Chapter Text
Rook is having a bad time.
Her eyes are crusty with dried tears, so puffy they only open into slits.
There’s a sour, nauseous tide rolling in her stomach.
She can smell sweat in the hair plastered to the side of her face.
It takes her a full five minutes to figure out where she is. Face down in her own bed. Alone. Well, not completely alone, there’s a half empty bottle of vodka next to her pillow.
Good. Great.
The fan next to her bed is too loud, but it’s also not actually cooling her off. It’s just blowing stale, muggy air around.
She should find her phone. Probably it’s also in her bed. Probably next to the vodka. She musters up the energy to reach for it and sends it flying onto the floor. Her stomach heaves. That’s okay, that’s fine. She doesn’t need to check her phone anyway, she knows what day it is.
August 3rd.
When she’d let herself think about this day, slantwise, just out of the corner of her brain, in the weeks leading up to it, she’d originally planned on staying home and being drunk all day. Seemed like a solid move. But then August finally rolled around and she decided that she would just go to work because why not, why can’t the 3rd be just the same as any other day? If she treats it like that, it will be that. If you build it, they will come. Hakuna matata.
She now, just a bit, has some regrets about that decision.
Her phone vibrates once against the floor, and she slowly inches her way towards the edge of the bed to peer down at it. Thank fucking god it landed face up.
Harding: you want anything from Krispy Kreme? I’ll be there in 20 min
Rook lets out a pitiful groan. Twenty minutes to haul herself out of bed, take a shower, maybe puke in the shower, and put herself together enough that she doesn’t look like death warmed over?
Sure. She’s done it in less time.
Harding is picking her up because her car is broken again. Bellara got the wrong spark plugs. It’s fine.
Rook: 2 choc iced pls
The shower helps. Rook turns the tap as cold as it will go and stands under the spray, shivering too much to even think about puking. She’s out of soap. Shampoo is basically soap, that works. Getting dressed is easy—all of her clothes are on the floor, so it doesn’t really matter what she grabs. None of them are clean right now anyway. Shale probably thinks she’s dropped dead.
Nope, not me. Still kicking.
“Two chocolate iced in there for you, as promised,” Harding says, handing over a box of donuts after Rook drops into her passenger seat.
“Bless.”
Rook sags against the window, taking slow, steady bites of her first donut and letting the sugar finish the work her cold shower started.
I’m getting too old for this shit.
“I also got you a coconut water, just on a hunch.”
“Good hunch. I didn’t even drunk text you last night.”
“I know, that’s what tipped me off.”
The important thing is that Rook didn’t have any nightmares last night, at least that she remembers. That was the point of all the vodka. Healthy? No. Effective? Yes. The hangover itself is also intentional. It’s hard to feel other emotions when your primary one is hungover.
The rest of the drive is quiet. They don’t ask each other how they’re doing. They don’t talk about what’s on the radio—Pink Floyd—or the weather—hazy, overcast, sweltering.
Isabela is outside the Lighthouse when they pull up, leaning against one of the little tables out front and smoking a cigarette. Rook’s first impulse is to be surprised, but she’s not, not really. Of course Isabela is here today.
“Shouldn’t you be at work?” Rook asks anyway, holding out the box of donuts and flipping up the lid.
“Took the day off,” Isabela says, picking out a Boston cream.
Harding holds the door open behind her. “Don’t let Neve see you smoking out here.”
“Who do you think gave it to me?” Isabela says with a cocked eyebrow, stubbing the cigarette out under the toe of her sandal and following them inside.
“You smoking again?” Rook asks Neve when she joins her behind the bar.
“Just for today,” Neve answers, her voice flat. She smells like she chain-smoked half a pack already.
The rest of the morning is slow. Slow enough for it to really sink in that Rook is going to spend the entire day doing nothing but counting down the hours and minutes until it’s over and she can stop thinking about it again. Until next year.
That’s the thing about anniversaries.
The four of them finish the donuts. Isabela lounges on one of the couches, getting steadily day drunk and practicing card tricks. Harding waters the plants and stares into space. Neve is glued to her phone. Rook works on payroll and alternates between coffee and coconut water. They don’t actually talk to each other that much. Rook doesn’t even know what she’d say.
Customers come and go as usual. Like it’s a normal day.
Sometime around 1 PM, Rook’s hangover starts to wear off. She can tell because her brain starts working again just enough to go places she doesn’t want it to go. It starts remembering shit. Like someone else playing cards with Isabela on the couches, and talking to Harding about the plants, and comparing Wordle scores with Neve. The empty space where he used to be starts to feel bigger.
