Damage
You dream. It’s such a welcome, soothing sensation, that as you slip in and out of consciousness, it feels like you’re dreaming the whole time. It has to be a dream, because you remember Iron Bull carrying you to his room, bundling you up in warm, soft blankets. Then all is lost in a hazy field of soft voices and warmth, none of which you believe is real.
When you wake, it’s not with a start, but the slow, easy waking of someone coming out of a genuine sleep. The first thing you notice is a sense of comfort and warmth. The second thing is a distinct lack of tension inside you. Your eyes snap open; when you passed out, you must have lost control over yourself, or perhaps you’d lost it earlier. Either way, you’re exposed. You swear, gathering the loose energy and raw power back inside of you with some difficulty—after so long inside, it wants to be free, burns with the desire. If Bull had been a mage or a Templar, you would never have woken up at all. He would certainly have killed you in your sleep.
Speaking of Bull… You’re in his room, again. It alarms you that you’ve been in his bedroom enough to recognize it. The man himself, however, is nowhere to be seen. How long have you been here? The bright sunlight streaming in from the window informs you that it’s been hours, at least. You’re nervous about having been discovered, but fairly certain that the fact you’re still alive and not in chains proves that your secret remains intact.
You spot your hands, then, and realize with mild horror that they’re bandaged, from your fingers up over your wrist. Suddenly, and all at once, memories from the morning come crashing down on you as if dropped from a great height. They crash through your mind in waves, leaving you reeling. Oh, Maker. You fucked up. You really fucked up. Against all odds, somehow, you lost your mind and survived to have to deal with the aftermath.
Panic begins clawing at your chest all over again as you remember quietly stalking Iron Bull across the courtyard. You completely lost it! It’s a miracle you didn’t burn the damned shed down. And Iron Bull… had you dealt him any serious injury? Thank the Maker your ridiculous flailing likely didn’t give away any combat training. Ugh… Alongside the growing panic is no small amount of mortification. You’re supposed to have a better grip on yourself than this! Did years spent in the Orlesian court imprint nothing onto you? You feel like the rash child you were in Rivain. You shouldn’t have used something so real for part of your backstory here. It’s fine when it’s just a few nights, but this is a whole identity, and you were in such a rush that you went and crammed half of your damned childhood into it. You got too caught up in the elation of being Emma back in Orlais, and didn’t think it through. You didn’t think anything through. You feel like you haven’t thought anything through since— You haven’t been yourself since—
You hear the door open, and twist yourself quickly towards it, tangling yourself in the thick woolen blankets. It’s Iron Bull, of course, carrying a tray of something with one hand. Your panic must show on your face, because as soon as he sees you, he stops, raising one hand up as if to indicate he’ll come no further.
“Hey. How you feeling?” The kindness in his voice just makes you feel more guilty. Had you really beaten him with a fucking stick? Maker… You had covered the man in your blood, possibly covered yourself in his, and he’s talking to you like you had an accident. You bury your head into the thick blankets tangled around your knees, wrapping your arms around the back of your head and groaning. You want to be on the next merchant cart out of here, just to escape the embarrassment, but as soon as you think of it, the image of Solas flashes into your mind. You can’t leave. Not while he’s gone. Not while you don’t know what’s happened to him.
“Emma. Talk to me. What are you feeling?” Iron Bull says again. You can tell from his voice that he hasn’t moved… The nicer he is, the worse you feel.
“Mortified,” you whine into the blankets.
“You don’t need to be. Everyone who was in Seheron has episodes like that.”
You look up, hesitantly. “Really?”
“Sure. How do you think I knew what to do?”
“I… Bull, I… don’t think I can apologize enough,” you say, trying to function through the acute humiliation. “It was… the fog, and the fighting, and I…” You run a hand through your hair, mortification intensifying to find it loose rather than pulled back as you normally keep it.
“It’s alright,” he says, with so much emphasis that you can almost believe it. He’s approaching now, and you don’t stop him. Rather than sitting down on the bed, he kneels next to it, and the motion brings another surge of guilt through you. He looks… battered. Despite his claims about not bruising easily, his silver skin is beginning to mottle dark blues and purples along his arms and chest.
His eyes follow your horrified gaze. “Oh, please,” he says mildly. “I’ve looked worse than this after sex.”
His words are so absurd that you can’t help but laugh, a short bark that alarms you as it escapes your throat.
“I’d be less confused if you were cross with me,” you confess.
“Be confused, then. Be disoriented. It’s normal; you’ve had a hell of a day.”
“I’ve had a hell of a day? Look in the mirror!”
“You’ve had that coming a long time, Emma. I’ve known ever since you bolted out of the mess hall. I’m just glad I was there when it happened.”
