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1. Rook, revisited
Neve finds Rook refreshing.
So many leaders let it all go to their heads. It’s less frustrating when she expects it — and frankly, she usually does — but Neve can never fully shake the little bit of hope that each time will be different. Better.
That means it always hurts, in the end. More dashed hopes for the pile she keeps stored behind her heart.
She does it this time too, allows herself to want. Maybe this case with Rana won’t leave her craving a world where she doesn’t have to fight the city she loves. Then she’s watching the First Templar let Bataris go, and she remembers why she works alone. Power makes people worse.
The world’s bad enough already; she doesn’t need worse.
Rana stares at her solemnly, and Neve looks away. It isn’t Rana’s fault, not really, but Neve isn’t in the mood for their little dance of mollifying words now.
Rook, though—
Well, she sees why Varric picked her. Not that it would have mattered much anyway if he hadn’t: Harding is understandably distraught, Bellara far too new and naive, and Neve herself—
I work alone, she repeats. It’s been a mantra lately, as she feels herself growing roots. I work alone: will she remember to rip them up before they grow too deep?
So there aren't many other options. And while Rook clearly isn’t actively enthused about her new position, she’s taken it in stride. If the realities of command are weighing on her, Neve hasn’t seen it yet, and she’s been looking.
There’s something there, Neve knows, something driving her, and she wants to know what.
She notes it down later: Unflappable. How? Who is “Rook” really?
2. Name
Rook is uncharacteristically unyielding when it comes to her name.
She has a quip for everything — including multiple that have already made their new necromancer recruit visibly cringe and, on one occasion, mutter a solemn “Oh, Rook, this is serious!” — but when asked, she replies merely, “Just Rook.”
And she does so every time. “It’s just Rook.”
As a friend, Neve doesn’t care. She meets people with stranger secrets a few times a week in Minrathous, and it’s really none of her business.
As a detective, she’s a little curious. If life were less apocalyptic, this side of her might win, but the gods take precedence now. The mystery fades as their journey continues: once a burning question, soon a forgotten factor.
Then they meet Isabela.
Neve knows of the woman, of course, through her own connections — the Lords have done work in Minrathous, and they don’t always clean up after themselves well — and through several nights spent sharing stories with Varric.
And if she’s honest, Neve is a little nervous to see how Rook reacts to one of Varric’s close associates, given the woman’s general avoidance of the loss. Luckily, it seems to be a non-issue: she and Isabela settle after dinner to work out the details of Taash’s time away from the Lords, and Neve is left to observe.
Rook seems calm. Disarmingly so, but that’s a norm with Rook: Neve finds herself swaying between disbelief, amusement, and wariness at the woman’s tenacity.
As they’re getting ready to leave, Isabela smiles in a way you only can when you’re a little bit sad, and Neve’s stomach sinks as she realizes they’re taking another of Isabela’s friends away for their cause.
We’ll bring this one back alright. I promise, she thinks but doesn’t say.
“It’s one of Varric’s nicknames, isn’t it?” Isabela speaks instead. “Rook?”
“Yeah.” A beat, and a shrug. “Apparently I move in straight lines.”
Isabela chuckles. “If it makes you feel better, mine was just Rivaini. His creativity… varied, at times.”
Neve thinks of her own nickname — Slick. really, Varric? — and snorts at that, and Isabela shoots her a charming smile, and oh, Varric didn’t do her justice in his stories.
“Alright, guess I’ll take it then,” Rook says. “Was honored to get a nickname in the first place, really.”
“He was funny about them. Never gave Hawke one, really, despite them being inseparable. He called her Chuckles sometimes, but it never stuck.” Isabela pauses, considering. “Maybe Hawke was the nickname, though: she’d have stabbed him if he ever called her Marian.”
Rook’s shoulders tense, for less than a second.
That’s interesting.
The visit ends shortly after, with little additional fanfare. Neve ponders this development as they traipse back through the Crossroads and into the Lighthouse. She ponders it even as she peels off her coat and gloves and undoes the top three buttons of her shirt, and she ponders it as she pulls out her notebook.
But she doesn’t write anything yet. She needs to know for sure.
The knock a few minutes later is expected: Rook always does a round of check-ins after she’s cleaned up for the evening.
“Come in,” Neve calls.
