Mercy

The shouting interrupted my contemplation of both my dinner and the fortress that I could now reasonably claim as my own. Solas was one of the participants, and I thought perhaps I heard Vivienne's cultivated inflections, and so, curious, I set my plate aside and followed the sound, down the stairs from the landing, and then down again, into the lower courtyard.

"This thing is not a stray puppy you can make into a pet!" Even raised, Vivienne's voice was dignified, and she had a good understanding of how to make herself heard without appearing to be shouting. "It has no business being here."

"Wouldn't you say the same of an apostate?" Solas shot back coldly, and his control wasn't as good - his ears were red and his voice strained.

I was close enough, by then, to see Vivienne reply with a single raised brow, and I might have laughed - of course she would say the same of an apostate. But, then, Vivienne wasn't the one Solas was trying to convince. Cassandra stood with them, her unease showing in the way she restlessly shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

"Inquisitor," she sighed, spotting me while the other two were still glaring daggers at each other. "We were discussing Cole. I wondered if he was perhaps a mage, given his unusual abilities."

"He can - " Solas began.

I cut him off, though I shot him an apologetic look. "Cole isn't a mage, he's a spirit - compassion, or something closely related."

Solas's eyebrows went up a little, but he replied with a slight smile and a nod, more pleased to have Cole's nature recognized, apparently, than displeased at being interrupted.

"It is a demon," Vivienne said flatly.

"If you prefer," Solas snorted with clear contempt, his smile fading as he turned his attention to her again, "although the truth is somewhat more complex."

"He is not a demon," I said flatly. "Only corrupted spirits become demons, and Cole is entirely uncorrupted."

"Call it whatever you like, it is still a threat," Vivienne sniffed.

"As are we all, Enchanter," Solas replied evenly.

"Is it possession?" Cassandra demanded.

"No," Solas and I said at the same time, and exchanged a smile. I gestured for him to go on. "As with the demon wearing the face of the Lord Seeker, Cole has formed a body of his own, one that appears and acts human in every respect. Unlike the demon, Cole wishes only to help. I suggest we allow him to do so."

"Even the Dalish, from what I understand, have sense enough to avoid demons - corrupted or otherwise," Vivienne pointed out.

"Many with limited experience and imagination shun what they cannot understand," Solas snapped.

"That isn't the reason," I told him quellingly. "The Dalish don't see spirits as humans do," I went on, addressing Vivienne, though I hoped Solas was listening carefully. "They are another people, their fundamental natures unlike our own, worthy of respect in their own right, but easily damaged by contact with us. The typical Dalish mage is killing two nugs with one arrow when she avoids spirits: she protects herself from possession and protects the spirit from corruption. If I see things differently...well, I quite literally see everything differently, and…" my eyes briefly met Solas's, "I had a teacher who showed me a different path when I was still quite young. In any case," I went on, returning my attention to the human mage, "the only reason I would send Cole away would be for his own protection."

"And that isn't a good enough reason?" Vivienne asked.

"No," I replied, "because Cole has demonstrated, by bringing himself bodily into the waking world without subverting his nature, that he has the will to remain himself even when in contact with us. He is no more likely to be corrupted than any one of us is, and so, like any other person, he should be judged by his attitudes and actions, not by the race of beings he belongs to." I looked at Cassandra. "I meant it when I said that the Inquisition is for all of us. If Cole wants to help, I won't turn him away."

"Very well," she said, inclining her head. "Compassion is, perhaps, not the worst spirit to attract to our cause. But if you could talk to him - his behavior is odd, and it sometimes makes others uncomfortable."

"Of course," I agreed, glancing around. I had the impression that he had been nearby during most of the argument over his status, though any concern I might have felt for his feelings or reactions had slipped right out of my mind - likely his doing. "Just...as soon as I find him."

"I believe he is seeing to the refugees," Solas said quietly, tilting his head towards an area that appeared to have become Skyhold's infirmary - at least for the present. It wasn't a bad place for it, in some ways - near enough the gates that any wounded coming in could be seen to almost instantly. We would need to consider ways to make it more permanent, though.

Cole was moving amongst the injured, offering a touch or words, or sometimes physical comforts like water, listening to thoughts to learn what was needed. "You know me," he said, turning to look at me as I approached. "You knew me as soon as you...watched through walls, laid welcome in my way. I used to think I was a ghost. I didn't know. I made mistakes...but I made friends, too. Then a templar proved I wasn't real. I lost my friends. I lost everything."

