Open | If you forget, is it like it never happened?

[killedwithlove]

WHO: Cole and anyone who needs or wants him
WHAT: Cole's back. If he ever left. Who really knows?
WHEN: Now until end of February.
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: If you want a personal starter, drop me a PM or find me at jemisard

Those sensitive to such things might notice that Cole is back. He's hard to remember at the best of times, and after such a long period, Cole himself expects virtually no one to remember who he is or that he's allowed to be here.

But it doesn't stop him doing what he does. Moving about, helping those he can.

Comments

[conqueredhearts]

Well this was a man who had no idea at all who this was because he hadn't known him when he'd been here. Honestly he'd just seen him doing something off to the side there and had become curious. Hence why he'd wandered over to where the young man was to look over his shoulder. Easy enough to do given how enormous he was.

"What are you doing there, my friend?"

[killedwithlove]

Cole has a long, slender knife drawn and is very delicately peeling the skin from some berries, staining his finger tips scarlet.

"Peeling berries. Are we friends? We haven't met before. Don't we have to have met to be friends?"

before time travel stuff at some point

[limier]

She's been watching him since he walked into the tavern, from the corners of her eyes and in elliptical little glances.

Deja vu, they call it in Orlais. Or at least that’s what they call it when you don’t spend twenty-five years sucking down lyrium. Then they just call it inevitable.

Is this how it starts?

She should know him, and she doesn't, and after a while she can't take it any more — slips through the little crowd (a clap on the shoulders, a returned laugh) to brush a hand against his arm, as though by accident. Wren offers the casual flash of a smile, tries to ignore the way that icewater pools through her guts.

"Did you want his attention?" A gesture to the barman. "We can order together."

[killedwithlove]

The tavern is noisy and alive and busy in a way that drowns the individual memories and feelings. He doesn't often venture down into the bulk of it, but he's been carefully taking away a soldier's mug every time he nearly falls asleep in it, his grief exhausted into ale.

The hand touches him and it comes with a refocusing of awareness, bright lyrium and chilled fear, I never got a chance to stop it and he flinches back, head snapping up to look at her face, as though it were her face he was looking at and not something more.

"Is this how it starts? Fading, flickering away, lyrium licking life from my mind, memories muddling, will I forget their bodies in those cells?"

His eyes are pale. He's too thin to be healthy, too pale. Almost paler than he was moments earlier.

[circleprodigy]

There's someone in dire need of Cole's help nearby, a large and canine someone. An adult mabari is pacing and whining below Sera's tavern roof. The source of his angst? A ball, which has yet to come back down.

The one who threw it, a young elven woman in Grey Warden attire, sighs upon seeing the results of her throwing arm. "...at least it didn't break a window. Stay, Garahel. I'll...figure out something." She heads inside with the intent of reaching the window opening out to that roof. Hopefully it isn't as slick as it appears to her; she's not exactly the athletic sort. Maybe if she could reach it with her staff...?

[killedwithlove]

Canine worries and needs are no less important than any other.

Cole's head pops out from the window, looking down at Garahel. "Where? Up here? I can reach it- Oh, she is?" He looks back to the stairs that lead up to this abandoned area that he often sits in. It's not his, he doesn't own it, but it's a place he often comes to.

He's speaking just before she comes into view. "I can get his ball, I climb on the roof all the time, he doesn't want you to fall trying to get it."

[meds4sale]

The Medicine Seller had a terminal penchant for being incredibly nosy curious. Especially about things that may be unusual.

Granted that, to him, everything in Thedas fell under 'unusual'. But Cole seemed particularly so.

He wasn't rude, however. He'd let the young man finish what he was doing. But when Cole was done, the Medicine Seller was compelled to butt in.

"Let me ask... what were you doing?"

There was nothing accusatory in the tone, though it held an edge of intrigue. He was sure his curiosity would one day be his downfall, but today was probably not that day.

[killedwithlove]

What he's doing planting some garlic bulbs near the stables. He digs the ground out carefully and then plants a bulb with a few pinches of something from a pouch and then covers it up again.

He stands and turns and then he's being asked questions.

"Planting garlic."

Which is exactly what he was doing.

