IRON FUCKING BULL!

but like HOLY SHIT? DORIAN? ISABELA? THE SOLAS SMILING MEME COMING TO LIFE? THE CONCEPT ART? LOCATIONS? FLYING SHIP? QUNARI GIRLFRIEND? BUFF QUNARI GIRLFRIEND? ANTIVAN CROWS?

two wardens in the inquisition is an odd thing, especially when one of them is a hero of renowned fame, but roselyn had arrived and deemed fit to stay, so... it is what it is. they haven’t spoken much, he’ll admit, but bull’s already found his closer friends in blackwall, sera, varric, occasionally solas, if the elf will descend from his high fuckin’ horse from time to time. he’s not really sure if he should speak, here, standing outside commander cullen’s office, which is usually the spot where he turns and walks the other way: can’t get through without passing through rutherford’s space, and the lion of the inquisition is not a morning person. he gives roselyn a nod. no grin, yet. he can’t quite muster the energy for it. “you’re up early. or is this par for the course?”

he climbs the last step, the aftertaste of the ale he’s had the only thing remaining of it, and searches the corners. cole favors the quiet, bull’s come to conclude, and sure enough: there he is, in his customary spot, with his barrel and what appears to be a mouse or two. just a quick conversation, he tells himself, and then he’ll put himself down to rest for the night, even as the drinks start to wear off. in skyhold he tries not to go to bed sober, but that’s more of a poorly ingrained habit than anything else. he comes to stand in front of cole, all gangly-limbed and pale, and clears his throat. “so, kid. do you remember when we had a talk to the kitchen staff about the turnips?”

        As is to be expected at nearly every hour of the day, Dorian’s sequestered himself into his long since chosen and claimed alcove, tucked away among his books and papers and otherwise research. Today he finds himself mired in the restoration of a particularly fascinating tome that had fallen into his hands ( a long lost and recently found recounting on the studies of the blight, far beyond repair for all that he had taken to it with a zeal that felt far too similar to guilt / a haunting thing ) for the sake of distraction from a particularly frustrating bit of research that he has found himself stuck on for, oh, what feels like years. Hasn’t been, certainly, but it is a good distraction, methodical in how his fingers trace the page, ink dotting up to his forearms. Magic hums in the air, temperature kept comfortably warm as he flips through the pages, trying to identify what has been torn and what has fallen and what can be scavenged.

        He’s aware of another in his space for all that he doesn’t bother looking up, far too absorbed in the task at hand, attention narrowed and sharp. It’s been known to happen, from time to him, this total absorption of his attention such that nothing and no one could drag him from his task ——— well. Nearly nothing and nearly no one.

        His concentration shatters when Bull speaks / something to be blamed on the utter amount of surprise that he feels all at once by hearing his voice alone. Dorian feels dumbfounded for a moment, leaned over the book placed squarely in a weak beam of sunlight, ink stains on his fingers, staring now unseeing at the pages laid out before him. It’s as though his mind has reached an impasse and he breathes for a moment / before looking up, eyebrow arched at the oddity which awaits him. In his mind he has compartmentalized the Qunari as a Ben—Hassrath spy, a warrior : someone to be vaguely trusted on the battlefield inasmuch as he would kill their mutual enemies quickly enough. But to see him here, in Dorian’s space that he’s carved out for himself, holding a book and looking for all the world as if this were a NORMAL OCCURRENCE.

        Odd doesn’t begin to cover it.

        ❝   The Iron Bull,   ❞   his tone is mild and wondering, head tilting has he gestures lazily and the table that he had pulled before his usual chair skidding to the side, placing itself beneath the window neatly. Dorian sits back in his chair, legs crossing.   ❝   Quite the unexpected surprise,   ❞   that may be the understatement of the year.   ❝   If the question is whether or not you can borrow that book, I only ask that you record the title in full and your signature in the log book,   ❞   he points to the aforementioned logbook leaned against the window frame innocuously.   ❝   If not… well, I’m all ears.   ❞

here’s the catch, the iron bull thinks, which isn’t so much as a catch as it is a footnote. he’s killed for dorian. that might seem unremarkable, given that he’s a mercenary. it’s his job, more or fucking less, to end things. he’s saved sera a few times, varric, too, and shit, he’s even pulled cassandra’s ass out of the fire at least once, with no acknowledgement of it on either side. it’s the way of things. but if he and dorian had shared the room... what? ten, fifteen years ago? well, he’s not quite so sure things would have been the same. he’s killed for dorian, because the boss thinks him valuable, but it’s the knowledge that he wouldn’t have in the past that makes this whole thing really fucking weird.

you sign on to a united front and all of a sudden everyone drops the pretenses? fucking right.

he puts mortalitasi back on the shelf, and there it sits, presumably to go untouched until dorian finds he thinks he needs information on a nevarran social hierarchy resolving around necromancy. bull pauses. well, that wouldn’t exactly surprise him, would it? it’d made sense, for him, with his arms covered in ink and his full weight leaning over a book. he looks up at bull and bull looks at him and for a second, there, all he can do is stare, expression blank, patiently waiting. dorian says something about the book. he can’t help it; he chuckles. it’s not about the book. he thumbs a page or two, from time to time, but reading tends to be an affair filled with headaches when you only have one eye. or, at least, it has in bull’s experience.

