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"It hurts."
"What's that Cole?" Ellana was not at all surprised by Cole’s sudden appearance. Her senses had told her he'd been around this whole trip but was attempting not to be seen. It was sweet, if a bit bothersome because she had to focus her magic on the important things like fade rifts and not Cole. She continues washing her tunic in the river.
"Your stomach. It hurts whenever you think about how alone you are but you are not."
"You're right Cole. I am not." She looks up. Cole must be feeling particularly strange as he is translucent, water rippling directly through him. She attempts a smile. "I have you here with me."
"That's not why you hurt. It's different. Is it because Cassandra cannot love you like you love her?"
Ellana stops washing her clothes, her arms going slack. "I hate that you do that Cole, just speak aloud all the feelings I bury."
"I'm sorry."
"It's alright....I...needed to hear it.” She goes back to washing. “I need to move on. I need to focus on our fight. On Corypheus."
"Varric tells me that kind of hurt makes a person sympathetic to the reader."
"Aye, that it does." She wrings out tunic until it stops dripping and moves closer to shore. Cole quietly floats alongside her. "We've all been there. We all want love."
"Even me?"
"I think you want love the most but not like that. Maybe like a child longs for their mother?"
"Or how you and Dorian love each? The room settles, the fades shifts, quiets, and everything seems...just right."
Ellana smiles. "Yeah, something like that. Something close, intimate but not romantic. Love may appear in more than one form."
“I think I love Varric. He’s very quiet and calls me Kid which makes me warm.”
“Varric is quiet?” Ellana chuckles. “I’ve only ever noticed when he’s unconscious.”
“He doesn’t dream, only writes stories.”
Ellana smiles. Cole’s visage is becoming stronger, she can no longer see through him as water ripples around his ankles.
“Aye, and such wonderful stories he writes.”