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Dorian refuses to show any emotion when he gets the letter.
It's an innocuous little thing, crisp edges, family seal, all sorts of things that should set off warning bells but mostly just irritate him. When he opens it, the words don't register, not the way they ought to. Condolences. It’s a joke- some sort of poorly thought-out joke while he’s away. Or perhaps a lie, because that's easier to stomach. Trembling finger touch the cracked seal, the cheerful letter and then he drops it like it's on fire and actually lights it on fire. He won't - he can't. He cannot deal with this right now, not with everything else going on.
Like most things in their life, it's not quite easy to just shove something aside and pretend as if it didn’t exist. The breach didn’t work that way, any of the issues they encountered didn’t work that way; it’s no shock that this would be the same. His personal business ends up aired out in front of everyone - which, no, that's unfair. No one makes a scene of it and when he tells the Inquisitor, she's terribly, painfully kind. Sometimes, the kindness is the worst of it.
He and Bull spend the night in their room; it starts with Dorian simply curling up in his lap in front of the fire while reading, and ends with his wrists tied to the bedframe, Bull whispering I’ve got you, kadan, I’ve got you. He doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t poke and prod at the clear injury that Dorian’s holding close to his chest; he gives what he can and Dorian takes it and for the moment, it’s enough.
There's a clock counting down in the back of his head, one he can't shake despite best efforts. He's going to have to return to Tevinter. Other affairs need set in order, along with his father's, and nothing is going to be simple despite his dearest wishes it would be. Bull doesn't fight him on it, which Dorian is grateful for. He takes it rather gracefully, all things considered. You know how to reach me, kadan, he says, and curls his fingers around Dorian's half of the necklace, using that to tug him in for a kiss that lasts long enough that he sucks in a breath when it's done.
They draw out the inevitable as long as humanly (or qunarily, he supposes) possible and when it's done, Dorian goes back. It's not a happy return, by any means.
It falls to Dorian to clean the house. They do have slaves to do it, of course, but it doesn’t seem right, after everything. He takes it room by room, starting in his father’s study. It’s unsettling, doing this, walking into a room that smells just like he remembers from childhood. More unsettling still, is that he can picture his father sitting at the desk there. His vellum is out, a cup for a glass of tea later, a tiny container of sugar with a fresh spoon still out.
All of these little things that line up, that paint a picture that screams that Halward Pavus was going to get up in the morning, answer letters, have a cup of tea, add his precise amount of sugar and then promptly forget about it until hours later, when it was cold. These tiny, little things that Dorian remembers from when he was little, and now he won’t be there to do them at all.
He empties the desk off, filing paperwork to review later. In one of the drawers there’s a tiny box - these ridiculously expensive Orlesian treats he fancies, and imports every so often. There’s one missing from the box, and another half-eaten, a precise little bite taken out of it. For a moment, the sight is so jarring that he can’t think. He was going to eat this. No one else even knew about the chocolates, and no one was going to eat them, now that his father was gone. The half-eaten piece just sits there and for a moment Dorian’s chest is so tight he can’t fucking breathe and he has to sink into the chair, tucking his head between his knees as his eyes burn.
When he recovers enough, he takes everything he can throw away and does, and leaves the desk and all its belongings alone. He was wrong about doing this - the slaves will need to, it’s one battle he can’t bear to fight right now. Instead, he makes his way to his own study, to lose himself in something, anything else.
*
Alexius’ estate feels more like home than his own right now, even though the only things there these days were ghosts.
While going through items a second time, Dorian discovers hand-written copies of their work. They’re all unpublished, of course - nothing finished, mostly theoretical, for the joy of learning and seeking out knowledge. They’re items that he’d missed the first time he had gone through, when he’d come in like a storm and taken just books at first, saving the ones he wanted to keep and donating the rest.
There’s more here than what they had worked on together; it’s enough that it presents a challenge to keep him occupied: to figure out a way to use the magic in a different manner. None of them needed to travel back in time, but the ability to see back, or forward?
He remembers nights with Alexius, their heads bent over paper as they scribbled and tossed ideas back and forth. They were getting ahead of themselves, of course - they hadn’t even mastered time magic, but the idea -- the potential for what they could do after had been something new, exciting. If one could nail down the basics of time travel magic, if they could solidify it into something less dangerous and unpredictable, they could figure out other possibilities.
Forward and backward through time were one thing. What about skimming along another timeline? What about seeing where your choices could have gone? Theory, all of it theory, of course, but Dorian had loved it at the time. Something to keep him busy. Now, he finds himself in much the same habits, grabbing the paperwork to look over later.
Unwise though it is, Dorian buries himself in that to have something else to think about. There’s Maevaris, the Magisterium, any number of other things during the day, but at nights he’s listless unless he has a conversation with the Inquisitor, or with Bull. He dumps all his time into the project, knowing that someday he’ll be fed up with not solving why it won’t work, but for the next few months, it should keep him occupied.
The shocking part isn’t that he solves it. Dorian’s quite sure of his own abilities and really, if anyone were to crack time magic again, it would be him. (There are, of course, other scholars who could potentially have done it, but they didn’t, and he did, so.) No, the shocking part is that it’s so stupidly easy that when he finishes out the equation, he’s almost frustrated with himself for not seeing it earlier.
