And maybe he's emboldened by the dark, or by the bare distance separating the two of them from the rest of their party. In either case, Dorian adds a little more quietly, to avoid being overheard, "I was under the impression that was your preference."
The Bull looks over at Dorian, the part of his eye that's visible through the carefully designed slat in the cloth a little wider. This is a really weird place to feel the kind of triumph that surges through him for a second, but weird or not, that's what's happening. It isn't like Dorian hasn't been giving him signals all along that he's into it, at least in theory, but all but saying that he's into it outright and openly - quiet, sure, but almost openly - that feels like something else.
Well, damn. Maybe he has more to look forward to once they get out of here than he thought.
"Guess that means we match then," he murmurs, voice warm with promise. "That's pretty convenient."
When the Bull answers, Dorian feels a warm flicker of something in his chest. Relief, perhaps, that the Bull hasn't decided to raise up his voice as he had earlier and make a show of it, drawing further attention to the two of them – the same way he had earlier in their game. At least Dorian won't have to hope for an excuse to disappear.
Dorian remains quiet for another beat, smiling to himself, feeling a strangely thrilling sense of satisfaction and pride. Silly of him – he's surely said and done lewder things back home in Tevinter. It's different in the south, knowing that admitting to some sort of attraction aloud would, at worst, lead him to only embarrassment, and little else.
His lips part to speak, except he hears a distant rumbling, like thunder.
"Brace yourselves!" Renn shouts, and he grabs hold of Valta's elbow, yanking her away from the cliff's edge, where she was admiring the ruins of the thaig. Cassandra does the same with Evelyn, the latter of whom looks back at Dorian and the Bull, her gaze darting upward and face going pale.
She shouts a warning, but Dorian's gaze has already followed hers, spotting the boulder plummetting toward the two of them. No time to grab his staff, and he shoulder-checks the Bull, pushing him toward the rest of the party. Dorian plants his feet into a wide stance, throws both of his arms out to his sides and swings them forward, hands forming into fists like he's physically yanking at the Veil. He shoves, and a green ripple of force surges from his arms to push the boulder away – just far enough to keep it from crushing the two of them.
The boulder slams into the path the two of them had just tread, and the stone starts to crack before giving way beneath the boulder's weight entirely.
Evelyn screams Dorian's name as the ground starts crumbling beneath his boots. He has a second to think a little bitterly, Maker's hairy balls, before he plummets.
Falling is an ugly, graceless thing, a distant part of him thinks, as he tumbles through the air, struggling to straighten himself out for some semblance of control. He manages to throw out his limbs, to make himself wide to keep from wildly spinning. It's only then he notices that the Bull has fallen with him, slightly above him, and he doesn't think, just reacts. He manages to flip himself around, and the rushing wind snatches away his mask. Dorian sweeps out his arm, covering the two of them with a flickering, haphazard barrier.
(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.
As they fall, Dorian is reasonably sure his short life is coming to a very violent end.
It's the easy assumption to make. He had, after all, dedicated a portion of his last moments of life to calculate how long one might take to plummet through the cavern they had found. He's a little sorry for that. There are a thousand different, better ways he could have spent that time.
The Bull is too far away, or else Dorian would have tried to pull them together, to shove every last bit of mana he has left to create one large shield for the both of them. The light of their barriers catches on something beneath them – illuminates the edges of architecture. More ruins.
It's not ideal, Dorian thinks, but at least it's better than an endless fall into blackness.
Later, he'll realize how lucky he is – that he's plummeting toward a hole in what was probably once a high ceiling, instead of splattering into stone. It gives him time to react, and he focuses, front-loading his barrier to better absorb the impact. He throws his arms out to the side, grabs the Veil again and shoves it forward. The surge of force provides some recoil, slowing his fall ever so slightly. In those last bare seconds, he curls up, guarding his head, and slams against the stone floor.
He can't be entirely sure, considering when he blinks his eyes open, it's nearly pitch black – but he thinks he must have blacked out. He can't tell if it was the impact or if something fell behind him that knocked him unconscious, but in either case, his head throbs which is— something. Someone might say it was good, that feeling any sort of pain means he's not dead, but at the current juncture, Dorian would find himself hard pressed to agree. For a few seconds, he lets himself lie there, dazed and aching, before a smaller, more rational part decides, That's quite enough of that. He pushes himself up onto his elbows, blinking into the darkness. Rocks and dirt fall away from him, and a bit of stone shifts beneath his hands. Oh, good, he thinks. What a nice thing to cushion my fall.
The hole in the ceiling admits the barest hint of light from the fissures at the surface. This might have been an office once, he thinks, squinting in the darkness. What would have been a doorway is almost entirely filled with large stones and other debris, and the idea of being trapped in this space nearly makes him panic until he realizes another wall has crumbled, leaving more than enough room for him to crawl into an adjoining space. Not exactly trapped, then, but only just.
Clumsily, he waves a hand, pulling a few wisps across the Veil, murmuring a soft incantation to bind them to him. They drift lazily around him like dust motes, their faint, pale green glow softly lighting the space. He forces himself to sit up, though it's not without a quiet groan and a hissed out, "Kaffas."
The next thing he notices is that faint smell, and his hand immediately covers his nose and mouth. Darkspawn have a distinctive stench. Decay and rot and something corrupted, something wrong. It's harder to notice when they fight the things on the surface, but here, where they spawn and swarm, it's far more noticeable. He immediately dismisses all but one wisp, and draws that final wisp closer to himself, curling his free hand over it and cupping it close to his sternum.
His face covering is gone. Of course it is. He has no face covering, and Renn was telling that delightful story about swallowing darkspawn blood, and oh, Dorian shouldn't flatter himself. He's more likely to be ripped apart than infected, but of course, of course Dorian would fall somewhere near a darkspawn settlement—
He jolts when he hears a distant noise. A thump. A choked-off grunt. The hiss and clatter of falling dirt and small rocks.
Dorian freezes, listening desperately, but when the sound doesn't evolve into the ugly growls or shrieks, he slowly gets to his feet.
"Bull?" It's as loud as he dares to speak, and he doesn't bother to to hide the unsteadiness in his voice. In the end, he admits he's not very loud at all. "Bull, please tell me that's you."
His head turns toward the noise. Not that looking does him any good. He can hear. He can definitely smell. But any light he's starting to get is just enough to tell him where the wall is that it's coming through.
