now that i'm older, my heart's colder.

[asunders]

Who| cole, shepard, joel
What| two surly people adopt a child somehow
Where| the tribute center lobby
When| tba
Warnings/Notes| none?



Cole hasn't been doing very well at being human lately. Despite all the advice he got from Cassandra and Dorian and Cullen, he's sort of forgotten to eat over the past couple of days. And sleep. In fact, he's barely moved from the lobby of the tribute center, glued to the large television that was broadcasting a 24-7 live feed of the games. They didn't always show him his friends, so Cole kept watching in the hopes that he could see a glimpse of them.

He doesn't want to watch them die, though. And he hates feeling like he can't do anything about it. Most people leave him alone, and it's probably because he cuts such a strange figure in that lobby. The brim of his hat pulled low over his face, curled up in the corner. Unmoving.

He just wishes he could help.

Comments

[aintyourdad]

Joel has seen the kid around a couple of times - sometimes alone, sometimes with people around. But this is the first time he's noticed him two days in a row, in the same spot, wearing the same clothes, staring at the same TV set -

That doesn't sit right with him. Not at all. Especially not when he takes a closer look, tilting his head to see under the brim of that hat - and what he sees is a kid who looks tired and underfed. Not taking care of himself.

Well, that does it. The kid can't be more than twenty, but he shouldn't be sitting there like that regardless. Joel finds the remote and switches the TV off with a click.

"C'mon, kid, you need to stop watchin' that shit," he growls. "Shepard's got a pillow fort, there's food there." He points to the weird structure on the other side of the lobby.

[asunders]

His eyes hurt. They never used to before, but the harsh lighting of the television sets is beginning to irritate them. The lack of sleep probably doesn't do much to help either, but they haven't shown him anyone from the Inquisition for hours now and he's afraid he's going to miss something. Afraid that someone is going to die alone and terrified and Cole thinks that he should at least notice and remember. He has the dead tributes names on his breath like an old prayer, watching everything through unkempt blonde hair, obviously distraught.

He ought to be used to cruelty, by now. But this is worse than the templars and the mages, worse than the whispers of all the murderers at the Winter Palace hiding behind their masks. And for a moment after the feed is clicked off, Cole can't help but stare up at the man in front of him.

"But...my friends. I want to help them," he wrings his hands a little, fidgeting where he sits. "I don't want them to die alone. Nobody should. I need to help."

[aintyourdad]

Yep, he's new. Joel sighs a little, and waves him over. "You need to take care of yourself, too. Your friends wouldn't want you to waste away out here. Look, we'll get you fed and rested, then we'll find your escort, okay? You can't help 'em watchin' that thing, but there are things you can do."

He waves his hand again, beckoning the kid over.

[asunders]

He considers it for a moment before he finally untangles himself from the position he's been sitting in for hours now. Cassandra warned him about back pain, but he hadn't really been expecting any of this. The stiffness in his joints, the seizing in his muscles as he unfolds himself to reveal a tall and lanky kid in baggy clothes that hang off him. A scarecrow comparison would not be inaccurate at this point.

"Shepard. The woman with the scars. They tell stories, but I can't hear them any more. Soft, silent, solemn, Shepard," he has the bad habit of babbling, lips twisting with expression as if they're not quite used to forming the words. His stomach growls, loud enough to be audible. He wobbles on his feet a little bit, slightly woozy from not eating.

[aintyourdad]

"Er." Well, that's a strange speech pattern. He definitely needs feeding up, though, and Joel grabs his elbow to stop him from teetering right the hell over.

"Yeah, that's her," he finally says. "I'm Joel. C'mon."

[earthborn]

Shepard's laying on her stomach when Joel comes into range, dragging Cole by an unwilling elbow. Huh, well look at that.

"Hey, Joel. Still rescuing random young people from uh..." She has a good perspective, from this angle, at the kid's desperate, pinched expression. Too much hardship and loneliness, never enough to eat, and certainly no one to look after him, "...Just get in here already, geez."

She rolled over and up, making room for the flaps to part and the two of them to crawl in. It was a dimly-lit space, populated by cushions and comforters too heavy to serve the ceilings. Here and there among the lumpy landscape stood the curious bottle-necks of the little glass children of indolence, capped or empty, or half-filled with what could have been anything so innocent as soda, but wasn't.

"We got...doughnuts, chips, beer, tube of cookies around here somewhere. It's Cole, right?"

[asunders]

It's actually kind of hard for him to crawl into the space. He's all awkward long limbs in his new human form, and he doesn't really like it very much. There's this feeling of being anchored to the ground somehow, like he can't up and disappear halfway across the room any time he wants to. It's very strange, and very soft inside the tent. He accidentally sits on an empty bottle and it pokes at his back until he pulls it out from underneath him.

"Yes. That's my name now," back before he was Cole, he was...something else. That one spirit had called him Compassion, but it's hard to tell. Cole squints at the bottle in his hand, reading the label on it.

"A doughnut is a kind of food?" maybe it's not the most healthy thing to be feeding the malnourished kid doughnuts right off the bat but he's definitely not going to complain.

[aintyourdad]

Joel, for his part, also has a bit of trouble - he's decidedly not lanky, that's mostly why. But he manages to crawl inside, grabbing a bottle of beer and cracking it open.

"Yeah, it's a pastry. Here." He grabs a box and offers it to him. Food is food. He might get sick later, but so does Joel for a couple days every time he gets back from an arena. It's an adjustment.

[earthborn]

"You look like you could use a few calories, kid," They're awful, anyways. Well, alright, they're quality stuff, light and fluffy, dusted with sugar-powder, and proudly gluten-free, whatever the hell that's meant to say as a function of quality-control.

But box doughnuts are meant to be one step up from eating sugar-infused foam cushions, you shouldn't be able to picture a gleaming bakery when you bite into one. Not unless it's the kind of bakery that takes place along a few miles of factory conveyer-belt, dammit!

"So, what took you so long?" this was to Joel, as much as Cole, "You know he's been watching that shit ever since we got back in."