Chapter Text
Iron Bull had carried Emeline to their room the day after the operation. Even hours after the lotus tincture had mostly worn off, her legs shook and her eyes were bleary. Between that and the poppy milk blurring her thoughts, walking was out of the question. Bull refused the offer of a wheeled chair or cot where his arms would do just fine, and embarrass her less when she was awake to hear the gossip. Arms looked like romance - a gurney looked pitiful, and she hated pity.
Down the halls of the Winter Palace, from the infirmary to their newly appointed rooms in the Guest Wing and past all the stares and whispers, Dorian, Sera and Cassandra had done their best to block the view and glare the gossip into silence. A troupe of healers - Divine Victoria's very own - had followed, fussing behind him and stinking of herbs and lyrium, arranging potions and salves on the desk while he laid her in their bed. The surgeon herself, a round little woman with red cheeks and stern eyes, pressed a brown bottle of poppy and elfroot into his hand with instructions to keep her sedated until she'd had some real sleep.
"An injury like that...well, I work clean, emergency or no, and I've no doubt it'll scar over fine. But a limb's a limb, and whatever that magic did to her on top of it, I can only guess. Never seen the like. She'll mend, mind you, but it's going to hurt for a good while, and she should be off her feet for at least a week while her body heals itself." She peered up at him with beady eyes, brow creased sharp and deep. Bull had to stifle the urge to stand up straight and "Yes, Tama" her. "Good, soft bread and butter, porridge and broth, none of those rich sauces or pies. Eggs, soft boiled, and lots of the tea I'm leaving with you, even if she won't want to drink it. It's nasty stuff but it will keep the humours balanced. I'll be back to change the bandaging tomorrow and my apprentice will take over the smaller tasks after that. I'll return to check on her in the evenings. But if the arm goes cold or hot, she starts to lose sensation, or there's even a hint of magical degradation, you call for me immediately and no one else, do you understand, young man?"
He'd nodded, rubbing the back of his aching neck. The saarebas had gotten in a few good hits, and with his adrenaline finally sapped, it was starting to show.
"Boring food, nasty tea, watch the arm. Can do." His eye only turned back to look at the healer once before returning to watch Emeline's steady breathing under the covers, her face so still her eyelids didn't even flicker with dreams. He couldn't help but be grateful - he'd had enough of the fucking Fade for a lifetime, and he didn't like the thought of her wandering around in there all alone, even in sleep, not right now. He thought about her eyes rolling back in her head as the poppy took over and the saw came down, the grip of her small, cold hand in his going limp, and he felt slightly sick. He looked back at the healer.
"Hey, uh...ma'am, can she have oranges?" The healer raised a brow, and the barely there curl of her lips had Bull's ears twitching. He thought of Varric teasing him about blushing, just a few days before.
"She likes them," he muttered.
"Well. I suppose I don't see the harm, as long as she's eating enough bread and the sort, to soften the juice on her stomach." Her expression softened just a bit. "She'll be just fine, you'll see. Tired, and cranky as a ram with a tick, but right as rain soon enough." With a sharp nod of her head and a brisk pat to his arm, she left, taking her apprentices with her.
Bull stayed with Emeline while she slept, tried sleeping too and found it impossible. He flipped through a book, then another, got bored and put it aside, fidgeted a little and then picked it up again, put it down again. He counted through the stock of potions and medicinals the healer had left behind, sniffing a few of the vials for hints of poison, sneezed a few times and worried if he'd just accidentally contaminated them. Poison he could suss out - the intricacies of healing potions were another thing entirely.
He got it in his head to make some tea, then dropped a cup in his exhaustion and held his breath while Emeline shifted under the covers. He let it out when she didn't wake, and made short work of sweeping up the shards, mumbling a few tired curses under his breath. Finally his belly had rumbled and he'd decided he might as well go grab some food, maybe some bread and fruit for her when she woke, some of those flaky rabbit pies they made at the tavern for him.