You shake your head, slowly, only to be taken by a surge of dizziness, the energy locked in your chest surging in irritation at being imprisoned after so short a freedom.
“Drink,” Iron Bull instructs in a tone that allows no argument. You find a mug has been placed in your bandaged hands, and you drink the fresh juice with some difficulty. It isn’t until you start drinking that you realize your thirst, and you quickly drain the whole cup, the juice soothing your twisting stomach. “You’ve had episodes like this before?”
You shake your head. “Not often. And never that much… that.” You’ve panicked, in the past, flashed back to Seheron and thought you were there, but you had always ridden it out. As years continued to pass, the attacks became less and less frequent. Until Skyhold, with its curious faces and their probing questions. And, of course, the presence of Iron Bull, the first Qunari you had seen in years.
“No wonder you’re freaking out. It happens, to people who have been in wars, or any kind of traumatic bullshit. Most of the boys in Seheron got them at least once.”
“I… I’m really sorry,” you say weakly. With your panic receding, and without the energy that had previously escaped to buoy you, you’re beginning to become aware that you hurt. A lot. Especially your hands, which feel like you got in a fight with a cheese grater. How are you going to write like this?
“It’s fine. I kinda expected that to happen when we fought. I’m just as glad it happened in private instead in front of the guys.”
“…Oh, Maker, that would have been a nightmare.”
“Yeah. So. You wanna talk about it, or are you good?”
You find yourself actually pausing to consider his question, which once would have automatically had you scurrying for the nearest door. That alone has you rigid with horror as you realize it. You’ve come to trust Iron Bull more, or perhaps you’re in a vulnerable position. Either way, it could be another Ben-Hassrath trick. He could have… could have fought you in the fog, knowing, the whole thing could have…
You shake your head slowly, heart pounding in your chest. You don’t know what to think, right now. “I don’t know if I can trust you, Bull,” you say, and to your surprise, it has the cadence of an apology. “I don’t know if I ever can.”
“When you can, I’ll be here,” is all he says. You find you can’t say anything in response.
Instead, you gesture uselessly at your hands. “What am I going to do?” You’ve mauled yourself on him, and you someone who depends on their hands for their livelihood.
“Go to the healers,” he suggests.
“And tell them what?” you hiss quietly. “That I got in a fight with a wall?”
“Well, they’ll know you were hitting something, just from the injuries,” Iron Bull points out, and you curse. He’s right.
“I doubt they ask questions when the men come in with injuries from fighting, Bull, but they’ll wonder when the linguist does!” You take a few deep breaths, trying to calm yourself. You’ve gotten yourself out of stranger situations. Alright. The Commander already knows there have been some less-than-kind soldiers hovering around you. It would be easy to blame the injuries on needing to fend off a more-than-amorous would-be-suitor. It would likely never even reach his ears. These things happened every day with no Commander any the wiser.
“Alright,” you say out loud. “I know what to do.”
“It’s something to watch your mind work,” Iron Bull says, sounding amused. His eyes had stayed on you as you went from panicked to determined, and it had been a fun thing to watch, from the grin on his lips. You frown at him.
“You’re… you’ll be discreet about this, yes?”
“Do you mean, will I go blabbing around Skyhold that you get jumpy in the fog? Or bragging that I had a pretty lady sit on my chest and try to break my face?”
“Bull!”
“I’ll keep it to myself,” he says with a cheeky grin. “I’m a spy. We’re good at that.”
Amazingly, your thrown-together plan goes off nearly without a hitch. You make a wilting flower of yourself before you enter the healer’s tent, a long and sprawling thing, pitched in the courtyard near the training yard. You’re already a mess, it’s only a matter of removing the bloody bandages from your hands. You wince to see the state of yourself. It doesn’t seem like you’ve broken any fingers, but your knuckles are all a bloody mess. Only one other thing…
It hurts, wrenching your own ankle out of place, and it hurts worse limping across the courtyard on it, but it gives you a believable limp. The rest will be covered by the bruises Iron Bull unwittingly gave you around your chest, arm, and shoulders when he wrestled the flight out of you.
You make your way slowly into the tent, and seize upon the most likely man you see, a stern looking man with a holy symbol of Andraste hanging around his neck. He takes one look at you and frowns.
“Maker’s breath, child, what happened to you?” The alarm in his voice makes you fear you won’t have the apathy towards your “situation” that you need.
“I, um… had an accident,” you lie, poorly and purposefully. The skepticism in his eyes is clear.
“I see. An accident has wrenched your ankle and bloodied your hands?”