"Spirits are real, Cole," I chided him gently. "They're just real...differently."

"I had to learn to be more like what I am, to be more different. It made me stronger. I can feel more. I can help," he said.

"I know. I'm not going to ask you to leave," I told him. "I want your help."

"Yes, helping," he sighed. It sounded like relief. "I help the hurt, the helpless - " He tensed. "There's someone…"

He stepped away from me, looking around. "It hurts," he murmured, "it hurts, it hurts, someone make it stop hurting, Maker please…" He drew a knife. Looked at me. "The healers have done all they can. It will take him hours to die. Every moment will be agony. He wants mercy. Help."

"We can give it," I told the spirit, "but not like that. Show me which one."

Cole led me to a man, still young. Healing was far from my best magic, but I could read another person's physical state, and so I called on a thread of my mana and let my awareness sink into his body.

His organs were failing - he had been stabbed in the kidney by a blade poisoned with red lyrium - or made of red lyrium - and now the poison was spreading throughout his body. The potions that brought on a cessation of pain no longer worked properly for him - he needed a higher dose, but a dose sufficient to bring him comfort would kill him.

Well then.

"Come," I told Cole, leading the way to the largest tent in the grouping, which boasted several alchemy benches. "If he wants mercy, we will offer the opportunity, but not the way you would have - never that way, if there is any other choice. He must choose it for himself."

I began pulling together ingredients, measuring out decoctions, activating with magic those that required it. I made many times the amount that would be needed for this one man - this potion was a poison in a high enough dose, but a gentle one, easing the victim to sleep as it slowed heart rate and respiration until both simply...stopped.

Once the mixture was complete, I measured a portion into a flask. "Sometimes," I told Cole, pressing the flask into his hand, "merely knowing there is a way out is enough to convince someone to keep fighting. He should be given every opportunity to fight. But if he truly can go on no longer, then that should be respected, too. This way, he has the choice. The flask is his to take whenever he pleases."

"You made more than he needs," Cole observed.

"We're at war. There will likely be others who need mercy, and the healers can't read thoughts the way you can." I put my hand on the larger bottle I had filled. "This is for your use, so you can offer mercy where it is wanted. Tell me if you need more, and I will mix it for you."

"Thank you," he said quietly, and then hesitated. When he spoke again, his voice had fallen into the near sing-song he used when expressing the thoughts of another: "You need to tell the rest of it - you see that now - but you dread telling him. Not because you don't want him to know, but because those moments were personal, private, and sharing should be chosen, not necessary."

"That's true," I said, knowing exactly what he was talking about. Solas convincing me to talk had been necessary, but ultimately he wasn't the right person to hear this initial outpouring - especially when I got to the hallucinated conversation with Deshanna. Unfortunately, no matter how wrong he might be, he was also the only one available.

"It needs to be said, and I can listen," Cole told me.

"Oh." Oh. "Would you?" I asked, suddenly feeling self-conscious.

"You deserve mercy, too," he said, turning away, toward the dying man. "Find a place, and I will come."

Solas had been assigned a room within the keep - more closet than room, really, but private - and so Cole and I met there. Solas had agreed readily enough that Cole was a better audience for my recounting than he could be, but he was still concerned as we parted outside the door. "I could leave," he told me uneasily. "Or if you would prefer I stayed close - "

"Stay close," I said, wondering if I would be able to sense him through the door. I thought this whole ordeal might be easier for me, if I could.

"Stay," Cole echoed. "I can't hold her in the way that reshapes the shadows with warmth and worth. Remembering the cold will weaken her warmth, will hurt even as it heals. Afterward, she will need help I can't give." The spirit fixed Solas with a pleading gaze.

"That is help I can offer," Solas promised.

The room was tiny, with only enough space for a bed, a chest for clothing, and the narrowest window I had ever seen. Cole and I sat on the bed, as there was nowhere else, really, to sit.

He took my hands as I tried to find a way to start. "You thought the avalanche would kill you, but it didn't," he prompted, and it was enough for me to find the thread.

My escape through the mining tunnels wasn't that interesting, other than recognizing, in hindsight, the despair that had settled over me as I realized both that I would have to continue struggling and that no one would come looking for me. At the time, I had been determined to feel nothing - which made sense, as I would likely have lain down and given up had I truly felt the depths of my hopelessness.

Everything about my imaginary conversation with my maela was harder.