Getting day drunk with Isabela would solve that. Rook doesn’t drink at work, as a rule, but if there was any day to give a big old middle finger to the rules, today would be it.
The front door bells jingle, and Lucanis, of all people, walks in.
“I brought lunch,” he says, crossing over to the bar with a big paper bag from Flora’s. “Sorry, Isabela, I didn’t know you would be here.”
“I’m on a liquid diet today,” Isabela says, taking a swallow from her pint glass.
Rook didn’t tell Lucanis what today is. Someone else must have. Harding or Neve. Because he obviously knows. He’s barely had time to eat dinner with her lately, let alone leave work for lunch. The sight of him here, in his suit, passing out sandwiches, throws her in a way Isabela’s presence didn’t.
“Flora made you a ham and jam slam, Harding. Neve, you have a tuna melt—”
“Extra pickles?” Neve asks.
“—with extra pickles. And a Dragon’s Bounty for you.”
Rook takes her paper-wrapped sandwich silently, and the weight in her hand feels like a weight on her heart. Lucanis’s expression is muted, reserved, and his dark eyes watch hers a bit more carefully than usual. He doesn’t reach for her or try to hug her, and thank god for that because if he did, Rook knows without a doubt that she would fall apart.
“Nothing for yourself?” she asks.
“I’m fine.”
He was starting to fill out over the course of the spring, thanks to all that yoga and running and baking, and now he’s getting thinner again. Just a little, barely enough to be noticeable. But looking at him is one of Rook’s favorite hobbies. She notices.
“We can split mine.”
“You two go eat in the back,” Harding says.
Lucanis leads the way down the hallway to the back room, and Rook stares at the back of his head, the broad line of his shoulders. Him being here cements that today is real, somehow. Rook only knew him after everything that happened. He wasn’t there before, not like Harding and Neve and Isabela. Her heart starts to twist up like a pretzel but weird-shaped, kind of wrong, a homemade pretzel from someone who’s never made pretzels before.
Fuck.
“Please don’t be too nice to me today, okay?” she asks, not knowing how else to say it, sitting down at the table with her back to the wall of portraits.
That little indent pops up between his brows and disappears just as quickly, and he nods. Cracks a smile.
“Want me to take the sandwich back?”
“Don’t you dare,” she says, but she still slides half over to him. “How’s work?”
He sighs. “Tense. There’s a board meeting later today.”
“How’d you manage to get away for lunch?”
“I took the rest of the day off.” He says it as he removes his suit jacket and starts to roll up his sleeves.
Her eyes widen and she stops chewing. “The whole day?”
He nods. “Too nice?”
Her throat gets tight. She has to force herself to swallow. “Maybe. But I’m glad you’re here.”
Rook eats her sandwich without really tasting it. It’s good, probably, Flora’s never lets her down. But it sits heavily in her stomach as she realizes that yes, Lucanis taking half the day off is too nice. It had to cost him. Someone’s bound to be mad at him. Multiple someones, probably. And he did it anyway, for her.
“What do you want to do tonight?” she asks around the lump forming in her throat.
“Pizza and a movie?” he suggests immediately, in a way that lets Rook know that he’s already thought about it. So she wouldn’t have to. “You’ve been talking about Bill and Ted a lot.”
“We’d have to watch all three movies. It’s a commitment.”
“I’m committed.”
Lucanis doesn’t mention that she’s closing tonight, and that there’s no way they’re going to stay up through one movie, let alone three. That’s not the point. The point is that he’ll be there, and she won’t have to spend the night listening to sad music and crying until she passes out again.
They finish eating in mostly comfortable silence. Lucanis doesn’t demand anything from her, even conversation. He just sits and exists with her. The lump in her throat is still there, too, but it doesn’t get bigger. It’s quiet enough that Rook can hear his phone buzz a couple times in his pocket. He doesn’t look at it.
“Since you’re here and all, do you mind finishing the milk order?” she quips eventually, wiping her hands on a napkin, only half-joking.
“I thought you’d never ask.” He leans back with a small grin. “Have you che—”
Raised voices from the front interrupt him.
“Are you fucking serious?”
Harding.
“You can’t be here.”
Neve.
“I need to speak with her.”
Solas.
For a second, the sound of his voice paralyzes Rook. It’s like being back under her ice cold shower. Something must show on her face because Lucanis says her name, but she barely hears him over the thudding of her heart in her ears. Then the anger she’s been missing these last few weeks crashes through her, white hot and vicious, and Rook is on her feet and through the door so fast she almost knocks the table over.
