Fae had never been more desperate to feel the sensation of being cold again on returning to Skyhold. Much easier to simply add more layers of clothing to stave off the cold than to strip down and still find the heat too much to bear. The privilege of owning more layers to add prodded at her habitual guilt like an old bruise. Still, she was alone in her room, in her bed, and no potential disapproval or disappointment could reach her under the blankets.

There was a knock at the door. Fae groaned. She'd forgotten to turn the sign over. "Nooo…" she mumbled into the mattress.

There was another knock. "Seer?"

Fae reluctantly climbed out of bed to answer the door. "Mm? Oh, hey Lia. Everything all right?"

"As far as I know," Lia smiled half-heartedly. "The Inquisitor called for you. Lady Josephine would have sent Amelie, but she's not feeling well, and I was there already so I said I'd pass on the message."

"Thanks, Lia. Stay and make tea while I'm gone, if you like, there's no rush."

"I'm fine, Seer. My leg's fine, I swear by Andraste," Lia insisted. "But I appreciate the offer."

Ellethir was pacing back and forth in her quarters, completely focused on the letter in her hands when Fae entered.

"Lethallan," Fae started carefully. "Is this about the situation in Wycome? Is your clan still doing alright?"

"What?" Ellethir looked up sharply, annoyed by the distraction momentarily until she remembered that she'd called Fae to her in the first place. "Oh… Yes, they're alright. The situation is a little dicey, but they're alright. Can't say the same for the nobility in Wycome right now, but that's by the by. This," she held up the letter, "Is good news. The Seers we contacted from Rivain have delivered their protective amulet for Cole. I'm going to bring it to him now, I figured you'd like to come with me. He likes you. We just need to find him first."

"Sure," Fae agreed. "I'm curious to see how it works too, as long as it doesn't hurt him. He's in Solas' office, I passed by them just now. Did the Seers…?"

"Mention you?" Ellethir smiled guiltily. "They did. They said your ability to touch memories of the Fade in a different way to other mages is intriguing, but that you are not a Seer, as you don't follow their practices," Ellethir glanced back down at the letter. "But, they also, somehow, know you didn't choose the title for yourself, and they hope you find the right name on your journey."

"Oh," Fae nodded slowly, surprised. "Well, that's…a much nicer reaction than I probably deserve. Maybe one day, I'll sail to Rivain and try to make it up to them, somehow."

"I'll gladly come with you, when this is all over," Ellethir smiled tiredly. "Alright! Let's take their gift to Cole and hope it works."

Solas was apparently in the midst of writing down answers to questions he was posing to Cole, who was sitting up on the wooden platform with his legs swinging back and forth over the edge.

"Almost blue, almost grey, mostly white. Sharp, but never sharp enough," Cole said.

"I see. What about Leliana?"

"Red, dark red like wine, and rare honey, and blood, and chantry robes."

"And Faellathi?"

"Blue. Very, very blue."

"I might have guessed."

"What are you doing? Why am I blue?"

Solas looked up from his paperwork. "Ah! A simple thought experiment. Spirits can interpret the waking world in different ways, I've learned that Cole is able to translate how he sees people into colours."

"And I'm blue?"

"I imagine you have seen a great deal of sadness."

Fae grimaced. "I guess. Ellethir?"

Solas stood up. "My apologies, welcome. Come in, Faellathi, and ma vhenan, it's good to see you. Both of you."

"What colour am I?" Ellethir asked Cole out of curiosity as they entered Solas' office.

"Too bright, like counting birds against the sun. The mark makes you more."

"Oh. Wow."

"Might I be of any assistance?" Solas asked.

"Right! Yes. We're actually here for Cole, the protective amulet from the Rivaini Seers has arrived," Ellethir held it out.

Cole clambered down the ladder and took it eagerly from her, then hesitated. "What do I do with it?"

"It is simple enough," Solas said. "You put it on, I charge it with magic, and you should be protected."

Cole quickly removed his hat and shoved the chain over his head, and cradled the amulet in his hands.

"Are you ready, Cole?" Ellethir asked cautiously.

He nodded, determined. "They can't make me a monster."

Solas took a deep breath, then summoned forth magical energy. Elegant pale swirls swept around Cole and towards the amulet. But when the first stream of magic touched it, there was a loud bang. The swirls of magic vanished instantly as Cole cried out.

Varric poked his head in the door. "Heard a bang, everything alright in here?" He took in the scene; Solas looking pensive, Fae and Ellethir looking both worried and guilty, and Cole with his head in his hands.

"Oh, for— what are you doing to the kid?"

