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

[killedwithlove]

[Cole stays put, waiting. He knows Robin wants to say more, so he lingers to hear it.]

I don't know. Cole was... sixteen? I don't know how long I was in the Pit by myself. But it's been... a couple of years? I think. I'm not very good with linear time, but I notice when celebrations happen. There were two celebrations for the end of the Fifth Blight since I left White Spire.

I don't know how long I was in the Fade. We don't have time there. Solas said I could be hundreds of years old, but that was as a spirit, which isn't the same.

[birdsbirdsbirds]

[he listens to this carefully, genuinely interested...]

I understand. I was just curious...

[while he's still not sure what to think of Cole, he has at least adapted a stance of being totally honest around him. it saves him the trouble of wondering just how much Cole would see past him anyway, if he were to lie.]

I've met very few people who've lived as long as I have. I was the oldest thing back home, if you don't count the ones who can't hold a conversation anymore. [the truly eldest beings on his world tend to get kind of formless or sluggish at about half his age.] And even here, it's not easy to find someone with that particular shared life experience, so. I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask, since we have other similarities.

[killedwithlove]

Solas says I am young in this form and ageless in what I am.

[He knows ages of suffering and is still learning the basics of how to be human, of how they interact and think.]

Suffering is ancient. So is Compassion. Maybe, I'm more like you than anything else here is.

[birdsbirdsbirds]

Mm... You may be right.

[something about that pulls the edge of a smirk onto his face, if nothing else.]

Theory has it that my soul is older than I am. This body was human once, too.

[killedwithlove]

[Cole reaches out hesitantly to poke Robin's arm, as if this will confirm that his body was once human.]

Mine wasn't. This body is all mine.

Were you an abomination?

[birdsbirdsbirds]

[he looks at that spot on his arm, curiously, but doesn't stop him. this form feels pretty human, but it's just a complex illusion. his true form is made of magic turned flesh. ...or flesh turned magic, it's never actually been explained to him.]

Ah. I'm sure I've been called that, but probably not for the same reason you're thinking.

What do you consider an "abomination"?

[killedwithlove]

[Like Cole. Something magic that has a physical form now.]

A spirit in a person. Spirits shouldn't be in people's bodies. It destroys them both.

[birdsbirdsbirds]

That sounds like a ghost. [he frowns a little. their worlds (or maybe their definitions) aren't quite lining up.] The angry ones take over the bodies of unsuspecting humans.

I'm not that. [a small pause.] The scriptures of my world theorize about what I am a lot, but I don't know if any of them are right.

[another pause--where he listens for any eavesdroppers, pays attention to the blood-filled bodies in this ship just in case one of them could overhear. he doesn't mind being open about this with Cole, but others... he likes his crew, but doesn't want this out in the open.]

...All I know is that I was a human, a long time ago, who slowly grew into something else. We aren't monsters, we're just... Something else.

[killedwithlove]

No. Not like a ghost. A ghost was the soul of a person.

I was never a person. I was Compassion, a spirit.

[He pauses, listens as well, but hears and feels nothing.]

I don't understand. But that's okay. You do.