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Rook’s knees buckled from the sheer force of the impact, sending a sharp, jarring pain shooting up through his body as he immediately crumpled under his own weight. He lurched, falling forwards, his hands reaching out and pressing against cold stone as he tried — too late — to brace himself. For much too long he simply remained there, collapsed on his hands and knees, paralysed with shock. Staring without really seeing, struggling to think through both the sharp blast of pain spiking mercilessly throughout his body, and the tingling, almost electric feeling under his skin.
For so long, there wasn’t anything else he could do.
Where-?
What just-?
He remembered all of it — Bellara screaming as she slipped from his grasp, Harding crying out as she tumbled backwards into oblivion, the writhing of Ghilan’nain’s final death throes, Lucanis staring up at him with glassy and unseeing eyes in the aftermath — but it didn’t feel real. None of it felt real.
They couldn’t just be gone. That didn’t make any sense. He’d been talking to them barely an hour ago. They’d all been right there, standing with him. How could they just-?
He let out a small hiss as he forced himself upright, wincing as he pushed himself back onto his knees — blinking rapidly as he tried to make some sense of his surroundings, only to find himself greeted with nothingness. Just a yawning chasm of impenetrable inky blackness that stretched out endlessly in every direction before him. The crushing silence pressing in on him from all sides.
This-
This wasn’t-
It didn’t feel real.
What just happened?
Where was he?
Was he dead, too?
He reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose — closing his eyes and his brows knitting together in frustration. Trying in vain to force himself to focus through the pulsing ache that had taken root in his skull, and the way Solas’ final parting words echoed throughout his mind.
He stopped dead, his hand immediately dropping back to his side.
Solas.
He’d been there, he’d been right there, reaching out and then-
Rook startled.
In an instant, he was up, staggering weakly to his feet and whirling around in a panic as his hand flew to his belt, groping blindly for the familiar weight of the dagger part of him knew wasn’t going to be there. A horrible gnawing dread growing in the pit of his stomach as he found it missing.
It was gone.
It was gone, Solas probably had it, there was no sign of any of the others — dead or missing, Rook had no way to tell — and meanwhile he was… wherever here was supposed to be.
And of course, it was then he finally was able to recognise it. When the suffocating darkness finally began to give way to reveal a horrifyingly familiar environment. The harsh grey and jagged edges of the ground as it split open to reveal a waiting abyss. Dust and flecks of rock drifting weightlessly through the air as countless statues of hands reached skyward. Hazy and distant, as if made of a barely recalled memory, but unmistakable all the same.
“What…?” he began, breathless and gasping as he took it all in. “This… this is where we…”
He trailed off, his voice dying in his throat as the realisation of why this was all so eerily familiar dawned on him. Why the strange, almost fluid feeling of nothing quite being fully there seemed to permeate everything about it. Why that prickling, almost electric feeling under his skin stubbornly refused to leave.
He’d been here before. He’d lost count of how many times.
But this- this felt off. Felt wrong, somehow. There was usually something, some underlying sense of melancholy and sorrow that just wasn’t there anymore. Suddenly, the air itself felt oddly empty. Now he could almost feel it creeping in, worming its way through him, crawling into the darkest recesses of his being, looking for something to fill that new void. He didn’t want to consider what that meant.
He-
He had to get out of here.
He had to leave, now.
He just-
He had to-
He had to wake up, somehow. Focus just long enough to force himself awake. Take control of the dream and end it before it could really begin. Solas had always kept him from being able to do that, but Solas wasn’t here anymore. Rook knew it. He could feel that absence in every aspect of the dreamscape’s barely constructed reality. There was nothing stopping him anymore, no one better practised at this to overrule him. He just had to… do something.
But as more and more seconds and minutes crawled past with no luck and no change, it began to occur to him that he had no idea what that something was supposed to be.
He’d never been good at this. Never gotten the hang of it. Never been quite able to calm himself enough, focus himself enough, to force the Fade into any particular shape. And maybe that was by design — a conscious decision on his part. For so much of his life, he hadn’t wanted to be good at it. It wasn’t a power he wanted to have. He knew the history. He’d seen it in action. He knew the lengths it could go to when wielded as a weapon. He didn’t want anything to do with it. He wanted it as far away from him as possible. It wasn’t him. Wasn’t who he was. Wasn’t who he wanted to be.
It didn’t matter anymore. He couldn’t just stay here, wasting precious time being useless and stuck as the world burned without him.
Slowly, he instead forced himself to move, stumbling blindly through the dark as an icy numbness began to set in, not entirely sure of where he was going. Not entirely sure if there was anywhere to go. Not entirely sure if it even mattered, as long as he was moving at all.
“This is a dream,” he whispered to himself, his voice low and hoarse and barely there as he hugged himself desperately for some semblance of warmth. “This isn’t happening. This isn’t real.”
He reinforced that to himself, over and over again, hoping against hope that telling himself it was under his control would somehow make it true. He had to do it. He had to get back. He had to do something.
Why was waking up always so goddamn hard?
“This isn’t real,” his own voice echoed back, the words reverberating in the air around him, sending violent shivers up his spine and setting his teeth on edge.
And then, another voice cut in.
“Your mind makes it real.”
Immediately, Rook’s head snapped up and he whirled around on the spot, eyes frantically darting over his surroundings, searching the non-existent horizon.
“…what is this?” he murmured, still glancing wildly around and trying not to wince as his heart began thudding loudly in his chest and his voice almost immediately shot up an octave. “Is someone there? Hello?!”
“Rook,” came the response, all too horribly familiar.
He stopped dead in his tracks, his blood turning to ice in his veins as he recognised it. “Solas?”
Footsteps sounded out from somewhere behind him, echoing endlessly throughout the dark, so loud against the oppressive silence. Rook whipped around when he heard it, only to quickly step back as Solas smoothly appeared from the shadows, the corners of his lips twitching with the beginnings of a politely amused smile and the lyrium dagger held ominously aloft in the air above him.
Quickly, Rook reeled back in a desperate bid to put as much distance between himself and the blade as possible. Tripping over himself and falling hard on his back as he frantically fought to get out of the blade’s reach when Solas brought it down, slicing open the air and leaving a wound bleeding a bright sickly green in its wake.
For a moment, Solas looked over him, sprawled out on the ground, eyebrows raised critically before he went to step through the hole the dagger had torn open in reality.
“You make it all real.”
No.
“Solas, you-!” Rook found himself shouting as he scrambled to his feet, charging straight towards Solas even as he stepped into the light.
There was a painfully bright flash and then-
Rook’s hands slid through empty air, then a jarring pain shot up his arms as he hit a wall of solid, unyielding stone that hadn’t been there a moment before.
“No…” he hissed, looking around wildly for some explanation, some sign of where Solas had gone, and beating his fists against the stone when he found none. “No no no no! Damn it! Solas!”
He threw himself at the wall, slamming against it with all the force he was capable of as his screams echoed around him. Reinforcing just how completely, utterly alone he was.
It didn’t matter.
None of this mattered, he didn’t have time for it, for this, whatever this was, he had to-
He let loose a vicious snarl as he fought and bit and pushed and kicked and screamed, all with the hysterical belief that sheer brute force was going to do absolutely anything to help. Anger and frustration surged as he lashed out, the air beginning to crackle and spark as the energy within him rose to a fever pitch.
There was a flash of brilliant light as a bolt of lightning shot out from his fingertips, the energy pouring out of him and arcing through the air. It collided with the wall with an earth-shattering boom, so loud that the air itself seemed to shudder from the sheer force of it.
Rook stood there, his arm still outstretched, his chest heaving from the effort, watching as the bolt shattered and sent arcs of light splitting off in every direction, crackling as they snaked over the stone and eventually dissipated into nothingness. Leaving nothing but the wall, which remained stubbornly unmoved and unaffected.
Dread clawed at his gut as he stared absently at it, his mind reeling. Trying to focus on something, anything that wasn’t the feeling of his heart hammering away relentlessly in his chest — though whether that was from fear or exertion, he couldn’t say. Maybe both.
That… usually did something. Real or not, dream or not, that should have some effect, if only because he expected it to.
He didn’t know what else he was supposed to do.
What else was he supposed to do?
Finally, he dropped his hand and slowly straightened, staring blankly at the wall that remained without any trace of damage. No chips, no cracks, not so much as a single scorch mark or even a faint whiff of smoke left behind by his attack. Completely impervious to anything he did to it.
It felt like it was actively taunting him, at this point.
Quickly, he turned around, dragging his hands over his face as he suddenly found himself unwilling to look at it anymore.
“It’s fine,” he muttered to nobody in particular, rolling his head back and bearing his face to the swirling darkness of the sky in some desperate attempt to relax. “It’s fine. You’re fine. This is just… it’s the Fade. It’s just the Fade.”
It wasn’t a reassuring thought, however much he tried to make it one. He could almost feel it — pulling at the edges of his being, slithering its way into his soul and twisting itself around him. For the briefest moment, he thought he could feel the pressure building up, pressing in on him from every conceivable direction.
He… he couldn’t stay here.
He wouldn’t stay here.
So he took off running.
The sound of his own footsteps thudding loudly against the cracked pavement echoed endlessly in the void as the darkness closed in. With each step, that hazy, distant landscape that had become all too familiar seemed a little further away, a little further out of reach, until it faded from view entirely. Leaving him going… somewhere. Anywhere. It didn’t matter. As long as he was going somewhere. As long as it was away from here.
That’s what he told himself. What he kept insisting to himself. But the further he ran, the less it felt like he was moving at all.
Something heavy suddenly snapped around his wrist, pulling taut and bringing him to an abrupt, violent halt. Rook gasped in surprise and pain as he staggered, his arm unceremoniously yanked back behind him. He pulled, frantically trying to fight his way forward, his feet sliding helplessly over the stone as he was firmly held in place with more force than he could hope to match. Finally, he twisted around, glancing down to find a thick manacle closed around his wrist, a heavy chain stretching out into the darkness further than he could see, trapping him there.
He blinked.
“What…” the word came out quiet, his voice barely there at all, “what is this?”
“It’s what you chose,” came the answer, slicing through the silence. “The tipping point.”
Rook whipped around at the sound of it, eyes wide as he peered frantically through the dark. Trying to ignore the feeling of weight pressing in around his chest as it constricted, and the way his heart was beating wildly against his ribcage, out of control.
What?
But he-
He just saw-
“Solas?” he called out desperately, still trying to find some sign of him, trying to figure out how any of this made sense. “What are you-?”
He cut off with a gasp as he felt another manacle snap around his other wrist, wrenching his arm harshly in the opposite direction. Tears sprang into his eyes as he felt both chains pull, his muscles burning from being dragged in different directions. Both with so much force it felt like he was being physically ripped apart.
“What’s the point of this?!” he demanded through terrified gasps, grinding his jaw as he was held there, arms painfully outstretched.
“This is the truth of your actions,” Solas’ voice responded in a low, dry, almost bored monotone as Rook was slowly but surely brought down to his knees. “Your tipping point.”
What did that even mean?
He wasn’t given any time to consider it. He felt something relax, felt tension release, then a weight shifted and suddenly he was being pulled back with more force than he could possibly hope to resist. He cried out as he was thrown off his feet, his back slamming roughly against the ground and his arms yanked over his head.
He lashed out, screaming and kicking uselessly as he was dragged, every bump and jagged edge felt all too keenly, each one cutting mercilessly through his armour. Pain radiated from his arms as his muscles ached from the strain and the manacles bit viciously into his skin. Lashing out and swearing violently at whatever unknown and unseen force that was so determined to pull him back, without a single care for any of his protests.
Then, something slacked. The weight lifted.
Rook slid, carried a little further over the ground by his own momentum until he finally came to a slow, utterly agonising halt.
He collapsed, squeezing his eyes shut tight and groaning as he frantically rubbed his wrists — now free and bare as if nothing had happened at all. He quickly curled in on himself with whatever little strength remained, not bothering to move or even open his eyes even when he heard footsteps approach, and felt a presence standing over him.
“The moment of freedom,” Solas’ voice said softly. “A god walks free, because another took his place. Someone who played the role.”