That wall's a few inches from his left shoulder. The ceiling - for lack of a better word - is only a little bit farther above his head. He moves his head wrong, and his horns scrape against the stone. Dorian's alive.
Focus on it. Dorian's alive. One of them might make it through this.
He realises he's going to have to think of an answer.
A moment passes.
"Dorian." His voice is hard, heavy, a little rough around the edges. He isn't whispering but he's not loud. The smell's enough - for him, at least - to give him a rough idea of how far away that smell might be, and he can figure how loud a voice he can get away with without thinking about it. Probably for the best. Clear thinking might be in some short supply. Whatever he can do with instinct is probably going to have to be what the Bull leans on.
Think. Dorian's not dead. So what does Dorian need to hear from him right now? Figure it out. Say that. Then move to the right. Find out how far away the wall is in that direction, for better or for worse.
Relief surges through him, and he swallows down the slightly hysterical laugh that wants to bubble up from his chest. Good. Good, the Bull is alive. Of course he is, the more vain part of him wants to say. Dorian's Barriers are powerful things.
He casts around, looks first to the blocked doorway. With time and effort, he might be able to clear it, either physically or with his magic. Quietly, however, is another matter entirely.
"Yes, there's— a wall," he says, voice still pitched low. He realizes, a moment later, how completely counterintuitive that sounds, so he quietly adds, "There's a hole in it. I can slip through."
Shaking out his limbs, he takes stock of himself. His head still throbs in time with his heartbeat. Gingerly, his fingertips find a tender spot near his temple, something that promises to swell into an ugly goose egg later. Otherwise, he's— all right. Horribly sore, and bound to be coated in dark bruises later, but all right.
"I'll live," he says, the weight of all the layers of rock and air in this place pressing his voice down until it's flat, and reasons out why he'd answered that way a moment after he says it. No point in worrying Dorian. They don't need the distraction. He's got a hand laying on his leg, flat along the side like that's going to keep it all together. He lets go of it. Lots of rocks behind him; hard jagged lines against the gashes and scrapes over his back, then round, smoother pressure, separate shapes. Rubble, probably. Blocking off the way that he fell in. He forces himself to move over to the right, find out how much room he has that way, by moving like he's got space. Like he did when he tried to stand up all the way. It's a room, because it's got to be. There's space, because he isn't going to move without believing-
There's another thud, a little more rubble trickling down some place. Not a lot. Not very loud. His breaths echo in what space there is. He focuses on the sound.
Dorian needs something else. The Bull needs something else. He needs to know at least one of them is getting out of here. He needs to know that before he moves forward. The little beam of dim near-light isn't reflecting off of anything in front of him, so maybe there's nothing there to reflect off of. Might be his night vision just isn't enough to tell. Can't always count on a lot with only one eye on the job. He might be missing details.
If he's going to ask anything, he should do it before he tries again to move around. Feels like a good idea.
"You can get out, right?" He already asked that, sort of. Dorian already answered. Still feels important, so there must be something else to add.
Right. The essentials. What needs to get done. "Do it. Might get you out of here."
There's something about how the Bull speaks that sends ice down Dorian's spine.
Maybe it's their predicament. Maybe it's the stench of darkspawn – Qunari have more sensitive noses than humans, evidently, and surely the Bull smells the darkspawn stench far more acutely than Dorian can. Maybe it's the necessity of keeping his voice low, when the Bull typically seems to prefer something raucous.
I'll live isn't much of an answer. It's an acknowledgment, at best, which means the Bull is almost certainly hurt, and isn't bothering to hide it – not well, at least. Dorian stumbles toward the wall they seem to be sharing, tripping a little over fallen stone but keeping his footing. Concussion, he thinks. Poor balance. He'll be fine.
Examining the wall, Dorian finds himself cursing dwarven architecture. It's solid, sturdy, with only a few cracks at the top from when the ceiling had caved in what must have been ages ago. Maybe he can find a weak point, though. Maybe he can figure out a way to take apart enough of the wall to slip through.
"What about you?" There's urgency in his voice, though he struggles to stay quiet. "Are you able to get out?"
He has to look. There's no getting around it. No sense putting it off. The space is stable enough, just small; it will be stable even if he's trapped in here. It doesn't matter what he feels. That isn't helpful right now. He doesn't need it. What matters is what's actually here around him. What matters is figuring that out. Then he'll know how to deal with it. If he can deal with it.
Even if all this wasn't built as sturdy as everything else down here, knocking a wall down wouldn't be a good option. He doesn't know the layout of the place. Take out the wrong wall, and-
Doesn't matter. He slows his breathing down, even if there's no one close enough to hear it. Breaths slow, deliberate, filling up his chest.
He rolls onto his good leg again. That takes his horns far enough from the rock above that he could almost pretend there's real space, if he wasn't so aware of it, heavy and waiting above him there. He moves one hand on the ground. Crawls forward, does it again. One more time.
After a few more breaths, he realises he hasn't actually answered. Got to do that.
"Maybe." Probably lying would have been better. Better not to give Dorian space to worry about him. He'd have to make it convincing, if he did. Reaching for the words, the manner, that usually comes so easy is like wading through mud.
'Maybe' it is.
"Might not have time for me to look around." Try for something. Not a lie, just a hope, a goal. The tone isn't there, still trying to be flat but without the sharp edge to it it's more obvious what's underneath, a tone that's balanced on the bare edge of something else. "Go ahead. I'll just catch up."
The Bull is quiet for too long, and Dorian feels himself starting to tense. His gaze grows distant as he listens to the scrape and skitter of stone and dirt – movement, he thinks, as bare as it is. What an awful thing, he thinks, for the two of them to survive such a terrible fall, only for one of them to be stuck. That does seem to be how their luck works.
Still, Dorian refuses to accept that.
And he refuses to accept the Bull's answer, as well, scowling at the wall briefly. Anger and annoyance to cover up that icy curl of panic licking up the walls of his chest. There's sense in the suggestion of course – find a way out, so Dorian can return with help – but Dorian isn't always a fan of good sense. Especially not with that strange timbre in the Bull's voice – something Dorian can't quite identify and almost doesn't want to.
"And deprive you the joy of my company?" He forces himself to smile, knowing it'll be audible in his voice if he does. "Perish the thought."