Later, laden down with food and head sore from question after question from worried friends and curious strangers, he walked into their rooms to find her staring at the fire from the bed. The covers he'd carefully pulled around her were shoved down to her waist. Her arm - what was left of it - was still bandaged tightly, resting on the pile of pillows he'd arranged, but he could see even from the doorway her shoulder was tense, probably aching something fierce. She didn't look up at him, just watched the flames while he shut the door.
"I'm so stupid." Her voice was sluggish, still thick with potion and sleep. "The whole time. And it was him, just...waiting." She glanced up, the circles under her eyes looking like bruises in the shadows of the darkened room. "You knew."
"Kadan, I -"
"Well, you suspected. I remember. You thought he was strange." She rubbed the sand from her eyes with the heel of her palm, rough and careless, and Bull was struck for just a moment at how young she looked, fuzzy from sleep and sedation. Vulnerable. When she next spoke, though, her voice had turned hard. "And I didn't pay attention to the fact that the Ben-Hassrath trained spy in my employ thought the shifty apostate with no background, no people, no history, was strange. So. What would you call that?"
Bull was quiet - Emeline had turned back to staring at the fire - and he carefully set down the plate of food in his hands on the low trestle table. He started to cut the sweet brown bread into thick slices, mulling over his words.
"I'd call it trust. You trusted someone who courted it, and had a thousand years on everyone around him." He shrugged, "Cassandra trusted him. Leliana at least trusted him enough to realize he was useful for a little while and take the risk. Old, smart, and everyone too scared to care where you're getting your answers from? That's a tough combination to beat." He glanced back at her. "Don't blame yourself for something a spymaster couldn't have predicted. Doesn't make any sense, does it?"
She lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug - the wrong shoulder, and her wince mirrored his. Bull turned back to his task, trying not grind his teeth to the tune of her pained breathing. He spread a thin layer of butter, fresh-churned and golden, across a couple slices of bread, and arranged them on a tray along with a tangerine from the Palace's own greenhouses. Little cups of poppy milk, potions of elfroot and dawn lotus followed.
"And I thought he was weird, sure, but shit. I never thought he was some sort of pissed off god." Bull set out to start some tea - more successfully, with any luck - and brought the tray to Emeline while the water was left to boil, sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed.
"Healer said you need to eat." Emeline wrinkled her nose, and Bull just held up a piece of bread. "No food and you're gonna be puking up your potions ten minutes after you drink them, Birdie. Eat."
She blinked for a moment, dully mutinous before weariness and Bull's red-rimmed eyes won out. She took the bread and he started on peeling the orange as she took a bite.
"The chess," he heard her mutter, still chewing. He looked up, a bemused little smile on his lips.
"You up to games already?"
Emeline raised her eyes, tilting her head as she swallowed.
"I should have caught on with the chess game." She took another bite, and then another, chewing slowly. "Caught on to something anyway. Shouldn't trust anyone that can play a whole game of chess in their head for weeks on end. 'S not natural."
Bull's brow raised, and he snorted.
"Hey, I didn't turn around and knife you in the back, and I almost beat his little ass."
Emeline rolled her eyes, but she smiled too, taking the sections of orange he handed over to her with something almost approximating eagerness. When he rose to get the kettle that was now whistling merrily, he heard her voice behind him, sounding just a little bit steadier.
"Well, maybe. The day's young, though, you still have time. I think, anyway, you haven't told me what the hour is"
Her tone was light - well, lighter. Still, for some reason his stomach went cold. It was a testament to his exhaustion from the last few days that his face would have actually betrayed it, if he'd been facing her. Something nagged at the edge of his brain, possibilities he knew existed and actively tried not to think about, since as far as he was concerned they never could have happened - never would have happened. Not now, with her, with him, the way they were together - the people they were together.
Still.
Then he splashed hot water onto his hand. He swore, she was pulled out of her head enough to cluck like a worried little hen, and the moment - whatever it was - was lost.
