Chapter Text
The Iron Bull entered the Inquisitor’s empty quarters, whistling low. He’d never been up here before. Had never had reason to. Didn’t exactly have permission to now, but hey. Nobody had stopped him.
Not even that locked door.
Figured she’d had good digs, being head of the whole shebang and the figurehead of a quasi-religious-awakening to boot - despite not even being Andrastian. But damn, she had a view.
He muttered a curse in Qunlat at the temperature, though. Did she have to keep every window open? They were literally surrounded by snow and ice. She must have frost in her veins.
He sat down at the edge of her expansive bed to wait for her, feeling experimentally how it caught his weight and held.
Yeah. This’d do.
He laid back, stretched out, got comfy. She was in meetings all afternoon – he knew her schedule was packed these days, but that was fine. He had patience in spades.
As well as…other things.
It was kind of why he was here.
Bull had fought with battle buddies for…too long. Decades. He’d gotten to see the signs for asalta-taar – soul-sickness – too goddamn up close and personal, too many times.
He didn’t think it was quite like that for her, but it was close. This was a different sort of battle, but it was fucked up, just the same.
She'd been a sheltered, almost cloistered, Dalish girl before coming here. Best he could find out before his sources at the Qun got cut off, she was her Keeper's First: training to lead her people one day, but still untested when she had been sent to spy on the Conclave. The meeting that literally blew up in everyone’s faces and led her to, well, this shitshow.
She'd never been meant for… whatever the fuck was going on now, though. Leading this massive force of armies and spies with tendrils twisting into every corner of Thedas. Solving problems both mythical and mundane. Preventing the end of the goddamn world. Apparently that was all up to her, now. Some twenty-something little elf mage-in-training.
Fuck.
Anybody who could handle that responsibility either didn’t deserve it or was deeply fucked in some other way.
Ellawyn was managing. Barely. Somehow. With a lot of support of really smart and talented people, she was keeping her head above water, keeping the Inquisition from starving, from freezing to death, from getting decimated by darkspawn and demon hordes in their endless skirmishes all over Thedas.
But that shit had to be taking its toll on her mind.
Bull had been observing her with growing interest since even before pledging his mercenaries to her cause. An elf called the Herald of Andraste? And a mage, at that. Contradictions upon contradictions. Either of those were interesting enough – especially to his Ben-Hassrath superiors back in Par Vollen – but eventually it was her person that had caught his one good eye.
Ellawyn grown into the role admirably – no one could fault that. Her instincts for diplomacy and tact were well-known by now, and despite her gentle insistence on not being the Herald of a long-dead woman she did not even worship, people still followed her. Still believed she had been touched, or whatever.
The Iron Bull knew what it was like to stand out in a crowd in Thedas. Like her, he was an outcast everywhere he went. He stood out even more than she did -- literally. They kinda had that in common. But at least people generally stayed the fuck outta his way. The elves around these parts...well, didn't have that luxury.
And mages, well. They just locked 'em up and threw away the key. He knew it could be argued that his people did worse, maybe...but for a long time, he'd gotten used to his own little world with the Chargers. His people, his rules. The Chargers had a Dalish mage - eh, "archer" - among them, but honestly he'd never had to consider how much mental control magic took until he got to know Ellawyn.
Ellawyn's skill with magic was a thing to behold. She could hold her own on the battlefield. Bull had learned that when she started swinging that staff that he’d better get out of her way. She’d earned his respect, and that took some doing.
Fuck, she’d stood up to a some kind of demon-darkspawn-dragon attack solo, and nearly succeeded in sacrificing herself under an avalanche to save her people. He’d have followed her through the Veil itself after that, as nightmarish as that sounded.
After all this time, she had borne the fate of the world on her slender shoulders with nary of crack in the façade. All of her advisors praised her, heaping more work on her daily, bringing more and more trouble to her feet. And the furrow in her brow just got deeper.
Was he really the only one who noticed she was about to break, or the only one who was trying to do something about it?
She was surrounded by apparent friends, companions, and trusted advisors, and yet she was necessarily apart from them all. Had to be.
Only one Anchor. Only she could close the Breach.
He rarely saw her outside of War Table meetings anymore. Too busy, too distracted. Always having to play her role in public as something other than a mortal, fallible woman – always having to be on the watch for those who would harm her.
Always alone.
If he was reading her right – and he was pretty sure he was – he thought he might have a solution to offer her.
Well, if not a solution, at least a reprieve. He had… special skills in that arena.
And yeah, it didn’t hurt that she had a rare, ethereal beauty, with hair as pale as moonglow and huge eyes like seaglass.
Not that he’d spent much time looking or anything.
Bull didn’t follow the ways of the people here, but it was easy enough to see how they could’ve accepted a Dalish elf as chosen by their human goddess. People’s eyes…followed her. She was special.
And also, she was much, much too buttoned up for her own good.
Maybe it was partly being Inquisitor, or partly being what basically amounted to an apostate mage surrounded by people who otherwise would’ve dragged her off to a cloistered tower for the rest of her days, but she never, ever seemed to relax. She was rarely seen in Herald’s Rest for a drink.
Even among her inner circle, grown to trust in the camaraderie of shed blood together, she hardly let her guard down anymore.
When he thought of how she used to be when he first met…well, Ellawyn was different now.
For a leader with too much responsibility on her untrained shoulders, she was doing a hell of a good job. But sooner or later, she was bound to crack under the pressure.
And for the good of everyone in the Inquisition, she really needed someone to share that burden.
About an hour and a half later, the door cracked open, and Bull sat up.
Ellawyn entered her quarters with eyes cast down at a stack of papers in one hand and rubbing the back of her neck with the other. She didn’t see him, not at first.
Her mouth twisted with dismay, no doubt at some news of supply shortages or battle losses. Even in the privacy of her own rooms, she couldn’t relax, not for a moment.
The Iron Bull stood from where he’d been seated at the edge of her bed. The shadow he cast over her caught her attention, and she startled, dropping the papers in a flurry of parchment to the stone floor.
He watched her face change from fear, to relief, to confusion…and then a little bit of fear again.
“Hey, boss.” His voice was rough from disuse, but he decided not to clear his throat.
Ellawyn stared at him, her lips parting silently. He couldn’t quite hear her heartbeat race, his ears weren’t that good, but he could see the pulse in her throat jump as she swallowed.
“What’s wrong, Bull? What are you doing here?”
It was sad, how her first thought was that he was bringing her news of some other fucking thing that had gone wrong. Of course her first thought was trouble. He’d never come to her room before, certainly never without her in it. Never breached any space that was solely hers.
He was already kind of pushing her boundaries, but he'd be lying if he said he didn't want to see how she reacted. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Somehow I find that hard to believe.” She was putting on a show of bravery, but he could read her nervousness in the way her eyes flitted anywhere but at him. Her eyes happened upon the window and widened, as if suddenly realizing the time of day. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have waited here until – gods, it’s almost dusk.”
They were allies – even friends, sure. But he’d caught her off guard by intruding. This wasn’t something they did. A boundary they might’ve teased, but hadn’t ever crossed.
And he could be a pretty scary motherfucker when he wanted to be.
He advanced.
Ellawyn retreated. Just like he thought she would. He couldn’t help a little self-satisfied smirk.
So, okay, he might have ulterior motives.
He'd read her, like he had a thousand times before. He knew the type.
He knew even without her ever even admitting it to herself. What she needed.
“I think maybe you know what I’m doing here.”