You're a spirit of compassion, Cole. Do you know what that means? To suffer together. You don't need to make people forget something to help. They don't need to end. When you share someone's pain, it can help just as much.
Togetherness is hard. Togetherness hurts more when they forget me. I don't want them to take my pieces away with them. I will run out.
The pieces of you are what help the most. And a spirit of compassion can never run out of them.
On the roof outside her room, he listened. She shot arrows at doors and chanted names, slamming them in traps to watch them bleed. Her mouth said the names of their enemies. Her heart said the names of her friends. Red Jenny for favors but never for friends.
Chaos inside with no straight lines, she bounced like rabbits from hill to valley, like Evelyn jumped rock to rock. Safety in motion. Stillness was death in murky pools. Closer and farther. The helping always hurt. Hating first helped.
A knock at the door, push it away. No friends no loves no talking. The smell of cookies was a traitor, pretty lying by ugly people. Say what's easy to keep yourself clean, but the dirt was what mattered. Shiny stole the truth. She kept her room crowded for discomfort. No one else could fit inside.
A little elf girl in a pretty dress who didn't know anything. She wore ribbons in her perfect hair and skipped down the road. The woman's pride was an umbrella that kept her from ever knowing rain. The glares and mutterings crashed on the forever shield and protected her from them. The little elf girl who thought the baker the only man who hated her without knowing. Who thought hate was the thing that could hurt you most. The world was a harder shape than that. She hardened with it when she left.
Another arrow in the door. No visitors allowed.
"It was fear."
She turned with a snarl. "It should get away from me, yeah?"
"The little girl with ribbons was gentle. She ate cookies and laughed."
"She was stupid and weak. I made her strong."
"The world made her feel weak so she wants to be strong."
He stepped through the window and held her, like a mother holds a child when she scrapes her knee. Firm and gentle. "The lady thought you were perfect and wanted to be the same. If she wasn't, what right did she have to love you? Every day, afraid of failing, afraid of letting you see inside her flaws. You were everything to her. She cried when you left, and her heart still has nothing. She sees little Sera every day and wonders if you're whole."
She beat her hands against his chest, but compassion could only feel the hurt of others. He listened for what she needed. "She heard of a noble, a cruel one who beat elves for sport and turned them to the street. He was ruined by a favor, and she rejoiced in her quiet house with no little girl. When he came to her later for help she dumped water on his head. You make her proud without knowing."
"If she's so proud, why didn't she do the favor herself?" she said, but there was no heat in her voice.
"Not everyone has courage when they are alone. She gave her best to you, and you made that better. A parent's only wish. Do not forget."
Outside the stables, he heard the hurting. The whickering of horses, calm and steady, giving way to their cries as the road turned sticky with their blood. Orders given with a jangling of coin. Honor was purchased and erased so easily. Why was it so hard to outrun the sounds? A little girl's sobs in the night, a mother begging for safety. His men were loyal under the confusing moon that washed the visions away. A dog in the street, with the face of a child. And he held the stick that beat pain into it.
Work the wood under him. Find something valuable inside, something worthy of being. He found the lumber on piles of trash, waiting to be discarded, and he took them back and made them something new. A Grey Warden's job, a recruiter's job, but lonely, solitary work for his bloody hands. There's no Calling in him. He wished he heard the noise that said it was time to rest.
Betrayals sharp like a knife. Would they cut or would they reveal? What path would he take? Evelyn stood at the crossroad, holding the sign that would tell him which way to go.
"The deciding is what matters."
"Hello, spirit," he said. His voice was calm and smooth, no rough edges. "My head of interest to you, then?"
"You thought that you were the little boy beating the dog, that leaving and staying are the same. Both hurt but they are not equal. The men knew. Not the ones who followed you, but the ones who lifted you. A man let you win a fight, then offered you the choice. A man claimed you when you were broken, then offered you the choice. Leave or stay. Different decisions, different outcomes. You left then, and you stay now. Staying to hurt or staying to help. It's the staying that makes the man."
He sliced another strip off of the wood. "And if staying is the wrong path?"
"A path cannot be wrong when who you follow is good, though it may not be as right as it could be. A path cannot be right when who you follow is evil, though it may not be as bad as it could be." He listened for wisdom. "A man in between bought you, a duke of ambition. You think you held the stick, but you were the stick. You thought you chose the path but you only chose a guide. Evelyn is not Gaspard."
Now the voice was harsh, unwelcoming. "Don't say his name to me. Or to anyone else, spirit. I warn you."
"Yes. It's a name for dark places, but this is not a dark place. Blackwall earns his honor. The wood lies bare and clean under the choices he makes. Do not forget."
He perched on a ladder and listened. There were real voices this time, over the inside whispers. Troop commands, training schedules, construction reports filling the space with sounds. Work to push away the needs. Needs are weakness. He'd given himself to the cause, all of him, and he'd meant it. The Inquisition was hard, unforgiving. Hardness was what he would give.
The lyrium in his desk, so close to his hands. A test that he set himself. An always-ready escape for the day he failed. Strength and weakness hand in hand. His legs shook when he stood, his fingers trembled through the papers, his mind closed and steady until the night. The bed was where the nightmares came, so he slept at his desk, stiff and uncomfortable. His desk with the lyrium. The bottle was cold to the touch, smooth under his fingers. When his men left he would take it out and stare at it. Remind himself of the price of its magic.
