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Chapter Text

Dawn broke across the scarred sky; the sun rose on a world free from the threat of Corypheus; and Inquisitor Morai of clan Lavellan slipped from the banquet in her honor and into her bed, seizing sleep instead of letting it claim her.

Dreaming was to walk in the Fade passively, swept up in whatever currents of thought or memory or emotion the spirits took interest in. With victory so recent, she would likely find herself in the middle of wonders or battle. Perhaps she'd see reflections of some horror she'd witnessed or heard tell of. None of these possibilities alarmed Morai after so long living among them.

But she might dream of Solas, and that she could not bear.

So she threw herself into sleep and took the reins of her dreaming as he had taught her. Better to watch the spirits reenact some dry ancient history than to live with the chance that her anger and loneliness might wear his face.

Knowing the trick, it was as simple as opening her eyes. Even so, it was not easy. Being consciously present in the Fade was as wholly different from dreaming as walking through it physically had been, and Morai's head swam as scenes and feelings swirled around her. The Fade was trying to draw her into its dreams, but she anchored herself in her will and stood on her balcony, looking out over the dream-mirror of her seat of power.

It was her own familiar keep, sun shining down on stone worn with the weight of ages, and even as other Skyholds flickered in her periphery (it was a scene of horror as flames licked out of windows beneath lowering grey clouds) (it was picturebook-perfect with new-quarried stone painted rose by a bloody sunset) (it was as cold and empty as a corpse under brilliant, wheeling stars) Morai swelled with pride. This was hers.

She was about to start a tour of her demesne when something else worked its way into her perception.

He was here.

The taste of his dreaming danced on her tongue like old spiced wine. For one wild moment, Morai forgot the inexplicable betrayals and all the ways he had abandoned her: she raised her face to the wind (the stars) (the rain) that brought the hint of his presence to her and laughed for joy. Solas was here. He'd come back.

As soon as the thought took shape, Morai's laughter crumbled into silence. No, he had not come back. If he was here, he had snuck back in slumber, kept his distance, not sought her out at all. He was here for himself, and was not meant to be noticed.

Pain lanced through her, but fury burned close on its heels—rushing, racing, as if to burn the grief away.

Before she could think better of it, Morai followed the thread of his presence back to its source. It took no more than a thought. One moment, she stood alone on her balcony; the next, she found herself across from Solas in the intact chapel of the Temple of Sacred Ashes.

(They stood in an ancient, untouched valley among grazing goats.) (The sky heaved with Corypheus's final Breach as they hung on the floating rocks suspended beneath it.) (Hundreds screamed as the Temple was rent asunder and came down upon them.)

Morai took a shuddering breath, crushed between the layered weight of emotions reflected by the spirits and her own raging heart; but Solas was watching her, and under his gaze she could do no less than bear it. She grit teeth in the face of his silence, his presence, and raised her chin.

“Why are you here?”

There was a considering pause. The Fade's dreaming flowed around them. Reflections of Corypheus and Divine Justinia and grand clerics and mages and templars and officials and pilgrims went through the motions of debate and violence and death and worship as if dancing a pavane.

Solas was immensely powerful here—Morai could feel it radiating off of him, didn't know how she had missed it for so long—and she wondered if he simply wouldn't answer, would leave into waking or simply some remoter reach of the Fade. But then he met her stare and said, “I need to understand what happened between you and the anchor when you interrupted Corypheus's ritual. This is the easiest place to study.”

Morai had watched enough partial truths leave his lips in the last few months to recognize one as it was spoken.

She had had enough of them for a lifetime.

It was not until she heard the impact of flesh that she realized she had struck him. Solas rocked backward with the force of it. Her knuckles stung, her hand ached, and it felt so good to loose her tightly-leashed anger that she hit him again, the full weight of her shoulder behind it.

Solas stumbled and fell, and as he did Morai knew with certainty that he hadn't raised a hand to defend himself on purpose. He had let her hit him.

