driftfleet | Your regularly scheduled creepy visitor

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Your regularly scheduled creepy visitor

Who: Cole and anyone who needs him... or wants to chat to him
Broadcast: No
Action: On any ship except Marsiva, Tourist or Red Fish because he avoids visiting two and can't visit the third.
When: While the fleet is moving and probably a bit after

[There is this thing Cole does.

He visits other ships. Sometimes he put the Pathstone alongside to visit and sometimes he takes a shuttle, but he's constantly wandering all over the fleet, being with people, circulating.

He hasn't done it in a while. He got a nasty fright and went into hiding for a while.

But the creepy psychic being is back! Sticking his large nose into all the business.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I don't belong in the Fade anymore. I live here now. Mostly. I can help more here. It was frightening. It wasn't like it should be. Nightmare's domain, not ours.

[He flickers across the hallway in a curl of smoke, leaning against the far wall, arms wrapped around himself.]

No. Spirits don't belong in bodies. This is me. My... natural manifestation. I had to come across on my own, to help Cole.

I thought you were Cole.

[He doesn't jump, but he follows Cole warily with his eyes at the sudden movement.]

Sorry, am I making you uncomfortable?

I am. Now.

But before I was Cole, there was another Cole. An apostate. I look like him. I have his memories. I held him while he died and it tangled us up.

[He shrugs a little.]

No. I'm just not very good at being people.

I see.

[Sort of. He's heard of soldiers taking up the names of their dead comrades, perhaps it's something like that. And the original Cole being an apostate puts a different spin on the story as well. Another tragedy instigated by the Templars, he suspects. It's always the Templars. Bloody Templars...]

I'm glad he had someone with him when he died. Not many apostates have that comfort.

[Adalwolfe offers a smile.]

As for people, you're in luck. We're an entirely weird bunch so if people find you odd, I'd say you're getting it mostly right.

No.

It's not always the Templars.

[Cole presses a hand over his chest.]

It was for Cole. For you. For Kirkwall. But not always. Adrian wanted to kill me. She did kill Pharamond. She killed people, for an idea. Real, living people.

Evangeline died to save me. Save Rhys. She was Templar. She protected us from the Lord Seeker.

It's not always anyone. It's always just people.

[For a moment he wants to take back what he said about Cole getting personing right, but the moment passes. He rarely has the chance to explain just how he feels about the whole thing; perhaps he should take this one.]

I don't believe every person who is a Templar is bad, but the Templars as an organization are not what they should be. They are supposed to protect people, including mages.

What you say about it always being just people, that much is true, but it's just as true for mages as it is for Templars. We're not all blood mages or abominations, we'e only just people with a talent we never asked for and yet there is the entire institution of the Templar Order and the Chantry that oversees them that has been perverted into hunting us down and killing us just for what we are.

So yes there are good Templars, my own brother is a Templar, but the institution they serve needs a drastic change before I will feel comfortable letting my guard down around any Templar but him.

I know.

[He's lived both sides, in memories and thoughts and feelings. He hid with the Templars for a long time, walking among them, among their dreams as well. Most of them trust their higher ups. And, in his world, die for that mistake.]

You're angry at me, like I don't understand that. I was an apostate. Or... Cole was. We were. I was just young and scared. I know that both sides are just people being misguided and lied to and being scared.

So much fear.

Frustrating, isn't it.

[Hawke folds his arms, not angry at Cole but more angry at the situation, angry that Anders has been blamed for it entirely, that he's been both blamed for it and looked to to fix it when changing minds is the single hardest thing to do. He sighs a great sigh and breathes in and out like his father taught him so long ago now. In through the nose, out through pursed lips, let the frustration and anger out with it and away from himself so he can think clearly.]

I'm not angry at you, Cole. I'm frustrated with people, with all of it. And very tired. I thought perhaps being here in the Fleet that all of that would fade into the background. There's nothing to be done here about Thedas when it's so far away, but the issues don't stay there.

[Hawke runs a hand down his face, his age showing at the corners of his eyes and in the slope of his shoulders. The mantle of Champion he'd taken up not just for Kirkwall, but for all of Thedas. All of its Mages anyway, until Corypheus had returned. That was his responsibility too.]

