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.]

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There isn't another word for a spirit living with a mortal in the mortal's body.

[It's not a judgment, just the only word he knows for that situation.]

Maybe, with more Compassion, they could ease themselves back towards Justice and Anders again. I don't know. I am Compassion, so I usually think more Compassion will help.

[He flops backwards to lie on the floor, arms spread wide.]

I'm good at keeping secrets. Even without being threatened.

I'm not threatening you.

[Adalwolfe gives Cole a put out look and mumbles under his breath.]

Why does everyone always think that's what I'm doing?

Anyway, I do agree. More Compassion might actually help. I think it's something that Justice lacks. Which makes sense considering you Spirits tend to embody a single concept in that way.

[He stretches his memory far back to lessons by campfire while on the road, cuddled up in a blanket to keep himself and Bethany warm while their father taught them what he knew. And less far, to conversations by candlelight in his bedroom in the estate or in Anders' Darktown clinic. Little clues to unraveling which bits are which, spirit or man.

Adalwolfe sits on his bunk to avoid pacing and in turn avoid stepping on Cole.]

Anders had it - has it - in spades, but was - is - to afraid to act on it. Justice helped him with that, I think.

No. I know. I didn't think you were.

[I'm sorry, do you think sprawling in an open manner is how he reacts to being threatened?]

Other people have, though. Fear makes people do things like that.

Yes. We embody one thing. I'm more complex, because I have mortal memories as well. I know Rage and Vengeance. Justice could benefit from Compassion, but will resist it.

[He props himself up on his elbows.]

Anders has Compassion, but his Rage and Fear sometimes hide it. Compassion vanishes easily. We're weak, pitiable spirits, a sentiment easily crushed under any other passion, virtue of emotion.

[Yeah, that really is something he's heard before.]

[Hey, you never know with spirits.]

I don't think compassion is weak. As a concept, it's one of the strongest things you can do, is be compassionate. It changes minds simply by example. Brings people to do not just what is right but is humane, even if that isn't an easy thing.

[He can almost hear his father's voice instead of his own, speaking through him.]

Maybe it's like that with Spirits too. Does others belief in your embodiment make you stronger? If that's true, then maybe there's an even stronger possibility of bringing Justice back from Vengeance.

[Oh Maker please let that be it.]

Most mages think we're the weakest.

[Cole doesn't think about it much. Compassion spirits tend to be easily bullied by other, more forceful spirits. They congregate in spots of kindness, hospitals, shelters, refuges.

Rarely Chantries anymore. That... probably says something unkind about the Chantry.]

Not... belief. Being. Feeling. Acting. When I'm around people who care, who give, who heal, I feel more sure of myself.

Most mages think they know more than they do and are too sheltered to be proven otherwise.

[He doesn't say it unkindly; honestly he feels poorly for his brethren and sistren, once trapped in the Circles with little to sustain them besides books and furtive bits of stolen time behind closed doors. Maybe outings to entertain at parties like his father had, but rarely do they end in such a way as was Malcolm's luck.

It's why he'd gone with Anders to keep stoking that fire of rebellion even after the fallout in Kirkwall. Mages needed freedom to really live, even from the Circles where things weren't nearly as bad as in the Gallows. Imprisonment is still imprisonment, no matter how pretty the cage or how well you convince yourself you wish to be there. If you're not allowed to leave, it's still a jail.

The trouble hadn't been in helping the war itself. If anything, mages had done nothing but hone their art for so long that they were highly destructive on the battlefield, even if not always effective. No, it was explaining how certain things worked in the world. Doing your own laundry, buying food. Easy things that the ones who had been brought too young to their towers and always done as told never had the need to know. That more than anything broke his heart on some level.]

It's similar then. Does that mean that if Justice is around people who are concerned with what's fair and right and not with recompense, he would be more certain as well? Provided there's a way for him to leave Anders willingly without either dying.

Most people think they know best. The ones who don't think that are often the ones who actually do.

[Cole isn't going to argue about whether they're sheltered or not. They can be. But they have an entirely different set of difficulties to overcome.]

You don't think much of mages from Circles. Why?

[Which is a total change of subject, yes.]

What? That's not true.

I worry for them considering the life of every mage in Thedas got turned upside-down by the war and a great many of the ones in the Circles don't know what to do about that. Apostates are hunted all their lives, they know how to defend themselves, presumably, or they'd already be dead. Circle mages don't have that experience and so can fall easy victim to--

[He waves a hand in front of himself as if to wave off the conversation mid-sentence. It's a little irksome to think you're having one conversation and then have someone respond to an entirely different train of thought.]

This isn't what we were talking about, Cole. Generally when you have a conversation you're supposed to respond to what people say, not their thoughts.

[Cole listens, focuses, tries to hear the other things. Gets shaken from it when he gets scolded.]

Yes. But I don't. Your thoughts were very loud.

I don't know if it will help. I'm not Wisdom. Solas might know. It would not make things worse?

I'll.. try to think more quietly.

[How do you even think quietly? He doesn't know, but he'll try.]

As long as it wouldn't make things worse.

[He sighs and leans back on his hands.]

It's all pointless unless I can get back though. Anders here is...