[gatheringstorm]

For better or worse, Korrin herself doesn't remember Cole. She's been part of the Inquisition since the beginning, arriving almost right after the temple exploded. But the Vashoth mercenary was never part of the Herald's team, instead assigned elsewhere. That's held true after Haven as well, her missions teaming her up with other people, sometimes rather far abroad. If they did interact, the memories are long-since faded and perhaps not even with the assistance of anything supernatural. No one can remember the faces of everyone in the Inquisition, after all.

Just finishing up her knight-enchanter training exercises outside, the tall horned woman reaches for a cloth to wipe herself down with. Movement in the corner of her eye catches her attention, and she turns to look, not realizing she'd had company. Her brow furrows for a moment as that large hat sparks...something fleeting, but she can't quite place it. It's probably not important. "Oh, hey. What's up?"

[killedwithlove]

Sometimes he just watches.

He likes watching people do things they enjoy, even though he thinks he should be doing something more helpful. Still, Vivienne doesn't like him anywhere near her, so he doesn't get to see this sort of training usually.

"Clouds. Birds. Bats, sometimes. Um... trebuchet flung boulders, but they come down again very quickly."

Before TTT

[not_the_question]

The Doctor was still settling in himself. He didn't think he had been here all that long, but well, his time sense in this place wasn't quite what he was used to.

Still. That didn't mean anything was wrong with his memory and he hadn't seen this person around before. Not just hadn't met them, but hadn't sensed them. Their presence was weird. Kind of like how he felt about the Silence. But not exactly. The Silence were forgotten the moment you didn't look at them any more. This was similar, but different.

"Hullo there. Haven't seen you about before. Are you new?"

[killedwithlove]

Cole senses the Shard approaching rather than the person. Maybe, in this circumstance, that's for the best.

"No. Yes. I don't know. I'm older than the gardens and the Knight Commander's sword, but younger than the wood that makes the beams of the tavern."

He also clearly doesn't get the context of what he's being asked.

doop doop doop

[amygdalae]

It's been a while since Bruce's seen Cole. A spirit like him was kind of hard to forget, even if it seemed like almost everyone else did. Perhaps that was something about the nature of what he was. Compassion was, after all, fleeting. It wouldn't be a surprise for Cole to reflect that.

So when he sees that familiar brimmed hat hovering around some of his usual patients, Bruce takes a moment to steel himself before going towards said patients - they were the next people he needed to visit anyway. He greets them as always, though his gaze is mostly fixed onto Cole, and a part of him wonders what the spirit is here for.

[killedwithlove]

Cole is sitting next to a resting woman, a hand under her head and carefully letting her sip tiny amounts of water mixed with elfroot. It was left for her to sip as she needed to her healing gut wound, but she struggles to lift her head, let alone sit up to drink it.

He doesn't look up when Bruce approaches, his focus is on the immediate task. "Hello, Bruce." He stifles his desire to greet the other one as well. That's not done. "She was thirsty and cramping. You're feeling better now, aren't you, Jenessa?"

The woman gives a soft sound of agreement, already fading back into a more peaceful rest.

[tactical_alert]

Seeker Reed has never met the boy-spirit Cole before. At least, he knows he hasn't, or perhaps he wasn't memorable enough to remember, given how very many people are here at Skyhold. More and more all the time. So long as the Inquisition keeps making appearances at the right places at the right times, they should hopefully keep a steady enough supply coming in, but he worries. Quietly, because it's not necessarily his place to worry about supplies, until the Advisors say otherwise.

Might be one of the reasons that, despite himself, he's in the kitchens. It's as much to make a quick inquiry about food and the like to keep those who don't fend for themselves fed as it is to hop in and help with the cooking, the cleaning, the prepping. He hasn't had as much time to do so lately as he's had in the past, but he still does try to make the time. And he isn't even one of the buggers who nips off with food like the kitchen is an open buffet. Despite injuries from the Winter Palace, his left arm all bandaged when he rolls up his sleeves for one thing, he moves easily and freely. He's had much worse, after all.

Nearly trips over a pale lad with a comically large hat. Had he always been there, lurking, or had Malcolm stopped paying attention for just a hair too long? "Watch yourself, or the cooks might chase you out with rotted fruit." It's happened before.

