to protect and serve

[eudorapatch]

WHO: Detective Eudora Patch
WHAT: the face-to-face option for her network post, looking for clothes and ammo and other necessities, learning her environment by hitting the streets walkways
WHEN: whole month of July for most of it, though an immediate response to her network post would happen on the 15th, and a belated response can happen any time after that
WHERE: room 020, but also kind of everywhere?
WARNINGS: anything in response to her network post may contain detailed and blunt discussions of violence/death/dying - anything at all with her runs a small risk of her at least thinking about her own death. if this will upset you, please tell me so before we begin so that i can avoid it.

NOTES: I don't like brackets/action-spam. It's not natural for me to write that way, and I much prefer prose. I can read it just fine (but please don't make your bracket text super tiny) and don't mind if styles don't match. So you're welcome to tag me in action-spam, but just be prepared for my responses to come back in prose.

option A
After Patch makes her post to the network, she feels an odd moment of disconnect. What if no one responds? What if she is the only one feeling overwhelmed and out of her depth? What if she just aired her trauma, and she's the only one going through it?

Well, if she did, then she did. Can't change it, and wouldn't even if she could. Because she might not be alone. It might help someone else. Which makes it worth it.

She goes to the door of her room, unlocks it, opens it. It closes again on its own. Right. She opens it again, waits for it to try and close, and sticks her hand in the way. She's prepared to yank it back quickly, lest she lose some fingers, but the door halts its progress, presumably in response to whatever is blocking it. That'll work. She comes up with a little squat metal container that used to hold something, but now is only home to a vaguely musty smell. With that placed along the recessed metal track, it leaves the door to room 020 open about a foot, unable to lock, and accessible to anyone walking past.

option B
She doesn't have much. The clothes on her back, main weapon, ankle weapon, and a few extra clips of ammunition. Plus the junk from her pockets. Never thought she'd see the day when taking stock of her possessions would include a mental tally of 'eight mint lifesavers' but the universe seems determined to keep tossing up hurdles in her path. Well, bring it on. High school track about to pay off in a big way. Metaphorically. She checks her weapons, tightens her ponytail, and runs her fingers over the gentle ridges and valleys of her badge where it's resting under her shirt, like a talisman. Time to go learn her new neighbourhood.

option C
Also time to go shopping. If you can call it that. Some extra clothing would be a good start. Boots, jeans, and jacket she can make do. But a spare shirt, a change of underwear, and something to sleep in, that would be nice. Toothbrush, hair brush, maybe a book. Anything to keep her occupied.

option !
Wildcard! You know how this works. Come at me, bro! :3

15 July
afternoon - Ben comes to talk about how he knows Patch - room 020
also afternoon - Drake stops by for more cheery death talk - room 020
late evening - Cole waits until everyone else has come and gone - room 020

16 July
afternoon - finding out just what a tiny thing Peter is - R & D

Comments

A- Later that evening.

[killedwithlove]

Cole gives everyone else time to visit, to talk, to sort out the complicated things of the siblings and Patch enough that they can all live with it for a little bit longer.

When he comes to find Patch, he just looks in through the gap, clinging to the edge of the door and slightly uncertain, because this isn't just about someone else.

"That was brave. I didn't reply, because I don't like the electric talking and writing, but I know what you did and how it helped others."

[eudorapatch]

Patch doesn't notice him until he speaks. People have been walking past her door all day, some coming to see her, many others not. She's tried to tune out that little flash of shadow and light on her periphery. When he does speak, though, she puts down the device in her hands and turns in the desk chair, facing the door.

"Thank you." A beat to consider his posture, the tone of his voice. Is it the hand-on-the-door comment? Has the earmarks of one. "Everyone else has been very brave, as well. Talking about their own experiences - on the broadcast, and here in private." He could, too, if he wants to. "Would you like to come in?"

[killedwithlove]

"Would you like me to come in?" Cole feels ambivalent about places, has only a nominal concept of privacy and doesn't want to hurt Patch by talking about things that will hurt her.

He thinks maybe she needs some context. "I didn't die, but Cole did and now I'm Cole, and I remember dying. But I experience lots of people's deaths, just not usually so.... intensely. I can feel your death, but I'm trying not to because it's an inside voice thing, not outside voice."

[eudorapatch]

Patch is about to tell him that she wants him to do whatever will make him feel the most comfortable. He can come in, and they can talk. Or he can come in, and they can be quiet. Or he can leave, and she won't bother him, and he can always come back later when he feels like he wants to.

