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Truth be told, Rook had never wanted to meet the Inquisitor. To her, it all sounded over-much, a little inflated; yes, the Inquisitor saved the world with her magic glowing hand, et cetera, but…in the end she was just a person. The Inquisitor didn't come to the Veilguard wearing armor or a crown or to the tune of trumpets and applause. She came in a traveling cloak, the stump of her left arm bare and scarred, with dark circles under her eyes and a grim set to her mouth.
And of course Rook had heard the rumors. Everyone had heard the rumors. By the Void, people would not stop talking about the rumors. Rook was convinced that they were made-up, or maybe just heavily embellished—but then the Inquisitor arrived at the Lighthouse, and Rook saw the look she exchanged with Solas, and, well.
Rook watched from the corner of her eye as the Inquisitor crossed the room and took Solas’s face in her palm. It was distressingly intimate. She almost felt ashamed to watch.
Solas’s posture crumpled. Everyone looked away. And then, as if the decision had been agreed upon aloud, they all left the room. Rook couldn't get out of there quickly enough.
But despite herself, she couldn’t help but linger a little in the hallway. Hearing was a lot less awkward than seeing—and, well, Rook was curious.
Minutes later she heard the Inquisitor's voice; low, melodic, lilting and sad. But she spoke in Elven, and Solas spoke back in Elven, and Rook was useless with Elven. It wasn't until the Inquisitor said “listen to me” in a firmer, more stubborn voice that Rook understood a single word of their exchange.
“I don't care,” the Inquisitor continued, muffled through the wall. “We can argue about it later. We can figure it out. I'm just glad you're safe."
Shortly after that Rook heard crying. She couldn't say who was doing the crying. She decided to stop listening around then.
It was a new dynamic in the Lighthouse, and new was exciting—if a little uncomfortable.
With Rook, Solas was cold, distant, always a little annoyed—perhaps understandably (but not really, considering no one had known interrupting his stupid ritual would release two evil gods hell-bent on destroying the world.) Anyway, the point was: Solas became a different person when the Inquisitor entered the room.
His posture would change. His expression would soften. He would look heartbroken and lovestruck all at once.
But he never touched her. He never stepped closer. He and the Inquisitor—sorry, the former Inquisitor—stood at opposite ends of any given room, exchanging only the tiniest of glances.
For a while, she was under the impression that they were angry at each other—but then, late one night, she turned the wrong corner in one of the Lighthouse’s spiraling hallways and—
Rook would give them this: they had picked a good shadowy spot in that hallway. If she hadn't been such an insomniac, they probably would've gotten away with it.
The Inquisitor—Eira, she knew to call her now—was cloaked in shadow, mostly hidden from view by Solas’s silhouette. But Rook could see her face, tilted up to look at him—could see Solas’s hand, cupping her cheek. In the precise moment that Rook turned the corner, he bent to kiss Eira’s forehead—and then Eira’s gaze snapped up and met Rook's.
Eira let out a muffled gasp. Solas went rigid and then—to Rook's horror and amusement—he blushed all the way to the tips of his ears.
It was kind of adorable. It was painfully sad and romantic and sweet and that made it very difficult to be around, and even worse to witness. Rook mouthed a quick sorry and turned on her heel, scurrying back down the hall before either elf could say a word.
So they were sweet. Awkward to be around, but sweet. That was not to say that they never argued. Oh, they loved to argue. Rook learned very quickly—with knowing looks from Lace and Varric both—that Solas and Eira not only argued, but seemed to thrive on it.
If it was a serious argument, they would speak in either hushed tones or raised voices, with no in-between. Sometimes, if it was really heated, they'd start speaking Elven, and Rook would scurry over to Davrin's quarters later to learn all the juicy details.
Usually their arguments were nonsense to Rook—all rhetoric and elven scholarship and turns-of-phrases and in-jokes. Sometimes it was endearing. Sometimes it became increasingly awkward to navigate.
Lately, though, their arguments straddled the line between friendly banter and barely-disguised hurt. Those arguments were the worst, because Rook would think it was safe, only to feel the worst rush of secondhand embarrassment and awkwardness she had ever felt mere minutes later.
“Ghilan'nain will not fall for such a simple trick,” Solas said, pacing from one end of the de facto war room to the other. “Nor will her creations. We must consider other options.”
Eira stood over the table, her hand planted flat on its surface. A frown tugged at her mouth. Her dark hair had come mostly loose from its braid, and the frizzy little silver hairs at her temple glinted in the light.
“Do you have a better trick up your sleeve?” Eira asked. Her voice was deceptively calm, but Rook knew a goad when she heard one.
Here we go, she thought.
Solas scoffed. He wheeled around mid-pace. “Ghilan’nain,” he said, “is among the oldest of my adversaries. If there was a trick capable of subduing her, I would have employed it by now.”
“Her creations have already been spotted in Minrathous. I have reports of sightings from before the ritual—” Eira cut herself off and made a face. Solas made a face. Rook looked away. Then, in a softer voice: “If we don't act soon…”
“Action,” Solas said, “is not inherently superior to inaction.”
Eira's frown twisted into something bitter. “Clearly,” she said, jabbing such a pointed look in Solas’s direction that even Rook felt it.
