killedwithlove | PSL: For kremdelacreme

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PSL: For kremdelacreme

Following this.

Cole had things to do during the night. There were nightmares to be soothed and dark spots to be softly lit. He banked the fires that needed tending and borrowed a cloak from Blackwall to tuck in a cold halla in his stall.

He went back to Krem's room for a little while, watching him sleep before slipping off to beg some food from the kitchens. The bread was softest and warmest from the ovens and he managed to convince the cook to give him a couple of fresh rolls with some butter and fruit preserve with the freshly arrived milk.

A brief detour to Cullen's room to make sure there was poppy juice and fresh, cool water when he came to and he headed off again.

He brought it all back to Krem's room and sat down on the chest in there to wait for Krem to wake up. He wasn't in a rush, Krem was peaceful asleep, it was nice to enjoy some quiet and the soft sounds of the castle waking.

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Cole wrinkled his nose. "I smelt like nug anyway."

He kept hold of Krem's hand, though. "So now I smell like nug and you."

Krem's smile grew some, and he lifted Cole's hand to rub the back of it against his neck. "Now that's even worse." A joke at his own expense, the sort that the Iron Bull would have made if he were there as well.

"You don't have much of a smell of your own. Is that because of the spirit thing?"

"I don't know. I suppose so. I don't sweat like mortal creatures." He might one day, but right now, he never had. "And I don't eat or drink, so there's nothing for my body to get rid of. Why is it worse?"

Obviously, making jokes around Cole wasn't the best idea. He was pretty sure he'd never even seen the other laugh.

"Nevermind," he sighed, then reached a hand up to Fluffy again to rub around the base of her horn, before nodding out into the yard again. There were more people roaming around by now, the guard rotation changing shifts and the vendors going to tend to their stalls, chantry sisters coming out to greet the day and start their chores.

with an easy tug on Cole's hand, Krem started out toward the training ring. "Come on, before it gets taken over by Cullen's men."

Cole had never been moved to laughter. He was too much inhabiting his body, rather than living in it.

Again, Cole followed. He was good at that, usually.

"He'll put them through their drills first. He didn't sleep well, so he might be a bit late this morning, as well."

Krem let go of his hand as they approached the training ring, leaning against the fence around it and watching a couple of the men as they went about their warmups. Cullen wasn't anywhere to be seen yet, so his routine would be delayed.

His maul was still leaning there against the fence where he'd left it, untouched; the troops knew better than to even think about doing so, unless they really wanted to be punched by someone shorter than them. He picked it up and slicked the clinging dew off it with his hand, flicking the water from his fingers then starting to run his own drills as a warmup.

"You don't have to spar with me, but I would like a new challenge," he called over to Cole. He didn't like the idea that Cole would just follow along with whatever he asked, just because it was asked of him. He wanted to give the option to just sit and watch, if that was what Cole wanted.

Cole watched the men briefly, then Krem and then wandered a little distance away before coming back as Krem hefted his maul into his hands.

"How do you spar with a maul? A knife, you can use a sheath, or a wooden double. But a maul..." He didn't know how it would work, since the weight of the weapon WAS the danger.

"I know I don't have to, but I'd like to. It'll be fun, and a challenge." He hopped over the fence and then up to sit on it, like he had the day before.

"Very carefully," Krem replied, though in all honesty he hadn't exactly planned on using it during the sparring match. He did still have his own knife, and he needed to work on his hand-to-hand regardless. He was simply running his warmups as the rest of the men were, waking up his muscles with the easy maneuvers.

He shook himself out when he was done with his set, then plucked his knife from its sheath on his belt and began to spin it deftly in his hand, walking it along his fingers then tossing it in the air and catching it and tipping Cole an easy, almost sweet smile.

"Come on then. You're the guest in this match, I'll give you the chance to strike first."

Cole didn't understand how one could use a maul very carefully, but when Krem pulled his knife, he realised they would be sparring hand to hand, with knives.

He didn't warm up like the others. He never stopped moving, really, he had no need to work into it. He set aside his good weapons and pulled his two small knives, dropping down into a combat ready stance, low and slightly difficult to focus on as the Fade reached to tug at the edges of his self.

"All right."

Cole moved fast. He had to, it was his advantage in hand to hand combat. He darted straight forward and then jinked to the side and spun, knives flashing to go for the sides and back, careful not to let them bite hard.

The upside of his having grown up in Tevinter and then taken up with the Chargers meant that Krem had the advantage of both being incredibly observant, and quick to react. He twisted as Cole swiped toward his side, blade spinning around in his hand to block one knife while his free hand closed on Cole's wrist. He planted the ball of his foot in the dirt and ground it in, spinning on the spot to bring him right up against Cole's back.

It wouldn't last long, with as slippery as the other could be, but he at least had a chance to smirk to himself over it.

Krem spun and Cole kept moving with him, like they were dancing, like he knew what Krem was trying to do, using Krem's grip on his wrist to twist himself from the hold and slide with a supple movement under one arm, rolling backwards and back onto his feet.

His hat somehow didn't come loose during the motion.

Krem followed the movement a little more stiffly, definitely not as graceful as Cole, not by a longshot. He released his hold on Cole's wrist as his knife swung up, blunt side first, aiming for the underside of the other's chin. His stance was held low and solid, free arm now protecting his center.

It shouldn't be possible to do a mix of a backflip and roll with that hat on and keep it, but Cole managed. He got some distance between them, in a similar low stance, but frighteningly open, knives held wide and apart, pale eyes glinting from under the brim of his hat, expression oddly empty for a man fighting.

If Krem didn't know better, he might have thought that the hat was glued to Cole's head, with the way he could move and still keep it on. He was distracted from the thought when he looked Cole in the face as they circled eachother. It worried him more than it probably should have, seeing that strange emptiness.

