Work Text:
It was so much easier than he’d thought it would be, for something called a harrowing.
His demon was beautiful, and powerful, with shining skin over lithe muscle. It smiled at him, reaching out to caress his cheek. The touch was pleasant, true, but that was all. Nothing new to him.
“Little mage,” the demon said. “I can give you what you want.”
“Can you now?” Dorian asked.
Dorian was smaller than the desire demon was, but that was a function of his own eccentricities, not reality. Dorian liked bigger men, and he liked to be chased, but only a bit. Clingy people were dull.
“I could take care of you, show you things you’ve never seen.”
A hand touched lightly at Dorian’s waist, and the soft scratch of sharp nails against his back made him gasp. It sent a little jolt down his spine, something Dorian filed away for later consideration.
“I’ll give you pleasures you did not know existed,” the demon whispered, against Dorian’s ear.
Dorian hummed softly. He could feel the demon’s grasp becoming tighter, its nails digging into him more sharply. There were teeth next to Dorian’s throat. Sharp, white teeth.
“My dear,” Dorian said. “You have nothing I can’t acquire for myself.”
The demon hissed, shocked but not yet set into rage.
“Get out,” Dorian said.
The fade, his little corner of the fade, turned red and sharp and very hostile. The demon cowered and fled. There was nothing else it could do. When Dorian woke, it was like rising from a restful nap.
“How do you feel?” his father asked, afterwards.
“Fine,” Dorian said. “It wasn’t difficult.”
“Oh, ho!” his father said. “A little harrowing is no trouble for a Pavus?”
“It didn’t offer me anything I might want,” Dorian replied.
---
Dying was a quieter affair than Dorian had expected it to be. His mana was depleted, and he was bleeding out, but that knowledge felt distant. The ground beneath him was hard, and coarse. Pebbles were digging into his skin. He was too tired to think on it, or do anything about it. The world was starting to grey.
Dorian could see the Bull, still, through the smoke, and that was nice. It was good that Bull was still up, still fighting. Bull would live and Dorian could leave the world, a disappointment yes, but contented in that. Bull would live. That was…
Bull fell, blood pouring out around the hand he had pressed to his stomach.
---
Dorian screamed and it was just a puff of air, an exhalation and only barely. He screamed and he made no sound. He raged and he did not move. He was nowhere.
And something was watching him. Something slithery, that Dorian could not see. Something that wasn’t so much behind him as under his skin.
“He’ll die slowly,” the creature said. “Gut wounds are so nasty.”
“Get out,” Dorian said, and his lips did not move.
“But I don’t want to.”
It sounded so pleased.
“I’ll not cave to you,” Dorian said. “Not even now.”
“Are you sure?” the demon asked. “Seems rather petty, when you could still save him.”
Dorian was silent, face down in the dirt. Time felt so slow, but he knew the world was rushing past and there was no space for anything but an immediate decision. He could die or be destroyed; be destroyed and have Bull live…
“Our enemies die first, Bull lives,” Dorian said. “And you don’t hurt… don’t hurt anyone in the Inquisition.”
“Oh, that’s much too rich a bargain, altus.”
“I can call another of you, I still have time.”
He didn’t, but demons were so very vain. The creature hissed and Dorian felt it like fire.
“Greedy mage,” the demon said. “You have a deal.”
It was like lightning. Like burning, like acid… Dorian felt the pathways of his body sing with mana, and everything was sharp again, sound and scent and sight, too much, too much.
A man was standing above Bull, ready to land a killing blow. Dorian cried out, and it sounded like glass breaking. The soldier died on his feet. Dorian looked to the next one.
She died as well.
Dorian turned towards Bull, stumbling on his feet. Bull was still alive, his dear face etched with pain, and something Dorian had never seen on him before. Dorian thought it was fear. He didn’t blame Bull, for that. Dorian looked down at his feet and saw blood and fire. His whole body was lit with mana-fueled flame. He couldn’t feel it. Couldn’t feel anything.
The demon wasn’t steering yet, but it was learning how. It was feeling him out.
Dorian could see Kelan running towards them, Cassandra holding up the flank. They’d been… been ambushed. Had let themselves be cornered near the mines, in the Hinterlands. It was still so loud. The dust of the quarry had been stirred up like smoke, and it was hard to breathe.
But the battle wasn’t over, and Bull wasn’t safe, so they still had time.
“Bull,” Dorian said, before coughing wetly.
“Dorian!” Kelan shouted.
“Please, amatus,” Dorian said. “Kill me b-before the last of them falls.”
“Dorian, what did you do?” Bull asked, teeth gritting together against the pain.
Dorian looked towards Cassandra, barely visible through dust. She was fighting two men, at least. Dorian held up his hand into a fist, and clenched it. One fell, screaming.
