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“I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.” - Jonathan Safran Foer
In a Rivaini border town shop, Dorian strips away his shirt.
“You ready?” the Bull asks, settling into the chair they've set aside for him. At least in Rivain things are built with qunari in mind.
“I'm considering just having your name tattooed across my arse,” Dorian says. “Isn't that what infatuated people usually do?”
“I'm sure they'll make it tasteful,” the Bull says, while his chest clenches. A reminder that the idea may have been Dorian's, but it's for him. Dorian won't have him in Tevinter, and the Bull wants him to be safe, so there's this.
A stooped old human woman they've only been permitted to call Mama, with a heavily lined face and very still hands, takes off the many bangles and rings she wears, setting them aside, as a younger, serious-faced elven woman lines up bottles and needles on the table. Both their staffs rest against the wall with Dorian's, and the Bull's axe.
They exchange words in Rivaini, and shit if the Bull knows the dialect; something about the night, and something about him, from what he can tell. Nothing about their tone makes him worry, and it's not like he and Dorian couldn't take down a couple of mages in a pinch. But he trusts their source on this, trusts the money more; if they were going to flake, the down payment Dorian made would have been enough to call it a good job and run.
“Lie down,” Mama says, patting the table-turned-bed. Dorian lies back against the pillow, only a moment to settle until Mama takes his left forearm in a grip that looks firm, turns it this way and that to inspect. “Good,” she says eventually. “This will hurt. You must keep still. You can talk, but no moving.”
“I've no issue with a little rest,” Dorian says, and the Bull only knows he's nervous because he knows Dorian. Amazing what his year in Tevinter taught Dorian about hiding things again. Amazing how that makes the Bull proud, but leaves his chest aching.
“It is not restful, what you ask for. Not all at once. You must be awake, and you must be still, and your lover must be ready to hold you down if you can't keep from moving.”
The Bull allows himself a little smirk at Dorian, but when he looks back at Mama he nods seriously. “Yes ma'am.”
Mama begins without ceremony, inks several dots with a brush on Dorian's arm by way of a guide. Apparently she's going to freehand this shit from the collection of sketches and notes she has out on her table, stuff about sigils and runes and other magical shit the Bull can't make heads or tails of. All he knows is that Dorian calls it their design, even though all the Bull did was make suggestions that usually started with 'I don't know anything about this magic crap, but'.
Dorian lets loose a little breath when Mama begins, using a tool with a short line of fine needles, and just one pot of deep red ink. It isn't blood, but the Bull only knows that because it doesn't smell like it, and for just a moment he does find himself despairing that he's going to hold Dorian's hand through some type of creepy not-quite-blood-magic magic.
“It hurt?” he asks. Dorian turns his head slowly towards him, and Mama doesn't scold him for moving, though she seems like the type who'd take no shit about her instructions, so it must be all right.
“Yes,” Dorian says, after some consideration. “It's not unbearable, but I am being stabbed repeatedly by needles, after all.”
This bit is easy to watch. The Bull just sits there on Dorian's right, watching Mama tattoo a pattern of shapes and lines into Dorian's flesh. There's a whole catalogue of impressive and stupid tattoos amongst the Chargers, and the Bull has sat through a few of them, so the process is familiar.
“You know that ugly wyvern tattoo Krem has on his arm?” he asks, because Dorian's face keeps stilling as has bears through the pain, and the Bull is there for distraction if he's there for anything at all.
“I know the one.”
“He got it because they took down a huge fucking wyvern on their own. Krem, Stitches and Grim, I mean. So they got tattoos to commemorate. Stitches got his on his leg.”
“Grim doesn't have any tattoos,” Dorian says. “I'm quite sure that he—oh, it's on his arse, isn't it?”
“Yup.”
“You encouraged this?”
“Didn't know shit about it until the next day when they were showing them off.”
Dorian hums with amusement, and Mama wipes at his arm with a cloth. The Bull can see now that the ink is more orange than blood, darker, contrasts where Dorian's bleeding in places.
“Do qunari have tattoos?”
“We mostly have vitaar,” the Bull says. “Viddathari might have them, but they'll burn them away if they think its getting in the way of conversion. If you're born qunari it's not really a part of the culture. Not banned, but not really done. Some qunari use horn-notching to commemorate things.”
“This isn't really a commemoration.”
“Nah, this is practical. Very qunari, except for the creepy magic shit they're gonna do with it. No offence,” he adds, when Mama looks up at him briefly. She returns to her task without comment.
