Not silent, Skyhold was never truly silent, but quiet enough that the crackle of the brazier and the distant murmur of soldiers became something far away. Solas sat alone before a mural he had begun. It sat unfinished, brush resting idle in his hand.
He had not touched the wall in hours. The paint had long since dried...
Cole's voice arrived without warning. He appeared from thin air, as he often did. Solas did not turn to greet him, instead his eyes peered at the mural before him. The great glowering eyes of the dread wolf gazed back at him ominously in that moment.
Cole stepped closer. His bare feet make no sound against the stone, as he closes some of the distance between them. He is weary, as if he is unsure of just how close he can really get to Solas, but ultimately it does not stop him from trying to help.
"You keep carrying them. All of them."
His brow furrows then, as if he doesn't understand, as if the reason why leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.
"Like stones in your chest.
Like if you put them down, they won't be yours anymore."
Solas closed his eyes at Cole's words, and for a moment an eternity passes before them. The spirits he had known, the people he had led, and the mistakes that had shaped the ages...
It was all his fault. For all his great wisdom, in the end he had made a terrible mistake, and it had cost his people everything.
"I deserve to carry them..."
The answer came so quickly that Solas finally looked at him. Cole stood with his hands clasped behind his back, head tilted. His usually aloof features sharp and alive for once, as he peered back at Solas from under his hat.
Solas let out a tired breath.
The spirit-boy sat beside him on the floor for a while then. For a time neither spoke, then after some time Cole's voice echoed out softly.
Solas laughed once. It was a short, bitter sound. One that covered up more truth than it held. He knew what Cole meant at once, and he was correct. He missed what he was before all of this, before he had so foolishly taken form and followed Mythal and the others.
"Simple is not a word I would use..."
Cole looked toward the unfinished mural.
"Before. Before names and bodies and choices. Before hunger. Before regret."
Solas's gaze drifted slowy.
Before... He remembered the Fade as it had been, as he had been... boundless thought, purpose without uncertainty.
Nothing more and nothing less.
Solas glanced at him once more as Cole's expression had become distant.
The words were spoken without shame, without hesitation.
"I wanted to help. That was enough. Then people hurt, and I hurt with them. Then there were names and faces and fears..."
The boy places his hand against his chest lightly then.
The young man looked down at his hands for a few moments, as if he himself were having the same realization that in a way he was trying to help Solas understand.
"I don't think Compassion is gone but Cole isn't gone either."
The realization settled between them, as Solas stared at him intently. Honestly surprised at how enlightening this conversation between them had been.
Cole, the spirit who had become a person or perhaps something between, something new. Something neither spirit nor mortal could fully describe.
"I have spent much of my life mourning what was lost..."
Solas admitted softly, his words stained with bitterness and guilt.
Cole nodded. The distance between slowly disappearing more as he continues you speak.
Cole leaned closer then, his eyes meeting Solas's own once more as they stand face to face.
The words struck harder than any accusation ever could, not because they hurt but because they didn't, because somewhere deep inside, they felt true.
"You learned things Wisdom never could."
Solas fell silent. The word lingered like salt on a wound. Love, friendship, hope, grief.... These things a spirit of Wisdom could only observe Solas had lived. The distinction suddenly felt important.
"You think becoming this... was not corruption?"
Cole's answer carried absolute certainty.
The young man tilted his head.
"You always tell people that spirits become demons when twisted against what they are."
"But that's not what happened."
The ancient elf found himself staring at the floor in contemplation. For centuries he had measured himself against what he once was, against an ideal. Against Wisdom. Every flaw had felt like evidence of decline, every emotion, a departure. Every attachment, another step away from purity. Yet Cole sat beside him as living proof that transformation was not inherently tragedy.
Compassion had become Cole, not lesser, not broken. Simply different, and perhaps...
Perhaps Wisdom had become Solas.
The thought settled into him like sunlight through stained glass. Gentle, warm, and unexpected.
Cole leaned against his shoulder then. The gesture was awkward, and affectionate in a purely human way. .
"You don't have to be who you were, it's okay to change."
"You can be who you became."
For a long moment Solas said nothing, then he looked at the unfinished mural before him not at the parts already painted,but at the empty spaces waiting to be filled.
A small smile touched his lips. The first genuine one in days.
Cole beamed. The smile that followed was all Compassion, and all Cole, at the same time.