It felt like squishing an ant. Dorian felt guilty. It wasn’t fair, to go against things that couldn’t fight back. Surely that wasn’t fair?
Who cared about fair? Why not do what you could do. Do whatever it was that you could do.
Kelan had his bow drawn, arrow pointed at Dorian. His hold was firm, but there was horror in his eyes. Which was as it should be, really. Dorian caught his gaze, and nodded.
“Please,” Dorian said.
Dorian thought he heard Cassandra shouting, as the arrow was loosed.
---
Dorian woke, knowing he shouldn’t have. He hurt. He hurt very badly.
“Don’t panic.”
It sounded rather a lot like Vivienne, but he couldn’t see her. He couldn’t see at all. He couldn’t feel his eyelids, couldn’t blink. He brought his shaking hands up to his face, and it felt like he was touching someone else.
“Be careful,” Vivienne said. “Your eyes are open. But I am fairly sure you are not the one using them.”
Dorian felt his lips move beneath his fingertips, and pulled them back in time to avoid earning a bite. He heard a growling noise, and knew it was coming from himself. He slapped his hand against the floor, and when he felt dirt, he scratched a question mark into it.
“You’re halfway possessed, Darling,” Vivienne said.
Fear cut through him like a lance, and dulled his aches. He dugs his fingers into the ground, then clutched at his sides, and down towards his belt. His potions were gone, and so was his knife. No glass, nothing sharp. He felt slim, cool fingers pass over his own, holding them gently for a moment. Dorian breathed through the panic.
He heard a deep voice, his own voice, chuckling. He slipped one of his hands free from Vivienne, and scratched two words into the dirt. Kill me.
“I would,” Vivienne said. “But I was out-voted.”
Dorian made a strangling motion into the air.
“I know,” Vivienne said. “They didn’t understand.”
And wasn’t that ironic? All the misgivings that Dorian had come up against, and none of them there when they counted, when they were needed.
Dorian scratched another word into the hard-packed floor. Why.
“There’s time. One of your conditions was technically unmet, I believe. I don’t wish to say much more, your… passenger is looking far too interested.”
The demon growled, and Dorian felt heavy, his hand limp in Vivienne’s grasp. The pain in his bones, in his skin, bloomed and then faded. He snatched his hand away from Vivienne, while he still had control over it.
“Less time than we thought, I see.” Vivienne said, now sounding further away.
Dorian’s breath grew quick. He couldn’t move his hands anymore, but he could feel the shift of them, feel them pushing his body up from the floor. There was nothing he could do, save hold his breath.
“I have to go,” Vivienne said. “But you’re being guarded. I won’t let you hurt anyone.”
It was a kindness, and he wished he could thank her for it.
---
Someone was holding him, thick arms cradling him against a solid body. A hand carded through his hair, and Dorian leant into it. He settled his back against a firm chest. He breathed in and it sounded like a sob.
“Bull?” Dorian asked. “Are you alright?”
Bull didn’t answer, but he did press his lips into Dorian’s hair. Dorian raised a hand to touch him, only for it to be caught by the wrist. Dorian flinched.
He couldn’t see, still. To not be able to touch either… it was unpleasant.
“Let go, please, I can’t see you. I don’t like it,” Dorian said.
Bull remained quiet.
“Bull?” Dorian asked.
Bull’s hand tightened, and Dorian registered it at his left one. It had four fingers. Dorian stiffened, and a husky voice laughed, low and pleased, against his ear. He pulled away when he felt a tongue run wet along the shell of his ear, but he didn’t get far. The man holding him was too strong.
“I want to have fun,” Bull’s voice said. “And I’m feeling a bit cranky with you, pretty mage.”
“Get out,” Dorian said.
“Nnnnno integrity where inconvenient, I see,” the demon said. “We had a bargain, and you’re holding outttt.”
“You tried to gouge me on the demonic equivalent of a lyrium potion and some elfroot. Integrity under those conditions is for snobs and fools.”
The demon’s grip grew tighter and Dorian hissed. It stung, the touch of him, and spread out, spread in, inside of him and away from every point of contact. As it faded, all Dorian could feel was a chill, so deep it made him shake in the demon’s arms.
“There, my love,” the demon said. “I do enjoy the feel of you.”
The demon nipped at his throat, and Dorian sobbed.
---
“Are you sure about this?” Kelan asked.
“Not really,” Bull replied.
The floor was covered in chalk sigils, inscribed in arrays and circles. Dorian’s body was tied at the centre of the seal. His mouth was growling and laughing, even through the gag they’d put between his teeth, so he wouldn’t bite his tongue. It was the sort of spellwork that Bull had only ever seen in Seheron. Heavy stuff, augmented by blood. The Inquisition used lyrium. If they hadn’t, Bull would never had agreed, not even for Dorian.
