CHAPTER THREE

Two weeks crawl by. And not that he’s looking for more demons to drop out of the sky or anything, but he could stand to see a little more action. If for nothing else but to spice up the monotony of his reports.

Got attacked by three bears today. THREE. I swear the Seeker attracts them. Breach is still big and scary. Nothing else of note.

The Chargers are getting bored too. But far from soft. He’s been riding their asses to prepare them for what’s to come. Which is kind of fucking impossible, seeing as how there’s no way of knowing. There’s a hole in the sky, demons around every corner and a slow kind of unease settling in his bones.

He has them practice drills ceaselessly. He grills them until Krem’s dripping sweat in the cold mountain air and even Rocky’s too tired at the end of the day to run his mouth. They do their fair share of griping and complaining, but they know as well as he does that shit’s going to get worse before it gets better.

The when is the only question. This whole calm before the storm shit is really getting on his nerves.

True to form, he hits a little harder when they stumble upon a rift in the Hinterlands.

They’ve spent the first couple of weeks here running errands for the refugees -finding blankets, food, and medicine- and making connections. Tedious, but important. And something he wouldn’t have thought Zaahra was capable of. He’s fought a lot of Tal-Vashoth in his time, and none of them have ever given a damn about anyone but themselves.

He still doesn’t trust her, however. And he’s always reminded of it in battle.

 The demons pouring out of the rift are paper to her blades. She is in and out of shadows that don’t exist, appearing on his left, on his right, dropping two wraiths before he’s even hefted his axe out of a terror’s body.

She darts in front of him just as he’s bringing the axe around for another swing. Her body ducks under the force of him before all that’s left of her is the tail end of her braid and then she’s gone once more. He stops still, gaze focused on the fray.

“Might as well give up on keeping track of her,” Varric helpfully suggests from behind him. He rocks back with the recoil of his crossbow and a wraith three feet to Bull’s left disintegrates with a howl.

Bull doesn’t have time to respond. His axe embeds in another body and he roars with the force of it. It’s not keeping track of her that worries him. It’s the brutality that she wields that really makes him uneasy. Sure, he can crack a skull with one swing and likes to wet the earth with blood just as much as the next guy. But there’s a difference between aggression and savagery. Zaahra is a predator. 

Merciless. Cold. Quiet.

“Seal it, now!” Cassandra’s voice breaks through the disjointed harmonies of the battle. She slams her shield back against a falling body. The corpse crashes into the grass and dissolves into the tendrils.

The Iron Bull stops and turns towards the rift. He’s heard about Zaahra closing them before, but he’s never actually been with her to see it. She materializes to his left. The only indication she’s even been in a fight at all is the quickness of her breath, mouth slightly parted and chest rising and falling in a staccato rhythm. He catches himself wondering what else might cause her to lose her breath like that, and then cuts the line of thought completely.

She lifts a hand to the rift. The inside of her palm crackles green and bright. It’s kind of pretty. Dazzling, hypnotizing -downright terrifying if he thinks about the implications of it for long enough. A crack of what sounds like it could be thunder splits the air before him and a line extends from her palm to the scar of light above their heads.

He finds his gaze trailing back down the thread that connects the two, to Zaahra herself. Face lit up with emerald light, eyes focused, mouth pressed tight with concentration.

It’s the first time he’s seen her as something magnificent, in place of savage.

The rift cracks in the center and then closes completely. The blue sky swallows it back up and everything goes quiet. 

Zaahra staggers back and grips at her forearm as the green light crackles and dies in her palm. Her brow knits. In pain, he notes. 

“Boss?” he asks, “You okay?”

“Fine,” she says.

Solas leans against his staff and nods “Well done.”

“We should keep moving,” Cassandra sheathes her sword at her hip, “We still have much ground to cover.”

If Zaahra needs a moment to collect herself, she doesn’t show it. She replaces her daggers along her shoulders and resumes the pace they’d set before they’d encountered the rift. Bull falls into step with her naturally.

“That’s a pretty good party trick,” he starts, sliding his gaze over at her, “Does it hurt?”

She cuts him a long glance, but doesn’t slow down. He notices the silver sheen of sweat across her temple.

“Are you asking because you genuinely want to know? Or you think it’ll be something good to put in your report?”

“Maybe I’m just trying to make conversation.”

“With a Tal-Vashoth?” she mocks him.

His smile is creased and annoyed, “Well, you haven’t killed any innocent people or looted any caravans since I’ve been with you, so I think we’re good.”

Zaahra looks straight ahead. The slope of her nose is regal and smooth, and the divot of her septum leads down to the fullness of her lips. The sunlight paints them like light upon steel. She takes a full breath.

“We’re not so different, you and I.”