Dorian sits on the spell for another week, mulling it over. It’s an unwise idea, certainly, but he can’t stop himself from considering it. One look, maybe. Just to see if it works. Gathering ingredients isn’t a difficult tasks; he manages laughably easy and makes sure to draw a circle wide enough to contain the magic that he’s working with.
When he casts, the air tears open with a wet noise, magic blasting out from the space over his hand where he directs it. There’s nowhere for it to go, so it bounced back along the edges of the circle, gathering sparkling and nearly too hot in his hand. The rip seals itself up a moment later - no rifts or holes forming.
The magic curls loose around his fingers, prickling at some points, but never painful. It's not that sort of magic, he muses idly. There's no intent for it to hurt, not really, so it doesn't. Instead, it hooks its claws into him, tingles and leaves him frowning as he considers it. They'd come so close so many times, and yet, a little bit of half-asleep tweaking and now he's here.
Holding the magic in one hand, Dorian thumbs through the paperwork with the other, until he finds the piece he needs. If one were simply using it as a looking glass, well, you needed something to focus that energy, to give you something to look into. A window wouldn’t work by its very nature - being able to see through it wasn’t a fit.
A mirror, though… Ah. There’s an idea. Dorian twists the magic into the mirror by his desk, using it as a means to hold the magic. It's not a perfect solution, nor is it a pretty one, exactly, but so long as he maintains contact with the edge of the mirror and ties the spell to it, it stays.
When you boil it down, it isn’t time travel he’s cracked. He could, of course, try that again but he knows how unwise it is. This is more the potential for seeing the effects of a timeline. Portals were too dangerous, presented too many issues. This was safe enough. Most men would have stopped here - they’ve cracked it, now it’s time to get the schools involved, to try and give this knowledge something tangible, to recreate it. They would wait, and study it.
He'll have a thousand papers to write on the theoretical nature of it once it's done, but right now, he can't keep his curiosity at bay. Normal scholars would leave it alone here, but Dorian can’t bring himself to do it. He’s too curious, the magic plucking at him like an insistent breeze, eager to steal his attention. Idly, he thinks of Bull. He’d probably tell him to cut this weirdass magic crap out, but Bull...well. Bull isn’t here.
Dorian curls his fingers in it like tugging at strands of cloth and pulls, sends the mirror foggy a moment as he brings them all the way back. There's no finesse to it; he has no way of knowing where he is or how far back until the smoke clears. A moment of pause brings the realization that it's not fog from the magic; there's fog in whatever he's seeing. Dorian squints, as if that will help, and out of it, a figure bleeds into view. Qunari, that much registers, and the whoever’s eyes he is borrowing right now, flicker. They’ve seen the Qunari, but they don’t rush to attack yet. Dorian wonders if they’re speaking, maybe; he can see the other’s mouth moving.
At least he’s confirmed that it’s through someone’s eyes. It makes sense; the magic follows the intent and his intent was to see into the past, to events he wouldn't have been able to see otherwise. It's literal, like that, sometimes. The question then becomes whose eyes is he looking out of, but he can worry about that later.
Right now, there’s the more pressing question of what he’s looking at - why this Qunari is just standing there, splattered in blood, holding something in his hand. Squinting does no good, but Dorian tries anyway, peering into the glass. It becomes painfully evident a moment later - a child, Qunari, as well, judging by the horns. The older one holds the child there a moment and whoever owns the eyes Dorian’s looking out of doesn’t blink. They’re there one moment and then the next they’re rushing forward, the glint of an axe held high.
It happens in a heartbeat, as most battles do. A gush of blood and the drop of a body. The Qunari who'd done it falls a moment later, an axe buried in his chest so deep that it takes three pulls for whoever is wielding it to pull it out and then he launches into battle a moment later. Around them are bodies- Qunari, some humans, but mostly Qunari. Women, children, a few soldiers but primarily it looks like casualties of war that were civilians, rather than soldiers.
Dorian doesn't watch, but he doesn't sever the connection, either; there's no telling if he can make it work the way he needs it to again, and he needs to know who this is to guide himself where to go later.
The mirror goes hazy with smoke again and then a grey hand appears, wrenching a door open to do a sweep before moving on. A hand signal - two fingers pointed outward, the rest curled in - Dorian feels his heart stop when he realizes there are two fingers missing. He knows those hands - he couldn't forget those hands. Bull--
The room is cleared but Bull doesn’t move just yet. Instead, there’s a pause, a visible shift where he takes two steps toward the wall and then sags against it like a puppet with its strings cut.
Dorian doesn’t need to see the rest of him to understand what’s happening, where and when they are. “Oh, Maker, Bull,” he breathes, looking away. The moment is too private, and he’s seen too much when Bull lifts a bloodspattered hand and starts frantically trying to wipe it off on his pants. They’re not the garish ones from earlier - they look partially armored, at least at the knees. It doesn’t much matter, though, because once his hands are clean, the palms are pressed to his eyes, and the mirror goes black a moment.