“I’ve not performed this spell myself before,” Solas said, breaking through Bull’s reverie. “It will be harder to send a non-mage through the fade.”
“We’re not leaving him,” Kelan said.
“I didn’t say you were,” Solas said.
He sounded approving. It was always something worth thinking about, when Solas approved. For better or worse. Solas was a philosopher, and he lived in ideals. Bull lived in an uncomfortable reality. Whatever it was, writhing on the floor in front of them, it wasn’t Dorian anymore. It was just commandeering the vessel that Dorian had been so proud of.
He wants to die, Vivienne had said. No mage wants this.
Vivienne was silent, now the decision had been made, but she was watching Dorian carefully. She had taken the east-most point of the circle, which she had said was fitting, though she hadn’t explained why. Fiona took the point to the South, and Solas stood in the west. Bull and Kelan were placed to the North, the only point of the array that opened to the main circle.
Cassandra was behind them, hand resting on the pommel of her sword. Just in case.
“I’m going to begin,” Solas said. “Do you need another moment?”
“No, I’m ready,” Kelan said, his hands pulled into fists by his sides.
Bull looked around them, at the abandoned Templar camp they’d appropriated for near-ironic purposes, at the small fortune of lyrium they were spending on a ‘maybe’. He looked to Fiona, who wore the expression of someone who had basis for all their doubts, and knew they wouldn’t be listened to either way. At Vivienne, who had nothing but cold, sad pity lingering in her eyes.
Solas was the only one out of any of them who seemed pleased by events. Whether it was faith, or academic interest, or madness… Bull didn’t know. There was nothing he could do about it, not while standing in the middle of a bunch of magic crap, while a fucking demon rode his mage.
Dorian had called him amatus, before he’d fallen. Bull knew what that meant, the word, and why Dorian had given in to a demon when he’d never been tempted before.
Dramatic fucking asshole.
“Let’s get it over with,” Bull said.
Bull tightened his grip on his axe as the circle lit up, the runes and sigils activating before his eye. He counted his breaths and thought about anything but Seheron.
Everything turned white, and Bull fell.
---
Dorian checked that the door was locked behind him whenever he visited, and he always left his staff by the bed. Bull never asked him why, though he was sure Dorian had expected him to, at first. Dorian tried to hide it, but he had the air of a man waiting for the sword to fall.
That night moreso than usual.
“Hey,” Bull said, when Dorian jostled the handle twice before walking away. “You alright?”
Dorian was looking peaked. Sober, but stressed. Bull could see his pulse jumping in the side of his throat. The pointed stare Dorian was levelling at him was nowhere near as convincing as it usually was.
“I’m fine, why do you ask?” Dorian said.
The lying was an issue, and a defence mechanism. That made it harder to address than it otherwise might have been. It was like calming a spooked horse.
“Come here,” Bull said, and Dorian went.
He draped himself over Bull’s lap, tucking himself in under Bull’s chin, like a housecat. It took a minute for Dorian’s breath to slow, for his pulse to even out beneath Bull’s gentle grip. Dorian wouldn’t have let Bull hold him like that, when they first got together. It spoke to trust, and that was what Bull wanted, really. He wanted to be a safe place.
He also wanted to ruffle Dorian’s feathers until the end of days, but the two sentiments coexisted fairly neatly in Bull’s mind.
“What do you want?” Bull asked, his lips brushing against Dorian’s brow.
Dorian tensed a little, and looked back towards the door. When Bull lowered his head to Dorian’s neck, Dorian allowed it, but he didn't arch into it like he normally would. He didn’t gasp, or make any of the soft sounds he’d never admit to, the ones that indicated his enjoyment. Dorian didn’t want sex, but he’d come to Bull anyway. He’d never done that before.
“From behind, please,” Dorian said.
Bull sighed quietly, and braced himself. Dorian was fragile with perceived rejection, something Bull had known before they’d gotten together, though he hadn’t known the full extent of it. Better that than to lay down with someone who didn’t want it, though.
“Maybe in the morning,” Bull said, and to his surprise, Dorian didn’t question it.
---
Bull opened his eye onto something else staring back at him, something with big, green irises and slit pupils. It blinked and Bull brought his axe up reflexively. He heard a high yelp. Bull dragged himself up onto his hands, in time to see something dark and furry scrambling away from him, into the dark. Kelan was beside him, drawing his bow too late to make a difference.
“What was that?” Kelan asked, his face wrinkling enough that it changed the shape of his vallaslin.
“Dunno,” Bull replied. “Had a lot of teeth though.”
Bull stood, his knee twinging still, even though Bull wasn’t in a physical body. He was fairly sure he was disappointed.
“This isn’t what I was expecting,” Kelan said, holding up his glowing hand so they could see.
