Chapter Text
The Fade was timeless.
Having lived in the Lighthouse, where reality warped slowly according to their needs, buildings spinning on their own axis and colours dancing in the air like they themselves were wisps, Rook had grown used to resting freely. No dreams interrupted her sleep—except the ones she was dragged into by her enemies—and her mage companions slowly began to gain colour in their cheeks, sleeping through the night after lifetimes of being wary to close their eyes. It was bizarre to know you could sleep in the Fade—wasn't that what the Fade was for? Rook was sure she had a better grasp on the Fade and the Veil's true nature than most people in Thedas since interrupting Solas’ ritual, but generally, that so-called “truth” sat uneasily in her chest. It was a perpetual itch, bothering her Thedosian sensibilities in all the wrong places.
Being trapped in the Prison of Regrets didn’t bring her the solace of sleep, unfortunately, not like the Lighthouse or the Crossroads. Her regret kept her awake, stone statues haunting her every step—and if it wasn't Bellara’s kidnapping, then it was Harding's death. Some regrets were easy to rationalise, their remnants, much like the Dread Wolf’s, littering her prison, taking the form of dark feathers from her Crow mask, tucked into the cracks and near-forgotten in the face of calamity.
She found Viago’s lost trust when she attacked the Antaam, accepted easily when she remembered his relieved eyes on her when she returned. She found Neve’s betrayal, dismissed with a hidden curl of her lip when imagining Treviso in place of Minrathous. She even found Emmrich’s dream of lichdom, carrying the feather with her until she saw a grinning Manfred in her mind's eye, and realised the spirit of curiosity she knew would be gone forever without her intervention.
There was a regret for Bellara sharing the Nadas Dirthalen with her people at Rook's direction; there was Lucanis fending off Spite by cooking them breakfast in the mornings, all while she stood by and did nothing. Harding’s choice to master the Titan’s anger being her own let that regret crumble away easily, but Rook’s blame over her death instead towered over her at any given opportunity. Bellara's kidnap only just matched it. And then there were the twin regrets of encouraging Davrin and Taash to explore the cultures they chose, unknowing of the devastation they would come to witness. Over and over, older and older. Each regret was small, in comparison to her latest fatal fuck ups, but by no means less important.
‘I wish you were here with me,’ she said selfishly, staring up at Lace’s statue. ‘I don’t do well alone.’
It’d been a running theme in her life, finding people like her team, Varric, and Viago. Well—Viago and the Crows had found her, but it only really vindicated the “doesn't do well alone” thing. She’d come off a boat from Antiva City with nothing but the clothes on her back, trying to escape the fires that raged through the capital's harbour. Rook had ended up scrounging on the streets, crying for parents who had surely died...
Around her, the Fade Prison rippled, stone roaring, and Rook looked around in apprehension, because the last time she heard that sound, Harding’s statues had formed from nothing.
‘Come on, that can’t be a regret…' Rook muttered to herself. Dark hazel eyes shifted from shadow to shadow, following the path to a magical mist, which floated ominously towards a pale gold cavern. The change from black and grey was enough to have Rook lurching forwards, practically staggering as the difference burned her greedy eyes. When she reached out, the stone was warm with memories, and her heart ached with acute homesickness, and a yearning for the people she’d lost as a child. She didn’t remember their faces, it had been too long now—but she knew her mother was Antivan, and her father had been in charge of…something. Some-where. A knight, or a bann, or something of that calibre. She couldn’t recall, if she ever knew at all.
The Prison was cold and grey: that was what she knew. But this regret was golden, drawing her in like a moth to a flame, turning into a ghastly rift-green when she finally reached the end of the illuminated cave. Rook held her breath as she found an imprint of a ship on the wall, glistening with magic. She could imagine the many subdued comments of her companions, telling her not to touch it…but she was lonely, desperate for anything but this drab cage.
Rook touched the regret.
In an instant, the world changed. Instead of the grim fog of the Prison of Regrets, the air became full of smoke, searing her lungs with burning tar. High above, great galleons and trading cogs burned in the night, yellow flames licking up masts to scorch canvas as their blackened keels burned away merrily. It went on for a mile along the coastline—but you wouldn’t know it from simply looking, the smoke hiding the bright lights of Antiva City from view.