Reprieve doesn’t last long; Bull’s too stubborn to give himself the time he needs. Instead, the hands drop and eyes focus on the axe, hefting it up again. When he goes back out the door, another building is on fire. Another Qunari steps out of the thick smoke, to fight.
It clicks into place abruptly after that, the smoke, the burning buildings, the bodies strewn about. How many nights Bull has woken from a dead sleep, groping for an axe or throwing fists, making choked, animal noises in the back of his throat. Dorian doesn’t ask about Seheron, but he also doesn’t need to. If Bull wants to talk about it, he will.
This isn't for you to see, Dorian thinks, and shoves forward instead of back, the magic behind it graceless but he's already seen more than he ever wanted to. How many apologies he'll owe after this, he doesn't know.
It skips forward, one image bleeding into the next until he stops, catches sight of Krem, a younger Krem, bleeding and clutching a slowly growing red spot at his waist. The vision is tinted red and a gray hand lifts, covered in blood. Dorian shoves forward again, sick to his stomach. No, no. Bad enough that he pries into Bull’s memories, however inadvertent. He doesn’t need to add Krem’s private thoughts, or his past to Dorian’s list of mistakes.
Better to think of himself, instead. There’s a moment where he forces a laugh at it, and then the magic shifts, changes in response. He doesn’t realize what a mistake that is until he's looking out of his own eyes at his father. A younger, more tired looking Halward, standing there, watching him. He looks like a shell of the man Dorian knew while growing up; Dorian hadn’t realized it at the time. Hadn’t registered how old, he looked. Old and resigned, a dagger clutched in one hand, blood puddled on the ground.
No, this isn’t something he wants to relive, either, especially having lived it once.
It skips, then, a twist of his hand and of magic, and the image shifts.
There is marble underneath his feet, his footsteps quick enough that the paintings breeze past him. His eyes are focused straight ahead and Dorian doesn't recognize the building. The doors open, pulled by two slaves who don't look at him and this other version of himself doesn't look at them past a glance.
Inside, there's a throne, black and gold and intimidating to look at, but he walks to it with purpose, and sinks down like he owns it. When his eyes glance out the window, there's a tinge of green to everything, the sky still split open. A world where he doesn't have the Inquisition, then, where he took a different path. A road where he sat on the throne as Archon, ruling a country that would probably turn itself into dust, with Corypheus at its head. Charming.
This other version of head looks off to the side, the doors opening. There’s a woman that steps through, barely giving anything a second glance; it’s more as if she’s barely there, the steps measured, careful. She’s beautiful enough, Dorian supposes, but it’s clear there’s no affection between them. When she comes in for a kiss, Dorian jerks back the image before it gets there, grimacing. No, he doesn’t need that either, thank you very much. Archon, with a wife. Wouldn’t his father be terribly proud. Dorian grits his teeth and bottles that up for the time being.
Honestly, he ought to leave this where it is. Theories were proved, years of work solved in just a few days. There’s something he could bring to the colleges, to scholars, to so many people and there’s so much potential there. His hand drags across the mirror again and clears it. Hesitation last for all of a moment before he decides to keep going. Curiosity killed the cat, of course, but he can't seem to stop. Instead, he thinks about times where things could have changed, decisions they made that would ultimately affect the outcome and lets the magic guide him instead. There’s no telling where he’ll end up but it’s worth a shot.
But no, Dorian doesn’t know when to stop, so he doesn’t. The mirror clears to the sight of a child - golden, curly hair, big green eyes. Dorian knows that it’s not his- thank the fucking Maker for that, but that begs the question of why he has an armful of fair-haired child and where its parents are. The child smiles up at him, honestly too large for Dorian to be carrying him about like that, judging by the gaps in his smile as he loses his baby teeth.
Bull’s nearby - standing with another child perched on his shoulders, just as blonde and gap-toothed as the one Dorian’s holding. She has a wood sword in one hand and points it at Dorian, one chubby hand curling around Bull’s horn as he nods and takes off at careful jog toward them. They end up in a heap on the ground, Dorian raising a hand dramatically toward the sun before he’s set upon by two wriggling children, Bull looking over their shoulders with this ridiculously warm, soft smile on his lips.
There’s a ring on his finger; Dorian wouldn’t have noticed it right away, except when Cullen hauls the children off with a wry smile, and Bull helps him up, he stops. There’s a matching one on Bull’s hand - larger, obviously, but it’s still terribly new judging by the way Bull just sort of stares at it a moment and then smiles, huge and positively ridiculous. Worse still is the way he bends down and kisses it, and then looks off to the side at some unheard noise and then sweeps Dorian up, pressing horrific, messy kisses all over him while the children clap off to the side.
That’s all he can stomach for the time being; he isn’t sure if this is his timeline, or if it’s another one, but he can’t watch more. Not because it’s difficult, or particularly awful, but because for a moment he wanted so badly that it eclipsed everything else. Rather than dwell, he switches to another thread. A new series of choices.
When the glass clears, they're standing on the top of a grassy hill, looking out onto ships in the distance. His stomach twists in a knot, already knowing, expecting what's coming. There's no sound, not for this, but he doesn't need it. He can read the tells in the set of Bull's shoulders, in the smug satisfaction radiating from Gatt.
