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Cole waits for them, listens for the secrets they keep from each other. Every day since they left he waits for the only two people who have never been afraid of him, never tried to change him from what he was. He may not be a person, but he treasured that feeling of belonging they gave to him.
They left for Crestwood a time ago; he cannot say when because time is tricky. It slips and slides through his fingers like the glittering fish she tried to catch with her bare hands when she was young. Every time he thinks he has it, it’s gone again down the stream. He almost wishes he could grasp the concept but he knows it will make it harder to leave, to go back to the Fade where time ignores him.
He feels lonely without them. Sometimes when there are too many hurts to help, when he simply cannot move for all the wailing and anguish pounding and clawing in his head, she let him lay his head in her lap. She pet his head and finger-combs his limp hair as she watches Solas paint or study or listens to him recall a story from the Fade. He likes those the best. It reminds him of his fellow spirits, the ones he could almost call friends—almost, because friends don’t exist in the fade and he’s not really even quite sure what friends are. It’s just what she calls him.
And he likes her.
She is light and brilliance and all the good things he has found in this world. They’re not pure, not at all, but somehow that makes her sweeter. Her quiet demeanor complimented his and they could go hours without talking or maybe she would listen to him as he rattled off the hurts of Skyhold. Sometimes she would help him. For a while, he thought maybe she was also a spirit of Compassion, but the muddied center of her being, where she kept her ugly desires and absolutely despondency tamped down tight, made him realize otherwise. Spirits don’t have wants other than fulfilling their purpose.
Sometimes he can see a bit of something tainting his core.
Cole has been around a lot of people and he thinks he understands what a family is. So he asked her, one day while they sat in the rotunda, if they were a family. ‘Of course’, she said, smiling the smile that made her spirit glow brighter and the mark not quite so sharp. ‘Solas, too?’ he asked, ‘Solas, too.’
He could see the warm glow they gave each other, and the screaming hurts he normally felt in Solas diminish until they were nothing but squeaks. She was able to forget, for a little while, that so many people depended on her, that her people depended on her. She could forget her mistakes and he didn’t even have to make her. Solas did that for him and he marveled at this.
But Solas was troubled, stormier than the Waking Sea before they left. The worry gnawed at him inside, like a starving wolf eating an already splintered bone. But she was still so happy, glowing brighter than the sun, reflecting in his eyes every time she turned. Solas’s black mood swallowed her shining aura and he was worried.
So when Solas came back alone, somehow even darker than when he left, he despaired. He felt the corruption fraying the edges of his being, tearing at his already fragile purpose. He barely pulls himself together, muttering to himself and clutching at his arms. He thought—knew—something like this would happen, Solas had always hinted but they were a family he couldn’t—
She came back a day later. Her entire being screaming and quiet all at the same time. He had never seen her like that. Not when she made the decision to banish the wardens, not when she executed Ser Ruth. She raged within herself. People normally came to greet her but today she cut a great swath among her followers and he followed her, invisible, as she sent her horse to the stables, grooming him so long the horse eventually nipped her and stomped his hooves. Her body sagged and he sagged with her.
He was unsure of how to help.
For several days she avoided the rotunda. He picked her mind for some hint of what happened; Solas was guarding his thoughts more closely than usual and had been sending Cole away whenever he tried to ask. Whenever she was alone she cried and she wasn’t simply sad. She was lonely, hurt, madness clawing at the edges of her consciousness. ‘Worthless’ she thought almost constantly, ‘Who could want you.’
He appeared to her finally, as she lay on her bed, staring at the stairway as if expecting someone. Her eyes, the unnatural green color granted to her by the Veil, didn’t even follow him as paced, wondering how to help. Finally, he decided to try something.
He lifted her head, silently, carefully, as if she were a babe asleep. He maneuvered his still awkward feeling body beside her and lay her head in his lap and began stroking her short hair. For a while, they were quiet, but finally, he broke the silence.
“One time, Rhys and I…”
-.-.-.-
He watches Solas for a while, furious but keeping the anger down because he might feel it coming off of him, palpable waves of heat and pure fury. He had hurt the one person who protected him, thought he was real from the beginning, even knowing what he was.
He could feel the torn edges, threads coming undone the longer he remained as he was.
He is going against his very nature but he cannot help it. She was destroyed, she would never be the same again, never the bright, shining light in the lives of the Inquisition. Always she would be dulled like the soldiers blade after his first kill, echoing pain and betrayal.
Eventually, he found the right words, the right way to truly convey what Solas had done, because the way his core remained black as tar and how continued to go about his daily life told Cole he didn’t care.
He appeared before Solas in a puff of roiling smoke, the smell acrid for once due to his fury.
Solas only wrinkles his nose. “Cole, please. I do not have time—“
“You said you loved her.”
“Cole, I do not want—“Cole stomps his foot like he had seen children doing to get an extra sweetie, interrupting Solas effectively. His eyes widen before he leans into his high backed chair expectantly, waiting for Cole. His own anger roiled underneath the black, subtle but noticeable. Cole ignored the ooze of despair permeating the cloud.
“Ar lath ma, you said, and she believed you!” he screams at Solas, raising his voice like he had not done in so long. He felt like the spirits of Justice he had met when he lacked a body, but with a perversion, a twisting in his gut that said vengeance, not justice. He can hear the confused thoughts raining down from above her, but he ignores the whispers and the multitudes of eyes that could see him.
“Cole, you must control yourself,” Solas says, leaning forward, “Remember who you are, what you are—“
“I am Compassion,” Cole roars, “And you have hurt her! Broken, empty, he left me, how could he leave me? I feel like nothing, I am nothing…”
“Enough, Cole!”
Solas slams his palms onto the wooden desk. Some papers flutter to the floor, disturbed by his outburst. Cole is shocked into silence, unused to the show of emotion. He stares at the blatantly dismal aura surrounding Solas, wondering how he could be so blind to something so sorrowful. It bled onto the floor, a million different reasons crying out in a cacophony, banging on his eardrums. Solas pants softly as everything is let loose, he had been trying so hard to keep it in.
Cole is on the floor, crouched and covering his head as if he expects a blow. All of the thoughts, the confusion, the anger, everything is bombarding him all at once and it’s too much. He can’t feel this much himself and still take on other people. It’s filling him up to the brim, flowing over and into the mess of regret and anguish dripping from Solas.
Suddenly, he is yanked up from the floor. He stumbles as he misses a step, another step as he’s dragged along past the people who don’t say what they mean and down the stairs to one of his quiet places. Solas releases his arm and Cole stares at it as though it had just turned purple. Or maybe more like the woman who had the Blight run up and down her arms and all she could do was watch as it creeped towards her heart.
Solas leans with his hand on the wall, covering his face with the other. He pulls all the emotion back in until it’s the same black cloud as before. But now, Cole can see the bits seeping out before being stuffed back in.
“If you hurt her now, she will hurt less later,” Cole murmurs, “I don’t understand.”
“Maybe you will in time. Maybe she will,” Solas says. He is poised again, but the tips of his ears are red and his eyes are too tight.
“You are hurting, too.”
“Yes, Cole. What I have done will haunt me until the end of my days.”
“You still love her,” Cole says, awed. He can see the rays of golden light punching through the cloud, trying to shine on the person who made them. But they, too, were ruthlessly shoved back into submission.
“And I always will.”
He left Cole in the hallway, faint sounds from the bustling of the kitchens echoing off the walls. Cole thinks he left a bit of his sorrow as well, as he can feel it nudging its way to his center and sitting there like a rock.