Then he keeps talking.

Today is just going to be a hell of a day, apparently.

"I-- Yes, Cole. Yes. I think I would like you to come in and talk with me, if that sounds all right to you."

Deep breath. Then another. She can do this. It's easy. You just-- decide you're going to be able to handle it, and the you find a way to handle it. Right. No problem.

[killedwithlove]

"You don't have to handle it," Cole says as he wanders in, letting the door close by nudging aside the box. "I know you want to handle it, but you don't need to. When you cry, your body purges toxins. I learned that with the Fleet. It's actually your body trying to cleanse itself, so it's good for you."

He wanders closer, swaying on his feet. "I'm an empath. And telepath. With... psychometry?" He sounds unsure. "My body is a manifested spirit, so I talk to the inside and outside of everything at the same time, but most people only talk from outside to outside."

He's trying to explain.

[eudorapatch]

Well, that's just... deeply, deeply, deeply unsettling. Though he might not be able to control it. He might not even realize it.

Patch sits in the desk chair, which is still pulled close to the couch after her visit with Ben, and gestures for Cole to take the couch if he wants to. "So... are you able to control it? Or do you just-- do that, speak to the inside and outside of me at the same time, without meaning to? Is it a choice you make? Or is it like-- opening your eyes. You can't pick what you see, and what you don't see?" She's trying to understand it, but she's not sure she'll be able to. He's reading her mind. Which means he knows everything she's thinking, anyway. Shit.

"I could-- I could choose not to speak. Or I could plug my ears to keep from hearing something. Are you able to do that with the inside of people?"

[killedwithlove]

"I know I'm doing it, but I can't stop it, it's what I am. I'm sorry. I was Compassion before I was Cole. Compassion knows, has to know to feel and I feel more than I hear." And he hears a lot. "I always know people. And your body doesn't speak, but your spirit does. All the time. It feels and sings and screams and is bright and coloured and your spirit leaves marks on everything you touch, with love, with anger, with fear... and Compassion understands. That's what it is. What I am."

He's trying to explain in terms that Solas used, that are familiar from her mind.

He sits after a moment, hands flat on the couch and then relaxing into it like a regular person undoubtedly had once. "Ben is overwhelmed by living, so long craved, so elusive, but it's hard, living, being alive, harder than being dead in some ways."

[eudorapatch]

"It isn't your fault, if you can't turn it off." It's invasive and a little frightening, but it's not his fault. That's important. He's not making a choice to invade her privacy. He's being very upfront about the fact that he is. He can't help it. He can't turn it off.

He can't turn it off. Wow. "It must be so incredibly loud for you, being around people in turmoil, people in pain. How do you cope with it?" She makes an effort to quiet her own thoughts. She used to be so good at that. She can so clearly remember, sitting in the patch of sunlight from her living room window, her back against the side of her couch, her legs stretched out in front of her, meditating on the beauty of life and the exquisite simplicity to be found in the decision to be happy. It's not so easy now.

[killedwithlove]

"It's... what I am. What I was created to be, in the Fade. I am Compassion." Her concern reminds him of Cadash, of Jove, of people caring about him as a being and it's uncomfortable.

For a moment, she might find herself not quite remembering what she was saying, who she was saying it to, before Cole forces himself to stay here and now and visible and memorable. "I've never been any other way."

[eudorapatch]

Her focus slips. That's unusual. Patch is distressed and a little off balance, but she doesn't just falter like that. She falters in other ways, but not like that. She shakes her head to clear it, even though she knows it won't make a difference. "Was that-- What just happened?" She looks at Cole. She doesn't want to ask him if he did something. That sounds accusatory. She doesn't want to accuse him of something. She doesn't want to seem angry at him. It's an unsettling feeling, though, to have your brain go full static like that. "Did you feel that?"

[killedwithlove]

"I'm sorry," Cole gasps. "People... forget me, don't see me, unless I focus on making it not happen. And sometimes... I don't like being noticed. Focused on." Every other time it's happened, he's been hurt in some way. It's why he manifested like this at all. "I panicked. I'm sorry."

[eudorapatch]

"No, it's all right. You don't have to apologize." He has to focus on remaining... solid? Perceptible? So any panic would cause that to falter, and it's not as though anyone can control their panic. It makes sense, even if it is unsettling for her. "I'm sorry that I made you panic. Would it help if I didn't look at you?" Does he mean visually noticed, or does the simple fact that she is aware that he exists make him nervous?