And he was staring up at her now without an ounce of fight, despite the two blooming marks on his cheekbone and jaw. He was sorrowful, but just as he'd been in the aftermath of Corypheus, his face was set. He had made his decisions and would not be moved.

Morai lurched forward, threw herself down to straddle his ribs, gripped his tunic in both fists. “Why,” she hissed, leaning down. “Tell me why.”

She was no longer asking about his presence so close to Skyhold. And Solas did not mean that, either, when he replied, “I cannot.”

The scenery had shifted at some point. They were now on the road from Skyhold, just outside of the portcullis. The great gate was closed, the courtyard silent. There was no one and nothing around them but the mountains and the lonely artery that connected the beating heart of the Inquisition to the rest of Thedas.

It was as empty as Morai felt.

But in the ring of her periphery, fainter than shadow, figures moved together. She did not have to concentrate to see what they did.

She rocked back in her crouch. Solas's gaze remained locked on hers. “Even now?” she asked, torn between desolation and disbelief.

“Especially now,” he said, quiet. Resigned.

The resignation burned. Oh, it was just so sadly inevitable that he should break her heart without a word of explanation. It was unavoidable that she should descend on him in the Fade and he should see her fury and want her. Oh, that longing, that tragic courtly ballad of a romance.

He was so good at distancing himself. Morai needed to make him feel.

Solas's back hit the hard stone of Haven's Chantry (the burning village gate) (the wall of Adan's apothecary). The Fade had reoriented itself. He was upright and she was no longer crouched over him, and she slammed into him with all of her weight and pinned him with one forearm across his throat. Before he could do more than take a strangled breath, she grabbed him between the legs with her other hand and bared her teeth.

“Is this what you came here for?” she asked acidly, working him through his breeches. He was half-hard, eyes wide, and his hands hovered over her arm as if he couldn't believe what she was doing. “Did you go to sleep tonight hoping I'd find you?”

Around them, spirits playacted coupling; an obscene accompaniment. Solas gripped her wrist, stopping shy of forcing it away, and rasped out, “Did you?”

Morai snarled in answer and ripped through his laces one-handed. He choked, and she could not tell whether it was the pressure against his neck or her hand wrapping around his cock or, horribly, laughter, and that was too much. She gripped him and twisted, a mockery of caresses from before, before, that now had more in common with wringing a neck than a lover's touch. His hands were still on her wrist and that too was a mockery, an echo of guiding, encouragement, the discovery of each other's bodies.

Solas groaned, a strangled, pained sound, and in her grip he was now fully hard. Some part of her was horrified at herself, but it was as remote as a star, and she turned from it and set a merciless pace. His eyes still held hers, and somehow, though they were glazed with pain or arousal or the restricted air making it past his throat, the careful distance was gone.

Morai leaned up—more pressure on his throat; a whistling breath—and kissed him. His hands left her wrist and, incredibly, came up to cup her face as he kissed her back. Solas's mouth was unbearably tender.

She bit down on his lip as hard as she could, and didn't release it until she tasted blood.

He gasped something in elvhen and almost immediately Morai felt a bead of moisture in her hand. She dragged the slickness around the head of his cock, rolling her palm, and for a moment her touch was that of a lover.

Then her grip tightened savagely and she returned once more to her punishing rhythm. Solas's bloody mouth opened with a silent, strained cry, his neck cording beneath the relentless pressure of her arm. His fingers trembled on her cheeks.

Morai's teeth were bared, his blood hot on her lips, copper on her tongue. Those brown eyes were still on hers, but they were unfocused; his breathing was ragged, becoming ever more uneven. Spirits roiled around them and the Fade shifted from scene to scene too fast and fluidly to catch as Solas's body strained against the onrushing climax, cock throbbing in her grasp. His breath became a strangled whine as Morai leaned harder across his throat, pressed her cheek to his, and into his ear hissed, “Harden your heart to this, ma etunash.”