Dorian’s mindscape was a hall. Not a particularly ornate one, but certainly Tevinter, if the furnishings were anything to go by. There was a lot of metallic detailing (probably gold, though he couldn’t tell in the green light), and Bull could see an intricately patterned snake on one of the wall-hangings. The floor was stone, and when Bull took a step, the sound of it echoed for seconds.
“So, Boss,” Bull said. “Which way do you want to go?”
Kelan looked down one end of the hall, then down the other. It went on as far as they could see, with no turns in either direction. Both ends had doors, interspaced down the walls, but nothing differentiated them.
“Does it matter?” Kelan asked, quirking his shoulders up.
They heard a long, sad howl, coming from the direction the monster had run to.
“At least we know something’s there?” Bull said.
“Better than nothing,” Kelan replied, smiling wryly and without mirth.
They started walking.
---
The first open door was a hundred yards down the hall. Every one before it had been locked beyond Kelan’s skill, and when Bull had pressed his ear against the wood, he hadn’t heard anything. Behind this one, he could hear shouting. No, not just shouting. Screaming.
“Get your bow up before I open the door,” Bull said, and Kelan nodded.
He adjusted his grip on his axe with his right hand, and curled his fingers around the handle with his left. Kelan backed up, ready to fire should there be anyone too close.
Bull opened the door, and the screaming stopped. Kelan’s arrow dropped by inches. His face fell. Bull turned, drawing himself through the doorway and into the room. There was a bed in the middle of the room, and in the centre of it was a young man, naked save for a corner of a blanket, his throat cut. There was blood pooled all over the sheets, and on the walls from the first burst of arterial spray. He stepped closer, and heard the quiet rattle of someone aspirating.
“He’s still alive,” Kelan said.
“Not for long,” Bull said, under his breath.
Kelan kept his distance while Bull stepped in close to the dying man. He didn’t look any older than his early twenties. His eyes were panicked and glassy, but he didn’t fight the press of Bull’s hand to his brow. The lamps in the room were lit, and in their light the man’s skin looked much too pale and clammy for someone who had skin darker than Dorian’s. He would’ve been handsome, before, when he was more than half alive.
“Who did this?” Bull asked.
The man pointed, towards the corner of the room and another door, broken down off its hinges. He clutched at Bull’s wrist before Bull had the chance to pull away.
“What is it?” Kelan asked.
The man mouthed two words. Bull leaned in close, saw the man hold the gape of his throat closed with a slippery hand.
“Hal… ward…” the man said.
Then his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and his chest stopped moving.
---
“You alright?” Bull asked.
“Fine,” Kelan replied.
Kelan had covered the dead man’s body with a sheet before they left, his posture as taut as a wire. Bull knew why. Dorian never spoke much about his past, willing though he was to wax poetic about Tevinter and all her many glories. There were a few things that were common knowledge, even still.
Halward was Dorian’s father’s name.
“I want to keep moving,” Kelan said. “Solas… Solas said we’d find him, if we followed his memories.”
Kelan wasn’t overfond of Solas, but he was their best resource on the Fade. Kelan would follow his instructions, and Bull would follow Kelan. Something was bothering him, though.
“What we’re seeing probably relates to the demon, right?” Bull said.
“Yes,” Kelan replied.
“Then just what sort of demon d’you think this is, if it’s showing us that?” Bull asked.
Kelan didn’t answer for a moment.
“Boss?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Kelan said. “Rules out some of the weaker ones, but we can handle it.”
Bull nodded, even though he had his suspicions. He knew Kelan did too. Maybe it was better, not to admit it until they knew for sure.
---
The corridor outside the bedroom wasn’t as empty as the one before it. Wasn’t quite so dark, either. Late-evening light was filtering into the space, through windows set high on the walls. The hall was wide, almost as wide as an entryway, and lived in. There were books on the side-tables, and toys, blocks and dolls, nudged out of the way, and all larger than Bull would’ve expected for a child.
“It’s like someone took a house and stretched it…” Kelan said.
Which was more apt a description than Bull had come up with on his own. And maybe it said something about Dorian’s memory, that the dying man’s bedroom had been so crisp, even though time had a tendency to warp such things.
“I think this is what childhood memories are supposed to look like…” Bull said, musing. “Everything else is huge but you.”
“Huh,” Kelan said.
He moved over to the wall, and bent down for a moment. When he stood up, he had a little wooden duck in his hand. Kelan flicked a finger over the wheels on the duck’s base.
“Cole… Cole found him one of these,” Kelan said. “Said he couldn’t find one with wheels.”
Bull forgot sometimes that even though Kelan had many companions, Dorian was the closest of them. They fed something in each-other that they couldn’t seem to find elsewhere, something they’d both been hungry for. Bull was familiar with that kind of love, but humans and elves didn’t seem to value it as much as they did other entanglements.
