driftfleet | When We're Rollin Through the Wild Wild West

When We're Rollin Through the Wild Wild West

Who: Everyone! EVERYONE!
Broadcast: IF YOU WANNA
Action: Everywhere! EVERYWHERE!
When: Mid-September - Mid-October

[How's your ship doing, pardners? Is it still pretty damaged? Is it glitching out hardcore? Well, there is one place to land to take care of all that, and that's on a dusty old moon in front of a planet that no one wants to go to. On this moon, you'll find a civilization that looks a lot like one's stepped into a wild west movie, hardened cowpolk and mutant horses and all. Will you become a vigilante, hunting bounties and stopping gangs from doing their dirty work? Will you go exploring planetside, with a cowboy hat and a stalk of wheat in your mouth to complete the look? Good luck with that; there is no wheat. This town ain't big enough for all you flooters, but make it so! For the ratings!

In other words, it's a planet mingle! Get 'er done!]

[September Planet info here]

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[Cole doesn't smile, but something about him lightens and seems pleased that he made Anders laugh.]

I think most people should live by it.

Couldn't hurt, I suppose.

[He takes a moment to heal another patient, this one just a messy scrape on a child's elbow from a fall.]

Still, easier said than done, isn't it? Everyone's got their own idea of what being a dick is. "Be as little a dick as possible," how about that?

[He snickers at his own joke. Little dicks!]

[The child's injury is small enough not to pull on Cole, but he crouches down to let a little hand pet the fox before the child runs off again.]

Be as kind as you can to the world and beings in it. But maybe that's a Compassion way of living, not a mortal one.

[Little dick joke goes straight over Cole's head. Sorry.]

[It's okay, he's used to it by now. He mostly tells them for his own amusement.]

Yes, well. That counts on the world being kind back, doesn't it? [The line of his mouth thins.] There isn't much of that, outside the Fade.

[Justice had been that way, trying to get the mortal world to fit into the confines of his being and his expectations. Anders is used to that by now, too.]

No.

[That's the thing about Compassion. About Cole.]

People hurt me sometimes. But that doesn't stop me being as kind as I can. They're scared, or hurting. They think being cruel will make them feel better.

How they act doesn't change how I act. My kindness is not dependent on theirs.

[True to form, and perhaps demonstrating Cole's point, Anders' reply has an edge of bitterness to it:]

That must be convenient. [It sounds like the exact opposite, actually.] Until you start counting the ones who hurt just because they can. My heart isn't quite that big, and I'm perfectly fine with that, I think. It's gotten me this far.

["This far" is, at least, not the Circle. Whether that's real freedom or not is... complex.]

Convenient? No. But I'm not mortal. I'm meant to be Compassion.

But I tried to kill the Templar who killed me. I wasn't Compassion then. I was angry.

Now there's something a man can relate to.

[He picks at the fabric of his cuffs, staring very determinedly between his feet. He did not kill those templars. But he also didn't try to stop the darkspawn who slit their throats. He and anger are old friends.]

You aren't mortal now, but you were mortal then? How is that supposed to work?

I don't know what I am now. Or was then. I'm just me.

Ever since I came through the Veil, I've just been me.

[He rocks on his barrel.]

I don't know how I work. I don't know if I do work.

Well, you have to at least work a little. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation at all, I don't think. Literally!

[It's easier to be blase about it, when he understands so little about what Cole is and how he works. It's just in a mage's nature to be wary of anything across the Veil, even if Cole's on the wrong side of it for now.]

But, really, in the end— how much does it matter? You'd be you if you were mortal or not, presumably. [a beat] You'd just be you longer in one case, I suppose.

I have a body. And I can use it. I even know how to eat, if I ever have to, but I don't have to.

[He had eaten before. He didn't really fancy doing it again, though.]

I suppose it doesn't matter. I am. That has to be enough.

That's the spirit. [Puns! He still doesn't expect Cole to get them, but he likes making them.] Besides, if you weren't so— both ways, I suppose, we wouldn't be able to team up like this, would we?

[... That's not actually true. Revising:]

Well, we wouldn't be able to do it and chat so much in the process, anyway.

[Cole tilts his head, then nods a little.]

True. I would be able to help, but we wouldn't be able to talk. Unless you're a spirit medium as well as a spirit healer. Rhys is both.

Only the latter, I'm sorry to say! But given my experiences with spirits so far, I feel like I have to at least be half a medium by now.

You can't be half a medium. That doesn't make any sense.

Well, not with that attitude it doesn't. [He sets one hand over his heart, mock-affronted.] I talk with spirits all the time these days, it seems. Why should it not count just because they've got real world bodies now, hm?

.. by spirits, do you mean me? Because I'm only one spirit.

Justice would be the other one, though you're a sight less corpse-y than he is, that's for certain. [A beat, while he considers.] He's also not here, strictly speaking, but I think he still counts. Seems rude otherwise.

He counts. He's a spirit. Justice, Vengeance, Rage, Compassion, Mercy, Despair...

[Cole stares off somewhere else.]

Careful. You'll be listing off feelings forever if you get started, and us still with boils to look at and skinned knees to patch.

[A beat. Justice is a spirit, the way Cole is a spirit. Except they've just gotten finished talking about how no one is really sure what Cole is, Cole himself included, and— it used to make sense, spirits and demons. He spent years of his life studying them, sorting them, understanding them and how to fight them off, if he had to.]

Some of those you're listing off don't really sound like spirits to me, though.

They are. I've been Compassion and Mercy. I was nearly Despair, but Cassandra promised to kill me if I ever do that.

[And Vengeance could have run the risk of becoming Rage.]

But now I'm too mortal. I'm Cole instead.

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When We're Rollin Through the Wild Wild West

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