Chapter Text
Bull’s not really listening to any of the conversation happening around him so much as he is just sitting among it.
They’ve gathered for a final game of Wicked Grace, now a final round of drinks together before they march into the Arbor Wilds and take down Corypheus once and for all. Herald’s Rest is full of soldiers and mages doing the same thing. There will be no time for this kind of merriment tomorrow evening; they’ll all be preparing until it’s too risky to stay awake any later. Most of the Chargers have joined in the raucous chorus that has taken up the level below them, Maryden’s melodies buried under the chanting and stamping of men who know many among them will never have this again.
Some are quieter, more reverent, but none march to their potential deaths unwillingly.
Krem sits beside him still, most of the way through one of those glasses of sweet shit the Inquisitor had plonked down on the table when he’d joined them. Bull can’t stomach the stuff, too floral and sugary besides, and notices the ale in his tankard is almost gone.
There’s an empty chair to his other side, then the Seeker, then Cullen, who is staring down into his tankard. Their Antivan Ambassador has turned in already, her spot left empty beside where the Nightingale had joined them briefly before disappearing for whatever sneaky shit she had to get up to before they leave the day after next.
Then, Dorian, splayed as he is, Varric next to him, reclined in his own chair with his arms crossed, and the Inquisitor leans heavily against the other end of the table from Bull, the bottle he’d brought sitting empty in front of him. Solas next to him, then Cole, a couple empty spots, and Krem again. Sera had been there at one point, but Bull’s lost track of her.
“Oh, Andraste give me strength, the tutors!” Dorian wails, folding over the table, then folding his arms over his head. This is what draws Bull back to the gathering of companions around the table, because of course it is; Bull feels like he has his ear tuned to seek out the mage’s tenor in any room they’re in, the Inquisitor’s, too. Keeps it to himself these days, though, lesson learned and all.
“The blasted tutors,” Maxwell curses darkly into his cup, held to his lips.
“Boys, really, complaining about the private education you got for free?” Varric remarks, tsking. Cassandra snorts, shaking her head as she continues to idly shuffle the cards they’d been playing with, long since abandoned in favor of drinking and recounting tales of their youths. Bull remembers a lot of the conversation now that he casts back for it; it had taken many drinks for the Inquisitor to join in talking of family, spoke of his sister, at least, and how the Free Marches, Ostwick, compared to Cassandra’s description of Nevarra City, Dorian’s of where he’d grown up in Qarinus. Bull feels indulgent in way he could categorize but doesn’t try to, just watches Maxwell set his cup down and turn to Dorian, head falling a little heavily as he cocks it, attentive.
“But you don’t get it, Varric,” Dorian says, voice now quite level for how emotion-filled it had just been. His olive cheeks are flushed pink when he picks up his head, eyes bright. He’s drunk, per usual, and Bull is as well, enough to allow himself to find it endearing how the mage stays draped over the table as he talks. “They’d smack you on the hands and make it so you wouldn’t get breaks.”
“They’d make you copy entire books by memory,” Maxwell adds. “And make you redo any page that wasn’t perfect.”
“They’d demand you recite eons of history at will,” Dorian continues. “Maker help you if you forget even a word. And the drills.”
“They’d tattle on you to your father and then you’d get locked away with only the Chant of Light to read and salt crackers to eat until you could sit still,” Maxwell says. His face is drawn when Bull looks over at him, eyes distant. Bull knows he’s not exactly here in the room with them at the moment and frowns at the sudden shift.
It’s quiet for a heartbeat. Cole shifts uncomfortably, seeming like he wants to help but isn’t sure if he should. The kid still sets Bull’s teeth on edge – he may be something different than a demon, but the reek of the Fade makes his skin feel like he’s covered in fire beetles and gaatlok.
“Hey, Max,” Varric says, gently.
Solas lays his fingers on the Inquisitor’s wrist and gives him a soft nudge.
Maxwell sips a quick breath and the faded look in his eyes shifts.
Bull watches Max pick up his cup and drain it.
He gets it, has seen the same haunted and shifting look in many others through his life. He’s sure he’s worn the expression himself at some points.
“I’ll grab us another round,” the Inquisitor says, bracing his hands on the table. He wobbles slightly as he stands from his chair and attempts to dismount it.
“I’ll go with you,” Dorian announces, standing as well.
“You’ll need another set of hands,” Sera pipes up, crawling out from under the table. So, that’s where she’d gone.
Varric slips a seat over to Solas and leans toward him, speaking in a way that Bull could overhear if he wanted to but doesn’t. He feels itchy, annoyed, beyond his immediate concern for Maxwell, his want to follow him down those stairs and keep him safe from whatever the fuck put that look on his face. Bull is glad, at least, that Dorian’s gone with him. It would be too obvious at this point for him to follow; though the potential audience, awareness, doesn’t bother him, probably wouldn’t bother Dorian, he knows it’d upset Max, knows the man doesn’t like being looked at, observed.
It makes sense to Bull that that’s the case, given this new tidbit of backstory. He knows what it’s like, after all, to have every action, every thought put to scrutiny, to be punished when inevitably found wanting.
He doesn’t think too much, though, about anybody he knows having been a child, or himself having been one, what it had been like.
He is not, so it bears no thinking.
He remembers a youth of sorts, living among tamassrans and peers, being assessed for his aptitude. He’d been clocked early on as strong, as capable, sure, but he was lucky to have somebody paying attention enough to realize he was meant for more than the canon fodder of Ashaads and Arvaraads.
Lucky.
Some parts of the Qun are woven into him, it feels. He is Qunari, blood and bone, despite his exile.
Not all born under the Qun truly believe in it, but there is a great shelf between the baker just getting through her day without thought to it and questioning one’s place within it. Questioning the idea of places in the first place. His thoughts get away from him, the tense twist at the back of his skull attempting to give way to a pleasant buzz at the front of it. There’s a tug-of-war between the feelings that makes his stomach flip, and he drains his tankard to chase the buzz.
The clunk of the metal mug on the table is harder, and louder, than he’d meant for it to be.
“Alright there, boss?” Krem mutters, poised head cocked as his own cup has paused mid-way to his mouth.
“Good, yeah, fine,” Bull says. His training must be slipping at least in some ways because his second-in-command simply levels a dull stare at him.
“Uh-huh,” says Krem. “You remember that thing we’re meant to be working on? The whole trusting each other, talking about shit thing.” He waves his hand in explanation.
“Yeah, uh-huh,” Bull echoes, wishes he had another inch of ale to drink, a whole other tankard, preferably.
The silence goes for a moment, and Krem finally takes a drink.
“Well, I could use some air, though,” he says after he sets his cup down. Krem stands, not waiting for Bull to say anything, and Bull can’t stop the way his nostrils flare. He might growl a little, just a bit, way down in his chest, quiet under all the merriment, because this whole vulnerability thing is uncomfortable and kind of a drag.
It had taken what he realizes now is too long a time for him to tell Krem and the rest of the Chargers why, exactly, the deal with the Qunari had fallen through. He gets why the boy’s still so salty about it. They’d all accepted when he said it didn’t work out, they were sorry to see the mission fail, the alliance fail, but they hadn’t pressed for questions. Trusted that if Bull had something to say, he’d say it. When Krem of all people realized the depth of the situation, the full truth of it, he’d given Bull a hiding, tore into him with words Bull’d had to ask Dorian to translate later and still make him feel embarrassed.
Him, The Iron Bull.
Embarrassed. By words.
He’d been apologetic, to say the least.
