redshiftlogs | Open: A Kindness to soothe the hurts

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Open: A Kindness to soothe the hurts

Cole is what he is because of what he does and so what he does is try and help.

He doesn't understand electricity, or computers, or what 'genes' are. He can't cook because he doesn't eat and he barely recognises the robots as existing because they lack the thing that makes him realise they're real.

So he lets himself sit, quiet and open and he listens for the hurts he can help. The things that need soothing and the emotional wounds that fester and need lancing and the aches that just need airing to begin healing.

And when he hears it, he follows.

OOC: (Cole is a spirit of Compassion and has an instinctively understanding of what is troubling people and what might help them recover. This can be as simple as listening to someone talk, or as complex as setting up a situation that would allow them to relax and forget about it for a while.

If your muse needs (or wants) some kindness, leave a top level and Cole will come to help.)

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Already in the midst of a nervous outburst, Kieran can't help the startled jump at the sound of Cole's voice, gentle as it is. Instinctively, he reaches for the revolver hanging from his waist, although he doesn't pull it. He's never been good at shooting first and asking questions later, something that's gotten him into trouble plenty of times during his previous gang-related excursions.

So he stands there, only partially armed with his back arched, stiff, like a frightened cat, yet unable to do much else except listen. Listen and feel his stomach churn and heart flutter at the mix of implications this stranger is throwing his way. Kieran can hear every single word Cole is saying, but it's taking so long to register that they may as well have passed from one ear through the other. He has to start from the beginning and replay the message in his head before beginning the arduous task of sifting through his piling questions.

Still guarded, Kieran swallows the lump that started to form in his throat, testing the waters before he attempts to speak. He starts with the broadest, and relative safest, of his inquiries.

"Y-You some kinda ghost, Cole? 'Cause if you are, I-I'm gonna let you know now I ain't in no mood for a hauntin'."

Cole watches the action for the gun with curiosity, but nothing like fear, not even an awareness of the gun as a weapon. "No. Not a ghost. I thought I was, but now I know I'm not. I'm a spirit living in the mortal world. So I can help people."

There's words flickering from Keiran, words that almost catch what he is, but not quite. He's not an angel, but he's more like an angel than he is a person. "I came to you because you're hurting and I want to help you feel better. I know what happened to you. Your life was so unfair, but it never made you cruel."

He doesn't know what to believe: his gut telling him everything the spirit is saying is legitimate or his brain telling him that anything less than completely distrusting the words coming out of Cole's mouth. Regardless, the palm on the hilt of his revolver falters. It eventually falls as the winner of his internal struggle makes itself known.

Kieran will trust Cole for now. He has a feeling that anything otherwise would be foolish.

He doesn't know much about spirits, only that supposedly talking with the wrong ones wasn't exactly the best of ideas, but with Cole's overall soothing presence, Kieran's pretty sure he's one of the good ones. Indeed, the word 'angel' crosses his mind once or twice, but it doesn't seem correct.

So 'good spirit' it is.

Then again, maybe just 'Cole' is fine.

He can't be sure about that. The only thing right now that Kieran is sure of is that his dredged up memories are pushing him to scream and yell and lash out at the only other 'person' here, but that would be just as unfair as the life that Cole's pointed out.

"Thanks, but, uh, unless you can work them spirit powers and change the past, I don't know if there's much you can do, Cole." Kieran answers. His tone is dry, reminiscent of the sardonic humor that's become one of his few coping mechanisms, but it's not unkind. Resigned, mostly.

"...N-Name's Kieran, by the way. Don't know if you already figured that out along with, y'know, a-all that other stuff."

"Duffy. But not always Duffy. Yes, I know. And I can listen. I can let you know that someone cares about what happened and tell you that you didn't deserve it. I can tell you you were missed, mourned..."

He trails off, looking somewhere else.