Rage spurts in his chest. The emotion is beneath him, for someone who prides himself on being in control of his mind at all times. But the sentiment strikes a nerve in him.

 How can she think they have anything in common, when he’s lived his whole life trying to prove that they’re not? Perhaps it causes such a reaction in him because she says it so freely, as if he should want to be more like her, as if he should give into that kind of sprawling madness. He snarls out a noise and then through gritted teeth spits “There’s a world of difference between Tal-Vashoth and Qunari.”

She turns her head to him as they walk. Her boots swish through the grass delicately, but her body is sharp and hard all of a sudden.

“And what’s so wrong with being Tal-Vashoth?”

He knows he’s touching a raw nerve in both of them, but he can’t help but digging his fingers in all the same.

“Back home, the Ben-Hassrath help people live by the Qun. Tal-Vashoth turned their back on all that, decided they’d rather live like savages,” he clenches his fists at his side, “The Qun isn’t perfect, but at least there’s some sense to it.”

That prompts a laugh out of her. The sound is harsh and scathing.  A lesser man might have flinched away form it but Bull grits his teeth and levels with her. Squares his shoulders a little as if to say, bring it on.

“Of course, because there’s so much sense in being brainwashed. So much sense in living your entire existence the way the Qun dictates and never knowing anything outside of it.” They walk side by side, but her entire body is combative. Each step a knife. The sway of her braid between her shoulders like a whip. He can feel her fury radiating off her body and smell her blood quickening in her veins.

She bares her teeth, “My people may be savage, but at least we’re not mindless.”

He tries to not let his own body feed off her, but can’t help the edge to his voice when he hurls back, “Right, you’re all mindful thugs and bandits who kill innocent people for sport.”

She doesn’t deny it. Merely snarls and sends him a withering look. It would be better if she tried to convince him otherwise. He’d held out a hope that she was of the milder sort of Vashoth -the ones whose parents defected and were merely born into a life stigmatized by savagery. But he should have known after seeing her fight. You don’t cut through enemies like that if you grow up peaceful and wholesome.

“You think you’re so much better? With your re-educators, your spies?” A vein at her throat beats angrily and he wonders what it might be like to skirt his tongue over it. Taste her salt, her fury.

At this point, he’s not sure if they’re getting ready to fight or fuck.

Maybe both.

She stops short and turns to him, “We’ve both killed innocent people. The difference is, you mask your guilt with duty, and I choose to face mine.”

He stops too. Stares down the slope of his nose at her, watching gold light up her face as the sun passes from behind a cloud. He wants to tear her in half. Remove her, remove the temptation of madness entirely. He wants to make her smoke instead of the very real entity that he’s spent his entire life avoiding. 

 The Iron Bull wants to break her down, limb by limb, bone by bone, and ruin her. Then rebuild her. Like the re-educators did to him so long ago.

“Facing it isn’t the same as answering for it,” he growls. He’s close enough to see her eyelashes flutter with the sharp snap of her gaze.

“And who answers for your mistakes?”

He feels the warmth of her breath on his lower lip. The cloud of air passes between them, warm beads of moisture in the thinness of the cold, and drives right down to his belly. 

There’s a weighted silence.

Then, Varric opens his mouth.

“Uh, do you two need some alone time?”

Zaahra steps back and the threat dissolves on her body. She becomes a disjointed picture of soft, pale lines and delicately curves horns once more. It takes Bull a few moments to collect himself off the edge of bracing for combat to turn and glare at the dwarf.

“Because if you’re going to duke it out, the three of us can wait back over there,” Varric gestures his thumb back over his shoulder. “Y’know, from a safe distance.”

Solas smirks a little, but declines to say anything. Cassandra on the other hand looks royally pissed. She marches forward and comes between the two of them, jaw set.

“Whatever your differences were before, they mean nothing now,” she says, volleying her gaze between them, “Infighting will get us nowhere. We must work together to close the Breach.”

Zaahra glares at him over the Seeker’s head. But there’s no longer a threat in her pale eyes. They both know Cassandra is right. And hard as he wants to hold onto his convictions, he knows there’s a bigger picture. If he really wants to distinguish himself as above the unchecked tempers of the Tal-Vashoth, he’ll leave the argument alone.

Cassandra strides forward between their two bodies. Solas follows after her, with Varric close at hand. As the dwarf crosses between the archway of them, he smirks.

“You two can beat each other up after we deal with the hole in the sky.”

Bull sighs, and after a moment follows the rest of the party. Zaahra’s eyes tear caverns into him him until he turns his back to her. Then, the sensation leaves, and he focuses on the task at hand.

That is the fundamental difference between he and Zaahra. 

He is order, he is control. He is rational enough to see the bigger picture.

She trails as quick burning fire and black smoke behind him. But he will cool himself with purpose. Find solace in the Qun.