#Rosie's so desperate to recruit Viv because she can sense that Viv has the strongest subclass

[bucketsofmonsters]

Where the Light Enters - Part 5

cw: unreliable narrator, hurt/comfort, slow burn, eventual sex, enemies to lovers, past childhood sexual assault, past sex trafficking, referenced noncon, past nonconsensual body modification, happy ending, the tags look scary but this is mainly a story about recovery

Cole/Female Inquisitor

word count: 4k

ao3 link

Masterlist

With their spat mostly over, Rosemary was back to dragging Cole along with her on their missions.

She was still pouting, of course, but in her defense he was the only person she could show her anger to. She had a lot of pouting pent up and she’d jump at any excuse to use it. 

Cole didn’t mind. He could clearly tell it was being done good-naturedly and watched her huff and puff with the closest thing to amusement Cole could muster shining in his eyes. 

One time he blurted out, “The inside doesn’t match the outside. You’re happy.” His voice was tinged with what she might confuse for glee if she didn’t know him better than that.

He showed up ready to head out with her after she hadn’t so much as told him they were leaving and she didn’t address it, preparing to head out alongside him. 

They were off to meet some mage who had sent them a letter. At least she thought the mage had sent a letter, she hadn’t been fully paying attention. 

Her name was Vivienne. She was sure of that much. 

She wasn’t sure of a lot of things about this new mage, but she knew one distinct pro that she had. She was not Solas. 

She wasn’t sure who to bring in the attempt to recruit her. They were going to a fancy party so she assumed this Vivienne was higher class, but that didn’t tell her much. 

So she did the safe thing. She grabbed her two other mages. At the very least, she’d gathered that there was a tumultuous relationship between mages and non mages so they probably wouldn’t hurt on that front. 

But Josephine had made it incredibly clear that Vivienne wanted to speak with her and only her, so when they arrived at a massive house that sprawled over a lush landscape with masked party goers drifting in and out of the doors, she allowed the doorman to lead her to the room she needed to be in and she planted all three of them outside it.  

She said, as clearly as she could, “Stay here. Listen for me, if you hear anything that sounds even slightly awry come inside but otherwise, just stay.” 

And then she went inside, all alone. 

The woman inside turned immediately to greet her. 

The room was meticulously furnished, all done in shades of silver and light blue. They matched Vivienne’s clothes perfectly, like the house was built around her. 

Vivienne had an elaborate dress on, covered in beads and embroidery and a thousand other things that gave her a headache to look at. The set of fabric horns atop her head matched it perfectly. The smile she wore was meticulously practiced, perfectly polite. 

“Inquisitor,” she said, and gave her a gracious nod. 

Rosemary smiled, a mirror of the one Vivienne had given her. “Madame Vivienne. I’ve heard you’re interested in aiding the Inquisition.”

“I am,” she said, and her voice exuded both elegance and snobbishness at once. Rosemary thought maybe that was the most honest part of her. “I admire your cause and I think you could use my expertise.”

“Of course we could.”

Before she could get another word out, Cole was standing between them. 

Vivienne reeled back. “Who is this?” she demanded. “I asked for a private meeting.”

He looked at the door, and once more she could get no read on his emotions. He was such a mystery to her, it was endlessly frustrating. “Their thoughts were too loud,” he announced to them, “and it was tiring to make eyes brush past, calm, unconcerned. I don’t need to make her forget. You can see me.”

He was mostly addressing Rosemary as he spoke, and she wondered what was wrong with him. He almost seemed overwhelmed, eyes a little cloudier than what she was accustomed to seeing from him. 

Vivienne’s eyes roved over him. “Eyes brush… What are you, young man? Are you some sort of spy? Where were you hiding?”

Rosemary was ready to agree with her as quickly as she could. She was beginning to see that it was certainly a better assumption than the alternative. 

He turned to Vivienne, his gaze curious. “You’re both lying, layers and layers and layers, the real words buried too deep to mean anything. You can’t speak that way. Nothing gets said.”

She evaluated him coldly, worry lines creasing her otherwise flawless face. “Are you in my head? Inquisitor, tell me you did not bring a demon into my home.”

Rosemary said “I did not,” at the exact time that Cole said, “I’m a spirit.”

She seemed taken aback by their insolence. “But you did bring him?”

Before she got the chance to respond, Vivienne was speaking again. 

“He should be put to death.”

“What?” Rosemary asked, reeling back a little. 

“You heard me. I will not work with an organization that works with demons.” 

Cole seemed hurt by the word demon more than he was concerned with the demand that he be put to death. He repeated once more, “I am a spirit.”