The woman’s cheeks are pink, Neve notes: freshly washed, given the way the curls around her face hang a little limply, dampened by a splash. It makes her look younger.
Neve decides to try something: she looks up at Rook carefully, silent for long enough that the woman tilts her head in question.
And then she strikes. “So: Marian.”
Rook stiffens again, and this time Neve can see the way her eyes widen unconsciously, barely, before she can school them back to careful indifference.
Neve hums, and Rook realizes she’s been caught. She sighs.
“How’d you figure it out?”
“You reacted earlier. When Isabela said it.”
Rook nods, considering this information. “Yeah, I guess I did. Good catch.”
“I’m a very good detective,” Neve says, looking up at Rook.
The consideration with which Rook regards her— It’s not new, but Neve isn’t sure how to interpret it yet. Whether it’s idle interest or something more, Neve finds she doesn’t mind it.
“Yeah, I know,” Rook replies, quiet and low.
Rook smiles. Neve smirks back.
“Don’t worry,” Neve assures her. “I won’t tell.”
At that, Rook laughs. “It’s really not as big a deal as I’ve been making it seem. I’m sure I’ll break eventually.”
“Harding’s badgering getting to you?”
“Maybe a little.”
“You know, you had me thinking it was something awful, the way you avoided the topic.”
Rook looks away, and Neve realizes too late that Rook’s humor about her discovery is — at least partially, maybe solely — a shield. “It was a family name” is all she says, and Neve nods: she doesn’t know anything about Rook’s family, but the implication is enough. There’s pain there.
Rook continues before she can say anything: “Plus Warden Thorne sounded a lot cooler. Then Varric called me Rook once, and it just stuck.”
Neve notes the redirection and doesn’t push. “It fits.”
“It does, doesn’t it? He didn’t even find out my first name ’til a few months in. Freaked him out big time.” Rook smiles, and it’s wistful, and she looks away for a moment. Rook’s voice gets lower, a bad mimicry of the dwarf’s: “‘Shit, Hawke really is haunting me. I guess this is a sign I need to start writing her more,’ he said.”
Neve sighs. Oh, Varric.
“There was just… a lot of weight,” Rook says, shrugging. “The family thing and then also living up to— He called me Hawke once. Don’t know if he even noticed, but I did.”
Neve thinks about the crossbow on the bed in the infirmary with a sense of sick foreboding: this type of mission won’t end with just one lost friend. Rook doesn’t seem to want to talk about Varric much, and she and Harding haven’t pushed.
This is good, Neve decides: this acknowledgement is a sign of processing. She’ll make a note of that.
(And later, much later, she’ll read it over with despair: how could she have not seen it? How could she have not known?)
The topic turns to other, less somber things — their new teammate, their next step — and then wanes. Talking to Rook is easy, and more enjoyable than poring over notes for the tenth time.
No: Rook doesn’t need the qualifiers. She’s enjoyable, period, Neve thinks.
It’s a surprising realization, the way she feels a little heavier when the other woman eventually leaves.
Rather than think about that, she pulls back out her notebook, flipping to the section she’s added for their journey, their situation, their team. Rook has two pages already, and at the bottom of the latest she begins to write.
Marian Thorne. Family name — history?
Varric connection: Rook reminded him of Hawke?
Pretty name. Fits her.
Then she crosses out the last line.
3. Magic
Electric. Palpable, too: feels like a buzz when I get too close. Clearly not Circle trained, especially not in South. Too raw.
Powerful. Uncontrolled? No. Likes to shock people for fun: can restrain it when it suits her.
So restraint usually doesn’t suit her: part of Warden life? To do: learn more about Warden training philosophy — start with Davrin?
Dagger and orb. Another sign of apostate past? Uncommon, that’s for sure. Maybe trained by non-mage at some point? Fluidity with dagger outside of magical aptitude
Throws herself into fights, but bad at healing magic. Ego? Deserved confidence? Death wish?
4. Physique
It’s purely the mystery of it.
Rook’s a mage, and mages, by and large, use barriers and cast spells from a distance. Mages have no need to be particularly strong.
That’s it: there’s no reason for Rook’s arms to look like that, and Neve simply wants to understand why they do.
She’s been short on idle casework lately — gods and blights leave no time for lost pets, stolen trinkets, and family intrigue — and she needs a quick win. It’s something like that that makes her stare at Rook’s forearms, she tells herself.
