#rookcanis

[domesticandlovingmonsters]

👀👀

‼️ veilguard spoilers below ‼️

i can't wait for people to start writing fics where the quest to find illario at the dellamorte manor is a masquerade ball and rook and lucanis have to sneak in dressed up all fancy as guests and inevitably have to pretend to be a couple for convenient plot reasons

[mothdogsart]

Spite/Rook/Lucanis is so special to me 😌♥️

[housederiva]

I’m in tears

Edit: the tears have increased

[wickedapostate]

So y'all remember how Lucanis's line in the meet the companion trailer was "Someone to bring a little darkness to the light"? One of the Shadow Dragon faction abilities is "Light In The Dark"

I'm telling y'all, they're made for each other

[tethrras]

show me where my armor ends, show me where my skin begins

vittoria de riva x lucanis dellamorte. smut/porn with plot. click here to read on ao3.

-

Vittoria de Riva is going to die tomorrow.

She is tired of deluding herself. Tired of pretending that she’s going to survive this. She will tell the others that this is not the end, of course, insist that there is still so much more left in the fight, but Harding and Neve are dead, their allies are tired, and Vittoria herself feels like a dead woman walking. She’s going to die tomorrow. One moment - a lapse in focus, a mistimed assault - is all it will take. 

But for now, all she needs to think about - all she deserves to think about - is Lucanis.

Spite’s wings come to settle on either side of them. Lucanis kisses her. Like all his other skills, his kissing is well-honed and precise, and for a moment, she’s left struggling to find an even footing. She hasn’t done this in a long time, after all, doesn’t know where to put her hands or how to move her legs, but in a few seconds, and after enough distraction, all those unwelcome thoughts and worries leave her head. In their place is a list of sensations: the scrape of his beard on her chin, the gentle intrusion of his tongue in her mouth, the feather-light sensation of his hair falling against her cheek. One of his hands comes to rest at the base of her neck, the other fisting the fabric at the curve of her waist, and Vittoria arches her back on an instinct she didn’t know she had. She feels sensitive, vulnerable, like a burn with no scab.

“Lucanis.” 

“Vittoria.” Even the sound of her own name makes her shiver when it comes from him, and she’s so distracted that she almost doesn’t notice him pulling the tie from her hair and letting it fall across the cushions. “What do you wish of me?” he asks, running a hand through the tangles above her head. “Tell me and I will do it.”

What does she wish of him? She wishes he could bundle her up in his arms and take her far from here. She wishes he could go back in time and take notice of her sooner - train with her, stroll the canals with her, invite her to coffee at Cafe Pietra in the evenings and watch the sunset over Treviso for another decade. She wishes that he would take off his pants and fuck her. “Everything,” she answers instead.

He chuckles and presses a kiss to the skin beside her mouth. “You’ll have to be more specific than that.” 

“Fuck me,” she says, then nips at the lush curve of his bottom lip. “Fuck me however you want. Make me forget.” Make me forget I’m going to die tomorrow. Make me forget that you might die first.

He takes a sharp inhale. She knows him well enough to know that he’s thinking about the next steps before he’s even started. “I can do that.”

Of course he can. He can do anything. It’s why she loves him. “Then show me.”

Lucanis sits back in her lap and reaches for the buttons of his shirt. Vittoria sits up, at first to watch and then to help, pressing kisses to each sliver of bare skin as it’s revealed, reveling in each of the sounds that he makes - the helpless sighs and strangled groans and breathless invocations of her name. She didn’t know he would be so sensitive - he, with all his confidence and experience - and like all good assassins, she takes note of it for later as he shrugs the shirt off and tosses it into an unseen corner of the room. “Your turn,” he tells her, reaching for the buttons of her shirt the same as he had with his own. But she swats his hands to the side instead.

“Let me look first.” 

Scars cover his torso, some sharp and white, others dark and deep. In another world, at another time, she would ask him where each of the scars came from and listen to the stories that lie beneath them, but she makes peace now with the knowledge that it doesn’t matter where the scars came from - all that matters is that none of the blades responsible for the scars struck true. 

Aside from the scars, decades of fighting has sculpted him into a marvel of muscle and flesh. While she can’t see his back from here, she runs her hands over the muscles there at the same time she trails kisses down the front of his chest, over those scars. How long she spent wanting this, she thinks, how long she spent watching him train, watching him walk the halls of the Diamond or the streets of Treviso, wishing that he would look at her the way he’s looking at her now; how long she spent wanting him, then wanting him to want her in return, and all it took was the elven gods returning to Thedas to get his attention. If Vittoria could find a way to tell her younger self that, she wouldn’t have believed it - which is good, because if she had, then she wouldn’t have trained as hard as she did to get where she is right now, and instead died a meaningless death all those lonely years ago.

“That’s enough touching.” He pulls at her collar, the roughest he’s ever been with her, at the same time he pushes his lips onto hers. The following command is muffled between kisses as he fists at the fabric of her shirt: “This. Off. Now.”

She pulls her hands from him and fumbles with her own buttons while Lucanis watches. His face is dark and shadowed, and she knows without question that he holds all the cards now. She can feel it - feel Spite stirring under the surface, feel that Dellamorte stubbornness rearing its handsome head. When she finishes with the last button of her shirt, he tears it from her torso and throws it onto the other side of the room. He uses that same hand to grip her shoulder and shove her down onto the cushions, not giving her a moment to catch her breath before reaching for the laces of her pants.

“It’s been… a while.” Vittoria watches as he works the piece of clothing off. She’s not sure which of them is breathing harder. “Since I did this.”

