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Dorian’s in his typical spot among the bookshelves when the Champion of Kirkwall finds him. She doesn’t mask her approach at all, boots deliberately heavy on the stone floor, so he turns to her, at ease.
Her cropped hair reminds him for a moment—like it had when he first saw her—of Cassandra. But Hawke is far taller—her impressive height means she towers among almost any group—and far more muscular. Cassandra enters battles composed and serious. Hawke enters battles with a good bit of yelling and a vicious grin. She reminds him a bit of Iron Bull, in that sense, Dorian thinks to himself with fondness.
Dorian would be on edge about the greatsword strapped to her back if she did not take it everywhere she went. He hopes, if she chooses to stay with them in Skyhold, that she’ll make fast friends. She’ll need more than just Varric if she’s to feel at ease here, Dorian knows. She’ll need to trust everyone to have her back if she’s going to relax enough to leave her weapon in her room. As it is, he takes in her battle-ready appearance unfazed and offers her a small smile.
“Madame Hawke,” Dorian says.
“Just Hawke is fine,” she says. “Thanks for the assist at Adamant.”
“Anything the Inquisitor needs of me,” Dorian says. “No problem helping the Champion of Kirkwall, either.”
“Are you busy?” Hawke says.
Dorian slides the book he’d been holding back on the bookshelf. Hawke eyes it, a bit of curiosity in there somewhere.
“Not so busy I can’t chat with a new friend,” Dorian says. Then, he offers, “It’s a book on Tevinter. Old legends. I’m working on Corypheus’s true identity. Or any further weaknesses, really.”
“Dorian of Tevinter,” Hawke says.
“Dorian Pavus of Tevinter,” Dorian says. “At your service.”
Hawke hums thoughtfully. Her eyes haven’t left Dorian this whole time, and Dorian tries not to become unsettled.
“You ever know a guy named Danarius?”
Dorian’s face crinkles automatically at hearing that name, and at the same time, warning horns are sounding off inside his skull. Hawke’s amiable demeanor hasn’t changed—no braced stance, no negativity in her tone—but there is something incredibly important about this question that Dorian is missing. He scrambles to think of why this matters while trying to form a coherent reply.
“I only met him a few times,” Dorian says, and it’s the truth. He allows a bit of bitterness and revulsion to cross his face. “His parties weren’t my type of thing.”
Hawke hums again.
“What were they like?”
“What?” Dorian says.
“Danarius’s parties,” Hawke says.
Dorian doesn’t feel like he has a steady grasp on this conversation at all. His neck prickles with goosebumps.
“Not really my thing,” Dorian says again. “Danarius was—“
Dorian had been going to say wasteful. Or inefficient. Something indicative of how he threw slaves’ lives away in brutal fighting matches like he had coin to burn. There was also one particular party that had made Danarius’s proclivities quite clear, and while Dorian had, by then, figured out his attraction to men, he‘d felt his stomach turn seeing the slaves Danarius passed around to his guests like party favors. Even if Dorian had been wanting, the unnecessary cruelty of some of the guests with those slaves had been repulsive. The violent nature of some of the very open groping would have killed Dorian’s mood immediately had he been in one.
It was the last party of Danarius’s that Dorian had attended. Dorian had run into him a few times more at other events, magic-related and otherwise, but making nice for politics’ sake didn’t interest Dorian. He had done his best to avoid Danarius and the fascinating but unsettling lyrium-lined bodyguard slave that followed him everywhere.
“—unpleasant,” Dorian says, thinking of the parties. He thinks, too, of the bodyguard, and how he’d itched to study those lines of lyrium, how he’s wondered what it would’ve taken to make that happen. How many failed attempts it took with other slaves before that final successful one. It had been merely a scientific curiosity, back then. Scientific and magical curiosity. A waste of lives, would’ve been his first thought. The immediate counter-argument in his head would’ve been, Was it a waste of lives if the end result is so brilliantly successful? And it had been, Dorian knows. It had been successful. He’d seen the bodyguard slave fight during the first two parties he’d attended. Danarius’s favorite way to end the night. A grand finale. The fist punching through a chest and ripping its heart out. And then, Danarius and the bodyguard at the third party—at the time, Dorian took in how Danarius clearly favored this slave above all others. Now, in hindsight, Dorian identifies the discomfort he’d had at witnessing it, that manner of attention to a “favorite” becoming nauseating even as a memory.
“He was unpleasant,” Dorian repeats, “And cruel.”
Hawke hums again.
“May I ask why you’re asking?” Dorian says.
The warning horns had quieted in Dorian’s head, but he hadn’t noticed until they blared again now. Dorian is acutely aware of the greatsword at Hawke’s back, and how he and Hawke are in the library alone.
“I just wanted to know,” Hawke says.
“Know what?” Dorian asks. Dread curdles in his stomach.
“Know you,” Hawke says.
In any other context, it could’ve been flirtatious. Dorian tries to channel that now.
“Like what you see?” he says.
“I haven’t decided yet,” Hawke says. She watches him for another heavy moment. Then, “How many of these books have you read already?”
Dorian answers Hawke’s further questions about the books with ease, reflecting as well as he can every bit of friendliness that Hawke slips back into like it’s a well-worn cloak. She even chuckles at one of his jokes—a low rumble that makes her shoulders shake a little, like mountains in an earthquake.
Still, when she leaves, Dorian exhales shakily, relief clouding his mind and making him sway on his feet. What was that? That horrible, ominous feeling, a looming menace, a heavy threat. Dorian doesn’t know how Hawke managed it, or why, but every string of Dorian’s body thrummed with tension under her weighty stare. He’d been preparing to die, he thinks. That greatsword—
Dorian wonders if he’ll ever know what brought that conversation on. He has the sinking feeling that it’s another one of those questions that keep piling up in his lifetime without answers.