A/N: This chapter is told from Cole's PoV, so it's a little different from the others. Thank you for reading!
...-...
It hurts.
An itch in the back of the mind, a spider's legs ghosting against skin. The feel of it gets worse if dwelt on.
Wrong.
So much is wrong and wretched and what if.
A word spoken in a different tone. A smile instead of a scowl. Humility instead of pride. So many ways that the path could have changed.
It's not his fault, but he can't see.
There's a twist in the tangle, a knot that will be too tight if tugged.
Guilt.
Guilt that he could have helped, somehow, some way.
It's eaten at him through the years, two memories dancing together, twirling interchangeably, reminding him how easily good can be tarnished and beaten away.
Two boys stand in a quiet corner of the Chantry, one with suspicion on his face, the other just frustrated. The first spends so much time, so much effort, fighting to be the best of what this place will make them into. The second sees that this place doesn't want to make them better or best. It wants to make them compliant.
He sees the eye rolls and hears the, 'He'll learn's when the first boy's back is turned. They never say to his face that he is wrong, that mages are not people, that it is the public that must be protected, not them with their wicked curse in their blood.
But they think it, and they know he will too. Because he is good and loyal and follows his orders well.
The second boy is tired of seeing him stand so tall when he stands for nothing. Tired of the effort that everyone expects will be leached from him soon enough. They are not protectors. They are not heroes. They are bound.
Bound, bound, bound.
He shouts. He flings his arms open, blocks the first boy's path.
Cullen, they don't care! You're not going to be some knight in shining armor! You're not going to save the day!
His words are too harsh, too pointed and cruel—even if the truth burns in them.
Burns bright like magefire.
Perhaps it is because that truth burns so brilliantly that the first boy refuses to see.
And I suppose you will?
The words are sharp as knives. More is intended to follow, but the boy with the blond curls and the ideals that shield him from the disapproving looks and jokes behind his back shuts his mouth and pushes past.
He should follow, make him see. This path was a choice for him, so he could turn back. The second boy has no way out, but at least he's not a fool.
The first memory sometimes plays further, drawing out to the fist fight when Alistair tries to stop him, to the dark looks and angry glares cast from one face to the other as time tugs them forward, shoots them toward the sky like sprouting trees, though they can only flourish so much in the molds given to them.
Eventually, it gives way to its partner.
Instead of that idealistic youth, back straight, head held proud, a different creature takes his place. Shoulders trembling, eyes wide and wild, clinging desperately to whatever wisp is left of him as though it will be wrenched away with a wail.
You cannot trust them. They are monsters.
The words are not directed at him, but the change is so severe.
It hurts his heart.
And it scares him.
He tried to warn him, didn't he? Tried to tell him that flaming sword was no shield.
Why hadn't he been able to reach him? Had he knowingly spoken so harshly? An attempt to reason that would be shrugged off, a compromise with his conscience so that he could sleep better, knowing he was smarter, more understanding of the world than the precious perfect boy?
Even once the danger is past, the first boy—now a man—will not concede they are safe. Words that make Alistair flinch spew from his lips as he points to the haggard mages who remain, insisting they be put to the sword.
They are dangerous, they are monsters, they are abominations waiting to happen.
The little ones cling to robes, making themselves as small as possible, but Wynne, that woman does not even flinch. Head held high as the boy's once was, she takes the bombardment of his words like a light breeze before suggesting the young man be given time to rest.
They have to drag him away.
He weeps.
Weeps for his words are going unheeded and he knows that danger will surface again.
Weeps because his warnings go unheard, just as the second boy's warnings fell to deaf ears.
The brave boy cut down and twisted into a hateful man.
The thoughts dance together, twirling and stilling in hateful harmony.
Somedays, they do not surface. He's gone months without them pestering him, but when they come back, he cannot help but wonder what he might have done, what might yet be done.
For years, it has tormented him on its whims and yet…
Yet now the dance has changed.
A third memory manages to interrupt that malicious waltz.
An older man, face gaunt and circles under his eyes. He holds his breath when he feels magic, but does not snap or move to squelch it. Instead, he looks sick. His mouth is a hard line, his brow pinched from pain—memories or injuries or both.
"The boy is gone and cannot be saved, but the man might yet be," Cole offers as he sits beside Alistair. "It wasn't your fault. Even if you had made him see that the templars were not great protectors, he would have joined them. He would have wanted to make them as they should have been. As he thought they were."
A pinch in Alistair's brow, a frown. He inspects Cole with a bit of confusion before blinking. "He always was stubborn, thinking the world was better than it was."