“You need to get the fuck out of here.”
And she’s glad she gets the words out before reaching the front, because the sight of Solas inside of the Lighthouse feels like a punch to the throat. Hands clasped behind his back. Impassive expression. Stupid bald head. He looks the same as he did the last time she saw him. At the funeral.
Rook stumbles back a step into Lucanis, who she didn’t even realize followed her out of the back room. But he’s right behind her, his hand steadying her elbow.
“Rook.”
Solas says her name like she’s a dog who just shat on his carpet. His eyes flick to the hand on her elbow and then back to her face.
“What do you want, Solas?” Her voice comes out in a hoarse growl.
“As I said, to talk,” he says evenly.
“I’m not selling the Lighthouse. It didn’t happen last year, and it’s—“
“It didn’t happen last year because Varric was a fool.“
“Varric is dead,” Rook spits back.
For a year, she hasn’t let herself say that name. Even think it. If she thinks about Varric for longer than half a second, she remembers watching him bleed out in the middle of the street, and that the last thing he ever said was her name.
“Rook—”
“Varric is dead, and it’s your fault,” she continues, chest heaving, “so don’t come in here—”
“Today of all fucking days,” Harding bites out.
“—thinking anyone wants to hear anything you have to say.”
“My fault?” he says quietly, after a long pause.
Fuck you, she thinks, but that lump in her throat is suddenly gigantic enough to force all the air from her lungs. Those two words from him are a sledgehammer to the walls she’s been building so carefully all year.
“I haven’t tased anyone yet this month, Solas,” Neve says, leaning over the bar with a joyless smile on her face. “If you can hang on a second, I’ll run and get it from my bag.”
Solas holds up a hand. “I’m sorry, Rook. I came to see how you’ve been doing, that’s all.”
“Oh, that’s all?” Isabela drawls from over on the couches.
“Varric wouldn’t want us to be enemies,” Solas continues.
“Varric wouldn’t want to sell the Lighthouse,” Harding retorts.
“Varric didn’t want to sell because he knew this place means everything to you, Rook,” Solas says, ignoring everyone else. “But I ran the numbers. The Lighthouse is barely staying afloat.”
Why does everyone have to keep saying his name?
“It may not exactly be profitable, but it’s not in the red. It’s very much afloat,” Lucanis counters. Still right behind her, right in her peripheral vision.
Solas spares Lucanis a single glance.
“Be that as it may, Rook, can we speak privately?”
“Like hell you can,” Harding snaps.
“It’s fine.”
Rook doesn’t know why she says it. Maybe if she talks to Solas now, he’ll shut up about selling the Lighthouse and leave her alone. Maybe now that her rage has boiled over, she can see things more clearly. He meant something to her, once. And to Varric.
Maybe she just wants to let him make her feel bad, because he spoke the words that have been etched on her heart for a year. My fault.
Rook avoids looking at anyone else and heads towards the back. She can feel Solas following at a respectful distance. They’ve made this walk hundreds of times together over the years, often mid-argument, and the familiarity is oddly comforting.
“How are you, really?” Solas asks, shutting the door behind him.
She hugs her arms across her chest. “How do you think?”
He looks at her then, really looks at her, and it surprises her how many little details about him she remembers. The small scar on his forehead. The blue of his eyes. The cleft in his chin. His height, and the way her head fit against his chest when he held her. It’s a familiar feeling, that he knows her so well and doesn’t know her at all.
“It’s good you have support today.”
“Yeah.”
“Lucanis Dellamorte isn’t someone I ever would have expected to see here.”
Rook raises an eyebrow. “Do you know him?”
“I know of him. He has quite the reputation in certain circles, with certain people.”
And you’ve been keeping an eye on things. You ran the numbers, you probably saw him on the payroll.
“Rich people. You can just say it, Solas, you are one.”
“I do not hoard my wealth. Unlike the Dellamortes and their clients.”
“Is that why you want to sell? Are you broke now?”
He sniffs. “The Lighthouse was a worthwhile endeavor that’s ultimately served its purpose. The money I’ll make from selling it will do far more good than keeping the place open.”
“And fuck you to everyone who works here and comes in every day, I guess?”
“There are other places they can go.” He brushes off the concern like it’s a piece of lint on his sleeve. “I have multiple offers. Good ones. Sold to the right developer, the profit from this building could provide aid for so many more people. It could do so much good for the city at large.”
