Disclaimer: I own none of the recognized characters. I am merely borrowing them to satisfy my muse

Chapter 13

The next time she awoke, CJ felt immensely better. The pain was still there, but it had all but faded to a slight ache.

"I am never doing that again." She muttered.

"Shoving your arm down a dragon's throat generally isn't the recommended method to kill one anyways." She opened one eye to see Iron Bull sitting beside her bed.

"I didn't shove my arm down its throat." She retorted.

"No? Then how'd you end up with a tooth through your arm?"

"My armor may have gotten caught on its tooth when I chucked the grenade down its throat. And apparently when you throw a grenade down a dragon's throat, it closes its mouth on reflex."

"Your arm was stuck in a dragon's mouth when a grenade exploded?" Iron Bull questioned.

"No. I yanked it out. With the tooth. I was four steps away when it exploded."

"Fighter," CJ looked at him. "You are either very brave or very stupid." She smiled.

"I like to think it's a healthy mixture of both, thank you very much." He laughed. But then the laughter died from his face as his eye flicked over her body.

CJ's smile died as well. In that glance, she knew. She knew that he knew about the scars. He'd seen them. He was meeting her eyes again. He wasn't going to bring it up if she didn't.

"Who all saw them?" She finally asked, not looking away from him.

"Most of the chargers. Cole. Me." Iron Bull ticked off each one on his fingers. "Talon. And Varric. But those last two only because they wouldn't stay out of the room when Stitches was trying to check your wounds when we got back to Skyhold." Her face colored in embarrassment. "Krem and Talon told us what happened. How you got them."

She couldn't meet his gaze anymore. She sat up, running a hand through her hair.

"I'm going to have a word with those two. Maybe something that involves knives. And dismemberment."

"You can't kill 'em Fighter."

"Who said anything about killing? You can dismember someone without killing them." She retorted. "I think I'll take Talon's ear. And Krem's big toes."

"His big toes?"

"He won't be able to balance." She answered simply.

"You've thought about this before, haven't you?"

She shrugged.

"Do you randomly think about which body parts you'd chop off your companions?" He questioned. She shrugged again.

"You think about how you'd kill people." She answered. "I think about how I'd maim them. Killing is final. You can't come back from death. Maiming? That's something you live with for the rest of your life. And I only do it when they're being particularly annoying."

"Remind me not to mess with you, fighter." Iron Bull laughed. "You've got an evil streak in you."

"We all do." She said. "Some just choose to act on it."

"All right." He agreed. "Then I hope I never give you cause to act on it."

They fell silent, Iron Bull watching CJ, CJ staring at her hands. She was barefoot, she could feel that beneath the blanket. CJ pushed the blanket off and stared at her feet. The crisscross of scars clear to her.

"What were they trying to get from you?" Iron Bull asked.

"They wanted to break me. Wanted me to beg for them to stop." She didn't react as Iron Bull moved to sit on her bed, pulling one of her feet into his lap. He stared at the scars, as if inspecting them for any sign of infection. He stared tracing them, which tickled.

"Six months." He said. "Krem said they had you for six months. You handled it for six months?"

"Yes."

"What happened to the bastards who did this to you?"

"I killed them."

"How many total?"

"The band that abducted us was made up of ten men."

"And you killed them all?"

"I did. The two bastards who scarred me first. Then the others."

"How?"

"Cut through my bonds with a jagged rock. When one bastard came in the middle of the night, drunk, I took his knife and slit his throat. All of them."

"Ten mercenaries?" Iron Bull let out an impressed whistle. "You'd just been tortured for six months, and you still killed ten mercenaries without getting killed in the process?"

"Obviously I survived." She answered. He was still tracing the scars on her foot. "That tickles, you know."

"Oh does it?" He grinned and lightened his touch. She squirmed, pulling her foot away.

"Yes, it does!"

"What about your other foot?" He reached for her, and CJ tried moving away. But she was still slow after being unconscious for a week. He easily caught her foot, pulling her closer and trapping her leg in a hold.

"Don't!" She laughed as he began to tickle her. "Bull! Knock it off!"

"No!" She kicked at him, but he just trapped her other leg and began tickling both feet. She was now half in his lap, twisting, trying to escape him.

She tried pulling his arm away, but that only resulted in him trapping her arm too.

"This is very unfair!" She exclaimed, red-faced and gasping for air. The way he had her held, she was pretty much immobilized, held against him.

"The enemy won't fight fair, remember?" He released her only to change hold, now their faces were inches apart.

"Are you my enemy?" She asked.

He searched her face. "I don't want to be." He leaned down. "I very much don't want to be your enemy."

"What do you want to be?" The question was out before she could stop it. He leaned even closer. Their lips were mere centimeters apart as he stopped and released her. She understood almost immediately. The next move was hers and hers alone. Whatever she wanted, he'd go with.

"He's supposed to be your nurse." A voice sounded out. "Not trying to seduce you." CJ pushed Iron Bull away, her face turning a deep red as she saw Krem and Talon standing in the door, looking very amused.

"If anyone was being a seducer, it was totally fighter." Bull said, scowling at the men.

"How are you feeling, CJ?" Talon asked as she fought to keep her face even.

"Fine." She quickly stood up, almost falling if Bull hadn't caught her.

"Easy, fighter." He said, smiling at her.

"If you're up to it, I know a little boy who is very eager to see you." Talon said.

"I'm up for it. Just let me get dressed." She kicked them all out of her room. As she got dressed, she thought about Iron Bull. He knew about the scars, and he wasn't disgusted by them. He didn't think less of her for them. If Talon and Krem hadn't interrupted them, they might have kissed. CJ honestly didn't know what she would have done, closed the distance between them or widen it. Until she could answer that question, it was going to bother her.