He didn’t know why Kelan and Dorian hadn’t gone down that path, and time only made him more unwilling to ask.
Something shifted behind the tablecloth, near Kelan’s feet. Bull adjusted his grip on his axe and coughed quietly. Kelan looked at him, his expression questioning.
“Boss,” Bull said. “There’s something down there.”
Kelan took a casual step back, and then another, and Bull threw his axe. Something bolted out from under the table, just before it hit. Something dark and furry and sleek. It ran down the hall, pausing halfway down the length, and turning back towards them.
It had shining green eyes, and sharp, tusk-like teeth. Bull recognized it, from when he’d woken. Now that he could see it properly, its body was that of a wolf, but its face was almost draconic. When Kelan drew his bow, it dropped its head back and howled, long and mournful. The same sound they’d heard, in the first hall. It sent a cold shiver down Bull’s spine.
It ran before Kelan had an arrow notched.
“What is that?” Kelan asked. “It looked familiar.”
“I don’t know,” Bull replied. “But it’s not a demon.”
---
This section of Dorian’s memory curved around, so even with the better lighting, they couldn’t see too far. The monstrous dog stayed ahead of them, but Bull kept catching glimpses of it, from behind shelves and statues. There were library’s worth of books, but they were all full of gibberish, the titles made of almost-letters, pushed together.
There were also paintings, but the less said about those, the better. They weren’t still. Looking at them made Bull’s head hurt.
“I shouldn’t be surprised that Dorian makes you work for it, if you want to find him in here,” Kelan said.
Bull huffed a laugh. No, not surprising at all. His mind would be a maze. It couldn’t be anything else.
Bull heard a soft scratching sound, and looked to Kelan. Kelan nodded back at him, and took point, his quick steps quieter than Bull could manage. When he was twenty paces ahead he drew his bow again, confusion blooming on his face as he raised it, only to lower it again.
“Bull,” Kelan said. “Come here.”
He followed, eyes widening when he saw the monster dog, cringing and curling up, looking woefully between them and a section of wall no different from all the rest. It didn’t run from them, but it was clear it wanted to. Up close Bull could see a cut on its face, long and thin, from when he’d swung his axe at it.
It scratched at the wall again, keening. Kelan stepped in close, moving slowly, but the dog made no move except to shift away from him. Kelan pressed his ear to the wood, and his eyes widened.
“What is it?” Bull asked.
Kelan ran his fingers over the architrave, pressing down until something gave beneath his fingers. It wasn’t a large handhold, but it was enough that when he pulled on it with all his weight, it budged. It was a door, disguised by the panelling of the walls. Kelan’s face fell when he looked through, and the dog pushed past them both before Bull could so much as grab at its scruff.
“Help me out,” Kelan said, and Bull took the open side of the door between his fingers and pulled it open, hinges screaming from disuse.
Inside there was a child, with brown skin and dark hair, weeping into his own chubby hands. The dog wrapped itself around him, eyes squeezing shut, its head delicately angled so its fangs didn’t touch the boy. The room was small, barely more than a cupboard, and covered in dust everywhere except for where the boy had slid through it.
There was whispering, coming in through the walls, in Tevene and Trade.
“Soporatus,” a high voice said. “And from that family.”
“No fit heir.” a deeper one replied.
“Had to be done.”
“Should’ve waited.”
“Left such a mess.”
“Waste of blood.”
The boy looked up at them, and Bull saw the beauty mark on his cheek. The child hid his face quickly, burying it in the fur of the dog. The dog whuffed, quietly.
“Dorian,” Kelan said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Dorian shook his head. He was so small. He couldn’t have been more than five.
“Please, it would be much better outside,” Kelan said.
“Papa venit hora,” Dorian said.
Bull stiffened, looking back into the hall. He could hear footsteps coming, getting louder with every moment, to many to be just one man.
“I think we need to get going, Kelan,” Bull said, quietly.
“Dorian!” Kelan whispered, voice growing tense.
“He’s coming,” Dorian said. “He’s coming to make me right.”
The ground beneath Dorian went slick, like tar. Kelan grabbed for him, but an arm shot up through the muck before them, its sticky fingers clamping down over Dorian’s mouth. Dorian screamed, voice muffled. The dog made a sound like the screeching of a thousand birds.
The arm pulled Dorian through the floor, and left nothing behind but an oily stain in the wood.
---
“Shit,” Bull said.
The dog was howling, baying disconsolately, digging at the floor so hard the boards scratched. Kelan was frozen, eyes wide and staring, but Bull could hear shouting behind them now, and they didn’t have time to process what they’d seen. What had happened to Dorian…
But it wasn’t Dorian. It wasn’t Dorian, it was the fade, a vision. A distraction.
“Kelan, time to go,” Bull said.
“We have to get down there,” Kelan said. “We have to… have to…”
“It’s a memory, we have to keep going, we’re not going to find him staring at the floor.”
