Chapter Text
When he places the horn to his lips, when the Inquisitor urges he call off his men and let the dreadnought sink, he knows he’ll be dead soon.
It sits at the base of his thick skull. It flows through his veins. He waits for the pain that he’s seen distorting so many faces — the pain, and then the tranquility.
He does not die.
He sits amongst the Chargers, an ever-rotating group of them, Bucket and Quince and Mitten and Hart and on and on and on, and he nurses the same ale and waits for it. He has no frame of reference for how it’ll feel beyond what he’s seen — no one talks about it. To die by maaksur alqalb is ignoble. It means you forgot yourself, and your place, and you were a danger to not only yourself but to the whole.
As with any death, the body is then warded against demons and burned. Bull takes comfort in the knowledge that when his time comes, at least the South’s got that part down.
==
He’s alive in the morning, and when they begin the trek back to Skyhold.
He keeps his feet free of the stirrups, and holds loosely to his mount’s reins. When he falls, he doesn’t want to take the horse down with him.
He can’t be sure he’ll be dead by nightfall — with the dreadnought sunk and only Gatt hauling ass back to report, Bull’s got maybe three days. But he’d seen the efficiency with which someone could be taken down on Seheron: identify the defector, notify the hiraas, work through the ritual if time allowed.
If time didn’t allow, do it quick and clean, and wait for the body to drop.
He’s alive by the next morning, and the one after that.
What was patient, if anxious, acceptance twists at the back of head and curdles in his gut. The climb to Skyhold leaves him tired, skin clammy to the touch. He knows he must look like shit when Vivienne bridges the space between them and presses the back of her hand to his forehead, her mouth a thin line.
“You’ll head to bed and not to drink, then,” she commands, and he gives her a nod. He never thought he’d die in his sleep, but maybe that’d be better. Somebody’d have to drag his fat ass down the stairs, but the mages could figure something out.
A messenger wakes him the following morning with further instruction from Vivienne to take it easy and a request from Red to meet her in her aviary. He can’t do one without displeasing the other, but whatever Red’s got to talk about will likely have repercussions even after he’s slumped in a corridor, so he heads for the tower.
The variable he hadn’t considered was Dorian, sitting in his broad chair and muttering vinty shit under his breath, holding the spine of a book like he expected it to vault across the room at a moment’s notice.
It’s early still, which usually means Dorian’s not slept as opposed to having got up with the sun, and Bull gauges whether it’d be worse to greet him than say nothing at all. What they’ve got isn’t anything at all — words, usually barbs, thrown back and forth across the South’s monotonous trails, and looks Bull’s more adept at letting linger than Dorian is.
Dorian still looks, though.
“Cock’ll be crowing any second now. It’ll be sure to keep you up when you finally get to bed,” Bull says, because he expects to be dead before nightfall, and because it warms him to the bone, how long it takes Dorian to register the words in his state, to grasp the innuendo.
“Maker’s breath,” Dorian says on an exhale, and closes the book in his lap. “How good of you to think of me and my health, in relation to the cock’s call.”
Bull laughs on his way to the next set of stairs. “Always happy to help,” he calls, and Dorian says something particularly vintish, and Bull ignores the pang in his chest, of guilt and — something else.
He hesitates midway up the stairwell, waiting, waiting. But he doesn’t die, and so he continues up.
Red’s standing in front of her shrine, hands clasped behind her back. Before Bull can announce himself she waves towards the table by the window, where she receives most of her correspondence.
There are her usual orderly stacks of parchment, and a small plain wooden box in the midst of it. Bull frowns as he moves closer, until he can see the numbers and letters inscribed in its lid. Then he stops, and reaches for the railing to keep him upright.
“You know what it is then,” Red says, and turns from the niche. She sits at the table and shifts the box, lifting it in her hands. “I’ve not opened it, though I’ve seen its ilk before.”
It takes a while for Bull to find his voice. “Surprised to see it.”
She lifts a brow and places the box back on the table. “As am I, given what occurred on the Storm Coast. The Qunari are not known for their mercy.”
“Mercy means something different to Southerners,” Bull replies, false humor in his voice, and Red pushes the box towards him, to the edge of the table.
He’s not sure how long he stays there, the edges of his nails digging into the wood railing, until he feels as though he can support himself on his own two feet.
He takes the box, the darequrnaas, and holds it too tightly in his hands. It’s built to withstand pressure though. Pressure, and fire, and flood. It will open at a hiraas’ command, and only then if you have lost your way — if it is time for the hiraas to perform their most terrible of duties.
Bull thinks of the Storm Coast, and of how Gatt had no hiraas with him. Of Gatt’s expression when Bull lowered the horn. Of the betrayal there, and of the roiling anger when Gatt slipped back down the hill. Of the camaraderie they’d shared, and the way they’d always looked out for each other.
“Using our esteemed spymistress to acquire trinkets?” Dorian snipes when Bull pauses between the flights of stairs, to resettle the box in his hands.
‘Yeah,” Bull responds simply, and continues down.
==
He remembers the surgery, infrequently.
They wait until you’re assigned your first role, so they know how it should be handled. Saarebas were left whole until they became too dangerous, at which point they would be killed; usually though, you went under the knife with your tamassran’s voice in your ears, instructing you to breathe, and to sleep.