She scoffed. “If the Inquisition believes that is enough to make this creature docile it must be staffed entirely by fools.” 

“Well maybe if you joined,” Rosemary said softly. “We would have a better head on our shoulders.”

Her tone was softer than it should have been, a little out of place in the argument that had begun brewing. It had to be to fight down the bile that had begun rising in her. 

This never used to happen. She never used to react emotionally to things like this but even as she put on a calm face, she felt the beginnings of anger curl in her. 

It was this horrible creature. He’d done something to her, somehow shoved her back towards humanity.

All of this would have been so much easier if she’d just been able to slit his throat back when they’d met. 

“Have him killed,” Madame Vivienne insisted.

If only she knew that if that was a choice, the spirit would have been dead long ago.

As she went to speak, to respond with something, anything, to smooth this all over, the door flew open and Solas and Dorian walked in, clearly looking desperately for Cole. 

Vivienne took one look at them with their staffs on their backs and then turned her nose up at the pair of them. “You have mages in your employ too, alongside a demon, with seemingly no safeguards. My advice is clearly needed.”

Dorian groaned. “And what safeguards do you think mages should be constrained under? You know, in Tevinter, mages would never allow themselves to be subjugated like you are.”

“In Tevinter,” Vivienne retorted, “corruption runs rampant. Here we are not quite so barbaric.”

He scoffed, “Barbaric is what you do to misbehaving mages.”

“Better than allowing them to become possessed by demons like this,” she said, gesturing over at Cole as she spoke, “with no consequences. The templars are not always correct, but your idea of circles is ineffectual at best.”

“Cole is no demon,” Solas decided to chime in, cutting off the venom that was clearly about to exit Dorian's mouth. “He is a spirit, and he deserves the same respect as you or I. He is no threat to mages.”

Vivienne laughed, a high, condescending thing. “No threat? You’re a fool, you all are.”

Rosemary wondered quietly if it were even possible to have picked a worse team for this mission. 

“I assure you, the only fool here,” Solas practically hissed. “Is you.”

“I’m sure the people will be glad to know that the ones trying to protect us from the fade have a pet demon running around, unchecked, with their mages. Do the templars know about this, Inquisitor? It seems like something they would very much be interested in.”

“The templars are wrong,” Cole snapped, and it was more emotion than she’d ever heard from him before. “The ones who remember you are people are not templars for it. They say you can’t be a templar and be kind. Cullen had to leave.”

“What is the mad demon blathering about now? Words like this, against your allies? You treat this demon like a pup and yet you have not even properly taught him to heel.”

“They have trained me,” Cole insisted. “I move silent, shrouded, but together. We move as one when the knife sinks in.”

“Tell me you have not armed this thing,” she said, sounding more and more outraged by the second. “I demand you have it taken care of.”

Solas reeled back. “Taken care of? Tell me that does not mean what I think it does. You cannot be entertaining this nonsense.”

“Solas,” Rosemary said, fighting to keep her voice measured, “We need her.”

“We do not need someone who lacks humanity like this. Your soul is lined with rot, Madame de Fer, and I am no longer left wondering how you could thrive in those wretched circles.”

Solas grabbed Cole’s arm and attempted to pull him out of the room. Cole fought against it, planting his feet. 

“She’s afraid,” he said, tugging against Solas’s hold. “Seeing me causes the hurt. I would not hurt her. I only harmed mages when I didn’t know, when I thought taking them away was the same as helping.”

Vivienne’s eyes widened and Rosemary suddenly wished Solas could pull harder. 

Vivienne showed few signs of being ill composed, still carrying herself with the same carefully considered weight she always did. The only sign that something was wrong lay in her breaths, how they had started to come just barely quicker. It was hardly enough to notice, at least to most people who weren’t focused on reading every little tell every other person displayed. 

“He admits it,” she said, and her tone was haughty. “He admits he’s hurt mages. Will you still do nothing?”

“He hasn’t hurt anyone,” she insisted, wishing with all her might that she could scream that she wished she could have killed him. That yes, spirits were manipulative, he’d manipulated her into letting him stay and then manipulated her once again, without her so much as realizing, into having her emotions bubble back up to the surface. 

“They did that themself,” Cole said, and she wished they were alone and she could snap at him that this most certainly was not the time to be rooting around in her head. “They wanted to see the air again. You let them with me and they remembered what it was like to be restless.”

She shot Solas a pointed look, incapable of tamping it down any longer. “Please remove yourself and Cole from the premises. You too, Dorian. Your presence is no longer necessary.”

Dorian moved towards the door, where Solas still had his hand firmly gripping around Cole’s forearm. 

“Does he really hurt mages?” Dorian asked as he headed for the door, and Rosemary didn’t know what the truth was.

