Chapter Text
It takes a while for him to notice the quiet presence at his elbow, waiting just beyond the reach of the warm tavern light. Focused on the story Bull is loudly telling at the counter, the soft music (admittedly of questionable quality) from the bard by the stairs, the ale in his cup, Krem isn’t paying a lot of attention to what’s going on in the corner behind him.
When he does notice, Cole says, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Krem asks. Sure, it’s a little weird that Cole is hovering in the shadows, but no weirder than anything else Cole does.
Cole says, “When you notice me. I make you more you.”
Krem’s confusion must show on his face because, after a moment’s pause, Cole frowns and tries a different explanation. “Before,” he says, “you could forget. You were,” he gestures, “everything else instead. But now you’re you because I’m here.”
Krem thinks he understands, sort of. To talk to Cole, he has to focus, be present, in a way he doesn’t have to with other people. Cole makes him more aware of himself. He isn’t sure yet how he feels about this.
Very quietly, Cole says, “It isn’t just you.”
He tilts his head, waiting for Cole to continue.
“Talking to you,” Cole whispers like it’s a confession. “It makes me more me.”
The question, when Krem manages to form it in his head, is hesitant. He says it out loud anyway, concerned that Cole will misread it if he has to guess. “Is that… good?”
Cole says, “It matters,” which could mean anything.
Krem thinks for a long time before he asks his next question. “What if you wanted to change?”
“What do you mean?” Cole’s eyes in the shadow of his broad-brimmed hat are earnest, seeking out Krem’s as though he can read the answer in them.
“You’re a… spirit of Compassion, right?” Krem asks. Is that all right? Does Cole mind being reminded that he’s a spirit? Does he mind being labeled that way, as though everything he is can be reduced down to a single word? “What if you wanted to be something else? Heroism or healing or…” He looks down at his tankard. “Or, I don’t know, merriment?”
Cole says, “But I’m not that.”
Krem deflates a little, thinking about all of the things he’s wanted—still wants—to be. All of the things he’s not.
Cole dips his head so that his eyes are in full shadow. “That makes you sad,” he says. “Why does it make you sad?”
Krem shrugs the question off like he has so many others. “It’s not important,” he says, longing for the quiet, unquestioning acceptance of the Chargers. Bull never asks him why he wears the armor he does. Grim never asks him why he wants to change.
A pang hits him when he thinks of Bull, of talking to Bull about who and what he is. It’s Bull who taught him the term aqun-athlok, but even that is wrong somehow. Bull understands completely who Krem is, has never questioned it even for a moment; it’s the Qun that rubs against Krem’s sensibilities in ways he doesn’t like. He’s not aqun-athlok. He’s not living as anything, any more than Bull is living as Ben-Hassrath or Rocky is living as someone with far too much ready access to explosives.
Cole says, “It matters,” which could mean anything.
“What made you Compassion?” Krem asks him, then hurriedly adds, “If you want to talk about it.”
Cole cocks his head curiously. “Nothing made me what I am,” he says.
“How do you know what you are?”
“How does anyone?” Cole asks him in return. “I know when I do something that makes me more me. It’s brighter. Easier. Like being in the Fade. I help people and I’m… more.”
Krem says, “Bull’s always saying everything has a purpose under the Qun. Like that?”
Thoughtfully, Cole says, “The Iron Bull thinks the Qun is what makes him more.” He pauses. “It isn’t.”
“What is?”
“He doesn’t know yet,” Cole tells him. “He was going in the wrong direction for a long time. Now it’s hard for him to get back.”
Krem knows how that feels.
“But you’re you now,” Cole says as though he’s protesting Krem’s thoughts. Maybe he is. Krem knows Cole hears the things people don’t say.
He shrugs. Is he? It doesn’t feel that way. At least, not always. In the middle of a fight, maybe, swinging his maul and feeling it clear a path in front of him. In the middle of the Chargers, maybe, holding a bottle of something unmentionable and singing along to a ribald chorus with everyone using different words. Here, with Cole looking at him in a way that suggests he sees too much, Krem isn’t so sure.
“You weren’t,” says Cole. “For a long time. Like The Iron Bull. Only you found your way back. It still hurts, sometimes. But not all the time. Just… enough to remind you.”
“It’s fine,” Krem says. “That was a long time ago.”
Cole says, “It matters,” which could mean anything.
Krem’s tankard is empty. He makes as if to stand, intending to bring it over to Cabot for a refill. Before he can, though, the bartender spots him and shakes a fresh tankard meaningfully at him, then slaps it into the hand of an eager-looking recruit to carry over to him. Krem gives Cabot a nod and the recruit a smile, accepting both the drink and his fate.
Cole says, “The armor makes you brighter. And the name.”
“It does?”
Cole nods. “And this, all of it.” He looks around at the tavern, the Chargers, Bull. “I’m glad you found it.”
Krem is glad, too.
Cole says, “Thank you.”
“For what?” Krem hasn’t done anything.
“For making me more me,” Cole replies. “You listen to me. You talk to me, even when it hurts. Even when it makes you remember yourself.”
The words settle heavily on Krem, like snow, like ash. He shakes his head. “It’s not you,” he says. “You don’t hurt.”
Cole looks doubtful. “I don’t mean to. But it happens anyway.”
“Not to me,” Krem says. “It… I know you see people a different way. What they are, not what they pretend to be.”
Cole regards him seriously. “You don’t pretend,” he says. “Not anymore. You tried, but…”
“But I wasn’t any good at it,” Krem says. “And I hated it.”
“That hurts, too,” says Cole. “It makes me hurt. I didn’t know it could do that. Your hurt making mine, making me… I don’t know. There’s a kind of sadness that pretends to be anger. This isn’t that. It’s a sadness that makes anger.”
“I used to feel like that,” Krem tells him. “But not anymore. That part of my life is over. This—” he swings his tankard a little too energetically, indicating the room at large “—is the good part.”
Cole says, “It’s over, but it’s not gone. The good part and the hurt together.”
On impulse, Krem reaches forward and takes one of Cole’s hands. The fingers are long and delicate and ice-cold, even against the chill the tankard’s metal handle has left on Krem’s skin, but Cole doesn’t seem to notice.
“That’s just life,” Krem says. “You’ll get used to it.”
Cole looks at him. “This makes you brighter, too.”
“What does?”
Cole takes Krem’s other hand.
Oh.
Krem thinks about this for a minute—or, at least, he tries to. It’s not easy with the way he can feel Bull grinning at him from across the tavern over the other Chargers’ heads. So he gives up and just tightens his grip on Cole’s hands.
“It matters,” he says. Which could mean anything.