It just hadn’t occurred to him. The alliance was off, that was that. That he’d saved the Chargers from the Dreadnought’s fate hadn’t exactly come up. Until it did.
So, he’s working on it, for Krem, for the rest of the boys, too. They deserve a leader who keeps them in the loop, who trusts them with important information. They’ve all proven time and again they won’t let him down or take advantage of it. Not like he had with his former leadership.
He feels weird, is all, about the Inquisitor’s mind going weird, or Dorian’s creepy magic going weird, let alone this weird and intricate and frankly exhausting little dance they’re all doing around each other while either pretending not to or genuinely not realizing they are, or, fuck, Cole’s freaky spirit-totally-not-a-demon shit going weird, or Solas’ whole weird thing going weirder, not to mention the impending doom upon them all if they can’t actually stop Corypheus and prevent the Fade from pouring into their world— It’s a lot to juggle. Not sure what talking is going to do about any of it.
But then, doing something about the problem’s not the point of it. ‘Get it out of your head,’ Krem had told him. And he knows the value of that: it’s the crux of his whole fear-stick-thing. Fuck, talking shit through is just another fear-stick-thing, or it could be, at least, once he gets used to it on his end. He has no problems listening to other people talk about their shit, knows it helps them, and he’s always ready to lend an ear, but ten out of ten times, Bull himself prefers the stick.
The pleasant buzz drains in a way that feels permanent for the night, so he kicks back the stool he’s been sitting on and follows Krem down the stairs. He pauses at the bottom, however, because the boy’s got this besotted look on his face talking to the minstrel by the hearth.
Bull will be a cruel man and a terrible commander if he pulls Krem away from that, tonight of all nights. Gives him a convenient excuse, too.
He notices that Dorian and Maxwell are definitely not ordering drinks, as he’d suspected they wouldn’t be, given the haste of their departure and what preceded it, though Sera is indeed standing at the table that passes for a bar top here, badgering Cabot. Bull perks his ears up as he exits the building, for voices or any other thing that might help him make sure they’re both alright, at least.
They’ve been getting along well these past months, very well by his observations, even if they’re not doing anything about it, but they’d had many tense arguments early on, mostly from Dorian’s flippant haughtiness clashing with Maxwell’s blunt candor. It still flares up sometimes, Bull knows, indignation in either direction for anything from morality and servitude to favorite drinks or books or other benign bullshit. It’s been amusing, at least, to watch them skirt around each other, neither realizing how close they’re getting.
What he knows of each of their upbringings, it makes sense. As much as humans loved to disparage the Qun, they had their own rigid class systems and roles to fulfill. Nobility comes with responsibility, so Maxwell tells it. He talks of structure, of rules, of endless guidelines one must simply know and follow; deviation lead to swift punishment, and if further correction was warranted, it was done, whatever the cost.
It comes close enough to the Qun for Bull to understand the complicated cycle of compulsion and rejection the two nobles talk about. The unstable nature of any perceived freedom while still within its bounds. The only true freedom is to leave, to sever ties for good, and even then.
These types of forces are clingy.
With the tavern door shut and late-night merriment inside muffled, Bull can hear the wind blowing through the towers, the knicker of horses and other beasts that Maxwell keeps echoing up from the stables, the crackle of the campfire that warms the triage tents in the courtyard below. He looks up at the cloudless sky, indigo splattered with diamond dust, a great spirit-green scar rippling across it. His neck aches, his arms ache, his back aches. In another life, he’d know exactly who to seek out to remedy his pains, among other things – here, he simply rolls his shoulders and sets off toward the lower courtyard to climb the steps to his room.
He’d hoped to make sure Dorian and Maxwell were alright before he headed off, but they’re big boys. They can take care of each other, too, a thought that makes Bull’s throat constrict for reasons he’s not really looking too hard at right now. As far as he’s concerned, his keeping watch over the two of them is companionable, that’s all. Just two good companions of his that he absolutely, for sure doesn’t want to—
And anyway, they’d be unlikely to welcome his comparisons as a fun thought-exercise, especially if there’s something emotional going on. Bull gets it, the Qun isn’t for everyone, wasn’t really for him, either, and it’s a conquering tide that he fully expects to break against the shores of mortal will, but is he truly the only one who finds the irony all a little funny?
For all their posturing, the Chantry craves the kind of control the Qun boasts, and they’ll never have it, solely by the nature of those they seek to subjugate. Though, they’d never own to calling it that; at least the Qun is honest.
His foot touches the stone of the stairs and he hears a cut-off noise and the rustle of fabric behind him, then—
“Okay, Max, alright,” comes Dorian’s voice, sounding much like a man who’s sobered up mentally but not physically.
Bull’s feet now take him back toward the quartermaster’s office. Tucked behind the tavern, the Inquisitor is folded over on his knees while Dorian crouches next to him, swaying a bit before sticking his heels to the dirt more firmly.
“Easy now,” Dorian says. Maxwell shakes his head, hands threading into his hair and squeezing, but Bull doesn’t think it’s a direct response. He’s muttering something, Bull can hear at least the sound of his vocal cords vibrating, the fervent whisper of breath.
A pebble scuffs under his heel as he approaches, and Dorian glances over.
“For how big you are, you’re awfully quiet,” the mage remarks, smiling quickly in a way that says he can’t be too amused at the moment. Bull gestures at the Inquisitor, who’s shaking his head again, curled over himself. “I do admit I’m out of my depth,” Dorian continues, swaying once more before falling back on to his ass. His dark eyes are glassy as he looks up into the moonlight, cheeks flushed.
Bull remembers Solas reaching over to the Inquisitor, Cole looking like he wanted to throw himself over like a cat wanting cuddles. He kneels down on the Inquisitor’s other side and slowly rests a heavy hand on his back. The fabric of Max’s fitted tunic is damp in places with sweat, cold and hot at the same time from the air and Max’s feverish skin.
It takes a long few moments, but Maxwell quiets, heaves shallow breaths into the space between his knees and the ground.
“You with us, boss?” Bull asks, thumb stroking slowly across a swath of dry fabric, feels a little steadier when Maxwell nods. He glances over again to Dorian, whose brow is creased in worry still.
“Apologies,” the Inquisitor says, voice cracking. He braces his hands on his knees and pushes himself up; he’s pale, skin sheet-white where he’s usually pink, brow beaded with sweat, lashes clumped, eyes shadowed.
Bull wants to tell him to clue them in on what the fuck’s going on with him, but the way Dorian is looking at the Inquisitor stills Bull’s tongue. For now.
“Apologies,” Maxwell says again after clearing his throat. “I feel fine now, please ignore me.”
It’s a canned response, so rote it makes Bull’s teeth ache, his tongue poised to offer up his own supplications, his own well-studied appeasements—His back twinges, phantom lashes falling across his shoulders. Max had almost spoken with someone else’s voice, strangely; close enough to Maxwell but not at all like himself at the same time. Bull’s heard it before in other settings, on the throne, talking to nobles, his forays into diplomacy. Never with them, though, not until this.
Bull moves to sit instead of crouching; it’s dawning on him that this is something more than a quick check in before bed. The movement makes the Inquisitor sway slightly, but Bull has a better look at him from this angle.
“You’re only about halfway here, boss,” he observes, taking in Max’s vacant stare somewhere on the scaffold to the left of Cassandra’s training spot.
“Oh,” he says, simply, gaze unchanging.
“Maxwell,” Dorian starts, voice tender and quiet, but for the first time since The Iron Bull has known him, he seems lost for words.
Bull sighs a little, moving his hand over to the Inquisitor’s shoulder and squeezing gently before pulling away. He stays close, though, could easily grab Maxwell if he starts to tip over or something.
