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Who: Cole to everyone
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: Pathstone
When: Now

[Cole is actually looking at the camera, which is a minor miracle for those familiar with his habit of leaving his communicator next to him and pointing at the ceiling.]

How do mortals know what you're feeling? Varric used to tell me what it was, or Jove, or Solas, but they're gone and now I don't know what these feelings are. I can tell how to help other people and how to navigate their hurts but I can't do it with my own.

[He gives a small sigh and looks off somewhere. A fluff slug climbs over the communicator screen.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Cole gasps.]

That would... make her feet itchy!

Yes, that's the point.

[Oh my god Cole you're precious.]

Oh!

[He covers his mouth with his hands, seemingly torn between being a little horrified (he is Compassion) and amusement (she betrayed Varric).]

Oh.

Is that a prank?

Yes, that's a prank. It's something that doesn't ruin the victim's life, but the person doing it gets a laugh at the person who was pranked's expense. A light revenge.

[It's better than Bianca deserves.]

Oooh, I get it.

[He might. He thinks he does, that's the important thing.]

Like putting a snake in Vivienne's sleeping bag.

[Adalwolfe chuckles at that. He wasn't much a fan of the Orlesian woman when they'd met briefly.]

Exactly. So long as it's not a very bitey snake.

She gave it lots of legs and put it in Sera's sleeping bag.

[Their back and forth pranking had baffled him at the time.]

What? Really? That wasn't beneath her?

[Well well, that is interesting. If he hadn't had Anders to get back to and Weisshaupt to inform, he might have tried to stick around the Inquisition a bit longer and seen some of the things they got up to. He gets the feeling they were a lot like his friends in Kirkwall. Thrown together by circumstance, but forging lasting bonds.]

No.

Sera tried to scandalise Vivinene by mooning her, but Vivienne always said it would take more than Sera's pale, skinny bottom to shock her.

Well then. I may have misjudged that woman.

[At least a little, anyway. She's still a loyalist, which isn't going to fly in his book without some major reform. Not that he'll have his say way out here.

He pauses, then gives a gentle smile.]

Are you feeling any better, Cole?

Maybe. Maybe not. She's stopped trying to find excuses to kill me, which is nice.

[He pauses and then blinks and smiles a little.]

I am.

[He doesn't say anything more about Vivienne. He knows the Circle line about spirits and demons. A spirit does anything entirely unexpected and it's not a spirit, it's a demon, and must be destroyed. It makes sense for what he knows of her, though it's encouraging that she stopped. Maybe even a staunch loyalist can change.]

I'm glad. It won't do to have my friends upset.

She used to tell me the Mage war was my fault, that everyone died because of me. She wanted me to Despair. Solas would yell at her and then Cadash would send one of them back to camp and take someone else with us.

[Well. There goes any chance of his opinion inching towards positive.]

What a ghastly person. The mage war isn't your fault, how could it be? That blame lies on a lot of things, but not least of all me and Anders.

[And Justice. But he really doesn't much like to talk about Justice.]

Because I killed Lord Seeker Lambert. She said that was why the war happened and it was my fault.

[The war happened in a lot of places at once, because it wasn't about individuals. It was about rebelling against injustice and cruelty, about being more scared of the norm than the punishment.]

I don't know a lot about... vast consequences. I only know people. The immediate. It's what Compassion needs to be.

Well I helped blow up a Chantry and kill a High Cleric and a Knight-Commander, so I really don't think you're the only one to blame here. And besides, something had to happen. Her blaming you is probably some kind of reaction to a change she didn't want, but the Circles were untenable and something had to be done. No one should suffer like that. I don't understand how any mages could still be loyalist out of anything other than fear when they've been treated how they have over generations.

[He lets out a breath.]

Sorry, I'm supposed to help you feel better, not lament the sad status of mages across Thedas.

Because Vivienne... made good for herself.

[Not his words, clearly.]

She thinks other mages could do fine if they just worked harder, complained less, sucked it up and got on with it.

[Because Vivienne victim blamed other mages for what happened to them.]

[He has a very unkind thought entailing Templars throwing her in a windowless cell for a year with nothing but a dog-eared copy of the Chant of Light and a cranky old cat for company and seeing if that changes her mind, but he doesn't voice it. When he said to Anders that no one deserves that, he meant it. Not even Vivienne. He guesses, anyway.]

Well then she's an idiot.

She's... entitled. There's a difference.

[It's a good thing Cole isn't there to hear that thought. That thought would scare the shit out of him.]

[A very good thing indeed, even if Adalwolfe would never actually dream of following through with a horrible thought like that.]

It amounts to the same thing.

No. Idiot isn't the same.

... there are none so blind as those that refuse to see.

... I'm not sure that's actually true, but I heard it.

No, I know that. What I meant was the end result is the same; she's against the rebellion as a whole, can't see the underlying reasons why it happened are solid ones, the injustices her own people endured.

[He sounds like Anders, he knows, but he spent most of a year after Kirkwall sounding like Anders, telling First Enchanters and any other representative of a Circle the same thing. Tower after Circle Tower in the Free Marches and some further south, he used the same words where Anders couldn't speak for fear of his actions in Kirkwall undermining the Circle mages' ability to follow.]

She doesn't see anything but her own position in Orlesian society. Probably the only reason she was even let into the Inquisition.

They're not her people. Not to her. Not to them.

[Vivienne was very clear on that.]

Yes. She threw a big party and informed Cadash she was joining the Inquisition. Cadash thought she was funny, and wanted to see what she'd do.

[Hawke snorts at that, but finds he has little taste for talking about Vivienne further. He has no stomach for mages who buy into the Chantry line that all mages are dangerous and therefore should be imprisoned just for what they are. Nevermind that they're people and if they were treated like people, taught to control their powers and taught the difference between right and wrong, that they'd be no more dangerous than any idiot who handles a crossbow. If you tell people all their lives that they're monsters, what other choice do they have?]

I think Lavellan might have let her join for the same reason, in my Thedas. I don't think he listened to her much.

No. Cadash didn't listen to her at all.

[He remembers a tiny dwarf woman staring down Cullen, her hand firm on the box of lyrium and swearing that she'd be strong enough for him to stay off it.]

Cole and Vivienne were both from White Spire. The top and the bottom.

[It might help explain his vague fascination in understanding her. They were both created in the same chantry.]