anima (for kate)

When he was young, Dorian would complain often of aches and pains. He would feel bruises blooming on his skin, cuts and scrapes, a sore aching in his muscles. He was only a child at the time, and could only endure so much. He was scolded--and even expelled from several prestigious Circles--for fighting, but thought that whomever was on the other side of this connection of his must have been fighting, too. He felt it in his arms, his legs, his neck; in the way his knuckles smarted or his palms stung. He trained hard with his magic and with his staff, so that whomever out there felt his own pain would know that he wasn't just sitting around on his ass himself.

One day, when he was barely twelve, he felt a pain so sharp and intense that he doubled over on the spot, crying out. It was like a knife sinking hilt deep into his side. It wasn't just bruises and scrapes anymore; whomever his animae dilectus--in Common, his soulmate--was, they sustained real injuries with some regularity. Slashes were a regularity, as were pains Dorian knew intimately in his own life; the burn or sting of magic, of fire and storm and ice spells. Surface wounds were common. Once, a piercing, searing pain that Dorian suspected must be from an arrow; he'd felt it again soon after when it was yanked out. The second time was worse.

He'd known since he was a young teenager that his soulmate must be a warrior of some sort. As Dorian aged, he thought more and more about what he might be like, and took a curious sort of pleasure in trying to figure out more about him through what he could feel. But really, all that he knew was that he must be somewhere that he saw constant battle, and that he must be rather reckless, to sustain so many injuries. Dorian could feel the wear and tear of a warrior's life on his body before he was even twenty. He concluded that it made him stronger. None of his peers knew so intimately what it felt like to be stabbed or shot, after all, and Dorian barely flinched any longer at the sensation of a blade glancing across his skin.

It felt strange, sometimes, to look at his naked body in a mirror and see himself entirely unmarred. He felt it somehow unfair, in a way. He'd endured all of this pain, too. Shouldn't he have something to show for it?



He was twenty-two and standing in Alexius' workroom when he felt the worst pain he'd ever experienced. It was a flash, like a hit to his head, the left side--and then burning, white-hot and all-consuming. He screamed, falling to his knees at once and clutching the left side of his face. He could barely hear Gereon call his name. His vision was swimming, focus in and out, and his ears rung. He felt his mentor take him into his arms, help him lay down, but he only had one coherent thought before he lost consciousness. Don't die, you reckless imbecile, he'd hoped fiercely, defiantly. Not before I've cursed you for this face to face.

His soulmate did not die, thankfully. Dorian knew this because when he woke several hours laer, the left side of his face still hurt so badly it made him nauseous. A shaky hand reached up to touch his left eye just to assure himself it was there. His other hand was being held in the concerned grip of one Felix Alexius. Dorian turned slowly to look at him through vision that was still bleary. His head was pounding.

"Did he live?" Felix asked quietly. "It's never been this bad before, Dorian."

Felix was, currently, the only person alive to whom Dorian had related the details of the constant pain his soulmate caused him. Others who were around him frequently had some idea, but Felix alone knew everything Dorian knew. He was a reliable sort that way.

"Yes," Dorian replied, little more than a croak. "He's alive. And at the moment, I rather hate him for it."

Felix's fingers squeezed his and his lips tightened in what Dorian imagined was amused sympathy. "Father wants to check on you. Should I send him in?"

With a huff of breath, Dorian managed a smile. "I don't imagine either of us can keep him out."



Several years later, their positions were reversed. Dorian sat at Felix's bedside, mopping his fevered face with a cool, wet cloth. Absently, he rubbed at his left knee, as had become a habit over the last few years. Felix's brow, speckled with sweat, furrowed. "Again?" His voice was soft, reedy. Some days it was stronger, like his body, but this was not one of them.

Dorian sighed. "He does a terrible lot of walking on that bad leg." At least the fingers had been quick enough to heal, and hardly pained him at all any longer. But the knee--Maker, he only got relief when the warrior decided to rest, which wasn't often. Dorian knew he must have lost the eye; as if the pain hadn't been enough to indicate as much, the injuries to his left side that followed were telltale.

He had wondered, more than once, what Felix's soulmate had felt since his friend contracted the Blight. What sort of suffering have they had to endure? Were they bedridden, too, but with phantom pain, left wondering and worrying at the source? He wondered if, ill as he is, Felix would ever have the chance to meet them. Or if one day their pain would fade as Felix's life does, and they will never have known why. Similarly, he wondered if someday he will feel the very last of his warrior's pain. An arrow, perhaps, or--dramatically--a blade through the heart. The rest will leech away with his life, and Dorian will never have known him. Like it had never been at all. But Dorian will mourn for someone he never knew, yet knew more intimately than anyone--and, selfishly, for the possibility of his own happiness.



In a stuffy old Chantry in a backwater village in Ferelden, Dorian meets the Herald of Andraste. He also meets his soulmate. The Herald is an elf. His soulmate is a Qunari. He is, in fact, the biggest Qunari Dorian has ever seen--and even though this is the very last thing Dorian had expected, Maker, he is glorious. His horns are massive, wide as his great shoulders. Almost reflexively, Dorian lifts a hand and rubs briefly at his neck.

From the moment he sees him, he feels the aches he has come to live with begin to dissipate. No strained shoulders, stiff neck, dull throbbing in his knee. These hurts and more have been a part of him for so long that he doesn't know what it feels like to live in a body that is not constantly fighting and wearing down in a hundred ways. The absence of that pain is shocking, and strangely lonely. But he trades it for the physical presence of the man before him: his warrior, at last, years after he'd given up hope of ever meeting him. He gazes with barely disguised amazement at the patch covering his left eye, the brace on his left leg, the topographic map of scars mottling the silver-gray skin of his bare torso, the marks Dorian had only ever been able to imagine on his own flesh. And--sure enough--the shortened fingers on his left hand, gripping the haft of a massive battleaxe that is settled across equally monumentous shoulders.

"Watch yourself," he growls in a voice so wonderfully deep Dorian feels himself shake with it, "the pretty ones are always the worst." The distrust is obvious in the narrowing of his single eye, in the way he grips his weapon. He is watching closely, but there is no sign of recognition. He doesn't know, Dorian realizes at once. He can't tell.

"Suspicious friends you have here," he makes himself say aloud, suitably upbeat and insouciant, even as his heart sinks, the weight falling leaden into his belly. He has to focus on this conversation. The fate of his country--of the entire world--is at stake, after all.

If soulmates are everything they are supposed to be, then he and this Qunari will be drawn together regardless. And if they are not--well, Dorian supposes, then it's no great loss. He has, after all, so much experience in dealing with pain.