“Vittoria.” He shakes his head and, despite his fervor, a small smile appears on his lips. “Do you honestly think that matters to me?” He moves off her lap for a moment so he can pull her pants down over the swell of her muscular thighs and then stops, looking up at her from underneath his eyelashes. “Does it matter to you?”

“No.”

“Good.” He finishes with his task and then crawls on top of her to kiss her hard and flatten her underneath him. “All that matters to me is that you’re here, that you’re alive, and that I get to do this.” 

She hears the words before she feels his fingers, first one and then another, brushing through the hair between her legs, his hand moving to cover the surface of her cunt. It feels indecent to have him touch her there, to watch his brow furrow with focus, not for a kill but for delving deep inside of her, deeper than she’s ever gone herself. She’s so wet that she can hear it, and she’d be humiliated by the sound if it weren’t for how much she loves him. She loves him, she loves him, she loves him. Her hips cant upwards into the cradle of his hand, chasing the pressure, the pleasure, the relief that his fingers offer her, and when she reaches for his face, he turns his head to take her thumb into his mouth. 

To have him taking her in so many ways at once…

“Lucanis.” She has said his name so many times but knows she’s never said it like this, like she’s trying to suck the marrow from each letter. “Please, I -”

Her thumb falls from his lips and she winds her arm around his shoulders to hold him as close as possible. “I am fucking you with my fingers, Vittoria,” he states with a raised eyebrow, somehow managing to sound unimpressed even with his pupils blown black the way they are. “Is that not enough?”

“No. It’s not.”

“You want my cock, then, hmm?”

He moves his fingers fast inside of her, pulling farther out and diving further in each time, and her face flushes with a heat she's never felt before. This is the most vulnerable she’s ever been with another person, after all. As a Crow, you learn to never let your guard down - anyone can betray you, any location can leave you exposed. And right now, all of her weakest points have been exposed to him. Any assassin worth his salt could kill her in an instant without even pulling his fingers out from inside of her. But Lucanis does not want to hurt her. He crooks his fingers inside of her like he wants to anchor himself to her forever. She did not know it was possible for a man to feel that way about her, let alone this man.

“Lucanis...”

“I’ll give it to you, Vittoria, I promise.” He nuzzles his nose against her cheek. “On one condition.”

“Anything.”

His fingers slow to a crawl. She doesn’t know if it’s better or worse, but her thighs tense regardless. “Tell me that you won’t leave me again,” he says, “now or ever.”

She’s glad he didn’t ask for a promise, because she can’t give him a promise. “I won’t leave you,” she tells him anyway. It’s not a promise of her survival, but a vow that she will do whatever she can to achieve it. Because she will. Even if she has to go to the end of the world and kill a god to prove it. “I won’t leave you again. Now or ever.”

“And tell me that… that...” His mouth opens and then closes and then opens again, uncertainty creasing his features. “Tell me that I’m yours.”

“You’re mine.”

“And tell me that you’re mine.”

“I’m - I’m -” She wants to tell him what he asked of her, wants to reassure him of her feelings, but his fingers shift inside of her, and even that small movement renders her speechless. 

By now, her fingernails are cutting crescents into the meat of his neck, but if he feels the pain, he doesn’t let on. His fingers start to move again, faster and deeper and harder than before, and he clenches his jaw in concentration. “Come for me, Vittoria,” he says through gritted teeth.

The pleasure splits her open at the seams and seems to fill her with the same blinding light of a falling star. She can’t remember the last time she came like this. Perhaps she never has. Perhaps she was waiting her entire life for Lucanis, for his touch to bring this ecstasy out of her. When the wave finishes washing over her, she tries and fails to catch her breath, and when her vision clears, she notices that he’s doing nothing but watching her come back to herself with a gentle tilt of his head. She meets his gaze and gives him her best attempt at a reassuring look. He gives her a look of his own and then raises his fingers out from between her legs, lathing his tongue along them and licking them clean.

The silence hangs between them for a moment, dense as a fog. And then, as slowly as she can manage in her near-delirium, she draws his hand towards her mouth and repeats what he had done moments ago, licking the last remnants of herself from his skin. A flash of violet light flickers through his fluttering lashes, and, sensing his impatience, she pushes her hips towards him. 

“Now,” she demands, and though the word is muddied around the width of his fingers, she doesn’t want him to take himself out of her mouth. She won’t do it, either. She wants him everywhere inside of her all at once, and even when she has him, that might not be hard enough, fast enough, deep enough. Nothing with him could ever be enough. But she’s tired of waiting, and she can tell that Spite is, too. “Please, Lucanis, please.”

“Whatever you want.” He pushes his pants down his thighs with his free hand and kisses the part of her mouth where his fingers aren’t. “Anything you want.”

Lucanis makes quick work of the rest of his clothes and shifts on top of her to line himself up with her entrance. Vittoria would watch if she could look anywhere other than his face. How is she so lucky? Yes, the world is ending, and yes, she might die tomorrow, and yes, there are people out there with the power to move the moon over Thedas, but she gets to be here, with him, gets to count the moles on his forehead, gets to press her hand into the small of his back, gets to feel the burn as he stretches her out around his cock. She wouldn’t change a thing. Glory, godhood, all the gold in the world - she wouldn’t take any of it if it meant losing this, and none of it matters if she loses it tomorrow.

There’s pressure that she’s not used to as he pushes inside her, and fresh tears cling to her lashes. He kisses her closed eyelids, and then, in one quick move, sheathes himself to the hilt.