Reluctantly, he releases the wisp, lets it drift upward to what remains of the ceiling. The soft glow illuminates cracks in the wall, tiny gaps fit only for a mouse to slip through – maybe that's why sound is carrying so easily between them. Dorian frowns before quietly drawing another wisp from the Fade, murmuring an incantation to bind it to the physical realm and to give it direction.
"I'm sending you a light, Bull. I'll thank you not to squash it."
And with that, he splays a hand, sends the new wisp through the small gaps in the wall to the Bull's side. It drifts lazily, casting about the same amount of light as a single candle flame in a soft green hue.
Rock washed in green light; a long, flat piece of what probably used to be the ceiling, resting on the rubble behind him, tilting upward. The way ahead of him, open.
Open.
The Bull lets out a slow breath. Seeing that should let out some of that tension strung through every inch of him. Maybe it does. The space around him has definition, now. The one eye he has left has something to take in now, something to remind it it's still whole. That's probably good. That's good.
He crawls forward a little more, tries to look up to see if the rubble above him opens up anywhere - not into open air or anything, or there would be more light, but but into something higher - and his horns thunk against the rock above.
He holds himself still. He breathes. He starts moving forward again. His leg is going to start hurting, probably sooner rather than later. For now it drags the green ground under him.
Dorian. Focus on that, instead of this. On what still needs to get done. "Make sure your way's open," he manages, voice a little more wilful now but not stronger, not that much changed from how it sounded before Dorian's light opened his little world up. "You can get out at the first sign of anything. First thing you hear."
He strains his ears, listening to the sounds filtering in from the Bull's side. It's difficult to tell, but Dorian gets the impression that it's movement, something with direction, rather than idle shifting like an animal in a cage.
Good. Good. All right. That's something he can work with.
This time, he doesn't argue – checking is better than simply leaving, obviously – and he limps his way to the opening in the wall. He cups the wisp against his chest again once it flits down to him, dimming the light, and with an abundance of caution, he peers out.
The opening spills out into a hallway – equally as decrepit as the room in which he finds himself – which is to say, there are openings in the ceiling, and a few walls are certainly in need of patching, but otherwise, nothing seems in immediate danger of collapsing. Superior dwarven workmanship, he thinks with a little irony.
The way to the Bull is blocked off by yet another wall, and Dorian curses under his breath, pushing away. He takes a deep breath, shutting his eyes and trying to ignore the stench of darkspawn. He can feel spirits pressing against the Veil, drawn here by their curiosity, and he realizes this settlement was likely overrun by darkspawn. He wonders how many died here to draw so much interest.
What a cheerful thing to think about.
"I don't have a way to you yet," he reports, calling back as loudly as he dares. That seems important to say – the yet. "But there's a hallway ahead of me. I'm— I can figure something out."
The Bull crawls. He watches his hands, the green shade all washed over them bizarre, not just in the normal way - just because it's unnatural, a spirit straight from the Fade here casting it - but because it's that and it's a gift, unnatural and freaky and he's grateful for it, all at once.
He braces himself. He risks looking up from his hands at the ceiling again. Still not great, but sloping up. Maybe if he stands, maybe if he isn't crawling on the floor like an animal, maybe this purposeless thing inside him will loosen up its senseless hold a little.
He overestimates, puts a tiny little hint of weight on his left leg instead of none, and cuts off his startled, pained noise just as straightens too far, horns hitting the rock above hard again. He leans against the left wall. His right shoulder doesn't brush the wall when he moves this way, almost feels like there's space over there if he doesn't look at it. His head, next to one of those cracks in the wall now, hangs and his breaths come heavy, deep, only a little fast.
"I hear you," he says, belatedly.
Another thought then, a second later. He has to ask. "That hallway. It leads away from here? Into another part of-" He pauses, and his words come back a little fainter. He should have finished the question all in one shot. Shouldn't have given himself an instant to imagine what it's actually going to be like, getting left here. "-of wherever the crap we are?"
Dorian's looking around. It's a good thing. Figuring how to get out. At least one of them should be able to get out.
Dorian tenses at that noise – the sharp scrape, the tiny, choked-off noise.
"You're hurt."
Of course the Bull is hurt. Only the Maker knows how far they fell. Dorian had his magic and his instincts to prevent himself from further damage – the Bull only had his natural resilience. Unconsciously, he chews on his lower lip, wishes he had a way to tear down the wall without compromising the entire structure, without alerting every living thing in the area.
A quick, irrational thought floats into his head: this is Dorian's fault, somehow. He finds himself as part of some ridiculous cautionary tale – something they'd tell in Tevinter. Flirt with another man in the open, and oops! The earth will swallow you whole.
Dorian hesitates before he forces himself to answer. "It runs adjacent a short way, but— yes. It leads further into this place."
Which is to say, it may lead him away from wherever the Bull currently is, at least for a time. Perhaps this place is arranged in compartments of some sort – rooms grouped together by purpose and partially separated from the others? Or perhaps they find themselves in two separate buildings with an adjoining wall? Odd, admittedly, but surely they've experienced odder.
The thought of leaving the Bull behind, even if it's with the intention of looping around, of finding a better way to him, feels unbearable, makes him a little sick.
"I'll keep," he says, decisive. "I'll wait here while you get your bearings. You've a way out of there yourself, yes?"
Now Dorian's not going to leave. Selfish, asking that question, the question that kept him here. On top of not being careful enough, letting that noise slip, now Dorian is going to stay. But then, if Dorian did go on alone, went too far, ran into darkspawn all on his own- people can rationalise anything, when they really want to. When they think they need to. As much as the Iron Bull depends on most people not realising it, his mind has as many weaknesses and cracks in it as anybody else's. He knows that up close and personal. He's known it for a long time.
But that doesn't mean the Bull is wrong. Maybe Dorian would be safer if he stayed. Hard to figure out what he needs to commit to. Hard to think.
He leans his forehead against the wall, eye watching the light through one of those cracks. He takes a breath, slow, in through his nose. Darkspawn smell just as far away as they did before, not that that tells him much. Especially when he doesn't know how this place is laid out.
Think about what needs to happen. Go from there.
"I've got to keep moving too. There's a- I don't know. A hallway? Something. Running along this wall, at least so far. Might take me away from here anyway." Better than that. Do better than that. If Dorian should actually go, actually commit to that. What would the Iron Bull say?
"Don't want to bore you anyway," he tries, with some echo of something like bravado. Asking if he was going to leave played on Dorian's sympathies, even if accidentally. Bad move. If the Bull had kept his chin up in the first place it wouldn't have happened. He could manage this, usually. It's just all the little parts, building into something big enough to rush him on his blind side.