The dog snarled, and Bull saw the muscle under its coat flex. Its eyes were yellowing, jowls salivating. It jumped on its hind legs and threw its weight into the ground. The boards creaked beneath it.
“Although maybe,” Bull said, eyes widening as the wood splintered.
The dog threw itself at the floor once more, and the floorboards buckled completely, snapping like twigs. Bull grabbed Kelan, tucking Kelan’s head against his chest, so the wood wouldn’t get in his eyes. When Bull let Kelan go, the dog was gone, disappeared into the space under the floor.
“You really do have pillowy bosoms,” Kelan said, sounding a little shocked.
Bull laughed tightly. The steps coming up the hall were thunderous now, the voices behind them them yelling in Tevene. They both looked towards the splintered hole in the ground before them.
“Down the rabbit hole?” Kelan said.
“I Can’t believe you said that,” Bull replied.
---
“Daddy was right, you know,” the demon said. “You’ll be much better this way.”
Dorian had stopped fighting him. When he was still, the demon touched him less, and that was worth a hit to his pride. Anything was better than the cold touch of the demon’s hands, how it spread through him and made every part of him feel wrong.
That didn’t mean it was pleasant though, watching as his most terrible memory played out before his eyes.
“She was still alive, wasn’t she?” the demon asked, painting sigils on the floor.
There was a woman, an elf, lying on the floor and breathing shallowly. She was whispy in Dorian’s memory. He’d been too upset to remember much of what had happened to him, after the fact. He had a vague memory of seeing the woman shiver on the floor, too weak to stand after having been bled for his father’s spell.
Dorian hadn’t known her. Could barely remember what she looked like. He’d left her there, lying prone, when he’d run.
“Hn, guilt’s not my regular emotion, but I do enjoy it,” the demon said.
The demon completed his circle with a final flick of his hand. It wasn’t entirely accurate, Dorian was sure of that, but it was good enough for its intended purpose. Dorian knew that, because he’d designed it, at the demon’s behest. It had held him face first over boiling water until he’d agreed.
Dorian knew the water wasn’t real. None of it was real, but that didn’t matter when it felt real, when Dorian was in the hands of something that was very good at walking that boundary.
“Wonder what else we can play with, in the time we have,” the demon said.
“You drone on, don’t you?” Dorian said.
“He’d be disgusted, you know,” the demon said. “That Bull that you let rut on top of you. He hates demons, and you let one right in.”
The demon waved the tip of his finger in front of Dorian’s face, and Dorian leant back, shivering in spite of himself.
“Wish you hadn’t let him know. Would’ve been fun to let him have you one more time before we took off,” the demon said.
“Stop.”
“Maybe he’ll let me anyway, he likes to try new things. Never had a mage before you. We could tick Abomination off the bucket list, too.”
“Please, stop,” Dorian said.
“And you called him ‘love’ right at the end there, too,” the demon said. “Now tell me, do you think that’s embarrassing? I’d love to know more about what you find embarrassing.”
And that, thankfully, had been a misstep on the demon’s part. The first one since they’d started their present scene. Dorian was many things, a veritable mosaic of flaws that he’d admit to with a smile on his face, but he wasn’t ashamed of loving Bull. Or if he was, it was the same shame he felt when he liked anything that had been outside his experience before he’d left Tevinter. It was the good shame, the small shame that came with growth.
Dorian smiled, and the demon slapped him in the face.
---
The tunnel walls were rough-hewn stone, the first unkempt aspect of Dorian’s mind that Bull had seen. The path wasn’t linear, either. It was full of spreading branches, and the only reason they hadn’t become helplessly lost was the trail of inky residue they were following, shining under the light of Kelan’s hand, except for where it was marred by paw prints.
It felt a little like learning something Dorian wasn’t willing to admit yet, and Bull told himself he’d apologize for it, when the time came.
“Bull?” Kelan said.
“Yeah?”
“I think we’re getting closer.”
The tunnel was beginning to curve, like it was skirting something on the other side of its wall. Whatever they were chasing was moving slower too, trying to find something, if the sparse marks it left on the wall were any indication. It hadn’t done that before, in all the time they’d been following it. The paw prints were closer together, as well.
“What do you think it’s doing?” Bull asked.
Then they heard it, a deep voice echoing down the tunnel.
“Dorian…”
Kelan stiffened, and Bull looked to him.
“That’s Dorian’s father,” Kelan said.
They picked up their pace.
---
Bull hadn’t met Dorian’s father. They hadn’t been that close, when Dorian had made the trip down to Redcliffe and seen him. Dorian didn’t like to talk about it, so the little things Bull knew about the man were simple quirks of personality. Bull didn’t know what the man looked like.
He suspected that the real thing wasn’t quite so… oily.