“I don’t suppose there is a way through any of this untouched by it,” Dorian muses, distant.
“This doesn’t seem like a new thing,” Bull points out.
“No, it doesn’t,” Dorian agrees.
“What did happen?” Bull asks.
“I don’t know,” Dorian replies. He shakes his head a little, brow furrowed like he’s trying to think and coming up empty.
“You got up to get drinks,” Bull prompts.
“Oh, I don’t think we were ever going to do that,” Dorian says, frowning. “He almost fell, trying to leave, and he wasn’t. I don’t know how to describe it, Bull, he just wasn’t all there.” Dorian shrugs again, then worries his bottom lip between his teeth.
Bull looks down at Maxwell again, who’s staring up now, eyes flicking back and forth, and gets what Dorian means.
Max starts to talk again, then, a prayer this time that Dorian knows, too, apparently. It’s a little freaky: Bull watches the shift in the Inquisitor’s awareness, the exact moment he comes back from wherever it is he’s gone, and how the color somehow drains again from his face when he does.
—
It’s his own fault. Maxwell had brought up the subject to begin with, hadn’t given a thought to any of the darker elements; they’d simply been complaining about life over drinks, a time-honored tradition. For all of his many points of comparison, he’s had an exceptional existence up until he found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and suddenly carrying the burden of the fate of life itself on his shoulders.
Hand.
For all that, one’s childhood is silly place to get lost.
His tutors had certainly not invented that particular punishment; no, that trial was one of his father’s creation, and one Maxwell has known well since his mother passed. He had wailed so inconsolably at her funeral that he’d been confined to his room for weeks after, his books and games and toys removed, no blankets on his bed, no food until he stopped screaming for her.
The memory had stuck into him like an arrowhead. And it had grown painful and large and inescapable, his mind placing him back in that shadowed room, sitting alone at a table with a pristine scroll and a single candle burning, though he somehow knew it was day. They’d drawn the heavy curtains shut so he couldn’t see out the windows, and as a boy he’d been too afraid to even sneak a look. He was sure they’d know he’d done it, and they’d leave him in there longer.
“’When I have lost all else, when my eyes fail me and the taste of blood fills my mouth, then in the pounding of my heart I hear the glory of creation,’” the words fall quickly from his lips, formed before he even has to think for the next. He has recited them so often they feel a part of him. “’You have grieved as I have. You, who made worlds out of nothing. We are alike in sorrow, sculptor and clay, comforting each other in our art.’”
Before he was scolded for it by one of his later tutors, he’d illuminated the Trials, used his mother’s paints and the skills she’d taught him to draw careful, intricate filigree in the margins. He’d hidden scenes within it like the stained glass he longed to watch the light filter through. At least he’d been able to give the scroll to one of the Sisters he attended services with, his only true sense of time, before the tutor was able to tell his father, so it hadn’t been destroyed, but writing utensils were added to the list for confiscation during those confinement periods. The word of the Chant was enough – he need not attempt to improve upon it.
The paints had never been returned to him.
“’Do not grieve for me, Maker of All. Though others may forget You, Your name is etched into my every step. I will not forsake You, even if I forget myself,’” he whispers, gut churning at the falseness of it, at how long it has been since these words have brought him any real comfort.
He knows he’s outside of the tavern, sightless, senseless, remembers stumbling off with some excuse on his lips, remembers Dorian – dear Dorian – following close and catching him around the waist when Max had swayed past his ability to self-correct.
“’Maker though the darkness comes upon me, I shall embrace the Light’—” Dorian says something, he’s still here, still near— “’I shall weather the storm. I shall endure. What you have created, no one can tear asunder.’”
He feels himself sway again, Dorian’s hands catching his arms this time as Maxwell’s legs wobble a little too hard, and he folds to his knees. It’s much more comfortable down here, and Dorian says something again, but it’s nowhere he can reach right now, though he’s trying to, wants to.
“’Who knows me as You do?’” He mutters as his heart throbs uncomfortably, head swimming, and he presses his skull between his hands. “’You have been there since before my first breath. You have seen me when no other would recognize my face. You composed the cadence of my heart. Through blinding mist, I climb a sheer cliff, the summit shrouded in fog, the base endlessly far beneath my feet. The Maker is the rock to which I cling.’”
The painted scroll is burned into his memory though it’s been many, many long years since he’s seen it; it is what he reads from in these moments, how he finds a way back to the quiet, away from the tempest that overtakes his senses.
“’I cannot see the path,’” it feels like the plea it had been when he first learned the words, “’Perhaps there is only abyss. Trembling, I step forward, in darkness enveloped. Though all before me is shadow, yet shall the Maker be my guide. I shall not be left to wander’—”
A hot, heavy weight settles on to his back, and he realizes suddenly how hard he’s shaking.
It’s not just Dorian anymore; Max recognizes Bull’s deep voice.
Maker, they’re probably worried.
He’s fairly certain Bull’s asked a question; he hazards a nod. He tries to clear his throat, tries to crackle out an apology.
Not good enough. Again.
He takes a deeper breath and sits up, locking his elbows to try and quell the shake in his arms.
“Apologies,” he tries again, clearer. “I feel fine now, please ignore me.”
Better.
Bull says something again, but Max can’t put it together into a sentence.
“Oh,” he says, simply, hoping that passes scrutiny. (Later, much later, he will marvel at how he ever thought he’d convince either of them to leave him alone in a state like this.)
It doesn’t, of course, and he hears Dorian and Bull keep talking.
Probably about him.
He’s used to it.
There’s something comfortingly familiar about this part: the cotton-wool in his ears, the cloudy lens over his eyes, the quiet heaviness of his mind. It’s been a few weeks since he’s had one of these moments, so swept by the rush of their crusade he hasn’t had the time to think, to spend in his head to get here. Something is racing behind it all, distant, some looming panic he knows will crash down once he has his wits about him again.
He much prefers this placidity, taking the moment to catch his breath, to allow his eyes to follow the path of the jute ropes tied around the scaffold, looped with slack in some places and load bearing in others.
“’Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter,’” he mutters, barely giving air to the words he shapes with his lips. “’Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just.’”
He hears another voice join his as he begins the next benediction, knows by cadence alone they speak the same prayer:
“’Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow. In their blood the Maker’s will is written,’” he finishes, hears Dorian clearly now, like Maxwell’s just come up from under the bath—
At once, he registers the damp cling of his clothes, the hard press of the earth on his tingling legs, the cramp in his stomach, the fluttering of his heart—He leans over his knees again and vomits into the dirt.
“Andraste guide me,” Dorian mutters, now behind him, and Max’s hair is pushed out of his face, the crisp night air immediately cooling what skin had been covered with his sweat-stuck locks.
“Sorry,” he croaks.
“Were you praying that whole time?” Dorian asks, voice light in that haughty manufactured way the mage excels at when he feels vulnerable. It pisses Maxwell off. “I never took you for a genuinely pious man.”
“I’m…It’s complicated,” Max whispers, spitting and attempting to stand. He pitches forward and resigns himself to falling into his own sick and is mildly surprised when he doesn’t.
“Whoa, there,” Bull says, graciously catching Max by the shoulders and setting him on his feet. He’d fully forgotten the qunari was there, he realizes, face burning with shame.
“Thank you,” says Max, has his faculties enough to be grateful, at least. “Truly. Now, I’ve embarrassed myself enough for one evening; please, I’ll take my leave.”
Maxwell bows his head and tries to slink away, but Bull’s hand on him remains. His face flares hot, and he stills, refuses to test the grip and find out if he’ll be let go or not.
