spending time with Eldrin in Arlathan feels less like coming home than visiting somewhere he used to know. He'd mostly stayed in Minrathous because it had seemed like the right thing to do. The city was choked with blight, and Neve… well, neither of them wanted to be alone in their grief. It had made sense at the time to stay there while the Wardens regrouped. And now, what's he doing? Walking the roads in Ferelden helping make maps?
He wishes, often, for the clarity of purpose that he'd followed to the Lighthouse. For a monster to hunt — a singular goal. But instead he's stuck just asking where is the need greatest and trying to get to that place, but unable to save anyone anyway. What's the fucking point if people just lock themselves in a chantry to burn?
He leans back in his chair, tossing down his quill. He rolls his shoulders back, seeking some relief from the weight he's been carrying. He finds little.
Tch. Tch. Tch.
He freezes. The scratching sound is too regular, too rhythmic to be a tree or bush or something else disturbed by the wind. It is coming from the window across the room. The fire in the hearth casts too much light to see out into the dark night through the fogged glass.
The sound has not woken Assan.
Tch. Tch. Tch. Tch.
He throws his consciousness out almost on instinct, but whatever is making that sound isn't darkspawn; he feels sure of that. He stands on silent feet, reaches for his sword that is never far, and carefully pads closer to the window.
The sound doesn't come again. He wars with himself as he stands there wondering: should he wake Asssan or one of the other Wardens? Do a quick perimeter check? It's strange, but nothing feels malicious here. Perhaps he is simply tired, the horrors of the day weighing too heavily upon him. Perhaps it is just the rain outside.
He glances out the window as though there might be something there, and through the foggy glass, he sees nothing but darkness.
He returns to his chair, but keeps his sword close. He'll investigate if he hears it again.
But he doesn't.
***
Morning arrives bright and cold and icy. Davrin wakes without feeling particularly well-rested. He'd had strange dreams through the night. He'd dreamt of a road. Long and winding, stretching through a desolate wasteland. A figure had walked there, and he had tried to catch up to them. Felt as though he needed to reach them for some reason, but he never quite caught them. In the distance, a chantry burned. Even from that far, he could feel the heat of the flames, hear the popping of the wood. So when Adal wakes him with a hand to his shoulder, he jumps a little, the vividness of the road and the fire taking far longer to desert him than his usual dreams. Nothing is said about it. Wardens are known for having nightmares.
She gives him a moment, and then brings him a bowl of whatever is passing for breakfast this morning. Davrin doesn't care because it's warm.
"You need to make a circuit of the house," she says.
"Why?"
"You know how you mentioned scratching on your watch?"
Davrin nods. "Yeah."
"There's these…symbols beneath the window."
"Symbols?" Davrin asks. Adal shrugs. "Pretty sure they weren't there yesterday, but hard to say because I wasn't exactly looking for them."
Davrin shoves his feet into his boots and pulls on his gambeson as quickly as he can so he's protected from the worst of the cold and ventures outside. The world is strange and glass-like around him. The rain had fallen and then frozen; everything seems like it is somehow encased in a thin layer of ice. It reminds him of Neve's magic, the way her fingers had so deftly directed bursts of freezing air. The ground below him crackles beneath his boots as he disturbs the fine casing of ice on the ground. He can see, already, where his companions have moved about this morning: Adal's careful tracks around the house, Assan's hopping about.
And there beneath the window is a set of symbols.
He stares at them uncomprehendingly at first. It is not that he doesn't recognize them, but instead, that their appearance here makes so little sense that he is unsure he's not mistaken in what they are. He's seen symbols like this all over the Necropolis. He cannot read what they say, but he knows it to be the same symbols on so many of the tombs and graves where he had once followed Rook and Emmrich.
At the thought of Rook, that old, familiar pang of grief arrives. He welcomes it. She is another in a long list of friends dead and gone. He misses her, sure, but he thinks he might miss more the way she'd united all of them together. That group that called the Lighthouse home. He hates the way they've all fractured, splintered off. She had brought them together — made them a team. He shakes the memories away because they don't matter this morning. These symbols do.