At the sound of it, Rook’s eyes snapped open and he was up, reaching out to grab at him, at Solas, sparks of electricity dancing around his fingers as magic surged.
There was a thunderous crack as he felt it leave him, and a blindingly bright bolt of lightning erupted once again from his hand with enough force to send him reeling back. He fell, barely able to brace himself in time, a high-pitched ringing in his ears. For a moment, he stayed there, wincing and blinking through the afterimage burned into his eyes. Pinching the bridge of his nose as it slowly faded, all the while trying to ignore the pulsing of blood in his skull.
That was… more than he’d intended, somehow.
He pulled his hand back, squinting down at it as if it would tell him anything. As if it would give him any comfort as the crawling unease overtook everything. Suddenly, magic — something that once felt natural, something he’d considered as much of an intrinsic part of him as any other aspect of his being — didn’t feel safe anymore. Suddenly, he felt wild and dangerous and out of control.
“Solas built a cage that could hold gods,” the voice continued calmly, unaffected by the display. “You trapped him, but were also his way out.”
Rook’s head snapped up at the sound of it, his brows knitting together when no one was there, and nothing but the same old empty darkness greeted him.
“You… you’re not Solas,” he murmured as he finally pushed himself weakly back to his feet, his gut clenching when the realisation finally dawned on him. “What are you? Another god?”
This wasn’t right.
None of this was right.
He was in the Fade, he knew he was, so his first thought would have been that he was facing a demon. But he knew what demons felt like. He knew when they were there, clawing their way through the Veil, warping and twisting reality as they went. He could feel every part of them, knew all too well that odd pain that came with them, like a jolt of electricity under his skin. Not like the faint buzzing when he was in the Lighthouse, or the Crossroads, or places where the Veil was thin. Demons made it sharp. Made it sting. Demons made it painful to the point it was almost debilitating. This… whatever this was, it wasn’t that.
This place, it felt empty. He could feel it in every aspect of his being. There wasn’t anyone else here but him.
So what was talking to him?
He stayed there, waiting for an answer it didn’t seem to be inclined to give.
Then, finally, an entirely new voice responded. A quiet, soft, distinctly feminine voice. Instantly recognisable, and excruciatingly familiar.
“Keep going, Rook,” it called out his name derisively, like the word itself was a joke. “It’s a long way back.”
“Back?” he demanded, spinning around on the spot as he tried to find the source of it. “Back to what?”
He wasn’t given an answer. All he got in response was smug silence.
Fine. If that was how it wanted to play things. He didn’t have the time or the patience for this, anyway. There were gods out there destroying the world — the real world, the world he actually cared about — right now. He didn’t know where his friends were, didn’t know what happened to them, if they were alive or dead, and instead of doing literally anything, he was trapped wandering around an empty void, arguing with what he had to assume was a demon.
That’s what this was. That’s what it had to be. Nothing else made any sense.
Unease gnawed at the edges of his mind as he moved forwards, one hand outstretched, trying to blindly feel his way through the dark.
He couldn’t feel it.
If it really was a demon, shouldn’t he be able to feel it?
“You’re more like Solas than you know,” it informed him dryly, still in that soft feminine that sent shivers up his spine and left him questioning his sanity.
Of all the voices to pick…
A wealth of unwanted memories immediately flooded to the forefront of his mind at the mere sound of it, recalling each and every thing it had said over the years. All the stupid, idiot things he didn’t want to think about, let alone remember. All of the arguments, all of the insults, all of the abuse it had screamed. All of the people it had hurt. All of the confusion and fear and disgust and shame and anger and frustration and indignation and embarrassment it brought up. All of the things he thought he’d long since left behind.
Rook jerked his head to one side, as if he thought to rid himself of it through sheer force.
“I am nothing like him,” he snarled back.
“It’s your pride,” it continued without missing a beat, not even acknowledging his aggression. “What you fight for. The blood on your hands.”
“What are you even talking-?”
A different voice again. Slightly higher pitch, different accent. Still entirely too familiar.
“Was this what I fought for, Rook?” a twisted mockery of Bellara’s voice called out to him, wavering with the beginnings of tears and broken with despair. “Was it worth it?”
For a moment, he stopped. His breath caught in his throat. He could see it; playing out in his mind’s eye over and over again. Bellara’s relieved smile, turned to shock and confusion and terror. The sound of her voice, screaming in fear. The feeling of her fingertips just barely grazing his as she was ripped from his grasp. Shards of glass exploding out from the eluvian as Davrin pulled him back.
It wasn’t her.
He let out a shout of sharp, bitter laughter that was just that little bit too loud and forced to be entirely believable, and resumed determinedly trudging his way forward. “You’re a bad actor.”
It didn’t respond to that accusation, leaving Rook alone in silence as he forced himself forward, one hand wrapped tightly around his waist in an effort to stave off the freezing cold, the other still held out in front of him as he kept all his focus on moving.
“She’d never say that,” he continued, his words slurring together slightly as he spoke faster and his tone grew increasingly hysterical. “Every moment was worth it. She knew why she was fighting. Didn’t need me to tell her.”
He wasn’t sure if he really believed that. With every word, he became less and less certain who he was trying to convince.
He could still see it. Could still see her face. Could still see the fear and shock and the faint look of betrayal as she was ripped away. There one minute, gone the next.
Just like that.
She’d been there, been with him almost the entire time. Bursting in and already talking a million miles a minute about whatever had captured her interest that day. Excitedly explaining everything about her current obsession in painstaking detail. Running every idea she had by him every chance she got. The pure, unadulterated joy in her expression because he’d been the one to ask in the first place. The relief in her face when he admitted he was in no position to judge someone for rambling, and they both began to realise just how much they had in common.
How could she just be gone?
“Where were you?” it asked in her voice. “I trusted you, why weren’t you there?”
He closed his eyes for a moment, his lip curling in irritation. “Shut up. You’re not her. Not real.”
“Live long enough, the only thing that’s real is what you’ve lost.”
What he’d lost.
The words echoed endlessly throughout his mind as he fought his way forward, his nails biting through his clothes and digging into his skin when the memories spilled forth. Flashes and brief snatches of things that felt like they’d only happened moments ago. Things that still didn’t feel real.
Bellara hadn’t been the only one.
“I did everything for you, Rook,” it suddenly whispered in Harding’s voice. “And then you left me.”
Crying out as she was impaled.
Her eyes rolling back into her skull as she lost her footing, the pillar crumbling beneath her as she fell, out of view, never to be seen again.
“Nope,” he shot back, even as it felt like a shard of ice cutting through him. “Not any better. Lace would blame herself. It’s her voice, but she’d never try to hurt someone like that.”
“If the pain is great enough, appearances can be all that matter.”
She was gone.
She was just, gone.
Where? When? How?
She’d been there longer than he had, almost a full decade of experience under her belt by the time they met. Always there, always finding a way, always getting them in and out of places that should have been impossible. Always there with a reassuring smile and gentle encouragement. Smiling through tears. Smiling through the pain. Determined to see it through. Whatever it takes.
How could she just be gone?
“You don’t know her,” he insisted. “Not like I do.”
“Not like you did.”
He stopped then, his lip curled into a wordless snarl as he spun around on the spot, one hand rising as if to make a strike at the air itself. The energy already rising up within him and almost spilling over before he managed to force it back down.
“Don’t you have your own voice?” he demanded loudly, all but screaming now. “Your own face? Your own shitty emotion to embody? Or are you going to pull that out of my head, too?!”
He couldn’t feel it.
It was a demon — it had to be, there wasn’t anything else it could be — but he couldn’t feel it. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever encountered before, and he couldn’t feel it.
He thought he’d be pleased if he lived to see a day where interacting with a demon didn’t leave him keeled over with near-crippling pain. When dreams and nightmares and the goddamned Fade didn’t feel like fighting for his life. But this? He didn’t know what this was. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to know.
“I mean, you’re a demon, right?” he continued to shout when it failed to give him an answer. “What’s the play here? Talk me into insanity so you can possess me?”
There was a beat.
And then;
“I am regret,” it told him almost matter-of-factly, flat and blunt and still in the same soft feminine voice that he couldn’t bear.
He ignored that. For his own peace of mind, he had to.
Instead, he fought his way forward, struggling and fighting and clawing his way through the endless darkness, both hands outstretched before him. Feeling blindly through air, though the rest of him wasn’t sure what he was even looking for anymore. Looking desperately for a way out even as a small, gnawing feeling in the back of his mind told him it didn’t exist.
Then he felt it — old, chipped wood grain beneath his fingers. Rook stopped dead in his tracks and looked up, squinting through the dark and trying to see anything as he pressed his palms flat against it, feeling his way across until his fingers met a door handle.
His hand lingered there for a moment, unsure. He stayed right where he was, rooted to the spot, staring aimlessly at a door he could feel but not see, locked in place by fear and uncertainty. Not sure what he would find on the other side, and not sure if he really wanted to know.
Something prickled under his skin as he waited, the pulsing in his head slowly building into a roar with every passing second. A thousand voices speaking a thousand thoughts, each and every one of them screaming at him to move, to push forward, to run back, to attack, to flee, to argue, to fight, to scream, to do something. To go somewhere. To be anywhere other than here. That every moment he spent here was a moment wasted. Was another moment people needed him. Was another moment closer to being too late.
He didn’t have time.
Rook let out a wordless growl and braced himself against the door, throwing all of his weight against it as he slowly but surely forced it open. Gritting his teeth in annoyance and pain as ancient hinges screamed in protest with every step.
It all seemed to come down on him at once — a horrible cacophony of shouts and screams over howling wind and the unholy shrieks of darkspawn. Rook staggered, stumbling through the door and falling forwards, onto his hands and knees as the ground shook. He heaved, his heart pounding relentlessly in his chest as he coughed from the ash that rained down and the smoke that stung his throat, gagging and gasping and trying not to choke on the overwhelming smell of burning flesh. All around him, the air was filled with a blistering heat and the ear-splitting roar of something he’d hoped he would never have to hear again.
For a moment, he thought he could hear it. Voices screaming at him, hazy and unclear, from across what felt like an endless distance, barely able to make out the words through the chaos.
Wardens, hold the wall! This is our house!
Hold that wall, Wardens! Push them back!
He clutched himself, his fingernails digging into his skin through his clothes, squeezing his eyes shut tight and clenching his jaw as he tried to push it all out of his mind — trying desperately to simply will the memory away.
“No,” he hissed to no one in particular as he curled in on himself. “No no no…”
He knew it was there. He could feel it, leering over him whether he could see it or not. He could feel his gut twist even at the thought of it, of that horrifying visage hanging in the clouds above him.
“A face in the sky,” he heard Evka’s horrified voice whisper. “Like no Blight before.”
“The Mother of Monsters,” Antoine’s voice added, shaking and cracking with visceral fear. “Like no Blight before.”
Like no Blight before.
He tried, he’d told the First Warden, over and over and over again. The letters they’d sent about D’Meta’s Crossing. The argument in Minrathous. The other argument in the wetlands outside Hossberg. Yelling, shouting, pleading, begging them to listen. The frustration and desperation building with every failure.
He’d known he sounded crazy to them. He’d known that. Of course he did. The sheer absurdity of what he was saying hadn’t been lost on him. Nothing about the situation made any sense. But what else could he do?
Then it was too late.
“This is just a memory,” he snarled as he forced himself back up, trying to gather what strength he still had. “This isn’t real. I saved the Wardens.”
“You saved some of the Wardens,” that soft feminine voice corrected him bluntly, pausing for a moment before sardonically adding; “And now they’re dead too, aren’t they?”
So many lost at Weisshaupt.
More to the wetlands.
More still to Ghilan’nain and the blighted dragons.
Almost the entire Order was lost. A fortress that had stood for almost a millennium was gone. The one thing that had seen the world through all the Blights was gone, and he should’ve prevented it, he should have pushed harder, fought harder, provided more proof, made them see, made them understand, done something, done anything-
He could hear it. The screams of countless Wardens as they died around him. The crackling of flames and sizzling of flesh as they burned alive. The screeching of metal armour being ripped through. The crashing of debris as the towers came down. The thunderous wing beats of the Archdemon swooping overhead. The oppressive voice of Ghilan’nain, so loud that the very air itself seemed to tear apart from the sheer force of it.