"He would have been at the Circle's fall, regardless of anything you could have done."
The words are like a sunbeam on a cloudy day. They shimmer and shift, breaking through the clouds weakly at first, but they catch on his face, brow first. That pinch eases out, the crease never going away completely—it can't anymore—and then the shadows under his eyes seem to lighten. "I suppose you're right."
With a smile, he reaches out and claps Cole on the shoulder before standing up, his burden lighter than it was. In an hour—if that—he won't remember who told him that Cullen's fate wasn't a burden he would need to carry. Instead, it will be as though an epiphany hit him, that newest memory of the man too tired to hate falling in between the dance and breaking its partners apart forever.
There will be room for hope for a man who could have been a friend, had either of them ever really reached out.
Mirroring his smile, Cole watches him wander over to where Finley is.
She's away from the campfire, back to it, staring out into the woods as though she's looking for something.
Nothing good will come to them with a fire about. And she feels she's been gone long enough that there's like to be new things drawn to that cursed, flickering light.
Too bright, blinding through bundled branches, drying the air and making the cold catch in a cough in the throat.
She didn't want it there at all, but she did not fight. This will be the last night she'll be persuaded to let them have their comforts. They've made good time so far, barely over a week from Skyhold and already she knows the territory.
How odd that home could be such a short, hard ride away. It felt so much further.
A dream fading, the path lost as a tide washes it out, leaving no way home.
But she is.
Home.
There will be no homecoming with the fire—or with others with her—but this isn't about coming home. This is about saving home.
Red. Black. Corruption. It was supposed to be gone. Supposed to be safe.
How far does the red lyrium reach from the temple?
Alistair said it started further north, near Kirkwall.
How is it spreading? How is it moving? Rocks don't move. Isn't lyrium a rock? How is it that it can be Blighted?
Or is it just that she wants it to be Blighted because then it's something she might be able to figure out?
Or is it because if it's Blighted it won't be her fault when she can't figure it out?
There's no right way to approach this problem, and Alistair will die because she can't figure it out. He wishes her good night, and she wonders if he will see the morning.
Everything is so…
"You should stay in the trees," Cole offers as he sits beside Finley. She doesn't jump, but he can feel her countenance shift. She's more alert without showing it.
And it scares her that he knows this.
He wishes he didn't scare her.
"The red follows the templars," Cole begins again, motioning off into the night. "If it's made it so far into the Wilds, then it would be wiser to be ready for a sweep."
"We'd have to douse the fire," Finley mumbles, fingers picking at her braid and forming a snarl. "And honestly, I don't think it'd matter with red templars."
There is so much fear.
Fear of the unknown and known alike. Of templars and the red, of the things she loves being tainted not by the Blight, but something just as hellish. The shadows could hold Corypheus himself for all she knows, and it makes her home feel foreign.
She doesn't belong anywhere anymore.
Nowhere.
Except…
"I like the commander," Cole says, staring off into the darkness. He can see little creatures, can feel their cautious curiosity at the light they dare not go too close to. "I think he would have found a way to come, if you had asked him."
That makes all the worries draw to a halt, if only for a few seconds. Instead, warmth and soft caresses fill her mind, along with a longing for a touch too many miles away to be felt. Then she shakes her head as wicked worries begin to taint that calmness.
"We have to go into the part of the Wilds that still suffers the Blight. He's already—"
Sick. Sick? Is it even…?
Will he be there when she gets back? Will he waste away? How long does lyrium withdrawal take to affect? How long does he have? She should have asked before she left, but she was too busy trying to think of the fastest way down to where they needed to go.
When he said goodbye, his fingers grazed her wrist, but nothing more, and she doesn't understand why he didn't kiss her. She leaned toward him, didn't she? Why did he seem so hesitant? He wasn't hesitant when she went to him the night before.
Doesn't matter.
They are casual. He doesn't need to kiss her if he doesn't feel like it. And he wouldn't need to, even if they weren't casual.
There is so much fear.
It ties Cole's tongue, and he's not sure how to approach it to make it better. Things are easier with most of the others. Their fears are isolated or little. Even a little fear can cause a lot of pain, but this…
She and Cullen are both bundles of traumas and heartbreaks, and whenever he picks a thread to try to pull lose, it's so tangled with the others that soothing one fear reawakens four more.
"Do you really think he would have come?"
The question is small, barely a whisper. For a moment, he's confused about whether he heard it from her lips or from her thoughts.
She is looking at him, though, expecting an answer.
Perking up a little, Cole leans toward her, nodding quickly. "He wanted to. He spent the night with you in his arms thinking of a way."
