P: Swimming in a Face of Flames
|| someonetocomplainto is my new favorite everything, we are hivemind. We’ve been batting around the idea of writing a Timestamp for when Krem and Bull met, and I have finally overcome my extreme EMOTIONS about this and written something!
P.S. The Thread Title is from "I am" By AwolNation
Looking back across the years, with hindsight casting clarity like sunlight on a mirror, it occurs to the Iron Bull that, had he been a better Ben-Hassrath Spy, he probably never would have met Krem. More than that, might never have founded the Chargers, or met the Inquisition. Never met Dorian.
And it's fitting, in a way, when the Qunari considers that Krem, with his defiant eyes and his bloodied lip, even now..... Krem was the beginning of the end. And also just a Beginning.
|| 9:37 Dragon, North of Hunter Fell, On the Border Between Tevinter and Nevarra ||
Hissrad had been loitering in the South of Tevinter for weeks now, avoiding the Great Highway and tracking movement between this shitty bordertown and Hunter Fell while he waited for his informant to make contact. The Qunari passed himself as a mercenary, adopting the name The Iron Bull and inserting himself into the daily backdrop of the town's local tavern; but his contact was far past his appointed arrival date and Hissrad was beginning to lose patience.
Once, the Qunari might not have minded such a lull.... but these days, Bull's head was too quiet from where the Re-Educators had pulled out unwanted memories, his hands too alive and twitching with some deeply ingrained instinct to lash out. Bull felt as though he were the stump of a severed limb, seeking some sensation he had once known, unable to comprehend all that he had lost. Memories that Hissrad couldn't recall still somehow grasped at him like phantom vines in a forest. These were things he had wanted to forget.... Right?
He wasn't sure. Bull knew only that another night spent in this Tavern might very well drive him to violence. Fortunately, it seemed like some Tevinter assholes were willing to oblige.
The battle was short, but bloody. Nearly an entire Tribune beating upon a single man, and even if Iron Bull hadn't heard the shouts of 'Deserter' and 'Freak,' he'd still have intervened. As it were, the little guy was holding his own pretty well, throwing punches hard enough to send men larger than him reeling backward. But the numbers were against him, and the Qunari was just in time to stop a pointed kick to the ribs before all hell broke loose.
Bull remembered slamming a man into the stone wall, throwing another down the length of the alleyway they'd trapped the stranger in. Someone got in a lucky slice with a nugsticker, but nothing that would leave even a good scar. The Ben-Hassrath was feeling pretty triumphant as he beat two soldiers' heads together, dropping them in a heap at his feet before lunging at the final man looming over the fallen kid, arm cocked back in the darkness as if to strike.
The Iron Bull collided with the soldier just as he swung around, something more than a fist in his hand, and one half of the Qunari's face suddenly lit up with whitehotheat and the agony of a pointed edge digging deep into flesh. The world exploded in a haze of pain, of fire, of the distant echo of someone screaming. When Bull next came back to himself, he and the stranger were alone in the alleyway, the soldier with the flail nothing more than a red crusting of gore across the knuckles of Hissrad's fists.
He Couldn't see, but there were worse things.