“I- I tried to warn them,” he managed as he pushed himself away from it, from all of it, absolutely hating himself when his voice shook and broke while doing everything to shove the memory as far out of his mind as it would allow. “The gods, they- …the gods changed everything.”
It hadn’t been enough.
He’d done everything he could think of, and it hadn’t been enough.
“Why were you there?”
He shook head violently, keeping his eyes shut tight so he wouldn’t have to see it, and kept moving away. “I told you-”
“That’s what you came to do,” it smoothly cut across him. “Not why you were there.”
What was that supposed to mean?
What else was he supposed to say?
What the hell did it want from him?!
“Why were you there?” it asked again. “Why you?”
Rook stopped for a moment, his hands clenching into tight fists as he finally opened his eyes, forcing himself to actually survey the chaos surrounding him. Reliving each and every painful moment of it.
“Because…” he began, his voice faint and weak as he stared down at it all, “because I was the one that trapped Solas. Because Varric-”
He cut off.
He didn’t know why.
His voice shook and broke as his chest constricted and he cut off, suddenly unable to go on. He blinked several times, his brow furrowing as he tried to make sense of it. A sudden sharp pain slicing through his head the second he hesitated. Rook gasped in surprise and reeled back, slapping one hand against his forehead while the other blindly grabbed at the wall before he lost his footing.
“Why show me this?” he demanded, short and impatient now, glaring up at the swirl of lightning and flames and ashen clouds in the sky. “So I’ll give up?”
“So you’ll ascend.”
Immediately, he dropped his hand back to his side as his head snapped up in confusion. “What?”
“Rise to match the gods. Rise above those who died,” came the response. “See why you lead.”
His lips twisted into a wordless snarl when he heard that, whatever little that remained of his patience quickly draining away. It was just more games. More riddles. More vague answers that conveniently failed to actually say anything. And really, at this point, why was he even surprised?
He didn’t have time for this. For any of this.
“How about you tell me why you’re here?!” he demanded, screaming the words into the empty void surrounding him. “This is a cage built for gods, right? So what are you supposed to be?!”
“A cage built for gods,” it echoed back in his own voice, a touch of dry amusement in its tone as its pitch shifted, rising to the painfully familiar soft feminine it seemed to prefer taunting him with. “Or mortals with delusions.”
It came then.
Almost nothing. Little more than a small uncomfortable twinge. Rook remained right where he was, brows knitting together, eyes darting over his surroundings for something, some semblance of an answer, some sign that he was talking to more than air.
Then he began to hear it.
Quiet at first. A faint rumbling from across an impossible distance, building with every passing second until it had slowly but surely morphed into a roar that drowned out everything else.
An icy cold dread shot through Rook as he slowly turned to see it — just enough to make it out in the corner of his eye. A colossal wall of water that overwhelmed the ruined landscape, swallowing it all whole. The barest hints of foam and spray at its crest, so far above, threatening to come down on top of him.
He choked.
He choked and immediately stumbled, silently screaming at himself to move despite every muscle in his body seeming to seize in sheer terror. His breath caught in his throat as he turned, frantically scrambling in sheer desperation to get away. Barely able to keep his balance as he sprinted, at full pelt, across the destroyed battlements. Leaping over piles of fallen debris, dodging flames and whatever else, the only coherent thought in his mind simply being a blind, panicked desperation to escape as he heard the water come crashing in behind him.
His scream was abruptly cut off as it swept in, the sheer force of it throwing him off his feet and sending him spiralling. Water poured into his mouth and down his throat before he could stop it, his body convulsing as his lungs burned and he tumbled, buffeted by the roaring water all around him.
“Did you think you could escape your past, Rook?”
He struggled and frantically lashed out, trying to find something, to fight his way to the surface and find some semblance of air, only to be met with blinding pain as his body harshly impacted solid stone. It punched through him as the water hurled him against the unyielding walls of the fortress, with so much force it held him there for a moment, before it began to recede, the current pulling him helplessly along with it.
“You tried to run. You twisted yourself into a different person, because you couldn’t face who you were.”
He desperately fought to grab at something — the floor, the walls, the ceiling, he couldn’t tell — his fingertips sliding uselessly over flat stone, finding no purchase as he was dragged out with the current. Tossed and thrown with more force than he could fight, wanting to scream with every fibre of his being even as the water pressed in from every angle.
Where-?
There was something, hands on him, a great weight pulling him further with every second. He fought, thrashing and flailing wildly against it, trying to find the surface, trying to breathe, and-
“And you thought you got away. You thought you left it behind.”
Exhaustion gnawed at him as his muscles became leaden, as his lungs burned with an impossible pain and he couldn’t move, he couldn’t do anything, he couldn’t-
“But even after all that, you’re still here.”
Blackness seeped in through the edges of his vision, and a shudder ran through his body as his mouth opened for one last, desperate, sharp inhale, despite every part of him, every instinct he had, fighting against him.
“I’m still here.”
His hands suddenly met stone and he collapsed, water pouring over him as he gasped. Arms shaking violently and barely able to keep himself even on his hands and knees from the sheer weight. Coughing and choking and gasping and vomiting up so much water as his insides burned. Staring blankly in sheer shock as someone came to a halt beside him.
For so long, he didn’t move. He just stayed precisely where he was, chest heaving as his lungs burned and water surged up his throat and dribbled over his lips. It took just about all his strength not to simply collapse right there and then, and he couldn’t bring himself to look up. Couldn’t stand to be reminded of the face he knew was looking over him critically, clearly unimpressed with him. With all of it.
Well. That made two of them. He wasn’t particularly impressed by its display, either.
“You’re not me,” he snarled at it, his voice hoarse and spiking painfully down his throat as he rasped the words out. “You’re a demon who thinks it can taunt me with my own face.”
It didn’t move. It didn’t say anything. And as he finally turned his head just enough to spy it in his peripheral, he could see how it barely even raised its eyebrows, its lips twitching with faint amusement at his retort.
He shouldn’t have been surprised to see it. He’d been expecting it, from the moment it had come at him with that voice. His own voice, from what seemed like a lifetime ago now. But something about seeing his own features staring back at him — rounder, perhaps, just that little bit softer — made his skin crawl. Part of him barely even recognised it. Barely even recognised it as him.
But there it was, all the same. A waifish elf girl staring right back at him with a look of cynical amusement. Hair recently shorn off, the scars over her right eye still somewhat fresh. The same girl part of him could still see, every time he looked in the mirror. The same girl part of him was convinced he would always see, no matter how much he changed, or how hard he tried to leave her behind.
“You’re not me,” he rasped out with all the aggression and defiance he could muster.
It barely even flinched at the accusation. “Just the part of you that you regret.”
“No,” he hissed back at it, his arms shaking violently as he struggled to push himself back up. “Shut up! You don’t get to pretend you’re a part of me. You don’t get to act like you know anything about me.”
That earned him little more than a crooked smile as it stretched its arms out wide, almost bowing as it stepped back further into the rapidly encroaching darkness, its form shimmering ever so slightly as it shifted to mirror him, exactly him, as he was at that very moment, right down to the blood and grime smeared across his skin and clothes, and the water still dripping from his nose and hair.
“No?” it questioned in a perfect echo of his own voice, though it spoke smoothly while he was left hoarse and rasping.
Rook sat there, lungs still heaving as he continued to gasp for air, staring after it. Watching helplessly as the darkness crept back in, and a wild, manic grin spreading across his own face became the last thing he saw.
Then it was gone.
And he was, once again, left completely alone.
Part of him couldn’t tell if that was better, or somehow worse.
Every muscle in his body cried out in agony as he stayed there, his arms shaking from holding up even just his own weight. Water still welled up in his throat with every passing moment, burning through his insides and making it almost impossible to breathe. And all the while his mind reeled from the shock of it all. Not quite able to wrap his head around any of it.
Finally, his arms gave out. He collapsed roughly onto his side, rolling onto his back as what precious little remained of his strength failed him. For such a long time he simply lay there, staring aimlessly up at the pitch black, featureless void above. Just about every conscious thought in his mind focused solely on forcing himself to breathe, and never quite feeling like he was ever getting enough.
He stayed there.
He didn’t know how long for.
Maybe a moment.
Maybe forever.
Maybe no time at all.
And then, there was a voice. Sharp and cutting as it sliced through the silence, and painfully familiar. Not the demon — or whatever it was — but something else. Something closer to a memory. An echo of something that had been said to him before.
“Do you understand what this past year has been like? Or did you somehow think no one would connect your actions to your own damned family?!”
He bolted straight up at the sound of his sister’s voice shouting at him, staggering to his feet and whirling wildly around, eyes frantically scanning the non-existent horizon as if he expected to find her there. Only to turn and find nothing but the same empty void as always greeting him. Then, finally, he caught a glimpse of something in the corner of his eye.
An empty artist’s easel stood there, in the middle of the void, gathering dust like it had been there the whole time.
Slowly, he approached it, his head tilting slightly to one side as he took it in, chewing his lip uncomfortably as his chest constricted and his heart leapt into his throat. He could see it all too clearly — her face, her unimpressed expression, the underlying hurt and pain and confusion plastered across her features as she fought to keep her composure. Her knuckles whitening ever so slightly as she clutched a small stick of charcoal like she was about to hurl it at him in sheer frustration.
He could feel his own muscles tense and heat rise to his face in response, echoing the defensive posture he’d taken at the time.
Part of him had wanted to argue with her. After all, it was what he did. What they’d always done. They fought, about everything, all the time. She’d say something, and he’d snap back at her. Even when he knew she had a point. Maybe especially when he knew she had a point.
He absently reached out with one hand, trembling fingers barely an inch away from the smooth wooden frame of the easel.
“Silvia…” he murmured her name, the weight still pooling in his chest.
“She was right.”
Rook gritted his teeth when he heard it. He immediately whipped around, bringing one hand up in an effort to strike, only for it to sail through empty air. Beneath his feet, the ground lurched suddenly to one side, disappearing out from under him. Rook gasped in surprise and fear as his stomach dropped, frantically twisting around as he slipped, fighting to save himself.
“You tell yourself that it’s worth it,” it continued in a voice that both was his and hadn’t been his for what felt like an eternity. “That it’s righteous. That you’re saving Tevinter. That you’re saving the world. But what have you actually done, in the end? Has anything changed?”
Rook slid uncontrollably down the impossibly steep slope, desperate to keep from screaming as he plummeted, and determined not to give it the satisfaction of his fear or pain as he seemed to hit each and every single small bump on the endless way down.
“What happens when you realise you’ve doomed more than you’ve saved?”
“We didn’t know what happened,” he remembered his sister telling him, the memory bubbling up from some dark, unwanted corner of his mind. “We didn’t know if you were even alive.”
It was supposed to be the right thing. The better thing. He was supposed to leave and never come back. He was supposed to be out of their hair forever. He wasn’t supposed to be their problem anymore. One last letter, and they could forget about him. One final, painful goodbye, and they’d never have to think about him or the fallout of all his stupid, impulsive decisions ever again. He’d stay away, and reap the consequences on his own. It wasn’t supposed to affect them anymore.
That had been the plan.
But things never went according to plan, did they?
“Dad had to publicly disown you. Did you know that? He was forced to, in order to protect us and keep his position. Do you realise how much that broke him?”
He should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. That it never just stopped with him. The damage was already done, and he hadn’t spared anyone or anything, save perhaps his own pride.
It was supposed to be the right thing. The noble thing. Self-imposed exile had been the only option. The only way to get everyone — the other Shadows, his family, the former slaves he’d rescued — out of his mess relatively clean. It had been his choice, his sacrifice to make. He’d been so sure at the time.
He’d been so sure.
But no matter what happened, no matter what he did, it wasn’t just him that suffered. It was never just him.
He’d been so sure.
“Nothing is more important to any of us than this family,” Silvia’s voice reminded him softly. “And that includes you. It’s always included you. I don’t know why you act like it doesn’t.”
