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Thel found his boyfriend in one of the Shadow Dragon hideouts.
The other man was sitting by one of the tables, a book open in front of him. He did not notice Thel’s steps as he came over, and for a moment, Thel could not help himself.
He wrapped his arms around the other man. “Got you!”
He noticed Rogelen flinch, before the man looked up. “Thel?”
“No. Andraste herself,” Thel replied.
“Right.” Rogelen turned his head as much as he could to look at him. “Don’t startle me like that.”
“I am just keeping you on your toes,” Thel said.
He pulled one of the stools over and set down next to the elf. “What have you been reading?”
“It is…” Rogelen closed the book – though keeping one of his fingers in the place where he had last been reading.
The book was not really a tome. It was a bit longer and wider, but did not seem to have more than maybe a hundred and fifty pages. It was bound in blue leather, with the Tevinter script on the spine saying: “Dalish Traditions – A Summary by Felipus Gorassum”.
“Julius lent it to me,” Rogelen said.
“Ah.” Admittedly, Thel was not fully sure what to say.
Rogelen was an elf, of course, but he was not Dalish. He had been born to slaves in Tevinter. And he had been sold to the Vastalen household in Minrathous when he had been six. To this day, the Dragons had not managed to find his parents. Maybe they were already dead. Or maybe they had just been sold who knew where to.
“It is a Vint book,” Thel noted.
“Yeah. It does make me wonder, you know?”
“Wonder what?”
Rogelen shrugged. “Just… I mean. A lot of it is probably bullshit. Because they want the Dalish to be these…” He stopped in his sentence, flinching.
Thel did understand it though.
According to general Tevintan education on those topics, of course, everyone outside of Tevinter was a savage either way. Those Fereldens with their dogs, and those Orlaisians who ate frogs or something. The people in Nevarra did not burn their dead. The Free Marches did not have a well-organized government. And Antiva was basically run by assassins. Most people would forget about the Andefels and Rivain most of the time.
But of course nobody was quite as savage – according to the Vints – as the qunari. Only the Dalish came close.
“I really wish I could go to one of the tribes,” Rogelen noted.
“I have heard that they do not like outsiders, though.”
“I mean… I am an elf,” his partner said.
“Sure,” Thel muttered. “But I mean…” He was not even sure how to say it. “You are not Dalish.”
Rogelen sighed at this. He opened the book up once more. There was an illustration of one of those boats on it. Thel had heard about them. The Dalish originally had those boats that were enchanted to float somehow. But these days they were often just on wheels, being drawn by some sort of animal.
“I mean, I could take you,” he said. “Not to the Dalish I mean, but out into the forests. We… I don’t know. Maybe we could just spend some time out there.” He did not like the city either way.
“Maybe.” Rogelen seemed to consider it. “Do you think I could even leave the city – and come back?”
Thel shrugged. “I still have the family seal. They will just… You know. They will assume you are just…” He pursed his lips.
Of course Rogelen understood. “I guess.”
Thel could not help but notice how the other man was now evading his gaze.
He guessed it was understandable.
Because nothing could ever remove this fact. That Thel’s family had owned slaves. Well, no. They were still owning slaves. It was just that Thel did no longer consider himself as part of them – as part of the family. But they owned slaves. There were still slaves waiting on his parents. On his sister. On all those other stupid relatives who had only ever cared about the family name, rather than anything good or moral.
Rogelen’s eyes were taking in the lines of text to accompany the picture, but then he shifted his attention back to Thel. “I guess I will finish this later.” He ran his fingers over Thel’s arm. “Do you want to get some fresh air?”
Thel paused for a moment, but then he nodded. He understood quite well what the other man wanted. And it beat sitting here and feeling guilty.
The harbor down in Dock Town smelled bad on a good day, but as the temperature was getting warmer, the scent of rotting sea weed and old fish was overwhelming in the afternoon.
Thel did not dare to take Rogelen’s hand. Not even down here, where most people were poor and had better things to do than to worry about a human being close with an elf.
Their hands touched each other from time to time, as they were walking by each other’s side, heading for one of the caves in the lower port area.
“You know that I do not hold it against you, right?” Rogelen asked.
Again Thel just shrugged. Because the fact of the matter was, that it did not matter. He was guilty of it in one way or another. He had lived with his family for so long, and never once had he even considered what the slaves might feel about it.
Not until Dorian had returned from the Inquisition.
“I mean it,” Rogelen said, when Thel stayed silent.
“I know,” he replied. “I just…” Thel did not look at the elf, just as he evaded the gazes of the other people who moved by them in the street. “I was a part of that. I am. In a way. You know? Right now.”
“You are with the Dragons.” Rogelen did keep his voice down. “You have freed me.”
Thel once more was silent. He accelerated his pace to try and get out of the crowded area.
He did not want to talk about it here. Not where other people were. Not right here in the middle of Minrathous.
And that was bad as well, wasn’t it? How he was a coward still.
He managed to balance over the side of one of the fishing boats, to take a shortcut to the pebble beach nearby.