“Mierda.” She almost doesn’t hear the word over the sound of her own moaning. He tucks his face into her neck. “You feel so good ,” he whispers, starting to move with slow, exploratory pumps of his hips. “So tight. Mmm… So wet.”

She answers with a whimper, wishing she could take his fingers further down her throat.

“You are so beautiful, Vittoria. Have I told you that before? How beautiful you are? It's too much, sometimes, to look at you.”

Another whimper. Her face must be as red as the blood in her veins, but her embarrassment means nothing if the sounds bring him pleasure.

“You have saved my life more times than I can count.” The confessions sound strained in his effort not to come before she comes a second time. “You have not only saved my life, but you have… made my life.”

It’s impossible to lie still with the onslaught of feelings and she throws her head back, breathing hard. He takes it as an invitation to sink his teeth into her neck, and when she clenches around him, the answering bite is strong enough to draw blood. But she doesn’t care. How many scars does she have on her body from people who mean nothing to her? She would take a scar from the man that she loves. She’d take a hundred.

Instead of continuing to bite her, he sucks a bruise into the skin of her neck. She clenches around him again. The even pace of his hips stutters. She’s not going to last much longer, and she doesn’t think that he’s going to, either.

“I am not losing you.” He hits a place inside of her that feels different than the others and her hips jerk into him of their own accord. It punches a moan out of him, which prompts a similar one from her. She loves the sounds he makes. She loves the feeling of him inside of her, and clenches around him again in the hopes that it will keep him there. “There it is. Ohh. Oh, there you are, mi vida. Stay with me forever, Vittoria, just like this.”

“I will.” A tear falls down Vittoria’s forehead. Lucanis keeps fucking her into the cushions. “I’m yours, Lucanis. I’ve always been yours.”

After they finish, after they return to themselves, he draws his fingers out from between her lips, brushes the hair from her face, and laughs. She laughs, too. Whatever happened in the previous months, whatever happens tomorrow, she forgets it all for one long, shining moment, and for that moment, it’s just the two of them held tight in each other’s embrace. She and the man she loves. But did she tell him that? In her mania? She can’t remember. Unwilling to waste the moment but unable to form words, she kisses his forehead, across his temple, down to the hollow of his cheek, hoping each brush of her lips serves as a confession. He chuckles as she continues to make her way from one side of his head to another. After her eyes have been opened long enough to focus, she can see that he’s blushing.

And then his lips meet hers again, the resulting kiss intense enough to make her toes curl. He licks into her mouth like he thinks he can find salvation inside of it, inside of her, and... maybe he can. Maybe he already did. She knows that she found the same in him. Because no matter what happens, no matter how hard it gets, she does not want to die tomorrow, and, if nothing else, loving him has taught her that the things you want the most have a way of coming true, even when it seems impossible.

[monpetitchattriste]

Headcanon of the day:

Lucanis main reason why he doesn't like Davrin is because he know Rook has a crush on him and is jealous.

In my game Rook is a Grey warden so her and Davirn love to sit around the fireplace and talk about all the different adventures they had. And Lucanis just overhears them all as he sulks in the pantry.

And don't even getting him start in when Rook and Davrin are training Assan. (He is using all his strength to keep Spite at bay from taking over)

One day Lucanis asks Rook about Darvin and if she likes him and she laughs in his face because Darvin is like an annoying brother to her.

[tealfling]

Solas tried to keep Rook locked away with regrets about the choices their friends made.

That wasn't going to work. They knew where their choices could lead.

What Regret could have kept my Rook locked away?

The regret of not telling Lucanis her real name.

[lazyroseart]

I know I just posted shush.

But with the recent thing about Lucanis and the spirit we know is spite and how spite becomes love (or something like that) umm..

Ahava's (My Rook) whole thing is love and love related (lots of things symbolic to love like swans and pinks/reds ya know) lol so I might have tied their relationship perfectly on accident.. that's not all of course but it's kinda funny.

[slothquisitor]

What Doesn't Break

Summary: Set about a year before the events of Veilguard, Lucanis makes a deal and Rook makes a choice and both of them are determined not to break. TW: child abuse (pulled from Bioware's canon). Eventual Rook/Lucanis, 3k.

Read on AO3.

____________________________________________________________

Lucanis has long since memorized the walls of his prison. At first, the magic of this underwater pit had given him splitting headaches, but now the pain recedes to a low buzz of the magic keeping the water from bursting in. Some days he wishes for the barriers to fail, for this whole place to flood, for all of them to meet their watery grave. In his worst moments, it is the only escape he can fathom now. 

In the quiet and the dark, he holds onto the only thing he has to keep him going, to keep him alive. It is a thin thread, something to keep his back straight, his will from breaking. Whatever they have done to him, it will fail. He will make sure of it. He will not give them the satisfaction of twisting him into something else. It isn’t survival, not really, but it is all he can do to spite them now. 

They call this place The Ossuary. It’s fitting. An ossuary is a final resting place, a small box, supposed to be something like peace. Like quiet, like sinking into a chair in the soft morning light. He wishes this wasn’t going to be his. 

He is Zara’s Orlesian dancing bear. She parades him around in chains, shows him the atrocities she’s committed with the gall to call them experiments, and gloats over how she sent a body back to Treviso wearing his face. He has been reduced to a symbol, the great Demon of Vyrantium brought to heel by the Venatori witch. 