And they don't make any damn sense. Why would these be scratched into the wood beneath this window? Perhaps they are a protection ward of some sort. Rook and Emmrich's magic had often utilized symbols for ward placement…maybe someone in this town had been from Nevarra….perhaps…
But it simply doesn't make sense.
And then there is the fact that there is no explanation for the scratching coming from this window last night. There are no trees nor bushes that could have been disturbed by the wind and rain. It cannot be a coincidence.
Davrin goes back inside to retrieve his journal. He cannot read the symbols, but he can copy them down and show them to someone who can. Eventually, he will get answers. When he gets inside, Matthias, Adal, and Ilona are sitting together at the table. They stop speaking as he enters.
It's too early for this shit. "Out with it."
For a moment, none of them speak, the three of them glancing at each other in silence. Finally, Ilona sighs. "We were talking….and we don't think we should stay here much longer than we have to."
"I've got a bad feeling about this place," Matthias says.
Adal nods. "Whatever was done in that Chantry has disturbed the Veil around here. To stay would be unwise. We should continue on."
He's no mage, so he'll have to trust Adal on this one. He can see that his team is united on this, but it is ultimately his call. "Alright. Let's just spend an hour or two. See if we can get any proof of what happened here, get any names to pass along if friends or family are looking for anyone. Then, we'll head out."
"You saw the symbols?" Adal asks.
"Yeah. Any of you know how to read Nevarran tomb script?"
"Is that what that is?"
Davrin shrugs. "It's what it looks like to me, but I'm no expert. I'll get it copied down, and maybe we'll find someone who can read it. But outside the Necropolis, I doubt it."
They go about their morning routines, adjusted slightly within the luxury of having slept all night indoors. But eventually, they do venture back into the town. With the rain and the cold, the chantry is nothing more than a charred skeleton of a building. There's only a little smoke rising from a few places. He's careful as he picks his way through the rubble inside. As he does, he's struck by questions he cannot answer.
What would compel people to sit in a room that was on fire? Were they already dead before the flames began licking their way up the rafters? He cannot fathom what would lead all these people into this place to die. There is no sign of attempts at escape, no sign anyone tried to go for the door or the windows; they are instead just across the pews of this place, as though they were once seated calmly.
Everything is too charred to get any sort of read. If Emmrich was here, he'd hand him the blackened skull of the corpse behind the altar, ask him to talk to it and get them answers. And maybe in another world where he didn't have miles and miles more to travel, he'd pick it up, wrap it carefully, and set it in his pack. As it stands, what happened here may just have to remain a mystery.
Something out of the corner of his eye catches his attention. He twists quickly, hand already resting on the pommel of his sword. But there is nothing there. Again. He rubs at his eyes and wonders if he's more tired than he thinks. It is the only explanation for seeing things that aren't there.
When he exits the chantry, Adal is coming out of a nearby house. Based on the number of dried plants hanging from the interior eaves, he guesses it must be the apothecary's home. She holds out a book. "Take a look at this."
He opens it. "Find anything else inside?"
"A shit ton of monkshood."
"That can be used as poison, right?"
Adal nods. "It's a paralytic. The book explains…enough."
He thumbs through the pages. Whoever this apothecary was, they kept a fairly meticulous journal, but it's the last few entries that interest him most. Mentions of following Andraste's example to be received at the Maker's side. It gets less and less lucid, the scrawl messier towards the end.
"Andraste was burned, right?" Davrin asks.
Adal shrugs. "Think so. Matthias's probably better to ask than me or Ilona."
His knowledge of Andrastianism isn't exactly well-rounded either, but he's pretty sure he's right. "So what, they all burned to death on purpose?"
"Hard to say if they all knew, but the apothecary and Chantry Sister certainly did."
Davrin pauses on the final page of the journal, staring uncomprehendingly at the words written therein. Rook. Rook. Rook. Rook. Rook. Over and over again, all over the page. Any other time it might have seemed like an odd coincidence, but taken with the scratched symbols outside the window, there's something impossibly odd here. Is this the work of a demon? He knows that time and distance collapse in the Fade; perhaps whatever compelled the people here had fed on his dreams, his fears, as his group approached this town.
"Why would they have written Rook over and over in this journal?"
"Chess piece or bird, you think?" Adal asked.
Davrin shook his head. "No, Rook, the person. The woman who led the fight against the Evanuris. She was at Weisshaupt."