He came like a cataclysm, crying out her name as he fell, finally released, to his knees.

Morai looked down at the ruin of him. Seed streaked the ground where he sagged, chest heaving, one hand on his throat. She wanted this to be a triumph so badly, but there was no satisfaction to this victory; in the barren wake of her fury, she felt nothing but howling shame.

They were on the edge of the Haven refugee camp where Solas had taken her aside all those months ago. It had been a still, cold night, but there had been warm fires and voices at their backs. In the Fade's reflection, it was silent. Empty. There weren't even any stars.

“You gave me a path forward here,” Morai said hollowly.

Solas, face pale, frowned down at the snow between his knees and did not answer. The wind swept around them.

“I have lost so much of myself to become the Inquisitor,” she continued, “but I always saw the need. Even when the losses were beyond my control—Haven, the Grey Wardens—I understood why.”

He would not look at her. His head was bowed.

Morai's voice rose, broke. “How then could you take so much from me, and I still can't even guess your reasons?”

There was a long moment during which only the wind spoke. Then Solas turned his face to her and smiled sadly. “You are so much more than anything taken from you, vhenan.”

She woke with a gasp to streaming midday sunlight.

The tears on her cheeks were as cold as blackest night.

Chapter Text

Morai was no dwarf. For all that the shame pooled in her stomach like lead, as cold and heavy for weeks as it was on that first waking—for all that she could swear not to walk in the Fade again—she was as unable to keep herself from dreaming as she was unable to keep the air from her lungs.

She still dreamed. And sometimes, she dreamed of him.

There were of course the sex dreams, smeared impressions or detailed imaginings of his mouth and fingers and cock. She dreamed of clutching him, of kissing him. She dreamed of begging him for more. And if sometimes in these dreams she dreamed him teeth sharp enough to rip out her throat and warmth in the old wolf pelt he'd donned when it was coldest, well, she'd cursed him and herself both to Fen'Harel often enough for that to make dream-logic sense.

To these dreams she woke up wet and aching. It was a different shame to be unable to leave her bed until she'd wrung a furious, inadequate release from herself. She went through the days following those dreams feeling branded and pathetic.

But, no, the sex dreams weren't the worst.

Sometimes she dreamed they were happy.

It always took her by surprise, and always the same way. The details never lingered. The fine points didn't matter. Morai would wake with vague impressions of sharing a journey, or a home, or a meal, and for one moment everything upon waking was light; then she would turn and find the perfect solitude in which she had slept, and the loneliness would crash down on her like a stone.

It was these dreams that she could not bear. She did not weep or rage in the morning light following them, or even put off rising; but each good dream of Solas chipped away at something vital within her. It cost her, to face the day in their wake.

Eventually there would be nothing left to pay.

—

Varric and Dorian knew. They knew her better than anyone left in Skyhold, and her Inquisitor's mask couldn't fool them so she at least didn’t have to bother with it around them. They did what they could, each to his own strength, to stave off what was coming, and Morai loved them for it even as they fell short.

There were late nights filled with cards and bawdy laughter, arranged by Varric and populated by whoever he could convince to put up a stake. She gambled and traded stories with troops and civilians when members of her dwindling inner circle weren't available, and if she noticed that they were sometimes a little overawed and forced in their merriment, she wasn't so ungrateful as to mention it. Sometimes, for brief flashes, the wine and clamor meant she could forget.

With Dorian, quieter afternoons of chess and conversation didn't let her forget so much as dull the rawness for a time. There was laughter here too, and gossip, but more intimate: just their two voices. Sometimes they lapsed into comfortable stretches of companionable silence broken only by the click of fine carved pieces on the marble board. Morai was grateful for how mundane and understandable her grief was when they spoke of the plans and hopes he had in returning to Tevinter, and she pressed on that bruise as often as she could.