"Stopping blood mages from binding me like the demons at Adamant," Cole huffed, picking his hat up from the floor and jamming it back on his head. "But it didn't work."

"This amulet should prevent Cole from being vulnerable to manipulation against his will by means of blood magic, but something appears to be interfering with the enchantment," Solas explained.

"Something like Cole not being a demon? Inquisitor, you're on board with this?"

"I'm… not certain exactly what Cole is," Ellethir admitted.

"Fae? We talked about this, remember?"

Fae shrugged, avoiding eye-contact. "He just wants to be safe," she muttered to the floor.

"Regardless of Cole's special circumstances, he remains a spirit, he is Compassion," Solas said firmly.

Varric scoffed. "Yes, a spirit who is strangely like a person!"

"Spirits are people," Fae protested, finding her voice again. "They think, and feel, like we do."

"Yeah, like Vengeance. He thought and felt and convinced Anders to blow up a chantry."

Fae bristled. "That's not fair! Anders and Justice were sharing a body, and they shouldn't have been. It was probably only because Justice started off as a spirit, not a demon, that Anders was able to keep his body normal in the first place! If it had been Vengeance from the start, Anders would have become…he wouldn't have looked human anymore! Cole's body is his own, there's only one mind in there."

"Might I make a suggestion?" Solas asked briskly. "Would you be willing to try holding the amulet, Faellathi? Perhaps the amulet itself has a history that is hindering its effectiveness."

"Hey! No, enough, Fae isn't a circus animal to be trotted out to perform every time you people need easy answers," Varric snapped.

"No one is suggesting she is, Varric," Ellethir sighed. "It was just a suggestion. It's still Fae's choice whether she wants to or not."

"And she wouldn't say she doesn't want to, because it would be you asking her."

"I'm right here, people," Fae grumbled, glancing nervously at the amulet. "I… can feel something, but I don't want to accidentally mess with the enchantment. I don't really know how any of this works."

"I don't matter!" Cole finally exploded. "Just lock away the parts of me that someone else could knot together to make me follow!"

"Focus on the amulet, Cole," Solas instructed. "Tell me what you feel."

Cole took a couple of breaths to calm down. "Warm, soft blanket covering, but it catches, tears, I'm the wrong shape, there's something…There. That way." His expression became uncharacteristically dark, and the broad-brimmed hat cast a shadow over his face as he turned to point towards the unpainted section of the wall.

"We'll find whatever is preventing the amulet from working, and we'll make it right," Ellethir assured him.

Varric pinched the bridge of his nose. "Alright, kid. Go find Cullen and work with him on the map to figure out where you're sensing something wrong."

Cole nodded. "Will you come with me? All of you?"

"We will."

Varric waited for Cole to leave, before turning back to Solas. "Alright, I get it. You like spirits. But he came into this world to be a person. Let him be one."

"He already is a person," Fae folded her arms.

"You know what I mean, Shortie. A physical person, a mortal person."

"Either way, what he wants is to make sure the Venatori can't use him against his will," Ellethir reasoned. "Whether or not Cole is a demon, or a spirit, or…something else, he has magical abilities, which means he has magical vulnerabilities. We cannot ignore that, and more to the point, he knows he's vulnerable. The least we can do is try to help, after everything he's done for us."

"Fair enough. But that Venatori ritual of theirs only works on demons, right? Shouldn't he be safe already? Because he's clearly not a demon if he's the embodiment of compassion."

"This is not some fanciful story, child of the Stone," Solas glowered. "We cannot change our nature by wishing it were simpler."

"You don't think?"

"All of you, cut it out! Please," Ellethir said finally, losing patience. "Whatever the reason, Cole needs answers and he seems to have found where they are. Whatever is interfering with the enchantment, we'll track it down and go from there."

With Cole's knack for colourful description, Cullen worked out fairly quickly that the location Cole described to him was on the outskirts of Redcliffe village. The Commander himself couldn't be spared, but the others involved all followed Cole to the place he felt, as promised.

When they arrived, it took a little longer to figure out that the exact location was an alleyway opposite the smithy, which led out on the other side to a bare field where new buildings had yet to be raised. It was early evening; most people had returned home by now, and the lanterns had only recently been lit.

As the group approached the alleyway, they watched a dwarven man in a dark cloak discreetly handing over a covered bundle to a human man in fur-lined leathers. "Yes, this should get me through the month," the human said.

Both men looked up as the group approached, and frowned in confusion. The human looked nervous to see them. "Give me a moment, will you?" he said to the dwarf, who nodded and promptly disappeared down the alley into the shadows.