“All that and you just,” Dorian starts, sputtering from where he’s still on the ground. “You just get up and slink away like it’s nothing?”
Okay, just because Maxwell had been planning to slink doesn’t mean Dorian has to describe it that way.
“I thank you for your help when I was too deep in my cups, but I’m fine now, it is nothing,” he insists, all too aware of Bull’s grip on his shoulder. Not tight, not aggressive, but impossible to ignore.
“Boss,” Bull says, serious and nonchalant at once, somehow. A contradiction, he’s found The Iron Bull to be over these long months, but it all shakes out to a warrior of solid character and a dear friend. Dorian, too, has been a bright point of levity among the drudgery, in spite of, and maybe partially due to, their spirited debates. And in Max’s more hopeful moments, he lets his thoughts linger on some dreamy fantasy of a life he will never have: apartments in a city, maybe even a house with a garden, filled with books and cats and warm hearths in every room, a bed he shares with…
Maker, he is too exhausted to stand the fluttering tremble of his own chest.
Maxwell sighs heavily, giving his weight over to Bull, gratified when the qunari simply keeps holding him upright, as though all of Max’s weight is as light as the soft breeze they stand in. His belly is hot and solid and it makes Max feel a bit more real the longer he stands there leaning, wants to lay his cheek on Bull’s skin and maybe fall asleep here.
“I do not know what this is,” he admits. “It’s happened all my life, it. It just happens.”
He feels like crying. Oh, Maker, he might just. Dorian looks like he’s about to speak, and Maxwell doesn’t think he can hear it.
“When I was young,” he starts, wants to give at least some context for all this, to appease the worry in their faces without more probing. “I would be isolated until I could…” Max falters, closing his eyes against a pulse of intensity behind them. Behave properly. “Collect myself. The canticles…Help,” he hedges, breathing slow and long through the hitch that rises in his chest. He clears his throat. “So does. This,” he gestures vaguely at Bull and Dorian.
He’d figured that out with Cole’s help, the blessed lad. It had unnerved Maxwell, first, as it would anyone, the way Cole could hear his thoughts. But he’d asked Cole to stop using the skill on him, and the boy had at least outwardly done so. It was only later, one dwindling twilight, Max’s back pressed to the day-warmed cobbles of the parapets, knees to his chest, fingers pulling tension on his hair so tight he felt it might rip from his scalp, Cole had helped the Inquisitor before he could consciously not act on what he’d had no choice but to hear from Maxwell’s head.
By that time, Max had come back to himself with gentle hands grasping his own shaking ones, hands that returned his grateful squeeze when he hadn’t the words to give thanks. Cole had taken him to Solas after, worried of spiritual malady.
But Solas could not tell Max anything he didn’t already know – whatever this is, it is no illness of the spirit, no curse or possession or anything so scary. Or fixable.
He startles when Bull’s hand moves to rest on the back of his head, stroking down once before cupping his nape. It quells the sharp needles kicking back up, like he pushes them right back down into Maxwell’s skin and makes them stay put.
“The mage and I will help you back to your quarters,” Bull says, and Maxwell can’t bring himself to argue. He’s doubly surprised when Dorian doesn’t beg off to go back to the tavern, just picks himself up and saunters along quietly beside and behind them as they ascend the stairs to the keep.
It’s empty, fires banked low and chandeliers extinguished for the evening. The hall is illuminated only by the sconces that hang from the statues, casting deep shadows and making the room feel cavernous, endlessly tall.
“Ah, just like home,” Dorian remarks cheerfully before he conjures a mote of soft white light in his hand.
There, those are the long tables and chairs Max knows, Varric’s fireplace gone cold, the scrolling carpet and smooth stone floors.
His yoke, the throne.
How many people has he sent to their deaths, to exile, to imprisonment, seated on its velvet surface? What right does he have to any of it, outside of what had been forced upon him? What he continues to wield by his own choosing? But does he truly have a choice?
Maxwell’s mouth is sour and bitter and he feels like vomiting again.
He lets Bull help him up the stairs more than he’ll be willing to admit in the light of day.
Some small part of him is still chalking all this up to drinking too much wine and getting too worked up. And sure, that couldn’t have helped him, but he’d been picking at that particular wound among many others long before alcohol entered the equation this evening. Though, he ought to accept any plausible deniability he can find at the moment, a rare commodity.
While Max would like to say he sits down on the couch at the top of the stairs, relieved to finally be off his feet, it’s more accurate to say that Bull deposits him there with a quiet squeak of springs, though he is still quite relieved. The shaking in his body has quelled some, thanks to his qunari companion’s otherworldly body heat, but he can still feel the ever-present tremble in his bones. Max watches Dorian continue forward and stoke up the fire.
In this heavy, quiet moment, Maxwell can’t think of a single thing to say.
Or rather, he has about a hundred things all vying to be said of varying sensibility and importance, so he keeps his mouth shut and watches the embers swell back up to a sizeable fire with Dorian’s attention. The mage sways in his crouch, and Max watches Bull stretch his arms uncomfortably out of the corner of his eye, probably antsy about the magic in close quarters on top of how the evening is unfolding.
He opens his mouth to speak—
“If you’re going to apologize again, stow it,” Dorian says, now walking back over. He drapes himself heavily onto the sofa next to Max and levels him with a challenging eyebrow raise.
Maxwell closes his mouth once more and leans back against the plush cushion behind him.
“It doesn’t sound like any madness I’ve heard of,” Bull offers, sounding thoughtful, which startles Max both for the suddenness of his voice and what he’s said.
“Madness?” He echoes quietly, knows well Bull’s fears and resulting revulsion. “You don’t—”
“No,” Bull replies, easily, and Maxwell deflates.
“You can’t go around putting thoughts in people’s heads like that,” Dorian clips. “You don’t think Maxwell has enough to worry about, let alone if he’s cracking up?”
“And how,” Max says, mildly, looking up at the underside of the roof but not really seeing it.
“Sorry,” Bull says, chagrined. “I really did mean it as a comfort.”
Max hums and listens to the fire crackle.
“I am quite alright by now,” he says. “I wouldn’t keep you both from your evenings.”
“If you want to be alone,” Dorian starts, but Max is surprised by the swell of panic that rises in his throat at the suggestion, despite it being his own. He swallows around it and attempts a smile.
“We’ve a long day of preparations ahead of us tomorrow,” he replies.
“What were the prayers?” Bull asks. He moves to sit on the stool at the end of Maxwell’s bed, and Max resigns himself to the company. (He is grateful for it beyond words.)
“The Benedictions at the end I recognized,” Dorian supplies, and Max nods. Those verses were his guidepost, his aspirations, in another lifetime. He’s been running from his obligation to join the Templar Order since he was sixteen years old; he’d stopped believing in salvation long before that.
“The Canticle of Trials,” he says. “Prayers for the despairing, Trial I. First and chief of all suffering the Maker’s children must bear.”
“Woof,” Bull mutters.
“Oh, you should hear Threnodies,” Dorian says, and Max wrinkles his nose.
“’And so we burned. We raised nations, we waged wars, we dreamed up false gods, great demons who could cross the Veil,’ and so on,” Maxwell says, leaning forward to press his face into his hands.
“Have you really got it memorized?” Dorian asks, to which Max can only nod miserably.
“We are all products of our raising,” he says to his palms.
“Yeah, so, I am curious about that one thing you said,” Bull remarks, and Maxwell wishes suddenly, viciously, perhaps ironically, to be alone right now.