Their friendship was precious to her, and the love they showed her was, truly, a balm. But as clearly as they saw her fractures and as fully as she threw herself into their company, they couldn't do more than paper over the holes. She was being crushed beneath the burden of not knowing why she’d been abandoned; her rage and pain were unmoored, directionless, all swirling questions with no answers. Her friends could offer her no outlet to that.

—

The dreams of him increased in frequency. He spoke to her in most of them now, words she forgot upon waking but which left her with a lingering, grinding, hollowing fury. She lingered over herself the mornings she woke up from dreams of sex, letting the loathing build pace-for-pace with her climax, three and more fingers until it barely even felt good anymore. When she opened her eyes from Fade-spun imaginings of happiness, the feeling was no match for her anger, and any pain at it fled before her barred teeth.

It was impossible to tell whether she was being visited by Fade-reflections or Solas himself or each in turn, but in truth it didn’t matter which. She was fraying.

She patched the edges of herself with the title of Inquisitor. But even that couldn’t slow the bleed, as in the wake of the Breach’s final sealing and Corypheus’s defeat the Inquisitor was called on less and less to close rifts and right dangerous wrongs. Instead, she was paraded and fêted through strategic holding after strategic holding, Josephine at her arm to help her parse the threats and promises and ambitions of her smiling hosts. Her armor was polished to a mirror shine. Her callouses began to fade. The numbing rage made it easy to smile a courtier's smile.

She was the Inquisitor, and there was less of a person behind the title with every day. 

Sometimes, she went to sleep barely knowing why she should bother waking up. If she opened her eyes to tears soaking her pillow or teeth aching from being clenched, it was only a callous reminder that she was still there.

—

Morai brought Dorian and Varric with her to the Frostback Basin because she needed her friends. She brought The Iron Bull because, with Cassandra now Divine and Blackwall long-banished to Weisshaupt with the rest of the Wardens, she needed the muscle if things with the Avvar went poorly.

She hadn't spent much time with the big mercenary, mostly working with his second-in-command to dispatch the Chargers where they were most needed; in the field, she found the barely-controlled power of Bull’s brand of violence hard to plan around. The latter hadn’t changed, but it turned out he was funny, and listening to him and Dorian flirt shamelessly was a welcome distraction from the turmoil in her head.

The whole expedition was a welcome distraction. It was a relief to be out of the vipers’ nest of court intrigue back north. As fragile as her equilibrium felt, dealing with some blessedly simple Avvar politics and a musty academic's research expedition was about all Morai could handle.

When they found the dreaming remnant of Telana's doomed vigil, Morai knew immediately that she'd been a fool. Listening to the spirit speak achingly of a lover long dead, she felt the cracks spider across her heart like fracturing ice even as she gently released the reflection from its self-imposed duty. Her friends’ eyes on her were brands.

The Iron Bull, lost in some nightmare of sea-air and spice, did not look at her. Cruel as it was, she was glad.

An Inquisitor and a dreamer. She would have laughed, if she didn't think she'd have trouble stopping once she started. There was no running from this, no way to go back to the time before she knew these names. The collapse was coming, and try as she might put it off with meaningless tasks around the Basin for Stone-Bear and the Inquisition and the academics, it was inevitable.

She found Ameridan. She didn’t find it within herself to give him soft words. It was an impossible meeting between two Dalish mages at the heads of Inquisitions most of a thousand years apart, and where Morai might once have found comfort in that mirroring she now felt the ground finish falling away beneath her feet. The only reason she bothered to save Thedas from Hakkon after that was as much Bull's excitement over the dragon as it was any sense of duty.

—

Varric tried to talk to her as they prepared to leave, and insisted on working with her on the reports she wrote so that the “story” didn't get lost in the facts. Dorian spent the whole trip back spinning ever-more elaborate hypotheticals about the fate of the bureaucrat who'd thought up Tevinter's Basin installations. In short, her friends watched her carefully, and Morai played along with absolutely nothing behind her eyes.

Bull didn't watch her, carefully or otherwise: he was too busy regaling the scouts with the battle against the Hakkon-dragon. Sometimes she fell asleep to his booming voice over the campfire's crackles and his audience's exclamations.

