Author's Note: This chapter is shorter than most, but it is a necessary one. I hope you enjoy it.

I have been working a lot on the next couple chapters, so you shouldn't have to wait as long for the next installment of the story (fingers crossed!).

Each time I get a new review, follow or favorite, it really boosts my morale. So THANK YOU all so much for following along! And, if you have any questions or comments, I encourage you to share them with me!

- songs for clem

-Cole's Secret-

When they had arrived at the Redcliffe tavern, Cole perched up in the rafters. He sat, still as a spider. He followed the rising and falling songs of the sorrows of those below. Their hearts blared, boisterous and brash; and, under the cadence, the Inquisitor's heart beckoned out into the night. It bore a scar, cryptic, concealed. He hoped he could help, but, before he could, he needed to comprehend.

He crawled out onto the roof to excise himself from the deafening songs of too many clamoring hearts. The air was cold and wet. The clear moon was poised in the sky. As he scaled higher, looking for purchase, he ran his fingers along the ruts of the shingles and felt the tufts of moss that grew along each crack. After he reached the top, he swung his legs over the side of the roof, kicking his heels against the wall, listening to the reverberations absorb into the wooden siding. Now that he had found his focus, he honed in on Avalon Lavellan, on the wavelength of her unfathomable ache.

This sorrow was unique.

"Her song is muffled," he muttered to himself. "An old hurt, forgotten. The scab crumbled into dust, but a thin scar remains. Scratching. Searching. Twist it about in the shadows, just right, and you can see where it healed wrong. Pieced together. Pink flesh. What lies underneath?" He gasped, "Is there anything there at all?"

This song was not resonating with grief. It was empty, a measured and sustained silence. This song told no story. It held no melody. It embodied the vacant spaces where sorrow had once been. It slipped in and out of awareness. It waited, like a messenger standing in the doorway, shifting on his feet, with nothing to say.

The intact memories around those absences had hardened around the crevices of the missing moments. The missing memories were like old bones suspended in mud that had fossilized into stone. Only, the bones were now ghosts, and in their place, her mind was riddled with gaps.

It was extensive.

Avalon fell asleep at the tavern table. Flashes of things forgotten nipped at her while she dreamed.

The sorrow had been silent for so long, and now it was unfolding, unfurling. He needed to follow. The pain permeated her deepest being, but she didn't even know how to face it. She didn't have a name for it. She only felt it pressing against her the way the night presses against the face of the moon.

Whomever had taken her memories, he had taken too much, but he had also not taken enough. It was not a clean wipe. Examining the shape of her hurt, Cole was aghast at how carelessly her mind had been altered. It was as if an explosion had shattered a huge portion of her story, yet broken bits were never swept out, so they lingered, haunting her. It was cruel.

Cole knew how to take a memory, but he did not take memories like this.

He would take specific instances, tiny flights of fright. He removed them expertly, with surgical precision, so the mind around the hurt could mend and become whole again. This was nothing like that. These pathways were gouged out of Avalon's past. There were jagged rips and huge gaps.

It was a precarious situation. Now that she was returning to these empty passages, she put her whole mind at risk. If she was not careful, Cole feared she could fracture her entire memory.

She awoke at the table, startled, and retired to her room. He did not want to disrupt her concentration. This quest was important to her. He waited for her to fall asleep, then he appeared beside her bed.

He thought he could help.

She lay, asleep, one hand tucked up under her chin. Her breathing was heavy and deep. Her face was in shadow, and the moonlight fell over her hair.

Cole reached out with his spirit, following the shape of her hurt, catching the scent of the lost memories. Then he opened up his mind to the night, fumbling for a connection, any thin thread to tie another person's buried memories to the echoes of Avalon's lost pain.

And, then, like little answered prayers, pieces of her past trickled into his mind. The lost memories were like spools of glowing energy. He sat on her bed, running his fingers through her hair, weaving tidbits of her story back into her mind, as the memories intertwined with her dreams. As she lay sleeping, he was her conduit, and he was startled at how readily the pieces came to him.

He stayed all through the night, her secret caretaker, crouching over her, caught up in her being.

When she started to stir, Cole whispered into her ear, "You think they didn't want you. You think there was something wrong with you, and that is why they kept you apart. But, really, they are afraid. Of you. Of what you mean. When they see you, they Remember, and that makes them afraid."

There were still too many gaps. There was still so much pain within her. Cole stood. He clenched his hands together, resolute. The wide brim of his hat obscured his face in shadow. "I will help you."

Then he disappeared.

And she awoke.