"Their grief follows you. No one grieved Cole. No one noticed or cared. But they cared enough to look. To avenge. Mary Beth watered the flowers she laid with her tears." It's all he can offer, but that small acceptance might mean something.

It means more than something.

It means just about everything.

It means that Kieran feels like he'd just been hit by a train, the wind knocked out of his lungs as he stumbles backward, hitting the barn wall with a muted thud. His chest constricts around his pounding heart once more; that lump is back in his throat and no amount of swallowing or deep breathing is pushing it away. Just as suddenly as this new wave of emotion, chaotic and confusing, washes over him, Kieran can feel tears start to cascade over his cheeks, wet and warm and uncontrollable with his wracking sobs. Something has given way inside of him, like a broken seal on a jar that's been left alone for too long with its contents ready to violently explode. He slides down, the wall guiding his body as he lowers it into the dirt, his legs incapable of holding him up anymore.

He can't tell if his tears are because of the mention of a name held so dear to him, the consequences of his passing, or the fact that the Van der Linde gang gave a damn to the extent that their frigid folk would allow (even with Cole's pacifying words, he knows there are members who would've celebrated his death based solely on his previous, unwillingly-made affiliations). Add in the all-encompassing guilt that comes with feeling even the slightest bit happy to learn that people cared about him, when he also knows that he's caused pain and heartache to those very same people--and especially for the young woman who Cole revealed liked (dare he believe, loved) him enough to leave him flowers and weep over him.

It takes a little while for his crying to subside, marked by a rough palm rubbing over his eyes, red-rimmed and tender, as well as his beard, wet and unkempt.

"I-I... S-Sorry... I just..." Kieran stammers, voice thick with emotion, "...They put me th-through hell. A-All of 'em did, 'cept Mary-Beth. I-I thought they... that they hated me."

He can see her in his mind's eye, standing over a grave with her eyes red in mourning. Maybe Arthur was there with her, too. He'd cared, right? After all, Kieran saved his life. Maybe that would've been enough. Anything to know that he'd been missed and that the one person he knew missed him the most wasn't left to do so alone.

"I didn't wanna hurt 'em... didn't wanna hurt her. I n-never thought that-that dyin' would... would..."

Kieran needs another moment, so he takes it.

"M'sorry. I'm so sorry."

He's not sure who he's apologizing to. It could be to Cole. It could be to the few loved ones he'd left behind. It could be to anyone, anywhere who happened to be listening. He's certain, though, that it's not aimed at himself. He's just so full of grief and anger and confusion about why this happened to him, that he's in no state for self-forgiveness.

Cole comes close enough to crouch down, weight on the balls of his feet and chest resting against his thighs. He curls up small, all the long, thin limbs folding up and tucking in.

"You don't need to apologise to anyone for what was done to you. Yes. Your death hurt some people. Hurt Mary-Beth. But knowing you and caring about you gave her joy and that was worth it. Losing you was a price she was happy to pay for getting to know you in the first place."

He picks at his shoes. They're rapidly becoming more holes than shoes at this point, his toes grimy where they're failing to keep dirt out. "Crying is good for you. Like washing a wound. Tears wash the wounds in your spirit clean, to stop them festering."

"Y-Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's one way to see it."

Kieran sniffs and hiccups, rubbing at his eyes again. There are still some tears leaking out of them, and he's far too tired to try to hold them back. Maybe Cole was right. Maybe he needed this chance to just let that bottled up negativity loose. He hadn't cried--not like this, anyway--since he'd been a little boy, lost without his mother and father. Showing any kind of emotion outside of that rough-and-tough grumpiness expected of an outlaw was the ultimate sign of weakness. Weakness got you killed. Got him killed.

But now that the worst has already happened, there's nothing holding those feelings back. It's liberating, in its own way.

He's been quiet for too long, thoughts and feelings playing in circles in his head. So he glances over at Cole, waiting there so patiently.

"Y-You said you'd died, too. That n-n-nobody grieved. You just... y-you okay with that?"