It never ceases to bother Davrin just how easily Rook was forgotten. He carries with him the weight of so much expectation, a hero of Minrathous, one of the Grey Wardens responsible for saving the world. Every time he has to remind someone of Rook it feels like walking and missing a stair. He cannot fathom how it is possible for them not to know who she was.
"What's it mean, do you think?"
"That maybe we should return to Skyhold sooner rather than later. I need to check in with some friends of mine."
Adal shrugs. "You're in charge. I'm happy as long as we're done in this town."
Davrin tucks the journal away and pulls out the map, traces a route. Redcliffe first, then they can use the eluvian to get to Skyhold, make a report and he can take some leave. Something in him shifts…this feels like the first time in a long time he's had any direction at all.
Summary: A return to real life. Here there be smut! *waggles eyebrows*. If that's not your cup of tea, I support you. Just dip when things get spicy and pick up after the break. Rook/Lucanis, modern teacher au, 5.2k.
Their final morning in Treviso is a flurry of activity, of attempting to clean up after themselves in a way that the housekeepers won't have to do much when they come in for their final deep clean now that the house has been cleared out. They'd removed bed linens, taken out trash, started laundry. And amongst it all, there hadn't been time for Camina to pester Lucanis about what happened last night.
Apparently, Illario had slept on the couch, but he'd taken off before she was properly awake. She tries not to read too much into it, but when Lucanis apologized for coming in long after she'd fallen asleep last night, he'd mentioned they'd patched things up between them. For the most part, anyway.
When the car is finally packed, and they've done one last sweep of the place, they pause together in the kitchen.
Lucanis lets out a long, slow breath, gaze roving slowly across the room. "I'll meet you at the car in a moment?"
She recognizes it for what it is. "Take your time," she replies. There's still plenty of time to get to the airport; she's not worried.
Camina steps out into the bright mid-morning sun. The humidity is already stifling. It feels like every day here has been warmer than the last. Meanwhile, Minrathous saw snow yesterday. It didn't stick or anything, but at least it'll be cooler back home. She's trying to look forward to it.
She turns back and looks at the house. Even after a week and so much time spent inside it, it's still hard to imagine it as a home. There might have been a time in her life when she would have dreamed of living somewhere like this, but when she looks back at this house, when she considers the two men who grew up in it, all she sees is waste. It's difficult to imagine children in this place that felt more like a museum than a place anyone might live. But it is beautiful, there's no denying that.
She's only outside by the car for a few minutes before Lucanis appears, walking towards the car with purpose. "Ready to go?"
"You alright?"
Multiple emotions play out on his face, but a tired smile is what wins. "I'm ready to go." He doesn't look back as he drives away.
She gives him a few minutes, the only sound in the car the playlist they'd made filled with pop punk songs from the early aughts, but somehow, now the nostalgia feels a little burdensome considering the memories they've been steeped in all week. The silence between them isn't at all uncomfortable, but she's dying to know what happened last night.
She wonders if she should just let it go, but curiosity wins out. "So, you and Illario talked?"
Lucanis nods. "We did. I apologized…we carved our initials in some trees…"
"You did what?"
A small shrug. "It felt…important. To leave something behind."
Something like proof, she thinks, but doesn't say. It's certainly better than yelling at each other or papering shoddily over their feelings. What a relief. "I'm really glad you worked things out."
"I invited him to visit this summer."
That feels…big. "Wow," Camina says. They really must have worked things out. "What did he say?"
He shrugs. "He didn't actually commit, but I think he'll come."
"He will. He misses you."
Lucanis snorts. "I wouldn't go that far."
Camina shifts in her seat, turning fully toward him now. "I thought you said the two of you talked."
"We did."
"Not enough, clearly."
His jaw tightens, just slightly. "What's that supposed to mean?"
His eyes don't leave the road, and she suddenly wishes they weren't having this conversation in the car. "Did you ask him why he suddenly got all charming only to pull a complete one-eighty last night?"
Lucanis's silence is telling.
"For fuck's sake," she mutters. What did they actually talk about then?
"What am I missing here?" His voice is still even, but there's something under it now. A little color of annoyance.