Then why didn't he say anything?
"He didn't know if you would want him to come."
"I don't," her response is quick, firm, and honest.
She likes to think of him far from the Blight, safe and warm, in his bed that can see the stars overhead.
Even so, a smile turns up the corners of her lips, her fingers stilling in the hectic mess they're making.
Then she's eyeing Cole, suspicious. "You're not just saying that—"
"It wouldn't help," Cole counters, a little annoyed that she would suspect him of lying.
But then, she's come a long way already, able to sit beside him without drawing away, able to look him over with a soft curiosity that pulls on other hurts he's not sure how to address.
"You should talk to—Cullen." Solas is who he wants to suggest before he catches himself.
Her demon's left such a huge, poorly healed scar and for him to try to talk to her about anything spirit related…
It would be like plunging her into icy waters, and he's not sure she'll come out of that.
Not yet.
Maybe someday when she has less hurts to weigh her down.
"Can't talk to someone who's not here," she mutters, already wishing he was. "I don't imagine he'd appreciate a bird message."
"Maybe if you showed him how it works before you sent it."
She nods at that, picking at her braid again. There is doubt, but there is little he can do to assuage it here.
"Do you rest?"
It's the first time she's ever asked him this sort of question, and Cole is taken aback as he stares at her in wonder. Then, with an awkward ringing of his hands, he shrugs a little. "I can."
"But do you need it?" Finley presses, mind suddenly focusing on him. There are questions tumbling in her mind, but he does his best not to latch on to any one. She is still afraid of being read so easily, even if he would only use it for good. His tongue all but tangles until he can finally remember the question that actually made it to her lips.
Focus, focus.
"Not really, no."
Unnatural. Everything rests, everything gets worn, but not it—him. Him, him, him.
He smiles despite himself. She wants to believe he's someone, and a good someone at that. It rattles in her head, tumbling against her doubts.
Unnatural. Not…right. Everything rests, everything—
Unless…
Does anything in the Fade rest? Perhaps he's as he should be, if he were where he should be.
Her gaze wanders away from Cole for the first time since he's sat beside her, toward Solas.
Talk to him.
The words burn in his mind, but he smiles instead, pretending as best he can that he doesn't hear the internal struggle in her mind. He wants to help, but quiet is what she needs most.
It is surprisingly hard.
But it helps.
"So you don't dream?"
The question takes him by surprise, which in itself surprises him more. He blinks. Once, twice. "No."
"Is that why you don't have magic?" Finley leans toward him now, head tilting. Her braid is forgotten. "You're cut off?"
A tranquil spirit?
The tranquil scare her, but for him to be one might make them less frightening. After all, he can smile and respond with his own will.
"I'm not tranquil," he objects, immediately hoping she doesn't make the connection to the thought question and his summation. It doesn't bother her.
"Or is the way people forget you a magic?" Her head tilts the other way, gaze fixated on him. "It doesn't feel like magic, but you could hide that."
"I don't try, really," Cole picks at one of his gloves, not sure if this attention is for better or for worse. Even Solas, who has always been able to see him, hasn't given him this direct attention before. Perhaps because Solas already understands him. "I don't know."
"Do you miss the Fade?"
"Sometimes." He shrugs. "I can help a lot of people here, though. I like that."
"Do you remember a lot about the Fade?"
Or is it a hazy home, memories taunting of a time before there was pain, of friends and family before the world caught up and swallowed you up in its realities.
"You want to know about spirits," Cole whispers, despite himself. "You want to know if she could have been good before she came here."
No.
Too much, too soon.
Finley is disappearing up into one of the trees before Cole can apologize.
She wants answers to questions she doesn't want to ask, and he doesn't know how to answer them without scaring and scarring. There are so many scars. She hides them and heals them and pretends that with the physical scab gone, so too is the memory. As though denial can unmake the harsher edges of her past.
She hurts.
Every heartbeat, every breath, every thought winds back to something wrong.
The Blight.
Lyrium addiction.
The mark.
Demons, monsters, templars. Mages with their suspicious glances, overly friendly smiles, friendship offered as a ruse.
Loss—
"Cole, would you care to help me tend to the fire?"
Solas' voice is a soothing interruption that gives him something to focus on aside from Finley. Her hurts nag at the back of his mind, pushing him to find ways to untangle the mess, but at least for now, it is not too much.
Walking over to where Solas sits, Cole drops down beside him.
"Do you wish you'd stayed in Skyhold?" Solas asks, not addressing the spirit's blunder.