No, she didn’t. She’d never understood. Why would she? They’d never given him a reason to think they didn’t love him. They’d always gone out of their way to make sure he knew that, even when he did everything in his power to push them away. But maybe that had been part of the problem.
He’d never been able to just accept that he belonged with them. He didn’t look anything like them. He wasn’t even human, not like them. Every time he tried to ignore the differences, something would remind him that he was only permitted to be there through the grace of their hearts. And no matter how much they told him otherwise, he could never rid himself of the fear that they’d take that away. Everything always felt conditional, even when they assured him that it wasn’t. Despite everything they did and everything they said, he’d never quite been able to bring himself to believe them.
But why not?
Why couldn’t he have just been happy with that? He’d been afforded so much infinitely more than elves in the Imperium usually were. Why couldn’t he have accepted it and been content with his life, knowing that he would have died on the battlefield otherwise?
Why wasn’t it ever enough for him?
Why couldn’t he just-?
“Your family did everything for you,” it whispered in his ear as he continued falling. “Sacrificed everything for you. And how did you repay them?”
He just-
He’d wanted-
Jarring force shot up through his legs and his knees painfully buckled as his feet abruptly impacted stone. Rook let out a pained gasp as he fell head over heels, tumbling over the ground as it evened back out, and rolling to a slow halt.
He let out a grunt from the impact and slowly pushed himself back up with shaking arms, desperately trying to ignore the pain that seemed to radiate from everywhere. He blinked several times, trying to clear his head as he pushed himself back up onto his knees, only to startle when he heard the sound of something clattering against the floor.
In an instant, his eyes flicked up, just in time to see a small jewellery box laying discarded on the floor, its lid fallen open to reveal the box itself to be completely bare. Every part of it struck some cord in his memory, until realisation finally set in.
Rook choked.
His eyes flew wide as he choked and scrambled back, pulling himself over the stone in a desperate bid to get as far away from the jewellery box as possible. Part of him not even wanting to look at it as dread closed around his heart, and countless unwanted memories came flooding to the forefront of his mind.
Stuffing everything into his pockets.
Carefully closing the door behind him as he’d left the house, as quietly as possible.
Rain on the cobblestone as he’d made his way through the winding streets, looking for the first fence willing to take what he’d managed to pilfer.
The quietly agonised look on his mother’s face when he’d gotten back home, so long after dark. More worried about him than what was missing. Not a single word between them as he’d stalked off to his room.
“She never brought it up,” it reminded him softly, lips just barely inches from his ear. “Never confronted you, though she knew. And in the end, her silence hurt far worse than anything her anger could have done.”
Rook gritted his teeth at it — at the memory, at the gnawing pit in his stomach that grew with every passing second. He’d known what he was doing. Just how much that jewellery meant to her. But he’d been desperate. He’d thought so at the time, anyway. Like that was supposed to be a justification. Like it was supposed to vindicate him somehow. Like he couldn’t have simply asked for help rather than resort to stealing from one of the only people in the world who ever really cared about him. Like it was about anything other than his own damned pride. No one had ever said anything about it, but that look on his mother’s face may as well have been burned into his soul.
“Poor, dear, darling Luciana,” it drawled, so close Rook could almost feel its breath brushing against the back of his neck. “For all her desperate efforts, she never could quite figure out where she was going wrong.”
He grimaced and absently waved it away, despite knowing what little good it would do. “It wasn’t her fault.”
“No,” came the agreement. “It never was. But you never bothered to tell her that, did you?”
It was supposed to be worth it.
It was supposed to be for the greater good.
But what did that even mean? Did it mean anything anymore?
All of it — everything he did, everything he said, everyone he hurt — it was supposed to be for something. It was supposed to save Tevinter. It was supposed to repay the debt he owed. It was supposed to make his family’s lives better, or at least a little easier. It was supposed to make it all worth it. Make it worth something.
It was supposed to be for something.
“You wanted to be worthy of them,” it murmured, sending shivers up his spine as cold fingers crept over his shoulder. “But all you’ve ever done is hurt them.”
He could feel it, could feel the ground open up under his feet as countless hands grabbed at him, crawling over him, fingers curling and digging into his skin, holding him with an ever tightening grip as they pulled him deeper, as they dragged him further down into the dark. Icy cold pressed in against him from every direction, biting at every part of him as he felt the water surge back in.
“I just… I wanted it to be worth something,” a memory of his own voice called out, quiet and shaking and on the verge of breaking with every word. “I didn’t want to be the thing that ruined you. I didn’t want you to regret me.”
“You ran from it but brought it nearer,” it whispered in the back of his mind. “Led it to them.”
He tried to gasp for air as he fought against the hands that were still dragging him down, barely able to move under the weight of it all. Burning pain followed by a cold, icy numbness as the water — the never ending crushing pressure of the water — surrounded him, seemingly endless.
“I tried to help people, and I couldn’t,” his own voice continued, broken with despair. “I tried to fix Tevinter, and I made things worse. I tried to save the world, and I ended up causing the apocalypse.”
For a moment, he thought he was going to die.
For one horrible, terrifying moment, he thought he might’ve welcomed it.
“Ventus.”
“I tried to help people, and I couldn’t.”
“Nessus.”
“I tried to fix Tevinter, and I made things worse.”
“Treviso.”
“I tried to save the world, and I ended up causing the apocalypse.”
“Weisshaupt.”
“I tried to save the world, and I ended up causing the apocalypse.”
“Even your beloved Minrathous cries out in agony.”
“I tried to save the world, and I ended up causing the apocalypse.”
“Do you still hear their screams?”
He could. Of course he could. He could hear it all — the absolute cacophony that had haunted his dreams every night since he could remember. He could hear every new voice added to it with each new disaster. Wardens burning alive. Antivan civilians dying from blight. Barely freed slaves cut down by Venatori. Mages tortured by Antaam. He could hear every single one.
People he’d known. People he could have saved, if he’d just-
His own voice, terrified and panicked and screaming for his friends as they fell around him.
“Bellara-!”
“Harding!”
“Varric? Varric?!”
A small voice in the back of his mind, quiet and rasping and almost too difficult to make out.
“Rook…”
He let out a pained grunt as he was abruptly thrown, out of the water and landing hard on his back, pain radiating out from everywhere the instant he hit the floor. A heavy weight pressed in against his chest, a boot bearing down on him and pinning him in place as he coughed and gasped desperately for air, water surging up his raw throat and spilling over his lips.
All around him, he was greeted with the interior of a small wooden shack. And above him, there was a face — his own face, his old face — staring down at him once again, lips split into a sly smile.
All too familiar.
Another place he’d already been.
Another memory he’d wanted to forget.
It was stupid, what he’d done in Nessus. It had been a stupid, impulsive, reckless plan that had nearly gotten him and everyone he’d been trying to save killed. Because that was what he did, wasn’t it? Get angry and impatient when things either weren’t moving fast enough, or weren’t being carried out in a way he found acceptable? Wasn’t that always what happened? He’d put on an impressive show, tried to inspire the captives to believe they could escape, to fight their way out. To hell with being careful.
And then-
And then they had. And he got himself caught. He’d been pinned to the floor, just as he was now, and so many people nearly died because he’d run off ahead, and hadn’t been with them like he said he would be.
People did die.
Not as many as would’ve otherwise, he’d insisted to himself at the time. He couldn’t save everyone, so he’d settled for at least saving someone. He’d told himself that had been enough.
It was supposed to be enough.
“Solas did this, you know,” it told him softly as it leaned in, the heel of its boot digging painfully into his chest as he struggled in vain. “You keep turning to him for help, listening to him, trusting his advice… despite knowing what he is. You admire him. And why? Because he looked you in the eye and said ‘our people’? Because he saw your greatest desire and gave you exactly what you wanted?”
“That’s not-”
“Yes it is,” it cut across him harshly.
Yes, it was.
He wasn’t human. He was barely even an elf. He didn’t belong anywhere. He’d never belonged anywhere, not even with his own family. People didn’t accept him. He’d been left for dead by whatever birth parents he was supposed to have. He’d done everything in his power to drive his adoptive family away. What few elves he’d tried to connect with over the course of his life hadn’t wanted anything to do with him.
He was too human for elves, and far too elven for humans. He was a means to an end to the Shadow Dragons, and then too much of a liability to keep around. He was a terrorist and a cataclysm waiting to happen to Tevinter. And then he was a walking disaster and potential abomination to the rest of the world.
He’d thought- he’d thought maybe if he tried, if he helped, if he proved himself, if he did something, maybe they’d-
Maybe he’d-
Then there Solas had been, the Dread Wolf, the god of rebellion himself, powerful and ancient and the stuff of legends, standing there looking so proud and so melancholic and talking to him like they were the same. And for the first time in his life, he’d felt some small fragment of that lifelong void in his soul finally fill. For the first time in his life, he’d felt accepted by someone like him, someone who knew what he was going through and understood him. Suddenly, he didn’t feel like he was just a stray someone took pity on. He’d felt like he was part of something. For a few brief, brilliant moments, he’d felt like he was actually supposed to be there.
“You’re desperate for his approval,” it murmured, so quietly he almost didn’t hear it. “But he’s the one who did this to you.”
“What are you talking about?!” he demanded, still fighting to push it off him, hating himself as his voice shot up an octave, cracking with genuine terror.
It didn’t respond immediately. Just smiled crookedly as it leaned in ever closer, lips just barely grazing his cheek.
“He made you forget,” it whispered, pulling back just enough to press its index against his forehead, lightly pushing him back in an almost playful gesture. “It played out right in front of you, and he made you forget all of it. Like it never even happened.”
“Forget what?”
He didn’t get an answer. He got barely more than a crooked smile in response, accompanied by a silence positively dripping with smugness. And all the while it looked down at him almost expectantly, waiting for something, though Rook couldn’t tell quite what. Waiting for something he wasn’t sure would ever come.
And all the while, something in the back of his mind prickled.
“It’s over,” it told him, pressing its foot a little bit more painfully against his chest. “You’ve played your part. There’s no point staying in denial anymore.”
He continued to struggle, fighting helplessly against the thing holding him there, every muscle in his body tensing and convulsing painfully as the energy began to build up to almost unbearable levels, buzzing just beneath his skin like a thousand angry wasps, so close to losing control completely.
Finally, he raised a shaking hand, and let the energy out.
There was a violent blast as something erupted from his fingertips, sending a sharp, icy pain shooting down his arm, quickly followed by an odd sense of numbness. There was no crackling energy this time, no sharp burst of blindingly bright light, no explosive force. Where he’d been expecting lightning, viciously sharp shards of ice shot forth, slicing through the air and burying themselves in the surrounding walls, sending splinters flying.
Rook lay there, on his back, his hand still lingering motionless in the air, eyes wide with shock as his chest heaved.
No no no-
Not this. Not now. Not here.
And the water came flooding back in.
It dripped off the melting ice shards around him, pooling onto the floor, steadily rising around him. Rook scrambled to his feet, clamouring for a handhold, something to help him pull himself up as the water engulfed his ankles, then his knees, his waist, his shoulders.
Rook scrambled, nails scratching into the wooden walls that were barely holding together, desperate to keep his head above the surface. Knuckles whitening as he hugged the rafters, holding onto them for dear life as he pressed his face as close to the ceiling as he could possibly manage. Sucking in a few last gasps for air as the water slowly rose higher, crawling up his neck and over his face until there was nothing else left.
“You want to know how Solas swapped places with you?” he heard it whisper as he frantically beat his fists against the ceiling, trying to break through and find some semblance of air. “How your regret could match his?”
Part of him wanted to scream, to scream and never stop, wooden splinters cutting painfully into his hands as he fought, tried to find any slight purchase, and-
“Every choice you’ve made, you owe to this. This is the moment that put lives in your hands. The moment the blood on your hands clouded your mind. The moment Varric showed you the cost of leadership.”
There was something then.
“You didn’t want to face it. And with a little blood magic, you didn’t have to.”
A flash of something, something he couldn’t quite-
“Solas was trapped in his own cage. But if your regret grew, he could escape.”