“He does not,” she said with confidence. “He is kept on a short leash. It was let out today when it should not have been, and now he is being removed. The consequences of this will be discussed.”

Solas managed to pull Cole out the door. He’d mostly stopped fighting it, just staring at her from below that stupid hat with those massive eyes that peered right through her. 

She sighed, desperately attempting to adjust her plan to the disaster that had unfolded. 

Vivienne let out a laugh devoid of any humor, one that seemed to announce how absurd all of that had been and how above it all she felt. 

“Well,” she said. “You most certainly have developed a fascinating little army, haven’t you.”

She shrugged. “The templars are our army. Them, I chose. Solas and Cole I was strongarmed into keeping. I am not the all encompassing ruler the rumors make me out to be.”

Vivinne evaluated her carefully. “No?”

“Absolutely not.” And then, in the name of salvaging this relationship and collecting the mage that she had heard was the strongest in the land, she did one of the only things she could rarely bring herself to do. She told the truth. 

“I have no love for mages. I was victimized by unrestrained mages, you know. I didn’t always look like this.”

Vivienne scoffed a little. “What, young and beautiful?”

She nodded and fought the urge to throw up. “It was an awful thing. Blood magic, I believe you call it here. They twisted me up, molded me into what they wanted me to look like. Men, mages, whoever you’d like to blame it on. I know how dangerous they are and if I had my way, we’d have our own circle to prevent anything like that happening here. I chose the templars. I understand every word you say. I know templars could never incite cruelty like that, could never live up to the wretched actions a mage, unrestrained, is capable of. I have no love for mages and I respect your thoughts on the subject. I think you could be a guiding force for us, even if I have been pushed into housing a spirit in order to learn the enemy’s mind.”

Most of it, of course, was nonsense. Most of everything she said was nonsense. 

In all honesty, she couldn’t have cared less about mages, and what those mages had done to her was far from the worst thing that had happened to her. She would have taken in every rebel mage and allowed them to learn every bit of blood magic they wanted if she thought it would keep her safer than she would have been without them. 

But there was enough truth shining through, enough of a sliver of vulnerability, that she could see it shift something in Vivienne. 

“I am sorry to hear that, my dear. In a proper circle, that never would have been allowed to happen. It is good to hear someone speaking sense.”

“Will you join us?” she asked gently, trying to not push too much. “I only want what is best for Thedas and I think we need you.”

“I will. And tell your spirit that if he comes sniffing around me he will be put down.”

She nodded, and as she did it felt almost like a bow. “Of course. There’s nothing else I’d like more.”

She left Madame de Fer’s mansion feeling exhausted. 

Dorian, Cole, and Solas were all waiting just outside the grounds. She nodded at them and the two mages looked incredibly displeased, Solas raising his hands to rub at his temples as Dorian rolled his eyes. 

Cole’s head perked up when she approached, blurting out words as he pulled them from her mind. “The truth shines through like sun through leaves, but it burns. It hurts even when you say it doesn’t, the face in the mirror being wrong. They say it’s a mercy, that no one ever touched the you that was. You wonder what she would think of the girl they formed.”

Solas and Dorian glanced between the two of them, trying to decipher the words. 

She was too tired to try and spin them into anything. 

And then an arrow landed between her feet and she was back in action, her exhaustion falling away. 

Solas had a protective spell around them in an instant as Dorain positioned himself to attack and Cole stood absolutely still, not making so much as an attempt to draw his weapons. 

“It meant to miss,” he said. “Sent between the heels to announce her way.”

As he spoke a blonde elf with short, choppy hair emerged from behind a bush, bow in hand, positioned perfectly so no one from the mansion could spy her from a window. 

“The Red Jenny’s send their regards,” she said with a smile. “We want to know why you people claim to want to help and yet you keep going to the richy riches of the world instead of talking to the little people. We could do you more good. Could tell you what the actual people living here need too.”

It had been too long of a day for this. She could not bring herself to pretend to care about the ‘little people’ or whatever else this weird girl who had shot at her was talking about. 

But manpower was manpower, and at least she didn’t need to grovel to get this one to stay, so she said, “Sure, come along, join the Inquisition. I’m sure we could find a place for you.”

The girl seemed confused by how smoothly this was going. “What, just like that? Now I’m a member of your little army?”

“If you want to be, sure. And I’m sure Josephine, she’s one of my advisors, would love to hear what the people of Thedas think.”

She was, in fact, not sure Josephine would care about this at all, but she was looking for anyone she could pawn this incredibly irritating girl off to. 