Solas took a breath and visibly released it. His mouth twitched, but—Rook had to hand it to him—it was hard to crack that facade.
Then he shot an equally pointed, even more scathing look in Rook's direction.
“Yes,” he agreed, his tone so clipped and polite that he may as well have shouted obscenities. “Clearly.”
Rook was not nosy.
Okay—maybe she was a little nosy. But it was a regular sort of nosy! Who didn't lean in to catch interesting bits of gossip from the other side of a room, or have their friend translate clipped Elven phrases overheard from lover's quarrels?
Okay, so maybe it went a bit beyond regular nosy. But who could blame her? Between missions, Rook was so caught up in guilt and fear and the end of the world and two evil gods on a rampage that a little bit of juicy gossip was a nice relief.
And really, Rook wasn't alone. The Inquisitor and the Dread Wolf were both practically legends; everyone was at least a little curious. And the two elves were so obnoxious and obvious about their entire love affair that it was impossible not to overhear something. The worst part was that they seemed to think they were being sneaky about it.
So Rook might’ve eavesdropped on a spare argument or two. Might’ve had Davrin translate the odd bit of overheard Elven. But she never—never!—had any intention at all of overhearing what she did that night outside of Solas’s door.
Her first mistake was staying up to stare at maps and plans and research. Her second mistake was thinking, Solas doesn't like me, but he's usually awake this late, and maybe he could answer a few questions.
That should've been her cue to go to bed. Going to Solas in the middle of the night? For advice? She should've known better.
But she went anyway. She crept silently through the winding darkened halls until she found the door to Solas’s chambers, and—
What Rook heard on the other side of that door was decidedly not Solas’s voice.
It was a woman’s voice—breathy, higher-pitched than normal, but unmistakably the Inquisitor’s.
Rook froze outside the door, her hand already raised to knock on the door. She lowered her hand.
Then there was Solas’s voice—lower and softer than Rook had ever heard it. He spoke in Elven, but Rook didn’t need to ask Davrin what rosas’da’din or ina’lan’ehn or sathan meant. She had a pretty good idea. And more to the point, she didn’t really want to know.
She also didn’t really want to listen outside of Solas’s door. She didn’t want to hear any of the sounds she heard that night—not the faint creaking of an old bed or the wispy moans of the Inquisitor or the obnoxious snorting giggles that came after.
It was partly a fear of being caught—of her escaping footsteps echoing loudly enough for the two elves to hear—that kept her feet rooted to the floor. It was also, she hated to admit, a bit of morbid curiosity.
But then Solas made a low, desperate sort of noise and Rook decided okay, that’s enough of that. Her feet promptly unrooted themselves. The fear that had frozen her thawed. She took a hasty step backwards and then came the worst possible thing that could’ve happened:
All the noise stopped.
The hallway outside of Solas’s door became perilously silent. Rook held her breath.
Then: muffled giggles. Another string of Elven, but this time the words sounded more like curses than dirty talk. Then Rook felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle—felt the slow creep of a spell cast as a wave of magic settled over the door and, presumably, the bedchamber beyond it.
Rook wasn’t a mage. But she also wasn’t stupid. She’d seen mages cast silencing spells before—popular little spells, back in Minrathous. If the sudden, unnatural quiet in the hallway was any clue, this was one of them. She took it as a merciful, if embarrassing, cue to leave.
After that, Rook was a lot more careful about her late-night roaming, even if some of the old morbid curiosity occasionally reared its head.
She had no desire to repeat that morning—the usual chatter as the team met for breakfast and Rook, sitting a little apart from them all, unable to look Solas or Eira in the eye.
It was a unique sort of embarrassment. Solas clearly knew that someone had overheard his night with the Inquisitor. But he did not accuse anyone. He did not even look at anyone accusingly. That was almost the worst part. Rook had the horrible feeling that he knew it was her—but he said not a single word.
Despite Rook’s embarrassment about that night, it did seem like Eira and Solas got along better afterwards.
They stood closer together in the common rooms. They would sit beside each other, exchange longer glances, speak in softer, sweeter voices. Once, during a meeting, Rook had even caught them holding hands—the scandal!
Another night, Varric had gathered everyone together in the common room and made them all play Wicked Grace. Long after the game had ended, sometime in the early hours of the morning, Rook found herself wandering the Lighthouse sleeplessly once again.
Her insomnia had only gotten worse since the whole affair—disaster!—with the ritual. She half-hoped Solas would notice and offer some kind of ancient, godly wisdom—mostly because that way, she wouldn't have to ask him herself.
For all that she rolled her eyes at him, he was intimidating. He scared her a little. He could tear the world asunder if he wanted to. He nearly had!
Eventually her wandering led her back to the common room. And, there, curled on the couch where they had sat hours earlier, were Eira and Solas—fast asleep in a tangle of (thankfully clothed) limbs.
It was almost worse than overhearing them. This felt so casually intimate, in a way that made Rook's skin itch. She had the immediate impression that she was not meant to see it.
All the pretense and facade and stress were gone from Solas's face; he looked peaceful, younger, almost happy as he slept. He looked like a person, in the same way Eira had when she'd first arrived at the Lighthouse.
Of course Rook did not test her luck this time. She took one last curious look, and then crept quietly, carefully back down the way she came.