"Now don't let my current situation fool you," began Dahj, words thickly coated in bittersweet sarcasm. "My life hasn't always been this perfect."

"I was orphaned at a young age. Can't really recall anything about my parents except that one day they left and never came back. From then on, I spent most of my adorable years wandering from village to village. No matter how huggably cute I was… no one seemed to want to take me in. Everyone had their own problems and hardships to deal with. Eventually I made my way to Orgrimmar and was placed at the orphanage there. I was the only tauren and obviously hadn't had much interaction with orcs or trolls before."

He took a deep breath here, but no words came forth, the room plummeting into an uncomfortable silence. Kishka brushed stray strands of ebony hair from her face to hide her awkwardness and to veil her regret in having asked the tauren something so personal in the first place. And then, Dahj sneezed.

"Sorry," he apologized casually. "Dust."

Kishka's teeth clamped down on her tongue, feeling foolish for being tricked into having sympathy for Dahj twice now. She was determined not to let there be a third.

"Anyway, it was very lonely, yadda' yadda'," continued Dahj, "Taja'ki came shortly after my arrival. She was loud, obnoxious, and when provoked even in the slightest, she would turn into a wild beast and attack without mercy. In short, she was like every other woman except instead of knocking a guy out with her looks, she literally knocked 'em out with her fists or whatever else she could get a hold of. Probably one of the most frightening combinations I've ever seen in my life: a girl who could fight like a guy."

The priestess could see that Dahj wasn't smiling, but the humor in his tone was unmistakable, although it seemed as if he were trying to hide this sentimentality.

"And yet… when she wasn't ripping people's throats out with her bare teeth, Taji was rather charming in a way. Always grinning like she could take on the world, saying whatever she pleased, laughing so lightheartedly, going on about her day as if only that moment mattered and she was going to live it to its fullest. She's just that kind of person. Draws people in like a magnet."

Chuckling under his breath, Dahj snorted softly, adding, "That's probably why whereas everyone at the orphanage hated me… they all loved Taji."

Sucking in a lungful of air, the tauren smirked despite himself.

"Although I wouldn't admit it to her now, I've always been jealous about that aspect of her personality; it's a bit relieving to also know that she's dumb as a rock. In the beginning, I completely ignored her. At the orphanage, I mostly spent time with myself, reading anything I could get my hands on. That's when I discovered my fascination with alchemy and chemicals. I taught myself many languages, just so I could discover the secrets locked away in the text."

Placing her elbows on the table, Kishka hunched forward slightly, openly intrigued by both the insightful details of his story and the casual approach to his storytelling.

"I didn't have any friends… But I was content. Or so I naively thought. I used to get beat up every so often by some bullies at the orphanage."

Here, Dahj shrugged nonchalantly, hiding a smirk. "Probably jealous of my winning personality and friendly demeanor."

The priestess's eyes drifted skyward and back. Yeah, right. I barely know you and I can understand why they'd have the sudden urge to hurt you, she thought dryly to herself.

"It was during one of these times that Taji," he continued, "who had never really paid me much mind passed by and immediately jumped in and beat the snot out of them. She was always like that though, stepping up to be the savior, the heroine. That's why so many kids looked up to her. And ya' know the first thing she says to me?

'For someone so smart, you sure get beat up a lot.'

"And, of course, with my gentlemanly charm, I replied something along the lines of, 'And for someone so ugly, you sure do talk a lot. Someone as ugly as you should just die now; save yourself the shame and save me the trouble of scrubbing my eyes with sandpaper to try and salvage what's left of my vision.'

He couldn't help but smile at this, completely unaware of Kishka's disapproving head shake.

"I had fully expected her to mess me up so bad that I wouldn't recognize me… but instead, she merely laughed and walked away. After that, she would approach me sometimes while I was reading, asking questions about what was in the books and such. She also kept the bullies from picking on me, though I never asked nor thanked her."

"I wasn't very nice to her in the beginning," he mused, reflectively, "but she kept laughing and kept coming back until it was just so natural I couldn't remember it being any different.