“Can… Can you heal me?” you say, cringing. As much as you loathe playing the cringing elf, this practiced victimhood has served you well your entire life. A tiny slave girl, a doe-eyed young lad, dirty and starving, a simple maid, one rabbit among many… You have always excelled at being small and forgotten. Pitiable, but in the same tired way that all weak are pitiable. “I work with my hands, I… I can’t…”
The man sighs. “I will have the truth out of you. Have you been fighting with another servant? The Inquisition will find you out eventually, if you go starting trouble!”
His scorn soothes your worries. Blessed are the self-righteous, hateful of the weak, for in their ineptitude, your safety is ensured. “N-no! It… There was a man…”
You watch with suppressed glee as the man’s eyes go flat. A story told throughout time. “I see. Let me have a look at you, girl.”
His rough examination no doubt confirms his suspicions. A long, painful bruise wraps its way around both your arms, you have a torn lip (from your own savage gnashing at Iron Bull’s hand, no doubt), your ankle is brutally twisted and swelling, and your knuckles are the bloodied, fleshy mess of punching injuries.
“I take it by the look of you that the man escaped in worse shape than you,” the healer says with no small amount of disapproval.
“Y…yes. I fought him off.”
“Then there will be no need for you to take this further. Be still, child, and I will fix your hands and heal your bruises.” The man is as good as his word. He fixes your hands, reduces the swelling and color of your bruising, although the pain remains. You gaze down at your ankle, hopefully, but his scorn only intensifies. Ugh. You picked one a little too pious. You thank him with a wince, and limp your way out of the tent. That’s what you get for injuring yourself to make your story more believable. He likely only healed your bruises to avoid trouble if another saw the state of you. A woman bloodied up with defensive injuries and bruises on her arms means only one thing, but a woman with a twisted ankle could merely be clumsy. Your bruises are no longer as visible, but they ache as if he hadn’t touched them. No matter, a badly twisted ankle will not impede your work. Climbing the stairs up the Great Hall is a misery, however.
When you finally limp your way into the rotunda, it’s a relief to flop down at your desk. You don’t even notice the missive sitting on it right away, and when you see it, you emit what could only be called a whimper.
All those stairs…
With a groan, you open it. A note is affixed to it, declaring that it is not urgent, but to do it at your earliest convenience. Ugh. You glance over it. More Ben-Hassrath reports; this a post-mission report. It details the personal affairs of some Fereldan noble… What in the world are the Ben-Hassrath doing in Denerim? Hmm… You make a point to memorize it as you translate, in case this turns out to be important as well. You still don’t know what Leliana’s game is, but you know that there IS a Game. There always is, with Orlesians. Even the commoners wish they could play.
You translate the note quickly, a little sour about the situation, but also furious with yourself for not being in your designated spot when you were needed. What if it had been urgent? You can’t have a reputation for being flighty. Worse, what if Leliana’s messenger had hunted you down, found you bloody and battered in Iron Bull’s bed? You couldn’t have devised a fictional assaulter to save you from humiliation then. Perhaps you could have played it off as sexual perversion, although you’ve no reason to believe Iron Bull would go along with that. Sex is one thing, but a reputation for violence in bed could genuinely sully his name.
It’s no matter. Several times today, you narrowly dodged situations that could have left you compromised or dead. If you dwell on it, you’ll throw yourself off balance. More off-balance than you already are, which is increasingly obviously very. There will be time for self-flagellation when less is at stake. You scribe off a translation, triple check it for accuracy—this is the sort of thing where accuracy can save lives—and then stand with a shuddering gasp. Your fist clenches around the missive as weight falls on your injured ankle. That quickly, you had forgotten. The stairs will be agony.
It’s only your pride that keeps you from dropping to hands and knees and crawling up the stairs. As it is, when you’re certain no one is looking, you sort of hop one-leggedly up them, clutching onto the railing for balance. You are, of course, spotted as you limp through the library and towards the second flight of stairs. You spot alarm in the eyes of both Thea and Dorian, but only Dorian rushes towards you.
“What happened?” he demands.
“Hello to you too, Dorian,” you say dryly, continuing to limp towards the stairs. He steps in front of you and crosses his arms, pointedly. You sigh. “I fell. I wasn’t expecting our mistress to call me upstairs, or I would have wrapped it.”
“You fell? What, down the stairs? Maker, take that boot off; let it breathe. Don’t you know where the healer’s tent is?”
You roll your eyes. “The ones who deal with wounded soldiers? I’m not wasting their time with this. If it will make Mother Tevinter happy, however, I’ll elevate it whilst I work. Honestly, it’s not broken, Dorian. I just twisted it.”
