Chapter Text
The first time it happened, it nearly killed him. He stopped, following through the motion already happening in the swing of his axe without any real meaning behind it. Somewhere, he was vaguely aware that his swing ended in a spinal cord. He could hear the snap, feel the bone splintering through the long haft. It wasn’t important. Darkspawn blood sprayed, burning his cheek like black acid. That wasn’t important either.
The only thing that mattered in that moment was the sound of Dorian laughing. The mage stood slightly crouched, staff twirling lurid and firey in his hands as he conjured gouts of flame. Bull had never known that a darkspawn could scream before this moment, nor that the prissy Tevinter mage got his kicks anywhere other than books.
Dorian’s was not a beautiful laugh. It was twisted and slightly ugly. A high pitched giggle pulled from the part deep within him that liked hurting people--not good people, and not too much, but just a bit. Just enough. The Iron Bull was familiar with that kind of laughter. He felt an answering chuckle start deep in his throat, was not paying attention when he started to let his guard down.
A flail swung at him low from his blind side. Had he been looking around the way he was supposed to, he would have had the creature’s skull in five or six pieces before it ever got this close to him. As it was, he had no option but to throw himself backwards, landing hard on his rear. The flail still left a long gouge that would have taken out his eye all over again had anything still been there. He looked up, his axe already swinging blindly at his attacker but there was no need.
Dorian pointed, not with his staff, which he had apparently forgotten, but with his empty outstretched hand. He uttered two syllables that The Iron Bull would later grin at because they sounded much like a Qunlat swear word. The darkspawn in front of him exploded. He had never seen anything quite like it. One second it was raising its weapon and the next it was just a pair of bloody legs below the knee and he and the gray dwarven stone around him were splattered with blood and chunks of meat for a radius of at least two meters. He didn’t understand any magical theory, but the spell didn’t leave behind the scent of floral residue and rot of the Iron Bull had come to associate with the Tevinter’s necromancy spells. Instead, the air crackled with residual energy. He thought he might be able to taste the essence of magic itself on his tongue were it not for the fine pink mist of darkspawn blood that tinged the air around him and made him afraid to breathe.
Dorian stumbled, looking stunned and leaning heavily on his staff but straightening the moment he realized someone was looking at him.
“And here I thought brutes like you were here to defend frail poncy mages,” he smirked. “It seems I had it the wrong way ‘round.” With that, he fainted dead away.
“Dorian!” the inquisitor bellowed. She had been forced back towards the deep road tunnels, unable to execute a proper offense while compensating for the shimmering magical barriers he had suddenly allowed to fall. The lone remaining Hurlock landed a long scratch on her arm and she let forth a torrent of invective that would have smoked the beards off of her old masters in the carta. It was not until Blackwall rushed over, beheaded the thing with a grunt, that the Iron Bull realized he was still sitting on his ass with his mouth open.
Kyren Cadash dusted herself off and went to see to Dorian while Blackwall knelt next to Bull, offering a flask. “Gargle and spit,” he told the Qunari gruffly. “Trust me when I say their blood is not something you will enjoy having swallowed by accident.” Bull did as he was told, if only to avoid making an unsettling comment to the gray warden about people who swallowed such things on purpose. Everyone thought no one else could possibly know about their secret rituals.
He chuckled. “Only a savage would laugh at violence as though it entertained,” Dorian sniffed.
“Does that make you a savage too, ‘vint?” Bull asked.
Dorian flushed nearly the shade of his wine-colored cloak, and The Iron Bull thought that was almost as nice as the giggling. That color could get him in a great deal of trouble very quickly.
“I appreciate excellent form, nothing more.”
I do like a challenge, The Bull smiled, but he didn’t say anything aloud. Cadash, ever the practical dwarf, cleaned off one of her daggers, then used it to cut a strip from the cleanest part of the cloth under her armor and handed it to Bull. “Thanks Boss,” he rumbled and slapped the fabric over his ruined eye.