Demons circling him. Abominations torturing him. Mages betraying him. He continued the work they'd begun on him so long ago. Prisons carried inside the soul.
Evelyn across the table, so close to his hands. The softness inside the Inquisition. Smiles in the blades, laughter on the shields. She would be warm to his touch, tender under his fingers. Another kind of test, one he'd already failed in the Circle. A beautiful mage, brimming with magic. An abomination. A beautiful leader, holding her own magic. A distraction. He wouldn't allow it.
"She is better than lyrium."
He whirled around with his hand on his sword. Tension lived in every line, even when he forced himself to breathe. "Cole. I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm so jumpy."
"You think I'm a demon. You think you're a demon. You think the lyrium will make us disappear. A rush of magic and then control, snapping the world into the shape you want. Closing the doors of memory in your mind." He listened, finding the heart. "But she told you not to take it. So much trust. Face kind, eyes soft, tempting beauty. Her hand on your arm like a brand. Too close. Not close enough. The lyrium will make it stop."
He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. His face was pale and worn. "Will it?"
"No. Pain traded for pain. Temptations don't end. They only change, Cullen the Templar. He gave the world hardness and it exploded underneath him, young glass cooled too quickly after the fire. Cullen the Commander cannot do the same. Hardness is not enough for a leader."
"I don't want her to carry my burdens."
"You cannot stop the burdens. The Inquisition is what she will always hold, an anchor weighing her down. Your love will make her lighter. You're not the only one who is tempted." He put his hands to the man's face, like a lover would. "Lyrium is a shortcut to a man you don't need to be anymore. The whispers in the night are echoes of a hurt that will heal in the day. Do not forget."
In the rookery, listening to the cawing of birds. Too much hurt here to bear, but nothing that was not already known. She read messages of paper and heard messages of swords. Death and ends, to all she loved. It comforted her to embrace the knowledge that in the end, she could do nothing to stop them.
"I can't help you."
She didn't look. "No, you can't."
"Your heart is smooth glass that will never break."
"No, it won't."
"Why does hurting help you? It shouldn't be that way."
"Many things shouldn't be the way they are. It will not stop me from fighting. Nightingales love the songs in the darkness. "
Sadness physical and thick in the air. Caressing it like a lover. Andraste's grief over the world she'd created. "Your world is kinder than you think."
"Not to me, little ghost. But I am glad it has room for you inside of it. Do not regret."
Balancing on a balcony, hearing tears. Harder to listen here. Compassion should not feel its own pain, but Rhys and Evangeline had made him. They'd helped him. They'd hurt him. And now the woman inside the room, the most important woman in the world, doing the same. The one who remembered and made him real. Her hurt reflected inside his own body until it fragmented into pieces that would never be found.
Eyes that watched her and wanted everything. She had no more to give, but she gave it all the same. Pieces of herself in their hands. She was not a spirit of compassion. Her pieces would run out, and she would die. That day rose over the horizon like a sun, and it warmed her while it burned her. To leave them before they knew she was a fraud. Andraste wasn't waiting for a Herald. Corypheus was waiting for a murderer. She would give him what he didn't know he needed.
Pain in her hand dulling the pain of her heart. They would leave her, one by one, when she wasn't enough for them anymore. Varric, disgusted with her remoteness. Bull, her weakness. Solas, her humanity. Vivienne, her hardness. Cassandra, her fear. Josephine, her rashness. Cullen, her love. The things she was and couldn't be, driving them away. There was no side of her that could hold them all.
Anguish, tears, despair. Compassion suffered and broke underneath its weight.
"Forget."
Behind her then, taking the memory without thought. Her shoulders stopped shaking. She looked at her desk in confusion, then glanced around. "Cole. Is something wrong?"
"Nothing is wrong. The Inquisition cannot be wrong. You tell it what it is, and you are right."
She smiled, and he felt better. He shouldn't feel better. He'd taken her away. But her hurting hurt him. Rhys had left when he hurt. He didn't want her face to live away from his.
Her voice was light and confident. "I'm always glad to see you. You have the nicest things to say about me."
"I don't say them. Your friends think them so loud that they take their own shape. You draw love to you from everywhere. Do not forget."
Back to Solas, the quiet one. Never anything to help, a mind as closed and still as the frozen lake below. "I did as you said. I gave away pieces and told them to remember. I don't know if I helped. But I don't feel smaller."
"That's a start. Even spirits do not always know what effect their actions might have on the world."
"I failed with some. I failed with her. I could not suffer together with the Inquisitor. I made her forget her fears."
He sighed, soft as wind. "She is a difficult case. Much of what troubles her are not things that will be helped by remembering."
"She's special."
"Yes, she is." A crack in the lake, then, a pain as old as the flickering stars.
"You will not be alone as long as she is innocent. She trusts your face, bare and solemn. When she runs, scared, in the Fade, she knows you will follow behind."
His eyes widened. His mind slammed shut, but not unkindly. "Thank you, Cole. I will not forget."