"There is so much to do there," Cole admits, but even as the words leave him, he is shaking his head. "A shadow, stealth and silence, too close to the mages, drawn in? No. No, this thing knows its way around. Summoned? How to find its master…an open investigation will have the mages at odds with the templars. Step light, step quick, find the culprit and handle it." Slumping down, Cole shakes his head. "Lady Vivienne does not want me present." He picks at the bottom of his shirt a moment before adding, "I don't think she'll believe that I'm help." He glances back toward the trees for a split second, not where Finley disappeared, but where she rests now, curled up in the upper branches, safe from the ground. "Not without Finley's assurance."
"You will need to speak with Finley about that," Solas states, voice calm, though there's slight annoyance in his eyes.
Cole leans forward and pats his hand. "She doesn't fear you. Just…her. She destroys everything she touches, and Finley doesn't know how to tell you that. Not so you'll believe. She worries you'll try to help and draw her wrath." Cole shudders. "She's right to worry."
At that, Solas cocks his head, brow arched. "You think?"
"She stopped being good a long time ago."
"I'm aware that her essence was corrupted—"
"She devours her prey in pieces, takes the information she needs and leaves them broken and incomplete. A mother, a lover, a friend. She takes whatever she wants, Finley's second shadow."
"I know not to let anyone in." Solas sounds offended.
"So did they." Shaking his head again, Cole points toward the trees where Finley disappeared rather than where she is. "She believes what she's seen. I don't know how you can show her that you won't fall down the same path, even if you won't."
"Neither do I." Solas sighs, watching the fire dance in front of him, embers flickering up into the sky and reflecting in his eyes, making them glimmer red.
"You could always tell her the truth. She'd appreciate that, I think. And she'd keep your secret. With as many as she has, one more is not so hard."
That earns him another arched brow and a look of mild reprimand. Alistair and Thom are asleep already, and Finley is far enough that she can't hear them.
Even as Cole wonders if she'll be able to sleep tonight—she doesn't sleep well, even without the nightmare demon picking at her—Solas sighs again. "I do not believe our inquisitor is one to believe in legends."
"She wouldn't think you're a monster unless you show her you are one."
Solas blinks at Cole, surprised. Cole shrugs a little. "She's terrified of me, but gave me a chance. She'd give you one."
That earns him a sad smile.
They sit for a time, neither speaking, only the crackle of flames interrupting the quiet of the night.
No.
True as it feels, that's a lie.
There are little skittering paws beyond the light, and larger things, moving quietly through the darkness, pausing to watch the embers before slinking off to the safer shadows.
There is tension here.
Fear of that fire, though not of its flames.
Fear of what the fire draws.
Cole shifts in his seat, glancing around. "Perhaps we should not have this."
Solas blinks, puzzled a moment before noting the way Cole's gaze has honed in upon the flames.
"You worry something will come?"
"Everything does."
Solas lets his mind wander to the two sleeping in their little clearing—it's not really large enough to be called that. The way Finley leads them, they avoid large open spaces, and it makes it tricky when making camps.
That won't matter tomorrow night. No fire, no fear of setting the woods alight, though Finley would never let that happen.
Tonight, though, Alistair and Thom are drawn toward the warmth on their cots. Alistair looks tired and haggard, his dreams a myriad of memories and nightmares, of a song that shouldn't be there just yet, and of Cullen and Finley and Thom.
He knows about the pretender.
Knows Thom isn't who he claims.
Isn't what.
He would have declared it outright, fought him for his honor, but Finley is so star struck with them both. And he doesn't know what to say, how to say it.
Cole keeps it that way.
She can't take another loss. Not now.
Let the other hurts settle and maybe…
Thom's dreams are the same as they've been for years: children screaming, a mother begging for her little ones' lives, abandoned men, and a new twist. A young lady, innocent and enthusiastic in this miserably dark world, looking up to him for his knowledge, for who she thinks he is. He sees her finding the truth a million ways, sees the way it crushes her.
The lie need not hurt her, too.
Cole will keep Alistair at bay as long as he can, but the rest of it…that is something Thom should have faced years ago.
It is difficult to balance these specific hurts, to let some linger and pick and pull gently at others, planting a hopeful presence in the echoing recesses of the mind.
He does it, though, fear to hope, fear to hope.
There's so much he can do here that sometimes he hurts.
Sometimes it feels as though he is slipping away himself.
Fears and paranoia, the hatred it leads to.
It makes him sick.
But it is everywhere, and he promised to make this world better. He will. He can.
One fear at a time.
He's still debating which fear will be best erased next for their group when Solas douses the fire.