The Inquisitor's Ghost
Author's Note: This chapter has a soundtrack: I Feel So by Box Car Racer.
Chapter 26 – You Killed Me
The one who repents, who has faith
Unshaken by the darkness of the world
She shall know true peace
- Transfigurations 10
Two days later and Cole and Ember were approaching the town of Redcliffe in the Hinterlands, which was where Cole had determined was where he would find the thing that was interfering with the amulet.
"Yeah, this should get me through the month." A human man with a long brown mustache murmured to a Carta dwarf. The man noticed their approach and muttered to the dwarf, "Give me a moment." The man came towards them with a smile. "Greetings. Can I help you?"
Cole stopped dead beside her. Brows furrowed, Ember looked over at him and came to a halt, her insides turning to stone.
Over six feet of hard masculine aggression stood beside her. His face was white as a sheet, his hands opening and closing into tight fists at his sides. His shoulders were racked up, all of him shaking like a lean volcano about to erupt. The air around him had slowly blackened until it was now darker than a storm cloud. Sunlight didn't fall anywhere near him, as if the rays were forced to bend away from the force of his animosity.
"You." That one word scrapped like a demon's claws on slate, finishing with a distinctly chilly edge, his blue eyes spitting murder at the man.
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The rest of the world fell away as Cole stared at the man he didn't think he'd ever see again, and it had the most unbelievable and horrifying effect on him.
Hate.
Hate, hate, hate.
It was a poison - fierce and vengeful - turning his core rotten. The bottomless pit of his furious revulsion blazed within him on a rampage as he flew towards the man like a devastating force of nature, pulsing with murderous intent. Like a wraith from hell, he disappeared and reappeared right in front of the man with hate eating away at his heart.
The man's eyes widened with fear as Cole shoved him to his knees, his hand on the top of the man's head, his dagger unsheathed and raised, poised to strike. The man stared up at him, utterly horrified, able to feel his rage and bloodlust in the black aura that shimmered a haze of violence around him.
"You killed me." Cole didn't even recognize the sound of his own voice.
"W-What?" the man stammered, confused and frightened. "I d-don't even know y-you."
"You forgot." His voice was razor sharp, his face distorted with unbridled fury, his eyes flashing black and blue hatred. "You locked me in the dungeon in the Spire and you forgot and I died in the dark!"
The man's chin wobbled. "T-The Spire?"
Cole's fist slammed with destructive force into the man's cheek, his knuckles splitting the man's lip wide open, sending blood flying into the dirt. Cole looked at the vial man's retched skin and blood caught in his knuckles with a blood-thirsty delight shinning in his eyes.
"Cole!" It was Ember's voice, sounding raw with concern, and a moment later he could smell her – the color red laced with fear.
"He killed me." Cole bent over and dug his fingers into the man's collarbone. The man howled in pain as he shattered the bone in his hand. "He killed me, and that's why it didn't work."
"Stop!" Her cry hit his eardrums, grating along his nerve-ends.
Cole shot her a flaring glance of impatience before he yanked the man forward, bringing his face right in front of his, his eyes firing up with the most ungodly flame of vengeful rage. "He killed me and I have to kill him back!"
"Cole, this man could not have killed you," she insisted urgently. "If he had, you'd be dead."
Memories filled his head and Cole's face became ashen. He started to shake so badly he could barely stay upright. His heart was clawing at the walls of his chest as if it was trying to escape from what his memory was forcing him to relive.
"A broken body, bloody, banged on the stone cell, guts gripping in the dark, dank, a captured apostate." His eyes met hers - hard, glinting, and cold. So cold they burned like dry ice in his eye sockets. "They threw him into the dungeon in the Spire at Val Royeaux. They forgot about him. He starved to death. He reminded me so much of you. I came through, to help, like I came through for you when you were so small and needed me to hold your hand." Raw pain seared a burning path up his esophagus. "I came through to help, and… I… couldn't. I couldn't help him. So I became him. Cole."
He saw her wince. "You're angry. I understand that. The death of the real Cole hurt you, deeply, when your efforts to help proved to be in vain. But to regain that part of yourself, you need to work through it and the emotions you are feeling," she told him anxiously.
"I don't want to work through it. I want to feed on it." His eyes returned to the ex-templar, burning with purgatory into the eyes of his tormentor. "I want to feed on his fear, his pain, his blood. Make him suffer for the hell he put me in."
"Only a demon feeds on such things, and you aren't a demon," she insisted, half-angry, half-pleading. "You altered the essence of what you are when you left the Fade. You made yourself a human. Humans change, they get hurt, and they heal. You need to work it out like a person." Her eyes were wide and beseeching. "You will never grow into a real person, Cole, until you come to terms with what happened."
"Let me kill him!" He barked at her, swinging a look of such unholy vehemence on her that she whimpered with a muffled choke and quickly stepped back from him. "I need to…" He summed up with a white-toothed razor slice, a demonic look lighting behind his eyes as his lips curled viciously. "I need to."
Ember stared at him in horror. "C-Cole… you're s-scaring me."