The Inquisitor watches, touches a small hand to Bull's arm while the ships don't blow up. He doesn't need this other version of himself to move forward, because he knows what he'll find, yet his feet move.
They watch together, while Bull's men die, none of them able to look away from the decision made. He tries to force this other version of himself to look to Bull, to look away, but there’s nothing for it. There’s no comfort he can offer in that moment, because for all that it’s a victory, it’s a hollow one. There’s nothing Dorian could say or do to ever make that ache any better.
When it's done, this other version of himself looks to the ground, staring at his own shoes for a moment and then back up to Bull. Bull looks...harder. Dorian can't quite place his finger on it, but whatever it is that this other version of himself sees in the lines of Bull's face, it prompts him to shift forward and touch his shoulder, just a brief squeeze. While it’s not shrugged off, it isn’t acknowledged, either. Bull lets it linger a moment and then slips away, ripping his axe out of the ground with a vicious jerk.
At least they never allowed that to happen. Dorian closes his eyes a moment and then skips to another thread.
This time, it’s a view of Bull's face above his, smiling and warm as he looks down. There are more scars on his face this time, to go with the ones on his eye. He’s still handsome, but it’s...jarring, looking at a face just as familiar as his own, only to realize he doesn’t know half the stories behind those scars. He gets a glimpse of his own hands, lashed to the headboard with bright red rope, slashes gouged into the wood from Bull’s horns. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what he’s peering in on, and he shuts that down a moment later. He doesn’t need to peep on his own intimate nights, thank you very much. He hasn’t reached that level of neediness while Bull is away.
This timeline doesn't seem so different, truth be told. The loss of the Chargers is obvious; the tavern is emptier, quieter. He skips forward a few times, here.
Once, Maryden is standing near Krem’s chair. Dorian can’t make out what she’s singing, but he sees the way Bull jerks, glancing from her to the empty chair. Another time, a man tries to sit there - tall, spindly limbs and a greasy, awful smile. It lasts for all of three seconds before Bull lumbers over and shakes his head. Once more, but this time it’s the Inquisitor, pressing a hand to the chair, only for her hand to curl into a tiny ball and then withdraw. This other Dorian meets her eyes a moment, inclines his head, and then they both leave. Bull isn’t in his chair that time, but Dorian doesn’t know if that’s significant or not.
If the Chargers were dead, Bull’s adamant about not letting anyone fill their place, apparently. Even a chair. Idly, he wonders if that extends to the whole of the Inquisition. If no one could bear to put someone in it, after everything. Everything else seems to line up, though. There are any other number of changes that he thinks to go down - what if they'd chosen someone other than Celene? What if, what if, what if. He doesn't explore those just yet, instead taking in the sights in front of him.
At least it’s a good night; there’s a glass of wine in his hand and one in Bull’s. The tiny glass is dwarfed by Bull's larger hands but neither of them seem to take note. There’s a soft, warm smile from Bull, before he settles his glass to the side and rises.
Dorian skips to another thread. Then another, and another.
Playing chess with Cullen in the courtyard. Taking care of one of the horses - he doesn’t recognize which one it is, but he sneaks her an apple all the same. Another moment with Bull, this time in a bath, candles providing dim lighting. The contrast of Bull’s skin against his. There's a moment Dorian pauses over - Solas, watching the Inquisitor with eyes he now thinks of as too sharp, almost calculating. It’s worthy of note, even if he can’t do much.
Corypheus still falls, he discovers and feels this huge sense of relief at it. They don't lose anyone, and when he moves forward further, he still returns to Tevinter for a time. There are flickers of letters, along with the sight of his own hands working on the enchantment to the dragon's tooth they'd cleaved in half. Every so often, this other version of himself looks away from the sight of two halves of the dragon’s tooth, no doubt counting days until he can give the other half back, so they can speak more.
When the Winter Palace comes up in his vision, he's unsurprised. Nothing thus far has changed, and Dorian pushes past that, forward until it's over. The Inquisitor looks grim, one arm less, her posture slightly slumped. The bandages are fresh, and Dorian aches for her. In this timeline, they can't escape it either. The scene he's watching makes no sense, though.
The Inquisitor is saying something to him, mouthing words with this horribly soft look on her face, her eyes red with tears. I’m so sorry, Dorian, I’m- he makes out, but that doesn’t provide any further context.
The mirror blurs a moment and it takes time to realize it's because of tears in his own eyes, obscuring things a moment. Whatever's happened is serious, serious enough he would let the Inquisitor comfort him - let her witness him crying. She comes forward and for a moment his vision is nothing but her shoulder; it changes a moment later when he adjusts, and it’s just him looking blankly over it instead, staring at a wall. Maybe in this timeline, he and the Inquisitor are even closer friends. Maybe this Dorian is softer. It doesn't seem terribly unlikely, he supposes.
Maker, but he wishes there were sound. Not knowing is almost worse, his mind filling in with all sorts of awful possibilities. Rather than wait it out, he pushes his magic forward just a few hours. It reveals his eyes are cleared but when he looks down, there are the two halves of the dragon's tooth in his hands. Somehow, that sight is worse than anything else he can think of that is perfectly innocent at first.