She doesn’t have as neat an explanation for why her mind immediately starts counting the freckles on the other woman’s wrists. Then Rook moves, and she jolts back, inhaling loudly enough for Taash to glance at her from across the library.
Her journeys with Rook thus far have been limited to— Flatter locations, Neve realizes later. Dock Town, the Necropolis, and even a few of Rook’s tamer trips to Arlathan.
So when Rook brings her to Treviso, Neve quickly makes a mental note to mark this particular mystery as solved: the woman scales the porticos, rooftops, and trellises without a second glance. This clearly isn’t a new development, either, given the fluidity of her movements.
Strong: had no trouble pulling herself up after missing a jump, she writes later, telling herself this is pertinent.
Because of Warden training? Or just a Rook thing?
Either way: the arms have an answer.
Neve thinks for one last, long moment about the way Rook’s biceps had flexed as she lifted herself upward earlier. And then her thoughts drift to what her abdominal muscles must have looked like as well, tensed, and—
Neve slams her notebook shut. She needs coffee.
5. Rook, revisited
Neve returns to her office only after the dining room door has shut behind Rook.
Her own door latches with a clack. What was she thinking?
She shakes her head. Getting this emotionally involved? Foolish. Bonding with Assan is one thing: still a deeper involvement than she’d allow herself most of the time, but she can tell herself it’s scientific curiosity as much as anything.
Plus, well, he and Fred are sweet.
Rook is sweet too, but a human kind of sweet. A human kind of sweet that means she looks at Neve sometimes with those big, blue eyes, from under those dark curls that always seem to be falling into her face, and Neve aches.
The thought sticks as she replays the interaction that just ended: Rook’s hair, barely damp — post-mission refresh, no doubt. Neve’s mind hones in on the piece on the left, the way it had fallen over Rook’s remnant-blue eyes as she leant over to pet the griffon. The way the strands shook as Rook combed her fingers through them, brushing them back only for two curls to fall forward again instantly.
Neve suddenly wants to be able to fill her notes with every adjective that describes its color (auburn? no, too bright. but brown alone doesn’t capture the way it shines in the sunlight), texture, feel, the way Rook stands next to her, the way Rook looks at her, the way—
No. I can’t do this. I can’t hurt her.
She pulls out her notebook. Casework always soothes her.
She flips toward the back of the book, to her latest notes on the strange occurrences in Dock Town, but something earlier stops her: Who is “Rook” really?
It wasn’t personal back when she wrote it. Rook was an unknown.
Neve is still desperate to know more, but it is personal now. Her eyes scan down her previous notes on Rook, and her lips twist into something like a grin.
Funny, how fast perceptions change. Or— Maybe change isn’t the right word, she notes. Because she stands by her thoughts, all things considered.
Unflappable. Still true, but Neve has begun to understand why. Rook isn’t superhuman, just determined to make the best out of everything. The jokes are genuine — her dedication to making them that often is proof enough — but they cover something.
It’s not insecurity. The team is both relieved by and envious of Rook’s obvious confidence, Neve knows.
It’s almost— Sadness. And the reasons behind that are simply Neve’s newest mystery.
After all, she can’t help investigate the gods unless she understands all the variables at play here, their own leader included. She pulls out her pen, twisting it between two fingers before she begins to write.
- Cyrian working for Anaris — though I can’t blame Rook for this one. Poor Bellara
- The Crow funeral with Lucanis. To do: research further. Parts of ceremony unexpected
- Necropolis. Good at hiding it: Emmrich doesn’t suspect. Shoulders tense during ride down. Must admit I’m not a fan of the murkiness, myself
- Missing family in Wetlands. Whoever opened that well should have known better.
And then she sits back. The times she’s seen Rook affected — wide-eyed, devastated in a way she isn’t able to school back into a smirk — are listed before her.
“Ah,” Neve murmurs, the fluttering butterflies of her moment with Rook and Assan long forgotten. The pattern here is clear.
This is not her information to know, but that’s fine: she can wait for Rook to share this herself. Share whatever loss, whatever family loss, drives her now.
6. Upbringing
It feels wrong to write down Rook’s greatest pain in detail, so she doesn’t.