“You've never considered it?” Dorian asks, gaze steady on him. Either he's got used to the pain, or the distraction of talking is working. “Tattoos, I mean.”
“Thought about it,” he says. “Before I was Tal-Vashoth, it didn't matter. I was going to go back to the Qun, and I didn't want to have to have shit burned off. Now, just never got around to thinking about it. And a lot of people in the South won't tattoo qunari, they say our skin's too thick.”
“Well, it does take me a little effort to leave a mark, but that's no reason not to try.”
“I'll tell that to the tattoo guy the next time the Chargers get drunk ideas.”
“Oh, don't. I dread to think what you'd come back with.”
They laugh, and Mama looks up again, so they exchange a look and go quiet. Dorian watches the ceiling, and the Bull watches the pain play across his face in regular waves. They've played with pain before, but he's not enjoying the sensation like those times; there's nothing sweet to counter it, no tease or touch to soothe him, just the constant of having inked needles pushed into his flesh. Needles, though – that's a thought. Might have to bring it up again sometime.
“Here,” Mama says, finally, straightening up. “Stand, drink, piss, whatever you need. It will take much longer for the next part.”
Dorian eases himself up, takes the mug of water the Bull offers him and drinks deeply. He turns his arm, studying the fresh lines against his brown skin, the reddening around the newly tattooed flesh, the places where he's bleeding.
The tattoo looks okay, to the Bull's eye. The lines are good, even, and Mama's hand hasn't faltered once. But for all they've talked about it, weeks and weeks of evenings spent with Dorian poring over diagrams, the Bull offering what input he could, he's a bit underwhelmed; he was expecting something a bit more flashy, for all the effort they've put in. Doesn't say it, but apparently Dorian knows it anyway.
“This is only the base. As far as decorations go, it's rather fetching, isn't it?”
“Looks good on you, kadan.”
“Rather simpler than most Tevinter designs. You know how we 'Vints like to show off. People might even mistake it for rudimentary sigils.”
“When have you ever wanted to be underestimated?”
Dorian tips his head. “It has it's benefits.”
“Limber up for me, kadan.”
Dorian rolls his eyes, but gets off the bed to stretch, rolling his ankles and wrists, lifting his arms above his head, rolling his neck, like the Bull usually gets him to do before a long rope session.
“Nina,” Mama says, gesturing to the elf. They speak in Rivaini, while Nina sorts through small bottles and vials, and Mama arranges her needles.
When he lies back, Mama straps Dorian's arm down with leather straps. He inhales with discomfort, but flicks his free wrist discouragingly when the Bull makes to sooth him with a touch.
Nina takes up a seat next to Mama, studying the tattoo as Mama prepares a fresh needle tool.
“Many poisons are made from the same thing, when they're reduced down,” Nina says. “This won't make you immune to everything. Some things, maybe. Others, some resistance. But we have to poison you, first.”
They knew that already, that this was going to be shitty and dangerous. Despite her serious face, her bedside manner is still better than Mama's quiet intent, and Dorian seems grounded by her words. She takes his wrist and hand between hers, and the faint blue-green glow that builds between their palms is familiar, and strangely calming. Dorian's not good at healing magic, but Dalish is better, and the Bull knows that light is a good light.
With a fresh needle, Mama loads up the first compound and puts it to Dorian's flesh, right along the tender lines that have already been tattooed. Dorian hisses, but with his arm strapped down he can't escape her as she traces over a triangular shape in the pattern that crosses several of the other lines.
“Kaffas!” Dorian gasps.
“You must stay as still as you can,” Nina says. Dorian nods, tight-lipped.
“It bad?” the Bull asks.
“It's not good,” Dorian snaps. “Sorry.”
“It's fine, kadan. You be as much of an asshole as you need to get through it.”
Dorian groans, closing his eyes. There's sweat on his chest and brow, his breathing just starting to sound laboured under the discomfort. When the Bull looks at the shape Mama is pricking with poison, the skin is an angry red, that the Bull would eyeball as infection around any other wound.
“Shit,” Dorian murmurs, when he opens his eyes again and looks over at the progress. “Tell me what we're doing, Bull.”
The Bull doesn't know the magical ins and outs of this, but he knows enough. They've spent hours planning, talking, arguing over this.
“They're poisoning and healing you over and over, until your body stops reacting to the poison. You can train poison resistance, but it takes years. With magic, you can do it in what? A few hours?”
“Hours,” Dorian echoes, voice cracking a little.
“You're doing okay,” Nina says, as she readjusts her hold on his wrist, the healing light not faltering. “We have to keep going.”