“when you left tevinter,” he starts, because he’s pretty fucking sure dorian did leave, “what did you feel?” he’s not expecting any sort of revelation, but by default, this is bull’s best way of learning about himself. the way in which others see him has always been illuminating. he can look in the mirror a thousand times and see the same two faces. other people? it’s not quite so simple. the bull thumbs, idly, at another spine on the shelf, a religious tome, something about the chantry.

     ❝ i am no one , ❞    𝙰𝙽𝙳 𝙸𝚂 𝚃𝙷𝙰𝚃 𝙰 𝙻𝙸𝙴 ?    she had never been anyone but what she had been named :  iseranae ,  iselan ,   arlise’sul’avelan ,  asha atish’an .  none of these were her or hers .  the elf smiles at him from her place by the fire and ,  almost playfully ,  a tongue of flame parts from the greater pile of sticks and leaves and curls around her finger before it is dismissed .  he is searching for answers ,  and that is commendable ,  but he’ll not have them from her .    ❝ i am  nothing . ❞    not anymore .  golden eyes cast themselves back to the flame as she adds ,  a smile playing upon her lips .   ❝ very few have titles that would rival  the iron bull . ❞

@irnhrns gets isenril  +  deathless .

the heat from the flames licks at the iron bull from time to time, but its tongue is never quite so harsh that it hurts. he’s trying to enjoy the warmth on his bad knee while focusing on unlocking his left shoulder in a desperate attempt to get it to loosen. no man’s good in a fight if he can’t move his joints in a circle. his head lifts when isenril speaks: still a mystery, still a stranger, still something. weird, probably. that’s all his head can ever seem to conjure these days, when it comes to encountering people alongside the boss. usually they’re weird, or fucked up, or just downright awful.

bull’s got those if i loved you less i might be able to talk about it more vibes no i will not explain

just kidding actually i will explain UM in all forms, the iron bull, i think, is incapable of expressing how he feels to the fullest degree -- he feels fully, but the words, as much as he banters and jokes and dances around them with other characters in-game, do not come to him. especially not when he is feeling things intensely. you can see this in the inquisitor’s conversation with him on the battlements after you kill the chargers or save them ( although it’s more prominent if you choose not to ), as well as on the coast and in many other instances of conversations the inquisitor has with bull in other areas. the inquisitor can ask about seheron, and the qun, and the life he lived before inquisition, and bull will happily share anecdotes, bits and pieces, but the emotions he felt in relation to them at the time are absent.

you ask him about life under the qun, and he talks about how he was chosen to be hissrad very quickly. he doesn’t talk about how proud this makes him, how he felt at the time. he talks about seheron, and the implication is that it ruined whoever hissrad was before, but it’s never outright stated or explained by bull himself. this could be in part due to the qun’s literal, actual, in-canon brainwashing, what the fuck bioware, but i think it’s bigger than that. bull cannot allow for himself to be put under the scope. he cannot explain his range of emotions in relation to his experiences because it would mean sacrificing his ability to do his job ( which is already compromised due to his relationship with the chargers and how much he cares about them ) it makes him uncomfortable. he struggles with it. deeply. in the words of richard siken: i want to tell you this story without having to be in it.

so the inquisitor falls in love with the bull. the bull falls in love with them. an aspect i’ve always enjoyed with bull’s romance is that it doesn’t quite feel as romance novel-y ( i’m looking at You, cullen rutherford ) and more rooted in reality aside from the fact the inquisitor cleaves a dragon tooth and gives it to bull in lieu of a wedding ring but w/e. he does say he loves them at some point in the game, but for whatever reason, to me it rings a bit hollow. here we have a man who by-and-large cannot express his feelings in direct relation to himself who is outright stating i feel this way about you and i am saying it out loud when he has NEVER done that before with any other character in-game -- not even dorian, if they get together, which is an entirely different dynamic that could have been good but falls flat on its face once you start looking at the writing for too long.

it’s been a month since he left the qun. since he buried hissrad for good. this last meeting with red, today, has confirmed once and for all that whatever the inquisition could have had with the qun is done. that’s it. chapter closed. and he knows he shouldn’t -- but his fingers still itch to open to the pages he’s bookmarked. to reread, to see exactly where he went wrong. not the boss, not the inquisition, not their people. him. he’s debating on a drink as he descends the stairs from red’s nest and finds himself confronted with an entirely different hovel: dorian’s. the mage’s space is warm, inviting, and in a complete lapse of judgment, bull stops.

they don’t speak often. par their interactions in the field, which seem to start and stop all at once in what can only be called awkward on the best of days. he doesn’t know why that is. something about dorian disarms him. he tries not to think too hard about that, turns his eyes towards the bookshelves. if he weren’t unsure about their capability to hold his weight he might have leaned against the shelves, but there’s no reliability in most things for a man his size, from benches to beds ( not that he can fault anyone for it; most places outside of the qun don’t expect a qunari to walk through their doors ). so instead he stands back and reads the titles on the spines. some are in tevene, others antivan, nevarran, most common, and he can’t help but wonder if dorian’s cultivating a little collection all on his own. making a space here, because others will not provide the room. 

bull might be projecting. he pulls a book -- simply titled mortalitasi, and nothing else -- and opens the cover. a few minutes pass, and he gets five pages in before he decides it is not his particular cup of tea. it’s here that he moves to look at dorian, sitting in his chair, and, in a second lapse of judgment, opens his mouth to speak. “can i ask you something, pavus?”