She folds her arms; there's a part of her that doesn't want to explain, that wants to tell him to ask his cousin instead. It doesn't win out. "He wants you to move back here. That's what all of that was. The dinner, the tour…everything. You brought me, so he tried to sell me on Treviso."
Lucanis frowns, like the idea is distant, almost abstract. "But your life is in Minrathous."
"Yeah, that's not…that's not the point," she replies. "The point is that he misses you, and he doesn't know how to say it. So he pushes, and he manipulates…and you…" She stops herself. She's overstepping, isn't she?
"And I what?"
She sighs. "And you want so badly for things to be good with him that you believe the facade."
Silence. "Oh," he says finally, like something has shifted just a fraction too late.
"Yeah." It feels a little bit wrong to have been the one to share all this. She wishes that Illario had simply told him himself.
"Do you have plans to move back?" It's not a question she's ever asked him, hadn't ever occurred to her to ask until last night. She holds her breath waiting for the answer.
It doesn't take long. "No," he says easily. "I like my life in Minrathous." He pauses; she feels his gaze slide towards her. "It's where you are."
He's good at that. At saying the most casually romantic shit she's ever heard. She smiles. "Good, because this place is too humid for me. I feel like I'm melting."
His answering chuckle dispels some of the tension. "Noted."
"Shit only changes if you change it," she says.
He nods. "I know."
"Really?"
"We talked. I apologized. We're…better."
"Great. What's your plan going forward then?"
"My plan?" he repeats, brow furrowed.
She nods. "Yeah, your plan. You're inviting him to come out this summer. That's great. What happens between now and then?"
He looks like he wants to argue. Instead, he sighs. "I don't know."
"I don't like feeling like I'm in the middle of this, Lucanis. Even now, it should be Illario telling you this. Not me!"
"You-" He cuts himself off. They're stopped at a red light, and Lucanis looks at her with this pained expression on his face, like he wants to disagree and realizes that he can't. "Did you hate this trip?"
"What? That's not what I said."
He nods. "I know, but it's what I'm asking."
"No, of course, not. I liked it. I liked seeing your life and the place you grew up. I liked understanding you better. I even liked Illario. This place is important to you, so it's important to me, too."
He looks relieved. "I didn't mean to put you in the middle. I'm sorry."
She knows that. She's just also not sure if he and Illario know another way of being. "Just…I don't know. Make an effort? Call him? Tell him about your life? I think he just wants to feel part of it."
"He'll make fun of me if I tell him about M&M."
"Good. And you can make fun of his stupid car and how he doesn't know how to button up his shirts properly," she says with a grin. "That's…look. You're not going to get vulnerability out of him unless you show him a little. And maybe remember that he's quick to swing if he feels cornered."
Lucanis sighs. "That is very true."
"He misses you. He worries about you. I gave him my number so he can touch base with me if he ever feels the need."
"Wow."
"I doubt he'll use it."
"That was nice of you…after everything."
"We don't get to pick our family. I know that."
They're very nearly to the airport, then, the bright sunny day is the perfect end punctuation to the entire trip. She can see the planes coming in and taking off. A place of arrivals and departures and not a lot in between. A small part of her tenses a little at the thought of going home, of returning to the familiar. It's been easy to cast off her own worries here; there's some anxiety that they'll return with full force the moment she's home. Her phone buzzes as Lucanis parks the car, and as they go about the business of grabbing their luggage, she glances down, surprised.
Illario: Have a safe flight.
***
Lucanis doesn't feel well and truly home until he walks in the door of Camina's house after M&M. It had been nice to swing by his own place, change out clothing, check on Spite and his self-feeder. But there's something about entering Camina's home that feels truly like homecoming. Though it does feel a little bit wrong that there is no Aphra to greet them at the door. They'll pick her up tomorrow.
"I cannot believe that Davrin sacrificed his character like that!" Camina says, throwing her keys on her counter and setting her M&M bag on the kitchen table with more force than strictly necessary. "He's dead in a way we can't fix!"
"You mean the paladin paladined too close to the sun?" Lucanis asks.
The evil wizard their group was fighting had very nearly killed an important NPC who had been helping them, and Davrin's character used an ability to take the attack instead, and wound up disintegrated. There's no bringing him back now. Camina has been mad about it since Davrin made the decision at the table. Bellara had been very clear that the consequences would be dire, and Davrin had accepted them with a solemn nod.