The girl puffed out her chest a little, a smug sense of pride painting itself across her face. It wasn’t that far from what she’d seen in Vivienne, to be honest. She just hadn’t trained any display of real emotion out of herself the way Vivienne had.

“Brilliant. My name's Sera, by the way.”

She heard Solas do his incessant long-suffering sigh next to her and wanted to shake him by the shoulders and ask what he wanted her to do and if he cared about winning this fight at all. 

Instead she just listened as he said, “You do have a fondness for strays, don’t you?” and forced out a bashful smile. 

Then, hiding her level of malice as deep as she could, hoping Cole wouldn’t just blurt it out, she said, “You always tell me I don’t consider elves enough. Here you go Solas, this one’s for you.”

Sera scoffed. “Yeah right, I’m not an elf. Not really.”

Solas shot her an exasperated look as she smiled at him, sickly sweet. “Something for you two to discuss. Now I have important things to do, surely you can show our new recruit to Skyhold.”

Solas might well kill her in her sleep at this point, no matter how many smiles she threw his way. He’d never really fallen prey to them anyways, even before she’d begun antagonizing him as subtly as she could. 

It made her a little afraid to see that she was getting bolder. She could feel it in the way she talked to people, more willing to antagonize, honest laughs and sighs escaping more. 

She blamed Cole once again. He was ruining her perfect training. 

Solas left with Sera, despite his obvious disdain for her. Dorian wandered off too, clearly in no hurry to spend more time with the Inquisitor who had unceremoniously thrown him out and had recruited both someone he hated and a spirit who may or may not have hurt mages. 

She considered asking Cole about what he’d meant when he’d said that before realizing she didn’t care.

As they wandered into Skyhold, Bull tried to flag her down, waving at her from across the courtyard. 

Cole’s head darted around as she began to resign herself to having to go over there. 

His presence disappeared from her side and she realized he’d completely abandoned her. 

It was fair. He could probably hear all of the things she’d thought and said to Vivienne. In his position, she would have abandoned her too. 

Varric’s voice cut through her thoughts from behind her, shouting, “Hey, Rosie, come train with me. It’s been too long since you picked up anything resembling a bow.”

She saw Cole lurking behind him, staring out at her, and considered being upset at him for revealing anything to Varric. 

But then again, she was exhausted and she wasn’t sure how much of Bull she could stomach right now, so she shrugged in Iron Bull’s direction and ran over to meet Varric. 

He thrusted a bow in her hand and she sighed at the realization that despite it being a ploy from Cole, she would not be getting out of training. 

Varric gave her a pat on the back. “Cole said you needed to unwind a little.”

“He did not say that,” she said, knowing the spirit far better than that by now. 

“No,” Varric said with a laugh, “he did not. But he said something and I gleaned at least that much from it. Why, was I wrong?”

“The truth makes things worse,” Cole said. “Starts to unravel knots you thought were tied. I unravel them too, that’s what happens when I can see through them. Vivienne was right. Dead things can’t unravel knots. The string pulls tight. Things don’t count when they’re lies. They can’t hurt when they don’t happen to her. If they can’t count, why do you cry?”

She looked down at the bow, refusing to acknowledge what Cole had said. “You were right that I haven’t picked a bow in ages.”

Varric, always her favorite, chose to ignore Cole too. “Well, it’s never too late to learn. How about it Cole, you want to be the target?”

His eyes lit up as much as they ever did, shining a bit, at least the bits of them that she could see behind his hair and hat. “Yes please.”

It was a shame she wasn’t a better shot, she thought as he disappeared and then reappeared beside the targets. This whole problem could be solved right now. 

“I could not,” he said, speaking at exactly his normal volume from across the range, and she could barely hear him. She wondered if he knew he could change how loud his voice was. “I told you, I am too slippery for you.”

She notched an arrow and fired it at him as quickly as she could. 

It went nowhere near him. He disappeared and reappeared anyway, making it land even further from him. It almost felt like he was taunting her. 

When it became apparent how truly awful of a shot she was, he started doing what she could only call teasing her, disappearing as she released the bowstring and appearing barely to the left or right of her shot. 

It should have been aggravating. She couldn’t understand why it wasn’t. 

Once more he disappeared, though an arrow had not been fired. She also couldn’t tell where he’d gone, seemingly leaving the range entirely. 

A bit of shade encompassed her and she turned around to find herself under the brim of his hat. 

He looked like the cat who got the canary, inexcusably proud of himself. 

“You like me,” he whispered, a fondness in his eyes that made her sick. 

“Shut up.”

He shook his head, the ghost of a smile on his face, and then disappeared. She realized too late, as the remaining wisps of green curled around her, that he’d taken her bow with her, Varric laughing at her side.