"One day, she asked me to teach her to read. After thinking a bit, I agreed, only if she agreed to teach me how to fight. And when we were finally old enough to leave the orphanage, we left together. We had nothing of our own, no money, no place to call home… yet that was okay. We had each other. Having that was better than nothing. We worked odd jobs around the city; nothing glamorous and we even did some things we weren't proud of just for a bite to eat or a warm bed for the night. But we managed to save up enough money to get the supplies to build this house."

For the first time since he began his story, Dahj opened his eyes, peering down his snout at Kishka.

"It may be small… but it was the first real home Taji and I had since the orphanage. And we made it with our own hard work, something that we could proudly say that we earned. Even though neither of us has been here for some time, this house means a lot to her and I. Probably more than either of us would willingly admit."

Stretching loudly with a muffled yawn, Dahj noted how the draenei was hanging onto his every word, practically leaning across the table in her blatant display of interest.

"Satisfied?" Dahj asked, teasingly.

Startled but still gripped with insatiable curiosity, Kishka shook her head, somewhat upset that he would cut his story short just when it was getting good.

"Not yet. Continue on."

Dahj snickered, much to Kishka's annoyance. "Fascinating, aren't I?"

"Hardly. There's nothing else to do to pass the time."

"You're a horrible liar. I bet while I was telling my story, you were thinking that you could probably fall for a suave guy like me, eh?"

This prompted a frown from the draenei. "Are you even vaguely aware how infuriating you are?"

Whereas Kishka had expected another glib comment, a pleasant smiled softened his featured and he replied, good-naturedly, "I have some idea. Makes for a nice defense though."

The priestess blinked. "Defense against what?"

But by then, Dahj had already gotten comfortable again, paying no mind to the woman's inquiry and starting his story where he had left off.

"Taji and I would always visit the orphanage in our free time. They were, after all, the only family we knew. One night as we were walking back home from the orphanage, we saw something we shouldn't have seen. Some guys selling something they shouldn't. They advanced on us, but Taji was not about to let us both die a senseless death in some darkened alleyway. She might have killed them had I not been there to stop her.

"Curious as always, I took a quick look at the stuff the guy was trying to sell. Later, I found out it was some kind of drug, but I didn't know at the time. I made some crude comment about a blind, one handed gnome could have mixed the stuff better and we left. We thought that was the end of it. Of course they found out where we worked, where our likely hangouts were and waited for us. However, it wasn't for revenge. It was a job offer. After assessing us, they thought they could use Taji's fighting skills and my intelligence."

Dahj paused here, stealing a glance at Kishka with a hooded gaze. Her face was uncharacteristically neutral, and she didn't say a word. He had half expected her to say something in indignant rage, to go off on some saccharin-heavy, moral soapbox speech until he gagged on his own conscience… yet she remained silent, so he continued on.

"Taji and I had been barely scraping by a living, and so together, we decided to take the job. We did small stuff at first, but as our jobs became more and more involved, we started to make a name for ourselves. I began talking with the guys who made the drugs and worked with them to make a better, more effective product and Taji made sure to keep other drug gangs in their place. Taj and Dahj was soon a common phrase on the streets for addicts and dealers alike.

"Eventually, our fame reached the drug lord, Rai'zen. We both knew his name well; tales of his ruthless business practices and his sick fascination with the pain and suffering of others was well known. When we went before him, he said that he saw our potential and decided we needed teachers.

"He set Taji up with a Forsaken priest named Korot so that she could better learn the trade and it's intricacies from a vet and so he could harness her natural charm and aggression effectively. I was sent to work under a goblin named Flask, who taught me more about alchemy than I ever thought possible. And when I had learned all I could, I began making drugs for Rai'zen."

Dahj's voice grew softer, so much so that Kishka began to wonder if he was telling the story for her sake, or his.

"However, after awhile… I began to have issues with my conscience. And I tried to run. You saw the results. As I had expected, Taji was the one Rai'zen assigned to kill me. He knew that my death would be that much more agonizing if it were Taji who did the deed."