"He's going to have to roll up a whole new character! Oh Maker, we're going to have to do a whole fucking funeral for him! And Assan doesn't even know!"
Lucanis laughs; he's rarely seen Camina get this worked up over their M&M game. "It'll be okay."
She sighs. "I know. I'm just feeling emotions."
"I can tell."
She glares at him. He meets it, and they both wind up grinning stupidly at one another. "I have something for you."
"You do?"
She nods. She walks over to a small ceramic bowl that lives on the counter and fishes out a small, silver house key. "This is for you."
He stares at it a beat. No one has ever given him a key. "Really?"
Her gaze is soft. "Look, this week away with you was nice. I liked not having to say goodbye at the end of the night…and maybe this is too soon….But I like it when you're around, and I want you to know you're always welcome here."
He closes his hand around the key she's still holding out, pulling her into him. "I like being around."
Her eyes are bright. "Maybe this summer we can talk about that being a more permanent state of things?"
There's a quiet hopefulness to her words that feels like it will be his undoing. He brings a hand up to trace her jaw before letting it come to rest against her neck. "I love you, Camina."
She closes the distance. "I love you, too," she murmurs against his lips before they meet. The kitchen is all soft light, but she is here, and she is real. And he can't help but feel how much he wants this. There were moments in Treviso where it felt like maybe he could have gone a little further, taken things with Camina that final degree. But there had been no forgetting that they were in Caterina's house. Time and memories pressing too close for comfort.
But now they're home. He's home. And there is this quiet promise of a future between them shared in little, ordinary ways. He deepens the kiss, tongue moving with hers as he presses her against the counter in an effort to eliminate all space between them. Already, he is smoldering, greedy in a way that he's beginning to attach to moments like this with Camina. Like he can't quite get enough of her, even when she's here in his arms, lips moving against his. He wants more even as he perches her atop the counter.
She breaks away to look at him in askance; the slight reversal of their heights sends a little thrill through him. "I didn't realize you'd be that excited about a key."
They both know better than that. It isn't about the key, not really. It's the way she's been quietly welcoming him into her life, bit by bit. A door easing open, and here he is, beyond the threshold, being woven in. There's a kind of wonder in it, almost disorienting, and a steady, blooming joy in the realization that with her, somehow, things don't level off or fade…they deepen, they widen, they keep becoming more.
He presses into the V of her legs, hands resting on her hips. "Maybe I just like shiny things."
Their bodies meld together too perfectly, and already he is achingly hard, rocking his hips into hers as he kisses her again. The movement sends sparks all the way through him, and he groans against her lips as the friction presses just so. An urgency has crept into his hands, the canting together of their bodies. He lifts her cropped t-shirt up and away, soothing the goosebumps that appear in its absence with slow, sweeping touches down her shoulders, her waist, the soft give of her stomach.
"May I?" he asks, his fingers settling beneath the waistband of her pants.
Camina's smile is quick and her eyes are bright as she lifts her hips and he pulls her clothing and underwear away in one smooth sweep. And then, he kneels, and the smile is replaced with a deep blush. "Oh."
He traces his hands up her inner thighs, falling just short of the juncture. "Alright?"
"Very."
He presses a kiss to the soft, smooth skin of her thigh, and then leans in, tongue pressing against the flushed lips of her cunt. He hears her sudden intake of breath, sees a hand scramble for the edge of the counter, while the other tangles in his hair. He oscillates between teasing at her folds and sucking at her clit before sweeping his tongue inside. The sounds she makes above him are a lovely cacophony in the quiet of her kitchen. He slips a finger inside in an effort to drive her higher, and is rewarded with the tightening of her thighs around his ears as she quakes at his ministrations.
He adds another finger, his hand pumping rhythmically in and out. He can tell she's close by the way her breath catches, the way her head falls back. He brings his mouth to suck more fully on her clit, and lifts his gaze as she shatters around him. There's something beautiful about the way her orgasm moves through her, the flush that begins at her sternum and spreads across her breasts, up her neck. She's still wearing her bra, and he can't quite take his eyes off the dark fabric proof he was in too much of a hurry to fully undress her. He strokes her through the aftershocks, and when her eyes finally open, they're glossy.