He could hear Rogelen’s steps following him. But only when the two of them rounded the corner of one of the larger rocks on the beach, and Thel slipped through one of the cracks in the cliffs did he feel like relaxing.
He spent the last three minutes climbing up a hidden slope, before finding his way into one of the coves that had borrowed all through the cliffs surrounding the port of Minrathous.
“You are being evasive,” Rogelen noted, as he finally pulled himself into the cave as well.
Thel was sitting near another crack now. Light was falling in from the outside, though it was still rather dusky inside. “I am just… I hate it. I hate being a fucking Vint,” Thel muttered.
“It is not really your fault, though. Being born a Vint,” Rogelen said.
“What does it matter?” Thel still evaded the other man’s gaze. “I still am… the son of my family.”
Rogelen sighed, and remained silent.
It was one of those tense silences. Not awkward. Just tense. It felt like there was a blade hanging between them. And maybe this blade was already ready to strike.
“What would you have rather been born as?” Rogelen finally asked.
Thel shrugged once more. “I don’t know. A cat, maybe? Or a bird.”
“You are afraid of heights,” Rogelen noted.
“I assume if I was born a bird I would not be,” Thel muttered.
He looked at the hands in his own lap. He was gripping the fabric of his trousers, because he did not know what to do with them – his hands that was.
He did not dare to look at Rogelen.
“You know you are being unfair,” the elf said.
“What?” Irritation sparked up in Thel’s mind, as he looked over to Rogelen for just a moment.
“What do you even want me to say? That I feel bad for you being born…” Rogelen gestured with his hand rather than saying it. Though it was not as if Thel did not understand.
“No. I just…”
“You want to feel sorry?”
“I am not feeling sorry,” Thel said. “I just… I hate. I hate it. Being this. Being me. Being… here.”
“So, what you are saying is that you just want to leave and forget about the things happening here?”
Thel glared at the other man. “You are being unfair.”
“You are being evasive,” Rogelen countered.
Thel sighed. “I just… I do not want to flee. I just want to… Burn it down. Burn it all down. Minrathous. Tevinter. The whole fucking world.”
“With everyone in it?”
“I don’t…” Thel bit his lips. “Maybe.”
“Including yourself?”
“Yeah.”
“Including me?”
Thel looked at him once more, only to evade his gaze after a split second.
He was not even sure why they were talking like this now.
He had wanted to go here, because he had wanted some privacy that the Shadow Dragon hideout would never offer. He had wanted to go here too because there were no other people around. And now they were… What? Arguing?
“I just wished the world could be different,” Thel muttered. “I mean, even with the Shadow Dragons. We free single slaves. But no matter how many we free, there is thousands here in Tevinter. And that is just Tevinter. I mean, the other places have some slaves too, right? And like… No matter who we free, there is some asshole fucking slavers out there, who will just take other people and then…”
“But it still makes a difference,” Rogelen said. “It makes a difference to the people you free.”
“I know. But I just…” Thel was still looking at his hands.
The truth was, maybe, that in a way he was also somewhat jealous of it. Of Rogelen as an elf. Rogelen was the son of slaves, sure. But he was an elf. So he could at least imagine some ancestors who might have been some noble Dalish, who had some deeper connection to the Dalish history. Something like that.
Thel knew his ancestors. He had been forced to learn their names five generations back. He knew the most important ones ten generations back as well. The people who were remembered.
And they had been shitty folks. Slavers. Warmongers. People who exploited others. Assholes.
There was no mystery. Only certainty. Certainty that he was descended from scum.
“I really do not know how to talk to you some days,” Rogelen muttered, as the silence became dangerous once more.
“I know,” Thel replied.
“I do want to talk to you, though.” Now Rogelen’s voice was softer.
He paused for a moment, but then extended his hand to hold Thel’s own. “You just make it hard.”
“I…” Thel looked at the fingers in his own. Rogelen’s skin was a good bit lighter than his own. “Sometimes I just wish that whatever went wrong with the world… I don’t know. I wish the elves were free, and that Tevinter was not Tevinter, and…” He shook his head.
“One day Tevinter might fall,” Rogelen noted.
“Yeah, maybe.” Thel closed his eyes, and then he took a deep breath – even though that meant smelling the scent of old ocean water even more. “I am sorry for being a dick.”
“You could maybe try not to be a dick all the time,” Rogelen said.
“I honestly do not know why you’d even put up with me.”
“Because when you are not a dick, you can be sweet.”
Thel chuckled, though it was a humorless chuckle in the end. He caressed the back of Rogelen’s hand with his thumb, before leaning over and against the other man. “I do still kind of want to leave for a while. To go out, hunt.”
“Do you really think that if you took me nobody would…” Once again Rogelen stopped in the middle of the sentence.
“I mean… I do not know for certain,” Thel whispered. “But from my experience… The guards never ask too many questions. Not if you have a family name.”
These words seemed to rattle something inside of Rogelen, as he now was the one to sigh. “I guess. Yes. Maybe then… Maybe we can leave.”
Thel nodded. “I… I’m gonna ask about it. I’m gonna try.”