And there’s the Solas she broke up with. Willing to play with people’s lives like they’re all little chess pieces on an imaginary board, just because he can.
“You realize how insane you sound, right? You know these people. You know me.”
He gives her a half smile. “You’d land on your feet, Rook. You always do.”
“God, you’re an asshole.”
Anger flashes across his eyes, just for a second. “I’m trying to work with you, out of respect for what we had and for Varric, but I don’t have to. I could sell it anyway.”
That shuts her right back up. Technically, he could. He owns the building, Rook’s name is just on the lease. He could sell the property to whoever he wants, and they’d be under no obligation to renew her lease at all. From everything Varric said over the years, it would be way more profitable for any new owner to just gut the whole place and build new. That’s why he fought Solas so hard on selling.
But Varric is dead.
“I am sorry for what happened, Rook. Selling this place could be a way to let go. Move on.”
Rook’s hands ball into fists.
“Have you? Moved on?”
“I’ve forgiven myself. You could, too.”
She doesn’t know if he means she could forgive him or herself, but either way it doesn’t matter.
“No, I can’t.”
He frowns and moves to take a step towards her.
“Rook.”
She steps back.
“You should go.”
Solas holds her gaze for a long moment, then nods and disappears back down the hallway. Leaving Rook alone. Her eyes drift to the portrait wall, to the sketch of Varric in profile, smiling over his shoulder, probably at some goofy thing she’d said. She doesn’t even remember drawing it at this point, it’s been there so long. And some day down the line, fewer and fewer people who work here will remember him. He’ll just be a yellowing picture on the wall.
The Lighthouse might not even exist at all, by then.
Harding and Neve appear a minute later to guide Rook over to the couch and sit her down, one of them on either side. She slumps forward, head in her hands. Not crying, not yet.
“I really will go tase him, it’s not too late,” Neve says.
A weak laugh shudders through her.
“What did he even want?” Harding asks.
“What else? He wants to sell. I really think he might do it, too.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“Varric isn’t here anymore to stop him, and he sure as hell isn’t going to listen to me.”
“If anyone can get through to him, you can.”
Rook just shakes her head, and the tears finally start to fall. Because no, she can’t. Solas made that abundantly clear already. He’ll sell, and all of her friends will be let down, and it will be her fault. Everything Varric built, gone. My fault.
“I miss him so much.”
And then she’s crying in earnest, deep, horrible, heaving sobs. Loud, like a little kid who fell on the playground or got lost at the mall. Keeled forward, head to her knees, tears running down her shins. Harding and Neve rub her back, shush her, tell her to let it out. She cries until she’s empty.
Eventually, she feels Neve get up, and then someone sits back down next to her but the weight is different, and then Harding gets up, too.
Rook smells Lucanis’s cologne, would know the touch of his hand on her shoulder from anyone’s. He pulls her up and into his chest and wraps his arms around her.
“You’re going to be all right,” Lucanis says softly.
Rook opens her eyes, and a few more fat tears slide down her cheeks. Not empty after all. “What if I’m not? What if I never am?”
He doesn’t say anything. He just pulls her in closer and stretches out as much as anyone can stretch out on the little break room couch, holding her tight against him, until they’re both laying down. Her face is tucked into his neck, and she can feel his heartbeat under her cheek and the steady rise and fall of his breath flush against her own chest.
“I’m getting snot on your shirt,” she sniffles after a few seconds.
“That’s okay.”
He strokes her hair with his fingertips, unconcerned.
“Thank you for being here,” she whispers.
He kisses the top of her head.
“Get some rest.”
Like it’s the permission her wrung out body was waiting for, Rook falls asleep within minutes. Her dreams smell like burnt rubber and smoke and blood. She sees Varric lying in the street, and Varric turns into Lucanis, and Lucanis is trying to tell her something but she can't hear him. He sounds so far away.
The vibrations of Lucanis quietly talking wakes her up before she actually registers the sound of his voice. When he mutters something about reports, Rook groggily realizes that he’s on the phone. Between the faint, angry voice she can hear on the other end and the way he tenses when he notices she's awake, she has a good idea who it is. He says a quick goodbye. They lay in silence for another minute before Rook can muster up the energy to ruin the moment.
“You have to go, don’t you?” she asks into his shirt collar. Her voice sounds like she swallowed glass.
His sigh blows through her hair. “Caterina needs me. The board is going to call for a vote of no confidence.”
“What does that mean?” She can guess.