“You could at least adjust it properly,” Kyren growled. “You already went and got your eye patch hacked off.” She whipped the fabric off of his head and then laid it back on, her gentle, blunt fingers belied the roughness of her words. She smoothed the linen, already soaked in his blood, and tied it around the back of his head. The Iron Bull avoided hissing at the pressure, but it was a narrow thing. They made their way back to camp, only running into a few wolves on the way back. Bull wondered, not wholly irritably, if every part of the south was this full of all these fucking wolves. He didn’t even know what the hell they were eating out here, scarce as prey was in comparison.
The inquisitor insisted on skinning the damned things, a process the bull would never admit in a hundred years made him squeamish. It reminded him too much of Par Vollen. Of the fate traitors were told to expect from the Ben-Hassrath.
Dorian had no such compunctions. He ripped the hides from the wolves’ flesh with a flick of his staff. Blackwall, still without comment, rolled the damned things up and tucked them into his pack.
They reached camp and Kyren hurried Bull to the healer’s tent. It was astonishing, really, how the tiny dwarven inquisitor could make herself so intimidating. Once inside, she had a quick, whispered conversation with Stitches and then let herself sink into the background with just as little effort. Bull bit back the urge to try to recruit her.
Stitches, along for the mission’s medical needs, carefully peeled back the makeshift bandage. Bull did let out a hiss, just a small one, when Stitches began dabbing at the cut with a stinging green liquid. There was something about the way the ointment hurt. The burning-wet push-pull better-worse. It was a sort of invasion that felt clean.
The antiseptic held all of his attention until his ears pricked at the sound of rummaging behind him. Stitches had a third of a profanity out of his mouth before he decided better of cursing someone who was not really one of the chargers.
“I was just looking for burn cream,” Dorian mumbled.
The Iron Bull struggled to remember what Dorian could have gotten burned on. He didn’t look terribly singed the last time Bull saw him.
Stitches went past Bull, examined whatever Dorian had burned for less than a perfunctory moment. He could not see the injury without turning, without being obvious. His loyal medic, he knew, would not tell him, simply because he wished to know.
The healer made his own rummage through the supplies and handed over the find to Dorian. Bull saw the jar when the mage sat in the only available space remaining in the healer’s tent to apply it. Surprised, he raised his lone remaining eyebrow at Stitches, who was not forthcoming with any clarifying information. The burn cream he had handed Dorian was his own special concoction. It came in a white stone jar, a rune of rejuvenation on the underside of the lid. The wax seal on the jar’s outside held a short series of letters and numerals Bull assumed meant something about the contents to Stitches. He only knew that the stuff worked, and that it was impossibly expensive to make for all of its working. He had never seen him offer it to someone who wasn’t a charger before, and certainly not for a scorching as superficial as Dorian’s burn seemed to be. Well, superficial by Bull's standards. He would keep the finger, at least.
Dorian opened the jar left-handed with some difficulty and then began to spread the thick ointment gently over his blackened fingertips. He looked otherwise uninjured but he appeared thoroughly shaken. Kyren chuckled. “There now, maybe a little fingertip scar, a little charring. No real harm done. Poor little glass cannon.” She thumped him on the shoulder hard enough that he nearly toppled.
Dorian bristled. “What did you just call me?”
“Glass cannon. That’s what we call people like you in Orzammar. Mostly berserkers who decide that they move faster when they don’t put their damn armor on. You roll in all power and fanfare, do a ton of damage, but one hit and you shatter.” The inquisitor shrugged. “It’s not a bad thing. Just means you ought to make sure there’s someone more… bulwarky there to protect you.” Dorian looked as though he very much thought it was a bad thing.
Bull rolled his lone eye. The Vint could take care of himself, as well as anyone else who came along. He’d made that much perfectly clear with his stunt from earlier.
He concentrated on him while he had his wound stitched. It was fast work, the gash long but shallow and clean. Easier to focus on, better to pull his mind there than allow himself to think about the slow, digging drag of thread through his insides. The thought made him slightly queasy, always had. Stitches crouched in front of him once he was done, both of his small hands grasping one of his large ones. He looked uncharacteristically somber, and Bull had a brief flash of terror as he thought of the taint, the infectious blood. “I did the best I could, Chief,” he said, a slight twitch of the lips giving him away, “but you’re going to lose the eye.”
Dorian giggled.