Cole waits, while Keiran sorts his thoughts and feelings out and then while he realises there's a liberation in having nothing left. Because with nothing to lose, there's only things to be gained.

"No. I wasn't 'just' okay with it. I was angry and scared and hurt for a long time. I don't let myself dwell on it now, because I know I'm Cole and Compassion, and it wasn't my body, even if I remember all of it." He represses his own trauma like a champ, compartmentalising it into 'other'. "It was hard. But it helped when someone else knew and acknowledged and was sad for me. Him. Us. Hearing someone say 'what happened to you wasn't right and you didn't deserve it' helped."

Deep down in his gut, Kieran feels that there's something fundamentally wrong with possessing a dead man's body. He's too exhausted to try and consider any moral quandaries surrounding the circumstances, however, and opts instead to nod and listen. For what it's worth, Cole's story is fascinating, if not difficult to parse thanks to poetic words painting an almost dreamlike experience; if nothing else, it's a nice reminder that even someone? something? as ethereal as a spirit could use a friend every once in a while. It's like Kieran's not crazy for wanting that kind of bond, as well.

He's able to share a smile, trickling tears notwithstanding.

"Who w-was the feller who helped you out?"

The Fade is dreamlike and spirits are the Fade. Cole's life is so multi levelled with inside and outside that the only start of communicating it is with those words.

"His name was Rhys. And even when he thought I might be a demon, or might be living in a dead body, which I wasn't, but even then, he wanted to help me. He didn't want me to hurt people, but he didn't want to make me suffer. He wanted to return me home, or help me to have a life. He was... the only kindness I'd ever known."

Cole's voice is so warm when he speaks of Rhys. The love and affection virtually rolls off him. And, he seems a little more... human.

The shift in Cole's tone widens the smile on Kieran's face and pushes the dark circles under his eyes into tiny, fine-lined bags. His brow furrows, however, when he connects a couple of implications from the rest of Cole's explanation.

"So, wait, the other spirit folks weren't nice to ya? Or am I just missin' something..."

Because it's beyond flabberghasting that any entity--human, spiritual, or otherwise--as gentle as Cole would encounter anything other than kindness. Especially when all he's tried to do, from the sound of things, is help out wherever he was needed.

Yes, the irony is lost on him.

"I was Compassion. Then I gained the memories and experiences of a boy, Cole. Now I'm Cole who is also Compassion. Spirits aren't interested in other spirits. Only mortals. Mortals feel and think and dream and aspire. Spirits just... are."

Except Cole. Cole thinks and feels. Cole understands "was" and "will be" as different things.

"Cole suffered a lot. So I remember suffering."

Kieran is silent while he digests Cole's words, piecing them together as carefully as his tired mind will allow. Finally, he nods with a confident dip of his head.

"I think I get it."

He wipes at his eyes again. They sting, undoubtedly from a mix of freshly shed tears and the dirt he's managed to smear on his face, but his vision's gone from blurry to somewhat clear. Sure, his heart's still a little sore, but it's like a wound that needed reopening to guide it into healing properly. He'll survive and be better off for it.

"I-Is it because you remembered all of Cole's sufferin' that you wanna help other folks with theirs?"

Cole watches, offers no advice or help about the dirty face or stinging eyes, because they're not things he's really aware of.

"No. I was Compassion before I ever knew of Cole. I help people because that's what I do, am, want to be. I am Compassion. I'm just also Cole now. Being Cole helps me.... understand. Put things in context."

"Is that how you wanna stay, then? As Cole? Or would you ever wanna go back to bein' a spirit?"

Dirty faces and emotional breakdowns aside, Kieran's curiosity is genuine and Cole's experiences are objectively unique. The one worry that crosses his mind is that perhaps he's asking too many questions and keeping Cole from helping someone else who needs it (and based on the people Kieran's met so far, plenty of people do).