I'm not disagreeing with you.

Edited 2016-06-14 04:35 (UTC)

The issues aren't in Thedas. Thedas doesn't care either way.

The issues are in people, and the people are here. So the issues are here with them.

[He walks over and sits up on a panel, feet swinging. His shoes are in terrible condition, more hole than shoe these days.]

People do that.

[Varric never mentioned anything about Cole pointing out the obvious and somehow making you feel an idiot in doing it as a side effect.]

You need new shoes.

[Petulant maybe, and abrupt, but there's nothing new to say on the matter of Mages and Templars.]

[It is a thing he does, sorry about that.]

Do I?

[He looks at his feet. They're surprisingly clean for once, by a side effect of not having had anything dirty to wander through recently.]

How do you know?

There's barely anything of them left.

[This is easier, talking about something simple and present than something all encompassing and complicated.]

Shoes are suppose to protect your feet. They're hardly doing that in the shape they're in.

[And Cole goes with the subject change quite happily.]

Are they? I just wore them because that's what people do.

[How can someone with so much insight be so... dim about the simplest of things? Honestly it reminds him of Merrill just a little and for a moment he wonders if Cole is putting him on.]

Well, yes, people do wear shoes, but it's for covering your feet, as I said. Wouldn't want to step on a rusty nail or a stray thorn. And before you ask, I have no idea how Elves go about barefoot all the time. They must have feet like Mabari.

I wasn't going to ask?

[Why would he ask you about that?]

My shoes wouldn't stop a nail or thorn. I don't think they would have when I first took them, either.

[Probably not. They're basically just thin leather.]

[He's just gonna breeze right past that one...]

Hence needing new ones. Come along, I think there's a locker somewhere on board with sturdy shoes.

[If not he has a spare pair. He doesn't mind wearing the ones he came in with, after all. If they fit, Cole can have the ones provided.

Out Hawke goes, leaving the wires hanging for now. Nothing's disconnected, just exposed, so it should be fine as long as no one touches it.]

But I don't need them! I only take what I need, because someone else might need it more.

[He still trots along after Hawke, because he sort of just follows people.]

These ones didn't mind going in the ocean. I minded. I nearly drowned, but Cullen pulled me out and hit my back until I stopped coughing out water. Sturdier ones might have wanted to stay in there.

Shoes can't want anything, they're shoes. And these are extra so either you take them or they go to waste.

[Just let him feel like he's accomplished something positive in the last week, alright? They might not fit anyway.

Honestly with his luck they probably won't...]

You just don't hear them. That doesn't mean they don't have opinions.

[Cole does have big hands and feet. Like he never quite finished growing into them.]

You're joking. I didn't know spirits could joke.

[Adalwolfe opens the door to his quarters and retrieves a pair of shiny new ankle boots. Mostly that's why he can't stand them. They offer no protection for his shins at all.]

Here, try these.

...

[He's not. Hawke doesn't... seem to get it.

Cole looks at the boots, slightly suspicious.]

How do I bend my ankles in them?

The leather's supple enough to bend with you I think. If it's leather, who knows with these space age things, but it should bend with you.

Go ahead, try them on.

[Cole still look suspicious, but he takes them, holding them and trying to see what they had to say.

Not much. They were very new. Made without emotion. It was strange.

He sat down, pulling off his shoes and pulling on one of the boots. He didn't tie up the laces, just moved his foot around, testing how it felt.]

A bit like armour boots.

Do they fit alright?

[He watches Cole flex his ankle, trying to see if the shoes are the spirit's size.]

Do they pinch anywhere?

[Or can Cole just... make them fit by changing shape a bit through general spiritiness? Hawke has no idea. The only spirit he'd spent any long amount of time with was Justice and it's not as if they had heart to heart conversations. It's only now that he's starting to get a sense that Justice changed Anders when the mage had let the spirit inhabit him, and whether that's good or bad is something he hasn't settled on yet.

The thought makes him frown.]

I don't know.

[Nothing he had fitted him right. He wasn't sure how to tell if they fit.

He looks at his feet, tapping them together and then doing up the laces, sort of. He pulled them tighter, but didn't knot them.]

Spirits shouldn't live in people. It's bad for us.

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