faderift | OPEN - Follow me home, if you dare to

"It's happened so many times. It can happen. I don't even have to try with some people. I just don't stick."

Cole has met more than his share of people chock full of dark emotions and darker pains - the cold and the dark he's feeling now is Emet's, to be certain, but the root isn't completely alien. Like everyone else, he has a pearl of pain, deep inside. That's why he can see the Spirit right now, he's sure.

But for now, he just blinks back in reply to the half-reassurance.

"You are new to Thedas." It's all he can think to say, hands fidgeting together. "How long?"

"That hardly means it must happen."

There's something to this, clearly, and there's more focus in the way he observes Cole now-- but that's one thing he holds to. His memory has always been sharp, and he doesn't care for the thought of anything simply failing to stay in it.

It's something he moves on from easily enough, though, with that question.

"Long enough to acclimate," is the response he gets. "Still relatively new, but I believe I know enough of the world to get by."

It's useless to explain, thinks Cole. The older the person involved, the more they are incapable of understanding his ability. Just as well, anyway...he would really rather cultivate some manner of skill in talking to others.

At the answer, he nods. Good. Asking questions is working so far.

"...Good." It's a low rasping grunt. He hesitates, then....

"How old are you?"

Well, that's an interesting question-- one that gets Cole a little further scrutiny. Strangeness means little to him, he's seen all manner of things, but... hm.

Rather than an answer, though, he just offers: "Why don't you make yourself an educated guess at it." All the better to determine whether the boy truly can tell anything.

At the suggestion, he squints a little, letting more of the energy from the Garlean wash over him. It's like wading further and further into a deep, dark pool, the water closing overhead, the depths dark and vast with no end in sight....

When he speaks, it's with wide eyes, voice far away.

"...Thousands. Thousands of years...spinning in circles, cracking, crashing...captive." His head tilts, hanging on his neck at an eerie angle. "It's a very old dark, isn't it?"

...he supposes that answers that. It doesn't escape him that people certainly know, here and there-- that Astarion has blithely said so in public conversation. But he's gotten good at reading others, over his existence, and the boy doesn't seem like he's simply set this up to act as if he could guess.

Nor would he be able to phrase it in such a way, considering all of the things Emet-Selch hasn't said to anyone at all.

"It is," he says, evenly. That initial moment of surprise has been smoothed over in his expression now, and he shifts from where he is, moving closer to Cole with measured, unhurried steps. "But I have long since grown accustomed to living in it. I am given to wonder, however... just what it is that you live within. Memory? Emotion?"

If there is new menace in this situation, Cole does not see it. He stands steady as the stranger approaches him, watching him with his wide, weary, wary eyes. Questions, he is coming to learn, are okay with him. Questions give him a direction, an opportunity to know what he is meant to say.

Even if this one is a bit pointed.

"...Compassion," he answers, plainly, simply. "I hear hurt. I know what is needed and I try to help."

So it's like that. There's a hint of distaste in the way his expression twists, a bit, and he waves a hand in a lazy, dismissive gesture.

"If you are so keenly aware, then surely you know there is naught you could offer." Not for this, not for him. "But had you truly nothing better to do than to run around chasing lost objects?"

Surely there should be some prioritization, here.

Distaste isn't new. Most people don't like being confronted with the idea of being Seen. He remains there, unblinking, staring right back. "I came to Riftwatch to help," he rasps in his dusty little voice. "Sometimes help is big. Sometimes it's small, simple."

He pauses for a moment, then amends to the first point:

"...And if you could see me when I was hidden from most, that means there is something. Something to help. To hear. To heal."

"The fact that you can hear something hardly means you're going to be able to fix it. There must be any number of troubles plaguing this world that you simply could not hope to touch."

It comes out more irritable than his tone has been up to this point, and he exhales a breath, shaking his head.

"And, ultimately, anything you do accomplish will be of little consequence to the world at large, but I assume you remain set on this course."

"I know. I am only one. But it's what I'm for. I have to help, have to try."

He's heard this one before - the idea that what he does won't matter. Cole knows, of course, that the people who say that are usually the ones with the deepest hurt, convinced that pain is a deep well that will never run dry.

They need help all the same. Even if they don't let go in the end.

"I can't stop. If I do, I may fade back to the Fade."

Edited 2021-09-16 08:15 (UTC)

"What you're for."

There's a long pause following that repetition, where he simply observes. It would be reasonable to expect him to continue along the same lines he already has, and that expectation might not be misplaced, but-

After that moment of silence passes, he instead asks, "And what more is there to you, beyond that?"

"There doesn't need to be anything else."