If she dreamed, she did not remember it. She did not remember most of the journey.

—

They returned to Skyhold as a long twilight fell toward dusk, welcomed home by the warmth of torchlight flaring to life against the old stones as shadows gathered, blue and grey. Morai knew, distantly, that it was beautiful. All she felt was empty.

Her friends, plainly exhausted by their vigilance but still duty-bound to see it through, loitered in the great hall with her until her advisors appeared to give their reports. Varric especially caught her eye before he departed. She wondered at the look on his face as she was talked at; it had read like a promise, though to whom or about what she didn't know.

Leliana finished speaking. Morai nodded like she’d understood, like she'd heard or retained even the gist of the matter, and turned away. There was a cut-off sound from Cullen, a small, worried sigh from Josephine, and then, after a moment and a soft word from Leliana, the sound of three sets of footsteps retreating.

They'd try again tomorrow. Maybe they thought tomorrow she'd be able to scrape together the will to care. Tonight, though; tonight she would finally have silence.

But her drifting path to the solitude of her room was blocked.

“Boss,” the Iron Bull said with that musical, deep voice of his, “I think you and I should talk.”

Morai looked at him bleakly. He grinned back, an easy, wry expression that moved across his scarred face in ripples. And when she simply walked around him to continue toward her stairs without another word, he followed her with a relaxed, long stride.

Chapter Text

His cock was, obviously, huge.

He made her call him Captain and beg to suck it.

Not that she was on her knees against her will. Bull had been quite clear that if she wasn't interested, he'd be on his way back to the Herald's Rest with no questions asked. But he'd also been quite clear—had in fact calmly informed her—that she was as close as he'd ever seen someone get to shattering without having already gone over the edge. While he couldn't give her what she really needed, he'd said, he could do his best to give her the rope she needed to pull herself back from the void.

The Iron Bull had never elided who he was or why he was here. He would not be asking her to make any decisions. He would not be tender with her, and he would not tell her that he loved her.

She’d said yes without so much as a pause.

He'd looked at her with what seemed like solemn understanding before cuffing her hard enough her knees buckled. Morai had sprawled to the floor, the pain of the blow cutting through the numbness in a way that she’d found intriguing, and looked up at him as he undid his heavy belt.

Naked, he'd bent down to lift her from the floor by her shirtfront. She'd felt herself float far away into a beautiful distance.

“You had a favor to ask your Captain?” he said, light and dangerous.

“Please,” Morai had heard herself replying, voice faint, toes not quite touching the ground. Bull gave her a shake. “Please,” she said again, louder. Another shake. “Captain,” she finally gasped, "I need your cock in my mouth.”

It was like a stranger was saying the words. A very small part of her wondered at herself, at the same mouth that had murmured softly to Solas now being used to debase herself to Bull. But that thought was floating with the rest of her, far above and away, and here in her room there was nothing at all in her head as he dropped her to her knees, fisted her hair in one hand, and said, “One more time.”

Morai ran her gaze up the hard, veined length before her to meet his eyes. Then she licked her lips.

“Please, Captain,” and the words were thick and plaintive, “please let me suck your cock.”

Bull grinned with all of his teeth. “Good girl,” he'd said, and jammed it into her mouth.

She choked, gasped as he used his grip on her hair to hold her steady as he withdrew slightly, and then choked again at another thrust. The size and heat of his cock was unbelievable, and her eyes went wide, a tickling thread of panic starting as she realized she couldn't breathe around it.

Her nascent floating distance began to unravel. She tried to pull away, struggling against the hold on her hair. Then a cracking sound split the air, and Morai blinked, the panic surprised out of her. Her cheek stung. In her periphery, she saw his hand fall back to his side.

He'd slapped her.

She sucked in a breath through her nose in sudden rage before she realized that meant she could breathe.

