#this is not a typical reaction for future rook and they're not sure how to deal with it

[ofcrowsanddragons]

WIP Wednesday

Thank you to @hyperions-light, @thedissonantverses, and @basedonconjecture for tagging me! Tagging @corvus-frugilegus and @thesummerstorms if you'd like to play and are working on something, and also @beepoven because you got to see a couple of these lines out of context.

I just posted Chapter 5 of A Working Relationship, so here's a suggestive (14A?) Crow/Crow Rookanis snippet from Chapter 6!

Magpie Rook thinking about Lucanis in the bath apparently (#pining)

Lucanis is going by "Luca" in this undercover mission (pre-game).

I spun around, flipping the knife in my off hand into a position where I could strike with all the force of my turn.

Luca raised his empty hands in mock surrender, and I cursed, halting my strike and stepping forward and slightly off to the side from him to dissipate the momentum.

He stepped with me and caught the elbow of my knife hand. A smirk played over his face in the dim light, and I could feel the cool pressure from his leather gloves through the linen of my shirtsleeves. “Careful,” he said with a dark chuckle. “You’re still leaving yourself open.”

Adrenaline still soared through me, and I pushed him off even as I dropped the knife into my other hand so that I could sheathe it.

He allowed the movement, casually stepping back out of my space like he didn’t even feel the push, and let his arms fall to his sides. “Martalis is right, though. You do have good instincts.”

Luca’s skin carried the scent of the soap that I’d left in the bathing chamber, and his cheeks and neck were freshly shaved. My skin flushed as I realized that Luca would have found the tub that I’d filled and hauled some of the water to the kitchen to boil. He would have needed to undress, unwrapping himself layer by vulnerable layer, always with a blade in reach. Knowing his scrupulous appearance, he would have unbuttoned each piece of clothing and carefully folded it to the side. He would have bared more and more skin, slick with the sweat of hauling the water and working the woodfire cookstove, only to finally sink into the hot, wet heat of the oak-scented tub with a sigh. I had terrible instincts, actually.

“I don’t know how you think this is going to make me less jumpy,” I said, exasperated and allowing it into my tone. It was better than needing to deal with the twin urges to rush forward to strangle him but also crush my body to his. I could tell he was watching where my gaze fell as it flicked across his body, my confused brain automatically calculating the best ways to get him off balance in one way or another. I turned away with an effort, showing him my back.

The other assassin would understand, probably. The banked heat of fear and a fight denied did strange things to a body. And the mind. And the urgent desire to fist two hands into the choppy waves of his chin length hair and lick up the anterior scalene of his neck, from his collarbone to the hinge of his jaw. It was wiser not to keep track of such things.

“There were no blades,” he said nonchalantly, as if that was a reasonable thing to say. “Have you found anything interesting?”

A Working Relationship

[cybershock24601]

My most unhinged and for the drama post canon Rookanis scenario is where Rook accidentally gets pregnant post the first night she and Luccanis spend together because they're both virgins, Rook's not on any contraceptive, and the final battle is happening pretty much right after so remembering to take the fantasy morning after pill kinda gets lost in the shuffle and it basically results in Lucanis speedrunning ditching the Crows to become the Ultimate Househusband.

The way I typically imagine post canon Rookanis going down is Rook moving in with Lucanis and her relationship with Caterina slowly worsening over months and years because while Caterina probably starts pretty neutral on Rook, she just does not vibe with Rook's personality and considering she's a paranoid old woman, does not like the influence this outsider has on her grandson or the sort of support Rook has unintentionally built up amongst the Crows during the whole, let's kill these evil elven gods fiasco. Sure Caterina named Lucanis First Talon but its pretty clear a lot of the power is supposed to remain in her guiding hand and Rook is an unknown and chaotic variable fucking with her plans.

Rook on the other hand goes in ready to do her best to build a good relationship with Caterina for Lucanis' sake but starts souring on Caterina the more she learns about Lucanis and Illario's childhoods and is like, no wonder shit went so sideways, which combined with Caterina's increasingly passive aggressive behavior, Rook is only being civil because she is not willing to cause more problems in Lucanis' already fucked up family but its not like Rook is taking Caterina's jabs without getting in a few of her own.

On top of that, despite Caterina's personal dislike of Rook, she's also pushing for Lucanis and Rook to marry and start pumping out great grandbabies to repopulate House Dellamorte. While Rook is more then willing to marry Lucanis, the more Rook learns about how Caterina raised Lucanis and Illario and just about the Crows in general, she starts getting a lot of reservations about raising any child of hers in such a fucked up environment. Meanwhile Lucanis is aggressively Not Thinking About It because while he can justify the treatment he received growing up, thinking about raising his children the way he was would probably break his brain a little because its a little hard to ignore how fucked up and traumatic your own childhood is when you have to confront how much that would fuck up and traumatize someone else.

So instead of these issues growing worse and worse over the years until they completely bubble over, Rook and Lucanis have to pretty immediately confront the realities of raising a family in the Crows and by the time the kid is 6 months old Rook has enough of a grasp of what this kids future will look like in the Crows and Lucanis has had to confront continuing the cycle of abuse he was born into and they just mutually come to the decision that they need to GTFO now.

Also maybe throw in a rival Talon trying to smother this future First Talon before they have chance to grow for a little extra drama and to force Lucanis to confront the same choice Caterina did on whether the seat of First Talon is worth sacrificing his family and the answer is obviously a resounding No.

And this is all without accounting for Spite and how he would react to Rook being pregnant because I'm sure that's probably an insane concept for a spirit or how Spite would deal with this new tiny person that's half-Lucanis and half-Rook. Not to mention whatever inevitable over dramatic reaction Illario has to becoming an uncle while trying to patch up his relationship with Lucanis after the whole 'attempting to have Lucanis killed to take the position of First Talon' thing. Lots of room for comedy here to balance out how fucked up the rest of this story is.

Anyways all this ends with Lucanis and Rook traveling around for a few years to keep the Crows off their tail because I doubt Lucanis would be able to easily leave without some reprisal before they eventually quietly settle down in the Necropolis. Which serves as great security because I like the idea of magical semi sentient locations and I don't think the Necropolis would let any Crow assassins reach its Crypt Baby or Crypt Grandbaby