He gives her a moment to catch her breath and becomes unfortunately aware of the painful press of the hardwood against his knees, and suddenly he has to stand, wincing a little as his knees twinge.
"Kneeling on the hardwood floor? Hot. Comfortable? Probably not," she teases, eyes crinkling as she pulls him in for a kiss, heedless of the way his beard and mustache are wet from her.
He can't help but smile into her lips. "We could move somewhere more comfortable." As if he hadn't been the one too impatient to change locations.
"Couch or bed?" she asks, her hands snaking beneath his shirt.
"Whichever is closest to a condom," he replies, moving out of the onslaught enough to meet her eyes, to see the way they widen.
It has felt like a luxury to take his time to get here. To learn himself, to learn her. Desire, so often nebulous, abstract, ephemeral, has shifted into something steadfast and certain. For so long, it had felt like a complicated knot for him to untangle, and yet, here and now, it feels as easy as breathing. And still, there is not a single reason to rush; they are quite proficient at bringing the other pleasure. But he cannot deny that he wants. He wants this with her; he wants the connection, the feeling, the joy. It feels so markedly different from every other time before when he was chasing something that felt fleeting, or else pushing himself in an attempt to be something he is not. With her, there is no worry, no concern about being anything but himself. There is a knowing, a certainty, that he is enough just as he is.
"You thinking of doing something that might require one?" she asks, raising an eyebrow and looking for all the world like she's trying to suppress a grin.
"If you're amenable."
She gives him a light push. "You're wearing too many clothes. I'll meet you in the bedroom."
It is a herculean effort to let her out of his grasp, to not pull her back to him. Instead, he watches her go, follows her as far as the bathroom, and then past her to the bedroom. He flicks on the lamp and then divests himself of the rest of his clothes. When she returns, she's abandoned her bra somewhere between here and the kitchen and has a small foil packet in her hand.
"Just the one?" he asks, feigning offense.
Camina laughs. "Ambitious, are we?"
"I've been thinking about this a long time," he admits as he sits on the bed, holding a hand out to her.
She drops the condom beside him and steps slowly closer. He makes no effort to conceal his appreciation of the curves of her body. She is all soft lines and gentle dips and too damn far from his hands.
She stands there a moment, fingers linked with his, eyes thoughtful. "And you're sure?" There's no teasing, no joking in her words.
He nods. "I love you, Camina. I want this."
Her movements are slow, still giving him an out in case he wants it. He doesn't. Her hands are gentle on his shoulders as she sinks into his lap, legs straddling his. He's only half hard now, but already the proximity of her is a pull he can't resist. He kisses her sternum, his cheek a soft rasp against the swell of her breasts. Her back arches in blatant offering, and he closes his mouth over one lightly puckering nipple. She rolls her hips into his, and his rapidly stiffening cock brushes against the wet heat of her folds in a near-perfect slide.
"Lucanis-"
His name is at once soft and urgent, and he is filled with a need to be touched, to have more. He thinks there might be a question there in the broken syllables of his name. "Yes," he tells her. It sounds as overwrought as he feels.
The moment feels somewhat endless, both of them fumbling for the condom resting beside him on the comforter. He can't help but groan into her touch as she slides it down his length, and then she is rising up, and he is angling himself just so. She sinks down on him in one sudden, perfect movement that knocks the breath out of both of them. Pleasure blooms bright and true, and he is grasping her hips to keep her still around him while the world reorients itself.
Her hands on his face are tender as they tip his head back. He feels entirely and utterly at her mercy. When she leans in to kiss him, his arms wrap more fully around her. The kiss is whisper soft, a gentle meeting. And then their bodies are moving, the rise and fall, the snap and cant of hips, of flushed bodies coming together over and over again, breath mingling as they cling to one another. She comes again, he feels it, the fluttering of her walls around his cock, the quiet murmur of something at once unintelligible but familiar all the same. He presses his face into her neck, breathes her in, tastes her skin.
Lucanis finds himself surprised, even in this moment, even now, at the comfort…the simple joy of being together, of being known. This, right here, this woman in his arms is more than he ever imagined for himself.
