AN: Due to the lack of Dorian and Adaar I went ahead and decided to start a little something. The first of the few drabbles I'm writing to help me cope with the fact that Dragon Age Inquisition (Dorian) is now further away. Pardon my typos, inbox me if you find any.
"You seem different from other qunari." Dorian spoke up as he strolled into the dining room, his fingers streaming though his damp fresh head of hair. He had to conceal his chuckle at the sight of this able bodied qunari before him whom's evidently only true struggle was to simply be able to drink from these small goblets that he could only hold in his fingertips that were clearly intended for human use. Adaar looked up at him.
"You must have met many qunari to make such an assessment, I gather?" he asked as he slammed the goblet down onto the table in defeat. Grunting curses in his language to himself, he reached out and plucked the red clay pot of tea from the table. He ripped the top off and proceeded to drink from it with no care in mind of whom it would upset as he leaned back in his seat. He felt his nerves fade away at the familiar taste of the warm spices and sweet herbs that spread over his tongue, soothing him effortlessly so. Dorian sighed as he watched the Inquisitor drink from the pot he himself he himself had hoped to have gotten a share of. Adaar paid no mind the man's bothered demeanor however.
"I have indeed. With my time in Tevinter it was expected."
"And how pray tell am I different from these Qunari you have encountered?" asked the Inquisitor. Dorian set aside his frustration, taking a seat across from the qunari.
"Well, for one the fact that we sit here speaking to one another is a wonder in itself." he commented as he took one of the sweet breads from the center of the table.
"How so? Because we are not attacking one another due to the origin of ourselves? The Qun is nothing but a former affiliation that was thrust upon me. I trust the same could be said for you." he pointed out and Dorian tilted his head in agreement.
"In part, but you're a mage. I have seen the way the Qun treats their mages. The way they accept their fate with no question. Hands, neck and ankles bound by chains and their mouth sewn shut. Then once you have all that, let us not forget the rod that leashes them, that has them at the whim of any command their Arvaarad sees fit." Dorian explained, bewildered even so as he described it. Incapable of comprehending how such a treatment could be ever exist. "And I am more than certain you know how they willingly choose to end themselves should they ever be separated from their Arvaarad. I cannot understand how they instill such ideas, how they are able to inspire such loyalty into someone they see as nothing but an abomination." Dorian took in a breath, attempting to calm himself as he brushed a hand through his hair, nails scraping across the scalp as though it would help. He looked up at Adaar. "Seeing you here, it is a wonder in itself that you defied. You are some manner of vision in my eyes. I can scarcely believe you are who you are, that you stand before me." he told the Inquisitor with the slightest of smiles twitching at the corner of his lips. Adaar did not comment, merely stared at the mage a moment before looking out to the sight beyond the stained glass doors that were cast open, setting the pot down upon the table.
"Sounds personal."
"How can it not? Magic courses through me, and I bear no ill will for ever possessing such a thing. I am simply unable to comprehend why they are like this and how you were not."
"It is how you were brought about into this world, to believe and think in the fashion that you do. Those born into the Qun, they were brought about in an alternate manner. It goes for the rest of the world as well. It is result of varied opinions." he spoke, taking the clay pot in hand once more. "As for myself. I am a different matter entirely." he stated as he raised the pot to his lips.
Dorian gave no answer initially, considering the Inquisitor's words. There would always be varied beliefs and the world was not something so easily persuaded. Dorian shook his head looking down at the sweet bread in his hands. A particular memory wandered into his mind as he felt the sugar leaving powdered residue on his fingers. "I was a young boy when I witnessed it for the first time. I was 13 or 14 at the time and Tevinter was keen to taking prisoners, and there was one rare occasion where they managed to capture one Saarebas alive from the group that had attacked us upon travel, they even manged to keep the rod that leashed him intact. My mentor was a good woman, not something common where I am from. She was kind to the qunari, but he would have none of it. He refused to eat anything she gave him, any aid she attempted to offer." Dorian frowned, clenching is jaw as he continued. "I remember watching at him at times as he stared off into the distance, like a…a statue. This hollow shell of the being that could have been. When no release was had, she awoke one morning and found him dead in his tent, he'd eaten the dirt until he chocked on it." he spoke lowly, the image of the qunari turned on his side with claw marks in the ground from where it had scooped from, his face powdered in pale dirt and his mouth hung wide open with mounds of mud trickling out. Dorian put the sweet roll back into the pile where he'd taken it from.
