(this is good! let me know if you need more reaction or something from Bull at the end for Dorian to respond to.)
The Bull's no stranger to terrible shit happening without warning, and quickly. And it isn't like he's let his guard down once since that long, grim wait to lower themselves down into this place. But there's some shit there's just no preparing for. Shit like this:
A flash of anger that Dorian shoved him out of the way, instinctive. It's supposed to be the Bull who takes the hits for the rest of the team. Fear, before that anger has time to find its way to anything more practical. That feeling you get sometimes, unreality meeting inevitable fact; the ground can't be breaking apart undreneath him. He can't be falling. When it comes down to it, no one really believes their time is up. Not even when that swooping, clenching feeling that means that means the ground's going to hit him hard is saying differently. Disbelief again, appreciation; the unnatural glowing colour of Dorian's barrier coming more or less to life around them, Dorian not accepting that their time is up yet either and still fighting. An impact on his back. He wasn't that far away from the edge when when he fell, and the rock itself doesn't cut a straight line down; it turns him in midair, and for a dizzy, stretched out moment it gets pretty hard to tell where and when he's getting hit.
A flash of something familiar, right there at the end - the bright, spreading heat of pain to come spreading down his shin, and through his ankle.
The thing he realises after that is that it's dark. Pitch black. Wait, comes the response, the first coherent thought he's had time for in an age. In maybe thirty seconds. Get your night vision first. Then decide how dark it is.
Okay.
He might have yelled at some point, he realises, as his mind starts to piece through the last less-than-a-minute and all its different, jumbled impressions. But there's no need for that now. No room for it. Put it all on the shelf until that changes. He's alive, so he needs to assess.
First priority: seeing. He's still waiting for that. Next.
Pain is probably important. Tells him how capable he's going to be of facing whatever he's going to need to face. He sorts through it, learning what he can. The worst of it's familiar, at least, and any feelings about that, about what a healer will be able to do for a weight-bearing joint that's broken more than once before and healed a little worse each time, about what that could mean for him, about the dented, bent up brace under his fingers, none of that feeling matters right now.
Next. He rolls himself onto his knee, cautiously. Something like light might be coming through over to his left. He turns himself so his good eye can get a look at it. If that gets any brighter as he gets used to the dark, he might be able to tell if his head wrap, that whole thing the boss spent all that time figuring out how to secure on a qunari just so she could keep him safe, is still intact enough to put back together. He can feel pieces of it tangled around his horns.
When his head hits rock it hits hard. That's what happens when you try to stand expecting the ceiling to be somewhere else, and the angry, startled noise comes out of him a second before he's able to bite it back. He must have hit it hard enough to dislodge something. There's rubble moving nearby, somewhere.
Dorian's probably dead. Dorian might not be dead. The Bull isn't. Qunaris come a little tougher, usually, than humans do.
He's hunched over. He is still. He takes a slow, slow breath in through his nose and then he forces it out. He's too busy sorting through it all, locking himself down, compartmentalising; the rubble and that noise were all the sound he's going to make. It hasn't occurred to him to try and make anything else.
no subject
The Bull's no stranger to terrible shit happening without warning, and quickly. And it isn't like he's let his guard down once since that long, grim wait to lower themselves down into this place. But there's some shit there's just no preparing for. Shit like this:
A flash of anger that Dorian shoved him out of the way, instinctive. It's supposed to be the Bull who takes the hits for the rest of the team. Fear, before that anger has time to find its way to anything more practical. That feeling you get sometimes, unreality meeting inevitable fact; the ground can't be breaking apart undreneath him. He can't be falling. When it comes down to it, no one really believes their time is up. Not even when that swooping, clenching feeling that means that means the ground's going to hit him hard is saying differently. Disbelief again, appreciation; the unnatural glowing colour of Dorian's barrier coming more or less to life around them, Dorian not accepting that their time is up yet either and still fighting. An impact on his back. He wasn't that far away from the edge when when he fell, and the rock itself doesn't cut a straight line down; it turns him in midair, and for a dizzy, stretched out moment it gets pretty hard to tell where and when he's getting hit.
A flash of something familiar, right there at the end - the bright, spreading heat of pain to come spreading down his shin, and through his ankle.
The thing he realises after that is that it's dark. Pitch black. Wait, comes the response, the first coherent thought he's had time for in an age. In maybe thirty seconds. Get your night vision first. Then decide how dark it is.
Okay.
He might have yelled at some point, he realises, as his mind starts to piece through the last less-than-a-minute and all its different, jumbled impressions. But there's no need for that now. No room for it. Put it all on the shelf until that changes. He's alive, so he needs to assess.
First priority: seeing. He's still waiting for that. Next.
Pain is probably important. Tells him how capable he's going to be of facing whatever he's going to need to face. He sorts through it, learning what he can. The worst of it's familiar, at least, and any feelings about that, about what a healer will be able to do for a weight-bearing joint that's broken more than once before and healed a little worse each time, about what that could mean for him, about the dented, bent up brace under his fingers, none of that feeling matters right now.
Next. He rolls himself onto his knee, cautiously. Something like light might be coming through over to his left. He turns himself so his good eye can get a look at it. If that gets any brighter as he gets used to the dark, he might be able to tell if his head wrap, that whole thing the boss spent all that time figuring out how to secure on a qunari just so she could keep him safe, is still intact enough to put back together. He can feel pieces of it tangled around his horns.
When his head hits rock it hits hard. That's what happens when you try to stand expecting the ceiling to be somewhere else, and the angry, startled noise comes out of him a second before he's able to bite it back. He must have hit it hard enough to dislodge something. There's rubble moving nearby, somewhere.
Dorian's probably dead. Dorian might not be dead. The Bull isn't. Qunaris come a little tougher, usually, than humans do.
He's hunched over. He is still. He takes a slow, slow breath in through his nose and then he forces it out. He's too busy sorting through it all, locking himself down, compartmentalising; the rubble and that noise were all the sound he's going to make. It hasn't occurred to him to try and make anything else.