Kishka nearly took a dive to the ground as the tauren suddenly let out a bark of laughter, harsh and short lived.

"But… she didn't kill me," he murmured, almost disbelieving. "Taji is just so many kinds of dumb, I can't even begin to start listing them off. Such a pain… protecting me, as always, even at her own expense."

"So… you wanted her to kill you?" asked Kishka, speaking up after her long silence.

With a weary grunt, Dahj forced himself upright, resting his elbows on the table and drawing the draenei's gaze to his. Kishka had been attempting to avoid his eyes, unsure of what to think of him now, but found herself unable to keep from being pulled in by the melancholic shadow hidden in his smile.

"Perhaps," he confessed, half-smirking. "I can't deny that it would have been easier for the both of us if she had."

Kishka didn't like his tone, how his words seemed to bypass her altogether and redirect themselves back to Dahj as an airborne poison that he siphoned gladly. Feeling a lump of disgust and pity meshed together in her throat at the tauren's subtle self-pitying display, Kishka stood, planting her hands firmly on the table.

"You're pathetic," said Kishka, admitting to herself that this sudden onset of anger was irrational, but couldn't convince herself to be concerned about such frivolous things like 'having a reason' at the moment.

"You know, your confession of love leaves something to be desired," Dahj taunted, flashing the draenei a Cheshire grin from across the table.

"If I had known that you wanted to die so badly, I would have just left you for the scavengers where I found you," Kishka seethed, infuriated at Dahj for brushing the subject aside with a pathetic attempt at a joke. "I feel like a fool now. If you're sorry for the things you've done in your past, you should know that dying is the coward's way out. You've put your wicked ways behind you… isn't that enough?"

Dahj considered this… for about three seconds.

"You're surprisingly uncute when you're angry. It wouldn't hurt if you at least pretended to have some feminine sensuality. I'm finding it a tad difficult to pay you any attention; normally its pretty women who yell at me for no reason. I usually don't mind 'cause making up after the argument is the best part… but the longer you continue to screech at me, the more I begin to suspect that this will not end with us both extremely satisfied and asleep."

Not to be deterred, the priestess spat, "Do you always have to reply with a humorless joke? Why can't you answer a straight question?"

"Okay, fair enough," Dahj admitted with a grudging nod. "I can't answer a straight question and you haven't realized that I've been staring down your robes since you stood up. We both have faults. Some big, and some really, really, really small…"

Unable to control the red heat enflaming her cheeks, Kishka removed her hands from the table and hastily stood up straight as physically possible, more embarrassed than mad.

"Don't worry your tentacled head over it, I didn't see anything," Dahj assured, although thoroughly amused at her reaction. "I'd need to get a little closer and squint a lot harder for that. Just sit down. If we're going to continue pretending that we like each other while we wait, you might as well do it comfortably."

Reluctantly, the priestess did as suggested, but not before asking, "What do you mean? Why are we waiting?"

"Well, because Taji might really kill me this time if she came all the way out here and I had already left."

Kishka gave the tauren an odd look. "How do you know she's coming here?"

Dahj returned the look with a sly grin, shrugging noncommittally at the question. "Because she's Taji. She probably has a few loose ends to tie up, but she'll be here. No matter what the situation, she just has to play the heroine and rushes to save the day. The only downside to that is she's entirely too stupid to know when it's beneficial to save her friends and when it's better to save herself. Sometimes her loyalty acts more against her than for her. You'll see what I mean when she gets here."

"I can hardly wait," Kishka sighed, mentally exhausted. She made the mistake of letting silence creep in on the two of them, giving Dahj the wordless prod to say something to break the stillness.

"So… wanna' kiss and make up now?"

"No," the woman flatly replied. "You know, a few hours in your company is more than enough to make any woman completely turned off of men."

This stone cold statement received the opposite reaction than anticipated as Dahj flooded the room with boisterous laughter.

"I wouldn't say that around Taji if I were you," he managed to gasp, attempting to refill his lungs with air.

"What?"

"Nothing. You and Taji are going to get along better than you know."