Still, he's dying to know about this enigma who so effortlessly quelled that tempest inside of him. Just a little more.

That, or he's afraid of being alone again. Either is plausible. Or both at once.

"I am a spirit. I'm just also Cole. I don't want to go back to the Fade. I like the physical world. I can make a difference here."

It's an answer in a roundabout way. He wouldn't go back to the Fade. He doesn't belong there anymore. He doesn't belong here either, but that's okay.

"No one else needs me more than you do. If they did, I'd go to them. I've done what I can for Klaus and Ben and Peter."

For a second that feels like an eternity, Kieran wonders if he somehow voiced his concerns. Then, realization slowly dawns on him that of course Cole could read him. He can't tell if it's his mind or his heart (or both or something else entirely) that this strange feller can open up so easily, but it's unsettling. Comforting in its own way, sure, but still unsettling.

"I can't say I know Klaus, but I do know Ben and Peter. Are they alright? Can I help 'em out, too?"

"Klaus is Ben's brother. There's seven of them, but not seven here." He doesn't say anymore, because he's not meant to give spoilers from other people's stories. Varric said so.

"I can help Ben because we're both... we both know what it's like to be thought of as monsters. Peter needs to be reminded that he's only responsible for his actions and thoughts. I reminded him. Suffering itself is not heroic. But not being scared of Ben would help. Reminding Peter he's allowed to be a teenager."

It hurts to think that these friendly people he's come across in Anchor are harboring just as many inner demons as he is, possibly worse, but at least there's support available for them. That's a relief.

"Okay, sure. I can try to help, too. W-Would that make things easier for you, too?"

He wants to help his friends, sure, but he also wants to return Cole's kindness.

"When you care and try to help, you make things easier and better for everyone," Cole explains. "Just... care. Try to understand, even if you don't agree. People mistake understanding for agreeing. It's not the same, though."

He understood Lambert and that just made him more adamant he needed to be stopped.

Cole’s assertion about understanding and agreeing hits home. In theory—as a concept—Kieran’s always understood that, but putting it into practice was a whole different story. Amongst his new friends, however, that could change. He could change. For the better. That’s exciting in its own right.

“I can... I can do that. Yeah.”

Kieran allows himself a few more breaths before he slowly rises to his feet. In all honesty, he feels exhausted, but the day has to continue. He’s got work to do. Work that will hopefully wind up helping others, too.

“Thanks. I don’t remember if I said it or not already, but thanks.”

Cole smiles softly and nods again. "You... are welcome." It was said by rote, well learned as a response to being thanked.

"I don't do it for gratitude, though. It doesn't matter if no one ever thanks you, or even remembers. The important thing is making a difference."

Doing anything without expectation of some sort of gratitude--and actually meaning it, instead of resorting to a polite 'you don't have to thank me!'--feels like something Cole's more spirit-y side would say. Something to hold in high esteem and try to emulate, Kieran supposes.

"I'll keep that in mind," he agrees. Sincerely, too.

"D-Do you have anywhere else you gotta be? Or do ya wanna stay here while I work? You're welcome, either way."

He wouldn't mind the company. He'd welcome it, even, especially after that emotional ordeal. He'd also understand if Cole had places to be and people to help, despite the fact that he said he has no other obligations in this moment.

"I can help with the work. I help with work in Skyhold, sometimes things are too heavy for one, or I can get where other can't. And Cole used to hunt for his food."

Cole reaches and unsheathes one of the knives from his back. Silkdart is a beautifully cared for and dangerous looking knife. And clearly well used. "I know lots of practical skills too. Cole needed to know them."

That... is an impressive knife. One that Kieran feels is best to not ask the history of, despite Cole's all-around friendliness.

"Great! Don't think we'll be doin' much huntin', but I can show you some of what I've been workin' on'."

Kieran grins and waves for Cole to follow him.

"This way! I bet you'll even have some fun!"

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Open: A Kindness to soothe the hurts

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