#cathedralposting

"a PEACE cut from the ALL" A PEACE. A peace. Not piece. He was content once. Rememburnings. The memory of what he used to be burns. An infinity instead of a small shade.

Spite is often treated childishly by several characters—Taash, for example, and even Lucanis depending on your dialogue choices—but I actually…don’t think Spite is all that childish. He’s been put into a situation he’s never experienced before, in a place where reality doesn’t work like it should, and been put through torture that he feels doubly through Lucanis on top of it all. Any person would through a “tantrum” under these circumstances. Spite’s behavior is reasonable.

He never tries to hurt Lucanis’s companions, not once. He only ever tries to leave, as Lucanis promised him he would be able to. Even Lucanis, he only hurts once outside of the Ossuary, when he must have felt unbelievably confused. Calivan is dead and Lucanis has gone home, has allies, and yet to Spite, he simply refuses to leave the Ossuary. And still, he asks. He could wrestle control from Lucanis, but instead he asks (or demands) to talk to Rook. And all he wants to say is that he wants to be free.

All and all, Lucanis does not reach out to anyone to ask for help with his depression or PSTD. Spite is his problem, he says, and says often. His burden. He never intended to let anyone in, even though he admits that he doesn’t know how to start healing. He asks for Rook’s help against Zara, against Illario, but no one is privy to his mental and emotional struggles.

Spite, on the other hand, asks immediately. Or he wants to ask. And finally, when Lucanis is in the middle of a spiral, it's Spite that says "Help us." Not demanding, just asking. Pleading. And still only to Rook. While I think at first, Spite wants Rook specifically because he knows Lucanis will listen, I think that has grown into something more by the time Inner Demons comes around.

"Help us," he says. Not just 'make him listen' or 'help Lucanis'. Us.

This is all to say I think that while Spite may not understand or feel romance (yet) he most certainly feels love. He loves Lucanis, whose image he takes ("They wouldn't dare, Lucanis is mine.") and he loves Rook ("Rook is my favorite." "Smells like...Rook." "Help us." The WINGS.) And that's all trust is, isn't it? A kind of love? Showing vulnerability to someone close to you?

When Spite is finally allowed to communicate, he shows plenty of maturity. He gives Lucanis space, he asks Emmrich to teach him fire, he's willing to try new things, and he loves.

Let me be clear in that I think Rook loves all their companions deeply. Let me also be clear in that I am very biased. But there's something so raw in that moment, after Rook shouted for Neve/Bellara before Elgar'nan stole them away, after Rook shouted for Harding/Davrin after Ghilan'nain kills them.

Rook has lost two companions already, snatched from him in a blink and irretrievable. No bodies to bury or burn. They are completely lost. And there is something so raw and aching in the fact that it's Lucanis that Rook can run to. Lucanis's body they can touch, whose coldness they can feel, whose stillness.

I imagine that is when it all really felt terribly real, that Rook had lost people and wasn't getting them back. This is the moment where the price of victory sinks in as deep as a blade. It's Lucanis whose "death" drives that point home, Lucanis who briefly shifts into Varric to remind Rook about the loss that started it all.

Since I romanced Lucanis first, I assumed that the game would replace him with whoever you'd committed to. But to see that it's him no matter what, that the final resounding crash and culmination of all Rook's losses thus far ends with Lucanis?

I'm haunted by the implications of this. This is an intelligent Despair demon that ruined an entire family by offering them hope and safety from the Blight and then snatching it away. It offered them salvation. For it to offer Rook to Spite, for Rook to be the best or even the only out that Spite can see...

Regardless of whether you romance Lucanis, and regardless of whether you believe Spite is or isn't a part of their relationship, this to me is yet more proof that Spite and Lucanis both love Rook very much. I haven't played a Minrathous route, so I can't speak on that much, but if you save Treviso it just seems so clear that Lucanis and Spite both come to depend heavily on Rook. For Rook to be the embodiment of hope for Spite and safety/comfort for Lucanis...

Idk. This is the stuff ships are made of or whatever the hell. I'm going crazy thinking about this tiny little interaction that's so easy to miss.

And only with Rook. When he faces the guards, the disjointedness returns, slowly but surely. Worse the further into Lucanis's mind you travel, worse when he faces Lucanis. A spirit learning to speak in our world is difficult, we know that...but less so when he's talking to Rook, which is what he's asked for since the beginning. It's so subtle but so important.

I imagine it feels similar to learning a second language, where you have a perfect imagining of what you WANT to say but can't articulate it in a way the person you're speaking to understands. And I think the fact that he speaks most clearly to Rook, who is one of the few people who seems to want to understand him, even above Lucanis for a certain length of time....

And on his second attempt, with Ghilan'nain having just foiled his attempt again, Harding or Davrin just lost, and Rook in her grasp, his attack is beautiful still, maybe even more so. But it's not acrobatic, not poised. Even when having reconciled with Spite, in the face of this loss, Lucanis leaps out of pain and desperation, and this time he strikes true.