"Good." Cole bared his teeth, lips tightly drawn back from blood-less lips, the air around him crackling with brutal savagery. "Do not get in my way."
One of her hands made a fluttering movement out in front of her. "Please… don't do this," she begged achingly in wretched disbelief. "Don't lose yourself to revenge."
"Don't take this away from me!" Eyes like flashing devils cut into her, the atmosphere around him fizzing and popping with his barely contained violence. "I've given you everything! Everything! Just give me this one thing!"
"Maker, Cole. Don't…" She took a half-step towards him with her hand outstretched in a kind of distressed plea. "You are not a murderer."
The look he flicked her could have seared off a layer of her skin. "Let me kill him."
"Oh Maker! I-I'm s-sorry. I'm s-so sorry," the man pleaded with a dry sob.
Cole's blue eyes fell to flash murderous flares into the man, a dark flush mounting his milky-white cheekbones. "Sorry isn't going to help you now." His voice was steel misted with frost, his expression like a shark circling its next meal.
"If blood is what you want, Cole, then stab him." Ember's words arrived hoarse and uneven, pulsing with a deeply felt emotion, but Cole could barely hear her over the roaring rush of blood-lust going on in his head.
"No! Please!" The man begged, tears running down his face.
"Put him down like a mad dog, Cole." Ember's harshly impatient voice raked across his nerve-ends that were so on edge they literally vibrated.
Shadows swirled around Cole, the eerie darkness shadowing his face, making his expression demonic as he placed the edge of his dagger against the man's neck. Cole's eyes were as large as saucers and shimmered with blood-lust and vengeance as he pressed the blade into his neck, drawing blood. Teeth searing together behind his tight lips, Cole dragged the blade half an inch across the man's neck, drawing more blood.
"You really are a monster."
Cole stopped dead, blanching at the fierce accusation in her voice. There was dead silence while he absorbed the full, brutal thrust of it - a long, taut, agonizing silence while her words pierced his heart.
He straightened up with a violent jerk, stumbling back from the man and the utter carnage he had just wreaked, the man's blood trickling from his blade and the knuckles of his still clenched fist. A wave of clarity and self-loathing erupted in a swirling spin of dizzying terror. He felt like the worst thing to have ever existed. He'd never felt so angry with himself— or so ashamed.
Ember tossed the man a health potion and told him to run as fast as he could. She turned to face him, the sharp movement sending the glorious weight of loose silky red spirals tumbling back from her face. Her lashes flickered upwards to let her eyes spear scorn into his.
He didn't speak— couldn't. His voice felt trapped in his own horror-stricken throat.
"Do you feel any better?" she finally demanded in tight, thick condemnation.
He eyes fell to stare down at the dagger in his hand that was coated with blood. His stomach revolted at what he'd almost done. His heart shriveled like a dried-up grape in his chest. "No."
"You can't make it all just go away," she retorted in a stark whisper. "I'm sorry for what I said. I didn't mean it, but I had to get through to you somehow."
Smoke-blue eyes darkened with repentance. Then it really hit— self-revulsion surging up from nowhere to bring a sickness clawing at the walls of his stomach. "I… I need to follow him. I-I need to make him f-forget."
"No," Ember murmured. "He needs to remember. You too."
His mouth closed into a hard, tight line of self-contempt. His hand clenched into a fist that he pushed to his brow. And then he disappeared and made a dash for as far away as he could get.
After running for what felt like forever, he gave his legs permission to fold and he slid into a huddle on the grass beneath a tree. He pressed his face into his knees, covered his ears with his hands and waited in trembling agony for the emotions trampling through him to subside.
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Alone, Ember trekked the path back home to Skyhold. The land was lush and fertile with rolling hillsides covered by trees that were broken by thick clusters of woodland.
After a long day of travelling, the Inquisitor covered another hillside to find a spectacularly beautiful valley, with rolling pastures and meadows gently dipping down towards the river that meandered its way the length of the valley on its way to the sea. It was there that she decided to make camp for the night where the land was rich and vibrant, sporting lush flora, tall pines, and old willows.
She uses her bow to hunt for food in the area around her campsite. Several gravel pathways wound their lazy way through flowerbeds down towards a river she could see glinting a short distance away, beyond the assortment of fruit trees that dappled the paths with leafy shade from the heat of the sun.
With food in hand, she made a fire and ate dinner. The dappling light from the fading sun quivered amongst the heavily leafed branches of the tangled trees and vines above her, but otherwise the wilderness of the forest around her remained at peace. When it got dark, she sat alone on a log in front of the fire, the sounds of nature surrounding her and the smell of wood burning.
"I'm sorry," a familiar voice murmured softly.
Ember lifted her face to find Cole sitting across the fire from her, studying her somberly.
"I know," she murmured back.
He continued to stare at her, those piercing eyes inside her. Ember tore her gaze from his to silently watch the flames lick at the wood. They were silent for a long time, and every time she glanced up she found him still sitting there just watching her.
Unable to stop herself, her eyes flickered up to his once more. "You missed dinner-"
The luxuriant swoop of his long charcoal eyelashes shaded his eyes from her. "I'm not hungry."