Angry voices screaming at each other and the sound of wood splintering and something clattering against stone and there was a burst of light and energy and sharp blast of pain in the back of his head and he couldn’t quite-
“Only by trading you. Shaping you. Until your regret matched his.”
There was something in his hands, damp material in his hands, fistfuls of a ruined coat in his hands, he was screaming something and his voice caught in his throat and he couldn’t-
“So the lie lived on in your mind, waiting until the moment the truth could break you.”
A small voice in the back of his mind, quiet and rasping and almost too difficult to make out and he couldn’t-
“This is the end. When he traded his regret for yours. This is the very real loss that let Solas swap his regret for yours.”
He just-
He had to-
He couldn’t-
“‘Regret is the price we pay for acting when no one else will’,” it mocked in a perfect imitation of Solas’ melancholic tone, before twisting back to his own — that soft feminine voice that he didn’t want to admit had ever been his. “Isn’t that what leaders say? When they get people killed for the greater good? When they toy with lives?”
“Varric? Varric?!”
“Rook…”
“Welcome to your cage. The moment why you lead.”
The words seemed to echo endlessly in the void as Rook felt some unseen force suddenly yank him back, wrenching him out of the water and throwing him unceremoniously to the ground, just as before. He landed roughly, crying out as he impacted solid stone and was sent rolling, barely able to recover in time before his own momentum sent him tumbling off into another bottomless chasm.
For a moment he stayed there, staring without really seeing at the countless statues of hands reaching up towards him from the unthinkable depths. He tried weakly to push himself up, as violent shivers wracked his body and his lungs burned painfully and he coughed and gasped and heaved, sending water splattering over the cracked stone and dripping over the chasm’s edge. Fear and exhaustion gnawed at every part of him, every fibre of his being screaming at him as his body threatened to collapse out from under him.
That was-
And he-
It wasn’t-
“I don’t believe you,” he snarled with all the aggression he could muster in that moment, sopping wet and vomiting up more water with every word, biting at where he imagined it was, standing over him.
“You will,” came the impassive response, as it slowly crouched down, reaching out to place two fingers under his chin and forcing him to look up at that horribly familiar visage of his own face. “It was a nice dream, to be sure. But it’s time to wake up now.”
Immediately, Rook reached up and harshly slapped its hand away, and forced himself to his feet. He staggered for a moment as his vision blurred, teetering dangerously on the edge of oblivion and struggling to fight past the leaden feeling in his muscles weighing him down. Every step was harder than the last, every breath weightier than the former, every second longer than the one that preceded it.
He didn’t know where he was anymore.
Where was he?
Where was he going?
What was he doing?
All around him, the air grew progressively colder, biting at any and every inch of exposed skin and sending violent shivers up his spine. Rook hugged himself desperately, his teeth audibly chattering as the wind picked up and the water still soaked through his clothes began to freeze.
All around him, the swirling featureless darkness was endless.
“H-hello?” he called out desperately, clutching himself as he frantically scanned the horizon — or what might have passed for one in this hellscape, anyway. “Can anyone hear me?!”
For a moment, he waited, arms wrapped so tightly around himself as his chest heaved, trying to force himself to breathe through the painful rawness in his throat. Each breath a little harder than the last as he turned on the spot, desperately searching for some sign of something, of life, of literally anything that wasn’t him, or something pretending to be him.
“Please…” he whispered, his voice little more than a hoarse whisper as his knees buckled beneath him and he collapsed on the spot. “Please.”
There was no response.
He didn’t know why he expected one. He could feel it, after all, that gaping emptiness that bled through every aspect of this place. All with the inescapable, utterly soul-crushing sense that no one was coming for him. That he was the only one here.
Rook let out a quiet exhale as he keeled over, squeezing his eyes shut tight as he leaned forward, until his forehead gently touched smooth, flat stone. Suddenly, all he could do was simply make himself as small as possible, trying to compress himself into maybe not existing anymore. Not wanting to think about any of it, then thinking about it anyway.
He could feel it, crawling into each and every dark recess of his mind, meticulously going through every bad memory he had, and dredging it all painfully up to the surface. He could feel it snaking around his insides, resisting every attempt he made to banish it. He could feel it eating away at him, pulling at the edges of his being, slowly but surely tearing him apart with every passing second.
He stayed there.
He didn’t know how long for.
Maybe a minute.
Maybe forever.
Time quickly lost all meaning, curled up and alone in that darkness and oppressive silence. Suddenly, Rook wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d been dragged down into this nightmare. Everything else seemed so far away, almost dreamlike, like it had happened to someone else, in a different lifetime.
Maybe he was dead.
Maybe he’d been dead the entire time, trapped in a hell of his own making.
He heard it then. A sound that broke through the crushing silence, slicing right through his thoughts. The faint and distant but ultimately entirely recognisable sound of an infant crying.
Rook bolted upright, his eyes flying open as he got to his feet. He spun wildly around on the spot, trying to make sense of what he was hearing, but receiving no explanation from the endless darkness surrounding him. And all the while the wailing continued, seemingly growing louder with every second he spent listening to it, until it was almost oppressive. Feeling his chest constrict and his breath catch as his heart hammered relentlessly against his ribcage with every passing moment. The blood pulsing through his skull as the noise came from both everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
Where-?
What-?
Then he felt something softly brush past him.
Rook let out a startled yelp and whirled around, just in time to see a hazy figure disappear into the shadows ahead of him, vanishing almost the exact moment he saw it.
Who-?
“H-hey,” he called out, scrambling over himself as he gave chase. “Hey! Wait!”
He took off running, as fast as he was able, even as it pressed in on him, even as it weighed him down, even as every step felt like fighting through molasses. Never taking his eyes off the faint outline of someone, always ahead of him, always on the verge of disappearing completely.
“Who-?” he began to choke out, only to immediately cut off and stop dead in his tracks as he finally saw the person he was chasing.
Meanwhile, the likeness of Charon Mercar stood a little ways from him, staring down at something, confusion and shock plastered all over his frozen expression.
His blood immediately turned to ice in his veins.
Rook fell back half a step as he recognised the whole scene. What it was. The only thing it could possibly be.
He knew what this was.
He didn’t remember it. Not really. But even still.
He’d been far too young at the time to possibly remember a single thing about it. But he knew the story. He could recall every detail, exactly how his father had described it. The high pitched screams of an infant, so loud against the silence. The smoke. The bodies. The blood. The endless questions it brought up.
They never found out how he’d gotten there. Abandoned on purpose, he’d figured. Maybe his parents had been slaves, trying to use the carnage to escape. Maybe they’d died. Maybe he’d been kidnapped. Maybe he’d been born there. Maybe he was an act of the Maker. Maybe he’d been a spirit that had somehow pushed its way through the Veil. He didn’t know. All he could say was that however it happened, he’d been left behind.
He knew he had to make peace with the fact that he probably would never know for sure. And still, it had plagued him all the same. What he was. Who he was. Who he might have been. If that was anything like the person he’d ended up becoming. What would be different. What would be the same. How radically everything about him must have changed, in that moment.
Would he even be able to recognise himself?
“This is what it all comes down to, in the end,” his own voice — his current, real voice — called out as it appeared behind him, this time a perfect mirror of everything he was. “One single moment of hesitation. The choice that preceded all the rest.”
“You could’ve left me alone,” he remembered telling his father through furious tears, not all that long ago. “You could’ve given me to an elven family. You could’ve sold me into slavery, and no one would have cared.”
“All the pain that could’ve been avoided,” it continued softly, so close he could feel its breath caressing his skin, causing the hair on the back of his neck to stand on end. “All the terrible things that didn’t have to happen, if only he’d just walked away.”
“I didn’t want to be the thing that ruined you,” he’d said.
“Dad had to publicly disown you,” Silvia’s voice reminded him.
“I was never really his son,” it added in a somewhat wry tone, though he could hear the barely masked pain hidden beneath. “I was barely even his daughter. Now I’m not either.”
“I didn’t want you to regret me,” he’d admitted, choking the words out past the growing lump in his throat, sinking down into a chair and burying his face in his hands. Unable to look at his father, at the agonised expression he knew had been plastered across his face.
“Do you realise how much that broke him?” Silvia had demanded, the frustration and pain written all over her.
“You could’ve left me alone.”
“He should have left me alone,” it murmured.
Rook’s breath caught in his throat as he watched the scene before him, tears welling up in his eyes and threatening to spill over. His mind reeled as shock held him firmly in place, completely beyond words, actions, or even thoughts, save for one. One single phrase that kept repeating itself in his mind, over and over and over again.
“I wish he’d walked away,” it breathed in his ear.
“I wish he’d walked away,” he echoed, so quietly even he almost didn’t hear it over the sound of his heart hammering in his chest.
It came then.
Rapid breaths that grew all the more shuddering and ragged as something wild and hysterical came over him. He keeled over, hugging himself in a desperate effort to keep himself together. Frantic and breathless and harsh as tears came streaming uncontrollably down his face, all at the realisation that none of it had to happen. That all of it — all the death, all the pain, all the misery — could have been avoided. Trapped in the knowledge that the world very well may have been so much better off if he’d never been in it.
That was the truth of it, wasn’t it? All along.
It wasn’t a new revelation. Just a thought that had plagued him all his life. A feeling of complete and utter self-loathing he’d been too afraid to voice, now staring him directly in the face.
Why?
Why was he here?
After everything he’d done, why was he still here?
An unbearable weight pooled in his chest as it constricted, and his breath caught and hitched in his throat, leaving him to choke as he hacked and coughed and shivered and cried. Shuddering, gasping breaths quickly turned to outright sobbing as he wept, tears streaming uncontrollably down his face. He slowly sagged down to his knees, grabbing up fistfuls of his ruined mantle as he crumpled, trying and failing to hold what little of himself that remained together. Even as part of him questioned why he even bothered. Why he even tried to cling to some sense of anything.
He broke.
He didn’t want to be here anymore.
He didn’t want to have ever been there at all.
And Rook broke.
He stayed there, recoiling in on himself under the weight of it all. Wishing he was dead and wanting nothing more than to compress himself into complete non-existence. He couldn’t say how long for.
Maybe a moment.
Maybe forever.
Maybe a lifetime. Maybe several.
“Hey,” a voice — different from all the others, gentle and reassuring and excruciatingly familiar — began softly, slicing cleanly through the silence. “Hey, kid.”
Immediately, Rook’s eyes snapped open. He could still feel it, that horrible cold gnawing in the back of his mind, the doubt that pooled in his chest and ate away at every part of him. He could feel every part of it as it wound its way through him, icy and sharp and unstoppable. But past it-
There was something else. Something warm and reassuring and familiar.
“…Varric?” he called out the instant he recognised it, only to immediately wince at how clearly the pleading desperation bled through every part of him, and the growing dread clawing at his gut. “Varric, help me!”
There was no response.
Just the sound of his own cries echoing endlessly around him, his own shaking words reverberating in the void, followed by his own panicked breathing.
He looked around wildly for a moment, part of him half-expecting, hoping against hope that he would find something there, a distant figure or a vague silhouette or something. Some indication that he wasn’t completely alone in this hellscape.
He’s not here, he heard it whispering in the back of his mind as he frantically scanned his surroundings. Of course he’s not.
Fistfuls of a ruined, blood-soaked coat in his hands.
He’s gone.
“Come on,” the voice — Varric’s voice — urged him, as some invisible force carefully wrapped around him and pulled him to his feet. “Solas found a way out. Now you need to find yours.”
Rook staggered, whirling around wildly on the spot, desperately trying to find some sense of where any of this was coming from. All around him, the void pressed in, an endless inky blackness in every conceivable direction. Flecks of dust and rock floating aimlessly in the air, before being swallowed by the shadows.
Where-?
“How… how do I get out?” he found himself begging the empty air. “Varric?”
No response.
Just silence.
Rook stopped, jerking his head roughly to one side. Trying to rid himself of all of it through sheer force, as if that was even possible. As if that would somehow magically prevent him from completely losing his mind. As if his crumbling sanity wasn’t already causing him to lose all sense of reality.