Bull gave her a minute as she explored the realization. She took another breath through her nose, in and out, and tentatively slid her tongue forward to relax the strain of her jaw. He rumbled approvingly, and the hand he had used to slap her came to rest gently on her still-ringing cheek.

Morai looked up, startled, to meet his gaze. The big qunari smiled down at her beatifically. “Good girl,” he said again, and the praise washed through her even as his fingers tightened again and he began, in earnest, to fuck her mouth.

Her scalp stung with his grip, her jaw ached around his cock, and she disappeared into the overpowering sensation of it all. She was just a mouth for Bull to use. She was just a meaningless, empty body, one without the weight of the world on its shoulders or a hollow under its sternum, and time was entirely meaningless. Spit ran down her cheeks and chin, slid down her straining neck, and from somewhere she heard him grunting and groaning appreciatively.

Then she was sprawled on the floor again, gasping, limbs akimbo, mouth empty, only registering the fact that she'd been pushed after the fact. Bull stood over her. She watched him like a mouse beneath the eyes of a hawk, but all he did was stand there, idly stroking himself. He was tall and powerful, broad and scarred, and he was, with infinite patience, waiting.

“Cah…” she attempted, but her throat didn't work quite right, and she coughed to try and remind herself how to use it. “Captain.” Bull nodded, as encouraging as a teacher, as dangerous as a hunting cat, and she pulled the strands of language together with an effort. Her voice was hoarse. “More, please, Captain.”

“Stand up.”

She made a small, disbelieving sound at the command. Without a pause he was down next to her in a crouch. She had a brief moment to see his eye burning dark beneath the deep, heavy brow, and then his arm rose and he slapped her again.

“Don't make me repeat myself,” Bull said casually, and then he stood back up, unfolding with fluid strength to his full height.

Ears ringing, Morai scrambled to her feet after him. He grabbed her by the neck before she could steady herself, found herself with all of her weight pressing her throat half-closed, and gasped. In her floating bubble, she wondered if this is what Solas had felt when— when—

Bull tore her breeches from her legs, the fabric burning her skin as it ripped, and the thought frayed and scattered. Her smallclothes joined the ruined pile on the floor, and the sudden air hit her throbbing quim like a slap. She whimpered; Bull laughed.

“Please,” she rasped, pressing herself harder against his grip, needing no prompting as she babbled, “please, Captain, please, I need, please—”

He dropped his hold on her neck and she stumbled, her mouth clicking shut. Before she could either fall or regain her balance, he pushed her, sent her tumbling against her stair railing, and though she yelped at the impact she did not resist it. She felt boneless. It was a pleasure to be limp.

Naked from the waist down, still reeling, Morai wrapped her arms through the railing and let herself drape across it. When a heavy foot kicked wide first one of her legs and then the other, she felt as close to peace as she had since her vallaslin was taken.

Without preamble, Bull sheathed his cock in her, one incredible thrust to the hilt. She bit back a scream. As wet as she was, she was tight, unprepared, and she strained at the sheer size of him. This was not the centering pain of his slaps or the hypnotic pain of his grip in her hair: this was too much. This was too much, his cock was too much, and he was still moving, already withdrawing, giving her no hope to adjust. By his grip on her hips, he meant to slam back home.

“Katoh!”

Bull pulled himself free from her without a moment's hesitation.

In the ringing silence that followed, Morai could do little but cling to the stone railing and listen to her own ragged breath. The panic receded, but in its wake she was once again horribly, horribly present in herself. She needed to find her way back out before the cloying numbness pulled her under again; but having used his word, she did not know how to ask.

As if he could sense her turmoil, Bull touched her back. His heavy hand was somehow feather-light.

“If you want more, say ‘Please, Captain.’ If you need something a little more manageable,” he continued, perfectly businesslike, as if he was not referring to his cock nearly splitting her in two, “say ‘I'm sorry, Captain.’ If you say neither, I'll help you into a bath and make sure you're alright, and then I'll leave, no questions asked.”