One, he realizes, is singed, chipped and the chain is much larger. Realization hits him like a punch in the gut, his chest going tight.
Whatever has happened, Bull isn’t wearing the necklace. It isn’t out of the question to think there’s a timeline where they never were together but this isn’t that. He’d worn the necklace, but now he wasn’t and the Inquisitor was comforting him--
Dorian pulls the magic back and spends Maker knows how long sifting, trying to figure out what’s gone wrong. The Chargers are dead, yes, but how could they have made it so far, only to lose one of their own after it’s all done? If he can figure out how Bull’s -- you don’t even know if he’s dead-- No. If he can figure out what’s gone wrong, he can figure out how to prevent any chance of it here.
He traces another thread with his fingers, tugs on that piece of magic and watches the picture swell to the surface. They’re fighting at night, the sky lit up by his magic and that of Vivienne’s as they press further ahead.
This scene, he’s seen before. Idly, he wonders if they kill the dragon or let it go, as they had. Nothing much changes and Dorian starts to push forward when abruptly, the mirror’s image shifts, as if this other Dorian had looked to the side sharply. He pauses a moment and waits, watching Bull lift his axe, mouthing words. On either side, he sees Vivienne and the Inquisitor lift their own weapons, sees his staff rise up into his field of vision.
“What are you--” There’s no one to hear his startled demand at this other version of himself, not in the quiet of his study, but he wants the reflections in the mirror to hear it. They’re raising weapons against Bull, even himself, and it makes no sense. Why would Bull even raise his weapons against them in the first place, unless - unless it was a ruse. The Viddasala had given him a command, after all; you need to make it look good. Maybe Leliana wanted one of them alive after. She’d been awfully cross they hadn’t brought back any alive.
There’s a slowly growing sense of unease in his belly, though, one he can’t shake even as he watches. The Inquisition does their best not to attack Bull, but he apparently has no such compunction. It’s only when Bull takes a swing at the Inquisitor that Dorian’s hand starts to tremble on the miror.
He wouldn’t. Not in any world, but certainly not in this one. Dorian’s seen how these two were with each other; it mirrored how he and Bull were, when they were together. That couldn’t have been faked.
Off to the side, Vivienne spits fire from her staff, locking Qunari where they stand. Neither he nor Vivienne were warriors, though, so it’s only to buy time rather than give the one with an axe or greatsword time to cut them down. That would normally be where Bull came in, but no. Not this time.
The Inquisitor is off nearby, vanishing and reappearing, her hand glowing brightly, illuminating her face in sickly tones of yellow and green. This other version of himself ducks a blade, and throws a rune onto the ground, flickering until it’s lit up by a Qunari that wanders over it. He’s blown back into a wall, screaming silently while trying to put out the fire on his chest. Where there was a gap in attackers, there’s suddenly nothing but Bull. Good, he thinks. They need the help, they need --
But Bull’s face is...wrong. Dorian doesn’t know how many hours he’s spent learning his face - the angles of it, the scars there, the way he looks with the eyepatch, without. All these little moment of intimacy he treasured, not realizing they’d be used to help him differentiate his Bull from this one.
There’s nothing in his expression, no flicker of him left in his eye. Worse still is that this other Dorian doesn’t fight, he dodges, he uses magic as a barrier rather than a weapon. The dragon is freed almost as an afterthought, but all of Dorian’s concentration remains on Bull as he advances forward.
There’s never any running. Bull strikes out patiently, swinging hard at Vivienne, twisting and sliding a blade he picked up into a gap in Lavellan’s stance that he’s pointed out a thousand times. It lands and withdraws in a splash of blood and Dorian sees his own hand reach out, curl into a fist and then snap upward as he brings a wall of flame up between Bull and the Inquisitor.
The battle isn’t quick, nor is it easy. The dragon lays slain - by their hands, Bull never landing a strike on it, only on them. The view on the mirror flickers up to the carcass, and then down to the red covering his own hands, to an injury covered by cloth, but only barely just. He spends a moment too long looking at himself, finding that when he looks up, Bull’s there. He swings again and the mad scramble that this other Dorian has to do isn’t flattering in the slightest. He scurries across the ground, chasing where his staff was knocked and then rolls, swinging it up to block, presumably.
For a moment, Dorian’s eyes can’t make sense of what he’s seeing. There are his hands, the wood of the staff, and then it trails up it to where the staff ends and Bull’s belly begins. But there’s a blade on it-- Dorian thinks, and is proven right a moment later.
It rips out, just as quickly as it landed, and Dorian has to bring his hand to his mouth to cover it before he’s ill all over the mirror and sends the magic spiraling out of control. Not a ruse, then. None of this was a ruse, and this is what it came to. It’s a horrific thing to swallow, watching Bull clutch his belly, watching pink and red slide through his fingers. This other Dorian can’t seem to stomach it either, apparently; he scrambles madly across the ground toward where the Inquisitor is kneeling, panting.
In the end, he doesn’t see who does the deed. All he knows is that one moment, he scans the room and no one is left standing save for Vivienne, the Inquisitor, and himself.