That's fine. Manage it. What would the Iron Bull say?
"I know how you intellectual types hate sitting around with nothing to do."
That doesn't feel like it hits the mark, exactly, but at least now he's shooting for it. They'll find out if he can keep it up.
"Yes, well," and he applauds himself for the levity he manages to inject in his voice, "luckily I'm company enough for both of us."
Which is to say, Dorian has no intention of skipping away just yet. For one, the Bull clearly needs something or someone to ground him, and considering the only other option is the darkspawn, Dorian is the best choice. And for another— Dorian doesn't want to be alone. Not yet. Not until he has to be.
"When you're ready, I'll travel alongside you. For as long as either of us can." Knowing their luck, their paths will diverge and send them in opposite directions. It's just that sort of day, Dorian expects. "That wisp should stay close to you, but— it's not exactly intelligent. You may have to hide it, in case there's trouble."
He grunts, unhappy at the idea of touching the thing, but- well. On the list of awful shit happening right now he guesses that doesn't really rate.
Or, it shouldn't. Still does, kind of. Might not be so bad, if he only knew a little less about what the thing actually is.
Doesn't matter. The Bull's getting his shit together.
"I'm going, I'm going," he grumbles, like that 'when you're ready' had been Dorian pushing him to get going. It wasn't, he knows, but it's easier to act like he should be acting, that way.
If he wants to get going, he's going to have to go back to crawling. Have to get on his knees - well, knee - like the space is even smaller, as small as it was, crawling not like he's ready to fight but like a wounded thing, a deer or something after a hunter's badly aimed shot.
But that's what he is. It's what he needs to do. He leans against the wall, hunches over further, manages to fall onto his good leg. Takes a breath.
Okay. Next. Dorian's going to follow him. No good trying too hard to convince him otherwise, especially not when pretty much everything the Bull's got is stuck somewhere near the back of his thoughts, the instincts, stuck on something far away from the well-ordered surface of his mind.
If Dorian's going to follow him, he's going to need something to follow. A voice.
"Let's go," the Bull says, voice that little bit farther from the crack again, low down to the ground. "So," he starts after that, putting something brisk in his voice as that pressure squeezes at his chest and winds tight through all his muscles, forcing the effort in to sound something close to casual. "While you've got me here, there anything you've been wanting to say? Anything that you want to ask? Get as rude as you want. Not like anyone else is around to hear it."
With the wall between them, the force of Dorian's glare in response to the Bull's grumbling is completely lost on the Bull – not that it particularly matters, given that there wasn't nearly as much as heat as Dorian tried to imbue it with.
He hears the faint sound of movement – scraping, shifting, the stirring of dirt against stone – and carefully follows it, the fingertips of one hand brushing against the wall between himself and the Bull. He'll have to pull away and climb through to get to the hallway, but for now, Dorian keeps pace with the Bull.
It's a slow pace. The Bull is in a bad way, Dorian reminds himself again. The worry already percolating low in his gut is starting to grow.
"Oh, what a lovely invitation," and Dorian forces himself to sound amused. "'As rude as I want.' I doubt you truly mean that. Surely even you must have some limitations."
If he tried to laugh at that, there's no way it wouldn't come out wrong. Not like Dorian's convinced anyway, but there's a limit. He's keeping this act up for a reason.
Think. How flirty would the Bull usually get here? Or- Dorian showed some genuine interest right before all this happened, the Bull remembers. Weird to feel all this pressing at him from the inside, watching his hands press against the stone and drag the rest of him along, and think of that, think of the triumph he felt then.
Something to look forward to, he'd thought. That might still be true.
The Bull would get a little more serious then. Wouldn't he? In case Dorian really needed the info. He'd make it a little bit of a joke too and he tries to wrap his mind around that, make himself figure out the balance, the mood of it that should be coming to him.
"Who, me?" he says, leaving it up to fate whether any of his answer comes out sounding light and joking or not. "Nah. Don't hurt anyone in a way they didn't ask for, or that would need to get treated afterward. Bloodplay makes things a little weird. Other than that, depends on who I'm with." He'd had to pause a couple times during that to take slow, deep breaths, and now he does it again. Then he focuses. "Why? How rude have you been wanting to get?"
For a second or two, Dorian wonders if the Bull is having his own conversation, wonders how badly the other man hit his head. Probably worse than Dorian had, if the Bull's current train of thought is any indication.
It takes him a little while before he realizes the Bull is talking not about his limitations, but his limitations. As in—
"Ugh."
He almost makes himself sound appropriately affronted, but it's tempered by his volume, by the hesitation that keeps him from responding immediately. There's too much effort in the Bull's voice, too many pauses, and Dorian grits his teeth against that twisting feeling of helplessness.
"Now is hardly the appropriate time for this." He tries to make his tone sharp, brusque, but he doesn't quite manage it. "Or is sex really the only thing ever on your mind?"
"Had worse things on my mind," he says, watching the rubble blocking part of the path as he gets closer to it, and the words come out too serious, missing the humour he was supposed to put in them.
It makes the path narrower, scraping at his shoulders. He could stand, he finds himself thinking, jump over the worst of it, and he knows pain, he could handle the pain-
But any pressure might make the ankle heal worse. Or, this time, maybe it wouldn't heal at all. No brace in the world, no matter how many strings the Chargers want to pull to get it designed, is going to make up for that.
He'd go home, he thinks. The Iron Bull is a mercenary captain. Hissrad is an agent of the Qun. Once both have had the last use wrung out of them, they would send him home to teach. A quiet life. The Chargers would have to fend for themselves. Or dissolve the whole company, maybe, depending. The Inquisition wouldn't have a use for a warrior who couldn't fight. Maybe the Qun would send someone else.
The stone walls brush the drying blood and scabs on his arms and his shoulders, press against his skin. He angles himself differently, a little, and it doesn't help. He grits his teeth. He keeps pulling himself through.
If Dorian said anything, the Bull realises he would have missed it. Bad idea to point it out. "So what do you want me to talk about?" the Bull asks, a little edge in his tone. If Dorian did say something that he didn't hear, that has as good a chance as anything else at blending in to the conversation, maybe not letting on.
That's a bit closer to the truth than Dorian was trying for, and Dorian immediately winces with it.