Think nothing. Feel nothing. Pay attention, seek only what is needed to escape. It has been his motto for how long now? It’s hard to say, impossible to track the days in a pit like this. He has guesses alone based on bits and pieces of information, overheard conversations he picks up from his jailors. They feed him things, shove acrid substances down his throat, and hold him down, using their magic to open the fade, to fill him with it until all he can hear are the screams. He is something new. They have made him something new, something that shouldn’t exist, shouldn’t be here. 

I do not want this . 

He knows what is happening here, has heard the screams, sensed Zara’s frustration at the failures. He knows that his days are limited, that sooner rather than later a demon will burst out of him, leaving his body behind like some broken chrysalis. He is but the host now. But he will not go quietly. The world tilts as the magic convulses his body, and he is drifting, wading knee-deep through half-forgotten memory. 

“Again,” Caterina’s unyielding voice says, her cane coming down on the stone as a staccato tap. He flinches at the sound but continues through the movements they have been drilling. 

He is eleven. Not quite a boy, not yet a man, but already honed into something sharp. Something built to kill. He will be a Crow, and not just any Crow but one of House Dellamorte, grandson of the First Talon. He has never been asked if this is what he wants. If this is the future he envisions for himself. It is expected, like the perfection of his footwork. His focus slips, and he stumbles. Again. 

He knows it, knows even as he glances at his grandmother what is coming. He is already turning away from her, already pulling up his shirt to expose his back. Once he had cried, had begged for mercy, but there is never mercy in her eyes. 

“I will beat you hard so that the world will not beat you harder,” she says, like a litany or a prayer. He swallows his screams as each strike hits with a white-hot heat. Love and hate twist and writhe within him, but he does not scream. He does not cry out. He already knows it wouldn’t save him anyway. 

The prison lurches back into focus and he knows he has lost some time, but how much? Who could say? His back aches as though the beating is fresh, but he has not felt her cane on his skin in years. And though the memory is not a good one, he finds that there is some deep ache in his chest. He longs to be back in that garden with his grandmother again, longs to hear her scold him for his stupidity, for being so careless as to be set up and captured by the Venatori. He wants to hear Illario complain about something , anything. More than anything, he wants his family, all that he has left of it anyway. He is almost sure he’ll never see them again.

There is something wrong with his limbs. He cannot move from where he lays on the cold sandy floor of his cell. His head aches and his thoughts swim. Everything hurts. 

But he will not break. He will not give that Venatori witch the satisfaction. If it is the last thing he does, he will make sure that no demon bursts forth from him. He knows that is one way this ends, he’s heard them talking about the failures. It is not how he wanted to go, but if it is the only stand he can make, he will. 

Illario always used to say that he didn’t know when to quit. Well, he was probably right. The pain bursts bright and sharp as a dagger to the ribs. His thoughts scatter as his stomach roils. 

“You know, there was coffee back at The Diamond,” Illario says, leaning back in his chair. 

Treviso glows in the darkness, the picturesque canals reflecting the stars. There is plenty wrong in the world, but right now, everything is perfect because he has a cup of coffee before him. He sips it from his cup and grins at his cousin. “If you can even call it that.”

“Snob,” Illario glowers, but it’s not menacing. This is their way. Old and practiced. 

He swirls his coffee, taking in the bitter aroma. “Rich coming from you. I didn’t think you’d be the one to complain about escaping from Caterina’s ire.”

Illario sighs bitterly. “How is it that I can finish out a contract perfectly, and still there is always something I should have done differently?”

Because their grandmother’s expectations have always been impossibly high. Because she is First Talon and she will not be seen as going easier on them simply because of the relation of their blood. No, instead she is harsher, crueler. It has always been that way. He used to resent it, resent her. But now he sees that she had prepared them to survive in this life in the only way she knew how. 

“She’s hard on you because she needs you to be perfect when you are First Talon,” Lucanis says before taking another sip of coffee. 

This too is a familiar refrain. And it used to be enough to banish the anger from Illario’s gaze, but even in this remnant of memory it is not enough. 

“Sure, cousin.” 

He will never fail to provide reassurance to Illario again, but now it will not matter. It is a relief to be free of that at least, the pressure of expectation, the anxiety of watching his cousin try and fail to quell the slow-building resentment between them. Should it not be enough that Lucanis never wanted the job?

The backs of his eyes itch and suddenly he knows he is not alone. The demon they have bound to him, the one they ripped from the Fade and stuffed inside him is here. He clenches his jaw so hard he’s sure the bones creak, but he will not give in. He will not break. 

He will not. He will not give in. This demon will not have him. 

“Not broken. Not breaking. Determined.” The demon’s voice stretches and scratches, angry and harsh. No mortal thing sounds like this. 

He forces his eyes open and sees the grotesque purple mass. It is a tangle of limbs of too long fingers, a twisted face. It cowers in the corner like a feral street cat, tired and hurt, but hissing at whatever might come near. He should be afraid, he knows that, but he has been trapped here for too long. He has nothing left to feel except exhaustion.

“What do you want?” he manages to spit out around the chattering of his teeth. When did he become so cold? His body still hurts, still aches with every movement, but he sits up, pushes through the burn of the pain. If he hurts, he’s still alive at least. 

“Trapped. Can’t leave.” Each word scrapes out of the demon as if it is an effort to make any sound at all. 

“Welcome to the club,” he replies grimly. Great, not even the demons want to be here. 

“Escape?” 

He sighs. “If there was a way, I would have found it by now.” Of that much he is sure. Zara is a lot of things, but careless is not one of them. Without outside interference, death is his only way out of here. Probably. 