"You still feel as though you have abandoned your clan - betrayed them by helping humans and the Chantry," Cole told me.

"Yes," I agreed. "I know it doesn't make sense - I know they abandoned me first. I know that what Corypheus plans threatens everyone. It's just…"

"The history hurts," Cole finished for me. "You haven't opened her letter."

"No," I whispered guiltily. I kept Deshanna's letter with me always, tucked into a pouch on my potion belt, but I hadn't yet found the courage to read it.

"Why do you think she won't approve of the place you have made for yourself in the Inquisition?" Cole asked. "Why did she tell you, in your mind, that you should never have left your clan? You believe she loves you, and yet these aren't things love does."

I pulled my hands from his, curling up around the emptiness in my chest. "She kept me there for years with promises that she was working to fix things for me, and yet everyone continued to treat me as a child. Would love do that?"

"It might," Cole said quietly, "if it saw all the alternatives as worse - much worse. How do you know she won't be relieved that you found a place among people who need your skills and protection, and who will protect you in turn?"

"Will she?" I asked him, cringing away from the desperate hope in my own voice.

"I don't know," he replied. "You could read the letter and find out, though. Then at least she would be one person in your mind, instead of two. You wouldn't be pulled in opposite directions, torn and trembling, terrified and tortured, both doubting and defending your own memories."

"That does sound nice, when you put it that way."

"Not now," Cole told me as I touched my pouch thoughtfully. "It's too much now. First finish this, then begin that."

Yes, he was right. I would rather read the letter while wrapped in Solas's arms - at least as long as I could count on him not being an ass about it. At some point - at some point soon - I should prod his opinions of the Dalish a little more forcefully.

"After my imaginary conversation with maela - or in the midst of it, depending on how we're counting - Dorian found me," I told Cole with a shrug, relaxing a little as I came to the end.

Cole gave me a quizzical look. "But you didn't think Dorian was real."

"Why would I?" I retorted. "I was already hallucinating about my grandmother, and I was certain no one was coming for me."

"But...why?" the spirit asked. "Solas told you the bond would cause wounds if broken. You had to know that he would know you were still alive, if only because the bond between you remained. You did know it. Why didn't you believe it?"

"He did call it inconvenient," I pointed out quietly. "The Breach is closed. I didn't think I was all that important. Not important enough to risk lives for - especially his own. I sent them all away so they wouldn't."

"But he called you vhenan."

"Only in Redcliffe, at that point, which is a future that doesn't exist," I insisted. "It didn't mean things had to be the same here. Things aren't the same here - I came back through time specifically to stop them from being the same here."

"You haven't said it back, even though it's true," Cole chided me.

"I have always known he is more important to me than I am to him," I replied carefully. "It just makes sense. Our timelines never really matched up when we met in the Fade, so what was linear for me wasn't for him. And then he doesn't even remember that. It's fine. I - I try to let it be...fine. But it still sometimes - "

"No," Cole insisted, leaning forward suddenly on his hands, until his face was no more than a hand's breadth from mine. "It's not fine. You have to - you can't let him - you love him, and he needs your love, and he needs to love you back." The spirit slowly drew away, sitting back on his heels as I stared at him, uncertain what to make of the outburst. "He has already been broken so many times, some days it's hard for him to piece together who he is, but you are a light letting him look at what pieces he's picking up, and what pieces he's putting together. Losing you would have been…" Cole trailed off, and then slowly reached out to take my hand. "You matter - to him and to others. You're different things for them, like seeing a thousand versions of you reflected in a thousand mirrors, but all of them are beautiful."

"Dorian...called me love," I recalled abruptly, even though the memory was right there, as though it had been following me around, waiting for me to look down and notice it.

"It scares him, because love ends badly - Alexius, Felix, Father - but he can't seem to stop. He hopes you don't remember him saying it, but he also hopes you do remember."

For some reason, that was what shattered the last of the ice that had hemmed me in, and I started to sob - the big kind that weren't going to stop coming for a while. "I'll get him," Cole whispered, and was gone. In the next moment Solas was there, wrapping me in an embrace. He had with him, I noticed, an entire stack of neatly-folded handkerchiefs.

I couldn't laugh - not really - but my breath caught briefly in something that wasn't quite a sob. "Ma serannas, vhenan," I managed to whisper brokenly.

His arms tightened around me, and the brief flair of pleasure he felt at hearing the endearment made me cry even harder.