—
Threnodies is Dorian’s favorite of the Canticles, if he’s pressed to choose. It tells the span of the Imperium before Andraste was called to His side, up until the moment humanity lost the Maker’s love for good. Dramatic, epic, emotional, and violent – it’s good reading, even if it isn’t the best of verses technically speaking, or in terms of hope or comfort. Though, hard to find comfort anywhere in the Chant, when the general message of hope is ‘when you die, He’ll take care of you maybe.’ Fickle as the Old Gods, is the Maker of All.
Dorian is much fonder of secular prose, if he truly has the option. Not that he’s exactly spoiled for choice with how small the library at Skyhold is, but at least he can procure more books on their excursions.
“What was all that about being isolated?” Bull asks, and Dorian bites on his back teeth to keep from telling him off. Let Maxwell be the one to set his own boundaries. Dorian can’t quell the spike of venom that stabs into his stomach, though, and grimaces at the carpet, not wholly understanding it.
“Ah,” Maxwell says after a pause. He clears his throat and sits up. “I really can’t remember what I was talking about.”
He’s very obviously lying, and Dorian is willing to give it to him after all that just now in the courtyard. The Iron Bull, however, is tenacious not just in battle.
“You said your tutors, your family? They locked you in a room alone,” Bull provides helpfully. The Inquisitor fidgets next to him on the couch, and Dorian glances over at him. Maxwell grips his hands together tightly before rubbing a palm over his chin and pressing his fingers to his lips.
He looks better than before, cheeks pinker and eyes clearer. His hair is mussed and pushed back from his face, more freckled skin visible than Dorian is used to seeing; the Inquisitor is much like Cole in his tendency to duck behind his own fringe in shy moments.
“It wasn’t—I’m sorry,” Maxwell replies. He drops his hand from his mouth, taking a steadying breath. “It just bubbled up, I didn’t realize what I was saying.”
“It’s alright,” Dorian says, intercepting Bull this time. “You don’t have to—”
“Krem told me it’s a good idea to talk about shit that makes you feel like you shouldn’t talk about it,” Bull supplies, talking over him, and Dorian frowns. He’s a little surprised, actually, that Bull isn’t taking the Inquisitor at his word, but then. Then, he’s always treated them both a little differently, more so these recent weeks. Dorian’s been chalking it up to growing camaraderie, at least where he’s concerned, but there’s a…an intimacy he’s feeling in Bull’s insistence now that doesn’t quite make sense with that explanation alone.
“You have a tendency to keep wise company,” the Inquisitor says, after a moment. He’s smiling when Dorian looks at him, if a bit bitterly. “I think my father’s choice of punishment for shameful childhood behavior was mild for what I know my companions have suffered. To lay it on your shoulders now, after having already burdened you with my well-being this evening, and with the fate of eternity before that, is uncouth at best. Would you accept that for an explanation?”
“Nope,” Bull says simply and immediately, and Dorian almost laughs. It’s a very near thing he doesn’t, and he’s glad for his own willpower when a mottled flush rises on Maxwell’s cheeks, and his jaw sets.
“The question had been a rhetorical courtesy,” he says, tersely.
Dorian breathes slowly, tilting his head. A war is unfolding between the two simultaneously most evasive and nosy people he’s ever known in his life, himself fully included.
He’s still drunk, is the thing. Honey wine (different from mead, Lord Trevelyan insists passionately) is a lovely way to become inebriated, another facet he shares in common with the Inquisitor, from noble upbringing, and some albeit rather extended lineage, to apparently also some variety of captivity. Maxwell knows Dorian’s brand well by now, but this is new territory for the mage himself to discover some similar reflections in Maxwell’s own history.
It’s complicated, he’d said. Despite being dubbed Andraste’s Herald and the performance of piety required by that station, before this evening Dorian had never heard anything overtly zealous out of Maxwell’s mouth beyond a well-placed curse during battle or an exasperated plea during a card game. But then, he’d never seen the Inquisitor in such a state before this evening, either.
It had been a trance, almost, the near endless recitation, and the moments afterward startlingly like the blank peacefulness of Tranquility before he’d crashed back into himself. Could he have some latent magic? Something in him that forces his mind to blink into the Fade while his body remains, that tethers him back for his eventual return…
No, that’s far too romantic.
More likely some nervous disorder. And who could blame the poor thing, sensitive as he is to the world and its ills. Dorian knows well, too, the price of extended isolation. The war certainly can’t be helping, the looming march, the precipice.
The room is warming, finally, the flames casting bright flickering light. Maxwell’s face shifts in it as he looks away from Bull and over at the stained glass behind him. When Dorian tips his head back, the glow of the moon softly illuminates the tiles of the roof, the tinted panels from the window washing color over the slate.
Dorian is interested to see who breaks the silence first – it won’t be himself, somehow he’s sure of that. Either his mouth is glued shut from being dry with lack of drink or his survival instincts are disallowing him from chiming in again to this part of the conversation. Trapped alone, not knowing when, if ever, you’d be able to leave. Being wholly dependent on an indifferent or even malicious party for every need, able to make no choices for oneself. No way to see the world beyond where you’d been made to be.
Why hadn’t he grabbed a blasted bottle before leaving the tavern?
Well, he’d been scared, is the thing. Maxwell had lurched forward, knees buckling, like he was trying to throw himself outside, and Dorian couldn’t just leave him to fall, couldn’t stomach standing at the bar while Max gasped for air alone. It was lucky there’d been a raucous sing-along while they’d taken their leave; none were any the wiser to the Inquisitor’s diminished state.
“Soon, we will march on Corypheus’ forces,” Maxwell says, his voice tired, with none of the anger that had been there before. Dorian looks over at him, not realizing his gaze had fallen to his own boots. The Inquisitor leans his head against his hand, his elbow against the arm of the sofa, gazing out at some horizon Dorian cannot see. “There is no aid now in dredging up past suffering. Is it not enough that my mind calls it forth unbidden? Must I truly attempt to put word to it all? I fear I do not know how.”
“Isn’t that a reason to practice?” Bull prods. Dorian wants to smack him but doesn’t interfere this time. Maxwell falls silent, breathes slowly through his nose, and Bull waits him out.
“You misunderstand me,” says Maxwell, finally, but not coldly. “I do not mean that I don’t know what must be said. There is too much to say and no sane order in which to explain its context. To have you even begin to understand would be to tell you of each memory I have since the first and hope that you see the same shapes in them. That, Bull, is an exercise in futility. Our time would be better spent in the pathways between trying to find Corypheus through another eluvian.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Bull replies.
“Exactly,” Maxwell says, flat.
Dorian sees Bull’s nostrils flare, an uncharacteristic overt display of frustration. The qunari is regularly much more subtle—in matters of the heart at least, which this seems indeed to be, from Dorian’s assessment.
“Perhaps we should call it a night,” Dorian offers.
“That would be best,” the Inquisitor says, quickly, standing from the settee and striding over to one of the balcony doors. “Thank you, both, for your help,” he says, softer, before ducking outside and letting the glass pane fall shut behind him.
In the pregnant silence, Dorian examines his nails.
“What the fuck?” Bull sighs, voice muffled. When Dorian glances over, he’s got his big hands pressed over his face. “Krem gets me spilling my guts in about ten minutes.”
“That’s because you’re easy,” Dorian tells him. “You want to be known, you crave it in the way our dear Lord Trevelyan flees from it.”
“I am not easy,” Bull argues, seeming genuinely affronted by the idea, and Dorian smirks briefly.
“Of course you’re not, but in context,” Dorian replies, waving his hand. “You’ve been waiting your whole life for somebody to listen to what you think. Any opportunity to share it with someone you trust? Of course you jump on it.”
