#cole text

What's that thing? Why's it just standin' there? Why won't it move, won't blink, won't eat, won't do anythin'. It's just wrong, I wish it would do SOMETHIN'!

She didn't like nothing, stillness, silence, suffocating, stiffling nothing.

And that's all I was for quite some time... I still liked her. Liked the gap in her teeth when she smiled, the snort when she laughed and how she made up words. She still didn't like me. She was still afraid of nothing.

One night it rained terribly, I saw Sera hurting badly. A knot tangled up in itself and pulled so tightly that I almost didn't try to undo it. Her heart broke over one of the cats passing, it had babies that were now cold and soaked to the bone, hungry and helpless. She felt so deeply and I offered to help, I was surprised that she actually let me.

When the others helped me feel more human I started to change, I got mad, reacted when she said something teasing and for the first time I saw a glint behind her eyes.

She smiled and teased me more. Varric told me later that it was a good thing, that she finally saw that I wasn't so bad.

The next few weeks were hard for me, eating and sleeping were new to me along with all of these emotions, the kinds I drew out when trying to help people.

Sera brought me cookies, said I had to try them now that I could. It made her happy that I liked them.

Broad shoulders and taller than me but thin, white hair and a slim face, always smiling, always happy.

You used to sing and play and even though my voice was no good you let me sing along.

You had dimples when you laughed and parted your hair in the middle, tucked behind your pointed ears.

It was always back in a bun with two playful fiery curls twisting down on either side.

The tattoos were faded, crossing on the forehead and framing your face, leaving marks across your lips.

This isn’t to say that I forgot about him, because that’s impossible when every last advisor, at the very least, insists on giving you their two cents on the situation (gee, thanks Cullen, your input was so necessary, now hush). But it just came into my head that this is exactly how Rosalind would deal with him. She and Lysander would be fine keeping him around, since he got them out of the Fade, and he did nothing to earn their distrust. And while that’s followed by an open ended “yet,” neither of them have their usual, immediate reaction: Kill him, just to be safe.

They trust literally no one after Highever, Rosalind less so than Lysander, but she’s the first to jump to Cole’s defense. And since they haven’t been around a child or a child-like personality in ~10 years, it doesn’t really occur to either of them why they’ve become so protective of what could easily turn out to be a demon.

He almost reminds them of Oren.

And even though they do defend him when he pops up in the war room, Rosalind especially avoids him like the plague, because she sees how his mind works and she doesn’t want him inside her head just yet. Maybe ever at all. But she can’t bring herself to resent him for it. Lysander does talk to him, quite a bit in fact, but that stops when Cole starts rattling on about what’s going with Rosalind, because no, Cole, this isn’t any of my business unless she wants it to be.