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

Entry tags:

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

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"The mushrooms encourage mice to come here."

And a lot of the steeds don't like having mice underfoot. And it brings the cats down here, which just makes a bigger problem, especially if removing the mushrooms will reduce the stress on the animals.

"...I believe I follow."

Mice were certainly a nuisance when it came to domestic animals; either spooking them, getting into their food, or spreading disease. It was unusual, then, to run into someone who neither wanted to kill nor capture the rodents.

"It is kind of you not to set up traps."

"I don't want to hurt anything. Traps remove a mouse. No food moves them on." He looks at his last bulb of garlic, in one dirty hand.

"You're a Rifter."

"My goodness. What an astute observer."

He was only a little sarcastic. He couldn't bring himself to be too brusque with someone who held the welfare of animals, big and small, in so high regard.

"Are you as well?"

"You shine. Sear sight into silence."

He shakes his head. "I'm from the Fade. From Fereldan. From the Pit."

Either Cole meant his clothes, the shard lodged into his hand, or ... something else. The Medicine Seller was about to ask for some clarification when Cole spoke again.

Now that was unusual.

"So many places to be from," he mused. "But I have been told..."

The Medicine Seller narrowed his eyes. If what he knew about spirits in this world were true and Cole was not lying - then why had his sword and scales not reacted?

"...Only spirits come from the Fade."

"Yes."

Is he talking about all the places, or agreeing about spirits? Hard to say. Maybe both.

There's a long beat and then Cole realises that more information is probably needed. "Compassion came from the Fade. Cole was from Fereldan. I became this me in the Pit, when Cole was dying and needed someone with him."

The Medicine Seller raised his hand to his lips in thought. Compassion. That would be a spirit then.

"...But you are not possessing a body."

It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact. Neither the sword nor the scales had made so much as a peep and this close, when he revealed his Truth so readily, the Medicine Seller would have heard something.

Behind his hand, he very nearly smiled.

"I was told spirits in this world cannot take human form."

"No."

This is the first person to not actually ask it. Or state it. He got it, better than others.

"Most can't. I did. I don't know how." Cole doesn't lie. He rarely obfuscates, though he can. Sometimes, a kindness is in not saying something. "It was the shape that would help, so it was the shape I took."

"You exist beyond the Fade, in a physical form of your own while retaining a sense of purpose."

He wondered if this young man was an anomaly or if the books he had read and the people he had spoken to had been wrong.

"It is refreshing."

"Yes. I am Cole, but I am also Compassion. I was... Mercy, or something like Mercy, for a while. I could have been Despair, but Rhys saved me."

Rhys had pulled him back from that edge without even knowing it. He misses him. He wishes he could show him what he does now, but he knows he can't.

"Solas said I am unique."

Solas, whoever that was, was probably right.

"That is a complicated existence for a spirit of the Fade."

As far as he had learned, spirits could only embody one thing, and the corruption of that.

"Who was Rhys?"

"Senior Enchanter Rhys of the White Spire Circle, spirit medium and leader of the Libertarian movement in the circle. He studied spirits and demons. He cared. Even when he found out what I'd done, he cared about me."

"Oh? And what is it that you had done?"

Clearly something that made it significant enough that this Rhys would still care about him even after finding out.

"Murdered six people."

He doesn't try to dodge around it. He doesn't feel anything really akin the shame. He was wrong to do it. "I thought I was helping them. But I just made them dead."

"I see."

He wasn't exactly bubbling with sympathy, but he didn't sound particularly bothered either.

"Is that what you meant when you said you became something like Mercy?"

"Yes. They Despaired and I tried to help them. Cole suffered and then died and that stopped his suffering. They... called to me. Without meaning to."

He knows better now. "I told Rhys. He was very angry. He wanted to take me to the Templars, but I wouldn't let him. I don't trust most Templars."

The Medicine Seller couldn't argue on that front. While the mages didn't engender much confidence from him either, the Templars seemed considerably more malignant.

"You were able to stop."

A pattern was beginning to emerge here.

"Are other spirits able to make such choices? Or are they bound completely to their compulsions?"

"He helped me."

Cole scrunches his nose up.

"I'm not like them. I'm more complicated. They are what they are, which is what mortals make them." So no, they can't make that choice.

The Medicine Seller nodded. Cole had given him a much clearer picture now of the spirits in this world. And he was curious about where his story went from there.

If Rhys had helped him, then there was no sense in the Medicine Seller spending time navel gazing and moralizing about why killing people was Not Good.

"Is Rhys with you here?"

"No. I haven't seen Rhys in... a couple of years, I suppose. He didn't want to see me again, so I never went back to find him."

Not since Lambert stripped the confusion away, laying bare what Cole was to Rhys... and to himself.

"He has Evangeline to look after him. He isn't very good at doing it himself, he daydreams and gets snuck up on and then he runs into things without his staff..." There's genuine worry in there, but he pushes it down, doesn't let himself chase the thread. "I hope he's safe and happy."

Worry. sadness. Concern and longing for another and yet wishing them well. Complicated emotions that he would certainly expect from spirits back home, but not here.

"Ohh? That is ...unusual."

Especially given that this Rhys had forgiven him for six murders. Something else must have happened.

"Why is it that he did not want to see you again?"

"... he found out I was a demon."

It was different before. He was a hedge mage who killed people to help them, not a demon, on the wrong side of the Fade, killing because his nature compelled him.

He ducks his head, hiding behind the brim of his hat. "I felt his shock and horror. He called me demon in his mind and it was so loud and clear... I could hear him like I hadn't before and he was..."

He shrugs a little. "I hope he's safe and happy."

"But it would appear he was wrong about one thing."

Not that the Medicine Seller could entirely blame Rhys. After all, it seemed all spirits got conflated with demons in this world, whether they were or not. And it mages had good reason to be afraid, even of those more benign.

But language was important. He didn't know what Cole was but the silence from his pack made it very plain what he wasn't.

"You are not a demon."

"No. I'm not."

He rocks on his feet, back and forth.

"If I turn into a demon, would you kill me?"

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