Lucanis’s pulse is leaping, but he sounds exhausted when he says, “It means Illario thinks he’s bribed enough shareholders to secure the votes he needs. He’s finally making his move.”
“He had to pick today of all days?”
He hugs her closer, and she feels his attempt at a laugh. It’s a silent, unhappy thing.
“Is that why Caterina brought you back? She thought you’d stop it?”
“There is no stopping it. She’s going to put me forward as another option.”
That gets Rook to sit up, awkwardly leaning against the back of the couch, staring down at him.
“For CEO? Even after everything that’s happened?”
He blinks, closing his eyes for a beat longer than necessary. Avoiding her gaze. “I’ve made the company a lot of money. She made sure the board was reminded of that this past month.”
Rook hates that she hears Solas saying Lucanis has a “quite the reputation” in this moment. She’s googled enough about hedge funds, and Talon Corp specifically, to know that they don’t make the world a better place, they make money. He just said it himself.
They make millions for people like Zara Renata, who use that money to help elect people like Aelia Vint, who want to drive everyone who’s not rich, straight, and white out of the city, so that people like Zara Renata can swoop in to buy up their homes and businesses and get even richer. And Rook would be lying to herself if she said she hasn’t been intentionally ignoring that piece of Lucanis’s puzzle. Telling herself it’s just a job, he’s just an analyst.
“Do you even want to be CEO?” she asks.
“No. I never have,” he answers with a bone-deep weariness.
But it isn’t about what he wants. When is it ever? Rook sits back farther, untangling his legs from her lap.
“Where do you draw the line, Lucanis? When has Caterina asked enough from you?”
He sits up, reaching for her, but she pulls away. She needs to focus or she won’t be able to get the words out, and she’s tired of choking them back.
“Rook—“
“No, you’ve been miserable all month. Tell me I’m wrong.” He opens his mouth to speak, but she’s not done. “This job is going to kill you.”
“Being miserable is not the same as being dead.”
“Oh yeah? What happened in December?”
Rook regrets the words as soon as they leave her mouth. Lucanis’s expression shutters, and his lips close into a bloodless line.
“I’m sorry,” she utters.
“I have to go.”
He stands, rolling his sleeves down and buttoning the cuffs with deliberate overattention. Grabs his suit jacket from the chair by the table.
“I’ll come back as soon as I’m done,” he says, pausing in front of the couch again. There’s something fractured in the way he looks at her, like he’s trying to put his polite Dellamorte mask on but can’t quite get it to fit. His jaw slackens, but instead of saying anything else, he just leans down to kiss her on the temple.
Rook stares blankly at the door after it closes behind him.
Why am I like this?
The echoing silence of the back room doesn’t offer her any answers.
Her phone says it’s just after 5:30. Lucanis will come back in a few hours, and she’ll fix it. She’ll figure out what to say, and she’ll say it, and she’ll fix it. The urge to text Varric is suddenly overwhelming. Varric would know exactly what do do. He’d at least have a better idea than “lay back down on the couch and sleep for the rest of the summer,” which is all Rook’s got so far.
“Lucanis left?” Harding asks when Rook reappears out front.
The clouds have darkened into blue-grey bruises and it’s raining, one of those straight up and down summer downpours. There’s an unexpected rush—customers stuck inside waiting out the rain, probably—and Harding is by herself behind the bar.
“Work thing. Where’s everybody else?”
“Neve took Isabela home, I told them both to call it a day.”
“Thanks for holding things down,” Rook says, stepping in to help the next customer. Her face is probably covered in dried snot and mascara—why did I wear mascara today, what was I thinking?—but she can’t bring herself to care at this point.
Harding just gives her a nod and a sidelong glance, and the brittleness of the gesture brings Rook up short.
Oh. Harding is tired.
Her normally sparkling eyes are dull, her braid is coming loose, and her shirt is splashed with water from loading and unloading the dishwasher. Who knows how long ago the others left, how long she’s been handling things out here on her own while Rook was busy being mildly catatonic? She lost Varric, too. She's been grieving, too. And Rook left her alone.
One more fuck up to add to today’s list.
“Hey, why don’t you go home?” Rook suggests. “Or go to Taash’s?”
Harding just keeps mixing the gin and tonic in her hands. “Yeah and if I do that, how are you going to get home?”
“Lucanis is coming back later, it’s fine.”
Part of her doesn’t believe it, even though he said he would, but that’s not Harding’s problem.
“Are you sure?” Harding asks, slowly putting down the glass she’d picked up to start the next drink.
“It’s fine.” Rook picks the glass up. “Text me when you get there.”