He wouldn't be deterred though, and he ducked forward, feinting in one direction then dipping low, aiming to take Cole's legs out from under him.

Krem thought it and Cole was reacting. Fighting on the defensive made more sense to him, plucking thoughts and intentions and moving to counter them. He darted in close, almost like he was about to tackle Krem but then he was flinging himself to the side and over one arm, using the sturdy shoulder to counter balance himself.

It left him open. It also left him able to follow the motion through and bring a knife hard and low, under a breastplate. He didn't drive the knife hard, but he was intending on completing the motion, for a touch that with extra strength would be an instantly killing blow.

Krem knew that Cole was picking up his intentions and moves straight from his head, and while it irked him, as it likely did most of Cole's real opponents, he could respect using the knowledge gleaned directly like that. Cole was very good with the tools that he had, most definitely a worthy opponent.

If it weren't for the chain mail layered between the leather and metal of his breastplate, that strike would have done a hell of a lot worse than simply knocking the wind out of him. Krem stepped back, holding his breath until his core wasn't quite as painful, then taking it shallowly. His blade spun in his hand, then flickered out of sight. A thud in the dirt marked where it had ended up, a centimeter away from Cole's foot, quivering slightly with the blade half buried in the hard-packed soil.

With the blade out of his hand, Krem was free to make his move, his arm wrapping around Cole's and holding it straight, locking his elbow, while the other hand shoved up toward his chin hard enough to crack his teeth together if it connected squarely. Cole might have pulled his punch, so to speak, but Krem doubted he could really damage the boy, not close-range like this.

Up close and in knife range, Cole was devastating in combat.

The locked arm would hold almost anyone else. Cole twisted, tried to move, couldn't get away from the blow he knew was coming and so instead he moved

Moving wasn't like walking, or shifting, or anything else mortals did. Moving was Cole tilting his head back, almost anticipating the blow and then vanishing from Krem's grip, leaving black and green smoke in his hands as Cole slipped into the cracks in reality and back out of reach again.

"You're very good," he said mildly. As if he hadn't just tweaked reality to let him move.

"That was cheap," Krem replied with a pout, catching himself before he could pitch forward with the momentum of his strike. He straightened up, hands on his hips, huffing and pulling his knife from the dirt with a hard tug. He wiped it off on his pants and sheathed it again, then stepped forward to be right there in front of Cole, looking up at him from under his hat.

Rather than remaining surly, he just reached up and took hold of the brim of Cole's hat, pulling it down over his eyes then lightly prodding his nose. "We should do this more often."

Cole canted his head, not quite sure what was cheap about it. It was free, so he supposed that was cheap.

And for all his grace and evasiveness in combat, once the sparring was clearly over, he simply let the tug and bop on the nose happen, reaching to rub at his nose rabbit like after it was done. "Yes. Spirits don't fight like mortals. And there are a lot of spirits out and lost because of the rifts."

He pushed his hat back up so he could see.

"I doubt they all fight like you, but it would still be good practice," Krem agreed, then went to pick up his maul, putting it over his shoulder and coming back to Cole's side to bump him gently. "You want to do anything now?"

"No, not all. Rage just attacks mindlessly. Solas says if you survive the first thirty heartbeats, you'll know everything they can do, because they can't hide anything, just attack. Pride can't back down, because it knows it is better than you and that it need not fear."

He moved with the bump and leaned in for a moment. "I have to wash. Solas says you should wash after every battle if you have the chance to do so."

"You put a lot of store in what Solas says, but what about what you think?" Krem asked, tone casual enough, but brow furrowed. He personally didn't care for the apostate, and he knew the Inquisitor shared that sentiment, having heard him griping at the Iron Bull about Solas every so often. Krem's concern was for Cole at the moment though. "Do you believe you need to wash? This wasn't a battle. You're not bloody, barely dirty, and obviously you don't sweat."

"Yes. He protected me when Vivienne and Cullen wanted to destroy me, he explained the mortal world better than anyone else had, because he understood me better than I understood me." Solas wasn't well liked, Cole knew that, but he didn't care because Solas didn't care.

"I don't know. I didn't know bodies needed washing, but people seemed happier once Solas told me to start doing it. Except Dorian, who told what I was doing barely qualified as bathing, because there was nowhere near enough hot water or relaxing involved in what I did. But then The Iron Bull threw him into the river as well."

Dorian had screamed indignantly and blossomed with a soft peach fondness that he was so casually accepted by the group. "I don't sweat. I do bleed."

"Cullen's a Templar, it's only to be expected of him to think like that, and Vivienne's a loyalist. They both like to think they know best in these matters, but nobody asks what you think. I don't even think people remember that you've got a mind of your own, until you speak up," Krem said thoughtfully. That soft frown was back on his face, at least until he had to imagine Dorian sitting in a river after having been thrown there.

Back to the idea of Cole wandering off to bathe, Krem just shrugged. "And you've done neither in the last hour I think. If you want to go, I won't stop you. You do still smell like nug after all." And he had to have words with Bull. He knew that there was a report from Bull's Ben-Hassrath contacts that needed to be discussed before it was brought before the Inquisitor. It had to be important, if the Chief wanted to sit with them in an official capacity.

"A lot of people don't think I do have a mind, that I just echo what's around me without thought or presence, acting without conscious intent. A thing that seeks only to help. Or harm."

Not everyone who had realised what Cole was took it well.

Cole looked to where the Chargers generally bunked down. "Worries, wriggles, worms inside. The hooks sink deep, bite into his flesh and pull in opposite directions, rending his soul. You should go and talk to The Iron Bull. It's important."

PSL: For kremdelacreme

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