The realization seems to hit this other version, too, because he’s suddenly running, checking bodies frantically until he comes across it. In death, Bull looks just as large. It’s not a thought Dorian had ever expected he would have, let alone see. There’s no telling if it were the burns that did him in, or maybe the spill of his own intestines on the ground, or any other number of injuries. Dorian takes stock of all of them, knowing this other version of himself does the same. Which injuries are his, which injuries are the Inquisitor’s, Vivienne’s. The knowledge doesn’t help, doesn’t make him feel any better.
There’s nothing more he can bear to watch, not right now. With his free hand, he scribbles down the last of what he can recall for performing the spell and then drags his hand over the mirror, ending it abruptly. The magic fizzles out with a sharp pop, loud in the quiet of the room, topped only by the sound of his own ragged, harsh breathing. Later, he may be foolish enough to look straight into his own future. Right now, he doesn’t think he can. Not with what he’s seen.
It’s two months before he sees Bull again.
They’re the longest two months of his life. They hit trouble somewhere in Orlais; he wasn’t ever told what trouble it was, just that there was trouble, and Bull would see him soon.
For those two months, he forces himself busy. There are letters to write, meetings to attend, any number of tasks that are monotonous but require his attention. He finishes clearing out his father’s belongings that his mother would rather they don’t keep, and contacts Varric, to see if he has any ideas on who would want to take the relative junk off his hands. No letters arrive from Bull, and while it’s not different than usual, it’s still terrifying in its own way. He doesn’t initiate a call through the crystals, too afraid of the idea of Bull not answering, unlikely as it is. It’s a coward’s move, but he can’t seem to make himself reach out, anxiety heavy like a rock in his stomach.
Instead, he buries himself so far and deep into work that when he’s reminded that it’s time to go on his trip to the border, and all of his belongings are prepared, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Two months without speaking. It’s not unheard of, but it is unusual. Since obtaining the crystals, Bull contacts him after every mission, and between those calls are numerous conversations, lasting long into the night until Dorian can manage to fall asleep on his own. With none of that, he feels the weight of the tooth even more acutely, heavy around his neck.
The property is just how he left it last time, sprawling land, an older building, wrought iron and stone making up its gates. He leaves his horse at the stables and hefts his bag up onto his shoulders, his other belongings having arrived shortly before he did. The door is unlatched when he reaches it and Dorian turns to the stairs slowly, each step harder than the last, his stomach twisting itself into vicious knots. When he reaches the top of the stairs and opens the door, there’s this awful sense of relief mixed with the anxiety.
His bag is left in a heap by the door, his staff leaning off to the side by it. The broad swell of Bull’s shoulders are familiar - more familiar still is the sight of him turning, grinning sheepishly, the crystal and tooth clutched in his hand. “Hey, kadan, I don’t suppose there’s any fancy magic crap you can pull to fix this?” The crystal is cracked, hanging loosely from its bindings in the tooth, no longer glowing. On Bull’s chest, there’s a corresponding bandage, no red showing through. Thank the Maker for small blessings. Out of anything that he could have seen right then, Bull with a grevious bodily injury is pretty far up there in the Would Not Handle Well column.
It takes a moment to school his face but he does after a moment and steps forward, plucking the tooth out of his hand, settling it on the table. “That’s the sort of greeting you opt for after so long?” he asks and there’s no need to fake any sort of annoyed lilt to his voice.
There’s no need to fake the way his lips curl into a smile with the first kiss and he parts them on the second, kissing Bull back eagerly. His hands skim over all the bare skin he can manage, mentally cataloging every single new injury, every scar that has appeared since last time. Stitches is good, but he can’t work miracles and Bull’s line of work and position don’t often leave him out of danger. His mouth shifts down, presses to the spot just above where the bandage ends, and Bull rumbles out a laugh, big hands cupping his back. If he spends a moment too long observing his face for scars matching the mirror Bull’s, well, it’s not the oddest thing he’s done.
“Looks worse than it is,” Bull assures, voice low and smooth like he knows how upset Dorian is - which, normally, he does. Dorian doesn’t ever like to see him injured, but this awful feeling inside is so much more than usual. Apparently he picks up that something isn’t right, because he softens further, presses a hand to his cheek. “Hey, kadan. Really, it’s--”
“I know, I know.” Dorian tips his head forward, pressing tight against him for a moment. The line of his body is familiar, right in a way that he can’t ever put into words. Would he really-? he thinks, and then shoves it down, locks it away. He hasn’t, not yet. No sense borrowing trouble where there isn’t any yet. “What was it?”
Bull cheerfully launches into a tale about the man that was built like a giant - not Qunari, Bull makes sure to emphasize. Not Qunari, huge all the same, built like a fucking tree. Dorian can picture it as he speaks, hands waving animatedly while Dorian starts to undo the clasps to his outfit, batting Bull’s hands away when he tries to help. He can do this. Bull’s been gone ages, they haven’t spoken in months, the least he can do is this. How many times has Bull taken care of him? “You know, I do manage to undress myself when you’re not around,” Bull says with no small amount of amusement. His hands have stopped trying to help and instead keep catching on Dorian’s, holding them just long enough for Dorian’s cheeks to get warm and for him to make exasperated noises before he withdraws and then starts it all over again.
