Chapter Text
“Enough.”
A dark form moved in Dorian’s vision, indistinguishable until gauntleted hands were clamped on Doran’s wrists and Blackwall’s fierce, melancholy eyes bore into his own. “You’ll shred yourself.”
Dorian attempted to remain stony rather than yield that Blackwall had a point. The surge of mana that had filled Dorian to the brim, overflowing and spilling out of him the first frenzied hour of his search, had long since been depleted, along with his lyrium potions. Dorian’s hands were grey with dirt and debris, and red with his own blood. He wasn’t the only one looking, but it felt like he might as well have been.
“Then help,” Dorian ground out, “because I’m not leaving him here.”
Blackwall seemed to weigh something carefully in his mind before nodding, and releasing Dorian’s hands to set about removing the heavy plate armour he still wore. The halt in Dorian’s momentum was enough to make him stand back briefly and assess, to see how far he’d failed to get, how much more work there was to be done. A day earlier he would have huffed, griped noisily about how Just because one could move mountains did not necessarily mean one actually, literally should, Inquisitor, as she doubtless would have been happily drawing fists from the earth and pounding the remnants of the battlefield into a new quarry or Maker knew what else. Bull would have teased Dorian about his sudden unwillingness to flaunt magic, and managed to make the teasing both salacious and affectionate. The exchange threatened to form itself fully in Dorian’s mind, the ghost of a conversation that would never happen, and he shook himself like a mabari and began to wedge his staff under a boulder to lever it aside.
“Seeker,” Blackwall said, and Dorian lifted his head to see Cassandra swing herself down from a fresh horse, unarmored and bearing heavy satchels that smelled of food and lyrium. Dorian abandoned his staff to grab a potion, but she caught him by the shoulder.
“No lyrium until you’ve eaten. It would not stretch my abilities to force the issue, Dorian.” He grimaced at the implication: that he was in no condition to make her. Blackwall went silently through the first pack, absently chewing half a loaf of bread before continuing to rummage as Cassandra went on, addressing them both.
“The Inquisitor wished to return with me. It took a good number of us to convince her otherwise. If so many of our number had not just returned from the Kocari Wilds, if more were not arriving still in waves, I doubt Josephine could have managed it. There is much to attend to. Today marked a tremendous day for Thedas. However heavy our hearts, it will be celebrated.”
She wasn’t wrong. Dorian knew it. He hadn’t an ounce of blame or anger to offer the Inquisitor, would never have expected her to be out there with them, still. He wanted to tell Cassandra she had no need to defend their absent leader, but he couldn’t summon the energy. All he could manage was to blink wearily at her as the word ‘celebrated’ pushed into his mind and immediately conjured vivid memories of celebrations; at the Herald’s Rest; in the quarters above it, a low rumble of laughter against his chest and the smell of vitaar. A grey, stubbly smirk. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly until the only thing he saw were the backs of his eyelids.
“The Chargers?” he asked without thinking, or meaning to, and saw Blackwall skirt a concerned, curious glance at Cassandra’s profile. She looked sad. There was tension around her eyes and the corners of her mouth.
“The company is all here, not a mile south. They have been working, as you have.”
Dorian nodded a little and Cassandra pressed a satchel against his chest. He rifled absently through its contents. He needn't worry about telling Krem, then. That was good.
“Dorian, your hands,” Cassandra was saying, but he waved her off in favor of pushing some large slices of tawny, dried fruit gracelessly into his mouth. There were heavy biscuits beneath that seemed to be made of the dregs of Skyhold’s morning porridge, and he broke one into manageable chunks and ate them as quickly as he could. They were an ordeal.
Of all the things wrong with his present situation, he would choose the food to complain about. Dorian could hear the accusation in his head, and it wasn’t made in his own voice but one rougher, deeper, and lightly accented with the round vowels and crisp plosives so particular to Qunlat. He fumbled the water skin from Blackwall and drank to force the biscuit down, and managed to stand still while Cassandra pressed an elfroot poultice into his hands. He rubbed it in absently, feeling the cracks and tears in his skin mend well enough that he might continue on, then held one grimy palm expectantly out toward Cassandra. Her expression tightened, but she didn’t hesitate to set two glowing glass phials in his palm.
People joined in the work as time apparently went by. Dorian didn't feel the hours. Someone scratched out a grid on a piece of parchment, an attempt to keep track of which parts of the field had been searched. Only a handful of people attempted to get Dorian to sleep, or stop, but most saw plainly they could make him do nothing of the kind, and eventually those that seemed game to make the effort were firmly warned off by Cassandra, who knew something of devotion.
The sun had risen and fallen and begun to rise again when the Inquisitor unhorsed, and pushed her way past supplicants and friends to find Dorian, whom she immediately drew into a hug. He winced half-heartedly and returned it with one arm, though he did that in earnest.
“I’m here,” she said into his collar, “I’m sorry.” I must smell awful, Dorian thought.
More ground was cleared as the Inquisitor pushed and pulled the earth with her force magic, where Dorian’s was more suited for setting it on fire or turning it into glass. She sifted as carefully as one could through boulders the size of great horned war nugs. There was little chatter. There was certainly no celebrating, although Dorian suspected a few people had the urge. They would look up at the perfect sky, grey receding toward peach as the sun climbed the morning, breathe for a moment, and then get back to it. Dorian spared the heavens no such regard. The hole in the sky was gone, but the one that had opened beneath him loomed and threatened still to swallow him. As long as he didn’t look down, he might make it.
When he found Bull’s body, Dorian felt himself brace for the impact of so many days’ toiling labor, of the battle before it, of the years preceding; for the fighting, and the loneliness, and the grief to crash over him like a wave and drag him to his knees. Instead he felt numb and untethered, and only stood staring, blankly taking inventory.
Yes, that was the Iron Bull’s harness. Yes, that was the Iron Bull’s hand, fingers unfurled around the haft of- yes, a particularly distinctive dawnstone axe. Yes, those were the Iron Bull’s horns, though one was shorter than it should have been. Dorian knelt beside the body and shouldered rubble away until it was mostly cleared. One more great, cold, grey piece of debris from the battle that had saved the world.
His fingertips skimmed mortal wounds long since bled dry, traced old scars that had already been intimately mapped out and memorized, and skittered gingerly along Bull’s horns, almost fussing at the broken tip like it was something that could be fixed. He went to brush dirt and blood from the planes and lines of the Iron Bull’s face, and out of the grooves of the design on his eyepatch. Dorian meant to do so gently, but his hands shook badly, and he couldn’t seem to make them stop.
Dorian heard a voice, reedy and harsh and unforgivably plaintive, whispering “No, no no,” and then, “my love. My love.”
It would have been terrifically embarrassing, prostrating himself at the qunari’s side and weeping the declaration, under any circumstances other than the present reality, which was that the Iron Bull was dead, and Dorian was truly and utterly bereft.