Sagging with immense gratitude, Morai relaxed her grip on the railing and whispered, “I'm sorry, Captain.”

One hand closed around the back of her neck, and she found herself hauled off of the railing and backwards. She arched in an effort to keep her feet. His eye was sharp as it scanned her face; she held her breath, but whatever he was looking for, he seemed to find it. His slow, dangerous smile sent a pulse through her hard enough to make her sway.

Still holding her, he slid a finger beneath the fastenings of her shirt one by one and slowly, deliberately, tore through each one until the ruined garment hung open. Her bandeau he simply shoved up. Her breasts seemed pathetically small under his regard, but he hummed appreciatively and deepened his grasp on her neck so she was forced to arch up more. He pinched each nipple hard in turn, and the pain ran through her like cold, clear water.

It was exactly what she needed. The last of the anxiety bled out of her. She must have made a sound, because Bull smirked and did it again, and then in one smooth motion turned, swinging her around, and threw her bodily onto her bed.

She yelled in surprise as she flew. The air was knocked from her when she landed among her bedclothes, but she hauled herself up to sitting anyway, and watched expectantly as he advanced on her once more. His face was alight.

He reached the bed and casually knocked her back to horizontal.

Bull knelt above her and pinned her to the mattress by the throat. Morai swallowed hard against the pressure, taking as much of a breath as she could, and even that much was almost more than she could do as she watched him take himself in hand and begin to stroke.

There was something ruthless in how Bull worked his cock. He was breathing through his teeth like he did when he was fighting, the same grunts and hahs, and from her floating remove she wondered if the difference for him between fucking and fighting was just a matter of whether the other party had any say.

His hard breathing became curses, and, pinned as she was with grey fuzz creeping into the corners of her vision, Morai could still see his cock throb. “Captain,” she heard herself choke, and in supplication grasped the arm pinning her.

“Open your mouth,” he snarled, and she closed her eyes and did as she was told just in time for him to roar like Hakkon was dying under their blades again. His hand on her throat spasmed tighter. Hot seed spattered across her breasts and face. She tried to swallow and choked.

Before the edges of her vision could go any blacker, the pressure on her neck disappeared. She took a moment to work out swallowing and breathing, then began to wipe her eyes clear with a forearm. The act of cleaning her face made her come back to herself, and it all felt a little ridiculous suddenly. She laughed softly at her awkwardness.

“Well, Bull, that was fun—”

She cut off with a gasp as her arms were suddenly pinned up over her head, both wrists in one of Bull’s hands. Where she had expected to see a return to easy humor in the wake of his release, his face as he leaned over her was still sharp.

“I don't remember saying we were done,” he said slowly, evenly. “And I didn't quite hear you. What did you call me?”

Morai met his gaze, her eyelashes still sticky. This was up to her. Now she wasn’t drowning and desperate for anything to drag her out of herself; nor was she still caught up in her need and stopped only by her own body's limits. She felt more or less right. Did she want to be treated like a rag doll just for the sake of it? She could call it now, and he would go. She could clean herself up. She could get herself off.

It was the thought of climaxing alone that made the decision for her. She was sick of her own fingers.

“I forgot myself,” she said, and, forcing herself not to frown in self-consciousness, met his eyes and added, “Captain.”

Bull smiled like one would smile at a struggling pupil's success, encouraging and proud, and pushed her legs wide. She had a moment to worry how many fingers exactly he was going to shove into her, her still-tender quim clenching at the thought, but only one thick finger slid through the slick mess between her thighs to slip inside.

He paused there, and she let out a breath she'd been holding and forced herself to relax into his hands. She couldn’t make herself float away into that other place, but she could let go of her embarrassment enough to close her eyes.

