It isn't often that he finds himself stymied with writer's block but the words don't want to come.
He tries, writing: Of all the lies I've told I wish this was one of them, Junior, but I'm afraid - The lump starts to form again so he stops, reaches for his drink to clear it.
"It burns going down, then it blankets, buoys." Cole whooshes next to him, nearly causing him to spill his glass. "A fog of forgetfulness, but it won't work... in the morning, the fog with be gone, and so she will still be."
"Kid," he starts, remembering to gentle his tone despite everything, "Either you've got to stop doing that, or we need to put a bell on you. It scares people."
"Why a bell, Varric? Why not ribbons, or a flower crown? People like flowers. They smell like sunshine."
"No, it – It's from a story, alright? 'Mice vote to bell a cat so they can hear him coming.'"
Cole's face stills in thought. "How would the mice get the cat to wear the bell? They only need themselves to find the cat, but they wouldn't want for it to find them..."
"... and the cat has no reason to let them put a bell on him. See, that's the reason why the expression means to attempt something impossibly difficult."
"Unless they used mint."
"Mint," Varric echoes. "Right."
Cole smiles. "It tickles the nose, teasing, tumbling. Long, lanky stretches in drugged dreaming."
"I guess you've got a solution for everything." Varric shakes his head.
"If I wore a bell, would the bell do the scaring, and not me? Would that be better than making them forget? I don't want to scare. I want to help."
"I know you do," he says, and thinks, But you do some scary shit sometimes, forgetting that his thoughts are not his own around Cole.
"The hawk would still be flying if it never crashed into the stone. No, stop lying, always lying, lie enough and you fool yourself. She never backed down from a challenge."
Varric sighs, and finally takes his drink. "Yeah. Stuff like that. Have a seat, Kid. We'll see if we can solve this problem together."
He pats a chair beside him, and digs out a couple of novels from his pack to put on the table. It takes a few moments for Cole to settle with so many minds here for him to filter out. His bedraggled, pale hair is for once not in his wide eyes; the Inquisitor, in one of her mothering efforts, must have introduced Cole to a comb. Varric just wishes Cole would remember to blink more. Was this what it was like with Blondie towards the end?
"Now, don't take this too literally, and I can't say this is going to be a perfect comparison, but it might help to think of people a bit like books. Everyone's got a cover that is different, everyone's got the front that they want showing to the world... some are just more honest than others. Generally, the outside will give you hints about what's inside. Regardless, every story has its secrets."
Cole turns Swords and Shields over in his hand, (always good to keep a few copies around in case a fan wants an autograph), its cover still glossy, pages still fresh and crisp from the copier. "Must be perfect, practiced, polished, and precise. Pristine. Never a stain, never a hair to be out of place, never give them a weakness to exploit," he murmurs, then looks at Tale of the Champion, dog-eared and watermarked, and runs a finger down the gash of the Seeker's knife. "Wearied and worn, wounded but wears the scars well. They don't seem to hurt anymore."
"Good, I think we're getting somewhere. Now, when you do... whatever it is you do, you're picking out whole pieces of someone's story. Sometimes good, sometimes bad... Mostly a lot of ugly. And when you do it around the rest of us it, well – other people don't easily forget things said."
"Face flushes, suffuses with shame. Not like that, not like them. There's more to me than what he wanted. So much more. I can be more."
"Rein it in a bit, Kid. It's content without context. That's not how they want others to know."
"It's... wrong." Cole says slowly, coming to a firm conclusion. "Books are to be read. Stories want to be told. Not stolen."
"Exactly!" Varric beams, feeling like they've made a breakthrough. "No one likes spoilers."
"But... it made Cassandra happy to know that the Knight-Captain was alive," Cole says, frowning.
"I wasn't too pleased if you remember," he answers, kindly, "It's my story, after all. Good or bad, I should be able to tell it in my own time. You tear pages out, even with good-intentions -" He moves his hand as if to remove them but Cole swiftly stops him, fearfully crying, "No! That'll hurt the book."
Varric nods. "That's right. Even alone, just with you, your spoilers can cause a lot of hurt. It wouldn't do us much good to forget about them, not when they make us who we are. Doesn't mean we aren't still prickly about them."
"Then how do I help without hurting?" Cole asks, looking mournful, a little lost.
"You've got the ability to skip to whatever part of the book you want, right? That's fine. Makes you, you. Everyone that starts out reading does it by doing it out loud. Sometimes even skimming their fingers along the page. Eventually, you need to learn to keep the words you're reading inside your head. For the comfort of others, anyway." Varric glances at him, frets that he's not really getting it, and adds, "Don't worry. I'll help you. Let's practice reading other people's thoughts silently, alright? And be careful. Like pages, our feelings are fragile – When you're not sure what to do, it can't hurt to ask."
"And what if they don't want me to help? You hurt, you wish you could forget, but not really."
"Ah, Kid..." He rallies, "Grief's tricky. You won't always be able to help, but there other things you can do. Saying 'I'm sorry', or simply being there. Letting them talk if they need to talk."
"Letting them help you instead." Cole's eyes are bright with understanding. "Like you help me, because she helped him."
Varric smiles crookedly, a little verklempt. "She tried."
"I'll try too."
He's a good kid, he thinks, as Cole hums the tavern songs from the Hanged Man to the steady scritch-scratch of his pen.