“Want to leave! Want OUT.” 

“Then go back to the Fade,” he replies with annoyance. The last thing he wants is to comfort this demon. 

“Can’t. Tied to YOU.” On the last word, the demon jumps from the corner and brings itself within a breath of Lucanis’s face. Two enormous wings have sprouted from its back. It is a lifetime of training that keeps him from flinching away. This close, everything about the demon is horrifying, from the open maw to the too-sharp features, and finally to the skeletal wings aimed in sharp points. 

“So what? I get out? You get out?” Lucanis asks.

The demon pulls back just a bit. “Yes. OUT. Freedom.”

It’s a bad idea. A terrible idea really, but if this demon is already tied to him, what else could go wrong? “We work together then? Wait for the right opportunity and then strike?” He is practiced at this, at waiting for the exactly right moment. He can be patient. 

“Offering a deal?” the demon asks, voice scraping and screeching. Is this how it happens? Were these the final moments of those who had demons burst from their ribcages? Is this the final moment of being himself? It doesn’t feel that way, it feels like survival. 

“Yes, a deal.”

“A deeeeaaallll,” the voice hisses, but now the demon is wearing his face. 

***

Camina Ingellvar shouldn’t have ever been in charge of anyone or anything. Case in point: she currently sits in the hallway outside Myrna’s office. Like much of the Grand Necropolis, there is a sort of faded opulence to the place, muted almost. She’s never sure if it’s an actual decor choice, or if that’s just what happens when one lives so close to the dead. 

She’s still in her battle robes, still covered in grave dust, and somehow still awake. Maker, she needs a nap. And a bath. She’s tired enough not to be picky about the order. She’s not even sure when she last slept. As deep as they were in the Necropolis, it’s not surprising that time got away from her. 

Camina can’t make out the exact words being said, but she can hear the yelling coming from the office. It’s mostly one-sided, and it doesn’t seem to be going well. 

She’s not really sure what happens to disgraced Watchers. Will she be demoted? Forced to supervise the incoming initiates? Or maybe they’ll put her on urn cleaning duty again. The order is too old, too steeped in tradition to simply discard her after all of the effort they’ve put into her abilities and training. It doesn’t mean that they won’t find some way for her to regret this particular choice.

She leans forward, resting her forearms on her knees, and tries to care. The civil war amongst the restless dead is over, and she’s not sorry about how it ended. There’s several violations of her Watcher Oath that had happened in the ending of the whole thing, but she knew that when she disobeyed the order to retreat. All she can do now is face the consequences of her actions. 

“LORD AMUNBERG IS VERY LOUD.” She doesn’t need to look up to know that the speaker is Vorgoth, she’d recognize that death rattle anywhere. Vorgoth is…well, Camina isn’t quite sure what Vorgoth is. Isn’t sure anyone really knows. But she’s known it for the whole of her life. 

“He’s had a lot to say,” she replies. The Amunbergs are one of the wealthiest families in Nevarra and give heavily to the Mourn Watch. Unfortunately for her, Amunberg’s relatives were amongst the undead she’d destroyed earlier today. 

Vorgoth gently floats beside her, not so much taking a seat as sinking down near her. “IT IS NOT GOING WELL.”

Camina folds her arms. “Nope.”

They sit in uneasy silence while the shouting continues…until it abruptly ends. The door to Myrna’s office opens, and she stands at the door with a frown. “Watcher Ingellvar, if you would, please?”

Camina stands rather stiffly and follows, noting that Vorgoth floats in her wake. Yeah…this feels pretty serious. She’s always liked Myrna. She’s only a few years older than Camina, but she holds a lot of power and influence within the Watchers despite her age. 

Inside Myrna’s office, Lord Amunberg stands rather red in the face. His gold-adorned jacket is also red, and the effect is that he looks rather like an overripe tomato. But it’s the presence of one of the Lich Lords that catches her attention. Her stomach sinks. 

The Lich Lord turns its green-flame gaze to the Duke. “This is Watcher business and will be handled accordingly.” That’s a dismissal if she’s ever heard one.

Amunberg looks like he wants to argue, but also looks like he’s a bit scared of the Lich Lord, so he doesn’t. Instead, he looks down his nose at her. “I’ll trust the Watchers to deal with this traitor appropriately.”

Amunberg is angry, but too polite to say what he really means. But it goes unspoken. She is an elf among the ranks of the Watchers, and she is here mostly by colossal accident. The reminder is unnecessary, she loves the Watchers and they’re more open-minded than most, but still, she never forgets. 

Amunberg leaves and Myrna sinks into her chair behind her desk, gesturing for the other three occupants in the room to do the same. Myrna sighs, looking utterly spent. “Would you like some tea?”

It is not the beginning she is expecting, and Camina is too shocked for a moment to respond. “Uh….sure.” 

With a wave of her hand, a skeletal attendant emerges from a side-door, a tea tray carried in its bony arms. It pours the tea and then hands them each a cup in jilted, stuttery movements. Camina desperately wants to fill the silence, but doesn’t dare. Several long minutes pass. 

Finally, Myrna begins. “Watcher Ingellvar, you disobeyed a direct order from a superior necromancer. Leading your team straight into danger.”

Camina has explanations ready, but Myrna holds up her hand. 

“While you destroyed a legion of undead, you saved countless other lives of Watchers and undead alike. You may have saved us all.”

Oh shit. Well, that’s…unexpected. “Oh…well…I mean, I wouldn’t go that far.”