"I suppose it's a better way to pass the time than most things," he offers, forcing a sort of grudging delivery. "Maybe not every hour of the day, but some of them."
Dorian expects some sort of rejoinder – another attempt at keeping the conversation going, as halfhearted or forced as it may be – but he receives only silence in response. He waits for another second before quietly venturing, "Bull?"
Another beat of silence before the Bull finally responds – and the fact that the man hasn't responded to what Dorian said doesn't miss his notice. He bites on his lower lip again before he finally lets the levity drop his voice.
Shit. He must have really missed something, then. The Bull stops crawling for a moment, closes his eye to try to think. That doesn't shut out the stone on either side, the awareness that he might well be shut in here for good, the hard, relentless pounding of his his heart. He tries to think over all of it, to how he normally would handle this.
He opens his eye to his world, this tiny pool of unnatural green light. He takes a deep breath. Does his best.
"I'm not bleeding out or anything." Casual. Good. Keep on pushing for casual. Keep going. Tell the truth in a way that makes it a truth, at least. Neither of them is going to be completely reassured by anything, not really, not unless they get out of this, but the Bull might be able to give Dorian enough to work as an explanation. "If that's what you're worried about. This place is just... what do those guys say to trick tourists into paying them for tours? It's thought provoking. Just giving me a lot to think about."
Should he add a joke? Might not be totally on the mark right now, with Dorian worried enough that he's demanding the truth like that, but there's a chance it'll prompt Dorian into dropping the question before he can dig for a different answer, prompt him into playing along like he has been.
Okay. Go for it. A little one.
"I know every word out of your mouth is like gold though, big guy. Not trying to ignore you; I know you can't stand that." Or Dorian couldn't, if he ever found anyone capable of ignoring him. Dorian's pretty good at making that impossible. So play into that, and hope Dorian's just close to reassured enough that he agrees to play into it a little bit, too.
"The ruins we saw earlier didn't provoke nearly as many thoughts, and those were in much better shape." Dorian doesn't take the bait. Maybe he ought to and continue providing the Bull a distraction – but as it stands, evidently Dorian hadn't been nearly as diverting as he had hoped.
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And maybe he's emboldened by the dark, or by the bare distance separating the two of them from the rest of their party. In either case, Dorian adds a little more quietly, to avoid being overheard, "I was under the impression that was your preference."
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Well, damn. Maybe he has more to look forward to once they get out of here than he thought.
"Guess that means we match then," he murmurs, voice warm with promise. "That's pretty convenient."
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When the Bull answers, Dorian feels a warm flicker of something in his chest. Relief, perhaps, that the Bull hasn't decided to raise up his voice as he had earlier and make a show of it, drawing further attention to the two of them – the same way he had earlier in their game. At least Dorian won't have to hope for an excuse to disappear.
Dorian remains quiet for another beat, smiling to himself, feeling a strangely thrilling sense of satisfaction and pride. Silly of him – he's surely said and done lewder things back home in Tevinter. It's different in the south, knowing that admitting to some sort of attraction aloud would, at worst, lead him to only embarrassment, and little else.
His lips part to speak, except he hears a distant rumbling, like thunder.
"Brace yourselves!" Renn shouts, and he grabs hold of Valta's elbow, yanking her away from the cliff's edge, where she was admiring the ruins of the thaig. Cassandra does the same with Evelyn, the latter of whom looks back at Dorian and the Bull, her gaze darting upward and face going pale.
She shouts a warning, but Dorian's gaze has already followed hers, spotting the boulder plummetting toward the two of them. No time to grab his staff, and he shoulder-checks the Bull, pushing him toward the rest of the party. Dorian plants his feet into a wide stance, throws both of his arms out to his sides and swings them forward, hands forming into fists like he's physically yanking at the Veil. He shoves, and a green ripple of force surges from his arms to push the boulder away – just far enough to keep it from crushing the two of them.
The boulder slams into the path the two of them had just tread, and the stone starts to crack before giving way beneath the boulder's weight entirely.
Evelyn screams Dorian's name as the ground starts crumbling beneath his boots. He has a second to think a little bitterly, Maker's hairy balls, before he plummets.
Falling is an ugly, graceless thing, a distant part of him thinks, as he tumbles through the air, struggling to straighten himself out for some semblance of control. He manages to throw out his limbs, to make himself wide to keep from wildly spinning. It's only then he notices that the Bull has fallen with him, slightly above him, and he doesn't think, just reacts. He manages to flip himself around, and the rushing wind snatches away his mask. Dorian sweeps out his arm, covering the two of them with a flickering, haphazard barrier.
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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.
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It's the easy assumption to make. He had, after all, dedicated a portion of his last moments of life to calculate how long one might take to plummet through the cavern they had found. He's a little sorry for that. There are a thousand different, better ways he could have spent that time.
The Bull is too far away, or else Dorian would have tried to pull them together, to shove every last bit of mana he has left to create one large shield for the both of them. The light of their barriers catches on something beneath them – illuminates the edges of architecture. More ruins.
It's not ideal, Dorian thinks, but at least it's better than an endless fall into blackness.
Later, he'll realize how lucky he is – that he's plummeting toward a hole in what was probably once a high ceiling, instead of splattering into stone. It gives him time to react, and he focuses, front-loading his barrier to better absorb the impact. He throws his arms out to the side, grabs the Veil again and shoves it forward. The surge of force provides some recoil, slowing his fall ever so slightly. In those last bare seconds, he curls up, guarding his head, and slams against the stone floor.
He can't be entirely sure, considering when he blinks his eyes open, it's nearly pitch black – but he thinks he must have blacked out. He can't tell if it was the impact or if something fell behind him that knocked him unconscious, but in either case, his head throbs which is— something. Someone might say it was good, that feeling any sort of pain means he's not dead, but at the current juncture, Dorian would find himself hard pressed to agree. For a few seconds, he lets himself lie there, dazed and aching, before a smaller, more rational part decides, That's quite enough of that. He pushes himself up onto his elbows, blinking into the darkness. Rocks and dirt fall away from him, and a bit of stone shifts beneath his hands. Oh, good, he thinks. What a nice thing to cushion my fall.
The hole in the ceiling admits the barest hint of light from the fissures at the surface. This might have been an office once, he thinks, squinting in the darkness. What would have been a doorway is almost entirely filled with large stones and other debris, and the idea of being trapped in this space nearly makes him panic until he realizes another wall has crumbled, leaving more than enough room for him to crawl into an adjoining space. Not exactly trapped, then, but only just.