“Let me have this,” Dorian says quietly, and for whatever reason, Bull listens. Dorian gets him out of the harness, and then kneels to work him out of those ridiculous pants, and his brace. When the last few pieces are on the ground, he rises to his feet again and does the same for himself. It’s quicker, his fingers not lingering as they had on Bull’s clothing. There’s no show in it, no flare, just quick, decisive movements until his clothing is neatly set off to the side.
There’s no question that something is wrong. It wouldn’t take a Ben-Hassrath spy to figure out that Dorian’s acting oddly. Still, Bull doesn’t ask about it and Dorian’s so grateful that he doesn’t even have words. They make their way over to the oversized bath that really was the deciding factor in Dorian’s purchase of the place, shiny, sleek marble and a basin large enough to hold two Qunari. Just a few moments of waiting and water fills the tub, heated already. Dorian slips into it first with a soft groan, settling into what’s ‘his’ seat while Bull follows him in, water sloshing about while he settles himself. For all that they haven’t talked in two months, the air isn’t thick with conversation just yet.
Dorian ducks down underwater to wet his hair and rinse it, surfacing and slicking it back out of the way. Water trickles into his eyes and when he blinks it away, Bull’s standing there, a bottle of shampoo in one big hand. He doesn’t need to say anything, and neither does Dorian.
That’s the beauty of it, Dorian supposes. They don’t need to talk to fill the silence. He leans into each touch of Bull’s hands over his scalp, rubbing soap in, rinsing it out, starting at his head and ending at the small of his back, with Dorian a melted mess in his lap, trading easy kisses.
“I’ll have it fixed before you go,” Dorian murmurs into the nape of Bull’s neck, their positions reversed while he tends to Bull. There’s an answering grunt, and that’s enough. He soaps up his hands and takes his time with cleaning him, working his way down every inch. When it’s over, they’re both hard, but neither of them instigate anything. Once, they wouldn’t have bothered to get this far without sex. Careful, idle touches would have come after, but now, Dorian relishes these quiet moments between when it’s just this simple.
“Didn’t bust it too bad?” Bull rumbles back and tilts his head carefully so that he can look back and so that Dorian can rise up enough to press a kiss to the corner of his lips. The angle’s off, but neither of them care. “I was gonna tell you wait til you see the other guy, but Krem seemed to think that was a bad idea. Something about persnickety ‘Vints who fuss.”
“Ah, once more it’s a Tevinter acting as the voice of reason,” Dorian sighs, and slides himself up against the wet, muscled line of Bull’s back, draping his arms over his shoulders so he can lean over him from behind. “I’m thankful you didn’t. I might’ve had half a mind to injure you--” Further goes unsaid. The words stop, choke his throat, leave him still and silent until he recovers from the sudden, vivid memory of Bull bloody on the ground.
Not here, that didn’t happen, he reminds himself and slips away from the comforting line of Bull’s body to do something else with his hands. Bull doesn’t chase him - he’s watching, cataloging, no doubt putting pieces together and filing them away for later, but Dorian doesn’t care. He can Ben-Hassrath the shit out of his reactions, but he’ll never piece together the why.
Or, maybe he will, because he’s capable of that, too. That traitorous little voice in the back of his mind doesn’t help matters; he shoves that down too, and gropes for a towel, suddenly light-headed. “The water’s too hot,” he offers faintly, and makes his way out with a towel around his waist. Bull still doesn’t question him acting so oddly, he just follows him out, winds a towel around his waist too. It’s one large enough to actually serve its purpose - sometimes, Bull picks the smaller ones just for the snickers it produces when he tries to wrap it around his waist and gets from the start of one thigh to the back of another. Dorian’s thankful he doesn’t go for the joke for the time being, and starts them off to their bedroom.
“At least the crystal’s easy to fix,” Bull says smoothly, while he’s putting on pants. Dorian makes some sort of noise of acknowledgment and finishes dressing the rest of the way, his hair drawn into a wet knot on top of his head. “Maybe easier than whatever’s rattling around in your head right now.”
“You were doing so well, avoiding the subject,” Dorian sighs, fingers skittering off the laces to his shirt, unable to recover right away. He gives up halfway through and makes his way over to Bull, letting him fasten his outfit up. His larger hands ought to make it more difficult to get the laces in the tiny little holes, but he does it with the ease of a man who has had practice.
“I don’t know how to...speak about it,” he admits after a moment and drops both of his hands on Bull’s shoulders, thinking about the sight of a ring on Bull’s finger in one image, and the sight of a ringless, bloodied hand in another. “Have your laugh, Dorian not being able to speak about something.”
“Mmn, s’not real funny, and you don’t have to.” Because of course he doesn’t. Because Bull trusts him to bring up the things that matter, or the things he needs to speak about. Dorian closes his eyes again, reaching down to lift one of Bull’s hands up, pressing a kiss to its palm.
“Easier, maybe, if I do.” Maybe. It’s a very, very large maybe.