“THE WAR IS OVER AND THE UNDEAD REST THANKS TO YOU,” Vorgoth says, voice rasping out of its hood. 

“But as you have clearly seen, the upper nobility of Nevarra, those we depend upon for funding and support…well. They are unhappy.”

Camina takes a steadying sip of her tea; it’s warm and tastes faintly of vanilla. “Will you need me to draft an apology? I’m not necessarily sorry, but I could say I am…”

Myrna’s answering smile is tight. “No, that will not be necessary.” She looks between Vorgoth and the Lich Lord before turning her attention back to her. “It has been decided that it is time you take a sabbatical. You have worked in the Grand Necropolis non-stop since you took your vows. It is time.”

And then the bottom falls out from under her. Oh, this is bad. The Grand Necropolis is her home . She has no other. She has no family, no connections. She was found here as a baby, drawn here as a child, but only invited back once her magic manifested. And she has spent every day since trying to prove that she deserves to be here. 

“But I have nowhere to go,” she says. She hates how small her voice sounds, how her fear is clear. 

Myrna nods as though she understands, but Camina knows she doesn’t. Myrna has the backing of a powerful Nevarran family in addition to her magic. She will never know what it means to scrape and claw and fight for every scrap of legitimacy. “We’ve received a request from a former contact with ties to the Inquisition. He is in need of a necromancer. You’ll meet him at The Watcher House in the city. We’ve arranged a carriage to take you there tonight. It leaves in an hour.”

“An Inquisition agent? Wasn’t the Inquisition disbanded? What does he need with a necromancer?”

Myrna’s smile never fades. “We’re unsure. It is likely that your work will take you away from Nevarra for some time.”

“But Mourn Watchers rarely leave Nevarra.”

“But you will,” the Lich Lord says. And there is enough authority that there is no sense in fighting it. 

And that’s what this is, isn’t it? An excuse to discard her. She has spent years working hard, keeping her head down, trying to be twice as good, to make this investment in her worthwhile. And all it took to undo it all was one choice, the right one, she still believes. But for all it cost her? Her home, her work, her friends, her life . 

She will not give this council the satisfaction of her tears. Still, she feels the weight of Vorgoth’s bony hand rest on her shoulder, as if it can sense her emotions. “I’ll go pack.”

Myrna does her the favor of at least looking sorry. “Camina, no one ever really leaves the Watchers. ‘A home in life, a berth in death’.”

A house of many mansions , but she can’t seem to get the words past her throat. She stands and leaves, aware with every step that it might well be the last she takes in these halls, in the only home she’s ever really known. 

It is only in the cramped space of her tiny quarters as she packs up her sparse belongings that she allows the tears to fall. Allows the grief to move through her. Forty-five minutes later her bags are packed and she climbs into the waiting carriage pulled by two skeletal steeds without an ounce of hesitation.

“Back straight, Watcher,” she whispers to herself as the Necropolis slips away behind her and she rides on toward an uncertain future.

[trinrose3]

I love romancing Lucanis cause half of his reactions to shit just feel like this meme

[calcium-draws]

rookcanis as text posts bc i just finished veilguard and don't know what to do with myself

[mothdogsart]

My Rook, Eannen, is a musician who likes to perform for the wisps to decompress after missions. When Lucanis learned that he played the lute, he bought Eannen a silver “talon” finger pick.

+ Bonus horny Spite and Mr. “At least I know I’m doing it” realizing that he’s kinda maybe a little bit in love with this guy

[mothdogs]

The way he looks at Rook like he's the most beautiful thing in the universe during this scene. I've stared at this for five hours now

[dangerlemon]

something something thats that me espresso or whatever

[tethrras]

a soft place to land

vittoria de riva x lucanis dellamorte. 2.7k. fluff, hurt/comfort, flirting. click here to read on ao3.

-

Vittoria is no stranger to loneliness.

It keeps her bed cold and her nights quiet. Sometimes she’s grateful for it and other times the longing for something more, the same longing she’s felt since childhood, threatens to strangle her. But she’s a Crow, and Crows can’t afford connections like that, so she doesn’t complain and instead spends long nights sharpening her blades in silence. Sharpening blades or, when she feels longing’s hands tightening around her neck, sitting in the window of her apartment in the canal district and watching the civilians of the city go about their lives.

“Her” apartment isn’t her apartment at all. It’s an abandoned apartment overlooking the market that no one has lived in for what seems like a decade, if not longer. She found it after one of her first contracts, and it’s the only place in Treviso that she can escape to without feeling the need to look over her shoulder for Viago. On nights she can’t sleep and doesn’t want to think or train, she scales the surface of the tower and settles in the window, letting the heartbeat of Treviso lull her into something that might resemble sleep. Visiting the apartment is what she misses most about home, and after seeing what happened to Minrathous, after hearing about what's happening in the South, she wants to visit it again. Who knows if - who knows when - it’ll be the last time?

She intends to head for the Eluvian with little fanfare - the others don’t need to know about her trip - but when she reaches the bottom of the staircase in the library, she finds Lucanis sitting on a chair with a cup of coffee in his hand and a book open in his lap. He looks up at her as her footsteps slow to a stop.

“De Riva.”

“Dellamorte.”

Vittoria shifts her weight from one foot to the other as a slight smile creases Lucanis’s lips.

“You’re going out.” He appraises her armor with a raised brow. She should’ve cleaned it earlier like she had meant to…

“I am.” Vittoria rests her hand on the hilt of her sword. “But I won’t be gone for long.”

“Where to?”

