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Emeline starts making Cole help in the Skyhold gardens.
Well, ‘making’ isn’t quite right. ‘Strongly suggesting’ and ‘listing all the reasons why her strong suggestion is the correct course of action’ is maybe slightly more accurate. It’s not that she’s trying to be rude, or implying that he needs to earn his keep or something. It’s just that he always seems out of place and a little lost. The people in Skyhold stare now that they can see him and he can’t make them forget. Or won’t, maybe - she’s still not sure which it is. Either way, they whisper, and they don’t have much to do with him - he may be human now, or more human anyway, but there’s still something about him that’s undeniably foreign and strange. Birds of a feather flock together, and Cole is like a little nervous, well-meaning fennec trying to make friends with a yard full of anxious hens.
He sits with Bull and the Chargers sometimes, and she’s seen Candy - or Marguerite, that is - slip him a tankard of beer and a soft look now and then, though he never drinks the beer and doesn’t seem to know what to do with the looks. Which is probably just as well.
Varric keeps Cole company as often as he can, and that seems to make him happy. But mostly he just stays in his little corner, up in the dank attic near Bull’s room. It makes her sad to think of him there, all alone in the dark, always near the sounds of laughter and music but so rarely among them. It reminds her of when she first came to the Circle, and she hid in the dusty corners of the basement when she could manage, desperately lonely and crying and wishing for her sister and old Alva the housekeeper, even her silly, dreary mother and her horrible father. She had very few friends those first few months - no one wants to play with the little girl who cries at the drop of a hat over the same thing everyone else had to go through, after all.
Of course she knows it’s not the same. She can’t imagine Cole crying in a corner, in truth, and she doesn’t think he feels particularly sad about his unpopularity precisely because he’s not yet entirely aware that he should. Which isn’t the worst thing, really. Of course, maybe he can’t or maybe he never will. But something in it pulls at her and makes her sorry for him, and eventually she finds herself trying to be all the friends he doesn’t have.
More than once Bull wakes up to an empty bed and the sound of whispering and laughter and confused conversation outside his bedroom door. Em doesn’t sleep much when her brain gets going and the kid never sleeps much at all, so he’s not really surprised. He just hopes she put a sweater on - it gets cold up near the ramparts and she’s kind of delicate around a chill, though he’d never admit himself that it might be more comfortable with a shirt - and goes back to sleep.
Still, late night conversations and the occasional untouched beer notwithstanding, it rankles her in a way. He just sort of...stands about, now that he’s unsure how to help people. And standing about is all well and good, sometimes, or laying about or sitting about or whatever - she certainly enjoys a nice afternoon liedown. But when she was little and prone to just standing about herself, eyes red and nose runny, Senior Enchanter Heloise told her that idle hands make for idle minds, and idle minds lead to tears and fuss which do absolutely no good for anyone at all. That was the afternoon Heloise pressed a little pair of garden shears into her hand for the first time, told her to wipe her eyes and watch her fingers, and put her on pruning duty in the Circle’s medicinal garden with an older apprentice - a highly coveted job due to the time spent outdoors, though she’d had no idea at the time. And if pulling weeds and cutting dead flowers didn’t immediately lighten her heart with happiness and sunshine, well, at least it had given her a sense of purpose, which was almost as good and really more useful in the long run.
Emeline tells this to Cole the afternoon she marches up to his attic, a basket of gardening tools in the crook of her arm and her favorite battered kerchief tied around her neck.
“So I think you should come help me today. And you already have a sun hat, even!” she beams.
Cole just looks confused and worries his fingers. He pops one knuckle and then another. Emeline has the slightly mortified thought that he might have picked up that particular habit from her.
“But I’m not crying.”
“Oh, well. No, but - you see, it’s not really about crying, Cole. It’s about -” she searches the room with her eyes, like maybe the right word is lurking in a dusty eave - “it’s about industriousness. A bit of elbow grease, and...and feeling accomplished at what you’ve done. It’s about feeling the dirt between your fingers, smelling the grass and the soil. Not thinking, just doing. It’s good for you.” He looks unconvinced, so she tries to sweeten the pot, smiling prettily up at him. “And if you get tired you can just lay in the sun on the grass, which is always lovely and warm.” Her eyes land on the pale blue veining under his skin, then, and she frowns. “Which wouldn’t be such a terrible thing, would it? You’re awfully pale. Actually, maybe the hat isn’t such a good idea.”
Cole ignores the critique of his complexion, instead peering down at her from under his brim. Then he starts to get that look in his eye, the look that makes Iron Bull shift from foot to foot, and all Emeline can think is ‘oh, shite.’
“Tears trickle down, missing home, the smell of lavender sweet and gen -”
And there he goes.
Emeline coughs. “Right, Cole, yes, I missed my mother, but we really needn’t do...that. Today. Or ever, actually. Remember laying in the sun?”
“But I understand now!” The look on his face says ‘And you obviously don’t.’ “You were alone and sad, but she was patient -”
He continues on, in the way he does, and his voice is so filled with overt, raw compassion she feels vaguely ill. She suddenly feels very bad about being quietly amused at all the times he picked through the others’ unsuspecting minds.
So he talks about her innermost thoughts and memories and she pops her knuckles and considers giving up on the whole endeavor. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she can hear Iron Bull - ‘Don’t make it weird, kid.’ She usually rolls her eyes at the sentiment but right now she’s tempted to use it herself. Cole normally can’t get a read on her at all, which is nice - except when her thoughts pertain to Bull, actually, which is frankly just weird. Although she sometimes wonders if it disturbs him or relieves him - one less nutter’s sad thoughts rambling through his overworked mind or a mystery he can never totally unravel, perpetually plaguing him. Maybe he doesn’t care at all.
Right now he seems enthusiastic enough, though, and it’s at the point where he describe’s Heloise’s fingers as ‘soft and dry like paper, wiping damp cheeks’ that finally Emeline sighs and places a firm grasp on his arm.
“Cole. Stop.”
He stops. He looks like a startled deer.
“So do you want to go pick some flowers or not?”
And finally, after he seems to consider for a long moment, he surprises her.
“I like my hat.” But he steps forward, and he looks ready to follow. “But I like the gardens too. The bees buzzing in the flowers makes my ears tickle.” And Emeline feels a surge of relief that he’s no longer picking through her brain and accomplishment that she finally managed to wrangle her unlikely pruning partner.
“Oh - well, good! And you can keep your hat, you know, it was only a suggestion. But, um, don’t try to get too close to the bees. Or they’ll make you feel something much worse than ticklish.”
“You don’t have to worry, I know. One of Sera’s flew down my shirt once. It hurt. A lot.”
They’re at the bottom of the stairs now, Cole at her heels, and Emeline clucks her tongue sympathetically.
“Little bastard.”
Not a beat later, right as she’s opening the tavern’s front door - “I don’t think bees can get married.”
Emeline glances back to explain what she means, patiently - because Cole is so literal and so often that you can’t help but get used to it - when she sees the small, shy smile on his lips. It’s even, she thinks, maybe a little sly. Little bugger.
She pulls a face at him - “Oh, har har, smartarse” - but she laughs too, offering her arm for him to take. He stares for a moment and she almost thinks he won’t accept. Then he tentatively loops his with hers and steps out into the sun at her side.
“Come on then, cheeky. Let’s go tell your jokes to the daisies.”