He lays Camina out below him, shifting their position in one fluid movement. Her hands cradle his face before pulling him back in, lips capturing his. They move in tandem now, her hips meeting every thrust, and too soon, he feels his own orgasm rushing at him.
He wants the moment to last forever, but it burns too quick and bright, and he comes with a stutter of his hips, panting hard. He eases off of her, rolling to the side.
She rolls with him, looking a little mussed, a little blissed out. He can't hold back a smile.
He almost misses the words around her breathless laughter, but she presses a kiss against his chest before settling there."I love you."
He wishes he could go back to that past version of himself that wondered what there was to live for anyway, and show him this moment. And the rest of the moments like it, where his heart feels too full, too big for words. He wants to tell him to hang on. He wants to tell him it's worth it.
***
Sunday arrives, carrying with it the knowledge that the liminal space that is spring break is breaking, dissolving at the edges. Time no longer feels real; it's gone strangely elastic. Camina is struck by the strangeness of travel, of having been in an entirely different place so far from home, a mere day and a half apart. It feels like a lifetime since she was back in her classroom. The thought of returning doesn't feel her with an existential dread; there's no clawing panic or worry. Instead, it feels so very mundane. She doesn't want to go back the same way; she doesn't want to leave a warm bed to turn off the alarm or put down a book in favor of cleaning. It feels like all that is waiting for her is the steady pull of neat routines.
It's a relief.
And so is being tangled in bed with Lucanis. They've spent more of the weekend unclothed than clothed. Venturing out only to retrieve Aphra and to get food. The dog's been shooting her judgmental looks at intervals for closing the bedroom door because neither of them is particularly interested in an audience. She's pawed at the door a number of times, whined plenty too, and both antics have sent them into fits of giggles.
She'd let her in after, and then crawled back into the warm circle of Lucanis's arms. For her part, Aphra has positioned herself on the far side of the bed, still managing to look utterly offended.
"Why do I feel like if she could talk, I'd be being scolded right now?" Lucanis asks, turning his face away, beard bristling against the sensitive skin of her neck.
She laughs. "I think if she could talk, we'd be getting an earful. Maybe we need like a treat reward system or something."
"You want to give the dog a treat every time we have sex?"
"Well, not when you put it like that. I'm not trying to train her." But a part of her is a little bit proud of just how blunt he is being about it. He didn't even blush when he said 'sex'.
"Just to apologize?"
"Yeah, let's make sure to only give her the good treats when it's 'sorry we locked you out of the room while we had sex' time."
"Our only other alternative is allowing the little voyeur."
Camina sighs. "You know, this was never a problem before you. I haven't dated anyone seriously since getting the dog."
"You'd think she would have helped your prospects," he quips.
Camina pinches his side in retaliation. "Now, I want to kick you out of my room, too."
"I'm so glad we get to discover your dog's kinks together," he deadpans.
"You're terrible; I've created a monster," she says, trying to squirm out of his arms. He holds her fast, pressing a kiss to her cheek.
"So, what do we need to do today to help you have an easy week?" he asks.
She melts back into his embrace. "Ugh. Don't remind me. I want another week of break."
"We can stay in bed all day and ignore Monday. It will still come, though."
She hates when he's right. "I need to do laundry. Probably grocery shop, too. But only under extreme duress."
"If you make me a list, we can divide and conquer," he offers.
She twists to look at him. "Wait, really?"
He shrugs like it's nothing. "Really. Besides, if I do your grocery shopping, all the things I want to make for you will already be here."
"Maker, you really are the best."
He grins, pressing a kiss to her lips. "Good to know you're easy."
The day moves with them molasses slow and unhurried in defiance of the upcoming week. They do divide and conquer, Lucanis disappearing to the grocery store and Camina doing laundry, as well as a number of other tasks that will make her life easier in the coming week. Like a fucking responsible adult or some shit. She's considering taking Aphra out for a quick jaunt in the sunshine since Lucanis isn't back yet when her phone buzzes. She's sure it's him or maybe the group chat bemoaning the oncoming week. But it's not. It's Myrna.
"Hello?" Camina asks, already feeling her heart rate speeding up. Myrna doesn't call just to chat. Something has happened. Something is wrong.