Clumsily, he waves a hand, pulling a few wisps across the Veil, murmuring a soft incantation to bind them to him. They drift lazily around him like dust motes, their faint, pale green glow softly lighting the space. He forces himself to sit up, though it's not without a quiet groan and a hissed out, "Kaffas."
The next thing he notices is that faint smell, and his hand immediately covers his nose and mouth. Darkspawn have a distinctive stench. Decay and rot and something corrupted, something wrong. It's harder to notice when they fight the things on the surface, but here, where they spawn and swarm, it's far more noticeable. He immediately dismisses all but one wisp, and draws that final wisp closer to himself, curling his free hand over it and cupping it close to his sternum.
His face covering is gone. Of course it is. He has no face covering, and Renn was telling that delightful story about swallowing darkspawn blood, and oh, Dorian shouldn't flatter himself. He's more likely to be ripped apart than infected, but of course, of course Dorian would fall somewhere near a darkspawn settlement—
He jolts when he hears a distant noise. A thump. A choked-off grunt. The hiss and clatter of falling dirt and small rocks.
Dorian freezes, listening desperately, but when the sound doesn't evolve into the ugly growls or shrieks, he slowly gets to his feet.
"Bull?" It's as loud as he dares to speak, and he doesn't bother to to hide the unsteadiness in his voice. In the end, he admits he's not very loud at all. "Bull, please tell me that's you."
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That wall's a few inches from his left shoulder. The ceiling - for lack of a better word - is only a little bit farther above his head. He moves his head wrong, and his horns scrape against the stone. Dorian's alive.
Focus on it. Dorian's alive. One of them might make it through this.
He realises he's going to have to think of an answer.
A moment passes.
"Dorian." His voice is hard, heavy, a little rough around the edges. He isn't whispering but he's not loud. The smell's enough - for him, at least - to give him a rough idea of how far away that smell might be, and he can figure how loud a voice he can get away with without thinking about it. Probably for the best. Clear thinking might be in some short supply. Whatever he can do with instinct is probably going to have to be what the Bull leans on.
Think. Dorian's not dead. So what does Dorian need to hear from him right now? Figure it out. Say that. Then move to the right. Find out how far away the wall is in that direction, for better or for worse.
Talk first.
"Sound close. You got a way out?"
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He casts around, looks first to the blocked doorway. With time and effort, he might be able to clear it, either physically or with his magic. Quietly, however, is another matter entirely.
"Yes, there's— a wall," he says, voice still pitched low. He realizes, a moment later, how completely counterintuitive that sounds, so he quietly adds, "There's a hole in it. I can slip through."
Shaking out his limbs, he takes stock of himself. His head still throbs in time with his heartbeat. Gingerly, his fingertips find a tender spot near his temple, something that promises to swell into an ugly goose egg later. Otherwise, he's— all right. Horribly sore, and bound to be coated in dark bruises later, but all right.
"Bull, are you hurt?"
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There's another thud, a little more rubble trickling down some place. Not a lot. Not very loud. His breaths echo in what space there is. He focuses on the sound.
Dorian needs something else. The Bull needs something else. He needs to know at least one of them is getting out of here. He needs to know that before he moves forward. The little beam of dim near-light isn't reflecting off of anything in front of him, so maybe there's nothing there to reflect off of. Might be his night vision just isn't enough to tell. Can't always count on a lot with only one eye on the job. He might be missing details.
If he's going to ask anything, he should do it before he tries again to move around. Feels like a good idea.
"You can get out, right?" He already asked that, sort of. Dorian already answered. Still feels important, so there must be something else to add.
Right. The essentials. What needs to get done. "Do it. Might get you out of here."
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Maybe it's their predicament. Maybe it's the stench of darkspawn – Qunari have more sensitive noses than humans, evidently, and surely the Bull smells the darkspawn stench far more acutely than Dorian can. Maybe it's the necessity of keeping his voice low, when the Bull typically seems to prefer something raucous.
I'll live isn't much of an answer. It's an acknowledgment, at best, which means the Bull is almost certainly hurt, and isn't bothering to hide it – not well, at least. Dorian stumbles toward the wall they seem to be sharing, tripping a little over fallen stone but keeping his footing. Concussion, he thinks. Poor balance. He'll be fine.
Examining the wall, Dorian finds himself cursing dwarven architecture. It's solid, sturdy, with only a few cracks at the top from when the ceiling had caved in what must have been ages ago. Maybe he can find a weak point, though. Maybe he can figure out a way to take apart enough of the wall to slip through.
"What about you?" There's urgency in his voice, though he struggles to stay quiet. "Are you able to get out?"
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He has to look. There's no getting around it. No sense putting it off. The space is stable enough, just small; it will be stable even if he's trapped in here. It doesn't matter what he feels. That isn't helpful right now. He doesn't need it. What matters is what's actually here around him. What matters is figuring that out. Then he'll know how to deal with it. If he can deal with it.
Even if all this wasn't built as sturdy as everything else down here, knocking a wall down wouldn't be a good option. He doesn't know the layout of the place. Take out the wrong wall, and-
Doesn't matter. He slows his breathing down, even if there's no one close enough to hear it. Breaths slow, deliberate, filling up his chest.
He rolls onto his good leg again. That takes his horns far enough from the rock above that he could almost pretend there's real space, if he wasn't so aware of it, heavy and waiting above him there. He moves one hand on the ground. Crawls forward, does it again. One more time.
After a few more breaths, he realises he hasn't actually answered. Got to do that.
"Maybe." Probably lying would have been better. Better not to give Dorian space to worry about him. He'd have to make it convincing, if he did. Reaching for the words, the manner, that usually comes so easy is like wading through mud.
'Maybe' it is.
"Might not have time for me to look around." Try for something. Not a lie, just a hope, a goal. The tone isn't there, still trying to be flat but without the sharp edge to it it's more obvious what's underneath, a tone that's balanced on the bare edge of something else. "Go ahead. I'll just catch up."
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Still, Dorian refuses to accept that.
And he refuses to accept the Bull's answer, as well, scowling at the wall briefly. Anger and annoyance to cover up that icy curl of panic licking up the walls of his chest. There's sense in the suggestion of course – find a way out, so Dorian can return with help – but Dorian isn't always a fan of good sense. Especially not with that strange timbre in the Bull's voice – something Dorian can't quite identify and almost doesn't want to.