When Ashkaari became Hissrad, he woke up with precise stitches down his chest, and with a pulse that had no physical connection to his heart. This disconnect was strange, but he would become used to it, as everyone did.
He didn’t feel empty, or that there was anything different about him, and there was no ache beyond what came with healing. And so he healed, and then he was sent off to train.
“We will keep you safe,” one of the hiraas told him, before he left.
Her expression was serene, and Hissrad had trusted her.
==
He hadn’t seen the box, or known where it ended up. It was better that way, in case he ever lost himself. Layers of protection, managed by the hiraas for the safety of all.
Now he sits on the edge of his bed with the box in his hands. It’s been… it’s been a while, since he sat this close to it.
His chest doesn’t ache. That’s bullshit, the kind of saccharine nonsense Varric would write about.
He doesn’t feel a swell of emotion, just like he’s never felt emotionless without it. That’s the propaganda of Tevinter — that Qunari tear apart their chests to rid themselves of feeling, to make them easier to control, to remove all personality.
He fiddles with the lock on the front of the box. Sera could get it open for him, if he asked. Half the Chargers could take a pick to it, and the other half would be right behind with the suggestion of brute force.
He sits, quiet, and listens for the slow beating of his heart, echoed by the blood in his veins. He hears fuck all. The box is too sturdy.
==
“Thought that was a superstition,” Krem says, eyeing the scarring of Bull’s chest with new interest. Bull flexes a pec just to see the way Krem’s expression twists into a kind of despair. “Stop. Stop. I asked a simple question.”
“Didn’t ask anything,” Bull replies, and Krem lets loose a sigh before rephrasing:
“So it’s not a superstition then?”
Bull shrugs a shoulder, and gives himself time to consider the answer while he takes a swig of ale. “No use publicizing the reason we can get knocked on our asses and get back up. Bad strategy.”
From across the table Stitches frowns, but then he’s been frowning for the last hour. Bull thinks if given the chance, he’ll frown at least for the rest of the year. Healers don’t like it when bodies don’t work the way they’re supposed to. “Every time any of us has ever expressed concern over your safety was bollocks.”
“Aww,” Bull says, and makes to reach across the table to grasp Stitches’ arm consolingly. Stitches leans back from him with a curse. “I’m pretty sure if I got hacked in half, you’d need to bury me.”
“Pretty sure,” Stitches hisses, and leaves to acquire more alcohol.
==
It’s a real fight, downing a Tal-Vashoth. They’re unpredictable. Erratic. Even when you get a hand up on one, if you want to put ‘em down right you’ve got to locate their darequrnaas. Few of ‘em run without it, and the ones that don’t take the time to locate it fall to a hiraas and maaksur alqalb.
If they’ve got it though, and you can’t find it, you’re left with a couple options: one, dismemberment and burial, each piece apart from the rest. Decapitation if you don’t have time, but you can’t guarantee the body’ll stop moving — it’s better to do the job right. Two, tie ‘em down with something heavy and drop them to the bottom of the sea, which works better if you disposed the hands elsewhere first. Three, destroy the body with enough fire or force that not even the power that tied a Qunari to their heart could make sense of the lumps anymore.
Bull’s seen the darequrnaas of a Tal-Vashoth after they’d buried her, bits of her in different holes around the island. She’d been picking off livestock and started targeting the help when they got in her way.
The hiraas had opened it up, and the heart inside had still been beating.
==
“Blood magic,” Solas says consideringly after he’s learned of Bull’s darequrnaas, and the entire line of Dorian’s shoulders, the length of his spine, tense under his fancy leathers.
Solas lets the comment stand on its own, and Bull ignores the chill it sends across his skin when Dorian watches him closely, curiously, for the rest of their sojourn in the Emerald Graves.
==
Bull knows that conversation’s never going to go anywhere, because Dorian’s a master of a lot of different Tevinter bullshit, including artful avoidance.
Dorian watches him though, and Bull holds Dorian’s gaze until he looks away.
They fall into bed after a night of carousing, the excitement of the last outing’s dragon hunt still thrumming through Bull’s veins, color high on Dorian’s cheeks every time their eyes catch. Dorian’s fucking beautiful, and beautiful when he’s fucking — Bull tells him that, after, and Dorian hits him repeatedly on the arm before covering his own face with his hand, his groan of dismay bubbling up into laughter.
Dorian steadies himself on the back of the chair at Bull’s writing desk, sliding his boots back on, and when Bull doesn’t hear any more movement, or Dorian’s goodnight, said in his warm, sleep-tinged tone, Bull looks over. Sits up and swings his legs over the edge of the bed.
“Hey,” he says, and keeps it at that.
Dorian’s hand rests on the desk, less than a foot from the darequrnaas. His fingers spasm once, like he’d considered reaching for it but stopped himself.
“It’s an old scar.”
It’s not what Bull expected him to say.
Bull glances down at his chest, unthinkingly. “One of the oldest.”
Dorian finishes tugging on his second boot and returns to the bed, standing within Bull’s reach. Bull doesn’t grab him, keep him where he stands, even if there’s the gentle urge to, just behind his ribs.
“At least now,” Dorian says, and there’s a bit of a pronouncement to it, and a curl to his lips, “I know why you’ve no concept of the very basic tenets of survival instinct, bellowing and flexing as you do during a battle.”
“Aw, you like it,” Bull replies with a grin, and feels warmth spread through the core of him when Dorian laughs and doesn’t deny it.