“And you’re the expert,” the qunari replies flatly, his one eye narrowed.
Dorian’s cheeks flare.
“Pot, kettle. Takes one to know one, and so on,” he replies, bracing his hand on the arm of the settee and standing slowly. “I, for one, need to be a great deal more drunk if I’ve any hope to avoid the nightmares this evening.”
“Nightmares?” Bull asks as he begins to follow Dorian down the steps.
“Not those kind, don’t you worry,” he replies breezily. “It’s not the Fade which haunts me.”
“Are all humans this cryptic? Do you, like, get off on it?” Bull grumbles. He catches the door to the Inquisitor’s room before it slams shut and eases it closed. Dorian smiles to himself and continues across the wooden walkway to the outer door.
“Give him time,” Dorian tells him. “There’s something very messy here, something he’s not ready to talk about. We have to respect that.”
“We may not have much time to wait for his readiness,” Bull argues.
“Don’t be so pessimistic,” Dorian chides, and Bull grumbles. “And you can’t argue with him every time he freezes up.”
“Phah, I know that,” Bull replies, groaning in exasperation.
“Do you? I wonder,” Dorian muses, holding the outer door open for Bull and shutting it behind them both.
“I would not want to leave this place without knowing the truth of things,” the great qunari says, sounding vexed and soft. Dorian understands a bit better, but still has too much rolling through his mind to get attached to the feeling of epiphany that quickly dissipates.
He needs a drink.
He rests a hand on Bull’s arm and offers a companionable smile, grateful at least his reticence those months ago hadn’t turned Bull cold to him.
“I’m headed back to the tavern. Care to join?”
“Nah,” Bull says, too lightly, waving his other hand. “Have one in my honor, though.” Dorian squeezes Bull’s arm and shares a quick smile with him and turns away. He clenches his fist at the burn of Bull’s body heat left in his palm.
“Good night, Iron Bull,” he bids, sticking his hands in his pockets.
“It’s The Iron Bull,” Bull says after him, and Dorian laughs to himself.
“Yes, of course, do enjoy your article,” he calls softly over his shoulder, amused as he continues down the darkened hall to return to the tavern.
He doesn’t much feel like joining in another conversation, or any merriment at all, really, but resigns himself to steeping in the environment at least for somewhere warm to drink. He wordlessly exchanges coin for his usual half bottle of dark Ferelden liquor, nodding to Cabot rather than try to raise his voice over the din before he steps away. With Bull turned in for the night, the chair he sprawls in is empty, so Dorian drapes himself in a similar way and takes a long swig.
What a tiring thing to argue about, now of all times.
What good, after all, is there really in turning over past hurts to look at them freshly, let alone on the edge of war? In Dorian’s experience, the only effect that’s ever had is convincing him to return to his drink, for which he needs little motivation, to be fair.
Perhaps with so much ahead being left to chance, it feels better for the two of them to cling to some smaller conflict, rather than their impending confrontation with Corypheus.
Dorian rather wishes they’d fuck already and release the tension. They’d be better for it, not just for the physical aspect—he knows much more about Bull’s genitalia than he ought to for never having actually been in his bed, but the qunari wears damnably thin pants—but also then Bull would just say or ask the thing that’s on his mind instead of needling Max about his childhood imprisonment.
Dorian’s long been aware of his and Maxwell’s generous overlap in background. Though the details of their individual circumstances vary greatly, it is unsurprising to share another core experience. To be locked away by one’s father is, after all, not exactly uncommon, though it’s usually left to princesses and such other people who matter in the scheme of things. No, the uniqueness here lies in the individual cruelty of two separate fathers seeking to subjugate their sons.
To think of Qarinus feels at times to remember a story of someone else’s life, but at as many other intervals, Dorian finds himself transported back into that dark dungeon, cell decorated like his room in the estate above as though it would bring him any comfort. When he could move of his own accord, he’d still been chained to an iron loop on the wall, recalls the heavy bruises that had taken weeks to heal after his escape, almost feels now the twin scars that run equidistant around his ankles. But then he hadn’t much had to worry about puppeting his own body for a good deal of time there.
The bottle is mostly gone by the time Dorian gets annoyed enough by all the singing to leave. He’ll not even be attempting sleep in a bed, not with home so fresh in his memory, so he heads off to climb the stairs to the keep. He’s got a stack of books in from a shop in Val Royeaux that he needs to get started with, a far better way to pass the time than fighting off unfortunately proverbial demons.
At least real ones can be exorcised.
—
“It’s The Iron Bull,” he calls after the departing mage, smiling to himself when the man shakes his head and sways a bit at the gesture.
“Yes, of course, do enjoy your article,” Dorian says over his shoulder. Then, he’s out into the night and descending the stairs back to the courtyard, the tavern.
Bull sighs and sits heavily on the short stone step down to the gallery that lines each side of the great hall. It’s dark again, like it had been when they first entered, and Bull is thankful for the privacy it gives him.
The walk to his quarters isn’t that long, but he finds himself suddenly too exhausted to even think of climbing all those stairs again.
Bull is sure, at least, that the Inquisitor isn’t suffering from any sort of madness or illness. That doesn’t exactly ease the confusion and frustration he feels at Maxwell’s secrecy, his avoidance. At this feeling that Maxwell still doesn’t truly trust him after everything Bull’s already lied about, despite how much other evidence he has that Max trusts him just fine and this is just a barbed pile of traumatic bullshit he doesn’t want to talk about.
It’s just that he could be dying, for all any of them know, and his unwillingness to talk about it will mean none of them can help him. They are surrounded by mages and Templars and other holy people — surely there is some aid they could render him if he needed it, if there is something actually wrong.
And sure, Bull knows this vexation to be an excuse of sorts, to give himself some way to believe he’s not ass over horns for somebody who’s in love with someone else (twice over, besides that). There’s a world where they make it work, the three of them; they balance each other out, in battle and in leisure, and he wants to know them. And maybe they could make something good happen inside all of this horror.
They may not get the chance for it, now, depending on how this battle goes.
That is urgency clawing at him; it wells up from a place deep within, somewhere primal, the wanting, the craving, the needing. To want something so ardently now, when he should not in the first place, when he cannot have it anyway, feels as familiar as the roar of blood through his ears when he fights. So much of his life has been violent haze book-ended by miserable clarity, always seeking to do better, to be more of what was expected of him – Demanded of him.
When he’d lost his ability to do that, he’d turned to the ones who were meant to help in just those situations.
There was a solution for everything, under the Qun. Want, desire, dreaming did not matter, did not plague Qunari.
True, Bull cannot remember wanting any particular path over another. He hadn’t wanted to be Ashaad, sure, but he hadn’t exactly wanted to be Hissrad, either, never really gave much thought to what he wanted at all beyond protecting innocent people, even when he burned out big-style and found himself in an ocean of red.
He’d thought of nothing but the Qun, then. Duty-bound as he was – afraid of himself, what he’d done and how it was all he could think about, now, all he wanted, couldn’t risk it – he’d gone to the re-educators.
They’d been so pleased with him, so kind as they listened to him and coaxed more confessions from him, told him his spirit was strong and the Qun would always accept him, always have a place for him. He need simply submit to It.
Isolation and exposure were two sides of the same coin. Solitude to focus solely on one’s role, days upon days of silent meditation and lashings to test them on it; he learned early on to keep his tongue away from his own teeth. Alternating with no privacy, made to feel homogeneous, yoked together and reciting passages the rest of the time. They would relearn that they were nothing outside of the Qun, how performing their roles would further the reach of the Qun, would bring peace and order to the chaos that plagued Thedas. There was a time, albeit a short, confined one, where he’d had that goal, too.