"And deprive you the joy of my company?" He forces himself to smile, knowing it'll be audible in his voice if he does. "Perish the thought."
Reluctantly, he releases the wisp, lets it drift upward to what remains of the ceiling. The soft glow illuminates cracks in the wall, tiny gaps fit only for a mouse to slip through – maybe that's why sound is carrying so easily between them. Dorian frowns before quietly drawing another wisp from the Fade, murmuring an incantation to bind it to the physical realm and to give it direction.
"I'm sending you a light, Bull. I'll thank you not to squash it."
And with that, he splays a hand, sends the new wisp through the small gaps in the wall to the Bull's side. It drifts lazily, casting about the same amount of light as a single candle flame in a soft green hue.
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Open.
The Bull lets out a slow breath. Seeing that should let out some of that tension strung through every inch of him. Maybe it does. The space around him has definition, now. The one eye he has left has something to take in now, something to remind it it's still whole. That's probably good. That's good.
He crawls forward a little more, tries to look up to see if the rubble above him opens up anywhere - not into open air or anything, or there would be more light, but but into something higher - and his horns thunk against the rock above.
He holds himself still. He breathes. He starts moving forward again. His leg is going to start hurting, probably sooner rather than later. For now it drags the green ground under him.
Dorian. Focus on that, instead of this. On what still needs to get done. "Make sure your way's open," he manages, voice a little more wilful now but not stronger, not that much changed from how it sounded before Dorian's light opened his little world up. "You can get out at the first sign of anything. First thing you hear."
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Good. Good. All right. That's something he can work with.
This time, he doesn't argue – checking is better than simply leaving, obviously – and he limps his way to the opening in the wall. He cups the wisp against his chest again once it flits down to him, dimming the light, and with an abundance of caution, he peers out.
The opening spills out into a hallway – equally as decrepit as the room in which he finds himself – which is to say, there are openings in the ceiling, and a few walls are certainly in need of patching, but otherwise, nothing seems in immediate danger of collapsing. Superior dwarven workmanship, he thinks with a little irony.
The way to the Bull is blocked off by yet another wall, and Dorian curses under his breath, pushing away. He takes a deep breath, shutting his eyes and trying to ignore the stench of darkspawn. He can feel spirits pressing against the Veil, drawn here by their curiosity, and he realizes this settlement was likely overrun by darkspawn. He wonders how many died here to draw so much interest.
What a cheerful thing to think about.
"I don't have a way to you yet," he reports, calling back as loudly as he dares. That seems important to say – the yet. "But there's a hallway ahead of me. I'm— I can figure something out."
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He braces himself. He risks looking up from his hands at the ceiling again. Still not great, but sloping up. Maybe if he stands, maybe if he isn't crawling on the floor like an animal, maybe this purposeless thing inside him will loosen up its senseless hold a little.
He overestimates, puts a tiny little hint of weight on his left leg instead of none, and cuts off his startled, pained noise just as straightens too far, horns hitting the rock above hard again. He leans against the left wall. His right shoulder doesn't brush the wall when he moves this way, almost feels like there's space over there if he doesn't look at it. His head, next to one of those cracks in the wall now, hangs and his breaths come heavy, deep, only a little fast.
"I hear you," he says, belatedly.
Another thought then, a second later. He has to ask. "That hallway. It leads away from here? Into another part of-" He pauses, and his words come back a little fainter. He should have finished the question all in one shot. Shouldn't have given himself an instant to imagine what it's actually going to be like, getting left here. "-of wherever the crap we are?"
Dorian's looking around. It's a good thing. Figuring how to get out. At least one of them should be able to get out.
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"You're hurt."
Of course the Bull is hurt. Only the Maker knows how far they fell. Dorian had his magic and his instincts to prevent himself from further damage – the Bull only had his natural resilience. Unconsciously, he chews on his lower lip, wishes he had a way to tear down the wall without compromising the entire structure, without alerting every living thing in the area.
A quick, irrational thought floats into his head: this is Dorian's fault, somehow. He finds himself as part of some ridiculous cautionary tale – something they'd tell in Tevinter. Flirt with another man in the open, and oops! The earth will swallow you whole.
Dorian hesitates before he forces himself to answer. "It runs adjacent a short way, but— yes. It leads further into this place."
Which is to say, it may lead him away from wherever the Bull currently is, at least for a time. Perhaps this place is arranged in compartments of some sort – rooms grouped together by purpose and partially separated from the others? Or perhaps they find themselves in two separate buildings with an adjoining wall? Odd, admittedly, but surely they've experienced odder.
The thought of leaving the Bull behind, even if it's with the intention of looping around, of finding a better way to him, feels unbearable, makes him a little sick.
"I'll keep," he says, decisive. "I'll wait here while you get your bearings. You've a way out of there yourself, yes?"
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But that doesn't mean the Bull is wrong. Maybe Dorian would be safer if he stayed. Hard to figure out what he needs to commit to. Hard to think.
He leans his forehead against the wall, eye watching the light through one of those cracks. He takes a breath, slow, in through his nose. Darkspawn smell just as far away as they did before, not that that tells him much. Especially when he doesn't know how this place is laid out.
Think about what needs to happen. Go from there.
"I've got to keep moving too. There's a- I don't know. A hallway? Something. Running along this wall, at least so far. Might take me away from here anyway." Better than that. Do better than that. If Dorian should actually go, actually commit to that. What would the Iron Bull say?
"Don't want to bore you anyway," he tries, with some echo of something like bravado. Asking if he was going to leave played on Dorian's sympathies, even if accidentally. Bad move. If the Bull had kept his chin up in the first place it wouldn't have happened. He could manage this, usually. It's just all the little parts, building into something big enough to rush him on his blind side.
That's fine. Manage it. What would the Iron Bull say?
"I know how you intellectual types hate sitting around with nothing to do."
That doesn't feel like it hits the mark, exactly, but at least now he's shooting for it. They'll find out if he can keep it up.
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Which is to say, Dorian has no intention of skipping away just yet. For one, the Bull clearly needs something or someone to ground him, and considering the only other option is the darkspawn, Dorian is the best choice. And for another— Dorian doesn't want to be alone. Not yet. Not until he has to be.