"Oh, are you hurt?"
"Nah, it's nothing, don't worry yourself." It could do with a bit of salve, later, but he ignored it for the moment. Instead, Bull brought the tea over, smelling as foul as the healer had warned. "Supposed to taste like shit, but I'll bet you've had worse." He held the cup up to her lips, and she took a sip, immediately cringing away from it.
"Maker, it's like warmed over swamp water. From the Fallow Mire."
"That good, huh?"
"You laugh, but you drink poultices. I don't think you can rightly judge."
He smiled faintly, shrugging. "Yeah, you're probably right. Come on, down the hatch, the sooner you get it over with the sooner you can eat something, get the taste of ass water out of your mouth."
Emeline rolled her eyes. "Ever the poet, my love," she muttered. But she gulped the tea down quick, all the same.
"There you go." He took the cup back, pulling a face at the smell. "Thought you might want to know they put the audience with the Council on hold, on account of the whole almost dying thing."
"Oh. Well, that was very thoughtful of them, I'm sure. Though I hardly know why they don't want me stumbling into the chambers, completely off my tits with poppies and lotus and maybe some..." she sniffed one of the little cups of potion on her tray, "mint? Alright, well, the mint won't be very entertaining to my adoring public, I admit."
"Yeah, real nice of them to postpone the party. So, according to these notes you want to take the..." he squinted, eyeing the potions, "the blue-y one there first - yeah. And then that pink one - huh, that's pretty - kind of a raspberry, isn't it? Does it taste -" Emeline gagged as she drank, shaking her head. "Er, right, that's a no, then. And then the white stuff and you're good."
Emeline wrinkled her nose as she drained the last cup, handing it off to him.
"I think you missed your calling as a nursemaid, you know. Senior Enchanter Heloise would have signed you right on to the infirmary at Ostwick, I'm sure of it."
"You think? Hey, do the Circle nurses wear cute little robes, because I could definitely - "
"It's not that sort of healing, Bull. I know, very sad. Though I'm sure if you wanted to wear a cute little robe, no one would protest."
Bull's head dipped as arranged the empty cups, smiling to himself. "I dunno - I think between the two of us, you pull off the sexy skirts thing a whole lot better."
"Flatterer."
He passed her a small plate with the second half of her orange, to clear the medicine from her mouth, and gathered up her tray. He deposited it on the table before gently sliding onto the bed, arranging pillows so he could lean back without gouging the headboard. He wondered why she wasn't eating the fruit until he realized he hadn't split it into pieces yet - she was probably wondering whether to just take a bite or how embarrassing it would be to pull it apart with her fingers and teeth. Quickly, casually, he reached over to start sectioning it himself.
"So, the Council. The thing is, I was talking to Leliana, and...well, it doesn't look so good." He paused, considering. "The Qunari, Solas. Me." Emeline glanced up sharply at that, and he shrugged, tired, feeling every ache down to his bones. "It looks suspicious."
"But that's ridiculous -"
"No, Em. It's not. Think. You know how it looks, we've talked about it, even before all this crap.” When she opened her mouth to protest, he shook his head. “Stop, kadan. What it looks like is the Inquisitor's been fucking a Qunari for over two years. Doesn't matter whether they knew I was ever a spy - now the Antaam somehow has enough intel to infiltrate and stage an invasion? It's too convenient, too clean. There's no solid evidence because there is no evidence, but they aren't going to give any Qunari the benefit of the doubt, Tal-Vashoth or not. And definitely not one that's been beside you these last few..."
Bull realized with a start that his throat had gone oddly tight. He stopped, cleared it a little, grunting for good measure. "I'm just saying, they don't know everything, but they know enough. Gossip, tidbits, shit that makes it easy to draw the worst conclusions if that's what they want to do. They can't do anything else about it, but they can get pretty damn angry if they want." He didn't need to elaborate that that was precisely what they wanted to do, and they both knew it. "It's bad. All of it. Might be bad enough to make them overlook all the good you've done."