Dorian’s clearly unhappy, but you move around him to get to the stairs. “You should go to the healers,” he says firmly as you try to walk up the second flight of stairs as normally as possible. “It’s what they’re there for, and you’re not helping anyone by limping around like a martyr.”
You continue up the stairs with much difficulty. Dorian’s concern, while misplaced, is a little flattering. It’s nice to know that he would be concerned if you injured yourself. You try very hard not to think about what Solas’s reaction to your injury would be. You’re starving for a mage’s attentions enough without thinking about Solas’s soothing magic filling you. If you imagine his warm hands on your bare ankle, you’ll… Ah, and there you go. You have no self-control at all.
You force your mind back into reality as you crest the top of the stairs. Thank the Maker that Leliana is always easily found. You force yourself to step down normally despite the screaming agony in your ankle, not wanting a curious spymaster investigating what you’d been up to all morning. You simply drop both messages off on her desk. She pauses in her reading, and glances up at you.
“Ah, Emma. I’m glad you found time for it.”
It was the kind of comment that might carry barbs, but you refuse to let something so obvious get to you. The note had said it wasn’t urgent. “Of course, serah. I am, as always, at your disposal,” you say politely. She eyes you curiously, but says no more, and when she goes back to her reading, you take that as your leave.
Heading down the stairs is less of an agony than going up was, but it still strains your poor ankle. You ignore the stink eye Dorian gives you as you go through the library, and sink down to your desk. As soon as you’re seated, you yank your cursed boot off, swearing as your ankle throbs and flames anew as it’s released. It’s turning an unpleasant purple and is very clearly swollen. Your punishment for being a little too determined to get out of the mess you made with your reputation intact.
You prop the leg on the stool you sometimes sit on, and pull your tome into your lap so you can work on your translation half-sideways. It’s a little awkward, but you manage to get the hang of it, and continue work on your translation. Again, no hope of finishing it today… You spend too much time playing around Skyhold like a child. The old you could have this done in a week, perhaps a week-and-a-half, tops. Look at you, faffing about like a fool when there’s work to be done…
When dinner time rolls around, there is no question that you’ll be staying to work through it, even though your stomach screams for having eaten nothing all day. Self-loathing keeps you rooted in your chair, however, until you hear uncertain boots entering your rotunda. You glance up, half-expecting to see Celia, Iron Bull, Sera, Dorian… any number of people chase after you these days. You’re quite shocked to see Thea, however. You’ve never once seen her step foot inside this rotunda, even after Solas left.
“Thea?” you say, surprise no doubt showing on your face.
“Well… you ‘aven’t been ‘round lately, and… well, I see you with Dorian, but you been away from the mess…” She’s mumbling; you can barely make out what she’s saying, but you get the gist of it. You realize, belatedly, that you’ve not been to the mess in two long days.
“Were you worried, or are you mad at me?” you jest with a practiced grin. You’ve neglected human friends in the past in your distraction. Neediness is annoying, but expected. You know how to deal with it.
“If you got hurt, I was worried. If you were just bein’ an ass, I was mad,” she says sourly.
“I’m fine,” you say, gesturing down towards your miserable looking ankle. “It’s just twisted; I fell on the steps because of the stupid fog. And I was being a bit of an ass. I was late to breakfast yesterday, and skipped it altogether today.” Her scowl shows her opinion of you skipping meals hasn’t changed any.
“An’ I bet you skipped dinner, too!”
“Nooo… How long could I possibly go without food?” you say with a laugh. The look she gives you is highly skeptical. “I’m sorry, Thea. I wasn’t avoiding you, I promise.”
She sighs. “Alright. But stop skipping meals! And get that ankle to a healer. S’what they’re for. I’m gettin’ outta this spooky place. Dunno how you work in here, all alone. Even more so when that mage of yours is home.”
“It’s peaceful,” you say with a slight eye roll. “Solas has yet to throw anything at me.”
“Give ‘im time!”
She heads back up the stairs, and you turn your focus back to your work. You do manage to get a goodly amount of work done, despite the steady ache of your ankle and the painful twisting of your stomach. How you manage to get through the day without anyone else checking on you is something you may never figure out. It isn’t until the night chill has your fingers stiff and your ankle throbbing with agony that you finally decide to rest.
It’s extra cold tonight, and you find you really don’t want to go outside. It would be a cold night on the couch, with no blankets to warm you. You think with fondness at the comfortable woolen blankets Iron Bull had wrapped you in, much softer than your own scratchy cotton throw. With a sigh, you throw yourself down on the couch anyway. Perhaps you’ll be frozen over by morning, but at least this way, you don’t have to limp across the courtyard on your swollen ankle.