"—so I ate it," she concluded.
That brought his eyes back up to her, and placed a crooked little smile on his lips. That awful anguished gaze drained away to reveal deep blue irises like velvet threaded with ivory that warmed her all the way through.
"What was it?" he questioned curiously.
"Rabbit stew."
"Eck," he grimaced.
"And cinnamon sweet buns I bought back in Redcliffe."
His disgusted expression fell away, his ears seeming to perk up with interest.
Her lips quirked into a knowing smile, "I saved you one."
A slow, appreciative smile spread across his face so devastating it rendered her speechless.
She reached into her pack and retrieved the last cinnamon sweet bun. She moved across the fire to sit beside him and held it out to him. Her smile grew when he took it into his hands. Long fingers plucked a piece of the treat and brought it to his lips. His mouth opened and closed around the delicious sweet bread, his lips puckering as he chewed slowly. She watched his eyelids flutter shut as he chewed and she found herself suddenly envious of a dessert.
Silence stretched between them again, the only sound being the popping of the log in the open fire. He sighed suddenly and her gaze shifted to him. She watched him close his eyes, his mouth clench, his chest move up and down on a fierce tug of air.
"There was a Cole," he whispered to her, keeping his eyes closed, soot-black eyelashes flickering against fiercely jutting cheekbones. "The templars forgot him in a cell in the dungeons of the White Spire. His hands were bruised from beating on the wall. It was dark like the cabinet where he had to escape his father. His belly hurt like knives, throat cracked dry. He was alone. I pushed through and held his hand. It was all I could do." Cole stopped, something like anguish raking across his face. "He said, 'Thank you'."
She watched as his eyelashes fluttered, the long dusky crescents rising upwards to reveal the depth of the ocean swirled by a hundred different emotions; that held her utterly transfixed.
"He thought if he didn't have magic… I'm what he wanted to be. Him, but normal. So no one would hurt him. I am exactly what he'd always wanted to be," Cole uttered, though his voice sounded deeply constricted, as though he'd only just got the syllables past his tensely locked throat. "But like… like the Elder One I only wear another man's life."
He was on his feet, turning his back to her and the fire, grabbing his nape with long angry fingers. "If a man can be dead and then not… could I have saved the real Cole?" His voice was thick— wretched and thick— roughened by a bone-melting remorse.
A weight pressing down on her heart kept her silent while she closed the gap between them, running her arms around his waist and pressing herself in close to his rigid back. She felt him immediately stiffen up like a slender column of concrete.
"You're talking about Corypheus at the Temple of Mythal and his using his connection to the Blight to make himself immortal. You couldn't do that." She walked around in front of him so she could wrap him in her arms. She lifted her head to stare bleakly at his grim, hard face. "You did everything you could to save the real Cole. He was lucky to have a friend like you."
"It still hurts." Those indecently long eyelashes lowered slightly. "When do I stop hurting?"
Her lips twisted wryly. "If you ever find the answer to that question, do let me know."
His chin lifted and those awful, tear-washed eyes looked right into hers. "Earlier… I wasn't thinking about helping." He was as white as a sheet, guilt-riddled and ashamed. "I wasn't thinking about taking his pain away. I wanted to kill him." His eyes were firing shame and fury that was aimed at himself.
She murmured gently, "You were thinking about Cole and what was done to him."
"I get heavy when I think of him," he replied, shifting his eyes just out of reach of hers. "It pushes me down, holds me here."
Her hand lifted to his face to gently return his gaze to hers. "You were hurt and angry. You could have chosen to be a spirit of compassion and simply forgiven. But you didn't. You chose to embrace what you felt, even though it hurt, and grow from it." Her fingers traced his cheekbone. "You chose to feel. You chose to grow. You chose to be human, and so you are." Her finger dragged beneath his chin as one corner of her mouth lifted. "Believe it to become it, right?"
"I did, didn't I?" he whispered in awed comprehension. "I can… choose. It's… it's up to me to form my own shape. I'm the one who makes me… me. The decision is mine."
A soft smile crossed her red lips as she looked him directly in the eyes. "It always has been."
All the tension seemed to bleed out of him. "This world taught me that changing means losing those most precious to you. But now I know that doesn't have to be true. I can change for the better. I can choose to be more. More than just compassion. Human."
He moved and she heard the sound of leather sliding as he reached up and ghosted a finger against a stray red curl that hung over her eye, his finger lingering on the skin of her cheek.
"Demons are bound when you tell them what they are so loudly that it's all they can hear. They have to be what you want. But they can't make me what they want me to be because I know what I am." His eyes were fixed on her face, as if nothing could tear them away. "I am yours." It came out as a broken breath. "No one can tell me otherwise."
His eyes were so hot they glowed skin-piercingly covetous as they seared a burning path into her. It pricked at just about every nerve-end she possessed. The carnal pull was shattering; the emotional one threatening to strip her bare.
"Sleep." It was a soft command as those long, pale fingers tucked the curl behind her ear. "I will watch over you."