"Oh, like closing the giant fucking hole in the sky that almost killed everyone in Thedas? Twice?" she snapped. She winced at her own voice, glancing at him apologetically. "I'm just...sorry. I know you're right." She took a piece of fruit, muttered an abashed "Thank you." Bull gave her thigh a quick squeeze. He felt her leg nudge against his, then, and looked down to see her peering sidelong at him.
"We've done."
He frowned. "Huh?"
"You said what I've done, the good deeds, whatever. But I don't remember doing any of it on my own, not really." Her eyes narrowed. "And if I recall correctly, I'd have been killed by an angry bear in the second month if you weren't around. I’d like to see how they’d have closed the Breach after that."
Bull blinked, and then his face cracked into a grin. "Oh shit, yeah. That was a great fight, damn. You nailed it in the end, though, stole my kill. Bam, right in the eye. All that blood, and you were laughing like a fucking lunatic. I thought you were gonna pass out, you looked so surprised. I never appreciated a staff so much before. Oh, shit, remember the way you cried after, though? Because you'd killed an innocent bear. I thought Blackwall was going to melt into the ground..." he trailed off, laughing.
"Wait, what? I did no such - I was not crying. It was - I was just overwhelmed by the moment because a bear almost ate my face, Bull." She looked on the edge of outrage - as close as a head full of potions would let her get - and like she was about to poke him, but he could see the corners of her lips fighting not to curl upwards. "You know, I'm trying to tell you how important you are and you're being horrible."
"Uh-huh. Still cried, kadan." He caught her hand when she did finally try to take a stab at his belly, raising it up to kiss the back before letting her go. She harrumphed, settling back against the pillows while he snatched one of her orange pieces and popped it into his mouth. "Look, about the council thing...I’m just saying I want you to be prepared. We both knew nothing good was coming, but after the last week? I think it's gonna turn into a real shitstorm."
Emeline didn't having anything to say to that, just leaned her head to rest against his shoulder. Her cheek was warm, the skin soft where his was rough, as always. He could smell her soap through the cloud of her hair, tangerine from her fingers, and underneath the ever-present tang of lyrium and elfroot. She was silent for long enough that Bull wondered if the potions had lulled her to sleep. Then he heard her voice under the crackle of the fire.
"Maybe that wouldn't be the worst thing," Emeline muttered.
Bull shifted, careful to try not to disturb her, not sure he'd heard her right.
"Birdie?"
She was quiet for a long moment, plucking at a stray bit of thread on the down quilt until Bull reached over to still her hand with his. She glanced up then.
"I just...maybe it wouldn't be so bad. To be forced to end it all. The Inquisition, that is, with us? Hand it off to the Chantry again, or whoever they decide. Or maybe just put an end to it entirely." Bull could feel the pillows sink as she rolled her left shoulder.
"...that's a big step. You sure you're ready for that?"
"I don't know." She paused, hesitating. He could see her eyes starting to lose their focus, sleep blurring the edges. "I know... I know that I don't want to do this anymore. I don't think I ever really did, but no one else would, and I had, you know, the almighty magic hand, and now..." she trailed off, pulling her fingers out from under his. She looked as though she was going to grasp her other hand, pop the joints like she always did, in that way that annoyed the shit out of him because it never failed to make him think of dislocations, cold little bird bones pop-pop-popping right out of place.
She looked that way, of course, until she remembered that she couldn't, that she had no bones left to pop. Her remaining hand went still in mid-air before dropping back to the bed.
She was very quiet then, her eyes drawn back to the fire. Her fingers were limp when he reached over to grasp them again, but after a moment he felt her thumb curl around his. Her voice barely reached his ears when she finally spoke.
"I'm so tired, Bull. I'm just so tired."
And the last thing Iron Bull thought before Emeline drifted off to sleep curled against his side, was how strange it was that someone who could look so young one minute, could sound so old the next.