“Dorian,” the man said. “Let me in, Dorian.”
The dog was trailing behind him, tail drooping between its legs. Tar was dripping from Halward’s robes, and smearing from his fingers onto the walls. Halward’s face was pressed against the stone, even as he walked.
“Dorian!”
The dog looked back at them, and whuffed. Bull didn’t know what it said about him, that he was empathizing with something out of horror story. Maybe nothing at all. There was a whole world full of ugly, and Dorian’s monster dog was the kind that didn’t matter. Dorian’s father, unfortunately, was the kind that did.
“Bull,” Kelan said. “How good are you at bashing through solid walls?”
“Before you get your hopes up, remember there’s no guarantee this won’t be another leg of the maze,” Bull said.
“Halward always finds him,” Kelan said.
Bull closed his eye for a moment, and took in a long, steadying breath. And maybe he wasn’t a part of the Qun anymore, but sometimes he still… he still baulked at the idea that the South was better, when just anyone could have a kid, and call it love when they hurt them.
“Stand back,” Bull said, dropping his shoulder.
When he hit the wall, it didn’t so much crumble as implode.
---
The scent of blood hit him first, so thick in the air he almost choked on it. When he looked down he saw it painted across the floor, in circles and sigils, already going dark as it dried. He looked up and saw they were standing in someone’s study, all the walls lined with shelves and thick fabric. At the very back of the room was a heavy desk, and just in front of that was Dorian, pale and shivering, a demon holding him by the throat. It was humanoid, body coloured pale and green. It had fingers like throwing knives.
“Come any closer and I rip him apart,” the demon said. “And believe me, you don’t want me to. Spirits are not as robust as they look.”
Kelan took a step, drawing level to Bull’s side. Bull saw him drop his bow. At the very corner of his vision, something dark and sleek edged into the room. Bull couldn’t see well enough to know if it was Dorian’s dog or his father.
“We want Dorian back,” Kelan said.
“We made a deal, one more to his favour than mine…” the demon said. “He belongs to me, now.”
Dorian looked Bull in the eye, so tense it seemed like keeping his eyes open was an effort. He shook his head and the demon squeezed his throat. Dorian mouthed something, but Bull couldn’t read his lips. He wanted to put his axe through something, but he’d come too far to lose himself when Dorian needed him.
Something brushed against his leg, and Bull looked down and saw Dorian’s monster dog.
“I want to make a deal,” Bull said, and Kelan’s head snapped towards him.
He didn’t look at Kelan’s face. He kept his eye on the demon, who smiled brightly, sharp teeth bared. There was movement behind it, but it hadn’t noticed yet.
“Oh, and what can you offer me, oxman?” the demon asked. “I’ll confess I could be tempted by horns. I like horns.”
“What can you offer me, first?” Bull asked.
Kelan had gone very still next to him.
“Maybe I let you have this back, he’s looking very tatty,” the demon said, shaking Dorian lightly. “Although I do like our Dorian’s mind. So twisty.”
Halward Pavus was standing, fully formed, behind his work desk, body still shining and black. He reached out and grabbed the demon by the scruff of the neck.
“Dorian!” Halward bellowed, body warping already, his limbs sticking to the demon.
The demon screeched, lashing out behind it. It raked its fingers across Dorian’s neck as it pulled away, cuts so fine they didn’t bleed until a second later. Dorian held his hand over his throat and fell.
Bull was already halfway across the room.
---
Dorian had never had his throat cut before. Depending on how he counted it, he still hadn’t, but that didn’t make it feel any less unpleasant. He held his fingers down over the cuts, trying to keep some pressure on them. They felt shallow, at least.
Dorian jolted, when Bull came crashing down onto his knees, next to him. He opened his mouth, only to find himself swept in against Bull’s chest, held firm but without hurt. Bull always seemed to know his strength.
“You are a hard man to find, Dorian,” Bull said, and surely his voice was not so thready as it sounded, to Dorian’s ears.
“Sorry,” Dorian replied softly.
A familiar set of green eyes popped up behind Bull’s shoulder, and it took Dorian a moment to place them. The creature smiled, face amiable even through all the fangs, and wagged its tail.
“It’s you,” Dorian said.
Bull looked over his shoulder and sighed.
“You’ve got to tell me what that is, once this is over,” He said.
The demon roared, and Dorian could hear his father’s voice calling out for him, his name distorted by whatever his mind had made his father out of.
“But not now, obviously,” Bull added, hoisting Dorian up in his arms and running away from the fight.
The room was growing dark, black tar spreading out from his father, and all over the floor. The blood-circle was half gone, and Dorian felt a moment of bitter-sweet relief for its passing. He never wanted to see it again, but there wasn’t much to celebrate when a nightmare-fueled personification of his father was taking over his mind.