Not a day goes by he doesn’t feel the thick roping scars twisting down his back, the heavy weight of chains on his horns, his neck, the scratch of his throat, the crack of his lips after chanting litanies for hours with no water, no food, just repeating back the Words they’d been told to say.
But he hadn’t tasted regret until his hand was forced. Not regret for turning his back on the Qun, on his people, which would have made sense, no:
Regret that he had not pursued his freedom sooner, that he had not realized just when “his people” had shifted to the Chargers and away from his blood. Regret that Maxwell had to be the one to show it to him, that he hadn’t seen it himself. That it had taken dangling the lives of his boys in front of him for him to realize just how much would continue to be demanded of him, no matter how far away he got, no matter the life he tried to build for himself.
Watching the dreadnought go down had been watching his own final chain untether.
It sits sourly in his stomach, the thought, the regret, the ale. Maxwell alone upstairs and Dorian alone in the tavern and him alone here in the dark.
Bull rises slowly and makes his way to the courtyard to climb the stairs to the tower he has claimed that none seem to argue with. Better the long walk than go traipsing through the Templar’s office.
Sleep, when it comes, is fitful and drenched in memory.
He wakes when it’s still dark, with a quickly fading image of a small horned boy crying fat, inconsolable tears into someone’s lap, but he does not know if he is the boy or the someone or both. Bull presses a hand to his chest as he sits up, breathing steadily to help the thudding drum to slow. His eye and nose sting and his back aches in protest as he curls over a bit further, the vision gone now from his memory, leaving only the feeling behind.
The birds are up, too, chirping brightly in the courtyard below. In a moment, he’ll get out of bed and chew on some elfroot to combat the headache unfurling in his skull.
There’s a knock at the door.
“Gimme a sec,” he says, voice scraped up with sleep but loud enough to carry.
He swings his feet off the bed and gropes around for his clothes, sighing at the way the world tips. It takes a moment for the spinning to stop, then he tugs on his pants and grabs his eye patch off the hook he slings it on at night when they’re here in the keep. He doesn’t undress to sleep when they’re on the road – that is not a luxury for the roaming, but it’s one he’ll happily indulge in here.
Bull doesn’t know who to expect when he opens the door, but he’s not exactly surprised to see the Inquisitor, his thick cloak tucked around his shoulders and over his head. It’s barely dawn, the sky pink and orange with the rising sun.
“Could I come in?” Maxwell asks Bull’s feet.
“Yeah, boss,” Bull says, feeling fond as he steps to the side. He shuts the door and turns back to where Max has stalled at Bull’s makeshift desk, set with papers and books and ink. He drops his hood back and glances over at him; Bull sees the way his eyes linger before flicking over to the fireplace.
“I’m sorry for last night,” he says, and Bull shakes his head.
“We talked about—”
“For being so evasive,” Max interrupts him, wringing his hands. “It’s not. It doesn’t feel like the right time to be doing any of this. There is so much at stake, I can’t. I can’t use the precious time we do have dissecting old hurts. I am just this way. It will simply be. I do not want to make more complicated what is already an insurmountable task.”
Bull feels a twinge of anger in his chest, but swallows it down. Save acting on it for when he understands it better. Not like he’d done last night, barrelling through and upsetting Maxwell with his damned want to know.
“What if talking about it could make it stop?” He asks, tries his best for gentle despite the feeling bubbling. “What if you get it out of your head and don’t give it the power to shock you like that?”
The Inquisitor opens his mouth, but snaps it shut soon after, brow creasing.
“What if, whatever the fuck any of this is, you don’t have to do it alone?” Bull continues, taking a step closer.
“But, Bull, I—” Max starts, sounding broken, pleading for a moment before he turns away to look at the stone wall beside him. “I don’t want to argue again.”
“Okay,” Bull says, putting up his palms in surrender. He’s gotten good at discerning when Max’s avoidance can be pushed, when it must be listened to, despite his drunk blundering last night – not that Bull has a lot of room to talk where truth-telling is concerned. But like Dorian had said: takes one to know one.
“I have to go out to get a few more samples of red lyrium for Dagna. Would you come with me?” The Inquisitor asks. Bull softens, feeling a smile grow in spite of himself at the abrupt change, the normalcy of the request.
“Yeah, boss. I’m your guy,” he says, gratified at the flush that rises on Maxwell’s cheeks.
“Meet me in the courtyard at sun-up,” he says, ducking past Bull to the door. “Um, thank you, again. And, sorry.” He says it all to the carpet stretches between them before he ducks out the door and closes it softly behind him.
Bull can hear him cursing as his footsteps fade and feels bewildered.
—
Like last night, Maxwell imagines pitching himself over the railing to become one with the mountains below as he hurries from Bull’s company.
Then, he remembers all of Thedas becoming infested with red lyrium, falling into the thrall of Corypheus and his blasphemous crusade, the blood and demons and screaming and death, and he steadies his resolve.
Stupid of him to think one conversation would lead Bull understanding anything. He’d said it himself after all: there is simply too much to talk about. Luckily, he doesn’t need understanding, he just needs his companions to remain as steadfast as they have been thus far.
Save one, they have given him no cause to doubt; he must return that favor.
He must do better.
“I’ve found another rift,” Solas tells him as he enters the atrium. Max looks up at the vivid mural the elf is finishing, perched at the top of his scaffold.
“I was about to invite you on my own excursion, but that sounds much more fun,” Maxwell observes, leaning against the archway. The elf is almost done, only this swath of plain plaster left at the top of this last panel.
“Perhaps our destinations align,” Solas offers, gesturing to his desk. Max pushes off the wall and steps over, tilting his head as he approaches the map spread across the top, held down on one side by a whispering shard.
“Looks like,” Max agrees, mild. “Sun-up in the courtyard, if you’re available.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Solas says, amusement evident in his voice.
He’d been wary of the mage at first, unsure of his apostasy and intentions. Perhaps there’s a part of him that’s still unsure of some aspects – who among them doesn’t have their secrets, after all – but he’s certain at least that Solas is an important ally in the fight against Corypheus. His presence is comforting, too, in its own way. Solas has no expectations of him, no unknown guidepost to be measured against and left wondering. He can exist as he is with the elf and not feel he’s been found wanting. These days, at least.
He climbs the stairs to the library above to go talk to Leliana and is surprised to see Dorian asleep in the chair he favors. Truthfully, Max hadn’t given much thought to what Dorian had gotten up to after…all that last evening. Max had upset Bull, he had realized that much and it had plagued him all night, but Dorian had seemed much less invested in prying into Max’s history. He’d been grateful for it then and is still now. Though, some part of him is grateful that Bull cares enough to pry, a part of him that twists a warm flush in his chest and makes him feel a little weak in the knees. He knows Dorian cares in his own way, too, recalls the measured way he’d been watching the conversation unfold and trying to steer Bull away from pushing too hard without speaking for Max himself.
Maker, it’s all so confusing.
He doesn’t want to wake Dorian but can’t help the way his feet fall still when he sees the mage, who had done plenty of his own evasion last night. And Maxwell knows enough of his past to understand why, to know that even the vague outline of imprisonment would be uncomfortable for him, let alone to discuss it explicitly.
“Do I truly look so dashing that you’ll stop in your tracks at the sight of me?” Dorian’s sleep-deep voice asks, and Maxwell realizes his eyes are open in heavy slits.
“Sorry I woke you,” he says, feeling his cheeks burn at being caught.