He blinks, wide-eyed, owlish. Staring Emet-Selch down, expression something sad, but not for his own plight. There's a tilt of his head as he contemplates how to put what he wants to make clear, before simply deciding to say it.

Something in him, however, is beginning to think this conversation may best be forgotten, depending on the reaction.

"I am a Spirit. I needed to help someone, and I couldn't. And now I'm here. I'm him."

There doesn't need to be anything else, he says, and something buried inside what he's been picking up from Emet-Selch shifts. Sharpens and digs in a little, an unintentional step onto broken glass; he does listen, though, to what else Cole has to say, his expression impassive as he decides his own response.

"If you're going to be here, and be anyone at all-- then you're going to have to find yourself a better answer."

The shift is palpable to the Spirit - the crunch and crack of shards, needling, pushing. He doesn't back down, doesn't look away.

"Why?"

The question is simple, and would feel naive, innocent...but there's something else behind it, just out of reach.

"Because if you are going to exist outside of your Fade, and to be someone, as you said-- there will have to be more to your life and identity than simply your purpose."

Said as if it's the most obvious thing in the world, at least to him-- but there's a slight hint of forced casualness to it that might be identifiable to him.

"Why does what I am bother you?"

Still wide eyed, still childlike, still...otherworldly. His face is hard to read.

"I am...happy, helping people. That is what I am. That is what keeps me here. If I am happy...why isn't that enough?"

Something about that stings.

But he says nothing of it, just exhales a long-suffering sigh. "Exist that way, then, if it is all you care to do. It hardly affects me if you remain incapable of properly existing within the world."

The Spirit listens to this...standing there, head tilting to one side...and then, all at once upon hearing Emet's reply, his chin drops, the brim of that over-large hat shadowing his face.

"...But it does affect you," he rasps, softly, in a tone that vaguely mirrors Emet's. "And that's why you can't give me a reason."

He strides forward the step that he had taken backward before, ignoring the crunch of the glass below, the way the icy water resists him, bites at his skin. "Maybe...you're not ready for me yet."

"It is not for you to decide," he snaps in response; anyone might find the spirit's current demeanor unsettling, but that doesn't affect him. There's just a spark of more open irritation than he's allowed to show thus far. "I have told you once already that there is naught for you to offer, and I suggest you remember this; I am disinclined to keep repeating myself."

Another stride forward. Another. Cole has made up his mind, and the broken glass is inside him now, tumbling out in his voice when he replies. This is for the best. He will try again later.

"I will remember," he hisses, holding out a spindly, grimy hand glowing with a smoky, wispy energy.

"But you won't."

In a flash, the Spirit vanishes from view...but he is still standing there, watching carefully what happens when Emet begins to feel his memories of this whole conversation uncontrollably slip away from him, like water through a sieve.

His own demeanor remains unchanged as Cole steps closer-- the annoyance is allowed to show, now, distaste clear in the twist of his mouth as he looks down on him. But the spirit holds out a hand and speaks, and those words do spark something.

Shadow answers his reflexive call, a dark glow flaring around one hand with the sharp intent to lash out; there is somehow nothing there to strike, though. And then when things begin to slip further-

It's not fear, not really. More like a sudden desperate disbelief-- if Cole thought the vibes were bad before, they are crushingly so now, a whirlpool in that dark, empty water. There's the sense of determined attachment, of clinging to this with as strong a grip as he can manage, and in that there is the distinct, jagged impression of the utter unwillingness to let anything be lost. (There is also, oddly, the exact sensation that had sharpened not long ago in their conversation, but it's so entangled in everything else that it's difficult to identify.)

The one thing that will be clear in all of this, though, is that this is maybe one of the more painful things that could be done to him. If he still had an impression of his presence, Emet-Selch would have attempted to kill him without a thought.

...so it's for the best that it continues to slip and fade, taking with it that lingering sense of disbelief and the impression that this shouldn't, couldn't happen.

He's still left unsettled by its end, frowning down at the purple-black magic gathered around an open hand, and dismisses it with a sharp flick of his wrist. He may not know why he feels uneasy, but he longer wishes to be here, quickly turning to stalk away.

Cole is a kindhearted thing - he dislikes causing further pain, and he watches the struggling Rifter from his hidden place with pity on his face. Standing there, he frowns deeply, letting the whirlpool wash over him. As each feeling spikes up, he notes it, letting it pass.

He takes no pleasure in this, watching Emet cling fast and slowly lose his grip. If he ever did take pleasure in it, it would mean something he doesn't want to so much as consider.

It really just makes him sad.

When the thing is done and Emet turns away, Cole simply lets him go, watching after him.

Another time.

OPEN - Follow me home, if you dare to

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