A hand rose up from the tar, only to be struck by an arrow. Dorian looked up to see Kelan, smiling weakly at him, bow up.
“So, plan?” Kelan said, when Bull was in close. “I’m open to suggestions.”
Dorian couldn’t even see the demon anymore. It was covered entirely.
“Hey Dorian,” Bull said. “If this is your mind… what’s your dad doing over there?”
“Fear demon,” Dorian said.
“Ok, fair, doesn’t explain your dog, but fair.”
Dorian felt a wave of heat, and saw the surface of his father’s body dry and crack. It was horrible, and it brought up a reflexive streak of worry for him, even though he wasn’t real. The demon tore through his father like a knife through silk. It screeched, eyes on Dorian, its body sharp at all its edges, made hard with anger. It leapt at him.
Kelan stepped between them, swinging his bow like a knife. The strike connected, but it brought Kelan in too close. The demon’s fingers tore into his arm without mercy. Something inside Dorian cracked.
The demon froze.
“We had a deal,” Dorian said, feeling his cuts heal beneath his fingers. “No one in the Inquisition gets hurt.”
His pet monster, the one that had lived beneath his bed when he was small, snarled. Its size had always fluctuated, depending on how he felt.
It was now the size of a horse.
“Eat him,” Dorian said, enjoying the way the demon tried to skitter away.
Dorian’s monster swallowed it whole, licking its lips like a satisfied dog when it was done. It turned towards Dorian and wagged its tail.
“Dorian,” Bull said.
“Yes,” Dorian replied.
“I really hate demons,” he said.
“I know you do,” Dorian said.
---
“It’s for the best that no one else know this happened,” Kelan said.
Dorian still felt fragile, weak from mana-withdrawal and stress, and everything else he’d put his body through. Bull hadn’t left his side since he’d woken up, and Dorian was too glad of it to pretend he minded. He felt safer, with Bull there.
“Dorian is still vulnerable,” Vivienne replied. “He could be a risk to Skyhold.”
“She’s right,” Dorian said.
He knew the tense lines of Kelan’s face well, knew that Kelan wouldn’t want to make Dorian’s day any harder than it had been. Unfortunately, the point remained. Until Dorian was back on his feet, he was a liability.
And even then, Dorian had proved that he would surrender to possession, if the stakes were high enough. That was no small matter. Dorian had broken their trust, even if he had saved Bull’s life.
“He was under extreme conditions,” Solas said. “Unusual ones, I see no reason to watch Dorian any more than we would any mage.”
Dorian heard Bull growl a little under his breath.
“We can camp out until the end of the week,” Bull said. “I’m in no rush to get back to Skyhold.”
It was most likely a lie. Bull didn’t like being away from his Chargers any longer than he had to be. Dorian appreciated it all the same. He was skin hungry, and whenever Bull was out of his sight for more than a few minutes, he found it difficult to quell his panic that something had happened to him.
“That is acceptable,” Vivienne said.
“To me as well,” Fiona added.
“We can talk about it more then,” Kelan said. “For now… I think we could all do with a little R&R.”
Dorian rested his head against Bull’s shoulder, and closed his eyes.
---
“Ok,” Bull said. “That dog thing, in your mind, what was it?”
They were in their tent, Dorian tucked against his side like he belonged there, and Bull liked to think he did. Dorian laughed quietly, and Bull felt it, rumbling through his chest.
“My father used to tell me that the monster under my bed was there to protect me, and that I shouldn’t be afraid of it,” Dorian said.
Bull was quiet for a moment, thinking about the things he’d seen in Dorian’s mind. The things Halward had done. He’d hurt Dorian very badly, but when the choice was there, he’d reached for the demon first. Or at least Dorian’s conception of him had.
“Oh,” Bull said.
“I know,” Dorian said.
But maybe it made sense. For all that Halward had done, all the terrible things he’d done, he had loved Dorian. It just wasn’t enough, and it never would be. Bull had heard Dorian say as much, before.
Bull wanted to tell Dorian that he cared about him, that he loved him, and he’d never hurt him. But it wasn’t the time for it, just like it wasn’t the time to ask Dorian if he’d meant what he’d said, when they’d both thought they were going to die. Maybe he’d meant it in the moment only.
“Hey, Dorian,” Bull said.
“Yes?” Dorian replied.
“After we rest up, and fuck like mad a couple times…”
“And bathe.”
“Yeah, that too,” Bull said. “You want to sit down and talk about our feelings?”
Dorian went still in his arms, so Bull rubbed a hand gently, up and down his back.
“All good things, I promise,” Bull said.
“Maybe,” Dorian replied, leaning up to kiss Bull on the cheek, before burying his face in Bull’s neck again.
“I was thinking about getting a pet dog, that sort of thing,” Bull said.
Bull was sure he could feel Dorian smiling into his shoulder.