How… how long had he been here? Suddenly, he couldn’t tell anymore. Nothing about it felt real.
“What do I do?” he asked no one in particular, hating himself as his voice cracked.
Nothing, it told him. There is nothing left. Nothing to go back to.
“What do I do?” he gasped out, hugging himself tightly as he keeled over. “Solas said this prison was built to hold gods.”
“‘Built to hold gods’.”
Every muscle in his body immediately seized. Fear flooded through him at the sound of her voice, of Bellara’s voice, as it came floating through the aether.
A relieved smile.
It’s not her.
A scream of terror.
That’s not her.
Her fingers slipping from his grasp.
She’s gone.
Shattered glass exploding out, barely inches from slicing his face open.
“And locked with regret,” her voice continued quietly. “He said that, too.”
Was it her?
It wasn’t like how it was before, sharp and mocking and trying to dig into all his insecurities. There was something else in it now. Something beyond a demon — a demon he couldn’t feel, but what else could it have been — using her voice against him. There was something else. Something that felt just that little bit more real.
“…Bellara?”
It was all he could manage. Just her name, barely choked out. Desperately wanting to believe it and terrified of letting himself believe it at the same time. Caught between needing it to be real and the crushing fear of what it would mean if it was real.
And then;
“Rook,” came the response.
“Bellara!” he screamed her name, already running at full pelt, already tearing off in what was his best guess at the direction her voice was coming from.
All around him, the landscape twisted and shifted, warping with each and every step into something that kept striking the same oddly familiar cord in his memory. Suddenly, he was leaping over pale reflections of collapsed walls, fighting his way through memories of grass and bushes and trees, clambering up and over echoes of ancient staircases. A faint recollection of magic buzzing in the air, surging under his skin in the way it always did when the Veil was thin.
He’d been here before.
For a moment, he thought he could almost see her, bursting over the hill with her arm outstretched, forcibly recalling a spirit from the armour it was possessing, magic flaring out from her gauntlet. For a brief second, he thought he could see her running ahead, deeper into the ruins. For one fleeting, brilliant moment, he thought he could hear her voice, gushing excitedly about something he even now barely understood.
“I wanted the elves to have a future that was all their own,” her voice cut in, shaking and broken and somehow so loud against everything else as he fought his way forward. “I’ll never see that now.”
His words.
After all, hadn’t he been the one to tell her that? Hadn’t he been the one who’d looked her in the eye and told her to stop chasing the past? Hadn’t it been him that insisted she let the archive spirit go? That after everything the Evanuris had done, and everything they were still doing, Elvhenan wasn’t worth bringing back?
She might’ve learned something. She could’ve figured it out, if she’d had access to that information. Maybe she would’ve understood the wards better, been able to take out the enchantment faster, been able to sense the thing waiting for her, been able to disable the eluvian before it could strike-
If he hadn’t-
She could’ve-
“I’m sorry to make you sad, but I told you the enchantments were dangerous. You chose me anyway.”
She had. And he did. It had seemed more like her wheelhouse. Maybe he could’ve tried to disable them himself, or let Neve do it, but… he remembered doubling over from the pain, barely able to get more than a few words out as the Veil was ripping apart around him. He remembered the icy cold fear and dread flooding through him the second Neve had offered to cut the wards off at the source and let them burn themselves out instead. Dangerous, yes, but Bellara’s method hadn’t been any safer.
Neve could’ve done it.
He could’ve done it himself.
Had he asked Bellara to do it because she was most suited, or had he just been too scared of losing himself? Of losing Neve? Had some part of him known what was going to happen? Had he just chosen who he was more prepared to sacrifice?
Maybe he had.
And now-
“You picked me to die.”
He burst through the doors, emerging into a tall, grand chamber awash with sickly green light as the wards still burned brightly. And there Bellara stood, her back to him, gauntlet raised, sparks of magical energy surrounding her.
“Bel-!” he screamed, frantically reaching out.
At the call of her name, Bellara turned on her heels, a bright smile on her face the instant she saw him there, and reached back. For one brief, fleeting, brilliant moment, he felt her hand reach for his, felt her fingers brush against his palm, and then-
There was a startled scream.
And Bellara slipped from his grasp, dragged back and disappearing into the waiting eluvian.
Rook slammed into it with more force than was good for him, sending jarring pain spiking throughout his body as he roughly collided with solid, unyielding glass. He let out a harsh scream as he beat his fists against it, uncaring when there was a sharp crack as it broke under the weight of the blow. Not even bothering to react as shards of glass fell away with each impact and cut harshly into his armour and skin.
“No- no!” he screamed as he repeatedly threw himself against the mirror, so loud he thought his throat might tear. “Bellara!”
There was no answer.
There was never any answer.
She’s not here, it reminded him. She’s gone.
Finally, he stepped back, his chest heaving as he stared at the broken glass, and the flecks of blood smeared across it. The sharp, stinging pain in his hands suddenly came to the forefront as he looked down, just in time to see the thousands of tiny cuts strewn over his fingers, the blood slowly but surely seeping through his shredded leather gauntlets.
She was gone.
Just like that.
Like she’d never even been there in the first place.
He closed his eyes and let himself fall forward, one hand pressed flat against what remained of the glass as he leaned in, until his forehead pressed against it with a soft thud. Until his knees buckled beneath him and he found himself sliding down, crumpling to the floor as the sheer weight of it all came crashing down.
“…you’re right,” he murmured, entirely to himself as he twisted himself around, leaning his back against the eluvian and pulling his knees to his chest, trying to make himself as small as possible. “You’re my friend, Bellara. You helped me more than I think you ever knew. And you deserved better than that.”
Except, it wasn’t her.
It couldn’t be her.
He knew it. Because she never would’ve said that to him, either. Bellara had never been the person to blame anyone for anything. She’d have placed the guilt upon herself long before ever considering someone else to be at fault, even when it didn’t make sense. Maybe especially when it didn’t make sense. She’d done it with the Veil Jumpers. She’d done it with Cyrian. She’d done it with the Evanuris. And part of him knew she would’ve done it with him, too.
Slowly, he pushed himself up, forcing himself to stand, never taking his eyes off the open doorway before him, and the impenetrable inky blackness that lay just beyond.
“But those wards had to come down,” he continued as he pushed his way forward, despite knowing he was speaking to a memory of an empty room. “Someone had to do it. We all knew that. I knew that. You knew that. That’s why you volunteered.”
Because she had, hadn’t she?
It all felt so obvious now. Part of him wanted to kick himself for not seeing it before. For letting himself get so caught up in it all that he didn’t see the truth. For being so stubbornly fixated on his own self-loathing that he refused to see what was right in front of him all along.
She wasn’t there. Not her. Not really.
He paused as he reached the doorway, stopping just short of that impossible black void, his hand pressed against the wall and lingering there as he twisted around. Just enough to glance back. Just for a moment.
“If you’re still out there… I’ll find you,” he insisted, entirely to himself, his voice barely more than a murmur. “I promise you that, Bel. I will find you.”
Already, the doubts were plaguing him. Eating away at the edges of his mind the second he even got the words out. Part of him — most of him, really — convinced that it was pointless. Asking all the questions he didn’t want to face.
And if you can’t? it asked him. If your friend is dead?
He closed his eyes, inhaling sharply as he tried to push the thought as far from his mind as it would allow, despite knowing he was never going to escape it.
What if she’s already gone?
Did it even matter now? Would laying down and dying here make any of it matter? Would it change anything? Fix anything?
He couldn’t keep doing this.
“And if you’re not…” he began slowly, as he opened his eyes once more, just enough to cast his gaze back at the shattered mirror behind him, “then I’ll make it worth something.”
It had to be worth something.
They’d known what they were getting into, before they left. Rook remembered it well — the unbearable tension that had descended upon the Lighthouse in those last few precious hours. They’d known. They’d all known, right then and there, that some of them might not come back. Then they’d left anyway. There hadn’t been anything else for it. No other choice to make. They had to try.
It had to be worth something.
“We all believed in what we were fighting for,” he continued softly, eyes still lingering on the eluvian. “What we’re still fighting for. And you… you knew what it might cost.”
And he stepped through the door, into the waiting void.
“She did, kid,” he heard Varric’s voice whisper, from somewhere in the back of his mind. “We all did. Because you always chose the hard truth over the easy lie.”
Had he?
Some part of him wasn’t entirely sure that was true. There was still something — a horrible crawling sense of something that gnawed at the deeper recesses of his mind. He could feel it in the air around him, slithering in the background, just beyond his reach, leaving him fumbling blindly through the dark. The horrible anticipation that something was going to jump out at him growing with every passing moment.
“Solas, on the other hand…”
There was a soft but thoroughly uncomfortable squelching sound — and the ground became suddenly warm and wet.
Rook stopped.
He didn’t move.
He didn’t even dare breathe.
For what seemed like an eternity, he remained there, rooted stubbornly to the spot, as a horrible stench of blight and rotting flesh filled the air. His heart immediately leapt into his throat as he turned, catching only the briefest glances of light shining off a slick, fleshy surface writhing around in the darkness. Barely able to keep his balance as something warm and moist slid along the suddenly unbearably fleshy ground, sending shivers up his spine as it brushed past his feet.
There was a pause.
There was a long, utterly excruciating pause as Rook stayed there, rooted completely to the spot, unable — or maybe refusing — to move a muscle. Fear locked him in place as the ground shifted and writhed beneath him, wrapping around his ankles and holding him in place as it twisted and wound its way up his body.
And then;
“Everyone’s a pawn,” Harding’s cold, echoing voice called out through the silence.
Rook blinked.
“Lace-”
He cut off as a sudden, sharp shock of blinding pain erupted from his back, throwing him off his feet with the sheer force of it. He staggered, keeling over and hugging himself tightly as something punched unceremoniously through him, all of the air leaving him in an instant. Tears sprang into his eyes as he felt his skin rip open, as he felt something horrible push through and squirm its way inside him, twisting around and through his ribs, wrapping around his lungs and squeezing all life from him.
“Allies,” her voice called, from across what sounded like an endless distance. “Even friends.”
He gasped and coughed, feeling the blood as it welled up in his throat, spilling over his lips. Every muscle in his body began to spasm as the pain grew all the more excruciating and intense, his hands uselessly reaching up to his chest as if he thought he could somehow physically claw out whatever it was worming around inside him.
He might’ve screamed then, if he’d been able.
“He’ll sacrifice them without a thought.”
Rook’s knees buckled beneath him and he sagged, falling forwards as he felt it finally withdraw, uncoiling around his organs and slipping away. The ground seemed to dissolve into nothingness as he lurched, tumbling forward with nothing to save him into the yawning chasm that opened up below.
For a moment, all awareness seemed to leave him, and he fell down into the abyss.
But then there was something, a faint shape beneath him, barely visible against the crushing and eternal blackness.
A warm smile.
A soft laugh.
Bright eyes flying wide with shock.
“After all, isn’t that what pawns are for?”
“Harding!” he screamed, frantically reaching out for her, so far below him.
There was no response. Just silence as he fell, desperately reaching out for her, even as she disappeared from view completely, vanishing into the waiting water.
Rook let out a harsh scream as he saw what was waiting for him, helplessly fighting against gravity as it pulled him down, plunging him into the depths. Icy cold enveloped him once again, bubbles and spray erupting around him as he sank deeper, the numbness and exhaustion eating away at every part of him.
For the first time, he didn’t fight. He didn’t even bother.
He slacked, surrendering himself to the weight of it all, his head rolling back and slowly closing his eyes as he let himself sink, too tired to do anything else. Too completely beyond exhaustion to try. His lungs began to burn as pain crawled through every part of him, and all he could do in response was just let himself drift and wait for the end to inevitably come. He had no strength left to fight, so he closed his eyes and let himself hang there, completely motionless in the water. Waiting for the end to come.
For a moment — just one precious moment — it almost seemed peaceful.
Then he felt something grab at him, felt fingers wrap tightly around his wrist and pull, wrenching him painfully upwards with an iron grip.
Suddenly, he was coughing and spluttering as his head broke the surface, pulled up and out of the water by his wrist. Water poured from his lips as he hacked, dragged over the ground by that same unseen force, until he finally managed to glance up.