Instead, she scans down her notes, crossing out the incorrect guesses so the truth can be found in the lines between.
Under Quick to save Minrathous, Neve adds: Venatori grudge personal.
She doesn’t add anything about the way Rook had curled in on herself while describing it: the way the Venatori had attacked, the blight they had wrangled claiming her family.
The cruel randomness is the worst part, Neve knows: they were unfortunate casualties in the Venatori crusade against the Inquisition, chosen by fate to pay the ultimate price for someone else’s war.
Neve scratches out History with Wardens unknown, replaces it with Warden ritual by necessity: saved her life.
The Wardens are cagey about exactly what their rites entail, but Neve has heard enough to know it’s far from easy, far from painless. She thinks of a younger Rook, orphaned, alone.
She sighs. This doesn’t matter, not when Aelia’s back, but she can’t tear her thoughts away.
Rook is so— Rook, still, despite it all. Willing to join the fight, despite the fact that she’s lost more than her fair of them, and Neve wonders if she takes the right notes, asks the right questions, cracks the right case—
Could she be like Rook? That open, that willing to love, despite it all?
It’s what Rook deserves.
She rests her chin on her fist, letting her eyes slide closed.
7. Rook, revisited
It’s a mere day later that Neve is dotting the I in Aelia’s name one more time and sliding the notebook back into her drawer.
There: everything she remembers about the remnants, Aelia’s reappearance, all of it. Documented and detailed out, ready for investigation.
I’ll take Aelia down. For good this time.
Then she pauses and, before she can stop herself, grabs the notebook back out. She knows exactly where to flip to, and she chooses not to ponder that further.
She looks at Rook’s name on the page.
She kissed Rook. Earlier. On the docks.
She shuts the notebook again. Reopens it.
What am I thinking? What am I doing? Am I going to write about what her lips felt like? Embarrassing.
Neve thinks about Bellara and her serials, Varric and his epic tales and grand poetry, and suddenly understands them both a little better.
She doesn’t write anything, but she lets her thoughts wander, and it feels like free-fall all the same.
8. Rook, revisited
Neve flips to the middle of her notebook. Her mind is reeling: so many new details about lichdom to record, process, understand.
At least Fred’s alright, she thinks. She doesn’t know Emmrich well enough to ask the man to open up, not about this. But in her own room, in the silence of her thoughts, she is satisfied with the outcome of this particular adventure.
There are, after all, much scarier things than death.
Before she finds the right page, however, her eye catches on other words: Natural leader.
Neve stops, smiling. Her early notes on Rook continue to amuse, especially as the two of them get more—
Serious, she knows, is the right word, but her mind fights against it. Serious, only until the house of cards falls. Serious, until one of them—
Maybe Emmrich had a point about immortality.
The notes continue: clearly, Neve sees, she had been interested in this particular aspect of Rook’s personality.
Willing to take charge — always like this? Forced to before?
Quick to praise team. Understands value of respect, appreciation
Neve’s mind drifts back to several nights prior, and she unwittingly snorts.
The notes are true enough: Rook is precisely the leader this team needs.
But—
The lights are softer in Rook’s room, all fade-blue glow and shadows of water, and it makes Rook’s eyes look even brighter than normal when Neve pushes her back against the chaise.
“Neve,” she murmurs.
“Again.”
“Hm?”
“Say my name like that again.”
Rook’s small smile grows, and Neve knows Rook is filing this away for future teasing. But the teasing won't happen now, not when Rook's so breathless, so needy, so—
“Neve.” It’s even quieter, and Neve decides to hear all of the longing and none of the love. Easier, that way.
The flittering of a wisp breaks her from her thoughts.
Rook might be good at dishing out orders to the team, but when it's just them? That’s a different story, and it’s one Neve is immeasurably pleased that she alone knows.
9. Food, revisited
Antivan hot chocolate: she liked it a lot — is it similar to what she grew up with?
To do: try it.
Update: tasted the cocoa powder. Sweet, lightly spiced. Can certainly find something similar.
—
Chocolate suppliers:
Starkhaven Bakery — promising. Update: destroyed by darkspawn
Kirkwall Chocolatiers — could ask Isabela? No. Embarrassing
Harding mentioned Ferelden chocolate from her Ma? No. Gift has to be from me
Val Royeaux Chocolatiers — promising. Update: destroyed by darkspawn
She shuts the notebook. This is silly.