"Such is their way." he stated as he moved the pot of tea in front of Dorian. Adaar watched as Dorian made not attempt for it, evidently wounded by the memory playing out in his mind as if for the first time. Dorian looked up at him, shaking his head.
"It does not make it just."
"And you think that the Tevinter is just?" he snapped and Dorian looked like he'd been struck across the face. Baffled and stunned by the abrupt comment.
"I never said that." he nearly exclaimed, appalled by the Inquisitor's words.
"You certainly believe your views to be superior to Vivienne's concerning The Circle." he countered. Dorian glared back at the Inquisitor.
"What? Now you're defending those that would treat you like a monstrosity?" Dorian spat. Adaar laughed, his rich bellowing voice echoed throughout the halls.
"I defend nothing." he grinned crudely. Adaar then rose from his seat and moved around the end of the table, their gaze locked and it gave Dorian thrills of distress. He was uncertain what the qunari intended and he did not know whether to flee or steel himself for some manner of a physical fight. All this went back and forth through his mind as he instead remained seated and chose to act on none of what his mind suggested.
The qunari's focus was nothing else, his eyes strong and relentless in all it's violet glory. Adaar approached him, towering over the mage looking up at him with an irrational fear shining in his gaze. Adaar then took a seat at the edge of the table, his legs upon the seat beside Dorian. Adaar averted his stare then as he turned to hike up the end of sleeve that belonged to his left arm followed by the right. Carefully then he proceeded to remove the cloth bandaging around each wrist. He turned them out for the necromancer to see. Dorian's eyes widened at the sight, the marred skin was scabbed and scarred beyond the healing capabilities of one's own body. It had been the heavy leather guards bound him and rubbed and scrapped him repeatedly for years. Dorian looked up at him as concerned as one could only assume, unable to speak.
Adaar silently then began to undo the top three claps of his tunic and revealed the same deep violet bruises that had apparently never faded around his neck from the leash. His eyes traced the scars that spread across his chest in varying directions and patterns. When Dorian faced his friend once more he was then able to notice the deep punctures around the qunari's lips from where his mouth had been sewn. The urging desire to reach out, to be able to somehow mend what had been done to him was a need that pained Dorian in more ways than he could have ever imagined.
Adaar then spoke, "The world overall believes their way is just but what they fail to realize is that no one is right. No one is wrong. We are all a medium of what should be. I do not defend the Qun, I do not defend the Tevinter, and I do not defend The Circle. I defend a world that stands before a precipice of change. The old ways will die." he stated, his violet stare piercing through Dorian. "Do not believe that everything I do or have done has simply been for the world to return to their old ways. They will live in the new world or die in their old one. A new dawn is rising and I will bear witness to the evolution that is to come or perish in my attempt to do so. Whichever fate I may bear." he stated and he could see in Dorian's eyes the sudden need to speak but he did not permit him. "I know how I must sound. A conqueror? Perhaps I am in a sense. I may be no better than the Arishok whom attempted to thrust his ways of the world upon Kirkwall but I, truest to my core believe my intentions are just. You know this, otherwise you would not follow me." he told him and Dorian said nothing, absorbing Adaar's words. The qunari slid off the table, taking the pot with him as he returned to his chambers to leave Dorian to his thoughts.
As Dorian considered, he felt at a loss however. How the conversation had all began, he'd never intended it to take such a turn. Adaar was clearly incapable of handling a simple compliment…