[killedwithlove]

Cole has a plate piled with a random assortment of food items. There's cut off scraps, a fresh baked bread roll, the woody stems of leafy greens which have been dumped next to a carefully balanced mug of hot stew. If it's a meal for him, it's a lot of random things, especially given that he seems half starved, pallid and thin.

"They never chase me out. They don't notice me. I don't know how you noticed me... Oh. Seeker."

His face isn't very expressive, but he does seem to draw back a little, slightly wary.

[issala]

Someone needing help is this young qunari, who can't find one of the pages of the report he was delivering. Freaking out a bit, Kas tries to backtrack without any success, and it's daunting to think how he was going to explain this to Harding.

He had never messed up like this before, and it terrifies him.

"Crap," he sighs, rubbing his face. "How do I always manage to screw up?"

[killedwithlove]

"Here."

Sometimes, Cole just leaves things where they need to be found, but he doesn't want it blowing away before being found, or being picked up by someone else.

So he's just suddenly there, offering out the missing page.

[eolasemah]

It's in the garden that Sina sees him again, and she approaches Cole with a smile. She isn't certain that he looks the same as he used to-- she always has a hard time remembering his face-- but there's a specific feel about him, one so inextricably tied with her unconscious that there's no mistaking him for anyone else.

"Haven't seen you in a while," Sina says with a small smile, tipping her head to see his face better under the hat, "what have you been up to?"

[killedwithlove]

Cole might not look exactly the same. His apparent health waxes and wanes with emotions and memories, pallid in the bad times, merely pale in the good.

"There was more hurt in other places. I went to help." He's sitting in front of a planting on Witherstalk, looking at the flower. "But I did help, so I came back."

[in_death_sacrifice]

Kain had never met Cole, not being at Skyhold at the time he was here before. So he has no recollection of him anyway when he appears. At the moment, he does seem to be in need of some help, as he's frustratedly crossing out something he's writing. Clearly something isn't going quite right. He glances up as the younger man shows up.

"Wha- Oh. I didn't notice you approaching. Did you want something?"

[killedwithlove]

Cole isn't sure he can help. he's not always good with words, but he can't not try to help. "I want to help. If I can."

He stays at a little distance, not getting too close, Not crowding.

[lionheartedman]

Cullen has no memory of the strange boy in the massive hat. If he really stopped to think about it, he might recall the ripple like disturbances. He doesn't stop to think about it, though. He already has more than enough on his plate. He misses having the reassurance of those War Table meetings, the camaraderie. It distracted him.

Now he has the time to think about how tired he is, how busy, how much his head hurts.

[killedwithlove]

Cole's usually careful not to be seen by Cullen. He can't miss the jagged scars of loss from the Fereldan Circle and he knows that demons put it there.

So usually, the food and the mild pain relieving drinks are delivered while he's distracted, to be noticed when he turns around. But this time, Cullen seems to need a little more, so Cole focuses on being really real and then knocks on Cullen's office door, balancing the tray on one hand.

[blightedson]

At times, Felix can feel the taint weighing heavily on him. He swears it's a bit like a heavy blanket that presses down at him. He can remember being suffocated by the Blight and how it had felt to have his life drained slowly from him, and having darkspawn blood inside of him serves as a reminder that once upon a time his mother died protecting him only for him to be sick and fast approaching joining her.

Times like this he remembers that his father is in a dungeon cell and that the only reason he's there is that he had been obsessed with finding a way to prolong Felix's life.

Then, the Wardens had come and provided that. Maybe agreeing to the Joining had been the wrong choice? Maybe it would make his father make even more terrible choices now that he was alive and breathing but weighed down by the taint.

Felix had thought to go see him and had even traveled to the castle with the thought of going to the dungeon only to stop himself halfway there and instead linger in the courtyard.

[killedwithlove]

Cole detours from his trip to the forge to find some scraps to the courtyard without making the choice to do so. He's drawn by the strongest pain and this pain is... familiar. Guilt and a bit of helplessness, that familiar, cold taste of Despair across the back of his eyelids.

It's not strong. It's not even really Despair yet. But there's enough similarity that he makes his way up to Felix, knowing that he can see him.

Once, he would've held a knife and whispered 'Look into my eyes'. Now, he stops just outside arm's reach, and glances at the man's face. "Felix Alexius. You're Dorian's friend. You can only take responsibility for your own choices, not others."