At her softening, he began. She felt her lips part and her body move at his hand's first stroke, and she suddenly wasn't forcing herself into looseness any longer. He wasn't gentle, but nor did he unleash the violence he'd brought to bear earlier; he thrust deeply into her, hard, and Morai gasped and moaned at each new plunge and withdrawal. She found that she was writhing against his grasp and rolling her hips, and it was so good, it was just so good to be under another's touch again, it was so good not to be furious at her own arousal, it was so good not to be impatient with her own hands, it was so good not to be alone to think of Solas.

He added a second finger and increased his pace, and Morai cried out at the stretch, the pain, and bucked her hips up to meet him. She was suddenly—exquisitely—fully present. There could be no emptiness inside of her because the pleasure and the pain filled every corner of her body. There was no room for anything but herself.

There were already tears on her face when her release hit her. He kept fucking her through her sobs, until she had no more tears left to shed.

With unspeakable gentleness, the Iron Bull withdrew his fingers and pulled her spent body into deep embrace. He stroked her back with his palm, a soft, comforting motion that calmed the trembling her body had succumbed to. She could hear his great heart beating within the wide chest her head was cradled against. For a long time, that was the only thing left in the world.

She stirred after an age, and Bull rumbled something about getting her cleaned up. When she nodded, he set her down and drew her ruined bedclothes around her carefully before striding off to draw a bath.

In his absence, Morai considered herself.

What had felt like 'more or less right' when she had nearly sent him away… that had just been the experience of inhabiting herself without the choking numbness for the first time in months. This, though—she was scoured clean, like a mountainside bared to sunlight for the first time after an avalanche. Even with the bruises aching on her throat, she was breathing easier than she could remember.

Morai touched her neck at the thought. Her whole body hurt, but her throat… it was good to know what it felt like. The shame at what she'd done to Solas in anger was still there, but it no longer rode her. She had done what penance she could.

“All good, Boss?” Bull asked, surprisingly gentle, as he reapproached the bed.

Morai took a long time to answer. “Yes,” she said eventually. Then she laughed. “Better than I've been in a long time. But you knew that.”

He grinned, satisfied. “Ben-Hassrath, remember? I have a knack for seeing where the fault lines are, and a lot of training. Sometimes it's my job to make the house come down; sometimes it's to shore things up.”

“And at the railing?” The one moment that had truly frightened her.

“It seemed like you could use the chance to say no to something that was too much,” Bull said simply. Then he paused, his face serious. “I'm glad you used the word I gave you, Boss. That one was a coin flip. You were pretty dead behind the eyes when you came in.”

“I was,” she said quietly. He did not ask her to elaborate, and she didn't offer. Instead, with surpassing care, he helped her into her bath and then gathered his own clothes.

“See you around, Boss.”

“Thanks, Bull,” Morai said, and listened to his steps descend.

She was alone.

Full night had fallen since she'd last noticed the sky. The one lamp Bull had lit was a small warm glow at her back; before her, the deepness of night. The moon was waxing, nearly full, and the sky over the mountains was clear and huge. Stars shone like tiny flecks of cold fire in the rich darkness.

In the warm water, the deep aches suffusing her body mellowed. She ran her fingers through reflected ripples of light to make them dance with the green glow of the Anchor, and considered the difference between floating and drowning. It was not so very much.

Morai lifted her eyes. Her reflection stared back at her from the windows separating her from the darkness. She was so small against the vastness of the mountains, a smudge of moonlight among ripples of starlight. That idea—the insignificance of her, herself, with the great weight of her title and her army and her enemies and her allies, unable to do so little a thing as understand why her lover had left her—had been crushing her for a long time.

“I'm done breaking myself on your memory,” she said aloud into the darkness.

The pale face that mimed her words in the glass was washed out and unfamiliar without its vallaslin. She had avoided looking at herself since her face was stripped naked, but now she leaned forward, examining it carefully. It was a stranger's face, but there was comfort to be found in that. Clarity. A new beginning.

Stars shone through it. The depth of night lived in its shadows. Then her reflection looked up, and the moonlight fell full across it, wiping away the stars and shadows alike.

“I am mine alone.”