The next day, she writes the most foolish letter she’s ever written and sends it off to Isabela, and two weeks after that an unlabeled package of Kirkwall’s best chocolates arrive.
The giddiness that fills Neve’s stomach feels a lot like the flu.
10. Names for Dock Town’s newest detective agency
Neve knows they deserve a page of their own, not just a list of jotted notes in the corners where they fit.
But doing that — making space just for this future, these options — would make it real, and it all feels so perfectly unreal. They had done it: they had defeated the gods, and she is still standing, and Rook is still standing.
Dock Town Detectives: straightforward, but Rana doesn’t like it
Gallus & Savas: Private Investigators
Savas & Gall— (Unfinished. Neve knows Rana won’t fight her on this one.)
Every potential name, she realizes, is squeezed somewhere on a page about Rook. Something to ponder further, her mind’s immediate association between Rook and the future.
The idea doesn’t hurt anymore, and that’s another thing to ponder.
First, though: Rook is standing in the doorway, and Neve looks up with a smile.
“Hi,” Rook says.
“Hi.”
“You haven’t eaten yet today.” It’s only when Rook says it that Neve realizes she’s right: her stomach has been idly aching for the better part of the morning. “Let’s go make lunch.”
“Defeat some gods, and suddenly you become so demanding,” Neve teases, but she’s already sliding her notebook to the side and standing.
“No, I just don’t want to have to do all the dishes myself after I eat.”
Neve chuckles. “Alright. What’s on the menu?”
“Don’t get your hopes up. I think we’ve only got stuff for a salad.”
Neve tries to sigh, but the faint smile on her lips hasn’t faded since the battle ended, and she doesn’t think it’s going to anytime soon.
Rook smiles back, holding up her hands in mock surrender. “Well, see, I have quite the task on my hands. The woman I’m desperately in love with refuses to eat vegetables, so it’s up to me—“
“Trouble,” Neve warns.
“What?”
There’s a pause. “I love you.”
Rook looks surprised, mouth falling open, and Neve almost says it again, and again after that, and a fourth time, and maybe however many times it’ll take before Rook doesn’t look surprised anymore.
Then her favorite Rook returns, easy smirk and squinted eyes. “I know you do.”
Neve shoots her a look — careful, Trouble — and Rook’s smile grows.
11. A number
She doesn’t know where else to write it. Doing so in the long-since-filled notebook, the one that she hasn’t had to open in months since it all ended, feels— Wrong, somehow, but also deeply right. The cover is faded, spine cracked from all the times she’s pored over the text within.
But there’s a small space in the corner of one page, next to Who is “Rook” really?, that will fit it perfectly, and the doubt fades. This is the spot.
Neve doesn’t really even need to record it at all: the information has already been sent to the jeweler. But it feels like the final detail in The Case of Rook, somehow, so she picks up her pen.
She doesn’t label it, doesn’t have to. She will always know what the little number means: it’s the circumference of Rook’s left ring finger, carefully, sneakily measured one night in one of Neve’s best solves.
0. Rook
Her apartment is cold most of the time. Tonight is no exception: she shrugs off her coat, moist from the Dock Town drizzle, and pulls a threadbare blanket around her shoulders.
She sighs. This case— She shouldn’t say yes. She knows she shouldn’t.
Varric Tethras had looked exhausted, and the scout with him — Harding — seemed apprehensive, eyes flitting between the window and the door. They hadn't shared many details, promising more once she had proven herself worthwhile, loyal.
There’s nothing good here, she thinks. Nothing good at all.
She should say no. This type of case never ends well.
Yet Neve sends word the next morning: I’m in.
They move fast, and she meets them at the Swan again that night to learn more: an elven god, a ritual that may destroy the world. Somehow, she potentially even believes it.
“So it’s you two against… What? A god?” she laughs, humorless.
“Three of us, technically,” Varric retorts. “Four with you.”
“Hmm. Who are we missing, then?”
“Name’s Rook. She’s looking into a lead along the coast. I'm sure you’ll meet her soon.”
Neve pulls out a brand new notebook that night. This case will need it.
The spine cracks when she bends it open for the first time. She twists her pen between her fingers and labels four pages: Solas. Varric. Harding.
Rook.