And for one wild, brilliant, fleeting moment, he could see her. Kneeling in front of him, a warm smile on her lips as her hand lingered reassuringly on his shoulder. For just a second, she beamed down at him, silhouetted against the light of the sun, so close and so real that he could almost see the flowers of the Lighthouse conservatory blooming around her. For one perfect moment, he thought he could smell jasmine.
“Lace…” he called her name, hoarse and rasping and shaking as his voice broke.
Then she was gone.
Just as quickly as she’d appeared, she was gone, and he was left shuddering and coughing and gasping and clutching himself in lonely darkness once again.
Like she’d never been there at all.
How could she just be gone?
“‘Whatever it takes’,” he heard her say, her voice so soft and gentle, calling from across what felt like an endless distance. “Your words, weren’t they?”
His words.
Her words.
The last thing she’d ever said, before falling back into that abyss. He’d been there, close enough to hear her, held dangling helplessly upside down as she’d taken matters into her own hands. He remembered feeling the crushing pressure around his leg suddenly loosen. Then he remembered screaming her name as he fell, so loud he’d thought his throat might tear. And then he’d hit the ground, bracing himself as best he could as he’d frantically glanced up, just in time to see her fall.
Just in time to never see her again.
Whatever it takes, he’d told them, silently steeling himself as he stood before them in the library, even as the dread had gnawed endlessly away at him.
Whatever it takes, she’d repeated softly to herself, gathering what remained of her courage as she’d brought up her bow.
How could she just be gone?
“And you were right,” her voice murmured, crawling into the back of his mind and echoing eerily around his skull, each refrain somehow feeling weightier than the last. “You gave so much, to all of us.”
He could see it, playing out in his mind’s eye, over and over and over again. Just like Bellara. Just like before. Always the same. Never changing.
Crying out.
Eyes rolling back.
Falling.
Whatever it takes.
“I got you killed,” he barely managed to choke out, his voice shattering and breaking and a horrible weight pooling in his chest as the inescapable reality of it all set back in. “Lace, you’re dead because of me.”
Blood on your hands, he felt it whisper in the back of his mind, its icy cold fingers worming their way through him and closing around him with every passing second.
How many?
How many had died? How many lives had been cut short because of him? How many friends had been killed for his recklessness? How much more innocent blood would be spilled? How many more corpses would be added to the pile by the time this was over?
The thought had haunted him before. It had plagued his mind for longer than he cared to admit. It had never stopped haunting him, since well before any of this even began. None of it was new. But he’d always just… kept going anyway. Because he had to. Because the only other choice would have been to lay down and die. And if he did that, then all of it — all of his idiotic recklessness, all of his stupidly impulsive decisions, all his stubborn bullheadedness — was for nothing. Giving up hadn’t been an option. It had never been an option. They’d come too damn far.
“You reminded me that what I feel isn’t who I am,” Harding’s voice continued softly. “That I know the world is good, and I love the people in it.”
Fighting through swirling wind and pulsing energy.
Desperately reaching out to her, to his friend, to his best friend, fear and panic rising up in him as he screamed at her to stop, to not let it overtake her, to remember who she is.
Clinging to her as they slowly sank to the ground, locked in a tight embrace. Pushing through all the exhaustion and fear and pain as he clutched her, just to be there with her, just so she knew she wasn’t alone.
“You did everything for the team. Brought us together. Held us together when no one else could.”
Fear and anxiety in her expression, so quickly turning to relief.
A cheeky grin as a small potted plant was forced into his hands.
“And you never wavered, not once.”
It had to be worth something.
“So how could I?”
It had to be worth something.
Slowly, he forced himself up, pushing himself weakly to his feet. All around him, the same dark void pressed in, the crushing weight of it coming from every direction, but he found himself holding firm. His heart was pounding relentlessly in his chest and he could feel the tears welling up in his eyes once more, but he remained steady.
“‘Take care of the team for me’,” he quoted softly, to no one in particular. “That’s what Varric told me. But we were more than just a team. We were friends, and I… I lost Bellara. I lost you.”
Rook closed his eyes for a moment, inhaling sharply and trying to ignore the stabbing pains in his chest that resulted. Then his eyes flicked open and he straightened, staring directly into the emptiness ahead of him, unwavering.
“But… I’m not really talking to you, am I?” he asked the empty air, knowing he was never going to get an answer. “Just like I wasn’t really talking to Bellara. Or a demon.”
This place, it felt empty.
And for the first time, Rook found himself realising why.
He’d never been good at this. He’d never really been able to reliably force the Fade into any particular shape — not purposely, anyway. That ability frightened him. The people who had it were powerful and uncontrollable and completely overwhelming, the stuff of legends and nightmares and tales to scare children as they were tucked in at night. He hadn’t wanted to acknowledge any of it as part of him. He never had. He’d been running from it for so long that he hadn’t been able to recognise it. He’d been so torn up over everything that he hadn’t stopped to see the obvious, even when it was staring him directly in the face.
There was no demon taunting him. No echoes of lost friends haunting him. There never had been.
This was an empty room.
“You’re gone,” he said as the truth of it all finally dawned on him. “And I’m the only one here.”
It was almost like something shifted in that moment, some great invisible weight suddenly lifted from his shoulders. Rook felt himself straighten, felt his strength begin to return with every step he made, as the darkness finally began to lift. Soft light slowly began to creep in, casting long shadows across the broken, cracked stone floor as he moved. And ahead of him, faint and almost impossibly far away, he could almost make out its source.
Something in him swelled and lifted as he saw it, his tentative steps quickly turning into a sprint. Hoping against hope that it was what he thought it was. His feet beating against the stone as he ran, paying no mind to the slowly emerging landscape reforming around him.
And then;
“Great job, kid,” Varric’s voice drifted in, from what felt like a thousand miles away. “Now… what about me?”
Rook stopped.
He immediately came to a sharp, almost painful halt, freezing dead in his tracks at the sound of it, cold dread running up his spine.
One more thing.
One last thing.
Something he knew he had to face, prickling in the back of his mind, even as every conscious part of him baulked.
“Varric?” he called out as he spun on the spot, the uncertainty and fear all too evident in his tone. “Where-?”
A sudden, violent pain spiked through his skull, with such force he staggered and doubled over, clutching his head and gritting his teeth in pain as his voice immediately died in his throat. Suddenly, there were flashes — a thousand images and feelings as cracked, distorted memories came trickling back through to the forefront of his mind.
The sound of an argument and energy swirling around him and wood splintering and a thunderous crash and the sound of someone crying out behind him as he ran.
Fistfuls of a ruined, blood-soaked coat in his hands.
“…where are you?”
He sounded so small as he spoke, so quiet and terrified and young, as the landscape slowly pulled itself together around him. Fallen debris slowly made its way back up, falling in reverse as stone pillars and giant statues reformed, cracks fading from view, recreating a perfect echo that he immediately recognised.
Rook’s gut twisted at the sight of it.
“That’s…” he began, only to immediately trail off as the words became stuck in his throat. “This is-”
“Where it all began.”
He didn’t move. He couldn’t bring himself to. He didn’t dare take another step, unable to rid himself of the feeling of something crawling around in the back of his mind. Part of him knowing exactly what it was, and refusing to acknowledge the fact that it had always been there.
“What is this?” he asked, hating himself as his voice shook. “Varric?”
“I think you already know.”
He could see it.
For the first time since it happened, he could finally see it. And the moment he did, every part of him recoiled, shrinking away from it, wanting nothing more than to keep clinging to the ignorance that had been his only source of comfort.
“We’ve got your back,” he remembered saying, pressed against one half of a broken archway as he’d glanced down at Varric, staff at the ready, as unimaginable pain had pierced mercilessly through his skull, electricity pulsing violently just beneath his skin. “If anyone can get through to him, you can.”
Had he really believed that, when he said it? Or had he been so unfocused from the pain of the Veil tearing apart around him that he was just trying to humour his friend? Had he simply been hoping against hope that maybe it would all turn out okay?
Varric had smiled crookedly at him, eyebrows raised in slight surprise. He hadn’t expected the support.
Rook remembered that. That look. How Varric had glanced over him for a moment, remembering the snarling, foul-tempered young woman Rook had been when they first met. He remembered the way Varric’s eyebrows rose and the way the corners of his lips twitched with the beginnings of a smile that said, very plainly, you’ve changed, kid.
“Thanks, Rook,” he’d said instead, rather than actually comment on any of it. “Whatever else he is, he’s my friend. And if he won’t listen to me… then he’ll hear from Bianca.”
Then he’d walked away.
And Rook had let him go.
It was largely a blur after that. The screeching of demons as magical energy unlike anything he’d felt before swirled around him, lightning crackling in the air and a blast of frost as Neve fought beside him, arrows whizzing past barely inches from his face as Harding had backed herself against the wall. Chaos and pain as they’d fought, him barely able to keep himself together. The pain had been so intense that he’d sagged, falling back and stabbing his staff into the ground in a desperate bid to keep himself upright.
He remembered hearing the distant sound of Varric’s crossbow arming, and a furious shout.
“You need to listen!”
He didn’t want to face it.
For so long, he hadn’t needed to.
Wood splintering as an angry bolt of lightning punched through it.
Pushing Harding out of the way as the statue came toppling down, screaming at her to run.
A powerful blast of light and magic that threw him off his feet, barely able to brace himself in time as a sharp ringing sounded out in his ears.
Not this.
Not now.
A quiet gasp.
Varric had stepped back, his foot slipping on the stairs as he tumbled back, one hand weakly grasping at the dagger lodged in his chest.
No.
No.
This wasn’t-
He couldn’t-
His own voice, screaming.
“Varric? Varric?!”
A pained grunt and the sound of a blade clattering against the ground as it was tossed carelessly aside.
Fistfuls of a torn, ruined, bloodied coat in his hands as he knelt over Varric’s body, clutching at his lapel and begging all the gods he knew of for things to be different. To not let things end this way.
“Rook…”
Then there had been light and a pulse and a sharp, blinding pain as he was thrown roughly back, slamming into a solid stone wall with too much force. The world had briefly flashed white as his head had cracked against it, and everything else had been a haze, stained a deep red as blood had poured down his face and into his eyes. Clouding his vision. Clouding his mind.
Rook slowly opened his eyes, his expression vacant and distant as he stared aimlessly at the ground immediately before him, the echoes of his own memory still reflected back at him from every direction. So completely lost in that moment that he didn’t acknowledge or even feel the tears sliding silently down his cheeks. Barely aware of where he was. Or what he was doing.
Because this was an empty room.
Because the only person standing here was him.
He’s not here, his own mind had been telling him, all this time. He never was.
That nagging thought had plagued him since it happened. He’d known something was wrong with him. He’d realised something was off, even if only subconsciously. He’d been trying to make himself remember. Trying to force himself to understand, all this time. He’d been trying to fight the thing keeping him from seeing it. He’d been helplessly screaming at himself, all this time. But ignorance had been so much easier.
He’s gone.
It felt like a punch to the gut.
“You died, back at the ritual site,” he murmured, talking before he even registered that he was saying anything at all. “You’ve been dead all along.”
The words were quiet, distant. Like he still couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it. Even saying them, it didn’t feel real. Nothing about it felt real. Like it was all some horrible nightmare he desperately hoped to wake up from.
But he wouldn’t.
Because this, this was real.
“Whenever I’ve been talking to you, asking for advice… I’ve been talking to myself, haven’t I?” he continued, his voice so quiet and so broken in that moment, as he closed his eyes and tried to remember how to breathe. “Because you’re dead.”
That was it. The name of the weight he hadn’t known he was carrying around. That was why nothing had felt right. Why he’d find himself locking himself in his room, why he’d been pulling away from the others, why he’d been acting so erratic and volatile without really knowing why. Why the others had all been giving him those odd, long, forlorn glances every time he’d emerged from the infirmary. Why there had been that strange tension filling the Lighthouse after they’d escaped from the ritual. Why Harding hadn’t been able to talk to him for days on end. Why Taash had bitten back at him about how he acted like he’d never lost anyone.