“If we stop now,” Mama says, without looking up, “you'd probably die.”
Dorian laughs, and reaches out his free hand for the Bull. The Bull takes it in his own, covers it and squeezes firmly.
It's not much fun watching Dorian getting poisoned, but there's something about how calm the two Rivaini women are as they poison and heal in turn that tempers the Bull's worry. He can read people, and they've giving nothing away that makes him think this is going badly. Once or twice Mama's face twists and the Bull feels his chest twist in kind, but it just takes a little adjustment at her needles or Nina's healing hands and it's gone again, some minor issue they're probably used to overcoming.
Eventually Mama sets aside the needle and bottle she's been using, and sorts the tools for the next one. Nina keeps holding Dorian's hand, channelling her magic up through his arm, the Bull's figured by now. Her other hand traces the triangular shape that's been treated with the poison, leaving a faint trail of shimmering magic that settles as a glow in Dorian's skin.
“Oh kaffas, fucking shit,” Dorian says, as Mama puts the needle to the second shape on the sigil with another poison compound. “This is the stupidest thing we've ever done.”
“We?”
“Oh, you're to blame!” Dorian laughs, hisses, and squeezes the Bull's hand. “You don't want me to get poisoned by assassins in Tevinter and die. Honestly, it's a bit clingy, if you ask me.”
The Bull lifts Dorian's hand to his mouth and kisses it. He's had enough time to debate feeling bad for insisting on this, after Dorian brought up the idea.
“There's been ten poisonings in the Magisterium in the last year,” Dorian says. He's told the Bull this before, but he sits and listens, so Dorian has something to do to keep his mind from the pain, even if he can't stop him from shaking. “Only two were fatal, but the others were enough to take those Magisters out of play for some time.”
“And other Magisters aren't doing anything like this?”
“Tevinter has become very insular. Trade with Rivain has been problematic since the Qunari came. Most Magisters wouldn't be caught dead in negotiations with people that have such an intimate truce with their enemy.”
“But they do magic tattoos in Tevinter, don't they? Lyrium, and shit like that.”
“Oh yes. It's the most extreme you can be, short of blood magic, to have power sigils carved into you, or marked on you. Mostly it's about making you more powerful. Magic is everything; poison is a tool of non-mages. That's why Magisters keep getting poisoned, because they think they're above it.”
“So they're not going to see your ink and know what it is?”
“No. It looks like channelling power, with a necromancer seal. Nobody will know it's Rivaini, or poison resistance.”
The Bull doubts it – there's always going to be someone with a good eye. But he hopes it'll at least be someone whose goals align a little bit with Dorian's aims.
“Shit, shit,” Dorian hisses struggling against the ties that hold him down. Mama makes an aborted sound in her throat, and Nina holds Dorian more firmly.
“Be still,” Mama warns. There is no arguing with that tone.
“Kadan, you need to keep still.”
“I know, I know,” he grumbles, and grips the Bull's hand tightly. “This was a stupid idea.”
“You keep saying. We'll get through, you're doing so good.”
Truthfully, Dorian looks like shit. He looks sick and clammy, and a touch of the Bull's hand against Dorian's damp brow confirms he's running a fever, burning up even as he shivers. His arm isn't just red this time, but some of the veins around where Mama is laying the poison are green. Shit.
They knew this was going to happen; Dorian's getting poisoned and healed, and his body either has to keep up, or he'll die. Lose the arm, at the least. He thinks about Dorian joking about matching the Inquisitor, when this was still just an idea. Doesn't seem so funny now, as tears run over Dorian's cheeks and he whimpers. Guilt roils in the Bull again, knowing that as much as this might protect Dorian, this has always been about the Bull wanting him to be safe.
“I will strap his arm more,” Mama says, as she straightens, apparently untroubled that Dorian's arm looks nearly gangrenous. Nina immediate puts her hand over the marred flesh Mama was working on, pressing her magic into his skin. Mama helps Nina to drink water and a lyrium potion, while she diligently heals Dorian's arm.
“Have you got a potion for him?” the Bull asks.
“Not yet,” Nina says. “I have to control how he's healing.”
“I'm fine,” Dorian says, though it sounds like he's choking back a sob. “Just do it. Get on with it!”
Mama straps Dorian's arm and hand down with more straps, and doesn't chide Dorian when he moves, straining against his bonds. He's not going anywhere, not unless his magic flares up, but at this point the Bull's pretty sure the straps they're using are enchanted.
