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Dorian and the Chargers go their separate ways in Cumberland, after one night staying at an inn to give him and the Bull some time together that doesn’t involve Dorian’s perpetual seasickness. They don’t sleep much, but they outdo their first night together.
“Five times,” Dorian stage whispers to Krem, when Stitches raises his eyebrow and asks the Bull if he’d had a good night.
“Please never talk to me again,” Krem says—and then adds too quickly, “until after you’ve had a cold shower.”
Dorian laughs, only a little forced, and ignores the slip. “For you, Cremisius Aclassi, I would bear the snowmelt of the Emprise itself.”
And then it’s all too soon but the Chargers ride west and Dorian, after watching them go, turns his horse north. The summer air carries no chill, and of all things to long for, the southern cold he’d never expected to make the list.
The crystal beats against his chest in time with the horse’s trot, tangling with the dragon’s tooth and then swinging apart.
-
He rides too hard that afternoon, and only slows when the horse shows signs of exhaustion. The town they find themselves in boasts only the one tavern, with three rooms for rent and not a soul in any of them. Conveniently, Nevarrans see many more citizens of Tevinter than the people of other southern nations, but Dorian hadn’t expected the warm welcome he receives. Apparently he’s achieved some notoriety of his own.
The night turns, if not outright rowdy, into something of a party. No one seems to mind Dorian’s reticence, but food and drink manage to find their way to the table he’s staked out all the same, and it’s comforting somehow to be welcomed within the evening’s merrymaking without expectation of his participation. The simultaneous warmth and melancholy of nostalgia fend off the less bearable emotions for now. He lets the noise and energy take over his focus, until he begins to nod off.
In the morning Dorian wakes early and rides off with the sun just barely risen. The road sees little traffic, either due to sparse population or a lull in trade, but it suits Dorian just fine; he’s little interest in human interaction. One voice he’d like to hear, but he’s all right without in this liminal space between home and home, where he doesn’t need to think too much about how they’ve both changed in the scant time he’s been gone this time. Here in the scrubland of eastern Nevarra he can keep his mind empty as the road ahead.
The third day he reaches the foothills and picks his way carefully around the rocks that reach up through the road to hobble the unsuspecting horse. It’s slow, consuming work, but Dorian has missed the physical labour of travel, another oddity. These days he keeps finding himself to have changed, shifted from the understanding of himself he’s grown accustomed to. In this instance, perhaps not in such a bad way.
Then again, it’s only another thing to miss once he’s immersed himself in the new life awaiting him in Minrathous.
-
When the crystal pulses to life Dorian has only just crossed into Tevinter, and his chest seizes in inexplicable terror. The horse tenses beneath him until he forces himself to relax, and only then can he bring himself to respond. Words fail him. In the end all he can do is focus on his breath, in and out, until either the Bull or Adaar speaks up.
“Dorian?” asks the Bull, and Dorian can’t prevent the sharp exhale punched from his lungs.
“Yes,” he replies, and his voice catches. “Yes, it’s me.”
A sigh from the other end of the connection. Relieved, perhaps, and shame builds in Dorian’s gut that he should still want to pull back from the conversation.
What to say? A thousand things, desperate and absurd, all held off by the simplicity of the road, and here the Bull is, many forbidden days’ travel away and yet speaking as if pressed warm around Dorian, mouth to his ear. He trembles and clutches at the tooth that hangs from his neck as a lifeline.
Too long the silence suspends before the Bull breaks it. “I was worried.”
“I couldn’t—” and here Dorian’s voice breaks again, and his eyes ache, and the awful sound in his ears he realizes must be his own, the way he gasps after it.
“Dorian,” says the Bull again, too tenderly, and this time Dorian recognizes his sob for what it is. “Kadan, are you—”
The next sob becomes a laugh, or the laugh becomes a sob, but it’s a harsh and bitter sound either way. “Of course I’m not okay,” he replies, voice shaking unacceptably. “I’ve no idea why I thought I could do this. Face down a darkspawn magister with aspirations of godhood, delightful walk in the park, please do allow me another. Qunari invasion through ancient elven mirrors, don’t mind if I do. A fine time, saving the world, but—”
“Dorian.” A reiteration. The Bull shifts, and Dorian can identify the sound as movement upon a bedroll. “You’re strong. You’re ready for this.”
“I am definitively not,” Dorian snaps, and wrenches forward in the saddle to his horse’s bewildered sidestep. The Bull says nothing, and Dorian leans his face against the horse’s neck to soothe them both. “No. I won’t take this out on you. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Neither have you,” the Bull murmurs, and Dorian sobs helplessly again.
Difficult, to speak around the gasps and way his whole body wracks so terribly with each second or third breath. “Oh, perhaps not yet. But I will. You’ve always had the best of me.”
The light has grown dim, and the day’s travel and the intensity of this flood of emotion drag at his limbs suddenly. Dorian raises his head at last, but stays slumped forward. No towns in his immediate vicinity, but he’s slept outside in worse conditions. Though not for a very long time on his own.
“Forgive me,” he says, voice dull now that the worst of the storm has passed. It’s left him empty and yearning, but with nothing to fuel it. “I haven’t even asked after you.”
“It’s not the same without you around,” the Bull replies, after a pause for thought. “Keeping pretty busy with the boys. We found a job just over the Orlesian border, something about varghests in flooded gardens. Should be fun.”
“I’m glad,” Dorian says, and finds he means it.
Then, a pause, that in different circumstances might have signified the Bull taking Dorian’s hand or resting his own along the small of Dorian’s back. Dorian swings himself from the saddle and tries not to imagine the feeling, one small barrier re-established between himself and the roiling emotion he’s barely managed to push away again.
Eventually the Bull breaks the silence. “We’ll figure it out.” To the untrained ear he’d sound confident, but not to Dorian, who has studied him too long and too well. There’s that same note of desperation under his voice as well.
“I’ll see you again,” Dorian says, and tries to believe it.