"When you're ready, I'll travel alongside you. For as long as either of us can." Knowing their luck, their paths will diverge and send them in opposite directions. It's just that sort of day, Dorian expects. "That wisp should stay close to you, but— it's not exactly intelligent. You may have to hide it, in case there's trouble."
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Or, it shouldn't. Still does, kind of. Might not be so bad, if he only knew a little less about what the thing actually is.
Doesn't matter. The Bull's getting his shit together.
"I'm going, I'm going," he grumbles, like that 'when you're ready' had been Dorian pushing him to get going. It wasn't, he knows, but it's easier to act like he should be acting, that way.
If he wants to get going, he's going to have to go back to crawling. Have to get on his knees - well, knee - like the space is even smaller, as small as it was, crawling not like he's ready to fight but like a wounded thing, a deer or something after a hunter's badly aimed shot.
But that's what he is. It's what he needs to do. He leans against the wall, hunches over further, manages to fall onto his good leg. Takes a breath.
Okay. Next. Dorian's going to follow him. No good trying too hard to convince him otherwise, especially not when pretty much everything the Bull's got is stuck somewhere near the back of his thoughts, the instincts, stuck on something far away from the well-ordered surface of his mind.
If Dorian's going to follow him, he's going to need something to follow. A voice.
"Let's go," the Bull says, voice that little bit farther from the crack again, low down to the ground. "So," he starts after that, putting something brisk in his voice as that pressure squeezes at his chest and winds tight through all his muscles, forcing the effort in to sound something close to casual. "While you've got me here, there anything you've been wanting to say? Anything that you want to ask? Get as rude as you want. Not like anyone else is around to hear it."
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He hears the faint sound of movement – scraping, shifting, the stirring of dirt against stone – and carefully follows it, the fingertips of one hand brushing against the wall between himself and the Bull. He'll have to pull away and climb through to get to the hallway, but for now, Dorian keeps pace with the Bull.
It's a slow pace. The Bull is in a bad way, Dorian reminds himself again. The worry already percolating low in his gut is starting to grow.
"Oh, what a lovely invitation," and Dorian forces himself to sound amused. "'As rude as I want.' I doubt you truly mean that. Surely even you must have some limitations."
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Think. How flirty would the Bull usually get here? Or- Dorian showed some genuine interest right before all this happened, the Bull remembers. Weird to feel all this pressing at him from the inside, watching his hands press against the stone and drag the rest of him along, and think of that, think of the triumph he felt then.
Something to look forward to, he'd thought. That might still be true.
The Bull would get a little more serious then. Wouldn't he? In case Dorian really needed the info. He'd make it a little bit of a joke too and he tries to wrap his mind around that, make himself figure out the balance, the mood of it that should be coming to him.
"Who, me?" he says, leaving it up to fate whether any of his answer comes out sounding light and joking or not. "Nah. Don't hurt anyone in a way they didn't ask for, or that would need to get treated afterward. Bloodplay makes things a little weird. Other than that, depends on who I'm with." He'd had to pause a couple times during that to take slow, deep breaths, and now he does it again. Then he focuses. "Why? How rude have you been wanting to get?"
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It takes him a little while before he realizes the Bull is talking not about his limitations, but his limitations. As in—
"Ugh."
He almost makes himself sound appropriately affronted, but it's tempered by his volume, by the hesitation that keeps him from responding immediately. There's too much effort in the Bull's voice, too many pauses, and Dorian grits his teeth against that twisting feeling of helplessness.
"Now is hardly the appropriate time for this." He tries to make his tone sharp, brusque, but he doesn't quite manage it. "Or is sex really the only thing ever on your mind?"
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It makes the path narrower, scraping at his shoulders. He could stand, he finds himself thinking, jump over the worst of it, and he knows pain, he could handle the pain-
But any pressure might make the ankle heal worse. Or, this time, maybe it wouldn't heal at all. No brace in the world, no matter how many strings the Chargers want to pull to get it designed, is going to make up for that.
He'd go home, he thinks. The Iron Bull is a mercenary captain. Hissrad is an agent of the Qun. Once both have had the last use wrung out of them, they would send him home to teach. A quiet life. The Chargers would have to fend for themselves. Or dissolve the whole company, maybe, depending. The Inquisition wouldn't have a use for a warrior who couldn't fight. Maybe the Qun would send someone else.
The stone walls brush the drying blood and scabs on his arms and his shoulders, press against his skin. He angles himself differently, a little, and it doesn't help. He grits his teeth. He keeps pulling himself through.
If Dorian said anything, the Bull realises he would have missed it. Bad idea to point it out. "So what do you want me to talk about?" the Bull asks, a little edge in his tone. If Dorian did say something that he didn't hear, that has as good a chance as anything else at blending in to the conversation, maybe not letting on.
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That's a bit closer to the truth than Dorian was trying for, and Dorian immediately winces with it.
"I suppose it's a better way to pass the time than most things," he offers, forcing a sort of grudging delivery. "Maybe not every hour of the day, but some of them."
Dorian expects some sort of rejoinder – another attempt at keeping the conversation going, as halfhearted or forced as it may be – but he receives only silence in response. He waits for another second before quietly venturing, "Bull?"
Another beat of silence before the Bull finally responds – and the fact that the man hasn't responded to what Dorian said doesn't miss his notice. He bites on his lower lip again before he finally lets the levity drop his voice.
"Bull, tell me truthfully how you are."
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He opens his eye to his world, this tiny pool of unnatural green light. He takes a deep breath. Does his best.
"I'm not bleeding out or anything." Casual. Good. Keep on pushing for casual. Keep going. Tell the truth in a way that makes it a truth, at least. Neither of them is going to be completely reassured by anything, not really, not unless they get out of this, but the Bull might be able to give Dorian enough to work as an explanation. "If that's what you're worried about. This place is just... what do those guys say to trick tourists into paying them for tours? It's thought provoking. Just giving me a lot to think about."
Should he add a joke? Might not be totally on the mark right now, with Dorian worried enough that he's demanding the truth like that, but there's a chance it'll prompt Dorian into dropping the question before he can dig for a different answer, prompt him into playing along like he has been.
Okay. Go for it. A little one.
"I know every word out of your mouth is like gold though, big guy. Not trying to ignore you; I know you can't stand that." Or Dorian couldn't, if he ever found anyone capable of ignoring him. Dorian's pretty good at making that impossible. So play into that, and hope Dorian's just close to reassured enough that he agrees to play into it a little bit, too.
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"How badly injured are you?"
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