Some of the tension finally bleeds out of Rook’s body after Harding leaves. She can breathe easier, and she feels selfish for it. But at least now, alone with just her customers and her thoughts, there’s no one to remind her how completely and utterly shitty today has been. There’s no risk of blurting out something else stupid or mean to someone she cares about.
Yeah. This is better.
She’ll stay busy. Distracted. It’s only a few hours until closing, and she can close a Monday night blindfolded with her hands tied behind her back.
And Lucanis will come back. She texts him:
Rook: Harding had to go, closing solo
He doesn’t respond.
Which is fine. She doesn’t know what she’s going to say to fix it yet.
An hour later, she googles “how long do board meetings take?”
An hour after that, business slows to the usual Monday night trickle. Rook eats a vegan hot dog and chugs some water, but she still feels like a taxidermied version of herself. Emptied out, hollow. It’s been the longest day of her life and it’s still not over. Solas was here. That was today.
He still wants to sell the Lighthouse.
Rook abruptly deletes the two voicemails from him, like maybe that will erase the whole problem. Then she lets herself scroll down. The last voicemail she ever got from Varric is still there, from August 2nd of last year. Her finger hovers over the play button for a second, before she chickens out and reads the transcription instead:
Hey kid, don’t worry about what Chuckles said earlier, this is between me and him. Don’t punch me for saying this, but you deserve better than him. Hell, you deserve better than both of us. See you tomorrow.
Rook did see him tomorrow. But not any day after that.
She texts Lucanis again:
Rook: hope you’re okay
She spends a solid stretch of time staring at that text message, willing three dots to appear. Trying to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach that, despite what he said about coming back, she really, really messed up this time.
Fifteen minutes before closing, when the Lighthouse is empty, the front door bells jingle.
It’s fucking Solas.
Rook doesn’t acknowledge him. She barely looks up from the dishwasher she’s emptying, even when he comes to stand right across from her on the other side of the bar.
“I wanted to apologize for how I acted earlier.”
“You could’ve just texted me.”
“I’m fairly certain you’ve blocked my number.”
“I don’t…care, Solas,” she says with a sigh, wiping hair out of her face with the back of her wet hand. “I don’t care if you apologize. I don’t think it changes anything.”
He gives her a thoughtful nod. “You’ve changed. Matured.”
Rook smirks, she can’t help herself. “You wouldn’t say that if you saw the bottle of vodka in my bed right now.”
Solas smirks back. “Even so.”
There’s a long pause while he considers his next words and Rook finishes wiping down the bar.
“Do you think we’ll ever be friends again?”
“No,” she answers immediately with a snort. “I don’t know. Do you even want to be?”
“Yes,” he says, his expression softening. “Some day, if you’ll allow it. You were one of the most important people in my life, Rook. I loved you.”
Loved, past tense. Just like she loved him, once.
She texts Lucanis:
Rook: just about done closing up, think you’ll be here soon?
“That’s a big ask, Solas. And if you say any bullshit about how it’s what Varric would want, I will slap you.”
Solas smiles a little at that. “I think Varric would want us both to be happy.”
And that gets Rook’s heart hurting again because yeah, he would. That’s exactly what he would want. She goes to flip the sign on the door to closed, and to put some distance between her and Solas for a second. It’s still raining, not as much of a downpour as before but enough that walking home would absolutely suck. The punishment she deserves, maybe. She checks her phone again, and there’s still no response from Lucanis.
Fuck it.
“Could you drive me home? My car’s busted.”
It’s always been hard to surprise Solas enough for him to show it. The man prides himself on his stoic facade. So seeing him blink and raise his eyebrows at her question is a little rewarding, Rook has to admit.
“Of course.”
“This doesn’t mean we’re friends.”
“I wouldn’t dare to hope.”
Rook: getting another ride home, meet you there
Just like walking into the back room with him, walking out to Solas’s car feels like slipping into her old life. Yes, Rook’s anxiety is spiking and her heart is jackrabbiting behind her ribs, but maybe this is her way forward. Maybe she can talk some sense into him. Maybe someday she won’t want to push him into an active volcano every time she thinks about him.
It helps that he has a different car now.
The drive is quiet, aside from the rain plunking down. Solas has NPR on the radio, because of course he does. Rook leans her head against the window. She survived the day. Ten more minutes, then she’ll be home and, hopefully, Lucanis will be there soon.
Oh shit, I have to get the pizz—
In a flash of headlights, the car swerves, Solas shouts, “Rook!” and her world goes grey.