He flinches and yelps when Mama sets about her task again. The Bull rises from his chair, the better to press his hand on Dorian's chest and hold him steady. Dorian's free hand flails as he hisses through his teeth, so the Bull takes that and holds that to Dorian's chest, too.
“I got you, kadan,” he says.
The Bull can feel Dorian's heart thundering in his chest, under his hand, and it's terrifying, thinking it's just gonna stop at any minute.
“You're doing real good, not long now.”
It's a lie, but he keeps telling it to Dorian as time drags on and Dorian writhes. Mama is putting poison along the longest lines of the tattoo, and the smell that hangs in the air is acrid and foul. He tries to track the time by the candlelight, by the daylight at the window, but he can't keep his mind on it, when he's watching Dorian like this.
“It's almost over, kadan.”
Losing Dorian to the pain is terrifying; watching him shake and stare at nothing, feeling his arms flex where the Bull has him pinned and hearing him groan and sob brokenly makes the Bull want nothing more than to gather him into his arms and fix it.
“Almost done, Dorian, almost there.”
Instead he lies, and holds down the man he loves for hours as a creepy old woman slips poison into his blood.
“Mama,” Nina says eventually, and the Bull snaps his head to look at the exchange, because that tone is a warning.
“Don't rush me,” Mama says, not looking up.
“Mama,” she says, more insistently. The blue-green light of her healing magic growing stronger, the veins along Dorian's arm lighting up with it.
The Bull watches as Mama finishes the line, pushing the needle covered in poison into Dorian skin, before removing it and reapplying poison to repeat it. Again and again, until finally, finally, she sets down the needle.
“It is done.”
Nina moves to direct her magic over the broken flesh, and soon the foul smell in the air is replaced by the strong smell of elfroot as Mama mixes a paste of herbs from a pouch at her belt.
When the Bull drags his eyes away, Dorian is unconscious.
“Dorian?”
Dorian's heartbeat is slowing under the Bull's hand, his breathing evening out.
“It's normal, at the end,” Nina says, as she spreads the salve over the tattooed parts of Dorian's forearm.
The Bull nods, and gently eases himself away from Dorian. He stands, stretches, drinks a mug of water. Doesn't take his eyes off Dorian the whole time.
Eventually Dorian stirs, blinking groggily as he comes around.
“I didn't die then,” he says, and the Bull can't help the relieved laughter that leaves him all in a breath.
“Not even close, kadan.”
Dorian only hums, groans as Nina lifts his arm to bandage it. When she's done the Bull helps to sit him up, and holds a mug of water up to his mouth, helping him to drink it.
“You got a potion for him?” the Bull prompts. Mama bustles closer, studying Dorian. He still looks a bit clammy, tired as shit, but better. Less like he's about to drop dead, but tired enough not to complain about the Bull fussing.
“We test, then potion. Your hand,” she beckons, and Dorian lifts his unbandaged arm, holds his hand aloft for her. Mama stabs one of his fingertips with a needle. Dorian grunts.
They wait.
“Feel okay?” the Bull prompts.
“Fine.”
Mama draws another needle from the leather wallet she holds, and he briefly wonders how many ways she knows how to poison someone.
She tests five more needles on him, and Dorian only complains about sore fingers from being stabbed.
“You should still avoid getting poisoned,” Mama says sternly, as she finally presses a healing potion into Dorian's hand. “And you must practice channelling magic through it. If you take something it cannot stop, you can slow it to survive, or to be helped.”
“Thank you,” Dorian says, his smile weak, faltering with pain as he shifts his bandaged arm.
Mama only nods, and turns then to the Bull, looking expectant. He takes a coin purse from a pouch at his belt, and drops it into her waiting hand.
“Imagine your three worst hangovers,” Dorian says, as Mama leaves them alone, “and then imagine them as one singular incident.”
“Doesn't sound fun.”
“I need to be taken somewhere warm and soft where you can feed me warm broth and put a compress on my brow.”
“So it's going to be like that, huh? You feeling sorry for yourself, me looking after you?”
“Oh, do indulge me for just a while, amatus.”
The Bull laughs, leaning down to kiss Dorian, and stroke soothingly over his hair. “Of course, kadan. I'm gonna take care of you.”
He presses their foreheads together, and feels the way Dorian leans into him, how exhausted he is. The Bull pushes the useless guilt aside.
“I'm always gonna take care of you,” the Bull says, softer, closer, a promise.
“As if you were on fire from within. The moon lives in the lining of your skin.” - Pablo Neruda