“Home,” she answers, then, “Treviso. Ever since we got back from Minrathous…”

He glances down at his lap then. “I know.”

She can tell he feels as she does - guilt for what happened to Minrathous, to the Shadow Dragons, to Neve, but gratefulness that the same - or worse - didn’t happen to Treviso. It’s a poor consolation, but consolation at all is priceless in times like this. 

Vittoria clears her throat. “Would you…”

“Would I what?”

“Um. Nothing,” she insists, shaking her head. Of course he wouldn’t want to come with her - he’s clearly in the middle of something. She’s not sure she wants company, either. “Anyway, I won’t be long. If anyone asks for me -”

“Were you going to ask me if I’d like to come with you?”

“... No.”

“Then what were you going to ask?”

She knows very well that Lucanis didn’t know who she was before she rescued him from the Ossuary, despite the two decades that she has spent with the Crows. It continues to surprise her that he understands her better than Viago ever has after only a month or two. No wonder he’s such a good assassin - he’s very good at reading his mark. She clears her throat. “Alright,” she confesses. “I was.”

“I thought so.” He stands up, takes a long sip from his teacup, and then places it down on the saucer. “Let me get my things. I will meet you at the Eluvian.”

He doesn’t leave her waiting long, and they travel home through the Crossroads in companionable silence. Vittoria can’t help but glance over at him from time to time. While he didn’t notice her in the past, she certainly noticed him - she even thought she had been in love with him once, though she’s sure now that she didn’t know what love meant. Or means. But he and Illario had a life that all Crow recruits wanted for themselves, and Vittoria had been one of them. The acclaim. The attention from the Talons. The inherent talent. When she was younger, she thought that having the attention of someone like Lucanis would’ve made her life easier - easier than the attention from Viago, anyway - and she strove for years to get that attention. She grew out of it eventually, and then, of course, he died, and whatever leftover feelings she might have had died with him. But now, the fact that not only is he alive, but that she was the one to save him… Sometimes it doesn’t feel real, and she always catches herself looking at him to make sure he’s really here.

“We’re not going to the Diamond,” she says when the two of them reach the Treviso Eluvian. “If you wanted to check in with Teia and Viago...”

“Hm. Then where are we going?”

“I have a place in the city that I go to. I consider it… well… a home. Of sorts. I wanted to make sure it was still standing, after…”

Lucanis nods. “I understand. But maybe we can check in with Teia and Viago while we’re here…” At Vittoria’s wince, he gives her a smile. “Or not.”

“Thank you.” There is a part of her that loves Viago, however complicated and repressed that part is, but the last thing she needs right now is a lecture.

“Of course. No one understands the desire to avoid Viago as well as I do, believe me.”

She steps through the Eluvian with Lucanis on her heels. 

Most of the Crows are asleep for the night, so the two of them meet no resistance at the Casino, and from there she leads him through the familiar streets in silence. It’s a short walk, though, and soon enough she’s standing at the base of the apartment building and refreshing herself on her usual footholds. She hasn’t been here since before she saved Varric all those months ago, and she would hate to fall to her death from the building that she’s scaled more than any other - in front of Lucanis, no less. To her relief, the tower doesn’t seem to have suffered in the face of the dragon attack. She glances back at her companion, who is staring up at the surface of the building the same way she had been moments ago.

“It’s not as tall as it looks,” she reassures him.

He meets her gaze. “Good thing I have wings.”

Vittoria has been climbing her whole life. As a child, she would spend hours scaling trees until she reached the top and could settle down in the branches with a book or wooden toy that she had stolen from one of her siblings. By the time she was six, she could scale the tallest tree on her family’s farm in one breath. When she first arrived in Antiva, it was the only thing that made her suited to the life of a Crow - everything else, the fighting and the thick skin and the iron stomach, came later. So climbing is second nature to her, and in no time, she’s heaving herself through the window and rolling onto the floor of her apartment. Lucanis follows. They stand up from the ground, dust themselves off, and meet each other’s eyes.

“This is it.” She says it more awkwardly than she’d meant to, and winces at herself. She thought she’d gotten over her infatuation with him - she doesn’t dwell on those old feelings when they’re working together side-by-side, killing Antaam and Venatori and Sentinels - but now that it’s the two of them, alone in an abandoned apartment with no gods or dragons for miles around, that soft spot of her heart feels rubbed raw. She turns away from him. “I’ve been coming here for years,” she says again. “I’m glad to see it’s still standing.”

Lucanis looks around curiously, and Vittoria does, too, to familiarize herself with the apartment again. There’s a bookshelf with a few books in it - books that she bought from the market herself, but can’t remember the contents of now - and a collection of knives sitting on a stool next to a well-worn whetstone. Above the stool is a series of scratches on the wall, each scratch representing one of her successful contracts. There must be more than a hundred scratches, but she’s not sure if he’d consider that a high or low number, so she resists the urge to call attention to it. 

On one side of the room is the window from which she can see the market, and on the wall opposite is the window from which she can see the whole of Treviso spilling over the hills on the horizon, its silver spires sparkling in the moonlight. Lucanis lingers here, standing still for a long moment. When he speaks, it shatters the silence.

“I have never seen Treviso like this.”

“I haven’t seen it like this for a long time.”

She brushes past him and sits on the edge of the window. It’s what she would do if she were alone, after all, and that’s what she had been coming here to do - to be alone, to calm herself and soothe her nerves of steel. Even though she knows she won’t be able to do those things now that he’s here with her, she’s still going to pretend that she can. And it’s easy, because for a long, long moment, neither of them move. It's only when she turns her head to look at him that he sits down on the windowsill across from her, stretching his legs out until his feet are nearly in her lap.