Rook choked as much in shock as she did from the air quality, tripping on cobbles to land hard on her knees. People were screaming, she registered faintly, and fire crackled as Antivan dockworkers called out for the water brigade. When Rook squinted through the hazy air, ears craning for any sign at all that she wasn't where she thought, a banner fluttered through the air to land on the ground before her. Bright blue with a yellow trim, the same ship she’d seen in the Prison looked back at her, blackened by ash and smouldering at the edges.
This is the harbour fire from when I was a girl, Rook thought in confusion, reaching out to touch the heavy weave. As her fingers brushed the fabric, she wondered what the Prison was trying to hold over her head. She was too old to be undone by a disaster such as this.
‘Ilsa!’ she heard someone cry, high-pitched and terrified. Rook almost gave herself whiplash trying to find the source. ‘Ilsa!’
‘Hello?’ Rook replied, but the woman kept calling out for her daughter. How she knew that, Rook didn’t know, though if there was a child who needed help, then she would give it freely. Hauling herself to her feet, Rook briefly begrudged Solas for stealing the ritual dagger and the source of her more impossible tricks, before pulling up her collar and holding it over her mouth and nose, to save her lungs from the smoke.
The cry came again, fainter this time. ‘Ilsa!’
Rook, knowing the havoc of the harbour fire personally, tried to memorise the voice so she'd be able to find them later. Then, she rooted around the pier she’d been dropped onto, tipping flaming barrels into the dark water below before others could catch, all the while searching for survivors. She wouldn’t stand idle in the face of calamity. It didn’t matter that it was the Prison’s trap.
Nowhere did Rook come across the missing child. She found a terrified cat, and a burning sailor who’d seemingly jumped from the rigging to escape and cracked his neck on impact, then had to make a hasty exit back towards the water when a topsail caught and fell right in her path. All was familiar. The mother’s screams, intelligible by the end with grief, disappeared beneath the roar of flames. It was times like this that Rook wished she were a mage, so she could douse the fire, and lift debris that barred the way. Then, maybe she would have been able to reach her...
‘Ilsa!’ Rook took up the cry in her stead, and felt the strangeness of her own name in her mouth as a small body collided against her legs, clinging to her in pure human desperation. Rook wondered if it was fate, or a cruel trick, as she looked down into hazel brown eyes that were identical to her own.
The Fade is timeless, she thought with a roiling stomach, knowing deep in her chest that the Prison was twisting her fear into grief. Her real self was never distracted from following the sound of their mother’s voice—she’d waited till she could no longer hear it. There, cowering in a soot-stained dress of white linen and lace, Rook had lost her parents forever.
‘Ilsa,’ she rasped, hacking on the smoke surrounding them both. The little girl with her little face and her little hands stared, uncomprehending. ‘Ilsa, you have to get on a boat! You need to save yourself!’
It disturbed Rook that’d she’d been so small, that any child this young could be lost so easily, with not a single minder able to catch her before she drifted beyond their reach. Her hair was braided back with yellow-gold ribbons, which were loose and lopsided from the shuffle—and really, she couldn't be more than four or five years old. Rook’s heart broke for her younger self, for the memory of what she’d been, seeing the shake of her shoulders. Little Ilsa didn't know what awaited her in Treviso. Not the cruelties the Crows would bestow upon her, nor the blood that would come to stain her hands.
‘Get on a boat, Ilsa!’ She instructed with a broken voice, because that was what she did that night in Antiva City. She repeated herself until Ilsa was nodding frantically, over and over, gripping her hand like a lifeline. Rook wanted to weep. Had there been someone who told her the same thing? Had she trusted them, as this little girl trusted Rook?
Beyond them both, a gangplank to a ship casting off in haste loomed ominously, wreathed in Fade magic. A deckhand saw them and waved them over, even as his compatriots made to unlatch it from the side. It made Rook’s stomach churn—but this regret wasn’t of her own making. The world didn’t care for lost little girls, and this was always her path. When Ilsa squeezed her hand, they ran towards it together, and once they passed the threshold, Rook found herself in the Prison of Regrets once more, alone and grieving for a life she’d lost.
Giving into the urge to vomit, Rook allowed her body to shake. If the vision had meant to be a form of torture, it had succeeded. She felt defeated. Wrung out and hung to dry.
‘I hate this,’ she groused, wiping her mouth. Ignoring the puddle of sick, Rook looked back at the cave, which still glowed gold, hiding the danger within. She coughed out the lingering ash and smoke that lined her throat, and wondered why. Why the harbour fire? The Prison was intelligent in its own way; it didn’t need to create a spectre of her friends when there were statues to remind her of what she’d chosen for them. That it had recreated one of the most pivotal moments of her childhood was...odd, to say the least.
