Tales of a Child Eternal [NSFW]

[Tethras Clan]

"Too many words can be just as absent of communication as too few," Varric counters. "And... that's not entirely true. At least..." The dwarf hesitates, weighing loyalties for a moment. Merrill would be fine, if it helps Clan. "A bit ago, Zevran came to me, asking for help with finding out how you can identify self-harm behavior. And how to help someone with that addiction. It's not the same as what you do, the motivations, the causes, are different but... evidently, she used to cut and was toying with starting again."

[Helene Dakesh]

Helene rocks in silence for a few moments, head lowered, thinking about this. Finally, when they do speak, their voice is softer, but calmer: "Merrill is sweet. Well loved. Good. Obedient. It is easy to forget she is... different. This one is bad. This one cannot fit into society. This one is the frightening kind of different. Defective."

[Tethras Clan]

"You're well loved. Good. Not so much obedient as dutiful. And less sweet but more earnest." Varric frowns. "And bother society, you fit fine with us."

[Helene Dakesh]

"This one is not good," they whisper, looking away. "This one is defective."

[Tethras Clan]

"It's hard to self-evaluate." He pats their hand softly. "So it's understandable that you'd be wrong there."

[Helene Dakesh]

"Not... not self-evaluation," they murmur, hanging their head.

[Tethras Clan]

"You mean the fools at that Draslina place?" Varric rolls his eyes. "Please. I think we can take Andra and Astea's word as a bit more definitive than theirs."

[Helene Dakesh]

"Worthy," they say, and the word is clearly soothing. "Worthy. Worthy." 

A deep breath. "Defective. But worthy. Clan."

[Tethras Clan]

Varric clucks his tongue. "I still say that defective has too many negative connotations to be accurate."

[Helene Dakesh]

"Deserved," they protest quietly. "This is negative."

[Tethras Clan]

"Your condition maybe, but that doesn't make you negative. You are more than this. Far, far more." Varric thinks a moment, then nods. "That's like throwing all everything a scholar wrote without reviewing it just because they had one bad theory."

[Helene Dakesh]

"B-bad theories c-can be evidence of b-bad thinking. And scholars who think poorly, who do not structure their logic appropriately, can be discarded , as seemingly sound theories are l-l-likely to be mi-sleading." Despite the stuttering, the longer, more elaborate sentence structure seems to be a positive thing.

[Tethras Clan]

"True- but that's not what we're looking at. Actually, it's not even a bad theory. It's more like discarding a scholor's body of work because they have bad handwriting and a stutter. There's nothing wrong with the context, just sometimes the delivery can be... flawed."

[Helene Dakesh]

"Th-this one thinks differently. This one is not, the difficulty is not solely communication. This one fails to understand many of the inputs this one is given. This one does not receive critical information. This one struggles to translate what information this one has."

[Tethras Clan]

"So... sounds more like you have your own personal language," Varric muses.