[It's a complicated burst of emotion that for all he'd just thought he should try to think quietly he can't quell. He's just so angry at Anders for things that he knows aren't the mage's fault, that he can't possibly be responsible for. It's not his doing that Atroma pulled him from an earlier time, that he's more frightened and more frivolous to hide it. It's not his fault that Adalwolfe has to wake up every morning with the knowledge that he's here, in the fleet, with no bloody idea of who Adalwolfe is except for some crazy that makes up stories then storms off. It's not his fault that Adalwolfe can't even look at him without his heart rising and then sinking immediately after. That Hawke holds weakly onto his anger in an effort just not to hurt.

He takes a breath, trying to get back on track.]

Solas. That was the apostate with the Inquisition, right?

You don't need to think quietly. Your feelings are always strong, even if your outside doesn't show it. You're a mage, you sing louder.

[Anders here isn't his Anders, isn't the fragile, world hardened healer he knows. He still has fragments of innocence and a pricklier demeanour to hide a more vulnerable, scared more than angry self.

He lets the change of conversation happen.]

Yes. He played chess with The Iron Bull, in their heads, speaking the pieces and moves aloud.

[Hawke tries not to make a sour face at his inability to hide from Cole just by the fact that he's a mage, but thankfully the spirit lets the conversation drift away from the source of his personal turmoil. Or... one of. There are a lot of sources currently, unfortunately.]

That's a good skill. I used to do that as a child, sometimes. Do you like chess?

[He used to do it with Malcolm, an exercise in mental acuity and acumen. Training, but training he didn't mind because it was more akin to a game when Hawke was small.

Also it's better than talking about whatever else.]

I'm not very good at chess. I can play, Rhys taught me in the Pit, but I find it hard not to listen to the pieces and board instead.

Varric says I'm very bad at cards because you're not meant to talk to them.

[Okay. He shouldn't ask. But...]

Do the pieces and cards, um. Talk. To you?

Yes. Usually. New things usually have less to say.

The chess set at Skyhold had lots to say. The white Queen didn't like Dorian. He always lost to Cullen. She wanted to win.

How does that even work? They're inanimate objects. I mean, I guess I can understand the idea that a chess piece would want to be on the winning side, if it were alive, but this sounds rather fanciful.

[He looks at Cole with all due gravitas.]

Is the Skyhold chess set possessed?

[A joke. A very bad joke.]

[Cole has developed opinions and he doesn't like being condescended to.]

Just because you don't hear it doesn't mean it isn't so. They have layers upon layers of emotions and thoughts, hopes, dreams, nightmares, all building over them like people have.

Just because those things came from outside themselves doesn't make them less there. There's more to the world than what you know.

Calm down, it was a petty joke. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend. I just have enough trouble with people and all their wants and needs that if I worried over what, say, my blanket or my breakfast has to say I might go mad.

[He's not trying to sound flippant, as on the fence as he is about objects having feelings and dreams, but Varric treated Bianca like a trusted friend, and the carving he'd given Merrill to guard her shelves did exactly that as if it were more than wood, and his armor made new for him as the Champion but already laden with the expectations of a frightened people. People have an effect and he knows that on some level, but Hawkes first instinct is always to find out what people want or need and if he worries too hard over what objects need as well as people it becomes entirely too much. People are already too much on their own. He'd first just wanted to protect his family, then his family and friends, then all of Kirkwall, which had turned into all of Thedas. Where does it end?]

I know I don't know everything, nor can I fix everything, despite what most people seem to think apparently.

[Cole deflates immediately, because he can feel the regret.]

You don't need to worry about their wants. It's not like living things. They want their purpose to be fulfilled. Like spirits. Someone playing chess wants to win. So the pieces want to win. They carry the hopes and memories of those players.

[He reaches over to touch Hawke's arm softly.]

I know you can't. If you don't mistreat items, that's all that matters.

[Suddenly Cole is touching him, not what he expected, and he tries not to flinch away. He's never been afraid of physical contact but Cole is a spirit, no matter how Human he's trying to be. There are deeply rooted prejudices there, worries that Hawke may not always acknowledge but he has nonetheless. Spirits and demons are so intertwined in Chantry doctrine - mostly in that possession by any of them makes a mage an abomination - and he never had a Circle education if they even teach anything different. He isn't a spirit healer or medium, so his experience with them is limited. He knows there is a difference but never how to tell what it is other than one is apparently benevolent and the other wants to wear his body like pajamas. Justice - Vengeance - he's spent the most time with but at the cost of Anders' autonomy. It doesn't fill him with confidence.

Cole is a spirit, though, and one of compassion at that. Hawke berates himself internally for even having the want to flinch, then hangs his head because he's certain Cole can hear all of that turmoil anyway.

To his credit, though, he doesn't move away or remove Cole's hand. If anything, it's the most comforting thing anyone's done for him since he's arrived in the fleet.]

I won't. I try not to mistreat anyone. Or... anything, I suppose.

It's okay.

[Cole drops his hand away immediately, because he feels Hawke's discomfort.]

I don't want your body. I understand this world enough to be here as I am.

And I know you won't.

[He chuckles, a quiet rumble in his chest.]

Thank you, Cole.

[Adalwolfe stands, trying to put back on his generally affable demeanor for all the thoughts now swirling in his head and heart.]

I should get back to the communications console, I shouldn't leave it in disarray like that. Enjoy the shoes. I think-

[He stops himself for a moment, wondering if he'll sound condescending if he says what he wants to, but he trusts that Cole will take it in the spirit in which it's meant.]

I think they'll be pleased to be used for their intended purpose instead of being stuck on a shelf forever.

Yes.

They probably will be.

[He looks at his feet again and nods.]

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Your regularly scheduled creepy visitor

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