He cleared his throat. "Greetings," he said lightly. "Can I help you?"

"You." In a flash, Cole disappeared and reappeared with the man's hair in his grip, forcing him to his knees. "You killed me!"

"What?" the man sputtered. "I don't…I don't even know you!"

"You forgot!" Cole hissed. "You locked me in the dungeon in the Spire, and you forgot, and I died in the dark!"

The man paled. "The Spire?"

"Cole, stop," Solas ordered.

"The Circle of Magi…?" Fae also looked shaken.

Varric gently pried Cole's fingers off the man's hair. "Just take it easy, kid."

As soon as he was free, the man bolted down the alleyway, only to find his leg stuck frozen to the ground as fragments of ice climbed their way up to his knee. Fae's momentary bolt of fear in her eyes was gone, replaced with a dangerous glare. "You're not going anywhere."

Ellethir was about to intervene with Fae but then Cole was in her line of vision, pacing back and forth. "He killed me. He killed me. That's why it doesn't work," he muttered agitatedly. "He killed me, and I have to kill him back!"

Ellethir took his hands in her own and tried to make eye-contact with Cole. "But you're alive now, how could he have killed you?"

"Cole, this man cannot have killed you," Solas agreed. "You are a spirit. You have not even possessed a body."

"A broken body, bloody, banged on the stone cell, guts gripping in the dank dark, a captured apostate," Cole recalled. "They threw him into the dungeon in the Spire at Val Royeaux. They beat him, they did… terrible things. Then they forgot about him. He starved to death. I came through to help…and I couldn't…" Cole put the pieces together as he said the words aloud. "So I became him. Cole."

"If Cole was an apostate, that'd make the guy we just saw a templar," Varric realised. "Must've been buying lyrium."

"Oh, Cole," Fae turned away from the trapped ex-templar, eyes welling with shocked tears. "You said you thought you were a ghost in the Spire. For years. You were the ghost of Cole. But you were Compassion, his friend?"

"Twelve years of life, and all of them hurt, until he was found by the templars and it was more years, and everything was always hurt. Always, always hurt. I forgot, too," Cole's voice cracked. "I still needed to help, and then Rhys and Evangeline helped me. But now, I remember." He wiped his face with the back of his hand, which already gripped his dagger. "Let me kill that man. I need to…I need to."

Ellethir was beginning to panic. "Solas?"

"We cannot let Cole kill him."

"I don't think anyone was going to suggest that, Chuckles."

"The death of the real Cole wounded him, perverted him from his purpose when his compassion wasn't enough to save him," Solas explained. "To regain that part of himself, he must be allowed to exercise his compassion, and the only way he can do that is by forgiving him."

Varric was affronted by the very notion. "Come on! You don't just forgive someone killing you."

"This man killed Cole, not Compassion."

"You also don't just forgive someone who killed your friend. He needs to work through his emotions—"

"A spirit does not work through emotions," Solas bit back. "It embodies them!"

"But he isn't a spirit, is he? He made himself a person, and people change. They get hurt, and they heal. He needs to work it out like a person."

"You would alter the essence of what he is."

"He did that to himself when he left the Fade. I'm just helping him survive it."

"It sounds like Cole didn't come here because he wanted to be a human," Ellethir said sombrely. "He came because he wanted the real Cole to live, and the only way he could do that was by making himself Cole."

Solas put a hand on Ellethir's shoulder. "And he wanted Cole to live because he is Compassion."

Ellethir looked to the Seer, whose eyes fixed once more on the ex-templar a short distance away. "Fae?"

"Being Cole is hurting him," she said quietly, without looking back.

"I believe I can help," Solas said. "Cole, come with me."

The ex-templar renewed his struggles to free his leg as Solas approached with Cole. "Not possible, not possible…" he rambled, fear-stricken.

"Can you feel this man's pain, Cole?"

"He remembers now," Cole glared. "He knows he killed me."

"No," Solas said steadily. "Feel his pain. His guilt. The shame that drove him from the templars."

"Don't worry, we'll erase his records," Cole began to narrate. "They clap me on the shoulder, smell of oiled metal and blood. They smile like Louis did when he made me drown the kittens. Laughter bounces off the walls like a thin child's fists."

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, please," the man begged.

"He's hurting, Cole. And you are a spirit of Compassion."

Cole placed his hand on the man's head. "Forget."

The man's expression softened for a moment, then turned to bewilderment, taking in his current circumstances as if he'd just woken up.

"I believe we are finished here," Solas said. "Fae, if you wouldn't mind?"

Fae reluctantly allowed the ice to melt, and the ex-templar took off again.