“I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to, darling,” Dorian says, beleaguered, and Maxwell’s stomach does an interesting little tumble. He sits upright and scrubs his hands over his face before smoothing back down his mustache. Dorian is gaunter than usual, skin wan and lined. “How are you feeling?” He asks.
“Fine, thank you,” Max replies, offering a smile to the shelf beside the mage.
Dorian hums, rising and stretching his arms over his head in a great arc.
“Should I have interceded earlier?” He asks, making Max cock his head.
“No,” says Maxwell after a moment. “I wanted…I hoped he’d understand.”
“To be fair, he usually doesn’t needle us like that. Not sure why this one’s so…sticky for him,” Dorian acquiesces. He’s stepped closer, resting a hand on Maxwell’s shoulder and squeezing gently.
“I spoke to him again earlier and he. He agreed to drop it, I think, but,” Max falters and shrugs.
“But he’s The Iron Bull,” Dorian says, managing dry and fond simultaneously.
“Yes,” he agrees, chuckling.
“Where are you headed?” Dorian asks, glancing over at the open space above Solas’ room.
“Emprise du Lion,” Maxwell replies. “Lyrium run and a rift. Might kill a dragon.”
Dorian frowns at him, eyes narrow.
“I am also out of felandaris,” he admits, quietly, wringing his fingers. “I’ve written to see if what I need can be made without it or with a substitution. I await his word. As with his reply on the timing.” When he glances over again, Dorian’s expression is much softer, and that settles a large part of the fear in Max’s stomach, somehow.
“I’ll be happy to assist, either way,” the mage says, smiling.
“We do plan to do most of those other things, though,” Maxwell clarifies, and bites down a smile of his own at Dorian’s resulting grimace.
“I hope you’ll forgive me if I request to stay here on this one,” Dorian replies, and Max puts his hand on top of Dorian’s where it has slid down to cup his elbow, unnoticed until now.
“I hope you’ll do as you wish,” he says, smiling at the utter relief that eases the lines of Dorian’s face, even a handful of the shadows. “Do not torment yourself. Please rest.”
“Oh, do not worry about me, my dear Lord Trevelyan,” Dorian says with a low bow, taking Max’s hand and pressing a kiss to his fingers.
Again, Maxwell knows he’s blushing, taking far closer to heart than Dorian surely intends with his flirtation. He is so free with his flattery, and Max is a man like any other: so very flattered by it. And he can dream for a moment that Dorian’s affection is truly reciprocal.
He realizes at once his own deception. Will Dorian feel flattered that his default method of communication is indulged in so heavily by his commander? Well, probably, actually, but without knowledge of Max’s own affections, it feels like a step too far: to take with pretense more than what is being offered.
“I,” he starts, feeling suddenly aware of every inch of his own skin and what is touching it. He slips his hand from Dorian’s and steps away, missing the body heat he hadn’t realized he’d been leaning into in the chilly morning.
He clears his throat and doesn’t look at Dorian and attempts a smile. He bows, keeping his eyes on the floor as he turns on his heel.
“Get some rest,” he repeats as he walks away, taking the stairs to the rookery two at a time as if he can outrun his shame.
But how could he, when all secrets are upturned before the woman he seeks to meet with now.
“You are hopeless,” Leliana murmurs as he approaches, gesturing to a letter folded on the table in front of her.
He drops into the wooden chair beside it and holds his face in his hands.
“What am I to do? Consort with my companions on the eve of a holy war?” He hisses through his fingers. He has long convinced himself to keep those lives separate: the one where he is the Herald and the one where he gets what he wants. Shame and the fear of wasted time twist heavy in his gut.
Leliana chuckles, shaking her head as she leans against the table, obviously seeing levity where Maxwell cannot.
“What is the purpose of our so-called holy war, then, hm?” She asks him. Further, she nudges his foot with her boot, and he scowls. “What good is saving all of Thedas if you have none to share the freedom with?”
“Bold of you,” Maxwell murmurs, throwing her an unheated glare he doesn’t mean anyway. She is simply too astute and hears too much; his defensiveness is only natural.
“I have made my choices,” Leliana tells him, and sounds content. “Most with the hope that others would not have to bear the same burdens. I often feel I have failed, in that respect, but then I remember how much worse things could be.”
Max sits up and pulls the page over to unfold it.
“Bull is acting weird,” he remarks.
“Oh?” Leliana intones. “Does he need to be watched?”
“No,” he replies, easily. “No, I just wondered if you had any insight.”
Leliana hums and pushes off the table, walking the few paces over to her altar before she speaks again.
“What did you argue about?” Max looks up at her. “A servant heard The Iron Bull and Dorian talking as they left your quarters. Nothing sordid, I know,” Leliana reassures him.
Maxwell wrinkles his nose and turns his attention back to the letter from King Alistair, looking entirely past it.
“You were a bard, Leliana, you know how noble families can be,” he says.
“Indeed,” she replies, lighting a few candles. Maxwell turns the benedictions over in his head, as he knows she is as she brings fire to each of the wicks. When each is lit, Leliana blows out the match and sets it in a small bronze cup on the side of the table. A white stream of smoke curls up and dissipates quickly in the open draft of the rookery.
“You’ve certainly looked into my past,” he invites once she’s finished, stroking his thumb across the parchment, enjoying the heavy weight and soft grain. Leliana hums in acknowledgement and turns to him.
“I was not able to learn much about the Trevelyans beyond common knowledge. Your father is very discreet,” she tells him.
“Yes, and I did not want to talk of just how discreet last night,” Maxwell says. “Nor do I now,” he adds, eyes flicking over to Leliana as she returns to the table beside him.
“The Iron Bull wishes you to do so?” She asks, sounding surprised.
“He’s got. He’s got some silly notion that talking about…all that…might help those…Those times when I lose myself,” he finishes shamefully as he resolutely does not look up from the letter, though he hasn’t read much yet beyond ‘Dear Maxwell’ and ‘Regrettably.’
Leliana had been one of the first to witness such a moment, after being confronted by Roderick way back at Haven those months ago. To be screamed at, called heathen and blamed for the tear in the sky and the scourge of demons unleashed, to have some recollection of having been there when it happened and not knowing if Roderick was truly wrong in his accusations. Cullen, of all people, the only voice of reason. Max had dropped to his knees in the war room as soon as the door had closed, tight throat fighting any of the air he desperately wheezed for. The thought of the moment brings a cold feeling seeping up into his chest, let alone the rush of vertigo when he thinks of Haven, of falling through the ground and stumbling half-frozen with no end in—
“I, however, do not see the point in picking open a wound long scarred over,” Maxwell says sharply. “It is enough I am not possessed or mad. The rest is irrelevant,” he adds, trying to get his eyes to focus on Alistair’s looping handwriting.
‘It keeps well enough. Turns grey and heavy when it’s gone off. Don’t try to use it anyway.’
Leliana hums thoughtfully, again, crossing her legs at the ankle as she leans.
“A wound may heal, but the damage does not become undone,” says the Nightingale. “You can only run from your pain for so long without it chasing you.”
“I have always been more of a sprinter,” he says dryly.
Leliana chuckles and shakes her head, and he gives up the pretense of reading, setting the letter down.
“In fact, I ought to get ready for this excursion,” he remarks, standing. Leliana places a gentle hand on his shoulder, and he pauses, eyes on the wood grain.
“Think about it,” she says, then moves away from him entirely.
When Max gets back down to the library on his way to Varric, Dorian is no longer there. He tries hard to ignore the surge of disappointment in his stomach and very nearly succeeds.