nothing is perfect, but your imperfections are quaint

[diomedea]

Who: AN ENTIRE BLOODSPORT AND ANY VISITORS
Broadcast: Nope!
Action: On the Bloodsport!
When: 6/14-6/21

[WELCOME TO THE BLOODSPORT HICCUP don't mind the crew. They're. Uhh. Unique.

Enjoy your pudding! What's the crew up to this week?]

Comments

[pompous_today]

Ah- a gun is a weapon. It fires bullets- small shaped pieces of metal, designed to pierce the target's body. They are quite often lethal.

[He seems curious about the augment, however-]

So your augment shows you things you didn't know before? I have yet to experience that- I suppose mine fits my skill set.

[killedwithlove]

It tells me about the technology here. We don't have anything like this in Thedas. It tells me how to not crash shuttles, and how the lights work, and all sorts of things I didn't know before.

Thedas doesn't use electricity. We use magic instead of technology sometimes, but most people just use candles and lamps and fires.

[pompous_today]

[Simon nods, fascinated. He finds the augments to be both fascinating and horrifying- modifying someone's brain rarely turned out well, and it reminded him a bit too much of what had been done to River- but at the same time, the medical and scientific part of his brain wanted to know the how of it. However, they seemed to resist all attempts at examination.]

So that each of us is able to perform a task, to play a role on our respective ships, even if we lacked the knowledge back home. ... Atroma really thinks of everything.

[killedwithlove]

Yes. Because without Personnel Augment, I wouldn't know how anything worked and I'd just be stuck in a room. I can move through doors that are shut, but not across space.

[pompous_today]

Handy. But how is it that you can move through a closed door?

[killedwithlove]

[Cole steps back and focuses hard, flickering across the open space as thick, black-green smoke]

And usually doors open when I ask them.

[pompous_today]

[Simon tries not to gape, but it's a close thing. And then suddenly something slots into place-]

That's how you vanished the first time we spoke. You can change into... that other form. I was wondering, because not even River is that stealthy.

[killedwithlove]

Not change. Just... be somewhere else.

And I can make people not notice me. Forget I'm here, while they're looking at me.

[He focuses and he starts to fade away from awareness, only to drop it moments later.]

Like that.

[pompous_today]

That's... quite remarkable. [Which was an understatement, of course- Cole can probably sense Simon's wonder, his curiosity.]

Was that something you were born with?

[killedwithlove]

I wasn't born. I came through the Veil, from the Fade.

But I don't know why I can make people forget me, or not notice me. Cadash said it was because I was traumatised by Cole's death. They forgot him and he died.

[pompous_today]

[Simon tilted his head. He was, admittedly, a little confused by all this, but he hoped to straighten it out.]

You knew another Cole? I think you have mentioned him before.

[killedwithlove]

I knew Cole. He was young and scared and dying and alone. I came through to be with him and then I became him.

He's dead. But I'm alive. I live for him. It's all I can do.

[pompous_today]

[Simon was a little touched by the story- but saddened, as well. Young men shouldn't have to die scared and alone.]

So you are now Cole, and you are living the life he was robbed of. What... what happened to him, if I may ask?

[killedwithlove]

[Cole rocks on his feet briefly and hums.]

He starved to death in a cell. They forgot about him. He drank the moisture from the moss and drips, but the moss didn't stop his stomach from curling, coiling, knotting and kneading...

[pompous_today]

[Simon shivered at that.]

Starvation... is such an awful way to die. [He knew the biological processes, what happened when the body was forced to consume itself in a desperate attempt to gain the nutrients it needed, though he knew just as well that it was hard to conceptualize how it felt unless someone lived it.] I hope having you there during the last moments was some sort of comfort to him.

[killedwithlove]

[Cole rests a hand over his own stomach. He's not as thin as he used to be, but there is a perpetual gauntness to his face and stomach which Cole's death goes some way to explaining.]

It was. He wanted to not be alone. That was why I came to him.

[pompous_today]

[Simon felt a bit of relief at that, but it still felt... heavy. Sad.]

Good. Easing another's suffering... well, you know that's one of the things I live to do. Small comforts are sometimes all I can give, but I still give them when I can. Death is inevitable, and we can't always stave it off, but we can do everything we can to ease it.

[killedwithlove]

Death is inevitable. Suffering doesn't have to be.

[He understands. He's an assassin, but that doesn't mean he's ever cruel.]

[pompous_today]

I agree. It is why I was so curious as to what happened on this ship... to those bug creatures.

[killedwithlove]

Because you didn't want there to be any more suffering.

[pompous_today]

[Simon nodded.]

I've been through something similar before... when we came across a ship full of people who had been killed by Reavers. [An image comes clear in his mind- beings who are clearly humans, but have heavy piercings and facial modifications, who are dressed in rags and sewn-together pieces, carrying all manner of nasty weaponry.] They were all dead by that time, but I still stayed to help give them a proper funeral of sorts, to ease their passage into wherever they may have gone next.

[killedwithlove]

[Cole doesn't understand why funeral rites matter. But then he feels the comfort they get from it.]

It... helps. To know someone cared.

[Not them. They're gone. But it helps the living.]

[pompous_today]

Yes- and to give people dignity they may have been denied in life. My job is to help the living, but we were taught to respect the dead, too- because they once had a life.

[killedwithlove]

[Cole might never understand that, but he understands it matters to the living.]

In Thedas, we burn the dead. So demons don't get into them.

[pompous_today]

[Simon bowed his head.]

Can the demons bring them back to life? Or some semblance of it? [It seemed wrong, to Simon. The dead should have stayed that way. For all their advances in techology and medicine, by his time, they still had not found a way to conquer death- and as far as he was concerned, he was just fine with keeping things that way.]