Bull doesn’t push the issue yet, doesn’t ask any leading questions, doesn’t do anything more than finish the laces and graze his knuckles over Dorian’s lips. “Yeah, but you don’t always go easier.”
That startles a laugh out of Dorian. “True enough,” he offers tiredly, and for a moment is so painfully overwhelmed by how much he loves this idiot that he can’t think of anything else. They retreat to bed after something to eat, and Dorian spends an inordinate amount of time relearning his face like if he studies this one enough, it’ll overwrite the image from the mirror, of Bull scarred and dead-eyed.
Rather than pry, Bull just...talks. Talks about the Chargers, gives Dorian updates on how they are, on the new members, on the old. It’s aimless, warm talk while Dorian trails his fingers down the newest scar and presses his lips to it, holding there while he drinks in the rumble of his voice.
When he finally manages to speak about it, it slips out of Dorian almost entirely by accident. “I cracked something that Alexius and I weren’t able to, when I was younger. Time magic, of a sort. Not… not like we experienced in Redcliffe. Imagine our lives are like a thread, and that thread is a part of a...tapestry. The thread all started from the same place- probably the same batch of animal fur or hair, but when it’s woven into the tapestry, each one veers off in a different way. When you direct that magical potential into a focus, you can use it to see the other threads.”
Unsurprisingly, Bull doesn’t look like he’s thrilled Dorian’s cracked the mystery to time magic. “And you went looking through the other threads,” he says after a pause. Maybe it’s silly to feel proud, but Dorian is, nodding.
“Our own, first. I went...back too far, initially.” This is where it’s difficult. It won’t be the only spot, but it gives him pause all the same. Dorian doesn’t quite meet his eye, instead opting to rest his cheek on one broad shoulder while his hand rests on his chest, rising and falling with each breath. “I was...focused on you at first, so much so that I didn’t realize I saw prior events for you. You and Cremisius.”
Bull doesn’t comment; normally, Dorian’d be worried he’s overstepped boundaries, or said something wrong, but he gets it a moment later when Bull lifts a hand and spreads it over the small of his back. Sometimes, there just aren’t words for things, even when you understand what’s being said.
“I am sorry. It..wasn’t my intent. I dug through my own threads instead.” Would it be easier if Bull asked the questions? If he led Dorian into saying what he had discovered, or would he know better than to ask that. This dancing around doesn’t do anyone any good, Dorian decides, and spreads his hand out over Bull’s heart, fingers spread as far as he can reach. “Some were normal. I was Archon in one. I suppose Father was terribly proud of my miserable life. In another, we were watching the Inquisitor and Cullen’s children.”
Bull snorts quietly at that; maybe, once, Cullen and the Inquisitor could have had something, but the Inquisitor and Josephine had happened instead. “You walked about with one on your head, like some sort of blonde, gap-toothed growth.”
That gets a slightly louder laugh, but Bull doesn’t offer anything right now, like he knows Dorian’s working up to it. When he finally gets there, he’s got his head tucked under Bull’s chin and the hand on his back is making wide, firm loops over his skin, soothing. “In another, the Chargers were dead, for the sake of the alliance.” Dorian pauses, not to let that sink in; he knows it will hit just as sure as any blade would. It’s more to give himself time to breathe. “Everything else seemed...normal. As much as could be so, given the circumstances. When the Viddasala called, though, you-”
Bull stops him, just like that. One big hand lifts, his two good fingers pressing tight against Dorian’s lips to still anything else he was trying to say. He can’t stop the vaguely offended noise at first, like he’s some sort of child that needs to be shushed, but doesn’t bite them like he’s tempted to do. “I don’t need to hear,” Bull says gently, and shifts Dorian so he’s tucked in a little more firmly against the solid bulk of him. He gets as far as opening his mouth to ask him to elaborate before Bull does. “I know, Dorian. I know what I’d do.”
Once, that would have been a terrifying thing to hear. The Qunari spy admits that he would betray us, he would have crowed, and Bull would have tossed back some witty response to fluster him. Things weren’t like that any longer, though. I know what I’d do isn’t some sort of gleeful response, or smug comment about the state of things. It’s low and somber, like Bull’s aware of what he would do, what it would mean, and doesn’t like it. “Oh,” Dorian offers, for lack of anything better to grit out.
“I didn’t, though. The Boss, she didn’t either. Krem and the rest of my boys are probably ruining another expensive carpet downstairs. Stitches is probably making eyes at your cook again.” Bull’s hand drifts up from his back, and presses to the nape of Dorian’s neck, fingers digging in to start working tension out of him. It’s not a perfect solution, but Dorian melts into it all the same, just listening. “Whatever you saw, it won’t happen. Not here. Not with you, not with the Chargers still here with me. Not for all the orders in the world.”
It’s not quite the way that Dorian envisioned having the talk, but the peace that rolls through him when he hears that is so overwhelming that words fail him and he’s left pressing a kiss to the dip of his collarbone, trailing his lips down to Bull’s heart. “I’ll hold you to it,” Dorian murmurs, and rolls his eyes up quick enough to see the smile that curves Bull’s lips, moments before he lunges up to kiss it off of them.