...what would happen if I went into the regret again?
For anyone else on her team, it would be a thought exercise before practical applications were discussed, but Rook was straightforward. Always had been. It was why Varric gave her the name Rook, and she never regretted taking it for her own. So when she asked herself the question, she didn’t hesitate, ignoring the churning of her empty stomach in lieu of meandering into the cave again and reaching for the glowing ship sigil.
Again, she found herself at the harbour. In the distance, she heard her mother calling for her. More prepared, Rook pulled her collar over her mouth and nose, then veered towards the cat stuck in a crate to release it, closing the eyes of the dead sailor with the snapped neck. But then time seemed to play tricks on her—because the topsail caught fire and fell in her path early, and when she stumbled back, her hand brushed against the falling blue banner with its golden trim and smouldering edges.
Little Ilsa ran straight into her, looking to strangers for a solution.
Her heart cracked. ‘Get on a boat, Ilsa,’ Rook whispered.
Grief sundered her when she fell into the Prison again, smoke clinging to her pores. It couldn’t be the same every time. There had to be a way to stop it.
She hissed to herself, ‘Again!’ then turned back to the regret.
Falling, catching herself.
Ilsa!
Covering her orifices-
Breaking open the crate to let the cat go free.
A dead sailer staring up at her.
The topsail burning, and falling in her path-
Little her.
A banner, falling onto the cobblestone.
The ship.
This can’t be it! I can do it right, I can do it faster-
Falling.
Catching herself.
Ilsa!
Letting the smoke burn her nose and mouth, so she could run past the fluttering blue banner.
Saving the cat.
Giving the sailor his last rites.
The topsail-
Little Ilsa.
The ship.
Rook hacked and coughed, determined to see the regret through. Wheezing, she laid there in the cool mists of the Prison and tried to imagine a way forwards. It occurred to her that in all sequences, the banner was the outlier—the blue banner with its golden yellow trim, in the same colour as Ilsa’s ribbons, and the same ship embroidered on the centre that she saw in the Prison each time she entered. It was the only thing to change, appearing whenever was least convenient—trying to tell her something, or taunting her? While Rook knew she was stubborn, she wasn’t stupid. There was a connection to her family there that she was missing, some kind of alliance, or blood-tie.
‘Who flies that banner?’ she croaked to herself, staring at the starless sky. ‘Blue and gold. Blue and gold…’ It was such a common pairing, and had long been associated with Antivan seafarers. Rook could name over a dozen Antivan houses with that colouring, forget adding the merchants.
Rubbing at her eyes, Rook sighed, then got up to figure out how to make this regret disappear like all the others.
The answer would come to her.
Falling into Antiva City, catching herself before she can skin her bruised knees, seeing the banner detach from a great mast up in the sky to fall at her feet;
Her mother called out her name in-between sobs, screaming for her baby, always unreachable and always too late;
Doing up her top buttons to hold her collar in place, hiding from the smoke as she clambered towards the trapped cat and the dead man, whispering prayers over his sightless corpse;
Avoiding the topsail as it fell and burned, already making her way towards where Ilsa was hiding at the end of the pier;
Meeting her halfway.
‘Little one,’ Rook held up her spare hand, where she’d kept a tight grasp on the blue and gold banner since it’d fallen at her feet. Holding it out for her to see, she asked the younger girl with a firm grip on her wrist, ‘Is this your family crest?’
Little Ilsa’s expression turned from frightened to confused in an instant, chapped lips mouthing the word family once, twice—and then her brow furrowed, and for the first time, something changed. Little Ilsa pulled against Rook’s hold, chin whipping towards the departing ship and its greenish gangplank.
‘Ilsa!’ Rook snapped, kneeling down and not letting her go. She held the banner up, almost to her younger self’s nose. ‘It’s important! Whose family does this belong to?’
‘Off! Let me go!’ screamed Ilsa, sobs wretched and smoke-hoarse. A ribbon slipped from her braid to the ground. ‘No! No, no, no-’
Flames roared in her ears, and Rook knew she’d moved too aggressively. Dropping the banner in lieu of the ribbon, she hauled little Ilsa up and sprinted towards the departing ship—jumping right back into the Fade Prison and ending the memory early.
The ribbon stayed looped through her fingertips.