Blood from Stone [AU]

[Carver Amell]

"I can't... I haven't felt like this since I found out about Merrill. I can't think about it. I can't breathe when I try too hard. I can't talk about it. I don't want to do anything close to it. I want to run right out and buy a girl just to prove to myself I can."

[Varric]

"I would recommend against that plan," Varric says, keeping his face mostly blank at that idea. Doesn't even shudder. "Would it help to met some other gay men? See how... diverse the group can be?"

[Carver Amell]

"No," he groans. "That's not really... Are there... Other people like Helene?"

[Varric]

"Non-gendered mortals?" Varric clarifies, then continues at the look of confirmation. "Yes. Couple dozen in Nyra I know of, none I know personally. Someof them have outsider blood but not all of them."

[Carver Amell]

"What about... Like me?" His voice is a mere whisper.

[Varric]

"Males born in female shells?" Varric nods. "More than a few. Hells, one of my best friends growing up was the opposite- female in a male shell." He shrugs. "Granted, it was just... background to me, something I never really thought about because it was normal." He cocks his head to the side. I should write her sometime... been almost three decades (long even for a dwarf) and she deserves better. Just... have to figure out how to... write around her cousin (------). "Orzammar dwarves don't really... you know how you have the word 'sex' and 'gender' in common to describe whether someone is male, female or whatnot? And how they're sorta interchangeable? They're not in dwarven."

[Carver Amell]

"So.. what. Anyone can just be anything?"

[Varric]

"No, no... it's more that... to an Orzammar dwarf, sex just describes the shell. It's... imprecise. Like... Like calling Helene a Bright instead of a Seeker. Doesn't give the full picture even if it's not _wrong_. We have four genders because your... not role but..." Varric frets at his lip for a moment. "I've talked about my mother, yeah? How she was the blacksmith while my father ran the books and so forth? They were both in the same... I guess role is about the best word for it. They stayed in Orzammar, didn't interact with outsiders. They only sold to other Orzammar dwarves. That's the other half of things, whether you interact with outsiders. The avos and avii genders are keep protected, sheltered from outsiders. Saros and sarii go out into the world, showing their faces," he explains, tapping his chin.

[Carver Amell]

"So... your dad was... a girl?" he asks, hesitantly.

[Varric]

"What? No, he was, well, a he. I mean...Alright." He frowns. "There's some... shared characteristics between avos and avii and females, sure- more timid or demure on average, by socialization if not inclination, cultural pressure to protect, less involvement with strangers. But our rulers are always avos or avii, they're the keepers of fiance and jobs are more or less split evenly." Varric ponders a moment, then offers, "that would be like saying being Bastionite is a female thing because it has a lot to do with niceness and healing and Junonites are all male because violence and honor."

[Carver Amell]

Carver winces, trying not to argue with that characterization. "Avii, that was..."

He makes a guilty face, then, remembering Dwarven class: 'Avii is like Avos, but for males. It means the speaker was a very feminine male.' 'Like a sissy-boy?'

"I uh. Okay. I don't think my language lessons explained very well. We were all told to use Avos or Sarii."

[Varric]

Varric snorts. "Yeah, I suspect not. No-one that didn't grow up in it can really grasp it in detail. Your teacher was probably a surface dwarf born. Or from another dwarf citadel. Not all of them use this model."

[Carver Amell]

"Oh, we didn't learn from a dwarf. We all got taught Dwarven from a textbook. Mr Mendias taught it."

[Varric]

Varric shudders. Wasn't their Bright a dwarf? Why didn't he... whatever. Idiots. "Yeah, that would do it. But no, there's no... overtone to avun or sarun that make either of them more female or male than the other. That wouldn't make sense, given that they break down into the two sexes." 

A pause. "Which, to be clear, is a separate thing. Avun and sarun aren't genders really. Or, well, they are. But to dwarves, male and female aren't genders. Linking the two concepts is like linking religion to species. You can do it, it can narrow things down or provide more accurate labeling, but they're different categories." This is a lot more complicated to explain than I would have thought. 

[Carver Amell]

Carver frowns. "But... but you're a man."