[killedwithlove]

"Perceptible," Cole agrees to the unsaid word. "I'm always here, but most people don't know. When I leave, most people forget."

He shifts, uncertain. "I don't, being the focus of attention. It's not right. Loud voice, bone and skin, sword calloused hands, get away from him, demon!" He pulls on the brim of his hat, awareness clawing for something around her that reflects similarly. "When he notices me, he makes me call Them, they nod encouragingly, you have to, Six."

[eudorapatch]

"When people focus on you... they can hurt you?" Make him do things he doesn't want to do? He's been abused.

Her heart breaks for him a little, even amid her confusion and her mild panic. "I won't hurt you. You can hear the things I don't say, the things I feel. You know that's true, don't you? Look for as long as you have to to see it. I won't hurt you, unless you're harming someone who can't protect themselves. If you're a good person... and I think you are, you won't ever have anything to fear from me."

[killedwithlove]

"When people see me, they hurt me. Hunt me. He did it to his projects, people said they were his children, but they weren't, they were his projects." He winces and rubs his stomach in an odd gesture that doesn't entirely seem like him.

He looks to her, nodding slowly. "You- protect people. I only kill people to stop them hurting others too."

[eudorapatch]

'We weren't his children, we were his projects.'

Of course, he can see everything that she is, it makes sense he'd be able to get that, that he might try to put it into terms he thinks she'd be familiar with. Patch has such clear memories of the pain in Diego's eyes, of wanting to take that pain away from him, to protect him from it, even from the memory of it.

"Then you're like me. We protect good and innocent people against the things that would hurt them, and we protect each other, as well. We don't abandon each other. We don't hurt each other."

[killedwithlove]

"No. I know Klaus and Ben. We met here. I know their hurts from them. But... I could probably find Diego's on you. He never used name for them. Their mother had to name them, when it happened. And they love their names, but some part of them is carved out in the shape of those numbers."

He rubs at his face. "People try and hurt me a lot. You won't. People here don't. I like that."

[eudorapatch]

Patch nods slowly. "It's a pretty great place. Full of second chances." She's alive. She might never be able to go home, might never have her life again, but she still gets another chance at life, at creating a new one. Even if they can only go home all or nothing, in the end, even if she has to give up her life to make sure everyone else gets to keep theirs, she's already had more time.

Every morning here is the start of a day she wouldn't have had any other way, and you can't put a price on that.

[killedwithlove]

"I'm Cole's second chance," Cole agrees. Agrees? It's something like agreement.

"You might go somewhere else. You might not. Even spirits don't know what happens."

[eudorapatch]

"You mean... when we die?" Patch has already had the talk with Ben about ghosts being a real thing. She's more or less accepted the insanity of that statement, and the way it's shaken her faith. She's not sure she feels up to exploring it all over again with Cole just now. Maybe some day, but not now.

Of course... "Or do you mean from this place? I don't think I can go home and still be alive. I was shot through the heart. You don't survive that."

[killedwithlove]

"I don't know. Maybe both. Or neither." He shrugs. "Ben isn't like other people. Other ghosts. They still hold him in place, They give him definition even if he doesn't want it."

[eudorapatch]

Patch nods in an agreement and an understanding. "They never got to be children." This is not what she thought they would be talking about, but it feels like a natural turn for it to take. "They deserved so much better than they got." She only knows of the other Hargreeves siblings through the filter of what Diego has told her, but her heart aches for them, all of them.

[killedwithlove]

"No. They never got to be children. Or people at all." He understands that. Even in Thedas, children get to be children for a little while. "He tortured them and told them it was for their own good."

[eudorapatch]

Patch is about to take a little bit of a shot in the dark, but she wonders why it is that Cole makes these connections now, if it's all to do with her, or a little bit to do with him. "Is that familiar to you? To Cole? Was one of the people who hurt him someone who should have been protecting him?"

It's not entirely unlike talking to a child, and Patch doesn't think that with even the slightest trace of negativity. Children see the world in a very plain and straightforward way, they remind her of things she's forgotten, that she can't see any more. There's something wonderfully uncomplicated about talking with children, even if it can be confusing at times.

[killedwithlove]

"A little familiar to Cole. His father was bad man. But he never needed reasons or excuses. Reginald did." He looks at her, quiet for a moment. "I'm Compassion. I always understand the why. I just don't necessarily agree with it. Reginald had reasons and to him they were good ones. But they were very unkind ones."