She used to dream of this. Of sitting across from Lucanis, fighting alongside him, of him knowing her name and… knowing even more than that. When she was little, she always imagined what she would tell someone if they asked her about her childhood in Ferelden, and for some reason, sitting across from him, she feels the words leaving her mouth before she can think about it. “When I arrived in Antiva, all I could think about was how different it was from Ferelden. I hated it at first.” But even the word hate doesn’t capture her feelings, because she spent most nights in the year or two after she arrived sobbing in her bed until the other recruits realized that hitting her hard enough could convince her to be quiet. “But I can’t remember what Ferelden looks like anymore. I can’t remember my family. All I know is Antiva, Treviso, Salle. The Crows. Viago. If Ghilan’nain’s dragon had…”

Vittoria glances over at Lucanis. He seems focused on something in the distance, but she notices him shift in his seat and straighten up when she looks for long enough.

“Did you recognize me?” She doesn’t know why she asks him this, but she does. “In the Ossuary?”

Lucanis shakes his head. “I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I didn’t think you did.”

“But I wish that I had.” He turns to face her. “I don’t know how I never noticed you before, truthfully.”

“And why is that?”

He smiles again, and she resists the urge to glance back out the window. “You are an impressive woman, Vittoria.” 

“Well.” She clears her throat. She doesn’t know what “impressive” means to him, if it means what she thinks it means or what it should mean or if it means something else, but her face flushes nevertheless. “I’ve worked hard to be.”

At that, his smile sours. “You know… You take very good care of us. Of the team. But I hope you don’t think that we can’t be there for you the way that you - ”

“I didn’t invite you here to give me a motivational speech.”

“Ah. You didn’t invite me at all, remember? I had to tease it out of you.”

Her face flushes even more at the word “tease”. 

“I just mean that… If there is anything I can do for you, any difficulties you might be facing that I don’t know about… please tell me.” He sighs. “I know that I can’t do much, all things considered, but I can try to ease some of the weight off your shoulders if you let me. I have wings, you know. I can take it.”

“Please.” Vittoria waves her hand at him to dismiss the thought. “You keep me fed - that’s enough.”

“Mm.” He crosses his arms over his chest and nods. “And you do eat a lot more than the others, that’s true…”

“Hey!” She kicks his foot. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, nothing! It was merely an observation.”

“Watch it, Dellamorte.” She gestures to the open window. “You’d hit the ground before Spite realized what was happening.”

“Please don’t say his name right now. I don’t want him to ruin the moment.”

There it is - another word that might mean something to him but also might mean nothing. She didn’t realize that whatever’s happening between them right now could be considered a moment… but at the same time, she has started to notice that he’s been giving her more attention since she saved him and the Crows from the dragon. He sits beside her at dinner, keeps close to her side in fights and in their travels through the Crossroads… and what had he been doing tonight, sitting in the library of the Lighthouse instead of the kitchen? 

She tells herself that it doesn’t mean anything, though. It can’t mean anything. Vittoria could never live at Lucanis’s side. He’s in line to become First Talon, and his family has been a part of the Crows for hundreds and hundreds of years. No matter how much training she does, no matter what she does, Vittoria won’t ever feel like she belongs to the Crows or like the Crows belong to her. She doesn’t think she’ll ever rid herself of the fear that one wrong move will be the end of it - of her life here, or of her life at all. And she feels the same about Lucanis. If she pushes her luck too far, who can she trust to watch her back the way she trusts him? She needs to focus on finding allies right now. Not a lover.

If he was interested in her at all. Which he isn’t. He can’t be.

“We don’t have to talk, you know,” she tells him, more for her sake than his. If her face flushes any more tonight, she might burst into flames. “We can just sit here and… look out at our city.” 

“Our city.” Lucanis turns away from her and rests his head against the window frame, settling in and looking more at ease than she’s ever seen him. And while watching him in motion is enough to drive her to madness, seeing him at ease might be even worse. Watching his chest rise and fall with long, measured breaths. Watching his eyelashes flutter like he’s trying to keep himself awake. He is a beautiful thing, Lucanis. She’s sure being loved by him would be a beautiful thing, too.

“Before we stop talking, then, let me say one last thing: thank you for saving our city.” His voice is softer than a whisper, so soft that she has to lean in to hear what comes next. “And even though I didn’t know you before, I am glad that I know you now.”

As allies. As friends. As teammates. While she knows that’s all he means, it’s still something. Vittoria smiles at him. “Me too.”

True to his word, Lucanis doesn’t speak again for the rest of the night. Neither does Vittoria. (Neither does Spite.) They watch the sun rise over the mountains surrounding their home and then decide that it’s time to return to the Lighthouse to rest before they see the First Warden. But if things go well, if she somehow figures out a way to stop the gods, then she might bring him back here and tell him all the things that no one has ever thought to ask her about. He might even want to know.

[monpetitchattriste]

Another thought about the almost kiss scene.

The wall behind Lucanis has wings sprayed on it and in late game the wing are gone.

I feel like Spite might been in control of him still. Just a little bit. That's why he starts to flirt with you even though he just come out of another Spite episode. Normally he leaves the room or asks people to leave him alone after Spite takes over. But he doesn't in this scene, he actually flirts back for a while and then as you kiss he stops.

I think in thst moment Lucanis is in full control again and is completely aware of his actions and that's why he stops. And because he is scared of whatever is happening between him and Rook.