"Hi Cam." Myrna's voice is tight. "I hope you've had a relaxing spring break."
She wishes she'd dispense with pleasantries and get to the fucking point. "Myrna, what's going on?"
"Dr. Tilani called me this week. The board met during break, and they gave official notice that they want to hold a public meeting about the Lighthouse. I wanted you to hear it from me-"
The rest of whatever Myrna says is lost to the buzzing that erupts in Camina's skull. It's an electric sound almost, like someone has struck a tuning fork behind her eyes and left it there vibrating. The words blur and stop meaning anything at all.
The Lighthouse. A fixture. An anchor point in her life feels like it's slipping perceptibly out of her grasp. It's not her classroom she sees, but that fucking memorial in the front hallway.
She doesn't remember ending the call.
Only the floor, the cool wood of the kitchen island against her back. Her phone somewhere on the floor beside her, the screen dark, unreachable and she cannot breathe…
Her lungs stutter. Lock up. She drags in a breath that doesn't go anywhere, like trying to drink through a straw with a hole in it. Another. Too fast, too shallow. Her chest feels tighter and tighter until it feels as though something is cinching it closed from the inside. Her heart is sprinting, slamming, pounding in her ears. Why can't she feel her hands?
She lifts them up, tries to move her fingers, but her hands are curled and useless. They're buzzing and fizzing, like they've fallen asleep and taken the rest of her with them.
Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong.
Her vision swims. The kitchen warps at the edges, and everything is wrong, wrong, wrong. The air is wrong. There isn't enough of it. Aphra is there…it registers distantly, like it's happening in another room, to another person. Warm breath on her face, a wet nose nudging at her cheek. What is happening to her? Is she dying? She feels like she's dying.
"Camina?" The voice cuts through, but it doesn't make sense at first. Just another sound in the chaos.
"Mierda. Camina?" Lucanis. He's in the doorway, grocery bags still in hand. He abandons them as he drops to her side.
"What's wrong?"
She tries to answer. Her mouth opens, but her lungs won't cooperate, breath catching and breaking, each inhale a panicked gasp that never quite fills her. She's drowning, she's-
"Something's-" She chokes on a sob. "Wrong with me."
His hands are on her face, steady and warm, grounding in a way nothing else is right now. "Hey, hey, look at me." His voice is low, firm. He's calm. Why is he calm? "You're having a panic attack. You're okay. You're not dying."
"Breathe with me," he says.
He brings her hand to rest on his chest and takes a deep breath in, holds it, releases it, breathes deeply again. She does her best to follow, realizes he's counting in fours. "In, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four." Again and again. Somewhere in the repetition, the vice-grip on her chest loosens, and she can breathe again. Air fills her lungs, leaves them, the world stops ending.
In its place, an exhaustion slams into her. Heavy and total, leaving her bones feeling like they've been hollowed out. She sags, tears leaking out of her eyes before she can stop them. She tries to wipe them away before he can see, but of course, he sees them anyway. She tries to move away from him, but her limbs feel too heavy. She doesn't want him to see this, to see her like this. She's not some stupid girl who falls apart at the slightest provocation; she's fine. She's got to be fine.
"Did something happen?" he asks. His concern makes her skin crawl.
She owes him something, though, an explanation will have to do. "Myrna called. The board met. There's going to be a public hearing."
"I'm sorry, Camina."
It should feel bigger than it does. That should be the thing that matters, but right now it's distant and muffled, just another weight added to a pile she can't carry anymore. Because she's falling apart, fraying at the edges. She has been for a while now, maybe the entire time she's known him. She's tried so hard to keep it together, to keep herself together, to keep moving forward. It's not enough anymore.
He's seen, and there's no avoiding it now. No world where she can pretend this didn't happen. "I think I need help."
He frowns slightly. "What do you mean?"
"Like I need to see a therapist or something," she whispers, the words fragile. "I keep thinking I'm going to get better, and I keep getting worse." The admission brings fresh tears to her eyes.
Aphra has lain down beside her, her head resting heavily against her thigh. Lucanis settles beside her too, putting an arm around her and pressing a kiss to her hair. "Yeah, I think that's a good idea."
She closes her eyes. She hates that he didn't disagree.