He took three more steps before the ice formed around his leg again almost instantaneously, rooting him to the ground.

"No," she said darkly. "We are not finished here." A dagger of ice formed in her hand, and Solas immediately dispelled it, stepping in between her and the templar. "Faellathi, what are you doing? Compassion has forgiven him."

"I haven't," Fae practically snarled. "He gets to live while the real Cole never even got to grow up?"

"Stop," Solas commanded. "This isn't your fight."

"You're right, it isn't. It was Cole's fight and now he's dead so I will give him the justice he deserved." She tried to dart around Solas but he was faster, blocking her attempts to conjure more magic. "Get away from me, Solas!"

"No."

Ellethir ran forward to catch Fae's arm and pull her back. "Why? Why do you have to be the one to avenge him?"

"Because it could have been me!" Fae all but screeched, yanking her arm away. "It would have been me, but I got lucky, I was found by a spirit who could help me!" And, now," she breathed heavily, her voice cracking. "All I can do to deserve being here when all the other children like Cole are gone is this!" This time her palms crackled with lightning, and bursts of it snapped threateningly around her. "Move, Solas!"

He didn't move, so she Fade-stepped around him, reappearing between him and the once-again terrified ex-templar. The lightning cracked against the ground, daring any of them to try and stop her.

"You're not acting like yourself, kid," Varric approached cautiously, his palms up. Fae directed her gaze at him, momentarily caught off-guard, and then she heard it.

"You're outnumbered," a voice whispered in her ear. "This templar has been living on borrowed time and he knows it. You'll never know why the Knight-Commander had you Harrowed as a child, knowing you would die in the process. You'll never even know who sold you out to the templars in the first place. But you know who killed Cole. You know how he died. You know why he died. You've earned the right to be enraged. I can help you make it right. Let us kill him."

She felt long, cool fingers wrap around her jaw, turning her around to face the ex-templar.

Something in her snapped.

"Fuck off!" she screamed, whipping around and expecting to see the demon behind her, but there were only her friends, standing around her with looks of concern, including Cole whose gaze was on something between them that she couldn't see. A demon. "This rage is MINE," she screamed. "MINE, AND MINE ALONE!"

There was an odd popping sound above where she stood, and they all watched as a Fade Rift began to expand in a thin line across the air. The Veil is thin in Redcliffe, Fae remembered, looking on in horror.

"And yet you've opened the door for me anyway," the demon chuckled.

"Get away from ME!" She screamed the last word, and the Rift opened wide. The next few minutes were a cacophony of shouts and fighting as three demons fell through the Rift before Ellethir could force it closed again. Fae, whose voice was hoarse from screaming and shouting at this point, marched up to the ex-templar. "Go," she choked out. "Run, now, so I don't kill you." She finally dissipated the ice and he fled, limping, without another word.

Fae slid down the wall of the alleyway and curled up, drawing her knees to her chest and hiding her head in her arms. Solas kneeled down beside her, and put a hand over hers. She flinched away immediately. "I'm sorry!" she yelled weakly, her apology muffled behind her arms.

"Cole is dead," Solas said quietly. "We did not know him, and we can still mourn his death but our friend, Compassion, lives. He must be allowed to fulfil his purpose as a spirit, as his friends we owe him that dignity."

Fae lifted her head slightly, eyes red, her face stained with tears. "And the templar's purpose? He was supposed to protect Cole, he was just—a child—" her voice caught and she hid her face again.

"And so were you," Solas acknowledged. "But Cole's fate was not yours. He is gone, he suffers no more. Whatever he went through, it is not your burden to bear."

"Let me help," Cole appeared in front of them. "I can make you forget all the extra pain you've seen. Other people's pain that collides with yours, makes it too heavy for one heart to bear."

"No," Fae shook her head adamantly. "Please, don't, Cole. It's mine. I'm sorry, for interfering. I'm not trying to stop you from fulfilling your purpose, but you already help me. This is mine."

The rattling of armour and the glow of torches alerted the group to the arrival of the arling guard. "We've heard reports of fighting," one of them said. "Are you responsible for this?"

Ellethir stepped forward, holding up her hand to show off the glow from the Anchor. "Our apologies, ser. The Inquisition received an urgent warning that a new Fade Rift had appeared, and we traced it here. I've closed it now."

The guard looked at Ellethir's hand, then at the others in the alleyway. "…I see. I understand the urgency, but we would prefer to also be notified of threats to our arling," he said finally.

"Of course, ser," Ellethir helped Fae to her feet. "We'll do that. We should be going."

"We bid you a safe journey home, Inquisitor."

"Likewise, ser."