It all suddenly made a terrifying amount of sense.
Because he’d encouraged Varric to talk, and it had gotten him killed. He’d tried to be different, to prove that he could leave the anger behind, to turn over a new leaf, to be that kind, merciful, compassionate person Varric had seen in him, the person Varric knew he could be, the person he’d once been as a child and Varric believed he could find in himself again. He’d tried, tried to trust and love and forgive, and Varric had died for it.
He was dead.
All this time.
“Yeah,” Varric’s voice acknowledged, his tone tinged with dry melancholy. “Sorry about that, kid.”
He didn’t respond. Not at first. For the longest time, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to. Words seemed to fail him every time he tried.
He didn’t know what he was doing anymore.
Why hadn’t he seen it?
Why hadn’t he known?
Shouldn’t he have known?
How could he have let himself fall for it? How could he let himself become a prisoner in his own mind, trapped in his own delusional ignorance? Looking back, it was obvious. Almost painfully so.
Abrupt pain sliced through his head and he reeled back, gritting his teeth and clutching his forehead as he keeled over, all air leaving his lungs in an instant as he forgot how to breathe. He squeezed his eyes shut tight and recoiled, eyes darting frantically back and forth as his memories seemed to fragment and split — all the memories of Varric being there and now, very suddenly, not being there at all. Versions of events where he’d been talking to him, playing cards with him, having him be there in their little group meetings in the library. Then versions where he’d been standing motionless and alone, of sitting on his lounge in silence as he gingerly turned the lyrium dagger over and over again in his hands, of playing cards against himself, of long awkward pauses and gaps in conversation where he was distracted and disorientated and no one seemed to know what to say.
Both seemed just as real, flickering and bleeding into each other as he struggled to sort fact from fiction.
Rook staggered from the sheer force of it, clutching his head and letting out a quiet, pained groan as his chest constricted and his breaths became shuddering, desperate gasps as he fought for air. Everything seemed to spin sickeningly around him as his head grew light and his knees buckled and he fell against the wall, slowly crumpling to the ground.
He hadn’t-
He should’ve-
Why hadn’t they-?
How long had he been like this? How long had he trapped himself in denial? How long had he been running from it? How long had he been fighting against his own mind, every time he tried to force himself to remember?
Why couldn’t he face it?
He felt a hand come to rest on his knee, then.
“Kid,” he heard Varric call, so soft and gentle and reassuring. “It’s okay.”
No, it wasn’t.
Okay was about the absolute last thing any of this was.
“I knew,” he managed to rasp out after far too long. “I knew, but I couldn’t- …I can’t-”
“You can.”
“No,” he argued, terrified and breathless and completely hysterical. “No, no, no. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it- …my fault,” he whispered, in between frantic gasps for air. “It was my fault.”
His fault.
All of it.
He should’ve known better, he did know better, he knew exactly who and what Solas was, he should’ve seen it, should’ve listened when they told him what he was capable of. He’d tried to be better, tried to be the person they saw in him, tried to get some of himself back, tried to push past all the pain and anger and fucking regret that had dictated his life for so long. He’d trusted Solas, trusted his friends, trusted Varric and now they were dead, they were all dead and he was stuck here, trapped in this hell of his own making and the world was ending and he didn’t have fucking time-
There was a faint, disbelieving chuckle.
“Shit, kid,” Varric sighed, halfway between amusement and exasperation. “Didn’t you learn anything from this place?”
Rook’s eyes snapped open at that.
For a moment, he half-expected to be greeted with the same old darkness and endless void as before. Instead, he found himself still where he was, curled up against an ancient and crumbling stone wall, surrounded by echoes of the ritual site. And there Varric was, standing immediately before him, staring directly at him, one hand planted firmly on his knee. So real he might have actually been there.
He’s not there, he reinforced to himself. Of course he’s not.
This was an empty room.
He’s gone.
“I made the choice,” Varric insisted, his tone forceful but not unkind. “To talk to him. To try to reach him, even knowing the risks. Because he was my friend.”
Quickly, Rook turned his head away, unable to stand to look Varric in the eye anymore. Not now, not with what he knew, not with the weight of guilt twisting him up inside.
“Rook,” he called out gently. “Look at me.”
Slowly, and a little unwillingly, Rook forced himself to glance back, just enough to spy Varric still there, in his peripheral. Still there, still watching him carefully. There and not there and real and not real. Every part of him, every aspect of it, sent spikes of pain radiating through his body as he struggled to keep himself together.
“It was my decision,” Varric reinforced quietly, never once breaking eye contact or looking away. “My sacrifice. And you don’t get to take that from me.”
“But-”
“Every story’s got an ending,” came the gentle reminder. “This one… just came a little earlier than I’d planned.”
For so long, Rook didn’t respond. He just stayed there, staring absently into space as his surroundings grew hazy, drifting in and out of focus as he both tried desperately to remember and fought to forget. What happened. What didn’t happen. Barely able to think past the pulsing of blood in his head as electricity ran underneath his skin.
How much of it was real? What had any of it been? An illusion? A ghost? A memory? His own thoughts, given form? How much of it had been Varric? How much of it had been something — some one — else? How much of it had been him? Where did the delusions end? Where did he begin?
He wasn’t sure he could tell the difference anymore.
None of it made sense.
Why hadn’t he-?
And the others, they’d just-
“The others…” he began, his voice shaking and almost dying as he forced the words out, “they knew. Harding, Neve, they- …they were there, when it happened. Why didn’t they tell me?”
“They thought you knew,” Varric gently pointed out. “You were there. It happened right in front of you. You’re the only one that wasn’t in on it.”
“But they talked to you. I remember.”
Did he?
He’d thought he did. Now he wasn’t sure. Every time he strained his mind back, the memory would break and flicker between Varric being there with him, and the painful void of his never being there at all. There was a version where they’d laughed and joked together, where Harding and Varric had bantered. And then there was another version where she’d been standing there, right in front of him, looking confused and worried and a little scared as she’d called his name and he’d just stood there, silent and vacant and distant.
Both felt real.
“Nah,” Varric told him, cutting straight through his train of thought. “They talked to you. Or to themselves. You just filled in the blanks.”
That-
That made no sense.
Or did it?
Hadn’t he overheard them talking about it once or twice? About his episodes? About how he wasn’t coping? About how scared they all were for him? Hadn’t he walked in when the others had been gathered together, talking about something with grave expressions, hushed whispers that immediately faded to silence the instant they noticed him there?
Hadn’t that happened?
Wasn’t that why Harding gave him that jasmine plant? Why Neve pulled him into helping her look through the notes of every case she was working on? Why Bellara was constantly dragging him to the workshop to go over her latest project? Why Lucanis was always asking for his opinion on food? Why Davrin kept dragging him out for walks with Assan? Why Taash pushed them into drinking at the Hilt with the Lords? Why Emmrich was always giving him all those books on magical theory to read?
Hadn’t they all seen how he wasn’t coping, how he was constantly slipping into an almost catatonic state, how he was ignoring everything and pushing his way through with sheer brute force like nothing ever happened? Hadn’t they all watched him crash and burn and done everything they could to pull him back from the abyss he seemed determined to hurl himself into?
“Time to finish this story. Your story,” Varric said, reaching out and gripping Rook’s wrist for a moment. “I just know the ending’s going to be killer.”
And with that, Rook found himself wrenched up and away from the wall, somewhat clumsily coming back to his feet. He blinked several times as he took it all in — the vague outline of the ritual site around him, almost completely vanished from the soft white light that now filled the entire space. Anxiously he glanced down at Varric, who was still standing there, firmly grasping his wrist, smiling warmly up at him.
“What happens now?” he asked. “To you?”
“To me? Nothing, kid. I was never here in the first place,” Varric answered softly. “But you’ll go on, and I’ll go back to being a memory. Hopefully one that doesn’t haunt you anymore.”
The corners of Rook’s lips twitched. “That sounds like something I’d say.”
“Then it makes sense, doesn’t it?” Varric responded. “You’re the only one here.”
And there it was.
The simple, inescapable truth of it.
“He’s like you, you know. Solas.”
Rook closed his eyes as he heard it, trying to focus on breathing and keeping himself calm. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard that accusation, since being here. Here, in this empty room, this place that reflected him and was him and threw his own mind and self-perceptions back in his face.
He didn’t want to think about what that meant. For his own peace of mind, he couldn’t.
“He wants to be a hero,” Varric pressed. “That’s who he is, deep down. But it’s easier for him to play the villain. Because that means he didn’t fail. All the damage he’s done, the people he’s hurt — it becomes a choice.”
Varric then let out a faint chuckle and glanced away, turning his head toward the light that was now almost oppressive, filling every available space and banishing every trace of shadow.
“Sounds a bit like someone else I know,” he said with a sigh, before turning back to look pointedly at Rook, one eyebrow raised as a crooked smile danced upon his lips. “Maybe try to remind him who he really is. Who you both are. He might just listen.”
Would he?
Somehow, Rook doubted it. Solas hadn’t listened to his friends. He hadn’t listened to the woman he supposedly loved. He hadn’t even listened to Mythal, in the end. Why would this be any different? They’d both spent far too much time trapped in each other’s minds, sure, but Rook doubted that gave him any real advantage.
He couldn’t think about it. Not right now. He had a thousand other problems to deal with first.
“So how do I get out of here?” he asked, turning back to Varric.
Varric simply smiled in response, and made a vague gesture at the light slowly but surely enveloping everything around them.
“Listen to your team,” he advised. “Like you always do.”
Rook opened his mouth to argue, but as soon as he did, he found that he could hear them. As if on cue, he heard distant voices calling out, yelling muffled words he couldn’t quite make out. If he listened closely, he thought he could almost decipher a stiff, posh, highly educated accent that could only be Emmrich’s, followed by a lower, harsher voice he couldn’t quite place. Taash, maybe?
And-
Maybe more?
Immediately, Rook whirled around on the spot, one hand reaching up to shield his eyes from the light that had grown painfully bright. He squinted and blinked, trying to make out rough shapes, or silhouettes, or anything. Some sign of them, that they really were there.
A gentle hand was placed against his back, and gave him a small, encouraging push.
“They’re waiting for you,” Varric told him. “Just take it one step at a time.”
“Varric, I-”
“Rook!”
His head snapped up.
That was Lucanis. That was unmistakably Lucanis.
Lucanis was alive?
He immediately turned, whirling around the spot as he reached out, only for his hand to sail through empty air.
“Varric-!”
“I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out,” his voice called out from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. “I’d say good luck, but… you don’t need it. You already have everything you need.”
More voices.
Then there was a feeling, hands grabbing at him, thin fingers wrapping around his wrist. Then there were more, large and calloused, closing around his upper arm and wrenching him roughly back, steadily pulling him into the light. More and more hands gripped him, grabbing up fistful of his clothes, tugging and heaving and pulling him back, dragging him further and further into the light as it encompassed everything.
There was light.
There was the sound of the others and-
There was the feeling of hands frantically reaching out and grabbing at him and-
There was noise and screaming and light and heat burning against his skin and chaos and then-
He staggered.
Suddenly there was solid rock beneath his feet and he staggered, tripping over the roughly hewn, uneven ground. He fell just for a moment, before hands, arms, caught and steadied him. Carefully holding him in place like he was threatening to topple over at any second.
Maybe he was.
Rook stayed there, motionless for a second, staring absently into space as voices erupted all around him. He didn’t move at all, not even registering where he was, or anything around him.
“…Rook?” a voice called, quiet and uncertain.
Rook blinked.
He glanced up without really seeing, barely able to take in Neve’s panicked, tear-streaked face.
“He’s dead,” he mumbled, breathless and delirious and hysterical, barely choking out the words as his mind reeled. “He… he’s dead. Varric’s dead. He’s…”
He trailed off.
There was nothing more he could say.
He felt lightheaded, barely coherent as the world spun sickeningly around him, and acid bubbled up his throat before he could do anything to stop it. Then, finally, darkness came creeping in. His eyes rolled into the back of his skull and he pitched forward, unconscious before he hit the ground.
“Rook-!”