Back hurts. Legs cramp. Blue and black and grey and white. I want to move, to run. Lavellan frowns. "Stop wriggling, Cole," she says, not angry. Firm. She gives me that look.
"You can't blame the kid," Varric says. Shrugs. "I don't like getting my portrait painted, either."
"I want my hat," I say.
"Then the painter won't be able to see your face. What's a portrait if we can't see your face?" Lavellan's smile is cold, skin stretched like fabric; too tight. Anxious.
"But my face isn't me."
"The best artists can capture someone's spirit in a piece," Lavellan explains. "A good artist can paint a body; a great artist can paint a person. Any one can paint Empress Celene, but only a choice few can paint who she truly is - the fierceness in her brow, the easy elegance in her posture, the majesty in her bearing." Her voice has a mystery - the way her lips move around the words. I sit up. I listen. "Every flick of the brush, every line and crease, it all paints a picture of something bigger, something beyond what our eyes can see, something greater than just us." Her words arc lightning - thought to thought, mind to mind, shivering and brightening and bright. Silver flashes in blackness. Exciting, tensing, shallowing.
Varric makes a joke: "I didn't realize you were such a patron of the arts, Inquisitor." I want her to continue, but the lid is off. The building has stopped.
I feel angry, but Lavellan presses her palm to my fingers, pale against paler, and the lightning starts again. Static in my ears, on my skin. "All he has left to do is the background. Do you want to see how it looks?"
I think no - say yes - and she guides me behind the easel. I don't like it. It looks too much, too little, too same, too different. "What do you think?" she asks.
"It's strange," I say. Maybe it's funny, and she laughs.
"It's a spitting image, kid," Varric hits my back. I try to smile and be nice like he says I should. Lavellan shimmers, and it makes it easier. "Where's it hanging when it's done?" Varric asks.
"In the hall outside my room, I think,"she says. She's thought about this, I realize. It scares me, but I don't see why.
"I'll have to come see it sometime." Varric hits my back again and leaves. Lavellan stays and looks.
I have a question, but Lavellan is looking. I look at her, she looks at me; a different me. She likes to look at me, but only a picture of me. Varric said it's rude to stare, but Lavellan stares. She stares at me, a reflection of me. I felt her anxiety, but now it was gone.
She looks at me looking at her. I feel her smile deep in my chest and neck. "What is it, Cole?"
"Why do you want a picture of me?"
I feel her fretting, but I try not to feel her feelings - Lavellan said don't do that, not to me, anyway. I try not to, but her thoughts are loud, a frantic, frenzied, feverish fear following and swallowing her.
If he leaves, if he leaves, if he leaves -
I try not to listen. I try.
If he leaves, if he leaves, if he leaves -
"For posterity's sake," Lavellan says. I don't understand; her words are thin. Veil stretching over truth. Almost there, to reach through, to grasp, just obscured under ice, a sheet, a shimmering light -
He can't make people forget, not anymore. But if he leaves, if he can, if he does...
Ah.
She was afraid of me. No - for me. Afraid to forget, to forget forgetting. Afraid that I would… that I...
But a picture doesn't forget. A picture doesn't vanish. It would stay, until it didn't.
I wanted to tell her, to promise her, but I didn't. She didn't like it when I thought her thoughts. But I let her hand touch my hand. I would feel real for the both of us.
I would have to grow.